_Marriage, and the choice of a profession_
[1822.]
... If you ever marry, I would wish you to marry the woman you like.
Do not be guided by the recommendations of friends. Nothing will
atone for or overcome an original distaste. It will only increase from
intimacy; and if you are to live separate, it is better not to come
together. There is no use in dragging a chain through life, unless
it binds one to the object we love. Choose a mistress from among your
equals. You will be able to understand her character better, and she
will be more likely to understand yours. Those in an inferior station
to yourself will doubt your good intentions, and misapprehend your
plainest expressions. All that you swear is to them a riddle or
downright nonsense. You cannot by any possibility translate your
thoughts into their dialect. They will be ignorant of the meaning of
half you say, and laugh at the rest. As mistresses, they will have no
sympathy with you; and as wives, you can have none with them.
Women care nothing about poets, or philosophers, or politicians. They
go by a man's looks and manner. Richardson calls them 'an eye-judging
sex'; and I am sure he knew more about them than I can pretend to do.
If you run away with a pedantic notion that they care a pin's point
about your head or your heart, you will repent it too late....
If I were to name one pursuit rather than another, I should wish you
to be a good painter, if such a thing could be hoped. I have failed in
this myself, and should wish you to be able to do what I have not--to
paint like Claude, or Rembrandt, or Guido, or Vandyke, if it were
possible. Artists, I think, who have succeeded in their chief object,
live to be old, and are agreeable old men. Their minds keep alive
to the last. Cosway's spirits never flagged till after ninety; and
Nollekens, though nearly blind, passed all his mornings in giving
directions about some group or bust in his workshop. You have seen Mr.
Northcote, that delightful specimen of the last age. With what avidity
he takes up his pencil, or lays it down again to talk of numberless
things! His eye has not lost its lustre, nor 'paled its ineffectual
fire'. His body is but a shadow: he himself is a pure spirit. There is
a kind of immortality about this sort of ideal and visionary existence
that dallies with Fate and baffles the grim monster, Death. If I
thought you could make as clever an artist, and arrive at such an
agreeable old age as Mr. Northcote, I should declare at once for your
devoting yourself to this enchanting profession; and in that reliance,
should feel less regret at some of my own disappointments, and little
anxiety on your account!