Watercolor Day in a Hole
You have seen watercolor paintings. This day is one of them, all blended gray, white, and black. It is smudgy at the corners, but some details stand out in sharp, startling definition: for example the pinprick holes left in the snow by ice or rain (which one, no one knows, save God).
I was to teach this morning. I was to lift my voice in the musical cadences of seventeenth-century poetry, and try to reveal its beauties to a group of students, and talk with them about it, and laugh, and revel in artistry. But the ice (or rain) pricked my snowy plan, and the colors smudged, and the class was cancelled. I am sorry, yet not sorry, for who that loves God can think it right to be vexed by His sovereignty?
Therefore I shall spend my day at home, at quiet work. I shall be lost in the world of the imagination, where I enter each morning by a magic hole on an obscure hill that I know. The hole is black print and the hill is paper. The wood between the worlds is my library, and today's pool is Pride and Prejudice.
They are all waiting for me there. Lizzy is ready with a sparkling remark, Darcy will shake hands gravely, Bingley is all cheerfulness, and Jane will look more sweetly lovely than ever, for she told me yesterday that she means to wear her blue muslin gown.
Lydia is gone into the north, of course. I hope I shall have a half-hour before tea to see Mr. Bennet's new folio (I understand from Mary that it has arrived), but I'll take care that we go to the book-room to see it, while Mary is not present to pronounce her opinion and Kitty---poor girl!---need not make an effort to look interested.
Mrs. Bennet, I dare say, will want me to stay to tea, and I have no objection. Whatever her other faults may be, she keeps a good table and her hospitality is delightful. After tea there will be cards, but as I do not prefer cards, I shall stand by and watch instead. How bright their faces will be in firelight! How they will laugh and tease and exclaim over their winnings!
I love especially to watch the four lovers; between them there is not only wit but tempered wit, softened by affection, experience, and wisdom. Their eyes are brim-full of joy. Jane's white hand rests momentarily on Bingley's sleeve, and Darcy is smiling down at Lizzy (he is a great tall fellow).
It will be hard to leave them, but at last I shall rise from the corner of the sopha [sic] and make my adieux. The comfortable old brick facade of the house will bid me a warm, but moon-and-ice-silvered farewell as I drive away. Lulled by the clatter-roll-dip-clatter-clop-clop-clop-snap!-creak-jingle-clatter of the carriage and the horses hooves, I will not know whether I am falling asleep or simply falling, falling up out of the hole and the pool, up into the wood between the worlds, my library.
I was to teach this morning. I was to lift my voice in the musical cadences of seventeenth-century poetry, and try to reveal its beauties to a group of students, and talk with them about it, and laugh, and revel in artistry. But the ice (or rain) pricked my snowy plan, and the colors smudged, and the class was cancelled. I am sorry, yet not sorry, for who that loves God can think it right to be vexed by His sovereignty?
Therefore I shall spend my day at home, at quiet work. I shall be lost in the world of the imagination, where I enter each morning by a magic hole on an obscure hill that I know. The hole is black print and the hill is paper. The wood between the worlds is my library, and today's pool is Pride and Prejudice.
They are all waiting for me there. Lizzy is ready with a sparkling remark, Darcy will shake hands gravely, Bingley is all cheerfulness, and Jane will look more sweetly lovely than ever, for she told me yesterday that she means to wear her blue muslin gown.
Lydia is gone into the north, of course. I hope I shall have a half-hour before tea to see Mr. Bennet's new folio (I understand from Mary that it has arrived), but I'll take care that we go to the book-room to see it, while Mary is not present to pronounce her opinion and Kitty---poor girl!---need not make an effort to look interested.
Mrs. Bennet, I dare say, will want me to stay to tea, and I have no objection. Whatever her other faults may be, she keeps a good table and her hospitality is delightful. After tea there will be cards, but as I do not prefer cards, I shall stand by and watch instead. How bright their faces will be in firelight! How they will laugh and tease and exclaim over their winnings!
I love especially to watch the four lovers; between them there is not only wit but tempered wit, softened by affection, experience, and wisdom. Their eyes are brim-full of joy. Jane's white hand rests momentarily on Bingley's sleeve, and Darcy is smiling down at Lizzy (he is a great tall fellow).
It will be hard to leave them, but at last I shall rise from the corner of the sopha [sic] and make my adieux. The comfortable old brick facade of the house will bid me a warm, but moon-and-ice-silvered farewell as I drive away. Lulled by the clatter-roll-dip-clatter-clop-clop-clop-snap!-creak-jingle-clatter of the carriage and the horses hooves, I will not know whether I am falling asleep or simply falling, falling up out of the hole and the pool, up into the wood between the worlds, my library.
posted by Praelucor at 8:14 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home