Morris set out to make a
revolution that the persons of his 'Well at the World's End' or his
'Waters of the Wondrous Isles,' always, to my mind, in the likeness
of Artemisia and her man, might walk his native scenery; and I, that
my native scenery might find imaginary inhabitants, half planned a
new method and a new culture. My mind began drifting vaguely towards
that doctrine of 'the mask' which has convinced me that every
passionate man (I have nothing to do with mechanist, or
philanthropist, or man whose eyes have no preference) is, as it
were, linked with another age, historical or imaginary, where alone
he finds images that rouse his energy. Napoleon was never of his own
time, as the naturalistic writers and painters bid all men be, but
had some Roman Emperor's image in his head and some condottiere's
blood in his heart; and when he crowned that head at Rome with his
own hands, he had covered, as may be seen from David's painting, his
hesitation with that Emperor's old suit.
XII
I had various women friends on whom I would call towards five
o'clock, mainly to discuss my thoughts that I could not bring to a
man without meeting some competing thought, but partly because their
tea & toast saved my pennies for the 'bus ride home; but with women,
apart from their intimate exchanges of thought, I was timid and
abashed.
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