I must answer your questions: I am better--and will certainly have
your injunction before my eyes and work quite moderately. Your letters
come _straight_ to me--my father's go to Town, except on extraordinary
occasions, so that _all_ come for my first looking-over. I saw Mr. K.
last night at the Amateur Comedy--and heaps of old acquaintances--and
came home tired and savage--and _yearned_ literally, for a letter this
morning, and so it came and I was well again. So, I am not even to
have your low spirits leaning on mine? It was just because I always
find you alike, and _ever_ like yourself, that I seemed to discern a
depth, when you spoke of 'some days' and what they made uneven where
all is agreeable to _me_. Do not, now, deprive me of a right--a right
... to find you as you _are_; get no habit of being cheerful with
me--I have universal sympathy and can show you a SIDE of me, a true
face, turn as you may. If you _are_ cheerful ... so will I be ... if
sad, my cheerfulness will be all the while _behind_, and propping up,
any sadness that meets yours, if that should be necessary. As for my
question about the opium ... you do not misunderstand _that_ neither:
I trust in the eventual consummation of my--shall I not say,
_our_--hopes; and all that bears upon your health immediately or
prospectively, affects me--how it affects me! Will you write again?
_Wednesday_, remember! Mr. K. wants me to go to him one of the three
next days after. I will bring you some letters ... one from Landor.
Why should I trouble you about 'Pomfret.'
And Luria ... does it so interest you? Better is to come of it. How
you lift me up!--
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Monday.
[Post-mark, November 18, 1845.]
How you overcome me as always you do--and where is the answer to
anything except too deep down in the heart for even the pearl-divers?
But understand ... what you do not quite ... that I did not mistake
you as far even as you say here and even 'for a moment.' I did not
write any of that letter in a 'doubt' of you--not a word.... I was
simply looking back in it on my own states of feeling, ... looking
back from that point of your praise to what was better ... (or I
should not have looked back)--and so coming to tell you, by a natural
association, how the completely opposite point to that of any praise
was the one which struck me first and most, viz. the no-reason of your
reasoning ... acknowledged to be yours. Of course I acknowledge it to
be yours, ... that high reason of no reason--I acknowledged it to be
yours (didn't I?) in acknowledging that it made an impression on me.
And then, referring to the traditions of my experience such as I told
them to you, I meant, so, farther to acknowledge that I would rather
be cared for in _that_ unreasonable way, than for the best reason in
the world. But all _that_ was history and philosophy simply--was it
not?--and not _doubt of you_.
The truth is ... since we really are talking truths in this world ...
that I never have doubted you--ah, you _know_!--I felt from the
beginning so sure of the nobility and integrity in you that I would
have trusted you to make a path for my soul--_that_, you _know_. I
felt certain that you believed of yourself every word you spoke or
wrote--and you must not blame me if I thought besides sometimes (it
was the extent of my thought) that you were self-deceived as to the
nature of your own feelings. If you could turn over every page of my
heart like the pages of a book, you would see nothing there offensive
to the least of your feelings ... not even to the outside fringes of
your man's vanity ... should you have any vanity like a man; which I
_do_ doubt. I never wronged you in the least of things--never ... I
thank God for it. But 'self-deceived,' it was so easy for you to be:
see how on every side and day by day, men are--and women too--in this
sort of feelings. 'Self-deceived,' it was so possible for you to be,
and while I thought it possible, could I help thinking it _best_ for
you that it should be so--and was it not right in me to persist in
thinking it possible? It was my reverence for you that made me
persist! What was _I_ that I should think otherwise? I had been shut
up here too long face to face with my own spirit, not to know myself,
and, so, to have lost the common illusions of vanity. All the men I
had ever known could not make your stature among them. So it was not
distrust, but reverence rather. I sate by while the angel stirred the
water, and I called it _Miracle_. Do not blame me now, ... _my_ angel!
Nor say, that I 'do not lean' on you with all the weight of my 'past'
... because I do! You cannot guess what you are to me--you cannot--it
is not possible:--and though I have said _that_ before, I must say it
again ... for it comes again to be said. It is something to me between
dream and miracle, all of it--as if some dream of my earliest
brightest dreaming-time had been lying through these dark years to
steep in the sunshine, returning to me in a double light. _Can_ it be,
I say to myself, that _you_ feel for me _so_? can it be meant for me?
this from _you_?
If it is your 'right' that I should be gloomy at will with you, you
exercise it, I do think--for although I cannot promise to be very
sorrowful when you come, (how could that be?) yet from different
motives it seems to me that I have written to you quite superfluities
about my 'abomination of desolation,'--yes indeed, and blamed myself
afterwards. And now I must say this besides. When grief came upon
grief, I never was tempted to ask 'How have I deserved this of God,'
as sufferers sometimes do: I always felt that there must be cause
enough ... corruption enough, needing purification ... weakness
enough, needing strengthening ... _nothing_ of the chastisement could
come to me without cause and need. But in this different hour, when
joy follows joy, and God makes me happy, as you say, _through_ you ...
I cannot repress the ... 'How have I deserved _this_ of Him?'--I know
I have not--I know I do not.
Could it be that heart and life were devastated to make room for
you?--If so, it was well done,--dearest! They leave the ground fallow
before the wheat.
'Were you wrong in answering?' Surely not ... unless it is wrong to
show all this goodness ... and too much, it may be for _me_. When the
plants droop for drought and the copious showers fall suddenly, silver
upon silver, they die sometimes of the reverse of their adversities.
But no--_that_, even, shall not be a danger! And if I said 'Do not
answer,' I did not mean that I would not have a doubt removed--(having
_no_ doubt!--) but I was simply unwilling to seem to be asking for
golden words ... going down the aisles with that large silken purse,
as _quêteuse_. Try to understand.
On Wednesday then!--George is invited to meet you on Thursday at Mr.
Kenyon's.
The _Examiner_ speaks well, upon the whole, and with allowances ...
oh, that absurdity about metaphysics apart from poetry!--'Can such
things be' in one of the best reviews of the day? Mr. Kenyon was here
on Sunday and talking of the poems with real living tears in his eyes
and on his cheeks. But I will tell you. 'Luria' is to climb to the
place of a great work, I see. And if I write too long letters, is it
not because you spoil me, and because (being spoilt) I cannot help
it?--May God bless you always--