Day: January 19, 2018

Monday Morning.

January 19, 1846.

Love, if you knew but how vexed I was, so very few minutes after my note left last night; how angry with the unnecessary harshness into which some of the phrases might be construed  – – you would forgive me, indeed. But, when all is confessed and forgiven, the fact remains  – – that it would be the one trial I know I should not be able to bear; the repetition of these ‘scenes’  – – intolerable  – – not to be written of, even my mind refuses to form a clear conception of them.

My own loved letter is come  – – and the news; of which the reassuring postscript lets the interrupted joy flow on again. Well, and I am not to be grateful for that; nor that you do ‘eat your dinner’? Indeed you will be ingenious to prevent me! I fancy myself meeting you on ‘the stairs’  – – stairs and passages generally, and galleries (ah, thou indeed!) all, with their picturesque accidents, of landing-places, and spiral heights and depths, and sudden turns and visions of half open doors into what Quarles calls ‘mollitious chambers’  – – and above all, landing-places  – – they are my heart’s delight  – – I would come upon you unaware in a landing-place in my next dream! One day we may walk on the galleries round and over the inner court of the Doges’ Palace at Venice; and read, on tablets against the wall, how such an one was banished for an ‘enormous dig (intacco) into the public treasure’  – – another for  . . . what you are not to know because his friends have got chisels and chipped away the record of it  – – underneath the ‘giants’ on their stands, and in the midst of the cortile the bronze fountains whence the girls draw water.

So you too wrote French verses?  – – Mine were of less lofty argument  – – one couplet makes me laugh now for the reason of its false quantity  – – I translated the Ode of Alcæus; and the last couplet ran thus . . ..

The fact was, I could not bear to hurt my French Master’s feelings  – – who inveterately maltreated ‘ai’s and oi’s’ and in this instance, an ‘ei.’ But ‘Pauline’ is altogether of a different sort of precocity  – – you shall see it when I can master resolution to transcribe the explanation which I know is on the fly-leaf of a copy here. Of that work, the Athenæum said [several words erased] now, what outrageous folly! I care, and you care, precisely nothing about its sayings and doings  – – yet here I talk!

Now to you  – – Ba! When I go through sweetness to sweetness, at ‘Ba’ I stop last of all, and lie and rest. That is the quintessence of them all,  – – they all take colour and flavour from that. So, dear, dear Ba, be glad as you can to see me to-morrow. God knows how I embalm every such day,  – – I do not believe that one of the forty is confounded with another in my memory. So, that is gained and sure for ever. And of letters, this makes my 104th and, like Donne’s Bride,

Bless you, my own Beloved!

I am much better to-day  – – having been not so well yesterday  – – whence the note to you, perhaps! I put that to your charity for construction. By the way, let the foolish and needless story about my whilome friend be of this use, that it records one of the traits in that same generous love, of me, I once mentioned, I remember  – – one of the points in his character which, I told you, would account, if you heard them, for my parting company with a good deal of warmth of attachment to myself.

What a day! But you do not so much care for rain, I think. My Mother is no worse, but still suffering sadly.

Ever your own, dearest ever  – –

 

Sunday.

January 19, 1846.

Your letter came just after the hope of one had past — the latest Saturday post had gone, they said, and I was beginning to be as vexed as possible, looking into the long letterless Sunday. Then, suddenly came the knock — the postman redivivus — just when it seemed so beyond hoping for — it was half past eight, observe, and there had been a post at nearly eight — suddenly came the knock, and your letter with it. Was I not glad, do you think?

And you call the Athenæum ‘kind and satisfactory’? Well — I was angry instead. To make us wait so long for an ‘article’ like that, was not over-kind certainly, nor was it ‘satisfactory’ to class your peculiar qualities with other contemporary ones, as if they were not peculiar. It seemed to me cold and cautious, from the causes perhaps which you mention, but the extracts will work their own way with everybody who knows what poetry is, and for others, let the critic do his worst with them. For what is said of ‘mist’ I have no patience because I who know when you are obscure and never think of denying it in some of your former works, do hold that this last number is as clear and self-sufficing to a common understanding, as far as the expression and medium goes, as any book in the world, and that Mr. Chorley was bound in verity to say so. If I except that one stanza, you know, it is to make the general observation stronger. And then ‘mist’ is an infamous word for your kind of obscurity. You never are misty, not even in ‘Sordello’ — never vague. Your graver cuts deep sharp lines, always — and there is an extra-distinctness in your images and thoughts, from the midst of which, crossing each other infinitely, the general significance seems to escape. So that to talk of a ‘mist,’ when you are obscurest, is an impotent thing to do. Indeed it makes me angry.

But the suggested virtue of ‘self-renunciation’ only made me smile, because it is simply nonsense  . . . nonsense which proves itself to be nonsense at a glance. So genius is to renounce itself — that is the new critical doctrine, is it? Now is it not foolish? To recognize the poetical faculty of a man, and then to instruct him in ‘self-renunciation’ in that very relation — or rather, to hint the virtue of it, and hesitate the dislike of his doing otherwise? What atheists these critics are after all — and how the old heathens understood the divinity of gifts better, beyond any comparison. We may take shame to ourselves, looking back.

Now, shall I tell you what I did yesterday? It was so warm, so warm, the thermometer at 68 in this room, that I took it into my head to call it April instead of January, and put on a cloak and walked down-stairs into the drawing-room — walked, mind! Before, I was carried by one of my brothers, — even to the last autumn-day when I went out — I never walked a step for fear of the cold in the passages. But yesterday it was so wonderfully warm, and I so strong besides — it was a feat worthy of the day — and I surprised them all as much as if I had walked out of the window instead. That kind dear Stormie, who with all his shyness and awkwardness has the most loving of hearts in him, said that he was ‘so glad to see me’!

Well! — setting aside the glory of it, it would have been as wise perhaps if I had abstained; our damp detestable climate reaches us otherwise than by cold, and I am not quite as well as usual this morning after an uncomfortable feverish night — not very unwell, mind, nor unwell at all in the least degree of consequence — and I tell you, only to show how susceptible I really am still, though ‘scarcely an invalid,’ say the complimenters.

What a way I am from your letter — that letter — or seem to be rather — for one may think of one thing and yet go on writing distrustedly of other things. So you are ‘grateful’ to my sisters  . . . you! Now I beseech you not to talk such extravagances; I mean such extravagances as words like these imply — and there are far worse words than these, in the letter  . . . such as I need not put my finger on; words which are sense on my lips, but no sense at all on yours, and which make me disquietedly sure that you are under an illusion. Observe! — certainly I should not choose to have a ‘claim,’ see! Only, what I object to, in ‘illusions,’ ‘miracles,’ and things of that sort, is the want of continuity common to such. When Joshua caused the sun to stand still, it was not for a year even! — Ungrateful, I am!

And ‘pretty well’ means ‘not well’ I am afraid — or I should be gladder still of the new act. You will tell me on Tuesday what ‘pretty well’ means, and if your mother is better — or I may have a letter to-morrow — dearest! May God bless you!

To-morrow too, at half past three o’clock, how joyful I shall be that my ‘kind considerateness’ decided not to receive you until Tuesday. My very kind considerateness, which made me eat my dinner to-day!

Your own

Ba.

A hundred letters I have, by this last,  . . . to set against Napoleon’s Hundred Days — did you know that?

So much better I am to-night: it was nothing but a little chill from the damp — the fog, you see!

 

Sunday Evening.

January 19, 1846.

You may have seen, I put off all the weighty business part of the letter  – – but I shall do very little with it now. To be sure, a few words will serve, because you understand me, and believe in enough of me. First, then, I am wholly satisfied, thoroughly made happy in your assurance. I would build up an infinity of lives, if I could plan them, one on the other, and all resting on you, on your word  – – I fully believe in it,  – – of my feeling, the gratitude, let there be no attempt to speak. And for ‘waiting’; ‘not hurrying’,  – – I leave all with you henceforth  – – all you say is most wise, most convincing.

On the saddest part of all,  – – silence. You understand, and I can understand through you. Do you know, that I never used to dream unless indisposed, and rarely then  – – (of late I dream of you, but quite of late)  – – and those nightmare dreams have invariably been of one sort. I stand by (powerless to interpose by a word even) and see the infliction of tyranny on the unresisting man or beast (generally the last)  – – and I wake just in time not to die: let no one try this kind of experiment on me or mine! Though I have observed that by a felicitous arrangement, the man with the whip puts it into use with an old horse commonly. I once knew a fine specimen of the boilingly passionate, desperately respectable on the Eastern principle that reverences a madman  – – and this fellow, whom it was to be death to oppose, (some bloodvessel was to break)  – – he, once at a dinner party at which I was present, insulted his wife (a young pretty simple believer in his awful immunities from the ordinary terms that keep men in order)  – – brought the tears into her eyes and sent her from the room  . . . purely to ‘show off’ in the eyes of his guests  . . . (all males, law-friends &c., he being a lawyer.) This feat accomplished, he, too, left us with an affectation of compensating relentment, to ‘just say a word and return’  – – and no sooner was his back to the door than the biggest, stupidest of the company began to remark ‘what a fortunate thing it was that Mr. So-and-so had such a submissive wife  – – not one of the women who would resist  – – that is, attempt to resist  – – and so exasperate our gentleman into  . . . Heaven only knew what!’ I said it was, in one sense, a fortunate thing; because one of these women, without necessarily being the lion-tressed Bellona, would richly give him his desert, I thought  – – ‘Oh, indeed?’ No  – – this man was not to be opposed  – – wait, you might, till the fit was over, and then try what kind argument would do  – – and so forth to unspeakable nausea. Presently we went up-stairs  – – there sate the wife with dried eyes, and a smile at the tea-table  – – and by her, in all the pride of conquest, with her hand in his, our friend  – – disposed to be very good-natured of course. I listened arrectis auribus, and in a minute he said he did not know somebody I mentioned. I told him, that I easily conceived  – – such a person would never condescend to know him, &c., and treated him to every consequence ingenuity could draw from that text  – – and at the end marched out of the room; and the valorous man, who had sate like a post, got up, took a candle, followed me to the door, and only said in unfeigned wonder, ‘What can have possessed you, my dear B?’  – – All which I as much expected beforehand, as that the above mentioned man of the whip keeps quiet in the presence of an ordinary-couraged dog. All this is quite irrelevant to the case  – – indeed, I write to get rid of the thought altogether. But I do hold it the most stringent duty of all who can, to stop a condition, a relation of one human being to another which God never allowed to exist between Him and ourselves. Trees live and die, if you please, and accept will for a law  – – but with us, all commands surely refer to a previously-implanted conviction in ourselves of their rationality and justice. Or why declare that ‘the Lord is holy, just and good’ unless there is recognised and independent conception of holiness and goodness, to which the subsequent assertion is referable? ‘You know what holiness is, what it is to be good? Then, He is that’  – – not, ‘that is so  – – because he is that’; though, of course, when once the converse is demonstrated, this, too, follows, and may be urged for practical purposes. All God’s urgency, so to speak, is on the justice of his judgments, rightness of his rule: yet why? one might ask  – – if one does believe that the rule is his; why ask further?  – – Because, his is a ‘reasonable service,’ once for all.

Understand why I turn my thoughts in this direction. If it is indeed as you fear, and no endeavour, concession, on my part will avail, under any circumstances  – – (and by endeavour, I mean all heart and soul could bring the flesh to perform)  – – in that case, you will not come to me with a shadow past hope of chasing.

The likelihood is, I over frighten myself for you, by the involuntary contrast with those here  – – you allude to them  – – if I went with this letter downstairs and said simply ‘I want this taken to the direction to-night, and am unwell and unable to go, will you take it now?’ my father would not say a word, or rather would say a dozen cheerful absurdities about his ‘wanting a walk,’ ‘just having been wishing to go out’ &c. At night he sits studying my works  – – illustrating them (I will bring you drawings to make you laugh)  – – and yesterday I picked up a crumpled bit of paper  . . . ‘his notion of what a criticism on this last number ought to be,  – – none, that have appeared, satisfying him!’  – – So judge of what he will say! And my mother loves me just as much more as must of necessity be.

Once more, understand all this  . . . for the clock scares me of a sudden  – – I meant to say more  – – far more.

But may God bless you ever  – – my own dearest, my Ba  – –

I am wholly your R.

(Tuesday)