A Writer's Notebook (16 page)

The other day I went into the theatre to see a Cæsarian. Because it's rarely done it was full. Before starting Dr. C. made a short discourse. I didn't listen very attentively, but I seem to remember his saying that the operation so far was seldom successful. He told us that the patient couldn't have a child naturally and had had to be twice aborted; but she'd set her heart on having one now that she was pregnant again and though he'd explained the danger to her and said that it was only an even chance that she'd come through, she'd told him that she was prepared to risk it. Her husband wanted it too, and that seemed to weigh with her. The operation appeared to go very well and Dr. C's face beamed when he extracted the baby. This morning I was in the ward and asked one of the nurses how she was getting on. She told me she'd died in the night. I don't know why, it gave me a shock and I had to frown because I was afraid I was going to cry. It was silly, I didn't know her, I'd only seen her on the operating table. I suppose what affected me was the passion of that woman, just an ordinary hospital patient, to have a baby, a passion so intense that she was willing to incur the frightful risk; it seemed hard, dreadfully hard, that she had to die. The nurse told me the baby was doing well. That poor woman.

The
cri du cœur
is never without its effect, but the odd thing is that it need never come from the heart at all; it need only be perfectly simulated, and the trick is done.

A big dinner-party is merely an opportunity for the common indulgence of sensual appetites.

The Vicar expounded twice on Sunday the more obvious parts of the Scriptures, in twenty minutes or so, making for the benefit of the vulgar a number of trite reflections in a slovenly language compounded from the Authorised Version and the daily papers. He had a great facility for explaining earnestly and at decorous length texts which were plain to the poorest intelligence. His offertories were devoted alternately to the poor of the parish and to the necessities of the church. He saw a connection between the need for coal to warm the vestry and for candles to light the altar and the dogmas of religion. So on these occasions he made it his practice to attack the scarlet weeds of heresy, expounding to an intelligent congregation of yokels and small boys, the difficulties of the Athanasian Creed. But he was at his best when he poured the withering vials of his contempt on the false crowd of Atheists, Romanists, Dissenters and Scientists. He could barely keep serious in his scorn for the theories of evolution; and would set up like a row of ninepins the hypotheses of philosophers and learned men and knock them down by the aid of his own fearless intellect. It might have been a dangerous experiment but that his congregation were convinced beyond the need of argument of the faith of their fathers, and not very attentive listeners.

When a woman of forty tells a man that she's old enough to be his mother, his only safety is in immediate flight. She'll either marry him or drag him through the divorce court.

One should always cultivate one's prejudices

Cornwall. The wind dragged up the sea by its roots and the water in heavy dark masses hurled itself against the rocks.
Overhead the sky was in frantic motion, the tormented clouds raced across the night and the wind whistled and hissed and screamed.

Fragments of cloud, tortured and rent, fled across the sky like the silent souls of anguish pursued by the vengeance of a jealous God.

There was a moaning of thunder in the distance and one by one fell the first rain-drops; they were like the tears of God.

The wind was like a charioteer in a chariot, and the horses, muscles straining, quivered in their traces; he lashed them furiously with his whip and they sprang forward with a rush and a whirl, and the morning air was rent with a long, shrill scream as though women in panic fled a danger there was no escaping.

I wandered at random, and the soft ground, broken by the tortuous courses of a hundred streamlets, with its carpet of brown, dead leaves, exhaled an odour of moist soil, the voluptuous scents of our mother, the Earth, gravid with silent life. The long branches of the briar-rose entangled my feet. Here and there, in sheltered corners, blossomed the primrose and the violet. The delicate branches of the beech trees were black amid the young leaves, vivid and tender, that had but just burst their buds. It was an emerald paradise. The eye could not pierce that intricate greenery. It was a filagree finer upon the slender twigs than the summer rain and more subtle than the mists of sunset. It was as intangible as a beautiful thought. It was a scene that drove away all thought of the sadness and the bitterness of life. The verdure was so pure that my mind became pure also and I felt like a child. Here and there, far
above the other trees, rose a fir, immensely tall, straight as a life without reproach; but cheerless, cold and silent. The only sound was the rustling of a rabbit among the dead leaves or the hasty springing of a squirrel.