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The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
·
George Gissing
5
When
he
left
London,
Ryecroft
bade
farewell
to
authorship.
He
told
me
that
he
hoped
never
to
write
another
line
for
publication.
But,
among
the
papers
which
I
looked
through
after
his
death,
I
came
upon
three
manuscript
books
which
at
first
glance
seemed
to
be
a
diary;
a
date
on
the
opening
page
of
one
of
them
showed
that
it
had
been
begun
not
very
long
after
the
writer's
settling
in
Devon.
When
I
had
read
a
little
in
these
pages,
I
saw
that
they
were
no
mere
record
of
day-to-day
life;
evidently
finding
himself
unable
to
forego
altogether
the
use
of
the
pen,
the
veteran
had
set
down,
as
humour
bade
him,
a
thought,
a
reminiscence,
a
bit
of
reverie,
a
description
of
his
state
of
mind,
and
so
on,
dating
such
passage
merely
with
the
month
in
which
it
was
written.
Sitting
in
the
room
where
I
had
often
been
his
companion,
I
turned
page
after
page,
and
at
moments
it
was
as
though
my
friend's
voice
sounded
to
me
once
more.
I
saw
his
worn
visage,
grave
or
smiling;
recalled
his
familiar
pose
or
gesture.
But
in
this
written
gossip
he
revealed
himself
more
intimately
than
in
our
conversation
of
the
days
gone
by.
Ryecroft
had
never
erred
by
lack
of
reticence;
as
was
natural
in
a
sensitive
man
who
had
suffered
much,
he
inclined
to
gentle
acquiescence,
shrank
from
argument,
from
self-assertion.
Here
he
spoke
to
me
without
restraint,
and,
when
I
had
read
it
all
through,
I
knew
the
man
better
than
before.
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