tial force in their
lives. For some it seems an audience is a vital necessity, they seek
audiences as creatures seek food; others again, my uncle among them,
can play to an imaginary audience. I, I think, have lived and can live
without one. In my adolescence I was my own audience and my own court
of honour. And to have an audience in one's mind is to play a part,
to become self-conscious and dramatic. For many years I had been
self-forgetful and scientific. I had lived for work and impersonal
interests until I found scrutiny, applause and expectation in Beatrice's
eyes. Then I began to live for the effect I imagined I made upon her, to
make that very soon the principal value in my life. I played to her.
I did things for the look of them. I began to dream more and more of
beautiful situations and fine poses and groupings with her and for her.

I put these things down because they puzzle me. I think I was in love
with Beatrice, as being in love is usually understood; but it was quite
a different state altogether from my passionate hunger for Marion, or
my keen, sensuous desire for and pleasure in Effie. These were selfish,
sincere things, fundamental and instinctive, as sincere as the leap of
a tiger. But until matters drew to a crisis with Beatrice, there was
an immense imaginative insurgence of a quite different quality. I am
setting down here very gravely, and perhaps absurdly, what are no doubt
elementary commonplaces for innumerable people. This love that grew up
between Beatrice and myself was, I think--I put it quite tentatively and
rather curiously--romantic love. That unfortunate and truncated affair
of my uncle and the Scrymgeour lady was really of the same stuff, if
a little different in quality. I have to admit that. The factor of
audience was of primary importance in either else.

Its effect upon me was to make me in many respects adolescent again.
It made me keener upon the point of honour, and anxious and eager to
do high and splendid things, and in particular, brave things. So far it
ennobled and upheld me. But it did also push me towards vulgar and showy
things. At bottom it was disingenuous; it gave my life the quality of
stage scenery, with one side to the audience, another side that wasn't
meant to show, and an economy of substance. It certainly robbed my work
of high patience and quality. I cut down the toil of research in my
eagerness and her eagerness for fine flourishes in the air, flights that
w