I once met an Englishman in the forest that starts outside Brussels
and stretches for a long day's journey across the hills. We found a
little cafe under the trees, and sat in the sun talking about modern
English literature all the afternoon. In this way we discovered that
we had a common standpoint from which we judged works of art, though
our judgments differed pleasantly and provided us with materials
for agreeable discussion. By the time we had divided three bottles of
Gueze Lambic, the noble beer of Belgium, we had already sketched out a
scheme for the ideal literary newspaper. In other words, we had
achieved friendship.
When the afternoon grew suddenly cold, the Englishman led me off to
tea at his house, which was half-way up the hill out of Woluwe. It
was one of those modern country cottages that Belgian architects
steal openly and without shame from their English confreres. We were
met at the garden gate by his daughter, a dark-haired girl of
fifteen or sixteen, so unreasonably beautiful that she made a
disillusioned scribbler feel like a sad line out of one of the
saddest poems of Francis Thompson. In my mind I christened her
Monica, because I did not like her real name. The house, with its
old furniture, its library, where the choice of books was clearly
dictated by individual prejudices and affections, and its
unambitious parade of domestic happiness, heightened my melancholy.
While tea was being prepared Monica showed me the garden.
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