[Manchester—Friday, 17 August 1866]
Friday. I find I omitted to speak of the blowing oaks yesterday in the little wood just beyond us on the way to the beach. They were standing with all their leaves blown back by the strong winds, looking as if they had “grown grey in a single night.” I went out again in the afternoon but found the winds more quiet and the breakers breaking in soft thunder upon the beach. By and by, the sunset flooded rocks and shore, and yellow sunlight stained the ragged headlands melting their fierceness into loveliness.
Today Lillian thought it best to return to town. She heard last night from Mr Aldrich and he was in trouble with his work, in confusion at his rooms which were about to be thus inopportunely cleaned for the winter. She concluded therefore to go and straighten affairs. So this morning I walked with her to the beach, where all was calm again, in the cool radiant morning-light. We gathered flowers as we went and it was pretty to see her content—not rapture, (she has not that,) but a kind of calm which the loveliness diffused about her. Indeed she is pretty and is full of points for a poet’s fancy to catch on.
I bade her good speed in the 10 o’clock train and walked to the Post Office. It was odd to see the nonchalance of the man who played the part of shop-keeper, book-keeper, errand-boy, and Post-master. I was obliged to wait so long until the whole youthful population had satisfied itself with candy and nuts, that I took down Lamartine’s Story of the Stone Mason of Saint Point, which I always remember as one of the loveliest tales ever written by mortal pen and speedily became absorbed in it so that when the letters were at length distributed to the waiting company he ignored me entirely and seemed to consider it quite a tiresome office to hand me my letters when I at length found myself standing in the shop alone. How I wished the letters were not in my hand and there was no necessity for return. The day so faultlessly clear, so cold and perfect, like autumn was almost too magnificent after the shrouded skies of yesterday and filled with inertia I longed to linger over the pretty story and forget the world for a time.
The sunshine was so strong and brilliant as to conquer at last and I retreated to the shelter of the house and read for a little before dinner. Directly after I sallied to the shore and stayed voiceless I hope not altogether without purpose under the cedars upon Eagle Head until night. The sunset was more gentle in its aspect than the day had been.
Jamie was rowed across at night, but he returned very nervous and tired. His day had been a very fatiguing one. Mr Strahan the publisher arrived to whom he wished to pay especial attention and with whom he dined in spite of a whirlpool of business part of which was for my mother. He will give a lease of her Beach St. house to the old tenant and was obliged to give an hour at least to the settlement of preliminaries with Mrs Waistcoat the queer old woman, who takes such good care of the house it would be worth while to have her there free of rent instead of for eleven hundred dollars which is what she is to give.
Mr Strahan was full of information and a man of large business ability. He has a house in Edinburgh, one in London, in New York, in Toronto. He says the authorship of Ecce Homo is one of the best kept secrets ever known, as good as Junius’ Letters.
Mrs Hawthorne came in and criticised her husband’s portrait by Rowse, thinking it admirable on the whole—but certain lines wrong.
I sometimes wish it were not always so. The poor woman is in a sad quandary. Her brother having come with his family to visit her by invitation, now considers that she should support him and wishes to remain in her house. This is a sore trial—first because she wishes to support her brother and cannot, second because she cannot form any plan by which he shall support himself. The most unhappy feature of the case seems to be that he considers she ought to do what she really cannot and accuses her of not doing her utmost for him and even dares to suggest that the interests of her children should be sacrificed to his necessity.
Poor woman! She is a poor rudderless craft. Her husband was her compass and rudder; now she drives before the wind helplessly, except when she will take a friend on board as pilot for a time. I know she is guided now as she has ever been in one sense, but it is her first taste of the hard experience of the world.
