Sadness

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  44. Since this Morning.At little day I am cold. A maple leaf Planes down and settles silently. The things one believes. I have hated day Since this morning: His insensitive glance Looked at me coldly Like the pale dawn moon. 45. Who Loves.A body that loves Is fragile and uncertain, A floating boat. The fires in the fishing boats at night Burn red, my heart burns red. Wooden Stakes hold up the nets Against the tide of Uji. The tide is against me. 46. Nightingale Sings to Plum Tree.How the nightingales sing to the plum trees And the frogs splash in the water. That is love. The call of people and of things Is everywhere. Dark clouds, Fishing boats, At the will of the tide, At the will of the wind. They seem to move their own sails. The ropes are woven in the old way Like woman's hair. Deep down in green reflections. Ah, back her to the port of love! 47. Life.To the passing dawn? To a boat passing? To the wake the boat leaves? To the froth the wake leaves? 48. Hiding Place.No more grieving. I hide myself in my happiness As a firefly Hides in a moon ray. 49. Rupture.Steps die on the brittle leaves, I think of very much. Evening, a perched crow On a bare branch. The end of Autumn. 50. Plum Tree Under Snow.The plum tree Still lives, Even Still blossoms Under the snow; my heart, My most unfortunate heart Also. 51. Rose Chrysanthemum.Three butterflies On a rose chrysanthemum. The white flies away, The red flies away, The black lights on my garment. Meaning? 52. Firefly.This evening I caught a firefly To light my waiting soul And for amusement. My right hand covers the firefly in my left And both are transparent and rosy Because of it. How funny! 53. In the Spring Rain.The nightingale is quite wet In the Spring rain. The scent of the flowers of the plum tree Rises at every beating Of the wet wing. Nightingales that play with flowers, How charming that is. Some birds do not know Where they may nest at evening, But I am a nightingale And my master is a plum tree. Soon I shall be free of my body, Free to love. Is not that so? And nothing else matters. 54. 0 Dreams.O dreams, do not bring me The face of my girl in sleep. My waking and my pain Would quite unman me. 55. Flakes of Flowers.It is snowing, Winter, It is snowing. But the flakes Are flowers also. See, it is already Spring By the cloud way. 56. Surugi Lake.Dew from the lotuses Of Surugi Lake Goes up in a light fume. My hope becomes lighter than air And disappears. Yet a voice is saying: 'Who knows? Soon he may marry you.' 57. Maples Leaves.Do you know why the Autumn moon Spreads her desirable brightness On the hill? It is so that we two may count the leaves of the maple

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  I put up a fight, I swear it! I swear I put up a fight—I was only nineteen when I got my first job—nineteen’s not so awfully old, is it, Stephen?’ Stephen said: ‘Go on,’ and her voice sounded husky. ‘Oh, my dear—it’s so dreadfully hard to tell you. The pay was rotten, not enough to live on—I used to think that they did it on purpose, lots of the girls used to think that way too—they never gave us quite enough to live on. You see, I hadn’t a vestige of talent, I could only dress up and try to look pretty. I never got a real speaking part, I just danced, not well, but I’d got a good figure.’ She paused and tried to look up through the gloom, but Stephen’s face was hidden in shadow. ‘Well then, darling—Stephen, I want to feel your arms, hold me closer—well then, I—there was a man who wanted me—not as you want me, Stephen, to protect and care for me; God, no, not that way! And I was so poor and so tired and so frightened; why sometimes my shoes would let in the slush because they were old and I hadn’t the money to buy myself new ones—try to think of that, darling. And I’d cry when I washed my hands in the winter because they’d be bleeding from broken chilblains. Well, I couldn’t stay the course any longer, that’s all. . . .’ The little gilt clock on the desk ticked loudly. Tick, tick! Tick, tick! An astonishing voice to come from so small and fragile a body. Somewhere out in the garden a dog barked—Tony, chasing imaginary rabbits through the darkness. ‘Stephen!’ ‘Yes, my dear?’ ‘Have you understood me?’ ‘Yes—oh, yes, I’ve understood you. Go on.’ ‘Well then, after a while he turned round and left me, and I just had to drag along as I had done, and I sort of crocked up—couldn’t sleep at night, couldn’t smile and look happy when I went on to dance—that was how Ralph found me—he saw me dance and came round to the back, the way some men do. I remember thinking that Ralph didn’t look like that sort of man; he looked—well, just like Ralph, not a bit like that sort of man. Then he started sending me flowers; never presents or anything like that, just flowers with his card. And we had lunch together a good few times, and he talked about that other man who’d left me. He said he’d like to go out with a horsewhip—imagine Ralph trying to horsewhip a man!

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She was very extreme, her perspective had been upset by the air raids. Raids frightened her as did the thought of starvation, and when frightened she was apt to grow rather sadistic, so that now she would want to rush off and inspect every ruin left by the German marauders. She had also been the first to applaud the dreadful descent of a burning Zeppelin. She bored Stephen intensely with her ceaseless prattle about Alec, who was one of London’s defenders, about Roger, who had got the Military Cross and was just on the eve of becoming a major, about the wounded whose faces she sponged every morning, and who seemed so pathetically grateful. From Morton came occasional letters for Puddle; they were more in the nature of reports now these letters. Anna had such and such a number of cases; the gardeners had been replaced by young women; Mr. Percival was proving very devoted, he and Anna were holding the estate well together; Williams had been seriously ill with pneumonia. Then a long list of humble names from the farms, from among Anna’s staff or from cottage homesteads, together with those from such houses as Morton—for the rich and the poor were in death united. Stephen would read that long list of names, so many of which she had known since her childhood, and would realize that the stark arm of war had struck deep at the quiet heart of the Midlands. BOOK FOUR CHAPTER 35 1 A stump of candle in the neck of a bottle flickered once or twice and threatened to go out. Getting up, Stephen found a fresh candle and lit it, then she returned to her packing-case upon which had been placed the remnants of a chair minus its legs and arms. The room had once been the much prized salon of a large and prosperous villa in Compiègne, but now the glass was gone from its windows; there remained only battered and splintered shutters which creaked eerily in the bitter wind of a March night in 1918. The walls of the salon had fared little better than its windows, their brocade was detached and hanging, while a recent rainstorm had lashed through the roof making ugly splotches on the delicate fabric—a dark stain on the ceiling was perpetually dripping. The remnants of what had once been a home, little broken tables, an old photograph in a tarnished frame, a child’s wooden horse, added to the infinite desolation of this villa that now housed the Breakspeare Unit—a Unit composed of Englishwomen, that had been serving in France just over six months, attached to the French Army Ambulance Corps. The place seemed full of grotesquely large shadows cast by figures that sat or sprawled on the floor. Miss Peel in her Jaeger sleeping-bag snored loudly, then choked because of her cold.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Riding home, she felt utterly spent and bewildered. Her thoughts were full of her father again—he seemed very near, incredibly near her. For a moment she thought that she heard his voice, but when she bent sideways trying to listen, all was silence, except for the tired rhythm of Raftery’s hooves on the road. As her brain grew calmer, it seemed to Stephen that her father had taught her all that she knew. He had taught her courage and truth and honour in his life, and in death he had taught her mercy—the mercy that he had lacked he had taught her through the mighty adventure of death. With a sudden illumination of vision, she perceived that all life is only one life, that all joy and all sorrow are indeed only one, that all death is only one dying. And she knew that because she had seen a man die in great suffering, yet with courage and love that are deathless, she could never again inflict wanton destruction or pain upon any poor, hapless creature. And so it was that by dying to Stephen, Sir Philip would live on in the attribute of mercy that had come that day to his child. But the body is still very far from the spirit, and it clings to the primitive joys of the earth—to the sun and the wind and the good rolling grass-lands, to the swift elation of reckless movement, so that Stephen, feeling Raftery between her strong knees, was suddenly filled with regret. Yes, in this her moment of spiritual insight she was infinitely sad, and she said to Raftery: ‘We’ll never hunt any more, we two, Raftery—we’ll never go out hunting together any more.’ And because in his own way he had understood her, she felt his sides swell with a vast, resigned sigh; heard the creaking of damp girth leather as he sighed because he had understood her. For the love of the chase was still hot in Raftery, the love of splendid, unforeseen danger, the love of crisp mornings and frostbound evenings, and of long, dusky roads that always led home. He was wise with the age-old wisdom of the beasts, it is true, but that wisdom was not guiltless of slaying, and deep in his gentle and faithful mind lurked a memory bequeathed him by some wild forbear. A memory of vast and unpeopled spaces, of fierce open nostrils and teeth bared in battle, of hooves that struck death with every sure blow, of a great untamed mane that streamed out like a banner, of the shrill and incredibly savage war-cry that accompanied that gallant banner. So now he too felt infinitely sad, and he sighed until his strong girths started creaking, after which he stood still and shook himself largely, in an effort to shake off depression. Stephen bent forward and patted his neck. ‘I’m sorry, sorry, Raftery,’ she said gravely. CHAPTER 161W

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  No more sacrifice need be made. Having seen the general ideas in the mind of the writer to the Hebrews concerning Jesus as a priest after the order of Melchizedek, we now turn to this passage in detail and study it in sections. THE TRUE KING AND THE TRUE PRIEST Hebrews 7:1–3 Now this Melchizedek was King of Salem and priest of the most high God. He met Abraham when he was returning from the smiting of the kings and blessed him, and Abraham set apart for him a tenth part of the spoils. In the first place, the interpretation of his own name means King of Righteousness and, in the second place, King of Salem means King of Peace. His father is never mentioned nor his mother; nor is there any record of his descent; there is no mention of the beginning of his days nor any of the end of his life; he is exactly like the Son of God; and he remains a priest forever. As we have seen, the two passages on which the writer to the Hebrews founds his argument are Psalm 110:4 and Genesis 14:18–20. In the old Genesis story, Melchizedek is a strange and almost eerie figure. He arrives out of the blue; there is nothing about his life, his birth, his death or his descent. He simply arrives. He gives Abraham bread and wine, which to us, reading the passage in the light of what we know, sounds very sacramental. He blesses Abraham. And then he vanishes from the stage of history with the same unexplained suddenness as he arrived. There is little wonder that in the mystery of this story the writer to the Hebrews found a symbol of Christ. From his name, Melchizedek was King of Righteousness, and from his realm King of Peace. The order is both significant and inevitable. Righteousness must always come before peace. Without righteousness, there can be no such thing as peace. As Paul has it in Romans 5:1: ‘Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God.’ As he has it again in Romans 14:17: ‘The kingdom of God is ... righteousness and peace and joy.’ The order is always the same – first righteousness and then peace. It may well be said that all life is a search for peace, and also that people persist in looking for it in the wrong place. (1) We look for peace in escape. But the trouble about escape is that it is always necessary to return. A. J. Gossip draws a picture of a woman whose home was a complete mess. She leaves her home one afternoon and goes to a cinema. For an hour or two, she escapes into the glamour and the luxury of the world of the film – and then she must go back home. It is escape all right – but there is the inevitable return. W. M.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  3That evening the old house seemed curiously thoughtful and curiously sad after all the merry-making. David’s second white bow had come untied and was hanging in two limp ends from his collar. Pauline had gone to church to light candles; Pierre, together with Pauline’s niece who would take Adèle’s place, was preparing dinner. And the sadness of the house flowed out like a stream to mingle itself with the sadness in Stephen. Adèle and Jean, the simplicity of it . . . they loved, they married, and after a while they would care for each other all over again, renewing their youth and their love in their children. So orderly, placid and safe it seemed, this social scheme evolved from creation; this guarding of two young and ardent lives for the sake of the lives that might follow after. A fruitful and peaceful road it must be. The same road had been taken by those founders of Morton who had raised up children from father to son, from father to son until the advent of Stephen; and their blood was her blood—what they had found good in their day, seemed equally good to their descendant. Surely never was outlaw more law-abiding at heart, than this, the last of the Gordons. So now a great sadness took hold upon her, because she perceived both dignity and beauty in the coming together of Adèle and Jean, very simply and in accordance with custom. And this sadness mingling with that of the house, widened into a flood that compassed Mary and through her David, and they both went and sat very close to Stephen on the study divan. As the twilight gradually merged into dusk, these three must huddle even closer together—David with his head upon Mary’s lap, Mary with her head against Stephen’s shoulder. CHAPTER 501S tephen ought to have gone to England that summer; at Morton there had been a change of agent, and once again certain questions had arisen which required her careful personal attention. But time had not softened Anna’s attitude to Mary, and time had not lessened Stephen’s exasperation—the more so as Mary no longer hid the bitterness that she felt at this treatment. So Stephen tackled the business by writing a number of long and wearisome letters, unwilling to set foot again in the house where Mary Llewellyn would not be welcome. But as always the thought of England wounded, bringing with it the old familiar longing—homesick she would feel as she sat at her desk writing those wearisome business letters. For even as Jamie must crave for the grey, wind-swept street and the wind-swept uplands of Beedles, so Stephen must crave for the curving hills, for the long green hedges and pastures of Morton. Jamie openly wept when such moods were upon her, but the easement of tears was denied to Stephen.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  Saving the dead—that is the paradoxically impossible project of Austerlitz, and it is both Jacques Austerlitz’s quest, and W. G. Sebald’s too. This book is like the antiques shop seen by Jacques in Terezin; it is full of old things, many of them reproduced in the photographs in the text: buildings, an old rucksack, books and paper records, a desk, a staircase, a messy office, a porcelain statue, gravestones, the roots of trees, a stamp, the drawing of a fortification. The photographs of these old things are themselves old things—the kind of shabby, discarded picture postcards you might find at a weekend flea market, and which Sebald greatly enjoyed collecting. If the photograph is itself an old, dead thing, then what of the people caught—frozen—by the photograph? (Flickering slightly at the edges, as Evan the cobbler describes the dead.) Aren’t they also old, dead things? That is why Sebald forces together animate and inanimate objects in his books, and it is why the inanimate objects greatly overwhelm the animate ones in Austerlitz. Amidst the photographs of buildings and gravestones, it is a shock to come upon a photograph of Wittgenstein’s eyes, or a photograph of the rugby team at Jacques’ school. The human seems to have been reified— turned into a thing—by time, and Sebald knowingly reserves an entire page for his shocking photograph of skulls in mud (supposedly, skeletons found near Broad Street Station in 1984, during excavations). Toward becoming these old things, these old headstones in mud, we are all traveling. (In the north of England, a cemetery used to be called a “boneyard,” the phrase somehow conveying the sense of our bones as mere lumber or junk.)

• From The Girls (2016)

  The tea was too hot; there was a lull while we huddled over the cups, my face dampening in the thin vegetal steam. When I asked Sasha where she was from, she grimaced. “Concord,” she said. “It sucks.” “And you go to college with Julian?” “Julian’s not in college.” I wasn’t sure if this was information Dan knew. I tried to remember what I’d last heard. When Dan did mention his son, it was with performative resignation, playing the clueless dad. Any trouble reported with sitcom sighs: boys will be boys. Julian had been diagnosed with some behavioral disorder in high school, though Dan made it sound mild. “Have you guys been together long?” I asked. Sasha sipped at the tea. “A few months,” she said. Her face grew animate, like just talking about Julian was a source of sustenance. She must have already forgiven him for leaving her behind. Girls were good at coloring in those disappointing blank spots. I thought of the night before, her exaggerated moans. Poor Sasha. She probably believed that any sadness, any flicker of worry over Julian, was just a problem of logistics. Sadness at that age had the pleasing texture of imprisonment: you reared and sulked against the bonds of parents and school and age, the things that kept you from the certain happiness that awaited. When I was a sophomore in college, I had a boyfriend who spoke breathlessly of running away to Mexico—it didn’t occur to me that we could no longer run away from home. Nor did I imagine what we would be running to, beyond the vagueness of warm air and more frequent sex. And now I was older, and the wishful props of future selves had lost their comforts. I might always feel some form of this, a depression that did not lift but grew compact and familiar, a space occupied like the sad limbo of hotel rooms. “Listen,” I said, slotting into a parental role that was laughably unearned. “I hope Julian is being nice to you.” “Why wouldn’t he be nice?” she said. “He’s my boyfriend. We live together.” I could imagine so easily what would pass for living. A month-to-month apartment that smelled of freezer meals and Clorox, Julian’s childhood

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Turning, she hurriedly left the stables. 5 Anna was standing at the foot of the stairs. ‘Are you leaving now, Stephen?’ ‘Yes—I’m going, Mother.’ ‘A short visit!’ ‘Yes, I must get back to work.’ ‘I see. . . .’ Then after a long, awkward pause: ‘Where would you like him buried?’ ‘In the large north paddock where he died—I’ve told Jim.’ ‘Very well, I’ll see that they carry out your orders.’ She hesitated, as though suddenly shy of Stephen again, as she had been in the past; but after a moment she went on quickly: ‘I thought—I wondered, would you like a small stone with his name and some sort of inscription on it, just to mark the place?’ ‘If you’d care to put one—I shan’t need any stone to remember.’ The carriage was waiting to drive her to Malvern. ‘Good-bye, Mother.’ ‘Good-bye—I shall put up that stone.’ ‘Thanks, it’s a very kind thought of yours.’ Anna said: ‘I’m so sorry about this, Stephen.’ But Stephen had hurried into the brougham—the door closed, and she did not hear her mother. CHAPTER 30 1 A t an old-fashioned, Kensington luncheon party, not very long after Raftery’s death, Stephen met and renewed her acquaintance with Jonathan Brockett, the playwright. Her mother had wished her to go to this luncheon, for the Carringtons were old family friends, and Anna insisted that from time to time her daughter should accept their invitations. At their house it was that Stephen had first seen this young man, rather over a year ago. Brockett was a connection of the Carringtons; had he not been Stephen might never have met him, for such gatherings bored him exceedingly, and therefore it was not his habit to attend them. But on that occasion he had not been bored, for his sharp, grey eyes had lit upon Stephen; and as soon as he well could, the meal being over, he had made his way to her side and had remained there. She had found him exceedingly easy to talk to, as indeed he had wished her to find him. This first meeting had led to one or two rides in the Row together, since they both rode early. Brockett had joined her quite casually one morning; after which he had called, and had talked to Puddle as if he had come on purpose to see her and her only—he had charming and thoughtful manners towards all elderly people. Puddle had accepted him while disliking his clothes, which were always just a trifle too careful; moreover she had disapproved of his cuff-links—platinum links set with tiny emeralds.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  around eleven, and when I told him this story as we walked down to the river through Whitechapel and Shoreditch he said nothing for quite a long time, perhaps, I told myself reproachfully afterwards, because he felt it was tasteless of me to dwell on the absurd aspects of the case. Only on the riverbank, where we stood for a while looking down at the gray-brown water rolling inland, did he say, looking straight at me as he sometimes did with wide and frightened eyes, that he could understand the Halifax carpenter very well, for what could be worse than to bungle even the end of an unhappy life? Then we walked the rest of the way in silence, going on downstream from Wapping and Shadwell to the quiet basins which reflect the towering office blocks of the Docklands area, and so to the Foot Tunnel running under the bend in the river. Over on the other side we climbed up through Greenwich Park to the Royal Observatory, which had scarcely any visitors apart from us on this cold day not long before Christmas. At least, I do not remember meeting anyone during the hours we spent there, both of us separately studying the ingenious observational instruments and measuring devices, quadrants and sextants, chronometers and regulators, displayed in the glass cases. Only in the octagonal observation room above the quarters of the former Astronomers Royal, where Austerlitz and I gradually resumed the conversation we had broken off, did a solitary Japanese tourist appear in the doorway. aaill He hovered there for a while before he went all round the octagon once and then quietly vanished again, following the green arrow pointing the way. In this room, which as Austerlitz commented was ideal for its purpose, I was surprised by the simple beauty of the wooden flooring, made of planks of different widths, and by the unusually tall windows, each divided into a hundred and twenty-two

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Then one day he had casually disappeared, and she heard that he had gone to Paris for some months, as was often his custom when the climate of London had begun to get on his nerves. He had drifted away like thistledown, without so much as a word of warning. He had not said good-bye nor had he written, so that Stephen felt that she had never known him, so completely did he go out of her life during his sojourn in Paris. Later on she was to learn, when she knew him better, that these disconcerting lapses of interest, amounting as they did to a breach of good manners, were highly characteristic of the man, and must of necessity be accepted by all who accepted Jonathan Brockett. And now here he was back again in England, sitting next to Stephen at the Carringtons’ luncheon. And as though they had met but a few hours ago, he took her up calmly just where he had left her. ‘May I come in to-morrow?’ ‘Well—I’m awfully busy.’ ‘But I want to come, please; I can talk to Puddle.’ ‘I’m afraid she’ll be out.’ ‘Then I’ll just sit and wait until she comes in; I’ll be quiet as a mouse.’ ‘Oh, no, Brockett, please don’t; I should know you were there and that would disturb me.’ ‘I see. A new book?’ ‘Well, no—I’m trying to write some short stories; I’ve got a commission from The Good Housewife.’ ‘Sounds thrifty. I hope you’re getting well paid.’ Then after a rather long pause: ‘How’s Raftery?’ For a second she did not answer, and Brockett, with quick intuition, regretted his question. ‘Not . . . not. . . .’ he stammered. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly, ‘Raftery’s dead—he went lame. I shot him.’ He was silent. Then he suddenly took her hand and, still without speaking, pressed it. Glancing up, she was surprised by the look in his eyes, so sorrowful it was, and so understanding. He had liked the old horse, for he liked all dumb creatures. But Raftery’s death could mean nothing to him; yet his sharp, grey eyes had now softened with pity because she had had to shoot Raftery. She thought: ‘What a curious fellow he is. At this moment I suppose he actually feels something almost like grief—it’s my grief he’s getting—and to-morrow, of course, he’ll forget all about it.’ Which was true enough. Brockett could compress quite a lot of emotion into an incredibly short space of time; could squeeze a kind of emotional beef-tea from all those with whom life brought him in contact—a strong brew, and one that served to sustain and revivify his inspiration. 2For ten days Stephen heard nothing more of Brockett; then he rang up to announce that he was coming to dinner at her flat that very same evening. ‘You’ll get awfully little to eat,’ warned Stephen, who was tired to death and who did not want him.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  It was going, like Mademoiselle Duphot. Kind Mademoiselle Duphot, so foolishly loving, so easily coerced, so glad to be persuaded; so eager to believe that you were doing your best, in the face of the most obvious slacking. Kind Mademoiselle Duphot who smiled when she shouldn’t, who laughed when she shouldn’t, and now she was weeping—but weeping as only a Latin can weep, shedding rivers of tears and sobbing quite loudly. ‘Chérie—mon bébé, petit chou!’ she was sobbing, as she clung to the angular Stephen. The tears ran down on to Mademoiselle’s tippet, and they wet the poor fur which already looked jaded, and the fur clogged together, turning black with those tears, so that Mademoiselle tried to wipe it. But the more she wiped it the wetter it grew, since her handkerchief only augmented the trouble; nor was Stephen’s large handkerchief very dry either, as she found when she started to help. The old station fly that had come out from Malvern, drove up, and the footman seized Mademoiselle’s luggage. It was such meagre luggage that he waved back assistance from the driver, and lifted the trunk single-handed. Then Mademoiselle Duphot broke out into English—heaven only knew why, perhaps from emotion. ‘It’s not farewell, it shall not be for ever—’ she sobbed. ‘You come, but I feel it, to Paris. We meet once more, Stévenne, my poor little baby, when you grow up bigger, we two meet once more—’ And Stephen, already taller than she was, longed to grow small again, just to please Mademoiselle. Then, because the French are a practical people even in moments of real emotion, Mademoiselle found her handbag, and groping in its depths she produced a half sheet of paper. ‘The address of my sister in Paris,’ she said, snuffling; ‘the address of my sister who makes little bags—if you should hear of anyone, Stévenne—any lady who would care to buy one little bag—’ ‘Yes, yes, I’ll remember,’ muttered Stephen. At last she was gone; the fly rumbled away down the drive and finally turned the corner. To the end a wet face had been thrust from the window, a wet handkerchief waved despondently at Stephen. The rain must have mingled with Mademoiselle’s tears, for the weather had broken and now it was raining. It was surely a desolate day for departure, with the mist closing over the Severn Valley and beginning to creep up the hillsides. . . . Stephen made her way to the empty schoolroom, empty of all save a general confusion; the confusion that stalks in some people’s trail—it had always stalked Mademoiselle Duphot. On the chairs, which stood crooked, lay odds and ends meaning nothing—crumpled paper, a broken shoehorn, a well-worn brown glove that had lost its fellow and likewise two of its buttons.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And surely the two of them had need of their friendship, for now there was little happiness at Morton; Sir Philip and Anna were deeply unhappy—degraded they would feel by their ceaseless quarrels. Sir Philip would think: ‘I must tell her the truth—I must tell her what I believe to be the truth about Stephen.’ He would go in search of his wife, but having found her would stand there tongue-tied, with his eyes full of pity. And one day Anna suddenly burst out weeping, for no reason except that she felt his great pity. Not knowing and not caring why he pitied, she wept, so that all he could do was to console her. They clung together like penitent children. ‘Anna, forgive me.’ ‘Forgive me, Philip—’ For in between quarrels they were sometimes like children, naïvely asking each other’s forgiveness. Sir Philip’s resolution weakened and waned as he kissed the tears from her poor, reddened eyelids. He thought: ‘To-morrow—to-morrow I’ll tell her—I can’t bear to make her more unhappy to-day. ’ So the weeks drifted by and still he had not spoken; summer came and went, giving place to the autumn. Yet one more Christmas visited Morton, and still Sir Philip had not spoken. CHAPTER 16 1 W ith the breaking up of the stables at Morton came the breaking up of their faithful servant. Old age took its toll of Williams at last, and it got him under completely. Sore at heart and gone in both wind and limb, he retired with a pension to his comfortable cottage; there to cough and grumble throughout the winter, or to smoke disconsolate pipes through the summer, seated on a chair in his trim little garden with a rug wrapped around his knees. ‘It do be a scandal,’ he was now for ever saying, ‘and ’er such a splendid woman to ’ounds!’ And then he would start remembering past glories, while his mind would begin to grieve for Sir Philip. He would cry just a little because he still loved him, so his wife must bring Williams a strong cup of tea. ‘There, there, Arth-thur, you’ll soon be meetin’ the master; we be old me and you—it can’t be long now.’ At which Williams would glare: ‘I’m not thinkin’ of ’eaven—like as not there won’t be no ’orses in ’eaven—I wants the master down ’ere at me stables. Gawd knows they be needin’ a master!’

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  We are to think of Christianity not in terms of church membership but in terms of intimate fellowship with God. (2) Christ entered into the presence of God not only for his own sake but also for ours. It was to open the way for us and to plead our cause. In Christ, there is the greatest paradox in the world, the paradox of the greatest glory and the greatest service, the paradox of one for whom the world exists and who exists for the world, the paradox of the eternal king and the eternal servant. (3) The sacrifice of Christ never needs to be made again. Year after year, the ritual of the Day of Atonement had to go on, and the things that blocked the road to God had to be atoned for; but, through Christ’s sacrifice, the road to God is always open. Men and women were always sinners and always will be, but that does not mean that Christ must go on offering himself again and again. The road is open once and for all. We can draw a faint analogy of that. For a long time, a particular surgical operation may be impossible. Then some surgeon finds a way round the difficulties. From that day, that same road is open to all surgeons. We may put it this way: nothing need ever be added to what Jesus Christ has done to keep open the way to God’s love for sinning humanity. Finally, the writer to the Hebrews draws a parallel between human life and the life of Christ. (1) Human beings die, and then comes the judgment. That itself was a shock to the Greeks, for they tended to believe that death was final. It was a belief expressed in the writings of the greatest Greek poets and dramatists. ‘When earth once drinks the blood of a man,’ said Aeschylus, ‘there is death once and for all and there is no resurrection.’ Euripides said: ‘It cannot be the dead to light shall come.’ ‘For the one loss is this that never mortal maketh good again the life of man – though wealth may be re-won.’ Homer makes Achilles say when he reaches the realm of the dead: ‘Rather would I live upon the soil as the hireling of another, with a landless man whose livelihood was small, than bear sway among all the dead who are no more.’ The Greek poet Mimnermus writes with a kind of despair: O Golden love, what life, what joy but thine? Come death, when thou art gone, and make an end! There is a simple Greek epitaph: Farewell, tomb of Melitē the best of women lies here, who loved her loving husband, Onesimus; you were most excellent, wherefore he longs for you after your death, for you were the best of wives. Farewell you too, dearest husband, only love my children. As G.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Because of Morton the days must go on, all their trifling tasks must be duly accomplished. At times she might wonder that this should be so, might be filled with a fleeting sense of resentment, but then she would think of her home as a creature dependent upon her and her mother for its needs, and the sense of resentment would vanish. Very gravely she listened to the lawyer from London. ‘The place goes to your mother for her lifetime,’ he told her; ‘on her death, of course, it becomes yours, Miss Gordon. But your father made a separate provision; when you’re twenty-one, in about two years time, you’ll inherit quite a considerable income.’ She said: ‘Will that leave enough money for Morton?’ ‘More than enough,’ he reassured her, smiling. In the quiet old house there was discipline and order, death had come and gone, yet these things persisted. Like the well-worn garment and favourite chair, discipline and order had survived the great change, filling the emptiness of the rooms with a queer sense of unreality at times, with a new and very bewildering doubt as to which was real, life or death. The servants scoured and swept and dusted. From Malvern, once a week, came a young clock-winder, and he set the clocks with much care and precision so that when he had gone they all chimed together —rather hurriedly they would all chime together, as though flustered by the great importance of time. Puddle added up the books and made lists for the cook. The tall under-footman polished the windows—the iridescent window that looked out on the lawns and the semi-circular fanlight he polished. In the gardens work progressed just as usual. Gardeners pruned and hoed and diligently planted. Spring gained in strength to the joy of the cuckoos, trees blossomed, and outside Sir Philip’s study glowed beds of the old-fashioned single tulips he had loved above all the others. According to custom the bulbs had been planted, and now, still according to custom, there were tulips. At the stables the hunters were turned out to grass, and the ceilings and walls had a fresh coat of whitewash. Williams went into Upton to buy tape for the plaits which the grooms were now engaged upon making; while beyond, in a paddock adjoining the beech wood, a couple of mares gave birth to strong foals—thus were all things accomplished in their season at Morton. But Anna, whose word was now absolute law, had become one of those who have done with smiling; a quiet, enduring, grief-stricken woman, in whose eyes was a patient, waiting expression. She was gentle to Stephen, yet terribly aloof; in their hour of great need they must still stand divided these two, by the old, insidious barrier. Yet Stephen clung closer and closer to Morton; she had definitely given up all idea of Oxford.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  In her large, long, rather low-ceilinged study whose casement windows looked over the river, sat Stephen with her feet stretched out to the fire and her hands thrust into her jacket pockets. Her eyelids drooped, she was all but asleep although it was early afternoon. She had worked through the night, a deplorable habit and one of which Puddle quite rightly disapproved, but when the spirit of work was on her it was useless to argue with Stephen. Puddle looked up from her embroidery frame and pushed her spectacles on to her forehead the better to see the drowsy Stephen, for Puddle’s eyes had grown very long-sighted so that the room looked blurred through her glasses. She thought: ‘Yes, she’s changed a good deal in these two years—’ then she sighed half in sadness and half in contentment, ‘All the same she is making good,’ thought Puddle, remembering with a quick thrill of pride that the long-limbed creature who lounged by the fire had suddenly sprung into something like fame thanks to a fine first novel. Stephen yawned, and readjusting her spectacles Puddle resumed her wool-work. It was true that the two long years of exile had left their traces on Stephen’s face; it had grown much thinner and more determined, some might have said that the face had hardened, for the mouth was less ardent and much less gentle, and the lips now drooped at the corners. The strong rather massive line of the jaw looked aggressive these days by reason of its thinness. Faint furrows had come between the thick brows and faint shadows showed at times under the eyes; the eyes themselves were the eyes of a writer, always a little tired in expression. Her complexion was paler than it had been in the past, it had lost the look of wind and sunshine—the open-air look—and the fingers of the hand that slowly emerged from her jacket pocket were heavily stained with nicotine—she was now a voracious smoker. Her hair was quite short. In a mood of defiance she had suddenly walked off to the barber’s one morning and had made him crop it close like a man’s. And mightily did this fashion become her, for now the fine shape of her head was unmarred by the stiff clumpy plait in the nape of her neck. Released from the torment imposed upon it the thick auburn hair could breathe and wave freely, and Stephen had grown fond and proud of her hair—a hundred strokes must it have with the brush every night until it looked burnished. Sir Philip also had been proud of his hair in the days of his youthful manhood.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  Then came the last visit from the visiting nurse, and the doctor said I was healed. That meant that I should be back on the sidewalks playing handball or enjoying the games I had been given when I was sick. When I refused to be the child they knew and accepted me to be, I was called impudent and my muteness sullenness. For a while I was punished for being so uppity that I wouldn't speak; and then came the thrashings, given by any relative who felt himself offended. • • • We were on the train going back to Stamps, and this time it was I who had to console Bailey. He cried his heart out down the aisles of the coach, and pressed his little-boy body against the window pane looking for a last glimpse of his Mother Dear. I have never known if Momma sent for us, or if the St. Louis family just got fed up with my grim presence. There is nothing more appalling than a constantly morose child. I cared less about the trip than about the fact that Bailey was unhappy, and had no more thought of our destination than if I had simply been heading for the toilet. 14The barrenness of Stamps was exactly what I wanted, without will or consciousness. After St. Louis, with its noise and activity, its trucks and buses, and loud family gatherings, I welcomed the obscure lanes and lonely bungalows set back deep in dirt yards. The resignation of its inhabitants encouraged me to relax. They showed me a contentment based on the belief that nothing more was coming to them, although a great deal more was due. Their decision to be satisfied with life's inequities was a lesson for me. Entering Stamps, I had the feeling that I was stepping over the border lines of the map and would fall, without fear, right off the end of the world. Nothing more could happen, for in Stamps nothing happened. Into this cocoon I crept. For an indeterminate time, nothing was demanded of me or of Bailey. We were, after all, Mrs. Henderson's California grandchildren, and had been away on a glamorous trip way up North to the fabulous St. Louis. Our father had come the year before, driving a big, shiny automobile and speaking the King's English with a big city accent, so all we had to do was lie quiet for months and rake in the profits of our adventures. Farmers and maids, cooks and handymen, carpenters and all the children in town, made regular pilgrimages to the Store. “Just to see the travelers.” They stood around like cutout cardboard figures and asked, “Well, how is it up North?” “See any of them big buildings?” “Ever ride in one of them elevators?” “Was you scared?” “Whitefolks any different, like they say?”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But Anna came less and less often to the study, and she would be sitting alone and idle. Puddle, upstairs at work in the schoolroom, might be swatting at her Greek to keep pace with Stephen, but Anna would be sitting with her hands in her lap in the vast drawing-room so beautifully proportioned, so restfully furnished in old polished walnut, so redolent of beeswax and orris root and violets—all alone in its vastness would Anna be sitting, with her white hands folded and idle. A lovely and most comfortable woman she had been, and still was, in spite of her gentle ageing, but not learned, oh, no, very far from learned—that, indeed, was why Sir Philip had loved her, that was why he had found her so infinitely restful, that was why he still loved her after very many years; her simplicity was stronger to hold him than learning. But now Anna went less and less often to the study. It was not that they failed to make her feel welcome, but rather that they could not conceal their deep interest in subjects of which she knew little or nothing. What did she know of or care for the Classics? What interest had she in the works of Erasmus? Her theology needed no erudite discussion, her philosophy consisted of a home swept and garnished, and as for the poets, she liked simple verses; for the rest her poetry lay in her husband. All this she well knew and had no wish to alter, yet lately there had come upon Anna an aching, a tormenting aching that she dared give no name to. It nagged at her heart when she went to that study and saw Sir Philip together with their daughter, and knew that her presence contributed nothing to his happiness when he sat reading to Stephen. Staring at the girl she would see the strange resemblance, the invidious likeness of the child to the father, she would notice their movements so grotesquely alike; their hands were alike, they made the same gestures, and her mind would recoil with that nameless resentment, the while she reproached herself, penitent and trembling. Yet penitent and trembling though Anna might be, she would sometimes hear herself speaking to Stephen in a way that would make her feel secretly ashamed.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  Would Momma, who knew the ways of the whites and the wiles of the Blacks, try to answer her grandson, whose very life depended on his not truly understanding the enigma? Most assuredly not. They both responded characteristically. Uncle Willie said something like he didn't know what the world was coming to, and Momma prayed, “God rest his soul, poor man.” I'm sure she began piecing together the details of our California trip that night. Our transportation was Momma's major concern for some weeks. She had arranged with a railroad employee to provide her with a pass in exchange for groceries. The pass allowed a reduction in her fare only, and even that had to be approved, so we were made to abide in a kind of limbo until white people we would never see, in offices we would never visit, signed and stamped and mailed the pass back to Momma. My fare had to be paid in “ready cash.” That sudden drain on the nickel-plated cash register lopsided our financial stability. Momma decided Bailey couldn't accompany us, since we had to use the pass during a set time, but that he would follow within a month or so when outstanding bills were paid. Although our mother now lived in San Francisco, Momma must have felt it wiser to go first to Los Angeles where our father was. She dictated letters to me, advising them both that we were on our way. And we were on our way, but unable to say when. Our clothes were washed, ironed and packed, so for an immobile time we wore those things not good enough to glow under the California sun. Neighbors, who understood the complications of travel, said goodbye a million times. “Well, if I don't see you before your ticket comes through, Sister Henderson, have a good trip and hurry back home.” A widowed friend of Momma's had agreed to look after (cook, wash, clean and provide company for) Uncle Willie, and after thousands of arrested departures, at last we left Stamps. My sorrow at leaving was confined to a gloom at separating from Bailey for a month (we had never been parted), the imagined loneliness of Uncle Willie (he put on a good face, though at thirty-five he'd never been separated from his mother) and the loss of Louise, my first friend. I wouldn't miss Mrs. Flowers, for she had given me her secret word which called forth a djinn who was to serve me all my life: books.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  She left me a teenincy note. Said people in Stamps thought they were better than she was, and that she hadn't only made one friend, and that was your grandson. Said she was moving to Dallas, Texas, and gone marry that railroad porter.” Momma said, “Do, Lord.” Mrs. Goodman said, “You know, Sister Henderson, she wasn't with me long enough for me to get the real habit of her, but still I miss her. She was sweet when she wanted to be.” Momma consoled her with, “Well, we got to keep our mind on the works of the Book. It say, ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’” Mrs. Goodman chimed in and they finished the phrase together, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” I don't know how long Bailey had known about Joyce, but later in the evening when I tried to bring her name into our conversation, he said, “Joyce? She's got somebody to do it to her all the time now.” And that was the last time her name was mentioned.