R.B. to E.B.B.
Friday Night.
[Post-mark, November 22, 1845.]
How good and kind to send me these books! (The letter I say nothing of, according to convention: if I wrote down 'best and kindest' ... oh, what poorest words!) I shall tell you all about 'Pomfret,' be sure. Chorley talked of it, as we walked homewards together last night,—modestly and well, and spoke of having given away two copies only ... to his mother one, and the other to—Miss Barrett, and 'she seemed interested in the life of it, entered into his purpose in it,' and I listened to it all, loving Chorley for his loveability which is considerable at other times, and saying to myself what might run better in the child's couplet—'Not more than others I deserve, Though God has given me more'!—Given me the letter which expresses surprise that I shall feel these blanks between the days when I see you longer and longer! So am I surprised—that I should have mentioned so obvious a matter at all; or leave unmentioned a hundred others its correlatives which I cannot conceive you to be ignorant of, you! When I spread out my riches before me, and think what the hour and more means that you endow one with, I do—not to say could—I do form resolutions, and say to myself—'If next time I am bidden stay away a fortnight, I will not reply by a word beyond the grateful assent.' I do, God knows, lay up in my heart these priceless treasures,—shall I tell you? I never in my life kept a journal, a register of sights, or fancies, or feelings; in my last travel I put down on a slip of paper a few dates, that I might remember in England, on such a day I was on Vesuvius, in Pompeii, at Shelley's grave; all that should be kept in memory is, with me, best left to the brain's own process. But I have, from the first, recorded the date and the duration of every visit to you; the numbers of minutes you have given me ... and I put them together till they make ... nearly two days now; four-and-twenty-hour-long-days, that I have been by you—and I enter the room determining to get up and go sooner ... and I go away into the light street repenting that I went so soon by I don't know how many minutes—for, love, what is it all, this love for you, but an earnest desiring to include you in myself, if that might be; to feel you in my very heart and hold you there for ever, through all chance and earthly changes!
There, I had better leave off; the words!
I was very glad to find myself with your brother yesterday; I like him very much and mean to get a friend in him—(to supply the loss of my friend ... Miss Barrett—which is gone, the friendship, so gone!) But I did not ask after you because I heard Moxon do it. Now of Landor's verses: I got a note from Forster yesterday telling me that he, too, had received a copy ... so that there is no injunction to be secret. So I got a copy for dear Mr. Kenyon, and, lo! what comes! I send the note to make you smile! I shall reply that I felt in duty bound to apprise you; as I did. You will observe that I go to that too facile gate of his on Tuesday, my day ... from your house directly. The worst is that I have got entangled with invitations already, and must go out again, hating it, to more than one place.
I am very well—quite well; yes, dearest! The pain is quite gone; and the inconvenience, hard on its trace. You will write to me again, will you not? And be as brief as your heart lets you, to me who hoard up your words and get remote and imperfect ideas of what ... shall it be written?... anger at you could mean, when I see a line blotted out; a second-thoughted finger-tip rapidly put forth upon one of my gold pieces!
I rather think if Warburton reviews me it will be in the Quarterly, which I know he writes for. Hanmer is a very sculpturesque passionless high-minded and amiable man ... this coldness, as you see it, is part of him. I like his poems, I think, better than you—'the Sonnets,' do you know them? Not 'Fra Cipolla.' See what is here, since you will not let me have only you to look at—this is Landor's first opinion—expressed to Forster—see the date! and last of all, see me and know me, beloved! May God bless you!
E.B.B. to R.B.
Saturday.
[Post-mark, November 22, 1845.]
Mr. Kenyon came yesterday—and do you know when he took out those verses and spoke his preface and I understood what was to follow, I had a temptation from my familiar Devil not to say I had read them before—I had the temptation strong and clear. For he (Mr. K.) told me that your sister let him see them—.
But no—My 'vade retro' prevailed, and I spoke the truth and shamed the devil and surprised Mr. Kenyon besides, as I could observe. Not an observation did he make till he was just going away half an hour afterwards, and then he said rather dryly ... 'And now may I ask how long ago it was when you first read these verses?—was it a fortnight ago?' It was better, I think, that I should not have made a mystery of such a simple thing, ... and yet I felt half vexed with myself and with him besides. But the verses,—how he praised them! more than I thought of doing ... as verses—though there is beauty and music and all that ought to be. Do you see clearly now that the latter lines refer to the combination in you,—the qualities over and above those held in common with Chaucer? And I have heard this morning from two or three of the early readers of the Chronicle (I never care to see it till the evening) that the verses are there—so that my wishes have fulfilled themselves there at least—strangely, for wishes of mine ... which generally 'go by contraries' as the soothsayers declare of dreams. How kind of you to send me the fragment to Mr. Forster! and how I like to read it. Was the Hebrew yours then ... written then, I mean ... or written now?
Mr. Kenyon told me that you were to dine with him on Tuesday, and I took for granted, at first hearing, that you would come on Wednesday perhaps to me—and afterwards I saw the possibility of the two ends being joined without much difficulty. Still, I was not sure, before your letter came, how it might be.
That you really are better is the best news of all—thank you for telling me. It will be wise not to go out too much—'aequam servare mentem' as Landor quotes, ... in this as in the rest. Perhaps that worst pain was a sort of crisis ... the sharp turn of the road about to end ... oh, I do trust it may be so.
Mr. K. wrote to Landor to the effect that it was not because he (Mr. K.) held you in affection, nor because the verses expressed critically the opinion entertained of you by all who could judge, nor because they praised a book with which his own name was associated ... but for the abstract beauty of those verses ... for that reason he could not help naming them to Mr. Landor. All of which was repeated to me yesterday.
Also I heard of you from George, who admired you—admired you ... as if you were a chancellor in posse, a great lawyer in esse—and then he thought you ... what he never could think a lawyer ... 'unassuming.' And you ... you are so kind! Only that makes me think bitterly what I have thought before, but cannot write to-day.
It was good-natured of Mr. Chorley to send me a copy of his book, and he sending so few—very! George who admires you, does not tolerate Mr. Chorley ... (did I tell ever?) declares that the affectation is 'bad,' and that there is a dash of vulgarity ... which I positively refuse to believe, and should, I fancy, though face to face with the most vainglorious of waistcoats. How can there be vulgarity even of manners, with so much mental refinement? I never could believe in those combinations of contradictions.
'An obvious matter,' you think! as obvious, as your 'green hill' ... which I cannot see. For the rest ... my thought upon your 'great fact' of the 'two days,' is quite different from yours ... for I think directly, 'So little'! so dreadfully little! What shallow earth for a deep root! What can be known of me in that time? 'So there, is the only good, you see, that comes from making calculations on a slip of paper! It is not and it cannot come to good.' I would rather look at my seventy-five letters—there is room to breathe in them. And this is my idea (ecce!) of monumental brevity—and hic jacet at last
Your E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Sunday Night.
[Post-mark, November 24, 1845.]
But a word to-night, my love—for my head aches a little,—I had to write a long letter to my friend at New Zealand, and now I want to sit and think of you and get well—but I must not quite lose the word I counted on.
So, that way you will take my two days and turn them against me? Oh, you! Did I say the 'root' had been striking then, or rather, that the seeds, whence the roots take leisure and grow, they had been planted then—and might not a good heart and hand drop acorns enough to grow up into a complete Dodona-grove,—when the very rook, say farmers, hides and forgets whole navies of ship-wood one day to be, in his summer storing-journeys? But this shall do—I am not going to prove what may be, when here it is, to my everlasting happiness.
—And 'I am kind'—there again! Do I not know what you mean by that? Well it is some comfort that you make all even in some degree, and take from my faculties here what you give them, spite of my protesting, in other directions. So I could not when I first saw you admire you very much, and wish for your friendship, and be willing to give you mine, and desirous of any opportunity of serving you, benefiting you; I could not think the finding myself in a position to feel this, just this and no more, a sufficiently fortunate event ... but I must needs get up, or imitate, or ... what is it you fancy I do? ... an utterly distinct, unnecessary, inconsequential regard for you, which should, when it got too hard for shamming at the week's end,—should simply spoil, in its explosion and departure, all the real and sufficing elements of an honest life-long attachment and affections! that I should do this, and think it a piece of kindness does....
Now, I'll tell you what it does deserve, and what it shall get. Give me, dearest beyond expression, what I have always dared to think I would ask you for ... one day! Give me ... wait—for your own sake, not mine who never, never dream of being worth such a gift ... but for your own sense of justice, and to say, so as my heart shall hear, that you were wrong and are no longer so, give me so much of you—all precious that you are—as may be given in a lock of your hair—I will live and die with it, and with the memory of you—this at the worst! If you give me what I beg,—shall I say next Tuesday ... when I leave you, I will not speak a word. If you do not, I will not think you unjust, for all my light words, but I will pray you to wait and remember me one day—when the power to deserve more may be greater ... never the will. God supplies all things: may he bless you, beloved! So I can but pray, kissing your hand.
R.B.
Now pardon me, dearest, for what is written ... what I cannot cancel, for the love's sake that it grew from.
The Chronicle was through Moxon, I believe—Landor had sent the verses to Forster at the same time as to me, yet they do not appear. I never in my life less cared about people's praise or blame for myself, and never more for its influence on other people than now—I would stand as high as I could in the eyes of all about you—yet not, after all, at poor Chorley's expense whom your brother, I am sure, unintentionally, is rather hasty in condemning; I have told you of my own much rasher opinion and how I was ashamed and sorry when I corrected it after. C. is of a different species to your brother, differently trained, looking different ways—and for some of the peculiarities that strike at first sight, C. himself gives a good reason to the enquirer on better acquaintance. For 'Vulgarity'—NO! But your kind brother will alter his view, I know, on further acquaintance ... and,—woe's me—will find that 'assumption's' pertest self would be troubled to exercise its quality at such a house as Mr. K.'s, where every symptom of a proper claim is met half way and helped onward far too readily.
Good night, now. Am I not yours—are you not mine? And can that make you happy too?
Bless you once more and for ever.
That scrap of Landor's being for no other eye than mine—I made the foolish comment, that there was no blotting out—made it some four or five years ago, when I could read what I only guess at now, through my idle opening the hand and letting the caught bird go—but there used to be a real satisfaction to me in writing those grand Hebrew characters—the noble languages!
E.B.B. to R.B.
Monday.
[Post-mark, November 24, 1845.]
But what unlawful things have I said about 'kindness'? I did not mean any harm—no, indeed! And as to thinking ... as to having ever thought, that you could 'imitate' (can this word be 'imitate'?) an unfelt feeling or a feeling unsupposed to be felt ... I may solemnly assure you that I never, never did so. 'Get up'—'imitate'!! But it was the contrary ... all the contrary! From the beginning, now did I not believe you too much? Did I not believe you even in your contradiction of yourself ... in your yes and no on the same subject, ... and take the world to be turning round backwards and myself to have been shut up here till I grew mad, ... rather than disbelieve you either way? Well!—You know it as well as I can tell you, and I will not, any more. If I have been 'wrong,' it was not so ... nor indeed then ... it is not so, though it is now, perhaps.
Therefore ... but wait! I never gave away what you ask me to give you, to a human being, except my nearest relatives and once or twice or thrice to female friends, ... never, though reproached for it; and it is just three weeks since I said last to an asker that I was 'too great a prude for such a thing'! it was best to anticipate the accusation!—And, prude or not, I could not—I never could—something would not let me. And now ... what am I to do ... 'for my own sake and not yours?' Should you have it, or not? Why I suppose ... yes. I suppose that 'for my own sense of justice and in order to show that I was wrong' (which is wrong—you wrote a wrong word there ... 'right,' you meant!) 'to show that I was right and am no longer so,' ... I suppose you must have it, 'Oh, You,' ... who have your way in everything! Which does not mean ... Oh, vous, qui avez toujours raison—far from it.
Also ... which does not mean that I shall give you what you ask for, to-morrow,—because I shall not—and one of my conditions is (with others to follow) that not a word be said to-morrow, you understand. Some day I will send it perhaps ... as you knew I should ... ah, as you knew I should ... notwithstanding that 'getting up' ... that 'imitation' ... of humility: as you knew too well I should!
Only I will not teaze you as I might perhaps; and now that your headache has begun again—the headache again: the worse than headache! See what good my wishes do! And try to understand that if I speak of my being 'wrong' now in relation to you ... of my being right before, and wrong now, ... I mean wrong for your sake, and not for mine ... wrong in letting you come out into the desert here to me, you whose place is by the waters of Damascus. But I need not tell you over again—you know. May God bless you till to-morrow and past it for ever. Mr. Kenyon brought me your note yesterday to read about the 'order in the button-hole'—ah!—or 'oh, you,' may I not re-echo? It enrages me to think of Mr. Forster; publishing too as he does, at a moment, the very sweepings of Landor's desk! Is the motive of the reticence to be looked for somewhere among the cinders?—Too bad it is. So, till to-morrow! and you shall not be 'kind' any more.
Your
E.B.B.
But how, 'a foolish comment'? Good and true rather! And I admired the writing21 ... worthy of the reeds of Jordan!
R.B. to E.B.B.
Thursday Morning.
[Post-mark, November 27, 1845.]
How are you? and Miss Bayley's visit yesterday, and Mr. K.'s to-day—(He told me he should see you this morning—and I shall pass close by, having to be in town and near you,—but only the thought will reach you and be with you—) tell me all this, dearest.
How kind Mr. Kenyon was last night and the day before! He neither wonders nor is much vexed, I dare believe—and I write now these few words to say so—My heart is set on next Thursday, remember ... and the prize of Saturday! Oh, dearest, believe for truth's sake, that I would most frankly own to any fault, any imperfection in the beginning of my love of you; in the pride and security of this present stage it has reached—I would gladly learn, by the full lights now, what an insufficient glimmer it grew from, ... but there never has been change, only development and increased knowledge and strengthened feeling—I was made and meant to look for you and wait for you and become yours for ever. God bless you, and make me thankful!
And you will give me that? What shall save me from wreck: but truly? How must I feel to you!
Yours R.B.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Monday Evening.
[Post-mark, November 27, 1845.]
Now you must not blame me—you must not. To make a promise is one thing, and to keep it, quite another: and the conclusion you see 'as from a tower.' Suppose I had an oath in heaven somewhere ... near to 'coma Berenices,' ... never to give you what you ask for! ... would not such an oath be stronger than a mere half promise such as I sent you a few hours ago? Admit that it would—and that I am not to blame for saying now ... (listen!) that I never can nor will give you this thing;—only that I will, if you please, exchange it for another thing—you understand. I too will avoid being 'assuming'; I will not pretend to be generous, no, nor 'kind.' It shall be pure merchandise or nothing at all. Therefore determine!—remembering always how our 'ars poetica,' after Horace, recommends 'dare et petere vicissim'—which is making a clatter of pedantry to take advantage of the noise ... because perhaps I ought to be ashamed to say this to you, and perhaps I am! ... yet say it none the less.
And ... less lightly ... if you have right and reason on your side, may I not have a little on mine too? And shall I not care, do you think?... Think!
Then there is another reason for me, entirely mine. You have come to me as a dream comes, as the best dreams come ... dearest—and so there is need to me of 'a sign' to know the difference between dream and vision—and that is my completest reason, my own reason—you have none like it; none. A ticket to know the horn-gate from the ivory, ... ought I not to have it? Therefore send it to me before I send you anything, and if possible by that Lewisham post which was the most frequent bringer of your letters until these last few came, and which reaches me at eight in the evening when all the world is at dinner and my solitude most certain. Everything is so still then, that I have heard the footsteps of a letter of yours ten doors off ... or more, perhaps. Now beware of imagining from this which I say, that there is a strict police for my correspondence ... (it is not so—) nor that I do not like hearing from you at any and every hour: it is so. Only I would make the smoothest and sweetest of roads for ... and you understand, and do not imagine beyond.
Tuesday evening.—What is written is written, ... all the above: and it is forbidden to me to write a word of what I could write down here ... forbidden for good reasons. So I am silent on conditions ... those being ... first ... that you never do such things again ... no, you must not and shall not.... I will not let it be: and secondly, that you try to hear the unspoken words, and understand how your gift will remain with me while I remain ... they need not be said—just as it need not have been so beautiful, for that. The beauty drops 'full fathom five' into the deep thought which covers it. So I study my Machiavelli to contrive the possibility of wearing it, without being put to the question violently by all the curiosity of all my brothers;—the questions 'how' ... 'what' ... 'why' ... put round and edgeways. They are famous, some of them, for asking questions. I say to them—'well: how many more questions?' And now ... for me—have I said a word?—have I not been obedient? And by rights and in justice, there should have been a reproach ... if there could! Because, friendship or more than friendship, Pisa or no Pisa, it was unnecessary altogether from you to me ... but I have done, and you shall not be teazed.
Wednesday.—Only ... I persist in the view of the other question. This will not do for the 'sign,' ... this, which, so far from being qualified for disproving a dream, is the beautiful image of a dream in itself ... so beautiful: and with the very shut eyelids, and the "little folding of the hands to sleep." You see at a glance it will not do. And so—
Just as one might be interrupted while telling a fairy-tale, ... in the midst of the "and so's" ... just so, I have been interrupted by the coming in of Miss Bayley, and here she has been sitting for nearly two hours, from twelve to two nearly, and I like her, do you know. Not only she talks well, which was only a thing to expect, but she seems to feel ... to have great sensibility—and her kindness to me ... kindness of manner and words and expression, all together ... quite touched me.—I did not think of her being so loveable a person. Yet it was kind and generous, her proposition about Italy; (did I tell you how she made it to me through Mr. Kenyon long ago—when I was a mere stranger to her?) the proposition to go there with me herself. It was quite a grave, earnest proposal of hers—which was one of the reasons why I could not even wish not to see her to-day. Because you see, it was a tremendous degree of experimental generosity, to think of going to Italy by sea with an invalid stranger, "seule à seule." And she was wholly in earnest, wholly. Is there not good in the world after all?
Tell me how you are, for I am not at ease about you—You were not well even yesterday, I thought. If this goes on ... but it mustn't go on—oh, it must not. May God bless us more!
Do not fancy, in the meantime, that you stay here 'too long' for any observation that can be made. In the first place there is nobody to 'observe'—everybody is out till seven, except the one or two who will not observe if I tell them not. My sisters are glad when you come, because it is a gladness of mine, ... they observe. I have a great deal of liberty, to have so many chains; we all have, in this house: and though the liberty has melancholy motives, it saves some daily torment, and I do not complain of it for one.
May God bless you! Do not forget me. Say how you are. What good can I do you with all my thoughts, when you keep unwell? See!—Facts are against fancies. As when I would not have the lamp lighted yesterday because it seemed to make it later, and you proved directly that it would not make it earlier, by getting up and going away!
Wholly and ever your
E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
[Post-mark, November 28, 1845.]22
Take it, dearest; what I am forced to think you mean—and take no more with it—for I gave all to give long ago—I am all yours—and now, mine; give me mine to be happy with!
You will have received my note of yesterday.—I am glad you are satisfied with Miss Bayley, whom I, too, thank ... that is, sympathize with, ... (not wonder at, though)—for her intention.... Well, may it all be for best—here or at Pisa, you are my blessing and life.
... How all considerate you are, you that are the kind, kind one! The post arrangement I will remember—to-day, for instance, will this reach you at 8? I shall be with you then, in thought. 'Forget you!'—What does that mean, dearest?
And I might have stayed longer and you let me go. What does that mean, also tell me? Why, I make up my mind to go, always, like a man, and praise myself as I get through it—as when one plunges into the cold water—only ... ah, that too is no more a merit than any other thing I do ... there is the reward, the last and best! Or is it the 'lure'?
I would not be ashamed of my soul if it might be shown you,—it is wholly grateful, conscious of you.
But another time, do not let me wrong myself so! Say, 'one minute more.'
On Monday?—I am much better—and, having got free from an engagement for Saturday, shall stay quietly here and think the post never intending to come—for you will not let me wait longer?
Shall I dare write down a grievance of my heart, and not offend you? Yes, trusting in the right of my love—you tell me, sweet, here in the letter, 'I do not look so well'—and sometimes, I 'look better' ... how do you know? When I first saw you—I saw your eyes—since then, you, it should appear, see mine—but I only know yours are there, and have to use that memory as if one carried dried flowers about when fairly inside the garden-enclosure. And while I resolve, and hesitate, and resolve again to complain of this—(kissing your foot ... not boldly complaining, nor rudely)—while I have this on my mind, on my heart, ever since that May morning ... can it be?
—No, nothing can be wrong now—you will never call me 'kind' again, in that sense, you promise! Nor think 'bitterly' of my kindness, that word!
Shall I see you on Monday?
God bless you my dearest—I see her now—and here and now the eyes open, wide enough, and I will kiss them—how gratefully!
Your own
R.B.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Friday.
[Post-mark, December 1, 1845.]
It comes at eight o'clock—the post says eight ... I say nearer half past eight ... it comes—and I thank you, thank you, as I can. Do you remember the purple lock of a king on which hung the fate of a city? I do! And I need not in conscience—because this one here did not come to me by treason—'ego et rex meus,' on the contrary, do fairly give and take.
I meant at first only to send you what is in the ring ... which, by the way, will not fit you I know—(not certainly in the finger which it was meant for ...) as it would not Napoleon before you—but can easily be altered to the right size.... I meant at first to send you only what was in the ring: but your fashion is best so you shall have it both ways. Now don't say a word on Monday ... nor at all. As for the ring, recollect that I am forced to feel blindfold into the outer world, and take what is nearest ... by chance, not choice ... or it might have been better—a little better—perhaps. The best of it is that it's the colour of your blue flowers. Now you will not say a word—I trust to you.
It is enough that you should have said these others, I think. Now is it just of you? isn't it hard upon me? And if the charge is true, whose fault is it, pray? I have been ashamed and vexed with myself fifty times for being so like a little girl, ... for seeming to have 'affectations'; and all in vain: 'it was stronger than I,' as the French say. And for you to complain! As if Haroun Alraschid after cutting off a head, should complain of the want of an obeisance!—Well!—I smile notwithstanding. Nobody can help smiling—both for my foolishness which is great, I confess, though somewhat exaggerated in your statement—(because if it was quite as bad as you say, you know, I never should have seen you ... and I have!) and also for yours ... because you take such a very preposterously wrong way for overcoming anybody's shyness. Do you know, I have laughed ... really laughed at your letter. No—it has not been so bad. I have seen you at every visit, as well as I could with both eyes wide open—only that by a supernatural influence they won't stay open with you as they are used to do with other people ... so now I tell you. And for the rest I promise nothing at all—as how can I, when it is quite beyond my control—and you have not improved my capabilities ... do you think you have? Why what nonsense we have come to—we, who ought to be 'talking Greek!' said Mr. Kenyon.
Yes—he came and talked of you, and told me how you had been speaking of ... me; and I have been thinking how I should have been proud of it a year ago, and how I could half scold you for it now. Ah yes—and Mr. Kenyon told me that you had spoken exaggerations—such exaggerations!—Now should there not be some scolding ... some?
But how did you expect Mr. Kenyon to 'wonder' at you, or be 'vexed' with you? That would have been strange surely. You are and always have been a chief favourite in that quarter ... appreciated, praised, loved, I think.
While I write, a letter from America is put into my hands, and having read it through with shame and confusion of face ... not able to help a smile though notwithstanding, ... I send it to you to show how you have made me behave!—to say nothing of my other offences to the kind people at Boston—and to a stray gentleman in Philadelphia who is to perform a pilgrimage next year, he says, ... to visit the Holy Land and your E.B.B. I was naughty enough to take that letter to be a circular ... for the address of various 'Europaians.' In any case ... just see how I have behaved! and if it has not been worse than ... not opening one's eyes!—Judge. Really and gravely I am ashamed—I mean as to Mr. Mathews, who has been an earnest, kind friend to me—and I do mean to behave better. I say that to prevent your scolding, you know. And think of Mr. Poe, with that great Roman justice of his (if not rather American!), dedicating a book to one and abusing one in the preface of the same. He wrote a review of me in just that spirit—the two extremes of laudation and reprehension, folded in on one another. You would have thought that it had been written by a friend and foe, each stark mad with love and hate, and writing the alternate paragraphs—a most curious production indeed.
And here I shall end. I have been waiting ... waiting for what does not come ... the ring ... sent to have the hair put in; but it won't come (now) until too late for the post, and you must hear from me before Monday ... you ought to have heard to-day. It has not been my fault—I have waited. Oh these people—who won't remember that it is possible to be out of patience! So I send you my letter now ... and what is in the paper now ... and the rest, you shall have after Monday. And you will not say a word ... not then ... not at all!—I trust you. And may God bless you.
If ever you care less for me—I do not say it in distrust of you ... I trust you wholly—but you are a man, and free to care less, ... and if ever you do ... why in that case you will destroy, burn, ... do all but send back ... enough is said for you to understand.
May God bless you. You are best to me—best ... as I see ... in the world—and so, dearest aright to
Your
E.B.B.
Finished on Saturday evening. Oh—this thread of silk—And to post!! After all you must wait till Tuesday. I have no silk within reach and shall miss the post. Do forgive me.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Saturday Evening.
This is the mere postscript to the letter I have just sent away. By a few minutes too late, comes what I have all day been waiting for, ... and besides (now it is just too late!) now I may have a skein of silk if I please, to make that knot with, ... for want of which, two locks meant for you, have been devoted to the infernal gods already ... fallen into a tangle and thrown into the fire ... and all the hair of my head might have followed, for I was losing my patience and temper fast, ... and the post to boot. So wisely I shut my letter, (after unwisely having driven everything to the last moment!)—and now I have silk to tie fast with ... to tie a 'nodus' ... 'dignus' of the celestial interposition—and a new packet shall be ready to go to you directly.
At last I remember to tell you that the first letter you had from me this week, was forgotten, (not by me) forgotten, and detained, so, from the post—a piece of carelessness which Wilson came to confess to me too frankly for me to grumble as I should have done otherwise.
For the staying longer, I did not mean to say you were wrong not to stay. In the first place you were keeping your father 'in a maze,' as you said yourself—and then, even without that, I never know what o'clock it is ... never. Mr. Kenyon tells me that I must live in a dream—which I do—time goes ... seeming to go round rather than go forward. The watch I have, broke its spring two years ago, and there I leave it in the drawer—and the clocks all round strike out of hearing, or at best, when the wind brings the sound, one upon another in a confusion. So you know more of time than I do or can.
Till Monday then! I send the 'Ricordi' to take care of the rest ... of mine. It is a touching story—and there is an impracticable nobleness from end to end in the spirit of it. How slow (to the ear and mind) that Italian rhetoric is! a language for dreamers and declaimers. Yet Dante made it for action, and Machiavelli's prose can walk and strike as well as float and faint.
The ring is smaller than I feared at first, and may perhaps—
Now you will not say a word. My excuse is that you had nothing to remember me by, while I had this and this and this and this ... how much too much!
If I could be too much
Your
E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, December 2, 1845.]
I was happy, so happy before! But I am happier and richer now. My love—no words could serve here, but there is life before us, and to the end of it the vibration now struck will extend—I will live and die with your beautiful ring, your beloved hair—comforting me, blessing me.
Let me write to-morrow—when I think on all you have been and are to me, on the wonder of it and the deliciousness, it makes the paper words that come seem vainer than ever—To-morrow I will write.
May God bless you, my own, my precious—
I am all your own
R.B.
I have thought again, and believe it will be best to select the finger you intended ... as the alteration will be simpler, I find; and one is less liable to observation and comment.
Was not that Mr. Kenyon last evening? And did he ask, or hear, or say anything?
R.B. to E.B.B.
[Post-mark, December 3, 1845.]
See, dearest, what the post brings me this minute! Now, is it not a good omen, a pleasant inconscious prophecy of what is to be? Be it well done, or badly—there are you, leading me up and onward, in his review as everywhere, at every future time! And our names will go together—be read together. In itself this is nothing to you, dear poet—but the unexpectedness, unintended significance of it has pleased me very much—does it not please you?—I thought I was to figure in that cold Quarterly all by myself, (for he writes for it)—but here you are close by me; it cannot but be for good. He has no knowledge whatever that I am even a friend of yours. Say you are pleased!
There was no writing yesterday for me—nor will there be much to-day. In some moods, you know, I turn and take a thousand new views of what you say ... and find fault with you to your surprise—at others, I rest on you, and feel all well, all best ... now, for one instance, even that phrase of the possibility 'and what is to follow,'—even that I cannot except against—I am happy, contented; too well, too prodigally blessed to be even able to murmur just sufficiently loud to get, in addition to it all, a sweetest stopping of the mouth! I will say quietly and becomingly 'Yes—I do promise you'—yet it is some solace to—No—I will not even couple the promise with an adjuration that you, at the same time, see that they care for me properly at Hanwell Asylum ... the best by all accounts: yet I feel so sure of you, so safe and confident in you! If any of it had been my work, my own ... distrust and foreboding had pursued me from the beginning; but all is yours—you crust me round with gold and jewelry like the wood of a sceptre; and why should you transfer your own work? Wood enough to choose from in the first instance, but the choice once made!... So I rest on you, for life, for death, beloved—beside you do stand, in my solemn belief, the direct miraculous gift of God to me—that is my solemn belief; may I be thankful!
I am anxious to hear from you ... when am I not?—but not before the American letter is written and sent. Is that done? And who was the visitor on Monday—and if &c. what did he remark?—And what is right or wrong with Saturday—is it to be mine?
Bless you, dearest—now and for ever—words cannot say how much I am your own.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, December 4, 1845.]
No Mr. Kenyon after all—not yesterday, not to-day; and the knock at the door belonged perhaps to the post, which brought me a kind letter from Mrs. Jameson to ask how I was, and if she might come—but she won't come on Saturday.... I shall 'provide'—she may as well (and better) come on a free day. On the other side, are you sure that Mr. Procter may not stretch out his hand and seize on Saturday (he was to dine with you, you said), or that some new engagement may not start up suddenly in the midst of it? I trust to you, in such a case, to alter our arrangement, without a second thought. Monday stands close by, remember, and there's a Saturday to follow Monday ... and I should understand at a word, or apart from a word.
Just as you understand how to 'take me with guile,' when you tell me that anything in me can have any part in making you happy ... you, who can say such words and call them 'vain words.' Ah, well! If I only knew certainly, ... more certainly than the thing may be known by either me or you, ... that nothing in me could have any part in making you unhappy, ... ah, would it not be enough ... that knowledge ... to content me, to overjoy me? but that lies too high and out of reach, you see, and one can't hope to get at it except by the ladder Jacob saw, and which an archangel helped to hide away behind the gate of Heaven afterwards.
Wednesday.—In the meantime I had a letter from you yesterday, and am promised another to-day. How ... I was going to say 'kind' and pull down the thunders ... how unkind ... will that do? ... how good you are to me—how dear you must be! Dear—dearest—if I feel that you love me, can I help it if, without any other sort of certain knowledge, the world grows lighter round me? being but a mortal woman, can I help it? no—certainly.
I comfort myself by thinking sometimes that I can at least understand you, ... comprehend you in what you are and in what you possess and combine; and that, if doing this better than others who are better otherwise than I, I am, so far, worthier of the ... I mean that to understand you is something, and that I account it something in my own favour ... mine.
Yet when you tell me that I ought to know some things, though untold, you are wrong, and speak what is impossible. My imagination sits by the roadside απεδιλος like the startled sea nymph in Æschylus, but never dares to put one unsandalled foot, unbidden, on a certain tract of ground—never takes a step there unled! and never (I write the simple truth) even as the alternative of the probability of your ceasing to care for me, have I touched (untold) on the possibility of your caring more for me ... never! That you should continue to care, was the utmost of what I saw in that direction. So, when you spoke of a 'strengthened feeling,' judge how I listened with my heart—judge!
'Luria' is very great. You will avenge him with the sympathies of the world; that, I foresee.... And for the rest, it is a magnanimity which grows and grows, and which will, of a worldly necessity, fall by its own weight at last; nothing less being possible. The scene with Tiburzio and the end of the act with its great effects, are more pathetic than professed pathos. When I come to criticise, it will be chiefly on what I take to be a little occasional flatness in the versification, which you may remove if you please, by knotting up a few lines here and there. But I shall write more of 'Luria,'—and well remember in the meanwhile, that you wanted smoothness, you said.
May God bless you. I shall have the letter to-night, I think gladly. Yes,—I thought of the greater safety from 'comment'—it is best in every way.
I lean on you and trust to you, and am always, as to one who is all to me,
Your own—