[Lydia] Maria [Child] ALS to Louise [Louisa Loring], June 24, 1849

I am afraid I shall have to do some outrageously wicked
thing, and proclaim it, merely for the sake of showing, as
Mrs. Chapman says, that "I stand upon my right to be
damned." But why do I blaze away thus to you,
whose quiet temperament never suffered from those pent-up
volcanic fires of suppressed individual freedom, which have
been the torment of my life?

I am sorry the Düsseldorf gallery did not open till a day or
two after you left. I went fifteen times. Page makes all
manner of fun of me for it. I admit the truth of his
criticism, that too much is sacrificed to nicety of mechan-
-ical execution, and that there is an objectionable tendency
to mannerism. Still, on the whole, it has never been my
good fortune to see so excellent a gallery of pictures.
There was one, suggested by a fairy-story of Tieck's, which
I should delight to hang up in my little garret, where the
first morning-light would fall upon it. The elves have
decoyed a little mortal maiden into their fairy boat.
They are swinging and floating round her, in all manner
of graceful forms, bringing her flowers, and dripping shells,
and coral and pearls. It is a standing unhappiness with
me that I have not a son at Düsseldorf, for Anna to
marry. Page says if he had a son, he would disown him
if he went to that school of equalizing mediocrity.
Poor Page! I let him rail at me as he pleases, and
love him still. You don't know what a terrible ordeal
life has been to him! And just now I feel peculiarly
tender toward him and his pretty young wife; because