Ever dearest you might have stayed ten minutes more. George did not come in till half past six after all—but there is the consciousness of being wise in one’s generation, which consoles so many for their eternity as children of light, ... yet doesn’t console me for my ten minutes, ... so it is as well to say no more on this head!
I have glanced over the paper in the Athenæum and am of an increased certainty that Mr. Chorley is the writer. It is his way from beginning to end—and that is the way, observe, in which little critics get to tread on the heels of great writers who are too great to kick backwards. Think of bringing George Sand to the level of the same sentence with such a woman as Mrs. Ellis! And then, the infinite trash about the three eras in the Frenchwoman’s career, ... which never would have been dragged into application there, if the critic had heard of her last two volumes ... published since the ‘Meunier d’Angibault,’ ‘Teverino’ and ‘Isidora.’ One may be angry and sin not, over such inapplicable commonplace. The motive of it, the low expediency, is worse to me than the offence. Why mention her at all ... why name in any fashion any of these French writers, for the reception of whom the English mind is certainly not prepared, unless they are to be named worthily, recognised righteously? It is just the principle of the advice about the De Kocks; whom people are to go and see and deny their acquaintance afterwards. Why not say boldly ‘These writers have high faculty, and imagination such as none of our romance-writers can pretend to—but they have besides a devil—and we do not recommend them as fit reading for English families!’ Now wouldn’t it answer every purpose? Or silence would!—silence, at least. But this digging and nagging at great reputations, ... it is to me quite insufferable: and not compensated for by the motive, which is a truckling to conventions rather than to morals. As if earnestness of aim was not, from the beginning, from ‘Rose et Blanche’ and ‘Indiana,’ a characteristic of George Sand! Really it is pitiful.
The ‘Mysteries of the Heaths,’ I suppose to be a translation of ‘Sept Jours au Château,’ a very clever story from the monstrous Hydra-headed imagination of Frédéric Soulié. Dumas is inferior to them all of course, yet a right good storyteller when he is in the mind for storytelling;—telling, telling, telling, and never having done. You know I like listening to stories—I agree with the great Sultan and would forego ever so much cutting off of heads for the sake of a story—it is a taste quite apart from a taste for literature: a story-teller, I like, apart from the sweet voice. Now that book of Dumas’s on the League wars, which distressed me so the other day, by having the cruelty ... the ‘villainie’ ... of hanging its hero in the fourth volume ... (regularly hanging him on a pair of gallows—wasn’t it too bad?) that book is amusing enough, more than amusing enough, to take with one’s coffee ... which is my fashion, ... because you are not here and I have nobody to talk to me. The hero who was hanged, deserved it a little, I think, though the author meant it for a pure misfortune and though no good romance-reader in the world, such as I am, could bear to part with the hero of four volumes in that manner, without pain; but the hero did deserve it a little when one came to consider. In the first place, he was a traitor once or twice in war and politics, and was quite ready to be so a third or fourth time, ... only ... as he said to the lady he loved ... ‘je perdrais votre estime.’ ‘Is that your only objection’ she enquired. ‘The only one’ he answered! (How frightfully true, that those brilliant French writers have no moral sense at all! do not, for the most part, know right from wrong! here, an instance!) Then, from the beginning to the end of the four volumes, he loves two women together ... a ‘phénomène’ by no means uncommon, says the historian musingly, ... and, except for the hanging, there might have been a difficulty perhaps in the final arrangement. Yet oh ... to see one’s hero, the hero of four volumes, and not a bad hero either in some respects, hung up before one’s eyes! ... it wrongs the natural affections to think of it! it made me unhappy for a full hour! There should be a society for the prevention of cruelty to romance-readers, against the recurrence of such things!
Pure nonsense I write to you, it seems to me.
What beautiful flowers you brought me!—and the sweet-brier is unfolding its leaves to-day, as if you did them, so, no wrong. And I have been considering; and there are not, if you please, five but four days, between Saturday and Thursday. In the meanwhile say how you are, dearest dearest! My thoughts are with you constantly ... indeed. I could almost say, too much, ... because sometimes they grow weak and tired ... not of you, who are best and beloved, but of themselves, having been so long used to be sad, May God bless you, ... bless you! His best blessing for me (after that!) were to make me worthy of you—but it would take too many miracles.
Your
Ba.
Remember the letters, if they come.