Possession (31 page)

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 of 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—

I dare not write more. I cannot be sure that any further communication of yours will reach me—intact—or at all—

Your
Poem
is lost
.