part I

shall not care to what place we go, except for the climate’s sake—the cheapness too should be considered a little: and, for the rest, every place which you should like, I should like, and which you liked most, I should like most—everything is novelty to _me_, remember.

My uncle Hedley has just come now, and I must quicken my writing. Oh—to be so troubled just now ... just now!—But I wrote to Mr. Serjeant Talfourd last night, and told him as fully and as briefly as I could the whole position ... and _that_ vexation I shall try now to throw behind me, after the fashion of dear Mr. Kenyon’s philosophy. I put the thought of you, beloved, between me and all other thoughts—surely I _can_, when you were here only yesterday. So much to think of, there is! One thing made me laugh in the recollection. Do you mean to tell Mrs. Jameson that you are going to marry me, ‘because it is intolerable to hear me talked of?’ That would be an original motive. ‘So speaks the great poet.’—

Ah Flush, Flush!—he did not hurt you really? You will forgive him for me? The truth is that he hates all unpetticoated people, and that though he does not hate _you_, he has a certain distrust of you, which any outward sign, such as the umbrella, reawakens. But if you had seen how sorry and ashamed he was yesterday! I slapped his ears and told him that he never should be loved again: and he sate on the sofa (sitting, not lying) with his eyes fixed on me all the time I did the flowers, with an expression of quite despair in his face. At last I said, ‘If you are good, Flush, you may come and say that you are sorry’ ... on which he dashed across the room and, trembling all over, kissed first one of my hands and then another, and put up his paws to be shaken, and looked into my face with such great beseeching eyes that you would certainly have forgiven him just as I did. It is not savageness. If he once loved you, you might pull his ears and his tail, and take a bone out of his mouth even, and he would not bite you. He has no savage caprices like other dogs and men I have known.

Writing of Flush, in my uncle comes, and then my cousin, and then my aunt ... _by relays!_ and now it is nearly four and this letter may be too late for the post which reaches you irregularly. So provoked I am!—but I shall write again, to-night, you know.

Dearest, you did me so much good yesterday! Say how your head is—and remember Saturday. Saturday will be clear through Chiswick—may the sun shine on it!—

Your own BA.

Think of the dreadful alternative as set forth in this MS.!—The English ... or a bad climate!—_Can_ it be true?

ENCLOSURE

[La Cava is _impossible_ for the winter owing to the damp and cold. At no season should any person remain out at the hour of sunset. An hour _afterwards_ the air is dry and healthy—[Is this at La Cava? Ba] This applies to all Italy, and is a precaution too often neglected. Salerno has bad air too near it, to be safe as a residence. Besides, it is totally without the resources of books, good food, or medical advice. Palermo would be agreeable in the winter, and not _very_ much frequented by English. _However, where good climate exists, English are to be found._ Murray’s ‘Southern Italy’ would give every particular as to the distance of La Cava from the sea.]

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

Thursday Evening. [Post-mark, July 10, 1846.]

How I have waited for your letter to-night,—and it comes nearly at ten!—It comes at last—thank you for it, ever dearest.

And I knew—quite understood yesterday, that you were sorry for _me_, which made you angry with another ... but, as to poor Haydon, you are too generous and too pitiful to refuse him any justice. I was sure that the letters would touch you. The particular letter about the ‘back-ground’ and the ‘neglect’ and Napoleon, ... _that_, you will observe, was the last I had from him. Every word you say of it, I think and feel. Yes, it was just _so_! His conscience was not a sufficient witness, ... nor was God. He must also have the Royal Academy and the appreciators of Tom Thumb. A ‘weak man,’ of course he was,—for all vain men are weak men. They cannot stand alone. But that he had in him the elements of greatness—that he looked to noble aims in art and life, however distractedly, ... that his thoughts and feelings were not those of a common man, ... it is true, it is undeniable,—and you would think so more and more if you read through the packets of letters which I have of his—so fervid, so full of earnestness and individuality ... so alive with egotism which yet seemed to redeem itself. Mr. Kenyon said of the letter we have spoken of, that it was scarcely the production of a sane mind. But I who was used to his letters, saw nothing in it in the least unusual—he has written to me far wilder letters! That he ‘never should die,’ he had said once or twice before. Then Napoleon was a favourite subject of his ... constantly recurred to. He was not mad _then_!

Poor Haydon! Think what an agony, life was to him, so constituted!—his own genius a clinging curse! the fire and the clay in him seething and quenching one another!—the man seeing maniacally in all men the assassins of his fame! and, with the whole world against him, struggling for the thing which was his life, through night and day, in thoughts and in dreams ... struggling, stifling, breaking the hearts of the creatures dearest to him, in the conflict for which there was no victory, though he could not choose but fight it. Tell me if Laocoon’s anguish was not as an infant’s sleep, compared to this? And could a man, suffering _so_, stop to calculate very nicely the consideration due to A, and the delicacy which should be observed toward B? Was he scrupulously to ask himself whether this or that cry of his might not give C a headache? Indeed no, no. It is for _us_ rather to look back and consider! Poor Haydon.

As to grief as grief—of course he had no killing grief. But he _suffered_.

Often it has struck me as a curious thing (yet it is not perhaps curious) that suicides are occasioned nearly always by a mortified self-love ... by losses in money, which force a man into painful positions ... and scarcely ever by bereavement through death ... scarcely ever. The wound on the vanity is more irritating than the wound on the affections—and the word _Death_, if it does not make us recoil (which it does I think sometimes, ... even from the graves of beloved beings!), yet keeps us humble ... casts us down from our heights. We may despond, but we do not rebel—we feel God over us.

Ah—your poor gardener! All that hope is vain—and the many, many hopes which in a father’s heart must have preceded it! How sorry I am for him.[4]

You never can have a grief, dearest dearest, of which I shall not have half for my share. That is my right from henceforth ... and if I could have it _all_ ... _would_ I not, do you think, ... and give my love to you to keep instead? Yes, ... indeed yes! May God bless you always. I have walked out to-day, you did me so much good yesterday. As for Saturday, it certainly is our day, since you are not ‘particularly engaged’ to Miss Campbell. Saturday, the day after to-morrow! But the mules may wait long at La Cava for us, if the tradition, which I sent you, is trustworthy—may they not? I feel as disappointed ... as disappointed—

Your own, very own BA.

[4] [Some months later the discovery was made that there had been a mistake in the War Office in the name, and that the son was unharmed.—R.B.B.]

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

Friday. [Post-mark, July 10, 1846.]

And _I_ am disappointed, dearest, in this news of La Cava—after which it would be madness to think of going there: the one reason we have to go at all is simply _for your health_—I mean, that if the seclusion were the main object, we might easily compass _that_ here. All places are utterly indifferent to me if I can inhabit them with you—why should Palermo please me less than Italy proper? The distance is considerable, however, and the journey expensive—I wonder whether the steamer will sail for Leghorn as last year. As for the travelling English, they are horrible, and at Florence, unbearable ... their voices in your ear at every turn ... and such voices!—I got to very nearly hate the Tribune for their sakes. Vietri is close to Salerno and must be obvious to the same condemnation. Your friend speaks from personal experience, I presume—she may well say that the baneful effects of the hour of sunset (_i.e._ the Ave-maria) are too much overlooked ‘in all Italy’—I never heard of them before—but an infinity of ‘crotchets’ go from Italian brain to brain about what, in eating or drinking or walking or sleeping, will be the death of you: still, they may know best. The most dreadful event that could happen to me would be your getting worse instead of better.... God knows what I should do! So whatever precaution we _can_ take, let us take.

Oh, poor Flush,—do you think I do not love and respect him for his jealous supervision,—his slowness to know another, having once known you? All my apprehension is that, in the imaginations down-stairs, he may very unconsciously play the part of the dog that is heard to ‘bark violently’ while something dreadful takes place: yet I do not sorrow over his slapped ears, as if they ever pained him very much—you dear Ba!

And to-morrow I shall see you. Are you, can you be, really ‘better’ after I have seen you? If it is not truth ... which I will not say ... such an assurance is the most consummate flattery I can imagine ... it may be recorded on my tombstone ‘R.B.—to whom this flattery was addressed, that, after the sight of him, Ba was better, she said.’ If it is truth ... may you say _that_, neither more nor less, day by day, year by year through our lives—and I shall have lived indeed!

How it rains—how it varies from hot to cold! a pretty vantage-ground whence we English can look and call other climates bad or indifferent! Now if to-morrow resembles to-day, will the Chiswick expedition hold good? I shall consider that I may go unless a letter comes to-morrow ... which would have to be written to-day. How pleasant it would be to make our days _always_ Wednesday and Saturday ... could not that be contrived? So much for considerateness and contentedness!

I want, now, to refer as little as possible to the sad subject ... but I am glad you have written,—glad too that you are not severe on me for some hasty speeches—which did, indeed, mean as you say ... vexation at your having been vexed. And, I will just add, you remark excellently on the wound to self-love making itself that remedy, rather than the wound to the affections ... yet there are instances ... Romilly loses his wife ... so does poor Laman Blanchard.

So I go on writing, writing about all but what my heart is full of! Let me kiss you, ever dearest—to-morrow will soon arrive—meanwhile, and forever I am your own.

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

Sunday. [Post-mark, July 12, 1846.]

When I made you promise to refer no more to that subject in your letter (which I must wait a day and a night for, alas!), I did not engage myself to the like silence ... perhaps because I was not bidden—or, no! there is a better reason; I want to beg your pardon, dearest, for all that petulancy,—for the manner of what I said rather than the matter,—there is a rationality in it all, if I could express trulier what I feel—but the manner was foolish and wrong and unnecessary to _you_—so do forgive and forget it. You would understand and sympathize if you knew—not me, whom you do know in some degree,—but so much of my early life as would account for the actual horror and hatred I have of those particular doctrines of the world—and the especially foolish word about the ‘travelling’ meant something like the not unnatural thought that if in this main, sole event for all good and all evil in my life,—if _here_ the world plucked you from me by any of the innumerable lines it casts, with that indirectness, too,—_then_, I should simply go and live the rest of my days as far out of it as I could.

The simple thing to say is, that I who know you to be above me in all great or good feelings and therefore worship you, must be without excuse to talk inconsiderately as if I, sitting by you and speaking of the same subject, must needs feel more acutely, more strongly in one respect where, indeed, it wants very little pre-eminence in heart or brain to feel entirely the truth—a simplest of truths. It would have been laughable if I had broken out on Mrs. Proctor’s bitterness of speech, for instance ... just as though you were the slower of us two to see the nature of it! So I do again ask your pardon, dearest Ba! You said you loved me no less yesterday than ever—how must I love you and press closer to you more and more, and desire to see nothing of the world behind you, when I hear how the world thinks, and how you think! You only, only adorable woman, only imaginable love for me! And all the hastiness and petulancy comes from that ... someone seems to come close (in every such maxim of the world’s) and say ‘What is _she_—to so much a year? Could you be happy with her except in Mayfair—and there whom could you not be happy with!’

It is as I expected—Rachel plays on Wednesday in ‘Phèdre,’ and our friend writes to say he has secured places. May nothing overcast the perfect three hours on Tuesday,—those dear, dear spaces of dear brightness—why cannot a life be made up of these ... with the proper interposition of work, to justify God’s goodness so far as poor mortality and its endeavours can,—a week of Tuesdays—then a month—a year—a life! I must long to see you again,—always by far the most I long, the _next day_—the very day after I have seen you—when it is freshest in my mind what I did _not_ say while I might have said it,—nor ask while I might have been answered—nor learn while you would have taught me—no, it is indescribable. Did I call yesterday ‘unsatisfactory’? Would I had it back now! Or better, I will wish you here when I write, with the trees to see and the birds to hear through the open window—I see you on this old chair against the purple back ... or shall you lie on the sofa? Ba, how I love you, my own perfect unapproachable mistress.

Let me kiss your feet—and now your hands and your eyes—and your lips now, for the full pardon’s sake, my sweetest love—

Ever your own—

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

Sunday. 6 P.M. [Post-mark, July 13, 1846.]

Ever, ever dearest, I have to _feel_ for you all through Sunday, and I hear no sound and see no light. How are you? how did you get home yesterday? I thought of you more than usual after you went, if I did not love you as much as usual.... What could _that_ doubt have been made of?

Dearest, I had a letter last night from Mrs. Jameson, who says that on _Tuesday or Wednesday_ at about four o’clock (though she is as little sure of the hour apparently as of the day), she means to come to see me. Now you are to consider whether this _grand peutêtre_ will shake our Tuesday, ... whether you would rather take Thursday instead, or will run the risk as it appears. I am ready to agree, either way. She is the most uncertain of uncertain people, and may not come at all ... it’s a case for what Hume used to call sceptical scepticism. Judge! Then I have heard (I forgot to tell you) from Mr. Horne—and ... did _you_ have two letters last week from your Bennet? ... because _I_ had,—flying leaves of ‘Mignonette,’ and other lyrical flowers.

When you had gone Arabel came to persuade me to go to the park in a cab, notwithstanding my too lively recollections of the last we chanced upon,—and I was persuaded, and so we tumbled one over another (yet not all those cabs are so rough!) to the nearest gate opening on the grass, and got out and walked a little. A lovely evening it was, but I wished somehow rather to be at home, and Flush had his foot pinched in shutting the cab-door, ... and altogether there was not much gain:—only, as for Flush’s foot, though he cried piteously and held it up, looking straight to me for sympathy, no sooner had he touched the grass than he began to run without a thought of it. Flush always makes the most of his misfortunes—he is of the Byronic school—_il se pose en victime_.

Now I will not write any more—I long to have my letter of to-morrow morning—I _long_ to have it.... Shall I not have it to-morrow morning? This is posted by my hand.

I loved you yesterday ... I love you to-day ... I shall love you to-morrow.

Every day I am yours.

BA.

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

Monday. [Post-mark, July 13, 1846.]

My own Ba, your letter kisses me in its entire kindness—and I kiss it and you.—Mrs. Jameson may come or keep away ... (since you let me speak and decide, which is like you) ... she may appoint and reappoint, but Tuesday was given me and I will have it if her visit is the only obstacle—for what was all the confessing worth if not to account for such a phenomenon as my presence in your room when by any chance she might discover it? Beside, as you say, she is the most uncertain of engagement-holders ... no, indeed,—no Tuesday ought to be given up for _her_! Therefore, unless fresh orders arrive,—at three on Tuesday ... which is happily, happily to-morrow! You are my own sweetest to reach a letter to me with your own hand, as you tell me,—and the drive, and the walk to the Post Office—thank you, Ba! Perhaps ... dare I say ... you will answer that letter I sent yesterday ... because now I remember there is no prayer at the end to prevent you ... that is, from answering the main part of it—the reverting &c.

I wrote to Mr. Horne, but shall not hear from him—on Saturday I wrote. And Mr. Bennett’s two letters are considerately written,—directed, I mean,—in a hand and with a blue ink that I recognise,—consequently the contents give me no trouble. I wrote two or three lines to the ‘year of the world’ poet,—did you take the pains? Once on a time some unknown author sent me a Tragedy, ‘not published,’ called ‘Alessandro de’ Medici,’ with some striking scenes ... I wonder who could be the writer—did it ever fall in your way?

... As if I care!—can I care about anything that is not Ba? All else seems as idle as ... as,—now you shall have a real instance in point—as my dream last night. This morning at breakfast my mother asked me, the first thing, what could so amuse me as to make me call loudly ‘Bravo’ again and again, with abundance of laughter? (My room is next to hers and the door is left ajar). Whereupon I tried to recall my dream—and all that I can seize is a passage through a gallery of _Haydon’s_ pictures, one of which was a portrait of his wife; nor did a suspicion once cross my mind that the artist was not well and working somewhere in the vicinity all the time—How strange! I never dream if _quite_ well—and I suppose the present state of my head just amounts to _not_ being quite well. (It is better at any rate, and to-morrow—ought to be worse, that—Ba may prove her potency as of old).

Now I will kiss you and wait as well as I can till the full blessing. Dearest—dearest I am your own—

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

Monday Morning. [Post-mark, July 14, 1846.]

I must write ... even if you come to-morrow. Dearest, if I told you all that nonsense on Saturday, it was for the sake of telling you all and of hearing you say ‘What nonsense’ afterwards. I never began by disguising anything from you ... did I? I always wished you to see how the arrows would strike out at us from that bush and this bush. At _us_. For, granting that you seriously thought it possible for such motives to divide me from you, ... ah, _granting_ it, ... and _you may well ask my pardon_!

The world! the world could as soon catch me with a ‘line’ so baited, as you could catch a trout with a silver sixpence at the end of a string. Not only do I think with you entirely on that subject, but I always thought like you. Always I have hated all their worldly systems, and not merely _now_, and since I _have loved you_. With a hundred a year between us, I would have married you, if _you_ had not been afraid. And so, think whether directly or ‘indirectly’ I am likely to be frightened into the breach of an engagement by what I repeated to you or by what is like unto it. No—my weaknesses are of a different class altogether.

The talk I talked over again to you, seemed to burn in my ears the longer on that Saturday, because, while it was being originally talked between Papa and my aunt (touching Arabella Hedley’s marriage), he had brought a paper for me to sign about some money placed on a railway, (not speculatively) ... and my aunt, by way of saying a lively thing, exclaimed, ‘Is that your marriage-settlement, my dear?’ ... which made me so nervous that I wrote my name wrong and vexed Papa into being almost cross with me. So one word got entwined with another, and all seemed to hang around me—Do you understand?

But you _do not_, how you pained me when you said _that_. Ah—I thought I saw you gone ... ‘so far, so far,’ as you said ... and myself left.

Yet I should deserve it of course, if I were to give you up for the sake of _that_! ... or for any other motive, ... except your advantage ... your own. I should deserve everything in such a case, but should feel nothing ... not even my punishment. _Could_ I? ... _being without a heart_?

Ah—after all my mistrust, did I ever mistrust you _so_? I have doubted your power to love me as you believed you loved me, perhaps—but your will to be true to one you loved, without reference to worldly influences, I never doubted, nor _could_. I think I will let you beg my pardon; you unjust, dearest....

To so much over-praise, there should be a little wronging, too ... and therefore you are not, after all, ‘unjust’ ... only ‘dearest’!...

Such a letter, besides, you have written, ... and there are two of them to-day! You will not go from me, I think, ‘so far, so far.’ You will not leave me behind, with the harpoon in me, to make red the salt wilderness of waters.

Altogether, then, I forgive you, Robert—and it is glorious for me to have something to forgive you for, who are the _best_ so out of measure!—I seize the opportunity.

And you come to-morrow! Which is right ... right! I was afraid that you would not come—And Mrs. Jameson is perfectly uncertain as you may read in this new note which reached me with yours to-night.

All the Hedleys have dined here. To-morrow will be clear of them ... _pure_ of them, I was going to write ... but I thought of Mrs. Hedley’s beaming affectionate face ... (so still lovely, she looked this evening, when she came up-stairs to kiss me!) ... and could not say such a wronging word. You would like her—you could not help it.

I was in the carriage to-day in Oxford Street ... and a sealed letter was thrown exactly at my head, my aunt and cousin and Henrietta being with me—a sealed letter sealed with arms (not of Agincourt!) and directed ‘For your perusal.’ Guess the meaning of that!—why just a tract by the Rev. Villiers of that parish, upon the enormous wickedness of frequenting plays and balls! Perhaps I looked as if my soul had entered into the secret of the Polka-dancers—who can say?

So, good-night, dearest dearest!—

I cannot give myself again to you,

being your own.

Of course this was written with the poker, as you will see by the calligraphy.

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

Wednesday Morning. [Post-mark, July 15, 1846.]

And is it true of to-day as you said it would be, ever dearest, that you wish to be with me? Let me have the comfort, or luxury rather, of the thought of it, before to-morrow takes you a step farther off.

At dinner my aunt said to Papa ... ‘I have not seen Ba all day—and when I went to her room, to my astonishment a gentleman was sitting there.’ ‘Who was _that_?’ said Papa’s eyes to Arabel—‘Mr. Browning called here to-day,’ she answered—‘And Ba bowed her head,’ continued my aunt, ‘as if she meant to signify to me that I was not to come in’—‘Oh,’ cried Henrietta, ‘_that_ must have been a mistake of yours. Perhaps she meant just the contrary.’ ‘You should have gone in,’ Papa said, ‘and seen the _poet_.’ Now if she really were to do that the next time!—Yet I did not, you know, make the expelling gesture she thought she saw. Simply I was startled. As to Saturday we must try whether we cannot defend the position ... set the guns against the approaches to right and left ... we must try.

In speaking too of your visit this morning, Stormy said to her ... ‘Oh Mr. Browning is a _great_ friend of Ba’s! He comes here twice a week—is it twice a week or once, Arabel?’

While I write, the Hedleys come—and Mrs. Hedley is beseeching me into seeing Mr. Bevan, whom perhaps I must see, notwithstanding Flush’s wrongs.

By the way, I made quite clear to Flush that you left the cakes, and they were very graciously received indeed.

Dearest, since the last word was written, Mrs. Hedley came back leading Mr. Bevan, and Papa who had just entered the room found the door shut upon him.... I was nervous ... oh, so nervous! and the six feet, and something more, of Mr. Bevan seemed to me as if they never would end, so tall the man is. Well—and he sate down by me according to my aunt’s arrangement; and I, who began to talk a thousand miles from any such subject, with a good reason for the precaution, found myself thrown head-foremost into ecclesiastical architecture at the close of about three minutes—how he got there all his saints know best! It’s his subject ... par excellence. He talks to Arabella about arches and mullions—he can’t talk of anything else, I suspect. And because the Trinity is expressed in _such_ a form of church-building, the altar at the east, and the baptistery at the door, ... there’s no other lawful form of a church, none at all! Not that he has an opinion! he ‘adopts opinions,’ but would not think for himself for the world at the risk of ultimate damnation! Which was the amount of his talk to-day ... and really it does not strike me as wisdom, now that I set it down so. Yet the man expressed himself well and has a sensible face—he is a clever third-class man, I think—better than the mass for sense, but commonplace essentially. Only, inasmuch as ecclesiastical architecture is not _my_ subject, I may think otherwise of him when I know him otherwise. I do not dislike him now. And then I am conscious how you spoil me for common men, dearest! It is scarcely fair on them.

My aunt (Mrs. Hedley) said when she introduced him: ‘You are to understand this to be a great honour—for she never lets anybody come here except Mr. Kenyon, ... and a few other gentlemen’ ... (laughing). Said Papa—‘Only _one_ other gentleman, indeed. Only Mr. Browning, the poet—the man of the pomegranates.’ Was _that_ likely to calm me, do you think? How late it is—I must break off. To-night I shall write again. Dearest beloved,

I am your own always.

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

Wednesday. [Post-mark, July 15, 1846.]

Dearest Ba, I am anxious to know what cannot yet be told me, how that unforeseen visit has worked—tell me the moment you can,—and fully, whatever happens.

‘Suspicious’—anything in the world rather than _that_, you are! When you have mistrusted your own power over me, I believed always in the mistrust ... which, indeed, matters little except to yourself. For if I would, certainly, have the truth seen as the truth, and our true position understood,—yet ... there is,—ought I not to be ashamed at saying?—an exquisite, _final_ grace and _endearingness_ in the ignorance, strange as I must account it. You doubly trust me,—with the treasure, and then, with the knowledge that it is a treasure, or _such_ a treasure.

Ba, when I think of it all, my whole heart becomes one gratitude to you,—I am only yours, grateful for ever. It is the only kind of thoughts in which you _shall_ not share (there are many in which you _cannot_) the thoughts to my inmost self as I go over what you say and do and try to clear up to myself the precise fascination in each: you shall not know what you do ... but shall continue to do and to let _me know_. I love you entirely. Where can you change so that I shall not love you more and more as I grow more able and worthier? I cannot sit for twenty-four hours by you as I sit for three—as it is, I take myself to task for not doing something here at home to justify in some measure my privilege and blessing—and the only thing that keeps conscience quiet comparatively is ... the old expedient that the Future engages to do for me what the Present cannot. Under your eyes, I will hope to work and attain your approval. _I know_ that when you were only the great Poet and not my Ba, I would have preferred _your_ praise, as competent to praise, to that of the whole world—I remember distinctly, and _know_ I should have done so. And now, if I put aside the Poet and only (what an ‘only’) see my dearest, dearest lady of that hair and eyes, and hands, and voice, and all the completeness that was trusted to my arms yesterday—why I feel that if she, never having written a line, said ‘What Miss Barrett may think I do not know, but _I_ am content with what you show me’—then, dearest, should not _I_ be content—?

I called on Moxon—and called at Carlyle’s to no purpose. He was out, and will leave town (said the servant) next Saturday. Mrs. Carlyle has already left it. So, no Rag Fair for the present, or probably ever! This was my fault,—I having let several Sundays go by—I must write to Mr. Kenyon and try if he will come on his own account. Moxon tells me that he has sold fifteen hundred of Tennyson’s Poems in a year—and is about to print another edition in consequence. If that is the case, and Tennyson gets, say, only half a crown by the sale of each copy, expenses deducted, he will have received 178_l._,—little enough, as payments are made to _Punch_-literature, but enough to live upon, whatever the awful fiat decides! Tennyson ‘is going’ to Switzerland presently with Moxon—but is liable to fits of indecision. He did talk of going to Italy (of course), but the other day, time being up, his brother was forced to proceed alone. Moxon is coming here first.

Now I will kiss you, dearest, and hope that Wimpole Street stands where it did, unhurt by explosions of any-kind. I have got a letter from Procter asking me to go to-day, which I cannot do. Ever your own, very own R.

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

Wednesday Evening. [Post-mark, July 16, 1846.]

Well! I anticipated your asking, I think, and told you _fully_ this morning. It was a chronicle I sent you, rather than a letter. And nothing is left to tell you—for I did not go out all day ... nor yesterday. Which was wrong. But I had visitor on visitor to-day, ... my old maid coming to bring me her baby to look at, to Flush’s infinite delight. Whenever she comes he devotes himself to her, stays with her down-stairs, lies on the corner of her gown, and, for the most part, forbears going to sleep. To-morrow I mean to go out ... to-morrow,—when you are beginning to think rather less of me.

Isn’t it ungrateful of me? _I think so._

I am glad, at least, that I do not appear to you ‘suspicious.’ Because I dislike suspicious people myself, and it has struck me often in the midst of the dislike.... ‘_That_ is how I must appear to _him_.’ Ah—but you are too indulgent to me, my own dearest ... too dearest! ... and you draw crooked inferences for me, shutting _both_ the eyes ... the near-sighted eye and far-sighted eye. Or is it, in that strange sight of yours, that I walk between the far and the near objects, in an invisible security? Or is it (which were best) that I am too near to be seen even by the near-sighted eye, ... like a hand brought close to the eyelashes, which, for over-closeness, nobody can see? _Let_ me be too near to be seen—always too near!—dearest, dearest! Never will I complain that you do not see me! Be sure of that, now.

Once I used to be more uneasy, and to think that I ought to _make_ you see me. But Love is better than Sight, and Love will do without Sight. Which I did not understand at first. I knew it was enough for _me_, that you should love me. That it was enough for _you_, I had to learn afterwards.

And ‘_Grateful_’ is my word and not yours. I am grateful to you, if to owe you all the sense of life, all the renewal of hope, all the possibility of happiness ... if to owe these things to another, consciously, feelingly, shall pass for gratitude, ... then _I_ am grateful to _you_, Robert. Do you not know it, that I should say it again? For me, it seems to me that I can do nothing in return. To love you! Why no woman in the world could do less.

I am glad, both for the public and Tennyson, that his poems sell so well—and presently you will do as well or better—and I, half as well perhaps; so that we shall be too rich, which will spoil it all ... won’t it?

Mr. Horne sent me the _Daily News_ to-day, ... the number containing his verses on Haydon ... and I cut from it an advertisement, for the purpose of bidding you observe that the land journey, or river-voyage, is very much cheaper than the sea-voyage by the steamers—unless the direct vessel to Leghorn should go as last year, and I fear it will not. The steamer-charges of the Oriental company are immense. Nineteen guineas to Gibraltar even! Twenty-eight, I think, to Naples. As for the advertisement, I send it only for what it suggests. And there is time enough for calculations, all ways suggestible.

May God bless you, dear, _dear_! How is the head? Shall it be better, without me, until Saturday? Say how it is.

Among all my visitors, the only one I expected, never came! No Mrs. Jameson again to-day!—

Dearest, I am your very own

BA.

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

Thursday. [Post-mark, July 16, 1846.]

I should be doing your own dear face (which I see so perfectly through the distance)—too great a wrong if I so much as answered the charge of ‘not remembering.’ I see the face smile above the hand that writes! As if one may not say that a division, a wound, smarts more on the first day, and aches more on the next! As if I do not prefer the fresh sharp regret to the settling of ... what I trust in God and you I never shall feel! However, if it will please you to know, I _do_ feel to-day as earnest a longing to be with you again as if your two letters were not here,—as if Tuesday lay only an hour behind instead of the two long days!

I think your Father’s words on those two occasions, very kind,—very! They confuse,—perhaps humble me ... that is not the expression, but it may stay. I dare say he is infinitely kind at bottom—I think so, that is, on my own account,—because, come what will or may, I shall never see otherwise than with your sight. If he could know me, I think he would soon reconcile himself to all of it,—know my heart’s purposes toward you. But that is impossible—and with the sincere will to please him by any exertion or sacrifice in my power, I shall very likely never have the opportunity of picking up a glove he might drop. In old novels, the implacable father is not seldom set upon by a round dozen of ruffians with blacked faces from behind a hedge,—and just as the odds prove too many, suddenly a stranger (to all save the reader) leaps over an adjacent ditch, &c. ‘Sir, under Providence, I owe you my life!’ &c. &c. How does Dumas improve on this in ‘Monte Cristo’—are there ‘new effects?’ Absurdity! Yet I would fain ... fain! you understand.

To talk about my ‘spoiling you for other conversers’ is ... oh, leap over hedge and ditch, somebody, to the rescue! If I praise myself for anything in our intimacy it is that I never ... but I won’t go into it. And putting my own experience aside and in its place, it strikes me that what Ba ranks as a ‘third-rate man’ may pass justly for a paragon and marvel among men as the world has a right to class them. I am quite sure if I had been present and much had uttered itself about mullions ... _somebody_ would have looked a very babe in knowledge, and perhaps made Ba blush for him and her own waste of love and praise—So he retreats where he may keep it all in virtue of being what he _is_ ever is, and shall be, her own R.

The river-voyage is not only the cheaper but by far the more interesting ... _all_ to consider is the fatigue to you; what else?

I am very well to-day. Rachel’s ‘Phèdre’ was admirable last night; quite _through_ Racine up to Euripides—the declaration-scene with Hippolytus exquisite ... I must tell you—

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

Thursday. [Post-mark, July 17, 1846.]

Dearest, if _you_ feel _that_, must I not feel it more deeply? Twice or three times lately he has said to me ‘my love’ and even ‘my puss,’ his old words before he was angry last year, ... and I quite quailed before them as if they were so many knife-strokes. Anything but his _kindness_, I can bear now.

Yet I am glad that you feel _that_ ... The difficulty, (almost the despair!) has been with me, to make you understand the two ends of truth ... both that he is _not_ stone ... and that he _is_ immovable _as_ stone. Perhaps only a very peculiar nature could have held so long the position he holds in his family. His hand would not lie so heavily, without a pulse in it. Then he is upright—faithful to his conscience. You would respect him, ... and love him perhaps in the end. For me, he might have been king and father over me _to_ the end, if he had thought it worth while to love me openly enough—yet, even _so_, he should not have let you come too near. And you could not (so) have come too near—for he would have had my confidence from the beginning, and no opportunity would have been permitted to you of proving your affection for me, and I should have thought always what I thought at first. So the night-shade and the eglantine are twisted, twined, one in the other, ... and the little pink roses lean up against the pale poison of the berries—we cannot tear this from that, let us think of it ever so much!

We must be humble and beseeching _afterwards_ at least, and try to get forgiven—Poor Papa! I have turned it over and over in my mind, whether it would be less offensive, less _shocking_ to him, if an application were made first. If I were strong, I think I should incline to it at all risks—but as it is, ... it might ... would, probably, ... take away the power of action from me altogether. We should be separated, you see, from _that moment_, ... hindered from writing ... hindered from meeting ... and I could evade nothing, as I am—not to say that I should have fainting fits at every lifting of his voice, through that inconvenient nervous temperament of mine which has so often made me ashamed of myself. Then ... the positive disobedience might be a greater offence than the unauthorised act. I shut my eyes in terror sometimes. May God direct us to the best.

Oh—do not write about this, dearest, dearest?—I throw myself out of it into the pure, sweet, deep thought of you ... which is the love of you always. I am yours ... your own. I never doubt of being yours. I feel too much yours. It is might and right together. You are more to me, beside, than the whole world.

Write nothing of this, dearest of all!—it is of no use. To-day ... this morning ... I went out in the carriage, and we drove round the Park; and Mrs. Jameson did not come afterward. Will she put it off till Saturday? I have heard nothing against Saturday, by the way, worse than that conjecture of mine.

And I have written you, perhaps, a teazing, painful letter ... I, who love you to-day ‘as much as ever.’ It is my destiny, I sometimes think, to torment you. And let me say what I will, remember how nothing that I say can mean _a doubt_—you never shall have reason to reproach me for the falseness of cowardice—that double falseness ... both to me and to you. Only I wish this were Christmas-Day, and we ... even at Salerno ... in the ‘bad air’! There’s no harm in such a wish—now _is_ there?

Ever and ever I am your own

BA.

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

Friday. [Post-mark, July 17, 1846.]

Did you ever see a more uncongenial, colourless day than this—that brings me no letter! I do not despair yet, however—there will be a post presently. When I am without the sight of you, and the voice of you, which a letter seems ... I feel very accurately the justice of that figure by which I am represented as ‘able to leave you alone—leaving you and following my pleasure elsewhere’—so you have written and spoken! Well, to-day, I may follow my pleasures.

I will follow you, Ba,—the thoughts of you, and long for to-morrow.

No letter for me,—the time is past. If you are well, my own Ba, I will not mind ... more than I can. You had not been out for two days—the wind is high, too. May God keep you at all times, ever dearest!

The sun shines again—now I will hope to hear at six o’clock.

I can tell you nothing better, I think, than this I heard from Moxon the other day ... it really ought to be remembered. Moxon was speaking of critics, the badness of their pay, how many pounds a column the _Times_ allowed, and shillings the _Athenæum_,—and of the inevitable effects on the performances of the poor fellows. ‘How should they be at the trouble of reading any _difficult_ book so as to review it,—Landor, for instance?’ and indeed a friend of my own has promised to write a notice in the _Times_—but he complains bitterly,—he shall have to _read_ the book,—he can do no less,—and all for five or ten pounds’! All which Moxon quite seemed to understand—‘it will really take him some three or four mornings to read _enough_ of Landor to be able to do anything effectually.’ I asked if there had been any notices of the Book already—‘Just so many,’ he said ‘as Forster had the power of _getting done_’—Mr. White, a clergyman, has written a play for Macready, which everybody describes as the poorest stuff imaginable,—it is immediately reviewed in _Blackwood_ and the _Edinburgh_ ‘Because’ continues M, ‘he is a _Blackwood_ reviewer, and may do the like good turn to any of the confraternity.’

So—here I will end,—wanting to come to the kissing dearest Ba, and bidding her remember to-morrow how my heart sinks to-day in the silence.

Ever, dearest dearest, your very own.

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

Friday. [Post-mark, July 18, 1846.]

It is out of time to-night to write to you, since to-morrow we are to meet—but the letter which did not reach you, has been recoiling on me all day. Perhaps you have it by this time ... an uncomfortable letter, better away from you, notwithstanding all the kindness you speak, about my silence and the effect of _that_. So I write just a few words—The post office was in fault as usual. May it do perfecter duty to-morrow.

Saturday!—our day! At least if anything should be against it, you shall hear at the door by a note, when you come at three o’clock. I have put away my Thursday night’s melancholy ... except the repentance of troubling you with it——understand that I have!

Mrs. Jameson was here to-day, and her niece, ... and _you_, never named,—but she is coming another day, she says, to pay me a longer visit. I like her ... I like her. Then, there came another visitor, ... my uncle Hedley, who began, as usual, to talk of Italy—he advises me to go this year.—‘If you don’t go this year, _you never will go_ ... and you ought at once to make an effort, and go.’ We talked of places and of ways, and after he had said many words in favour of Pisa, desired, if I went through Paris, that I would pay him a visit. ‘Ah,’ said I, ‘uncle Hedley, you are very good to me always, but when that day arrives, you may be inclined, perhaps, to cast me off.’ ‘Cast you off, Ba,’ he cried in the most puzzled astonishment—‘why what _can_ you mean? what words to use! Cast you off! now do explain what you mean.’ ‘Ah, no one can tell,’ said I musingly. ‘Do you mean,’ he insisted, ‘because you will be a rebel and a runaway?’ ... (laughing!) ‘no, no—_I_ won’t cast you off, I promise you! Only I hope that you may be able to manage it quietly’ &c. &c.

He is a most amiable man, so gentle and tender; and fond of me; _exclusively_ of the poetry. I am certain that he never can make out how anyone in the world can consent to read my verses. But Ba, as Ba, is a decided favourite of his, beyond all in the house—not that he is a real uncle ... only the husband of my aunt, and caring more for me than both my real uncles, who, each of them, much prefer a glass of claret,—thank you! The very comparison does me too much honour for either of them. Claret is a holy thing. If I had said half a glass, and mixed it with water, I should have been more accurate by so much.

Now, dearest, dearest, I say good-night and have done.

I am wholly yours and always.

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

Sunday. [Post-mark, July 20, 1846.]

Dearest Ba’s face of yesterday, with the smiles and perfect sweetness,—oh, the comfort it is to me through this day of my especial heaviness! I don’t know when I have felt more stupid, and I seem to keep the closelier to you, Ba. Is that one of my felicities of compliment? I think if you were here I should lay my head on your bosom, my own beloved, and never raise it again. In your last letter, you speak of those who care less for you than for a ‘glass of claret’—there is something sublime,—at all events, astounding, in the position we occupy each of us,—I, and those less-carers,—standing in respect to each other so like England and Owhyhee, at which, they told me when I was a boy, I should be pretty sure to arrive if I dug a hole just through the earth, dropped to the centre and then, turning round, climbed straight up!

I left here, yesterday, without taking the prints of Dumas and Hugo—_there_ is a head ‘for remembering!’ and justifying your commodations! Chorley says, you see, my acquisitions are rather accumulated than digested—or words to that effect—I am sure at this moment the stupid, heavy head _knows_ not one thing,—as a clear point of knowledge, taken in and laid by, orderly and separately. So let me say here, while I _do_ remember, that a letter from Forster puts off his visit and Moxon’s till Monday—should any reason therefore, prevent your confirming to me the gift of Tuesday, this other day will lie open—but _only_ in that case, I trust—because Tuesday objects not to Saturday, does it? while Wednesday looks grave, and Thursday frowns downright on the same! _Friday_, remember, is Mr. Kenyon’s day.

I wish, dearest, you would tell me precisely what you have written—all my affectionate pride in you rises at once when I think of your poetry, that is and that is to be—you dear, dear Ba, can you not write on my shoulder while my head lies as you permit?

I found at home on my return yesterday my friend Pritchard, who brought me an old notice of Rachel by Jules Janin—of course there is no believing a word—but he _does_ say that she was,—at the time he wrote,—perfectly ignorant of the most ordinary rules of grammar,—that, for instance, on meeting him she remarked (alluding to her having played previously at another theatre than the T. Français)—‘C’était moi que j’était au Gymnase!’—to which he ought to have answered, he thinks, ‘Je le savions!’—I will bring her portrait, too, if you please—and this memoir, untrustworthy as it is.

I will go now and walk about, I think—did you go out, as you promised, love? Ah, dearest,—_you_ to wonder I could look up to you for ever as you stand,—you who once wrote to me that, in order to verify a date about Shelley in a