_R.B. to E.B.B._
[Post-mark, September 17, 1845.]
I do not know whether you imagine the precise effect of your letter on
me--very likely you do, and write it just for that--for I conceive
_all_ from your goodness. But before I tell you what is that effect,
let me say in as few words as possible what shall stop any
fear--though only for a moment and on the outset--that you have been
misunderstood, that the goodness _outside_, and round and over all,
hides all or any thing. I understand you to signify to me that you
see, at this present, insurmountable obstacles to that--can I speak
it--entire gift, which I shall own, was, while I dared ask it, above
my hopes--and wishes, even, so it seems to me ... and yet could not
but be asked, so plainly was it dictated to me, by something quite out
of those hopes and wishes. Will it help me to say that once in this
Aladdin-cavern I knew I ought to stop for no heaps of jewel-fruit on
the trees from the very beginning, but go on to the lamp, _the_ prize,
the last and best of all? Well, I understand you to pronounce that at
present you believe this gift impossible--and I acquiesce entirely--I
submit wholly to you; repose on you in all the faith of which I am
capable. Those obstacles are solely for _you_ to see and to declare
... had _I_ seen them, be sure I should never have mocked you or
myself by affecting to pass them over ... what _were_ obstacles, I
mean: but you _do_ see them, I must think,--and perhaps they strike me
the more from my true, honest unfeigned inability to imagine what they
are,--not that I shall endeavour. After what you _also_ apprise me of,
I know and am joyfully confident that if ever they cease to be what
you now consider them, you who see now _for me_, whom I implicitly
trust in to see for me; you will _then_, too, see and remember me, and
how I trust, and shall then be still trusting. And until you so see,
and so inform me, I shall never utter a word--for that would involve
the vilest of implications. I thank God--I _do_ thank him, that in
this whole matter I have been, to the utmost of my power, not unworthy
of his introducing you to me, in this respect that, being no longer in
the first freshness of life, and having for many years now made up my
mind to the impossibility of loving any woman ... having wondered at
this in the beginning, and fought not a little against it, having
acquiesced in it at last, and accounted for it all to myself, and
become, if anything, rather proud of it than sorry ... I say, when
real love, making itself at once recognized as such, _did_ reveal
itself to me at last, I _did_ open my heart to it with a cry--nor care
for its overturning all my theory--nor mistrust its effect upon a mind
set in ultimate order, so I fancied, for the few years more--nor
apprehend in the least that the new element would harm what was
already organized without its help. Nor have I, either, been guilty of
the more pardonable folly, of treating the new feeling after the
pedantic fashions and instances of the world. I have not spoken when
_it_ did not speak, because 'one' might speak, or has spoken, or
_should_ speak, and 'plead' and all that miserable work which, after
all, I may well continue proud that I am not called to attempt. _Here_
for instance, _now_ ... 'one' should despair; but 'try again' first,
and work blindly at removing those obstacles (--if I saw them, I
should be silent, and only speak when a month hence, ten years hence,
I could bid you look where they _were_)--and 'one' would do all this,
not for the _play-acting's_ sake, or to 'look the character' ...
(_that_ would be something quite different from folly ...) but from a
not unreasonable anxiety lest by too sudden a silence, too complete an
acceptance of your will; the earnestness and endurance and
unabatedness ... the _truth_, in fact, of what had already been
professed, should get to be questioned--But I believe that you believe
me--And now that all is clear between us I will say, what you will
hear, without fearing for me or yourself, that I am utterly contented
... ('grateful' I have done with ... it must go--) I accept what you
give me, what those words deliver to me, as--not all I asked for ...
as I said ... but as more than I ever hoped for,--_all_, in the best
sense, that I deserve. That phrase in my letter which you objected to,
and the other--may stand, too--I never attempted to declare, describe
my feeling for you--one word of course stood for it all ... but having
to put down some one _point_, so to speak, of it--you could not wonder
if I took any extreme one _first_ ... never minding all the untold
portion that _led_ up to it, made it possible and natural--it is true,
'I could not dream of _that_'--that I was eager to get the horrible
notion away from never so flitting a visit to you, that you were thus
and thus to me _on condition_ of my proving just the same to you--just
as if we had waited to acknowledge that the moon lighted us till we
ascertained within these two or three hundred years that the earth
happens to light the moon as well! But I felt that, and so said
it:--now you have declared what I should never have presumed to
hope--and I repeat to you that I, with all to be thankful for to God,
am most of all thankful for this the last of his providences ... which
is no doubt, the natural and inevitable feeling, could one always see
clearly. Your regard for me is _all_ success--let the rest come, or
not come. In my heart's thankfulness I would ... I am sure I would
promise anything that would gratify you ... but it would _not_ do
that, to agree, in words, to change my affections, put them elsewhere
&c. &c. That would be pure foolish talking, and quite foreign to the
practical results which you will attain in a better way from a higher
motive. I will cheerfully promise you, however, to be 'bound by no
words,' blind to no miracle; in sober earnest, it is not because I
renounced once for all oxen and the owning and having to do with them,
that I will obstinately turn away from any unicorn when such an
apparition blesses me ... but meantime I shall walk at peace on our
hills here nor go looking in all corners for the bright curved horn!
And as for you ... if I did not dare 'to dream of that'--, now it is
mine, my pride and joy prevent in no manner my taking the whole
consolation of it at once, _now_--I will be confident that, if I obey
you, I shall get no wrong for it--if, endeavouring to spare you
fruitless pain, I do not eternally revert to the subject; do indeed
'quit' it just now, when no good can come of dwelling on it to you;
you will never say to yourself--so I said--'the "generous impulse"
_has_ worn itself out ... time is doing his usual work--this was to be
expected' &c. &c. You will be the first to say to me 'such an obstacle
has ceased to exist ... or is now become one palpable to _you_, one
_you_ may try and overcome'--and I shall be there, and ready--ten
years hence as now--if alive.
One final word on the other matters--the 'worldly matters'--I shall
own I alluded to them rather ostentatiously, because--because _that
would be_ the _one_ poor sacrifice I could make you--one I would
cheerfully make, but a sacrifice, and the only one: this careless
'sweet habitude of living'--this absolute independence of mine, which,
if I had it not, my heart would starve and die for, I feel, and which
I have fought so many good battles to preserve--for that has
happened, too--this light rational life I lead, and know so well that
I lead; this I could give up for nothing less than--what you know--but
I _would_ give it up, not for you merely, but for those whose
disappointment might re-act on you--and I should break no promise to
myself--the money getting would not be for the sake of _it_; 'the
labour not for that which is nought'--indeed the necessity of doing
this, if at all, _now_, was one of the reasons which make me go on to
that _last request of all_--at once; one must not be too old, they
say, to begin their ways. But, in spite of all the babble, I feel sure
that whenever I make up my mind to that, I can be rich enough and to
spare--because along with what you have thought _genius_ in me, is
certainly talent, what the world recognizes as such; and I have tried
it in various ways, just to be sure that I _was_ a little magnanimous
in never intending to use it. Thus, in more than one of the reviews
and newspapers that laughed my 'Paracelsus' to scorn ten years ago--in
the same column, often, of these reviews, would follow a most
laudatory notice of an Elementary French book, on a new plan, which I
'_did_' for my old French master, and he published--'_that_ was really
an useful work'!--So that when the only obstacle is only that there is
so much _per annum_ to be producible, you will tell me. After all it
would be unfair in me not to confess that this was always intended to
be _my_ own single stipulation--'an objection' which I could see,
certainly,--but meant to treat myself to the little luxury of
removing.
So, now, dearest--let me once think of that, and of you as my own, my
dearest--this once--dearest, I have done with words for the present. I
will wait. God bless you and reward you--I kiss your hands _now_. This
is my comfort, that if you accept my feeling as all but _un_expressed
now, more and more will become spoken--or understood, that is--we both
live on--you will know better _what_ it was, how much and manifold,
what one little word had to give out.