第41章 VI(6)

I am beginning to think this room where we take our tea is more like a tinder-box than a quiet and safe place for "a party in a parlor."

It is true that there are at least two or three incombustibles at our table, but it looks to me as if the company might pair off before the season is over, like the crew of Her Majesty's ship the Mantelpiece, --three or four weddings clear our whole table of all but one or two of the impregnables. The poem we found in the sugar-bowl last week first opened my eyes to the probable state of things. Now, the idea of having to tell a love-story, --perhaps two or three love-stories, --when I set out with the intention of repeating instructive, useful, or entertaining discussions, naturally alarms me. It is quite true that many things which look to me suspicious may be simply playful.

Young people (and we have several such among The Teacups) are fond of make-believe courting when they cannot have the real thing, -"flirting," as it used to be practised in the days of Arcadian innocence, not the more modern and more questionable recreation which has reached us from the home of the cicisbeo. Whatever comes of it, I shall tell what I see, and take the consequences.

But I am at this moment going to talk in my own proper person to my own particular public, which, as I find by my correspondence, is a very considerable one, and with which I consider myself in exceptionally pleasant relations.

I have read recently that Mr. Gladstone receives six hundred letters a day. Perhaps he does not receive six hundred letters every day, but if he gets anything like half that number daily, what can he do with them? There was a time when he was said to answer all his correspondents. It is understood, I think, that he has given up doing so in these later days.

I do not pretend that I receive six hundred or even sixty letters a day, but I do receive a good many, and have told the public of the fact from time to time, under the pressure of their constantly increasing exertions. As it is extremely onerous, and is soon going to be impossible, for me to keep up the wide range of correspondence which has become a large part of my occupation, and tends to absorb all the vital force which is left me, I wish to enter into a final explanation with the well-meaning but merciless taskmasters who have now for many years been levying their daily tax upon me. I have preserved thousands of their letters, and destroyed a very large number, after answering most of them. A few interesting chapters might be made out of the letters I have kept,--not only such as are signed by the names of well-known personages, but many from unknown friends, of whom I had never heard before and have never heard since.

A great deal of the best writing the languages of the world have ever known has been committed to leaves that withered out of sight before a second sunlight had fallen upon them. I have had many letters I should have liked to give the public, had their nature admitted of their being offered to the world. What straggles of young ambition, finding no place for its energies, or feeling its incapacity to reach the ideal towards which it was striving! What longings of disappointed, defeated fellow-mortals, trying to find a new home for themselves in the heart of one whom they have amiably idealized! And oh, what hopeless efforts of mediocrities and inferiorities, believing in themselves as superiorities, and stumbling on through limping disappointments to prostrate failure! Poverty comes pleading, not for charity, for the most part, but imploring us to find a purchaser for its unmarketable wares. The unreadable author particularly requests us to make a critical examination of his book, and report to him whatever may be our verdict,--as if he wanted anything but our praise, and that very often to be used in his publisher's advertisements.

But what does not one have to submit to who has become the martyr--the Saint Sebastian--of a literary correspondence! I will not dwell on the possible impression produced on a sensitive nature by reading one's own premature obituary, as I have told you has been my recent experience. I will not stop to think whether the urgent request for an autograph by return post, in view of the possible contingencies which might render it the last one was ever to write, is pleasing or not. At threescore and twenty one must expect such hints of what is like to happen before long. I suppose, if some near friend were to watch one who was looking over such a pressing letter, he might possibly see a slight shadow flit over the reader's features, and some such dialogue might follow as that between Othello and Iago, after "this honest creature" has been giving breath to his suspicions about Desdemona :

"I see this hath a little dash'd your spirits.

Not a jot, not a jot.

"My lord, I see you're moved."

And a little later the reader might, like Othello, complain, "I have a pain upon my forehead here."

Nothing more likely. But, for myself, I have grown callous to all such allusions. The repetition of the Scriptural phrase for the natural term of life is so frequent that it wears out one's sensibilities.

But how many charming and refreshing letters I have received! How often I have felt their encouragement in moments of doubt and depression, such as the happiest temperaments must sometimes experience!

If the time comes when to answer all my kind unknown friends, even by dictation, is impossible, or more than I feel equal to, I wish to refer any of those who may feel disappointed at not receiving an answer to the following general acknowledgments:

I. I am always grateful for any attention which shows me that I am kindly remembered. --II. Your pleasant message has been read to me, and has been thankfully listened to. --III. Your book (your essay)