Thursday Morning.
January 17, 1846.
Our letters have crossed; and, mine being the longest, I have a right to expect another directly, I think. I have been calculating: and it seems to me — now what I am going to say may take its place among the paradoxes, — that I gain most by the short letters. Last week the only long one came last, and I was quite contented that the ‘old friend’ should come to see you on Saturday and make you send me two instead of the single one I looked for: it was a clear gain, the little short note, and the letter arrived all the same. I remember, when I was a child, liking to have two shillings and sixpence better than half a crown — and now it is the same with this fairy money, which will never turn all into pebbles, or beans, whatever the chronicles may say of precedents.
Arabel did tell Mr. Kenyon (she told me) that ‘Mr. Browning would soon go away’ — in reply to an observation of his, that ‘he would not stay as I had company’; and altogether it was better, — the lamp made it look late. But you do not appear in the least remorseful for being tempted of my black devil, my familiar, to ask such questions and leave me under such an impression — ‘mens conscia recti’ too!! —
And Mr. Kenyon will not come until next Monday perhaps. How am I? But I am too well to be asked about. Is it not a warm summer? The weather is as ‘miraculous’ as the rest, I think. It is you who are unwell and make people uneasy, dearest. Say how you are, and promise me to do what is right and try to be better. The walking, the changing of the air, the leaving off Luria . . . do what is right, I earnestly beseech you. The other day, I heard of Tennyson being ill again, . . . too ill to write a simple note to his friend Mr. Venables, who told George. A little more than a year ago, it would have been no worse a thing to me to hear of your being ill than to hear of his being ill! — How the world has changed since then! To me, I mean.
Did I say that ever . . . that ‘I knew you must be tired?’ And it was not even so true as that the coming event threw its shadow before?
Thursday night. — I have begun on another sheet — I could not write here what was in my heart — yet I send you this paper besides to show how I was writing to you this morning. In the midst of it came a female friend of mine and broke the thread — the visible thread, that is.
And now, even now, at this safe eight o’clock, I could not be safe from somebody, who, in her goodnature and my illfortune, must come and sit by me — and when my letter was come — ‘why wouldn’t I read it? What wonderful politeness on my part.’ She would not and could not consent to keep me from reading my letter. She would stand up by the fire rather.
No, no, three times no. Brummel got into the carriage before the Regent, . . . (didn’t he?) but I persisted in not reading my letter in the presence of my friend. A notice on my punctiliousness may be put down to-night in her ‘private diary.’ I kept the letter in my hand and only read it with those sapient ends of the fingers which the mesmerists make so much ado about, and which really did seem to touch a little of what was inside. Not all, however, happily for me! Or my friend would have seen in my eyes what they did not see.
May God bless you! Did I ever say that I had an objection to read the verses at six years old — or see the drawings either? I am reasonable, you observe! Only, ‘Pauline,’ I must have some day — why not without the emendations? But if you insist on them, I will agree to wait a little — if you promise at last to let me see the book, which I will not show. Some day, then! you shall not be vexed nor hurried for the day — some day. Am I not generous? And I was ‘precocious’ too, and used to make rhymes over my bread and milk when I was nearly a baby . . . only really it was mere echo-verse, that of mine, and had nothing of mark or of indication, such as I do not doubt that yours had. I used to write of virtue with a large ‘V,’ and ‘Oh Muse’ with a harp, and things of that sort. At nine years old I wrote what I called ‘an epic’ — and at ten, various tragedies, French and English, which we used to act in the nursery. There was a French ‘hexameter’ tragedy on the subject of Regulus — but I cannot even smile to think of it now, there are so many grave memories — which time has made grave — hung around it. How I remember sitting in ‘my house under the sideboard,’ in the dining-room, concocting one of the soliloquies beginning
Que suis je? autrefois un général Remain:
Maintenant esclave de Carthage je souffre en vain.
Poor Regulus! — Can’t you conceive how fine it must have been altogether? And these were my ‘maturer works,’ you are to understand, . . . and ‘the moon was bright at ten o’clock at night’ years before. As to the gods and goddesses, I believed in them all quite seriously, and reconciled them to Christianity, which I believed in too after a fashion, as some greater philosophers have done — and went out one day with my pinafore full of little sticks (and a match from the housemaid’s cupboard) to sacrifice to the blue-eyed Minerva who was my favourite goddess on the whole because she cared for Athens. As soon as I began to doubt about my goddesses, I fell into a vague sort of general scepticism, . . . and though I went on saying ‘the Lord’s prayer’ at nights and mornings, and the ‘Bless all my kind friends’ afterwards, by the childish custom . . . yet I ended this liturgy with a supplication which I found in ‘King’s Memoirs’ and which took my fancy and met my general views exactly . . .. ‘O God, if there be a God, save my soul if I have a soul.’ Perhaps the theology of many thoughtful children is scarcely more orthodox than this: but indeed it is wonderful to myself sometimes how I came to escape, on the whole, as well as I have done, considering the commonplaces of education in which I was set, with strength and opportunity for breaking the bonds all round into liberty and license. Papa used to say . . . ‘Don’t read Gibbon’s history — it’s not a proper book. Don’t read “Tom Jones” — and none of the books on this side, mind!’ So I was very obedient and never touched the books on that side, and only read instead Tom Paine’s ‘Age of Reason,’ and Voltaire’s ‘Philosophical Dictionary,’ and Hume’s ‘Essays,’ and Werther, and Rousseau, and Mary Wollstonecraft . . . books, which I was never suspected of looking towards, and which were not ‘on that side’ certainly, but which did as well.
How I am writing! — And what are the questions you did not answer? I shall remember them by the answers I suppose — but your letters always have a fulness to me and I never seem to wish for what is not in them.
But this is the end indeed.