Selections from the Letters of Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury to Jane Welsh Carlyle (1892)

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MISS JEWSBURY'S LETTERS

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PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON

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SELECTIONS FROM THE LETTERS

OF

GERALDINE ENDSOR JEWSBURY

TO

JANE WELSH CARLYLE

EDITED BY

MRS. ALEXANDER IRELAND

AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE OF JANE WELSH CARLYLE"

PREFACED BY
A MONOGRAPH ON MISS JEWSBURY, BY THE EDITOR

LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16^th STREET
1892

All rights reserved

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INTRODUCTION

Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury was born at Measham, in Derbyshire, in the year 1812. Her father, Thomas Jewsbury, left Derbyshire, where business had not prospered well with him, about 1818, and settled in Manchester as a merchant, uniting with this business the duties of agent to the West of England Insurance Company. The family was rather large, the means rather narrow. One infant was born after the removal from Derbyshire. This was Sydney, who afterwards went to sea. The oldest of the family was Maria, afterwards Mrs. Fletcher, and she was nearly nineteen years of age when the heavy cares of the orphaned family devolved upon her. The latest born, Sydney, was but a month old at the time; Geraldine, about six years of age; and there were three other sons - Henry, Tom, and Frank. It was not until 1832 that Geraldine - the bright, fairy-like girl - was placed in the position which her sister vacated on her marriage with Mr. Fletcher; and in 1840, when Mr. Thomas Jewsbury died, and the household was broken up, Geraldine became housekeeper to her brother Frank, remaining with him until his marriage, which took place in 1853.

There was always a strong bond between the brother and sister - one that neither marriage, nor separation, nor death could alter. There had been a terrible shock to Geraldine's affections in the death of Mrs. Fletcher, her dear and only sister, who had acted a mother's part to her, and who had died in India when the sensitive Geraldine was only in her twenty-first year. So there was all the more love for Frank, and he had it! Geraldine's nature was rich in affection, sparkling with light, rapid in forming conclusions, which were not always of the wisest. Intellectually [Page viii]  she was a man, but the heart within her was as womanly as ever daughter of Eve could boast. This combination of keen intellect and truly feminine heart - this being, defenceless and tender on the one hand, and strong enough to cleave the very rocks on the other - could never, in truth, grow old, never become hardened by the world's coarse realities. She was generous to a fault, and noble-hearted, yet mentally searching and sounding depths which it were happier for the average woman to leave unsounded.

It was in 1841 that Miss Jewsbury first met the Carlyles, when the 'sage of Chelsea' pronounced her to be 'one of the most interesting young women he had seen for years - clear, delicate sense and courage looking out of her small sylph-like figure.'

He could not know how intently he was to be regarded, in time, by the 'clear, delicate sense' which animated that small frame, nor could he then be aware of the links of iron that were forged on the instant between the hearts of the two women - the sparkling, sometimes stern, Jane Welsh Carlyle, and the brilliant, but ever tender, Geraldine Jewsbury. Nor could he know how the one was to uphold the other and turn to her, nor how the two were to exchange letters that were almost love-letters through the long years that were to come. He knew not of the passionate thirst that was unsatisfied in these two fiery natures, nor how each would, at times, look to the other for a straw to hold on to in the tempest of Life. For Miss Jewsbury had cast off ancient anchors, and was drifting wildly about in search of some safe mooring, and Mrs. Carlyle had long tossed on a dark and stormy sea, and knew not peace. A friendship of nearly half a century ended - or, shall I say, only fully began - with Mrs. Carlyle's death. Miss Jewsbury stood by the narrow bed in St. George's Hospital where the friend of her heart lay, struck down by death. On that very night [Page ix]  they were to have met in bright and congenial society. 'The book was closed, when she had read but a page.' It was in 1854 that Miss Jewsbury removed to Chelsea, to be near her friend, and the letters show that the two were never apart in spirit. When Mrs. Carlyle died, in April, 1866, it was to Geraldine Jewsbury that the stricken man turned for sympathy. She, amongst all women, he felt, could and would give it. And though he characterised some of her dear remembrances of her lost friend as 'apocryphal,' he well knew that the love that had bound the two women together was one in which he had been unable to share, by reason of the lesser quantity of lovableness in himself, or its superabundance in them, or his faulty and mistaken estimate of many things - all silent when the stern lips of Jane Welsh Carlyle had closed in majestic repose upon the secrets of a woman's heart.

Miss Jewsbury had most fascinating conversational powers, a fine sense of humour, the most winning of manners, and a generous heart, which often led her straight on until, metaphorically, she dashed her head against a wall. Her sojourn with her brother Frank, before his marriage, was marked by the most delicious little parties, where literary men, and women too, felt at ease in the genial warmth, and, as Carlyle says, 'The burden was rolled from every heart.' But, with all these charming qualities, Miss Jewsbury was distinctly a literary woman, and did much hard work. Amongst her friends was W. E. Forster, with whom she visited Paris during the revolutionary excitement in May, 1848. She was a favourite with Sydney, Lady Morgan, with the late Lady Llanover, with Vicountess Combermere, and with many women of literary and artistic taste, who revelled in her bright presence. It was at her suggestion that Lady Martin (Helen Faucit) published her 'Female Characters of Shakespeare,' for which all students are so [Page x]  grateful. She assisted Lady Morgan in the arrangement of her 'Memoirs,' which, later on - namely, in 1868 - were edited and published by William Hepworth Dixon.

But this original nature of hers could not for ever find satisfaction in 'arranging' other people's brain-products. Her own brain teemed with half-formed plots and novels. In 1845 she published her first novel, 'Zoe, the History of Two Lives,' and gave a presentment of Mirabeau as a lover of her heroine. The work was immature in parts, startling and unique here and there. In 1848 came the publication of 'The Half-Sisters,' which Miss Jewsbury wanted to dedicate to Jane Welsh Carlyle. The readers of Carlyle literature will remember how this wish on her part was received. Her next tale was written for the Manchester Examiner and Times in 1851, and afterwards appeared in book-form. It was called 'Marian Withers,' and dealt ably with much that bears on life in the Lancashire manufacturing districts. There are crudities in the book, strange 'solutions of continuity,' but much that goes to the heart, and much promise of greater things. Her next novel (a little disappointing), dated 1855, was 'Constance Herbert,' and the following year saw the publication of a truly well-told tale, 'The Sorrows of Gentility,' which may be read and re-read with advantage. Her last novel was 'Right or Wrong,' published in 1859. This list, however, does not nearly represent the extent of her literary labours. She had done other work; had brought out two stories for children: 'The History of an Adopted Child' in 1852, and 'Angelo, or the Pine Forest in the Alps' in 1855; many contributions she had sent to Mr. S. C. Hall's 'Juvenile Budget'; and, what was more significant, she had come into relations with the editor of 'Household Words.' The following letter, of which the original has been in my hands, will [Page xi]  show in what very high esteem Miss Jewsbury stood with Charles Dickens: -

Copy of Letter from Charles Dickens to Miss Jewsbury.

'Devonshire Terrace, London: Feb. 1850.

'Dear Miss Jewsbury, - I make no apology for addressing you thus, for I am a reader of yours, and I hope I have that knowledge of you which may justify a frank approach.

'I don't know whether you know that I am about to commence, at the end of next month, a new, cheap, weekly literary journal, intended to displace some of the offensive matter in that form now afloat. Be this as it may, I am steadily and actively engaged in such a design, and if I could induce you to write any papers or short stories for it I should, I sincerely assure you, set great store by your help, and be much gratified in having it.

'I purpose publishing none of the writers' names - neither my own nor any others - in the periodical itself, but to give to these parents, in such a case as yours, the power of reclaiming their own children, after a certain time, if they should desire to do so. The payment, of course, is prompt and good. In no respect, I trust, would you have to regret forming the connection, and in all respects I should be truly earnest in my desire to make it most agreeable to you.

'If I were to write a whole book on the subject I hardly know that I could do more than impress you with a sense of my being in want of your aid, because I estimate its value highly. I have a kind of confidence that I cannot mean to do that so steadfastly without doing it somehow, even in this short note. Therefore I leave it here.

'Believe me, faithfully yours,

'Charles Dickens.

'Miss Jewsbury.'

[Page xii] 

It was little to be wondered at that these two quick and ardent natures understood each other; but the tribute here paid by Dickens to Miss Jewsbury as a writer stands quite apart from the fascination of her womanly nature, which shed a 'glamour' over men and women alike, and bore with it a sort of enchanted atmosphere - not valuable to the caterer for a weekly journal, though delightful in social life. Miss Jewsbury had an ambition - it was to become a journalist, to move in the world of letters as a man, a good comrade, 'one of the craft.' Except in the case of her close friendship with Jane Welsh Carlyle, the tie of friendship with women did not fetter her, whilst the easy triumph of having a man always in love with her - or, more correctly speaking, several men at a time - did not fill up the wants of a nature which had wings and wished to fly. But she was heavily handicapped in the race. For, added to the fact that she was a woman and not a man - a fact by no means to be overlooked, since woman cannot have, and almost ought not to have, what sportsmen call the 'staying' qualities - she was of a most delicately-balanced nervous constitution, and entirely unfitted to do her 'tale of bricks' in the ordinary 'hack'-fashion of the work so regularly and automatically done by male workers. Her slender frame, vibrating with every breeze that blew, was absolutely incapable of the drudgery demanded of a professional literary woman the moment she pretends to enter the lists on an equal footing with man. All her bright abilities failed her at times. And no wonder! As a well-known writer has said, 'what is woman, regarded as a literary worker? Simply an inferior animal, educated by an inferior animal. And what is man? He is a superior being, educated by a superior being. So how can they ever be equal on that particular line?' The theory meets with a constant and crushing contradiction in exceptional cases; [Page xiii]  but so much of it is true, that a woman, though she may in certain circumstances understand better, go more rapidly to work, achieve faster, in mental labour of a high order than can her fellow man, is yet liable to collapses, eclipses, failures of power, sad to behold, unfitting her for the steady strain of ever-recurring work, which to the average man is the very 'breath of his nostrils,' and which holds him up while his gentler companion must sink by the wayside, overpowered by some nervous trouble or other complication, which reminds her that, after all, she is a woman. Journalism is rather a stern occupation; its demands are of the character of the celebrated 'laws of the Medes and Persians,' and their fulfilment is wholly incompatible with a migraine or a 'day off,' unless officially permitted. Yet did this delicate woman for many years contribute constantly to the 'Athenæum' - reviewing in its pages, and wielding her strong and subtle pen in various directions, independently of her own books. So she worked, she loved, and cast a colour of rose over other and sadder lives; she wept, and dried her tears, and she arose again, to work and love once more - and what further fulfilment of a woman's true calling can be looked for in one for whom the closer, more real calling - that of wife and mother - seemed out of reach? The strong sympathy Miss Jewsbury had with her brother Frank was touching in its undisguised reality. While he was yet unmarried that bright home at Greenheys, Manchester, attracted many shining spirits - many who could shine there, and not elsewhere. Many an overladen heart laid down its 'carking care' on that genial threshold, and, later on, when Miss Jewsbury had left Manchester and gone to reside in London - near that friend of her heart, Jane Welsh Carlyle - she would still come to visit Frank, and the brother and sister seemed, even [Page xiv]  to the outer world, to forget the years and the circumstances which had placed their lots in different counties. Geraldine Jewsbury had a pretty and harmless pleasure in shocking the feelings of 'Mrs. Grundy,' and when her married brother, who was somewhat precise in his expressions and modes of thinking, met her on neutral ground - dining, perhaps, in the house of some common friend - the lively lady would deliberately give rein to her sparkling wit in remarks addressed either directly to her brother, and calculated to make his hair stand on end, or with a graceful naïveté make them audibly to her hostess, for the benefit of the whole company, and display the most impenetrable unconsciousness of what she had done!

Here was a nature with which Mrs. Carlyle, endowed by heredity with a decided strain of 'Bohemianism,' could sympathise keenly enough. The small conventionalities and meaningless proprieties of daily life were as nothing in the eyes of these two. They could laugh together, they could utter to each other the scathing judgments on men and things which neither really felt; but, what is more, they could weep together, quarrel like lovers, make peace like lovers, despair together when all was dark to both, smile when the smallest ray of sun shone on either and show each to the other the wounds which each was too proud to show to the world - those terrible hurts which a woman instinctively hides, and most anxiously from those of her own sex. Each was isolated in many ways, and the stronger one suffered more, needed more, and received more, was less able to bear sympathy, while more utterly incapable of admitting pity - that cruel would-be healer of wounds. Jane Welsh Carlyle, in a fragment of a journal kept by her, under date of March 26, 1856, says:-

'To-day it has blown knives and files - a cold, rasping, savage day excruciating for sick nerves. Dear Geraldine, [Page xv]  as though she could contend with the very elements on my behalf, brought me a bunch of violets, and a bouquet of the loveliest, most fragrant flowers. Talking with her all I have done, or could do. Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak. ... O Lord, heal me! ...'

The significant expression, 'Talking with her all I have done, or could do,' tells the tale of that dear friendship. The strangely-assorted friends could minister each to the heart-pain of the other, and on that day it may fairly be concluded that talking with Mrs. Carlyle was probably all Miss Jewsbury had done or could do!

So the matter lies in a nutshell. They could not help each other very much, in some senses, but in the highest sense of all they undoubtedly did succour each other. It was the stronger who leaned on the weaker, as we so often see in life. Mrs. Carlyle had iron and steel where Miss Jewsbury had softer substances, yet it was on Geraldine Jewsbury that the reserved woman poured some of her agony, some of her rare joy; and the attachment was no one-sided affair, if, indeed, that which deserves the name of attachment ever is so!

There are some beautiful plants which cannot grow unless trained en espalier, and such was the nature of Miss Jewsbury. Her strength lay largely in her weakness, and vice-versâ. That it should have been a woman who gave the needed support was a mere accident of fate, life, Providence - what you will!

But this was the fact, and without the feminine sympathy of Geraldine Jewsbury it may be doubted if the brave, brilliant, unhappy Mrs. Carlyle would have held on to her cross, would have stilled the beating of those restless wings which always beat against the bars, would have survived the awful moment, which comes at times to the strong, not so often to the weak - I mean the moment in which the [Page xvi]  spirit seems to ask the question of itself, 'Shall I go on or not? 'The answer to this query is by no means to be found in encyclopædias, philosophy, or reason. It must come in a heart-to-heart communion of some kind, and to Mrs. Carlyle it certainly did come in the warm, faithful, undying love of Miss Jewsbury.

There is a certain armour which proud natures are apt to rivet on themselves, from some motive or other, and which, once assumed, becomes difficult, almost impossible, to lay down, though under it a human heart may all the while be panting for relief. The struggle may or may not be apparent, but it is a desperate matter when there is felt to be no possibility of laying aside the iron links. The longed-for relaxation Mrs. Carlyle found in Miss Jewsbury, in whose intimate presence she could be herself. It was, in some sense, as though the Tragic Muse rested her head on the fairy-like bosom of an 'Ariel,' but this 'Ariel' had also depths of her own.

And the two were comforted!

It was in 1866, after Mrs. Carlyle's death, that Miss Jewsbury removed to Sevenoaks, Kent. Life had lost one of its greatest charms for her. A violent shock had been given to those mysterious links which bind men and women to life. The short time spent by that bedside in St. George's Hospital had shorn away much of what remained of the buoyancy of her keen and ardent spirit. The colour had faded from the everlasting rose, and though Miss Jewsbury still wrote at times, still retained the honouring friendship of such men as Carlyle, J. A. Froude, Huxley, and a host of other men and women who loved her, she began that slow process of ceasing to live which is one penalty brilliant natures have to pay, at times, for the superabundance of vitality granted them at an earlier period. She must have longed 'for the touch of a vanished [Page xvii]  hand, and the sound of a voice that is still.' But she said little on the subject.

Quietly she succumbed to a disease now believed by those most skilled in medical diagnosis to trace its first start very frequently to mental causes - I mean cancer. Thus smitten, she removed to a private hospital in Burwood Place, Edgware Road, London, and there went through her martyrdom - a hard, almost cruel, ending to a life with such sunny proclivities.

But care and kindness never deserted her; and among her last acts was one of loyalty, for, propped up on her bed of pain, she manfully destroyed, day by day, all the letters from Mrs. Carlyle which were in her possession, having promised that she would do so. Death stopped the process, and the dying hand left one letter, which I printed in my 'Life of Mrs. Carlyle.' In Shakespeare's words, 'The rest is silence.'

But the beloved friend had not destroyed the letters of Miss Jewsbury. She probably meant to do so, some day. She felt, perhaps, that it was hard to destroy so much love and warmth, and she had no warning given her. Hers was a summons of the sudden kind, which leaves no time for the carrying out of fixed determinations. So the letters survived, and the 'other side' can only be filled in by the heart.

During Miss Jewsbury's last illness she often asked me to tell her the little speeches of my children, any little thing about them. And I wrote, receiving and expecting no reply, in the vain hope that these innocent trivialities might beguile her of an hour of her painful change from Life to Death. For she knew the children, and had always a heart for young things. I never knew if these small chronicles of mine did her any good. I knew she had brave and noble spirits about her, who watched her last struggle [Page xviii]  with pain, and could alleviate where I could not. It was on September 23, 1880, that she folded the bright wings so sadly weighted with mortal conflict, closed her once dancing eyes, and slept in peace.

She was sixty-eight years of age at the time of her death, and was buried in Brompton Cemetery, in Lady Morgan's vault. A fitting epitaph for her would have been, 'Qui multum amavit,' for truly she loved much and well.

It is Dickens who says, 'What the poor are to the poor, only God knows.'

I would say, 'What a woman is to a woman, only a woman knows.'

And with these words I close my imperfect record of a woman whom I, too, loved, and whose letters tell what she was to one of the most remarkable women the world has known - or, rather, has not known.

ANNIE E. IRELAND.

September, 1892.

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SELECTIONS OF LETTERS

FROM

MISS JEWSBURY TO JANE WELSH CARLYLE

1841

LETTER 1.

Saturday, April 15, 1841.

DEAREST JANE, - You will think I am possessed by as great a mania for letter-writing as any of Richardson's heroines, but the fact is, I continue unable to see to do anything but what I feel specially inclined for, and I profit by it to write to you, for the time is coming when I must attend to many things which have only their necessity to recommend them. I think of you very often; indeed, you are scarcely ever out of mind. But I wish I could think of you as strong and well, though then you would no longer be the same person. But I want sadly to know how you are - do write a line, and fill your letter about yourself - I am growing really anxious to know how you are going on in every way - mind, body, and estate. I did a foolish thing yesterday, but it was so pleasant I can't find in [Page 2]  my heart to repent of it. I went to spend the day with a lady who has been very kind to me since I was shut up; who has nearly read me through your husband's lectures on Hero Worship. She lives at a large pleasant old-fashioned house in a garden with plenty of trees in it (by the way, De Quincey was born there). There was a party in the evening, and a sort of 'Masque' acted: it was got up for the holidays last Christmas, but as many of her friends had not seen it they repeated it last night. It would have done credit in all respects to Macready himself. She had provided a pair of queer spectacles for me, but I obstinately refused to look through such a destroying medium. I have only recently formed a personal acquaintance with her, though I have long known her by reputation for all manner of goodness: she is one you would like, and says things which constantly remind me of you. She was left a widow about five years since with a family of boys, and it is quite beautiful to see the way in which she has brought them up. She is a most ardent admirer of your husband, though not just what I should call a disciple; but she has taken great pains to influence the minds and habits of all the young men who come to her house and who are her sons' companions, and she doses them with your husband's books - by way of giving them right feelings and so forth. She is a Christian by way of belief and I dare not say a great [Page 3]  deal to her that lies in my heart, but she has a fine mind and fine feelings, and she is an acquisition to be very thankful for. She said something the other day that struck me. We were talking of women, and I said 'the sufferings of any individual woman, however great, seem to be absorbed in that of her sex, and the sufferings of women seem not to be recognised as altogether the legitimate evils of life. Providence does not seem to count them as items in the troubles it imposes on the world, to take no account of them.' She said, 'all must be made perfect through suffering, and a woman's trials are appointed through her affections: it is only through them that she is capable of suffering, at least I think so' - but you will be tired of hearing so much of one you do not know. (Monday morning.) I was half in hopes of a letter from you yesterday, but instead there came one from an estimable young damsel of my acquaintance, who sends me word that by way of a winter occupation she has been reading half a dozen of the stiffest Greek plays in the original! besides getting through any number of volumes of tough Puritan divinity!! and several other items equally ponderous. Well, my dear, it is certainly a great credit to one to have such virtue exemplified by one's acquaintances, and I have a great notion that old orthodox doctrine of 'imputed virtues' is correct. I can't help feeling as if I had deserved a good child's reward [Page 4]  myself when any of my friends do right! Is there any hope of seeing Carlyle on his way home? or is there any prospect of your coming through Liverpool this year? I am not going to fill my letter with what I think about those glorious lectures, because I have some questions to ask him, and I can say it then - you would smile if you knew what is at the end of my pen to say, but it would not be in mirth, and I ought to have learned, by this time, that we know not what we do when we envy; but to tell you the truth, I did for a few minutes feel there was something very dazzling in bearing the name you do! Now don't misunderstand - and think what I should not wish you to think! Walking in a triumph must needs be dazzling. It is well for a woman to be, as it were, absorbed, just in proportion to the intenseness of her passion, though every thought, feeling, and power of intellect is called into perfection, in order that it may be an offering to the one she has made her idol! A woman cannot, in her turn, be to the man all that he is to her - she cannot (except in rare cases) be the first and last object of life to him. All the great business affairs of the world must get themselves transacted by men, and only occupation that comes by necessity - and not, as a woman's occupation does, from a voluntary setting about something to avoid idleness - will prevent the most desperate devotion and the most sublime affection from being other than [Page 5]  secondary to the daily grand business affairs which keep society in shape and going. Added to which, a man does not, in a general way, understand our refinements in the matter of love; owing to our having little real occupation, our own female branch of the subject has been much more highly cultivated and comes to greater perfection than with men; we love with a desire to give them pleasure - they love us to please themselves. A man who has had le plus grand succès among women, and who was the most passionate and poetically refined lover in his manners and conversation you could wish to find, once said to me in a fit of truth (he was in a fit of remorse for circumstances I well knew, so he had no reason to pretend, and keep up appearances to me - I will tell you the tale some day): 'But I can form no idea of what women mean by those refined notions of theirs. I like a woman to love me in that way, but I do not in the least understand it. There is nothing but passion, more or less refined, in a man's love for a woman, let him talk as he will, and don't you be ready to believe any man who says the contrary.'

So, my dear, let us look our lot boldly in the face at once; if it has been given us to love - for it is not every woman who receives that terrible gift - let us submit without vain struggling as to the conditions. It brings suffering as surely as life brings death! We shall have no reward except what our own soul [Page 6]  gives us. We can never be for a continuance to the one we love what they are to us, and it is very uncertain that we may die when all that has made our life worth living is gone. It takes a great deal of misery to kill; in all this we fulfil our destiny, and we form no unimportant link in the economy of life. It may be that we women are made as we are in order that they may in some sort fertilise the world; their passionate affection, and their devotedness, though it brings no good to themselves, yet goes far towards making the world at large a better and more supportable place, and prevents its being altogether a 'den of cruelty and fierce habitations.' Do not all religions seem to shadow forth an occult law of nature in the notion (common to all) of vicarious sacrifices - the few suffering, undeservedly, to benefit the many? We shall go on loving blindly, and making our very souls as the ground for them we love. And yet, after all, let us not forget that they who cause this suffering are only acting according to their nature, and are not altogether to be blamed; they take and make use of what we give, and bring forth the effects in some other shape; we centre in them, they centre in what is exterior and lies without them, and those things of the world which they consider of importance, and for which they weary and waste themselves, likewise bring no return to them, but work on to some end which we [Page 7]  do not yet discern. We shall go on loving, they will go on struggling and toiling, and we are alike mercifully allowed to die - after a while.

I don't know whether you will agree with this, and I cannot see to argue, for my eyes are very bad and painful. Do write, please. Did you receive a long letter, and a little picture I sent you soon after I got home? Poor dear ----- is rather better, I am thankful to say. Take care of yourself. How is Mr. Carlyle? Will you give my love to him, and believe me, dearest, your most faithful and affectionate,

G. E. JEWSBURY.

You will be just blinded in trying to make this out. Kind regards to -----.

LETTER 2.

Friday - Monday (Postmark, April 19), 1841.

Dearest Jane, - I don't know that I have anything to tell you, specially worth writing down. But my eyes are still too weak to allow me to read; writing does not try them so much, and you are the only person I feel tempted to talk to just now! What would I have given to be with you this last week! though, after all, quietness and rest were the best things for you. Still, I would have liked to join my rest to yours, for I also have attained to the 'Giaour's' beatitude, and feel just now uncertain [Page 8]  whether I am alive or dead! Lying on a sofa as I am, half dreaming, half dozing, in a light that is neither light nor darkness - except for occasional twinges of recollection I should have altogether attained to a highly pacified and vegetative state, which will be changed, perhaps not for the better, so soon as I can bear the light of day. This was to have been a gay week. I was engaged to two grand parties - not fine, stilted 'conversation affairs,' but regular unsophisticated dances! - and I was obliged to send back-word to both. I had rather set my heart on one of them, at the house of one of the nicest women I know down here. It is a German family; and she is such a charming, natural, kind-hearted creature, just cultivated up (to) the most agreeable point, and stops short of any pretensions! Only to think what harlequinade tricks fate sometimes plays one! The other day Mr. ----- sent up word by my brother that he was in town, and should come up to see me. He has not been since our memorable conversation; and whilst I was rather wondering what turn things would take this time, there arrived, not him, but a most sober and reputable matron of my acquaintance, who came, she said, 'just to teach me how to net,' thinking that it would be a nice amusement for me now that I could not see to read or work! and she stayed all afternoon. ----- did not come at all for some reason or another, [Page 9]  and on the whole I was not sorry, for seeing him now is like the meeting of two ghosts on the other side Styx. Each has been connected so strangely with the history of so many feelings and incidents, which at the time seemed as if their memory could never pass away. And what has been the end of so much passionate suffering, so much love which all the parties thought would endure for ever? The woman he loved so madly - of whom he declared (to one he trusted) that he would rather obtain her friendship even, than have possession of her whole sex - died of a broken heart, or, rather, of a cancer, which Sir Astley Cooper said had been brought on by grief and anxiety of mind. She was a fine creature. I never saw her but once; but I heard of her from many quarters, and from those who knew her best. She was married to a man who did not care for her, and she, till she met -----, did not know what affection meant. His own testimony, and the way he spoke of her to me (that time we had our conversation), was enough to absolve her from all censure except the deepest commiseration. Her sister (who knew nothing of the matter) said, after her death, that she used to sit for hours gazing on the wall without seeing anything or speaking a word. When asked, What are you thinking about? - 'Oh, many things; don't talk to me!' He, for whom she had risked everything - very soon after he had obtained [Page 10]  everything - began to grow, not indifferent exactly, but satisfied. Unfortunately for her, she and her husband were obliged to leave this country; in absence she lost her influence over him. In a very short time he forced her to break with him; he married for convenance, and is now the father of a family, is a respectable man, and in prosperous circumstances. Since her death he professes, to those who knew the facts, bitterly to regret the past; but it is somewhat dubious whether these brave sentiments are real, or assumed as a piece of his respectability.

I, who was a bystander, have the recollection of the faith I then had in his good qualities, and the strong feeling I had for him, and the firm belief in his chivalrous, honourable dealing towards her, and the undoubting trust in her submission to duty, honour, and so forth. I did believe, then, in many fine things, and even now I only doubt their durability, or rather it now seems unreasonable to expect high-pressure efforts except from a steam-engine, and even that wears out; and why should we regret that things are so constituted? The fact of all that is worth having, and even life itself, being precarious, gives it a value beyond its own, and those who have an eternity to trust to, little know the desperate tenacity of those who have to make the most of Time! I cannot explain to you the superstitious [Page 11]  value I set on those I ever love, and the sort of religious feeling with which I try to guard every word or thought which might raise a shade between us.

No, my dear, you must first have no hope of anything beyond this world, before you can know how very precious is a friend we really love. This letter has been written à plusieurs reprises, for my eyes are rather worse, if anything, to-day than they were this day week, so that now I can hardly write, and what is to become of me I don't know!

I have more time for thinking than is at all agreeable. All this while I have never thanked you for your letter - it made me feel very sad. Those efforts after strength are weary things, and I doubt whether they do much good. They go to exhaust what strength we may possess. On the whole, I cannot help thinking it is the wisest to let ourselves be drifted along. Time brings quiet and strength naturally; in fact, the very change he works in us and in our feelings is equivalent to strength. There are two lines in Coleridge's translation of 'Wallenstein' that haunt me from morning to night, and have done so ever since I began to know what endurance meant. 'What pang is permanent with man? From the highest as from the vilest things he learns to wean himself, and the strong hours conquer him!' [Page 12] 

If you will, from time to time, send me word how you go on, it will be a great favour. Just now I am especially anxious to hear from you; if you cannot guess why, I won't tell you. Do not plague yourself to write long letters, but say how you are in every way; patronise the pronoun 'I' as much as I do myself! Never mind telling me anything, except inasmuch as it affects or interests you! I have not said a tithe of what I have thought of when lying on the sofa. You little know the comfort it is to me to have you to think of, nor how much I think of you. If you take an interest in my friend -----, she is rather better, at least was last Tuesday. She had a scheme in her head which had quite roused her. Heaven only knows whether it will prove wise and feasible, but even the power of hoping is no small blessing to her!

She did talk of going to the seaside in a few weeks, and it was settled that I should go with her when she went, but all is yet in a state of uncertainty.

Is your husband returned from his excursion?

I heartily hope he will be the better for it.

Will you give my love to him? He has had splendid weather. So soon as I have eyes to see to write a reputable letter, there are several knotty points I want him to solve for me, but I cannot venture to send him the sort of scrawl I bestow on you. 'Les sept cordes' are waiting for me at the [Page 13]  bookseller's, I expect, but they will not get touched yet awhile, hélas! I am too cross this morning to write any more. I am in an ill humour with my doctor, too, which is almost as bad in a patient as it would be for a hungry man to quarrel with his bread and butter! Offer my respects to your brother-in-law, and you may tell him that I have about as little to contend with as a young woman of 'my sort' could hope to find anywhere. To the immortal credit of all the people here be it spoken, they take me as I am, which is a great virtue in my eyes of course; and then they hang up Nymphs, and Cupids, and Psyches, &c., &c., in their diningrooms, so that, 'sans peur et sans reproche,' as I told you before, I have said ten thousand things to you in my own mind which are not written in this letter. I wish you were here to-day. An individual I once named to you is coming here this evening. It is well for us that we cannot solve all the problems presented to us in this world; for my own part, I am quite reconciled that my heart should be deceitful sometimes. I don't want to know the truth of what it means, and if 'Job' had been a wise man he would never have asked the question. Give my remembrances to -----, your damsel, and believe me, most affectionately yours,

G.E.J.

P.S. - I began a little tale called the 'Lune de [Page 14]  Lait' in one of your French newspapers. Could you spare me some of the succeeding numbers to finish it? for I took great interest in it. I will return them by post - if it is not convenient, never mind, however.

LETTER 3.

Tuesday (Date of Postmark, May 6, 1841).

Dearest Jane, - You must take up with scraps till I can see to indite a regular reputably written letter. I have been doing something, and I half fear that, like most busybodies, I have been doing wrong. Some friends of mine are gone up to London this week - Mrs. ----- and her father. This father is a great collector of pictures, and is considered one of the first judges in the county; he has a valuable collection of works of art. It struck me that he would be a most likely person to do something if he could see Count Peppoli's pictures, even if he did not buy; his word and judgment would do good (down here, at least). I wrote a line to ----- to tell him to get him to see them if possible, but as I recollected that ----- has not the entrée, will you (if you think the thing worth the trouble) send any sort of a talisman to him which may open the door; understand that I do not want you to be plagued with the people in any shape or way, but Mr. -----, great, rough, and sooty-looking man as he [Page 15]  is, has done the work of two generations towards civilising the town he lives in, is always buying pictures himself, and making other people buy them too. Do not think me taking a liberty, and don't plague yourself in any way. How are you? are you going on getting strong? Heaven knows when I shall see again fairly! Is Carlyle come back? A friend has been good enough to come and read to me all day in 'Hero-Worship'; but I cannot write any more now.

Ever yours,

G. E. J.

LETTER 4.

Monday, June 15, 1841.

Dearest Jane, - There is a great deal I want to say to you, but when I begin to write to you it seems difficult, almost impossible, to put it down as it really is.

I would give the world - that is, all my expectations in it - for the space between four walls where I might talk to you in peace for an hour, so many things occur every day which I should like you to know at the time, but I cannot patronise 'small beer' so far as to chronicle them, and besides, they are only interesting for the minute - like newspapers. But there is not a day that I do not most sadly want you. Your letters tell me little or nothing about yourself, and, besides, you don't like writing, [Page 16]  and I cannot find the heart to plague you to write, and then there is so little connection between the world you live in and that which I live in, every day seems to separate us more, and these stiff documents are the only substitute for speech and sight; I want to see you more than I can tell you. I cannot write half I want to say, and I dare not write even a quarter of what could be written, so these letters are very unsatisfactory all ways. One thing you may do, however - tell me how you are, and how you go on; never mind other people or news of any sort, it is you I want to hear about. I think of you a great deal, and with an anxiety I cannot account for. I can't express my feelings even to myself, only by tears; but I am no good to you, and I, who wish to be and do anything that might be a comfort to you, can give you nothing but vague, undefined yearnings to be yours in some way. I can use no expressions of affection. I don't like using them. I am jealous of giving you what I have ever offered to another, and, besides, talk as much as I will, it's the same thing said over and over; you will let me be yours, and think of me as such, will you not? How are you? Do you sleep well still? That is my summum bonum of felicity. I can get through any given amount of plague if I may sleep all night without dreaming. I am come home again ten days since, and, after all, I am best here, though it is not much [Page 17]  I do. My eyes are, I suppose, well, but I cannot use them for long together, and the green spectacles are still in requisition. They are weak, my dear, and weakness in all things is the worst sort of ailment; au reste I am well and have nothing to plague me just now, but I suppose that is a beatific state which never lasts long.

My friend ----- is much better, and I am relieved from much anxiety about her. I have begun to do something, and I have a strong notion that it will have to be undone again. I think we are both of us mad; but there is a sort of instinct sometimes which leads one to do things that seem to have no profit in them beyond the fact that they ought not to be done! What I am after now is something of the kind you once suggested. One day, as we were walking in the grounds, Mrs. ----- exclaimed, looking at the house, 'If we could but make those walls tell all they have ever seen or heard for the last seven years, they would teach (to women especially) more than they have ever been taught yet.' This had no reference to anythnng previous, but we began settling all the various affairs that had been transacted there, and the fierce passages of life and suffering we had seen pass, and our philosophy on the same! Well, we agreed to make it into a history in letters. The actual letters that were written from time to time have been destroyed; but now that some of the persons are [Page 18]  dead, and others married or removed far away, there is a strange sort of pleasure in working out one's own peculiar notions on certain subjects. I should like you to see it, but I much fear that it would be objected to if I asked leave. I wonder whether you would agree with us! Do you remember in one of your letters you tell me that 'I am clever, but wrong on certain points'? How much I wish that you would give me some of your own philosophy some time! One day, whilst at Seaforth, a youth I have known a long time took it into his head to be very confidential, and preached his own gospel for the space of a whole afternoon! He had been thrown on the world very young to shift for himself, and a real little youth of the world he had become. He looked so young - though he is twenty-five - that one could not call him a man! The mere facts that he told me were not disguised and beautified, yet the morale that stood out clear was to the effect that men cannot afford to be very long or very much in earnest in their intercourse with women; that when a woman got thoroughly earnest and engrossed, a man who had any regard for himself or her would break off at once! That une grande passion 'was an embarrassing affair, and was very dangerous to people who had to get a living,' and that he had always 'broken off' as soon as he came to his senses; that women seemed to think it was the only object of interest in life, and [Page 19]  it was a desperate thing to let them go too far. One thing specially struck me - though this was not said to me, only repeated to me - viz., that all men who have received an English education hate a woman in proportion as she commits herself for them, though a woman cares for a man exactly in the proportion in which she has made sacrifices for him, evidently thinking and showing, he thought, that all that was in the world - business and riches and success and so forth - were the only realities, and the only things worth making objects! He is neither better nor worse, but an average specimen of the generality of men. He once did me a material piece of kindness, and he was not in love with me; he had taken a fit of kindness to a friend of mine, and he raised himself in my opinion, and showed more real feeling than I had supposed in him. To be sure, the fact that my friend did not care about him would account for his good behaviour; it was not put in his power to behave ill! This will seem stupid to you, not knowing the people and the circumstances; but it had a great interest for me, and it set me moralising to think how much more miserable we should be than we are if we had our eyes opened to discern always true from make-believe. I have great sympathy with that prayer of the Ancient Mariner, 'O let me be awake, my God, or let me sleep alway!' There is something [Page 20]  else I long very much to tell you, but I dare not in a letter.

I wish there were some photographic process by which one's mind could be struck off and transferred to that of the friend we wish to know it, without the medium of this confounded letter-writing!

I want your counsel, and I cannot even ask for it! Well, my dear, I must not omit to tell you that, by way of natural female occupation, I am engaged in preparing a 'baby basket' for my sister-in-law, who is expecting her first little one next month. This is the 'ha'penny worth of bread to so much sack.'

I am going to drink tea and take my work to a very nice lady, one who interests me much - a real specimen of an English woman. She is married, and devoted to her husband, who is also a real specimen of an English mari. I am sure she is not happy, by several little observations she has dropped, though she would start to think she had given such an impression; but there is a great deal that wants saying about matrimony. Who dare say it? I have read the 'Sept Cordes' at last, and full of genius it is - more so, I think, than any other of the writer's works. No one but herself could have written it; but what a pity that such splendid truths should be buried in the earth! She might do so much more than she has done.

Why will she do nothing but write novels? I [Page 21]  am also deep in a very different book, and am equally chained to it, though I had to begin by an odd volume. It is altogether fascinating, and there is such a fine, healthy feeling through it all, and so much human sympathy, and wit enough to endow all the libraries of useful (?) knowledge 'ever inflicted on the world.'

It was a volume of 'Rabelais' I got hold of the other day, and shall not rest till I have got the beginning of him. I cannot give you an idea of the delight it has given me. The Old French is a great bore; but it is well worth the plague of it.

A poor lady of my acquaintance is in great trouble; she has just lost a daughter, of whom I was very fond, under most painful circumstances, and I must go and see her. It makes my heart sick to see her. Her husband is a great scoundrel; he left his family, after tormenting them to death, and now he increases their trouble by all sorts of vexations, and it makes me mad to hear people coolly say, 'I understand Mrs. ----- has a violent temper,' as if a woman was to be steel and marble under the most unprovoked outrages! I wish I might say my say about matrimony. This is a tremendously long letter.

God bless you, dear love. Take care of yourself, and write as soon as you can.

Ever yours,

G.E.J.

[Page 22] 

LETTER 5.

Addressed to Mrs. Carlyle when she was at Templand, on her last visit to her mother, Mrs. Welsh.

Thursday (Postmark, July, 1841).

Carissima mia, - I am not going to write you a long letter; I only want to tell you that I hope all your perils and annoyances are over. Your cousins promised to send me word when they received tidings of your safe arrival. You will have plenty to do, so do not, my darling, plague yourself to write to me just yet. To have seen you has given me enough to think about, and you are never out of either my head or my heart. After you left on Tuesday I felt so horribly wretched, too miserable even to cry, and what could be done? I was obliged to go back into the drawing-room, and listen to that doctor talk about the transmigration of souls across me to that sedate-looking young damsel, who replied, like Mrs. Chapone and Hannah More 'rolled into one,' and I had taken up Mrs. Ellis's 'Women of England,' which made the oddest running commentary you can imagine, till the whole thing became so exquisitely absurd that, in spite of everything, I began to laugh, and so immoderately that neither the lady nor gentleman considered me worth speaking to for the rest of the evening. When your cousins returned, it gave me great comfort to hear that the Captain was such a respectable man, and your cousin Alick [Page 23]  quite won my heart by the judicious things he said to satisfy me that, on the whole, you would have had more annoyances by land, in changing carriages, &c., than even by sea. I don't know whether it really would have been so, but I felt glad for anyone to say so, and to try to make me believe it. He is a very nice youth indeed, and seems so fond of you. Your cousins were exceedingly kind to me, and the eldest, with the young lady who had stayed all night, escorted me to the railway next morning. I found a letter from 'my papa' waiting for me, saying that he was to be in Liverpool yesterday, and giving his address, so I suppose I am restored to favour again. I felt very vexed that I should have just missed seeing him; however, I suppose he will come over. Take care of yourself, dear love. Write to me when you are settled, and tell me how all goes with you, and whether you are materially worse for being in the open air all night, and whether it rained, &c. - tell me everything about you. This is not intended for a letter, but I could not rest without writing to ask you how you did, though I cannot have the answer for a long time.

I have no time to say more just now, except that I am ever and always yours,

G. E. J.

P.S. - You will offer my respects to your husband, [Page 24]  and tell him that I tried to remember one of the young lady's speeches, thinking it would be a good epigraph for his article on 'George Sandism,' only I despair of doing it justice - the manner in which it was debité - 'I think decidedly that all novels - modern ones especially - ought to be burnt.' 'What!' said I, 'all of them?' 'Yes, let them all go together. People would do far better to study history, and if they were properly trained to it they would find it quite as amusing. I could not read a novel for half an hour!' It reads flat, but as she said it, it was impayable. Good-bye, dear one!

LETTER 6.

(Postmark, July 6, 1841.)

Dearest Jane, - Your note, which by some extraordinary chance has come to hand to-day, has almost driven me crazy with delight at the idea of seeing you so soon; but why are you obliged to go straight to Liverpool? Why can you not come and spend a few days here?

I have plenty of accommodation for you, for ----, the baggage and all. I will go on with you to Liverpool, if you like, afterwards; but come to me first. It will make scarcely any difference in the expense; or, if you will not bring ---- and the baggage, bring yourself and send her on to announce your arrival. [Page 25] 

Come; I can discern no reason why you should not. You do not like anyone in your room, I know, so you shall have one all to yourself. I am just wild to see you. There is so much for you to tell me. Don't plague yourself to write a letter. Just write 'Yes' on a piece of paper, and I shall know that I may expect you - that all is well with you. I can guess: your happiness will be no dream; you have earned it by doing and suffering like no other woman, and I have great faith in the doctrine of recompense or retribution. I never knew it fail, and I have seen scores of instances. You have not yet gathered the harvest of your self-sacrifices, but it will come, and be worth the long patience you have had for it. Mine is not a vain theory. It is as true as cause and effect can make it. We cannot avoid or avert the consequences of our actions, whether they be good or bad. But I am too happy to philosophise. I shall see you in a few days. Till I do see you, I cannot believe the fact. In a parenthesis - your husband's taking himself off round by Newcastle will sadly damage the plans of our Royal Institution directors. Now that they are clear of the election they were purposing to invite him to visit us in March, and to give us a lecture, and they would have made all sorts of fuss with him. I had told Mrs. ----, who is the mother of one of the directors, and she had told them that you would [Page 26]  be at Liverpool on your way to Scotland, and they intended to try to catch him en route. But they must be disappointed this time; but, so that you come, I care for nothing and no one else. It is only yourself I want to see.

Ever, dear love, your most affectionate

GERALDINE.

(In tremendous haste.)

LETTER 7.

Tuesday (Postmark, August 4, 1841).

My darling Jane, - I thank God that you are safe on dry ground once more, and if ever you go on board a steamer again you shall have a strait-waistcoat and a commission of lunacy shall be issued against you! Your long letter left me rather uneasy about you, and I was very glad of your cousin's little note; pray thank her for it! How very kind of you to get her to write it! I am as busy as any old fairy godmother; whether I am doing good or harm heaven and the event only know, or whether I shall prove a most magnanimous and devoted friend or a great rascal I am sure I can't predict. But have you never noticed that when one has been trying to do something really good one is much nearer committing some special sin than when one keeps on in the selfish, matter-of-fact prudence of minding one's [Page 27]  own business, and that alone? I would give a great deal to see you just now.

My own affairs have now, I think, come to a crisis. I was first driven half-mad, what between real emotion and rage and indignation, and now I have, I think, subsided into a calm which, it is to be hoped, will be final on this point at least. Last Monday I was invited to a christening, and requested to stand proxy for a relative who lives at a distance; my friend was one of the sponsors, and by some chance we were left tête-à-tête for more than an hour. Well, my dear, nothing heroic passed; when he entered the drawing-room of the house where the christening was, I was lying on the sofa in that state of weariness when one feels as if one were sinking into it. (I had been walking a great deal.) In a few minutes the only other person in the room left to dress.

I did not rise - I could not, and because it was easier to lie still. At first he tried to make a sort of general common-place conversation about the pretty houses that are building in the neighbourhood, and some compliments on my improved appearance, made exactly in the sort of half-gallant manner in which the most ordinary acquaintance could be addressed - one in the habit of being seen every day - for there was no strangership in the tone. I could have stood anything but civility, and I am afraid I [Page 28]  uttered an ejaculation much stronger than became the lips of a young lady.

I was much more astonished at myself than he seemed to be, for he continued for a minute in the most composed and gentle strain, and then, professing to think that I seemed fatigued, took up a book. I kept my eves shut, and lay as still as if I had been dead, instead of feeling every vein beating within me like a sledge-hammer; after a while other people came into the room, and he said, 'You have been asleep, I think!!!' I said, 'you know that I have not.' I was sorry I said anything, afterwards. As if Fate had determined to mock us with opportunities which would have made a pair of lovers happy for a month, it was fixed that we were to walk home in the evening, and after we had all started some change in the procession made it necessary for him to offer me his arm. There was no possibility of avoiding it, and we walked more than a mile together. He still seemed as unconscious as ever, but this time he began to tell me of some of his affairs, and especially of the prosperity of a scheme he has been long engaged in, and from his anxiety about which I know dates the beginning of his indifference to myself. He calmly went on to tell me of all the hindrances and disappointments and difficulties of all sorts he had had to encounter, that he wondered he had been able to persevere, but that now he thought things [Page 29]  would go on well. No more notice, interest, or reference shown or made towards myself than if I had not existed! I never felt till then how utterly useless and valueless I was to him, and how unintelligible to him is all I have suffered for the last three years; and yet he is a man, walking about and looking like other men, and seems on excellent terms with himself besides!

I was too oppressed and too helpless to cry, and besides, now I know that what my lot has been is, in the main, that of every woman who does as I have done - for those who try to make their lot contrary to custom, are always broken in the attempt.

I might have been spared many aggravating circumstances, but the end must soon come. I have been made more melancholy by a speech last Saturday my papa made at random, which seemed to shew the end that must needs come to all these things. I cannot tell you how good and kind he was - he is a man worth calling a man, he is strong enough to be trusted - and yet, if one knew the secrets of his life, how much misery he may have caused! It seems as if when one loved another thoroughly, it only gives them the power of making us suffer. I have just received two letters which have quite bewildered me, one from poor ---- and the other from Betsy. I fear much that ---- will not live long, and I could [Page 30]  find in my heart to wish her dead; she wants that element of resistance which is indispensable if people are to get through the world - she is a weed, drifted by the current - and yet how gloriously well she has been treated.

---- has been spending a couple of days with her. He called on me as he passed through, but I was not at home. I wish I could send you her real letter about what passed; however, the one she has written for ---- is quite to the life. I like it much; what do you think of it? Some of the doctrine I should have wished insisted on more; however, it is all as true as a copy from the life can be! She has written a great deal more of the tale, and I think she improves. I am not allowed to do anything just now, my eyes are so very weak.

This letter is not half what I intended it to be when I sat down. I have said little or nothing that I wanted to say. How are you? Do write me a good account of yourself. I think of you as Catholics think of their saints, to keep them out of evil; as regards me, the odds are in the devil's favour, for I am obliged to be idle, and, though a sober matron told me this morning that it was very beneficial to retire within ourselves and meditate, c'est selon, and it does not agree with me just now!! Does ---- take care of you? Thank Heaven you are within reach of your mother! I have a most superstitious [Page 31]  faith in a mother, and I feel glad every day to think that you are not far from yours.

Do you know, my love, that I have actually been resolving to try to be conformable and more proper-behaved in my manners and conversation, in order to be more of a credit to you! If I am to be your friend I must, and ought to, be a more responsible and less whimsical person than I am!!

I would wish to be worth something for you. Thank Carlyle for the French newspaper, and give my best respects to him. I am anxiously looking for his 'George Sand' article, in the hope of a word in season. I will write to you again - I am too harassed just now, and I have been besides much annoyed by something since I began this letter. ...

LETTER 8.

Seaforth House (Date probably August, 1841).

Dearest Jane, - Your most welcome letter was forwarded me here when I came last week.

I made up my mind to start suddenly at the last, having made the brilliant discovery that I might as well transact my idleness in company as in solitude. And there was another reason too. I feared being alone any longer: it is no fancy one can be stronger and braver when with others. Do you remember [Page 32]  the story of Blue Beard's key - how, when the stain was scoured out on one side it reappeared on the other? Well, it is true of many things besides. This is a most beautiful place close by the sea, and I am with the friend you have so often heard me name, and I have the respectable comfort of feeling sans gêne in every respect. We are something like that piece of science which says that 'two substances made perfectly smooth by grinding together will adhere without any cement.' She was the first intimate friend I ever made, and we have been gradually grinding together for the last seven years. She takes as much interest in all that interests me as if it were herself, and vice versâ. She is a splendid creature in every way, except that she cannot keep counsel.

Of course, I never trust her except with what concerns myself; and I run the risk, for she is so true and generous that her sympathy quite outbalances the inconvenience. She comes nearer to my notion of a woman of genius than any other I have yet seen. She has a fine creative faculty, which is my notion of genius, and she is strong, can live without either the affection or sympathy of others - live on her own resources in a way I cannot understand; but when she does care for anyone it is an affection that is as strong and enduring as a rock. [Page 33] 

She is wild after your husband's books, and I have been saving up my eyes to read the lectures. Her sister, a most fine character also, is here too, so we are quite a party, and you would laugh to see us getting half crazy about the book. I have contrived to get the 'Sept Cordes' at last, but all my eyesight has so far been spent on the lectures. They are all gone to Liverpool this morning, but I begged to be left behind. I cannot tell you how glad I am to hear that you keep well. Don't plague yourself about anything. Your letter has made me quite happy, for I was beginning to feel the want of hearing from you. Nevertheless, I like better to think of you as well and keeping quiet, than that you should exert yourself to indite letters and tell me what you are about, and so interrupt the process.

My eyes you ask after. Hélas! they are weak, very weak still, and I am become a connoisseur in the different shades of green spectacles. I can do nothing without them, and have no less than three pairs at this minute. Give my kind regards to ----, and tell her that the garment is actually in my drawer at home, that its appearance here has caused me as much speculation as its disappearance did her; but I, being a philosopher, concluded that some inquiry would in time be made after it, when the owner discovered the loss. I send you some German newspapers. I don't know whether you care about [Page 34]  those things, but the people here tell me it is a very fine article. I, having only had an account of it in broken English, don't know much about the matter, but the writer seems to have some notion of proper reverence; only, on the whole, I have a great deal of the Catholic in me, and I don't approve of people sitting in judgment on my popes, even to admire them. They ought to 'hear and obey,' and 'anathematise those who do not.' This paper is too thin, so that I dare not write on each side of it, and I can't see to read over what is written, and the governess is going to the post and will take this. So good-bye, my dear love. Take care of yourself. How is Carlyle after his journey? Write when you have nothing better to do and are up to it. Remember that I love you always.

Ever yours,

G.E.J.

LETTER 9.

Addressed to Mrs. Carlyle, under cover to Mrs. Welsh, Templand.

[Fragment.]

(Date, September.)

... Whether it will ever subside, I don't know. I think not. He has wearied me out, and I feel almost to despise him; he has destroyed all interest in himself. So, my dear, your counsel is very easy to practise just now and yet, up to that day, a word, a look, or even less, would have made me more his than ever.

There is but a point between 'too late' and 'there is yet time' - that once passed, it is for ever after nothing but too late! I have been in this place - a beautiful sea-bathing place - about a fortnight. I am staying with a very old friend, who has been ordered here for her health; but I hope now that the danger is in great measure over. You have heard me speak of her as being such a sweet specimen of an English lady, and also as being so desperate about a disagreeable un-English husband, who did not understand anything desperate; however, he has found great favour in my eyes of late for his real, thoughtful kindness, and the thorough healthy affection he has shown through all her illness. I quite repent sundry disagreeable speeches I have made about [Page 36]  him, so this is a sort of amende to satisfy my conscience!

----, I am glad to say, was getting better in every way the last letter I had from her. It is a great relief to me, for I was getting really uneasy. Do write, dear love, soon. I am more anxious than you can tell to know all prospers with you. I am glad you are at Templand. May I send love to your mother? I cannot help loving all that belongs to you. Respects to your husband. In tremendous haste,

Your most affectionate

G.

Direct to me, under cover, to

Mrs. John Hargreaves,
Lytham, near Preston,
Lancashire.

LETTER 10.

Wednesday morning (Postmark, October 29, 1841).

Dearest Jane, - Your letter arrived yesterday. I don't know that I am glad of it, for it has created a painful yearning to see you and talk to you.

I have such a thousand things I want to say to you, it has made me very melancholy.

Do not, my love, speak of yourself in such tones. You are not a judge of yourself, or your own case. You have neither failed nor fallen [Page 37]  short in anything you have proposed to yourself. You are only worn by the daily struggle of life. It is the weight of life that at times presses on us too grievously to be borne, and then one asks oneself, Why must we go on enduring? to what purpose is all this waste? and one feels tempted to throw up the game altogether. Even I (who have had comparatively little to endure) have known what it is to feel all the motives, which had once seemed as imperative as necessity, suddenly begin to look like mere fancies, which I had imposed on myself; and when I have looked round there has seemed no real cause why I should go on doing and enduring, when my own suffering seemed the only reality left. At such times one feels almost mad, for there is none to appeal to, and none to answer when one calls. If one begins to stand still in one's course to question, it is like trying to stop in a crowd when all are hurrying the same way - we are only thrown off our balance, and trampled on and bruised. We must allow ourselves to be carried along; the impulse of one day carries us through the next. So long as we live we must go on struggling, according to the strength that is in us, against the forces that would overwhelm us. It is no voluntary thing: it is the instinct of life. Everything in the world has a tendency to run into dissolution, and life is a fighting against it. So long as we are alive must we go [Page 38]  on without resting: the only comfort I know is that, eventually, we must die. There are times when we are more than usually oppressed and wearied, and then there is no word that can be spoken to refresh us: it passes partially away of itself. Nothing remains in the same form long together; but if we are to begin to doubt the course we have pursued - the reasons which induced us to take it - there is nothing but madness for it. What we call madness, that is; for whether it is the most mad to do or to abstain from doing I know not, nor can tell; but go on we must while we live. You, my love, have been true to your own self in all you have done, and that, as a mere matter of cause and effect, must bring good. I feel more and more how little it is that the most devoted love can do towards giving comfort or doing any real good. Suffering is suffering, and affection is but 'a vainly precious thing.'

I love you, my darling, more than I can express, more than I am conscious of myself, and yet I can do nothing for you, not even help you to sew up one of your interminable seams!

A good evangelical once said to me that the great comfort of going to Heaven would be the unruffled self-complacency in which we might then indulge! and it seems, in truth, a great element of comfort. So I counsel you, my dearest, to cultivate a complacent view of yourself, and do not run down your own [Page 39]  character by accusing it of vanity and all sorts of hard things! I feel to love you more and more every day, and you will laugh, but I feel towards you much more like a lover than a female friend! What would I give to see you for an hour! for in writing it is vain to attempt giving you anything like a true account of myself. As to my confounded eyes, they are not well, but advancing by slow degrees. I myself have subsided into a sort of chronic laziness, and achieve nothing beyond a stray row of my Turkish stitch; in fact, I cannot yet see to do much, and I have begun to find out the superior pleasure of doing nothing! Even writing a common note requires a greater effort than I feel inclined to make!! I am grown dreadfully stupid, and altogether am in a sort of 'dead thaw,' which I try to represent to my conscience as a step achieved towards repose and equanimity!!

Mr. ---- has been painting here and in Liverpool for the last three months. I have seen a great deal of him. He is returning to London next week. I have told him to call on you. He can tell you more about me than anybody else; will you let me commend him to you? Will you allow him to call on you from time to time? Till I see you I can tell you nothing; all my drama seems winding up. Though the dénouement has been neither matrimony nor death, everything has settled itself in the best [Page 40]  possible way as regards everybody with whom I have been connected.

I have not done being astonished at the comfort and order which have resulted from what at one time seemed a very chaos.

I told you in my last that it was well with me, and I can say so still. I think my laziness arises in part from the perfect state of contentment in which I am. An odd circumstance I must tell you - my ci-devant friend has taken it into his head to fall in love afresh! There was no previous notice; he called suddenly (he had not been to see me since our breach), and as quietly as if we had parted the day before wished to put things on their old footing, to take matters up from where we left off. At first he offered no explanation, or attempt at explanation, himself, but seemed quite to think that my affection had been kept at boiling point for his benefit; but I suppose I am a woman, for all the tears and sighs I had bestowed on him seemed to have become so many petrifactions!!

My heart was hardened; I told him that no one but himself could have estranged me, but that now it was too late. I could feel neither pain nor pleasure on his account; his behaviour all through was of a piece with the last two years and a half. He shewed a little emotion, but very little, and was only earnest in entreating that I would leave off making such bitter speeches to him, which I promised to do, and [Page 41]  he also asked leave to come and see me occasionally, which I also agreed to. . . . He still calls, but seldom. Well, my dear, what do you say to this? I hope you don't think me very fickle. Will you offer my best regards to Mr. Carlyle? An 'Athenæum,' directed by him, has just been delivered to me; pray thank him for remembering me. I shall read the article with great interest. A French lady of my acquaintance has just lent me Mme. Lafaye's Memoires.

I cannot say that I have been taken with them, amusing as they are. She was not half genuine enough to commit crimes à la Medea, and that is the only reason I fancy she may be innocent; au reste, there is such a Mme. de Genlis flavour through it all, that I have no patience. I cannot write any more just now; this is hardly worth your reading. En attendant mieux, it will tell you that I love you, that I think of you, that I try to imitate you. Write to me, dear love, when you can find time from sitting on a cushion and sewing up a seam! I know the full amount of virtue it requires, yet half-a-day's sewing would give me such a fit of depression and ennui as a week's idleness would not repair. In my eyes you well deserve a niche in the Calendar. I had rather wear a hair shirt than make a linen one, or alter a 'winter shawl.' By the way, I contemplate achieving a tippet for you to wear under that said shawl, but when it will be finished I am not rash enough to [Page 42]  guess. Mrs. ---- has been having a grand dinner-party; I was invited over to it, but I could not well leave home for one or two reasons. ---- is come to stay with her own family in Manchester, which rejoices me much. Mrs. ---- inquires after you in every letter; she has been in a sort of domestic disquietude - her cook, who has lived with her since her marriage, has thought fit suddenly to get married herself.

Good bye, dear love.

Ever your own

G. E. J.

1842.

LETTER 11.

January 1, 1841, or 1842.^[1]

Dearest Jane, - A happy new year to you, and no more of them than you desire! I don't like having time measured by such set horizons so that we cannot help knowing how it goes, or seeing how very little worth anything fills the space between. This last year has been the best I ever have had; it has brought me much good, on the strength of which I feel able to go on many days. I have found you, and now I wonder how I ever lived without you, and it is strange, but you are of infinitely more worth and importance in my eyes than 'my new friend.'

You come nearer to me; I don't feel towards you as if you were a woman. What will to-day bring you? Comfort that you had not last year - and yet, dear love, there seems to me a want of security in your lot, as if the thing you loved never stood still beside you. You seem to live in a sort of a passionate kaleidoscope, never able either to know, or to control, the next change, but obliged to endure whatever [Page 44]  comes. It would not suit me, whatever fun you may make of my present way of going on. There is a relief in the entire absence of all strong emotion 'et l'un vaut bien l'autre.' I would not exchange with you. Nay! if I could transmigrate into a duckpond, I would sell my hopes of a reversionary paradise for a very small consideration!

I cannot feel up to anything very desperate - and if 'my new friend ' took to tormenting me I should actually dissolve under it! I could not oppose even the resistance of endurance. So you see, my darling, matters are better arranged for me than you imagine, on the whole. You say one thing which is true, to a degree - but more witty than true, nevertheless. You say 'the sentimental is always a got-up thing,' a 'do at the bottom of it.' Now, selon moi, the sentiment is an instinct with us women. It is religion to us. It is what chemists would call the 'menstruum' in which all our qualities are worked and made manifest, which holds them together. There is nothing got-up in the real sentiment which lies within us, but hélas! the real 'do' begins when we have to try to be satisfied with the very pitiful gods and shrines at which, faute de mieux, we have to worship. It is when we have to shut our eyes and pray that they may not be opened for us - that is the unreal, make-believe part of the business! We know, at the bottom of our hearts, the exalted qualities we fancy [Page 45]  we are yielding to are not inherent in our idols, and we do like poor Don Quixote, who first expected that his helmet would turn the blow of a sword - and, trying the experiment honestly, he demolished it altogether. After repairing the damage he tried it again, but this time he took care not to hit it so hard! Well, my dear, but let me tell you this much about myself - I really and truly care a great deal more about 'my new friend' than you seem to fancy. I could at one time have been yet more attached to him if he would have let me, but somehow he has always seemed to put himself between us. All you say of him and his way of speaking of me is true enough, but I explain it differently. He does not love me thoroughly, he does not care for me, as he did, as he does for ----, separated as they are, and though of necessity all is at an end between them, yet she is deified in his eyes!

He loves her as if she were dead; that was a genuine passion, and I don't think it is in man to feel the same twice! I know that he is capable of loving as I never believed a man could before. Our relation is made up of other things as well as love. I have begun, and I must go on! I feel almost as much bound to him as if I were his wife. At present I am necessary to him. As long as I continue to be so, nothing would tempt me to break with him. As a friend, when I see you I can tell you many circumstances [Page 46]  which placed us in our present position with each other, but which I cannot well write down. Whether my affection for him will cool down into a mere friendship, or will increase till it comes to a specimen of 'la grande passion,' I do not know. It must take its chance! Magnanimity is not my vocation, and I am beginning to feel dreadfully annoyed at being so completely degraded to a second place by the 'souvenir de Julie.' It cools me down! I cannot be desperately in love on such meagre fare: but I should as soon think of leaving a husband if I were married, as of contemplating the idea of finding a more convenable friend. It will be he who dissolves the friendship if it is ever done, not me, and he behaved really well when I went into such a rage about that letter I told you of, and he is coming again into this part of the world very soon, and I never feel any of his faults when he is with me

I have been practical with a vengeance all this week. I could face Rhadamanthus himself with boldness. Listen! When I got home from Leeds I found my servant ill, and I had to find a substitute in an instant! Well, this unlucky substitute left me at a minute's notice on Christmas Day, and there was I, left with a servant ill in bed and eight people to provide a dinner for, nothing but myself to stand between them and starvation! Well, I made the plum-pudding and stuffed the turkey, and got them to begin [Page 47]  to cook, and I borrowed my sister-in-law's servant for an hour as soon as she came from church, and the dinner was handsomely achieved, and an old 'gourmand' who was here to dinner declared that the sauces were all excellent, and my pudding was every morsel eaten! So there was un grand succès for you! But the next day was Sunday, and I could not go out to look for another servant, and I could not borrow one either, so I was obliged to light the fires and work till Monday morning, at one o'clock, a beneficent angel in the shape of my sister's old servant came to see how I was getting on, so I was able to get out, and find a help on my own account, and I have made a vow never to work again when I can be lazy! for I never knew the comfort of laziness till now - and, to make matters better, it was a bitter frost all the time! Well, my love, I have since then knitted you the enclosed ruff as a specimen of my Turkish stitch! It is not very nice, but will do, however, at night, when you go out in the cold; and pray consider its imperfections as so many autograph proofs that it is really and truly my own work! I have a dreadful headache, and I cannot see any more, except to tell you that I love you, and should much like to see you in your 'piquante' costume. I have set up a lovely embroidered merino, which people tell me looks well; I can only hope so. How is Mr. Carlyle? Give him [Page 48]  my best regards, and all sorts of good Christmas wishes! Your own

G----.

P.S. - Mrs. -----! I have heard of her books. I have not seen any. From what I have been told I am not much inclined to fall in love with her; she seems one of those didactic women, and she expresses a great disapprobation of Unitarians! as to 'hiding under a bushel,' though any light worth lighting up the world with will burn up or shine through the bushel stupid enough to stand over it; but if you are disposed to be actively benevolent, God forbid I should hinder you! So you know 'Paracelsus'! I have been more pleased with that book than any for a long time, and have read it over and over again. There is an inarticulate power in it - a something greater than the man himself could comprehend struggling to get itself said! ---- lent it to me, and I have not found in my heart to return it yet. Once more, good-bye. Write very soon!

LETTER 12.

Monday (Date on Postmark, January 25, 1842).

My darling Jane, - A thousand thanks for your kindness in writing so soon! Your letter made me happy, for I could not help almost fearing that you would be out of all patience with me.

I had half written a long letter to you two days [Page 49]  ago, but by some accident it got burned by mistake with some other papers, and I am sorry for it, because I said many things I am not in a humour to say this morning.

I had a letter from my friend; he will be here, I expect, in the course of a week or ten days. There was a something through it all which would have cost me many tears had you not given me the courage to look and see how matters really stand with me, though he evidently intended to be most affectionate and so forth. ... The process of being harried out of a charming delusion with beautiful blue in it is painful, and no wonder we try to make it hold round us as long as possible; and, besides, as far as certain peculiarly charming delusions are concerned, there are many feelings which induce a woman to cling to the one she has chosen long after she begins to suspect his unsuitability. We always want to persuade ourselves that one we love is the very first we have felt for. We regret every word and look of kindness which has been bestowed on another. We would wish to be perfect and entire in all our thoughts for him we choose, and flatter ourselves that he will be the only one, and then when it comes to be seen that the friendship must cease - that we have fancied a reality when it was none - no woman can help feeling degraded in her own eyes, and less worthy of finding one who will love as [Page 50]  she desires, for she has given her first feelings already! A man may make it a source of complacency to have had the love of many women, but a woman must feel painfully humbled at having to alter her choice once. As to my actual position with my friend, that must be guided by circumstances. So long as I can be of any comfort or service to him, I will. I must abide by the step I have taken; he is now what he was then, and I have no right to punish him for my own want of penetration. And besides, I have great faith in things settling themselves naturally. I am free (thanks to you), and the rest must take its chance!

I have had a small adventure since I wrote last to you. Fate seems raining adventures on me just now, and is giving me a parody on the wishes and hopes of the very best four years of my life.

I told you of the sort of explanation come to about a year ago. I have hardly seen him since, and never once alone. He neglected to come many times when he might have done, and I began to think all that passed then was a mere piece of acting to make himself interesting, but on Wednesday night last he came up. I was alone (he had ascertained that I should be), and at first we talked about natural things, but gradually he led back the conversation to that night, and spoke bitterly of the regret and shame he felt at what he was and what he might have been, and what he had thrown away, and then he dashed at [Page 51]  once in medias res, saying that he once cared for me, and if he could only have believed he had had a chance of success, he should never have loved anyone else; and then he rushed from the other side of the room, and fell down, selon les règles, at my feet, begging that I would try to care for him again, as I had once done. And all this time I was as cold and calm as marble! I could not even feel agitated, or embarrassed, and yet he was the very first I ever cared for, and though he never said, in so many words, that he had any regard for me, there were a hundred things which made me hope it; but I was so really engrossed by caring for him that I did not much trouble myself about what he thought of me. I felt content to wait, but when he married, there was so much that was pitiful and bad, that it gave me a real disgust. If he had married for real reasons, I could have forgiven him, but . . . since that period he has been out of the pale of all those who used to be his best friends, and now he is bitterly feeling the consequences of his own deeds. He might have been such a glorious creature. Even now, knowing him as I do, I cannot help having a degree of interest in him I never suspected. If he is sincere, and really desirous to come back to us, and be one of us, as he used to be, I can be a friend for him, out of whom he may get good. Surely such passionate sensibility was never given for nothing; and he must have [Page 52]  some good left; all his gifts can never have been utterly wasted. I have felt more since he went than I did at the time. I shall not choose ever to see much of him. I don't think it is in him to care for a woman except as she would wish, and no woman ever stood a chance with him yet, and I have thought since that there was mere presumptive goodness in my offer to be his friend; he is more likely to do me harm than I to do him good. I am afraid of having much to do with him. If it had come six years ago, we might both have been better worth than we are. Well, my dear, to talk of something else. ...

I am hoping to go to Seaforth next Monday to stay as long as I can, and I shall only be too glad to call on your cousins; would that you were in Liverpool, or any hope of getting you there! You must think of Seaforth as your natural home when you visit that region. I have had a parcel of callers and a bad headache since beginning this, so excuse all imperfections and write very soon, please. By the way, I had Emerson's 'Essays' lent me on Saturday, and I have read nearly half through them.

I like the one on 'Spiritual Laws' much, but I don't take to the man - he is a dry, cold, sententious Yankee; he spiritualises profit and loss, and strikes a very fair balance, and says many true and many sensible things, but he owes himself to your husband, I think, and has not a grain of his passionate eloquence, which makes one's heart burn within one. [Page 53] 

I can profit by him now, but I might have read him till doomsday before I knew your husband, and been neither better nor worse. I don't take to the man at all; he is sober, honest, and so forth, because he clearly sees he gets more by it. It is the most profitable and safe investment he can make of his faculties.

Your husband would be rather aghast if he suspected what I do - viz., that the opening of his eyes to my manifold perfections has happened to ----, from the fact that your husband has honoured me enough to take any notice of me; he is a great admirer of his, and I feel pretty certain that his having taken any interest in me has been the means of quickening my friends' perceptions.

Mrs. ---- has determined to have a repetition of our play to-morrow night, as it went so well before, and Mrs. ---- has lent me a dress so beautiful that no lover or love could enter my heart when I had the prospect of wearing it, and I have got a cap as pretty as your Greek one, and I intend to have a brilliant evening to-morrow, and forget everything else; if ever I get my eyesight well I will try if I cannot work you a dress like mine - it is an invention of Mrs. ----'s own. Now I must go out, so goodbye, dear love. Write very soon, please, and tell me what you think of all I have told you

Ever your own

G.E.J.

LETTER 13.

Thursday night (Postmark, February 19, 1842).

My dearest Jane, - I have begun one or two notes to you and accomplished none, for, though I want to write to you, I don't too well know what to say, or, rather, how to say it. Your last came just as the car came to the door to take me to the railway - I wish it had been to take me within reach of you. I cannot tell you how your letter made me feel; you have not been out of my mind many minutes together since I read it. I am very anxious about you, but do not either plague yourself to write or to make any detail or explanations. There are times certainly when it is a comfort to talk, but more often it is a nuisance, and you know that it needs no interesting particulars to rouse my sympathy then (that is a 'Minerva Press' word I don't like, but I know no other). Those headaches of yours are real nasty things, and God knows what they may end in! I wish you had not received my two last letters when you did; how selfish and egotistic those pitiful details must have seemed, but yet I have no instinct to know that you were 'all right.' I see how it will be; you and your kaleidoscope will be both shattered together some of these days, and then there will come passionate regrets and useless endeavours to make you what you were before, and then the astonishing [Page 55]  discovery will come that the past cannot be undone, though sought earnestly with tears. Do not write till you quite feel inclined; no fear that I shall set it down to a fit of anything. You know I love you as nobody else can, and everything you do is right in my eyes. I went to town yesterday for the first time since I came here. Among others I called on your cousins, but none of them were at home. I shall call again before I leave. Mrs. ---- is as handsome and kind as ever; she often talks and wishes either fit or chance would send you here again. I think it would make her perfectly happy. I have had a visit from my friend since I wrote. I really repent of all the ill-natured things I have said about him. He behaved so really well. As to Mrs. ----'s brother ----, he has turned out a very promising scoundrel. I have thought out the mischief he was nearly doing. I am not clear of him yet, but I hope in a fair way of being so; he did all he could to make a break between his sister and me by saying the most shameful things to each of us. He was horrified lest I should tell her our last interview, for fear of our comparing notes, but the first thing I did was to tell her everything, for the more I reflected on what had passed I felt he was not to be trusted. And, my word! the pitiful spectacle he made, when we came to talk him over, was enough to put one out of conceit with mankind now and evermore. I wrote [Page 56]  to tell him what I had done in a most civil and, indeed, kind letter, if he will but take it so; I don't want to vex him, because he has not the gift of telling anything but lies, as I and his sister know to our cost. So this is the state of my affairs at present. I am taking German lessons again from Mrs. ----'s tutor. I shall remain here I daresay for three weeks longer. I wish you were here to have splendid air and perfect quiet, and to join us in our walks on the top of the house, and to lie on the sofa 'in the little dim room.' This is a most stupid letter, but I had not the heart to write about anything. Mrs. ---- has gone to a singing lecture, and I have stayed at home to finish this. She told me to send her love. Once more - do not plague yourself in any way about me. I would give the world to see you, if only for an hour. Do take care of yourself as well as you can.

Ever, dear love, your own

G.

P.S. - What do you try for your headaches? Cold water to the top of my head does me good always. If they are very acute, hot turpentine. It 'does not injure the most delicate fabric,' as they say of marking-ink, and I have seen it perform wonderful cures. Put it on the head, not the forehead. The next time you write let me hear a better account of you.

I fear my visit to town is put off for good and all. [Page 57]  The lady I was to have visited has had several domestic troubles; how can people sell their souls for the sake of furniture and respectability? She has made me register a vow against keeping up appearances.

Mr. ---- has just come in, and desires his kind regards.

LETTER 14.

Written when Mrs. Carlyle was suffering from the death of her mother.^[1]

Sunday Afternoon (Dated May, 1842).

Dear Love, - I am become very anxious to hear something about you; it does not seem natural to have you silent so long. Even your cousin has not written to me, and I miss tidings of you more than I can tell you. I feel as if I were separated from you. I want to know what you are doing, how you are. There are so many things I want to know about you, and yet I don't want to plague you. I reproach myself for even wishing you to write or exert yourself, and yet I cannot help hoping every day at post-time. I don't think you are ever absolutely out of my mind. You are there as a sort of under-current; other things are like visitors to be attended to, and [Page 58]  dismissed. If you were happy I don't think I should care for you half so much. I am very anxious about you, and I can do nothing to help you. I love you more than anything else I have in the world, and what must I do if you are to go on suffering in this way? Take some pity on yourself, and don't spend all your strength on misery!

I wish I could see you, if but for an hour. Letters are very good-for-nothing, and never arrive at the right time. I love you, my darling; it may do you no good now, but it may be a comfort some time, it will be always there for you. I thought I had a great deal to tell you, but, somehow, I have not the heart to say anything. All my own affairs are much as usual, neither good nor bad; but I had a visit from ---- on Sunday, and he was here again yesterday. I can't make him out, nor feel to believe what he says - which is all the better, perhaps. His children are here with his mother, he is to bring them to see me. He is coming to London shortly. He must feel very anxious with such a large family, in these bad times. I had a letter from 'my friend' about three weeks since, written in very low spirits. I have been much worried, and am getting out of all manner of patience, and yet I can't find in my heart to say or do anything unkind just now, being of 'Mr. Mantalini's' opinion, that we 'should not scratch or claw, but pet and comfort' when our [Page 59]  friends are not happy. But I was a great fool to set up for being quixotic, and taking the rôle I did. One's conscience reproaches one much more stingingly for one's follies than one's crimes. I am sadly out of countenance when I think of myself. Mrs. ---- was over here last week for the Association. She inquired very affectionately after you. I am trying to indite wisdom, if I cannot act it. I am hard at work on the said tale I told you of, and when you are well enough I should like you to see what is done, for you have been the imaginary 'chair' I have addressed myself to. The first sheet of this letter was written on Sunday afternoon, and I could not finish it yesterday. This is Tuesday night. Do, dear love, try to let me know how you go on! I have no spirit to write to you; it seems such cold-blooded egotism to tell you my own matters, and to think of you makes me sad any minute. What can I tell you that will do you any good? If tears would comfort you, you would have felt it long since, for I cannot think of you without them! You and your lot are a riddle to me. If men reap the things they sow, why are you not happier than you are? Do, dear love, let me hear some thing about you! I will not be long before I write to you again, though it is painful to call and not be heard. Dear, dear love, good-bye!

Your very own

G.

[Page 60]  P.S. - Will you give my best regards to Mr. Carlyle? I hope he keeps well. How does his book prosper? My little niece, the other day, offered to make me a book-mark, and asked me what name she should put on it. I told her Jane. So there it is for you, my darling!

I like bringing your name in, and yet I cannot talk about you to anyone, except just a short word, now and then, and that never seems what I meant to have said. Can you understand that? (Tuesday.)

LETTER 15.^[1]

Monday Afternoon, May 20, 1842.

My darling Love, - Your letter came this morning, and has made me more sad than I care to express.

I am not surprised at anything you say. I should only wonder if it were not so. I know full well that giddy, uprooted feeling that leaves one wondering why one is left on the earth, or why one was ever sent here. Your loss is now what it was five months ago, when it first occurred: the strange thing is, not that we are so long in getting reconciled to our bereavement, but that we [are] able to find life tolerable after the 'desire of our eyes has been taken away by a stroke.' I have often wondered how this could be; but it is so. I suppose we have, with [Page 61]  trees, the property of growing over the deepest incisions made in the bark. The only thing that gives me any hope for you is, that I have seen women get cheerful - I mean regain an average degree of pleasure in life - after the death of a child, even when that child has been an only one. There is a woman in this neighbourhood who lost her whole family, consisting of three daughters, one after another, under most distressing circumstances, and yet she has recovered; and she was a widow, which made her situation still more desolate. If I had not seen such strange power in life to overcome affliction in every imaginable shape I should indeed tremble about you. I cannot think that it will be thus with you always, and yet at times it seems 'hoping against hope,' for why should you take comfort hereafter more than now? A friend of mine once said to me, after having had to endure intense bodily agony, 'it seemed suddenly to open my eyes to all the misery there was in the world, and of which mine was only a fragment.' Those words have grown on me. Everything suffers - man and beast, and creeping thing, and the suffering of each is to the full amount of what they can endure. I don't think there is one living who has not felt at some period that their sufferings were intolerable, too grievous to be borne. You recollect that expression of terrible agony in the Revelation, 'they gnawed their tongues [Page 62]  for pain.' But it is of no use talking about the sufferings allotted to others, for our own portion has an individuality and fits close to us, eating into our souls like fire. We could find some ease under the worst troubles of others if they fell to us. It is only our own that press down upon us on all sides, and from which there is no escape. Still, I don't think, either from what I know myself or have seen in others, that this season lasts very long; either the sufferers die under it, and so escape themselves, or else they live through it and find calmer days. For there is a better time, if we can only hold out till it comes. But the worst of it is, that in such afflictions as yours is, the idea of ever becoming comforted is altogether loathsome, and so, my darling, I can do you no good. I can but see you struggling in the dark waters, ready to be swallowed up in them, and can help you in no wise. You must 'exploiter' your sorrow in its length and breadth. It's no use trying to stay you by words without meaning. I never heard of anybody but 'Job' who could look within himself and find a fair catalogue of virtues when he was in affliction, and that, I fancy, is why nobody feels much sympathy with him. Are you, do you think, the only one who feels utterly worthless? It is in such times as these that one seems made aware of all the unutterable vanity of one's own heart. It is always there, but we do not feel our real worthlessness [Page 63]  till we are brought face to face with such great realities.

I have often thought that the grand thing in religion is that we stand naked and open in the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Neither appearances nor make-believes are of any avail. There is no deceit before Him. I can give you no idea of the relief that thought is to me. What shall be hereafter we neither know nor can know, but we shall be in the hands of Him who placed us here, then as now. I have wished so often since you have been in affliction that I could speak to you a single word of all that Christian people comfort themselves with, and find strong consolation in it, too; but I neither know anything nor believe in anything. But one thing I am quite sure of having proved, that so long as we are in this place 'whatsoever our hand finds to do we must do it with all our might.' We must work whilst it is called to-day, for the night cometh. To what our work tends, God knows, and why we must work I cannot give you any reason that would sound logical; but so long as we do what lies before us to do, so long it is well with us. If we grow weary and faint by the way, the night cometh, and it will not be long in coming. We must just have faith enough to strive honestly till then, even though the reason and the motive cannot be spoken in intelligible words. You are broken just now, but [Page 64]  if your task be not ended fresh strength will come to you; but, remember, that if you are to be taken away from us, it will make the way of those who remain behind very dismal indeed. Therefore, do not regret staying with us a little longer.

Do you know that I have found myself more soothed when in trouble by going to the Mass in a Catholic chapel, than by anything else in the world. The doctrines 'may all go hang,' as you once said, but you will find every thought and feeling which you cannot utter even to yourself drawn out, as [it] were, and uttered in aspirations to the same unknown and unseen Power that afflicts us. I can only speak to the effect their Litany has on myself. Only think of the many millions of sufferers that same Catholic Church has given comfort to. There is a Catholic chapel very near you, and, when you feel in the humour, go in by yourself! I cannot endure having any companion with me at such times. Their talk, whether wise or foolish, spoils all; and, don't think me cracked for proposing such a thing to you: that 'Agnus Dei' - 'miserere nobis' - is the only prayer that ever sounds like the utterance of necessity. Now, dear love, farewell! So long as you are thus wretched I suffer too, not metaphorically, but in sad earnest. Give my dear love to your husband.

Ever your own

G.E.J.

Tuesday Morning.

LETTER 16.

Seaforth: Friday (Postmark, May 30, 1842).

My Darling, - Your note has made me very sad. There is nothing to be said to it, as you cannot be comforted, but time - time, that is the only hope and refuge for all of us! I know full well what it is to cease to see the necessity of struggling; it would puzzle the wisest of us to point it out at the best of times, but the inscrutableness does not always press upon us so heavily - it does not come till we see into some deep trouble, and then are like to go mad. To all of us life is a riddle put more or less unintelligibly, and death is the only end we can see - for we may die, and that is a strong consolation, of which nothing can defraud us. We cannot well be more dark or miserable than we are; we shall all die - no exception, no fear of exemption. Every morning I say this to myself. When I am in sorrow, it is the only comfort that has strength in it. Why, indeed, must we go on struggling, rising up early and late and taking rest? 'Behold, He giveth His beloved sleep!' And yet it is not well that you feel this so constantly that it swallows up all other feelings. Life is not strong in you when you are thus - it will not be so always. There is a strength in life to make us endure it. I am astonished sometimes to find that I am glad to be alive - that the instinct of feeling that 'it is [Page 66]  a pleasant thing to behold the sun, and that light is good.' And this is a feeling that will spring up in your heart after a while, crushed and dead as it seems now. When my father died I cannot tell you the horrible sense of desolateness and insecurity that struck through me. I had friends to love me, who would do anything for me, but I had no right to count on their endurance. I had lost the one on whose love I could depend as on the earth itself - the one whose relationship seemed to revoke the law of change pronounced against all other things in this world. Our parents and relations are given us by the same unknown Power which sent us into this world, given to us like our own bodies, without our knowing how or where, and when they are taken from us our ties to this life are loosened, and all seems tottering - nothing can supply their place. But yet even this gets blunted after a while; we can and do live, when we are put to it, on wonderfully little, without all we at first fancied indispensable, and then for ever after the love of such friends as are left or raised up to us becomes strangely precious in a way no one else can understand. We strain them to us with all our force, to try to supply the place of that natural necessity which united us without effort on our part to those who are gone! We have always a fear that the friends we have made for ourselves will leave us; we were only afraid for [Page 67]  the others that they would be taken away. Dear love, this present strange, stunned state you will recover from. No fear of your sinking down into apathy - there is too much for you to do. You are necessary to the welfare of too many; your life will take shape again, though now it seems nothing but confused hopelessness. The thought of you brings tears to my eyes any moment it comes. Do not be so very wretched. I can give you no comfort - there is none - but from time to time write when you can, but don't plague yourself. I also will write without waiting. I am most thankful the dear little cousin still stays with you. Give my love to her. I am glad that your husband is well, and that he has his book to busy himself in. It is like a child to him. I am here since a week. I go home in a few days. Mrs. ---- sends her love to you. I wish you could be within reach of her; she would be a comfort to you, as she has been to me. Good bye, dear love; take care of yourself for the sake of others besides yourself!

LETTER 17.

Sunday (Postmark, June 14, 1842).

My dear Love, - I am beginning to want to hear something about you again. Has your cousin cut my acquaintance, as she never writes now? Don't plague yourself to write, for I don't think it is a very good [Page 68]  employment for you. If I could be in the place of Providence to you for a few months, I know what you should do; but you are not likely to realise my castle-building in your behalf, nor are you more likely to guess my schemes for rendering you all that you were meant to be - all that you even now might be. But 'God is great,' as the poor Mussulman says, and it may be that He intends you better and more than either you or I dare hope; at least, I will not believe that you will be left altogether comfortless! Is it not Job who says that 'trouble springeth out of the ground'? And if so, may not consolation also arise when we see least signs of its coming? But this is idle talking: what will come must come, and hoping seems a waste of energy. I am really unhappy about you, and I would willingly have some evil laid on myself if so I might hear that you were lightened of your suffering. I am, as you said, very free from anything like trouble at present, but I feel as if I had no right to be so when you are as you are; and besides, my present exemption seems to throw me beyond your pale, as it were. However, as our intervals of ease are only given to get strength for the next trouble, it will not divide us long. If I had had many claims of what you call natural affection on me I could not have cared for you as I do. At least, those of my friends in whom they are fully filled up are not those who are able to care for any beyond [Page 69]  them. Their friends are unnecessary, they are never more than 'the stranger that is within the gate,' and this must account to you for what may seem like e