“Let us not exalt worldly distinctions, titles, etc., by saying that they make no difference.”
In 1895 came the words, “East Anglia—the Fens—Yorkshire—the Lakes,” and the isolated thought:
“To be alone in eternity is the human lot of a man, but to be alone in time, alas! alas!”
The next year he had not touched the book: it was the year of his marriage, for in 1897 he had written: “We have now been married one year.” A list of villages followed showing a zigzag course right across England; then the thought: “There is nothing like the visible solitude of another soul to teach us our own. Two hungers, two thirsts, two solitudes, begetting others.”
Was it perhaps at the birth of a child—the date is not given, it might have been the same year, 1897—that he wrote this? “To him who is born into eternity it matters little what happens in time, and a generation of pain is as the falling of a leaf.” Then:—
“Unhappiness is apart from pain. When they tell us that in the Middle Ages and even in the last century men suffered more pain and discomfort than we, they do not tell us that they also had less unhappiness. Many a battlefield has seen more joy than pain; many a festival as little of either.”
And then, on a page to itself:—
“We are looking for straight oak sticks in a world where it is hazel that grows straight.”
That he was still travelling was indicated only by names of places written down without comment. A week’s accounts showed the expenditure of 10s. on the food of himself, his wife, and John and Paul, two children. In March, 1898, he wrote:—
“The road northward out of Arundel leads to Heaven”; to which he had added, “So does Lavender Hill.”