September 10, 1875

Under Oriental Skies

James made the most preposterous of declarations this morning after breakfast. (Why does everything have to happen just after breakfast?) Oh, the very thought of it sends a shiver down me!

'Victoria, have you been writing on your diary recently?'

'Yes, I have.'

'Well, you know there are times when I fill in my vacant moments by writing a diary myself. But they are not my thoughts. Well, they are, and yet they are not. Though I must say that I do not quite know the difference between these two. I write on my diary pretending to be a woman. It has been an overwhelming experience at times, you know? The more I realise how different I am from you, the deeper it sinks into me how estranged I am from myself.'

I was too startled to speak out for a long time. I must say that I still do not understand what James meant. Say, could I start writing on these pages from tomorrow pretending to be a man? Oh, the arrogant pretence of it! Only a man could rise, or should I say sink, to such shameful depths of megalomania. Are we so malleable, plastic, and unencumbered that we can pick up and throw away ourselves with every passing wind?

And what would it even mean for me to write as a man? Would I have to see the world through a man's eyes, feel it through his heart, and understand it through his mind (and, I must hasten to add, eat the dinner cooked for him through his stomach)?

I find myself going back to St. Augustine once again : Quaestio mihi factus sum. Indeed, I have become a question to myself.

No, I must stop now, for my head seems to swim round and round in circles. I distantly remember my cousin, now Lord Munro, speaking to me on this matter years ago.

'Victoria', he said, when I was asking him about what would happen if I were to reach the end of the sky and put my hand through it, 'A full-scale assault of the human reason on itself, that the Ancients used to call Philosophy. And Philosophy, my dear Victoria, is a skill suitable only for the robust minds of men.'

Perhaps Lord D'Acre was right. Only I wish he would someday read this diary and see for himself how this full-scale assault takes place every day on its pages.