his griefs, as grief _goes_? Do you remember I told you, when the news
of Aliwal and the other battles came to England, of our gardener, and
his son, a sergeant in one of the regiments engaged ... how the father
could learn nothing at first, of course ... how they told him at the
Horse Guards he should be duly informed in time, after his betters,
whether this son was dead, or wounded. Since then, no news came ...
‘which is _good_ news’ the father persuaded himself to think ... so the
apprehensions subside, and the hope confirms itself, more and more,
while the old fellow digs and mows and rakes away, like a man painting
historical pictures ... only without the love of it. Well, this morning
we had his daughter here to say ‘the letter’ had arrived at last ...
her brother was killed in the first battle, so there’s an end of the
three months’ sickness of heart,—and the poor fellow must bear his loss
‘like a man’—or like a woman ... for I recollect another case, of an
old woman whom my mother was in the habit of relieving,—who brought a
letter one day which she could hardly understand—it was from her son,
a sailor, and went on for a couple of pages about his good health and
expectations,—then, in a different handwriting, somebody, ‘your son’s
shipmate’ ‘took up his pen to inform you that he fell from the masthead
into the sea and was drowned yesterday,—which he therefore thought it
right to put in the unfinished letter.’ All which the old woman bore
somehow,—seeing she lives yet.
Well,—ought not I to say Mr. Kenyon was as kind as usual, and his party
as pleasant? No, for you know—what you cannot by possibility know, it
seems, is, that I am not particularly engaged next Saturday! Ba, shall I
really see you so soon? Bless you ever, my very, very own! I shall not
hear to-day ... but to-morrow,—do but not keep me waiting for _that_
letter, and the mules shall be ready hours and hours, for any sign I will
have, at La Cava!
Ever your R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday.
[Post-mark, July 9, 1846.]
See what an account we have this morning of La Cava ... ‘quite impossible
for the winter.’ What does ‘quite impossible’ quite mean, I wonder? I
feel disappointed. As to Palermo, you would rather be in Italy, and so
would I, perhaps. Salerno seems questionable too; and Vietri ... what of
Vietri? I don’t at all see why we should receive the responses of this
friend of my friend who is not so very much my friend, as if they were
oracular and final. There must be the right of appeal for us to other
authorities. Will you investigate and think a little? For my part I shall
not care to what place we go, except for the climate’s sake—the cheapness
too should be considered a little: and, for the rest, every place which
you should like, I should like, and which you liked most, I should like
most—everything is novelty to _me_, remember.
My uncle Hedley has just come now, and I must quicken my writing. Oh—to
be so troubled just now ... just now!—But I wrote to Mr. Serjeant
Talfourd last night, and told him as fully and as briefly as I could the
whole position ... and _that_ vexation I shall try now to throw behind
me, after the fashion of dear Mr. Kenyon’s philosophy. I put the thought
of you, beloved, between me and all other thoughts—surely I _can_, when
you were here only yesterday. So much to think of, there is! One thing
made me laugh in the recollection. Do you mean to tell Mrs. Jameson that
you are going to marry me, ‘because it is intolerable to hear me talked
of?’ That would be an original motive. ‘So speaks the great poet.’—
Ah Flush, Flush!—he did not hurt you really? You will forgive him for me?
The truth is that he hates all unpetticoated people, and that though he
does not hate _you_, he has a certain distrust of you, which any outward
sign, such as the umbrella, reawakens. But if you had seen how sorry and
ashamed he was yesterday! I slapped his ears and told him that he never
should be loved again: and he sate on the sofa (sitting, not lying) with
his eyes fixed on me all the time I did the flowers, with an expression
of quite despair in his face. At last I said, ‘If you are good, Flush,
you may come and say that you are sorry’ ... on which he dashed across
the room and, trembling all over, kissed first one of my hands and then
another, and put up his paws to be shaken, and looked into my face with
such great beseeching eyes that you would certainly have forgiven him
just as I did. It is not savageness. If he once loved you, you might pull
his ears and his tail, and take a bone out of his mouth even, and he
would not bite you. He has no savage caprices like other dogs and men I
have known.
Writing of Flush, in my uncle comes, and then my cousin, and then my aunt
... _by relays!_ and now it is nearly four and this letter may be too
late for the post which reaches you irregularly. So provoked I am!—but I
shall write again, to-night, you know.
Dearest, you did me so much good yesterday! Say how your head is—and
remember Saturday. Saturday will be clear through Chiswick—may the sun
shine on it!—
Your own BA.
Think of the dreadful alternative as set forth in this MS.!—The English
... or a bad climate!—_Can_ it be true?
ENCLOSURE
[La Cava is _impossible_ for the winter owing to the damp and cold. At
no season should any person remain out at the hour of sunset. An hour
_afterwards_ the air is dry and healthy—[Is this at La Cava? Ba] This
applies to all Italy, and is a precaution too often neglected. Salerno
has bad air too near it, to be safe as a residence. Besides, it is
totally without the resources of books, good food, or medical advice.
Palermo would be agreeable in the winter, and not _very_ much frequented
by English. _However, where good climate exists, English are to be
found._ Murray’s ‘Southern Italy’ would give every particular as to the
distance of La Cava from the sea.]
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, July 10, 1846.]
How I have waited for your letter to-night,—and it comes nearly at
ten!—It comes at last—thank you for it, ever dearest.
And I knew—quite understood yesterday, that you were sorry for _me_,
which made you angry with another ... but, as to poor Haydon, you are too
generous and too pitiful to refuse him any justice. I was sure that the
letters would touch you. The particular letter about the ‘back-ground’
and the ‘neglect’ and Napoleon, ... _that_, you will observe, was the
last I had from him. Every word you say of it, I think and feel. Yes,
it was just _so_! His conscience was not a sufficient witness, ... nor
was God. He must also have the Royal Academy and the appreciators of
Tom Thumb. A ‘weak man,’ of course he was,—for all vain men are weak
men. They cannot stand alone. But that he had in him the elements
of greatness—that he looked to noble aims in art and life, however
distractedly, ... that his thoughts and feelings were not those of a
common man, ... it is true, it is undeniable,—and you would think so
more and more if you read through the packets of letters which I have
of his—so fervid, so full of earnestness and individuality ... so alive
with egotism which yet seemed to redeem itself. Mr. Kenyon said of the
letter we have spoken of, that it was scarcely the production of a sane
mind. But I who was used to his letters, saw nothing in it in the least
unusual—he has written to me far wilder letters! That he ‘never should
die,’ he had said once or twice before. Then Napoleon was a favourite
subject of his ... constantly recurred to. He was not mad _then_!
Poor Haydon! Think what an agony, life was to him, so constituted!—his
own genius a clinging curse! the fire and the clay in him seething and
quenching one another!—the man seeing maniacally in all men the assassins
of his fame! and, with the whole world against him, struggling for the
thing which was his life, through night and day, in thoughts and in
dreams ... struggling, stifling, breaking the hearts of the creatures
dearest to him, in the conflict for which there was no victory, though he
could not choose but fight it. Tell me if Laocoon’s anguish was not as an
infant’s sleep, compared to this? And could a man, suffering _so_, stop
to calculate very nicely the consideration due to A, and the delicacy
which should be observed toward B? Was he scrupulously to ask himself
whether this or that cry of his might not give C a headache? Indeed no,
no. It is for _us_ rather to look back and consider! Poor Haydon.
As to grief as grief—of course he had no killing grief. But he _suffered_.
Often it has struck me as a curious thing (yet it is not perhaps curious)
that suicides are occasioned nearly always by a mortified self-love ...
by losses in money, which force a man into painful positions ... and
scarcely ever by bereavement through death ... scarcely ever. The wound
on the vanity is more irritating than the wound on the affections—and
the word _Death_, if it does not make us recoil (which it does I think
sometimes, ... even from the graves of beloved beings!), yet keeps us
humble ... casts us down from our heights. We may despond, but we do not
rebel—we feel God over us.
Ah—your poor gardener! All that hope is vain—and the many, many hopes
which in a father’s heart must have preceded it! How sorry I am for
him.[4]
You never can have a grief, dearest dearest, of which I shall not have
half for my share. That is my right from henceforth ... and if I could
have it _all_ ... _would_ I not, do you think, ... and give my love to
you to keep instead? Yes, ... indeed yes! May God bless you always.
I have walked out to-day, you did me so much good yesterday. As for
Saturday, it certainly is our day, since you are not ‘particularly
engaged’ to Miss Campbell. Saturday, the day after to-morrow! But
the mules may wait long at La Cava for us, if the tradition, which I
sent you, is trustworthy—may they not? I feel as disappointed ... as
disappointed—
Your own, very own BA.
[4] [Some months later the discovery was made that there had been a
mistake in the War Office in the name, and that the son was
unharmed.—R.B.B.]
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Friday.
[Post-mark, July 10, 1846.]
And _I_ am disappointed, dearest, in this news of La Cava—after which
it would be madness to think of going there: the one reason we have to
go at all is simply _for your health_—I mean, that if the seclusion
were the main object, we might easily compass _that_ here. All places
are utterly indifferent to me if I can inhabit them with you—why should
Palermo please me less than Italy proper? The distance is considerable,
however, and the journey expensive—I wonder whether the steamer will
sail for Leghorn as last year. As for the travelling English, they are
horrible, and at Florence, unbearable ... their voices in your ear at
every turn ... and such voices!—I got to very nearly hate the Tribune for
their sakes. Vietri is close to Salerno and must be obvious to the same
condemnation. Your friend speaks from personal experience, I presume—she
may well say that the baneful effects of the hour of sunset (_i.e._ the
Ave-maria) are too much overlooked ‘in all Italy’—I never heard of them
before—but an infinity of ‘crotchets’ go from Italian brain to brain
about what, in eating or drinking or walking or sleeping, will be the
death of you: still, they may know best. The most dreadful event that
could happen to me would be your getting worse instead of better.... God
knows what I should do! So whatever precaution we _can_ take, let us take.
Oh, poor Flush,—do you think I do not love and respect him for his
jealous supervision,—his slowness to know another, having once known
you? All my apprehension is that, in the imaginations down-stairs, he
may very unconsciously play the part of the dog that is heard to ‘bark
violently’ while something dreadful takes place: yet I do not sorrow over
his slapped ears, as if they ever pained him very much—you dear Ba!
And to-morrow I shall see you. Are you, can you be, really ‘better’ after
I have seen you? If it is not truth ... which I will not say ... such an
assurance is the most consummate flattery I can imagine ... it may be
recorded on my tombstone ‘R.B.—to whom this flattery was addressed, that,
after the sight of him, Ba was better, she said.’ If it is truth ... may
you say _that_, neither more nor less, day by day, year by year through
our lives—and I shall have lived indeed!
How it rains—how it varies from hot to cold! a pretty vantage-ground
whence we English can look and call other climates bad or indifferent!
Now if to-morrow resembles to-day, will the Chiswick expedition hold
good? I shall consider that I may go unless a letter comes to-morrow ...
which would have to be written to-day. How pleasant it would be to make
our days _always_ Wednesday and Saturday ... could not that be contrived?
So much for considerateness and contentedness!
I want, now, to refer as little as possible to the sad subject ... but I
am glad you have written,—glad too that you are not severe on me for some
hasty speeches—which did, indeed, mean as you say ... vexation at your
having been vexed. And, I will just add, you remark excellently on the
wound to self-love making itself that remedy, rather than the wound to
the affections ... yet there are instances ... Romilly loses his wife ...
so does poor Laman Blanchard.
So I go on writing, writing about all but what my heart is full of! Let
me kiss you, ever dearest—to-morrow will soon arrive—meanwhile, and
forever I am your own.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday.
[Post-mark, July 12, 1846.]
When I made you promise to refer no more to that subject in your letter
(which I must wait a day and a night for, alas!), I did not engage
myself to the like silence ... perhaps because I was not bidden—or,
no! there is a better reason; I want to beg your pardon, dearest, for
all that petulancy,—for the manner of what I said rather than the
matter,—there is a rationality in it all, if I could express trulier what
I feel—but the manner was foolish and wrong and unnecessary to _you_—so
do forgive and forget it. You would understand and sympathize if you
knew—not me, whom you do know in some degree,—but so much of my early
life as would account for the actual horror and hatred I have of those
particular doctrines of the world—and the especially foolish word about
the ‘travelling’ meant something like the not unnatural thought that if
in this main, sole event for all good and all evil in my life,—if _here_
the world plucked you from me by any of the innumerable lines it casts,
with that indirectness, too,—_then_, I should simply go and live the rest
of my days as far out of it as I could.
The simple thing to say is, that I who know you to be above me in all
great or good feelings and therefore worship you, must be without excuse
to talk inconsiderately as if I, sitting by you and speaking of the same
subject, must needs feel more acutely, more strongly in one respect
where, indeed, it wants very little pre-eminence in heart or brain
to feel entirely the truth—a simplest of truths. It would have been
laughable if I had broken out on Mrs. Proctor’s bitterness of speech,
for instance ... just as though you were the slower of us two to see the
nature of it! So I do again ask your pardon, dearest Ba! You said you
loved me no less yesterday than ever—how must I love you and press closer
to you more and more, and desire to see nothing of the world behind you,
when I hear how the world thinks, and how you think! You only, only
adorable woman, only imaginable love for me! And all the hastiness and
petulancy comes from that ... someone seems to come close (in every such
maxim of the world’s) and say ‘What is _she_—to so much a year? Could
you be happy with her except in Mayfair—and there whom could you not be
happy with!’
It is as I expected—Rachel plays on Wednesday in ‘Phèdre,’ and our friend
writes to say he has secured places. May nothing overcast the perfect
three hours on Tuesday,—those dear, dear spaces of dear brightness—why
cannot a life be made up of these ... with the proper interposition
of work, to justify God’s goodness so far as poor mortality and its
endeavours can,—a week of Tuesdays—then a month—a year—a life! I
must long to see you again,—always by far the most I long, the _next
day_—the very day after I have seen you—when it is freshest in my mind
what I did _not_ say while I might have said it,—nor ask while I might
have been answered—nor learn while you would have taught me—no, it is
indescribable. Did I call yesterday ‘unsatisfactory’? Would I had it back
now! Or better, I will wish you here when I write, with the trees to see
and the birds to hear through the open window—I see you on this old chair
against the purple back ... or shall you lie on the sofa? Ba, how I love
you, my own perfect unapproachable mistress.
Let me kiss your feet—and now your hands and your eyes—and your lips now,
for the full pardon’s sake, my sweetest love—
Ever your own—
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Sunday. 6 P.M.
[Post-mark, July 13, 1846.]
Ever, ever dearest, I have to _feel_ for you all through Sunday, and
I hear no sound and see no light. How are you? how did you get home
yesterday? I thought of you more than usual after you went, if I did not
love you as much as usual.... What could _that_ doubt have been made of?
Dearest, I had a letter last night from Mrs. Jameson, who says that on
_Tuesday or Wednesday_ at about four o’clock (though she is as little
sure of the hour apparently as of the day), she means to come to see me.
Now you are to consider whether this _grand peutêtre_ will shake our
Tuesday, ... whether you would rather take Thursday instead, or will
run the risk as it appears. I am ready to agree, either way. She is the
most uncertain of uncertain people, and may not come at all ... it’s a
case for what Hume used to call sceptical scepticism. Judge! Then I have
heard (I forgot to tell you) from Mr. Horne—and ... did _you_ have two
letters last week from your Bennet? ... because _I_ had,—flying leaves of
‘Mignonette,’ and other lyrical flowers.
When you had gone Arabel came to persuade me to go to the park in a
cab, notwithstanding my too lively recollections of the last we chanced
upon,—and I was persuaded, and so we tumbled one over another (yet not
all those cabs are so rough!) to the nearest gate opening on the grass,
and got out and walked a little. A lovely evening it was, but I wished
somehow rather to be at home, and Flush had his foot pinched in shutting
the cab-door, ... and altogether there was not much gain:—only, as for
Flush’s foot, though he cried piteously and held it up, looking straight
to me for sympathy, no sooner had he touched the grass than he began
to run without a thought of it. Flush always makes the most of his
misfortunes—he is of the Byronic school—_il se pose en victime_.
Now I will not write any more—I long to have my letter of to-morrow
morning—I _long_ to have it.... Shall I not have it to-morrow morning?
This is posted by my hand.
I loved you yesterday ... I love you to-day ... I shall love you
to-morrow.
Every day I am yours.
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Monday.
[Post-mark, July 13, 1846.]
My own Ba, your letter kisses me in its entire kindness—and I kiss it and
you.—Mrs. Jameson may come or keep away ... (since you let me speak and
decide, which is like you) ... she may appoint and reappoint, but Tuesday
was given me and I will have it if her visit is the only obstacle—for
what was all the confessing worth if not to account for such a phenomenon
as my presence in your room when by any chance she might discover it?
Beside, as you say, she is the most uncertain of engagement-holders
... no, indeed,—no Tuesday ought to be given up for _her_! Therefore,
unless fresh orders arrive,—at three on Tuesday ... which is happily,
happily to-morrow! You are my own sweetest to reach a letter to me with
your own hand, as you tell me,—and the drive, and the walk to the Post
Office—thank you, Ba! Perhaps ... dare I say ... you will answer that
letter I sent yesterday ... because now I remember there is no prayer
at the end to prevent you ... that is, from answering the main part of
it—the reverting &c.
I wrote to Mr. Horne, but shall not hear from him—on Saturday I wrote.
And Mr. Bennett’s two letters are considerately written,—directed, I
mean,—in a hand and with a blue ink that I recognise,—consequently
the contents give me no trouble. I wrote two or three lines to the
‘year of the world’ poet,—did you take the pains? Once on a time some
unknown author sent me a Tragedy, ‘not published,’ called ‘Alessandro
de’ Medici,’ with some striking scenes ... I wonder who could be the
writer—did it ever fall in your way?
... As if I care!—can I care about anything that is not Ba? All else
seems as idle as ... as,—now you shall have a real instance in point—as
my dream last night. This morning at breakfast my mother asked me, the
first thing, what could so amuse me as to make me call loudly ‘Bravo’
again and again, with abundance of laughter? (My room is next to hers and
the door is left ajar). Whereupon I tried to recall my dream—and all that
I can seize is a passage through a gallery of _Haydon’s_ pictures, one
of which was a portrait of his wife; nor did a suspicion once cross my
mind that the artist was not well and working somewhere in the vicinity
all the time—How strange! I never dream if _quite_ well—and I suppose the
present state of my head just amounts to _not_ being quite well. (It is
better at any rate, and to-morrow—ought to be worse, that—Ba may prove
her potency as of old).
Now I will kiss you and wait as well as I can till the full blessing.
Dearest—dearest I am your own—
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Monday Morning.
[Post-mark, July 14, 1846.]
I must write ... even if you come to-morrow. Dearest, if I told you
all that nonsense on Saturday, it was for the sake of telling you all
and of hearing you say ‘What nonsense’ afterwards. I never began by
disguising anything from you ... did I? I always wished you to see how
the arrows would strike out at us from that bush and this bush. At _us_.
For, granting that you seriously thought it possible for such motives to
divide me from you, ... ah, _granting_ it, ... and _you may well ask my
pardon_!
The world! the world could as soon catch me with a ‘line’ so baited, as
you could catch a trout with a silver sixpence at the end of a string.
Not only do I think with you entirely on that subject, but I always
thought like you. Always I have hated all their worldly systems, and
not merely _now_, and since I _have loved you_. With a hundred a year
between us, I would have married you, if _you_ had not been afraid. And
so, think whether directly or ‘indirectly’ I am likely to be frightened
into the breach of an engagement by what I repeated to you or by what is
like unto it. No—my weaknesses are of a different class altogether.
The talk I talked over again to you, seemed to burn in my ears the
longer on that Saturday, because, while it was being originally talked
between Papa and my aunt (touching Arabella Hedley’s marriage), he had
brought a paper for me to sign about some money placed on a railway,
(not speculatively) ... and my aunt, by way of saying a lively thing,
exclaimed, ‘Is that your marriage-settlement, my dear?’ ... which made me
so nervous that I wrote my name wrong and vexed Papa into being almost
cross with me. So one word got entwined with another, and all seemed to
hang around me—Do you understand?
But you _do not_, how you pained me when you said _that_. Ah—I thought I
saw you gone ... ‘so far, so far,’ as you said ... and myself left.
Yet I should deserve it of course, if I were to give you up for the sake
of _that_! ... or for any other motive, ... except your advantage ...
your own. I should deserve everything in such a case, but should feel
nothing ... not even my punishment. _Could_ I? ... _being without a
heart_?
Ah—after all my mistrust, did I ever mistrust you _so_? I have doubted
your power to love me as you believed you loved me, perhaps—but your will
to be true to one you loved, without reference to worldly influences, I
never doubted, nor _could_. I think I will let you beg my pardon; you
unjust, dearest....
To so much over-praise, there should be a little wronging, too ... and
therefore you are not, after all, ‘unjust’ ... only ‘dearest’!...
Such a letter, besides, you have written, ... and there are two of them
to-day! You will not go from me, I think, ‘so far, so far.’ You will not
leave me behind, with the harpoon in me, to make red the salt wilderness
of waters.
Altogether, then, I forgive you, Robert—and it is glorious for me to have
something to forgive you for, who are the _best_ so out of measure!—I
seize the opportunity.
And you come to-morrow! Which is right ... right! I was afraid that you
would not come—And Mrs. Jameson is perfectly uncertain as you may read in
this new note which reached me with yours to-night.
All the Hedleys have dined here. To-morrow will be clear of them ...
_pure_ of them, I was going to write ... but I thought of Mrs. Hedley’s
beaming affectionate face ... (so still lovely, she looked this evening,
when she came up-stairs to kiss me!) ... and could not say such a
wronging word. You would like her—you could not help it.
I was in the carriage to-day in Oxford Street ... and a sealed letter
was thrown exactly at my head, my aunt and cousin and Henrietta being
with me—a sealed letter sealed with arms (not of Agincourt!) and directed
‘For your perusal.’ Guess the meaning of that!—why just a tract by the
Rev. Villiers of that parish, upon the enormous wickedness of frequenting
plays and balls! Perhaps I looked as if my soul had entered into the
secret of the Polka-dancers—who can say?
So, good-night, dearest dearest!—
I cannot give myself again to you,
being your own.