The Bride of Dreams

by Frederik van Eeden

Every day of the campaign on which I had so bravely entered, I saw more distinctly the fatal difficulty I was facing. In order to be able to carry out anything I should have to "make a name," as it is called. And making a name, the forming of a centre of suggestive influence working, not through essential worth but through idle sound, - this is in conflict with a contemplative nature and a lover of reality as I am. The man of action will make a name, he will work for it unashamed, he finds unadulterated pleasure in being honored and celebrated and renowned. For in his capacity the power of a name, a personality, is indispensable. Wisely he has been equipped with the suitable instincts for this.

But I myself had an insurmountable horror of anything that would tend to bring my own personality, my most transitory, spectral unimportant being into the limelight. To see my name printed or to hear it discussed was quite indifferent to me, even very disagreeable. I should be willing to bear it for Christ's sake, if I realized that I could only thus serve him and that he demanded it of me. But it was impossible for me to exert myself to that end. It is harder for the Original than for anyone else to act contrary to his natural disposition. To uphold the important truths whereof I knew myself to be the sole and responsible supporter, I was always ready to make any sacrifice. But to fight for my person, my career, my name, did not attract me in the least and thus also rarely met with success.

So for days, weeks, and months I worked without the slightest result. A pupil, sent to me by Elkinson, stayed away after a few weeks without paying me - perhaps because he may have heard something about my illegitimate marriage. Some journalists who had known me in former days received me with superficial friendliness and promised to do something for me. But they did nothing - speedily absorbed again in their own interests. Of Elkinson, I heard that he had been brought into consideration for the presidential candidacy; sufficient reason for him to forget hundreds of conversations with a Muralto, shipwrecked through his own folly.

Just as prosperity again begets prosperity, so also does misery grow like a snowball rolling down hill. The great, tremendous, busy world about me rushed restlessly onward in the fog - striving, seeking, building up and demolishing, urged on by uncomprehended impulses - and considered we no more than any of the thousand lost creatures that are crushed under its blind and heavy tread, cruel as the machine that catches the careless worker in its wheels. And yet I knew that this tremendous structure was the obedient tool of the same power that had entrusted me with its most precious gifts, that had urged me on my way, that was responsible for my strength and for my weakness.

And in proportion as the want that reigned in my little house grew more and more real and the struggle for existence more and more anxious, in the same proportion this humble home also began to grow dearer to me. I was approaching the age when a man, even though not yet tired and worn out, still, more than ever before, longs for a resting place, a small intimate sphere of quiet and rest, of cherishing love and peace, a home. What had formerly been my home had always remained inwardly strange to me. It afforded me every comfort and physical ease, but my heart found no happiness there. And now I had more than I had ever expected to find. I found the true domestic happiness more beautiful, more sublime and holy than I had imagined - but its beauty was touched with anguish and its joy with anxious sorrow because it was so transitory.

We needed so little - a couple of tidy rooms with few ugly things and one or two objects of beauty, a small garden plot with flowers, some sunlight by day, some lamplight cheer at night, enough to eat, and quiet and serenity for study - and all the hours spent together were completely satisfying in their measure of glory and every minute of separation became endurable through the prospect of finding each other again.

Elsje had the child-like power of enjoyment, that in a trifle - an opening flower, a new piece of furniture, an ornament or decoration, a song, a few fine lines of poetry - can find gratification and delight for hours and days. She had the pure taste that, above all, fears overloading and over-excitement, and takes pleasure only in what is simple and what is truly enjoyed.

How little I would have needed to make her life a constant joy. But even that little I was not able to give. The poverty from which I had wished to teach men to escape, the poverty falsely, proclaimed as Jesus' friend and the bride of the devout, - in truth Christ's fiercest enemy and a horror and terror to every truly devout man - this poverty slunk into my house and with a grim laugh of scorn revenged herself upon me who had dared assail her sacredness and sublimity. And she struck the most beautiful and the dearest that life had offered me, she menaced my greatest treasure, won but so shortly and at such great sacrifice.

It seemed as though Elsje's dauntless efforts to prepare a comforting home for me, her unfailing patience and brave cheerfulness consumed her physical being all the more. I saw the battle that she was waging, and it tortured me with a thousand variations of pain. Her keeping up when she was well-nigh powerless with exhaustion. Her increased tenderness when she saw me yield under the heavy pressure of care, whereby I noticed that she felt herself responsible for my suffering, as it was for her sake that I had given up my life of prosperity.

Then at the time of our greatest troubles, came that which Elsje had expected and longed for as the highest blessing - maternity.