Sunday.
[April 5, 1846.]
It seems to me the safest way to send back the proofs by the early Monday post: you may choose perhaps to bring the sheet corrected into town when you come, and so I shall let you have what you sent me, before you come to take it ... though I thought first of waiting. To-morrow I shall force you to tell me how you like the ‘Tragedy’ now! For my part, it delights me—and must raise your reputation as a poet and thinker ... must. Chiappino is highly dramatic in that first part, and speaks so finely sometimes that it is a wrench to one’s sympathies to find him overthrown. Do you know that, as far as the temper of the man goes, I am acquainted with a Chiappino ... just such a man, in the temper, the pride and the bitterness ... not in other things. When I read your manuscript I was reminded—but here in print it, seems to grow nearer and nearer. My Chiappino has tired me out at last—I have borne more from him than women ought to bear from men, because he was unfortunate and embittered in his nature and by circumstances, and because I regarded him as a friend of many years. Yet, as I have told him, anyone, who had not such confidence in me, would think really ill of me through reading the insolent letters which he has thought fit to address to me on what he called a pure principle of adoration. At last I made up my mind (and shall keep it so) to answer no letter of the kind. Men are ignoble in some things, past the conceiving of their fellows. Again and again I have said ... ‘Specify your charge against me’—but there is no charge. With the most reckless and dauntless inconsistency I am lifted halfway to the skies, and made a mark there for mud pellets—so that I have been excited sometimes to say quite passionately ... ‘If I am the filth of the earth, tread on me—if I am an angel of Heaven, respect me—but I can’t be both, remember.’ See where your Chiappino leads you ... and me! Though I shall not tell you the other name of mine. Whenever I see him now, I make Arabel stay in the room—otherwise I am afraid—he is such a violent man. A good man, though, in many respects, and quite an old friend. Some men grow incensed with the continual pricks of ill-fortune, like mad bulls: some grow tame and meek.
Well—I did not like the spirit of the Athenæum remarks either. I like what you say. These literary men are never so well pleased, as in having opportunities of barking against one another—and, for the Athenæum people, if they wanted to be didactic as to morals, they might have taken occasion to be so out of their own order, and in their own country. And then to bring in Balzac so! The worst of Balzac (who has not a fine moral sense at any time, great and gifted as he is), the very worst of him, is his bearing towards his literary brothers ... the manner in which he, who can so nobly present genius to the reverence of humanity in scientific men (as he describes them in his books), always dishonours and depreciates it in the man of letters and the poet. See his ‘Grand Homme de Province à Paris,’ one of the most powerful of his works, but the remark is true everywhere. I go on writing as if I were not to see you directly. It is past four oclock—and if Mr. Kenyon does not come to-day, he may come to-morrow, and find you, who were here last Thursday to his knowledge!—Half I fear.
Observe the proof. Since you have two, you say, I have not scrupled to write down on this ever so much improvidence, which you will glance at and decide upon finally.
‘Grateful’ ... ‘grateful’ ... what a word that is. I never would have such a word on any proof that came to me for correction. Do not use such inapplicable words—do not, dearest! for you know very well in your understanding (if not in your heart) that if such a word is to be used by either of us, it is not by you. My word, I shall keep mine,—I am ‘grateful’—you cannot be ‘grateful’ ... for ineffable reasons....
For the rest, it is certainly very likely that you may ‘want all your faculties, and more’ ... to bear with me ... to support me with graceful resignation; and who can tell whether I may not be found intolerable after all?
By the way (talking of St. Catherine’s wheels and the like torments) you wrote ‘gag’ ... did you not? ... where the proof says ‘gadge’—I did not alter it. More and more I like ‘Luria.’
Your Ba.
Mr. Kenyon has been here—so our Monday is safe.
Sunday.
[Post-mark, April 6, 1846.]
I sent you some even more than usual hasty foolish words,—not caring much, however—for dearest Ba shall have to forgive my shortcomings every hour in the day,—it is her destiny, and I began unluckily with that stupidest of all notions,—that about the harm coming of genius &c., so I fell with my subject and we rolled in the mud together—pas vrai? But there was so many other matters alluded to in your dearest (because last) letter—there are many things in which I agree with you to such a tremblingly exquisite exactness, so to speak, that I hardly dare cry out lest the charm break, the imaginary oscillation prove incomplete and your soul, now directly over, pass beyond mine yet, and not stay! Do you understand, dear soul of my soul, dearest Ba? Oh, how different it all might be! In this House of life—where I go, you go—where I ascend you run before—when I descend it is after you. Now, one might have a piece of Ba, but a very little of her, and make it up into a lady and a mistress, and find her a room to her mind perhaps when she should sit and sing, ‘warble eat and dwell’ like Tennyson’s blackbird, and to visit her there with due honour one might wear the finest of robes, use the courtliest of ceremonies—and then—after a time, leave her there and go, the door once shut, without much blame, to throw off the tunic and put on Lord Compton’s blouse and go whither one liked—after, to me, the most melancholy fashion in the world. How different with us! If it were not, indeed—what a mad folly would marriage be! Do you know what quaint thought strikes me, out of old Bunyan, on this very subject? He says (with another meaning though) ‘Who would keep a cow, that may buy milk at a penny the quart’—(elegant allusion). Just so,—whoever wants ‘a quart’ of this other comfort, as solace of whatever it may be (at breakfast or tea time too), why not go and ‘buy’ the same, and having discussed it, drink claret at dinner at his club? Why did not Mr. Butler read Fanny Kemble’s verses, paying his penny of intellectual labour, and see her play ‘Portia’ at night, and make her a call or ride with her in the middle of the day—why ‘keep the cow’? But—don’t you know they prescribe to some constitutions the perpetual living in a cow-house? the breath, the unremitting influence is everything,—not the milk—(now, Ba—Ba is suddenly Ἴω πλανωμένη and Mrs. Jameson is the Gadfly—and I am laughed at—not too cruelly, or the other lock of hair becomes mine—with which locks ... and not with Louis Seize iron knick-nack ones, I rather think I was occupied last time, last farewell taking—)
From all which I infer—that I shall see you to-morrow! Yes, or I should not have the heart to be so glad and absurd.
Well, to-morrow makes amends—dear, dear Ba! Why do you persist in trying to turn my head so? It does not turn, I look the more steadfastly at the feet and the ground, for all your crying and trying! But something shocking might happen—would happen, if it were not written that I am to get nothing but good from Ba,—and who, who began calling names—who used the word ‘flatterer’ first?
Bless you my own dearest flatterer—I love you with heart and soul. Are you down-stairs to day? it is warm, the rain you like—yes you are down, I think. God keep you wherever you are!
Your own.
I went last night to Lord Compton’s father’s Soirée,—and for all our deep convictions, and philosophic rejoicing, I assure you that of the two or three words that we interchanged—congratulation on the bright fortune of his son formed no part,—any more than intelligence about ordering Regiments to India whenever I met the relatives of the ordered. And yesterday morning I planted a full dozen more rose-trees, all white—to take away the yellow-rose reproach!
Monday Morning.
[April 6, 1846.]
I shall receive a note from you presently, I trust—but this had better go now—for I expect a friend, and must attend to him as he wants to go walking—so, dearest—dearest, take my—last work I ever shall send you, if God please!
A word about a passage or two,—I had forgotten to say before—gadge is a real name (in Johnson, too) for a torturing iron—it is part of the horror of such things that they should be mysteriously named,—indefinitely,—‘The Duke of Exeter’s Daughter’ for instance ... Ugh!—Besides, am I not a rhymester? Well, who knows but one may want to use such a word in a couplet with ‘badge’—which, if one reject the old and obsolete ‘fadge,’ is rhymeless?
Then Chiappino remarks that men of genius usually do the reverse ... of beginning by dethroning &c. and so arriving with utmost reluctancy at the acknowledgment of a natural and unalterable inequality of Mankind—instead of that, they begin at once, he says, by recognizing it in their adulation &c. &c.—I have supplied the words ‘at once,’ and taken out ‘virtually,’ which was unnecessary; so that the parallel possibly reads clearlier. I know there are other things to say—but at this moment my memory is at fault.
Can you tell me Mrs. Jameson’s address?
My sea-friend’s opinion is altogether unfavourable to the notion of an invalid’s trusting himself alone in a merchant vessel—he says—‘it will certainly be the gentleman’s death.’ So very small a degree of comfort can be secured amid all the inevitable horrors of dirt, roughness, &c. The expenses are trifling in any case, on that very account. Any number of the Shipping Gazette (I think) will give a list of all vessels about to sail, with choice of ports—or on the walls of the Exchange one may see their names placarded, with reference to the Agent—or he will, himself, (my friend Chas. Walton) do his utmost with a shipowner, we both know, and save some expense, perhaps. I made him remark the difference between my carelessness of accommodations and an invalid’s proper attention beforehand—but he persisted in saying nothing can be done, nothing effectual. My time is out—but I must bless you my ever dearest Ba—and kiss you—
Ever your own.
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, April 7, 1846.]
Dearest, it is not I who am a ‘flatterer’—and if I used the word first, it is because I had the right of it, I remember, long and long ago. There is the vainest of vanities in discussing the application of such a word ... and so, when you said the other day that you ‘never flattered’ forsooth ... (oh no!) I would not contradict you for fear of the endless flattery it would lead to. Only that I do not choose (because such things are allowed to pass) to be called on my side ‘a flatterer’—I! That is too much, and too out of place. What do I ever say that is like flattery? I am allowed, it may be hoped, to admire the ‘Lurias’ and the rest, quite like other people, and even to say that I admire them ... may I not lawfully? If that is flattery woe to me! I tell you the real truth, as I see the truth, even in respect to them ... the ‘Lurias’....
For instance, did I flatter you and say that you were right yesterday? Indeed I thought you as wrong as possible ... wonderfully wrong on such a subject, for you ... who, only a day or two before, seemed so free from conventional fallacies ... so free! You would abolish the punishment of death too ... and put away wars, I am sure! But honourable men are bound to keep their honours clean at the expense of so much gunpowder and so much risk of life ... that must be, ought to be, ... let judicial deaths and military glory be abolished ever so! For my part, I set all Christian principle aside, (although if it were carried out ... and principle is nothing unless carried out ... it would not mean cowardice but magnanimity) but I set it aside and go on the bare social rational ground ... and I do advisedly declare to you that I cannot conceive of any possible combination of circumstances which could ... I will not say justify, but even excuse, an honourable man’s having recourse to the duellist’s pistol, either on his own account or another’s. Not only it seems to me horribly wrong ... but absurdly wrong, it seems to me. Also ... as a matter of pure reason ... the Parisian method of taking aim and blowing off a man’s head for the sins of his tongue, I do take to have a sort of judicial advantage over the Englishman’s six paces ... throwing the dice for his life or another man’s, because wounded by that man in his honour. His honour!—Who believes in such an honour ... liable to such amends, and capable of such recovery! You cannot, I think—in the secret of your mind. Or if you can ... you, who are a teacher of the world ... poor world—it is more desperately wrong than I thought.
A man calls you ‘a liar’ in an assembly of other men. Because he is a calumniator, and, on that very account, a worse man than you, you ask him to go down with you on the only ground on which you two are equals ... the duelling-ground, ... and with pistols of the same length and friends numerically equal on each side, play at lives with him, both mortal men that you are. If it was proposed to you to play at real dice for the ratification or non-ratification of his calumny, the proposition would be laughed to scorn ... and yet the chance (as chance) seems much the same, ... and the death is an exterior circumstance which cannot be imagined to have much virtue. At best, what do you prove by your duel? ... that your calumniator, though a calumniator, is not a coward in the vulgar sense ... and that yourself, though you may still be a liar ten times over, are not a coward either! ‘Here be proofs.’
And as to the custom of duelling preventing insults ... why you say that a man of honour should not go out with an unworthy adversary. Now supposing a man to be withheld from insult and calumny, just by the fear of being shot ... who is more unworthy than such a man? Therefore you conclude irrationally, illogically, that the system operates beyond the limit of its operations.—Oh! I shall write as quarrelsome letters as I choose. You are wrong, I know and feel, when you advocate the pitiful resources of this corrupt social life, ... and if you are wrong, how are we to get right, we all who look to you for teaching. Are you afraid too of being taken for a coward? or would you excuse that sort of fear ... that cowardice of cowardice, in other men? For me, I value your honour, just as you do ... more than your life ... of the two things: but the madness of this foolishness is so clear to my eyes, than instead of opening the door for you and keeping your secret, as that miserable woman did last year, for the man shot by her sister’s husband, I would just call in the police, though you were to throw me out of the window afterwards. So, with that beautiful vision of domestic felicity, (which Mrs. Jameson would leap up to see!) I shall end my letter—isn’t it a letter worth thanking for?—
Ever dearest, do you promise me that you never will be provoked into such an act—never? Mr. O’Connell vowed it to himself, for a dead man ... and you may to me, for a living woman. Promises and vows may be foolish things for the most part ... but they cannot be more foolish than, in this case, the thing vowed against. So promise and vow. And I will ‘flatter’ you in return in the lawful way ... for you will ‘make me happy’ ... so far! May God bless you, beloved! It is so wet and dreary to-day that I do not go down-stairs—I sit instead in the gondola chair ... do you not see? ... and think of you ... do you not feel? I even love you ... if that were worth mentioning....
being your own
Ba.
How good of you to write so on Sunday! to compare with my bad!
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, April 7, 1846.]
They have just sent me one proof, only—so I have been correcting everything as fast as possible, that, returning it at once, a revise might arrive, fit to send, for this that comes is just as bad as if I had let it alone in the first instance. All your corrections are golden. In ‘Luria,’ I alter ‘little circle’ to ‘circling faces’—which is more like what I meant. As for that point we spoke of yesterday—it seems ‘past praying for’—if I make the speech an ‘aside,’ I commit Ogniben to that opinion:—did you notice, at the beginning of the second part, that on this Ogniben’s very entry (as described by a bystander), he is made to say, for first speech, ‘I have known so many leaders of revolts’—‘laughing gently to himself’? This, which was wrongly printed in italics, as if a comment of the bystander’s own, was a characteristic circumstance, as I meant it. All these opinions should be delivered with a ‘gentle laughter to himself’—but—as is said elsewhere,—we profess and we perform! Enough of it—Meliora sperumus!
What am I to say next, my Ba? When I write my best and send ‘grateful’ to you—you send my proof back, ‘grateful (h)’ Then I must do and say what you hate ... for I am one entire gratitude to you, God knows! May He reward you.
It is late; bless you once again, my dearest! You have nothing so much yours as
R.
My mother says that I paid only fifteen or sixteen pounds for the Venice voyage, and much less for the Naples one—ten, and no more, she thinks—and I think; but that represents twenty—as the other, twenty five or thirty pounds, to a person unconnected with the freighting party. (In the first ship, Rothschild sent a locomotive entire, with all its appurtenances, for one article, to Trieste). Can I make enquiries for you? Nay, I will, and at once.
Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 8, 1846.]
In my disagree ... able letter this morning, I forgot to write how, after you went away, and I came to read again the dedication, I admired it more and more—it is most graceful and complete. Landor will be gratified and grateful ... he, allowably—and only you shall be ‘hateful’ ... and only to me, dearest, ... so that it doesn’t matter much. As to Ogniben, you understand best of course—I understood the ‘laughing gently to himself,’ though I omitted to notice the italics. I perfectly understood that it was the bystander’s observation.
Your letter came so late to-night that I despaired of it—the postman fell into a trance somewhere I fancy, and it was not till nine oclock that the knock (equal to the tapping of a fairy’s wand) came to the door. Now I have two letters to thank you for together ... for the dear one on Monday, which lay in the shadow of your coming, and so was a little, little, less thought of than it could have been under any other possible circumstance ... and for this letter to-night. Well! and for Mr. Buckingham’s voyage, if you will and can conveniently, (I use that word for my sake, not for your sake—because I think of you and not of him!) but if you can without inconvenience make enquiries about these vessels, why I shall be glad and shall set it to your account as one goodness more. It would be easy for him (and you should have done it, in your voyage) to take with him those potted meats and portable soups and essences of game which would prevent his being reduced to common fare with the sailors. Then a mattress is as portable as the soups, nearly. Apart from the asafœtida he may endure, I should think. Do you know, I was amused at myself yesterday, after the first movement, for liking to hear you say that ‘dry biscuits satisfied’ you—because, after all, I should not be easy to see you living on dry biscuits ... Ceres and Bacchus forbid! Oh—I don’t profess to apply, out of a pure poetical justice, Lord Byron’s Pythagoreanism to the ‘nobler half of creation’—do not be afraid—but it is rather desecrating and disenchanting to mark how certain of those said Nobilities turn upon their dinners as on the pivot of the day, for their good pleasure and good temper besides. Did you ever observe a lord of creation knit his brows together because the cutlets were underdone, shooting enough fire from his eyes to overdo them to cinders ... ‘cinder-blast’ them, as Æschylus would have it? Did you ever hear of the litany which some women say through the first course ... low to themselves? Perhaps not! it does not enter into your imagination to conceive of things, which nevertheless are.
Not that I ever thought of you with reference to such—oh no, no! But every variety of the ‘Epicuri de grege porcus,’ I have a sort of indisposition to ... even as the animal itself (pork of nature and the kitchen) I avoid like a Jewish woman. Do you smile? And did I half (or whole) make you angry this morning through being so didactic and detestable? Will you challenge me to six paces at Chalk Farm, and will you ‘take aim’ this time and put an end to every sort of pretence in me to other approaches between us two? Tell me if you are angry, dearest! I ask you to tell me if you felt (for the time even) vexed with me.... I want to know.... I need to know. Do you not know what my reflection must reasonably be?... That is, apart from provocation and excitement, you believe in the necessity of such and such resources, ... provoked and excited you would apply to them—there could be no counteracting force ... no help nor hope.
So I spoke my mind—and you are vexed with me, which I feel in the air. May God bless you dearest, dearest! Forgive, as you can, best,
Your Ba.
Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, April 8, 1846.]
First of all, kiss me, dearest,—and again—and now, with the left arm round you, I will write what I think in as few words as possible. I think the fault of not carrying out principles is yours, here. Several principles would arrive at the result you desire—Christianity, Stoicism, Asceticism, Epicureanism (in the modern sense)—all these ‘carried out’ stop the procedure you deprecate—but I fancy, as you state your principle, that it is an eclecticism from these and others; and presently one branch crosses its fellow, and we stop, arrive at nothing. Do you accept ‘life’s warm-beating joy and dole,’ for an object of that life? Is ‘society’ a thing to desire to participate in? not by the one exceptional case out of the million, but by men generally,—men who ‘live’ only for living’s sake, in the first instance; next, men who, having ulterior objects and aims of happiness, yet derive various degrees of sustainment and comfort from the social life round them; and so on, higher up, till you come to the half-dozen, for whom we need not be pressingly urgent to legislate just yet, having to attend to the world first. Well, is social life, a good, generally to these? If so,—go back to another principle which I suppose you to admit,—that ‘good’ may be lawfully held, defended,—even to the death. Now see where the ‘cross’ takes place. Something occurs which forces a man to hold this, defend this—he must do this, or renounce it. You let him do neither. Do not say he needs not renounce it,—we go avowedly on the vulgar broad ground of fact—you very well know it is a fact that by his refusing to accept a challenge, or send one, on conventionally sufficient ground, he will be infallibly excluded from a certain class of society thenceforth and forever. What society should do rather, is wholly out of the question—what will be done? And now, candidly, can you well fancy a more terrible wrong than this to the ordinary multitude of men? Alter the principles of your reasoning—say, Christianity forbids this,—and that will do—rational Simon renounces on his pillar more than the pleasures of society if so he may save his soul: say, society is not worth living in,—it is no wrong to be forced to quit it—that will do, also,—a man with ‘Paradise Lost’ or ‘Othello’ to write; or with a Ba to live beside for his one companion,—or many other compensations,—he may retire to his own world easily. Say, on the lowest possible ground, ‘out of society one eats, drinks &c. excellently well; what loss is there?’—all these principles avail; but mix them—and they surely neutralize each other. A man may live, enjoy life, oppose an attempt to prevent his enjoying life,—yet not—you see! ‘The method is irrational, proves nothing &c.’—what is that to the question? Is the effect disputable or no? Wordsworth decides he had better go to court—then he must buy or borrow a court-dress. He goes because of the poetry in him. What irrationality in the bag and sword—in the grey duffil gown yonder, he wrote—half through the exceeding ease and roominess of it—‘The Excursion’; how proper he should go in it, therefore ... beside it will wring his heartstrings to pay down the four pounds, ten and sixpence: good, Mr. Wordsworth! There’s no compulsion; go back to the lakes and be entirely approved of by Miss Norwick! ... but, if you do choose to kiss hands (instead of cheeks ‘smackingly’) why, you must even resolve to ‘grin and bear it’ (a sea-phrase!)—and, Ba, your imaginary man, who is called ‘liar’ before a large assembly, must decide for one or the other course. ‘He makes his antagonist double the wrong’? Nay—here the wrong begins—the poor author of the outrage should have known his word was nothing—the sense of it, he and his like express abundantly every hour of the day, if they please, in language only a shade removed from this that causes all the harm,—and who does other than utterly, ineffably despise them? but he chooses, as the very phrase is, to oblige his adversary to act thus. He is nothing (I am going on your own case of a supposed futile cause of quarrel)—he may think just what he pleases—but having said this and so,—it is entirely society’s affair—and what is society’s present decision? Directly it relaxes a regulation, allows another outlet to the natural contempt for, and indifference to such men and their opinions spoken or unspoken, everybody avails himself of it directly. If the Lord Chamberlain issues an order this morning, ‘No swords need be worn at next levee’—who will appear with one? A politician is allowed to call his opponent a destructive &c. A critic may write that the author of such a book or such, is the poorest creature in the world—and who dreams of being angry? but society up to this time says, ‘if a man calls another &c. &c., then he must’—Will you renounce society? I for one, could, easily: so therefore shall Mr. Kenyon! Beside, I on purpose depreciate the value of an admission into society ... as if it were only for those who recognize no other value; and the wiser men might easily forego it. Not so easily! There are uses in it, great uses, for purposes quite beyond its limits—you pass through it, mix with it, to get something by it: you do not go in to the world to live on the breath of every fool there, but you reach something out of the world by being let go quietly, if not with a favourable welcome, among them. I leave here to go to Wimpole Street:—I want to have as little as possible to say to the people I find between—but, do you know, if I allow a foolish child to put the very smallest of fool’s caps on my head instead of the hat I usually wear, though the comfort would be considerable in the change,—yet I shall be followed by an increasing crowd, say to Charing Cross, and thence pelted, perhaps, till I reach No. 50—there, perhaps to find the servant hesitate about opening the door to such an apparition,—and when Papa comes to hear how illustriously your visitor was attended through the streets! why he will specially set apart Easter Monday to testify in person his sense of the sublime philosophy, will he not? My Ba—I tell the child on the first symptom of such a wish on his part ‘Don’t!’ with all the eloquence in my power—if I can put it handsomely off my head, even, I will, and with pitying good nature—but if I must either wear the cap, and pay the penalty, or—slap his face, why—! ‘Ah,’ you say, ‘but he has got a pistol that you don’t see and will shoot you dead like a foolish child as he is.’ That he may! Have I to be told that in this world men, foolish or wicked, do inflict tremendous injuries on their unoffending fellows? Let God look to it, I say with reverence, and do you look to this point, where the injury is, begins. The foolish man who throws some disfiguring liquid in your face, which to remove you must have recourse to some dangerous surgical operation,—perilling himself, too, by the consequent vengeance of the law, if you sink under knife or cauterizing iron,—shall I say ‘the fault is yours—why submit to the operation? The fault is his that institutes the very fault—which begin by teaching him from his cradle in every possible shape! But don’t, don’t say—‘the operation is unnecessary; your blistered face will look, does look just as usual, not merely to me who know you, perhaps love you,—but to the whole world ... on whose opinion of its agreeableness, I confess that you are dependent for nearly every happy minute of your life.’ In all this, I speak for the world, not for me—I have other, too many other sources of enjoyment—I could easily, I think, do what you require. I endeavour to care for others with none of these; as dear, dearest Ba, sitting in her room because of a dull day, would have me take a few miles’ exercise. Has everybody a Ba? I had not last year—yet last year I had reasons, and still have, for, on occasion, renouncing society fifty times over: what I should do, therefore, is as improper to be held up for an example, as the exemplary behaviour of Walpole’s old French officer of ninety, who ‘hearing some youths diverting themselves with some girls in a tent close by, asked, ‘Is this the example I set you, gentlemen?’. But I shall be dishonoured however—Ba will ‘go and call the police’—why, so should I for your brother, in all but the extremest case!—because when I had told all the world, with whom the concern solely is, that, despite his uttermost endeavour, I had done this,—the world would be satisfied at once—and the whole procedure is meant to satisfy the world—even the foolishest know that the lion in a cage, through no fault of his, cannot snap at a fly outside the bars. The thing to know is, will Ba dictate to her husband ‘a refusal to fight,’ and then recommend him to go to a dinner-party? Say, ‘give up the dinner for my sake,’ if you like—one or the other it must be: you know, I hate and refuse dinner-parties. Does everybody?
But now in candour, hear me: I write all this to show the not such irrationality of the practice even on comparatively frivolous grounds ... and that those individuals to whom you once admit society may be a legitimate enjoyment, must take such a course to retain the privileges they value—and that the painful consequences should be as unhesitatingly attributed to the first offence and its author,—as the explosion and horror to the fool who would put the match, in play perhaps, to the powder-barrel. And I excepted myself from the operation of this necessity. But I must confess that I can conceive of ‘combinations of circumstances’ in which I see two things only ... or a Third: a miscreant to be put out the world, my own arm and best will to do it; and, perhaps, God to excuse; which is, approve. My Ba, what is Evil, in its unmistakable shape, but a thing to suppress at any price? I do approve of judicial punishment to death under some circumstances—I think we may, must say: ‘when it comes to that, we will keep our pact of life, stand by God and put that out of us, our world—it shall not be endured, or we shall not be endured’! Dear Ba, is Life to become a child’s game? A. is wronged, B. rights him, and is a hero as we say; B. is wronged again, by C.; but he must not right himself; that is D.’s proper part, who again is to let E. do the same kind office for him—and so on. ‘Defend the poor and fatherless’—and we all applaud—but if they could defend themselves, why not? I will not fancy cases—here’s one that strikes me—a fact. Some soldiers were talking over a watch fire abroad—one said that once he was travelling in Scotland and knocked at a cottage-door—an old woman with one child let him in, gave him a supper and a bed—next morning he asked how they lived, and she said the cow, the milk of which he was then drinking, and the kale in the garden, such as he was eating—were all her ‘mailien’ or sustenance—whereon, rising to go, he, for the fun, ‘killed the cow and destroyed the kale’—‘the old witch crying out she should certainly be starved’—then he went his way. ‘And she was starved, of course,’ said a young man; ‘do you rue it?’—The other laughed ‘Rue aught like that!’—The young man said. ‘I was the boy, and that was my mother—now then!’—In a minute or two the preparer of this ‘combination of circumstances’ lay writhing with a sword through him up to the hilt—‘If you had rued it’—the youth said—‘you should have answered it only to God!’
More than enough of this—but I was anxious to stand clearer in your dear eyes. ‘Vows and promises!’—I want to leave society for the Sirens’ isle,—and now, I often seriously reproach myself with conduct quite the reverse of what you would guard against: I have too much indifferentism to the opinions of Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown—by no means am anxious to have his notions agree with mine. Smith thinks Cromwell a canting villain,—Brown believes no dissenter can be saved,—and I repeat Goethe’s ‘Be it your unerring rule, ne’er to contradict a fool, for if folly choose to brave you, all your wisdom cannot save you!’ And sometimes I help out their arguments by a touch or two, after Ogniben’s fashion—it all seems so wearisomely unprofitable; what comes of Smith’s second thought if you change his first—out of that second will branch as great an error, you may be sure! (11 o’clock) Here comes your letter! My own Ba! My dearest best, best beloved! I, angry! oh, how you misinterpret, misunderstand the motions of my mind! In all that I said, or write here, I speak of others—others, if you please, of limited natures: I say why they may be excused ... that is all. ‘You do not like pork’? But those poor Irish Colliers whose only luxury is bacon once a month; you understand them liking it? I do not value society—others do: ‘we are all His children’ says Euripides and quotes Paul.
Now, love, let this be a moot point to settle among the flowers one day—with Sir Thomas Browne’s ‘other hard questions yet not impossible to be solved’ (‘What song the Sirens sang to Ulysses,’ is the first!) in which blessed hope let me leave off; for I confess to having written myself all-but-tired, headachy. But ‘vexed with you’! Ba, Ba; you perplex me, bewilder me; let me get right again; kiss me, dearest, and all is right—God bless you ever—
Your R.
Wednesday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 9, 1846.]
After the question about the ‘Sirens’ song to Ulysses, dearest? Then directly before, I suppose, the other ‘difficult question’ talked of by your Sir Thomas Browne, as to ‘what name Achilles bore when he lived among the women.’ That, you think, will be an appropriate position for our ‘moot point’ which, once in England, was guilty of tiring you and making your head ache:—and as for Achilles’ name when he lived among women, it was Μῶρος you will readily guess, and I shall not dare to deny. Only ... only ... I never shall be convinced on the ‘previous question’ by the arguments of your letter—it is not possible.
May I say just one thing, without touching that specific subject? There is a certain class of sacrifice which men who live in society, should pay willingly to society ... the sacrifice of little or indifferent things, ... in respect to mere manners and costume. There is another class of sacrifice which should be refused by every righteous man though ever so eminently a social man, and though to the loss of his social position. Now you would be the last, I am sure, to confound these two classes of sacrifice—and you will admit that our question is simply between them ... and to which of them, duelling belongs ... and not at all whether society is in itself a desirable thing and much rejoiced in by the Browns and Smiths. You refuse to wear a fool’s cap in the street, because society forbids you—which is well: but if, in order to avoid wearing it, you shoot the ‘foolish child’ who forces it upon you ... why you do not well, by any means: it would not be well even for a Brown or a Smith—but for my poet of the ‘Bells and Pomegranates,’ it is very ill, wonderfully ill ... so ill, that I shut my eyes, and have the heartache (for the headache!) only to think of it. So I will not. Why should we see things so differently, ever dearest? If anyone had asked me, I could have answered for you that you saw it quite otherwise. And you would hang men even—you!
Well! Because I do ‘not rue’ (and am so much the more unfit to die) I am to be stabbed through the body by an act of ‘private judgment’ of my next neighbour. So I must take care and ‘rue’ when I do anything wrong—and I begin now, for being the means of tiring you, ... and for seeming to persist so! You may be right and I wrong, of course—I only speak as I see. And will not speak any more last words ... taking pardon for these. I rue.
To-day I was down-stairs again—and if the sun shines on as brightly, I shall be out of doors before long perhaps.
Your headache! tell me how your headache is,—remember to tell me. When your letter came, I kissed it by a sort of instinct ... not that I do always at first sight (please to understand), but because the writing did not look angry ... not vexed writing. Then I read ... ‘First of all, kiss’....
So it seemed like magic.
Only I know that if I went on to write disagreeing disagreeable letters, you might not help to leave off loving me at the end. I seem to see through this crevice.
Good Heavens!—how dreadfully natural it would be to me, seem to me, if you did leave off loving me! How it would be like the sun’s setting ... and no more wonder! Only, more darkness, more pain. May God bless you my only dearest! and me, by keeping me
Your
Ba.
Thursday. 8 A.M.
[Post-mark, April 9, 1846.]
Dearest, I have to go out presently and shall not be able to return before night ... so that the letter I expect will only be read then, and answered to-morrow—what will it be, the letter? Nothing but dear and kind, I know ... even deserve to know, in a sense,—because I am sure all in my letter was meant to be ‘read by your light.’ I submit, unfeignedly, to you, there as elsewhere—and,—as I said, I think,—I wrote so, precisely because it was never likely to be my own case. I should consider it the most unhappy thing that could possibly happen to me,—(putting aside the dreadful possibilities one refuses to consider at all,—the most).
Have you made any discoveries about the disposition of Saturday? May I come, dearest? (On Saturday evening I shall see a friend who will tell me all he knows about ships and voyage expenses—or refer me to higher authorities.)
Bless you, now and ever, my own Ba. Do you know, next Saturday, in its position of successor to Good Friday, will be the anniversary of Mr. Kenyon’s asking me, some four years ago, ‘if I would like to see Miss B.’ How I remember? I was staying with him for a couple of days. Now, I will ask myself ‘would you like to kiss Ba?’ ‘Then comes the Selah.’ Goodbye, dearest-dearest!
Yours R.
Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 10, 1846.]
I thought you had not written to me to-night, ever dearest! Nine o’clock came and went, and I heard no postman’s knock; and I supposed that I did not deserve (in your mind) to hear it at all. At last I rang the bell and said to Wilson ... ‘Look in the letter-box—there may be a letter perhaps. If there should be none, you need not come up-stairs to tell me—I shall understand.’ So she left me, and, that time, I listened for footsteps ... the footsteps of my letter. If I had not heard them directly, what should I have thought?
You are good and kind, ... too good and kind, ... always, always!—and I love you gratefully and shall to the end, and with an unspeakable apprehension of what you are in yourself, and towards me:—yet you cannot, you know,—you know you cannot, dearest ... ‘submit’ to me in an opinion, any more than I could to you, if I desired it ever so anxiously. We will talk no more however on this subject now. I have had some pain from it, of course ... but I am satisfied to have had the pain, for the knowledge ... which was as necessary as possible, under circumstances, for more reasons than one.
Dearest ... before I go to talk of something else ... will you be besought of me to consider within yourself, ... and not with me to teaze you; why the ‘case,’ spoken of, should ‘never in likelihood be your own?’ Are you and yours charmed from the influence of offensive observations ... personally offensive? ‘The most unhappy thing that could happen to you,’ is it, on that account, the farthest thing?
Now—! Mrs. Jameson was here to-day, and in the room before, almost, I heard of her being on the stairs. It is goodnatured of her to remember me in her brief visits to London—and she brought me two or three St. Sebastians with the arrows through them, etched by herself, to look at—very goodnatured! Once she spoke of you—‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you saw Mr. Browning’s last number! yes, I remember how you spoke of it. I suppose Mr. Kenyon lent you his copy’.... And before I could speak, she was on another subject. But I should not have had heart to say what I meant and predetermined to say, even if the opportunity to-day had been achieved. As if you could not be read except in Mr. Kenyon’s copy! I might have confessed to my own copy, even if not to my own original ... do you not think?
Before she came, I went down to the drawing-room, I and Flush, and found no one there ... and walked drearily up and down the rooms, and, so, came back to mine. May you have spent your day better. There was sunshine for you, as I could see. God bless you and keep you. Saturday may be clear for us, or may not—and if it should not be clear, certainly Monday and Tuesday will not ... what shall be done? Will you wait till Wednesday? or will you (now let it be as you choose!) come on Saturday, running the risk of finding only a parcel ... a book and a letter ... and so going away, if there should be reasons against the visit. Because last Monday was known of, and I shall not ascertain until Saturday whether or not we shall be at liberty. Or ... shall we at once say Wednesday? It is for your decision. You go out on Saturday evening ... and perhaps altogether there may be a conspiracy against Saturday. Judge and decide.
I am writing as with the point of a pilgrim’s staff rather than a pen. ‘We are all strangers and pilgrims.’ Can you read anywise?
I think of you, bless you, love you—but it would have been better for you never to have seen my face perhaps, though Mr. Kenyon gave the first leave. Perhaps!!—I ‘flatter’ myself to-night, in change for you.
Best beloved I am your
Ba.
Friday—2 o’clock p.m.
[Post-mark, April 10, 1846.]
Ever dearest I wrote last night what might make you doubtful and uncomfortable about Saturday; being doubtful myself and not knowing what word to say of it. But just now Papa has been here in the room with me,—and a beatific Jamaica packet has just come in, as the post declares ... (Benedetta sia l’ora &c.!) and he will ‘hear more,’ he says, ‘in the city to-morrow!’—So we are safe. Come, if there should be no reason of your own for staying. For me, I seem to have more need than usual of seeing you. May God bless you. I am
Your
Ba.
Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, April 10, 1846.]
Dearest, sweetest best—how can you, seeing so much, yet see that ‘possibility’—I leave off loving you! and be ‘angry’ and ‘vexed’ and the rest! Well—take care I don’t answer fairly and plainly that I can do all this—as the poor women had to confess in their bewilderment when grave judges asked ‘by which of the thirty-seven ways they were accustomed to signify their desire of his presence to Asmodeus—&c. &c.—But I cannot jest, nor trifle here—I protest in the most solemn way I am capable of conceiving, that I am altogether unable to imagine how or whence or why any possible form of anger or vexation or any thing akin can or could or should or shall ever rise in me to you—it is a sense hitherto undreamed of, a new faculty—altogether an inexplicable, impossible feeling. I am not called on, surely, to suppose cases of pure impossibility? To say, ‘if you did thus or thus,’—what I know you could no more do than go and kill cows with your own hand, and dig up kale grounds? But I can fancy your being angry with me, very angry—and speaking the truth of the anger—that is to be fancied: and God knows I should in that case kiss my letters, here, till you pleased to judge me not unworthy to kiss the hem of your garment again. My own Ba! My election is made or God made it for me,—and is irrevocable. I am wholly yours. I see you have yet to understand what that implies,—but you will one day. And in this, just said, I understand serious anger, for serious offences; to which, despite my earnest endeavour, who shall say I may not be liable? What are you given me for but to make me better—and, in that, happier? If you could save my soul, ‘so as by fire,’ would your dear love shrink from that? But in the matter we really refer to.... Oh, Ba, did I not pray you at the beginning to tell me the instant you detected anything to be altered by human effort? to give me that chance of becoming more like you and worthier of you? and here where you think me gravely in the wrong, and I am growing conscious of being in the wrong,—one or two repetitions of such conduct as yours, such ‘disagreeable letters,’ and I must ‘leave off’.... When I do that on such ground ... I need imprecate no foolish sense on my head,—the very worst will be in full operation. I only wrote to justify an old feeling, exercised only in the case of others I have heard of—men called ‘cool murderers,’ ‘deliberate imbruers of their hands in,’ &c. &c.—and I meant just to say,—well,—I, and others, despise your society and only go into it now to be the surer that, when we leave it, we were not excluded as the children turn from the grapes because their teeth are set on edge, whatever may be the foxes’ pretext—but, for your own devoted followers be a little more merciful, and while you encourage them to spend a dozen years in a law-suit, lest they lose a few pounds ... but I won’t repeat the offence, dear—you are right and I am wrong and will lay it to heart, and now kiss, not your feet this time, because I am the prouder, far from the more humble, by this admission and retractation——
Your note arrives here—Ba;—it would have been ‘better for me,’ that? Oh, dearest, let us marry soon, very soon, and end all this! If I could begin taking exceptions again, I might charge you with such wild conventionalism, such wondrous perversity of sight or blindness rather! Can you, now, by this time, tell me or yourself that you could believe me happy with any other woman that ever breathed? I tell you, without affectation, that I lay the whole blame to myself ... that I feel that if I had spoken my love out sufficiently, all this doubt could never have been possible. You quite believe I am in earnest, know my own mind and speak as I feel, on these points we disputed about—yet I am far from being sure of it, or so it seems now—but, as for loving you,—there I mistake, or may be wrong, or may, or might or or—
Now kiss me, my best-dearest beloved! It seems I am always understood so—the words are words, and faulty, and inexpressive, or wrongly expressive,—but when I live under your eyes, and die, you will never mistake,—you do not now, thank God, say to me—‘you want to go elsewhere for all you say the visit seems too brief’—and, ‘you would change me for another, for all you possess’—never do you say such things—but when I am away, all the mistaking begins—let it end soon, come, dearest life of my life, light of my soul, heart’s joy of my heart!
You feel I must see you to-morrow if possible—at all events I will call for the parcel. (What made you suppose I was engaged to-morrow night? The saying that I should meet my sea-faring friend, perhaps? But that is to be here—he comes here—at all events, I recollect no other engagement—if I had one with Death himself, I almost think I would go,—folly!) But let the parcel be ready (to put into my hand at once) and I will venture at 3 o’clock.
In truth, all yesterday I was very unwell,—going about sight-seeing with a friend and his lady-cousins, and afterward dining with them—I came home dead with intense boring—I rarely remember to have suffered so much. To-day I am rather better,—much better, indeed. If I can but see you for a few minutes to-morrow!
May God bless you, dearest—and show you the truth in me, the one truth which I dare hope compensates for much that is to be forgiven: when I told you at the beginning I was not worthy, was infinitely lower &c., you seemed incredulous! well now, you see! I, that you would persist in hoping better things of, held such opinions as those—and so you begin setting me right, and so I am set far on towards right—is not all well, love? And now go on, when I give next occasion, and tell me more, and let me alter more, and thank you, if I can, more,—but not, not love you more, you, Ba, whom I love wholly,—with all my faculties, all my being. May God bless you, again—it all ends there—!
Your own R.
Sunday.
[Post-mark, April 13, 1846.]
I will not speak much of the letter, as you desire that I should not. And because everything you write must be answered in some way and sense, ... must have some result, there is the less need of words in the present case. Let me say only then, ever dearest, dearest, that I never felt towards you as I felt when I had read that letter ... never loved you so entirely! ... that it went to my heart, and stayed there, and seemed to mix with the blood of it ... believe this of me, dear dearest beloved! For the rest, there is no need for me to put aside carefully the assumption of being didactic to you ... of being better than you, so as to teach you! ... ah, you are so fond of dressing me up in pontifical garments (‘for fun,’ as the children say!)—but because they are too large for me, they drop off always of themselves, ... they do not require my pulling them off: these extravagances get righted of their own accord. After all, too, you, ... with that præternatural submissiveness of yours, ... you know your power upon the whole, and understand, in the midst of the obeisances, that you can do very much what you please, with your High Priest. Εἴ τις αἴσθησἲς in the ghosts of the tribe of Levi, let them see and witness how it is!
And now, do you see. It was just natural that when we differed for the first time I should fall into low spirits. In the night, at dream-time, when instead of dreams ‘deep thought falleth upon man,’ suddenly I have been sad even to tears, do you know, to think of that: and whenever I am not glad, the old fears and misgivings come back—no, you do not understand ... you cannot, perhaps! But dear, dearest, never think of yourself that you have expressed ‘insufficiently’ your feelings for me. Insufficiently! No words but just your own, between heaven and earth, could have persuaded me that one such as you could love me! and the tongue of angels could not speak better words for that purpose, than just yours. Also, I know that you love me.... I do know it, my only dearest, and recognize it in the gratitude of my soul:—and it is through my want of familiarity with any happiness—through the want of use in carrying these weights of flowers, that I drop them again and again out of weak hands. Besides the truth is, that I am not worthy of you—and if you were to see it just as I see it, why there would be an end ... there, ... I sometimes think reasonably.
Well—now I shall be good for at least a fortnight. Do I not teaze you and give you trouble? I feel ashamed of myself sometimes. Let me go away from myself to talk of Mr. Kenyon, therefore!
For he came to-day, and arrived in town on Friday evening—(what an escape on Saturday!) and said of you, ... with those detestable spectacles—like the Greek burning glasses, turned full on my face ... ‘I suppose now that Mr. Browning’s book is done and there are no more excuses for coming, he will come without excuses.’ Then, after talk upon other subjects, he began a long wandering sentence, the end of which I could see a mile off, about how he ‘ought to know better than I, but wished to enquire of me’ ... what, do you suppose? ... why, ‘what Mr. Browning’s objects in life were. Because Mrs. Procter had been saying that it was a pity he had not seven or eight hours a day of occupation,’ &c. &c. It is a good thing to be angry, as a refuge from being confounded: I really could say something to that. And I did say that you ‘did not require an occupation as a means of living ... having simple habits and desires—nor as an end of living, since you found one in the exercise of your genius! and that if Mr. Procter had looked as simply to his art as an end, he would have done better things.’
Which made Mr. Kenyon cry out ... ‘Ah now! you are spiteful! and you need not be, for there was nothing unkind in what she said.’ ‘But absurd’! ... I insisted—‘seeing that to put race horses into dray carts, was not usually done nor advised.’
You told me she was a worldly woman; and here is a proof, sent back to you. But what business have worldly women to talk their dust and ashes over high altars in that way? I was angry and sinned not—angry for the moment. Then Mr. Kenyon agreed with me, I think, and illustrated the subject by telling me how Wordsworth had given himself to the service of the temple from the beginning—‘though,’ observed Mr. Kenyon, ‘he did not escape so from worldliness.’ But William Wordsworth is not Robert Browning. Mr. Kenyon spoke of your family and of yourself with the best and most reverent words.
And all this reminds me of what I have often and often mused about saying to you, and shrank back, and torn the paper now and then.... You know the subject you wanted to discuss, on Saturday. Now whenever the time shall come for discussing that subject, let this be a point agreed upon by both of us. The peculiarity of our circumstances will enable us to be free of the world ... of our friends even ... of all observation and examination, in certain respects: now let us use the advantage which falls to us from our misfortune,—and, since we must act for ourselves at last, let us resist the curiosity of the whole race of third persons ... even the affectionate interest of such friends as dear Mr. Kenyon, ... and put it into the power of nobody to say to himself or to another, ... ‘she had so much, and he, so much, in worldly possessions—or she had not so much and he had not so much.’ Try to understand what I mean. As it is not of the least importance to either of us, as long as we can live, whether the sixpence, we live by, came most from you or from me ... and as it will be as much mine as yours, and yours as mine when we are together ... why let us join in throwing a little dust in all the winking eyes round—oh, it is nonsense and weakness, I know—but I would rather, rather, see winking eyes than staring eyes. What has anybody to do with us? Even my own family ... why should they ever see the farthest figure of our affairs, as to mere money? There now—it is said, ... what I have had in my head so long to say. And one other word resumes my meditations on ‘the subject’ which will not be ripe for discussion for ever so many months ... and that other word is ... that if ever I am to wrong you so much as to be yours so, it is on the condition of leaving England within the fewest possible half hours afterwards. I told you that, long ago—so bear it in mind. I should not dare breathe in this England. Think!—There is my father—and there is yours! Do you imagine that I am not afraid of your family? and should be still more, if it were not for the great agony of fear on the side of my own house. Ah—I must love you unspeakably ... even to dare think of the possibility of such things. So we will not talk of them now. I write what I write, to throw it off my mind and have done. Bear it in yours, but do not refer to it—I ask you not to refer to it.
A long straggling letter, this is. I shall have mine to-morrow. And you will tell me if Wednesday or Thursday shall be our day; and above all, tell me how you are. Then the book will come. Remember to send one to Mrs. Jameson! I write in haste ... in haste—but one may think of you either in haste or at leisure, without blotting the air. Love me, beloved ... do not leave off to see if I deserve it. I am at least (which is at most)
Your very own.
Sunday.
[Post-mark, April 13, 1846.]
Dearest, unspeakably dear Ba,—would I were with you! But my heart stays with you: I write this, tired somewhat and out of spirits—for I have been writing notes this morning; getting rid of the arrears which turn out more considerable than I thought. And the moment I have done, I look to the chair and the picture and desire to be at rest with you; the perfect rest and happiness here on earth. But do think, my own Ba, in the direction I indicated yesterday—any obstacle now, would be more than I could bear—I feel I must live with you,—if but for a year, a month—to express the love which words cannot express, nor these letters, nor aught else.
See one thing! Through your adorable generosity, my beloved,—at the beginning you pleased to tell me my love was returned,—that I had gained your love; without your assurance, I should never have believed that possible, whatever you may think; but you, what you say, I believe; would in other matters believe, rather than my own senses; and here I believed—in humbleness, God knows; but so it was. —Then, is there not this one poor fruit of that generosity, one reassuring consideration, if you will accept it, that, nearly a year ago, I was in possession of all I aspired to?—so that if I had been too weak for my accorded happiness—likely to be in due time satiated with it, and less and less impressed by it, and so on, till at last ‘I changed,’—would not this have happened inevitably before now? I had gained your love; one could not go on gaining it—but some other love might be gained! Indeed, I don’t see how, in certain instances (where there is what is called a ‘pursuit,’ and all the excitement of suspense, and alternating hope and fear, all ending in the marriage day, after the fashion of a Congreve comedy), how with the certainty of that kind of success, all the interest of the matter can avoid terminating. But it does seem to me, that the love I have gained is as nothing to the love I trust to gain. I want the love at our lives’ end, the love after trial, the love of my love, when mine shall have had time and occasion to prove itself! I have already, from the beginning indeed, had quite enough magnanimity to avoid wishing for opportunities of doing so at your expense—I pray you may never be in dangers from which I rescue you, nor meet sorrow from which I divert you: but in the ordinary chances of life—I shall be there, and ready, and your own, heart and soul. Why do I say this to you?
All words are so weak,—so weak!
Here,—(no, I shall have to send it to-morrow, I believe—well, here in the course of the day)—comes ‘Luria’ and the other—and I lay it at my dear Lady’s feet, wishing it were worthier of them, and only comforted, through all the conviction of the offering’s unworthiness, by knowing that she will know,—the dear, peerless, all precious Ba I adore, will know—that I would give her my life gladlier at a word. See what I have written on the outside—‘to Miss Barrett’!—because I thought even leaving out the name might look suspiciously! But where no eye can see; save your dear eye ... there is written a dedication.
Kiss me, dear Ba. May God bless you. Care for everything—if you should have taken cold last night, for instance! Talk of a sword suspended by a hair!—what is the feeling of one whose priceless jewel hangs over a gulf by a hair? Tell me all—I love you wholly and am wholly yours.
See the strangely dirty paper—it comes from my desk where, every now and then, a candle gets over-set; or the snuffers remain open, aghast at what I write!
Monday.
[Post-mark, April 14, 1846.]
Ever dearest I have your two letters; and because there are only two ‘great lights’ to rule the day and the night, I am not likely to hear from you again before to-morrow. Then you want Mrs. Jameson’s direction ... (it is just Mrs. Jameson, Ealing!) and here is the last ‘Bell and Pomegranate’—and, for all these reasons, I must write without waiting; I will not wait for the night. Thank you for the book, thank you! I turn over the leaves ever so proudly. Tell me how I can be proud of you, when I cannot be proud of your loving me:—I am certainly proud of you. One of my first searches was for the note explanatory of the title—and I looked, and looked, and looked, at the end, at the beginning, at the end again. At last I made up my mind that you had persisted in not explaining, or that the printer had dropped the manuscript. Why, what could make you thrust that note on all but the titlepage of the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’? Oh—I comprehend. Having submitted to explain, quite at the point of the bayonet, you determined at least to do it where nobody could see it done. Be frank and tell me that it was just so. Also the poor ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’ you have repudiated so from the ‘Bells and Pomegranates’ ... pushing it gently aside. Well—you must allow it to be a curious dislocation—only it is not important—and I like the note, all except the sentence about ‘Faith and Works,’ which does not apply, I think, ... that instance. ‘Bells and Pomegranates’ is a symbolic phrase—which the other is not at all, however much difficult and doubtful theological argument may have arisen from it as a collective phrase. So I am the first critic, you see, notwithstanding that Mr. Forster waylaid the first copy. Ah no! I shall have my gladness out of the book presently, beyond the imagination of any possible critic. Who in the world shall measure gladnesses with me?
Tell me—I was going to write that ‘Tell me’ in my yesterday’s letter, but at last I was hurried, and could not ... did you come into London on Sunday? did you walk past this house on the other side of the street, about two o’clock? Because just then I and Flush went down-stairs. The drawing-room had nobody in it, and the window being wide open, I walked straight to it to shut it. And there, across the street, walked somebody ... I am so near sighted that I could only see a shadow in a dimness ... but the shadow had, or seemed to have, a sign of you, a trace of you ... and instead of shutting the window I looked after it till it vanished. No, it was not you. I feel now that it was not you; and indeed yesterday I felt it was not you. But, for the moment, it made my heart stop beating, ... that insolent shadow, ... which pretended to be you and wasn’t. Some one, I dare say, who ‘has an occupation eight or nine hours a day’ and never does anything! I may speak against him, for deceiving me—it’s a pure justice.
To go back to the book ... you are perfectly right about ‘gadge,’ and in the view you take of the effect of such words. You misunderstood me if you fancied that I objected to the word—it was simply my ignorance which led me to doubt whether you had written ‘gag.’ Of course, the horror of those specialities is heightened by the very want of distinct understanding they meet with in us:—it is the rack in the shadow of the vault. Oh—I fully agree.
And now ... dearest dearest ... do not bring reason to me to prove ... what, to prove? I never get anything by reason on this subject, be very sure!—and I like better to feel that unreasonably you love me—to feel that you love me as, last year, you did. Which I could not feel, last year, a whole day or even half a day together. Now the black intervals are rarer ... which is of your goodness, beloved, and not of mine. For me, you read me indeed a famous lesson about faith, ... and set me an example of how you ‘believed’! ... but it does not apply, this lesson, ... it does not resemble, this example!—inasmuch as what you had to believe ... viz. that roses blow in June ... was not quite as difficult as what I am called to believe, ... viz. that St. Cecilia’s angel-visitant had a crown of roses on, which eternally were budding and blowing. But I believe ... believe ... and want no ‘proof’ of the love, but just itself to prove it,—for nothing else is worthy. On the other side, I have the audacity to believe, as I think I have told you, that no woman in the world could feel for you exactly what ... but, here, too, I had better shun the reasons, ... the ‘bonnes raisons’ which ‘le roy notre sire’ cannot abide.—What foolishness I am writing really! And is it to be for a ‘year,’ or a ‘month’—or a week,—better still? or we may end by a compromise for the two hours on Wednesdays, ... if it goes on so,—more sensibly.
I have heard to-day from Miss Martineau and from Mrs. Jameson, both—one talking Mesmer and the other Homer. I sent her (Mrs. J.) two versions of the daughters of Pandarus, the first in the metre you know, and the second in blank verse; ... and she does not decide which she likes best, she says graciously, whereas I could not guess which I liked worse, when I sent them on Saturday. Do let her have ‘Luria’ at once. She will take the right gladness in it, even as she appreciates you with the right words and thoughts. But surely you use too many stamps? Have you a pair of scales like Zeus and me? ... only mine are broken, or I would send you an authority on this important subject, as well as an opinion.
How did you not get my letter, pray, by the first post on Monday? You ought to have had it! it was not my fault. And thinking of ‘causas rerum,’ ... I was to ‘catch cold,’ I suppose, on Saturday, because you went away?—there was no stronger motive. I did not however catch cold—ah, how you make me giddy with such words, as if I did really ‘hang over a gulph’!—not with fear though! Is it possible, I say to myself, that I can be so much to him? to him! May God bless him! There was no harm meant by the black seal, I think? Tell me too of the headache, and whether the dinner is for Wednesday, and whether, in that case, it is still to be preferred, with all its close clipping, to Thursday. Meantime the letter grows as if there was no such thing as shears!
Your own
Ba.