What is better than to love and live with the loved? But that must sometimes bring us to live with the dead; and this too turns at last into a very tranquil and sweet tie, safe from change and injury.
You see, I make myself a warrant out of my regard for you, to write as if we had long been near each other. And I cannot help wishing that we were physically nearer--that you were not on the other side of Europe. We shall trust in Mr. Lytton's kindness to let us hear of you by and by. But you must never write except to satisfy your own longing. May all true help surround you, dear Mrs. Lytton, and whenever you can think of me, believe in me as yours with sincere affection.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Mary Cross, 31st July, 1871.]
I read your touching story[16] aloud yesterday to Mr. Lewes, and we both cried over it. Your brother wrote to me that you had doubts about giving your name. My faith is, that signature is right in the absence of weighty special reasons against it.
We think of you all very often, and feel ourselves much the richer for having a whole dear family to reckon among our friends. We are to stay here till the end of the month. When the trees are yellow, I hope you will be coming to see us in St. John's Wood. How little like the woods we have around us! I suppose Weybridge is more agreeable than other places at present, if it has any of its extra warmth in this arctic season.
Our best love, to your dear mother supremely, and then to all.
[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 2d Aug. 1871.]
I always say that those people are the happiest who have a peremptory reason for staying in one place rather than another. Else I should be sorry for you that you are kept in London--by Parliamentary business, of course.
There is sunshine over our fields now, but the thermometer is only 64° in the house, and in the warmest part of the day I, having a talent for being cold, sit shivering, sometimes even with a warm-water bottle at my feet. I wonder if you went to the French plays to see the supreme Got? That is a refined pleasure which I enjoyed so much in Paris a few years ago that I was sorry to be out of reach of it this spring.
About the Crystal Palace music I remember feeling just what you mention--the sublime effect of the Handel choruses, and the total futility of the solos.