The idea of writing such a book as this came to me first as I sat by the dead body of your grandfather—my father. It was because I wanted so greatly such a book from him that I am now writing this. He died, you must know, only a few months ago, and I went to his house to bury him and settle all his affairs.
At one time he had been my greatest friend. He had never indeed talked to me about himself or his youth, but he had always showed an extraordinary sympathy and helpfulness for me in all the confusion and perplexities into which I fell. This did not last to the end of his life. I was the child of his middle years, and suddenly, in a year or less, the curtains of age and infirmity fell between us. There came an illness, an operation, and he rose from it ailing6, suffering, dwarfed7 and altogether changed. Of all the dark shadows upon life I think that change through illness and organic decay in the thoughts and spirits of those who are dear and close to us is the most evil and distressing8 and inexplicable9. Suddenly he was a changeling, a being querulous and pitiful, needing indulgence and sacrifices.
In a little while a new state of affairs was established. I ceased to consider him as a man to whom one told things, of whom one could expect help or advice. We all ceased to consider him at all in that way. We humored him, put pleasant things before him, concealed10 whatever was disagreeable. A poor old man he was indeed in those concluding years, weakly rebellious11 against the firm kindliness12 of my cousin, his housekeeper13 and nurse. He who had once been so alert was now at times astonishingly apathetic14. At times an impish malice15 I had never known in him before gleamed in little acts and speeches. His talk rambled16, and for the most part was concerned with small, long-forgotten contentions17. It was indistinct and difficult to follow because of a recent loss of teeth, and he craved18 for brandy, to restore even for a moment the sense of strength and well-being19 that ebbed20 and ebbed away from him. So that when I came to look at his dead face at last, it was with something like amazement21 I perceived him grave and beautiful—more grave and beautiful than he had been even in the fullness of life.
All the estrangement22 of the final years was wiped in an instant from my mind as I looked upon his face. There came back a rush of memories, of kind, strong, patient, human aspects of his fatherhood. And I remembered as every son must remember—even you, my dear, will some day remember because it is in the very nature of sonship—insubordinations, struggles, ingratitudes, great benefits taken unthankfully, slights and disregards. It was not remorse23 I felt, nor repentance24, but a tremendous regret that so things had happened and that life should be so. Why is it, I thought, that when a son has come to manhood he cannot take his father for a friend? I had a curious sense of unprecedented25 communion as I stood beside him now. I felt that he understood my thoughts; his face seemed to answer with an expression of still and sympathetic patience.
I was sensible of amazing gaps. We had never talked together of love, never of religion.
All sorts of things that a man of twenty-eight would not dream of hiding from a coeval26 he had hidden from me. For some days I had to remain in his house, I had to go through his papers, handle all those intimate personal things that accumulate around a human being year by year—letters, yellowing scraps27 of newspaper, tokens, relics28 kept, accidental vestiges29, significant litter. I learnt many things I had never dreamt of. At times I doubted whether I was not prying30, whether I ought not to risk the loss of those necessary legal facts I sought, and burn these papers unread. There were love letters, and many such touching31 things.
My memories of him did not change because of these new lights, but they became wonderfully illuminated32. I realized him as a young man, I began to see him as a boy. I found a little half-bound botanical book with stencil-tinted illustrations, a good-conduct prize my father had won at his preparatory school; a rolled-up sheet of paper, carbonized and dry and brittle33, revealed itself as a piece of specimen34 writing, stiff with boyish effort, decorated in ambitious and faltering35 flourishes and still betraying the pencil rulings his rubber should have erased36. Already your writing is better than that. And I found a daguerreotype37 portrait of him in knickerbockers against a photographer's stile. His face then was not unlike yours. I stood with that in my hand at the little bureau in his bedroom, and looked at his dead face.
The flatly painted portrait of his father, my grandfather, hanging there in the stillness above the coffin38, looking out on the world he had left with steady, humorous blue eyes that followed one about the room,—that, too, was revivified, touched into reality and participation39 by this and that, became a living presence at a conference of lives. Things of his were there also in that life's accumulation....
There we were, three Strattons together, and down in the dining-room were steel engravings to take us back two generations further, and we had all lived full lives, suffered, attempted, signified. I had a glimpse of the long successions of mankind. What a huge inaccessible lumber-room of thought and experience we amounted to, I thought; how much we are, how little we transmit. Each one of us was but a variation, an experiment upon the Stratton theme. All that I had now under my hands was but the merest hints and vestiges, moving and surprising indeed, but casual and fragmentary, of those obliterated40 repetitions. Man is a creature becoming articulate, and why should those men have left so much of the tale untold—to be lost and forgotten? Why must we all repeat things done, and come again very bitterly to wisdom our fathers have achieved before us? My grandfather there should have left me something better than the still enigma41 of his watching face. All my life so far has gone in learning very painfully what many men have learnt before me; I have spent the greater part of forty years in finding a sort of purpose for the uncertain and declining decades that remain. Is it not time the generations drew together and helped one another? Cannot we begin now to make a better use of the experiences of life so that our sons may not waste themselves so much, cannot we gather into books that men may read in an hour or so the gist42 of these confused and multitudinous realities of the individual career? Surely the time is coming for that, when a new private literature will exist, and fathers and mothers behind their rôles of rulers, protectors, and supporters, will prepare frank and intimate records of their thought and their feeling, told as one tells things to equals, without authority or reserves or discretions, so that, they being dead, their children may rediscover them as contemporaries and friends.
That desire for self-expression is indeed already almost an instinct with many of us. Man is disposed to create a traditional wisdom. For me this book I contemplate43 is a need. I am just a year and a half from a bitter tragedy and the loss of a friend as dear as life to me. It is very constantly in my mind. She opened her mind to me as few people open their minds to anyone. In a way, little Stephen, she died for you. And I am so placed that I have no one to talk to quite freely about her. The one other person to whom I talk, I cannot talk to about her; it is strange, seeing how we love and trust one another, but so it is; you will understand that the better as this story unfolds. For eight long years before the crisis that culminated44 in her tragic45 death I never saw her; yet, quite apart from the shock and distresses46 of that time, it has left me extraordinarily47 lonely and desolate48.
And there was a kind of dreadful splendor49 in that last act of hers, which has taken a great hold upon my imagination; it has interwoven with everything else in my mind, it bears now upon every question. I cannot get away from it, while it is thus pent from utterance50.... Perhaps having written this to you I may never show it you or leave it for you to see. But yet I must write it. Of all conceivable persons you, when you have grown to manhood, are the most likely to understand.
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1
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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4
blurred
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| v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离 | |
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inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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ailing
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| v.生病 | |
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dwarfed
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| vt.（使）显得矮小（dwarf的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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8
distressing
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| a.使人痛苦的 | |
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inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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rebellious
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| adj.造反的，反抗的，难控制的 | |
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kindliness
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| n.厚道，亲切，友好的行为 | |
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housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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apathetic
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| adj.冷漠的，无动于衷的 | |
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malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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16
rambled
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| （无目的地）漫游( ramble的过去式和过去分词 )； （喻）漫谈； 扯淡； 长篇大论 | |
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contentions
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| n.竞争( contention的名词复数 )；争夺；争论；论点 | |
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craved
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| 渴望，热望( crave的过去式 )； 恳求，请求 | |
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well-being
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| n.安康，安乐，幸福 | |
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ebbed
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| （指潮水）退( ebb的过去式和过去分词 )； 落； 减少； 衰落 | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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estrangement
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| n.疏远，失和，不和 | |
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remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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repentance
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| n.懊悔 | |
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unprecedented
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| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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coeval
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| adj.同时代的；n.同时代的人或事物 | |
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scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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vestiges
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| 残余部分( vestige的名词复数 )； 遗迹； 痕迹； 毫不 | |
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30
prying
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| adj.爱打听的v.打听，刺探（他人的私事）( pry的现在分词 )；撬开 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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32
illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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33
brittle
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| adj.易碎的；脆弱的；冷淡的；(声音)尖利的 | |
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specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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faltering
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| 犹豫的，支吾的，蹒跚的 | |
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36
erased
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| v.擦掉( erase的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；清除 | |
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daguerreotype
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| n.银板照相 | |
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coffin
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| n.棺材，灵柩 | |
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39
participation
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| n.参与，参加，分享 | |
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40
obliterated
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| v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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41
enigma
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| n.谜，谜一样的人或事 | |
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42
gist
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| n.要旨；梗概 | |
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43
contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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44
culminated
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| v.达到极点( culminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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45
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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46
distresses
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| n.悲痛( distress的名词复数 )；痛苦；贫困；危险 | |
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47
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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48
desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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49
splendor
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| n.光彩；壮丽，华丽；显赫，辉煌 | |
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50
utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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