_E.B.B. to R.B._
[Post-mark, September 16, 1845.]
I scarcely know how to write what is to be written nor indeed why it
is to be written and to what end. I have tried in vain--and you are
waiting to hear from me. I am unhappy enough even where I am
happy--but ungrateful nowhere--and I thank you from my
heart--profoundly from the depths of my heart ... which is nearly all
I can do.
One letter I began to write and asked in it how it could become me to
speak at all if '_from the beginning and at this moment you never
dreamed of_' ... and there, I stopped and tore the paper; because I
felt that you were too loyal and generous, for me to bear to take a
moment's advantage of the same, and bend down the very flowering
branch of your generosity (as it might be) to thicken a little the
fence of a woman's caution and reserve. You will not say that you have
not acted as if you 'dreamed'--and I will answer therefore to the
general sense of your letter and former letters, and admit at once
that I _did_ state to you the difficulties most difficult to myself
... though not all ... and that if I had been worthier of you I should
have been proportionably less in haste to 'bid you leave that
subject.' I do not understand how you can seem at the same moment to
have faith in my integrity and to have doubt whether all this time I
may not have felt a preference for another ... which you are ready
'to serve,' you say. Which is generous in you--but in _me_, where were
the integrity? Could you really hold me to be blameless, and do you
think that truehearted women act usually so? Can it be necessary for
me to tell you that I could not have acted so, and did not? And shall
I shrink from telling you besides ... you, who have been generous to
me and have a right to hear it ... and have spoken to me in the name
of an affection and memory most precious and holy to me, in this same
letter ... that neither now nor formerly has any man been to my
feelings what you are ... and that if I were different in some
respects and free in others by the providence of God, I would accept
the great trust of your happiness, gladly, proudly, and gratefully;
and give away my own life and soul to that end. I _would_ do it ...
_not, I do_ ... observe! it is a truth without a consequence; only
meaning that I am not all stone--only proving that I am not likely to
consent to help you in wrong against yourself. You see in me what is
not:--_that_, I know: and you overlook in me what is unsuitable to you
... _that_ I know, and have sometimes told you. Still, because a
strong feeling from some sources is self-vindicating and ennobling to
the object of it, I will not say that, if it were proved to me that
you felt this for me, I would persist in putting the sense of my own
unworthiness between you and me--not being heroic, you know, nor
pretending to be so. But something worse than even a sense of
unworthiness, _God_ has put between us! and judge yourself if to beat
your thoughts against the immovable marble of it, can be anything but
pain and vexation of spirit, waste and wear of spirit to you ...
judge! The present is here to be seen ... speaking for itself! and the
best future you can imagine for me, what a precarious thing it must be
... a thing for making burdens out of ... only not for your carrying,
as I have vowed to my own soul. As dear Mr. Kenyon said to me to-day
in his smiling kindness ... 'In ten years you may be strong
perhaps'--or 'almost strong'! that being the encouragement of my best
friends! What would he say, do you think, if he could know or
guess...! what _could_ he say but that you were ... a poet!--and I ...
still worse! _Never_ let him know or guess!
And so if you are wise and would be happy (and you have excellent
practical sense after all and should exercise it) you must leave
me--these thoughts of me, I mean ... for if we might not be true
friends for ever, I should have less courage to say the other truth.
But we may be friends always ... and cannot be so separated, that your
happiness, in the knowledge of it, will not increase mine. And if you
will be persuaded by me, as you say, you will be persuaded _thus_ ...
and consent to take a resolution and force your mind at once into
another channel. Perhaps I might bring you reasons of the class which
you tell me 'would silence you for ever.' I might certainly tell you
that my own father, if he knew that you had written to me _so_, and
that I had answered you--_so_, even, would not forgive me at the end
of ten years--and this, from none of the causes mentioned by me here
and in no disrespect to your name and your position ... though he does
not over-value poetry even in his daughter, and is apt to take the
world's measures of the means of life ... but for the singular reason
that he never _does_ tolerate in his family (sons or daughters) the
development of one class of feelings. Such an objection I could not
bring to you of my own will--it rang hollow in my ears--perhaps I
thought even too little of it:--and I brought to you what I thought
much of, and cannot cease to think much of equally. Worldly thoughts,
these are not at all, nor have been: there need be no soiling of the
heart with any such:--and I will say, in reply to some words of yours,
that you cannot despise the gold and gauds of the world more than I
do, and should do even if I found a use for them. And if I _wished_ to
be very poor, in the world's sense of poverty, I _could not_, with
three or four hundred a year of which no living will can dispossess
me. And is it not the chief good of money, the being free from the
need of thinking of it? It seems so to me.
The obstacles then are of another character, and the stronger for
being so. Believe that I am grateful to you--_how_ grateful, cannot be
shown in words nor even in tears ... grateful enough to be truthful in
all ways. You know I might have hidden myself from you--but I would
not: and by the truth told of myself, you may believe in the
earnestness with which I tell the other truths--of you ... and of this
subject. The subject will not bear consideration--it breaks in our
hands. But that God is stronger than we, cannot be a bitter thought to
you but a holy thought ... while He lets me, as much as I can be
anyone's, be only yours.