might be in a better world—altogether made up of affectionateness
and generosity. I do not much fear, now, I shall ever offend
you—in the miserable way of giving you direct offence which mortal
will and endeavour could avert (although I speak—by design, on
profession—doubtfully about the happiness of the future in some
respects, yet I dare be quite bold here, and feel sure, as of my life at
this moment, that I shall never do _that_, ...)—but at present I almost
love even the apprehension that I may be found out too useless, too
unworthy in the end; let it be said so, since I feel it so, my own Ba! I
love this, because your dear love seems fit to cover any imperfection of
mine: I dare say you do _not_ see them, as you say—but you will perhaps,
and then I trust to the love wholly. I want forms, ways, of expressing my
devotion to you—but such as I am, all is yours.
I will write more to-morrow—the stupid head will not be quiet to-day—my
mother’s is sadly affected too—it is partly my fault for reading ... a
state to be proud of! Don’t let my frankness do me wrong, however,—the
inconvenience is very little, but I was desired to tell you, was I not? I
shall go out presently and get well.
Are _you_ out to-day, beloved? It is very warm; be careful like the
dearest Ba you are! And kiss me as I kiss you ... all except the
adoration which is mine indefeasibly.
May God bless you ever for your very own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Night.
[Post-mark, June 3, 1846.]
My own dearest who are never to offend me!—And, true, _that_ is—because I
have _tried_, before now, to be offended, and could not, ... being under
a charm. So it is not my fault but yours, that never you see me angry.
But your head, _my_ head ... is it better, dearest, by this time, or
is it ringing and aching even, under the crashing throat-peals of Mr.
Landor’s laughter? he laughs, I remember like an ogre—he laughs as if
laughter could kill, and he knew it, thinking of an enemy. May it do his
friends no harm to-night! How I think of you, and, in every thought,
love you! Yes, surely I can love you as if I were worthier! and better
perhaps than if _I_ were better, ... though that may sound like a riddle.
And dear dearest, why do you talk of your faults _so_? It is not at all
gracious of you indeed. You are on a high hill above me where I cannot
reach your hand—(in the myths, be it understood) and you sigh and say
querulously ... ‘By and bye I may have to take a step down lower.’ Now
is that gracious of you, or worthy of your usual chivalry? You ought to
be _glad_, on the contrary, to be so much nearer _me_—! in the myths, be
it understood! For _out_ of the myths we are near enough, as near as two
hearts can be, ... I believe ... I trust!
You will not mistake what I said to you this morning my own beloved—you
will not? My promise to you was to place the decision in your hands—and
my desire is simply that you should decide according to your judgment and
understanding ... I do not say, your affections, this time. Now it has
struck me that you have a sort of _instinct_....
But no—I shall not write on that subject to-night. Rather I will tell you
what I have been doing to-day to be so very, very tired. To-day I paid
my first visit—not to Mr. Kenyon but to an older friend than even he—to
Miss _Trepsack_ ... learn that name by heart ... whom we all of us have
called ‘Treppy’ ever since we could speak. Moreover she has nursed ...
tossed up ... held on her knee—Papa when he was an infant; the dearest
friend of his mother and her equal, I believe, in age—so you may suppose
that she is old now. Yet she can outwalk my sisters, and except for
deafness, which, dear thing, she carefully explains as ‘a mere nervous
affection,’—is as young as ever. But she calls us all ‘her children’ ...
and I, you are to understand, am ‘her child,’ _par excellence_ ... her
acknowledged darling and favourite,—perhaps because tenderly she thinks
it right to carry on the love of her beloved friend, whom she lived with
to the last. Once she saw you in the drawing-room—and you perhaps saw
her. She dines here every Sunday, and on the other days of course often,
and has the privilege of scolding everybody in the house when she is out
of humour, and of being ‘coaxed’ by slow degrees back into graciousness.
So, she had full right to have me on my first visit—had she not? and
the goodness and kindness and funniness of the reception were enough to
laugh and cry over. First ... half way up-stairs, I found a chair, to
sit and rest on. Then the windows were all shut up, because I liked it
so in my room. And then, for occulter reasons, a feast was spread for
Arabel and Flush and me, which made me groan in the spirit, and Flush
wag his tail, to look upon ... ice cream and cakes, which I was to taste
and taste in despite of all memories of dinner an hour before ... and
_cherrybrandy_!!! which I had to taste too, ... just then saved alive by
an oath, on Arabel’s part, that I was ‘better without it.’ Think of dear
Treppy!—of all the kindness, and fondness! Almost she kissed me to pieces
as the ‘darlingest of children.’ So I am glad I went—and so is Flush,
who highly approves of that class of hospitable attentions, and wishes
it were the way of the world every day. But I am tired! so tired! The
visiting is a new thing.
It is an old one that I should write such long letters. If I am tired,
you might retort with the _Ed io anche_!—Yet you will not, because you
are supernaturally good; and as it was in the beginning, ever shall be,
you say!
But will you explain to me some day why you are sorry for Italy having
been mentioned between us, and why you would rather prefer Nova Zembla?
_So as to kill me the faster, is it?_
Your Ælian says that the oldest painters used to write under a tree, when
they painted one, ‘This is a tree.’ So _I_ must do, I suddenly remember,
under my jests ... I being, it would appear, as bad an artist in jesting,
as they were in painting. Therefore ... see the last line of the last
paragraph ... ‘_This is a jest._’
And _this_ is the earnest thing of all ... that I love you as I can
love—and am for ever ... living and dying....
Your own—
Take care of the head, _I entreat_! and say how you are! and how your
mother is! I am grieved to hear of that relapse!
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, June 3, 1846.]
I will tell you, dearest: your good is my good, and your will mine; if
you were convinced _that_ good would be promoted by our remaining as we
are for twenty years instead of one, I should endeavour to submit in the
end ... after the natural attempts to find out and remove the imagined
obstacle. If, as you seem to do here, you turn and ask about _my_
good—yours being supposed to be uninfluenced by what I answer ... then,
here is my TRUTH on that subject, in that view,—my good for myself. Every
day that passes before _that day_ is one the more of hardly endurable
anxiety and irritation, to say the least; and the thought of another
year’s intervention of hope deferred—altogether intolerable! Is there
anything I can do in that year—or that you can do—to forward our object?
Anything impossible to be done sooner? If not—
You may misunderstand me now at first, dear, dearest Ba: at first I sate
quietly, you thought; do I live quietly now, do you think? Ought I to
show the evidence of the unselfishness I _strive_, at least, to associate
with my love, by coolly informing you ‘what would please me.’
But I will not say more, you must know ... and _I_ seem to know that this
question was one of Ba’s old questions ... a branch-licence, perhaps, of
the original inestimable one, that charter of my liberties, by which I am
empowered to ‘hold myself unengaged, unbound’ &c. &c.
Good Heaven; I would not,—even to save the being asked such
questions,—have played the horseleech that cries ‘give, give,’ in
Solomon’s phrase—‘Do you let me see you once a week? Give me a sight once
a day!—May I dare kiss you? Let me marry you to-morrow!’
But to the end, the very end, I am yours: God knows I would not do you
harm for worlds—worlds! I may easily mistake what _is_ harm or not. I
will ask your leave to speak—at your foot, my Ba: I would not have dared
to take the blessing of kissing your hand, much less your lip, but that
it seemed as if I was leading you into a mistake—as did happen—and that
you might fancy I only felt a dreamy, abstract passion for a phantom of
my own creating out of your books and letters, and which only took your
name.... _That_ once understood, the rest you shall give me. In every
event, I am your own.
_12 o’clock._—I thought another letter might arrive. This must go as we
shall set off presently to Mr. Kenyon’s.
I _did_ understand the question about my sister. I mean, that you felt
somewhat so, incredible as it seems—only I believe _all_ you say, all—to
the letter, the iota. Think of _that_, whenever I _might_ ask and do
not—or speak, and am silent ... but I am getting back to the question
discussed above, which I ought not to do—understand me, dearest dearest!
See me, open the eyes, the dear eyes, and see the love of your
R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Wednesday—5 p.m.
[Post-mark, June 4, 1846].
Then let it be as we meant it should be. And do you forgive me, my own,
if I have teazed you ... vexed you. Do I not always tell you that you are
too good for me?
Yet the last of my intentions was, this time, to doubt of your attachment
for me. Believe _that_. I will write to-night more fully—but never can
be more than at this moment
Your
BA.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Wednesday Evening.
[Post-mark, June 4, 1846.]
Nothing at all had it to do with your Magna Charta, beloved, that
question of mine. After you were gone the other day and I began turning
your words over and over, ... (_so_, I make hay of them to feed the
horses of the sun!) it struck me that you had perhaps an instinct of
common sense, which, with a hand I did not see and a voice I could not
hear, drew you perhaps. So I thought I would ask. For after all, this is
rather a serious matter we are upon, and if you think that you are not
to have your share of responsibility ... that you are not to consider
and arrange and decide, and perform your own part, ... you are as much
mistaken as ever _I_ was. ‘Judge what I say.’ For my part, I have done,
it seems to me, nearly as much as I can do. I do not, at least, seem
to myself to have any power to _doubt_ even, of the path to choose for
the future. If for any reason you had seen wisdom in delay, it would
have been a different thing—and the seeing was a _possible_ thing, you
will admit. I did not ask you if you _desired_ a delay, but if you saw
a reason for it. In the meantime I was absolutely yours, I remembered
thoroughly, ... and the question went simply to enquire what you thought
it best to do with your own.
For me I agree with your view—I never once thought of proposing a delay
on my own account. We are standing on hot scythes, and because we do
not burn in the feet, by a miracle, we have no right to count on the
miracle’s prolongation. Then nothing is to be gained—and everything
may be lost—and the sense of mask-wearing for another year would be
suffocating. This for _me_. And for yourself, I shall not be much younger
or better otherwise, I suppose, next year. I make no motion, then, for a
delay, further than we have talked of, ... to the summer’s end.
My good ... happiness! Have I any that did not come from you, that is not
_in_ you, that you should talk of my good apart from yours? I shudder to
look back to the days when you were not for me. Was ever life so like
death before? My face was so close against the tombstones, that there
seemed no room even for the tears. And it is unexampled generosity of
yours, that, having done all for me, you should write as you always do,
about _my giving_ ... giving! Among the sons of men there is none like
you as I believe and know, ... and every now and then declare to my
sisters.
* * * * *
Dearest, if I vexed you, teazed you, by that question which proved
unnecessary ... forgive me! Had you uncomfortable thoughts in the gardens
to-day? Perhaps! And I could not smooth them away, though I drew as near
as I dared ... though I was in a carriage at seven o’clock, running a
mystical circle round your tents and music. Did you feel me, any more
than if I were a ‘quick spider,’ I wonder.
Henrietta and Arabel were going to spend the evening with cousins of
ours, and as the carriage waited for the plaiting of Henrietta’s hair,
or the twisting of the ringlets, Arabel said to me ‘Will you go for a
quarter of an hour?’ And in a minute, we were off ... she and Flush
and Lizzie and I. Never did I expect again to see so many people—but I
thought of _one_ so much that my head was kept from turning round—and
we drove once round the ‘inner circle,’ so called, and looked up to Mr.
Kenyon’s windows—and _there_, or _there_, you were, certainly!—and either
_there_, or _there_, you were being disquieted in your thoughts by me,
as certainly! Ah forgive me. After all, ... listen ... I love you with
the fulness of my nature. Nothing of all this unspeakable goodness and
tenderness is lost on me ... I catch on my face and hands every drop of
all this dew.
So now ... you are not teazed? we are at one again, and may talk of
outside things again?
But first, I must hear how the head is. _How_ is it, best and dearest?
And you had my letter at last, had you not? Because I wrote it as usual,
of course. May God bless you—and _me_ as I am altogether your own.
_Twice_ (observe) I have been out to-day—the first time, walking. Also,
twice have I written to you.
Say how your mother is—and _yourself_!—
George and Henrietta were asked to meet you at Mr. Kenyon’s—but only
to-day, and too late to forestall other engagements. Did you enjoy any of
it? Tell me.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Thursday.
[Post-mark, June 4, 1846.]
‘Vex me,’ or ‘teaze me,’ my own Ba, you cannot. I look on it indeed,
after a moment, as the only natural effect of your strange disbelief
in yourself, and ignorance of our true relation one to the other by
every right and reason. Only, Ba, you _are_ wrong—doubly,—that is, you
would be wrong if your own estimate of your power over me were the true
one—for,—though it is difficult for me to fancy these abstractions and
fantastic metamorphoses (as how one could feel without one’s head,—or how
I could live without the love of you now I have once got it)—yet, since
you make me, I will fancy I love my head and love you no longer ... and
then (which is _now_) _now_, do you think I am so poor a creature as to
go on adding to my faults, and letting you gently down, as the phrase is,
with cowardly excuses, ‘postponing’ this, and ‘consenting to delay’ the
other,—and perhaps managing to get you to do the whole business for me
in the end? I hope and think I should say at once—Oh, no more of this!
But see how right I was—‘_an instinct_, you seem to see.’ So, I have been
thinking,—there are but few topics of our conversation from which any
such impressions could arise—was it that I have asked more than once, if
you could really bear another winter in London, (in all probability a
severe one)—and again, if you could get to Italy by any ordinary means
without the same opposition you will have to encounter for my sake?...
My Ba, as God knows, _all that_ was so much pure trembling attempting
to justify myself for the over-greatness of the fortune, the excess of
the joy,—if I could but feel that there was a little of your own good
in it too—that you would gain that much advantage at least by my own
inestimable advantage! If you knew how,—spite of all endeavours,—how
happy I have been—which is a shame to confess—but how very happy to hear
that you could not without a degree of danger stay here—could no more
easily leave England with Miss Bayley than with me! It seemed to justify
me, as I say. And so of ‘the wishing I had not mentioned Italy’—I wish
your will to be mine, to originate mine, your pleasure to be only mine.
Expressed first—it _will be_ my pleasure ... but all is wrong if you
take the effect, seek to know it, before the cause. What does it matter
that I should prefer Italy to Nova Zembla? So, you _ought to have begun
by saying_ ‘we will go there,’ and then my pleasure in obedience had
been naturally expressed. Did I not ask you whether you had not, after
all, thought of going to Italy first—to Pisa, or Malta,—from the very
beginning? _Always to justify myself!_ Always!
But—this too is misunderstood. Let me say humbly, I _should_ prefer to go
with you to Italy or any place where we can live alone for some little
time, till you can _know_ me, be as sure of me as of yourself. Nor am I
so selfish, I hope, as that (because my uttermost pride and privilege
and glory above all glories would be to live in your sick-room and
serve you,)—as that, on that account, I would not rather see you in a
condition to need none of my service ... the next thing to serving you,
is to be—what shall I say?—served by you ... loved by you, made happy by
you—it is the being an angel, though there might be _arch_angels—
And if _now_ you do not understand,—well, I kneel to you, my Ba, and pray
you to give yourself to me in deed as in word, the body as the heart and
mind,—and _now_!—at any time,—you know what I cannot say, I cannot, I
think,—if I know myself—love you more than I do ... but I shall always
love you _thus_—and _thus_, in any case, happen what God may ordain—
Your R.
I know this is taking the simple experimental question too seriously to
heart ... but such experiments touch at the very quick and core of the
heart ... I cannot treat them otherwise—_ought_ I?
You will see Miss Bayley to-day—Mr. Kenyon asked if I were going to call
to-day ... ‘if not, Miss B. would.’
I have your letter ... the short note, not the promised one ... for all
this writing about the question ... but I could not merely say—‘Oh no,
you mistake ... I had rather, upon the whole, not wait.’
Even now the feeling, in its subsiding, hinders me from speaking of the
delightful account of ‘Treppy’ ... whom I remember now, perfectly—and
what comfort is in _thy_ dear note!
Bless you, _my_ ‘darlingest creature,’—my Ba!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday.
[Post-mark, June 5, 1846.]
You are too perfect, too overcomingly good and tender—dearest you are,
and I have no words with which to answer you. There is little wonder
indeed that _I_, being used so long to the dark, should stumble and
mistake, and see men like trees walking—and yet I must tell you that I
did _not_ mistake to the extent you have set down for me ... and that
never was I so dull, so idiotic and ungrateful, as to fancy you into one
‘wishing to let me down gently with cowardly excuses.’ Since I first
looked you in the face, and before that day, I have been incapable of
defiling the idea of you with such an unworthy imputation. And surely
what I _did_, fancy, was consistent with the fullest faith in you and
in the completest verity of your affection for myself. You might have
had reasons, surely, which I did not see, without aggrieving me in any
fashion. So do not make me out _too_ stupid—it is bad enough actually.
Yes—those questions you refer to, turned me down that path—and do tell me
how I could be expected to guess at the real drift of them, after having
been accustomed to walk rather with men than with angels! Ah—and now
even, that I _see_, it makes me smile and sigh together. To say that I am
not worthy, all at once grows too little to say. _No one_ could be worthy
of such words from _you_. You are best, best!! How much more do you want
me to owe to you, when I _begin_ by owing to your all things, ... the
only happiness of my life?
As to Italy, I thought of it first, so I am in no danger of thinking
that you engage me as female courier and companion ... the feminine of
what Mr. Bezzi wants to be, Miss Bayley told me to-day. So if it is the
same thing to you, we will put off Nova Zembla a little. But how is it
possible to jest, with this letter close by? Dearest of all, believe that
I am grateful to you as I ought to be ... penetrated ... touched to the
bottom of my heart with the sense of what you have been to me and are;
dearest beloved!
So do not reproach me with my dull questions, on Saturday. I won’t ask
them any more, ... and I did not mean by them the wickedness you thought
... so now let us be tranquil and happy till the fine weather ends.
Brightly it begins, does it not? So hot it is to-day—so very hot in this
room! Miss Bayley came just as I had been out walking and was tired; but
she talked and interested me, and I found out from her that you were not
in the gardens when we drove round them, but in the house when I looked
up at the windows. Very happy and agreeable you all were, she said, at
Mr. Kenyon’s—though Mrs. Jameson missed the flower-show.
I forgot to tell you that Treppy is a Creole—she would say so as if she
said she was a Roman. She lived, as an adopted favourite, in the house
of my great grandfather in Jamaica for years, and talks to the delight
of my brothers, of that ‘dear man’ who, with fifty thousand a year, wore
patches at his knees and elbows, upon principle. Then there are infinite
traditions of the great great grandfather, who flogged his slaves like
a divinity: and upon the beatitude of the slaves as slaves, let no one
presume to doubt, before Treppy. If ever she sighs over the slaves, it is
to think of their emancipation. Poor creatures, to be emancipated!
May God bless you, dear dearest! Shall I ever be better, I wonder, than
the torment of your life? It is _I_ who want to be ‘_justified_,’ and not
_you_ my beloved,—except as to your good sense for having made such a
choice.
Such as I am however, I am
Your very own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Friday.
[Post-mark, June 5, 1846.]
Nor did _I_ mean so bad, dearest dearest, as that you _were_ suspecting
me of _that_ ... Oh no, since ‘Scorn of me (_that_ “me”) would recoil on
you’ ... you would have no right to bear with such a person for a moment:
but I put the broadest case possible to declare upon broadly. As I would
do _so_ if I felt _so_ ... felt no love longer ... so, in due degree, I
would tell you frankly a fear or a doubt if I felt either. I thought you
suspected me, perhaps, of being deficient in this last point of courage:
but it was not altogether so,—or if it was, you shall doubt no more,
but believe the more strongly for the future ... let us kiss on that
convention, dearest! You see, I knew it _could not but be that_ ... for
if anything had struck _you_ as really to be gained by delay, you must
feel whether I should listen to that or no—last year, for instance, when
you said ‘let us wait.’
Ah, Ba, my own, many things _are_ that ought not to be ... and I hide
nothing ... cannot hide from you some feelings ... as that—after all,
after all—talk, and indeed think, as one may—it is, let us say, a
_pleasant_ thing, at least, to be able to prove one’s words,—even one’s
lighter words. The proof may justify _some_ words, I mean, and the rest,
that admit of no proof, get believed on the score of _them_,—the first
words and proofs. I should like to prove a very, very little ... if
I could but do so in turning fifty-thousand a year, or less, to some
account and building Flush a house ‘fair to see’—after which I could go
on talking about the longings never to be satisfied here....
Now this is foolish,—so the causeless blame, if you please, shall be
transferred here ... as naughty children punished by mistake are promised
a remission of next offence.
Oh to-morrow kisses all right ... all so right again, dearest! I have
so much to say. Make me remember, love, to tell you something I have
just learned about Mr. Kenyon which makes one—no, all is proper,—he
_should_ have the money, and I the admiration and love of his divine use
of it: something to love him for, and he happy that God will reward it.
Remember—for even _that_ I should forget by you!
And all has been charming at Mr. Kenyon’s—Landor’s dinner, and our
flower-show feast,—I will tell you to-morrow—and last night I went to
Mrs. Procter’s in downright spirits ‘_pour cause_’ (with my first letter
... not my second, which only arrived this morning)—and I danced, to put
it on record there that I was altogether happy, and saw Mrs. Jameson,
and the Countess Hahn-Hahn, and Milnes and the Howitts and others in a
multitude,—and I got to this house door at 4 o’clock, with the birds
singing loud and the day bright and broad—and my head is _quite well_,—as
my mother’s is better, I hope—quite well, I am at this minute. For
the rest, the news of your two exits and entrances in one day ... oh,
thank you, thank the golden heart of my own, own Ba! whom I shall see
to-morrow, but can ... _how_ I can kiss her now—being her own
R.B.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Sunday.
[Post-mark, June 6, 1846.]