The last sentences quoted from Father O'Connor touch on the deepest—perhaps the only deep—problem for them both. For far the hardest thing was the struggle against the real danger that he might again drink too much, as he had before the illness that so nearly killed him in 1915. This struggle was rendered especially hard by two elements in her make-up: Frances wanted always to give Gilbert exactly what he wanted, and she hated to admit even to herself anything that could be called a fault in him. She saw the overwork that she was powerless to stop: she could not but be aware how great it made the temptation. It was for her to remember the old illness, to be vigilant without worrying him, to help him against himself.
After the long illness Dr. Pocock had advised total abstinence for some years, largely because, as he told me, Gilbert, unless specially warned, ate and drank absentmindedly anything that happened to be there! He observed this prohibition faithfully until Dr. Pocock left Beaconsfield in 1919. Dr. Bakewell, who succeeded him advised moderation but only occasionally found it necessary to order total abstention. It was the amount of liquid he feared rather than its nature. When he forbade wine he did so because wine increased the general tendency to absorb liquid. For Gilbert was always unslakeably thirsty. Daily he drank several bottles of Vichy Water or Evian, also of claret at what may be called the "open" seasons, and many cups of tea and coffee. Spirits he practically never touched, nor such heavier wines as port and sherry. But even two bottles of claret or Burgundy, although usually appearing to brighten his intellect, might well be a serious strain on the digestion of a man who overworked the mind without exercising the body. "He loved to sip a glass of wine," Monsignor O'Connor writes, "and to stroll between sips in and out of his study, brooding and jotting, and then the dictation was ready for the morning."
Dorothy Collins once kept a record for a few weeks of the number of words dictated of the book of the moment—usually thirteen to fourteen thousand, about twenty-one hours weekly—exclusive of journalism, editing and lecturing. The pressure was tremendous and increasing, nor was it felt by Gilbert only. In a letter to Maurice Baring at the time of his conversion he writes: "For deeper reasons than I could ever explain, my mind has to turn especially on the thought of my wife, whose life has been in many ways a very heroic tragedy; and to whom I am so much in debt of honour that I cannot bear to leave her, even psychologically, if it be possible by tact and sympathy to take her with me."
Frances would indeed have been amazed to find herself cast for such a part. Her life had held two tragic events—Gertrude's death and the much sadder death of her brother, believed to have killed himself. With her faith and her profound affections such an end had stabbed deep. Yet certainly Frances did not view herself as other than happy: in fact, I think she very seldom thought about herself at all. There was something of heroism in this very self-forgetfulness. Frances never had good health and for some years had suffered from arthritis of the spine. Yet intimate as I was I knew this only after her death. My husband was saying lately that had he been asked to choose adjectives to describe Frances he would have chosen "cheerful" and "well-balanced." Of all the people we have known we felt she was one of the closest to the norm of sanity and mental health: quite an achievement for a woman suffering from a really painful complaint.
Yet I think when Gilbert used the strong phrase "heroic tragedy" he saw with his great insight that his frail wife, beside their heavy cross of childlessness, beside the burden of her own physical and spiritual sufferings, was carrying the weight of his achievement, and that it was not a light one. Heroic was the right word but tragedy the wrong, for this life given to her keeping ended on a note of triumph.
The treatment of a situation of this kind can, of course, easily be made unreal. In the sort of golden glow cast by the imagination on Fleet Street with its taverns and its drinks, next morning's headache is always omitted: but even the finer, deeper glow of the domestic hearth has its ashy moments. No finite beings can conduct their lives with complete absence of errors and regrets. In any human relationship, however perfect, the people concerned sometimes bore or annoy or even hurt one another. That is one of the main things that sends Catholics week by week or month by month to the Confessional, which brings for everyman something of the renewal and re-creation of daily joy that the genius Gilbert saw when he wrote Manalive. In this story the hero is always eloping with his own wife and marrying her again. Flora Finching's "It was not ecstasy it was comfort" is a common enough view of a reasonably successful marriage, but Gilbert wanted to keep and did keep the flashes of ecstasy. When he wrote Manalive he had been married eleven years and he used a thought that had inspired a poem to Frances while they were engaged. The heroine in the story keeps changing her second name, but the name is always a colour: in one town the hero runs away with her as Mary Grey, in another as Mary Green. Thus as a girl Gilbert had seen Frances in green and had understood why green trees and fields are beautiful; had seen her in grey and had learnt a new love for grey winter days, and the grey robes of palmers; and in blue—
Then saw I how the fashioner
Splashed reckless blue on sky and sea
And ere 'twas good enough for her
He tried it on eternity.
When they came back from Jerusalem Gilbert dedicated to Frances the Ballad of St. Barbara and we find him again at his old trick: seeing as her throne the great stones of the mediaeval walls, seeing nature as her background. With all apologies to the cynics I am afraid that the judgment of the biographer upon all the evidence must be that after twenty-five years Gilbert not only loved his wife tenderly, but was still ardently in love with her!
A curious prayer of his youth was fulfilled as they celebrated this year their silver wedding.
A wan new garment of young green,
Touched as you turned your soft brown hair;
And in me surged the strangest prayer
Ever in lover's heart hath been.