Month: September 2017

September 18, 1845.

Words!  – – it was written I should hate and never use them to any purpose. I will not say one word here  – – very well knowing neither word nor deed avails  – – from me.

My letter will have reassured you on the point you seem undecided about  – – whether I would speak &c.

I will come whenever you shall signify that I may  . . . whenever, acting in my best interests, you feel that it will not hurt you (weary you in any way) to see me  – – but I fear that on Saturday I must be otherwhere  – – I enclose the letter from my old foe. Which could not but melt me for all my moroseness and I can hardly go and return for my sister in time. Will you tell me?

It is dark  – – but I want to save the post  – –

Ever yours

R.B.

 

Wednesday Evening.

September 18, 1845.

But one word before we leave the subject, and then to leave it finally; but I cannot let you go on to fancy a mystery anywhere, in obstacles or the rest. You deserve at least a full frankness; and in my letter I meant to be fully frank. I even told you what was an absurdity, so absurd that I should far rather not have told you at all, only that I felt the need of telling you all: and no mystery is involved in that, except as an ‘idiosyncrasy’ is a mystery. But the ‘insurmountable’ difficulty is for you and everybody to see; and for me to feel, who have been a very byword among the talkers, for a confirmed invalid through months and years, and who, even if I were going to Pisa and had the best prospects possible to me, should yet remain liable to relapses and stand on precarious ground to the end of my life. Now that is no mystery for the trying of ‘faith’; but a plain fact, which neither thinking nor speaking can make less a fact. But don’t let us speak of it.

I must speak, however, (before the silence) of what you said and repeat in words for which I gratefully thank you — and which are not ‘ostentatious’ though unnecessary words — for, if I were in a position to accept sacrifices from you, I would not accept such a sacrifice  . . . amounting to a sacrifice of duty and dignity as well as of ease and satisfaction  . . . to an exchange of higher work for lower work  . . . and of the special work you are called to, for that which is work for anybody. I am not so ignorant of the right uses and destinies of what you have and are. You will leave the Solicitor-Generalships to the Fitzroy Kellys, and justify your own nature; and besides, do me the little right, (over the over-right you are always doing me) of believing that I would not bear or dare to do you so much wrong, if I were in the position to do it.

And for all the rest I thank you — believe that I thank you  . . . and that the feeling is not so weak as the word. That you should care at all for me has been a matter of unaffected wonder to me from the first hour until now — and I cannot help the pain I feel sometimes, in thinking that it would have been better for you if you never had known me. May God turn back the evil of me! Certainly I admit that I cannot expect you  . . . just at this moment,  . . . to say more than you say,  . . . and I shall try to be at ease in the consideration that you are as accessible to the ‘unicorn’ now as you ever could be at any former period of your life. And here I have done. I had done living, I thought, when you came and sought me out! and why? and to what end? That, I cannot help thinking now. Perhaps just that I may pray for you — which were a sufficient end. If you come on Saturday I trust you to leave this subject untouched, — as it must be indeed henceforth.

I am yours,

E.B.B.

No word more of Pisa — I shall not go, I think.

 

Wednesday Morning.

September 17, 1845.

I write one word just to say that it is all over with Pisa; which was a probable evil when I wrote last, and which I foresaw from the beginning — being a prophetess, you know. I cannot tell you now how it has all happened — only do not blame me, for I have kept my ground to the last, and only yield when Mr. Kenyon and all the world see that there is no standing. I am ashamed almost of having put so much earnestness into a personal matter — and I spoke face to face and quite firmly — so as to pass with my sisters for the ‘bravest person in the house’ without contestation.

Sometimes it seems to me as if it could not end so — I mean, that the responsibility of such a negative must be reconsidered  . . . and you see how Mr. Kenyon writes to me. Still, as the matter lies,  . . . no Pisa! And, as I said before, my prophetic instincts are not likely to fail, such as they have been from the beginning.

If you wish to come, it must not be until Saturday at soonest. I have a headache and am weary at heart with all this vexation — and besides there is no haste now: and when you do come, if you do, I will trust to you not to recur to one subject, which must lie where it fell  . . . must! I had begun to write to you on Saturday, to say how I had forgotten to give you your MSS. which were lying ready for you  . . . the Hood poems. Would it not be desirable that you made haste to see them through the press, and went abroad with your Roman friends at once, to try to get rid of that uneasiness in the head? Do think of it — and more than think.

For me, you are not to fancy me unwell. Only, not to be worn a little with the last week’s turmoil, were impossible — and Mr. Kenyon said to me yesterday that he quite wondered how I could bear it at all, do anything reasonable at all, and confine my misdoings to sending letters addressed to him at Brighton, when he was at Dover! If anything changes, you shall hear from —

E.B.B.

Mr. Kenyon returns to Dover immediately. His kindness is impotent in the case.

 

September 17, 1845.

I do not know whether you imagine the precise effect of your letter on me  – – very likely you do, and write it just for that  – – for I conceive all from your goodness. But before I tell you what is that effect, let me say in as few words as possible what shall stop any fear  – – though only for a moment and on the outset  – – that you have been misunderstood, that the goodness outside, and round and over all, hides all or any thing. I understand you to signify to me that you see, at this present, insurmountable obstacles to that  – – can I speak it  – – entire gift, which I shall own, was, while I dared ask it, above my hopes  – – and wishes, even, so it seems to me  . . . and yet could not but be asked, so plainly was it dictated to me, by something quite out of those hopes and wishes. Will it help me to say that once in this Aladdin-cavern I knew I ought to stop for no heaps of jewel-fruit on the trees from the very beginning, but go on to the lamp, the prize, the last and best of all? Well, I understand you to pronounce that at present you believe this gift impossible  – – and I acquiesce entirely  – – I submit wholly to you; repose on you in all the faith of which I am capable. Those obstacles are solely for you to see and to declare  . . . had I seen them, be sure I should never have mocked you or myself by affecting to pass them over  . . . what were obstacles, I mean: but you do see them, I must think,  – – and perhaps they strike me the more from my true, honest unfeigned inability to imagine what they are,  – – not that I shall endeavour. After what you also apprise me of, I know and am joyfully confident that if ever they cease to be what you now consider them, you who see now for me, whom I implicitly trust in to see for me; you will then, too, see and remember me, and how I trust, and shall then be still trusting. And until you so see, and so inform me, I shall never utter a word  – – for that would involve the vilest of implications. I thank God  – – I do thank him, that in this whole matter I have been, to the utmost of my power, not unworthy of his introducing you to me, in this respect that, being no longer in the first freshness of life, and having for many years now made up my mind to the impossibility of loving any woman  . . . having wondered at this in the beginning, and fought not a little against it, having acquiesced in it at last, and accounted for it all to myself, and become, if anything, rather proud of it than sorry  . . . I say, when real love, making itself at once recognized as such, did reveal itself to me at last, I did open my heart to it with a cry  – – nor care for its overturning all my theory  – – nor mistrust its effect upon a mind set in ultimate order, so I fancied, for the few years more  – – nor apprehend in the least that the new element would harm what was already organized without its help. Nor have I, either, been guilty of the more pardonable folly, of treating the new feeling after the pedantic fashions and instances of the world. I have not spoken when it did not speak, because ‘one’ might speak, or has spoken, or should speak, and ‘plead’ and all that miserable work which, after all, I may well continue proud that I am not called to attempt. Here for instance, now  . . . ‘one’ should despair; but ‘try again’ first, and work blindly at removing those obstacles (  – – if I saw them, I should be silent, and only speak when a month hence, ten years hence, I could bid you look where they were)  – – and ‘one’ would do all this, not for the play-acting’s sake, or to ‘look the character’  . . . (that would be something quite different from folly  . . .) but from a not unreasonable anxiety lest by too sudden a silence, too complete an acceptance of your will; the earnestness and endurance and unabatedness  . . . the truth, in fact, of what had already been professed, should get to be questioned  – – But I believe that you believe me  – – And now that all is clear between us I will say, what you will hear, without fearing for me or yourself, that I am utterly contented  . . . (‘grateful’ I have done with  . . . it must go  – – ) I accept what you give me, what those words deliver to me, as  – – not all I asked for  . . . as I said  . . . but as more than I ever hoped for,  – – all, in the best sense, that I deserve. That phrase in my letter which you objected to, and the other  – – may stand, too  – – I never attempted to declare, describe my feeling for you  – – one word of course stood for it all  . . . but having to put down some one point, so to speak, of it  – – you could not wonder if I took any extreme one first  . . . never minding all the untold portion that led up to it, made it possible and natural  – – it is true, ‘I could not dream of that‘  – – that I was eager to get the horrible notion away from never so flitting a visit to you, that you were thus and thus to me on condition of my proving just the same to you  – – just as if we had waited to acknowledge that the moon lighted us till we ascertained within these two or three hundred years that the earth happens to light the moon as well! But I felt that, and so said it:  – – now you have declared what I should never have presumed to hope  – – and I repeat to you that I, with all to be thankful for to God, am most of all thankful for this the last of his providences  . . . which is no doubt, the natural and inevitable feeling, could one always see clearly. Your regard for me is all success  – – let the rest come, or not come. In my heart’s thankfulness I would  . . . I am sure I would promise anything that would gratify you  . . . but it would not do that, to agree, in words, to change my affections, put them elsewhere &c. &c. That would be pure foolish talking, and quite foreign to the practical results which you will attain in a better way from a higher motive. I will cheerfully promise you, however, to be ‘bound by no words,’ blind to no miracle; in sober earnest, it is not because I renounced once for all oxen and the owning and having to do with them, that I will obstinately turn away from any unicorn when such an apparition blesses me  . . . but meantime I shall walk at peace on our hills here nor go looking in all corners for the bright curved horn! And as for you  . . . if I did not dare ‘to dream of that’  – – , now it is mine, my pride and joy prevent in no manner my taking the whole consolation of it at once, now  – – I will be confident that, if I obey you, I shall get no wrong for it  – – if, endeavouring to spare you fruitless pain, I do not eternally revert to the subject; do indeed ‘quit’ it just now, when no good can come of dwelling on it to you; you will never say to yourself  – – so I said  – – ‘the “generous impulse” has worn itself out  . . . time is doing his usual work  – – this was to be expected’ &c. &c. You will be the first to say to me ‘such an obstacle has ceased to exist  . . . or is now become one palpable to you, one you may try and overcome’  – – and I shall be there, and ready  – – ten years hence as now  – – if alive.

One final word on the other matters  – – the ‘worldly matters’  – – I shall own I alluded to them rather ostentatiously, because  – – because that would be the one poor sacrifice I could make you  – – one I would cheerfully make, but a sacrifice, and the only one: this careless ‘sweet habitude of living’  – – this absolute independence of mine, which, if I had it not, my heart would starve and die for, I feel, and which I have fought so many good battles to preserve  – – for that has happened, too  – – this light rational life I lead, and know so well that I lead; this I could give up for nothing less than  – – what you know  – – but I would give it up, not for you merely, but for those whose disappointment might re-act on you  – – and I should break no promise to myself  – – the money getting would not be for the sake of it; ‘the labour not for that which is nought’  – – indeed the necessity of doing this, if at all, now, was one of the reasons which make me go on to that last request of all  – – at once; one must not be too old, they say, to begin their ways. But, in spite of all the babble, I feel sure that whenever I make up my mind to that, I can be rich enough and to spare  – – because along with what you have thought genius in me, is certainly talent, what the world recognizes as such; and I have tried it in various ways, just to be sure that I was a little magnanimous in never intending to use it. Thus, in more than one of the reviews and newspapers that laughed my ‘Paracelsus’ to scorn ten years ago  – – in the same column, often, of these reviews, would follow a most laudatory notice of an Elementary French book, on a new plan, which I ‘did‘ for my old French master, and he published  – – ‘that was really an useful work’!  – – So that when the only obstacle is only that there is so much per annum to be producible, you will tell me. After all it would be unfair in me not to confess that this was always intended to be my own single stipulation  – – ‘an objection’ which I could see, certainly,  – – but meant to treat myself to the little luxury of removing.

So, now, dearest  – – let me once think of that, and of you as my own, my dearest  – – this once  – – dearest, I have done with words for the present. I will wait. God bless you and reward you  – – I kiss your hands now. This is my comfort, that if you accept my feeling as all but unexpressed now, more and more will become spoken  – – or understood, that is  – – we both live on  – – you will know better what it was, how much and manifold, what one little word had to give out.

God bless you  – –

Your R.B.

On Thursday,  – – you remember?

This is Tuesday Night  – –

I called on Saturday at the Office in St. Mary Axe  – – all uncertainty about the vessel’s sailing again for Leghorn  – – it could not sail before the middle of the month  – – and only then if &c. But if I would leave my card &c. &c.

 

September 16, 1845.

I scarcely know how to write what is to be written nor indeed why it is to be written and to what end. I have tried in vain — and you are waiting to hear from me. I am unhappy enough even where I am happy — but ungrateful nowhere — and I thank you from my heart — profoundly from the depths of my heart  . . . which is nearly all I can do.

One letter I began to write and asked in it how it could become me to speak at all if ‘from the beginning and at this moment you never dreamed of‘  . . . and there, I stopped and tore the paper; because I felt that you were too loyal and generous, for me to bear to take a moment’s advantage of the same, and bend down the very flowering branch of your generosity (as it might be) to thicken a little the fence of a woman’s caution and reserve. You will not say that you have not acted as if you ‘dreamed’ — and I will answer therefore to the general sense of your letter and former letters, and admit at once that I did state to you the difficulties most difficult to myself  . . . though not all  . . . and that if I had been worthier of you I should have been proportionably less in haste to ‘bid you leave that subject.’ I do not understand how you can seem at the same moment to have faith in my integrity and to have doubt whether all this time I may not have felt a preference for another  . . . which you are ready ‘to serve,’ you say. Which is generous in you — but in me, where were the integrity? Could you really hold me to be blameless, and do you think that truehearted women act usually so? Can it be necessary for me to tell you that I could not have acted so, and did not? And shall I shrink from telling you besides  . . . you, who have been generous to me and have a right to hear it  . . . and have spoken to me in the name of an affection and memory most precious and holy to me, in this same letter  . . . that neither now nor formerly has any man been to my feelings what you are  . . . and that if I were different in some respects and free in others by the providence of God, I would accept the great trust of your happiness, gladly, proudly, and gratefully; and give away my own life and soul to that end. I would do it  . . . not, I do  . . . observe! it is a truth without a consequence; only meaning that I am not all stone — only proving that I am not likely to consent to help you in wrong against yourself. You see in me what is not: — that, I know: and you overlook in me what is unsuitable to you  . . . that I know, and have sometimes told you. Still, because a strong feeling from some sources is self-vindicating and ennobling to the object of it, I will not say that, if it were proved to me that you felt this for me, I would persist in putting the sense of my own unworthiness between you and me — not being heroic, you know, nor pretending to be so. But something worse than even a sense of unworthiness, God has put between us! and judge yourself if to beat your thoughts against the immovable marble of it, can be anything but pain and vexation of spirit, waste and wear of spirit to you  . . . judge! The present is here to be seen  . . . speaking for itself! and the best future you can imagine for me, what a precarious thing it must be  . . . a thing for making burdens out of  . . . only not for your carrying, as I have vowed to my own soul. As dear Mr. Kenyon said to me to-day in his smiling kindness  . . . ‘In ten years you may be strong perhaps’ — or ‘almost strong’! that being the encouragement of my best friends! What would he say, do you think, if he could know or guess . . .! what could he say but that you were  . . . a poet! — and I  . . . still worse! Never let him know or guess!

And so if you are wise and would be happy (and you have excellent practical sense after all and should exercise it) you must leave me — these thoughts of me, I mean  . . . for if we might not be true friends for ever, I should have less courage to say the other truth. But we may be friends always  . . . and cannot be so separated, that your happiness, in the knowledge of it, will not increase mine. And if you will be persuaded by me, as you say, you will be persuaded thus  . . . and consent to take a resolution and force your mind at once into another channel. Perhaps I might bring you reasons of the class which you tell me ‘would silence you for ever.’ I might certainly tell you that my own father, if he knew that you had written to me so, and that I had answered you — so, even, would not forgive me at the end of ten years — and this, from none of the causes mentioned by me here and in no disrespect to your name and your position  . . . though he does not over-value poetry even in his daughter, and is apt to take the world’s measures of the means of life  . . . but for the singular reason that he never does tolerate in his family (sons or daughters) the development of one class of feelings. Such an objection I could not bring to you of my own will — it rang hollow in my ears — perhaps I thought even too little of it: — and I brought to you what I thought much of, and cannot cease to think much of equally. Worldly thoughts, these are not at all, nor have been: there need be no soiling of the heart with any such: — and I will say, in reply to some words of yours, that you cannot despise the gold and gauds of the world more than I do, and should do even if I found a use for them. And if I wished to be very poor, in the world’s sense of poverty, I could not, with three or four hundred a year of which no living will can dispossess me. And is it not the chief good of money, the being free from the need of thinking of it? It seems so to me.

The obstacles then are of another character, and the stronger for being so. Believe that I am grateful to you — how grateful, cannot be shown in words nor even in tears  . . . grateful enough to be truthful in all ways. You know I might have hidden myself from you — but I would not: and by the truth told of myself, you may believe in the earnestness with which I tell the other truths — of you  . . . and of this subject. The subject will not bear consideration — it breaks in our hands. But that God is stronger than we, cannot be a bitter thought to you but a holy thought  . . . while He lets me, as much as I can be anyone’s, be only yours.

E.B.B.

Saturday Morning.
September 13, 1845.

Now, dearest, I will try and write the little I shall be able, in reply to your letter of last week  – – and first of all I have to entreat you, now more than ever, to help me and understand from the few words the feelings behind them  – – (should speak rather more easily, I think  – – but I dare not run the risk: and I know, after all, you will be just and kind where you can.) I have read your letter again and again. I will tell you  – – no, not you, but any imaginary other person, who should hear what I am going to avow; I would tell that person most sincerely there is not a particle of fatuity, shall I call it, in that avowal; cannot be, seeing that from the beginning and at this moment I never dreamed of winning your love. I can hardly write this word, so incongruous and impossible does it seem; such a change of our places does it imply  – – nor, next to that, though long after, would I, if I could, supplant one of any of the affections that I know to have taken root in you  – – that great and solemn one, for instance. I feel that if I could get myself remade, as if turned to gold, I would not even then desire to become more than the mere setting to that diamond you must always wear. The regard and esteem you now give me, in this letter, and which I press to my heart and bow my head upon, is all I can take and all too embarrassing, using all my gratitude. And yet, with that contented pride in being infinitely your debtor as it is, bound to you for ever as it is; when I read your letter with all the determination to be just to us both; I dare not so far withstand the light I am master of, as to refuse seeing that whatever is recorded as an objection to your disposing of that life of mine I would give you, has reference to some supposed good in that life which your accepting it would destroy (of which fancy I shall speak presently)  – – I say, wonder as I may at this, I cannot but find it there, surely there. I could no more ‘bind you by words,’ than you have bound me, as you say  – – but if I misunderstand you, one assurance to that effect will be but too intelligible to me  – – but, as it is, I have difficulty in imagining that while one of so many reasons, which I am not obliged to repeat to myself, but which any one easily conceives; while any one of those reasons would impose silence on me for ever (for, as I observed, I love you as you now are, and would not remove one affection that is already part of you,)  – – would you, being able to speak so, only say that you desire not to put ‘more sadness than I was born to,’ into my life?  – – that you ‘could give me only what it were ungenerous to give’?

Have I your meaning here? In so many words, is it on my account that you bid me ‘leave this subject’? I think if it were so, I would for once call my advantages round me. I am not what your generous self-forgetting appreciation would sometimes make me out  – – but it is not since yesterday, nor ten nor twenty years before, that I began to look into my own life, and study its end, and requirements, what would turn to its good or its loss  – – and I know, if one may know anything, that to make that life yours and increase it by union with yours, would render me supremely happy, as I said, and say, and feel. My whole suit to you is, in that sense, selfish  – – not that I am ignorant that your nature would most surely attain happiness in being conscious that it made another happy  – – but that best, best end of all, would, like the rest, come from yourself, be a reflection of your own gift.

Dearest, I will end here  – – words, persuasion, arguments, if they were at my service I would not use them  – – I believe in you, altogether have faith in you  – – in you. I will not think of insulting by trying to reassure you on one point which certain phrases in your letter might at first glance seem to imply  – – you do not understand me to be living and labouring and writing (and not writing) in order to be successful in the world’s sense? I even convinced the people here what was my true ‘honourable position in society,’ &c. &c. therefore I shall not have to inform you that I desire to be very rich, very great; but not in reading Law gratis with dear foolish old Basil Montagu, as he ever and anon bothers me to do;  – – much less  – – enough of this nonsense.

‘Tell me what I have a claim to hear’: I can hear it, and be as grateful as I was before and am now  – – your friendship is my pride and happiness. If you told me your love was bestowed elsewhere, and that it was in my power to serve you there, to serve you there would still be my pride and happiness. I look on and on over the prospect of my love, it is all onwards  – – and all possible forms of unkindness  . . . I quite laugh to think how they are behind  . . . cannot be encountered in the route we are travelling! I submit to you and will obey you implicitly  – – obey what I am able to conceive of your least desire, much more of your expressed wish. But it was necessary to make this avowal, among other reasons, for one which the world would recognize too. My whole scheme of life (with its wants, material wants at least, closely cut down) was long ago calculated  – – and it supposed you, the finding such an one as you, utterly impossible  – – because in calculating one goes upon chances, not on providence  – – how could I expect you? So for my own future way in the world I have always refused to care  – – any one who can live a couple of years and more on bread and potatoes as I did once on a time, and who prefers a blouse and a blue shirt (such as I now write in) to all manner of dress and gentlemanly appointment, and who can, if necessary, groom a horse not so badly, or at all events would rather do it all day long than succeed Mr. Fitzroy Kelly in the Solicitor-Generalship,  – – such an one need not very much concern himself beyond considering the lilies how they grow. But now I see you near this life, all changes  – – and at a word, I will do all that ought to be done, that every one used to say could be done, and let ‘all my powers find sweet employ’ as Dr. Watts sings, in getting whatever is to be got  – – not very much, surely. I would print these things, get them away, and do this now, and go to you at Pisa with the news  – – at Pisa where one may live for some £100 a year  – – while, lo, I seem to remember, I do remember, that Charles Kean offered to give me 500 of those pounds for any play that might suit him  – – to say nothing of Mr. Colburn saying confidentially that he wanted more than his dinner ‘a novel on the subject of Napoleon‘! So may one make money, if one does not live in a house in a row, and feel impelled to take the Princess’s Theatre for a laudable development and exhibition of one’s faculty.

Take the sense of all this, I beseech you, dearest  – – all you shall say will be best  – – I am yours  – –

Yes, Yours ever. God bless you for all you have been, and are, and will certainly be to me, come what He shall please!

R.B.

Thursday.
September 11, 1845.

Will you come on Friday  . . . to-morrow  . . . instead of Saturday — will it be the same thing? Because I have heard from Mr. Kenyon, who is to be in London on Friday evening he says, and therefore may mean to visit me on Saturday I imagine. So let it be Friday — if you should not, for any reason, prove Monday to be better still.

May God bless you —

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

Thursday Morning.

September 11, 1845.

Here are your beautiful, and I am sure true sonnets; they look true  – – I remember the light hair, I find. And who paints, and dares exhibit, E.B.B.’s self? And surely ‘Alfred’s’ pencil has not foregone its best privilege, not left the face unsketched? Italians call such an ‘effect defective’  – – ‘l’andar a Roma senza vedere il Papa.’ He must have begun by seeing his Holiness, I know, and  . . . he will not trust me with the result, that my sister may copy it for me, because we are strangers, he and I, and I could give him nothing, nothing like the proper price for it  – – but you would lend it to me, I think, nor need I do more than thank you in my usual effective and very eloquent way  – – for I have already been allowed to visit you seventeen times, do you know; and this last letter of yours, fiftieth is the same! So all my pride is gone, pride in that sense  – – and I mean to take of you for ever, and reconcile myself with my lot in this life. Could, and would, you give me such a sketch? It has been on my mind to ask you ever since I knew you if nothing in the way of good portrait existed  – – and this occasion bids me speak out, I dare believe: the more, that you have also quieted  – – have you not?  – – another old obstinate and very likely impertinent questioning of mine  – – as to the little name which was neither Orinda, nor Sacharissa (for which thank providence) and is never to appear in books, though you write them. Now I know it and write it  – – ‘Ba’  – – and thank you, and your brother George, and only burned his kind letter because you bade me who know best. So, wish by wish, one gets one’s wishes  – – at least I do  – – for one instance, you will go to Italy

Why, ‘lean and harken after it’ as Donne says  – –

Don’t expect Neapolitan Scenery at Pisa, quite in the North, remember. Mrs. Shelley found Italy for the first time, real Italy, at Sorrento, she says. Oh that book  – – does one wake or sleep? The ‘Mary dear’ with the brown eyes, and Godwin’s daughter and Shelley’s wife, and who surely was something better once upon a time  – – and to go through Rome and Florence and the rest, after what I suppose to be Lady Londonderry’s fashion: the intrepidity of the commonplace quite astounds me. And then that way, when she and the like of her are put in a new place, with new flowers, new stones, faces, walls, all new  – – of looking wisely up at the sun, clouds, evening star, or mountain top and wisely saying ‘who shall describe that sight!’  – – Not you, we very well see  – – but why don’t you tell us that at Rome they eat roasted chestnuts, and put the shells into their aprons, the women do, and calmly empty the whole on the heads of the passengers in the street below; and that at Padua when a man drives his waggon up to a house and stops, all the mouse-coloured oxen that pull it from a beam against their foreheads sit down in a heap and rest. But once she travelled the country with Shelley on arm; now she plods it, Rogers in hand  – – to such things and uses may we come at last! Her remarks on art, once she lets go of Rio’s skirts, are amazing  – – Fra Angelico, for instance, only painted Martyrs, Virgins &c., she had no eyes for the divine bon-bourgeoisie of his pictures; the dear common folk of his crowds, those who sit and listen (spectacle at nose and bent into a comfortable heap to hear better) at the sermon of the Saint  – – and the children, and women,  – – divinely pure they all are, but fresh from the streets and market place  – – but she is wrong every where, that is, not right, not seeing what is to see, speaking what one expects to hear  – – I quarrel with her, for ever, I think.

I am much better, and mean to be well as you desire  – – shall correct the verses you have seen, and make them do for the present.

Saturday, then! And one other time only, do you say?

God bless you, my own, best friend.

Yours ever

R.B.

 

Tuesday.

September 9, 1845.

One reason against printing the tragedies now, is your not being well enough for the necessary work connected with them,  . . . a sure reason and strong  . . . nay, chiefest of all. Plainly you are unfit for work now — and even to complete the preparation of the lyrics, and take them through the press, may be too much for you, I am afraid; and if so, why you will not do it — will you? — you will wait for another year, — or at least be satisfied for this, with bringing out a number of the old size, consisting of such poems as are fairly finished and require no retouching. ‘Saul’ for instance, you might leave — ! You will not let me hear when I am gone, of your being ill — you will take care  . . . will you not? Because you see  . . . or rather I see  . . . you are not looking well at all — no, you are not! and even if you do not care for that, you should and must care to consider how unavailing it will be for you to hold those golden keys of the future with a more resolute hand than your contemporaries, should you suffer yourself to be struck down before the gate  . . . should you lose the physical power while keeping the heart and will. Heart and will are great things, and sufficient things in your case — but after all we carry a barrow-full of clay about with us, and we must carry it a little carefully if we mean to keep to the path and not run zigzag into the border of the garden. A figure which reminds me  . . . and I wanted no figure to remind me  . . . to ask you to thank your sister for me and from me for all her kindness about the flowers. Now you will not forget? you must not. When I think of the repeated trouble she has taken week after week, and all for a stranger, I must think again that it has been very kind — and I take the liberty of saying so moreover  . . . as I am not thanking you. Also these flowers of yesterday, which yesterday you disdained so, look full of summer and are full of fragrance, and when they seem to say that it is not September, I am willing to be lied to just so. For I wish it were not September. I wish it were July  . . . or November  . . . two months before or after: and that this journey were thrown behind or in front  . . . anywhere to be out of sight. You do not know the courage it requires to hold the intention of it fast through what I feel sometimes. If it (the courage) had been prophesied to me only a year ago, the prophet would have been laughed to scorn. Well! — but I want you to see. George’s letter, and how he and Mrs. Hedley, when she saw Papa’s note of consent to me, give unhesitating counsel. Burn it when you have read it. It is addressed to me  . . . which you will doubt from the address of it perhaps  . . . seeing that it goes βα  . . . ρβαριζων. We are famous in this house for what are called nick-names  . . . though a few of us have escaped rather by a caprice than a reason: and I am never called anything else (never at all) except by the nom de paix which you find written in the letter: — proving as Mr. Kenyon says, that I am just ‘half a Ba-by’  . . . no more nor less; — and in fact the name has that precise definition. Burn the note when you have read it.

And then I take it into my head, as you do not distinguish my sisters, you say, one from the other, to send you my own account of them in these enclosed ‘sonnets’ which were written a few weeks ago, and though only pretending to be ‘sketches,’ pretend to be like, as far as they go, and are like — my brothers thought — when I ‘showed them against’ a profile drawn in pencil by Alfred, on the same subjects. I was laughing and maintaining that mine should be as like as his — and he yielded the point to me. So it is mere portrait-painting — and you who are in ‘high art,’ must not be too scornful. Henrietta is the elder, and the one who brought you into this room first — and Arabel, who means to go with me to Pisa, has been the most with me through my illness and is the least wanted in the house here,  . . . and perhaps  . . . perhaps — is my favourite — though my heart smites me while I write that unlawful word. They are both affectionate and kind to me in all things, and good and lovable in their own beings — very unlike, for the rest; one, most caring for the Polka,  . . . and the other for the sermon preached at Paddington Chapel,  . . . that is Arabel  . . . so if ever you happen to know her you must try not to say before her how ‘much you hate &c.’ Henrietta always ‘managed’ everything in the house even before I was ill,  . . . because she liked it and I didn’t, and I waived my right to the sceptre of dinner-ordering.

I have been thinking much of your ‘Sordello’ since you spoke of it — and even, I had thought much of it before you spoke of it yesterday; feeling that it might be thrown out into the light by your hand, and greatly justify the additional effort. It is like a noble picture with its face to the wall just now — or at least, in the shadow. And so worthy as it is of you in all ways! individual all through: you have made even the darkness of it! And such a work as it might become if you chose  . . . if you put your will to it! What I meant to say yesterday was not that it wanted more additional verses than the ‘ten per cent’ you spoke of  . . . though it does perhaps  . . . so much as that (to my mind) it wants drawing together and fortifying in the connections and associations  . . . which hang as loosely every here and there, as those in a dream, and confound the reader who persists in thinking himself awake.

How do you mean that I am ‘lenient’? Do you not believe that I tell you what I think, and as I think it? I may think wrong, to be sure — but that is not my fault: — and so there is no use reproaching me generally, unless you can convict me definitely at the same time: — is there, now?

And I have been reading and admiring these letters of Mr. Carlyle, and receiving the greatest pleasure from them in every way. He is greatly himself always — which is the hardest thing for a man to be, perhaps. And what his appreciation of you is, it is easy to see — and what he expects from you — notwithstanding that prodigious advice of his, to write your next work in prose! Also Mrs. Carlyle’s letter — thank you for letting me see it. I admire that too! It is as ingenious ‘a case’ against poor Keats, as could well be drawn — but nobody who knew very deeply what poetry is, could, you know, draw any case against him. A poet of the senses, he may be and is, just as she says — but then it is of the senses idealized; and no dream in a ‘store-room’ would ever be like the ‘Eve of St. Agnes,’ unless dreamed by some ‘animosus infans,’ like Keats himself. Still it is all true  . . . isn’t it? . . . what she observes of the want of thought as thought. He was a seer strictly speaking. And what noble oppositions — (to go back to Carlyle’s letters)  . . . he writes to the things you were speaking of yesterday! These letters are as good as Milton’s picture for convicting and putting to shame. Is not the difference between the men of our day and ‘the giants which were on the earth,’ less  . . . far less  . . . in the faculty  . . . in the gift,  . . . or in the general intellect,  . . . than in the stature of the soul itself? Our inferiority is not in what we can do, but in what we are. We should write poems like Milton if [we] lived them like Milton.

I write all this just to show, I suppose, that I am not industrious as you did me the honour of apprehending that I was going to be  . . . packing trunks perhaps  . . . or what else in the way of ‘active usefulness.’

Say how you are — will you? And do take care, and walk and do what is good for you. I shall be able to see you twice before I go. And oh, this going! Pray for me, dearest friend. May God bless you.

E.B.B.

 

Saturday.

September 8, 1845.

I am in the greatest difficulty about the steamers. Will you think a little for me and tell me what is best to do? It appears that the direct Leghorn steamer will not sail on the third, and may not until the middle of October, and if forced to still further delay, which is possible, will not at all. One of my brothers has been to Mr. Andrews of St. Mary Axe and heard as much as this. What shall I do? The middle of October, say my sisters  . . . and I half fear that it may prove so  . . . is too late for me — to say nothing for the uncertainty which completes the difficulty.

On the 20th of September (on the other hand) sails the Malta vessel; and I hear that I may go in it to Gibraltar and find a French steamer there to proceed by. Is there an objection to this — except the change of steamers  . . . repeated  . . . for I must get down to Southampton — and the leaving England so soon? Is any better to be done? Do think for me a little. And now that the doing comes so near  . . . and in this dead silence of Papa’s  . . . it all seems impossible,  . . . and I seem to see the stars constellating against me, and give it as my serious opinion to you that I shall not go. Now, mark.

But I have had the kindest of letters from dear Mr. Kenyon, urging it — .

Well — I have no time for writing any more — and this is only a note of business to bespeak your thoughts about the steamers. My wisdom looks back regretfully  . . . only rather too late  . . . on the Leghorn vessel of the third of September. It would have been wise if I had gone then.

May God bless you, dearest friend.

E.B.B.

But if your head turns still,  . . . do you walk enough? Is there not fault in your not walking, by your own confession? Think of this first — and then, if you please, of the steamers.

So, till Monday! —