I think I see you gasp, but Cornelia, in these words lie hidden one of the first elemental truths of existence and of happiness. It is what we were made for—to be mothers of men, and when for one reason or another we miss, or shirk that high destiny, we have got to pay the price. What can match the flowers of the field for beauty and strength? Their sweetness is flung ungrudgingly on a desert world; no man prunes, or trains or troubles about them; they are the children of mother earth and greatly do her credit. We shall have to get back to old primeval simple things where the big issues are concerned. The family, not the solitary child, but the healthy, sturdy row, "steps and stairs," as we used to call them, will have to become, as of yore, the basic column of our national life.
The war which has torn at the very roots of our vaunted civilisation has revealed to us the canker.
Anne is being as tiresome as a self-willed girl of seventeen can be, and that is saying much. You see they know everything at that age, and nobody else knows anything. Parents are back numbers, their only function to provide the setting for the soaring ambitions, through which seventeen aims at self-realisation.
I don't think there is much you can do at this juncture. If she had been but two years older, I should have asked you to ship her over here and I would have taken her to France. I expect to go there next month. If she could be beside Effie and do a bit of honest work, the more sordid and unattractive work the better, she would get something of a perspective. When my girl went out first and I was very anxious, a wise man and true friend said:
"Now you must leave Effie alone. You have done all you can. Let Destiny do the rest."
It comforted me mightily and I have honestly tried to follow his advice. It isn't easy. I am one of the candid outspoken kind of people, and I never see any reason for not talking about what interests me.
But Himself and Effie don't talk. Half the time you never know what they are thinking or meaning to do. I suppose they know themselves, only they don't feel the need of sharing things. Once when particularly exasperated, I informed Himself he ought never to have been married, as he would have been a success as a Swiss Family Robinson, without the family, quartered on a desert island. He just smiled and made no comment.
A friend of mine, married to a very distinguished man, whose name I daren't mention, said to me once: "It is quite possible to love your husband dearly and yet to want frequently to throw him out of the window."
I have just had an interruption from a woman who runs one of the camp tents here—an awful kind of woman, who never stops talking about herself for a moment. When she went away she thanked me for our pleasant talk. I very nearly said: "Thank yourself, Ma'am—I had no talk."
It took me back quite a long time to a Bohemian night in Douglas Sladen's flat, at Kensington, which was filled to overflowing with a motley crew of what are popularly termed "leading lights" of the stage, literature, and art. The party overflowed itself out to the stairs. I was caught in the passage beside Hall Caine; he did not know me, though I knew him. How he talked! I was grateful to him, for it made me forget the weariness and discomfort of the moment. A day or two later I got a letter from him, written at Greeba Castle, Isle of Man, telling me that the only thing he carried away from that party was the memory of our interesting conversation. There was no conversation that I could recall. What I had carried away was a very interesting, one-man talk. It was mostly about himself, but one forgets that when it is an interesting self.