_E.B.B. to R.B._
[Post-mark, October 24, 1845.]
'_And be forgiven_' ... yes! and be thanked besides--if I knew how to
thank you worthily and as I feel ... only that I do not know it, and
cannot say it. And it was not indeed 'doubt' of you--oh no--that made
me write as I did write; it was rather because I felt you to be surely
noblest, ... and therefore fitly dearest, ... that it seemed to me
detestable and intolerable to leave you on this road where the mud
must splash up against you, and never cry 'gare.' Yet I was quite
enough unhappy yesterday, and before yesterday ... I will confess
to-day, ... to be too gratefully glad to 'let you be' ... to 'let you
have your way'--you who overcome always! Always, but where you tell me
not to think of you so and so!--as if I could help thinking of you
_so_, and as if I should not take the liberty of persisting to think
of you just so. 'Let me be'--Let me have my way.' I am unworthy of you
perhaps in everything except one thing--and _that_, you cannot guess.
May God bless you--
Ever I am yours.
The proof does not come!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday.
[Post-mark, October 25, 1845.]
I wrote briefly yesterday not to make my letter longer by keeping it;
and a few last words which belong to it by right, must follow after it
... must--for I want to say that you need not indeed talk to me about
squares being not round, and of _you_ being not 'selfish'! You know it
is foolish to talk such superfluities, and not a compliment.
I won't say to my knowledge of you and faith in you ... but to my
understanding generally. Why should you say to me at all ... much
less for this third or fourth time ... 'I am not selfish?' to _me_ who
never ... when I have been deepest asleep and dreaming, ... never
dreamed of attributing to you any form of such a fault? Promise not to
say so again--now promise. Think how it must sound to my ears, when
really and truly I have sometimes felt jealous of myself ... of my own
infirmities, ... and thought that you cared for me only because your
chivalry touched them with a silver sound--and that, without them, you
would pass by on the other side:--why twenty times I have thought
_that_ and been vexed--ungrateful vexation! In exchange for which too
frank confession, I will ask for another silent promise ... a silent
promise--no, but first I will say another thing.
First I will say that you are not to fancy any the least danger of my
falling under displeasure through your visits--there is no sort of
risk of it _for the present_--and if I ran the risk of making you
uncomfortable about _that_, I did foolishly, and what I meant to do
was different. I wish you also to understand that _even if you came
here every day_, my brothers and sisters would simply care to know if
I liked it, and then be glad if I was glad:--the caution referred to
one person alone. In relation to _whom_, however, there will be no
'getting over'--you might as well think to sweep off a third of the
stars of Heaven with the motion of your eyelashes--this, for matter of
fact and certainty--and this, as I said before, the keeping of a
general rule and from no disrespect towards individuals: a great
peculiarity _in the individual_ of course. But ... though I have been
a submissive daughter, and this from no effort, but for love's sake
... because I loved him tenderly (and love him), ... and hoped that he
loved me back again even if the proofs came untenderly sometimes--yet
I have reserved for myself _always_ that right over my own affections
which is the most strictly personal of all things, and which involves
principles and consequences of infinite importance and scope--even
though I _never_ thought (except perhaps when the door of life was
just about to open ... before it opened) never thought it probable or
possible that I should have occasion for the exercise; from without
and from within at once. I have too much need to look up. For friends,
I can look any way ... round, and _down_ even--the merest thread of a
sympathy will draw me sometimes--or even the least look of kind eyes
over a dyspathy--'Cela se peut facilement.' But for another
relation--it was all different--and rightly so--and so very
different--'Cela ne se peut nullement'--as in Malherbe.
And now we must agree to 'let all this be,', and set ourselves to get
as much good and enjoyment from the coming winter (better spent at
Pisa!) as we can--and I begin my joy by being glad that you are not
going since I am not going, and by being proud of these new green
leaves in your bay which came out with the new number. And then will
come the tragedies--and then, ... what beside? We shall have a happy
winter after all ... _I_ shall at least; and if Pisa had been better,
London might be worse: and for _me_ to grow pretentious and fastidious
and critical about various sorts of _purple_ ... I, who have been used
to the _brun foncé_ of Mme. de Sévigné, (_foncé_ and _enfoncé_
...)--would be too absurd. But why does not the proof come all this
time? I have kept this letter to go back with it.
I had a proposition from the New York booksellers about six weeks ago
(the booksellers who printed the poems) to let them re-print those
prose papers of mine in the _Athenæum_, with additional matter on
American literature, in a volume by itself--to be published at the
same time both in America and England by Wiley and Putnam in Waterloo
Place, and meaning to offer liberal terms, they said. Now what shall I
do? Those papers are not fit for separate publication, and I am not
inclined to the responsibility of them; and in any case, they must
give as much trouble as if they were re-written (trouble and not
poetry!), before I could consent to such a thing. Well!--and if I do
not ... these people are just as likely to print them without leave
... and so without correction. What do you advise? What shall I do?
All this time they think me sublimely indifferent, they who pressed
for an answer by return of packet--and now it is past six ... eight
weeks; and I must say something.
Am I not 'femme qui parle' to-day? And let me talk on ever so, the
proof won't come. May God bless you--and me as I am
Yours,