Work Text:
My Dear Mary,
I hope this letter finds you well, and that your married life in London agrees with you - though I suspect it does. Tom always did love the city best in Autumn, when the leaves collect along the Embankment and there is an excuse to stay indoors with a book. I imagine you have found that particular habit of his either entirely charming or quietly maddening by now. Perhaps both. I, personally, found it maddening.
I am writing from my new sister-in-law’s house in Bath, where I have been for these past eight weeks. Bath is full of people taking the waters and complaining about their nerves, and I confess I find I like it rather more than I expected to. Mr. Powell and I have been frequenting a lending library on Milsom Street rather more than is strictly dignified.
I have been meaning to write you for some time. I am not entirely sure why I kept putting it off. Cowardice, possibly. Or the worry that a letter might arrive on your doorstep like an uninvited guest - one that would make Mr. Hayward uncomfortable and that you would feel obliged to gracefully receive even if you would rather not. You are too kind to turn anyone away, Mary. It is one of the things I always admired about you, though I suspect you would insist it is merely a failure of assertiveness.
I feel I need to say something very plainly, because I think you deserve plain speaking more than most people I have ever met, and because I never got the opportunity to say it in person.
I was never in love with Tom.
I beg you to understand that I know this now with the same certainty that I once told myself the opposite. We had an understanding - or rather, we had a very long and comfortable habit of expecting an understanding, which is not the same thing at all, though it can feel remarkably similar when you are not paying close enough attention. Tom is a good man. An excellent man, even. He was always so kind to me. But kindness, I have come to learn, is not the same as the particular variety of attention he gave to you.
I did notice it, you know. Earlier than you might think. Certainly earlier than you noticed it. There was an evening at the Gardiners’ - you had said something about… Milton? I believe? Some small, precise observation that made everyone else in the room glaze over politely, yet Tom turned toward you the way a plant turns toward a window. He did not even seem to be aware he was doing it. That was rather the point.
I was not heartbroken. I need to be honest about that too, because I fear that you have spent a great deal of unnecessary energy feeling very guilty on my behalf. What I felt was something closer to relief, and underneath that relief I began to feel a wistfulness for wanting what you two seemed to have without even trying. The sharp, specific recognition of another person. I must confess, I had begun to feel those stirrings of recognition toward Mr. Powell, though I was frequently telling myself otherwise.
Please, please, do not write back apologizing. I shall be very put out if you do. I did mean it, most sincerely, when I asked you to take care of him for me when we spoke at the coaching inn. Write back and tell me instead whether Tom has managed to convince you that Wordsworth is superior to Milton - my understanding is that this argument is still ongoing - and whether you have found a bookseller in your new neighborhood who does not try to steer you toward improving literature for ladies when you ask where the philosophy books are located.
Also, selfishly: I miss our walks. If you are ever inclined toward visitors, I should love to bring Mr. Powell back to London in the spring. I promise to admire your new bookshelves and compliment your new wallpaper and smile indulgently while your husband recites poetry. We shall be wonderful houseguests.
With genuine warmth and very few regrets,
Mrs. Ann Powell
P.S. I told Tom once that he had a tendency to quote poetry at people when he did not know how to express what he felt. He denied if vigorously. I trust you now have sufficient evidence to settle the matter.