'When all things are blossoming, it seems so strange not to
blossom too; that the quick thought within cannot remould its
tenement. Man is the slowest aloes, and I am such a shabby
plant, of such coarse tissue. I hate not to be beautiful, when
all around is so.'
Again, after recording a visit to a family, whose taste and culture,
united to the most liberal use of wealth, made the most agreeable of
homes, she writes:
'Looking out on the wide view, I felt the blessings of my
comparative freedom. I stand in no false relations. Who else
is so happy? Here are these fair, unknowing children envying
the depth of my mental life. They feel withdrawn by sweet
duties from reality. Spirit! I accept; teach me to prize and
use whatsoever is given me.'
'At present,' she writes elsewhere, 'it skills not. I am able
to take the superior view of life, and my place in it. But I
know the deep yearnings of the heart and the bafflings of time
will be felt again, and then I shall long for some dear hand
to hold. But I shall never forget that my curse is nothing,
compared with that of those who have entered into those
relations, but not made them real; who only _seem_ husbands,
wives, and friends.'
'I remain fixed to be, without churlishness or coldness, as
much alone as possible. It is best for me. I am not fitted to
be loved, and it pains me to have close dealings with those
who do not love, to whom my feelings are "strange." Kindness
and esteem are very well. I am willing to receive and bestow
them; but these alone are not worth feelings such as mine. And
I wish I may make no more mistakes, but keep chaste for mine
own people.'
There is perhaps here, as in a passage of the same journal quoted
already, an allusion to a verse in the ballad of the Lass of
Lochroyan:--
"O yours was gude, and gude enough,
But aye the best was mine;
For yours was o' the gude red gold,
But mine o' the diamond fine."
'There is no hour of absolute beauty in all my past, though
some have been made musical by heavenly hope, many dignified
by intelligence. Long urged by the Furies, I rest again in
the temple of Apollo. Celestial verities dawn constellated as
thoughts in the Heaven of my mind.
'But, driven from home to home, as a renouncer, I get the
picture and the poetry of each. Keys of gold, silver, iron,
and lead, are in my casket. No one loves me; but I love many a
good deal, and see, more or less, into their eventual beauty.
Meanwhile, I have no fetter on me, no engagement, and, as I
look on others,--almost every other,--can I fail to feel this
a great privilege? I have nowise tied my hands or feet; yet
the varied calls on my sympathy have been such, that I hope
not to be made partial, cold, or ignorant, by this isolation.
I have no child; but now, as I look on these lovely children
of a human birth, what low and neutralizing cares they
bring with them to the mother! The children of the muse
come quicker, and have not on them the taint of earthly
corruption.'
Practical questions in plenty the days and months brought her to
settle,--questions requiring all her wisdom, and sometimes more than
all. None recurs with more frequency, at one period, in her journals,
than the debate with herself, whether she shall make literature a
profession. Shall it be woman, or shall it be artist?