But again I say, what a disappointment the West has been. Yes, taking it all round I must own that I am again a désenchantée. Do you know, I am now afraid even of a charwoman who comes to work for me. Alas! I have learned of what she is capable—theft, hatred, vengeance, and the greed of money, for which she would sell her soul.
I told the editor of a Paris paper one day that I blushed at the manner in which he encouraged dirty linen to be washed in public. “All your papers are the same,” I said. “Take them one after the other and see if one article can be found which is favourable to your poor country. You give the chief place to horrible crimes. Your leading article contains something scandalous about a minister, and from these articles France is judged not only by her own people but by the whole world.”
He did not contradict me, but smiling maliciously, he answered, “Les journalistes ont à cœur d’être aussi veridique que possible.” (“Journalists must try to be as truthful as possible.”) A clever phrase, perhaps, but worse than anything he could have written in the six pages of his paper.
But perhaps I am leaving you under the impression, désenchantée though I be, that nothing has pleased me in the West. Not at all! I have many delightful impressions to take back with me, and I want to return some day if the “Kismet” will allow it.
Munich, Venice, the Basque Countries, the Riviera, and London I hope to see again. Art and music, the delightful libraries, the little towns where I have worked, thought, and discovered so many things, and a few friends “who can understand”—surely these are attractions great enough to bring me back to Europe again.
The countries I have seen are beautiful enough, but civilisation has spoiled them. To take a copy of what it was going to destroy, however, civilisation created art—art in so many forms, art in which I had revelled in the West. It was civilisation that collected musical harmonies, civilisation that produced Wagner, and music to my mind is the finest of all its works.
But there are books too, you will say, wonderful books. Yes, but in the heart of Asia there are quite as many masterpieces, and they are far more reposeful.
6th March.
This morning early I was wakened by the sun, the advance-guard of what I expect away yonder. From my window I see a portion of the harbour, and the curious ships which start and arrive from all corners of the earth. Again I see the Bosphorus with its ships, which in my childish imagination were fairy godmothers who would one day take me far, far away ... and now they are the fairy godmothers who will take me back again.