E.B.B. to R.B.
[Post-mark, September 16, 1845.]
I scarcely know how to write what is to be written nor indeed why it is to be written and to what end. I have tried in vain—and you are waiting to hear from me. I am unhappy enough even where I am happy—but ungrateful nowhere—and I thank you from my heart—profoundly from the depths of my heart ... which is nearly all I can do.
One letter I began to write and asked in it how it could become me to speak at all if 'from the beginning and at this moment you never dreamed of' ... and there, I stopped and tore the paper; because I felt that you were too loyal and generous, for me to bear to take a moment's advantage of the same, and bend down the very flowering branch of your generosity (as it might be) to thicken a little the fence of a woman's caution and reserve. You will not say that you have not acted as if you 'dreamed'—and I will answer therefore to the general sense of your letter and former letters, and admit at once that I did state to you the difficulties most difficult to myself ... though not all ... and that if I had been worthier of you I should have been proportionably less in haste to 'bid you leave that subject.' I do not understand how you can seem at the same moment to have faith in my integrity and to have doubt whether all this time I may not have felt a preference for another ... which you are ready 'to serve,' you say. Which is generous in you—but in me, where were the integrity? Could you really hold me to be blameless, and do you think that truehearted women act usually so? Can it be necessary for me to tell you that I could not have acted so, and did not? And shall I shrink from telling you besides ... you, who have been generous to me and have a right to hear it ... and have spoken to me in the name of an affection and memory most precious and holy to me, in this same letter ... that neither now nor formerly has any man been to my feelings what you are ... and that if I were different in some respects and free in others by the providence of God, I would accept the great trust of your happiness, gladly, proudly, and gratefully; and give away my own life and soul to that end. I would do it ... not, I do ... observe! it is a truth without a consequence; only meaning that I am not all stone—only proving that I am not likely to consent to help you in wrong against yourself. You see in me what is not:—that, I know: and you overlook in me what is unsuitable to you ... that I know, and have sometimes told you. Still, because a strong feeling from some sources is self-vindicating and ennobling to the object of it, I will not say that, if it were proved to me that you felt this for me, I would persist in putting the sense of my own unworthiness between you and me—not being heroic, you know, nor pretending to be so. But something worse than even a sense of unworthiness, God has put between us! and judge yourself if to beat your thoughts against the immovable marble of it, can be anything but pain and vexation of spirit, waste and wear of spirit to you ... judge! The present is here to be seen ... speaking for itself! and the best future you can imagine for me, what a precarious thing it must be ... a thing for making burdens out of ... only not for your carrying, as I have vowed to my own soul. As dear Mr. Kenyon said to me to-day in his smiling kindness ... 'In ten years you may be strong perhaps'—or 'almost strong'! that being the encouragement of my best friends! What would he say, do you think, if he could know or guess...! what could he say but that you were ... a poet!—and I ... still worse! Never let him know or guess!
And so if you are wise and would be happy (and you have excellent practical sense after all and should exercise it) you must leave me—these thoughts of me, I mean ... for if we might not be true friends for ever, I should have less courage to say the other truth. But we may be friends always ... and cannot be so separated, that your happiness, in the knowledge of it, will not increase mine. And if you will be persuaded by me, as you say, you will be persuaded thus ... and consent to take a resolution and force your mind at once into another channel. Perhaps I might bring you reasons of the class which you tell me 'would silence you for ever.' I might certainly tell you that my own father, if he knew that you had written to me so, and that I had answered you—so, even, would not forgive me at the end of ten years—and this, from none of the causes mentioned by me here and in no disrespect to your name and your position ... though he does not over-value poetry even in his daughter, and is apt to take the world's measures of the means of life ... but for the singular reason that he never does tolerate in his family (sons or daughters) the development of one class of feelings. Such an objection I could not bring to you of my own will—it rang hollow in my ears—perhaps I thought even too little of it:—and I brought to you what I thought much of, and cannot cease to think much of equally. Worldly thoughts, these are not at all, nor have been: there need be no soiling of the heart with any such:—and I will say, in reply to some words of yours, that you cannot despise the gold and gauds of the world more than I do, and should do even if I found a use for them. And if I wished to be very poor, in the world's sense of poverty, I could not, with three or four hundred a year of which no living will can dispossess me. And is it not the chief good of money, the being free from the need of thinking of it? It seems so to me.
The obstacles then are of another character, and the stronger for being so. Believe that I am grateful to you—how grateful, cannot be shown in words nor even in tears ... grateful enough to be truthful in all ways. You know I might have hidden myself from you—but I would not: and by the truth told of myself, you may believe in the earnestness with which I tell the other truths—of you ... and of this subject. The subject will not bear consideration—it breaks in our hands. But that God is stronger than we, cannot be a bitter thought to you but a holy thought ... while He lets me, as much as I can be anyone's, be only yours.
E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
[Post-mark, September 17, 1845.]
I do not know whether you imagine the precise effect of your letter on me—very likely you do, and write it just for that—for I conceive all from your goodness. But before I tell you what is that effect, let me say in as few words as possible what shall stop any fear—though only for a moment and on the outset—that you have been misunderstood, that the goodness outside, and round and over all, hides all or any thing. I understand you to signify to me that you see, at this present, insurmountable obstacles to that—can I speak it—entire gift, which I shall own, was, while I dared ask it, above my hopes—and wishes, even, so it seems to me ... and yet could not but be asked, so plainly was it dictated to me, by something quite out of those hopes and wishes. Will it help me to say that once in this Aladdin-cavern I knew I ought to stop for no heaps of jewel-fruit on the trees from the very beginning, but go on to the lamp, the prize, the last and best of all? Well, I understand you to pronounce that at present you believe this gift impossible—and I acquiesce entirely—I submit wholly to you; repose on you in all the faith of which I am capable. Those obstacles are solely for you to see and to declare ... had I seen them, be sure I should never have mocked you or myself by affecting to pass them over ... what were obstacles, I mean: but you do see them, I must think,—and perhaps they strike me the more from my true, honest unfeigned inability to imagine what they are,—not that I shall endeavour. After what you also apprise me of, I know and am joyfully confident that if ever they cease to be what you now consider them, you who see now for me, whom I implicitly trust in to see for me; you will then, too, see and remember me, and how I trust, and shall then be still trusting. And until you so see, and so inform me, I shall never utter a word—for that would involve the vilest of implications. I thank God—I do thank him, that in this whole matter I have been, to the utmost of my power, not unworthy of his introducing you to me, in this respect that, being no longer in the first freshness of life, and having for many years now made up my mind to the impossibility of loving any woman ... having wondered at this in the beginning, and fought not a little against it, having acquiesced in it at last, and accounted for it all to myself, and become, if anything, rather proud of it than sorry ... I say, when real love, making itself at once recognized as such, did reveal itself to me at last, I did open my heart to it with a cry—nor care for its overturning all my theory—nor mistrust its effect upon a mind set in ultimate order, so I fancied, for the few years more—nor apprehend in the least that the new element would harm what was already organized without its help. Nor have I, either, been guilty of the more pardonable folly, of treating the new feeling after the pedantic fashions and instances of the world. I have not spoken when it did not speak, because 'one' might speak, or has spoken, or should speak, and 'plead' and all that miserable work which, after all, I may well continue proud that I am not called to attempt. Here for instance, now ... 'one' should despair; but 'try again' first, and work blindly at removing those obstacles (—if I saw them, I should be silent, and only speak when a month hence, ten years hence, I could bid you look where they were)—and 'one' would do all this, not for the play-acting's sake, or to 'look the character' ... (that would be something quite different from folly ...) but from a not unreasonable anxiety lest by too sudden a silence, too complete an acceptance of your will; the earnestness and endurance and unabatedness ... the truth, in fact, of what had already been professed, should get to be questioned—But I believe that you believe me—And now that all is clear between us I will say, what you will hear, without fearing for me or yourself, that I am utterly contented ... ('grateful' I have done with ... it must go—) I accept what you give me, what those words deliver to me, as—not all I asked for ... as I said ... but as more than I ever hoped for,—all, in the best sense, that I deserve. That phrase in my letter which you objected to, and the other—may stand, too—I never attempted to declare, describe my feeling for you—one word of course stood for it all ... but having to put down some one point, so to speak, of it—you could not wonder if I took any extreme one first ... never minding all the untold portion that led up to it, made it possible and natural—it is true, 'I could not dream of that'—that I was eager to get the horrible notion away from never so flitting a visit to you, that you were thus and thus to me on condition of my proving just the same to you—just as if we had waited to acknowledge that the moon lighted us till we ascertained within these two or three hundred years that the earth happens to light the moon as well! But I felt that, and so said it:—now you have declared what I should never have presumed to hope—and I repeat to you that I, with all to be thankful for to God, am most of all thankful for this the last of his providences ... which is no doubt, the natural and inevitable feeling, could one always see clearly. Your regard for me is all success—let the rest come, or not come. In my heart's thankfulness I would ... I am sure I would promise anything that would gratify you ... but it would not do that, to agree, in words, to change my affections, put them elsewhere &c. &c. That would be pure foolish talking, and quite foreign to the practical results which you will attain in a better way from a higher motive. I will cheerfully promise you, however, to be 'bound by no words,' blind to no miracle; in sober earnest, it is not because I renounced once for all oxen and the owning and having to do with them, that I will obstinately turn away from any unicorn when such an apparition blesses me ... but meantime I shall walk at peace on our hills here nor go looking in all corners for the bright curved horn! And as for you ... if I did not dare 'to dream of that'—, now it is mine, my pride and joy prevent in no manner my taking the whole consolation of it at once, now—I will be confident that, if I obey you, I shall get no wrong for it—if, endeavouring to spare you fruitless pain, I do not eternally revert to the subject; do indeed 'quit' it just now, when no good can come of dwelling on it to you; you will never say to yourself—so I said—'the "generous impulse" has worn itself out ... time is doing his usual work—this was to be expected' &c. &c. You will be the first to say to me 'such an obstacle has ceased to exist ... or is now become one palpable to you, one you may try and overcome'—and I shall be there, and ready—ten years hence as now—if alive.
One final word on the other matters—the 'worldly matters'—I shall own I alluded to them rather ostentatiously, because—because that would be the one poor sacrifice I could make you—one I would cheerfully make, but a sacrifice, and the only one: this careless 'sweet habitude of living'—this absolute independence of mine, which, if I had it not, my heart would starve and die for, I feel, and which I have fought so many good battles to preserve—for that has happened, too—this light rational life I lead, and know so well that I lead; this I could give up for nothing less than—what you know—but I would give it up, not for you merely, but for those whose disappointment might re-act on you—and I should break no promise to myself—the money getting would not be for the sake of it; 'the labour not for that which is nought'—indeed the necessity of doing this, if at all, now, was one of the reasons which make me go on to that last request of all—at once; one must not be too old, they say, to begin their ways. But, in spite of all the babble, I feel sure that whenever I make up my mind to that, I can be rich enough and to spare—because along with what you have thought genius in me, is certainly talent, what the world recognizes as such; and I have tried it in various ways, just to be sure that I was a little magnanimous in never intending to use it. Thus, in more than one of the reviews and newspapers that laughed my 'Paracelsus' to scorn ten years ago—in the same column, often, of these reviews, would follow a most laudatory notice of an Elementary French book, on a new plan, which I 'did' for my old French master, and he published—'that was really an useful work'!—So that when the only obstacle is only that there is so much per annum to be producible, you will tell me. After all it would be unfair in me not to confess that this was always intended to be my own single stipulation—'an objection' which I could see, certainly,—but meant to treat myself to the little luxury of removing.
So, now, dearest—let me once think of that, and of you as my own, my dearest—this once—dearest, I have done with words for the present. I will wait. God bless you and reward you—I kiss your hands now. This is my comfort, that if you accept my feeling as all but unexpressed now, more and more will become spoken—or understood, that is—we both live on—you will know better what it was, how much and manifold, what one little word had to give out.
God bless you—
Your R.B.
On Thursday,—you remember?
This is Tuesday Night—
I called on Saturday at the Office in St. Mary Axe—all uncertainty about the vessel's sailing again for Leghorn—it could not sail before the middle of the month—and only then if &c. But if I would leave my card &c. &c.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, September 17, 1845.]
I write one word just to say that it is all over with Pisa; which was a probable evil when I wrote last, and which I foresaw from the beginning—being a prophetess, you know. I cannot tell you now how it has all happened—only do not blame me, for I have kept my ground to the last, and only yield when Mr. Kenyon and all the world see that there is no standing. I am ashamed almost of having put so much earnestness into a personal matter—and I spoke face to face and quite firmly—so as to pass with my sisters for the 'bravest person in the house' without contestation.
Sometimes it seems to me as if it could not end so—I mean, that the responsibility of such a negative must be reconsidered ... and you see how Mr. Kenyon writes to me. Still, as the matter lies, ... no Pisa! And, as I said before, my prophetic instincts are not likely to fail, such as they have been from the beginning.
If you wish to come, it must not be until Saturday at soonest. I have a headache and am weary at heart with all this vexation—and besides there is no haste now: and when you do come, if you do, I will trust to you not to recur to one subject, which must lie where it fell ... must! I had begun to write to you on Saturday, to say how I had forgotten to give you your MSS. which were lying ready for you ... the Hood poems. Would it not be desirable that you made haste to see them through the press, and went abroad with your Roman friends at once, to try to get rid of that uneasiness in the head? Do think of it—and more than think.
For me, you are not to fancy me unwell. Only, not to be worn a little with the last week's turmoil, were impossible—and Mr. Kenyon said to me yesterday that he quite wondered how I could bear it at all, do anything reasonable at all, and confine my misdoings to sending letters addressed to him at Brighton, when he was at Dover! If anything changes, you shall hear from—
E.B.B.
Mr. Kenyon returns to Dover immediately. His kindness is impotent in the case.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Wednesday Evening.
[Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
But one word before we leave the subject, and then to leave it finally; but I cannot let you go on to fancy a mystery anywhere, in obstacles or the rest. You deserve at least a full frankness; and in my letter I meant to be fully frank. I even told you what was an absurdity, so absurd that I should far rather not have told you at all, only that I felt the need of telling you all: and no mystery is involved in that, except as an 'idiosyncrasy' is a mystery. But the 'insurmountable' difficulty is for you and everybody to see; and for me to feel, who have been a very byword among the talkers, for a confirmed invalid through months and years, and who, even if I were going to Pisa and had the best prospects possible to me, should yet remain liable to relapses and stand on precarious ground to the end of my life. Now that is no mystery for the trying of 'faith'; but a plain fact, which neither thinking nor speaking can make less a fact. But don't let us speak of it.
I must speak, however, (before the silence) of what you said and repeat in words for which I gratefully thank you—and which are not 'ostentatious' though unnecessary words—for, if I were in a position to accept sacrifices from you, I would not accept such a sacrifice ... amounting to a sacrifice of duty and dignity as well as of ease and satisfaction ... to an exchange of higher work for lower work ... and of the special work you are called to, for that which is work for anybody. I am not so ignorant of the right uses and destinies of what you have and are. You will leave the Solicitor-Generalships to the Fitzroy Kellys, and justify your own nature; and besides, do me the little right, (over the over-right you are always doing me) of believing that I would not bear or dare to do you so much wrong, if I were in the position to do it.
And for all the rest I thank you—believe that I thank you ... and that the feeling is not so weak as the word. That you should care at all for me has been a matter of unaffected wonder to me from the first hour until now—and I cannot help the pain I feel sometimes, in thinking that it would have been better for you if you never had known me. May God turn back the evil of me! Certainly I admit that I cannot expect you ... just at this moment, ... to say more than you say, ... and I shall try to be at ease in the consideration that you are as accessible to the 'unicorn' now as you ever could be at any former period of your life. And here I have done. I had done living, I thought, when you came and sought me out! and why? and to what end? That, I cannot help thinking now. Perhaps just that I may pray for you—which were a sufficient end. If you come on Saturday I trust you to leave this subject untouched,—as it must be indeed henceforth.
I am yours,
E.B.B.
No word more of Pisa—I shall not go, I think.
R.B. to E.B.B.
[Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
Words!—it was written I should hate and never use them to any purpose. I will not say one word here—very well knowing neither word nor deed avails—from me.
My letter will have reassured you on the point you seem undecided about—whether I would speak &c.
I will come whenever you shall signify that I may ... whenever, acting in my best interests, you feel that it will not hurt you (weary you in any way) to see me—but I fear that on Saturday I must be otherwhere—I enclose the letter from my old foe. Which could not but melt me for all my moroseness and I can hardly go and return for my sister in time. Will you tell me?
It is dark—but I want to save the post—
Ever yours
R.B.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
Of course you cannot do otherwise than go with your sister—or it will be 'Every man out of his humour' perhaps—and you are not so very 'savage' after all.
On Monday then, if you do not hear—to the contrary.
Papa has been walking to and fro in this room, looking thoughtfully and talking leisurely—and every moment I have expected I confess, some word (that did not come) about Pisa. Mr. Kenyon thinks it cannot end so—and I do sometimes—and in the meantime I do confess to a little 'savageness' also—at heart! All I asked him to say the other day, was that he was not displeased with me—and he wouldn't; and for me to walk across his displeasure spread on the threshold of the door, and moreover take a sister and brother with me, and do such a thing for the sake of going to Italy and securing a personal advantage, were altogether impossible, obviously impossible! So poor Papa is quite in disgrace with me just now—if he would but care for that!
May God bless you. Amuse yourself well on Saturday. I could not see you on Thursday any way, for Mr. Kenyon is here every day ... staying in town just on account of this Pisa business, in his abundant kindness.... On Monday then.
Ever yours,
E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Thursday Morning.
[Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
But you, too, will surely want, if you think me a rational creature, my explanation—without which all that I have said and done would be pure madness, I think. It is just 'what I see' that I do see,—or rather it has proved, since I first visited you, that the reality was infinitely worse than I know it to be ... for at, and after the writing of that first letter, on my first visit, I believed—through some silly or misapprehended talk, collected at second hand too—that your complaint was of quite another nature—a spinal injury irremediable in the nature of it. Had it been so—now speak for me, for what you hope I am, and say how that should affect or neutralize what you were, what I wished to associate with myself in you? But as you now are:—then if I had married you seven years ago, and this visitation came now first, I should be 'fulfilling a pious duty,' I suppose, in enduring what could not be amended—a pattern to good people in not running away ... for where were now the use and the good and the profit and—
I desire in this life (with very little fluctuation for a man and too weak a one) to live and just write out certain things which are in me, and so save my soul. I would endeavour to do this if I were forced to 'live among lions' as you once said—but I should best do this if I lived quietly with myself and with you. That you cannot dance like Cerito does not materially disarrange this plan—nor that I might (beside the perpetual incentive and sustainment and consolation) get, over and above the main reward, the incidental, particular and unexpected happiness of being allowed when not working to rather occupy myself with watching you, than with certain other pursuits I might be otherwise addicted to—this, also, does not constitute an obstacle, as I see obstacles.
But you see them—and I see you, and know my first duty and do it resolutely if not cheerfully.
As for referring again, till leave by word or letter—you will see—
And very likely, the tone of this letter even will be misunderstood—because I studiously cut out all vain words, protesting &c.:—No—will it?
I said, unadvisedly, that Saturday was taken from me ... but it was dark and I had not looked at the tickets: the hour of the performance is later than I thought. If to-morrow does not suit you, as I infer, let it be Saturday—at 3—and I will leave earlier, a little, and all will be quite right here. One hint will apprise me.
God bless you, dearest friend.
R.B.
Something else just heard, makes me reluctantly strike out Saturday—
Monday then?
E.B.B. to R.B.
Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, September 19, 1845.]
It is not 'misunderstanding' you to know you to be the most generous and loyal of all in the world—you overwhelm me with your generosity—only while you see from above and I from below, we cannot see the same thing in the same light. Moreover, if we did, I should be more beneath you in one sense, than I am. Do me the justice of remembering this whenever you recur in thought to the subject which ends here in the words of it.
I began to write last Saturday to thank you for all the delight I had had in Shelley, though you beguiled me about the pencil-marks, which are few. Besides the translations, some of the original poems were not in my copy and were, so, quite new to me. 'Marianne's Dream' I had been anxious about to no end—I only know it now.—
On Monday at the usual hour. As to coming twice into town on Saturday, that would have been quite foolish if it had been possible.
Dearest friend,
I am yours,
E.B.B.
E.B.B. to R.B.
[Post-mark, September 24, 1845.]
I have nothing to say about Pisa, ... but a great deal (if I could say it) about you, who do what is wrong by your own confession and are ill because of it and make people uneasy—now is it right altogether? is it right to do wrong?... for it comes to that:—and is it kind to do so much wrong?... for it comes almost to that besides. Ah—you should not indeed! I seem to see quite plainly that you will be ill in a serious way, if you do not take care and take exercise; and so you must consent to be teazed a little into taking both. And if you will not take them here ... or not so effectually as in other places; why not go with your Italian friends? Have you thought of it at all? I have been thinking since yesterday that it might be best for you to go at once, now that the probability has turned quite against me. If I were going, I should ask you not to do so immediately ... but you see how unlikely it is!—although I mean still to speak my whole thoughts—I will do that ... even though for the mere purpose of self-satisfaction. George came last night—but there is an adverse star this morning, and neither of us has the opportunity necessary. Only both he and I will speak—that is certain. And Arabel had the kindness to say yesterday that if I liked to go, she would go with me at whatever hazard—which is very kind—but you know I could not—it would not be right of me. And perhaps after all we may gain the point lawfully; and if not ... at the worst ... the winter may be warm (it is better to fall into the hands of God, as the Jew said) and I may lose less strength than usual, ... having more than usual to lose ... and altogether it may not be so bad an alternative. As to being the cause of any anger against my sister, you would not advise me into such a position, I am sure—it would be untenable for one moment.
But you ... in that case, ... would it not be good for your head if you went at once? I praise myself for saying so to you—yet if it really is good for you, I don't deserve the praising at all. And how was it on Saturday—that question I did not ask yesterday—with Ben Jonson and the amateurs? I thought of you at the time—I mean, on that Saturday evening, nevertheless.
You shall hear when there is any more to say. May God bless you, dearest friend! I am ever yours,
E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Wednesday Evening.
[Post-mark, September 25, 1845.]
I walked to town, this morning, and back again—so that when I found your note on my return, and knew what you had been enjoining me in the way of exercise, I seemed as if I knew, too, why that energetic fit had possessed me and why I succumbed to it so readily. You shall never have to intimate twice to me that such an insignificant thing, even, as the taking exercise should be done. Besides, I have many motives now for wishing to continue well. But Italy just now—Oh, no! My friends would go through Pisa, too.
On that subject I must not speak. And you have 'more strength to lose,' and are so well, evidently so well; that is, so much better, so sure to be still better—can it be that you will not go!
Here are your new notes on my verses. Where are my words for the thanks? But you know what I feel, and shall feel—ever feel—for these and for all. The notes would be beyond price to me if they came from some dear Phemius of a teacher—but from you!
The Theatricals 'went off' with great éclat, and the performance was really good, really clever or better. Forster's 'Kitely' was very emphatic and earnest, and grew into great interest, quite up to the poet's allotted tether, which is none of the longest. He pitched the character's key note too gravely, I thought; beginning with certainty, rather than mere suspicion, of evil. Dickens' 'Bobadil' was capital—with perhaps a little too much of the consciousness of entire cowardice ... which I don't so willingly attribute to the noble would-be pacificator of Europe, besieger of Strigonium &c.—but the end of it all was really pathetic, as it should be, for Bobadil is only too clever for the company of fools he makes wonderment for: having once the misfortune to relish their society, and to need but too pressingly their 'tobacco-money,' what can he do but suit himself to their capacities?—And D. Jerrold was very amusing and clever in his 'Country Gull'—And Mr. Leech superb in the Town Master Mathew. All were good, indeed, and were voted good, and called on, and cheered off, and praised heartily behind their backs and before the curtain. Stanfield's function had exercise solely in the touching up (very effectively) sundry 'Scenes'—painted scenes—and the dresses, which were perfect, had the advantage of Mr. Maclise's experience. And—all is told!
And now; I shall hear, you promise me, if anything occurs—with what feeling, I wait and hope, you know. If there is no best of reasons against it, Saturday, you remember, is my day—This fine weather, too!
May God bless my dearest friend—
Ever yours
R.B.
E.B.B. to R.B.
[Post-mark, September 25, 1845.]
I have spoken again, and the result is that we are in precisely the same position; only with bitterer feelings on one side. If I go or stay they must be bitter: words have been said that I cannot easily forget, nor remember without pain; and yet I really do almost smile in the midst of it all, to think how I was treated this morning as an undutiful daughter because I tried to put on my gloves ... for there was no worse provocation. At least he complained of the undutifulness and rebellion (!!!) of everyone in the house—and when I asked if he meant that reproach for me, the answer was that he meant it for all of us, one with another. And I could not get an answer. He would not even grant me the consolation of thinking that I sacrificed what I supposed to be good, to him. I told him that my prospects of health seemed to me to depend on taking this step, but that through my affection for him, I was ready to sacrifice those to his pleasure if he exacted it—only it was necessary to my self-satisfaction in future years, to understand definitely that the sacrifice was exacted by him and was made to him, ... and not thrown away blindly and by a misapprehension. And he would not answer that. I might do my own way, he said—he would not speak—he would not say that he was not displeased with me, nor the contrary:—I had better do what I liked:—for his part, he washed his hands of me altogether.
And so I have been very wise—witness how my eyes are swelled with annotations and reflections on all this! The best of it is that now George himself admits I can do no more in the way of speaking, ... I have no spell for charming the dragons, ... and allows me to be passive and enjoins me to be tranquil, and not 'make up my mind' to any dreadful exertion for the future. Moreover he advises me to go on with the preparations for the voyage, and promises to state the case himself at the last hour to the 'highest authority'; and judge finally whether it be possible for me to go with the necessary companionship. And it seems best to go to Malta on the 3rd of October—if at all ... from steam-packet reasons ... without excluding Pisa ... remember ... by any means.
Well!—and what do you think? Might it be desirable for me to give up the whole? Tell me. I feel aggrieved of course and wounded—and whether I go or stay that feeling must last—I cannot help it. But my spirits sink altogether at the thought of leaving England so—and then I doubt about Arabel and Stormie ... and it seems to me that I ought not to mix them up in a business of this kind where the advantage is merely personal to myself. On the other side, George holds that if I give up and stay even, there will be displeasure just the same, ... and that, when once gone, the irritation will exhaust and smooth itself away—which however does not touch my chief objection. Would it be better ... more right ... to give it up? Think for me. Even if I hold on to the last, at the last I shall be thrown off—that is my conviction. But ... shall I give up at once? Do think for me.
And I have thought that if you like to come on Friday instead of Saturday ... as there is the uncertainty about next week, ... it would divide the time more equally: but let it be as you like and according to circumstances as you see them. Perhaps you have decided to go at once with your friends—who knows? I wish I could know that you were better to-day. May God bless you
Ever yours,
E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
[Post-mark, September 25, 1845.]
You have said to me more than once that you wished I might never know certain feelings you had been forced to endure. I suppose all of us have the proper place where a blow should fall to be felt most—and I truly wish you may never feel what I have to bear in looking on, quite powerless, and silent, while you are subjected to this treatment, which I refuse to characterize—so blind is it for blindness. I think I ought to understand what a father may exact, and a child should comply with; and I respect the most ambiguous of love's caprices if they give never so slight a clue to their all-justifying source. Did I, when you signified to me the probable objections—you remember what—to myself, my own happiness,—did I once allude to, much less argue against, or refuse to acknowledge those objections? For I wholly sympathize, however it go against me, with the highest, wariest, pride and love for you, and the proper jealousy and vigilance they entail—but now, and here, the jewel is not being over guarded, but ruined, cast away. And whoever is privileged to interfere should do so in the possessor's own interest—all common sense interferes—all rationality against absolute no-reason at all. And you ask whether you ought to obey this no-reason? I will tell you: all passive obedience and implicit submission of will and intellect is by far too easy, if well considered, to be the course prescribed by God to Man in this life of probation—for they evade probation altogether, though foolish people think otherwise. Chop off your legs, you will never go astray; stifle your reason altogether and you will find it is difficult to reason ill. 'It is hard to make these sacrifices!'—not so hard as to lose the reward or incur the penalty of an Eternity to come; 'hard to effect them, then, and go through with them'—not hard, when the leg is to be cut off—that it is rather harder to keep it quiet on a stool, I know very well. The partial indulgence, the proper exercise of one's faculties, there is the difficulty and problem for solution, set by that Providence which might have made the laws of Religion as indubitable as those of vitality, and revealed the articles of belief as certainly as that condition, for instance, by which we breathe so many times in a minute to support life. But there is no reward proposed for the feat of breathing, and a great one for that of believing—consequently there must go a great deal more of voluntary effort to this latter than is implied in the getting absolutely rid of it at once, by adopting the direction of an infallible church, or private judgment of another—for all our life is some form of religion, and all our action some belief, and there is but one law, however modified, for the greater and the less. In your case I do think you are called upon to do your duty to yourself; that is, to God in the end. Your own reason should examine the whole matter in dispute by every light which can be put in requisition; and every interest that appears to be affected by your conduct should have its utmost claims considered—your father's in the first place; and that interest, not in the miserable limits of a few days' pique or whim in which it would seem to express itself; but in its whole extent ... the hereafter which all momentary passion prevents him seeing ... indeed, the present on either side which everyone else must see. And this examination made, with whatever earnestness you will, I do think and am sure that on its conclusion you should act, in confidence that a duty has been performed ... difficult, or how were it a duty? Will it not be infinitely harder to act so than to blindly adopt his pleasure, and die under it? Who can not do that?
I fling these hasty rough words over the paper, fast as they will fall—knowing to whom I cast them, and that any sense they may contain or point to, will be caught and understood, and presented in a better light. The hard thing ... this is all I want to say ... is to act on one's own best conviction—not to abjure it and accept another will, and say 'there is my plain duty'—easy it is, whether plain or no!
How 'all changes!' When I first knew you—you know what followed. I supposed you to labour under an incurable complaint—and, of course, to be completely dependent on your father for its commonest alleviations; the moment after that inconsiderate letter, I reproached myself bitterly with the selfishness apparently involved in any proposition I might then have made—for though I have never been at all frightened of the world, nor mistrustful of my power to deal with it, and get my purpose out of it if once I thought it worth while, yet I could not but feel the consideration, of what failure would now be, paralyse all effort even in fancy. When you told me lately that 'you could never be poor'—all my solicitude was at an end—I had but myself to care about, and I told you, what I believed and believe, that I can at any time amply provide for that, and that I could cheerfully and confidently undertake the removing that obstacle. Now again the circumstances shift—and you are in what I should wonder at as the veriest slavery—and I who could free you from it, I am here scarcely daring to write ... though I know you must feel for me and forgive what forces itself from me ... what retires so mutely into my heart at your least word ... what shall not be again written or spoken, if you so will ... that I should be made happy beyond all hope of expression by. Now while I dream, let me once dream! I would marry you now and thus—I would come when you let me, and go when you bade me—I would be no more than one of your brothers—'no more'—that is, instead of getting to-morrow for Saturday, I should get Saturday as well—two hours for one—when your head ached I should be here. I deliberately choose the realization of that dream (—of sitting simply by you for an hour every day) rather than any other, excluding you, I am able to form for this world, or any world I know—And it will continue but a dream.
God bless my dearest E.B.B.
R.B.
You understand that I see you to-morrow, Friday, as you propose.
I am better—thank you—and will go out to-day.
You know what I am, what I would speak, and all I would do.