January 26, 1846.
I must begin by invoking my own stupidity! To forget after all the penholder! I had put it close beside me too on the table, and never once thought of it afterwards from first to last — just as I should do if I had a common-place book, the memoranda all turning to obliviscenda as by particular contact. So I shall send the holder with Miss Martineau’s books which you can read or not as you like . . . they have beauty in passages . . . but, trained up against the wall of a set design, want room for branching and blossoming, great as her skill is. I like her ‘Playfellow’ stories twice as well. Do you know them? Written for children, and in such a fine heroic child-spirit as to be too young and too old for nobody. Oh, and I send you besides a most frightful extract from an American magazine sent to me yesterday . . . no, the day before . . . on the subject of mesmerism — and you are to understand, if you please, that the Mr. Edgar Poe who stands committed in it, is my dedicator . . . whose dedication I forgot, by the way, with the rest — so, while I am sending, you shall have his poems with his mesmeric experience and decide whether the outrageous compliment to E.B.B. or the experiment on M. Vandeleur [Valdemar] goes furthest to prove him mad. There is poetry in the man, though, now and then, seen between the great gaps of bathos . . .. ‘Politian’ will make you laugh — as the ‘Raven’ made me laugh, though with something in it which accounts for the hold it took upon people such as Mr. N.P. Willis and his peers — it was sent to me from four different quarters besides the author himself, before its publication in this form, and when it had only a newspaper life. Some of the other lyrics have power of a less questionable sort. For the author, I do not know him at all — never heard from him nor wrote to him — and in my opinion, there is more faculty shown in the account of that horrible mesmeric experience (mad or not mad) than in his poems. Now do read it from the beginning to the end. That ‘going out‘ of the hectic, struck me very much . . . and the writhing away of the upper lip. Most horrible! — Then I believe so much of mesmerism, as to give room for the full acting of the story on me . . . without absolutely giving full credence to it, understand.
Ever dearest, you could not think me in earnest in that letter? It was because I understood you so perfectly that I felt at liberty for the jesting a little — for had I not thought of that before, myself, and was I not reproved for speaking of it, when I said that I was content, for my part, even so? Surely you remember — and I should not have said it if I had not felt with you, felt and known, that ‘there is, with us, less for the future to give or take away than in the ordinary cases.’ So much less! All the happiness I have known has come to me through you, and it is enough to live for or die in — therefore living or dying I would thank God, and use that word ‘enough‘ . . . being yours in life and death. And always understanding that if either of us should go, you must let it be this one here who was nearly gone when she knew you, since I could not bear —
Now see if it is possible to write on this subject, unless one laughs to stop the tears. I was more wise on Friday.
Let me tell you instead of my sister’s affairs, which are so publicly talked of in this house that there is no confidence to be broken in respect to them — yet my brothers only see and hear, and are told nothing, to keep them as clear as possible from responsibility. I may say of Henrietta that her only fault is, her virtues being written in water — I know not of one other fault. She has too much softness to be able to say ‘no’ in the right place — and thus, without the slightest levity . . . perfectly blameless in that respect, . . . she says half a yes or a quarter of a yes, or a yes in some sort of form, too often — but I will tell you. Two years ago, three men were loving her, as they called it. After a few months, and the proper quantity of interpretations, one of them consoled himself by giving nick-names to his rivals. Perseverance and Despair he called them, and so, went up to the boxes to see out the rest of the play. Despair ran to a crisis, was rejected in so many words, but appealed against the judgment and had his claim admitted — it was all silence and mildness on each side . . . a tacit gaining of ground, — Despair ‘was at least a gentleman,’ said my brothers. On which Perseverance came on with violent re-iterations, — insisted that she loved him without knowing it, or should — elbowed poor Despair into the open streets, who being a gentleman wouldn’t elbow again — swore that ‘if she married another he would wait till she became a widow, trusting to Providence’ . . . did wait every morning till the head of the house was out, and sate day by day, in spite of the disinclination of my sisters and the rudeness of all my brothers, four hours in the drawing-room . . . let himself be refused once a week and sate all the longer . . . allowed everybody in the house (and a few visitors) to see and hear him in fits of hysterical sobbing, and sate on unabashed, the end being that he sits now sole regnant, my poor sister saying softly, with a few tears of remorse for her own instability, that she is ‘taken by storm and cannot help it.’ I give you only the résumé of this military movement — and though I seem to smile, which it was impossible to avoid at some points of the evidence as I heard it from first one person and then another, yet I am woman enough rather to be glad that the decision is made so. He is sincerely attached to her, I believe; and the want of refinement and sensibility (for he understood her affections to be engaged to another at one time) is covered in a measure by the earnestness, — and justified too by the event — everybody being quite happy and contented, even to Despair, who has a new horse and takes lessons in music.
That’s love — is it not? And that’s my answer (if you look for it) to the question you asked me yesterday.
Yet do not think that I am turning it all to game. I could not do so with any real earnest sentiment . . . I never could . . . and now least, and with my own sister whom I love so. One may smile to oneself and yet wish another well — and so I smile to you — and it is all safe with you I know. He is a second or third cousin of ours and has golden opinions from all his friends and fellow-officers — and for the rest, most of these men are like one another . . .. I never could see the difference between fuller’s earth and common clay, among them all.
What do you think he has said since — to her too? — ‘I always persevere about everything. Once I began to write a farce — which they told me was as bad as could be. Well! — I persevered! — I finished it.’ Perfectly unconscious, both he and she were of there being anything mal à propos in that — and no kind of harm was meant, — only it expresses the man.
Dearest — it had better be Thursday I think — our day! I was showing to-day your father’s drawings, — and my brothers, and Arabel besides, admired them very much on the right grounds. Say how you are. You did not seem to me to answer frankly this time, and I was more than half uneasy when you went away. Take exercise, dear, dearest . . . think of me enough for it, — and do not hurry ‘Luria.’ May God bless you!
Your own
Ba.
