part I
sympathize more with him in that point of specific stupidity, than on any other I have yet heard of. If he had said as little about ecclesiastical architecture, he would have been unobjectionable, wholly. They went away with four horses, in disdain of the railroads.
But poor Mrs. Hedley was dreadfully affected—I knew she would be. This is the only grown-up daughter, you see,—the others being all children, the youngest three years old—and she loses a constant companion, besides the hourly sight of a very lovely girl, the delight of her eyes and heart.
Dearest, you understood why I told you to-day of Mr. Kenyon’s professed opinions? It was to make you know _him_. The rest, we know alike. And for _him_ even, when he looks back on a thing instead of looking forward to it (where the Bude Light of the world is in his eyes and blinds them) he will see aright and as we do. Only you frightened me by your idea about his application to you. May God forbid!
May God bless you, rather, in the best way! Why should I choose how? I _‘ought’ not_, I think, to fancy that I know the best for you, enough to use such words.
But I am your own. That, we both know! _May_ I be yours, not to do you harm, my beloved! Good-night, now!
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday Morning. [Post-mark, August 5, 1846.]
If I had felt, as you pleased to feel yesterday, that it had been ‘only one hour’ which my coming gained—I should richly deserve to find out to-day, as I do fully, what the precise value of such an hour is. But I never act so ungratefully and foolishly—you are more than ever you have been to me,—yet at any time I would have gone for the moment’s sight of you,—one moment’s—and returned happy. You never doubt this because I do not waylay you in your walks and rides? I consider your sisters, and your apprehension for them, and other reasons that make such a step objectionable. Do you remember what I said yesterday—what I have told myself so often? It is one proof how I love you that I am jealous of any conversation with you which should be too interesting _for itself_, apart from the joy of your presence—it is better to sit and see you, or hear you, or only say something which, in its insignificance, shall be obviously of no account beside the main and proper delight—as at wine-feasts you get the wine and a plate of thin dry tasteless biscuits—(observe, for instance, that this noble simile was not set before you yesterday—no, my Ba!)
And you _did_ understand also why I left, on that mere chance of danger to you,—for it was not, do you think it was only the irksomeness to myself I sought to escape—though that would have been considerable. There is no unstable footing for me in the whole world except just in your house—which is _not_ yours. I ought not to be in that one place—all I could do in any circumstances (were a meeting to happen) would be _wrong_, unfortunate. The certainty of misconception would spoil everything—so much of gentleness as is included in _gentle_manliness would pass for a very different quality—and the _manliness_ which one observes there too, would look like whatever it is farthest from. This is a real avowal of weakness—because, being in the right, as I dare trust I am, so far as I can see through the involvement, I ought to be able to take my stand upon it,—and so I shall be able, and easily—but not _here_, just here. With Mr. Kenyon, in spite of a few misgivings, I shall know what to say—I can justify myself, if not convince him. Never fancy, dearest, that he has any ‘clay’ in his composition—he may show a drop of water at the heart of the else entire chrystal he is—did you ever see that pretty phenomenon—of which Claudian wrote so prettily? ‘Non potuit toto mentiri corpore gemmam, sed medio latuit proditor orbe latex.’ Our Druids used to make balls for divining out of such _all-but-solid_ gems with the central weakness—I have had them in my hand. Such doubts and fears are infinitely more becoming in him, situated as he is than their absence would be—if he said for instance, ‘Oh yes,—I am used to a certain style of living, which of course I do not change for _no_ reason at all,—but who doubts that I _could_ do so, without difficulty or regret? I shall hardly bestow any sympathy on what I am sure must be the easiest life in the world!’ One would rather hear an epicure say frankly he cannot conceive how people can end a dinner without Tokay, than ask over his Tokay (as Sheridan’s Abbot in the ‘Duenna’) of the poor starved wistful attendant monk, ‘Haven’t you the chrystal spring?’
In this case, he is directly looking to your possible undertakings, not merely expressing his general ‘remembrance that we are dust’ and need gilding—and certainly if in some respects you have, as I believe, less use, fewer uses for money than ordinary women,—you also have an absolute _necessity_ for whatever portion you _do_ require,—such a necessity as _they_ have not, neither. I shall never grieve over the lace handkerchiefs you cannot get—but whatever you possess already in this room of yours, or might possess on the contingency of such illness, you must _keep_,—to your life’s end. I would not take you away on any other condition. Now listen Ba—not think for a moment that it puts me to the least, least pain imaginable to talk on this subject, while I know you wholly, as _there_ I am sure I do, and while you too know me, as I also am sure,—we may discuss this, as we do the better or worse routes to Italy, in the fullest confidence of our aims and desires being absolutely identical,—so that it is but a prize for the ingenuity of either,—a prize from the common stock of our advantage,—whenever a facility is discovered or a difficulty avoided. So listen,—will you, at once, or as soon as practicable, ascertain what you certainly possess—what is quite yours, and in your sole power, to take or to let remain—what will be just as available to you in Italy as in England? I want to know, being your possible husband. My notion of the perfection of money arrangements is that of a fairy purse which every day should hold _so_ much, and there an end of trouble. Houses and land always seem like a vineyard to a man who wants a draught of wine for present thirst: so tell me how much will be found in the purse—because when we are in Italy or halfway there telling will be superfluous or beyond remedy,—easy remedy at least.
* * * * *
Since writing the above I have been down-stairs—and now return to tell you, a miracle has just happened, which my father, mother and sister are at this moment engaged in admiring—I hear their voices in the garden. We have a fig-tree which I planted four years ago—this year it produces its first fruit, a small fig, ‘_seule et unique_,’ which is still on the tree—not another fig, ripe or unripe, living or dead, has ever been carried into the garden—yet this morning is discovered in the exact centre of the garden, and parallel with the fig-tree aforesaid, another indubitable seedling fig-tree,—‘how begot, how nourished?’ _Ipse vidi_—does that prognosticate, my own Siren, my soothsayer and wise lady?
And now, have you been incommoded by the storm,—and thunder, which was loud and lasting here? I thought of you with such thoughts.
And what came of my visit? Was it really your Aunt—did my precipitation improve matters? Will Saturday have to fear?
Yesterday I was not in a mood to go quietly home—‘for my soul kept up too much light under my eyelids for the night, and thus I _went_ disquieted’ till at Charing Cross it struck me that going home by water (to Greenwich, at least) would be a calmative—so I went on board a steamer. Close by me sate three elderly respectable men,—I could not help hearing them talk rationally about the prospects of the planters, the ‘compensation there is to be in the article of Rum,’—how we ‘get labour,’ which is the main thing, and may defy, with that, Cuba, the Brazils &c. One who talked thus was a fat genial fellow, ending every sentence in a laugh from pure good-nature—his companions somehow got to ‘the Church,’ then Puseyism, then Dissent—on all which this personage had his little opinion,—when one friend happened to ask ‘you think so?’—‘I do,’ said the other ‘and indeed I _know_ it.’ ‘How so?’—‘Because it was revealed to me in a vision.’ ‘A ... vision?’—‘Yes, a vision’—and so he began to describe it, quite in earnest, but with the selfsame precision and assurance, with which he had been a little before describing the effect of the lightning on an iron steamboat at Woolwich as he witnessed it. In this vision he had seen the devil cast out of himself—which he took for an earnest of God’s purposes for good to the world at large—I thought, ‘we mad poets,—and this very unpoetical person!’ who had also previously been entering on the momentous question ‘why I grow fatter than of old, seeing that I eat no more—’
Come, Ba, say, is not this too bad, too far from the line?—I may _talk_ this _by_ you,—but _write_ this _away_ from you,—oh, no! Be with me then, dearest, for one moment, for many moments, in spite of the miles, while I kiss your sweetest lips, as now—Beloved!
I am ever your very own
Oh,—I determine not to go _yet_ to Mrs. J’s ‘for reasons’—a phrase which ought to be ready stereotyped.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Wednesday Night. [Post-mark, August 6, 1846.]
Dearest, you did not have my letter, I think—the letter I wrote on Tuesday, yesterday. These iniquitous postpeople—who are not likely to see in a vision (like your fat prophet) the devil cast out of them for the good of the world! Indeed it is too bad.
To answer first the question—(You are wise beyond me in all things ... let me say _that_ in a parenthesis!) I will tell you what I know. Stormie told me the other day that I had eight thousand pounds in the funds; of which the interest comes to me quarterly, the money being in two different per cents ... (do you understand better than I do?) and from forty to forty-five pounds Papa gives me every three months, the income tax being first deducted. It may be eight thousand pounds, or more or less, ... it is difficult to ask about it ... but what comes to me every three months, I know certainly. Then there is the ship money ... a little under two hundred a year on an average ... which I have not used at all (but must for the future use), and the annual amount of which therefore, has been added to the Fund-money until this year, when I was directed to sign a paper which invested it (_i.e._ the annual return) in the Eastern Railroad. That investment is to yield a large percentage, I heard, and Stormie tried to persuade me to ask Papa to place everything I had, on the same railroad. Papa had said down-stairs the other day that it would be best so—and I ought to remind him to do it, repeated Stormie, as it would very much increase ... increase by doubling almost ... the available income; and without the slightest risk of any kind. But I could not take the advice under the circumstances—I could not mention such a word as money to him, giving the appearance even of trouble about my affairs, now. And he would wonder how I should take a fancy suddenly to touch such matters with the end of my finger. Then there are the ten shares in Drury Lane Theatre—out of which comes nothing.
You wonder how I can spend, perhaps, the quarterly forty pounds and upward that come to me? I _do spend_ them. Yet let me hold you from being frightened, and teach you to consider how easy it is to spend money, and not upon oneself. Never in any one year of my life, even when I was well, have my expenses in dress (as I told Mr. Kenyon the other day) exceeded twenty pounds. My greatest personal expense lately has been _the morphine_. Still the money flows out of window and door—you will understand how it flows like a stream. I have not the gift (if it is a gift) of making dresses ... in my situation, here. Elsewhere, all changes, you know. You shall not call me extravagant—you will see. If I was ‘surprised’ at what you told me of Mrs. Norton, it was only because I had had other ideas of her—for my own gown cost five shillings ... the one I had on when you spoke. So she was better than I by a mere sixpence. Ah—it came into my head afterwards that my being ‘surprised’ about Mrs. Norton, might argue my own extravagance. See!—
But the Goddess Dulness inspires me to write about it and about it, to no end. I say briefly at last, that whatever I have, is mine ... and for use in Italy, as in England. Papa has managed ... has taken a power of attorney, to manage for me kindly ... but everything is in my name—and if it were not, he could not for a moment think of interfering with an incontestable right of property. Still, I do see a difficulty at the beginning—I mean that, _as I am here_, I could not put my hand out for a large sum, such as would be necessary perhaps. I have had a great deal to pay and do lately,—and the next quarter will not be until the middle of October. Still there would be something, but less than is necessary. We might either wait on the road till the required sum were called for and sent—or get a hundred pounds advanced by someone for a few weeks until everything was settled ... which would be pleasanter, if possible. Poor Papa’s first act will be to abandon his management. Ah, may God grant him to do it rather angrily than painfully.
A letter, I have written to you, like the chiming of two penny pieces—a miserable letter! And there is much to tell you ... but nothing painful ... do not fear. The Hedleys dined here, and Mrs. Hedley has been sitting with me ... keeping me from writing. Good-night now it must be! When you write so of caring to be with me, my heart seems to _rock_ with pleasure. Shouldn’t this letter have been written on ’Change, and isn’t it unworthy of all you are to me ... and even of all I am to _you_? But such things must be, after a fashion. Have I told you right, dearest? does it make any sense, altogether? You are wise in little subjects as in great ones, and I will let you make me wiser if you can. And there _is_ no clay in dear Mr. Kenyon ... but just the drop in the chrystal you tell me of—only you shall not divine by him, my Druid, or you will sit by yourself under the oak tree to the end of the day!
Wholly yours and ever—in the greatest haste—
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Thursday Morning. [Post-mark, August 6, 1846.]
No, dearest,—the post brought me no letter till early this morning, a few hours before the second arrival: so, in case of any unexpected stoppage in our visit-affairs, if the post _can_ have been to blame, always be sure it _is_; if I do not arrive at any time when I ought to arrive, having been sent for—there is the great instance and possibility, which you are to remember! However at present, _post naufragia tutus sum_ with my two treasures.
Thank you, dearest, for all that kind care of answering—will you now let me lay it all quietly up in my head to mature, before I ... really _think_ upon it, much more, speak of it? If one can do both _once for all_, what a blessing! But a little leaven of uncertainty and apprehension, just enough to be tasted bitterly in the whole lump of our life,—that cannot be too diligently guarded against while there is time.
Well, love, your excursion to Kensington was a real good, well purchased by my early going—and I am glad the great event stood before all eyes and mouths. I seem to notice that you do not leave the house quite so often as, say, a month ago; and that you are not the better for it. Of course you cannot go out in storm and rain. Will you do what is best for _my_ Ba, you who say you love me,—that is, love her?
Don’t I sympathize with Horne, and see with his eyes, and want with his senses! But why can he not want after the two months, I ask selfishly—seeing, or fancying I see, this inconvenience ... that, as his _report_ will probably be the _latest_ to the world, it would be advisable for you to look as well as possible,—would it not? It would not do for him to tell people ‘All I can say is, that a few weeks only _before it happened_, she appeared to me thus and thus’—while, on the other hand, if you receive him in the drawing room,—_there_ are difficulties too.
You never told me how yesterday’s thunder affected you—nor how your general health is—yet I will answer you that I am very well to-day—about to go to Mrs. Procter’s, alas—it is good that this letter cannot reach you before night or nine o’clock—I should fail to deny myself the moment’s glance at the window—if you could be prayed to stand there! But it is past praying for now. I told you that I have excused myself to Mrs. Jameson on the ground of some kind of uncertainty that rules the next fortnight’s engagements—who shall say what a fortnight may not bring forth? I shall not mind Mr. Kenyon being of the party to-night, should it be so ordered ... for, if he asks me, I can say with dignity—‘No,—I did not call to-day,—meaning to call on Saturday, perhaps’—‘Well, there is _some_ forbearance,’ he will think! However, he will not be present, I prophesy, and Chorley _will_ ... or no, perhaps, Rachel’s Jeanne D’Arc may tempt him. Important to Ba, very! almost as much as to me—so at once to the really, truly, exclusively important thing, by comparison—Love me ever, dearest dearest, as I must ever love you,—and take my heart, as if it were a better offering. Also write to me and tell me that Saturday is safe ... will it be safe? Your aunt may perhaps leave you soon—and one observation of hers would be enough to ruin us—consider and decide!
Since these words were written, my mother, who was out, entered the room to confirm a horrible paragraph in the paper. You know our light momentary annoyance at the storm on Saturday; it is over for _us_. The next day, Mr. Chandler, the cultivator of camellias at Wandsworth, died of grief at the loss from the damage to his conservatories and flowers—which new calamity added to the other, deprived his eldest son, and partner—of his senses ... ‘he was found to be raving mad on Monday’ are the words of the _Times_. My mother’s informant called theirs ‘the most amicable of families.’
How strange—and a few weeks ago I read, in the same paper, a letter from Constantinople—wherein the writer mentioned that he had seen (I think, that morning) Pacha somebody, whose malpractices had just drawn down on him the Sultan’s vengeance, and who had been left with barely his life,—having lost his immense treasures, palaces and gardens &c., along with his dignity,—the writer saw this old man selling slices of melon on a bridge in the city; and on stopping in wonderment to praise such constancy, the Turk asked him with at least equal astonishment, whether it was not fitter to praise Allah who had lent him such wealth for forty years, than to repine that he had judged right to recall it now?
Could we but practise it, as we reason on it!—May God continue me that blessing I have all unworthily received ... but not, I trust, insensibly received!
May he keep you, dearest dearest
R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday. [Post-mark, August 7, 1846.]
I told you nothing yesterday; but the interruption left me no time, and the house was half asleep before I had done writing what I was able to write. Otherwise I wanted to tell you that Mrs. Jameson had been here ... that she came yesterday, and without having received my note. So I was thrown from my resources. I was obliged to thank her with my voice ... so much weaker than my hand. If you knew how frightened I was! The thunder, the morning before, (which I did not hear holding _your_ hand!) shook me less, upon the whole. I thanked her at least ... I could do _that_. And then I said it was in vain ... impossible.
‘Mr. Kenyon threw cold water on the whole scheme. But _you_! Have _you_ given up going to Italy?’
I said ‘no, that I have not certainly.’ I said ‘I felt deeply how her great kindness demanded every sort of frankness and openness from me towards her,——and yet, that at that moment I could not be frank—there were reasons which prevented it. Would she promise not to renew the subject to Mr. Kenyon? not to repeat to him what I said? and to wait until the whole should be explained to herself?’
She promised. She was kind beyond imagination—at least, far beyond expectation. She looked at me a little curiously, but asked no more questions until she rose to go away. And then——
‘But you will go?’ ‘Perhaps—if something unforeseen does not happen.’ ‘And you will let me know, and when you can,—when everything is settled?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And you think you shall go?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And with efficient companionship?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And happily and quietly?’ ... ‘Ye ...’ I could not say the full ‘Yes,’ to _that_—If it had been utterable, the idea of ‘quiet’ would have been something peculiar. She loosened her grasp of her catechumen, therefore——nothing was to be done with me.
I forgot, however, to tell you that in the earlier part of the discussion she spoke of having half given up her plan of going herself. In her infinite goodness she said, ‘she seemed to want an object, and it was in the merest selfishness, she had proposed taking _me_ as an object’—‘And if you go even without me, would it not be possible to meet you on the road? I shall go to Paris in any case. _If_ you go, _how_ do you go?’
‘Perhaps across France—by the rivers.’
‘Precisely. That is as it should be. Mr. Kenyon talked of a long sea-voyage.’
Now I have recited the whole dialogue to you, I think, except where my gratitude grew rhetorical, as well it might. She is the kindest, most affectionate woman in the world! and you shall let me love her for you and for me.
As for me, my own dearest, you are fanciful when you say that I do not go out so much, nor look so well. Now I will just tell you—Henrietta cried out in loud astonishment at me to-day, desiring Treppy to look at my face, when we were all standing together in this room—‘Look at Ba, Treppy!—Did you ever see anyone looking so much better; it really is wonderful, the difference within these few weeks.’ That’s Henrietta’s opinion! She quite startled me with crying out ... as if suddenly she had missed my head!—And _you_!
Then I have been out in the carriage to-day, just to Charing Cross, and then to Mr. Boyd’s in St. John’s Wood. I am as well at this moment as anyone in the world. I have not had one symptom of illness throughout the summer—perfectly well, I am. At the same time, being _strong_ is different; and sometimes for a day or two together, when I do not feel the strongest, it is _right_ to be quiet and not to walk up and down stairs. So as I ‘love _Ba_,’ (quite enough, I assure you!) I am quiet. There’s the only meaning of not going out every day! But the health is perfectly unaffected, I do assure you,—so keep yourself from every vexing thought of me, _so_ far at least. Are you getting frightened for me, my beloved? Do not be frightened, I would not deceive you by an exaggeration, for the sake even of your temporary satisfaction—you may trust what I say.
For the thunder ... if you thought of me during it, as _you_ say, ... why it did me just so much good. Think of me, dearest, in the thunder and out of the thunder; the longest peal’s worth of your thought would not content me now, because you have made me too covetous.
As to Mr. Horne, you write _Sordelloisms_ of him—and you shall tell me your real meaning in a new edition on Saturday. Might your meaning be that I _look worse_ in this room than in the drawing-room? Have you an objection to this room as a room? I rub my eyes and look for a little more light—(but can’t be more impertinent!—can I?)
So, till Saturday—yes, Saturday! To-morrow there is a clearance of aunts—one going at nine in the morning, and one at five in the afternoon: and uncles and cousins do not stay behind. You are glad, I think—and I, not sorry.
How striking your two stories are! Wonderful it is to me, when mere worldly reverses affect men _so_—I cannot comprehend it—I stand musing _there_. But the sublime sentiment of the Melon-seller applies to the griefs I _can_ understand—and we may most of us (called Christians) go to him for his teaching.
May God bless you for _me_! Your BA.
(I want to say one word more and so leave the subject. Stormie told me this morning, in answer to an enquiry of mine, that certainly I did not receive the whole interest of the fund-money, ... could not ... making ever so much allowance for the income-tax. And now, upon consideration, I seem to see that I cannot have done so. The ship-shares are in the ‘David Lyon,’ a vessel in the West Indian trade, in which Papa also has shares. Stormie said ‘There must be three hundred a year of interest from the fund-money—even at the low rate of interest paid there.’ Now it would be the easiest thing in the world (as I saw even in to-day’s newspaper) to have money advanced upon this—only there is a risk of its being known perhaps, which neither of us would at all like.) _Burn this._
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Friday Morning. [Post-mark, August 7, 1846.]
(First of all, let me tell you that the whole story about that death through grief, madness &c., turns out to be a vile fabrication,—false from beginning to end. My mother’s informant, I now find, had derived the knowledge from newspaper also—I hope the _other_ tale, of the Turk, is true at least.)
And now, love, I can go on to say that no letter comes—is it the post’s fault? Yes—I think,—so does your goodness spoil me—you have to tell me about to-morrow, beside. I shall wait hopefully till 2 or 3 o’clock.
Mr. Kenyon was there last evening, for all my prognostications—he had already twice passed this place in the course of the day on his way to Lewisham. He soon asked me as I expected—or something that sounded like it—for, in the half whisper of his tone, I can only hope he did not put the question thus ‘Have you seen Miss Barrett _since Saturday_,—or have you called to-day?’ My mind misgives a little—at all events I only answered the last part of the sentence—and now, mark you!—after dinner he proposed that I should go to him on Wednesday, and make one of a party he is organising. I tried some faint excuse or other—‘You know,’ interposed he, ‘you can pay a visit to Wimpole Street and I shall know and keep away from troubling you’—or words to that effect. I thought it really better to simply (in every sense of the word) smile, and attempt to say nothing. Now, I feel sure that if I were to remark, ‘I will call on Mrs. Jameson’—for instance—he would say, ‘So will I, then, if I can’—on that day, rather than any other—unless some special business had been mentioned as the object of my visit. And here is another inconvenience he will perhaps consider ‘As he means to call on Wednesday,—there is no reason I should keep away to-morrow—Saturday—’
It will be, however, a justification in his eyes at the end—‘he knew her so well, saw so much of her,—who could wonder?’
I sate by a pleasant chatting Jewess, Goldsmid, or whatever the name is,—also by Thackeray—and Milnes came in the evening,—yet the dulness was mortal, and I am far from my ordinary self to-day. I am convinced that general society depresses my spirits more than any other cause. I could keep by myself for a month till I recovered my mind’s health. But you are part or all of that self now,—and would be, were you only present in memory, in fancy. As it is, oh, to be with you, Ba?
* * * * *
Three o’clock, no letter! I will put my own philosophy in practice and be consoled that you are not in any circumstances to justify and require anxiety—not unwell—nor have any fresh obstacles arisen _necessarily_.... Any alleviations so long as I am allowed to keep a good substantial misfortune at the end!
Once you said in your very own way ... when I sent you some roses in a box, and no letter with them, ‘Now I shall write no more to-day, not having been written to!’ I cannot write more—I see! Ah, Ba, here the letter comes!! and I will wait from reading it to kiss my gratitude to you, you utterly best and dearest! And I repeat my kisses while I write the few words there is time for—what a giver you are of all good things all together. Let me take the best first, not minding ingratitude to the rest, and say _yes_, to-morrow I will see you—even if Mr. Kenyon comes, it will be easy saying—‘I cannot go on Wednesday.’ Did you manage so well with Mrs. Jameson? As for Horne,—why, there may have been Sordelloisms, I daresay—I only meant, ‘if you look an invalid to him,—he will say so, just when your improved health is my one excuse for the journey and its fatigues—and if you look plainly no longer an invalid’—Oh, I don’t know ... I thought he might talk of that too, and bring in a host! There is the secret, rendered more obscurely perhaps! As for the room, the dearest four walls that I ever have been enclosed by—I only thought of the possible phrase—‘Still confined to her room’—or the like—and as—that is the fact,—I rather understood the whole tone in which you spoke of the circumstance, as of slight dissatisfaction at the notion of the intended visit ... _in tuam sententiam discedens_, I sordelloized!
The words about your health reassure me, beloved! I had no positive fears _quite_ as you suppose ... but I coupled one circumstance with another, do you see, and _did_ get to apprehend what you now show me to be groundless, thank God!
Oh, my time! Bless you, ever, ever, beloved!
Your own R.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday. [Post-mark, August 10, 1846.]
Just now I tore the few words I had begun of the letter to you, Ba—they all went away, strangely afar from the meaning begun in them, through my mind taking up the thought that you were ‘waiting’ for what I should write—‘waiting all day’—and ready to call the poor joyful service of love, ‘goodness’ in me! When such thoughts arise, I am not fit to pay even that imperfect service—I have only arms to receive you, kisses to give you—the words seem too cold, indeed! I sincerely believe this I am to write now, will be the shorter because of the intervention of you,—and that, like Flush, I shall behave best when not looked at too much!
Then, in our life,—what I do earnestly in intention and from love of you, _that_ you will always accept and make the best of! How happy you make me, _now_ and _ever_—in the present happiness, in the assurance of the future’s even greater happiness, I am obliged to believe! It seemed like a dream as I walked home last night and thought of all over again, after a few hours’ talk with my old friends, on subjects from which you were excluded, and of a kind that brought my former feelings back again; so as to be understood, at least, and recognised as mine. ‘All which is changed now,’ I thought going home in the moonlight. Chorley was apprised of my being there and came good-naturedly—and we discussed delinquencies political and literary: he says, times were never so bad as now—people come without a notion of offending a critic, and offer him money—‘will you do this for so much’—praise this or blame this! He was in a bad humour, he said; at least teazed and tired—and really looked both, so that: I asked ‘had you not better throw away a day on our green dulness at Hatcham, strolling through it with me?’—‘Yes—this day next week, if you like’—he answered at once ... so that our Saturday will be gone ... so that our Tuesday _must_ be secured, my own Ba, and after it the Friday, at an equal interval of time—do you let it be so? Saturday would seem to be his only available day, poor Chorley—he walked through the park with me and over the Bridge, at one in the morning—in return for my proving, (I don’t quite think _that_, however!)—proving, to _Arnould’s_ great satisfaction at least, that Mr. Horne _was a poet_, and moreover a dramatic one,—Chorley sees no good in him beyond talent with an abundance of ‘crotchets,’ and ‘could not read “Orion” for his life.’ I proved another thing too—that Forster was not a whit behind his brethren of the faculty, in literary morals—that the _Examiner_, named, was quite as just and good as another paper, unnamed. Whereat Chorley grew warm and lost his guard, and at last; declaring I forced him into corners and that speak he _must_; _instanced the ‘Examiner’s’ treatment of myself as not generous_ ... ‘Luria’ having been noticed as you remember a week after the publication, and _yet_, or never, to be reviewed in the Unnamed:—_Ces Misères!_
A fortnight ago when Rachel played in ‘Andromaque’ ‘for the last time’—Sarianna and I agreed that if she did ever play again in it, we would go and see ... and lo, contrary to all expectation she _does_ repeat Hermione to-morrow night, and we are to go. And you, Ba, you cannot go—ought I to go? One day, one not distant day, and ‘cannot’ will apply to us both—_now_, it seems to do me good, with the crowd of its suggestions, this seeing Rachel; beside, Sarianna has just this only opportunity of going.
I am anxious to let the folly of that person spend itself unaggravated by any notice of mine—I mean _to you_; any notice which should make you think it—(the folly)—affected _me_ as well as you; but I do trust you will not carry toleration too far in this case, nor furnish an ungenerous, selfish man with weapons for your own annoyance. ‘_Insolent_ letters’ you ought to put up with from _no one_—and as there is no need of concealment of my position now, I think you will see a point when I may interfere. Always rely on my being _quietly_ firm, and never violent nor exasperating: you alluded to some things which I cannot let my fancy stop upon. Remember you are mine, now,—my own, my very own. I know very well what a wretched drunkenness there is in that sort of self-indulgence—what it permits itself to do, all on the strength of its ‘strong feeling’ ‘earnestness’—stupid in execrable sophistry as it is! I have too a strong belief that the man who would _bully_ you, would drop into a fit at the sight of a man’s uplifted little finger. Can this person be the ‘old friend in an ill humour’ who followed me up-stairs one day? I _trust_ to you—that is the end of all.
Now I will kiss you, my own Ba, and wait for my letter, and then, Tuesday. Dearest, I am your own, your very own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Sunday. [Post-mark, August 10, 1846].
Ever dearest, I shall write to you a little this morning and try to manage to post myself what shall be written, too early to permit the possibility (almost) of your being without a letter to-morrow. Dearest, how you were with me yesterday, after you went away!—I thought, thought, thought of you,—and the books I took up one by one ... (I tried a romance too ‘Les Femmes’ by a writer called Desnoyers ... quite new, and weak and foolish enough as a story, but full of clever things about shoe tyes ... philosophy in small:) the books were all so many _lorgnons_ through which I looked at you again and again. Did you ever hear a story of the late Lord Grey, that he was haunted by a head, a head without a body? If he turned to the right or left there it was—if he looked up in the air, there it hung ... or down to the floor, there it lay—or walked up or down stairs, there it bounded before him—flop ... flop ... just on its chin. ‘Alas, poor ghost?’ And just such another, as far as the haunting goes, were you to me, dearest, yesterday—only that _you_ were of the celestial rather than ghastly apparitionery, and bore plainly with you airs from Heaven full against my forehead. How did I ever deserve you—how ever? Never indeed! And how can it seem right to submit to so much happiness undeservedly, as the knowledge of your affection gives, you who are ‘great in everything,’ as Mr. Kenyon said the other day! Shall I tell you how I reconcile myself to the good? Thus it is. First I think that no woman in the world, let her be ever so much better than I, could quite be said to deserve you—and that therefore there may not be such harm in your taking the one who will owe you most with the fullest consciousness! If it may not be merit, it shall be gratitude—_that_ is how I look at it when I would keep myself from falling back into the old fears. Ah! you may prevent my rising up to receive you ... though I did not know that I did ... it was a pure instinct!—but you cannot prevent my sinking down to the feet of your spirit when I think of the love it has given me from the beginning and _not_ taken away. Dearest, dearest—I am content to owe all to you—it is not too much humiliation!
While I was writing, came Mr. Kenyon ... the spectacles mended, and looking whole catechisms from behind them. The first word was, ‘Have you seen Browning lately?’ I, taken by surprise, answered _en niaise_, ‘Yes, yesterday.’ ‘And did he tell you that he was coming on Wednesday, next Wednesday?’ ‘He said something of it.’
A simpleton would have done better—to call me one were too much honour!—yet it seemed impossible to be adroit under the fire of the full face, spectacles included. The words came without the will. And now, what had we better do? Take Tuesday, that you may be able to say on Wednesday, ‘I was not there to-day’...? or be frank for the hour and let it all pass? Think for us, Robert—I am quite frightened at what I have done. It seemed to me too, afterwards, that Mr. Kenyon looked grave. Still he talked of Miss Mitford and Mr. Buckingham, and Landor, and of going to the Lakes himself for a few days, and laughed and jested in great good humour, the subject being turned—he asked me too if I had ever discussed your poetry with Miss Mitford, on which I said that she did not much believe in you—‘Not even in “Saul”?’ said he. I don’t know what to think. I am in a fog off the Nore. And he proposed coming to-morrow with a carriage, to drive me up the Harrow road to see the train coming in, and then to take me to his house, and, so, home,—all in his infinite kindness. He comes at half-past three—let me have your thoughts with me then—and the letter, farther on. Two letters, I am to have to-morrow. If Sunday is the worst day, Monday is the best,—of those I mean of course, on which I do not see you. May God bless you, my own beloved. I love you in the deepest of my heart; which seems ever to grow deeper. I live only for you; and feel that it is worth while.
Your BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Monday Morning. [Post-mark, August 10, 1846.]
You dearest Ba, do you write thus to put all thoughts of fear out of my head, and make me confident nothing can go ill with us if you feel so for me? I seem to have a presentiment that this afternoon, before this letter reaches you, Mr. Kenyon will have spoken—and if the whole world spoke its loudest, your words would be all I should hear. Or are they trials, every such word, of my vanity and weakness,—do you think, ‘if anything can call them up, this will?’ No, I very well know your entire truth in this and the other assurances I make my life bright with,—through any darkness that can come. What you choose to assert of yourself, _I_ feel of myself every hour. But there must be this disproportionateness in a beloved object—before I knew you, women seemed not so much better than myself,—therefore, no love for them! There is no love but from beneath, far beneath,—that is the law of its nature—and now, no more of words—will there indeed be need of no more,—as I dare hope and believe, will the deeds suffice?—not in their own value, no! but in their plain, certain intention,—as a clear advance beyond mere words? We shall soon know—if you live, you will be mine, I must think—you have put these dear arms too surely round my neck to be disengaged now. I cannot presume to suggest thoughts to you resolutions for the future—you must impart to me always,—but I do lift up my heart in an aspiration to lead the life that seems accorded by your side, under your eyes.—I cannot write on this, dear Ba,—to say, I will live and work as I ought, seems too presumptuous. Understand all, and help me with your dearest hand, my own love!
As I say, I fancy Mr. Kenyon will speak—I only hope, the caution will act both ways, and that he will see as much inexpediency in altogether opposing as in encouraging such a step. That you should pass another winter and the risk of it—and perhaps many—_that_ seems the _worst_ fate. Can he apprehend any worse evil than that?
I observe in the _Times_ to-day that the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Company have advertised a ship from Southampton to Genoa, Leghorn, Civita Vecchia and Naples on the 30th September, and that ‘thenceforth the company will despatch a first-class steamer to those ports on the 15th of every month. One more facility, should circumstances require it. Are you sure that the France journey with the delays and fatigue is preferable to this—where if the expenses are greater, yet the _uncertain_ expenses are impossible? You are to think, beloved.
Now, will you write to-night? I may come to-morrow? Say one word—you have heard why I wanted to come, even if Mr. Kenyon’s questions had not been put—otherwise, Friday will be impossible—I can say, ‘I called on Saturday, and think of doing so next Friday—’ I must see you to-morrow indeed, love!
Let me leave off here—I love you wholly, and bless you ever as now—Your own R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Monday Morning. [Post-mark, August 11, 1846.]
Then let it be Tuesday. It will correct, too, my stupidity to Mr. Kenyon, for easily you may reply to his certain question, that you had not been here on Wednesday but meant to go on Friday instead. Ah well! By the time all this is over we shall be fit to take a degree in some Jesuits’ college—we shall have mastered all the points of casuistry. To wash one’s hands of it, and then throw away the water, will be something gained at least.
Dearest, no, indeed!—there is nothing for your goodness to do in that badness I told you of, and which you describe so precisely in your word, ‘drunkenness’ of mind. It is precisely _that_, and no more nor less—a throwing off of moral restraint ... a miserable degradation. One may get angry, frightened, disgusted—but, after all, compassion comes in:—and who would think of fighting a delirious man with a sword? It would be a cruelty, like murder. There is a fine nature too, under these ruins of the will; and a sensibility which strikes inwards and outwards—(no one else should have any sensibility, within a thousand miles.) Think of a sort of dumb Rousseau,—with the ‘Confessions’ _in_ him, pining evermore to get out! A miserable man, first by constitution and next by fortune—seeing only the shadow, for the sun,—the nettles in the field,—and breathing hard when he stands among garden-roses, to attain to smelling the onions over the wall. I have told him sometimes that he had a talent for anger!—‘indignatio facit orationes’ and _that_ is his pleasure, ‘par excellence,’—to be let talk against this abuse or that abuse, this class of men or that class of men, this or that world’s misery or offence:—he will rise up in it and be eloquent and happy. Otherwise ... mécréants we must be, he thinks, who dare to be happy in this vale of tears. Life is a long moan to him. And is not such a man enough punished? For me, I have not had the heart to take quite the position I ought to have done, looking only to his most outrageous bearing towards myself—although he talks of my scorn and sarcasms, as if I had shown myself quite equal to self-defence. An old, old friend, too!—known as a friend these twelve or thirteen years! And then, men are nearly all the same in the point of _wanting generosity to women_. It is a sin of sex, be sure—and we have our counter-sins and should be merciful. So I have been furiously angry, and then relented—by turns; as I could. Oh yes—it was he who followed you up-stairs. There was an explosion that day among the many—and I had to tell him as a consequence, that if he chose to make himself the fable and jest of the whole house, he was the master, but that I should insist upon his not involving my name in the discussion of his violences. Wilson said he was white with passion as he followed you, and that she in fear trembled so she could scarcely open the door. He was a little ashamed afterwards, and apologized in a manner for what sufficiently required an apology. Before a servant too!—But that is long ago—and at that time he knew nothing for a certainty. Is it possible to be continuously angry with any one who proves himself so _much the weaker_? The slave of himself ... of his own passions—is too unhappy for the rod of another—man or woman.
Mr. Chorley—Mr. Chorley!—how could he utter such words! Men seem imbecile sometimes—understandings have they, and understand not.
Monday Night.
Dearest, I have your last letter. Thank you out of my heart—though you are not a prophet, dear dearest—not about Mr. Kenyon at least. See how far you are from the truth-well, with that divining hazel which you wave to and fro before my eyes. Mr. Kenyon, instead of too much remembering us, has forgotten me to-day. I waited an hour with my bonnet on, and he did not come. And then came a note! He had had business—he had forgotten me—he would come to-morrow. Which I, thinking of you, wrote back a word against, and begged him to come rather on Thursday or Saturday, or Monday. Is _that_ right, dearest? Your coming to-morrow will be very right.
But when you say that there can be no love except ‘_from beneath_’ ... is it right? is it comforting to hear of? No, no—indeed! How unhappy I should be if I accepted your theory! So I accept rather your love, beloved....
Trusting to be yours.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday Morning. [Post-mark, August 12, 1846.]
I have been putting all the letters into rings—twenty together—and they look now as they should—‘infinite treasure in a little room’—note, that they were so united and so ranged from the beginning, at least since I began to count by twenties—but the white tape I used (no red tape, thank you!) was vile in its operation,—the untying and retying (so as to preserve a proper _cross_ [Illustration]) hard for clumsy fingers like mine:—these rings are perfect. How strange it will be to have no more letters! Of all the foolishnesses that ever were uttered that speech of mine,—about your letters strewing the house,—was the most thoroughly perfect! yet you have nothing to forgive in me, you say!
Just now I took up a periodical and read a few lines of a paper on the charm that there is in a contrariety of tempers and tastes, for friends and lovers—and there followed platitudes in a string—the clever like the stupid, the grave choose the lively, and so forth. Now, unless, the state of the liker and chooser is really considered by him as a misfortune,—what he would get rid of if he could in himself, so shall hardly desire to find in another—except in this not very probable case, is there not implied by every such choice, an absolute despair of any higher one? The grave man says (or would if he knew himself)—‘except on my particular grounds such a serious humour would be impossible and absurd ... and where can I find another to appreciate them? Better accept the lower state of ignorance that they exist even, and consequent gaiety,—than a preposterous melancholy arising from no adequate cause.’ And what man of genius would not associate with people of no talent at all, rather than the possessors of _mere_ talent, who keep sufficiently near him, as they walk together, to give him annoyance at every step? Better go with Flush on his four legs, avowedly doglike, than with a monkey who will shuffle along on two for I don’t know how many yards. Now for instance, is the writer of that wise notice of Landor in last week’s _Athenæum_, one whit nearer your sympathy _in that precise matter_, than somebody who never heard of Landor or supposed him to have usually written under the signature of L.E.L.? With the exception of a word or two about the silly abuse of Plato, and on the occasional unfairness of statement, is there one word right and seasonable?
Here am I letting the words scratch themselves one after another while my thought as usual goes quite another way. Perhaps my wits are resting because of the great alacrity they are to display at Mr. Kenyon’s this evening ... I shall take care not to be first comer, nor last goer. Dearest, you are wrong in your fancy about my little caring whether he knows or does not. I see altogether with your eyes ... indeed, now that you engage to remove any suspicion of unkindness or mistrust which might attach to me in his thoughts (all I ever apprehended for _myself_), there is no need to consider him—at all. He can do no good nor harm. Did you ever receive such a letter? The dull morning shall excuse it—anything but the dull heart—for you fill it, however the _heat_ may keep within, sometimes.
Bless you, Ba, my dearest, perfect love—now I will begin thinking of you again—let me kiss you, my own!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Wednesday Morning. [Post-mark, August 12, 1846.]
Shall you pass through this street to Mr. Kenyon’s, this evening? I have been sitting here these five minutes, wondering. But no answer is possible now, and if I go to the window of the other room and look up and look down about half-past five or a little later, it will be in vain perhaps. Just now I have heard from Mr. Kenyon, who cannot come to-day to drive with me though he may come to talk. He does not leave London, he says, so soon as he thought!—more’s the pity. Ah! What unkind things one learns to write and meditate in this world, even of the dear Mr. Kenyons in it!—I am ashamed. Instruct your guardian angel to cover me with the shadow of his wings,—dearest.
Now I will tell you a curious thing which _Treppy_ said to Arabel yesterday while you and I were together. Arabel was walking with her, and she was in one of her ill humours, poor Treppy, sighing and moaning over the wickedness of the people in Wimpole Street—she ‘should go and live at Ramsgate,’ she thought, as nobody paid her the right attention! _That’s_ the intermittent groan, when she is out of humour, poor Treppy. ‘And besides’ said she, ‘it is much better that I should not go to Wimpole Street at this time when there are so many secrets. Secrets indeed! You think that nobody can see and hear except yourselves, I suppose; and there are two circumstances going on in the house, plain for any eyes to see! and those are considered _secrets_, I suppose.’ ‘Oh, Treppy’—interpolated Arabel ... ‘you are always fancying secrets where there are none.’ ‘Well, I don’t fancy anything now! I _know_—just as _you_ do.’—Something was said too about ‘Ba’s going to Italy.’ ‘And, Treppy, do you think that she _will_ go to Italy?’ ‘Why there is only one way for her to go—but she may go that way. If she marries, she may go.’ ‘And you would not be surprised?’ ‘_I!_ not in the least—_I_ am never surprised, because I always see things from the beginning. Nobody can hide anything from _me_.’ After which fashion she smoothed the darkness till it smiled, and boasted herself back into a calmer mood. But just observe how people are talking and inferring! It frightens me to think of it. Not that there is any danger from Treppy. She would as soon cut off her hand, as bring one of us into a difficulty, and _me_, the last. Only it would not do to _tell her_,—she must have it in her power to say ‘I did not know this’ ... for reasons of the strongest. To occasion a schism between her and this house, would be to embitter the remainder of her days.
Here is a letter from a lady in a remote district called Swineshead, who sends me lyrical specimens, and desires to know if _this be Genius_. She does not desire to publish; at any rate not for an indefinite number of years; but for her private and personal satisfaction, she would be glad to be informed whether she is a Sappho or George Sand or anything of that kind. What in the world is to be answered, now, to an application of _that_ kind! To meddle with a person’s opinion of himself or herself (quite a private opinion) seems like meddling with his way of dressing, with her fashion of putting in pins—like saying you _shall_ put your feet on a stool, or you _shan’t_ eat pork. It is an interference with private rights, from which I really do shrink. Unfortunately too it is impossible to say what she wants to hear—I am in despair about it. When we are at Pisa we shall not hear these black stones crying after us any more perhaps. I shall listen, instead, to my talking bird and singing tree, and repose from the rest. How did you get home? And tell me of Mr. Kenyon’s dinner! So nervous I am about Mr. Kenyon, when you or I happen to be _en rapport_ with him.
Not only I loved you yesterday, but even to-day I love you; which is remarkable. To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow, what will _you_ do? Is _that_ an ‘offence?’ Nay, but it is rather reasonable that when the hour strikes, the fairy-gold should turn back into leaves, and poor Cinderella find herself sitting in her old place among the ashes, just as she had touched the hand of the king’s son.
Don’t think I mean anything by _that_, ever dearest—not so much as to teaze you—Robert!
I only love you to-day—that is, I love you and do nothing more. And the Fairy Tales are on the whole, I feel, the most available literature for illustration, whenever I think of loving you.
Your own BA.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Wednesday Evening. [Post-mark, August 13, 1846.]
‘Did I ever receive such a letter?’ Never—except from _you_. It is a question easily answered.
As to [the] other question, about the communion of contrarieties, I agree with you, thought for thought, in all your thinking about it—only adding one more reason to the reasons you point out. There is another reason at the bottom of all, _I_ think—I cannot but think—and it is just that, when women are chosen for wives, they are not chosen for companions—that when they are selected to be loved, it is quite apart from life—‘man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart.’ A German professor selects a woman who can merely stew prunes—not because stewing prunes and reading Proclus make a delightful harmony, but because he wants his prunes stewed for him and chooses to read Proclus by himself. A fulness of sympathy, a sharing of life, one with another, ... is scarcely ever looked for except in a narrow conventional sense. Men like to come home and find a blazing fire and a smiling face and an hour of relaxation. Their serious thoughts, and earnest aims in life, they like to keep on one side. And this is the carrying out of love and marriage almost everywhere in the world—and this, the degrading of women by both.
For friendship ... why Like seeks Like in friendship very openly. To ‘have sympathy’ with a person, is a good banal current motive for friendship. Yet (for the minor points) a man with a deficiency of animal spirits may like the society of a man who can amuse him, and the amusing man may have pleasure again in the sense of using a faculty and conferring a benefit. It is happily possible to _love down_, and even across a chasm—or the world would be more loveless than it is. I have loved and still love people a thousand souls off—as you have and do, of course;—but to love them _better_ on that account, would be strange and difficult.
Always I know, my beloved, that I am unworthy of your love in a hundred ways—yet I do hold fast my sense of advantage in one,—that, as far as I can see, I see after you ... understand you, divine you ... call you by your right name. Then it is something to be able to look at life itself as you look at it—(I quite _sigh_ sometimes with satisfaction at that thought!): there will be neither hope nor regret away from your footsteps. Dearest—I feel to myself sometimes, ‘Do not move, do not speak—or the dream will vanish,’ So fearfully like a dream, it is! Like a reflection in the water of an actual old, old dream of my own, too ... touching which, ... now silent voices used to say “That romantic child.”’
What did _you_ mean to say about my not believing in your nature ... in your feelings ... what did you and could you mean yesterday? Was it because of my speech about the ‘calm eyes’? Ah—_you!_—I did not think to make so impressive a speech when I made it ... for this is not the first time, Robert, you have quoted Hansard for it. Well! I shall not rise to explain after all. Only I do justice to the whole subject ... _eyes_ inclusively ... ‘whatever you may think’ as you said yesterday with ever such significance.
No—yes—now I will ask you one thing. Common eyes will carry an emotion of a soul—and, so, not be calm, of course. Calm ones, I know, will carry the whole soul and float it up against yours, till it loses footing, and ... _That_ is a little of what I meant by the calm in the eyes, and so I will ask you whether I could wrong, by such meaning, any depth in the nature.
At this moment you are at Mr. Kenyon’s—and you did not, I think, go up this street. Perhaps you will go home through it—but I shall not see—I cannot watch, being afraid of the over-watchers. May God bless you, my own dearest! You have my heart with you as if it lay in your hand! I told you once that I never could love (in _this_ way of love) except _upward_ very far and high—but you are not like me in it, I thank God—since you can love _me_. Love me, dearest of all—do not tire. I am your very own
BA.
Another Bennett!!—yet the same! _To Friday._
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Thursday. [Post-mark, August 13, 1846].
Dearest Ba, I love you wholly and for ever! How shall the charm ever break?
My two letters! I think we must institute solemn days whereon such letters are to be read years hence ... when I shall ask you,—(all being known, many weaknesses you do not choose to see now, and perhaps some strength and constancy you cannot be sure of—for the charm may break, you think) ... ‘If you stood _there_’ ... at Wimpole Street in the room ... would you whisper ‘Love, I love you, as before?’ Oh, how fortunately, fortunately the next verse comes with its sweetest reassurance!
When I have chosen to consider the circumstances of the altered life I am about to lead with you ... (‘chosen,’ because you have often suggested drawbacks, harms to my interest &c. which I have really been forced to take up and try to think over seriously, lest I should be unawares found treating what had undoubtedly come from you with disrespect), I never, after all the considering in my power, was yet able to _fancy_ even the possibility of their existence. I will not revert to them now—nor to the few _real_ inconveniences which I _did_ apprehend at the beginning, but which never occurred to _you_: at present I take you, and with you as much happiness as I seem fit to bear in this world,—the one shadow being the fear of its continuance. Or if there is one thing I shall regret ... it is just that which I should as truly lose if I married any Miss Campbell of them all—rather, _then_ should _really_ lose, what now is only modified,—transferred partly and the rest retainable. There was always a great delight to me in this prolonged relation of childhood almost ... nay altogether—with all here. My father and I have not one taste in common, one artistic taste ... in pictures, he goes, ‘souls away,’ to Brauwer, Ostade, Teniers ... he would turn from the Sistine Altar piece to these—in music he desiderates a tune ‘that has a story connected with it,’ whether Charles II.’s favourite dance of ‘Brose and butter’ or—no matter,—what I mean is, that the sympathy has not been an intellectual one. I hope if you want to please me especially, Ba, you will always remember I have been accustomed, by pure choice, to have another will lead mine in the little daily matters of life. If there are two walks to take (to put the thing at simplest) you must say, ‘_This_ one’ and not ‘either’ ... because though they were before indifferently to be chosen—after _that_ speech, one is altogether better than the other, to _me_ if not to you. When you have a real preference which I can discern, you will be good enough to say nothing about it, my own Ba! Now, do you not see how, with this feeling, which God knows I profess to be mine without the least affectation,—how much my happiness would be disturbed by allying myself with a woman to whose intellect, as well as goodness, I could _not_ look up?—in an obedience to whose desires, therefore, I should not be justified in indulging? It is pleasanter to lie back on the cushions inside the carriage and let another drive—but if you suspect he cannot drive?
Nothing new at Mr. Kenyon’s yesterday—I arrived late to a small party—Thackeray and Procter—pleasant as usual. I took an opportunity of mentioning that I had come straight from home. Did you really look from the window, dearest? I was carried the other way, by the new road, but I thought of you till you may have felt it!
And indeed you are ‘out’ again as to my notions of your notions, you dearest Ba! I know well enough that by ‘calmness’ you did not mean absence of passion—I spoke only of the foolish popular notion.
To-morrow there would seem to be no impediment whatever—and I trust to be with you, beloved—but before, I can kiss you as now,—loving you as ever—ever—
Your own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Saturday Morning. [August 15, 1846.]
A bright beautiful day this is, on which you do not come—it seems as if you ought to have come on it by rights. Dearest, you did not meet Mr. Kenyon yesterday after you left me? I fancied that you might, and so be detected in the three hours, to the fullest length of them—it seemed possible. Now I look forward to the driving instead of to you—and he has just sent to desire me to be ready at a quarter to three, and not later, as was fixed in your hearing. And why, pray, should you be glad that I am going on this excursion? I _should_ have liked it, if we had been living in the daylight; but with all these ‘shadows, clouds and darkness,’ it is pleasanter to me to sit still and see nobody—and least, Mr. Kenyon. Oh, that somebody would spirit him away gently, very gently, so as to do him no manner of harm in achieving the good for me!—for both you and me. Did you say ‘Do you pity me’ to _me_? I did not tell you yesterday that I have another new fear ... an American lady who in her time has reviewed both you and me, it seems, comes to see me ... is about to come to see me ... armed with a letter of introduction from Mr. Mathews—and in a week, I may expect her perhaps. She is directed, too, towards Mr. Horne. Observe the double chain thrown across the road at my feet—I am entreated to show her attention and introduce her to my friends ... things out of the question as I am situated. Yet I have not boldness to say ‘I will not see you.’ I almost _must_ see her, I do fear. Mr. Mathews ought to have felt his way a little, before throwing such a weight on me. He is delighted with your ‘Bells and Pomegranates’ (to pass from his frailties to his merits) and the review of them is sent to me, he says—only that I do not receive it.
Dearest, when I told you yesterday, after speaking of the many coloured theologies of the house, that it was hard to answer for what _I_ was, ... I meant that I felt unwilling, for my own part, to put on any of the liveries of the sects. The truth, as God sees it, must be something so different from these opinions about truth—these systems which fit different classes of men like their coats, and wear brown at the elbows always! I believe in what is divine and floats at highest, in all these different theologies—and because the really Divine draws together souls, and tends so to a unity, I could pray anywhere and with all sorts of worshippers, from the Sistine Chapel to Mr. Fox’s, those kneeling and those standing. Wherever you go, in all religious societies, there is a little to revolt, and a good deal to bear with—but it is not otherwise in the world without; and, _within_, you are especially reminded that God has to be more patient than yourself after all. Still you go quickest there, where your sympathies are least ruffled and disturbed—and I like, beyond comparison best, the simplicity of the dissenters ... the unwritten prayer, ... the sacraments administered quietly and without charlatanism! and the principle of a church, as they hold it, _I_ hold it too, ... quite apart from state-necessities ... pure from the law. Well—there is enough to dissent from among the dissenters—the Formula is rampant among them as among others—you hear things like the buzzing of flies in proof of a corruption—and see every now and then something divine set up like a post for men of irritable minds and passions to rub themselves against, calling it a holy deed—you feel moreover bigotry and ignorance pressing on you on all sides, till you gasp for breath like one strangled. But better this, even, than what is elsewhere—_this_ being elsewhere too in different degrees, besides the evil of the place. Public and social prayer is right and desirable—and I would prefer, as a matter of custom, to pray in one of those chapels, where the minister is simple-minded and not controversial—certainly would prefer it. Not exactly in the Socinian chapels, nor yet in Mr. Fox’s—not by preference. The Unitarians seem to me to throw over what is most beautiful in the Christian Doctrine; but the Formulists, on the other side, stir up a dust, in which it appears excusable not to see. When the veil of the body falls, how we shall look into each other’s faces, astonished, ... after one glance at God’s!
Have I written to you more than too much about my doxy? I was a little, little, uncomfortable in the retrospect of yesterday, lest my quick answer should have struck you as either a levity or an evasion—and have you not a right to all my thoughts of all things? For the rest, we will be married just as you like ... _volo quod vis_: and you will see by this profession of faith that I am not likely much to care either way. There are some solemn and beautiful things in the Church of England Marriage-service, as I once heard it read, the only time I was present at such a ceremony—but I heard it then in the abbreviated customary form ... and not as the Puseyites (who always bring up the old lamps against a new) choose to read it, they say, in spite of custom. Archdeacon Hale with an inodorous old lamp, displeased some of the congregation from Fenton’s Hotel, I hear. But we need not go to the Puseyites at least. And after all, perhaps the best will be what is easiest. Something is sure to happen—something must surely happen to put an end to it all ... before I go to Greece!
May God bless you, ever dearest: Tell me if you get this letter to-day, Saturday.
Your very own BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Saturday. [Post-mark, August 15, 1846.]
My very, very dearest—many, if not all, of those things for which I want the words when too close to you, become quite clear at a little distance. How simple, for instance, it is to admit, that in our case,—my own, only Ba once discovered, the circumstances of the weakness and retirement were, on the whole, favourable rather than otherwise! Had they been unfavourable ... I do not think a few obstacles would have discouraged me ... but this way has been easier—better—and now all is admitted! _By themselves_, the circumstances could never obtain more than the feeling properly due to them—do you think one particle of love goes with the pity and service to a whole Hospital of Incurables? So let all the attraction of that kind pass for what it is worth, and for no more. If all had been different, and I had still perceived you and loved you, then there _might_, perhaps,—or probably—be as different an aim for me,—for my own peculiar delight in you ... I should want to feel and be sure of your love, in your happiness ... certainly in your entire happiness then as now—but I should aspire to find it able to support itself in a life altogether different from the life in which I had first seen you—if you loved me you would need to be happy in quiet and solitude and simplicity and privation ... then I should _know_ you loved me, knowing _how_ you had been happy before! But now, do you not see that my utmost pride and delight will be to think you are happy, as _you were not_,—in the way you were not: if you chose to come out of a whirl of balls and parties and excursions and visitings—to my side, I should love you as you sate still by me,—but now, when you stand up simply, much more walk ... I will consider, if you let me, every step you take that brings you pleasure,—every smile on your mouth, and light on your eyes—as a directest _obedience_ to me ... all the obedience you _can_ ever pay me ... you shall say in every such act ‘this I do on purpose to content you!’ I hope to know you have been happy ... that shall prove you loved me, at the end.
Probably you _will_ not hear anything to-day from Mr. Kenyon, as your sister is to be present: do you really imagine that those eyes and spectacles are less effective than the perceptions of your ‘Treppy’?
By the way, hear an odd coincidence—you heard that foolish story of Thackeray and Mr. ‘Widdicombe’ ... which I told just to avoid a dead silence and guilty blankness of face. As I was returning I met Thackeray (with Doyle—H.B.) and was energetically reminded of our dinner ... he is in very earnest, Mr. Kenyon may assure himself. Presently I reached Charing Cross—and stood waiting for my omnibus. There is always a crowd of waiters—in a moment there passes an extraordinary looking personage—a policeman on duty at this police-requiring spot saunters up to _me_, of all others, and says (on some miraculous impulse, no doubt)—with an overflowing impressible grin, ‘D’ye know _him_, Sir?’ ‘No—who may he be?’ ‘He’s Widdicombe!—He goes now to Astley’s, and afterwards to Vauxhall—there’s a good likeness of him in the painting of the Judge and Jury Club.’ Here my omnibus arrives ... ‘Thank you’ I said—and there was an end of the communication. How for many thousand years may I walk the street before another inspired policeman addresses me without preface and tells me, _that_ is the man I have just been talking of to somebody else? Let me chronicle Mr. W.’s glories ... his face is just Tom Moore’s, _plus_ two painted cheeks, a sham moustache, and hair curled in wiry long ringlets; Thackeray’s friend was a friend indeed, ‘warning every man and teaching every man’—the _tête-à-tête_ would have been portentous.
Now, dearest, you cannot return me such delectabilities, so must even be content to tell me what happens to-day and what is said and done and surmised—and how you are ... three times over, how you are, dearest dearest! And I will write to-morrow, and kiss you meanwhile, as now as ever. Bless you, love—
Your R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Saturday Evening. [Post-mark, August 17, 1846.]
How I thank for your letter, ever beloved. You were made perfectly to be loved—and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long. Did I tell you _that_ before, so often as I have thought it? It is _that_ which makes me take it all as visionary good—for when one’s Ideal comes down to one, and walks beside one suddenly, what is it possible to do but to cry out ... ‘a dream’? You are the best ... best. And if you loved me only and altogether for pity, (and I think that, more than _you_ think, the sentiment operated upon your generous chivalrous nature), and if you confessed it to me and proved it, and I knew it absolutely—what then? As long as it was _love_, should I accept it less gladly, do you imagine, because of the root? Should I think it less a gift? should I be less grateful, ... or _more_? Ah—I have my ‘theory of causation’ about it all—but we need not dispute, and will not, on any such metaphysics. Your _loving_ me is enough to satisfy me—and if you did it because I sate rather on a green chair than a yellow one, it would be enough still for me:—only it would not, for _you_—because your motives are as worthy always as your acts.—Dearest!
So let us talk of the great conference in Mr. Kenyon’s carriage, in which joined himself, Arabel, Flush and I. First he said ... ‘Did Browning stay much longer with you?’ ‘Yes—some time.’ This was as we were going on our way toward some bridge, whence to look at the Birmingham train. As we came back, he said, with an epical leap _in medias res_ ... ‘What an extraordinary memory our friend Browning has.’ ‘Very extraordinary’—said I—‘and how it is raining.’ I give you Arabel’s report of my reply, for I did not myself exactly remember the full happiness of it—and she assured me besides that he looked ... looked at me ... as a man may look ... And this was everything spoken of you throughout the excursion.
But he spoke of _me_ and observed how well I was—on which Arabel said ‘Yes—she considered me quite well; and that nothing was the matter now but _sham_.’ Then the railroads were discussed in relation to me ... and she asked him—‘Shouldn’t she try them a little, before she undertakes this great journey to Italy?’ ‘Oh’ ... he replied—‘_she_ is going on no great journey.’ ‘Yes, she will, perhaps—Ba is inclined to be a great deal too wild, and now that she is getting well, I do assure you, Mr. Kenyon.’
To sit upon thorns, would express rather a ‘velvet cushion’ than where I was sitting, while she talked this foolishness. I have been upbraiding her since, very seriously; and I can only hope that the words were taken for mere jest—_du bout des lèvres_.
Moreover Mr. Kenyon is _not_ going away on Thursday—he has changed his plans: he has put off Cambridge till the ‘spring’—he meets Miss Bayley nowhere—he holds his police-station in London. ‘When _are_ you going’ I asked in my despair, trying to look satisfied. He did not know—‘not directly, at any rate’—‘I need not hope to get rid of him,’ he said aside perhaps.
But we saw the great roaring, grinding Thing ... a great blind mole, it looked for blackness. We got out of the carriage to see closer—and Flush was so frightened at the roar of it, that he leapt upon the coach-box. Also it rained,—and I had ever so many raindrops on my gown and in my face even, ... which pleased me nearly as much as the railroad sight. It is something new for me to be rained upon, you know.
As for happiness—the words which you use so tenderly are in my heart already, making me happy, ... I am happy by you. Also I may say solemnly, that the greatest proof of love I could give you, is to be happy because of you—and even _you_ cannot judge and see how great a proof _that_ is. You have lifted my very soul up into the light of your soul, and I am not ever likely to mistake it for the common daylight. May God bless you, ever ever dearest!
I am your own—
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday. [Post-mark, August 17, 1846.]
No, my own dearest, your letter does not arrive on Saturday, but this morning—what then? You will not be prevented from your usual ways of entire goodness to me by _that_? You will continue to write through the remainder of the writing-time? This one letter reaches me,—if another was sent, it stays back till to-morrow—so I _do_ get a blessing by your endeavour, and am grateful as ever, my own Ba! After all, neither of us loses,—effectually loses—anything—for my letter always comes in its good time,—it is not cast hopelessly away—and do you suppose that _you_ lose any of the gladness and thanks? Rather, you get them doubly—for all along, all through the suspense, I have been (invariably) sure of the deed when promised, and of the unchanging love, when only expected ... so that when the letter finds me at last, the joy being unaccountably unabated do you not see that there is a _gain_ somehow? I told you on Friday I loved you more at that instant than at any previous time—I will show you why, because I _can_ show you, I think—though it seems at first an irrational word ... for always having loved you wholly, how can I, still _only_ loving you wholly, speak of ‘more’ or ‘less’?—This is why—I used to see you once a week, to sit with you for an hour and a half—to receive a letter, or two, or three, during the week—and I loved you, Ba, wholly, as I say, and reckoned time for no time in the intervals of seeing you and hearing from you. Now I see you twice in the week, and stay with you the three hours, and have letter on dear letter,—and the distance is, at least, the _same_, between the days, and between the letters—I will only affirm it is the _same_—so I must love you more—because if you were to bring me back to the old allowance of you,—the one short visit, the two or three letters,—I should be starved with what once feasted me! (If you do not understand Flush does!) Seriously, does not that go to prove, I love you more! Increased strength comes insensibly thus,—is only ascertained by such process of induction ... once you crossed the room to look out Shelley’s age in a book, and were not tired—now you cross London to see the trains arrive, and (I trust) are not tired.... _So_—you are stronger.
Dearest, I know your very meaning, in what you said of religion, and responded to it with my whole soul—what you express now, is for us both ... those are my own feelings, my convictions beside—instinct confirmed by reason. Look at that injunction to ‘love God with all the heart, and soul, and strength’—and then imagine yourself bidding any faculty, that arises towards the love of him, be still! If in a meeting house, with the blank white walls, and a simple doctrinal exposition,—all the senses should turn (from where they lie neglected) to all that sunshine in the Sistine with its music and painting, which would lift them at once to Heaven,—why should you not go forth?—to return just as quickly, when they are nourished into a luxuriance that extinguishes, what is called, Reason’s pale wavering light, lamp or whatever it is—for I have got into a confusion with thinking of our convolvuluses that climb and tangle round the rose-trees—which might be lamps or tapers! See the levity! No—this sort of levity only exists because of the strong conviction, I do believe! There seems no longer need of earnestness in assertion, or proof ... so it runs lightly over, like foam on the top of a wave.
Chorley came and was very agreeable and communicative. You shall tell me more about Mr. Mathews and his review. And with respect to his lady-friend, you will see her, I think. But first tell me of Mr. Kenyon, and yourself—how you are, and what I am to do, when to see you.
Now goodbye, my own Ba—‘goodbye.’ Be prepared for all fantasticalness that may happen! Perhaps some day I shall shake hands with you, simply, and go ... just to remember the more exquisitely where I once was, and where you let me stay now, you dearest, dearest heart of my heart, soul of my soul! But the shaking-hands, at a very distant time! _Now_—let me kiss you, beloved—and so I do kiss you—
Ever your own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Sunday Morning. [Post-mark, August 17, 1846.]
Your sight of Widdicombe was highly dramatic—and the policeman ‘intersit nodo’ as well as any god of them all. What a personage Widdicombe must be! Think of the mental state of a man, who could gravely apply to his own face false moustachios and rouge before a looking-glass. There is something in it to wonder over, as over the megalosaurie and prodigions of ridicules. Mind—when I talked of rouge improving a complexion for the nonce, I was thinking of women; not of men, in whom that sort of colouring (even if it were natural) is detestable, or, to measure one’s language, very ugly indeed. I have seen a man, of whom it was related that he _painted his lips_—so that at dinner, with every course, was removed a degree of bloom; the lips paled at the soup, grew paler at the mutton, became white at the fricandeau and ghastly at the pudding—till with the orange at dessert, his nearest neighbours drew back their chairs a little, expecting him to fall flat in a fainting-fit. But he was very rich, and could only talk charmingly out of those painted lips. There were women who ‘couldn’t conceive why people should call him a fool.’ To every Bottom’s head (not to wrong Bottom by such a comparison), there will be a special Titania—see if there will not!
So you go on Wednesday to this club-dinner, really. And you come to me also on Wednesday. Does _that_ remain decided? I have had a letter from that poor Chiappino, to desire a ‘last interview’ ... which is promised to be ‘pacific.’ Oh—such stuff! Am I to hold a handkerchief to my eyes and sob a little? Your policeman is necessary to the full development of the drama, I think. And I forgot to tell you that there were _two_ things in which I had shown great want of feeling—one, the venturing to enclose your verses—the other ... (now listen!) the other ... the having said that ‘I was sincerely sorry for all his real troubles.’ Which I do remember having said once, when I was out of patience—as how can any one be patient continually? and how was I especially to condole with him in lawn and weepers, on the dreadful fact of your existence in the world? Well—he has real troubles unfortunately, and he is going away to live in a village somewhere. Poor Chiappino! A little occupation would be the best thing that could happen for him; it would be better than prosperity without it. When a man spins evermore on his own axis, like a child’s toy I saw the other day, ... what is the use of him but to make a noise? No greater tormentor is there, than self-love, ... even to self. And no greater instance of this, than _this_!
Dearest beloved, to turn away from the whole world to you ... _when_ I do, do I lose anything ... or not rather gain all? Sometimes I feel to wish that I had more to sacrifice to you, so as to prove something of what is in me—but you do not require sacrifice ... it is enough, you say, that I should _be happy through you_. How like those words are to you!—how they are said in your own idiom! And for myself, I am contented to think that, ... if such things can really satisfy you, ... you would find with difficulty elsewhere in the world than here, a woman as perfectly empty of life and gladness, except what comes to her from your hands. Many would be happy through you:—but to be happy through only you, is my advantage ... my boast. In this, I shall be better than the others.
Why, if you were to drive me from you after a little, in what words could I reproach you, but just in these ... ‘You might have left me to die _before_.’ Still I should be your debtor, my beloved, as now I am
Your very own
BA.
I told you that I was going to the chapel one Sunday—but I have not been yet. I had not courage. May God bless you!—
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Monday Morning. [Post-mark, August 17, 1846.]
I come home from Town for my letters ... the _two_ I ventured to expect, and here they meet me. As I said, you _had_ written, and I thanked you _then_, and _now_, too, just as if I had been despairing all along—and over and above, there are some especial thanks to pay,—for when I could not otherwise disengage myself from a dinner a little way out of town,—having unawares confessed to the day’s being at my disposal, ... I said—‘I expect letters at home which _must_ be answered’—and here I am.
Or rather, here you are, dearest,—in, I do think, your dearest mood. I must shift my ground already, alter my moment of time, and avow that it is _now_ I love you the best, the completest. Do you want to know how much kindness I can bear? If I ever am so happy as to speak so as to please you, it may be only your own kindness overflowing and running back to you—I feel every day, often in every day, the regret follow some thought of you,—that _this_ thought, for instance, if I could secure and properly tell you _this_ only, you would know my love for what it is,—and yet that _this_ thought will pass unexpressed like the others! Well, I do not care—rightly considered, there is not so much to regret—the words _should_ lead to acts, and be felt insufficient.
Now we collect then, from Mr. Kenyon’s caution, or discretion, or pity, or ignorance, that he will not interpose, and that there will be one great effort, and acknowledgment _for all_? I should certainly like it _so_ best. You seem stronger than to need the process of preparatory disclosures, now to one, now to another friend. It is clearly best as it is like to be ... for perhaps the chances are in our favour that the few weeks more will be uninterrupted.
My time is gone—and nothing said! For to-morrow, all rests with you ... if the note bids me go, I shall be in _absolute_ readiness—otherwise on Wednesday ... just as you seem to discern the times and the seasons.
Bless you my own best, dearest Ba—your own R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Monday. [Post-mark, August 18, 1846.]
For these two dear letters, I thank you, dearest! You are best, as ever! And _that_ is all I have to tell you, almost—for I have seen nobody, heard nothing ... except that _Eugène Sue can paint_, ... which Miss Mitford told me this morning in a note of hers, ... in which, besides, she complains of the fatigue she suffers from the visitors who go to see after her the Reading prison, as the next ‘sight’ of the neighbourhood. Better to live in Cheapside, than among the oaks, on such conditions! As to Mr. Kenyon, he does not approach me. So he may come to-morrow, perhaps, or even on Wednesday. Would it not appear the top of wisdom if you deferred our day to Thursday’s sun!—now consider! It would be a decided gain, surely, to be able to say to him on Wednesday that you had not seen me since you and he saw me together. So I propose _Thursday_ if you permit it. Next week we may take up our two days again, as one takes up so many dropt silken stitches, ... and we will be careful that the beads do not run off in the meantime. To-day George came from circuit. He asked, for nearly a first question, whether I had thought of Italy—‘Yes, I had thought of it—but there was time to think more.’ I am uneasy a little under George’s eyes.
You did not tell me of Mr. Chorley ... whether he put questions about the Continent, or observed on the mysteries in you. Does he go himself, and when? A curious ‘fact’ is, that Mrs. Jameson was in the next house to us this morning, and also a few days ago; yet never came here—the reason certainly being a reluctance to seem to tread in upon the recalling confidence. I felt sorry, and obliged to her—both at once. Talking of confidences, I neglected to tell you when you were here last, that one more had escaped us. It was not by my choice, if by my fault. I wrote something in a note to Mr. Boyd some weeks ago, which nobody except himself would have paused to think over; but he, like a prisoner in a dungeon, sounds every stone of the walls round him, and discerns a hollowness, detects a wooden beam, ... patiently pricks out the mortar with a pin—all this, in his rayless, companionless Dark,—poor Mr. Boyd! The time before I last went to see him, he asked me if I were going to be a nun—there, was the first guess! On the next visit he puts his question precisely right—_I_ tried to evade—then, promised to be frank in a little time—but being pressed on all sides, and drawn on by a solemn vow of secrecy, I allowed him to see the truth—and he lives such an isolated life, that it is perfectly safe with him, setting the oath aside. Also, he was very good and kind, and approved highly of the whole, and exhorted me, with ever such exhortation, to keep to my purpose, and to allow no consideration in the world or out of the world, to make any difference—quoting the moral philosophers as to the rights of such questions. Is there harm in his knowing? He knows nobody, talks to nobody, and is very faithful to his word. Just as _I_, you will retort, was foolish in mine! Yet I do assure you, mine was a sort of word, which to nine hundred and ninety nine persons, would have suggested nothing—only _he_ mused over it, turned it into all lights, and had nothing to do but _that_. Afterwards he was proud, and asked ... ‘Was I not acute?’ It was a pleasure to him, one could not grudge.
Are you well, ever dearest? _I_ am well. And yesterday, while they were at dinner, I walked out alone, or with Flush—twice to the corner of the street, turning it, to post your letter. May God bless you. Surely we feel alike in many, many things—the convolvuluses grow together; twisted together—and you lift me up from the ground; you! I am your very own—
Mr. Mathews said nothing more than I told you—very briefly—but he _sent_ the review, he said—and it has not come.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday Morning [Post-mark, August 18, 1846.]
Let it be on Thursday then, dearest, for the reasons you mention. I will say nothing of my own desires to meet you sooner ... they are corrected by the other desires to spend my whole life with you. After all, these are the critical weeks now approaching or indeed present—there shall be no fault I can avoid. So, till Thursday—
Chorley said very little ... he is all discreetness and forbearance, here as on other points. He goes to Birmingham at the end of this week, and returning after some three or four days, leaves London for Paris—probably next Saturday week. From Paris he thinks of going to Holland ... a good step,—and of staying at Scheven ... ing ... what is the Bath’s name?—not a good step, I told him, because of the mortal ugliness of the place—which I well remember ... it may have improved in ten years, to be sure. There, ‘walking on the sands,’ (sands in a heapy slope, not a traversable flat) he means to ‘grow to an end’ with his Tragedy ... there is a noble ardour in his working which one cannot help admiring—he has a few weeks’ holiday, is jaded to death with writing, and yet will write away his brief time of respite and restoratives—for what? He wondered whether there was any chance of our meeting in Paris—‘our’ meaning him and myself.
As for your communication to Mr. Boyd—how could you do otherwise, my own Ba? I am altogether regardless of whatever danger there may be, in the great delight at his sympathy and approval of your intention: he probably never heard my name before ... but his own will ever be associated divinely in my memory with those verses which always have affected me profoundly ... perhaps on the whole, _more_ profoundly than any others you ever wrote: _that_ is hard to prove to myself,—but I really think so—the personal allusions in it went straight to my heart at the beginning. I remember, too, how he loved and loves you ... you told me, Ba: so I am most grateful to him,—as I ever shall feel to those who, knowing you, judge me worthy of being capable of knowing you and taking your impress, and becoming yours sufficiently for your happiness.
Are you so well, dearest, in your walks,—after your rides? Does that rejoice me or no, when I would rather hear you had been happy, than simply see you without such an assurance? I am very well, since you ask—but my mother is not—her head being again affected. Yet the late improvement gives ground for hope ... nor is this a very violent attack in itself.
I suppose it _was_ in Mrs. Jameson’s mind, as you apprehend—you must always be fond of her—(and such will be always my way of rewarding people _I_ am fond of!)
God bless you, dearest—I love you all I can, Ba. I see another ship is advertised to sail—(a steamer) for Naples, and other southern ports—but no higher. When you are well and disposed to go to Greece, take me, my love. I should feel too happy for this world, I think, among the islands with you.
My very own, I am yours—
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Evening. [Post-mark, August 19, 1846.]
Your mother is not well, dearest? _that_ is bad news indeed. And then, I think of your superstition of your being ill and well with her—take care and keep well, Robert, ... or of what use will it be that _I_ should be well? To-day we drove out, and were as far as Finchley, and I am none the worse at all for it. Do you know Finchley? It is pretty and rural; the ground rising and falling as if with the weight of verdure and dew! fields, and hedgerows, and long slopes of grass thick and long enough, in its fresh greenness, quite to hide the nostrils of the grazing cows. The fields are little, too, as if the hedges wanted to get together. Then the village of Finchley straggles along the road with a line of cottages, or small houses, seeming to _play_ at a village. No butchers, no bakers—only one shop in the place—but gardens, and creepers round the windows. Such a way from London, it looked! Arabel wanted to call on a friend of hers, a daughter of Sir William Russell’s, who married an adopted son of _Lamartine_, and was in the navy, and is now an Independent minister officiating in this selfsame metropolis of Finchley. A concatenation, _that_ is, altogether. Very poor they are—living on something less than two hundred a year, with five children, and the eldest five years old. And the children came out to us, everybody else being away—so I, who would have stayed in the carriage under other circumstances, was tempted out by the children and the cottage, and they dragged us along to see the drawing room, and dining room, and ‘Papa’s flowers,’ and their own particular book ‘about the twenty-seven tailors’; and those of the children who could speak, thought Flush ‘very cool’ for walking up-stairs without being asked. (The baby opened its immense eyes wider than ever, thinking unutterable things.) So as they had been so kind and hospitable to us, we could not do less (after a quantity of admiration upon the pretty house covered with roses, and the garden and lawn, and especially the literature of those twenty-seven tailors) we could not do less than offer to give them a drive ... which was accepted with acclamation. Think of our taking into the carriage, all five children, with their prodigious eyes and cheeks—the nurse on the coachbox, to take them home at the end of some quarter of a mile! At the moment of parting, Alphonse Lamartine thought seriously of making a great scream—but upon Arabel’s perjuring herself by a promise to ‘come again soon,’ we got away without that catastrophe. A worse one is, that you may think yourself obliged to read this amusing history. To make amends, I send you what I gathered for you in the garden ‘Pansy!—that’s for thoughts.’[5]
How wise we are about Thursday! or rather about Tuesday and Wednesday, perhaps.
As for Mr. Boyd, he had just heard your name, but he is blind and deaf to modern literature, and I am not anxious that he should know you much by your poetry. He asked some questions about you, and he enquired of Arabel particularly whether she thought we cared for each other enough. But to tell you the truth, his unqualified adhesion strikes me as less the result of his love for _you_, than of his anger towards another. I am sure he triumphs inwardly in the idea of a chain being broken which he has so often denounced in words that pained and vexed me—and then last year’s affair about Italy made him furious. Oh—I could see plainly by the sort of smile he smiled—but we need not talk of it—I am at the end too of my time. How good you are to me not to upbraid me for imprudence and womanly talkativeness! You are too, too good. And you liked my verses to Mr. Boyd! Which _I_ like to hear, of course. Dearest—
Shall we go to Greece then, Robert? _Let_ us, if you like it! When we have used a little the charm of your Italy, and have been in England just to see that everybody is well, of yours and mine, ... (if you like _that_!) ... why straightway we can go ‘among the islands’—(and _nearly_ as pleasant, it will be for me, as if I went there alone, having left you!). I should like to see Athens with my living eyes ... Athens was in all the dreams I dreamed, before I knew you. Why should we not see Athens, and Egypt too, and float down the mystical Nile, and stand in the shadow of the Pyramids? _All_ of it is more possible now, than walking up this street seemed to me last year.
Indeed, there is only one miracle for _me_, my beloved,—and _that_ is your loving me. Everything else under the sun, and much over it, seems the merest commonplace and workday matter-of-fact. If I found myself, suddenly, riding in Paradise, on a white elephant of golden feet, ... I should shake the bridle, I fancy, with ever so much nonchalance, and absently wonder over ‘that miracle’ of the previous world. Because ‘_THAT’S for thoughts_,’ as my flower says! look at it and listen.
As for me, I am your very own—
[5] [The flower is enclosed with the letter.]
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday. [Post-mark, August 19, 1846.]
See my one piece of available paper for the minute! Ought I to write on or wait? No, I will tell Ba at once how I love her for giving me this one more letter with its delights. ‘Finchley’—I know very well—not that I ever saw the streets, and palaces, and cathedral, with these eyes ... but in ‘Quarles’ Emblems,’ my childhood’s pet book, I well remember that an aspiring Soul,—(a squat little woman-figure with a loose gown, hair in a coil, and bare feet—) is seated on the world, a ‘terrestrial ball,’—which, that you may clearly perceive it to be our world, is somewhat parsimoniously scattered over with cities and towns—and one, the evident capital of the universe and Babylon’s despair for size,—occupying as it does a tract quite equal to all Europe’s due share on the hemisphere, is marked ‘Finchley’—Do you recognize? [Illustration] Yet, if you will have it only the pretty village with the fields you describe so perfectly, I accept the sweetness and give up the glory, and your Finchley is mine for ever, you dearest—whom I see in the house, and in the carriage ... but how is it you escaped the rain, Ba? Oh, it did not rain till later, now I think a little. Those are indeed strange circumstances ... and the ‘independent ministry’ at the end, seems hard to account for ... or, why hard? Well, _this_ is _not_ hard to feel and know, that it is perfect joy to hear you propose such travels and adventures—Greece _with you_, Egypt _with you_! Will you please and tell me ... (not _now_, but whenever your conscience prompts you on the recurrence of that notable objection, if Miss Campbell’s desirableness _is_ to recur) ... what other woman in the whole world and Finchley, would propose to go to Egypt instead of Belgravia? Do our tastes coincide or no? This is putting all on the lowest possible ground ... setting love aside even, to Miss Mitford’s heart’s fullest content; if I were to choose among women, without love to give or take, and only for _other_ advantages, do you think _any_ advantage would compete with this single one,—‘she will feel happy in travelling with you to a distance.’ Love alters the scale, overbalances everything—at the beginning I fancied you could not leave England, you know. But it singularly affects my imagination, such a life with you,—led _for_ the world, I hope, all the more effectually for being not led _in_ the world. If their ways are not to be ours, all is better at a distance, and _so_ I have put this down as, surely, _one_ palpable, unmistakable _advantage_ even _you_ must confess I shall gain in marrying you—(I may only love Ba’s eyes and mouth in a sort of fearful secrecy so far as words go ... she stops all speech on that subject!)
Yes indeed, Ba, I always felt that ‘Cyprus wine’ poem fill my heart with unutterable desires to you. There is so much of you in it. Observe, I do no foolish injustice in criticisms ... I quite understand a charm _beside_ the charm the world can see. Some of your pansies are entirely beautiful in themselves.... I can set them before the visitors of a flower-show and bid all pronounce on them—others, beside their beauty, come to me as _this_ dear one, in a letter, with a story of the plucking, with a _sense_ of the fingers that held it. Bless you, ever dearest, dear beyond words,—you have given me already in this year and a half the entirest faith and purest kindness my heart can comprehend. Do lovers ‘abuse the beloved object’—‘try to shake off their chains’ &c. &c.? Mine is not love then! No one minute or moment of your life with me could have been other than it was without seeming less dear, less perfect in my memory—and for all, God reward you.
To-morrow, Thursday! And to-night I will warily speak of not having seen you.
Your own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday. [Post-mark, August 21, 1846.]
Dearest, this is to be a brief letter, though my heart shall find room in whatever goes to you. Yesterday cost us nothing—no observation was made: we were in all security notwithstanding the forebodings on either side. May they find such an end in circumstances of still more consequence. Dearest, your flowers are beautiful beyond their beauty of yesterday which I praised—they think themselves still in the garden; we have done them no sort of wrong. What a luring thought you leave with me in the flowers! How I look at them as a sign of you, left behind—your footstep in the ground! It has been so from the beginning. And yet sometimes you try to prove that you are not always good. You!
If you are not good, it is because you are _best_. I will admit so much.
Oh, to look back! It is so wonderful to me to look back on my life and my old philosophy of life, made of the necessities of sorrow and the resolution to attain to something better than a perpetual moaning and complaint,—to that state of neutralized emotion to which I did attain—that serenity which meant the failure of hope! _Can_ I look back to such things, and not thank you next to God? For you, who had the _power_, to stoop to having the will,—is it not worthy of thanks? So I thank you and love you and shall always, however it may be hereafter. I could not feel otherwise to you, I think, than by my feeling at this moment.
How Papa has startled me. He came in while I was writing ... (I shut the writing-case as he walked over the floor—) and then, after the usual talk of the weather, and how the nights ‘were growing cold,’ ... he said suddenly ... looking to the table ... ‘What a beautiful colour those little blue flowers have—’ Calling them just _so_, ... ‘little blue flowers.’ I could scarcely answer I was so frightened—but he observed nothing and turned and left the room with his favourite enquiry _pour rire_, as to whether he ‘could do anything for me in the City.’
Do anything for _me_ in the City! Well—do _you_ do something for me, by thinking of me and loving me, Robert. Dear you are, never to be tired of me, with so much reason for it as I know. May God bless you, very dear!—and ever dearest! I am your own too entirely to need to say so.
_Ba._
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Friday. [Post-mark, August 21, 1846.]
I think—now that the week is over with its opportunities,—and now that no selfish complaining can take advantage of your goodness,—that I will ask you how _I_ feel, do you suppose, without my proper quantity of ‘morphine’? May I call you my morphine?
And speaking of ‘proper quantities’—there were some remarks of yours which I altogether acquiesced in, yesterday, about a humiliating dependence in money-matters; though I should be the first to except myself from feeling _buite_ with the world there—I have told you, indeed,—but my case is not everybody’s. I hate being _master_, and alone, and absolute disposer in points where real love will save me the trouble ... because there are infinitely more and greater points where the solitary action and will, with their responsibility, cannot be avoided. I suppose _that_ is Goethe’s meaning when he says every man has liberty enough—political liberty and social: so that when they let him write ‘Faust’ after his own fashion, he does not mind how they dispose of his money, or even limit his own footsteps. Ah,—but there are the good thousands all round who don’t want to write ‘Fausts,’ and only have money to spend and walks to take, and how do _they_ like such an arrangement? Moreover, I should be perhaps more refractory than anybody, if what I cheerfully agree to, as happening to take my fancy, were forced on me, as the only reasonable course. All men ought to be independent, whatever Carlyle may say. And so, too, I like being alone, myself—but I should be sorry to see the ordinary friends I have, live alone. Do you understand all this, Ba? Will you make me say it, in your mind, intelligibly? And then will you say still more of your own till the true thing is completely said? And, after all, will you kiss me?’
As I asked you yesterday ... because of a most foolish, thoughtless allusion,—which I only trust you never noticed ... do not you allude to it, not even to forgive me, dearest, dearest. I would rather be unforgiven than pain you afresh to do it ... but perhaps you did not notice my silly expression after all.... I wished your dear hands before my eyes, I know! Still you would know it was only thoughtlessness.
All this sad morning the blackness has been quite enough to justify our fire ... we have had one there two or three days. But now the sun comes out—and I will hope you follow him,—after Mr. Kenyon’s visit? _That_ is to be I think!
I never write anything bearable, even for _me_, on these days when no letter from you leads me on phrase by phrase ... I am thrown too completely on the general feelings—‘Do you love Ba?—then tell her _that_!’ Yes, indeed! It is easier to leave all the love untold, having to speak for the moment of Finchley only! Finchley,—the cottage,—Ba entering it—Flush following her ... now I come to something I wanted to say! In the paper, this morning, is a paragraph about the bold villainy of _dog-stealers_. There is an ‘organised society’ of these fellows, and they seize and convey away everybody’s Flushes, ‘if such a one ever _were_,’ as Iago rhymes of his perfect wife. So friend Flush must go his _high_ ways only, and keep out of alleys and dark corners: beside in Pisa, he must guard the house. In earnest, I warn you, Ba!
Now tell me—will there be any impediment to Tuesday?
I think I will go out into this sunshine while it lasts. I am very well considering there are three days to wait, but a walk will do no harm,—nor will I.
All speech to you shall be ever simple, simplest. I can only love you and say so,—and I do love you, best beloved!
Your own, very own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday Evening. [Post-mark, August 22, 1846.]
Can I be as good for you as morphine is for me, I wonder ... even at the cost of being as bad also? Can’t you leave me off without risking your life,—nor go on with me without running the hazards of all poison. Ah!—it will not do, so. The figure exceeds me, let _it_ be ever so fatal. I may not be your morphine, even if I shall be your Ba!—you _see_!
You are my prophet though, in a few things. For instance, Mr. Kenyon came to-day, and sate here I really believe two hours, talking of poor Papa ... (oh! not of _us_, my prophet!) and at length, of the Pyrenees and of Switzerland, and of the characteristics of mountain scenery—full of interest it all was, and I thought (while he talked) that when you and I had done with the crocodiles, we might look for a chamois or two. If I ‘drive,’ I shall drive that way, I think still ... that is, ever since four o’clock, I _have_ thought. Mr. Kenyon said ... ‘You had a visitor yesterday!’ ‘Yes’ said I—‘Mr. Browning came.’ ‘You mean that he actually _did_ come, through that pouring rain! Well—he told me he was coming: but when I saw the rain, I imagined it to be out of the question.’ Just observe his subtlety. Imagining that you did not come yesterday he concluded of course that you would come to-day,—and straightway hurried here himself! Moreover he seems to me to have resolved on never again leaving London! Because Mr. Eagles goes to the seaside instead of to the Quantock hills, Mr. Kenyon has written to Landor a proposition toward a general renouncement of the adventure. Quite cross I felt, to hear of it! And it doesn’t unruffle me to be told, even that he goes to Richmond on Tuesday and sleeps there and spends the Wednesday. Nothing _can_ unruffle me. So tiresome it is! Then I am provoked a little by the news he brought me of ‘Miss Martineau’s leaving the Lakes for a month or two’—seeing that _if_ she leaves the Lakes, it is for London—there are nets on all sides of us. I am under a promise to see her, and I shrink both from herself and her consequences. Now, _is_ it not tiresome? Those are coming, and these are _not_ going away. The hunters are upon us ... and where we run, we run into the nets.
Dearest, I have been considering one thing, and do _you_ consider whether, if we _do_ achieve this peculiar madness of going to Italy, we should take any books, and what they should be. A few books of the small editions would be desirable perhaps—and then it were well for us to arrange it so that we should not take duplicates, and that the possession of the duodecimo should ‘have the preference’ ... do you understand? Also, this arrangement being made, and the time approaching, I had better perhaps send you _my_ part of the books, so as to save the difficulty of taking more packets than absolutely were necessary, from this house. It will be very difficult to remove things without exciting observation—and _my sisters must not observe_. The consequences would be frightful if they were suspected of knowing; and, poor things, I could not drive them into acting a part.
My own beloved, when my courage seems to bend and break, I turn to you and look at you ... as men see visions! _It is enough, always._ Did you ever give me pain by a purpose of yours?—do you not rather keep me from all pain?—do we blame the wind that breathes gently, because a reed or a weed trembles in it? I could not feel much pain while sitting near you, I think—unless you suffered a little, ... or looked as if you did not love me. And _that_ was not at least yesterday.
May God bless you dearest, ever dearest.
I am your own.
Say how your mother is—and how you are. _Don’t_ neglect this.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Saturday. [Post-mark, August 22, 1846.]
Your first note reached me at six o’clock yesterday ... did the dear living spirit inside help it along in spite of all the post’s hindrances? And this second comes duly. When you know I am most at a loss how to thank you, invariably you begin thanking _me_! Is that because of my own practice of saying a foolish thing and then, to cover it, asking you to kiss me? I think I will tell you now what that foolish thing was,—lest you, missing it, should go hunting and find worse, and far worse. I will just remind you, that on your enumerating your brothers and sisters, I said without a moment’s thought ‘so, _you are seven_’!... And you know how Wordsworth applied that phrase ... and in the sudden fear of wounding dearest Ba, I took such refuge for myself, rather than her! Will you kiss me now, my own love? And say nothing, but let it die away here, this stupidity of mine.
I hardly conceive what Mr. Kenyon means ... except perhaps a sort of general exhortation to take care, and—I mean, if he came for the purpose of catching me _only_,—he ought either to know or not know, keep silence or speak, approve or condemn ... and to do _neither_ being so easy, his own cautiousness would keep him away, I should have thought.
About your books, you speak altogether wisely: in this first visit to Italy we had better take only enough to live upon,—travelling books,—and return for the rest. And so with everything else. I shall put papers &c. into a room and turn the key on them and my death’s heads—because when we come back (think of you and me ... why, we shall walk arm in arm,—would Flush object to carry an umbrella in his mouth? And so let Lough cut us in marble, all three!)—well, when we come back, all can be done leisurely and considerately. And _then_, Greece, Egypt, Syria, the Chamois-country, as Ba pleases!
Ba, Lord Byron is altogether in my affection again ... I have read on to the end, and am quite sure of the great qualities which the last ten or fifteen years had partially obscured. Only a little longer life and all would have been gloriously right again. I read this book of Moore’s too long ago: but I always retained my first feeling for Byron in many respects ... the interest in the places he had visited, in relics of him. I would at any time have gone to Finchley to see a curl of his hair or one of his gloves, I am sure—while Heaven knows that I could not get up enthusiasm enough to cross the room if at the other end of it all Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey were condensed into the little China bottle yonder, after the Rosicrucian fashion ... they seem to ‘have their reward’ and want nobody’s love or faith. Just one of those trenchant opinions which I found fault with Byron for uttering,—as ‘proving nothing’! But telling a weakness to Ba is not telling it to ‘the world,’ as poor authors phrase it!
By the way, Chorley has written another very kind paper, in that little journal of to-day, ‘Colombe’s Birthday’—I have only glanced at it however. See his goodwill: I will bring it on Tuesday, if you please in goodness. I was not _quite_ so well ... (there is the bare truth ...) this morning early—but the little there was to _go_, _has_ gone, and I am about to go out. My mother continues indisposed. The connection between our ailings is no fanciful one. A few weeks ago when my medical adviser was speaking about the pain and its cause ... my mother sitting by me ... he exclaimed ‘Why, has anybody to search far for a cause of whatever nervous disorder you may suffer from, when _there_ sits your mother ... whom you so absolutely resemble ... I can trace every feature &c. &c.’ To which I did _not_ answer, ‘And will anybody wonder that the said disorder flies away, when there sits my Ba, whom I so thoroughly adore.’
Yes, there you sit, Ba!
And here I kiss you, best beloved,—my very own as I am your own—
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Saturday. [Post-mark, August 22, 1846.]
I begin to write before one this morning, with the high resolve that you shall have a letter on Sunday, to-morrow, at least,—it shall be put into the post so precisely at the right hour. At two I am going out in the carriage to Mr. Boyd’s and other places,—and dining duties are to be performed before then, and before now I have had a visitor. Guess whom—Mrs. Jameson. So I am on a ‘narrow neck of land’ ... such as Wesley wrote hymns about; ... and _stans in pede uno_ on it—can make for you but a hurried letter.
She came in with a questioning face, and after wondering to find me visible so soon, plunged into the centre of the question and asked ‘what was settled ... what I was doing about Italy.—’ ‘Just nothing,’ I told her. ‘She found me as she left me, able to say no word.’
‘But what _are_ you going to do—’ throwing herself back in the chair with a sudden—‘but oh, I must not enquire.’
I went on to say that ‘in the first place my going would not take place till quite the end of September if so soon,—that I had determined to make no premature fuss,—and that, for the actual present, nothing was either to be done or said.
‘Very sudden then, it is to be. In fact, there is only an _elopement_ for you—’ she observed laughing.
So I was obliged to laugh.
(But, dearest, nobody will use such a word surely to the _event_. We shall be in such an obvious exercise of Right by Daylight—surely nobody will use such a word.)
I talked of Mr. Kenyon,—how he had been with me yesterday and brought the mountains of the Earth into my room—‘which was almost too much,’ I said, ‘for a prisoner.’ ‘Yes—but if you go to Italy....’
‘But Mr. Kenyon thinks I shall not. In his opinion, my case is desperate.’
‘But I tell you that it is not. Nobody’s case is desperate when the will is not at fault. And a woman’s will when she wills thoroughly as I hope you do, is strong enough to overcome. When I hear people say that _circumstances are against them_, I always retort, ... you mean _that your will is not with you_! I believe in the will—I have faith in it.’
There is an oracle for us, to remember for good! She goes to Paris, she says, with her niece, between the seventh and tenth of September,—and after a few days at Paris she goes to Orleans for the cathedral’s sake—but what follows is doubtful ... Italy is doubtful. Only that my opinion is, as I told her, that if Italy is doubtful here in London, at Orleans, when she gets there, it will be certain. She will not resist the attraction towards the South. She looked at me all the while she told me this ... looked into my eyes, like a Diviner.
On Monday morning she comes to see me again. It is all painful, or rather unpleasant. One should not use strong words out of place, and there will remain too much use for this. How I teaze you now!
Believe me, through it all, that when I think of the very worst of the future, I love you the best, and feel most certain of never hesitating. As long as you choose to have me, my beloved, I have chosen—I am yours already—
and your own always—
_Ba_.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Sunday Morning. [Post-mark, August 24, 1846.]
But dearest—Did you not understand that I understood? I know your words better than you think, you see. Were you afraid to trust me to give a chase to them in my recollection, lest I should fall blindly upon some ‘Secret Sin’ of yours? a wild boar, instead of a poor little coney belonging to the rocks of my desolation?—such as it was before you made the yellow furze grow everywhere on it? Now, it is like me for wickedness, to begin talking of your ‘Secret Sins,’ just by this opportunity. You overcome me with goodness—there’s the real truth, and the whole of it.
While I am writing, comes in Arabel with such a face. My brother had been talking, talking of me. Stormie suddenly touched her and said—‘Is it true that there is an engagement between Mr. Browning and Ba—?’ She was taken unaware, but had just power to say ‘You had better ask them, if you want to know. What nonsense, Storm.’ ‘Well,’ he resumed, ‘I’ll ask Ba when I go up-stairs.’ George was by, looking as grave as if antedating his judgeship. Think how frightened I was, Robert ... expecting them up-stairs every minute,—for all my brothers come here on Sunday, all together. But they came, and not a single word was said—not on that subject, and I talked on every other in a sort of hurried way—I was so frightened.
Saturday Mr. Boyd and I talked on _it_ for two hours nearly, he would not let me go with his kindness. Nothing, he said, would make him gladder than our having gone, and escaped the storms. In fact, what with affection for me, and disaffection in other directions, he thinks of nothing besides, I do believe. He only wishes that he had known last year, in order to exhort me properly. The very triumph of reason and righteousness, he considers the whole affair. But I told you what Mr. Boyd is—dear, poor Mr. Boyd! Talking such pure childishness sometimes, in such pure Attic—yet one of the very most upright men, after all, that I ever dreamt of—one of the men born shepherds—with a crook in the hand, instead of the metaphorical ‘silver spoon in the mouth.’ Good, dear Mr. Boyd,—I am very grateful to him for his goodness to me just now. I assure you that he takes us up exactly as if we were Ossian and Macpherson, or a criticism of Porson’s, or a new chapter of Bentley on Phalaris. By the way, _do you believe in Ossian_? Let me be properly prepared for that question.
But I have a question for you of my own. Listen to me, my Famous in Council, and give me back words of wisdom. A long, long while ago, nearly a year since perhaps, I wrote to the Blackwoods of Edinburgh to mention my new ‘Prometheus,’ and to ask if they would care to use it in their magazine, _that_, and verses more my own; whether they would care to have them at the usual magazine terms—I had some lyrics by me, and people have constantly advised me to print in Blackwood, with the prospect of republishing in the independent form. You get at the public so, and are paid for your poems instead of paying for them. Did I tell you all this before—and about my having written the enquiry? At any rate, no reply came—I concluded that Mr. Blackwood did not think it worth while to write, and eschewed the poems—and the subject passed from my thoughts till last night. Then came a very civil note. The authorities receiving nothing from me, were afraid that their answer to my letter had not reached me, and therefore wrote again. They would ‘like to see’ my ‘Prometheus’ though apprehensive of its being unfit for the Magazine—but particularly desire to have all manner of lyrics, whatever I have by me. Now, what do you think? What shall I do? Would it not be well to let this door between us and Blackwood stand open. One is not in the worst company there—they pay well,—and you have the opportunity of standing face to face with the public at any moment—without hindering the solemner interviews. When we are in Italy, particularly...! Do you see? Tell me your thoughts.
Since I began this letter, I have been to the Scotch Church in our neighbourhood—and it has all been in vain—I could not stay. We heard that a French minister, a M. Alphonse Monod of Montauban, was to preach at three o’clock, in French—and counting on a small congregation, and Arabel (through a knowledge of the localities) encouraging me with the prospect of sitting close to the door, and retiring back into the entrance-hall when the singing began, so as to escape that excitement—I agreed to make the trial, and she and I set out in a cab from the cab-stand hard by ... to which we walked. But the church was filling, obviously filling, as we arrived ... and grew fuller and fuller. We went in and came out again, and I sate down on the stairs—and the people came faster and faster, and I could not keep the tears out of my eyes to begin with. One gets nervous among all these people if a straw stirs. So Arabel after due observations on every side, decided that it would be too much of a congregation for me, and that I had better go home to Flush—(poor Flush having been left at home in a state of absolute despair). She therefore put me into a cab and sent me to Wimpole Street, and stayed behind herself to hear M. Monod—there’s my adventure to-day. When I opened my door on my return, Flush threw himself upon me with a most ecstatical agony, and for full ten minutes did not cease jumping and kissing my hands—he thought he had lost me for certain, this time. Oh! and you warn me against the danger of losing _him_. Indeed I take care and take thought too—those ‘organised banditti’ are not merely banditti _de comedie_—they are a dreadful reality. Did I not tell you once that they had announced to me that I should not have Flush back the _next time_, for less than ten guineas? But you will let him come with us to Italy, instead—will you not, dear, dearest? in good earnest, will you not? Because, if I leave him behind, he will be teazed for my sins in this house—or I could not be sure of the reverse of it. And even if he escaped that fate, consider how he would break his heart about me. Dogs pine to death sometimes—and if ever a dog loved a man, or a woman, Flush loves me. But you say that he shall keep the house at Pisa—and you mean it, I hope and I think?—you are in earnest. May God bless you,—_so_, I say my prayers, though I missed the Church. To-morrow, comes my letter ... come my two letters! the happy Monday! The happier Tuesday, if on Tuesday comes the writer of the letters!
His very own BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday Afternoon. [Post-mark, August 24, 1846.]
This time, they brought me your letter at six o’clock yesterday evening: was I startled, or no, do you think, as I received it? But all proved right, and kind as ever, or kinder. By the post-mark, I see you _did_ go out. Can you care in this way for my disappointments and remedy them? If I did not love you, how I would begin _now_! Every day shows me more to love in you, dearest, and I open my arms as wide as I can ... ‘incomprehensible’ Ba, as Donne would say! Also he would say much better things, however.
What a visitation! Miss Martineau is the more formidable friend, however—Mrs. Jameson will be contented with a little confidence, you see, and ask no questions—but I doubt if you arrange matters so easily with the new-comer. Because no great delicacy can be kept alive with all that conceit—and such conceit! A lady told me a few weeks ago that she had seen a letter in which Miss M. gave as her reason for not undertaking _then_, during the London season, this very journey which empty London is to benefit from now, ‘that at such a time she should be _mobbed to death_’: whereupon the lady went on to comment, ‘Miss M. little knows what London is, and how many nearly as notable objects may be found to divert its truculence from herself’—Tom Thumb, and Ibrahim Pacha, to wit.
Why do you suspect that you ‘teaze’ me when you say ‘there will remain too much use for the word “painful”’? Do you not know more of me by this time, my own Ba? When I have spoken of the probable happiness of our future life—of the chances in our favour from a community of tastes and feelings,—I have really done it on your account, not mine. I very well know that there would be an exquisite, secret happiness _through_ pain with you, or for you—but it is not for me to insist on _that_, with that divine diffidence in your own worth which meets me wherever I turn to approach you, and puts me so gently aside ... so I rather retire and content myself with occupying the ground you _do_ concede ... and since you will only hear of my being happy in the obvious, ordinary way, I tell you, with perfect truth, that you, and only you, can make me thus—that only you, of all women, look in the direction that I look, and feel as I feel, and live for the ends of my life; and beside that, see with my eyes the most natural and immediate way of reaching them, through a simple life, retirements from the world here (not from the real world), travel, and the rest. But all the while I know ... do not _you_ know, Ba? ... that the joy’s essence is in the life with you, for the sake of you, not of the mere vulgar happiness; and that if any of our calculations should fail, it will be a surprise, a delight, a pride to me to take the new taste you shall prescribe, or leave the old one you forbid. My life being yours, what matters the change which you effect in it?
Here, you mean not even so much as this by your ‘painful’—‘Elopement’! Let them call it ‘felony’ or ‘burglary’—so long as they don’t go to church with us, and propose my health after breakfast! Now you fancy this a gratuitous piece of impertinence, do you not, Ba? You are wrong, sweet: I speak from directest experience—having dreamed, the night before last, that we were married, and that on adjourning to the house of a friend of mine, his brother, a young fop I know slightly, made a speech, about a certain desk or dressing-case, which he ended by presenting to me in the name of the house! Whereto I replied in a strain of the most alarming fluency ( ... all in the dream, I need not tell you)—‘and then I woke.’ Oh _can_ I have smiled, higher up in the letter, at Miss Martineau’s over-excitability on the subject of ‘mobbing’ here? The greatest coward is the wisest man ... even the suspicion of such mobs ought to keep people at their lakes, or send them to their Pisas.
By the way, Byron speaks of plucking oranges in his garden at Pisa ... I saw just a courtyard with a high wall—which may have been a garden ... but a gloomier one than the palace, even, warrants. They have painted the front fresh staring yellow and changed its name ... there being another Casa Lanfranchi on the other side of the Arno.
Now I will kiss you, dearest: used you to divine that at the very beginning, I have sometimes shortened the visit in order to arrive at the time of taking your hand?
You will write to me to-night, I think—Tuesday is our day, remember. May God bless you, my very very dearest—
Your R.
That sonnet will not turn up—it is neither in Vasari, nor Dolce, nor Castiglione ... probably in Richardson’s ‘Painting’ which somebody has borrowed—but I will find it yet, knowing that it must be near at hand.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Monday Morning. [Post-mark, August 24, 1846.]
My own dearest, let me say the most urgent thing first. You hear these suspicions of your brothers. Will you consider if, during this next month, we do not risk too much in seeing each other as usual? We risk everything ... and what do we gain, in the face of that? I can learn no more about you, be taught no new belief in your absolute peerlessness—I have taken my place at your feet for ever: all my use of the visits is, therefore, the perfect delight of them ... and to hazard a whole life of such delight for the want of self-denial during a little month,—that would be horrible. I altogether sympathise with your brothers’ impatience, or curiosity, or anxiety, or ‘graveness’—and am prepared for their increasing and growing to heights difficult or impossible to be borne. But do you not think we may avoid compelling any premature crisis of this kind? I am guided by your feelings, as I seem to perceive them, in this matter; the harm to be apprehended is _through_ the harm to _them_—to your brothers. If they determine on avowedly _knowing_ what we intend, I do not see which to fear most; the tacit acquiescence in our scheme which may draw down a vengeance on them without doing us the least good,—or the open opposition which would bring about just so much additional misfortune. I _know_, now, your perfect adequacy to any pain and danger you will incur for our love’s sake—I believe in you as you would have me believe: but give yourself to me, dearest dearest Ba, the entire creature you are, and not a lacerated thing only reaching my arms to sink there. Perhaps this is all a sudden fancy, not justified by circumstances, arising from my ignorance of the characters of those I talk about; that is for you to decide—your least word reassures me, as always. But I fear much for _you_, to make up, perhaps, for there being nothing else in the world fit to fear: I exclude direct visitations of God, which cannot be feared, after all—dreadful dooms to which we should bow. But the ‘fear’ _proper_, means with me an apprehension that, with all my best effort, it may be unable to avert some misfortune ... the effort going on all the time: and _this_ is a real effort, dearest Ba, this letter: consider it thus. I will (if possible) send it to town, so as to reach you earlier and allow you to write _one line_ in reply. You have heard all I can say ... say you, _shall I come to-morrow?_ If you think it advisable, I will come and be most happy.
Another thing: you see your excitement about the church and the crowd.... My own love, are you able,—with all that great, wonderful heart of yours,—to bear the railway fatigues, and the entering and departure from Paris and Orleans and the other cities and towns? Would not the long sea-voyage be infinitely better, if a little dearer? Or what can be _dear_ if it prevents all that risk, or rather certainty, of excitement and fatigue? You see, the packet sails on the 30th September and the _15th October_. As three of us go, they would probably make some reduction in price. Ah, even here, I must smile ... will you affirm that ever _an approximation to a doubt_ crossed your mind about Flush? I think your plans with respect to ‘Blackwood’ most excellent—I see _many_ advantages.
* * * * *
Here is the carriage for my sister, who is going to stay in town at the Arnoulds’ for a week,—with Mrs. A. in it to fetch her. I shall give this letter to be put in the post—I have _all_ to say, but the _very_ essential is said—understand me, my best, only love, and forgive my undue alarm, for the sake of the love that prompts it. Write the one line ... do not let me do myself wrong by my anxiety—if I _may_ come, _let me_! Bless you, Ba.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Monday Evening. [Post-mark, August 25, 1846.]
Dearest, how you frightened me with the sight of your early letter! But it is only your wisdom,—which by this time should scarcely startle me,—there’s a compliment, to begin with, you see, in change for all the praises; ... my ‘peerlessness’ (!!!) being settled like the Corn Law repeal!—oh, you want no more evidence of it, not you! (poor blind you!) and the other witnesses are bidden to ‘stand down’—‘I may smile even _now_’ ... as you say _quoad_ Flush, ... smile at your certainty as you smile at my doubt. Will you let me smile, and not call it a peerless insolence, or ingratitude,—dearest you?
For dearest you are, and best in the world, ... it all comes to _that_, ... and considerate for me always: and at once I agree with you that for this interval it will be wise for us to set the visits, ... ‘our days’ ... far apart, ... nearly a week apart, perhaps, so as to escape the dismal evils we apprehend. I agree in all you say—in all. At the same time, the cloud has passed for the present—nothing has been said more, and not a word to me; and nobody appears out of humour with me. They will be displeased of course, in the first movement ... we must expect _that_ ... they will be vexed at the occasion given to conversation and so on. But it will be a passing feeling, and their hearts and their knowledge of circumstances may be trusted to justify me thoroughly. I do not fear offending them—there is no room for fear. At this point of the business too, you place the alternative rightly—their approbation or their disapprobation is equally to be escaped from. Also, we may be certain that they would press the applying for permission—and I might perhaps, in the storm excited, among so many opinions and feelings, fail to myself and you, through weakness of the body. Not of the _Will_! And for my affections and my conscience, they turn to you—and untremblingly turn.
Will you come on _Wednesday_ rather than Tuesday then? It is only one day later than we meant at first, but it nearly completes a week of separation; and we can then go to next week for the next day. Also, on Wednesday we secure Mr. Kenyon’s absence. He will be still at Richmond.
Your letter which startled me by coming early, yet came too late for you to receive the answer to it to-night. But I will send it to the post to-night; and I write hurriedly to be in time for that end.
My own beloved, you shall not be uneasy on my account.—I send you foolishnesses and you are daunted by them—but see! What affects me in those churches and chapels is something different, quite different, from railroad noises and the like. You do not understand, and I never explained, ... you could not understand—but the music, the sight of the people, the old tunes of hymns ... all these things seem to suffocate my very soul with the sense of the past, past days, when there was one beside me who is not here now—I am upset, overwhelmed with it all. I think I should have been quite foolishly, hysterically ill yesterday if I had persisted in staying. Next Sunday I shall go to the vestry, and see nobody, and get over it by degrees.
Well—but for the sea-voyage, it seems to me that the great thing for us to ascertain is the precise _expense_. I should not at all mind going by sea, only that I fear the expense, and also that it is necessary to take our passages some time before, ... and then, if anything happened ... I mean any little thing ... an obstacle for a day or two! Consider our circumstances.
I shall write again perhaps. Do not rely, though, on my writing. _Perhaps_ I shall write. I shall think of your goodness certainly! May God bless you, dearest beloved, I love, love you! I cannot be more
Your own.
Don’t forget to bring the paper on ‘Colombe’s Birthday,’—and say particularly how you are—and how your mother is. In such haste I write!—
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday. [Post-mark, August 25, 1846.]
When your letter came, my love, I could have easily borne the over-ruling its objections to a visit to-day, for all my cautious philosophy! But it seems best arranged as at present ... indeed it must be best, if you agree. To-morrow repays me: nor is very long to wait!
I will only write briefly because I want to go to Town, (since there is nothing better practicable), and enquire precisely about that steamboat and the prices. I see that one may go to Trieste, a much greater journey, for ‘£12 and £15,’ according to Mr. Waghorn’s bill. Besides, the advertisement speaks of the ‘economy’ of this way—and certainly under ordinary circumstances anybody would prefer the river-voyage with its picturesqueness. There is a long account, in the paper to-day, of the earthquakes in Tuscany—which have really been formidable enough to keep away the travelling English for the next month or two—whole villages were overthrown, Leghorn has suffered considerably, the inhabitants bivouac outside the walls—and at Pisa the roof of a church fell in ... also the villas in the vicinity have been damaged. Do you fear, dearest? If you do not,—_I fear_ that the eligibility of Pisa as our place of abode is only doubled and tripled by all this. Think; there is a new lake risen, just by! and great puffs of sulphureous smoke came up through chinks in the plains. How do these wonders affect you?
You asked me about Ossian—now here is truth—the first