THE LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING AND ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 1845-1846 (continued 7)

Do you see the meaning through the mist? Do you accept

Your very own

Ba?

R.B. to E.B.B.

Wednesday. [Post-mark, July 1, 1846.]

Dearest—dearest, you did once, one time only, call me by my name—Robert; and though it was to bid ‘R. not talk extravagances’ (your very words) still the name so spoken became what it never had been before to me. I never am called by any pet-name, nor abbreviation, here at home or elsewhere.... Oh, best let it alone ... it is one of my incommunicable advantages to have a Ba of my own, and call her so—indeed, yes, my Ba! I write ‘dearest,’ and ‘most dearest,’ but it all ends in—‘Ba,’ and the ‘my’ is its framework,—its surrounding arm—Ba—my own Ba! ‘Robert’ is in Saxon, (ni fallor), ‘famous in counsel,’ so let him give a proof of his quality in counselling you to hold your good, happy inspiration about La Cava (my French map-maker must have had Ceva in Piedmont in his head) for at such a place, so situate, we renounce not one sight at Salerno, nor Amalfi, nor Sorrento ... four miles ... the distance between your house and Highgate, perhaps! Cava,—the hollow of a hill; and such hills and such hollows are in that land! Oh, let it be La Cava—or Seven Dials, with you!

I passed through Seven Dials this morning—and afterward, by your house,—with a heart full of thoughts,—not fuller than usual, but they were more stirring and alive, near their source. I called at Mrs. Procter’s door (proceeding from Forster’s) and then on Mrs. Jameson whom I found and talked with pleasantly till a visitor came. I do extremely appreciate her, delight in her ... to avoid saying ‘love’—I was never just to her before, far from it. I saw her niece, a quiet earnest-looking little girl. But did it not please me to call in at Moxon’s and hear that (amongst other literary news dexterously enquired after) Miss Barrett’s poems were selling very well and would ere long be out of print? And, after that pleasure, came the other of finding dear, generous, noble Carlyle had sent his new edition of ‘Cromwell,’ three great volumes, with his brave energetic assurance of ‘regards’ and ‘many’ of them, in black manly writing on the first page. So may he continue to like me till he knows you; when it will be ‘mine’ instead of me, that he shall love—‘love’? I let the whole world love you—if they can overtake my love. As I read on, about the visit to Mr. Boyd, I thought, ‘I trust she will kiss his forehead,’—and I kiss yours—thus—for that, too,—in gratitude for that. You dear, good, blessing of a Ba, how I kiss you!—

R.B.

I am quite well to-day, and my mother is quite well—The good account of the visit is enough to make me happy on a Wednesday—leading to a Saturday! Then my two letters!

I did not see Moxon—only the brother—who tells odd stories drily; one made me laugh to-day. Poor Mr. Reade, Landor’s love, sent a book to Campbell the Poet, and then called on him ... to discover him in the very act of wiping a razor on a leaf torn out of the book, laid commodiously by his toilet-table for the express purpose.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Wednesday. [Post-mark, July 2, 1846.]

No, No! indeed I never did. If you heard me say ‘Robert,’ it was on a stair-landing in the House of Dreams—never anywhere else! Why how could you fancy such a thing? Wasn’t it rather your own disquieted Conscience which spoke instead of me, saying ‘Robert, don’t be extravagant.’ Yes—just the speech that is, for a ‘good uneasy,’ discerning Conscience—and you took it for my speech! ‘Don’t be extravagant’ I may certainly have said. Both I and the Conscience might have said so obvious a thing.

Ah—and now I have got the name, shall I have courage to say it? tell me, best councillor! I like it better than any other name, though I never spoke it with my own lips—I never called any one by such a name ... except once when I was in the lane with Bertha. One uncle I have, called Robert—but to me he is an ‘uncle Hedley’ and no more. So it is a white name to take into life. Isn’t this an Hebraic expression of a preferring affection ... ‘I have called thee by thy name.’? And therefore, because you are the best, only dearest!——Robert.

You passed by and I never knew! How foolish—but really it quite strikes me as something wonderful, that I should not have known. I knew however of your being in London, because ... (don’t expect supernatural evidence) Mrs. Jameson told me. She was here with me about five, and brought her niece whom I liked just for the reasons you give; and herself was feeling and affectionate as ever:—it is well that you should give me leave to love her a little. Once she touched upon Italy ... and I admitted that I thought of it, and thought it probable as an event ... on which she pressed gently to know ‘on what I counted.’ ‘Perhaps on my own courage,’ I said. ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed ‘now I see clearly.’

Which made me smile ... the idea of her seeing clearly, but earnestly and cordially she desired me to remember that to be useful to me in any manner, would give her pleasure. Such kindness! The sense of it has sunk into my heart. You cannot praise her too much for me. She was so kind, that when she asked me to go to see her in Mortimer Street on Friday, I could not help agreeing at once: and I am to have the sofa and no company—that’s a promise. She asked me to go at twelve o’clock, and to bring Mr. Kenyon for an escort—but I would not answer for Mr. Kenyon’s going, only half promising for myself. Now I must try to fix a later hour, because....

Listen to the because. My aunt, Miss Clarke, and my cousin, her adopted daughter and niece, come to-morrow evening, and stay in this house ... oh, I cannot tell you how long: for a whole week as a beginning, certainly. I have been sighing and moaning so about it that Arabel calls it quite a scandal—but when one can’t be glad, why should it be so undutiful to appear sad? If she had but stayed in Paris six months longer! Well!—and to-morrow morning Miss Mitford comes to spend the day like the kind dear friend she is; and I, not the least in the world glad to see her! Why have you turned my heart into such hard porphyry? Once, when it was plain clay, every finger (of these womanly fingers) left a mark on it—and now, ... you see! Even Mrs. Jameson makes me grateful to her chiefly (as I know in myself) because she sees you as you are in part, and will forgive me for loving you as soon as she hears of it ... however she may, and must consistently, expect us to torment one another, according to the way of the ‘artistic temperament,’ evermore, and ever more and more. But for the rest, the others who do not know you and value you ... I hate to see them ... and there’s the truth! There is something too in the concealment, the reserve, the doubleness enforced on occasion! ... which is painful and hateful. Detestable it all is.

And I like La Cava too! Think of a hollow in the mountain ... something like a cave, do you think? At least it must be a hollow in the mountains. I wrote to my friend this morning to ask if the place is considered warm, and if she knew any more of it. The ‘porticoes as at Bologna’ look attractive too by the dreamlight we look at them by; and Baba may escape the forty thieves of English in the Cave, with a good watchword like Sesame—now that’s half my nonsense and half yours, I beg you to observe. I won’t be at the charge of it all.

I was out to-day—walked up, walked down, in my old fashion—only I do improve in walking, I think, and gain strength.

May God bless you dear dearest! I am your own.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Thursday. [Post-mark, July 2, 1846.]

Dear, you might as well imagine you had never given me any other of the gifts, as that you did not call me, as I tell you. You spoke quickly, interrupting me, and, for the name, ‘I can hear it, ’twixt my spirit and the earth-noise intervene’; do you think I forget one gift in another, even a greater? I should still taste the first freshness of the vinegar, (or whatever was the charm of it)—though Cleopatra had gone on dissolving pearl after pearl in it. I love you for these gifts to me now—hereafter, it seems almost as if I must love you even better, should you choose to continue them to me in spite of complete knowledge: I feel this as often as I think of it, which is not seldom.

Do you know, Mrs. Jameson asked me to go and see her on Friday morning—would you like me to go? What I like ... do not fancy,—because your own pleasure is to be consulted. Should you fear the eyes, which can, on occasion, wear spectacles? If not ... and if our Saturday will not be interfered with ... and if you can tell me the hour ‘later than twelve’ you mean to appoint, ... so that my call may be neither too early nor too late ... why, then, Ba, dearest, dearest—

La Cava—is surely our cave, Ba—early in October will be vintage-time,—no fire flies. There will be the advantage in the vicinity of Naples, that through the Rothschilds’ House there we can, I believe, receive and dispatch letters without any charge, which otherwise would be an expensive business in Italy. The economy of the Post Office there is astounding. A stranger goes to a window and asks for ‘A’s’ or ‘Z’s’ letters ... not even professing himself to be ‘A,’ or ‘Z’—whereupon the official hands over sundry dozens of letters, without a word of enquiry, out of which the said stranger picks what pleases him, and paying for his selections, goes away and there an end. At Venice, I remember, they offered me, with other letters, about ten or fifteen for the Marquis of Hastings who was not arrived yet—I had only to say ‘I am sent for them’.... At Rome a lady lamented to me the sad state of things ‘A letter might contain Heaven only knew what and lie at the office and’—‘I might go and get it,’ I said—‘You? Nay, my husband might!’ she answered as one mightily wronged.

But of your dear self now—the going out will soon and effectually cure the nervousness, we may be sure. I am most happy, love, to hear of the walking and increased strength. So you used to like riding on a donkey? Then you shall have a mule, un bel mulo, and I will be your muleteer, walk by your side—and you will think the moment you see him of the wicked shoeing of cats with walnut-shells, for they make a mule’s shoes turn up, for all the world like large shells—those on his forefeet at least. Will the time really come then? Meanwhile, your visitors ... let us hope they will go sight-seeing or call-making, do anything but keep the house on our days.... The three hours seem as a minute ... if they are to be curtailed,—oh, no, no, I hope. Tell me all you can, dearest ... and let me tell you all I can, little as it is, in kissing you, my best and dearest Ba, as now kisses your very own.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Thursday Evening. [Post-mark, July 3, 1846.]

But, ever dearest, I do so fear that I shall not be able to get to Mrs. Jameson’s to-morrow at all! not at twelve, I fear, I fear. Our visitors are to arrive late to-night, too late for me to see them: and for me to go away at twelve in the morning, just about the hour when they might reasonably expect to have and to hold me, ... seems altogether unlawful, according to my sisters. Yet the temptation is strong. Would half-past twelve be too early for you, if I could manage to go at twelve? Ah—but I shall not be able, I do fear. Just see how it becomes possible and impossible at once for us to touch hands! I could almost wring mine, to see! For I could dare the spectacles, the hypothetical spectacles, and the eyes discerning without them: she has no idea to begin with—and you would not say ‘Ba, let us order the mules,’ I suppose. If I went, it would be alone—but probably I shall not be able—so you had better not think of me, and pay your visit at your own hour ‘after the devices of your heart.’

In the meanwhile, quite you make me laugh by your positiveness about the name-calling. Well—if ever I did such a thing, it was in a moment of unconsciousness all the more surprising, that, even to my own soul, in the lowest spirit-whisper, I have not been in the habit of saying ‘Robert,’ speaking of you. You have only been The One. No word ever stood for you. The Idea admitted of no representative—the words fell down before it and were silent. Still such very positive people must be right of course—they always are. At any rate it is only one illusion more—and some day I expect to hear you say and swear that you saw me fly out of one window and fly in at another. So much for your Cleopatra’s Roman pearls, oh my famous in council!—and appreciation of sour vinegar!

Dear Miss Mitford came at two to-day and stayed until seven, and all those hours you were not once mentioned—I had not courage—and she perhaps avoided an old subject of controversy ... I do not know. It is singular that for this year past you are not mentioned between us, while other names come up like grass in the rain. No single person will be more utterly confounded than she, when she comes to be aware of what you are to me now—and that I was thinking to-day, while she talked to never a listener. She will be confounded, and angry perhaps—it will be beyond her sympathies or if they reach so far, the effort to make them do so will prove a more lively affection for me, than, with all my trust in her goodness, I dare count on. Yet very good and kind and tender, she was to me to-day. And very variously intelligent and agreeable. Do you know, I should say that her natural faculties were stronger than Mrs. Jameson’s—though the latter has a higher aspiration and, in some ways, a finer sensibility of intellect. You would certainly call her superior to her own books—certainly you would. She walks strongly on her two feet in this world—but nobody shall see her (not even you) fly out of a window. Too closely she keeps to the ground, I always feel. Now Mrs. Jameson can ‘aspire’ like Paracelsus; and believes enough in her own soul, to know a poet when she sees one. Ah—but all cannot be all.

Miss Mitford wrung a promise from me—that ‘if I were well enough and in England next summer, I would go to see her.’ So remember. Isn’t it a promise for two?

Only we shall be mule-riding in those days—unless I shall have tired you. Shall you be tired of me in one winter, I wonder? My programme is, to let you try me for one winter, and if you are tired (as I shall know without any confession on your side) why then I shall set the mule on a canter and leave you in La Cava, and go and live in Greece somewhere all alone, taking enough with me for bread and salt. Is it a jest, do you think? Indeed it is not. It is very grave earnest, be sure. I believe that I never could quarrel with you; but the same cause would absolutely hinder my living with you if you did not love me. We could not lead the abominable lives of ‘married people’ all round—you know we could not—I at least know that I could not, and just because I love you so entirely. Then, you know, you could come to England by yourself—and ... ‘Where’s Ba?’—‘Oh, she’s somewhere in the world, I suppose. How can I tell?’ And then Mrs. Jameson would shake her head, and observe that the problem was solved exactly as she expected, and that artistical natures smelt of sulphur and brimstone, without any exceptions.

Am I laughing? am I crying? who can tell. But I am not teazing, ... Robert! because, my Robert, if gravely I distrusted your affection, I could not use such light-sounding words on the whole—now could I? It is only the supposition of a possible future ... just possible ... (as the end of human affections passes for a possible thing)—which made me say what I would do in such a case.

But I am yours—your own: and it is impossible, in my belief, that I can ever fail to you so as to be less yours, on this side the grave or across it. So, I think of impossibilities—whatever I may, of possibilities!

Will it be possible to see you to morrow, I wonder! I ask myself and not you.

And if you love me only nearly as much (instead of the prodigal ‘more’) afterward, I shall be satisfied, and shall not run from you further than to the bottom of the page.

Where you see me as your own

Ba.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Friday Morning. [Post-mark, July 3, 1846.]

I am forced to say something now which you will not like and which I, for my part, hate to say—but you shall judge how impossible it is for me to see you to-morrow.

The visitors did not come last night; and as this morning we expected them hourly, the post brought a letter instead, to the effect that they were to arrive just on Saturday ... leaving us to calculate the time of arrival between one p.m. to five or six. If at one, ... Papa will be in the house and likely to stay in it all day after ... which would be a complication of disadvantages for us, and if at three ... why even so, my aunt would ‘admire’ a little the reason of my not seeing her at once, and there would be questions and answers a faire frémir. So dearest dearest, I must try to live these two days more without seeing you—and indeed it will be hard work—the very light of the sun to-morrow, let it be ever so bright a sun, will only reproach the day with what it ought to have been ... our day, instead of everybody’s day or nobody’s day, a poor, blank, dreary day. What, when the clock is at three ... oh what will keep me, I wonder, from being sullen to my aunt and sulky to my cousin? They will think me (if my ministering angel should not throw me some hallowing thought of you, best beloved!) considerably fallen off in the morale, however the improvement may be of the bodily health—I shall be as cross, as cross ... well, if I am less than cross, you must be right after all, and I, ‘une femme miraculeuse’ without illusion! It is too bad, too bad. The whole week—from Monday to Monday! And I do not positively fix even Monday, though I hope for Monday:—but Monday may be taken from us just as Saturday is, and the Hedleys are to come on Tuesday ... only not to this house. I wish they were all at Seringapatam.

Do not mind it however. Yes, mind it a little, ... Robert! but not overmuch—because the day shall not be lost utterly—I shall take care. I will be on the watch for half-days when people go out to shop ... that solemn business of life, ... and we will have our lost day back again ... you will see. But I could not get to Mrs. Jameson’s this morning, not being quite well enough. It is nothing as illness,—I tell you the truth, dear—and even now I feel better than I did in the early morning. It was only just enough to prevent my going. And if I had gone I should not have seen you—you would not go in time—you would not perhaps even have my letter in time. The stars are against us for the moment, it seems.

Write to me, think of me, love me. You shall hear on Saturday and on Sunday, and we will settle about Monday.

After all, it would have been difficult to have met you at Mrs. Jameson’s, observing the ‘fitness of things’: ... and as I am subject to the madness of saying ‘Robert’ without knowing it...!

May God bless you. Say how you are! Don’t let me slide out of your mind through this rift in the rock. I catch at the jutting stones.

I am your own Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Friday. [Post-mark, July 3, 1846.]

No, dear, dear Ba, I shall not see you to-day in spite of all the hoping and fancying ... for I could not, as I calculate, reach Mrs. Jameson’s before 1 o’clock or a little later ... and there would be the worst of vexations, to know you had been and gone again! I persuade myself you may not pay the visit to-day, ... (‘it is impossible’ you say), and that it may be paid next week, the week in which there is only one day for us ... how do you say, dearest? all complaining is vain—let to-morrow make haste and arrive!

Ba, there is nothing in your letter that shocks me,—nothing: if you choose to imagine that ‘possibility,’ you are consistent in imagining the proper step to take ... it is all imagining. But I feel altogether as you feel about the horribleness of married friends, mutual esteemers &c.—when your name sounds in my ear like any other name, your voice like other voices,—when we wisely cease to interfere with each other’s pursuits,—respect differences of taste &c. &c., all will be over then!

I cannot myself conceive of one respect in which I shall ever fall from this feeling for you ... there never has been one word, one gesture unprompted by the living, immediate love beneath—but there have been many, many, so many that the same love has suppressed, refused to be represented by! I say this, because I can suppose a man taking up a service of looks and words, which service is only to last for a time, and so may be endured,—after which the ‘real affection,’ ‘honest attachment’ &c. &c. means to go to its ends by a shorter road, saving useless ceremony and phrases ... do you know what I mean? I hardly do ... except that it is, whatever it is, opposed, as heaven to earth, to what I feel is. I count confidently on being more and more able to find the true words and ways (which may not be spoken words perhaps), the true rites by which you should be worshipped, you dear, dear Ba, my entire blessing now and ever—and ever; if God shall save me also.

Let me kiss you now, and long for to-morrow—I shall bring you the poorest flowers——all is brown, dry, autumnal. The sun shines and reproves me.... After all, there would have been some rocks in the pleasant water of to-day’s meeting ... ‘Oh, hardness to dissemble’!

Here is no dissembling.... I kiss you, my very own!

E.B.B. to R.B.

Friday Night, [Post-mark, July 4, 1846.]

Ah! ‘to-morrow, make haste and arrive.’ And what good will to-morrow do when it comes?

Dearest, with your letter to-night, I have a note from Mrs. Jameson, who proposes that I should go to her just on this to-morrow, between twelve and one: she will wait for me till one and then go out. Moreover she leaves town on Tuesday. Now I think I ought to try to be with her this time, therefore, on the hour she mentions, and I will try ... I mean to try. But as for seeing you even so, and for a moment, ... I understand that it scarcely is possible—no, not possible—you cannot have time, I think. Thinking which, understanding which, I shall yet, in spite of reason, listen for the footstep and the voice: certainly I shall not help doing that.

Our to-morrow!—How they have spoilt it for us! In revenge, I shall love you to-morrow twice as much, looking at my dead flowers. Twice as much!! ‘Ba, never talk extravagances.’ Twice as much is a giant fifty feet high. It is foolish to be fabulous.

Being better this evening (almost as if I were sure to see you in the morning) I went out to drive with Arabel and Flush, about six o’clock,—and we were not at home until eight, after having seen a mirage (as it appeared) of green fields and trees. Beyond Harrow cemetery we went, through silent lanes and hedgerows—so silent, so full of repose! Quite far away over the tops of the trees, was ‘London,’ Arabel said ... but I could see only a cloud:—it seemed no more, nor otherwise. Once she got out and went into a field to give Flush a run—and I, left to myself and you, read your last letter in the carriage, under the branches which were dropping separate shadows of every leaf they had. The setting sun forced them to it. Oh—but I send you no leaves, because I could not reach any, and did not get out to walk to-day where I might have gathered them. Arabel tried hard to persuade me to go into the cemetery—but let me deserve all she said to me about weakness and foolishness, ... really that sort of thing does sadden me—my spirits fall flat with it: it is the dark side of death. So I begged her to go by herself and to leave me.... I would wait for her—and she should have as long a pleasure in that pleasure-ground of the Dead, as she liked. ‘Very pretty,’ it is said to be—the dissenters and the churchpeople planted in separate beds; and the Roman Catholics conspicuous for their roses! Oh that ghastly mixture of horror and frivolity! The niaiserie of their divisions and subdivisions taken down so carefully into the dust! But Arabel did not go at last, and we were at home quite late enough.

May God bless you, dear, dear! Give me all my thoughts (those that belong to me) to-morrow. Poor disinherited to-morrow.

I will write to-morrow, at any rate—and hear—let me hear.

And you are the best, best! When I speak lead, you answer gold. Because I ‘do not shock’ you, you melt my heart away with joy.

Yet I can love you enough, even I!

Your Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Saturday. [Post-mark, July 4, 1846.]

Dearest Ba, I am at Mrs. Jameson’s ... to hear you cannot come; most properly. She wants me to go and see an Exhibition, and I cannot refuse ... so this is my poor long letter (with kisses in the words), that was to have been! But on Monday, dearest, dearest, I shall see you? All thanks for your letter.... I dare write no more, as there must be some difference in my way of writing to you from other ways.

Bless you, ever, as I am ever yours—

R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Saturday. [Post-mark, July 4, 1846.]

Ah, this Saturday! how heavily the wheels of it turn round! as if ‘with all the weights of sleep and death hung at them.’ After all it was not possible for me to get to Mrs. Jameson’s this morning ... not that I was unwell to signify, mind—but unfit for the exertion—and it would not have been agreeable to anybody if I had gone there and fainted. So here I am, the picture of helpless indolence, stretched out at full length between the chair and the high stool, thinking how you will not to-day sit on the low one, nor in your old own place by me——oh how I think, think, think of you, to make imperfect amends! Are you disappointed ... you? I hope you are, and I fear you are. My generosity does not carry me through the hope of it to the end. I love your love too much. And that is the worst fault, my beloved, I ever can find in my love of you.

Look, what Miss Mitford has sent me from the Daily News—Mr. Horne’s lament for poor Haydon. Tell me if you do not like it. It has moved me much, and as a composition it is fine, I think,—worthy of ‘Orion.’ I shall write to Mr. Horne to thank him, as one reader of many, for touching that solemn string into such a right melody. To my mind, it is worth, and more than worth, twenty such books as his ballad-book—tell me if it isn’t. It has much affected me.

Papa went out early—so we should have escaped the ‘complication’—but every half-hour we are expecting our visitors. And for Monday ... I scarcely dare say yet ‘Come on Monday.’ Only we will find our lost Pleiads ... of that, be very sure—I am very sure. Still to miss one for a moment draws me into darkness—or ... do you not know that you are all my stars? yes, and the sun, besides! The thing which people call a sun seems to shine quite coldly to-day, because you are not on this side of my window. ‘All complaining is vain,’ do you say?

Let me pass the time a little, then, by confessing to you that what you said, some letters ago, about the character of our intercourse, in our present relation, being a sort of security for the future, ... that that did strike me as a true and reasonable observation as far as it goes. I think, at least, that if I were inclined to fear for my own happiness apart from yours (which, as God knows, is a fear that never comes into my head), I should have sense to reason myself clear of it all by seeing in you none of the common rampant man-vices which tread down a woman’s peace—and which begin the work often long before marriage. Oh, I understand perfectly, how as soon as ever a common man is sure of a woman’s affections, he takes up the tone of right and might ... and he will have it so ... and he won’t have it so! I have heard of the bitterest tears being shed by the victim as soon as ever, by one word of hers, she had placed herself in his power. Of such are ‘Lovers’ quarrels’ for the most part. The growth of power on one side ... and the struggle against it, by means legal and illegal, on the other. There are other causes, of course—but for none of them could it be possible for me to quarrel with you now or ever. Neither now nor ever do I look forward to the ordinary dangers. What I have feared has been so different! May God bless you my own ... own! For my part, you have my leave to make me unhappy if you please. It only would be just that the happiness you have given, you should take away—it is yours, as I am yours.

Say how your head is—say how your mother is. Think of me with the thoughts that do good.

Your own

Ba.

TO THE MEMORY OF B. R. HAYDON

By the Author of ‘Orion’

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday. [Post-mark, July 6, 1846.]

You will have known by my two or three words that I received your letter in time to set out for Mrs. J.’s—she said to me, directly and naturally, ‘you have missed a great pleasure’—and then accounted for your absence. Do not be sorry, Ba, at my gladness ... for I was, I hope, glad ... yes, I am sure, glad that you ran no risk, if you will not think of that, think of my risk if you had ‘fainted’ ... should I have kept the secret, do you suppose? Oh, dearest of all dreamt-of dearness,—incur no unnecessary danger now, at ... shall I dare trust,—the end of the adventure! I cannot fear for any mischance that may follow, once let my arms be round you ... I mean, the blow seems then to fall on both alike—now, what dismal, obscure months might be prolonged between us, before we meet next, by a caprice where the power is! When have I been so long without the blessing of your sight! Yet how considerately you have written, what amends you make, all that the case admits of! If I were less sure of my own mind, and what it knows for best, I might understand the French lover’s fancy of being separated from his mistress that he might be written to and write ... but the very best I know, and have ever in sight, and constantly shall strive after ... to see you face to face, to live so and to die so—which I say, because it ends all, all that can be ended ... and yet seems in itself so encountered—no death, no end.

After all, I may see you to-morrow, may I not? There is no more than a danger, an apprehension, that we may lose to-morrow also, is there? You cannot tell me after this is read ... I shall know before. If I receive no letter, mind, I go to you ... so that if the Post is in fault after its custom, and your note arrives at 3 o’clock, you will know why I seem to disobey it and call ... and I shall understand why you are not to be seen—but I will hope.

When you say these exquisitely dear and tender things, you know Ba, it is as if the sweet hand were on my mouth—I cannot speak ... I try to seem as if I heard not, for all the joy of hearing ... you give me a jewel and I cannot repeat ‘you, you do give me a jewel.’ I am not worthy of any gift, you must know, Ba,—never say you do not—but what you press on me, let me feel and half-see, and in the end, carry away, but do not think I can, in set words, take them. At most, they are, and shall be, half-gift half-loan for adornment’s sake,—mine to wear, yours to take back again. Even this, all this ungracefulness, is proper, appropriate in its way—I am penetrated with shame thinking on what you say, and what my utmost devotion will deserve ... so infinitely less will it deserve! You are my very, very angel.

Mrs. Jameson showed me the lines you had sent her, Horne’s very beautiful poem,—very earnest, very solemn and pathetic,—worthy of Horne and the subject—and you will do well to reward him as you propose. I think I will also write two or three lines,—telling him that you called my attention to the poem,—so that he may understand the new friend does not drive out the old, as the old proverb says. I will wait a day or two and write. And you are herein, too, a dear good Ba,—to write me out the verses in the characters I love best of all! I may keep them, I hope.

The weather is hot as ever: Ba, remember how I believe in you—is the indisposition ‘nothing to signify’? And remember the confidence I make you of every slightest headache or what looks like it—tell me frankly as Ba should, and will if she loves me! I am very well ... and my mother much better. I observe while I write, the clouds gather propitiously for coolness if not rain—may all be as is best for you—‘and for me?’ Then kiss me, really, through the distance, and love me, my sweetest Ba!

I am your own—

E.B.B. to R.B.

Sunday. [Post-mark, July 6, 1846.]

Will it do if you come on Wednesday, dearest? It will be safer I think—and, with people staying in the house, it is necessary, you see, to consider a little. My aunt is so tired with her journey that she is not likely to go out at all to-morrow—and when I remember that you dine with Mr. Kenyon on that Wednesday, it seems marked out for our day. Still I leave it to you. Never have we been so long parted, and perhaps by Wednesday you may forget me—ah no! Now I will not make the time longer by being unkind ... or even unjust.

I meant to write you a long letter to-day,—but first my aunt and cousin were here telling me all the statistics of Arabella Hedley’s marriage,—and then Mr. Kenyon came, ... and on such a very different subject, his talk was, that he has left me quite depressed. It appears that poor Mr. Haydon, in a paper entering into his reasons for self-destruction, says that he has left his manuscripts to me, with a desire for me to arrange the terms of their publication with Longman. Of course it has affected me naturally ... such a proof of trust when he had so many friends wiser and stronger to look to—but I believe the reference to be simply to the fact of his having committed to my care all his private papers in a great trunk ... one of three which he sent here. Two years ago when we corresponded, he made me read a good part of his memoirs, which he thought of publishing at that time; and then he asked me (no, it was a year and a half ago) to speak about them to some bookseller ... to Longman, he said, I remember, then. I explained, in reply, how I had not any influence with any bookseller in the world; advising him besides not to think of printing, without considerable modification, what I had read. In fact it was—with much that was individual and interesting,—as unfit as possible for the general reader—fervid and coarse at once, with personal references blood-dyed at every page. At the last, I suppose, the idea came back to him of my name in conjunction with Longman’s—I cannot think that he meant me to do any editor’s work, for which (with whatever earnestness of will) I must be comparatively unfit, both as a woman and as personally and historically ignorant of the persons and times he writes of. I should not know how one reference would fall innocently, and another like a thunderbolt, on surviving persons. I only know that without great modification, the Memoirs should not appear at all ... that the scandal would be great if they did. At the same time you will feel with me, I am sure, you who always feel with me, that whatever is clearly set for me to do, I should not shrink from under these circumstances, whatever the unpleasantness may be, more or less, involved in the doing. But if Mr. Serjeant Talfourd is the executor ... is he not the obviously fit person? Well! there is no need to talk any more. Mr. Kenyon is to try to see the paper. It was Mr. Forster who came to tell him of this matter and to get him to communicate it to me. Poor Haydon!

Dearest, I long for you to come and bring me a little light. Tell me how you are—now tell me. Tell me too how your mother is.

My aunt’s presence here has seemed to throw me back suddenly and painfully into real life out of my dream-life with you——into the old dreary flats of real life. She does not know your name even—she sees in me just Ba who is not your Ba—and when she talks to me ... seeing me so ... I catch the reflection of the cold abstraction as she apprehends it, and feel myself for a moment a Ba who is not your Ba ... sliding back into the melancholy of it! Do you understand the curious process, I talk of so mistily? Do you understand that she makes me sorrowful with not talking of you while she talks to me? Everything, in fact, that divides us, I must suffer from—so I need not treat metaphysically of causes and causes ... splitting the thinner straws.

Once she looked to the table where the remains of your flowers are, ... and said, ‘I suppose Miss Mitford brought you those flowers.’ ‘No,’ I answered, ‘she did not.’ ‘Oh no,’ began Arabel with a more suggestive voice, ‘not Miss Mitford’s flowers.’ But I turned the subject quickly.

Robert!—how did you manage to write me the dear note from Mrs. Jameson’s? how could you dare write and direct it before her eyes? What an audacity that was of yours. Oh—and how I regretted the missing you, as you proved it was a missing, by the letter! Twice to miss you on one day, seemed too much ill-luck ... even for me, I was going to write ... but that would have been a word of my old life, before I knew that I was born to the best fortune and happiest, which any woman could have, ... in being loved by you.

Dearest, do not leave off loving me. Do not forget me by Wednesday. Shall it be Wednesday? or must it be Thursday? answer you.

I am your own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Monday. [Post-mark, July 6, 1846.]

When I read, after the reasons for not seeing you to-day, this—‘still I leave it to you,’—believe, dearest, that I at once made the sacrifice and determined to wait till Wednesday,—as seemed best for you, and therefore for me: but at the letter’s very end, amid the sweetest, comes ‘Wednesday ... or must it be Thursday?’ What is that? What ‘must’ is mine? Shall you fear, or otherwise suffer, if we appoint Wednesday?

Oh, another year of this! Yet I am not, I feel, ungrateful to the Past ... all the obstacles in the world can do nothing now, nothing: earlier they might have proved formidable annoyances. I have seen enough of you, Ba, for an eternity of belief in you ... and you, as you confess, you cannot think ‘I shall forget.’

All you can, you compensate me for the absence—that such letters, instead of being themselves the supremest reward and last of gains, should be—compensation, at the best! Am I really to have you, all of you and altogether, and always? If you go out of your dream-life, can I lie quietly in mine? But I hold your hand and hear your voice through it all.

How do these abrupt changes in the temperature affect you? Yesterday at noon, so oppressively hot—this morning, a wind and a cold. Do you feel no worse than usual? If you do not tell me,—you know, I cannot keep away. Then, this disinspiriting bequest of poor Haydon’s journal ... his ‘writings’—from which all the harm came, and, it should seem, is still to come to himself and everybody beside—let us all forget what came of those descriptions and vindications and explanations interminable; but as for beginning another sorrowful issue of them,—it is part and parcel of the insanity—and to lay the business of editing the ‘twenty-six’ (I think) volumes, with the responsibility, on you—most insane! Unless, which one would avoid supposing, the author trusted precisely to your ignorance of facts and isolation from the people able to instruct you. Take one little instance of how ‘facts’ may be set down—in the Athenæum was an account of Haydon’s quoting Waller’s verse about the eagle reached by his own feather on the arrow,—which he applied to Maclise and some others, who had profited by their intimacy with him to turn his precepts to account and so surpass him in public estimation: now, Maclise was in Haydon’s company for the first time at Talfourd’s on that evening when I met your brother there,—so said Talfourd in an after-supper speech,—and Forster, to whom I mentioned the circumstance, assured me that Maclise ‘called on Haydon for the first time only a few months ago’ ... I suppose, shortly after. Now, what right has Maclise, a fine generous fellow, to be subjected to such an imputation as that? With an impartial prudent man, acquainted with the artists of the last thirty years, the editing might turn to profit: I do hope for an exercise of Mr. Kenyon’s caution here, at all events. And then how horrible are all these posthumous revelations,—these passions of the now passionless, errors of the at length better-instructed! All falls unfitly, ungraciously—the triumphs or the despondencies, the hopes or fears, of—whom? He is so far above it all now! Even in this life—imagine a proficient in an art or science, who, after thirty or sixty years of progressive discovery, finds that some bookseller has disinterred and is about publishing the raw first attempt at a work which he was guilty of in the outset!

All of which you know better than I—what do you not know better? Nor as well?—that I love you with my whole heart, Ba, dearest Ba, and look up into your eyes for all light and life. Bless you.

Your very own—

I am going to Talfourd’s to-morrow (to dine)—and perhaps to Chorley’s in the evening. If I can do any bidding of yours at Talfourd’s ... but that seems improbable,—with Mr. Kenyon, too! But (this between our very selves) the Talfourds, or at least Mrs. T., please to take one of their unimaginably stupid groundless dislikes to him.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Monday. [Post-mark, July 7, 1846.]

But I meant to ‘leave it to you,’ not to come before Wednesday but after Wednesday, in case of some Wednesday’s engagement coming to cross mine. ‘Ba’s old way’ ... do you cry out! Perhaps—only that an engagement is a possible thing always. Not meaning an engagement with Miss Campbell. I hope, hope, then, to be able to see you, dearest Robert, on Wednesday. On Wednesday, at last!

Here is a letter which I had this morning from Mr. Landor, than which can anything be more gracious? It appears ... I forgot to tell you yesterday after I heard it from Mr. Kenyon ... it appears that my note of thanks had my signature affixed to it in such a state of bad writing, that Mr. Landor, being sorely puzzled, sent the letter up to Mr. Forster to be read. Mr. Forster read it (so it could be read!) and then took it to Mr. Kenyon, who read it too, and afterwards came to scold me for being perfectly illegible. It was signed at full length too, Elizabeth Barrett Barrett ... and really I couldn’t believe that I was very guilty till Mr. Landor’s own letter persuaded me this morning of its being so much pleasanter to be guilty than innocent, for the nonce.

Ah—you use the right word for the other subject. If a bequest, it is indeed a ‘dispiriting bequest,’ this of poor Haydon’s. But I hope to the last that he meant simply to point to me as the actual holder of the papers—and certainly when he sent the great trunk here, it was with no intention of dying; Mr. Kenyon agreed with me to that effect—I showed him the notes which I had found and laid aside for you, and which you shall take with you on Wednesday. Still, there must be an editor found somewhere—because the papers cannot go as they are to a publisher’s hands from mine, if I only hold them. Does any one say that I am a fit editor? Have I the power? the knowledge of art and artists? of the world? of the times? of the persons? All these things are against me—and others besides.

Now I will tell you one thing which he told me in confidence, but which is at length perhaps in those papers—I tell you because you are myself, and will understand the need and obligation to silence—and I want you to understand besides how the twenty-six volumes hang heavily on my thoughts. He told me in so many words that Mrs. Norton had made advances towards him—and that his children, in sympathy towards their mother, had dashed into atoms the bust of the poetess as it stood in his painting room.

If you can say anything safely for me at Mr. Talfourd’s, of course I shall be glad ... and Mr. Kenyon will speak to Mr. Forster, he said. I want to get back my letters too as soon as I can do it without disturbing anyone’s peace. What is in those letters, I cannot tell, so impulsively and foolishly, sometimes, I am apt to write; and at that time, through caring for nobody and feeling so loose to life, I threw away my thoughts without looking where they fell. Often my sisters have blamed me for writing in that wild way to strangers—and I should like to have the letters back before they shall have served to amuse two or three executors—but of this too, I spoke to Mr. Kenyon.

Still it is not of me that we are called to think—and I would not for the world refuse any last desire, if clearly signified, and if the power should be with me. He was not a common man—he had in him the stuff of greatness, this poor Haydon had; and we must consider reverently whatever rent garment he shall have left behind. Quite, in some respects, I think with you but your argument does appear to me to sweep out too far on one side, so that if you do not draw it back, Robert, you will efface all autobiography and confession—tear out a page bent over by many learners—I mean when you say that because he is above (now) the passions and frailties he has recorded, we should put from us the record. True, he is above it all—true, he has done with the old Haydon; like a man outgrowing his own childhood he will not spin this top any more. Oh, it is true—I feel it all just as you do. But, after all, a man outgrowing his childhood, may leave his top to children, and no one smile! This record is not for the angels, but for us, who are a little lower at highest. Three volumes perhaps may be taken from the twenty-six full of character and interest, and not without melancholy teaching. Only some competent and sturdy hand should manage the selection; as surely as mine is unfit for it. But where to seek discretion? delicacy?

Dearest, I speak the truth to you—I am not ill indeed. When I was at best in health I used sometimes to be a little weak and faint, and it has only been so for this last day or two. By Wednesday the cloud will have passed. And, do you know, I have found out something from our long parting, ... I have found out that I love you better than even I thought. There’s a piece of finding out! My own dearest—what would become of me indeed, if I could not see you on Wednesday nor on Thursday nor on Friday?—no breath I have, for going on. No breath I should have, for living on. I do kiss you through the distance——since you tell me. I love you with my soul.

Your own I am.

Three of the flowers and nearly all the little blue ones stay with me all this while to comfort me!! isn’t it kind of them?

Two letters to-day—and such letters! Ah—if you love me always but half as much—I will agree with you now for half! Yet, O Hesiod, half is not better than the whole, by any means! Yet ... if the whole went away, and did not leave me half!—

When I was a child I heard two married women talking. One said to the other ... ‘The most painful part of marriage is the first year, when the lover changes into the husband by slow degrees.’ The other woman agreed, as a matter of fact is agreed to. I listened with my eyes and ears, and never forgot it ... as you observe. It seemed to me, child as I was, a dreadful thing to have a husband by such a process. Now, it seems to me more dreadful.

Beautiful verses—just to prove to you that I do not remember only the disagreeable things ... only to teaze you with, like so many undeserved reproaches. And you so good, so best—Ah—but it is that which frightens me! so far best!

You were foolish to begin to love me, you know, as always I told you, my beloved!—but since you would begin, ... go on to do it as long as you can ... do not leave me in the wilderness. God bless you for me!—

I am your Ba.

Think if people were to get hold of that imputation on poor Mrs. Norton—think!

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday Morning in haste. [Post-mark, July 7, 1846.]

Dearest, I am uncertain whether I can see you to-morrow. To-night I will write again—you shall hear. You tell me to risk nothing ... which is what I feel. But I long, long to see you. You shall hear in the morning.

Read the note which Mr. Kenyon sends me from Mr. Forster. Very averse I feel, from applying, in the way prescribed, to Mr. Serjeant Talfourd. Tell me what to do, Robert ... my ‘famous in council!’ Sick at heart, it all makes me. Am I to write to Mr. Talfourd, do you think?

Oh, you would manage it for me—but to mix you up in it, will make a danger of a worse evil. May God bless you, my own. I may see you to-morrow perhaps after all—it is a ‘perhaps’ though ... and I am surely

Your Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday. [Post-mark, July 7, 1846.]

Dearest, the first thing to say is the deep joyfulness of expecting to see you, really, to-morrow—mind, the engagement with Mr. Kenyon is nothing in the way. If you cannot let me stay the usual time—I can call, pass away the interval easily ... this is a superfluous word to your goodness which is superfluous in these ‘old ways of Ba’s’—dear Ba, whom I kiss with perfect love—and shall soon kiss in no dream! Landor is all well enough in one sentence ... happily turned that is,—but I am vexed at his strange opinion of Goethe’s poem,—and the more, that a few years ago he wrote down as boldly that nothing had been written so ‘Hellenic’ these two thousand years—(in a note to the ‘Satire on the Satirists’)—and of these opinions I think the earlier much nearer the truth. Then he wrote so, because Wordsworth had depreciated Goethe—now, very likely, some maladroit applauder has said Landor’s own ‘Iphigenia’ is worthy of Goethe,—or similar platitudes.

Yes, dearest, you are quite right—and my words have a wrong sense, and one I did not mean they should bear, if they object to confessions and autobiographies in general. Only the littleness and temporary troubles, the petty battle with foes, which is but a moment’s work however the success may be, all that might go when the occasion, real or fancied, is gone. I would have the customary ‘habits,’ as we say, of the man preserved, and if they were quilted and stiffened with steel and bristling all over with the offensive and defensive weapons the man judged necessary for his safety,—they should be composed and hung up decently—telling the true story of his life. But I should not preserve the fretful gesture,—lift the arm, as it was angrily lifted to keep off a wolf—which now turns out to have been only Flush in a fever of vigilance—half-drew the sword which—Ah, let me have done with this! You understand, if I do not. For the bad story,—the telling that, if it were true, is nearly as bad as inventing it. That poor woman is the hack-block of a certain class of redoubtable braggarts—there are such stories by the dozen in circulation. All may have been misconception ... ‘advances’—to induce one more painter to introduce her face in his works.

My time is out ... I had much to say, but this letter of mine arrived by the afternoon post,—shame on the office! To-morrow!

Bless you, ever dearest dearest—

Your own.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday Evening [Post-mark, July 8, 1846.]

Yes—I understand you perfectly—and it should be exactly as you say—and it is just that, which requires so much adroitness,—and such decision and strength of hand, to manage these responsibilities. Somebody is wanted to cut and burn, and be silent afterwards. I remember that bitter things are said of Shelley and Leigh Hunt beyond all the bitterness of alcohol. Olives do not taste so, though steeped in salt. There are some curious letters by poor Keats about Hunt, and they too are bitter. It would be dreadful to suffer these miseries to sow themselves about the world, like so much thistle-down ... the world, where there are thistles enough already, to make fodder for its wild asses!

As to Landor ... oh, I did not remember the note you speak of in the satire you speak of—but you remember everything ... even me. Is it not true that Landor, too, is one of the men who carry their passions about with them into everything, as a boy would, pebbles ... muddying every clear water, with a stone here and a stone there. The end is, that we lose the image of himself in the serene depth, as we might have had it—and the little stone comes to stand for him. How unworthy of such a man as Landor, such weakness is! To think with one’s temper!! One might as well be at once Don Quixote, and fight with a warming-pan.

But I did not remember the former opinion. I took it for a constitutional fancy of Landor’s, and did not smile much more at it than at my own ‘profundity in German,’ which was a matter of course ... of course ... of course. For have I not the gift of tongues? Don’t I talk Syriac ... as well as Flush talks English—and Hebrew, like a prophetess ... and various other languages and dialects less familiarly known to persons in general than these aforesaid? So, profound indeed, must be the German and the Dutch! And perhaps it may not be worth while to answer Mr. Landor’s note for the mere purpose of telling him anything about it.

Dearest!—I have written all this before I would say a word of your coming, just to think a little more—and down all these pages I have been thinking, thinking, of you ... of your possible coming ... what nonsense they must be! Well! and the end is that, let it be wise or unwise, I must and will see you to-morrow—I cannot do otherwise. It is just as if Flush had been shut up in a box for so many days. My spirits flag ... and I could find it in my heart to grow cross like Landor and deny Goethe. So come, dearest dearest—and let the world bark at our heels if it pleases. I will just turn round and set Flush at it.

For two or three days I have not been out—not for two days ... not out of this room. This evening at seven, when they were all going to dinner, I took Wilson with me and drove into the park for air. It will do me good perhaps—but your coming will, certainly. So come, my dearest beloved!—At three, remember.

Your own

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Private

Wednesday 7 A.M. [Post-mark, July 8, 1846.]

My own Ba, I received your note on my return from Talfourd’s last night. I am anxious to get the first post for this, so can only use the bare words,—if those. After dinner, Forster put a question to our host about the amount of the subscription; and in a minute the paper-bequest was introduced. Talfourd had received a letter from Miss Mitford, enclosing one from you (or a copy of one ... I did not hear)—whereat he pronounced so emphatically upon H.’s conduct in making you,—‘who could never have known the nature of the transaction nor the very serious consequences it involved’—the depositary of his pictures &c. on such occasions,—the words, ‘H. it seems, has been in the habit of using Miss B’s house &c.’ (or to that effect) had so offensive an implication,—that I felt obliged to say simply, you had never seen Haydon and were altogether amazed and distressed at his desire,—and that, for the other matter, what he chose to send, you could not, I supposed, bring yourself to refuse admittance to the house. I gave no particular account of my own means of knowledge, nor spoke further than to remove the impression from the minds of the people present that you must have ‘known’ Haydon, as they call ‘knowing’—and Forster, for one, expressed surprise at it. I ventured to repeat what I mentioned to you—‘that it seemed likely you were selected for the Editorship precisely on account of your isolation from the world.’

Soon after, Forster went away—and, up-stairs, I got Talfourd alone, and just told him that I was in the habit of corresponding with you, that you had made me acquainted with a few of the circumstances, and that you had at once thought of him, Talfourd, as the proper source of instruction on the subject. Talfourd’s reply amounted to this,—(in the fewest words possible). The will &c. is of course an absurdity. The papers are the undoubted property of the creditors ... any attempt to publish them would subject you to an action at law. They were given prospectively to you exactly for the reason I suggested: they having been in the first instance offered to Talfourd. Haydon knew that T. would never print them in their offensive integrity, and hoped that you would—being quite of the average astuteness in worldly matters when his own vanity and selfishness were not concerned. They might, these papers, be published with advantage to Mrs. Haydon at some future time if the creditors permit—or without their permitting, if woven into a substantially new framework; as some ‘Haydon and his Times,’ or the like ... but there is nothing to call for such a step at present, even in that view of advantage to the family ... the subscription and other assistances being sufficient for their necessities. Therefore the course T. would recommend you to adopt is to let the deposit (if you have one ... for he did not know, and I said nothing)—lie untouched—not giving them up to anybody, any creditor, to Mrs. H’s prejudice.

Now, can you do better than as Forster advises? Talfourd goes on circuit to-morrow—he said, ‘I can hear, or arrange anything with Miss B’s brother’—so that, if there should be no time, you can write by him, and entrust explanations &c. But would it not be best to get done with this matter directly—to write a brief note in the course of to-day, mentioning the facts, and requesting advice? In order to leave you the time to do this,—should the post presently bring me a letter allowing me to see you at three ... unless the allowance is very free, very irresistible ... I will rather take to-morrow ... a piece of self-denial I fear I should not so readily bring myself to exhibit, were I not really obliged to pass your house to-day; so that even Ba will understand!

Miss Mitford’s note appears to have been none of the wisest—indeed a phrase or two I heard, were purely foolish: H. was said to have practised ‘Ion’s principle’!

T. had known Haydon most intimately and for a long time: he does not believe H. was mad—of a mad vanity, of course. His last paper ... ‘Haydon’s Thoughts’ ... was a dissertation on the respective merits of Napoleon and Wellington—how wrong Haydon felt he had been to prefer the former ... and the why and the wherefore. All this wretched stuff, in a room theatrically arranged,—here his pictures, there ... God forgive us all, fools or wise by comparison! The debts are said to be £3,000 ... he having been an insolvent debtor ... how long before? His landlord, a poor man, is creditor for £1,200.

Here I will end, and wait: this is written in all haste ... and is so altogether no proper letter of mine that I shall put the necessary ‘Private’ at the top of it. My letter shall go presently, if I do not go, to my own Ba—

R.B.

Should you write to your brother ... will he need reminding that Talfourd is only to know we correspond,—not that we are personally acquainted? Had you not better mention this in any case?

God bless you, dearest,—what a letter from me to you—to Ba! Time, Time!

R.B. to E.B.B.

Thursday. [Post-mark, July 9, 1846.]

My own darling, my Ba, do you know when I read those letters (as soon as I remembered I had got them,—for you hold me long after both doors, up and down stairs, shut) when I looked through them, under a gateway ... I was pricked at the heart to have thought so, and spoken so, of the poor writer. I will believe that he was good and even great when in communication with you—indeed all men are made, or make themselves, different in their approaches to different men—and the secret of goodness and greatness is in choosing whom you will approach, and live with, in memory or imagination, through the crowding obvious people who seem to live with you. That letter about the glory of being a painter ‘if only for the neglect’ is most touching and admirable ... there is the serene spot attained, the solid siren’s isle amid the sea; and while there, he was safe and well ... but he would put out to sea again, after a breathing time, I suppose? though even a smaller strip of land was enough to maintain Blake, for one instance, in power and glory through the poor, fleeting ‘sixty years’—then comes the rest from cartooning and exhibiting. But there is no standing, one foot on land and one on the waves, now with the high aim in view, now with the low aim,—and all the strange mistaken talk about ‘prestiges,’ ‘Youth and its luck,’ Napoleon and the world’s surprise and interest. There comes the low aim between the other,—an organ grinds Mr. Jullien’s newest dance-tune, and Camoens is vexed that the ‘choral singing which brought angels down,’ can’t also draw street-passengers round.

I take your view of H.’s freedom, at that time, from the thoughts of what followed.

He was weak—a strong man would have borne what so many bear—what were his griefs, as grief goes? Do you remember I told you, when the news of Aliwal and the other battles came to England, of our gardener, and his son, a sergeant in one of the regiments engaged ... how the father could learn nothing at first, of course ... how they told him at the Horse Guards he should be duly informed in time, after his betters, whether this son was dead, or wounded. Since then, no news came ... ‘which is good news’ the father persuaded himself to think ... so the apprehensions subside, and the hope confirms itself, more and more, while the old fellow digs and mows and rakes away, like a man painting historical pictures ... only without the love of it. Well, this morning we had his daughter here to say ‘the letter’ had arrived at last ... her brother was killed in the first battle, so there’s an end of the three months’ sickness of heart,—and the poor fellow must bear his loss ‘like a man’—or like a woman ... for I recollect another case, of an old woman whom my mother was in the habit of relieving,—who brought a letter one day which she could hardly understand—it was from her son, a sailor, and went on for a couple of pages about his good health and expectations,—then, in a different handwriting, somebody, ‘your son’s shipmate’ ‘took up his pen to inform you that he fell from the masthead into the sea and was drowned yesterday,—which he therefore thought it right to put in the unfinished letter.’ All which the old woman bore somehow,—seeing she lives yet.

Well,—ought not I to say Mr. Kenyon was as kind as usual, and his party as pleasant? No, for you know—what you cannot by possibility know, it seems, is, that I am not particularly engaged next Saturday! Ba, shall I really see you so soon? Bless you ever, my very, very own! I shall not hear to-day ... but to-morrow,—do but not keep me waiting for that letter, and the mules shall be ready hours and hours, for any sign I will have, at La Cava!

Ever your R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Thursday. [Post-mark, July 9, 1846.]

See what an account we have this morning of La Cava ... ‘quite impossible for the winter.’ What does ‘quite impossible’ quite mean, I wonder? I feel disappointed. As to Palermo, you would rather be in Italy, and so would I, perhaps. Salerno seems questionable too; and Vietri ... what of Vietri? I don’t at all see why we should receive the responses of this friend of my friend who is not so very much my friend, as if they were oracular and final. There must be the right of appeal for us to other authorities. Will you investigate and think a little? For my part I shall not care to what place we go, except for the climate’s sake—the cheapness too should be considered a little: and, for the rest, every place which you should like, I should like, and which you liked most, I should like most—everything is novelty to me, remember.

My uncle Hedley has just come now, and I must quicken my writing. Oh—to be so troubled just now ... just now!—But I wrote to Mr. Serjeant Talfourd last night, and told him as fully and as briefly as I could the whole position ... and that vexation I shall try now to throw behind me, after the fashion of dear Mr. Kenyon’s philosophy. I put the thought of you, beloved, between me and all other thoughts—surely I can, when you were here only yesterday. So much to think of, there is! One thing made me laugh in the recollection. Do you mean to tell Mrs. Jameson that you are going to marry me, ‘because it is intolerable to hear me talked of?’ That would be an original motive. ‘So speaks the great poet.’—

Ah Flush, Flush!—he did not hurt you really? You will forgive him for me? The truth is that he hates all unpetticoated people, and that though he does not hate you, he has a certain distrust of you, which any outward sign, such as the umbrella, reawakens. But if you had seen how sorry and ashamed he was yesterday! I slapped his ears and told him that he never should be loved again: and he sate on the sofa (sitting, not lying) with his eyes fixed on me all the time I did the flowers, with an expression of quite despair in his face. At last I said, ‘If you are good, Flush, you may come and say that you are sorry’ ... on which he dashed across the room and, trembling all over, kissed first one of my hands and then another, and put up his paws to be shaken, and looked into my face with such great beseeching eyes that you would certainly have forgiven him just as I did. It is not savageness. If he once loved you, you might pull his ears and his tail, and take a bone out of his mouth even, and he would not bite you. He has no savage caprices like other dogs and men I have known.

Writing of Flush, in my uncle comes, and then my cousin, and then my aunt ... by relays! and now it is nearly four and this letter may be too late for the post which reaches you irregularly. So provoked I am!—but I shall write again, to-night, you know.

Dearest, you did me so much good yesterday! Say how your head is—and remember Saturday. Saturday will be clear through Chiswick—may the sun shine on it!—

Your own Ba.

Think of the dreadful alternative as set forth in this MS.!—The English ... or a bad climate!—Can it be true?

Enclosure

[La Cava is impossible for the winter owing to the damp and cold. At no season should any person remain out at the hour of sunset. An hour afterwards the air is dry and healthy—[Is this at La Cava? Ba] This applies to all Italy, and is a precaution too often neglected. Salerno has bad air too near it, to be safe as a residence. Besides, it is totally without the resources of books, good food, or medical advice. Palermo would be agreeable in the winter, and not very much frequented by English. However, where good climate exists, English are to be found. Murray’s ‘Southern Italy’ would give every particular as to the distance of La Cava from the sea.]

E.B.B. to R.B.

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

How I have waited for your letter to-night,—and it comes nearly at ten!—It comes at last—thank you for it, ever dearest.

And I knew—quite understood yesterday, that you were sorry for me, which made you angry with another ... but, as to poor Haydon, you are too generous and too pitiful to refuse him any justice. I was sure that the letters would touch you. The particular letter about the ‘back-ground’ and the ‘neglect’ and Napoleon, ... that, you will observe, was the last I had from him. Every word you say of it, I think and feel. Yes, it was just so! His conscience was not a sufficient witness, ... nor was God. He must also have the Royal Academy and the appreciators of Tom Thumb. A ‘weak man,’ of course he was,—for all vain men are weak men. They cannot stand alone. But that he had in him the elements of greatness—that he looked to noble aims in art and life, however distractedly, ... that his thoughts and feelings were not those of a common man, ... it is true, it is undeniable,—and you would think so more and more if you read through the packets of letters which I have of his—so fervid, so full of earnestness and individuality ... so alive with egotism which yet seemed to redeem itself. Mr. Kenyon said of the letter we have spoken of, that it was scarcely the production of a sane mind. But I who was used to his letters, saw nothing in it in the least unusual—he has written to me far wilder letters! That he ‘never should die,’ he had said once or twice before. Then Napoleon was a favourite subject of his ... constantly recurred to. He was not mad then!

Poor Haydon! Think what an agony, life was to him, so constituted!—his own genius a clinging curse! the fire and the clay in him seething and quenching one another!—the man seeing maniacally in all men the assassins of his fame! and, with the whole world against him, struggling for the thing which was his life, through night and day, in thoughts and in dreams ... struggling, stifling, breaking the hearts of the creatures dearest to him, in the conflict for which there was no victory, though he could not choose but fight it. Tell me if Laocoon’s anguish was not as an infant’s sleep, compared to this? And could a man, suffering so, stop to calculate very nicely the consideration due to A, and the delicacy which should be observed toward B? Was he scrupulously to ask himself whether this or that cry of his might not give C a headache? Indeed no, no. It is for us rather to look back and consider! Poor Haydon.

As to grief as grief—of course he had no killing grief. But he suffered.

Often it has struck me as a curious thing (yet it is not perhaps curious) that suicides are occasioned nearly always by a mortified self-love ... by losses in money, which force a man into painful positions ... and scarcely ever by bereavement through death ... scarcely ever. The wound on the vanity is more irritating than the wound on the affections—and the word Death, if it does not make us recoil (which it does I think sometimes, ... even from the graves of beloved beings!), yet keeps us humble ... casts us down from our heights. We may despond, but we do not rebel—we feel God over us.

Ah—your poor gardener! All that hope is vain—and the many, many hopes which in a father’s heart must have preceded it! How sorry I am for him.[4]

You never can have a grief, dearest dearest, of which I shall not have half for my share. That is my right from henceforth ... and if I could have it all ... would I not, do you think, ... and give my love to you to keep instead? Yes, ... indeed yes! May God bless you always. I have walked out to-day, you did me so much good yesterday. As for Saturday, it certainly is our day, since you are not ‘particularly engaged’ to Miss Campbell. Saturday, the day after to-morrow! But the mules may wait long at La Cava for us, if the tradition, which I sent you, is trustworthy—may they not? I feel as disappointed ... as disappointed—

Your own, very own Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Friday. [Post-mark, July 10, 1846.]

And I am disappointed, dearest, in this news of La Cava—after which it would be madness to think of going there: the one reason we have to go at all is simply for your health—I mean, that if the seclusion were the main object, we might easily compass that here. All places are utterly indifferent to me if I can inhabit them with you—why should Palermo please me less than Italy proper? The distance is considerable, however, and the journey expensive—I wonder whether the steamer will sail for Leghorn as last year. As for the travelling English, they are horrible, and at Florence, unbearable ... their voices in your ear at every turn ... and such voices!—I got to very nearly hate the Tribune for their sakes. Vietri is close to Salerno and must be obvious to the same condemnation. Your friend speaks from personal experience, I presume—she may well say that the baneful effects of the hour of sunset (i.e. the Ave-maria) are too much overlooked ‘in all Italy’—I never heard of them before—but an infinity of ‘crotchets’ go from Italian brain to brain about what, in eating or drinking or walking or sleeping, will be the death of you: still, they may know best. The most dreadful event that could happen to me would be your getting worse instead of better.... God knows what I should do! So whatever precaution we can take, let us take.

Oh, poor Flush,—do you think I do not love and respect him for his jealous supervision,—his slowness to know another, having once known you? All my apprehension is that, in the imaginations down-stairs, he may very unconsciously play the part of the dog that is heard to ‘bark violently’ while something dreadful takes place: yet I do not sorrow over his slapped ears, as if they ever pained him very much—you dear Ba!

And to-morrow I shall see you. Are you, can you be, really ‘better’ after I have seen you? If it is not truth ... which I will not say ... such an assurance is the most consummate flattery I can imagine ... it may be recorded on my tombstone ‘R.B.—to whom this flattery was addressed, that, after the sight of him, Ba was better, she said.’ If it is truth ... may you say that, neither more nor less, day by day, year by year through our lives—and I shall have lived indeed!

How it rains—how it varies from hot to cold! a pretty vantage-ground whence we English can look and call other climates bad or indifferent! Now if to-morrow resembles to-day, will the Chiswick expedition hold good? I shall consider that I may go unless a letter comes to-morrow ... which would have to be written to-day. How pleasant it would be to make our days always Wednesday and Saturday ... could not that be contrived? So much for considerateness and contentedness!

I want, now, to refer as little as possible to the sad subject ... but I am glad you have written,—glad too that you are not severe on me for some hasty speeches—which did, indeed, mean as you say ... vexation at your having been vexed. And, I will just add, you remark excellently on the wound to self-love making itself that remedy, rather than the wound to the affections ... yet there are instances ... Romilly loses his wife ... so does poor Laman Blanchard.

So I go on writing, writing about all but what my heart is full of! Let me kiss you, ever dearest—to-morrow will soon arrive—meanwhile, and forever I am your own.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday. [Post-mark, July 12, 1846.]

When I made you promise to refer no more to that subject in your letter (which I must wait a day and a night for, alas!), I did not engage myself to the like silence ... perhaps because I was not bidden—or, no! there is a better reason; I want to beg your pardon, dearest, for all that petulancy,—for the manner of what I said rather than the matter,—there is a rationality in it all, if I could express trulier what I feel—but the manner was foolish and wrong and unnecessary to you—so do forgive and forget it. You would understand and sympathize if you knew—not me, whom you do know in some degree,—but so much of my early life as would account for the actual horror and hatred I have of those particular doctrines of the world—and the especially foolish word about the ‘travelling’ meant something like the not unnatural thought that if in this main, sole event for all good and all evil in my life,—if here the world plucked you from me by any of the innumerable lines it casts, with that indirectness, too,—then, I should simply go and live the rest of my days as far out of it as I could.

The simple thing to say is, that I who know you to be above me in all great or good feelings and therefore worship you, must be without excuse to talk inconsiderately as if I, sitting by you and speaking of the same subject, must needs feel more acutely, more strongly in one respect where, indeed, it wants very little pre-eminence in heart or brain to feel entirely the truth—a simplest of truths. It would have been laughable if I had broken out on Mrs. Proctor’s bitterness of speech, for instance ... just as though you were the slower of us two to see the nature of it! So I do again ask your pardon, dearest Ba! You said you loved me no less yesterday than ever—how must I love you and press closer to you more and more, and desire to see nothing of the world behind you, when I hear how the world thinks, and how you think! You only, only adorable woman, only imaginable love for me! And all the hastiness and petulancy comes from that ... someone seems to come close (in every such maxim of the world’s) and say ‘What is she—to so much a year? Could you be happy with her except in Mayfair—and there whom could you not be happy with!’

It is as I expected—Rachel plays on Wednesday in ‘Phèdre,’ and our friend writes to say he has secured places. May nothing overcast the perfect three hours on Tuesday,—those dear, dear spaces of dear brightness—why cannot a life be made up of these ... with the proper interposition of work, to justify God’s goodness so far as poor mortality and its endeavours can,—a week of Tuesdays—then a month—a year—a life! I must long to see you again,—always by far the most I long, the next day—the very day after I have seen you—when it is freshest in my mind what I did not say while I might have said it,—nor ask while I might have been answered—nor learn while you would have taught me—no, it is indescribable. Did I call yesterday ‘unsatisfactory’? Would I had it back now! Or better, I will wish you here when I write, with the trees to see and the birds to hear through the open window—I see you on this old chair against the purple back ... or shall you lie on the sofa? Ba, how I love you, my own perfect unapproachable mistress.

Let me kiss your feet—and now your hands and your eyes—and your lips now, for the full pardon’s sake, my sweetest love—

Ever your own—

E.B.B. to R.B.

Sunday. 6 P.M. [Post-mark, July 13, 1846.]

Ever, ever dearest, I have to feel for you all through Sunday, and I hear no sound and see no light. How are you? how did you get home yesterday? I thought of you more than usual after you went, if I did not love you as much as usual.... What could that doubt have been made of?

Dearest, I had a letter last night from Mrs. Jameson, who says that on Tuesday or Wednesday at about four o’clock (though she is as little sure of the hour apparently as of the day), she means to come to see me. Now you are to consider whether this grand peutêtre will shake our Tuesday, ... whether you would rather take Thursday instead, or will run the risk as it appears. I am ready to agree, either way. She is the most uncertain of uncertain people, and may not come at all ... it’s a case for what Hume used to call sceptical scepticism. Judge! Then I have heard (I forgot to tell you) from Mr. Horne—and ... did you have two letters last week from your Bennet? ... because I had,—flying leaves of ‘Mignonette,’ and other lyrical flowers.

When you had gone Arabel came to persuade me to go to the park in a cab, notwithstanding my too lively recollections of the last we chanced upon,—and I was persuaded, and so we tumbled one over another (yet not all those cabs are so rough!) to the nearest gate opening on the grass, and got out and walked a little. A lovely evening it was, but I wished somehow rather to be at home, and Flush had his foot pinched in shutting the cab-door, ... and altogether there was not much gain:—only, as for Flush’s foot, though he cried piteously and held it up, looking straight to me for sympathy, no sooner had he touched the grass than he began to run without a thought of it. Flush always makes the most of his misfortunes—he is of the Byronic school—il se pose en victime.

Now I will not write any more—I long to have my letter of to-morrow morning—I long to have it.... Shall I not have it to-morrow morning? This is posted by my hand.

I loved you yesterday ... I love you to-day ... I shall love you to-morrow.

Every day I am yours.

Ba.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Monday. [Post-mark, July 13, 1846.]

My own Ba, your letter kisses me in its entire kindness—and I kiss it and you.—Mrs. Jameson may come or keep away ... (since you let me speak and decide, which is like you) ... she may appoint and reappoint, but Tuesday was given me and I will have it if her visit is the only obstacle—for what was all the confessing worth if not to account for such a phenomenon as my presence in your room when by any chance she might discover it? Beside, as you say, she is the most uncertain of engagement-holders ... no, indeed,—no Tuesday ought to be given up for her! Therefore, unless fresh orders arrive,—at three on Tuesday ... which is happily, happily to-morrow! You are my own sweetest to reach a letter to me with your own hand, as you tell me,—and the drive, and the walk to the Post Office—thank you, Ba! Perhaps ... dare I say ... you will answer that letter I sent yesterday ... because now I remember there is no prayer at the end to prevent you ... that is, from answering the main part of it—the reverting &c.

I wrote to Mr. Horne, but shall not hear from him—on Saturday I wrote. And Mr. Bennett’s two letters are considerately written,—directed, I mean,—in a hand and with a blue ink that I recognise,—consequently the contents give me no trouble. I wrote two or three lines to the ‘year of the world’ poet,—did you take the pains? Once on a time some unknown author sent me a Tragedy, ‘not published,’ called ‘Alessandro de’ Medici,’ with some striking scenes ... I wonder who could be the writer—did it ever fall in your way?

... As if I care!—can I care about anything that is not Ba? All else seems as idle as ... as,—now you shall have a real instance in point—as my dream last night. This morning at breakfast my mother asked me, the first thing, what could so amuse me as to make me call loudly ‘Bravo’ again and again, with abundance of laughter? (My room is next to hers and the door is left ajar). Whereupon I tried to recall my dream—and all that I can seize is a passage through a gallery of Haydon’s pictures, one of which was a portrait of his wife; nor did a suspicion once cross my mind that the artist was not well and working somewhere in the vicinity all the time—How strange! I never dream if quite well—and I suppose the present state of my head just amounts to not being quite well. (It is better at any rate, and to-morrow—ought to be worse, that—Ba may prove her potency as of old).

Now I will kiss you and wait as well as I can till the full blessing. Dearest—dearest I am your own—

E.B.B. to R.B.

Monday Morning. [Post-mark, July 14, 1846.]

I must write ... even if you come to-morrow. Dearest, if I told you all that nonsense on Saturday, it was for the sake of telling you all and of hearing you say ‘What nonsense’ afterwards. I never began by disguising anything from you ... did I? I always wished you to see how the arrows would strike out at us from that bush and this bush. At us. For, granting that you seriously thought it possible for such motives to divide me from you, ... ah, granting it, ... and you may well ask my pardon!

The world! the world could as soon catch me with a ‘line’ so baited, as you could catch a trout with a silver sixpence at the end of a string. Not only do I think with you entirely on that subject, but I always thought like you. Always I have hated all their worldly systems, and not merely now, and since I have loved you. With a hundred a year between us, I would have married you, if you had not been afraid. And so, think whether directly or ‘indirectly’ I am likely to be frightened into the breach of an engagement by what I repeated to you or by what is like unto it. No—my weaknesses are of a different class altogether.

The talk I talked over again to you, seemed to burn in my ears the longer on that Saturday, because, while it was being originally talked between Papa and my aunt (touching Arabella Hedley’s marriage), he had brought a paper for me to sign about some money placed on a railway, (not speculatively) ... and my aunt, by way of saying a lively thing, exclaimed, ‘Is that your marriage-settlement, my dear?’ ... which made me so nervous that I wrote my name wrong and vexed Papa into being almost cross with me. So one word got entwined with another, and all seemed to hang around me—Do you understand?

But you do not, how you pained me when you said that. Ah—I thought I saw you gone ... ‘so far, so far,’ as you said ... and myself left.