Prev | Current Page 129 | Next

Begbie, Harold, 1871-1929

"The Bed-Book of Happiness"

...

[Sidenote: _Edward FitzGerald_]
Some one from this house is going to London: and I will try and write
you some lines now in half an hour before dinner. 'I am going out for
the evening to my old lady, who teaches me the names of the stars, and
other chaste information. You see, Master John Allen, that if I do not
come to London (and I have no thought of going yet) and you will not
write, there is likely to be an end of our communication: not, by the
way, that I am never to go to London again; but not just yet. Here I
live with tolerable content: perhaps with as much as most people arrive
at, and what if one were properly grateful one would perhaps call
perfect happiness. Here is a glorious sunshiny day: all the morning I
read about Nero in Tacitus, lying at full length on a bench in the
garden, a nightingale singing, and some red anemones eyeing the sun
manfully not far off. A funny mixture all this, Nero, and the delicacy
of spring, all very human however. Then at half-past one lunch on
Cambridge cream cheese: then a ride over hill and dale: then spudding up
some weeds from the grass: and then, coming in, I sit down to write to
you, my sister winding red worsted from the back of a chair, and the
most delightful little girl in the world chattering incessantly. So runs
the world away.


Pages:
117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141