ABSTRACT
Katherine’s death spelt for Murry the end of an old life and the beginning of a new. The old life had lasted thirty-three years: to the onlooker, years of steady advance in the world, to the inlooker (and he was nothing if not that) of steady estrangement. He had won a small but recognized place for himself in English letters; he was the most influential literary critic of the day; and ‘it would be the greatest mistake in the world’, William Rothenstein was writing at this moment, in his Contemporary Portraits, ‘to regard Mr Murry’s spirit as wholly critical. Friends were kind; letters of condolence poured in from high and low: but his alienation was now complete. The inward division which had been debilitating him for years, between the craving of his heart for the security of love, and the knowledge of his mind that love was doomed, had reached an extremity.
