Tuesday Morning.
[Post-mark, April 14, 1846.]
I waited till this second letter should arrive—feeling that it would be easier to address the answer to this.
About the other,—that part which you bid me not refer to. You are obeyed now—my time will come in its turn, and I will try and speak. With respect to the immediate leaving England, you will let me say, I think, that all my own projects depend on that,—there will not be one least objection made to it by my father or mother, I know beforehand. You perhaps misconceived something I said last Saturday. I meant the obvious fact however—that while there would be a best way of finding myself with you, still, from the worst way (probably, of taking a house opposite Mrs. Procter’s)—from that even, to the best way of any other life I can imagine,—what a descent! From the worst of roses to the most flourishing of—dandelions. But we breathe together, understand together, know, feel, live together ... I feel every day less and less need of trying to assure you I feel thus and thus—I seem to know that you must know!
Mrs. Procter is very exactly the Mrs. Procter I knew long ago. What she says is of course purely foolish. The world does seem incurably stupid on this, as other points. I understand Mr. Kenyon’s implied kindness—that is,—understand he may think he sees my true good in this life with older and better instructed eyes than my own—so benevolent people beg me ‘not to go out in the open air—without something about my neck,’ and would gird on a triple worsted ‘comforter’ there, entirely for my good, if I would let them. ‘Why, Mr. Procter wears one!’ Ah, but without it, what a cold he would catch!
The explanatory note fills up an unseemly blank page—and does not come at the end of the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’—prose after prose—still it does look awkwardly—but then I don’t consider that it excludes this last from the ‘Bells’—rather it says this is the last, (no, nine if you like,—as the title says ‘eight and last’—from whence will be this advantage, that, in the case of another edition, all the lyrics &c. may go together under one common head of Lyrics and Romances—and the ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’ profiting by the general move-up of the rest of the numbers, after the fashion of hackney coaches on a stand when one is called off, step into the place and take the style of No. 8—and the public not find themselves defrauded of the proper quantity!)
And shall I indeed see you to-morrow, Ba? I will tell you many things, it seems to me now, but when I am with you they always float out of mind. The feelings must remain unwritten—unsung too, I fear. I very often fancy that if I had never before resorted to that mode of expression, to singing,—poetry—now I should resort to it, discover it! Whereas now—my very use and experience of it deters me—if one phrase of mine should seem ‘poetical’ in Mrs. Procter’s sense—a conscious exaggeration,—put in for effect! only seem, I say! So I dare not try yet—but one day!
Ba, I kept your letter yesterday, about me—it lay by my head at night—that its good might not go from me,—such perfect good! How strange to hear what you say of my letters,—of such and such a letter—some seem kind, and kinder and kindest—and how should I guess why? My life and love flow steadily under all those bubbles, or many or less—it is through the under current that, whatever you see, does appear, no doubt—but also where nothing appears,—all is one depth!
Bless you, all dearest beloved.
To-morrow, Wednesday!
Ever your very own,
Thursday.
[Post-mark, April 16, 1846.]
This morning, you would never guess what I have been doing.—Buying a bonnet! That looks like a serious purpose of going out, walking out, driving out ... now doesn’t it? And having chosen one a little like a Quaker’s, as I thought to myself, I am immediately assured by the learned that ‘nothing can be more fashionable’ ... which is a most satisfactory proof of blind instinct, ... feeling towards the Bude lights of the world, and which Mrs. Procter would highly esteem me for, if she did but know it.
In the meanwhile assure yourself that I understand perfectly your feeling about the subject of yesterday. Flies are flies, and yet they are vexatious with their buzzing, as flies. Only Mrs. Jameson told me the other day that a remedy against the mosquitos ... polvere di morchia ... had been discovered lately in Italy, so that the world might sleep there in peace—as you may here ... let us talk no more of it. I think I should not have told you if I had not needed it for a talking-ladder to something else. For the rest, it is amusing to me, quite amusing, to observe how people cannot conceive of work except under certain familiar forms. Men who dig in ditches have an idea that the man who leads the plough rather rests than works: and all men of out-door labour distrust the industry of the manufacturers in-doors—while both manufacturers and out-door labourers consider the holders of offices and clerkships as idle men ... gentlemen at ease. Then between all these classes and the intellectual worker, the difference is wider, and the want of perception more complete. The work of creation, nobody will admit ... though everybody has by heart, without laying it to heart, that God rested on the seventh day. Looking up to the stars at nights, they might as well take all to be motionless—though if there were no motion there would be no morning ... and they look for a morning after all. Why who could mind such obtuse stupidity? It is the stupidity of mankind, par excellence of foolishness! The hedger and ditcher they see working, but God they do not see working. If one built a palace without noise and confusion and the stroke of hammers, one would scarcely get credit for it in this world ... so full of virtue and admiration it is, to make a noise! Even I, you see, who said just now ‘Talk no more of it,’ talk more and more, and make more noise than is necessary. Here is an end though—we leave Mrs. Procter here. And do not think that the least word of disrespect was said of you—indeed it was not! neither disrespect nor reproach. So you and I will forgive everybody henceforward, for wishing you to be rich. And if Miss Procter would ‘commit suicide’ rather than live as you like to live, I will not, as long as you are not tired of me—and that, just now and as things are, is of a little more consequence perhaps....
Scarcely had you gone, dearest, yesterday, when I had two letters with the very prose of life in them, dropping its black blotchy oil upon all the bright colours of our poetry! I groaned in the spirit to read, and to have to answer them. First was a Miss Georgiana Bennet—did you ever hear of her?—I never did before, but that was my base ignorance; for she is a most voluminous writer it appears ... and sent me five or six ‘works’ (observe), ... published under the ‘high sanction’ (and reiterated subscription) of ever so many Royal Highnesses and Right Reverends ... written in prose and verse, upon female education and the portrait of Harrison Ainsworth (‘I gaze upon that noble face, and bright expressive eyes!’), miscellaneous subjects of that sort!—also, there is a poem of some length, called ‘The Poetess,’ which sets forth in detail how Miss Georgiana Bennet has found the laurel on her brow a mere nightshade, and the glories of fame no comfort in the world. Well—all these books were sent to me, with a note hortative—giving indeed a very encouraging opinion of my poems generally, but desiring me to consider, that poets write both for the learned and the unlearned, and that in fact I am in the habit of using a great many hard words, much to the confusion of the latter large class of readers. She has heard (Georgiana has) that I am a classical scholar which of course (of course) accounts for this peculiarity ... but it is the duty of one’s friends to tell one of one’s faults, which is the principle she goes upon. In return for which benevolence, I am requested to send back a copy of my poems directly, and to ‘think of her, as she thinks of me.’ There an end. The next letter is from a Mrs. Milner, who used to edit the ‘Christian Mother’s Magazine’; the most idiotic tract-literature, that magazine was, but supported by the Queen dowager and a whole train of Duchesses proper—very proper indeed! She used to edit the ‘Christian Mother,’ but now she has ‘generalised’ it, she says, to the ‘Englishwoman’s Magazine’ and wants me to write for it and says....
Oh—I cannot have patience to go on to tell you. Besides you will take me to be too bitter, when I ought to be grateful perhaps! But if you knew how hard it is for me to have to read and write sometimes, as if you were not in the world with me ... as if.... Is it wrong to laugh a little, to put it off,—only to you, though? And do you know, I feel ill at ease in my conscience, on account of what I said (even to you) about Mrs. Paine, who came to see me, you remember; and because she has written me a letter which quite affected me, I shall send it for you to read, to undo any false impression. Then you will not dislike reading it on other grounds. She is very different from the Georgiana Bennets, and I am interested in her, and touched aright by what she says.
You will write. You think of me? I am better to-day, much—and it is strange to be so, when you are not here. Ever dearest, let your thoughts be with me—
I am your own....
Thursday.
[Post-mark, April 16, 1846.]
How are you now, dearest? If the worse for my visit.... No, there is no affectation in what I would say—you might be worse, you know, through excitement, whether pleasurable or the reverse. One comfort is, the walking, going down-stairs, &c. have not occasioned it. I expect everything from your going out of doors, that is to be—what a joy to write it, think of it, expect it! Oh, why are you not here—where I sit writing; whence, in a moment, I could get to know why the lambs are bleating so, in the field behind—I do not see it from either window in this room—but I see a beautiful sunshine (2½ p.m.) and a chestnut tree leafy all over, in a faint trembling chilly way, to be sure—and a holly hedge I see, and shrubs, and blossomed trees over the garden wall,—were you but here, dearest, dearest—how we would go out, with Flush on before, for with a key I have, I lock out the world, and then look down on it; for there is a vast view from our greatest hill—did I ever tell you that Wordsworth was shown that hill or its neighbour; someone saying ‘R.B. lives over there by that hill’—‘Hill’? interposed Wordsworth—‘we call that, such as that, a rise’! I must have told you, I think. (While I write, the sun gets ever brighter—you must be down-stairs, I feel sure—)
I fully meant to go out this morning—but there is a pressing note from my old young friend, Frank Talfourd, to get me to witness—only another play and farce!—and what is to be done?
Here shall be my ending ‘for reasons, for reasons.’ To-morrow I will write more; my Monday—to have to wait so long! And when I do see you, I begin to pour out profusions of confusions of speech about Mrs. Procter and her vain notions—to what earthly good? ... as it is very easy to ask now! now that I am here again, alone again.
Dear, dearest Ba, I cannot serve you, nor even talk to you ... but love you,—oh, that I must dare say I can do, as none other could—as you have yet to know!
Bless you my very dearest, sweetest Ba—I am your own, heart and soul—
Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 17, 1846.]
Ah, the chestnut tree: do you think that I never saw the chestnut tree before? Long ago, I did ... a full year ago or more—more! A voice talked to me of the ‘west wind’ which ‘set dancing the baby cones of my chestnut tree’—nearly I remember the words. Do you, the time? It was early in the morning—‘before seven,’ said the voice!—too early in the morning for my dream to be—because a dream, says Lord Brougham when he tries at philosophy, a dream, if ever so long a dream, is all contained in the last moment of sleep, at the turn towards waking—so, late and not early!
No—you did not tell me of Wordsworth—not at least, after that reading. Perhaps if Hatcham should not be swept away in the Railway ‘scirocco,’ I may see the ‘hill’ or the ‘rise’ at some distant day. Shall I, do you think? I would rather see it than Wordsworth’s mountains—‘for reasons, for reasons’ as you say. And talking of reasons, and reasonable people in general, I thought, ... after you went away on Wednesday, and I began to remember how you had commended your own common sense and mine,—I thought that it might be very well for you to do it, inasmuch as nobody else would, for you——! ὑπέρ σου as the theological critics intensify ὑπέρ to the genitive, ‘for reasons, for reasons.’
How ‘Luria’ takes possession of me more and more! Such a noble work!—of a fulness, a moral grandeur!—and the language everywhere worthy. Tell me what you hear the people say—I shall be anxious, which you will not be—but, to me, you will forgive it. ‘The Soul’s Tragedy’ is wonderful—it suggests the idea of more various power than was necessary to the completion of ‘Luria’ ... though in itself not a comparable work. But you never wrote more vivid dramatic dialogue than that first part—it is exquisite art, it appears to me. Tell me what the people say!—and tell me what the gods say ... Landor, for instance!
Mr. Kenyon has not been here—and I dare not, even in a letter, be the first to talk to anyone of you. It is foolish of me perhaps—but if I whisper your name I expect to be directly answered by all the thunders of Heaven and cannons of earth. When I was writing to Miss Martineau the other day, for full ten minutes I held the pen ready charged with ink over a little white place, just to say ‘have you read,’ ... or ‘have you heard’ ... and at last I couldn’t write one word of those words ... I believe I said something about landed proprietors and agrarian laws instead.
So you ‘felt’ that I was down-stairs to-day! See how wrong feeling may be, when it has to do with such as I. For, dearest, notwithstanding your bright sunshine I did not go down-stairs ... only opened the window and let in the air. I have not been quite as well, as far as just sensation goes, as usual, these few days—but it is nothing, a passing common headache, as I told you, ... and your visit did good rather than harm, and to-morrow you may think of me as in the drawing-room. Oh, I might have been there to-day, or yesterday, or the day before! but it was pleasanter to sit in the chair and be idle, so I sate! But you did not see me in my gondola chair—not you! you were thinking of the lambs instead, and looking over the wall to the ‘blossomed trees’ ... (what trees? cherry-trees? apple-trees? pear-trees?) and so, altogether, you lost your second sight of me and made mistakes. Ever dearest, is your head better? You will not say. You are afraid to say, perhaps, that you were ill, through writing too many notes and not going out to take the right exercise. Ah, do remember me for that good! I heard yesterday that ‘Mr. Browning looked very pale as he came up-stairs.’ Which comes of Mr. Browning’s writing when he should be walking!—now doesn’t it?
Do you go to Mr. Serjeant Talfourd’s on Monday? and would it be better therefore if you came here on Tuesday? You could come on the next Saturday all the same—consider! Nobody shall leap into lions’ dens for me! so let us measure the convenience of things, as Miss Mitford would in marriages. ‘Convenance,’ though, she would say—which is more foolish than ‘convenience’ as I write it. She asserts that every marriage in her experience, beginning by any sort of love, has ended miserably—thus run her statistics in matrimony. Add, that she thinks—she told me last autumn—that all men without exception are essentially tyrants,—and that poets are a worse species of men, seeing that, all human feelings, they put into their verses, and leave them there ... add this, and this, and then calculate how, if I consulted her on our prospects (shall I?), she would see for me an infinite succession of indefinite thumbscrews and gadges!! Well—I am not afraid—except for you sometimes! for myself I accept my chances for life under the peine forte et dure. And I won’t speak to Miss Mitford, if you don’t to Mr. Kenyon ... and I beseech you to avoid by every legitimate means the doing that ... oh, do not ever speak that to him!
May God bless you my beloved!—Walk for my sake, and be well, try to be well! For me, I am so without trying, ... just as I am
Your own
Ba.
Friday.
[Post-mark, April 17, 1846.]
No, my own dearest, I did not see you sit in your chair, nor in mine, yesterday—did I write nothing about your walking with me by the garden wall, and on the hill, and looking down on London? And afterwards you went with me, indeed, to Talfourd’s (last night was that purgatorial business,—how could I make you think it related to Monday?) If I have to put the least thing into words, so I put it always! Being just like the family of somebody—‘who were one and all so stupid’ said he—‘that if you bade them spell A B they answered B A——’ Nay, I spell Happiness, and Blessing, and all other good words if ever so many letters by that same Ba! But I want to go on and say you kept me from such an undiluted evening of misery (because I saw you through it all)—oh, such an evening!—it shall be the last, I think—and the going out is so near,—the bonnet is bought! And you pretend not to know I would walk barefoot till I dropped, if so I might attain to the sight of you, and it. Do let me say, for gratitude’s sake—it is like the sign of spring in Shelley’s ‘Prometheus’—
—that the flower of my life will blow! Now let me try and answer everything in Ba’s darling letters and so not be ‘vexed’ afterward,—recollecting how she asked this, or bade me be sure to reply to that, and how I answered, spelling A B for B A! First, there is a famous contrivance against fly tormentors, a genuine canopy, gnat-repelling enclosure of muslin which covers your bed wholly, and into which once introduce yourself dexterously (because the plagues try to follow slily) and lo, you are in a syren’s isle within the isle, a world cut off from the outer one by that fine hazy cloudish gauze—a delight it is! Only, if you let one persisting critic of a buzzer lie perdue, he will have you at a glorious advantage—(not that one ever bit me, in England or elsewhere). And now—your letters,—Miss Bennet’s letter that you received ‘just after I had gone’—will you be edified if I tell you what I received the moment I got home? (once, beforehand—my experience or yours, which would you rather not have?) My sister pointed with immense solemnity to a packet,—then delivered a message, and then—but hear the message—a ‘Mrs. George Sharp’ (unless I mistake the name) lives next door to Dickens and awfully respects him—she asks one aunt of mine, to ask another, to ask my sister, to ask me ... who have never seen or heard of this Mrs. George,—me, who am, she has understood, a friend of Dickens,—to get inserted in the Daily News some paragraph of a reasonable length in recommendation of the accompanying packet of cough-drops, (lozenges, or pills—for I was not rightly instructed which)—my fee, I suppose, being the said packet of pills! All comment is beyond me.
Well, but your Mrs. Bennet—what a wretched, disgusting sfacciataccia! I would not be accessory to keeping those soapy bubbles of stupid vanity from bursting, by sparing a rough finger, certainly not. How ‘ought you to be grateful, perhaps?’ For what on earth?
Dearest, dearest Ba,—a ‘passing’ headache of ‘these few days,’ what can I say, or do? May God bless you, and care for all. Still the comfort continues, it is not that you have made an effort, and so grown worse.
I am pretty well,—I half determine to go out and see Carlyle to-night,—so to forget a hasty resolution against all company (‘other’ company I had written ... as if to honour it—Ba’s is one company, and those people’s!—‘another’!)—I think I will go.
I spoke about Mr. Kenyon,—because I never would in my life take a step for myself (if that could be), apart from your good, without being guided by you where possible—much more, therefore, in a matter directly concerning you rather than me, did I want your opinion as to the course most proper, in the event of &c. I do not think it likely he will speak, or I shall have to answer ... but if that did happen, and you were not at hand, my own dearest,—how I should be grieved if, answering wrongly, I gave you annoyance! Here I seem to understand your wish.
My Ba, my only, utterly dear love, may God reward you for your blessing to me—my whole heart turns to you—and in your own. I kiss you, dearest—this morning a very ordinary motivetto in the overture to ‘Rabuco’ seemed to tell you more than I ever shall—I sit and speak to you by that, now!
R.B.
No letters yet from ‘anybody’—the few received are laudatory however—I will send you one from the old sailor-friend I told you of—but, mark! you must not send it back, to show my eyes and grieve my heart, when the bulky letter proves to be only this—returned! Landor’s in due time, I suppose! This I send is to make you laugh.... My Ba’s dear laugh can hurt nobody, not even my friend here—who has praised her poems more to me, there’s my consolation,—Consuelo—
Friday.
[Post-mark, April 18, 1846.]
But, dearest of all, you never said a word about Monday. So I did not misunderstand—I only misguessed. Because you did not mention any day, I took it into my head that you might perhaps be invited for Monday, and make an effort, which would make a fatigue, and go there and come here. I am glad you went to Carlyle’s—and where is Tennyson, and the dinner at Forster’s all this while? And how did the Talfourds torment you so? was it that you were very unwell? I fear you were unwell. For me, I have recovered from my dreadful illness of the last day or two ... I knew I should survive it after all ... and to-day, just that I might tell you, I went down-stairs with Flush, he running before as when we walk together through the gate. I opened the drawing-room door; when instead of advancing he stopped short ... and I heard strange voices—and then he drew back and looked up in my face exactly as if to say, ‘No! This will not do for us!—we had better go home again.’ Surely enough, visitors were in the room ... and he and I returned upon our steps. But think of his sense! Flush beats us both in ‘common sense,’ dearest, we must acknowledge, let us praise each other for it ever so. Next to Flush we may be something, but Flush takes the pas, as when he runs down-stairs.
To-day Mr. Kenyon came, spectacles and all. He sleeps in those spectacles now, I think. Well, and the first question was ... ‘Have you seen Mr. Browning? And what did he come for again, pray?’ ‘Why I suppose,’ I said, ‘for the bad reason my visitors have in general, when they come to see me’—Then, very quickly I asked about ‘Luria,’ and if he had read it and what he thought of it—upon which, the whole pomegranate was pulled out of his pocket, and he began to talk like the agreeable man he can be when he doesn’t ask questions and look discerningly through spectacles. ‘Luria’ was properly praised indeed. A very noble creation, he thought it, and heroically pathetic ... and much struck he seemed to be with the power you had thrown out on the secondary characters, lifting them all to the height of humanity, justifying them by their own lights Oh—he saw the goodness, and the greatness, the art and the moral glory; we had a great deal of talk. And when he tried to find out a few darknesses, I proved to him that they were clear noonday blazes instead, and that his eyes were just dazzled. Then the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’ made the right impression—a wonderful work it is for suggestions, and the conception of it as good a test of the writer’s genius, as any we can refer to. We talked and talked. And then he put the book into his pocket to carry it away to some friend of his, unnamed: and we had some conversation about poets in general and their way of living, of Wordsworth and Coleridge. I like to hear Mr. Kenyon talk of the gods and how he used to sit within the thunder-peal. Presently, leaning up against the chimney-piece,—he said quietly ... ‘Do you not think—oh, I am sure I need not ask you—in fact I know your thoughts of it ... but how strikingly upright and loyal in all his ways and acts, Mr. Browning is!—how impeccable as a gentleman’ &c. &c. and so on and on ... I do not tell you any more, because I should be tired perhaps ... (do you understand?) and this is not the first time, nor second, nor third time that he has spoken of you personally, so ... and as no man could use more reverent language of another. And all this time, what has become of Walter Savage Landor? I shall be vexed in another day. He may be from home perhaps—there must be a reason.
Vive Pritchard! and thank you for letting me see what he wrote.
Oh—and you shall see what I did not send yesterday—I shall make you read this one sheet of Mrs. Paine’s letter, because it really touched me, and because I am bound to undo the effects of my light speaking. As for the overpraise of myself, the overkindness in every respect, ... why we know how ‘sermons are found in stones’ ... yet no praise to the stones on that account! But you shall read what I send, both for her sake and mine, ... because I like you to read it.
My own dearest, do you mind what I say, and take exercise? You are vexing yourself with those notes, as I see from here. Now take care—follow my example, and be well—if not, there will be no use in wellness to me! May God bless you! Do you remember when you wrote first to me ‘May God bless you and me in that!’ It was before we met. Can you guess what I thought? I have the whole effect in my memory distinctly. I felt with a bitter feeling, that it was quite a pity to throw away such beautiful words out of the window into the dark. ‘Bitterly’ does not mean anything wrong or harsh, you know. But there was something painful ... as if the words were too near, for the speaker to be so far. Well—I am glad in looking back ... yes, glad ... glad to be certain at my heart, that I did not assume anything ... stretch out my hand for anything ... dearest!...
It is always when one is asleep that the dream-angels come. Watchers see nothing but ghosts.
Yet I shall see you on Monday, and shall watch and wait as those who wait for the morning ... that is, the Monday-morning! Till when and ever after, I am
Your own
Ba.
Saturday.
[Post-mark, April 18, 1846.]
So my dear, own Ba has good sense, best sense—whatever Flush’s may be! Do you think ... (to take the extreme horn of a certain dilemma I see) ... that—
Now, dearest, somehow I can’t write the great proof down—I will tell you on Monday—as to my good sense. I was wrong to give such a praise to myself in the particular case you were alluding to at the time—the good sense of the bird which finds out its mate amid a forest-full of birds of another kind! Why the poorest brown butterfly will seek out a brown stone in a gravel walk, or brown leaf in a flower bed, to settle on and be happy——(And I suppose even dear Carlyle is no longer my brown leaf; at least, I could not go last night. I will, however, try again on Monday—after leaving you—with that elixir in my veins).
Mrs. Paine’s note is charming. I thank you, dearest, for sending it—(How I like being reminded of thanks, due from me to you, which I may somehow come near the expression of! I am silent about an infinity of blessings—but I do say how grateful I am for this kindness!). Now, there is the legitimate process; the proper benefit received, in the first instance, and profited by, and thence grows in proper time the desire of being admitted to see you—so different from the vulgar ‘Georgianas’ who, possibly, hearing of the privilege extended to such a person as this we speak of, would say, with the triumphant chuckle of low cunning, ‘ah,—I will get as far, by one stroke of the pen—by one bold desire “to be thought of as I think of her.”’ She could but ask and be refused! Whereas Mrs. Paine was already in possession of much more dear, dear Ba, than could be taken away even by a refusal—besides, her reverence would have made her understand and acquiesce even in that. Therefore, I am glad, sympathisingly glad she is rewarded, that good, gentle Mrs. Paine! I will bring her note with me.
Because, here is Mr. Kenyon’s, and Landor’s (which had been sent to Moxon’s some days ago, whence the delay)—and Mrs. Jameson’s. All kind and indulgent and flattering in their various ways ... but, my Ba, my dear, dear Ba, other praises disregarding, I but harken those of yours—only saying—Ah, it is wrong to take the sacrificial vessel and say,—‘See, it holds my draught of wine, too’!—I will not do so, not parody your verses again. And I like to be praised now, in a sense, much, much more than ever—but, darling, oh how easily, if need were, I could know the world was abusing at its loudest outside; if you were inside ... though but the thinnest of gauze canopies kept us from the buzzing! This is only said on this subject, struck out by it, not of it,—for the praise is good true praise and from the worthies of our time—but—you, I love,—and there is the world-wide difference. And what ought I to say to Mr. Kenyon’s report of me? Stand quietly, assentingly? You will agree to this at least, that he cannot know what he says—only be disposed to hope and believe it is so: still, to speak so to you—what would I not do to repay him, if that could be! What a divinely merciful thought of God for our sake ... that we cannot know each other—infallibly know—as we know other things, in their qualities! For instance, I bid you know my love for you (which would be knowing me)—I complain that you do not, cannot—yet,—if you could ... my Ba, would you have been ever quite my Ba? If you said, calmly as when judging of material objects, ‘there is affection, so much, and sincerity, and admiration &c., yes, that I see, of course, for it is there, plainly’—So I should lose the delight crowning the delight,—first of the fact, as I know it; and then of this; that you desired to know it, chose to lean forward, and take my poor testimony for a fact, believing through desire, or at least will to believe—so that I do, in the exercise of common sense, adore you, more and more, as I live to see more, and feel more. So let me kiss you, my pearl of woman. Do I ‘remember’ praying God to bless me through the blessing on you? Shall I ever forget to pray so, rather! My dear—dearest, I pray now, with all my heart; may He bless you—and what else can now bless your own R?—
Sunday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, April 20, 1846.]
Just now I read again your last note for a particular purpose of thinking about the end of it ... where you say, as you have said so many times, ‘that your hand was not stretched out to the good—it came to you sleeping’—etc. I wanted to try and find out and be able to explain to myself, and perhaps to you, why the wrongness in you should be so exquisitely dear to me, dear as the rightness, or dearer, inasmuch as it is the topmost grace of all, seen latest on leaving the contemplation of the others, and first on returning to them——because, Ba, that adorable spirit in all these phrases, what I should adore without their embodiment in these phrases which fall into my heart and stay there, that strange unconsciousness of how the love-account really stands between us, who was giver altogether and who taker, and, by consequence, what is the befitting virtue for each of us, a generous disposition to forgetfulness on the giver’s part, as of everlasting remembrance and gratitude on the other—this unconsciousness is wrong, my heart’s darling, strangely wrong by the contrast with your marvellous apprehension on other points, every other point I am capable of following you to. I solemnly assure you I cannot imagine any point of view wherein I ought to appear to any rational creature the benefitting party and you the benefitted—nor any matter in which I can be supposed to be even magnanimous, (so that it might be said, ‘there, is a sacrifice’—‘that, is to be borne with’ &c.)—none where such a supposition is not degrading to me, dishonouring and affronting. I know you, my Ba, not because you are my Ba, but through the best exercise of whatever power in me you too often praise, I know—that you are immeasurably my superior, while you talk most eloquently and affectingly to me, I know and could prove you are as much my Poet as my Mistress; if I suspected it before I knew you, personally, how is it with me now? I feel it every day; I tell myself every day it is so. Yet you do not feel nor know it—for you write thus to me. Well,—and this is what I meant to say from the beginning of the letter, I love your inability to feel it in spite of right and justice and rationality. I would,—I will, at a moment’s notice, give you back your golden words, and lie under your mind supremacy as I take unutterable delight in doing under your eye, your hand. So Shakespeare chose to ‘envy this man’s art and that man’s scope’ in the Sonnets. But I did not mean to try and explain what is unexplainable after all—(though I wisely said I would try and explain!) You seem to me altogether ... (if you think my words sounded like flattery, here shall come at the end—anything but that!) you do seem, my precious Ba, too entirely mine this minute,—my heart’s, my senses’, my soul’s precise τὸ καλόν to last! Too perfect for that! The true power with the ignorance of it, the real hold of my heart, as you can hold this letter,—yet the fear with it that you may ‘vex me’ by a word,—makes me angry. Well,—if one must see an end of all perfection—still, to know one was privileged to see it—Nay, it is safe now—for this present, all my future would not pay, whatever your own future turned to!
Yet if I had to say, ‘I shall see her in a month or two—perhaps’—as this time last year I was saying in a kind of contented feeling!
Thank God I shall see her to-morrow—my dearest, best, only Ba cannot change by to-morrow!—What nonsense! The words break down, yet I will be trying to use them!
God bless my dearest, ever bless her.
I shall be with you soon after this reaches you, I trust—now, I kiss you, however, and now, my Ba!
Letters! since you bid me send them,—do you not?—see what the longer says of the improved diction, freedom from difficulty &c. Who is to praise for that, my Ba? Oh, your R.B. wholly and solely to be sure!
Tuesday.
[April 21, 1846.]
I would not say to you yesterday, perhaps could not, that you wrote ever so much foolishness to me in the morning, dearest, and that I knew it ever so well. There is no use, no help, in discussing certain questions,—some sorts of extravagance grow by talking of,—shake this elixir, and you have more and more bubbles on the surface of it. So I would not speak—nor will I write much. Only I protest, from my understanding, from my heart—and besides I do assert the truth—clear of any ‘affectation,’ this time,—and it is that you always make me melancholy by using such words. It seems to me as if you were in the dark altogether, and held my hand for another’s: let the shutter be opened suddenly; and the hand ... is dropped perhaps ... must I not think such thoughts, when you speak such words? I ask you if it is not reasonable. No, I do not ask you. We will not argue whether eagles creep, or worms fly. And see if it is distrust on my part! Love, I have learnt to believe in. I see the new light which Reichenbach shows pouring forth visibly from these chrystals tossed out. But when you say that the blue, I see, is red, and that the little chrystals are the fixed stars of the Heavens, how am I to think of you but that you are deluded, mistaken?—and in what? in love itself? Ah,—if you could know—if you could but know for a full moment of conviction, how you depress and alarm me by saying such things, you never would say them afterwards, I know. So trust to me, even as I trust to you, and do not say them ever again, ... you, who ‘never flatter’. Is it not enough that you love me? Is there anything greater? And will you run the risk of ruining that great wonder by bringing it to the test of an ‘argumentum ad absurdum’ such as I might draw from your letter? Have pity on me, my own dearest, and consider how I must feel to see myself idealized away, little by little, like Ossian’s spirits into the mist ... till ... ‘Gone is the daughter of Morven’! And what if it is mist or moon-glory, if I stretch out my hands to you in vain, and must still fade away farther? Now you will not any more. When the world comes to judge between us two, or rather over us both, the world will say (even the purblind world, as I myself with wide-open eyes!) that I have not been generous with my gifts—no; you are in a position to choose ... and you might have chosen better— ... that is my immoveable conviction. It has been only your love for me,—which I believe in perfectly as love—and which, being love, does not come by pure logic, as the world itself may guess ... it has been only, wholly and purely your love for me which has made a level for us two to meet and stand together. There is my fact against your fiction! Now let us talk no more. We cannot agree, because we stand in different positions ... ‘I hear a voice you cannot hear’! ... I am on the black side of the knight’s shield. Presently you will hear perhaps, and see. Shall you love me then? When the ideal breaks off, when the light is gone, ... will you love me then for the love which I shall bear you then as now, ... the only real thing?
In the meantime I did but jest about the letters—I know you care for mine ... because I care for yours so infinitely: ... it is a lesson learnt by heart. To-night I shall write again!—
Your own
Ba.
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, April 21, 1846.]
My dearest Ba, my sweetest, only love must sit, if she please, in the gondola chair and let me talk to-day, not write to her—for my head aches,—from pure perversity,—and a little from my morning spent over a novel of Balzac’s—that is it, not any real illness, I know—however, the effect is the same. Beside I got tired with the long walk from Carlyle’s last night—for I went and saw him to heart’s content—and he talked characteristically and well, and constringingly, bracingly. He has been in the country a little,—that is, has gone down to see his wife occasionally who was on a visit at Croydon, whence she only returned on Saturday. He told me he had read my last number; and that he had ‘been read to’—some good reader had recited ‘The Duchess’ to him. Altogether he said wonderfully kind things and was pleased to prophesy in the same spirit; God bless him! We talked for three or four hours—he asked me to come again soon, and I will.
Here are two letters—Chorley’s, one—and the other from quite another kind of man, an old friend who ‘docks’ ships or something like it; a great lover of ‘intelligibility in writing,’ and heretofore a sufferer from my poetry.
My love, I lend you such things with exactly as much vanity as ... no comparison will serve! it is the French vulgarism—comme ... n’importe quoi! Celui me pousse à la vanité comme—n’importe quoi!
Will you have a significative ‘comme’ of another kind? ‘je me trouve bête ce matin comme ... trente-six oies!’—(I assure you this is no flower culled from Balzac this morning—but a little ‘souvenir’ of an old play.)
Now, if I were to say to myself something is dear as ‘thirty-six Bas’—I should be scared, as when looking into a mirror cut into façettes one is met on every side by the same face, twenty times repeated. Nothing can add to my conception of the one Ba—my one, only—ever dear, dearest Ba—‘what perfect nonsense’ says Ba—and nonsensical I will be— —all she pleases so long as let live and die her very own.
Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 22, 1846.]
‘Vanity’! I never saw in you, my very dearest, even the short morning shadow of ‘vanity.’ ‘Vanity’ is not of you! You work as the cedars grow, upward, and without noise, and without turning to look on the darkness you cause upon the ground. It is only because you are best and dearest that you let me see the letters ... yes, and besides, because I have a little a right to have them sent to me,—since they concern me more than you,—and are, after a fashion, my letters. My letters? what am I saying? My letters, my true letters, are different indeed—and one of them came to-night to prove so!
But Mr. Chorley’s and the illegible man’s whose name begins with a D (or doesn’t) both gave me pleasure. If Mr. Chorley did not read ‘Luria’ at once, he speaks of you in the right words—and the naval illegible man, with his downright earnest way of being impressed, makes a better critic than need be sought for in the Athenæum synod. And what a triumph (after all!) and what a privilege, and what a good deed, is this carrying of the light down into the mines among the workmen, this bringing down of the angels of the Ideal into the very depth of the Real, where the hammer rings on the rough stone. The mission of Art, like that of Religion, is to the unlearned ... to the poor and to the blind—to make the rugged paths straight, and the wilderness to blossom as the rose—at least it seems so to me. And now, pray, why am I not to hear what Carlyle said? will you tell me? won’t you tell me? how shall I persuade you? If I can or not, I will say God bless him too ... since he spoke the right word, to do you good. For the manifest advance in clearness and directness of expression ... I quite forgot to take notice of what you said to me—and you, who never flatter!—about being the cause of it—I! Now do observe that the ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’ which is as light as day, I never touched with my finger, except in one place, I think ... to say ... ‘Just here there is a little shade.’ The fact is, that your obscurities, ... as far as they concern the medium, ... you have been throwing off gradually and surely this long while—you have a calmer mastery over imagery and language, and it was to be expected that you should. For me, I am the fly on the chariot, ... ‘How we drive!’ Shall I ever, ever, ever, be of any use or good to you? See what a thought you have thrown me into, from that height! Shall I ever, ever, be of any use, any good—and not, rather, the contrary to these? Love is something: and it is something to love you better than a better woman could: but ... but....
There is no use nor good in writing so, and you with a headache too! Why, how could you get that headache? First with not walking; then with walking—!! and reading Balzac. But you had been writing notes perhaps? or Carlyle had talked too ‘bracingly?’ or you fasted too long, being too late for his tea-kettle? The headache came at any rate. Did it go? tell me, dearest beloved! say how you are. And let me hear if your mother continues to be better. How happy that change must make you all! and shall I not thank God that it makes you happy?
Mr. Kenyon has not been here, and I have nothing, nothing, to tell you. The east wind has kept guard at the door, so that I should not go out, ... and nothing has happened. I seem not to have drawn breath scarcely, since we parted. ‘Parted’—what a word! As if we could!—in the full sense!
I have written to Miss Bayley to ask her to come on any day except Saturday.
Shall the thirty-six Bas love you all together in that one Ba who is your own?
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, April 22, 1846.]
I never thought I should convince you, dearest—and I was foolish to write so, since it makes you reply so. At all events, I do not habitually offend in this kind—forty-nine days out of fifty I hear my own praises from your lips, and yet keep silence—on the fiftieth I protest gently—is that too much? Then I will be quiet altogether, my Ba, and get a comfort out of the consciousness of obedience there at least. But I should like some talking-bird to tell you the struggle there is and what I could say. Shall I idealize you into mere mist, Ba, and see the fine, fine, last of you? Well, I cannot even play with the fancy of that—so, one day, when so much is to be cleared up between us, look for a word or two on this matter also. Some savage speech about the ‘hand I was to have dropped’—the whole ending with the Promethean—Οὕτως ὑβρίζειν τοὺς ὑβρίζοντας χρέων. Meantime my revenge on the hand must be to kiss it—I kiss it.
Yesterday’s letters both arrived this morning by the 11½ post—was that right? I add my mite of savageness to the general treasury of wrath: every body is complaining. Still, so long as I do get my letters,—such letters!
The cold wind continues—you will have kept the room to-day no doubt—what colourless weather; not the moist fresh bright true April of old years! I shall go out presently—but with such an effort, such unwillingness! I am better however—and my mother still continues well—goes out every morning—so there is hope for everybody. I ought to tell you that I went to my doctor last evening—(remembering to whom I promised I would do so, if need were, or good seemed likely to follow)—and he speaks encouragingly and I have engaged to be obedient; perhaps, because he ordains no very intolerable laws. He says I am better than when he saw me last—and, as he wanted then to begin and prescribe, ... there is clearly a gain of about two months’ comfort!
Here strikes fatal four-o’clock! To-morrow for more writing; and now, for the never-ending love, and thought of my dearest dearest. May God bless you, Ba.
Your own——
Wednesday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 23, 1846.]
Then seriously you are not well, since you went for the medical advice after all! that is the thought which is uppermost as the effect of your letter, though I ought to be grateful to you (and am!) for remembering to keep your promise, made two months ago. But how can I help thinking that you are ill ... help knowing that you felt very ill before you came to consider that promise? You did feel very ill ... now did you not? And I see in this letter that you are not well—I see plainly, plainly! Have you been using the shower-bath? tell me:—and tell me how you are—do not keep back anything. For the rest, you will submit to the advice, you say, and you mean to submit, I think, my own very dearest—remember that all my light comes, not only through you, but from you, let it be April light or November light. I say that for you. As for myself, when I am anxious about you, it is not, I hope, for such a reason as that my light comes from you. Before I had any light, ... before I knew you so ... do I not remember how Mr. Kenyon with that suggestive shake of the head and grave dropping of the voice, when he came and told me with other news, of your being ill, ... made me wonderfully unhappy and restless till I could not help writing for a directer account? Oh, those strange days to look back upon, ... which had no miraculous light, yet were strange days, with their ‘darkness which might be felt’ and was felt!
You will be careful, ... will you not? ... in these? I am not happy about you, to-night. I feel as if you are worse perhaps than you say. And it does you so much good to keep talking about this misgiving and that misgiving!—the ‘trente-six oies’ are nothing at all to me, really.
For those two letters, it was far from any intention of mine that you should have them both together,—and the first-written went to the post at two on the day before. Too bad it is! I observe that you never get a letter on the day it is posted, unless the posting is very early, ... say before eight, or, at latest, before nine. Which is abominable, when the distance is considered.
And you make a piteous case out for yourself against me, indeed, ... and it seems very hard to have to endure so much, ‘forty-nine days out of fifty’ ... I did not think it was so bad with you! And when you protest gently on the fiftieth day ... so gently ... so gently!! Well, the fact is that you forget perhaps what sort of a gentle protestation it was, you wrote to me on Sunday, you who protest so gently, and never flatter! And as for having your own ‘praises blown in your eyes’ for forty-nine days together, I cannot confess to the iniquity of it, ... you mistake, you mistake, as well as forget—only that I will not vex you and convict you too much now that you are not well. So we shall have peace, shall we not? on each side. I never write extravagances—ah, but we will not write of them, even. Any more letters about ‘Luria?’
Yes—All day to-day in the gondola chair! There was no leaving this room for the cold wind, and it made me feel so tired without my taking a step scarcely, that after dinner ... guess what I did, and save me the shame of relating? after dinner, my dinner at one oclock, I positively fell fast asleep with this pen in my hand, and went to see you in a dream I dare say, though, this time, I do not remember. Then I half expected Miss Bayley, and she did not come, and instead of talking to her I wrote letters to ‘all the peoples’ ... I hate writing letters, how I hate it now, except to you only. And to-day I thought only of you, let me write ever so away from you. Which is why you saw me in the gondola chair.
But you are not well—the ‘refrain’ comes round constantly—call it a burden! May God bless you, dearest beloved! Do you say harm of this April, when it is the best April I ever saw, let it be proved to want the vulgar sun and blue sky as much as you please! Yet you are not well! say how you are! I come clear out of the mist to call myself
Your very own
Ba.
Thursday.
[Post-mark, April 23, 1846.]
Dear, dear Ba, I was never very ill, and now am very much better, quite well, indeed. I mean to co-operate with your wishes, and my doctor’s doings, which are luckily gentle enough,—and so, how should I fail of bringing into subjection this restive, ill-conditioned head of mine?
This morning I have walked to town and back—leaving myself barely time to write—but just before going out, I got your letter, for which I was waiting; and the joy of it, the entire delight, carried me lightly out and in again. Ah, my own Ba,—of the two ‘extravagances which you never write nor speak,’—after all, if I must, I concede the praises and eagle-soaring and, and—because, if I please, I can say, if you do persist in making me, ‘why, it may be so,—how should I know, or Ba not know?’ And as a man may suppose himself poor and yet be rightful owner to a wonderful estate somewhere (in novels &c.)—so, I, the intellectually poor &c. &c.—But, dearest, if you say ‘My letters tire you’——say that again—and then what unknown gadge ought to stop the darling mouth? How does honey dew bind up the rose from opening? Moreover it is one peculiarity of my mind that it loses no pleasure,—must not forego the former for the latter pleasure. How shall I explain? I believe that, when I should have been your husband for years,—years—if I were separated from you for a day and a letter came—I think my heart would move to it just as it now does—because now, when I see you, know what that blessing is—still the very oldest first flutter of delight at ‘Miss Barrett’s’ writing it is all here, all!
Shall my heart flutter, then, to-morrow, my dear dear heart’s heart? And it shall be not April when I read it your letter—but June and May—if it tells you are well, as I am well,—now, if I say that, can you doubt what I consider my present state? But be better, dear Ba, and make me better—I should like to breathe and move and live by your allowance and pleasure—being your very very own
R.B.
I see this morning a characteristic piece of news in the paper. President Polk, with an eye to business, gets his brother, a tall gaunt hungry man, appointed Ambassador to Naples—why not? So he arrives a year ago,—finds the Neapolitans speak Italian, or else French, or else German—that is, the Diplomatic Body at Naples don’t speak English—on which discovery, Polk secundus sees he may as well amuse himself, so goes to Paris for half a year,—then to Rome where he is now, seeing sights—who could tell the Italians were not able to talk English? Is not that American entirely? Carlyle told me of an American who was commissioned by some learned body of his countrymen to ask two questions ... ‘What C.’s opinion was as to a future state?’—and next ‘what relation Goethe was to Goethe’s mother’s husband?’—
Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 24, 1846.]
Yes, you are better, I think. I thank God for that, first of all. And, do you know, your note only just comes, and it is past ten o’clock, and I had rung the bell to have the letter-box investigated ... and then came the knock and the letter! Such a sinning post, it is, more and more. But to come at last, is something—I am contented indeed. And for being well, I am well too, if that is all. The wind is a little hard on me; but I keep in the room and think of you and am thought of by you, and no wind, under such circumstances, can do much harm perhaps:—it does not to me, anywise. So keep well, and believe that I am so:—‘well as you are well’ ... which sounds very well.
What nonsense one comes to write when one is glad! I observe that in myself constantly. All my wisdom seems to depend on being pricked with pins ... or rather with something sharper. And besides your being better, I am glad through what you say here about your ‘peculiarity’! Ah—how you have words in your coffers, of all sorts, ... crowns to suit all heads ... and this, which I try on last, suits mine better than the other glittering ones. Those exaggerations, idealizations, with burning carbuncles in the front of them, which made me sigh under the weight, ... those are different—! But when you say now that you do not part with feelings,—that it is your peculiarity not to wear them out, and that you are likely to care for the sight of my handwriting as much after years as at first, why you make me happy when you say such things, and (see what faith I have!) I believe them, since you say them, speaking of yourself. They are not after the fashion of men, or women either—but, true of you, they may be, ... and I take upon trust that they are: I accept such words from you as means of gladness. The worst is—I mean, the worst reasonableness that goes out to oppose them, is, ... the fear lest, when your judgments have been corrected by experience, the feelings may correct themselves. But it is ungrateful to talk reason in the face of so much love. I take up the gladness rather, and thank you and bless you seven times over, to completion. You are the best, I know, of all in the world. Did I tell you once that my love was ‘something’? Yet it is nothing: because there is no woman, let her heart be ever so made of stone and steel, who could help loving you, ... I answer for all women!—so this is no merit of mine, though it is the best thing I ever did in my life.
Dearest beloved, when I used to tell you to give me up, and imagined to myself how I should feel if you did it, ... and thought it would not be much worse than it was before I knew you ... (a little better indeed, inasmuch as I had the memory for ever ...) the chief pang was the idea of another woman——! From that, I have turned back again and again, recoiling like a horse set against too high a wall. Therefore if I talk of what all women would do, I do not mean that they should. ‘Thirty-six Bas,’ we shall not have,—shall we? or I shall be like Flush, who, before he learnt to be a philosopher, used to shiver with rage at sight of the Flush in the looking-glass, and gnash his teeth impotently, and quite howl. Now,—we shall not, dearest, have the thirty-six Bas ... now, shall we? Besides, one will be more than enough, she fears to herself, for your comfort and patience.
No more letters about ‘Luria’? Did you see Moxon when you were in town?
Miss Bayley has not been here yet. To-morrow, perhaps. When she comes, I shall not dare name you, but she will, I think ... I seem sure of hearing her mind about ‘Luria’ and the ‘Tragedy.’ George thinks the former ‘very fine.’ Mr. Kenyon does not come,—and to-morrow (Friday) he goes ... from London.
You will care for me always the same? But that is like promising a charmed life, or an impossible immortality to somebody—and nobody has either, except Louis Philippe. May God bless you,—say how you are when you write to-morrow.
Your own
Ba.
Oh—your learned Americans! was it literal of Carlyle, do you think, or a jest?
[Post-mark, April 24, 1846.]
How I sympathize with poor Cloten when he complains that ‘he is in the habit of saying daily many things fully as witty as those of Posthumus, men praise so—if men would but note them’!—I feel jealous of the success and ‘praise’ of my Ba,—falling as they do on the mere asides and interjectional fits and starts of the play,—when its earnest soliloquy, the very soul and substance of it all, never reaches her ear, nor calls down her dear, dear words.
Yet do I say that I feel jealous? Rather, I acquiesce gladly in the ignorance ... because when the words, the golden words, are brought in to me by the inferior agents, and honestly transferred by them to the real moving powers ... they, even, find the reward too much, too much, till they—till they resolve (on the other side of a sheet) to keep silence and be grateful till death help them to speak.
Well, my dear, own dearest ... the week has got to its weary end, and to-morrow I shall trust to be with you. I continue to feel better,—and this morning’s rain, in the opinion of the learned, will be succeeded by warm weather. May is just here, beside.
Let me say how a word of praise from your brother gratifies me. I feel his kindness in other respects—feel it deeply—as I do that of the rest of your family. Because ... after these extravagant flatteries of mine you find such just fault with,—wherein I go the length of attributing to you the authorship of the ‘Drama of Exile,’ and ‘Geraldine’ and ‘Bertha,’ and many more poems which I used to suppose my Ba’s,—after that undue glorification, you will bear to be told, by way of ‘set-off’—that I cannot help thinking, you, of all your family, are the most ignorant of your own value—very ignorant you are, my sweet Ba,—but they cannot be, and their kindness to me becomes centupled ‘for reasons, for reasons.’
Now let me kiss you—which kiss, as I am to really kiss you to-morrow, my sweetest, I shall dare tell the truth of to myself, and say ‘The real will be better.’ At other times, with a longer perspective of days, and days after them, until ... why, then I make the best of pity and say ‘Can the real be better—what can be better than the best’? Still—remember my ‘peculiarity’—with the greater I keep the less, you let me say and praise me for saying—so, with all the dear hope of to-morrow,—now, my Ba—and now, I kiss you. May God bless you, best and dearest.
No letters that are letters—here is one however from Arnould[1] just arrived—an Oxford Prize Poet, and an admirable dear good fellow, for all his praise—which is better.