Letters to an Unknown

I declare that since September 28 I have suffered disappointments and vexations of every description. Your marriage was only another of the fatalities that were to fall on me.

One night not long ago, being unable to sleep, I reviewed in my mind all the vexations which have overwhelmed me during the last fortnight, and I found for them all but one compensation, which was your amiable letter, and your equally amiable promise to make me a sketch. Yet now I wish I could stab the sun, as the Andalusians say.

All this is only a parable. I took dinner the other evening with the false diamond, and made but a surly appearance. When I am angry I am rather skilful with the rhetorical figure called irony, and so I extolled the good qualities of the diamond in my most bombastic style and with frigid composure. I do not know, I am sure, why I tell you all this, especially since we are soon to forget each other. Meanwhile, I love you still, and commend myself to your prayers—“nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered,” etc.

Next Friday your picture will leave by mail, and should certainly reach London by Sunday. You might send for it Tuesday at Mr. V.’s, Pall-Mall.

My dear platonic Friend: We are becoming very affectionate. You say to me, Amigo de mi alma, which from a woman’s lips is very sweet. You give me no news of your health. In your former letter you told me that my platonic friend was ill, and you should have known that I was anxious. Be more definite in future. It is all very well for you to complain of my reticence, you who are mystery incarnate! What more will you have on the story of the diamond, unless it is the name? Details, perhaps; but they would be tiresome to write, and some day they may amuse you, when we shall find nothing to say to each other, seated in our arm-chairs on opposite sides of the chimney corner.

You are very kind. I have said this to you frequently of late. It was very kind of you to have answered the question that I asked you recently. I need not tell you that your reply pleased me. You have even said, unconsciously, perhaps, several things that have given me pleasure, and especially that the husband of a woman who resembled you would have your sincere sympathy. I can readily believe you, and will add that no one could be more unfortunate unless it were a man who loved you.

By the way, you are wrong to suspect Mr. V. of undue curiosity. Even if it were equal to yours, which is not possible, Mr. V. is a Cato, and under no consideration would he break a seal. Therefore send him the schizzo under cover, and have no fear of any indiscretion on his part. I should like to see you as you were writing, Amigo de mi alma. When you are having your photograph taken for me, say those words to yourself, instead of “prunes and prisms,” as ladies say when they wish to give their mouth a pleasant expression.

Good-bye. You have my best wishes for your health, for your happiness, that you may not marry, that you may come to Paris—in short, that we may become good friends.

You will knit your beautiful black brows at this, and say, “The saucy man doubts that I have a heart!” for this nowadays is the great assumption. Since so many novels and poems of passion, so called, have been written, all women affect to have a heart. Wait a little while. When you have really discovered your heart you will tell me about it; you will recall regretfully these good days when you were ruled only by the mind, and you will realise that the vexations you now suffer are mere pin-pricks compared to the dagger-thrusts that shall overwhelm you when the days of passion shall have come.

I shall start for London early next month. I am going to see the election. I shall also eat some whitebait at Blackwall, look over the cartoons of Hampton Court, and then return to Paris. If I were to see you it would make me very happy, but I dare not hope for it. However that may be, if you will send the sketch under cover to Mr. V. just as you do your letters, I shall receive it promptly, for, if nothing happens, I shall be in London the 8th of December.

I have censured your curiosity and indiscretion in opening Mr. V.’s letter, but to tell you the truth you have some faults that I like, and your curiosity is one of them. If we were to meet often, I am afraid you would take a dislike to me, and that the opposite would happen with me. At this moment I am thinking of the expression on your face. It is a little severe, that of a lioness, though tame.

Adieu. I send a thousand kisses to your mysterious feet.

I am writing to you lying on a couch, suffering tortures; colour that of a sun-scorched meadow. I refer to my own colour, not that of the couch. You must know that the sea makes me very ill, and that the glad waters of the dark blue sea are pleasant to me only when I watch them from the shore. The first time I went to England I was so ill that it was a fortnight before I regained my usual colour, which is that of the pale horse of the Apocalypse. One day when I was dining opposite to Madam V., she exclaimed suddenly, “Until to-day I thought you were an Indian.” Do not be frightened, and do not take me for a ghost.

Good-bye. I have a terrible pain in my left elbow, on which I am leaning to write to you; besides, you do not deserve three closely written pages. You send me only a few lines, carelessly written, and when you write three lines two of them are certain to throw me in a rage.

I swear to you that if you will not permit me to call and see you, I shall go to Madam D. and ask her to give me some news of you. In this connection, Madam D. might give you a satisfactory proof of my discretion, for I even resisted the desire which made my fingers tingle to open the package containing the picture. Applaud me.

Why are you unwilling that I should see you on the promenade, for example, or, better still, at the British Museum or the Ingerstein Gallery? I have a friend with me who is exceedingly curious about the large package which I untied while his back was turned, and also about the change in my spirits due to its arrival. I have not told him a word that approaches the truth, but I think he is on the scent.

London, December 10.

Tell me, in the name of God, “if you are of God,” querida Mariquita, why you have not answered my letter. Your letter before the last, and especially the picture which accompanied it, threw me into such a flutter that the note I wrote you on the spot did not have any too much common sense. Now that I am calmer, and have had several days in London to refresh my mind, I shall try to reason with you.

Let us consider the impropriety of it. Is the thing improper in itself? No, for nothing is more open and above-board. You know in advance that I shall not eat you. The thing, then, is improper, admitting that it is improper, only in the eyes of society. Observe in passing that this word society makes us miserable from the day when we put on clothes that are uncomfortable, because society so orders it, until the day of our death....

In sending me your portrait, it seems to me that you gave me a proof of your faith in my discretion. Why, then, believe in it no longer? A man’s good judgment, and mine in particular, is the greater the more is expected of him. This granted, and being fully convinced of my discretion, you may see me, and society will be none the wiser, consequently it can not exclaim at the impropriety. I will even add, with my hand on my heart—that is, on my left side—that so far as I am concerned I see not the slightest impropriety in it. I will say more: if this correspondence is to continue without our ever meeting, it becomes the most absurd thing in the world. All these thoughts I leave to your reflection.

Good-bye.

Paris, February, 1842.

It is for you to decide the protocol of which you speak. You do not believe in my gray hair. Here is a sample in proof of it.

I give nothing without expecting a return. Before you go to Naples, you will be good enough to take my directions and to bring me back what I shall tell you. I might give you a letter to the director of the Pompeiian excavations, if you are interested in such things.

Paris, Saturday, March, 1842.

For two hours I have been trying to decide whether I should write to you. My pride offers many reasons why I should not do so, but although you are perfectly sure, I hope, of the pleasure your letter gave me, I declare I can not refrain from telling you so.

So you are rich; so much the better. I congratulate you. Rich, which is, interpreted, free. Your friend, who had such a happy inspiration, must have been somewhat of an Auld Robin Gray; he was evidently in love with you. You will never confess it, because you are too fond of mystery; but I will forgive you; we write to each other too seldom to quarrel. Why should you not go to Rome and to Naples to enjoy the pictures and the sunshine? You are capable of appreciating Italy, and you will return richer in impressions and ideas.

Tell me, should you like some more substantial souvenir of the Orient? Unfortunately, I have given away all the beautiful things that I brought back with me. I could give you quantities of sandals, but you would wear them for others, thank you. If you wish some conserves of roses and jessamine, I still have a little left, but let me know at once, or I shall eat them all. We hear from each other so seldom that we have a great many things to say concerning ourselves. Here is my history:

On my return to Paris I treated myself to the innocent pleasure of printing a book for private circulation. There were only made a hundred and fifty copies, with superb paper, illustrations, etc., which I presented to people whom I liked. I should offer you this rare book if you were worthy of it; but I must warn you that it is a historical and pedantic work, so bristling with Greek and Latin, nay, even with Oscan (do you even know what Oscan is?), that you could not so much as nibble at it.

In the first place, I do not care for any but the Doric, and there are no columns, not even excepting those of the Parthenon, which can be compared to the memory of an old friendship. Good-bye; go to Italy, and be happy. I start to-day for Evreux, on a matter of business, expecting to return Monday night. If you wish to eat rose leaves, say so; but I warn you there is only a spoonful left for you.

Paris, Monday night, March, 1842.

I recall having seen, a long time ago, a Madame de C. at a house where there were some theatricals, in which I played the part of the fool. Ask her if she remembers me.

Good-bye now, and for a long time, no doubt. I am sorry not to have seen you. Write to me now and then. It will always be a great pleasure to hear from you, even though you continue the beautiful system of hypocrisy upon which you have entered so triumphantly. I will commend you to Buonuicci, you and your society, as greatly interested in archæology. You will be pleased with his cordiality.

Paris, Saturday, May 14, 1842.

I do not know to what promise you refer, and there are also many other obscure passages in your letter. We can never bear the same relations to each other that exist between Madame de X. and myself; the first condition in the attitude between a brother and sister being unlimited confidence, and in this respect Madame de X. has spoiled me.

I am silly enough to grieve over that scarf-pin, but I am consoled at the thought that you also are sorry for it. This is still another beautiful trait in your character. How flattered your stoicism must have been at this victory over yourself! You imagine that you are proud, but I regret to tell you that what you think is pride is only the petty vanity which one would expect in a religious temperament. It is the fashion nowadays to preach. Shall you follow it? That would be the finishing stroke. I must drop this subject, for it always puts me in a bad humour.

From Naples you will go to Rome, where you will spend a month persuading yourself that it is useless to try to see it all, because you shall return there in the future. Then you will go to Florence, and remain there ten days. After that you will do what you like. When you come to Paris, you will find the book for M. Buonuicci and my final instructions. At that time I shall probably be at Arles or at Orange. If you should stop there, be sure and inquire for me, and I will show you an ancient theatre, which will not interest you especially.

Good-bye. I will write again before leaving. Be happy, but bear in mind this maxim, that one should never do foolish things unless they please you. Perhaps the precept of M. de Talleyrand is more to your taste, that one should beware of first impulses, because they are usually honest.

Paris, June 22, 1842.

Secondly, I do not care for your pheasants. You offer them in a disagreeable fashion, and, besides, you say unpleasant things to me about my Turkish conserves. It is you who have the taste of a heretic, if you are unable to appreciate what the houris eat.

I believe I have answered everything that was sensible in your letter. I will not quarrel about the rest. I abandon you to your own conscience, which, I am sure, is sometimes even more severe than I, whom you accuse of harshness and indifference. The hypocrisy which you practise so well in sport, will play you a trick some day—that is, it will become natural to you. As for coquetry, the inseparable companion of the horrid vice which you extol, you have always indulged in it. It became you very well when it was softened by frankness, warm-heartedness, and imagination, but now—now, what shall I say?

There was once a dervish who seemed to a baker to be a saint. The baker one day promised to give him white bread the rest of his life. At this the dervish was enchanted. But after awhile the baker said to him, “We agreed on brown bread, did we not? I have first-class brown bread. It is my specialty, is brown bread.” The dervish replied, “I have already more brown bread than I can eat, but——”

Since your wishes always are realised, I pray you humbly to wish that I may become an Academician. This would be a great gratification to me, provided that you were not present at my reception. However, you have abundant time for the realisation of your wishes. It will be necessary for an epidemic to break out among those gentlemen before my chances are advanced; and to improve them, I should be obliged to borrow a little of that hypocrisy in which you are now so skilled. I am too old to reform; if I should try, I should be still worse than I am at present.

I am curious to know what you think of me, but how shall I ever find it out? You will never tell me, either the best or the worst that you think. Formerly I had not much of an opinion of my precious self, but now I have a little more self-esteem; not that I think I have improved, but it is the world that has grown worse.

Châlon-sur-Saône, June 30, 1842.

You guessed correctly the end of the story: the dervish was imposed upon by the baker, but, all the same, the holy man did not like brown bread.

Have you become deeply pious, following the general fashion of the day? You must be pious for the same reason that you must wear a blue cashmere. I should be sorry, however, if this were so. Our piety here in France is repugnant to me. It is a sort of mediocre philosophy, which springs not from the heart, but from the mind. When you have seen the devotion of the common people in Italy, you will agree with me, I hope, that theirs is the only genuine religion; only one must be born beyond the Alps or the Pyrenees to believe this.

I have spent almost the entire winter studying mythology from old Latin and Greek archives. It has proved to be extremely entertaining, and if there should ever come into your head the desire to know the record of the thoughts of men, which is vastly more interesting than the history of their deeds, inquire of me, and I will recommend three or four books for your reading which will make you as wise as I—and this is saying no little!

I hope to see Madame de M. in Paris this year. If she comes, I should like to have you meet her. You would then discover that brown bread is more difficult to make than you seem to think. If you are willing, nothing will be easier than to make the acquaintance of this baker.

Good-bye. The wind continues to blow. I am obliged to remain a month in the country, and if you have any time to spare, and wish to give me a great deal of pleasure, you have only to write to me at Avignon, where I shall call for your letter.

Avignon, July 20, 1842.

Since you take that view of it, upon my word, I capitulate. Give me brown bread; it is better than none at all. Only, allow me to say that it is brown, and continue to write to me. You will observe how humble and submissive I am!

I shall reply to it item by item. The figure of rhetoric of which you think yourself the inventor, has been known for a long time. With the aid of Greek, one might give it a new and whimsical name. In French it is called by the less stately name of a lie. Employ it with me as little as you can. Do not overtax it with others. It should be kept for unusual occasions. Do not make too great an effort to find the world silly and ridiculous. It is, alas! only too much so. You ought, on the contrary, to endeavour to imagine it as it is not. It is better to have too many illusions than not to have any at all. I still have a few, some of which are not very sound, but I make strenuous efforts to retain them.

If you knew Madame de M. you would love her to distraction. She does not give me white bread, but she gives me something that takes its place. She is not a baker’s wife; she is a baker.

I grieve to see that you are becoming more and more affected. I am fully informed about your piety. I thank you for your prayers, if you do not mean them for a figure of speech. As to your blue cashmere, I am rather sceptical of your piety, because piety in 1842 is a fashion, just as blue cashmeres are. You will fail to understand the connection, but it is perfectly clear notwithstanding.

But I am supposing that your time is not absorbed in the selection of toilettes, or in displaying them before your friends. Everything in Homer is remarkable. The epithets, which in the French translation seem so strange, are wonderfully correct. I remember that he speaks of the sea as purple. I never understood what he meant until last summer, when I was in a little boat on the Gulf of Lepanto, going to Delphi. It was just at sunset. Immediately afterwards, the sea took on a magnificent deep violet tint, which lasted for ten minutes. To see this effect requires the atmosphere, the sea, and the sun of Greece. I hope that you will never become enough of an artist to recognise with pleasure that Homer was a great painter.

If you can think of anything pleasant to say to me, you might write. I shall remain here for a fortnight still. I want to add one word about the life I am leading, tramping the fields without meeting any other obstacle than rocks. Farewell. I hope you find me this time sufficiently submissive and well-behaved, Signora Fornarina?

Paris, August 27, 1842.

I regret exceedingly that you start so late in the season for Italy. You run the risk of seeing everything through odious rain-storms, which deprive the most beautiful mountains in the world of half their splendour; and you will be obliged to take my word for it when I praise the radiant skies of Naples. Neither will you have any good fruit to eat, but must content yourself instead with fig-eaters, birds so called because they live on figs.

I do not at all agree with your version of the parable.

Upon the arrival of the stage-coach I found within a woman, tall and pretty, simply and stylishly dressed, who said she was ill, and despaired of ever reaching Paris alive. We entered into conversation. I was as polite and agreeable as it is possible to be when I am compelled to remain long in the same position. My companion talked intelligently and with no Marseilles accent. She was an ardent Bonapartist, of very enthusiastic temperament; she believed in the immortality of the soul, not overmuch in the catechism, and was on the whole an optimist. I could not help feeling that she had a certain fear of me.

As a fact, my wild life lasted but three years, and even then my heart was not in it. I threw myself into dissipation not from inclination, but partly from despondency, and partly, perhaps, out of curiosity. I am afraid, however, that this fact will injure my chances for membership in the Academy. I am criticised, also, for not being religious, and for not going to church. I might act the hypocrite, but I should not know how to go about it, and, besides, I should not have the patience.

If you are astonished that all the goddesses are fair, you will be still more astonished at Naples when you see statues with the hair coloured red. It seems that it was the fashion, formerly, for ladies to use red powder, nay, even gold powder. On the other hand, you will see in the paintings at the studios many goddesses with black hair. It is difficult for me to decide which colour I prefer. Only, I advise you not to powder your hair. There is a terrible Greek word which signifies black hair. Melanchaites (Μελαγχαἱτης); this χα has a diabolical sound.

You used to admire my wealth of antique gems. Alas! the other day I lost my most beautiful one, a magnificent Juno, while doing a kind act; that is, while carrying home a drunken man who had fractured his thigh. And that stone was an Etruscan. Juno held a scythe, and there is no other monument where she is so represented. Do sympathise with me!

You write charmingly in Greek, and much more legibly than you write in French. But who is your Greek teacher? You can not make me believe that you have learned to write that running hand from a book only. Who is the professor of rhetoric at D.?

It is a fact that at one time in my life I frequented bad society, but I was attracted to it through curiosity only, and I was always there as a stranger in a strange country. As for good society, I have found it often enough deadly tiresome. There are two places where I am at ease, at least, where I flatter myself I am in my proper element: first, among unpretentious people whom I have known for a long time; secondly, in a Spanish venta, with mule-drivers and Andalusian peasants. Write this in my funeral oration, and you will have told the truth.

I am spending part of the night writing, or else in tearing up what I wrote the night before, consequently I make slow progress. What I am writing interests me, but the question is, Will it interest the public? I consider the ancients far more interesting than ourselves; they had no such paltry aims, nor were they so engrossed as we are in a multitude of silly trifles. I find that my hero, Julius Caesar, at the age of fifty-three, committed all sorts of follies for the sake of Cleopatra, forgetting all else for her; this is why he came so near drowning, both literally and figuratively. What man of our century, among our statesmen, I mean, who is not completely callous, completely heartless, by the time he aspires to a seat in the Senate? I should like to explain the difference between that age and our own, but how shall I do it?

You scoff at my epicureanism. Have you ever tried to imagine the nature of the entrails which the Greek heroes ate with such relish? The modern philosophers still eat them: they are called κονκονρἑτζι, and are simply delicious. There are little wooden skewers made of the fragrant wood of the mastic tree, with something crisp and spicy around them, which makes one readily understand why the priests used to reserve for themselves this dainty morsel from their victims.

Paris, October 24, 1842.

You are exceedingly kind to leave me in ignorance of that part of the globe which is so fortunate as to possess you. Shall I address this letter to Naples, or to ..., or even to Paris? In your last letter you say that you are about to start for Paris, perhaps for Italy, and since then not a single word of news. I have a suspicion that you are here, and that you will inform me of the fact after you have left; this will be highly in character.

Since writing to you I went away for several days, when, upon my return, I found your letter, dated so long ago that I thought it useless to send an answer to.... I marvel greatly that you have learned without assistance to write the Greek characters, as you say you have. If you will only be a little patient, with such talent as yours you will become a second Madame Dacier. For my own part, I no longer take any interest either in Greek or in French; I have fallen into a fossil state, and whether I read or write, the letters dance up and down before my eyes in a most disagreeable way.

The trouble with the Greeks is that their ideas of decency, and even of morality, were very different from ours. There are many things in their literature which might shock, nay, even disgust you if you understood them. After reading Homer, you can take up confidently the tragedy writers, who will amuse you, and whom you will enjoy because you have a taste for the beautiful, a sentiment which the Greeks possessed in the highest degree, and which a happy few of us inherit from them.

Here are three pages of Greek. As for the pronunciation, if you wish, I will send you a page which I prepared especially for you. It will teach you the best method, that is, the pronunciation used by modern Greeks. The classical is easier, but it is absurd.

This is the end of a Greek letter.

P.S.—Opening a book, I have found these two little flowers, which I plucked at Thermopylæ, upon the hilltop where Leonidas died. It is a relic, as you see.

Thursday, October, 1842.

Friday morning, October, 1842.

I thank you very much for having come yesterday. You gave me a great deal of pleasure. I hope your brother saw nothing extraordinary in our meeting. I have an Etruscan seal for you; I can not endure the one you are using. I will give you the other the next time I see you. I enclose the page of Greek which I prepared for you. When you have a relapse into an erudite mood it may be of use.

Tuesday night, October, 1842.

I have lost nothing, as it seems, by waiting for your letter. It is studiously perverse; but believe me, perverseness is not becoming to you. Abandon this style, and resume your customary coquetry, which suits you marvellously.

As for your assertion that you have never refused me anything that I asked, you will have to remain several million years in purgatory for that pretty fib. I see that you are anxious to have my Etruscan stone, and as I am more magnanimous than you, I shall not say, like Leonidas, “Come and take it!” but I shall ask you again how you wish me to send it to you.