From a photograph by Lombardi & Co.
WHEN FIRST A WIDOW
CHAPTER VI
WIDOWHOOD AND WORK
Labor omnia vincit
ALONE!
’Tis often harder to live than to die.
Schopenhauer says happiness is only a delusion of youth and childhood; anyway, my work now began. Hard work; collar-work, uphill and unceasing. The work of a professional woman, not the pleasant dipping into the inkpot as amateur fancy led.
Despite advice showered on me I refused to give up my “home.” Many things were sold, the carriages and saddles among them, but I stuck to the “home.” The old family silver was sent to the bank, the ancestors’ china packed away; the house was let for two years until the worker should feel her feet. But those two years were destined to be more than doubled before I should sit down once more on my own hearth, among my beloved household gods.
Now that I had to face the world on my own and take up my pen seriously, the few pounds that dilettante work had brought in before—to be distributed in charity—must be doubled and quadrupled.