Each person invited, I am told, has to bring a present. What a wicked expense to put their friends to. Oh, vanity of vanities!
How is it possible not to admire the primitive Circassians, who when they love one another and wish to marry, walk off without consulting anyone but themselves?
*****
I am also disappointed at the manner in which divorce proceedings are conducted in England. What a quantity of unkind words and vile accusations! What a low handling and throwing of mud at each other, what expense, what time and worry! And all simply to prove that two people are not suited to live together.
To think that, with the possibility of such a life of tragedy, there are still people who have the courage to get married! It seems to me there are some who take marriage too seriously, others who do not take it seriously enough, and that others again only take it seriously when one of the partners wants to be liberated.
How sad it is! And what good can be said of laws, the work of human beings, which not only do not help us in our misfortunes, but extend neither pity nor pardon to those who try to suffer a little less.
During the time I lived away yonder and suffered from a total absence of liberty, I imagined that Europe respected the happiness and the misfortunes of individuals. How horrible it is to find in the daily papers the names of people mercilessly branded by their fellow-men for having committed no other fault than that of trying to be less unhappy, for having the madness to wish to repair their wrecked existence. To publish the reports of the evidence, the sordid gossip of menials, the calumnies, the stolen letters, written under such different circumstances, in moments of happiness, in absolute confidence, or extreme mental agony, in which a woman has laid her soul bare, is loathsome. Is it not worse than perjury to exact from a friend’s lips what he only knows in confidence? Poor imprudent beings! They have had their moments of sincerity: for this your sad civilisation of the West makes them pay with the rest of their broken lives.
*****
For a long time I have wanted to make the acquaintance of Mr. W. T. Stead, who is known and respected in the East more perhaps than any Englishman. I had no particular reason to go and see him except that he knew my father at the first Hague Conference. So, one day I was bold enough to jump into a hansom and drive to his office. I was asked whom I wanted. I asked for Mr. Stead.
“Who wants him?” I was asked.