Galgenberg, Oct. 28th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Well, yes, I do think you must get over it without
much help from me. You have a great deal of my sympathy, I assure you;
far more than you think. I don't put it into my letters because there's
so much of it that it would make them overweight. Also it would want a
great deal of explaining. You see it's a different sort from what you
expect, and given for other reasons than those you have in your mind;
and it is quite impossible to account for in any way you are likely to
understand. But do consider what, as regards the broken-off engagement,
you must look like from my point of view. Candidly, are you a fit object
for my compassion? I see you wandering now through Italy in its golden
autumn looking at all your dear Luinis and Bellinis and Botticellis and
other delights of your first growing up, and from my bleak hill-top I
watch you hungrily as you go. November is nearly upon us, and we shiver
under leaden clouds and driving rain. The windows are loose, and all of
them rattle. The wind screams through their chinks as though somebody
had caught it by the toes and was pinching it. We can't see out for the
raindrops on the panes. When I go to the door to get a breath of
something fresher than house air I see only mists, and wreaths of
clouds, and mists again, where a fortnight ago lay a little golden town
in a cup of golden hills. Do you think that a person with this cheerless
prospect can pity you down there in the sun? I trace your bright line of
march on the map and merely feel envy. I am haunted by visions of the
many beautiful places and climates there are in the world that I shall
never see. The thought that there are people at this moment sitting
under palm-trees or in the shadow of pyramids fanning themselves with
their handkerchiefs while I am in my clammy room--the house gets clammy,
I find, in persistent wet weather--not liking to light a lamp because it
is only three o'clock, and yet hardly able to see because of the
streaming panes and driving mist, the thought of these happy people
makes me restive. I too want to be up and off, to run through the wet
pall hanging over this terrible gray North down into places where
sunshine would dry the fog out of my hair, and brown my face, and loosen
my joints, and warm my poor frozen spirit. I would change places with
you this minute if I could. Gladly would I take the burden of your
worries on to my shoulders, and, carrying them like a knapsack, lay them
at the feet of the first Bellini Madonna I met and leave them there for
good. It would give me no trouble to lay them down, those worries
produced by other people. One little shake, and they'd tumble off.
Always things and places have been more to me than people. Perhaps it is
often so with persons who live lonely lives. Anyhow don't at once cry
out that I'm unnatural and inhuman, for things are after all only
filtered out people,--their ideas crystallized into tangibleness, their
spirit taking visible form; either they are that, or they are, I
suppose, God's ideas--after all the same thing put into shapes we can
see and touch. So that it's not so dreadful of me to like them best, to
prefer their company, their silent teaching, although you will I know
lecture me and perhaps tell me I am petrifying into a mere thing myself.
Well, it is only fair that you should lecture me, who so often lecture
you.
Yours quite meekly,