"From what you tell me of his want of enjoyment in the practice of art, the determination seems wise. I suppose we take it for granted that a man must take pleasure in doing whatever he can do well; but there is no reason in the world why ability and inclination should always go together. A man with a good eye and that general ability and power of application which make a good student may easily be a draughtsman above the average, but it is quite intelligible that he should take more pleasure in other studies."
At the end of August Gilbert went with Stephen and his eldest nephew, Maurice Pelletier, for a cruise of ten days on the Saône. They were on the new catamaran "L'Arar," and enjoyed their voyage thoroughly.
On October 2, Richard left us to go to Paris to have the benefit of les Cours de la Sorbonne, as a preparation for L'Agrégation d'Anglais; and in December Stephen asked for a year's leave of absence from his post, in order to pursue his English studies in London. It is therefore conceivable that the father's health should have been impaired by anxiety and his brain overtaxed by the numerous works he had undertaken to meet his responsibilities. He was at the same time writing "Human Intercourse" for Messrs. Macmillan, "Paris" for the "Portfolio," and the book on "Landscape" was begun.
In November he had written a very long letter to Miss Betham-Edwards, mainly in explanation of the word "sheer" used for boats, then about our doings, and he says:—
"We have had the house upset by workpeople, but we are settled again after a great bother, which I dreaded before, as Montaigne used to dread similar disturbances; but now it is over I feel myself much more comfortable and orderly, though the reform has cost me a considerable loss of time. The rooms look prettier and are less crammed.
"I got the other day a letter of twenty pages from a cousin in New Zealand who had never written to me for thirty years. It was the most interesting biography of struggle, adventure, danger, hard work, and final success. It is a great pity that the men who go through such lives have not the literary talent to make autobiographies that can be published. I have another cousin whose history is quite as good as 'Robinson Crusoe,' and I have engaged him to write it, but he never will. If I lived near him I could gradually get the material out of him; but at a distance I cannot get him even to write rough notes. On the other hand, we literary people are quite humdrum people in our ways of life, and our autobiographies would generally be of little interest.
"I have been reading Ariosto lately in Italian, and am struck both by his qualities and deficiencies. He is all on the surface; but what a wealth of inventive power, and what a well-sustained, unflagging energy and cheerfulness! The descriptions are frequently superb, and there is a go in the style generally that is very stimulating. It is like watching the flow of a bright, rapid, brimming river. I don't think we have any English poet of the same kind. Spenser is rather like, but heavier, and just lacking that brightness in combination with movement. Spenser and Byron together contain many of the qualities of Ariosto."
The first note in the diary for 1884 says: "I must try to economize time in all little things where economy is possible without injury to the quality of work. I cannot economize it very much in the work itself without risk of lowering quality."
It was a pleasure for my husband to see that his articles on the architecture of Paris had been so favorably noticed as to bring requests for contributions from "The Builder" and "L'Architecte." Mr. Seeley wrote to him: "I think it is a feather in your cap that your architectural notes should have brought you invitations to write for professional journals."
My brother-in-law, M. Pelletier, had left Algiers, and was now Économe at the Lycée at Marseilles. He had suggested that, it being possible to go from Chalon to Marseilles by water, we might pay him a visit and see the course of the Rhône at the same time. My husband felt greatly tempted to accept, for more than one reason: he would be able at the same time to take notes and to make observations on the way for the book on "Landscape," and to come to a conclusion about the possibility of the Rhône scheme. We might divide the places of interest into two series, and see one of them in going and the other in coming back, with a pleasant time of rest at our friend's in the interval.