The Well of Loneliness quotes

It has dignity and pride without ostentation, self-assurance without arrogance, repose without inertia; and a gentle aloofness that, to those who know its spirit, but adds to its value as a home.

It is indeed like certain lovely women who, now old, belong to a bygone generation⁠—women who in youth were passionate but seemly; difficult to win but when won, all-fulfilling.

They are passing away, but their homesteads remain, and such an homestead is Morton.

And because she felt grateful she gave much to the poor, and Sir Philip went to church, which was seldom his custom, and the Vicar came to dinner, and just towards the end many matrons called to give good advice to Anna.

But: “Man proposes⁠—God disposes,” and so it happened that on Christmas Eve, Anna Gordon was delivered of a daughter; a narrow-hipped, wide-shouldered little tadpole of a baby, that yelled and yelled for three hours without ceasing, as though outraged to find itself ejected into life.

Anna Gordon held her child to her breast, but she grieved while it drank, because of her man who had longed so much for a son. And seeing her grief, Sir Philip hid his chagrin, and he fondled the baby and examined its fingers.

It relieved her to stamp and then burst into tears at the first sign of opposition. After such outbreaks she would feel much more cheerful, would find it almost easy to be docile and obedient.

In some vague, childish way she had hit back at life, and this fact had restored her self-respect.

Anna would send for her turbulent offspring and would say: “Stephen darling, Mother’s not really cross—tell Mother what makes you give way to these tempers; she’ll promise to try to understand if you’ll tell her—”

“ ’Course not!” murmured Collins, “but I had to say something—you didn’t mind, Miss Stephen, did you?” And as Stephen looked doubtfully up into her face, Collins suddenly stooped and kissed her.

Stephen stood speechless from a sheer sense of joy, all her doubts swept completely away.

At that moment she knew nothing but beauty and Collins, and the two were as one, and the one was Stephen—and yet not Stephen either, but something more vast, that the mind of seven years found no name for.

The sorrows of childhood are mercifully passing, for it is only when maturity has rendered soil mellow that grief will root very deeply.

Stephen’s grief for Collins, in spite of its violence, or perhaps because of that very violence, wore itself out like a passing tempest and was all but spent by the autumn.

And she answered:

“I’m dreadfully happy, Father. I’m so dreadfully happy that it makes me feel frightened, ’cause I mayn’t always last happy⁠—not this way.”

He did not ask why she might not last happy; he just nodded, as though he admitted of a reason; but he laid his hand over hers on the bridle for a moment, a large, and comforting hand.

And then Violet knitted, or said that she knitted—Stephen had never seen anything but knots. “Can’t you knit?” she would say, looking scornfully at Stephen, “I can—Mother called me a dear little housewife!” Then Stephen would lose her temper and speak rudely:

“You’re a dear little sop, that’s what you are!”

For hours she must play stupid doll-games with Violet, because Roger would not always play real games in the garden. He hated to be beaten, yet how could she help it? Could she help throwing straighter than Roger?

Her own eyes clouded and she stared at her boots, ashamed of the tears that she felt might flow over. He saw this and went on speaking more quickly, as though anxious to cover her confusion.

“You’re all the son that I’ve got,” he told her.

“You’re brave and strong-limbed, but I want you to be wise—I want you to be wise for your own sake, Stephen, because at the best life requires great wisdom. I want you to learn to make friends of your books;

She looked into his anxious, questioning eyes:

“You are honour,” she said quite simply.

When Stephen kissed Mademoiselle Duphot goodbye, she cried, for she felt that something was going that would never come back—irresponsible childhood. It was going, like Mademoiselle Duphot. Kind Mademoiselle Duphot, so foolishly loving, so easily coerced, so glad to be persuaded;

She appeared to take Stephen as a matter of course, nothing surprised or even amused her it seemed, and Stephen grew quite at ease with her.

“I can always be comfortable with you, Puddle,” Stephen would say in a tone of satisfaction, “you’re like a nice chair; though you are so tiny yet one’s got room to stretch, I don’t know how you do it.”

Then Puddle would smile, and that smile would warm Stephen while it mocked her a little; but it also mocked Puddle—they would share that warm smile with its fun and its kindness, so that neither of them could feel hurt or embarrassed.

Shy though she might be, they sensed this presumption; it annoyed them, it made them feel on the defensive. She was handsome but much too large and unyielding both in body and mind, and they liked clinging women.

They were oak-trees, preferring the feminine ivy.

It might cling rather close, it might finally strangle, it frequently did, and yet they preferred it, and this being so, they resented Stephen, suspecting something of the acorn about her.

So that the girl should not wake and kiss back, she would kiss her lightly and quickly on the forehead.

The eye of youth is very observant.

Youth has its moments and keen intuition, even normal youth—but the intuition of those who stand midway between the sexes, is so ruthless, so poignant, so accurate, so deadly, as to be in the nature of an added scourge;

She could start to caress them, awkwardly, shyly, stroking their hands with her strong, bony fingers—first his hand, then hers, then perhaps both together, so that they smiled in spite of their trouble. But she dared not stand up before them accusing, and say: “I’m

Stephen, I’m you, for you bred me.

You shall not fail me by failing yourselves. I’ve a right to demand that you shall not fail me!” No, she dared not stand up and speak such words as these—she had never demanded anything from them.

these would be when they two were sitting in his study, for then he would seem contented. Surrounded by his books, caressing their bindings, Sir Philip would look carefree again and lighthearted.

“No friends in the world like books,” he would tell her. “Look at this fellow in his old leather jacket!”

There were times, too, out hunting when he seemed very young, as Raftery had been that first season. But the ten-year-old Raftery was now wiser than Sir Philip, who would often behave like a foolhardy schoolboy.

And he answered:

“Some part of us always sheds tears when we see lovely things⁠—they make us regretful.”

But when she asked him why this should be, he shook his head slowly, unable to tell her.

And he answered:

“Yes, because of His trees. Don’t you?”

“Oh, my poor, blind Stephen! Look again, go on looking until you do believe.”

And he answered: “Yes, because of His trees. Don’t you?”

“Oh, my poor, blind Stephen! Look again, go on looking until you do believe.”

They discussed many things quite simply together, for between these two was no vestige of shyness. His youth met hers and walked hand in hand with it, so that she knew how utterly lonely her own youth had been before the coming of Martin.

Yes, and now she knew to the full the meaning of fear, and Martin it was, who had taught her its meaning—her friend—the man she had utterly trusted had pulled the scales from her eyes and revealed it.

Fear, stark fear, and the shame of such fear⁠—that was the legacy left her by Martin.

And yet he had made her so happy at first, she had felt so contented, so natural with him; but that was because they had been like two men, companions, sharing each other’s interests. And at this thought her bitterness would all but flow over;

“Coup, c-o-u-p!” she called, but he swung his neck sideways as he swam—it was like a disdainful negation.

“Perhaps he thinks I’m a freak,” she mused grimly, feeling more lonely because of the swan.

The lakes were guarded by massive old beech trees, and the beech trees stood ankle-deep in their foliage; a lovely and luminous carpet of leaves they had spread on the homely brown earth of Morton.

And Stephen answered:

“Perhaps he’s a poet like his namesake; I think if he could write he’d write verses. They say all the Irish are poets at heart, so perhaps they pass on the gift to their horses.”

Then the two of them smiled, each a little embarrassed, but their eyes held great friendship the one for the other, a friendship of years now cemented by Raftery whom they loved—and small wonder, for assuredly never did more gallant or courteous horse step out …

Unto the third and fourth generations. …” And Stephen was waiting for his answer. Then Sir Philip set the lips of his spirit to the cup, and his spirit must drink the gall of deception:

“I will not tell her, You cannot ask it⁠—there are some things that even God should not ask.”

And now he turned round and deliberately faced her; smiling right into her eyes he lied glibly: “My dear, don’t be foolish, there’s nothing strange about you, some day you may meet a man you can love.

“Thank you,” she said very quietly and simply, “I felt that I had to ask you about Martin—”

After she had gone he sat on alone, and the lie was still bitter to his spirit as he sat there, and he covered his face for the shame that was in him⁠—but because of the love that was in him he wept.

But Sir Philip, that other descendant of theirs, found little excuse for his critical neighbours.

Because he loved much he must equally suffer, consuming himself at times with resentment.

And now when he and Stephen were out hunting he would be on his guard, very anxious and watchful lest any small incident should occur to distress her, lest at any time she should find herself lonely.

But his oaths could not save Stephen now from her neighbours, nothing could do that since the going of Martin—for quite unknown to themselves they feared her; it was fear that aroused their antagonism.

In her they instinctively sensed an outlaw, and theirs was the task of policing nature.

In her vast drawing-room so beautifully proportioned, Anna would sit with her pride sorely wounded, dreading the thinly veiled questions of her neighbours, dreading the ominous silence of her husband.

Ugly, degrading, rather terrible half-truths; and he knew the whole truth, yet he dared not speak it.

It is bad for the soul to know itself a coward, it is apt to take refuge in mere wordy violence.

“Yes, you, her mother, you persecute Stephen, you torment her; I sometimes think you hate her!”

Sir Philip’s death deprived his child of three things; of companionship of mind born of real understanding, of a stalwart barrier between her and the world, and above all of love

—that faithful love that would gladly have suffered all things for her sake, in order to spare her suffering.

Outrageous, Puddle would feel it to be, that wilfully selfish tyranny of silence evolved by a crafty old ostrich of a world for its own well-being and comfort.

The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that seeing nothing it might avoid Truth.

It said to itself: “If seeing’s believing, then I don’t want to see—if silence is golden, it is also, in this case, very expedient.” There were moments when Puddle would feel sorely tempted to shout out loud at the world.

“And I’m Angela Crossby,” came the reply; “we’ve taken The Grange, just the other side of Upton.”

Angela Crossby was amazingly blonde, her hair was not so much golden as silver.

She wore it cut short like a medieval page; it was straight, and came just to the lobes of her ears, which at that time of pompadours and much curling gave her an unusual appearance.

At last Angela settled down again on the lounge. “Come and sit over here,” she suggested, smiling.

Then Stephen sat down on the edge of a chair as though she were sitting in the Prickly Cradle.

She forgot to inquire about Angela’s dog-bite, though the bandaged hand was placed on a cushion; and she also forgot to adjust her new necktie, which in her emotion had slipped slightly crooked.

“Oh, I belong nowhere—you forget I’m the stranger.”

“I know that you’re you,” said Stephen.

They walked on in silence while the light changed and deepened, growing always more golden and yet more elusive. And the birds, who loved that strange light, sang singly and then all together: “We’re happy, Stephen!”

And Stephen answered:

“I know that I love you, and that nothing else matters in the world.”

Then, perhaps because of that glamorous evening, with its spirit of queer, unearthly adventure, with its urge to strange, unendurable sweetness, Angela moved a step nearer to Stephen, then another, until their hands were touching.

Stephen’s need was now hers, by sheer force of its blind and uncomprehending will to appeasement.

Then Stephen took Angela into her arms, and she kissed her full on the lips, as a lover.

For Angela could never quite let the girl go. She herself would be rather bewildered at moments—she did not love Stephen, she was quite sure of that, and yet the very strangeness of it all was an attraction.

Stephen was becoming a kind of strong drug, a kind of anodyne against boredom.

And then Angela knew her own power to subdue; she could play with fire yet remain unscathed by it. She had only to cry long and bitterly enough for Stephen to grow pitiful and consequently gentle.

In her ears kept sounding those words from the past, those words of her father’s when long, long ago he too had been a young lover:

“She’s so pure that only the purest stones are fit to touch her finger.”

…”

Oh, intolerable fragrance of log fires burning!

Presently she lifted her wondering face, and now her lips were quite close to Stephen’s, but Stephen kissed her instead on the forehead. “You must rest,” she said, “you’re simply worn out. Can’t you sleep if I keep you safe in my arms?”

For at moments, such is the blindness and folly yet withal the redeeming glory of love.

He would make thinly-veiled allusions to the past, glancing sideways at Stephen the while he did so; and one day when she flushed to the roots of her hair with rage to see Angela humble and fearful, he laughed loudly:

“I’m just a plain tradesman, you know; if you don’t like my ways, then you’d better not come here.”

Catching Angela’s eye, Stephen tried to laugh too.

Her whole body seemed to dissolve itself in weeping; and she flung herself down on the kind earth of Morton, shedding tears as of blood. There was no one to witness those tears except the white swan called Peter.

Terrible, heartbreaking months.

She grew gaunt with her unappeased love for Angela Crossby. And now she would sometimes turn in despair to the thought of her useless and unspent money. Thoughts would come that were altogether unworthy, but nevertheless those thoughts would persist. Roger was not rich;

All told she had spent a considerable sum, and this gave her a fleeting satisfaction. But on her way back in the train to Malvern, she gazed out of the window with renewed desolation.

Money could not buy the one thing that she needed in life; it could not buy Angela’s love.

That night she stared at herself in the glass; and even as she did so she hated her body with its muscular shoulders, its small compact breasts, and its slender flanks of an athlete.

Very grave and aloof had Stephen become; too reserved, too self-assured, thought her neighbours. They supposed that success had gone to her head, for no one was now allowed to divine the terrible shyness that made social intercourse such a miserable torment.

Life had already taught Stephen one thing, and that was that never must human beings be allowed to suspect that a creature fears them.

The fear of the one is a spur to the many, for the primitive hunting instinct dies hard—it is better to face a hostile world than to turn one’s back for a moment.

One critic described this as: “A lack of grip,” and his criticism, on the whole, was a fair one. However, the Press was disposed to be kind, remembering the merits of The Furrow.

But the heart of the Author knoweth its own sorrows and is seldom responsive to false consolation

, so that when Puddle said: “Never mind, Stephen, you can’t expect every book to be The Furrow—and this one is full of literary merit,” Stephen replied as she turned away: “I was writing a novel, my dear, not an essay.”

He thrust the box into Stephen’s hands. “Here, you take it—it’s dripping. Can I have a wash rag?” But after a moment he forgot the new gloves. “I’ve raided Fortnum and Mason—such fun—

I do love eating things out of cardboard boxes.

Hallo, Puddle darling! I sent you a plant. Did you get it? A nice little plant with brown bobbles. It smells good, and it’s got a ridiculous name like an old Italian dowager or something. Wait a minute—what’s it called?

Your own temperament is so much against you. You’re so strong in some ways and yet so timid—such a mixture—and you’re terribly frightened of life. Now why? You must try to stop being frightened, to stop hiding your head. You need life, you need people.

People are the food that we writers live on; get out and devour them, squeeze them dry, Stephen!

”

The subtlety, the craftiness of that question which in common decency could have but one answer! Oh, well, she had gone and would go even farther. Raftery was dead, there was nothing to hold her, she was free—what a terrible thing could be freedom.

Trees were free when they were uprooted by the wind; ships were free when they were torn from their moorings; men were free when they were cast out of their homes⁠—free to starve, free to perish of cold and hunger.

At Morton there lived an ageing woman with sorrowful eyes now a little dim from gazing for so long into the distance. Only once, since her gaze had been fixed on the dead, had this woman turned it full on her daughter;

But Valérie answered: “

One may have two homes⁠—many homes.

Be courteous to our lovely Paris and give it the privilege of being your second home—it will feel very honoured, Miss Gordon.” She sometimes made little ceremonious speeches like this, and coming from her, they sounded strangely old-fashioned.

but she did not resent him, nor his rudeness, nor his technical interest in her muscles. Indeed, she liked the cross little man with his bristling black beard and his peppery temper, and when he remarked apropos of nothing: “

We are all great imbeciles about nature. We make our own rules and call them la nature; we say she do this, she do that⁠—imbeciles! She do what she please and then make the long nose.

” Stephen felt neither shy nor resentful.

Near by had been lying a dead young Uhlan, and Stephen had shot the beast with his revolver, but Mary had suddenly started sobbing: “Oh, God! Oh, God! It was dumb—it couldn’t speak.

It’s so awful somehow to see a thing suffer when it can’t ask you why!

” She had sobbed a long time, and Stephen had not known how to console her.

And Mary answered:

“I’ve been waiting for you, and it’s seemed such a dreadful long time, Stephen.”

The barely healed wound across Stephen’s cheek flushed darkly, for what could she find to answer?

Not a woman of them all but felt vaguely regretful in spite of the infinite blessing of peace, for none could know what the future might hold of trivial days filled with trivial actions.

Great wars will be followed by great discontents⁠—the pruning knife has been laid to the tree, and the urge to grow throbs through its mutilated branches.

The house in the Rue Jacob was en fête in honour of Stephen’s arrival. Pierre had rigged up an imposing flagstaff, from which waved a brand new tricolour commandeered by Pauline from the neighbouring baker;

The songs of the beggars who sang in the garden at the hour when the santa noche smelt sweetest, those songs would seem full of a cruel jibing: “A-a-a-y!

Before I saw thee I was at peace, but now I am tormented because I have seen thee.

”

and Mary all things to her—the child, the friend, the beloved, all things. But Mary, because she was perfect woman, would rest without thought, without exultation, without question; finding no need to question since for her there was now only one thing—Stephen.

Time, that most ruthless enemy of lovers, strode callously forward into the spring.

It was March, so that down at the noisy Puerto the bougainvilleas were in their full glory, while up in the old town of Orotava bloomed great laden bushes of white camellias.

Even to themselves their vows would sound foolish, because so inadequate to compass their meaning.

Language is surely too small a vessel to contain those emotions of mind and body that have somehow awakened a response in the spirit.

And now when they climbed the long hill to the town of old Orotava on their way to the mountains, they would pause to examine certain flowers minutely, or to stare down the narrow, shadowy bystreets.

mimosa that left gold dust on the fingers, and the faintly perfumed ascetic white lilac that had come in the train from the Riviera. There were also hyacinths, pink, red and blue, and many small trees of sturdy azalea.

Oh, but the spring was shouting through Paris!

It was in the hearts and the eyes of the people. The very dray-horses jangled their bells more loudly because of the spring in their drivers. The debauched old taxis tooted their horns and spun round the corners as though on a race track.

The lure of the brightly lighted boulevards, the lure of the dim and mysterious bystreets would grip them so that they would not turn homeward for quite a long while, but would just go on walking.

The moon, less clear than at Orotava, less innocent doubtless, yet scarcely less lovely, would come sailing over the Place de la Concorde, staring down at the dozens of other white moons that had managed to get themselves caught by the standards.

In the cafés would be crowds of indolent people, for the French who work hard know well how to idle; and these cafés would smell of hot coffee and sawdust, of rough, strong tobacco, of men and women.

…” And then the guard set upon eyes and lips; the feeling of guilt at so much as a hand-touch; the pretence of a careless, quite usual friendship—“Mary, don’t look at me as though you cared! you did this evening—remember my mother.”

Intolerable quagmire of lies and deceit!

The degrading of all that to them was sacred—a very gross degrading of love, and through love a gross degrading of Mary. Mary … so loyal and as yet so gallant, but so pitifully untried in the war of existence.

She seemed to be striving to obliterate, not only herself, but the whole hostile world through some strange and agonized merging with Mary. It was terrible indeed, very like unto death, and it left them both completely exhausted.

The world had achieved its first real victory.

It was Mary who suggested that Barbara and Jamie should be asked to share their Christmas dinner, while Stephen who must suddenly pity Wanda for a misjudged and very unfortunate genius, invited her also—after all why not?

Wanda was more sinned against than sinning.

She drank, oh, yes, Wanda drowned her sorrows; everybody knew that, and like Valérie Seymour, Stephen hated drink like the plague—but all the same she invited Wanda.

and something in this placid, self-assured indifference went so ill with her youth that it startled Stephen. She in her turn must quickly light a cigarette, while Pat still endeavoured to silence Wanda.

Valérie said with her enigmatic smile: “Shall we now go on to our next entertainment?”

They paid the bill and persuaded Wanda to postpone her abuse of the ingratiating Pujol. Stephen took one arm, Dickie West the other, and between them they coaxed her into the motor;

Said Valérie with her calm little smile: “

I think I preferred it when we were all martyrs!

”

so far it had only aroused her anger. She yawned. “Well, at least we could dance together without being thought freaks; there was something in that.

Beggars can’t be choosers in this world, Stephen!

”

and their blood was her blood—what they had found good in their day, seemed equally good to their descendant.

Surely never was outlaw more law-abiding at heart, than this, the last of the Gordons.

So now a great sadness took hold upon her, because she perceived both dignity and beauty in the coming together of Adèle and Jean, very simply and in accordance with custom.

And so Jamie who dared not go home to Beedles for fear of shaming the woman she loved, Jamie who dared not openly mourn lest Barbara’s name be defiled through her mourning,

Jamie had dared to go home to God⁠—to trust herself to His more perfect mercy, even as Barbara had gone home before her.

She had heard that in England many such women had taken to breeding dogs in the country. Well, why not? Dogs were very nice people to breed.

“Plus je connais les hommes, plus j’aime les chiens.”

There were worse things than breeding dogs in the country.