_E.B.B. to R.B._
Sunday.
[August 31, 1845.]
I did not think you were angry--I never said so. But you might
reasonably have been wounded a little, if you had suspected me of
blaming you for any bearing of yours towards myself; and this was the
amount of my fear--or rather hope ... since I conjectured most that
you were not well. And after all you did think ... do think ... that
in some way or for some moment I blamed you, disbelieved you,
distrusted you--or why this letter? How have I provoked this letter?
Can I forgive myself for having even seemed to have provoked it? and
will you believe me that if for the past's sake you sent it, it was
unnecessary, and if for the future's, irrelevant? Which I say from no
want of sensibility to the words of it--your words always make
themselves felt--but in fulness of purpose not to suffer you to hold
to words because they have been said, nor to say them as if to be
holden by them. Why, if a thousand more such words were said by you to
me, how could they operate upon the future or present, supposing me to
choose to keep the possible modification of your feelings, as a
probability, in my sight and yours? Can you help my sitting with the
doors all open if I think it right? I do attest to you--while I trust
you, as you must see, in word and act, and while I am confident that
no human being ever stood higher or purer in the eyes of another, than
you do in mine,--that you would still stand high and remain
unalterably my friend, if the probability in question became a fact,
as now at this moment. And this I must say, since you have said other
things: and this alone, which _I_ have said, concerns the future, I
remind you earnestly.
My dearest friend--you have followed the most _generous_ of impulses
in your whole bearing to me--and I have recognised and called by its
name, in my heart, each one of them. Yet I cannot help adding that, of
us two, yours has not been quite the hardest part ... I mean, to a
generous nature like your own, to which every sort of nobleness comes
easily. Mine has been more difficult--and I have sunk under it again
and again: and the sinking and the effort to recover the duty of a
lost position, may have given me an appearance of vacillation and
lightness, unworthy at least of _you_, and perhaps of both of us.
Notwithstanding which appearance, it was right and just (only just) of
you, to believe in me--in my truth--because I have never failed to you
in it, nor been capable of _such_ failure: the thing I have said, I
have meant ... always: and in things I have not said, the silence has
had a reason somewhere different perhaps from where you looked for it.
And this brings me to complaining that you, who profess to believe in
me, do yet obviously believe that it was only merely silence, which I
required of you on one occasion--and that if I had 'known your power
over yourself,' I should not have minded ... no! In other words you
believe of me that I was thinking just of my own (what shall I call it
for a motive base and small enough?) my own scrupulousness ... freedom
from embarrassment! of myself in the least of me; in the tying of my
shoestrings, say!--so much and no more! Now this is so wrong, as to
make me impatient sometimes in feeling it to be your impression: I
asked for silence--but _also_ and chiefly for the putting away of ...
you know very well what I asked for. And this was sincerely done, I
attest to you. You wrote once to me ... oh, long before May and the
day we met: that you 'had been so happy, you should be now justified
to yourself in taking any step most hazardous to the happiness of your
life'--but if you were justified, could _I_ be therefore justified in
abetting such a step,--the step of wasting, in a sense, your best
feelings ... of emptying your water gourds into the sand? What I
thought then I think now--just what any third person, knowing you,
would think, I think and feel. I thought too, at first, that the
feeling on your part was a mere generous impulse, likely to expand
itself in a week perhaps. It affects me and has affected me, very
deeply, more than I dare attempt to say, that you should persist
_so_--and if sometimes I have felt, by a sort of instinct, that after
all you would not go on to persist, and that (being a man, you know)
you might mistake, a little unconsciously, the strength of your own
feeling; you ought not to be surprised; when I felt it was more
advantageous and happier for you that it should be so. _In any case_,
I shall never regret my own share in the events of this summer, and
your friendship will be dear to me to the last. You know I told you
so--not long since. And as to what you say otherwise, you are right in
thinking that I would not hold by unworthy motives in avoiding to
speak what you had any claim to hear. But what could I speak that
would not be unjust to you? Your life! if you gave it to me and I put
my whole heart into it; what should I put but anxiety, and more
sadness than you were born to? What could I give you, which it would
not be ungenerous to give? Therefore we must leave this subject--and I
must trust you to leave it without one word more; (too many have been
said already--but I could not let your letter pass quite silently ...
as if I had nothing to do but to receive all as matter of course
_so_!) while you may well trust _me_ to remember to my life's end, as
the grateful remember; and to feel, as those do who have felt sorrow
(for where these pits are dug, the water will stand), the full price
of your regard. May God bless you, my dearest friend. I shall send
this letter after I have seen you, and hope you may not have expected
to hear sooner.
Ever yours,