So see, and forgive your own
R.
Friday.
[Post-mark, June 13, 1846.]
But dearest, dearest, ... when did I try to dissuade you from telling all to your father and mother? Surely I did not and could not. That you should ‘wound them to the very soul and for ever’ ... I am so far from counselling it, that I would rather, I think, as was intimated in my letter of this morning, have all at an end at once—rather! Certainly rather, ... when the alternative would be your certain unhappiness and remorse. A right, they have, to your entire confidence;—for me to say a word against your giving it—may God forbid! Even that you should submit your wishes to theirs in this matter, would be no excess of duty—I said so, I think, in my letter of this morning.
At the same time, I am of opinion, ... which was what I meant to put into words, ... that, in the case of their approving in the sufficient degree ... and of your resolving finally on carrying out our engagement ... you should avoid committing them further than is necessary, and so exposing them to unpleasant remarks and reproaches from my family ... to go no farther. You think that nothing can be said—I wish I could think so. You are not to be restrained perhaps ... but you are to be advised ... and it would be a natural step for your father, to go straight to his friend Mr. Kenyon. Do you see what might be done though you are ‘of age’—and for not doing which, your father might be reproached? And more there would be to do, besides. Therefore I thought that you should avoid, as far as possible, committing him openly ... making him a party in the eyes of the world (as would be done by my visit to New Cross for instance)—yet I may be wrong here, ... and you, in any case, are the master, to act as you see best.
And, looking steadily at the subject, do you not see, ... now that we look closely besides, ... how mortifying to the just pride of your family, as well as to your own self-respect, is every possible egress from these unhappy circumstances? Ah—I told you—I told you long ago! I saw that at the beginning. Giving the largest confidence to your family, you still must pain them—still.
For the rest ... you are generous and noble as always—but, no, ... I shall refuse steadily for reasons which are plain, to put away from me God’s gifts ... given perhaps in order to this very end ... and apart from which, I should not have seen myself justified, ... even as far as now I vaguely, dimly seem ... to cast the burden of me upon you. No. I care as little for money as you do—but this thing I will not agree to, because I ought not. At the same time, you shall be at liberty to arrange that after the deaths of us two, the money should return to my family ... this, if you choose—for it shall be by your own act hereafter, that they may know you for what you are. In the meanwhile, I should laugh to scorn all that sort of calumny ... even if I could believe it to be possible. Supposing that you sought money, you would not be quite so stupid, the world may judge for itself, as to take hundreds instead of thousands, and pence instead of guineas. To do the world justice, it is not likely to make a blunder on such a point as this.
I wish, if you can wish so, that you were the richer. I could be content to have just nothing, if we could live easily so. But as I have a little without seeking it, you must, on the other hand, try to be content, and not be too proud.
As to Lord Monteagle, ... dearest ... you will do what you like of course, though I do not understand exactly what your object is. A pension on literary grounds is the more difficult to obtain, that the fund set apart for that end is insufficient, I believe. Then if you are to do diplomacy for it, ... how do you know that you may not be sent to Russia, or somewhere impossible for me to winter in? If you were fixed even in London, ... what then? You know best what your own views are, and wishes are—I would not cross them, if you should be happier so, or so.
And do you think that because this may be done, or not done ... and because that ought not to be borne ... we can make any change ... act any more openly ... face to face, perhaps—voice to voice? Alas, no!—You said once that women were as strong as men, ... unless in the concurrence of physical force. Which is a mistake. I would rather be kicked with a foot, ... (I, for one woman!...) than be overcome by a loud voice speaking cruel words. I would not yield before such words—I would not give you up if they were said ... but, being a woman and a very weak one (in more senses than the bodily), they would act on me as a dagger would, ... I could not help dropping, dying before them. I say it that you may understand. Tyranny? Perhaps. Yet in that strange, stern nature, there is a capacity to love—and I love him—and I shall suffer, in causing him to suffer. May God bless you. You will scarcely make out these hurried straggling words—and scarcely do they carry out my meaning. I am for ever your
Ba.
Saturday.
[Post-mark, June 13, 1846.]
Dearest, all dearest beyond my heart’s uttering, will you forgive me for that foolish letter, and the warmth, and—for all,—more than ever I thought to have needed to ask forgiveness for! I love you in every imaginable way. All was wrong, absurd, in that letter—do you forgive—now, while I kiss your feet, my own, own Ba?
For see why it was wrong ... my father and mother will not be pained in any degree: they will believe what I say, exactly what I say. I wrote on and on in a heat at the sudden ridiculous fancy of the matter’s taking place some fine morning, without a word of previous intimation,—‘I am going away, never mind where,—with somebody, never concern yourselves whom,—to stay, if for ever, is it any business of yours to enquire?’ All which was ... what was it? a method of confirming you in your complimentary belief in my ‘calmness’—or that other in my ‘good practical sense’—oh, Ba, Ba, how I deserve you! I will only say, I agree in all you write—it will be clearly best, and I can obviate every untowardness here ... show that all is pure kindness and provident caution ... so easy all will be! And for the other matters, I will fear nothing.
But you do—you do understand what caused the sudden fancy ... how I thought ‘not show them my pride of prides, my miraculous, altogether peerless and incomparable Ba!’ It was not flying from your counsel,—oh, no!
So, is your hand in mine, or rather mine in yours again, sweetest, best love? All will be well. Follow out your intention, as you spoke of it to me, in every point. Do not for God’s sake run the risk, or rather, encounter the certainty of hearing words which most likely have not anything like the significance to the speaker that they would convey to the hearer—and so let us go quietly away. I will care nothing about diplomatism or money-getting extraordinary—why, my own works sell and sell and are likely to sell, Moxon says. And I mean to write wondrous works, you may be sure, and sell them too,—and out of it all may easily come some fifty or sixty horrible pounds a year,—on which one lives famously in Ravenna, I dare say: think of Ravenna, Ba!—it seems the place of places, with the pines and the sea, and Dante, and no English, and all Ba.
My Ba, I see you on Monday, do I not? You let me come then, do you not? I am on fire to see you and know you love me ... not as I love you ... that can never be! I am your own
R.
I resolve, after a long pause and much irresolution, to write down as much as I shall be able, of an obvious fact.... If the saddest fate I can imagine should be reserved for me ... I should wish, you would wish to live the days out worthily,—not end them—nor go mad in them—to prevent which, I should need distraction, the more violent the better,—and it would have to be forced on me in the only way possible—therefore, after my death, I return nothing to your family, be assured. You will not recur to this!
Saturday Morning.
[Post-mark, June 15, 1846.]
I wrote last night when my head was still struggling and swimming between two tides of impressions received from the excitement and fatigue of the day. Mr. Kenyon (dear Mr. Kenyon in his exquisite kindness!) took me to see the strange new sight (to me!) of the Great Western ... the train coming in: and we left the carriage and had chairs—and the rush of the people and the earth-thunder of the engine almost overcame me ... not being used to such sights and sounds in this room, remember!! and afterwards I read and answered your letter with a whirling head. I cannot be sure how I answered it, my head whirled so. I only hope ... hope ... hope ... that it did not seem unworthy of your goodness and generosity—for that would be unworthy of my perception of them and reverence for them, besides. You do not, in particular, I do hope, misunderstand my reasons for refusing to improve what you call my ‘advantages,’ by turning them into disadvantages for you. Really it struck me at the moment and strikes me new every time I think of it, that it would be monstrous in me to stop at such an idea long enough to examine it. To do such a thing would complete the ‘advantages’ of my alliance—if that is a desire of yours. And if I were to be ill afterwards, there would be the crown of the crown. Now ask yourself if I ought—
I cannot conceive of the possibility of a ‘calumny’ on such a pretext—there seems no room for it. You will however have it in your power hereafter, without injury to either of us, to do yourself full justice in this particular— —only neither now nor hereafter shall I consent to let in sordid withering cares with your life. God has not made it so and it shall not be so by an act of mine.
And after all, shall we be so much ... so much too rich? do you fancy that Miss Kilmansegg is made of brass compared to me? It is not so bad, be very sure. If Arabel should not offend Papa, she will be richer hereafter than we are ... yet not rich even so. Why are you fanciful in that way? People are more likely to say that I have taken you in. The sign of the Red Dragon! as you suggested once yourself!
I could make you laugh, if it were not too hot to laugh, with telling you how I really do not know what my ‘advantages’ are—specifically—so many, and so many. I am not ‘allowed’ to spend what I might—but the motive is of course a kind one— —there is no mistaking that. Poor Papa! He attends just to those pecuniary interests which no one cares for, with a scrupulous attention. Nearly two hundred a year of ship shares I never touch. Then there is the interest of six thousand pounds (not less at any rate) in the funds—and I referred to the principal of that, when I said yesterday, that when we had ceased to need it, it might return to my family, since it came from them, if you chose. But this is all air—and nothing shall be said of it now—and whatever may be said hereafter, shall come from you, and be your word rather than mine. So I beseech you, by your affection for me, to speak no more of this hateful subject, which I have entered for a moment lest you should exaggerate to yourself and mistake me for the least in the world of an heiress. As to Lord Monteagle, we can do without him, I think—and unless he would give us a house to keep, or something of that sort, at Sorrento or Ravenna, I do not exactly see what he can do for us. To make an agreement with a periodical, would be more a possibility perhaps—but it is not a necessity—there is no sort of need, in fact—and why should you be tormented ‘in the multitude of the thoughts within you,’ utterly in vain?
As to your family ... I understand your natural desire of giving your confidence at the fullest to your father and mother, who deserve and claim it ... I understand that you should speak and listen to them, and cross no wish of theirs, and in nothing displease and pain them. But I do not understand the argument by which you involve the question with other questions ... when you say, for instance, that I ‘ought not to countenance the preposterousness and tyranny.’ How do I seem to countenance what I revolt from? Do you mean that we ought to do what we are about, openly? It is the only meaning I can attach to your words. Well—If you choose it to be so, knowing what I have told you, let it be so. I can however, as I said yesterday, answer only for my will and mind, and not for my strength and body—and if the end should be different from the end you looked for, you will not blame me, being just, ... any more than I shall blame myself. May God bless you, ever dearest!—
I am your own as ever.
Sunday.
[Post-mark, June 15, 1846.]
May I venture to speak to dearest Ba as if I had seen her or heard from her since I wrote yesterday,—and that seeing or that hearing had brought the usual comfort and assurance,—and forgiveness when needed, but delight at all times? Do you forgive me indeed, Ba?
I shall know to-morrow—which ‘to-morrow’ is your to-day. I am soon to be with you to-day. I trust there is [no] occasion to exercise fancy and say—‘When we meet on your return from Tunbridge a month hence,’ or two, or three ... to go on fancying! What should I do,—be able to do? and if I understood you rightly the letter-communication would be hindered, if not stopped altogether. Thus is one the sport of one’s own wishes. Fine weather is desired ... fine enough to drive people out of town into the country!
As it is, I have been sufficiently punished for that foolish letter, which has lost me the last two or three days of your life and deeds, my Ba. You went to Mr. Kenyon’s—may have gone elsewhere (and gathered roses I did not deserve to receive)—but I do not know, and shall not recover my loss—not ever ... because if you tell me now, you exclude something new you would say otherwise ... if you write it on Tuesday, what becomes of Tuesday’s own stock of matter for chronicling?
Well, the proper word in my mouth is—I am sorry to the heart, and will try never to offend so again. How you wrote to me, also! How you rise above yourself while I get no nearer where you were first of all, no nearer than ever! But so it should be! so may it ever be!
I believe the fault comes from a too-sweet sense of the freedom of being true with you, telling you all, hiding nothing. Carlyle was saying in his fine way, he understood why the Romans confined acting to their slaves ... it was no employment for a free man to amuse people ... be bound to do that, and if other faculties interposed, tending to other results on an audience than amusement, be bidden suppress them accordingly ... and so, he thought, it would be one day with our amusers, writers of fun, concocters of comic pieces. I feel it delicious to be free when most bound to you, Ba,—to be able to love on in all the liberty of the implied subjection ... so I am angry to you, desponding sometimes to you, as well as joyous and hopeful—well, well, I love, at any rate,—do love you with heart and soul, my Ba,—ever shall love you, dearest above all dearness: God bless you!
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, June 16, 1846.]
As to ‘practical sense’ I never saw, I confess, much to praise you for—but you began by making a great profession of it, please to remember—and, otherwise, you certainly ought to know more of the world and the wisdom thereof than I, or you are dull, dearest mine, and one might as well call the sun so on this burning dazzling morning, when everything is at a white heat. Then for the ‘calmness’ ... I did not call your eyes ‘green’ after all ... nor did I mean what you would force on me for a meaning in the other way:—you pretend to misunderstand? Eyes, at least, that had the mastery with me from the beginning! and it was so long, so long (as you observed yourself), that I could not lift up mine against them—they were the mystic crystal walls, so long!
After you were gone yesterday and I had done with the roses (exquisite roses!) and had my coffee, I saw my uncle Hedley who had been inquiring about me, said my sisters, all the afternoon, ... for it was he who came when we heard the greetings on the stairs—and he told me that his wife and daughter were to be in London early in July ... so that we shall have the whole squadron sooner than we thought—drawn up like a very squadron ... my other aunt, Miss Clarke, coming at the same time, and my cousin with her, Arlette Butler. But only those two will be in the house here, and they will not be for very long, nor will they be much in the way, I hope.
Shall I tell you? I repented yesterday ... I repented last night ... I repent to-day, having made the promise you asked of me. I could scarcely sleep at all last night, through thinking that I ought not to have made it. Be generous, and free me from that promise. To be true to you in the real right sense, I need no promises at all—and if an argument were addressed to me in order to separate us, I should see through the piteous ingenuity of it, I think, whatever ground it took, and admit no judgment and authority over your life to be higher than your own. But I have misgivings about that promise, because I can conceive of circumstances.... Loose me from my promise, and let me be grateful to you, my beloved, in all things and ways, and hold you to be generous in the least as in the greatest. What I asked of you, was as different as our positions are—different beyond what you see or can see. No third person can see,—no second person can see ... what my position is and has been ... I do not enter on it here. But there is just and only one way in which I may be injured by you, ... and that is, in being allowed to injure you—so remember, remember, ... to the last available moment.
Then ... I have lived so in a dream for very long!—and everything, all undertakings, all movements, seem easy in dream-life. The sense of this has lately startled me. To waken up suddenly and find that I have wronged you—what more misery?—and I feel already that I am bringing you into a position which will by some or many be accounted unworthy of you. Well—we will not talk of it—not now! there is time for the grave consideration which must be. Let us both think.
And may God bless you, ever dearest! You are the best and most generous of all in the world! Whatever my mistake may be, it is not concerning that. Also I love you, love you. Premature things I say sometimes, which are foolish always. Tell me how you are ... tell me how your mother is— —but speak of your own head ... tam chari ... particularly. Overcoming, the heat is—and I do hope that Mrs. Jameson won’t come after all.
Your
Ba.
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, June 16, 1846.]
I have just returned from Town—some twelve miles at least I must have walked in this extreme heat ... so what has become of the headache? And now I sit down to write what Ba will read ... what has become of the heat and fatigue? In this sense Ba ‘looks cool at me!’
I shall just write that I love, and love you, and love you again—my own Ba—just this, lest you learn the comfort of a respite from hearing what you are doomed to hear, with variations, all the days of your life. But not much more than this shall I write, because the love lies still in me, and deep, as water does,—cannot run forth in rivulets and sparkle, this hot weather; but then how I love her when I can only say so,—how I feel her ... as in an old opera’s one line that stays in my recollection the tropical sun is described on the ocean—‘fervid on the glittering flood’—so she lies on me.
See the pure nonsense, my own Ba, and laugh at it, but not at what lies at bottom of it, because that is true as truth, true as Ba’s self in its way.
I called on Forster this morning: he says Landor is in high delight at the congratulatory letters he has received—so you must write, dearest, and add the queen-rose to his garland. F— talks about some 500 copies—or did he say 300?—being sold already ... so there is hope for Landor’s lovers.
So I should have written once ... but like Virgil’s shepherd ... ‘know I now what love is!’—Do you remember that the first word I ever wrote to you was ‘I love you, dear Miss Barrett?’ It was so,—could not but be so—and I always loved you, as I shall always.
Tell me all you can about your dearest self, my own love. I am so happy in you, in your perfect goodness and truth,—in all of you.
Be careful this fatiguing weather ... the evenings and mornings are the only working time of the day, as in the beginning of things. But all day long is rest-time to love you, dear, and kiss you, as now—kisses
Your own.
Tuesday. 6 o’clock.
[Post-mark, June 17, 1846.]
Beloved, this weather, which makes Flush cross, perhaps helped to make me depressed this morning. I had not slept well, and ought not to have written to you till the effect of it had gone off. Now I feel more as if I had been with you yesterday. Ah well! I don’t, can’t remember what I wrote ... and some of it was wise ... for I ought not to have promised that, ... and you must loose me, that I may be loosed in Heaven, from the bands of it. Only you are not to go to Greenwich (you go to Greenwich to-morrow, do you not?) thinking that I wanted to teaze you. There is just one meaning to all my words, let them be sad or gay ... and it is, that your happiness is precious. For myself, if we were to part now and for ever, I should still owe you the only happiness of my life. But nobody is talking of parting, you know—I am yours, and cannot be put away from you except by your own hand. Which is decided! What I ask of you, is to spare me the pang of causing you to suffer on my account, ... and you may suffer sometimes, I fear, through all your affection for me, ... and indirectly, if not directly.
Two visitors I have had to-day—dear Mr. Kenyon, and Lady Margaret Cocks. She is going to Italy—(oh, of course!) to Rome. He came to tell me that the books came to me from Landor himself, and that I must write to him to thank him properly. Mrs. Jameson I do not see, nor Miss Bayley.
How hot it will be for you to-morrow! Try to be amused and not too tired, dearest beloved, and tell me in your letters how the head is.
While the heart beats (mine!) I am your own.
I am going in the carriage presently and shall write again to-night. Won’t that be three times in a day according to order?
Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, June 17, 1846.]
Best, ... best, you are, to write to me when you were tired, and so! When I am tired and write to you, it is too apt to be what may trouble you. With you, how different! In nothing do you show your strength more than in your divine patience and tenderness towards me, till ... not being used to it, I grow overwhelmed by it all, and would give you my life at a word. Why did you love me, my beloved, when you might have chosen from the most perfect of all women and each would have loved you with the perfectest of her nature? That is my riddle in this world. I can understand everything else ... I was never stopped for the meaning of sorrow upon sorrow ... but that you should love me I do not understand, and I think that I never shall.
Do I remember? Yes indeed, I remember. How I recurred and wondered afterwards, though at the moment it seemed very simple and what was to be met with in our philosophy every day. But there, you see, there’s the danger of using mala verba! The Fates catch them up and knit them into the web! Then I remember all the more (though I should at any rate) through an imprudence of my own (or a piece of ill-luck rather ... it shall not be called an imprudence) of which I will tell you. I was writing to Miss Mitford and of you—we differed about you often, ... because she did not appreciate you properly, and was fond of dwelling on the ‘obscurity’ when I talked of the light,—and I just then writing of you, added in my headlong unreflecting way that I had had a real letter from you which said that you loved me—‘Oh—but,’ I wrote on, ‘you are not to mistake this, not to repeat it—for of course, it is simply the purest of philanthropies’ ... some words to that effect—and if yours was the purest of philanthropies, mine was the purest of innocences, as you may well believe, ... for if I had had the shadow of a foresight, I should not have fallen into the snare. So vexed I was afterwards! Not that she thought anything at the time, or has referred to it since, or remembers a word now. Only I was vexed in my innermost heart ... and am ... do you know? ... that I should have spoken lightly of such an expression of yours—though you meant it lightly too. Dearest! It was a disguised angel and I should have known it by its wings though they did not fly.
But I foresaw nothing, ... looked to you for nothing, ... nothing can prove better to myself, than my having mentioned the quaint word at all. For I know, and I hope you know, how impossible it always has been to me to choose for a subject of conversation and jest, things which never should be spoken to friend or sister. But how was I to foresee? So the quaintness passed as quaintness with me. And never from that time (you grew sacred too soon!), never again from that moment, did I mention you to Miss Mitford—oh yes, I did, when she talked of introducing Mr. Chorley, and when I replied that, being a woman, I would have my wilful way, and that my wilful way was to see you instead. But except then ... and when I sent her Mr. Landor’s verses on you ... not a word have I spoken ... except in bare response. She thinks perhaps that my old fervour about you has sunk into the socket—she suspects nothing—in fact she does not understand what love is ... and I never should think of asking her for sympathy. She is one of the Black Stones, which, when I climb up towards my Singing Tree and Golden Water, will howl behind me and call names.
You had my second letter to-day, speaking of Landor, and of Mr. Kenyon’s visit. At half-past six came Miss Bayley, talking exceeding kindnesses of Italy, and entreating me to use her ... to let her go with me and take care of me and do me all manner of good. What kindness, really, in a woman whom I have not seen six times in all! I am very grateful to her. She held my hands, and told me to write to her if ever I had need of her—she would come at a moment, go for a year!—she would do anything for me I desired! And this woman to believe of herself that she has no soul! Help me to thank her in your thoughts of her! She said, by the way, that Mrs. Jameson had talked to her of wishing to take me, ... but she thought (Miss Bayley thought) that she (Mrs. Jameson) had too many objects and too much vivacity ... it would not do so well, she thought. In reply—I could just thank her, and scarcely could do that, ... only I am sure she saw and felt that I was grateful to her aright, let the words come ever so wrong. To-morrow she leaves London for an indefinite time.
She told me too that a friend of hers, calling on Mrs. Jameson, had found her on the point of coming to me to-day, to drive out ... but she suffered from toothache and was going to Cartwright’s first ... and last, I suppose. I dare say he put her to torture, to be classified with ‘the thumbscrew and the gadge’ ... some disabling torture, for I have not seen her at all. So as at half-past seven Henrietta was going out to dinner, Lizzie and I and Flush took our places by her in the carriage, and went to Hyde Park ... drove close by the Serpentine, and saw by the ruffling of the water that there was a breath of wind more than we felt. The shadows were gathering in quite fast, shade upon shade; and at last the silvery water seemed to hold all the light left, as on the flat of a hand. Very much I liked and enjoyed it. And, as we came home, the gas was in the shops ... another strange sight for me—and we all liked everything. Flush had his head out of the window the whole way ... except when he saw a long whip, ... or had a frightful vision at the water of somebody washing a little dog ... which made him draw back into the carriage with dilated eyes and quivering ears, and set about licking my hands, for an ‘Ora pro nobis.’ And Lizzie confided to me, that, when she is ‘grown up,’ she never will go out to dinners like Henrietta, but drive in the park like Ba, instead ... unless she can improve upon both, and live in a cottage covered with roses, in the country. I, in the meantime, between my companions, thought of neither of them more than was necessary, but of somebody whom I had been teazing perhaps ... dearest, was it so, indeed? ... but I avenge you by teazing myself back again! A long rambling letter, with nothing in it! ‘Passages, that lead to nothing’—and staircases, too! May I be loved nevertheless, as usual? and forgiven for my ‘secret faults?’ You are the whole world to me—and the stars besides!
And I am your very own
Ba.
Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, June 17, 1846.]
My own Ba, I release you from just as much as you would easily dispense me from observing in that mutual promise. Indeed, it has become one unnecessary for our present relation and knowledge: it was right at the beginning for either to say to the other, using calm words, ‘It is your good I seek, not mine,’ and as if it were demonstrated that I should secure yours at the expense of mine by leaving you I would endeavour to do it—so, you assure me, you would act by me. The one point to ascertain therefore, is—what will amount to a demonstration; and I for my part apprize you that no other person in the world can by any possibility know so much of me as to be entitled to pronounce in the matter—to say ‘it is for good or for evil’—therefore, you will no more be justified in giving up to that kind of demonstration what I consent you shall give up to one clearly furnished by myself the only authentic one—than you would be justified in paying my money, entrusted to you, on the presentation of a cheque signed by somebody else ... somebody who loves me better than himself, my best of friends, truest of advisers &c. &c. It skills not, boots not—‘John Smith’ is not R.B., nor B.A. and because R.B. or B.A. shall be instantly attended to,—the counterfeit must be refused.’ Just this, so rational and right, I understood you to bid me promise—and so much you have promised me, a proper precaution for the earlier time when the friend might seem to argue with some plausibility ‘really I understand my friend’s interests better than you can.’ But now, who dares assure me that? I disbelieve it—one only knows better, can ever know better—yourself; and I will obey yourself. So with me—I know better my own good than you do yet, I think. When I tell you that good requires such a step as you speak of, you shall acquiesce; I will tell you on the instant, as you, in your own case, should tell me on the instant. I needed not ask you to promise, as I foolishly did, that you would not act in the saddest of ways—professing to see what could never be, and believe what must be untrue. At the beginning, at the first day, suppose Mr. Kenyon had said—you prevent his getting such a place, which brings in so much honour and wealth—or marrying such a person who would effect the same—you might have assented then, in your comparative ignorance, just as you could not have objected had he said, ‘If you hold Mr. B. to his engagement to come here on the Derby Day you will ruin him assuredly, for his heart and soul are on “the turf” and his betting-book will go to wreck.’ To this you could never bring yourself to pretend an assent—it would be no argument if he went on saying—‘Why, A and B and C go to races and bet on them’—you know I do not—so you know my estimate of honour and wealth and the rest, apart ... I will not say from the love of you,—but from my own life as I had traced it years ago, and as it is still traced for me to its end,—your love coming to help it in every smallest particular, to supply the undreamed-of omissions in the plan of it, and remove the obstructions best seen now that they are removed or removable. There is a calmest ‘of calm’ statements of the good of you to me.
My dearest Ba, you say ‘let us both think’—think of this, you! Do not for God’s sake introduce an element of uncertainty and restlessness and dissatisfaction into the feeling whereon my life lies. To speak for myself, this matter is concluded, done with,—I am yours, you are mine, and not to give use to refinements upon refinements as to what is the being most of all each other’s, which might end in your loving me best while I was turned a Turk in the East, or my—you know the inquisition does all for the pure love of the victim’s soul. Let us have common sense—and think, in its most ordinary exercise, what would my life be worth now without you—as I,—putting on your own crown, accepting your own dearest assurance,—dare believe your life would be incomplete now without mine—so you have allowed me to believe. Then our course is plain. If you dare make the effort, we will do as we propose,—if not, not: I have nothing to do but take your hand ... there is not one difficulty in my path,—nor in yours on my account,—that is for me. If I change my views, and desire hereafter what I altogether turn from now,—in what conceivable respect will your being my wife hinder me? If I accept the Embassy which Young England in the person of Milnes has promised me—you shall offer no impediment. If I rather aspire to ‘dine out’ here in London, you shall stay at home and be good-natured. I shall attain to all these delights just as easily with you as without you, I suppose; ‘No, I cannot marry some other woman and by her means and connections and connexions’—No—because—first and least of all, I begin by drawing on myself the entire cataract of shame and disgrace in the mouth of the world,—direct accusation or rather condemnation, against which not a word can be urged in mitigation, because all would be the pure simple truth—I do this, who have been fretfully wincing under the mere apprehension of catching a mere spatter or two of gossiping scandal—which a very few words would get rid of, seeing that, in fact, the falseness of the imputation will be apparent to everybody with eyes to see—for after all, here I am, living to my own pleasure and my father and mother’s, and at liberty to do so for ever, as mortals say. Well, and so having gone under the whole real cataract instead of the sprinkling impertinence of the half a dozen sprinklings from the mop at the nursery-window which an upward look and cry will stop at once,—so having mended the matter, I commit a sin which I turn and ask you, should you be ever at peace with God and yourself if you sate still and suffered me to commit,—not on account of me and my harm to follow in both worlds,—but in mere justice to your ‘neighbour,’—on whom you would see inflicted this infamous wrong?
Dear, dear, dear Ba, I kiss you, kiss my heart out unto you,—best love, one love! I see above what I will not think over again, look over again—but what then? Can I be quiet when I hear the least, least motion about my treasure, and my heart that is there, with it? Then no more, I beseech you, love, never one word more of all that! Whenever I can hear such words calmly, I shall be fit for agreeing to them,—let all be now. These two kindest of letters both come in together to my blessing—my entire blessing! I was writing the last line when they came—I will just say now, that the Greenwich affair is put off till Friday. Do not I understand Miss Bayley! And do I understand you, my Ba, when I venture this time——because of the words and the pain I shall not hide that they did give me,—to feel that, even beyond my kissing you, you kiss this one time your own R.B.
My mother is much better, and out—she is walking with my sister. I am very well—in the joy perhaps ... but really much better—and have been so.
My two hundredth letter from her! I, poor?
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, June 18, 1846.]
Dearest and ever dearest, try to forgive me when I fall so manifestly short of you in all things! It is the very sense of this which throws me on despairs sometimes of being other than a bane to your life—and then ... by way of a remedy ... I begin to be a torment to it directly. Forgive me. Whatever I may say I am as wholly yours as if you held me in your hand, and I would do for you any extravagance, as if it were a common thing, at a word—and what is before us is only a common thing, since I have looked to it from the beginning. Oh—I may talk when I am out of spirits—but you know, and I know best of all, that I could not withdraw myself from you, unless you said ‘Go’—could not—I have no power. Fine talking, it is of me, to talk of withdrawing myself from you! You know I could not at all do it, let ever so many special pleaders come to prove to me that you would be more prosperous and happy without me. ‘Then’ I would say ... ‘let him put me away. I can’t put myself away, because I am not mine but his.’ Assuredly I would say just that, and no more. So do you forget that I have teazed you and pained you ... pained you!... I will try not to pain you, my own, own dearest, any more. I have grown to love you instead of the whole world; and only one thing ... (you understand what that is ...) is dreadful and intolerable to me to imagine. But now it is done with; and you shall teach me hereafter to make you happy instead of the contrary. So ... yes—you are kissed this time! upon both eyes, ... that they may not see my faults. And afterwards I will tell you a paradox ... that if I loved you a hundred times less, I should run into such offences less in exact proportion. And finally I will give you a promise ... not to teaze you for a week—which were a wonderful feat for me! the teazer par excellence.
To-day I deserved to hear of your head being worse—but it is better, I thank God—and your mother is better—all such comforting news! But it was no news that you did not go to Greenwich to-day,—for Mrs. Jameson came for me to drive at about six, and she and I were in Regent’s Park until nearly eight. Then she went somewhere to dinner, and I, who had had tea, came home to supper! I like her very much—more and more, certainly—and we need not be mysterious up to the usual mark of mystery, because I told her ... told her ... what might be told—and she was gracious to the uttermost—not angry at all,—and said that ‘Truth was truth, and one could breathe in the atmosphere of it, and she was glad I had told her.’ Of you, she said, that she admired you more than ever—yes, more than ever—for the ‘manner in which as a man of honour you had kept the secret’—so you were praised, and I, not blamed ... and we shall not complain, if our end is as good as our beginning. Also we talked of your poetry and of you personally, and I was pleased, ... which proves a little what was said—and I heard how you were invited as a ‘celebrity’ for the Countess Hahn-Hahn to see you, and how you effaced yourself with ever so much gracefulness; yet not too much, to omit charming the whole room. Mrs. Jameson praises you always, as nobody does better. And to-morrow ... will you be surprised to hear that to-morrow at half-past four, I am to go again with her, ... to see Rogers’s pictures? Is it wrong? shall I get into a scrape? She promised laughingly that I should be incognita to the only companion she thought of taking ... a Mrs. Bracebridge, I think ... and Mr. Rogers himself is not to be visible—and she herself will mention it to nobody. It was hard to say ‘no’—yet perhaps ‘no’ would have been better. Do you think so? Mrs. Bracebridge is an artist and lives or lived on Mount Hymettus!—and she is not to hear my name even.
Now—good night, very dear!—most dear of all! I will not teaze you for a fortnight, I think. Ah—if ever I can do that again, you shall not be pained, ... you shall think that my heart and life are in you, and that, if they seem to flatter, it is that they go deeper. All I am is yours—which is different from ... all I have. ‘All I have,’ is when I may lean my head down on the shoulder—
So let me be your own
Ba.
Of those two letters, one was in the post before seven the evening before. Now, is it not too bad?
Thursday.
[Post-mark, June 18, 1846.]
Did you really kiss me on the two eyes, my Ba? I cannot say ‘perhaps at the very time I was thinking of you,’—more than ‘when I was breathing’—I breathe always, think of you always,—kiss you almost always. You dear, dearest Ba! Do pain me so again and again,—if you will so cure me every time! But you should not imagine that I can mistake the motive,—as if you loved me less and therefore wrote—oh, no—but there is no getting rid of these mistakings before the time: they bear their fruit and die away naturally ... the hoe never cuts up all their roots. I shall trust to hear you say one day I am past such mistaking—but—at Amalfi?
I am very glad, love, you go to Mr. Rogers’ to-day—what harm can follow? The evil in the other case was a very precise and especial one. They say his pictures are well worth seeing. Tell me, make me see you seeing! I am glad, too, Mrs. Jameson knows ... but her graciousness I expected, because the causes you were able to give her would really operate just in that manner: indeed they are the sole causes of the secresy we have observed. I cannot help liking Mrs. Jameson more, much more since her acquaintance with you. Hazlitt says somewhere that the misery of consorting with country-people is felt when you try for their sympathy as to favourite actors—‘Liston?’ says the provincial, ‘never heard of him’—but—whoever knows Miss Barrett ... ‘Ba,’ they are not going to be let know ... of such a person I know something more than of any other.
Talking of Hahn-Hahn, read this note of Mrs. Carlyle’s—although to my mortification I find that the wise man is not so peremptory on the virtue of one of Ba’s qualities as I, the ignorant man, must continue to be. Never mind,—perhaps ‘in the long run’ I may love you as if you were exactly to Mrs. Carlyle’s mind!
I want to tell you a thing not to be forgotten about Florence as a residence for any time. You spoke of the bad water at Ravenna ... which if a serious inconvenience anywhere is a very plague in Italy; well, the medical people, according to Valléry, attribute the black hollow cheeks and sunk eyes and general ill health of the Florentines to their vile water; impregnated with lead, I think. There is only one good fountain in the city—that opposite Santa Croce; I religiously abstained from drinking water there—and felt the privation the more from having just left Rome, where the water is the most perfectly delicious and abundant and, they say, wholesome—in the world. That one objection is decisive against Ravenna—but then, why do the English all live at Florence?
It makes me happy to hear of your achievements and not of any ill result—happy! Is it quite so warm to-day? If it were to rain to-morrow (!), if—our party would be postponed till the next day, Saturday, I believe ... there was a kind of understanding to that effect—now, in that case, might I go to you to-morrow? In the case of real heavy rain only——the letter to-morrow will tell me perhaps....
Goodbye, dearest dearest; I love you wholly—
Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, June 19, 1846.]
But I have not been to Mr. Rogers’s to-day, after all. I had a note from Mrs. Jameson, to put off our excursion to Saturday ... if I consented to Saturday! but of course I would not consent to Saturday—and as she intimated that another day would do as well, we shall have another day fixed, I suppose. What a good fruit it would be of the confession I made in the park, if she were to ask you to go!!! Oh, I should like that—I should like it notwithstanding the drawbacks. It would be a fair gain upon the usual times of meeting—only that I could not care quite as much for the pictures—yet, those too, I should like to see with you, rather than apart from you. And you never saw them ... you! Is there a hope of her asking you when you are at Greenwich together? Now I have got this into my head, it will not go out again—oh, you must try and enchant her properly at Greenwich and lead her into asking you. Yet, with you or without you in the body, the spirit of you and the influence of you are always close to my spirit when it discerns any beauty or feels any joy; if I am happy on any day it is through you wholly, whether you are absent or present, dearest, and ever dearest!
And so, instead of Mr. Rogers’s pictures, I have been seeing you in my thoughts, as I sate here all alone to-day. When everybody was at dinner I remembered that I had not been out—it was nearly eight ... there was no companion for me unless I called one from the dinner-table; and Wilson, whom I thought of, had taken holiday. Therefore I put on my bonnet, as a knight of old took his sword,—aspiring to the pure heroic,—and called Flush, and walked down-stairs and into the street, all alone—that was something great! And, with just Flush, I walked there, up and down in glorious independence. Belgium might have felt so in casting off the yoke. As to Flush, he frightened me a little and spoilt my vain-glory—for Flush has a very good, stout vain-glory of his own, and, although perfectly fond of me, has no idea whatever of being ruled over by me!—(he looks beautiful scorn out of his golden eyes, when I order him to do this or this) ... and Flush chose to walk on the opposite side of the street,—he would,—he insisted on it! and every moment I expected him to disappear into some bag of the dogstealers, as an end to his glory, à lui. Happily, however, I have no moral with which to point my tale—it’s a very immoral story, and shows neither Flush nor myself punished for our sins. Often, I am not punished for my sins, ... am I? You know that ... dearest, dearest! But then, even you are not punished for your sins ... when you flatter so! Ah, it is happy for you, and for your reputation in good taste and sense, that you cannot very well say such things except to me, who cannot believe them. For the rest, the eyes were certainly blinded, ... being kissed too hard.
How I like Mrs. Carlyle’s note! You will go of course. But it will not rain to-morrow, and you shall not have the advantage of coming through it to me, ... for this reason (among others far better), that I have engaged to see, at three or four perhaps, a friend of ours from the country. She is in London for only two days and wrote to beg me to see her, and to-day I escaped by half a rudeness, and, if I do to-morrow, it will be by a whole rudeness. So, not to-morrow! And, if Saturday should be taken from us, we must find three days somehow next week—it will be easily done.
As to Florence, the flood of English is the worst water of all in the argument. And then Dr. Chambers ‘warned me off’ Florence, as being too cold for the winter. It would be as well not to begin by being ill; and half I am afraid of Ravenna—though Ravenna may not be cold, and though Shelley may belie it altogether. ‘A miserable place’ he calls it in the ‘Letters.’ Still I observe that his first impressions are apt to be darker than remain. For instance, he began by hating Pisa, and preferred it to most places, afterwards. There is Pisa by the way! Or your Sorrento ... Salerno ... Amalfi ... you shall consider if you please—find a new place if you like.
It is my last letter perhaps till I see you. May God bless you, I lift up my heart to say. How happy I ought to be, ... and am, ... with your thoughts all round me, so, as you describe! Let them call me your very own
Ba.
Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, June 19, 1846.]
I shall hardly be able, I am afraid, to get your letter ... if one should come through your dear goodness, my own Ba ... before I go out ... having to meet the Procters’ party in Town: so I will just write my joy at its being little more now than twenty-four hours before I shall see you, I trust. The day is cool and nearer rain than I fancied probable—but, oh the task-work, Egyptian bondage, that much going-out would be to me, who am tired (unreasonably) beforehand on this first and most likely last occasion during the year. It is a pity that I am so ignorant about Hahn-Hahn’s books—one, ‘Faustina,’ I got last night, but have neither heart nor time to ‘get it up’ in a couple of hours.
Something you said on Mrs. Jameson’s authority amused me—the encomium on my grace in sitting still to see the play and not jumping on the stage to act too—as if it were not the best privilege one finds in being ‘known’ never so little, that it dispenses one from having to make oneself known. When you are shipwrecked among Caribbee Indians you are forced to begin professing ‘I can make baskets, and tell fortunes, and foresee eclipses—so don’t eat me!’ And even there if they threatened nothing of the kind, I should be content to live and die as unhonoured as one of their own cabbage-trees.
I must go now—the day gets hotter, but then our day draws nearer—All my heart is yours, best of dearest loves, my own Ba, as I am your own—
Sunday.
[Post-mark, June 22, 1846.]
What I told you yesterday is very often in my thoughts, my own Ba—that with respect to the love for you ‘I see what I know and testify what I have seen.’ I know what is, and why it is—so far as my faculties of perception allow, of course—I rest on you just as I sate on the grass in the garden this morning with the very earth’s immensity beneath: that is very different from trusting to this chair which is firm enough now, but might break down from a thousand causes. How entirely I believe in you, Ba! When you praise me, I believe that you are in error, yet believe it none——I know I am not so truthful to you—not so invariably, in the least as in the greatest matters—in the greatest, in the ordinary even, I speak pure truth,—but the old conventional habits cling, as I find out on reflection sometimes—but I aspire no less to become altogether open to your sight as you are to me,—I in my degree,—like a smallest of lake’s face under the sky’s: and for this also I shall have to bless you, my only Ba,—my only Ba!
I ought never ... I think I will not again ... attempt to write down why I love you.... (not, not that it is done here, but alluded-to, touched upon ...) The elements of the love ... (I say ‘the’ love, mine, because I will not know, nor hear, nor be taught anything by anybody else about ‘love,’ the one love everybody knows, it seems, and lives and dies by)—my love’s elements are so many that the attempt to describe them is to bring about this failure ... the first that comes is taken up and treated of at length ... as that element of ‘trust’ just now ... and then, in the feeling of incompetence which makes the pen sink away and turns the mind off, the others are let pass by unnamed, much less described, or at least acknowledged for the undeniable elements they are. What were all the trust without—and thus I could begin again! Let me say no more now—and forgive all the foolishness ... it is not for my wisdom you are to love me, Ba! Except that if you agreed too heartily with me on that point, I should very likely be found turning round on you with ‘not wise, when I adore you so?’ Wise or unwise, I do adore you, my Ba! And more and evermore! But see how I need your letters to train mine, to lead them into something more like the true way ... and to-morrow the letter will come—will it not? And mine shall be less about myself and more about you—whom may God bless, prays your own
R.
Sunday.
[Post-mark, June 22, 1846.]
I write to you in the drawing-room, and have brought down with me, I find, no smaller paper—but it can’t be filled, can it? though I have to tell you the great news about the lilies ... that all, except two, are in full blow ... and that the two are unfolding ... I can almost see the leaves move. I told you how it would be. They will live, ... and last longer than the roses, ... which I shall have to tell you by history as well as prediction, presently. The next news is not so good,—for I have had a note from Mrs. Jameson to the effect that she will come to take me to the pictures to-morrow, Monday—so that there will be no time to be diplomatic. My hope was of your meeting her at Mr. Carlyle’s, before she could arrange anything finally,—and really I do feel as disappointed as if I had had a reason for the hope. Now, unless we have another miracle, there’s an end, I suppose.
Think of my having left Flush behind me fast asleep. He dashes at the door in the most peremptory way, and nearly throws me backward when I open it, with his leaping-up-joy ... if it is not rather his reproach.
Now I am here all alone, except Flush—sitting, leaning against the open window with my feet curled up, and, at them, Flush curled up too; and I writing on my knee more meo. Rather cooler it seems, but rather too hot still it is, I think. How did you get home? how are you, dearest? And your mother? tell me of her, and of you! You always, you know (do you know?), leave your presence with me in the flowers; and, as the lilies unfold, of course I see more and more of you in each apocalypse. Still, the Saturday’s visit is the worst of all to come to an end, as always I feel. In the first place stands Sunday, like a wall without a door in it! no letter! Monday is a good day and makes up a little, but it does not prevent Tuesday and Wednesday following ... more intervening days than between the other meetings—or so it seems. I forgot to tell you that yesterday I went to Mr. Boyd’s house ... not to see him, but as a preliminary step to seeing him. Arabel went to his room to tell him of my being there—we are both perhaps rather afraid of meeting after all these years of separation. Quite blind he is—and though scarcely older than Mr. Kenyon (perhaps a year or two or three), so nervous, that he has really made himself infirm, and now he refuses to walk out or even to go down-stairs. A very peculiar life he has led ever since he lost his sight, which he did when he was quite a young man—and a very peculiar person he is in all possible ways. His great faculty is ... memory ... and his great passion ... Greek—to which of late he has added Ossian. Otherwise, he talks like a man of slow mind, which he is, ... and with a child’s way of looking at things, such as would make you smile—oh, he talks in the most wonderfully childish way! Poor Mr. Boyd. He cares for me perhaps more than he cares for any one else ... far more than for his own only daughter; but he is not a man of deep sensibility, and, if he heard of my death, would merely sleep a little sounder the next night. Once he said to me that whenever he felt sorry about anything, he was inclined to go to sleep. An affectionate and grateful regard ... grateful for many kindnesses ... I bear him, for my part. He says that I should wear the crown in poetry, if I would but follow Pope—but that the dreadful system of running lines one into another ruins everything. When I talk of memory, I mean merely the mechanical faculty. The associative, which makes the other a high power, he wants. So I went to his house in St. John’s Wood yesterday, and saw the little garden. Poor Mr. Boyd. There, he lives, all alone—and never leaving his chair! yet cheerful still, I hear, in all that desolation. As for you and Tennyson, he never heard of you ... he never guesses at the way of modern literature ... and it is the intense compliment to me when he reads verses of mine, ‘notwithstanding my corrupt taste,’ ... to quote his own words.
Dearest, do you love me to-day? I think of you, which is quite the same thing. Think of me to-morrow at half-past four when Mrs. Jameson comes, and I shall have all that exertion to go through without the hope of you. Only that you are always there ... here!—and I, your very own
Ba.
Monday.
[Post-mark, June 22, 1846.]
If I only thought for myself in this instance, I should at once go and mount guard before your house so as to see you, at least, for a moment as you leave it.
To hope for a word would never do ... you might be startled, or simply not like such a measure, and in simili incontri I will not run risks, but I should be able to see you, my Ba ... why do I not go then? People at doors and windows are also able, alas, to see me too—so I stay ... if this is staying away when I can see the curled-up feet and kiss them beside,—ever-dear feet!
Do you know the days and the times and the long interval,—you, as I know? How strange that you should complain, and I become the happier! If I could alter it, and make you feel no subject for complaint any longer, I would,—surely I would, and be happy in that too, I hope ... yet the other happiness needs must be given up in that case ... I cannot reason it out. I excuse my present selfish happiness by feeling I would not exchange the sadness of being away from you for any imaginable delight in which you had no part. But I will have this delight, too, my Ba, of imagining that you are gratified by what you will see to-day. Tell me all, and what is said, and how you are at the end.
Thank you meanwhile for the picture of poor Mr. Boyd ... then he never has seen you, since he was blind so long ago! How strange and melancholy—you say he is ‘cheerful,’ however. In that case—think of unhappy Countess Faustina with her ‘irresistible longings,’ and give her as much of your commiseration as she ought to get. What a horrible book ... how have I brought in what I prescribed to myself ‘silence about.’ Such characters as Faustina produce the very worst possible effect on me—I don’t know how they strike other people—but I am at once incited ‘debellare superbos’—to try at least and pull down the arrogant—contempt would be the most Christian of all the feelings possible to be called forth by such a woman. Let me get back to you, my own dearest-dearest,—I do ‘love you to-day,’ if you must ask,—and bidding me think of you is all very well—never bid me not think of you!—and so never find out that there could be a bidding I am unable to obey. But what is mere ‘thinking’? I kiss your hand, and your eyes, and now your lips,—and ask for my heart back again, to give it and be ever giving it. No words can tell how I am your own.
My mother is much better,—observably so, to-day. Oh, dearest,—I want you to read Landor’s Dialogue between Tasso and his Sister, in the second volume,—with the exquisite Sorrentine scenery—do read it. I see your Tasso with his prominent eyes as if they were ever just brightening out of a sorrow that has broken over them.
How I like (‘love’ is not my word now) but like Landor, more and more!
Monday Evening.
[Post-mark, June 23, 1846.]
Well—I did look everywhere for you to-day,—but not more than I always do—always I do, when I go out, look for you in the streets ... round the corners! And Mrs. Jameson came alone and she and I were alone at Mr. Rogers’s, and you must help me to thank her some day for her unspeakable kindness to me, though she did not leap to the height of the inspiration of managing to let us see those pictures together. Ah—if she had, it would have been too much. As it is, she gave me a great deal of pleasure in the kindest of ways ... and I let it be pleasure, by mixing it with enough thoughts of you—(otherwise how could it be pleasure?)—and she showed the pictures, and instructed me, really taking pains and instructing me ... and telling me how Rubens painted landscapes ... as how should my ignorance guess? ... and various other unknown things The first word as we reached the door, frightened me—for she said that perhaps we might see Mr. Rogers ... which was a little beyond our covenant—but we did not see him, and I suppose the Antinous on the staircase is not at all like him. Grand it is, in its serene beauty. On a colossal scale, in white marble. For the pictures, they are full of wonder and divinity—each giving the measure of a man’s soul. And think ... sketches from the hand of Michael Angelo and Raphael! And a statuette in clay, alive with the life of Michael Angelo’s finger—the blind eyes looking ... seeing ... as if in scorn of all clay! And the union of energy and meditation in the whole attitude! You have seen the marble of that figure in Florence. Then, a divine Virgin and child, worn and faded to a shadow of Raphael’s genius, as Mrs. Jameson explained to me—and the famous ‘Ecce Homo’ of Guido ... and Rubens’ magnificent ‘version,’ as she called it, of Andrea Mantegna’s ‘Triumph of Julius Cæsar.’ So triumphing to this day! And Titian, and Tintoretto ... and what did not strike me the least, ... a portrait of Rembrandt by himself, which if his landscapes, as they say, were ‘dug out of nature,’ looks as if it were dug out of humanity. Such a rugged, dark, deep subterraneous face, ... yet inspired—! seeming to realize that God took clay and breathed into the nostrils of it. There are both the clay, and the divinity! And think! I saw the agreement between the bookseller and Milton for the sale of Paradise Lost! with Milton’s signature and seal! and ‘Witnessed by William Greene, Mr. Milton’s servant.’ How was it possible not to feel giddy with such sights! Almost I could have run my head against the wall, I felt, with bewilderment—and Mrs. Jameson must have been edified, I have thought since, through my intense stupidity. I saw too the first edition of ‘Paradise Lost.’ The rooms are elegant, with no pretension to splendour ... which is good taste, a part of the good taste everywhere. Only, on the chimney-piece of the dining-room, were two small busts, beautiful busts, white with marble, ... and representing—now, whom, of gods and men, would you select for your Lares ... to help your digestion and social merriment?... Caligula and Nero in childhood! The ‘childhood’ is horribly suggestive to me! On the side-board is Pope’s bust, by Roubillac—a too expressive, miserable face—drawn with disease and bitter thoughts, and very painful, I felt, to look at. These things I liked least, in the selection and arrangement. Everything beside was admirable: and I write and write of it all as if I were not tired—but I am ... and most with the excitement and newness. Mrs. Jameson breakfasted with Mr. Rogers yesterday, she said, and met the Countess Hahn-Hahn, who was talking of modern literature when her host suddenly stopped her with a question ... ‘Did you ever read Addison?’
How late it is. Must I have done, before I have half done?
What I did not tell you yesterday is very much in my thoughts ... do you know? I, too, ‘see what I know and testify what I have felt ... and, as far as my faculties of perception go!’ I am confident that you had better not look for a single reason for loving me. Which is worst? A bad reason, or no reason at all? A bad reason, I think—and accept the alternative. Ah ... my own only beloved. And how you write to me to-night! I will read what you tell me in Landor ... but no words of inspired lips or pen ... no poet’s word, of the divinest, ... ever went to my heart as yours in these letters! Do I not love you? am I not your own? And while deserving nothing of all of it, I feel it at least—respond to it—my heart is in your hand. May God bless you ... ‘and me in that,’—because even He could not bless me without that. Which He knows.
Your own.
But there is much beauty in Faustina—oh, surely!
The lilies, all in blow except one ... which is blowing.
Are we going to have a storm to-night? It lightens ... lightens!