calligraphy.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, July 15, 1846.]
And is it true of to-day as you said it would be, ever dearest, that you
wish to be with me? Let me have the comfort, or luxury rather, of the
thought of it, before to-morrow takes you a step farther off.
At dinner my aunt said to Papa ... ‘I have not seen Ba all day—and when
I went to her room, to my astonishment a gentleman was sitting there.’
‘Who was _that_?’ said Papa’s eyes to Arabel—‘Mr. Browning called here
to-day,’ she answered—‘And Ba bowed her head,’ continued my aunt, ‘as
if she meant to signify to me that I was not to come in’—‘Oh,’ cried
Henrietta, ‘_that_ must have been a mistake of yours. Perhaps she meant
just the contrary.’ ‘You should have gone in,’ Papa said, ‘and seen the
_poet_.’ Now if she really were to do that the next time!—Yet I did
not, you know, make the expelling gesture she thought she saw. Simply I
was startled. As to Saturday we must try whether we cannot defend the
position ... set the guns against the approaches to right and left ... we
must try.
In speaking too of your visit this morning, Stormy said to her ... ‘Oh
Mr. Browning is a _great_ friend of Ba’s! He comes here twice a week—is
it twice a week or once, Arabel?’
While I write, the Hedleys come—and Mrs. Hedley is beseeching me into
seeing Mr. Bevan, whom perhaps I must see, notwithstanding Flush’s wrongs.
By the way, I made quite clear to Flush that you left the cakes, and they
were very graciously received indeed.
Dearest, since the last word was written, Mrs. Hedley came back leading
Mr. Bevan, and Papa who had just entered the room found the door shut
upon him.... I was nervous ... oh, so nervous! and the six feet, and
something more, of Mr. Bevan seemed to me as if they never would end,
so tall the man is. Well—and he sate down by me according to my aunt’s
arrangement; and I, who began to talk a thousand miles from any such
subject, with a good reason for the precaution, found myself thrown
head-foremost into ecclesiastical architecture at the close of about
three minutes—how he got there all his saints know best! It’s his subject
... par excellence. He talks to Arabella about arches and mullions—he
can’t talk of anything else, I suspect. And because the Trinity is
expressed in _such_ a form of church-building, the altar at the east,
and the baptistery at the door, ... there’s no other lawful form of a
church, none at all! Not that he has an opinion! he ‘adopts opinions,’
but would not think for himself for the world at the risk of ultimate
damnation! Which was the amount of his talk to-day ... and really it does
not strike me as wisdom, now that I set it down so. Yet the man expressed
himself well and has a sensible face—he is a clever third-class man, I
think—better than the mass for sense, but commonplace essentially. Only,
inasmuch as ecclesiastical architecture is not _my_ subject, I may think
otherwise of him when I know him otherwise. I do not dislike him now.
And then I am conscious how you spoil me for common men, dearest! It is
scarcely fair on them.
My aunt (Mrs. Hedley) said when she introduced him: ‘You are to
understand this to be a great honour—for she never lets anybody come here
except Mr. Kenyon, ... and a few other gentlemen’ ... (laughing). Said
Papa—‘Only _one_ other gentleman, indeed. Only Mr. Browning, the poet—the
man of the pomegranates.’ Was _that_ likely to calm me, do you think?
How late it is—I must break off. To-night I shall write again. Dearest
beloved,
I am your own always.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, July 15, 1846.]
Dearest Ba, I am anxious to know what cannot yet be told me, how that
unforeseen visit has worked—tell me the moment you can,—and fully,
whatever happens.
‘Suspicious’—anything in the world rather than _that_, you are! When
you have mistrusted your own power over me, I believed always in the
mistrust ... which, indeed, matters little except to yourself. For if I
would, certainly, have the truth seen as the truth, and our true position
understood,—yet ... there is,—ought I not to be ashamed at saying?—an
exquisite, _final_ grace and _endearingness_ in the ignorance, strange as
I must account it. You doubly trust me,—with the treasure, and then, with
the knowledge that it is a treasure, or _such_ a treasure.
Ba, when I think of it all, my whole heart becomes one gratitude to
you,—I am only yours, grateful for ever. It is the only kind of thoughts
in which you _shall_ not share (there are many in which you _cannot_) the
thoughts to my inmost self as I go over what you say and do and try to
clear up to myself the precise fascination in each: you shall not know
what you do ... but shall continue to do and to let _me know_. I love
you entirely. Where can you change so that I shall not love you more
and more as I grow more able and worthier? I cannot sit for twenty-four
hours by you as I sit for three—as it is, I take myself to task for not
doing something here at home to justify in some measure my privilege and
blessing—and the only thing that keeps conscience quiet comparatively
is ... the old expedient that the Future engages to do for me what the
Present cannot. Under your eyes, I will hope to work and attain your
approval. _I know_ that when you were only the great Poet and not my Ba,
I would have preferred _your_ praise, as competent to praise, to that
of the whole world—I remember distinctly, and _know_ I should have done
so. And now, if I put aside the Poet and only (what an ‘only’) see my
dearest, dearest lady of that hair and eyes, and hands, and voice, and
all the completeness that was trusted to my arms yesterday—why I feel
that if she, never having written a line, said ‘What Miss Barrett may
think I do not know, but _I_ am content with what you show me’—then,
dearest, should not _I_ be content—?
I called on Moxon—and called at Carlyle’s to no purpose. He was out,
and will leave town (said the servant) next Saturday. Mrs. Carlyle has
already left it. So, no Rag Fair for the present, or probably ever! This
was my fault,—I having let several Sundays go by—I must write to Mr.
Kenyon and try if he will come on his own account. Moxon tells me that he
has sold fifteen hundred of Tennyson’s Poems in a year—and is about to
print another edition in consequence. If that is the case, and Tennyson
gets, say, only half a crown by the sale of each copy, expenses deducted,
he will have received 178_l._,—little enough, as payments are made to
_Punch_-literature, but enough to live upon, whatever the awful fiat
decides! Tennyson ‘is going’ to Switzerland presently with Moxon—but is
liable to fits of indecision. He did talk of going to Italy (of course),
but the other day, time being up, his brother was forced to proceed
alone. Moxon is coming here first.
Now I will kiss you, dearest, and hope that Wimpole Street stands where
it did, unhurt by explosions of any-kind. I have got a letter from
Procter asking me to go to-day, which I cannot do. Ever your own, very
own R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Wednesday Evening.
[Post-mark, July 16, 1846.]
Well! I anticipated your asking, I think, and told you _fully_ this
morning. It was a chronicle I sent you, rather than a letter. And
nothing is left to tell you—for I did not go out all day ... nor
yesterday. Which was wrong. But I had visitor on visitor to-day, ... my
old maid coming to bring me her baby to look at, to Flush’s infinite
delight. Whenever she comes he devotes himself to her, stays with her
down-stairs, lies on the corner of her gown, and, for the most part,
forbears going to sleep. To-morrow I mean to go out ... to-morrow,—when
you are beginning to think rather less of me.
Isn’t it ungrateful of me? _I think so._
I am glad, at least, that I do not appear to you ‘suspicious.’ Because
I dislike suspicious people myself, and it has struck me often in the
midst of the dislike.... ‘_That_ is how I must appear to _him_.’ Ah—but
you are too indulgent to me, my own dearest ... too dearest! ... and
you draw crooked inferences for me, shutting _both_ the eyes ... the
near-sighted eye and far-sighted eye. Or is it, in that strange sight of
yours, that I walk between the far and the near objects, in an invisible
security? Or is it (which were best) that I am too near to be seen even
by the near-sighted eye, ... like a hand brought close to the eyelashes,
which, for over-closeness, nobody can see? _Let_ me be too near to be
seen—always too near!—dearest, dearest! Never will I complain that you do
not see me! Be sure of that, now.
Once I used to be more uneasy, and to think that I ought to _make_ you
see me. But Love is better than Sight, and Love will do without Sight.
Which I did not understand at first. I knew it was enough for _me_,
that you should love me. That it was enough for _you_, I had to learn
afterwards.
And ‘_Grateful_’ is my word and not yours. I am grateful to you,
if to owe you all the sense of life, all the renewal of hope, all
the possibility of happiness ... if to owe these things to another,
consciously, feelingly, shall pass for gratitude, ... then _I_ am
grateful to _you_, Robert. Do you not know it, that I should say it
again? For me, it seems to me that I can do nothing in return. To love
you! Why no woman in the world could do less.
I am glad, both for the public and Tennyson, that his poems sell so
well—and presently you will do as well or better—and I, half as well
perhaps; so that we shall be too rich, which will spoil it all ... won’t
it?
Mr. Horne sent me the _Daily News_ to-day, ... the number containing
his verses on Haydon ... and I cut from it an advertisement, for the
purpose of bidding you observe that the land journey, or river-voyage,
is very much cheaper than the sea-voyage by the steamers—unless the
direct vessel to Leghorn should go as last year, and I fear it will
not. The steamer-charges of the Oriental company are immense. Nineteen
guineas to Gibraltar even! Twenty-eight, I think, to Naples. As for the
advertisement, I send it only for what it suggests. And there is time
enough for calculations, all ways suggestible.
May God bless you, dear, _dear_! How is the head? Shall it be better,
without me, until Saturday? Say how it is.
Among all my visitors, the only one I expected, never came! No Mrs.
Jameson again to-day!—
Dearest, I am your very own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Thursday.
[Post-mark, July 16, 1846.]
I should be doing your own dear face (which I see so perfectly through
the distance)—too great a wrong if I so much as answered the charge of
‘not remembering.’ I see the face smile above the hand that writes! As if
one may not say that a division, a wound, smarts more on the first day,
and aches more on the next! As if I do not prefer the fresh sharp regret
to the settling of ... what I trust in God and you I never shall feel!
However, if it will please you to know, I _do_ feel to-day as earnest a
longing to be with you again as if your two letters were not here,—as if
Tuesday lay only an hour behind instead of the two long days!
I think your Father’s words on those two occasions, very kind,—very!
They confuse,—perhaps humble me ... that is not the expression, but it
may stay. I dare say he is infinitely kind at bottom—I think so, that
is, on my own account,—because, come what will or may, I shall never see
otherwise than with your sight. If he could know me, I think he would
soon reconcile himself to all of it,—know my heart’s purposes toward
you. But that is impossible—and with the sincere will to please him by
any exertion or sacrifice in my power, I shall very likely never have
the opportunity of picking up a glove he might drop. In old novels, the
implacable father is not seldom set upon by a round dozen of ruffians
with blacked faces from behind a hedge,—and just as the odds prove too
many, suddenly a stranger (to all save the reader) leaps over an adjacent
ditch, &c. ‘Sir, under Providence, I owe you my life!’ &c. &c. How
does Dumas improve on this in ‘Monte Cristo’—are there ‘new effects?’
Absurdity! Yet I would fain ... fain! you understand.
To talk about my ‘spoiling you for other conversers’ is ... oh, leap
over hedge and ditch, somebody, to the rescue! If I praise myself for
anything in our intimacy it is that I never ... but I won’t go into it.
And putting my own experience aside and in its place, it strikes me that
what Ba ranks as a ‘third-rate man’ may pass justly for a paragon and
marvel among men as the world has a right to class them. I am quite sure
if I had been present and much had uttered itself about mullions ...
_somebody_ would have looked a very babe in knowledge, and perhaps made
Ba blush for him and her own waste of love and praise—So he retreats
where he may keep it all in virtue of being what he _is_ ever is, and
shall be, her own R.
The river-voyage is not only the cheaper but by far the more interesting
... _all_ to consider is the fatigue to you; what else?
I am very well to-day. Rachel’s ‘Phèdre’ was admirable last night; quite
_through_ Racine up to Euripides—the declaration-scene with Hippolytus
exquisite ... I must tell you—
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday.
[Post-mark, July 17, 1846.]
Dearest, if _you_ feel _that_, must I not feel it more deeply? Twice or
three times lately he has said to me ‘my love’ and even ‘my puss,’ his
old words before he was angry last year, ... and I quite quailed before
them as if they were so many knife-strokes. Anything but his _kindness_,
I can bear now.
Yet I am glad that you feel _that_ ... The difficulty, (almost the
despair!) has been with me, to make you understand the two ends of truth
... both that he is _not_ stone ... and that he _is_ immovable _as_
stone. Perhaps only a very peculiar nature could have held so long the
position he holds in his family. His hand would not lie so heavily,
without a pulse in it. Then he is upright—faithful to his conscience. You
would respect him, ... and love him perhaps in the end. For me, he might
have been king and father over me _to_ the end, if he had thought it
worth while to love me openly enough—yet, even _so_, he should not have
let you come too near. And you could not (so) have come too near—for he
would have had my confidence from the beginning, and no opportunity would
have been permitted to you of proving your affection for me, and I should
have thought always what I thought at first. So the night-shade and the
eglantine are twisted, twined, one in the other, ... and the little pink
roses lean up against the pale poison of the berries—we cannot tear this
from that, let us think of it ever so much!
We must be humble and beseeching _afterwards_ at least, and try to get
forgiven—Poor Papa! I have turned it over and over in my mind, whether
it would be less offensive, less _shocking_ to him, if an application
were made first. If I were strong, I think I should incline to it at all
risks—but as it is, ... it might ... would, probably, ... take away the
power of action from me altogether. We should be separated, you see,
from _that moment_, ... hindered from writing ... hindered from meeting
... and I could evade nothing, as I am—not to say that I should have
fainting fits at every lifting of his voice, through that inconvenient
nervous temperament of mine which has so often made me ashamed of myself.
Then ... the positive disobedience might be a greater offence than the
unauthorised act. I shut my eyes in terror sometimes. May God direct us
to the best.
Oh—do not write about this, dearest, dearest?—I throw myself out of it
into the pure, sweet, deep thought of you ... which is the love of you
always. I am yours ... your own. I never doubt of being yours. I feel too
much yours. It is might and right together. You are more to me, beside,
than the whole world.
Write nothing of this, dearest of all!—it is of no use. To-day ... this
morning ... I went out in the carriage, and we drove round the Park; and
Mrs. Jameson did not come afterward. Will she put it off till Saturday?
I have heard nothing against Saturday, by the way, worse than that
conjecture of mine.
And I have written you, perhaps, a teazing, painful letter ... I, who
love you to-day ‘as much as ever.’ It is my destiny, I sometimes think,
to torment you. And let me say what I will, remember how nothing that I
say can mean _a doubt_—you never shall have reason to reproach me for the
falseness of cowardice—that double falseness ... both to me and to you.
Only I wish this were Christmas-Day, and we ... even at Salerno ... in
the ‘bad air’! There’s no harm in such a wish—now _is_ there?
Ever and ever I am your own
BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Friday.
[Post-mark, July 17, 1846.]
Did you ever see a more uncongenial, colourless day than this—that
brings me no letter! I do not despair yet, however—there will be a post
presently. When I am without the sight of you, and the voice of you,
which a letter seems ... I feel very accurately the justice of that
figure by which I am represented as ‘able to leave you alone—leaving you
and following my pleasure elsewhere’—so you have written and spoken!
Well, to-day, I may follow my pleasures.
I will follow you, Ba,—the thoughts of you, and long for to-morrow.
No letter for me,—the time is past. If you are well, my own Ba, I will
not mind ... more than I can. You had not been out for two days—the wind
is high, too. May God keep you at all times, ever dearest!
The sun shines again—now I will hope to hear at six o’clock.
I can tell you nothing better, I think, than this I heard from Moxon
the other day ... it really ought to be remembered. Moxon was speaking
of critics, the badness of their pay, how many pounds a column the
_Times_ allowed, and shillings the _Athenæum_,—and of the inevitable
effects on the performances of the poor fellows. ‘How should they be at
the trouble of reading any _difficult_ book so as to review it,—Landor,
for instance?’ and indeed a friend of my own has promised to write
a notice in the _Times_—but he complains bitterly,—he shall have to
_read_ the book,—he can do no less,—and all for five or ten pounds’!
All which Moxon quite seemed to understand—‘it will really take him
some three or four mornings to read _enough_ of Landor to be able to do
anything effectually.’ I asked if there had been any notices of the Book
already—‘Just so many,’ he said ‘as Forster had the power of _getting
done_’—Mr. White, a clergyman, has written a play for Macready, which
everybody describes as the poorest stuff imaginable,—it is immediately
reviewed in _Blackwood_ and the _Edinburgh_ ‘Because’ continues M, ‘he
is a _Blackwood_ reviewer, and may do the like good turn to any of the
confraternity.’
So—here I will end,—wanting to come to the kissing dearest Ba, and
bidding her remember to-morrow how my heart sinks to-day in the silence.
Ever, dearest dearest, your very own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday.
[Post-mark, July 18, 1846.]
It is out of time to-night to write to you, since to-morrow we are to
meet—but the letter which did not reach you, has been recoiling on me
all day. Perhaps you have it by this time ... an uncomfortable letter,
better away from you, notwithstanding all the kindness you speak, about
my silence and the effect of _that_. So I write just a few words—The post
office was in fault as usual. May it do perfecter duty to-morrow.
Saturday!—our day! At least if anything should be against it, you shall
hear at the door by a note, when you come at three o’clock. I have
put away my Thursday night’s melancholy ... except the repentance of
troubling you with it——understand that I have!
Mrs. Jameson was here to-day, and her niece, ... and _you_, never
named,—but she is coming another day, she says, to pay me a longer visit.
I like her ... I like her. Then, there came another visitor, ... my uncle
Hedley, who began, as usual, to talk of Italy—he advises me to go this
year.—‘If you don’t go this year, _you never will go_ ... and you ought
at once to make an effort, and go.’ We talked of places and of ways,
and after he had said many words in favour of Pisa, desired, if I went
through Paris, that I would pay him a visit. ‘Ah,’ said I, ‘uncle Hedley,
you are very good to me always, but when that day arrives, you may be
inclined, perhaps, to cast me off.’ ‘Cast you off, Ba,’ he cried in the
most puzzled astonishment—‘why what _can_ you mean? what words to use!
Cast you off! now do explain what you mean.’ ‘Ah, no one can tell,’ said
I musingly. ‘Do you mean,’ he insisted, ‘because you will be a rebel and
a runaway?’ ... (laughing!) ‘no, no—_I_ won’t cast you off, I promise
you! Only I hope that you may be able to manage it quietly’ &c. &c.
He is a most amiable man, so gentle and tender; and fond of me;
_exclusively_ of the poetry. I am certain that he never can make out how
anyone in the world can consent to read my verses. But Ba, as Ba, is a
decided favourite of his, beyond all in the house—not that he is a real
uncle ... only the husband of my aunt, and caring more for me than both
my real uncles, who, each of them, much prefer a glass of claret,—thank
you! The very comparison does me too much honour for either of them.
Claret is a holy thing. If I had said half a glass, and mixed it with
water, I should have been more accurate by so much.
Now, dearest, dearest, I say good-night and have done.
I am wholly yours and always.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday.
[Post-mark, July 20, 1846.]
Dearest Ba’s face of yesterday, with the smiles and perfect
sweetness,—oh, the comfort it is to me through this day of my especial
heaviness! I don’t know when I have felt more stupid, and I seem to keep
the closelier to you, Ba. Is that one of my felicities of compliment?
I think if you were here I should lay my head on your bosom, my own
beloved, and never raise it again. In your last letter, you speak of
those who care less for you than for a ‘glass of claret’—there is
something sublime,—at all events, astounding, in the position we occupy
each of us,—I, and those less-carers,—standing in respect to each other
so like England and Owhyhee, at which, they told me when I was a boy, I
should be pretty sure to arrive if I dug a hole just through the earth,
dropped to the centre and then, turning round, climbed straight up!
I left here, yesterday, without taking the prints of Dumas and
Hugo—_there_ is a head ‘for remembering!’ and justifying your
commodations! Chorley says, you see, my acquisitions are rather
accumulated than digested—or words to that effect—I am sure at this
moment the stupid, heavy head _knows_ not one thing,—as a clear point
of knowledge, taken in and laid by, orderly and separately. So let me
say here, while I _do_ remember, that a letter from Forster puts off his
visit and Moxon’s till Monday—should any reason therefore, prevent your
confirming to me the gift of Tuesday, this other day will lie open—but
_only_ in that case, I trust—because Tuesday objects not to Saturday,
does it? while Wednesday looks grave, and Thursday frowns downright on
the same! _Friday_, remember, is Mr. Kenyon’s day.
I wish, dearest, you would tell me precisely what you have written—all my
affectionate pride in you rises at once when I think of your poetry, that
is and that is to be—you dear, dear Ba, can you not write on my shoulder
while my head lies as you permit?
I found at home on my return yesterday my friend Pritchard, who brought
me an old notice of Rachel by Jules Janin—of course there is no believing
a word—but he _does_ say that she was,—at the time he wrote,—perfectly
ignorant of the most ordinary rules of grammar,—that, for instance,
on meeting him she remarked (alluding to her having played previously
at another theatre than the T. Français)—‘C’était moi que j’était
au Gymnase!’—to which he ought to have answered, he thinks, ‘Je le
savions!’—I will bring her portrait, too, if you please—and this memoir,
untrustworthy as it is.