January 3, 1889.
There is a tiny vignette of Blake's, a woodcut, I think, in which one sees a ladder set up to the crescent moon from a bald and bare corner of the globe. There are two figures that seem to be conversing together; on the ladder itself, just setting his foot to the lowest rung, is the figure of a man who is beginning to climb in a furious hurry. "I want, I want," says the little legend beneath. The execution is trivial enough; it is all done, and not very well done, in a space not much bigger than a postage-stamp—but it is one of the many cases in which Blake, by a minute symbol, expressed a large idea. One wonders if he knew how large an idea it was. It is a symbol for me of all the vague, eager, intense longing of the world, the desire of satisfaction, of peace, of fulfilment, of perfection; the power that makes people passionately religious, that makes souls so much greater and stronger than they appear to themselves to be. It is the thought that makes us at moments believe intensely and urgently in the justice, the mercy, the perfect love of God, even at moments when everything round us appears to contradict the idea. It is the outcome of that strange right to happiness which we all feel, the instinct that makes us believe of pain and grief that they are abnormal, and will be, must be, set right and explained somewhere. The thought comes to me most poignantly at sunset, when trees and chimneys stand up dark against the fiery glow, and when the further landscape lies smiling, lapt in mist, on the verge of dreams; that moment always seems to speak to me with a personal voice. "Yes," it seems to say, "I am here and everywhere—larger, sweeter, truer, more gracious than anything you have ever dreamed of or hoped for—but the time to know all is not yet." I cannot explain the feeling or interpret it; but it has sometimes seemed to me, in such moments, that I am, in very truth, not a child of God, but a part of Himself—separated from Him for a season, imprisoned, for some strange and beautiful purpose, in the chains of matter, remembering faintly and obscurely something that I have lost, as a man strives to recall a beautiful dream that has visited him. It is then that one most desires to be strong and free, to be infinitely patient and tender and loving, to be different. And then one comes back to the world with a sense of jar and shock, to broken purposes, and dull resentments, to unkindly thoughts, and people who do not even pretend to wish one well. I have been trying with all my might in these desolate weeks to be brave and affectionate and tender, and I have not succeeded. It is easy enough, when one is happily occupied for a part of the day, but when one is restless, dissatisfied, impatient, ineffective, it is a constant and a weary effort. And what is more, I dislike sympathy. I would rather bear a thing in solitude and silence. I have no self-pity, and it is humiliating and weakening to be pitied. Yet of course Maud knows that I am unhappy; and the wretchedness of it is that it has introduced a strain into our relations which I have never felt before. I sit reading, trying to pass the hours, trying to stifle thought. I look up and see her eyes fixed on me full of compassion and love—and I do not want compassion. Maud knows it, divines it all; but she can no more keep her compassion hidden than I can keep my unrest hidden. I have grown irritable, suspicious, hard to live with. Yet with all my heart and soul I desire to be patient, tolerant, kindly, sweet-tempered. FitzGerald said somewhere that ill-health makes all of us villains. This is the worst of it, that for all my efforts I get weaker, more easily vexed, more discontented. I do not and cannot trace the smallest benefit which results to me or any one else from my unhappiness. The shadow of it has even fallen over my relations with the children, who are angelically good. Maggie, with that divine instinct which women possess—what a perfectly beautiful thing it is!—has somehow contrived to discern that things are amiss with me, and I can perceive that she tries all that her little heart and mind can devise to please, soothe, interest me. But I do not want to be ministered to, exquisite as the instinct is in the child; and all the time I am as far off my object as ever. I cannot work, I cannot think. I have said fine things in my books about the discipline of reluctant suffering; and now my feeling is that I could bear any other kind of trial better. It seems to be given to me with an almost demoniacal prescience of what should most dishearten me.
"It would not school the shuddering will
To patience, were it sweet to bear,"
says an old poet; and it is true, I have no doubt; but, good God, to think that a man, so richly dowered as I am with every conceivable blessing, should yet have so small a reserve of faith and patience! Even now I can frame epigrams about it. "To learn to be content not to be content"—that is the secret—but meanwhile I stumble in dark paths, through the grove nullo penetrabilis astro, where men have wandered before now. It seems fine and romantic enough, when one thinks of another soul in torment. One remembers the old sage, reading quietly at a sunset hour, who had a sudden vision of the fate that should befall him. His book falls from his hands, he sits there, a beautiful and venerable figure enough, staring heavily into the void. It makes me feel that I shall never dare to draw the picture of a man in the grip of suffering again; I have had so little of it in my life, and I have drawn it with a luxurious artistic emotion. I remember once saying of a friend that his work was light and trivial, because he had never descended into hell. Now that I have myself set foot there, I feel art and love, and life itself, shrivel in the relentless chill—for it is icy cold and drearily bright in hell, not dark and fiery, as poets have sung! I feel that I could wrestle better with the loss of health, of wealth, of love, for there would be something to bear, some burden to lift. Now there is nothing to bear, except a blank purposelessness which eats the heart out of me. I am in the lowest place, in the darkness and the deep.