[Footnote 1: 'Purg.' v. 52 7.]
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Sunday Night.
[Post-mark, December 24, 1845.]
But did I dispute? Surely not. Surely I believe in you and in
'mysteries.' Surely I prefer the no-reason to ever so much rationalism
... (rationalism and infidelity go together they say!). All which I
may do, and be afraid sometimes notwithstanding, and when you
overpraise me (_not_ over_love_) I must be frightened as I told you.
It is with me as with the theologians. I believe in you and can be
happy and safe _so_; but when my 'personal merits' come into question
in any way, even the least, ... why then the position grows untenable:
it is no more 'of grace.'
Do I tease you as I tease myself sometimes? But do not wrong me in
turn! Do not keep repeating that 'after long years' I shall know
you--know you!--as if I did not without the years. If you are forced
to refer me to those long ears, I must deserve the thistles besides.
The thistles are the corollary.
For it is obvious--manifest--that I cannot doubt of you, that I may
doubt of myself, of happiness, of the whole world,--but of
_you_--_not_: it is obvious that if I could doubt of you and _act so_
I should be a very idiot, or worse indeed. And _you_ ... you think I
doubt of you whenever I make an interjection!--now do you not? And is
it reasonable?--Of _you_, I mean?
_Monday._--For my part, you must admit it to be too possible that you
may be, as I say, 'disappointed' in me--it _is_ too possible. And if
it does me good to say so, even now perhaps ... if it is mere weakness
to say so and simply torments you, why do _you_ be magnanimous and
forgive _that_ ... let it pass as a weakness and forgive it _so_.
Often I think painful things which I do not tell you and....
While I write, your letter comes. Kindest of you it was, to write me
such a letter, when I expected scarcely the shadow of one!--this makes
up for the other letter which I expected unreasonably and which you
'_ought not_' to have written, as was proved afterwards. And now why
should I go on with that sentence? What had I to say of 'painful
things,' I wonder? all the painful things seem gone ... vanished. I
forget what I had to say. Only do you still think of this, dearest
beloved; that I sit here in the dark but for _you_, and that the light
you bring me (from _my_ fault!--from the nature of _my_ darkness!) is
not a settled light as when you open the shutters in the morning, but
a light made by candles which burn some of them longer and some
shorter, and some brighter and briefer, at once--being 'double-wicks,'
and that there is an intermission for a moment now and then between
the dropping of the old light into the socket and the lighting of the
new. Every letter of yours is a new light which burns so many hours
... and _then_!--I am morbid, you see--or call it by what name you
like ... too wise or too foolish. 'If the light of the body is
darkness, how great is that darkness.' Yet even when I grow too wise,
I admit always that while you love me it is an answer to all. And I am
never so much too foolish as to wish to be worthier for my own
sake--only for yours:--not for my own sake, since I am content to owe
all things to you.
And it could be so much to you to lose me!--and you say so,--and
_then_ think it needful to tell me not to think the other thought! As
if _that_ were possible! Do you remember what you said once of the
flowers?--that you 'felt a respect for them when they had passed out
of your hands.' And must it not be so with my life, which if you
choose to have it, must be respected too? Much more with my life!
Also, see that I, who had my warmest affections on the other side of
the grave, feel that it is otherwise with me now--quite otherwise. I
did not like it at first to be so much otherwise. And I could not have
had any such thought through a weariness of life or any of my old
motives, but simply to escape the 'risk' I told you of. Should I have
said to you instead of it ... '_Love me for ever_'? Well then, ... I
_do_.
As to my 'helping' you, my help is in your fancy; and if you go on
with the fancy, I perfectly understand that it will be as good as
deeds. We _have_ sympathy too--we walk one way--oh, I do not forget
the advantages. Only Mrs. Tomkins's ideas of happiness are below my
ambition for you.
So often as I have said (it reminds me) that in this situation I
should be more exacting than any other woman--so often I have said it:
and so different everything is from what I thought it would be!
Because if I am exacting it is for _you_ and not for _me_--it is
altogether for _you_--you understand _that_, dearest of all ... it is
for _you wholly_. It never crosses my thought, in a lightning even,
the question whether I may be happy so and so--_I_. It is the other
question which comes always--too often for peace.
People used to say to me, 'You expect too much--you are too romantic.'
And my answer always was that 'I could not expect too much when I
expected nothing at all' ... which was the truth--for I never thought
(and how often I have _said that_!) I never thought that anyone whom
_I_ could love, would stoop to love _me_ ... the two things seemed
clearly incompatible to my understanding.
And now when it comes in a miracle, you wonder at me for looking
twice, thrice, four times, to see if it comes through ivory or _horn_.
You wonder that it should seem to me at first all illusion--illusion
for you,--illusion for me as a consequence. But how natural.
It is true of me--very true--that I have not a high appreciation of
what passes in the world (and not merely the Tomkins-world!) under the
name of love; and that a distrust of the thing had grown to be a habit
of mind with me when I knew you first. It has appeared to me, through
all the seclusion of my life and the narrow experience it admitted
of, that in nothing men--and women too--were so apt to mistake their
own feelings, as in this one thing. Putting _falseness_ quite on one
side, quite out of sight and consideration, an honest mistaking of
feeling appears wonderfully common, and no mistake has such frightful
results--none can. Self-love and generosity, a mistake may come from
either--from pity, from admiration, from any blind impulse--oh, when I
look at the histories of my own female friends--to go no step further!
And if it is true of the _women_, what must the other side be? To see
the marriages which are made every day! worse than solitudes and more
desolate! In the case of the two happiest I ever knew, one of the
husbands said in confidence to a brother of mine--not much in
confidence or I should not have heard it, but in a sort of smoking
frankness,--that he had 'ruined his prospects by marrying'; and the
other said to himself at the very moment of professing an
extraordinary happiness, ... 'But I should have done as well if I had
not married _her_.'
Then for the falseness--the first time I ever, in my own experience,
heard that word which rhymes to glove and comes as easily off and on
(on some hands!)--it was from a man of whose attentions to another
woman I was at that _time her confidante_. I was bound so to silence
for her sake, that I could not even speak the scorn that was in
me--and in fact my uppermost feeling was a sort of horror ... a
terror--for I was very young then, and the world did, at the moment,
look ghastly!
The falseness and the calculations!--why how can you, who are _just_,
_blame women_ ... when you must know what the 'system' of man is
towards them,--and of men not ungenerous otherwise? Why are women to
be blamed if they act as if they had to do with swindlers?--is it not
the mere instinct of preservation which makes them do it? These make
women what they are. And your 'honourable men,' the most loyal of
them, (for instance) is it not a rule with them (unless when taken
unaware through a want of self-government) to force a woman (trying
all means) to force a woman to stand committed in her affections ...
(they with their feet lifted all the time to trample on her for want
of delicacy) before _they_ risk the pin-prick to their own personal
pitiful vanities? Oh--to see how these things are set about by _men_!
to see how a man carefully holding up on each side the skirts of an
embroidered vanity to keep it quite safe from the wet, will contrive
to tell you in so many words that he ... might love you if the sun
shone! And women are to be blamed! Why there are, to be sure, cold and
heartless, light and changeable, ungenerous and calculating women in
the world!--that is sure. But for the most part, they are only what
they are made ... and far better than the nature of the making ... of
that I am confident. The loyal make the loyal, the disloyal the
disloyal. And I give no more discredit to those women you speak of,
than I myself can take any credit in this thing--I. Because who could
be disloyal with _you_ ... with whatever corrupt inclination? _you_,
who are the noblest of all? If you judge me so, ... it is my privilege
rather than my merit ... as I feel of myself.
_Wednesday._--All but the last few lines of all this was written
before I saw you yesterday, ever dearest--and since, I have been
reading your third act which is perfectly noble and worthy of you both
in the conception and expression, and carries the reader on
triumphantly ... to speak for one reader. It seems to me too that the
language is freer--there is less inversion and more breadth of rhythm.
It just strikes me so for the first impression. At any rate the
interest grows and grows. You have a secret about Domizia, I
guess--which will not be told till the last perhaps. And that poor,
noble Luria, who will be equal to the leap ... as it is easy to see.
It is full, altogether, of magnanimities;--noble, and nobly put. I
will go on with my notes, and those, you shall have at once ... I mean
together ... presently. And don't hurry and chafe yourself for the
fourth act--now that you are better! To be ill again--think what that
would be! Luria will be great now whatever you do--or whatever you do
_not_. Will he not?
And never, never for a moment (I quite forgot to tell you) did I fancy
that you were talking at _me_ in the temper-observations--never. It
was the most unprovoked egotism, all that I told you of my temper; for
certainly I never suspected you of asking questions so. I was simply
amused a little by what you said, and thought to myself (if you _will_
know my thoughts on that serious subject) that you had probably lived
among very good-tempered persons, to hold such an opinion about the
innocuousness of ill-temper. It was all I thought, indeed. Now to
fancy that I was capable of suspecting you of such a manoeuvre! Why
you would have _asked_ me directly;--if you had wished 'curiously to
enquire.'
An excellent solemn chiming, the passage from Dante makes with your
'Sordello,' and the 'Sordello' _deserves_ the labour which it needs,
to make it appear the great work it is. I think that the principle of
association is too subtly in movement throughout it--so that _while_
you are going straight forward you go at the same time round and
round, until the progress involved in the motion is lost sight of by
the lookers on. Or did I tell you that before?
You have heard, I suppose, how Dickens's 'Cricket' sells by nineteen
thousand copies at a time, though he takes Michael Angelo to be 'a
humbug'--or for 'though' read 'because.' Tell me of Mr. Kenyon's
dinner and Moxon?
Is not this an infinite letter? I shall hear from you, I hope.... I
_ask_ you to let me hear soon. I write all sorts of things to you,
rightly and wrongly perhaps; when wrongly forgive it. I think of you
always. May God bless you. 'Love me for ever,' as