In the distance there appeared to be a Pool. It lay across my path—a brown pool—deep in colour, uncertain in depth—reflecting the canopy in its dark unbroken surface. I looked at it and looked away, and when I looked back it contained a Creature. I must suppose this Creature to have come there by some minor magic, for it had certainly not been there before, and could hardly have walked there, for the surface remained still and unbroken.
Now the Creature was a small hound, milky-white in colour, with a finely pointed little head and black intelligent eyes. It lay—or couched would be better—it was like the sphinx, couchant—half-above and half-below the water, so that its shoulders and haunches were licked and divided by a fine hairline of surface, and its limbs, below the surface, gleamed through flowing green and amber. Its delicate forefeet were stretched before it and its fine tail curled round about. It was as still as though it was made of marble, and this not for only one or two moments but for some considerable time.
Round its neck it wore a series of spherical silver bells on a silver chain—not miniature tinkling bells, but large bells, akin to gulls’ eggs, or even bantam eggs.
My horse and I stopped and stared. And the creature, stone-still always, stared back, with comfortable confidence, and a look, somehow, of command.
I was for a period of several moments wholly undecided as to whether this manifestation were a reality, or a hallucination, or what? Had it come from another time? It lay there so improbably, half-submerged, a veritable Canis aquaticus, a water-spirit emerging, or an earth-spirit half-submerged.
I could not for the life of me press on or make it give way or move or vanish. I stared, it stared. It seemed to me a solid Poem, and you came into my mind, and your little dog and your unearthly creatures walking the earth. There also came into my mind several poems of Sir Thos Wyatt—hunting poems for the most part, but where the creatures of the Chase are denizens of the Court Chamber. Noli me tangere, the beast seemed to proclaim haughtily, and indeed I could not and did not advance upon it, but returned to time and daylight and the time-keeping of daily chatter, as best I might.
Now I write it out—it may seem no great matter to you—or to anyone who may read this account of it. And yet it was. It was a sign. I thought of Elizabeth in the days of her youth hunting in that same park with just such small hounds—a Virgin Huntress—an implacable Artemis—and I fancied I saw her fierce face in its whiteness and the deer running from her. (The full-fed ones I passed cropped the turf contentedly enough, or watched me like statues and snuffed the air of my passing.) Did you know that the Wild Hunt used sometimes, after passing through a homestead, to leave a little dog in the hearth which would be frighted with the right charm but otherwise stayed a year, eating the sustenance of the house, until the Huntsmen came again?
I shall write no more on this topic. I have made myself foolish enough and put my dignity wholly in your hands—with as much trust as you expressed towards me in your never-to-be-forgotten last letter, which, as I said in opening, shall have its answer.
Let me have your view of my apparition—
Swammerdam needs a touch or two more. He was a queer intellect and a lost soul—despised and rejected like so many great men—the circumstances of his life almost perfectly coincident with the great preoccupations—nay obsessions—of his nature. Think, my dear friend, of the variousness and the shape-shifting and the infinite extensibility of the human spirit—that can at one time inhabit a stuffy Dutch Cabinet of Curiosities—and dissect a microscopic heart—and contemplate a visionary water-hound in the brightest English air and leafiness—and tramp about Galilee considering the lilies of those fields with Renan, and pry unforgivably and in fantasy into the secrets of the unseen room where your head is bent over your paper—and you smile at your work—for by this time Melusina is embarked on and the knight comes to the encounter by the Fountain of Thirst—
My dear Friend,
If I address you So—it is for the Last Time as well as for the First. We have rushed down a Slope—I at least have Rushed—where we might have descended more circumspectly—or Not at All even. It has been borne in upon me that there are dangers in our continued conversation. I fear I lack delicacy in saying so—I see no good way out indeed—I reproach you with nothing—not myself neither—unless with an indiscreet confessional—and of what then—that I loved my father, and was set upon writing an epic?
But the world would not look well upon such letters—between a woman living in a shared solitude as I do—and a man—even if that man were a great and wise poet—
There are those who care for what the world—and his wife—may say. There are those who are hurt by his bad opinion. It is pointed out to me, quite rightly—that if I am jealous of my freedom to live as I do—and manage my own affairs—and work my work—I must be more than usually careful to remain sufficiently respectable in the eyes of the world and his wife—to evade his bad opinions—and consequent niggling restrictions on my freedom of movement.
I would not impugn your delicacy in any thing—or your judgment—or your good faith.
Do you not think it would be better—if we were to cease to correspond?
I shall be your well-wisher always
Christabel LaMotte
My dear Friend,
Your letter came as a shock to me—as you must, of course, have foreseen, from its complete contrast with its predecessor, and with the good faith and trust that had grown and subsisted (I thought) between us. I asked myself—what had I done to alarm you so—and answered myself that I had transgressed the bounds of your delineated privacy in coming to Richmond, and not only in coming, but in writing, as I did, of what I had seen. I could urge you to take that as a whimsical exaggeration of a curious phaenomenon—though it was not—if I thought truly, upon reflection, that that was the cause of the matter. But it is not—or if it was, after the tone of your letter, it no longer is.
I will confess, I was at first not only shocked, but angry, that you should write so. But too much was at stake—including the delicacy and good judgment and good faith you kindly attribute to me—for me to write back in anger. So I thought long and hard about our correspondence, and about your predicament, as you choose to describe it—of a woman “jealous of her freedom to live as she does.” I have no designs on your freedom, I wanted to retort—much the opposite, indeed, I respect and honour and admire that freedom and the product of it, your work, your words, your web of language. I know to my own cost the unhappiness that lack of freedom can bring to women—the undesirability, the painfulness, the waste, of the common restrictions placed upon them. I thought of you most truly as a fine poet and my friend.
But—forgive me this necessary failure in delicacy—one thing your letter does is to define us fair and square in relation to each other as a man and a woman. Now, as long as this was not done, we might have gone on forever, simply conversing—with a hint of harmless gallantry, courtly devotion perhaps—but mostly with a surely not illicit desire to speak of the art, or craft, we both profess. I thought this freedom was one you claimed for yourself. What has caused you to retreat so behind a palisade of prickling conventions?
Can anything be retrieved?
I would make two observations here. The first is that you do not by any means utter a firm resolution that we must write no more letters. You write in the interrogative mood—and moreover with a deference to my opinion that is either mere feminine deprecation (most mal à propos?) or a true reflection of your state of mind—a not complete certainty of closure in this matter.
No—my dear Miss LaMotte—I do not (on the evidence you have offered) think it would be better if we were to cease to correspond. It would not be better for me—I should be almost infinitely a loser, and without any gratifying moral certainty that I had done a right or noble thing in renouncing a correspondence that gave me intense delight—and freedom—and harmed no one.
I do not think it would be better for you—but I am not wholly aware o
f your circumstances—I am open to conviction.
I said, I would make two observations. This was the first. The second is, that you write—do I go too far—as though your letter was in part dictated by the views of some other person or persons. I say this most tentatively—but it is very striking—some other voice speaks in your lines—do I divine truly? Now, this may be the voice of someone with much greater claims on your loyalty and attention than I may put forward—but you must be very sure that such a person sees truly and not with a vision distracted by other considerations. I cannot find a tone to write to you that does not veer towards the hectoring or the plaintive. I do not know—so quickly have you become part of my life—how I should do without you.
I should like still to send you Swammerdam. May I do that, at least?
Yours to command
Randolph Ash
My dear Friend,
How shall I answer you? I have been abrupt and ungracious—from fear of Infirmity of Purpose, and because I am a voice—a voice that would be still and small—crying plaintively out of a Whirlwind—which I may not in Honesty describe to you. I owe you an Explanation—and yet I Must Not—and yet I must—or stand convicted of hideous Ingratitude as well as lesser vices.
But Truly Sir it will not do. The—precious—letters—are too much and too little—and above all and first, I should say, compromising.
What a cold sad word. It is His word—the World’s word—and her word too, that prude, his Wife. But it entails freedom.
I will expatiate—on freedom and injustice.
The injustice is—that I require my freedom—from you—who respect it so fully. That was a noble saying of yours about freedom—how can I turn from …
I will put in Evidence a brief History. A History of little nameless unremembered acts. Of this our Bethany cottage—which was named for a reason. Now to you and in your marvellous Poem—Bethany is the Place where the master called his dead friend to resurrection beforetimes and particularly.
But to us Females, it was a place wherein we neither served nor were served—poor Martha was cumbered with much serving—and was sharp with her sister Mary who sat at His Feet and heard His Word and chose the one thing needful. Now I believe rather, with George Herbert, that “Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws—Makes that and the action fine.” We formed a Project—my dear Companion and myself—to make ourselves a Bethany where the work of all kinds was carried on in the Spirit of Love and His Laws. We met, you are to know, at one of Mr Ruskin’s marvellous lectures on the dignity of handicraft and individual work. We were Two—who wished to live the Life of the Mind—to make good things. We saw after thought that if we put together the pittances we possessed—and could come by by giving drawing lessons—or by selling Wonder Tales or even Poems—we might make ourselves a life in which drudgery was Artful—was sacred as Mr Ruskin believes is possible—and it was shared, for no Master (save Him Who is Lord of All and visited the true Bethany). We were to Renounce. Not the lives that then encompassed us—cramped Daughterly Devotion to a worldly mother—nor the genteel Slavery of governessing—those were no loss—those were gleefully fled and opposition staunchly met. But we were to renounce the outside World—and the usual Female Hopes (and with them the usual Female Fears) in exchange for—dare I say Art—a daily duty of crafting—from exquisite curtains to Mystical Paintings, from biscuits with sugar roses to the Epic of Melusina. It was a Sealed Pact—I say no more of that. It was a chosen way of life—in which, you must believe, I have been wondrously happy—and not alone in being so.
(And the Letters we have written are with me such an Addiction, I want to ask—have you ever seen Mr Ruskin demonstrate the Art of Nature in the depicting of a veined Stone in a water-glass? So jewel-bright his colours, so fine his pen and brush, so exact his description of why we must see what is truly there—but I must not run on—it is right that we should cease—)
I have chosen a Way—dear Friend—I must hold to it. Think of me if you will as the Lady of Shalott—with a Narrower Wisdom—who chooses not the Gulp of outside Air and the chilly river-journey deathwards—but who chooses to watch diligently the bright colours of her Web—to ply an industrious shuttle—to make—something—to close the Shutters and the Peephole too—
You will say, you are no threat to That. You will argue—rationally. There are things we have not said to each other beyond the—One—you so starkly—Defined.
I know in my Intrinsic Self—the Threat is there.
Be patient. Be generous. Forgive
Your friend
Christabel LaMotte
My dear Friend,
These last letters have been like Noah’s Ravens—they have sped out over the waste waters, across the turgid Thames in these rainy days—and have not returned or brought back any sign of life. I was most hopeful of the latest-despatched, with Swammerdam with the ink barely dry on him. I thought you must certainly see that you had in some sense called him up—that without your fine perceptions, without your intricate sense of minute inhuman lives, he would have presented an altogether grosser semblance, not so articulate on his dry bones. No other Poem of mine has ever in the slightest been written for a particular Reader—only for myself, or some half-conceived Alter Ego. Now, you are not that—it is your difference, your otherness to which I address myself—fascinated, intrigued. And now my vanity—and something more—my sense of Human Friendship—is hurt that you cannot—for it is nonsense to say that you dare not—even acknowledge my poem.
If I have offended you by calling your last long-ago letter contradictory (which it was) or timid (which it was) then you must forgive me. You may well ask why I am so tenacious in continuing writing to one who has declared herself unable to maintain a friendship (which she also declared to be valuable to herself) and remains resolute in silence, in rejection. A lover might indeed in all honour accept such a congé—but a peaceable, a valued friend? It is not as though I ever breathed—or scribbled or scratched—the faintest hint of any improper attention—no “if things were otherwise, ah well then …” no “Your eyes, which I know to be bright, may peruse …”—no—all was straightforward from my honest thoughts which are closer to my essential self than any such nonsensical gallantry—and this you cannot support?
And why am I so tenacious? I hardly know myself. For the sake of future Swammerdams, it may be—for I see that I had insensibly come to perceive you—mock not—as some sort of Muse.
Could the Lady of Shalott have written Melusina in her barred and moated Tower?
Well, you will say, you are too busy writing the poetry itself, to require employment as a Muse. I had not thought the two were incompatible—indeed they might even be thought to be complementary. But you are adamant.
Do not be misled by my mocking tone. It is all that seems to come. I shall hope against hope—that this letter is the Dove which will return with the hoped-for Olive-Branch. If not, I shall cease to bother you.
Ever yours most truly
R. H. Ash
Dear Mr Ash,
This is not the first time this letter has been embarked on. I know neither how to start nor how to proceed. A Circumstance has arisen—no, I know no longer how to write, neither, for how could a circumstance arise, or what appearance might such a creature—bear?
Dear Sir—your Letters have not reached me—for a Reason. Not your Raven-ous letters—nor yet, to my infinite loss—your Poem.
I fear—I know indeed, with all but ocular proof positive—they have been Taken.
Today I happened—to run a little faster to greet the Postman. There was almost a papery—Tussle. I snatched. To my shame—to our shame—we—snatched.
I ask you—I beg you—I have told you the Truth—do not condemn. My honour was being guarded—and if I do not exactly share the conception of Honour which prompted the zealous carefulness—I must be grateful, I must, I am.
But to stoop to Theft
Oh, Sir, I am torn by contrary emotions. I am grateful,
as I have said. But I must be very angry to have been so deceived—and angry on your behalf—for though I might have thought it best—not to answer those letters—no one else had the right to interfere with them—whatever the motive.
I cannot find them. They are torn to shreds, I am told. And Swammerdam with them. How shall that be forgiven? And yet—how may it not?
This house—so happy once—is full of weeping and wailing and Black Headache like a Painful Pall—Dog Tray slinks to and fro—Monsignor Dorato is silenced—and I—I pace up and down—I ask myself to whom I may turn—and think of you my Friend, the unwitting cause of so much Woe—
It is all misapprehension, I know.
I no longer know what was right and wrong about the Original Step—to discontinue the writing—
If it was to safeguard—domestic harmony—that is now most thoroughly jangled, out of tune and harsh.
Oh, dear friend—I am so very angry—I see strange fiery flashes before my drowned eyes—