VENICE, _13th November_ (1876).
I have to-day your dear little note, and have desired Joan to send you
one just written to her in which I have given some account of myself,
that may partly interest, partly win your pardon for apparent neglect.
Coming here, after practically an interval of twenty-four years,--for
I have not seriously looked at anything during the two hurried visits
with Joan,[18]--my old unfinished work, and the possibilities of its
better completion, rise grievously and beguilingly before me, and I
have been stretching my hands to the shadow of old designs and
striving to fulfill shortcomings, always painful to me, but now, for
the moment, intolerable.
I am also approaching the close of the sixth year of Fors, and have
plans for the Sabbatical year of it, which make my thoughts active and
troubled. I am drawing much, and have got a study of St. Ursula which
will give you pleasure; but the pain of being separate from my friends
and of knowing they miss me! I wonder if you will think you are making
me too vain, Susie. Such vanity is a very painful one, for I know that
you look out of the window on Sundays now, wistfully, for Joan's
handkerchief. This pain seems always at my heart, with the other which
is its own.
I am thankful, always, you like St. Ursula. _One_ quite fixed plan for
the last year of Fors, is that there shall be absolutely no abuse or
controversy in it, but things which will either give pleasure or help;
and some clear statements of principle, in language as temperate as
hitherto violent; to show, for one thing, that the violence was not
for want of self-command.
I'm going to have a good fling at the Bishops in next Fors to finish
with, and then for January!--only I mustn't be too good, Susie, or
something would happen to me. So I shall say naughty things still, but
in the mildest way.
I am very grateful to you for that comparison about my mind being as
crisp as a lettuce. I am _so_ thankful you can feel that still. I was
beginning to doubt, myself.
[Footnote 18: May 1870 and June 1872.]
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