Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 16th March, 1865.
I did not promise, like Mr. Collins, that you should receive a letter of thanks for your kind entertainment of me; but I feel the need of writing a word or two to break the change from your presence to my complete absence from you. It was really an enjoyment to be with you, in spite of the bodily uneasiness which robbed me of half my mind. One thing only I regret—that in my talk with you I think I was rather merciless to other people. Whatever vices I have seem to be exaggerated by my malaise—such "chastening" not answering the purpose of purification in my case. Pray set down any unpleasant notions I have suggested about others to my account—i.e., as being my unpleasantness, and not theirs. When one is bilious, other people's complexions look yellow, and one of their eyes higher than the other—all the fault of one's own evil interior. I long to hear from you that you are better, and if you are not better, still to hear from you before too long an interval. Mr. Congreve's condition is really cheering, and he goes about with me as a pleasant picture—like that Raphael the Tuscan duke chose always to carry with him.
I got worse after I left you; but to-day I am better, and begin to think there is nothing serious the matter with me except the "weather," which every one else is alleging as the cause of their symptoms.
Letter to Mrs. Bray, 18th March, 1865.
I believe you are one of the few who can understand that in certain crises direct expression of sympathy is the least possible to those who most feel sympathy. If I could have been with you in bodily presence, I should have sat silent, thinking silence a sign of feeling that speech, trying to be wise, must always spoil. The truest things one can say about great Death are the oldest, simplest things that everybody knows by rote, but that no one knows really till death has come very close. And when that inward teaching is going on, it seems pitiful presumption for those who are outside to be saying anything. There is no such thing as consolation when we have made the lot of another our own. I don't know whether you strongly share, as I do, the old belief that made men say the gods loved those who died young. It seems to me truer than ever, now life has become more complex, and more and more difficult problems have to be worked out. Life, though a good to men on the whole, is a doubtful good to many, and to some not a good at all. To my thought it is a source of constant mental distortion to make the denial of this a part of religion—to go on pretending things are better than they are. To me early death takes the aspect of salvation; though I feel, too, that those who live and suffer may sometimes have the greater blessedness of being a salvation. But I will not write of judgments and opinions. What I want my letter to tell you is that I love you truly, gratefully, unchangeably.
Journal, 1865.
March 25.—I am in deep depression, feeling powerless. I have written nothing but beginnings since I finished a little article for the Pall Mall, on the Logic of Servants. Dear George is all activity, yet is in very frail health. How I worship his good humor, his good sense, his affectionate care for every one who has claims on him! That worship is my best life.
March 29.—Sent a letter on "Futile Lying," from Saccharissa to the Pall Mall.
I have begun a novel ("Felix Holt").
Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 11th April, 1865.