Emily to her sister Miranda.
... Ockey has just received another Veronese to copy for her work at home. She has begun doing it so beautifully. She is distressed at only working three hours on Dulwich days; so she has begun working in her spare time at the College, and by that she will manage six hours every day....
We are very regular with our reading three evenings a week from nine to ten. Mama reads and Ockey and I work.... I think Ockey is becoming converted to Shakespeare. Dear Mama reads it so beautifully.
February, 1859.
My dear Mr. Ruskin,
I thank you for your letter. “What has been the matter?” you ask. Physically, only this, I have severe pains in walking distances that I used to manage easily. But you would quite laugh if you saw me, to hear me speak of want of strength.
But the truth is that, if enough is as good as a feast, too little must be as bad as a famine; and I feared that I had just too little for my work. But everyone agrees that it isn’t fatigue that has made me ill, but responsibility and worry and want of change. It’s my own fault. I ought to take things more quietly and not think that so very much depends on my deciding wisely, and not nearly break my heart if things go wrong for a time.
I think you’re mistaken about the teaching, which is hopeful and refreshing. As to sentiment there are few people who have not stronger feelings than I have. I assure you, I am considered the person in the family, who is without imagination, poetry, feeling, affection. Good only to do a sum, carry a weight, go a long walk in the rain, or decide any difficult question about tangible things. You happen to know the other side of me. All that’s kept in, that I may do my work; and you don’t know what a life of calculation and routine and steadiness mine is. I’m told that the best developed organ that I have is that of caution.
ESTIMATE OF HER OWN CHARACTER
However, thank you, I hope I haven’t “come to a smash.” I’m gloriously well to-day, and I’ve done my full work; perhaps I may manage five days at Dulwich after all. I think I wrote too seriously, and I beg your pardon. You can imagine the horror of being ill, to a person whose whole heart is in what they do, and who has never been obliged to calculate strength, but only time.