An Interlude: An "Imaginary Conversation," Supposed to Be Found Among the Unpublished Papers of Walter Savage Landor

I.

SHAKSPERE AND ANNE HATHAWAY SHAKSPERE.

ANNE. Yes, the happy poems are the best. But there is one happy thing that even you would never be able to tell, with all your art.

SHAKS. And what is that, blue-eyes ?

ANNE. YOU could never tell how happy it makes me to have you back again from London. Only a month — but it seemed a year. How ever did I let you go !

SHAKS. Anne, there is something I do not like to tell you — Nay, do not start.

ANNE. Will!

SHAKS. Look not so affrighted; it is only that they won from me a promise to come again at Michaelmas. Nay, girl, ’t is not a thing to sob at.

ANNE. It has come. I knew I never could hold you.

SHAKS. ’T is but for a little while. Why, that is my brave wife : lift your sweet face; let me wipe the tears away.

ANNE. NO, let them run. The heart will maybe ache the less for them.

SHAKS. SO long a silence ? Prithee, speak to me. What do those blue-bell eyes behold in the distance that should make them so heavy ? ’T is but for a month, or two — or not a year, at most.

Speak, I say ! what is it you see ?

ANNE. I see the time that was to come. Do you not remember, sitting in the little brier-rose garden at Shottery, how I used to say. “It can never last! ” For something — some augury such as foreboding women know — would suddenly make my heart faint and heavy. And you would stop my mouth — Let be I must needs cry a little when I remember.

SHAKS. Fie, fie ! Are you a grown woman, or a child in arms ? — Well, what is the new fret now ?

ANNE. The letter!

SHAKS. Anne, Anne, are you lunatic ? what letter ?

ANNE. That will say, “ I am writing to tell you our separation must be final.”

SHAKS. Anne ! (Ah, these poor fond fools!) Wife, I say ! (She has e’en swooned away.)

II.

SOUTHAMPTON AND ANNE S.

ANNE. Ay, I had his letter. The hand was Shakspere, but the voice was some good, virtuous, prying, devilish friend of his.

SOUTH. Nay, woman, affront me not with your fierce looks. I did not see him when he wrote it, nor ever advised him touching its purport. Be still! I came all the way hither to confer with your reason, not to bear with your passions.

ANNE. I know well what you have advised him. A woman’s wit needs no second-sight to discern her love’s enemy. You prate to him of your wily right and wrong. It is a thing of conscience, forsooth, to give me up. The poor precedents of the commonalty you put for the eternal laws of God’s mercy. I tell you Heaven talks closer with a woman’s heart than with all the cunning custommongers of the world. God gave me my husband, and you would push him from me for your circle’s shallow traditions, — poor scruples, scribbled on perishable parchment, and taken for Heaven’s mandates writ on tables of stone.

SOUTH. Rail on ! but I am a better friend to him than you with what you call your love. I counsel him for his gain : you would hold him from it for your pleasure.

ANNE. So I have stung the true color of it into light, at last! You make it a virtue to him of a Sunday, but a’ Monday morning and all the other days it is his “ gain ” ! You paint it shrewdly to him, I ween : the out-worn country woman, — among the clods, as it were, — the fall of the leaf, as it were, — Hobbin the sheep-boy, and Clobbinet that minds the curds !

SOUTH. Come, woman ! The mood becomes you not. You are e’en better favored in honest speech. Leave flouting to the court.

ANNE. If it were truth you told him — but I know the town. I could trail my velvet at my gran’dam’s there as well as any. I say, I know the town, and I know my worth. The silk robe still hides the shallows better than any homespun. Under the tricked bearing and the pretty phrase will my Shakspere find the deeper fountains of his art ? Not so — it was never so. They may gloss life better, but we live it here. He had never been my poet had you reared him there. It was these stars that drew him, these country skies that fed him honeydew.

SOUTH. And Anne Hathaway ?

ANNE. I care not for your discourtesies. The thing is greater to me than that I should care. It was Anne Hathaway that knew his thought — ay, and answered it. He was my poet, before ever he descended to become your patcher of plays.

SOUTH. I’ faith, I would fain hear those poems!

ANNE. You will never hear them. They are mine alone.

SOUTH. What! you have verses writ by him ? If this purse — this ruby —

ANNE. Court fool! And you thought your trinkets would buy heart’s blood ?

SOUTH. You have not destroyed them ?

ANNE. Nay, they are gathered in my heart. But the paper — yea, sooth, the paper of them was burned the day the letter came.

SOUTH. The letter ! was it not pure reason in the letter ? “ It is the right I

do,” he said.

ANNE. So you did see the letter! Oh, the honorable courtier and brave gentleman !

SOUTH. After it was writ I saw it. “ Thou knowest,” he said to you, " it is the right I do, and thou must do thy share.”

ANNE. My share! Ay, I shall do my share.

SOUTH. Plague ou your crying! Hear but straight reason, I say.

ANNE. Well — you have come from my husband: I will hear.

SOUTH. Your husband ? Where is the husband you were married to in secret, years before ? Turn not away. “ It is foul wrong,” says Shakspere — says he not well ? — “ for me to take his place.”

ANNE. His place ? Where is his place ! Did he not leave me — a green girl — of his own free pleasure ? “ Right! ” what know I of right save justice and mercy to God’s creatures ! I think the things the world names right are but the pretexts for following its own sweet desires. To forgive one’s enemies — to be faithful to one’s friends — what priest’s canon dares contravene such right as this ? Adieu ! and tell my husband — nay, tell him naught from me, for to him I am naught. Or tell him, till my heart is broken, it is all his, and his alone.

[ Goes in.

SOUTH. Wild words from a wild creature, and with distempered gesture. And yet, it is a clear soul, and a womanly withal. If I were Shakspere — I know not.

III.

FROM THE WIFE TO THE HUSBAND. A LETTER.

DEAR WILL : And so you think our separation must be final ? But how can it be final till love be dead ? Final for our little life it may easily be, but when the winter of these brief necessities shall awake to endless summer-time, what room is there then for separations ? You do not wish it, do you ? Yet I know that now it is better so. You must follow the clue that is in your hand. You have the round of illusions and disillusions to complete. But something tells me you will never find your mate till you come back to me.

I know that I am lesser than you : I know that I am older; and yet I am not old. And there is something in my bosom that will refuse to grow old so long as you are to be lived for. I have not told you my thoughts in these months past. My heart has been full with what I would not speak, lest I seem to hold you back from your better fortune. If I have whispered it on my pillow, if I have called it aloud on the night wind in the solitary fields, I knew it could never reach you to do you harm. God forgive me if sometimes I have wished it might, so it would bring you back to my arms. Your friend said it were noblest in me to make you forget me. Well, perchance I am trying. It may be this pursuit is but a subtlety to weary you of me, grounded on this : that he who seeks is never sought. Nay, what if it were still a shrewder subtlety, this very telling you thereof? You said once I was subtle. Do you remember ? And I said it was a vile phrase, it was French, and I would have none of it. Ah, the little affectionate familiar jests we had together — the slow talks we had, mingled with confident quietness: must it all have come to naught ? Have the words all gone like frosty breath into the air ? Is there nothing, nothing, and never to be anything ? Can such a past just die, and have no consequent, as in a desert a call that was not answered and that dies away forever ? And you ? You will meantime be happy. Never say not — I knew it long ago. Do I wish it? Not now, not yet. But I shall wish it, in better and larger moments. Then I will wish you only your own heart’s desire ; hoping nothing, only that some day in some far-off world I may stand near, if unseen, and see your gladness, and be so pure at last that I shall be glad in that alone.

Farewell — and remember — best, oh most best — believe it.

ANNE S.

IV.

A SECOND LETTER.

To MY FRIEND THAT WAS MINE, W. S.

It was a silly letter that I wrote before : such as women will still be writing, when they use their wits to follow their feeling, not to lead it. It was a true letter, too, for I meant it all; but this it would have been wiser to mean : Imprimis — Lovers still love most hotly when they are long apart. How rede you that riddle ? Why, thus : we are not so perfect as the imagination bodies us out, delicately touching his colors on our image. Day by day the absent grows more beautiful, wiser, more pat to our desire. I know that through the silence I shall grow to seem to you what I am not. But look not back from your path. I know your needs. I can foretell what your nature is capable to answer to. You are only right when you cut loose from a past that had no outlook. Among a thousand things unattainable to my nature belongs your life. If ever aspiration flags, and memory goes feeling backward after old illusions, appeal from rosy fancy to daylight fact. Let us think of each other as we would in the commonplace life of the house. Whatever in feature or form is insignificant, whatever in the disposition is harsh and untunable, whatever in the mind is incapable, — these we must see, if we would see the very truth ; the little jangles of life as well the joys ; the self-seeking, the indolences, the animal solicitations that are mixed with all our clay. Not in order that we may hate each other ; but to take that cheerful and reasonable view that leaves the heart light and the mind clear. So might we be comrades, — taking and giving what help we can ; nor blind to the better looks of comelier persons, nor to the freshness of younger ones, nor the vigor of haler ones, the wit of sprightlier ones, the deeper plummet of wiser ones.

So may each love only as Cordelia said she loved : “ So much as you are, so much as you are worth withal.”

We were not worthy to live together if we are not able to live well apart.

It doth spoil life’s reasonableness when the overflowing heart must e’en flood the brain and blur its clarity. I am content, in one regard, if my lover’s passion goes away from me, drawn, like a flame in the wind, toward another, if only it carry away the veil of illusion through which my lover saw me. I would that we knew each other at last, in true light and shadow, with all our lack and ails, nothing extenuated, and yet all seen as by a kindly comrade. And you that vrent from my arms as a cold and merely friendly lover will come back to my hands a warm and loving friend. If the years pass heavily, it is no matter: they will bring that day. If they pass swiftly and hasten on old age, it is no matter: they will bring that day. And for that I wait.

A. S.