_E.B.B. to R.B._
[Post-mark, December 4, 1845.]
Why of course I am pleased--I should have been pleased last year, for
the vanity's sake of being reviewed in your company. Now, as far as
that vice of vanity goes ... shall I tell you?... I would infinitely
prefer to see you set before the public in your own right solitude,
and supremacy, apart from me or any one else, ... this, as far as my
vice of vanity goes, ... and because, vainer I am of my poet than of
my poems ... _pour cause_. But since, according to the _Quarterly_
régime, you were to be not apart but with somebody of my degree, I am
glad, pleased, that it should be with myself:--and since I was to be
there at all, I am pleased, very much pleased that it should be with
_you_,--oh, of course I am pleased!--I am pleased that the 'names
should be read together' as you say, ... and am happily safe from the
apprehension of that ingenious idea of yours about 'my leading _you_'
&c. ... quite happily safe from the apprehension of that idea's
occurring to any mind in the world, except just your own. Now if I
'find fault' with you for writing down such an extravagance, such an
ungainly absurdity, (oh, I shall abuse it just as I shall choose!)
_can_ it be 'to your surprise?' _can_ it? Ought you to say such
things, when in the first place they are unfit in themselves and
inapplicable, and in the second place, abominable in my eyes? The
qualification for Hanwell Asylum is different peradventure from what
you take it to be--we had better not examine it too nearly. You never
will say such words again? It is your promise to me? Not those
words--and not any in their likeness.
Also ... nothing is _my_ work ... if you please! What an omen you take
in calling anything my work! If it is my work, woe on it--for
everything turns to evil which I touch. Let it be God's work and
yours, and I may take breath and wait in hope--and indeed I exclaim to
myself about the miracle of it far more even than you can do. It seems
to me (as I say over and over ... I say it to my own thoughts
oftenest) it seems to me still a dream how you came here at all, ...
the very machinery of it seems miraculous. Why did I receive you and
only you? Can I tell? no, not a word.
Last year I had such an escape of seeing Mr. Horne; and in this way it
was. He was going to Germany, he said, for an indefinite time, and
took the trouble of begging me to receive him for ten minutes before
he went. I answered with my usual 'no,' like a wild Indian--whereupon
he wrote me a letter so expressive of mortification and vexation ...
'mortification' was one of the words used, I remember, ... that I grew
ashamed of myself and told him to come any day (of the last five or
six days he had to spare) between two and five. Well!--he never came.
Either he was overcome with work and engagements of various sorts and
had not a moment, (which was his way of explaining the matter and
quite true I dare say) or he was vexed and resolved on punishing me
for my caprices. If the latter was the motive, I cannot call the
punishment effective, ... for I clapped my hands for joy when I felt
my danger to be passed--and now of course, I have no scruples.... I
may be as capricious as I please, ... may I not? Not that I ask you.
It is a settled matter. And it is useful to keep out Mr. Chorley with
Mr. Horne, and Mr. Horne with Mr. Chorley, and the rest of the world
with those two. Only the miracle is that _you_ should be behind the
enclosure--within it ... and so!--
_That_ is _my_ side of the wonder! of the machinery of the wonder, ...
as _I_ see it!--But there are greater things than these.
Speaking of the portrait of you in the 'Spirit of the Age' ... which
is not like ... no!--which has not your character, in a line of it ...
something in just the forehead and eyes and hair, ... but even _that_,
thrown utterly out of your order, by another bearing so unlike you...!
speaking of that portrait ... shall I tell you?--Mr. Horne had the
goodness to send me all those portraits, and I selected the heads
which, in right hero-worship, were anything to me, and had them framed
after a rough fashion and hung up before my eyes; Harriet Martineau's
... because she was a woman and admirable, and had written me some
kind letters--and for the rest, Wordsworth's, Carlyle's, Tennyson's
and yours. The day you paid your first visit here, I, in a fit of
shyness not quite unnatural, ... though I have been cordially laughed
at for it by everybody in the house ... pulled down your portrait, ...
(there is the nail, under Wordsworth--) and then pulled down
Tennyson's in a fit of justice,--because I would not have his hung up
and yours away. It was the delight of my brothers to open all the
drawers and the boxes, and whatever they could get access to, and find
and take those two heads and hang them on the old nails and analyse my
'absurdity' to me, day after day; but at last I tired them out, being
obstinate; and finally settled the question one morning by fastening
the print of you inside your Paracelsus. Oh no, it is not like--and I
knew it was not, before I saw you, though Mr. Kenyon said, 'Rather
like!'
By the way Mr. Kenyon does not come. It is strange that he should not
come: when he told me that he could not see me 'for a week or a
fortnight,' he meant it, I suppose.
So it is to be on Saturday? And I will write directly to America--the
letter will be sent by the time you get this. May God bless you ever.
It is not so much a look of 'ferocity,' ... as you say, ... in that
head, as of _expression by intention_. Several people have said of it
what nobody would say of you ... 'How affected-looking.' Which is too
strong--but it is not like you, in any way, and there's the truth.
So until Saturday. I read 'Luria' and feel the life in him. But _walk_
and do not _work_! do you?