to-day, and sate here I really believe two hours, talking of poor Papa
... (oh! not of _us_, my prophet!) and at length, of the Pyrenees and
of Switzerland, and of the characteristics of mountain scenery—full of
interest it all was, and I thought (while he talked) that when you and I
had done with the crocodiles, we might look for a chamois or two. If I
‘drive,’ I shall drive that way, I think still ... that is, ever since
four o’clock, I _have_ thought. Mr. Kenyon said ... ‘You had a visitor
yesterday!’ ‘Yes’ said I—‘Mr. Browning came.’ ‘You mean that he actually
_did_ come, through that pouring rain! Well—he told me he was coming:
but when I saw the rain, I imagined it to be out of the question.’ Just
observe his subtlety. Imagining that you did not come yesterday he
concluded of course that you would come to-day,—and straightway hurried
here himself! Moreover he seems to me to have resolved on never again
leaving London! Because Mr. Eagles goes to the seaside instead of to the
Quantock hills, Mr. Kenyon has written to Landor a proposition toward a
general renouncement of the adventure. Quite cross I felt, to hear of it!
And it doesn’t unruffle me to be told, even that he goes to Richmond on
Tuesday and sleeps there and spends the Wednesday. Nothing _can_ unruffle
me. So tiresome it is! Then I am provoked a little by the news he brought
me of ‘Miss Martineau’s leaving the Lakes for a month or two’—seeing that
_if_ she leaves the Lakes, it is for London—there are nets on all sides
of us. I am under a promise to see her, and I shrink both from herself
and her consequences. Now, _is_ it not tiresome? Those are coming, and
these are _not_ going away. The hunters are upon us ... and where we run,
we run into the nets.
Dearest, I have been considering one thing, and do _you_ consider
whether, if we _do_ achieve this peculiar madness of going to Italy,
we should take any books, and what they should be. A few books of the
small editions would be desirable perhaps—and then it were well for
us to arrange it so that we should not take duplicates, and that the
possession of the duodecimo should ‘have the preference’ ... do you
understand? Also, this arrangement being made, and the time approaching,
I had better perhaps send you _my_ part of the books, so as to save the
difficulty of taking more packets than absolutely were necessary, from
this house. It will be very difficult to remove things without exciting
observation—and _my sisters must not observe_. The consequences would be
frightful if they were suspected of knowing; and, poor things, I could
not drive them into acting a part.
My own beloved, when my courage seems to bend and break, I turn to you
and look at you ... as men see visions! _It is enough, always._ Did you
ever give me pain by a purpose of yours?—do you not rather keep me from
all pain?—do we blame the wind that breathes gently, because a reed or a
weed trembles in it? I could not feel much pain while sitting near you, I
think—unless you suffered a little, ... or looked as if you did not love
me. And _that_ was not at least yesterday.
May God bless you dearest, ever dearest.
I am your own.
Say how your mother is—and how you are. _Don’t_ neglect this.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Saturday.
[Post-mark, August 22, 1846.]
Your first note reached me at six o’clock yesterday ... did the dear
living spirit inside help it along in spite of all the post’s hindrances?
And this second comes duly. When you know I am most at a loss how to
thank you, invariably you begin thanking _me_! Is that because of my own
practice of saying a foolish thing and then, to cover it, asking you to
kiss me? I think I will tell you now what that foolish thing was,—lest
you, missing it, should go hunting and find worse, and far worse. I will
just remind you, that on your enumerating your brothers and sisters, I
said without a moment’s thought ‘so, _you are seven_’!... And you know
how Wordsworth applied that phrase ... and in the sudden fear of wounding
dearest Ba, I took such refuge for myself, rather than her! Will you kiss
me now, my own love? And say nothing, but let it die away here, this
stupidity of mine.
I hardly conceive what Mr. Kenyon means ... except perhaps a sort of
general exhortation to take care, and—I mean, if he came for the purpose
of catching me _only_,—he ought either to know or not know, keep silence
or speak, approve or condemn ... and to do _neither_ being so easy, his
own cautiousness would keep him away, I should have thought.
About your books, you speak altogether wisely: in this first visit to
Italy we had better take only enough to live upon,—travelling books,—and
return for the rest. And so with everything else. I shall put papers &c.
into a room and turn the key on them and my death’s heads—because when we
come back (think of you and me ... why, we shall walk arm in arm,—would
Flush object to carry an umbrella in his mouth? And so let Lough cut us
in marble, all three!)—well, when we come back, all can be done leisurely
and considerately. And _then_, Greece, Egypt, Syria, the Chamois-country,
as Ba pleases!
Ba, Lord Byron is altogether in my affection again ... I have read on
to the end, and am quite sure of the great qualities which the last ten
or fifteen years had partially obscured. Only a little longer life and
all would have been gloriously right again. I read this book of Moore’s
too long ago: but I always retained my first feeling for Byron in many
respects ... the interest in the places he had visited, in relics of
him. I would at any time have gone to Finchley to see a curl of his hair
or one of his gloves, I am sure—while Heaven knows that I could not get
up enthusiasm enough to cross the room if at the other end of it all
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey were condensed into the little China
bottle yonder, after the Rosicrucian fashion ... they seem to ‘have their
reward’ and want nobody’s love or faith. Just one of those trenchant
opinions which I found fault with Byron for uttering,—as ‘proving
nothing’! But telling a weakness to Ba is not telling it to ‘the world,’
as poor authors phrase it!
By the way, Chorley has written another very kind paper, in that little
journal of to-day, ‘Colombe’s Birthday’—I have only glanced at it
however. See his goodwill: I will bring it on Tuesday, if you please in
goodness. I was not _quite_ so well ... (there is the bare truth ...)
this morning early—but the little there was to _go_, _has_ gone, and I am
about to go out. My mother continues indisposed. The connection between
our ailings is no fanciful one. A few weeks ago when my medical adviser
was speaking about the pain and its cause ... my mother sitting by me
... he exclaimed ‘Why, has anybody to search far for a cause of whatever
nervous disorder you may suffer from, when _there_ sits your mother ...
whom you so absolutely resemble ... I can trace every feature &c. &c.’ To
which I did _not_ answer, ‘And will anybody wonder that the said disorder
flies away, when there sits my Ba, whom I so thoroughly adore.’
Yes, there you sit, Ba!
And here I kiss you, best beloved,—my very own as I am your own—
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Saturday.
[Post-mark, August 22, 1846.]
I begin to write before one this morning, with the high resolve that
you shall have a letter on Sunday, to-morrow, at least,—it shall be put
into the post so precisely at the right hour. At two I am going out in
the carriage to Mr. Boyd’s and other places,—and dining duties are to
be performed before then, and before now I have had a visitor. Guess
whom—Mrs. Jameson. So I am on a ‘narrow neck of land’ ... such as Wesley
wrote hymns about; ... and _stans in pede uno_ on it—can make for you but
a hurried letter.
She came in with a questioning face, and after wondering to find me
visible so soon, plunged into the centre of the question and asked ‘what
was settled ... what I was doing about Italy.—’ ‘Just nothing,’ I told
her. ‘She found me as she left me, able to say no word.’
‘But what _are_ you going to do—’ throwing herself back in the chair with
a sudden—‘but oh, I must not enquire.’
I went on to say that ‘in the first place my going would not take place
till quite the end of September if so soon,—that I had determined to make
no premature fuss,—and that, for the actual present, nothing was either
to be done or said.
‘Very sudden then, it is to be. In fact, there is only an _elopement_ for
you—’ she observed laughing.
So I was obliged to laugh.
(But, dearest, nobody will use such a word surely to the _event_. We
shall be in such an obvious exercise of Right by Daylight—surely nobody
will use such a word.)
I talked of Mr. Kenyon,—how he had been with me yesterday and brought the
mountains of the Earth into my room—‘which was almost too much,’ I said,
‘for a prisoner.’ ‘Yes—but if you go to Italy....’
‘But Mr. Kenyon thinks I shall not. In his opinion, my case is desperate.’
‘But I tell you that it is not. Nobody’s case is desperate when the
will is not at fault. And a woman’s will when she wills thoroughly as I
hope you do, is strong enough to overcome. When I hear people say that
_circumstances are against them_, I always retort, ... you mean _that
your will is not with you_! I believe in the will—I have faith in it.’
There is an oracle for us, to remember for good! She goes to Paris, she
says, with her niece, between the seventh and tenth of September,—and
after a few days at Paris she goes to Orleans for the cathedral’s
sake—but what follows is doubtful ... Italy is doubtful. Only that my
opinion is, as I told her, that if Italy is doubtful here in London, at
Orleans, when she gets there, it will be certain. She will not resist the
attraction towards the South. She looked at me all the while she told me
this ... looked into my eyes, like a Diviner.
On Monday morning she comes to see me again. It is all painful, or rather
unpleasant. One should not use strong words out of place, and there will
remain too much use for this. How I teaze you now!
Believe me, through it all, that when I think of the very worst of the
future, I love you the best, and feel most certain of never hesitating.
As long as you choose to have me, my beloved, I have chosen—I am yours
already—
and your own always—
_Ba_.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Sunday Morning.
[Post-mark, August 24, 1846.]
But dearest—Did you not understand that I understood? I know your
words better than you think, you see. Were you afraid to trust me to
give a chase to them in my recollection, lest I should fall blindly
upon some ‘Secret Sin’ of yours? a wild boar, instead of a poor little
coney belonging to the rocks of my desolation?—such as it was before
you made the yellow furze grow everywhere on it? Now, it is like me
for wickedness, to begin talking of your ‘Secret Sins,’ just by this
opportunity. You overcome me with goodness—there’s the real truth, and
the whole of it.
While I am writing, comes in Arabel with such a face. My brother had
been talking, talking of me. Stormie suddenly touched her and said—‘Is
it true that there is an engagement between Mr. Browning and Ba—?’ She
was taken unaware, but had just power to say ‘You had better ask them,
if you want to know. What nonsense, Storm.’ ‘Well,’ he resumed, ‘I’ll ask
Ba when I go up-stairs.’ George was by, looking as grave as if antedating
his judgeship. Think how frightened I was, Robert ... expecting them
up-stairs every minute,—for all my brothers come here on Sunday, all
together. But they came, and not a single word was said—not on that
subject, and I talked on every other in a sort of hurried way—I was so
frightened.
Saturday Mr. Boyd and I talked on _it_ for two hours nearly, he would
not let me go with his kindness. Nothing, he said, would make him
gladder than our having gone, and escaped the storms. In fact, what
with affection for me, and disaffection in other directions, he thinks
of nothing besides, I do believe. He only wishes that he had known last
year, in order to exhort me properly. The very triumph of reason and
righteousness, he considers the whole affair. But I told you what Mr.
Boyd is—dear, poor Mr. Boyd! Talking such pure childishness sometimes,
in such pure Attic—yet one of the very most upright men, after all, that
I ever dreamt of—one of the men born shepherds—with a crook in the hand,
instead of the metaphorical ‘silver spoon in the mouth.’ Good, dear Mr.
Boyd,—I am very grateful to him for his goodness to me just now. I assure
you that he takes us up exactly as if we were Ossian and Macpherson, or
a criticism of Porson’s, or a new chapter of Bentley on Phalaris. By the
way, _do you believe in Ossian_? Let me be properly prepared for that
question.
But I have a question for you of my own. Listen to me, my Famous in
Council, and give me back words of wisdom. A long, long while ago,
nearly a year since perhaps, I wrote to the Blackwoods of Edinburgh to
mention my new ‘Prometheus,’ and to ask if they would care to use it
in their magazine, _that_, and verses more my own; whether they would
care to have them at the usual magazine terms—I had some lyrics by me,
and people have constantly advised me to print in Blackwood, with the
prospect of republishing in the independent form. You get at the public
so, and are paid for your poems instead of paying for them. Did I tell
you all this before—and about my having written the enquiry? At any rate,
no reply came—I concluded that Mr. Blackwood did not think it worth
while to write, and eschewed the poems—and the subject passed from my
thoughts till last night. Then came a very civil note. The authorities
receiving nothing from me, were afraid that their answer to my letter had
not reached me, and therefore wrote again. They would ‘like to see’ my
‘Prometheus’ though apprehensive of its being unfit for the Magazine—but
particularly desire to have all manner of lyrics, whatever I have by me.
Now, what do you think? What shall I do? Would it not be well to let
this door between us and Blackwood stand open. One is not in the worst
company there—they pay well,—and you have the opportunity of standing
face to face with the public at any moment—without hindering the solemner
interviews. When we are in Italy, particularly...! Do you see? Tell me
your thoughts.
Since I began this letter, I have been to the Scotch Church in our
neighbourhood—and it has all been in vain—I could not stay. We heard that
a French minister, a M. Alphonse Monod of Montauban, was to preach at
three o’clock, in French—and counting on a small congregation, and Arabel
(through a knowledge of the localities) encouraging me with the prospect
of sitting close to the door, and retiring back into the entrance-hall
when the singing began, so as to escape that excitement—I agreed to make
the trial, and she and I set out in a cab from the cab-stand hard by
... to which we walked. But the church was filling, obviously filling,
as we arrived ... and grew fuller and fuller. We went in and came out
again, and I sate down on the stairs—and the people came faster and
faster, and I could not keep the tears out of my eyes to begin with. One
gets nervous among all these people if a straw stirs. So Arabel after
due observations on every side, decided that it would be too much of a
congregation for me, and that I had better go home to Flush—(poor Flush
having been left at home in a state of absolute despair). She therefore
put me into a cab and sent me to Wimpole Street, and stayed behind
herself to hear M. Monod—there’s my adventure to-day. When I opened my
door on my return, Flush threw himself upon me with a most ecstatical
agony, and for full ten minutes did not cease jumping and kissing my
hands—he thought he had lost me for certain, this time. Oh! and you
warn me against the danger of losing _him_. Indeed I take care and take
thought too—those ‘organised banditti’ are not merely banditti _de
comedie_—they are a dreadful reality. Did I not tell you once that they
had announced to me that I should not have Flush back the _next time_,
for less than ten guineas? But you will let him come with us to Italy,
instead—will you not, dear, dearest? in good earnest, will you not?
Because, if I leave him behind, he will be teazed for my sins in this
house—or I could not be sure of the reverse of it. And even if he escaped
that fate, consider how he would break his heart about me. Dogs pine to
death sometimes—and if ever a dog loved a man, or a woman, Flush loves
me. But you say that he shall keep the house at Pisa—and you mean it, I
hope and I think?—you are in earnest. May God bless you,—_so_, I say my
prayers, though I missed the Church. To-morrow, comes my letter ... come
my two letters! the happy Monday! The happier Tuesday, if on Tuesday
comes the writer of the letters!
His very own BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, August 24, 1846.]
This time, they brought me your letter at six o’clock yesterday evening:
was I startled, or no, do you think, as I received it? But all proved
right, and kind as ever, or kinder. By the post-mark, I see you _did_ go
out. Can you care in this way for my disappointments and remedy them?
If I did not love you, how I would begin _now_! Every day shows me
more to love in you, dearest, and I open my arms as wide as I can ...
‘incomprehensible’ Ba, as Donne would say! Also he would say much better
things, however.
What a visitation! Miss Martineau is the more formidable friend,
however—Mrs. Jameson will be contented with a little confidence, you see,
and ask no questions—but I doubt if you arrange matters so easily with
the new-comer. Because no great delicacy can be kept alive with all that
conceit—and such conceit! A lady told me a few weeks ago that she had
seen a letter in which Miss M. gave as her reason for not undertaking
_then_, during the London season, this very journey which empty London
is to benefit from now, ‘that at such a time she should be _mobbed to
death_’: whereupon the lady went on to comment, ‘Miss M. little knows
what London is, and how many nearly as notable objects may be found to
divert its truculence from herself’—Tom Thumb, and Ibrahim Pacha, to wit.
Why do you suspect that you ‘teaze’ me when you say ‘there will remain
too much use for the word “painful”’? Do you not know more of me by this
time, my own Ba? When I have spoken of the probable happiness of our
future life—of the chances in our favour from a community of tastes and
feelings,—I have really done it on your account, not mine. I very well
know that there would be an exquisite, secret happiness _through_ pain
with you, or for you—but it is not for me to insist on _that_, with that
divine diffidence in your own worth which meets me wherever I turn to
approach you, and puts me so gently aside ... so I rather retire and
content myself with occupying the ground you _do_ concede ... and since
you will only hear of my being happy in the obvious, ordinary way, I tell
you, with perfect truth, that you, and only you, can make me thus—that
only you, of all women, look in the direction that I look, and feel as I
feel, and live for the ends of my life; and beside that, see with my eyes
the most natural and immediate way of reaching them, through a simple
life, retirements from the world here (not from the real world), travel,
and the rest. But all the while I know ... do not _you_ know, Ba? ...
that the joy’s essence is in the life with you, for the sake of you, not
of the mere vulgar happiness; and that if any of our calculations should
fail, it will be a surprise, a delight, a pride to me to take the new
taste you shall prescribe, or leave the old one you forbid. My life being
yours, what matters the change which you effect in it?
Here, you mean not even so much as this by your ‘painful’—‘Elopement’!
Let them call it ‘felony’ or ‘burglary’—so long as they don’t go to
church with us, and propose my health after breakfast! Now you fancy this
a gratuitous piece of impertinence, do you not, Ba? You are wrong, sweet:
I speak from directest experience—having dreamed, the night before last,
that we were married, and that on adjourning to the house of a friend of
mine, his brother, a young fop I know slightly, made a speech, about a
certain desk or dressing-case, which he ended by presenting to me in the
name of the house! Whereto I replied in a strain of the most alarming
fluency ( ... all in the dream, I need not tell you)—‘and then I woke.’
Oh _can_ I have smiled, higher up in the letter, at Miss Martineau’s
over-excitability on the subject of ‘mobbing’ here? The greatest coward
is the wisest man ... even the suspicion of such mobs ought to keep
people at their lakes, or send them to their Pisas.
By the way, Byron speaks of plucking oranges in his garden at Pisa ... I
saw just a courtyard with a high wall—which may have been a garden ...
but a gloomier one than the palace, even, warrants. They have painted the
front fresh staring yellow and changed its name ... there being another
Casa Lanfranchi on the other side of the Arno.
Now I will kiss you, dearest: used you to divine that at the very
beginning, I have sometimes shortened the visit in order to arrive at the
time of taking your hand?
You will write to me to-night, I think—Tuesday is our day, remember. May
God bless you, my very very dearest—
Your R.
That sonnet will not turn up—it is neither in Vasari, nor Dolce, nor
Castiglione ... probably in Richardson’s ‘Painting’ which somebody has
borrowed—but I will find it yet, knowing that it must be near at hand.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Monday Morning.
[Post-mark, August 24, 1846.]
My own dearest, let me say the most urgent thing first. You hear these
suspicions of your brothers. Will you consider if, during this next
month, we do not risk too much in seeing each other as usual? We risk
everything ... and what do we gain, in the face of that? I can learn no
more about you, be taught no new belief in your absolute peerlessness—I
have taken my place at your feet for ever: all my use of the visits is,
therefore, the perfect delight of them ... and to hazard a whole life
of such delight for the want of self-denial during a little month,—that
would be horrible. I altogether sympathise with your brothers’
impatience, or curiosity, or anxiety, or ‘graveness’—and am prepared
for their increasing and growing to heights difficult or impossible to
be borne. But do you not think we may avoid compelling any premature
crisis of this kind? I am guided by your feelings, as I seem to perceive
them, in this matter; the harm to be apprehended is _through_ the harm
to _them_—to your brothers. If they determine on avowedly _knowing_
what we intend, I do not see which to fear most; the tacit acquiescence
in our scheme which may draw down a vengeance on them without doing us
the least good,—or the open opposition which would bring about just so
much additional misfortune. I _know_, now, your perfect adequacy to any
pain and danger you will incur for our love’s sake—I believe in you as
you would have me believe: but give yourself to me, dearest dearest Ba,
the entire creature you are, and not a lacerated thing only reaching my
arms to sink there. Perhaps this is all a sudden fancy, not justified by
circumstances, arising from my ignorance of the characters of those I
talk about; that is for you to decide—your least word reassures me, as
always. But I fear much for _you_, to make up, perhaps, for there being
nothing else in the world fit to fear: I exclude direct visitations of
God, which cannot be feared, after all—dreadful dooms to which we should
bow. But the ‘fear’ _proper_, means with me an apprehension that, with
all my best effort, it may be unable to avert some misfortune ... the
effort going on all the time: and _this_ is a real effort, dearest Ba,
this letter: consider it thus. I will (if possible) send it to town, so
as to reach you earlier and allow you to write _one line_ in reply. You
have heard all I can say ... say you, _shall I come to-morrow?_ If you
think it advisable, I will come and be most happy.
Another thing: you see your excitement about the church and the crowd....
My own love, are you able,—with all that great, wonderful heart of
yours,—to bear the railway fatigues, and the entering and departure
from Paris and Orleans and the other cities and towns? Would not the
long sea-voyage be infinitely better, if a little dearer? Or what
can be _dear_ if it prevents all that risk, or rather certainty, of
excitement and fatigue? You see, the packet sails on the 30th September
and the _15th October_. As three of us go, they would probably make some
reduction in price. Ah, even here, I must smile ... will you affirm that
ever _an approximation to a doubt_ crossed your mind about Flush? I
think your plans with respect to ‘Blackwood’ most excellent—I see _many_
advantages.
* * * * *
Here is the carriage for my sister, who is going to stay in town at the
Arnoulds’ for a week,—with Mrs. A. in it to fetch her. I shall give
this letter to be put in the post—I have _all_ to say, but the _very_
essential is said—understand me, my best, only love, and forgive my undue
alarm, for the sake of the love that prompts it. Write the one line ...
do not let me do myself wrong by my anxiety—if I _may_ come, _let me_!
Bless you, Ba.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Monday Evening.
[Post-mark, August 25, 1846.]
Dearest, how you frightened me with the sight of your early letter!
But it is only your wisdom,—which by this time should scarcely startle
me,—there’s a compliment, to begin with, you see, in change for all the
praises; ... my ‘peerlessness’ (!!!) being settled like the Corn Law
repeal!—oh, you want no more evidence of it, not you! (poor blind you!)
and the other witnesses are bidden to ‘stand down’—‘I may smile even
_now_’ ... as you say _quoad_ Flush, ... smile at your certainty as you
smile at my doubt. Will you let me smile, and not call it a peerless
insolence, or ingratitude,—dearest you?