Remember to say how you are.
I sent 'Pomfret'--and Shelley is returned, and the letters, in the
same parcel--but my letter goes by the post as you see. Is there
contrast enough between the two rival female personages of 'Pomfret.'
_I_ fancy not. Helena should have been more 'demonstrative' than she
appeared in Italy, to secure the 'new modulation' with Walter. But you
will not think it a strong book, I am sure, with all the good and pure
intention of it. The best character ... most life-like ... as
conventional life goes ... seems to _me_ 'Mr. Rose' ... beyond all
comparison--and the best point, the noiseless, unaffected manner in
which the acting out of the 'private judgment' in Pomfret himself is
made no heroic virtue but simply an integral part of the love of
truth. As to Grace she is too good to be interesting, I am afraid--and
people say of her more than she expresses--and as to 'generosity,' she
could not do otherwise in the last scenes.
But I will not tell you the story after all.
At the beginning of this letter I meant to write just one page; but my
generosity is like Grace's, and could not help itself. There were the
letters to write of, and the verses! and then, you know, 'femme qui
parle' never has done. _Let_ me hear! and I will be as brisk as a
monument next time for variety.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Friday Night.
[Post-mark, November 22, 1845.]
How good and kind to send me these books! (The letter I say nothing
of, according to convention: if I wrote down 'best and kindest' ...
oh, what poorest words!) I shall tell you all about 'Pomfret,' be
sure. Chorley talked of it, as we walked homewards together last
night,--modestly and well, and spoke of having given away two copies
only ... to his mother one, and the other to--Miss Barrett, and 'she
seemed interested in the life of it, entered into his purpose in it,'
and I listened to it all, loving Chorley for his loveability which is
considerable at other times, and saying to myself what might run
better in the child's couplet--'Not more than others I deserve, Though
God has given me more'!--Given me the letter which expresses surprise
that I shall feel these blanks between the days when I see you longer
and longer! So am _I_ surprised--that I should have mentioned so
obvious a matter at all; or leave unmentioned a hundred others its
correlatives which I cannot conceive you to be ignorant of, you! When
I spread out my riches before me, and think _what_ the hour and more
means that you endow one with, I _do_--not to say _could_--I _do_ form
resolutions, and say to myself--'If next time I am bidden stay away a
FORTNIGHT, I will not reply by a word beyond the grateful assent.' I
_do_, God knows, lay up in my heart these priceless treasures,--shall
I tell you? I never in my life kept a journal, a register of sights,
or fancies, or feelings; in my last travel I put down on a slip of
paper a few dates, that I might remember in England, on such a day I
was on Vesuvius, in Pompeii, at Shelley's grave; all that should be
kept in memory is, with _me_, best left to the brain's own process.
But I have, from the first, recorded the date and the duration of
every visit to you; the numbers of minutes you have given me ... and I
put them together till they make ... nearly two days now;
four-and-twenty-hour-long-days, that I have been _by you_--and I enter
the room determining to get up and go sooner ... and I go away into
the light street repenting that I went so soon by I don't know how
many minutes--for, love, what is it all, this love for you, but an
earnest desiring to include you in myself, if that might be; to feel
you in my very heart and hold you there for ever, through all chance
and earthly changes!
There, I had better leave off; the words!
I was very glad to find myself with your brother yesterday; I like him
very much and mean to get a friend in him--(to supply the loss of my
friend ... Miss Barrett--which is gone, the friendship, so gone!) But
I did not ask after you because I heard Moxon do it. Now of Landor's
verses: I got a note from Forster yesterday telling me that he, too,
had received a copy ... so that there is no injunction to be secret.
So I got a copy for dear Mr. Kenyon, and, lo! what comes! I send the
note to make you smile! I shall reply that I felt in duty bound to
apprise you; as I did. You will observe that I go to that too facile
gate of his on Tuesday, _my day_ ... from your house directly. The
worst is that I have got entangled with invitations already, and must
go out again, _hating_ it, to more than one place.
I am _very_ well--quite well; yes, dearest! The pain is quite gone;
and the inconvenience, hard on its trace. You will write to me again,
will you not? And be as brief as your heart lets you, to me who hoard
up your words and get remote and imperfect ideas of what ... shall it
be written?... anger at you could mean, when I see a line blotted out;
a _second-thoughted_ finger-tip rapidly put forth upon one of my gold
pieces!
I rather think if Warburton reviews me it will be in the _Quarterly_,
which I know he writes for. Hanmer is a very sculpturesque passionless
high-minded and amiable man ... this coldness, as you see it, is part
of him. I like his poems, I think, better than you--'the Sonnets,' do
you know them? Not 'Fra Cipolla.' See what is here, since you will not
let me have only you to look at--this is Landor's first
opinion--expressed to Forster--see the date! and last of all, see me
and know me, beloved! May God bless you!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Saturday.
[Post-mark, November 22, 1845.]
Mr. Kenyon came yesterday--and do you know when he took out those
verses and spoke his preface and I understood what was to follow, I
had a temptation from my familiar Devil not to say I had read them
before--I had the temptation strong and clear. For he (Mr. K.) told me
that your sister let him see them--.
But no--My 'vade retro' prevailed, and I spoke the truth and shamed
the devil and surprised Mr. Kenyon besides, as I could observe. Not an
observation did he make till he was just going away half an hour
afterwards, and then he said rather dryly ... 'And now may I ask how
long ago it was when you first read these verses?--was it a fortnight
ago?' It was better, I think, that I should not have made a mystery of
such a simple thing, ... and yet I felt half vexed with myself and
with him besides. But the verses,--how he praised them! more than I
thought of doing ... as verses--though there is beauty and music and
all that ought to be. Do you see clearly now that the latter lines
refer to the combination in you,--the qualities over and above those
held in common with Chaucer? And I have heard this morning from two or
three of the early readers of the _Chronicle_ (I never care to see it
till the evening) that the verses are there--so that my wishes have
fulfilled themselves _there_ at least--strangely, for wishes of mine
... which generally 'go by contraries' as the soothsayers declare of
dreams. How kind of you to send me the fragment to Mr. Forster! and
how I like to read it. Was the Hebrew yours _then_ ... _written then_,
I mean ... or written _now_?
Mr. Kenyon told me that you were to dine with him on Tuesday, and I
took for granted, at first hearing, that you would come on Wednesday
perhaps to me--and afterwards I saw the possibility of the two ends
being joined without much difficulty. Still, I was not sure, before
your letter came, how it might be.
That you really are better is the best news of all--thank you for
telling me. It will be wise not to go out _too_ much--'aequam servare
mentem' as Landor quotes, ... in this as in the rest. Perhaps that
worst pain was a sort of crisis ... the sharp turn of the road about
to end ... oh, I do trust it may be so.
Mr. K. wrote to Landor to the effect that it was not because he (Mr.
K.) held you in affection, nor because the verses expressed critically
the opinion entertained of you by all who could judge, nor because
they praised a book with which his own name was associated ... but for
the abstract beauty of those verses ... for _that_ reason he could not
help naming them to Mr. Landor. All of which was repeated to me
yesterday.
Also I heard of you from George, who admired you--admired you ... as
if you were a chancellor in _posse_, a great lawyer in _esse_--and
then he thought you ... what he never could think a lawyer ...
'_unassuming_.' And _you_ ... you are so kind! Only _that_ makes me
think bitterly what I have thought before, but cannot write to-day.
It was good-natured of Mr. Chorley to send me a copy of his book, and
he sending so few--very! George who admires _you_, does not tolerate
Mr. Chorley ... (did I tell ever?) declares that the affectation is
'bad,' and that there is a dash of vulgarity ... which I positively
refuse to believe, and _should_, I fancy, though face to face with the
most vainglorious of waistcoats. How can there be vulgarity even of
manners, with so much mental refinement? I never could believe in
those combinations of contradictions.
'An obvious matter,' you think! as obvious, as your 'green hill' ...
which I cannot see. For the rest ... my thought upon your 'great
_fact_' of the 'two days,' is quite different from yours ... for I
think directly, 'So little'! so dreadfully little! What shallow earth
for a deep root! What can be known of me in that time? 'So _there_, is
the only good, you see, that comes from making calculations on a slip
of paper! It is not and it cannot come to good.' I would rather look
at my seventy-five letters--there is room to breathe in them. And this
is my idea (_ecce_!) of monumental brevity--and _hic jacet_ at last
Your E.B.B.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday Night.
[Post-mark, November 24, 1845.]
But a word to-night, my love--for my head aches a little,--I had to
write a long letter to my friend at New Zealand, and now I want to sit
and think of you and get well--but I must not quite lose the word I
counted on.
So, _that_ way you will take my two days and turn them against me?
_Oh, you!_ Did I say the 'root' had been striking then, or rather,
that the seeds, whence the roots take leisure and grow, _they_ had
been planted then--and might not a good heart and hand drop acorns
enough to grow up into a complete Dodona-grove,--when the very rook,
say farmers, hides and forgets whole navies of ship-wood one day to
be, in his summer storing-journeys? But this shall do--I am not going
to prove what _may_ be, when here it _is_, to my everlasting
happiness.
--And 'I am kind'--there again! Do I not know what you mean by that?
Well it is some comfort that you make all even in some degree, and
take from my faculties here what you give them, spite of my
protesting, in other directions. So I could not when I first saw you
admire you very much, and wish for your friendship, and be willing to
give you mine, and desirous of any opportunity of serving you,
benefiting you; I could not think the finding myself in a position to
feel this, just this and no more, a sufficiently fortunate event ...
but I must needs get up, or imitate, or ... what is it you fancy I do?
... an utterly distinct, unnecessary, inconsequential regard for you,
which should, when it got too hard for shamming at the week's
end,--should simply spoil, in its explosion and departure, all the
real and sufficing elements of an honest life-long attachment and
affections! that I should do this, and think it a piece of kindness
does....
Now, I'll tell you what it _does_ deserve, and what it shall get. Give
me, dearest beyond expression, what I have always dared to think I
would ask you for ... one day! Give me ... wait--for your own sake,
not mine who never, never dream of being worth such a gift ... but for
your own sense of justice, and to _say_, so as my heart shall hear,
that you were wrong and are no longer so, give me so much of you--all
precious that you are--as may be given in a lock of your hair--I will
live and die with it, and with the memory of you--this _at_ the
_worst_! If you give me what I beg,--shall I say next Tuesday ... when
I leave you, I will not speak a word. If you do not, I will not think
you unjust, for all my light words, but I will pray you to wait and
remember me one day--when the power to deserve more may be greater ...
never the will. God supplies all things: may he bless you, beloved! So
I can but pray, kissing your hand.