For Miss Mitford ...
But people are not angels quite ...
and she sees the whole world in stripes of black and white, it is her
way. I feel very affectionately towards her, love her sincerely. She
is affectionate to _me_ beyond measure. Still, always I feel that if I
were to vex her, the lower deep below the lowest deep would not be low
enough for _me_. I always feel _that_. She would advertise me directly
for a wretch proper.
Then, for all I said about never changing, I have ice enough over me
just now to hold the sparrows!--in respect to a great crowd of people,
and she is among them--for reasons--for reasons.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Saturday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 23, 1846.]
So all was altered, my love--and, instead of Miss T. and the other
friend, I had your brother and Procter--to my great pleasure. After, I
went to that place, and soon got away, and am very well this morning
in the sunshine; which I feel with you, do I not? Yesterday after
dinner we spoke of Mrs. Jameson, and, as my wont is--(Here your letter
reaches me--let me finish this sentence now I have finished kissing
you, dearest beyond all dearness--My own heart's Ba!)--oh, as I am
used, I left the talking to go on by itself, with the thought busied
elsewhere, till at last my own voice startled me for I heard my tongue
utter 'Miss Barrett ... that is, Mrs. Jameson says' ... or 'does ...
or does not.' I forget which! And if anybody noticed the _gaucherie_
it must have been just your brother!
Now to these letters! I do solemnly, unaffectedly wonder how you can
put so much pure felicity into an envelope so as that I shall get it
as from the fount head. This to-day, those yesterday--there is, I see,
and know, thus much goodness in line after line, goodness to be
scientifically appreciated, _proved there_--but over and above, is it
in the writing, the dots and traces, the seal, the paper--here does
the subtle charm lie beyond all rational accounting for? The other day
I stumbled on a quotation from J. Baptista Porta--wherein he avers
that any musical instrument made out of wood possessed of medicinal
properties retains, being put to use, such virtues undiminished,--and
that, for instance, a sick man to whom you should pipe on a pipe of
elder-tree would so receive all the advantage derivable from a
decoction of its berries. From whence, by a parity of reasoning, I may
discover, I think, that the very ink and paper were--ah, what were
they? Curious thinking won't do for me and the wise head which is
mine, so I will lie and rest in my ignorance of content and understand
that without any magic at all you simply wish to make one
person--which of your free goodness proves to be your R.B.--to make me
supremely happy, and that you have your wish--you _do_ bless me! More
and more, for the old treasure is piled undiminished and still the new
comes glittering in. Dear, dear heart of my heart, life of my life,
_will this last_, let _me_ begin to ask? Can it be meant I shall live
this to the end? Then, dearest, care also for the life beyond, and put
in my mind how to testify here that I have felt, if I could not
deserve that a gift beyond all gifts! I hope to work hard, to prove I
do feel, as I say--it would be terrible to accomplish nothing now.
With which conviction--renewed conviction time by time, of your
extravagance of kindness to me unworthy,--will it seem
characteristically consistent when I pray you not to begin frightening
me, all the same, with threats of writing _less_ kindly? That must not
be, love, for _your_ sake now--if you had not thrown open those
windows of heaven I should have no more imagined than that Syrian lord
on whom the King leaned 'how such things might be'--but, once their
influence showered, I should know, too soon and easily, if they shut
up again! You have committed your dear, dearest self to that course of
blessing, and blessing on, on, for ever--so let all be as it is, pray,
_pray_!
No--not _all_. No more, ever, of that strange
suspicion--'insolent'--oh, what a word!--nor suppose I shall
particularly wonder at its being fancied applicable to _that_, of all
other passages of your letter! It is quite as reasonable to suspect
the existence of such a quality _there_ as elsewhere: how _can_ such a
thing, _could_ such a thing come from you to me? But, dear Ba, _do_
you know me better! _Do_ feel that I know you, I am bold to believe,
and that if you were to run at me with a pointed spear I should be
sure it was a golden sanative, Machaon's touch, for my entire good,
that I was opening my heart to receive! As for words, written or
spoken--I, who sin forty times in a day by light words, and untrue to
the thought, I am certainly not used to be easily offended by other
peoples' words, people in the world. But _your_ words! And about the
'mission'; if it had not been a thing to jest at, I should not have
begun, as I did--as you felt I did. I know now, what I only suspected
then, and will tell you all the matter on Monday if you care to hear.
The 'humanity' however, would have been unquestionable if I had chosen
to exercise it towards the poor weak incapable creature that wants
_somebody_, and urgently, I can well believe.
As for your apologue, it is naught--as you felt, and so broke off--for
the baron knew well enough it was a spray of the magical tree which
once planted in his domain would shoot up, and out, and all round, and
be glorious with leaves and musical with birds' nests, and a fairy
safeguard and blessing thenceforward and for ever, when the foolish
baton had been broken into ounces of gold, even if gold it _were_, and
spent and vanished: for, he said, such gold lies in the highway, men
pick it up, more of it or less; but this one slip of the flowering
tree is all of it on this side Paradise. Whereon he laid it to his
heart and was happy--in spite of his disastrous chase the night
before, when so far from catching an unicorn, he saw not even a
respectable prize-heifer, worth the oil-cake and rape-seed it had
doubtless cost to rear her--'insolence!'
I found no opportunity of speaking to Mr. K. about Monday, but nothing
was said of last Wednesday, and he must know I did not go yesterday.
So, Monday is laughing in sunshine surely! Bless you, my sweetest. I
love you with my whole heart; ever shall love you.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
[Post-mark, February 24, 1846.]
Ever dearest, it is only when you go away, when you are quite gone,
out of the house and the street, that I get up and think properly, and
with the right gratitude of your flowers. Such beautiful flowers you
brought me this time too! looking like summer itself, and smelling!
Doing the 'honour due' to the flowers, makes your presence a little
longer with me, the sun shines back over the hill just by that time,
and then drops, till the next letter.
If I had had the letter on Saturday as ought to have been, no, I could
_not_ have answered it so that you should have my answer on
Sunday--no, I should still have had to write first.
Now you understand that I do not object to the writing first, but only
to the hearing second. I would rather write than not--I! But to be
written to is the chief gladness of course; and with all you say of
liking to have my letters (which I like to hear quite enough indeed)
you cannot pretend to think that _yours_ are not more to _me_, most to
_me_! Ask my guardian-angel and hear what he says! Yours will look
another way for shame of measuring joys with him! Because as I have
said before, and as he says now, you are all to me, all the light, all
the life; I am living for you now. And before I knew you, what was I
and where? What was the world to me, do you think? and the meaning of
life? And now, when you come and go, and write and do not write, all
the hours are chequered accordingly in so many squares of white and
black, as if for playing at fox and goose ... only there is no fox,
and I will not agree to be goose for one ... _that_ is _you_ perhaps,
for being 'too easily' satisfied.
So my claim is that you are more to me than I can be to you at any
rate. Mr. Fox said on Sunday that I was a 'religious hermit' who wrote
'poems which ought to be read in a Gothic alcove'; and religious
hermits, when they care to see visions, do it better, they all say,
through fasting and flagellation and seclusion in dark places. St.
Theresa, for instance, saw a clearer glory by such means, than your
Sir Moses Montefiore through his hundred-guinea telescope. Think then,
how every shadow of my life has helped to throw out into brighter,
fuller significance, the light which comes to me from you ... think
how it is the one light, seen without distractions.
_I_ was thinking the other day that certainly and after all (or rather
before all) I had loved you all my life unawares, that is, the idea of
you. Women begin for the most part, (if ever so very little given to
reverie) by meaning, in an aside to themselves, to love such and such
an ideal, seen sometimes in a dream and sometimes in a book, and
forswearing their ancient faith as the years creep on. I say a book,
because I remember a friend of mine who looked everywhere for the
original of Mr. Ward's 'Tremaine,' because nothing would do for _her_,
she insisted, except just _that_ excess of so-called refinement, with
the book-knowledge and the conventional manners, (_loue qui peut_,
Tremaine), and ended by marrying a lieutenant in the Navy who could
not spell. Such things happen every day, and cannot be otherwise, say
the wise:--and _this_ being otherwise with _me_ is miraculous
compensation for the trials of many years, though such abundant,
overabundant compensation, that I cannot help fearing it is too much,
as I know that you are too good and too high for me, and that by the
degree in which I am raised up you are let down, for us two to find a
level to meet on. One's ideal must be above one, as a matter of
course, you know. It is as far as one can reach with one's eyes
(soul-eyes), not reach to touch. And here is mine ... shall I tell
you? ... even to the visible outward sign of the black hair and the
complexion (why you might ask my sisters!) yet I would not tell you,
if I could not tell you afterwards that, if it had been red hair
quite, it had been the same thing, only I prove the coincidence out
fully and make you smile half.
Yet indeed I did not fancy that I was to love _you_ when you came to
see me--no indeed ... any more than I did your caring on your side. My
ambition when we began our correspondence, was simply that you should
forget I was a woman (being weary and _blasée_ of the empty written
gallantries, of which I have had my share and all the more perhaps
from my peculiar position which made them so without consequence),
that you should forget _that_ and let us be friends, and consent to
teach me what you knew better than I, in art and human nature, and
give me your sympathy in the meanwhile. I am a great hero-worshipper
and had admired your poetry for years, and to feel that you liked to
write to me and be written to was a pleasure and a pride, as I used
to tell you I am sure, and then your letters were not like other
letters, as I must not tell you again. Also you _influenced_ me, in a
way in which no one else did. For instance, by two or three half words
you made me see you, and other people had delivered orations on the
same subject quite without effect. I surprised everybody in this house
by consenting to see you. Then, when you came, you never went away. I
mean I had a sense of your presence constantly. Yes ... and to prove
how free that feeling was from the remotest presentiment of what has
occurred, I said to Papa in my unconsciousness the next morning ...
'it is most extraordinary how the idea of Mr. Browning does beset
me--I suppose it is not being used to see strangers, in some
degree--but it haunts me ... it is a persecution.' On which he smiled
and said that 'it was not grateful to my friend to use such a word.'
When the letter came....
Do you know that all that time I was frightened of you? frightened in
this way. I felt as if you had a power over me and meant to use it,
and that I could not breathe or speak very differently from what you
chose to make me. As to my thoughts, I had it in my head somehow that
you read _them_ as you read the newspaper--examined them, and fastened
them down writhing under your long entomological pins--ah, do you
remember the entomology of it all?
But the power was used upon _me_--and I never doubted that you had
mistaken your own mind, the strongest of us having some exceptional
weakness. Turning the wonder round in all lights, I came to what you
admitted yesterday ... yes, I saw _that_ very early ... that you had
come here with the intention of trying to love whomever you should
find, ... and also that what I had said about exaggerating the amount
of what I could be to you, had just operated in making you more
determined to justify your own presentiment in the face of mine.
Well--and if that last clause was true a little, too ... why should I
be sorry now ... and why should you have fancied for a moment, that
the first could make me sorry. At first and when I did not believe
that you really loved me, when I thought you deceived yourself,
_then_, it was different. But now ... now ... when I see and believe
your attachment for me, do you think that any cause in the world
(except what diminished it) could render it less a source of joy to
me? I mean as far as I myself am considered. Now if you ever fancy
that I am _vain_ of your love for me, you will be unjust, remember. If
it were less dear, and less above me, I might be vain perhaps. But I
may say _before_ God and you, that of all the events of my life,
inclusive of its afflictions, nothing has humbled me so much as your
love. Right or wrong it may be, but true it _is_, and I tell you. Your
love has been to me like God's own love, which makes the receivers of
it kneelers.
Why all this should be written, I do not know--but you set me thinking
yesterday in that backward line, which I lean back to very often, and
for once, as you made me write directly, why I wrote, as my thoughts
went, that way.
Say how you are, beloved--and do not brood over that 'Soul's Tragedy,'
which I wish I had here with 'Luria,' because, so, you should not see
it for a month at least. And take exercise and keep well--and remember
how many letters I must have before Saturday. May God bless you. Do
you want to hear me say