Your BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 4, 1846.]
You ought hardly,--ought you, my Ba?--to refer to _that_ letter or any
expression in it; I had--and _have_, I trust--your forgiveness for
what I wrote, meaning to be generous or at least just, God knows.
That, and the other like exaggerations were there to serve the purpose
of what you properly call a _crisis_. I _did_ believe,--taking an
expression, in the note that occasioned mine, in connection with an
excuse which came in the postscript for not seeing me on the day
previously appointed, I did fully believe that you were about to deny
me admittance again unless I blotted out--not merely softened
down--the past avowal. All was wrong, foolish, but from a good notion,
I dare to say. And then, that particular exaggeration you bring most
painfully to my mind--_that_ does not, after all, disagree with what I
said and you repeat--does it, if you will think? I said my other
'_likings_' (as you rightly set it down) _used_ to 'come and go,' and
that my love for you _did not_, and that is true; the first clause as
the last of the sentence, for my sympathies are very wide and
general,--always have been--and the natural problem has been the
giving unity to their object, concentrating them instead of
dispersing. I seem to have foretold, _foreknown_ you in other likings
of mine--now here ... when the liking '_came_' ... and now elsewhere
... when as surely the liking '_went_': and if they had stayed before
the time would that have been a comfort to refer to? On the contrary,
I am as little likely to be led by delusions as can be,--for Romeo
_thinks_ he loves Rosaline, and is excused on all hands--whereas I saw
the plain truth without one mistake, and 'looked to like, if looking
liking moved--and no more deep _did_ I endart mine eye'--about which,
first I was very sorry, and after rather proud--all which I seem to
have told you before.--And now, when my whole heart and soul find you,
and fall on you, and fix forever, I am to be dreadfully afraid the joy
cannot last, seeing that
--it is so baseless a fear that no illustration will serve! Is it gone
now, dearest, ever-dearest?
And as you amuse me sometimes, as now, by seeming surprised at some
chance expression of a truth which is grown a veriest commonplace to
_me_--like Charles Lamb's 'letter to an elderly man whose education
had been neglected'--when he finds himself involuntarily communicating
truths above the capacity and acquirements of his friend, and stops
himself after this fashion--'If you look round the world, my dear
Sir--for it _is_ round!--so I will make you laugh at me, if you will,
for _my_ inordinate delight at hearing the success of your experiment
with the opium. I never dared, nor shall dare inquire into your use of
that--for, knowing you utterly as I do, I know you only bend to the
most absolute necessity in taking more or less of it--so that increase
of the quantity must mean simply increased weakness, illness--and
diminution, diminished illness. And now there _is_ diminution! Dear,
dear Ba--you speak of my silly head and its ailments ... well, and
what brings on the irritation? A wet day or two spent at home; and
what ends it all directly?--just an hour's walk! So with _me_:
now,--fancy me shut in a room for seven years ... it is--no, _don't_
see, even in fancy, what is left of me then! But _you_, at the end;
this is _all_ the harm: I wonder ... I confirm my soul in its belief
in perpetual miraculousness ... I bless God with my whole heart that
it is thus with you! And so, I will not even venture to say--so
superfluous it were, though with my most earnest, most loving breath
(I who _do_ love you more at every breath I draw; indeed, yes
dearest,)--I _will not_ bid you--that is, pray you--to persevere! You
have all my life bound to yours--save me from _my 'seven years'_--and
God reward you!
Your own R.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
[Post-mark, February 5, 1846.]
But I did not--dear, dearest--no indeed, I did not mean any harm about
the letter. I wanted to show you how you had given me pleasure--and
so,--did I give you pain? was _that_ my ingenuity? Forgive my
unhappiness in it, and let it be as if it had not been. Only I will
just say that what made me talk about 'the thorn in the flesh' from
that letter so long, was a sort of conviction of your having put into
it as much of the truth, _your_ truth, as admitted of the ultimate
purpose of it, and not the least, slightest doubt of the key you gave
me to the purpose in question. And so forgive me. Why did you set
about explaining, as if I were doubting you? When you said once that
it 'did not come and go,'--was it not enough? enough to make me feel
happy as I told you? Did I require you to write a letter like this?
Now think for a moment, and know once for all, how from the beginning
to these latter days and through all possible degrees of crisis, you
have been to my apprehension and gratitude, the best, most consistent,
most noble ... the words falter that would speak of it all. In nothing
and at no moment have you--I will not say--failed to _me_, but spoken
or acted unworthily of yourself at the highest. What have you ever
been to me except too generous? Ah--if I had been only half as
generous, it is true that I never could have seen you again after that
first meeting--it was the straight path perhaps. But I had not
courage--I shrank from the thought of it--and then ... besides ... I
could not believe that your mistake was likely to last,--I concluded
that I might keep my friend.
Why should any remembrance be painful to _you_? I do not understand.
Unless indeed I should grow painful to you ... I myself!--seeing that
every remembered separate thing has brought me nearer to you, and made
me yours with a deeper trust and love.
And for that letter ... do you fancy that in _my_ memory the sting is
not gone from it?--and that I do not carry the thought of it, as the
Roman maidens, you speak of, their cool harmless snakes, at my heart
always? So let the poor letter be forgiven, for the sake of the dear
letter that was burnt, forgiven by _you_--until you grow angry with me
instead--just till then.
And that you should care so much about the opium! Then _I_ must care,
and get to do with less--at least. On the other side of your goodness
and indulgence (a very little way on the other side) it might strike
you as strange that I who have had no pain--no acute suffering to keep
down from its angles--should need opium in any shape. But I have had
restlessness till it made me almost mad: at one time I lost the power
of sleeping quite--and even in the day, the continual aching sense of
weakness has been intolerable--besides palpitation--as if one's life,
instead of giving movement to the body, were imprisoned undiminished
within it, and beating and fluttering impotently to get out, at all
the doors and windows. So the medical people gave me opium--a
preparation of it, called morphine, and ether--and ever since I have
been calling it my amreeta draught, my elixir,--because the
tranquillizing power has been wonderful. Such a nervous system I
have--so irritable naturally, and so shattered by various causes, that
the need has continued in a degree until now, and it would be
dangerous to leave off the calming remedy, Mr. Jago says, except very
slowly and gradually. But slowly and gradually something may be
done--and you are to understand that I never _increased_ upon the
prescribed quantity ... prescribed in the first instance--no! Now
think of my writing all this to you!--
And after all the lotus-eaters are blessed beyond the opium-eaters;
and the best of lotuses are such thoughts as I know.
Dear Miss Mitford comes to-morrow, and I am not glad enough. Shall I
have a letter to make me glad? She will talk, talk, talk ... and I
shall be hoping all day that not a word may be talked of ... _you_:--a
forlorn hope indeed! There's a hope for a day like Thursday which is
just in the middle between a Tuesday and a Saturday!
Your head ... is it ... _how_ is it? tell me. And consider again if it
could be possible that I could ever desire to reproach _you_ ... in
what I said about the letter.
May God bless you, best and dearest. If you are the _compensation_
blessed is the evil that fell upon me: and _that_, I can say before
God.
Your BA.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Friday.
[Post-mark, February 6, 1846.]
If I said you 'gave me pain' in anything, it was in the only way ever
possible for you, my dearest--by giving _yourself_, in me, pain--being
unjust to your own right and power as I feel them at my heart: and in
that way, I see you will go on to the end, I getting called--in this
very letter--'generous' &c. Well, let me fancy you see very, very deep
into future chances and how I should behave on occasion. I shall
hardly imitate you, I whose sense of the present and its claims of
gratitude already is beyond expression.
All the kind explaining about the opium makes me happier. 'Slowly and
gradually' what may _not_ be done? Then see the bright weather while I
write--lilacs, hawthorn, plum-trees all in bud; elders in leaf,
rose-bushes with great red shoots; thrushes, whitethroats, hedge
sparrows in full song--there can, let us hope, be nothing worse in
store than a sharp wind, a week of it perhaps--and then comes what
shall come--
And Miss Mitford yesterday--and has she fresh fears for you of my evil
influence and Origenic power of 'raying out darkness' like a swart
star? Why, the common sense of the world teaches that there is nothing
people at fault in any faculty of expression are so intolerant of as
the like infirmity in others--whether they are unconscious of, or
indulgent to their own obscurity and fettered organ, the hindrance
from the fettering of their neighbours' is redoubled. A man may think
he is not deaf, or, at least, that you need not be so much annoyed by
his deafness as you profess--but he will be quite aware, to say the
least of it, when another man can't hear _him_; he will certainly not
encourage him to stop his ears. And so with the converse; a writer who
fails to make himself understood, as presumably in my case, may either
believe in his heart that it is _not_ so ... that only as much
attention and previous instructedness as the case calls for, would
quite avail to understand him; or he may open his eyes to the fact and
be trying hard to overcome it: but on which supposition is he led to
confirm another in his unintelligibility? By the proverbial tenderness
of the eye with the mote for the eye with the beam? If that beam were
just such another mote--_then_ one might sympathize and feel no such
inconvenience--but, because I have written a 'Sordello,' do I turn to
just its _double_, Sordello the second, in your books, and so perforce
see nothing wrong? 'No'--it is supposed--'but something _as_ obscure
in its way.' Then down goes the bond of union at once, and I stand no
nearer to view your work than the veriest proprietor of one thought
and the two words that express it without obscurity at all--'bricks
and mortar.' Of course an artist's whole problem must be, as Carlyle
wrote to me, 'the expressing with articulate clearness the thought in
him'--I am almost inclined to say that _clear expression_ should be
his only work and care--for he is born, ordained, such as he is--and
not born learned in putting what was born in him into words--what ever
_can_ be clearly spoken, ought to be. But 'bricks and mortar' is very
easily said--and some of the thoughts in 'Sordello' not so readily
even if Miss Mitford were to try her hand on them.
I look forward to a real life's work for us both. _I_ shall do
all,--under your eyes and with your hand in mine,--all I was intended
to do: may but _you_ as surely go perfecting--by continuing--the work
begun so wonderfully--'a rose-tree that beareth seven-times seven'--
I am forced to dine in town to-day with an old friend--'to-morrow'
always begins half the day before, like a Jewish sabbath. Did your
sister tell you that I met her on the stairs last time? She did _not_
tell you that I had almost passed by her--the eyes being still
elsewhere and occupied. Now let me write out that--no--I will send the
old ballad I told you of, for the strange coincidence--and it is very
charming beside, is it not? Now goodbye, my sweetest, dearest--and
tell me good news of yourself to-morrow, and be but half a quarter as
glad to see me as I shall be blessed in seeing you. God bless you
ever.