Shall I have a letter?
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Saturday.
[Post-mark, January 31, 1846.]
It is a relief to me this time to obey your wish, and reserve further
remark on _that_ subject till by and bye. And, whereas some people, I
suppose, have to lash themselves up to the due point of passion, and
choose the happy minutes to be as loving in as they possibly can ...
(that is, in _expression_; the just correspondency of word to fact and
feeling: for _it_--the love--may be very truly _there_, at the bottom,
when it is got at, and spoken out)--quite otherwise, I do really have
to guard my tongue and set a watch on my pen ... that so I may say as
little as can well be likely to be excepted to by your generosity.
Dearest, _love_ means _love_, certainly, and adoration carries its
sense with it--and _so_, you may have received my feeling in that
shape--but when I begin to hint at the merest putting into practice
one or the other profession, you 'fly out'--instead of keeping your
throne. So let this letter lie awhile, till my heart is more used to
it, and after some days or weeks I will find as cold and quiet a
moment as I can, and by standing as far off you as I shall be able,
see more--'si _minus propè_ stes, te capiet magis.' Meanwhile, silent
or speaking, I am yours to dispose of as that _glove_--not that hand.
I must think that Mr. Kenyon sees, and knows, and ... in his goodness
... hardly disapproves--he knows I could not avoid--escape you--for he
knows, in a manner, what you are ... like your American; and, early in
our intercourse, he asked me (did I tell you?) 'what I thought of his
young relative'--and I considered half a second to this effect--'if he
asked me what I thought of the Queen-diamond they showed me in the
crown of the Czar--and I answered truly--he would not return; "then of
course you mean to try and get it to keep."' So I _did_ tell the truth
in a very few words. Well, it is no matter.
I am sorry to hear of poor Tennyson's condition. The projected
book--title, scheme, all of it,--_that_ is astounding;--and fairies?
If 'Thorpes and barnes, sheep-pens and dairies--_this_ maketh that
there ben no fairies'--locomotives and the broad or narrow gauge must
keep the very ghosts of them away. But how the fashion of this world
passes; the forms its beauty and truth take; if _we_ have the making
of such! I went last night, out of pure shame at a broken promise, to
hear Miss Cushman and her sister in 'Romeo and Juliet.' The whole play
goes ... horribly; 'speak' bids the Poet, and so M. Walladmir
[Valdemar] moves his tongue and dispenses with his jaws. Whatever is
slightly touched in, indicated, to give relief to something actually
insisted upon and drawn boldly ... _here_, you have it gone over with
an unremitting burnt-stick, till it stares black forever! Romeo goes
whining about Verona by broad daylight. Yet when a schoolfellow of
mine, I remember, began translating in class Virgil after this mode,
'Sic fatur--so said Æneas; lachrymans--_a-crying_' ... our pedagogue
turned on him furiously--'D'ye think Æneas made such a noise--as _you_
shall, presently?' How easy to conceive a boyish half-melancholy,
smiling at itself.
Then _Tuesday_, and not Monday ... and Saturday will be the nearer
afterward. I am singularly well to-day--head quite quiet--and
yesterday your penholder began its influence and I wrote about half my
last act. Writing is nothing, nor praise, nor blame, nor living, nor
dying, but you are all my true life; May God bless you ever--