My dear Friend,
If I address you So- it is for the Last Time as well as for the First. We have rushed down a Slope -I at least have Rushed - where we might have descended more circumspectly - or Not at All even. It has been borne in upon me that there are dangers in our continued conversation. I fear I lack delicacy in saying so -I see no good way out indeed -I reproach you with nothing - not myself neither - unless with an indiscreet confessional - and of what then - that I loved my father, and was set upon writing an epic?
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 - maysay. There are those who are hurt by his bad opinion. It is pointed out to me, quite rightly - that if I amjealous of myfreedom 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 consequentniggling restrictions on myfreedom 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, haveforeseen, from its complete contrastwith 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 couldurge you to take that as a whimsical exaggeration of a curiousphaenomenon - 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 describeit - 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 usfair 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 onforever, 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 resolutionthat we must write no more letters. You write in the interrogative mood - and moreover with a deference to my opinion that is eithermerefeminine 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 moralcertainty that I had done a right or noble thing in renouncing a correspondencethat gave me intense delight - andfreedom - 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, thatyou write - do I go too far - as though your letter was in part dictated by the views of some other person orpersons. 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 thatdoes 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 sofully. That was a noble saying of yours aboutfreedom - 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 namedfor 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 roomasfor Thy laws - Makesthat 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 handicraftand 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 - wassacred 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 encompassedus - 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 exchangefor - dare I say Art - a dailyduty 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.