Nelka | Page 4

for beauty. I have nothing that satisfies me yet. Art and beauty: I do not connect them at all in my mind. Art is based on significance first and this does not depend on beauty. Beauty is much more difficult to define than art. We have somehow got the idea that only the beautiful pleases. Can beautiful be applied to whatever pleases? I don't think so. Beauty is truthfulness of what? Of the original intention I suppose. Is beautiful something or is it not? Anyway I detach it from that which pleases. If beauty is something distinct that which pleases is not always beautiful. Is beauty independent of taste? It is so hard to think out. However, I never think anything without knowing it, and I know very few things, needless to say."
Washington 1898.
"It is terrible to be twenty! But I proved myself still young in being able to shed a tear over my departed teens. Mama and all of our little Russian colony drank my health wishing me each in turn to find myself each year one year younger, till I had to stop them less they eclipse me altogether. I think my nineteenth was the fullest year I have ever had--crammed."
When she was twenty, Nelka went with her mother to Narragansett Bay for the summer. Here a very tragic event took place which left an imprint on Nelka, if not for life, then certainly for many years. One afternoon, while sitting and talking with her mother, the latter suddenly collapsed and died instantly. Nelka was there all alone with her. The blow was terrible. For a very long time, being highly emotional, she could not get over this tragic end of a person with whom she had always been so close and so intimate. She went into deep mourning and remained in a state of frozen sorrow. Writing to her aunt Susie she expressed so vividly the tragic feeling of complete sorrow which gripped her:
St. Louis 1898.
"No one could offer more generously what unfortunately I feel that I may never have. Don't misunderstand me, dear Poodie, but my 'home' was forever lost when Mama left me and I can never find it except with her. I am Mama's own and my 'home' such as you mean it can only exist in memory and anticipation."
"I am thankful to God that I am left on earth with such aunts as you and Pats. Not many in my situation are so blessed. I shall always feel alone. But perhaps I have had more of Mama than many have in twice the time."
It is true that by circumstances she had always lived very much together with her mother, who as a widow had nothing but her. Even when Nelka was in school, her mother lived in the same city and saw her constantly, and their closeness was very complete.
Again she writes:
"In all events I have had more in life than I deserve, more than one should dare hope for."
"I was sorry to disappoint you yesterday, but I cried all the afternoon."
A year later--Washington 1899.
"Try as I will I do not see how I can ever take up any interest again. I have so little desire to go on with anything and I am so satisfied with what I have had."
Washington 1899.
"I went to church this morning and I was surprised to realize how heathenish and unchristian the sermon sounded to me. It was painful to feel that I did not believe one word of what a Christian minister said. What a network man seems to have made of the simplest things, wherein to be everlastingly confounded. Might one just look up and reach out overhead, instead of looking around one and trying to grope at one's level. Truths made intangible by the impenetrable meshes of faulty creeds and imperfect reasoning."
Ashantee 1899.
"Please do not worry about me. I told you that I was peaceful and content, which I am. I want nothing which I cannot get and my mind is reposeful. I do not care to understand anything. That I have got to accept whatever may come is manifest and the wherefore has ceased to trouble me, if it ever did. In the instances that have thus far come up in my life, what I should do has always been palpable enough and has required more determination or will. My inclination is to do as little as I can to maintain my peace of conscience. While I have no feeling of lassitude, I also feel no incentive, and while without this one need not fail utterly, one will not probably accomplish much."
"I don't believe there are many happy lives. Mama gave me more happiness in the given number of years than I shall ever have again, though doubtless, if I live long enough,