therefore if you came here on Tuesday? You could come on the next
Saturday all the same—consider! Nobody shall leap into lions’ dens for
_me_! so let us measure the convenience of things, as Miss Mitford would
in marriages. ‘Convenance,’ though, she would say—which is more foolish
than ‘convenience’ as I write it. She asserts that _every marriage in her
experience_, beginning by any sort of _love_, has ended miserably—thus
run her statistics in matrimony. Add, that she thinks—she told me last
autumn—that all men without exception are essentially tyrants,—and that
poets are a worse species of men, seeing that, all human feelings, they
put into their verses, and leave them there ... add this, and this, and
then calculate how, if I consulted her on our prospects (shall I?), she
would see for me an infinite succession of indefinite thumbscrews and
_gadges_!! Well—I am not afraid—except for _you_ sometimes! for myself I
accept my chances for life under the _peine forte et dure_. And I won’t
speak to Miss Mitford, if _you_ don’t to Mr. Kenyon ... and I beseech you
to avoid by every legitimate means the doing _that_ ... oh, _DO NOT ever
speak THAT to him_!
May God bless you my beloved!—Walk for my sake, and be well, try to be
well! For me, I am so without trying, ... just as I am
Your own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Friday.
[Post-mark, April 17, 1846.]
No, my own dearest, I did not see you sit in your chair, nor in mine,
yesterday—did I write nothing about your walking with me by the garden
wall, and on the hill, and looking down on London? And afterwards you
went with me, indeed, to Talfourd’s (last night was that purgatorial
business,—how could I make you think it related to Monday?) If I have to
put the least thing into words, _so_ I put it always! Being just like
the family of somebody—‘who were one and all so stupid’ said he—‘that if
you bade them spell A B they answered _B A_——’ Nay, I spell Happiness,
and Blessing, and all other good words if ever so many letters by that
same Ba! But I want to go on and say you kept me from such an undiluted
evening of misery (because I saw you through it all)—oh, such an
evening!—it shall be the last, I think—and the going out is so near,—_the
bonnet_ is bought! And you pretend not to know I would walk barefoot till
I dropped, if so I might attain to the sight of you, _and it_. Do let
me say, for gratitude’s sake—it is like the sign of spring in Shelley’s
‘Prometheus’—
When ‘mild winds shake the elder-brake,
And the wandering herdsmen know
That the white thorn soon _will blow_’:
—that the flower of my life will blow! Now let me try and
answer everything in Ba’s darling letters and so not be ‘vexed’
afterward,—recollecting how she asked _this_, or bade me be sure to reply
to _that_, and how I answered, spelling A B _for_ B A! First, there
is a famous contrivance against fly tormentors, a genuine _canopy_,
gnat-repelling enclosure of muslin which covers your bed wholly, and into
which once introduce yourself dexterously (because the plagues try to
follow slily) and lo, you are in a syren’s isle within the isle, a world
cut off from the outer one by that fine hazy cloudish gauze—a delight it
is! Only, if you let one persisting critic of a buzzer lie perdue, he
will have you at a glorious advantage—(not that one _ever_ bit ME, in
England or elsewhere). And now—your letters,—Miss Bennet’s letter _that_
you received ‘just after I had gone’—will you be edified if I tell you
what _I_ received the moment I got home? (once, beforehand—my experience
or yours, which would you rather _not_ have?) My sister pointed with
immense solemnity to a packet,—_then_ delivered a message, and _then_—but
hear the message—a ‘Mrs. George Sharp’ (unless I mistake the name)
lives next door to Dickens and awfully respects him—she asks one aunt
of mine, to ask another, to ask my sister, to ask me ... who have never
seen or heard of this Mrs. George,—_me_, who am, she has understood, a
friend of Dickens,—to get inserted in the _Daily News_ some paragraph
of a reasonable length in recommendation of the accompanying packet of
_cough-drops_, (lozenges, or pills—for I was not rightly instructed
_which_)—_my fee_, I suppose, being the said packet of pills! All comment
is beyond me.
Well, but your Mrs. Bennet—what a wretched, disgusting _sfacciataccia_!
I would not be accessory to keeping those soapy bubbles of stupid vanity
from bursting, by sparing a rough finger, certainly not. _How_ ‘ought you
to be grateful, perhaps?’ For _what_ on earth?
Dearest, dearest Ba,—a ‘passing’ headache of ‘these few days,’ what can
I say, or do? May God bless you, and care for all. Still the comfort
continues, it is not that you have made an effort, and so grown worse.
I am pretty well,—I half determine to go out and see Carlyle to-night,—so
to forget a hasty resolution against all company (‘other’ company I
had written ... as if to honour it—Ba’s is one company, and those
people’s!—‘another’!)—I think I will go.
I spoke about Mr. Kenyon,—because I never would in my life take a step
for _myself_ (if that could be), apart from your good, without being
guided by you where possible—much more, therefore, in a matter directly
concerning you rather than me, did I want your opinion as to the course
most proper, _in the event_ of &c. I do not think it likely he will
speak, or I shall have to answer ... but if that _did_ happen, and you
were not at hand, my own dearest,—how I should be grieved if, answering
wrongly, I gave you annoyance! Here I seem to understand your wish.
My Ba, my only, utterly dear love, may God reward you for your
blessing to me—my whole heart turns to you—and in your own. I kiss
you, dearest—this morning a very ordinary motivetto in the overture to
‘Rabuco’ seemed to tell you more than _I_ ever _shall_—I sit and speak to
you by _that_, now!
R.B.
No letters yet from ‘anybody’—the few received are laudatory however—I
will send you one from the old sailor-friend I told you of—but, mark!
you must not send it back, to show my eyes and grieve my heart, when the
bulky letter proves to be only _this_—returned! Landor’s in due time, I
suppose! This I send is to make you laugh.... My Ba’s dear laugh can hurt
nobody, not even my friend here—who _has praised her poems_ more to me,
there’s my consolation,—Consuelo—
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday.
[Post-mark, April 18, 1846.]
But, dearest of all, you never said a word about Monday. So I did not
misunderstand—I only _misguessed_. Because you did not mention any day,
I took it into my head that you might perhaps be invited for Monday, and
make an effort, which would make a fatigue, and go there and come here.
I am glad you went to Carlyle’s—and where is Tennyson, and the dinner
at Forster’s all this while? And how did the Talfourds torment you so?
was it that you were _very unwell_? I fear you were unwell. For me, I
have recovered from my dreadful illness of the last day or two ... I knew
I should survive it after all ... and to-day, just that I might tell
you, I went down-stairs with Flush, he running before as when _we_ walk
together through the gate. I opened the drawing-room door; when instead
of advancing he stopped short ... and I heard strange voices—and then he
drew back and looked up in my face exactly as if to say, ‘No! This will
not do for us!—we had better go home again.’ Surely enough, visitors
were in the room ... and he and I returned upon our steps. But think
of his sense! Flush beats us both in ‘common sense,’ dearest, we must
acknowledge, let us praise each other for it ever so. Next to Flush we
may be something, but Flush takes the _pas_, as when he runs down-stairs.
To-day Mr. Kenyon came, spectacles and all. He sleeps in those spectacles
now, I think. Well, and the first question was ... ‘Have you seen Mr.
Browning? And what did he come for again, pray?’ ‘Why I suppose,’ I said,
‘for the bad reason my visitors have in general, when they come to see
me’—Then, very quickly I asked about ‘Luria,’ and if he had read it and
what he thought of it—upon which, the whole pomegranate was pulled out of
his pocket, and he began to talk like the agreeable man he can be when he
doesn’t ask questions and look discerningly through spectacles. ‘Luria’
was properly praised indeed. A very noble creation, he thought it, and
heroically pathetic ... and much struck he seemed to be with the power
you had thrown out on the secondary characters, lifting them all to the
height of humanity, justifying them by their own lights Oh—he saw the
goodness, and the greatness, the art and the moral glory; we had a great
deal of talk. And when he tried to find out a few darknesses, I proved
to him that they were clear noonday blazes instead, and that his eyes
were just dazzled. Then the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’ made the right impression—a
wonderful work it is for suggestions, and the conception of it as good
a test of the writer’s genius, as any we can refer to. We talked and
talked. And then he put the book into his pocket to carry it away to
some friend of his, unnamed: and we had some conversation about poets
in general and their way of living, of Wordsworth and Coleridge. I like
to hear Mr. Kenyon talk of the gods and how he used to sit within the
thunder-peal. Presently, leaning up against the chimney-piece,—he said
quietly ... ‘Do you not think—oh, I am sure I need not ask you—in fact I
know your thoughts of it ... but how strikingly upright and loyal in all
his ways and acts, Mr. Browning is!—how impeccable as a gentleman’ &c.
&c. and so on and on ... I do not tell you any more, because I should be
tired perhaps ... (do you understand?) and this is not the first time,
nor second, nor third time that he has spoken of you personally, _so_
... and as no man could use more reverent language of another. And all
this time, what has become of Walter Savage Landor? I shall be vexed in
another day. He may be from home perhaps—there must be a reason.
Vive Pritchard! and thank you for letting me see what he wrote.
Oh—and you _shall_ see what I did not send yesterday—I shall make you
read this one sheet of Mrs. Paine’s letter, because it really touched me,
and because I am bound to undo the effects of my light speaking. As for
the overpraise of _myself_, the overkindness in every respect, ... why we
know how ‘sermons are found in stones’ ... yet no praise to the stones on
that account! But you shall read what I send, both for her sake and mine,
... because I like you to read it.
My own dearest, do you mind what I say, and take exercise? You are vexing
yourself with those notes, as I see from here. Now take care—follow my
example, and be well—if not, there will be no use in wellness to me!
May God bless you! Do you remember when you wrote first to me ‘_May God
bless you and me_ in _that_!’ It was before we met. Can you guess what
I thought? I have the whole effect in my memory distinctly. I felt with
a bitter feeling, that it was quite a pity to throw away such beautiful
words out of the window into the dark. ‘Bitterly’ does not mean anything
wrong or harsh, you know. But there was something painful ... as if the
words were too near, for the speaker to be so far. Well—I am glad in
looking back ... yes, glad ... glad to be certain at my heart, that I did
not assume anything ... stretch out my hand for anything ... _dearest_!...
It is always when one is asleep that the dream-angels come. Watchers see
nothing but ghosts.
Yet I shall see you on Monday, and shall watch and wait as those who
wait for the morning ... that is, the Monday-morning! Till when and ever
after, I am
Your own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Saturday.
[Post-mark, April 18, 1846.]
So my dear, own Ba _has_ good sense, best sense—whatever Flush’s may be!
Do you think ... (to take the extreme horn of a certain dilemma I see)
... that—
Now, dearest, somehow I can’t write the great proof down—I will tell you
on Monday—as to _my_ good sense. I was wrong to give such a praise to
myself in the particular case you were alluding to at the time—the good
sense of the bird which finds out its mate amid a forest-full of birds
of another kind! Why the poorest brown butterfly will seek out a brown
stone in a gravel walk, or brown leaf in a flower bed, to settle on and
be happy——(And I suppose even dear Carlyle is no longer my brown leaf;
at least, I could not go last night. I will, however, try again on
Monday—after leaving you—with that elixir in my veins).
Mrs. Paine’s note is charming. I thank you, dearest, for sending it—(How
I like being reminded of thanks, due from me to you, which I may
somehow come near the expression of! I am silent about an infinity of
blessings—but I do say how grateful I am for this kindness!). Now, there
is the legitimate process; the proper benefit received, in the first
instance, and profited by, and thence grows in proper time the desire of
being admitted to see you—so different from the vulgar ‘Georgianas’ who,
possibly, hearing of the privilege extended to such a person as this we
speak of, would say, with the triumphant chuckle of low cunning, ‘ah,—I
will get as far, by one stroke of the pen—by one bold desire “to be
thought of as I think of her.”’ She could but ask and be refused! Whereas
Mrs. Paine was already in possession of much more dear, dear Ba, than
could be taken away even by a refusal—besides, her reverence would have
made her understand and acquiesce even in that. Therefore, I am glad,
sympathisingly glad she is rewarded, that good, gentle Mrs. Paine! I will
bring her note with me.
Because, here is Mr. Kenyon’s, and Landor’s (which had been sent to
_Moxon’s_ some days ago, whence the delay)—and Mrs. Jameson’s. All kind
and indulgent and flattering in their various ways ... but, my Ba,
my dear, dear Ba, other praises disregarding, I but harken those of
yours—only saying—Ah, it is wrong to take the sacrificial vessel and
say,—‘See, it holds my draught of wine, too’!—I will not do so, not
parody your verses again. And I like to be praised now, in a sense,
much, much more than ever—but, darling, oh how easily, if need were, I
could know the world was abusing at its loudest outside; if you were
_inside_ ... though but the thinnest of gauze canopies kept us from the
buzzing! This is only said _on_ this subject, struck out by it, not
_of_ it,—for the praise is good true praise and from the worthies of
our time—_but_—_you_, I love,—and there is the world-wide difference.
And what ought I to say to Mr. Kenyon’s report of me? Stand quietly,
assentingly? You will agree to _this_ at least, that he cannot _know_
what he says—only be disposed to hope and believe it is _so_: still,
to speak so to _you_—what would I not do to repay him, if that could
be! What a divinely merciful thought of God for our sake ... that we
cannot _know_ each other—infallibly know—as we know other things, in
their qualities! For instance, I bid you know my love for you (which
would be knowing _me_)—I complain that you do not, _cannot_—yet,—if you
_could_ ... my Ba, would you have been ever quite my Ba? If you said,
calmly as when judging of material objects, ‘there is affection, so
much, and sincerity, and admiration &c., yes, _that_ I see, of course,
for it is _there_, plainly’—So I should lose the delight crowning the
delight,—first of the fact, as _I_ know it; and then of _this_; that you
_desired_ to know it, chose to lean forward, and take my poor testimony
_for_ a fact, believing through desire, or at least will to believe—so
that I do, in the exercise of common sense, adore you, more and more, as
I live to see more, and feel more. So let me kiss you, my pearl of woman.
Do I ‘remember’ praying God to bless me _through_ the blessing on you?
Shall I ever forget to pray so, rather! My dear—dearest, I pray now, with
all my heart; may He bless you—and what else can now bless your own R?—
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, April 20, 1846.]
Just now I read again your last note for a particular purpose of
thinking about the end of it ... where you say, as you have said so many
times, ‘that your hand was not stretched out to the good—it came to you
sleeping’—etc. I wanted to try and find out and be able to explain to
myself, and perhaps to you, why the _wrongness_ in you should be so
exquisitely dear to me, dear as the rightness, or dearer, inasmuch as it
is the topmost grace of all, seen latest on leaving the contemplation of
the others, and first on returning to them——because, Ba, that adorable
spirit in all these phrases, what I should adore without their embodiment
in these phrases which fall into my heart and stay there, that strange
unconsciousness of how the love-account really stands between us, _who_
was giver altogether and _who_ taker, and, by consequence, what is the
befitting virtue for each of us, a generous disposition to forgetfulness
on the giver’s part, as of everlasting remembrance and gratitude on the
other—this unconsciousness _is wrong_, my heart’s darling, strangely
wrong by the contrast with your marvellous apprehension on other points,
every other point I am capable of following you to. I solemnly assure
you I cannot imagine any point of view wherein I ought to appear to any
rational creature the benefitting party and you the benefitted—nor any
matter in which I can be supposed to be even magnanimous, (so that it
might be said, ‘_there_, is a sacrifice’—‘_that_, is to be borne with’
&c.)—none where such a supposition is not degrading to me, dishonouring
and affronting. I know you, my Ba, not because you are _my_ Ba, but
through the best exercise of whatever power in me you too often praise,
I _know_—that you are immeasurably my superior, while you talk most
eloquently and affectingly to me, I _know_ and could prove you are
as much my Poet as my Mistress; if I suspected it before I knew you,
personally, how is it with me _now_? I feel it every day; I tell myself
every day it is so. Yet you do not feel nor know it—for you write thus
to me. Well,—and this is what I meant to say from the beginning of the
letter, I love your inability to feel it in spite of right and justice
and rationality. I would,—I _will_, at a moment’s notice, give you
back your golden words, and lie under your mind supremacy as I take
unutterable delight in doing under your eye, your hand. So Shakespeare
chose to ‘envy this man’s art and that man’s scope’ in the Sonnets. But I
did not mean to try and explain what is unexplainable after all—(though
I wisely said I _would_ try and explain!) You seem to me altogether ...
(if you think my words sounded like flattery, _here_ shall come at the
end—anything but that!) you do seem, my precious Ba, _too_ entirely
_mine_ this minute,—my heart’s, my senses’, my soul’s precise τὸ καλόν
to _last_! Too perfect for that! The true power with the ignorance of
it, the real hold of my heart, as you can hold this letter,—yet the fear
with it that you may ‘vex me’ by a word,—makes me angry. Well,—if one
must see an end of all perfection—still, to know one _was_ privileged to
see it—Nay, it is safe now—for this present, all my future would not pay,
whatever your own future turned to!
Yet if I had to say, ‘I shall see her in a month or two—_perhaps_’—as
this time last year I was saying in a kind of contented feeling!
Thank God I shall see her to-morrow—my dearest, best, only Ba cannot
change by to-morrow!—What nonsense! The words break down, yet I _will_ be
trying to use them!
God bless my dearest, ever bless her.
I shall be with you soon after this reaches you, I trust—now, I kiss you,
however, and now, my Ba!
* * * * *
Letters! since you bid me send them,—do you not?—see what the longer says
of the improved diction, freedom from difficulty &c. Who is to praise for
that, my Ba? Oh, your R.B. wholly and solely to be sure!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday.
[April 21, 1846.]
I would not say to you yesterday, perhaps could not, that you wrote
ever so much foolishness to me in the morning, dearest, and that I
knew it ever so well. There is no use, no help, in discussing certain
questions,—some sorts of extravagance grow by talking of,—shake this
elixir, and you have more and more bubbles on the surface of it. So
I would not speak—nor will I write much. Only I _protest_, from my
understanding, from my heart—and besides I do assert the truth—clear
of any ‘affectation,’ this time,—and it is that you always make me
melancholy by using such words. It seems to me as if you were in the dark
altogether, and held my hand for another’s: let the shutter be opened
suddenly; and the hand ... is dropped perhaps ... must I not think such
thoughts, when you speak such words? I ask you if it is not reasonable.
No, I do not ask you. We will not argue whether eagles creep, or worms
fly. And see if it is distrust on my part! _Love_, I have learnt to
believe in. I see the new light which Reichenbach shows pouring forth
visibly from these chrystals tossed out. But when you say that the blue,
I see, is red, and that the little chrystals are the fixed stars of the
Heavens, how am I to think of you but that you are deluded, mistaken?—and
in _what_? in love itself? Ah,—if you could know—if you could but
know for a full moment of conviction, how you depress and alarm me by
saying such things, you never would say them afterwards, _I_ know. So
trust to me, even as I trust to you, and do not say them ever again,
... _you_, who ‘never flatter’. Is it not enough that you love me? Is
there anything greater? And will you run the risk of ruining that great
wonder by bringing it to the test of an ‘argumentum ad absurdum’ such
as I might draw from your letter? Have pity on me, my own dearest, and
consider how I must feel to see myself idealized away, little by little,
like Ossian’s spirits into the mist ... till ... ‘Gone is the daughter
of Morven’! And what if it is mist or moon-glory, if I stretch out my
hands to you in vain, and must still fade away farther? Now _you will not
any more_. When the world comes to judge between us two, or rather over
us both, the world will say (even the purblind world, as I myself with
wide-open eyes!) that I have not been generous with my gifts—no; you are
in a position to choose ... and you might have chosen better— ... that
is my immoveable conviction. It has been only your love for me,—which
I believe in perfectly as love—and which, being love, does not come by
pure logic, as the world itself may guess ... it has been only, wholly
and purely your love for me which has made a level for us two to meet
and stand together. There is my fact against your fiction! Now let us
talk no more. We cannot agree, because we stand in different positions
... ‘I hear a voice you cannot hear’! ... I am on the black side of the
knight’s shield. Presently you will hear perhaps, and see. Shall you love
me _then_? When the ideal breaks off, when the light is gone, ... will
you love me then for the love which I shall bear you then as now, ... the
only real thing?
In the meantime I did but jest about the letters—I _know_ you care for
mine ... because I care for yours so infinitely: ... it is a lesson
learnt by heart. To-night I shall write again!—
Your own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, April 21, 1846.]
My dearest Ba, my sweetest, only love must sit, if she please, in the
gondola chair and let me talk to-day, not write to her—for my head
aches,—from pure perversity,—and a little from my morning spent over a
novel of Balzac’s—_that_ is it, not any real illness, I know—however,
the effect is the same. Beside I got tired with the long walk from
Carlyle’s last night—for I went and saw him to heart’s content—and he
talked characteristically and well, and _constringingly_, _bracingly_. He
has been in the country a little,—that is, has gone down to see his wife
occasionally who was on a visit at Croydon, whence she only returned on
Saturday. He told me he had read my last number; and that he had ‘been
read to’—some good reader had recited ‘The Duchess’ to him. Altogether
he said wonderfully kind things and was pleased to prophesy in the same
spirit; God bless him! We talked for three or four hours—he asked me to
come again soon, and I will.
Here are two letters—Chorley’s, one—and the other from quite another kind
of man, an old friend who ‘docks’ ships or something like it; a great
lover of ‘intelligibility in writing,’ and heretofore a sufferer from my
poetry.
My love, I lend you such things with exactly as much vanity as ... no
comparison will serve! it is the French vulgarism—comme ... n’importe
quoi! Celui me pousse à la vanité comme—n’importe quoi!
Will you have a significative ‘comme’ of another kind? ‘je me trouve bête
ce matin comme ... trente-six oies!’—(I assure you this is no flower
culled from Balzac this morning—but a little ‘_souvenir_’ of an old play.)
Now, if I were to say to myself something is dear as ‘thirty-six Bas’—I
should be scared, as when looking into a mirror cut into façettes one
is met on every side by the same face, twenty times repeated. Nothing
can add to my conception of the one Ba—my one, only—ever dear, dearest
Ba—‘what perfect nonsense’ says Ba—and nonsensical I will be— —all she
pleases so long as let live and die her very own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 22, 1846.]