[Postmark: April 3, 1846]
Friday
Dearest, your flowers make the whole room look like
April, they are so full of colours . . growing fuller and
fuller as we get nearer to the sun. The wind was melancholy too, all last night — oh, I think the wind melancholy,
just as you do, — or more than you do perhaps for having
spent so many restless days and nights close on the sea-
shore in Devonshire. I seem now always to hear the sea in
the wind, voice within voice ! But I like a sudden wind
not too loud, — a wind which you hear the rain in rather
than the sea — and I like the half cloudy half sunny April
weather, such as we have it here in England, with a west or
south wind — I like and enjoy that ! and remember vividly
how I used to like to walk or wade nearly up to my waist in
the wet grass or weeds, with the sun overhead, and the
wind darkening or lightening the verdure all round.
But none of it was happiness, dearest dearest. Happiness does not come with the sun or the rain. Since my
illness, when the door of the future seemed shut and locked
before my face, and I did not tire myself with knocking
any more, I thought I was happier, happy, I thought,
just because I was tranquil unto death. Now I know life
from death, . . and the unsorrowful life for the first time
since I was a woman ; though I sit here on the edge of a
precipice in a position full of anxiety and danger. What
matter, … if one shuts one’s eyes, and listens to the birds
singing? Do you know, I am glad — I could almost
thank God — that Papa keeps so far from me . . that he
has given up coming in the evening . . I could almost
thank God. If he were affectionate, and made me, or let
me, feel myself necessary to him, . . how should I bear
(even with my reason on my side) to prepare to give him
pain ? So that the Pisa business last year, by sounding
the waters, was good in its way . . and the pang that came
with it to me, was also good. He feels ! — he loves me . .
but it is not (this, I mean to say) to the trying degrees of
feeling and love . . trying to me. Ah, well ! In any case,
I should have ended probably, in giving up all for you —
I do not profess otherwise. I used to think I should, if
ever I loved anyone — and if the love of you is different
from, it is greater than, anything preconceived . . divined.
Mrs. Jameson, the other day, brought out a theory of
hers which I refused to receive, and which I thought to
myself she would apply to me some day. with the rest of
what Miss Mitford calls ‘ those good-for-nothing poets and
poetesses.’ She maintained, (Mrs. Jameson did) that
‘artistical natures never learn wisdom from experience —
that sorrow teaches them nothing — leaves no trace at all
— that the mind is modified in no way by passion —
suffering.’ Which I disbelieved quite, and ventured to say
on the other side, that although practically a man or woman
might not be wiser, through perhaps the interception of a
vivid apprehension of the present, which might put back
the influence of the future over actions, . . yet that it was
impossible for a self-conscious nature (which all these
artistic natures are) and a sensitive nature, not to receive
some sort of modification from things suffered — ‘ No ‘ — she
said, they did not ! she had known and loved such — and
they were like children, all of them, — essentially immature.’
But she did not persuade me. What is inequality of nature,
as Dugald Stewart observed it, (and did he not say that men
of genius had lop-sided minds ?) is different, I think, from
immaturity in her sense of the word. We were talking of
her friend Mrs. Butler, which brought us to the subject.
Presently she will say of you and me . . ‘ Just see there !
she meant no harm, poor thing, I dare say — but she acts
like a child ! And, for him, his is the imbecility of most
regent genius . . such as I am to live to see confessed
imperial, or I die a disappointed woman.’ !
Do you hear? I do, distinctly. You in the meantime,
are looking at the ‘ locks ‘ . . just as poor Louis Seize did
when they were preparing his guillotine.
May God bless you, my own dearest — Think of me a
little — as you say !
Your
Ba.