_E.B.B. to R.B._
[Post-mark, November 1, 1845.]
All to-day, Friday, Miss Mitford has been here! She came at two and
went away at seven--and I feel as if I had been making a five-hour
speech on the corn laws in Harriet Martineau's parliament; ... so
tired I am. Not that dear Miss Mitford did not talk both for me and
herself, ... for that, of course she did. But I was forced to answer
once every ten minutes at least--and Flush, my usual companion, does
not exact so much--and so I am tired and come to rest myself on this
paper. Your name was not once spoken to-day; a little from my good
fencing: when I saw you at the end of an alley of associations, I
pushed the conversation up the next--because I was afraid of questions
such as every moment I expected, with a pair of woman's eyes behind
them; and those are worse than Mr. Kenyon's, when he puts on his
spectacles. So your name was not once spoken--not thought of, I do not
say--perhaps when I once lost her at Chevy Chase and found her
suddenly with Isidore the queen's hairdresser, my thoughts might have
wandered off to you and your unanswered letter while she passed
gradually from that to this--I am not sure of the contrary. And
Isidore, they say, reads Béranger, and is supposed to be the most
literary person at court--and wasn't at Chevy Chase one must needs
think.
One must needs write nonsense rather--for I have written it there. The
sense and the truth is, that your letter went to the bottom of my
heart, and that my thoughts have turned round it ever since and
through all the talking to-day. Yes indeed, dreams! But what _is_ not
dreaming is this and this--this reading of these words--this proof of
this regard--all this that you are to me in fact, and which you cannot
guess the full meaning of, dramatic poet as you are ... cannot ...
since you do not know what my life meant before you touched it, ...
and my angel at the gate of the prison! My wonder is greater than your
wonders, ... I who sate here alone but yesterday, so weary of my own
being that to take interest in my very poems I had to lift them up by
an effort and separate them from myself and cast them out from me into
the sunshine where I was not--feeling nothing of the light which fell
on them even--making indeed a sort of pleasure and interest about that
factitious personality associated with them ... but knowing it to be
all far on the outside of _me_ ... _myself_ ... not seeming to touch
it with the end of my finger ... and receiving it as a mockery and a
bitterness when people persisted in confounding one with another.
Morbid it was if you like it--perhaps very morbid--but all these heaps
of letters which go into the fire one after the other, and which,
because I am a woman and have written verses, it seems so amusing to
the letter-writers of your sex to write and see 'what will come of
it,' ... some, from kind good motives I know, ... well, ... how could
it all make for me even such a narrow strip of sunshine as Flush finds
on the floor sometimes, and lays his nose along, with both ears out in
the shadow? It was not for _me_ ... _me_ ... in any way: it was not
within my reach--I did not seem to touch it as I said. Flush came
nearer, and I was grateful to him ... yes, grateful ... for not being
tired! I have felt grateful and flattered ... yes flattered ... when
he has chosen rather to stay with me all day than go down-stairs.
Grateful too, with reason, I have been and am to my own family for not
letting me see that I was a burthen. These are facts. And now how am I
to feel when you tell me what you have told me--and what you 'could
would and will' do, and _shall not_ do?... but when you tell me?
Only remember that such words make you freer and freer--if you can be
freer than free--just as every one makes me happier and richer--too
rich by you, to claim any debt. May God bless you always. When I wrote
that letter to let you come the first time, do you know, the tears ran
down my cheeks.... I could not tell why: partly it might be mere
nervousness. And then, I was vexed with you for wishing to come as
other people did, and vexed with myself for not being able to refuse
you as I did them.
When does the book come out? Not on the first, I begin to be glad.
Ever yours,