YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 65 



This was but a transient softness towards the neighbours 

 who had ridiculed and reviled him for his indolence, his 

 unusual figure and careless dress, and his poor scrap of 

 a march to Moscow. They were nothing to him : ' there 

 was not a single one friendly to me.' Near the end of the 

 month he has twice walked to Swindon and back, and is 

 strong enough to travel. His evenings are wearisome : 

 his father and Henry go out, ' mother runs about the 

 house,' and he gets tired of reading. He wants to see 

 England : ' I think next spring, all being well, to start for 

 a long journey, most probably into Cornwall, or else to 

 the north of Scotland, but I would sooner see wild Cornwall 

 and hear the wild Cornish legends of King Arthur.' His 

 employers (the Wilts and Gloster Standard) wanted him 

 back, and commissioned him to write a history of Ciren- 

 cester. In October he took a short holiday at Sydenham 

 or Eastbourne, and by the middle of November was as 

 busy as ever, once working twenty-two hours out of the 

 twenty-four at election work, and writing in cold weather 

 with a rug round his knees until five in the morning. He 

 is starting for Malmesbury at half-past six in the morning 

 on foot ; he goes to Cricklade for Nomination Day, when 

 fighting is expected. 



On his one clear day in this busy season he was out all 

 day with his gun. But it was not sport alone ; it was 

 something more even than his deepest love of Nature 

 in earlier days that now enriched his experience out of 

 doors. Before his illness he had been devoted to one of 

 his cousins at Snodshill ; not much later he began his 

 courtship of Miss Jessie Baden, of Day House Farm, who 

 became his wife. Seeing the roses in a much later summer, 

 he recalled those of his youth : 



' Straight go the white petals to the heart ; straight the 

 mind's glance goes back to how many other pageants 

 of summer in old times ! . . . To the dreamy summer haze 

 love gave a deep enchantment, the colours were fairer, 

 the blue more lovely in the lucid sky. Each leaf finer, 

 and the gross earth enamelled beneath the feet. A sweet 



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