put in my pocket,—and fancy I leave on the table,—is picked up in our
lane and presented to me on my return; so my reason, which told you I had
forgotten it, the book, was wrong, and my instinct which told me, all
the time, that I could not forget even so poor a matter if it tended to
you,—_that_ was right, as usual? (Don’t think that I forgot the said book
on the former occasions ... I wanted to look through it first, so as to
be able to correct any possible mistakings, in case you should ask, or
should not ask, my siren! I read the book during the voyage.)
Will you tell me what number of the _League_ contains the notice of you?
I can get it directly. I did not ask you yesterday, being just as much
master of myself as I commonly am when with you—but after-wisdom comes
duly for a consolation, and mine was apparent in a remark I made last
night—‘Here is truly an illusion broken’ I said—‘for not very long ago I
used to feel impatient at listening to other people’s commendations of
her, and as if they were usurping my especial office,—they _could_ not
see what I see, not utter what I could utter: and now, at the beginning
of my utterance, the hand closes my mouth, while its dear fellow shuts
my eyes,—I may not see what everybody sees, nor say what the whole world
says,—I, that was to excel them all in either function! So now I will
change my policy and bid them praise, praise, praise, praise, since I
may not. Will you let me hear them, my Ba? You know Chesterfield forbids
his son to play on the instrument himself—‘for you can pay musicians’
he says—‘and hear them play.’ Where may I hear this discourser of most
excellent music?
In your last letter you spoke of ‘other women,’ and said they might
‘love’ me—just see! They might love me because of something in me,
lovingness in me, which they never could have evoked ... so the effect
produces the cause, my dear ‘inverter’! If there had been a vague aimless
feeling in me, turning hither and thither for some object to attach
itself to and spend itself on, and you had chanced to be that object, I
should understand you were very little flattered and how a poplar does as
well for a vine-prop as a palm tree—but whatever love of mine clings to
you was created by you, dearest,—they were not in me, I believed—those
feelings,—till you came. So that, mournful and degrading as it sounds,
still it would, I think, be more rational to confess the possibility
of their living on, though you withdrew,—finding some other—oh no, it
is,—that is as great an impossibility as the other,—they came from you,
they go to you, what is the whole world to them!
May God bless you, repay you—He can—
Well Ba, do you see the _Examiner_? That is very kind, very generous
of Forster. There are real difficulties in the way of this prompt,
efficient, serviceable notice—for he has a tribe of friends, dramatists,
actors ‘conflicting interests’ &c. &c. to keep the peace among,—and
he quite understands his trade—how compensation is to be made, and an
equilibrium kept in the praises so as to offend nobody,—yet see how he
writes, and with a heap of other business on his shoulders! I thank him
very sincerely, I am sure.
Tell me how you are, beloved—all-beloved! I am quite well to-day,—have
been out.
Do you remember our friend Bennett of Blackheath? (Don’t ejaculate ‘le
Benêt’!) He sent me letters lately—and I returned a copy of ‘Luria’ to
save compliments and words—here is his answer ... (I will at once confess
I could not read it, but Ba bids me send, and what am I but Ba’s own,
very very own?)
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Monday.
[Post-mark, April 27, 1846.]
Oh yes; that paper is by Chorley, no doubt—I read it, and quite
wonder at him. I suppose he follows somebody’s ‘lead’—writes as he
is directed—because I well remember what he said on lending me ‘Le
Compagnon.’ There, there is that other silly expenditure of pen and ink
on the English poets, or whatever they are. And in such work may a man
spend his youth and not a few available energies—sad work altogether!
My love, _I_ have done a fair day’s work this Monday,—whoever may be
idle—I thought I would call on Forster this morning—he was out, and I
crossed over to Moxon’s, not seeing him, neither, and thence walked
home—so that to tell you I am _well_ is superfluous enough, is it not?
But while the sun shone brightest, (and it shines now) I said ‘The
cold wind is felt through it all,—_she keeps the room_!’ The wind is
unremitting,—savage. Do you bear it, dearest, or suffer, as I fear?
(Speaking of Forster ... you see the _Examiner_, I believe? Or I will
send it directly of course). I entirely agree with you in your estimate
of the comparative value of French and English Romance-writers. I bade
the completest adieu to the latter on my first introduction to Balzac,
whom I greatly admire for his faculty, whatever he may choose to do with
it. Do you know a little sketch ‘La Messe de l’Athée,’—most affecting
to me. And for _you_, with your love of a ‘story,’ what an unceasing
delight must be that very ingenious way of his, by which he connects the
new novel with its predecessors—keeps telling you more and more news yet
of the people you have got interested in, but seemed to have done with.
Rastignac, Mme. d’Espard, Desplein &c.—they keep alive, moving—it is not
ingenious? Frédéric Soulié I know a little of (I let this reading drop
some ten years ago) and only George Sand’s early works: by the way,
the worst thing of all in that blessed article we have been referring
to, is the spiteful and quite uncalled for introduction of the names of
A. de Musset and De Lamennais—what have the English families to do with
_that_? Did you notice a stanza quoted from some lachrymose rhymester to
be laughed at (in the Article on Poetry)—in which the writer complains
of the ill-treatment of false friends, for, says he, ‘I have felt their
_bangs_.’ The notion of one’s friend ‘banging’ one is exhilarating when
one reflects that he might get a little pin, and prick, prick after this
fashion. No, it is probably a manner of writing,—meant for the week’s
life and the dozen readers. Here is a note from his sister, by the way.
Now, dearest-dearest, good bye till to-morrow. I think of you all day,
and, if I dream, dream of you—and the end of the thinking and of the
dreaming is still new love, new love of you, my sweetest, only beloved!
so I kiss you and bless you from my heart of heart.
Ever your R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Monday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 28, 1846.]
Very good _Examiner_!—I am pleased with it and with Mr. Forster for the
nonce, though he talks a little nonsense here and there, in order to be a
true critic, and though he doesn’t talk at all, scarcely, of the ‘Soul’s
Tragedy’ ... how is one to bear it? That ‘Tragedy’ has wonderful things
in it—thoughts, suggestions, ... and more and more I feel, that you never
did better dialogue than in the first part. Every pulse of it is alive
and individual—dramatic dialogue of the best. Nobody in the world could
write such dialogue—now, you know, you must be patient and ‘meke as
maid,’ being in the course of the forty-nine days of enduring praises.
Praises, instead of ‘bangs’!!—consider that it might be worse!—_dicit
ipsissima Ba_.
Think of my not hearing a word about the article in the _Examiner_,
until I had your note this morning. And the _Examiner_ was in the house
since Saturday night, and nobody to tell me! I was in high vexation,
reproaching them all, to-day—till Stormie had the impertinence to turn
round and tell me that only Papa had read the paper, and that ‘he had of
course put it away to keep me from the impropriety of thinking too much
about ... about’ ... yes, really Stormie _was_ so impertinent. For the
rest, when Papa came up-stairs at one o’clock, he had it in his hand.
At two, Miss Bayley came, and sate here two hours, and thought me looking
so well, with such improved looks from last autumn, that I don’t mean to
groan at all to you to-day about the wind—it is a savage wind, as you
say, and I wish it were gone, and I am afraid of stirring from the room
while it lasts, but there’s an end ... and not of _me_, says Miss Bayley.
She doffed her bonnet and talked and talked, and was agreeable and
affectionate, and means to come constantly to see me ... (‘only not on
Thursday,’ I desired:) and do you know, you need not think any more of my
going with you to Italy, for she has made up her mind to take me herself
... there is no escape for me that I can see—it’s fixed ... certain!
with a thousand generous benignities she stifled my ‘no’s’ ... and all I
had breath to say at last, was, that ‘there was time enough for plans of
that kind.’ Seriously, I was quite embarrassed to know how to adjourn the
debate. And she is capable of ‘arranging everything’—of persisting, of
insisting—who knows what? And so, ... when I am ‘withdrawn’ ... carried
away ... then, shall all my ‘feelings,’ which are in you, be given to
somebody else? is _that_ the way—?
Now I shall not make jests upon _that_ ... I shall not: first, I shall
not, because it is ungrateful—and next and principally, because my
heart stands still only to think of it...! Why did you say _that_ to
me? I could be as jealous (did I not tell you once?) as any one of
your melodramatic gitana heroines, who carries a poignard between the
white-satin sash and the spangles? I perfectly understand, at this
distance, what _jealousy_ is, would be, ought to be, must be—though I
never guessed at all what _love_ was, at _that_ distance, and startled I
am often and confounded, to see the impotency of my imagination.
Forgive the blottings out—I have not blotted out lately ... _have_ I now?
and it is pardonable once in a hundred years or days.
The rest for to-morrow. Your correspondent of the first letter you sent
me really does write like a Bennet, though he praises you. I could not
help laughing very gently, though he praises you. Good-night my only
beloved ... dearest! As _my_ Bennet says (Georgiana) when she catches
vehemently at the laurel ... ‘_I will not be forgot_’....
‘I must die ... but I WILL NOT BE FORGOT’ (in _large capitals_!) But what
_she_ applies to the Delphic groves, turns for _me_ to something more
ambitious. ‘I will not be forgot’ ... will I? shall I? not till Thursday
at least ... being ever and ever
Your own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, April 28, 1846.]
Now bless you, my dearest, best Ba, for this letter that comes at the
eleventh hour,—which means, at 3 o’clock. Was not I frightened! I
made sure you would write. Why, our Post emulates the Italian glory
... nay, that is _too_ savage a saying—for in Venice or Rome I should
have to go for this to the office, and only get it at last through the
forbearing honesty of every other applicant for letters during the day,
or week—since to every man and woman who thrusts his or her head in at
the window at Venice, the clerk hands coolly over the whole odd hundred,
and turns to his rest again till as many are taken as may be thought
necessary. But, Ba, dear dearest Ba, do you really mean to tell me I
_said ‘that’_ ... of ‘transferring feelings’ etc? I hope I did,—though
I cannot imagine how I ever could—say so—for so the greater fault will
be Ba’s—who drives me from one Scylla (see my critic’s account) into a
worse Charybdis through pure fear and aversion,—and then cries ‘See where
you are _now_!’ I was retreating as far as possible from that imaginary
‘woman who called out those feelings,’—might have called them out,—just
as this April sun of ours makes date-palms grow and bear—and because I
said, of the two hypotheses, the one which taught you the palms _might_
be transplanted and _live on_ here,—_that_ was the more rational ... you
turn and ask ‘So your garden will rear palms.’ Now, I tell Ba,—no, I will
kiss Ba and so tell her.
How happy Miss Bayley’s testimony makes me! One never can be too sure of
such a happiness. She has no motive for thus confirming it. You ‘look so
well’—and she not merely sees it, but _acts_ upon it,—is for deriving a
practical benefit from it, and forthwith. Then, Miss Bayley, let me try
and ‘transfer’ ... ah, the palm is too firmly rooted in my very heart,—I
can but sprinkle you over with yellow dust!
Oh, Ba; not to tell me of the _League_; the _number_!—will you please
tell me? One letter more I get, do I not? Then comes Thursday—my Thursday.
What you style ‘impertinence’ in your Brother, is very kind and
good-natured to my thinking. Well, now—see the way a newspaper criticism
affects one, nearly the only way! If this had been an attack—how it would
affect you and me matters nothing—it might affect others disagreeably—and
through them, us. So I feel very much obliged to Forster in this instance.
I kiss you with perfect love, my sweetest best Ba. May God bless you.
R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, April 29, 1846.]
Dearest, you are not to blame the post, nor even me. The reason you did
not get the letter was simply that Henrietta slept over the hour, and let
it lie on the table till past eight. Still, you should have had it before
_three_ perhaps. Only the wrong was less a wrong than you fancied.
For _my_ wrongs, dearest beloved, they are mine I confess, and not yours
... ah, you are ‘evilly persecuted, and entreated’ of me, I must allow.
Yet as, with all my calumnious imputations, I think softly to myself
seven times seven times a day that no living man is worthy to stand in
your footsteps, ... why you must try to forgive and (_not_) forget me. Do
I teaze you past enduring, sometimes? Yes, yes. And wasn’t it my fault
about the ‘imaginary woman;’ that heiress, in an hypothesis, of the
‘love’ I ‘made’? Yes, yes, yes—it was, of course. Unless indeed she came
out of that famous mist, which you fined me away into, ... the day you
slew and idealized me, remember!—and, now I begin to consider, I think
she did! So we will share the fault between us, you and I. The odium of
it, I was going to say—but _odium_ is by no means the right word, perhaps.
The truth of all is, that you are too much in the excess of goodness,
... that you spoil me! There it is! Did I not tell you, warn you, that
I never was used to the purple and fine linen of such an infinite
tenderness? If you give me back my sackcloth, I shall know my right hand
from my left again, perhaps, ... guess where I stand ... what I am ...
recover my common sense. Will you? no—do not.
And for the _League_ newspaper, you mistook me, and I forgot to say so
in my letter yesterday. I told you only that the _League_ paper had
mentioned me—not noticed me. It was just ... I just shall _tell_ you,
that you may not spend another thought on such a deep subject ... it was
a mere quotation from the ‘cornships in the offing,’ with a prefatory
_as that exquisite poet Miss B ... says_! Now you are done with the
winter of your discontent? You are with the snowdrops at any rate. But
last year there was a regular criticism on my poems in that _League_
paper, and I had every reason to thank the critic. I have heard too that
Cobden is a very gracious reader of mine ... and that his Leeds (liege)
subjects generally do me the honours of popularity, more than any other
people in England. There’s glory for you, talking of palm-trees.
Ah—talking of palm-trees, you do not know what a curious coincidence your
thought is with a thought of mine, which I shall not tell you now ... but
some day perhaps. There’s a mystery! talking of Venice!
For Balzac, I have had my full or overfull pleasure from that habit of
his you speak of, ... and which seems to prove his own good faith in the
life and reality of his creations, in such a striking manner. He is a
writer of most wonderful faculty—with an overflow of life everywhere—with
the vision and the utterance of a great seer. His French is another
language—he throws new metals into it ... malleable metals, which fuse
with the heat of his genius. There is no writer in France, to my mind, at
all comparable to Balzac—none—but where is the reader in England to make
the admission?—_none_, again ... is almost to be said.
But, dearest, you do not say how you are; and _that_ silence is not
lawful, and _is_ too significant. For me, when the wind changed for a
few hours to-day, I went down-stairs with Flush, and had my walk in the
drawing-room. Mrs. Jameson has written to proclaim her coming to-morrow
at four,—so I shall hear of ‘Luria,’ I think. Remember to bring my
verses, if you please, on your Thursday. And if dreaming of me should be
good for making you love me, let me be dreamt of ... go on to dream of
me: and love me, my beloved, ever so much, without grudging,—because the
love returns to you, all of it, ... as the wave to the sea; and with an
addition of sundry grains of soiling sand, to make you properly grateful.
Take care of yourself—may God take care of you for your own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, April 29, 1846.]
Oh, post, post, how I am plagued by what uses to delight me! No
letter,—and I cannot but think you have written one, my Ba! It will come
perhaps at 3 o’clock. Shame and again, shame!
Meantime I will tell you what a dear, merciful Ba you are, in only
threatening me with daggers,—when you play at threatening,—instead of
declaring you will _frown_ at me.... Oh, but here ‘Fear recoils, he knows
well why, even at the sound himself has made—’
The best of it is, that this was the second fright, and by no means the
most formidable. When I read that paragraph beginning ‘you need not think
any more of going with me to Italy’—shall I only say I _was_ alarmed?
Without a particle of affectation, I tell Ba, I _am_, cannot help being,
alarmed even now—we have been discussing possibilities—and it is rather
more possible than probable that Miss Bayley may ‘carry off’ my Ba, and
her Flush, and, say, an odd volume of the Cyclic Poets, all in her pocket
... she being, if I remember, of the race of the Anakim—than that I shall
ever find in the wide world a flesh and blood woman able to bear the
weight of the ‘feelings,’ I rest now upon the B and the A which spell
Ba’s name,—only her name!
Forster sent a note last evening urging me to go and dine with him and
Leigh Hunt to-day,—there was no refusing. There is sunshine—you may have
been down-stairs—but the wind continues.
I shall know to-morrow—but surely a letter _is_ to come presently—let me
wait a little.
Nothing! Pray write if anything have happened, my own Ba!
No time—Ever your
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday.
[Post-mark, May 1, 1846.]
I am delighted with the verses and quite surprised by Mr. Arnould’s,
having expected to find nothing but love and law in them, and really
there is a great deal besides. Hard to believe, it was, that a university
prize poet (who was not Tennyson) could write such good verses: but he
wrote them of _you_, and _that_ was enough inspiration for _him_, I
suppose, as it would be for others, my own dearest. How I delight in
hearing you praised!—it is such a delightful assent to the word which is
in me, in the deepest of me. You know that mysterious pleasure we have,
in listening to echoes!—we hear nothing new, nothing we have not said
ourselves—yet we stand on the side of the hill and listen ... listen ...
as if to the oracles of Delphi. The very pleasure of it all is in the
repetition ... the reverberation.
When you had gone yesterday and I had taken my coffee, holding my book
... ‘La Gorgone’ a sea-romance by _Landelle_, (those little duodecimo
books are the only possible books to hold in one’s hand at coffee-times
... and the people at Rolandi’s library sent me this, which is not worth
much, I think, but quite new and very marine) ... holding my book at one
page, as if fixed ... transfixed, ... by a sudden eternity, ... well,
after all _that_ was done with, coffee and all, ... in came George, and
told me that the day before he had seen Tennyson at Mr. Venables’ house,
or chambers rather. Mr. Venables was unwell, and George went to see him,
and while he was there, came the poet. He had left London for a few days,
he said, and meant to stay here for a time ... ‘hating it perfectly’
like your Donne ... ‘seeming to detest London,’ said George ... ‘abusing
everything in unmeasured words.’ Then he had been dining at Dickens’s,
and meeting various celebrities, and Dickens had asked him to go with
him (Dickens) to Switzerland, where he [is] going, to write his new
work: ‘but,’ laughed Tennyson, ‘if I went, I should be entreating him to
dismiss his sentimentality, and so we should quarrel and part, and never
see one another any more. It was better to decline—and I have declined.’
When George had told his story, I enquired if Tennyson was what was
called an agreeable man—happy in conversation. And the reply was ...
‘yes—but quite inferior to Browning! He neither talks so well,’ observed
George with a grave consideration and balancing of the sentences, ...
‘nor has so frank and open a manner. The advantages are all on Browning’s
side, _I should say_.’ Now dear George is a little criticised you must
know in this house for his official gravity and dignity—my sisters murmur
at him very much sometimes ... poor dear George!—but he is good and kind,
and high and right minded, as we all know, and I, for my part, never
thought of criticising him yesterday when he said those words rather ...
perhaps ... barristerially, ... had they been other words.
_My_ other words must go by my next letter—I am to write to you again
presently, you are to be pleased to remember ... and that letter may
reach you, for aught I can guess, at the same moment with this. In the
meantime, ever beloved,
I am your
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Friday.
[Post-mark, May 1, 1846.]
I go to you, my Ba, with heart _full_ of love, so it seems,—yet I come
away always with a greater capacity of holding love,—for there is more
and still more,—_that_ seems too! At the beginning, I used to say (most
truly) that words were all inadequate to express my feelings,—now,
those very feelings seem, as I see them from this present moment, just
as inadequate in their time to represent what I am conscious of now.
I _do_ feel more, widelier, strangelier ... how can I tell you? You
must believe,—my only, only beloved! I daresay I have said this before,
because it has struck me repeatedly,—and, judging by past experience, I
shall need to say it again—and often again. Am I really destined to pass
my life sitting by you? And you speak of _your_ hesitation at trusting
in miracles! Oh, my Ba, my heart’s—well, Ba, I am so far guiltless of
presumption, let come what will, that I never for the moment cease to
be ... tremblingly anxious I will say,—and conscious that the good is
too great for me in this world. You do not like one to write so, I know,
but there is a safety in it—the presumptuous walk blindfold among pits,
to a proverb—and no one shall record that of me. And if I have cares
and scruples of this kind at times, or at all times, I have none where
most other people would have very many. I never ask myself, as perhaps I
should,—‘Will _she_ be happy too?’—All that seems removed from me, far
above my concernment—she—you, my Ba ... will make _me_ so entirely happy,
that it seems enough to know ... my palm-trees grow well enough without
knowing the cause of the sun’s heat. Then I think again, that your nature
is to make happy and to bless, and itself to be satisfied with that.—So
instead of fruitless speculations how to give you back your own gift,
I will rather resolve to lie quietly and let your dear will have its
unrestricted way. All which I take up the paper determining _not_ to
write,—for it is foolish, poor endeavour at best, but,—just this time it
is written. May God bless you—
R.B.
I called on Moxon, who is better, and reports cheeringly. Then I went to
my friend’s, and thence home, not much tired. I have to go out (to-day)
with my sister but only next door. To-morrow I hear from you, love, and
on Monday—(unless a pressing engagement &c.—ah!)