From Miss Aurora¹ Church in New York to Miss Whiteside in Paris

January 1881.

I told you (after we landed) about my agreement with mamma — that I was to have my liberty for three months and that if at the end of this time I shouldn’t have made a good use of it I was to give it back to her. Well, the time’s up today, and I’m very much afraid I haven’t made a good use of it. In fact I haven’t made any use of it at all — I haven’t got married, for that’s what mamma meant by our little bargain. She has been trying to marry me in Europe for years, without a dot, and as she has never (to the best of my knowledge) even come near it, she thought at last that if she were to leave it to me I might possibly do better. I couldn’t certainly do worse. Well, my dear, I’ve done very badly — that is I haven’t done at all. I haven’t even tried. I had an idea that the coup² in question came of itself over here; but it hasn’t come to me. I won’t say I’m disappointed, for I haven’t on the whole seen any one I should like to marry. When you marry people in these parts they expect you to love them, and I haven’t seen any one I should like to love. I don’t know what the reason is, but they’re none of them what I’ve thought of. It may be that I’ve thought of the impossible; and yet I’ve seen people in Europe whom I should have liked to marry. It’s true they were almost always married to some one else. What I am disappointed in is simply having to give back my liberty. I don’t wish particularly to be married, and I do wish to do as I like — as I’ve been doing for the last month. All the same I’m sorry for poor mamma, since nothing has happened that she wished to happen. To begin with, we’re not appreciated, not even by the Rucks, who have disappeared in the strange way in which people over here seem to vanish from the world. We’ve made no sensation; my new dresses count for nothing (they all have better ones); our philological³ and historical studies don’t show. We’ve been told we might do better in Boston; but on the other hand mamma hears that in Boston the people only marry their cousins. Then mamma’s out of sorts because the country’s exceedingly dear and we’ve spent all our money. Moreover, I’ve neither eloped, nor been insulted, nor been talked about, nor — so far as I know —

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