[Postmark: May 16, 1846]
Saturday Morning.
You shall hear from me on this Sunday, though it
cannot be as an answer, dearest, to your letter of to-night.
But I being so wretchedly tired last night, and ‘ yawning ‘
being, to your mind, so ‘ intolerable,’ it is as well to leave a
better impression with you than that . . though there is
nothing to say, and the east wind blows on virulently.
The AthenÊum has put me out of humour for the day
. . besides. Not a word of ‘Luria’ — not a word of the
Literary Fund dinner, and a great, drawling carrying out
of the ‘ Poetry for the Million ‘ article . . as if all this trash
could not die of itself ! — as if it were not dead of itself! —
That the critics of a country should set themselves to such
work . . is as if the Premier of England took his official
seat in the window to kill flies, . . talking, with his first
finger out, of ‘ my administration.’ Only flies are flies and
have fly-life in them : they are nobler game than those.
Mrs. Jameson, while she was here the five minutes
yesterday, talked, in an under-breath to my under-breath
opposition, her opinion about the present age. ‘ That the
present age did not, could’ not, ought not, to express itself
by Art, . . though the next age would.’ She is surprisingly
wrong, it appears to me. There is no predominant character
in the age, she says, to be so expressed ! there is no
unity, to bear expression.
But art surely, if art is anything, is the expression, not
of the characteristics of an age except accidentally, . . essentially
it is the expression of Humanity in the individual
being — and unless we are men no longer, I cannot conceive
how such an argument as hers can be upheld for a
moment. Also it is exasperating to hear such things.
Then I do not believe, for one, that genius in the arts
is a mere reflection of the character of the times. Genius
precedes surely, — initiates. It is genius which gives an
Age its character and imposes its own colour …. But I
shall not write any more. Her paper on ‘ Titian’s House at
Venice,’ which she let me read in proof, and which is one
of the essays she is printing now, is full of beauty and truth,
and I admired it heartily. Then there is a quotation about
the ‘calm, cold, beautiful regard,’ of ‘Virgin child and
saint’ . . . which you may remember perhaps. I know
you will like the essay and feel it to be Venetian.
That you were feeling the east wind, beloved, meant
that you were not well, though you have quite left off telling
me a word of yourself lately. And why ? It shall not be
so next week, — now shall it ? May God bless you. I am
afraid of going down-stairs, because of the double-knocks.
It will be great gain to have the loudest noises from the
cicale. Except when somebody else is noisy, — which is a
noise I am always forgetting, just as if it were impossible.
Your own
Ba.