book I

ought to put in my pocket,—and fancy I leave on the table,—is picked up in our lane and presented to me on my return; so my reason, which told you I had forgotten it, the book, was wrong, and my instinct which told me, all the time, that I could not forget even so poor a matter if it tended to you,—_that_ was right, as usual? (Don’t think that I forgot the said book on the former occasions ... I wanted to look through it first, so as to be able to correct any possible mistakings, in case you should ask, or should not ask, my siren! I read the book during the voyage.)

Will you tell me what number of the _League_ contains the notice of you? I can get it directly. I did not ask you yesterday, being just as much master of myself as I commonly am when with you—but after-wisdom comes duly for a consolation, and mine was apparent in a remark I made last night—‘Here is truly an illusion broken’ I said—‘for not very long ago I used to feel impatient at listening to other people’s commendations of her, and as if they were usurping my especial office,—they _could_ not see what I see, not utter what I could utter: and now, at the beginning of my utterance, the hand closes my mouth, while its dear fellow shuts my eyes,—I may not see what everybody sees, nor say what the whole world says,—I, that was to excel them all in either function! So now I will change my policy and bid them praise, praise, praise, praise, since I may not. Will you let me hear them, my Ba? You know Chesterfield forbids his son to play on the instrument himself—‘for you can pay musicians’ he says—‘and hear them play.’ Where may I hear this discourser of most excellent music?

In your last letter you spoke of ‘other women,’ and said they might ‘love’ me—just see! They might love me because of something in me, lovingness in me, which they never could have evoked ... so the effect produces the cause, my dear ‘inverter’! If there had been a vague aimless feeling in me, turning hither and thither for some object to attach itself to and spend itself on, and you had chanced to be that object, I should understand you were very little flattered and how a poplar does as well for a vine-prop as a palm tree—but whatever love of mine clings to you was created by you, dearest,—they were not in me, I believed—those feelings,—till you came. So that, mournful and degrading as it sounds, still it would, I think, be more rational to confess the possibility of their living on, though you withdrew,—finding some other—oh no, it is,—that is as great an impossibility as the other,—they came from you, they go to you, what is the whole world to them!

May God bless you, repay you—He can—

Well Ba, do you see the _Examiner_? That is very kind, very generous of Forster. There are real difficulties in the way of this prompt, efficient, serviceable notice—for he has a tribe of friends, dramatists, actors ‘conflicting interests’ &c. &c. to keep the peace among,—and he quite understands his trade—how compensation is to be made, and an equilibrium kept in the praises so as to offend nobody,—yet see how he writes, and with a heap of other business on his shoulders! I thank him very sincerely, I am sure.

Tell me how you are, beloved—all-beloved! I am quite well to-day,—have been out.

Do you remember our friend Bennett of Blackheath? (Don’t ejaculate ‘le Benêt’!) He sent me letters lately—and I returned a copy of ‘Luria’ to save compliments and words—here is his answer ... (I will at once confess I could not read it, but Ba bids me send, and what am I but Ba’s own, very very own?)

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Monday. [Post-mark, April 27, 1846.]

Oh yes; that paper is by Chorley, no doubt—I read it, and quite wonder at him. I suppose he follows somebody’s ‘lead’—writes as he is directed—because I well remember what he said on lending me ‘Le Compagnon.’ There, there is that other silly expenditure of pen and ink on the English poets, or whatever they are. And in such work may a man spend his youth and not a few available energies—sad work altogether!

My love, _I_ have done a fair day’s work this Monday,—whoever may be idle—I thought I would call on Forster this morning—he was out, and I crossed over to Moxon’s, not seeing him, neither, and thence walked home—so that to tell you I am _well_ is superfluous enough, is it not? But while the sun shone brightest, (and it shines now) I said ‘The cold wind is felt through it all,—_she keeps the room_!’ The wind is unremitting,—savage. Do you bear it, dearest, or suffer, as I fear? (Speaking of Forster ... you see the _Examiner_, I believe? Or I will send it directly of course). I entirely agree with you in your estimate of the comparative value of French and English Romance-writers. I bade the completest adieu to the latter on my first introduction to Balzac, whom I greatly admire for his faculty, whatever he may choose to do with it. Do you know a little sketch ‘La Messe de l’Athée,’—most affecting to me. And for _you_, with your love of a ‘story,’ what an unceasing delight must be that very ingenious way of his, by which he connects the new novel with its predecessors—keeps telling you more and more news yet of the people you have got interested in, but seemed to have done with. Rastignac, Mme. d’Espard, Desplein &c.—they keep alive, moving—it is not ingenious? Frédéric Soulié I know a little of (I let this reading drop some ten years ago) and only George Sand’s early works: by the way, the worst thing of all in that blessed article we have been referring to, is the spiteful and quite uncalled for introduction of the names of A. de Musset and De Lamennais—what have the English families to do with _that_? Did you notice a stanza quoted from some lachrymose rhymester to be laughed at (in the Article on Poetry)—in which the writer complains of the ill-treatment of false friends, for, says he, ‘I have felt their _bangs_.’ The notion of one’s friend ‘banging’ one is exhilarating when one reflects that he might get a little pin, and prick, prick after this fashion. No, it is probably a manner of writing,—meant for the week’s life and the dozen readers. Here is a note from his sister, by the way.

Now, dearest-dearest, good bye till to-morrow. I think of you all day, and, if I dream, dream of you—and the end of the thinking and of the dreaming is still new love, new love of you, my sweetest, only beloved! so I kiss you and bless you from my heart of heart.

Ever your R.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Monday Evening. [Post-mark, April 28, 1846.]

Very good _Examiner_!—I am pleased with it and with Mr. Forster for the nonce, though he talks a little nonsense here and there, in order to be a true critic, and though he doesn’t talk at all, scarcely, of the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’ ... how is one to bear it? That ‘Tragedy’ has wonderful things in it—thoughts, suggestions, ... and more and more I feel, that you never did better dialogue than in the first part. Every pulse of it is alive and individual—dramatic dialogue of the best. Nobody in the world could write such dialogue—now, you know, you must be patient and ‘meke as maid,’ being in the course of the forty-nine days of enduring praises. Praises, instead of ‘bangs’!!—consider that it might be worse!—_dicit ipsissima Ba_.

Think of my not hearing a word about the article in the _Examiner_, until I had your note this morning. And the _Examiner_ was in the house since Saturday night, and nobody to tell me! I was in high vexation, reproaching them all, to-day—till Stormie had the impertinence to turn round and tell me that only Papa had read the paper, and that ‘he had of course put it away to keep me from the impropriety of thinking too much about ... about’ ... yes, really Stormie _was_ so impertinent. For the rest, when Papa came up-stairs at one o’clock, he had it in his hand.

At two, Miss Bayley came, and sate here two hours, and thought me looking so well, with such improved looks from last autumn, that I don’t mean to groan at all to you to-day about the wind—it is a savage wind, as you say, and I wish it were gone, and I am afraid of stirring from the room while it lasts, but there’s an end ... and not of _me_, says Miss Bayley. She doffed her bonnet and talked and talked, and was agreeable and affectionate, and means to come constantly to see me ... (‘only not on Thursday,’ I desired:) and do you know, you need not think any more of my going with you to Italy, for she has made up her mind to take me herself ... there is no escape for me that I can see—it’s fixed ... certain! with a thousand generous benignities she stifled my ‘no’s’ ... and all I had breath to say at last, was, that ‘there was time enough for plans of that kind.’ Seriously, I was quite embarrassed to know how to adjourn the debate. And she is capable of ‘arranging everything’—of persisting, of insisting—who knows what? And so, ... when I am ‘withdrawn’ ... carried away ... then, shall all my ‘feelings,’ which are in you, be given to somebody else? is _that_ the way—?

Now I shall not make jests upon _that_ ... I shall not: first, I shall not, because it is ungrateful—and next and principally, because my heart stands still only to think of it...! Why did you say _that_ to me? I could be as jealous (did I not tell you once?) as any one of your melodramatic gitana heroines, who carries a poignard between the white-satin sash and the spangles? I perfectly understand, at this distance, what _jealousy_ is, would be, ought to be, must be—though I never guessed at all what _love_ was, at _that_ distance, and startled I am often and confounded, to see the impotency of my imagination.

Forgive the blottings out—I have not blotted out lately ... _have_ I now? and it is pardonable once in a hundred years or days.

The rest for to-morrow. Your correspondent of the first letter you sent me really does write like a Bennet, though he praises you. I could not help laughing very gently, though he praises you. Good-night my only beloved ... dearest! As _my_ Bennet says (Georgiana) when she catches vehemently at the laurel ... ‘_I will not be forgot_’....

‘I must die ... but I WILL NOT BE FORGOT’ (in _large capitals_!) But what _she_ applies to the Delphic groves, turns for _me_ to something more ambitious. ‘I will not be forgot’ ... will I? shall I? not till Thursday at least ... being ever and ever

Your own

BA.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Tuesday. [Post-mark, April 28, 1846.]

Now bless you, my dearest, best Ba, for this letter that comes at the eleventh hour,—which means, at 3 o’clock. Was not I frightened! I made sure you would write. Why, our Post emulates the Italian glory ... nay, that is _too_ savage a saying—for in Venice or Rome I should have to go for this to the office, and only get it at last through the forbearing honesty of every other applicant for letters during the day, or week—since to every man and woman who thrusts his or her head in at the window at Venice, the clerk hands coolly over the whole odd hundred, and turns to his rest again till as many are taken as may be thought necessary. But, Ba, dear dearest Ba, do you really mean to tell me I _said ‘that’_ ... of ‘transferring feelings’ etc? I hope I did,—though I cannot imagine how I ever could—say so—for so the greater fault will be Ba’s—who drives me from one Scylla (see my critic’s account) into a worse Charybdis through pure fear and aversion,—and then cries ‘See where you are _now_!’ I was retreating as far as possible from that imaginary ‘woman who called out those feelings,’—might have called them out,—just as this April sun of ours makes date-palms grow and bear—and because I said, of the two hypotheses, the one which taught you the palms _might_ be transplanted and _live on_ here,—_that_ was the more rational ... you turn and ask ‘So your garden will rear palms.’ Now, I tell Ba,—no, I will kiss Ba and so tell her.

How happy Miss Bayley’s testimony makes me! One never can be too sure of such a happiness. She has no motive for thus confirming it. You ‘look so well’—and she not merely sees it, but _acts_ upon it,—is for deriving a practical benefit from it, and forthwith. Then, Miss Bayley, let me try and ‘transfer’ ... ah, the palm is too firmly rooted in my very heart,—I can but sprinkle you over with yellow dust!

Oh, Ba; not to tell me of the _League_; the _number_!—will you please tell me? One letter more I get, do I not? Then comes Thursday—my Thursday.

What you style ‘impertinence’ in your Brother, is very kind and good-natured to my thinking. Well, now—see the way a newspaper criticism affects one, nearly the only way! If this had been an attack—how it would affect you and me matters nothing—it might affect others disagreeably—and through them, us. So I feel very much obliged to Forster in this instance.

I kiss you with perfect love, my sweetest best Ba. May God bless you.

R.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Tuesday. [Post-mark, April 29, 1846.]

Dearest, you are not to blame the post, nor even me. The reason you did not get the letter was simply that Henrietta slept over the hour, and let it lie on the table till past eight. Still, you should have had it before _three_ perhaps. Only the wrong was less a wrong than you fancied.

For _my_ wrongs, dearest beloved, they are mine I confess, and not yours ... ah, you are ‘evilly persecuted, and entreated’ of me, I must allow. Yet as, with all my calumnious imputations, I think softly to myself seven times seven times a day that no living man is worthy to stand in your footsteps, ... why you must try to forgive and (_not_) forget me. Do I teaze you past enduring, sometimes? Yes, yes. And wasn’t it my fault about the ‘imaginary woman;’ that heiress, in an hypothesis, of the ‘love’ I ‘made’? Yes, yes, yes—it was, of course. Unless indeed she came out of that famous mist, which you fined me away into, ... the day you slew and idealized me, remember!—and, now I begin to consider, I think she did! So we will share the fault between us, you and I. The odium of it, I was going to say—but _odium_ is by no means the right word, perhaps.

The truth of all is, that you are too much in the excess of goodness, ... that you spoil me! There it is! Did I not tell you, warn you, that I never was used to the purple and fine linen of such an infinite tenderness? If you give me back my sackcloth, I shall know my right hand from my left again, perhaps, ... guess where I stand ... what I am ... recover my common sense. Will you? no—do not.

And for the _League_ newspaper, you mistook me, and I forgot to say so in my letter yesterday. I told you only that the _League_ paper had mentioned me—not noticed me. It was just ... I just shall _tell_ you, that you may not spend another thought on such a deep subject ... it was a mere quotation from the ‘cornships in the offing,’ with a prefatory _as that exquisite poet Miss B ... says_! Now you are done with the winter of your discontent? You are with the snowdrops at any rate. But last year there was a regular criticism on my poems in that _League_ paper, and I had every reason to thank the critic. I have heard too that Cobden is a very gracious reader of mine ... and that his Leeds (liege) subjects generally do me the honours of popularity, more than any other people in England. There’s glory for you, talking of palm-trees.

Ah—talking of palm-trees, you do not know what a curious coincidence your thought is with a thought of mine, which I shall not tell you now ... but some day perhaps. There’s a mystery! talking of Venice!

For Balzac, I have had my full or overfull pleasure from that habit of his you speak of, ... and which seems to prove his own good faith in the life and reality of his creations, in such a striking manner. He is a writer of most wonderful faculty—with an overflow of life everywhere—with the vision and the utterance of a great seer. His French is another language—he throws new metals into it ... malleable metals, which fuse with the heat of his genius. There is no writer in France, to my mind, at all comparable to Balzac—none—but where is the reader in England to make the admission?—_none_, again ... is almost to be said.

But, dearest, you do not say how you are; and _that_ silence is not lawful, and _is_ too significant. For me, when the wind changed for a few hours to-day, I went down-stairs with Flush, and had my walk in the drawing-room. Mrs. Jameson has written to proclaim her coming to-morrow at four,—so I shall hear of ‘Luria,’ I think. Remember to bring my verses, if you please, on your Thursday. And if dreaming of me should be good for making you love me, let me be dreamt of ... go on to dream of me: and love me, my beloved, ever so much, without grudging,—because the love returns to you, all of it, ... as the wave to the sea; and with an addition of sundry grains of soiling sand, to make you properly grateful. Take care of yourself—may God take care of you for your own

BA.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Wednesday. [Post-mark, April 29, 1846.]

Oh, post, post, how I am plagued by what uses to delight me! No letter,—and I cannot but think you have written one, my Ba! It will come perhaps at 3 o’clock. Shame and again, shame!

Meantime I will tell you what a dear, merciful Ba you are, in only threatening me with daggers,—when you play at threatening,—instead of declaring you will _frown_ at me.... Oh, but here ‘Fear recoils, he knows well why, even at the sound himself has made—’

The best of it is, that this was the second fright, and by no means the most formidable. When I read that paragraph beginning ‘you need not think any more of going with me to Italy’—shall I only say I _was_ alarmed? Without a particle of affectation, I tell Ba, I _am_, cannot help being, alarmed even now—we have been discussing possibilities—and it is rather more possible than probable that Miss Bayley may ‘carry off’ my Ba, and her Flush, and, say, an odd volume of the Cyclic Poets, all in her pocket ... she being, if I remember, of the race of the Anakim—than that I shall ever find in the wide world a flesh and blood woman able to bear the weight of the ‘feelings,’ I rest now upon the B and the A which spell Ba’s name,—only her name!

Forster sent a note last evening urging me to go and dine with him and Leigh Hunt to-day,—there was no refusing. There is sunshine—you may have been down-stairs—but the wind continues.

I shall know to-morrow—but surely a letter _is_ to come presently—let me wait a little.

Nothing! Pray write if anything have happened, my own Ba!

No time—Ever your

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Friday. [Post-mark, May 1, 1846.]

I am delighted with the verses and quite surprised by Mr. Arnould’s, having expected to find nothing but love and law in them, and really there is a great deal besides. Hard to believe, it was, that a university prize poet (who was not Tennyson) could write such good verses: but he wrote them of _you_, and _that_ was enough inspiration for _him_, I suppose, as it would be for others, my own dearest. How I delight in hearing you praised!—it is such a delightful assent to the word which is in me, in the deepest of me. You know that mysterious pleasure we have, in listening to echoes!—we hear nothing new, nothing we have not said ourselves—yet we stand on the side of the hill and listen ... listen ... as if to the oracles of Delphi. The very pleasure of it all is in the repetition ... the reverberation.

When you had gone yesterday and I had taken my coffee, holding my book ... ‘La Gorgone’ a sea-romance by _Landelle_, (those little duodecimo books are the only possible books to hold in one’s hand at coffee-times ... and the people at Rolandi’s library sent me this, which is not worth much, I think, but quite new and very marine) ... holding my book at one page, as if fixed ... transfixed, ... by a sudden eternity, ... well, after all _that_ was done with, coffee and all, ... in came George, and told me that the day before he had seen Tennyson at Mr. Venables’ house, or chambers rather. Mr. Venables was unwell, and George went to see him, and while he was there, came the poet. He had left London for a few days, he said, and meant to stay here for a time ... ‘hating it perfectly’ like your Donne ... ‘seeming to detest London,’ said George ... ‘abusing everything in unmeasured words.’ Then he had been dining at Dickens’s, and meeting various celebrities, and Dickens had asked him to go with him (Dickens) to Switzerland, where he [is] going, to write his new work: ‘but,’ laughed Tennyson, ‘if I went, I should be entreating him to dismiss his sentimentality, and so we should quarrel and part, and never see one another any more. It was better to decline—and I have declined.’ When George had told his story, I enquired if Tennyson was what was called an agreeable man—happy in conversation. And the reply was ... ‘yes—but quite inferior to Browning! He neither talks so well,’ observed George with a grave consideration and balancing of the sentences, ... ‘nor has so frank and open a manner. The advantages are all on Browning’s side, _I should say_.’ Now dear George is a little criticised you must know in this house for his official gravity and dignity—my sisters murmur at him very much sometimes ... poor dear George!—but he is good and kind, and high and right minded, as we all know, and I, for my part, never thought of criticising him yesterday when he said those words rather ... perhaps ... barristerially, ... had they been other words.

_My_ other words must go by my next letter—I am to write to you again presently, you are to be pleased to remember ... and that letter may reach you, for aught I can guess, at the same moment with this. In the meantime, ever beloved,

I am your

BA.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Friday. [Post-mark, May 1, 1846.]

I go to you, my Ba, with heart _full_ of love, so it seems,—yet I come away always with a greater capacity of holding love,—for there is more and still more,—_that_ seems too! At the beginning, I used to say (most truly) that words were all inadequate to express my feelings,—now, those very feelings seem, as I see them from this present moment, just as inadequate in their time to represent what I am conscious of now. I _do_ feel more, widelier, strangelier ... how can I tell you? You must believe,—my only, only beloved! I daresay I have said this before, because it has struck me repeatedly,—and, judging by past experience, I shall need to say it again—and often again. Am I really destined to pass my life sitting by you? And you speak of _your_ hesitation at trusting in miracles! Oh, my Ba, my heart’s—well, Ba, I am so far guiltless of presumption, let come what will, that I never for the moment cease to be ... tremblingly anxious I will say,—and conscious that the good is too great for me in this world. You do not like one to write so, I know, but there is a safety in it—the presumptuous walk blindfold among pits, to a proverb—and no one shall record that of me. And if I have cares and scruples of this kind at times, or at all times, I have none where most other people would have very many. I never ask myself, as perhaps I should,—‘Will _she_ be happy too?’—All that seems removed from me, far above my concernment—she—you, my Ba ... will make _me_ so entirely happy, that it seems enough to know ... my palm-trees grow well enough without knowing the cause of the sun’s heat. Then I think again, that your nature is to make happy and to bless, and itself to be satisfied with that.—So instead of fruitless speculations how to give you back your own gift, I will rather resolve to lie quietly and let your dear will have its unrestricted way. All which I take up the paper determining _not_ to write,—for it is foolish, poor endeavour at best, but,—just this time it is written. May God bless you—

R.B.

I called on Moxon, who is better, and reports cheeringly. Then I went to my friend’s, and thence home, not much tired. I have to go out (to-day) with my sister but only next door. To-morrow I hear from you, love, and on Monday—(unless a pressing engagement &c.—ah!)

What do you say to this little familiar passage in the daily life of friend Howitt,—for which I am indebted to Moxon. Howitt is book-making about Poets, it seems—where they were born, how they live, ‘what relation their mothers’ sons are to their fathers’—etc. In the prosecution of this laudable object he finds his way to Ambleside, calls on Wordsworth ‘quite promiscuously’ as Mrs. Malaprop says, meaning nothing at all. And so after a little ordinary complimenting and _play_-talk, our man of business takes to good earnest, but dexterous questioning ... all for pure interest in poetry and Mr. W. ‘So, sir, after that school ... if I understand—you went to ... to ...?’—and so on. Mr. Wordsworth the younger having quicker eyes than his father detected a certain shuffling movement between the visitor’s right hand and some mysterious region between the chair’s back and his coat-pocket ... glimpses of a pocket case and paper note book were obtained. He thought it (the son) high time to go and tell Mrs. Wordsworth,—who came in and found the good old man in the full outpouring of all those delightful reminiscences hitherto supposed the exclusive property of Miss Fenner no doubt! Mrs. W—‘desired to speak with William for a moment’ (the old William)—and then came the amazement, horror &c. &c., and last of all came Mr. Howitt’s bow and ‘so no more at present from your loving &c.’—Seriously, in my instinct—instinct—instinct thrice I write it and thank my stars! Moxon said, Howitt is ‘just gone to call on Tennyson for information—having left his card for that purpose.’ ‘And one day will call on you’ quoth Moxon, who is but a sinister prophet, as _you_ may have heard—Dii meliora piis! It is fair enough in Tennyson’s case, for he is apprised by Howitt’s self of the purpose of his visit, but to try and inveigle Wordsworth into doing what he would hate most ... to his credit be it said—why, it is abominable—abominable!

Then I heard another story—his wife, Mary, finds out,—at all events, translates Miss Bremer. Another publisher gets translated other works—or may be the same,—as who shall say him nay? Howitt writes him a letter (which is shown my informant), wherein ‘rogue,’ ‘thief,’ ‘rascal’ and similar elegancies dance pleasantly through period after period.

‘Come out from among them my soul, neither be thou a partaker of their habitations!’

From all which I infer—I may kiss you, may I not, love Ba? It is done, may I or may I not—

Ever your own

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Friday. [Post-mark, May 2, 1846.]

How you write to me! Is there any word to answer to these words ... which, when I have read, I shut my eyes as one bewildered, and think blindly ... or do not think—some feelings are deeper than the thoughts touch. My only beloved, it is thus with me ... I stand by a miracle in your love, and because I stand in it and it covers me, just for _that_, you cannot see me! May God grant that you _never see me_—for then we two shall be ‘happy’ as you say, and I, in the only possible manner, be very sure. Meanwhile, you do quite well not to speculate about making me happy ... your instinct knows, if _you_ do not know, that it is _implied_ in your own happiness ... or rather (not to assume a magnanimity) in my sense of your being happy, not apart from me. As God sees me, and as I know at all the motions of my own soul, I may assert to you that from the first moment of our being to each other anything, I never conceived of happiness otherwise ... never thought of being happy through you or by you or in you, even—your good was all my idea of good, and _is_. I hear women say sometimes of men whom they love ... ‘such a one will make me happy, I am sure,’ or ‘I shall be happy with _him_, I think’—or again ... ‘He is so good and affectionate that nobody need be afraid for my happiness.’ Now, whether you like or dislike it, I will tell you that I never had such thoughts of _you_, nor ever, for a moment, gave you that sort of praise. I do not know why ... or perhaps I do ... but I could not so think of you ... I have not time nor breath ... I could as soon play on the guitar when it is thundering. So be happy, my own dearest ... and if it should be worth a thought that you _cannot_ be _alone_, _so_, you may think _that_ too. You have so deep and intense a nature, that it were impossible for you to love after the fashion of other men, weakly and imperfectly, and your love, which comes out like your genius, may glorify enough to make you happy, perhaps. Which is my dream, my calculation rather, when I am happiest now. May God bless you. Suppose I should ever read in your eyes that you were not happy with me?—can I help, do you fancy, such thoughts? Could _you_ help being not happy? The very word ‘_unhappiness_’ implies that you cannot help it. Now forgive me my naughtiness, because I love you, and never loved but you, ... and because I promise not to go with Miss Bayley to Italy ... I promise. Ah—If you could pretend to be afraid of _that, indeed_, _I_ have a right to be afraid, without pretence at all ... _I_ who am a woman and frightened of lightning. And see the absurdity. If I did not go to Italy with _you_, the reason would be that you did not choose—and if _you_ did not choose, I should not choose ... I would not see Italy without your eyes—_could_ I, do you think? So if Miss Bayley takes me to Italy with a volume of the Cyclic poets, it will be as a dead Ba clasped up between the leaves of it. You talked of a ‘Flora,’ you remember, in the first letter I had from you.

How bad of William Howitt! How right you are, always! Yet not quite always, dear dearest beloved, happily for your own

BA.

Say how you are I beseech you, and honestly! I was down-stairs to-day, since the wind changed, and am the better for it. What writing for a postman!—or for _you_ even!

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Saturday. [Post-mark, May 2, 1846.]

No, my Ba, your letter came as it ought last night,—and the promise it contained of another made me restless all the morning—to no purpose,—nothing more comes—_yet_—for there is a ‘peradventure’ yet unwithdrawn. When I do not hear from you, as now, I always fancy there was some signal reason why I ought to have heard ... that ‘to-morrow,’ I could better bear the not hearing ... though never, never do yesterday’s letters slip by a hair’s breadth from the place in my affection they once take,—_they_ could not have been dispensed with,—but the imaginary letter of to-morrow _could_, by contrast with to-day’s exigencies ... till to-morrow really comes and is found preferring such claims of its own—such claims.

_This_ letter I have got, and will try and love enough for two ... I can do no harm by trying ... _this_ I do not mean to say that I expected. May I say ‘in heart-playing,’ ... now, Ba, it will be a fancy, which you can pounce on and poke your humming-bird bill through, like a needle, in a very ‘twinkling,’ and so shall my flower’s eye be ruined for ever, and when it turns black and shrivels up as dead flowers do, you can triumph and ask ‘are these your best flowers, best feelings for me?’. But now, after this deprecation, you will be generous and only hover above, using the diamond eye rather than the needle-bill,—and I will go on and dare say that I should like, for one half second, _not to love you_, and then feel all the love lit up in a flame to the topmost height, at the falling of such a letter on my heart. Don’t you know that foolish boys sometimes play at hanging themselves—suspend themselves by the neck actually for such a half second as this of my fancying—that they may taste the luxury of catching back at existence, and being cut down again? There is a notable exemplification, a worthy simile! It all comes, I suppose, from the joy of being rid handsomely of my dinners and in a fair way for Monday ... nothing between but letters,—I shall continue to hope! At sea it always sounds pleasantly to hear ... after passing Cape This and Isle the other, ‘now, _next_ land we make is—Italy, or England, or Greece.’

Moxon told me Tennyson was still in Town. Switzerland? He is a fortnight going to wherever a Train takes him—‘for,’ says Moxon, ‘he has to pack up, and is too late, and next day’ ... I dare say he unaffectedly hates London where this poco-curanteism would entail all manner of disagreeabilities. If I caught rightly ... that is, now apply rightly, a word or two I heard ... one striking celebrity at Dickens’ Dinner was—Lord Chesterfield—literary, inasmuch as a great ‘maker _up_ of books’—for the Derby. Macready may have been another personage—they, Tennyson and he, may ‘fadge,’ in Shakespearian phrase, if the writer of the ‘Two Voices’ &c. considers Home’s ‘Douglas’ exquisite poetry,—otherwise,—it is a chance!

But with respect to your Brother ... first of all—nay, and last of all, for it all is attributable to _that_—I feel his kindness, in its way, as I feel yours; as truly, according to its degree and claim: but—‘now think what I would speak!’—When he really _does_ see me one day—no longer embarrassed as under the circumstances I could not but have been on these two or three occasions when we met—he will find something better than conversational powers to which I never pretended—and what he will accept in preference,—a true, faithful desire of repaying his goodness—he will find it, that is, because it must be _there_, and I have confidence in such feelings making sooner or later their way.

* * * * *

So now, at 2½ p.m., I must (—_here is the Post_ ... from you? _Yes_—the letter is here at last—I was waiting:—now to read; no, kissing it comes first).

* * * * *

And now ... I will not say a word, my love of loves, my dearest, dearest Ba,—not one word—but I will go out and walk where I can be alone, and think out all my thought of you, and bless you and love you with nothing to intercept the blessing and the love. I will look in the direction of London and send my heart there.... Dear, dear love, I kiss you and commend you to God. Your very own—

I am very well—quite well, dearest.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Sunday. [Post-mark, May 4, 1846.]

When I said one more letter might come before to-morrow, I forgot. How used I to manage in the early ‘day of small things’—comparatively—when letters came once a week at most, and yet I felt myself so rich, dearest!

I want you to remember, Ba, what I shall be nearly sure to forget when closer to you than now; tell me to-morrow. If I chance to see Mrs. Jameson in the course of the week what am I to say,—that is, what have you decided on saying? Does she know that you write to me? Because there is a point of simple good taste to be preserved ... I must not listen with indifference if I am told that ‘her friend Miss B.’ thought well of the last number. But she must know we write, I think,—never make any secret of that, when the subject is brought forward.

Here is warm May weather, my Ba; I do not shiver by sympathy as I fancy you going down-stairs. I shall hope to see the sweet face look its ... now, what? ‘Best’ would be altogether an impertinence,—unless you help my meaning, which is ‘best,’ too.

I received two days ago a number of the _People’s Journal_—from our illustrious contemporary, Bennett! Bennett figures where Barrett might have fronted the world. Fact! I will cut you out his very original lyric[2]—observe the felicitous emendation in the author’s own blue ink ... that supplemental trochee makes a musical line of it! Mary Howitt follows with a pretty, washy, very meritorious Lyric of Life. There is ‘a guilty one’—‘Name her not!’ ‘Virtue turns aside for shame’

She was born of guilty kin— Her life’s course hath guilty been— Unto school she never went— And whate’er she learned was sin,— LET HER DIE!

And so on—what pure nonsense! Who cries ‘let her die’ in the whole world now? thank God, nobody. The sin of the world (of the lookers-on, not the causers of the wrong) consists, in these days, in looking on and asking ‘How can we help her dying—or factory children’s dying—or evicted Irish peasantry’s dying?’ What ails these Howitts of a sudden, that they purvey this kind of cat-lap,—they that once did better? William Howitt grinds here an article on May day; past human power of reading of course, but I just noticed that not a venerablest commonplace was excused on account of its age—the quotations from Chaucer, Spenser, Herrick got once more into rank and file with the affecting alacrity shown the other day at a review of the Chelsea invalids! Oh, William, ‘Let them die!’

So goodbye till to-morrow, my dearest. I love you and bless you ever, and am your

R.B.

[2] [‘Cry of the Spring Flower-seller,’ by W. C. Bennett.]

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Tuesday. [Post-mark, May 5, 1846.]

Yes, you were right, my Ba—our meeting was on the 20th of last May: the next letter I received was the 14th and _that_ ran in my head, no doubt, yesterday. You must have many such mistakes to forgive in me when I undertake to talk and ‘stare’ at the same time ... well for me if they are no more serious mistakes!

I referred to my letters—and found much beside the date to reflect on. I will tell you. Would it not be perilous in some cases,—many cases—to contrast the present with the very early Past: the first time, even when there is abundant fruit, with the dewy springing and blossoming? One would confess to a regret at the vanishing of that charm, at least, if it were felt to be somehow vanished out of the present. And, looking upon our experience as if it were another’s,—undoubtedly the peril seems doubled—with that five months’ previous correspondence ... only _then_,—after all the curiosity, and hope and fear,—the first visit to come! And after,—shortly after,—you know—the heightened excitement that followed ... I should not believe in the case of another,—or should not _have_ believed,—that the strange delight could last ... no more than I should think it reasonable to wonder, or even grieve, that it did not last—so long as other delights came in due succession. Now, hear the truth! I never, God knows, felt the joy of being with you as I felt it YESTERDAY—the fruit of my happiness has grown under the blossom, lifting it and keeping it as a coronet—not one feeling is lost, and the new feelings are infinite. Ah, my Ba, can you wonder if I seem less inclined to see the adorable kindness in those provisions, and suppositions, and allowances for escape, change of mind &c., you furnish me with,—than to be struck at the strange fancy which, as I said, insists on my being free to leave off breathing vital air the moment it shall so please me?

And when I spoke of ‘dishonouring suppositions’ I had not the faintest approximation to an idea of standing in your eyes for a magnanimous keeper of promises, vow-observer, and the rest. All _that_ is profoundly pitiable! But to change none of my views of the good of this life and the next, and yet to give up my love on the view (for instance) which sees that good in money, or worldly advancement,—what is that if not dishonouring?

All the while, I know your thought, your purpose in it all,—I believe and am sure—and I bless you from my heart—you will soon know, what _you_ have to know—_I_ believe, beforehand, I repeat.

I am rather out of spirits to-day—_thus_ I feel toward you when at all melancholy ... you would undo me in withdrawing from me your help, _undo_ me, I feel! When, as ordinarily, I am cheerful, I have precisely the same conviction. Does that prove nothing, my Ba?

Well, I give up proving, or trying to prove anything—from the beginning I abjured mere words—and now, much more!

Let me kiss you, ever best and dearest! My life is in the hand you call ‘mine,’—if that hand would ‘shake’ less from letting it fall, I earnestly pray God may relieve you of it nor ever let you be even aware of what followed your relief! For what _should_ one live or die in this world?

I am wholly yours—

Did I not meet two of your brothers yesterday in the Hall? Pray take care of this cold wind—be satisfied with the good deeds of the last few days.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Tuesday. [Post-mark, May 6, 1846.]

Dearest, it has just come into my head that I should like to carry this letter to the post myself—but no, I shall not be able. Probably the post is far out of reach, and even if it were within reach, my grand scheme of walking in the street is scarcely a possible thing to-day, for I must keep watch in the house from two till five for Lady Margaret Cocks, an old friend of mine, who was kind to me when I was a child, in the country, and has not forgotten me since, when, two months in the year, she has been in the habit of going to London. A good, worthy person, with a certain cultivation as to languages and literature, but quite manquée on the side of the imagination ... talking of the poets, as a blind woman of colours, calling ‘Pippa Passes’ ‘_pretty and odd_,’ and writing herself ‘poems’ in heaps of copy books which every now and then she brings to show me ... ‘odes’ to Hope and Patience and all the cardinal virtues, with formulas of ‘Begin my muse’ in the fashion ended last century. She has helped to applaud and scold me since I could walk and write verses; and when I was so wicked as to go to dissenting chapels besides, she reproached me with tears in her eyes; but they were tears of earnest partizanship, and not of affection for me, ... she does not love me after all, nor guess at my heart, and _I_ do not love her, I feel. Woe to us! for there are good and unlovable people in the world, and we cannot help it for our lives.

In the midst of writing which, comes the Leeds Miss Heaton, who used to send me those long confidential letters _à faire frémir_, and beg me to call her ‘Ellen,’ and as this is the second time that she has sent up her card, in an accidental visit to London, I thought I would be good-natured for once, and see her. An intelligent woman, with large black eyes and a pleasant voice, and young ... manners provincial enough, for the rest, and talking as if the world were equally divided between the ‘Congregationalists’ and the ‘Churchpeople.’ She assured me that ‘Dr. Vaughan was very much annoyed’ at the article on my poems which ‘crept’ into his review, and that it was fully intended to recant at length on the first convenient opportunity. ‘And really,’ she said, ‘it seems to me that you have as many admirers among churchmen as among dissenters.’! There’s glory!—and I kept my countenance. _Lost_ it though, five minutes afterwards, when she observed pathetically, that a ‘friend of hers who had known Mr. Browning _quite intimately_, had told her he was an infidel ... more’s the pity, when he has such a genius.’ I desired the particular information of your intimate friend, a little more warmly perhaps than was necessary, ... but what could be expected of me, I wonder?

I shall write again to you to-night, you know, and this is enough for two o’clock. Now will you get my letter on this Tuesday? Do you think of me ... love me? And are you well to-day? The flowers look beautiful though you put their heads into the water instead of their feet.

Your BA.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Tuesday Evening. [Post-mark, May 6, 1846.]

But my own only beloved, I surely did not speak too ‘insistingly’ yesterday. I shrank from your question as you put it, because you put it wrong. If you had asked me instead, whether I meant to keep my promise to you, I would have answered ‘yes’ without hesitation: but the form you chose, referred to _you_ more than to _me_, and was indeed and indeed a foolish form of a question, my own dearest! For the rest ... ah, you do not see my innermost nature, ... _you_!—you are happily too high, and cannot see into it ... cannot perceive how the once elastic spring is broken with the long weights! ... you wonder that it should drop, when you, who lifted it up, do not hold it up! you cannot understand! ... you wonder! And _I_ wonder too ... on the other side! _I_ wonder how I can feel happy and alive ... as I can, _through you_! how I can turn my face toward life again ... as I can, _for you_! ... and chiefly of all, how I can ever imagine ... as I do, sometimes ... that such a one as you, may be happy perhaps with such a one as _I_! ... happy!

Do not judge me severely, you, to whom I have given _both_ hands, for your own uses and ends!—you, who are more to me than I can be to you, even by your own statement—better to me than life ... or than death even, as death seemed to me before I knew you.

Certainly I love you enough, and trust you enough, if you knew what God knows. Yet, ... ‘now hear me.’ I shall not be able to please you, I think, by a firm continued belief of this engagement’s being justifiable, until the event wholly _has_ justified it ... I mean, ... until I shall see you not less happy for having lived near me for six months or a year—should God’s mercy permit such justification. Do not blame me. I cannot help it ... I would, if I could, help it. Every time you say, as in this dearest letter, ever dearest, that you have been happy on such a day through being with me, I have a new astonishment—it runs through me from head to feet ... I open my eyes astonished, whenever my sun rises in the morning, as if I saw an angel in the sun. And I _do_ see him, in a sense. Ah—if you make a crime to me of my _astonishments_, it is all over indeed! can I help it, indeed? So forgive me! let it not be too great a wrong to be covered by a pardon. Think that we are different, you and I—and do not think that I would send you to ‘money and worldly advancement’ ... do not think so meanly of my ambition for you.

Dearest dearest!—do you ever think that I could fail to you? Do you doubt for a moment, ever ... ever, ... that my hand might peradventure ‘shake less’ in being loosed from yours? Why, it might—and would! _Dead_ hands do not shake at all,—and only _so_, could my hand be loosed from yours through a failing on my part. It is your hand, while you hold it: while you choose to hold it, and while it is a living hand.

Do you know what you are to me, ... _you_? We talk of the mild weather doing me good ... of the sun doing me good ... of going into the air as a means of good! Have you done me no good, do you fancy, in loving me and lifting me up? Has the unaccustomed divine love and tenderness been nothing to me? Think! Mrs. Jameson says earnestly ... said to _me_ the other day ... that ‘love was only magnetism.’ And I say in my heart, that, magnet or no magnet, I have been drawn back into life by your means and for you ... that I see the dancing mystical lights which are seen through the eyelids ... and I think of you with an unspeakable gratitude always—always! No other could have done this for me—it was not possible, except by you.

But, no—do not, beloved, wish the first days here again. You saw your way better in them than I did. I had too bitter feelings sometimes: they looked to me like an epigram of destiny! as if ‘He who sitteth on high should laugh her to scorn—should hold her in derision’—as why not? My best hope was that you should be my friend after all. We will not have them back again ... those days! And in these, you do not love me less but more? Would it be strange to thank you? I feel as if I _ought_ to thank you!

I have written, written, and have more to write, yet must end here now. The letter I wrote this morning and gave to my sister to leave in the post, she was so naughty as to forget, and has been well scolded as a consequence; but the scolding did not avail, I fear, to take the letter to you to-night; there is no chance! Mrs. Jameson came to-day when I was engaged with Lady Margaret Cocks and I could not see her—and Mr. Kenyon came, when I could see him and was glad. I am tired with my multitude of visitors—oh, so tired!

Why are you melancholy, dear, dearest? Was it my fault? could _that_ be? no—you were unwell, I think ... I fear. Say how you are; and believe that you may answer your own questions, for that I never can fail to you. If two persons have one will on a matter of that sort, they need not be thwarted here in London—so answer your own questions.

Wholly and ever yours I am.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Wednesday. [Post-mark, May 6, 1846.]

Dearest Ba let me [be] silent, as on other occasions, over what you promise: one reads of ‘a contest in generosity,’ and now this party was as determined to give, as that party not to accept—far from anything so graceful, I am compelled to clutch at the offering, I take all, because, because—because I _must_, now! May God requite you, my best beloved!

I met Mrs. Jameson last evening and she began just as I prophesied ... ‘but’ said she ‘I will tell you all when you come and breakfast with me on Thursday—which a note of mine now on its way to you, desires may happen!’

A large party at Chorley’s, and admirable music—not without a pleasant person or two. I wish you could hear that marvellous Pischek, with his Rhine songs, and Bohemian melodies. Then a Herr Kellerman told a kind of crying story on the violoncello, full of quiet pathos, and Godefroi—if they so spell him—harped like a God harping, immortal victorious music indeed! Altogether a notable evening ... oh, the black ingratitude of man ... these few words are the poor ‘set-off’ to this morning’s weary yawning, and stupefaction. To-night having to follow beside! So near you I shall be! Mrs. J. is to [be] at the Procters’ to-night too. Oh, by the way, and in the straight way to make Ba laugh ... Mrs. J.’s _first_ word was ‘What? Are you _married_?’ She having caught a bit of Miss Chorley’s enquiry after ‘Mrs. Browning’s health’ i.e. my mother’s. Probably Miss Heaton’s friend, who is my intimate, heard me profess complete infidelity as to—homœopathy ... _que sais-je_? But of all accusations in the world ... what do you say to my having been asked if I was not the Author of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ and ‘Othello’? A man actually asked me that, as I sate in Covent Garden Pit to see the second representation of ‘Strafford’—I supposed he had been _set on_ by somebody, but the simple face looked too quiet for that impertinence—I was muffled up in a cloak, too; so I said ‘No—so far as I am aware.’ (His question was, ‘_is not THIS Mr. Browning_ the author of &c. &c.’) After the play, all was made clear by somebody in Macready’s dressing room—two burlesques on Shakespeare _were_ in the course of performance at some minor theatre by a Mr. Brown, or Brownley, or something Brown-like—and to these my friend had alluded.

So is begot, so nourished ‘_il mondan rumore_’—_I_, author of ‘Othello’!—when I can be, and am, and may tell Ba I am, her own, own

R.

The news about the post—the walk there which might have been,—_that_ is pure delight! But take care, my all-precious love—_festina lente_. All the same, what a vision I have of the _Bonnet_!

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Wednesday Evening. [Post-mark, May 7, 1846.]

Now, dearest, you are close by and I am writing to you as if you were ever so far off. People are not always the better, you see, for being near one another. There’s a moral to put on with your gloves—and if you were not quite sufficiently frightened by Mrs. Jameson’s salutation, it may be of some use to you perhaps—who knows?

She left word yesterday that she should come to-day or to-morrow, and as to-day she didn’t, I shall hear of you from her to-morrow ... that is, if you go to her breakfast, which you will do I dare say, supposing that you are not perfectly ill and exhausted by what came before. Ah—you do not say how you are—and I know what _that_ means. Even the music was half lost in the fatigue ... _that_ is what you express by ‘stupefaction.’ And then to have to dine at Mr. Procter’s without music ... say how you are ... do not omit it this time.

Nor think that I shall forget how to-morrow is the seventh of May ... your month as you call it somewhere ... in Sordello, I believe ... so that I knew before, you had a birthday there—and I shall remember it to-morrow and send you the thoughts which are yours, and pray for you that you may be saved from March-winds ... ever dearest!

I am glad you heard the music after all: it was something to hear, as you describe it.

To-day I had a book sent to me from America by the poetess Mrs. Osgood. Did you ever hear of a poetess Mrs. Osgood? ... and her note was of the very most affectionate, and her book is of the most gorgeous, all purple and gold—and she tells me ... oh, she tells me ... that I ought to go to New York, only ‘to see Mr. Poe’s wild eyes flash through tears’ when he reads my verses. It is overcoming to think of, even ... isn’t it? Talking of poetesses, such as Mrs. Osgood and me, Miss Heaton, ... the friend of your intimate friend, ... told me yesterday that the poetess proper of the city of Leeds was ‘_Mrs. A._’ ... ‘Mrs. A.?’ said I with an enquiring innocence. ‘Oh,’ she went on, (divining sarcasms in every breath I drew) ... ‘oh! I dare say, _you_ wouldn’t admit her to be a real poetess. But as she lives in Leeds and writes verses, we call her our poetess! and then, really, Mrs. A. is a charming woman. She was a Miss Roberts ... and her ‘Spirit of the Woods,’ and of the ‘Flowers’ has been admired, I assure you.’ Well, in a moment I seemed to remember something,—because only a few months since, surely I had a letter from somebody who once was a spirit of the Woods or ghost of the Flowers. Still, I could not make out _Mrs. A._ ...! ‘Certainly’ I confessed modestly, ‘I never did hear of a Mrs. A. ... and yet, and yet’.... A most glorious confusion I was in ... when suddenly my visitor thought of spelling the name ... ‘_H e y_’ said she. Now conceive that! The Mrs. Hey who came by solution, had both written to me and sent me a book on the Lakes quite lately ... ‘by the author of the Spirit of the Woods’.... _There_ was the explanation! And my Leeds visitor will go back and say that I denied all knowledge of the charming Mrs. A. the Leeds poetess, and that it was with the greatest difficulty I could be brought to recognise her existence. Oh, the arrogance and ingratitude of me! And Mrs. A. ... being ‘a churchwoman’ ... will expose me of course to the churchwardens! May you never fall into such ill luck! You could not expect me to walk to the post office afterwards—now could you?

What nonsense and foolishness I take it into my head to send you sometimes.

I was down-stairs to-day but not out of the house. Now you are talking, now you are laughing—I think that almost I can hear you when I _listen hard_ ... at Mr. Procter’s!

Do _you_, on the other side, hear _me_? ... and how I am calling myself your very own

BA.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Thursday. [Post-mark, May 7, 1846.]

No, dearest,—I get Mrs. Jameson’s leave to put the breakfast off till to-morrow—and this morning, instead of resting as I had intended, I wisely went to town, to get a call on Forster off my mind—I have walked there and back again ... see the weakness you pity! I _cheat_ you, my Ba, of all that pity ... yet when I have got it, however unjustly, I lay it to my heart.

And I was at Mrs. Procter’s last night—Kinglake and Chorley, with a little of Milnes and Coventry Patmore—but no Howitts: because they have a sick child,—dying, I am afraid. On my return I found a note from Horne, who is in London of a sudden for a week.

Oh,—_The Daily News_ passes into the redoubtable hands of Mr. Dilke,—and the price is to be reduced to 2½d, in emulation of the system recently adopted by the French Journals. Forster continues to write, on the new Editor’s particular entreaty. I rather think the scheme will succeed, Dilke having the experience the present régime wants—he will buy his privileges cheaply too. So that Chorley may possibly be employed. Here ends my patronage of it, at all events—not another number do I groan over!

Patmore told me in his quiet way that his criticisms—his book on which he had been expending a world of pains, is altogether superseded by the appearance of ‘Ulrici on Shakespeare’—‘the very words of many of his more important paragraphs are the same.’ _That_ astounds one a little, does it not?

And what, _what_ do you suppose Tennyson’s business to have been at Dickens’—what caused all the dining and repining? He has been sponsor to Dickens’ child _in company with Count D’Orsay_, and accordingly the _novus homo_ glories in the prænomina, Alfred D’Orsay Tennyson Dickens! Ah, Charlie, if this don’t prove to posterity that you might have been a Tennyson and were a D’Orsay—why excellent labour will have been lost! You observe, ‘Alfred’ is common to both the godfather and the—devil-father, as I take the Count to be: so Milnes has been goodnaturedly circulating the report that in good truth it is _the_ Alfred of neither personage, but of—Mr. Alfred Bunn. When you remember what the form of sponsorship is, to what it pledges you in the ritual of the Church of England— —and _then_ remember that Mr. Dickens is an enlightened Unitarian,—you will get a curious notion of the man, I fancy.

Have you not forgotten that birthday? Do, my Ba, forget it—my day, as I told you, is the 20th—my true, happiest day! But I thank you all I can, dearest—All good to me comes through you, or for you—every wish and hope ends in you. May God bless you, ever dear Ba.—

Your own R.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

May 7th, 1846.

Beloved, my thoughts go to you this morning, loving and blessing you! May God bless you for both His worlds—not for this alone. For me, if I can ever do or be anything to you, it will be my uttermost blessing of all I ever knew, or could know, as He knows. A year ago, I thought, with a sort of mournful exultation, that I was _pure of wishes_. Now, they recoil back on me in a spring-tide ... flow back, wave upon wave, ... till I should lose breath to speak them! and it is nothing, to say that they concern another ... for they are so much the more intensely mine, and of me. May God bless you, very dear! dearest.

So I am to forget to-day, I am told in the letter. Ah! But I shall forget and remember what I please. In the meanwhile I was surprised while writing thus to you this morning ... as a good deed to begin with ... by Miss Bayley’s coming. Remembering the seventh of May I forgot _Thursday_, which she had named for her visit, and altogether she took me by surprise. I thought it was Wednesday! She came and then, Mr. Kenyon came, ... and as they both went down-stairs together, Mrs. Jameson came up. Miss Bayley is what is called _strong-minded_, and with all her feeling for art and Beauty, talks of utility like a Utilitarian of the highest, and professes to receive nothing without _proof_, like a reasoner of the lowest. She told me with a frankness for which I did not like her less, that she was a materialist of the strictest order, and believed in no soul and no future state. In the face of those conclusions, she said, she was calm and resigned. It is more than _I_ could be, as I confessed. My whole nature would cry aloud against that most pitiful result of the struggle here—a wrestling only for the dust, and not for the crown. What a resistless melancholy would fall upon me if I had such thoughts!—and what a dreadful indifference. All grief, to have itself to end in!—all joy, to be based upon nothingness!—all love, to feel eternal separation under and over it! Dreary and ghastly, it would be! I should not have strength to love you, I think, if I had such a miserable creed. And for life itself, ... would it be worth holding on such terms,—with our blind Ideals making mocks and mows at us wherever we turned? A game to throw up, this life would be, as not worth playing to an end!

There’s a fit letter for the seventh of May!—but why was _Thursday_ the seventh, and not Wednesday rather, which would have let me escape visitors? I thank God that I can look over the grave with you, _past_ the grave, ... and hope to be worthier of you _there_ at least.

Mrs. Jameson did not say much, being hoarse and weak with a cold, but she told me of having met you at dinner, and found you ‘very agreeable.’ Also, beginning by a word about Professor Longfellow, who has married, it appears, and is a tolerably merciful husband for a poet ... (‘solving the problem of the _possibility_ of such a thing,’ said she!) ... beginning so, she dropped into the subject of marriage generally, and was inclined to repropose Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s septennial act ... which might be a reform perhaps! ... what do you think? Have I not, altogether, been listening to improving and memorable discourse on this seventh of May? The _ninth’s_ will be more after my heart.

I like Mrs. Jameson, mind!—and I like her views on many subjects—_ex_clusive of the septennial marriage act, though.

How you amuse me by your account of the sponsorship! the illustrious D’Orsay with his _paletot_ reputation, in a cleft stick of Alfred ... Tennyson! Bunn in the distance! A curious combination it makes really ... and you read it like a vates that you are!—

So, good night—dearest!—I think of you behind all these passing clouds of subjects, my poet of the Lyre and Crown! Look down on your own

BA.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Friday. [Post-mark, May 8, 1846.]

‘_Look down on you_’—my Ba? I would die for you, with triumphant happiness, God knows, at a signal from your hand! But that,—look _down_,—never, though you bade me again and again, and in such words! I look _up_,—always up,—my Ba. When I indulge in my deepest luxury, I make you _stand_ ... do you not know that? I sit, and my Ba chooses to let me sit, and stands by,—understanding all the same how the relation really _is_ between us,—how I would, and do, kiss her feet,—my queen’s feet!

Do you feel for me so, my love? I seldom dare to try and speak to you of _your love for me_ ... my love I am allowed to profess ... I could not steadily (I have tried, whether you noticed it or no, and could not,) say aloud ‘and you love _me_’! Because it is altogether a blessing of your gift,—irrespective of my love to you—however it may go to increase it. Here are the words however. Human conviction is weak enough, no doubt,—but, when I forget these words, and this answer of my heart to them,—I cannot say it—

May God bless you, dearest dearest,—my Ba! I was at Mrs. Jameson’s this morning—she spoke of you so as to make my heart tremble with very delight—I never liked her so much ... I may say, never liked her before—by comparison. She read me your three translations,—clearly feeling their rare beauty; and now,—let me clap hands, my Ba, and ask you who knows best? She means to print BOTH versions—the blank verse and the _latter_ rhymed one. Of course, of course! But she said so many things—I must tell you to-morrow,—if you _remind_ me. She felt such gratifications, too, at your thinking her etching of St. Cecilia worthy to hang by your chair, in your sight. Do you know, Ba, at the end,—_à propos of her breakfast_, I fairly took her by both hands, and shook them with a cordiality which I just reflect, tardily, may subject the Literary Character to a possible misconstruction. ‘He must have wanted a breakfast,’ she will say!

I am going to the Museum on Monday with her, to see Italian prints. I like her very much. And after breakfast, Mr. Kenyon came in, and Mr. Bezzi—and Mr. K. means to make me go and see him next Monday also, I believe.

But my seeing, and hearing, and enjoying—Saturday is my day for all that? To-morrow—by this time!—too great happiness it is, I know.

And I, too, look long over the grave, to follow you, my own heart’s love. Let Mrs. Jameson repeal those acts,—limit the seven years to seven days or less,—what matters? If the seven days have to be endured because of a law,—then I see the weariness of course—but in our case, if a benevolent Legislature should inform me, now, that if I choose, I may decline visiting you to-morrow—

... Ah, nefandum,—kiss me, my own Ba, and let the world legislate and decree and relieve and be otherwise notable—so they let me be your own for ever

R.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Sunday. [Post-mark, May 11, 1846.]

Dearest when you use such words as ‘eligible ...’ (_investment_ ... was it?) and I do not protest seriously and at length, it is through the very absurdity and unnaturalness ... as if you were to say that the last comet was made of macaroni, and Arago stood by, he would not think it worth while to confute you. Talking the worldly idiom, as you will tell me you just meant to do in those words, and considering the worldly considerations, why still the advantage is with you—I can do nothing that I can see, but stand in your sunshine. I solemnly assure you that only the apparent fact of your _loving me_, has overcome the scruple, which, on this ground, made me recoil from.... Well! there is no use now in talking. But for _you_ to talk of what is eligible and ineligible for _me_, is too absurd—indeed it is. You might be richer, to be sure—but _I_ like it better as it is, a hundred times—I should _choose_ it to be so, if it were left to my choice. In every other respect, using the world’s measures, ... or the measure of the angel who measured the heavenly Jerusalem, ... you are beyond me ... above me—and nothing but your love for me could have brought us to a level. My love for you could not have _tried_, even! Now, if I teaze you with saying such things over and over, it is the right punishment for what _you_ said yesterday about ‘eligible marriages’—now, isn’t it?

But your conclusion then was right. For if you were twice yourself, with a duchy of the moon to boot, it would avail nothing. We should have to carry all this underground work on precisely the same. Miserable it is, nevertheless—only, I keep my eyes from _that side_, as far as I can. I keep my eyes on your face. Yesterday Henrietta told me that Lady Carmichael, a cousin of ours, met her at the Royal Academy and took her aside to ‘speak seriously to her’ ... to observe that she looked thin and _worried_, and to urge her to act for herself ... to say too, that Mrs. Bayford, an old hereditary friend of ours, respected by us all for her serene, clear-headed views of most things,—and ‘of the strictest sect,’ too, for all domestic duties,—‘did not like, as a mother, to give direct advice, but was of opinion that the case admitted certainly and plainly of the daughter’s acting for herself.’ In fact, it was a message, sent under cover of a supposed irresponsibility. Which is one of a hundred proofs to show how this case is considered exceptional among our family friends, and that no very hard judgment will be passed at the latest. Only, on other grounds, _I_ shall be blamed ... and perhaps by another class of speakers. As for telling Mr. Kenyon, it is most unadvisable, both for his sake and ours. Did you never hear him talk of his organ of caution? We should involve him in ever so many fears for us, and force him to have his share of the odium at last. Papa would not speak to him again while he lived. And people might say, ‘Mr. Kenyon did it all.’ No—if we are to be selfwilled, let us be selfwilled ... at least, let _me_! for you, of course, are free to follow your judgment in respect to your own friends. And then, it is rather a matter of feeling with me after all, that as I _cannot_ give my confidence to my father, I should refuse it to others. I feel _that_ a little.

Henrietta will do nothing, I think, this year—there are considerations of convenience to prevent it; and it is better for us that it should be so, and will not be worse for _her_ in the end. I wish that man were a little nobler, higher ... more of a man! He is amiable, good-natured, easy-tempered, of good intentions in the main: but he eats and drinks and sleeps, and _shows_ it all when he talks. Very popular in his regiment, very fond of his mother—there is good in him of course—and for the rest....

Dearest ... to compare others with you, would be too hard upon them. Besides, each is after his kind. Yet ... as far as love goes ... and although this man sincerely loves my sister, I do believe, ... I admit to myself, again and again, that if you were to adopt such a bearing towards _me_, as he does to her, I should break with you at once. And why? Not because I am spoilt, though you knit your brows and think so ... nor because I am exacting and offensible, though you may fancy that too. Nor because I hold loosely by you ... dearest beloved ... ready at a caprice to fall away. But because _then_ I should know you did _not_ love me enough to let you be happy hereafter with me ... you, who must love according to what you _are_! greatly, as you write ‘Lurias’!

To-morrow, shall you be at Mr. Kenyon’s? To-morrow I shall hear. Nothing has happened since I saw you. May God bless you.

Your own, I am.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Sunday. [Post-mark, May 11, 1846.]

I am always telling you, because always feeling, that I can express nothing of what goes from my heart to you, my Ba; but there is a certain choice I have all along exercised, of subjects on which I would _try_ and express somewhat—while others might be let alone with less disadvantage. When we first met, it was in your thought that I loved you only for your poetry ... I think you thought that. And because one _might_ be imagined to love that and not you,—because everybody must love it, indeed, that is worthy, and yet needs not of necessity love you,—yet _might_ mistake or determine to love you through loving _it_ ... for all these reasons, there was not the immediate demand on me for a full expression of my admiration for your intellectuality,—do you see? Rather, it was proper to insist as little as possible on it, and speak to the woman, Ba, simply—and so I have tried to speak,—partly, in truth, because I love _her_ best, and love her mind by the light and warmth of her heart—reading her verses, saying ‘and these are Ba’s,’—not kissing her less because they spoke the verses. But it does not follow that I have lost the sense of any delight that has its source in you, my dearest, dearest—however I may choose to live habitually with certain others in preference. I would shut myself up with you, and die to the world, and live out fifty long, long lives in bliss through your sole presence—but it is no less true that it will also be an ineffable pride,—something too sweet for the name of pride,—to avow myself, before anyone whose good opinion I am soliciting to retain, as _so_ distinguished by you—it is _too_ sweet, indeed,—so I guard against it,—for frequent allusion to it, might,—(as I stammer, and make plain things unintelligible) ... might cause you to misconceive me, which would be dreadful ... for after all, Ba’s head has given the crown its worth,—though a wondrous crown it is, too! All this means ... the avowal we were speaking of, will be a heart’s pride above every other pride whenever you decide on making such an avowal. You will understand as you do ever your own R.

* * * * *

On getting home I found letters and letters—the best being a summons to meet Tennyson at Moxon’s on Tuesday,—and the frightfullest ... nay, I will send it. Now, Ba, hold my hand from the distant room, tighter than ever, at about 8 o’clock on Wednesday ... for I must go, I fear—‘Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking’ &c. &c. ‘ἔα, ἔα, ἄπεχε, φεῦ.’ Then Mr. Kenyon writes that his friend Commodore Jones is returned to England in bad health and that he must away to Portsmouth and see him—so I do not go on Monday. While I was away Chorley’s brother (John Chorley) called,—having been put to the trouble of a journey hither for nothing.

I have been out this morning—to church with my sister—and the sun shone almost oppressively,—but now all is black and threatening. How I send my heart after your possible movements, my own all-beloved! Care for yourself, and for me. But a few months more,—if God shall please. May He bless you—

Ever your own

Hail and rain—at a quarter to four o’clock!

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Monday 4 o’clock. [Post-mark, May 11, 1846.]

Sweetest, I have this moment come from Town and Mrs. Jameson—the Marc-Antonio Prints kept us all the morning—and at last I said ‘There is a letter for me at home which I _must_ go and answer.’ And now I cannot answer it—but I can love you and say so. God bless you, ever dearest. I have read your letter ... but only once. Now I shall begin my proper number of times—

Ever your very own

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Monday. [Post-mark, May 12, 1846.]

It is too bad, or too good, or something. Almost I could reproach you, and quite would thank you! yet do not let it be so again. You are supernaturally kind ... kindestest, bestestest ... and, so, dearestest by the merest justice; only, to think of your hastening home, as if you were under an obligation to write to me in the face of the seven worlds, ... _that_ is too much, and shall not be again—now see that it shall not. I seem to hear the rattling of the chain all this distance. And do, for the future, let it be otherwise. When you are kept in London, or in any way hindered, or unwell, ... in any case of the sort, let the vow be kept by _one line_, which, too late for the day’s post, may reach me the next day,—and I shall not be uneasy at eight o’clock, but wait ‘as those who wait for the morning.’ In the meanwhile how I thank you! The second dear letter comes close in the footsteps of the first, as your goodnesses are so apt to do.

Well!—and whatever you may think about Wednesday, _I_ am pleased, and feel every inclination to ‘return thanks’ myself in reply to the bishop of Lincoln. I send the letter back lest you should want it. The worst is that you are likely to have a very bad headache with the noise and confusion—and the bishop’s blessing on the dramatists of England, will not prevent it, I fear.

Look what is inside of this letter—look! I gathered it for you to-day when I was walking in the Regent’s Park. Are you surprised? Arabel and Flush and I were in the carriage—and the sun was shining with that green light through the trees, as if he carried down with him the very essence of the leaves, to the ground, ... and I wished so much to walk through a half open gate along a shaded path, that we stopped the carriage and got out and walked, and I put both my feet on the grass, ... which was the strangest feeling! ... and gathered this laburnum for you. It hung quite high up on the tree, the little blossom did, and Arabel said that certainly I could not reach it—but you see! It is a too generous return for all your flowers: or, to speak seriously, a proof that I thought of you and wished for you—which it was natural to do, for I never enjoyed any of my excursions as I did to-day’s—the standing under the trees and on the grass, was so delightful. It was like a bit of that Dreamland which is your especial dominion,—and I felt joyful enough for the moment, to look round for you, as for the cause. It seemed _illogical_, not to see you close by. And you were not far after all, if thoughts count as bringers near. Dearest, we shall walk together under the trees some day!

And all those strange people moving about like phantoms of life. How wonderful it looked to me!—and only you, ... the idea of you ... and myself seemed to be real there! And Flush a little, too!—

Ah—what ... _next_ to nonsense, ... in the first letter, this morning! So you think that I meant to complain when we first met, of your ‘_loving me only for my poetry_’! Which I did not, simply because I did not believe that _you loved me!—for any reason_. For the rest, I am not over-particular, I fancy, about what I may be loved for. There is no good reason for loving me, certainly, and my earnest desire (as I have said again and again) is, that there should be by profession no reason at all. But if there is to be any sort of reason, why one is as welcome as another ... you may love me for my shoes, if you like it ... except that they wear out. I thought you did not love me at all—you loved out into the air, I thought—a love _a priori_, as the philosophers might say, and not _by induction_, any wise! Your only knowledge of me was by the poems (or most of it)—and what knowledge could _that_ be, when I feel myself so far below my own aspirations, morally, spiritually? So I thought you did not love me at all—I did not believe in miracles _then_, nor in ‘Divine Legations’—but _my_ miracle is as good as Constantine’s, you may tell your bishop on Wednesday when he has delivered his charge.

Is it _eight_ o’clock, or _three_? You write a [figure] which looks like both, or at least either.

Love me, my only beloved; since you _can_. May God bless you!

I am ever and wholly your

BA.

_Say how you are._

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Tuesday. [Post-mark, May 12, 1846.]

My Ba, your flower is the one flower I have seen, or see or shall see—when it fades ‘I will bless it till it shine,’ and when I can bless you no longer it shall fade with me and my letters and ... perhaps ... my ring. Ba, if ... I was going to say, _if_ you meant to make me most exquisitely happy ... and you _did_ surely mean it ... well, you succeed, as you know! And I see you on the grass, and am with you as you properly acknowledge. And by this letter’s presence and testimony, I may judge you to be not much the worse,—not fatigued ... is it so? Oh, it was a good inspiration that led you through the half-opened gate and under the laburnum, and, better still, that made you see us ‘one day walking by the trees together’—when all I shall say is,—I hope, in spite of that felicity to remember and feel _this_, as vividly as now.

‘For the chain you hear rattle’ ... _there_ comes the earthly mood again and the inspiration goes away altogether! So you being Miss Barrett and not my Ba for the moment, I will give you none of my, and Ba’s, syren-island illustrations, but ask you, what a fine lady would say if you caught at her diamond necklace and cried—‘You shall wear no such chains,—indeed you shall not!’ Why even Flush is proud of his corals and blue beads, you tell me! As for me,—being used to bear sundry heavier chains than this of writing to you—owning the degradation of being, for instance, forced to respire so many times a minute in order to live—to go out into the open air so as to continue well—with many similarly affronting impositions on a free spirit ... on the whole, I can very patiently submit to write a letter which is duly read, and forgiven for its imperfections, and interpreted into a rationality (sometimes) not its own, and then answered by the sweetest hand that ever ministered to the dearest, dearest Ba that ever was imagined, or can be! Ba,—there are three Syren’s Isles, you know: I shall infallibly get into the farthest of them, a full thirty yards from you and the tower,—so as to need being written to—for the _cicale_ make such a noise that you will not be able to call to me—which is as well, for you may ... that is, _I_ might—break my neck by a sudden leap on the needles of rocks ... as I remember the boatman told me.

As for what you wish yesterday ... the _mode_ of my expressing my love ... I never think of it,—I _have_ none—no system, nor attempt at such a thing—I begin and end by saying _I love you—whatever comes of it_. There is one obvious remark to make however ... that unless I _had_ loved you and felt that every instant of my life depended on you for its support and comfort,—I should never have dreamed of what has been proposed and accepted ... Your own goodness at the very beginning would have rendered that superfluous; for I was put in possession of your friendship,—might write to you, and receive letters—might even hope to see you as often as anybody—would not this have sufficed a reasonable friendship? May not Mr. Kenyon be your satisfied friend?... But all was different—and so——

So I am blessed now—and can only bless you. But goodbye, dearest, till to-morrow—and next day, which is ours. At 8—eight I conjecture my martyrdom may take place ... oh, think of me and help me! I shall feel you,—as ever. You forgot the letter after all ... can you send it? It may be convenient to produce, as I know nobody of them all—terrible it is altogether! ‘At six’ the dinner begins— —I shall get behind my brother Dramatists ... and say very little about them, even.

Kiss me, in any case, of failure, or success,—and the one will be forgotten, and the other doubled, centupled—to your own—

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Tuesday. [Post-mark, May 13, 1846.]

When you began to speak of the islands, the three islands, I thought you were going to propose that you should live in one, and Flush in one, and I in the third: and almost it was so, ... only that you took, besides, the ‘_farthest_’ for yourself! Observe!—always I write nonsense, when you send me a letter which moves me like this, ... dearest, ... my own!

To-day Mrs. Jameson has been here, and having left with me a proof about Titian, she comes again to-morrow to take it. I think her quite a lovable person now—I like her more and more. How she talked of you to-day, and called you the most charming companion in the world, setting you too on your right throne as ‘poet of the age.’ Wouldn’t it have been an ‘_effect_’ in the midst of all, if I had burst out crying? And what with being flurried, frightened, and a little nervous from not sleeping well last night, I assure you it was quite possible—but happily, on every account, I escaped that ‘dramatic situation.’ I wish ... no, I can’t wish that she wouldn’t talk of you as she does whenever she comes here. And then, to make it better, she told me how you had recited ‘in a voice and manner as good as singing,’ my ‘Catarina.’ How are such things to be borne, do you think, when people are not made of marble? But I took a long breath, and held my mask on with both hands.

You will tell me of the Marc Antonio prints,—will you not? Remember them on Thursday. Raffael’s—are they not? I shall expect ever so much teaching, and showing, and explaining ... I, who have seen and heard nothing of pictures and music, from you who know everything ... so the cicale must not be too loud for _that_. Did ever anyone say to you that you were like Raffael’s portrait—not in the eyes, which are quite different, but in the lower part of the face, the mouth, and also the brow? It has struck me sometimes—and I had it on my lips to-day as a question to Mrs. Jameson. I think I was mad to-day altogether. But she did not see it—(I mean my madness ... not your likeness!) [and] went away unconsciously.

Here, at last, is the letter! Careless that I was yesterday!—

And you take me to be too generous if you fancy that I proposed giving up the daily letter which is my daily bread. I meant only that you should not, for the sake of a particular post, tire yourself, hurry yourself, ... do what you did yesterday. As for the daily letter, I am Ba—not Miss Barrett. Now, am I Miss Barrett? am I not Ba rather, and your Ba? I should like to hear what will be heard to-morrow. Oh—I should like to be under the table, or in a pasty, after the fashion of the queen’s dwarf when Elizabeth was queen and Shakespeare poet. Shall you be nervous, as _I_ was with Mrs. Jameson? Oh no,—why should you be nervous? You will do it all well and gracefully—I am not afraid for you. It is simply out of vain-glory that I wish to be there! Only ... the dramatists of England ... where in the world are they just now? Or will somebody prove _ten_ of them,—because _nought_ after _one_, makes exactly ten? Mr. Horne indeed. But I wish the toast had been ‘the poets of England,’ rather. May God bless you, any way! ‘_I love you whatever comes of it._’ Yes, unless sorrow of yours should come of it, _that_ is what I like to hear. Better it is, than a thousand praises of this thing and that thing, which never were mine ... alas!—Also, loving me _so_, you can be made happy with laburnum-leaves!—Dearest—most dear! Dare I speak, do you think?

Exactly at eight to-morrow, and exactly at three the next day, I shall be with you—being at any hour

Your very own.

The walk did me no harm. But you say nothing of yourself!

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Wednesday. [Post-mark, May 13, 1846.]

Dearest, dearest, I shall be with you to-morrow and be comforted—and will tell you all about everything. I am a little tired (but _very_ well, altogether well, singularly so)—and I _do_ feel a little about to-night’s affair, though you may not. _You_, indeed, to judge me by yourself! But, after all I do not greatly care ... I can but get up and stammer and say ‘thank you’ and sit down again, like my betters,—and—as I say and say,—_you_ are at the end of everything ... so long as I find _you_! I hoped that Tennyson was to have been Poet-respondent—but Moxon says ‘no’ ... and, moreover, that the Committee had meant (and he supposed had acted upon their meaning) to offer me the choice of taking either qualification, of Poetry or the Drama, as mine ... but they have altered their mind. As it _is_ ... observe—(you will find a list of Stewards in last _Athenæum_)—observe that they are all Bishops or Deans or Doctors ... and that all will be grave and heavy enough, I dare say. So I shall try and speak for about five minutes on the advantages of the Press over the Stage as a medium of communication of the Drama ... and so get done, if Heaven please!

I saw Tennyson last night—and ... oh, let me tell you to-morrow. Also, Severn, I saw ... Keats’ Severn, who bought his own posthumous picture of Keats, and talked pleasantly about him and Shelley (Tennyson asked me ‘what I thought of Shelley’—in so many words). Moxon’s care of him,—Tennyson, not Severn,—is the charmingest thing imaginable, and he seems to need it all—being in truth but a LONG, hazy kind of a man, at least just after dinner ... yet there is something ‘naif’ about him, too,—the genius you see, too.

May God bless you, my dearest dearest,—to-morrow repays for all—

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Friday. [Post-mark, May 15, 1846.]

The treader on your footsteps was Miss Bayley, who left a card and ‘would come another day.’ She must have seen you.... One of these days, ‘scirocco’ will be ‘loose’—we may as well be prepared for it. To keep it off as long as possible is all that can be. But when it comes it will not uproot my palm-trees, I think, though it should throw flat the olives.

Papa brought me some flowers yesterday when he came home ... and they went a little to my heart as I took them. I put them into glasses near yours, and they look faded this morning nevertheless, while your roses, for all your cruelty to them, are luxuriant in beauty as if they had just finished steeping themselves in garden-dew. I look gravely from one set of flowers to the other—I cannot draw a glad omen—I wish he had not given me these. Dearest, there seems little kindness in teazing you with such thoughts ... but they come and I write them: and let them come ever so sadly, I do not for a moment doubt ... hesitate. One may falter, where one does not fail. And for the rest, ... it is my fault, and not my sorrow rather, that we act so? It is by choice that we act so? If he had let me I should have loved him out of a heart altogether open to him. It is not my fault that he would not let me. Now it is too late—I am not his nor my own, any more.

This morning I have had American letters of the kindest ... from Massachusetts—and a review on my poems, quite extravagant indeed, in the _Methodist Quarterly_. One of these letters is so like another, that I need only tell you of them ... written too by people ... Lydias and Richards ... never heard of before by either of us. The review repeats the fabulous story in the ‘Spirit of the Age,’ about unknown tongues and a seven years’ eclipse in total darkness—but I say to myself ... after all, the real myth is scarcely less wonderful. If I have not all this knowledge ... I have _you_ ... which is greater, better! ‘Not less wonderful’ did I say? when it is the miracle....

Oh, these people!—I am seized and bound. More to-night! from

Your own

BA.

_Say how you are._

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Friday. [Post-mark, May 15, 1846.]

The sun is warm, and the day, I suppose, is fine,—but my Ba will have been kept at home by the vile wind—most vile—even I feel it! So the spring passes away without the true spring feeling—all the blossoms are fast going already—and one’s spirits are affected, I dare say. Did you not think me intolerable yesterday with my yawning and other signs of fatigue you noticed? Well now—I _do_ think a little is _said_ by all that: might one not _like_ or even _love_ ... just short of _true_ love, so long as the spirits were buoyant and the mind cheerful,—and when the contrary befell, some change might appear, surely!

The more I need you the more I love you, Ba—and I need you _always_—in joy, to make the joy seem what it is—and in any melancholy that I can imagine, _more_ still, infinitely more, I need you—though _melancholy_, I certainly was not—only tired a little ... all I mean to say is, that at times when I could, I think, shut up Shelley, and turn aside from Beethoven, and look away from my noble Polidoro,—my Ba’s ring—not to say the hand—ah, you know, Ba, what they are to me!

I have to go out to-day, to my sorrow—to the Garrick Club, and a friend there. (My sister tells me we have to go to the Flower-show next Wednesday unless the day be rainy. I shall hear from Mr. Kenyon, I expect.)

Let me end the chapter we began yesterday, about speech-making and adepts in it of various kinds, by telling you what my father made me laugh by an account of, the other day ... only it should be really _told_, and not written. He had a curiosity to know how would-be Parliamentary members _canvassed_ ... and as the Chamberlain of the City, Sir James Shaw, came into the Bank for that purpose (there being Livery men there, or whatever they are called, with votes) my father followed to hear how he would address people. Sir James, a gigantic man, went about as his friends directed ... or rather pushed and shoved him ... and whenever they reached an Elector the whole cortège stopped, Sir James made his speech, the friends, book and pencil in hand, recorded the promise the moment it was made, and forthwith wheeled round their candidate to the next man ... no word of speechification being to be wasted once its object accomplished, since time pressed—so now fancy. _Friends_ (to Sir J) ‘Mr. Snooks, Sir James!’ Sir J. (_with his eyes shut, and head two feet above Snooks_) ‘When Charles Fox came into Parliament, he came into Parliament with a profusion of promises, of which I’ll defy Charles Fox’s best friends to say that he ever kept a single one’—(Friends twitch him)—‘Thankee Sir,’—‘Mr. Smith.’ ‘When Charles Fox came into Parliament ... thankee, Sir’—‘Mr. Thompson’—‘When Charles Fox ... thankee!’ &c. &c. And so on from man to man, never getting beyond this instructive piece of anecdotical history—till at the very last a little Elector, reaching to the great man’s elbow, let him go to the full length of the sentence’s tether from admiration of such an orator ... did not say briefly ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as the others had done. So Sir James arrived duly at ... ‘kept a single one. Thus—if ... as it were ... eh? oh!’ Here he opened his eyes with a start, missing the pushing and driving from his friends in the rear—and finding it was only this little man; he abruptly stopped ... was not going to spend more eloquence on _him_! There, Ba; _you tell_ me you write nonsense ... _I do_ the thing, the precise thing! But no more nonsense because I am going to kiss you, which is wise, and love you with my whole heart and soul forever, which is wiser, and pray you to love me, dear, dear Ba, which is the wisest! Sweetest, may God bless you,—

Your very own.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Friday Evening. [Post-mark, May 16, 1846.]

Not even do you yawn in vain then, O you! And this, then, is what Cicero called ‘oscitans sapientia?’ The _argument of the yawn_ ought in fact, to be conclusive!

But, dearest, if it was ‘intolerable’ to see you yawn yesterday, still less supportable was it to-day when I had all the yawning to myself, and proved nothing by it. Tired I am beyond your conceiving of ... tired! You saw how I broke off in my letter to you this morning. Well—that was Miss Heaton, who came yesterday and left the packet you saw, and came again to-day and sate here exactly three hours. Now imagine that! Three hours of incessant restless talking. At the end I was _blanched_, as everybody could see, and Mrs. Jameson who came afterwards for five minutes and was too unwell herself to stay, seriously exhorted me not to exert myself too much lest I should pay the penalty. And I had not been down-stairs even—only been ground down in the talking-mill. Arabel told her too, before she came up-stairs, that I was expecting a friend—‘Oh’ ... said she to me, ‘I shall go away directly anyone comes.’ And again presently ... ‘Pray tell me when I ought to go away’! (As if I could say _Go_. She deserved it, but I _couldn’t_!) And then ... ‘How good of you to let me sit here and talk!’ So good of me, when I was wishing her ... only at Leeds in the High Street, between a dissenter and a churchman—anywhere but opposite to my eyes! Yet _she_ has very bright ones, and cheeks redder than your roses; and she is kind and cordial ... as I thought in the anguish of my soul, when I tried to be grateful to her. Certainly I should have been more so, if she had stayed a little less, talked a little less—it is awful to think how some women can talk! Happily she leaves London to-morrow morning, and will not be here again till next year, if then. She talked biography too ... ah, I did not mean to tell you—but it is better to tell you at once and have done ... only she desired me not to mention it ... only she little knew what she was doing! You will not mention it. She told me that ‘her informant about Mr. Browning, ... was a lady _to whom he had been engaged_ ... that there had been a very strong attachment on both sides, but that everything was broken off by _her_ on the ground of religious differences—that it happened years ago and that the lady was married.’ At first I exclaimed imprudently enough (but how could it be otherwise?) that it was not true—but I caught at the bridle in a minute or two and let her have it her own way. Do not answer this—it is nonsense, I know—but it helped to tire me with the rest. Wasn’t it a delightful day for me? At the end of the three hours, she threw her arms round me and kissed me some half dozen times and wished me ‘goodbye’ till next year. Wilson found me standing in the middle of the room, looking as she said, ‘like a ghost.’ And no wonder! The ‘vile wind’ out of doors was nothing to it.

Dearest, you are well? Your letter says nothing. Only one more letter, and then Monday. Ah—it is the sweetest of flattery to say that you ‘need’ me—but isn’t it difficult to understand? Yet while you even fancy that you have such a need, you may be sure (let Charles Fox break his promises ever so!) of your own

BA.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Saturday. [Post-mark, May 16, 1846.]

Then, dearest-dearest, _do_ take Mrs. Jameson’s advice—_do_ take care of the results of this fatigue—why should you see any woman that pleases to ask to come? I am certain that some of the men you have refused to admit, would be more considerate—and Miss Heaton must be a kind of fool into the bargain with her inconsiderateness ... though _that_ is the folly’s very self. As for her ‘Yorkshire Tragedy,’ I hold myself rather aggrieved by it—they used to get up better stories of Lord Byron,—and even _I told_ you, anticipatingly, that I caused that first wife of mine to drown and hang herself ... whereas, now, it turns out she did neither, but bade me do both ... nay, was not my wife after all! I hope she told Miss Heaton the story in the presence of the husband who had no irreligious scruples. But enough of this pure nonsense—I had, by this post that brings me your last letter, one from Horne—he leaves to-day for Ireland, and says kind things about my plays—and unkind things of Mr. Powell ‘a dog he repudiates for ever.’ So our ‘clique’ is deprived of yet another member!

For me, love,—I am pretty well—but _rather_ out of spirits,—for no earthly cause. I shall take a walk and get better presently—your dear letters have their due effect, all that effect!

So, dear,—all my world, my life, all I look to or live for, my own Ba—I will bless you and bid you goodbye for to-day—to-morrow I will write more—and on Monday—return, my Ba, this kiss ... my dearest above all dearness!

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Saturday Morning. [Post-mark, May 16, 1846.]

You shall hear from me on this Sunday, though it cannot be as an answer, dearest, to your letter of to-night. But I being so wretchedly tired last night, and ‘yawning’ being, to your mind, so ‘intolerable,’ it is as well to leave a better impression with you than _that_ ... though there is nothing to say, and the east wind blows on virulently.

The _Athenæum_ has put me out of humour for the day ... besides. Not a word of ‘Luria’—not a word of the Literary Fund dinner, and a great, drawling carrying out of the ‘Poetry for the Million’ article ... as if all this trash could not die of itself!—as if it were not _dead_ of itself!—That the critics of a country should set themselves to such work ... is as if the Premier of England took his official seat in the window to kill flies, ... talking, with his first finger out, of ‘my administration.’ Only flies are flies and have fly-life in them: they are nobler game than those.

Mrs. Jameson, while she was here the five minutes yesterday, talked, in an under-breath to my under-breath opposition, her opinion about the present age. ‘That the present age did not, could not, ought not, to express itself by Art, ... though the next age would.’ She is surprisingly wrong, it appears to me. There is no predominant character in the age, she says, to be so expressed! there is no unity, to bear expression.

But art surely, if art is anything, is the expression, not of the characteristics of an age except accidentally, ... essentially it is the expression of Humanity in the individual being—and unless we are men no longer, I cannot conceive how such an argument as hers can be upheld for a moment. Also it is exasperating to hear such things.

Then I do not believe, for one, that genius in the arts is a mere reflection of the character of the times. Genius precedes surely,—initiates. It is genius which gives an Age its character and imposes its own colour.... But I shall not write any more. Her paper on ‘Titian’s House at Venice,’ which she let me read in proof, and which is one of the essays she is printing now, is full of beauty and truth, and I admired it heartily. Then there is a quotation about the ‘calm, cold, beautiful regard,’ of ‘Virgin child and saint’ ... which you may remember perhaps. I know you will like the essay and feel it to be Venetian.

That you were feeling the east wind, beloved, meant that you were not well, though you have quite left off telling me a word of yourself lately. And why? It shall not be so next week,—now shall it? May God bless you. I am afraid of going down-stairs, because of the double-knocks. It will be great gain to have the loudest noises from the cicale. Except when somebody else is noisy,—which is a noise I am always forgetting, just as if it were impossible.

Your own

BA.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Sunday. (Day before to-morrow!) [Post-mark, May 18, 1846.]

How kind to write to me and help me through the gloomy day with a light! I could certainly feel my way in the dark and reach to-morrow without very important stumbling, but now I go cheerfully on, spite of a little headache and weariness. Need you? I should hate life apart from you. Knowing what I say, I should hate it—the life of my soul as seen apart from that of the mere body ... to which, to the necessities of which, no human being ever ministered before, and which, now that I have known you, I myself cannot provide for,—or could not were you removed,—even after the imperfect fashion of former times. If you ask Mrs. Jameson she will tell you, if she has thought it worth remembering, that I once, two or three years ago, _explained_ to her that I could not believe in ‘love’ nor understand it,—nor be subject to it consequently. I said—‘all you describe as characteristics of the passion—I should expect to find in _men_ more easily and completely—’ now I know better, and my year’s life spent in this knowledge makes all before it look pale and all _after_, if an after could come, look black.

Why do I write so? I am rather dull, this horrible day, and cling to you the closelier.

All you write about Art is most true. Carlyle has turned and forged, reforged on his anvil that fact ‘that no age ever appeared heroic to itself’ ... and so, worthy of reproduction in Art by itself ... I thought after Carlyle’s endeavours nobody could be ignorant of that,—nobody who was obliged to seek the proof of it out of his own experience. The cant is, that ‘an age of transition’ is the melancholy thing to contemplate and delineate—whereas the worst things of all to look back on are times of comparative standing still, rounded in their important completeness. So the young England imbeciles hold that ‘belief’ is the admirable point—_in what_, they judge comparatively immaterial! The other day I took up a