shadow of ‘vanity.’ ‘Vanity’ is not of you! You work as the cedars grow,
upward, and without noise, and without turning to look on the darkness
you cause upon the ground. It is only because you are best and dearest
that you let me see the letters ... yes, and besides, because I have a
little a right to have them sent to me,—since they concern me more than
you,—and are, after a fashion, _my_ letters. _My_ letters? what am I
saying? _My_ letters, _my true_ letters, are different indeed—and one of
them came to-night to prove so!
But Mr. Chorley’s and the illegible man’s whose name begins with a D (or
doesn’t) both gave me pleasure. If Mr. Chorley did not read ‘Luria’ at
once, he speaks of you in the right words—and the naval illegible man,
with his downright earnest way of being impressed, makes a better critic
than need be sought for in the _Athenæum_ synod. And what a triumph
(after all!) and what a privilege, and what a good deed, is this carrying
of the light down into the mines among the workmen, this bringing down of
the angels of the Ideal into the very depth of the Real, where the hammer
rings on the rough stone. The mission of Art, like that of Religion, is
to the unlearned ... to the poor and to the blind—to make the rugged
paths straight, and the wilderness to blossom as the rose—at least it
seems so to me. And now, pray, why am I not to hear what Carlyle said?
will you tell me? won’t you tell me? how shall I persuade you? If I can
or not, I will say God bless him too ... since he spoke the right word,
to do you good. For the manifest advance in clearness and directness of
expression ... I quite forgot to take notice of what you said to me—and
you, who never flatter!—about being the cause of it—I! Now do observe
that the ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’ which is as light as day, I never touched
with my finger, except in one place, I think ... to say ... ‘Just here
there is a little shade.’ The fact is, that your obscurities, ... as far
as they concern the _medium_, ... you have been throwing off gradually
and surely this long while—you have a calmer mastery over imagery and
language, and it was to be expected that you should. For me, I am the fly
on the chariot, ... ‘How we drive!’ Shall I ever, ever, ever, be of any
use or good to you? See what a thought you have thrown me into, from that
height! Shall I ever, ever, be of any use, any good—and not, rather, the
contrary to these? Love is something: and it is something to love you
better than a better woman could: but ... but....
There is no use nor good in writing so, and you with a headache too!
Why, how could you get that headache? First with not walking; then with
walking—!! and reading Balzac. But you had been writing notes perhaps? or
Carlyle had talked _too_ ‘bracingly?’ or you fasted too long, being too
late for his tea-kettle? The headache _came_ at any rate. Did it _go_?
tell me, dearest beloved! say how you are. And let me hear if your mother
continues to be better. How happy that change must make you all! and
shall I not thank God that it makes _you_ happy?
Mr. Kenyon has not been here, and I have nothing, nothing, to tell you.
The east wind has kept guard at the door, so that I should not go out,
... and nothing has happened. I seem not to have drawn breath scarcely,
since we parted. ‘Parted’—what a word! As if we could!—in the full sense!
I have written to Miss Bayley to ask her to come on any day except
Saturday.
Shall the thirty-six Bas love you all together in that one Ba who is your
own?
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, April 22, 1846.]
I never thought I should convince you, dearest—and I was foolish to write
_so_, since it makes you reply so. At all events, I do not habitually
offend in this kind—forty-nine days out of fifty I hear my own praises
from your lips, and yet keep silence—on the fiftieth I protest gently—is
that too much? Then I will be quiet altogether, my Ba, and get a comfort
out of the consciousness of obedience there at least. But I should like
some talking-bird to tell you the struggle there is and what I _could_
say. Shall I idealize you into mere mist, Ba, and see the fine, fine,
last of you? Well, I cannot even play with the fancy of _that_—so, one
day, when so much is to be cleared up between us, look for a word or
two on this matter also. Some savage speech about the ‘hand I was to
have dropped’—the whole ending with the Promethean—Οὕτως ὑβρίζειν τοὺς
ὑβρίζοντας χρέων. Meantime my revenge on the hand must be to kiss it—I
kiss it.
Yesterday’s letters both arrived this morning by the 11½ post—was that
right? I add my mite of savageness to the general treasury of wrath:
every body is complaining. Still, so long as I _do_ get my letters,—such
letters!
The cold wind continues—you will have kept the room to-day no doubt—what
colourless weather; not the moist fresh bright true April of old years!
I shall go out presently—but with such an effort, such unwillingness! I
am better however—and my mother still continues _well_—goes out every
morning—so there is hope for everybody. I ought to tell you that I went
to my doctor last evening—(remembering _to whom_ I promised I would
do so, if need were, or good seemed likely to follow)—and he speaks
encouragingly and I have engaged to be obedient; perhaps, because he
ordains no very intolerable laws. He says I am better than when he saw
me last—and, as he wanted _then_ to begin and prescribe, ... there is
clearly a gain of about two months’ comfort!
Here strikes fatal four-o’clock! To-morrow for more writing; and _now_,
for the never-ending love, and thought of my dearest dearest. May God
bless you, Ba.
Your own——
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Wednesday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 23, 1846.]
Then seriously you are not well, since you went for the medical advice
after all! _that_ is the thought which is uppermost as the effect of your
letter, though I ought to be grateful to you (and am!) for remembering
to keep your promise, made two months ago. But how can I help thinking
that you are ill ... help _knowing_ that you felt very ill before you
came to consider that promise? You _did_ feel very ill ... now did you
not? And I see in this letter that you _are not_ well—I see plainly,
plainly! Have you been using the shower-bath? tell me:—and tell me how
you are—do not keep back anything. For the rest, you will submit to
the advice, you say, and you _mean_ to submit, I think, my own very
dearest—remember that all my light comes, not only _through_ you, but
_from_ you, let it be April light or November light. I say that for
_you_. As for myself, when I am anxious about you, it is not, I hope,
for such a reason as that my light comes from you. Before I had any
light, ... before I knew you _so_ ... do I not remember how Mr. Kenyon
with that suggestive shake of the head and grave dropping of the voice,
when he came and told me with other news, of your being _ill_, ... made
me wonderfully unhappy and restless till I could not help writing for a
directer account? Oh, those strange days to look back upon, ... which had
no miraculous light, yet were strange days, with their ‘darkness which
might be felt’ and was felt!
You will be careful, ... will you not? ... in these? I am not happy about
you, to-night. I feel as if you are worse perhaps than you say. And it
does you so much good to keep talking about this misgiving and that
misgiving!—the ‘trente-six oies’ are nothing at all to me, really.
For those two letters, it was far from any intention of mine that you
should have them both together,—and the first-written went to the post
at two on the day before. Too bad it is! I observe that you never get a
letter on the day it is posted, unless the posting is very early, ... say
before eight, or, at latest, before nine. Which is abominable, when the
distance is considered.
And you make a piteous case out for yourself against me, indeed, ... and
it seems very hard to have to endure so much, ‘forty-nine days out of
fifty’ ... I did not think it was so bad with you! And when you protest
gently on the fiftieth day ... so gently ... so gently!! Well, the fact
is that you forget perhaps what sort of a gentle protestation it was, you
wrote to me on Sunday, you who protest so gently, and never flatter! And
as for having your own ‘praises blown in your eyes’ for forty-nine days
together, I cannot confess to the iniquity of it, ... you mistake, you
mistake, as well as forget—only that I will not vex you and convict you
too much now that you are not well. So we shall have peace, shall we not?
on each side. _I_ never write extravagances—ah, but we will not write
_of_ them, even. Any more letters about ‘Luria?’
Yes—All day to-day in the gondola chair! There was no leaving this room
for the cold wind, and it made me feel so tired without my taking a step
scarcely, that after dinner ... guess what I did, and save me the shame
of relating? after dinner, my dinner at one oclock, I positively fell
fast asleep with this pen in my hand, and went to see you in a dream I
dare say, though, this time, I do not remember. Then I half expected
Miss Bayley, and she did not come, and instead of talking to her I wrote
letters to ‘all the peoples’ ... I hate writing letters, how I hate it
now, except to you only. And to-day I thought only of you, let me write
ever so away from you. Which is why you saw me in the gondola chair.
But you are not well—the ‘refrain’ comes round constantly—call it a
_burden_! May God bless you, dearest beloved! Do you say harm of this
April, when it is the best April I ever saw, let it be proved to want the
vulgar sun and blue sky as much as you please! Yet you are not well! say
how you are! I come clear out of the mist to call myself
Your very own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Thursday.
[Post-mark, April 23, 1846.]
Dear, dear Ba, I was never very ill, and now am very much better, quite
well, indeed. I mean to co-operate with your wishes, and my doctor’s
doings, which are luckily gentle enough,—and so, how should I fail of
bringing into subjection this restive, ill-conditioned head of mine?
This morning I have walked to town and back—leaving myself barely time
to write—but just before going out, I got your letter, for which I was
waiting; and the joy of it, the entire delight, carried me lightly out
and in again. Ah, my own Ba,—of the two ‘extravagances which you never
write nor speak,’—after all, if I must, I concede the _praises_ and
eagle-soaring and, and—because, if I please, I can say, if you do persist
in making me, ‘why, it _may_ be so,—how should I know, or Ba _not_ know?’
And as a man may suppose himself poor and yet be rightful owner to a
wonderful estate somewhere (in novels &c.)—so, I, the intellectually poor
&c. &c.—But, dearest, if you say ‘My letters _tire_ you’——say _that_
again—and then _what_ unknown _gadge_ ought to stop the darling mouth?
How does honey dew bind up the rose from opening? Moreover it is one
peculiarity of my mind that it loses no pleasure,—must not forego the
former for the latter pleasure. How shall I explain? I believe that, when
I should have been your husband for years,—years—if I were separated from
you for a day and a letter came—I think my heart would move to it _just
as it now does_—because now, when I see you, know what that blessing
is—still the very oldest first flutter of delight at ‘Miss Barrett’s’
writing it is all here, _all_!
Shall my heart flutter, then, to-morrow, my dear dear heart’s heart? And
it shall be _not_ April when I read it your letter—but June and May—if it
tells _you_ are well, _as I am well_,—now, if I say _that_, can you doubt
what I consider my present state? But be _better_, dear Ba, and make me
better—I should like to breathe and move and live by your allowance and
pleasure—being your very very own
R.B.
I see this morning a characteristic piece of news in the paper. President
Polk, with an eye to business, gets his brother, a tall gaunt hungry man,
appointed Ambassador to Naples—why not? So he arrives a year ago,—finds
the Neapolitans speak Italian, or else French, or else German—that is,
the Diplomatic Body at Naples don’t speak English—on which discovery,
Polk secundus sees he may as well amuse himself, so goes to Paris for
half a year,—then to Rome where he is now, seeing sights—who could
tell the Italians were not able to talk English? Is not that American
entirely? Carlyle told me of an American who was commissioned by some
learned body of his countrymen to ask two questions ... ‘What C.’s
opinion was as to a future state?’—and next ‘what relation Goethe was to
Goethe’s mother’s husband?’—
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 24, 1846.]
Yes, you are better, I think. I thank God for _that_, first of all. And,
do you know, your note only just comes, and it is past ten o’clock, and I
had rung the bell to have the letter-box investigated ... and then came
the knock and the letter! Such a sinning post, it is, more and more. But
to come at last, is something—I am contented indeed. And for being well,
I am well too, if that is all. The wind is a little hard on me; but I
keep in the room and think of you and am thought of by you, and no wind,
under such circumstances, can do much harm perhaps:—it does not to _me_,
anywise. So keep well, and believe that I am so:—‘well as you are well’
... which sounds very well.
What nonsense one comes to write when one is glad! I observe _that_
in myself constantly. All my wisdom seems to depend on being pricked
with pins ... or rather with something sharper. And besides your being
better, I am glad through what you say here about your ‘peculiarity’!
Ah—how you have words in your coffers, of all sorts, ... crowns to suit
all heads ... and this, which I try on last, suits mine better than the
other glittering ones. Those exaggerations, idealizations, with burning
carbuncles in the front of them, which made me sigh under the weight,
... those are different—! But when you say now that you do not part with
feelings,—that it is your peculiarity not to wear them out, and that you
are likely to care for the sight of my handwriting as much after years
as at first, why you make me happy when you say such things, and (see
what faith I have!) _I believe them_, since you say them, speaking of
yourself. They are not after the fashion of men, or women either—but,
true of _you_, they may be, ... and I take upon trust that they are: I
accept such words from you as means of gladness. The worst is—I mean,
the worst reasonableness that goes out to oppose them, is, ... the fear
lest, when your judgments have been corrected by experience, the feelings
may correct themselves. But it is ungrateful to talk reason in the face
of so much love. I take up the gladness rather, and thank you and bless
you seven times over, to completion. You are the best, I know, of all
in the world. Did I tell you once that my love was ‘_something_’? Yet
it is nothing: because there is no woman, let her heart be ever so made
of stone and steel, who could _help_ loving you, ... I answer for all
women!—so this is no merit of mine, though it is the best thing I ever
did in my life.
Dearest beloved, when I used to tell you to give me up, and imagined
to myself how I should feel if you did it, ... and thought it would
not be much worse than it was before I knew you ... (a little better
indeed, inasmuch as I had the memory for ever ...) the chief _pang_ was
the idea of another woman——! From _that_, I have turned back again and
again, recoiling like a horse set against too high a wall. Therefore if
I talk of what all women _would_ do, I do not mean that they _should_.
‘Thirty-six Bas,’ we shall not have,—shall we? or I shall be like Flush,
who, before he learnt to be a philosopher, used to shiver with rage at
sight of the Flush in the looking-glass, and gnash his teeth impotently,
and quite howl. Now,—we shall not, dearest, have the thirty-six Bas ...
now, shall we? Besides, _one_ will be more than enough, she fears to
herself, for your comfort and patience.
No more letters about ‘Luria’? Did you see Moxon when you were in town?
Miss Bayley has not been here yet. To-morrow, perhaps. When she comes,
I shall not dare name you, but _she_ will, I think ... I seem sure of
hearing her mind about ‘Luria’ and the ‘Tragedy.’ George thinks the
former ‘very fine.’ Mr. Kenyon does not come,—and to-morrow (Friday) he
goes ... from London.
You will care for me always the same? But _that_ is like promising a
charmed life, or an impossible immortality to somebody—and nobody has
either, except Louis Philippe. May God bless you,—say how you are when
you write to-morrow.
Your own
BA.
Oh—your learned Americans! was it literal of Carlyle, do you think, or a
jest?
_R.B. to E.B.B._
[Post-mark, April 24, 1846.]
How I sympathize with poor Cloten when he complains that ‘he is in
the habit of saying daily many things fully as witty as those of
Posthumus, men praise so—_if men would but note them_’!—I feel jealous
of the success and ‘praise’ of my Ba,—falling as they do on the mere
_asides_ and interjectional fits and starts of the play,—when its earnest
soliloquy, the very soul and substance of it all, never reaches her ear,
nor calls down her dear, dear words.
Yet do I say that I feel jealous? Rather, I acquiesce gladly in the
ignorance ... because when the words, the golden words, are brought in to
me by the inferior agents, and honestly transferred by _them_ to the real
moving powers ... they, even, find the reward too much, too much, till
they—till they resolve (on the other side of a sheet) to keep silence and
be grateful till death help them to speak.
Well, my dear, own dearest ... the week has got to its weary end, and
to-morrow I shall trust to be with you. I continue to feel better,—and
this morning’s rain, in the opinion of the learned, will be succeeded by
warm weather. May is just here, beside.
Let me say how a word of praise from your brother gratifies me. I feel
his kindness in other respects—feel it deeply—as I do that of the rest
of your family. Because ... after these extravagant flatteries of mine
you find such just fault with,—wherein I go the length of attributing to
you the authorship of the ‘Drama of Exile,’ and ‘Geraldine’ and ‘Bertha,’
and many more poems which I used to suppose my Ba’s,—after that undue
glorification, you will bear to be told, by way of ‘set-off’—that I
cannot help thinking, you, of all your family, are the most ignorant of
your own value—very ignorant you are, my sweet Ba,—but they cannot be,
and their kindness to me becomes centupled ‘for reasons, for reasons.’
Now let me kiss you—which kiss, as I am to really kiss you to-morrow,
my sweetest, I shall dare tell the truth of to myself, and say ‘The
real will be better.’ At other times, with a longer perspective of
days, and days after them, until ... why, _then_ I make the best of
pity and say ‘_Can_ the real be better—what can be better than the
best’? Still—remember my ‘peculiarity’—with the greater I keep the less,
you let me say and praise me for saying—so, with all the dear hope of
to-morrow,—_now_, my Ba—and now, I kiss you. May God bless you, best and
dearest.
No letters that are letters—here is one however from Arnould[1] just
arrived—an Oxford Prize Poet, and an admirable dear good fellow, for all
his praise—which is better.
[1] [Afterwards Sir Joseph Arnould.]
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Sunday.
[Post-mark, April 27, 1846.]
Ever dearest you might have stayed ten minutes more. George did not come
in till half past six after all—but there is the consciousness of being
wise in one’s generation, which consoles so many for their eternity as
children of light, ... yet doesn’t console _me_ for my ten minutes, ...
so it is as well to say no more on this head!
I have glanced over the paper in the _Athenæum_ and am of an increased
certainty that Mr. Chorley is the writer. It is his _way_ from beginning
to end—and that is the way, observe, in which little critics get to tread
on the heels of great writers who are too great to kick backwards. Think
of bringing George Sand to the level of the same sentence with such a
woman as Mrs. Ellis! And then, the infinite trash about the three eras in
the Frenchwoman’s career, ... which never would have been dragged into
application there, if the critic had heard of her last two volumes ...
published since the ‘Meunier d’Angibault,’ ‘Teverino’ and ‘Isidora.’ One
may be angry and sin not, over such inapplicable commonplace. The motive
of it, the low expediency, is worse to me than the offence. Why mention
her at all ... why name in any fashion any of these French writers, for
the reception of whom the English mind is certainly not prepared, unless
they are to be named worthily, recognised righteously? It is just the
principle of the advice about the De Kocks; whom people are to go and see
and deny their acquaintance afterwards. Why not say boldly ‘These writers
have high faculty, and imagination such as none of our romance-writers
can pretend to—but they have besides a devil—and we do not recommend
them as fit reading for English families!’ Now wouldn’t it answer every
purpose? Or silence would!—silence, at least. But this digging and
nagging at great reputations, ... it is to me quite insufferable: and not
compensated for by the motive, which is a truckling to conventions rather
than to morals. As if earnestness of aim was not, from the beginning,
from ‘Rose et Blanche’ and ‘Indiana,’ a characteristic of George Sand!
Really it is pitiful.
The ‘Mysteries of the Heaths,’ I suppose to be a translation of ‘Sept
Jours au Château,’ a very clever story from the monstrous Hydra-headed
imagination of Frédéric Soulié. Dumas is inferior to them all of
course, yet a right good storyteller when he is in the mind for
storytelling;—telling, telling, telling, and never having done. You know
I like listening to stories—I agree with the great Sultan and would
forego ever so much cutting off of heads for the sake of a story—it is a
taste quite apart from a taste for literature: a story-teller, I like,
apart from the sweet voice. Now that book of Dumas’s on the League wars,
which distressed me so the other day, by having the cruelty ... the
‘villainie’ ... of hanging its hero in the fourth volume ... (regularly
hanging him on a pair of gallows—wasn’t it too bad?) that book is amusing
enough, more than amusing enough, to take with one’s coffee ... which is
my fashion, ... because you are not here and I have nobody to talk to me.
The hero who was hanged, deserved it a little, I think, though the author
meant it for a pure misfortune and though no good romance-reader in the
world, such as I am, could bear to part with the hero of four volumes
in _that_ manner, without pain; but the hero did deserve it a little
when one came to consider. In the first place, he was a traitor once or
twice in war and politics, and was quite ready to be so a third or fourth
time, ... _only_ ... as he said to the lady he loved ... ‘je perdrais
votre estime.’ ‘Is that your only objection’ she enquired. ‘_The only
one_’ he answered! (_How_ frightfully true, that those brilliant French
writers have no moral sense at all! do not, for the most part, know
right from wrong! here, an instance!) Then, from the beginning to the
end of the four volumes, he loves two women together ... a ‘phénomène’
by no means uncommon, says the historian musingly, ... and, except for
the hanging, there might have been a difficulty perhaps in the final
arrangement. Yet oh ... to see one’s hero, the hero of four volumes, and
not a bad hero either in some respects, hung up before one’s eyes! ...
it wrongs the natural affections to think of it! it made me unhappy for
a full hour! There should be a society for the prevention of cruelty to
romance-readers, against the recurrence of such things!
Pure nonsense I write to you, it seems to me.
What beautiful flowers you brought me!—and the sweet-brier is unfolding
its leaves to-day, as if you did them, so, no wrong. And I have been
considering; and there are not, if you please, _five_ but _four_ days,
between Saturday and Thursday. In the meanwhile say how you are, dearest
dearest! My thoughts are with you constantly ... indeed. I could almost
say, too much, ... because sometimes they grow weak and tired ... not of
_you_, who are best and beloved, but of themselves, having been so long
used to be sad, May God bless you, ... bless you! His best blessing for
_me_ (after _that_!) were to make me worthy of you—but it would take too
many miracles.
Your
BA.
Remember the letters, if they come.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday.
[Post-mark, April 27, 1846.]