e less that something of the triviality and
innocent vanity of children abounds in them. A delightful and most
welcome letter was the last you sent me, my dearest friend. Your
bridal visit must have charmed you, and I am glad you had the gladness
of witnessing some of the happiness of your friend, Mrs. Acton Tyndal,
_you_ who have such quick sympathies, and to whom the happiness of a
friend is a gain counted in your own. The swan's shadow is something
in a clear water. For poor Mrs.----, if she is really, as you say Mrs.
Tyndal thinks, pining in an access of literary despondency, why _that_
only proves to me that she is not happy otherwise, that her life
and soul are not sufficiently filled for her woman's need. I cannot
believe of any woman that she can think of _fame first_. A woman of
genius may be absorbed, indeed, in the exercise of an active power,
engrossed in the charges of the course and the combat; but this is
altogether different to a vain and bitter longing for prizes, and what
prizes, oh, gracious heavens! The empty cup of cold metal! _so_ cold,
_so_ empty to a woman with a heart. So, if your friend's belief is
true, still more deeply do I pity that other friend, who is supposed
to be unhappy from such a cause. A few days ago I saw a bride of
my own family, Mrs. Reynolds, Arlette Butler, who married Captain
Reynolds some five months since.... Many were her exclamations at
seeing me. She declared that such a change was never seen, I was
so transfigured with my betterness: 'Oh, Ba, it is quite wonderful
indeed!' We had been calculated on, during her three months in Rome,
as a 'piece of resistance,' and it was a disappointment to find us
here in a corner with the salt. Just as I was praised was poor Flush
criticised. Flush has not recovered from the effects yet of the summer
plague of fleas, and his curls, though growing, are not grown. I never
saw him in such spirits nor so ugly; and though Robert and I flatter
ourselves upon 'the sensible improvement,' Arlette could only see him
with reference to the past, when in his Wimpole Street days he was
sleek and over fat, and she cried aloud at the loss of his beauty.
Then we have had [another] visitor, Mr. Hillard, an American critic,
who reviewed me in [the old] world, and so came to _view_ me in the
new, a very intelligent man, of a good, noble spirit. And Miss Boyle,
ever and anon, comes at night, at nine o'clock, to catch us at our
hot chestnuts and mulled wine,