Part 48 (1/2)
It is true that this scenery is often wildly sublime in its character; nevertheless, it is overlooked in almost every direction by villas, monasteries, or villages, and if one escapes from these (as, indeed, I only suppose I _may_, for I have not yet been able to do so), one stumbles among the ruins and gigantic remains of the great race that has departed, and recollections of men, their works and ways, pursue one everywhere, and surround one with the vestiges of the humanity of bygone centuries.
In the woods of Ma.s.sachusetts wild-cats panthers, and bears are yet occasionally to be met with, and the absence of the human element, whether present or past, gives a character of unsympathizing savageness to the scenery; while here it has so saturated the very soil with its former existence that where there is n.o.body there are millions of ghosts, and that, if the sense of solitude is almost precluded, there is an abiding and depressing one of desolate desertion.
The personal danger which I am told attends walking alone about the woods and hills here rather impairs my enjoyment of the lovely country....
How lamentably foolish human beings are in their intercourse with each other, to be sure, whether they love or hate, or whatever they do!...
The epistle of yours that I am now answering I received only this morning, and, owing no one else a previous debt, sat down instantly to discharge my debt to you. Am I honest? am I just? If I am not, show me how I am not; if I am, why, hold your tongue.
The climate of Rome disagreed with me more than any climate of which I have yet had experience. I had a perpetual consciousness of my bilious tendencies, and when the sirocco blew I found it difficult to bear up against that and the permanent causes of depression I always have to struggle against. The air here is undoubtedly freer and purer, but even here we do not escape from that deadly hot wind, that blast, that I should think came straight from h.e.l.l, it is so laden with despair.
I liked those pretty la.s.ses, the Ladies T----, very much. All young people interest me, and must be wonderfully displeasing if they do not please me. I met them frequently, but they were naturally full of gayety and life and spirits, which I naturally was not. The little society I went into in Rome oppressed me dreadfully with its ponderous vapidity, and beyond exchanging a few words with these bonnie girls, and admiring their sweet pleasant faces, I had nothing to do with them. There was much talk about the chances of a marriage between Lord W---- and Lady M----, but though her father left no stone unturned to accomplish this great blessing for his pretty daughter, the matter seemed extremely doubtful when the season ended and they all went off to Naples.
As for Mrs. H----, if she had chronicled me, I am afraid it would scarcely have been with good words. I met her at a party at Mrs.
Bunsen's (whose husband is the son of Arnold's friend).... The young lady impressed me as one of that numerous cla.s.s of persons who like to look at a man or woman whose name, for any reason, has been in the public mouth, and probably her curiosity was abundantly satisfied by my being brought up and shown to her. She made no particular impression upon me, but I have no doubt that in sorrow, or joy, or any real genuine condition, instead of what is called society, she might perhaps have interested me. It takes uncommon powers of fascination, or what is even rarer, perfect simplicity, to attract attention or arouse sympathy in the dead atmosphere of modern civilized social intercourse. All is so drearily dry, smooth, narrow, and commonplace that the great deeps of life below this stupid stagnant surface are never seen, heard, or thought of.
If your nieces' constancy in following the round of monotonously recurring amus.e.m.e.nts of a Dublin season amazes me, they would certainly think it much more amazing to pa.s.s one's time as I do, wandering about the country alone, dipping one's head and hands into every wayside fountain one comes to, and sitting down by it only to get up again and wander on to the next spring of living water. The symbol is comforting, as well as the element itself, though it is a mere suggestion of the spiritual wells by which one may find rest and refreshment, and pause and ponder on this dusty life's way of ours.
I rejoice the distress in Ireland is less than was antic.i.p.ated, and am sorry that I cannot sympathize with your nephew's political views [Colonel Taylor was all his life a consistent and fervent Tory]....
Politics appear to me, in a free government, to be the especial and proper occupation of a wealthy landowner; and, in such a country as Ireland, I am sure they might furnish a n.o.ble field for the exercise of the finest intelligence and the most devoted patriotism, as well as fill the time with occupation of infinite interest, both of business and benevolence. I should like to be a man with such a work....
My sister's little girl is lovely; she runs about, but does not speak yet. G.o.d bless you, my dear friend. Give my love to dear Dorothy. If I can, I will come and see you both at Torquay this next winter. I hope to be in England in November.
Ever yours, f.a.n.n.y.
FRASCATI, Wednesday, July 1st, 1846.
... You know of old that the slightest word of blame from you is worse than hot sealing-wax on my skin to me, and that to my self-justifications there is no end. My dear friend, are mental perplexity and despondency, moral difficulty, spiritual apathy, and a general bitter internal struggle with existence, less real trials, less positive troubles, than the most afflicting circ.u.mstances generally so cla.s.sed? I almost doubt it. It may be more difficult to formulate that species of anguish in words, and it may seem a less positive and substantial grief than some others, but the plagues of the soul are _real_ tortures, and I set few sufferings above them, few difficulties and few pains beyond those that have their source not in the outward dispensation of events, but in the inward conditions of our physical and moral const.i.tutions.
Comparing one lot with another, does not rather the equality of the general doom of trouble and sorrow, of difficulty and struggle, witness the impartiality with which we are governed and our several fates distributed to us? The self-a.s.sured and self-relying strength of my const.i.tution (I mean by that my character as well as the temperament from which it results) knows nothing of the trials that beset yours--doubt, distrust, despondency. I have health, mental and physical activity, and a ”mounting spirit” of indomitable enjoyment that buoyantly protects me from sufferings under which others wince and writhe; nevertheless, I have the sufferings proper to my individuality, and I needs must suffer, if it were only that I may be said to _live_, in the fit and proper sense of the term. Our lots are just; by G.o.d they are appointed....
But in spite of abiding sorrow, I have often hours of vivid enjoyment, enjoyment which has nothing to do with happiness, or peace, or hope; momentary flashes, bright gleams of exquisite pleasure, of which the capacity seems indestructible in my nature; and whatever bitterness may lie at my heart's core, it still leaves about it a mobile surface of sensibility, which reflects with a sort of ecstasy every ray of light and every form of beauty.
You certainly do not enjoy as I do, and perhaps therefore you do not suffer as acutely; but we err in nothing more than in our estimate of each other's natures, and might more profitably spend the same amount of consideration upon our own lot, and its capabilities of sorrow or of joy for our own improvement.
Why is it that people do perpetually live below their own pitch? as you very truly described their living. My return to civilized society makes me ponder much upon the causes of the desperate frivolity and dismal inanity which calls itself by that name, and in the midst of which we live and move and have our being. If people did really enjoy and amuse themselves, nothing could be better; because enjoyment and amus.e.m.e.nt _are_ great goods, and deserve to be labored for _sufficiently_; but the absence of amus.e.m.e.nt, of enjoyment, of life, of spirits, of vivacity, of _vitality_, in the society of the present day, and its so-called diversions, strikes me with astonishment and compa.s.sion. For my own part, I hold a good laugh to be inestimable in pleasure and in profit; good nonsense well talked only less admirable than good sense well delivered; and a spirit of fun the next best thing to a serious spirit; and moreover, thank G.o.d, they are quite compatible! I think the stupid shallowness of society has some deep causes; one among which is, of course, that by devoting all their energies and all their faculties and all their time to mere amus.e.m.e.nt, as they have no right to do, people fail of their aim, and are neither well amused nor well occupied, nor well anything else. For if ”all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,”
what does the reverse do for him? This pa.s.sion for cakes and sugar-candy in adult, not to say advanced, life is rather lugubrious; and of course it strikes me forcibly on my return from America, where the absence of a wholesome spirit of recreation is one of the dreariest features of the national existence....
Here the absolute necessity for mere amus.e.m.e.nt strikes me as a sort of dry-rot in certain portions of the fabric of civilized society, and tends to make it a sapless crumbling ma.s.s of appearances--the most ostentatious appearance of all, that of pleasure, being perhaps the hollowest and most unreal.
It takes, I believe, no meaner qualities than intelligence and goodness to enable a person to be thoroughly, heartily, and satisfactorily amused.
Unless you, my dear friend, deprecate our meeting to part again, I have no intention whatever of leaving England without seeing you once more. I cannot imagine doing such a thing, unless in compliance with your wish, or submission to inevitable necessity. I hope to come down to Torquay, to you and Dorothy, for a few days in the winter.
I am amused at your saying that you don't think any one would feel very comfortable living with me, who had not a great love of truth. Catherine Sedgwick once said it was impossible to tell a lie before me _with any comfort_; and yet I have told my own lies, and certainly sinned, as did not the worthy lady who, being charged with a falsehood, replied unhesitatingly, ”Of course, I know it was a lie; _I made it!_ I thought it would do good.” Another lady of my acquaintance, speaking of a person we both knew, who was indifferent, to say the least of it, upon the question of veracity, exclaimed, ”Oh, but Mrs. C---- is really too bad, for she will tell stories _when there isn't the least necessity for it_.”
A---- was a curious instance of the distortion of a very upright nature; for she is undoubtedly a person of great natural truth and integrity, and yet, under the influence of an unfortunate pa.s.sion, her pre-eminent virtue suffered total eclipse; and she must have condescended, proud and sincere as she was, to much duplicity and much absolute falsehood. Poor girl!
I think one great argument against wrong-doing of every sort is that it almost invariably, sooner or later, leads to a sacrifice of truth in some way or other; and for that reason a hearty love of truth is a great preservative from sin in general.
Your letters, directed either to Rome or here, to the care of Edward Sartoris, have reached me hitherto safely and punctually....