Character...

... and chosen environment is a theme threading through my blog and one I hope will continue to give insight to the reader. I recognize the limitations of the construct in literature but it serves my purposes well: I posit, more to myself than anyone else, that one can read rooms and derive knowledge of character as clearly as one can derive knowledge by observing body language. 

This isn't a new idea but it's one I find very interesting as for me blogging is much about looking inwards, backwards and forwards. I'm not too interested in product and neither am I overly moved by the seemingly endless parade of vanity and aspiration. What moves me is the hidden, the past, the old, the unregarded - that which intends to be discovered. 

Home is the subject of this blog and when I quoted the blog's title from A.E Houseman's A Shropshire Lad I knew that despite the meanderings and digressions around the basic theme I would remain true to my original intent which was to go home again but yet where I "cannot come again." 

So, again, from Michael by E.F. Benson, published as a serial in The Quiver in 1916.

"Her presence in a room counted for about as much as a rather powerful shadow on the wall, unexplained by any solid object which could have made it appear there. But most of the day she spent in her own room, which was furnished exactly in accordance with her twilight existence. There was a writing-table there, which she never used, several low arm-chairs (one of which she was always using), by each of which was a small table on to which she could put the book that was at the moment engaged on. Lace hangings, of the sort that prevent anybody either seeing in or out, obscured the windows; and for decoration there were china figures on the chimney-piece, plush-rimmed plates on the walls, and a couple of easels, draped with chiffon, on which stood enlarged photographs of her husband and her children.

There was, it may be added, nothing in the least pathetic about her, for, as far as could be ascertained, she had everything she wanted. In fact, from the standpoint of common sense, hers was the most successful existence; for, knowing what she liked, she passed her entire life in its accomplishment."