[_Skerryvore_, _Bournemouth_], _April_ 15 _or_ 16 (_the hour not being
known_), 1886.
MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,—It is I know not what hour of the night; but I
cannot sleep, have lit the gas, and here goes.
First, all your packet arrived: I have dipped into the Schumann already
with great pleasure. Surely, in what concerns us there is a sweet little
chirrup; the _Good Words_ arrived in the morning just when I needed it,
and the famous notes that I had lost were recovered also in the nick of
time.
And now I am going to bother you with my affairs: premising, first, that
this is _private_; second, that whatever I do the _Life_ shall be done
first, and I am getting on with it well; and third, that I do not quite
know why I consult you, but something tells me you will hear with
fairness.
Here is my problem. The Curtin women are still miserable prisoners; no
one dare buy their farm of them, all the manhood of England and the world
stands aghast before a threat of murder. (1) Now, my work can be done
anywhere; hence I can take up without loss a back-going Irish farm, and
live on, though not (as I had originally written) in it: First Reason.
(2) If I should be killed, there are a good many who would feel it:
writers are so much in the public eye, that a writer being murdered would
attract attention, throw a bull’s-eye light upon this cowardly business:
Second Reason. (3) I am not unknown in the States, from which the funds
come that pay for these brutalities: to some faint extent, my death (if I
should be killed) would tell there: Third Reason. (4) _Nobody else is
taking up this obvious and crying duly_: Fourth Reason. (5) I have a
crazy health and may die at any moment, my life is of no purchase in an
insurance office, it is the less account to husband it, and the business
of husbanding a life is dreary and demoralising: Fifth Reason.
I state these in no order, but as they occur to me. And I shall do the
like with the objections.
First Objection: It will do no good; you have seen Gordon die and nobody
minded; nobody will mind if you die. This is plainly of the devil.
Second Objection: You will not even be murdered, the climate will
miserably kill you, you will strangle out in a rotten damp heat, in
congestion, etc. Well, what then? It changes nothing: the purpose is to
brave crime; let me brave it, for such time and to such an extent as God
allows. Third Objection: The Curtin women are probably highly
uninteresting females. I haven’t a doubt of it. But the Government
cannot, men will not, protect them. If I am the only one to see this
public duty, it is to the public and the Right I should perform it—not to
Mesdames Curtin. Fourth Objection: I am married. ‘I have married a
wife!’ I seem to have heard it before. It smells ancient! what was the
context? Fifth Objection: My wife has had a mean life (1), loves me (2),
could not bear to lose me (3). (1) I admit: I am sorry. (2) But what
does she love me for? and (3) she must lose me soon or late. And after
all, because we run this risk, it does not follow we should fail. Sixth
Objection: My wife wouldn’t like it. No, she wouldn’t. Who would? But
the Curtins don’t like it. And all those who are to suffer if this goes
on, won’t like it. And if there is a great wrong, somebody must suffer.
Seventh Objection: I won’t like it. No, I will not; I have thought it
through, and I will not. But what of that? And both she and I may like
it more than we suppose. We shall lose friends, all comforts, all
society: so has everybody who has ever done anything; but we shall have
some excitement, and that’s a fine thing; and we shall be trying to do
the right, and that’s not to be despised. Eighth Objection: I am an
author with my work before me. See Second Reason. Ninth Objection: But
am I not taken with the hope of excitement? I was at first. I am not
much now. I see what a dreary, friendless, miserable, God-forgotten
business it will be. And anyway, is not excitement the proper reward of
doing anything both right and a little dangerous? Tenth Objection: But
am I not taken with a notion of glory? I dare say I am. Yet I see quite
clearly how all points to nothing coming, to a quite inglorious death by
disease and from the lack of attendance; or even if I should be knocked
on the head, as these poor Irish promise, how little any one will care.
It will be a smile at a thousand breakfast-tables. I am nearly forty
now; I have not many illusions. And if I had? I do not love this
health-tending, housekeeping life of mine. I have a taste for danger,
which is human, like the fear of it. Here is a fair cause; a just cause;
no knight ever set lance in rest for a juster. Yet it needs not the
strength I have not, only the passive courage that I hope I could muster,
and the watchfulness that I am sure I could learn.
Here is a long midnight dissertation; with myself; with you. Please let
me hear. But I charge you this: if you see in this idea of mine the
finger of duty, do not dissuade me. I am nearing forty, I begin to love
my ease and my home and my habits, I never knew how much till this arose;
do not falsely counsel me to put my head under the bed-clothes. And I
will say this to you: my wife, who hates the idea, does not refuse. ‘It
is nonsense,’ says she, ‘but if you go, I will go.’ Poor girl, and her
home and her garden that she was so proud of! I feel her garden most of
all, because it is a pleasure (I suppose) that I do not feel myself to
share.