May I see the first act first? Let me!--And you walk?
Mr. Horne's address is Hill Side, Fitzroy Park, Highgate.
There is no reason against Saturday so far. Mr. Kenyon comes
to-morrow, Friday, and therefore--!--and if Saturday should become
impracticable, I will write again.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday Evening.
[Post-mark, November 10, 1845.]
When I come back from seeing you, and think over it all, there never
is a least word of yours I could not occupy myself with, and wish to
return to you with some ... not to say, all ... the thoughts and
fancies it is sure to call out of me. There is nothing in you that
does not draw out all of me. You possess me, dearest ... and there is
no help for the expressing it all, no voice nor hand, but these of
mine which shrink and turn away from the attempt. So you must go on,
patiently, knowing me more and more, and your entire power on me, and
I will console myself, to the full extent, with your
knowledge--penetration, intuition--_somehow_ I must believe you can
get to what is here, in me, without the pretence of my telling or
writing it. But, because I give up the great achievements, there is no
reason I should not secure any occasion of making clear one of the
less important points that arise in our intercourse ... if I fancy I
can do it with the least success. For instance, it is on my mind to
explain what I meant yesterday by trusting that the entire happiness I
feel in the letters, and the help in the criticising might not be hurt
by the surmise, even, that those labours to which you were born, might
be suspended, in any degree, through such generosity to _me_. Dearest,
I believed in your glorious genius and knew it for a true star from
the moment I saw it; long before I had the blessing of knowing it was
MY star, with my fortune and futurity in it. And, when I draw back
from myself, and look better and more clearly, then I _do_ feel, with
you, that the writing a few letters more or less, reading many or few
rhymes of any other person, would not interfere in any material degree
with that power of yours--that you might easily make one so happy and
yet go on writing 'Geraldines' and 'Berthas'--but--how can I, dearest,
leave my heart's treasures long, even to look at your genius?... and
when I come back and find all safe, find the comfort of you, the
traces of you ... _will_ it do--tell me--to trust all that as a light
effort, an easy matter?
Yet, if you can lift me with one hand, while the other suffices to
crown you--there is queenliness in _that_, too!
Well, I have spoken. As I told you, your turn comes now. How have you
determined respecting the American Edition? You tell me nothing of
yourself! It is all ME you help, me you do good to ... and I take it
all! Now see, if this goes on! I have not had _every_ love-luxury, I
now find out ... where is the proper, rationally
to-be-expected--'_lovers' quarrel_'? _Here_, as you will find! 'Iræ;
amantium'.... I am no more 'at a loss with my Naso,' than Peter
Ronsard. Ah, but then they are to be _reintegratio amoris_--and to get
back into a thing, one must needs get for a moment first out of it ...
trust me, no! And now, the natural inference from all this? The
consistent inference ... the 'self-denying ordinance'? Why--do you
doubt? even this,--you must just put aside the Romance, and tell the
Americans to wait, and make my heart start up when the letter is laid
to it; the letter full of your news, telling me you are well and
walking, and working for my sake towards _the time_--informing me,
moreover, if Thursday or Friday is to be my day--.
May God bless you, my own love.
I will certainly bring you an Act of the Play ... for this serpent's
reason, in addition to the others ... that--No, I will _tell_ you
that--I can tell you now more than even lately!