The City of Beautiful Nonsense

by E. Temple Thurston

"This is where I begin counting the days to your visit. I dare not begin sooner--too many figures always bewildered me. It is now just about three months. Your father is much better than he was, and is doing a little work these days."

And here was added in a quaint little parenthesis of his father's: "She calls it work, my dear boy, just to please me--but when old men play, they like to hear it called work. You've got to do my work. And she is so quick--she has seen I have been writing more than she has said. I shall persuade her to let this stay in nevertheless."

Then, uninterrupted for a space the letter continued.

"I'm so pleased that your work is going on so well. I thought your last story was too sad, though. Must stories end unhappily? Yours always seem to. But I think I guess. They won't always end like that. But your father says I am not to worry you on that point; that you can't paint in a tone of gold what you see in a tone of grey, and that what you see now in a tone of grey, you will as likely as not see one day in a tone of gold."

Then, here, another parenthesis.

"You will understand what I mean, my dear boy. I've read the story, and I don't think it ought to end sadly, and you will no doubt say, 'Oh, he's quite old-fashioned; he does not know that a sad ending is an artistic ending.' But that is not because I am old-fashioned. It is simply because I am old. When you are young, you see unhappy endings because you are young enough to bear the pain of them. It is only when you get older that you see otherwise. When you have had your sorrow, which, you know, only as an artist I wish for you, then you will write in another strain. Go on with your unhappy endings. Don't take any notice of us. All your work will be happy one day, and remember, you are not writing for but because of us. By the way, I think you spelt paregoric wrong."

Now again the dictation.

"Well, anyhow, though I know nothing about it, I feel you write as though you loved. You would tell me, would you not, if you did? I am sure it must be the way to write, the way, in fact, to do everything. Your father says the pictures he paints now lack strength and vigour; but I find them just as beautiful; they are so gentle."

Parenthesis.

"One can't always love as one did at twenty-six--T.G. That sounds like reverential gratitude for the fact, but you understand it is only my initials."