_R.B. to E.B.B._
[Post-mark, January 23, 1846.]
Now, of all perverse interpretations that ever were and never ought to
have been, commend me to this of Ba's--after I bade her generosity
'understand me,' too!--which meant, 'let her pick out of my disjointed
sentences a general meaning, if she can,--which I very well know their
imperfect utterance would not give to one unsupplied with the key of
my whole heart's-mystery'--and Ba, with the key in her hand, to
pretend and poke feathers and penholders into the key-hole, and
complain that the wards are wrong! So--when the poor scholar, one has
read of, uses not very dissimilar language and argument--who being
threatened with the deprivation of his Virgil learnt the Æneid by
heart and then said 'Take what you can now'!--_that_ Ba calls
'feeling the loss would not be so hard after all'!--_I_ do not, at
least. And if at any future moment I should again be visited--as I
earnestly desire may never be the case--with a sudden consciousness of
the entire inutility of all earthly love (since of _my_ love) to hold
its object back from the decree of God, if such should call it away;
one of those known facts which, for practical good, we treat as
supremely common-place, but which, like those of the uncertainty of
life--the very existence of God, I may say--if they were _not_
common-place, and could they be thoroughly apprehended (except in the
chance minutes which make one grow old, not the mere years)--the
business of the world would cease; but when you find Chaucer's graver
at his work of 'graving smale seles' by the sun's light, you know that
the sun's self could not have been _created_ on that day--do you
'understand' that, Ba? And when I am with you, or here or writing or
walking--and perfectly happy in the sunshine of you, I very well know
I am no wiser than is good for me and that there seems no harm in
feeling it impossible this should change, or fail to go on increasing
till this world ends and we are safe, I with you, for ever. But
when--if only _once_, as I told you, recording it for its very
strangeness, I _do_ feel--in a flash--that words are words, and could
not alter _that_ decree ... will you tell me how, after all, that
conviction and the true woe of it are better met than by the as
thorough conviction that, for one blessing, the extreme woe is
_impossible_ now--that you _are_, and have been, _mine_, and _me_--one
with me, never to be parted--so that the complete separation not being
to be thought of, such an incomplete one as is yet in Fate's power may
be the less likely to attract her notice? And, dearest, in all
emergencies, see, I go to you for help; for your gift of better
comfort than is found in myself. Or ought I, if I could, to add one
more proof to the Greek proverb 'that the half is greater than the
whole'--and only love you for myself (it is absurd; but if I _could_
disentwine you from my soul in that sense), only see my own will, and
good (not in _your_ will and good, as I now see them and shall ever
see) ... should you say I _did_ love you then? Perhaps. And it would
have been better for me, I know--I should not have _written_ this or
the like--there being no post in the Siren's isle, as you will see.
And the end of the whole matter is--what? Not by any means what my Ba
expects or ought to expect; that I say with a flounce 'Catch me
blotting down on paper, again, the first vague impressions in the
weakest words and being sure I have only to bid her
"understand"!--when I can get "Blair on Rhetoric," and the additional
chapter on the proper conduct of a letter'! On the contrary I tell
you, Ba, my own heart's dearest, I will provoke you tenfold worse;
will tell you all that comes uppermost, and what frightens me or
reassures me, in moments lucid or opaque--and when all the pen-stumps
and holders refuse to open the lock, out will come the key perforce;
and once put that knowledge--of the entire love and worship of my
heart and soul--to its proper use, and all will be clear--tell me
to-morrow that it will be clear when I call you to account and exact
strict payment for every word and phrase and full-stop and partial
stop, and no stop at all, in this wicked little note which got so
treacherously the kisses and the thankfulness--written with no
penholder that is to belong to me, I hope--but with the feather,
possibly, which Sycorax wiped the dew from, as Caliban remembered when
he was angry! All but--(that is, all was wrong but)--to be just ...
the old, dear, so dear ending which makes my heart beat now as at
first ... and so, pays for all! Wherefore, all is right again, is it
not? and you are my own priceless Ba, my very own--and I will have
you, if you like that style, and want you, and must have you every day
and all day long--much less see you to-morrow _stand_--
... Now, there breaks down my new spirit--and, shame or no, I must
pray you, in the old way, _not_ to _receive me standing_--I should not
remain master of myself I do believe!
You have put out of my head all I intended to write--and now I slowly
begin to remember the matters they seem strangely unimportant--that
poor impotency of a Newspaper! No--nothing of that for the present.
To-morrow my dearest! Ba's first comment--'_To-morrow?_ _To-day_ is
too soon, it seems--yet it is wise, perhaps, to avoid the satiety &c.
&c. &c. &c. &c.'
Does she feel how I kissed that comment back on her dear self as fit
punishment?
_E.B.B. to R.B._
[Post-mark, January 26, 1846.]
I must begin by invoking my own stupidity! To forget after all the
penholder! I had put it close beside me too on the table, and never
once thought of it afterwards from first to last--just as I should do
if I had a common-place book, the memoranda all turning to
obliviscenda as by particular contact. So I shall send the holder with
Miss Martineau's books which you can read or not as you like ... they
have beauty in passages ... but, trained up against the wall of a set
design, want room for branching and blossoming, great as her skill is.
I like her 'Playfellow' stories twice as well. Do you know _them_?
Written for children, and in such a fine heroic child-spirit as to be
too young and too old for nobody. Oh, and I send you besides a most
frightful extract from an American magazine sent to me yesterday ...
no, the day before ... on the subject of mesmerism--and you are to
understand, if you please, that the Mr. Edgar Poe who stands committed
in it, is my dedicator ... whose dedication I forgot, by the way, with
the rest--so, while I am sending, you shall have his poems with his
mesmeric experience and decide whether the outrageous compliment to
E.B.B. or the experiment on M. Vandeleur [Valdemar] goes furthest to
prove him mad. There is poetry in the man, though, now and then, seen
between the great gaps of bathos.... 'Politian' will make you
laugh--as the 'Raven' made _me_ laugh, though with something in it
which accounts for the hold it took upon people such as Mr. N.P.
Willis and his peers--it was sent to me from _four_ different quarters
besides the author himself, before its publication in this form, and
when it had only a newspaper life. Some of the other lyrics have power
of a less questionable sort. For the author, I do not know him at
all--never heard from him nor wrote to him--and in my opinion, there
is more faculty shown in the account of that horrible mesmeric
experience (mad or not mad) than in his poems. Now do read it from the
beginning to the end. That '_going out_' of the hectic, struck me very
much ... and the writhing _away_ of the upper lip. Most
horrible!--Then I believe so much of mesmerism, as to give room for
the full acting of the story on me ... without absolutely giving full
credence to it, understand.
Ever dearest, you could not think me in earnest in that letter? It was
because I understood you so perfectly that I felt at liberty for the
jesting a little--for had I not thought of _that_ before, myself, and
was I not reproved for speaking of it, when I said that I was content,
for my part, even _so_? Surely you remember--and I should not have
said it if I had not felt with you, felt and known, that 'there is,
with us, less for the future to give or take away than in the ordinary
cases.' So much less! All the happiness I have known has come to me
through you, and it is enough to live for or die in--therefore living
or dying I would thank God, and use that word '_enough_' ... being
yours in life and death. And always understanding that if either of us
should go, you must let it be this one here who was nearly gone when
she knew you, since I could not bear--
Now see if it is possible to write on this subject, unless one laughs
to stop the tears. I was more wise on Friday.
Let me tell you instead of my sister's affairs, which are so publicly
talked of in this house that there is no confidence to be broken in
respect to them--yet my brothers only see and hear, and are told
nothing, to keep them as clear as possible from responsibility. I may
say of Henrietta that her only fault is, her virtues being written in
water--I know not of one other fault. She has too much softness to be
able to say 'no' in the right place--and thus, without the slightest
levity ... perfectly blameless in that respect, ... she says half a
yes or a quarter of a yes, or a yes in some sort of form, too
often--but I will tell you. Two years ago, three men were loving her,
as they called it. After a few months, and the proper quantity of
interpretations, one of them consoled himself by giving nick-names to
his rivals. Perseverance and Despair he called them, and so, went up
to the boxes to see out the rest of the play. Despair ran to a crisis,
was rejected in so many words, but appealed against the judgment and
had his claim admitted--it was all silence and mildness on each side
... a tacit gaining of ground,--Despair 'was at least a gentleman,'
said my brothers. On which Perseverance came on with violent
re-iterations,--insisted that she loved him without knowing it, or
_should_--elbowed poor Despair into the open streets, who being a
gentleman wouldn't elbow again--swore that 'if she married another he
would wait till she became a widow, trusting to Providence' ... _did_
wait every morning till the head of the house was out, and sate day by
day, in spite of the disinclination of my sisters and the rudeness of
all my brothers, four hours in the drawing-room ... let himself be
refused once a week and sate all the longer ... allowed everybody in
the house (and a few visitors) to see and hear him in fits of
hysterical sobbing, and sate on unabashed, the end being that he sits
now sole regnant, my poor sister saying softly, with a few tears of
remorse for her own instability, that she is 'taken by storm and
cannot help it.' I give you only the _résumé_ of this military
movement--and though I seem to smile, which it was impossible to avoid
at some points of the evidence as I heard it from first one person and
then another, yet I am woman enough rather to be glad that the
decision is made _so_. He is sincerely attached to her, I believe; and
the want of refinement and sensibility (for he understood her
affections to be engaged to another at one time) is covered in a
measure by the earnestness,--and justified too by the event--everybody
being quite happy and contented, even to Despair, who has a new horse
and takes lessons in music.
That's love--is it not? And that's my answer (if you look for it) to
the question you asked me yesterday.
Yet do not think that I am turning it all to game. I could not do so
with any real earnest sentiment ... I never could ... and now least,
and with my own sister whom I love so. One may smile to oneself and
yet wish another well--and so I smile to _you_--and it is all safe
with you I know. He is a second or third cousin of ours and has golden
opinions from all his friends and fellow-officers--and for the rest,
most of these men are like one another.... I never could see the
difference between fuller's earth and common clay, among them all.
What do you think he has said since--to _her_ too?--'I always
persevere about everything. Once I began to write a farce--which they
told me was as bad as could be. Well!--I persevered!--_I finished
it_.' Perfectly unconscious, both he and she were of there being
anything mal à propos in _that_--and no kind of harm was meant,--only
it expresses the man.
Dearest--it had better be Thursday I think--_our_ day! I was showing
to-day your father's drawings,--and my brothers, and Arabel besides,
admired them very much on the right grounds. Say how you are. You did
not seem to me to answer frankly this time, and I was more than half
uneasy when you went away. Take exercise, dear, dearest ... think of
me enough for it,--and do not hurry 'Luria.' May God bless you!