THE LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING AND ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 1845-1846 (continued 4)

Ever your own

Hail and rain—at a quarter to four o’clock!

R.B. to E.B.B.

Monday 4 o’clock. [Post-mark, May 11, 1846.]

Sweetest, I have this moment come from Town and Mrs. Jameson—the Marc-Antonio Prints kept us all the morning—and at last I said ‘There is a letter for me at home which I must go and answer.’ And now I cannot answer it—but I can love you and say so. God bless you, ever dearest. I have read your letter ... but only once. Now I shall begin my proper number of times—

Ever your very own

E.B.B. to R.B.

Monday. [Post-mark, May 12, 1846.]

It is too bad, or too good, or something. Almost I could reproach you, and quite would thank you! yet do not let it be so again. You are supernaturally kind ... kindestest, bestestest ... and, so, dearestest by the merest justice; only, to think of your hastening home, as if you were under an obligation to write to me in the face of the seven worlds, ... that is too much, and shall not be again—now see that it shall not. I seem to hear the rattling of the chain all this distance. And do, for the future, let it be otherwise. When you are kept in London, or in any way hindered, or unwell, ... in any case of the sort, let the vow be kept by one line, which, too late for the day’s post, may reach me the next day,—and I shall not be uneasy at eight o’clock, but wait ‘as those who wait for the morning.’ In the meanwhile how I thank you! The second dear letter comes close in the footsteps of the first, as your goodnesses are so apt to do.

Well!—and whatever you may think about Wednesday, I am pleased, and feel every inclination to ‘return thanks’ myself in reply to the bishop of Lincoln. I send the letter back lest you should want it. The worst is that you are likely to have a very bad headache with the noise and confusion—and the bishop’s blessing on the dramatists of England, will not prevent it, I fear.

Look what is inside of this letter—look! I gathered it for you to-day when I was walking in the Regent’s Park. Are you surprised? Arabel and Flush and I were in the carriage—and the sun was shining with that green light through the trees, as if he carried down with him the very essence of the leaves, to the ground, ... and I wished so much to walk through a half open gate along a shaded path, that we stopped the carriage and got out and walked, and I put both my feet on the grass, ... which was the strangest feeling! ... and gathered this laburnum for you. It hung quite high up on the tree, the little blossom did, and Arabel said that certainly I could not reach it—but you see! It is a too generous return for all your flowers: or, to speak seriously, a proof that I thought of you and wished for you—which it was natural to do, for I never enjoyed any of my excursions as I did to-day’s—the standing under the trees and on the grass, was so delightful. It was like a bit of that Dreamland which is your especial dominion,—and I felt joyful enough for the moment, to look round for you, as for the cause. It seemed illogical, not to see you close by. And you were not far after all, if thoughts count as bringers near. Dearest, we shall walk together under the trees some day!

And all those strange people moving about like phantoms of life. How wonderful it looked to me!—and only you, ... the idea of you ... and myself seemed to be real there! And Flush a little, too!—

Ah—what ... next to nonsense, ... in the first letter, this morning! So you think that I meant to complain when we first met, of your ‘loving me only for my poetry’! Which I did not, simply because I did not believe that you loved me!—for any reason. For the rest, I am not over-particular, I fancy, about what I may be loved for. There is no good reason for loving me, certainly, and my earnest desire (as I have said again and again) is, that there should be by profession no reason at all. But if there is to be any sort of reason, why one is as welcome as another ... you may love me for my shoes, if you like it ... except that they wear out. I thought you did not love me at all—you loved out into the air, I thought—a love a priori, as the philosophers might say, and not by induction, any wise! Your only knowledge of me was by the poems (or most of it)—and what knowledge could that be, when I feel myself so far below my own aspirations, morally, spiritually? So I thought you did not love me at all—I did not believe in miracles then, nor in ‘Divine Legations’—but my miracle is as good as Constantine’s, you may tell your bishop on Wednesday when he has delivered his charge.

Is it eight o’clock, or three? You write a [figure] which looks like both, or at least either.

Love me, my only beloved; since you can. May God bless you!

I am ever and wholly your

Ba.

Say how you are.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday. [Post-mark, May 12, 1846.]

My Ba, your flower is the one flower I have seen, or see or shall see—when it fades ‘I will bless it till it shine,’ and when I can bless you no longer it shall fade with me and my letters and ... perhaps ... my ring. Ba, if ... I was going to say, if you meant to make me most exquisitely happy ... and you did surely mean it ... well, you succeed, as you know! And I see you on the grass, and am with you as you properly acknowledge. And by this letter’s presence and testimony, I may judge you to be not much the worse,—not fatigued ... is it so? Oh, it was a good inspiration that led you through the half-opened gate and under the laburnum, and, better still, that made you see us ‘one day walking by the trees together’—when all I shall say is,—I hope, in spite of that felicity to remember and feel this, as vividly as now.

‘For the chain you hear rattle’ ... there comes the earthly mood again and the inspiration goes away altogether! So you being Miss Barrett and not my Ba for the moment, I will give you none of my, and Ba’s, syren-island illustrations, but ask you, what a fine lady would say if you caught at her diamond necklace and cried—‘You shall wear no such chains,—indeed you shall not!’ Why even Flush is proud of his corals and blue beads, you tell me! As for me,—being used to bear sundry heavier chains than this of writing to you—owning the degradation of being, for instance, forced to respire so many times a minute in order to live—to go out into the open air so as to continue well—with many similarly affronting impositions on a free spirit ... on the whole, I can very patiently submit to write a letter which is duly read, and forgiven for its imperfections, and interpreted into a rationality (sometimes) not its own, and then answered by the sweetest hand that ever ministered to the dearest, dearest Ba that ever was imagined, or can be! Ba,—there are three Syren’s Isles, you know: I shall infallibly get into the farthest of them, a full thirty yards from you and the tower,—so as to need being written to—for the cicale make such a noise that you will not be able to call to me—which is as well, for you may ... that is, I might—break my neck by a sudden leap on the needles of rocks ... as I remember the boatman told me.

As for what you wish yesterday ... the mode of my expressing my love ... I never think of it,—I have none—no system, nor attempt at such a thing—I begin and end by saying I love you—whatever comes of it. There is one obvious remark to make however ... that unless I had loved you and felt that every instant of my life depended on you for its support and comfort,—I should never have dreamed of what has been proposed and accepted ... Your own goodness at the very beginning would have rendered that superfluous; for I was put in possession of your friendship,—might write to you, and receive letters—might even hope to see you as often as anybody—would not this have sufficed a reasonable friendship? May not Mr. Kenyon be your satisfied friend?... But all was different—and so——

So I am blessed now—and can only bless you. But goodbye, dearest, till to-morrow—and next day, which is ours. At 8—eight I conjecture my martyrdom may take place ... oh, think of me and help me! I shall feel you,—as ever. You forgot the letter after all ... can you send it? It may be convenient to produce, as I know nobody of them all—terrible it is altogether! ‘At six’ the dinner begins— —I shall get behind my brother Dramatists ... and say very little about them, even.

Kiss me, in any case, of failure, or success,—and the one will be forgotten, and the other doubled, centupled—to your own—

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday. [Post-mark, May 13, 1846.]

When you began to speak of the islands, the three islands, I thought you were going to propose that you should live in one, and Flush in one, and I in the third: and almost it was so, ... only that you took, besides, the ‘farthest’ for yourself! Observe!—always I write nonsense, when you send me a letter which moves me like this, ... dearest, ... my own!

To-day Mrs. Jameson has been here, and having left with me a proof about Titian, she comes again to-morrow to take it. I think her quite a lovable person now—I like her more and more. How she talked of you to-day, and called you the most charming companion in the world, setting you too on your right throne as ‘poet of the age.’ Wouldn’t it have been an ‘effect’ in the midst of all, if I had burst out crying? And what with being flurried, frightened, and a little nervous from not sleeping well last night, I assure you it was quite possible—but happily, on every account, I escaped that ‘dramatic situation.’ I wish ... no, I can’t wish that she wouldn’t talk of you as she does whenever she comes here. And then, to make it better, she told me how you had recited ‘in a voice and manner as good as singing,’ my ‘Catarina.’ How are such things to be borne, do you think, when people are not made of marble? But I took a long breath, and held my mask on with both hands.

You will tell me of the Marc Antonio prints,—will you not? Remember them on Thursday. Raffael’s—are they not? I shall expect ever so much teaching, and showing, and explaining ... I, who have seen and heard nothing of pictures and music, from you who know everything ... so the cicale must not be too loud for that. Did ever anyone say to you that you were like Raffael’s portrait—not in the eyes, which are quite different, but in the lower part of the face, the mouth, and also the brow? It has struck me sometimes—and I had it on my lips to-day as a question to Mrs. Jameson. I think I was mad to-day altogether. But she did not see it—(I mean my madness ... not your likeness!) [and] went away unconsciously.

Here, at last, is the letter! Careless that I was yesterday!—

And you take me to be too generous if you fancy that I proposed giving up the daily letter which is my daily bread. I meant only that you should not, for the sake of a particular post, tire yourself, hurry yourself, ... do what you did yesterday. As for the daily letter, I am Ba—not Miss Barrett. Now, am I Miss Barrett? am I not Ba rather, and your Ba? I should like to hear what will be heard to-morrow. Oh—I should like to be under the table, or in a pasty, after the fashion of the queen’s dwarf when Elizabeth was queen and Shakespeare poet. Shall you be nervous, as I was with Mrs. Jameson? Oh no,—why should you be nervous? You will do it all well and gracefully—I am not afraid for you. It is simply out of vain-glory that I wish to be there! Only ... the dramatists of England ... where in the world are they just now? Or will somebody prove ten of them,—because nought after one, makes exactly ten? Mr. Horne indeed. But I wish the toast had been ‘the poets of England,’ rather. May God bless you, any way! ‘I love you whatever comes of it.’ Yes, unless sorrow of yours should come of it, that is what I like to hear. Better it is, than a thousand praises of this thing and that thing, which never were mine ... alas!—Also, loving me so, you can be made happy with laburnum-leaves!—Dearest—most dear! Dare I speak, do you think?

Exactly at eight to-morrow, and exactly at three the next day, I shall be with you—being at any hour

Your very own.

The walk did me no harm. But you say nothing of yourself!

R.B. to E.B.B.

Wednesday. [Post-mark, May 13, 1846.]

Dearest, dearest, I shall be with you to-morrow and be comforted—and will tell you all about everything. I am a little tired (but very well, altogether well, singularly so)—and I do feel a little about to-night’s affair, though you may not. You, indeed, to judge me by yourself! But, after all I do not greatly care ... I can but get up and stammer and say ‘thank you’ and sit down again, like my betters,—and—as I say and say,—you are at the end of everything ... so long as I find you! I hoped that Tennyson was to have been Poet-respondent—but Moxon says ‘no’ ... and, moreover, that the Committee had meant (and he supposed had acted upon their meaning) to offer me the choice of taking either qualification, of Poetry or the Drama, as mine ... but they have altered their mind. As it is ... observe—(you will find a list of Stewards in last Athenæum)—observe that they are all Bishops or Deans or Doctors ... and that all will be grave and heavy enough, I dare say. So I shall try and speak for about five minutes on the advantages of the Press over the Stage as a medium of communication of the Drama ... and so get done, if Heaven please!

I saw Tennyson last night—and ... oh, let me tell you to-morrow. Also, Severn, I saw ... Keats’ Severn, who bought his own posthumous picture of Keats, and talked pleasantly about him and Shelley (Tennyson asked me ‘what I thought of Shelley’—in so many words). Moxon’s care of him,—Tennyson, not Severn,—is the charmingest thing imaginable, and he seems to need it all—being in truth but a long, hazy kind of a man, at least just after dinner ... yet there is something ‘naif’ about him, too,—the genius you see, too.

May God bless you, my dearest dearest,—to-morrow repays for all—

E.B.B. to R.B.

Friday. [Post-mark, May 15, 1846.]

The treader on your footsteps was Miss Bayley, who left a card and ‘would come another day.’ She must have seen you.... One of these days, ‘scirocco’ will be ‘loose’—we may as well be prepared for it. To keep it off as long as possible is all that can be. But when it comes it will not uproot my palm-trees, I think, though it should throw flat the olives.

Papa brought me some flowers yesterday when he came home ... and they went a little to my heart as I took them. I put them into glasses near yours, and they look faded this morning nevertheless, while your roses, for all your cruelty to them, are luxuriant in beauty as if they had just finished steeping themselves in garden-dew. I look gravely from one set of flowers to the other—I cannot draw a glad omen—I wish he had not given me these. Dearest, there seems little kindness in teazing you with such thoughts ... but they come and I write them: and let them come ever so sadly, I do not for a moment doubt ... hesitate. One may falter, where one does not fail. And for the rest, ... it is my fault, and not my sorrow rather, that we act so? It is by choice that we act so? If he had let me I should have loved him out of a heart altogether open to him. It is not my fault that he would not let me. Now it is too late—I am not his nor my own, any more.

This morning I have had American letters of the kindest ... from Massachusetts—and a review on my poems, quite extravagant indeed, in the Methodist Quarterly. One of these letters is so like another, that I need only tell you of them ... written too by people ... Lydias and Richards ... never heard of before by either of us. The review repeats the fabulous story in the ‘Spirit of the Age,’ about unknown tongues and a seven years’ eclipse in total darkness—but I say to myself ... after all, the real myth is scarcely less wonderful. If I have not all this knowledge ... I have you ... which is greater, better! ‘Not less wonderful’ did I say? when it is the miracle....

Oh, these people!—I am seized and bound. More to-night! from

Your own

Ba.

Say how you are.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Friday. [Post-mark, May 15, 1846.]

The sun is warm, and the day, I suppose, is fine,—but my Ba will have been kept at home by the vile wind—most vile—even I feel it! So the spring passes away without the true spring feeling—all the blossoms are fast going already—and one’s spirits are affected, I dare say. Did you not think me intolerable yesterday with my yawning and other signs of fatigue you noticed? Well now—I do think a little is said by all that: might one not like or even love ... just short of true love, so long as the spirits were buoyant and the mind cheerful,—and when the contrary befell, some change might appear, surely!

The more I need you the more I love you, Ba—and I need you always—in joy, to make the joy seem what it is—and in any melancholy that I can imagine, more still, infinitely more, I need you—though melancholy, I certainly was not—only tired a little ... all I mean to say is, that at times when I could, I think, shut up Shelley, and turn aside from Beethoven, and look away from my noble Polidoro,—my Ba’s ring—not to say the hand—ah, you know, Ba, what they are to me!

I have to go out to-day, to my sorrow—to the Garrick Club, and a friend there. (My sister tells me we have to go to the Flower-show next Wednesday unless the day be rainy. I shall hear from Mr. Kenyon, I expect.)

Let me end the chapter we began yesterday, about speech-making and adepts in it of various kinds, by telling you what my father made me laugh by an account of, the other day ... only it should be really told, and not written. He had a curiosity to know how would-be Parliamentary members canvassed ... and as the Chamberlain of the City, Sir James Shaw, came into the Bank for that purpose (there being Livery men there, or whatever they are called, with votes) my father followed to hear how he would address people. Sir James, a gigantic man, went about as his friends directed ... or rather pushed and shoved him ... and whenever they reached an Elector the whole cortège stopped, Sir James made his speech, the friends, book and pencil in hand, recorded the promise the moment it was made, and forthwith wheeled round their candidate to the next man ... no word of speechification being to be wasted once its object accomplished, since time pressed—so now fancy. Friends (to Sir J) ‘Mr. Snooks, Sir James!’ Sir J. (with his eyes shut, and head two feet above Snooks) ‘When Charles Fox came into Parliament, he came into Parliament with a profusion of promises, of which I’ll defy Charles Fox’s best friends to say that he ever kept a single one’—(Friends twitch him)—‘Thankee Sir,’—‘Mr. Smith.’ ‘When Charles Fox came into Parliament ... thankee, Sir’—‘Mr. Thompson’—‘When Charles Fox ... thankee!’ &c. &c. And so on from man to man, never getting beyond this instructive piece of anecdotical history—till at the very last a little Elector, reaching to the great man’s elbow, let him go to the full length of the sentence’s tether from admiration of such an orator ... did not say briefly ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as the others had done. So Sir James arrived duly at ... ‘kept a single one. Thus—if ... as it were ... eh? oh!’ Here he opened his eyes with a start, missing the pushing and driving from his friends in the rear—and finding it was only this little man; he abruptly stopped ... was not going to spend more eloquence on him! There, Ba; you tell me you write nonsense ... I do the thing, the precise thing! But no more nonsense because I am going to kiss you, which is wise, and love you with my whole heart and soul forever, which is wiser, and pray you to love me, dear, dear Ba, which is the wisest! Sweetest, may God bless you,—

Your very own.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Friday Evening. [Post-mark, May 16, 1846.]

Not even do you yawn in vain then, O you! And this, then, is what Cicero called ‘oscitans sapientia?’ The argument of the yawn ought in fact, to be conclusive!

But, dearest, if it was ‘intolerable’ to see you yawn yesterday, still less supportable was it to-day when I had all the yawning to myself, and proved nothing by it. Tired I am beyond your conceiving of ... tired! You saw how I broke off in my letter to you this morning. Well—that was Miss Heaton, who came yesterday and left the packet you saw, and came again to-day and sate here exactly three hours. Now imagine that! Three hours of incessant restless talking. At the end I was blanched, as everybody could see, and Mrs. Jameson who came afterwards for five minutes and was too unwell herself to stay, seriously exhorted me not to exert myself too much lest I should pay the penalty. And I had not been down-stairs even—only been ground down in the talking-mill. Arabel told her too, before she came up-stairs, that I was expecting a friend—‘Oh’ ... said she to me, ‘I shall go away directly anyone comes.’ And again presently ... ‘Pray tell me when I ought to go away’! (As if I could say Go. She deserved it, but I couldn’t!) And then ... ‘How good of you to let me sit here and talk!’ So good of me, when I was wishing her ... only at Leeds in the High Street, between a dissenter and a churchman—anywhere but opposite to my eyes! Yet she has very bright ones, and cheeks redder than your roses; and she is kind and cordial ... as I thought in the anguish of my soul, when I tried to be grateful to her. Certainly I should have been more so, if she had stayed a little less, talked a little less—it is awful to think how some women can talk! Happily she leaves London to-morrow morning, and will not be here again till next year, if then. She talked biography too ... ah, I did not mean to tell you—but it is better to tell you at once and have done ... only she desired me not to mention it ... only she little knew what she was doing! You will not mention it. She told me that ‘her informant about Mr. Browning, ... was a lady to whom he had been engaged ... that there had been a very strong attachment on both sides, but that everything was broken off by her on the ground of religious differences—that it happened years ago and that the lady was married.’ At first I exclaimed imprudently enough (but how could it be otherwise?) that it was not true—but I caught at the bridle in a minute or two and let her have it her own way. Do not answer this—it is nonsense, I know—but it helped to tire me with the rest. Wasn’t it a delightful day for me? At the end of the three hours, she threw her arms round me and kissed me some half dozen times and wished me ‘goodbye’ till next year. Wilson found me standing in the middle of the room, looking as she said, ‘like a ghost.’ And no wonder! The ‘vile wind’ out of doors was nothing to it.

Dearest, you are well? Your letter says nothing. Only one more letter, and then Monday. Ah—it is the sweetest of flattery to say that you ‘need’ me—but isn’t it difficult to understand? Yet while you even fancy that you have such a need, you may be sure (let Charles Fox break his promises ever so!) of your own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Saturday. [Post-mark, May 16, 1846.]

Then, dearest-dearest, do take Mrs. Jameson’s advice—do take care of the results of this fatigue—why should you see any woman that pleases to ask to come? I am certain that some of the men you have refused to admit, would be more considerate—and Miss Heaton must be a kind of fool into the bargain with her inconsiderateness ... though that is the folly’s very self. As for her ‘Yorkshire Tragedy,’ I hold myself rather aggrieved by it—they used to get up better stories of Lord Byron,—and even I told you, anticipatingly, that I caused that first wife of mine to drown and hang herself ... whereas, now, it turns out she did neither, but bade me do both ... nay, was not my wife after all! I hope she told Miss Heaton the story in the presence of the husband who had no irreligious scruples. But enough of this pure nonsense—I had, by this post that brings me your last letter, one from Horne—he leaves to-day for Ireland, and says kind things about my plays—and unkind things of Mr. Powell ‘a dog he repudiates for ever.’ So our ‘clique’ is deprived of yet another member!

For me, love,—I am pretty well—but rather out of spirits,—for no earthly cause. I shall take a walk and get better presently—your dear letters have their due effect, all that effect!

So, dear,—all my world, my life, all I look to or live for, my own Ba—I will bless you and bid you goodbye for to-day—to-morrow I will write more—and on Monday—return, my Ba, this kiss ... my dearest above all dearness!

E.B.B. to R.B.

Saturday Morning. [Post-mark, May 16, 1846.]

You shall hear from me on this Sunday, though it cannot be as an answer, dearest, to your letter of to-night. But I being so wretchedly tired last night, and ‘yawning’ being, to your mind, so ‘intolerable,’ it is as well to leave a better impression with you than that ... though there is nothing to say, and the east wind blows on virulently.

The Athenæum has put me out of humour for the day ... besides. Not a word of ‘Luria’—not a word of the Literary Fund dinner, and a great, drawling carrying out of the ‘Poetry for the Million’ article ... as if all this trash could not die of itself!—as if it were not dead of itself!—That the critics of a country should set themselves to such work ... is as if the Premier of England took his official seat in the window to kill flies, ... talking, with his first finger out, of ‘my administration.’ Only flies are flies and have fly-life in them: they are nobler game than those.

Mrs. Jameson, while she was here the five minutes yesterday, talked, in an under-breath to my under-breath opposition, her opinion about the present age. ‘That the present age did not, could not, ought not, to express itself by Art, ... though the next age would.’ She is surprisingly wrong, it appears to me. There is no predominant character in the age, she says, to be so expressed! there is no unity, to bear expression.

But art surely, if art is anything, is the expression, not of the characteristics of an age except accidentally, ... essentially it is the expression of Humanity in the individual being—and unless we are men no longer, I cannot conceive how such an argument as hers can be upheld for a moment. Also it is exasperating to hear such things.

Then I do not believe, for one, that genius in the arts is a mere reflection of the character of the times. Genius precedes surely,—initiates. It is genius which gives an Age its character and imposes its own colour.... But I shall not write any more. Her paper on ‘Titian’s House at Venice,’ which she let me read in proof, and which is one of the essays she is printing now, is full of beauty and truth, and I admired it heartily. Then there is a quotation about the ‘calm, cold, beautiful regard,’ of ‘Virgin child and saint’ ... which you may remember perhaps. I know you will like the essay and feel it to be Venetian.

That you were feeling the east wind, beloved, meant that you were not well, though you have quite left off telling me a word of yourself lately. And why? It shall not be so next week,—now shall it? May God bless you. I am afraid of going down-stairs, because of the double-knocks. It will be great gain to have the loudest noises from the cicale. Except when somebody else is noisy,—which is a noise I am always forgetting, just as if it were impossible.

Your own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday. (Day before to-morrow!) [Post-mark, May 18, 1846.]

How kind to write to me and help me through the gloomy day with a light! I could certainly feel my way in the dark and reach to-morrow without very important stumbling, but now I go cheerfully on, spite of a little headache and weariness. Need you? I should hate life apart from you. Knowing what I say, I should hate it—the life of my soul as seen apart from that of the mere body ... to which, to the necessities of which, no human being ever ministered before, and which, now that I have known you, I myself cannot provide for,—or could not were you removed,—even after the imperfect fashion of former times. If you ask Mrs. Jameson she will tell you, if she has thought it worth remembering, that I once, two or three years ago, explained to her that I could not believe in ‘love’ nor understand it,—nor be subject to it consequently. I said—‘all you describe as characteristics of the passion—I should expect to find in men more easily and completely—’ now I know better, and my year’s life spent in this knowledge makes all before it look pale and all after, if an after could come, look black.

Why do I write so? I am rather dull, this horrible day, and cling to you the closelier.

All you write about Art is most true. Carlyle has turned and forged, reforged on his anvil that fact ‘that no age ever appeared heroic to itself’ ... and so, worthy of reproduction in Art by itself ... I thought after Carlyle’s endeavours nobody could be ignorant of that,—nobody who was obliged to seek the proof of it out of his own experience. The cant is, that ‘an age of transition’ is the melancholy thing to contemplate and delineate—whereas the worst things of all to look back on are times of comparative standing still, rounded in their important completeness. So the young England imbeciles hold that ‘belief’ is the admirable point—in what, they judge comparatively immaterial! The other day I took up a book two centuries old in which ‘glory’, ‘soldiering’, ‘rushing to conquer’ and the rest, were most thoroughly ‘believed in’—and if by some miracle the writer had conceived and described some unbeliever, unable to ‘rush to conquer the Parthians’ &c., it would have been as though you found a green bough inside a truss of straw.

But you know—

And I know one thing, one—but one—I love you, shall love you ever, living and dying your own—

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday Morning. [Post-mark, May 19, 1846.]

My own ever dearest, when I try to thank you for such a letter as yesterday’s, ... for any proof, in fact, of your affection, ... I cannot speak: but you know, of this and all things, that I understand, feel—you must know it very well. There is only one thing I can do as I ought, and it is to love you; and the more I live, not ‘the less’ but the more I am able to love you—believe it of me. And for the less, ... we never will return to that foolish subject, ... but for the ‘less you spoke of when you said ‘you do not love me less?’ ... why I thought at the moment and feel now, that it would be too late, as I am, ever, upon any possible ground, to love you less. If you loved me less ... even!—or (to leave that) if you were to come to me and say that you had murdered a man—why I may imagine such things, you know—but I cannot imagine the possibility of my loving you less, as a consequence of your failing so! I am yours in the deepest of my affections:—not unreasonably, certainly, as I see you and know you—but if it were to turn unreasonable ... I mean, if you took away the appearance of reasonableness ... still I should be yours in the deepest of my affections ... it is too late for a difference there.

Mrs. Jameson has just now sent me a proof with the ‘Daughters of Pandarus,’ which she is to call for presently and therefore I must come to an end with this note. How I shall think of you to-morrow! And if it should be fine, I may perhaps drive in the park near the gardens ... take my sisters to the gate of the gardens, and feel that you are inside! That will be something, if it is feasible. And if it is fine or not, and if I go or not, I shall remember our first day, the only day of my life which God blessed visibly to me, the only day undimmed with a cloud ... my great compensation-day, which it was worth while being born for!

Your very own

Ba.

Oh—you will not see me to-morrow, remember! I tell you only out of cunning ... to win a thought!

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday. [Post-mark, May 19, 1846].

With this day expires the first year since you have been yourself to me—putting aside the anticipations, and prognostications, and even assurances from all reasons short of absolute sight and hearing,—excluding the five or six months of these, there remains a year of this intimacy. You accuse me of talking extravagantly sometimes. I will be quiet here,—is the tone too subdued if I say, such a life—made up of such years—I would deliberately take rather than any other imaginable one in which fame and worldly prosperity and the love of the whole human race should combine, excluding ‘that of yours—to which I hearken’—only wishing the rest were there for a moment that you might see and know that I did turn from them to you. My dearest, inexpressibly dearest. How can I thank you? I feel sure you need not have been so kind to me, so perfectly kind and good,—I should have remained your own, gratefully, entirely your own, through the bare permission to love you, or even without it—seeing that I never dreamed of stipulating at the beginning for ‘a return,’ and ‘reward,’—but I also believe, joyfully, that no course but the course you have taken would have raised me above my very self, as I feel on looking back. I began by loving you in comparison with all the world,—now, I love you, my Ba, in the face of your past self, as I remember it.

All words are foolish—but I kiss your feet and offer you my heart and soul, dearest, dearest Ba.

I left you last evening without the usual privilege—you did not rise, Ba! But,—I don’t know why,—I got nervous of a sudden, it seemed late and I remembered the Drawing-room and its occupants.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday Evening. [Post-mark, May 20, 1846.]

Do you remember how, when poor Abou Hassan, in the Arabian story, awakens from sleep in the Sultan’s chamber, to the sound of instruments of music, he is presently complimented by the grand vizier on the royal wisdom displayed throughout his reign ... do you remember? Because just as he listened, do I listen, when you talk to me about ‘the course I have taken’.... I, who have just had the wit to sit still in my chair with my eyes half shut, and dream ... dream!—Ah, whether I am asleep or awake, what do I know ... even now? As to the ‘course I have taken,’ it has been somewhere among the stars ... or under the trees of the Hesperides, at lowest....

Why how can I write to you such foolishness? Rather I should be serious, grave, and keep away from myths and images, and speak the truth plainly. And speaking the truth plainly, I, when I look back, dearest beloved, see that you have done for me everything, instead of my doing anything for you—that you have lifted me.... Can I speak? Heavens!—how I had different thoughts of you and of myself and of the world and of life, last year at this hour! The spirits who look backward over the grave, cannot feel much otherwise from my feeling as I look back. As to your thanking me, that is monstrous, it seems to me. It is the action of your own heart alone, which has appeared to do you any good. For myself, if I do not spoil your life, it is the nearest to deserving thanks that I can come. Think what I was when you saw me first ... laid there on the sofa as an object of the merest compassion! and of a sadder spirit than even the face showed! and then think of all your generosity and persistence in goodness. Think of it!—shall I ever cease? Not while the heart beats, which beats for you.

And now as the year has rounded itself to ‘the perfect round,’ I will speak of that first letter, about which so many words were, ... just to say, this time, that I am glad now, yes, glad, ... as we were to have a miracle, ... to have it so, a born-miracle from the beginning. I feel glad, now, that nothing was between the knowing and the loving ... and that the beloved eyes were never cold discerners and analyzers of me at any time. I am glad and grateful to you, my own altogether dearest! Yet the letter was read in pain and agitation, and you have scarcely guessed how much. I could not sleep night after night,—could not,—and my fear was at nights, lest the feverishness should make me talk deliriously and tell the secret aloud. Judge if the deeps of my heart were not shaken. From the first you had that power over me, notwithstanding those convictions which I also had and which you know.

For it was not the character of the letter apart from you, which shook me,—I could prove that to you—I received and answered very calmly, with most absolute calmness, a letter of the kind last summer ... knowing in respect to the writer of it, (just as I thought of you), that a moment’s enthusiasm had carried him a good way past his discretion. I am sure that he was perfectly satisfied with my way of answering his letter ... as I was myself. But you ... you ... I could not escape so from you. You were stronger than I, from the beginning, and I felt the mastery in you by the first word and first look.

Dearest and most generous. No man was ever like you, I know! May God keep me from laying a blot on one day of yours!—on one hour! and rather blot out mine!

For my life, it is yours, as this year has been yours. But how can it make you happy, such a thing as my life? There, I wonder still. It never made me happy, without you!—

Your very own

Ba.

Mrs. Jameson was here to-day and brought a message from Mr. Kenyon, who comes to-morrow at one. The sun does not promise to come besides—does he?

Mrs. Jameson goes to Brighton on Thursday, and returns in a day or two to spend another month or six weeks in town, changing her lodgings.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Wednesday. [Post-mark, May 20, 1846.]

My Ba, I can just kneel down to you and be kissed,—I cannot do more, nor speak, nor thank you—and I seem to have no more chance of getting new love to give you,—all is given,—so I have said before, and must keep saying now—all of me is your very own.

My sister (whose engagement, and not mine, this was) decides to act according to the letter of Mr. Kenyon’s kind instructions, and keeps at home on account of the rain. She is very subject to colds and sore-throat which the least dampness underfoot is sure to produce in her. So I am not near you! You would not go, however,—I think, would not go,—to the Park gate as you conditionally promised—I do not, therefore, miss my flower-show, my ‘rose tree that beareth seven times seven.’ But the other chance which your last letter apprises me of,—the visit of Mr. Kenyon,—which, by going in time to him, I might perhaps make my own too—that, on a second thought, I determine to forego ... because it jeopardizes my Saturday, which will be worth so many, many such visits,—does it not? There is no precedent in our golden year for three visits taking place in a single week—not even in that end of October when all the doubt was about the voyage—how I remember!

I shall be more with you than if in the presence of people before whom I may not say ‘Miss Barrett’ with impunity while professing to talk of Miss—I forget who! But ‘more with you’ I who am always with you!

Always with you in the spirit, always yearning to be with you in the body,—always, when with you, praying, as for the happiest of fortunes, that I may remain with you for ever. So may it be, prays your

own, own R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Wednesday, May 20.

Was it very wrong of me that never did I once think of the possibility of your coming here with Mr. Kenyon? Never once had I the thought of it. If I had, I should have put it away by saying aloud ‘Don’t come’; because as you say, it would have prevented Saturday’s coming, the coming to-day would, ... and also, as you do not say, it would have been infinitely hard for me to meet you and Mr. Kenyon in one battalion. Oh no, no! The gods forefend that you should come in that way! It was bad enough as it was, to-day, when while he sate here his ten minutes, (first showing me a sonnet from America, which began ‘Daughter of Græcian Genius!’) he turned those horrible spectacles full on me and asked, ‘Does Mrs. Jameson know that Mr. Browning comes here?’ ‘No,’ said I,—suddenly abashed, though I had borne the sonnet like a hero. ‘Well, then! I advise you to give directions to the servants that when she or anyone else asks for you, they should not say Mr. Browning is with you,—as they said the other day to Miss Bayley who told me of it.’ Now, wasn’t that pleasant to hear? I thanked him for his advice, and felt as uncomfortable as was well possible—and am, at this moment, a little in doubt how he was thinking while he spoke. Perhaps after the fashion of my sisters, when they cry out ‘Such a state of things never was heard of before!’ Not that they have uttered one word of opposition ... not, from the first they knew, ... understand!—but that they are frightened at what may be said by people who take for granted that we are strangers, you and I, to one another. Ah!—a little more, a little less ... of what consequence is it?

Such a day, to-day!—it was finer last year I remember! and Tuesday, instead of Wednesday! Your sister was right, very right—though mine went—but the distance was less, with us. A party of twelve went from this house—‘among us but not of us.’ For my part, I have not stirred from my room of course—the carriage was out of the question. And, if you please, I never ‘promised’ to be at the park gate—oh indeed, I never meditated seeing you even from afar—I thought only that I should hear a little distant music and remember that, where it sounded, you were, that was all, ... and too much, the stars made out, and so drove down the clouds.

Poor Mr. Kenyon was grave—depressed about his friend, who is in a desperate state—dying in fact. He returns to Portsmouth to-morrow to be with him till the change comes.

Dearest, how are you? Never now will you condescend to say how you are. Which is not to be allowed in this second year of our reign. I am very well. Yesterday I heard some delightful matrimonial details of an ‘establishment’ in Regent’s Park, quite like an old pastoral in the quickness of the repartee. ‘I hate you’—‘I abhor you’—‘I never liked you’—‘I always detested you.’ A cup and saucer thrown bodily, here, by the lady! On which the gentleman upsets her, ... chair and all, ... flat on the floor. The witness, who is a friend of mine, gets frightened and begins to cry. She was invited to the house to be godmother to their child, and now she is pressed to stay longer to witness the articles of separation.

Oh, I suppose such things are common enough!—But what is remarkable here, is the fact that neither party is a poet, by the remotest courtesy.

Goodnight, dear dearest—

I am your

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Thursday. [Post-mark, May 21, 1846.]

Just as I write, the weather is a little more proper for this ‘the blest ascension-day of the cheerful month of May’: may you not go out therefore, my Ba? Or down-stairs, at all events. We were sorry, Sarianna and I, to see the bright afternoon yesterday ... we ought to have gone, perhaps—but Mr. Kenyon is good and will understand; spite of the spectacles. But what sonnet is that, you perverse Ba, of which you give me the two or three words,—in print,—how, where? And if I do not request and request I shall be sure to hear nothing of that American review again,—so, I do request, Ba!

Last night brought Dickens’ ‘Pictures from Italy’—which I read this morning. He seems to have expended his power on the least interesting places,—and then gone on hurriedly, seeing or describing less and less, till at last the mere names of places do duty for pictures of them, and at Naples he fairly gives it up ... the Vesuvius’ journey excepted. But the book is readable and clever—shall I bring it?—(or next week when everybody here has done with it).

I know, dearest, you did not promise me that beatific vision by the gate—but was not enough said to justify me in waiting for you there? Indeed, yes—only the rain and wind seemed to forbid you; as they did. Were your sisters pleased? I am not sure I should have been glad to meet them so—I could not have left my sister (whom nobody would have known)—and then, with that unspoken secret between us. Also I please myself by hoping that Mr. Kenyon was only relieved of a great trouble and annoyance in the present state of his anxieties by our keeping away. Poor Captain Jones—really a fine, manly, noble fellow—I am heartily sorry. As for me, since Ba asks, I am pretty well,—much better in some points, and no worse in the rest—all is right but the little sound in the head which will be intrusive—but I must walk it away presently, or think it away at worst.

For, dearest, dearest Ba, I can cure all pains at once with you to think of, and to love, and to bless. So, bless you!

Your R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Thursday. [Post-mark, May 22, 1846.]

Dearest, when your letter came I was cutting open the leaves of Dickens’ ‘Letters from Italy’ which Papa had brought in—so I am glad to have your thoughts of the book to begin with. Before your letter came I had sent you the review, as you will find. What changes, what changes! And the sonnet was purely manuscript, and for the good of the world should remain so. Oh—you cannot care for all this trash—such trash! Why I had a manuscript sonnet sent to me last autumn by ‘person or persons unknown,’ ... ‘To EBB on her departure from England to Pisa.’ Can you fancy that melodious piece of gossipping? Then a lady of the city, famous, I believe, for haberdashery, used to address all her poems to me—which really was original ... for she would write five or six ‘poems’ on an evening, and sweep them up and send them to me once a fortnight, upon faith, hope and charity, seaweed and moonshine, cornlaws and the immortality of the soul, and take me for her standing muse, properly thou’d and thee’d all through. What a good vengeance it would be upon your unjust charges, if I set you to read a volume or two of those ‘poems’ ... which all went into the fire—so you need not be frightened.

And to-day I had a rose-tree sent to me by somebody who has laid close siege to me this long while, and whom I have escaped hitherto ... but who has encamped, she says, ‘till July’ in 16 Wimpole Street. She writes too on her card ... ‘When are you going to Italy?’

Ah! you, who blame me (half blame me) for ‘seeing women,’ do not know how difficult it is to help it sometimes, without being in appearance ungrateful and almost brutal. Just because I am unwell, they teaze me more, I believe. Now that Miss Heaton ... oh, I need not go back, but it was not of my choice, be sure. You being a man are different,—and perhaps you make people afraid and keep them off. They do not thrust their hands through the bars where the lion is, as they do with the giraffe. Once I had this proposition—‘If we mayn’t come in, will you stand up at the window that we may see?’ Now!—And there’s the essence of at least ten MS. sonnets!——so don’t complain any more.

As for Mr. Kenyon, he had his ‘collation,’ I understand—and he said that he was expecting Mrs. Jameson and sundries—but he referred to some ‘friends from the country who would not be so mad as to come,’ and whom I knew to be yourselves. You were quite, quite right not to come. To-day you are right too ... in thinking that I—was out. I was in the park nearly an hour, Arabel and Flush and I: and perhaps if to-morrow should be fine, I may walk in the street; so think of me and help me. This is my last letter before I see you again, dear dearest. Oh—but I heard yesterday ... and it was not a tradition of the elders this time ... it was ‘vivid in the pages of contemporary history’ ... in fact one of my brothers heard it at the Flower Show and brought it home as the newest news, ... that ‘Mr. Browning is to be married immediately to Miss Campbell.’ The tellers of the news were ‘intimate friends’ of yours, they said, and knew it from the highest authority—

Laugh!—Why should not they talk, being women? My brother did not tell me, but he told it down-stairs—and Arabel was amused, she said, at some of the faces round. At that turn of the road they lost the track of the hare. Not an observation was made by anybody.

May God bless you—Think of me. I am ever and ever

Your own

Ba.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Thursday.

This is not to be called a letter, please to understand, because to write a letter to you once a day is enough in all reason. But I want to send you the review you asked for at the same time with the drawings which I kept too long I thought months ago,—but I have looked over them again and again. Then there is the book on Junius—and lastly, the song which I want you to have ... the ‘Toll Slowly’—that is my gift to you, for as much as it is worth, and not to be sent back to me if you please. As for the Notes on Naples, I shall keep them for the present, having need to study about Amalfi.

Now I am going out in the carriage, and shall drive round the park perhaps. You will not think much of the music—but it being the first music I had heard for years and years, and in itself so overwhelmingly melancholy, it affected me so that I should scarcely hear it to the end. I went down-stairs on purpose to hear it and be able to thank the composer rightly. But she has done better things, I am sure.

Your own

Ba.

Observe—I disobey in nothing by sending this parcel. There is too much for you to carry. Don’t forget to bring me my Statesmen which is a lawful burden.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Friday. [Post-mark, May 22, 1846.]

I have a great mind to retract ... I do retract altogether whatever I said the other day in explanation of Miss Heaton’s story. I make no doubt, now, it was a pure dream to which my over-scrupulousness of conscience gave a local habitation and name both, through the favourable dimness and illusion of ‘a good many years ago’—because this last charge about ‘Miss Campbell’—briefly—I never in my life saw, to my knowledge, a woman of that name—nor can there be any woman of any other name from my acquaintance with whom the merest misunderstanding in the world could possibly arise to a third person ... I mean, that it must be a simple falsehood and not gossip or distortion of fact, as I supposed in the other case. I told you of the one instance where such distortion might take place,—(Miss Haworth, to avoid mistake). This charge after the other ... I will tell you of what it reminds me—in my early boyhood I had a habit of calling people ‘fools,’ with as little reverence as could be, ... and it used to be solemnly represented to me after such offences that ‘whoso calleth his brother “fool,” is in danger &c. for he hath committed murder in his heart already’ &c. in short,—there was no help for it,—I stood there a convicted murderer ... to which I was forced penitently to agree.... Here is Miss Heaton’s charge and my confession. Now, let a policeman come here presently to ask what I know about the ‘Deptford Murder’ or the ‘Marshalsea Massacre’—and you will have my ‘intimate friend’s’ charge. By the way, did your brother overhear this, or was it spoken to someone in his company, or is my friend his acquaintance also? Because in either of the latter cases I can interfere easily. (There is a Mr. Browning—Henry I think—living in, or near the Regent’s Park.) At all events, please say that I know no such person, nor ever knew,—that the whole is a pure falsehood—(and I only use so mild a word because I write to you, and because on reading the letter again I see the speakers were women).

It is a fact that I have made myself almost ridiculous by a kind of male prudery with respect to ‘young ladies’ ... that I have seemed to imply—‘If I gave you the least encouragement something would be sure to follow.’ In fact never seeing any attractiveness in the class, I was very little inclined to get involved in troubles and troubles for nothing at all. And as for marrying ... that is a point on which I have certainly not chosen to dilate before you, nor shall I now dilate on it.

Well, I shall see you to-morrow, that remedies everything. And that is your way of letting me see the Review,—you send it! Not that it has arrived yet. Dear Ba, how ever good you are!

All about the lady enthusiasts makes me laugh—don’t think I fail of the proper respect to them, however—it is only once in a week that one sees a real painted Emperor settle on a flower, and then perhaps for a few minutes—while at all times, if you look, you will find a good half dozen of earnest yet sleepy drones living there, working away at the sweet,—after all, these get the most out of the flower.

Did you really go out yesterday? I was not sure, for the wind was Easterly—but it appears to have done you no harm,—you may ‘go into the street’ to-day—I am most happy,—most happy—and always entirely happy in you,—in thinking of you, and hoping,—my life is in you now—

Bless you, dearest—I am your own.

2 o’clock, the parcel arrives ... thank you, best of Ba’s! I will read and tell you—(only what on earth do you mean by sending back those sketches?)

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday Morning. [Post-mark, May 25, 1846.]

My own Ba is entreated to observe, that when she sends me reviews about herself, and songs by herself, and a make-weight book about ‘Junius’ happens to be sent also ... I do not ordinarily plunge into the Junius-discussion at once—perhaps from having made up my mind that the Author is Miss Campbell:—at all events, while the review was read and re-read and the music done justice and injustice to, the Junius was opened for the first time this morning, at eight of the clock, and Ba’s letter which lay between pages 16 and 17, ‘came to hand’—was brought to me by my mother, from my father! but for whose lucky inspiration of curiosity the said note had perhaps lain shut in till the book’s secret was found out ... certainly I should never have touched the book before then! And from this note, duly studied, I learn that yesterday I must have appeared to Ba touched by a general mental paralysis—inasmuch as I was surprised, over and above the joyfulness, to hear that she was in the Park on Thursday, as well as Friday ... (oh, I know the letter I did receive mentioned it, but it seems as if one of the two excursions were unrecorded)—and seeing that I enquired whether Ba had heard with her own ears the song ... and altogether omitted thanking her for the gift of it: and lastly, brought no Statesmen, even on Ba’s request! Of all which matters I ought to have been made acquainted by the note: what must you think of me, you Ba; dearest-dearest, that expect me to know the face through the bonnet, and the letter through the book covers—(Ba sitting in the Bookseller’s shop was a type, I see!). What did you think of me yesterday, I want to know?

Well, and now my letter does come I thank you—(for all the trouble this precedent will give me—next time a parcel comes—of poking into all impossible places to see and to see!). You are the dearest, dearest, impossibly dear Ba that heart ever adored,

as Shirley sings—and every now and then the full sense of the sweetness collects itself and overcomes me entirely, as now, on the occasion of this note that I find; I am blessed by you in the hundred unspeakable ways—but were it only for this and similar pure kindness, I find it in my heart to give you my life could it profit you! Here ought I, by every law and right and propriety ... ask Miss Campbell! ... to be ministering to you, caring for you; and ... oh, Ba, do please, please, throw a coffee cup at me!—(giving some grounds for complaint!)—and after it the soucoupe (‘glaring with saucer eyes’)—and see what you shall see, and hear what you shall hear! You ‘strongest woman that has written yet’! Have they found that out? I know it, I think, by this! So I will go and think over it in the garden, and tell you more in the afternoon.

12 o’clock!—What strange weather!—but pleasant, I think—you have been out, or will go out, perhaps. Tell me all, dearest, and how you feel after it. To-morrow I will send you the Review and some of the other books you have spoken of from time to time—but, I almost dare to keep the Statesmen, spite of your positive request. Why, dear, want to see what I desire to forget altogether? So my other poems, ‘Sordello’ &c.—I most unaffectedly shudder at the notion of your reading them, as I said yesterday. My poetry is far from the ‘completest expression of my being’—I hate to refer to it, or I could tell you why, wherefore, ... prove how imperfect (for a mild word), how unsatisfactory it must of necessity be. Still, I should not so much object, if, such as it is, it were the best, the flower of my life ... but that is all to come, and through you, mainly, or more certainly. So will it not be better to let me write one last poem this summer,—quite easily, stringing every day’s thoughts instead of letting them fall,—and laying them at the dear feet at the summer’s end for a memorial? I have been almost determining to do this, or try to do it, as I walked in the garden just now. A poem to publish or not to publish; but a proper introduction to the afterwork. What do you think, my Ba, my dearest siren, and muse, and Mistress, and ... something beyond all, above all and better ... shall I do this? And what are you studying about Amalfi, my Ba? Will you please keep that Naples’ Note-book till I ask for it—at Amalfi. Till holy church incorporate two in one; and I take the degree of my aspiration. Rᵗ. Bᵍ. B.A.—in earnest of which, kiss me dear, ‘earnest, most earnest of poets,’ and let me kiss you as I do ... loving you as I love you. Bless you, best and dearest.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Sunday. [Post-mark, May 25, 1846.]

When you came yesterday I had scarcely done my grumbling over the Athenæum, which really seems to me to select its subjects from the things least likely to interest and elevate. It goes on its own level perhaps—but to call itself a Journal of Art and Literature afterwards, is too much to bear patiently when one turns it over and considers. Lady Hester Stanhope’s physician, antiquities of the mayors of London, stories re-collected from the magazines by Signor Marcotti—and this is literature ... art! Without thinking of ‘Luria,’ it is natural and righteous to be angry even after the sun has gone down. These are your teachers, O Israel! Mr. Dilke may well fly to the Daily News for congenial occupation and leave literature behind him, and nobody hang on the wheels of his chariot, crying, ‘Come back, Mr. Dilke.’

Talking of chariots, George met you, he said, yesterday, wheeling down Oxford Street, ... (this he told me when he came in ...) going as fast as an express train, and far too fast, of course, either to recognize or be recognized.

Oh—I forgot to tell you one thing about the review in the Methodist Quarterly. You observe there some very absurd remarks about Tennyson—but, just there, is an extract from the ‘Spirit of the Age,’ about his ‘coming out of himself as the nightingale from under the leaves,’ ... you see that? Well ... it is curious that precisely what is quoted there, is some of my writing, when I contributed to Mr. Horne’s book. It amused me to recognize it, (as you did not George) ... but I was vexed too at the foolish deduction, because....

In the midst I had to hold my Sunday-levee, when for the only day in the week and for one half hour I have to see all my brothers and sisters at once: on the week days, one being in one place and one in another, and the visits to me only coming by twos and threes. Well, and Alfred, who never had said a word to me before, gave me the opportunity of saying ‘no, no, it is not true’—followed hard by a remark from somebody else, that ‘of course Ba must know, as she and Mr. Browning are such very intimate friends,’ and a good deal of laughter on all sides: on which, without any transition and with an exceeding impertinence, Alfred threw himself down on the sofa and declared that he felt inclined to be very ill, ... for that then perhaps (such things being heard of) some young lady might come to visit him, to talk sympathetically on the broad and narrow gauge! Altogether, I shall leave you for the future to ... contradict yourself! I did not mean to do it this time, only that Alfred forced me into it. But he said ... ‘How the Miss Cokers praised him!... “It was delightful,” they cried, “to see a man of such a great genius condescend to little people like them.”’ So they are better than the Athenæum, and I shall not have them spoken of ungently, mind, even if they do romance a little wildly, and marry me, next time, to the man in the moon.

In the meantime, dearest, it is no moonshine that I was out walking to-day again, and that I walked up all these stairs with my own feet on returning. I sate down on the stairs two or three times, but I could not rest in the drawing-room because somebody was there, and I was not carried, as usual—see how vain-glorious I am. And what a summer-sense in the air—and how lovely the strips of sky between the houses! And yet I may tell you truly, that, constantly, through these vivid impressions, I am thinking and feeling that mournful and bitter would be to me this return into life, apart from you, apart from the consideration of you. How could ever I have borne it, I keep feeling constantly. But you are there, in the place of memory. Ah—you said yesterday that you were not ungrateful! I cannot say so. I blame myself often. And yet again I think that the wrong may be pardoned to me, for that those affections had worked out on me their uttermost pang—nearly unto death I had felt them—and now if I am to live, it must be by other means—or I should die still, and not live. Also I owe you gratitude——do I not owe you gratitude? Then, I cannot help it ... right or wrong, I cannot help it ... you are all to me, and, beloved—whichever way I look, I only can see you. If wrong, it is not for you to be severe on me—

Your own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Monday. 12 o’clock.

I get nothing by the post this morning:—perhaps at next delivery! Well, I had the unexpected largess yesterday, you know. At this time last year the letters came once a week! Now the manna falls as manna should omitting only the seventh day.

Do you know, my Ba,—the Campbell mystery is all but solved, to my thinking, by supposing, as one may, that, those foolish ladies confound their cousin’s friend Brown, an indubitable Scot and Lord Jeffrey’s nephew,—(and their intimate for aught I know)—with me. He is in town now; did dine with them just before I saw him a fortnight ago; and may meditate happiness with Miss Campbell, and be provided with a paragon of a ‘sister’ besides. Those ladies have been to Scotland—may easily know him there and see ‘sights’ with him here. Is not all this likely? It is not worth writing about to White, nor a visit to him at Doctors’ Commons, but when I next chance on his company, I will enquire.

Here is the review,—which I like very much—the introductory, abstract remarks might be better, but so it always is when a man, having really something to say about one precise thing (your poems), thinks he had better preface it by a little graceful generality. All he wanted to write, I agree in, thoroughly agree,—though I cannot but fancy my own selection,—that might be,—of passages and single poems!

And, dearest, I venture to keep back the Statesmen, as I asked leave to do yesterday, for the reasons then given—may I keep it back?

Also I return those sketches,—now they have been in your hand, they cannot lie about here—(I keep brown paper with your writing on it, and string, and the wrappage of this pen of mine—to be sure) so I shall get you to bear with them again, two or three being added, just as I find them. There is, too, the ode which was presented to me on my departure from Rome by an enthusiastic Roman; red ribbon and all! And last of all you have my play as altered by Macready: greater excisions had been determined on, but on the appearance of the printed copy had the effect it intended ... it would have been too ludicrous to leave out the whole of the first scene, for instance (as was in contemplation), and then to tell the public ‘my play’ had been acted. I refer to this silly business only to show you what success or non-success on the stage means and is worth. It is all behind me now—so far behind!

Now I will wait and see what next post may bring me from dearest Ba—Ba, the dear, and the beloved, e sopra tutto, the tall! Does she not ‘stand high in the affection’—of her very own

R.B.?

R.B. to E.B.B.

Monday. [Post-mark, May 25, 1846.]

Dear, dear love, your letter comes at half past three by a new Postman,—(very bewildered). You will perhaps have received my parcel and note—if not, such things are on the road. All in your note delights me entirely. As for my walking fast, that is exactly my use and wont ... I am famous for it,—as my father is for driving old lady-friends into illnesses, and then saying innocently, ‘I took care to walk very slowly.’ When I have anything to occupy my mind, I all but run—but the pen can’t run, for this letter must go, and nothing said.

So, Ba, my Ba, Goodbye till to-morrow from

Your own, own.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Monday Morning. [Post-mark, May 26, 1846.]

My beloved I scarcely know what to say about the poem. It is almost profane and a sin to keep you from writing it when your mind goes that way,—yet I am afraid that you cannot begin without doing too much and without suffering as a consequence in your head. Now if you make yourself ill, what will be the end? So you see my fears! Let it be however as it must be! Only you will promise to keep from all excesses, and to write very very gently. Ah—can you keep such a promise, if it is made ever so? There are the fears again.

You are very strange in what you say about my reading your poetry—as if it were not my peculiar gladness and glory!—my own, which no man can take from me. And not you, indeed! Yet I am not likely to mistake your poetry for the flower of your nature, knowing what that flower is, knowing something of what that flower is without a name, and feeling something of the mystical perfume of it. When I said, or when others said for me, that my poetry was the flower of me, was it praise, did you think, or blame? might it not stand for a sarcasm? It might,—if it were not true, miserably true after a fashion.

Yet something of the sort is true, of course, with all poets who write directly from their personal experience and emotions—their ideal rises to the surface and floats like the bell of the waterlily. The roots and the muddy water are subaudita, you know—as surely there, as the flower.

But you ... you have the superabundant mental life and individuality which admits of shifting a personality and speaking the truth still. That is the highest faculty, the strongest and rarest, which exercises itself in Art,—we are all agreed there is none so great faculty as the dramatic. Several times you have hinted to me that I made you careless for the drama, and it has puzzled me to fancy how it could be, when I understand myself so clearly both the difficulty and the glory of dramatic art. Yet I am conscious of wishing you to take the other crown besides—and after having made your own creatures speak in clear human voices, to speak yourself out of that personality which God made, and with the voice which He tuned into such power and sweetness of speech. I do not think that, with all that music in you, only your own personality should be dumb, nor that having thought so much and deeply on life and its ends, you should not teach what you have learnt, in the directest and most impressive way, the mask thrown off however moist with the breath. And it is not, I believe, by the dramatic medium, that poets teach most impressively—I have seemed to observe that! ... it is too difficult for the common reader to analyse, and to discern between the vivid and the earnest. Also he is apt to understand better always, when he sees the lips move. Now, here is yourself, with your wonderful faculty!—it is wondered at and recognised on all sides where there are eyes to see—it is called wonderful and admirable! Yet, with an inferior power, you might have taken yourself closer to the hearts and lives of men, and made yourself dearer, though being less great. Therefore I do want you to do this with your surpassing power—it will be so easy to you to speak, and so noble, when spoken.

Not that I usen’t to fancy I could see you and know you, in a reflex image, in your creations! I used, you remember. How these broken lights and forms look strange and unlike now to me, when I stand by the complete idea. Yes, now I feel that no one can know you worthily by those poems. Only ... I guessed a little. Now let us have your own voice speaking of yourself—if the voice may not hurt the speaker—which is my fear.

Evening.—Thank you, dearest dearest! I have your parcel—I have your letters ... three letters to-day, it is certainly feast day with me. Thank you my own dearest. The drawings I had just fixed in my mind, courageously to ask for, because as you meant me to keep them I did not see why I should throw away a fortune—and they return to me with interest ... I observe these new vivid sketches! Some day I shall put them into a book, as you should have done. Then for the Roman ode, and all the rest, thank you, thank you. I looked here and looked there, though, for a letter—I could not find it at first, and was just saying to myself quite articulately ‘What wickedness’! ... meaning that it was wickedness in you to send me a parcel without a word, ... when I came upon the folded paper. For I looked inside the books, be sure. I did not toss them away....

There’s the gratitude of the world, you see! and of womankind in particular! there’s the malign spirit of the genus coffee-cup-throw-arum! Talking of which coffee-cups, you dare me to it. Which is imprudent, to say the least of it. I heard once of her most gracious Majesty’s throwing a tea-cup,—whereupon Albertus Magnus, who is no conjurer, could find nothing better to do than to walk out of the room in solemn silence. If I had been he, I should have tied the royal hands, I think; for when women get to be warlike after that demonstrative fashion, it seems to me to be allowable to teach them that they are not the strongest. I say it, never thinking of my ‘licence to’ throw coffee-cups—which you granted, knowing very well what I know intimately, ... that ... that....

I have a theory about you. Was ever anybody in the world, ... a woman at least, ... angry with you? If anyone ever tried, did she not fail in the first breath of the trying?—go out to curse like the prophet, and bless instead? Tell me if anyone was ever angry with you? It is impossible, I know perfectly. Therefore, as to the coffee-cup license, ... the divine Achilles, invulnerable all but the heel, might as well have said to his dearest foe ‘Draw out your sword, O Diomede, and strike me across the head, prick me in the forehead, slash me over the ears, ...’ and that stand for a proof of courage!

What stuff I do write, to be sure. I was out to-day walking, with Arabel and Flush, and rested at the bookseller’s; but as I went farther than the other day, I let Stormie carry me up-stairs, ... it is such a long way! Say how you are, dearest—you do not! Shall you walk so fast when you walk with me under the trees? I shall not let you—I shall hang back, as Flush does, when he won’t go with a string. Ah—little (altogether) you know perhaps what a hard Degree that B:A: is, to take— —the BA which is not a Bachelor’s.

No, no, for the rest. It was not any Brown on earth, but the only Browning of the great genius, who was shown up as intimate friend to the Miss Cokers and elect husband of that cloud, Miss Campbell the ‘great heiress’—all in proportion, observe! But I do entreat you not to say a word to Dr. White or another. Why should you? It is mere nonsense,—so do let it evaporate quietly. Why, with all my doubts for which you have blamed me, ... at the thickest and saddest of the doubting, it never was what people could say of you that could move me. And this is so foolish, and unbelieved even by the very persons who say it, perhaps! Let it pass away with other dust, in the wind. It is not worth the watering.

May God bless you! This is my last letter ... already! I had another criticism to-day from America, in a book called ‘Thoughts on the Poets,’ which is written by a Mr. Tuckermann, and selects its poets on the most singular principle ... or rather on none at all ... beginning with Petrarch, ending with Bryant, receiving Tennyson, Procter, Hunt, and your Ba ... and not a word of you! Stupid book—Petrarch and Alfieri are the only foreign poets admitted—criticisms, swept back to the desk from the magazines, I dare say. Very kind to me—you shall see if you like.

And now ... good-night at last! it must come. Have I not written you one letter as long as the three? Only not worth a third as much—that I know.

Wholly and ever your

Ba.

Oh I must speak, though I meant to be silent! though first, I meant to keep the great subject of the Statesmen for an explosion on Wednesday. I gave up the early poems because I felt contented to read them afterwards—but listen ... my Statesmen, I will not give up. Now listen—I expect nothing at all from them—they were written for another person, and under peculiar circumstances ... they are probably as bad as anything written by you, can be. Will that do, to say? And may I see them? Now I ask ever so humbly ... Dearest!

R.B. to E.B.B.

3½ P.M. Tuesday. [Post-mark, May 26, 1846.]

Dearest, your dearest of notes only arrived at 2 o’clock—and Carlyle has just been with me,—come on horseback for the express purpose of strolling about—so that I was forced, forced ... you see! He is gone again—and there is only time to tell you why no more is told—but to-morrow will supply all deficiency. Bless you, my dearest best Ba. How I love you!

Your own—

Poor Capt. Jones is dead,—you may see in the papers.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Thursday Morning. [Post-mark, May 28, 1846.]

Dearest it is my fancy to write quickly this morning and take my letter to the post myself. Oh, I shall do it this time—there will be no obstacle. The office is just below Hodgson’s, the bookseller’s. And so with this letter, please to understand that I go to you twice and wholly, once in the spirit, and again in the body.

But there is nothing to tell you, except that I think of you with the thought which never can change essentially, while it deepens always. What I meant to say yesterday was simply, that I, knowing that, should be ‘bad’ if I could fail practically to myself and you. I have known from the beginning the whole painful side of what is before me, also ... I should have no excuse therefore for any weakness in any fear. Should I not be ‘bad’ then, and more unworthy of you than even according to my own account, if the obstacle came from me? It never can. Remember to be sure of it.

A change of feeling indeed would be a different thing, and we think exactly alike on the fit consequences of it. Which change is however absolutely impossible in my position and to me, ‘for reasons ... for reasons’ ... you guess at some of them, some are spoken, and others cannot be.

In one word for all, life seems to come to me only through you.

I am your very own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Thursday. [Post-mark, May 28, 1846.]

There is a long four days more of waiting—I feel more and more and ever more how, wanting you, my life wants all it can have. Dear Ba, never wonder that I fancy at times such an event’s occurrence as you tell me I need not fear. I shall always fear,—never can I hold you sufficiently fast, I shall think. So, if my jewel must be taken from me, let some eagle stoop down for it suddenly, baffling all human precaution, as I look on my treasure on a tower’s top miles and miles inland,—don’t let me have to remember, though but in a minute of life afterwards, that I let it drop into the sea through foolishly balancing it in my open hand over the water. There is one of Ba’s ‘myths,’ excepting all Ba’s felicitousness of application and glory of invention,—but then it has all my own love and worship of Ba’s self, all I care to be distinguished by.

I hope you go out this fine morning—the wind is cold, to be sure, but London is much warmer than this place, and the wind kept off by the houses. I have got two of Mr. Kenyon’s kind notes, to confirm the appointment for Wednesday (when Mrs. Jameson is to be of the party), and to invite me to meet Landor on Tuesday—so that for three days running I shall be in Ba’s very neighbourhood ... for if the wind can’t get through houses and walls, Ba can and does, as my heart knows. Might I not see you for a moment on the Wednesday? Ah, there will be time to contrive, to concert—but the worst is that when I see you I contrive nothing, nor do you help me, you Ba! Else, out of these walks,—who is to object to my going to see the Thames Tunnel or the Tower, by way of Wimpole Street,—wanting the organ of locality as I am said to? Whereas I am all one consciousness of the influence of one locality, turning as my whole heart and soul turn to Ba,—my dearest, dearest, whom may God bless and requite. I can only kiss you, as I do, and be your very own, my Ba, as I am and shall be ever.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Thursday. [Post-mark, May 29, 1846.]

Dearest dearest, I thought I had lost my letter to-night, for not a sound came like a postman’s knock ... I thought I had lost my letter, talking of losing jewels. I waited and waited, and at last broke silence to Arabel with, ‘when will the post come?’ ‘Not to-night,’ said she—‘it is nearly ten.’ On which I exclaimed so pitifully and with such a desperate sense of loss, ‘You mean to say that I shall have no letter to-night,’? ... that after she had laughed a very little, she went down-stairs to search the letterbox and brought me what I wanted.

And you think it possible that I should give up my letters and their golden fountain?—I! ... while I live and have understanding! I can’t fancy what manner of eagles you believe in. If in real live eagles, ... why it is as probable as any other thing of the sort, that I (or you) should be snatched away by an eagle ... the eagle who used to live, for instance, at the Coliseum of Regent’s Park. And when I ride away upon an eagle, I may take a wrong counsel perhaps that hour from other birds of the air: ... but till then, I am yours to have and to hold, ... unless, as you say, you open your hand wide and cry with a distinct voice, ‘Go.’ It shall be your doing and not mine, if we two are to part—or God’s own doing, through illness and death. And the way to avert danger is to avoid observation and discussion, as much as we can—and we have not been frightened much yet, ... now have we? As for Wednesday, there is time to think. But how can you leave your sister? you cannot. So unless you derange your ‘myth’ altogether, and find a trysting place for us, ... each mounted on an eagle, ... in Nephelococcygia, we had better be satisfied, it seems to me, with Monday and Saturday.

I was out to-day as you saw by my letter, which with my own hand I dropped into the post. I liked to do it beyond what you discern. And how the sun shone,—and the little breath of wind could do nobody harm, I felt. Also there was the ‘Autography’ in the shop-window to see, before I sate down in the shop. So you were thought of by necessity, besides the freewill.

Do you not see that I am bound to you hand and foot? Why do you not see what God sees?

But it is late, and the rest must be for to-morrow. The sender of the rose-tree sent to-day a great heliotrope—so, presently, you will have to seek me in a wood.

Everywhere your own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Friday. [Post-mark, May 29, 1846.]

My own darling, your little note was a great delight to me last night, when I expected nothing; and though I do not hear to-day, I will believe you are well after the walk—the walk, what a ‘divine fancy’; not mentioned by Quarles!

And then the words that follow the good news of the walk ... those assurances ... oh, my best, dearest Ba,—it is all right that I cannot speak here,—if I could, by some miracle, speak, it would be foolish:—but my life lies before you to take and direct, and keep or give away,—I am altogether your own.

I come in rather tired from Town—having spent the morning at the Exhibition, and made calls beside. (Etty’s picture of the sirens is abominable; though it looks admirable beside another picture of his: did I not tell you he had chosen the sirens for a subject?)

Oh, dearest beyond all dearness, now, at this moment only, your last and pro tempore best letter comes to me! One can’t scold and kiss at the same time ... so let the wretched Post arrangements be unmentioned for the moment; there is enough to get up a revolution about, I do think! But you, you spoil me and undo me almost,—ought to do so, at least,—they were too delicious to bear, the things you say to me! Why will you not say rather what I feel,—for you can, perhaps, being what you are, and let me subscribe it! It is a real pain to me to feel as I feel, and speak no more than I speak.

And again the time urges ... just when I want most to go on writing—but to-morrow I will do nothing else. Take this now, sweet, sweet Ba, with my whole heart that loves, loves you!

Your R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Friday. [Post-mark, May 30, 1846.]

I have your letter ... you who cannot write! The contrariety is a part of the ‘miracle.’ After all it seems to me that you can write for yourself pretty well—rather too well I used to think from the beginning. But if you persist in the proposition about my doing it for you, leaving room for your signature ... shall it be this way?

Show me how to get rid of you.

(signed) R.B.

Now isn’t it I who am ... not ‘balancing my jewel’ over the gulph ... but actually tossing it up in the air out of sheer levity of joyousness? Only it is not perhaps such dangerous play as it looks: there may be a little string perhaps, tying it to my finger. Which, if it is not imprudence in act, is imprudence in fact, you see!

Dearest, I committed a felony for your sake to-day—so never doubt that I love you. We went to the Botanical Gardens, where it is unlawful to gather flowers, and I was determined to gather this for you, and the gardeners were here and there ... they seemed everywhere ... but I stooped down and gathered it. Is it felony, or burglary on green leaves—or what is the name of the crime? would the people give me up to the police, I wonder? Transie de peur, I was, ... listening to Arabel’s declaration that all gathering of flowers in these gardens is highly improper,—and I made her finish her discourse, standing between me and the gardeners—to prove that I was the better for it.

How pretty those gardens are, by the way! We went to the summer-house and sate there, and then on, to the empty seats where the band sit on your high days. What I enjoy most to see, is the green under the green ... where the grass stretches under trees. That is something unspeakable to me, in the beauty of it. And to stand under a tree and feel the green shadow of the tree! I never knew before the difference of the sensation of a green shadow and a brown one. I seemed to feel that green shadow through and through me, till it went out at the soles of my feet and mixed with the other green below. Is it nonsense, or not? Remember that by too much use we lose the knowledge and apprehension of things, and that I may feel therefore what you do not feel.

But in everything I felt you—and always, dearest beloved, you were nearer to me than the best.

Well; to go on with my story. Coming home and submitting to be carried up-stairs because I was tired, the news was that Miss Bayley had waited to see me three quarters of an hour. Then she sate with me an hour—and oh, such kind, insisting, persisting plans about Italy! I did not know what to say, so I was niaise and grateful, and said ‘thank you, thank you’ as I could. Did Mrs. Jameson tell you of her scheme of going to Florence for two years and to Venice for one, taking her niece with her in order to an ‘artistical education’? And Mr. Bezzi, who is the ‘most accurate of men,’ furnishes the details of necessary expenses, and assures her in his programme that she may ‘walk in silk attire’ and drive her carriage like an English aristocrat, for three hundred a year, at Florence—but the place is English-ridden ... filled and polluted. Sorrento is better or even Pisa. We will keep our Siren-isles to ourselves ... will we not?

And now tell me. Was there not a picture of Sirens by Etty, exhibited years ago ... which was also ‘abominable,’ as I thought when I saw it? Is it the same picture returning like a disquieted ghoule ... much more that, than like a Siren at all, if it is the same, ... I remember it was scarcely to be looked at for hideousness ... though I heard some carnivorous connoisseurs praising the ‘colouring’!! Foreigners might refer such artistical successes to our national ‘beef’ ... ‘le bifteak’ ideal. The materialism of Art.

Can you love me so? do you? ... will you always? And is any of that love ‘lost,’ do you think, ... as the saying is? Indeed it is not. I put golden basins all round (the reverse shape of lachrymatories) to catch every drop as it falls, ... so that when we two shall meet together in the new world, I may look in your face (as I cannot at this moment) and say ‘None of the love was lost, though all of it was undeserved.’ May God bless you, dearest, best! My heart is in you, I think. You would laugh to see the books I take up ... first, ‘Strafford’ ... then Suetonius to see about your Cæsar ... then the Naples book. Oh, but I find you out in the Statesmen ... for all the dim light.