My daughter Helen

Chapter i

T he other day I read Browning’s “ Strafford ” again, and the last line of it—“ O God, I shall die first—I shall die first! ”—left me meditating, rec¬ ollecting. For my wife had once said that she dreaded to die before Helen. Helen’s passion for her mother was strong and natural and yet strange. I was never jealous of it; children should love their mother best. I remember how, when we went out for the evening, Helen would leave a note or a flower on her mother’s dressing-table—a greeting for the return. The flower might be a buttercup, the note little more than a bald hope that the evening had been a pleasant one. Some¬ times there was a nosegay or an outpouring of en¬ dearments ; sometimes I was included, kindly or affec¬ tionately; she would turn from her mother to me fearing that I felt neglected. When she was very little she would cry when her mother went out, and even all the time till her return. It became quite a bother and I scolded her. The line, the effectual line, to take was that it distressed her mother. And poor Helen’s remorse when she had disagreed or quarrelled with her mother was tragical in little. Randal, her elder by about two years, was philosophical about Helen’s sulks and tantrums. He was capable of a critical detachment, which she feared; he deflated her moods.

When her mother died and the time for comforting came it was Helen who comforted me. Her mother’s illness became a long communion between them. In that deep intimacy there was no place for facile de¬ spair. If I was not formally committed to Helen’s charge I knew that I had been the subject of solici¬ tude. Perhaps they had worked out a philosophy to¬ gether; at least they had feelings and emotions in common.

Helen’s composure surprised me, but I did not mis¬ understand it. What grief, consternation, reserves, wild questionings, were behind that aspect that was, with all its poor pathetic flaws, benignant? Already she had learnt to help, to reassure. I didn’t know how to help her. I could not give her sentimental makebelieves and mere fortitude was too harsh. She was a big girl—about fourteen then, I suppose—and her embrace was an envelopment, a support. We wept together and sometimes our attempts to comfort one another were clumsy. We were like unpractised lovers.

She was not frank with me: she could not be frank. Her mother had received all her girlish outpourings. There would never be such confidence again. And I respected it; I respected that mystery of mother and daughter; I didn’t want to be sceptical or analytic even when it seemed that a gentle pressure from them was exercised on me. And now I was conscious of my children’s commiseration, and it was precious be¬ cause it was beautiful in them. Randal and Helen consulted together about me a good deal. I was faintly amused when I caught them at it. They were young, and in their minds was that sad, baffling question: “ What is there for him? ” They wanted vaguely to make it up to me. Even Helen must presently begin to realize again that she was young. I believe she had her moments of remorse, of self-reproach, at the discovery.

It was settled that I was to go on living at the old house, that Randal should return to school and aim for his Oxford scholarship, that Helen should return to school. On this last point we had a close dis¬ cussion. Helen was for giving up school and becom¬ ing my housekeeper or, as an alternative, going to a day school in the neighbourhood. Randal listened to my arguments, for I condescended to argue, and was gravely on my side. I was amused and rather grati¬ fied to find that his consent to my living most of the year alone was founded on his confidence in my character. He didn’t exactly say that, but something charmingly near it. And on the part of these poor young things I was presently to discover a dread that I might sometime marry again. I was old, but not so old as to make it impossible. I could imagine the good Randal conceding the right and Helen dis¬ tressed in a confusion of loyalties and affections. They sometimes got to the same point by different ways; Randal by justice and logic, Helen by her in¬ stinct for realities. But as time went on their appre¬ hensions were allayed.

I settled down again to my work at the office and to those private attempts at literature which have, so far, failed to bring fortune or fame. One dreads the full confession of failure; the period of acquies¬ cence, indolence, the resort to mere ironies. In some ways this present record is a rebellion against that. I try to catch, to realize, to shape, something of that relation to my children which from now onwards must be the better part of my life. I suppose it will be a gradual compilation, and at first one sees things mainly in the distant past. Then, my thoughts and impressions were shared. We sat hand in hand in the obscurity of the hall when Helen first danced at the village entertainment. Two foolish parents were close to tears. And how happily we have laughed at Randal’s laconic, slightly excited “ Done it, Daddy,” when he won the scholarship! When we watched a schoolboy cricket match it was a devastating experi¬ ence when Randal got out; philosophy is not proof against such things.

The house was too large for me when I was left: alone, but I was reluctant to leave it. The common¬ place garden had its beauties and its memories. With our two sycamores and the ash, the great horse-chest¬ nuts in the garden opposite, our bank which screened us from the road with its various shrubs, we had an outlook of multiform greenery. The road, not being a main artery, was comparatively quiet. Altogether it was a setting for quiet drama.

Chapter 2

Qo Helen was packed off to school and I was un- ^ happy to think of her eating her heart out there. But her letters were not unhappy, and it seemed that she turned the bright side to me. The school was a great place for athleticisms, and with lawn-tennis and cricket, and presently hockey and lacrosse, she had the distractions she needed and more; I waited in vain for the spiritual or even the scholastic to prevail. Her letters were amazingly empty. They were con¬ cocted with determination, they were dutiful, and duti¬ fulness was not what I wanted from her. Their end¬ ings were emphatic; the tender, conventional messages were vigorously—passionately?—underlined. The let¬ ters did not always come regularly and (God forgive me!) I’ve had dreams of resentment, I’ve dallied with the luxury of resenting neglect by my children. It’s base. It’s treacherous. It’s a depressing part of the artist’s experimental habit, I suppose.

Rarely, a phrase in a letter arrested me, and I came back to it, pored over it, squeezed more out of it than ever was in. She would wish to please me, and she even sent me poems sometimes. I read them eagerly, doubtfully, tried not to be the elderly critic, gave what I could of praise and incitement. More to the point were her drawings, and it seemed that she had a talent for design. She exercised it vigorously, whim- 9 sically; you could see something of her in this. When she came home for the holidays these faint expressions of her seemed to melt away. She was amazingly large and real. She was of about my height and Randal’s; we had measuring competitions, and there was little between us. I believe people disputed about her pretti¬ ness; I should have scorned to call her pretty.

It was the summer holiday, and she flaunted it in light frocks. She bore herself as a goddess, and it was absurd to treat her as a schoolgirl. Perhaps there is something in Randal’s contention that God¬ heads must be qualified with humour. If you give your God human attributes they must include humour or you make a stiff, impossible figure of Him; and humour cannot be one-sided. Helen, among other things, was a joke. She used to be a little puzzled when Randal and I agreed that she was a joke. We had to make a sort of defence against her.

Yet intellectually she didn’t follow in the brilliant Randal’s footsteps. Her schooling seemed to consist very much of imitations of the paraphernalia of boys’ athleticisms, of trumpery matters that resulted in badges and titles. Yet the school could point to her as magnificent, and you can hardly grumble at mag¬ nificence. You might put it to Randal, as a matter for regret, that she wasn’t learned and wise like him, but he, shrewd and magnanimous, would dismiss his great accomplishments with a gesture. Helen, he de¬ cided, would do. Helen was all right. It was char¬ acter that mattered, not learning. And if you sug¬ gested that at school character should bring persistii ence and persistence learning, he would tell you that Helen was always doing something. You can’t be always watching your children and nudging them; perhaps, after all, the best kind of parent is the neg¬ lectful one. So, in semi-cynicism, one would surmise. I put it to Randal and he considered the point. And then with a courteous inclination of the head he said something nice about a happy mean. I felt like a blushing girl. Recovering, I realized that Randal, too, was a bit of a joke, though I didn’t tell him so.

We had a summer holiday together at a Grasmere inn. It cheered me to see Helen and Randal so com¬ radely together. Yet every relation between two im¬ plies exclusion. They had their understandings and sometimes I was timid with them. They would receive me generously, but I shrank from a reception. I’ve gone through life shrinking and recovering. I’ve not been firm enough or simple enough. And, indeed, some of their understandings were compunctions, con¬ siderations about me. They had their kindly little plots, their subterfuges.

Poor Helen wasn’t altogether in her element, for to trudge it over the mountains was never quite her line. We explained that the idea was to “ plod on and keep the passion fresh,” but she hadn’t a genius for plodding, though she was not without her persist¬ encies. And so sometimes we left her, as Randal said, biting her thumb, and we started rather sadly, lingeringly; sometimes our company or her prospec¬ tive boredom turned the scale, and she came with us. If we came home to her we were always curious to know what she had done. She had played bowls with an old gentleman; she had sulked in the churchyard; she had washed her hair and dried it out of the win¬ dow; she had drawn a picture of a hen running away from a dog; she had read a tattered old magazine. She didn’t talk for effect, but she made us sorry, and we would propose a day on the lake for the morrow. She wouldn’t have it if she thought we were pitying her.

Once, when she was with us on the hills I had a tumble that shook me, and I laid down to rest. Helen seemed to come to life suddenly. There was nothing to be done, but she became a masterful figure. She questioned Randal sharply about distances—the near¬ est water, the nearest help—and contemplated me with an air vaguely professional. I think she was ready to carry me upon her back, and in the meantime she was firm and gentle in her ministrations. As I lay on the ground I winked at Randal, and when he made some reply to Helen smilingly, her scowl was so fero¬ cious that I began to laugh. She glared from one to the other, disconcerted. Poor Helen would affect to fear our subtlety, and did sometimes permit herself to be anxious about the point. In this case there wasn’t much point and it was ungrateful to laugh at her. The effects of the fall were nothing, I was ready to go on very soon, but Helen was alert now and guarded me very closely. Randal pretended that I had fallen on purpose to give her a little pleasure. He said that her nature demanded incidents, that she was not fitted for the contemplative life.

Randal left us for a couple of days’ climbing at Dungeon Ghyll where his friend Antony Derwent was staying. Derwent was a year or two ahead of him in the school-college progress and a fine, big, athletic fellow. Helen and I went over to see them, for she could walk with an object, and so we made Antony’s acquaintance. Helen was very much interested. She was only a girl, but a girl is very nearly a woman, and this came to me with a pang. We watched the boys tackling a climb, and I think that Helen’s prac¬ tical sense revolted from it, but she developed en¬ thusiasm with great rapidity and wanted to join them. But we had to think of our homeward journey, and I felt relieved to get away. She, I could feel, found it very flat to pad off with me, leaving young manhood behind. Bitterly I felt my inadequacy. It seemed that our holiday was spoilt; the placid face of it was de¬ ranged. I saw before me enormous difficulties; the control, the direction of all manner of ardencies, rash¬ ness. Or the judicious, generous refrain from inter¬ ference? A father is nothing if he is not magnani¬ mous. Helen cheered up I’m sure, even if she didn’t show it, when I said that we must have Antony over some time. She asked whether I meant here or at Darley. I had meant here, but I said “ Both.” Yes, I was magnanimous. The time would come when I should want Helen too much to myself. I must fight against that.

Yes; Antony caught the eye, and what does that has a good chance of staying in the memory. Helen and I talked correctly about the sound, English type.

In our superior fashion we ridicule the public-school product nowadays, but it turns out some gracious boys. They are not strictly utilitarian? That is hardly the case against them. Graciousness is good, but you can’t do without a bony structure; you must be ready to die on the point of honour, but it is well to know how to live; I was to learn presently that Antony was no fool, but when I told Helen that he was a pleasant, athletic fellow I felt that there was some degree of depreciation in this, and that it was hardly fair. She spoke of him with frank admiration; she had none of the subterfuges of the self-conscious misses con¬ fronted with a staggering young man. We were pleas¬ urably tired, we became placid and I think we were happy together. My spirits rose and when, after dinner, we came into contact with other guests at the hotel I played what Randal called my role of the agree¬ able rattle. I made them laugh, I laughed myself, I made Helen laugh. And the truth is that I was showing off before her.

Chapter 3

1\ 1 y ambitions began to take on new form or new -L*-* colour; I wanted to do something for the sake of my children. Here had I been slogging away at novels and plays for the last twenty years, and the accomplishment in terms of fame or money was trifling. And of course there was the implication, in critical work or in casual conversation, that the distribution of these rewards was not strictly accord¬ ing to merit. So, almost embarrassingly, the loyal young people championed me. I’ve never liked the part of the neglected genius, never put in a claim for it, and there’s something ignoble irt explaining that success is spurious because it hasn’t come to you. One can’t be always pointing out that reticence, distinc¬ tion, isolation, are virtues, but, indeed, the young folk —bless ’em—would go farther than I ever wanted to go in that direction. They would express their con¬ tempt for the gross thousands or hundreds in favour of the lean and honourable tens. Yet I could see them clutching pathetically at any odd piece of commenda¬ tion. Randal’s “ I see, Daddy, you are mentioned in the Tribune this week,” had the proper casual tone, and a remittance from America—rather more solid than usual—was hailed by Helen as a turning of the tide. Poor Helen had plenty of natural flamboyancy and, desiring the blaze of success, she would look into 15 i6 her soul to see what was wrong. If she did follow Randal in a rather comic depreciation of the public taste, she insisted that the neglect of my works was a particular shame. The desire grew to have some¬ thing to show them, something striking and grandiose.

We should all have enjoyed a howling success. If one were but built that way! I puzzled Helen by telling her that I felt rather apologetic toward some of my prosperous contemporaries. I wanted to tell them that I wasn’t half as contemptuous of them as they might suppose. She didn’t care for subtleties of superciliousness. I listened to the kindly advice of friends who proposed the larger scheme, the more genial attitude. Why should the man of meagre tal¬ ent attempt refinements that only genius could make tolerable? If you are second-rate, why not be cheer¬ fully practicable ? There’s something in it, and some¬ times it has seemed that there’s everything in it. But it’s such a bore not to do your best. If one could knock off the pot-boiler quickly and make something

of it, why then- But a day might come when the

astute Randal could not stifle his judgment with loy¬ alty. I should dread the time when he might say, “The old man’s getting a bit thin,” though perhaps that’s not quite how he would say it. And one could see Randal going on for a long way loyally accepting. I could always face him while I did my best.

Sometimes one built castles in Spain and sometimes reversed the process and made dungeons of gloomy thoughts. And, of course, it wasn’t as bad as that. The young people would insist on being too proud of me. If I deprecated this, the humility became an added virtue. They pinned their faith to the narrow band of friendly critics; they resented the breath of depreciation, and any hearty blast of it was madness or malignity. And—talking of loyalties—I must be loyal to a faith so unswerving; yes, I should dread Randal’s reception of a pot-boiler.

Helen could appreciate in flashes. Her reading was a mixture of masterpieces and rubbish, with a pre¬ ponderance of rubbish. In real life she can be prac¬ tical and measured, but imaginatively she is unsure; she is at the mercy of chance emotions. Sometimes in the holidays the three of us had Shakespeare read¬ ings, and though Helen was not keen on the sport, she would join us graciously. We attacked big things, and Helen was certainly an inadequate Cleopatra. I think she found her deficient in the Public School spirit. Yet the play troubled her. I found her after¬ wards poring over it. She asked me if women often spoilt men’s lives. Wasn’t it Antony’s own fault? Why did I think him fine ? I suggested that it’s some¬ thing to be a fool on such a colossal scale.

“ Is there anything to be said for her?” asked Helen.

“ There’s all that Antony said.”

She reflected on this and then: “ He liked saying such things; he would have said them to some one else.”

“ The point is that he wouldn’t.”

“If you admire women like that, what’s the use of being good? ”

“ It’s a work of art that we admire, my dear. It’s Shakespeare.”

“ Well, Shakespeare’s one of you, Daddy. You all make a great fuss about Cleopatra and Mary, Queen of Scots, and Helen of Troy. Do you want us to be like them ? ”

“ They’re spectacular, legendary figures that we’ve agreed to be romantic about.”

“ It’s funny,” she said, “ that they should all be bad.”

“ Oh, but there are others,” I said. “ Joan of Arc and Cordelia and Florence Nightingale.”

She laughed, and I was afraid she might ask me whether I meant the Lady with the Lamp or Mr. Strachey’s Florence Nightingale.

Then she said: “ I hate Cleopatra. I hate wanting to be like her.”

“ I don’t think you’ll be like her,” I said.

“ What shall I be like, Daddy?”

“You’ll be helpful.”

“ Oh, bother! ” she said.

“Don’t you want to be?”

“ It’s what I’m afraid of myself.”

“ And you’d rather be bringing Antonys to grief ? ”

“ How could she do it ? ” said Helen.

I think Randal fancied his vigorous reading of Antony’s passion—I took most of “ the field ”—and for some days the young people exchanged phrases from the play—■“ Let’s have one other gaudy night,” “ I give you joy of the worm,” and so on. We were all, in a way, possessed by it. But when the real

Antony—Antony Derwent—came to pay his visit, all this seemed to be forgotten or overlaid. And yet I had a foolish, lingering idea that Helen surveyed this Antony as a possibly heroic figure, possibly to be aban¬ doned and betrayed. He had a grandeur of limb and pose and the face of a kindly Englishman. In the event he was to pay us many visits and, indeed, de¬ serting his Manchester suburb, to be very much “about.” His people were in the South, but some theory of “ provincial openings ” had brought him to the Chancery bar in Manchester. He was a lawn tennis player of some local reputation, and he often accompanied Helen and Randal to our Sports Club. Helen had left school, and had decided against col¬ lege on the two-fold reason that she wasn’t clever enough and that I must be looked after. So she had the official position of housekeeper, which wasn’t very onerous, and gave herself a little orgy of fun, sport and sunshine, fine weather delights. Randal, who was always alive to serious or sombre aspects of Helen, said she was on the spree, and I think we all felt that this was a phase that couldn’t last. With most girls of her class such an experience comes to an end with marriage, and this became an apprehension to me. I watched her with a jealous eye. I could re¬ call tentative jealousy or distaste when, many years before, the little girl had played at the stupid kissing games, “ Shy Widow ” or “ Postman’s Knock,” which unimaginative generations pass on. And now I was excessively sensitive about the manners, the approach, of the young men. I don’t think I was an exacting, heavy-handed father, but I had to school myself, and sometimes she would divine what I didn’t say. Her own bearing, I felt, was beyond reproach, and yet in reasonable moments I told myself that it couldn’t be, it shouldn’t be; the world doesn’t get on by means of correct attitudes.

I craved her confidence; I wanted her to talk to me of herself; all my life I have asked from her more than she would give. And she seemed to know it and to be sorry for me. I suppose that the deep difference between us is that she is a woman and I a man. I think that she will never know, now that her mother is gone, a perfect confidence. She had happy school friendships, many contacts of a little more than kin and less than kind; nothing very deep. She had a trick of pondering, of a sombre concentration, and it gave an illusion of power; you could believe that she was self-supporting. And yet at times I was afraid of her becoming a rattle, I was afraid of some rash committal; I was afraid, always afraid. I hid it pretty well, I think. We used to have nice conver¬ sations, sometimes with cheerful endings. We would discuss—perhaps the initiative was mainly on my side —the question of rigid rules of conduct as against the cultivation of a spirit with natural reactions. Some¬ times I was dreadfully inopportune. I remember an occasion when we had returned from the tennis ground on a bright summer day. There was a scrap of leisure yet before us, and I was unwise enough to force the note. The irrelevance, the mustiness of Milton or Keats—mere books—was opposed to the brilliance of life that we had just left behind. It was unimagina¬ tive of me, and poor Helen cried out in despair. She was in tears. “ I’m no good,” she said. “ I care for that, I hate this. No—not hate.” (She feared tohurt me.)

And I saw it, I felt it too, and IVe often felt it. What is this life of the spirit, represented by old books, mere words, to the entrancing rush of crude young life? The poets wrote in immortal phrases, I dare say. But there is this strong obsession of white-clad figures striving in the game, of the sun shining on gay surfaces, of careless, easy contacts with your friends. The life that absorbs you is the life that matters. The garish day effaces that dim twilight of old shapes and memories enshrined in books. I knew too well what it is to be restlessly indifferent to books. We take them up; we lay them down; we come back to them. And Helen saw in me a task¬ master who did not understand what she was feeling now. I tried to explain; I abased myself. She thought I was just trying to be kind. Rather, I was trying to be just. And I did make her see something of what I felt. I forced it on her; I compelled her atten¬ tion when she would have subsided into some mood of facile self-reproach. Why wouldn’t she understand that we faced the world together ? I think I was ready to waive the trumpery parental authority—at any rate, till some need or menace arose. I wanted intimacies and to be intimate, it seems, is to be equal. I was her natural protector and she was mine.

Chapter 4

S o we had a share of bright and jolly life in the summer weather and, naturally, ardent young men were a part of it. In the privacy of my mind I could and did, ridiculously enough, regard them as rivals. Of course there is always the parents’ natural fear of misalliance, but I may confess to fear rather of the eligible. Kindly ladies of the neighbourhood would have been ready, doubtless, to help, to warn. The lack of likely young men, the prevalence of the un¬ likely, have often been the cause of removals, even of the sale of houses. Prudent mothers look about them and think it is time to be off; proximity is enor¬ mously more potent than suitability. It was for me to be the prudent father, but I knew that Helen was no flighty miss; her assured dignity of bearing gave one confidence. Yet she was capable of generous mis¬ take.

One meets gallant young rebels to whom prudence is the meanest of vices. And, indeed, what seems to the father a calamity may bring to the child the full¬ ness of life. It is the irony of the human struggle that it is perpetually against the trials that may exalt it. We are always aiming at safety, and safety is the most insidious of dangers. It is just a restful idea, an idea that one must have. We mustn’t take our children too seriously. We can but throw them 22 into the stream to sink or swim. We want them to be paragons, but you cannot cherish a paragon ten¬ derly. We want to assure their future, but only they and the gods can do that. We would keep places for them, tie up money for them; we are of little faith. The family sits round the table and in their common life they are as one. Disaster to any is unthinkable, even separation is but a vague menace. But they separate, they go here and there in the world, they die and fail. Safety, confidence, family pride, are illusions of the brave heart. They are illusions, but the illusion is the present reality.

I was the victim of moods. I would let Helen go her own way or I would have her go my way. I trusted her to value the young men who came about her, and yet I wanted to superintend the valuation. I hadn’t much fear of her marrying beneath her, as we say. She wasn’t innocent of the snobbery, social or intellectual, that is bred in the high-class boardingschools, but her niceties generally were temperamental and aesthetic. She wouldn’t mistake the shopwalker for the gentleman, and it jarred my honest radicalism that she should be too ready with the distinction. In Darley we had the usual suburban dread of the taint of retail business; though, indeed, a shop might be so big as to accomplish a kind of social purifica¬ tion; did not a super-grocer become an illustrious yachtsman and hob-nob with kings? At the Sports Club, however, we had a reasonably high standard of selection. We were all nice or had some claim to niceness. And Helen knew her way about among these specious young men in flannels; her distinctions were, very much, mine. I’m afraid I was guilty some¬ times of cunning disparagements, but I didn’t want to be ungenerous or unfair. I was sensitive to her dis¬ appointments with me and -hated to be a drag upon the impulses of youth. She could read me sometimes. “ You’re afraid of young men, Daddy,” she said.