[1] [Afterwards Sir Joseph Arnould.]
Sunday.
[Post-mark, April 27, 1846.]
Ever dearest you might have stayed ten minutes more. George did not come in till half past six after all—but there is the consciousness of being wise in one’s generation, which consoles so many for their eternity as children of light, ... yet doesn’t console me for my ten minutes, ... so it is as well to say no more on this head!
I have glanced over the paper in the Athenæum and am of an increased certainty that Mr. Chorley is the writer. It is his way from beginning to end—and that is the way, observe, in which little critics get to tread on the heels of great writers who are too great to kick backwards. Think of bringing George Sand to the level of the same sentence with such a woman as Mrs. Ellis! And then, the infinite trash about the three eras in the Frenchwoman’s career, ... which never would have been dragged into application there, if the critic had heard of her last two volumes ... published since the ‘Meunier d’Angibault,’ ‘Teverino’ and ‘Isidora.’ One may be angry and sin not, over such inapplicable commonplace. The motive of it, the low expediency, is worse to me than the offence. Why mention her at all ... why name in any fashion any of these French writers, for the reception of whom the English mind is certainly not prepared, unless they are to be named worthily, recognised righteously? It is just the principle of the advice about the De Kocks; whom people are to go and see and deny their acquaintance afterwards. Why not say boldly ‘These writers have high faculty, and imagination such as none of our romance-writers can pretend to—but they have besides a devil—and we do not recommend them as fit reading for English families!’ Now wouldn’t it answer every purpose? Or silence would!—silence, at least. But this digging and nagging at great reputations, ... it is to me quite insufferable: and not compensated for by the motive, which is a truckling to conventions rather than to morals. As if earnestness of aim was not, from the beginning, from ‘Rose et Blanche’ and ‘Indiana,’ a characteristic of George Sand! Really it is pitiful.
The ‘Mysteries of the Heaths,’ I suppose to be a translation of ‘Sept Jours au Château,’ a very clever story from the monstrous Hydra-headed imagination of Frédéric Soulié. Dumas is inferior to them all of course, yet a right good storyteller when he is in the mind for storytelling;—telling, telling, telling, and never having done. You know I like listening to stories—I agree with the great Sultan and would forego ever so much cutting off of heads for the sake of a story—it is a taste quite apart from a taste for literature: a story-teller, I like, apart from the sweet voice. Now that book of Dumas’s on the League wars, which distressed me so the other day, by having the cruelty ... the ‘villainie’ ... of hanging its hero in the fourth volume ... (regularly hanging him on a pair of gallows—wasn’t it too bad?) that book is amusing enough, more than amusing enough, to take with one’s coffee ... which is my fashion, ... because you are not here and I have nobody to talk to me. The hero who was hanged, deserved it a little, I think, though the author meant it for a pure misfortune and though no good romance-reader in the world, such as I am, could bear to part with the hero of four volumes in that manner, without pain; but the hero did deserve it a little when one came to consider. In the first place, he was a traitor once or twice in war and politics, and was quite ready to be so a third or fourth time, ... only ... as he said to the lady he loved ... ‘je perdrais votre estime.’ ‘Is that your only objection’ she enquired. ‘The only one’ he answered! (How frightfully true, that those brilliant French writers have no moral sense at all! do not, for the most part, know right from wrong! here, an instance!) Then, from the beginning to the end of the four volumes, he loves two women together ... a ‘phénomène’ by no means uncommon, says the historian musingly, ... and, except for the hanging, there might have been a difficulty perhaps in the final arrangement. Yet oh ... to see one’s hero, the hero of four volumes, and not a bad hero either in some respects, hung up before one’s eyes! ... it wrongs the natural affections to think of it! it made me unhappy for a full hour! There should be a society for the prevention of cruelty to romance-readers, against the recurrence of such things!
Pure nonsense I write to you, it seems to me.
What beautiful flowers you brought me!—and the sweet-brier is unfolding its leaves to-day, as if you did them, so, no wrong. And I have been considering; and there are not, if you please, five but four days, between Saturday and Thursday. In the meanwhile say how you are, dearest dearest! My thoughts are with you constantly ... indeed. I could almost say, too much, ... because sometimes they grow weak and tired ... not of you, who are best and beloved, but of themselves, having been so long used to be sad, May God bless you, ... bless you! His best blessing for me (after that!) were to make me worthy of you—but it would take too many miracles.
Your
Ba.
Remember the letters, if they come.
Sunday.
[Post-mark, April 27, 1846.]
See what a brain I have,—which means, you have! The book I ought to put in my pocket,—and fancy I leave on the table,—is picked up in our lane and presented to me on my return; so my reason, which told you I had forgotten it, the book, was wrong, and my instinct which told me, all the time, that I could not forget even so poor a matter if it tended to you,—that was right, as usual? (Don’t think that I forgot the said book on the former occasions ... I wanted to look through it first, so as to be able to correct any possible mistakings, in case you should ask, or should not ask, my siren! I read the book during the voyage.)
Will you tell me what number of the League contains the notice of you? I can get it directly. I did not ask you yesterday, being just as much master of myself as I commonly am when with you—but after-wisdom comes duly for a consolation, and mine was apparent in a remark I made last night—‘Here is truly an illusion broken’ I said—‘for not very long ago I used to feel impatient at listening to other people’s commendations of her, and as if they were usurping my especial office,—they could not see what I see, not utter what I could utter: and now, at the beginning of my utterance, the hand closes my mouth, while its dear fellow shuts my eyes,—I may not see what everybody sees, nor say what the whole world says,—I, that was to excel them all in either function! So now I will change my policy and bid them praise, praise, praise, praise, since I may not. Will you let me hear them, my Ba? You know Chesterfield forbids his son to play on the instrument himself—‘for you can pay musicians’ he says—‘and hear them play.’ Where may I hear this discourser of most excellent music?
In your last letter you spoke of ‘other women,’ and said they might ‘love’ me—just see! They might love me because of something in me, lovingness in me, which they never could have evoked ... so the effect produces the cause, my dear ‘inverter’! If there had been a vague aimless feeling in me, turning hither and thither for some object to attach itself to and spend itself on, and you had chanced to be that object, I should understand you were very little flattered and how a poplar does as well for a vine-prop as a palm tree—but whatever love of mine clings to you was created by you, dearest,—they were not in me, I believed—those feelings,—till you came. So that, mournful and degrading as it sounds, still it would, I think, be more rational to confess the possibility of their living on, though you withdrew,—finding some other—oh no, it is,—that is as great an impossibility as the other,—they came from you, they go to you, what is the whole world to them!
May God bless you, repay you—He can—
Well Ba, do you see the Examiner? That is very kind, very generous of Forster. There are real difficulties in the way of this prompt, efficient, serviceable notice—for he has a tribe of friends, dramatists, actors ‘conflicting interests’ &c. &c. to keep the peace among,—and he quite understands his trade—how compensation is to be made, and an equilibrium kept in the praises so as to offend nobody,—yet see how he writes, and with a heap of other business on his shoulders! I thank him very sincerely, I am sure.
Tell me how you are, beloved—all-beloved! I am quite well to-day,—have been out.
Do you remember our friend Bennett of Blackheath? (Don’t ejaculate ‘le Benêt’!) He sent me letters lately—and I returned a copy of ‘Luria’ to save compliments and words—here is his answer ... (I will at once confess I could not read it, but Ba bids me send, and what am I but Ba’s own, very very own?)
Monday.
[Post-mark, April 27, 1846.]
Oh yes; that paper is by Chorley, no doubt—I read it, and quite wonder at him. I suppose he follows somebody’s ‘lead’—writes as he is directed—because I well remember what he said on lending me ‘Le Compagnon.’ There, there is that other silly expenditure of pen and ink on the English poets, or whatever they are. And in such work may a man spend his youth and not a few available energies—sad work altogether!
My love, I have done a fair day’s work this Monday,—whoever may be idle—I thought I would call on Forster this morning—he was out, and I crossed over to Moxon’s, not seeing him, neither, and thence walked home—so that to tell you I am well is superfluous enough, is it not? But while the sun shone brightest, (and it shines now) I said ‘The cold wind is felt through it all,—she keeps the room!’ The wind is unremitting,—savage. Do you bear it, dearest, or suffer, as I fear? (Speaking of Forster ... you see the Examiner, I believe? Or I will send it directly of course). I entirely agree with you in your estimate of the comparative value of French and English Romance-writers. I bade the completest adieu to the latter on my first introduction to Balzac, whom I greatly admire for his faculty, whatever he may choose to do with it. Do you know a little sketch ‘La Messe de l’Athée,’—most affecting to me. And for you, with your love of a ‘story,’ what an unceasing delight must be that very ingenious way of his, by which he connects the new novel with its predecessors—keeps telling you more and more news yet of the people you have got interested in, but seemed to have done with. Rastignac, Mme. d’Espard, Desplein &c.—they keep alive, moving—it is not ingenious? Frédéric Soulié I know a little of (I let this reading drop some ten years ago) and only George Sand’s early works: by the way, the worst thing of all in that blessed article we have been referring to, is the spiteful and quite uncalled for introduction of the names of A. de Musset and De Lamennais—what have the English families to do with that? Did you notice a stanza quoted from some lachrymose rhymester to be laughed at (in the Article on Poetry)—in which the writer complains of the ill-treatment of false friends, for, says he, ‘I have felt their bangs.’ The notion of one’s friend ‘banging’ one is exhilarating when one reflects that he might get a little pin, and prick, prick after this fashion. No, it is probably a manner of writing,—meant for the week’s life and the dozen readers. Here is a note from his sister, by the way.
Now, dearest-dearest, good bye till to-morrow. I think of you all day, and, if I dream, dream of you—and the end of the thinking and of the dreaming is still new love, new love of you, my sweetest, only beloved! so I kiss you and bless you from my heart of heart.
Ever your R.
Monday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 28, 1846.]
Very good Examiner!—I am pleased with it and with Mr. Forster for the nonce, though he talks a little nonsense here and there, in order to be a true critic, and though he doesn’t talk at all, scarcely, of the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’ ... how is one to bear it? That ‘Tragedy’ has wonderful things in it—thoughts, suggestions, ... and more and more I feel, that you never did better dialogue than in the first part. Every pulse of it is alive and individual—dramatic dialogue of the best. Nobody in the world could write such dialogue—now, you know, you must be patient and ‘meke as maid,’ being in the course of the forty-nine days of enduring praises. Praises, instead of ‘bangs’!!—consider that it might be worse!—dicit ipsissima Ba.
Think of my not hearing a word about the article in the Examiner, until I had your note this morning. And the Examiner was in the house since Saturday night, and nobody to tell me! I was in high vexation, reproaching them all, to-day—till Stormie had the impertinence to turn round and tell me that only Papa had read the paper, and that ‘he had of course put it away to keep me from the impropriety of thinking too much about ... about’ ... yes, really Stormie was so impertinent. For the rest, when Papa came up-stairs at one o’clock, he had it in his hand.
At two, Miss Bayley came, and sate here two hours, and thought me looking so well, with such improved looks from last autumn, that I don’t mean to groan at all to you to-day about the wind—it is a savage wind, as you say, and I wish it were gone, and I am afraid of stirring from the room while it lasts, but there’s an end ... and not of me, says Miss Bayley. She doffed her bonnet and talked and talked, and was agreeable and affectionate, and means to come constantly to see me ... (‘only not on Thursday,’ I desired:) and do you know, you need not think any more of my going with you to Italy, for she has made up her mind to take me herself ... there is no escape for me that I can see—it’s fixed ... certain! with a thousand generous benignities she stifled my ‘no’s’ ... and all I had breath to say at last, was, that ‘there was time enough for plans of that kind.’ Seriously, I was quite embarrassed to know how to adjourn the debate. And she is capable of ‘arranging everything’—of persisting, of insisting—who knows what? And so, ... when I am ‘withdrawn’ ... carried away ... then, shall all my ‘feelings,’ which are in you, be given to somebody else? is that the way—?
Now I shall not make jests upon that ... I shall not: first, I shall not, because it is ungrateful—and next and principally, because my heart stands still only to think of it...! Why did you say that to me? I could be as jealous (did I not tell you once?) as any one of your melodramatic gitana heroines, who carries a poignard between the white-satin sash and the spangles? I perfectly understand, at this distance, what jealousy is, would be, ought to be, must be—though I never guessed at all what love was, at that distance, and startled I am often and confounded, to see the impotency of my imagination.
Forgive the blottings out—I have not blotted out lately ... have I now? and it is pardonable once in a hundred years or days.
The rest for to-morrow. Your correspondent of the first letter you sent me really does write like a Bennet, though he praises you. I could not help laughing very gently, though he praises you. Good-night my only beloved ... dearest! As my Bennet says (Georgiana) when she catches vehemently at the laurel ... ‘I will not be forgot’....
‘I must die ... but I will not be forgot’ (in large capitals!) But what she applies to the Delphic groves, turns for me to something more ambitious. ‘I will not be forgot’ ... will I? shall I? not till Thursday at least ... being ever and ever
Your own
Ba.
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, April 28, 1846.]
Now bless you, my dearest, best Ba, for this letter that comes at the eleventh hour,—which means, at 3 o’clock. Was not I frightened! I made sure you would write. Why, our Post emulates the Italian glory ... nay, that is too savage a saying—for in Venice or Rome I should have to go for this to the office, and only get it at last through the forbearing honesty of every other applicant for letters during the day, or week—since to every man and woman who thrusts his or her head in at the window at Venice, the clerk hands coolly over the whole odd hundred, and turns to his rest again till as many are taken as may be thought necessary. But, Ba, dear dearest Ba, do you really mean to tell me I said ‘that’ ... of ‘transferring feelings’ etc? I hope I did,—though I cannot imagine how I ever could—say so—for so the greater fault will be Ba’s—who drives me from one Scylla (see my critic’s account) into a worse Charybdis through pure fear and aversion,—and then cries ‘See where you are now!’ I was retreating as far as possible from that imaginary ‘woman who called out those feelings,’—might have called them out,—just as this April sun of ours makes date-palms grow and bear—and because I said, of the two hypotheses, the one which taught you the palms might be transplanted and live on here,—that was the more rational ... you turn and ask ‘So your garden will rear palms.’ Now, I tell Ba,—no, I will kiss Ba and so tell her.
How happy Miss Bayley’s testimony makes me! One never can be too sure of such a happiness. She has no motive for thus confirming it. You ‘look so well’—and she not merely sees it, but acts upon it,—is for deriving a practical benefit from it, and forthwith. Then, Miss Bayley, let me try and ‘transfer’ ... ah, the palm is too firmly rooted in my very heart,—I can but sprinkle you over with yellow dust!
Oh, Ba; not to tell me of the League; the number!—will you please tell me? One letter more I get, do I not? Then comes Thursday—my Thursday.
What you style ‘impertinence’ in your Brother, is very kind and good-natured to my thinking. Well, now—see the way a newspaper criticism affects one, nearly the only way! If this had been an attack—how it would affect you and me matters nothing—it might affect others disagreeably—and through them, us. So I feel very much obliged to Forster in this instance.
I kiss you with perfect love, my sweetest best Ba. May God bless you.
R.
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, April 29, 1846.]
Dearest, you are not to blame the post, nor even me. The reason you did not get the letter was simply that Henrietta slept over the hour, and let it lie on the table till past eight. Still, you should have had it before three perhaps. Only the wrong was less a wrong than you fancied.
For my wrongs, dearest beloved, they are mine I confess, and not yours ... ah, you are ‘evilly persecuted, and entreated’ of me, I must allow. Yet as, with all my calumnious imputations, I think softly to myself seven times seven times a day that no living man is worthy to stand in your footsteps, ... why you must try to forgive and (not) forget me. Do I teaze you past enduring, sometimes? Yes, yes. And wasn’t it my fault about the ‘imaginary woman;’ that heiress, in an hypothesis, of the ‘love’ I ‘made’? Yes, yes, yes—it was, of course. Unless indeed she came out of that famous mist, which you fined me away into, ... the day you slew and idealized me, remember!—and, now I begin to consider, I think she did! So we will share the fault between us, you and I. The odium of it, I was going to say—but odium is by no means the right word, perhaps.
The truth of all is, that you are too much in the excess of goodness, ... that you spoil me! There it is! Did I not tell you, warn you, that I never was used to the purple and fine linen of such an infinite tenderness? If you give me back my sackcloth, I shall know my right hand from my left again, perhaps, ... guess where I stand ... what I am ... recover my common sense. Will you? no—do not.
And for the League newspaper, you mistook me, and I forgot to say so in my letter yesterday. I told you only that the League paper had mentioned me—not noticed me. It was just ... I just shall tell you, that you may not spend another thought on such a deep subject ... it was a mere quotation from the ‘cornships in the offing,’ with a prefatory as that exquisite poet Miss B ... says! Now you are done with the winter of your discontent? You are with the snowdrops at any rate. But last year there was a regular criticism on my poems in that League paper, and I had every reason to thank the critic. I have heard too that Cobden is a very gracious reader of mine ... and that his Leeds (liege) subjects generally do me the honours of popularity, more than any other people in England. There’s glory for you, talking of palm-trees.
Ah—talking of palm-trees, you do not know what a curious coincidence your thought is with a thought of mine, which I shall not tell you now ... but some day perhaps. There’s a mystery! talking of Venice!
For Balzac, I have had my full or overfull pleasure from that habit of his you speak of, ... and which seems to prove his own good faith in the life and reality of his creations, in such a striking manner. He is a writer of most wonderful faculty—with an overflow of life everywhere—with the vision and the utterance of a great seer. His French is another language—he throws new metals into it ... malleable metals, which fuse with the heat of his genius. There is no writer in France, to my mind, at all comparable to Balzac—none—but where is the reader in England to make the admission?—none, again ... is almost to be said.
But, dearest, you do not say how you are; and that silence is not lawful, and is too significant. For me, when the wind changed for a few hours to-day, I went down-stairs with Flush, and had my walk in the drawing-room. Mrs. Jameson has written to proclaim her coming to-morrow at four,—so I shall hear of ‘Luria,’ I think. Remember to bring my verses, if you please, on your Thursday. And if dreaming of me should be good for making you love me, let me be dreamt of ... go on to dream of me: and love me, my beloved, ever so much, without grudging,—because the love returns to you, all of it, ... as the wave to the sea; and with an addition of sundry grains of soiling sand, to make you properly grateful. Take care of yourself—may God take care of you for your own
Ba.
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, April 29, 1846.]
Oh, post, post, how I am plagued by what uses to delight me! No letter,—and I cannot but think you have written one, my Ba! It will come perhaps at 3 o’clock. Shame and again, shame!
Meantime I will tell you what a dear, merciful Ba you are, in only threatening me with daggers,—when you play at threatening,—instead of declaring you will frown at me.... Oh, but here ‘Fear recoils, he knows well why, even at the sound himself has made—’
The best of it is, that this was the second fright, and by no means the most formidable. When I read that paragraph beginning ‘you need not think any more of going with me to Italy’—shall I only say I was alarmed? Without a particle of affectation, I tell Ba, I am, cannot help being, alarmed even now—we have been discussing possibilities—and it is rather more possible than probable that Miss Bayley may ‘carry off’ my Ba, and her Flush, and, say, an odd volume of the Cyclic Poets, all in her pocket ... she being, if I remember, of the race of the Anakim—than that I shall ever find in the wide world a flesh and blood woman able to bear the weight of the ‘feelings,’ I rest now upon the B and the A which spell Ba’s name,—only her name!
Forster sent a note last evening urging me to go and dine with him and Leigh Hunt to-day,—there was no refusing. There is sunshine—you may have been down-stairs—but the wind continues.
I shall know to-morrow—but surely a letter is to come presently—let me wait a little.
Nothing! Pray write if anything have happened, my own Ba!
No time—Ever your
Friday.
[Post-mark, May 1, 1846.]
I am delighted with the verses and quite surprised by Mr. Arnould’s, having expected to find nothing but love and law in them, and really there is a great deal besides. Hard to believe, it was, that a university prize poet (who was not Tennyson) could write such good verses: but he wrote them of you, and that was enough inspiration for him, I suppose, as it would be for others, my own dearest. How I delight in hearing you praised!—it is such a delightful assent to the word which is in me, in the deepest of me. You know that mysterious pleasure we have, in listening to echoes!—we hear nothing new, nothing we have not said ourselves—yet we stand on the side of the hill and listen ... listen ... as if to the oracles of Delphi. The very pleasure of it all is in the repetition ... the reverberation.
When you had gone yesterday and I had taken my coffee, holding my book ... ‘La Gorgone’ a sea-romance by Landelle, (those little duodecimo books are the only possible books to hold in one’s hand at coffee-times ... and the people at Rolandi’s library sent me this, which is not worth much, I think, but quite new and very marine) ... holding my book at one page, as if fixed ... transfixed, ... by a sudden eternity, ... well, after all that was done with, coffee and all, ... in came George, and told me that the day before he had seen Tennyson at Mr. Venables’ house, or chambers rather. Mr. Venables was unwell, and George went to see him, and while he was there, came the poet. He had left London for a few days, he said, and meant to stay here for a time ... ‘hating it perfectly’ like your Donne ... ‘seeming to detest London,’ said George ... ‘abusing everything in unmeasured words.’ Then he had been dining at Dickens’s, and meeting various celebrities, and Dickens had asked him to go with him (Dickens) to Switzerland, where he [is] going, to write his new work: ‘but,’ laughed Tennyson, ‘if I went, I should be entreating him to dismiss his sentimentality, and so we should quarrel and part, and never see one another any more. It was better to decline—and I have declined.’ When George had told his story, I enquired if Tennyson was what was called an agreeable man—happy in conversation. And the reply was ... ‘yes—but quite inferior to Browning! He neither talks so well,’ observed George with a grave consideration and balancing of the sentences, ... ‘nor has so frank and open a manner. The advantages are all on Browning’s side, I should say.’ Now dear George is a little criticised you must know in this house for his official gravity and dignity—my sisters murmur at him very much sometimes ... poor dear George!—but he is good and kind, and high and right minded, as we all know, and I, for my part, never thought of criticising him yesterday when he said those words rather ... perhaps ... barristerially, ... had they been other words.
My other words must go by my next letter—I am to write to you again presently, you are to be pleased to remember ... and that letter may reach you, for aught I can guess, at the same moment with this. In the meantime, ever beloved,
I am your
Ba.
Friday.
[Post-mark, May 1, 1846.]
I go to you, my Ba, with heart full of love, so it seems,—yet I come away always with a greater capacity of holding love,—for there is more and still more,—that seems too! At the beginning, I used to say (most truly) that words were all inadequate to express my feelings,—now, those very feelings seem, as I see them from this present moment, just as inadequate in their time to represent what I am conscious of now. I do feel more, widelier, strangelier ... how can I tell you? You must believe,—my only, only beloved! I daresay I have said this before, because it has struck me repeatedly,—and, judging by past experience, I shall need to say it again—and often again. Am I really destined to pass my life sitting by you? And you speak of your hesitation at trusting in miracles! Oh, my Ba, my heart’s—well, Ba, I am so far guiltless of presumption, let come what will, that I never for the moment cease to be ... tremblingly anxious I will say,—and conscious that the good is too great for me in this world. You do not like one to write so, I know, but there is a safety in it—the presumptuous walk blindfold among pits, to a proverb—and no one shall record that of me. And if I have cares and scruples of this kind at times, or at all times, I have none where most other people would have very many. I never ask myself, as perhaps I should,—‘Will she be happy too?’—All that seems removed from me, far above my concernment—she—you, my Ba ... will make me so entirely happy, that it seems enough to know ... my palm-trees grow well enough without knowing the cause of the sun’s heat. Then I think again, that your nature is to make happy and to bless, and itself to be satisfied with that.—So instead of fruitless speculations how to give you back your own gift, I will rather resolve to lie quietly and let your dear will have its unrestricted way. All which I take up the paper determining not to write,—for it is foolish, poor endeavour at best, but,—just this time it is written. May God bless you—
R.B.
I called on Moxon, who is better, and reports cheeringly. Then I went to my friend’s, and thence home, not much tired. I have to go out (to-day) with my sister but only next door. To-morrow I hear from you, love, and on Monday—(unless a pressing engagement &c.—ah!)
What do you say to this little familiar passage in the daily life of friend Howitt,—for which I am indebted to Moxon. Howitt is book-making about Poets, it seems—where they were born, how they live, ‘what relation their mothers’ sons are to their fathers’—etc. In the prosecution of this laudable object he finds his way to Ambleside, calls on Wordsworth ‘quite promiscuously’ as Mrs. Malaprop says, meaning nothing at all. And so after a little ordinary complimenting and play-talk, our man of business takes to good earnest, but dexterous questioning ... all for pure interest in poetry and Mr. W. ‘So, sir, after that school ... if I understand—you went to ... to ...?’—and so on. Mr. Wordsworth the younger having quicker eyes than his father detected a certain shuffling movement between the visitor’s right hand and some mysterious region between the chair’s back and his coat-pocket ... glimpses of a pocket case and paper note book were obtained. He thought it (the son) high time to go and tell Mrs. Wordsworth,—who came in and found the good old man in the full outpouring of all those delightful reminiscences hitherto supposed the exclusive property of Miss Fenner no doubt! Mrs. W—‘desired to speak with William for a moment’ (the old William)—and then came the amazement, horror &c. &c., and last of all came Mr. Howitt’s bow and ‘so no more at present from your loving &c.’—Seriously, in my instinct—instinct—instinct thrice I write it and thank my stars! Moxon said, Howitt is ‘just gone to call on Tennyson for information—having left his card for that purpose.’ ‘And one day will call on you’ quoth Moxon, who is but a sinister prophet, as you may have heard—Dii meliora piis! It is fair enough in Tennyson’s case, for he is apprised by Howitt’s self of the purpose of his visit, but to try and inveigle Wordsworth into doing what he would hate most ... to his credit be it said—why, it is abominable—abominable!
Then I heard another story—his wife, Mary, finds out,—at all events, translates Miss Bremer. Another publisher gets translated other works—or may be the same,—as who shall say him nay? Howitt writes him a letter (which is shown my informant), wherein ‘rogue,’ ‘thief,’ ‘rascal’ and similar elegancies dance pleasantly through period after period.
‘Come out from among them my soul, neither be thou a partaker of their habitations!’
From all which I infer—I may kiss you, may I not, love Ba? It is done, may I or may I not—
Ever your own
Friday.
[Post-mark, May 2, 1846.]
How you write to me! Is there any word to answer to these words ... which, when I have read, I shut my eyes as one bewildered, and think blindly ... or do not think—some feelings are deeper than the thoughts touch. My only beloved, it is thus with me ... I stand by a miracle in your love, and because I stand in it and it covers me, just for that, you cannot see me! May God grant that you never see me—for then we two shall be ‘happy’ as you say, and I, in the only possible manner, be very sure. Meanwhile, you do quite well not to speculate about making me happy ... your instinct knows, if you do not know, that it is implied in your own happiness ... or rather (not to assume a magnanimity) in my sense of your being happy, not apart from me. As God sees me, and as I know at all the motions of my own soul, I may assert to you that from the first moment of our being to each other anything, I never conceived of happiness otherwise ... never thought of being happy through you or by you or in you, even—your good was all my idea of good, and is. I hear women say sometimes of men whom they love ... ‘such a one will make me happy, I am sure,’ or ‘I shall be happy with him, I think’—or again ... ‘He is so good and affectionate that nobody need be afraid for my happiness.’ Now, whether you like or dislike it, I will tell you that I never had such thoughts of you, nor ever, for a moment, gave you that sort of praise. I do not know why ... or perhaps I do ... but I could not so think of you ... I have not time nor breath ... I could as soon play on the guitar when it is thundering. So be happy, my own dearest ... and if it should be worth a thought that you cannot be alone, so, you may think that too. You have so deep and intense a nature, that it were impossible for you to love after the fashion of other men, weakly and imperfectly, and your love, which comes out like your genius, may glorify enough to make you happy, perhaps. Which is my dream, my calculation rather, when I am happiest now. May God bless you. Suppose I should ever read in your eyes that you were not happy with me?—can I help, do you fancy, such thoughts? Could you help being not happy? The very word ‘unhappiness’ implies that you cannot help it. Now forgive me my naughtiness, because I love you, and never loved but you, ... and because I promise not to go with Miss Bayley to Italy ... I promise. Ah—If you could pretend to be afraid of that, indeed, I have a right to be afraid, without pretence at all ... I who am a woman and frightened of lightning. And see the absurdity. If I did not go to Italy with you, the reason would be that you did not choose—and if you did not choose, I should not choose ... I would not see Italy without your eyes—could I, do you think? So if Miss Bayley takes me to Italy with a volume of the Cyclic poets, it will be as a dead Ba clasped up between the leaves of it. You talked of a ‘Flora,’ you remember, in the first letter I had from you.
How bad of William Howitt! How right you are, always! Yet not quite always, dear dearest beloved, happily for your own
Ba.
Say how you are I beseech you, and honestly! I was down-stairs to-day, since the wind changed, and am the better for it. What writing for a postman!—or for you even!
Saturday.
[Post-mark, May 2, 1846.]
No, my Ba, your letter came as it ought last night,—and the promise it contained of another made me restless all the morning—to no purpose,—nothing more comes—yet—for there is a ‘peradventure’ yet unwithdrawn. When I do not hear from you, as now, I always fancy there was some signal reason why I ought to have heard ... that ‘to-morrow,’ I could better bear the not hearing ... though never, never do yesterday’s letters slip by a hair’s breadth from the place in my affection they once take,—they could not have been dispensed with,—but the imaginary letter of to-morrow could, by contrast with to-day’s exigencies ... till to-morrow really comes and is found preferring such claims of its own—such claims.
This letter I have got, and will try and love enough for two ... I can do no harm by trying ... this I do not mean to say that I expected. May I say ‘in heart-playing,’ ... now, Ba, it will be a fancy, which you can pounce on and poke your humming-bird bill through, like a needle, in a very ‘twinkling,’ and so shall my flower’s eye be ruined for ever, and when it turns black and shrivels up as dead flowers do, you can triumph and ask ‘are these your best flowers, best feelings for me?’. But now, after this deprecation, you will be generous and only hover above, using the diamond eye rather than the needle-bill,—and I will go on and dare say that I should like, for one half second, not to love you, and then feel all the love lit up in a flame to the topmost height, at the falling of such a letter on my heart. Don’t you know that foolish boys sometimes play at hanging themselves—suspend themselves by the neck actually for such a half second as this of my fancying—that they may taste the luxury of catching back at existence, and being cut down again? There is a notable exemplification, a worthy simile! It all comes, I suppose, from the joy of being rid handsomely of my dinners and in a fair way for Monday ... nothing between but letters,—I shall continue to hope! At sea it always sounds pleasantly to hear ... after passing Cape This and Isle the other, ‘now, next land we make is—Italy, or England, or Greece.’
Moxon told me Tennyson was still in Town. Switzerland? He is a fortnight going to wherever a Train takes him—‘for,’ says Moxon, ‘he has to pack up, and is too late, and next day’ ... I dare say he unaffectedly hates London where this poco-curanteism would entail all manner of disagreeabilities. If I caught rightly ... that is, now apply rightly, a word or two I heard ... one striking celebrity at Dickens’ Dinner was—Lord Chesterfield—literary, inasmuch as a great ‘maker up of books’—for the Derby. Macready may have been another personage—they, Tennyson and he, may ‘fadge,’ in Shakespearian phrase, if the writer of the ‘Two Voices’ &c. considers Home’s ‘Douglas’ exquisite poetry,—otherwise,—it is a chance!
But with respect to your Brother ... first of all—nay, and last of all, for it all is attributable to that—I feel his kindness, in its way, as I feel yours; as truly, according to its degree and claim: but—‘now think what I would speak!’—When he really does see me one day—no longer embarrassed as under the circumstances I could not but have been on these two or three occasions when we met—he will find something better than conversational powers to which I never pretended—and what he will accept in preference,—a true, faithful desire of repaying his goodness—he will find it, that is, because it must be there, and I have confidence in such feelings making sooner or later their way.
So now, at 2½ p.m., I must (—here is the Post ... from you? Yes—the letter is here at last—I was waiting:—now to read; no, kissing it comes first).
And now ... I will not say a word, my love of loves, my dearest, dearest Ba,—not one word—but I will go out and walk where I can be alone, and think out all my thought of you, and bless you and love you with nothing to intercept the blessing and the love. I will look in the direction of London and send my heart there.... Dear, dear love, I kiss you and commend you to God. Your very own—
I am very well—quite well, dearest.
Sunday.
[Post-mark, May 4, 1846.]
When I said one more letter might come before to-morrow, I forgot. How used I to manage in the early ‘day of small things’—comparatively—when letters came once a week at most, and yet I felt myself so rich, dearest!
I want you to remember, Ba, what I shall be nearly sure to forget when closer to you than now; tell me to-morrow. If I chance to see Mrs. Jameson in the course of the week what am I to say,—that is, what have you decided on saying? Does she know that you write to me? Because there is a point of simple good taste to be preserved ... I must not listen with indifference if I am told that ‘her friend Miss B.’ thought well of the last number. But she must know we write, I think,—never make any secret of that, when the subject is brought forward.
Here is warm May weather, my Ba; I do not shiver by sympathy as I fancy you going down-stairs. I shall hope to see the sweet face look its ... now, what? ‘Best’ would be altogether an impertinence,—unless you help my meaning, which is ‘best,’ too.
I received two days ago a number of the People’s Journal—from our illustrious contemporary, Bennett! Bennett figures where Barrett might have fronted the world. Fact! I will cut you out his very original lyric[2]—observe the felicitous emendation in the author’s own blue ink ... that supplemental trochee makes a musical line of it! Mary Howitt follows with a pretty, washy, very meritorious Lyric of Life. There is ‘a guilty one’—‘Name her not!’ ‘Virtue turns aside for shame’
And so on—what pure nonsense! Who cries ‘let her die’ in the whole world now? thank God, nobody. The sin of the world (of the lookers-on, not the causers of the wrong) consists, in these days, in looking on and asking ‘How can we help her dying—or factory children’s dying—or evicted Irish peasantry’s dying?’ What ails these Howitts of a sudden, that they purvey this kind of cat-lap,—they that once did better? William Howitt grinds here an article on May day; past human power of reading of course, but I just noticed that not a venerablest commonplace was excused on account of its age—the quotations from Chaucer, Spenser, Herrick got once more into rank and file with the affecting alacrity shown the other day at a review of the Chelsea invalids! Oh, William, ‘Let them die!’
So goodbye till to-morrow, my dearest. I love you and bless you ever, and am your
R.B.