THE LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING AND ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 1845-1846 (continued 2)

But now in candour, hear me: I write all this to show the not such irrationality of the practice even on comparatively frivolous grounds ... and that those individuals to whom you once admit society may be a legitimate enjoyment, must take such a course to retain the privileges they value—and that the painful consequences should be as unhesitatingly attributed to the first offence and its author,—as the explosion and horror to the fool who would put the match, in play perhaps, to the powder-barrel. And I excepted myself from the operation of this necessity. But I must confess that I can conceive of ‘combinations of circumstances’ in which I see two things only ... or a Third: a miscreant to be put out the world, my own arm and best will to do it; and, perhaps, God to excuse; which is, approve. My Ba, what is Evil, in its unmistakable shape, but a thing to suppress at any price? I do approve of judicial punishment to death under some circumstances—I think we may, must say: ‘when it comes to that, we will keep our pact of life, stand by God and put that out of us, our world—it shall not be endured, or we shall not be endured’! Dear Ba, is Life to become a child’s game? A. is wronged, B. rights him, and is a hero as we say; B. is wronged again, by C.; but he must not right himself; that is D.’s proper part, who again is to let E. do the same kind office for him—and so on. ‘Defend the poor and fatherless’—and we all applaud—but if they could defend themselves, why not? I will not fancy cases—here’s one that strikes me—a fact. Some soldiers were talking over a watch fire abroad—one said that once he was travelling in Scotland and knocked at a cottage-door—an old woman with one child let him in, gave him a supper and a bed—next morning he asked how they lived, and she said the cow, the milk of which he was then drinking, and the kale in the garden, such as he was eating—were all her ‘mailien’ or sustenance—whereon, rising to go, he, for the fun, ‘killed the cow and destroyed the kale’—‘the old witch crying out she should certainly be starved’—then he went his way. ‘And she was starved, of course,’ said a young man; ‘do you rue it?’—The other laughed ‘Rue aught like that!’—The young man said. ‘I was the boy, and that was my mother—now then!’—In a minute or two the preparer of this ‘combination of circumstances’ lay writhing with a sword through him up to the hilt—‘If you had rued it’—the youth said—‘you should have answered it only to God!’

More than enough of this—but I was anxious to stand clearer in your dear eyes. ‘Vows and promises!’—I want to leave society for the Sirens’ isle,—and now, I often seriously reproach myself with conduct quite the reverse of what you would guard against: I have too much indifferentism to the opinions of Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown—by no means am anxious to have his notions agree with mine. Smith thinks Cromwell a canting villain,—Brown believes no dissenter can be saved,—and I repeat Goethe’s ‘Be it your unerring rule, ne’er to contradict a fool, for if folly choose to brave you, all your wisdom cannot save you!’ And sometimes I help out their arguments by a touch or two, after Ogniben’s fashion—it all seems so wearisomely unprofitable; what comes of Smith’s second thought if you change his first—out of that second will branch as great an error, you may be sure! (11 o’clock) Here comes your letter! My own Ba! My dearest best, best beloved! I, angry! oh, how you misinterpret, misunderstand the motions of my mind! In all that I said, or write here, I speak of others—others, if you please, of limited natures: I say why they may be excused ... that is all. ‘You do not like pork’? But those poor Irish Colliers whose only luxury is bacon once a month; you understand them liking it? I do not value society—others do: ‘we are all His children’ says Euripides and quotes Paul.

Now, love, let this be a moot point to settle among the flowers one day—with Sir Thomas Browne’s ‘other hard questions yet not impossible to be solved’ (‘What song the Sirens sang to Ulysses,’ is the first!) in which blessed hope let me leave off; for I confess to having written myself all-but-tired, headachy. But ‘vexed with you’! Ba, Ba; you perplex me, bewilder me; let me get right again; kiss me, dearest, and all is right—God bless you ever—

Your R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Wednesday Evening. [Post-mark, April 9, 1846.]

After the question about the ‘Sirens’ song to Ulysses, dearest? Then directly before, I suppose, the other ‘difficult question’ talked of by your Sir Thomas Browne, as to ‘what name Achilles bore when he lived among the women.’ That, you think, will be an appropriate position for our ‘moot point’ which, once in England, was guilty of tiring you and making your head ache:—and as for Achilles’ name when he lived among women, it was Μῶρος you will readily guess, and I shall not dare to deny. Only ... only ... I never shall be convinced on the ‘previous question’ by the arguments of your letter—it is not possible.

May I say just one thing, without touching that specific subject? There is a certain class of sacrifice which men who live in society, should pay willingly to society ... the sacrifice of little or indifferent things, ... in respect to mere manners and costume. There is another class of sacrifice which should be refused by every righteous man though ever so eminently a social man, and though to the loss of his social position. Now you would be the last, I am sure, to confound these two classes of sacrifice—and you will admit that our question is simply between them ... and to which of them, duelling belongs ... and not at all whether society is in itself a desirable thing and much rejoiced in by the Browns and Smiths. You refuse to wear a fool’s cap in the street, because society forbids you—which is well: but if, in order to avoid wearing it, you shoot the ‘foolish child’ who forces it upon you ... why you do not well, by any means: it would not be well even for a Brown or a Smith—but for my poet of the ‘Bells and Pomegranates,’ it is very ill, wonderfully ill ... so ill, that I shut my eyes, and have the heartache (for the headache!) only to think of it. So I will not. Why should we see things so differently, ever dearest? If anyone had asked me, I could have answered for you that you saw it quite otherwise. And you would hang men even—you!

Well! Because I do ‘not rue’ (and am so much the more unfit to die) I am to be stabbed through the body by an act of ‘private judgment’ of my next neighbour. So I must take care and ‘rue’ when I do anything wrong—and I begin now, for being the means of tiring you, ... and for seeming to persist so! You may be right and I wrong, of course—I only speak as I see. And will not speak any more last words ... taking pardon for these. I rue.

To-day I was down-stairs again—and if the sun shines on as brightly, I shall be out of doors before long perhaps.

Your headache! tell me how your headache is,—remember to tell me. When your letter came, I kissed it by a sort of instinct ... not that I do always at first sight (please to understand), but because the writing did not look angry ... not vexed writing. Then I read ... ‘First of all, kiss’....

So it seemed like magic.

Only I know that if I went on to write disagreeing disagreeable letters, you might not help to leave off loving me at the end. I seem to see through this crevice.

Good Heavens!—how dreadfully natural it would be to me, seem to me, if you did leave off loving me! How it would be like the sun’s setting ... and no more wonder! Only, more darkness, more pain. May God bless you my only dearest! and me, by keeping me

Your

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Thursday. 8 A.M. [Post-mark, April 9, 1846.]

Dearest, I have to go out presently and shall not be able to return before night ... so that the letter I expect will only be read then, and answered to-morrow—what will it be, the letter? Nothing but dear and kind, I know ... even deserve to know, in a sense,—because I am sure all in my letter was meant to be ‘read by your light.’ I submit, unfeignedly, to you, there as elsewhere—and,—as I said, I think,—I wrote so, precisely because it was never likely to be my own case. I should consider it the most unhappy thing that could possibly happen to me,—(putting aside the dreadful possibilities one refuses to consider at all,—the most).

Have you made any discoveries about the disposition of Saturday? May I come, dearest? (On Saturday evening I shall see a friend who will tell me all he knows about ships and voyage expenses—or refer me to higher authorities.)

Bless you, now and ever, my own Ba. Do you know, next Saturday, in its position of successor to Good Friday, will be the anniversary of Mr. Kenyon’s asking me, some four years ago, ‘if I would like to see Miss B.’ How I remember? I was staying with him for a couple of days. Now, I will ask myself ‘would you like to kiss Ba?’ ‘Then comes the Selah.’ Goodbye, dearest-dearest!

Yours R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Thursday Evening. [Post-mark, April 10, 1846.]

I thought you had not written to me to-night, ever dearest! Nine o’clock came and went, and I heard no postman’s knock; and I supposed that I did not deserve (in your mind) to hear it at all. At last I rang the bell and said to Wilson ... ‘Look in the letter-box—there may be a letter perhaps. If there should be none, you need not come up-stairs to tell me—I shall understand.’ So she left me, and, that time, I listened for footsteps ... the footsteps of my letter. If I had not heard them directly, what should I have thought?

You are good and kind, ... too good and kind, ... always, always!—and I love you gratefully and shall to the end, and with an unspeakable apprehension of what you are in yourself, and towards me:—yet you cannot, you know,—you know you cannot, dearest ... ‘submit’ to me in an opinion, any more than I could to you, if I desired it ever so anxiously. We will talk no more however on this subject now. I have had some pain from it, of course ... but I am satisfied to have had the pain, for the knowledge ... which was as necessary as possible, under circumstances, for more reasons than one.

Dearest ... before I go to talk of something else ... will you be besought of me to consider within yourself, ... and not with me to teaze you; why the ‘case,’ spoken of, should ‘never in likelihood be your own?’ Are you and yours charmed from the influence of offensive observations ... personally offensive? ‘The most unhappy thing that could happen to you,’ is it, on that account, the farthest thing?

Now—! Mrs. Jameson was here to-day, and in the room before, almost, I heard of her being on the stairs. It is goodnatured of her to remember me in her brief visits to London—and she brought me two or three St. Sebastians with the arrows through them, etched by herself, to look at—very goodnatured! Once she spoke of you—‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you saw Mr. Browning’s last number! yes, I remember how you spoke of it. I suppose Mr. Kenyon lent you his copy’.... And before I could speak, she was on another subject. But I should not have had heart to say what I meant and predetermined to say, even if the opportunity to-day had been achieved. As if you could not be read except in Mr. Kenyon’s copy! I might have confessed to my own copy, even if not to my own original ... do you not think?

Before she came, I went down to the drawing-room, I and Flush, and found no one there ... and walked drearily up and down the rooms, and, so, came back to mine. May you have spent your day better. There was sunshine for you, as I could see. God bless you and keep you. Saturday may be clear for us, or may not—and if it should not be clear, certainly Monday and Tuesday will not ... what shall be done? Will you wait till Wednesday? or will you (now let it be as you choose!) come on Saturday, running the risk of finding only a parcel ... a book and a letter ... and so going away, if there should be reasons against the visit. Because last Monday was known of, and I shall not ascertain until Saturday whether or not we shall be at liberty. Or ... shall we at once say Wednesday? It is for your decision. You go out on Saturday evening ... and perhaps altogether there may be a conspiracy against Saturday. Judge and decide.

I am writing as with the point of a pilgrim’s staff rather than a pen. ‘We are all strangers and pilgrims.’ Can you read anywise?

I think of you, bless you, love you—but it would have been better for you never to have seen my face perhaps, though Mr. Kenyon gave the first leave. Perhaps!!—I ‘flatter’ myself to-night, in change for you.

Best beloved I am your

Ba.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Friday—2 o’clock p.m. [Post-mark, April 10, 1846.]

Ever dearest I wrote last night what might make you doubtful and uncomfortable about Saturday; being doubtful myself and not knowing what word to say of it. But just now Papa has been here in the room with me,—and a beatific Jamaica packet has just come in, as the post declares ... (Benedetta sia l’ora &c.!) and he will ‘hear more,’ he says, ‘in the city to-morrow!’—So we are safe. Come, if there should be no reason of your own for staying. For me, I seem to have more need than usual of seeing you. May God bless you. I am

Your

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Friday Morning. [Post-mark, April 10, 1846.]

Dearest, sweetest best—how can you, seeing so much, yet see that ‘possibility’—I leave off loving you! and be ‘angry’ and ‘vexed’ and the rest! Well—take care I don’t answer fairly and plainly that I can do all this—as the poor women had to confess in their bewilderment when grave judges asked ‘by which of the thirty-seven ways they were accustomed to signify their desire of his presence to Asmodeus—&c. &c.—But I cannot jest, nor trifle here—I protest in the most solemn way I am capable of conceiving, that I am altogether unable to imagine how or whence or why any possible form of anger or vexation or any thing akin can or could or should or shall ever rise in me to you—it is a sense hitherto undreamed of, a new faculty—altogether an inexplicable, impossible feeling. I am not called on, surely, to suppose cases of pure impossibility? To say, ‘if you did thus or thus,’—what I know you could no more do than go and kill cows with your own hand, and dig up kale grounds? But I can fancy your being angry with me, very angry—and speaking the truth of the anger—that is to be fancied: and God knows I should in that case kiss my letters, here, till you pleased to judge me not unworthy to kiss the hem of your garment again. My own Ba! My election is made or God made it for me,—and is irrevocable. I am wholly yours. I see you have yet to understand what that implies,—but you will one day. And in this, just said, I understand serious anger, for serious offences; to which, despite my earnest endeavour, who shall say I may not be liable? What are you given me for but to make me better—and, in that, happier? If you could save my soul, ‘so as by fire,’ would your dear love shrink from that? But in the matter we really refer to.... Oh, Ba, did I not pray you at the beginning to tell me the instant you detected anything to be altered by human effort? to give me that chance of becoming more like you and worthier of you? and here where you think me gravely in the wrong, and I am growing conscious of being in the wrong,—one or two repetitions of such conduct as yours, such ‘disagreeable letters,’ and I must ‘leave off’.... When I do that on such ground ... I need imprecate no foolish sense on my head,—the very worst will be in full operation. I only wrote to justify an old feeling, exercised only in the case of others I have heard of—men called ‘cool murderers,’ ‘deliberate imbruers of their hands in,’ &c. &c.—and I meant just to say,—well,—I, and others, despise your society and only go into it now to be the surer that, when we leave it, we were not excluded as the children turn from the grapes because their teeth are set on edge, whatever may be the foxes’ pretext—but, for your own devoted followers be a little more merciful, and while you encourage them to spend a dozen years in a law-suit, lest they lose a few pounds ... but I won’t repeat the offence, dear—you are right and I am wrong and will lay it to heart, and now kiss, not your feet this time, because I am the prouder, far from the more humble, by this admission and retractation——

Your note arrives here—Ba;—it would have been ‘better for me,’ that? Oh, dearest, let us marry soon, very soon, and end all this! If I could begin taking exceptions again, I might charge you with such wild conventionalism, such wondrous perversity of sight or blindness rather! Can you, now, by this time, tell me or yourself that you could believe me happy with any other woman that ever breathed? I tell you, without affectation, that I lay the whole blame to myself ... that I feel that if I had spoken my love out sufficiently, all this doubt could never have been possible. You quite believe I am in earnest, know my own mind and speak as I feel, on these points we disputed about—yet I am far from being sure of it, or so it seems now—but, as for loving you,—there I mistake, or may be wrong, or may, or might or or—

Now kiss me, my best-dearest beloved! It seems I am always understood so—the words are words, and faulty, and inexpressive, or wrongly expressive,—but when I live under your eyes, and die, you will never mistake,—you do not now, thank God, say to me—‘you want to go elsewhere for all you say the visit seems too brief’—and, ‘you would change me for another, for all you possess’—never do you say such things—but when I am away, all the mistaking begins—let it end soon, come, dearest life of my life, light of my soul, heart’s joy of my heart!

You feel I must see you to-morrow if possible—at all events I will call for the parcel. (What made you suppose I was engaged to-morrow night? The saying that I should meet my sea-faring friend, perhaps? But that is to be here—he comes here—at all events, I recollect no other engagement—if I had one with Death himself, I almost think I would go,—folly!) But let the parcel be ready (to put into my hand at once) and I will venture at 3 o’clock.

In truth, all yesterday I was very unwell,—going about sight-seeing with a friend and his lady-cousins, and afterward dining with them—I came home dead with intense boring—I rarely remember to have suffered so much. To-day I am rather better,—much better, indeed. If I can but see you for a few minutes to-morrow!

May God bless you, dearest—and show you the truth in me, the one truth which I dare hope compensates for much that is to be forgiven: when I told you at the beginning I was not worthy, was infinitely lower &c., you seemed incredulous! well now, you see! I, that you would persist in hoping better things of, held such opinions as those—and so you begin setting me right, and so I am set far on towards right—is not all well, love? And now go on, when I give next occasion, and tell me more, and let me alter more, and thank you, if I can, more,—but not, not love you more, you, Ba, whom I love wholly,—with all my faculties, all my being. May God bless you, again—it all ends there—!

Your own R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Sunday. [Post-mark, April 13, 1846.]

I will not speak much of the letter, as you desire that I should not. And because everything you write must be answered in some way and sense, ... must have some result, there is the less need of words in the present case. Let me say only then, ever dearest, dearest, that I never felt towards you as I felt when I had read that letter ... never loved you so entirely! ... that it went to my heart, and stayed there, and seemed to mix with the blood of it ... believe this of me, dear dearest beloved! For the rest, there is no need for me to put aside carefully the assumption of being didactic to you ... of being better than you, so as to teach you! ... ah, you are so fond of dressing me up in pontifical garments (‘for fun,’ as the children say!)—but because they are too large for me, they drop off always of themselves, ... they do not require my pulling them off: these extravagances get righted of their own accord. After all, too, you, ... with that præternatural submissiveness of yours, ... you know your power upon the whole, and understand, in the midst of the obeisances, that you can do very much what you please, with your High Priest. Εἴ τις αἴσθησἲς in the ghosts of the tribe of Levi, let them see and witness how it is!

And now, do you see. It was just natural that when we differed for the first time I should fall into low spirits. In the night, at dream-time, when instead of dreams ‘deep thought falleth upon man,’ suddenly I have been sad even to tears, do you know, to think of that: and whenever I am not glad, the old fears and misgivings come back—no, you do not understand ... you cannot, perhaps! But dear, dearest, never think of yourself that you have expressed ‘insufficiently’ your feelings for me. Insufficiently! No words but just your own, between heaven and earth, could have persuaded me that one such as you could love me! and the tongue of angels could not speak better words for that purpose, than just yours. Also, I know that you love me.... I do know it, my only dearest, and recognize it in the gratitude of my soul:—and it is through my want of familiarity with any happiness—through the want of use in carrying these weights of flowers, that I drop them again and again out of weak hands. Besides the truth is, that I am not worthy of you—and if you were to see it just as I see it, why there would be an end ... there, ... I sometimes think reasonably.

Well—now I shall be good for at least a fortnight. Do I not teaze you and give you trouble? I feel ashamed of myself sometimes. Let me go away from myself to talk of Mr. Kenyon, therefore!

For he came to-day, and arrived in town on Friday evening—(what an escape on Saturday!) and said of you, ... with those detestable spectacles—like the Greek burning glasses, turned full on my face ... ‘I suppose now that Mr. Browning’s book is done and there are no more excuses for coming, he will come without excuses.’ Then, after talk upon other subjects, he began a long wandering sentence, the end of which I could see a mile off, about how he ‘ought to know better than I, but wished to enquire of me’ ... what, do you suppose? ... why, ‘what Mr. Browning’s objects in life were. Because Mrs. Procter had been saying that it was a pity he had not seven or eight hours a day of occupation,’ &c. &c. It is a good thing to be angry, as a refuge from being confounded: I really could say something to that. And I did say that you ‘did not require an occupation as a means of living ... having simple habits and desires—nor as an end of living, since you found one in the exercise of your genius! and that if Mr. Procter had looked as simply to his art as an end, he would have done better things.’

Which made Mr. Kenyon cry out ... ‘Ah now! you are spiteful! and you need not be, for there was nothing unkind in what she said.’ ‘But absurd’! ... I insisted—‘seeing that to put race horses into dray carts, was not usually done nor advised.’

You told me she was a worldly woman; and here is a proof, sent back to you. But what business have worldly women to talk their dust and ashes over high altars in that way? I was angry and sinned not—angry for the moment. Then Mr. Kenyon agreed with me, I think, and illustrated the subject by telling me how Wordsworth had given himself to the service of the temple from the beginning—‘though,’ observed Mr. Kenyon, ‘he did not escape so from worldliness.’ But William Wordsworth is not Robert Browning. Mr. Kenyon spoke of your family and of yourself with the best and most reverent words.

And all this reminds me of what I have often and often mused about saying to you, and shrank back, and torn the paper now and then.... You know the subject you wanted to discuss, on Saturday. Now whenever the time shall come for discussing that subject, let this be a point agreed upon by both of us. The peculiarity of our circumstances will enable us to be free of the world ... of our friends even ... of all observation and examination, in certain respects: now let us use the advantage which falls to us from our misfortune,—and, since we must act for ourselves at last, let us resist the curiosity of the whole race of third persons ... even the affectionate interest of such friends as dear Mr. Kenyon, ... and put it into the power of nobody to say to himself or to another, ... ‘she had so much, and he, so much, in worldly possessions—or she had not so much and he had not so much.’ Try to understand what I mean. As it is not of the least importance to either of us, as long as we can live, whether the sixpence, we live by, came most from you or from me ... and as it will be as much mine as yours, and yours as mine when we are together ... why let us join in throwing a little dust in all the winking eyes round—oh, it is nonsense and weakness, I know—but I would rather, rather, see winking eyes than staring eyes. What has anybody to do with us? Even my own family ... why should they ever see the farthest figure of our affairs, as to mere money? There now—it is said, ... what I have had in my head so long to say. And one other word resumes my meditations on ‘the subject’ which will not be ripe for discussion for ever so many months ... and that other word is ... that if ever I am to wrong you so much as to be yours so, it is on the condition of leaving England within the fewest possible half hours afterwards. I told you that, long ago—so bear it in mind. I should not dare breathe in this England. Think!—There is my father—and there is yours! Do you imagine that I am not afraid of your family? and should be still more, if it were not for the great agony of fear on the side of my own house. Ah—I must love you unspeakably ... even to dare think of the possibility of such things. So we will not talk of them now. I write what I write, to throw it off my mind and have done. Bear it in yours, but do not refer to it—I ask you not to refer to it.

A long straggling letter, this is. I shall have mine to-morrow. And you will tell me if Wednesday or Thursday shall be our day; and above all, tell me how you are. Then the book will come. Remember to send one to Mrs. Jameson! I write in haste ... in haste—but one may think of you either in haste or at leisure, without blotting the air. Love me, beloved ... do not leave off to see if I deserve it. I am at least (which is at most)

Your very own.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday. [Post-mark, April 13, 1846.]

Dearest, unspeakably dear Ba,—would I were with you! But my heart stays with you: I write this, tired somewhat and out of spirits—for I have been writing notes this morning; getting rid of the arrears which turn out more considerable than I thought. And the moment I have done, I look to the chair and the picture and desire to be at rest with you; the perfect rest and happiness here on earth. But do think, my own Ba, in the direction I indicated yesterday—any obstacle now, would be more than I could bear—I feel I must live with you,—if but for a year, a month—to express the love which words cannot express, nor these letters, nor aught else.

See one thing! Through your adorable generosity, my beloved,—at the beginning you pleased to tell me my love was returned,—that I had gained your love; without your assurance, I should never have believed that possible, whatever you may think; but you, what you say, I believe; would in other matters believe, rather than my own senses; and here I believed—in humbleness, God knows; but so it was. —Then, is there not this one poor fruit of that generosity, one reassuring consideration, if you will accept it, that, nearly a year ago, I was in possession of all I aspired to?—so that if I had been too weak for my accorded happiness—likely to be in due time satiated with it, and less and less impressed by it, and so on, till at last ‘I changed,’—would not this have happened inevitably before now? I had gained your love; one could not go on gaining it—but some other love might be gained! Indeed, I don’t see how, in certain instances (where there is what is called a ‘pursuit,’ and all the excitement of suspense, and alternating hope and fear, all ending in the marriage day, after the fashion of a Congreve comedy), how with the certainty of that kind of success, all the interest of the matter can avoid terminating. But it does seem to me, that the love I have gained is as nothing to the love I trust to gain. I want the love at our lives’ end, the love after trial, the love of my love, when mine shall have had time and occasion to prove itself! I have already, from the beginning indeed, had quite enough magnanimity to avoid wishing for opportunities of doing so at your expense—I pray you may never be in dangers from which I rescue you, nor meet sorrow from which I divert you: but in the ordinary chances of life—I shall be there, and ready, and your own, heart and soul. Why do I say this to you?

All words are so weak,—so weak!

Here,—(no, I shall have to send it to-morrow, I believe—well, here in the course of the day)—comes ‘Luria’ and the other—and I lay it at my dear Lady’s feet, wishing it were worthier of them, and only comforted, through all the conviction of the offering’s unworthiness, by knowing that she will know,—the dear, peerless, all precious Ba I adore, will know—that I would give her my life gladlier at a word. See what I have written on the outside—‘to Miss Barrett’!—because I thought even leaving out the name might look suspiciously! But where no eye can see; save your dear eye ... there is written a dedication.

Kiss me, dear Ba. May God bless you. Care for everything—if you should have taken cold last night, for instance! Talk of a sword suspended by a hair!—what is the feeling of one whose priceless jewel hangs over a gulf by a hair? Tell me all—I love you wholly and am wholly yours.

See the strangely dirty paper—it comes from my desk where, every now and then, a candle gets over-set; or the snuffers remain open, aghast at what I write!

E.B.B. to R.B.

Monday. [Post-mark, April 14, 1846.]

Ever dearest I have your two letters; and because there are only two ‘great lights’ to rule the day and the night, I am not likely to hear from you again before to-morrow. Then you want Mrs. Jameson’s direction ... (it is just Mrs. Jameson, Ealing!) and here is the last ‘Bell and Pomegranate’—and, for all these reasons, I must write without waiting; I will not wait for the night. Thank you for the book, thank you! I turn over the leaves ever so proudly. Tell me how I can be proud of you, when I cannot be proud of your loving me:—I am certainly proud of you. One of my first searches was for the note explanatory of the title—and I looked, and looked, and looked, at the end, at the beginning, at the end again. At last I made up my mind that you had persisted in not explaining, or that the printer had dropped the manuscript. Why, what could make you thrust that note on all but the titlepage of the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’? Oh—I comprehend. Having submitted to explain, quite at the point of the bayonet, you determined at least to do it where nobody could see it done. Be frank and tell me that it was just so. Also the poor ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’ you have repudiated so from the ‘Bells and Pomegranates’ ... pushing it gently aside. Well—you must allow it to be a curious dislocation—only it is not important—and I like the note, all except the sentence about ‘Faith and Works,’ which does not apply, I think, ... that instance. ‘Bells and Pomegranates’ is a symbolic phrase—which the other is not at all, however much difficult and doubtful theological argument may have arisen from it as a collective phrase. So I am the first critic, you see, notwithstanding that Mr. Forster waylaid the first copy. Ah no! I shall have my gladness out of the book presently, beyond the imagination of any possible critic. Who in the world shall measure gladnesses with me?

Tell me—I was going to write that ‘Tell me’ in my yesterday’s letter, but at last I was hurried, and could not ... did you come into London on Sunday? did you walk past this house on the other side of the street, about two o’clock? Because just then I and Flush went down-stairs. The drawing-room had nobody in it, and the window being wide open, I walked straight to it to shut it. And there, across the street, walked somebody ... I am so near sighted that I could only see a shadow in a dimness ... but the shadow had, or seemed to have, a sign of you, a trace of you ... and instead of shutting the window I looked after it till it vanished. No, it was not you. I feel now that it was not you; and indeed yesterday I felt it was not you. But, for the moment, it made my heart stop beating, ... that insolent shadow, ... which pretended to be you and wasn’t. Some one, I dare say, who ‘has an occupation eight or nine hours a day’ and never does anything! I may speak against him, for deceiving me—it’s a pure justice.

To go back to the book ... you are perfectly right about ‘gadge,’ and in the view you take of the effect of such words. You misunderstood me if you fancied that I objected to the word—it was simply my ignorance which led me to doubt whether you had written ‘gag.’ Of course, the horror of those specialities is heightened by the very want of distinct understanding they meet with in us:—it is the rack in the shadow of the vault. Oh—I fully agree.

And now ... dearest dearest ... do not bring reason to me to prove ... what, to prove? I never get anything by reason on this subject, be very sure!—and I like better to feel that unreasonably you love me—to feel that you love me as, last year, you did. Which I could not feel, last year, a whole day or even half a day together. Now the black intervals are rarer ... which is of your goodness, beloved, and not of mine. For me, you read me indeed a famous lesson about faith, ... and set me an example of how you ‘believed’! ... but it does not apply, this lesson, ... it does not resemble, this example!—inasmuch as what you had to believe ... viz. that roses blow in June ... was not quite as difficult as what I am called to believe, ... viz. that St. Cecilia’s angel-visitant had a crown of roses on, which eternally were budding and blowing. But I believe ... believe ... and want no ‘proof’ of the love, but just itself to prove it,—for nothing else is worthy. On the other side, I have the audacity to believe, as I think I have told you, that no woman in the world could feel for you exactly what ... but, here, too, I had better shun the reasons, ... the ‘bonnes raisons’ which ‘le roy notre sire’ cannot abide.—What foolishness I am writing really! And is it to be for a ‘year,’ or a ‘month’—or a week,—better still? or we may end by a compromise for the two hours on Wednesdays, ... if it goes on so,—more sensibly.

I have heard to-day from Miss Martineau and from Mrs. Jameson, both—one talking Mesmer and the other Homer. I sent her (Mrs. J.) two versions of the daughters of Pandarus, the first in the metre you know, and the second in blank verse; ... and she does not decide which she likes best, she says graciously, whereas I could not guess which I liked worse, when I sent them on Saturday. Do let her have ‘Luria’ at once. She will take the right gladness in it, even as she appreciates you with the right words and thoughts. But surely you use too many stamps? Have you a pair of scales like Zeus and me? ... only mine are broken, or I would send you an authority on this important subject, as well as an opinion.

How did you not get my letter, pray, by the first post on Monday? You ought to have had it! it was not my fault. And thinking of ‘causas rerum,’ ... I was to ‘catch cold,’ I suppose, on Saturday, because you went away?—there was no stronger motive. I did not however catch cold—ah, how you make me giddy with such words, as if I did really ‘hang over a gulph’!—not with fear though! Is it possible, I say to myself, that I can be so much to him? to him! May God bless him! There was no harm meant by the black seal, I think? Tell me too of the headache, and whether the dinner is for Wednesday, and whether, in that case, it is still to be preferred, with all its close clipping, to Thursday. Meantime the letter grows as if there was no such thing as shears!

Your own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday Morning. [Post-mark, April 14, 1846.]

I waited till this second letter should arrive—feeling that it would be easier to address the answer to this.

About the other,—that part which you bid me not refer to. You are obeyed now—my time will come in its turn, and I will try and speak. With respect to the immediate leaving England, you will let me say, I think, that all my own projects depend on that,—there will not be one least objection made to it by my father or mother, I know beforehand. You perhaps misconceived something I said last Saturday. I meant the obvious fact however—that while there would be a best way of finding myself with you, still, from the worst way (probably, of taking a house opposite Mrs. Procter’s)—from that even, to the best way of any other life I can imagine,—what a descent! From the worst of roses to the most flourishing of—dandelions. But we breathe together, understand together, know, feel, live together ... I feel every day less and less need of trying to assure you I feel thus and thus—I seem to know that you must know!

Mrs. Procter is very exactly the Mrs. Procter I knew long ago. What she says is of course purely foolish. The world does seem incurably stupid on this, as other points. I understand Mr. Kenyon’s implied kindness—that is,—understand he may think he sees my true good in this life with older and better instructed eyes than my own—so benevolent people beg me ‘not to go out in the open air—without something about my neck,’ and would gird on a triple worsted ‘comforter’ there, entirely for my good, if I would let them. ‘Why, Mr. Procter wears one!’ Ah, but without it, what a cold he would catch!

The explanatory note fills up an unseemly blank page—and does not come at the end of the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’—prose after prose—still it does look awkwardly—but then I don’t consider that it excludes this last from the ‘Bells’—rather it says this is the last, (no, nine if you like,—as the title says ‘eight and last’—from whence will be this advantage, that, in the case of another edition, all the lyrics &c. may go together under one common head of Lyrics and Romances—and the ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’ profiting by the general move-up of the rest of the numbers, after the fashion of hackney coaches on a stand when one is called off, step into the place and take the style of No. 8—and the public not find themselves defrauded of the proper quantity!)

And shall I indeed see you to-morrow, Ba? I will tell you many things, it seems to me now, but when I am with you they always float out of mind. The feelings must remain unwritten—unsung too, I fear. I very often fancy that if I had never before resorted to that mode of expression, to singing,—poetry—now I should resort to it, discover it! Whereas now—my very use and experience of it deters me—if one phrase of mine should seem ‘poetical’ in Mrs. Procter’s sense—a conscious exaggeration,—put in for effect! only seem, I say! So I dare not try yet—but one day!

Ba, I kept your letter yesterday, about me—it lay by my head at night—that its good might not go from me,—such perfect good! How strange to hear what you say of my letters,—of such and such a letter—some seem kind, and kinder and kindest—and how should I guess why? My life and love flow steadily under all those bubbles, or many or less—it is through the under current that, whatever you see, does appear, no doubt—but also where nothing appears,—all is one depth!

Bless you, all dearest beloved.

To-morrow, Wednesday!

Ever your very own,

E.B.B. to R.B.

Thursday. [Post-mark, April 16, 1846.]

This morning, you would never guess what I have been doing.—Buying a bonnet! That looks like a serious purpose of going out, walking out, driving out ... now doesn’t it? And having chosen one a little like a Quaker’s, as I thought to myself, I am immediately assured by the learned that ‘nothing can be more fashionable’ ... which is a most satisfactory proof of blind instinct, ... feeling towards the Bude lights of the world, and which Mrs. Procter would highly esteem me for, if she did but know it.

In the meanwhile assure yourself that I understand perfectly your feeling about the subject of yesterday. Flies are flies, and yet they are vexatious with their buzzing, as flies. Only Mrs. Jameson told me the other day that a remedy against the mosquitos ... polvere di morchia ... had been discovered lately in Italy, so that the world might sleep there in peace—as you may here ... let us talk no more of it. I think I should not have told you if I had not needed it for a talking-ladder to something else. For the rest, it is amusing to me, quite amusing, to observe how people cannot conceive of work except under certain familiar forms. Men who dig in ditches have an idea that the man who leads the plough rather rests than works: and all men of out-door labour distrust the industry of the manufacturers in-doors—while both manufacturers and out-door labourers consider the holders of offices and clerkships as idle men ... gentlemen at ease. Then between all these classes and the intellectual worker, the difference is wider, and the want of perception more complete. The work of creation, nobody will admit ... though everybody has by heart, without laying it to heart, that God rested on the seventh day. Looking up to the stars at nights, they might as well take all to be motionless—though if there were no motion there would be no morning ... and they look for a morning after all. Why who could mind such obtuse stupidity? It is the stupidity of mankind, par excellence of foolishness! The hedger and ditcher they see working, but God they do not see working. If one built a palace without noise and confusion and the stroke of hammers, one would scarcely get credit for it in this world ... so full of virtue and admiration it is, to make a noise! Even I, you see, who said just now ‘Talk no more of it,’ talk more and more, and make more noise than is necessary. Here is an end though—we leave Mrs. Procter here. And do not think that the least word of disrespect was said of you—indeed it was not! neither disrespect nor reproach. So you and I will forgive everybody henceforward, for wishing you to be rich. And if Miss Procter would ‘commit suicide’ rather than live as you like to live, I will not, as long as you are not tired of me—and that, just now and as things are, is of a little more consequence perhaps....

Scarcely had you gone, dearest, yesterday, when I had two letters with the very prose of life in them, dropping its black blotchy oil upon all the bright colours of our poetry! I groaned in the spirit to read, and to have to answer them. First was a Miss Georgiana Bennet—did you ever hear of her?—I never did before, but that was my base ignorance; for she is a most voluminous writer it appears ... and sent me five or six ‘works’ (observe), ... published under the ‘high sanction’ (and reiterated subscription) of ever so many Royal Highnesses and Right Reverends ... written in prose and verse, upon female education and the portrait of Harrison Ainsworth (‘I gaze upon that noble face, and bright expressive eyes!’), miscellaneous subjects of that sort!—also, there is a poem of some length, called ‘The Poetess,’ which sets forth in detail how Miss Georgiana Bennet has found the laurel on her brow a mere nightshade, and the glories of fame no comfort in the world. Well—all these books were sent to me, with a note hortative—giving indeed a very encouraging opinion of my poems generally, but desiring me to consider, that poets write both for the learned and the unlearned, and that in fact I am in the habit of using a great many hard words, much to the confusion of the latter large class of readers. She has heard (Georgiana has) that I am a classical scholar which of course (of course) accounts for this peculiarity ... but it is the duty of one’s friends to tell one of one’s faults, which is the principle she goes upon. In return for which benevolence, I am requested to send back a copy of my poems directly, and to ‘think of her, as she thinks of me.’ There an end. The next letter is from a Mrs. Milner, who used to edit the ‘Christian Mother’s Magazine’; the most idiotic tract-literature, that magazine was, but supported by the Queen dowager and a whole train of Duchesses proper—very proper indeed! She used to edit the ‘Christian Mother,’ but now she has ‘generalised’ it, she says, to the ‘Englishwoman’s Magazine’ and wants me to write for it and says....

Oh—I cannot have patience to go on to tell you. Besides you will take me to be too bitter, when I ought to be grateful perhaps! But if you knew how hard it is for me to have to read and write sometimes, as if you were not in the world with me ... as if.... Is it wrong to laugh a little, to put it off,—only to you, though? And do you know, I feel ill at ease in my conscience, on account of what I said (even to you) about Mrs. Paine, who came to see me, you remember; and because she has written me a letter which quite affected me, I shall send it for you to read, to undo any false impression. Then you will not dislike reading it on other grounds. She is very different from the Georgiana Bennets, and I am interested in her, and touched aright by what she says.

You will write. You think of me? I am better to-day, much—and it is strange to be so, when you are not here. Ever dearest, let your thoughts be with me—

I am your own....

R.B. to E.B.B.

Thursday. [Post-mark, April 16, 1846.]

How are you now, dearest? If the worse for my visit.... No, there is no affectation in what I would say—you might be worse, you know, through excitement, whether pleasurable or the reverse. One comfort is, the walking, going down-stairs, &c. have not occasioned it. I expect everything from your going out of doors, that is to be—what a joy to write it, think of it, expect it! Oh, why are you not here—where I sit writing; whence, in a moment, I could get to know why the lambs are bleating so, in the field behind—I do not see it from either window in this room—but I see a beautiful sunshine (2½ p.m.) and a chestnut tree leafy all over, in a faint trembling chilly way, to be sure—and a holly hedge I see, and shrubs, and blossomed trees over the garden wall,—were you but here, dearest, dearest—how we would go out, with Flush on before, for with a key I have, I lock out the world, and then look down on it; for there is a vast view from our greatest hill—did I ever tell you that Wordsworth was shown that hill or its neighbour; someone saying ‘R.B. lives over there by that hill’—‘Hill’? interposed Wordsworth—‘we call that, such as that, a rise’! I must have told you, I think. (While I write, the sun gets ever brighter—you must be down-stairs, I feel sure—)

I fully meant to go out this morning—but there is a pressing note from my old young friend, Frank Talfourd, to get me to witness—only another play and farce!—and what is to be done?

Here shall be my ending ‘for reasons, for reasons.’ To-morrow I will write more; my Monday—to have to wait so long! And when I do see you, I begin to pour out profusions of confusions of speech about Mrs. Procter and her vain notions—to what earthly good? ... as it is very easy to ask now! now that I am here again, alone again.

Dear, dearest Ba, I cannot serve you, nor even talk to you ... but love you,—oh, that I must dare say I can do, as none other could—as you have yet to know!

Bless you my very dearest, sweetest Ba—I am your own, heart and soul—

E.B.B. to R.B.

Thursday Evening. [Post-mark, April 17, 1846.]

Ah, the chestnut tree: do you think that I never saw the chestnut tree before? Long ago, I did ... a full year ago or more—more! A voice talked to me of the ‘west wind’ which ‘set dancing the baby cones of my chestnut tree’—nearly I remember the words. Do you, the time? It was early in the morning—‘before seven,’ said the voice!—too early in the morning for my dream to be—because a dream, says Lord Brougham when he tries at philosophy, a dream, if ever so long a dream, is all contained in the last moment of sleep, at the turn towards waking—so, late and not early!

No—you did not tell me of Wordsworth—not at least, after that reading. Perhaps if Hatcham should not be swept away in the Railway ‘scirocco,’ I may see the ‘hill’ or the ‘rise’ at some distant day. Shall I, do you think? I would rather see it than Wordsworth’s mountains—‘for reasons, for reasons’ as you say. And talking of reasons, and reasonable people in general, I thought, ... after you went away on Wednesday, and I began to remember how you had commended your own common sense and mine,—I thought that it might be very well for you to do it, inasmuch as nobody else would, for you——! ὑπέρ σου as the theological critics intensify ὑπέρ to the genitive, ‘for reasons, for reasons.’

How ‘Luria’ takes possession of me more and more! Such a noble work!—of a fulness, a moral grandeur!—and the language everywhere worthy. Tell me what you hear the people say—I shall be anxious, which you will not be—but, to me, you will forgive it. ‘The Soul’s Tragedy’ is wonderful—it suggests the idea of more various power than was necessary to the completion of ‘Luria’ ... though in itself not a comparable work. But you never wrote more vivid dramatic dialogue than that first part—it is exquisite art, it appears to me. Tell me what the people say!—and tell me what the gods say ... Landor, for instance!

Mr. Kenyon has not been here—and I dare not, even in a letter, be the first to talk to anyone of you. It is foolish of me perhaps—but if I whisper your name I expect to be directly answered by all the thunders of Heaven and cannons of earth. When I was writing to Miss Martineau the other day, for full ten minutes I held the pen ready charged with ink over a little white place, just to say ‘have you read,’ ... or ‘have you heard’ ... and at last I couldn’t write one word of those words ... I believe I said something about landed proprietors and agrarian laws instead.

So you ‘felt’ that I was down-stairs to-day! See how wrong feeling may be, when it has to do with such as I. For, dearest, notwithstanding your bright sunshine I did not go down-stairs ... only opened the window and let in the air. I have not been quite as well, as far as just sensation goes, as usual, these few days—but it is nothing, a passing common headache, as I told you, ... and your visit did good rather than harm, and to-morrow you may think of me as in the drawing-room. Oh, I might have been there to-day, or yesterday, or the day before! but it was pleasanter to sit in the chair and be idle, so I sate! But you did not see me in my gondola chair—not you! you were thinking of the lambs instead, and looking over the wall to the ‘blossomed trees’ ... (what trees? cherry-trees? apple-trees? pear-trees?) and so, altogether, you lost your second sight of me and made mistakes. Ever dearest, is your head better? You will not say. You are afraid to say, perhaps, that you were ill, through writing too many notes and not going out to take the right exercise. Ah, do remember me for that good! I heard yesterday that ‘Mr. Browning looked very pale as he came up-stairs.’ Which comes of Mr. Browning’s writing when he should be walking!—now doesn’t it?

Do you go to Mr. Serjeant Talfourd’s on Monday? and would it be better therefore if you came here on Tuesday? You could come on the next Saturday all the same—consider! Nobody shall leap into lions’ dens for me! so let us measure the convenience of things, as Miss Mitford would in marriages. ‘Convenance,’ though, she would say—which is more foolish than ‘convenience’ as I write it. She asserts that every marriage in her experience, beginning by any sort of love, has ended miserably—thus run her statistics in matrimony. Add, that she thinks—she told me last autumn—that all men without exception are essentially tyrants,—and that poets are a worse species of men, seeing that, all human feelings, they put into their verses, and leave them there ... add this, and this, and then calculate how, if I consulted her on our prospects (shall I?), she would see for me an infinite succession of indefinite thumbscrews and gadges!! Well—I am not afraid—except for you sometimes! for myself I accept my chances for life under the peine forte et dure. And I won’t speak to Miss Mitford, if you don’t to Mr. Kenyon ... and I beseech you to avoid by every legitimate means the doing that ... oh, do not ever speak that to him!

May God bless you my beloved!—Walk for my sake, and be well, try to be well! For me, I am so without trying, ... just as I am

Your own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Friday. [Post-mark, April 17, 1846.]

No, my own dearest, I did not see you sit in your chair, nor in mine, yesterday—did I write nothing about your walking with me by the garden wall, and on the hill, and looking down on London? And afterwards you went with me, indeed, to Talfourd’s (last night was that purgatorial business,—how could I make you think it related to Monday?) If I have to put the least thing into words, so I put it always! Being just like the family of somebody—‘who were one and all so stupid’ said he—‘that if you bade them spell A B they answered B A——’ Nay, I spell Happiness, and Blessing, and all other good words if ever so many letters by that same Ba! But I want to go on and say you kept me from such an undiluted evening of misery (because I saw you through it all)—oh, such an evening!—it shall be the last, I think—and the going out is so near,—the bonnet is bought! And you pretend not to know I would walk barefoot till I dropped, if so I might attain to the sight of you, and it. Do let me say, for gratitude’s sake—it is like the sign of spring in Shelley’s ‘Prometheus’—

—that the flower of my life will blow! Now let me try and answer everything in Ba’s darling letters and so not be ‘vexed’ afterward,—recollecting how she asked this, or bade me be sure to reply to that, and how I answered, spelling A B for B A! First, there is a famous contrivance against fly tormentors, a genuine canopy, gnat-repelling enclosure of muslin which covers your bed wholly, and into which once introduce yourself dexterously (because the plagues try to follow slily) and lo, you are in a syren’s isle within the isle, a world cut off from the outer one by that fine hazy cloudish gauze—a delight it is! Only, if you let one persisting critic of a buzzer lie perdue, he will have you at a glorious advantage—(not that one ever bit me, in England or elsewhere). And now—your letters,—Miss Bennet’s letter that you received ‘just after I had gone’—will you be edified if I tell you what I received the moment I got home? (once, beforehand—my experience or yours, which would you rather not have?) My sister pointed with immense solemnity to a packet,—then delivered a message, and then—but hear the message—a ‘Mrs. George Sharp’ (unless I mistake the name) lives next door to Dickens and awfully respects him—she asks one aunt of mine, to ask another, to ask my sister, to ask me ... who have never seen or heard of this Mrs. George,—me, who am, she has understood, a friend of Dickens,—to get inserted in the Daily News some paragraph of a reasonable length in recommendation of the accompanying packet of cough-drops, (lozenges, or pills—for I was not rightly instructed which)—my fee, I suppose, being the said packet of pills! All comment is beyond me.

Well, but your Mrs. Bennet—what a wretched, disgusting sfacciataccia! I would not be accessory to keeping those soapy bubbles of stupid vanity from bursting, by sparing a rough finger, certainly not. How ‘ought you to be grateful, perhaps?’ For what on earth?

Dearest, dearest Ba,—a ‘passing’ headache of ‘these few days,’ what can I say, or do? May God bless you, and care for all. Still the comfort continues, it is not that you have made an effort, and so grown worse.

I am pretty well,—I half determine to go out and see Carlyle to-night,—so to forget a hasty resolution against all company (‘other’ company I had written ... as if to honour it—Ba’s is one company, and those people’s!—‘another’!)—I think I will go.

I spoke about Mr. Kenyon,—because I never would in my life take a step for myself (if that could be), apart from your good, without being guided by you where possible—much more, therefore, in a matter directly concerning you rather than me, did I want your opinion as to the course most proper, in the event of &c. I do not think it likely he will speak, or I shall have to answer ... but if that did happen, and you were not at hand, my own dearest,—how I should be grieved if, answering wrongly, I gave you annoyance! Here I seem to understand your wish.

My Ba, my only, utterly dear love, may God reward you for your blessing to me—my whole heart turns to you—and in your own. I kiss you, dearest—this morning a very ordinary motivetto in the overture to ‘Rabuco’ seemed to tell you more than I ever shall—I sit and speak to you by that, now!

R.B.

No letters yet from ‘anybody’—the few received are laudatory however—I will send you one from the old sailor-friend I told you of—but, mark! you must not send it back, to show my eyes and grieve my heart, when the bulky letter proves to be only this—returned! Landor’s in due time, I suppose! This I send is to make you laugh.... My Ba’s dear laugh can hurt nobody, not even my friend here—who has praised her poems more to me, there’s my consolation,—Consuelo—

E.B.B. to R.B.

Friday. [Post-mark, April 18, 1846.]

But, dearest of all, you never said a word about Monday. So I did not misunderstand—I only misguessed. Because you did not mention any day, I took it into my head that you might perhaps be invited for Monday, and make an effort, which would make a fatigue, and go there and come here. I am glad you went to Carlyle’s—and where is Tennyson, and the dinner at Forster’s all this while? And how did the Talfourds torment you so? was it that you were very unwell? I fear you were unwell. For me, I have recovered from my dreadful illness of the last day or two ... I knew I should survive it after all ... and to-day, just that I might tell you, I went down-stairs with Flush, he running before as when we walk together through the gate. I opened the drawing-room door; when instead of advancing he stopped short ... and I heard strange voices—and then he drew back and looked up in my face exactly as if to say, ‘No! This will not do for us!—we had better go home again.’ Surely enough, visitors were in the room ... and he and I returned upon our steps. But think of his sense! Flush beats us both in ‘common sense,’ dearest, we must acknowledge, let us praise each other for it ever so. Next to Flush we may be something, but Flush takes the pas, as when he runs down-stairs.

To-day Mr. Kenyon came, spectacles and all. He sleeps in those spectacles now, I think. Well, and the first question was ... ‘Have you seen Mr. Browning? And what did he come for again, pray?’ ‘Why I suppose,’ I said, ‘for the bad reason my visitors have in general, when they come to see me’—Then, very quickly I asked about ‘Luria,’ and if he had read it and what he thought of it—upon which, the whole pomegranate was pulled out of his pocket, and he began to talk like the agreeable man he can be when he doesn’t ask questions and look discerningly through spectacles. ‘Luria’ was properly praised indeed. A very noble creation, he thought it, and heroically pathetic ... and much struck he seemed to be with the power you had thrown out on the secondary characters, lifting them all to the height of humanity, justifying them by their own lights Oh—he saw the goodness, and the greatness, the art and the moral glory; we had a great deal of talk. And when he tried to find out a few darknesses, I proved to him that they were clear noonday blazes instead, and that his eyes were just dazzled. Then the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’ made the right impression—a wonderful work it is for suggestions, and the conception of it as good a test of the writer’s genius, as any we can refer to. We talked and talked. And then he put the book into his pocket to carry it away to some friend of his, unnamed: and we had some conversation about poets in general and their way of living, of Wordsworth and Coleridge. I like to hear Mr. Kenyon talk of the gods and how he used to sit within the thunder-peal. Presently, leaning up against the chimney-piece,—he said quietly ... ‘Do you not think—oh, I am sure I need not ask you—in fact I know your thoughts of it ... but how strikingly upright and loyal in all his ways and acts, Mr. Browning is!—how impeccable as a gentleman’ &c. &c. and so on and on ... I do not tell you any more, because I should be tired perhaps ... (do you understand?) and this is not the first time, nor second, nor third time that he has spoken of you personally, so ... and as no man could use more reverent language of another. And all this time, what has become of Walter Savage Landor? I shall be vexed in another day. He may be from home perhaps—there must be a reason.

Vive Pritchard! and thank you for letting me see what he wrote.

Oh—and you shall see what I did not send yesterday—I shall make you read this one sheet of Mrs. Paine’s letter, because it really touched me, and because I am bound to undo the effects of my light speaking. As for the overpraise of myself, the overkindness in every respect, ... why we know how ‘sermons are found in stones’ ... yet no praise to the stones on that account! But you shall read what I send, both for her sake and mine, ... because I like you to read it.

My own dearest, do you mind what I say, and take exercise? You are vexing yourself with those notes, as I see from here. Now take care—follow my example, and be well—if not, there will be no use in wellness to me! May God bless you! Do you remember when you wrote first to me ‘May God bless you and me in that!’ It was before we met. Can you guess what I thought? I have the whole effect in my memory distinctly. I felt with a bitter feeling, that it was quite a pity to throw away such beautiful words out of the window into the dark. ‘Bitterly’ does not mean anything wrong or harsh, you know. But there was something painful ... as if the words were too near, for the speaker to be so far. Well—I am glad in looking back ... yes, glad ... glad to be certain at my heart, that I did not assume anything ... stretch out my hand for anything ... dearest!...

It is always when one is asleep that the dream-angels come. Watchers see nothing but ghosts.

Yet I shall see you on Monday, and shall watch and wait as those who wait for the morning ... that is, the Monday-morning! Till when and ever after, I am

Your own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Saturday. [Post-mark, April 18, 1846.]

So my dear, own Ba has good sense, best sense—whatever Flush’s may be! Do you think ... (to take the extreme horn of a certain dilemma I see) ... that—

Now, dearest, somehow I can’t write the great proof down—I will tell you on Monday—as to my good sense. I was wrong to give such a praise to myself in the particular case you were alluding to at the time—the good sense of the bird which finds out its mate amid a forest-full of birds of another kind! Why the poorest brown butterfly will seek out a brown stone in a gravel walk, or brown leaf in a flower bed, to settle on and be happy——(And I suppose even dear Carlyle is no longer my brown leaf; at least, I could not go last night. I will, however, try again on Monday—after leaving you—with that elixir in my veins).

Mrs. Paine’s note is charming. I thank you, dearest, for sending it—(How I like being reminded of thanks, due from me to you, which I may somehow come near the expression of! I am silent about an infinity of blessings—but I do say how grateful I am for this kindness!). Now, there is the legitimate process; the proper benefit received, in the first instance, and profited by, and thence grows in proper time the desire of being admitted to see you—so different from the vulgar ‘Georgianas’ who, possibly, hearing of the privilege extended to such a person as this we speak of, would say, with the triumphant chuckle of low cunning, ‘ah,—I will get as far, by one stroke of the pen—by one bold desire “to be thought of as I think of her.”’ She could but ask and be refused! Whereas Mrs. Paine was already in possession of much more dear, dear Ba, than could be taken away even by a refusal—besides, her reverence would have made her understand and acquiesce even in that. Therefore, I am glad, sympathisingly glad she is rewarded, that good, gentle Mrs. Paine! I will bring her note with me.

Because, here is Mr. Kenyon’s, and Landor’s (which had been sent to Moxon’s some days ago, whence the delay)—and Mrs. Jameson’s. All kind and indulgent and flattering in their various ways ... but, my Ba, my dear, dear Ba, other praises disregarding, I but harken those of yours—only saying—Ah, it is wrong to take the sacrificial vessel and say,—‘See, it holds my draught of wine, too’!—I will not do so, not parody your verses again. And I like to be praised now, in a sense, much, much more than ever—but, darling, oh how easily, if need were, I could know the world was abusing at its loudest outside; if you were inside ... though but the thinnest of gauze canopies kept us from the buzzing! This is only said on this subject, struck out by it, not of it,—for the praise is good true praise and from the worthies of our time—but—you, I love,—and there is the world-wide difference. And what ought I to say to Mr. Kenyon’s report of me? Stand quietly, assentingly? You will agree to this at least, that he cannot know what he says—only be disposed to hope and believe it is so: still, to speak so to you—what would I not do to repay him, if that could be! What a divinely merciful thought of God for our sake ... that we cannot know each other—infallibly know—as we know other things, in their qualities! For instance, I bid you know my love for you (which would be knowing me)—I complain that you do not, cannot—yet,—if you could ... my Ba, would you have been ever quite my Ba? If you said, calmly as when judging of material objects, ‘there is affection, so much, and sincerity, and admiration &c., yes, that I see, of course, for it is there, plainly’—So I should lose the delight crowning the delight,—first of the fact, as I know it; and then of this; that you desired to know it, chose to lean forward, and take my poor testimony for a fact, believing through desire, or at least will to believe—so that I do, in the exercise of common sense, adore you, more and more, as I live to see more, and feel more. So let me kiss you, my pearl of woman. Do I ‘remember’ praying God to bless me through the blessing on you? Shall I ever forget to pray so, rather! My dear—dearest, I pray now, with all my heart; may He bless you—and what else can now bless your own R?—

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday Afternoon. [Post-mark, April 20, 1846.]

Just now I read again your last note for a particular purpose of thinking about the end of it ... where you say, as you have said so many times, ‘that your hand was not stretched out to the good—it came to you sleeping’—etc. I wanted to try and find out and be able to explain to myself, and perhaps to you, why the wrongness in you should be so exquisitely dear to me, dear as the rightness, or dearer, inasmuch as it is the topmost grace of all, seen latest on leaving the contemplation of the others, and first on returning to them——because, Ba, that adorable spirit in all these phrases, what I should adore without their embodiment in these phrases which fall into my heart and stay there, that strange unconsciousness of how the love-account really stands between us, who was giver altogether and who taker, and, by consequence, what is the befitting virtue for each of us, a generous disposition to forgetfulness on the giver’s part, as of everlasting remembrance and gratitude on the other—this unconsciousness is wrong, my heart’s darling, strangely wrong by the contrast with your marvellous apprehension on other points, every other point I am capable of following you to. I solemnly assure you I cannot imagine any point of view wherein I ought to appear to any rational creature the benefitting party and you the benefitted—nor any matter in which I can be supposed to be even magnanimous, (so that it might be said, ‘there, is a sacrifice’—‘that, is to be borne with’ &c.)—none where such a supposition is not degrading to me, dishonouring and affronting. I know you, my Ba, not because you are my Ba, but through the best exercise of whatever power in me you too often praise, I know—that you are immeasurably my superior, while you talk most eloquently and affectingly to me, I know and could prove you are as much my Poet as my Mistress; if I suspected it before I knew you, personally, how is it with me now? I feel it every day; I tell myself every day it is so. Yet you do not feel nor know it—for you write thus to me. Well,—and this is what I meant to say from the beginning of the letter, I love your inability to feel it in spite of right and justice and rationality. I would,—I will, at a moment’s notice, give you back your golden words, and lie under your mind supremacy as I take unutterable delight in doing under your eye, your hand. So Shakespeare chose to ‘envy this man’s art and that man’s scope’ in the Sonnets. But I did not mean to try and explain what is unexplainable after all—(though I wisely said I would try and explain!) You seem to me altogether ... (if you think my words sounded like flattery, here shall come at the end—anything but that!) you do seem, my precious Ba, too entirely mine this minute,—my heart’s, my senses’, my soul’s precise τὸ καλόν to last! Too perfect for that! The true power with the ignorance of it, the real hold of my heart, as you can hold this letter,—yet the fear with it that you may ‘vex me’ by a word,—makes me angry. Well,—if one must see an end of all perfection—still, to know one was privileged to see it—Nay, it is safe now—for this present, all my future would not pay, whatever your own future turned to!

Yet if I had to say, ‘I shall see her in a month or two—perhaps’—as this time last year I was saying in a kind of contented feeling!

Thank God I shall see her to-morrow—my dearest, best, only Ba cannot change by to-morrow!—What nonsense! The words break down, yet I will be trying to use them!

God bless my dearest, ever bless her.

I shall be with you soon after this reaches you, I trust—now, I kiss you, however, and now, my Ba!

Letters! since you bid me send them,—do you not?—see what the longer says of the improved diction, freedom from difficulty &c. Who is to praise for that, my Ba? Oh, your R.B. wholly and solely to be sure!

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday. [April 21, 1846.]

I would not say to you yesterday, perhaps could not, that you wrote ever so much foolishness to me in the morning, dearest, and that I knew it ever so well. There is no use, no help, in discussing certain questions,—some sorts of extravagance grow by talking of,—shake this elixir, and you have more and more bubbles on the surface of it. So I would not speak—nor will I write much. Only I protest, from my understanding, from my heart—and besides I do assert the truth—clear of any ‘affectation,’ this time,—and it is that you always make me melancholy by using such words. It seems to me as if you were in the dark altogether, and held my hand for another’s: let the shutter be opened suddenly; and the hand ... is dropped perhaps ... must I not think such thoughts, when you speak such words? I ask you if it is not reasonable. No, I do not ask you. We will not argue whether eagles creep, or worms fly. And see if it is distrust on my part! Love, I have learnt to believe in. I see the new light which Reichenbach shows pouring forth visibly from these chrystals tossed out. But when you say that the blue, I see, is red, and that the little chrystals are the fixed stars of the Heavens, how am I to think of you but that you are deluded, mistaken?—and in what? in love itself? Ah,—if you could know—if you could but know for a full moment of conviction, how you depress and alarm me by saying such things, you never would say them afterwards, I know. So trust to me, even as I trust to you, and do not say them ever again, ... you, who ‘never flatter’. Is it not enough that you love me? Is there anything greater? And will you run the risk of ruining that great wonder by bringing it to the test of an ‘argumentum ad absurdum’ such as I might draw from your letter? Have pity on me, my own dearest, and consider how I must feel to see myself idealized away, little by little, like Ossian’s spirits into the mist ... till ... ‘Gone is the daughter of Morven’! And what if it is mist or moon-glory, if I stretch out my hands to you in vain, and must still fade away farther? Now you will not any more. When the world comes to judge between us two, or rather over us both, the world will say (even the purblind world, as I myself with wide-open eyes!) that I have not been generous with my gifts—no; you are in a position to choose ... and you might have chosen better— ... that is my immoveable conviction. It has been only your love for me,—which I believe in perfectly as love—and which, being love, does not come by pure logic, as the world itself may guess ... it has been only, wholly and purely your love for me which has made a level for us two to meet and stand together. There is my fact against your fiction! Now let us talk no more. We cannot agree, because we stand in different positions ... ‘I hear a voice you cannot hear’! ... I am on the black side of the knight’s shield. Presently you will hear perhaps, and see. Shall you love me then? When the ideal breaks off, when the light is gone, ... will you love me then for the love which I shall bear you then as now, ... the only real thing?

In the meantime I did but jest about the letters—I know you care for mine ... because I care for yours so infinitely: ... it is a lesson learnt by heart. To-night I shall write again!—

Your own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday. [Post-mark, April 21, 1846.]

My dearest Ba, my sweetest, only love must sit, if she please, in the gondola chair and let me talk to-day, not write to her—for my head aches,—from pure perversity,—and a little from my morning spent over a novel of Balzac’s—that is it, not any real illness, I know—however, the effect is the same. Beside I got tired with the long walk from Carlyle’s last night—for I went and saw him to heart’s content—and he talked characteristically and well, and constringingly, bracingly. He has been in the country a little,—that is, has gone down to see his wife occasionally who was on a visit at Croydon, whence she only returned on Saturday. He told me he had read my last number; and that he had ‘been read to’—some good reader had recited ‘The Duchess’ to him. Altogether he said wonderfully kind things and was pleased to prophesy in the same spirit; God bless him! We talked for three or four hours—he asked me to come again soon, and I will.

Here are two letters—Chorley’s, one—and the other from quite another kind of man, an old friend who ‘docks’ ships or something like it; a great lover of ‘intelligibility in writing,’ and heretofore a sufferer from my poetry.

My love, I lend you such things with exactly as much vanity as ... no comparison will serve! it is the French vulgarism—comme ... n’importe quoi! Celui me pousse à la vanité comme—n’importe quoi!

Will you have a significative ‘comme’ of another kind? ‘je me trouve bête ce matin comme ... trente-six oies!’—(I assure you this is no flower culled from Balzac this morning—but a little ‘souvenir’ of an old play.)

Now, if I were to say to myself something is dear as ‘thirty-six Bas’—I should be scared, as when looking into a mirror cut into façettes one is met on every side by the same face, twenty times repeated. Nothing can add to my conception of the one Ba—my one, only—ever dear, dearest Ba—‘what perfect nonsense’ says Ba—and nonsensical I will be— —all she pleases so long as let live and die her very own.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday Evening. [Post-mark, April 22, 1846.]

‘Vanity’! I never saw in you, my very dearest, even the short morning shadow of ‘vanity.’ ‘Vanity’ is not of you! You work as the cedars grow, upward, and without noise, and without turning to look on the darkness you cause upon the ground. It is only because you are best and dearest that you let me see the letters ... yes, and besides, because I have a little a right to have them sent to me,—since they concern me more than you,—and are, after a fashion, my letters. My letters? what am I saying? My letters, my true letters, are different indeed—and one of them came to-night to prove so!

But Mr. Chorley’s and the illegible man’s whose name begins with a D (or doesn’t) both gave me pleasure. If Mr. Chorley did not read ‘Luria’ at once, he speaks of you in the right words—and the naval illegible man, with his downright earnest way of being impressed, makes a better critic than need be sought for in the Athenæum synod. And what a triumph (after all!) and what a privilege, and what a good deed, is this carrying of the light down into the mines among the workmen, this bringing down of the angels of the Ideal into the very depth of the Real, where the hammer rings on the rough stone. The mission of Art, like that of Religion, is to the unlearned ... to the poor and to the blind—to make the rugged paths straight, and the wilderness to blossom as the rose—at least it seems so to me. And now, pray, why am I not to hear what Carlyle said? will you tell me? won’t you tell me? how shall I persuade you? If I can or not, I will say God bless him too ... since he spoke the right word, to do you good. For the manifest advance in clearness and directness of expression ... I quite forgot to take notice of what you said to me—and you, who never flatter!—about being the cause of it—I! Now do observe that the ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’ which is as light as day, I never touched with my finger, except in one place, I think ... to say ... ‘Just here there is a little shade.’ The fact is, that your obscurities, ... as far as they concern the medium, ... you have been throwing off gradually and surely this long while—you have a calmer mastery over imagery and language, and it was to be expected that you should. For me, I am the fly on the chariot, ... ‘How we drive!’ Shall I ever, ever, ever, be of any use or good to you? See what a thought you have thrown me into, from that height! Shall I ever, ever, be of any use, any good—and not, rather, the contrary to these? Love is something: and it is something to love you better than a better woman could: but ... but....

There is no use nor good in writing so, and you with a headache too! Why, how could you get that headache? First with not walking; then with walking—!! and reading Balzac. But you had been writing notes perhaps? or Carlyle had talked too ‘bracingly?’ or you fasted too long, being too late for his tea-kettle? The headache came at any rate. Did it go? tell me, dearest beloved! say how you are. And let me hear if your mother continues to be better. How happy that change must make you all! and shall I not thank God that it makes you happy?

Mr. Kenyon has not been here, and I have nothing, nothing, to tell you. The east wind has kept guard at the door, so that I should not go out, ... and nothing has happened. I seem not to have drawn breath scarcely, since we parted. ‘Parted’—what a word! As if we could!—in the full sense!

I have written to Miss Bayley to ask her to come on any day except Saturday.

Shall the thirty-six Bas love you all together in that one Ba who is your own?

R.B. to E.B.B.

Wednesday. [Post-mark, April 22, 1846.]

I never thought I should convince you, dearest—and I was foolish to write so, since it makes you reply so. At all events, I do not habitually offend in this kind—forty-nine days out of fifty I hear my own praises from your lips, and yet keep silence—on the fiftieth I protest gently—is that too much? Then I will be quiet altogether, my Ba, and get a comfort out of the consciousness of obedience there at least. But I should like some talking-bird to tell you the struggle there is and what I could say. Shall I idealize you into mere mist, Ba, and see the fine, fine, last of you? Well, I cannot even play with the fancy of that—so, one day, when so much is to be cleared up between us, look for a word or two on this matter also. Some savage speech about the ‘hand I was to have dropped’—the whole ending with the Promethean—Οὕτως ὑβρίζειν τοὺς ὑβρίζοντας χρέων. Meantime my revenge on the hand must be to kiss it—I kiss it.

Yesterday’s letters both arrived this morning by the 11½ post—was that right? I add my mite of savageness to the general treasury of wrath: every body is complaining. Still, so long as I do get my letters,—such letters!

The cold wind continues—you will have kept the room to-day no doubt—what colourless weather; not the moist fresh bright true April of old years! I shall go out presently—but with such an effort, such unwillingness! I am better however—and my mother still continues well—goes out every morning—so there is hope for everybody. I ought to tell you that I went to my doctor last evening—(remembering to whom I promised I would do so, if need were, or good seemed likely to follow)—and he speaks encouragingly and I have engaged to be obedient; perhaps, because he ordains no very intolerable laws. He says I am better than when he saw me last—and, as he wanted then to begin and prescribe, ... there is clearly a gain of about two months’ comfort!

Here strikes fatal four-o’clock! To-morrow for more writing; and now, for the never-ending love, and thought of my dearest dearest. May God bless you, Ba.

Your own——

E.B.B. to R.B.

Wednesday Evening. [Post-mark, April 23, 1846.]

Then seriously you are not well, since you went for the medical advice after all! that is the thought which is uppermost as the effect of your letter, though I ought to be grateful to you (and am!) for remembering to keep your promise, made two months ago. But how can I help thinking that you are ill ... help knowing that you felt very ill before you came to consider that promise? You did feel very ill ... now did you not? And I see in this letter that you are not well—I see plainly, plainly! Have you been using the shower-bath? tell me:—and tell me how you are—do not keep back anything. For the rest, you will submit to the advice, you say, and you mean to submit, I think, my own very dearest—remember that all my light comes, not only through you, but from you, let it be April light or November light. I say that for you. As for myself, when I am anxious about you, it is not, I hope, for such a reason as that my light comes from you. Before I had any light, ... before I knew you so ... do I not remember how Mr. Kenyon with that suggestive shake of the head and grave dropping of the voice, when he came and told me with other news, of your being ill, ... made me wonderfully unhappy and restless till I could not help writing for a directer account? Oh, those strange days to look back upon, ... which had no miraculous light, yet were strange days, with their ‘darkness which might be felt’ and was felt!

You will be careful, ... will you not? ... in these? I am not happy about you, to-night. I feel as if you are worse perhaps than you say. And it does you so much good to keep talking about this misgiving and that misgiving!—the ‘trente-six oies’ are nothing at all to me, really.

For those two letters, it was far from any intention of mine that you should have them both together,—and the first-written went to the post at two on the day before. Too bad it is! I observe that you never get a letter on the day it is posted, unless the posting is very early, ... say before eight, or, at latest, before nine. Which is abominable, when the distance is considered.

And you make a piteous case out for yourself against me, indeed, ... and it seems very hard to have to endure so much, ‘forty-nine days out of fifty’ ... I did not think it was so bad with you! And when you protest gently on the fiftieth day ... so gently ... so gently!! Well, the fact is that you forget perhaps what sort of a gentle protestation it was, you wrote to me on Sunday, you who protest so gently, and never flatter! And as for having your own ‘praises blown in your eyes’ for forty-nine days together, I cannot confess to the iniquity of it, ... you mistake, you mistake, as well as forget—only that I will not vex you and convict you too much now that you are not well. So we shall have peace, shall we not? on each side. I never write extravagances—ah, but we will not write of them, even. Any more letters about ‘Luria?’

Yes—All day to-day in the gondola chair! There was no leaving this room for the cold wind, and it made me feel so tired without my taking a step scarcely, that after dinner ... guess what I did, and save me the shame of relating? after dinner, my dinner at one oclock, I positively fell fast asleep with this pen in my hand, and went to see you in a dream I dare say, though, this time, I do not remember. Then I half expected Miss Bayley, and she did not come, and instead of talking to her I wrote letters to ‘all the peoples’ ... I hate writing letters, how I hate it now, except to you only. And to-day I thought only of you, let me write ever so away from you. Which is why you saw me in the gondola chair.