I have thought again, and believe it will be best to select the finger
_you_ intended ... as the alteration will be simpler, I find; and one
is less liable to observation and comment.
Was not that Mr. Kenyon last evening? And did he ask, or hear, or say
anything?
_R.B. to E.B.B._
[Post-mark, December 3, 1845.]
See, dearest, what the post brings me this minute! Now, is it not a
good omen, a pleasant inconscious prophecy of what is to be? Be it
well done, or badly--there are you, leading me up and onward, in his
review as everywhere, at every future time! And our names will go
together--be read together. In itself this is nothing to _you_, dear
poet--but the unexpectedness, unintended significance of it has
pleased me very much--_does_ it not please you?--I thought I was to
figure in that cold _Quarterly_ all by myself, (for he writes for
it)--but here you are close by me; it cannot but be for good. He has
no knowledge whatever that I am even a friend of yours. Say you are
pleased!
There was no writing yesterday for me--nor will there be much to-day.
In some moods, you know, I turn and take a thousand new views of what
you say ... and find fault with you to your surprise--at others, I
rest on you, and feel _all_ well, all _best_ ... now, for one
instance, even that phrase of the _possibility_ 'and what is to
follow,'--even _that_ I cannot except against--I am happy, contented;
too well, too prodigally blessed to be even able to murmur just
sufficiently loud to get, in addition to it all, a sweetest stopping
of the mouth! I will say quietly and becomingly 'Yes--I do promise
you'--yet it is some solace to--No--I will _not_ even couple the
promise with an adjuration that you, at the same time, see that they
care for me properly at Hanwell Asylum ... the best by all accounts:
yet I feel so sure of _you_, so safe and confident in you! If any of
it had been _my_ work, my own ... distrust and foreboding had pursued
me from the beginning; but all is _yours_--you crust me round with
gold and jewelry like the wood of a sceptre; and why should you
transfer your own work? Wood enough to choose from in the first
instance, but the choice once made!... So I rest on you, for life, for
death, beloved--beside you do stand, in my solemn belief, the direct
miraculous gift of God to me--that is my solemn belief; may I be
thankful!
I am anxious to hear from you ... when am I not?--but _not_ before the
American letter is written and sent. Is that done? And who was the
visitor on Monday--and if &c. _what_ did he remark?--And what is
right or wrong with Saturday--is it to be mine?
Bless you, dearest--now and for ever--words cannot say how much I am
your own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, December 4, 1845.]
No Mr. Kenyon after all--not yesterday, not to-day; and the knock at
the door belonged perhaps to the post, which brought me a kind letter
from Mrs. Jameson to ask how I was, and if she might come--but she
won't come on Saturday.... I shall 'provide'--she may as well (and
better) come on a free day. On the other side, are you sure that Mr.
Procter may not stretch out his hand and seize on Saturday (he was to
dine with you, you said), or that some new engagement may not start up
suddenly in the midst of it? I trust to you, in such a case, to alter
_our_ arrangement, without a second thought. Monday stands close by,
remember, and there's a Saturday to follow Monday ... and I should
understand at a word, or apart from a word.
Just as _you_ understand how to 'take me with guile,' when you tell me
that anything in me can have any part in making you happy ... you, who
can say such words and call them 'vain words.' Ah, well! If I only
knew certainly, ... more certainly than the thing may be known by
either me or you, ... that nothing in me could have any part in making
you _un_happy, ... ah, would it not be enough ... _that_ knowledge ...
to content me, to overjoy me? but _that_ lies too high and out of
reach, you see, and one can't hope to get at it except by the ladder
Jacob saw, and which an archangel helped to hide away behind the gate
of Heaven afterwards.
_Wednesday._--In the meantime I had a letter from you yesterday, and
am promised another to-day. How ... I was going to say 'kind' and
pull down the thunders ... how _un_kind ... will _that_ do? ... how
good you are to me--how dear you must be! Dear--dearest--if I feel
that you love me, can I help it if, without any other sort of certain
knowledge, the world grows lighter round me? being but a mortal woman,
can I help it? no--certainly.
I comfort myself by thinking sometimes that I can at least understand
you, ... comprehend you in what you are and in what you possess and
combine; and that, if doing this better than others who are better
otherwise than I, I am, so far, worthier of the ... I mean that to
understand you is something, and that I account it something in my own
favour ... mine.
Yet when you tell me that I ought to know some things, though untold,
you are wrong, and speak what is impossible. My imagination sits by
the roadside [Greek: apedilos] like the startled sea nymph in
Æschylus, but never dares to put one unsandalled foot, unbidden, on a
certain tract of ground--never takes a step there unled! and never (I
write the simple truth) even as the alternative of the probability of
your ceasing to care for me, have I touched (untold) on the
possibility of your caring _more_ for me ... never! That you should
_continue_ to care, was the utmost of what I saw in that direction.
So, when you spoke of a 'strengthened feeling,' judge how I listened
with my heart--judge!
'Luria' is very great. You will avenge him with the sympathies of the
world; that, I foresee.... And for the rest, it is a magnanimity which
grows and grows, and which will, of a worldly necessity, fall by its
own weight at last; nothing less being possible. The scene with
Tiburzio and the end of the act with its great effects, are more
pathetic than professed pathos. When I come to criticise, it will be
chiefly on what I take to be a little occasional flatness in the
versification, which you may remove if you please, by knotting up a
few lines here and there. But I shall write more of 'Luria,'--and
well remember in the meanwhile, that you wanted smoothness, you said.
May God bless you. I shall have the letter to-night, I think gladly.
Yes,--I thought of the greater safety from 'comment'--it is best in
every way.
I lean on you and trust to you, and am always, as to one who is all to
me,