E-Book, Englisch, 118 Seiten
Reihe: Classics To Go
E-Book, Englisch, 118 Seiten
Reihe: Classics To Go
ISBN: 978-3-98826-104-5
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
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ON LIFE AT LARGE
Oct. 17, 19—. My dear Alexa,— You asked me to write to you while you were away—“long letters,” you said; and the request set me wondering a little. I think I understand now. Comprehension came to me in a flash as I was stropping my razor this morning: the sharpening of one thing helped to sharpen another—my wits. You felt, didn’t you, that as I am a writing sort of man, I might, in long letters, find it possible to say things that an impalpable something had hitherto made it difficult for me to say when you and I were face to face? I think, perhaps, you were right; these long letters will show. All the same, we have been as intimate as most fathers and daughters; more intimate, I fondly think. I should like to write at length to-day; about 2000 words—forgive the jargon of the trade—on the relations of father and grown-up daughter, but you asked for letters, not essays. Still, I might point out this, in case it has not occurred to you before:—Those relations are peculiar, more than that, unique. His daughter is the only woman in all the world for whom a man five-and-twenty years her senior can feel no stir of passion, no trace of that complex emotion that modern novelists and people of that sort are so pleased to call sex-love; the only woman from whom he cannot possibly evoke passion in return. That fact of itself gives his daughter a chamber all to herself in the man’s heart, a chamber guarded by an angel with a flaming sword. To talk of love is the next thing to making love, they say, or something like that. It is probably not quite true; but now that I come to think of it, when I have talked of love to women whom I knew well, after a quarter of an hour or so a certain tartness, a certain uncomfortableness has come into the talk, also one felt oneself becoming just a trifle artificial, less entirely frank, less spontaneous, than one likes to be. Such talks have ended not infrequently in tears and temper. I need not assure you, Alexa, that the tears were not mine: as for the temper! And when I have talked of love to women whom I have not known well I have sensed a sort of agitation on both sides which seemed to portend danger in the not dim distance. One never felt quite sure as to what might happen in the next five minutes. Of course, all this refers to a long time ago. You will understand that. There is some truth in the old saying evidently. You might remember it. But the point of these remarks, as Mr. Bunsby says (it is one of your merits that you are not ashamed to love Dickens), lies in the application of them. His daughter is the one young woman to whom a man can talk of love quit of the faintest fear of being led into making it. I probably shall talk of love in these long letters you asked me to write. I am not sure but what, in any other mood and on any other day but this, I should have said that between men and women there is nothing else worth talking about. But if I said that now, I should be insincere, for I don’t feel it. This autumn weather, this dismal lingering death of summer, oppress my soul, and one should be in high fettle to talk intelligently of love. Now I am not that to-day as I look out of the library window and see those big funereal cedars lords of all, the whole garden subdued to their sombre humour. Day and night the piteous leaves of all the other trees are falling, falling like slow rain-drops; and at twilight they sound upon the garden paths as the footsteps of ghosts might sound—creepy, creepy. This morning I picked a rose for sheer pity of it, and in half an hour its charm was gone; its very colour had changed, its pink shell-like petals (it was the last of the Maman Cochets) had turned livid as the lips of a corpse; it exhaled, not perfume, but an odour of death. The birds flutter about aimlessly, they seem to feel there is nothing left for them to do in a world so full of sadness, no nests to be builded, no broods to be reared; and they haven’t the heart to sing. To add the last touch of sable to the whole mumpish outlook, you are away. Don’t think that insincere: it is not a bit. I wandered moodily, and with no definite object, into your room to-day. It was in shocking disorder, untidiness appalling, of course, or it had not been yours; but somehow the chaos did not irritate me as it usually does. Somehow I was glad of it. Had it been otherwise—as neat as my own study, for instance—I had been plunged into still deeper gloom. It was like an empty nursery in which the toys were still lying scattered all about. Oh, the deathly chill of an empty and tidy nursery! Let me see, you are nineteen or a trifle more, aren’t you? And Love must be lying in wait for you somewhere very near by. I wonder whether you will know him when you see him. If you do, then will you be the cleverest of your sex, and much cleverer than any one of mine. If he is anything at all like the Love of the Christmas cards and the funny little poets who like to display a smattering of classic knowledge—have no fear of him whatever. He won’t hurt, that chubby child with the toy bow and arrows. Of what drivelling folly, what stupendous ignorance were they guilty who personified Love as a pink and pulpy baby nourished on Pott’s Emulsion! Don’t believe them, dear. When Love’s self comes he comes always a strong man armed—a warrior with old scars upon his forehead and dints upon his shield. And there is another mailed adventurer, too, who may likely spring upon you unawares. He is so like Love in his equipment and in the manner of his attack, this one, that it is not until forty years have passed that one can see through his disguise. He is, by the most, held to be unmentionable between men of my age and women of yours, but the name of him is Passion. If I were an ideal instead of a practicable, work-a-day parent, I should warn you against him in the solemnest way, or I should pretend that there was no such a person. But I don’t do either; first because I know the warning and the conventional lie would be futile, and next, because I don’t think either would be quite fair to you. This world is an interesting place; it would be considerably less interesting but for Passion’s vagaries, his adroit ambushes, his sudden swift assaults, his slow retirements, and, sometimes, his unexpected defeats. And I want you to find life interesting—you are sure not to find it happy, folk of our temperament never do. Here I should like to drop metaphor and dissertate for a while in the plain language of what some modern writers call “psycho-physiology,” but I don’t want to startle you, much less to shock, so I will reserve psycho-physiology for another time. This, however, I may say: you will know Love from Passion just by this—that Love wants ever to give; Passion, to take. When the two appear as close allies—well, then you will be upon the eve of certainly the most momentous and, perhaps, the most catastrophic event of all your life. There is really no saying what may happen then, and you had better come and talk it over quietly with me. Don’t be afraid of Passion because you have heard him called by uglier names, and remember always this—that come he by tempestuous assault or by patient siege he never wins of his own strength alone. It is always a traitor within the gates that gives the citadel away. That’s the one you have to keep an eye on—the traitor inside. I have often heard you say (you are the only woman I have heard say it) that you would not, if you could, be a man. I like you the better for saying it, but you are wrong all the same; at least I think so. Whether men or women have the better time I don’t know, but I do know that men have the safer. They get more out of life, and they risk infinitely less in the getting thereof. In this matter of Passion, for instance (the metaphor’s changed now), the handicap is quite infernally unfair. It almost makes a just man blaspheme the handicapper. It is as though the two sexes were skating. Each equally enjoys the exhilarating exercise. To mine a slip means, at the worst, a ridiculous posture for a moment or two and a few bruises; to yours, the almost certainty of a compound fracture, possibly of a broken back. But perhaps in a sporting spirit you will reply, the deadlier peril carries with it the keener thrill; and really there may be something in that. My observation of life, however, convinces me to the contrary. For me the chances of the undignified tumble and the bruises are enough. Some of your advanced sisters (you’ll meet them presently, if not in the flesh, then in books) will tell you that the tendencies of the times are all in favour of equalising the chances. Maybe; but put not your trust in tendencies, Alexa. Think what you like, but act as though the world were going to be always just what it is now. Pioneers are always uncomfortable, and for that reason, mostly unpleasant. Your business is to make life interesting, and in so far as you do that you yourself will be an interesting woman. At the same time, an you love me, don’t imagine that I am counselling cowardice or even prudence. If cowardice be a positive vice, prudence is but a negative virtue, and the line that divides the two is so thin as to be often imperceptible. As you travel through life you will find the negative virtues, the cloistered virtues, as Milton, I think it is, calls them, about the least amiable and the most irritating things you will encounter. No, don’t be a coward. No woman with a chin like yours, and the brain I feel sure you have inherited, need be that. No end of obstacles and hindrances will go down before that chin of yours if only you...
