undertakings, all movements, seem easy in dream-life. The sense of
this has lately startled me. To waken up suddenly and find that I have
wronged you—what more misery?—and I feel already that I am bringing you
into a position which will by some or many be accounted unworthy of
you. Well—we will not talk of it—not now! there is time for the grave
consideration which _must be_. Let us both think.
And may God bless you, ever dearest! You are the best and most generous
of all in the world! Whatever my mistake may be, it is not concerning
_that_. Also I love you, love you. Premature things I say sometimes,
which are foolish always. Tell me how you are ... tell me how your
mother is— —but speak of your own head ... tam chari ... particularly.
Overcoming, the heat is—and I do hope that Mrs. Jameson won’t come after
all.
Your
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, June 16, 1846.]
I have just returned from Town—some twelve miles at least I must have
walked in this extreme heat ... so what has become of the headache? And
now I sit down to write what Ba will read ... what has become of the heat
and fatigue? In this sense Ba ‘looks cool at me!’
I shall just write that I love, and love you, and love you again—my own
Ba—just this, lest you learn the comfort of a respite from hearing what
you are doomed to hear, with variations, all the days of your life. But
not much more than this shall I write, because the love lies still in
me, and deep, as water does,—cannot run forth in rivulets and sparkle,
this hot weather; but then how I love her when I can only say so,—how I
feel her ... as in an old opera’s one line that stays in my recollection
the tropical sun is described on the ocean—‘fervid on the glittering
flood’—so she lies on me.
See the pure nonsense, my own Ba, and laugh at it, but not at what lies
at bottom of it, because that is true as truth, true as Ba’s self in its
way.
I called on Forster this morning: he says Landor is in high delight at
the congratulatory letters he has received—so you must write, dearest,
and add the queen-rose to his garland. F— talks about some 500 copies—or
did he say 300?—being sold already ... so there is hope for Landor’s
lovers.
So I should have written once ... but like Virgil’s shepherd ... ‘know
I now what love is!’—Do you remember that the first word I ever wrote
to you was ‘I love you, dear Miss Barrett?’ It was so,—could not but be
so—and I always loved you, as I shall always.
Tell me all you can about your dearest self, my own love. I am so happy
in you, in your perfect goodness and truth,—in all of you.
Be careful this fatiguing weather ... the evenings and mornings are the
only working time of the day, as in the beginning of things. But all day
long is rest-time to love you, dear, and kiss you, as now—kisses
Your own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday. 6 o’clock.
[Post-mark, June 17, 1846.]
Beloved, this weather, which makes Flush cross, perhaps helped to make
me depressed this morning. I had not slept well, and ought not to have
written to you till the effect of it had gone off. Now I feel more as if
I had been with you yesterday. Ah well! I don’t, can’t remember what I
wrote ... and some of it was _wise_ ... for I ought not to have promised
_that_, ... and you must loose me, that I may be loosed in Heaven, from
the bands of it. Only you are not to go to Greenwich (you go to Greenwich
to-morrow, do you not?) thinking that I wanted to teaze you. There is
just one meaning to all my words, let them be sad or gay ... and it is,
that _your happiness is precious_. For myself, if we were to part now
and for ever, I should still owe you the only happiness of my life. But
nobody is talking of parting, you know—I am yours, and cannot be put away
from you except by your own hand. Which is decided! What I ask of you, is
to spare me the pang of causing you to suffer on my account, ... and you
may suffer sometimes, I fear, through all your affection for me, ... and
indirectly, if not directly.
Two visitors I have had to-day—dear Mr. Kenyon, and Lady Margaret Cocks.
She is going to Italy—(oh, of course!) to Rome. He came to tell me that
the books came to me from Landor himself, and that I must write to him to
thank him properly. Mrs. Jameson I do not see, nor Miss Bayley.
How hot it will be for you to-morrow! Try to be amused and not too tired,
dearest beloved, and tell me in your letters how the head is.
While the heart beats (mine!) I am your own.
I am going in the carriage presently and shall write again to-night.
Won’t that be _three times in a day_ according to order?
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, June 17, 1846.]
Best, ... best, you are, to write to me when you were tired, and _so_!
When _I_ am tired and write to _you_, it is too apt to be what may
trouble you. With _you_, how different! In nothing do you show your
strength more than in your divine patience and tenderness towards me,
till ... not being used to it, I grow overwhelmed by it all, and would
give you my life at a word. Why did you love _me_, my beloved, when you
might have chosen from the most perfect of all women and each would have
loved you with the perfectest of her nature? That is my riddle in this
world. I can understand everything else ... I was never stopped for the
meaning of sorrow upon sorrow ... but that you should love me I do not
understand, and I think that I never shall.
Do I remember? Yes indeed, I remember. How I recurred and wondered
afterwards, though at the moment it seemed very simple and what was to
be met with in our philosophy every day. But there, you see, there’s
the danger of using _mala verba_! The Fates catch them up and knit them
into the web! Then I remember all the more (though I should at any
rate) through an imprudence of my own (or a piece of ill-luck rather
... it shall not be called an imprudence) of which I will tell you. I
was writing to Miss Mitford and of you—we differed about you often, ...
because she did not appreciate you properly, and was fond of dwelling on
the ‘obscurity’ when I talked of the light,—and I just then writing of
you, added in my headlong unreflecting way that I had had a real letter
from you which said that you loved me—‘Oh—but,’ I wrote on, ‘you are not
to mistake this, not to repeat it—for of course, it is simply the purest
of philanthropies’ ... some words to that effect—and if yours was the
purest of philanthropies, mine was the purest of innocences, as you may
well believe, ... for if I had had the shadow of a foresight, I should
not have fallen into the snare. So vexed I was afterwards! Not that she
thought anything at the time, or has referred to it since, or remembers
a word now. Only I was vexed in my innermost heart ... and _am_ ... do
you know? ... that I should have spoken lightly of such an expression of
yours—though you meant it lightly too. Dearest! It was a disguised angel
and I should have known it by its wings though they did not fly.
But I foresaw nothing, ... looked to you for nothing, ... nothing can
prove better to myself, than my having mentioned the quaint word at all.
For I know, and I hope you know, how impossible it always has been to me
to choose for a subject of conversation and jest, things which never
should be spoken to friend or sister. But how was I to foresee? So the
quaintness passed as quaintness with me. And never from that time (you
grew sacred too soon!), never again from that moment, did I mention
you to Miss Mitford—oh yes, I did, when she talked of introducing Mr.
Chorley, and when I replied that, being a woman, I would have my wilful
way, and that my wilful way was to see _you_ instead. But except _then_
... and when I sent her Mr. Landor’s verses on you ... not a word have
I spoken ... except in bare response. She thinks perhaps that my old
fervour about you has sunk into the socket—she suspects nothing—in fact
she does not understand what _love_ is ... and I never should think of
asking her for sympathy. She is one of the Black Stones, which, when I
climb up towards my Singing Tree and Golden Water, will howl behind me
and call names.
You had my second letter to-day, speaking of Landor, and of Mr. Kenyon’s
visit. At half-past six came Miss Bayley, talking exceeding kindnesses of
Italy, and entreating me to use her ... to let her go with me and take
care of me and do me all manner of good. What kindness, really, in a
woman whom I have not seen six times in all! I am very grateful to her.
She held my hands, and told me to write to her if ever I had need of
her—she would come at a moment, go for a year!—she would do anything for
me I desired! And this woman to believe of herself that she has no soul!
Help me to thank her in your thoughts of her! She said, by the way, that
Mrs. Jameson had talked to her of wishing to take me, ... but she thought
(Miss Bayley thought) that she (Mrs. Jameson) had too many objects and
too much vivacity ... it would not do so well, she thought. In reply—I
could just thank her, and scarcely could do _that_, ... only I am sure
she saw and felt that I was grateful to her aright, let the words come
ever so wrong. To-morrow she leaves London for an indefinite time.
She told me too that a friend of hers, calling on Mrs. Jameson, had
found her on the point of coming to me to-day, to drive out ... but she
suffered from toothache and was going to Cartwright’s first ... and last,
I suppose. I dare say he put her to torture, to be classified with ‘the
thumbscrew and the gadge’ ... some disabling torture, for I have not
seen her at all. So as at half-past seven Henrietta was going out to
dinner, Lizzie and I and Flush took our places by her in the carriage,
and went to Hyde Park ... drove close by the Serpentine, and saw by
the ruffling of the water that there was a breath of wind more than we
felt. The shadows were gathering in quite fast, shade upon shade; and
at last the silvery water seemed to hold all the light left, as on the
flat of a hand. Very much I liked and enjoyed it. And, as we came home,
the gas was in the shops ... another strange sight for me—and we all
liked everything. Flush had his head out of the window the whole way ...
except when he saw a long whip, ... or had a frightful vision at the
water of somebody washing a little dog ... which made him draw back into
the carriage with dilated eyes and quivering ears, and set about licking
my hands, for an ‘Ora pro nobis.’ And Lizzie confided to me, that, when
she is ‘grown up,’ she never will go out to dinners like Henrietta, but
drive in the park like Ba, instead ... unless she can improve upon both,
and live in a cottage covered with roses, in the country. I, in the
meantime, between my companions, thought of neither of them more than was
necessary, but of somebody whom I had been teazing perhaps ... dearest,
was it so, indeed? ... but I avenge you by teazing myself back again!
A long rambling letter, with nothing in it! ‘Passages, that lead to
nothing’—and staircases, too! May I be loved nevertheless, as usual? and
forgiven for my ‘secret faults?’ You are the whole world to me—and the
stars besides!
And I am your very own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, June 17, 1846.]
My own Ba, I release you from just as much as you would easily dispense
me from observing in that mutual promise. Indeed, it has become one
unnecessary for our present relation and knowledge: it was right at the
beginning for either to say to the other, using calm words, ‘It is your
good I seek, not mine,’ and as if it were demonstrated that I should
secure yours at the expense of mine by leaving you I would endeavour to
do it—so, you assure me, you would act by me. The one point to ascertain
therefore, is—what will amount to a demonstration; and I for my part
apprize you that no other person in the world can by any possibility know
so much of me as to be entitled to pronounce in the matter—to say ‘it is
for good or for evil’—therefore, you will no more be justified in giving
up to _that_ kind of demonstration what I consent you shall give up to
one clearly furnished by _myself_ the only authentic one—than you would
be justified in paying my money, entrusted to you, on the presentation
of a cheque signed by somebody else ... somebody who loves me better
than himself, my best of friends, truest of advisers &c. &c. It skills
not, boots not—‘John Smith’ is not R.B., nor B.A. and because R.B. or
B.A. shall be instantly attended to,—the counterfeit must be refused.’
Just this, so rational and right, I understood you to bid me promise—and
so much you have promised me, a proper precaution for the earlier time
when the friend might seem to argue with some plausibility ‘really I
understand my friend’s interests better than you can.’ But now, who dares
assure me that? I disbelieve it—one only knows better, can ever know
better—yourself; and I will obey yourself. So with me—I know better my
own good than you do yet, I think. When I tell you that good requires
such a step as you speak of, you shall acquiesce; I will tell you on
the instant, as you, in your own case, should tell me on the instant. I
needed not ask you to promise, as I foolishly did, that you would not
act in the saddest of ways—professing to see what could never be, and
believe what must be untrue. At the beginning, at the first day, suppose
Mr. Kenyon had said—you prevent his getting such a place, which brings
in so much honour and wealth—or marrying such a person who would effect
the same—you might have assented then, in your comparative ignorance,
just as you could not have objected had he said, ‘If you hold Mr. B. to
his engagement to come here on the Derby Day you will ruin him assuredly,
for his heart and soul are on “the turf” and his betting-book will go to
wreck.’ To this you could never bring yourself to pretend an assent—it
would be no argument if he went on saying—‘Why, A and B and C go to
races and bet on them’—_you know_ I _do not_—so you know my estimate of
honour and wealth and the rest, apart ... I will not say from the love
of you,—but from my own life as I had traced it years ago, and as it is
still traced for me to its end,—your love coming to help it in every
smallest particular, to supply the undreamed-of omissions in the plan of
it, and remove the obstructions best seen now that they are removed or
removable. There is a calmest ‘of calm’ statements of the good of you to
me.
My dearest Ba, you say ‘let us both think’—think of this, you! Do not
for God’s sake introduce an element of uncertainty and restlessness and
dissatisfaction into the feeling whereon _my_ life lies. To speak for
myself, this matter is concluded, done with,—I am yours, you are mine,
and not to give use to refinements upon refinements as to what is the
being most of all each other’s, which might end in your loving me best
while I was turned a Turk in the East, or my—you know the inquisition
does all for the pure love of the victim’s soul. Let us have common
sense—and think, in its most ordinary exercise, what would my life
be worth now without you—as I,—putting on your own crown, accepting
your own dearest assurance,—dare believe your life would be incomplete
now without mine—_so_ you have allowed me to believe. Then our course
is plain. If you dare make the effort, we will do as we propose,—if
not, not: I have nothing to do but take your hand ... there is not one
difficulty in my path,—nor in yours on my account,—that is for me. If
I change my views, and desire hereafter what I altogether turn from
now,—in what conceivable respect will your being my wife hinder me? If
I accept the Embassy which Young England in the person of Milnes has
promised me—you shall offer no impediment. If I rather aspire to ‘dine
out’ here in London, you shall stay at home and be good-natured. I shall
attain to all these delights just as easily with you as without you,
I suppose; ‘No, I cannot marry some other woman and by her means and
connections and connexions’—No—because—first and least of all, I begin by
drawing on myself the entire cataract of shame and disgrace in the mouth
of the world,—direct accusation or rather condemnation, against which
not a word can be urged in mitigation, because all would be the pure
simple truth—_I_ do this, who have been fretfully wincing under the mere
apprehension of catching a mere spatter or two of gossiping scandal—which
a very few words would get rid of, seeing that, in fact, the falseness of
the imputation will be apparent to everybody with eyes to see—for after
all, here I am, living to my own pleasure and my father and mother’s, and
at liberty to do so for ever, as mortals say. Well, and _so_ having gone
under the whole real cataract instead of the sprinkling impertinence of
the half a dozen sprinklings from the mop at the nursery-window which an
upward look and cry will stop at once,—_so_ having mended the matter, I
commit a sin which I turn and ask you, should you be ever at peace with
God and yourself if you sate still and suffered me to commit,—not on
account of me and my harm to follow in both worlds,—but in mere justice
to your ‘neighbour,’—on whom you would see inflicted this infamous wrong?
Dear, dear, dear Ba, I kiss you, kiss my heart out unto you,—best love,
one love! _I_ see above what I will not think over again, look over
again—but what then? Can I be quiet when I hear the least, least motion
about my treasure, and my heart that is there, with it? Then _no more_, I
beseech you, love, never one word more of all that! Whenever I can hear
such words calmly, I shall be fit for agreeing to them,—let all be now.
These two kindest of letters both come in together to my blessing—my
entire blessing! I was writing the last line when they came—I will just
say now, that the Greenwich affair is put off till Friday. Do not I
understand Miss Bayley! And do I understand you, my Ba, when I venture
this time——because of the _words_ and the pain I shall not hide that they
_did_ give me,—to feel that, even beyond my kissing you, you kiss this
one time your own R.B.
My mother is much better, and out—she is walking with my sister. I am
very well—in the joy perhaps ... but really much better—and have been so.
_My two hundredth letter from her!_ I, _poor_?
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, June 18, 1846.]
Dearest and ever dearest, try to forgive me when I fall so manifestly
short of you in all things! It is the very sense of this which throws
me on despairs sometimes of being other than a bane to your life—and
then ... by way of a remedy ... I begin to be a torment to it directly.
_Forgive me._ Whatever I may say I am as wholly yours as if you held me
in your hand, and I would do for you any extravagance, as if it were a
common thing, at a word—and what is before us is _only_ a common thing,
since I have looked to it from the beginning. Oh—I may talk when I am
out of spirits—but you know, and _I_ know best of all, that I could not
withdraw myself from you, unless you said ‘Go’—could not—I have no
power. Fine talking, it is of me, to talk of withdrawing myself from you!
You know I could not at all do it, let ever so many special pleaders come
to prove to me that you would be more prosperous and happy without me.
‘Then’ I would say ... ‘let him put me away. I can’t put myself away,
because I am not mine but his.’ Assuredly I would say just that, and no
more. So do you forget that I have teazed you and pained you ... _pained_
you!... I will try not to pain you, my own, own dearest, any more. I have
grown to love you instead of the whole world; and only one thing ...
(you understand what _that_ is ...) is dreadful and intolerable to me to
imagine. But now it is done with; and you shall teach me hereafter to
make you happy instead of the contrary. So ... yes—you are kissed this
time! upon both eyes, ... that they may not see my faults. And afterwards
I will tell you a paradox ... that if I loved you a hundred times less,
I should run into such offences less in exact proportion. And finally
I will give you a promise ... not to teaze you for a week—which were a
wonderful feat for _me_! the teazer _par excellence_.
To-day I deserved to hear of your head being worse—but it is better, I
thank God—and your mother is better—all such comforting news! But it was
no news that you did not go to Greenwich to-day,—for Mrs. Jameson came
for me to drive at about six, and she and I were in Regent’s Park until
nearly eight. Then she went somewhere to dinner, and I, who had had tea,
came home to supper! I like her very much—more and more, certainly—and
we need not be mysterious up to the usual mark of mystery, because I
told her ... told her ... what might be told—and she was gracious to
the uttermost—not angry at all,—and said that ‘Truth was truth, and
one could breathe in the atmosphere of it, and she was glad I had told
her.’ Of you, she said, that she admired you more than ever—yes, more
than ever—for the ‘manner in which as a man of honour you had kept the
secret’—so you were praised, and I, not blamed ... and we shall not
complain, if our end is as good as our beginning. Also we talked of your
poetry and of you personally, and I was _pleased_, ... which proves a
little what was said—and I heard how you were invited as a ‘celebrity’
for the Countess Hahn-Hahn to see you, and how you effaced yourself
with ever so much gracefulness; yet not too much, to omit charming the
whole room. Mrs. Jameson praises you always, as nobody does better. And
to-morrow ... will you be surprised to hear that to-morrow at half-past
four, I am to go again with her, ... to see Rogers’s pictures? Is it
wrong? shall I get into a scrape? She promised laughingly that I should
be _incognita_ to the only companion she thought of taking ... a Mrs.
Bracebridge, I think ... and Mr. Rogers himself is not to be visible—and
she herself will mention it to nobody. It was hard to say ‘_no_’—yet
perhaps ‘no’ would have been better. Do you think so? Mrs. Bracebridge is
an artist and lives or lived on _Mount Hymettus_!—and she is not to hear
my name even.
Now—good night, very dear!—most dear of all! I will not teaze you for
a fortnight, I think. Ah—if ever I can do that again, you shall not be
_pained_, ... you shall think that my heart and life are in you, and
that, if they seem to flatter, it is that they go deeper. All I _am_ is
yours—which is different from ... all I _have_. ‘All I _have_,’ is when I
may lean my head down on the shoulder—
So let me be your own
BA.
Of those two letters, one was in the post before seven the evening
before. Now, is it not too bad?
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Thursday.
[Post-mark, June 18, 1846.]
Did you really kiss me on the two eyes, my Ba? I cannot say ‘perhaps at
the very time I was thinking of you,’—more than ‘when I was breathing’—I
breathe always, think of you always,—kiss you almost always. You dear,
dearest Ba! Do _pain_ me so again and again,—if you will _so_ cure me
every time! But you should not imagine that I can mistake the motive,—as
if you loved me less and therefore wrote—oh, no—but there is no getting
rid of these mistakings before the time: they bear their fruit and die
away naturally ... the hoe never cuts up all their roots. I shall trust
to hear you say one day I am past such mistaking—but—at Amalfi?
I am very glad, _love_, you go to Mr. Rogers’ to-day—what harm _can_
follow? The evil in the other case was a very precise and especial one.
They say his pictures are well worth seeing. Tell me, make me see _you_
seeing! I am glad, too, Mrs. Jameson knows ... but her graciousness I
expected, because the causes you were able to give her would really
operate just in that manner: indeed they _are_ the sole causes of the
secresy we have observed. I cannot help liking Mrs. Jameson more, much
more since her acquaintance with you. Hazlitt says somewhere that the
misery of consorting with country-people is felt when you try for their
sympathy as to favourite actors—‘Liston?’ says the provincial, ‘never
heard of him’—but—whoever knows Miss Barrett ... ‘Ba,’ they are not going
to be let know ... of such a person _I_ know something more than of any
other.
Talking of Hahn-Hahn, read this note of Mrs. Carlyle’s—although to my
mortification I find that the wise man is not so peremptory on the virtue
of one of Ba’s qualities as I, the ignorant man, must continue to be.
Never mind,—perhaps ‘in the long run’ I may love you as if you were
exactly to Mrs. Carlyle’s mind!