Selections from the Letters of Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury to Jane Welsh Carlyle

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 Excerpt: ...has a wonderful funny likeness to one or two I wrote to when, without a blow-up, I wanted to put her at arm's length, or rather, out of reach. I do not suspect you the least in the world of doing it with such deadly intent, but it will account for my dislike to it. Besides, even if you did, it would not take effect; there are two sides to every bargain, and I am not a subject for 'painless extinction.' I should first squeak for my life very sonorously, and try what moving speeches would do, and if they did not answer, I would wait patiently till the tide of things should bring us into our right relation again. You may give me pain--you have often done so--to a degree you would hardly believe that one woman could inflict on another--(no one has ever made me suffer so much). I see now how very much was my fault, and not yours; but I only say this to make you feel how utterly it is beyond your power to vex or estrange me permanently; as long as you are in this world the tie exists, with a strength that has been proved, and which is far beyond any control of your own. If David, with all his sin, was called 'a man after God's own heart' because love lay at the bottom of his 'Pandora's box, ' I am sure I ought to be called a woman after yours. You know I don't hold to your theory of 'wounds and bruises ' at all. Nature heals soundly over all mortal casualties. There is no such thing, either morally or physically, as living with incurable wounds. And besides, the Bible tells us we are all 'soldiers, ' so if we have scars it is all as it must be, under the circumstances. If, however, there has been any reason for the coldness I may have fancied, but which I have suffered from all the same, either kill it yourself, or tell me, that I may destroy it myself. I sin again.