White Stains

16 PREFACE here and there ; but these are small blemishes on a series of poems whose originality is always striking, and often dreadful, in its broader features. We cannot leave George Bishop without a word of enquiry as to what became of the heroic figure of Mathilde Doriac. It is a bitter task to have to write in cold blood the dreadful truth about her death. She had the misfortune to contract, in the last few days of her life with him, the same terrible disease which he describes in the last poem of this collection. This shock, coming so soon after, and, as it were, as an unholy perpetual reminder of the madness and sequestration of her lover, no less than of his infidelity, unhinged her mind, and she shot herself on July 5th, 1869. Her last letter to Madame J . . . S . . . is one of the tenderest and most pathetic ever written. She seems to have been really loved by George, in his wild, infidel fashion : “ All Night ” and “ Victory ”, among others, are obviously inspired by her beauty ; and her devotion to him, the abasement of soul, the prostitution of body, she underwent for and with him, is one of the noblest stories life has known. She seems to have dived with him, yet ever trying to raise his soul from the quagmire ; if God is just at