R.B. to E.B.B.
Sunday Evening.
[Post-mark, January 26, 1846.]
I will not try and write much to-night, dearest, for my head gives a little warning—and I have so much to think of!—spite of my penholder being kept back from me after all! Now, ought I to have asked for it? Or did I not seem grateful enough at the promise? This last would be a characteristic reason, seeing that I reproached myself with feeling too grateful for the 'special symbol'—the 'essential meaning' of which was already in my soul. Well then, I will—I do pray for it—next time; and I will keep it for that one yesterday and all its memories—and it shall bear witness against me, if, on the Siren's isle, I grow forgetful of Wimpole Street. And when is 'next time' to be—Wednesday or Thursday? When I look back on the strangely steady widening of my horizon—how no least interruption has occurred to visits or letters—oh, care you, sweet—care for us both!
That remark of your sister's delights me—you remember?—that the anger would not be so formidable. I have exactly the fear of encountering that, which the sense of having to deal with a ghost would induce: there's no striking at it with one's partizan. Well, God is above all! It is not my fault if it so happens that by returning my love you make me exquisitely blessed; I believe—more than hope, I am sure I should do all I ever now can do, if you were never to know it—that is, my love for you was in the first instance its own reward—if one must use such phrases—and if it were possible for that ... not anger, which is of no good, but that opposition—that adverse will—to show that your good would be attained by the—
But it would need to be shown to me. You have said thus to me—in the very last letter, indeed. But with me, or any man, the instincts of happiness develop themselves too unmistakably where there is anything like a freedom of will. The man whose heart is set on being rich or influential after the worldly fashion, may be found far enough from the attainment of either riches or influence—but he will be in the presumed way to them—pumping at the pump, if he is really anxious for water, even though the pump be dry—but not sitting still by the dusty roadside.
I believe—first of all, you—but when that is done, and I am allowed to call your heart mine,—I cannot think you would be happy if parted from me—and that belief, coming to add to my own feeling in that case. So, this will be—I trust in God.
In life, in death, I am your own, my own! My head has got well already! It is so slight a thing, that I make such an ado about! Do not reply to these bodings—they are gone—they seem absurd! All steps secured but the last, and that last the easiest! Yes—far easiest! For first you had to be created, only that; and then, in my time; and then, not in Timbuctoo but Wimpole Street, and then ... the strange hedge round the sleeping Palace keeping the world off—and then ... all was to begin, all the difficulty only begin:—and now ... see where is reached! And I kiss you, and bless you, my dearest, in earnest of the end!
E.B.B. to R.B.
Monday.
[Post-mark, January 27, 1846.]
You have had my letter and heard about the penholder. Your fancy of 'not seeming grateful enough,' is not wise enough for you, dearest; when you know that I know your common fault to be the undue magnifying of everything that comes from me, and I am always complaining of it outwardly and inwardly. That suddenly I should set about desiring you to be more grateful,—even for so great a boon as an old penholder,—would be a more astounding change than any to be sought or seen in a prime minister.
Another mistake you made concerning Henrietta and her opinion—and there's no use nor comfort in leaving you in it. Henrietta says that the 'anger would not be so formidable after all'! Poor dearest Henrietta, who trembles at the least bending of the brows ... who has less courage than I, and the same views of the future! What she referred to, was simply the infrequency of the visits. 'Why was I afraid,' she said—'where was the danger? who would be the informer?'—Well! I will not say any more. It is just natural that you, in your circumstances and associations, should be unable to see what I have seen from the beginning—only you will not hereafter reproach me, in the most secret of your thoughts, for not having told you plainly. If I could have told you with greater plainness I should blame myself (and I do not) because it is not an opinion I have, but a perception. I see, I know. The result ... the end of all ... perhaps now and then I see that too ... in the 'lucid moments' which are not the happiest for anybody. Remember, in all cases, that I shall not repent of any part of our past intercourse; and that, therefore, when the time for decision comes, you will be free to look at the question as if you saw it then for the first moment, without being hampered by considerations about 'all those yesterdays.'
For him ... he would rather see me dead at his foot than yield the point: and he will say so, and mean it, and persist in the meaning.
Do you ever wonder at me ... that I should write such things, and have written others so different? I have thought that in myself very often. Insincerity and injustice may seem the two ends, while I occupy the straight betwixt two—and I should not like you to doubt how this may be! Sometimes I have begun to show you the truth, and torn the paper; I could not. Yet now again I am borne on to tell you, ... to save you from some thoughts which you cannot help perhaps.
There has been no insincerity—nor is there injustice. I believe, I am certain, I have loved him better than the rest of his children. I have heard the fountain within the rock, and my heart has struggled in towards him through the stones of the rock ... thrust off ... dropping off ... turning in again and clinging! Knowing what is excellent in him well, loving him as my only parent left, and for himself dearly, notwithstanding that hardness and the miserable 'system' which made him appear harder still, I have loved him and been proud of him for his high qualities, for his courage and fortitude when he bore up so bravely years ago under the worldly reverses which he yet felt acutely—more than you and I could feel them—but the fortitude was admirable. Then came the trials of love—then, I was repulsed too often, ... made to suffer in the suffering of those by my side ... depressed by petty daily sadnesses and terrors, from which it is possible however for an elastic affection to rise again as past. Yet my friends used to say 'You look broken-spirited'—and it was true. In the midst, came my illness,—and when I was ill he grew gentler and let me draw nearer than ever I had done: and after that great stroke ... you know ... though that fell in the middle of a storm of emotion and sympathy on my part, which drove clearly against him, God seemed to strike our hearts together by the shock; and I was grateful to him for not saying aloud what I said to myself in my agony, 'If it had not been for you'...! And comparing my self-reproach to what I imagined his self-reproach must certainly be (for if I had loved selfishly, he had not been kind), I felt as if I could love and forgive him for two ... (I knowing that serene generous departed spirit, and seeming left to represent it) ... and I did love him better than all those left to me to love in the world here. I proved a little my affection for him, by coming to London at the risk of my life rather than diminish the comfort of his home by keeping a part of my family away from him. And afterwards for long and long he spoke to me kindly and gently, and of me affectionately and with too much praise; and God knows that I had as much joy as I imagined myself capable of again, in the sound of his footstep on the stairs, and of his voice when he prayed in this room; my best hope, as I have told him since, being, to die beneath his eyes. Love is so much to me naturally—it is, to all women! and it was so much to me to feel sure at last that he loved me—to forget all blame—to pull the weeds up from that last illusion of life:—and this, till the Pisa-business, which threw me off, far as ever, again—farther than ever—when George said 'he could not flatter me' and I dared not flatter myself. But do you believe that I never wrote what I did not feel: I never did. And I ask one kindness more ... do not notice what I have written here. Let it pass. We can alter nothing by ever so many words. After all, he is the victim. He isolates himself—and now and then he feels it ... the cold dead silence all round, which is the effect of an incredible system. If he were not stronger than most men, he could not bear it as he does. With such high qualities too!—so upright and honourable—you would esteem him, you would like him, I think. And so ... dearest ... let that be the last word.
I dare say you have asked yourself sometimes, why it was that I never managed to draw you into the house here, so that you might make your own way. Now that is one of the things impossible to me. I have not influence enough for that. George can never invite a friend of his even. Do you see? The people who do come here, come by particular license and association ... Capt. Surtees Cook being one of them. Once ... when I was in high favour too ... I asked for Mr. Kenyon to be invited to dinner—he an old college friend, and living close by and so affectionate to me always—I felt that he must be hurt by the neglect, and asked. It was in vain. Now, you see—
May God bless you always! I wrote all my spirits away in this letter yesterday, and kept it to finish to-day ... being yours every day, glad or sad, ever beloved!—
Your Ba.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, January 27, 1846.]
Why will you give me such unnecessary proofs of your goodness? Why not leave the books for me to take away, at all events? No—you must fold up, and tie round, and seal over, and be at all the pains in the world with those hands I see now. But you only threaten; say you 'shall send'—as yet, and nothing having come, I do pray you, if not too late, to save me the shame—add to the gratitude you never can now, I think ... only think, for you are a siren, and I don't know certainly to what your magic may not extend. Thus, in not so important a matter, I should have said, the day before yesterday, that no letter from you could make my heart rise within me, more than of old ... unless it should happen to be of twice the ordinary thickness ... and then there's a fear at first lest the over-running of my dealt-out measure should be just a note of Mr. Kenyon's, for instance! But yesterday the very seal began with 'Ba'—Now, always seal with that seal my letters, dearest! Do you recollect Donne's pretty lines about seals?
Quondam fessus Amor loquens Amato,
Tot et tanta loquens amica, scripsit:
Tandem et fessa manus dedit Sigillum.
And in his own English,
When love, being weary, made an end
Of kind expressions to his friend,
He writ; when hand could write no more,
He gave the seal—and so left o'er.
(By the way, what a mercy that he never noticed the jingle in posse of ending 'expressions' and beginning 'impressions.')
How your account of the actors in the 'Love's Labour Lost' amused me! I rather like, though, the notion of that steady, business-like pursuit of love under difficulties; and the sobbing proves something surely! Serjt. Talfourd says—is it not he who says it?—'All tears are not for sorrow.' I should incline to say, from my own feeling, that no tears were. They only express joy in me, or sympathy with joy—and so is it with you too, I should think.
Understand that I do not disbelieve in Mesmerism—I only object to insufficient evidence being put forward as quite irrefragable. I keep an open sense on the subject—ready to be instructed; and should have refused such testimony as Miss Martineau's if it had been adduced in support of something I firmly believed—'non tali auxilio'—indeed, so has truth been harmed, and only so, from the beginning. So, I shall read what you bid me, and learn all I can.
I am not quite so well this week—yesterday some friends came early and kept me at home—for which I seem to suffer a little; less, already, than in the morning—so I will go out and walk away the whirring ... which is all the mighty ailment. As for 'Luria' I have not looked at it since I saw you—which means, saw you in the body, because last night I saw you; as I wonder if you know!
Thursday, and again I am with you—and you will forget nothing ... how the farewell is to be returned? Ah, my dearest, sweetest Ba; how entirely I love you!
May God bless you ever—
R.
2. p.m. Your parcel arrives ... the penholder; now what shall I say? How am I to use so fine a thing even in writing to you? I will give it you again in our Isle, and meantime keep it where my other treasures are—my letters and my dear ringlet.
Thank you—all I can thank.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, January 28, 1846.]
Ever dearest—I will say, as you desire, nothing on that subject—but this strictly for myself: you engaged me to consult my own good in the keeping or breaking our engagement; not your good as it might even seem to me; much less seem to another. My only good in this world—that against which all the world goes for nothing—is to spend my life with you, and be yours. You know that when I claim anything, it is really yourself in me—you give me a right and bid me use it, and I, in fact, am most obeying you when I appear most exacting on my own account—so, in that feeling, I dare claim, once for all, and in all possible cases (except that dreadful one of your becoming worse again ... in which case I wait till life ends with both of us), I claim your promise's fulfilment—say, at the summer's end: it cannot be for your good that this state of things should continue. We can go to Italy for a year or two and be happy as day and night are long. For me, I adore you. This is all unnecessary, I feel as I write: but you will think of the main fact as ordained, granted by God, will you not, dearest?—so, not to be put in doubt ever again—then, we can go quietly thinking of after matters. Till to-morrow, and ever after, God bless my heart's own, own Ba. All my soul follows you, love—encircles you—and I live in being yours.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, January 31, 1846.]
Let it be this way, ever dearest. If in the time of fine weather, I am not ill, ... then ... not now ... you shall decide, and your decision shall be duty and desire to me, both—I will make no difficulties. Remember, in the meanwhile, that I have decided to let it be as you shall choose ... shall choose. That I love you enough to give you up 'for your good,' is proof (to myself at least) that I love you enough for any other end:—but you thought too much of me in the last letter. Do not mistake me. I believe and trust in all your words—only you are generous unawares, as other men are selfish.
More, I meant to say of this; but you moved me as usual yesterday into the sunshine, and then I am dazzled and cannot see clearly. Still I see that you love me and that I am bound to you:—and 'what more need I see,' you may ask; while I cannot help looking out to the future, to the blue ridges of the hills, to the chances of your being happy with me. Well! I am yours as you see ... and not yours to teaze you. You shall decide everything when the time comes for doing anything ... and from this to then, I do not, dearest, expect you to use 'the liberty of leaping out of the window,' unless you are sure of the house being on fire! Nobody shall push you out of the window—least of all, I.
For Italy ... you are right. We should be nearer the sun, as you say, and further from the world, as I think—out of hearing of the great storm of gossiping, when 'scirocco is loose.' Even if you liked to live altogether abroad, coming to England at intervals, it would be no sacrifice for me—and whether in Italy or England, we should have sufficient or more than sufficient means of living, without modifying by a line that 'good free life' of yours which you reasonably praise—which, if it had been necessary to modify, we must have parted, ... because I could not have borne to see you do it; though, that you once offered it for my sake, I never shall forget.
Mr. Kenyon stayed half an hour, and asked, after you went, if you had been here long. I reproached him with what they had been doing at his club (the Athenæum) in blackballing Douglas Jerrold, for want of something better to say—and he had not heard of it. There were more black than white balls, and Dickens was so enraged at the repulse of his friend that he gave in his own resignation like a privy councillor.
But the really bad news is of poor Tennyson—I forgot to tell you—I forget everything. He is seriously ill with an internal complaint and confined to his bed, as George heard from a common friend. Which does not prevent his writing a new poem—he has finished the second book of it—and it is in blank verse and a fairy tale, and called the 'University,' the university-members being all females. If George has not diluted the scheme of it with some law from the Inner Temple, I don't know what to think—it makes me open my eyes. Now isn't the world too old and fond of steam, for blank verse poems, in ever so many books, to be written on the fairies? I hope they may cure him, for the best deed they can do. He is not precisely in danger, understand—but the complaint may run into danger—so the account went.
And you? how are you? Mind to tell me. May God bless you. Is Monday or Tuesday to be our day? If it were not for Mr. Kenyon I should take courage and say Monday—but Tuesday and Saturday would do as well—would they not?
Your own
Ba.
Shall I have a letter?
R.B. to E.B.B.
Saturday.
[Post-mark, January 31, 1846.]
It is a relief to me this time to obey your wish, and reserve further remark on that subject till by and bye. And, whereas some people, I suppose, have to lash themselves up to the due point of passion, and choose the happy minutes to be as loving in as they possibly can ... (that is, in expression; the just correspondency of word to fact and feeling: for it—the love—may be very truly there, at the bottom, when it is got at, and spoken out)—quite otherwise, I do really have to guard my tongue and set a watch on my pen ... that so I may say as little as can well be likely to be excepted to by your generosity. Dearest, love means love, certainly, and adoration carries its sense with it—and so, you may have received my feeling in that shape—but when I begin to hint at the merest putting into practice one or the other profession, you 'fly out'—instead of keeping your throne. So let this letter lie awhile, till my heart is more used to it, and after some days or weeks I will find as cold and quiet a moment as I can, and by standing as far off you as I shall be able, see more—'si minus propè stes, te capiet magis.' Meanwhile, silent or speaking, I am yours to dispose of as that glove—not that hand.
I must think that Mr. Kenyon sees, and knows, and ... in his goodness ... hardly disapproves—he knows I could not avoid—escape you—for he knows, in a manner, what you are ... like your American; and, early in our intercourse, he asked me (did I tell you?) 'what I thought of his young relative'—and I considered half a second to this effect—'if he asked me what I thought of the Queen-diamond they showed me in the crown of the Czar—and I answered truly—he would not return; "then of course you mean to try and get it to keep."' So I did tell the truth in a very few words. Well, it is no matter.
I am sorry to hear of poor Tennyson's condition. The projected book—title, scheme, all of it,—that is astounding;—and fairies? If 'Thorpes and barnes, sheep-pens and dairies—this maketh that there ben no fairies'—locomotives and the broad or narrow gauge must keep the very ghosts of them away. But how the fashion of this world passes; the forms its beauty and truth take; if we have the making of such! I went last night, out of pure shame at a broken promise, to hear Miss Cushman and her sister in 'Romeo and Juliet.' The whole play goes ... horribly; 'speak' bids the Poet, and so M. Walladmir [Valdemar] moves his tongue and dispenses with his jaws. Whatever is slightly touched in, indicated, to give relief to something actually insisted upon and drawn boldly ... here, you have it gone over with an unremitting burnt-stick, till it stares black forever! Romeo goes whining about Verona by broad daylight. Yet when a schoolfellow of mine, I remember, began translating in class Virgil after this mode, 'Sic fatur—so said Æneas; lachrymans—a-crying' ... our pedagogue turned on him furiously—'D'ye think Æneas made such a noise—as you shall, presently?' How easy to conceive a boyish half-melancholy, smiling at itself.
Then Tuesday, and not Monday ... and Saturday will be the nearer afterward. I am singularly well to-day—head quite quiet—and yesterday your penholder began its influence and I wrote about half my last act. Writing is nothing, nor praise, nor blame, nor living, nor dying, but you are all my true life; May God bless you ever—
R.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Friday Evening.
[Post-mark, February 2, 1846.]
Something, you said yesterday, made me happy—'that your liking for me did not come and go'—do you remember? Because there was a letter, written at a crisis long since, in which you showed yourself awfully, as a burning mountain, and talked of 'making the most of your fire-eyes,' and of having at intervals 'deep black pits of cold water'!—and the lava of that letter has kept running down into my thoughts of you too much, until quite of late—while even yesterday I was not too well instructed to be 'happy,' you see! Do not reproach me! I would not have 'heard your enemy say so'—it was your own word! And the other long word idiosyncrasy seemed long enough to cover it; and it might have been a matter of temperament, I fancied, that a man of genius, in the mystery of his nature, should find his feelings sometimes like dumb notes in a piano ... should care for people at half past eleven on Tuesday, and on Wednesday at noon prefer a black beetle. How you frightened me with your 'fire-eyes'! 'making the most of them' too! and the 'black pits,' which gaped ... where did they gape? who could tell? Oh—but lately I have not been crossed so, of course, with those fabulous terrors—lately that horror of the burning mountain has grown more like a superstition than a rational fear!—and if I was glad ... happy ... yesterday, it was but as a tolerably sensible nervous man might be glad of a clearer moonlight, showing him that what he had half shuddered at for a sheeted ghoule, was only a white horse on the moor. Such a great white horse!—call it the 'mammoth horse'—the 'real mammoth,' this time!
Dearest, did I write you a cold letter the last time? Almost it seems so to me! the reason being that my feelings were near to overflow, and that I had to hold the cup straight to prevent the possible dropping on your purple underneath. Your letter, the letter I answered, was in my heart ... is in my heart—and all the yeses in the world would not be too many for such a letter, as I felt and feel. Also, perhaps, I gave you, at last, a merely formal distinction—and it comes to the same thing practically without any doubt! but I shrank, with a sort of instinct, from appearing (to myself, mind) to take a security from your words now (said too on an obvious impulse) for what should, would, must, depend on your deliberate wishes hereafter. You understand—you will not accuse me of over-cautiousness and the like. On the contrary, you are all things to me, ... instead of all and better than all! You have fallen like a great luminous blot on the whole leaf of the world ... of life and time ... and I can see nothing beyond you, nor wish to see it. As to all that was evil and sadness to me, I do not feel it any longer—it may be raining still, but I am in the shelter and can scarcely tell. If you could be too dear to me you would be now—but you could not—I do not believe in those supposed excesses of pure affections—God cannot be too great.
Therefore it is a conditional engagement still—all the conditions being in your hands, except the necessary one, of my health. And shall I tell you what is 'not to be put in doubt ever'?—your goodness, that is ... and every tie that binds me to you. 'Ordained, granted by God' it is, that I should owe the only happiness in my life to you, and be contented and grateful (if it were necessary) to stop with it at this present point. Still I do not—there seems no necessity yet.
May God bless you, ever dearest:—
Your own Ba.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Saturday.
[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]
Well I have your letter—and I send you the postscript to my last one, written yesterday you observe ... and being simply a postscript in some parts of it, so far it is not for an answer. Only I deny the 'flying out'—perhaps you may do it a little more ... in your moments of starry centrifugal motion.
So you think that dear Mr. Kenyon's opinion of his 'young relative'—(neither young nor his relative—not very much of either!) is to the effect that you couldn't possibly 'escape' her—? It looks like the sign of the Red Dragon, put so ... and your burning mountain is not too awful for the scenery.
Seriously ... gravely ... if it makes me three times happy that you should love me, yet I grow uneasy and even saddened when you say infatuated things such as this and this ... unless after all you mean a philosophical sarcasm on the worth of Czar diamonds. No—do not say such things! If you do, I shall end by being jealous of some ideal Czarina who must stand between you and me.... I shall think that it is not I whom you look at ... and pour cause. 'Flying out,' that would be!
And for Mr. Kenyon, I only know that I have grown the most ungrateful of human beings lately, and find myself almost glad when he does not come, certainly uncomfortable when he does—yes, really I would rather not see him at all, and when you are not here. The sense of which and the sorrow for which, turn me to a hypocrite, and make me ask why he does not come &c. ... questions which never came to my lips before ... till I am more and more ashamed and sorry. Will it end, I wonder, by my ceasing to care for any one in the world, except, except...? or is it not rather that I feel trodden down by either his too great penetration or too great unconsciousness, both being overwhelming things from him to me. From a similar cause I hate writing letters to any of my old friends—I feel as if it were the merest swindling to attempt to give the least account of myself to anybody, and when their letters come and I know that nothing very fatal has happened to them, scarcely I can read to an end afterwards through the besetting care of having to answer it all. Then I am ignoble enough to revenge myself on people for their stupidities ... which never in my life I did before nor felt the temptation to do ... and when they have a distaste for your poetry through want of understanding, I have a distaste for them ... cannot help it—and you need not say it is wrong, because I know the whole iniquity of it, persisting nevertheless. As for dear Mr. Kenyon—with whom we began, and who thinks of you as appreciatingly and admiringly as one man can think of another,—do not imagine that, if he should see anything, he can 'approve' of either your wisdom or my generosity, ... he, with his large organs of caution, and his habit of looking right and left, and round the corner a little way. Because, you know, ... if I should be ill before ... why there, is a conclusion!—but if afterward ... what? You who talk wildly of my generosity, whereas I only and most impotently tried to be generous, must see how both suppositions have their possibility. Nevertheless you are the master to run the latter risk. You have overcome ... to your loss perhaps—unless the judgment is revised. As to taking the half of my prison ... I could not even smile at that if it seemed probable ... I should recoil from your affection even under a shape so fatal to you ... dearest! No! There is a better probability before us I hope and believe—in spite of the possibility which it is impossible to deny. And now we leave this subject for the present.
Sunday.—You are 'singularly well.' You are very seldom quite well, I am afraid—yet 'Luria' seems to have done no harm this time, as you are singularly well the day after so much writing. Yet do not hurry that last act.... I won't have it for a long while yet.
Here I have been reading Carlyle upon Cromwell and he is very fine, very much himself, it seems to me, everywhere. Did Mr. Kenyon make you understand that I had said there was nothing in him but manner ... I thought he said so—and I am confident that he never heard such an opinion from me, for good or for evil, ever at all. I may have observed upon those vulgar attacks on account of the so-called mannerism, the obvious fact, that an individuality, carried into the medium, the expression, is a feature in all men of genius, as Buffon teaches ... 'Le style, c'est l'homme.' But if the whole man were style, if all Carlyleism were manner—why there would be no man, no Carlyle worth talking of. I wonder that Mr. Kenyon should misrepresent me so. Euphuisms there may be to the end of the world—affected parlances—just as a fop at heart may go without shoestrings to mimic the distractions of some great wandering soul—although that is a bad comparison, seeing that what is called Carlyle's mannerism, is not his dress, but his physiognomy—or more than that even.
But I do not forgive him for talking here against the 'ideals of poets' ... opposing their ideal by a mis-called reality, which is another sort, a baser sort, of ideal after all. He sees things in broad blazing lights—but he does not analyse them like a philosopher—do you think so? Then his praise for dumb heroic action as opposed to speech and singing, what is that—when all earnest thought, passion, belief, and their utterances, are as much actions surely as the cutting off of fifty heads by one right hand. As if Shakespeare's actions were not greater than Cromwell's!—
But I shall write no more. Once more, may God bless you.
Wholly and only
Your Ba.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Tuesday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 4, 1846.]
You ought hardly,—ought you, my Ba?—to refer to that letter or any expression in it; I had—and have, I trust—your forgiveness for what I wrote, meaning to be generous or at least just, God knows. That, and the other like exaggerations were there to serve the purpose of what you properly call a crisis. I did believe,—taking an expression, in the note that occasioned mine, in connection with an excuse which came in the postscript for not seeing me on the day previously appointed, I did fully believe that you were about to deny me admittance again unless I blotted out—not merely softened down—the past avowal. All was wrong, foolish, but from a good notion, I dare to say. And then, that particular exaggeration you bring most painfully to my mind—that does not, after all, disagree with what I said and you repeat—does it, if you will think? I said my other 'likings' (as you rightly set it down) used to 'come and go,' and that my love for you did not, and that is true; the first clause as the last of the sentence, for my sympathies are very wide and general,—always have been—and the natural problem has been the giving unity to their object, concentrating them instead of dispersing. I seem to have foretold, foreknown you in other likings of mine—now here ... when the liking 'came' ... and now elsewhere ... when as surely the liking 'went': and if they had stayed before the time would that have been a comfort to refer to? On the contrary, I am as little likely to be led by delusions as can be,—for Romeo thinks he loves Rosaline, and is excused on all hands—whereas I saw the plain truth without one mistake, and 'looked to like, if looking liking moved—and no more deep did I endart mine eye'—about which, first I was very sorry, and after rather proud—all which I seem to have told you before.—And now, when my whole heart and soul find you, and fall on you, and fix forever, I am to be dreadfully afraid the joy cannot last, seeing that
—it is so baseless a fear that no illustration will serve! Is it gone now, dearest, ever-dearest?
And as you amuse me sometimes, as now, by seeming surprised at some chance expression of a truth which is grown a veriest commonplace to me—like Charles Lamb's 'letter to an elderly man whose education had been neglected'—when he finds himself involuntarily communicating truths above the capacity and acquirements of his friend, and stops himself after this fashion—'If you look round the world, my dear Sir—for it is round!—so I will make you laugh at me, if you will, for my inordinate delight at hearing the success of your experiment with the opium. I never dared, nor shall dare inquire into your use of that—for, knowing you utterly as I do, I know you only bend to the most absolute necessity in taking more or less of it—so that increase of the quantity must mean simply increased weakness, illness—and diminution, diminished illness. And now there is diminution! Dear, dear Ba—you speak of my silly head and its ailments ... well, and what brings on the irritation? A wet day or two spent at home; and what ends it all directly?—just an hour's walk! So with me: now,—fancy me shut in a room for seven years ... it is—no, don't see, even in fancy, what is left of me then! But you, at the end; this is all the harm: I wonder ... I confirm my soul in its belief in perpetual miraculousness ... I bless God with my whole heart that it is thus with you! And so, I will not even venture to say—so superfluous it were, though with my most earnest, most loving breath (I who do love you more at every breath I draw; indeed, yes dearest,)—I will not bid you—that is, pray you—to persevere! You have all my life bound to yours—save me from my 'seven years'—and God reward you!
Your own R.
E.B.B. to R.B.
[Post-mark, February 5, 1846.]
But I did not—dear, dearest—no indeed, I did not mean any harm about the letter. I wanted to show you how you had given me pleasure—and so,—did I give you pain? was that my ingenuity? Forgive my unhappiness in it, and let it be as if it had not been. Only I will just say that what made me talk about 'the thorn in the flesh' from that letter so long, was a sort of conviction of your having put into it as much of the truth, your truth, as admitted of the ultimate purpose of it, and not the least, slightest doubt of the key you gave me to the purpose in question. And so forgive me. Why did you set about explaining, as if I were doubting you? When you said once that it 'did not come and go,'—was it not enough? enough to make me feel happy as I told you? Did I require you to write a letter like this? Now think for a moment, and know once for all, how from the beginning to these latter days and through all possible degrees of crisis, you have been to my apprehension and gratitude, the best, most consistent, most noble ... the words falter that would speak of it all. In nothing and at no moment have you—I will not say—failed to me, but spoken or acted unworthily of yourself at the highest. What have you ever been to me except too generous? Ah—if I had been only half as generous, it is true that I never could have seen you again after that first meeting—it was the straight path perhaps. But I had not courage—I shrank from the thought of it—and then ... besides ... I could not believe that your mistake was likely to last,—I concluded that I might keep my friend.
Why should any remembrance be painful to you? I do not understand. Unless indeed I should grow painful to you ... I myself!—seeing that every remembered separate thing has brought me nearer to you, and made me yours with a deeper trust and love.
And for that letter ... do you fancy that in my memory the sting is not gone from it?—and that I do not carry the thought of it, as the Roman maidens, you speak of, their cool harmless snakes, at my heart always? So let the poor letter be forgiven, for the sake of the dear letter that was burnt, forgiven by you—until you grow angry with me instead—just till then.
And that you should care so much about the opium! Then I must care, and get to do with less—at least. On the other side of your goodness and indulgence (a very little way on the other side) it might strike you as strange that I who have had no pain—no acute suffering to keep down from its angles—should need opium in any shape. But I have had restlessness till it made me almost mad: at one time I lost the power of sleeping quite—and even in the day, the continual aching sense of weakness has been intolerable—besides palpitation—as if one's life, instead of giving movement to the body, were imprisoned undiminished within it, and beating and fluttering impotently to get out, at all the doors and windows. So the medical people gave me opium—a preparation of it, called morphine, and ether—and ever since I have been calling it my amreeta draught, my elixir,—because the tranquillizing power has been wonderful. Such a nervous system I have—so irritable naturally, and so shattered by various causes, that the need has continued in a degree until now, and it would be dangerous to leave off the calming remedy, Mr. Jago says, except very slowly and gradually. But slowly and gradually something may be done—and you are to understand that I never increased upon the prescribed quantity ... prescribed in the first instance—no! Now think of my writing all this to you!—
And after all the lotus-eaters are blessed beyond the opium-eaters; and the best of lotuses are such thoughts as I know.
Dear Miss Mitford comes to-morrow, and I am not glad enough. Shall I have a letter to make me glad? She will talk, talk, talk ... and I shall be hoping all day that not a word may be talked of ... you:—a forlorn hope indeed! There's a hope for a day like Thursday which is just in the middle between a Tuesday and a Saturday!
Your head ... is it ... how is it? tell me. And consider again if it could be possible that I could ever desire to reproach you ... in what I said about the letter.
May God bless you, best and dearest. If you are the compensation blessed is the evil that fell upon me: and that, I can say before God.
Your Ba.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Friday.
[Post-mark, February 6, 1846.]
If I said you 'gave me pain' in anything, it was in the only way ever possible for you, my dearest—by giving yourself, in me, pain—being unjust to your own right and power as I feel them at my heart: and in that way, I see you will go on to the end, I getting called—in this very letter—'generous' &c. Well, let me fancy you see very, very deep into future chances and how I should behave on occasion. I shall hardly imitate you, I whose sense of the present and its claims of gratitude already is beyond expression.
All the kind explaining about the opium makes me happier. 'Slowly and gradually' what may not be done? Then see the bright weather while I write—lilacs, hawthorn, plum-trees all in bud; elders in leaf, rose-bushes with great red shoots; thrushes, whitethroats, hedge sparrows in full song—there can, let us hope, be nothing worse in store than a sharp wind, a week of it perhaps—and then comes what shall come—
And Miss Mitford yesterday—and has she fresh fears for you of my evil influence and Origenic power of 'raying out darkness' like a swart star? Why, the common sense of the world teaches that there is nothing people at fault in any faculty of expression are so intolerant of as the like infirmity in others—whether they are unconscious of, or indulgent to their own obscurity and fettered organ, the hindrance from the fettering of their neighbours' is redoubled. A man may think he is not deaf, or, at least, that you need not be so much annoyed by his deafness as you profess—but he will be quite aware, to say the least of it, when another man can't hear him; he will certainly not encourage him to stop his ears. And so with the converse; a writer who fails to make himself understood, as presumably in my case, may either believe in his heart that it is not so ... that only as much attention and previous instructedness as the case calls for, would quite avail to understand him; or he may open his eyes to the fact and be trying hard to overcome it: but on which supposition is he led to confirm another in his unintelligibility? By the proverbial tenderness of the eye with the mote for the eye with the beam? If that beam were just such another mote—then one might sympathize and feel no such inconvenience—but, because I have written a 'Sordello,' do I turn to just its double, Sordello the second, in your books, and so perforce see nothing wrong? 'No'—it is supposed—'but something as obscure in its way.' Then down goes the bond of union at once, and I stand no nearer to view your work than the veriest proprietor of one thought and the two words that express it without obscurity at all—'bricks and mortar.' Of course an artist's whole problem must be, as Carlyle wrote to me, 'the expressing with articulate clearness the thought in him'—I am almost inclined to say that clear expression should be his only work and care—for he is born, ordained, such as he is—and not born learned in putting what was born in him into words—what ever can be clearly spoken, ought to be. But 'bricks and mortar' is very easily said—and some of the thoughts in 'Sordello' not so readily even if Miss Mitford were to try her hand on them.
I look forward to a real life's work for us both. I shall do all,—under your eyes and with your hand in mine,—all I was intended to do: may but you as surely go perfecting—by continuing—the work begun so wonderfully—'a rose-tree that beareth seven-times seven'—
I am forced to dine in town to-day with an old friend—'to-morrow' always begins half the day before, like a Jewish sabbath. Did your sister tell you that I met her on the stairs last time? She did not tell you that I had almost passed by her—the eyes being still elsewhere and occupied. Now let me write out that—no—I will send the old ballad I told you of, for the strange coincidence—and it is very charming beside, is it not? Now goodbye, my sweetest, dearest—and tell me good news of yourself to-morrow, and be but half a quarter as glad to see me as I shall be blessed in seeing you. God bless you ever.
Your own R.