by Edward Kenealy, LL.B.
Originally published in Ainsworth's Magazine: A Miscellany of Romance (Chapman and Hall) vol.10 #5 (1846).
Chapter V.
Letter I.—To Edgar.
Come to me for five minutes, and then we shall go to walk in our own walk of flowers. Do you not long to sit with me once again underneath the green trees? And bring with you our old favourite, Shelley. Every day I love him more and more. His songs are like the songs of angels—his thoughts seem heaven-born.
I should say more, but I am busy—writing. Your's.
Letter II.—To Edgar.
I am going to — at once. Come down to-morrow and I shall meet you. Bring the volume of poems, the miniature, and the silver pen. I shall be in the large bay window. Pass by, and you shall see me. It will be your own fault if you don't come to me now.
Letter III.—To Edgar.
Do you love me better than any one lady you know?—better than the lady I asked you did you know?
Letter IV.—To Edith.[1]
Tuesday Night.
If I had entertained any doubt of your fond and ardent feelings of love towards me, your dear letter would have instantly removed them; for the sentiments flow from the heart so sincerely, and so naturally, that I am indeed persuaded you are wholly mine. I cannot describe to you my impatience until I had read your letter. I asked myself a thousand times, "what does it contain? In what manner has my own love, my own dearest love spoken of her Edgar?" A thousand times I pressed it to my heart, to my lips. I ran home with trembling eagerness—methought I trod on air—I broke the seal—and oh! when I had read it, how delightedly I felt that all my warmest anticipations were realised to the full. But why do you so often and so unconcernedly write that odious word " part ?" Why, dearest Edith, should you and I ever dream of parting? How can you cloud the sunshine of our present happiness (if, indeed, you are happy, like me, for I am perfectly so), by dark presages of the future? If our present hours are bright and sunny, why should we overshadow them by gloomy forebodings? Can you not read my heart by your own; and if you feel that you can never cease to love me, why will you not allow me to possess constancy at least equal? Are you not aware that no impression on the heart equals that of first love?—that it dwells within the bosom, pure, holy, undefiled, immortal; enshrined, as if in a sacred temple,—and that man cannot, even if he would, expel it from its sanctuary? Father, mother, sister, brother, home, country, ambition, every powerful passion, every sweet and gentle instinct of nature, is forgotten or absorbed by this mysterious sentiment. You and I have been lovers, sweet Edith, from our very childhood. I was not yet fifteen when I first saw and loved you. From that moment you have filled my entire soul. Never have I been completely free from the fascination of our early passion. My spirit is bound, as it were, in some magic spell, and you, dear Edith, are my fair magician. In solitude or in the crowd, your image always accompanies me. How often has Memory—the sweet, wild enchantress—painted to me, when absent from you, those dear winding walks in which we fondly passed our hours, the roses that seemed to nestle amid the thick clusters of arbutus, the beautiful summer twilight, a few stars faintly gleaming in the evening sky, the grey silence in the heaven and over the earth, the thoughtful solitude, the meditative stillness of the vesper time, the woodland beauty of the landscape, you in your pretty blue and ermine cloak, pressed to my heart, our eyes glowing with celestial joy, while the whispering trees embowered us around, and white-robed spirits of Innocence, Love, and Truth came, as if from heaven, to preside over our meetings. How sweetly musical your words—how beautiful your smiles—how delicious the close warm clasping of our hands. As pure, as fresh, as delicately sweet and dewy as the wild rose in your hair, you seemed. O beloved Edith, never shall I forget it. Surely, if happiness ever was on earth, we experienced it then. And yet you, you, who like me have enjoyed, and do yet remember this—oh! how can you doubt your Edgar's fondness? To forget you, I must first forget the whole period of my boyhood, and all that made it beautiful, radiant, happy. I must no longer think of that dear word of assignation which you used to repeat when passing me in school—"six o'elock."—I must forget our looks, our walks, our partings, our embraces—nay, must I not forget life itself, for you were my life, my soul, my being then? Never, my dearest heart, doubt that I have always loved you, and that I shall always continue to be yours.
I cannot tell you how heartily delighted I am that you should have commenced this correspondence, as it will no doubt make us fonder of each other, by continual thinking, while in absence. I am only afraid that you will not continue it as regularly as you have promised, and as I hope. Be assured that I shall not be the first to break it off.
And so you will tell me your inmost thoughts. My own love! Nothing, indeed, but the deepest affection could make you do so. But use it with this reservation—never to tell me any thing which it would give you the least pain to reveal. Our hearts are so completely one, that we should have no secrets from each other, nor shall we. I am myself naturally of a frank and communicative disposition, and I shall love you the better for being so.
I have written all this in my head, with my desk open before me, and my reading-lamp, which you recollect so well, beside me on a little oaken table. And I promise to do the same every night for I know not how long. And now, Edith, attend to the following.
I. Do not destroy any of these letters, but preserve them with the greatest possible care, and keep them from the eye of nearest and dearest as well for your own sake as for mine. You know how dreadful would be the consequence if our intercourse were even suspected by —.
2. Always love me, think of me, and write tome. Good-night.
Letter V.—To Edgar.[2]
To E.H. E.C. sends her thoughts, thoughts that will never rest on any one but him whom she so dearly loves, and whom she feels that she must always love. Whatever may happen to change him she will remain unchanged. Her soul lies open before him; it is not her soul so much as it is his; no thoughts of hers shall henceforward be concealed from him; wild, disjointed, and confused they may be, but they shall be at all events to him revealed as if to Heaven. The paper shall convey what she would never dare to say when face to face with Edgar.
Letter VI.—To Edith.
* * * When I concluded my last letter, I paused for several minutes, and wished that I could transport myself to your side. How were you engaged? 'twas two o'clock—the stars were shining above you, and you were fast asleep. How pleasant it would have been to wake from dreams of me and find me near you. * * * Ah! why will you not write for me the history of your heart, your thoughts, your fears, hopes, affections, during the first three months at Darwin's? which period I shall ever look back to as the Eden of my existence. The first moment I saw you I fell in love with you. I am sure Nature designed us for each other, and that from our creation our union in life in this world was predestinated; for affection so wild, so warm, so instantaneous, so all-absorbing, is never, cannot be, the effect of mere accident, but of some mystical attraction of congenial spirits towards each other at first meeting. You may remember, it was about eleven o'clock; Darwin was standing close to me; you came to him to get a pen mended. I had seen you a few moments before, and though I spoke to Darwin, my thoughts, my heart, my mind were already with you. I was enchanted when you came up, and though I instantly loved you, I had no notion of what was to happen. I wanted a pencil at the moment, and by the merest chance asked Darwin for one. He had it not; but he turned to you, and with the sweetest smile I ever saw you wear, you offered me the loan of yours. I am sure at that instant love entered both our bosoms, and there he has remained since. I accepted the pencil, and I remember perfectly that I blushed to the ears. My hand trembled as I took it, my heart panted wildly, my blood flashed, but I could not speak; no, if I had got worlds I could not utter a word. You may be sure I studied but little that day. When school broke up, I waited to see you, to thank you, and to return the pencil, but I was disappointed and was not happy enough to meet you. Oh, how bitterly I felt it! All that evening and night I thought only of you, of you my dearest, best love. You may remember that I always followed you home afterwards, every day after school broke up. Perhaps I never again shall enjoy purer happiness than I did then in looking at you as you walked before me with your little basket of books, Sometimes when you looked back, I would turn away my head in another direction, as if I were completely ignorant that you were before me at all, and had no design in walking so very slowly as I did. I used to wait at the stationer's, looking at the books and pictures in the window as if merely for curiosity, but really with the design of letting you by and then having the pleasure of following you. How I longed to know you then! How many thousand plans came into my head to get introduced to you! What poetry I wrote—what songs I scribbled—what hopes I formed of mutual happiness! In a week I had marked you out as mine for ever, and ardently waited for an opportunity of meeting you. You may remember I got sick; ‘twas on a Saturday. You accompanied my sisters to our house as they came from school. You spoke of me, and in a fond manner; when they came in I was lying in bed; they instantly told me all you had said. How very happy I felt! how sweet were my reflections! I got well in a short time. Soon after we became acquainted. How perfect, how vivid is my recollection of that night, and of its every slightest incident. You have not forgotten it, nor our meetings on the bridge, nor the evening when you asked me whom I loved best in the world; nor how fondly we embraced as we mutually confessed all that we felt. All these I have not forgotten, nor shall I forget them but with life. Is your memory equally good, Edith? Has affection impressed upon your mind slight incidents of this nature so firmly? But I shall know all when you tell me the history of your heart. How I long to read it! how many thousand times I shall kiss it! how often shall I peruse it! How many new hours of pure delight will it give me during its perusal!
It is now half-past one. I have a severe headache, and you are not here to chafe my temples with your dear hands as you know you once did. I am at the end of my paper.
Chapter VI.
I can imagine a cross and cynical man of the world, lounging back in his chair, and sipping his wine, whose heart has never felt one gentle or genuine emotion, cold and hard as ice on the frozen Neva; I can imagine him, I say, contemptuously looking at these simple lines, and flinging them aside unread, unthought of, uncared for.
—Or some witty critic declaring them to be stupid and full of me a the sentiments forced, or tiresome, or old, or prolix, or worthess.
—Or some careful matron, duly wrapping up in a robe and visor of strict virtue the longings of her vicious heart; she has already begun, as Rochefoucault has it, either to sacrifice to God the devil's leavings, or she meditates the same.
—Or some vain and vulgar reader to whom the language of the heart is unintelligible, and love a mere terrestrial deity of flesh and blood, and animal pursuits, instincts, and passions.
—Or some giddy miss, all artifice, folly, and unnaturalness, just one degree removed from monkeyism, who cannot or will not understand what is hereinbefore written—boarding-schooled into a disbelief of all that etherealises our nature.
These, I repeat, I can imagine scornfully, prudishly, ignorantly, or giddily condemning those sweet effusions of two loving spirits, blent and intertwined as it were in the rarest union of soul—but the generous, the just, the wise, the experienced will read them, and linger over them with feelings of a different nature, feelings genial and exalted, rising like perfume from exalted hearts.
Nor will these feelings be wrongly directed—for the characters I have drawn are not imaginative, the events are not fabulous, nor have I given an ideal portrait of their virtues and accomplishments; nor are the letters themselves, or the fragments one whit altered in copying from the original drafts before me. The story is true—the letters, the reflections, the descriptions, the characters—all these are true. And in their truth alone is centred whatever interest may attach to them. I cannot write romances—nor if I could should I perhaps have leisure to do so; but a solemn duty, and a solemn resolution have made me publish this story and these documents. The originals will then be committed to the grave.
For, by a strange direction of my friend, these papers, relics, and withered flowers when used, are not to be destroyed by fire, or in any other way, but to be buried up in iron, and solemnly consigned to the earth that covers his coffin, on the anniversary of his death. Hermetically sealed, the manuscripts will remain long after the frail flesh that penned them has mouldered into nothingness. Some future ages may perhaps behold them, dug out of their earthy prison, and given to the world as literary curiosities—like the love letters of Abælard and Heloïsa. So be it. We shall all have passed away then. You, dear reader, who now sympathise with me—I myself—the whole of this breathing mass of manhood, womanhood, childhood, infancy, that now tenants the earth. Our place knowing us no longer, whither shall we have gone?—where shall we be?
Yet it was not without many an inward struggle, severe and deep, that I resolved to publish these papers. Several years have elapsed since these sad incidents took place. Edith and Edgar have long since both departed, and scarcely does there remain, except in my heart, a trace of their memory. The duty committed to my charge should have been performed before. I feel it. I know it. The frailty of life ought to have warned me that I had no time to lose, and that my friend's dying directions should be at once fulfilled. His memory also required, not, indeed, to be rescued from oblivion, but to be shielded from the reproaches which his friends hurled upon his untimely grave. He was a suicide. He died by his own hand, in the full possession, as I believe, of all his faculties. But suicide is somehow looked upon as a crime—it is certainly an injury to society in the mass—and his friends avenged themselves upon Edgar for his noble qualities, by making the most of this crime that they possibly could. O, vile and worthless wretches! Little did ye know that generous heart. Little did ye know the agonies of that spirit which sought repose in the Lethe of Death.
And what is this boasted friendship whereof fools and poets speak? I have lived in the world for many years, and have travelled in many climes, and have seen men of every condition of society, and read, perhaps with no unobservant eye, the great pages of life. And the lesson that I have learned is, that with some rare exceptions, all men are naturally enemies—that we live in a state of warfare with each other—and that after a certain stage of existence, friendship, such as I understand the feeling to be, is altogether unknown—that it dies away slowly and gradually from the heart, and leaves that heart little better than a noisome pound of flesh. Homo homini lupus, says the old adage—alas! it is not the less true because it is old. Thus it is that all our fair fond superstitions die away, and that we begin to awake to the loathsome realities of existence. Turn over in mind the list of your dearest friends in boyhood, at school, in adolescence. How many have remained true? Say rather have not all proved hollow, false, and worthless? Those in whom your heart was bound up; whom you generously believed to be the truest of the true; to whom you revealed all your young confidences with almost womanly trustfulness; around whom your affections were entwined; for whom you would gladly have risked your life; upon whose honour and fidelity you would have staked your existence; in whom you beheld your second self; whom your eyes sparkled with delight to meet, or from whom in parting your cheeks were wet with tears—O dear and gentle reader, turn over in thought the list of these, and if you can find but one true, honest, steadfast to his plighted friendship, think yourself indeed a happy man. But you will not be so fortunate, or if you should, you form but am exception to the general rule, which is as I have stated it. Or if you should not trust your own experience—if perchance you seek elsewhere for some corroborating proofs of this saddening theory—would that it were only theory!—examine the biographies of the great and good who have passed away, and there behold in startling vividness proofs of what I have said. Think of Pitt only five minutes after he had breathed his last, deserted by every human being, left alone m a lone house, not even a domestic remaining to close his eyes, or wipe his brow damp with the dews of death; he, the all-powerful minister, who on that morning wielded the destinies of mighty England. Or of Martha Blount, for so many years the protected of Pope, fed by him, housed by him, and clothed, querulously exclaiming in his last moments: "Is he not dead yet?" Or of Pope himself, whose letters to Bolingbroke seem to have been dictated by a friendship as pure, as ardent, and as fine as ever burned within a mortal bosom, yet, who loving money infinitely beyond any friend, and hoping to outlive him, surreptitiously printed one of his friend's pamphlets, in such a way as would have irreparably injured that friend's memory.[3] Or of Addison sending, on his death-bed, for poor Gay, his friend, and with tears imploring his forgiveness for some vile, but secret injury which he had done him at the very time he professed for him the strongest attachment. Or of Hawkins, the trusted executor of Johnson, writing his life, and representing him to the world with all his foibles and errors, and, under the mask of friendship, holding him up to ridicule, to censure, and contempt. Or of Orrery like a true Irishman, performing the same abominable office, and branding, or seeking to brand, the illustrious memory of Swift; an act of infamy which our own age has beheld in the case of Sheridan, by his friend Thomas Moore. Or of Fox, rudely repelling from his death-bed that same Sheridan who had fought for him, trusted him, and sacrificed himself for him. Or of Canning, hunted to death by those in whom his choicest confidence was placed. Or of Curran, betrayed by the traitor Grattan, and dying broken-hearted.[4] But why extend the catalogue? Why linger longer over these melancholy details, so degrading to human nature? Is not history full? is not biography teeming with these odious truths? And yet the world is still misled by names—the wise world, which disbelieves in Jupiter and Cerberus, is credulous of friendship.
I have strayed into these speculations, by reflecting on the fate of my friend. For he, too, entered the world, and firmly trusted, like all other youths of enthusiastic temperament; and like them he was doomed to disappointment. So long as his uncommon abilities remained undeveloped, he was the theme of general applause. But immediately he had manifested to the world the spirit that was within him, Envy and Jealousy, Fraud and Falsehood, base and abominable Calumny, and white-faced Insinuation arose, and did their worst against him. His friends, in whom he trusted, were nowhere to be found; his enemies were legion, and they hated him the more heartily, because, in sooth, he gave them no cause for hatred. The base, and mean, and vile, in whom self-love always exists in greater intensity than in the high, and noble, and pure, hated with a deadly hate, one whose exceeding elegance of soul, gave an every day insult to their own detestable natures; whose lofty sentiment was a perpetual reproof to them, for well they knew they could never climb to that glorious height. And what an accomplished Jesuit Hatred is! How candidly did these miscreants, disguising their detestation under a show of love, deplore the errors of Edgar, and piously wish the day to come when he would be purified from stain, and become worthy of universal interest. How deeply they regretted—how sincerely they sympathised. Nobody knew for what he was condemned—every body saw that he had enemies in thousands, but none could tell the cause of the enmity, or discover the original inventors of the calumnies afloat. By some he was called an Atheist; by others, a fool; by many, a madman; by all he was looked on as something dreadful and vicious. It was in the same way that Byron was crucified to death by fools, knaves, and liars.
Musing upon these thoughts, therefore, I have asked myself, whether I do well to publish these letters? Will they not provoke inquiry anew? Will not the old enmities and crawling jealousies revive? Will not Slander once again come forth like a reptile, and leave its filthy slime upon the character of my friend? Will not the dead falsehoods be revived? Will not the mob of wretches, who knew him, rush forth again in mad eagerness to blast the name of the departed? Perhaps so.
But I heed not these considerations. Truth is mighty, and she will prevail in the end. I do not believe that any man's character can be permanently lied away. It is only contemporaries who invent lies about a man. A future age will curiously examine them—will disdain to take them on trust; and, if they do not stand the test, will expose and annihilate them. Bear witness, some of the noblest names of antiquity. Living, they were regarded as demons; dead, they ranked with demi-gods, or even with the gods themselves. Future times tell truth, and shame the devil.
These letters themselves are, indeed, the clearest refutation of all that has been said. The life of Edgar Hyde is written in them; the noble and philosophic sentiments do him honour, and the morality is perfectly unexceptionable. They will abash an army of slanderers. And she —.
Sweet Edith, I have not forgotten thee. Didst not thou too suffer? For thy sake also these letters must appear. Calumny is not confined to the male sex. It originated first with woman, and it bears the stamp of its mother. Weak and cowardly, it is essentially feminine. The old poets gave Report a hundred tongues of falsehood; they gave her also a female name and figure. And in what single instance were those ancient mythologists wrong? How vile must it have been, when it pursued even thee. But these letters will convict it to shame, for ever and ever.
How comes it to pass, that it is the most virtuous of either sex who are the most slandered? That Falsehood loves to fasten on the fairest souls, and to pollute them with its filth. Some old writer—I forget who—says, "You will easily discern the best characters, by observing those who are most calumniated, as it is on the finest fruits that the birds have left most peckings." This may not be true in all cases; but it is assuredly true in the most numerous. And is it not a fact honourable to human nature? And is not that human nature the destined heir of Heaven?
Man looks aloft, and with regretful eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.
Hereditary, indeed! But who would dare to say that Pope wrote this in bitter irony, and that he did not believe a single word of it? For my part I believe it all, and more if required; and I think that we ought not to be contented after death with any place but a Heaven radiant with stars and the eternal light of God. We should be wrong to take less. We certainly do every thing we can to deserve as much. Probably a future enlightened age will look out for something more than even this. And heartily do I wish, that if they should, they may succeed in their prospects. May they discover a dozen heavens instead of one. Priority of discovery will then insure priority of possession.
Yet I am fantastic enough to believe that man, if he liked, and if he would follow only the proper course, could make a heaven even upon this earth. Have I not known some who carry about with them a heaven of purity, love, and truth within their own hearts? Increase and multiply the number, and the problem is solved. Then only—then, indeed, and not till then, shall we ever become worthy of that sublime communion with spiritual essence, which we all of us more or less believe to be the allotted destiny of man—those who have reflected most, believing it firmest—and which, indeed, must have been designed by a God of goodness, omniscience, and omnipotence, for so celestial a creation as the soul of man, in certain of its moods, assuredly is. But until we do this, how futile are all our aspirings after a better sphere. For what do we to deserve it? When we begin by setting our own house in order, we may probably be thought worthy of transfer to a greater.
Whither have my thoughts carried me? I am a sad rambler from my subject. But the story of Edith Carleton and Edgar Hyde is pregnant with reflections. I cannot avoid them as they arise.
1. The letter to which this appears to be an answer, is not to be found in the collection which has passed into my hands.
2. This is a mere fragment. It appears to be an envelope of a letter.
3. This disgraceful anecdote will be found in Walpole's Letters to Sir Horace Mann.
4. See Dublin Review, vol. xv., p. 247.