do I not love it, my England? Yet not my England yet. Till she
proclaim it herself, I am not hers. I will make her mine. I will
write as no man has ever written about her, for very love of her. I
look out to-night from my narrow window and think how the moonlight
falls on Tintern, on Glastonbury, on Furness. How it falls on the
primrose I would not pluck. How it would like to fall on the tall
blue-bells in the wood. I see the lights of Oxford St. The omnibuses
rattle by, the people are going to see Irving, Wilson Barrett, Ellen
Terry. What line, of mine, what bar, what thought or phrase will turn
the silence into song, the copper into gold?--I come back from
the window and sit at the square centre table. It is rickety and
uncomfortable, useless to write on. I kick it. I would kick anything
that came in my way to-night. I am savage. Outside, a French piano
is playing that infernal waltz. A fair subject for kicking if you
will. But, though I would I cannot. What a room! The fire-place is
filled with orange peel and brown paper, cigar stumps and matches.
One blind I pulled down this morning, the other is crooked. The lamp
glass is cracked, my work too. I dare not look at the wall paper nor
the pictures. The carpet I have kicked into holes. I can see it
though I can't feel it, it is so thin. My clothes are lying all about.
The soot of London begrimes every object in the room. I would buy a
pot of musk or a silken scarf if I dared, but how can I?
I must get my bread first and live for beauty after. Everything is
refused though, everything sent back or else dropped as it were into
some bottomless pit or gulf.
Here is my opera. This is my _magnum opus_, very dear, very clear,
very well preserved. For it is three years old. I scored it nearly
altogether, by _her_ side, Hortense, my dear love, my northern bird!
You could flush under my gaze, you could kindle at my touch, but you
were not for me, you were not for me!--My head droops down, I
could go to sleep. But I must not waste the time in sleep. I will
write another story. No; I had four returned to-day. Ah! Cruel London!
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