part I
could not see for a long while what was the _reason_ of a most unaffected preference. I think I see it now. Painting flatters the senses and makes the Ideal credible in a vulgar way. But with sculpture it is different—and there is a grand audacity in the power of an Ideal which, appealing directly to the Senses, and to the coarsest of them, the Touch, as well as the Sight, yet forces them to receive Beauty through the door of an Abstraction which is a means abhorrent to them. Have I written what I mean, I wonder, or do you understand it, without? Then there is a great deal, of course, in that grand white repose! Like the Ideas of the Platonic system, these great sculptures seem—when looked at from a distance.
When you were gone yesterday, and I had had my coffee and put on my bonnet, I went, with the intention of walking out, as far as the drawing-room, and there, failed: not even with your recommendation in my ears, beloved, could I get any further. Notwithstanding all my flatteries (meaning the flatteries of me!) I was not at best and strongest, yesterday, nor am even to-day, though it is nothing to mind or to mention—only I think I shall not try to walk out in this heat even to-day, and yesterday it seemed impossible. So I came back and lay on my own sofa, and presently began to read ‘Le Comte de Monte Cristo,’ the new book by Dumas, (observe how I waste my time—while you learn how _not_ to fortify cities, out of Machiavelli!) and really he amuses me with his ‘Monte Cristo’ ... six volumes I am glad to see—he is the male Scheherazade certainly. Now that the hero is safe in a dungeon (of the Château d’If) it will be delightful to see how he will get out—somebody knocks at the wall already. Only the narrative is not always very clear to me, inasmuch as, when I read, I unconsciously interleave it with such thoughts of you as make very curious cross readings ... j’avais cru remarquer quelques infidelités ... he really seems to love me—l’homme n’est jamais qu’un homme ... never was any man like him—ses traits étaient bouleversés ... the calmest eyes I ever saw.... So, Dumas or Machiavelli, it is of the less consequence what I read, I suppose, while I apply so undestractedly.
May God bless you, ever beloved! I think of you, I love you—I forgot again your ‘Strafford’—Mr. Forster’s ‘Strafford,’ I beg his pardon for not attributing to him other men’s works. Not that I mean to be cross—not to him even.
I am your own.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday. [Post-mark, June 8, 1846.]
One thing you said yesterday which I want to notice and protest against, my Ba—you charged me with speaking depreciatingly of myself because you had set the example—‘I should not have thought of it but that you began.’ Now I am tired, just at this moment, and submissive altogether, and _hopeful_ besides, on the whole,—so I will let you off with a simple but firmest of protests,—I did NOT think of imitating you, but spoke as I felt and knew,—and feel and know still. The world, generally, will inform you of this in its own good time and way, so ... _taceo_! (The last opinion of the world’s on the respective value of people and people, is unhappily too decisive. ‘And, after all, Mr. Langton is quite as good as the Duke’s daughter ... for he will have full twenty thousand a year!’) I suspect I was going to turn a pretty phrase and tell you I have only a heart, as the play-books prescribe,—when the said heart pricks me as if I reserved something—so I will confess to owning a ‘forehead and an eye’—one advantage over Pope, to whom folks used to remark ‘Sir, you have an eye’—and no more—whereas yesterday evening after leaving Ba, while I settled myself in the corner of our omnibus to think of her, a spruce gentleman stretched over, and amid the rumbling begged my pardon for being forced to remark that my forehead and eye interested him deeply, phrenologist as he was; and he was sure I must needs be _somebody_ ... besides a passenger to Greenwich! So if Ba will trust in phrenology!—I will at least not be unkind to her as to the learned man—who left the vehicle in due time, lamenting that in return for his own confidence and pink bill (‘Mr. Hamilton, phrenologist and lecturer’ &c. &c.) I would not break my obstinate reserve and augustly pronounce ‘Am I a Beefeater now?’
_Assez de sottises_: Ba, my Ba, I am happy in you beyond hope of expression—you know how happy.... And have not I some shade of a right,—I who loved the dear, dear pale cheek and the thin hand,—a right to be blessed in the wonders I see ... so long as I continue to be thankful to God whose direct doing I know it to be: how can I ever doubt the rest ... the so easy matters remaining—I will not doubt more, I think.
Tell me, write of yourself, love: remember the fierce heat ... and _never_ go up the long stairs—or, at least, _rest_ at proper intervals. I think of the Homeric stone heaved nearly to the hill-top and _then_!... An accident now would be horrible,—think, and take every precaution—because it is _my_ life, (if that will influence you) my whole happiness you are carrying safely or letting slip. May God over-watch all and care for us!
Good bye, best beloved,—I fear I ought to go to Mrs. Jameson’s to-night: there is a breakfast engagement for Wednesday, to meet this and the other notable; and a simple ‘at home’ promised to anybody calling this evening—and my pride won’t let me accept _one_, nor my liking to Mrs. J. suffer me to refuse both.... Yet the fatigue! I have been at church to-day, seeing people faint.
Your own, your own R.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Monday. [Post-mark, June 8, 1846.]
My ‘recommendation’ to dearest Ba was properly interpreted by her when she regarded the spirit and not the letter of it.
The day was hot—even _I_ thought who thrive in heat—and yesterday you did well to keep the house—but last night’s rain, and this comfort of cloudiness may allow you to resume the exercise,—only with _all_ ease, darling! Mrs. Jameson told me she called the other day on Miss Barrett, and was informed that lady was ‘walking before her door’—for I went last night, and deserved to be amused, perhaps, for the effort, ... and so I was, I never liked our friend as I now like her, I more than like the good nature and good feeling and versatility of ready intelligence and quick general sympathy. She is to see you to-day. She told this to a Miss Kindersley who had been reading the ‘Drama of Exile’ to her complete delight—but in listening silently,—and after, when Mrs. J. obligingly turned and said ‘How I should like to introduce _you_ to Miss Barrett ... did you ever see her?’ ... to which I answered in the old way, ‘that nobody, as she knew, saw you.’ At all these times did not I feel the ‘mask’ you speak of! I am, fortunately, out of the way of enquiries ... but if the thing were of constant occurrence, it would be intolerable. Shall it indeed end soon? May I count by months, by weeks? It is not safe—beginning to write on this subject—I can do nothing moreover.
Well, Lough has some good works, and you will be pleased I daresay: but of all things, hold him to his bond of maintaining the strictest privacy—for Mr. Powell or his kith and kin go there, and _his_ impudence and brazen insensibility are dreadful to encounter beyond all belief. He would book-make about ‘the meeting,’ and in his ordinary talk, be supplied with a subject to tell lies about for the next year or two,—unless he got a lesson earlier. But Lough will understand and keep his promise, no doubt, if you exact it strictly.
My mother is decidedly better, ... I am quite well—considering Thursday is so far off!—considering the end of summer is so far off. Would it be profane to think of that lament ... ‘the Summer is ended and we are not saved’?
I am obliged to leave off here—I love you ever my best
dearest, own Ba!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Monday _Morning_. [Post-mark, June 9, 1846.]
The stars threaten you with a long letter to-day, it seems, for I stretch out my hand and take blindly the largest sheet. Dearest, I have been driving out before your letter came ... and to _Hampstead_! think of _that_. And see the proof of it—this grew in the hedges when the sun rose to-day. We had a great branch gathered, and ‘this was of it,’ starred over with dog-roses. I did in the morning long for air, through the suffocation yesterday, and the walking being better for another day, my sisters persuaded me into the carriage. Only I wanted to wait for your letter, my letter, and could not—it did not come by the usual early post, and the carriage was here before it ... so I had to go, thinking of it all the way, and having it on my return ready to gladden me. How you make me laugh with your phrenologist! ‘For the interests of science’ you should have given your name. Then, would have come the whole history in the next lecture, ... how ‘Once in an omnibus he met an individual with a forehead and eyes of mark, and knew him at a glance for the first poet of the age.’ It would have made a feature in the lecture, and highly developed, I dare say, ... to suit the features in the omnibus. Just at the moment of this observation _I_ too was thinking of eyes—‘calm eyes’ did I say? Yes, calm, serene ... which was what struck me first of all, in the look of them—was it ever observed before, I wonder? The most serene spiritual eyes, I ever saw—I thought _that_ the first day I saw _you_. They may be called by other names beside, but they shall not lose the name I then gave them. Now to bear with the horrible portrait in the matter of the eyes, is a hard thing—Mr. Howitt must have _his_ shut nearly, I think. The hair is like—and nothing else. The mouth, the form of the cheek, one is as unlike as the other. And the character of the whole is _most_ unlike of the whole—it is a vulgarized caricature—and I only wonder how I could have fastened it inside of my ‘Paracelsus’ frontispiece-fashion. When it was hung up and framed, I did not know you face to face, remember. Mr. Kenyon told me it was ‘rather like.’ But always and uninstructed I seemed to know that it was not like you in some things....
_Monday Evening._—Observe how the sentence breaks off! While I was writing it, came a ‘tapping, tapping at the chamber door,’ as sings my dedicator Edgar Poe. Flush barked vociferously; I threw down the pen and shut up the writing case, ... and lo, Mrs. Jameson! I suppose she did not guess that I was writing to you. She brought me the engravings of Xanthian marbles, and also her new essays ... and was very kind as usual, and proposed to come some day next week with a carriage to take me out,—and all this time, how we treat her! Will she not have a right to complain of being denied the degree of confidence we gave ( ... Mr. Kenyon gave for me ...) to Miss Bayley? Will she not think hereafter ‘There was no need of their deceiving _me_?’ And yet I doubt how to retreat now. Could I possibly say to her the next time she speaks of you ... or could I not? it would set her on suspecting perhaps. She talked a little to-day of Italy, and plainly asked me what thoughts I had of it,—to which I could answer truthfully ‘No thoughts, but dreams.’ Then she insisted, ‘But whenever you have thoughts, you will let me know them? You will not be in Italy when I am there, without my knowing it? And where will you go—? to Pisa? ... to Sienna? to Naples?’ And she advised ... ‘Don’t go where the English are, in any case.’ And encouraged like an oracle, ... ‘Remember that where there’s a will there’s a way’—knowing no more what she spoke, than a Pythian on the serpent’s skin.
Beloved, you are right in your fear about Mr. Lough. I have decided not to go there. Oh, it is best certainly; and, quietly considered, I shall be happier as well as safer in not going. We must walk softly on the snowdrifts of the world, now that we have got to them.
For the rest, ... that is for the chief thing ... you wrote foolishly in your first letter to-day, my beloved,—you _can_ write foolishly on occasion, let me grant to the critics. I have just so much logic as to be able to see (though I am a woman) that for _me_ to be too good for _you_, and for _you_ to be too good for _me_, cannot be true at once, both ways. Now I could discern and prove, from the beginning of the beginning, that _you_ were too good for _me_—it is too late therefore to take up the other argument—the handle of it was broken last year.
Also, I do not go to the world to ask it to appraise you—I would fain leave to Robins the things of Robins. I hope you have repented all day to-day having written so foolishly yesterday. Even Robins would not justify you.
Dearest, the avalanches are on us! Uncle and aunts coming down in a great crash! My uncle Hedley comes next week!—on the second or third of July, the eldest of my aunts, ... from Paris, ... who proposes to reside in this house for a week—it may be longer! and, still in July, the rest of the Hedleys, I think!—everybody coming, coming! Their welcome will be somewhat of a ghastly smile from _me_—for indeed I cannot be quite delighted, after the fashion of a thoroughly dutiful niece.
Ah, never mind them! Nobody can change anything, if you do not change yourself. You have ‘a right’ ... not the ‘shadow’ of one, but the very right ... to all I am, and to all the life I live. Did you not see before, what I have felt so long, that indeed you have a right to me and over me?
I am your own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday. [Post-mark, June 9, 1846.]
_Is_ your letter ‘long,’ my own Ba? I seem to get to the end, each time I read it, just as sorrowfully soon as usual—so much for thankfulness! But if Ba is not to be ‘tall,’ depend on it, her letter shall not describe itself as ‘long’—though in a sense nothing ever written, ever read by me, drew such a trail of light after it as her letters—your letters, my own, own love! While I write this, my lips rest on the eglantine ... well, it shall be ‘_dog_-rose’ for Flushie’s sake! You say truly about the folly—it is very foolish,—when I fancy you proposing to give _me_ a golden Papal rose and gift for a King, instead of this! And if _I_ feel this, why should not you, and more vividly even? A rose from Hampstead! And you bore the journey well? You should tell me, precisely, detailedly.
As for Lough’s statues ... now, I have said more than I meant if it deters you from going to see them! If he will abide strictly by his promise, there is much to reward the trouble of going.
Always remember, my Ba, that the secret is _your_ secret and not mine ... that I keep it while you bid me, but that you may communicate it to whom you please, _when_ you please, without waiting to apprize me. I should, I think, have preferred telling Mrs. Jameson from the beginning about the mere visits ... or, I don’t know ... by one such piece of frankness you only expose yourself to fifty new—whatever they are! For there would be so much the more talk about you,—and either the quick woman’s wit and discernment are to be eluded, or they are not,—foiled or not—and how manage without ... without those _particular_ evasions which seem to degrade most of all? Miss Mitford’s promises began the embarrassment. In short I think the best way in such a case is to tell _all_ or none. I believe you might tell all to Mrs. Jameson with perfect safety, but, for _her_ sake, I doubt the propriety ... for it would be to introduce her forthwith to exactly our own annoyances with respect to Mr. Kenyon, Chorley &c. Once knowing, she cannot _un_-know. In any case, I promise my conscience to give her,—and anybody else that may have a right to it,—a full explanation at the earliest safe moment.. may _that_ be at no great distance! My own feeling is for telling Mr. Kenyon ... though you would considerably startle me if you answered ‘well, _do_!’ But, of the whole world, I seem only to care for _his_ not feeling aggrieved: oh, he will understand!—and _can_, because he knows the circumstances at your house. Come what will, I am sure of you; ‘if you live, and are well’—even this last clause I might exclude; it has often been in my thought to tell you ... only, dearest, there is always, when I plan never so dreamily and vaguely, always an understood submission the most absolute to your own desire ... but I fancied, that, in the case of any _real_ obstacle arising so as to necessitate the ‘postponement,’ &c., I should have _stipulated_ ... in the right yourself have given me ... I should have said—‘we will postpone it, if you will marry me _now_ ... merely as to the form ... but so as to enable me, if difficulties should thicken, to be by your bed-_side_ at least.’ You see, what you want ‘to relieve’ me of, is just what my life should be thrice paid down for and cheaply. How could you ever be so truly mine as _so_? Even the poor service does not ‘part us’ before ‘death’——‘till _sickness_ do us part!’
But there will be no sickness and all happiness, I trust in God! Dear, dear Ba, I love you wholly and for ever—true as I kiss your rose, and will keep it for ever. Bless you.
My first letter ‘did not reach you by the first post on Monday morning’—No! How should it ... when I carried it to town on Sunday night and went half a mile out of my way to put it in the general post office at the corner of Oxford Street!
You know I am to breakfast with Mrs. Jameson to-morrow—and perhaps I may make some calls after: if anything keeps me in Town so as to hinder the letter by the 8 o’clock post, you will know the reason ... and expect the letter the next morning; but I will endeavour to get back in time.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Evening. [Post-mark, June 10, 1846.]
Best, dearest beloved, ... would it not be strange if you were not so to me? How do you think I feel, hearing you say such things ... finding such thoughts in your mind? If it is not worthy of you to have a burden set on your shoulders and to be forced into the shadow of disquietudes not your own, yet this divine tenderness is worthy of you ... worthy of your nature; as I know and recognise! May God help me to thank you, for I have not a word.
Practically however, see how your proposal would work. It could not work _at all_, unless circumstances were known—and if they were known, at the very moment of their being known you would be saved, dearest, all the trouble of coming up-stairs to me, by my being thrown out of the window to you ... upon which, you might certainly pick up the pieces of me and put them into a bag and set off for Nova Zembla. _That_ would be the event of the working of your proposition. Yet remember that I will accede to whatever you shall choose—so _think for us both_. You know more of the world and have more practical sense than I—and if you did not, had not, you may _do what you like with your own_, as surely as the Duke of Newcastle might.
For Mrs. Jameson, I never should think of telling her ‘_all_’—I should not, could not, would not! and the gods forefend that you should think of telling Mr. Kenyon any more. Now, listen. Perfectly I understand your reasons, your scruples ... what are they to be called? But I promise to take the blame of it. I will tell dear Mr. Kenyon hereafter that you would have spoken, but that I _would not let you_—won’t _that_ do? won’t it stop the pricking of the conscience? Because, you see, I know Mr. Kenyon, ... and I know perfectly that either he would be unhappy himself, or he would make us so. He never could bear the sense of responsibility. Then, as he told me to-day, and as long ago I knew, ... he is ‘irresolute,’ timid in deciding. Then he shrinks before the dæmon of the world—and ‘what may be said’ is louder to him than thunder. And then again, and worst of all, he sees afar off casualty within casualty, and a marriage without lawyers would be an abomination in his sight. Moreover, to discover ourselves to him, and _not submit to his counsels_, would be a real offence ... would it not? As it is, it may seem natural and excusable that we two of ourselves should poetically rush into a foolishness—but if we heard counsel, and rejected it!! Do you see?...
He came here to-day, dear Mr. Kenyon, and is to come with Miss Bayley on Friday, and take me in the carriage to drive, and to see his house. I must go, but dread it ... shrink from it—yes, indeed. As for Mr. Lough, how could I have ‘bound him with Styx nine times round him?’ It is easier to bind Mrs. Jameson. Oh no! You were right, and I was wrong in my first inclination about Mr. Lough.
And yesterday I was not tired to signify. I shall not be ill, my beloved,—I think I shall not. I am as perfectly well now in all respects (except that I have not strength for much exercise and noise and confusion, ...) as it is possible to be. So do not be anxious about me—rather spend your dear thoughts of me in loving me, ... dear, dearest!
You breakfast with Mrs. Jameson, and I shall remember not to long too much for the eight o’clock letter at night. Remember _you_, not to be hurried as to the writing of it.
Oh! I had a letter from my particular Bennet this morning, ... and my Georgiana desires me instantly to say why I presumed not to write to her before. I am commanded out of all further delays. ‘_Did_ I receive her letter,’ she wonders!!!! Georgiana is imperative.
May God bless you, you who bless me!
I am wholly your own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday Morning. [Post-mark, June 12, 1846.]
I must write very little to-day, dearest, because Mr. Kenyon, as a note from him just tells me, comes at half past two for me, and in the meantime I am expecting a visit from my uncle Hedley, who arrived yesterday while we were together. Scarcely could Henrietta keep him, she says, from coming up-stairs ‘to see Ba!’ We just escaped, therefore. I have been thinking that having the barbarians down on us may be at least a means of preserving us from going into the wilderness ourselves ... _my_self ... if I were taken away, as I told you, to Tunbridge, Dover, or other provinces of Siberia. How should I bear, do you think, to be taken away from you? Very badly!—though you will not hear of my being able to love you as I ought——when _that_ is precisely the only thing I can do, it seems to me, at all worthily of you.
_Ora pro me_ in Mr. Kenyon’s carriage to-day—I am getting so nervous and frightened! I shall feel all the while as if set on a vane on the top of St. Paul’s ... can you fancy the feeling? I do wish I were safe at home again, reading your letter ... which _will_ come to-night—_will_ ... _shall_ ... _must_ ... according to the letter and spirit of the Law.
You made the proposal to me about New Cross, yesterday, out of consideration and kindness to _me_! I understand it so, thanking you. For the rest, I need not, I am certain, assure you that it would be the greatest pain to me at any time, to be wanting in even the forms of respect and affection towards your family—and that I would not, from a mere motive of shyness, hazard a fault against _them_—you will believe this of me. But the usual worldly form (if the world is to give the measure) would be _against_ my paying such a visit—and under ordinary circumstances it never is paid—not _so_. Therefore the not paying it is not an omission of an ordinary form of attention—_that_ is what I mean to say. And to keep all dear to you quite safe and away from all splashing of the mud which we cannot ourselves hope to escape, is the great object,—it does seem to me. Your father and mother would be blamed (in this house, I know, if not in others) for not apprizing my father of what they knew. As it is, there is evil enough—though there is a way of escaping _that_ evil.
As it is.—Now I do beseech you to consider well whether you will not have too much pain in finding that they suffer it (after every precaution taken) ... to render all this which we are about, wise and advisable. They will suffer, to hear you spoken of as we both shall be spoken of ... be perfectly sure! They will suffer, to have to part with you _so_— —and the circumstances, perhaps, will not help to give them confidence in the stranger, who presumes _so_ to enter their family. I _ask you_ not to answer this!—only, to think of it in time, lest you should come to think of it too late. Put it between the leaves of Machiavel,—that at need you may confute yourself as well as M. Thiers.
Beloved, say how you are—and how your mother is. Here I must end—to be ready for dear Mr. Kenyon, and casualties of uncles &c. Think of me, love me—my heart is full of you.
I am your BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Friday. [Post-mark, June 12, 1846.]
When I am close to you, in your very room, I see through your eyes and feel what you feel—but after, the sight widens with the circle of outside things—I cannot fear for a moment what seemed redoubtable enough yesterday—nor do I believe that there will be two opinions anywhere in the world as to your perfect right to do as you please under the present circumstances. People are not quite so tolerant to other people’s preposterousness, and that which yourself tell me exceeds anything I ever heard of or imagined—but, dearest, on twice thinking, one surely ought not to countenance it as you propose—why should not my father and mother know? What possible harm can follow from their knowing? Why should I wound them to the very soul and for ever, by as gratuitous a piece of unkindness as if,—no,—there is no comparison will do! Because, since I was a child I never looked for the least or greatest thing within the compass of their means to give, but given it was,—nor for liberty but it was conceded, nor confidence but it was bestowed. I dare say they would break their hearts at such an end of all. For in any case they will take my feeling for their own with implicit trust—and if I brought them a beggar, or a famous actress even, they would believe in her because of me,—if a Duchess or Miss Hudson, or Lady Selina Huntingdon rediviva ... they would do just the same, sorrow to say! As to any harm or blame that can attach itself to _them_,—it is too absurd to think of! What earthly control can they have over me? They live here,—I go my own way, being of age and capability. How can they interfere?
And then, blame for _what_, in either God’s or the devil’s name? I believe you to be the one woman in the world I am able to marry because able to love. I wish, on some accounts, I had foreseen the contingency of such an one’s crossing my path in this life—but I did not, and on all ordinary grounds preferred being free and poor, accordingly. All is altered now. Does anybody doubt that I can by application in proper quarters obtain quite enough to support us both in return for no extraordinary expenditure of such faculties as I have? If it _is_ to be doubted, I have been greatly misinformed, that is all. Or, setting all friends and their proposals and the rest of the hatefulness aside—I should say that so simple a procedure as writing to anybody ... Lord Monteagle, for instance, who reads and likes my works, as he said at Moxon’s two days ago on calling there for a copy to give away ... surely to write to him, ‘When you are minister next month, as is expected, will you give me for my utmost services about as much as you give Tennyson for nothing?’—_this_ would be rational and as easy as all rationality. _Let me do so, and at once, my own_ Ba! And do you, like the unutterably noble creature I know you, transfer your own advantages to your brothers or sisters ... making if you please a proper reservation in the case of my own exertions failing, as failure comes everywhere. So shall the one possible occasion of calumny be removed and all other charges go for the simple absurdities they will be. I am entirely in earnest about this, and indeed had thought for a moment of putting my own share of the project into immediate execution—but on consideration,—no! _So_ I will live and so die with you. I will not be poorly endeavouring to startle you with unforeseen generosities, catch you in pretty pitfalls of magnanimities, be always surprising you, or trying to do it. No, I resolve to do my best, _through_ you—by your counsel, with your help, under your eye ... the most strenuous endeavour will only approximate to an achievement of _that_,—and to suppose a superfluousness of devotion to you (as all these surprises do) would be miserably foolish. So, dear, dear Ba, understand and advise me. I took up the paper with ordinary feelings ... but the absurdity and tyranny suddenly flashed upon me ... it must not be borne—indeed its only safety in this instance is in its impotency. I am not without fear of some things in this world—but the ‘wrath of men,’ all the men living put together, I fear as I fear the fly I have just put out of the window; but I fear _God_—and am ready, he knows, to die this moment in taking his part against any piece of injustice and oppression, _so_ I aspire to die!
See this long letter, and all about a tiny one, a plain palpable commonplace matter about which you agree with me, you the dear quiet Ba of my heart, with me that make all this unnecessary fuss! See what is behind all the ‘bated breath and whispered humbleness?’—but it is _right_, after all, to revolt against such monstrous tyranny. And I ought not, I feel, to have forgotten the feelings of my father and mother as I did—because I know as certainly as I know anything that if I could bring myself to ask them to give up everything in the world; they would do it and cheerfully.
So see, and forgive your own
R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday. [Post-mark, June 13, 1846.]
But dearest, dearest, ... _when_ did I try to dissuade you from telling all to your father and mother? Surely I did not and could not. That you should ‘wound them to the very soul and for ever’ ... I am so far from counselling it, that I would rather, I think, as was intimated in my letter of this morning, have all at an end at once—_rather_! Certainly _rather_, ... when the alternative would be your certain unhappiness and remorse. _A right_, they have, to your entire confidence;—for _me_ to say a word against your giving it—may God forbid! Even that you should submit your wishes to theirs in this matter, would be no excess of duty—I said so, I think, in my letter of this morning.
At the same time, I _am_ of opinion, ... which was what I meant to put into words, ... that, _in the case_ of their approving in the sufficient degree ... and of your resolving finally on carrying out our engagement ... you should avoid committing them further than is necessary, and so exposing them to unpleasant remarks and reproaches from _my family_ ... to go no farther. You think that nothing can be said—I wish _I_ could think so. You are not to be restrained perhaps ... but you are to be _advised_ ... and it would be a natural step for your father, to go straight to his friend Mr. Kenyon. Do you see what might be done though you are ‘of age’—and for not doing which, your father might be reproached? And more there would be to do, besides. Therefore I thought that you should avoid, as far as possible, committing him openly ... making him a party in the eyes of the world (as would be done by my visit to New Cross for instance)—yet I may be wrong here, ... and you, in any case, are the master, to act as you see best.
And, looking steadily at the subject, do you not see, ... now that we look closely besides, ... how mortifying to the just pride of your family, as well as to your own self-respect, is every possible egress from these unhappy circumstances? Ah—I told you—I told you long ago! I saw that at the beginning. Giving the largest confidence to your family, you still must pain them—still.
For the rest ... you are generous and noble as always—but, no, ... I shall refuse steadily for reasons which are plain, to put away from me God’s gifts ... given perhaps in order to this very end ... and apart from which, I should not have seen myself justified, ... even as far as now I vaguely, dimly seem ... to cast the burden of me upon you. _No._ I care as little for money as you do—but this thing I will not agree to, because I ought not. At the same time, you shall be at liberty to arrange that after the deaths of us two, the money should return to my family ... this, if you choose—for it shall be by your own act hereafter, that they may know you for what you are. In the meanwhile, I should laugh to scorn all _that_ sort of calumny ... even if I could believe it to be possible. Supposing that you sought _money_, you would not be quite so stupid, the world may judge for itself, as to take hundreds instead of thousands, and pence instead of guineas. To do the world justice, it is not likely to make a blunder on such a point as this.
I wish, if you can wish so, that you were the richer. I could be content to have just nothing, if we could live easily so. But as I have a little without seeking it, you must, on the other hand, try to be content, and not be too proud.
As to Lord Monteagle, ... dearest ... you will do what you like of course, though I do not understand exactly what your object is. A pension on literary grounds is the more difficult to obtain, that the fund set apart for that end is insufficient, I believe. Then if you are to do diplomacy for it, ... how do you know that you may not be sent to Russia, or somewhere impossible for me to winter in? If you were fixed even in London, ... what then? You know best what your own views are, and wishes are—I would not cross them, if you should be happier so, or so.
And do you think that because this may be done, or not done ... and because _that_ ought _not_ to be borne ... we can make any change ... act any more openly ... face to face, perhaps—voice to voice? Alas, no!—You said once that women were as strong as men, ... unless in the concurrence of physical force. Which is a mistake. I would rather be kicked with a foot, ... (I, for one woman!...) than be overcome by a loud voice speaking cruel words. I would not yield before such words—I would not give you up if they were said ... but, being a woman and a very weak one (in more senses than the bodily), they would act on me as a dagger would, ... I could not help _dropping_, dying before them. I say it that you may understand. Tyranny? Perhaps. Yet in that strange, stern nature, there is a capacity to love—and I love him—and I shall suffer, in causing him to suffer. May God bless you. You will scarcely make out these hurried straggling words—and scarcely do they carry out my meaning. I am for ever your
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Saturday. [Post-mark, June 13, 1846.]
Dearest, all dearest beyond my heart’s uttering, will you forgive me for that foolish letter, and the warmth, and—FOR ALL,—more than ever I thought to have needed to ask forgiveness for! I love you in every imaginable way. All was wrong, absurd, in that letter—do you forgive—now, while I kiss your feet, my own, own Ba?
For see why it was wrong ... my father and mother will NOT BE PAINED IN ANY DEGREE: they will believe what I say, exactly what I say. I wrote on and on in a heat at the sudden ridiculous fancy of the matter’s taking place some fine morning, without a word of previous intimation,—‘I am going away, never mind where,—with somebody, never concern yourselves whom,—to stay, if for ever, is it any business of yours to enquire?’ All which was ... _what_ was it? a method of confirming you in your complimentary belief in my ‘calmness’—or that other in my ‘good practical sense’—oh, Ba, Ba, how I deserve you! I will only say, I agree in all you write—it will be clearly best, and I can obviate every untowardness here ... show that all is pure kindness and provident caution ... so easy all will be! And for the other matters, I will fear nothing.
But you do—you do understand what caused the sudden fancy ... how I thought ‘not show them my pride of prides, my miraculous, altogether peerless and incomparable Ba!’ It was not flying from your counsel,—oh, no!
So, is your hand in mine, or rather mine in yours again, sweetest, best love? All will be well. Follow out your intention, as you spoke of it to me, in every point. _Do not for God’s_ sake run the risk, or rather, encounter the certainty of hearing words which most likely have not anything like the significance to the speaker that they would convey to the hearer—and so let us go quietly away. I will care nothing about diplomatism or money-getting extraordinary—why, my own works sell and sell and are likely to sell, Moxon says. And I mean to write wondrous works, you may be sure, and sell them too,—and out of it all may easily come some fifty or sixty horrible pounds a year,—on which one lives famously in Ravenna, I dare say: think of Ravenna, Ba!—it seems the place of places, with the pines and the sea, and Dante, and _no_ English, and all Ba.
My Ba, I see you on Monday, do I not? You let me come then, do you not? I am on fire to see you and know you love me ... _not as_ I love you ... that can never be! I am your own
R.
I resolve, after a long pause and much irresolution, to write down as much as I shall be able, of an obvious fact.... If the saddest fate I can imagine should be reserved for me ... I should wish, _you_ would wish to live the days out worthily,—not end them—nor go mad in them—to prevent which, I should need distraction, the more violent the better,—and it would have to be _forced_ on me in the only way possible—therefore, _after my death_, I return nothing to your family, be assured. You will not recur to _this_!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Saturday Morning. [Post-mark, June 15, 1846.]
I wrote last night when my head was still struggling and swimming between two tides of impressions received from the excitement and fatigue of the day. Mr. Kenyon (dear Mr. Kenyon in his exquisite kindness!) took me to see the strange new sight (to _me_!) of the Great Western ... the train coming in: and we left the carriage and had chairs—and the rush of the people and the earth-thunder of the engine almost overcame me ... not being used to such sights and sounds in this room, remember!! and afterwards I read and answered your letter with a whirling head. I cannot be sure _how_ I answered it, my head whirled so. I only hope ... hope ... hope ... that it did not seem unworthy of your goodness and generosity—for _that_ would be unworthy of my perception of them and reverence for them, besides. You do not, in particular, I do hope, misunderstand my reasons for refusing to improve what you call my ‘advantages,’ by turning them into disadvantages for _you_. Really it struck me at the moment and strikes me new every time I think of it, that it would be monstrous in me to stop at such an idea long enough to examine it. To do such a thing would complete the ‘advantages’ of my alliance—if _that_ is a desire of yours. And if I were to be ill afterwards, there would be the crown of the crown. Now ask yourself if _I ought_—
I cannot conceive of the possibility of a ‘calumny’ on such a pretext—there seems no room for it. You will however have it in your power hereafter, without injury to either of us, to do yourself full justice in this particular— —only neither now nor hereafter shall I consent to let in sordid withering cares with your life. God has not made it so and it shall not be so by an act of mine.
And after all, shall we be so much ... so much too rich? do you fancy that Miss Kilmansegg is made of brass compared to me? It is not so bad, be very sure. If Arabel should not offend Papa, she will be richer hereafter than we are ... yet not rich even so. Why are you fanciful in _that_ way? People are more likely to say that _I have taken you in_. The sign of the Red Dragon! as you suggested once yourself!
I could make you laugh, if it were not too hot to laugh, with telling you how I really do not know what my ‘advantages’ are—specifically—so many, and so many. I am not ‘allowed’ to spend what I might—but the motive is of course a kind one— —there is no mistaking _that_. Poor Papa! He attends just to those pecuniary interests which no one cares for, with a scrupulous attention. Nearly two hundred a year of ship shares I never touch. Then there is the interest of six thousand pounds (not _less_ at any rate) in the funds—and I referred to the principal of _that_, when I said yesterday, that when we had ceased to need it, it might return to my family, since it came from them, if you chose. But this is all air—and _nothing shall be said of it now_—and whatever may be said hereafter, shall come from _you_, and be your word rather than mine. So I beseech you, by your affection for me, to speak no more of this hateful subject, which I have entered for a _moment_ lest you should exaggerate to yourself and mistake me for the least in the world of an heiress. As to Lord Monteagle, we can do without him, _I_ think—and unless he would give us a house to keep, or something of that sort, at Sorrento or Ravenna, I do not exactly see what he can do for us. To make an agreement with a periodical, would be more a possibility perhaps—but it is not a necessity—there is no sort of need, in fact—and why should you be tormented ‘in the multitude of the thoughts within you,’ utterly in vain?
As to your family ... I understand your natural desire of giving your confidence at the fullest to your father and mother, who deserve and claim it ... I understand that you should speak and listen to them, and cross no wish of theirs, and in nothing displease and pain them. But I do not understand the argument by which you involve the question with other questions ... when you say, for instance, that I ‘ought not to countenance the preposterousness and tyranny.’ How do I seem to countenance what I revolt from? Do you mean that we ought to do what we are about, _openly_? It is the only meaning I can attach to your words. Well—If you choose it to be so, knowing what I have told you, _let_ it be so. I can however, as I said yesterday, answer only for my will and mind, and not for my strength and body—and if the end should be different from the end you looked for, you will not blame me, being just, ... any more than I shall blame myself. May God bless you, ever dearest!—
I am your own as ever.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday. [Post-mark, June 15, 1846.]
May I venture to speak to dearest Ba as if I had seen her or heard from her since I wrote yesterday,—and that seeing or that hearing had brought the usual comfort and assurance,—and forgiveness when needed, but delight at all times? Do you forgive me indeed, Ba?
I shall know to-morrow—which ‘to-morrow’ is your _to_-day. I am soon to be with you _to-day_. I trust there is [no] occasion to exercise fancy and say—‘When we meet on your return from Tunbridge a month hence,’ or two, or three ... to go on fancying! What should I do,—be able to do? and if I understood you rightly the letter-communication would be hindered, if not stopped altogether. Thus is one the sport of one’s own wishes. Fine weather is desired ... fine enough to drive people out of town into the country!
As it is, I have been sufficiently punished for that foolish letter, which has lost me the last two or three days of your life and deeds, my Ba. You went to Mr. Kenyon’s—may have gone elsewhere (and gathered roses I did not deserve to receive)—but I do not know, and shall not recover my loss—not ever ... because if you tell me _now_, you exclude something new you would say otherwise ... if you write it on Tuesday, what becomes of Tuesday’s own stock of matter for chronicling?
Well, the proper word in my mouth is—I am sorry to the heart, and will try never to offend so again. How you wrote to me, also! How you rise above yourself while I get no nearer where you were first of all, no nearer than ever! But so it should be! so may it ever be!
I believe the fault comes from a too-sweet sense of the freedom of being _true_ with you, telling you all, hiding nothing. Carlyle was saying in his fine way, he understood why the Romans confined acting to their slaves ... it was no employment for a free man to amuse people ... be bound to do that, and if other faculties interposed, tending to other results on an audience than amusement, be bidden suppress them accordingly ... and so, he thought, it would be one day with our _amusers_, writers of fun, concocters of comic pieces. _I_ feel it delicious to be free when most bound to you, Ba,—to be able to love on in all the liberty of the implied subjection ... so I am angry _to_ you, desponding sometimes _to_ you, as well as joyous and hopeful—well, well, I _love_, at any rate,—do love you with heart and soul, my Ba,—ever shall love you, dearest above all dearness: God bless you!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday. [Post-mark, June 16, 1846.]
As to ‘practical sense’ I never saw, I confess, much to praise you for—but you began by making a great profession of it, please to remember—and, otherwise, you certainly ought to know more of the world and the wisdom thereof than I, or you are _dull_, dearest mine, and one might as well call the sun so on this burning dazzling morning, when everything is at a white heat. Then for the ‘calmness’ ... I did not call your eyes ‘green’ after all ... nor did I mean what you would force on me for a meaning in the other way:—you pretend to misunderstand? Eyes, at least, that had the mastery with me from the beginning! and it was so long, so long (as you observed yourself), that I could not lift up mine against them—they were the mystic crystal walls, so long!
After you were gone yesterday and I had done with the roses (exquisite roses!) and had my coffee, I saw my uncle Hedley who had been inquiring about me, said my sisters, all the afternoon, ... for it was he who came when we heard the greetings on the stairs—and he told me that his wife and daughter were to be in London early in July ... so that we shall have the whole squadron sooner than we thought—drawn up like a very squadron ... my other aunt, Miss Clarke, coming at the same time, and my cousin with her, Arlette Butler. But only those two will be in the house here, and they will not be for very long, nor will they be much in the way, I hope.
Shall I tell you? I repented yesterday ... I repented last night ... I repent to-day, having made the promise you asked of me. I could scarcely sleep at all last night, through thinking that I ought not to have made it. Be generous, and free me from that promise. To be true to you in the real right sense, I need no promises at all—and if an argument were addressed to me _in order_ to _separate us_, I should see through the piteous ingenuity of it, I think, whatever ground it took, and admit no judgment and authority over your life to be higher than your own. But I have misgivings about that promise, because I can conceive of circumstances.... Loose me from my promise, and let me be grateful to you, my beloved, in all things and ways, and hold you to be generous in the least as in the greatest. What _I_ asked of _you_, was as different as our positions are—different beyond what you see or can see. No third person can see,—no second person can see ... what my position is and has been ... I do not enter on it here. But there is just and only _one_ way in which I may be injured by you, ... and _that_ is, in being allowed to _injure you_—so remember, remember, ... to the last available moment.
Then ... I have lived so in a dream for very long!—and everything, all undertakings, all movements, seem easy in dream-life. The sense of this has lately startled me. To waken up suddenly and find that I have wronged you—what more misery?—and I feel already that I am bringing you into a position which will by some or many be accounted unworthy of you. Well—we will not talk of it—not now! there is time for the grave consideration which _must be_. Let us both think.
And may God bless you, ever dearest! You are the best and most generous of all in the world! Whatever my mistake may be, it is not concerning _that_. Also I love you, love you. Premature things I say sometimes, which are foolish always. Tell me how you are ... tell me how your mother is— —but speak of your own head ... tam chari ... particularly. Overcoming, the heat is—and I do hope that Mrs. Jameson won’t come after all.
Your
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday. [Post-mark, June 16, 1846.]
I have just returned from Town—some twelve miles at least I must have walked in this extreme heat ... so what has become of the headache? And now I sit down to write what Ba will read ... what has become of the heat and fatigue? In this sense Ba ‘looks cool at me!’
I shall just write that I love, and love you, and love you again—my own Ba—just this, lest you learn the comfort of a respite from hearing what you are doomed to hear, with variations, all the days of your life. But not much more than this shall I write, because the love lies still in me, and deep, as water does,—cannot run forth in rivulets and sparkle, this hot weather; but then how I love her when I can only say so,—how I feel her ... as in an old opera’s one line that stays in my recollection the tropical sun is described on the ocean—‘fervid on the glittering flood’—so she lies on me.
See the pure nonsense, my own Ba, and laugh at it, but not at what lies at bottom of it, because that is true as truth, true as Ba’s self in its way.
I called on Forster this morning: he says Landor is in high delight at the congratulatory letters he has received—so you must write, dearest, and add the queen-rose to his garland. F— talks about some 500 copies—or did he say 300?—being sold already ... so there is hope for Landor’s lovers.
So I should have written once ... but like Virgil’s shepherd ... ‘know I now what love is!’—Do you remember that the first word I ever wrote to you was ‘I love you, dear Miss Barrett?’ It was so,—could not but be so—and I always loved you, as I shall always.
Tell me all you can about your dearest self, my own love. I am so happy in you, in your perfect goodness and truth,—in all of you.
Be careful this fatiguing weather ... the evenings and mornings are the only working time of the day, as in the beginning of things. But all day long is rest-time to love you, dear, and kiss you, as now—kisses
Your own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday. 6 o’clock. [Post-mark, June 17, 1846.]
Beloved, this weather, which makes Flush cross, perhaps helped to make me depressed this morning. I had not slept well, and ought not to have written to you till the effect of it had gone off. Now I feel more as if I had been with you yesterday. Ah well! I don’t, can’t remember what I wrote ... and some of it was _wise_ ... for I ought not to have promised _that_, ... and you must loose me, that I may be loosed in Heaven, from the bands of it. Only you are not to go to Greenwich (you go to Greenwich to-morrow, do you not?) thinking that I wanted to teaze you. There is just one meaning to all my words, let them be sad or gay ... and it is, that _your happiness is precious_. For myself, if we were to part now and for ever, I should still owe you the only happiness of my life. But nobody is talking of parting, you know—I am yours, and cannot be put away from you except by your own hand. Which is decided! What I ask of you, is to spare me the pang of causing you to suffer on my account, ... and you may suffer sometimes, I fear, through all your affection for me, ... and indirectly, if not directly.
Two visitors I have had to-day—dear Mr. Kenyon, and Lady Margaret Cocks. She is going to Italy—(oh, of course!) to Rome. He came to tell me that the books came to me from Landor himself, and that I must write to him to thank him properly. Mrs. Jameson I do not see, nor Miss Bayley.
How hot it will be for you to-morrow! Try to be amused and not too tired, dearest beloved, and tell me in your letters how the head is.
While the heart beats (mine!) I am your own.
I am going in the carriage presently and shall write again to-night. Won’t that be _three times in a day_ according to order?
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Evening. [Post-mark, June 17, 1846.]
Best, ... best, you are, to write to me when you were tired, and _so_! When _I_ am tired and write to _you_, it is too apt to be what may trouble you. With _you_, how different! In nothing do you show your strength more than in your divine patience and tenderness towards me, till ... not being used to it, I grow overwhelmed by it all, and would give you my life at a word. Why did you love _me_, my beloved, when you might have chosen from the most perfect of all women and each would have loved you with the perfectest of her nature? That is my riddle in this world. I can understand everything else ... I was never stopped for the meaning of sorrow upon sorrow ... but that you should love me I do not understand, and I think that I never shall.
Do I remember? Yes indeed, I remember. How I recurred and wondered afterwards, though at the moment it seemed very simple and what was to be met with in our philosophy every day. But there, you see, there’s the danger of using _mala verba_! The Fates catch them up and knit them into the web! Then I remember all the more (though I should at any rate) through an imprudence of my own (or a piece of ill-luck rather ... it shall not be called an imprudence) of which I will tell you. I was writing to Miss Mitford and of you—we differed about you often, ... because she did not appreciate you properly, and was fond of dwelling on the ‘obscurity’ when I talked of the light,—and I just then writing of you, added in my headlong unreflecting way that I had had a real letter from you which said that you loved me—‘Oh—but,’ I wrote on, ‘you are not to mistake this, not to repeat it—for of course, it is simply the purest of philanthropies’ ... some words to that effect—and if yours was the purest of philanthropies, mine was the purest of innocences, as you may well believe, ... for if I had had the shadow of a foresight, I should not have fallen into the snare. So vexed I was afterwards! Not that she thought anything at the time, or has referred to it since, or remembers a word now. Only I was vexed in my innermost heart ... and _am_ ... do you know? ... that I should have spoken lightly of such an expression of yours—though you meant it lightly too. Dearest! It was a disguised angel and I should have known it by its wings though they did not fly.
But I foresaw nothing, ... looked to you for nothing, ... nothing can prove better to myself, than my having mentioned the quaint word at all. For I know, and I hope you know, how impossible it always has been to me to choose for a subject of conversation and jest, things which never should be spoken to friend or sister. But how was I to foresee? So the quaintness passed as quaintness with me. And never from that time (you grew sacred too soon!), never again from that moment, did I mention you to Miss Mitford—oh yes, I did, when she talked of introducing Mr. Chorley, and when I replied that, being a woman, I would have my wilful way, and that my wilful way was to see _you_ instead. But except _then_ ... and when I sent her Mr. Landor’s verses on you ... not a word have I spoken ... except in bare response. She thinks perhaps that my old fervour about you has sunk into the socket—she suspects nothing—in fact she does not understand what _love_ is ... and I never should think of asking her for sympathy. She is one of the Black Stones, which, when I climb up towards my Singing Tree and Golden Water, will howl behind me and call names.
You had my second letter to-day, speaking of Landor, and of Mr. Kenyon’s visit. At half-past six came Miss Bayley, talking exceeding kindnesses of Italy, and entreating me to use her ... to let her go with me and take care of me and do me all manner of good. What kindness, really, in a woman whom I have not seen six times in all! I am very grateful to her. She held my hands, and told me to write to her if ever I had need of her—she would come at a moment, go for a year!—she would do anything for me I desired! And this woman to believe of herself that she has no soul! Help me to thank her in your thoughts of her! She said, by the way, that Mrs. Jameson had talked to her of wishing to take me, ... but she thought (Miss Bayley thought) that she (Mrs. Jameson) had too many objects and too much vivacity ... it would not do so well, she thought. In reply—I could just thank her, and scarcely could do _that_, ... only I am sure she saw and felt that I was grateful to her aright, let the words come ever so wrong. To-morrow she leaves London for an indefinite time.
She told me too that a friend of hers, calling on Mrs. Jameson, had found her on the point of coming to me to-day, to drive out ... but she suffered from toothache and was going to Cartwright’s first ... and last, I suppose. I dare say he put her to torture, to be classified with ‘the thumbscrew and the gadge’ ... some disabling torture, for I have not seen her at all. So as at half-past seven Henrietta was going out to dinner, Lizzie and I and Flush took our places by her in the carriage, and went to Hyde Park ... drove close by the Serpentine, and saw by the ruffling of the water that there was a breath of wind more than we felt. The shadows were gathering in quite fast, shade upon shade; and at last the silvery water seemed to hold all the light left, as on the flat of a hand. Very much I liked and enjoyed it. And, as we came home, the gas was in the shops ... another strange sight for me—and we all liked everything. Flush had his head out of the window the whole way ... except when he saw a long whip, ... or had a frightful vision at the water of somebody washing a little dog ... which made him draw back into the carriage with dilated eyes and quivering ears, and set about licking my hands, for an ‘Ora pro nobis.’ And Lizzie confided to me, that, when she is ‘grown up,’ she never will go out to dinners like Henrietta, but drive in the park like Ba, instead ... unless she can improve upon both, and live in a cottage covered with roses, in the country. I, in the meantime, between my companions, thought of neither of them more than was necessary, but of somebody whom I had been teazing perhaps ... dearest, was it so, indeed? ... but I avenge you by teazing myself back again! A long rambling letter, with nothing in it! ‘Passages, that lead to nothing’—and staircases, too! May I be loved nevertheless, as usual? and forgiven for my ‘secret faults?’ You are the whole world to me—and the stars besides!
And I am your very own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday Morning. [Post-mark, June 17, 1846.]
My own Ba, I release you from just as much as you would easily dispense me from observing in that mutual promise. Indeed, it has become one unnecessary for our present relation and knowledge: it was right at the beginning for either to say to the other, using calm words, ‘It is your good I seek, not mine,’ and as if it were demonstrated that I should secure yours at the expense of mine by leaving you I would endeavour to do it—so, you assure me, you would act by me. The one point to ascertain therefore, is—what will amount to a demonstration; and I for my part apprize you that no other person in the world can by any possibility know so much of me as to be entitled to pronounce in the matter—to say ‘it is for good or for evil’—therefore, you will no more be justified in giving up to _that_ kind of demonstration what I consent you shall give up to one clearly furnished by _myself_ the only authentic one—than you would be justified in paying my money, entrusted to you, on the presentation of a cheque signed by somebody else ... somebody who loves me better than himself, my best of friends, truest of advisers &c. &c. It skills not, boots not—‘John Smith’ is not R.B., nor B.A. and because R.B. or B.A. shall be instantly attended to,—the counterfeit must be refused.’ Just this, so rational and right, I understood you to bid me promise—and so much you have promised me, a proper precaution for the earlier time when the friend might seem to argue with some plausibility ‘really I understand my friend’s interests better than you can.’ But now, who dares assure me that? I disbelieve it—one only knows better, can ever know better—yourself; and I will obey yourself. So with me—I know better my own good than you do yet, I think. When I tell you that good requires such a step as you speak of, you shall acquiesce; I will tell you on the instant, as you, in your own case, should tell me on the instant. I needed not ask you to promise, as I foolishly did, that you would not act in the saddest of ways—professing to see what could never be, and believe what must be untrue. At the beginning, at the first day, suppose Mr. Kenyon had said—you prevent his getting such a place, which brings in so much honour and wealth—or marrying such a person who would effect the same—you might have assented then, in your comparative ignorance, just as you could not have objected had he said, ‘If you hold Mr. B. to his engagement to come here on the Derby Day you will ruin him assuredly, for his heart and soul are on “the turf” and his betting-book will go to wreck.’ To this you could never bring yourself to pretend an assent—it would be no argument if he went on saying—‘Why, A and B and C go to races and bet on them’—_you know_ I _do not_—so you know my estimate of honour and wealth and the rest, apart ... I will not say from the love of you,—but from my own life as I had traced it years ago, and as it is still traced for me to its end,—your love coming to help it in every smallest particular, to supply the undreamed-of omissions in the plan of it, and remove the obstructions best seen now that they are removed or removable. There is a calmest ‘of calm’ statements of the good of you to me.
My dearest Ba, you say ‘let us both think’—think of this, you! Do not for God’s sake introduce an element of uncertainty and restlessness and dissatisfaction into the feeling whereon _my_ life lies. To speak for myself, this matter is concluded, done with,—I am yours, you are mine, and not to give use to refinements upon refinements as to what is the being most of all each other’s, which might end in your loving me best while I was turned a Turk in the East, or my—you know the inquisition does all for the pure love of the victim’s soul. Let us have common sense—and think, in its most ordinary exercise, what would my life be worth now without you—as I,—putting on your own crown, accepting your own dearest assurance,—dare believe your life would be incomplete now without mine—_so_ you have allowed me to believe. Then our course is plain. If you dare make the effort, we will do as we propose,—if not, not: I have nothing to do but take your hand ... there is not one difficulty in my path,—nor in yours on my account,—that is for me. If I change my views, and desire hereafter what I altogether turn from now,—in what conceivable respect will your being my wife hinder me? If I accept the Embassy which Young England in the person of Milnes has promised me—you shall offer no impediment. If I rather aspire to ‘dine out’ here in London, you shall stay at home and be good-natured. I shall attain to all these delights just as easily with you as without you, I suppose; ‘No, I cannot marry some other woman and by her means and connections and connexions’—No—because—first and least of all, I begin by drawing on myself the entire cataract of shame and disgrace in the mouth of the world,—direct accusation or rather condemnation, against which not a word can be urged in mitigation, because all would be the pure simple truth—_I_ do this, who have been fretfully wincing under the mere apprehension of catching a mere spatter or two of gossiping scandal—which a very few words would get rid of, seeing that, in fact, the falseness of the imputation will be apparent to everybody with eyes to see—for after all, here I am, living to my own pleasure and my father and mother’s, and at liberty to do so for ever, as mortals say. Well, and _so_ having gone under the whole real cataract instead of the sprinkling impertinence of the half a dozen sprinklings from the mop at the nursery-window which an upward look and cry will stop at once,—_so_ having mended the matter, I commit a sin which I turn and ask you, should you be ever at peace with God and yourself if you sate still and suffered me to commit,—not on account of me and my harm to follow in both worlds,—but in mere justice to your ‘neighbour,’—on whom you would see inflicted this infamous wrong?
Dear, dear, dear Ba, I kiss you, kiss my heart out unto you,—best love, one love! _I_ see above what I will not think over again, look over again—but what then? Can I be quiet when I hear the least, least motion about my treasure, and my heart that is there, with it? Then _no more_, I beseech you, love, never one word more of all that! Whenever I can hear such words calmly, I shall be fit for agreeing to them,—let all be now. These two kindest of letters both come in together to my blessing—my entire blessing! I was writing the last line when they came—I will just say now, that the Greenwich affair is put off till Friday. Do not I understand Miss Bayley! And do I understand you, my Ba, when I venture this time——because of the _words_ and the pain I shall not hide that they _did_ give me,—to feel that, even beyond my kissing you, you kiss this one time your own R.B.
My mother is much better, and out—she is walking with my sister. I am very well—in the joy perhaps ... but really much better—and have been so.
_My two hundredth letter from her!_ I, _poor_?
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Wednesday. [Post-mark, June 18, 1846.]
Dearest and ever dearest, try to forgive me when I fall so manifestly short of you in all things! It is the very sense of this which throws me on despairs sometimes of being other than a bane to your life—and then ... by way of a remedy ... I begin to be a torment to it directly. _Forgive me._ Whatever I may say I am as wholly yours as if you held me in your hand, and I would do for you any extravagance, as if it were a common thing, at a word—and what is before us is _only_ a common thing, since I have looked to it from the beginning. Oh—I may talk when I am out of spirits—but you know, and _I_ know best of all, that I could not withdraw myself from you, unless you said ‘Go’—could not—I have no power. Fine talking, it is of me, to talk of withdrawing myself from you! You know I could not at all do it, let ever so many special pleaders come to prove to me that you would be more prosperous and happy without me. ‘Then’ I would say ... ‘let him put me away. I can’t put myself away, because I am not mine but his.’ Assuredly I would say just that, and no more. So do you forget that I have teazed you and pained you ... _pained_ you!... I will try not to pain you, my own, own dearest, any more. I have grown to love you instead of the whole world; and only one thing ... (you understand what _that_ is ...) is dreadful and intolerable to me to imagine. But now it is done with; and you shall teach me hereafter to make you happy instead of the contrary. So ... yes—you are kissed this time! upon both eyes, ... that they may not see my faults. And afterwards I will tell you a paradox ... that if I loved you a hundred times less, I should run into such offences less in exact proportion. And finally I will give you a promise ... not to teaze you for a week—which were a wonderful feat for _me_! the teazer _par excellence_.
To-day I deserved to hear of your head being worse—but it is better, I thank God—and your mother is better—all such comforting news! But it was no news that you did not go to Greenwich to-day,—for Mrs. Jameson came for me to drive at about six, and she and I were in Regent’s Park until nearly eight. Then she went somewhere to dinner, and I, who had had tea, came home to supper! I like her very much—more and more, certainly—and we need not be mysterious up to the usual mark of mystery, because I told her ... told her ... what might be told—and she was gracious to the uttermost—not angry at all,—and said that ‘Truth was truth, and one could breathe in the atmosphere of it, and she was glad I had told her.’ Of you, she said, that she admired you more than ever—yes, more than ever—for the ‘manner in which as a man of honour you had kept the secret’—so you were praised, and I, not blamed ... and we shall not complain, if our end is as good as our beginning. Also we talked of your poetry and of you personally, and I was _pleased_, ... which proves a little what was said—and I heard how you were invited as a ‘celebrity’ for the Countess Hahn-Hahn to see you, and how you effaced yourself with ever so much gracefulness; yet not too much, to omit charming the whole room. Mrs. Jameson praises you always, as nobody does better. And to-morrow ... will you be surprised to hear that to-morrow at half-past four, I am to go again with her, ... to see Rogers’s pictures? Is it wrong? shall I get into a scrape? She promised laughingly that I should be _incognita_ to the only companion she thought of taking ... a Mrs. Bracebridge, I think ... and Mr. Rogers himself is not to be visible—and she herself will mention it to nobody. It was hard to say ‘_no_’—yet perhaps ‘no’ would have been better. Do you think so? Mrs. Bracebridge is an artist and lives or lived on _Mount Hymettus_!—and she is not to hear my name even.
Now—good night, very dear!—most dear of all! I will not teaze you for a fortnight, I think. Ah—if ever I can do that again, you shall not be _pained_, ... you shall think that my heart and life are in you, and that, if they seem to flatter, it is that they go deeper. All I _am_ is yours—which is different from ... all I _have_. ‘All I _have_,’ is when I may lean my head down on the shoulder—
So let me be your own
BA.
Of those two letters, one was in the post before seven the evening before. Now, is it not too bad?
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Thursday. [Post-mark, June 18, 1846.]
Did you really kiss me on the two eyes, my Ba? I cannot say ‘perhaps at the very time I was thinking of you,’—more than ‘when I was breathing’—I breathe always, think of you always,—kiss you almost always. You dear, dearest Ba! Do _pain_ me so again and again,—if you will _so_ cure me every time! But you should not imagine that I can mistake the motive,—as if you loved me less and therefore wrote—oh, no—but there is no getting rid of these mistakings before the time: they bear their fruit and die away naturally ... the hoe never cuts up all their roots. I shall trust to hear you say one day I am past such mistaking—but—at Amalfi?
I am very glad, _love_, you go to Mr. Rogers’ to-day—what harm _can_ follow? The evil in the other case was a very precise and especial one. They say his pictures are well worth seeing. Tell me, make me see _you_ seeing! I am glad, too, Mrs. Jameson knows ... but her graciousness I expected, because the causes you were able to give her would really operate just in that manner: indeed they _are_ the sole causes of the secresy we have observed. I cannot help liking Mrs. Jameson more, much more since her acquaintance with you. Hazlitt says somewhere that the misery of consorting with country-people is felt when you try for their sympathy as to favourite actors—‘Liston?’ says the provincial, ‘never heard of him’—but—whoever knows Miss Barrett ... ‘Ba,’ they are not going to be let know ... of such a person _I_ know something more than of any other.
Talking of Hahn-Hahn, read this note of Mrs. Carlyle’s—although to my mortification I find that the wise man is not so peremptory on the virtue of one of Ba’s qualities as I, the ignorant man, must continue to be. Never mind,—perhaps ‘in the long run’ I may love you as if you were exactly to Mrs. Carlyle’s mind!
I want to tell you a thing not to be forgotten about Florence as a residence for any time. You spoke of the _bad water_ at Ravenna ... which if a serious inconvenience anywhere is a very plague in Italy; well, the medical people, according to Valléry, attribute the black hollow cheeks and sunk eyes and general ill health of the Florentines to their vile water; impregnated with lead, I think. There is only one good fountain in the city—that opposite Santa Croce; I religiously abstained from drinking water there—and felt the privation the more from having just left Rome, where the water is the most perfectly delicious and abundant and, they say, wholesome—in the world. That one objection is decisive against Ravenna—but then, why do the English all live at Florence?
It makes me happy to hear of your achievements and _not_ of any ill result—_happy_! Is it quite so warm to-day? If it were to rain to-morrow (!), IF—our party would be postponed till the next day, Saturday, I believe ... there was a kind of understanding to that effect—now, in that case, might I go to you to-morrow? In the case of real heavy rain only——the letter to-morrow will tell me perhaps....
Goodbye, dearest dearest; I love you wholly—
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday Evening. [Post-mark, June 19, 1846.]
But I have not been to Mr. Rogers’s to-day, after all. I had a note from Mrs. Jameson, to put off our excursion to Saturday ... if I consented to Saturday! but of course I would not consent to Saturday—and as she intimated that another day would do as well, we shall have another day fixed, I suppose. What a good fruit it would be of the confession I made in the park, if she were to ask _you_ to go!!! Oh, I should like _that_—I should like it notwithstanding the drawbacks. It would be a fair gain upon the usual times of meeting—only that I could not care quite as much for the pictures—yet, those too, I should like to see with you, rather than apart from you. And _you_ never saw them ... _you_! Is there a hope of her asking you when you are at Greenwich together? Now I have got this into my head, it will not go out again—oh, you must try and enchant her properly at Greenwich and lead her into asking you. Yet, with you or without you in the body, the spirit of you and the influence of you are always close to my spirit when it discerns any beauty or feels any joy; if I am happy on any day it is through you wholly, whether you are absent or present, dearest, and ever dearest!
And so, instead of Mr. Rogers’s pictures, I have been seeing you in my thoughts, as I sate here all alone to-day. When everybody was at dinner I remembered that I had not been out—it was nearly eight ... there was no companion for me unless I called one from the dinner-table; and Wilson, whom I thought of, had taken holiday. Therefore I put on my bonnet, as a knight of old took his sword,—aspiring to the pure heroic,—and called Flush, and walked down-stairs and into the street, all alone—_that_ was something great! And, with just Flush, I walked there, up and down in glorious independence. Belgium might have felt so in casting off the yoke. As to Flush, he frightened me a little and spoilt my vain-glory—for Flush has a very good, stout vain-glory of his own, and, although perfectly fond of me, has no idea whatever of being ruled over by me!—(he looks beautiful scorn out of his golden eyes, when I order him to do this or this) ... and _Flush_ chose to walk on the opposite side of the street,—he _would_,—he insisted on it! and every moment I expected him to disappear into some bag of the dogstealers, as an end to _his_ glory, _à lui_. Happily, however, I have no moral with which to point my tale—it’s a very immoral story, and shows neither Flush nor myself punished for our sins. Often, I am not punished for my sins, ... am I? _You_ know _that_ ... dearest, dearest! But then, even _you_ are not punished for your sins ... when you flatter so! Ah, it is happy for you, and for your reputation in good taste and sense, that you cannot very well say such things except to me, who cannot believe them. For the rest, the eyes were certainly blinded, ... being kissed too hard.
How I like Mrs. Carlyle’s note! You will go of course. But it will _not_ rain to-morrow, and you shall _not_ have the advantage of coming through it to me, ... for this reason (among others far better), that I have engaged to see, at three or four perhaps, a friend of ours from the country. She is in London for only two days and wrote to beg me to see her, and to-day I escaped by half a rudeness, and, if I do to-morrow, it will be by a whole rudeness. So, not to-morrow! And, if Saturday should be taken from us, we must find three days somehow next week—it will be easily done.
As to Florence, the flood of English is the worst water of all in the argument. And then Dr. Chambers ‘warned me off’ Florence, as being too cold for the winter. It would be as well not to begin by being ill; and half I am afraid of Ravenna—though Ravenna may _not_ be cold, and though Shelley may belie it altogether. ‘A miserable place’ he calls it in the ‘Letters.’ Still I observe that his first impressions are apt to be darker than remain. For instance, he began by hating Pisa, and preferred it to most places, afterwards. There is Pisa by the way! Or your Sorrento ... Salerno ... Amalfi ... you shall consider if you please—find a new place if you like.
It is my last letter perhaps till I see you. May God bless you, I lift up my heart to say. How happy I ought to be, ... and am, ... with your thoughts all round me, _so_, as you describe! Let them call me your very own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Friday Morning. [Post-mark, June 19, 1846.]
I shall hardly be able, I am afraid, to get your letter ... if one should come through your dear goodness, my own Ba ... before I go out ... having to meet the Procters’ party in Town: so I will just write my joy at its being little more now than twenty-four hours before I shall see you, I trust. The day is cool and nearer rain than I fancied probable—but, oh the task-work, Egyptian bondage, that _much_ going-out would be to me, who am tired (_unreasonably_) beforehand on this first and most likely last occasion during the year. It is a pity that I am so ignorant about Hahn-Hahn’s books—one, ‘Faustina,’ I got last night, but have neither heart nor time to ‘get it up’ in a couple of hours.
Something you said on Mrs. Jameson’s authority amused me—the encomium on my grace in sitting still to see the play and not jumping on the stage to act too—as if it were not the best privilege one finds in being ‘known’ never so little, that it dispenses one from having to make oneself known. When you are shipwrecked among Caribbee Indians you are forced to begin professing ‘I can make baskets, and tell fortunes, and foresee eclipses—so don’t eat me!’ And even there if they threatened nothing of the kind, I should be content to live and die as unhonoured as one of their own cabbage-trees.
I must go now—the day gets hotter, but then our day draws nearer—All my heart is yours, best of dearest loves, my own Ba, as I am your own—
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday. [Post-mark, June 22, 1846.]
What I told you yesterday is very often in my thoughts, my own Ba—that with respect to the love for you ‘I see what I know and testify what I have seen.’ I know what _is_, and _why_ it is—so far as my faculties of perception allow, of course—I rest on you just as I sate on the grass in the garden this morning with the very earth’s immensity beneath: that is very different from trusting to this chair which is firm enough now, but might break down from a thousand causes. How entirely I believe in you, Ba! When you praise me, I believe that you are in error, yet believe it none——I know I am not so truthful to you—not so invariably, in the least as in the greatest matters—in the _greatest_, in the ordinary even, I speak pure truth,—but the old conventional habits cling, as I find out on reflection sometimes—but I aspire no less to become altogether open to your sight as you are to me,—I in my degree,—like a smallest of lake’s face under the sky’s: and for this also I shall have to bless you, my only Ba,—my only Ba!
I ought never ... I think I will not again ... attempt to write down why I love you.... (not, NOT that it is done here, but alluded-to, touched upon ...) The elements of the love ... (I say ‘the’ love, _mine_, because I _will_ not know, nor hear, nor be taught anything by anybody else about ‘love,’ the one love everybody knows, it seems, and lives and dies by)—my love’s elements are so many that the attempt to describe them is to bring about this failure ... the first that comes is taken up and treated of at length ... as that element of ‘_trust_’ just now ... and then, in the feeling of incompetence which makes the pen sink away and turns the mind off, the others are let pass by unnamed, much less described, or at least acknowledged for the undeniable elements they are. What were all the _trust_ without—and thus I could begin again! Let me say no more now—and forgive all the foolishness ... it is not for my wisdom you are to love me, Ba! Except that if you agreed too heartily with me on that point, I should very likely be found turning round on you with ‘not wise, when I adore you _so_?’ Wise or unwise, I _do_ adore you, my Ba! And more and evermore! But see how I need your letters to _train_ mine, to lead them into something more like the true way ... and to-morrow the letter will come—will it not? And mine shall be less about myself and more about you—whom may God bless, prays your own
R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Sunday. [Post-mark, June 22, 1846.]
I write to you in the drawing-room, and have brought down with me, I find, no smaller paper—but it can’t be filled, can it? though I have to tell you the great news about the lilies ... that all, except _two_, are in full blow ... and that the two are unfolding ... I can almost see the leaves move. I told you how it would be. They will live, ... and last longer than the roses, ... which I shall have to tell you by history as well as prediction, presently. The next news is not so good,—for I have had a note from Mrs. Jameson to the effect that she will come to take me to the pictures to-morrow, Monday—so that there will be no time to be diplomatic. My hope was of your meeting her at Mr. Carlyle’s, before she could arrange anything finally,—and really I do feel as disappointed as if I had had a reason for the hope. Now, unless we have another miracle, there’s an end, I suppose.
Think of my having left Flush behind me fast asleep. He dashes at the door in the most peremptory way, and nearly throws me backward when I open it, with his leaping-up-joy ... if it is not rather his reproach.
Now I am here all alone, except Flush—sitting, leaning against the open window with my feet curled up, and, at them, Flush curled up too; and I writing on my knee _more meo_. Rather cooler it seems, but rather too hot still it is, I think. How did you get home? how are you, dearest? And your mother? tell me of her, and of you! You always, you know (_do_ you know?), leave your presence with me in the flowers; and, as the lilies unfold, of course I see more and more of you in each apocalypse. Still, the Saturday’s visit is the worst of all to come to an end, as always I feel. In the first place stands Sunday, like a wall without a door in it! no letter! Monday is a good day and makes up a little, but it does not prevent Tuesday and Wednesday following ... more intervening days than between the other meetings—or so it seems. I forgot to tell you that yesterday I went to Mr. Boyd’s house ... not to see him, but as a preliminary step to seeing him. Arabel went to his room to tell him of my being there—we are both perhaps rather afraid of meeting after all these years of separation. Quite blind he is—and though scarcely older than Mr. Kenyon (perhaps a year or two or three), so nervous, that he has really made himself infirm, and now he refuses to walk out or even to go down-stairs. A very peculiar life he has led ever since he lost his sight, which he did when he was quite a young man—and a very peculiar person he is in all possible ways. His great faculty is ... _memory_ ... and his great passion ... Greek—to which of late he has added _Ossian_. Otherwise, he talks like a man of slow mind, which he is, ... and with a child’s way of looking at things, such as would make you smile—oh, he talks in the most wonderfully childish way! Poor Mr. Boyd. He cares for me perhaps more than he cares for any one else ... far more than for his own only daughter; but he is not a man of deep sensibility, and, if he heard of my death, would merely sleep a little sounder the next night. Once he said to me that whenever he felt sorry about anything, he was inclined to go to sleep. An affectionate and grateful regard ... grateful for many kindnesses ... I bear him, for my part. He says that I should wear the crown in poetry, if I would but follow Pope—but that the dreadful system of running lines one into another ruins everything. When I talk of _memory_, I mean merely the mechanical faculty. The _associative_, which makes the other a high power, he wants. So I went to his house in St. John’s Wood yesterday, and saw the little garden. Poor Mr. Boyd. There, he lives, all alone—and never leaving his chair! yet cheerful still, I hear, in all that desolation. As for you and Tennyson, he never heard of you ... he never guesses at the way of modern literature ... and it is the intense compliment to me when he reads verses of mine, ‘notwithstanding my corrupt taste,’ ... to quote his own words.
Dearest, do you love me to-day? I think of you, which is quite the same thing. Think of _me_ to-morrow at half-past four when Mrs. Jameson comes, and I shall have all that exertion to go through without the hope of you. Only that you are always _there_ ... _here_!—and I, your very own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Monday. [Post-mark, June 22, 1846.]
If I only thought for myself in this instance, I should at once go and mount guard before your house so as to see you, at least, for a moment as you leave it.
To hope for a word would never do ... you might be startled, or simply not like such a measure, and _in simili incontri_ I will not run risks, but I should be able to _see_ you, my Ba ... why do I not go then? People at doors and windows are also able, alas, to see _me_ too—so I stay ... if this _is_ staying away when I can see the curled-up feet and kiss them beside,—ever-dear feet!
Do _you_ know the days and the times and the long interval,—you, as _I_ know? How strange that you should complain, and I become the happier! If I could alter it, and make you feel no subject for complaint any longer, I _would_,—surely I would, and be happy in that too, I hope ... yet the other happiness needs must be given up in that case ... I cannot reason it out. I excuse my present selfish happiness by feeling I would not exchange the sadness of being away from you for any imaginable delight in which you had no part. But I will have this delight, too, my Ba, of imagining that you are gratified by what you will see to-day. Tell me all, and what is said, and how you are at the end.
Thank you meanwhile for the picture of poor Mr. Boyd ... then he never _has_ seen you, since he was blind so long ago! How strange and melancholy—you say he is ‘cheerful,’ however. In that case—think of unhappy Countess Faustina with her ‘irresistible longings,’ and give her as much of your commiseration as she ought to get. What a horrible book ... how have I brought in what I prescribed to myself ‘silence about.’ Such characters as Faustina produce the very worst possible effect on me—I don’t know how they strike other people—but I am at once incited ‘debellare superbos’—to try at least and pull down the arrogant—_contempt_ would be the most Christian of all the feelings possible to be called forth by such a woman. Let me get back to you, my own dearest-dearest,—I _do_ ‘love you to-day,’ if you must ask,—and bidding me think of you is all very well—never bid me not think of you!—and so never find out that there could be a bidding I am unable to obey. But what is mere ‘_thinking_’? I kiss your hand, and your eyes, and now your lips,—and ask for my heart back again, to give it and be ever giving it. No words can tell how I am your own.
My mother is much better,—observably so, to-day. Oh, dearest,—I want you to read Landor’s Dialogue between Tasso and his Sister, in the second volume,—with the exquisite Sorrentine scenery—do read it. I see your Tasso with his prominent eyes as if they were ever just brightening out of a sorrow that has broken over them.
How I like (‘love’ is not my word now) but like Landor, more and more!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Monday Evening. [Post-mark, June 23, 1846.]
Well—I did look everywhere for you to-day,—but not more than I always do—always I do, when I go out, look for you in the streets ... round the corners! And Mrs. Jameson came _alone_ and she and I were alone at Mr. Rogers’s, and you must help me to thank her some day for her unspeakable kindness to me, though she did not leap to the height of the inspiration of managing to let us see those pictures together. Ah—if she had, it would have been too much. As it is, she gave me a great deal of pleasure in the kindest of ways ... and I let it _be_ pleasure, by mixing it with enough thoughts of you—(otherwise how could it be pleasure?)—and she showed the pictures, and instructed me, really taking pains and instructing me ... and telling me how Rubens painted landscapes ... as how should my ignorance guess? ... and various other unknown things The first word as we reached the door, frightened me—for she said that perhaps we might see Mr. Rogers ... which was a little beyond our covenant—but we did not see him, and I suppose the Antinous on the staircase is not at all like him. Grand it is, in its serene beauty. On a colossal scale, in white marble. For the pictures, they are full of wonder and divinity—each giving the measure of a man’s soul. And think ... sketches from the hand of Michael Angelo and Raphael! And a statuette in clay, alive with the life of Michael Angelo’s finger—the blind eyes looking ... seeing ... as if in scorn of all clay! And the union of energy and meditation in the whole attitude! You have seen the marble of that figure in Florence. Then, a divine Virgin and child, worn and faded to a shadow of Raphael’s genius, as Mrs. Jameson explained to me—and the famous ‘Ecce Homo’ of Guido ... and Rubens’ magnificent ‘_version_,’ as she called it, of Andrea Mantegna’s ‘Triumph of Julius Cæsar.’ So triumphing to this day! And Titian, and Tintoretto ... and what did not strike me the least, ... a portrait of Rembrandt by himself, which if his landscapes, as they say, were ‘dug out of nature,’ looks as if it were dug out of humanity. Such a rugged, dark, deep subterraneous face, ... yet inspired—! seeming to realize that God took clay and breathed into the nostrils of it. There are both the clay, and the divinity! And think! I saw the agreement between the bookseller and Milton for the sale of Paradise Lost! with Milton’s signature and seal! and ‘_Witnessed by William Greene, Mr. Milton’s servant._’ How was it possible not to feel giddy with such sights! Almost I could have run my head against the wall, I felt, with bewilderment—and Mrs. Jameson must have been edified, I have thought since, through my intense stupidity. I saw too the first edition of ‘Paradise Lost.’ The rooms are elegant, with no pretension to splendour ... which is good taste, a _part_ of the good taste everywhere. Only, on the chimney-piece of the dining-room, were two small busts, beautiful busts, white with marble, ... and representing—now, whom, of gods and men, would you select for your Lares ... to help your digestion and social merriment?... Caligula and Nero in _childhood_! The ‘_childhood_’ is horribly suggestive to me! On the side-board is Pope’s bust, by Roubillac—a too expressive, miserable face—drawn with disease and bitter thoughts, and very painful, I felt, to look at. These things I liked least, in the selection and arrangement. Everything beside was admirable: and I write and write of it all as if I were not tired—but I am ... and most with the excitement and newness. Mrs. Jameson breakfasted with Mr. Rogers yesterday, she said, and met the Countess Hahn-Hahn, who was talking of modern literature when her host suddenly stopped her with a question ... ‘Did you ever read Addison?’
How late it is. Must I have done, before I have half done?
What I did _not_ tell you yesterday is very much in my thoughts ... do you know? _I_, too, ‘see what I know and testify what I have felt ... and, as far as my faculties of perception go!’ I am confident that you had better not look for a single reason for loving me. Which is worst? A bad reason, or no reason at all? A bad reason, _I_ think—and accept the alternative. Ah ... my own only beloved. And how you write to me to-night! I will read what you tell me in Landor ... but no words of inspired lips or pen ... no poet’s word, of the divinest, ... ever went to my heart as yours in these letters! Do I not love you? am I not your own? And while deserving nothing of all of it, I _feel_ it at least—respond to it—my heart is in your hand. May God bless you ... ‘_and me in that_,’—because even He could not bless me without _that_. Which He knows.
Your own.
But there is much beauty in Faustina—oh, surely!
The lilies, all in blow except one ... which is blowing.
Are we going to have a storm to-night? It lightens ... lightens!
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday Morning [Post-mark, June 23, 1846.]
I was just on the point of answering your dear letter, in all the good spirits it might be expected to wake in me, when the sad news of poor Haydon’s death stopped all; much I feel it, for the light words of my own about his extravagance, as I had been told of it, but very much more on your account, who were so lately in communication with him. I earnestly hope,—I will trust—you have not been rudely apprised of this—I am happy to remember that you do not see the newspaper in the morning,—others will see it first; perhaps there may be no notice in the _Chronicle_ at all, or on the other hand, a more circumstantial one than this in the _Times_ which barely says—‘that B.R.H. died suddenly at his residence—yesterday morning. He was in his usual health on the previous evening, and it is believed that his decease was hastened by pecuniary embarrassment’—and he is called ‘the unfortunate gentleman’—which with the rest implies the very worst, I fear. If by any chance _this_ should be the first intimation you receive of it ... do not think me stupid nor brutal,—for I thought again and again as to the right course to take ... whether it would not be best to be silent altogether and wait and see ... but in that case I should have surprised you more by my cold letter,—such an one as I could bring myself to write,—for how were it possible to speak of pictures and indifferent matters when you perhaps have been shocked, made ill by this news? If I have done wrong, forgive me, my own best, dearest Ba—I would give the world to know how you are. The storm, too, and lightning may have made you even more than ordinarily unfit to be startled and grieved. God knows and must help you! I am but your devoted—
* * * * *
How glad I am you told me you had never seen him. And perhaps he may be after all a mere acquaintance ... anything I will fancy that is likely to relieve you of pain! Dearest dearest!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday. [Post-mark, June 24, 1846.]
Ever tenderest, kindest and most beloved, I thank you from the quick of my heart, where the thought of you lives constantly! In this world full of sadness, of which I have had my part ... full of sadness and bitterness and wrong ... full of most ghastly contrasts of life and death, strength and weakness side by side ... it is too much, to have _you_ to hold by, as the river rushes on ... too much good, too much grace for such as I, ... as I feel always, and cannot cease to feel!
Oh yes—it has shocked me, this dreadful news of poor Mr. Haydon—it chilled the blood in my veins when I heard it from Alfred, who, seeing the _Times_ at the Great Western Terminus, wrote out the bare extract and sent it to me by the post. He just thought that the _Chronicle_ did not mention it, ... and that I had not seen Mr. Haydon ... he did not perhaps think how it would shock me.
For, _this_ _I_ cannot help thinking. Could anyone—_could my own hand even ... have averted what has happened_? My head and heart have ached to-day over the inactive hand! But, for the moment, it was out of my power, without an application where it would have been useless—and then, I never fancied this case to be more than a piece of a continuous case ... of a habit fixed. Two years ago he sent me boxes and pictures precisely so, and took them back again—poor, poor Haydon!—as he will not this time. And he said last week that Peel had sent him fifty pounds ... adding ... ‘I do not however want _charity_, but employment.’ Also, I have been told again and again (oh, never by _you_ my beloved!) that to give money _there_, was to drop it into a hole of the ground.
But if to have dropped it so, dust to dust, would have saved a living man—what then?
Yet of the three notes I had from him last week, the first was written so lightly, that the second came to desire me not to attribute to him a ‘want of feeling.’ And who could think ... contemplate ... this calamity? May God have mercy on the strongest of us, for we are weak. Oh, that a man so high hearted and highly endowed ... a bold man, who has thrown down gauntlet after gauntlet in the face of the world—that such a man should go mad for a few paltry pounds! For he was _mad_ if he killed himself! of that I am as sure as if I knew it. If he killed himself, he was mad first.
Some day, when I have the heart to look for it, you shall see his last note. I understand now that there are touches in it of a desperate pathos—but never could he have meditated self-destruction while writing that note. He said he should write six sets of lectures more ... six more volumes. He said he was painting a new background to a picture, which made him ‘feel as if his soul had wings.’ And then he hoped his brain would not turn. And he ‘gloried’ in the naval dangers of his son at sea. And he repeated an old phrase of his, which I had heard from him often before, and which now rings hollowly to the ears of my memory ... that he _couldn’t and wouldn’t die_. Strange and dreadful!
It is nearly two years since we had a correspondence of some few months—from which at last I receded, notwithstanding the individuality and spirit of his letters, and my admiration for a certain fervour and magnanimity of genius, no one could deny to him. His very faults partook of that nobleness. But for a year and a half or more perhaps, I scarcely have written or heard from him—until last week when he wrote to ask for a shelter for his boxes and pictures. If you had enquired of me the week before, I might have answered that I did not _wish to renew the intercourse_—yet who could help being shocked and saddened? _Would_ it have availed, to have dropped something into that ‘hole in the ground?’ Oh, to imagine _that_! Yet a little would have been but as nothing!—and he did not ask even for a little—and I should have been ashamed to have offered but a little. Yet I cannot turn the thought away—_that I did not offer_.
Henry went to the house as I begged him. His son came to the door, and to a general enquiry ‘after the family,’ said that ‘Mr. Haydon was dead and that his family were quite as well as could be expected.’ That horrible banality is all I know more than you know.
Yesterday at Rogers’s, Mrs. Jameson led me to his picture of Napoleon at St. Helena. At the moment we looked at it, his hand was scarcely cold, perhaps. Surely it was not made of the commonest clay of men—that hand!
I pour out my thoughts to you, dearest dearest, as if it were right rather to think of doing myself that good and relief, than of _you_ who have to read all. But you spoil me into an excess of liberty, by your tenderness. Best in the world! Oh—you help me to live—I am better and lighter since I have drawn near to you even on this paper—already I am better and lighter. And now I am going to dream of you ... to meet you on some mystical landing place ... in order to be quite well to-morrow. Oh—we are so selfish on this earth, that nothing grieves us very long, let it be ever so grievous, unless we are touched in _ourselves_ ... in the apple of our eye ... in the quick of our heart ... in _what_ you are, and _where_ you are ... my own dearest beloved! So you need not be afraid for _me_! We all look to our own, as I to _you_; the thunderbolts may strike the tops of the cedars, and, except in the first start, none of us be moved. True it is of _me_—not of _you_ perhaps—certainly you are better than I, in all things. Best in the world, you are!—no one is like you. Can you read what I have written? Do not love me less! Do you think that I cannot _feel_ you love me, through all this distance? If you loved me less, I should know, without a word or a sign. Because I live by your loving me! I am your
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday. [Post-mark, June 24, 1846.]
But, dearest love—I have just come in later than I expected, I am happy to say ... for your note only just arrives too, they say ... and I should have been frightened more than I need say. All blessing on you, Ba. I have seen no paper.—but Countess Hahn-Hahn said across Carlyle’s table that poor H. had attempted to shoot himself and then chosen another method—too successful. Horrible indeed—All to say now is, I shall be with you to-morrow,—my very own, dearest of all dear created things—my life and pride and joy—(Bless you).
R.
There is nothing in to-day’s _Times_ I find—
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Friday Morning. [Post-mark, June 26, 1846.]
I drew the table to the fire before I wrote this. Here is cool weather, grateful to those overcome by last week’s heat, I suppose!—much as one conceives of a day’s starvation being grateful to people who were overfeasted some time back. But the coolness (that is, piercing cold as the north wind can make) sets me to ponder on what you said yesterday,—of considering summer as beginning next Wednesday, or there about, and ending by consequence with September. Our time is ‘at the Summer’s end’: and it does strike me that there may be but too many interpositions beside that of ‘my own will’ ... far too many. If those equinoctial winds disturb the sea, the cold weather adds to the difficulties of the land-journey ... then the will may interpose or stand aloof ... I cannot take you and kill you ... really, inevitably kill you! As it is ... or rather, as it might be, I should feel during a transit under the most favourable circumstances possible, somewhat as the performer of that trick by which a full glass of water resting in the open hand is made to describe a circle from above to below and back without spilling a drop—through some good-natured suspension, in the operator’s interest, of just a fundamental law of the universe, no more! Therefore if any September weather shall happen in September ... let us understand and wait ... another year! and another, and another.
Now, have I ever, with all those askings, asked you once too often, that is, unnecessarily—‘if this should be,’—or ‘when this should be?’ What is my ‘will’ to do with it? Can I keep the winds away, alas? My own will has all along been annihilated before you,—with respect to you—I should never be able to say ‘she shall dine on fish, or fruit,’ ‘She shall wear silk gloves or thread gloves’—even to exercise in fancy that much ‘will _over you_’ is revolting—I _will this_, never to be ‘over you’ if I could!
So, you decide here as elsewhere—but _do_ decide, Ba, my own only Ba—do _think_, to decide. I _can_ know nothing here as to what is gained or lost by delay or anticipation—I only refer to the few obvious points of the advantage of our ‘flight not being in the winter’—and the consideration that the difficulty in another quarter will never be less nor more,—therefore is out of the question.
I will tell you something I meant to speak of yesterday. Mrs. Jameson said Mr. Kenyon had assured her, with the kindest intentions, that it was quite vain to make those offers of company to Pisa or elsewhere, for your Father would never give his consent, and the very rationality of the plan, and probability of the utmost benefit following the adoption of it, would be the harder to forego the more they were entertained—whereupon, ‘having the passions of his kind he spoke some certain things’—bitter and unavoidable. Then Mrs. J. spoke too, as you may imagine; apparently from better knowledge than even I possess. Now I repeat this to your _common-sense_, my Ba—it is not hard to see that _you_ must be silent and suffering, where no other can or will be either—so that if a verdict needs must be pronounced on our conduct, it will be ‘the world’s’ and not an individual’s—and for once a fair one. Mrs. Jameson’s very words were ... (writing from what _has been_, observe—what is irrevocably past, and not what _may_ be)—‘I feel unhappy when in her presence ... impelled to do her some service, and impeded. _Can_ nothing be done to rescue her from this? _ought_ it to continue?’ So speaks—not your lover!—who, as he told you, _did_ long to answer ‘someone with attempt, at least!’ But it was best, for Mrs. Jameson would be blamed afterward, as Mr. K. might be abused, as ourselves will be vituperated, as my family must be calumniated ... by _whom_.
Do you feel me kiss your feet while I write this? I think you must, Ba! There is surely,—I trust, surely no impatience here, in this as in the other letter—if there is, I will endeavour to repress it ... but it will be difficult—for I love you, and am not a stock nor a stone.
And as we are now,—another year!
Well, kissing the feet answers everything, declares everything—and I kiss yours, my own Ba.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday Morning. [Post-mark, June 26, 1846.]
Arabel insists on my going out in the carriage, but I will not, I say, before I have written my letter—and while we talk, the rain comes down like a guardian angel, and I _cannot_ go out before I have written my letter, as is apparent to all. Dearest, you did me such good yesterday with seeing you and hearing you, that I slept better and am better altogether, and after a little change into the air, shall be well—and how is your head? Now do not forget to tell me particularly. Say too whether you found your friend and had the right quantity of talk and got home without being the worse for him ... or _me_!
I have not had the heart to look at the newspapers, but hear that Sir Robert Peel has provided liberally for the present necessities of the poor Haydons. And do you know, the more I think the more I am inclined to conclude that the money-distress was merely an additional irritation, and that the despair leading to the revolt against life, had its root in disappointed ambition. The world did not recognize his genius, and he punished the world by withdrawing the light. If he had not that thought in him, I am wrong. The cartoon business, and his being refused employment in the Houses of Parliament ... _that_ was bitter: and then came his opposition with Tom Thumb and the dwarfs triumph ... he talked bitterly of _that_ in a letter to me of last week. He was a man, you see, who carried his whole being and sensibility on the outside of him; nay, worse than _so_, since in the thoughts and opinions of the world. All the audacity and bravery and self-exultation which drew on him so much ridicule were an agony in disguise—he could not live without reputation, and he wrestled for it, struggled for it, _kicked_ for it, forgetting grace of attitude in the pang. When all was vain, he went mad and died. Poor Haydon! He measures things differently now! and let _us_ now be right and just in our admeasurement of what he was—for, with all his weaknesses, he was not certainly _far_ from being a great man.
It is hope and help, to be able to look away from all such thoughts, to _you_, dearest beloved, who do not partake of the faults and feeblenesses of these lower geniuses. There is hope and help for the world in you—and if for the world, why for me indeed much more. You do not know ... ah, you do not know—how I look up to you and trust perfectly in you. You are above all these clouds—your element is otherwise—men are not your taskmasters that you should turn to them for recompense. ‘Shall I always think the same of you,’ you asked yesterday. But I _never_ think the same of you; because day by day you look greater and feel dearer. Only there is a deep gulph of another question, close beside _that_, which suggests itself, and makes me shudder to look down.
And now, the rain is over, and I shall dine briefly, and go out in the carriage.
May God bless you ... très bon!—très cher, pour cause.
Toute à toi—pour toujours.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday Evening. [Post-mark, June 27, 1846.]
Ever dearest, I send you a bare line to-night, for it is late and I am very tired; having ... while you were sitting by the fire ... been, for my part, driving to Highgate ... now think of _that_! Also it has done me good, I think, and I shall sleep for it to-night perhaps, though I am tired certainly.
Your letter shall be answered to-morrow—and here is a green answer to your leaves![3]—what leaves? whence and how? My green little branch, I gathered myself out of the hedge, snatching at it from the carriage-window. The roses were gone, or nearly gone, and the few left, quite out of reach; and the leaves keep behind to assure you that they do not look for snow-storms in _September_. No! it was not _that_, they said. I am belying what they said.
I gathered them in the hedge of the pretty close green lane which you go through to Hampstead. Were you ever there, I wonder?
Dearest, I will write to-morrow. Never are you ‘impatient,’ inconsiderate—and as for selfishness, I have been uneasy sometimes, precisely because you are so _little_ selfish. I am not likely to mistake ... to wrench the wrong way ... any word of yours. As for mine, it was not a _mere_ word, when I said that you should decide everything. Could I hold out for November, or October, or for September even, if _you_ choose against? Indeed I could not. We—you will think—I am yours, and if _you_ never repent _that_, _I_ shall not—I am too entirely yours.
And so good-night—dearest beloved! Because you have a fire in June, is the snow to fall in September, and earth and ocean to become impassable? Ah well! we shall see! But you shall not see that I deceive you—
I am your very own
_Ba_.
Dear brown leaves! where did they come from, besides from _you_?
_Not_ a north wind. Only a north-west wind, as I could have proved to you if you had been with me! Yet it is a detestable climate, this English climate, let us all confess. Say how your head is.
[3] [A sprig from rose-tree enclosed. R.B.’s previous letter contained some leaves.]
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Saturday. [Post-mark, June 27, 1846.]
Your dear gentle laugh, as I seem to hear it, makes all well again for the moment undoubtedly. I cannot help trusting you implicitly ... so whenever I seem able to reason a little, and set you reasoning for me, ought I not to try,—and then give up, and sink my head over you ... dearest! In fact, I was a little frightened by what I heard and saw ... for _you_, if you please, began by saying ‘it was too cold to go out’—and you were paler, I thought. The news of Highgate and the green leaves are re-assuring indeed—but my brown leaves might be sent to you by myriads for all that, for all the light laugh,—all roses fast going, lilies going ... autumnal hollyhocks in full blow ... and now to count three months over before summer is to end! These rains may do something, or hinder somewhat—and certainly our fire was left alone early yesterday morning. Well, I have not been presumptuous except ... ah, the exception!
How could I presume, for one thing, to hope for last evening’s letter ... a pure piece of kindness in you, Ba! And all your kindness is pure, entire, pearl-like for roundness and completeness ... there is no one rough side as when a crystal is broken off and given: do you think it no good augury of our after life in what must be called, I suppose, another relation,—that _this_ has been so perfect ... to me ... this last year, let me only say? In this relation there are as many ‘écueils’ as in the other,—as many, though of a different nature,—lovers quarrel on as various grounds as the wedded—and though with the hue and softness of love the most energetic words and deeds may change their character; yet one might write savage sentences in Chinese celestial-blue ink, which after a powdering with gold-dust should look prettier than the truest blessing in ordinary black. But you have been PERFECT to me hitherto—perfect! And of course only to _you_ is the praise ... for I have to be entirely confided in by you, seeing that you cannot keep an eye on me after I leave your room ... whereas,—not I, but a gross, stupid fool who conceived of no liberty but that of the body, nor that the soul may be far more unfaithful—such an one might exult in the notion of the closed door and the excluded world of rivals.
Bless you, darling—Monday is not very far off now! And I am to hear again. I am much better,—my mother much better too. I saw my French friend and talked and heard him talk. Yesterday, the whole day, (after the fire went out) was given to a cousin of mine, a girl, just married, and here from Paris with her husband—these two had to be amused somehow. Ever your very own—
R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Saturday. [Post-mark, June 27, 1846.]
I said I would answer your letter to-day, my beloved, but how shall I say more than I have said and you know? _Do_ you not know, you who will not will ‘over’ me, that I _cannot_ will against you, and that if you set yourself seriously to take September for October, and August for September, it is all at an end with me and the calendar? Still, seriously ... there is time for deciding, is there not? ... even if I grant to you, which I do at once, that the road does not grow smoother for us by prolonged delays. The single advantage perhaps of delay is, that in the summer I get stronger every week and fitter to travel—and then, it never was thought of before (that I have heard) to precede September _so_. Last year, was I not ordered to leave England in October, and _permitted_ to leave it in November? Yet I agree, November and perhaps October might be late—might be running a risk through lingering ... in our case; and you will believe me when I say I should be loth to run the risk of being forced to the further delay of a year—the position being scarcely tenable. Now for September, it generally passes for a hot month—it ripens the peaches—it is the figtime in Italy. Well—nobody decides for September nevertheless. The end of August is nearer—and at any rate we can consider, and observe the signs of the heavens and earth in the meanwhile—there is so much to think of first; and the end, remember, is only too frightfully easy. Also you shall not have it on your conscience to have killed me, let ever so much snow fall in September. If the sea should be frozen over, almost we might go by the land—might we not? and apart from fabulous ports, there are the rivers—the Seine, the Saône, the Rhone—which might be cheaper than the sea and the steamers; and _would_, I almost should fancy. These are things among the multitude, to think of, and you shall think of them, dearest, in your wisdom. Oh—there is time—full time.
No—there is not, in a sense. I wanted to write so much more, so much—and I went out to walk first, and, on returning, met Mr. Kenyon, who came up-stairs with me.
Now it is too late to add a word.
May God bless you. I shall see you on Monday. I am better for Highgate—I walked longer to-day than usual. How strong you make me, you who make me happy!
I am your own.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday. [Post-mark, June 29, 1846.]
My last letter will have answered this of yours, my dearest,—I agree in all you say; and sooner or later comes to the same thing, if to any possible increase of difficulty is brought a proportionate increase of strength to undergo it—as let us hope will be the case! So you see you have to ‘understand’ and understand me,—I keep your faculty in constant exercise, now with seeming to wish for postponement, and now, for anticipation! And all the time do I really ‘grow greater’ in your eyes? I might grow less woefully,—‘for reasons—for reasons’—
The sea will not be frozen, beside ... which makes me think to tell you that Carlyle is wanting to visit only one foreign country—_Iceland_. The true cradle of the Northmen and their virtues ... all that is worth a Northman’s caring to see is there, he thinks, and nowise in Italy. Perhaps! Indeed, so I _reason_ and say—Did I not once turn on myself and speak against the Southern spirit, and even Dante, just because of that conviction?—(or _imperfect_ conviction, whence the uneasy exaggeration). Carlyle thinks modern Italy’s abasement a direct judgment from God. ‘Here is a nation in whose breast arise men who _could_ doubt, examine the new problems of the reformation &c.—trim the balance at intervals, and throw overboard the accumulation of falsehood—all other nations around, less favoured, are doing it laboriously for themselves ... now is the time for the acumen of the Bembos, the Bentivoglios and so forth ... and these and their like, one and all, turn round, decline the trouble, say ‘these things _may_ be true, or they may not, meantime let us go on verse-making, painting, music-scoring’—to which all the nation accedes as if relieved of a trouble—upon which God bids the Germans go in and possess them; pluck their fruits and feel their sun after their own hard work.’ Carlyle said the _sense_ of this, between two huge pipe-whiffs, the other afternoon.
‘Pluck their fruits’—some four years ago I planted ... or held straight while my mother planted, a fig-tree,—for love of Italy! This year it bears its first fruit ... a single one! what does that bode?
Since I wrote the last paragraph, the wind took my thoughts away, as it always does, and I saw you again as I used to see, _before_ I knew you, so very substanceless, faint, unreal—when I was struck by the reality again,—by this paper,—by to-morrow’s visit I shall pay ... it was as if someone had said ‘but that star is your own.’
I fancied you just what I find you—I knew you from the beginning.
Let me kiss you dearest dearest—
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Morning. [Post-mark, June 30, 1846.]
The gods and men call you by your name, but I never do—never dare. In case of invocation, tell me how you should be called by such as I? not to be always the ‘inexpressive _He_’ which I make of you. In case of courage for invocation!—
Dearest ... (which is a name too) read on the paper inside what I have been studying about Salerno since we parted yesterday. Forsyth is too severe in his deductions, perhaps, from the apothecaries, but your Naples book will not help me to contradict him, saying neither the one thing nor the other. The word we could not read in the letter yesterday, was _La Cava_—and La Cava is a town on the way between Naples and Salerno, which Mrs. Stark describes as ‘a large town with porticoes on each side of the High Street, like those at Bologna.’ To which the letter adds, remember ‘enchantingly beautiful, very good air and no English. Then there is Vietri, mentioned by Forsyth, between La Cava and Salerno, and _on the bay_. It is as well to think of all three. Were you ever at either? Amalfi itself appears to be very habitable. Oh—and your Naples book says of Salerno, that it is illuminated by fireflies, and that the chanting of frogs covers the noises of the city. You will like the frogs, if you don’t the apothecaries, and I shall like the fireflies if I don’t the frogs—but I _do_ like frogs, you know, and it was quite a mistake of yours when you once thought otherwise.
Now I am going out in the carriage, to call on Mr. Kenyon, and perhaps to see Mr. Boyd. Your flowers are more beautiful than they were yesterday, if possible: and the fresh coolness helps them to live, so, that I hope you may see some of them on Saturday when you come. On Saturday! What a time to wait! if not for _them_, yet for _me_. Of the two, it is easier for them, certainly. _They_ only miss a little dew and air.
I shall write again to-night,—but I cannot be more then than now, nor less _ever_ than now
Your own
BA.
Here is a coincidence. Hardly had you left me, when, passing near the table at the end of the room, I saw a parcel there. Remember your question about the ‘_Year of the World_’ Precisely that! With a note, the counterpart of yours—desiring an opinion!
May God bless you, dear, _dear_!—Did I ever think I should live to thank God that I did not die five years ago?—Not that I quite, quite dare to do it yet. I must be sure first of something.
Which is not your _love_, my beloved—it is a something still dearer and of more consequence.
SALERNO.
‘Though placed between the beauties of sea and land, of cultivated and rude nature, the city is _so unhealthy_ that its richer inhabitants remove to Vietri during the hot months. In proof of its bad air, I remark here a number of apothecaries!’
FORSYTH.
‘Its white houses curving round the haven at the water’s brink, the mountains crowding close behind the city, the ruins of its Gothic castle on the olive-covered hill above, together mirrored on the waveless water, itself alternate shine and shadow—’tis a noble sight.
‘The view from Salerno is one of the loveliest pictures in Italy. A clear-complexioned, open-eyed, and bright-faced city is modern Salerno,—and its streets and piazza were all astir.’
_Letters from Naples._
‘This town, the approach to which is enchanting, boasts a tolerably good _inn_!!’
MRS. STARKE.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday. [Post-mark, June 30, 1846.]
I have looked in the map for ‘L——,’ the place praised in the letter, and conclude it must be either Ceva, (La Ceva, between Nocera and Salerno, about four miles from the latter, and on the mountain-side, I suppose ... see a map, my Ba!)—or else _Lucera_, (which looks very like the word ... and which lies at about sixty miles to the N.E. of Naples, in a straight line over the mountains and roadless country, but perhaps twice as far by the mainway through _Avellino_, _Ariano_, _Bovino_, and Savia—exactly 120 Italian miles now that I count the posts). So that there would be somewhat of a formidable journey to undertake after the sea voyage. I daresay at Ceva there is abundance of quietness, as the few who visit Salerno do not go four miles inland,—can you enquire into this?
How inexpressibly charming it is to me to have a pretext for writing thus ... about such approaches to the real event—these business-like words, and names of places! If at the end you should bring yourself to say ‘But you never seriously believed this would take place’—what should I answer, I wonder?
Let me think on what is real, indisputable, however ... the improvement in the health as I read it on the dear, dear cheeks yesterday. This morning is favourable again ... you will go out, will you not?
Mr. Kenyon sends me one of his kindest letters to ask me to dine with him next week—on Wednesday. I feel _his_ kindness, just as you feel in the other case, and in its lesser degree, I feel it,—and then I know,—dare think I know whether he will be so sorry in the end,—loving you as he does. I will send his letter that you may understand here as elsewhere.
I think my head is dizzy with reading the debates this morning—Peel’s speech and farewell. How exquisitely absurd, it just strikes me, would be any measure after Miss Martineau’s own heart, which should introduce women to Parliament as we understand its functions at present—how essentially retrograde a measure! Parliament seems no place for originating, creative minds—but for second-rate minds influenced by and bent on working out the results of these—and the most efficient qualities for such a purpose are confessedly found oftener with men than with women—physical power having a great deal to do with it beside. So why shuffle the heaps together which, however arbitrarily divided at first, happen luckily to lie pretty much as one would desire,—here the great flint stones, here the pebbles—and diamonds too. The men of genius knew all this, said more than all this, in their way and proper place on the outside, where Miss M. is still saying something of the kind—to be taken up in its time by some other Mr. Cobden and talked about, and beleaguered. But such people cannot or will not see where their office begins and advantageously ends; and that there is such a thing as influencing the influencers, playing the Bentham to the Cobden, the Barry to a Commission for Public Works, the Lough to the three or four industrious men with square paper caps who get rules and plummets and dot the blocks of marble all over as his drawings indicate. So you and I will go to Salerno or L—— (not to the L—akes, Heaven forefend!) and if we ‘let sail winged words, freighted with truth from the throne of God’—we may be sure——
Ah, presumption all of it! Then, you shall fill the words with their freight, and I will look on and love you,—is that too much? _Yes_—for any other—_No_—for one you [know] is _yours_—
Your very own.
For the quick departing yesterday our day was not spoken of ... it is Saturday, is it not?
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Evening. [Post-mark, July 1, 1846.]
Thank you for letting me see dear Mr. Kenyon’s letter. He loves you, admires you, trusts you. When what is done cannot be undone, then he will forgive you besides—that is, he will forgive both of us, and set himself to see all manner of good where now he would see evil if we asked him to look. So we will not, if you please, ask him to look on the encouragement of ever so many more kind notes, pleasant as they are to read, and worthy to trust to, under certain conditions. Dear Mr. Kenyon—but how good he is! And I love him more (shall it be _under-love_?) because of his right perception and understanding of _you_—no one among men sets you higher than he does as a man and as a poet—even if he misses the subtle sense, sometimes.
So you dine with him—don’t you? And I shall have you on Wednesday instead of Thursday! yes, certainly. And on Saturday, of course, next time.
In the carriage, to-day, I went first to Mr. Kenyon’s, and as he was not at home, left a card for a footstep. Then Arabel and Flush and I proceeded on our way to Mr. Boyd’s in St. John’s Wood, and I was so nervous ... so anxious for an excuse for turning back ... that ... can you guess what Arabel said to me? ‘Oh Ba’; she said, ‘such a coward as _you_ are, never will be ... married, while the world lasts.’ Which made me laugh if it did not make me persevere—for you see by it what her notion is of an heroic deed! So, there, I stood at last, at the door of poor Mr. Boyd’s dark little room, and saw him sitting ... as if he had not moved these seven years—these seven heavy, changeful years. Seeing him, my heart was too full to speak at first, but I stooped and kissed his poor bent-down forehead, which he never lifts up, his chin being quite buried in his breast. Presently we began to talk of Ossian and Cyprus wine, and I was forced, as I would not have Ossian for a god, to take a little of the Cyprus,—there was no help for me, nor alternative: so I took as little as I could, while he went on proving to me that the Adamic fall and corruption of human nature (Mr. Boyd is a great theologian) were never in any single instance so disgustingly exemplified as in the _literary controversy about Ossian_; every man of the Highland Society having a lost soul in him; and Walter Scott ... oh, the woman who poisoned all her children the other day, is a saint to Walter Scott, ... so we need not talk of him any more. ‘Arabel!—how much has she taken of that wine? not half a glass.’ ‘But Mr. Boyd, you would not have me be obliged to carry her home.’
That visit being over, we went into the Park, Hyde Park, and drove close to the Serpentine, and then returned. Flush would not keep his head out of the window (his favourite pleasure) all the way, because several drops of rain trickled down his ears. Flush has no idea of wetting his ears:—his nose so near, too!
Right you are, I think, in opposition to Miss Martineau, though your reasons are too gracious to be right ... except indeed as to the physical inaptitude, which is an obvious truth. Another truth (to my mind) is, that women, as they _are_ (whatever they _may be_) have not mental strength any more than they have bodily; have not instruction, capacity, wholeness of intellect enough. To deny that women, as a class, have defects, is as false I think, as to deny that women have wrongs.
Then you are right again in affirming that the creators have no business _there_, with the practical men—_you_ should not be _there_ for instance. And _I_ (if I am to be thought of) would be prouder to eat cresses and maccaroni (Dearest—there is a manufactory of maccaroni and writing-paper at Amalfi close by—observe that combination! maccaroni and writing-paper!) _I_ would be prouder to eat cresses and maccaroni with _you_ as _you_, than to sit with diamonds in my ears, under the shelter of the woolsack, _you_ being a law-lord and parliamentary maker of speeches! By the way, I _couldn’t_ have diamonds in my ears: they never were _bored_ for it ... as I never was _born_ for it. A physical inaptitude, here too!
Shall I say what you tell me ... ‘You never seriously believed’ ... shall I? I will, if you like. But it is not _Ceva_, if you like—it is Cava ... La Cava ... in my map, and according to my authorities. Otherwise, the place is the same—four miles from Salerno, I think, and ‘enchantingly beautiful.’ It is worth an enquiry certainly, this enchanting place which has no English in it, with porticoes like Bologna, and too little known to be spelt correctly by the most accomplished geographers.
Ah—your head is ‘_dizzy_,’ my beloved! Tell me how it is now. And tell me how your mother is. I think of you—love you. I, who am discontented with myself, ... self-condemned as unworthy of you, in all else ... am yet satisfied with the _love_ I have for you—it seems worthy of you, as far as an abstract affection can go, without taking note of the personality loving.
Do you see the meaning through the mist? Do you accept
Your very own
BA?
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday. [Post-mark, July 1, 1846.]
Dearest—dearest, you _did_ once, one time only, call me by my name—Robert; and though it was to bid ‘R. not talk extravagances’ (your very words) still the name so spoken became what it never had been before to me. I never am called by any pet-name, nor abbreviation, here at home or elsewhere.... Oh, best let it alone ... it is one of my incommunicable advantages to have a Ba of my own, and call her so—indeed, yes, my Ba! I write ‘dearest,’ and ‘most dearest,’ but it all ends in—‘Ba,’ and the ‘my’ is its framework,—its surrounding arm—Ba—my own Ba! ‘Robert’ is in Saxon, (_ni fallor_), ‘famous in counsel,’ so let him give a proof of his quality in counselling you to hold your good, happy inspiration about La Cava (my French map-maker must have had _Ceva in Piedmont_ in his head) for at such a place, so situate, we renounce not one sight at Salerno, nor Amalfi, nor Sorrento ... four miles ... the distance between your house and Highgate, perhaps! Cava,—the hollow of a hill; and such hills and such hollows are in that land! Oh, let it be La Cava—or Seven Dials, _with you_!
I passed through Seven Dials this morning—and afterward, by your house,—with a heart full of thoughts,—not fuller than usual, but they were more stirring and alive, near their source. I called at Mrs. Procter’s door (proceeding from Forster’s) and then on Mrs. Jameson whom I found and talked with pleasantly till a visitor came. I do extremely appreciate her, delight in her ... to avoid saying ‘love’—I was never just to her before, far from it. I saw her niece, a quiet earnest-looking little girl. But did it not please me to call in at Moxon’s and hear that (amongst other literary news dexterously enquired after) Miss Barrett’s poems were selling very well and would ere long be out of print? And, after that pleasure, came the other of finding dear, generous, noble Carlyle had sent his new edition of ‘Cromwell,’ three great volumes, with his brave energetic assurance of ‘regards’ and ‘many’ of them, in black manly writing on the first page. So may he continue to like me till he knows you; when it will be ‘mine’ instead of me, that he shall love—‘love’? I let the whole world love you—if they can overtake my love. As I read on, about the visit to Mr. Boyd, I thought, ‘I trust she will kiss his forehead,’—and I kiss yours—thus—for _that_, too,—in gratitude for that. You dear, good, blessing of a Ba, how I kiss you!—
R.B.
I am quite well to-day, and my mother is quite well—The good account of the visit is enough to make me happy on a Wednesday—leading to a Saturday! Then my two letters!
I did not see Moxon—only the brother—who tells odd stories drily; one made me laugh to-day. Poor Mr. Reade, Landor’s love, sent a book to Campbell the Poet, and then called on him ... to discover him in the very act of wiping a razor on a leaf torn out of the book, laid commodiously by his toilet-table for the express purpose.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Wednesday. [Post-mark, July 2, 1846.]
No, No! indeed I never did. If you heard me say ‘Robert,’ it was on a stair-landing in the House of Dreams—never anywhere else! Why how could you fancy such a thing? Wasn’t it rather your own disquieted Conscience which spoke instead of me, saying ‘Robert, don’t be extravagant.’ Yes—just the speech _that_ is, for a ‘good _un_easy,’ discerning Conscience—and you took it for my speech! ‘Don’t be extravagant’ I may certainly have said. Both I and the Conscience might have said so obvious a thing.
Ah—and now I have got the name, shall I have courage to say it? tell me, best councillor! I like it better than any other name, though I never spoke it with my own lips—I never called any one by such a name ... except once when I was in the lane with Bertha. One uncle I have, called Robert—but to me he is an ‘uncle Hedley’ and no more. So it is a white name to take into life. Isn’t this an Hebraic expression of a preferring affection ... ‘_I have called thee by thy name._’? And therefore, because you are the best, only dearest!——_Robert._
You passed by and I never knew! How foolish—but really it quite strikes me as something wonderful, that I should not have known. I knew however of your being in London, because ... (don’t expect supernatural evidence) Mrs. Jameson told me. She was here with me about five, and brought her niece whom I liked just for the reasons you give; and herself was feeling and affectionate as ever:—it is well that you should give me leave to love her a little. Once she touched upon Italy ... and I admitted that I thought of it, and thought it probable as an event ... on which she pressed gently to know ‘on what I counted.’ ‘Perhaps on my own courage,’ I said. ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed ‘now I see clearly.’
Which made me smile ... the idea of her seeing clearly, but earnestly and cordially she desired me to remember that to be useful to me in any manner, would give her pleasure. Such kindness! The sense of it has sunk into my heart. You cannot praise her too much for _me_. She was so kind, that when she asked me to go to see her in Mortimer Street on Friday, I could not help agreeing at once: and I am to have the sofa and no company—that’s a promise. She asked me to go at twelve o’clock, and to bring Mr. Kenyon for an escort—but I would not answer for Mr. Kenyon’s going, only half promising for myself. Now I must try to fix a later hour, because....
Listen to the _because_. My aunt, Miss Clarke, and my cousin, her adopted daughter and niece, come to-morrow evening, and stay in this house ... oh, I cannot tell you how long: for a whole week as a beginning, certainly. I have been sighing and moaning so about it that Arabel calls it quite a scandal—but when one can’t be glad, why should it be so undutiful to appear sad? If she had but stayed in Paris six months longer! Well!—and to-morrow morning Miss Mitford comes to spend the day like the kind dear friend she is; and I, not the least in the world glad to see her! Why have you turned my heart into such hard porphyry? Once, when it was plain clay, every finger (of these womanly fingers) left a mark on it—and now, ... you see! Even Mrs. Jameson makes me grateful to her chiefly (as I know in myself) because she sees you as you are in part, and will forgive me for loving you as soon as she hears of it ... however she may, and must consistently, expect us to torment one another, according to the way of the ‘artistic temperament,’ evermore, and ever more and more. But for the rest, the others who do not know you and value you ... _I hate to see them_ ... and there’s the truth! There is something too in the concealment, the reserve, the doubleness enforced on occasion! ... which is painful and hateful. Detestable it all is.
And _I_ like La Cava too! Think of a hollow in the mountain ... something like a cave, do you think? At least it must be a hollow in the mountains. I wrote to my friend this morning to ask if the place is considered warm, and if she knew any more of it. The ‘_porticoes as at Bologna_’ look attractive too by the dreamlight we look at them by; and _Baba_ may escape the forty thieves of English in the _Cave_, with a good watchword like Sesame—now that’s half _my_ nonsense and half yours, I beg you to observe. I won’t be at the charge of it all.
I was out to-day—walked up, walked down, in my old fashion—only I do improve in walking, I think, and gain strength.
May God bless you dear dearest! I am your own.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Thursday. [Post-mark, July 2, 1846.]
Dear, you might as well imagine you had never given me any other of the gifts, as that you did not call me, as I tell you. You spoke quickly, interrupting me, and, for the name, ‘I can hear it, ’twixt my spirit and the earth-noise intervene’; do you think I forget one gift in another, even a greater? I should still taste the first freshness of the vinegar, (or whatever was the charm of it)—though Cleopatra had gone on dissolving pearl after pearl in it. I love you for these gifts to me now—hereafter, it seems almost as if I must love you even better, should you choose to continue them to me in spite of complete knowledge: I feel this as often as I think of it, which is not seldom.
Do you know, Mrs. Jameson asked _me_ to go and see her on Friday morning—would you like me to go? What _I_ like ... do not fancy,—because your own pleasure is to be consulted. Should you fear the eyes, which _can_, on occasion, wear spectacles? If not ... and if our Saturday will not be interfered with ... and if you can tell me the hour ‘later than twelve’ you mean to appoint, ... so that my call may be neither too early nor too late ... why, then, Ba, dearest, dearest—
La Cava—is surely our cave, Ba—early in October will be vintage-time,—no fire flies. There will be the advantage in the vicinity of Naples, that through the Rothschilds’ House there we can, I believe, receive and dispatch letters without any charge, which otherwise would be an expensive business in Italy. The economy of the Post Office there is astounding. A stranger goes to a window and asks for ‘A’s’ or ‘Z’s’ letters ... not even professing himself to be ‘A,’ or ‘Z’—whereupon the official hands over sundry dozens of letters, without a word of enquiry, out of which the said stranger picks what pleases him, and paying for his selections, goes away and there an end. At Venice, I remember, they offered me, with other letters, about ten or fifteen for the Marquis of Hastings who was not arrived yet—I had only to say ‘I am sent for them’.... At Rome a lady lamented to me the sad state of things ‘A letter might contain Heaven only knew what and lie at the office and’—‘_I_ might go and get it,’ I said—‘You? Nay, my husband might!’ she answered as one mightily wronged.
But of your dear self now—the going out will soon and effectually cure the nervousness, we may be sure. I am most happy, love, to hear of the walking and increased strength. So you used to like riding on a donkey? Then you shall have a mule, un bel mulo, and I will be your muleteer, walk by your side—and you will think the moment you see him of the wicked shoeing of cats with walnut-shells, for they make a mule’s shoes turn up, for all the world like large shells—those on his forefeet at least. Will the time really come then? Meanwhile, your visitors ... let us hope they will go sight-seeing or call-making, do anything but keep the house on our days.... The three hours seem as a minute ... if they are to be curtailed,—oh, no, no, I hope. Tell me all you can, dearest ... and let me tell you all I can, little as it is, in kissing you, my best and dearest Ba, as now kisses your very own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday Evening. [Post-mark, July 3, 1846.]
But, ever dearest, I do so fear that I shall not be able to get to Mrs. Jameson’s to-morrow at all! not at twelve, I fear, I fear. Our visitors are to arrive late to-night, too late for me to see them: and for me to go away at twelve in the morning, just about the hour when they might reasonably expect to have and to hold me, ... seems altogether unlawful, according to my sisters. Yet the temptation is strong. Would half-past twelve be too early for you, if I could manage to go at twelve? Ah—but I shall not be able, I do fear. Just see how it becomes possible and impossible at once for us to touch hands! I could almost wring mine, to see! For I _could_ dare the spectacles, the hypothetical spectacles, and the eyes discerning without them: she has no idea to begin with—and you would not say ‘Ba, let us order the mules,’ I suppose. If I went, it would be _alone_—but probably I shall not be able—so you had better not think of me, and pay your visit at your own hour ‘after the devices of your heart.’
In the meanwhile, quite you make me laugh by your positiveness about the name-calling. Well—if ever I did such a thing, it was in a moment of unconsciousness all the more surprising, that, even to my own soul, in the lowest spirit-whisper, I have not been in the _habit_ of saying ‘Robert,’ speaking of you. You have only been The One. No word ever stood for you. The Idea admitted of no representative—the words fell down before it and were silent. Still such very positive people must be right of course—they always are. At any rate it is only one illusion more—and some day I expect to hear you say and swear that you saw me fly out of one window and fly in at another. So much for your Cleopatra’s Roman pearls, oh my famous in council!—and appreciation of sour vinegar!
Dear Miss Mitford came at two to-day and stayed until seven, and all those hours you were not once mentioned—_I_ had not courage—and she perhaps avoided an old subject of controversy ... I do not know. It is singular that for this year past you are not mentioned between us, while other names come up like grass in the rain. No single person will be more utterly confounded than she, when she comes to be aware of what you are to me now—and _that_ I was thinking to-day, while she talked to never a listener. She will be confounded, and angry perhaps—it will be beyond her sympathies or if they reach so far, the effort to make them do so will prove a more lively affection for me, than, with all my trust in her goodness, I dare count on. Yet very good and kind and tender, she was to me to-day. And very variously intelligent and agreeable. Do you know, I should say that her _natural_ faculties were stronger than Mrs. Jameson’s—though the latter has a higher aspiration and, in some ways, a finer sensibility of intellect. You would certainly call her superior to her own books—certainly you would. She walks strongly on her two feet in this world—but nobody shall see her (not even _you_) fly out of a window. Too closely she keeps to the ground, I always feel. Now Mrs. Jameson can ‘aspire’ like Paracelsus; and believes enough in her own soul, to know a poet when she sees one. Ah—but all cannot be all.
Miss Mitford wrung a promise from me—that ‘if I were well enough and in England next summer, I would go to see _her_.’ So remember. Isn’t it a promise for two?
Only we shall be mule-riding in those days—unless I shall have tired you. _Shall_ you be tired of me in one winter, I wonder? My programme is, to let you try me for one winter, and if you are tired (as I shall know without any confession on your side) why then I shall set the mule on a canter and leave you in La Cava, and go and live in Greece somewhere all alone, taking enough with me for bread and salt. Is it a jest, do you think? Indeed it is not. It is very grave earnest, be sure. I believe that I never could quarrel with you; but the same cause would absolutely hinder my living with you if you did not love me. We could not lead the abominable lives of ‘married people’ all round—you _know_ we could not—_I_ at least know that _I_ could not, and just because I love you so entirely. Then, you know, you could come to England by yourself—and ... ‘Where’s Ba?’—‘Oh, she’s somewhere in the world, I suppose. How can _I_ tell?’ And then Mrs. Jameson would shake her head, and observe that the problem was solved exactly as she expected, and that artistical natures smelt of sulphur and brimstone, without any exceptions.
Am I laughing? am I crying? who can tell. But I am not _teazing_, ... Robert! because, my Robert, if gravely I distrusted your affection, I could not use such light-sounding words on the whole—now could I? It is only the supposition of a _possible_ future ... just possible ... (as the end of human affections passes for a possible thing)—which made me say what I would do in such a case.
But I am yours—your own: and it is impossible, in my _belief_, that I can ever fail to you so as to be less yours, on this side the grave or across it. _So_, I think of _im_possibilities—whatever I may, of possibilities!
Will it be possible to see you to morrow, I wonder! I ask myself and not you.
And if you love me only nearly as much (instead of the prodigal ‘more’) _afterward_, I shall be satisfied, and shall not run from you further than to the bottom of the page.
Where you see me as your own
BA.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday Morning. [Post-mark, July 3, 1846.]
I am forced to say something now which you will not like and which I, for my part, hate to say—but you shall judge how impossible it is for me to see you to-morrow.
The visitors did not come last night; and as this morning we expected them hourly, the post brought a letter instead, to the effect that they were to arrive just _on Saturday_ ... leaving us to calculate the time of arrival between one p.m. to five or six. If at one, ... Papa will be in the house and likely to stay in it all day after ... which would be a complication of disadvantages for us, and if at three ... why even so, my aunt would ‘admire’ a little the reason of my not seeing her at once, and there would be questions and answers a faire frémir. So dearest dearest, I must try to live these two days more without seeing you—and indeed it will be hard work—the very light of the sun to-morrow, let it be ever so bright a sun, will only reproach the day with what it _ought_ to have been ... _our_ day, instead of everybody’s day or nobody’s day, a poor, blank, dreary day. What, when the clock is at three ... oh _what_ will keep me, I wonder, from being sullen to my aunt and sulky to my cousin? They will think me (if my ministering angel should not throw me some hallowing thought of _you_, best beloved!) considerably fallen off in the _morale_, however the improvement may be of the bodily health—I shall be as cross, as cross ... well, if I am less than cross, you must be right after all, and I, ‘une femme miraculeuse’ without illusion! It is too bad, too bad. The whole week—from Monday to Monday! And I do not positively fix even Monday, though I hope for Monday:—but Monday may be taken from us just as Saturday is, and the Hedleys are to come on _Tuesday_ ... only not to this house. I wish they were all at Seringapatam.
Do not mind it however. Yes, mind it a little, ... Robert! but not overmuch—because the day shall not be lost utterly—I shall take care. I will be on the watch for half-days when people go out to shop ... that solemn business of life, ... and we will have our lost day back again ... you will see. But I could not get to Mrs. Jameson’s this morning, not being quite well enough. It is _nothing_ as illness,—I tell you the truth, dear—and even now I feel better than I did in the early morning. It was only just enough to prevent my going. And if I had gone I should not have seen you—you would not go in time—you would not perhaps even have my letter in time. The stars are against us for the moment, it seems.
Write to me, think of me, love me. You shall hear on Saturday and on Sunday, and we will settle about Monday.
After all, it would have been difficult to have met you at Mrs. Jameson’s, observing the ‘fitness of things’: ... and as I am subject to the madness of saying ‘Robert’ without knowing it...!
May God bless you. Say how you are! Don’t let me slide out of your mind through this rift in the rock. I catch at the jutting stones.
I am your own BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Friday. [Post-mark, July 3, 1846.]
No, dear, dear Ba, I shall not see you to-day in spite of all the hoping and fancying ... for I could not, as I calculate, reach Mrs. Jameson’s before 1 o’clock or a little later ... and there would be the worst of vexations, to know you had been and gone again! I persuade myself you may not pay the visit to-day, ... (‘it is impossible’ you say), and that it may be paid next week, the week in which there is only one day for us ... how do you say, dearest? all complaining is vain—let to-morrow make haste and arrive!
Ba, there is nothing in your letter that shocks me,—nothing: if you choose to imagine _that_ ‘possibility,’ you are consistent in imagining the proper step to take ... it is all imagining. But I feel altogether as you feel about the horribleness of married friends, mutual esteemers &c.—when your name sounds in my ear like any other name, your voice like other voices,—when we wisely cease to interfere with each other’s pursuits,—respect differences of taste &c. &c., all will be over _then_!
I cannot myself conceive of one respect in which I shall ever fall from this feeling for you ... there never has been one word, one gesture unprompted by the living, immediate love beneath—but there have been many, many, _so_ many that the same love has suppressed, refused to be represented by! I say this, because I can suppose a man taking up a service of looks and words, which service is only to last for a time, and so may be endured,—after which the ‘real affection,’ ‘honest attachment’ &c. &c. means to go to its ends by a shorter road, saving useless ceremony and phrases ... do you know what I mean? I hardly do ... except that it is, whatever it is, opposed, as heaven to earth, to what I feel is. I count confidently on being more and more able to find the true words and ways (which may not be _spoken_ words perhaps), the true rites by which you should be worshipped, you dear, dear Ba, my entire blessing now and ever—and _ever_; if God shall save me also.
Let me kiss you now, and long for to-morrow—I shall bring you the poorest flowers——all is brown, dry, autumnal. The sun shines and reproves me.... After all, there would have been some rocks in the pleasant water of to-day’s meeting ... ‘Oh, hardness to dissemble’!
Here is no dissembling.... I kiss you, my very own!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday Night, [Post-mark, July 4, 1846.]
Ah! ‘to-morrow, make haste and arrive.’ And what good will to-morrow do when it comes?
Dearest, with your letter to-night, I have a note from Mrs. Jameson, who proposes that I should go to her just on this to-morrow, between twelve and one: she will wait for me till one and then go out. Moreover she leaves town on Tuesday. Now I think I ought to try to be with her this time, therefore, on the hour she mentions, and I will try ... I mean to try. But as for seeing you even _so_, and for a moment, ... I understand that it scarcely is possible—no, _not_ possible—you cannot have time, I think. Thinking which, understanding which, I shall yet, in spite of reason, listen for the footstep and the voice: certainly I shall not help doing _that_.
Our to-morrow!—How they have spoilt it for us! In revenge, I shall love you to-morrow twice as much, looking at my dead flowers. Twice as much!! ‘_Ba, never talk extravagances._’ _Twice as much_ is a giant fifty feet high. It is foolish to be fabulous.
Being better this evening (almost as if I were sure to see you in the morning) I went out to drive with Arabel and Flush, about six o’clock,—and we were not at home until eight, after having seen a mirage (as it appeared) of green fields and trees. Beyond Harrow cemetery we went, through silent lanes and hedgerows—so silent, so full of repose! Quite far away over the tops of the trees, was ‘_London_,’ Arabel said ... but I could see only a cloud:—it seemed no more, nor otherwise. Once she got out and went into a field to give Flush a run—and I, left to myself and you, read your last letter in the carriage, under the branches which were dropping separate shadows of every leaf they had. The setting sun forced them to it. Oh—but I send you no leaves, because I could not reach any, and did not get out to walk to-day where I might have gathered them. Arabel tried hard to persuade me to go into the cemetery—but let me deserve all she said to me about weakness and foolishness, ... really that sort of thing does sadden me—my spirits fall flat with it: it is the dark side of death. So I begged her to go by herself and to leave me.... I would wait for her—and she should have as long a pleasure in that pleasure-ground of the Dead, as she liked. ‘Very pretty,’ it is said to be—the dissenters and the churchpeople planted in separate beds; and the Roman Catholics conspicuous for their roses! Oh that ghastly mixture of horror and frivolity! The _niaiserie_ of their divisions and subdivisions taken down so carefully into the dust! But Arabel did not go at last, and we were at home quite late enough.
May God bless you, dear, dear! Give me all my thoughts (those that belong to me) to-morrow. Poor disinherited to-morrow.
I will _write_ to-morrow, at any rate—and _hear_—let me hear.
And you are the best, best! When I speak lead, you answer gold. Because I ‘do not shock’ you, you melt my heart away with joy.
Yet I can love you enough, even I!
Your BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Saturday. [Post-mark, July 4, 1846.]
Dearest Ba, I am at Mrs. Jameson’s ... to hear you cannot come; most properly. She wants me to go and see an Exhibition, and I cannot refuse ... so this is my poor long letter (with kisses in the words), that was to have been! But on Monday, dearest, dearest, I shall see you? All thanks for your letter.... I dare write no more, as there _must_ be some difference in my way of writing to you from other ways.
Bless you, ever, as I am ever yours—
R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Saturday. [Post-mark, July 4, 1846.]
Ah, this Saturday! how heavily the wheels of it turn round! as if ‘with all the weights of sleep and death hung at them.’ After all it was not possible for me to get to Mrs. Jameson’s this morning ... not that I was unwell to _signify_, mind—but unfit for the exertion—and it would not have been agreeable to anybody if I had gone there and fainted. So here I am, the picture of helpless indolence, stretched out at full length between the chair and the high stool, thinking how you will not to-day sit on the low one, nor in your old own place by me——oh how I think, think, think of you, to make imperfect amends! Are you disappointed ... _you_? I hope you are, and I fear you are. My generosity does not carry me through the hope of it to the end. I love your love too much. And _that_ is the worst fault, my beloved, I ever can find in my love of _you_.
Look, what Miss Mitford has sent me from the _Daily News_—Mr. Horne’s lament for poor Haydon. Tell me if you do not like it. It has moved me much, and as a composition it is fine, I think,—worthy of ‘Orion.’ I shall write to Mr. Horne to thank him, as one reader of many, for touching that solemn string into such a right melody. To my mind, it is worth, and more than worth, twenty such books as his ballad-book—tell me if it isn’t. It has much affected me.
Papa went out early—so we should have escaped the ‘complication’—but every half-hour we are expecting our visitors. And for Monday ... I scarcely dare say yet ‘Come on Monday.’ Only we will find our lost Pleiads ... of that, be very sure—_I_ am very sure. Still to miss one for a moment draws me into darkness—or ... do you not know that you are _all_ my stars? yes, and the sun, besides! The thing which people call a sun seems to shine quite coldly to-day, because you are not on this side of my window. ‘All complaining is vain,’ do you say?
Let me pass the time a little, then, by confessing to you that what you said, some letters ago, about the character of our intercourse, in our present relation, being a sort of security for the future, ... that _that_ did strike me as a true and reasonable observation as far as it goes. I think, at least, that if I were inclined to fear for my own happiness apart from yours (which, as God knows, is a fear that never comes into my head), I should have sense to reason myself clear of it all by seeing in you none of the common rampant man-vices which tread down a woman’s peace—and which begin the work often long before marriage. Oh, I understand perfectly, how as soon as ever a common man is sure of a woman’s affections, he takes up the tone of right and might ... and he _will_ have it so ... and he _won’t_ have it so! I have heard of the bitterest tears being shed by the victim as soon as ever, by one word of hers, she had placed herself in his power. Of such are ‘Lovers’ quarrels’ for the most part. The growth of power on one side ... and the struggle against it, by means legal and illegal, on the other. There are other causes, of course—but for none of them could it be possible for _me_ to quarrel with _you_ now or ever. Neither now nor ever do I look forward to the ordinary dangers. What I have feared has been so different! May God bless you my own ... own! For my part, you have my leave to make me unhappy if you please. It only would be just that the happiness you have given, you should take away—it is yours, as I am yours.
Say how your head is—say how your mother is. Think of me with the thoughts that do good.
Your own
BA.
TO THE MEMORY OF B. R. HAYDON
_By the Author of ‘Orion’_
Mourn, fatal Voice, whom ancients called the Muse! Thy fiery whispers rule this mortal hour, Wherein the toiling Artist’s constant soul Revels in glories of a visioned world,— Power, like a god, exalting the full heart; Beauty with subtlest ravishment of grace Refining all the senses; while afar Through vistas of the stars where strange friends dwell. A temple smiles for him to take his seat Among the happy Dead whose work is done. Mourn, fatal Voice, whom ancients called the Muse! Thou lead’st the devotee through fruitful bowers Wherein Imagination multiplies Divinely, and, with noblest ecstasy, To nature ever renders truth for truth.
Mourn, fatal Voice, whom ancients called the Muse! Thou teachest to be strong and virtuous; In labour, patient; clear-eyed as a star, Self-truthful; vigilant within; and full Of faith to be, and do, and send it forth;— But teachest no man how to know himself, His over-measures or his fallings short, Nor how to know when he should step aside Into the quiet shade, to wait his hour And foil the common dragon of the earth.
O fatal Voice! so syren-sweet, yet rife With years of sorrow, deathbeds terrible! Mourn for a worthy son whose aims were high, Whose faith was strong amidst a scoffing age. No warning giv’st thou, on the perilous path, To those who need the gold thy teaching scorns, Heedless if other knowledge hold due watch. Thou fill’st with heavenly bliss the enraptured eyes, While the feet move to ruin and the grave. Therefore, O voice, inscrutably divine, Uplifting sunward, casting in the dust, Forgetting man as man, and mindful only Of the man-angel even while on earth,— Mourn now with all thine ancient tenderness, Mingled with tears that fall in heavy drops, For One who lost himself, remembering thee!
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday. [Post-mark, July 6, 1846.]
You will have known by my two or three words that I received your letter in time to set out for Mrs. J.’s—she said to me, directly and naturally, ‘you have missed a great pleasure’—and then accounted for your absence. Do not be sorry, Ba, at my gladness ... for I was, I hope, glad ... yes, I am sure, glad that you ran no risk, if you will not think of _that_, think of _my_ risk if you had ‘_fainted_’ ... should I have kept the secret, do you suppose? Oh, dearest of all dreamt-of dearness,—incur no unnecessary danger now, at ... shall I dare trust,—the end of the adventure! I cannot fear for any mischance that may follow, once let my arms be round you ... I mean, the blow seems then to fall on both alike—now, what dismal, obscure months might be prolonged between us, before we meet next, by a caprice where the power is! When have I been so long without the blessing of your sight! Yet how considerately you have written, what amends you make, all that the case admits of! If I were less sure of my own mind, and what it knows for _best_, I might understand the French lover’s fancy of being separated from his mistress that he might be written to and write ... but the _very best_ I know, and have ever in sight, and constantly shall strive after ... to see you face to face, to live so and to die so—which I say, because it ends all, all that can be ended ... and yet seems in itself so encountered—no death, no end.
After all, I _may_ see you to-morrow, may I not? There is no more than a danger, an apprehension, that we may lose to-morrow also, is there? You cannot tell me after this is read ... I shall know before. If I receive _no_ letter, mind, I go to you ... so that if the Post is in fault after its custom, and your note arrives at 3 o’clock, you will know why I seem to disobey it and call ... and I shall understand why you are not to be seen—but I will hope.
When you say these exquisitely dear and tender things, you know Ba, it is as if the sweet hand were on my mouth—I cannot speak ... I try to seem as if I heard not, for all the joy of hearing ... you give me a jewel and I cannot repeat ‘you, you _do_ give me a jewel.’ I am not worthy of any gift, you _must_ know, Ba,—never say you do not—but what you press on me, let me feel and half-see, and in the end, carry away, but do not think I can, in set words, _take_ them. At most, they are, and shall be, half-gift half-loan for adornment’s sake,—mine to wear, yours to take back again. Even this, all this ungracefulness, is proper, appropriate in its way—I am penetrated with shame thinking on what you say, and what my utmost devotion will deserve ... so infinitely less will it deserve! You are my very, very angel.
Mrs. Jameson showed me the lines you had sent her, Horne’s very beautiful poem,—very earnest, very solemn and pathetic,—worthy of Horne and the subject—and you will do well to reward him as you propose. I think I will also write two or three lines,—telling him that you called my attention to the poem,—so that he may understand the new friend does not drive out the old, as the old proverb says. I will wait a day or two and write. And you are herein, too, a dear good Ba,—to write me out the verses in the characters I love best of all! I may keep them, I hope.
The weather is hot as ever: Ba, remember how I believe in you—is the indisposition ‘nothing to signify’? And remember the confidence I make you of every slightest headache or what looks like it—tell me frankly as Ba should, and will if she loves me! I am very well ... and my mother much better. I observe while I write, the clouds gather propitiously for coolness if not rain—may all be as is best for you—‘and for me?’ Then kiss me, really, through the distance, and love me, my sweetest Ba!
I am your own—
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Sunday. [Post-mark, July 6, 1846.]
Will it do if you come on Wednesday, dearest? It will be safer I think—and, with people staying in the house, it is necessary, you see, to consider a little. My aunt is so tired with her journey that she is not likely to go out at all to-morrow—and when I remember that you dine with Mr. Kenyon on that Wednesday, it seems marked out for our day. Still I leave it to you. Never have we been so long parted, and perhaps by Wednesday you may forget me—ah no! Now I will not make the time longer by being unkind ... or even unjust.
I meant to write you a long letter to-day,—but first my aunt and cousin were here telling me all the statistics of Arabella Hedley’s marriage,—and then Mr. Kenyon came, ... and on such a very different subject, _his_ talk was, that he has left me quite depressed. It appears that poor Mr. Haydon, in a paper entering into his reasons for self-destruction, says that he has left his manuscripts to _me_, with a desire for me to arrange the terms of their publication with Longman. Of course it has affected me naturally ... such a proof of trust when he had so many friends wiser and stronger to look to—but I believe the reference to be simply to the _fact_ of his having committed to my care all his private papers in a great trunk ... one of three which he sent here. Two years ago when we corresponded, he made me read a good part of his memoirs, which he thought of publishing at that time; and then he asked me (no, it was a year and a half ago) to speak about them to some bookseller ... to Longman, he said, I remember, then. I explained, in reply, how I had not any influence with any bookseller in the world; advising him besides not to think of printing, without considerable modification, what I had read. In fact it was—with much that was individual and interesting,—as unfit as possible for the general reader—fervid and coarse at once, with personal references blood-dyed at every page. At the last, I suppose, the idea came back to him of my name in conjunction with Longman’s—I cannot think that he meant me to do any _editor’s_ work, for which (with whatever earnestness of will) I must be comparatively unfit, both as a woman and as personally and historically ignorant of the persons and times he writes of. I should not know how one reference would fall innocently, and another like a thunderbolt, on surviving persons. I only know that without great modification, the Memoirs should not appear at all ... that the scandal would be great if they did. At the same time you will feel with me, I am sure, you who always feel with me, that whatever is clearly set for me to do, I should not shrink from under these circumstances, whatever the unpleasantness may be, more or less, involved in the doing. But if Mr. Serjeant Talfourd is the executor ... is he not the obviously fit person? Well! there is no need to talk any more. Mr. Kenyon is to try to see the paper. It was Mr. Forster who came to tell him of this matter and to get him to communicate it to me. Poor Haydon!
Dearest, I long for you to come and bring me a little light. Tell me how you are—now tell me. Tell me too how your mother is.
My aunt’s presence here has seemed to throw me back suddenly and painfully into real life out of my dream-life with you——into the old dreary flats of real life. She does not know your name even—she sees in me just _Ba_ who is not your Ba—and when she talks to me ... seeing me so ... I catch the reflection of the cold abstraction as _she_ apprehends it, and feel myself for a moment a Ba who is not your Ba ... sliding back into the melancholy of it! Do you understand the curious process, I talk of so mistily? Do you understand that she makes me sorrowful with not talking of _you_ while she talks to _me_? Everything, in fact, that divides us, I must suffer from—so I need not treat metaphysically of causes and causes ... splitting the thinner straws.
Once she looked to the table where the remains of your flowers are, ... and said, ‘I suppose Miss Mitford brought you those flowers.’ ‘No,’ I answered, ‘she did not.’ ‘Oh no,’ began Arabel with a more suggestive voice, ‘not Miss Mitford’s flowers.’ But I turned the subject quickly.
Robert!—how did you manage to write me the dear note from Mrs. Jameson’s? how could you dare write and direct it before her eyes? What an audacity that was of yours. Oh—and how I regretted the missing you, as you proved it was a missing, by the letter! Twice to miss you on one day, seemed too much ill-luck ... even for _me_, I was going to write ... but _that_ would have been a word of my old life, before I knew that I was born to the best fortune and happiest, which any woman could have, ... in being loved by _you_.
Dearest, do not leave off loving me. Do not forget me by Wednesday. Shall it be Wednesday? or must it be Thursday? answer _you_.
I am your own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Monday. [Post-mark, July 6, 1846.]
When I read, after the reasons for not seeing you to-day, this—‘still I leave it to you,’—believe, dearest, that I at once made the sacrifice and determined to wait till Wednesday,—as seemed best for you, and therefore for me: but at the letter’s very end, amid the sweetest, comes ‘Wednesday ... or must it be Thursday?’ What is _that_? What ‘_must_’ is mine? Shall you fear, or otherwise suffer, if we appoint Wednesday?
Oh, another year of this! Yet I am not, I feel, ungrateful to the Past ... all the obstacles in the world can do nothing now, nothing: earlier they might have proved formidable annoyances. I have seen enough of you, Ba, for an eternity of belief in you ... and you, as you confess, you cannot think ‘I shall forget.’
All you can, you compensate me for the absence—that such letters, instead of being themselves the supremest reward and last of gains, should be—compensation, at the best! Am I really to have you, all of you and altogether, and always? If you go out of your dream-life, can I lie quietly in mine? But I hold your hand and hear your voice through it all.
How do these abrupt changes in the temperature affect you? Yesterday at noon, so oppressively hot—this morning, a wind and a cold. Do you feel no worse than usual? If you do not tell me,—you know, I cannot keep away. Then, this disinspiriting bequest of poor Haydon’s journal ... his ‘writings’—from which all the harm came, and, it should seem, is still to come to himself and everybody beside—let us all forget what came of those descriptions and vindications and explanations interminable; but as for beginning another sorrowful issue of them,—it is part and parcel of the insanity—and to lay the business of editing the ‘twenty-six’ (I think) volumes, with the responsibility, on _you_—most insane! Unless, which one would avoid supposing, the author trusted precisely to your ignorance of facts and isolation from the people able to instruct you. Take one little instance of how ‘facts’ may be set down—in the _Athenæum_ was an account of Haydon’s quoting Waller’s verse about the eagle reached by his own feather on the arrow,—which he applied to Maclise and some others, who had profited by their intimacy with him to turn his precepts to account and so surpass him in public estimation: now, Maclise was in Haydon’s company for the first time at Talfourd’s on that evening when I met your brother there,—so said Talfourd in an after-supper speech,—and Forster, to whom I mentioned the circumstance, assured me that Maclise ‘called on Haydon for the first time only a few months ago’ ... I suppose, shortly after. Now, what right has Maclise, a fine generous fellow, to be subjected to such an imputation as that? With an impartial prudent man, acquainted with the artists of the last thirty years, the editing might turn to profit: I do hope for an exercise of Mr. Kenyon’s caution here, at all events. And then how horrible are all these posthumous revelations,—these passions of the now passionless, errors of the at length better-instructed! All falls unfitly, ungraciously—the triumphs or the despondencies, the hopes or fears, of—whom? He is so far above it all now! Even in this life—imagine a proficient in an art or science, who, after thirty or sixty years of progressive discovery, finds that some bookseller has disinterred and is about publishing the raw first attempt at a work which he was guilty of in the outset!
All of which you know better than I—what do you not know better? Nor as well?—that I love you with my whole heart, Ba, dearest Ba, and look up into your eyes for all light and life. Bless you.
Your very own—
I am going to Talfourd’s to-morrow (to dine)—and perhaps to Chorley’s in the evening. If I can do any bidding of yours at Talfourd’s ... but that seems improbable,—with Mr. Kenyon, too! But (_this between our very selves_) the Talfourds, or at least Mrs. T., please to take one of their unimaginably stupid groundless dislikes to him.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Monday. [Post-mark, July 7, 1846.]
But I meant to ‘leave it to you,’ not to come before Wednesday but after Wednesday, in case of some Wednesday’s engagement coming to cross mine. ‘Ba’s old way’ ... do you cry out! Perhaps—only that an engagement is a possible thing always. Not meaning an engagement with Miss Campbell. I hope, hope, then, to be able to see you, dearest Robert, on Wednesday. On Wednesday, at last!
Here is a letter which I had this morning from Mr. Landor, than which can anything be more gracious? It appears ... I forgot to tell you yesterday after I heard it from Mr. Kenyon ... it appears that my note of thanks had my signature affixed to it in such a state of bad writing, that Mr. Landor, being sorely puzzled, sent the letter up to Mr. Forster to be read. Mr. Forster read it (so it _could_ be read!) and then took it to Mr. Kenyon, who read it too, and afterwards came to scold me for being perfectly illegible. It was signed at full length too, Elizabeth Barrett Barrett ... and really I couldn’t believe that I was very guilty till Mr. Landor’s own letter persuaded me this morning of its being so much pleasanter to be guilty than innocent, for the nonce.
Ah—you use the right word for the other subject. _If_ a bequest, it is indeed a ‘_dispiriting_ bequest,’ this of poor Haydon’s. But I hope to the last that he meant simply to point to _me_ as the actual holder of the papers—and certainly when he sent the great trunk here, it was with no intention of dying; Mr. Kenyon agreed with me to that effect—I showed him the notes which I had found and laid aside for you, and which you shall take with you on Wednesday. Still, there must be an editor found somewhere—because the papers cannot go as they are to a publisher’s hands from mine, if I _only hold_ them. Does any one say that I am a fit editor? Have I _the power_? the knowledge of art and artists? of the world? of the times? of the persons? All these things are against me—and others besides.
Now I will tell you one thing which he told me in confidence, but which is at length perhaps in those papers—I tell you because you are myself, and will understand the need and obligation to silence—and I want you to understand besides how the twenty-six volumes hang heavily on my thoughts. He told me in so many words that Mrs. Norton had made advances towards him—and that his children, in sympathy towards their mother, had dashed into atoms the bust of the poetess as it stood in his painting room.
If you can say anything _safely_ for me at Mr. Talfourd’s, of course I shall be glad ... and Mr. Kenyon will speak to Mr. Forster, he said. I want to get back my letters too as soon as I can do it without disturbing anyone’s peace. What is in those letters, I cannot tell, so impulsively and foolishly, sometimes, I am apt to write; and at that time, through caring for nobody and feeling so loose to life, I threw away my thoughts without looking where they fell. Often my sisters have blamed me for writing in that wild way to strangers—and I should like to have the letters back before they shall have served to amuse two or three executors—but of this too, I spoke to Mr. Kenyon.
Still it is not of _me_ that we are called to think—and I would not for the world refuse any last desire, if clearly signified, and if the power should be with me. He was not a common man—he had in him the stuff of greatness, this poor Haydon had; and we must consider reverently whatever rent garment he shall have left behind. Quite, in some respects, I think with you but your argument does appear to me to sweep out too far on one side, so that if you do not draw it back, Robert, you will efface all autobiography and confession—tear out a page bent over by many learners—I mean when you say that because he is above (now) the passions and frailties he has recorded, we should put from us the record. True, he is above it all—true, he has done with the old Haydon; like a man outgrowing his own childhood he will not spin this top any more. Oh, it is true—I feel it all just as you do. But, after all, a man outgrowing his childhood, may leave his top to children, and no one smile! This record is not for the angels, but for _us_, who are a little lower at highest. Three volumes perhaps may be taken from the twenty-six full of character and interest, and not without melancholy teaching. Only some competent and sturdy hand should manage the selection; as surely as mine is unfit for it. But where to seek _discretion_? _delicacy_?
Dearest, I speak the truth to you—I am not ill indeed. When I was at best in health I used sometimes to be a little weak and faint, and it has only been _so_ for this last day or two. By Wednesday the cloud will have passed. And, do you know, I have found out something from our long parting, ... I have found out that I love you better than even I thought. There’s a piece of finding out! My own dearest—what would become of me indeed, _if_ I could not see you on Wednesday nor on Thursday nor on Friday?—no breath I have, for going on. No breath I should have, for living on. I do kiss you through the distance——since you tell me. I love you with my soul.
Your own I am.
Three of the flowers and nearly all the little blue ones stay with me all this while to comfort me!! isn’t it kind of them?
Two letters to-day—and such letters! Ah—if you love me always but half as much—I will agree with you now for half! Yet, O Hesiod, half is not better than the whole, by any means! Yet ... if the whole went away, and did not leave me half!—
When I was a child I heard two married women talking. One said to the other ... ‘The most painful part of marriage is the first year, when the lover changes into the husband by slow degrees.’ The other woman agreed, as a matter of fact is agreed to. I listened with my eyes and ears, and never forgot it ... as you observe. It seemed to me, child as I was, a dreadful thing to have a husband by such a process. Now, it seems to me more dreadful.
Si l’âme est immortelle L’amour ne l’est-il pas?
Beautiful verses—just to prove to you that I do not remember _only_ the disagreeable things ... only to teaze you with, like so many undeserved reproaches. And you so good, so best—Ah—but it is _that_ which frightens me! so far _best_!
You were foolish to begin to love me, you know, as always I told you, my beloved!—but since you _would_ begin, ... go on to do it as long as you can ... do not leave me in the wilderness. God bless you for me!—
I am your BA.
Think if people were to get hold of that imputation on poor Mrs. Norton—think!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Morning in haste. [Post-mark, July 7, 1846.]
Dearest, I am uncertain whether I can see you to-morrow. To-night I will write again—you shall hear. You tell me to _risk nothing_ ... which is what I feel. But I long, long to see you. You shall hear in the morning.
Read the note which Mr. Kenyon sends me from Mr. Forster. Very averse I feel, from applying, in the way prescribed, to Mr. Serjeant Talfourd. Tell me what to do, Robert ... my ‘famous in council!’ Sick at heart, it all makes me. Am I to write to Mr. Talfourd, do you think?
Oh, _you_ would manage it for me—but to mix _you_ up in it, will make a danger of a worse evil. May God bless you, my own. I may see you to-morrow perhaps after all—it is a ‘_perhaps_’ though ... and I am surely
Your BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday. [Post-mark, July 7, 1846.]
Dearest, the first thing to say is the deep joyfulness of expecting to see you, really, to-morrow—mind, the engagement with Mr. Kenyon is nothing in the way. If you cannot let me stay the usual time—I can call, pass away the interval easily ... this is a superfluous word to your goodness which is superfluous in these ‘old ways of Ba’s’—dear Ba, whom I kiss with perfect love—and shall soon kiss in no dream! Landor is all well enough in one sentence ... happily turned _that_ is,—but I am vexed at his strange opinion of Goethe’s poem,—and the more, that a few years ago he wrote down as boldly that nothing had been written _so_ ‘Hellenic’ these two thousand years—(in a note to the ‘Satire on the Satirists’)—and of these opinions I think the earlier much nearer the truth. _Then_ he wrote so, because Wordsworth had depreciated Goethe—now, very likely, some maladroit applauder has said Landor’s own ‘Iphigenia’ is worthy of Goethe,—or similar platitudes.
Yes, dearest, you are quite right—and my words have a wrong sense, and one I did not mean they should bear, if they object to confessions and autobiographies in general. Only the littleness and temporary troubles, the petty battle with foes, which is but a moment’s work however the success may be, all _that_ might go when the occasion, real or fancied, is gone. I would have the customary ‘habits,’ as we say, of the man preserved, and if they were quilted and stiffened with steel and bristling all over with the offensive and defensive weapons the man judged necessary for his safety,—they should be composed and hung up decently—telling the true story of his life. But I should not preserve the fretful gesture,—lift the arm, as it was angrily lifted to keep off a wolf—which now turns out to have been only Flush in a fever of vigilance—half-drew the sword which—Ah, let me have done with this! You understand, if I do not. For the bad story,—the telling _that_, if it were true, is nearly as bad as inventing it. That poor woman is the hack-block of a certain class of redoubtable braggarts—there are such stories by the _dozen_ in circulation. All may have been misconception ... ‘advances’—to induce one more painter to introduce her face in his works.
My time is out ... I had much to say, but this letter of mine arrived by the afternoon post,—shame on the office! To-morrow!
Bless you, ever dearest dearest—
Your own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Evening [Post-mark, July 8, 1846.]
Yes—I understand you perfectly—and it should be exactly as you say—and it is just _that_, which requires so much adroitness,—and such decision and strength of hand, to manage these responsibilities. Somebody is wanted to cut and burn, and be silent afterwards. I remember that bitter things are said of Shelley and Leigh Hunt beyond all the bitterness of alcohol. Olives do not taste so, though steeped in salt. There are some curious letters by poor Keats about Hunt, and _they_ too are bitter. It would be dreadful to suffer these miseries to sow themselves about the world, like so much thistle-down ... the world, where there are thistles enough already, to make fodder for its wild asses!
As to Landor ... oh, I did not remember the note you speak of in the satire you speak of—but you remember everything ... even _me_. Is it not true that Landor, too, is one of the men who carry their passions about with them into everything, as a boy would, pebbles ... muddying every clear water, with a stone here and a stone there. The end is, that we lose the image of himself in the serene depth, as we might have had it—and the little stone comes to stand for him. How unworthy of such a man as Landor, such weakness is! To _think_ with one’s temper!! One might as well be at once Don Quixote, and fight with a warming-pan.
But I did not remember the _former_ opinion. I took it for a constitutional fancy of Landor’s, and did not smile much more at it than at my own ‘profundity in German,’ which was a matter of course ... of course ... of course. For have I not the gift of tongues? Don’t I talk Syriac ... as well as Flush talks English—and Hebrew, like a prophetess ... and various other languages and dialects less familiarly known to persons in general than these aforesaid? So, profound indeed, must be the German and the Dutch! And perhaps it may not be worth while to answer Mr. Landor’s note for the mere purpose of telling him anything about it.
Dearest!—I have written all this before I would say a word of your coming, just to think a little more—and down all these pages I have been thinking, thinking, of _you_ ... of your possible coming ... what nonsense they must be! Well! and the end is that, let it be wise or unwise, I _must and will see you to-morrow_—I cannot do otherwise. It is just as if Flush had been shut up in a box for so many days. My spirits flag ... and I could find it in my heart to grow cross like Landor and deny Goethe. So come, dearest dearest—and let the world bark at our heels if it pleases. I will just turn round and set Flush at it.
For two or three days I have not been out—not for two days ... not out of this room. This evening at seven, when they were all going to dinner, I took Wilson with me and drove into the park for air. It will do me good perhaps—but your coming will, certainly. So come, my dearest beloved!—At three, remember.
Your own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
PRIVATE
Wednesday 7 A.M. [Post-mark, July 8, 1846.]
My own Ba, I received your note on my return from Talfourd’s last night. I am anxious to get the first post for this, so can only use the bare words,—if those. After dinner, Forster put a question to our host about the amount of the subscription; and in a minute the paper-bequest was introduced. Talfourd had received a letter from Miss Mitford, enclosing one from you (or a copy of one ... I did not hear)—whereat he pronounced so emphatically upon H.’s conduct in making you,—‘who could never have known the nature of the transaction nor the very serious consequences it involved’—the depositary of his pictures &c. on such occasions,—the words, ‘H. it seems, has been in the habit of using Miss B’s house &c.’ (or to that effect) had so offensive an implication,—that I felt obliged to say simply, you had never seen Haydon and were altogether amazed and distressed at his desire,—and that, for the other matter, what he chose to send, you could not, I supposed, bring yourself to refuse admittance to the house. I gave no particular account of my own means of knowledge, nor spoke further than to remove the impression from the minds of the people present that you must have ‘known’ Haydon, as they call ‘knowing’—and Forster, for one, expressed surprise at it. I ventured to repeat what I mentioned to you—‘that it seemed likely you were selected for the Editorship precisely on account of your isolation from the world.’
Soon after, Forster went away—and, up-stairs, I got Talfourd alone, and just told him that I was in the habit of corresponding with you, that you had made me acquainted with a few of the circumstances, and that you had at once thought of _him_, Talfourd, as the proper source of instruction on the subject. Talfourd’s reply amounted to this,—(in the fewest words possible). The _will_ &c. is of course an absurdity. The papers are the undoubted property of the creditors ... any attempt to publish them would subject you to an action at law. They were given prospectively to you _exactly for the reason I suggested_: they having been in the first instance offered to Talfourd. Haydon knew that T. would never print them in their offensive integrity, and hoped that _you would_—being quite of the average astuteness in worldly matters when his own vanity and selfishness were not concerned. They might, these papers, be published with advantage to Mrs. Haydon at some future time if the creditors permit—or without their permitting, if woven into a substantially new framework; as some ‘Haydon and his Times,’ or the like ... but there is nothing to call for such a step at present, even in that view of advantage to the family ... the subscription and other assistances being sufficient for their necessities. Therefore the course T. would recommend you to adopt is to let the deposit (_if_ you have one ... for he did not _know_, and I said nothing)—lie untouched—not giving them up to anybody, any creditor, to Mrs. H’s prejudice.
Now, can you do better than as Forster advises? Talfourd goes on circuit _to-morrow_—he said, ‘I can hear, or arrange anything with Miss B’s brother’—so that, if there should be no time, you can write by him, and entrust explanations &c. But would it not be best to get done with this matter directly—to write a BRIEF note in the course of to-day, mentioning the facts, and requesting advice? In order to leave you the time to do this,—should the post presently bring me a letter allowing me to see you at three ... unless the allowance is _very_ free, _very_ irresistible ... I will rather take to-morrow ... a piece of self-denial I fear I should not so readily bring myself to exhibit, were I not really obliged to pass your house to-day; so that even Ba will understand!
Miss Mitford’s note appears to have been none of the wisest—indeed a phrase or two I heard, were purely foolish: H. was said to have practised ‘Ion’s principle’!
T. had known Haydon most intimately and for a long time: he does not believe H. was mad—of a mad vanity, of course. His _last_ paper ... ‘Haydon’s Thoughts’ ... was a dissertation on the respective merits of Napoleon and Wellington—how wrong Haydon felt he had been to prefer the former ... and the why and the wherefore. All this wretched stuff, in a room theatrically arranged,—here his pictures, there ... God forgive us all, fools or wise by comparison! The debts are said to be £3,000 ... he having been an insolvent debtor ... how long before? His landlord, a poor man, is creditor for £1,200.
Here I will end, and wait: this is written in _all_ haste ... and is so altogether no proper letter of _mine_ that I shall put the necessary ‘Private’ at the top of it. _My_ letter shall go presently, if _I_ do not go, to my own Ba—
R.B.
Should you write to your brother ... will he need reminding that Talfourd is only to know we correspond,—not that we are personally acquainted? Had you not better mention this in any case?
God bless you, dearest,—what a letter from me to you—to Ba! _Time_, Time!
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Thursday. [Post-mark, July 9, 1846.]
My own darling, my Ba, do you know when I read those letters (as soon as I remembered I had got them,—for you hold me long after both doors, up and down stairs, shut) when I looked through them, under a gateway ... I was pricked at the heart to have thought so, and spoken so, of the poor writer. I will believe that he was good and even great when in communication with you—indeed all men are made, or make themselves, different in their approaches to different men—and the secret of goodness and greatness is in choosing _whom_ you will approach, and live with, in memory or imagination, through the crowding obvious people who seem to live with you. That letter about the glory of being a painter ‘if only for the neglect’ is most touching and admirable ... there is the serene spot attained, the solid siren’s isle amid the sea; and while _there_, he was safe and well ... but he would put out to sea again, after a breathing time, I suppose? though even a smaller strip of land was enough to maintain Blake, for one instance, in power and glory through the poor, fleeting ‘sixty years’—then comes the rest from cartooning and exhibiting. But there is no standing, one foot on land and one on the waves, now with the high aim in view, now with the low aim,—and all the strange mistaken talk about ‘prestiges,’ ‘Youth and its luck,’ Napoleon and the world’s surprise and interest. There comes the low aim between the other,—an organ grinds Mr. Jullien’s newest dance-tune, and Camoens is vexed that the ‘choral singing which brought angels down,’ can’t also draw street-passengers round.
I take your view of H.’s freedom, at that time, from the thoughts of what followed.
He was weak—a strong man would have borne what so many bear—what were his griefs, as grief _goes_? Do you remember I told you, when the news of Aliwal and the other battles came to England, of our gardener, and his son, a sergeant in one of the regiments engaged ... how the father could learn nothing at first, of course ... how they told him at the Horse Guards he should be duly informed in time, after his betters, whether this son was dead, or wounded. Since then, no news came ... ‘which is _good_ news’ the father persuaded himself to think ... so the apprehensions subside, and the hope confirms itself, more and more, while the old fellow digs and mows and rakes away, like a man painting historical pictures ... only without the love of it. Well, this morning we had his daughter here to say ‘the letter’ had arrived at last ... her brother was killed in the first battle, so there’s an end of the three months’ sickness of heart,—and the poor fellow must bear his loss ‘like a man’—or like a woman ... for I recollect another case, of an old woman whom my mother was in the habit of relieving,—who brought a letter one day which she could hardly understand—it was from her son, a sailor, and went on for a couple of pages about his good health and expectations,—then, in a different handwriting, somebody, ‘your son’s shipmate’ ‘took up his pen to inform you that he fell from the masthead into the sea and was drowned yesterday,—which he therefore thought it right to put in the unfinished letter.’ All which the old woman bore somehow,—seeing she lives yet.
Well,—ought not I to say Mr. Kenyon was as kind as usual, and his party as pleasant? No, for you know—what you cannot by possibility know, it seems, is, that I am not particularly engaged next Saturday! Ba, shall I really see you so soon? Bless you ever, my very, very own! I shall not hear to-day ... but to-morrow,—do but not keep me waiting for _that_ letter, and the mules shall be ready hours and hours, for any sign I will have, at La Cava!
Ever your R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday. [Post-mark, July 9, 1846.]
See what an account we have this morning of La Cava ... ‘quite impossible for the winter.’ What does ‘quite impossible’ quite mean, I wonder? I feel disappointed. As to Palermo, you would rather be in Italy, and so would I, perhaps. Salerno seems questionable too; and Vietri ... what of Vietri? I don’t at all see why we should receive the responses of this friend of my friend who is not so very much my friend, as if they were oracular and final. There must be the right of appeal for us to other authorities. Will you investigate and think a little? For my