must shift my ground already, alter my moment of time, and avow that it
is _now_ I love you the best, the completest. Do you want to know how
much kindness I can bear? If I ever am so happy as to speak so as to
please you, it may be only your own kindness overflowing and running
back to you—I feel every day, often in every day, the regret follow some
thought of you,—that _this_ thought, for instance, if I could secure and
properly tell you _this_ only, you would know my love for what it is,—and
yet that _this_ thought will pass unexpressed like the others! Well, I
do not care—rightly considered, there is not so much to regret—the words
_should_ lead to acts, and be felt insufficient.
Now we collect then, from Mr. Kenyon’s caution, or discretion, or pity,
or ignorance, that he will not interpose, and that there will be one
great effort, and acknowledgment _for all_? I should certainly like it
_so_ best. You seem stronger than to need the process of preparatory
disclosures, now to one, now to another friend. It is clearly best as it
is like to be ... for perhaps the chances are in our favour that the few
weeks more will be uninterrupted.
My time is gone—and nothing said! For to-morrow, all rests with you ...
if the note bids me go, I shall be in _absolute_ readiness—otherwise on
Wednesday ... just as you seem to discern the times and the seasons.
Bless you my own best, dearest Ba—your own R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Monday.
[Post-mark, August 18, 1846.]
For these two dear letters, I thank you, dearest! You are best, as ever!
And _that_ is all I have to tell you, almost—for I have seen nobody,
heard nothing ... except that _Eugène Sue can paint_, ... which Miss
Mitford told me this morning in a note of hers, ... in which, besides,
she complains of the fatigue she suffers from the visitors who go to see
after her the Reading prison, as the next ‘sight’ of the neighbourhood.
Better to live in Cheapside, than among the oaks, on such conditions!
As to Mr. Kenyon, he does not approach me. So he may come to-morrow,
perhaps, or even on Wednesday. Would it not appear the top of wisdom
if you deferred our day to Thursday’s sun!—now consider! It would be a
decided gain, surely, to be able to say to him on Wednesday that you had
not seen me since you and he saw me together. So I propose _Thursday_ if
you permit it. Next week we may take up our two days again, as one takes
up so many dropt silken stitches, ... and we will be careful that the
beads do not run off in the meantime. To-day George came from circuit. He
asked, for nearly a first question, whether I had thought of Italy—‘Yes,
I had thought of it—but there was time to think more.’ I am uneasy a
little under George’s eyes.
You did not tell me of Mr. Chorley ... whether he put questions about
the Continent, or observed on the mysteries in you. Does he go himself,
and when? A curious ‘fact’ is, that Mrs. Jameson was in the next house
to us this morning, and also a few days ago; yet never came here—the
reason certainly being a reluctance to seem to tread in upon the
recalling confidence. I felt sorry, and obliged to her—both at once.
Talking of confidences, I neglected to tell you when you were here
last, that one more had escaped us. It was not by my choice, if by my
fault. I wrote something in a note to Mr. Boyd some weeks ago, which
nobody except himself would have paused to think over; but he, like a
prisoner in a dungeon, sounds every stone of the walls round him, and
discerns a hollowness, detects a wooden beam, ... patiently pricks out
the mortar with a pin—all this, in his rayless, companionless Dark,—poor
Mr. Boyd! The time before I last went to see him, he asked me if I were
going to be a nun—there, was the first guess! On the next visit he puts
his question precisely right—_I_ tried to evade—then, promised to be
frank in a little time—but being pressed on all sides, and drawn on by
a solemn vow of secrecy, I allowed him to see the truth—and he lives
such an isolated life, that it is perfectly safe with him, setting the
oath aside. Also, he was very good and kind, and approved highly of
the whole, and exhorted me, with ever such exhortation, to keep to my
purpose, and to allow no consideration in the world or out of the world,
to make any difference—quoting the moral philosophers as to the rights
of such questions. Is there harm in his knowing? He knows nobody, talks
to nobody, and is very faithful to his word. Just as _I_, you will
retort, was foolish in mine! Yet I do assure you, mine was a sort of
word, which to nine hundred and ninety nine persons, would have suggested
nothing—only _he_ mused over it, turned it into all lights, and had
nothing to do but _that_. Afterwards he was proud, and asked ... ‘Was I
not acute?’ It was a pleasure to him, one could not grudge.
Are you well, ever dearest? _I_ am well. And yesterday, while they were
at dinner, I walked out alone, or with Flush—twice to the corner of the
street, turning it, to post your letter. May God bless you. Surely we
feel alike in many, many things—the convolvuluses grow together; twisted
together—and you lift me up from the ground; you! I am your very own—
Mr. Mathews said nothing more than I told you—very briefly—but he _sent_
the review, he said—and it has not come.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday Morning
[Post-mark, August 18, 1846.]
Let it be on Thursday then, dearest, for the reasons you mention. I will
say nothing of my own desires to meet you sooner ... they are corrected
by the other desires to spend my whole life with you. After all, these
are the critical weeks now approaching or indeed present—there shall be
no fault I can avoid. So, till Thursday—
Chorley said very little ... he is all discreetness and forbearance, here
as on other points. He goes to Birmingham at the end of this week, and
returning after some three or four days, leaves London for Paris—probably
next Saturday week. From Paris he thinks of going to Holland ... a
good step,—and of staying at Scheven ... ing ... what is the Bath’s
name?—not a good step, I told him, because of the mortal ugliness of the
place—which I well remember ... it may have improved in ten years, to
be sure. There, ‘walking on the sands,’ (sands in a heapy slope, not a
traversable flat) he means to ‘grow to an end’ with his Tragedy ... there
is a noble ardour in his working which one cannot help admiring—he has a
few weeks’ holiday, is jaded to death with writing, and yet will write
away his brief time of respite and restoratives—for what? He wondered
whether there was any chance of our meeting in Paris—‘our’ meaning him
and myself.
As for your communication to Mr. Boyd—how could you do otherwise, my own
Ba? I am altogether regardless of whatever danger there may be, in the
great delight at his sympathy and approval of your intention: he probably
never heard my name before ... but his own will ever be associated
divinely in my memory with those verses which always have affected me
profoundly ... perhaps on the whole, _more_ profoundly than any others
you ever wrote: _that_ is hard to prove to myself,—but I really think
so—the personal allusions in it went straight to my heart at the
beginning. I remember, too, how he loved and loves you ... you told me,
Ba: so I am most grateful to him,—as I ever shall feel to those who,
knowing you, judge me worthy of being capable of knowing you and taking
your impress, and becoming yours sufficiently for your happiness.
Are you so well, dearest, in your walks,—after your rides? Does that
rejoice me or no, when I would rather hear you had been happy, than
simply see you without such an assurance? I am very well, since you
ask—but my mother is not—her head being again affected. Yet the late
improvement gives ground for hope ... nor is this a very violent attack
in itself.
I suppose it _was_ in Mrs. Jameson’s mind, as you apprehend—you must
always be fond of her—(and such will be always my way of rewarding people
_I_ am fond of!)
God bless you, dearest—I love you all I can, Ba. I see another ship is
advertised to sail—(a steamer) for Naples, and other southern ports—but
no higher. When you are well and disposed to go to Greece, take me, my
love. I should feel too happy for this world, I think, among the islands
with you.
My very own, I am yours—
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, August 19, 1846.]
Your mother is not well, dearest? _that_ is bad news indeed. And then, I
think of your superstition of your being ill and well with her—take care
and keep well, Robert, ... or of what use will it be that _I_ should be
well? To-day we drove out, and were as far as Finchley, and I am none
the worse at all for it. Do you know Finchley? It is pretty and rural;
the ground rising and falling as if with the weight of verdure and dew!
fields, and hedgerows, and long slopes of grass thick and long enough, in
its fresh greenness, quite to hide the nostrils of the grazing cows. The
fields are little, too, as if the hedges wanted to get together. Then the
village of Finchley straggles along the road with a line of cottages, or
small houses, seeming to _play_ at a village. No butchers, no bakers—only
one shop in the place—but gardens, and creepers round the windows. Such
a way from London, it looked! Arabel wanted to call on a friend of
hers, a daughter of Sir William Russell’s, who married an adopted son
of _Lamartine_, and was in the navy, and is now an Independent minister
officiating in this selfsame metropolis of Finchley. A concatenation,
_that_ is, altogether. Very poor they are—living on something less than
two hundred a year, with five children, and the eldest five years old.
And the children came out to us, everybody else being away—so I, who
would have stayed in the carriage under other circumstances, was tempted
out by the children and the cottage, and they dragged us along to see
the drawing room, and dining room, and ‘Papa’s flowers,’ and their own
particular book ‘about the twenty-seven tailors’; and those of the
children who could speak, thought Flush ‘very cool’ for walking up-stairs
without being asked. (The baby opened its immense eyes wider than ever,
thinking unutterable things.) So as they had been so kind and hospitable
to us, we could not do less (after a quantity of admiration upon the
pretty house covered with roses, and the garden and lawn, and especially
the literature of those twenty-seven tailors) we could not do less than
offer to give them a drive ... which was accepted with acclamation. Think
of our taking into the carriage, all five children, with their prodigious
eyes and cheeks—the nurse on the coachbox, to take them home at the end
of some quarter of a mile! At the moment of parting, Alphonse Lamartine
thought seriously of making a great scream—but upon Arabel’s perjuring
herself by a promise to ‘come again soon,’ we got away without that
catastrophe. A worse one is, that you may think yourself obliged to read
this amusing history. To make amends, I send you what I gathered for you
in the garden ‘Pansy!—that’s for thoughts.’[5]
How wise we are about Thursday! or rather about Tuesday and Wednesday,
perhaps.
As for Mr. Boyd, he had just heard your name, but he is blind and deaf
to modern literature, and I am not anxious that he should know you much
by your poetry. He asked some questions about you, and he enquired of
Arabel particularly whether she thought we cared for each other enough.
But to tell you the truth, his unqualified adhesion strikes me as less
the result of his love for _you_, than of his anger towards another. I am
sure he triumphs inwardly in the idea of a chain being broken which he
has so often denounced in words that pained and vexed me—and then last
year’s affair about Italy made him furious. Oh—I could see plainly by the
sort of smile he smiled—but we need not talk of it—I am at the end too
of my time. How good you are to me not to upbraid me for imprudence and
womanly talkativeness! You are too, too good. And you liked my verses to
Mr. Boyd! Which _I_ like to hear, of course. Dearest—
Shall we go to Greece then, Robert? _Let_ us, if you like it! When we
have used a little the charm of your Italy, and have been in England
just to see that everybody is well, of yours and mine, ... (if you like
_that_!) ... why straightway we can go ‘among the islands’—(and _nearly_
as pleasant, it will be for me, as if I went there alone, having left
you!). I should like to see Athens with my living eyes ... Athens was
in all the dreams I dreamed, before I knew you. Why should we not see
Athens, and Egypt too, and float down the mystical Nile, and stand in the
shadow of the Pyramids? _All_ of it is more possible now, than walking up
this street seemed to me last year.
Indeed, there is only one miracle for _me_, my beloved,—and _that_ is
your loving me. Everything else under the sun, and much over it, seems
the merest commonplace and workday matter-of-fact. If I found myself,
suddenly, riding in Paradise, on a white elephant of golden feet, ...
I should shake the bridle, I fancy, with ever so much nonchalance, and
absently wonder over ‘that miracle’ of the previous world. Because
‘_THAT’S for thoughts_,’ as my flower says! look at it and listen.
As for me, I am your very own—
[5] [The flower is enclosed with the letter.]
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, August 19, 1846.]
See my one piece of available paper for the minute! Ought I to write on
or wait? No, I will tell Ba at once how I love her for giving me this
one more letter with its delights. ‘Finchley’—I know very well—not that
I ever saw the streets, and palaces, and cathedral, with these eyes ...
but in ‘Quarles’ Emblems,’ my childhood’s pet book, I well remember
that an aspiring Soul,—(a squat little woman-figure with a loose gown,
hair in a coil, and bare feet—) is seated on the world, a ‘terrestrial
ball,’—which, that you may clearly perceive it to be our world, is
somewhat parsimoniously scattered over with cities and towns—and
one, the evident capital of the universe and Babylon’s despair for
size,—occupying as it does a tract quite equal to all Europe’s due share
on the hemisphere, is marked ‘Finchley’—Do you recognize? [Illustration]
Yet, if you will have it only the pretty village with the fields you
describe so perfectly, I accept the sweetness and give up the glory, and
your Finchley is mine for ever, you dearest—whom I see in the house,
and in the carriage ... but how is it you escaped the rain, Ba? Oh, it
did not rain till later, now I think a little. Those are indeed strange
circumstances ... and the ‘independent ministry’ at the end, seems hard
to account for ... or, why hard? Well, _this_ is _not_ hard to feel
and know, that it is perfect joy to hear you propose such travels and
adventures—Greece _with you_, Egypt _with you_! Will you please and
tell me ... (not _now_, but whenever your conscience prompts you on the
recurrence of that notable objection, if Miss Campbell’s desirableness
_is_ to recur) ... what other woman in the whole world and Finchley,
would propose to go to Egypt instead of Belgravia? Do our tastes coincide
or no? This is putting all on the lowest possible ground ... setting
love aside even, to Miss Mitford’s heart’s fullest content; if I were to
choose among women, without love to give or take, and only for _other_
advantages, do you think _any_ advantage would compete with this single
one,—‘she will feel happy in travelling with you to a distance.’ Love
alters the scale, overbalances everything—at the beginning I fancied
you could not leave England, you know. But it singularly affects my
imagination, such a life with you,—led _for_ the world, I hope, all the
more effectually for being not led _in_ the world. If their ways are not
to be ours, all is better at a distance, and _so_ I have put this down
as, surely, _one_ palpable, unmistakable _advantage_ even _you_ must
confess I shall gain in marrying you—(I may only love Ba’s eyes and mouth
in a sort of fearful secrecy so far as words go ... she stops all speech
on that subject!)
Yes indeed, Ba, I always felt that ‘Cyprus wine’ poem fill my heart with
unutterable desires to you. There is so much of you in it. Observe, I
do no foolish injustice in criticisms ... I quite understand a charm
_beside_ the charm the world can see. Some of your pansies are entirely
beautiful in themselves.... I can set them before the visitors of a
flower-show and bid all pronounce on them—others, beside their beauty,
come to me as _this_ dear one, in a letter, with a story of the plucking,
with a _sense_ of the fingers that held it. Bless you, ever dearest, dear
beyond words,—you have given me already in this year and a half the
entirest faith and purest kindness my heart can comprehend. Do lovers
‘abuse the beloved object’—‘try to shake off their chains’ &c. &c.? Mine
is not love then! No one minute or moment of your life with me could have
been other than it was without seeming less dear, less perfect in my
memory—and for all, God reward you.
To-morrow, Thursday! And to-night I will warily speak of not having seen
you.
Your own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday.
[Post-mark, August 21, 1846.]
Dearest, this is to be a brief letter, though my heart shall find room in
whatever goes to you. Yesterday cost us nothing—no observation was made:
we were in all security notwithstanding the forebodings on either side.
May they find such an end in circumstances of still more consequence.
Dearest, your flowers are beautiful beyond their beauty of yesterday
which I praised—they think themselves still in the garden; we have done
them no sort of wrong. What a luring thought you leave with me in the
flowers! How I look at them as a sign of you, left behind—your footstep
in the ground! It has been so from the beginning. And yet sometimes you
try to prove that you are not always good. You!
If you are not good, it is because you are _best_. I will admit so much.
Oh, to look back! It is so wonderful to me to look back on my life
and my old philosophy of life, made of the necessities of sorrow and
the resolution to attain to something better than a perpetual moaning
and complaint,—to that state of neutralized emotion to which I did
attain—that serenity which meant the failure of hope! _Can_ I look back
to such things, and not thank you next to God? For you, who had the
_power_, to stoop to having the will,—is it not worthy of thanks? So I
thank you and love you and shall always, however it may be hereafter.
I could not feel otherwise to you, I think, than by my feeling at this
moment.
How Papa has startled me. He came in while I was writing ... (I shut the
writing-case as he walked over the floor—) and then, after the usual
talk of the weather, and how the nights ‘were growing cold,’ ... he said
suddenly ... looking to the table ... ‘What a beautiful colour those
little blue flowers have—’ Calling them just _so_, ... ‘little blue
flowers.’ I could scarcely answer I was so frightened—but he observed
nothing and turned and left the room with his favourite enquiry _pour
rire_, as to whether he ‘could do anything for me in the City.’
Do anything for _me_ in the City! Well—do _you_ do something for me, by
thinking of me and loving me, Robert. Dear you are, never to be tired
of me, with so much reason for it as I know. May God bless you, very
dear!—and ever dearest! I am your own too entirely to need to say so.
_Ba._
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Friday.
[Post-mark, August 21, 1846.]
I think—now that the week is over with its opportunities,—and now that
no selfish complaining can take advantage of your goodness,—that I will
ask you how _I_ feel, do you suppose, without my proper quantity of
‘morphine’? May I call you my morphine?
And speaking of ‘proper quantities’—there were some remarks of yours
which I altogether acquiesced in, yesterday, about a humiliating
dependence in money-matters; though I should be the first to except
myself from feeling _buite_ with the world there—I have told you,
indeed,—but my case is not everybody’s. I hate being _master_, and
alone, and absolute disposer in points where real love will save me the
trouble ... because there are infinitely more and greater points where
the solitary action and will, with their responsibility, cannot be
avoided. I suppose _that_ is Goethe’s meaning when he says every man has
liberty enough—political liberty and social: so that when they let him
write ‘Faust’ after his own fashion, he does not mind how they dispose of
his money, or even limit his own footsteps. Ah,—but there are the good
thousands all round who don’t want to write ‘Fausts,’ and only have money
to spend and walks to take, and how do _they_ like such an arrangement?
Moreover, I should be perhaps more refractory than anybody, if what I
cheerfully agree to, as happening to take my fancy, were forced on me,
as the only reasonable course. All men ought to be independent, whatever
Carlyle may say. And so, too, I like being alone, myself—but I should be
sorry to see the ordinary friends I have, live alone. Do you understand
all this, Ba? Will you make me say it, in your mind, intelligibly?
And then will you say still more of your own till the true thing is
completely said? And, after all, will you kiss me?’
As I asked you yesterday ... because of a most foolish, thoughtless
allusion,—which I only trust you never noticed ... do not you allude
to it, not even to forgive me, dearest, dearest. I would rather be
unforgiven than pain you afresh to do it ... but perhaps you did not
notice my silly expression after all.... I wished your dear hands before
my eyes, I know! Still you would know it was only thoughtlessness.
All this sad morning the blackness has been quite enough to justify our
fire ... we have had one there two or three days. But now the sun comes
out—and I will hope you follow him,—after Mr. Kenyon’s visit? _That_ is
to be I think!
I never write anything bearable, even for _me_, on these days when
no letter from you leads me on phrase by phrase ... I am thrown too
completely on the general feelings—‘Do you love Ba?—then tell her
_that_!’ Yes, indeed! It is easier to leave all the love untold, having
to speak for the moment of Finchley only! Finchley,—the cottage,—Ba
entering it—Flush following her ... now I come to something I wanted to
say! In the paper, this morning, is a paragraph about the bold villainy
of _dog-stealers_. There is an ‘organised society’ of these fellows,
and they seize and convey away everybody’s Flushes, ‘if such a one ever
_were_,’ as Iago rhymes of his perfect wife. So friend Flush must go his
_high_ ways only, and keep out of alleys and dark corners: beside in
Pisa, he must guard the house. In earnest, I warn you, Ba!
Now tell me—will there be any impediment to Tuesday?
I think I will go out into this sunshine while it lasts. I am very well
considering there are three days to wait, but a walk will do no harm,—nor
will I.
All speech to you shall be ever simple, simplest. I can only love you and
say so,—and I do love you, best beloved!
Your own, very own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday Evening.
[Post-mark, August 22, 1846.]
Can I be as good for you as morphine is for me, I wonder ... even at the
cost of being as bad also? Can’t you leave me off without risking your
life,—nor go on with me without running the hazards of all poison. Ah!—it
will not do, so. The figure exceeds me, let _it_ be ever so fatal. I may
not be your morphine, even if I shall be your Ba!—you _see_!