July 30.—Read little this morning—my mind dwelling with much depression on the probability or improbability of my achieving the work I wish to do. I struck out two or three thoughts towards an English novel. I am much afflicted with hopelessness and melancholy just now, and yet I feel the value of my blessings.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 30th July, 1861.
Thornie, our second boy, is at home from Edinburgh for his holidays, and I am apt to give more thought than is necessary to any little change in our routine. We had a treat the other night which I wished you could have shared with us. We saw Fechter in Hamlet. His conception of the part is very nearly that indicated by the critical observations in "Wilhelm Meister," and the result is deeply interesting—the naturalness and sensibility of the Wesen overcoming in most cases the defective intonation. And even the intonation is occasionally admirable; for example, "And for my soul, what can he do to that?" etc., is given by Fechter with perfect simplicity, whereas the herd of English actors imagine themselves in a pulpit when they are saying it. À propos of the pulpit, I had another failure in my search for edification last Sunday. Mme. Bodichon and I went to Little Portland Street Chapel, and lo! instead of James Martineau there was a respectable old Unitarian gentleman preaching about the dangers of ignorance and the satisfaction of a good conscience, in a tone of amiable propriety which seemed to belong to a period when brains were untroubled by difficulties, and the lacteals of all good Christians were in perfect order. I enjoyed the fine selection of collects he read from the Liturgy. What an age of earnest faith, grasping a noble conception of life and determined to bring all things into harmony with it, has recorded itself in the simple, pregnant, rhythmical English of those collects and of the Bible! The contrast when the good man got into the pulpit and began to pray in a borrowed, washy lingo—extempore in more senses than one!
Diary, 1861.
Aug. 1.—Struggling constantly with depression.
Aug. 2.—Read Boccaccio's capital story of Fra Cipolla—one of his few good stories—and the Little Hunchback in the "Arabian Nights," which is still better.
Aug. 10.—Walked with G. We talked of my Italian novel. In the evening, Mr. Pigott and Mr. Redford.
Aug. 12.—Got into a state of so much wretchedness in attempting to concentrate my thoughts on the construction of my story that I became desperate, and suddenly burst my bonds, saying, I will not think of writing!
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 12th Aug. 1861.
That doctrine which we accept rather loftily as a commonplace when we are quite young—namely, that our happiness lies entirely within, in our own mental and bodily state, which determines for us the influence of everything outward—becomes a daily lesson to be learned, and learned with much stumbling, as we get older. And until we know our friends' private thoughts and emotions we hardly know what to grieve or rejoice over for them.