In that sweet hyperbole I seemed to read a transcript of your beauty. If I am selfish, beloved, all love is selfishness.
Dear girl, it seems that always I must woo you in metaphysics and express my ardour in theorems. But have I not made myself understood? “Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,” as a thousand women have quoted: and it is true. But do you not see that even for this reason his love swells into a passionate idolatry of the woman who knows no such cleavage in her soul. Try us with sacrifices. I could throw away every earthly good to bestow on you a year of happiness—only not my philosophic proposition, as you sarcastically call it. That is greater than I and greater than you—pray heaven it do not clash with the promise of our peace. Virgil, I think, meant to exhibit such a tragic conflict in his tale of Æneas and Dido, only poetwise the inner impulse which worked within Æneas he expressed dramatically as a messenger from the gods. It shows but little understanding of the poem or of human nature to censure Æneas as a cold egotist. Did he not sail away carrying anguish in his heart, multa gemens? For him there was destined toil and warfare, for Dido only terror and death. The tragedy fell hardest upon the woman, for so the Fates have ordered.
But why do I write such grim reflections? There is no tragedy, no separation, for us, but a great wonder of happiness:
| The treasures of the deep are not so precious As are the concealed comforts of a man Locked up in woman’s love. |
All the marvellous words of the poets rush into my brain when I think of this new blessing. Yes, I have acted a robber’s part, sweet Jessica, and he who ravished that great jewel from the Indian idol never carried away so large a draft on the world’s happiness as this that I have stolen. I cannot be repentant while this golden glow is upon me; later I shall begin to question my own worthiness.
I cannot now tell you one half that is in my mind to write, or answer one half the questions in your letter. Jack is living with me just at present, but of him I will speak next time. I have planned to change my abode, but of that too next time. And I would not attempt to give a name to the deity I serve in a postscript, as it were. Dear Heart, only let your love add a little to your happiness as it has added so much to mine; and trust me.—I am sending a letter to your father, the contents of which you might imagine even if he should not show it to you.
XXX
JESSICA TO PHILIP
WRITTEN BEFORE THE RECEIPT OF THE PRECEDING LETTER
My Beloved: