[5] [The flower is enclosed with the letter.]
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, August 19, 1846.]
See my one piece of available paper for the minute! Ought I to write on or wait? No, I will tell Ba at once how I love her for giving me this one more letter with its delights. ‘Finchley’—I know very well—not that I ever saw the streets, and palaces, and cathedral, with these eyes ... but in ‘Quarles’ Emblems,’ my childhood’s pet book, I well remember that an aspiring Soul,—(a squat little woman-figure with a loose gown, hair in a coil, and bare feet—) is seated on the world, a ‘terrestrial ball,’—which, that you may clearly perceive it to be our world, is somewhat parsimoniously scattered over with cities and towns—and one, the evident capital of the universe and Babylon’s despair for size,—occupying as it does a tract quite equal to all Europe’s due share on the hemisphere, is marked ‘Finchley’—Do you recognize? Yet, if you will have it only the pretty village with the fields you describe so perfectly, I accept the sweetness and give up the glory, and your Finchley is mine for ever, you dearest—whom I see in the house, and in the carriage ... but how is it you escaped the rain, Ba? Oh, it did not rain till later, now I think a little. Those are indeed strange circumstances ... and the ‘independent ministry’ at the end, seems hard to account for ... or, why hard? Well, this is not hard to feel and know, that it is perfect joy to hear you propose such travels and adventures—Greece with you, Egypt with you! Will you please and tell me ... (not now, but whenever your conscience prompts you on the recurrence of that notable objection, if Miss Campbell’s desirableness is to recur) ... what other woman in the whole world and Finchley, would propose to go to Egypt instead of Belgravia? Do our tastes coincide or no? This is putting all on the lowest possible ground ... setting love aside even, to Miss Mitford’s heart’s fullest content; if I were to choose among women, without love to give or take, and only for other advantages, do you think any advantage would compete with this single one,—‘she will feel happy in travelling with you to a distance.’ Love alters the scale, overbalances everything—at the beginning I fancied you could not leave England, you know. But it singularly affects my imagination, such a life with you,—led for the world, I hope, all the more effectually for being not led in the world. If their ways are not to be ours, all is better at a distance, and so I have put this down as, surely, one palpable, unmistakable advantage even you must confess I shall gain in marrying you—(I may only love Ba’s eyes and mouth in a sort of fearful secrecy so far as words go ... she stops all speech on that subject!)
Yes indeed, Ba, I always felt that ‘Cyprus wine’ poem fill my heart with unutterable desires to you. There is so much of you in it. Observe, I do no foolish injustice in criticisms ... I quite understand a charm beside the charm the world can see. Some of your pansies are entirely beautiful in themselves.... I can set them before the visitors of a flower-show and bid all pronounce on them—others, beside their beauty, come to me as this dear one, in a letter, with a story of the plucking, with a sense of the fingers that held it. Bless you, ever dearest, dear beyond words,—you have given me already in this year and a half the entirest faith and purest kindness my heart can comprehend. Do lovers ‘abuse the beloved object’—‘try to shake off their chains’ &c. &c.? Mine is not love then! No one minute or moment of your life with me could have been other than it was without seeming less dear, less perfect in my memory—and for all, God reward you.
To-morrow, Thursday! And to-night I will warily speak of not having seen you.
Your own.
Friday.
[Post-mark, August 21, 1846.]
Dearest, this is to be a brief letter, though my heart shall find room in whatever goes to you. Yesterday cost us nothing—no observation was made: we were in all security notwithstanding the forebodings on either side. May they find such an end in circumstances of still more consequence. Dearest, your flowers are beautiful beyond their beauty of yesterday which I praised—they think themselves still in the garden; we have done them no sort of wrong. What a luring thought you leave with me in the flowers! How I look at them as a sign of you, left behind—your footstep in the ground! It has been so from the beginning. And yet sometimes you try to prove that you are not always good. You!
If you are not good, it is because you are best. I will admit so much.
Oh, to look back! It is so wonderful to me to look back on my life and my old philosophy of life, made of the necessities of sorrow and the resolution to attain to something better than a perpetual moaning and complaint,—to that state of neutralized emotion to which I did attain—that serenity which meant the failure of hope! Can I look back to such things, and not thank you next to God? For you, who had the power, to stoop to having the will,—is it not worthy of thanks? So I thank you and love you and shall always, however it may be hereafter. I could not feel otherwise to you, I think, than by my feeling at this moment.
How Papa has startled me. He came in while I was writing ... (I shut the writing-case as he walked over the floor—) and then, after the usual talk of the weather, and how the nights ‘were growing cold,’ ... he said suddenly ... looking to the table ... ‘What a beautiful colour those little blue flowers have—’ Calling them just so, ... ‘little blue flowers.’ I could scarcely answer I was so frightened—but he observed nothing and turned and left the room with his favourite enquiry pour rire, as to whether he ‘could do anything for me in the City.’
Do anything for me in the City! Well—do you do something for me, by thinking of me and loving me, Robert. Dear you are, never to be tired of me, with so much reason for it as I know. May God bless you, very dear!—and ever dearest! I am your own too entirely to need to say so.
Ba.
Friday.
[Post-mark, August 21, 1846.]
I think—now that the week is over with its opportunities,—and now that no selfish complaining can take advantage of your goodness,—that I will ask you how I feel, do you suppose, without my proper quantity of ‘morphine’? May I call you my morphine?
And speaking of ‘proper quantities’—there were some remarks of yours which I altogether acquiesced in, yesterday, about a humiliating dependence in money-matters; though I should be the first to except myself from feeling buite with the world there—I have told you, indeed,—but my case is not everybody’s. I hate being master, and alone, and absolute disposer in points where real love will save me the trouble ... because there are infinitely more and greater points where the solitary action and will, with their responsibility, cannot be avoided. I suppose that is Goethe’s meaning when he says every man has liberty enough—political liberty and social: so that when they let him write ‘Faust’ after his own fashion, he does not mind how they dispose of his money, or even limit his own footsteps. Ah,—but there are the good thousands all round who don’t want to write ‘Fausts,’ and only have money to spend and walks to take, and how do they like such an arrangement? Moreover, I should be perhaps more refractory than anybody, if what I cheerfully agree to, as happening to take my fancy, were forced on me, as the only reasonable course. All men ought to be independent, whatever Carlyle may say. And so, too, I like being alone, myself—but I should be sorry to see the ordinary friends I have, live alone. Do you understand all this, Ba? Will you make me say it, in your mind, intelligibly? And then will you say still more of your own till the true thing is completely said? And, after all, will you kiss me?’
As I asked you yesterday ... because of a most foolish, thoughtless allusion,—which I only trust you never noticed ... do not you allude to it, not even to forgive me, dearest, dearest. I would rather be unforgiven than pain you afresh to do it ... but perhaps you did not notice my silly expression after all.... I wished your dear hands before my eyes, I know! Still you would know it was only thoughtlessness.
All this sad morning the blackness has been quite enough to justify our fire ... we have had one there two or three days. But now the sun comes out—and I will hope you follow him,—after Mr. Kenyon’s visit? That is to be I think!
I never write anything bearable, even for me, on these days when no letter from you leads me on phrase by phrase ... I am thrown too completely on the general feelings—‘Do you love Ba?—then tell her that!’ Yes, indeed! It is easier to leave all the love untold, having to speak for the moment of Finchley only! Finchley,—the cottage,—Ba entering it—Flush following her ... now I come to something I wanted to say! In the paper, this morning, is a paragraph about the bold villainy of dog-stealers. There is an ‘organised society’ of these fellows, and they seize and convey away everybody’s Flushes, ‘if such a one ever were,’ as Iago rhymes of his perfect wife. So friend Flush must go his high ways only, and keep out of alleys and dark corners: beside in Pisa, he must guard the house. In earnest, I warn you, Ba!
Now tell me—will there be any impediment to Tuesday?
I think I will go out into this sunshine while it lasts. I am very well considering there are three days to wait, but a walk will do no harm,—nor will I.
All speech to you shall be ever simple, simplest. I can only love you and say so,—and I do love you, best beloved!
Your own, very own.
Friday Evening.
[Post-mark, August 22, 1846.]
Can I be as good for you as morphine is for me, I wonder ... even at the cost of being as bad also? Can’t you leave me off without risking your life,—nor go on with me without running the hazards of all poison. Ah!—it will not do, so. The figure exceeds me, let it be ever so fatal. I may not be your morphine, even if I shall be your Ba!—you see!
You are my prophet though, in a few things. For instance, Mr. Kenyon came to-day, and sate here I really believe two hours, talking of poor Papa ... (oh! not of us, my prophet!) and at length, of the Pyrenees and of Switzerland, and of the characteristics of mountain scenery—full of interest it all was, and I thought (while he talked) that when you and I had done with the crocodiles, we might look for a chamois or two. If I ‘drive,’ I shall drive that way, I think still ... that is, ever since four o’clock, I have thought. Mr. Kenyon said ... ‘You had a visitor yesterday!’ ‘Yes’ said I—‘Mr. Browning came.’ ‘You mean that he actually did come, through that pouring rain! Well—he told me he was coming: but when I saw the rain, I imagined it to be out of the question.’ Just observe his subtlety. Imagining that you did not come yesterday he concluded of course that you would come to-day,—and straightway hurried here himself! Moreover he seems to me to have resolved on never again leaving London! Because Mr. Eagles goes to the seaside instead of to the Quantock hills, Mr. Kenyon has written to Landor a proposition toward a general renouncement of the adventure. Quite cross I felt, to hear of it! And it doesn’t unruffle me to be told, even that he goes to Richmond on Tuesday and sleeps there and spends the Wednesday. Nothing can unruffle me. So tiresome it is! Then I am provoked a little by the news he brought me of ‘Miss Martineau’s leaving the Lakes for a month or two’—seeing that if she leaves the Lakes, it is for London—there are nets on all sides of us. I am under a promise to see her, and I shrink both from herself and her consequences. Now, is it not tiresome? Those are coming, and these are not going away. The hunters are upon us ... and where we run, we run into the nets.
Dearest, I have been considering one thing, and do you consider whether, if we do achieve this peculiar madness of going to Italy, we should take any books, and what they should be. A few books of the small editions would be desirable perhaps—and then it were well for us to arrange it so that we should not take duplicates, and that the possession of the duodecimo should ‘have the preference’ ... do you understand? Also, this arrangement being made, and the time approaching, I had better perhaps send you my part of the books, so as to save the difficulty of taking more packets than absolutely were necessary, from this house. It will be very difficult to remove things without exciting observation—and my sisters must not observe. The consequences would be frightful if they were suspected of knowing; and, poor things, I could not drive them into acting a part.
My own beloved, when my courage seems to bend and break, I turn to you and look at you ... as men see visions! It is enough, always. Did you ever give me pain by a purpose of yours?—do you not rather keep me from all pain?—do we blame the wind that breathes gently, because a reed or a weed trembles in it? I could not feel much pain while sitting near you, I think—unless you suffered a little, ... or looked as if you did not love me. And that was not at least yesterday.
May God bless you dearest, ever dearest.
I am your own.
Say how your mother is—and how you are. Don’t neglect this.
Saturday.
[Post-mark, August 22, 1846.]
Your first note reached me at six o’clock yesterday ... did the dear living spirit inside help it along in spite of all the post’s hindrances? And this second comes duly. When you know I am most at a loss how to thank you, invariably you begin thanking me! Is that because of my own practice of saying a foolish thing and then, to cover it, asking you to kiss me? I think I will tell you now what that foolish thing was,—lest you, missing it, should go hunting and find worse, and far worse. I will just remind you, that on your enumerating your brothers and sisters, I said without a moment’s thought ‘so, you are seven’!... And you know how Wordsworth applied that phrase ... and in the sudden fear of wounding dearest Ba, I took such refuge for myself, rather than her! Will you kiss me now, my own love? And say nothing, but let it die away here, this stupidity of mine.
I hardly conceive what Mr. Kenyon means ... except perhaps a sort of general exhortation to take care, and—I mean, if he came for the purpose of catching me only,—he ought either to know or not know, keep silence or speak, approve or condemn ... and to do neither being so easy, his own cautiousness would keep him away, I should have thought.
About your books, you speak altogether wisely: in this first visit to Italy we had better take only enough to live upon,—travelling books,—and return for the rest. And so with everything else. I shall put papers &c. into a room and turn the key on them and my death’s heads—because when we come back (think of you and me ... why, we shall walk arm in arm,—would Flush object to carry an umbrella in his mouth? And so let Lough cut us in marble, all three!)—well, when we come back, all can be done leisurely and considerately. And then, Greece, Egypt, Syria, the Chamois-country, as Ba pleases!
Ba, Lord Byron is altogether in my affection again ... I have read on to the end, and am quite sure of the great qualities which the last ten or fifteen years had partially obscured. Only a little longer life and all would have been gloriously right again. I read this book of Moore’s too long ago: but I always retained my first feeling for Byron in many respects ... the interest in the places he had visited, in relics of him. I would at any time have gone to Finchley to see a curl of his hair or one of his gloves, I am sure—while Heaven knows that I could not get up enthusiasm enough to cross the room if at the other end of it all Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey were condensed into the little China bottle yonder, after the Rosicrucian fashion ... they seem to ‘have their reward’ and want nobody’s love or faith. Just one of those trenchant opinions which I found fault with Byron for uttering,—as ‘proving nothing’! But telling a weakness to Ba is not telling it to ‘the world,’ as poor authors phrase it!
By the way, Chorley has written another very kind paper, in that little journal of to-day, ‘Colombe’s Birthday’—I have only glanced at it however. See his goodwill: I will bring it on Tuesday, if you please in goodness. I was not quite so well ... (there is the bare truth ...) this morning early—but the little there was to go, has gone, and I am about to go out. My mother continues indisposed. The connection between our ailings is no fanciful one. A few weeks ago when my medical adviser was speaking about the pain and its cause ... my mother sitting by me ... he exclaimed ‘Why, has anybody to search far for a cause of whatever nervous disorder you may suffer from, when there sits your mother ... whom you so absolutely resemble ... I can trace every feature &c. &c.’ To which I did not answer, ‘And will anybody wonder that the said disorder flies away, when there sits my Ba, whom I so thoroughly adore.’
Yes, there you sit, Ba!
And here I kiss you, best beloved,—my very own as I am your own—
Saturday.
[Post-mark, August 22, 1846.]
I begin to write before one this morning, with the high resolve that you shall have a letter on Sunday, to-morrow, at least,—it shall be put into the post so precisely at the right hour. At two I am going out in the carriage to Mr. Boyd’s and other places,—and dining duties are to be performed before then, and before now I have had a visitor. Guess whom—Mrs. Jameson. So I am on a ‘narrow neck of land’ ... such as Wesley wrote hymns about; ... and stans in pede uno on it—can make for you but a hurried letter.
She came in with a questioning face, and after wondering to find me visible so soon, plunged into the centre of the question and asked ‘what was settled ... what I was doing about Italy.—’ ‘Just nothing,’ I told her. ‘She found me as she left me, able to say no word.’
‘But what are you going to do—’ throwing herself back in the chair with a sudden—‘but oh, I must not enquire.’
I went on to say that ‘in the first place my going would not take place till quite the end of September if so soon,—that I had determined to make no premature fuss,—and that, for the actual present, nothing was either to be done or said.
‘Very sudden then, it is to be. In fact, there is only an elopement for you—’ she observed laughing.
So I was obliged to laugh.
(But, dearest, nobody will use such a word surely to the event. We shall be in such an obvious exercise of Right by Daylight—surely nobody will use such a word.)
I talked of Mr. Kenyon,—how he had been with me yesterday and brought the mountains of the Earth into my room—‘which was almost too much,’ I said, ‘for a prisoner.’ ‘Yes—but if you go to Italy....’
‘But Mr. Kenyon thinks I shall not. In his opinion, my case is desperate.’
‘But I tell you that it is not. Nobody’s case is desperate when the will is not at fault. And a woman’s will when she wills thoroughly as I hope you do, is strong enough to overcome. When I hear people say that circumstances are against them, I always retort, ... you mean that your will is not with you! I believe in the will—I have faith in it.’
There is an oracle for us, to remember for good! She goes to Paris, she says, with her niece, between the seventh and tenth of September,—and after a few days at Paris she goes to Orleans for the cathedral’s sake—but what follows is doubtful ... Italy is doubtful. Only that my opinion is, as I told her, that if Italy is doubtful here in London, at Orleans, when she gets there, it will be certain. She will not resist the attraction towards the South. She looked at me all the while she told me this ... looked into my eyes, like a Diviner.
On Monday morning she comes to see me again. It is all painful, or rather unpleasant. One should not use strong words out of place, and there will remain too much use for this. How I teaze you now!
Believe me, through it all, that when I think of the very worst of the future, I love you the best, and feel most certain of never hesitating. As long as you choose to have me, my beloved, I have chosen—I am yours already—
and your own always—
Ba.
Sunday Morning.
[Post-mark, August 24, 1846.]
But dearest—Did you not understand that I understood? I know your words better than you think, you see. Were you afraid to trust me to give a chase to them in my recollection, lest I should fall blindly upon some ‘Secret Sin’ of yours? a wild boar, instead of a poor little coney belonging to the rocks of my desolation?—such as it was before you made the yellow furze grow everywhere on it? Now, it is like me for wickedness, to begin talking of your ‘Secret Sins,’ just by this opportunity. You overcome me with goodness—there’s the real truth, and the whole of it.
While I am writing, comes in Arabel with such a face. My brother had been talking, talking of me. Stormie suddenly touched her and said—‘Is it true that there is an engagement between Mr. Browning and Ba—?’ She was taken unaware, but had just power to say ‘You had better ask them, if you want to know. What nonsense, Storm.’ ‘Well,’ he resumed, ‘I’ll ask Ba when I go up-stairs.’ George was by, looking as grave as if antedating his judgeship. Think how frightened I was, Robert ... expecting them up-stairs every minute,—for all my brothers come here on Sunday, all together. But they came, and not a single word was said—not on that subject, and I talked on every other in a sort of hurried way—I was so frightened.
Saturday Mr. Boyd and I talked on it for two hours nearly, he would not let me go with his kindness. Nothing, he said, would make him gladder than our having gone, and escaped the storms. In fact, what with affection for me, and disaffection in other directions, he thinks of nothing besides, I do believe. He only wishes that he had known last year, in order to exhort me properly. The very triumph of reason and righteousness, he considers the whole affair. But I told you what Mr. Boyd is—dear, poor Mr. Boyd! Talking such pure childishness sometimes, in such pure Attic—yet one of the very most upright men, after all, that I ever dreamt of—one of the men born shepherds—with a crook in the hand, instead of the metaphorical ‘silver spoon in the mouth.’ Good, dear Mr. Boyd,—I am very grateful to him for his goodness to me just now. I assure you that he takes us up exactly as if we were Ossian and Macpherson, or a criticism of Porson’s, or a new chapter of Bentley on Phalaris. By the way, do you believe in Ossian? Let me be properly prepared for that question.
But I have a question for you of my own. Listen to me, my Famous in Council, and give me back words of wisdom. A long, long while ago, nearly a year since perhaps, I wrote to the Blackwoods of Edinburgh to mention my new ‘Prometheus,’ and to ask if they would care to use it in their magazine, that, and verses more my own; whether they would care to have them at the usual magazine terms—I had some lyrics by me, and people have constantly advised me to print in Blackwood, with the prospect of republishing in the independent form. You get at the public so, and are paid for your poems instead of paying for them. Did I tell you all this before—and about my having written the enquiry? At any rate, no reply came—I concluded that Mr. Blackwood did not think it worth while to write, and eschewed the poems—and the subject passed from my thoughts till last night. Then came a very civil note. The authorities receiving nothing from me, were afraid that their answer to my letter had not reached me, and therefore wrote again. They would ‘like to see’ my ‘Prometheus’ though apprehensive of its being unfit for the Magazine—but particularly desire to have all manner of lyrics, whatever I have by me. Now, what do you think? What shall I do? Would it not be well to let this door between us and Blackwood stand open. One is not in the worst company there—they pay well,—and you have the opportunity of standing face to face with the public at any moment—without hindering the solemner interviews. When we are in Italy, particularly...! Do you see? Tell me your thoughts.
Since I began this letter, I have been to the Scotch Church in our neighbourhood—and it has all been in vain—I could not stay. We heard that a French minister, a M. Alphonse Monod of Montauban, was to preach at three o’clock, in French—and counting on a small congregation, and Arabel (through a knowledge of the localities) encouraging me with the prospect of sitting close to the door, and retiring back into the entrance-hall when the singing began, so as to escape that excitement—I agreed to make the trial, and she and I set out in a cab from the cab-stand hard by ... to which we walked. But the church was filling, obviously filling, as we arrived ... and grew fuller and fuller. We went in and came out again, and I sate down on the stairs—and the people came faster and faster, and I could not keep the tears out of my eyes to begin with. One gets nervous among all these people if a straw stirs. So Arabel after due observations on every side, decided that it would be too much of a congregation for me, and that I had better go home to Flush—(poor Flush having been left at home in a state of absolute despair). She therefore put me into a cab and sent me to Wimpole Street, and stayed behind herself to hear M. Monod—there’s my adventure to-day. When I opened my door on my return, Flush threw himself upon me with a most ecstatical agony, and for full ten minutes did not cease jumping and kissing my hands—he thought he had lost me for certain, this time. Oh! and you warn me against the danger of losing him. Indeed I take care and take thought too—those ‘organised banditti’ are not merely banditti de comedie—they are a dreadful reality. Did I not tell you once that they had announced to me that I should not have Flush back the next time, for less than ten guineas? But you will let him come with us to Italy, instead—will you not, dear, dearest? in good earnest, will you not? Because, if I leave him behind, he will be teazed for my sins in this house—or I could not be sure of the reverse of it. And even if he escaped that fate, consider how he would break his heart about me. Dogs pine to death sometimes—and if ever a dog loved a man, or a woman, Flush loves me. But you say that he shall keep the house at Pisa—and you mean it, I hope and I think?—you are in earnest. May God bless you,—so, I say my prayers, though I missed the Church. To-morrow, comes my letter ... come my two letters! the happy Monday! The happier Tuesday, if on Tuesday comes the writer of the letters!
His very own Ba.
Sunday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, August 24, 1846.]
This time, they brought me your letter at six o’clock yesterday evening: was I startled, or no, do you think, as I received it? But all proved right, and kind as ever, or kinder. By the post-mark, I see you did go out. Can you care in this way for my disappointments and remedy them? If I did not love you, how I would begin now! Every day shows me more to love in you, dearest, and I open my arms as wide as I can ... ‘incomprehensible’ Ba, as Donne would say! Also he would say much better things, however.
What a visitation! Miss Martineau is the more formidable friend, however—Mrs. Jameson will be contented with a little confidence, you see, and ask no questions—but I doubt if you arrange matters so easily with the new-comer. Because no great delicacy can be kept alive with all that conceit—and such conceit! A lady told me a few weeks ago that she had seen a letter in which Miss M. gave as her reason for not undertaking then, during the London season, this very journey which empty London is to benefit from now, ‘that at such a time she should be mobbed to death’: whereupon the lady went on to comment, ‘Miss M. little knows what London is, and how many nearly as notable objects may be found to divert its truculence from herself’—Tom Thumb, and Ibrahim Pacha, to wit.
Why do you suspect that you ‘teaze’ me when you say ‘there will remain too much use for the word “painful”’? Do you not know more of me by this time, my own Ba? When I have spoken of the probable happiness of our future life—of the chances in our favour from a community of tastes and feelings,—I have really done it on your account, not mine. I very well know that there would be an exquisite, secret happiness through pain with you, or for you—but it is not for me to insist on that, with that divine diffidence in your own worth which meets me wherever I turn to approach you, and puts me so gently aside ... so I rather retire and content myself with occupying the ground you do concede ... and since you will only hear of my being happy in the obvious, ordinary way, I tell you, with perfect truth, that you, and only you, can make me thus—that only you, of all women, look in the direction that I look, and feel as I feel, and live for the ends of my life; and beside that, see with my eyes the most natural and immediate way of reaching them, through a simple life, retirements from the world here (not from the real world), travel, and the rest. But all the while I know ... do not you know, Ba? ... that the joy’s essence is in the life with you, for the sake of you, not of the mere vulgar happiness; and that if any of our calculations should fail, it will be a surprise, a delight, a pride to me to take the new taste you shall prescribe, or leave the old one you forbid. My life being yours, what matters the change which you effect in it?
Here, you mean not even so much as this by your ‘painful’—‘Elopement’! Let them call it ‘felony’ or ‘burglary’—so long as they don’t go to church with us, and propose my health after breakfast! Now you fancy this a gratuitous piece of impertinence, do you not, Ba? You are wrong, sweet: I speak from directest experience—having dreamed, the night before last, that we were married, and that on adjourning to the house of a friend of mine, his brother, a young fop I know slightly, made a speech, about a certain desk or dressing-case, which he ended by presenting to me in the name of the house! Whereto I replied in a strain of the most alarming fluency ( ... all in the dream, I need not tell you)—‘and then I woke.’ Oh can I have smiled, higher up in the letter, at Miss Martineau’s over-excitability on the subject of ‘mobbing’ here? The greatest coward is the wisest man ... even the suspicion of such mobs ought to keep people at their lakes, or send them to their Pisas.
By the way, Byron speaks of plucking oranges in his garden at Pisa ... I saw just a courtyard with a high wall—which may have been a garden ... but a gloomier one than the palace, even, warrants. They have painted the front fresh staring yellow and changed its name ... there being another Casa Lanfranchi on the other side of the Arno.
Now I will kiss you, dearest: used you to divine that at the very beginning, I have sometimes shortened the visit in order to arrive at the time of taking your hand?
You will write to me to-night, I think—Tuesday is our day, remember. May God bless you, my very very dearest—
Your R.
That sonnet will not turn up—it is neither in Vasari, nor Dolce, nor Castiglione ... probably in Richardson’s ‘Painting’ which somebody has borrowed—but I will find it yet, knowing that it must be near at hand.
Monday Morning.
[Post-mark, August 24, 1846.]
My own dearest, let me say the most urgent thing first. You hear these suspicions of your brothers. Will you consider if, during this next month, we do not risk too much in seeing each other as usual? We risk everything ... and what do we gain, in the face of that? I can learn no more about you, be taught no new belief in your absolute peerlessness—I have taken my place at your feet for ever: all my use of the visits is, therefore, the perfect delight of them ... and to hazard a whole life of such delight for the want of self-denial during a little month,—that would be horrible. I altogether sympathise with your brothers’ impatience, or curiosity, or anxiety, or ‘graveness’—and am prepared for their increasing and growing to heights difficult or impossible to be borne. But do you not think we may avoid compelling any premature crisis of this kind? I am guided by your feelings, as I seem to perceive them, in this matter; the harm to be apprehended is through the harm to them—to your brothers. If they determine on avowedly knowing what we intend, I do not see which to fear most; the tacit acquiescence in our scheme which may draw down a vengeance on them without doing us the least good,—or the open opposition which would bring about just so much additional misfortune. I know, now, your perfect adequacy to any pain and danger you will incur for our love’s sake—I believe in you as you would have me believe: but give yourself to me, dearest dearest Ba, the entire creature you are, and not a lacerated thing only reaching my arms to sink there. Perhaps this is all a sudden fancy, not justified by circumstances, arising from my ignorance of the characters of those I talk about; that is for you to decide—your least word reassures me, as always. But I fear much for you, to make up, perhaps, for there being nothing else in the world fit to fear: I exclude direct visitations of God, which cannot be feared, after all—dreadful dooms to which we should bow. But the ‘fear’ proper, means with me an apprehension that, with all my best effort, it may be unable to avert some misfortune ... the effort going on all the time: and this is a real effort, dearest Ba, this letter: consider it thus. I will (if possible) send it to town, so as to reach you earlier and allow you to write one line in reply. You have heard all I can say ... say you, shall I come to-morrow? If you think it advisable, I will come and be most happy.
Another thing: you see your excitement about the church and the crowd.... My own love, are you able,—with all that great, wonderful heart of yours,—to bear the railway fatigues, and the entering and departure from Paris and Orleans and the other cities and towns? Would not the long sea-voyage be infinitely better, if a little dearer? Or what can be dear if it prevents all that risk, or rather certainty, of excitement and fatigue? You see, the packet sails on the 30th September and the 15th October. As three of us go, they would probably make some reduction in price. Ah, even here, I must smile ... will you affirm that ever an approximation to a doubt crossed your mind about Flush? I think your plans with respect to ‘Blackwood’ most excellent—I see many advantages.
Here is the carriage for my sister, who is going to stay in town at the Arnoulds’ for a week,—with Mrs. A. in it to fetch her. I shall give this letter to be put in the post—I have all to say, but the very essential is said—understand me, my best, only love, and forgive my undue alarm, for the sake of the love that prompts it. Write the one line ... do not let me do myself wrong by my anxiety—if I may come, let me! Bless you, Ba.
Monday Evening.
[Post-mark, August 25, 1846.]
Dearest, how you frightened me with the sight of your early letter! But it is only your wisdom,—which by this time should scarcely startle me,—there’s a compliment, to begin with, you see, in change for all the praises; ... my ‘peerlessness’ (!!!) being settled like the Corn Law repeal!—oh, you want no more evidence of it, not you! (poor blind you!) and the other witnesses are bidden to ‘stand down’—‘I may smile even now’ ... as you say quoad Flush, ... smile at your certainty as you smile at my doubt. Will you let me smile, and not call it a peerless insolence, or ingratitude,—dearest you?
For dearest you are, and best in the world, ... it all comes to that, ... and considerate for me always: and at once I agree with you that for this interval it will be wise for us to set the visits, ... ‘our days’ ... far apart, ... nearly a week apart, perhaps, so as to escape the dismal evils we apprehend. I agree in all you say—in all. At the same time, the cloud has passed for the present—nothing has been said more, and not a word to me; and nobody appears out of humour with me. They will be displeased of course, in the first movement ... we must expect that ... they will be vexed at the occasion given to conversation and so on. But it will be a passing feeling, and their hearts and their knowledge of circumstances may be trusted to justify me thoroughly. I do not fear offending them—there is no room for fear. At this point of the business too, you place the alternative rightly—their approbation or their disapprobation is equally to be escaped from. Also, we may be certain that they would press the applying for permission—and I might perhaps, in the storm excited, among so many opinions and feelings, fail to myself and you, through weakness of the body. Not of the Will! And for my affections and my conscience, they turn to you—and untremblingly turn.
Will you come on Wednesday rather than Tuesday then? It is only one day later than we meant at first, but it nearly completes a week of separation; and we can then go to next week for the next day. Also, on Wednesday we secure Mr. Kenyon’s absence. He will be still at Richmond.
Your letter which startled me by coming early, yet came too late for you to receive the answer to it to-night. But I will send it to the post to-night; and I write hurriedly to be in time for that end.
My own beloved, you shall not be uneasy on my account.—I send you foolishnesses and you are daunted by them—but see! What affects me in those churches and chapels is something different, quite different, from railroad noises and the like. You do not understand, and I never explained, ... you could not understand—but the music, the sight of the people, the old tunes of hymns ... all these things seem to suffocate my very soul with the sense of the past, past days, when there was one beside me who is not here now—I am upset, overwhelmed with it all. I think I should have been quite foolishly, hysterically ill yesterday if I had persisted in staying. Next Sunday I shall go to the vestry, and see nobody, and get over it by degrees.
Well—but for the sea-voyage, it seems to me that the great thing for us to ascertain is the precise expense. I should not at all mind going by sea, only that I fear the expense, and also that it is necessary to take our passages some time before, ... and then, if anything happened ... I mean any little thing ... an obstacle for a day or two! Consider our circumstances.
I shall write again perhaps. Do not rely, though, on my writing. Perhaps I shall write. I shall think of your goodness certainly! May God bless you, dearest beloved, I love, love you! I cannot be more
Your own.
Don’t forget to bring the paper on ‘Colombe’s Birthday,’—and say particularly how you are—and how your mother is. In such haste I write!—
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, August 25, 1846.]
When your letter came, my love, I could have easily borne the over-ruling its objections to a visit to-day, for all my cautious philosophy! But it seems best arranged as at present ... indeed it must be best, if you agree. To-morrow repays me: nor is very long to wait!
I will only write briefly because I want to go to Town, (since there is nothing better practicable), and enquire precisely about that steamboat and the prices. I see that one may go to Trieste, a much greater journey, for ‘£12 and £15,’ according to Mr. Waghorn’s bill. Besides, the advertisement speaks of the ‘economy’ of this way—and certainly under ordinary circumstances anybody would prefer the river-voyage with its picturesqueness. There is a long account, in the paper to-day, of the earthquakes in Tuscany—which have really been formidable enough to keep away the travelling English for the next month or two—whole villages were overthrown, Leghorn has suffered considerably, the inhabitants bivouac outside the walls—and at Pisa the roof of a church fell in ... also the villas in the vicinity have been damaged. Do you fear, dearest? If you do not,—I fear that the eligibility of Pisa as our place of abode is only doubled and tripled by all this. Think; there is a new lake risen, just by! and great puffs of sulphureous smoke came up through chinks in the plains. How do these wonders affect you?
You asked me about Ossian—now here is truth—the first book I ever bought in my life was Ossian ... it is now in the next room. And years before that, the first composition I ever was guilty of was something in imitation of Ossian, whom I had not read, but conceived, through two or three scraps in other books—I never can recollect not writing rhymes ... but I knew they were nonsense even then; this, however, I thought exceedingly well of, and laid up for posterity under the cushion of a great arm-chair. ‘And now my soul is satisfied’—so said one man after killing another, the death being suggested, in its height of honour, by stars and stars (* * * *). I could not have been five years old, that’s one consolation. Years after, when I bought this book, I found a vile dissertation of Laing ... all to prove Ossian was not Ossian ... I would not read it, but could not help knowing the purpose of it, and the pith of the hatefully-irresistible arguments. The worst came in another shape, though ... an after-gleaning of real Ossianic poems, by a firm believer whose name I forget—‘if this is the real’—I thought! Well, to this day I believe in a nucleus for all that haze, a foundation of truth to Macpherson’s fanciful superstructure—and I have been long intending to read once again those Fingals and Malvinas.
I remember that somewhere a chief cries ‘Come round me, my thousands!’—There is an Achilles! And another, complaining of old age remarks ‘Now—I feel the weight of my shield!’ Nestor; and both beautifully perfect, are they not, you perfect Ba?
I will go now. To-morrow I trust to see you face to face; dearest that you are!
Ever your own.
My poor mother suffers greatly. I am much better.
Tuesday, 6 p.m.
[Post-mark, August 26, 1846.]
I have just had a note from Mr. Kenyon, who, after his absence at Richmond, promises to come and see me on Thursday afternoon. Now ... would it be quite ‘unco guid’ of us ... and wise ‘above what is written’ (in your letter) if we put off our day to Friday, and gave me the power to answer to Mr. Kenyon’s certain question, ... ‘no, I have not seen him since I saw you.’? If you think it would be wise, my own dearest, why do not come to-morrow; do not come till Friday. See—to-day is Tuesday, and only two days more will intervene,—and we are agreed on the necessity of prudence for the coming weeks—particularly when my brothers have nothing particular to do, at this time of vacation, but to watch us on all sides. I am so nervous that my own footsteps startle me. But quite well I am, and you shall not have fancies about me—as to strength, I mean—as to what I cannot do, bear, and the like.
To-night I shall write a letter as usual. This is a bare line, which Henrietta will throw into the post, to speak to you of to-morrow. The letter follows.
How I miss you, and long for Friday. If you have an engagement for Friday, there is Saturday. ‘Understand’ ... as you say, and I repeat.
To-night I will tell you where I went to-day.
Your own I am always
Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, August 26, 1846.]
‘Nor is it very long to wait’—Alas!—My note went two hours ago to cross out the application of that phrase, and now it is very long to wait, ... all the days to Friday. Tell me, dearest, if you think it wise, at least, to make such an unhappy arrangement, ... considering, you know, Mr. Kenyon and my brothers. It ought to be wise, I think ... it is so unhappy and disappointing. Consider what I am without you all this long dreary while; and how little ever so much sense of wisdom can console anybody.
Friday will come however,—and I may as well go on to tell you that Mrs. Jameson came yesterday. ‘Anything settled?’ she asked; as she walked into the room. She looked at me with resolute, enquiring eyes. I wonder if she ever approaches to the divination of something like the truth—not the truth, but like it. Either she must see indistinctly ‘something new and strange,’ or attribute to me a strange delight in the mysterious. She half promised to see me again before she leaves England, and begged me to write and tell her all whenever I shall have it in my power to make the communication. Affectionate she was, as always.
To-day I have seen nobody, except Mr. Boyd for a little, after driving through street upon street, where I might have met you if I had been happy enough. Albemarle Street ... were you there? I sate there, in the carriage, opposite to the York Hotel, while Henrietta paid her visit to old Lady Bolingbroke, a full half hour ... Flush and I—Flush staring out of the window, and I ... doing what I generally do in this room, do you ask what it was? At the end of some twenty minutes, a boy passed, who had the impertinence to look full at Flush and whistle, whereupon Flush growled, and appealed to me with two immense eyes ... both seeming to say ‘I hope you observe how I am insulted.’ So my reverie was broken in the middle—but being better tempered, rather, than Flush, or having larger resources, I did not growl, but took your latest letter out instead, which lasted for the whole remainder of the time. Then at Mr. Boyd’s ... oh, I must tell you ... he began to tell me some romantic compliments of several young ladies who desired to be disguised in servant’s accoutrements, just to open the door to me (to have a good stare, I suppose) or, in good earnest, to be my maid! (to go with us to Pisa, dearest ... how would you like that?—Seriously now do just calculate the wonderful good fortune of such a person, in falling upon two lions instead of one—nay, on a great wild forest-lion, this time, in addition to the little puny lioness of the original bargain!) Well!—but when Mr. Boyd had done his report, I asked naturally, ‘And what am I to say to all this?’ ‘Why you are to say that you will be goodnatured, and give somebody pleasure at the cost of no pain to yourself, and go to the room down-stairs and speak three words to Miss Smith who is there, waiting.’ Imagine anybody having a Miss Smith ready in the drawing-room to let out upon one! Imagine me too (to be less abstract) walking in to that same Miss Smith, ... to the effect of—! ‘Here I am! just come to be looked at. Is it at all what you expected, Miss Smith’?
The worst was, that dear Mr. Boyd would have set it down to a species of malignancy, if I had refused—so I took my courage up with both hands, and remembering that I had seen two or three times, years ago, the stepmother of the said Miss Smith, I thought I might enquire after her with a sort of propriety. And I got through it somehow. ‘Will you let me shake hands with you and ask how Mrs. Smith is? Does she remember me, I wonder? I am Elizabeth Barrett.’—‘Is it possible? Ah! I thought you were one of your sisters at first! Dear me! Why how much better, you must be, to be sure!—Oh dear me, what an illness you have had! Ah, quite shut up so long! How very, very interesting, to be sure.’—If Flush had swallowed her up in the middle, I might have forgiven him, to be sure. So interesting too, that catastrophe would have been! But you shall not set me down as a savage—it was all kindness on her side, of course—but one may be savage to a situation ... (which is just the way with me, ...) without being a born barbarian woman.
As to Miss Martineau, the expression which sounds so rampant with conceit, may yet be the plainest proof of a mere instinct of self-preservation. If three Smiths would be mob enough to mob me to death (and they may make a mob, as three fine days, a summer!), let us have some feeling for her, exposed, from various causes, to the thirties ... at the lowest comparative computation.
For Ossian, you admit the nucleus. Which is only like your Ba, dearest ... you will not stand higher as an Ossianic critic unless you believe the verbal authenticity, ‘nothing extenuating.’ The cushion of the armchair! My place of deposit used to be between the mattresses of my crib—a little mahogany crib with cane sides to it. You were like Lord Byron (another point of likeness!) in imitating Ossian, but you were still earlier at the work than he was.
It is very well to ascertain the prices by the steamers; though my expectation is that you will find them higher than you fancy them. Nineteen guineas was the charge last year, as far as Gibraltar only. Then, if you charmed ever so eloquently with the voice of the charmer, you never, as a passenger, would induce those people to diminish the rate, because of our being three; and a female servant is charged for at the higher rate ... if not the highest. Altogether the expenses will be, out of all comparison, beyond that of the passage through France ... see if it will not. Ten pounds, as far as the travelling goes, seem to cover everything, in going from hence to Leghorn ... to Pisa ... taking Rouen and Orleans—and meaning of course, for one person. And if the advantages are, as you describe, besides ... why should we forego them? Is the fatigue so much greater? If there are more changes and shiftings, there is also more absolute rest—and the rivers are smoother than the seas. Still, it is well to consider—and there are good reasons on each side, worthy of consideration.
So much more I had to say—I break off suddenly, being benighted. How you write to me! how you wrote to me on Sunday and yesterday! How I wish for two hearts to love you with, and two lives to give to you, and two souls to bear the weight worthily of all you have given to me. But if one heart and one life will do, ... they are yours ... I cannot give them again.
Beloved, if your mother should be ill, we must not think of your leaving her, surely?
May God bless you, dearest beloved.
I am your Ba.
Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, August 26, 1846.]
Dearest, I do think it will be only prudent to stay away till Friday for those reasons. Oh, how I feel what a Ba, mine is ... how truly peerless a lady ... when I find instinctively at this minute while I write, that the proper course will be to seem as little affected by this enforced absence as possible ... that knowing my love she would understand any comfort I take from the eventful good of the arrangement—I have not to dwell on the present sorrow of it, lest she disbelieve me! I am your very own, dearest dearest, with you or away from you. Both your notes came together just now ... how can I thank and love you enough? I might have guessed that at the end you would thank me for my own letters ... that is your ‘trick of fence,’ discovered, remember! But when you read the ‘red-leaved tablets of the heart’ ... then be satisfied ... ‘praise,’ nothing in me to you can deserve.
I have learned all particulars about the steamer. There are only two classes of passengers ... Servants being the second. The first pay, for the voyage to Leghorn 21l.—the second, 14l. 5s. all expenses included except during the stay at Genoa. No reduction ‘it is feared’ could be made in the case of so small a party—but by booking early, a separate cabin might be secured, at no additional expense. In the event of any obstacle, the passage paid for may be postponed till the departure of the next, or any future vessel of the company. Now, you see, these rates, though moderate, I think—(the ordinary term of the passage to Genoa is eleven days)—are yet considerably above those of the other method by at least 20l., I should say. The voyage is long, supremely tiresome, and in all respects so much less interesting than the French route, that the whole scheme can only be constructed for those to whom any other mode of travel is impossible. The one question to be asked therefore is ... are you really convinced that you need not be treated as one of these? And on further consideration, there arise not a few doubts as to whether the sea-voyage be not the more difficult of the two—the roughness is all between here and Gibraltar—and in the case of that affecting you more seriously than we hope, there would be no possibility of escaping from the ship—whereas, should you be indisposed on the other route, we can stop at once and stay for any period. Then, the ‘shiftings’ are only three or four, and probably accompanied by no very great fatigue beyond the notion that a shifting there is. Above all, you would get the first of the sea in a little experiment, soon made and over,—so that if it proved unfavourable to you there might be an end of the matter at once. So that after all, the cheaper journey may be the safer. But all does not rest with you quite, as I was going to say ... all my life is bound up with the success of this measure ... therefore, think and decide, my Ba!
Would there be an advantage in Mrs. Jameson accompanying us—to Orleans, at least? Would the circumstances of our marriage alter her desire, do you think? She has wished to travel with me, also—she must suspect the truth—I doubt whether it is not in such cases as hers, where no responsibility is involved, whether it is not better policy, as well as the more graceful, to communicate what is sure to be discovered—so getting thanks and sympathy instead of neither. All is for you to consider.
And now, dearest, I will revert, in as few words as I can, to the account you gave me, a short time since, of your income. At the beginning, if there had been the necessity I supposed, I should have proposed to myself the attainment of something like such an amount, by my utmost efforts, before we could marry. We could not under the circumstances begin with less—so as to be free from horrible contingencies,—not the least of which would be the application for assistance afterward. After we marry, nobody must hear of us. In spite of a few misgivings at first I am not proud, or rather, am proud in the right place. I am utterly, exclusively proud of you—and though I should have gloried in working myself to death to prove it, and shall be as ready to do so at any time a necessity shall exist, yet at present I shall best serve you, I think, by the life by your side, which we contemplate. I hope and believe, that by your side I shall accomplish something to justify God’s goodness and yours—and, looking at the matter in a worldly light, I see not a few reasons for thinking that unproductive as the kind of literature may be, which I should aim at producing, yet, by judicious management, and profiting by certain favourable circumstances,—I shall be able to realise an annual sum quite sufficient for every purpose—at least in Italy.
As I never calculated on such a change in my life, I had the less repugnance to my father’s generosity, that I knew that an effort at some time or other might furnish me with a few hundred pounds which would soon cover my very simple expenses. If we are poor, it is to my father’s infinite glory, who, as my mother told me last night, as we sate alone, ‘conceived such a hatred to the slave-system in the West Indies,’ (where his mother was born, who died in his infancy), that he relinquished every prospect,—supported himself, while there, in some other capacity, and came back, while yet a boy, to his father’s profound astonishment and rage—one proof of which was, that when he heard that his son was a suitor to her, my mother—he benevolently waited on her uncle to assure him that his niece would be thrown away on a man so evidently born to be hanged!—those were his words. My father on his return had the intention of devoting himself to art, for which he had many qualifications and abundant love—but the quarrel with his father,—who married again and continued to hate him till a few years before his death,—induced him to go at once and consume his life after a fashion he always detested. You may fancy, I am not ashamed of him.
I told my mother, who told him. They have never been used to interfere with, or act for me—and they trust me. If you care for any love, purely love,—you will have theirs—they give it you, whether you take it or no. You will understand, therefore, that I would not accept even the 100l. we shall want: I said ‘you shall lend it me—I will pay it back out of my first literary earnings—I take it, because I do not want to sell my copyrights, or engage myself to write a play, or any other nuisance. Surely I can get fifty pounds next year, and the other fifty in due course!’
So, dearest, we shall have plenty for the journey—and you have only to determine the when and the how. Oh, the time! Bless you, ever dearest! I love you with all my heart and soul—
R.
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, August 27, 1846.]
‘If I care for any love’—‘whether I take it or no.’ Now ought I not to reproach you a little, for bearing to write such words of me, when you could not but think all the while, that I should feel a good deal in reading what you wrote beside? Will you tell me that you did not know I should be glad and grateful for tolerance even?—the least significance of the kinder feeling affecting me beyond, perhaps, what you could know of me. I am bound to them utterly.
And if it is true, as it is true, that they have much to pardon and overlook in me, ... and among the rest, the painful position imposed on you by my miserable necessities, ... they yet never shall find me, I trust, unworthy of them and you by voluntary failures, and, least of all, by failures of dutiful affection towards themselves—‘if they care for any love.’
For the rest of what you tell me, it is all the purest kindness—and you were perfectly, perfectly right in taking so, and as a loan, which we ought, I think, to return when our hands are free, without waiting for the completion of other projects. By living quietly and simply, we shall surely have enough—and more than enough. Then among other resources is Blackwood. I calculated once that without unpleasant labour, with scarcely an effort, I could make a hundred a year by magazine-contributions—and this, without dishonour either. It does ‘fugitive poems,’ observe, no harm whatever, to let them fly through a periodical before they alight on their tree to sing. Then you will send perhaps the sweepings of your desk to Blackwood, to alternate with my sendings! Shall we do that, when we sit together on the ragged edge of earthquake chasms, in the midst of the ‘sulphurous vapour.’ I, afraid? No indeed—I think I should never be afraid, if you were near enough. Only that you never must go away in boats. But there is time enough for such compacts.
As to the sea voyage, that was your scheme, and not mine, from the beginning: and your account of the expenses, if below my fear ... (although I believe that ‘servants’ do not mean ‘female servants’ and that the latter are subject to additional charges), yet seems to me to leave the Rhone and Saône route as preferable as ever. And do you mark, dear dearest, that supposing me to be unfit for the short railroad passage from Rouen to Paris and from Paris to Orleans, I must be just as unfit for the journey to Southampton, which is necessary to the sea-voyage. Then ... supposing me to be unfit for the river-passage, I must be still more unfit for the sea. So don’t suppose either. I am stronger than you fancy. I shall shut my eyes and think of you when there is too much noise and confusion,—the things which try me most,—and it will be easy to find a quiet room and to draw down the blinds and take rest, I suppose, ... which one might in vain long for in that crowded steamer at sea. Therefore, dearest, if I am to think and decide, I have decided ... let us go through France. And let us go quick, quick, and not stop anywhere within hearing of England ... not stop at Havre, nor at Rouen, nor at Paris—that is how I decide. May God help us, and smooth the way before and behind. May your father indeed be able to love me a little, for my father will never love me again.
For you ... you will ‘serve me best’ and serve me only, by being happy not away from me. When I shall have none but you, if I can feel myself not too much for you,—not something you would rather leave—then you will have ‘served’ me all you can. But this is more perhaps than you can—these things do not depend on the will of a man—that he should promise to do them. I speak simply for myself, and of what would give me a full contentment. Do not fancy that there is a doubt in the words of it. I cannot doubt now of your affection for me. Dearest, I cannot. Yet you make me uneasy often through this extravagance of over-estimation; forcing me to contract ‘obligations to pay’ which I look at in speechless despair—And here is a penny.
Of Mrs. Jameson, let me write to-morrow—I am benighted and must close. On Friday we shall meet at last, surely; and then it will be all the happier in proportion to the vexation. Dearest, love me—
I am your own—
Thursday Morning.
[Post-mark, August 27, 1846.]
Dearest, I am to write to you of Mrs. Jameson. First, as to telling her ... will it not be an embarrassment both to her and ourselves? If she cannot say ‘I knew nothing of this,’ she bears the odium of confidante and adviser perhaps —who shall explain the distinction to others? And to Mr. Kenyon, will it not seem as if we had trusted her more than him—and though there is a broad distinction too between their cases, who shall explain that to him so quickly and nicely that he shall not receive the shock of a painful impression? Consider a little—She is so in medias res—so in the way of all the conversation and the questionings. But it shall be as you like and think best. I am too nervous perhaps.
As for the travelling, she sets out between the seventh and tenth of September, a century before our æra, you know—but if she goes to Italy and is not too angry with me, we might certainly meet her in Paris or at Orleans ... take her up at Orleans, and go on together. That is, if you like it too. She would be pleased, I daresay, if it were proposed—and we might be kind in proposing it—and something I might say to her, if you liked it, on the condition of her not changing her mind. Certainly I do agree with you that she must have some ideas—she is not without imagination, and the suggestions are abundant,—though nothing points to you, mind!—if she could possibly think me capable of loving anyone else in the world, with you in it.
I had a letter to-day ... with a proposition to write ballads and other lyrics in order to the civilisation of the colonies ... especially Australia. It appears that a Mr. Angus Fife has a scheme on foot nearly, about sending missionary ballad-singers among the natives, and that I am invited to write some of them, or to be invited—for nothing is specified yet. Now what do you think of that? One should take one’s mythology from the Kangaroos, I suppose.
Then a book of ‘serious poems’ is to be brought out in Edinburgh and contributions are desired so very politely that nobody can quite refuse.
I write to you of anything but what is in my thoughts. Your letter of yesterday took hold of me and will not let me go—it all seems too earnest for the mere dream I have been dreaming all this while—is it not a dream ... or what? And something I said in my letter, which was wrong to say and I am sorry to think of—forgive me that, ever beloved—but you have forgiven, I know. May God bless you, and not take from me my blessing in you.
I am your very own Ba.
We are going out in the carriage and shall post this note. You will come to-morrow unless you hear more? Is it a compact?