_R.B. to E.B.B._
[Post-mark, September 25, 1845.]
You have said to me more than once that you wished I might never know
certain feelings _you_ had been forced to endure. I suppose all of us
have the proper place where a blow should fall to be felt most--and I
truly wish _you_ may never feel what I have to bear in looking on,
quite powerless, and silent, while you are subjected to this
treatment, which I refuse to characterize--so blind is it _for_
blindness. I think I ought to understand what a father may exact, and
a child should comply with; and I respect the most ambiguous of love's
caprices if they give never so slight a clue to their all-justifying
source. Did I, when you signified to me the probable objections--you
remember what--to myself, my own happiness,--did I once allude to,
much less argue against, or refuse to acknowledge those objections?
For I wholly sympathize, however it go against me, with the highest,
wariest, pride and love for you, and the proper jealousy and vigilance
they entail--but now, and here, the jewel is not being over guarded,
but ruined, cast away. And whoever is privileged to interfere should
do so in the possessor's own interest--all common sense
interferes--all rationality against absolute no-reason at all. And you
ask whether you ought to obey this no-reason? I will tell you: all
passive obedience and implicit submission of will and intellect is by
far too easy, if well considered, to be the course prescribed by God
to Man in this life of probation--for they _evade_ probation
altogether, though foolish people think otherwise. Chop off your legs,
you will never go astray; stifle your reason altogether and you will
find it is difficult to reason ill. 'It is hard to make these
sacrifices!'--not so hard as to lose the reward or incur the penalty
of an Eternity to come; 'hard to effect them, then, and go through
with them'--_not_ hard, when the leg is to be _cut off_--that it is
rather harder to keep it quiet on a stool, I know very well. The
partial indulgence, the proper exercise of one's faculties, there is
the difficulty and problem for solution, set by that Providence which
might have made the laws of Religion as indubitable as those of
vitality, and revealed the articles of belief as certainly as that
condition, for instance, by which we breathe so many times in a minute
to support life. But there is no reward proposed for the feat of
breathing, and a great one for that of believing--consequently there
must go a great deal more of voluntary effort to this latter than is
implied in the getting absolutely rid of it at once, by adopting the
direction of an infallible church, or private judgment of another--for
all our life is some form of religion, and all our action some belief,
and there is but one law, however modified, for the greater and the
less. In your case I do think you are called upon to do your duty to
yourself; that is, to God in the end. Your own reason should examine
the whole matter in dispute by every light which can be put in
requisition; and every interest that appears to be affected by your
conduct should have its utmost claims considered--your father's in the
first place; and that interest, not in the miserable limits of a few
days' pique or whim in which it would seem to express itself; but in
its whole extent ... the _hereafter_ which all momentary passion
prevents him seeing ... indeed, the _present_ on either side which
everyone else must see. And this examination made, with whatever
earnestness you will, I do think and am sure that on its conclusion
you should act, in confidence that a duty has been performed ...
_difficult_, or how were it a duty? Will it _not_ be infinitely harder
to act so than to blindly adopt his pleasure, and die under it? Who
can _not_ do that?
I fling these hasty rough words over the paper, fast as they will
fall--knowing to whom I cast them, and that any sense they may contain
or point to, will be caught and understood, and presented in a better
light. The hard thing ... this is all I want to say ... is to act on
one's own best conviction--not to abjure it and accept another will,
and say '_there_ is my plain duty'--easy it is, whether plain or no!
How 'all changes!' When I first knew you--you know what followed. I
supposed you to labour under an incurable complaint--and, of course,
to be completely dependent on your father for its commonest
alleviations; the moment after that inconsiderate letter, I reproached
myself bitterly with the selfishness apparently involved in any
proposition I might then have made--for though I have never been at
all frightened of the world, nor mistrustful of my power to deal with
it, and get my purpose out of it if once I thought it worth while, yet
I could not but feel the consideration, of _what_ failure would _now_
be, paralyse all effort even in fancy. When you told me lately that
'you could never be poor'--all my solicitude was at an end--I had but
myself to care about, and I told you, what I believed and believe,
that I can at any time amply provide for that, and that I could
cheerfully and confidently undertake the removing _that_ obstacle. Now
again the circumstances shift--and you are in what I should wonder at
as the veriest slavery--and I who _could_ free you from it, I am here
scarcely daring to write ... though I know you must feel for me and
forgive what forces itself from me ... what retires so mutely into my
heart at your least word ... what _shall not_ be again written or
spoken, if you so will ... that I should be made happy beyond all hope
of expression by. Now while I _dream_, let me once dream! I would
marry you now and thus--I would come when you let me, and go when you
bade me--I would be no more than one of your brothers--'_no
more_'--that is, instead of getting to-morrow for Saturday, I should
get Saturday as well--two hours for one--when your head ached I
should be _here_. I deliberately choose the realization of that dream
(--of sitting simply by you for an hour every day) rather than any
other, excluding you, I am able to form for this world, or any world I
know--And it will continue but a dream.
God bless my dearest E.B.B.