Galgenberg, Dec. 22d.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,—The house is quite good enough for me, I assure you—the 'setting' I think you call it, suggesting with pleasant flattery that there is something precious to be set. It only has the bruised sort of color you noticed when its background is white with snow. In summer against the green it looks as white as you please; but a thing must be white indeed to look so in the midst of our present spotlessness. And it is not damp if there are fires enough. And the rooms are not too small for me—poky was the adjective you applied to the dear little things. And I am never lonely. And Joey is very nice, even though he doesn't quite talk in blank verse. I feel a sort of shame when you make so much of me, when you persist in telling me that the outer conditions of my life are unworthy. It makes me feel so base, such a poor thing. Sometimes I half believe you must be poking fun. Anyhow I don't know what you would be at; do you wish me to turn up my nose at my surroundings? And do you see any good that it would do? And the details you go into! That coffee-pot you saw and are so plaintive about came to grief only the day before your visit, and will, in due season, be replaced by another. Meanwhile it doesn't hurt coffee to be poured out of a broken spout, and it doesn't hurt us to drink it after it has passed through this humiliation. On the contrary, we receive it thankfully into cups, and remain perfectly unruffled. You say, and really you say it in a kind of agony, that the broken spout, you are sure, is symbolic of much that is invisible in my life. You say—in effect, though your words are choicer—that if you had your way my life would be set about with no spouts that were not whole. If you had your way? Mr. Anstruther, it is a mercy that in this one matter you have not got it. What an extremely discontented creature I would become if I spent my days embedded in the luxury you, by a curious perverseness, think should be piled around me. I would gasp ill-natured epigrams from morning till night. I would wring my hands, and rend the air with cries of cui bono. The broken spout is a brisk reminder of the transitoriness of coffee-pots and of life. It sets me hurrying about my business, which is first to replace it, and then by every possible ingenuity to make the most of the passing moment. The passing moment is what you should keep your eye on, my young friend. It is a slippery, flighty thing; but, properly pounced upon, lends itself fruitfully to squeezing. The upshot of your last letter is, I gather, that for some strange reason, some extremity of perverseness, you would have me walk in silk attire, and do it in halls made of marble. It suffocates me only to think of it. I love my freedom and forest trampings, my short skirts and swinging arms. I want the wind to blow on me, and the sun to burn me, and the mud to spatter me. Away with caskets, and settings, and frames! I am not a picture, or a jewel, whatever your poetic eye, misled by a sly and tricky Muse, persists in seeing. It would be quite a good plan, and of distinctly tonic properties, for you to write to Frau von Lindeberg and beg her to describe me. She, it is certain, would do it very accurately, untroubled by the deceptions of any Muse.
How kind of you to ask me what I would like for Christmas, and how funny of you to ask if you might not give me a trinket. I laughed over that, for did I not write to you three days ago and give you an account of my conversation with Joey on the subject of trinkets at Christmas? Is it possible you do not read my letters? Is it possible that, having read them, you forget them so immediately? Is it possible that proverbs lie, and the sauce appropriate to the goose is not also appropriate to the gander? Give me a book. There is no present I care about but that. And if it happened to be a volume in the dark blue binding edition of Stevenson to add to my row of him I would be both pleased and grateful. Joey asked me what I wanted, so he is getting me the Travels with a Donkey. Will you give me Virginibus Puerisque?
Yours sincerely,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
If you'd rather, you may give me a new coffee-pot instead.
Later.
But only an earthenware one, like the one that so much upset you.