by A. S. Byatt
Can anything be retrieved?
I would make two observations here. The first is that you do not by any means utter a firm resolution that we must write no more letters. You write in the interrogative mood—and moreover with a deference to my opinion that is either mere feminine 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 moral certainty that I had done a right or noble thing in renouncing a correspondence that gave me intense delight—and freedom—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, that you write—do I go too far—as though your letter was in part dictated by the views of some other person or persons. 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 that does 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 so fully. That was a noble saying of yours about freedom—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 named for 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 room as for Thy laws—Makes that 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 handicraft and 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—was sacred 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 encompassed us—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 exchange for—dare I say Art—a daily duty 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.
(And the Letters we have written are with me such an Addiction, I want to ask—have you ever seen Mr Ruskin demonstrate the Art of Nature in the depicting of a veined Stone in a water-glass? So jewel-bright his colours, so fine his pen and brush, so exact his description of why we must see what is truly there—but I must not run on—it is right that we should cease—)
I have chosen a Way—dear Friend—I must hold to it. Think of me if you will as the Lady of Shalott—with a Narrower Wisdom—who chooses not the Gulp of outside Air and the chilly river-journey deathwards—but who chooses to watch diligently the bright colours of her Web—to ply an industrious shuttle—to make—something—to close the Shutters and the Peephole too—
You will say, you are no threat to That. You will argue—rationally. There are things we have not said to each other beyond the—One—you so starkly—Defined.
I know in my Intrinsic Self—the Threat is there.
Be patient. Be generous. Forgive
Your friend
Christabel LaMotte
My dear Friend,
These last letters have been like Noah’s Ravens—they have sped out over the waste waters, across the turgid Thames in these rainy days—and have not returned or brought back any sign of life. I was most hopeful of the latest-despatched, with Swammerdam with the ink barely dry on him. I thought you must certainly see that you had in some sense called him up—that without your fine perceptions, without your intricate sense of minute inhuman lives, he would have presented an altogether grosser semblance, not so articulate on his dry bones. No other Poem of mine has ever in the slightest been written for a particular Reader—only for myself, or some half-conceived Alter Ego. Now, you are not that—it is your difference, your otherness to which I address myself—fascinated, intrigued. And now my vanity—and something more—my sense of Human Friendship—is hurt that you cannot—for it is nonsense to say that you dare not—even acknowledge my poem.
If I have offended you by calling your last long-ago letter contradictory (which it was) or timid (which it was) then you must forgive me. You may well ask why I am so tenacious in continuing writing to one who has declared herself unable to maintain a friendship (which she also declared to be valuable to herself) and remains resolute in silence, in rejection. A lover might indeed in all honour accept such a congé—but a peaceable, a valued friend? It is not as though I ever breathed—or scribbled or scratched—the faintest hint of any improper attention—no “if things were otherwise, ah well then …” no “Your eyes, which I know to be bright, may peruse …”—no—all was straightforward from my honest thoughts which are closer to my essential self than any such nonsensical gallantry—and this you cannot support?
And why am I so tenacious? I hardly know myself. For the sake of future Swammerdams, it may be—for I see that I had insensibly come to perceive you—mock not—as some sort of Muse.
Could the Lady of Shalott have written Melusina in her barred and moated Tower?
Well, you will say, you are too busy writing the poetry itself, to require employment as a Muse. I had not thought the two were incompatible—indeed they might even be thought to be complementary. But you are adamant.
Do not be misled by my mocking tone. It is all that seems to come. I shall hope against hope—that this letter is the Dove which will return with the hoped-for Olive-Branch. If not, I shall cease to bother you.
Ever yours most truly
R. H. Ash
Dear Mr Ash,
This is not the first time this letter has been embarked on. I know neither how to start nor how to proceed. A Circumstance has arisen—no,
I know no longer how to write, neither, for how could a circumstance arise, or what appearance might such a creature—bear?
Dear Sir—your Letters have not reached me—for a Reason. Not your Raven-ous letters—nor yet, to my infinite loss—your Poem.
I fear—I know indeed, with all but ocular proof positive—they have been Taken.
Today I happened—to run a little faster to greet the Postman. There was almost a papery—Tussle. I snatched. To my shame—to our shame—we—snatched.
I ask you—I beg you—I have told you the Truth—do not condemn. My honour was being guarded—and if I do not exactly share the conception of Honour which prompted the zealous carefulness—I must be grateful, I must, I am.
But to stoop to Theft
Oh, Sir, I am torn by contrary emotions. I am grateful, as I have said. But I must be very angry to have been so deceived—and angry on your behalf—for though I might have thought it best—not to answer those letters—no one else had the right to interfere with them—whatever the motive.
I cannot find them. They are torn to shreds, I am told. And Swammerdam with them. How shall that be forgiven? And yet—how may it not?
This house—so happy once—is full of weeping and wailing and Black Headache like a Painful Pall—Dog Tray slinks to and fro—Monsignor Dorato is silenced—and I—I pace up and down—I ask myself to whom I may turn—and think of you my Friend, the unwitting cause of so much Woe—
It is all misapprehension, I know.
I no longer know what was right and wrong about the Original Step—to discontinue the writing—
If it was to safeguard—domestic harmony—that is now most thoroughly jangled, out of tune and harsh.
Oh, dear friend—I am so very angry—I see strange fiery flashes before my drowned eyes—
I dare not write more. I cannot be sure that any further communication of yours will reach me—intact—or at all—
Your Poem is lost.
And shall I give up—so? I who have fought for my Autonomy against Family and Society? No, I will not. In the known risk of appearing—Inconsequential, Tergiversatory, infirm of purpose and feminine—I ask you—is it possible for you to walk in Richmond Park—when shall I say—you will be occupied—any day the next three days at about eleven in the morning. You will urge that the Weather is inclement. These last few days have been fearful. The Water has been so high—with each high Tide the Thames advances and runs in over foreshore and quay wall—climbing that, with watery ferocity—and laughing and slapping its way across the cobbled pavements on the bank—invading people’s gardens, paying no attention to wicket-gates or wooden fence—but creeping sinuously—and bubbling up—brown and strong—bringing with it a trail of such things—cotton waste, feathers, soaking garments, dead small creatures—overtopping pansy and Forget-me-nots—and aspiring to early Hollyhock. But I shall be there. I shall step out with Dog Tray—he at least will thank me wholeheartedly—in solid boots and armed with an umbrella—I shall enter by the Richmond Hill gate of the Park—and perambulate near there—if you should chuse to come.
I have an Apology to make that I wish to make in Person.
Here is your Olive-branch. Will you receive it?
Oh, the lost poem—
Your true friend
My dear friend,
I hope you got safe home. I watched till you were out of sight—two determined little booted feet and four loping grey clawed ones setting up small fountains as you went, without once looking back. You at least did not do so—but Dog Tray once or twice twisted his grey head, I hope regretfully. How could you deliberately mislead me so? There was I, looking diligently about me for a King Charles Spaniel, or a milky sharp small hound—and there were you, quite overwhelmed and half-hidden by a huge gaunt grey creature out of some Irish fairytale or Northern saga of wolf-hunting. What else have you so mischievously misrepresented to me? My idea of yr Bethany House revises itself daily now—eaves shift, windows laugh and lengthen, hedges advance and retreat—it is all a perpetual shape-shifting and adjustment—nowhere constant. Ah, but I saw your face, even if only in flashes under the dripping brim of a bonnet and the arching shadow of that huge and most purposeful umbrella. And I held your hand—at the beginning and the end—it rested in mine, with trust, I hope and believe.
What a walk, in what a wind, never-to-be-forgotten. The clashing together of our umbrella-spines as we leaned to speak, and their hopeless tangling; the rush of air carrying our words away; the torn green leaves flying past, and on the brow of the hill the deer running and running against that labouring mounting mass of leaden cloud. Why do I tell you this, who saw it with me? To share the words too, as we shared the blast and the sudden silence when the wind briefly dropped. It was very much your world we walked in, your watery empire, with the meadows all drowned as the city of Is, and the trees all growing down from their roots as well as up—and the clouds swirling indifferently in both aerial and aquatic foliage—
What else can I say? I am copying Swammerdam for you again—a problematic labour as I keep discovering small defects, some of which I mend and some of which merely make me anxious. You shall have him next week. Next week we shall walk again, shall we not, now it is very clear to you that I am no ogre, but only a mild and somewhat apprehensive gentleman?
And did you find—as I did—how curious, as well as very natural, it was that we should be so shy with each other, when in a papery way we knew each other so much better? I feel I have always known you, and yet I search for polite phrases and conventional enquiries—you are more mysterious in your presence (as I suppose most of us may be) than you seem to be in ink and scribbled symbols. (Perhaps we all are so. I cannot tell.)
I will not write more now. I have addressed this, as requested, to the Richmond Poste Restante. I do not wholly like this subterfuge—I do not like the imputed shady dealing of such a step—I find it inhibiting. Nor can you, with your quick moral discernment and yr proud sense of yr own moral autonomy, find it at all easy. Can we not think of something better? Will the urgency diminish? I am in your hands, but unquiet. Let me know, if you are able, that you have received this first waiting-letter. Let me know how you are, and that we may meet again soon. My respects to Dog Tray—
My dear Friend,
Your letter came safely. Your word of—subterfuge—hit home. I will think—there are Veils and Whirligigs of hindrances—I will think—and hope I may come up with more than—a headache.
I shall not easily forget our shining progress across the wet earth. Nor any Word you said—not the most courteous Nothing—nor yet the moments snatched to speak Truth and Justice about the Future Life. I hope you may be convinced that Mrs Lees’ seances are worthy of your serious consideration. They bring such unspeakable Comfort—to the deeply grieving. Last week a Mrs Tompkins held her dead infant on her knees for upward of ten minutes—his very weight, she said, his very curling fingers and toes—how can mother-love be mistaken? The Father too, was able to touch the soft curls of this briefly-returned being. There was too, glancing unearthly light—and a ghost of a sweet perfume.
It is most true as you say, that embodied—I had almost writ confrontation—conversation—unsettles the Letters. I know not—what to write. My pen is reluctant. I am overawed by your voice—in truth—by Presence—however taken. Shall we see each other again? Will it do good or harm? Dog Tray—who sends his respects—knows it will do good—and I know nothing—so let it be Tuesday—if you come not, I will look in the Poste Restante, where I stand beside seamen’s wives, and fashionable Creatures, and a dour Tradesman whose face creases to thunder when nothing is produced for him.
I long for Swammerdam.
Your true friend
My dear,
I was about to begin in this vein—“how can I apologise?” and so forth—“a moment’s madness”—then I thought I might circumvent the whole happening, deny that Magnets rush towards each other, and deny it so steadily, the lie might become a kind of
saving fiction that held a kind of truth. But the Laws of Nature deserve as much respect as any other, and there are human laws as strong as the magnetic field of iron and lodestone—if I deviate into lying, to you to whom I have never lied—I am lost.
I shall see you—as you were the moment before the madness—until the day I die. Your little face, with its pale candour, turned to me—and your hand out—in the watery sunshine, between the great trees. And I could have taken your hand—or not taken your hand—could I not? Either? But now only the one. Never have I felt such a concentration of my whole Being—on one object, in one place, at one time—a blessed eternity of momentariness that went on forever, it seemed. I felt you call me, though your voice said something different, something about the rainbow spectrum—but the whole of you, the depth of you called to me and I had to answer—and not with words—this wordless call. Now is this only my madness? With you in my arms (I tremble as I remember it to write it) I was sure it was not.
Now, away from you, I do not know what you think or feel.
But I must speak. I must say to you what is in my mind. The unforgivable embrace was no sudden impulse—no momentary excitation—but came from what is deepest in me, and I think also what is best. I must tell you—ever since that first meeting, I have known you were my fate, however from time to time I may have disguised that knowledge from myself.
I have dreamed nightly of your face and walked the streets of my daily life with the rhythms of your writing singing in my silent brain. I have called you my Muse, and so you are, or might be, a messenger from some urgent place of the spirit where essential poetry sings and sings. I could call you, with even greater truth—my Love—there, it is said—for I most certainly love you and in all ways possible to man and most fiercely. It is a love for which there is no place in this world—a love my diminished reason tells me can and will do neither of us any good, a love I tried to hide cunningly from, to protect you from, with all the ingenuity at my command. (Except complete silence, you will rightly say, which was out of my power.) We are rational nineteenth-century beings, we might leave the coup de foudre to the weavers of Romances—but I have certain evidence that you know what I speak of, that you acknowledged, however momently (that infinite moment) that at least what I claim is true.