Bildungsromans; Midlands (England) -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
“It is half-past seven, and I am sitting ready dressed to go and talk
to Harry Jackson about a young horse he wants to sell to me. He is in
pretty low water, and it will make a pretty good horse. But I don’t
care much whether I have it or not. The mood seized me to write to you.
Somehow at the bottom I feel miserable and heavy, yet there is no need.
I am making pretty good money, and I’ve got all I want. But when I’ve
been ploughing and getting the oats in those fields on the hillside at
the back of Greymede church, I’ve felt as if I didn’t care whether I
got on or not. It’s very funny. Last week I made over five pounds
clear, one way and another, and yet now I’m as restless, and
discontented as I can be, and I seem eager for something, but I don’t
know what it is. Sometimes I wonder where I am going. Yesterday I
watched broken white masses of cloud sailing across the sky in a fresh
strong wind. They all seemed to be going somewhere. I wondered where
the wind was blowing them. I don’t seem to have hold on anything, do I?
Can you tell me what I want at the bottom of my heart? I wish you were
here, then I think I should not feel like this. But generally I don’t,
generally I am quite jolly, and busy.
“By jove, here’s Harry Jackson come for me. I will finish this letter
when I get back.
“——I have got back, we have turned out, but I cannot finish. I cannot
tell you all about it. I’ve had a little row with Meg. Oh, I’ve had a
rotten time. But I cannot tell you about it to-night, it is late, and I
am tired, and have a headache. Some other time perhaps——
GEORGE SAXTON.”
The spring came bravely, even in south London, and the town was filled
with magic. I never knew the sumptuous purple of evening till I saw the
round arc-lamps fill with light, and roll like golden bubbles along the
purple dusk of the high road. Everywhere at night the city is filled
with the magic of lamps: over the river they pour in golden patches
their floating luminous oil on the restless darkness; the bright lamps
float in and out of the cavern of London Bridge Station like round
shining bees in and out of a black hive; in the suburbs the street
lamps glimmer with the brightness of lemons among the trees. I began to
love the town.
In the mornings I loved to move in the aimless street’s procession,
watching the faces come near to me, with the sudden glance of dark
eyes, watching the mouths of the women blossom with talk as they
passed, watching the subtle movements of the shoulders of men beneath
their coats, and the naked warmth of their necks that went glowing
along the street. I loved the city intensely for its movement of men
and women, the soft, fascinating flow of the limbs of men and women,
and the sudden flash of eyes and lips as they pass. Among all the faces
of the street my attention roved like a bee which clambers drunkenly
among blue flowers. I became intoxicated with the strange nectar which
I sipped out of the eyes of the passers-by.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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