it is because I had the right of it, I remember, long and long ago.
There is the vainest of vanities in discussing the application of such a
word ... and so, when you said the other day that you ‘never flattered’
forsooth ... (oh no!) I would not contradict you for fear of the endless
flattery it would lead to. Only that I do not choose (because such things
are allowed to pass) to be called on my side ‘a flatterer’—I! _That_ is
too much, and too out of place. What do I ever say that is like flattery?
I am allowed, it may be hoped, to admire the ‘Lurias’ and the rest, quite
like other people, and even to _say_ that I admire them ... may I not
lawfully? If _that_ is flattery woe to me! I tell you the real truth, as
I see the truth, even in respect to _them_ ... the ‘Lurias’....
For instance, did I flatter you and say that you were right yesterday?
Indeed I thought you as wrong as possible ... wonderfully wrong on
such a subject, for _you_ ... who, only a day or two before, seemed so
free from conventional fallacies ... so free! You would abolish the
punishment of death too ... and put away wars, I am sure! But honourable
men are bound to keep their honours clean at the expense of so much
gunpowder and so much risk of life ... _that_ must be, ought to be, ...
let judicial deaths and military glory be abolished ever so! For my
part, I set all Christian principle aside, (although if it were carried
out ... and principle is nothing unless carried out ... it would not
mean cowardice but magnanimity) but I set it aside and go on the bare
social rational ground ... and I do advisedly declare to you that I
cannot conceive of any _possible combination of circumstances_ which
could ... I will _not_ say _justify_, but even _excuse_, an honourable
man’s having recourse to the duellist’s pistol, either on his own
account or another’s. Not only it seems to me horribly wrong ... but
absurdly wrong, it seems to me. Also ... as a matter of pure reason
... the Parisian method of taking aim and blowing off a man’s head for
the sins of his tongue, I do take to have a sort of judicial advantage
over the Englishman’s six paces ... throwing the dice for his life or
another man’s, because wounded by that man in his honour. His honour!—Who
believes in such an honour ... liable to such amends, and capable of such
recovery! _You_ cannot, I think—in the secret of your mind. Or if _you
can ... you_, who are a teacher of the world ... poor world—it is more
desperately wrong than I thought.
A man calls you ‘a liar’ in an assembly of other men. Because he is a
calumniator, and, on that very account, a worse man than you, you ask him
to go down with you on the only ground on which you two are equals ...
the duelling-ground, ... and with pistols of the same length and friends
numerically equal on each side, play at lives with him, both mortal men
that you are. If it was proposed to you to play at real dice for the
ratification or non-ratification of his calumny, the proposition would be
laughed to scorn ... and yet the chance (as chance) seems much the same,
... and the death is an exterior circumstance which cannot be imagined to
have much virtue. At best, what do you prove by your duel? ... that your
calumniator, though a calumniator, is not a coward in the vulgar sense
... and that yourself, though you may still be a liar ten times over, are
not a coward either! ‘Here be proofs.’
And as to the custom of duelling preventing insults ... why you _say_
that a man of honour should not go out with an unworthy adversary. Now
supposing a man to be withheld from insult and calumny, just by the fear
of being shot ... who is more unworthy than such a man? Therefore you
conclude irrationally, illogically, that the system operates beyond the
limit of its operations.—Oh! I shall write as quarrelsome letters as I
choose. You are wrong, I know and feel, when you advocate the pitiful
resources of this corrupt social life, ... and if you are wrong, how are
we to get right, we all who look to you for teaching. Are _you_ afraid
too of being taken for a coward? or would you excuse that sort of fear
... that cowardice of cowardice, in other men? For me, I value your
honour, just as you do ... more than your life ... of the two things:
but the madness of this foolishness is so clear to my eyes, than instead
of opening the door for you and keeping your secret, as that miserable
woman did last year, for the man shot by her sister’s husband, I would
just _call in the police_, though you were to throw me out of the window
afterwards. So, with that beautiful vision of domestic felicity, (which
Mrs. Jameson would leap up to see!) I shall end my letter—isn’t it a
letter worth thanking for?—
Ever dearest, do _you_ promise me that you never will be provoked into
such an act—never? Mr. O’Connell vowed it to himself, for a dead man ...
and you may to me, for a living woman. Promises and vows may be foolish
things for the most part ... but they cannot be more foolish than, in
this case, the thing vowed against. So promise and vow. And I will
‘flatter’ you in return in the lawful way ... for you _will_ ‘make me
happy’ ... so far! May God bless you, beloved! It is so wet and dreary
to-day that I do not go down-stairs—I sit instead in the gondola chair
... do you not see? ... and think of you ... do you not feel? I even love
you ... if _that_ were worth mentioning....
being your own
BA.
How good of you to write so on Sunday! to compare with _my_ bad!
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, April 7, 1846.]
They have just sent me _one_ proof, only—so I have been correcting
everything as fast as possible, that, returning it at once, a _revise_
might arrive, fit to send, for _this_ that comes is just as bad as if
I had let it alone in the first instance. All your corrections are
golden. In ‘Luria,’ I alter ‘little circle’ to ‘circling faces’—which
is more like what I meant. As for that point we spoke of yesterday—it
seems ‘past praying for’—if I make the speech an ‘aside,’ I _commit_
Ogniben to that opinion:—did you notice, at the beginning of the second
part, that on this Ogniben’s very entry (as described by a bystander),
he is made to say, for first speech, ‘I have known so many leaders of
revolts’—‘_laughing gently to himself_’? This, which was wrongly printed
in italics, as if a comment of the bystander’s own, was a characteristic
circumstance, as I meant it. All these opinions should be delivered with
a ‘gentle laughter to himself’—but—as is said elsewhere,—we profess and
we perform! Enough of it—Meliora sper_u_mus!
What am I to say next, my Ba? When I write my best and send ‘grateful’ to
you—you send my proof back, ‘_grateful_ (_h_)’ Then I _must_ do and say
what you hate ... for I am one entire gratitude to you, God knows! May
He reward you.
It is late; bless you once again, my dearest! You have nothing so much
yours as
R.
My mother says that I paid only fifteen or sixteen pounds for the
Venice voyage, and much less for the Naples one—_ten_, and no more, she
thinks—and I think; but _that_ represents _twenty_—as the other, twenty
five or thirty pounds, to a person unconnected with the freighting party.
(In the first ship, Rothschild sent a _locomotive_ entire, with all its
appurtenances, for one article, to Trieste). Can I make enquiries for
you? Nay, I _will_, and at once.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 8, 1846.]
In my _disagree_ ... able letter this morning, I forgot to write
how, after you went away, and I came to read again the dedication, I
admired it more and more—it is most graceful and complete. Landor will
be gratified and grateful ... he, allowably—and only _you_ shall be
‘hateful’ ... and only to _me_, dearest, ... so that it doesn’t matter
much. As to Ogniben, you understand best of course—_I_ understood the
‘laughing gently to himself,’ though I omitted to notice the italics. I
perfectly understood that it was the bystander’s observation.
Your letter came so late to-night that I despaired of it—the postman
fell into a trance somewhere I fancy, and it was not till nine oclock
that the knock (equal to the tapping of a fairy’s wand) came to the
door. Now I have two letters to thank you for together ... for the dear
one on Monday, which lay in the shadow of your coming, and so was a
little, little, less thought of than it could have been under any other
possible circumstance ... and for this letter to-night. Well! and for
Mr. Buckingham’s voyage, if you will and can conveniently, (I use _that_
word for my sake, not for your sake—because I think of _you_ and not of
_him_!) but if you can without inconvenience make enquiries about these
vessels, why I shall be glad and shall set it to your account as one
goodness more. It would be easy for him (and _you_ should have done it,
in _your_ voyage) to take with him those potted meats and portable soups
and essences of game which would prevent his being reduced to common
fare with the sailors. Then a mattress is as portable as the soups,
nearly. Apart from the asafœtida he may endure, I should think. Do you
know, I was amused at myself yesterday, after the first movement, for
liking to hear you say that ‘dry biscuits satisfied’ you—because, after
all, I should not be easy to see you living on dry biscuits ... Ceres
and Bacchus forbid! Oh—I don’t profess to apply, out of a pure poetical
justice, Lord Byron’s Pythagoreanism to the ‘nobler half of creation’—do
not be afraid—but it _is_ rather desecrating and disenchanting to mark
how certain of those said Nobilities turn upon their dinners as on the
pivot of the day, for their good pleasure and good temper besides. Did
you ever observe a lord of creation knit his brows together because the
cutlets were underdone, shooting enough fire from his eyes to overdo them
to cinders ... ‘cinder-blast’ them, as Æschylus would have it? Did you
ever hear of the litany which some women say through the first course ...
low to themselves? Perhaps not! it does not enter into your imagination
to conceive of things, which nevertheless _are_.
Not that I ever thought of _you_ with reference to _such_—oh no, no!
But every variety of the ‘Epicuri de grege porcus,’ I have a sort of
indisposition to ... even as the animal itself (pork of nature and the
kitchen) I avoid like a Jewish woman. Do you smile? And did I half
(or whole) make you angry this morning through being so didactic and
detestable? Will you challenge me to six paces at Chalk Farm, and _will_
you ‘take aim’ this time and put an end to every sort of pretence in me
to other approaches between us two? Tell me if you are angry, dearest! I
_ask_ you to tell me if you felt (for the time even) vexed with me.... I
want to know.... I _need_ to know. Do _you_ not know what my reflection
must reasonably be?... That is, _apart from provocation and excitement_,
you believe in the necessity of such and such resources, ... provoked and
excited you would apply to them—there could be no counteracting force ...
no help nor hope.
So I spoke my mind—and you are vexed with me, which I feel in the air.
May God bless you dearest, dearest! Forgive, as you can, best,
Your BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, April 8, 1846.]
First of all, kiss me, dearest,—and again—and now, with the left arm
round you, I will write what I think in as few words as possible.
I think the fault of not carrying out principles is _yours_, here.
Several principles would arrive at the result you desire—Christianity,
Stoicism, Asceticism, Epicureanism (in the modern sense)—all these
‘carried out’ stop the procedure you deprecate—but I fancy, as you state
your principle, that it is an _eclecticism_ from these and others;
and presently one branch crosses its fellow, and we _stop_, arrive at
nothing. Do you accept ‘life’s warm-beating joy and dole,’ for an object
of that life? Is ‘society’ a thing to desire to participate in? not by
the one exceptional case out of the million, but by men generally,—men
who ‘live’ only for living’s sake, in the first instance; next, men who,
having ulterior objects and aims of happiness, yet derive various degrees
of sustainment and comfort from the social life round them; and so on,
higher up, till you come to the half-dozen, for whom we need not be
pressingly urgent to legislate just yet, having to attend to the world
first. Well, is social life, a good, generally to these? If so,—go back
to another principle which I suppose you to admit,—that ‘good’ may be
_lawfully_ held, defended,—even to the death. Now see where the ‘cross’
takes place. Something occurs which forces a man to _hold_ this, defend
this—he _must_ do this, or _renounce_ it. You let him do neither. Do
not say he _needs_ not renounce it,—we go avowedly on the vulgar broad
ground of fact—you very well know it is a _fact_ that by his refusing to
accept a challenge, or send one, on conventionally sufficient ground, he
will be infallibly excluded from a certain class of society thenceforth
and forever. What society _should_ do rather, is wholly out of the
question—what _will_ be done? And now, candidly, can you well fancy a
more terrible wrong than this to the ordinary multitude of men? Alter the
principles of your reasoning—say, Christianity forbids this,—and _that_
will do—rational Simon renounces on his pillar more than the pleasures
of society if so he may save his soul: say, society is not worth living
in,—it is no wrong to be forced to quit it—_that_ will do, also,—a man
with ‘Paradise Lost’ or ‘Othello’ to write; or with a Ba to live beside
for his one companion,—or many other compensations,—_he_ may retire
to his own world easily. Say, on the lowest possible ground, ‘out of
society one eats, drinks &c. excellently well; what loss is there?’—all
these principles _avail_; but _mix_ them—and they surely neutralize each
other. A man _may_ live, enjoy life, oppose an attempt to prevent his
enjoying life,—yet not—you see! ‘The method is irrational, proves nothing
&c.’—what is that to the question? Is the _effect_ disputable or no?
Wordsworth decides he had better go to court—then he must buy or borrow a
court-dress. He goes because of the poetry in him. What irrationality in
the bag and sword—in the grey duffil gown yonder, he wrote—half through
the exceeding ease and roominess of it—‘The Excursion’; how proper he
should go in it, therefore ... beside it will wring his heartstrings
to pay down the four pounds, ten and sixpence: good, Mr. Wordsworth!
There’s no compulsion; go back to the lakes and be entirely approved of
by Miss Norwick! ... but, if you _do_ choose to kiss hands (instead of
cheeks ‘smackingly’) why, you must even resolve to ‘grin and bear it’ (a
sea-phrase!)—and, Ba, your imaginary man, who is called ‘liar’ before
a large assembly, must decide for one or the other course. ‘He makes
his antagonist double the wrong’? Nay—_here_ the wrong begins—the poor
author of the outrage should have known his _word_ was _nothing_—the
sense of it, he and his like express abundantly every hour of the day,
if they please, in language only a shade removed from this that causes
all the harm,—and who does other than utterly, ineffably despise them?
but he chooses, as the very phrase is, to _oblige_ his adversary to act
thus. _He_ is nothing (I am going on your own case of a supposed futile
cause of quarrel)—he may _think_ just what he pleases—but having _said_
this and _so_,—_it is entirely society’s affair_—and what _is_ society’s
present decision? Directly it relaxes a regulation, allows another outlet
to the natural contempt for, and indifference to such men and their
opinions spoken or unspoken, everybody avails himself of it directly. If
the Lord Chamberlain issues an order this morning, ‘No swords need be
worn at next levee’—who will appear with one? A politician is allowed to
call his opponent a destructive &c. A critic may write that the author of
such a book or such, is the poorest creature in the world—and who dreams
of being angry? but society up to this time says, ‘if a man calls another
&c. &c., _then_ he must’—Will you renounce society? _I for one, could,
easily: so therefore shall Mr. Kenyon!_ Beside, I on purpose depreciate
the value of an admission into society ... as if it were only for those
who recognize no other value; and the wiser men might easily forego it.
_Not so easily!_ There are uses in it, great uses, for purposes quite
beyond its limits—you pass through it, mix with it, to get something
by it: you do _not_ go in to the world to live on the breath of every
fool there, but you reach something _out_ of the world by being let go
quietly, if not with a favourable welcome, among them. I leave _here_
to go to Wimpole Street:—I want to have as little as possible to say to
the people I find _between_—but, do you know, if I allow a foolish child
to put the very smallest of fool’s caps on my head instead of the hat I
usually wear, though the comfort would be considerable in the change,—yet
I shall be followed by an increasing crowd, say to Charing Cross, and
thence pelted, perhaps, till I reach No. 50—there, perhaps to find the
servant hesitate about opening the door to such an apparition,—and when
Papa comes to hear how illustriously your visitor was attended through
the streets! why he will specially set apart Easter Monday to testify in
person his sense of the sublime philosophy, will he not? My Ba—I tell the
child on the first symptom of such a wish on his part ‘Don’t!’ with all
the eloquence in my power—if I can put it handsomely off my head, even, I
will, and with pitying good nature—but if I _must_ either wear the cap,
and pay the penalty, or—slap his face, why—! ‘Ah,’ you say, ‘but he has
got a pistol that you don’t see and will shoot you dead like a foolish
child as he is.’ That he may! Have I to be told that in this world men,
foolish or wicked, do inflict tremendous injuries on their unoffending
fellows? Let God look to it, I say with reverence, and do _you_ look
to this point, _where_ the injury _is_, _begins_. The foolish man who
throws some disfiguring liquid in your face, which to remove you must
have recourse to some dangerous surgical operation,—perilling himself,
too, by the consequent vengeance of the law, if you sink under knife or
cauterizing iron,—shall I say ‘the fault is _yours_—why submit to the
operation? The fault is _his_ that institutes the very fault—which begin
by teaching him from his cradle in every possible shape! But don’t,
don’t say—‘the operation is _unnecessary_; your blistered face will look,
_does_ look just as usual, not merely to me who know you, perhaps love
you,—but to the whole world ... on whose opinion of its agreeableness,
I confess that you are dependent for nearly every happy minute of your
life.’ In all this, I speak for the world, _not_ for me—I have other,
too many other sources of enjoyment—I could _easily_, I think, do what
you require. I endeavour to care for others with none of these; as dear,
dearest Ba, sitting in her room because of a dull day, would have _me_
take a few miles’ exercise. Has everybody a Ba? I had not last year—yet
last year I had reasons, and still have, for, on occasion, renouncing
society fifty times over: what I should do, therefore, is as improper to
be held up for an example, as the exemplary behaviour of Walpole’s old
French officer of ninety, who ‘hearing some youths diverting themselves
with some girls in a tent close by, asked, ‘Is this the example _I_ set
you, gentlemen?’. But I shall be dishonoured however—Ba will ‘go and call
the police’—why, so should I for your brother, in all but the extremest
case!—because when I had told all the world, _with whom the concern
solely_ is, that, despite his uttermost endeavour, I had done this,—the
world would be satisfied at once—and the whole procedure is _meant_ to
satisfy the world—even the foolishest know that the lion in a cage,
through no fault of his, cannot snap at a fly outside the bars. The thing
to know is, will Ba dictate to her husband ‘a refusal to fight,’ and then
recommend him to go to a dinner-party? Say, ‘give up the dinner for my
sake,’ if you like—one _or_ the other it _must_ be: you know, I hate and
refuse dinner-parties. Does everybody?
But now in candour, hear me: I write all this to show the _not such
irrationality_ of the practice even on comparatively frivolous grounds
... and that those individuals to whom you once admit society may be a
legitimate enjoyment, must take such a course to retain the privileges
they value—and that the painful consequences should be as unhesitatingly
attributed to the first offence and its author,—as the explosion and
horror to the fool who _would_ put the match, in play perhaps, to
the powder-barrel. And I excepted myself from the operation of this
necessity. But I must confess that I can conceive of ‘combinations
of circumstances’ in which I see two things only ... or a Third: a
miscreant to be put out the world, my own arm and best will to do it;
and, perhaps, God to excuse; which is, approve. My Ba, what is Evil, in
its unmistakable shape, but a thing to suppress at any price? I _do_
approve of judicial punishment to death under some circumstances—I think
we may, _must_ say: ‘when it comes to _that_, we will keep our pact of
life, stand by God and put _that_ out of us, our world—_it_ shall not
be endured, or _we_ shall not be endured’! Dear Ba, is Life to become
a child’s game? A. is wronged, B. rights him, and is a hero as we say;
B. is wronged again, by C.; but he must not right himself; _that_ is
D.’s proper part, who again is to let _E._ do the same kind office for
_him_—and so on. ‘Defend the poor and fatherless’—and we all applaud—but
if they could defend themselves, why not? I will not fancy cases—here’s
one that strikes me—a fact. Some soldiers were talking over a watch fire
abroad—one said that once he was travelling in Scotland and knocked at a
cottage-door—an old woman with one child let him in, gave him a supper
and a bed—next morning he asked how they lived, and she said the cow,
the milk of which he was then drinking, and the kale in the garden, such
as he was eating—were all her ‘_mailien_’ or sustenance—whereon, rising
to go, he, for the fun, ‘killed the cow and destroyed the kale’—‘the
old witch crying out she should certainly be starved’—then he went his
way. ‘And she _was_ starved, of course,’ said a young man; ‘do you
_rue_ it?’—The other laughed ‘Rue aught like that!’—The young man said.
‘I was the boy, and that was my mother—now then!’—In a minute or two
the preparer of this ‘combination of circumstances’ lay writhing with
a sword through him up to the hilt—‘If you had _rued_ it’—the youth
said—‘you should have answered it only to God!’
More than enough of this—but I was anxious to stand clearer in your
dear eyes. ‘Vows and promises!’—I want to leave society for the Sirens’
isle,—and _now_, I _often seriously reproach_ myself with conduct
quite the reverse of what you would guard against: I have too much
_indifferentism_ to the opinions of Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown—by no means
am anxious to have his notions agree with mine. Smith thinks Cromwell
a canting villain,—Brown believes no dissenter can be saved,—and I
repeat Goethe’s ‘Be it your unerring rule, ne’er to contradict a fool,
for if folly choose to brave you, all your wisdom cannot save you!’
And sometimes I help out their arguments by a touch or two, after
Ogniben’s fashion—it all seems so wearisomely unprofitable; what comes
of Smith’s second thought if you change his first—out of _that_ second
will branch as great an error, you may be sure! (11 o’clock) Here comes
your letter! My own Ba! My dearest best, best beloved! _I_, angry! oh,
how you misinterpret, misunderstand the motions of my mind! In all that
I said, or write here, I speak of others—others, if you please, of
limited natures: I say why _they_ may be excused ... that is all. ‘_You
do not like pork_’? _But_ those poor Irish Colliers whose only luxury is
_bacon_ once a month; you understand _them_ liking it? I do not value
society—others do: ‘_we are all His children_’ says Euripides and quotes
Paul.