The self-criticism, despair and morbid sensitivity which had continued to haunt even the commercial success of The Mill and the critical buzz of Romola now began to melt. The letters she wrote to friends during the mid-1860s have lost their characteristic defensive, combative tone. There are not so many swipes at ‘frivolous women’, fewer proud references to her lack of friends, less posing as an intellectual Olympian, unconcerned with what the masses think about her work. For the first time in Marian’s correspondence, there is something like an unguarded heart. A week after her forty-third birthday, in November 1862, she had written to M. D’Albert Durade: ‘I think this year’s end finds me enjoying existence more than I ever did before, in spite of the loss of youth. Study is a keener delight to me than ever, and I think the affections, instead of being dulled by age, have acquired a stronger activity – or at least their activity seems stronger for being less perturbed by the egoism of young cravings.’1 Viewed from outside there was no obvious reason for this softening.
