band
and wife, mother and children.

I said that what seemed to me to make a difference was whether the
people thus espied were conscious of the espionage or not; and that it
was no more improper to have such things revealed IN A BOOK, than to
have them described in a novel or shown upon the stage. Moreover, it
seemed to me, I said, as though to reveal such things in a book was the
perfect compromise. I feel strongly that each home, each circle has a
right to its own privacy; but I am not ashamed of my natural feelings
and affections, and, by allowing them to appear in a book, I feel that
I am just speaking of them simply to those who will understand. I
desire communion with all sympathetic and like-minded persons; but
one's actual circle of friends is limited by time and space and
physical conditions. People talk of books as if every one in the world
was compelled to read them. My own idea of a book is that it provides a
medium by which one may commune confidentially with people whom one may
never see, but whom one is glad to know to be alive. One can make
friends through one's books with people with whom one agrees in spirit,
but whose bodily presence, modes of life, reticences, habits, would
erect a barrier to social intercourse. It is so much easier to love and
understand people through their books than through their conversation.
In books they put down their best, truest, most deliberate thoughts; in
talk, they are at the mercy of a thousand accidents and sensations.
There were people who objected to the publication of the Browning
love-letters. To me they were the sacred and beautiful record of an
intensely holy and passionate relation between two great souls; and I
can afford to disregard and to contemn the people who thought the book
strained, unconventional and shameless, for the sake of those whose
faith in love and beauty was richly and generously nurtured by it.

It seems to me that the whole progress of life and thought, of love and
charity, depends upon our coming to understand each other. The hostile
seclusion which some desire is really a savage and almost animal
inheritance; and the best part of civilisation has sprung from the
generous self-revelation of kindly and honourable souls.

I am not even deterred, in a case of this kind, by wondering whether
the person concerned would have liked or disliked the publication of
these letters. I feel no sort of doubt that, as far as I am concerned,
she would