Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion
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William Hazlitt >> Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion
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LETTER VI
(Written in May)
Dear P----, What have I suffered since I parted with you! A raging fire
is in my heart and in my brain, that never quits me. The steam-boat
(which I foolishly ventured on board) seems a prison-house, a sort of
spectre-ship, moving on through an infernal lake, without wind or tide,
by some necromantic power--the splashing of the waves, the noise of the
engine gives me no rest, night or day--no tree, no natural object varies
the scene--but the abyss is before me, and all my peace lies weltering
in it! I feel the eternity of punishment in this life; for I see no end
of my woes. The people about me are ill, uncomfortable, wretched
enough, many of them--but to-morrow or next day, they reach the place of
their destination, and all will be new and delightful. To me it will be
the same. I can neither escape from her, nor from myself. All is
endurable where there is a limit: but I have nothing but the blackness
and the fiendishness of scorn around me--mocked by her (the false one)
in whom I placed my hope, and who hardens herself against me!--I believe
you thought me quite gay, vain, insolent, half mad, the night I left the
house--no tongue can tell the heaviness of heart I felt at that moment.
No footsteps ever fell more slow, more sad than mine; for every step
bore me farther from her, with whom my soul and every thought lingered.
I had parted with her in anger, and each had spoken words of high
disdain, not soon to be forgiven. Should I ever behold her again?
Where go to live and die far from her? In her sight there was Elysium;
her smile was heaven; her voice was enchantment; the air of love waved
round her, breathing balm into my heart: for a little while I had sat
with the Gods at their golden tables, I had tasted of all earth's bliss,
"both living and loving!" But now Paradise barred its doors against me;
I was driven from her presence, where rosy blushes and delicious sighs
and all soft wishes dwelt, the outcast of nature and the scoff of love!
I thought of the time when I was a little happy careless child, of my
father's house, of my early lessons, of my brother's picture of me when
a boy, of all that had since happened to me, and of the waste of years
to come--I stopped, faultered, and was going to turn back once more to
make a longer truce with wretchedness and patch up a hollow league with
love, when the recollection of her words--"I always told you I had no
affection for you"--steeled my resolution, and I determined to proceed.
You see by this she always hated me, and only played with my credulity
till she could find some one to supply the place of her unalterable
attachment to THE LITTLE IMAGE. * * * * * I am a little, a very little
better to-day. Would it were quietly over; and that this misshapen form
(made to be mocked) were hid out of the sight of cold, sullen eyes! The
people about me even take notice of my dumb despair, and pity me. What
is to be done? I cannot forget HER; and I can find no other like what
SHE SEEMED. I should wish you to call, if you can make an excuse, and
see whether or no she is quite marble--whether I may go back again at my
return, and whether she will see me and talk to me sometimes as an old
friend. Suppose you were to call on M---- from me, and ask him what his
impression is that I ought to do. But do as you think best. Pardon,
pardon.
P.S.--I send this from Scarborough, where the vessel stops for a few
minutes. I scarcely know what I should have done, but for this relief
to my feelings.
LETTER VII
My dear Friend, The important step is taken, and I am virtually a free
man. * * * What had I better do in these circumstances? I dare not
write to her, I dare not write to her father, or else I would. She has
shot me through with poisoned arrows, and I think another "winged wound
" would finish me. It is a pleasant sort of balm (as you express it)
she has left in my heart! One thing I agree with you in, it will remain
there for ever; but yet not very long. It festers, and consumes me. If
it were not for my little boy, whose face I see struck blank at the
news, looking through the world for pity and meeting with contempt
instead, I should soon, I fear, settle the question by my death. That
recollection is the only thought that brings my wandering reason to an
anchor; that stirs the smallest interest in me; or gives me fortitude to
bear up against what I am doomed to feel for the ungrateful. Otherwise,
I am dead to every thing but the sense of what I have lost. She was my
life--it is gone from me, and I am grown spectral! If I find myself in
a place I am acquainted with, it reminds me of her, of the way in which
I thought of her,
--"and carved on every tree The soft, the fair, the inexpressive she!"
If it is a place that is new to me, it is desolate, barren of all
interest; for nothing touches me but what has a reference to her. If
the clock strikes, the sound jars me; a million of hours will not bring
back peace to my breast. The light startles me; the darkness terrifies
me. I seem falling into a pit, without a hand to help me. She has
deceived me, and the earth fails from under my feet; no object in nature
is substantial, real, but false and hollow, like her faith on which I
built my trust. She came (I knew not how) and sat by my side and was
folded in my arms, a vision of love and joy, as if she had dropped from
the Heavens to bless me by some especial dispensation of a favouring
Providence, and make me amends for all; and now without any fault of
mine but too much fondness, she has vanished from me, and I am left to
perish. My heart is torn out of me, with every feeling for which I
wished to live. The whole is like a dream, an effect of enchantment; it
torments me, and it drives me mad. I lie down with it; I rise up with
it; and see no chance of repose. I grasp at a shadow, I try to undo the
past, and weep with rage and pity over my own weakness and misery. I
spared her again and again (fool that I was) thinking what she allowed
from me was love, friendship, sweetness, not wantonness. How could I
doubt it, looking in her face, and hearing her words, like sighs
breathed from the gentlest of all bosoms? I had hopes, I had prospects
to come, the flattery of something like fame, a pleasure in writing,
health even would have come back with her smile--she has blighted all,
turned all to poison and childish tears. Yet the barbed arrow is in my
heart--I can neither endure it, nor draw it out; for with it flows my
life's-blood. I had conversed too long with abstracted truth to trust
myself with the immortal thoughts of love. THAT S. L. MIGHT HAVE BEEN
MINE, AND NOW NEVER CAN--these are the two sole propositions that for
ever stare me in the face, and look ghastly in at my poor brain. I am
in some sense proud that I can feel this dreadful passion--it gives me a
kind of rank in the kingdom of love--but I could have wished it had been
for an object that at least could have understood its value and pitied
its excess. You say her not coming to the door when you went is a
proof--yes, that her complement is at present full! That is the reason
she doesn't want me there, lest I should discover the new affair--wretch
that I am! Another has possession of her, oh Hell! I'm satisfied of it
from her manner, which had a wanton insolence in it. Well might I run
wild when I received no letters from her. I foresaw, I felt my fate.
The gates of Paradise were once open to me too, and I blushed to enter
but with the golden keys of love! I would die; but her lover--my love
of her--ought not to die. When I am dead, who will love her as I have
done? If she should be in misfortune, who will comfort her? when she
is old, who will look in her face, and bless her? Would there be any
harm in calling upon M----, to know confidentially if he thinks it worth
my while to make her an offer the instant it is in my power? Let me
have an answer, and save me, if possible, FOR her and FROM myself.
LETTER VIII
My dear Friend, Your letter raised me for a moment from the depths of
despair; but not hearing from you yesterday or to-day (as I hoped) I
have had a relapse. You say I want to get rid of her. I hope you are
more right in your conjectures about her than in this about me. Oh no!
believe it, I love her as I do my own soul; my very heart is wedded to
her (be she what she may) and I would not hesitate a moment between her
and "an angel from Heaven." I grant all you say about my
self-tormenting folly: but has it been without cause? Has she not
refused me again and again with a mixture of scorn and resentment, after
going the utmost lengths with a man for whom she now disclaims all
affection; and what security can I have for her reserve with others, who
will not be restrained by feelings of delicacy towards her, and whom she
has probably preferred to me for their want of it. "SHE CAN MAKE NO
MORE CONFIDENCES"--these words ring for ever in my ears, and will be my
death-watch. They can have but one meaning, be sure of it--she always
expressed herself with the exactest propriety. That was one of the
things for which I loved her--shall I live to hate her for it? My poor
fond heart, that brooded over her and the remains of her affections as
my only hope of comfort upon earth, cannot brook this new degradation.
Who is there so low as me? Who is there besides (I ask) after the
homage I have paid her and the caresses she has lavished on me, so vile,
so abhorrent to love, to whom such an indignity could have happened?
When I think of this (and I think of nothing else) it stifles me. I am
pent up in burning, fruitless desires, which can find no vent or object.
Am I not hated, repulsed, derided by her whom alone I love or ever did
love? I cannot stay in any place, and seek in vain for relief from the
sense of her contempt and her ingratitude. I can settle to nothing:
what is the use of all I have done? Is it not that very circumstance
(my thinking beyond my strength, my feeling more than I need about so
many things) that has withered me up, and made me a thing for Love to
shrink from and wonder at? Who could ever feel that peace from the
touch of her dear hand that I have done; and is it not torn from me for
ever? My state is this, that I shall never lie down again at night nor
rise up in the morning in peace, nor ever behold my little boy's face
with pleasure while I live--unless I am restored to her favour. Instead
of that delicious feeling I had when she was heavenly-kind to me, and my
heart softened and melted in its own tenderness and her sweetness, I am
now inclosed in a dungeon of despair. The sky is marble to my thoughts;
nature is dead around me, as hope is within me; no object can give me
one gleam of satisfaction now, nor the prospect of it in time to come.
I wander by the sea-side; and the eternal ocean and lasting despair and
her face are before me. Slighted by her, on whom my heart by its last
fibre hung, where shall I turn? I wake with her by my side, not as my
sweet bedfellow, but as the corpse of my love, without a heart in her
bosom, cold, insensible, or struggling from me; and the worm gnaws me,
and the sting of unrequited love, and the canker of a hopeless, endless
sorrow. I have lost the taste of my food by feverish anxiety; and my
favourite beverage, which used to refresh me when I got up, has no
moisture in it. Oh! cold, solitary, sepulchral breakfasts, compared
with those which I promised myself with her; or which I made when she
had been standing an hour by my side, my guardian-angel, my wife, my
sister, my sweet friend, my Eve, my all; and had blest me with her
seraph kisses! Ah! what I suffer at present only shews what I have
enjoyed. But "the girl is a good girl, if there is goodness in human
nature." I thank you for those words; and I will fall down and worship
you, if you can prove them true: and I would not do much less for him
that proves her a demon. She is one or the other, that's certain; but I
fear the worst. Do let me know if anything has passed: suspense is my
greatest punishment. I am going into the country to see if I can work a
little in the three weeks I have yet to stay here. Write on the receipt
of this, and believe me ever your unspeakably obliged friend.
TO EDINBURGH
--"Stony-hearted" Edinburgh! What art thou to me? The dust of thy
streets mingles with my tears and blinds me. City of palaces, or of
tombs--a quarry, rather than the habitation of men! Art thou like
London, that populous hive, with its sunburnt, well-baked, brick-built
houses--its public edifices, its theatres, its bridges, its squares, its
ladies, and its pomp, its throng of wealth, its outstretched magnitude,
and its mighty heart that never lies still? Thy cold grey walls reflect
back the leaden melancholy of the soul. The square, hard-edged,
unyielding faces of thy inhabitants have no sympathy to impart. What is
it to me that I look along the level line of thy tenantless streets, and
meet perhaps a lawyer like a grasshopper chirping and skipping, or the
daughter of a Highland laird, haughty, fair, and freckled? Or why
should I look down your boasted Prince's Street, with the beetle-browed
Castle on one side, and the Calton Hill with its proud monument at the
further end, and the ridgy steep of Salisbury Crag, cut off abruptly by
Nature's boldest hand, and Arthur's Seat overlooking all, like a lioness
watching her cubs? Or shall I turn to the far-off Pentland Hills, with
Craig-Crook nestling beneath them, where lives the prince of critics and
the king of men? Or cast my eye unsated over the Frith of Forth, that
from my window of an evening (as I read of AMY and her love) glitters
like a broad golden mirror in the sun, and kisses the winding shores of
kingly Fife? Oh no! But to thee, to thee I turn, North Berwick-Law,
with thy blue cone rising out of summer seas; for thou art the beacon of
my banished thoughts, and dost point my way to her, who is my heart's
true home. The air is too thin for me, that has not the breath of Love
in it; that is not embalmed by her sighs!
A THOUGHT
I am not mad, but my heart is so; and raves within me, fierce and
untameable, like a panther in its den, and tries to get loose to its
lost mate, and fawn on her hand, and bend lowly at her feet.
ANOTHER
Oh! thou dumb heart, lonely, sad, shut up in the prison-house of this
rude form, that hast never found a fellow but for an instant, and in
very mockery of thy misery, speak, find bleeding words to express thy
thoughts, break thy dungeon-gloom, or die pronouncing thy Infelice's
name!
ANOTHER
Within my heart is lurking suspicion, and base fear, and shame and hate;
but above all, tyrannous love sits throned, crowned with her graces,
silent and in tears.
LETTER IX
My dear P----, You have been very kind to me in this business; but I
fear even your indulgence for my infirmities is beginning to fail. To
what a state am I reduced, and for what? For fancying a little artful
vixen to be an angel and a saint, because she affected to look like one,
to hide her rank thoughts and deadly purposes. Has she not murdered me
under the mask of the tenderest friendship? And why? Because I have
loved her with unutterable love, and sought to make her my wife. You
say it is my own "outrageous conduct" that has estranged her: nay, I
have been TOO GENTLE with her. I ask you first in candour whether the
ambiguity of her behaviour with respect to me, sitting and fondling a
man (circumstanced as I was) sometimes for half a day together, and then
declaring she had no love for him beyond common regard, and professing
never to marry, was not enough to excite my suspicions, which the
different exposures from the conversations below-stairs were not
calculated to allay? I ask you what you yourself would have felt or
done, if loving her as I did, you had heard what I did, time after time?
Did not her mother own to one of the grossest charges (which I shall
not repeat)--and is such indelicacy to be reconciled with her pretended
character (that character with which I fell in love, and to which I
MADE LOVE) without supposing her to be the greatest hypocrite in the
world? My unpardonable offence has been that I took her at her word,
and was willing to believe her the precise little puritanical person she
set up for. After exciting her wayward desires by the fondest embraces
and the purest kisses, as if she had been "made my wedded wife
yestreen," or was to become so to-morrow (for that was always my feeling
with respect to her)--I did not proceed to gratify them, or to follow up
my advantage by any action which should declare, "I think you a common
adventurer, and will see whether you are so or not!" Yet any one but a
credulous fool like me would have made the experiment, with whatever
violence to himself, as a matter of life and death; for I had every
reason to distrust appearances. Her conduct has been of a piece from
the beginning. In the midst of her closest and falsest endearments, she
has always (with one or two exceptions) disclaimed the natural inference
to be drawn from them, and made a verbal reservation, by which she might
lead me on in a Fool's Paradise, and make me the tool of her levity, her
avarice, and her love of intrigue as long as she liked, and dismiss me
whenever it suited her. This, you see, she has done, because my
intentions grew serious, and if complied with, would deprive her of THE
PLEASURES OF A SINGLE LIFE! Offer marriage to this "tradesman's
daughter, who has as nice a sense of honour as any one can have;" and
like Lady Bellaston in Tom Jones, she CUTS you immediately in a fit
of abhorrence and alarm. Yet she seemed to be of a different mind
formerly, when struggling from me in the height of our first intimacy,
she exclaimed--"However I might agree to my own ruin, I never will
consent to bring disgrace upon my family!" That I should have spared
the traitress after expressions like this, astonishes me when I look
back upon it. Yet if it were all to do over again, I know I should act
just the same part. Such is her power over me! I cannot run the least
risk of offending her--I love her so. When I look in her face, I cannot
doubt her truth! Wretched being that I am! I have thrown away my heart
and soul upon an unfeeling girl; and my life (that might have been so
happy, had she been what I thought her) will soon follow either
voluntarily, or by the force of grief, remorse, and disappointment. I
cannot get rid of the reflection for an instant, nor even seek relief
from its galling pressure. Ah! what a heart she has lost! All the love
and affection of my whole life were centred in her, who alone, I
thought, of all women had found out my true character, and knew how to
value my tenderness. Alas! alas! that this, the only hope, joy, or
comfort I ever had, should turn to a mockery, and hang like an ugly film
over the remainder of my days!--I was at Roslin Castle yesterday. It
lies low in a rude, but sheltered valley, hid from the vulgar gaze, and
powerfully reminds one of the old song. The straggling fragments of the
russet ruins, suspended smiling and graceful in the air as if they would
linger out another century to please the curious beholder, the green
larch-trees trembling between with the blue sky and white silver clouds,
the wild mountain plants starting out here and there, the date of the
year on an old low door-way, but still more, the beds of flowers in
orderly decay, that seem to have no hand to tend them, but keep up a
sort of traditional remembrance of civilization in former ages, present
altogether a delightful and amiable subject for contemplation. The
exquisite beauty of the scene, with the thought of what I should feel,
should I ever be restored to her, and have to lead her through such
places as my adored, my angelwife, almost drove me beside myself. For
this picture, this ecstatic vision, what have I of late instead as the
image of the reality? Demoniacal possessions. I see the young witch
seated in another's lap, twining her serpent arms round him, her eye
glancing and her cheeks on fire--why does not the hideous thought choke
me? Or why do I not go and find out the truth at once? The moonlight
streams over the silver waters: the bark is in the bay that might waft
me to her, almost with a wish. The mountain-breeze sighs out her name:
old ocean with a world of tears murmurs back my woes! Does not my heart
yearn to be with her; and shall I not follow its bidding? No, I must
wait till I am free; and then I will take my Freedom (a glad prize) and
lay it at her feet and tell her my proud love of her that would not
brook a rival in her dishonour, and that would have her all or none, and
gain her or lose myself for ever!--
You see by this letter the way I am in, and I hope you will excuse it as
the picture of a half-disordered mind. The least respite from my
uneasiness (such as I had yesterday) only brings the contrary reflection
back upon me, like a flood; and by letting me see the happiness I have
lost, makes me feel, by contrast, more acutely what I am doomed to bear.
LETTER X
Dear Friend, Here I am at St. Bees once more, amid the scenes which I
greeted in their barrenness in winter; but which have now put on their
full green attire that shews luxuriant to the eye, but speaks a tale of
sadness to this heart widowed of its last, its dearest, its only hope!
Oh! lovely Bees-Inn! here I composed a volume of law-cases, here I wrote
my enamoured follies to her, thinking her human, and that "all below was
not the fiend's"--here I got two cold, sullen answers from the little
witch, and here I was ----- and I was damned. I thought the revisiting
the old haunts would have soothed me for a time, but it only brings back
the sense of what I have suffered for her and of her unkindness the more
strongly, till I cannot endure the recollection. I eye the Heavens in
dumb despair, or vent my sorrows in the desart air. "To the winds, to
the waves, to the rocks I complain"--you may suppose with what effect!
I fear I shall be obliged to return. I am tossed about (backwards and
forwards) by my passion, so as to become ridiculous. I can now
understand how it is that mad people never remain in the same
place--they are moving on for ever, FROM THEMSELVES!
Do you know, you would have been delighted with the effect of the
Northern twilight on this romantic country as I rode along last night?
The hills and groves and herds of cattle were seen reposing in the grey
dawn of midnight, as in a moonlight without shadow. The whole wide
canopy of Heaven shed its reflex light upon them, like a pure crystal
mirror. No sharp points, no petty details, no hard contrasts--every
object was seen softened yet distinct, in its simple outline and natural
tones, transparent with an inward light, breathing its own mild lustre.
The landscape altogether was like an airy piece of mosaic-work, or like
one of Poussin's broad massy landscapes or Titian's lovely pastoral
scenes. Is it not so, that poets see nature, veiled to the sight, but
revealed to the soul in visionary grace and grandeur! I confess the
sight touched me; and might have removed all sadness except mine. So (I
thought) the light of her celestial face once shone into my soul, and
wrapt me in a heavenly trance. The sense I have of beauty raises me for
a moment above myself, but depresses me the more afterwards, when I
recollect how it is thrown away in vain admiration, and that it only
makes me more susceptible of pain from the mortifications I meet with.
Would I had never seen her! I might then not indeed have been happy,
but at least I might have passed my life in peace, and have sunk into
forgetfulness without a pang.--The noble scenery in this country mixes
with my passion, and refines, but does not relieve it. I was at
Stirling Castle not long ago. It gave me no pleasure. The declivity
seemed to me abrupt, not sublime; for in truth I did not shrink back
from it with terror. The weather-beaten towers were stiff and formal:
the air was damp and chill: the river winded its dull, slimy way like a
snake along the marshy grounds: and the dim misty tops of Ben Leddi, and
the lovely Highlands (woven fantastically of thin air) mocked my
embraces and tempted my longing eyes like her, the sole queen and
mistress of my thoughts! I never found my contemplations on this
subject so subtilised and at the same time so desponding as on that
occasion. I wept myself almost blind, and I gazed at the broad golden
sunset through my tears that fell in showers. As I trod the green
mountain turf, oh! how I wished to be laid beneath it--in one grave with
her--that I might sleep with her in that cold bed, my hand in hers, and
my heart for ever still--while worms should taste her sweet body, that I
had never tasted! There was a time when I could bear solitude; but it
is too much for me at present. Now I am no sooner left to myself than I
am lost in infinite space, and look round me in vain for suppose or
comfort. She was my stay, my hope: without her hand to cling to, I
stagger like an infant on the edge of a precipice. The universe without
her is one wide, hollow abyss, in which my harassed thoughts can find no
resting-place. I must break off here; for the hysterica passio comes
upon me, and threatens to unhinge my reason.
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