February 16th.
I read yesterday that “strong passions are increased by distance.” Mine for you must be very strong then—though indeed tender friendship is ever the surest of any—for I love you better than ever:—but this is intelligible enough. If we truly love a person, we have, when absent from him, only his good and agreeable qualities before our eyes; the unpleasant little defects which exist in every man, and which, however trifling they may be, annoy us when present, vanish from our recollection,—and thus love naturally increases in absence. And you—what do you think on this subject? How many more faults have you to cover with the mantle of Christian love in me!
I am going to London to-morrow, expressly to deliver this letter to our ambassador with my own hands, since the last was delayed so long. Probably it fell into the hands of the curious, for we shall not soon get rid of the ‘infamie’ of opening letters. In two days I shall return, and shall be happy enough to miss three or four balls in the interval.—I took a long walk this morning, and this time not entirely alone, but with one of the many agreeable girls I have met with here. When young unmarried women are once ‘lancées’ in the world, they enjoy more rational freedom in England than in any other country in Europe. The young lady ‘quæstionis’ was just seventeen, and polished in Paris.
On my return home I found, to my no small astonishment, a letter from the luckless R——, who has been again driven back to Harwich, and despairingly implores money and help. Contrary to my desire, as I now learn for the first time, he did not go by Calais. These wanderings of the Garden-Odysseus are as ludicrous as they are disagreeable, and you will doubtless think the adventurer ‘malgré lui’ is eaten by the fishes, till you have ocular proof of the contrary. I recollect that twelve years ago, about this same season, I was going to embark for Hamburg, from which I was fortunately dissuaded by my old French valet. He said, with rather an odd turn of expression; “Dans ces tems ci, il y a toujours quelques équinoxes dangéreuses, qui peuvent devenir funestes.” He was right; the vessel was wrecked, and several lives lost.
London, Feb. 18th.
Honour to Mr. Temple!—Your letter, which he forwarded, reached me in ten days, while those which come through our diplomacy are three weeks on the road. Give him my best thanks. I laughed heartily at the news H—— sends me so humourously. The little Criminal-rath (‘conseiller criminel’) whom the jester calls ‘le Rat criminel’; the ‘Renvoyé extraordinaire,’ and the ‘Diplomate à la fourchette,’ are admirably painted; so is The Fortunate house-court-state-and body-servant. Don’t wonder at his success: it is indisputable that there is a sort of narrowness which almost always succeeds in the world; and a character of mind which never succeeds. Mine is of this latter sort—a fantastic picture-making mind, that fashions its own dream-world anew every day, and thence remains for ever a stranger in the actual world. You tell me that if Fortune had offered herself to me, I should have slighted her, or at most, playfully taken her by the finger, instead of clutching her earnestly;—that I never valued the present till it stood as a picture in the far distance;—that then indeed it was often a picture of repentance and regret; the future, a picture of longing and aspiration; the present, never anything but a misty spot. ‘A merveille.’ You say all this most charmingly; and I must acknowledge that nobody understands better how to moralize impressively than you.—If it were but of any use to me! But tell me,—if you could convince the lame man that it were far better for him not to be lame;—as soon as the poor wretch tries to set one foot before the other, does he limp the less? ‘Naturam expellas furca,’ &c. Vainly do you desire your stomach to digest better, your wit to be sharper, your reason to be more efficient:—things go on in their old train, with a few modifications.
The decisions of the Ministers on the S—— affair, which you communicate to me, also remain after the old sort, in spite of the extreme politeness of those gentlemen. Is it not strange, however, that our inferior functionaries distinguish themselves as much by their ‘tracasseries,’ and by their ill-bred, and I might say contemptuous style, as the higher do (with a single exception) by their care in using none but the most refined and polished forms? Do not these on this very account wear the appearance of the bitterest irony? You may give this as a subject for a prize-essay to our G—— dilettante academy.
‘A propos,’—who is that very wise Minister of whom H—— speaks? Ah ha! I guess—but all Ministers are now-a-days so wise ‘ex officio,’ that it is difficult to know which he means. The other, however, I guessed instantly—as well as the pure horizontal individual, whose illness grieves me heartily; for when he is well, he stands, in my opinion, most singularly perpendicular, towering above disfavour or envy, by the dignity of his character, and by his experience and talents for business. There are, to be sure, some official persons in our country whom one might fairly ask, with Bürger’s Lenore, every time one sees them, “Bist lebend, Liebster, oder todt?”[47]
Heaven preserve us both in better health of body and mind! And, above all, may it preserve to me your tender friendship, the most essential element of my well-being!
Your faithful L——.