The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

by George Gissing
PREFACE

The name of Henry Ryecroft never became familiar to what is called
the reading public. A year ago obituary paragraphs in the literary

papers gave such account of him as was thought needful: the date
and place of his birth, the names of certain books he had written,

an allusion to his work in the periodicals, the manner of his death.
At the time it sufficed. Even those few who knew the man, and in a

measure understood him, must have felt that his name called for no
further celebration; like other mortals, he had lived and laboured;

like other mortals, he had entered into his rest. To me, however,
fell the duty of examining Ryecroft's papers; and having, in the

exercise of my discretion, decided to print this little volume, I
feel that it requires a word or two of biographical complement, just

so much personal detail as may point the significance of the self-
revelation here made.

When first I knew him, Ryecroft had reached his fortieth year; for
twenty years he had lived by the pen. He was a struggling man,

beset by poverty and other circumstances very unpropitious to mental
work. Many forms of literature had he tried; in none had he been

conspicuously successful; yet now and then he had managed to earn a
little more money than his actual needs demanded, and thus was

enabled to see something of foreign countries. Naturally a man of
independent and rather scornfuloutlook, he had suffered much from

defeated ambition, from disillusions of many kinds, from subjection
to grim necessity; the result of it, at the time of which I am

speaking, was, certainly not a broken spirit, but a mind and temper
so sternly disciplined, that, in ordinary intercourse with him, one

did not know but that he led a calm, contented life. Only after
several years of friendship was I able to form a just idea of what

the man had gone through, or of his actualexistence. Little by
little Ryecroft had subdued himself to a modestly" target="_blank" title="ad.谦虚地；有节制地">modestly industrious

routine. He did a great deal of mere hack-work; he reviewed, he
translated, he wrote articles; at long intervals a volume appeared

under his name. There were times, I have no doubt, when bitterness
took hold upon him; not seldom he suffered in health, and probably

as much from moral as from physical over-strain; but, on the whole,
he earned his living very much as other men do, taking the day's

toil as a matter of course, and rarely grumbling over it.
Time went on; things happened; but Ryecroft was still laborious and

poor. In moments of depression he spoke of his declining energies,
and evidently suffered under a haunting fear of the future. The

thought of dependence had always been intolerable to him; perhaps
the only boast I at any time heard from his lips was that he had

never incurred debt. It was a bitter thought that, after so long
and hard a struggle with unkindly circumstance, he might end his

life as one of the defeated.
A happier lot was in store for him. At the age of fifty, just when

his health had begun to fail and his energies to show abatement,
Ryecroft had the rare good fortune to find himself suddenly released

from toil, and to enter upon a period of such tranquillity of mind
and condition as he had never dared to hope. On the death of an

acquaintance, more his friend than he imagined, the wayworn man of
letters learnt with astonishment that there was bequeathed to him a

life annuity of three hundred pounds. Having only himself to
support (he had been a widower for several years, and his daughter,

an only child, was married), Ryecroft saw in this income something
more than a competency. In a few weeks he quitted the London suburb

where of late he had been living, and, turning to the part of
England which he loved best, he presently established himself in a

cottage near Exeter, where, with a rustichousekeeper to look after
him, he was soon thoroughly at home. Now and then some friend went

down into Devon to see him; those who had that pleasure will not
forget the plain little house amid its half-wild garden, the cosy

book-room with its fine view across the valley of the Exe to Haldon,
the host's cordial, gleeful hospitality, rambles with him in lanes

and meadows, long talks amid the illness" target="_blank" title="n.不动；无声，寂静">stillness of the rural night. We
hoped it would all last for many a year; it seemed, indeed, as

though Ryecroft had only need of rest and calm to become a hale man.
But already, though he did not know it, he was suffering from a

disease of the heart, which cut short his life after little more
than a lustrum of quiet contentment. It had always been his wish to

die suddenly; he dreaded the thought of illness, chiefly because of
the trouble it gave to others. On a summer evening, after a long

walk in very hot weather, he lay down upon the sofa in his study,
and there--as his calm face declared--passed from slumber into the

great silence.
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; evidentlyfinding 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.
Assuredly, this writing was not intended for the public, and yet, in

many a passage, I seemed to perceive the literary purpose--something
more than the turn of phrase, and so on, which results from long

habit of composition. Certain of his reminiscences, in particular,
Ryecroft could hardly have troubled to write down had he not,

however vaguely, entertained the thought of putting them to some
use. I suspect that, in his happy leisure, there grew upon him a

desire to write one more book, a book which should be written merely
for his own satisfaction. Plainly, it would have been the best he

had it in him to do. But he seems never to have attempted the
arrangement of these fragmentary pieces, and probably because he

could not decide upon the form they should take. I imagine him
shrinking from the thought of a first-person volume; he would feel

it too pretentious; he would bid himself wait for the day of riper
wisdom. And so the pen fell from his hand.

Conjecturing thus, I wondered whether the irregular diary might not
have wider interest than at first appeared. To me, its personal

appeal was very strong; might it not be possible to cull from it the
substance of a small volume which, at least for its sincerity's

sake, would not be without value for those who read, not with the
eye alone, but with the mind? I turned the pages again. Here was a

man who, having his desire, and that a very modest one, not only
felt satisfied, but enjoyed great happiness. He talked of many

different things, saying exactly what he thought; he spoke of
himself, and told the truth as far as mortal can tell it. It seemed

to me that the thing had human interest. I decided to print.
The question of arrangement had to be considered; I did not like to

offer a mere incondite miscellany. To supply each of the
disconnected passages with a title, or even to group them under

subject headings, would have interfered with the spontaneity which,
above all, I wished to preserve. In reading through the matter I

had selected, it struck me how often the aspects of nature were
referred to, and how suitable many of the reflections were to the

month with which they were dated. Ryecroft, I knew, had ever been
much influenced by the mood of the sky, and by the procession of the