_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, February 24, 1846.]
Ah, sweetest, in spite of our agreement, here is the note that sought
not to go, but must--because, if there is no speaking of Mrs. Jamesons
and such like without bringing in your dear name (not _dearest_ name,
my Ba!) what is the good of not writing it down, now, when I, though
possessed with the love of it no more than usual, yet _may_ speak, and
to a hearer? And I have to thank you with all my heart for the good
news of the increasing strength and less need for the opium--how I do
thank you, my dearest--and desire to thank God through whose goodness
it all is! This I could not but say now, to-morrow I will write at
length, having been working a little this morning, with whatever
effect. So now I will go out and see your elm-trees and gate, and
think the thoughts over again, and coming home I shall perhaps find a
letter.
Dearest, dearest--my perfect blessing you are!
May God continue his care for us. R.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 25, 1846.]
Once you were pleased to say, my own Ba, that 'I made you do as I
would.' I am quite sure, you make me _speak_ as you would, and not at
all as I mean--and for one instance, I never surely spoke anything
half so untrue as that 'I came with the intention of loving whomever I
should find'--No! wreathed shells and hollows in ruins, and roofs of
caves may transform a voice wonderfully, make more of it or less, or
so change it as to almost alter, but turn a 'no' into a 'yes' can no
echo (except the Irish one), and I said 'no' to such a charge, and
still say 'no.' I _did_ have a presentiment--and though it is hardly
possible for me to look back on it now without lending it the true
colours given to it by the event, yet I _can_ put them aside, if I
please, and remember that I not merely hoped it would not be so (_not_
that the effect I expected to be produced would be _less_ than in
anticipation, certainly I did not hope _that_, but that it would range
itself with the old feelings of simple reverence and sympathy and
friendship, that I should love you as much as I supposed I _could_
love, and no more) but in the confidence that nothing could occur to
divert me from my intended way of life, I made--went on making
arrangements to return to Italy. You know--did I not tell you--I
wished to see you before I returned? And I had heard of you just so
much as seemed to make it impossible such a relation could ever exist.
I know very well, if you choose to refer to my letters you may easily
bring them to bear a sense in parts, more agreeable to your own theory
than to mine, the true one--but that was instinct,
Providence--anything rather than foresight. Now I will convince you!
yourself have noticed the difference between the _letters_ and the
_writer_; the greater 'distance of the latter from you,' why was that?
Why, if not because the conduct _began_ with _him_, with one who had
now seen you--was no continuation of the conduct, as influenced by the
feeling, of the letters--else, they, if _near_, should have enabled
him, if but in the natural course of time and with increase of
familiarity, to become _nearer_--but it was not so! The letters began
by loving you after their way--but what a world-wide difference
between _that_ love and the true, the love from seeing and hearing and
feeling, since you make me resolve, what now lies blended so
harmoniously, into its component parts. Oh, I know what is old from
what is new, and how chrystals may surround and glorify other vessels
meant for ordinary service than Lord N's! But I _don't_ know that
handling may not snap them off, some of the more delicate ones; and if
you let me, love, I will not again, ever again, consider how it came
and whence, and when, so curiously, so pryingly, but believe that it
was always so, and that it all came at once, all the same; the more
unlikelinesses the better, for they set off the better the truth of
truths that here, ('how begot? how nourished?')--here is the whole
wondrous Ba filling my whole heart and soul; and over-filling it,
because she is in all the world, too, where I look, where I fancy. At
the same time, because all is so wondrous and so sweet, do you think
that it would be _so_ difficult for me to analyse it, and give causes
to the effects in sufficiently numerous instances, even to 'justify my
presentiment?' Ah, dear, dearest Ba, I could, could indeed, could
account for all, or enough! But you are unconscious, I do believe, of
your power, and the knowledge of it would be no added grace, perhaps!
So let us go on--taking a lesson out of the world's book in a
different sense. You shall think I love you for--(tell me, you must,
what for) while in my secret heart I know what my 'mission of
humanity' means, and what telescopic and microscopic views it procures
me. Enough--Wait, one word about the 'too kind letters'--could not the
same Montefiore understand that though he deserved not one of his
thousand guineas, yet that he is in disgrace if they bate him of his
next gift by merely _ten_? It _is_ all too kind--but I shall feel the
diminishing of the kindness, be very sure! Of that there is, however,
not too alarming a sign in this dearest, because last of all--dearest
letter of all--till the next! I looked yesterday over the 'Tragedy,'
and think it will do after all. I will bring one part at least next
time, and 'Luria' take away, if you let me, so all will be off my
mind, and April and May be the welcomer? Don't think I am going to
take any extraordinary pains. There are some things in the 'Tragedy' I
should like to preserve and print now, leaving the future to spring
as it likes, in any direction, and these half-dead, half-alive works
fetter it, if left behind.
Yet one thing will fetter it worse, only one thing--if _you_, in any
respect, stay behind? You that in all else help me and will help me,
beyond words--beyond dreams--if, because I find you, your own works
_stop_--'then comes the Selah and the voice is hushed.' Oh, no, no,
dearest, _so_ would the help cease to be help--the joy to be joy, Ba
herself to be _quite_ Ba, and my own Siren singing song for song. Dear
love, will that be kind, and right, and like the rest? Write and
promise that all shall be resumed, the romance-poem chiefly, and I
will try and feel more yours than ever now. Am I not with you in the
world, proud of you--and _vain_, too, very likely, which is all the
sweeter if it is a sin as you teach me. Indeed dearest, I have set my
heart on your fulfilling your mission--my heart is on it! Bless you,
my Ba--
Your R.B.
I am so well as to have resumed the shower-bath (this morning)--and I
walk, especially near the elms and stile--and mean to walk, and be
very well--and you, dearest?
_E.B.B. to R.B._
[Post-mark, February 26, 1846.]
I confess that while I was writing those words I had a thought that
they were not quite yours as you said them. Still it comes to
something in their likeness, but we will not talk of it and break off
the chrystals--they _are_ so brittle, then? do you know _that_ by an
'instinct.' But I agree that it is best not to talk--I 'gave it up' as
a riddle long ago. Let there be 'analysis' even, and it will not be
solution. I have my own thoughts of course, and you have yours, and
the worst is that a third person looking down on us from some
snow-capped height, and free from personal influences, would have
_his_ thoughts too, and _he_ would think that if you had been
reasonable as usual you would have gone to Italy. I have by heart (or
by head at least) what the third person would think. The third person
thundered to me in an abstraction for ever so long, and at intervals I
hear him still, only you shall not to-day, because he talks 'damnable
iterations' and teazes you. Nay, the first person is teazing you now
perhaps, without going any further, and yet I must go a little
further, just to say (after accepting all possible unlikelinesses and
miracles, because everything was miraculous and impossible) that it
was agreed between us long since that you did not love me for
anything--your having no reason for it is the only way of your not
seeming unreasonable. Also _for my own sake_. I like it to be so--I
cannot have peace with the least change from it. Dearest, take the
baron's hawthorn bough which, in spite of his fine dream of it is dead
since the other day, and so much the worse than when I despised it
last--take that dead stick and push it upright into the sand as the
tide rises, and the whole blue sea draws up its glittering breadth and
length towards and around it. But what then? What does _that prove_?
... as the philosopher said of the poem. So we ought not to talk of
such things; and we get warned off even in the accidental
illustrations taken up to light us. Still, the stick certainly did not
draw the sea.
Dearest and best you were yesterday, to write me the little note! You
are better than the imaginations of my heart, and _they_, as far as
they relate to you (not further) are _not_ desperately wicked, I
think. I always expect the kindest things from you, and you always are
doing some kindness beyond what is expected, and this is a miracle
too, like the rest, now isn't it? When the knock came last night, I
knew it was your letter, and not another's. Just another little leaf
of my Koran! How I thank you ... thank you! If I write too kind
letters, as you say, why they may be too kind for me to send, but not
for you to receive; and I suppose I think more of you than of me,
which accounts for my writing them, accounts and justifies. And _that_
is my reflection not now for the first time. For we break rules very
often--as that exegetical third person might expound to you clearly
out of the ninety-sixth volume of the 'Code of Conventions,' only you
are not like another, nor have you been to me like another--you began
with most improvident and (will you let me say?) _unmasculine_
generosity, and Queen Victoria does not sit upon a mat after the
fashion of Queen Pomare, nor should.
But ... but ... you know very fully that you are breaking faith in the
matter of the 'Tragedy' and 'Luria'--you promised to rest--and _you
rest for three days_. Is it _so_ that people get well? or keep well?
Indeed I do not think I shall let you have 'Luria.' Ah--be careful, I
do beseech you--be careful. There is time for a pause, and the works
will profit by it themselves. And _you_! And I ... if you are ill!--
For the rest I will let you walk in my field, and see my elms as much
as you please ... though I hear about the shower bath with a little
suspicion. Why, if it did you harm before, should it not again? and
why should you use it, if it threatens harm? Now tell me if it hasn't
made you rather unwell since the new trial!--tell me, dear, dearest.
As for myself, I believe that you set about exhorting me to be busy,
just that I might not reproach _you_ for the over-business. Confess
that _that_ was the only meaning of the exhortation. But no, you are
quite serious, you say. You even threaten me in a sort of underground
murmur, which sounds like a nascent earthquake; and if I do not write
so much a day directly, your stipendiary magistrateship will take away
my license to be loved ... I am not to be Ba to you any longer ... you
say! And is _this_ right? now I ask you. Ever so many chrystals fell
off by that stroke of the baton, I do assure you. Only you did not
mean quite what you said so too articulately, and you will unsay it,
if you please, and unthink it near the elms.
As for the writing, I will write ... I have written ... I am writing.
You do not fancy that I have given up writing?--No. Only I have
certainly been more loitering and distracted than usual in what I have
done, which is not my fault--nor yours directly--and I feel an
indisposition to setting about the romance, the hand of the soul
shakes. I am too happy and not calm enough, I suppose, to have the
right inclination. Well--it will come. But all in blots and fragments
there are verses enough, to fill a volume done in the last year.
And if there were not ... if there were none ... I hold that I should
be Ba, and also _your_ Ba ... which is 'insolence' ... will you say?
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Thursday.
[Post-mark, February 26, 1846.]
As for the 'third person,' my sweet Ba, he was a wise speaker from the
beginning; and in our case he will say, turning to me--'the late
Robert Hall--when a friend admired that one with so high an estimate
of the value of intellectuality in woman should yet marry some kind of
cook-maid animal, as did the said Robert; wisely answered, "you can't
kiss Mind"! May _you_ not discover eventually,' (this is to me) 'that
mere intellectual endowments--though incontestably of the loftiest
character--mere Mind, though that Mind be Miss B's--cannot be
_kissed_--nor, repent too late the absence of those humbler qualities,
those softer affections which, like flowerets at the mountain's foot,
if not so proudly soaring as, as, as!...' and so on, till one of us
died, with laughing or being laughed at! So judges the third person!
and if, to help him, we let him into your room at Wimpole Street,
suffered him to see with Flush's eyes, he would say with just as wise
an air 'True, mere personal affections may be warm enough, but does it
augur well for the durability of an attachment that it should be
_wholly, exclusively_ based on such perishable attractions as the
sweetness of a mouth, the beauty of an eye? I could wish, rather, to
know that there was something of less transitory nature co-existent
with this--some congeniality of Mental pursuit, some--' Would he not
say that? But I can't do his platitudes justice because here is our
post going out and I have been all the morning walking in the perfect
joy of my heart, with your letter, and under its blessing--dearest,
dearest Ba--let me say more to-morrow--only this now, that you--ah,
what are you not to me! My dearest love, bless you--till to-morrow
when I will strengthen the prayer; (no, _lengthen_ it!)
Ever your own.
'Hawthorn'[1]--to show how Spring gets on!
[Footnote 1: Sprig of Hawthorn enclosed with letter.]
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, February 27, 1846.]
If all third persons were as foolish as this third person of yours,
ever dearest, first and second persons might follow their own devices
without losing much in the way of good counsel. But you are unlucky in
your third person as far as the wits go, he talks a great deal of
nonsense, and Flush, who is sensible, will have nothing to do with
him, he says, any more than you will with Sir Moses:--he is quite a
third person _singular_ for the nonsense he talks!
So, instead of him, you shall hear what I have been doing to-day. The
sun, which drew out you and the hawthorns, persuaded me that it was
warm enough to go down-stairs--and I put on my cloak as if I were
going into the snow, and went into the drawing-room and took
Henrietta by surprise as she sate at the piano singing. Well, I meant
to stay half an hour and come back again, for I am upon 'Tinkler's
ground' in the drawing-room and liable to whole droves of morning
visitors--and Henrietta kept me, kept me, because she wanted me,
besought me, to stay and see the great sight of Capt. Surtees
Cook--_plus_ his regimentals--fresh from the royal presence at St.
James's, and I never saw him in my life, though he is a sort of
cousin. So, though I hated it as you may think, ... not liking to be
unkind to my sister, I stayed and stayed one ten minutes after
another, till it seemed plain that he wasn't coming at all (as I told
her) and that Victoria had kept him to dinner, enchanted with the
regimentals. And half laughing and half quarrelling, still she kept me
by force, until a knock came most significantly ... and '_There_ is
Surtees' said she ... 'now you must and shall stay! So foolish,' (I
had my hand on the door-handle to go out) 'he, your own cousin too!
who always calls you Ba, except before Papa.' Which might have
encouraged me perhaps, but I can't be sure of it, as the very next
moment apprized us both that no less a person than Mrs. Jameson was
standing out in the passage. The whole 36th. regiment could scarcely
have been more astounding to me. As to staying to see her in that
room, with the prospect of the military descent in combination, I
couldn't have done it for the world! so I made Henrietta, who had
drawn me into the scrape, take her up-stairs, and followed myself in a
minute or two--and the corollary of this interesting history is, that
being able to talk at all after all that 'fuss,' and after walking
'up-stairs and down-stairs' like the ancestor of your spider, proves
my gigantic strength--now doesn't it?
For the rest, 'here be proofs' that the first person can be as foolish
as any third person in the world. What do you think?
And Mrs. Jameson was kind beyond speaking of, and talked of taking me
to Italy. What do you say? It is somewhere about the fifth or sixth
proposition of the sort which has come to me. I shall be embarrassed,
it seems to me, by the multitude of escorts to Italy. But the
kindness, one cannot laugh at so much kindness.
I wanted to hear her speak of you, and was afraid. I _could not_ name
you. Yet I _did_ want to hear the last 'Bell' praised.
She goes to Ireland for two months soon, but prints a book first, a
collection of essays. I have not seen Mr. Kenyon, with whom she dined
yesterday. The Macreadys were to be there, and he told me a week ago
that he very nearly committed himself in a 'social mistake' by
inviting you to meet them.
Ah my hawthorn spray! Do you know, I caught myself pitying it for
being gathered, with that green promise of leaves on it! There is room
too on it for the feet of a bird! Still I shall keep it longer than it
would have stayed in the hedge, _that_ is certain!
The first you ever gave me was a yellow rose sent in a letter, and
shall I tell you what _that_ means--the yellow rose? '_Infidelity_,'
says the dictionary of flowers. You see what an omen, ... to begin
with!
Also you see that I am not tired with the great avatar to-day--the
'fell swoop' rather--mine, into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Jameson's
on _me_.
And I shall hear to-morrow again, really? I '_let_' you. And you are
best, kindest, dearest, every day. Did I ever tell you that you made
me do what you choose? I fancied that I only _thought_ so. May God
bless you. I am your own.
Shall I have the 'Soul's Tragedy' on Saturday?--any of it? But _do not
work_--I beseech you to take care.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
[Post-mark, February 27, 1846.]
To be sure my 'first person' was nonsensical, and, in that respect
made speak properly, I hope, only he was cut short in the middle of
his performance by the exigencies of the post. So, never mind what
such persons say, my sweetest, because they know nothing at all--_quod
erat demonstrandum_. But you, love, you speak roses, and
hawthorn-blossoms when you tell me of the cloak put on, and the
descent, and the entry, and staying and delaying. I will have had a
hand in all that; I know what I wished all the morning, and now this
much came true! But you should have seen the regimentals, if I could
have so contrived it, for I confess to a Chinese love for bright
red--the very names 'vermilion' 'scarlet' warm me, yet in this cold
climate nobody wears red to comfort one's eye save soldiers and fox
hunters, and old women fresh from a Parish Christmas Distribution of
cloaks. To dress in floating loose crimson silk, I almost understand
being a Cardinal! Do you know anything of Nat Lee's Tragedies? In one
of them a man angry with a Cardinal cries--
Stand back, and let me mow this poppy down,
This rank red weed that spoils the Churches' corn.
Is not that good? and presently, when the same worthy is poisoned
(that is the Cardinal)--they bid him--'now, Cardinal, lie down and
roar!'
Think of thy scarlet sins!
Of the justice of all which, you will judge with no Mrs. Jameson for
guide when we see the Sistina together, I trust! By the way, yesterday
I went to Dulwich to see some pictures, by old Teniers, Murillo,
Gainsborough, Raphael!--then twenty names about, and last but one, as
if just thought of, 'Correggio.' The whole collection, including 'a
_divine_ picture by Murillo,' and Titian's Daughter (hitherto supposed
to be in the Louvre)--the whole I would, I think, have cheerfully
given a pound or two for the privilege of not possessing--so execrable
as sign-paintings even! 'Are there worse poets in their way than
painters?' Yet the melancholy business is here--that the bad poet goes
out of his way, writes his verses in the language he learned in order
to do a hundred other things with it, all of which he can go on and do
afterwards--but the painter has spent the best of his life in learning
even how to produce such monstrosities as these, and to what other
good do his acquisitions go? This short minute of life our one chance,
an eternity on either side! and a man does not walk whistling and
ruddy by the side of hawthorn hedges in spring, but shuts himself up
and conies out after a dozen years with 'Titian's Daughter' and,
there, gone is his life, let somebody else try!