Nobody could tell him. He had to find out the way. He had within him what was worth saying; had not yet learned how to say it. The massed testimony of the masters lay heavily undigested within him; he was too richly fed, stuffed; the intricacies and complexities of technique worried and disheartened him; he felt too keenly, too deeply to keep a clear mind and a cool one.
Every sense he possessed was necessary to him in his creative work; emotion, intense personal sympathy with his characters, his theme, clogged, checked and halted inspiration, smothering simplicity and clarity. This was a phase. He had the usual experience. He struggled through it and onward.
Stephanie wrote that she had graduated, but that as her aunt was ill she would remain for the present at the hospital.
He felt that he ought to go back. And did not. He was in a dreadfully involved dilemma with his new novel, "Renunciation"—all about a woman—one of the sort he never had met—and no wonder he was in a mess! Besides that, and in spite of the gaily coloured line of rags fluttering on the clothes-line of experience, he knew very little about women. One day, when he came to realize that he knew nothing at all about them, he might begin to write about them, convincingly and acceptably. But he was not yet as far along as that in his education.
He had a desperate affair with an engaging woman of the real world—a countess. She took excellent care of herself, had a delightful time with Cleland, and, in gratitude, opened his eyes to the literary morass in which he had been wading.
Clear-minded, witty, charming, very lovely to look upon, she read and criticised what he wrote, discussed, consulted, advised, and, with exquisite tact, divining the boy’s real talent, led him deftly to solid land again. And left him there, enchanted, miserable, inspired, heart-broken, with a laughing admonition to be faithful to her memory while she enjoyed her husband’s new post at the Embassy in Sofia.
He wrote, after her departure, a poem simple enough for a child to understand. And tucked it away with a ribbon and a dried flower in his portfolio. It was the first good thing he had ever written. But he remained unconscious of the fact for a long time.