My dear Christmas gift of a letter! I will write back a few lines,
(all I can, having to go out now)--just that I may forever,--certainly
during our mortal 'forever'--mix my love for you, and, as you suffer
me to say, your love for me ... dearest! ... these shall be mixed with
the other loves of the day and live therein--as I write, and trust,
and know--forever! While I live I will remember what was my feeling in
reading, and in writing, and in stopping from either ... as I have
just done ... to kiss you and bless you with my whole heart.--Yes,
yes, bless you, my own!
All is right, all of your letter ... admirably right and just in the
defence of the women I _seemed_ to speak against; and only
seemed--because that is a way of mine which you must have observed;
that foolish concentrating of thought and feeling, for a moment, on
some one little spot of a character or anything else indeed, and in
the attempt to do justice and develop whatever may seem ordinarily to
be overlooked in it,--that over vehement _insisting_ on, and giving an
undue prominence to, the same--which has the effect of taking away
from the importance of the rest of the related objects which, in
truth, are not considered at all ... or they would also rise
proportionally when subjected to the same (that is, correspondingly
magnified and dilated) light and concentrated feeling. So, you
remember, the old divine, preaching on 'small sins,' in his zeal to
expose the tendencies and consequences usually made little account of,
was led to maintain the said small sins to be 'greater than great
ones.' _But then_ ... if you look on the world _altogether_, and
accept the small natures, in their usual proportion with the greater
... things do not look _quite_ so bad; because the conduct which _is_
atrocious in those higher cases, of proposal and acceptance, _may_ be
no more than the claims of the occasion justify (wait and hear) in
certain other cases where the thing sought for and granted is avowedly
less by a million degrees. It shall all be traffic, exchange (counting
spiritual gifts as only coin, for our purpose), but surely the
formalities and policies and decencies all vary with the nature of the
thing trafficked for. If a man makes up his mind during half his life
to acquire a Pitt-diamond or a Pilgrim-pearl--[he] gets witnesses and
testimony and so forth--but, surely, when I pass a shop where oranges
are ticketed up seven for sixpence I offend no law by sparing all
words and putting down the piece with a certain authoritative ring on
the counter. If instead of diamonds you want--(being a king or
queen)--provinces with live men on them ... there is so much more
diplomacy required; new interests are appealed to--high motives
_supposed_, at all events--whereas, when, in Naples, a man asks leave
to black your shoe in the dusty street 'purely for the honour of
serving your Excellency' you laugh and would be sorry to find yourself
without a 'grano' or two--(six of which, about, make a farthing)--Now
do you not see! Where so little is to be got, why offer much more? If
a man knows that ... but I am teaching you! All I mean is, that, in
Benedick's phrase, 'the world must go on.' He who honestly wants his
wife to sit at the head of his table and carve ... that is be his
_help-meat_ (not 'help mete for him')--he shall assuredly find a girl
of his degree who wants the table to sit at; and some dear friend to
mortify, who _would_ be glad of such a piece of fortune; and if that
man offers that woman a bunch of orange-flowers and a sonnet, instead
of a buck-horn-handled sabre-shaped knife, sheathed in a 'Every Lady
Her Own _Market-Woman_, Being a Table of' &c. &c.--_then_, I say he
is--
Bless you, dearest--the clock strikes--and time is none--but--bless
you!
Your own R.B.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Saturday 4. p.m.
[Post-mark, December 27, 1845.]
I was forced to leave off abruptly on Christmas Morning--and now I
have but a few minutes before our inexorable post leaves. I hoped to
return from Town earlier. But I can say something--and Monday will
make amends.
'For ever' and for ever I _do_ love you, dearest--love you with my
whole heart--in life, in death--
Yes; I did go to Mr. Kenyon's--who had a little to forgive in my slack
justice to his good dinner, but was for the rest his own kind
self--and I went, also, to Moxon's--who said something about my
number's going off 'rather heavily'--so let it!
Too good, too, too indulgent you are, my own Ba, to 'acts' first or
last; but all the same, I am glad and encouraged. _Let_ me get done
with these, and better things will follow.
Now, bless you, ever, my sweetest--I have you ever in my thoughts--And
on Monday, remember, I am to see you.
Your own R.B.
See what I cut out of a _Cambridge Advertiser_[1] of the 24th--to make
you laugh!
[Footnote 1: The cutting enclosed is:--'A Few Rhymes for the Present
Christmas' by J. Purchas, Esq., B.A. It is headed by several
quotations, the first of which is signed 'Elizabeth B. Barrett:'
'This age shows to my thinking, still more infidels to Adam,
Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God.'
This is followed by extracts from Pindar, 'Lear,' and the Hon. Mrs.
Norton.]
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Saturday.
[Post-mark, December 27, 1845.]
Yes, indeed, I have 'observed that way' in you, and not once, and not
twice, and not twenty times, but oftener than any,--and almost every
time ... do you know, ... with an uncomfortable feeling from the
reflection that _that_ is the way for making all sorts of mistakes
dependent on and issuing in exaggeration. It is the very way!--the
highway.
For what you say in the letter here otherwise, I do not deny the
truth--as partial truth:--I was speaking generally quite. Admit that I
am not apt to be extravagant in my _esprit de sexe_: the Martineau
doctrines of intellectual equality &c., I gave them up, you remember,
like a woman--most disgracefully, as Mrs. Jameson would tell me. But
we are not on that ground now--we are on ground worth holding a brief
for!--and when women fail _here_ ... it is not so much our fault.
Which was all I meant to say from the beginning.
It reminds me of the exquisite analysis in your 'Luria,' this third
act, of the worth of a woman's sympathy,--indeed of the exquisite
double-analysis of unlearned and learned sympathies. Nothing could be
better, I think, than this:--
To the motive, the endeavour,--the heart's self--
Your quick sense looks; you crown and call aright
The soul of the purpose ere 'tis shaped as act,
Takes flesh i' the world, and clothes itself a king;
except the characterizing of the 'learned praise,' which comes
afterwards in its fine subtle truth. What would these critics do to
you, to what degree undo you, who would deprive you of the exercise of
the discriminative faculty of the metaphysicians? As if a poet could
be great without it! They might as well recommend a watchmaker to deal
only in faces, in dials, and not to meddle with the wheels inside!
You shall tell Mr. Forster so.
And speaking of 'Luria,' which grows on me the more I read, ... how
fine he is when the doubt breaks on him--I mean, when he begins ...
'Why then, all is very well.' It is most affecting, I think, all that
process of doubt ... and that reference to the friends at home (which
at once proves him a stranger, and intimates, by just a stroke, that
he will not look home for comfort out of the new foreign treason) is
managed by you with singular dramatic dexterity....
... 'so slight, so slight,
And yet it tells you they are dead and gone'--
And then, the direct approach....
You now, so kind here, all you Florentines,
What is it in your eyes?--
Do you not feel it to be success, ... '_you_ now?' _I_ do, from my low
ground as reader. The whole breaking round him of the cloud, and the
manner in which he _stands_, facing it, ... I admire it all
thoroughly. Braccio's vindication of Florence strikes me as almost too
_poetically_ subtle for the man--but nobody could have the heart to
wish a line of it away--_that_ would be too much for critical virtue!
I had your letter yesterday morning early. The post-office people were
so resolved on keeping their Christmas, that they would not let me
keep mine. No post all day, after that general post before noon, which
never brings me anything worth the breaking of a seal!
Am I to see you on Monday? If there should be the least, least
crossing of that day, ... anything to do, anything to see, anything to
listen to,--remember how Tuesday stands close by, and that another
Monday comes on the following week. Now I need not say _that_ every
time, and you will please to remember it--Eccellenza!--