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Simone
de Beauvoir
Diary of a Philosophy Student
volume 3, 1926–30

E D I T E D B Y B A R B A R A K L A W,
S Y LV I E L E B O N D E B E A U V O I R ,
AND MARGARET A. SIMONS
with Marybeth Timmermann

Foreword by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir


DIARY OF A
PHILOSOPHY STUDENT
THE BEAUVOIR SERIES
Coedited by Margaret A. Simons and
Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir

Editorial Board
Kristana Arp
Debra Bergoffen
Anne Deing Cordero
Elizabeth Fallaize
Eleanore Holveck

A list of books in
the series appears at
the end of this book.
Simone de Beauvoir
DIARY OF A PHILOSOPHY STUDENT

VOLUME 3, 1926–30

Edited by Barbara Klaw,


Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir,
Margaret A. Simons,
and Marybeth Timmermann
Foreword by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir
Translations, Notes, and Annotations by Barbara Klaw
Transcription by Barbara Klaw and Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir
English language translation of Notebooks Three, Five, and Seven
in Cahiers de jeunesse, 1926–1930 by Simone de Beauvoir,
edited by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir

This edition © 2024 by the Board of Trustees


of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


Beauvoir, Simone de, 1908–1986.
[Carnets de jeunesse. English]
Diary of a philosophy student / Simone de Beauvoir ; edited by Barbara Klaw, Sylvie Le
Bon de Beauvoir, and Margaret A. Simons, with Marybeth Timmermann; foreword
by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir; translations, notes, and annotations by Barbara Klaw;
transcribed by Barbara Klaw and Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir.
p. cm. — (The Beauvoir series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-252-04564-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-252-05533-1 (ebook)
1. Beauvoir, Simone de, 1908–1986.
I. Klaw, Barbara.
II. Le Bon de Beauvoir, Sylvie.
III. Simons, Margaret A.
IV. Title.
b2430.b344a313 2006
194—dc22[b] 2006021222
IN MEMORY OF
YOL A NDA PAT T ER SON
Contents

Foreword to the Beauvoir Series  ix


Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir
Preface  xi
Margaret A. Simons
Acknowledgments  xxv

Reading Beauvoir’s 1926–30 Student Diary as Adventures


in Literary Creation  1
Barbara Klaw
Beauvoir and #MeToo  15
Margaret A. Simons
Third Notebook: December 7, 1926–April 15, 1927  37
Simone de Beauvoir
Fifth Notebook: October 31, 1927–August 30, 1928  117
Simone de Beauvoir
Seventh Notebook: September 15, 1929–October 31, 1930  159
Simone de Beauvoir
Bibliography  227

Index  233
Foreword to the Beauvoir Series
Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir
tr a nsl ated by m a r y be th timmer m a nn

It is my pleasure to take this opportunity to honor the monumental work


of research and publication that the Beauvoir Series represents, which was
undertaken and brought to fruition by Margaret A. Simons and the ensem-
ble of her team. These volumes of Simone de Beauvoir’s writings, concern-
ing literature as well as philosophy and feminism, stretch from 1926 to 1979,
that is to say throughout almost her entire life. Some of them have been
published before, and are known, but remain dispersed throughout time
and space, in diverse editions, diverse newspapers, or reviews. Others were
read during conferences or radio programs and then lost from view. Some
had been left completely unpublished. What gives them force and meaning
is precisely having them gathered together, closely, as a whole. Nothing of
the sort has yet been realized, except, on a much smaller scale, Les écrits
de Simone de Beauvoir (The writings of Simone de Beauvoir), published in
France in 1979. Here, the aim is an exhaustive corpus, as much as that is
possible.
Because they cover more than 50 years, these volumes faithfully reflect
the thoughts of their author, the early manifestation and permanence of
certain of her preoccupations as a writer and philosopher, as a woman and
foreword

feminist. What will be immediately striking, I think, is their extraordinary


coherence. Obviously, from this point of view, Les cahiers de jeunesse (Diaries
of a Philosophy Student), previously unpublished, constitute the star docu-
ment. The very young eighteen, nineteen, twenty-year-old Simone de Beau-
voir who writes them is clearly already the future great Simone de Beauvoir,
author of L’invitée (She Came to Stay), Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté (The
Ethics of Ambiguity), Le deuxième sexe (The Second Sex), Les Mandarins
(The Mandarins), and Mémoires (Memoirs). Not only is her vocation as a
writer energetically affirmed in these diaries, but one also discovers in them
the roots of her later reflections. It is particularly touching to see the birth,
often with hesitations, doubt, and anguish, of the fundamental choices of
thought and existence that would have such an impact on so many future
readers, women and men. Torments, doubt, and anguish are expressed, but
also exultation and confidence in her strength and in the future—the fore-
sight of certain passages is impressive. Take the one from June 25, 1929, for
example: “Strange certitude that these riches will be welcomed, that some
words will be said and heard, that this life will be a fountain-head from
which many others will draw. Certitude of a vocation.”
These precious Cahiers will cut short the unproductive and recurrent
debate about the “influence” that Sartre supposedly had on Simone de Beau-
voir, since they incontestably reveal to us Simone de Beauvoir before Sartre.
Thus, their relationship will take on its true sense, and one will understand
to what point Simone de Beauvoir was even more herself when she agreed
with some of Sartre’s themes, because all those lonely years of apprentice-
ship and training were leading her to a definite path and not just any path.
Therefore, it is not a matter of influence, but an encounter in the strong
sense of the term. They each recognized themselves in the other because each
one already existed independently and intensely. One can all the better dis-
cern the originality of Simone de Beauvoir in her ethical preoccupations,
her own conception of concrete freedom, and her dramatic consciousness
of the essential role of the Other, for example, because they are prefigured
in the feverish meditations, pen in hand, which occupied her youth. Les
cahiers constitute a priceless testimony.
I conclude by thanking Margaret A. Simons and her team again for their
magnificent series, which constitutes an irreplaceable contribution to the
study and the true understanding of the thoughts and works of Simone de
Beauvoir.

x
Preface

Simone de Beauvoir’s lifelong struggle for sexual freedom and equality has
left a complicated legacy for #MeToo, a legacy further complicated, as I dis-
cuss in my essay below, by the shocking evidence of sexual violation in this
third and final volume of her Diary. This single volume, comprising three
notebooks with entries spanning Beauvoir’s years as a philosophy student,
provides readers with a unique vantage point on the original philosophy
and hidden trauma at the heart of her life and work.
Notebooks in Diary of a Philosophy Student:

Notebook Dates Source Volume


First March 1926-? Lost
Second 6 Aug 1926–2 Dec 1926 Bibliothèque nationale 1
Third 7 Dec 1926–15 Apr 1927 Cahiers de jeunesse 3
Fourth 17 Apr 1927–21 Oct 1927 Bibliothèque nationale 1
Fifth 31 Oct 1927–30 Aug 1928 Cahiers de jeunesse 3
Sixth 27 Sep 1928–12 Sep 1929 Bibliothèque nationale 2
Seventh 15 Sep 1929–31 Oct 1930 Bibliothèque nationale 3
preface

History of the Beauvoir Series


The long history of the Beauvoir Series explains why the three notebooks
in this volume appear out of chronological order in Diary (see table above).
The Beauvoir Series began, in a sense, in 1990, when Sylvie Le Bon de Beau-
voir donated four of her adoptive mother’s handwritten notebooks from
1926–30 to the Bibliothèque nationale. In 1994, I thought of those notebooks
after reading of Edward Fullbrook’s discovery that Sartre had, in February
1939, drawn upon Beauvoir’s metaphysical novel, She Came to Stay, in writ-
ing Being and Nothingness.1 If Beauvoir had authored an original philosophy
in 1939, I reasoned, we might be able to find the origins of that philosophy
in her 1926–30 notebooks. That summer of 1994 I traveled to Paris and
the Bibliothèque nationale where I struggled to read Beauvoir’s handwriting
until, on the final day of my visit, I discovered her July 10, 1927 entry on the
problem of the “opposition of self and other,” a key to her later philosophy.2
Fortunately, another Beauvoir scholar, Barbara Klaw, had just arrived at the
library to work on the diary and I was able to tell her of my discovery. Later
that fall Barbara sent me her draft transcription of the Second and Fourth
Notebooks. Our collaborative project had begun.
With the support of grants from the National Endowment for the Humani-
ties and the French Ministry of Culture, our edition of Beauvoir’s Philosophi-
cal Writings, the first volume in the Beauvoir Series, was published in 2004 by
the University of Illinois Press. The first volume of Diary, with our editions of
the Second and Fourth Notebooks, was published in 2006. Then in 2008, Gal-
limard published Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir’s complete edition of the 1926–30
notebooks, Cahiers de jeunesse, including the previously unknown Third and
Fifth Notebooks. Since it was too late to publish English editions of the early
notebooks in chronological order, and given the time required to prepare our
scholarly editions, we decided to publish only the lengthy Sixth Notebook in
the second volume of Diary, which appeared in 2019. This third volume fills
in gaps in Diary with our editions of the Third, Fifth, and Seventh Notebooks,
giving Beauvoir’s English readers access for the first time to the dramatic story
of her early intellectual and emotional life hidden during her lifetime and
erased from her memoirs.

Memoirs: Setting the Stage


Beauvoir’s Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter sets the stage for Diary, as I dis-
cuss in the first volume. She recounts in Memoirs becoming interested in

xii
preface

philosophy during her 1924–25 senior year at the Institut Adeline-Desir, or


Cours Desir, a private Catholic girls’ school that she had attended since the
age of five. The yearlong philosophy class, which prepared students for the
difficult philosophy baccalauréat exam, required for access to the university
and entrance to the professions, inspired Beauvoir to dream of studying phi-
losophy at the Sorbonne. “In those days,” Beauvoir writes, “you could count
on one hand the number of women who had passed the agrégation exam
or earned a doctorate in philosophy: I wanted to be one of those pioneers.”3
When Beauvoir passed the baccalauréat exams in both philosophy and
mathematics in the spring of 1925 and prepared to enter the university the
following fall, she was pursuing opportunities newly won by French femi-
nists after a long fight for access to exams and degree programs previously
reserved for men. Until then, French schools had been governed by the
eighteenth-century ideal of a separate, domestic sphere for women, with
secondary schools for girls traditionally offering only a finishing-school
diploma with no practical value. The situation changed after World War
I when the baccalauréat came to be seen as offering a respectable alterna-
tive for unmarried girls from impoverished bourgeois families. In Memoirs,
Beauvoir writes that she and her younger sister faced this very situation:
“My father was not a feminist,” she writes. “But necessity made the rule:
‘You, my girls, will not marry,’ he often repeated. ‘You have no dowry and
will have to work.’”4
But conservative French society remained deeply ambivalent about the
changes in women’s roles. When Beauvoir’s pious mother opposed her
daughter’s ambition to study philosophy at the Sorbonne, fearing that it
would “corrode her soul,” she reluctantly agreed to pursue a degree in clas-
sics and enrolled in October 1925 at the Institut Sainte-Marie, a Catholic
girls’ school in the Paris suburb of Neuilly, while also studying mathemat-
ics at the Institut Catholique in Paris and learning Greek. Beauvoir writes
that her father, instead of supporting her studies, insisted that she fulfill the
social obligations of a proper young lady and angrily accused her of “deny-
ing her sex” when she refused. Beauvoir writes of feeling “ill at ease in my
own skin and full of resentment.”5
While at Neuilly during the 1925–26 academic year, Beauvoir found her
first intellectual mentor. Robert Garric was a literature professor, veteran of
the World War I trenches, and founder of an idealistic movement, the Équi-
pes Sociales (Social Teams), to overcome class divisions by bringing together
young people from different classes. Inspired by Garric’s example, Beau-
voir emulated his asceticism and joined the Équipes, teaching literature to

xiii
preface

a group of girls in the working-class suburb of Belleville in 1926–27. When


Beauvoir’s father condemned her actions and Garric’s politics as undermin-
ing the bourgeois values of family and class loyalty, Beauvoir writes in Mem-
oirs that her rancor gradually “turned into rebellion.”6
After passing the exams for certificats d’études supérieurs in French lit-
erature, mathematics, and Latin in the spring of 1926, Beauvoir, with the
consent of her parents and the encouragement of the philosophy professor
at Neuilly, Jeanne Mercier, returned to her original project of a license in
philosophy. That fall she would begin studying philosophy at the Sorbonne
while taking courses in logic and history of philosophy from Mercier at
Neuilly.7 The stage was set on a life marked by academic achievement and
ascetic self-denial, by familial conflict and inner confusion reflective of an
era of radical change in women’s roles.

Notebooks: Overview and Highlights


The Notebooks in Beauvoir’s Diary are organized by academic year, begin-
ning in August during the summer vacation of 1926 and concluding in
October at the beginning of the 1930–31 school year. The following chron-
ological guide presents highlights from the Notebooks drawn from my
introductions.

Second Notebook: Summer Vacation and Fall Term 1926


Diary’s first volume opens with an important entry from August 1926 in the
Second Notebook beginning Beauvoir’s lifelong reflections on the problem of
the Other erased from Memoirs but central both to Diary (an “old refrain” in
the Seventh Notebook) and her later philosophy. Henri Bergson is an impor-
tant early influence, as is Paul Claudel, through Jeanne Mercier.
6 August 1926: After a visit to Lourdes, Beauvoir writes of being initially
drawn to “a life that was a complete gift of oneself, a total self-abnegation,”
before rejecting the “absolute gift” as “moral suicide,” and vowing to achieve
an “equilibrium” between the duties to self and others.8
12 August: “Do not take pleasure—serve. The first was more logical. Why
prefer the second? [. . .] Certainly, it is by my taste [. . .] that I feel moved
toward devotion more than toward egoism. Is it truly a sufficient ethic? If I
had to teach it, I dare say not, but it is quite sufficient for me.”9
16 August: On Henri Bergson: “my first great intellectual rapture.”10
5 November: “I split my existence into two parts: one for others” and “a
part for myself.” “My thoughts, my feelings, are useless.”11

xiv
preface

13 November: On Jacques: “my desire no longer has any common mea-


sure with his veritable value. [. . .] I have an excessive soul.” On the Sor-
bonne: “the young people with whom it could be fruitful to chat scare me!
[. . .] [they are] so intellectually and morally rude.”12
16 November: “Mlle Mercier transported me to this region I will call
‘Claudelian.’”13
30 November: On Zaza: “I love her passionately.”14

Third Notebook: Holiday Break and Spring Term 1926–27


A highlight of the Third Notebook, in this volume, is a January 1927 entry
showing Beauvoir’s first use of an inner dialogue, a literary-philosophical
method she employed to render the ambiguity of existence. Here, as in her
later essay, “Pyrrhus and Cineas,” ambition vies with a sense of the uselessness,
the ultimate futility of action, that followed her loss of faith. We see her mov-
ing away from Garric and Mercier and finding a new mentor, the phenom-
enologist Jean Baruzi, a student of Bergson, a Leibniz scholar, and author of a
controversial dissertation giving a Husserlean description of the “lived experi-
ence” of the mystic. An important entry in March provides a rare glimpse of
Beauvoir’s early thinking and focus on ethics, under Garric’s influence, from
the era of Diary’s missing first Notebook.
16 December 1926: On Jacques: “I am sometimes seized by this need to
realize a work of my own rather than consecrating my life to him so that he
can realize one, a true suffering.”15
20 December: “Philosophy has started to interest me. [. . .] It is poignant:
[. . .] We would like to do things, but there is nothing to do! Nothing needs
me; nothing needs anything, because nothing needs to be.”16
21 December: “I must find my thought, my destiny, my reason for being
which perhaps does not exist. [. . .] Hatred of this love that enchains me,
[. . .]; it stays on the plane below, and I sacrifice the most to it!”17
23 December: “I know that, for all of my existence, I will be able to count
on myself. [. . .] I walk with confidence towards this self of tomorrow, who
will not betray me.”18
27 December: On Jacques: “I am no longer like last year, the little girl who
admires all your words; you made me your equal; you allowed me to judge
you.”19
8 January 1927: At the Sorbonne Library: “THE ONE SELF: So look at
them all: all have their thoughts, their sorrows, their problems, [. . .] and
what use are we? [. . .] THE OTHER SELF: [. . .] They toil over books, and
you, you understand effortlessly, [. . .] and you know how [. . .] to think what

xv
preface

you feel. [. . .] Say that you are never intoxicated with your strength! You
can’t say it.”20
15 January: On the Équipes: “I am weary of trying to talk to them about
literature or ethics, weary of this effort to uplift them. Do they need to be
uplifted, supposing that they could be? Ah! [. . .] when they showed me their
sadness, what loathing for all the fine sentences that I could tell them.”21
10 February: “[M]y self-love has wearied and disappointed me. [. . .] To
renounce oneself. Some nights I grew giddy with the painful pleasure of this
great surrender.”22
23 February: “Not yet! [. . .] Oh! Gide! Rivière! [. . .] All that of myself in
which he has no share, don’t leave me yet, I do not want to strip myself of all
too dearly beloved egoism. [. . .] My youth!”23
18 March: “Before my birth (I mean before January 1926 more or less,
before Garric) I was content with the sole joy of living. [. . .] I wake up. [. . .]
Moral preoccupations: I seek to form an ethics for myself in spite of my
disbelief in God. [. . .] [O]ne must [. . .] use oneself—give oneself. [. . .] every
pleasure is banished. [. . .] This year [. . .] my faith leaves me: awful disap-
pointment to recognize that there isn’t anything in life. Suffering.”24
26 March: “Nietzsche who fills me with enthusiasm. [. . .] Oh! Think of all
that I could do and be! [. . .] I know the value of my mind, I know the value
of my life, and it is useless, useless forevermore!”25
12 April: “To understand rationally, to explain philosophically, coldly,
what one has lived, felt, what voluptuous intellectual pleasure!”26
15 April: “[E]goistic, proud, and harsh, that’s what I see when I strip my
soul bare. Why do others find me loving, humble, and devoted?”27

Fourth Notebook: Spring Term and Summer 1927


In her Fourth Notebook, in Diary’s first volume, Beauvoir writes that studying
philosophy has led to her loss of faith in reason, deepening her despair at the
uselessness of life and tempting her to evade reality through self-deception.
Arguments about philosophy with a new friend, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, lead
Beauvoir to reflect on religion and her identity as a woman. Rereading the
descriptions of her immediate experience in her diary, she vows to maintain
her lucidity.
20 April 1927: “What did this year bring to me intellectually? A serious
philosophical formation which [. . .] sharpened my (alas!) too penetrating
critical mind. [. . .] Everywhere I observed only our inability to found any-
thing in the order of knowledge as in the order of ethics.”28

xvi
preface

30 April: “[W]hat I like more than anything [. . .] is the beings who cannot
let themselves be duped and who struggle to live in spite of their lucidity.”29
6 May: “The horror of the definitive choice is that we engage not only the
self of today but also that of tomorrow. And that is why at heart, marriage
is immoral. [. . .] [M]y need to realize what I feel within me, to do some-
thing, to believe in something! My intellectual passions, my philosophical
seriousness!”30
19 May: “But I too would so much like to have the right to be very simple
and very weak, to be a woman. [. . .] I count on myself; I know that I can
count on myself. But I would like not to have to count on myself.”31
21 May: “I would want to believe in something—to meet with total exi-
gency—to justify my life. In short, I would want God. [. . .] But knowing that
this noumenal world exists, that I cannot attain, [. . .] I will build my life in
the phenomenal world. [. . .] I will take myself as an end.”32
3 June: On love: “[W]e will support one another so strongly that we will
know how to withstand the great vertiginous void. We will not fall into the
abyss.”33
10 July: “Mademoiselle Mercier is trying to convert me. [. . .] I do not
desire to believe. An act of faith is the greatest act of despair that could be
and I want my despair to preserve at least its lucidity. I do not want to lie to
myself. [. . .] I must clearly spell out my philosophical ideas. [. . .] The theme
is almost always this opposition of self and other that I felt upon starting to
live.”34
18 July: “Raised differently, Merleau-Ponty, would your reason stripped
of all passion attract you to Catholicism?”35
19 July: “I want to remain a woman, still more masculine by her brain,
more feminine by her sensibility.”36
19 July: “Ponti supports his [philosophy] with faith in reason, I on the
powerlessness of reason.”37
20 July: “Oh! Tired, irritated, sure of getting nothing out of this desper-
ate recourse to philosophy, and yet I want it, I owe it to myself to do it. [. . .]
Reason coldly. Ah! There is a lot to do to make a philosopher of me!”38
28 July: On Merleau-Ponty: “Drama of my affections, pathos of life. [. . .]
Those problems that he lives in his mind, I live them with my arms and my
legs. [. . .] I don’t want to lose all that.”39
29 July: “I don’t see anything at all; not only no answer, but no presentable
way to ask the question. Skepticism and indifference are impossible; [. . .]
mysticism is tempting. [. . .] Oh! I see my life well now [. . .] a passionate,

xvii
preface

boundless research. [. . .] Marvelous intoxication of thought, solitude of the


mind. I will dominate the world.”40
3 October: “I have before me three burdensome years [. . .] Then . . . prob-
ably an indefinite solitude instead of that tenderness that was offered one
day. A husband, children, a warm hearth . . . Does anyone marry a woman
like me?”41

Fifth Notebook: Fall Term 1927–Summer 1928


The Fifth Notebook, in this volume, recounts a momentous year as Beauvoir
completes her licence degree in philosophy and prepares to write her diplôme,
a graduate thesis, on Leibniz. A highlight of this notebook is the evidence of
her early solipsism and turn (as an alternative to skepticism) to a kind of
mysticism, a “metaphysical intuition,” in a paper on “Personality,” written
for Baruzi—an important missing text.42 Is it buried someplace in a private
archive? Will the recently discovered manuscript of the diplôme reveal evi-
dence of her early solipsism as the conclusion of her early short story cycle,
When Things of the Spirit Come First, seems to reflect a continuing interest in
“metaphysical intuition”?
31 October 1927: “It will be enough if by age 22, I’ve taken the agrégation
and written a book. [. . .] For perhaps it is through the act alone that the self
is posited; and I want myself.”43
3 December: “Have read Baruzi’s Saint Jean. ‘To go to the unknown, one
must go through the unknown.’ [. . .] This great inner adventure is going to
continue in my ‘sonorous solitude.’”44
8–9 December: “‘[H]ello Jacques.’ [. . .] No, I no longer dream of this
solitude; since my love exists; it’s as if I wanted to be a great painter or to be
a man . . . It must be my entire self that rises.”45
20 January 1928: “Oh! too philosophical, says one. Not enough, says the
other. [. . .] Life does not fit me; this alone is certain.”46
23 January: “With crazy desires, dreams of departure, and the certitude
of such a complete liberation from everything and everybody. Aside from
killing, what wouldn’t I do?”47
28 January: “Always within me this conflict with seemingly no remedy:
an ardent consciousness of [. . .] my superiority over them all, [. . .] and of
the great place [. . .] that I could carve out for myself among men, [. . .] then
a feeling of the total uselessness of these things, no goal being worth the
trouble of such effort.”48
29 January: “Baruzi’s class; I handed in this homework into which I put
so much of myself. [. . .] Rereading my essay I notice that some passages

xviii
preface

are really well written [. . .] where the abstract is concretized in disdainful


images.”49
7 February: “[Jacques] made me wish to live this risky and useless exis-
tence of his [. . .] portrayed in the novels that I adore. [. . .] But this would
not be enough for me: I get such pleasure from reading Descartes—how can
I combine all this?”50
10 February: “If ever I write my book, it will be to convey this silent
descent into the deepest depths of self [. . .] for which lived experiences
carve out the path.”51
19 February: “Baruzi gave me back my essay with a truly moving warmth.
[. . .] oh my thought! my life! [. . .] This program that I sketched out a week
ago is beautiful. [. . .] Beginning of this splendid intuition.”52
March 1928: “If facing this void gives you vertigo, close your eyes; be
great enough to fill the emptiness. [. . .] I would like [. . .] a mind stronger
than my own. [. . .] Someone who has advanced to this threshold where
madness lies in wait! [. . .] I would like a genius.”53
3 April: On Merleau-Ponty’s reconversion to Catholicism: “Why the sad-
ness about those long hours spent yesterday with Ponty. [. . .] I am alone,
nobody will ever understand how much. [. . .] I am exiled.”54
6 April: “the solitude of the soul unaware that other souls exist and with-
out any means to know it, and that lives through an incommunicable experi-
ence. [. . .] Hence an impression of abandonment, almost of ‘monstrosity.’”55
27 April: “Mademoiselle Mercier is right: [. . .] ‘a metaphysical intuition,’
[. . .] the highest spiritual experience that I can attain by myself. [. . .] My
desire to maintain these states where the mind no longer knows its body is
the impossible desire to be a pure mind liberated from time and matter.”56
11 May: “Jacques’s departure [for eighteen months of military service].
Sadness.”57
14 June: “For me, there is no ethics, but only spirituality. [. . .] No other
values except the mind, an inner progress. [. . .] And beings, one by one? [. . .]
Admittedly, I love [. . .] as brothers, only those who have a worthy mind. [. . .]
The innumerable others [. . .] are [. . .] not truly my brothers. [. . .] I am not
charitable. The moral values of Christianity are [. . .] almost odious to me.”58

Sixth Notebook: Fall Term 1928–Summer 1929


A highlight of the Sixth Notebook, in Diary’s second volume, is Beauvoir’s
account of meeting Sartre in July 1929, an account which differs in surpris-
ing ways from the story in Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. Beauvoir’s social
life takes center stage here since her decision to write her diplôme on Leibniz

xix
preface

(completed in May 1929), while preparing for the agrégation, allowed her to
skip a year but left her little time for other writing. Fortunately, the recent dis-
covery of the manuscript of her diplôme means that English readers will find
it in a forthcoming volume of the Beauvoir Series.
29 September 1928: “Slight stupefaction that follows nine hours of study-
ing without a break.”59
30 September: “I received a brief note from Zaza. [. . .] She didn’t know
how much I love her!”60
1 October: On Jacques: “You taught me not to be the humorless and defi-
ant intellectual I might have been, [. . .] you taught me the sweetness of not
being alone.”61
2 October: “Poor Zaza! [. . .] Madame Lacoin ‘hates intellectuals,’ forbids
Zaza to ‘read these stupid books’ etc.”62
4 October: “Have read a very clear and intelligent book by Benedetto
Croce on Hegel.”63
5 October: “[I]s it this religion that left me with such a taste for purity that
the slightest allusion to things of the flesh fills me with distress? [. . .] I have
seen many, many things, but [. . .] I do not consent to believe in their exis-
tence. [. . .] [I]f [two beings] feel governed by their desire, if their consent is
not required, it makes me sick. [. . .] I would hate any solely carnal caress.”64
10 October: “I am ardently studying Kant.”65
24 October: “Brunschvicg brings me unexpected pleasures. [. . .] I find a
concept of the mind, which in fact is very similar to my own. I follow this
rather unexpected evolution of my thoughts with a pleasure destined for me
alone; I used to hate him so much!”66
25 October: “Oh, how Barrès has made his mark on me! [. . .] [O]thers,
for me, are ‘adversaries,’ and I construct a world that I like against this world
that I do not like.”67
[October 1928]: “Summary of My Life. [. . .] January 1926 marks my eigh-
teenth birthday. In March I pass my certificate in French literature magna
cum laude. [. . .] I begin to keep a journal that I lose in Sainte-Geneviève. I
start over.”68
1 November: “Fernand [. . .] speaks to me of Husserl, of German philoso-
phy.”69
25 April 1929: “I work on my diplôme, that is progressing well.”70
18 May: “Work at home on my diplôme; [. . .] take it to the Sorbonne.”71
11 June: “I go up to take the exam for my diplôme. Brunschvicg was
pleased with it.”72

xx
preface

12 June: “I meet M.-Ponty. We [. . .] consult the list that gives us the results
on our diplômes.”73
8 July: “That’s when everything started. Lama came to get me and the AE
bus drove us to the Cité universitaire. Shyness. Sartre politely welcomes me
but intimidates me. I remember them so intensely: Lama in shirtsleeves
half stretched out on the bed, Sartre seated across from me in front of the
table, and all of that room, the big mess, the books, my surprise, the odor of
tobacco . . . I explain Leibniz.”74
11 July: “[I]t seems that I angered Sartre quite a bit when for fun I com-
pared him to Gandillac. What’s more, I let loose this afternoon. . . . [I]n fact
I am getting the better of Sartre today; I am having great fun, but how well
we are working too!”75
17 July: “Worry. Sorbonne, ministry, École Normale with Zaza to find
out if I passed; [. . .] then encounter with Sartre who announces my success.
Lama, who flunked, tells me goodbye with a profoundly affectionate smile.
[. . .] Sartre [. . .] does whatever he wants with me, but I adore his way of
being authoritarian, of adopting me, and of being so sternly indulgent.”76
21 July: “I go to Luxembourg Gardens with Sartre where we discuss good
and evil for two hours. He interests me enormously but destroys me; I am
no longer sure of what I think or even of thinking. [. . .] Revelation of a rich-
ness of life incomparable with the one in the too exclusive garden in which
I enclose myself, a strength of thought [. . .] and a maturity that I envy and
promise myself to attain.”77
30 July: “Waiting for the results [of the oral exam]; the great charm of
being between Sartre and Nizan [. . .] with only two points of difference
from Sartre.”78

Seventh Notebook: Fall Term 1929–Summer 1930


The Seventh Notebook, in this volume, shows Beauvoir beginning the aca-
demic year celebrating the freedom of a first place of her own and planning to
devote the coming year to writing her book—plans erased by an experience of
sexual violation discussed below in my “Beauvoir and #MeToo.”
16 September 1929: On Jacques: “I will never marry him. [. . .] [He]
opened the first door for me, now [he] can only confine me to a comfort-
able existence. [. . .] Besides, it’s simple, I love Sartre. Ah, does he ever open
doors!”79
21 September: “There is within me a frantic desire for liberty, for adven-
ture, for stories, for voyages, for other souls; a desire to keep all doors open,

xxi
preface

to welcome everything, to give myself to everything, a refusal of all ties, a


fear of marriage that I feel very deep within me.”80
24 September: “[Sartre] is neither happiness nor love; he is the possibility,
through strength and tenderness, of living without one or the other.”81
10 June 1930: “To give oneself and to keep oneself . . . old refrain.”82
31 October 1931: “Zaza, my friend, my departed darling; I need you so!
That tomb covered with flowers, those photos, and that horrible memory.
[. . .] I don’t have the strength to remember alone. [. . .] I’m cold. Zaza.”83

NOT ES

1. See Kate Fullbrook and Edward Fullbrook, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre:
The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend (New York: Basic, 1994); Edward Fullbrook,
“Sartre’s Secret Key,” in Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Margaret A.
Simons (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 97–111.
2. See Simons, “Beauvoir’s Early Philosophy: The 1927 Diary,” in Beauvoir and The Sec-
ond Sex: Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism (Lanham MD: Rowman & Little-
field, 1999), 185–243; and Simons, “Beauvoir’s Early Philosophy: 1926–27,” in Diary of a
Philosophy Student, 1:29–50 (hereafter cited as Diary).
3. Beauvoir, Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée, 222 (hereafter cited as MJFR); Memoirs of
a Dutiful Daughter, 160 (hereafter cited as MDD).
4. MJFR, 145; MDD 104.
5. MJFR, 223, 247, 248–49; MDD, 160, 168, 178–79.
6. MJFR, 264; MDD, 191.
7. MJFR, 256, 282; MDD, 184, 204.
8. Beauvoir, Diary, 1:54–55; Beauvoir, Cahiers de jeunesse, 47–48 (hereafter cited as
Cahiers).
9. Cahiers, 54; Diary, 1:63.
10. Cahiers, 60; Diary, 1:66.
11. Cahiers, 172; Diary, 1:163.
12. Cahiers, 190, 191; Diary, 1:178, 179.
13. Cahiers, 192; Diary, 1:180.
14. Cahiers, 210; Diary, 1:195.
15. Cahiers, 226.
16. Cahiers, 230, 234–35.
17. Cahiers, 239–40.
18. Cahiers, 243.
19. Cahiers, 247.
20. Cahiers, 255–56.
21. Cahiers, 265.
22. Cahiers, 277–78.
23. Cahiers, 283–84.
24. Cahiers, 293–94.

xxii
preface

25. Cahiers, 294, 296.


26. Cahiers, 299.
27. Cahiers, 300.
28. Cahiers, 314; Diary, 1:232.
29. Cahiers, 323; Diary, 1:242.
30. Cahiers, 331, 332; Diary, 1:246, 247.
31. Cahiers, 346; Diary, 1:260.
32. Cahiers, 348; Diary, 1:262.
33. Cahiers, 355; Diary, 1:268.
34. Cahiers, 367; Diary, 1:279.
35. Cahiers, 373; Diary, 1:284.
36. Cahiers, 374; Diary, 1:284.
37. Cahiers, 376; Diary, 1:287.
38. Cahiers, 378–79; Diary, 1:289.
39. Cahiers, 384; Diary, 1:293.
40. Cahiers, 387; Diary, 1:296.
41. Cahiers, 409; Diary, 1:316.
42. “J’entrepris pour Baruzi une immense dissertation sur ‘la personnalité’” (MJFR, 364;
MDD, 263).
43. Cahiers, 417.
44. Cahiers, 418.
45. Cahiers, 419.
46. Cahiers, 422.
47. Cahiers, 424.
48. Cahiers, 425–26.
49. Cahiers, 430.
50. Cahiers, 431–32.
51. Cahiers, 435.
52. Cahiers, 436.
53. Cahiers, 439.
54. Cahiers, 440.
55. Cahiers, 443.
56. Cahiers, 448.
57. Cahiers, 452.
58. Cahiers, 455–57.
59. Cahiers, 467; Diary, 2:26.
60. Cahiers, 468–69; Diary, 2:28.
61. Cahiers, 470; Diary, 2:29.
62. Cahiers, 471; Diary, 2:30.
63. Cahiers, 472; Diary, 2:31.
64. Cahiers, 474; Diary, 2:32–34.
65. Cahiers, 482; Diary, 2:39.
66. Cahiers, 501; Diary, 2:55.
67. Cahiers, 503–4; Diary, 2:57.
68. Cahiers, 509–10; Diary, 2:62–63.
69. Cahiers, 514; Diary, 2:66.

xxiii
preface

70. Cahiers, 625; Diary, 2:163.


71. Cahiers, 654; Diary, 2:189.
72. Cahiers, 692; Diary, 2:223.
73. Cahiers, 693; Diary, 2:224.
74. Cahiers, 720; Diary, 2:248.
75. Cahiers, 722–23; Diary, 2:250.
76. Cahiers, 731; Diary, 2:257.
77. Cahiers, 733–34; Diary, 2:259.
78. Cahiers, 741; Diary, 2:265.
79. Cahiers, 775–76.
80. Cahiers, 784–85.
81. Cahiers, 787.
82. Cahiers, 840.
83. Cahiers, 849.

xxiv
Acknowledgments

Barbara Klaw writes: I applaud the numerous individuals who helped in


the production of this annotated translation. First, I thank Sylvie Le Bon
de Beauvoir for her kind encouragement to continue my work on Beau-
voir’s 1927–1930 diary. I am grateful to the staff in the Manuscript Room
of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and especially to Mauricette Berne
for facilitating my study and transcription of the manuscripts. To Marga-
ret Simons and Marybeth Timmermann, I am indebted for comments on
earlier versions of my translation and annotation. As much of this volume
was revised during a difficult pandemic year that I spent alone in my apart-
ment, I owe special thanks to the Alliance Française of Cincinnati, the Inter-
national Simone de Beauvoir Society, and Tiphaine Martin, for involving
me in intellectual presentations, discussions, and publications throughout
2020–21. I thank Tom Richards for his help in exploring Irish Folklore. For
listening to my weekly contemplations of all things related to this volume,
I am beholden to Alan Hutchison, Kathleen Carter, and Nadia Ibrahim. I
credit Barry Paul Price for his weekly guidance through numerous personal
challenges during this pandemic, and for much of my resulting joy in com-
pleting this volume. For the funding of my years of work on the manuscript

xxv
acknowledgments

leading to this volume, I express gratitude to the American Philosophical


Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Northern Kentucky
University, and the Southern Regional Education Board.
Margaret Simons writes: I would like to express my appreciation to Bar-
bara Klaw for her fine work over these almost thirty years in translating and
annotating Beauvoir’s 1926–30 diary, and to thank her once again for so
generously sharing her draft transcription of Beauvoir’s 1927 diary back in
1994, effectively launching this collaborative project. I would like to extend
my warmest thanks to Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, coeditor of the Beauvoir
Series, for her unwavering support and encouragement; to our first edi-
tor, Joan Catapano, for believing in our project from the beginning; and
to Laurie Matheson, at the University of Illinois Press, for her continued
guidance and support. I am very grateful to Anne-Solange Noble, at Édi-
tions Gallimard, for her invaluable advice and assistance; to Mauricette
Berne, for her guidance in accessing the manuscripts at the Bibliothèque
Nationale; to Marybeth Timmermann, my partner in this whole wonderful,
crazy project; to Jen McWeeny and Linda Martín Alcoff, for their research
that expanded my understanding of Beauvoir’s life and work; to Nancy Ruff,
Pam Decoteau, Deborah Evans, for their helpful suggestions on my pref-
ace; to Mikels Skele for his fifty years of unwavering love and support; and
to my late sister, Jacqui Hill, whose life continues to instruct my thinking.
This volume would not have been possible without the generous support
of a Collaborative Research Grant from the National Endowment for the
Humanities, an independent federal agency; a Matching Funds grant from
the Illinois Board of Higher Education allocated by the Graduate School of
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville; and a translation grant from the
French Ministry of Culture.

xxvi
DIARY OF A
PHILOSOPHY STUDENT
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
CHAPTER XIX.
The discovery of the fact that there was a secret way in and out of
the Abbey had a strong and most unhappy effect upon poor Freda.
She dared not say anything about it to Nell, and Crispin she never
saw: forced, therefore, to bear the burden of the secret alone, she
crept about the house day by day, not daring to make any fresh
researches, and suffering from a hundred fears. To add to her
unhappiness, she now could not but feel sure that Nell had kept back
her letter to Sister Agnes. For she got no answer to it. Mrs. Bean
seemed to guess that the girl had learned something about which
she would want to ask inconvenient questions. So Freda passed a
week in silence and solitude such as the convent had not
accustomed her to. Even the nocturnal noises had ceased. Once,
and once only, she caught sight of Crispin, and ran after him, calling
him by name. It was dusk, and she was watching the sea-mews from
the courtyard, as they flew screaming about the desolate walls of
what had once been the banqueting-room. He did not answer, but
disappeared rapidly under the gallery in evident avoidance of her.
Poor Freda felt so desolate that she burst into tears. Her old,
fanciful belief in her father was dead. Everything pointed to the fact
that he was really Blewitt’s murderer, and that, in order to save
himself from detection, he had feigned death and gone away without
one thought of the daughter he was deserting. Now that Crispin,
whom she had looked upon through all as her friend, was deserting
her also, she grew desperate, and recovering all the courage which
for the last few days had seemed dead in her, she resolved to make
another attempt to fathom the secrets the Abbey still held from her.
To begin with, she must explore the west wing. Now this west wing
was so dark and so cold, so honeycombed with narrow little
passages which seemed to lead to nowhere in particular, and with
small rooms meagrely furnished and full of dust, that Freda had
always been rather afraid of lingering about it, and had hopped
through so much of it as she was obliged to pass on her way to and
from the library, with as much speed as possible. Now, however, she
got a candle, and boldly proceeded to examine every nook and
corner of the west wing. And the result of her researches was to
prove that on the ground floor, underneath her own room, there was
a chamber surrounded by four solid stone walls without a single
doorway or window. The only entrance to this mysterious chamber
seemed to be through the panel-door in the storey above. Where,
then, did the secret door in the library lead to? That question she
would solve at once. It was quite dark and very cold in the narrow
passages through which she ran, and the tipity-tap of her crutch
frightened her by the echo it awoke. She reached the library panting,
and running to the secret door, began pulling it and shaking it with all
her might.
Suddenly the door gave way, almost throwing her down as it
opened upon her; with a cry she recognised Dick behind it. She had
thought of him so much since his last strange appearance, that the
sight of him in the flesh made her feel shy. She said nothing, but
crept away towards the window, feeling indeed an overwhelming joy
at the sight of a friendly face.
“Did I frighten you again?” asked he.
The girl turned and looked up at him, shyly.
“I am always frightened here,” she said.
“Poor child! They are treating you very badly. I was afraid so. I
have been to see you twice, to make sure you had come to no
harm.”
Freda, who had crept into the window-seat, as far away from him
as she could get, looked up in surprise.
“You have been to see me?” she exclaimed.
“Not to see you exactly, because the door was shut between us.
But I heard you in here, talking to yourself and turning over the
leaves of your books. I didn’t think it worth while to disturb you. I
shouldn’t have come in to-night, only I heard you shaking and pulling
the door, and I thought you had heard me and were frightened.”
“Oh, no. I wanted to know where it led to.”
“To the floor above by a staircase. See.”
He opened the door through which he had entered, and showed
her the lowest steps of a very narrow staircase, which went up along
the outer side of the library-wall.
“And how did you get into the floor above?”
“Well, it’s a secret I’m bound not to betray.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Freda coolly, “I shall find it out. I want them
to find that I am a meddlesome, inquisitive creature, who must be got
rid of.”
“Who’s ‘them’?” asked Dick.
“Crispin and Mrs. Bean.”
“And you want them to send you back to the convent?”
“Yes.”
“I think that would be a pity.”
“You didn’t last time.”
“No-o,” said Dick, clearing his throat. “Perhaps I didn’t see it quite
so well then. You see I hadn’t thought about it. But I have since; and
there’s a lot in what you said about the selfishness of it.”
“Ah, but now I’m just in the only position in the world in which it
isn’t selfish. I am quite alone, you see.”
“So you were a week ago.”
“But I had some hope then that I might be able to do some good.
Now I haven’t. And you don’t know what it is to be always lonely, to
have nobody to speak to even. It makes one feel like an outcast from
all the world.”
“Yes, so it does. So that one is glad of the very mice that run
behind the wainscot; and when one of the little brutes comes out of
its hole and runs about the room, why one wouldn’t disturb it for the
world.”
“Oh, yes, I love the mice. Do you know I expect that sometimes
when I have listened to a scratching in the wall and thought it was
mice, it was really you all the time!”
“Very likely.”
“It was very good of you to come and see that I was all right.”
“Oh, I was glad to come. I’m lonely too now. They’ve gone away,
the others.”
“Your aunt, and your cousin? And left you all by yourself?”
“That wouldn’t be much of a hardship, if only one could manage to
exist. But it is lonely, as you say. I shouldn’t mind it if the dog
wouldn’t howl so. Sign of a death, they say; I shouldn’t be sorry if it
were mine.”
“Your death! Oh, don’t say that. You didn’t seem at all miserable
when I went to your house.”
“No. The fact is, you are at the bottom of my low spirits. It’s your
uncanny spells that have done it, Miss Mulgrave. Witches always
have little sticks like that.”
He took up her crutch almost reverently. It was leaning against the
window-seat between them, for he had sat down beside her.
“What do you mean, Dick?”
It was only a consequence of her extreme ignorance of the world’s
ways that she called him by the name by which she had heard
others call him. But it came upon the young man as a startling and
delicious surprise.
“Why, I mean,” he said, with rather more apparent constraint than
before, “that you said things which made me uncomfortable,
preached me a little sermon, in fact.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon; I did not mean to preach indeed.”
“It’s all right, it did me good. I don’t mind a girl preaching, and I
thought over what you said very seriously. I—” he hesitated, and
then finished hurriedly, “I thought you’d like to know.”
“Indeed I’m very glad, if you didn’t think me rude. Perhaps if my
preaching did you good, it might do Crispin good too—if only I could
get hold of him.”
Dick laughed.
“I don’t think I should set my heart too much upon that. Crispin is a
thorough-paced old rascal.”
“You don’t know him. You haven’t seen into his heart,” cried Freda,
rising from the window-seat in her earnestness, and bending forward
so that she might look into the young man’s face. For very little light
now came through the old mullioned window.
“Well, I don’t believe he has a heart to see into.”
“Ah, that is because you have been careless, and have neglected
your religion. We all, even the worst, have a heart; it may sleep
sometimes, so that men think it is dead. But if God sends some one,
with love for Him alive and glowing, to speak to that sleeping heart, it
awakens, and a little spark of love and goodness will shine bright in
it. Don’t you believe that?”
“I believe that if anybody could work miracles through goodness, it
would be you. But it would take a thundering big miracle to make
Crispin Bean anything but an unprincipled rascal. Why, if you only
knew—— But then it’s better you should not know,” said he, pulling
himself up hurriedly and getting up to go.
“Oh, tell me, do tell me. I want to know!”
“You wouldn’t be a woman if you didn’t. But I’m not going to tell
you.”
And Dick drew himself up and looked out of the window, with the
obstinate look she had seen before on his face. Freda was far too
unconscious of her own feminine powers to attempt to move his
resolution. She only sighed as he held out his hand.
“Are you very lonely at the farm?” she asked.
“Very. At least I mean rather.”
“You have nobody there at all to speak to?”
“Nobody at all.”
“And you will go on living like that?”
“As long as I can hold out. The love of the old place, and of all this
country round, is a passion with me—the only one I’ve ever had, in
fact. And you,” he continued, leaving the subject of his own
prospects with some abruptness, “you are lonely too. May I come
and see you again?”
Freda hesitated.
“May I not come? Don’t you want to see me again?”
“Oh, yes. But——”
“I don’t frighten you, do I, with my rough, uncivilised ways?”
“Oh, no; Oh, no. Frighten me! Of course not.”
“Then, if I don’t frighten you, why did you screw yourself up into a
corner of the window-seat just now, to be as far from me as
possible?”
He spoke in a low tone, bending towards her.
Freda blushed, but she never thought of denying the accusation.
But what had her reason been? She herself did not know.
“I—I think it must have been because I had been crying, and of
course nobody likes to be seen crying,” she answered slowly, hoping
that she had told the truth.
“Crying, had you? What about? Tell me just this: is it about—
Blewitt’s—death?”
“Why, why, do you know anything about that?”
“I know,” said Dick cautiously, “that it had something to do with
your father’s—disappearance.”
Freda shivered at the word.
“You know more than that?” she said hoarsely.
“Perhaps. But I swear I can’t tell you what I know, so don’t ask
me.”
For a minute there was dead silence, as they stood face to face,
but scarcely able to see each other in the gathering darkness.
Suddenly both were startled by the sound of a man’s hoarse voice,
muffled by distance, which seemed to come from behind the door,
through which Dick had entered.
CHAPTER XX.
At first both Dick and Freda listened to the faint sounds in silence.
Then Dick spoke.
“They’ve come back. I sha’n’t be able to get out that way,” he said.
“Why should you? I can let you out by the front-gate.”
“But—I don’t want to be seen,” he said. “If Captain Mulgrave were
to see me——”
Freda was startled by this suggestion, which betrayed how much
the young man knew or guessed. She turned from the door, where
she had paused with her fingers on the handle.
“Oh, yes,” he said in a low voice and very quickly, understanding
her thought, “it did take me in, for a time, and my cousin Bob too,
that story about his being dead, although we both knew him very
well.”
“But why should he pretend any such thing?”
“That’s what we want to find out. It makes us careful. So Bob’s
gone away, and I keep watch.”
“And you are so sure he is alive?”
“I’ve seen him.”
Freda began to tremble. Here was an answer to the question she
had so often asked herself, whether her father was not really in
hiding about the place after all. She led the way out of the library,
along the corridor and out into the courtyard by the nearest door,
without a word. It was so dark that there was little fear of their being
seen crossing to the gate; though indeed Freda had forgotten that
there was need of caution, being absorbed in conjectures about her
father. She took the big key from its nail, opened the heavy gate, and
led Dick through to the open space before the blank wall of the
banqueting-hall. They crossed this, still in silence, and came to the
lodge. Here she was about to summon the lodge-keeper, when Dick
stopped her.
“Don’t,” said he. “The old woman would recognise me, and you
would be made to suffer. I must get out some other way.”
“There is no other way,” said Freda. “And when my friends come
to see me they should go out by the front way.”
And, before he could stop her, she had seized the iron bell-handle
which hung outside the wall of the lodge and rang it firmly.
The old woman who kept the key looked rather frightened when
she saw who was with Freda, but she unlocked the gate, waited,
curtseying, while the young people shook hands, and then popped
back into her cottage like a rabbit.
But there were eyes about more to be dreaded than the old
woman’s. When Freda returned to the inner gate, which she had left
open, she found it locked, and had to ring the bell. Mrs. Bean did not
answer the summons for some time, and when she did, it was with a
frown of ill-omen upon her face.
“So you’ve been receiving visitors, I see,” she began shortly.
“Yes, I’ve had one visitor.”
“One of the young Heritages, whom your father specially wished
you not to have anything to do with. Crispin told you that.”
“Yes,” said Freda tremulously, “but since they leave me here all by
myself with nobody to speak to, they can’t be surprised if I make any
friends when I can.”
“Well, and am I not friend enough for you, without your having to
run after any stranger or vagabond that happens to come into the
parish?”
“No, you’re not, for I certainly couldn’t say anything I liked to you,
as one can to a friend. If I ask you a question, you put me off with an
answer that tells me nothing, as if I were a child. But I’m going to
show you that I’m grown up, and do some things that will astonish
you.”
And Freda hopped quickly away across the court-yard to the
entrance of the west wing, leaving Nell a little anxious and perturbed
by this new independence.
Freda returned to the study, her little brain actively spinning
fancies concerning her late visitor, all of a pretty, harmless kind,
dowering him with a great many ideal qualities to which the young
man could certainly not lay claim. It was now so dark in the room that
she had to feel her way carefully, well as she knew it. She walked
along close by the wall, touching the book-laden shelves as she
went, until she came to a point where they seemed to yield under her
fingers. Her heart leapt up. This was the secret door through which
Dick had entered: and he had left it open.
Freda’s first impulse was delight; her second fear. Now that the
way was at last open to her to learn the secrets of this guilty house,
she began to shrink from the knowledge she was about to gain. She
opened the door, listened, and looked in. Pitch-black darkness; utter
silence. She knew that Dick had come down by a staircase, so she
felt for it and mounted carefully. She counted fourteen rather steep
steps, and then she found that she had reached a level floor. It was
so cold here that her hands and feet were stiff and benumbed,
although her head was burning; she was in a passage the walls of
which were of stone, just like those outside her own room. But this
passage was narrower, she thought. There was no light whatever, so
that she groped her way cautiously, with her left hand outstretched
before her face, while with the right she tapped her crutch lightly on
the ground in front of her. After a few steps she came to a blank
stone wall; it was the end of the passage and she had to turn back.
As she retraced her steps, she suddenly came to a slight recess on
the right hand, where the stone wall was broken by a wooden door.
Something in the sound of this as she rattled it made her believe that
this was the panel-door into the gallery. If this were so, the way down
was through a trap-door in the floor; for this was the way Crispin had
brought her on the day that he found her in the disused stable. Down
she went upon her knees, feeling about until her hand touched an
end of knotted rope. Pulling this up, she found, as she had expected,
that it raised a door in the floor, beneath which was a flight of
wooden steps. There was still no sound to be heard, so, after a
moment’s hesitation, she decided to continue her explorations, and
to trust to luck to hide herself if she heard any one coming. The
steps were rickety, but she got down them in safety, and found
herself in a stone passage, similar to that on the floor above. At the
end of this was a door, which Freda, still groping in the dark, decided
to be that which opened into one of the out-houses in the yard
outside. It was securely fastened. She felt her way back along the
walls until a door on the right suddenly gave way under her hand,
and a flash of light, after the darkness in which she had been so
long, streamed into her eyes and dazzled her.
Freda thought she was discovered; but the utter silence reassuring
her, she presently looked up again, and found that she was standing
before the doorway of a big, stone-walled, windowless room, piled
high with bales and boxes which reeked with the unmistakable odour
of strong tobacco. She was in the smugglers’ storeroom. An oil-lamp,
which hung opposite to the door and gave a bright light, enabled her
to make an exhaustive survey of the room and its contents. In one
corner there was a rope and pulley fastened securely to one of the
strong beams which ran from end to end of the roof. There was no
ceiling. Directly under this rope and pulley was a square hole in the
floor; and Freda, peeping down, saw that a rope-ladder connected
this chamber with another underneath, which, however, was
unlighted. She had scarcely had time to make these discoveries
when she heard dull, muffled sounds which seemed to come from
beneath the cellar. Afraid of being caught by one of the unknown
men whose coarse voices she had so often heard, Freda hid herself
among the bales not far from the opening in the floor. The sounds
came nearer, became distinguishable as the tramp of one man’s
feet, and then the rope-ladder began to shake.
Freda, peeping out, began to tremble at her own daring. The man
was coming up, and already she knew, whether by instinct or by his
tread she hardly could tell, that it was not Crispin. She shrank back,
with a loudly-beating heart, and crouched behind the bales as the
newcomer reached the floor and pulled up the rope-ladder after him.
He began to move some of the bales, and Freda was half dead with
fear lest he should touch those behind which she was hiding. But
presently he desisted from this work, and she heard him drag out a
heavy weight from the space he had made, draw a cork, and
presently began to take long breaths of pleasure and to smack his
lips. Very cautiously, believing him to be too agreeably employed to
notice her, she then dared to peep at him. But the sight of his face
turned her sick with surprise and dread.
For she saw the grinning, withered face she had seen about the
house in the darkness, the face which Nell had tried to persuade her
was the creation of her imagination.
CHAPTER XXI.
Freda fancied that the long-drawn breath which escaped her as she
recognised the man must attract his attention. But he was too intent
upon the enjoyment of the strong spirit, which he kept pouring from a
huge stone bottle into a cracked tumbler, to have eyes or ears for the
little eavesdropper in the corner. A horrible idea flashed into her mind
as she crouched again in her hiding-place: Was this grinning
creature, with the hideous face of an ape, the father she had waited
to know so long? A shiver of horror ran through her as she
remembered how this would tally with the facts she knew: with the
dread in which her father was held, with her belief that he was in
hiding about the house, and with the airs of proprietorship which this
man was assuming.
Even as these unwelcome thoughts pressed into her mind, the
man got up, and confirming her fears by his tone of authority,
stamped upon the floor and called down the opening in a loud voice:
“Hallo! Anybody there yet? Kelk! Harrison!”
There was no answer, and he walked up and down, swearing to
himself impatiently. Presently a muffled sound came from below, and
he called out again.
“Aye, aye, sir,” said a hoarse voice.
“Is that you, Braim?” asked the man above.
“Aye, sir.”
“Anybody else with you?”
“Theer be fower on us, sir.”
“All right. Close up, and I’ll be down with you in a minute.”
There were sounds now in the cellar below of several men moving
about and talking in low tones. Then the man above moved back a
step or two from the opening in the floor; and Freda, whose curiosity
had grown stronger than her caution, peeped out far enough to see
him take from a shelf a small revolver, which he secreted about his
person. Then he lowered the rope-ladder, let himself down into the
cellar by it, and immediately threw it up again so deftly that it landed
safely on the floor he had left. Freda heard a chorus of demands for
“soomat to warm them,” and by the sounds which followed she could
soon tell that drinking had begun. Being now able to lift her head
without fear, she could make out a good deal of their talk, although
the strong dialect in which all but the leader spoke often puzzled her.
As the talk went on and the drink went round, the men seemed to get
more and more excited; but just as they had done at the “Barley
Mow,” they lowered their voices as they grew warm in discussion,
until Freda, whose interest and curiosity had become deeply excited,
crept softly out of her hiding-place, and crawling to the opening in the
floor, listened with her head only just out of the men’s sight.
They were talking about some person against whom they had a
grudge, using oaths and threats which, although strange and new to
Freda, shocked her by their coarseness. At last her curiosity to see
them grew so great that she was impelled to glance down stealthily
at the group below. The men were seated at a rough deal table, over
which they leaned and sprawled, with their heads close together, in
eager converse. It was some moments before she got a view of any
of the faces; at last, however, two of them raised their heads a little,
and she instantly recognised one as a little wrinkled, oldish-looking
man, who wore rings in his ears and walked with the cat-like tread of
one accustomed to go barefoot, whom she had seen at the “Barley
Mow.”
“Ah tell ye,” he was now saying, “it’s’ t’ same now as were at t’
‘Barley Mow’ on t’ neght when train was snawed oop. Barnaby
Ugthorpe fund him aht, and tawd me abaht it hissen.”
Freda forgot to draw back; her breath came with difficulty: this man
against whom they were using such hideous threats must be her
friend, John Thurley. From this moment, every word they uttered
assumed for her a terrible significance.
“Oh, I’ve no doubt your information is right enough,” said the
leader, who used fewer words than the rest, “the question is whether
he hasn’t found out too much for it to be any good interfering with
him. You see, he’s been about the neighbourhood some time now,
keeping very quiet, and he may have picked up and sent off to
London enough information to do for all the lot of us; in that case a
bullet or two through his hide would only increase the
unpleasantness of our position.”
“Aye, aye, Captain, but Ah’ve kep’ a eye upon him, to see what he
were up to. A pal of mine done that business for me, an’ as fur as we
mak’ aht, he hasn’t done mooch correspondering, an’ nothing
suspicious-loike. Ah’ve a pal in t’ poast-office, as Ah have moast
pleaces, an’ ye can tak’ my word for’t.”
“An’ now we’ve fahnd him aht spying at us from t’ scaur, as we did
yesterneght, Ah seay it’s high toime as a stop wur put to his goings
on, an’ it’s not loike ye, Capt’n, to seay neay to that.”
“I don’t say nay to that,” said the little withered man, with an ugly
grin on his face. “You know me better. But no good ever comes of
using violent means until you’ve tried all others. I’ll be on the scaur
myself to-night and watch.”
Freda stared down at the group, fascinated with horror. There was
a brutal callousness of look and tone in these men which made her
feel as if she were watching a cageful of wild beasts. Every line of
their weather-beaten faces, dimly as she saw them by the light of
two flaring tallow candles, seemed to her to be eloquent of the risks
and dangers of a hardening and brutalising life. And the face which
looked the most repulsive of all was that of the leader. Was he her
father? The girl prayed that it might not be true. Although his speech
was so much more correct than that of the rest as to mark him as
belonging to a higher class, his voice was coarse and thick, and his
manner furtive and restless. Even the faint twinkle of humour which
was visible in the eyes of the wizened informer, James Braim, was
absent from those of his chief. Those few words, in which he said
that he would watch on the scaur that night, filled Freda with more
anxiety for John Thurley’s safety than all the coarse threats and
menacing gestures of the other three men.
“Goin’ to unload to-night, Capt’n?” asked one man.
The leader nodded.
“Must. Here’s three nights we’ve wasted hanging about, on
account of the scare about this spy, whoever he is. So to-night you’ll
get to work, and I’ll keep the lookout, and if anybody’s fool enough to
be loafing about where he’s not wanted when he ought to be in bed,
why, he can’t in fairness complain if he gets—sent home.”
He paused significantly before the last two words, and a low
murmur of appreciation and amusement went round the group. Then
the talk was carried on in short whispers, and Freda was presently
seized with the fancy that some of the questions and answers
exchanged referred to her. For the men talked about some woman,
and all the questions were directed to the repulsive-looking leader,
who after some minutes rose, with a remark a little louder than the
previous talk.
“She won’t interfere with any of us much longer, at any rate. We
can’t afford to keep spies in the camp. Now, lads, it’s time for
business. Get off to the yacht, and to business as fast as you can. I’ll
be down on the scaur in less than half an hour.”
The men pushed back their seats without delay, Kelk alone
venturing on a grumbling word of remonstrance. And then, still
watching closely from above, Freda saw a very strange occurrence.
The bare, ill-lighted cellar grew empty of all except the leader as if by
magic, the men seeming to disappear into the bowels of the earth.
As she looked, bending her head lower and lower with straining eyes
to spy out the reason of this, Freda involuntarily drew a long breath
of amazement. The solitary man left in the cellar looked up, as he
was in the act of filling his own glass once more from the stone jar.
The girl drew back with a cry, for a look of intense malignity passed
over the man’s wrinkled face.
“Hallo!” he exclaimed very quietly, blinking up at her, “so it’s you, is
it? Playing the spy as usual?”
He muttered an oath below his breath, and came close under the
opening in the floor.
“Just throw down that rope,” he continued peremptorily.
“What rope?” asked Freda, trembling.
“Come, you know well enough. You haven’t got eyes in your head
for nothing.” He paused, but Freda remained motionless. “Now then,”
he added with a sudden access of anger and a stamp of his foot on
the stone floor, “throw down the rope-ladder I came down by. Do you
understand that?”
But Freda only attempted to get away. Excited by anger and drink,
the man took from his belt a revolver, which he pointed up at her.
This action, strangely enough, checked Freda’s impulse to retreat.
She looked down at him straightforwardly and fearlessly, eye to eye.
“Do you think you can make me obey you by shooting me?” she
asked simply.
“I think you are a d——d ungrateful little chit,” answered the man
sullenly. But he lowered the weapon in his hand.
“Ungrateful!” faltered Freda, the great fear rising again in her
heart. “Ungrateful!” she repeated. “Then you are—are you—my
father?”
“Of course I am,” he answered sullenly. “Pretty filial instincts you
seem to have!”
Freda was overwhelmed. For a few moments she sat transfixed,
looking down on this newly-found parent with undisguised horror.
“Well, aren’t you going to obey me?” repeated he with rather less
ferocity of tone.
“Yes,” whispered Freda hoarsely.
She drew back a step or two from the opening in the floor, and
began to grope about with cold, clammy fingers for the rope-ladder.
At last she found it and threw it down.
If she had not been so benumbed with amazement and grief at
this discovery, she would have been frightened by the savage
exclamation with which the man set his foot on the ladder. As it was,
she heard nothing, saw nothing until she suddenly felt herself pulled
up by the arm. Dragged to her feet against her will, paralysed with
alarm, she turned to see the grinning, withered face held close to
hers, full of spite and malignity.
“Now,” said he, “I’m going to give you a lesson for your
disobedience.”
With a shudder and a low cry, Freda struggled with him, avoiding
the meeting with his eyes.
“Don’t,” she whispered hoarsely. “Don’t. I wish to remember my
obedience, my duty. I can’t if you treat me like a dog.”
He gave a short, rasping laugh.
“I sha’n’t do that,” he said. “I respect a dog.”
At the brutal words and tone, Freda, by a sudden movement,
wrenched herself free for an instant, and looked him steadily in the
face.
“Now,” she said, “I know that you have been deceiving me. You
are not my father!”
“We’ll see about that. Come here.”
He seized her by the right wrist, giving it such a violent twist that
she cried out with pain. “Now if you struggle any more or cry out, I’ll
just give you a broken arm to match your broken leg.”
He gave her arm another wrench to prove that his threat was not
an idle one, and the girl with difficulty suppressed a moan. Just as he
gripped her arm more tightly to inflict further punishment for this
insubordination, a change came quite suddenly over his face; he
dropped her arm at once, and sliding over the floor as stealthily and
rapidly as a cat, he ran down the rope-ladder, and disappeared from
view just as his four subordinates had done.
Freda was bewildered, and not one whit relieved at his
disappearance. It only seemed to augur some fresh misfortune. As
she stood where he had left her, dazed, miserable, still nursing her
arm for the pain, she heard another step behind her. Her endurance
had been tried too much; she could not face a fresh enemy, as she
believed the newcomer to be. Putting her hands before her face, she
turned and stepped backwards, away from him, murmuring broken
entreaties, interrupted by sobs. As she retreated, she felt that the
intruder was pursuing her, and fled faster and faster.
“Stop, child, stop,” cried at last a voice she knew. At the same
moment she felt that she had gone a step too far, and was falling
through the opening in the floor. But even as she felt this, strong
arms were thrown round her, and she found herself in a warm clasp
of kindliness. Opening her eyes, she saw who her preserver was,
saw too that his eyes were full of tenderness.
“Crispin! Crispin!” she cried.
But the next moment, with a wild shriek, she flung her arms round
his neck in a passionate embrace.
“No, no, not Crispin, you are not really Crispin! You—are—my
father!” she sobbed out with a burst of hysterical tears and laughter.
CHAPTER XXII.
Not even the stolid silence with which he received her
demonstrative outburst could dissuade Freda from her new belief
that this man, whom she had always known as Crispin Bean, was
really her father. She wondered, as she looked into his stern, rugged
face, and noted the half involuntary tenderness in his eyes as he
looked at her, how she could ever have doubted it. She chose to
believe now that she had really known it all the time, and that she
had only been waiting for him to declare himself. This, however, he
was not ready to do even now.
“I am Crispin, Crispin,” he said, while he patted her soothingly on
the shoulder, “remember that.”
He did not speak harshly, but even if he had done so she would
not have been afraid of him. She was so overjoyed to have found her
father, as she still obstinately believed she had done, that she was
ready to submit to any condition it might be his fancy to impose.
“Yes, Crispin,” she said meekly, nestling up to his shoulder and
looking with shy gladness up in his face, “I will remember anything
you tell me, Crispin.”
He put his arm round her with a sudden impulse of tenderness,
and Freda fancied, as he looked into her eyes, that he was trying to
trace a resemblance to her mother; she fancied, too, by a look of
content mingled with sadness which came over his face, that he
succeeded.
“I heard you crying out as I came in,” he said at last, abruptly.
“Was it my footsteps that frightened you?”
“No,” said Freda hesitatingly.
“What was it, then?”
“A man, a man I have seen about the house before, came up from
there,”—she pointed to the hole in the floor—“and frightened me. He
said he was my father.”
Crispin looked black.
“How did he frighten you?” he asked shortly.
“He saw me looking through at him and some other men—dreadful
looking men—who were talking together; and I think he was angry
because I saw them. So he made me throw the rope down to him,
and he came up, and he was very angry.”
And Freda shuddered at the recollection.
“He didn’t hurt you, threaten you, did he?”
She hesitated.
“Not much. Perhaps he didn’t mean to hurt me at all, only to
frighten me. But I was frightened.”
And she hid her face against Crispin’s shoulder.
“Jealous brute, he shall suffer for this!” he muttered angrily.
Turning to her suddenly again he asked: “Did you hear what the
other men said? Did they frighten you?”
“I didn’t hear much, and none of them saw me except that one
man. But, oh, Crispin, they are dreadful people! Why do you have
anything to do with them?”
“Little girls shouldn’t ask questions,” he answered rather grimly.
But Freda would not take his tone as a warning. Indeed she had
an object of vital importance at her heart.
“But there was something they said, something I did hear, which I
must tell you about, even if I make you angry—Crispin. There is a
man whom they want to hurt, perhaps to kill; they said so. They are
going to be out on the scaur to-night, and if he is there, as they
expect, the wicked man, the worst of them all, said he would be on
the watch.”
“Well, a man may watch another without hurting him. Like a foolish
girl, who listens to what doesn’t concern her, you have half-heard
things, and jumped to a ridiculous conclusion.”
But Freda was not to be put off like that. She rose from the bench
on which they had been sitting side by side, and stood before him so
that she could look straight into his face.
“No, no,” she cried vehemently. “I know more than you think, and I
know they meant harm to John Thurley, who was kind to me, and
wanted me to go away because he thought I was lonely and not
taken care of.”
Crispin glanced up hastily, with a guilty flush on his face.
“Mrs. Bean—Nell looks after you, doesn’t she?” he asked sharply.
“Oh,” said the girl with a little half-bitter laugh, “I am fed all right;
but perhaps Mr. Thurley thinks that food isn’t quite all a girl wants.”
Crispin got up abruptly, almost pushing her aside, and began
walking about the room, as if in search of something to do, to hide a
certain uneasiness which he felt. He kicked a coil of rope into a
corner, and shifted one of the bales that had got a little out of place.
“I know,” he burst out suddenly, “that I—that you have not been
treated well. You have been neglected, shamefully neglected. Of
course you ought never to have come. It was a mistake, a caprice of
temper on the part of—your father. Then when you came, of course
you ought to have been sent back; it was cruel and wrong to keep
you here. But by that time—you had brought—something, a ray of
humanity, perhaps, or of sunshine, to—somebody, and so you
stayed. And—and of course it was wrong, and somebody—is sorry.”
Freda, touched, breathless, was drinking in every word, with her
great brown eyes fixed upon him. She flew up at the last words, and
forgetting even her crutch, limped across to him and fell into his
arms.
“Oh,” she whispered, “but you should have said so, you should
have told me! And then if you had wished me to live on here like this
for a year, ten years, without ever even seeing your face, I would
have done it gladly, if I had only known you cared, that it gave you
one spark of comfort or satisfaction. Oh, you believe me, do you
not?”
He could not help believing her, for truth and devotion were
burning clear in her eyes. But it puzzled, it almost alarmed him.
“You—you are strangely, ridiculously sentimental,” he said, trying
to laugh. “How did you come by all these high-flown notions?”
“Whatever I feel God put into my heart, when he sent me to you to
make you happy again, as you were when my mother was alive.”
He half-pushed her away, with a sharply-drawn breath of pain; for
she had touched the still sensitive place.
“Ah, child,” he said, “they have educated you on fairy tales. There
is no going back to peace and happiness and innocence to men like
me. The canker has eaten too deep.”
These words gave Freda a sudden chill, recalling to her unwilling
mind the mysterious murder of Blewitt. She shuddered, but she did
not draw away.
“Well,” said Crispin brusquely, “if you are frightened you can go
away. I’m not detaining you.”
She looked up with a flushed face, full of sensitive feeling.
“I am sorry and sad with thinking of things which can’t be undone,”
she said softly; “but I am not frightened.”
He put his hand gently upon her head. She fancied that she heard
him murmur: “God bless you.” In a few moments, however, he
withdrew his hand abruptly, and said that he must “be off.”
“And you must go out of this place,” he continued in his harder
tone. “We don’t allow intruders here, you know.”
He led her up the stone staircase to the panel-door, which he
unlocked. Then he helped her through into the gallery, and said
“Good-night” in his usual matter-of-fact, brusque manner. But Freda
was not to be repulsed. Before he could close the door, she caught
his hand, and held it firmly, forcing him to listen to her.
“Crispin,” she whispered, “remember what I said. John Thurley
was kind to me. Don’t let them hurt him. Promise.”
But he would not promise. His face grew stern again, and he put
her off with a laugh as he freed his hand.
“Don’t worry yourself with silly fancies,” he said shortly. “He’s all
right.”
He closed the door sharply and fastened it. Freda remained for a
few moments listening to his footsteps as he went down the stone
stairs. Then remembering with excitement, that “Crispin” had
forgotten to ask her how she got in, and that the way through the
library into the locked-up portion of the house was still open, she
went downstairs, and passed again through the door among the
bookshelves.
She would try and get down to the scaur by the secret way the
smugglers used.

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