Should I take up painting seriously? My love of colour and form, the fact that I had exhibited a little without lessons, seemed to point to the possibility of my doing more if I studied.
Then again, a hat shop was no impossible means of livelihood, with my huge connection of friends.
Or, should I give up everything, give up the battle, and just live quietly in a small cottage somewhere and look after chickens?
Weeks rolled on in Finland, the notes for the book were made; parts of it were written in steamers or on railway trains, bundles of material had been collected for subsequent articles, and, most important of all, my mind was made up. I was going to write.
By the time we had knocked about Finland for three or four months I was worn out, from worry, work, anxiety as to the future, and want of sleep. Many people in England do not realise that the midnight sun shines in Finland no less than in northern Norway, and the perpetual sense of light is wearying, inexpressibly so sometimes, to the brain.
However, the notes were taken. I was steeped in the customs, habits, thoughts, and scenery of Finland, but, more important than all the rest, I had entered Finland in deepest sorrow, my mind had now been made up, flame-like—imagination had decided I would write—my spirit emerged in the house of life.
Artistic life is, after all, self-development, and self-development and outward expression lay before me in my newly sought profession. Cruel doubts crept in; but the flame of desire was burning, and again and again I said to myself, “I will write.” Through Finland in Carts appeared in 1897, the third edition came out three years later, and others followed at intervals (now in Nelson’s 1/- library).
On the borders of Lapland my resolution to become a scribe had been made and my luck had turned. It was there I received the wire containing an offer to take my house off my hands; and so began my first “let.” Four years later, when strenuous effort had made it possible, I went back to live in that same old home. It was a very old-fashioned thing to do, because everybody lives in everybody else’s house nowadays. The snobbish rich luxuriate in the castles of the aristocratic poor, and the aristocratic poor curl themselves up in the abandoned cottages of the self-made. But I reached my first goal when I stepped across the threshold of my old home again. The accompanying illustration, taken just after my husband’s death, is from a photograph for which a paper asked on the appearance of Finland. The reason for its not showing the conventional widow’s weeds—no crêpe and no veil—is that I never wore these social brands, and my severe, unrelieved black—a terrible breach of custom in the opinion of Jay’s forewoman—was impossible, for reasons connected with the camera. Hence a dilemma! Suddenly remembering my grandmother’s lace scarf and my sister’s new bridesmaid’s hat, I donned both and went off to be “taken.” Hence this photograph.
When I returned to England, late in September, and York Terrace was in other hands, I took a tiny country cottage in Buckinghamshire, and retired there alone with my little boys of six and seven years of age to write my book.
This had barely been started, and the notes were still scattered over the table and piled on the sofa, and the chapters had not yet been formulated, when another dreadful telegram was put into my hands: My father had fallen dead of apoplexy in his study. The second breadwinner in the family had gone out.