Returning to the actual subject of this thread, I think it is a tribute to the character of Ludwig that his wife could actually write him a letter in which she rebuked him for the 'childish' letter she had received from him, then morphing into the - for the time - extraordinary statement that "There has never been any lack of love-only with time, the disillusion became harder to bear....I longed for a real companion, for, apart from that, life had nothing to offer me in Darmstadt. I could have been quite happy and contented living in a cottage, if I had been able to share my intellectual interests and intellectual aspirations with a husband whose strong, protective love would have guided me round the rocks strewn in my way by my own nature, outward circumstances and the excess of my opinions." This of course has been the great marker for those who consider Alice wasted in Darmstadt, but it is clear from her own remarks that she did not believe a wider stage would have made her happier. She then goes on to say "So naturally I am bitterly disappointed with myself when I look back........and this realisation, my darling, often makes me unjust towards yourself-for one always bears the blame for everything in one's self-I know that now.....But let us go on helping each other-honestly-we cannot let ourselves be paralyzed by the past-and there is nothing I want but to make your life happy and to be useful to you. I have tried again and again to talk to you about more serious things.......bit we never met each other-I feel that true companionship is an impossibilty for us-because our thoughts will never meet.......I shall never forget yourgreat goodness, nor that you are still so fond of me-and I love too so very much, my darling husband, that is why it is so sad to feel that our life is nevertheless so incomplete and sometimes so difficult. But you are never intentionally to blame for this-I never think that, never......"
It must have been a hard letter to write, but also very painful to receive - but there never seems to have been any impression that Alice had to soften her views or opinions to her husband, for fear that he would cut up rough at the very least. One could say that he was very liberal and enlightened in his views towards his tormented wife, who in a later letter wrote that "I am not blind to my faults. But I think I can say that we did not choose badly then and that we are a very happy couple."
