beginning you pleased to tell me my love was returned,—that I had gained
your love; without your assurance, I should never have believed that
possible, whatever you may think; but _you_, what you _say_, I _believe_;
would in other matters believe, rather than my own senses; and _here_ I
believed—in humbleness, God knows; but so it was. —Then, is there not
this one poor fruit of that generosity, one reassuring consideration,
if you will accept it, that, nearly a year ago, I was in possession
of all I aspired to?—so that if I had been too weak for my accorded
happiness—likely to be in due time satiated with it, and less and less
impressed by it, and so on, till at last ‘_I changed_,’—would not this
have happened inevitably _before now_? I had gained your love; one could
not go on gaining it—but some other love might be gained! Indeed, I
don’t see how, in certain instances (where there is what is called a
‘pursuit,’ and all the excitement of suspense, and alternating hope and
fear, all ending in the marriage day, after the fashion of a Congreve
comedy), how with the certainty of that kind of success, all the interest
of the matter can avoid terminating. But it does seem to me, that the
love I have gained is as nothing to the love I trust to gain. I want the
love at our lives’ end, the love after trial, the love of _my_ love, when
mine shall have had time and occasion to prove itself! I have already,
from the beginning indeed, had quite enough magnanimity to avoid wishing
for opportunities of doing so at your expense—I pray you may never be in
dangers from which I rescue you, nor meet sorrow from which I divert you:
but in the ordinary chances of life—I shall be there, and ready, and your
own, heart and soul. Why do I say this to you?
All words are so weak,—_so_ weak!
Here,—(no, I shall have to send it to-morrow, I believe—well, here in
the course of the day)—comes ‘Luria’ and the other—and I lay it at my
dear Lady’s feet, wishing it were worthier of them, and only comforted,
through all the conviction of the offering’s unworthiness, by knowing
that _she_ will know,—the dear, peerless, all precious Ba I adore, will
know—that I would give her my life gladlier at a word. See what I have
written on the outside—‘to Miss Barrett’!—because I thought even leaving
out the name might look suspiciously! But where no eye can see; save your
dear eye ... _there_ is written a dedication.
Kiss me, dear Ba. May God bless you. Care for everything—if you should
have taken cold last night, for instance! Talk of a sword suspended by a
hair!—what is the feeling of one whose priceless jewel hangs over a gulf
by a hair? Tell me all—I love you wholly and am wholly yours.
See the strangely dirty paper—it comes from my desk where, every now and
then, a candle gets over-set; or the snuffers remain open, aghast at what
I write!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Monday.
[Post-mark, April 14, 1846.]
Ever dearest I have your two letters; and because there are only two
‘great lights’ to rule the day and the night, I am not likely to hear
from you again before to-morrow. Then you want Mrs. Jameson’s direction
... (it is just _Mrs. Jameson, Ealing_!) and here is the last ‘Bell and
Pomegranate’—and, for all these reasons, I must write without waiting; I
will not wait for the night. Thank you for the book, thank you! I turn
over the leaves ever so proudly. Tell me how I can be proud of _you_,
when I cannot be proud of your loving me:—I am certainly proud of _you_.
One of my first searches was for the note explanatory of the title—and
I looked, and looked, and looked, at the end, at the beginning, at the
end again. At last I made up my mind that you had persisted in not
explaining, or that the printer had dropped the manuscript. Why, what
could make you thrust that note on all but the titlepage of the ‘Soul’s
Tragedy’? Oh—I comprehend. Having submitted to explain, quite at the
point of the bayonet, you determined at least to do it where nobody
could see it done. Be frank and tell me that it was just _so_. Also the
poor ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’ you have repudiated _so_ from the ‘Bells and
Pomegranates’ ... pushing it gently aside. Well—you must allow it to
be a curious dislocation—only it is not important—and I like the note,
all except the sentence about ‘Faith and Works,’ which does not apply,
I think, ... that instance. ‘Bells and Pomegranates’ is a symbolic
phrase—which the other is not at all, however much difficult and doubtful
theological argument may have arisen from it as a collective phrase.
So I am the first critic, you see, notwithstanding that Mr. Forster
waylaid the first copy. Ah no! I shall have my gladness out of the book
presently, beyond the imagination of any possible critic. Who in the
world shall measure gladnesses with me?
Tell me—I was going to write _that_ ‘Tell me’ in my yesterday’s letter,
but at last I was hurried, and could not ... did you come into London on
Sunday? did you walk past this house on the other side of the street,
about two o’clock? Because just then I and Flush went down-stairs. The
drawing-room had nobody in it, and the window being wide open, I walked
straight to it to shut it. And there, across the street, walked somebody
... I am so near sighted that I could only see a shadow in a dimness ...
but the shadow had, or seemed to have, a sign of you, a trace of you ...
and instead of shutting the window I looked after it till it vanished.
No, it was not _you_. I feel now that it was not you; and indeed
yesterday I felt it was not you. But, for the moment, it made my heart
stop beating, ... that insolent shadow, ... which pretended to be you and
wasn’t. Some one, I dare say, who ‘has an occupation eight or nine hours
a day’ and never does anything! I may speak against him, for deceiving
me—it’s a pure justice.
To go back to the book ... you are perfectly right about ‘gadge,’ and
in the view you take of the effect of such words. You misunderstood me
if you fancied that I objected to the word—it was simply my ignorance
which led me to doubt whether you had written ‘gag.’ Of course, the
horror of those specialities is heightened by the very want of distinct
understanding they meet with in us:—it is the rack in the shadow of the
vault. Oh—I fully agree.
And now ... dearest dearest ... do not bring _reason_ to me to prove ...
what, to prove? I never get anything by reason on this subject, be very
sure!—and I like better to _feel_ that unreasonably you love me—to _feel_
that you love me as, last year, you did. Which I could not feel, last
year, a whole day or even half a day together. _Now_ the black intervals
are rarer ... which is of your goodness, beloved, and not of mine. For
me, you read me indeed a famous lesson about faith, ... and set me
an example of how _you_ ‘believed’! ... but it does not apply, this
lesson, ... it does not resemble, this example!—inasmuch as what _you_
had to believe ... viz. that roses blow in June ... was not quite as
difficult as what _I_ am called to believe, ... viz. that St. Cecilia’s
angel-visitant had a crown of roses on, which eternally were budding and
blowing. But I believe ... believe ... and want no ‘proof’ of the love,
but just itself to prove it,—for nothing else is worthy. On the other
side, I have the audacity to believe, as I think I have told you, that no
woman in the world _could_ feel for you exactly what ... but, here, too,
I had better shun the reasons, ... the ‘bonnes raisons’ which ‘le roy
notre sire’ cannot abide.—What foolishness I am writing really! And is
it to be for a ‘year,’ or a ‘month’—or a _week_,—better still? or we may
end by a compromise for the two hours on Wednesdays, ... if it goes on
so,—more sensibly.
I have heard to-day from Miss Martineau and from Mrs. Jameson, both—one
talking Mesmer and the other Homer. I sent her (Mrs. J.) two versions
of the daughters of Pandarus, the first in the metre you know, and the
second in blank verse; ... and she does not decide which she likes best,
she says graciously, whereas I could not guess which I liked worse, when
I sent them on Saturday. Do let her have ‘Luria’ at once. She will take
the right gladness in it, even as she appreciates you with the right
words and thoughts. But surely you use too many stamps? Have you a pair
of scales like Zeus and me? ... only mine are broken, or I would send you
an authority on this important subject, as well as an opinion.
How did you _not_ get my letter, pray, by the first post on Monday?
You ought to have had it! it was not my fault. And thinking of ‘causas
rerum,’ ... I was to ‘catch cold,’ I suppose, on Saturday, because you
went away?—there was no stronger motive. I did not however catch cold—ah,
how you make me giddy with such words, as if I did really ‘hang over a
gulph’!—not with _fear_ though! Is it possible, I say to myself, that I
can be so much to him? to _him_! May God bless him! There was no harm
meant by the black seal, I think? Tell me too of the headache, and
whether the dinner is for Wednesday, and whether, in that case, _it_ is
still to be preferred, with all its close clipping, to Thursday. Meantime
the letter grows as if there was no such thing as shears!
Your own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday Morning.
[Post-mark, April 14, 1846.]
I waited till this second letter should arrive—feeling that it would be
easier to address the answer to _this_.
About the other,—that part which you bid me not refer to. You are
obeyed now—my time will come in its turn, and I will try and speak.
With respect to the immediate leaving England, you will let me say, I
think, that _all_ my own projects depend on that,—there will not be one
least objection made to it by my father or mother, I know beforehand.
You perhaps misconceived something I said last Saturday. I meant the
obvious fact however—that while there would be a _best_ way of finding
myself with you, still, from the _worst_ way (probably, of taking a house
opposite Mrs. Procter’s)—from that even, to the _best_ way of any other
life I can imagine,—what a descent! From the worst of roses to the most
flourishing of—dandelions. But we breathe together, understand together,
know, feel, live together ... I feel every day less and less need of
trying to assure you _I_ feel thus and thus—I seem to know that _you_
must _know_!
Mrs. Procter is very exactly the Mrs. Procter I knew long ago. What she
says is of course purely foolish. The world does seem incurably stupid on
this, as other points. I understand Mr. Kenyon’s implied kindness—that
is,—understand he may think he sees my true good in this life with older
and better instructed eyes than my own—so benevolent people beg me ‘not
to go out in the open air—without something about my neck,’ and would
gird on a triple worsted ‘comforter’ there, entirely for my good, if I
would let them. ‘Why, Mr. Procter wears one!’ Ah, but without it, what a
cold he would catch!
The explanatory note fills up an unseemly blank page—and does not come
at the end of the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’—prose after prose—still it does look
awkwardly—but then I don’t consider that it excludes this last from the
‘Bells’—rather it says this _is_ the last, (_no, nine_ if you like,—as
the title says ‘eight _and_ last’—from whence will be this advantage,
that, in the case of another edition, all the lyrics &c. may go together
under one common head of Lyrics and Romances—and the ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’
profiting by the general move-up of the rest of the numbers, after the
fashion of hackney coaches on a stand when one is called off, step into
the place and take the style of No. 8—and the public not find themselves
defrauded of the proper quantity!)
And shall I indeed see you to-morrow, Ba? I will tell you many things, it
seems to me now, but when I am with you they always float out of mind.
The feelings must remain unwritten—unsung too, I fear. I very often fancy
that if I had never before resorted to _that_ mode of expression, to
singing,—poetry—_now_ I should resort to it, discover it! Whereas now—my
very use and experience of it deters me—if one phrase of mine should seem
‘poetical’ in Mrs. Procter’s sense—a conscious exaggeration,—put in for
effect! only _seem_, I say! So I dare not try yet—but one day!
Ba, I kept your letter yesterday, _about_ me—it lay by my head at
night—that its good might not go from me,—such perfect good! How strange
to hear what you say of my letters,—of such and such a letter—some seem
kind, and kinder and kindest—and how should I guess why? My life and love
flow steadily under all those bubbles, or many or less—it is through the
under current that, whatever you see, _does_ appear, no doubt—but also
where nothing appears,—all is one depth!
Bless you, all dearest beloved.
To-morrow, Wednesday!
Ever your very own,
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday.
[Post-mark, April 16, 1846.]
This morning, you would never guess what I have been doing.—Buying a
bonnet! That looks like a serious purpose of going out, walking out,
driving out ... now doesn’t it? And having chosen one a little like a
Quaker’s, as I thought to myself, I am immediately assured by the learned
that ‘nothing can be more fashionable’ ... which is a most satisfactory
proof of blind instinct, ... feeling towards the Bude lights of the
world, and which Mrs. Procter would highly esteem me for, if she did but
know it.
In the meanwhile assure yourself that I understand perfectly your
feeling about the subject of yesterday. Flies are flies, and yet they
are vexatious with their buzzing, _as_ flies. Only Mrs. Jameson told
me the other day that a remedy against the mosquitos ... _polvere di
morchia_ ... had been discovered lately in Italy, so that the world
might sleep there in peace—as _you_ may here ... let us talk no more
of it. I think I should not have told you if I had not needed it for a
talking-ladder to something else. For the rest, it is amusing to me,
quite amusing, to observe how people cannot conceive of _work_ except
under certain familiar forms. Men who dig in ditches have an idea that
the man who leads the plough rather rests than works: and all men of
out-door labour distrust the industry of the manufacturers in-doors—while
both manufacturers and out-door labourers consider the holders of offices
and clerkships as idle men ... gentlemen at ease. Then between all these
classes and the intellectual worker, the difference is wider, and the
want of perception more complete. The work of creation, nobody will admit
... though everybody has by heart, without laying it to heart, that God
rested on the seventh day. Looking up to the stars at nights, they might
as well take all to be motionless—though if there were no motion there
would be no morning ... and they look for a morning after all. Why who
could mind such obtuse stupidity? It is the stupidity of mankind, par
excellence of foolishness! The hedger and ditcher they see working, but
God they do not see working. If one built a palace without noise and
confusion and the stroke of hammers, one would scarcely get credit for
it in this world ... so full of virtue and admiration it is, to make a
noise! Even I, you see, who said just now ‘Talk no more of it,’ talk
more and more, and make more noise than is necessary. Here is an end
though—we leave Mrs. Procter here. And do not think that the least word
of disrespect was said of you—indeed it was not! neither disrespect nor
reproach. So you and I will forgive everybody henceforward, for wishing
you to be rich. And if Miss Procter would ‘commit suicide’ rather than
live as you like to live, _I_ will not, as long as you are not tired
of me—and _that, just now_ and as things are, is of a little more
consequence perhaps....
Scarcely had you gone, dearest, yesterday, when I had two letters with
the very prose of life in them, dropping its black blotchy oil upon all
the bright colours of our poetry! I groaned in the spirit to read, and to
have to answer them. First was a Miss Georgiana Bennet—did you ever hear
of her?—_I_ never did before, but that was my base ignorance; for she is
a most voluminous writer it appears ... and sent me five or six ‘_works_’
(observe), ... published under the ‘high sanction’ (and reiterated
subscription) of ever so many Royal Highnesses and Right Reverends ...
written in prose and verse, upon female education and the portrait of
Harrison Ainsworth (‘I gaze upon that noble face, and bright expressive
eyes!’), miscellaneous subjects of that sort!—also, there is a poem of
some length, called ‘The Poetess,’ which sets forth in detail how Miss
Georgiana Bennet has found the laurel on her brow a mere nightshade,
and the glories of fame no comfort in the world. Well—all these books
were sent to me, with a note hortative—giving indeed a very encouraging
opinion of my poems generally, but desiring me to consider, that poets
write both for the learned and the unlearned, and that in fact I am in
the habit of using a great many hard words, much to the confusion of
the latter large class of readers. She has heard (Georgiana has) that
I am a classical scholar which of course (of course) accounts for this
peculiarity ... but it is the duty of one’s friends to tell one of
one’s faults, which is the principle she goes upon. In return for which
benevolence, I am requested to send back a copy of my poems directly,
and to ‘think of her, as she thinks of me.’ There an end. The next
letter is from a Mrs. Milner, who used to edit the ‘Christian Mother’s
Magazine’; the most idiotic tract-literature, that magazine was, but
supported by the Queen dowager and a whole train of Duchesses proper—very
proper indeed! She used to edit the ‘Christian Mother,’ but now she has
‘generalised’ it, she says, to the ‘Englishwoman’s Magazine’ and wants me
to write for it and says....
Oh—I cannot have patience to go on to tell you. Besides you will take me
to be too bitter, when I ought to be grateful perhaps! But if you knew
how hard it is for me to have to read and write sometimes, as if you were
not in the world with me ... as if.... Is it wrong to laugh a little, to
put it off,—only to _you_, though? And do you know, I feel ill at ease
in my conscience, on account of what I said (even to _you_) about Mrs.
Paine, who came to see me, you remember; and because she has written me
a letter which quite affected me, I shall send it for you to read, to
undo any false impression. Then you will not dislike reading it on other
grounds. She is very different from the Georgiana Bennets, and I am
interested in her, and touched aright by what she says.
You will write. You think of me? I am better to-day, much—and it is
strange to be so, when you are not here. Ever dearest, let your thoughts
be with me—
I am your own....
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Thursday.
[Post-mark, April 16, 1846.]
How are you now, dearest? If the worse for my visit.... No, there is no
affectation in what I would say—you might be worse, you know, through
_excitement_, whether pleasurable or the reverse. One comfort is,
the walking, going down-stairs, &c. have not occasioned it. I expect
everything from your going out of doors, that is to be—what a joy to
write it, think of it, expect it! Oh, why are you not here—where I sit
writing; whence, in a moment, I could get to know why the lambs are
bleating so, in the field behind—I do not see it from either window in
this room—but I see a beautiful sunshine (2½ p.m.) and a chestnut tree
leafy all over, in a faint trembling chilly way, to be sure—and a holly
hedge I see, and shrubs, and blossomed trees over the garden wall,—were
you but here, dearest, dearest—how we would go out, with Flush on before,
for with a key I have, I lock out the world, and then look down on it;
for there is a vast view from our greatest hill—did I ever tell you that
Wordsworth was shown that hill or its neighbour; someone saying ‘R.B.
lives over _there_ by that HILL’—‘Hill’? interposed Wordsworth—‘_we_ call
that, such as that, a _rise_’! I must have told you, I think. (While I
write, the sun gets ever brighter—you must be down-stairs, I feel sure—)
I fully meant to go out this morning—but there is a pressing note from my
old young friend, Frank Talfourd, to get me to witness—only another play
and farce!—and what is to be done?
Here shall be my ending ‘for reasons, for reasons.’ To-morrow I will
write more; my Monday—to have to wait so long! And when I _do_ see you, I
begin to pour out profusions of confusions of speech about Mrs. Procter
and her vain notions—to what earthly good? ... as it is very easy to ask
_now_! now that I am here again, alone again.
Dear, dearest Ba, I cannot serve you, nor even talk to you ... but love
you,—oh, that I must dare say I _can_ do, as none other could—as you have
yet to know!
Bless you my very dearest, sweetest Ba—I am your own, heart and soul—
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 17, 1846.]
Ah, the chestnut tree: do you think that I never saw the chestnut tree
before? Long ago, I did ... a full year ago or more—more! A voice talked
to me of the ‘west wind’ which ‘set dancing the baby cones of my chestnut
tree’—nearly I remember the words. Do _you_, the time? It was early in
the morning—‘before seven,’ said the voice!—too early in the morning
for my dream to be—because a dream, says Lord Brougham when he tries at
philosophy, a dream, if ever so long a dream, is all contained in the
last moment of sleep, at the turn towards waking—so, late and not early!
No—you did not tell me of Wordsworth—not at least, after _that_ reading.
Perhaps if Hatcham should not be swept away in the Railway ‘scirocco,’
I may see the ‘hill’ or the ‘rise’ at some distant day. Shall I, do you
think? I would rather see it than Wordsworth’s mountains—‘for reasons,
for reasons’ as you say. And talking of reasons, and reasonable people in
general, I thought, ... after you went away on Wednesday, and I began to
remember how you had commended your own common sense and mine,—I thought
that it might be very well for you to do it, inasmuch as nobody else
would, for you——! ὑπέρ σου as the theological critics intensify ὑπέρ to
the genitive, ‘for reasons, for reasons.’
How ‘Luria’ takes possession of me more and more! _Such_ a noble work!—of
a fulness, a moral grandeur!—and the language everywhere worthy. Tell
me what you hear the people say—I shall be anxious, which you will
not be—but, to _me_, you will forgive it. ‘The Soul’s Tragedy’ is
wonderful—it suggests the idea of more various power than was necessary
to the completion of ‘Luria’ ... though in itself not a comparable work.
But you never wrote more vivid dramatic dialogue than that first part—it
is exquisite art, it appears to me. Tell me what the people say!—and tell
me what the gods say ... Landor, for instance!
Mr. Kenyon has not been here—and I dare not, even in a letter, be the
first to talk to anyone of you. It is foolish of me perhaps—but if I
whisper your name I expect to be directly answered by all the thunders
of Heaven and cannons of earth. When I was writing to Miss Martineau the
other day, for full ten minutes I held the pen ready charged with ink
over a little white place, just to say ‘have you read,’ ... or ‘have
you heard’ ... and at last I couldn’t write one word of those words ...
I believe I said something about landed proprietors and agrarian laws
instead.
So you ‘_felt_’ that I was down-stairs to-day! See how wrong feeling may
be, when it has to do with such as I. For, dearest, notwithstanding your
bright sunshine I did not go down-stairs ... only opened the window and
let in the air. I have not been quite as well, as far as just sensation
goes, as usual, these few days—but it is nothing, a passing common
headache, as I told you, ... and your visit did good rather than harm,
and to-morrow you may think of me as in the drawing-room. Oh, I _might_
have been there to-day, or yesterday, or the day before! but it was
pleasanter to sit in the chair and be idle, so I sate! But you did not
see me in my gondola chair—not _you_! you were thinking of the lambs
instead, and looking over the wall to the ‘blossomed trees’ ... (what
trees? cherry-trees? apple-trees? pear-trees?) and so, altogether, you
lost your second sight of me and made mistakes. Ever dearest, is your
head better? You will not say. You are _afraid_ to say, perhaps, that you
were ill, through writing too many notes and not going out to take the
right exercise. Ah, _do_ remember me for _that_ good! I heard yesterday
that ‘Mr. Browning looked very pale as he came up-stairs.’ Which comes of
Mr. Browning’s writing when he should be walking!—now doesn’t it?