THE LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING AND ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 1845-1846 (continued 6)

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday. [Post-mark, June 16, 1846.]

As to ‘practical sense’ I never saw, I confess, much to praise you for—but you began by making a great profession of it, please to remember—and, otherwise, you certainly ought to know more of the world and the wisdom thereof than I, or you are dull, dearest mine, and one might as well call the sun so on this burning dazzling morning, when everything is at a white heat. Then for the ‘calmness’ ... I did not call your eyes ‘green’ after all ... nor did I mean what you would force on me for a meaning in the other way:—you pretend to misunderstand? Eyes, at least, that had the mastery with me from the beginning! and it was so long, so long (as you observed yourself), that I could not lift up mine against them—they were the mystic crystal walls, so long!

After you were gone yesterday and I had done with the roses (exquisite roses!) and had my coffee, I saw my uncle Hedley who had been inquiring about me, said my sisters, all the afternoon, ... for it was he who came when we heard the greetings on the stairs—and he told me that his wife and daughter were to be in London early in July ... so that we shall have the whole squadron sooner than we thought—drawn up like a very squadron ... my other aunt, Miss Clarke, coming at the same time, and my cousin with her, Arlette Butler. But only those two will be in the house here, and they will not be for very long, nor will they be much in the way, I hope.

Shall I tell you? I repented yesterday ... I repented last night ... I repent to-day, having made the promise you asked of me. I could scarcely sleep at all last night, through thinking that I ought not to have made it. Be generous, and free me from that promise. To be true to you in the real right sense, I need no promises at all—and if an argument were addressed to me in order to separate us, I should see through the piteous ingenuity of it, I think, whatever ground it took, and admit no judgment and authority over your life to be higher than your own. But I have misgivings about that promise, because I can conceive of circumstances.... Loose me from my promise, and let me be grateful to you, my beloved, in all things and ways, and hold you to be generous in the least as in the greatest. What I asked of you, was as different as our positions are—different beyond what you see or can see. No third person can see,—no second person can see ... what my position is and has been ... I do not enter on it here. But there is just and only one way in which I may be injured by you, ... and that is, in being allowed to injure you—so remember, remember, ... to the last available moment.

Then ... I have lived so in a dream for very long!—and everything, all undertakings, all movements, seem easy in dream-life. The sense of this has lately startled me. To waken up suddenly and find that I have wronged you—what more misery?—and I feel already that I am bringing you into a position which will by some or many be accounted unworthy of you. Well—we will not talk of it—not now! there is time for the grave consideration which must be. Let us both think.

And may God bless you, ever dearest! You are the best and most generous of all in the world! Whatever my mistake may be, it is not concerning that. Also I love you, love you. Premature things I say sometimes, which are foolish always. Tell me how you are ... tell me how your mother is— —but speak of your own head ... tam chari ... particularly. Overcoming, the heat is—and I do hope that Mrs. Jameson won’t come after all.

Your

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday. [Post-mark, June 16, 1846.]

I have just returned from Town—some twelve miles at least I must have walked in this extreme heat ... so what has become of the headache? And now I sit down to write what Ba will read ... what has become of the heat and fatigue? In this sense Ba ‘looks cool at me!’

I shall just write that I love, and love you, and love you again—my own Ba—just this, lest you learn the comfort of a respite from hearing what you are doomed to hear, with variations, all the days of your life. But not much more than this shall I write, because the love lies still in me, and deep, as water does,—cannot run forth in rivulets and sparkle, this hot weather; but then how I love her when I can only say so,—how I feel her ... as in an old opera’s one line that stays in my recollection the tropical sun is described on the ocean—‘fervid on the glittering flood’—so she lies on me.

See the pure nonsense, my own Ba, and laugh at it, but not at what lies at bottom of it, because that is true as truth, true as Ba’s self in its way.

I called on Forster this morning: he says Landor is in high delight at the congratulatory letters he has received—so you must write, dearest, and add the queen-rose to his garland. F— talks about some 500 copies—or did he say 300?—being sold already ... so there is hope for Landor’s lovers.

So I should have written once ... but like Virgil’s shepherd ... ‘know I now what love is!’—Do you remember that the first word I ever wrote to you was ‘I love you, dear Miss Barrett?’ It was so,—could not but be so—and I always loved you, as I shall always.

Tell me all you can about your dearest self, my own love. I am so happy in you, in your perfect goodness and truth,—in all of you.

Be careful this fatiguing weather ... the evenings and mornings are the only working time of the day, as in the beginning of things. But all day long is rest-time to love you, dear, and kiss you, as now—kisses

Your own.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday. 6 o’clock. [Post-mark, June 17, 1846.]

Beloved, this weather, which makes Flush cross, perhaps helped to make me depressed this morning. I had not slept well, and ought not to have written to you till the effect of it had gone off. Now I feel more as if I had been with you yesterday. Ah well! I don’t, can’t remember what I wrote ... and some of it was wise ... for I ought not to have promised that, ... and you must loose me, that I may be loosed in Heaven, from the bands of it. Only you are not to go to Greenwich (you go to Greenwich to-morrow, do you not?) thinking that I wanted to teaze you. There is just one meaning to all my words, let them be sad or gay ... and it is, that your happiness is precious. For myself, if we were to part now and for ever, I should still owe you the only happiness of my life. But nobody is talking of parting, you know—I am yours, and cannot be put away from you except by your own hand. Which is decided! What I ask of you, is to spare me the pang of causing you to suffer on my account, ... and you may suffer sometimes, I fear, through all your affection for me, ... and indirectly, if not directly.

Two visitors I have had to-day—dear Mr. Kenyon, and Lady Margaret Cocks. She is going to Italy—(oh, of course!) to Rome. He came to tell me that the books came to me from Landor himself, and that I must write to him to thank him properly. Mrs. Jameson I do not see, nor Miss Bayley.

How hot it will be for you to-morrow! Try to be amused and not too tired, dearest beloved, and tell me in your letters how the head is.

While the heart beats (mine!) I am your own.

I am going in the carriage presently and shall write again to-night. Won’t that be three times in a day according to order?

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday Evening. [Post-mark, June 17, 1846.]

Best, ... best, you are, to write to me when you were tired, and so! When I am tired and write to you, it is too apt to be what may trouble you. With you, how different! In nothing do you show your strength more than in your divine patience and tenderness towards me, till ... not being used to it, I grow overwhelmed by it all, and would give you my life at a word. Why did you love me, my beloved, when you might have chosen from the most perfect of all women and each would have loved you with the perfectest of her nature? That is my riddle in this world. I can understand everything else ... I was never stopped for the meaning of sorrow upon sorrow ... but that you should love me I do not understand, and I think that I never shall.

Do I remember? Yes indeed, I remember. How I recurred and wondered afterwards, though at the moment it seemed very simple and what was to be met with in our philosophy every day. But there, you see, there’s the danger of using mala verba! The Fates catch them up and knit them into the web! Then I remember all the more (though I should at any rate) through an imprudence of my own (or a piece of ill-luck rather ... it shall not be called an imprudence) of which I will tell you. I was writing to Miss Mitford and of you—we differed about you often, ... because she did not appreciate you properly, and was fond of dwelling on the ‘obscurity’ when I talked of the light,—and I just then writing of you, added in my headlong unreflecting way that I had had a real letter from you which said that you loved me—‘Oh—but,’ I wrote on, ‘you are not to mistake this, not to repeat it—for of course, it is simply the purest of philanthropies’ ... some words to that effect—and if yours was the purest of philanthropies, mine was the purest of innocences, as you may well believe, ... for if I had had the shadow of a foresight, I should not have fallen into the snare. So vexed I was afterwards! Not that she thought anything at the time, or has referred to it since, or remembers a word now. Only I was vexed in my innermost heart ... and am ... do you know? ... that I should have spoken lightly of such an expression of yours—though you meant it lightly too. Dearest! It was a disguised angel and I should have known it by its wings though they did not fly.

But I foresaw nothing, ... looked to you for nothing, ... nothing can prove better to myself, than my having mentioned the quaint word at all. For I know, and I hope you know, how impossible it always has been to me to choose for a subject of conversation and jest, things which never should be spoken to friend or sister. But how was I to foresee? So the quaintness passed as quaintness with me. And never from that time (you grew sacred too soon!), never again from that moment, did I mention you to Miss Mitford—oh yes, I did, when she talked of introducing Mr. Chorley, and when I replied that, being a woman, I would have my wilful way, and that my wilful way was to see you instead. But except then ... and when I sent her Mr. Landor’s verses on you ... not a word have I spoken ... except in bare response. She thinks perhaps that my old fervour about you has sunk into the socket—she suspects nothing—in fact she does not understand what love is ... and I never should think of asking her for sympathy. She is one of the Black Stones, which, when I climb up towards my Singing Tree and Golden Water, will howl behind me and call names.

You had my second letter to-day, speaking of Landor, and of Mr. Kenyon’s visit. At half-past six came Miss Bayley, talking exceeding kindnesses of Italy, and entreating me to use her ... to let her go with me and take care of me and do me all manner of good. What kindness, really, in a woman whom I have not seen six times in all! I am very grateful to her. She held my hands, and told me to write to her if ever I had need of her—she would come at a moment, go for a year!—she would do anything for me I desired! And this woman to believe of herself that she has no soul! Help me to thank her in your thoughts of her! She said, by the way, that Mrs. Jameson had talked to her of wishing to take me, ... but she thought (Miss Bayley thought) that she (Mrs. Jameson) had too many objects and too much vivacity ... it would not do so well, she thought. In reply—I could just thank her, and scarcely could do that, ... only I am sure she saw and felt that I was grateful to her aright, let the words come ever so wrong. To-morrow she leaves London for an indefinite time.

She told me too that a friend of hers, calling on Mrs. Jameson, had found her on the point of coming to me to-day, to drive out ... but she suffered from toothache and was going to Cartwright’s first ... and last, I suppose. I dare say he put her to torture, to be classified with ‘the thumbscrew and the gadge’ ... some disabling torture, for I have not seen her at all. So as at half-past seven Henrietta was going out to dinner, Lizzie and I and Flush took our places by her in the carriage, and went to Hyde Park ... drove close by the Serpentine, and saw by the ruffling of the water that there was a breath of wind more than we felt. The shadows were gathering in quite fast, shade upon shade; and at last the silvery water seemed to hold all the light left, as on the flat of a hand. Very much I liked and enjoyed it. And, as we came home, the gas was in the shops ... another strange sight for me—and we all liked everything. Flush had his head out of the window the whole way ... except when he saw a long whip, ... or had a frightful vision at the water of somebody washing a little dog ... which made him draw back into the carriage with dilated eyes and quivering ears, and set about licking my hands, for an ‘Ora pro nobis.’ And Lizzie confided to me, that, when she is ‘grown up,’ she never will go out to dinners like Henrietta, but drive in the park like Ba, instead ... unless she can improve upon both, and live in a cottage covered with roses, in the country. I, in the meantime, between my companions, thought of neither of them more than was necessary, but of somebody whom I had been teazing perhaps ... dearest, was it so, indeed? ... but I avenge you by teazing myself back again! A long rambling letter, with nothing in it! ‘Passages, that lead to nothing’—and staircases, too! May I be loved nevertheless, as usual? and forgiven for my ‘secret faults?’ You are the whole world to me—and the stars besides!

And I am your very own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Wednesday Morning. [Post-mark, June 17, 1846.]

My own Ba, I release you from just as much as you would easily dispense me from observing in that mutual promise. Indeed, it has become one unnecessary for our present relation and knowledge: it was right at the beginning for either to say to the other, using calm words, ‘It is your good I seek, not mine,’ and as if it were demonstrated that I should secure yours at the expense of mine by leaving you I would endeavour to do it—so, you assure me, you would act by me. The one point to ascertain therefore, is—what will amount to a demonstration; and I for my part apprize you that no other person in the world can by any possibility know so much of me as to be entitled to pronounce in the matter—to say ‘it is for good or for evil’—therefore, you will no more be justified in giving up to that kind of demonstration what I consent you shall give up to one clearly furnished by myself the only authentic one—than you would be justified in paying my money, entrusted to you, on the presentation of a cheque signed by somebody else ... somebody who loves me better than himself, my best of friends, truest of advisers &c. &c. It skills not, boots not—‘John Smith’ is not R.B., nor B.A. and because R.B. or B.A. shall be instantly attended to,—the counterfeit must be refused.’ Just this, so rational and right, I understood you to bid me promise—and so much you have promised me, a proper precaution for the earlier time when the friend might seem to argue with some plausibility ‘really I understand my friend’s interests better than you can.’ But now, who dares assure me that? I disbelieve it—one only knows better, can ever know better—yourself; and I will obey yourself. So with me—I know better my own good than you do yet, I think. When I tell you that good requires such a step as you speak of, you shall acquiesce; I will tell you on the instant, as you, in your own case, should tell me on the instant. I needed not ask you to promise, as I foolishly did, that you would not act in the saddest of ways—professing to see what could never be, and believe what must be untrue. At the beginning, at the first day, suppose Mr. Kenyon had said—you prevent his getting such a place, which brings in so much honour and wealth—or marrying such a person who would effect the same—you might have assented then, in your comparative ignorance, just as you could not have objected had he said, ‘If you hold Mr. B. to his engagement to come here on the Derby Day you will ruin him assuredly, for his heart and soul are on “the turf” and his betting-book will go to wreck.’ To this you could never bring yourself to pretend an assent—it would be no argument if he went on saying—‘Why, A and B and C go to races and bet on them’—you know I do not—so you know my estimate of honour and wealth and the rest, apart ... I will not say from the love of you,—but from my own life as I had traced it years ago, and as it is still traced for me to its end,—your love coming to help it in every smallest particular, to supply the undreamed-of omissions in the plan of it, and remove the obstructions best seen now that they are removed or removable. There is a calmest ‘of calm’ statements of the good of you to me.

My dearest Ba, you say ‘let us both think’—think of this, you! Do not for God’s sake introduce an element of uncertainty and restlessness and dissatisfaction into the feeling whereon my life lies. To speak for myself, this matter is concluded, done with,—I am yours, you are mine, and not to give use to refinements upon refinements as to what is the being most of all each other’s, which might end in your loving me best while I was turned a Turk in the East, or my—you know the inquisition does all for the pure love of the victim’s soul. Let us have common sense—and think, in its most ordinary exercise, what would my life be worth now without you—as I,—putting on your own crown, accepting your own dearest assurance,—dare believe your life would be incomplete now without mine—so you have allowed me to believe. Then our course is plain. If you dare make the effort, we will do as we propose,—if not, not: I have nothing to do but take your hand ... there is not one difficulty in my path,—nor in yours on my account,—that is for me. If I change my views, and desire hereafter what I altogether turn from now,—in what conceivable respect will your being my wife hinder me? If I accept the Embassy which Young England in the person of Milnes has promised me—you shall offer no impediment. If I rather aspire to ‘dine out’ here in London, you shall stay at home and be good-natured. I shall attain to all these delights just as easily with you as without you, I suppose; ‘No, I cannot marry some other woman and by her means and connections and connexions’—No—because—first and least of all, I begin by drawing on myself the entire cataract of shame and disgrace in the mouth of the world,—direct accusation or rather condemnation, against which not a word can be urged in mitigation, because all would be the pure simple truth—I do this, who have been fretfully wincing under the mere apprehension of catching a mere spatter or two of gossiping scandal—which a very few words would get rid of, seeing that, in fact, the falseness of the imputation will be apparent to everybody with eyes to see—for after all, here I am, living to my own pleasure and my father and mother’s, and at liberty to do so for ever, as mortals say. Well, and so having gone under the whole real cataract instead of the sprinkling impertinence of the half a dozen sprinklings from the mop at the nursery-window which an upward look and cry will stop at once,—so having mended the matter, I commit a sin which I turn and ask you, should you be ever at peace with God and yourself if you sate still and suffered me to commit,—not on account of me and my harm to follow in both worlds,—but in mere justice to your ‘neighbour,’—on whom you would see inflicted this infamous wrong?

Dear, dear, dear Ba, I kiss you, kiss my heart out unto you,—best love, one love! I see above what I will not think over again, look over again—but what then? Can I be quiet when I hear the least, least motion about my treasure, and my heart that is there, with it? Then no more, I beseech you, love, never one word more of all that! Whenever I can hear such words calmly, I shall be fit for agreeing to them,—let all be now. These two kindest of letters both come in together to my blessing—my entire blessing! I was writing the last line when they came—I will just say now, that the Greenwich affair is put off till Friday. Do not I understand Miss Bayley! And do I understand you, my Ba, when I venture this time——because of the words and the pain I shall not hide that they did give me,—to feel that, even beyond my kissing you, you kiss this one time your own R.B.

My mother is much better, and out—she is walking with my sister. I am very well—in the joy perhaps ... but really much better—and have been so.

My two hundredth letter from her! I, poor?

E.B.B. to R.B.

Wednesday. [Post-mark, June 18, 1846.]

Dearest and ever dearest, try to forgive me when I fall so manifestly short of you in all things! It is the very sense of this which throws me on despairs sometimes of being other than a bane to your life—and then ... by way of a remedy ... I begin to be a torment to it directly. Forgive me. Whatever I may say I am as wholly yours as if you held me in your hand, and I would do for you any extravagance, as if it were a common thing, at a word—and what is before us is only a common thing, since I have looked to it from the beginning. Oh—I may talk when I am out of spirits—but you know, and I know best of all, that I could not withdraw myself from you, unless you said ‘Go’—could not—I have no power. Fine talking, it is of me, to talk of withdrawing myself from you! You know I could not at all do it, let ever so many special pleaders come to prove to me that you would be more prosperous and happy without me. ‘Then’ I would say ... ‘let him put me away. I can’t put myself away, because I am not mine but his.’ Assuredly I would say just that, and no more. So do you forget that I have teazed you and pained you ... pained you!... I will try not to pain you, my own, own dearest, any more. I have grown to love you instead of the whole world; and only one thing ... (you understand what that is ...) is dreadful and intolerable to me to imagine. But now it is done with; and you shall teach me hereafter to make you happy instead of the contrary. So ... yes—you are kissed this time! upon both eyes, ... that they may not see my faults. And afterwards I will tell you a paradox ... that if I loved you a hundred times less, I should run into such offences less in exact proportion. And finally I will give you a promise ... not to teaze you for a week—which were a wonderful feat for me! the teazer par excellence.

To-day I deserved to hear of your head being worse—but it is better, I thank God—and your mother is better—all such comforting news! But it was no news that you did not go to Greenwich to-day,—for Mrs. Jameson came for me to drive at about six, and she and I were in Regent’s Park until nearly eight. Then she went somewhere to dinner, and I, who had had tea, came home to supper! I like her very much—more and more, certainly—and we need not be mysterious up to the usual mark of mystery, because I told her ... told her ... what might be told—and she was gracious to the uttermost—not angry at all,—and said that ‘Truth was truth, and one could breathe in the atmosphere of it, and she was glad I had told her.’ Of you, she said, that she admired you more than ever—yes, more than ever—for the ‘manner in which as a man of honour you had kept the secret’—so you were praised, and I, not blamed ... and we shall not complain, if our end is as good as our beginning. Also we talked of your poetry and of you personally, and I was pleased, ... which proves a little what was said—and I heard how you were invited as a ‘celebrity’ for the Countess Hahn-Hahn to see you, and how you effaced yourself with ever so much gracefulness; yet not too much, to omit charming the whole room. Mrs. Jameson praises you always, as nobody does better. And to-morrow ... will you be surprised to hear that to-morrow at half-past four, I am to go again with her, ... to see Rogers’s pictures? Is it wrong? shall I get into a scrape? She promised laughingly that I should be incognita to the only companion she thought of taking ... a Mrs. Bracebridge, I think ... and Mr. Rogers himself is not to be visible—and she herself will mention it to nobody. It was hard to say ‘no’—yet perhaps ‘no’ would have been better. Do you think so? Mrs. Bracebridge is an artist and lives or lived on Mount Hymettus!—and she is not to hear my name even.

Now—good night, very dear!—most dear of all! I will not teaze you for a fortnight, I think. Ah—if ever I can do that again, you shall not be pained, ... you shall think that my heart and life are in you, and that, if they seem to flatter, it is that they go deeper. All I am is yours—which is different from ... all I have. ‘All I have,’ is when I may lean my head down on the shoulder—

So let me be your own

Ba.

Of those two letters, one was in the post before seven the evening before. Now, is it not too bad?

R.B. to E.B.B.

Thursday. [Post-mark, June 18, 1846.]

Did you really kiss me on the two eyes, my Ba? I cannot say ‘perhaps at the very time I was thinking of you,’—more than ‘when I was breathing’—I breathe always, think of you always,—kiss you almost always. You dear, dearest Ba! Do pain me so again and again,—if you will so cure me every time! But you should not imagine that I can mistake the motive,—as if you loved me less and therefore wrote—oh, no—but there is no getting rid of these mistakings before the time: they bear their fruit and die away naturally ... the hoe never cuts up all their roots. I shall trust to hear you say one day I am past such mistaking—but—at Amalfi?

I am very glad, love, you go to Mr. Rogers’ to-day—what harm can follow? The evil in the other case was a very precise and especial one. They say his pictures are well worth seeing. Tell me, make me see you seeing! I am glad, too, Mrs. Jameson knows ... but her graciousness I expected, because the causes you were able to give her would really operate just in that manner: indeed they are the sole causes of the secresy we have observed. I cannot help liking Mrs. Jameson more, much more since her acquaintance with you. Hazlitt says somewhere that the misery of consorting with country-people is felt when you try for their sympathy as to favourite actors—‘Liston?’ says the provincial, ‘never heard of him’—but—whoever knows Miss Barrett ... ‘Ba,’ they are not going to be let know ... of such a person I know something more than of any other.

Talking of Hahn-Hahn, read this note of Mrs. Carlyle’s—although to my mortification I find that the wise man is not so peremptory on the virtue of one of Ba’s qualities as I, the ignorant man, must continue to be. Never mind,—perhaps ‘in the long run’ I may love you as if you were exactly to Mrs. Carlyle’s mind!

I want to tell you a thing not to be forgotten about Florence as a residence for any time. You spoke of the bad water at Ravenna ... which if a serious inconvenience anywhere is a very plague in Italy; well, the medical people, according to Valléry, attribute the black hollow cheeks and sunk eyes and general ill health of the Florentines to their vile water; impregnated with lead, I think. There is only one good fountain in the city—that opposite Santa Croce; I religiously abstained from drinking water there—and felt the privation the more from having just left Rome, where the water is the most perfectly delicious and abundant and, they say, wholesome—in the world. That one objection is decisive against Ravenna—but then, why do the English all live at Florence?

It makes me happy to hear of your achievements and not of any ill result—happy! Is it quite so warm to-day? If it were to rain to-morrow (!), if—our party would be postponed till the next day, Saturday, I believe ... there was a kind of understanding to that effect—now, in that case, might I go to you to-morrow? In the case of real heavy rain only——the letter to-morrow will tell me perhaps....

Goodbye, dearest dearest; I love you wholly—

E.B.B. to R.B.

Thursday Evening. [Post-mark, June 19, 1846.]

But I have not been to Mr. Rogers’s to-day, after all. I had a note from Mrs. Jameson, to put off our excursion to Saturday ... if I consented to Saturday! but of course I would not consent to Saturday—and as she intimated that another day would do as well, we shall have another day fixed, I suppose. What a good fruit it would be of the confession I made in the park, if she were to ask you to go!!! Oh, I should like that—I should like it notwithstanding the drawbacks. It would be a fair gain upon the usual times of meeting—only that I could not care quite as much for the pictures—yet, those too, I should like to see with you, rather than apart from you. And you never saw them ... you! Is there a hope of her asking you when you are at Greenwich together? Now I have got this into my head, it will not go out again—oh, you must try and enchant her properly at Greenwich and lead her into asking you. Yet, with you or without you in the body, the spirit of you and the influence of you are always close to my spirit when it discerns any beauty or feels any joy; if I am happy on any day it is through you wholly, whether you are absent or present, dearest, and ever dearest!

And so, instead of Mr. Rogers’s pictures, I have been seeing you in my thoughts, as I sate here all alone to-day. When everybody was at dinner I remembered that I had not been out—it was nearly eight ... there was no companion for me unless I called one from the dinner-table; and Wilson, whom I thought of, had taken holiday. Therefore I put on my bonnet, as a knight of old took his sword,—aspiring to the pure heroic,—and called Flush, and walked down-stairs and into the street, all alone—that was something great! And, with just Flush, I walked there, up and down in glorious independence. Belgium might have felt so in casting off the yoke. As to Flush, he frightened me a little and spoilt my vain-glory—for Flush has a very good, stout vain-glory of his own, and, although perfectly fond of me, has no idea whatever of being ruled over by me!—(he looks beautiful scorn out of his golden eyes, when I order him to do this or this) ... and Flush chose to walk on the opposite side of the street,—he would,—he insisted on it! and every moment I expected him to disappear into some bag of the dogstealers, as an end to his glory, à lui. Happily, however, I have no moral with which to point my tale—it’s a very immoral story, and shows neither Flush nor myself punished for our sins. Often, I am not punished for my sins, ... am I? You know that ... dearest, dearest! But then, even you are not punished for your sins ... when you flatter so! Ah, it is happy for you, and for your reputation in good taste and sense, that you cannot very well say such things except to me, who cannot believe them. For the rest, the eyes were certainly blinded, ... being kissed too hard.

How I like Mrs. Carlyle’s note! You will go of course. But it will not rain to-morrow, and you shall not have the advantage of coming through it to me, ... for this reason (among others far better), that I have engaged to see, at three or four perhaps, a friend of ours from the country. She is in London for only two days and wrote to beg me to see her, and to-day I escaped by half a rudeness, and, if I do to-morrow, it will be by a whole rudeness. So, not to-morrow! And, if Saturday should be taken from us, we must find three days somehow next week—it will be easily done.

As to Florence, the flood of English is the worst water of all in the argument. And then Dr. Chambers ‘warned me off’ Florence, as being too cold for the winter. It would be as well not to begin by being ill; and half I am afraid of Ravenna—though Ravenna may not be cold, and though Shelley may belie it altogether. ‘A miserable place’ he calls it in the ‘Letters.’ Still I observe that his first impressions are apt to be darker than remain. For instance, he began by hating Pisa, and preferred it to most places, afterwards. There is Pisa by the way! Or your Sorrento ... Salerno ... Amalfi ... you shall consider if you please—find a new place if you like.

It is my last letter perhaps till I see you. May God bless you, I lift up my heart to say. How happy I ought to be, ... and am, ... with your thoughts all round me, so, as you describe! Let them call me your very own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Friday Morning. [Post-mark, June 19, 1846.]

I shall hardly be able, I am afraid, to get your letter ... if one should come through your dear goodness, my own Ba ... before I go out ... having to meet the Procters’ party in Town: so I will just write my joy at its being little more now than twenty-four hours before I shall see you, I trust. The day is cool and nearer rain than I fancied probable—but, oh the task-work, Egyptian bondage, that much going-out would be to me, who am tired (unreasonably) beforehand on this first and most likely last occasion during the year. It is a pity that I am so ignorant about Hahn-Hahn’s books—one, ‘Faustina,’ I got last night, but have neither heart nor time to ‘get it up’ in a couple of hours.

Something you said on Mrs. Jameson’s authority amused me—the encomium on my grace in sitting still to see the play and not jumping on the stage to act too—as if it were not the best privilege one finds in being ‘known’ never so little, that it dispenses one from having to make oneself known. When you are shipwrecked among Caribbee Indians you are forced to begin professing ‘I can make baskets, and tell fortunes, and foresee eclipses—so don’t eat me!’ And even there if they threatened nothing of the kind, I should be content to live and die as unhonoured as one of their own cabbage-trees.

I must go now—the day gets hotter, but then our day draws nearer—All my heart is yours, best of dearest loves, my own Ba, as I am your own—

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday. [Post-mark, June 22, 1846.]

What I told you yesterday is very often in my thoughts, my own Ba—that with respect to the love for you ‘I see what I know and testify what I have seen.’ I know what is, and why it is—so far as my faculties of perception allow, of course—I rest on you just as I sate on the grass in the garden this morning with the very earth’s immensity beneath: that is very different from trusting to this chair which is firm enough now, but might break down from a thousand causes. How entirely I believe in you, Ba! When you praise me, I believe that you are in error, yet believe it none——I know I am not so truthful to you—not so invariably, in the least as in the greatest matters—in the greatest, in the ordinary even, I speak pure truth,—but the old conventional habits cling, as I find out on reflection sometimes—but I aspire no less to become altogether open to your sight as you are to me,—I in my degree,—like a smallest of lake’s face under the sky’s: and for this also I shall have to bless you, my only Ba,—my only Ba!

I ought never ... I think I will not again ... attempt to write down why I love you.... (not, not that it is done here, but alluded-to, touched upon ...) The elements of the love ... (I say ‘the’ love, mine, because I will not know, nor hear, nor be taught anything by anybody else about ‘love,’ the one love everybody knows, it seems, and lives and dies by)—my love’s elements are so many that the attempt to describe them is to bring about this failure ... the first that comes is taken up and treated of at length ... as that element of ‘trust’ just now ... and then, in the feeling of incompetence which makes the pen sink away and turns the mind off, the others are let pass by unnamed, much less described, or at least acknowledged for the undeniable elements they are. What were all the trust without—and thus I could begin again! Let me say no more now—and forgive all the foolishness ... it is not for my wisdom you are to love me, Ba! Except that if you agreed too heartily with me on that point, I should very likely be found turning round on you with ‘not wise, when I adore you so?’ Wise or unwise, I do adore you, my Ba! And more and evermore! But see how I need your letters to train mine, to lead them into something more like the true way ... and to-morrow the letter will come—will it not? And mine shall be less about myself and more about you—whom may God bless, prays your own

R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Sunday. [Post-mark, June 22, 1846.]

I write to you in the drawing-room, and have brought down with me, I find, no smaller paper—but it can’t be filled, can it? though I have to tell you the great news about the lilies ... that all, except two, are in full blow ... and that the two are unfolding ... I can almost see the leaves move. I told you how it would be. They will live, ... and last longer than the roses, ... which I shall have to tell you by history as well as prediction, presently. The next news is not so good,—for I have had a note from Mrs. Jameson to the effect that she will come to take me to the pictures to-morrow, Monday—so that there will be no time to be diplomatic. My hope was of your meeting her at Mr. Carlyle’s, before she could arrange anything finally,—and really I do feel as disappointed as if I had had a reason for the hope. Now, unless we have another miracle, there’s an end, I suppose.

Think of my having left Flush behind me fast asleep. He dashes at the door in the most peremptory way, and nearly throws me backward when I open it, with his leaping-up-joy ... if it is not rather his reproach.

Now I am here all alone, except Flush—sitting, leaning against the open window with my feet curled up, and, at them, Flush curled up too; and I writing on my knee more meo. Rather cooler it seems, but rather too hot still it is, I think. How did you get home? how are you, dearest? And your mother? tell me of her, and of you! You always, you know (do you know?), leave your presence with me in the flowers; and, as the lilies unfold, of course I see more and more of you in each apocalypse. Still, the Saturday’s visit is the worst of all to come to an end, as always I feel. In the first place stands Sunday, like a wall without a door in it! no letter! Monday is a good day and makes up a little, but it does not prevent Tuesday and Wednesday following ... more intervening days than between the other meetings—or so it seems. I forgot to tell you that yesterday I went to Mr. Boyd’s house ... not to see him, but as a preliminary step to seeing him. Arabel went to his room to tell him of my being there—we are both perhaps rather afraid of meeting after all these years of separation. Quite blind he is—and though scarcely older than Mr. Kenyon (perhaps a year or two or three), so nervous, that he has really made himself infirm, and now he refuses to walk out or even to go down-stairs. A very peculiar life he has led ever since he lost his sight, which he did when he was quite a young man—and a very peculiar person he is in all possible ways. His great faculty is ... memory ... and his great passion ... Greek—to which of late he has added Ossian. Otherwise, he talks like a man of slow mind, which he is, ... and with a child’s way of looking at things, such as would make you smile—oh, he talks in the most wonderfully childish way! Poor Mr. Boyd. He cares for me perhaps more than he cares for any one else ... far more than for his own only daughter; but he is not a man of deep sensibility, and, if he heard of my death, would merely sleep a little sounder the next night. Once he said to me that whenever he felt sorry about anything, he was inclined to go to sleep. An affectionate and grateful regard ... grateful for many kindnesses ... I bear him, for my part. He says that I should wear the crown in poetry, if I would but follow Pope—but that the dreadful system of running lines one into another ruins everything. When I talk of memory, I mean merely the mechanical faculty. The associative, which makes the other a high power, he wants. So I went to his house in St. John’s Wood yesterday, and saw the little garden. Poor Mr. Boyd. There, he lives, all alone—and never leaving his chair! yet cheerful still, I hear, in all that desolation. As for you and Tennyson, he never heard of you ... he never guesses at the way of modern literature ... and it is the intense compliment to me when he reads verses of mine, ‘notwithstanding my corrupt taste,’ ... to quote his own words.

Dearest, do you love me to-day? I think of you, which is quite the same thing. Think of me to-morrow at half-past four when Mrs. Jameson comes, and I shall have all that exertion to go through without the hope of you. Only that you are always there ... here!—and I, your very own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Monday. [Post-mark, June 22, 1846.]

If I only thought for myself in this instance, I should at once go and mount guard before your house so as to see you, at least, for a moment as you leave it.

To hope for a word would never do ... you might be startled, or simply not like such a measure, and in simili incontri I will not run risks, but I should be able to see you, my Ba ... why do I not go then? People at doors and windows are also able, alas, to see me too—so I stay ... if this is staying away when I can see the curled-up feet and kiss them beside,—ever-dear feet!

Do you know the days and the times and the long interval,—you, as I know? How strange that you should complain, and I become the happier! If I could alter it, and make you feel no subject for complaint any longer, I would,—surely I would, and be happy in that too, I hope ... yet the other happiness needs must be given up in that case ... I cannot reason it out. I excuse my present selfish happiness by feeling I would not exchange the sadness of being away from you for any imaginable delight in which you had no part. But I will have this delight, too, my Ba, of imagining that you are gratified by what you will see to-day. Tell me all, and what is said, and how you are at the end.

Thank you meanwhile for the picture of poor Mr. Boyd ... then he never has seen you, since he was blind so long ago! How strange and melancholy—you say he is ‘cheerful,’ however. In that case—think of unhappy Countess Faustina with her ‘irresistible longings,’ and give her as much of your commiseration as she ought to get. What a horrible book ... how have I brought in what I prescribed to myself ‘silence about.’ Such characters as Faustina produce the very worst possible effect on me—I don’t know how they strike other people—but I am at once incited ‘debellare superbos’—to try at least and pull down the arrogant—contempt would be the most Christian of all the feelings possible to be called forth by such a woman. Let me get back to you, my own dearest-dearest,—I do ‘love you to-day,’ if you must ask,—and bidding me think of you is all very well—never bid me not think of you!—and so never find out that there could be a bidding I am unable to obey. But what is mere ‘thinking’? I kiss your hand, and your eyes, and now your lips,—and ask for my heart back again, to give it and be ever giving it. No words can tell how I am your own.

My mother is much better,—observably so, to-day. Oh, dearest,—I want you to read Landor’s Dialogue between Tasso and his Sister, in the second volume,—with the exquisite Sorrentine scenery—do read it. I see your Tasso with his prominent eyes as if they were ever just brightening out of a sorrow that has broken over them.

How I like (‘love’ is not my word now) but like Landor, more and more!

E.B.B. to R.B.

Monday Evening. [Post-mark, June 23, 1846.]

Well—I did look everywhere for you to-day,—but not more than I always do—always I do, when I go out, look for you in the streets ... round the corners! And Mrs. Jameson came alone and she and I were alone at Mr. Rogers’s, and you must help me to thank her some day for her unspeakable kindness to me, though she did not leap to the height of the inspiration of managing to let us see those pictures together. Ah—if she had, it would have been too much. As it is, she gave me a great deal of pleasure in the kindest of ways ... and I let it be pleasure, by mixing it with enough thoughts of you—(otherwise how could it be pleasure?)—and she showed the pictures, and instructed me, really taking pains and instructing me ... and telling me how Rubens painted landscapes ... as how should my ignorance guess? ... and various other unknown things The first word as we reached the door, frightened me—for she said that perhaps we might see Mr. Rogers ... which was a little beyond our covenant—but we did not see him, and I suppose the Antinous on the staircase is not at all like him. Grand it is, in its serene beauty. On a colossal scale, in white marble. For the pictures, they are full of wonder and divinity—each giving the measure of a man’s soul. And think ... sketches from the hand of Michael Angelo and Raphael! And a statuette in clay, alive with the life of Michael Angelo’s finger—the blind eyes looking ... seeing ... as if in scorn of all clay! And the union of energy and meditation in the whole attitude! You have seen the marble of that figure in Florence. Then, a divine Virgin and child, worn and faded to a shadow of Raphael’s genius, as Mrs. Jameson explained to me—and the famous ‘Ecce Homo’ of Guido ... and Rubens’ magnificent ‘version,’ as she called it, of Andrea Mantegna’s ‘Triumph of Julius Cæsar.’ So triumphing to this day! And Titian, and Tintoretto ... and what did not strike me the least, ... a portrait of Rembrandt by himself, which if his landscapes, as they say, were ‘dug out of nature,’ looks as if it were dug out of humanity. Such a rugged, dark, deep subterraneous face, ... yet inspired—! seeming to realize that God took clay and breathed into the nostrils of it. There are both the clay, and the divinity! And think! I saw the agreement between the bookseller and Milton for the sale of Paradise Lost! with Milton’s signature and seal! and ‘Witnessed by William Greene, Mr. Milton’s servant.’ How was it possible not to feel giddy with such sights! Almost I could have run my head against the wall, I felt, with bewilderment—and Mrs. Jameson must have been edified, I have thought since, through my intense stupidity. I saw too the first edition of ‘Paradise Lost.’ The rooms are elegant, with no pretension to splendour ... which is good taste, a part of the good taste everywhere. Only, on the chimney-piece of the dining-room, were two small busts, beautiful busts, white with marble, ... and representing—now, whom, of gods and men, would you select for your Lares ... to help your digestion and social merriment?... Caligula and Nero in childhood! The ‘childhood’ is horribly suggestive to me! On the side-board is Pope’s bust, by Roubillac—a too expressive, miserable face—drawn with disease and bitter thoughts, and very painful, I felt, to look at. These things I liked least, in the selection and arrangement. Everything beside was admirable: and I write and write of it all as if I were not tired—but I am ... and most with the excitement and newness. Mrs. Jameson breakfasted with Mr. Rogers yesterday, she said, and met the Countess Hahn-Hahn, who was talking of modern literature when her host suddenly stopped her with a question ... ‘Did you ever read Addison?’

How late it is. Must I have done, before I have half done?

What I did not tell you yesterday is very much in my thoughts ... do you know? I, too, ‘see what I know and testify what I have felt ... and, as far as my faculties of perception go!’ I am confident that you had better not look for a single reason for loving me. Which is worst? A bad reason, or no reason at all? A bad reason, I think—and accept the alternative. Ah ... my own only beloved. And how you write to me to-night! I will read what you tell me in Landor ... but no words of inspired lips or pen ... no poet’s word, of the divinest, ... ever went to my heart as yours in these letters! Do I not love you? am I not your own? And while deserving nothing of all of it, I feel it at least—respond to it—my heart is in your hand. May God bless you ... ‘and me in that,’—because even He could not bless me without that. Which He knows.

Your own.

But there is much beauty in Faustina—oh, surely!

The lilies, all in blow except one ... which is blowing.

Are we going to have a storm to-night? It lightens ... lightens!

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday Morning [Post-mark, June 23, 1846.]

I was just on the point of answering your dear letter, in all the good spirits it might be expected to wake in me, when the sad news of poor Haydon’s death stopped all; much I feel it, for the light words of my own about his extravagance, as I had been told of it, but very much more on your account, who were so lately in communication with him. I earnestly hope,—I will trust—you have not been rudely apprised of this—I am happy to remember that you do not see the newspaper in the morning,—others will see it first; perhaps there may be no notice in the Chronicle at all, or on the other hand, a more circumstantial one than this in the Times which barely says—‘that B.R.H. died suddenly at his residence—yesterday morning. He was in his usual health on the previous evening, and it is believed that his decease was hastened by pecuniary embarrassment’—and he is called ‘the unfortunate gentleman’—which with the rest implies the very worst, I fear. If by any chance this should be the first intimation you receive of it ... do not think me stupid nor brutal,—for I thought again and again as to the right course to take ... whether it would not be best to be silent altogether and wait and see ... but in that case I should have surprised you more by my cold letter,—such an one as I could bring myself to write,—for how were it possible to speak of pictures and indifferent matters when you perhaps have been shocked, made ill by this news? If I have done wrong, forgive me, my own best, dearest Ba—I would give the world to know how you are. The storm, too, and lightning may have made you even more than ordinarily unfit to be startled and grieved. God knows and must help you! I am but your devoted—

How glad I am you told me you had never seen him. And perhaps he may be after all a mere acquaintance ... anything I will fancy that is likely to relieve you of pain! Dearest dearest!

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday. [Post-mark, June 24, 1846.]

Ever tenderest, kindest and most beloved, I thank you from the quick of my heart, where the thought of you lives constantly! In this world full of sadness, of which I have had my part ... full of sadness and bitterness and wrong ... full of most ghastly contrasts of life and death, strength and weakness side by side ... it is too much, to have you to hold by, as the river rushes on ... too much good, too much grace for such as I, ... as I feel always, and cannot cease to feel!

Oh yes—it has shocked me, this dreadful news of poor Mr. Haydon—it chilled the blood in my veins when I heard it from Alfred, who, seeing the Times at the Great Western Terminus, wrote out the bare extract and sent it to me by the post. He just thought that the Chronicle did not mention it, ... and that I had not seen Mr. Haydon ... he did not perhaps think how it would shock me.

For, this I cannot help thinking. Could anyone—could my own hand even ... have averted what has happened? My head and heart have ached to-day over the inactive hand! But, for the moment, it was out of my power, without an application where it would have been useless—and then, I never fancied this case to be more than a piece of a continuous case ... of a habit fixed. Two years ago he sent me boxes and pictures precisely so, and took them back again—poor, poor Haydon!—as he will not this time. And he said last week that Peel had sent him fifty pounds ... adding ... ‘I do not however want charity, but employment.’ Also, I have been told again and again (oh, never by you my beloved!) that to give money there, was to drop it into a hole of the ground.

But if to have dropped it so, dust to dust, would have saved a living man—what then?

Yet of the three notes I had from him last week, the first was written so lightly, that the second came to desire me not to attribute to him a ‘want of feeling.’ And who could think ... contemplate ... this calamity? May God have mercy on the strongest of us, for we are weak. Oh, that a man so high hearted and highly endowed ... a bold man, who has thrown down gauntlet after gauntlet in the face of the world—that such a man should go mad for a few paltry pounds! For he was mad if he killed himself! of that I am as sure as if I knew it. If he killed himself, he was mad first.

Some day, when I have the heart to look for it, you shall see his last note. I understand now that there are touches in it of a desperate pathos—but never could he have meditated self-destruction while writing that note. He said he should write six sets of lectures more ... six more volumes. He said he was painting a new background to a picture, which made him ‘feel as if his soul had wings.’ And then he hoped his brain would not turn. And he ‘gloried’ in the naval dangers of his son at sea. And he repeated an old phrase of his, which I had heard from him often before, and which now rings hollowly to the ears of my memory ... that he couldn’t and wouldn’t die. Strange and dreadful!

It is nearly two years since we had a correspondence of some few months—from which at last I receded, notwithstanding the individuality and spirit of his letters, and my admiration for a certain fervour and magnanimity of genius, no one could deny to him. His very faults partook of that nobleness. But for a year and a half or more perhaps, I scarcely have written or heard from him—until last week when he wrote to ask for a shelter for his boxes and pictures. If you had enquired of me the week before, I might have answered that I did not wish to renew the intercourse—yet who could help being shocked and saddened? Would it have availed, to have dropped something into that ‘hole in the ground?’ Oh, to imagine that! Yet a little would have been but as nothing!—and he did not ask even for a little—and I should have been ashamed to have offered but a little. Yet I cannot turn the thought away—that I did not offer.

Henry went to the house as I begged him. His son came to the door, and to a general enquiry ‘after the family,’ said that ‘Mr. Haydon was dead and that his family were quite as well as could be expected.’ That horrible banality is all I know more than you know.

Yesterday at Rogers’s, Mrs. Jameson led me to his picture of Napoleon at St. Helena. At the moment we looked at it, his hand was scarcely cold, perhaps. Surely it was not made of the commonest clay of men—that hand!

I pour out my thoughts to you, dearest dearest, as if it were right rather to think of doing myself that good and relief, than of you who have to read all. But you spoil me into an excess of liberty, by your tenderness. Best in the world! Oh—you help me to live—I am better and lighter since I have drawn near to you even on this paper—already I am better and lighter. And now I am going to dream of you ... to meet you on some mystical landing place ... in order to be quite well to-morrow. Oh—we are so selfish on this earth, that nothing grieves us very long, let it be ever so grievous, unless we are touched in ourselves ... in the apple of our eye ... in the quick of our heart ... in what you are, and where you are ... my own dearest beloved! So you need not be afraid for me! We all look to our own, as I to you; the thunderbolts may strike the tops of the cedars, and, except in the first start, none of us be moved. True it is of me—not of you perhaps—certainly you are better than I, in all things. Best in the world, you are!—no one is like you. Can you read what I have written? Do not love me less! Do you think that I cannot feel you love me, through all this distance? If you loved me less, I should know, without a word or a sign. Because I live by your loving me! I am your

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Wednesday. [Post-mark, June 24, 1846.]

But, dearest love—I have just come in later than I expected, I am happy to say ... for your note only just arrives too, they say ... and I should have been frightened more than I need say. All blessing on you, Ba. I have seen no paper.—but Countess Hahn-Hahn said across Carlyle’s table that poor H. had attempted to shoot himself and then chosen another method—too successful. Horrible indeed—All to say now is, I shall be with you to-morrow,—my very own, dearest of all dear created things—my life and pride and joy—(Bless you).

R.

There is nothing in to-day’s Times I find—

R.B. to E.B.B.

Friday Morning. [Post-mark, June 26, 1846.]

I drew the table to the fire before I wrote this. Here is cool weather, grateful to those overcome by last week’s heat, I suppose!—much as one conceives of a day’s starvation being grateful to people who were overfeasted some time back. But the coolness (that is, piercing cold as the north wind can make) sets me to ponder on what you said yesterday,—of considering summer as beginning next Wednesday, or there about, and ending by consequence with September. Our time is ‘at the Summer’s end’: and it does strike me that there may be but too many interpositions beside that of ‘my own will’ ... far too many. If those equinoctial winds disturb the sea, the cold weather adds to the difficulties of the land-journey ... then the will may interpose or stand aloof ... I cannot take you and kill you ... really, inevitably kill you! As it is ... or rather, as it might be, I should feel during a transit under the most favourable circumstances possible, somewhat as the performer of that trick by which a full glass of water resting in the open hand is made to describe a circle from above to below and back without spilling a drop—through some good-natured suspension, in the operator’s interest, of just a fundamental law of the universe, no more! Therefore if any September weather shall happen in September ... let us understand and wait ... another year! and another, and another.

Now, have I ever, with all those askings, asked you once too often, that is, unnecessarily—‘if this should be,’—or ‘when this should be?’ What is my ‘will’ to do with it? Can I keep the winds away, alas? My own will has all along been annihilated before you,—with respect to you—I should never be able to say ‘she shall dine on fish, or fruit,’ ‘She shall wear silk gloves or thread gloves’—even to exercise in fancy that much ‘will over you’ is revolting—I will this, never to be ‘over you’ if I could!

So, you decide here as elsewhere—but do decide, Ba, my own only Ba—do think, to decide. I can know nothing here as to what is gained or lost by delay or anticipation—I only refer to the few obvious points of the advantage of our ‘flight not being in the winter’—and the consideration that the difficulty in another quarter will never be less nor more,—therefore is out of the question.

I will tell you something I meant to speak of yesterday. Mrs. Jameson said Mr. Kenyon had assured her, with the kindest intentions, that it was quite vain to make those offers of company to Pisa or elsewhere, for your Father would never give his consent, and the very rationality of the plan, and probability of the utmost benefit following the adoption of it, would be the harder to forego the more they were entertained—whereupon, ‘having the passions of his kind he spoke some certain things’—bitter and unavoidable. Then Mrs. J. spoke too, as you may imagine; apparently from better knowledge than even I possess. Now I repeat this to your common-sense, my Ba—it is not hard to see that you must be silent and suffering, where no other can or will be either—so that if a verdict needs must be pronounced on our conduct, it will be ‘the world’s’ and not an individual’s—and for once a fair one. Mrs. Jameson’s very words were ... (writing from what has been, observe—what is irrevocably past, and not what may be)—‘I feel unhappy when in her presence ... impelled to do her some service, and impeded. Can nothing be done to rescue her from this? ought it to continue?’ So speaks—not your lover!—who, as he told you, did long to answer ‘someone with attempt, at least!’ But it was best, for Mrs. Jameson would be blamed afterward, as Mr. K. might be abused, as ourselves will be vituperated, as my family must be calumniated ... by whom.

Do you feel me kiss your feet while I write this? I think you must, Ba! There is surely,—I trust, surely no impatience here, in this as in the other letter—if there is, I will endeavour to repress it ... but it will be difficult—for I love you, and am not a stock nor a stone.

And as we are now,—another year!

Well, kissing the feet answers everything, declares everything—and I kiss yours, my own Ba.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Friday Morning. [Post-mark, June 26, 1846.]

Arabel insists on my going out in the carriage, but I will not, I say, before I have written my letter—and while we talk, the rain comes down like a guardian angel, and I cannot go out before I have written my letter, as is apparent to all. Dearest, you did me such good yesterday with seeing you and hearing you, that I slept better and am better altogether, and after a little change into the air, shall be well—and how is your head? Now do not forget to tell me particularly. Say too whether you found your friend and had the right quantity of talk and got home without being the worse for him ... or me!

I have not had the heart to look at the newspapers, but hear that Sir Robert Peel has provided liberally for the present necessities of the poor Haydons. And do you know, the more I think the more I am inclined to conclude that the money-distress was merely an additional irritation, and that the despair leading to the revolt against life, had its root in disappointed ambition. The world did not recognize his genius, and he punished the world by withdrawing the light. If he had not that thought in him, I am wrong. The cartoon business, and his being refused employment in the Houses of Parliament ... that was bitter: and then came his opposition with Tom Thumb and the dwarfs triumph ... he talked bitterly of that in a letter to me of last week. He was a man, you see, who carried his whole being and sensibility on the outside of him; nay, worse than so, since in the thoughts and opinions of the world. All the audacity and bravery and self-exultation which drew on him so much ridicule were an agony in disguise—he could not live without reputation, and he wrestled for it, struggled for it, kicked for it, forgetting grace of attitude in the pang. When all was vain, he went mad and died. Poor Haydon! He measures things differently now! and let us now be right and just in our admeasurement of what he was—for, with all his weaknesses, he was not certainly far from being a great man.

It is hope and help, to be able to look away from all such thoughts, to you, dearest beloved, who do not partake of the faults and feeblenesses of these lower geniuses. There is hope and help for the world in you—and if for the world, why for me indeed much more. You do not know ... ah, you do not know—how I look up to you and trust perfectly in you. You are above all these clouds—your element is otherwise—men are not your taskmasters that you should turn to them for recompense. ‘Shall I always think the same of you,’ you asked yesterday. But I never think the same of you; because day by day you look greater and feel dearer. Only there is a deep gulph of another question, close beside that, which suggests itself, and makes me shudder to look down.

And now, the rain is over, and I shall dine briefly, and go out in the carriage.

May God bless you ... très bon!—très cher, pour cause.

Toute à toi—pour toujours.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Friday Evening. [Post-mark, June 27, 1846.]

Ever dearest, I send you a bare line to-night, for it is late and I am very tired; having ... while you were sitting by the fire ... been, for my part, driving to Highgate ... now think of that! Also it has done me good, I think, and I shall sleep for it to-night perhaps, though I am tired certainly.

Your letter shall be answered to-morrow—and here is a green answer to your leaves![3]—what leaves? whence and how? My green little branch, I gathered myself out of the hedge, snatching at it from the carriage-window. The roses were gone, or nearly gone, and the few left, quite out of reach; and the leaves keep behind to assure you that they do not look for snow-storms in September. No! it was not that, they said. I am belying what they said.

I gathered them in the hedge of the pretty close green lane which you go through to Hampstead. Were you ever there, I wonder?

Dearest, I will write to-morrow. Never are you ‘impatient,’ inconsiderate—and as for selfishness, I have been uneasy sometimes, precisely because you are so little selfish. I am not likely to mistake ... to wrench the wrong way ... any word of yours. As for mine, it was not a mere word, when I said that you should decide everything. Could I hold out for November, or October, or for September even, if you choose against? Indeed I could not. We—you will think—I am yours, and if you never repent that, I shall not—I am too entirely yours.

And so good-night—dearest beloved! Because you have a fire in June, is the snow to fall in September, and earth and ocean to become impassable? Ah well! we shall see! But you shall not see that I deceive you—

I am your very own

Ba.

Dear brown leaves! where did they come from, besides from you?

Not a north wind. Only a north-west wind, as I could have proved to you if you had been with me! Yet it is a detestable climate, this English climate, let us all confess. Say how your head is.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Saturday. [Post-mark, June 27, 1846.]

Your dear gentle laugh, as I seem to hear it, makes all well again for the moment undoubtedly. I cannot help trusting you implicitly ... so whenever I seem able to reason a little, and set you reasoning for me, ought I not to try,—and then give up, and sink my head over you ... dearest! In fact, I was a little frightened by what I heard and saw ... for you, if you please, began by saying ‘it was too cold to go out’—and you were paler, I thought. The news of Highgate and the green leaves are re-assuring indeed—but my brown leaves might be sent to you by myriads for all that, for all the light laugh,—all roses fast going, lilies going ... autumnal hollyhocks in full blow ... and now to count three months over before summer is to end! These rains may do something, or hinder somewhat—and certainly our fire was left alone early yesterday morning. Well, I have not been presumptuous except ... ah, the exception!

How could I presume, for one thing, to hope for last evening’s letter ... a pure piece of kindness in you, Ba! And all your kindness is pure, entire, pearl-like for roundness and completeness ... there is no one rough side as when a crystal is broken off and given: do you think it no good augury of our after life in what must be called, I suppose, another relation,—that this has been so perfect ... to me ... this last year, let me only say? In this relation there are as many ‘écueils’ as in the other,—as many, though of a different nature,—lovers quarrel on as various grounds as the wedded—and though with the hue and softness of love the most energetic words and deeds may change their character; yet one might write savage sentences in Chinese celestial-blue ink, which after a powdering with gold-dust should look prettier than the truest blessing in ordinary black. But you have been perfect to me hitherto—perfect! And of course only to you is the praise ... for I have to be entirely confided in by you, seeing that you cannot keep an eye on me after I leave your room ... whereas,—not I, but a gross, stupid fool who conceived of no liberty but that of the body, nor that the soul may be far more unfaithful—such an one might exult in the notion of the closed door and the excluded world of rivals.

Bless you, darling—Monday is not very far off now! And I am to hear again. I am much better,—my mother much better too. I saw my French friend and talked and heard him talk. Yesterday, the whole day, (after the fire went out) was given to a cousin of mine, a girl, just married, and here from Paris with her husband—these two had to be amused somehow. Ever your very own—

R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Saturday. [Post-mark, June 27, 1846.]

I said I would answer your letter to-day, my beloved, but how shall I say more than I have said and you know? Do you not know, you who will not will ‘over’ me, that I cannot will against you, and that if you set yourself seriously to take September for October, and August for September, it is all at an end with me and the calendar? Still, seriously ... there is time for deciding, is there not? ... even if I grant to you, which I do at once, that the road does not grow smoother for us by prolonged delays. The single advantage perhaps of delay is, that in the summer I get stronger every week and fitter to travel—and then, it never was thought of before (that I have heard) to precede September so. Last year, was I not ordered to leave England in October, and permitted to leave it in November? Yet I agree, November and perhaps October might be late—might be running a risk through lingering ... in our case; and you will believe me when I say I should be loth to run the risk of being forced to the further delay of a year—the position being scarcely tenable. Now for September, it generally passes for a hot month—it ripens the peaches—it is the figtime in Italy. Well—nobody decides for September nevertheless. The end of August is nearer—and at any rate we can consider, and observe the signs of the heavens and earth in the meanwhile—there is so much to think of first; and the end, remember, is only too frightfully easy. Also you shall not have it on your conscience to have killed me, let ever so much snow fall in September. If the sea should be frozen over, almost we might go by the land—might we not? and apart from fabulous ports, there are the rivers—the Seine, the Saône, the Rhone—which might be cheaper than the sea and the steamers; and would, I almost should fancy. These are things among the multitude, to think of, and you shall think of them, dearest, in your wisdom. Oh—there is time—full time.

No—there is not, in a sense. I wanted to write so much more, so much—and I went out to walk first, and, on returning, met Mr. Kenyon, who came up-stairs with me.

Now it is too late to add a word.

May God bless you. I shall see you on Monday. I am better for Highgate—I walked longer to-day than usual. How strong you make me, you who make me happy!

I am your own.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday. [Post-mark, June 29, 1846.]

My last letter will have answered this of yours, my dearest,—I agree in all you say; and sooner or later comes to the same thing, if to any possible increase of difficulty is brought a proportionate increase of strength to undergo it—as let us hope will be the case! So you see you have to ‘understand’ and understand me,—I keep your faculty in constant exercise, now with seeming to wish for postponement, and now, for anticipation! And all the time do I really ‘grow greater’ in your eyes? I might grow less woefully,—‘for reasons—for reasons’—

The sea will not be frozen, beside ... which makes me think to tell you that Carlyle is wanting to visit only one foreign country—Iceland. The true cradle of the Northmen and their virtues ... all that is worth a Northman’s caring to see is there, he thinks, and nowise in Italy. Perhaps! Indeed, so I reason and say—Did I not once turn on myself and speak against the Southern spirit, and even Dante, just because of that conviction?—(or imperfect conviction, whence the uneasy exaggeration). Carlyle thinks modern Italy’s abasement a direct judgment from God. ‘Here is a nation in whose breast arise men who could doubt, examine the new problems of the reformation &c.—trim the balance at intervals, and throw overboard the accumulation of falsehood—all other nations around, less favoured, are doing it laboriously for themselves ... now is the time for the acumen of the Bembos, the Bentivoglios and so forth ... and these and their like, one and all, turn round, decline the trouble, say ‘these things may be true, or they may not, meantime let us go on verse-making, painting, music-scoring’—to which all the nation accedes as if relieved of a trouble—upon which God bids the Germans go in and possess them; pluck their fruits and feel their sun after their own hard work.’ Carlyle said the sense of this, between two huge pipe-whiffs, the other afternoon.

‘Pluck their fruits’—some four years ago I planted ... or held straight while my mother planted, a fig-tree,—for love of Italy! This year it bears its first fruit ... a single one! what does that bode?

Since I wrote the last paragraph, the wind took my thoughts away, as it always does, and I saw you again as I used to see, before I knew you, so very substanceless, faint, unreal—when I was struck by the reality again,—by this paper,—by to-morrow’s visit I shall pay ... it was as if someone had said ‘but that star is your own.’

I fancied you just what I find you—I knew you from the beginning.

Let me kiss you dearest dearest—

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday Morning. [Post-mark, June 30, 1846.]

The gods and men call you by your name, but I never do—never dare. In case of invocation, tell me how you should be called by such as I? not to be always the ‘inexpressive He’ which I make of you. In case of courage for invocation!—

Dearest ... (which is a name too) read on the paper inside what I have been studying about Salerno since we parted yesterday. Forsyth is too severe in his deductions, perhaps, from the apothecaries, but your Naples book will not help me to contradict him, saying neither the one thing nor the other. The word we could not read in the letter yesterday, was La Cava—and La Cava is a town on the way between Naples and Salerno, which Mrs. Stark describes as ‘a large town with porticoes on each side of the High Street, like those at Bologna.’ To which the letter adds, remember ‘enchantingly beautiful, very good air and no English. Then there is Vietri, mentioned by Forsyth, between La Cava and Salerno, and on the bay. It is as well to think of all three. Were you ever at either? Amalfi itself appears to be very habitable. Oh—and your Naples book says of Salerno, that it is illuminated by fireflies, and that the chanting of frogs covers the noises of the city. You will like the frogs, if you don’t the apothecaries, and I shall like the fireflies if I don’t the frogs—but I do like frogs, you know, and it was quite a mistake of yours when you once thought otherwise.

Now I am going out in the carriage, to call on Mr. Kenyon, and perhaps to see Mr. Boyd. Your flowers are more beautiful than they were yesterday, if possible: and the fresh coolness helps them to live, so, that I hope you may see some of them on Saturday when you come. On Saturday! What a time to wait! if not for them, yet for me. Of the two, it is easier for them, certainly. They only miss a little dew and air.

I shall write again to-night,—but I cannot be more then than now, nor less ever than now

Your own

Ba.

Here is a coincidence. Hardly had you left me, when, passing near the table at the end of the room, I saw a parcel there. Remember your question about the ‘Year of the World’ Precisely that! With a note, the counterpart of yours—desiring an opinion!

May God bless you, dear, dear!—Did I ever think I should live to thank God that I did not die five years ago?—Not that I quite, quite dare to do it yet. I must be sure first of something.

Which is not your love, my beloved—it is a something still dearer and of more consequence.

Salerno.

‘Though placed between the beauties of sea and land, of cultivated and rude nature, the city is so unhealthy that its richer inhabitants remove to Vietri during the hot months. In proof of its bad air, I remark here a number of apothecaries!’

Forsyth.

‘Its white houses curving round the haven at the water’s brink, the mountains crowding close behind the city, the ruins of its Gothic castle on the olive-covered hill above, together mirrored on the waveless water, itself alternate shine and shadow—’tis a noble sight.

‘The view from Salerno is one of the loveliest pictures in Italy. A clear-complexioned, open-eyed, and bright-faced city is modern Salerno,—and its streets and piazza were all astir.’

Letters from Naples.

‘This town, the approach to which is enchanting, boasts a tolerably good inn!!’

Mrs. Starke.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday. [Post-mark, June 30, 1846.]

I have looked in the map for ‘L——,’ the place praised in the letter, and conclude it must be either Ceva, (La Ceva, between Nocera and Salerno, about four miles from the latter, and on the mountain-side, I suppose ... see a map, my Ba!)—or else Lucera, (which looks very like the word ... and which lies at about sixty miles to the N.E. of Naples, in a straight line over the mountains and roadless country, but perhaps twice as far by the mainway through Avellino, Ariano, Bovino, and Savia—exactly 120 Italian miles now that I count the posts). So that there would be somewhat of a formidable journey to undertake after the sea voyage. I daresay at Ceva there is abundance of quietness, as the few who visit Salerno do not go four miles inland,—can you enquire into this?

How inexpressibly charming it is to me to have a pretext for writing thus ... about such approaches to the real event—these business-like words, and names of places! If at the end you should bring yourself to say ‘But you never seriously believed this would take place’—what should I answer, I wonder?

Let me think on what is real, indisputable, however ... the improvement in the health as I read it on the dear, dear cheeks yesterday. This morning is favourable again ... you will go out, will you not?

Mr. Kenyon sends me one of his kindest letters to ask me to dine with him next week—on Wednesday. I feel his kindness, just as you feel in the other case, and in its lesser degree, I feel it,—and then I know,—dare think I know whether he will be so sorry in the end,—loving you as he does. I will send his letter that you may understand here as elsewhere.

I think my head is dizzy with reading the debates this morning—Peel’s speech and farewell. How exquisitely absurd, it just strikes me, would be any measure after Miss Martineau’s own heart, which should introduce women to Parliament as we understand its functions at present—how essentially retrograde a measure! Parliament seems no place for originating, creative minds—but for second-rate minds influenced by and bent on working out the results of these—and the most efficient qualities for such a purpose are confessedly found oftener with men than with women—physical power having a great deal to do with it beside. So why shuffle the heaps together which, however arbitrarily divided at first, happen luckily to lie pretty much as one would desire,—here the great flint stones, here the pebbles—and diamonds too. The men of genius knew all this, said more than all this, in their way and proper place on the outside, where Miss M. is still saying something of the kind—to be taken up in its time by some other Mr. Cobden and talked about, and beleaguered. But such people cannot or will not see where their office begins and advantageously ends; and that there is such a thing as influencing the influencers, playing the Bentham to the Cobden, the Barry to a Commission for Public Works, the Lough to the three or four industrious men with square paper caps who get rules and plummets and dot the blocks of marble all over as his drawings indicate. So you and I will go to Salerno or L—— (not to the L—akes, Heaven forefend!) and if we ‘let sail winged words, freighted with truth from the throne of God’—we may be sure——

Ah, presumption all of it! Then, you shall fill the words with their freight, and I will look on and love you,—is that too much? Yes—for any other—No—for one you [know] is yours—

Your very own.

For the quick departing yesterday our day was not spoken of ... it is Saturday, is it not?

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday Evening. [Post-mark, July 1, 1846.]

Thank you for letting me see dear Mr. Kenyon’s letter. He loves you, admires you, trusts you. When what is done cannot be undone, then he will forgive you besides—that is, he will forgive both of us, and set himself to see all manner of good where now he would see evil if we asked him to look. So we will not, if you please, ask him to look on the encouragement of ever so many more kind notes, pleasant as they are to read, and worthy to trust to, under certain conditions. Dear Mr. Kenyon—but how good he is! And I love him more (shall it be under-love?) because of his right perception and understanding of you—no one among men sets you higher than he does as a man and as a poet—even if he misses the subtle sense, sometimes.

So you dine with him—don’t you? And I shall have you on Wednesday instead of Thursday! yes, certainly. And on Saturday, of course, next time.

In the carriage, to-day, I went first to Mr. Kenyon’s, and as he was not at home, left a card for a footstep. Then Arabel and Flush and I proceeded on our way to Mr. Boyd’s in St. John’s Wood, and I was so nervous ... so anxious for an excuse for turning back ... that ... can you guess what Arabel said to me? ‘Oh Ba’; she said, ‘such a coward as you are, never will be ... married, while the world lasts.’ Which made me laugh if it did not make me persevere—for you see by it what her notion is of an heroic deed! So, there, I stood at last, at the door of poor Mr. Boyd’s dark little room, and saw him sitting ... as if he had not moved these seven years—these seven heavy, changeful years. Seeing him, my heart was too full to speak at first, but I stooped and kissed his poor bent-down forehead, which he never lifts up, his chin being quite buried in his breast. Presently we began to talk of Ossian and Cyprus wine, and I was forced, as I would not have Ossian for a god, to take a little of the Cyprus,—there was no help for me, nor alternative: so I took as little as I could, while he went on proving to me that the Adamic fall and corruption of human nature (Mr. Boyd is a great theologian) were never in any single instance so disgustingly exemplified as in the literary controversy about Ossian; every man of the Highland Society having a lost soul in him; and Walter Scott ... oh, the woman who poisoned all her children the other day, is a saint to Walter Scott, ... so we need not talk of him any more. ‘Arabel!—how much has she taken of that wine? not half a glass.’ ‘But Mr. Boyd, you would not have me be obliged to carry her home.’

That visit being over, we went into the Park, Hyde Park, and drove close to the Serpentine, and then returned. Flush would not keep his head out of the window (his favourite pleasure) all the way, because several drops of rain trickled down his ears. Flush has no idea of wetting his ears:—his nose so near, too!

Right you are, I think, in opposition to Miss Martineau, though your reasons are too gracious to be right ... except indeed as to the physical inaptitude, which is an obvious truth. Another truth (to my mind) is, that women, as they are (whatever they may be) have not mental strength any more than they have bodily; have not instruction, capacity, wholeness of intellect enough. To deny that women, as a class, have defects, is as false I think, as to deny that women have wrongs.

Then you are right again in affirming that the creators have no business there, with the practical men—you should not be there for instance. And I (if I am to be thought of) would be prouder to eat cresses and maccaroni (Dearest—there is a manufactory of maccaroni and writing-paper at Amalfi close by—observe that combination! maccaroni and writing-paper!) I would be prouder to eat cresses and maccaroni with you as you, than to sit with diamonds in my ears, under the shelter of the woolsack, you being a law-lord and parliamentary maker of speeches! By the way, I couldn’t have diamonds in my ears: they never were bored for it ... as I never was born for it. A physical inaptitude, here too!

Shall I say what you tell me ... ‘You never seriously believed’ ... shall I? I will, if you like. But it is not Ceva, if you like—it is Cava ... La Cava ... in my map, and according to my authorities. Otherwise, the place is the same—four miles from Salerno, I think, and ‘enchantingly beautiful.’ It is worth an enquiry certainly, this enchanting place which has no English in it, with porticoes like Bologna, and too little known to be spelt correctly by the most accomplished geographers.

Ah—your head is ‘dizzy,’ my beloved! Tell me how it is now. And tell me how your mother is. I think of you—love you. I, who am discontented with myself, ... self-condemned as unworthy of you, in all else ... am yet satisfied with the love I have for you—it seems worthy of you, as far as an abstract affection can go, without taking note of the personality loving.