To-morrow you shall tell me, dearest, that Mrs. Jameson wondered to
see you so well--did she not wonder? Ah, to-morrow! There is a lesson
from all this writing and mistaking and correcting and being
corrected; and what, but that a word goes safely only from lip to lip,
dearest? See how the cup slipped from the lip and snapped the
chrystals, you say! But the writing is but for a time--'a time and
times and half a time!'--would I knew when the prophetic weeks end!
Still, one day, as I say, no more writing, (and great scandalization
of the third person, peeping through the fringes of Flush's ears!)
meanwhile, I wonder whether if I meet Mrs. Jameson I may practise
diplomacy and say carelessly 'I should be glad to know what Miss B. is
like--' No, that I must not do, something tells me, 'for reasons, for
reasons'--
I do not know--you may perhaps have to wait a little longer for my
'divine Murillo' of a Tragedy. My sister is copying it as I give the
pages, but--in fact my wise head does ache a little--it is
inconceivable! As if it took a great storm to topple over some stone,
and once the stone pushed from its right place, any bird's foot, which
would hardly bend the hawthorn spray, may set it trembling! The aching
begins with reading the presentation-list at the Drawing-room quite
naturally, and with no shame at all! But it is gentle, well-behaved
aching now, so I _do_ care, as you bid me, Ba, my Ba, whom I call Ba
to my heart but could not, I really believe, call so before another,
even your sister, if--if--
But Ba, I call you boldly here, and I dare kiss your dear, dear eyes,
till to-morrow--Bless you, my own.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Sunday.
[Post-mark, March 2, 1846.]
You never could think that I meant any insinuation against you by a
word of what was said yesterday, or that I sought or am likely to seek
a 'security'! do you know it was not right of you to use such an
expression--indeed no. You were angry with me for just one minute, or
you would not have used it--and why? Now what did I say that was wrong
or unkind even by construction? If I did say anything, it was three
times wrong, and unjust as well as unkind, and wronged my own heart
and consciousness of all that you are to me, more than it could _you_.
But you began speaking of yourself just as a woman might speak under
the same circumstances (you remember what you said), and then _I_,
remembering that all the men in the world would laugh such an idea to
scorn, said something to that effect, you _know_. I once was in
company with a man, however, who valued himself very much on his
constancy to a woman who was so deeply affected by it that she became
his wife at last ... and the whole neighbourhood came out to stare at
him on that ground as a sort of monster. And can you guess what the
constancy meant? Seven years before, he loved that woman, he said, and
she repulsed him. 'And in the meantime, _how many_?' I had the
impertinence to ask a female friend who told me the tale. 'Why,' she
answered with the utmost simplicity, 'I understand that Miss A. and
Miss B. and Mrs. C. would not listen to him, but he took Miss D.'s
rejection most to heart.' That was the head and front of his
'constancy' to Miss E., who had been loved, she boasted, for seven
years ... that is, once at the beginning and once at the end. It was
just a coincidence of the 'premier pas' and the 'pis aller.'
Beloved, I could not mean this for you; you are not made of such
stuff, as we both know.
And for myself, it was my compromise with my own scruples, that you
should not be 'chained' to me, not in the merest metaphor, that you
should not seem to be bound, in honour or otherwise, so that if you
stayed with me it should be your free choice to stay, not the
_consequence_ of a choice so many months before. That was my
compromise with my scruples, and not my doubt of your affection--and
least of all, was it an intention of trifling with you sooner or later
that made me wish to suspend all _decisions_ as long as possible. I
have decided (for me) to let it be as you shall please--now I told you
that before. Either we will live on as we are, until an obstacle
arises,--for indeed I do not look for a 'security' where you suppose,
and the very appearance of it _there_, is what most rebuts me--or I
will be yours in the obvious way, to go out of England the next
half-hour if possible. As to the steps to be taken (or not taken)
before the last step, we must think of those. The worst is that the
only question is about a _form_. Virtually the evil is the same all
round, whatever we do. Dearest, it was plain to see yesterday evening
when he came into this room for a moment at seven o'clock, before
going to his own to dress for dinner ... plain to see, that he was not
altogether pleased at finding you here in the morning. There was no
pretext for objecting gravely--but it was plain that he was not
pleased. Do not let this make you uncomfortable, he will forget all
about it, and I was not _scolded_, do you understand. It was more
manner, but my sisters thought as I did of the significance:--and it
was enough to prove to me (if I had not known) what a desperate game
we should be playing if we depended on a yielding nerve _there_.
And to-day I went down-stairs (to prove how my promises stand) though
I could find at least ten good excuses for remaining in my own room,
for our cousin, Sam Barrett, who brought the interruption yesterday
and put me out of humour (it wasn't the fault of the dear little
cousin, Lizzie ... my 'portrait' ... who was '_so_ sorry,' she said,
dear child, to have missed Papa somewhere on the stairs!) the cousin
who should have been in Brittany yesterday instead of here, sate in
the drawing-room all this morning, and had visitors there, and so I
had excellent excuses for never moving from my chair. Yet, the field
being clear at _half-past two_! I went for half an hour, just--just
for _you_. Did you think of me, I wonder? It was to meet your thoughts
that I went, dear dearest.
How clever these sketches are. The expression produced by such
apparently inadequate means is quite striking; and I have been making
my brothers admire them, and they 'wonder you don't think of employing
them in an illustrated edition of your works.' Which might be, really!
Ah, you did not ask for 'Luria'! Not that I should have let you have
it!--I think I should not indeed. Dearest, you take care of the head
... and don't make that tragedy of the soul one for mine, by letting
it make you ill. Beware too of the shower-bath--it plainly does not
answer for you at this season. And walk, and think of me for _your_
good, if such a combination should be possible.
And _I_ think of _you_ ... if I do not of Italy. Yet I forget to speak
to you of the Dulwich Gallery. I never saw those pictures, but am
astonished that the whole world should be wrong in praising them.
'Divine' is a bad word for Murillo in any case--because he is
intensely human in his most supernatural subjects. His beautiful
Trinity in the National Gallery, which I saw the last time I went out
to look at pictures, has no deity in it--and I seem to see it now. And
do you remember the visitation of the angels to Abraham (the Duke of
Sutherland's picture--is it not?) where the mystic visitors look like
shepherds who had not even dreamt of God? But I always understood that
that Dulwich Gallery was famous for great works--you surprise me! And
for painters ... their badness is more ostentatious than that of
poets--they stare idiocy out of the walls, and set the eyes of
sensitive men on edge. For the rest, however, I very much doubt
whether they wear their lives more to rags, than writers who mistake
their vocation in poetry do. There is a mechanism in poetry as in the
other art--and, to men not native to the way of it, it runs hard and
heavily. The 'cudgelling of the brain' is as good labour as the
grinding of the colours, ... do you not think?
If ever I am in the Sistine Chapel, it will not be with Mrs.
Jameson--no. If ever I should be there, what teaching I shall want,
_I_ who have seen so few pictures, and love them only as children do,
with an unlearned love, just for the sake of the thoughts they bring.
Wonderfully ignorant I am, to have had eyes and ears so long! There is
music, now, which lifts the hair on my head, I feel it so much, ...
yet all I know of it as art, all I have heard of the works of the
masters in it, has been the mere sign and suggestion, such as the
private piano may give. I never heard an oratorio, for instance, in my
life--judge by _that_! It is a guess, I make, at all the greatness and
divinity ... feeling in it, though, distinctly and certainly, that a
composer like Beethoven _must_ stand above the divinest painter in
soul-godhead, and nearest to the true poet, of all artists. And this
I felt in my guess, long before I knew you. But observe how, if I had
died in this illness, I should have left a sealed world behind me!
_you_, unknown too--unguessed at, _you_, ... in many respects,
wonderfully unguessed at! Lately I have learnt to despise my own
instincts. And apart from those--and _you_, ... it was right for me to
be melancholy, in the consciousness of passing blindfolded under all
the world-stars, and of going out into another side of the creation,
with a blank for the experience of this ... the last revelation,
unread! How the thought of it used to depress me sometimes!
Talking of music, I had a proposition the other day from certain of
Mr. Russell's (the singer's) friends, about his setting to music my
'Cry of the Children.' His programme exhibits all the horrors of the
world, I see! Lifeboats ... madhouses ... gamblers' wives ... all done
to the right sort of moaning. His audiences must go home delightfully
miserable, I should fancy. He has set the 'Song of the Shirt' ... and
my 'Cry of the Children' will be acceptable, it is supposed, as a
climax of agony. Do you know this Mr. Russell, and what sort of music
he suits to his melancholy? But to turn my 'Cry' to a 'Song,' a
burden, it is said, is required--he can't sing it without a burden!
and behold what has been sent 'for my approval'.... I shall copy it
_verbatim_ for you....
And the threads twirl, twirl, twirl,
Before each boy and girl;
And the wheels, big and little, still whirl, whirl, whirl.
... accompaniment _agitato_, imitating the roar of the machinery!
This is not endurable ... ought not to be ... should it now? Do tell
me.
May God bless you, very dearest! Let me hear how you are--and think
how I am
Your own....
_R.B. to E.B.B._
[Post-mark, March 2, 1846.]
Dearest, I have been kept in town and just return in time to say why
you have _no_ note ... to-morrow I will write ... so much there is to
say on the subject of this letter I find.