Seeing crudely

Monday, January 11th., Victoria Grove, London.

Corner of King's Road and Edith Grove

The novelist of contemporary manners needs to be saturated with a sense of the picturesque in modern things. Walking down Edith Grove this afternoon, I observed the vague mysterious beauty of the vista of houses and bare trees melting imperceptibly into a distance of grey fog. And then, in King's Road, the figures of tradesmen at shop doors, of children romping or stealing along mournfully, of men and women each totally different from every other, and all serious, wrapt up in their own thoughts and ends - these seemed curiously strange and novel and wonderful. Every scene, even the commonest, is wonderful if only one can detach oneself, casting off all memory of use and custom, and behold it (as it were) for the first time; in its right authentic colours; without making comparisons. The novelist should cherish and burnish this faculty of seeing crudely, simply, artlessly, ignorantly; of seeing like a baby or a lunatic, who lives each moment by itself and tarnishes the present by no remembrance of the past.

Regrettably it seems to me that it is impossible to achieve this state of 'innocence', though I have read that some Eastern mystics are able to focus on the moment to the exclusion of all else. But that is of course an internal focus, and not much use to the novelist. Every waking moment (and no doubt our dreams as well) is filtered through the screen of our memory and experience. I am nearly thirty now and realise that as I age so will my ability to 'see crudely' diminish. Only imagination remains as a resource and the novelist must seek to inhabit the mind of his characters, seeing the world through their eyes rather than his own. Is this possible? I am in doubt.