Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion
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William Hazlitt >> Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion
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LETTER XI
My dear and good Friend, I am afraid I trouble you with my querulous
epistles, but this is probably the last. To-morrow or the next day
decides my fate with respect to the divorce, when I expect to be a free
man. In vain! Was it not for her and to lay my freedom at her feet,
that I consented to this step which has cost me infinite perplexity, and
now to be discarded for the first pretender that came in her way! If
so, I hardly think I can survive it. You who have been a favourite with
women, do not know what it is to be deprived of one's only hope, and to
have it turned to shame and disappointment. There is nothing in the
world left that can afford me one drop of comfort--THIS I feel more
and more. Everything is to me a mockery of pleasure, like her love.
The breeze does not cool me: the blue sky does not cheer me. I gaze
only on her face averted from me--alas! the only face that ever was
turned fondly to me! And why am I thus treated? Because I wanted her
to be mine for ever in love or friendship, and did not push my gross
familiarities as far as I might. "Why can you not go on as we have
done, and say nothing about the word, FOREVER?" Was it not plain from
this that she even then meditated an escape from me to some less
sentimental lover? "Do you allow anyone else to do so?" I said to her
once, as I was toying with her. "No, not now!" was her answer; that is,
because there was nobody else in the house to take freedoms with her. I
was very well as a stopgap, but I was to be nothing more. While the
coast was clear, I had it all my own way: but the instant C---- came,
she flung herself at his head in the most barefaced way, ran breathless
up stairs before him, blushed when his foot was heard, watched for him
in the passage, and was sure to be in close conference with him when he
went down again. It was then my mad proceedings commenced. No wonder.
Had I not reason to be jealous of every appearance of familiarity with
others, knowing how easy she had been with me at first, and that she
only grew shy when I did not take farther liberties? What has her
character to rest upon but her attachment to me, which she now denies,
not modestly, but impudently? Will you yourself say that if she had all
along no particular regard for me, she will not do as much or more with
other more likely men? "She has had," she says, "enough of my
conversation," so it could not be that! Ah! my friend, it was not to be
supposed I should ever meet even with the outward demonstrations of
regard from any woman but a common trader in the endearments of love! I
have tasted the sweets of the well practiced illusion, and now feel the
bitterness of knowing what a bliss I am deprived of, and must ever be
deprived of. Intolerable conviction! Yet I might, I believe, have won
her by other methods; but some demon held my hand. How indeed could I
offer her the least insult when I worshipped her very footsteps; and
even now pay her divine honours from my inmost heart, whenever I think
of her, abased and brutalised as I have been by that Circean cup of
kisses, of enchantments, of which I have drunk! I am choked, withered,
dried up with chagrin, remorse, despair, from which I have not a
moment's respite, day or night. I have always some horrid dream about
her, and wake wondering what is the matter that "she is no longer the
same to me as ever?" I thought at least we should always remain dear
friends, if nothing more--did she not talk of coming to live with me
only the day before I left her in the winter? But "she's gone, I am
abused, and my revenge must be to LOVE her!"--Yet she knows that one
line, one word would save me, the cruel, heartless destroyer! I see
nothing for it but madness, unless Friday brings a change, or unless she
is willing to let me go back. You must know I wrote to her to that
purpose, but it was a very quiet, sober letter, begging pardon, and
professing reform for the future, and all that. What effect it will
have, I know not. I was forced to get out of the way of her answer,
till Friday came.
Ever yours.
TO S. L.
My dear Miss L----, EVIL TO THEM THAT EVIL THINK, is an old saying;
and I have found it a true one. I have ruined myself by my unjust
suspicions of you. Your sweet friendship was the balm of my life; and I
have lost it, I fear for ever, by one fault and folly after another.
What would I give to be restored to the place in your esteem, which, you
assured me, I held only a few months ago! Yet I was not contented, but
did all I could to torment myself and harass you by endless doubts and
jealousy. Can you not forget and forgive the past, and judge of me by
my conduct in future? Can you not take all my follies in the lump, and
say like a good, generous girl, "Well, I'll think no more of them?" In
a word, may I come back, and try to behave better? A line to say so
would be an additional favour to so many already received by
Your obliged friend,
And sincere well-wisher.
LETTER XII. TO C. P----
I have no answer from her. I'm mad. I wish you to call on M---- in
confidence, to say I intend to make her an offer of my hand, and that I
will write to her father to that effect the instant I am free, and ask
him whether he thinks it will be to any purpose, and what he would
advise me to do.
UNALTERED LOVE
"Love is not love that alteration finds: Oh no! it is an ever-fixed
mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken."
Shall I not love her for herself alone, in spite of fickleness and
folly? To love her for her regard to me, is not to love her, but
myself. She has robbed me of herself: shall she also rob me of my love
of her? Did I not live on her smile? Is it less sweet because it is
withdrawn from me? Did I not adore her every grace? Does she bend less
enchantingly, because she has turned from me to another? Is my love
then in the power of fortune, or of her caprice? No, I will have it
lasting as it is pure; and I will make a Goddess of her, and build a
temple to her in my heart, and worship her on indestructible altars, and
raise statues to her: and my homage shall be unblemished as her
unrivalled symmetry of form; and when that fails, the memory of it shall
survive; and my bosom shall be proof to scorn, as hers has been to pity;
and I will pursue her with an unrelenting love, and sue to be her slave,
and tend her steps without notice and without reward; and serve her
living, and mourn for her when dead. And thus my love will have shewn
itself superior to her hate; and I shall triumph and then die. This is
my idea of the only true and heroic love! Such is mine for her.
PERFECT LOVE
Perfect love has this advantage in it, that it leaves the possessor of
it nothing farther to desire. There is one object (at least) in which
the soul finds absolute content, for which it seeks to live, or dares to
die. The heart has as it were filled up the moulds of the imagination.
The truth of passion keeps pace with and outvies the extravagance of
mere language. There are no words so fine, no flattery so soft, that
there is not a sentiment beyond them, that it is impossible to express,
at the bottom of the heart where true love is. What idle sounds the
common phrases, adorable creature, angel, divinity, are? What a proud
reflection it is to have a feeling answering to all these, rooted in the
breast, unalterable, unutterable, to which all other feelings are light
and vain! Perfect love reposes on the object of its choice, like the
halcyon on the wave; and the air of heaven is around it.
FROM C. P., ESQ.
London, July 4th, I822.
I have seen M----! Now, my dear H----, let me entreat and adjure you to
take what I have to tell you, FOR WHAT IT IS WORTH--neither for less,
nor more. In the first place, I have learned nothing decisive from him.
This, as you will at once see, is, as far as it goes, good. I am
either to hear from him, or see him again in a day or two; but I thought
you would like to know what passed inconclusive as it was--so I write
without delay, and in great haste to save a post. I found him frank,
and even friendly in his manner to me, and in his views respecting you.
I think that he is sincerely sorry for your situation; and he feels that
the person who has placed you in that situation is not much less
awkwardly situated herself; and he professes that he would willingly do
what he can for the good of both. But he sees great difficulties
attending the affair--which he frankly professes to consider as an
altogether unfortunate one. With respect to the marriage, he seems to
see the most formidable objections to it, on both sides; but yet he by
no means decidedly says that it cannot, or that it ought not to take
place. These, mind you, are his own feelings on the subject: but the
most important point I learn from him is this, that he is not prepared
to use his influence either way--that the rest of the family are of the
same way of feeling; and that, in fact, the thing must and does entirely
rest with herself. To learn this was, as you see, gaining a great
point.--When I then endeavoured to ascertain whether he knew anything
decisive as to what are her views on the subject, I found that he did
not. He has an opinion on the subject, and he didn't scruple to tell me
what it was; but he has no positive knowledge. In short, he believes,
from what he learns from herself (and he had purposely seen her on the
subject, in consequence of my application to him) that she is at present
indisposed to the marriage; but he is not prepared to say positively
that she will not consent to it. Now all this, coming from him in the
most frank and unaffected manner, and without any appearance of cant,
caution, or reserve, I take to be most important as it respects your
views, whatever they may be; and certainly much more favourable to them
(I confess it) than I was prepared to expect, supposing them to remain
as they were. In fact as I said before, the affair rests entirely with
herself. They are none of them disposed either to further the marriage,
or throw any insurmountable obstacles in the way of it; and what is more
important than all, they are evidently by no means CERTAIN that SHE
may not, at some future period, consent to it; or they would, for her
sake as well as their own, let you know as much flatly, and put an end
to the affair at once.
Seeing in how frank and straitforward a manner he received what I had to
say to him, and replied to it, I proceeded to ask him what were HIS
views, and what were likely to be HERS (in case she did not consent)
as to whether you should return to live in the house;--but I added,
without waiting for his answer, that if she intended to persist in
treating you as she had done for some time past, it would be worse than
madness for you to think of returning. I added that, in case you did
return, all you would expect from her would be that she would treat you
with civility and kindness--that she would continue to evince that
friendly feeling towards you, that she had done for a great length of
time, &c. To this, he said, he could really give no decisive reply, but
that he should be most happy if, by any intervention of his, he could
conduce to your comfort; but he seemed to think that for you to return
on any express understanding that she should behave to you in any
particular manner, would be to place her in a most awkward situation.
He went somewhat at length into this point, and talked very reasonably
about it; the result, however, was that he would not throw any obstacles
in the way of your return, or of her treating you as a friend, &c., nor
did it appear that he believed she would refuse to do so. And, finally,
we parted on the understanding that he would see them on the subject,
and ascertain what could be done for the comfort of all parties: though
he was of opinion that if you could make up your mind to break off the
acquaintance altogether, it would be the best plan of all. I am to hear
from him again in a day or two.--Well, what do you say to all this? Can
you turn it to any thing but good--comparative good? If you would know
what _I_ say to it, it is this:--She is still to be won by wise and
prudent conduct on your part; she was always to have been won by
such;--and if she is lost, it has been (not, as you sometimes suppose,
because you have not carried that unwise, may I not say UNWORTHY?
conduct still farther, but because you gave way to it at all. Of course
I use the terms "wise" and "prudent" with reference to your object.
Whether the pursuit of that object is wise, only yourself can judge. I
say she has all along been to be won, and she still is to be won; and
all that stands in the way of your views at this moment is your past
conduct. They are all of them, every soul, frightened at you; they have
SEEN enough of you to make them so; and they have doubtless heard ten
times more than they have seen, or than anyone else has seen. They are
all of them including M---- (and particularly she herself) frightened
out of their wits, as to what might be your treatment of her if she were
yours; and they dare not trust you--they will not trust you, at present.
I do not say that they will trust you, or rather that SHE will, for
it all depends on her, when you have gone through a probation, but I am
sure that she will not trust you till you have. You will, I hope, not
be angry with me when I say that she would be a fool if she did. If she
were to accept you at present, and without knowing more of you, even I
should begin to suspect that she had an unworthy motive for doing it.
Let me not forget to mention what is perhaps as important a point as
any, as it regards the marriage. I of course stated to M---- that when
you are free, you are prepared to make her a formal offer of your hand;
but I begged him, if he was certain that such an offer would be refused,
to tell me so plainly at once, that I might endeavour, in that case, to
dissuade you from subjecting yourself to the pain of such a refusal.
HE WOULD NOT TELL ME THAT HE WAS CERTAIN. He said his opinion was
that she would not accept your offer, but still he seemed to think that
there would be no harm in making it!---One word more, and a very
important one. He once, and without my referring in the slightest
manner to that part of the subject, spoke of her as a GOOD GIRL, and
LIKELY TO MAKE ANY MAN AN EXCELLENT WIFE! Do you think if she were a
bad girl (and if she were, he must know her to be so) he would have
dared to do this, under these circumstances?--And once, in speaking of
HIS not being a fit person to set his face against "marrying for
love," he added "I did so myself, and out of that house; and I have had
reason to rejoice at it ever since." And mind (for I anticipate your
cursed suspicions) I'm certain, at least, if manner can entitle one to
be certain of any thing, that he said all this spontaneously, and
without any understood motive; and I'm certain, too, that he knows you
to be a person that it would not do to play any tricks of this kind
with. I believe--(and all this would never have entered my thoughts,
but that I know it will enter yours) I believe that even if they thought
(as you have sometimes supposed they do) that she needs whitewashing, or
making an honest woman of, YOU would be the last person they would
think of using for such a purpose, for they know (as well as I do) that
you couldn't fail to find out the trick in a month, and would turn her
into the street the next moment, though she were twenty times your
wife--and that, as to the consequences of doing so, you would laugh at
them, even if you couldn't escape from them.--I shall lose the post if I
say more.
Believe me,
Ever truly your friend,
C. P.
LETTER XIII
My dear P----, You have saved my life. If I do not keep friends with
her now, I deserve to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. She is an angel
from Heaven, and you cannot pretend I ever said a word to the contrary!
The little rogue must have liked me from the first, or she never could
have stood all these hurricanes without slipping her cable. What could
she find in me? "I have mistook my person all this while," &c. Do you
know I saw a picture, the very pattern of her, the other day, at
Dalkeith Palace (Hope finding Fortune in the Sea), just before this
blessed news came, and the resemblance drove me almost out of my senses.
Such delicacy, such fulness, such perfect softness, such buoyancy, such
grace! If it is not the very image of her, I am no judge.--You have the
face to doubt my making the best husband in the world; you might as well
doubt it if I was married to one of the Houris of Paradise. She is a
saint, an angel, a love. If she deceives me again, she kills me. But I
will have such a kiss when I get back, as shall last me twenty years.
May God bless her for not utterly disowning and destroying me! What an
exquisite little creature it is, and how she holds out to the last in
her system of consistent contradictions! Since I wrote to you about
making a formal proposal, I have had her face constantly before me,
looking so like some faultless marble statue, as cold, as fixed and
graceful as ever statue did; the expression (nothing was ever like
THAT!) seemed to say--"I wish I could love you better than I do, but
still I will be yours." No, I'll never believe again that she will not
be mine; for I think she was made on purpose for me. If there's anyone
else that understands that turn of her head as I do, I'll give her up
without scruple. I have made up my mind to this, never to dream of
another woman, while she even thinks it worth her while to REFUSE TO
HAVE ME. You see I am not hard to please, after all. Did M---- know
of the intimacy that had subsisted between us? Or did you hint at it?
I think it would be a CLENCHER, if he did. How ought I to behave when
I go back? Advise a fool, who had nearly lost a Goddess by his folly.
The thing was, I could not think it possible she would ever like ME.
Her taste is singular, but not the worse for that. I'd rather have her
love, or liking (call it what you will) than empires. I deserve to call
her mine; for nothing else CAN atone for what I've gone through for
her. I hope your next letter will not reverse all, and then I shall be
happy till I see her,--one of the blest when I do see her, if she looks
like my own beautiful love. I may perhaps write a line when I come to
my right wits.--Farewel at present, and thank you a thousand times for
what you have done for your poor friend.
P. S.--I like what M---- said about her sister, much. There are good
people in the world: I begin to see it, and believe it.
LETTER THE LAST
Dear P----, To-morrow is the decisive day that makes me or mars me. I
will let you know the result by a line added to this. Yet what
signifies it, since either way I have little hope there, "whence alone
my hope cometh!" You must know I am strangely in the dumps at this
present writing. My reception with her is doubtful, and my fate is then
certain. The hearing of your happiness has, I own, made me thoughtful.
It is just what I proposed to her to do--to have crossed the Alps with
me, to sail on sunny seas, to bask in Italian skies, to have visited
Vevai and the rocks of Meillerie, and to have repeated to her on the
spot the story of Julia and St. Preux, and to have shewn her all that my
heart had stored up for her--but on my forehead alone is
written--REJECTED! Yet I too could have adored as fervently, and loved
as tenderly as others, had I been permitted. You are going abroad, you
say, happy in making happy. Where shall I be? In the grave, I hope, or
else in her arms. To me, alas! there is no sweetness out of her sight,
and that sweetness has turned to bitterness, I fear; that gentleness to
sullen scorn! Still I hope for the best. If she will but HAVE me,
I'll make her LOVE me: and I think her not giving a positive answer
looks like it, and also shews that there is no one else. Her holding
out to the last also, I think, proves that she was never to have been
gained but with honour. She's a strange, almost an inscrutable girl:
but if I once win her consent, I shall kill her with kindness.--Will you
let me have a sight of SOMEBODY before you go? I should be most
proud. I was in hopes to have got away by the Steam-boat to-morrow, but
owing to the business not coming on till then, I cannot; and may not be
in town for another week, unless I come by the Mail, which I am strongly
tempted to do. In the latter case I shall be there, and visible on
Saturday evening. Will you look in and see, about eight o'clock? I
wish much to see you and her and J. H. and my little boy once more; and
then, if she is not what she once was to me, I care not if I die that
instant. I will conclude here till to-morrow, as I am getting into my
old melancholy.--
It is all over, and I am my own man, and yours ever--
PART III
ADDRESSED TO J. S. K.----
My dear K----, It is all over, and I know my fate. I told you I would
send you word, if anything decisive happened; but an impenetrable
mystery hung over the affair till lately. It is at last (by the merest
accident in the world) dissipated; and I keep my promise, both for your
satisfaction, and for the ease of my own mind.
You remember the morning when I said "I will go and repose my sorrows at
the foot of Ben Lomond"--and when from Dumbarton Bridge its
giant-shadow, clad in air and sunshine, appeared in view. We had a
pleasant day's walk. We passed Smollett's monument on the road (somehow
these poets touch one in reflection more than most military
heroes)--talked of old times; you repeated Logan's beautiful verses to
the cuckoo,* which I wanted to compare with Wordsworth's, but my courage
failed me; you then told me some passages of an early attachment which
was suddenly broken off; we considered together which was the most to be
pitied, a disappointment in love where the attachment was mutual or one
where there has been no return, and we both agreed, I think, that the
former was best to be endured, and that to have the consciousness of it
a companion for life was the least evil of the two, as there was a
secret sweetness that took off the bitterness and the sting of regret,
and "the memory of what once had been" atoned, in some measure, and at
intervals, for what "never more could be." In the other case, there was
nothing to look back to with tender satisfaction, no redeeming trait,
not even a possibility of turning it to good. It left behind it not
cherished sighs, but stifled pangs. The galling sense of it did not
bring moisture into the eyes, but dried up the heart ever after. One
had been my fate, the other had been yours!
[*--"Sweet bird, thy bower is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear; Thou
hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year."
So they begin. It was the month of May; the cuckoo sang shrouded in
some woody copse; the showers fell between whiles; my friend repeated
the lines with native enthusiasm in a clear manly voice, still resonant
of youth and hope. Mr. Wordsworth will excuse me, if in these
circumstances I declined entering the field with his profounder
metaphysical strain, and kept my preference to myself.]
You startled me every now and then from my reverie by the robust voice,
in which you asked the country people (by no means prodigal of their
answers)--"If there was any trout fishing in those streams?"--and our
dinner at Luss set us up for the rest of our day's march. The sky now
became overcast; but this, I think, added to the effect of the scene.
The road to Tarbet is superb. It is on the very verge of the
lake--hard, level, rocky, with low stone bridges constantly flung across
it, and fringed with birch trees, just then budding into spring, behind
which, as through a slight veil, you saw the huge shadowy form of Ben
Lomond. It lifts its enormous but graceful bulk direct from the edge of
the water without any projecting lowlands, and has in this respect much
the advantage of Skiddaw. Loch Lomond comes upon you by degrees as you
advance, unfolding and then withdrawing its conscious beauties like an
accomplished coquet. You are struck with the point of a rock, the arch
of a bridge, the Highland huts (like the first rude habitations of men)
dug out of the soil, built of turf, and covered with brown heather, a
sheep-cote, some straggling cattle feeding half-way down a precipice;
but as you advance farther on, the view expands into the perfection of
lake scenery. It is nothing (or your eye is caught by nothing) but
water, earth, and sky. Ben Lomond waves to the right, in its simple
majesty, cloud-capt or bare, and descending to a point at the head of
the lake, shews the Trossacs beyond, tumbling about their blue ridges
like woods waving; to the left is the Cobler, whose top is like a castle
shattered in pieces and nodding to its ruin; and at your side rise the
shapes of round pastoral hills, green, fleeced with herds, and retiring
into mountainous bays and upland valleys, where solitude and peace might
make their lasting home, if peace were to be found in solitude! That it
was not always so, I was a sufficient proof; for there was one image
that alone haunted me in the midst of all this sublimity and beauty, and
turned it to a mockery and a dream!
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