Galgenberg, Dec. 22d.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,--The house is quite good enough for me, I assure
you--the 'setting' I think you call it, suggesting with pleasant
flattery that there is something precious to be set. It only has the
bruised sort of color you noticed when its background is white with
snow. In summer against the green it looks as white as you please; but a
thing must be white indeed to look so in the midst of our present
spotlessness. And it is not damp if there are fires enough. And the
rooms are not too small for me--poky was the adjective you applied to
the dear little things. And I am never lonely. And Joey is very nice,
even though he doesn't quite talk in blank verse. I feel a sort of shame
when you make so much of me, when you persist in telling me that the
outer conditions of my life are unworthy. It makes me feel so base, such
a poor thing. Sometimes I half believe you must be poking fun. Anyhow I
don't know what you would be at; do you wish me to turn up my nose at my
surroundings? And do you see any good that it would do? And the details
you go into! That coffee-pot you saw and are so plaintive about came to
grief only the day before your visit, and will, in due season, be
replaced by another. Meanwhile it doesn't hurt coffee to be poured out
of a broken spout, and it doesn't hurt us to drink it after it has
passed through this humiliation. On the contrary, we receive it
thankfully into cups, and remain perfectly unruffled. You say, and
really you say it in a kind of agony, that the broken spout, you are
sure, is symbolic of much that is invisible in my life. You say--in
effect, though your words are choicer--that if you had your way my life
would be set about with no spouts that were not whole. If you had your
way? Mr. Anstruther, it is a mercy that in this one matter you have not
got it. What an extremely discontented creature I would become if I
spent my days embedded in the luxury you, by a curious perverseness,
think should be piled around me. I would gasp ill-natured epigrams from
morning till night. I would wring my hands, and rend the air with cries
of _cui bono_. The broken spout is a brisk reminder of the
transitoriness of coffee-pots and of life. It sets me hurrying about my
business, which is first to replace it, and then by every possible
ingenuity to make the most of the passing moment. The passing moment is
what you should keep your eye on, my young friend. It is a slippery,
flighty thing; but, properly pounced upon, lends itself fruitfully to
squeezing. The upshot of your last letter is, I gather, that for some
strange reason, some extremity of perverseness, you would have me walk
in silk attire, and do it in halls made of marble. It suffocates me only
to think of it. I love my freedom and forest trampings, my short skirts
and swinging arms. I want the wind to blow on me, and the sun to burn
me, and the mud to spatter me. Away with caskets, and settings, and
frames! I am not a picture, or a jewel, whatever your poetic eye, misled
by a sly and tricky Muse, persists in seeing. It would be quite a good
plan, and of distinctly tonic properties, for you to write to Frau von
Lindeberg and beg her to describe me. She, it is certain, would do it
very accurately, untroubled by the deceptions of any Muse.
How kind of you to ask me what I would like for Christmas, and how funny
of you to ask if you might not give me a trinket. I laughed over that,
for did I not write to you three days ago and give you an account of my
conversation with Joey on the subject of trinkets at Christmas? Is it
possible you do not read my letters? Is it possible that, having read
them, you forget them so immediately? Is it possible that proverbs lie,
and the sauce appropriate to the goose is not also appropriate to the
gander? Give me a book. There is no present I care about but that. And
if it happened to be a volume in the dark blue binding edition of
Stevenson to add to my row of him I would be both pleased and grateful.
Joey asked me what I wanted, so he is getting me the _Travels with a
Donkey_. Will you give me _Virginibus Puerisque_?
Yours sincerely,