12TH
I haven’t one friend of my own age and generation. I wish I had. I don’t know if it’s my own fault. I haven’t a
single thing
in common with them. They’re all snarled up in grandchildren or W.A. or church teas or bridge or society. None of them like painting and they particularly dislike my kind of painting. [. . .]
A lunatic, a prostitute and a Chinese artist — these are among my friends. I have rewritten the “Throat and a Monkey’s Hands.” Tried to get some construction, suspense and climax in it. It’s great fun. I
want
to make the thing hang together, make the creatures real and
make
people love them.
AUGUST 15TH
Heaven forgive me. How I hate tenants. Always trying to squeeze something out of you, always trying to make out they’re being done in or not getting their pound of flesh, always finding shortcomings in you and your house. Snivelling, whining, squeezing, hypocritical vermin. Susie the rat is a lady compared to most of ’em. Bristles burst out of every crevice of my vertebrae and I long to do one of Woo’s faces at them. Alice sits there and lets those cheap English tramp all over her. I spit like a cat at every tap of their beastly heels. I detest that type. Those cheap, bragging, swanking English are rennet wine to my life’s milk. Theysour and curdle me. Lie down, oh flesh. Get up, spirit. Hoist me above the miring clay.
I’ve had old Mrs. Rollins today. Eighty-two. Shall I be like that twenty years from now?
No,
I shan’t be nearly so nice or sweet. It’s too bad for folks to live alone. I feel and know it. You centre too much round yourself. She wasn’t tethered to her ego.
SEPTEMBER 9TH
[…]
Written to Lawren just as if they were like they used to be. I wonder what Bess has done to him. Has she helped or hindered his work? None of my business.
OCTOBER 5TH
[…]
Alice phoned and said great niece Betty B. was at the house with her mother and her baby, and I’d better come down. I had not seen Betty for years, not since she grew up. She’s very tall and bright and happy and proud of her baby. She kissed me. Una, her mother, sat by Alice’s fire. They all sat round it, even Campbell who doesn’t belong was there. When I went in the music stopped and there was no chair for me. I bowed to Una and said good evening and a horrible feeling ran round the circle. I knew I must not stay. I went down to the bedroom and saw the child (my great grandnephew) and talked a few minutes to Betty and called the pups and came away home again to the big empty lonesome house. Oh why? Eleven years ago Una said those bitter things. Even as she wrote them she did not know if I was already dead. I was undergoing a bad operation and she wrote that it was to be hoped I would die and not live to be a burden and a nuisance to the others. Why should her “dear Aunt Bet” be burdened with a hateful crosspatch to wait on? She supposed the trouble I wasbeing operated on for was one reason I’d been such a hateful crank all my life, etc. etc. Lizzie left the letter lying on my desk. It was addressed to Miss Carr, 646 Simcoe Street. It began “Dear Auntie” and was in my blotter. I read it thinking it was for me. Soon I saw but read on, stung to the quick. Una and I had never hit it off. We were too near of an age for aunt and niece. She was beautiful — I stupid — I was gifted but ordinary. I suppose that beast jealousy poked in. Well, I wrote to her and said I
was dead to her.
I did not meet her for over ten years. Lizzie and Alice adore her and count it all my fault. Is it? If any one wishes you dead, why live to them? Best be dead. I wish her no ill, I just want to leave her alone and forget her. Breaks like that don’t mend. Of course, Lizzie sides entirely with her and condemns my wickedness. If the Devil himself was pitted against me, she’d side with him. It has always been so. She is good to me because she is good and likes to do her duty. But she condemns me always; in all I do or say,
I haven’t one friend of my own age and generation. I wish I had. I don’t know if it’s my own fault. I haven’t a
single thing
in common with them. They’re all snarled up in grandchildren or W.A. or church teas or bridge or society. None of them like painting and they particularly dislike my kind of painting. [. . .]
A lunatic, a prostitute and a Chinese artist — these are among my friends. I have rewritten the “Throat and a Monkey’s Hands.” Tried to get some construction, suspense and climax in it. It’s great fun. I
want
to make the thing hang together, make the creatures real and
make
people love them.
AUGUST 15TH
Heaven forgive me. How I hate tenants. Always trying to squeeze something out of you, always trying to make out they’re being done in or not getting their pound of flesh, always finding shortcomings in you and your house. Snivelling, whining, squeezing, hypocritical vermin. Susie the rat is a lady compared to most of ’em. Bristles burst out of every crevice of my vertebrae and I long to do one of Woo’s faces at them. Alice sits there and lets those cheap English tramp all over her. I spit like a cat at every tap of their beastly heels. I detest that type. Those cheap, bragging, swanking English are rennet wine to my life’s milk. Theysour and curdle me. Lie down, oh flesh. Get up, spirit. Hoist me above the miring clay.
I’ve had old Mrs. Rollins today. Eighty-two. Shall I be like that twenty years from now?
No,
I shan’t be nearly so nice or sweet. It’s too bad for folks to live alone. I feel and know it. You centre too much round yourself. She wasn’t tethered to her ego.
SEPTEMBER 9TH
[…]
Written to Lawren just as if they were like they used to be. I wonder what Bess has done to him. Has she helped or hindered his work? None of my business.
OCTOBER 5TH
[…]
Alice phoned and said great niece Betty B. was at the house with her mother and her baby, and I’d better come down. I had not seen Betty for years, not since she grew up. She’s very tall and bright and happy and proud of her baby. She kissed me. Una, her mother, sat by Alice’s fire. They all sat round it, even Campbell who doesn’t belong was there. When I went in the music stopped and there was no chair for me. I bowed to Una and said good evening and a horrible feeling ran round the circle. I knew I must not stay. I went down to the bedroom and saw the child (my great grandnephew) and talked a few minutes to Betty and called the pups and came away home again to the big empty lonesome house. Oh why? Eleven years ago Una said those bitter things. Even as she wrote them she did not know if I was already dead. I was undergoing a bad operation and she wrote that it was to be hoped I would die and not live to be a burden and a nuisance to the others. Why should her “dear Aunt Bet” be burdened with a hateful crosspatch to wait on? She supposed the trouble I wasbeing operated on for was one reason I’d been such a hateful crank all my life, etc. etc. Lizzie left the letter lying on my desk. It was addressed to Miss Carr, 646 Simcoe Street. It began “Dear Auntie” and was in my blotter. I read it thinking it was for me. Soon I saw but read on, stung to the quick. Una and I had never hit it off. We were too near of an age for aunt and niece. She was beautiful — I stupid — I was gifted but ordinary. I suppose that beast jealousy poked in. Well, I wrote to her and said I
was dead to her.
I did not meet her for over ten years. Lizzie and Alice adore her and count it all my fault. Is it? If any one wishes you dead, why live to them? Best be dead. I wish her no ill, I just want to leave her alone and forget her. Breaks like that don’t mend. Of course, Lizzie sides entirely with her and condemns my wickedness. If the Devil himself was pitted against me, she’d side with him. It has always been so. She is good to me because she is good and likes to do her duty. But she condemns me always; in all I do or say,
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