king part in them.

By the time that a spell of the set smile and the barren labours had
brought me near to breaking point, Fanny would be frequently tearful
and desperately peevish from her boredom, and from poor health; for I
fancy she was in little better case than I as regards the penalties of
a faulty and inadequate dietary, combined with long confinement within
doors. These conditions would produce in me a day or two (and a
sleepless night or two) of black, dyspeptic melancholy, and quite
hopeless depression. Then, as like as not, I would try a long tramp,
probably in Epping Forest, and after that--another abortive honeymoon.
In other words, full of wise resolutions and determined hopefulness, I
would apply the fixative to my domestic circle smile and amiability,
and make an entirely fresh start, with a little jaunt of some kind as
a send off.

I fancy Fanny's faith in these foredoomed attempts remained
permanently unsullied. I know she used to resolve to discontinue the
long gossipy afternoons with her mother in Howard Street--in some
mysterious way the mother had lain aside all her old pretensions as a
tyrannical autocrat, and they met now, I gathered, as friendly
gossips--and to become an ideal wife for a literary man. She would
even tell our landlady not to clean or tidy our rooms any more, since
she, Fanny, intended to do this in future. And she would do it--for a
week or so; just as I would keep up my sickening grin, and the attempt
to make myself believe that I really liked doing my work in public
libraries, reading-rooms, waiting-rooms, and other such inspiring
places. Not even on the first day of a new honeymoon could I force
myself to fancy I liked the attempt to work in our joint sitting-room.
That affected me like a neuralgia.

The point, and perhaps the only point I can make in extenuation of my
admitted failure to conduct my married life to a successful issue, I
have made already; for one year I did, according to my poor lights,
strive consistently and hard for success. Throughout another year I
did strive as hardly, and almost equally consistently to make our
joint life tolerable for us both. More than that I cannot claim, and,
in the light of all that happened, I feel that this much is rather
pitifully little.

X

It may very well be that during the first years after my marriage some
of the chickens I had hatched out in the preceding years of slum life
and incessant scribbling came home