In all my early work, until, in fact, I wrote “Sally Bishop,” I was inclined to find it ugly enough in all conscience. But now beauty does seem inevitable and, what is more, the only reality we have. For if, as they say, God made man in His own image, then to call the ugliness of man a reality is to curse the sight of God; in which case, it were as well to die and have done with this business of existence altogether.

To see nothing but ugliness then, or, as the modern school would have it, to see nothing but realism, is a form of mental suicide which, thank God, no longer appeals to me. For when every year I find the daffodils bringing up their glory of colour and beauty of line with unfailing perfection, I cannot but think that man, made in God’s image, was meant to be still more beautiful in his thoughts and deeds even than they. Then surely what man was meant to be must be the only true reality of what he is. All else happens to him. That is all.

Wherefore, when, in these pages, you read of Bellwattle and of Emily the housemaid, of my little old pensioner, or of the poor woman in Limehouse; when, too, you read my attempt to give words to the maternal instinct; then you will see realities as I have seen them over the past two years and I dedicate this true record of them to you, because I know that you will take them to be as real as the beauty of Livy, the manliness of Nod, or the colour of those wall-flowers which bloom by the little red-brick paths in that graceful garden of yours in Kent.

Yours always,
E. Temple Thurston.

Eversley, 1910.

CONTENTS

I.The Pension of the Patchwork Quilt[3]
II.The Mouse-trap, Henrietta Street[13]
III.The Wonderful City[25]
IV.Bellwattle and the Laws of God[33]
V.Realism[43]
VI.The Sabbath[55]
VII.House to Let[67]
VIII.A Suffragette[77]
IX.Bellwattle and the Laws of Nature[87]
X.May Eve[101]
XI.The Flower Beautiful[111]
XII.The Feminine Appreciation of Mathematics[123]
XIII.The Maternal Instinct[135]
XIV.From my Portfolio[147]
XV.An Old String Bonnet[159]
XVI.The New Malady[167]
XVII.Bellwattle and the Dignity of Men[179]
XVIII.The Night the Pope Died[193]
XIX.Art[203]
XX.The Value of Idleness[217]
XXI.The Spirit of Competition[229]
XXII.Bellwattle on the Higher Mathematics[243]
XXIII.The Mystery of the Vote[257]
XXIV.Ship’s Logs[269]