1883

[april 25th] i am up one day and down another. have been a long way down today, and now my head feels empty and i am nothing particular. will things never settle? is this being grownup? (...) i can't settle to anything but my painting, i lost my patience over everything else. there is nothing to be done, i must watch things pass - oh faith - faith.

[june 8th] they cut down the old walnut up the new road. poor old tree, i remember it almost as long as i remember anything hereabouts. they are cutting a road across the field, preparatory to building. it is the last bit of the orchards left.

[june 15th] they cut down the big mulberry bush on the left at the bottom of gloucester road, and most of the other trees except the big plane. i wonder how the rooks know, they left these trees a very short time before they were felled, and they left the rookery in kensington gardens the autumn before the trees went.

[july 28th] i, seventeen. i have heard it called 'sweet seventeen', no indeed, what a time we are, have been having, and shall have.

1884

[may 8th] i feel and extraordinary dislike to this idea, a childish dislike, but the memory of that home is the only bit of childhood i have left. it was not perfectly happy, childhood's sorrows are sharp while they last, but they are like april showers serving to freshen the fields and make the sunshine brighter than before. we watch the gentle rain on the mown grass in april, and feel a quiet peace and beauty. we feel and hear the roaring storm of november, and fiend the peace gone, the beauty become wild and strange. then as we struggle on, the thought of that peaceful past time of childhood comes to us like soft music and blissful vision through the snow. we do not wish we were back in it, unless we are daily broken down, for the very good reason that it is impossible for us to be so, but it keeps one up, and there is a vague feeling that one day there will again be rest. the place is changed now, and many familiar faces are gone, but the greatest change is in myself. i was a child then, i had no idea what the world would be like. i wished to trust myself on the waters and sea. everythinh was romantic in my imagination. the woods were peopled by mysterious good folk. the lords and the ladies of the last century walked with me along the overgrown paths, and picked the old fashioned flowers among the box and rose hedges of the garden. half believing the picturesque superstitions of the district, seeing my own fancies so clearly that they became true to me, i lived in a separate world. then just as childhood was beginning to shake, we had to go, my first great sorrow. i do not wish to have to repeat it, it has been a terrible time since, and the future is dark and uncertain, let me keep the past. the old plum tree is fallen, the trees are feleed, the black river is an open hollow, the elfin castle is no longer hidden in the dark glades of craig donald wood. i remember every stone, every tree, the scent of the heather, the music sweetest mortal ears can hear, the murmuring of the wind through the fir trees. even when the thunder growled in the distence, and the wind swept up the valley in fitful gusts, oh, it was always beautiful, home sweet home, i knew nothing of trouble then. i could not see it in the same way now, i would rather remember it with the sun sinking, showing, behind the mountais, the purple shadows creeping down the ravines into the valley to meet the white mist rising from the river. then, an hour or two later, the great harvest moon rose over the hills, the fairies came out to dance on the smooth turf, the nightjar's eerie cry was heard, the hooting of the owls, the bat flitted round the house, roe-deer's bark sounded from the dark woods, and faint in the distance, then nearer and nearer came the strange wild music of the summer breeze.

[may 26th] man may spoil a great deal, but he cannot change the everlasting hills, or the mighty river, whose golden waters still flow on at the same measured peace, mysterious, irresistible.

[june 14th] shall i really never see him again? but he is gone with almost every other, home is gone for me, the little girl does not bound about now, and live in fairyland, and occasionally wonder in curious, carefree manner, as of something not concerning her nature, what life means, and whether she shall ever feel sorrow. it is all gone, and he is resting quietly with our fathers. i have begun the dark journey of life. will it go on as darkly as it has begun? oh that i might go through life as blamelessly as he!

1885

[december 31st] oh life, wearisome, disappointing, and yet in many shades so sweet, i wonder why one is so unwilling to let go this old year? not because it has been joyful, but because i fear its successors - i am terribly afraid of the future. Some fears will inevitably be fulfilled, and the rest is dark - peace to the old year, may the seed sown therein bear no bitter fruit!

1894

[october 2nd] i am sure, driving for miles among these lovely cornfields and deep silent woods, and on the grassy slopes of the still more quiet hills, i have thought the whole countryside belonged to the fairies, and that they come out of the woods by moonlight into the fields and on the dewy grass beside the streams. there are not many hedgehogs, which are fairy beasts, but there are the green sour ringlets whereon the ewe not bites, and how without the aid of the fairy-folk of fosterland could there be so little mildew in the corn?

1896

[november 17th] i cannot tell what possesses me with the fancy that they laugh and clap their hands, especially the little ones that grow in troops and rings amongst dead leaves in the woods. i suppose it is the fairy rings, the myriads of fairy fungi that start into life in autumn woods. i remember i used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when i was a child. what heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and commonsense, to fear no longer the terror that flieth by night, yet to feel truly and understand a little, a very little, of the story of life.