. William De Morgan and his wife . s thoughto the young and healthy the mystery of that darker side of lifewith which they are still unacquainted attracts with all theforce of a fantastic contrast—there is a luxury in melancholy towhich they cling in thought. Still more do all stirrings of genius,all aspiration, all ultimate achievement, find their root in thisacceptance of sadness as one of the great adjuncts of life. Be-lieve me, said Colehurst to Mary Crockenden, that all thenoblest thought, noblest work, noblest friendship is rooted andgrounded in profound sadness. Sad—everythings sad—fair
. William De Morgan and his wife . s thoughto the young and healthy the mystery of that darker side of lifewith which they are still unacquainted attracts with all theforce of a fantastic contrast—there is a luxury in melancholy towhich they cling in thought. Still more do all stirrings of genius,all aspiration, all ultimate achievement, find their root in thisacceptance of sadness as one of the great adjuncts of life. Be-lieve me, said Colehurst to Mary Crockenden, that all thenoblest thought, noblest work, noblest friendship is rooted andgrounded in profound sadness. Sad—everythings sad—fairthings and foul things alike. It may be some dim realization of this truth which makes theappeal of sorrow to a mind that has never tasted its actuality;yet there are those of us who have suffered more keenly from the ^ A few corrections to the grammar in the above, apparently madeby the Governess, have been allowed to stand in order that the Frenchmay be more intelligible to the reader ; otherwise the original is The Daughters of ihf. MistEvelyn De Morgan pinxit [In the posscssiou of Mrs. Spencer Pickering PEN-DRIFT i6i visionary griefs and terrors of our early days than is possible inlater life when we face reality with a sense of proportion and aphilosophy that childhood lacked. As will have been gathered, no home could have been morefree from gloom than the sunny house in Upper Grosvenor Street,and no child less weighted with the sorrows of existence than wasEvelyn ; yet with the perversity of an imaginative tempera-ment, all that was the antithesis to her own lot appealed mostkeenly to her in those early years. Thus if she describes a sceneof lovers wandering in a grove, of children playing in the sun-light, of flowers blossoming on the bank of a silver stream inspring-time—though she does so with a lightness and graceunusual in a child, she dwells, too, with insistence on the thoughtof how Death is hovering near to pounce on these lovely livingthings a
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1922
