I see that now. It's one of the things this last
year or so of loneliness has made me realize; that in so far as I
have set out to live the aristocratic life I have failed. Instead
I've discovered it--and found myself out. I'm an overstrung man. I
go harshly and continuously for one idea. I live as I ride. I
blunder through my fences, I take off too soon. I've no natural
ease of mind or conduct or body. I am straining to keep hold of a
thing too big for me and do a thing beyond my ability. Only after
Prothero's death was it possible for me to realize the prig I have
always been, first as regards him and then as regards Amanda and my
mother and every one. A necessary unavoidable priggishness. . . ."
I do not see how certain things can be done without prigs, people,
that is to say, so concentrated and specialized in interest as to be
a trifle inhuman, so resolved as to be rather rhetorical and
forced. . . . All things must begin with clumsiness, there is
no assurance about pioneers. . . .
"Some one has to talk about aristocracy, some one has to explain
aristocracy.
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