The Journal of a Disappointed Man

November 20. Still at home ill. If anything, R---- is more of a précieux than I am myself. At the present moment he is tickling himself with the idea that he's in love with a certain golden-haired damsel from the States. He reports to me fragments of his conversations with her, how he snatches a fearful joy by skirting dangerous conversational territory, or he takes a pencil and deftly outlines her profile or the rondeur of her bosom. Or he discourses at length on her nose or eye. I can well imagine him driving a woman crazy and then collecting her tears in a bottle as mementoes. Then whenever he requires a little heart stimulus he could take the phial from his waistcoat pocket and watch the tears condensing. "Why don't you marry her out of hand and be done with all this dalliance? I can tell you what's the matter with you," I growled, "you're a landscape artist.... You'll grow to resemble, that mean, Jewy, secretive, petty creature, J.W.M. Turner, and allow no human being to interfere with your art. A fine artist perhaps--but what a man! You'll finish up with a Mrs. Danby." "Yes," he answered, quoting Tennyson with great aptness, "and 'lose my salvation for a sketch,' like Romney deserting his wife. If I were not married I should have no wife to desert." It is useless to argue with him. His cosmogony is wrongly centred in Art not life. Life interests him--he can't altogether resign himself to the cowl and the tonsured head, but he will not plunge. He insists on being a spectator, watching the maelstrom from the bank and remarking exquisitely, "Ah! there is a very fine sorrow," or, "What an exquisite sensation." The other day after one of our furious conversational bouts around this subject, I drew an insect, cut it out, and pinned the slip in a collecting box. Then suddenly producing the box, and opening it with a facetious grin, I said,--