I have acted honestly and in good faith

Thanks for your letter, which I received this morning. I'm glad to see that you took all that I told you in such a good-natured way. Later when I find an opportunity to tell you more particulars to explain the circumstances more clearly, I hope you will not have to change your opinion that I have acted honestly and in good faith. I have to do with a woman who had one foot in the grave when I met her, and whose mind and nervous system were also upset and unbalanced - whose only chance of staying alive was what that professor at Leyden had prescribed: a regular home life. And even then it will take years before she is entirely normal again.

As to her past life, I believe that you condemn “fallen women” no more than I do. Frank Hol once expressed it this way - in a drawing which as far as I know has not yet been reproduced - he called the drawing “Her Poverty but Not Her Will Consents.” Amice, at this very moment I can think of no fewer than four women in this town (mine included) who have either fallen, or have been deceived and deserted, and have illegitimate children, and their fate is so melancholy that it is difficult to think of, especially as three of them have hardly a chance of getting out of their misery - that is, in theory they do, but not in practice, as I see it. And I feel obliged to add that I do not consider my relation with the woman in question as something of a passing nature.

To Anton von Rappard, from The Hague, 7 February 1883, Letter R21
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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