NOVEMBER 117 



O'Connor's wonderful reviews of a Life of Tolstoi, he 

 quotes a passage which is a very vivid picture of self- 

 consciousness in grief. ' Tolstoi describes his visit to 

 his mother's death - chamber : "I could not believe it 

 was her face." How this comes home to us all ! The 

 change made by death, the effort of the brain to recog- 

 nise that what we see before us is the loved object, 

 whom, living, we should instantly have recognised 

 among a million. Tolstoi continues : " I looked fixedly 

 at it, and by degrees began to recognise in it the dear 

 familiar features. I shuddered when I did so, and knew 

 that this something was my mother. But why had her 

 closed eyes sunk thus into her head 1 Why was she so 

 dreadfully pale? and why was a dark spot visible 

 through her transparent skin on one of her cheeks? 

 Why was the expression of her face so stern and so 

 cold ? Why were her lips so bloodless and their lines 

 so fair, so grand ? Why did they express such unearthly 

 calmness that a cold shiver passed through me as I 

 looked at them ? . . . Both before the funeral and after 

 I did not cease to weep and feel melancholy. But I do 

 not like to remember it, because a feeling of self-love 

 mingled with all its manifestations ; either a desire to 

 show that I was more afflicted than the rest, or thoughts 

 about the impression I produced upon others ; or idle 

 curiosity which made me examine Mimi's cap or the 

 faces of those around me." ' The reviewer adds: ' Now 

 I call this passage morbid.' It may be, but the descrip- 

 tion is extraordinarily true to many under the influence 

 of grief, though they faU to analyse or understand their 

 own mental state. 



We all say, we all think, we all know, that 'in the 

 midst of life we are in death ' ; and yet when the blow 

 falls with appalling startlingness on someone who is near 

 to us, how we all must feel — with a piercing, heartrend- 

 ing reality — ' If I had known ' I 



