R.B. to E.B.B.
[Post-mark, October 15, 1845.]
Thanks, my dearest, for the good news—of the fever's abatement—it is good, too, that you write cheerfully, on the whole: what is it to me that you write is of me ... I shall never say that! Mr. Kenyon is all kindness, and one gets to take it as not so purely natural a thing, the showing kindness to those it concerns, and belongs to,—well! On Thursday, then,—to-morrow! Did you not get a note of mine, a hurried note, which was meant for yesterday-afternoon's delivery?
Mr. Forster came yesterday and was very profuse of graciosities: he may have, or must have meant well, so we will go on again with the friendship, as the snail repairs his battered shell.
My poems went duly to press on Monday night—there is not much correctable in them,—you make, or you spoil, one of these things; that is, I do. I have adopted all your emendations, and thrown in lines and words, just a morning's business; but one does not write plays so. You may like some of my smaller things, which stop interstices, better than what you have seen; I shall wonder to know. I am to receive a proof at the end of the week—will you help me and over-look it. ('Yes'—she says ... my thanks I do not say!—)
While writing this, the Times catches my eye (it just came in) and something from the Lancet is extracted, a long article against quackery—and, as I say, this is the first and only sentence I read—'There is scarcely a peer of the realm who is not the patron of some quack pill or potion: and the literati too, are deeply tainted. We have heard of barbarians who threw quacks and their medicines into the sea: but here in England we have Browning, a prince of poets, touching the pitch which defiles and making Paracelsus the hero of a poem. Sir E.L. Bulwer writes puffs for the water doctors in a style worthy of imitation by the scribe that does the poetical for Moses and Son. Miss Martineau makes a finessing servant girl her physician-general: and Richard Howitt and the Lady aforesaid stand God-father and mother to the contemptible mesmeric vagaries of Spencer Hall.'—Even the sweet incense to me fails of its effect if Paracelsus is to figure on a level with Priessnitz, and 'Jane'!
What weather, now at last! Think for yourself and for me—could you not go out on such days?
I am quite well now—cold, over and gone. Did I tell you my Uncle arrived from Paris on Monday, as they hoped he would—so my travel would have been to great purpose!
Bless my dearest—my own!
R.B.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, October 16, 1845.]
Your letter which should have reached me in the morning of yesterday, I did not receive until nearly midnight—partly through the eccentricity of our new postman whose good pleasure it is to make use of the letter-box without knocking; and partly from the confusion in the house, of illness in different ways ... the very servants being ill, ... one of them breaking a blood-vessel—for there is no new case of fever; ... and for dear Occy, he grows better slowly day by day. And just so late last night, five letters were found in the letter-box, and mine ... yours ... among them—which accounts for my beginning to answer it only now.
What am I to say but this ... that I know what you are ... and that I know also what you are to me,—and that I should accept that knowledge as more than sufficient recompense for worse vexations than these late ones. Therefore let no more be said of them: and no more need be said, even if they were not likely to prove their own end good, as I believe with you. You may be quite sure that I shall be well this winter, if in any way it should be possible, and that I will not be beaten down, if the will can do anything. I admire how, if all had happened so but a year ago, (yet it could not have happened quite so!), I should certainly have been beaten down—and how it is different now, ... and how it is only gratitude to you, to say that it is different now. My cage is not worse but better since you brought the green groundsel to it—and to dash oneself against the wires of it will not open the door. We shall see ... and God will oversee. And in the meantime you will not talk of extravagances; and then nobody need hold up the hand—because, as I said and say, I am yours, your own—only not to hurt you. So now let us talk of the first of November and of the poems which are to come out then, and of the poems which are to come after then—and of the new avatar of 'Sordello,' for instance, which you taught me to look for. And let us both be busy and cheerful—and you will come and see me throughout the winter, ... if you do not decide rather on going abroad, which may be better ... better for your health's sake?—in which case I shall have your letters.
And here is another ... just arrived. How I thank you. Think of the Times! Still it was very well of them to recognise your principality. Oh yes—do let me see the proof—I understand too about the 'making and spoiling.'
Almost you forced me to smile by thinking it worth while to say that you are 'not selfish.' Did Sir Percival say so to Sir Gawaine across the Round Table, in those times of chivalry to which you belong by the soul? Certainly you are not selfish! May God bless you.
Ever your
E.B.B.
The fever may last, they say, for a week longer, or even a fortnight—but it decreases. Yet he is hot still, and very weak.
To to-morrow!
E.B.B. to R.B.
Friday.
[Post-mark, October 17, 1845.]
Do tell me what you mean precisely by your 'Bells and Pomegranates' title. I have always understood it to refer to the Hebraic priestly garment—but Mr. Kenyon held against me the other day that your reference was different, though he had not the remotest idea how. And yesterday I forgot to ask, for not the first time. Tell me too why you should not in the new number satisfy, by a note somewhere, the Davuses of the world who are in the majority ('Davi sumus, non Oedipi') with a solution of this one Sphinx riddle. Is there a reason against it?
Occy continues to make progress—with a pulse at only eighty-four this morning. Are you learned in the pulse that I should talk as if you were? I, who have had my lessons? He takes scarcely anything yet but water, and his head is very hot still—but the progress is quite sure, though it may be a lingering case.
Your beautiful flowers!—none the less beautiful for waiting for water yesterday. As fresh as ever, they were; and while I was putting them into the water, I thought that your visit went on all the time. Other thoughts too I had, which made me look down blindly, quite blindly, on the little blue flowers, ... while I thought what I could not have said an hour before without breaking into tears which would have run faster then. To say now that I never can forget; that I feel myself bound to you as one human being cannot be more bound to another;—and that you are more to me at this moment than all the rest of the world; is only to say in new words that it would be a wrong against myself, to seem to risk your happiness and abuse your generosity. For me ... though you threw out words yesterday about the testimony of a 'third person,' ... it would be monstrous to assume it to be necessary to vindicate my trust of you—I trust you implicitly—and am not too proud to owe all things to you. But now let us wait and see what this winter does or undoes—while God does His part for good, as we know. I will never fail to you from any human influence whatever—that I have promised—but you must let it be different from the other sort of promise which it would be a wrong to make. May God bless you—you, whose fault it is, to be too generous. You are not like other men, as I could see from the beginning—no.
Shall I have the proof to-night, I ask myself.
And if you like to come on Monday rather than Tuesday, I do not see why there should be a 'no' to that. Judge from your own convenience. Only we must be wise in the general practice, and abstain from too frequent meetings, for fear of difficulties. I am Cassandra you know, and smell the slaughter in the bath-room. It would make no difference in fact; but in comfort, much.
Ever your own—
R.B. to E.B.B.
Saturday.
[Post-mark, October 18, 1845.]
I must not go on tearing these poor sheets one after the other,—the proper phrases will not come,—so let them stay, while you care for my best interests in their best, only way, and say for me what I would say if I could—dearest,—say it, as I feel it!
I am thankful to hear of the continued improvement of your brother. So may it continue with him! Pulses I know very little about—I go by your own impressions which are evidently favourable.
I will make a note as you suggest—or, perhaps, keep it for the closing number (the next), when it will come fitly in with two or three parting words I shall have to say. The Rabbis make Bells and Pomegranates symbolical of Pleasure and Profit, the gay and the grave, the Poetry and the Prose, Singing and Sermonizing—such a mixture of effects as in the original hour (that is quarter of an hour) of confidence and creation. I meant the whole should prove at last. Well, it has succeeded beyond my most adventurous wishes in one respect—'Blessed eyes mine eyes have been, if—' if there was any sweetness in the tongue or flavour in the seeds to her. But I shall do quite other and better things, or shame on me! The proof has not yet come.... I should go, I suppose, and enquire this afternoon—and probably I will.
I weigh all the words in your permission to come on Monday ... do not think I have not seen that contingency from the first! Let it be Tuesday—no sooner! Meanwhile you are never away—never from your place here.
God bless my dearest.
Ever yours
R.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Monday Morning.
[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
This arrived on Saturday night—I just correct it in time for this our first post—will it do, the new matter? I can take it to-morrow—when I am to see you—if you are able to glance through it by then.
The 'Inscription,' how does that read?
There is strange temptation, by the way, in the space they please to leave for the presumable 'motto'—'they but remind me of mine own conception' ... but one must give no clue, of a silk's breadth, to the 'Bower,' yet, One day!
—Which God send you, dearest, and your
R.B.
E.B.B. to R.B.
[Post-mark, October 22, 1845.]
Even at the risk of teazing you a little I must say a few words, that there may be no misunderstanding between us—and this, before I sleep to-night. To-day and before to-day you surprised me by your manner of receiving my remark about your visits, for I believed I had sufficiently made clear to you long ago how certain questions were ordered in this house and how no exception was to be expected for my sake or even for yours. Surely I told you this quite plainly long ago. I only meant to say in my last letter, in the same track ... (fearing in the case of your wishing to come oftener that you might think it unkind in me not to seem to wish the same) ... that if you came too often and it was observed, difficulties and vexations would follow as a matter of course, and it would be wise therefore to run no risk. That was the head and front of what I meant to say. The weekly one visit is a thing established and may go on as long as you please—and there is no objection to your coming twice a week now and then ... if now and then merely ... if there is no habit ... do you understand? I may be prudent in an extreme perhaps—and certainly everybody in the house is not equally prudent!—but I did shrink from running any risk with that calm and comfort of the winter as it seemed to come on. And was it more than I said about the cloak? was there any newness in it? anything to startle you? Still I do perfectly see that whether new or old, what it involves may well be unpleasant to you—and that (however old) it may be apt to recur to your mind with a new increasing unpleasantness. We have both been carried too far perhaps, by late events and impulses—but it is never too late to come back to a right place, and I for my part come back to mine, and entreat you my dearest friend, first, not to answer this, and next, to weigh and consider thoroughly 'that particular contingency' which (I tell you plainly, I who know) the tongue of men and of angels would not modify so as to render less full of vexations to you. Let Pisa prove the excellent hardness of some marbles! Judge. From motives of self-respect, you may well walk an opposite way ... you.... When I told you once ... or twice ... that 'no human influence should' &c. &c., ... I spoke for myself, quite over-looking you—and now that I turn and see you, I am surprised that I did not see you before ... there. I ask you therefore to consider 'that contingency' well—not forgetting the other obvious evils, which the late decision about Pisa has aggravated beyond calculation ... for as the smoke rolls off we see the harm done by the fire. And so, and now ... is it not advisable for you to go abroad at once ... as you always intended, you know ... now that your book is through the press? What if you go next week? I leave it to you. In any case I entreat you not to answer this—neither let your thoughts be too hard on me for what you may call perhaps vacillation—only that I stand excused (I do not say justified) before my own moral sense. May God bless you. If you go, I shall wait to see you till your return, and have letters in the meantime. I write all this as fast as I can to have it over. What I ask of you is, to consider alone and decide advisedly ... for both our sakes. If it should be your choice not to make an end now, ... why I shall understand that by your not going ... or you may say 'no' in a word ... for I require no 'protestations' indeed—and you may trust to me ... it shall be as you choose. You will consider my happiness most by considering your own ... and that is my last word.
Wednesday morning.—I did not say half I thought about the poems yesterday—and their various power and beauty will be striking and surprising to your most accustomed readers. 'St. Praxed'—'Pictor Ignotus'—'The Ride'—'The Duchess'!—Of the new poems I like supremely the first and last ... that 'Lost Leader' which strikes so broadly and deep ... which nobody can ever forget—and which is worth all the journalizing and pamphleteering in the world!—and then, the last 'Thought' which is quite to be grudged to that place of fragments ... those grand sea-sights in the long lines. Should not these fragments be severed otherwise than by numbers? The last stanza but one of the 'Lost Mistress' seemed obscure to me. Is it so really? The end you have put to 'England in Italy' gives unity to the whole ... just what the poem wanted. Also you have given some nobler lines to the middle than met me there before. 'The Duchess' appears to me more than ever a new-minted golden coin—the rhythm of it answering to your own description, 'Speech half asleep, or song half awake?' You have right of trove to these novel effects of rhythm. Now if people do not cry out about these poems, what are we to think of the world?
May God bless you always—send me the next proof in any case.
Your
E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
[Post-mark, October 23, 1845.]
But I must answer you, and be forgiven, too, dearest. I was (to begin at the beginning) surely not 'startled' ... only properly aware of the deep blessing I have been enjoying this while, and not disposed to take its continuance as pure matter of course, and so treat with indifference the first shadow of a threatening intimation from without, the first hint of a possible abstraction from the quarter to which so many hopes and fears of mine have gone of late. In this case, knowing you, I was sure that if any imaginable form of displeasure could touch you without reaching me, I should not hear of it too soon—so I spoke—so you have spoken—and so now you get 'excused'? No—wondered at, with all my faculty of wonder for the strange exalting way you will persist to think of me; now, once for all, I will not pass for what I make no least pretence to. I quite understand the grace of your imaginary self-denial, and fidelity to a given word, and noble constancy; but it all happens to be none of mine, none in the least. I love you because I love you; I see you 'once a week' because I cannot see you all day long; I think of you all day long, because I most certainly could not think of you once an hour less, if I tried, or went to Pisa, or 'abroad' (in every sense) in order to 'be happy' ... a kind of adventure which you seem to suppose you have in some way interfered with. Do, for this once, think, and never after, on the impossibility of your ever (you know I must talk your own language, so I shall say—) hindering any scheme of mine, stopping any supposable advancement of mine. Do you really think that before I found you, I was going about the world seeking whom I might devour, that is, be devoured by, in the shape of a wife ... do you suppose I ever dreamed of marrying? What would it mean for me, with my life I am hardened in—considering the rational chances; how the land is used to furnish its contingent of Shakespeare's women: or by 'success,' 'happiness' &c. &c. you never never can be seeing for a moment with the world's eyes and meaning 'getting rich' and all that? Yet, put that away, and what do you meet at every turn, if you are hunting about in the dusk to catch my good, but yourself?
I know who has got it, caught it, and means to keep it on his heart—the person most concerned—I, dearest, who cannot play the disinterested part of bidding you forget your 'protestation' ... what should I have to hold by, come what will, through years, through this life, if God shall so determine, if I were not sure, sure that the first moment when you can suffer me with you 'in that relation,' you will remember and act accordingly. I will, as you know, conform my life to any imaginable rule which shall render it possible for your life to move with it and possess it, all the little it is worth.
For your friends ... whatever can be 'got over,' whatever opposition may be rational, will be easily removed, I suppose. You know when I spoke lately about the 'selfishness' I dared believe I was free from, I hardly meant the low faults of ... I shall say, a different organization to mine—which has vices in plenty, but not those. Besides half a dozen scratches with a pen make one stand up an apparent angel of light, from the lawyer's parchment; and Doctors' Commons is one bland smile of applause. The selfishness I deprecate is one which a good many women, and men too, call 'real passion'—under the influence of which, I ought to say 'be mine, what ever happens to you'—but I know better, and you know best—and you know me, for all this letter, which is no doubt in me, I feel, but dear entire goodness and affection, of which God knows whether I am proud or not—and now you will let me be, will not you. Let me have my way, live my life, love my love.
When I am, praying God to bless her ever,
R.B.
E.B.B. to R.B.
[Post-mark, October 24, 1845.]
'And be forgiven' ... yes! and be thanked besides—if I knew how to thank you worthily and as I feel ... only that I do not know it, and cannot say it. And it was not indeed 'doubt' of you—oh no—that made me write as I did write; it was rather because I felt you to be surely noblest, ... and therefore fitly dearest, ... that it seemed to me detestable and intolerable to leave you on this road where the mud must splash up against you, and never cry 'gare.' Yet I was quite enough unhappy yesterday, and before yesterday ... I will confess to-day, ... to be too gratefully glad to 'let you be' ... to 'let you have your way'—you who overcome always! Always, but where you tell me not to think of you so and so!—as if I could help thinking of you so, and as if I should not take the liberty of persisting to think of you just so. 'Let me be'—Let me have my way.' I am unworthy of you perhaps in everything except one thing—and that, you cannot guess. May God bless you—
Ever I am yours.
The proof does not come!
E.B.B. to R.B.
Friday.
[Post-mark, October 25, 1845.]
I wrote briefly yesterday not to make my letter longer by keeping it; and a few last words which belong to it by right, must follow after it ... must—for I want to say that you need not indeed talk to me about squares being not round, and of you being not 'selfish'! You know it is foolish to talk such superfluities, and not a compliment.
I won't say to my knowledge of you and faith in you ... but to my understanding generally. Why should you say to me at all ... much less for this third or fourth time ... 'I am not selfish?' to me who never ... when I have been deepest asleep and dreaming, ... never dreamed of attributing to you any form of such a fault? Promise not to say so again—now promise. Think how it must sound to my ears, when really and truly I have sometimes felt jealous of myself ... of my own infirmities, ... and thought that you cared for me only because your chivalry touched them with a silver sound—and that, without them, you would pass by on the other side:—why twenty times I have thought that and been vexed—ungrateful vexation! In exchange for which too frank confession, I will ask for another silent promise ... a silent promise—no, but first I will say another thing.
First I will say that you are not to fancy any the least danger of my falling under displeasure through your visits—there is no sort of risk of it for the present—and if I ran the risk of making you uncomfortable about that, I did foolishly, and what I meant to do was different. I wish you also to understand that even if you came here every day, my brothers and sisters would simply care to know if I liked it, and then be glad if I was glad:—the caution referred to one person alone. In relation to whom, however, there will be no 'getting over'—you might as well think to sweep off a third of the stars of Heaven with the motion of your eyelashes—this, for matter of fact and certainty—and this, as I said before, the keeping of a general rule and from no disrespect towards individuals: a great peculiarity in the individual of course. But ... though I have been a submissive daughter, and this from no effort, but for love's sake ... because I loved him tenderly (and love him), ... and hoped that he loved me back again even if the proofs came untenderly sometimes—yet I have reserved for myself always that right over my own affections which is the most strictly personal of all things, and which involves principles and consequences of infinite importance and scope—even though I never thought (except perhaps when the door of life was just about to open ... before it opened) never thought it probable or possible that I should have occasion for the exercise; from without and from within at once. I have too much need to look up. For friends, I can look any way ... round, and down even—the merest thread of a sympathy will draw me sometimes—or even the least look of kind eyes over a dyspathy—'Cela se peut facilement.' But for another relation—it was all different—and rightly so—and so very different—'Cela ne se peut nullement'—as in Malherbe.
And now we must agree to 'let all this be,', and set ourselves to get as much good and enjoyment from the coming winter (better spent at Pisa!) as we can—and I begin my joy by being glad that you are not going since I am not going, and by being proud of these new green leaves in your bay which came out with the new number. And then will come the tragedies—and then, ... what beside? We shall have a happy winter after all ... I shall at least; and if Pisa had been better, London might be worse: and for me to grow pretentious and fastidious and critical about various sorts of purple ... I, who have been used to the brun foncé of Mme. de Sévigné, (foncé and enfoncé ...)—would be too absurd. But why does not the proof come all this time? I have kept this letter to go back with it.
I had a proposition from the New York booksellers about six weeks ago (the booksellers who printed the poems) to let them re-print those prose papers of mine in the Athenæum, with additional matter on American literature, in a volume by itself—to be published at the same time both in America and England by Wiley and Putnam in Waterloo Place, and meaning to offer liberal terms, they said. Now what shall I do? Those papers are not fit for separate publication, and I am not inclined to the responsibility of them; and in any case, they must give as much trouble as if they were re-written (trouble and not poetry!), before I could consent to such a thing. Well!—and if I do not ... these people are just as likely to print them without leave ... and so without correction. What do you advise? What shall I do? All this time they think me sublimely indifferent, they who pressed for an answer by return of packet—and now it is past six ... eight weeks; and I must say something.
Am I not 'femme qui parle' to-day? And let me talk on ever so, the proof won't come. May God bless you—and me as I am
Yours,
E.B.B.
And the silent promise I would have you make is this—that if ever you should leave me, it shall be (though you are not 'selfish') for your sake—and not for mine: for your good, and not for mine. I ask it—not because I am disinterested; but because one class of motives would be valid, and the other void—simply for that reason.
Then the femme qui parle (looking back over the parlance) did not mean to say on the first page of this letter that she was ever for a moment vexed in her pride that she should owe anything to her adversities. It was only because adversities are accidents and not essentials. If it had been prosperities, it would have been the same thing—no, not the same thing!—but far worse.
Occy is up to-day and doing well.
R.B. to E.B.B.
[Post-mark, October 27, 1845.]
How does one make 'silent promises' ... or, rather, how does the maker of them communicate that fact to whomsoever it may concern? I know, there have been many, very many unutterable vows and promises made,—that is, thought down upon—the white slip at the top of my notes,—such as of this note; and not trusted to the pen, that always comes in for the shame,—but given up, and replaced by the poor forms to which a pen is equal; and a glad minute I should account that, in which you collected and accepted those 'promises'—because they would not be all so unworthy of me—much less you! I would receive, in virtue of them, the ascription of whatever worthiness is supposed to lie in deep, truest love, and gratitude—
Read my silent answer there too!
All your letter is one comfort: we will be happy this winter, and after, do not fear. I am most happy, to begin, that your brother is so much better: he must be weak and susceptible of cold, remember.
It was on my lip, I do think, last visit, or the last but one, to beg you to detach those papers from the Athenæum's gâchis. Certainly this opportunity is most favourable, for every reason: you cannot hesitate, surely. At present those papers are lost—lost for practical purposes. Do pray reply without fail to the proposers; no, no harm of these really fine fellows, who could do harm (by printing incorrect copies, and perhaps eking out the column by suppositious matter ... ex-gr. they strengthened and lengthened a book of Dickens', in Paris, by adding quant. suff. of Thackeray's 'Yellowplush Papers' ... as I discovered by a Parisian somebody praising the latter to me as Dickens' best work!)—and who do really a good straightforward un-American thing. You will encourage 'the day of small things'—though this is not small, nor likely to have small results. I shall be impatient to hear that you have decided. I like the progress of these Americans in taste, their amazing leaps, like grasshoppers up to the sun—from ... what is the 'from,' what depth, do you remember, say, ten or twelve years back?—to—Carlyle, and Tennyson, and you! So children leave off Jack of Cornwall and go on just to Homer.
I can't conceive why my proof does not come—I must go to-morrow and see. In the other, I have corrected all the points you noted, to their evident improvement. Yesterday I took out 'Luria' and read it through—the skeleton—I shall hope to finish it soon now. It is for a purely imaginary stage,—very simple and straightforward. Would you ... no, Act by Act, as I was about to propose that you should read it; that process would affect the oneness I most wish to preserve.
On Tuesday—at last, I am with you. Till when be with me ever, dearest—God bless you ever—
R.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Tuesday 9 a.m.
[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
I got this on coming home last night—have just run through it this morning, and send it that time may not be lost. Faults, faults; but I don't know how I have got tired of this. The Tragedies will be better, at least the second—
At 3 this day! Bless you—
R.B.
E.B.B. to R.B.
I write in haste, not to lose time about the proof. You will see on the papers here my doubtfulnesses such as they are—but silence swallows up the admirations ... and there is no time. 'Theocrite' overtakes that wish of mine which ran on so fast—and the 'Duchess' grows and grows the more I look—and 'Saul' is noble and must have his full royalty some day. Would it not be well, by the way, to print it in the meanwhile as a fragment confessed ... sowing asterisks at the end. Because as a poem of yours it stands there and wants unity, and people can't be expected to understand the difference between incompleteness and defect, unless you make a sign. For the new poems—they are full of beauty. You throw largesses out on all sides without counting the coins: how beautiful that 'Night and Morning' ... and the 'Earth's Immortalities' ... and the 'Song' too. And for your 'Glove,' all women should be grateful,—and Ronsard, honoured, in this fresh shower of music on his old grave ... though the chivalry of the interpretation, as well as much beside, is so plainly yours, ... could only be yours perhaps. And even you are forced to let in a third person ... close to the doorway ... before you can do any good. What a noble lion you give us too, with the 'flash on his forehead,' and 'leagues in the desert already' as we look on him! And then, with what a 'curious felicity' you turn the subject 'glove' to another use and strike De Lorge's blow back on him with it, in the last paragraph of your story! And the versification! And the lady's speech—(to return!) so calm, and proud—yet a little bitter!
Am I not to thank you for all the pleasure and pride in these poems? while you stand by and try to talk them down, perhaps.
Tell me how your mother is—tell me how you are ... you who never were to be told twice about walking. Gone the way of all promises, is that promise?
Ever yours,
E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Wednesday Night.
[Post-mark, October 30, 1845.]
Like your kindness—too, far too generous kindness,—all this trouble and correcting,—and it is my proper office now, by this time, to sit still and receive, by right Human (as opposed to Divine). When you see the pamphlet's self, you will find your own doing,—but where will you find the proofs of the best of all helping and counselling and inciting, unless in new works which shall justify the unsatisfaction, if I may not say shame, at these, these written before your time, my best love?
Are you doing well to-day? For I feel well, have walked some eight or nine miles—and my mother is very much better ... is singularly better. You know whether you rejoiced me or no by that information about the exercise you had taken yesterday. Think what telling one that you grow stronger would mean!
'Vexatious' with you! Ah, prudence is all very right, and one ought, no doubt, to say, 'of course, we shall not expect a life exempt from the usual proportion of &c. &c.—' but truth is still more right, and includes the highest prudence besides, and I do believe that we shall be happy; that is, that you will be happy: you see I dare confidently expect the end to it all ... so it has always been with me in my life of wonders—absolute wonders, with God's hand over all.... And this last and best of all would never have begun so, and gone on so, to break off abruptly even here, in this world, for the little time.
So try, try, dearest, every method, take every measure of hastening such a consummation. Why, we shall see Italy together! I could, would, will shut myself in four walls of a room with you and never leave you and be most of all then 'a lord of infinite space'—but, to travel with you to Italy, or Greece. Very vain, I know that, all such day dreaming! And ungrateful, too; with the real sufficing happiness here of being, and knowing that you know me to be, and suffer me to tell you I am yours, ever your own.
God bless you, my dearest—
E.B.B. to R.B.
[Post-mark, November 1, 1845.]
All to-day, Friday, Miss Mitford has been here! She came at two and went away at seven—and I feel as if I had been making a five-hour speech on the corn laws in Harriet Martineau's parliament; ... so tired I am. Not that dear Miss Mitford did not talk both for me and herself, ... for that, of course she did. But I was forced to answer once every ten minutes at least—and Flush, my usual companion, does not exact so much—and so I am tired and come to rest myself on this paper. Your name was not once spoken to-day; a little from my good fencing: when I saw you at the end of an alley of associations, I pushed the conversation up the next—because I was afraid of questions such as every moment I expected, with a pair of woman's eyes behind them; and those are worse than Mr. Kenyon's, when he puts on his spectacles. So your name was not once spoken—not thought of, I do not say—perhaps when I once lost her at Chevy Chase and found her suddenly with Isidore the queen's hairdresser, my thoughts might have wandered off to you and your unanswered letter while she passed gradually from that to this—I am not sure of the contrary. And Isidore, they say, reads Béranger, and is supposed to be the most literary person at court—and wasn't at Chevy Chase one must needs think.
One must needs write nonsense rather—for I have written it there. The sense and the truth is, that your letter went to the bottom of my heart, and that my thoughts have turned round it ever since and through all the talking to-day. Yes indeed, dreams! But what is not dreaming is this and this—this reading of these words—this proof of this regard—all this that you are to me in fact, and which you cannot guess the full meaning of, dramatic poet as you are ... cannot ... since you do not know what my life meant before you touched it, ... and my angel at the gate of the prison! My wonder is greater than your wonders, ... I who sate here alone but yesterday, so weary of my own being that to take interest in my very poems I had to lift them up by an effort and separate them from myself and cast them out from me into the sunshine where I was not—feeling nothing of the light which fell on them even—making indeed a sort of pleasure and interest about that factitious personality associated with them ... but knowing it to be all far on the outside of me ... myself ... not seeming to touch it with the end of my finger ... and receiving it as a mockery and a bitterness when people persisted in confounding one with another. Morbid it was if you like it—perhaps very morbid—but all these heaps of letters which go into the fire one after the other, and which, because I am a woman and have written verses, it seems so amusing to the letter-writers of your sex to write and see 'what will come of it,' ... some, from kind good motives I know, ... well, ... how could it all make for me even such a narrow strip of sunshine as Flush finds on the floor sometimes, and lays his nose along, with both ears out in the shadow? It was not for me ... me ... in any way: it was not within my reach—I did not seem to touch it as I said. Flush came nearer, and I was grateful to him ... yes, grateful ... for not being tired! I have felt grateful and flattered ... yes flattered ... when he has chosen rather to stay with me all day than go down-stairs. Grateful too, with reason, I have been and am to my own family for not letting me see that I was a burthen. These are facts. And now how am I to feel when you tell me what you have told me—and what you 'could would and will' do, and shall not do?... but when you tell me?
Only remember that such words make you freer and freer—if you can be freer than free—just as every one makes me happier and richer—too rich by you, to claim any debt. May God bless you always. When I wrote that letter to let you come the first time, do you know, the tears ran down my cheeks.... I could not tell why: partly it might be mere nervousness. And then, I was vexed with you for wishing to come as other people did, and vexed with myself for not being able to refuse you as I did them.
When does the book come out? Not on the first, I begin to be glad.
Ever yours,
E.B.B.
I trust that you go on to take exercise—and that your mother is still better. Occy's worst symptom now is too great an appetite ... a monster-appetite indeed.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, November 4, 1845.]
Only a word to tell you Moxon promises the books for to-morrow, Wednesday—so towards evening yours will reach you—'parve liber, sine me ibis' ... would I were by you, then and ever! You see, and know, and understand why I can neither talk to you, nor write to you now, as we are now;—from the beginning, the personal interest absorbed every other, greater or smaller—but as one cannot well,—or should not,—sit quite silently, the words go on, about Horne, or what chances—while you are in my thought.
But when I have you ... so it seems ... in my very heart; when you are entirely with me—oh, the day—then it will all go better, talk and writing too.
Love me, my own love; not as I love you—not for—but I cannot write that. Nor do I ask anything, with all your gifts here, except for the luxury of asking. Withdraw nothing, then, dearest, from your
R.B.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, November 6, 1845.]
I had your note last night, and am waiting for the book to-day; a true living breathing book, let the writer say of it what he will. Also when it comes it won't certainly come 'sine te.' Which is my comfort.
And now—not to make any more fuss about a matter of simple restitution—may I have my letter back?... I mean the letter which if you did not destroy ... did not punish for its sins long and long ago ... belongs to me—which, if destroyed, I must lose for my sins, ... but, if undestroyed, which I may have back; may I not? is it not my own? must I not?—that letter I was made to return and now turn to ask for again in further expiation. Now do I ask humbly enough? And send it at once, if undestroyed—do not wait till Saturday.
I have considered about Mr. Kenyon and it seems best, in the event of a question or of a remark equivalent to a question, to confess to the visits 'generally once a week' ... because he may hear, one, two, three different ways, ... not to say the other reasons and Chaucer's charge against 'doubleness.' I fear ... I fear that he (not Chaucer) will wonder a little—and he has looked at me with scanning spectacles already and talked of its being a mystery to him how you made your way here; and I, who though I can bespeak self-command, have no sort of presence of mind (not so much as one would use to play at Jack straws) did not help the case at all. Well—it cannot be helped. Did I ever tell you what he said of you once—'that you deserved to be a poet—being one in your heart and life:' he said that of you to me, and I thought it a noble encomium and deserving its application.
For the rest ... yes: you know I do—God knows I do. Whatever I can feel is for you—and perhaps it is not less, for not being simmered away in too much sunshine as with women accounted happier. I am happy besides now—happy enough to die now.
May God bless you, dear—dearest—
Ever I am yours—
The book does not come—so I shall not wait. Mr. Kenyon came instead, and comes again on Friday he says, and Saturday seems to be clear still.