Don't think me as prolific as ——, but I must begin again, as I had to send off my letter with nothing but an answer to your question in it. Lord Granville's visit must have been more busy than pleasant; and their dinner topic is provoking because one always hears that the best men were those one could not have known. Remembering Macaulay, Circourt, and Rémusat, I do not care to believe that Cousin or Radowitz was far superior to them in talk. But then I, again, look back to the people I knew with regret, and think my contemporaries less amusing.
If ever I see Hawarden again, I hope it will not be for a night and half a day, but I do not know when that will be. Let us fix our thoughts on Tegernsee, and pave the way to rest and distraction here next summer.
Without claiming the discernment of Tennyson, I hold fast to what I said. There may be people you dislike for one or two reasons. You have no tenderness for Dizzy; and I am not sure you cared much for either of our gondola companions. There are one or two unpardonable crimes in your code, and one or two chasms that even Dante's mercy cannot bridge. But you never show it, and ill-nature must show itself in speech. I have no doubt at all that the relish with which you held up the mirror of my vices the other day had more of sorrow than of anger, and only a scrap of malice. It must have been Cheney, especially if it was a reminiscence of Holmbury. Freddy Leveson has a touching fidelity to monotonous friendships. This one was laid down, I think, on Holland House foundations.
If I wrapped my poet in too thick a hide of mystery (observe the joke—own cousin to the Bite of Ecuador), it was because I fancied you knew that you have no business to be the P.M.'s daughter, and would never have been, but that Lady Waldegrave, lured by the sweep of the Thames at Nuneham, neglected, or failed, to hook that brilliant Young Englander, Monckton Milnes, poet and statesman. But I know several men, some you never heard of, who, looking back along the road where they took the wrong turning, say to themselves, or at least to their friends: "Well, well; but for this or that I should be P.M. now!"
I have been prevented from finishing by interruptions, one of which was the brief appearance of the Freddy Cavendishes, spoiled by their uncomfortable haste to get away. I suppose what makes her so nice is, partly her affection for her relations. There certainly was no arrière pensée in her way of speaking of your father.
You cannot too much cultivate his taste for Dickens. Beware of "Little Dorrit," "Oliver Twist," and "Dombey." In "Chuzzlewit" the English scenes are often amusing, but there is a story about Pecksniff that may repel him.
*****
Please do not destroy the ease and serenity and confidence of my letters, which are chatted and whispered, more than written, by wanting to show them—even to Morley, in whom I have great reliance. I should write quite differently, as you rightly say, if I was not writing to the most chosen of correspondents. To Mr. Gladstone I already wrote what was due to my friendship with St. Hilaire, especially as I fancied that Downing Street would be strongly prejudiced against him. Do not turn yourself from an end into a means—one does not justify the other....
Cannes Dec. 14, 1880
I have been afraid to write. The delicious and most spiritual gift[[46]] was sent to me here, whither we came early, only to find ourselves in sore trouble, for a child had died of diphtheria in our villa just before we arrived. We had to settle in half-furnished apartments, where Mrs. Flower[[47]] found us, bringing a flavour of Hawarden. What has stood in my way is this: Some time ago, recalling a foolish speech of mine, a year old, and spoken under the spell of a great charm, you asked me to repeat it on paper. I hesitated long, and whilst I hesitated, the little volume came, and made it churlish to decline any wish of yours. I resolved that the best sign of the sincerity of my gratitude would be to do what you had asked, and to be much more foolish than ever by putting on impertinent record the evanescent conversation of Tegernsee. But I have been so fearful of giving you more annoyance than pleasure, whether by the seeming of flattery or of censure, that I have allowed myself to slip into a much more grievous fault. Will you understand me and try to forgive me? I can never thank you enough for all the friendship of which that beautiful volume is the treasured symbol. There is so much of your thought in the beauty of it, and so much in the choice of it—more than you could guess. A dear friend of mine, now dead,[[48]] devoted himself to the study of the Sonnets, as the real key to Shakespeare, being the form of his own ideas, not what he gave to his characters. We discussed them much together in long evenings at Aldenham, and he wrote a book about them, which he followed up with a volume called "The School of Shakespeare"; and the two together are the best introduction to him that I know.... Swinburne himself has recognised their merit; so that a lost part of my life came back to me with your gift. All which is to say that, whereas all that comes from you is very precious to me, if anything could add to its price it was the happy chance that guided your hand.