50. Joyce Cary - Trudy's Dying

From: Joyce Cary, A Biography by Malcolm Foster

In one of the vest-pocket notebooks Joyce always carried with him, usually reserved for entries about his novels and short stories and in which the germs for many of them had first been jotted down, Joyce had written that spring before Trudy’s death,

What is strange is that I got no pleasure in walking through the parks and looking at the new leaves on the trees, at the buttercups which are just opening in crowds among the brick green grass. I used to think that looking at nature would always give me consolation in misery, but it did not do so today. The only thing that gave me comfort was simply a feeling for other people in misfortune and their need of love. I was made to feel, I suppose, for the first time, the absolute need of love to make life possible, and the continuous everlasting presence of love in the world. And so the fearful bitterness of this danger to T. and all our memories together, was mixed with the sense of something that can survive any loss, the power of love.