Susan never kept a diary, she tells me, but she had, like most beginning
authors, the habit of scribbling things down, which she never intended
to keep, and then could seldom bring herself to destroy. To a writer all
that his pen leaves behind it seems sacred; it is, I treacherously
submit, a private grief to any of us to blot a line. Such is our vanity.
However inept the work which we force ourselves or are prevailed upon to
destroy, the unhappy doubt always lingers: "If I had only saved it? One
can't be sure? Perhaps posterity----?"
Susan, thank God, was not and probably is not exempt from this folly. It
enables me from this time forward to present certain passages--mere
scraps and jottings--from her notebooks, which she has not hesitated to
turn over to me.
"I don't approve, Ambo," was her comment, "but if you _will_ write
nonsense about me, I can't help it. What I can help, a little, is your
writing nonsense about yourself or Phil or the rest. It's only fair to
let me get a word in edgeways, now and then--if only for your sake and
theirs."
That is not, however, my own reason for giving you occasional peeps
into these notebooks of Susan's.
* * * * *
"I'm beginning to wish that Shelley might have had a sense of humor.
'Epipsychidion' is really too absurd. 'Sweet benediction in the eternal
curse!' Imagine, under any condition of sanity, calling any woman that!
Or 'Thou star above the storm!'--beautiful as the image is. 'Thou storm
upon the star!' would make much worse poetry, but much better sense....
Isn't it strange that I can't feel this about Wordsworth? He was better
off without humor, for all his solemn-donkey spots--and it's better for
us that he didn't have it. It's probably better for us, too, that
Shelley didn't have it--but it wasn't better for _him_.
Diddle-diddle-dumpling--what stuff all this is! Go to bed, Susan."
* * * * *
"There's no use pretending things are different, Susan Blake; you might
as well face them and see them through, open-eyed. What does being in
love mean?
"I suppose if one is really in love, head over heels, one doesn't care
what it means. But I don't like pouncing, overwhelming things--things
that crush and blast and scorch and blind. I don't like cyclones and
earthquakes and conflagrations--at least, I've never experienced any,
but I know I shouldn't like them if I did. But I don't think I'd be so
terribly afraid of them--though I might. I think I'd be more--sort
of--indignant--disgusted."
* * * * *
Editor's Note: Such English! But pungent stylist as Susan is now
acknowledged to be, she is still, in the opinion of academic critics,
not sufficiently attentive to formal niceties of diction. She remains
too wayward, too impressionistic; in a word, too personal. I am inclined
to agree, and yet--am I?
* * * * *
"It's all very well to stamp round declaiming that you're captain of
your soul, but if an earthquake--even a tiny one--comes and shakes your
house like a dice box and then scatters you and the family out of it
like dice--it wouldn't sound very appropriate for your epitaph. 'I am
the master of my fate' would always look silly on a tombstone. Why
aren't tombstones a good test for poetry--some poetry? I've never seen
anything on a tombstone that looked real--not even the names and dates.
"But _does_ love have to be like an earthquake? If it does, then it's
just a blind force, and I don't like blind forces. It's stupid to be
blind oneself; but it's worse to have blind stupid things butting into
one and pushing one about.
"Hang it, I don't believe love has to be stupid and blind, and go
thrashing through things! Ambo isn't thrashing through things--or Phil
either. But, of course, they wouldn't. That's exactly what I mean about
love; it can be tamed, civilized. No, not civilized--just tamed.
_Cowed?_ Then it's still as wild as ever underneath? I'm afraid it is.
Oh, dear!
"Phil and Ambo really are captains of their souls though, so far as
things in general let them be. _Things in general_--what a funny name
for God! But isn't God just a short solemn name for things in general?
There I go again. Phil says I'm always taking God's name in vain. He
thinks I lack reverence. I don't, really. What I lack is--reticence.
That's different--isn't it, Ambo?"
* * * * *
The above extracts date back a little. The following were jotted early
in November, 1913, not long after our return from overseas.
* * * * *
"This is growing serious, Susan Blake. Phil has asked you to marry him,
and says he needs you. Ditto Maltby; only he says he wants you. Which,
too obviously, he does. Poor Maltby--imagine his trying to stoop so low
as matrimony, even to conquer! As for Ambo--Ambo says nothing, bless
him--but I think he wants and needs you most of all. Well, Susan?"
* * * * *
"Jimmy's back. I saw him yesterday. He didn't know me."
"Sex is a miserable nuisance. It muddles things--interferes with honest
human values. It's just Nature making fools of us for her own private
ends. These are not pretty sentiments for a young girl, Susan Blake!"
* * * * *
"Speak up, Susan--clear the air! You are living here under false
pretenses. If you can't manage to feel like Ambo's daughter--you
oughtn't to stay."