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Show My Thoughts Are Not Still 277 Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a con ventuallife, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in doing all for the sake of brother's burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is for ever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know. Her finely-touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faith fully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." Having re-read two novels by nineteenth century British "greats," Madelyn chose to read during the winter of 1959-60 a polemical work by Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own. Madelyn had read Woolf's To The Lighthouse (1927) in 1952 and was astonished to find herself in it. "She was describing feelings that I had felt belonged only to me," Madelyn wrote. She then quoted a passage from the book that particularly sat isfied her: She [Lily Briscoe, the painter and Woolf's surrogate] could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of-to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, When life sank down for a moment, the being oneself of seemed limitless." range experience to .... "I'm grateful," Madelyn wrote, "for the words to an experi ence I have had so often."l1 Described as "one of the most complete person-of-letters in |
