residence for any time. You spoke of the _bad water_ at Ravenna ... which
if a serious inconvenience anywhere is a very plague in Italy; well, the
medical people, according to Valléry, attribute the black hollow cheeks
and sunk eyes and general ill health of the Florentines to their vile
water; impregnated with lead, I think. There is only one good fountain in
the city—that opposite Santa Croce; I religiously abstained from drinking
water there—and felt the privation the more from having just left Rome,
where the water is the most perfectly delicious and abundant and, they
say, wholesome—in the world. That one objection is decisive against
Ravenna—but then, why do the English all live at Florence?
It makes me happy to hear of your achievements and _not_ of any ill
result—_happy_! Is it quite so warm to-day? If it were to rain to-morrow
(!), IF—our party would be postponed till the next day, Saturday, I
believe ... there was a kind of understanding to that effect—now, in
that case, might I go to you to-morrow? In the case of real heavy rain
only——the letter to-morrow will tell me perhaps....
Goodbye, dearest dearest; I love you wholly—
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, June 19, 1846.]
But I have not been to Mr. Rogers’s to-day, after all. I had a note from
Mrs. Jameson, to put off our excursion to Saturday ... if I consented
to Saturday! but of course I would not consent to Saturday—and as she
intimated that another day would do as well, we shall have another day
fixed, I suppose. What a good fruit it would be of the confession I made
in the park, if she were to ask _you_ to go!!! Oh, I should like _that_—I
should like it notwithstanding the drawbacks. It would be a fair gain
upon the usual times of meeting—only that I could not care quite as much
for the pictures—yet, those too, I should like to see with you, rather
than apart from you. And _you_ never saw them ... _you_! Is there a hope
of her asking you when you are at Greenwich together? Now I have got this
into my head, it will not go out again—oh, you must try and enchant her
properly at Greenwich and lead her into asking you. Yet, with you or
without you in the body, the spirit of you and the influence of you are
always close to my spirit when it discerns any beauty or feels any joy;
if I am happy on any day it is through you wholly, whether you are absent
or present, dearest, and ever dearest!
And so, instead of Mr. Rogers’s pictures, I have been seeing you in my
thoughts, as I sate here all alone to-day. When everybody was at dinner I
remembered that I had not been out—it was nearly eight ... there was no
companion for me unless I called one from the dinner-table; and Wilson,
whom I thought of, had taken holiday. Therefore I put on my bonnet, as
a knight of old took his sword,—aspiring to the pure heroic,—and called
Flush, and walked down-stairs and into the street, all alone—_that_ was
something great! And, with just Flush, I walked there, up and down in
glorious independence. Belgium might have felt so in casting off the
yoke. As to Flush, he frightened me a little and spoilt my vain-glory—for
Flush has a very good, stout vain-glory of his own, and, although
perfectly fond of me, has no idea whatever of being ruled over by me!—(he
looks beautiful scorn out of his golden eyes, when I order him to do
this or this) ... and _Flush_ chose to walk on the opposite side of the
street,—he _would_,—he insisted on it! and every moment I expected him to
disappear into some bag of the dogstealers, as an end to _his_ glory, _à
lui_. Happily, however, I have no moral with which to point my tale—it’s
a very immoral story, and shows neither Flush nor myself punished for our
sins. Often, I am not punished for my sins, ... am I? _You_ know _that_
... dearest, dearest! But then, even _you_ are not punished for your sins
... when you flatter so! Ah, it is happy for you, and for your reputation
in good taste and sense, that you cannot very well say such things except
to me, who cannot believe them. For the rest, the eyes were certainly
blinded, ... being kissed too hard.
How I like Mrs. Carlyle’s note! You will go of course. But it will _not_
rain to-morrow, and you shall _not_ have the advantage of coming through
it to me, ... for this reason (among others far better), that I have
engaged to see, at three or four perhaps, a friend of ours from the
country. She is in London for only two days and wrote to beg me to see
her, and to-day I escaped by half a rudeness, and, if I do to-morrow, it
will be by a whole rudeness. So, not to-morrow! And, if Saturday should
be taken from us, we must find three days somehow next week—it will be
easily done.
As to Florence, the flood of English is the worst water of all in the
argument. And then Dr. Chambers ‘warned me off’ Florence, as being too
cold for the winter. It would be as well not to begin by being ill; and
half I am afraid of Ravenna—though Ravenna may _not_ be cold, and though
Shelley may belie it altogether. ‘A miserable place’ he calls it in the
‘Letters.’ Still I observe that his first impressions are apt to be
darker than remain. For instance, he began by hating Pisa, and preferred
it to most places, afterwards. There is Pisa by the way! Or your Sorrento
... Salerno ... Amalfi ... you shall consider if you please—find a new
place if you like.
It is my last letter perhaps till I see you. May God bless you, I lift
up my heart to say. How happy I ought to be, ... and am, ... with your
thoughts all round me, _so_, as you describe! Let them call me your very
own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, June 19, 1846.]
I shall hardly be able, I am afraid, to get your letter ... if one should
come through your dear goodness, my own Ba ... before I go out ... having
to meet the Procters’ party in Town: so I will just write my joy at its
being little more now than twenty-four hours before I shall see you, I
trust. The day is cool and nearer rain than I fancied probable—but, oh
the task-work, Egyptian bondage, that _much_ going-out would be to me,
who am tired (_unreasonably_) beforehand on this first and most likely
last occasion during the year. It is a pity that I am so ignorant about
Hahn-Hahn’s books—one, ‘Faustina,’ I got last night, but have neither
heart nor time to ‘get it up’ in a couple of hours.
Something you said on Mrs. Jameson’s authority amused me—the encomium on
my grace in sitting still to see the play and not jumping on the stage to
act too—as if it were not the best privilege one finds in being ‘known’
never so little, that it dispenses one from having to make oneself
known. When you are shipwrecked among Caribbee Indians you are forced
to begin professing ‘I can make baskets, and tell fortunes, and foresee
eclipses—so don’t eat me!’ And even there if they threatened nothing of
the kind, I should be content to live and die as unhonoured as one of
their own cabbage-trees.
I must go now—the day gets hotter, but then our day draws nearer—All my
heart is yours, best of dearest loves, my own Ba, as I am your own—
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday.
[Post-mark, June 22, 1846.]
What I told you yesterday is very often in my thoughts, my own Ba—that
with respect to the love for you ‘I see what I know and testify what I
have seen.’ I know what _is_, and _why_ it is—so far as my faculties of
perception allow, of course—I rest on you just as I sate on the grass in
the garden this morning with the very earth’s immensity beneath: that is
very different from trusting to this chair which is firm enough now, but
might break down from a thousand causes. How entirely I believe in you,
Ba! When you praise me, I believe that you are in error, yet believe it
none——I know I am not so truthful to you—not so invariably, in the least
as in the greatest matters—in the _greatest_, in the ordinary even, I
speak pure truth,—but the old conventional habits cling, as I find out on
reflection sometimes—but I aspire no less to become altogether open to
your sight as you are to me,—I in my degree,—like a smallest of lake’s
face under the sky’s: and for this also I shall have to bless you, my
only Ba,—my only Ba!
I ought never ... I think I will not again ... attempt to write down why
I love you.... (not, NOT that it is done here, but alluded-to, touched
upon ...) The elements of the love ... (I say ‘the’ love, _mine_, because
I _will_ not know, nor hear, nor be taught anything by anybody else about
‘love,’ the one love everybody knows, it seems, and lives and dies by)—my
love’s elements are so many that the attempt to describe them is to bring
about this failure ... the first that comes is taken up and treated of
at length ... as that element of ‘_trust_’ just now ... and then, in the
feeling of incompetence which makes the pen sink away and turns the mind
off, the others are let pass by unnamed, much less described, or at least
acknowledged for the undeniable elements they are. What were all the
_trust_ without—and thus I could begin again! Let me say no more now—and
forgive all the foolishness ... it is not for my wisdom you are to love
me, Ba! Except that if you agreed too heartily with me on that point, I
should very likely be found turning round on you with ‘not wise, when I
adore you _so_?’ Wise or unwise, I _do_ adore you, my Ba! And more and
evermore! But see how I need your letters to _train_ mine, to lead them
into something more like the true way ... and to-morrow the letter will
come—will it not? And mine shall be less about myself and more about
you—whom may God bless, prays your own
R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Sunday.
[Post-mark, June 22, 1846.]
I write to you in the drawing-room, and have brought down with me, I
find, no smaller paper—but it can’t be filled, can it? though I have to
tell you the great news about the lilies ... that all, except _two_, are
in full blow ... and that the two are unfolding ... I can almost see the
leaves move. I told you how it would be. They will live, ... and last
longer than the roses, ... which I shall have to tell you by history as
well as prediction, presently. The next news is not so good,—for I have
had a note from Mrs. Jameson to the effect that she will come to take me
to the pictures to-morrow, Monday—so that there will be no time to be
diplomatic. My hope was of your meeting her at Mr. Carlyle’s, before she
could arrange anything finally,—and really I do feel as disappointed as
if I had had a reason for the hope. Now, unless we have another miracle,
there’s an end, I suppose.
Think of my having left Flush behind me fast asleep. He dashes at the
door in the most peremptory way, and nearly throws me backward when I
open it, with his leaping-up-joy ... if it is not rather his reproach.
Now I am here all alone, except Flush—sitting, leaning against the open
window with my feet curled up, and, at them, Flush curled up too; and I
writing on my knee _more meo_. Rather cooler it seems, but rather too hot
still it is, I think. How did you get home? how are you, dearest? And
your mother? tell me of her, and of you! You always, you know (_do_ you
know?), leave your presence with me in the flowers; and, as the lilies
unfold, of course I see more and more of you in each apocalypse. Still,
the Saturday’s visit is the worst of all to come to an end, as always I
feel. In the first place stands Sunday, like a wall without a door in
it! no letter! Monday is a good day and makes up a little, but it does
not prevent Tuesday and Wednesday following ... more intervening days
than between the other meetings—or so it seems. I forgot to tell you
that yesterday I went to Mr. Boyd’s house ... not to see him, but as a
preliminary step to seeing him. Arabel went to his room to tell him of
my being there—we are both perhaps rather afraid of meeting after all
these years of separation. Quite blind he is—and though scarcely older
than Mr. Kenyon (perhaps a year or two or three), so nervous, that he has
really made himself infirm, and now he refuses to walk out or even to
go down-stairs. A very peculiar life he has led ever since he lost his
sight, which he did when he was quite a young man—and a very peculiar
person he is in all possible ways. His great faculty is ... _memory_ ...
and his great passion ... Greek—to which of late he has added _Ossian_.
Otherwise, he talks like a man of slow mind, which he is, ... and with
a child’s way of looking at things, such as would make you smile—oh, he
talks in the most wonderfully childish way! Poor Mr. Boyd. He cares for
me perhaps more than he cares for any one else ... far more than for
his own only daughter; but he is not a man of deep sensibility, and,
if he heard of my death, would merely sleep a little sounder the next
night. Once he said to me that whenever he felt sorry about anything,
he was inclined to go to sleep. An affectionate and grateful regard ...
grateful for many kindnesses ... I bear him, for my part. He says that
I should wear the crown in poetry, if I would but follow Pope—but that
the dreadful system of running lines one into another ruins everything.
When I talk of _memory_, I mean merely the mechanical faculty. The
_associative_, which makes the other a high power, he wants. So I went
to his house in St. John’s Wood yesterday, and saw the little garden.
Poor Mr. Boyd. There, he lives, all alone—and never leaving his chair!
yet cheerful still, I hear, in all that desolation. As for you and
Tennyson, he never heard of you ... he never guesses at the way of modern
literature ... and it is the intense compliment to me when he reads
verses of mine, ‘notwithstanding my corrupt taste,’ ... to quote his own
words.
Dearest, do you love me to-day? I think of you, which is quite the same
thing. Think of _me_ to-morrow at half-past four when Mrs. Jameson comes,
and I shall have all that exertion to go through without the hope of you.
Only that you are always _there_ ... _here_!—and I, your very own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Monday.
[Post-mark, June 22, 1846.]
If I only thought for myself in this instance, I should at once go and
mount guard before your house so as to see you, at least, for a moment as
you leave it.
To hope for a word would never do ... you might be startled, or simply
not like such a measure, and _in simili incontri_ I will not run risks,
but I should be able to _see_ you, my Ba ... why do I not go then? People
at doors and windows are also able, alas, to see _me_ too—so I stay ...
if this _is_ staying away when I can see the curled-up feet and kiss them
beside,—ever-dear feet!
Do _you_ know the days and the times and the long interval,—you, as _I_
know? How strange that you should complain, and I become the happier! If
I could alter it, and make you feel no subject for complaint any longer,
I _would_,—surely I would, and be happy in that too, I hope ... yet the
other happiness needs must be given up in that case ... I cannot reason
it out. I excuse my present selfish happiness by feeling I would not
exchange the sadness of being away from you for any imaginable delight
in which you had no part. But I will have this delight, too, my Ba, of
imagining that you are gratified by what you will see to-day. Tell me
all, and what is said, and how you are at the end.
Thank you meanwhile for the picture of poor Mr. Boyd ... then he
never _has_ seen you, since he was blind so long ago! How strange and
melancholy—you say he is ‘cheerful,’ however. In that case—think of
unhappy Countess Faustina with her ‘irresistible longings,’ and give
her as much of your commiseration as she ought to get. What a horrible
book ... how have I brought in what I prescribed to myself ‘silence
about.’ Such characters as Faustina produce the very worst possible
effect on me—I don’t know how they strike other people—but I am at
once incited ‘debellare superbos’—to try at least and pull down the
arrogant—_contempt_ would be the most Christian of all the feelings
possible to be called forth by such a woman. Let me get back to you,
my own dearest-dearest,—I _do_ ‘love you to-day,’ if you must ask,—and
bidding me think of you is all very well—never bid me not think of
you!—and so never find out that there could be a bidding I am unable to
obey. But what is mere ‘_thinking_’? I kiss your hand, and your eyes, and
now your lips,—and ask for my heart back again, to give it and be ever
giving it. No words can tell how I am your own.
My mother is much better,—observably so, to-day. Oh, dearest,—I want you
to read Landor’s Dialogue between Tasso and his Sister, in the second
volume,—with the exquisite Sorrentine scenery—do read it. I see your
Tasso with his prominent eyes as if they were ever just brightening out
of a sorrow that has broken over them.
How I like (‘love’ is not my word now) but like Landor, more and more!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Monday Evening.
[Post-mark, June 23, 1846.]
Well—I did look everywhere for you to-day,—but not more than I always
do—always I do, when I go out, look for you in the streets ... round
the corners! And Mrs. Jameson came _alone_ and she and I were alone
at Mr. Rogers’s, and you must help me to thank her some day for her
unspeakable kindness to me, though she did not leap to the height of the
inspiration of managing to let us see those pictures together. Ah—if
she had, it would have been too much. As it is, she gave me a great
deal of pleasure in the kindest of ways ... and I let it _be_ pleasure,
by mixing it with enough thoughts of you—(otherwise how could it be
pleasure?)—and she showed the pictures, and instructed me, really taking
pains and instructing me ... and telling me how Rubens painted landscapes
... as how should my ignorance guess? ... and various other unknown
things The first word as we reached the door, frightened me—for she
said that perhaps we might see Mr. Rogers ... which was a little beyond
our covenant—but we did not see him, and I suppose the Antinous on the
staircase is not at all like him. Grand it is, in its serene beauty. On
a colossal scale, in white marble. For the pictures, they are full of
wonder and divinity—each giving the measure of a man’s soul. And think
... sketches from the hand of Michael Angelo and Raphael! And a statuette
in clay, alive with the life of Michael Angelo’s finger—the blind eyes
looking ... seeing ... as if in scorn of all clay! And the union of
energy and meditation in the whole attitude! You have seen the marble of
that figure in Florence. Then, a divine Virgin and child, worn and faded
to a shadow of Raphael’s genius, as Mrs. Jameson explained to me—and the
famous ‘Ecce Homo’ of Guido ... and Rubens’ magnificent ‘_version_,’
as she called it, of Andrea Mantegna’s ‘Triumph of Julius Cæsar.’ So
triumphing to this day! And Titian, and Tintoretto ... and what did not
strike me the least, ... a portrait of Rembrandt by himself, which if
his landscapes, as they say, were ‘dug out of nature,’ looks as if it
were dug out of humanity. Such a rugged, dark, deep subterraneous face,
... yet inspired—! seeming to realize that God took clay and breathed
into the nostrils of it. There are both the clay, and the divinity! And
think! I saw the agreement between the bookseller and Milton for the
sale of Paradise Lost! with Milton’s signature and seal! and ‘_Witnessed
by William Greene, Mr. Milton’s servant._’ How was it possible not to
feel giddy with such sights! Almost I could have run my head against the
wall, I felt, with bewilderment—and Mrs. Jameson must have been edified,
I have thought since, through my intense stupidity. I saw too the first
edition of ‘Paradise Lost.’ The rooms are elegant, with no pretension to
splendour ... which is good taste, a _part_ of the good taste everywhere.
Only, on the chimney-piece of the dining-room, were two small busts,
beautiful busts, white with marble, ... and representing—now, whom,
of gods and men, would you select for your Lares ... to help your
digestion and social merriment?... Caligula and Nero in _childhood_! The
‘_childhood_’ is horribly suggestive to me! On the side-board is Pope’s
bust, by Roubillac—a too expressive, miserable face—drawn with disease
and bitter thoughts, and very painful, I felt, to look at. These things
I liked least, in the selection and arrangement. Everything beside was
admirable: and I write and write of it all as if I were not tired—but I
am ... and most with the excitement and newness. Mrs. Jameson breakfasted
with Mr. Rogers yesterday, she said, and met the Countess Hahn-Hahn, who
was talking of modern literature when her host suddenly stopped her with
a question ... ‘Did you ever read Addison?’
How late it is. Must I have done, before I have half done?
What I did _not_ tell you yesterday is very much in my thoughts ... do
you know? _I_, too, ‘see what I know and testify what I have felt ...
and, as far as my faculties of perception go!’ I am confident that you
had better not look for a single reason for loving me. Which is worst?
A bad reason, or no reason at all? A bad reason, _I_ think—and accept
the alternative. Ah ... my own only beloved. And how you write to me
to-night! I will read what you tell me in Landor ... but no words of
inspired lips or pen ... no poet’s word, of the divinest, ... ever
went to my heart as yours in these letters! Do I not love you? am I
not your own? And while deserving nothing of all of it, I _feel_ it at
least—respond to it—my heart is in your hand. May God bless you ... ‘_and
me in that_,’—because even He could not bless me without _that_. Which He
knows.
Your own.
But there is much beauty in Faustina—oh, surely!
The lilies, all in blow except one ... which is blowing.
Are we going to have a storm to-night? It lightens ... lightens!
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday Morning
[Post-mark, June 23, 1846.]
I was just on the point of answering your dear letter, in all the good
spirits it might be expected to wake in me, when the sad news of poor
Haydon’s death stopped all; much I feel it, for the light words of my own
about his extravagance, as I had been told of it, but very much more on
your account, who were so lately in communication with him. I earnestly
hope,—I will trust—you have not been rudely apprised of this—I am happy
to remember that you do not see the newspaper in the morning,—others will
see it first; perhaps there may be no notice in the _Chronicle_ at all,
or on the other hand, a more circumstantial one than this in the _Times_
which barely says—‘that B.R.H. died suddenly at his residence—yesterday
morning. He was in his usual health on the previous evening, and it is
believed that his decease was hastened by pecuniary embarrassment’—and
he is called ‘the unfortunate gentleman’—which with the rest implies
the very worst, I fear. If by any chance _this_ should be the first
intimation you receive of it ... do not think me stupid nor brutal,—for
I thought again and again as to the right course to take ... whether it
would not be best to be silent altogether and wait and see ... but in
that case I should have surprised you more by my cold letter,—such an
one as I could bring myself to write,—for how were it possible to speak
of pictures and indifferent matters when you perhaps have been shocked,
made ill by this news? If I have done wrong, forgive me, my own best,
dearest Ba—I would give the world to know how you are. The storm, too,
and lightning may have made you even more than ordinarily unfit to be
startled and grieved. God knows and must help you! I am but your devoted—
* * * * *
How glad I am you told me you had never seen him. And perhaps he may be
after all a mere acquaintance ... anything I will fancy that is likely to
relieve you of pain! Dearest dearest!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, June 24, 1846.]
Ever tenderest, kindest and most beloved, I thank you from the quick
of my heart, where the thought of you lives constantly! In this world
full of sadness, of which I have had my part ... full of sadness and
bitterness and wrong ... full of most ghastly contrasts of life and
death, strength and weakness side by side ... it is too much, to have
_you_ to hold by, as the river rushes on ... too much good, too much
grace for such as I, ... as I feel always, and cannot cease to feel!
Oh yes—it has shocked me, this dreadful news of poor Mr. Haydon—it
chilled the blood in my veins when I heard it from Alfred, who, seeing
the _Times_ at the Great Western Terminus, wrote out the bare extract and
sent it to me by the post. He just thought that the _Chronicle_ did not
mention it, ... and that I had not seen Mr. Haydon ... he did not perhaps
think how it would shock me.