THE LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING AND ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 1845-1846 (continued 3)

But you are not well—the ‘refrain’ comes round constantly—call it a burden! May God bless you, dearest beloved! Do you say harm of this April, when it is the best April I ever saw, let it be proved to want the vulgar sun and blue sky as much as you please! Yet you are not well! say how you are! I come clear out of the mist to call myself

Your very own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Thursday. [Post-mark, April 23, 1846.]

Dear, dear Ba, I was never very ill, and now am very much better, quite well, indeed. I mean to co-operate with your wishes, and my doctor’s doings, which are luckily gentle enough,—and so, how should I fail of bringing into subjection this restive, ill-conditioned head of mine?

This morning I have walked to town and back—leaving myself barely time to write—but just before going out, I got your letter, for which I was waiting; and the joy of it, the entire delight, carried me lightly out and in again. Ah, my own Ba,—of the two ‘extravagances which you never write nor speak,’—after all, if I must, I concede the praises and eagle-soaring and, and—because, if I please, I can say, if you do persist in making me, ‘why, it may be so,—how should I know, or Ba not know?’ And as a man may suppose himself poor and yet be rightful owner to a wonderful estate somewhere (in novels &c.)—so, I, the intellectually poor &c. &c.—But, dearest, if you say ‘My letters tire you’——say that again—and then what unknown gadge ought to stop the darling mouth? How does honey dew bind up the rose from opening? Moreover it is one peculiarity of my mind that it loses no pleasure,—must not forego the former for the latter pleasure. How shall I explain? I believe that, when I should have been your husband for years,—years—if I were separated from you for a day and a letter came—I think my heart would move to it just as it now does—because now, when I see you, know what that blessing is—still the very oldest first flutter of delight at ‘Miss Barrett’s’ writing it is all here, all!

Shall my heart flutter, then, to-morrow, my dear dear heart’s heart? And it shall be not April when I read it your letter—but June and May—if it tells you are well, as I am well,—now, if I say that, can you doubt what I consider my present state? But be better, dear Ba, and make me better—I should like to breathe and move and live by your allowance and pleasure—being your very very own

R.B.

I see this morning a characteristic piece of news in the paper. President Polk, with an eye to business, gets his brother, a tall gaunt hungry man, appointed Ambassador to Naples—why not? So he arrives a year ago,—finds the Neapolitans speak Italian, or else French, or else German—that is, the Diplomatic Body at Naples don’t speak English—on which discovery, Polk secundus sees he may as well amuse himself, so goes to Paris for half a year,—then to Rome where he is now, seeing sights—who could tell the Italians were not able to talk English? Is not that American entirely? Carlyle told me of an American who was commissioned by some learned body of his countrymen to ask two questions ... ‘What C.’s opinion was as to a future state?’—and next ‘what relation Goethe was to Goethe’s mother’s husband?’—

E.B.B. to R.B.

Thursday Evening. [Post-mark, April 24, 1846.]

Yes, you are better, I think. I thank God for that, first of all. And, do you know, your note only just comes, and it is past ten o’clock, and I had rung the bell to have the letter-box investigated ... and then came the knock and the letter! Such a sinning post, it is, more and more. But to come at last, is something—I am contented indeed. And for being well, I am well too, if that is all. The wind is a little hard on me; but I keep in the room and think of you and am thought of by you, and no wind, under such circumstances, can do much harm perhaps:—it does not to me, anywise. So keep well, and believe that I am so:—‘well as you are well’ ... which sounds very well.

What nonsense one comes to write when one is glad! I observe that in myself constantly. All my wisdom seems to depend on being pricked with pins ... or rather with something sharper. And besides your being better, I am glad through what you say here about your ‘peculiarity’! Ah—how you have words in your coffers, of all sorts, ... crowns to suit all heads ... and this, which I try on last, suits mine better than the other glittering ones. Those exaggerations, idealizations, with burning carbuncles in the front of them, which made me sigh under the weight, ... those are different—! But when you say now that you do not part with feelings,—that it is your peculiarity not to wear them out, and that you are likely to care for the sight of my handwriting as much after years as at first, why you make me happy when you say such things, and (see what faith I have!) I believe them, since you say them, speaking of yourself. They are not after the fashion of men, or women either—but, true of you, they may be, ... and I take upon trust that they are: I accept such words from you as means of gladness. The worst is—I mean, the worst reasonableness that goes out to oppose them, is, ... the fear lest, when your judgments have been corrected by experience, the feelings may correct themselves. But it is ungrateful to talk reason in the face of so much love. I take up the gladness rather, and thank you and bless you seven times over, to completion. You are the best, I know, of all in the world. Did I tell you once that my love was ‘something’? Yet it is nothing: because there is no woman, let her heart be ever so made of stone and steel, who could help loving you, ... I answer for all women!—so this is no merit of mine, though it is the best thing I ever did in my life.

Dearest beloved, when I used to tell you to give me up, and imagined to myself how I should feel if you did it, ... and thought it would not be much worse than it was before I knew you ... (a little better indeed, inasmuch as I had the memory for ever ...) the chief pang was the idea of another woman——! From that, I have turned back again and again, recoiling like a horse set against too high a wall. Therefore if I talk of what all women would do, I do not mean that they should. ‘Thirty-six Bas,’ we shall not have,—shall we? or I shall be like Flush, who, before he learnt to be a philosopher, used to shiver with rage at sight of the Flush in the looking-glass, and gnash his teeth impotently, and quite howl. Now,—we shall not, dearest, have the thirty-six Bas ... now, shall we? Besides, one will be more than enough, she fears to herself, for your comfort and patience.

No more letters about ‘Luria’? Did you see Moxon when you were in town?

Miss Bayley has not been here yet. To-morrow, perhaps. When she comes, I shall not dare name you, but she will, I think ... I seem sure of hearing her mind about ‘Luria’ and the ‘Tragedy.’ George thinks the former ‘very fine.’ Mr. Kenyon does not come,—and to-morrow (Friday) he goes ... from London.

You will care for me always the same? But that is like promising a charmed life, or an impossible immortality to somebody—and nobody has either, except Louis Philippe. May God bless you,—say how you are when you write to-morrow.

Your own

Ba.

Oh—your learned Americans! was it literal of Carlyle, do you think, or a jest?

R.B. to E.B.B.

[Post-mark, April 24, 1846.]

How I sympathize with poor Cloten when he complains that ‘he is in the habit of saying daily many things fully as witty as those of Posthumus, men praise so—if men would but note them’!—I feel jealous of the success and ‘praise’ of my Ba,—falling as they do on the mere asides and interjectional fits and starts of the play,—when its earnest soliloquy, the very soul and substance of it all, never reaches her ear, nor calls down her dear, dear words.

Yet do I say that I feel jealous? Rather, I acquiesce gladly in the ignorance ... because when the words, the golden words, are brought in to me by the inferior agents, and honestly transferred by them to the real moving powers ... they, even, find the reward too much, too much, till they—till they resolve (on the other side of a sheet) to keep silence and be grateful till death help them to speak.

Well, my dear, own dearest ... the week has got to its weary end, and to-morrow I shall trust to be with you. I continue to feel better,—and this morning’s rain, in the opinion of the learned, will be succeeded by warm weather. May is just here, beside.

Let me say how a word of praise from your brother gratifies me. I feel his kindness in other respects—feel it deeply—as I do that of the rest of your family. Because ... after these extravagant flatteries of mine you find such just fault with,—wherein I go the length of attributing to you the authorship of the ‘Drama of Exile,’ and ‘Geraldine’ and ‘Bertha,’ and many more poems which I used to suppose my Ba’s,—after that undue glorification, you will bear to be told, by way of ‘set-off’—that I cannot help thinking, you, of all your family, are the most ignorant of your own value—very ignorant you are, my sweet Ba,—but they cannot be, and their kindness to me becomes centupled ‘for reasons, for reasons.’

Now let me kiss you—which kiss, as I am to really kiss you to-morrow, my sweetest, I shall dare tell the truth of to myself, and say ‘The real will be better.’ At other times, with a longer perspective of days, and days after them, until ... why, then I make the best of pity and say ‘Can the real be better—what can be better than the best’? Still—remember my ‘peculiarity’—with the greater I keep the less, you let me say and praise me for saying—so, with all the dear hope of to-morrow,—now, my Ba—and now, I kiss you. May God bless you, best and dearest.

No letters that are letters—here is one however from Arnould[1] just arrived—an Oxford Prize Poet, and an admirable dear good fellow, for all his praise—which is better.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Sunday. [Post-mark, April 27, 1846.]

Ever dearest you might have stayed ten minutes more. George did not come in till half past six after all—but there is the consciousness of being wise in one’s generation, which consoles so many for their eternity as children of light, ... yet doesn’t console me for my ten minutes, ... so it is as well to say no more on this head!

I have glanced over the paper in the Athenæum and am of an increased certainty that Mr. Chorley is the writer. It is his way from beginning to end—and that is the way, observe, in which little critics get to tread on the heels of great writers who are too great to kick backwards. Think of bringing George Sand to the level of the same sentence with such a woman as Mrs. Ellis! And then, the infinite trash about the three eras in the Frenchwoman’s career, ... which never would have been dragged into application there, if the critic had heard of her last two volumes ... published since the ‘Meunier d’Angibault,’ ‘Teverino’ and ‘Isidora.’ One may be angry and sin not, over such inapplicable commonplace. The motive of it, the low expediency, is worse to me than the offence. Why mention her at all ... why name in any fashion any of these French writers, for the reception of whom the English mind is certainly not prepared, unless they are to be named worthily, recognised righteously? It is just the principle of the advice about the De Kocks; whom people are to go and see and deny their acquaintance afterwards. Why not say boldly ‘These writers have high faculty, and imagination such as none of our romance-writers can pretend to—but they have besides a devil—and we do not recommend them as fit reading for English families!’ Now wouldn’t it answer every purpose? Or silence would!—silence, at least. But this digging and nagging at great reputations, ... it is to me quite insufferable: and not compensated for by the motive, which is a truckling to conventions rather than to morals. As if earnestness of aim was not, from the beginning, from ‘Rose et Blanche’ and ‘Indiana,’ a characteristic of George Sand! Really it is pitiful.

The ‘Mysteries of the Heaths,’ I suppose to be a translation of ‘Sept Jours au Château,’ a very clever story from the monstrous Hydra-headed imagination of Frédéric Soulié. Dumas is inferior to them all of course, yet a right good storyteller when he is in the mind for storytelling;—telling, telling, telling, and never having done. You know I like listening to stories—I agree with the great Sultan and would forego ever so much cutting off of heads for the sake of a story—it is a taste quite apart from a taste for literature: a story-teller, I like, apart from the sweet voice. Now that book of Dumas’s on the League wars, which distressed me so the other day, by having the cruelty ... the ‘villainie’ ... of hanging its hero in the fourth volume ... (regularly hanging him on a pair of gallows—wasn’t it too bad?) that book is amusing enough, more than amusing enough, to take with one’s coffee ... which is my fashion, ... because you are not here and I have nobody to talk to me. The hero who was hanged, deserved it a little, I think, though the author meant it for a pure misfortune and though no good romance-reader in the world, such as I am, could bear to part with the hero of four volumes in that manner, without pain; but the hero did deserve it a little when one came to consider. In the first place, he was a traitor once or twice in war and politics, and was quite ready to be so a third or fourth time, ... only ... as he said to the lady he loved ... ‘je perdrais votre estime.’ ‘Is that your only objection’ she enquired. ‘The only one’ he answered! (How frightfully true, that those brilliant French writers have no moral sense at all! do not, for the most part, know right from wrong! here, an instance!) Then, from the beginning to the end of the four volumes, he loves two women together ... a ‘phénomène’ by no means uncommon, says the historian musingly, ... and, except for the hanging, there might have been a difficulty perhaps in the final arrangement. Yet oh ... to see one’s hero, the hero of four volumes, and not a bad hero either in some respects, hung up before one’s eyes! ... it wrongs the natural affections to think of it! it made me unhappy for a full hour! There should be a society for the prevention of cruelty to romance-readers, against the recurrence of such things!

Pure nonsense I write to you, it seems to me.

What beautiful flowers you brought me!—and the sweet-brier is unfolding its leaves to-day, as if you did them, so, no wrong. And I have been considering; and there are not, if you please, five but four days, between Saturday and Thursday. In the meanwhile say how you are, dearest dearest! My thoughts are with you constantly ... indeed. I could almost say, too much, ... because sometimes they grow weak and tired ... not of you, who are best and beloved, but of themselves, having been so long used to be sad, May God bless you, ... bless you! His best blessing for me (after that!) were to make me worthy of you—but it would take too many miracles.

Your

Ba.

Remember the letters, if they come.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday. [Post-mark, April 27, 1846.]

See what a brain I have,—which means, you have! The book I ought to put in my pocket,—and fancy I leave on the table,—is picked up in our lane and presented to me on my return; so my reason, which told you I had forgotten it, the book, was wrong, and my instinct which told me, all the time, that I could not forget even so poor a matter if it tended to you,—that was right, as usual? (Don’t think that I forgot the said book on the former occasions ... I wanted to look through it first, so as to be able to correct any possible mistakings, in case you should ask, or should not ask, my siren! I read the book during the voyage.)

Will you tell me what number of the League contains the notice of you? I can get it directly. I did not ask you yesterday, being just as much master of myself as I commonly am when with you—but after-wisdom comes duly for a consolation, and mine was apparent in a remark I made last night—‘Here is truly an illusion broken’ I said—‘for not very long ago I used to feel impatient at listening to other people’s commendations of her, and as if they were usurping my especial office,—they could not see what I see, not utter what I could utter: and now, at the beginning of my utterance, the hand closes my mouth, while its dear fellow shuts my eyes,—I may not see what everybody sees, nor say what the whole world says,—I, that was to excel them all in either function! So now I will change my policy and bid them praise, praise, praise, praise, since I may not. Will you let me hear them, my Ba? You know Chesterfield forbids his son to play on the instrument himself—‘for you can pay musicians’ he says—‘and hear them play.’ Where may I hear this discourser of most excellent music?

In your last letter you spoke of ‘other women,’ and said they might ‘love’ me—just see! They might love me because of something in me, lovingness in me, which they never could have evoked ... so the effect produces the cause, my dear ‘inverter’! If there had been a vague aimless feeling in me, turning hither and thither for some object to attach itself to and spend itself on, and you had chanced to be that object, I should understand you were very little flattered and how a poplar does as well for a vine-prop as a palm tree—but whatever love of mine clings to you was created by you, dearest,—they were not in me, I believed—those feelings,—till you came. So that, mournful and degrading as it sounds, still it would, I think, be more rational to confess the possibility of their living on, though you withdrew,—finding some other—oh no, it is,—that is as great an impossibility as the other,—they came from you, they go to you, what is the whole world to them!

May God bless you, repay you—He can—

Well Ba, do you see the Examiner? That is very kind, very generous of Forster. There are real difficulties in the way of this prompt, efficient, serviceable notice—for he has a tribe of friends, dramatists, actors ‘conflicting interests’ &c. &c. to keep the peace among,—and he quite understands his trade—how compensation is to be made, and an equilibrium kept in the praises so as to offend nobody,—yet see how he writes, and with a heap of other business on his shoulders! I thank him very sincerely, I am sure.

Tell me how you are, beloved—all-beloved! I am quite well to-day,—have been out.

Do you remember our friend Bennett of Blackheath? (Don’t ejaculate ‘le Benêt’!) He sent me letters lately—and I returned a copy of ‘Luria’ to save compliments and words—here is his answer ... (I will at once confess I could not read it, but Ba bids me send, and what am I but Ba’s own, very very own?)

R.B. to E.B.B.

Monday. [Post-mark, April 27, 1846.]

Oh yes; that paper is by Chorley, no doubt—I read it, and quite wonder at him. I suppose he follows somebody’s ‘lead’—writes as he is directed—because I well remember what he said on lending me ‘Le Compagnon.’ There, there is that other silly expenditure of pen and ink on the English poets, or whatever they are. And in such work may a man spend his youth and not a few available energies—sad work altogether!

My love, I have done a fair day’s work this Monday,—whoever may be idle—I thought I would call on Forster this morning—he was out, and I crossed over to Moxon’s, not seeing him, neither, and thence walked home—so that to tell you I am well is superfluous enough, is it not? But while the sun shone brightest, (and it shines now) I said ‘The cold wind is felt through it all,—she keeps the room!’ The wind is unremitting,—savage. Do you bear it, dearest, or suffer, as I fear? (Speaking of Forster ... you see the Examiner, I believe? Or I will send it directly of course). I entirely agree with you in your estimate of the comparative value of French and English Romance-writers. I bade the completest adieu to the latter on my first introduction to Balzac, whom I greatly admire for his faculty, whatever he may choose to do with it. Do you know a little sketch ‘La Messe de l’Athée,’—most affecting to me. And for you, with your love of a ‘story,’ what an unceasing delight must be that very ingenious way of his, by which he connects the new novel with its predecessors—keeps telling you more and more news yet of the people you have got interested in, but seemed to have done with. Rastignac, Mme. d’Espard, Desplein &c.—they keep alive, moving—it is not ingenious? Frédéric Soulié I know a little of (I let this reading drop some ten years ago) and only George Sand’s early works: by the way, the worst thing of all in that blessed article we have been referring to, is the spiteful and quite uncalled for introduction of the names of A. de Musset and De Lamennais—what have the English families to do with that? Did you notice a stanza quoted from some lachrymose rhymester to be laughed at (in the Article on Poetry)—in which the writer complains of the ill-treatment of false friends, for, says he, ‘I have felt their bangs.’ The notion of one’s friend ‘banging’ one is exhilarating when one reflects that he might get a little pin, and prick, prick after this fashion. No, it is probably a manner of writing,—meant for the week’s life and the dozen readers. Here is a note from his sister, by the way.

Now, dearest-dearest, good bye till to-morrow. I think of you all day, and, if I dream, dream of you—and the end of the thinking and of the dreaming is still new love, new love of you, my sweetest, only beloved! so I kiss you and bless you from my heart of heart.

Ever your R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Monday Evening. [Post-mark, April 28, 1846.]

Very good Examiner!—I am pleased with it and with Mr. Forster for the nonce, though he talks a little nonsense here and there, in order to be a true critic, and though he doesn’t talk at all, scarcely, of the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’ ... how is one to bear it? That ‘Tragedy’ has wonderful things in it—thoughts, suggestions, ... and more and more I feel, that you never did better dialogue than in the first part. Every pulse of it is alive and individual—dramatic dialogue of the best. Nobody in the world could write such dialogue—now, you know, you must be patient and ‘meke as maid,’ being in the course of the forty-nine days of enduring praises. Praises, instead of ‘bangs’!!—consider that it might be worse!—dicit ipsissima Ba.

Think of my not hearing a word about the article in the Examiner, until I had your note this morning. And the Examiner was in the house since Saturday night, and nobody to tell me! I was in high vexation, reproaching them all, to-day—till Stormie had the impertinence to turn round and tell me that only Papa had read the paper, and that ‘he had of course put it away to keep me from the impropriety of thinking too much about ... about’ ... yes, really Stormie was so impertinent. For the rest, when Papa came up-stairs at one o’clock, he had it in his hand.

At two, Miss Bayley came, and sate here two hours, and thought me looking so well, with such improved looks from last autumn, that I don’t mean to groan at all to you to-day about the wind—it is a savage wind, as you say, and I wish it were gone, and I am afraid of stirring from the room while it lasts, but there’s an end ... and not of me, says Miss Bayley. She doffed her bonnet and talked and talked, and was agreeable and affectionate, and means to come constantly to see me ... (‘only not on Thursday,’ I desired:) and do you know, you need not think any more of my going with you to Italy, for she has made up her mind to take me herself ... there is no escape for me that I can see—it’s fixed ... certain! with a thousand generous benignities she stifled my ‘no’s’ ... and all I had breath to say at last, was, that ‘there was time enough for plans of that kind.’ Seriously, I was quite embarrassed to know how to adjourn the debate. And she is capable of ‘arranging everything’—of persisting, of insisting—who knows what? And so, ... when I am ‘withdrawn’ ... carried away ... then, shall all my ‘feelings,’ which are in you, be given to somebody else? is that the way—?

Now I shall not make jests upon that ... I shall not: first, I shall not, because it is ungrateful—and next and principally, because my heart stands still only to think of it...! Why did you say that to me? I could be as jealous (did I not tell you once?) as any one of your melodramatic gitana heroines, who carries a poignard between the white-satin sash and the spangles? I perfectly understand, at this distance, what jealousy is, would be, ought to be, must be—though I never guessed at all what love was, at that distance, and startled I am often and confounded, to see the impotency of my imagination.

Forgive the blottings out—I have not blotted out lately ... have I now? and it is pardonable once in a hundred years or days.

The rest for to-morrow. Your correspondent of the first letter you sent me really does write like a Bennet, though he praises you. I could not help laughing very gently, though he praises you. Good-night my only beloved ... dearest! As my Bennet says (Georgiana) when she catches vehemently at the laurel ... ‘I will not be forgot’....

‘I must die ... but I will not be forgot’ (in large capitals!) But what she applies to the Delphic groves, turns for me to something more ambitious. ‘I will not be forgot’ ... will I? shall I? not till Thursday at least ... being ever and ever

Your own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday. [Post-mark, April 28, 1846.]

Now bless you, my dearest, best Ba, for this letter that comes at the eleventh hour,—which means, at 3 o’clock. Was not I frightened! I made sure you would write. Why, our Post emulates the Italian glory ... nay, that is too savage a saying—for in Venice or Rome I should have to go for this to the office, and only get it at last through the forbearing honesty of every other applicant for letters during the day, or week—since to every man and woman who thrusts his or her head in at the window at Venice, the clerk hands coolly over the whole odd hundred, and turns to his rest again till as many are taken as may be thought necessary. But, Ba, dear dearest Ba, do you really mean to tell me I said ‘that’ ... of ‘transferring feelings’ etc? I hope I did,—though I cannot imagine how I ever could—say so—for so the greater fault will be Ba’s—who drives me from one Scylla (see my critic’s account) into a worse Charybdis through pure fear and aversion,—and then cries ‘See where you are now!’ I was retreating as far as possible from that imaginary ‘woman who called out those feelings,’—might have called them out,—just as this April sun of ours makes date-palms grow and bear—and because I said, of the two hypotheses, the one which taught you the palms might be transplanted and live on here,—that was the more rational ... you turn and ask ‘So your garden will rear palms.’ Now, I tell Ba,—no, I will kiss Ba and so tell her.

How happy Miss Bayley’s testimony makes me! One never can be too sure of such a happiness. She has no motive for thus confirming it. You ‘look so well’—and she not merely sees it, but acts upon it,—is for deriving a practical benefit from it, and forthwith. Then, Miss Bayley, let me try and ‘transfer’ ... ah, the palm is too firmly rooted in my very heart,—I can but sprinkle you over with yellow dust!

Oh, Ba; not to tell me of the League; the number!—will you please tell me? One letter more I get, do I not? Then comes Thursday—my Thursday.

What you style ‘impertinence’ in your Brother, is very kind and good-natured to my thinking. Well, now—see the way a newspaper criticism affects one, nearly the only way! If this had been an attack—how it would affect you and me matters nothing—it might affect others disagreeably—and through them, us. So I feel very much obliged to Forster in this instance.

I kiss you with perfect love, my sweetest best Ba. May God bless you.

R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday. [Post-mark, April 29, 1846.]

Dearest, you are not to blame the post, nor even me. The reason you did not get the letter was simply that Henrietta slept over the hour, and let it lie on the table till past eight. Still, you should have had it before three perhaps. Only the wrong was less a wrong than you fancied.

For my wrongs, dearest beloved, they are mine I confess, and not yours ... ah, you are ‘evilly persecuted, and entreated’ of me, I must allow. Yet as, with all my calumnious imputations, I think softly to myself seven times seven times a day that no living man is worthy to stand in your footsteps, ... why you must try to forgive and (not) forget me. Do I teaze you past enduring, sometimes? Yes, yes. And wasn’t it my fault about the ‘imaginary woman;’ that heiress, in an hypothesis, of the ‘love’ I ‘made’? Yes, yes, yes—it was, of course. Unless indeed she came out of that famous mist, which you fined me away into, ... the day you slew and idealized me, remember!—and, now I begin to consider, I think she did! So we will share the fault between us, you and I. The odium of it, I was going to say—but odium is by no means the right word, perhaps.

The truth of all is, that you are too much in the excess of goodness, ... that you spoil me! There it is! Did I not tell you, warn you, that I never was used to the purple and fine linen of such an infinite tenderness? If you give me back my sackcloth, I shall know my right hand from my left again, perhaps, ... guess where I stand ... what I am ... recover my common sense. Will you? no—do not.

And for the League newspaper, you mistook me, and I forgot to say so in my letter yesterday. I told you only that the League paper had mentioned me—not noticed me. It was just ... I just shall tell you, that you may not spend another thought on such a deep subject ... it was a mere quotation from the ‘cornships in the offing,’ with a prefatory as that exquisite poet Miss B ... says! Now you are done with the winter of your discontent? You are with the snowdrops at any rate. But last year there was a regular criticism on my poems in that League paper, and I had every reason to thank the critic. I have heard too that Cobden is a very gracious reader of mine ... and that his Leeds (liege) subjects generally do me the honours of popularity, more than any other people in England. There’s glory for you, talking of palm-trees.

Ah—talking of palm-trees, you do not know what a curious coincidence your thought is with a thought of mine, which I shall not tell you now ... but some day perhaps. There’s a mystery! talking of Venice!

For Balzac, I have had my full or overfull pleasure from that habit of his you speak of, ... and which seems to prove his own good faith in the life and reality of his creations, in such a striking manner. He is a writer of most wonderful faculty—with an overflow of life everywhere—with the vision and the utterance of a great seer. His French is another language—he throws new metals into it ... malleable metals, which fuse with the heat of his genius. There is no writer in France, to my mind, at all comparable to Balzac—none—but where is the reader in England to make the admission?—none, again ... is almost to be said.

But, dearest, you do not say how you are; and that silence is not lawful, and is too significant. For me, when the wind changed for a few hours to-day, I went down-stairs with Flush, and had my walk in the drawing-room. Mrs. Jameson has written to proclaim her coming to-morrow at four,—so I shall hear of ‘Luria,’ I think. Remember to bring my verses, if you please, on your Thursday. And if dreaming of me should be good for making you love me, let me be dreamt of ... go on to dream of me: and love me, my beloved, ever so much, without grudging,—because the love returns to you, all of it, ... as the wave to the sea; and with an addition of sundry grains of soiling sand, to make you properly grateful. Take care of yourself—may God take care of you for your own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Wednesday. [Post-mark, April 29, 1846.]

Oh, post, post, how I am plagued by what uses to delight me! No letter,—and I cannot but think you have written one, my Ba! It will come perhaps at 3 o’clock. Shame and again, shame!

Meantime I will tell you what a dear, merciful Ba you are, in only threatening me with daggers,—when you play at threatening,—instead of declaring you will frown at me.... Oh, but here ‘Fear recoils, he knows well why, even at the sound himself has made—’

The best of it is, that this was the second fright, and by no means the most formidable. When I read that paragraph beginning ‘you need not think any more of going with me to Italy’—shall I only say I was alarmed? Without a particle of affectation, I tell Ba, I am, cannot help being, alarmed even now—we have been discussing possibilities—and it is rather more possible than probable that Miss Bayley may ‘carry off’ my Ba, and her Flush, and, say, an odd volume of the Cyclic Poets, all in her pocket ... she being, if I remember, of the race of the Anakim—than that I shall ever find in the wide world a flesh and blood woman able to bear the weight of the ‘feelings,’ I rest now upon the B and the A which spell Ba’s name,—only her name!

Forster sent a note last evening urging me to go and dine with him and Leigh Hunt to-day,—there was no refusing. There is sunshine—you may have been down-stairs—but the wind continues.

I shall know to-morrow—but surely a letter is to come presently—let me wait a little.

Nothing! Pray write if anything have happened, my own Ba!

No time—Ever your

E.B.B. to R.B.

Friday. [Post-mark, May 1, 1846.]

I am delighted with the verses and quite surprised by Mr. Arnould’s, having expected to find nothing but love and law in them, and really there is a great deal besides. Hard to believe, it was, that a university prize poet (who was not Tennyson) could write such good verses: but he wrote them of you, and that was enough inspiration for him, I suppose, as it would be for others, my own dearest. How I delight in hearing you praised!—it is such a delightful assent to the word which is in me, in the deepest of me. You know that mysterious pleasure we have, in listening to echoes!—we hear nothing new, nothing we have not said ourselves—yet we stand on the side of the hill and listen ... listen ... as if to the oracles of Delphi. The very pleasure of it all is in the repetition ... the reverberation.

When you had gone yesterday and I had taken my coffee, holding my book ... ‘La Gorgone’ a sea-romance by Landelle, (those little duodecimo books are the only possible books to hold in one’s hand at coffee-times ... and the people at Rolandi’s library sent me this, which is not worth much, I think, but quite new and very marine) ... holding my book at one page, as if fixed ... transfixed, ... by a sudden eternity, ... well, after all that was done with, coffee and all, ... in came George, and told me that the day before he had seen Tennyson at Mr. Venables’ house, or chambers rather. Mr. Venables was unwell, and George went to see him, and while he was there, came the poet. He had left London for a few days, he said, and meant to stay here for a time ... ‘hating it perfectly’ like your Donne ... ‘seeming to detest London,’ said George ... ‘abusing everything in unmeasured words.’ Then he had been dining at Dickens’s, and meeting various celebrities, and Dickens had asked him to go with him (Dickens) to Switzerland, where he [is] going, to write his new work: ‘but,’ laughed Tennyson, ‘if I went, I should be entreating him to dismiss his sentimentality, and so we should quarrel and part, and never see one another any more. It was better to decline—and I have declined.’ When George had told his story, I enquired if Tennyson was what was called an agreeable man—happy in conversation. And the reply was ... ‘yes—but quite inferior to Browning! He neither talks so well,’ observed George with a grave consideration and balancing of the sentences, ... ‘nor has so frank and open a manner. The advantages are all on Browning’s side, I should say.’ Now dear George is a little criticised you must know in this house for his official gravity and dignity—my sisters murmur at him very much sometimes ... poor dear George!—but he is good and kind, and high and right minded, as we all know, and I, for my part, never thought of criticising him yesterday when he said those words rather ... perhaps ... barristerially, ... had they been other words.

My other words must go by my next letter—I am to write to you again presently, you are to be pleased to remember ... and that letter may reach you, for aught I can guess, at the same moment with this. In the meantime, ever beloved,

I am your

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Friday. [Post-mark, May 1, 1846.]

I go to you, my Ba, with heart full of love, so it seems,—yet I come away always with a greater capacity of holding love,—for there is more and still more,—that seems too! At the beginning, I used to say (most truly) that words were all inadequate to express my feelings,—now, those very feelings seem, as I see them from this present moment, just as inadequate in their time to represent what I am conscious of now. I do feel more, widelier, strangelier ... how can I tell you? You must believe,—my only, only beloved! I daresay I have said this before, because it has struck me repeatedly,—and, judging by past experience, I shall need to say it again—and often again. Am I really destined to pass my life sitting by you? And you speak of your hesitation at trusting in miracles! Oh, my Ba, my heart’s—well, Ba, I am so far guiltless of presumption, let come what will, that I never for the moment cease to be ... tremblingly anxious I will say,—and conscious that the good is too great for me in this world. You do not like one to write so, I know, but there is a safety in it—the presumptuous walk blindfold among pits, to a proverb—and no one shall record that of me. And if I have cares and scruples of this kind at times, or at all times, I have none where most other people would have very many. I never ask myself, as perhaps I should,—‘Will she be happy too?’—All that seems removed from me, far above my concernment—she—you, my Ba ... will make me so entirely happy, that it seems enough to know ... my palm-trees grow well enough without knowing the cause of the sun’s heat. Then I think again, that your nature is to make happy and to bless, and itself to be satisfied with that.—So instead of fruitless speculations how to give you back your own gift, I will rather resolve to lie quietly and let your dear will have its unrestricted way. All which I take up the paper determining not to write,—for it is foolish, poor endeavour at best, but,—just this time it is written. May God bless you—

R.B.

I called on Moxon, who is better, and reports cheeringly. Then I went to my friend’s, and thence home, not much tired. I have to go out (to-day) with my sister but only next door. To-morrow I hear from you, love, and on Monday—(unless a pressing engagement &c.—ah!)

What do you say to this little familiar passage in the daily life of friend Howitt,—for which I am indebted to Moxon. Howitt is book-making about Poets, it seems—where they were born, how they live, ‘what relation their mothers’ sons are to their fathers’—etc. In the prosecution of this laudable object he finds his way to Ambleside, calls on Wordsworth ‘quite promiscuously’ as Mrs. Malaprop says, meaning nothing at all. And so after a little ordinary complimenting and play-talk, our man of business takes to good earnest, but dexterous questioning ... all for pure interest in poetry and Mr. W. ‘So, sir, after that school ... if I understand—you went to ... to ...?’—and so on. Mr. Wordsworth the younger having quicker eyes than his father detected a certain shuffling movement between the visitor’s right hand and some mysterious region between the chair’s back and his coat-pocket ... glimpses of a pocket case and paper note book were obtained. He thought it (the son) high time to go and tell Mrs. Wordsworth,—who came in and found the good old man in the full outpouring of all those delightful reminiscences hitherto supposed the exclusive property of Miss Fenner no doubt! Mrs. W—‘desired to speak with William for a moment’ (the old William)—and then came the amazement, horror &c. &c., and last of all came Mr. Howitt’s bow and ‘so no more at present from your loving &c.’—Seriously, in my instinct—instinct—instinct thrice I write it and thank my stars! Moxon said, Howitt is ‘just gone to call on Tennyson for information—having left his card for that purpose.’ ‘And one day will call on you’ quoth Moxon, who is but a sinister prophet, as you may have heard—Dii meliora piis! It is fair enough in Tennyson’s case, for he is apprised by Howitt’s self of the purpose of his visit, but to try and inveigle Wordsworth into doing what he would hate most ... to his credit be it said—why, it is abominable—abominable!

Then I heard another story—his wife, Mary, finds out,—at all events, translates Miss Bremer. Another publisher gets translated other works—or may be the same,—as who shall say him nay? Howitt writes him a letter (which is shown my informant), wherein ‘rogue,’ ‘thief,’ ‘rascal’ and similar elegancies dance pleasantly through period after period.

‘Come out from among them my soul, neither be thou a partaker of their habitations!’

From all which I infer—I may kiss you, may I not, love Ba? It is done, may I or may I not—

Ever your own

E.B.B. to R.B.

Friday. [Post-mark, May 2, 1846.]

How you write to me! Is there any word to answer to these words ... which, when I have read, I shut my eyes as one bewildered, and think blindly ... or do not think—some feelings are deeper than the thoughts touch. My only beloved, it is thus with me ... I stand by a miracle in your love, and because I stand in it and it covers me, just for that, you cannot see me! May God grant that you never see me—for then we two shall be ‘happy’ as you say, and I, in the only possible manner, be very sure. Meanwhile, you do quite well not to speculate about making me happy ... your instinct knows, if you do not know, that it is implied in your own happiness ... or rather (not to assume a magnanimity) in my sense of your being happy, not apart from me. As God sees me, and as I know at all the motions of my own soul, I may assert to you that from the first moment of our being to each other anything, I never conceived of happiness otherwise ... never thought of being happy through you or by you or in you, even—your good was all my idea of good, and is. I hear women say sometimes of men whom they love ... ‘such a one will make me happy, I am sure,’ or ‘I shall be happy with him, I think’—or again ... ‘He is so good and affectionate that nobody need be afraid for my happiness.’ Now, whether you like or dislike it, I will tell you that I never had such thoughts of you, nor ever, for a moment, gave you that sort of praise. I do not know why ... or perhaps I do ... but I could not so think of you ... I have not time nor breath ... I could as soon play on the guitar when it is thundering. So be happy, my own dearest ... and if it should be worth a thought that you cannot be alone, so, you may think that too. You have so deep and intense a nature, that it were impossible for you to love after the fashion of other men, weakly and imperfectly, and your love, which comes out like your genius, may glorify enough to make you happy, perhaps. Which is my dream, my calculation rather, when I am happiest now. May God bless you. Suppose I should ever read in your eyes that you were not happy with me?—can I help, do you fancy, such thoughts? Could you help being not happy? The very word ‘unhappiness’ implies that you cannot help it. Now forgive me my naughtiness, because I love you, and never loved but you, ... and because I promise not to go with Miss Bayley to Italy ... I promise. Ah—If you could pretend to be afraid of that, indeed, I have a right to be afraid, without pretence at all ... I who am a woman and frightened of lightning. And see the absurdity. If I did not go to Italy with you, the reason would be that you did not choose—and if you did not choose, I should not choose ... I would not see Italy without your eyes—could I, do you think? So if Miss Bayley takes me to Italy with a volume of the Cyclic poets, it will be as a dead Ba clasped up between the leaves of it. You talked of a ‘Flora,’ you remember, in the first letter I had from you.

How bad of William Howitt! How right you are, always! Yet not quite always, dear dearest beloved, happily for your own

Ba.

Say how you are I beseech you, and honestly! I was down-stairs to-day, since the wind changed, and am the better for it. What writing for a postman!—or for you even!

R.B. to E.B.B.

Saturday. [Post-mark, May 2, 1846.]

No, my Ba, your letter came as it ought last night,—and the promise it contained of another made me restless all the morning—to no purpose,—nothing more comes—yet—for there is a ‘peradventure’ yet unwithdrawn. When I do not hear from you, as now, I always fancy there was some signal reason why I ought to have heard ... that ‘to-morrow,’ I could better bear the not hearing ... though never, never do yesterday’s letters slip by a hair’s breadth from the place in my affection they once take,—they could not have been dispensed with,—but the imaginary letter of to-morrow could, by contrast with to-day’s exigencies ... till to-morrow really comes and is found preferring such claims of its own—such claims.

This letter I have got, and will try and love enough for two ... I can do no harm by trying ... this I do not mean to say that I expected. May I say ‘in heart-playing,’ ... now, Ba, it will be a fancy, which you can pounce on and poke your humming-bird bill through, like a needle, in a very ‘twinkling,’ and so shall my flower’s eye be ruined for ever, and when it turns black and shrivels up as dead flowers do, you can triumph and ask ‘are these your best flowers, best feelings for me?’. But now, after this deprecation, you will be generous and only hover above, using the diamond eye rather than the needle-bill,—and I will go on and dare say that I should like, for one half second, not to love you, and then feel all the love lit up in a flame to the topmost height, at the falling of such a letter on my heart. Don’t you know that foolish boys sometimes play at hanging themselves—suspend themselves by the neck actually for such a half second as this of my fancying—that they may taste the luxury of catching back at existence, and being cut down again? There is a notable exemplification, a worthy simile! It all comes, I suppose, from the joy of being rid handsomely of my dinners and in a fair way for Monday ... nothing between but letters,—I shall continue to hope! At sea it always sounds pleasantly to hear ... after passing Cape This and Isle the other, ‘now, next land we make is—Italy, or England, or Greece.’

Moxon told me Tennyson was still in Town. Switzerland? He is a fortnight going to wherever a Train takes him—‘for,’ says Moxon, ‘he has to pack up, and is too late, and next day’ ... I dare say he unaffectedly hates London where this poco-curanteism would entail all manner of disagreeabilities. If I caught rightly ... that is, now apply rightly, a word or two I heard ... one striking celebrity at Dickens’ Dinner was—Lord Chesterfield—literary, inasmuch as a great ‘maker up of books’—for the Derby. Macready may have been another personage—they, Tennyson and he, may ‘fadge,’ in Shakespearian phrase, if the writer of the ‘Two Voices’ &c. considers Home’s ‘Douglas’ exquisite poetry,—otherwise,—it is a chance!

But with respect to your Brother ... first of all—nay, and last of all, for it all is attributable to that—I feel his kindness, in its way, as I feel yours; as truly, according to its degree and claim: but—‘now think what I would speak!’—When he really does see me one day—no longer embarrassed as under the circumstances I could not but have been on these two or three occasions when we met—he will find something better than conversational powers to which I never pretended—and what he will accept in preference,—a true, faithful desire of repaying his goodness—he will find it, that is, because it must be there, and I have confidence in such feelings making sooner or later their way.

So now, at 2½ p.m., I must (—here is the Post ... from you? Yes—the letter is here at last—I was waiting:—now to read; no, kissing it comes first).

And now ... I will not say a word, my love of loves, my dearest, dearest Ba,—not one word—but I will go out and walk where I can be alone, and think out all my thought of you, and bless you and love you with nothing to intercept the blessing and the love. I will look in the direction of London and send my heart there.... Dear, dear love, I kiss you and commend you to God. Your very own—

I am very well—quite well, dearest.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday. [Post-mark, May 4, 1846.]

When I said one more letter might come before to-morrow, I forgot. How used I to manage in the early ‘day of small things’—comparatively—when letters came once a week at most, and yet I felt myself so rich, dearest!

I want you to remember, Ba, what I shall be nearly sure to forget when closer to you than now; tell me to-morrow. If I chance to see Mrs. Jameson in the course of the week what am I to say,—that is, what have you decided on saying? Does she know that you write to me? Because there is a point of simple good taste to be preserved ... I must not listen with indifference if I am told that ‘her friend Miss B.’ thought well of the last number. But she must know we write, I think,—never make any secret of that, when the subject is brought forward.

Here is warm May weather, my Ba; I do not shiver by sympathy as I fancy you going down-stairs. I shall hope to see the sweet face look its ... now, what? ‘Best’ would be altogether an impertinence,—unless you help my meaning, which is ‘best,’ too.

I received two days ago a number of the People’s Journal—from our illustrious contemporary, Bennett! Bennett figures where Barrett might have fronted the world. Fact! I will cut you out his very original lyric[2]—observe the felicitous emendation in the author’s own blue ink ... that supplemental trochee makes a musical line of it! Mary Howitt follows with a pretty, washy, very meritorious Lyric of Life. There is ‘a guilty one’—‘Name her not!’ ‘Virtue turns aside for shame’

And so on—what pure nonsense! Who cries ‘let her die’ in the whole world now? thank God, nobody. The sin of the world (of the lookers-on, not the causers of the wrong) consists, in these days, in looking on and asking ‘How can we help her dying—or factory children’s dying—or evicted Irish peasantry’s dying?’ What ails these Howitts of a sudden, that they purvey this kind of cat-lap,—they that once did better? William Howitt grinds here an article on May day; past human power of reading of course, but I just noticed that not a venerablest commonplace was excused on account of its age—the quotations from Chaucer, Spenser, Herrick got once more into rank and file with the affecting alacrity shown the other day at a review of the Chelsea invalids! Oh, William, ‘Let them die!’

So goodbye till to-morrow, my dearest. I love you and bless you ever, and am your

R.B.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday. [Post-mark, May 5, 1846.]

Yes, you were right, my Ba—our meeting was on the 20th of last May: the next letter I received was the 14th and that ran in my head, no doubt, yesterday. You must have many such mistakes to forgive in me when I undertake to talk and ‘stare’ at the same time ... well for me if they are no more serious mistakes!

I referred to my letters—and found much beside the date to reflect on. I will tell you. Would it not be perilous in some cases,—many cases—to contrast the present with the very early Past: the first time, even when there is abundant fruit, with the dewy springing and blossoming? One would confess to a regret at the vanishing of that charm, at least, if it were felt to be somehow vanished out of the present. And, looking upon our experience as if it were another’s,—undoubtedly the peril seems doubled—with that five months’ previous correspondence ... only then,—after all the curiosity, and hope and fear,—the first visit to come! And after,—shortly after,—you know—the heightened excitement that followed ... I should not believe in the case of another,—or should not have believed,—that the strange delight could last ... no more than I should think it reasonable to wonder, or even grieve, that it did not last—so long as other delights came in due succession. Now, hear the truth! I never, God knows, felt the joy of being with you as I felt it yesterday—the fruit of my happiness has grown under the blossom, lifting it and keeping it as a coronet—not one feeling is lost, and the new feelings are infinite. Ah, my Ba, can you wonder if I seem less inclined to see the adorable kindness in those provisions, and suppositions, and allowances for escape, change of mind &c., you furnish me with,—than to be struck at the strange fancy which, as I said, insists on my being free to leave off breathing vital air the moment it shall so please me?

And when I spoke of ‘dishonouring suppositions’ I had not the faintest approximation to an idea of standing in your eyes for a magnanimous keeper of promises, vow-observer, and the rest. All that is profoundly pitiable! But to change none of my views of the good of this life and the next, and yet to give up my love on the view (for instance) which sees that good in money, or worldly advancement,—what is that if not dishonouring?

All the while, I know your thought, your purpose in it all,—I believe and am sure—and I bless you from my heart—you will soon know, what you have to know—I believe, beforehand, I repeat.

I am rather out of spirits to-day—thus I feel toward you when at all melancholy ... you would undo me in withdrawing from me your help, undo me, I feel! When, as ordinarily, I am cheerful, I have precisely the same conviction. Does that prove nothing, my Ba?

Well, I give up proving, or trying to prove anything—from the beginning I abjured mere words—and now, much more!

Let me kiss you, ever best and dearest! My life is in the hand you call ‘mine,’—if that hand would ‘shake’ less from letting it fall, I earnestly pray God may relieve you of it nor ever let you be even aware of what followed your relief! For what should one live or die in this world?

I am wholly yours—

Did I not meet two of your brothers yesterday in the Hall? Pray take care of this cold wind—be satisfied with the good deeds of the last few days.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday. [Post-mark, May 6, 1846.]

Dearest, it has just come into my head that I should like to carry this letter to the post myself—but no, I shall not be able. Probably the post is far out of reach, and even if it were within reach, my grand scheme of walking in the street is scarcely a possible thing to-day, for I must keep watch in the house from two till five for Lady Margaret Cocks, an old friend of mine, who was kind to me when I was a child, in the country, and has not forgotten me since, when, two months in the year, she has been in the habit of going to London. A good, worthy person, with a certain cultivation as to languages and literature, but quite manquée on the side of the imagination ... talking of the poets, as a blind woman of colours, calling ‘Pippa Passes’ ‘pretty and odd,’ and writing herself ‘poems’ in heaps of copy books which every now and then she brings to show me ... ‘odes’ to Hope and Patience and all the cardinal virtues, with formulas of ‘Begin my muse’ in the fashion ended last century. She has helped to applaud and scold me since I could walk and write verses; and when I was so wicked as to go to dissenting chapels besides, she reproached me with tears in her eyes; but they were tears of earnest partizanship, and not of affection for me, ... she does not love me after all, nor guess at my heart, and I do not love her, I feel. Woe to us! for there are good and unlovable people in the world, and we cannot help it for our lives.

In the midst of writing which, comes the Leeds Miss Heaton, who used to send me those long confidential letters à faire frémir, and beg me to call her ‘Ellen,’ and as this is the second time that she has sent up her card, in an accidental visit to London, I thought I would be good-natured for once, and see her. An intelligent woman, with large black eyes and a pleasant voice, and young ... manners provincial enough, for the rest, and talking as if the world were equally divided between the ‘Congregationalists’ and the ‘Churchpeople.’ She assured me that ‘Dr. Vaughan was very much annoyed’ at the article on my poems which ‘crept’ into his review, and that it was fully intended to recant at length on the first convenient opportunity. ‘And really,’ she said, ‘it seems to me that you have as many admirers among churchmen as among dissenters.’! There’s glory!—and I kept my countenance. Lost it though, five minutes afterwards, when she observed pathetically, that a ‘friend of hers who had known Mr. Browning quite intimately, had told her he was an infidel ... more’s the pity, when he has such a genius.’ I desired the particular information of your intimate friend, a little more warmly perhaps than was necessary, ... but what could be expected of me, I wonder?

I shall write again to you to-night, you know, and this is enough for two o’clock. Now will you get my letter on this Tuesday? Do you think of me ... love me? And are you well to-day? The flowers look beautiful though you put their heads into the water instead of their feet.

Your Ba.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday Evening. [Post-mark, May 6, 1846.]

But my own only beloved, I surely did not speak too ‘insistingly’ yesterday. I shrank from your question as you put it, because you put it wrong. If you had asked me instead, whether I meant to keep my promise to you, I would have answered ‘yes’ without hesitation: but the form you chose, referred to you more than to me, and was indeed and indeed a foolish form of a question, my own dearest! For the rest ... ah, you do not see my innermost nature, ... you!—you are happily too high, and cannot see into it ... cannot perceive how the once elastic spring is broken with the long weights! ... you wonder that it should drop, when you, who lifted it up, do not hold it up! you cannot understand! ... you wonder! And I wonder too ... on the other side! I wonder how I can feel happy and alive ... as I can, through you! how I can turn my face toward life again ... as I can, for you! ... and chiefly of all, how I can ever imagine ... as I do, sometimes ... that such a one as you, may be happy perhaps with such a one as I! ... happy!

Do not judge me severely, you, to whom I have given both hands, for your own uses and ends!—you, who are more to me than I can be to you, even by your own statement—better to me than life ... or than death even, as death seemed to me before I knew you.

Certainly I love you enough, and trust you enough, if you knew what God knows. Yet, ... ‘now hear me.’ I shall not be able to please you, I think, by a firm continued belief of this engagement’s being justifiable, until the event wholly has justified it ... I mean, ... until I shall see you not less happy for having lived near me for six months or a year—should God’s mercy permit such justification. Do not blame me. I cannot help it ... I would, if I could, help it. Every time you say, as in this dearest letter, ever dearest, that you have been happy on such a day through being with me, I have a new astonishment—it runs through me from head to feet ... I open my eyes astonished, whenever my sun rises in the morning, as if I saw an angel in the sun. And I do see him, in a sense. Ah—if you make a crime to me of my astonishments, it is all over indeed! can I help it, indeed? So forgive me! let it not be too great a wrong to be covered by a pardon. Think that we are different, you and I—and do not think that I would send you to ‘money and worldly advancement’ ... do not think so meanly of my ambition for you.

Dearest dearest!—do you ever think that I could fail to you? Do you doubt for a moment, ever ... ever, ... that my hand might peradventure ‘shake less’ in being loosed from yours? Why, it might—and would! Dead hands do not shake at all,—and only so, could my hand be loosed from yours through a failing on my part. It is your hand, while you hold it: while you choose to hold it, and while it is a living hand.

Do you know what you are to me, ... you? We talk of the mild weather doing me good ... of the sun doing me good ... of going into the air as a means of good! Have you done me no good, do you fancy, in loving me and lifting me up? Has the unaccustomed divine love and tenderness been nothing to me? Think! Mrs. Jameson says earnestly ... said to me the other day ... that ‘love was only magnetism.’ And I say in my heart, that, magnet or no magnet, I have been drawn back into life by your means and for you ... that I see the dancing mystical lights which are seen through the eyelids ... and I think of you with an unspeakable gratitude always—always! No other could have done this for me—it was not possible, except by you.

But, no—do not, beloved, wish the first days here again. You saw your way better in them than I did. I had too bitter feelings sometimes: they looked to me like an epigram of destiny! as if ‘He who sitteth on high should laugh her to scorn—should hold her in derision’—as why not? My best hope was that you should be my friend after all. We will not have them back again ... those days! And in these, you do not love me less but more? Would it be strange to thank you? I feel as if I ought to thank you!

I have written, written, and have more to write, yet must end here now. The letter I wrote this morning and gave to my sister to leave in the post, she was so naughty as to forget, and has been well scolded as a consequence; but the scolding did not avail, I fear, to take the letter to you to-night; there is no chance! Mrs. Jameson came to-day when I was engaged with Lady Margaret Cocks and I could not see her—and Mr. Kenyon came, when I could see him and was glad. I am tired with my multitude of visitors—oh, so tired!

Why are you melancholy, dear, dearest? Was it my fault? could that be? no—you were unwell, I think ... I fear. Say how you are; and believe that you may answer your own questions, for that I never can fail to you. If two persons have one will on a matter of that sort, they need not be thwarted here in London—so answer your own questions.

Wholly and ever yours I am.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Wednesday. [Post-mark, May 6, 1846.]

Dearest Ba let me [be] silent, as on other occasions, over what you promise: one reads of ‘a contest in generosity,’ and now this party was as determined to give, as that party not to accept—far from anything so graceful, I am compelled to clutch at the offering, I take all, because, because—because I must, now! May God requite you, my best beloved!

I met Mrs. Jameson last evening and she began just as I prophesied ... ‘but’ said she ‘I will tell you all when you come and breakfast with me on Thursday—which a note of mine now on its way to you, desires may happen!’

A large party at Chorley’s, and admirable music—not without a pleasant person or two. I wish you could hear that marvellous Pischek, with his Rhine songs, and Bohemian melodies. Then a Herr Kellerman told a kind of crying story on the violoncello, full of quiet pathos, and Godefroi—if they so spell him—harped like a God harping, immortal victorious music indeed! Altogether a notable evening ... oh, the black ingratitude of man ... these few words are the poor ‘set-off’ to this morning’s weary yawning, and stupefaction. To-night having to follow beside! So near you I shall be! Mrs. J. is to [be] at the Procters’ to-night too. Oh, by the way, and in the straight way to make Ba laugh ... Mrs. J.’s first word was ‘What? Are you married?’ She having caught a bit of Miss Chorley’s enquiry after ‘Mrs. Browning’s health’ i.e. my mother’s. Probably Miss Heaton’s friend, who is my intimate, heard me profess complete infidelity as to—homœopathy ... que sais-je? But of all accusations in the world ... what do you say to my having been asked if I was not the Author of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ and ‘Othello’? A man actually asked me that, as I sate in Covent Garden Pit to see the second representation of ‘Strafford’—I supposed he had been set on by somebody, but the simple face looked too quiet for that impertinence—I was muffled up in a cloak, too; so I said ‘No—so far as I am aware.’ (His question was, ‘is not this Mr. Browning the author of &c. &c.’) After the play, all was made clear by somebody in Macready’s dressing room—two burlesques on Shakespeare were in the course of performance at some minor theatre by a Mr. Brown, or Brownley, or something Brown-like—and to these my friend had alluded.

So is begot, so nourished ‘il mondan rumore’—I, author of ‘Othello’!—when I can be, and am, and may tell Ba I am, her own, own

R.

The news about the post—the walk there which might have been,—that is pure delight! But take care, my all-precious love—festina lente. All the same, what a vision I have of the Bonnet!

E.B.B. to R.B.

Wednesday Evening. [Post-mark, May 7, 1846.]

Now, dearest, you are close by and I am writing to you as if you were ever so far off. People are not always the better, you see, for being near one another. There’s a moral to put on with your gloves—and if you were not quite sufficiently frightened by Mrs. Jameson’s salutation, it may be of some use to you perhaps—who knows?

She left word yesterday that she should come to-day or to-morrow, and as to-day she didn’t, I shall hear of you from her to-morrow ... that is, if you go to her breakfast, which you will do I dare say, supposing that you are not perfectly ill and exhausted by what came before. Ah—you do not say how you are—and I know what that means. Even the music was half lost in the fatigue ... that is what you express by ‘stupefaction.’ And then to have to dine at Mr. Procter’s without music ... say how you are ... do not omit it this time.

Nor think that I shall forget how to-morrow is the seventh of May ... your month as you call it somewhere ... in Sordello, I believe ... so that I knew before, you had a birthday there—and I shall remember it to-morrow and send you the thoughts which are yours, and pray for you that you may be saved from March-winds ... ever dearest!

I am glad you heard the music after all: it was something to hear, as you describe it.

To-day I had a book sent to me from America by the poetess Mrs. Osgood. Did you ever hear of a poetess Mrs. Osgood? ... and her note was of the very most affectionate, and her book is of the most gorgeous, all purple and gold—and she tells me ... oh, she tells me ... that I ought to go to New York, only ‘to see Mr. Poe’s wild eyes flash through tears’ when he reads my verses. It is overcoming to think of, even ... isn’t it? Talking of poetesses, such as Mrs. Osgood and me, Miss Heaton, ... the friend of your intimate friend, ... told me yesterday that the poetess proper of the city of Leeds was ‘Mrs. A.’ ... ‘Mrs. A.?’ said I with an enquiring innocence. ‘Oh,’ she went on, (divining sarcasms in every breath I drew) ... ‘oh! I dare say, you wouldn’t admit her to be a real poetess. But as she lives in Leeds and writes verses, we call her our poetess! and then, really, Mrs. A. is a charming woman. She was a Miss Roberts ... and her ‘Spirit of the Woods,’ and of the ‘Flowers’ has been admired, I assure you.’ Well, in a moment I seemed to remember something,—because only a few months since, surely I had a letter from somebody who once was a spirit of the Woods or ghost of the Flowers. Still, I could not make out Mrs. A. ...! ‘Certainly’ I confessed modestly, ‘I never did hear of a Mrs. A. ... and yet, and yet’.... A most glorious confusion I was in ... when suddenly my visitor thought of spelling the name ... ‘H e y’ said she. Now conceive that! The Mrs. Hey who came by solution, had both written to me and sent me a book on the Lakes quite lately ... ‘by the author of the Spirit of the Woods’.... There was the explanation! And my Leeds visitor will go back and say that I denied all knowledge of the charming Mrs. A. the Leeds poetess, and that it was with the greatest difficulty I could be brought to recognise her existence. Oh, the arrogance and ingratitude of me! And Mrs. A. ... being ‘a churchwoman’ ... will expose me of course to the churchwardens! May you never fall into such ill luck! You could not expect me to walk to the post office afterwards—now could you?

What nonsense and foolishness I take it into my head to send you sometimes.

I was down-stairs to-day but not out of the house. Now you are talking, now you are laughing—I think that almost I can hear you when I listen hard ... at Mr. Procter’s!

Do you, on the other side, hear me? ... and how I am calling myself your very own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Thursday. [Post-mark, May 7, 1846.]

No, dearest,—I get Mrs. Jameson’s leave to put the breakfast off till to-morrow—and this morning, instead of resting as I had intended, I wisely went to town, to get a call on Forster off my mind—I have walked there and back again ... see the weakness you pity! I cheat you, my Ba, of all that pity ... yet when I have got it, however unjustly, I lay it to my heart.

And I was at Mrs. Procter’s last night—Kinglake and Chorley, with a little of Milnes and Coventry Patmore—but no Howitts: because they have a sick child,—dying, I am afraid. On my return I found a note from Horne, who is in London of a sudden for a week.

Oh,—The Daily News passes into the redoubtable hands of Mr. Dilke,—and the price is to be reduced to 2½d, in emulation of the system recently adopted by the French Journals. Forster continues to write, on the new Editor’s particular entreaty. I rather think the scheme will succeed, Dilke having the experience the present régime wants—he will buy his privileges cheaply too. So that Chorley may possibly be employed. Here ends my patronage of it, at all events—not another number do I groan over!

Patmore told me in his quiet way that his criticisms—his book on which he had been expending a world of pains, is altogether superseded by the appearance of ‘Ulrici on Shakespeare’—‘the very words of many of his more important paragraphs are the same.’ That astounds one a little, does it not?

And what, what do you suppose Tennyson’s business to have been at Dickens’—what caused all the dining and repining? He has been sponsor to Dickens’ child in company with Count D’Orsay, and accordingly the novus homo glories in the prænomina, Alfred D’Orsay Tennyson Dickens! Ah, Charlie, if this don’t prove to posterity that you might have been a Tennyson and were a D’Orsay—why excellent labour will have been lost! You observe, ‘Alfred’ is common to both the godfather and the—devil-father, as I take the Count to be: so Milnes has been goodnaturedly circulating the report that in good truth it is the Alfred of neither personage, but of—Mr. Alfred Bunn. When you remember what the form of sponsorship is, to what it pledges you in the ritual of the Church of England— —and then remember that Mr. Dickens is an enlightened Unitarian,—you will get a curious notion of the man, I fancy.

Have you not forgotten that birthday? Do, my Ba, forget it—my day, as I told you, is the 20th—my true, happiest day! But I thank you all I can, dearest—All good to me comes through you, or for you—every wish and hope ends in you. May God bless you, ever dear Ba.—

Your own R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

May 7th, 1846.

Beloved, my thoughts go to you this morning, loving and blessing you! May God bless you for both His worlds—not for this alone. For me, if I can ever do or be anything to you, it will be my uttermost blessing of all I ever knew, or could know, as He knows. A year ago, I thought, with a sort of mournful exultation, that I was pure of wishes. Now, they recoil back on me in a spring-tide ... flow back, wave upon wave, ... till I should lose breath to speak them! and it is nothing, to say that they concern another ... for they are so much the more intensely mine, and of me. May God bless you, very dear! dearest.

So I am to forget to-day, I am told in the letter. Ah! But I shall forget and remember what I please. In the meanwhile I was surprised while writing thus to you this morning ... as a good deed to begin with ... by Miss Bayley’s coming. Remembering the seventh of May I forgot Thursday, which she had named for her visit, and altogether she took me by surprise. I thought it was Wednesday! She came and then, Mr. Kenyon came, ... and as they both went down-stairs together, Mrs. Jameson came up. Miss Bayley is what is called strong-minded, and with all her feeling for art and Beauty, talks of utility like a Utilitarian of the highest, and professes to receive nothing without proof, like a reasoner of the lowest. She told me with a frankness for which I did not like her less, that she was a materialist of the strictest order, and believed in no soul and no future state. In the face of those conclusions, she said, she was calm and resigned. It is more than I could be, as I confessed. My whole nature would cry aloud against that most pitiful result of the struggle here—a wrestling only for the dust, and not for the crown. What a resistless melancholy would fall upon me if I had such thoughts!—and what a dreadful indifference. All grief, to have itself to end in!—all joy, to be based upon nothingness!—all love, to feel eternal separation under and over it! Dreary and ghastly, it would be! I should not have strength to love you, I think, if I had such a miserable creed. And for life itself, ... would it be worth holding on such terms,—with our blind Ideals making mocks and mows at us wherever we turned? A game to throw up, this life would be, as not worth playing to an end!

There’s a fit letter for the seventh of May!—but why was Thursday the seventh, and not Wednesday rather, which would have let me escape visitors? I thank God that I can look over the grave with you, past the grave, ... and hope to be worthier of you there at least.

Mrs. Jameson did not say much, being hoarse and weak with a cold, but she told me of having met you at dinner, and found you ‘very agreeable.’ Also, beginning by a word about Professor Longfellow, who has married, it appears, and is a tolerably merciful husband for a poet ... (‘solving the problem of the possibility of such a thing,’ said she!) ... beginning so, she dropped into the subject of marriage generally, and was inclined to repropose Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s septennial act ... which might be a reform perhaps! ... what do you think? Have I not, altogether, been listening to improving and memorable discourse on this seventh of May? The ninth’s will be more after my heart.

I like Mrs. Jameson, mind!—and I like her views on many subjects—exclusive of the septennial marriage act, though.

How you amuse me by your account of the sponsorship! the illustrious D’Orsay with his paletot reputation, in a cleft stick of Alfred ... Tennyson! Bunn in the distance! A curious combination it makes really ... and you read it like a vates that you are!—

So, good night—dearest!—I think of you behind all these passing clouds of subjects, my poet of the Lyre and Crown! Look down on your own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Friday. [Post-mark, May 8, 1846.]

‘Look down on you’—my Ba? I would die for you, with triumphant happiness, God knows, at a signal from your hand! But that,—look down,—never, though you bade me again and again, and in such words! I look up,—always up,—my Ba. When I indulge in my deepest luxury, I make you stand ... do you not know that? I sit, and my Ba chooses to let me sit, and stands by,—understanding all the same how the relation really is between us,—how I would, and do, kiss her feet,—my queen’s feet!

Do you feel for me so, my love? I seldom dare to try and speak to you of your love for me ... my love I am allowed to profess ... I could not steadily (I have tried, whether you noticed it or no, and could not,) say aloud ‘and you love me’! Because it is altogether a blessing of your gift,—irrespective of my love to you—however it may go to increase it. Here are the words however. Human conviction is weak enough, no doubt,—but, when I forget these words, and this answer of my heart to them,—I cannot say it—

May God bless you, dearest dearest,—my Ba! I was at Mrs. Jameson’s this morning—she spoke of you so as to make my heart tremble with very delight—I never liked her so much ... I may say, never liked her before—by comparison. She read me your three translations,—clearly feeling their rare beauty; and now,—let me clap hands, my Ba, and ask you who knows best? She means to print both versions—the blank verse and the latter rhymed one. Of course, of course! But she said so many things—I must tell you to-morrow,—if you remind me. She felt such gratifications, too, at your thinking her etching of St. Cecilia worthy to hang by your chair, in your sight. Do you know, Ba, at the end,—à propos of her breakfast, I fairly took her by both hands, and shook them with a cordiality which I just reflect, tardily, may subject the Literary Character to a possible misconstruction. ‘He must have wanted a breakfast,’ she will say!

I am going to the Museum on Monday with her, to see Italian prints. I like her very much. And after breakfast, Mr. Kenyon came in, and Mr. Bezzi—and Mr. K. means to make me go and see him next Monday also, I believe.

But my seeing, and hearing, and enjoying—Saturday is my day for all that? To-morrow—by this time!—too great happiness it is, I know.

And I, too, look long over the grave, to follow you, my own heart’s love. Let Mrs. Jameson repeal those acts,—limit the seven years to seven days or less,—what matters? If the seven days have to be endured because of a law,—then I see the weariness of course—but in our case, if a benevolent Legislature should inform me, now, that if I choose, I may decline visiting you to-morrow—

... Ah, nefandum,—kiss me, my own Ba, and let the world legislate and decree and relieve and be otherwise notable—so they let me be your own for ever

R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Sunday. [Post-mark, May 11, 1846.]

Dearest when you use such words as ‘eligible ...’ (investment ... was it?) and I do not protest seriously and at length, it is through the very absurdity and unnaturalness ... as if you were to say that the last comet was made of macaroni, and Arago stood by, he would not think it worth while to confute you. Talking the worldly idiom, as you will tell me you just meant to do in those words, and considering the worldly considerations, why still the advantage is with you—I can do nothing that I can see, but stand in your sunshine. I solemnly assure you that only the apparent fact of your loving me, has overcome the scruple, which, on this ground, made me recoil from.... Well! there is no use now in talking. But for you to talk of what is eligible and ineligible for me, is too absurd—indeed it is. You might be richer, to be sure—but I like it better as it is, a hundred times—I should choose it to be so, if it were left to my choice. In every other respect, using the world’s measures, ... or the measure of the angel who measured the heavenly Jerusalem, ... you are beyond me ... above me—and nothing but your love for me could have brought us to a level. My love for you could not have tried, even! Now, if I teaze you with saying such things over and over, it is the right punishment for what you said yesterday about ‘eligible marriages’—now, isn’t it?

But your conclusion then was right. For if you were twice yourself, with a duchy of the moon to boot, it would avail nothing. We should have to carry all this underground work on precisely the same. Miserable it is, nevertheless—only, I keep my eyes from that side, as far as I can. I keep my eyes on your face. Yesterday Henrietta told me that Lady Carmichael, a cousin of ours, met her at the Royal Academy and took her aside to ‘speak seriously to her’ ... to observe that she looked thin and worried, and to urge her to act for herself ... to say too, that Mrs. Bayford, an old hereditary friend of ours, respected by us all for her serene, clear-headed views of most things,—and ‘of the strictest sect,’ too, for all domestic duties,—‘did not like, as a mother, to give direct advice, but was of opinion that the case admitted certainly and plainly of the daughter’s acting for herself.’ In fact, it was a message, sent under cover of a supposed irresponsibility. Which is one of a hundred proofs to show how this case is considered exceptional among our family friends, and that no very hard judgment will be passed at the latest. Only, on other grounds, I shall be blamed ... and perhaps by another class of speakers. As for telling Mr. Kenyon, it is most unadvisable, both for his sake and ours. Did you never hear him talk of his organ of caution? We should involve him in ever so many fears for us, and force him to have his share of the odium at last. Papa would not speak to him again while he lived. And people might say, ‘Mr. Kenyon did it all.’ No—if we are to be selfwilled, let us be selfwilled ... at least, let me! for you, of course, are free to follow your judgment in respect to your own friends. And then, it is rather a matter of feeling with me after all, that as I cannot give my confidence to my father, I should refuse it to others. I feel that a little.

Henrietta will do nothing, I think, this year—there are considerations of convenience to prevent it; and it is better for us that it should be so, and will not be worse for her in the end. I wish that man were a little nobler, higher ... more of a man! He is amiable, good-natured, easy-tempered, of good intentions in the main: but he eats and drinks and sleeps, and shows it all when he talks. Very popular in his regiment, very fond of his mother—there is good in him of course—and for the rest....

Dearest ... to compare others with you, would be too hard upon them. Besides, each is after his kind. Yet ... as far as love goes ... and although this man sincerely loves my sister, I do believe, ... I admit to myself, again and again, that if you were to adopt such a bearing towards me, as he does to her, I should break with you at once. And why? Not because I am spoilt, though you knit your brows and think so ... nor because I am exacting and offensible, though you may fancy that too. Nor because I hold loosely by you ... dearest beloved ... ready at a caprice to fall away. But because then I should know you did not love me enough to let you be happy hereafter with me ... you, who must love according to what you are! greatly, as you write ‘Lurias’!

To-morrow, shall you be at Mr. Kenyon’s? To-morrow I shall hear. Nothing has happened since I saw you. May God bless you.

Your own, I am.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday. [Post-mark, May 11, 1846.]

I am always telling you, because always feeling, that I can express nothing of what goes from my heart to you, my Ba; but there is a certain choice I have all along exercised, of subjects on which I would try and express somewhat—while others might be let alone with less disadvantage. When we first met, it was in your thought that I loved you only for your poetry ... I think you thought that. And because one might be imagined to love that and not you,—because everybody must love it, indeed, that is worthy, and yet needs not of necessity love you,—yet might mistake or determine to love you through loving it ... for all these reasons, there was not the immediate demand on me for a full expression of my admiration for your intellectuality,—do you see? Rather, it was proper to insist as little as possible on it, and speak to the woman, Ba, simply—and so I have tried to speak,—partly, in truth, because I love her best, and love her mind by the light and warmth of her heart—reading her verses, saying ‘and these are Ba’s,’—not kissing her less because they spoke the verses. But it does not follow that I have lost the sense of any delight that has its source in you, my dearest, dearest—however I may choose to live habitually with certain others in preference. I would shut myself up with you, and die to the world, and live out fifty long, long lives in bliss through your sole presence—but it is no less true that it will also be an ineffable pride,—something too sweet for the name of pride,—to avow myself, before anyone whose good opinion I am soliciting to retain, as so distinguished by you—it is too sweet, indeed,—so I guard against it,—for frequent allusion to it, might,—(as I stammer, and make plain things unintelligible) ... might cause you to misconceive me, which would be dreadful ... for after all, Ba’s head has given the crown its worth,—though a wondrous crown it is, too! All this means ... the avowal we were speaking of, will be a heart’s pride above every other pride whenever you decide on making such an avowal. You will understand as you do ever your own R.

On getting home I found letters and letters—the best being a summons to meet Tennyson at Moxon’s on Tuesday,—and the frightfullest ... nay, I will send it. Now, Ba, hold my hand from the distant room, tighter than ever, at about 8 o’clock on Wednesday ... for I must go, I fear—‘Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking’ &c. &c. ‘ἔα, ἔα, ἄπεχε, φεῦ.’ Then Mr. Kenyon writes that his friend Commodore Jones is returned to England in bad health and that he must away to Portsmouth and see him—so I do not go on Monday. While I was away Chorley’s brother (John Chorley) called,—having been put to the trouble of a journey hither for nothing.

I have been out this morning—to church with my sister—and the sun shone almost oppressively,—but now all is black and threatening. How I send my heart after your possible movements, my own all-beloved! Care for yourself, and for me. But a few months more,—if God shall please. May He bless you—