How I want to write! Every day more awe enfolds the dream. Days bring me closer to the Town. The war has deepened the hearts of all the young people here, especially the women. Young women are very wonderful to me. They have a certain loveliness of body that comes of girl-whiteness within—thoughtful tenderness about them, and something else, a lightness that may be just youth. It attracts me because I have never felt it.
I do not care if the gods laugh at my ambitions to write. By the very sign that we are victims of matter now, we shall become victors. I want the bottom—down among the deeps of pain, where all the sorrow of the world is my sorrow; all tears, my tears.... I am not ready for the Hive. No compromise. To accept less in one's work than the dream—that is failure.
The Valley Road Girl is eighteen. She has hardly been away from the little town by the lake shore. She is held to it queerly still. I expect her to make the place long-lived in the memory of many novel readers. I see the big book of the country-side about her—a gallery of quaint and curious faces—done with her stern, sweet power. I have seen this big book building about her, as I see the top trays of The Abbot's Sea Chest. These are the days of her sketching and tearing down. Deep draughts of life call to her, deeps of religion, deeps of cosmic memory—and all about is the little town. The meaning has come to her at last. Already she has turned to love the nearest; loving the nearest will unfold the big book and set her free. Six hundred pages I call for—the leisurely vibration, terrible intensity of romantic moments, passion of the fields, the hideous mockery of narrow, brittle lives, the country-wife worn glassy with routine and insane monotony, and the young of the country-side—quick bloom, pure youth falling into coarseness before its form is finished, the real and immortal behind it all. These are her properties. Hundreds of pages have been written and prayerfully destroyed. Thus is she setting herself free.
I have a paper of hers on the spiritual adventures of a smileless child—which I liked much when it came in, more than two years ago. The Valley Road Girl is close to us in all our preparing and building; so that these chapters would be strange without her voice:
... Fire was always terrible, so my first aspirations were caused by fear of hell below. Before that, I had wanted to laugh when told to pray. As I grew, I thought much of the heavenly state, but could find only vague pictures. Recently I asked a country minister his idea of heaven, and he seemed uncertain. He could only assure me that it was a desirable place. Yet children always wonder about their destination, questioning as they journey.
I started early to pray—a grim affair; at first crying out through fear or hurt. God was too awful for such intimacies so I took the Christ figure of the Trinity into my confidence. Just here came a strange transition. It didn't seem sufficient for me to think those prayers: I felt I must state them clearly or my wish might be ambiguous. Even to-day, I find that only expressing a thing simplifies it for me.
If there were acquaintances whose lives were touched with beauty or romance, I prayed for them, but mostly named my wants. I made the discovery that the intensity put forth in holding the image of a desire brings it into the world. Man may call the answer God, but that seems his own power. I have sometimes thought of Will with its divine kindred, Wisdom and Love, as the Three Who stood first before His Face.
To-day we dream, and to-morrow our hands are filled. I remember the early Chapel days when the Old Man would say, "Be careful what you want—you are apt to get it,"—with a great laugh and mystery playing about his words. How truly one comes to realise that. When I started at Stonestudy, the town-people used to ask how we were taught,—if our English and story-structure were principally considered as in the schools. I could only tell them, "Oh, no, not like school!" Then I tried to explain Chapel and they wondered how that manner of education could make us writers. Yet our writing improved with the days. Work, a few weeks old, embarrassed us with its defects.
Then I actually tried to discover just how we were being helped. To a young aspirant, there is awe about an artist; we had come to listen. The same thoughts expressed in homely words wouldn't have quickened us. The Old Man's sentences were rich with figures that clarified everything. We began to see Stonestudy. About this time at home I used to start anything that interested me, "I've got a picture——" Chapel had helped me, as only one can help another, by quickening the imagination.
That was what drew me to the Little Girl—her vivid impression of things. She could make her listener see also. Speaking of children whom school had overwhelmed, she used to tell us of their "lacking eyes" and the world that had crushed them, as the "solid world." ... I think that was the secret of her faith in fairies and Nature's most elusive agencies. I listened doubtfully at first, for school had tampered with my once-ready belief. One had first to trust her words, "If you believe, you will see." And I recalled my early religious experiences, based on "According to your faith, be it unto you."
This is the "really" religion—faith in the hidden world. We conceive its light gradually as the seed pushes its way upward through the soil. All religion that does not make the workshop a Chapel—the place for picturing heaven, is less than we know. I seem to confuse religion with the stimulating of the imagination. It is because they are one to me.
The Valley Road Girl has a beautiful sister who was rather reluctant to come to Stonestudy. She did not think she could ever belong; had no thought ever of writing or taking part in our things, yet none of the young people ever brought us more than Esther. I found the following pages about these two sisters together among the writings of the Little Girl:
... On the floor below lived two girls who came often to visit their beloved friends in the attic. One was a year or so older than the other, and most serious and sober, constantly hunting for her own philosophy and making her own religion, praying for power and vision, fearing lest she fail at the appointed task, suffering over conditions, revolting at times, loving her work and her sister with an everlasting passion. That was the one whom we call the Valley Road Girl.
The other was a perfect giver, born with the thought of her own smallness, unwilling to accept a different point of view on the subject from another. A spirit—wide eyes, frail body, living her life calmly, objecting to nothing, obeying others, loving all, frightening her parents with her absolute goodness. And that was Esther.
When she came at last to Stonestudy, her cushion with the others round the fire had been waiting for many months. For we all knew her; through the Valley Road Girl we knew Esther belonged to us. One Chapel day later, when she remained at home, we wondered how we'd ever manage without her.... Occasionally Esther brought a paper with her and laid it under the black stone—a bit of verse, perhaps a dream, or something deep and mysterious from her soul. One day it was a picture of the Desert, I remember.... Noonday, the white heat of the sun reflected by the sand, the brown of a camel's eyes, the long road to travel—caravans—then night—the sound of low music, women dancing, the red of fires on black oily bodies of slaves.... Esther made us see it all.
There were long days in the woods—spring quickening life in all things. We'd gather moss and violets and talk endlessly, Esther always so free these memorable days, and happy. It was the dance that set her free—her expression through the dance—a dancer's body and soul, her wonderful quality of forgetfulness of self, made her perfect. Literally she could surrender herself to the music, trust it, and be carried in perfect grace and rhythm. We watched her unfold, the beauty of her deepening in every way. Her joy in life grew. She became like a nymph in the pure light of summer....