friend Howitt,—for which I am indebted to Moxon. Howitt is book-making
about Poets, it seems—where they were born, how they live, ‘what relation
their mothers’ sons are to their fathers’—etc. In the prosecution of
this laudable object he finds his way to Ambleside, calls on Wordsworth
‘quite promiscuously’ as Mrs. Malaprop says, meaning nothing at all. And
so after a little ordinary complimenting and _play_-talk, our man of
business takes to good earnest, but dexterous questioning ... all for
pure interest in poetry and Mr. W. ‘So, sir, after that school ... if I
understand—you went to ... to ...?’—and so on. Mr. Wordsworth the younger
having quicker eyes than his father detected a certain shuffling movement
between the visitor’s right hand and some mysterious region between
the chair’s back and his coat-pocket ... glimpses of a pocket case and
paper note book were obtained. He thought it (the son) high time to go
and tell Mrs. Wordsworth,—who came in and found the good old man in the
full outpouring of all those delightful reminiscences hitherto supposed
the exclusive property of Miss Fenner no doubt! Mrs. W—‘desired to speak
with William for a moment’ (the old William)—and then came the amazement,
horror &c. &c., and last of all came Mr. Howitt’s bow and ‘so no more at
present from your loving &c.’—Seriously, in my instinct—instinct—instinct
thrice I write it and thank my stars! Moxon said, Howitt is ‘just gone to
call on Tennyson for information—having left his card for that purpose.’
‘And one day will call on you’ quoth Moxon, who is but a sinister
prophet, as _you_ may have heard—Dii meliora piis! It is fair enough in
Tennyson’s case, for he is apprised by Howitt’s self of the purpose of
his visit, but to try and inveigle Wordsworth into doing what he would
hate most ... to his credit be it said—why, it is abominable—abominable!
Then I heard another story—his wife, Mary, finds out,—at all events,
translates Miss Bremer. Another publisher gets translated other works—or
may be the same,—as who shall say him nay? Howitt writes him a letter
(which is shown my informant), wherein ‘rogue,’ ‘thief,’ ‘rascal’ and
similar elegancies dance pleasantly through period after period.
‘Come out from among them my soul, neither be thou a partaker of their
habitations!’
From all which I infer—I may kiss you, may I not, love Ba? It is done,
may I or may I not—
Ever your own
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday.
[Post-mark, May 2, 1846.]
How you write to me! Is there any word to answer to these words ...
which, when I have read, I shut my eyes as one bewildered, and think
blindly ... or do not think—some feelings are deeper than the thoughts
touch. My only beloved, it is thus with me ... I stand by a miracle in
your love, and because I stand in it and it covers me, just for _that_,
you cannot see me! May God grant that you _never see me_—for then we
two shall be ‘happy’ as you say, and I, in the only possible manner, be
very sure. Meanwhile, you do quite well not to speculate about making me
happy ... your instinct knows, if _you_ do not know, that it is _implied_
in your own happiness ... or rather (not to assume a magnanimity) in my
sense of your being happy, not apart from me. As God sees me, and as I
know at all the motions of my own soul, I may assert to you that from the
first moment of our being to each other anything, I never conceived of
happiness otherwise ... never thought of being happy through you or by
you or in you, even—your good was all my idea of good, and _is_. I hear
women say sometimes of men whom they love ... ‘such a one will make me
happy, I am sure,’ or ‘I shall be happy with _him_, I think’—or again
... ‘He is so good and affectionate that nobody need be afraid for my
happiness.’ Now, whether you like or dislike it, I will tell you that I
never had such thoughts of _you_, nor ever, for a moment, gave you that
sort of praise. I do not know why ... or perhaps I do ... but I could not
so think of you ... I have not time nor breath ... I could as soon play
on the guitar when it is thundering. So be happy, my own dearest ... and
if it should be worth a thought that you _cannot_ be _alone_, _so_, you
may think _that_ too. You have so deep and intense a nature, that it were
impossible for you to love after the fashion of other men, weakly and
imperfectly, and your love, which comes out like your genius, may glorify
enough to make you happy, perhaps. Which is my dream, my calculation
rather, when I am happiest now. May God bless you. Suppose I should
ever read in your eyes that you were not happy with me?—can I help, do
you fancy, such thoughts? Could _you_ help being not happy? The very
word ‘_unhappiness_’ implies that you cannot help it. Now forgive me my
naughtiness, because I love you, and never loved but you, ... and because
I promise not to go with Miss Bayley to Italy ... I promise. Ah—If you
could pretend to be afraid of _that, indeed_, _I_ have a right to be
afraid, without pretence at all ... _I_ who am a woman and frightened of
lightning. And see the absurdity. If I did not go to Italy with _you_,
the reason would be that you did not choose—and if _you_ did not choose,
I should not choose ... I would not see Italy without your eyes—_could_
I, do you think? So if Miss Bayley takes me to Italy with a volume of the
Cyclic poets, it will be as a dead Ba clasped up between the leaves of
it. You talked of a ‘Flora,’ you remember, in the first letter I had from
you.
How bad of William Howitt! How right you are, always! Yet not quite
always, dear dearest beloved, happily for your own
BA.
Say how you are I beseech you, and honestly! I was down-stairs to-day,
since the wind changed, and am the better for it. What writing for a
postman!—or for _you_ even!
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Saturday.
[Post-mark, May 2, 1846.]
No, my Ba, your letter came as it ought last night,—and the promise
it contained of another made me restless all the morning—to no
purpose,—nothing more comes—_yet_—for there is a ‘peradventure’ yet
unwithdrawn. When I do not hear from you, as now, I always fancy there
was some signal reason why I ought to have heard ... that ‘to-morrow,’ I
could better bear the not hearing ... though never, never do yesterday’s
letters slip by a hair’s breadth from the place in my affection they
once take,—_they_ could not have been dispensed with,—but the imaginary
letter of to-morrow _could_, by contrast with to-day’s exigencies ...
till to-morrow really comes and is found preferring such claims of its
own—such claims.
_This_ letter I have got, and will try and love enough for two ... I can
do no harm by trying ... _this_ I do not mean to say that I expected. May
I say ‘in heart-playing,’ ... now, Ba, it will be a fancy, which you can
pounce on and poke your humming-bird bill through, like a needle, in a
very ‘twinkling,’ and so shall my flower’s eye be ruined for ever, and
when it turns black and shrivels up as dead flowers do, you can triumph
and ask ‘are these your best flowers, best feelings for me?’. But now,
after this deprecation, you will be generous and only hover above, using
the diamond eye rather than the needle-bill,—and I will go on and dare
say that I should like, for one half second, _not to love you_, and then
feel all the love lit up in a flame to the topmost height, at the falling
of such a letter on my heart. Don’t you know that foolish boys sometimes
play at hanging themselves—suspend themselves by the neck actually for
such a half second as this of my fancying—that they may taste the luxury
of catching back at existence, and being cut down again? There is a
notable exemplification, a worthy simile! It all comes, I suppose, from
the joy of being rid handsomely of my dinners and in a fair way for
Monday ... nothing between but letters,—I shall continue to hope! At sea
it always sounds pleasantly to hear ... after passing Cape This and Isle
the other, ‘now, _next_ land we make is—Italy, or England, or Greece.’
Moxon told me Tennyson was still in Town. Switzerland? He is a fortnight
going to wherever a Train takes him—‘for,’ says Moxon, ‘he has to pack
up, and is too late, and next day’ ... I dare say he unaffectedly
hates London where this poco-curanteism would entail all manner of
disagreeabilities. If I caught rightly ... that is, now apply rightly,
a word or two I heard ... one striking celebrity at Dickens’ Dinner
was—Lord Chesterfield—literary, inasmuch as a great ‘maker _up_ of
books’—for the Derby. Macready may have been another personage—they,
Tennyson and he, may ‘fadge,’ in Shakespearian phrase, if the
writer of the ‘Two Voices’ &c. considers Home’s ‘Douglas’ exquisite
poetry,—otherwise,—it is a chance!
But with respect to your Brother ... first of all—nay, and last of all,
for it all is attributable to _that_—I feel his kindness, in its way,
as I feel yours; as truly, according to its degree and claim: but—‘now
think what I would speak!’—When he really _does_ see me one day—no longer
embarrassed as under the circumstances I could not but have been on these
two or three occasions when we met—he will find something better than
conversational powers to which I never pretended—and what he will accept
in preference,—a true, faithful desire of repaying his goodness—he will
find it, that is, because it must be _there_, and I have confidence in
such feelings making sooner or later their way.
* * * * *
So now, at 2½ p.m., I must (—_here is the Post_ ... from you? _Yes_—the
letter is here at last—I was waiting:—now to read; no, kissing it comes
first).
* * * * *
And now ... I will not say a word, my love of loves, my dearest, dearest
Ba,—not one word—but I will go out and walk where I can be alone, and
think out all my thought of you, and bless you and love you with nothing
to intercept the blessing and the love. I will look in the direction
of London and send my heart there.... Dear, dear love, I kiss you and
commend you to God. Your very own—
I am very well—quite well, dearest.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday.
[Post-mark, May 4, 1846.]
When I said one more letter might come before to-morrow, I forgot. How
used I to manage in the early ‘day of small things’—comparatively—when
letters came once a week at most, and yet I felt myself so rich, dearest!
I want you to remember, Ba, what I shall be nearly sure to forget when
closer to you than now; tell me to-morrow. If I chance to see Mrs.
Jameson in the course of the week what am I to say,—that is, what have
you decided on saying? Does she know that you write to me? Because there
is a point of simple good taste to be preserved ... I must not listen
with indifference if I am told that ‘her friend Miss B.’ thought well
of the last number. But she must know we write, I think,—never make any
secret of that, when the subject is brought forward.
Here is warm May weather, my Ba; I do not shiver by sympathy as I fancy
you going down-stairs. I shall hope to see the sweet face look its ...
now, what? ‘Best’ would be altogether an impertinence,—unless you help my
meaning, which is ‘best,’ too.
I received two days ago a number of the _People’s Journal_—from our
illustrious contemporary, Bennett! Bennett figures where Barrett might
have fronted the world. Fact! I will cut you out his very original
lyric[2]—observe the felicitous emendation in the author’s own blue ink
... that supplemental trochee makes a musical line of it! Mary Howitt
follows with a pretty, washy, very meritorious Lyric of Life. There is ‘a
guilty one’—‘Name her not!’ ‘Virtue turns aside for shame’
She was born of guilty kin—
Her life’s course hath guilty been—
Unto school she never went—
And whate’er she learned was sin,—
LET HER DIE!
And so on—what pure nonsense! Who cries ‘let her die’ in the whole world
now? thank God, nobody. The sin of the world (of the lookers-on, not the
causers of the wrong) consists, in these days, in looking on and asking
‘How can we help her dying—or factory children’s dying—or evicted Irish
peasantry’s dying?’ What ails these Howitts of a sudden, that they purvey
this kind of cat-lap,—they that once did better? William Howitt grinds
here an article on May day; past human power of reading of course, but I
just noticed that not a venerablest commonplace was excused on account of
its age—the quotations from Chaucer, Spenser, Herrick got once more into
rank and file with the affecting alacrity shown the other day at a review
of the Chelsea invalids! Oh, William, ‘Let them die!’
So goodbye till to-morrow, my dearest. I love you and bless you ever, and
am your
R.B.
[2] [‘Cry of the Spring Flower-seller,’ by W. C. Bennett.]
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, May 5, 1846.]
Yes, you were right, my Ba—our meeting was on the 20th of last May: the
next letter I received was the 14th and _that_ ran in my head, no doubt,
yesterday. You must have many such mistakes to forgive in me when I
undertake to talk and ‘stare’ at the same time ... well for me if they
are no more serious mistakes!
I referred to my letters—and found much beside the date to reflect on.
I will tell you. Would it not be perilous in some cases,—many cases—to
contrast the present with the very early Past: the first time, even when
there is abundant fruit, with the dewy springing and blossoming? One
would confess to a regret at the vanishing of that charm, at least, if
it were felt to be somehow vanished out of the present. And, looking
upon our experience as if it were another’s,—undoubtedly the peril
seems doubled—with that five months’ previous correspondence ... only
_then_,—after all the curiosity, and hope and fear,—the first visit to
come! And after,—shortly after,—you know—the heightened excitement that
followed ... I should not believe in the case of another,—or should not
_have_ believed,—that the strange delight could last ... no more than I
should think it reasonable to wonder, or even grieve, that it did not
last—so long as other delights came in due succession. Now, hear the
truth! I never, God knows, felt the joy of being with you as I felt it
YESTERDAY—the fruit of my happiness has grown under the blossom, lifting
it and keeping it as a coronet—not one feeling is lost, and the new
feelings are infinite. Ah, my Ba, can you wonder if I seem less inclined
to see the adorable kindness in those provisions, and suppositions, and
allowances for escape, change of mind &c., you furnish me with,—than to
be struck at the strange fancy which, as I said, insists on my being
free to leave off breathing vital air the moment it shall so please me?
And when I spoke of ‘dishonouring suppositions’ I had not the faintest
approximation to an idea of standing in your eyes for a magnanimous
keeper of promises, vow-observer, and the rest. All _that_ is profoundly
pitiable! But to change none of my views of the good of this life and
the next, and yet to give up my love on the view (for instance) which
sees that good in money, or worldly advancement,—what is that if not
dishonouring?
All the while, I know your thought, your purpose in it all,—I believe and
am sure—and I bless you from my heart—you will soon know, what _you_ have
to know—_I_ believe, beforehand, I repeat.
I am rather out of spirits to-day—_thus_ I feel toward you when at all
melancholy ... you would undo me in withdrawing from me your help, _undo_
me, I feel! When, as ordinarily, I am cheerful, I have precisely the same
conviction. Does that prove nothing, my Ba?
Well, I give up proving, or trying to prove anything—from the beginning I
abjured mere words—and now, much more!
Let me kiss you, ever best and dearest! My life is in the hand you call
‘mine,’—if that hand would ‘shake’ less from letting it fall, I earnestly
pray God may relieve you of it nor ever let you be even aware of what
followed your relief! For what _should_ one live or die in this world?
I am wholly yours—
Did I not meet two of your brothers yesterday in the Hall? Pray take care
of this cold wind—be satisfied with the good deeds of the last few days.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, May 6, 1846.]
Dearest, it has just come into my head that I should like to carry this
letter to the post myself—but no, I shall not be able. Probably the
post is far out of reach, and even if it were within reach, my grand
scheme of walking in the street is scarcely a possible thing to-day,
for I must keep watch in the house from two till five for Lady Margaret
Cocks, an old friend of mine, who was kind to me when I was a child,
in the country, and has not forgotten me since, when, two months in
the year, she has been in the habit of going to London. A good, worthy
person, with a certain cultivation as to languages and literature, but
quite manquée on the side of the imagination ... talking of the poets,
as a blind woman of colours, calling ‘Pippa Passes’ ‘_pretty and odd_,’
and writing herself ‘poems’ in heaps of copy books which every now and
then she brings to show me ... ‘odes’ to Hope and Patience and all the
cardinal virtues, with formulas of ‘Begin my muse’ in the fashion ended
last century. She has helped to applaud and scold me since I could walk
and write verses; and when I was so wicked as to go to dissenting chapels
besides, she reproached me with tears in her eyes; but they were tears of
earnest partizanship, and not of affection for me, ... she does not love
me after all, nor guess at my heart, and _I_ do not love her, I feel.
Woe to us! for there are good and unlovable people in the world, and we
cannot help it for our lives.
In the midst of writing which, comes the Leeds Miss Heaton, who used to
send me those long confidential letters _à faire frémir_, and beg me
to call her ‘Ellen,’ and as this is the second time that she has sent
up her card, in an accidental visit to London, I thought I would be
good-natured for once, and see her. An intelligent woman, with large
black eyes and a pleasant voice, and young ... manners provincial enough,
for the rest, and talking as if the world were equally divided between
the ‘Congregationalists’ and the ‘Churchpeople.’ She assured me that ‘Dr.
Vaughan was very much annoyed’ at the article on my poems which ‘crept’
into his review, and that it was fully intended to recant at length on
the first convenient opportunity. ‘And really,’ she said, ‘it seems to
me that you have as many admirers among churchmen as among dissenters.’!
There’s glory!—and I kept my countenance. _Lost_ it though, five minutes
afterwards, when she observed pathetically, that a ‘friend of hers who
had known Mr. Browning _quite intimately_, had told her he was an infidel
... more’s the pity, when he has such a genius.’ I desired the particular
information of your intimate friend, a little more warmly perhaps than
was necessary, ... but what could be expected of me, I wonder?
I shall write again to you to-night, you know, and this is enough for two
o’clock. Now will you get my letter on this Tuesday? Do you think of me
... love me? And are you well to-day? The flowers look beautiful though
you put their heads into the water instead of their feet.
Your BA.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, May 6, 1846.]
But my own only beloved, I surely did not speak too ‘insistingly’
yesterday. I shrank from your question as you put it, because you put it
wrong. If you had asked me instead, whether I meant to keep my promise
to you, I would have answered ‘yes’ without hesitation: but the form you
chose, referred to _you_ more than to _me_, and was indeed and indeed a
foolish form of a question, my own dearest! For the rest ... ah, you do
not see my innermost nature, ... _you_!—you are happily too high, and
cannot see into it ... cannot perceive how the once elastic spring is
broken with the long weights! ... you wonder that it should drop, when
you, who lifted it up, do not hold it up! you cannot understand! ... you
wonder! And _I_ wonder too ... on the other side! _I_ wonder how I can
feel happy and alive ... as I can, _through you_! how I can turn my face
toward life again ... as I can, _for you_! ... and chiefly of all, how I
can ever imagine ... as I do, sometimes ... that such a one as you, may
be happy perhaps with such a one as _I_! ... happy!
Do not judge me severely, you, to whom I have given _both_ hands, for
your own uses and ends!—you, who are more to me than I can be to you,
even by your own statement—better to me than life ... or than death even,
as death seemed to me before I knew you.
Certainly I love you enough, and trust you enough, if you knew what God
knows. Yet, ... ‘now hear me.’ I shall not be able to please you, I
think, by a firm continued belief of this engagement’s being justifiable,
until the event wholly _has_ justified it ... I mean, ... until I shall
see you not less happy for having lived near me for six months or a
year—should God’s mercy permit such justification. Do not blame me. I
cannot help it ... I would, if I could, help it. Every time you say, as
in this dearest letter, ever dearest, that you have been happy on such a
day through being with me, I have a new astonishment—it runs through me
from head to feet ... I open my eyes astonished, whenever my sun rises
in the morning, as if I saw an angel in the sun. And I _do_ see him, in
a sense. Ah—if you make a crime to me of my _astonishments_, it is all
over indeed! can I help it, indeed? So forgive me! let it not be too
great a wrong to be covered by a pardon. Think that we are different,
you and I—and do not think that I would send you to ‘money and worldly
advancement’ ... do not think so meanly of my ambition for you.
Dearest dearest!—do you ever think that I could fail to you? Do you doubt
for a moment, ever ... ever, ... that my hand might peradventure ‘shake
less’ in being loosed from yours? Why, it might—and would! _Dead_ hands
do not shake at all,—and only _so_, could my hand be loosed from yours
through a failing on my part. It is your hand, while you hold it: while
you choose to hold it, and while it is a living hand.
Do you know what you are to me, ... _you_? We talk of the mild weather
doing me good ... of the sun doing me good ... of going into the air as
a means of good! Have you done me no good, do you fancy, in loving me
and lifting me up? Has the unaccustomed divine love and tenderness been
nothing to me? Think! Mrs. Jameson says earnestly ... said to _me_ the
other day ... that ‘love was only magnetism.’ And I say in my heart,
that, magnet or no magnet, I have been drawn back into life by your means
and for you ... that I see the dancing mystical lights which are seen
through the eyelids ... and I think of you with an unspeakable gratitude
always—always! No other could have done this for me—it was not possible,
except by you.
But, no—do not, beloved, wish the first days here again. You saw your
way better in them than I did. I had too bitter feelings sometimes: they
looked to me like an epigram of destiny! as if ‘He who sitteth on high
should laugh her to scorn—should hold her in derision’—as why not? My
best hope was that you should be my friend after all. We will not have
them back again ... those days! And in these, you do not love me less but
more? Would it be strange to thank you? I feel as if I _ought_ to thank
you!
I have written, written, and have more to write, yet must end here now.
The letter I wrote this morning and gave to my sister to leave in the
post, she was so naughty as to forget, and has been well scolded as a
consequence; but the scolding did not avail, I fear, to take the letter
to you to-night; there is no chance! Mrs. Jameson came to-day when I was
engaged with Lady Margaret Cocks and I could not see her—and Mr. Kenyon
came, when I could see him and was glad. I am tired with my multitude of
visitors—oh, so tired!
Why are you melancholy, dear, dearest? Was it my fault? could _that_ be?
no—you were unwell, I think ... I fear. Say how you are; and believe that
you may answer your own questions, for that I never can fail to you. If
two persons have one will on a matter of that sort, they need not be
thwarted here in London—so answer your own questions.
Wholly and ever yours I am.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, May 6, 1846.]
Dearest Ba let me [be] silent, as on other occasions, over what you
promise: one reads of ‘a contest in generosity,’ and now this party was
as determined to give, as that party not to accept—far from anything so
graceful, I am compelled to clutch at the offering, I take all, because,
because—because I _must_, now! May God requite you, my best beloved!
I met Mrs. Jameson last evening and she began just as I prophesied ...
‘but’ said she ‘I will tell you all when you come and breakfast with
me on Thursday—which a note of mine now on its way to you, desires may
happen!’