Month: January 2018

Sunday.

January 12, 1846.

I have no words for you, my dearest,  – – I shall never have.

You are mine, I am yours. Now, here is one sign of what I said  . . . that I must love you more than at first  . . . a little sign, and to be looked narrowly for or it escapes me, but then the increase it shows can only be little, so very little now  – – and as the fine French Chemical Analysts bring themselves to appreciate matter in its refined stages by millionths, so  – – ! At first I only thought of being happy in you,  – – in your happiness: now I most think of you in the dark hours that must come  – – I shall grow old with you, and die with you  – – as far as I can look into the night I see the light with me. And surely with that provision of comfort one should turn with fresh joy and renewed sense of security to the sunny middle of the day. I am in the full sunshine now; and after, all seems cared for,  – – is it too homely an illustration if I say the day’s visit is not crossed by uncertainties as to the return through the wild country at nightfall?  – – Now Keats speaks of ‘Beauty, that must die  – – and Joy whose hand is ever at his lips, bidding farewell!’ And who spoke of  – – looking up into the eyes and asking ‘And how long will you love us’?  – – There is a Beauty that will not die, a Joy that bids no farewell, dear dearest eyes that will love for ever!

And I  – – am to love no longer than I can. Well, dear  – – and when I can no longer  – – you will not blame me? You will do only as ever, kindly and justly; hardly more. I do not pretend to say I have chosen to put my fancy to such an experiment, and consider how that is to happen, and what measures ought to be taken in the emergency  – – because in the ‘universality of my sympathies’ I certainly number a very lively one with my own heart and soul, and cannot amuse myself by such a spectacle as their supposed extinction or paralysis. There is no doubt I should be an object for the deepest commiseration of you or any more fortunate human being. And I hope that because such a calamity does not obtrude itself on me as a thing to be prayed against, it is no less duly implied with all the other visitations from which no humanity can be altogether exempt  – – just as God bids us ask for the continuance of the ‘daily bread’!  – – ‘battle, murder and sudden death’ lie behind doubtless. I repeat, and perhaps in so doing only give one more example of the instantaneous conversion of that indignation we bestow in another’s case, into wonderful lenity when it becomes our own,  . . . that I only contemplate the possibility you make me recognize, with pity, and fear  . . . no anger at all; and imprecations of vengeance, for what? Observe, I only speak of cases possible; of sudden impotency of mind; that is possible  – – there are other ways of ‘changing,’ ‘ceasing to love’ &c. which it is safest not to think of nor believe in. A man may never leave his writing desk without seeing safe in one corner of it the folded slip which directs the disposal of his papers in the event of his reason suddenly leaving him  – – or he may never go out into the street without a card in his pocket to signify his address to those who may have to pick him up in an apoplectic fit  – – but if he once begins to fear he is growing a glass bottle, and, so, liable to be smashed,  – – do you see? And now, love, dear heart of my heart, my own, only Ba  – – see no more  – – see what I am, what God in his constant mercy ordinarily grants to those who have, as I, received already so much; much, past expression! It is but  – – if you will so please  – – at worst, forestalling the one or two years, for my sake; but you will be as sure of me one day as I can be now of myself  – – and why not now be sure? See, love  – – a year is gone by  – – we were in one relation when you wrote at the end of a letter ‘Do not say I do not tire you’ (by writing)  – – ‘I am sure I do.’ A year has gone by  – – Did you tire me then? Now, you tell me what is told; for my sake, sweet, let the few years go by; we are married, and my arms are round you, and my face touches yours, and I am asking you, ‘Were you not to me, in that dim beginning of 1846, a joy behind all joys, a life added to and transforming mine, the good I choose from all the possible gifts of God on this earth, for which I seemed to have lived; which accepting, I thankfully step aside and let the rest get what they can; what, it is very likely, they esteem more  – – for why should my eye be evil because God’s is good; why should I grudge that, giving them, I do believe, infinitely less, he gives them a content in the inferior good and belief in its worth? I should have wished that further concession, that illusion as I believe it, for their sakes  – – but I cannot undervalue my own treasure and so scant the only tribute of mere gratitude which is in my power to pay. Hear this said now before the few years; and believe in it now for then, dearest!

Must you see ‘Pauline’? At least then let me wait a few days; to correct the misprints which affect the sense, and to write you the history of it; what is necessary you should know before you see it. That article I suppose to be by Heraud  – – about two thirds  – – and the rest, or a little less, by that Mr. Powell  – – whose unimaginable, impudent vulgar stupidity you get some inkling of in the ‘Story from Boccaccio’  – – of which the words quoted were his, I am sure  – – as sure as that he knows not whether Boccaccio lived before or after Shakspeare, whether Florence or Rome be the more northern city,  – – one word of Italian in general, or letter of Boccaccio’s in particular. When I took pity on him once on a time and helped his verses into a sort of grammar and sense, I did not think he was a buyer of other men’s verses, to be printed as his own; thus he bought two modernisations of Chaucer  – – ‘Ugolino’ and another story from Leigh Hunt  – – and one, ‘Sir Thopas’ from Horne, and printed them as his own, as I learned only last week. He paid me extravagant court and, seeing no harm in the mere folly of the man, I was on good terms with him, till ten months ago he grossly insulted a friend of mine who had written an article for the Review  – – (which is as good as his, he being a large proprietor of the delectable property, and influencing the voices of his co-mates in council)  – – well, he insulted my friend, who had written that article at my special solicitation, and did all he could to avoid paying the price of it  – – Why?  – – Because the poor creature had actually taken the article to the Editor as one by his friend Serjeant Talfourd contributed for pure love of him, Powell the aforesaid,  – – cutting, in consequence, no inglorious figure in the eyes of Printer and Publisher! Now I was away all this time in Italy or he would never have ventured on such a piece of childish impertinence. And my friend being a true gentleman, and quite unused to this sort of ‘practice,’ in the American sense, held his peace and went without his ‘honorarium.’ But on my return, I enquired, and made him make a proper application, which Mr. Powell treated with all the insolence in the world  – – because, as the event showed, the having to write a cheque for ‘the Author of the Article’  – – that author’s name not being Talfourd’s  . . . there was certain disgrace! Since then (ten months ago) I have never seen him  – – and he accuses himself, observe, of ‘sucking my plots while I drink his tea’  – – one as much as the other! And now why do I tell you this, all of it? Ah,  – – now you shall hear! Because, it has often been in my mind to ask you what you know of this Mr. Powell, or ever knew. For he, (being profoundly versed in every sort of untruth, as every fresh experience shows me, and the rest of his acquaintance) he told me long ago, ‘he used to correspond with you, and that he quarrelled with you’  – – which I supposed to mean that he began by sending you his books (as with one and everybody) and that, in return to your note of acknowledgment, he had chosen to write again, and perhaps, again  – – is it so? Do not write one word in answer to me  – – the name of such a miserable nullity, and husk of a man, ought not to have a place in your letters  – – and that way he would get near to me again; near indeed this time!  – – So tell me, in a word  – – or do not tell me.

How I never say what I sit down to say! How saying the little makes me want to say the more! How the least of little things, once taken up as a thing to be imparted to you, seems to need explanations and commentaries; all is of importance to me  – – every breath you breathe, every little fact (like this) you are to know!

I was out last night  – – to see the rest of Frank Talfourd’s theatricals; and met Dickens and his set  – – so my evenings go away! If I do not bring the Act you must forgive me  – – yet I shall, I think; the roughness matters little in this stage. Chorley says very truly that a tragedy implies as much power kept back as brought out  – – very true that is. I do not, on the whole, feel dissatisfied  – – as was to be but expected  – – with the effect of this last  – – the shelve of the hill, whence the end is seen, you continuing to go down to it, so that at the very last you may pass off into a plain and so away  – – not come to a stop like your horse against a church wall. It is all in long speeches  – – the action, proper, is in them  – – they are no descriptions, or amplifications  – – but here, in a drama of this kind, all the events, (and interest), take place in the minds of the actors  . . . somewhat like ‘Paracelsus’ in that respect. You know, or don’t know, that the general charge against me, of late, from the few quarters I thought it worth while to listen to, has been that of abrupt, spasmodic writing  – – they will find some fault with this, of course.

How you know Chorley! That is precisely the man, that willow blowing now here now there  – – precisely! I wish he minded the Athenæum, its silence or eloquence, no more nor less than I  – – but he goes on painfully plying me with invitation after invitation, only to show me, I feel confident, that he has no part nor lot in the matter: I have two kind little notes asking me to go on Thursday and Saturday. See the absurd position of us both; he asks more of my presence than he can want, just to show his own kind feeling, of which I do not doubt; and I must try and accept more hospitality than suits me, only to prove my belief in that same! For myself  – – if I have vanity which such Journals can raise; would the praise of them raise it, they who praised Mr. Mackay’s own, own ‘Dead Pan,’ quite his own, the other day?  – – By the way, Miss Cushman informed me the other evening that the gentleman had written a certain ‘Song of the Bell’  . . . ‘singularly like Schiller’s; considering that Mr. M. had never seen it!’ I am told he writes for the Athenæum, but don’t know. Would that sort of praise be flattering, or his holding the tongue  – – which Forster, deep in the mysteries of the craft, corroborated my own notion about  – – as pure willingness to hurt, and confessed impotence and little clever spite, and enforced sense of what may be safe at the last? You shall see they will not notice  – – unless a fresh publication alters the circumstances  – – until some seven or eight months  – – as before; and then they will notice, and praise, and tell anybody who cares to enquire, ‘So we noticed the work.’ So do not you go expecting justice or injustice till I tell you. It answers me to be found writing so, so anxious to prove I understand the laws of the game, when that game is only ‘Thimble-rig’ and for prizes of gingerbread-nuts  – – Prize or no prize, Mr. Dilke does shift the pea, and so did from the beginning  – – as Charles Lamb’s pleasant sobriquet (Mr. Bilk, he would have it) testifies. Still he behaved kindly to that poor Frances Brown  – – let us forget him.

And now, my Audience, my crown-bearer, my path-preparer  – – I am with you again and out of them all  – – there, here, in my arms, is my proved palpable success! My life, my poetry, gained nothing, oh no!  – – but this found them, and blessed them. On Tuesday I shall see you, dearest  – – am much better; well to-day  – – are you well  – – or ‘scarcely to be called an invalid’? Oh, when I have you, am by you  – –

Bless you, dearest  – – And be very sure you have your wish about the length of the week  – – still Tuesday must come! And with it your own, happy, grateful

R.B.

 

Saturday.

January 10, 1846.

This is no letter  – – love,  – – I make haste to tell you  – – to-morrow I will write. For here has a friend been calling and consuming my very destined time, and every minute seemed the last that was to be; and an old, old friend he is, beside  – – so  – – you must understand my defection, when only this scrap reaches you to-night! Ah, love,  – – you are my unutterable blessing,  – – I discover you, more of you, day by day,  – – hour by hour, I do think!  – – I am entirely yours,  – – one gratitude, all my soul becomes when I see you over me as now  – – God bless my dear, dearest.

My ‘Act Fourth’ is done  – – but too roughly this time! I will tell you  – –

One kiss more, dearest!

Thanks for the Review.

 

Saturday.

January 10, 1846.

Kindest and dearest you are! — that is ‘my secret’ and for the others, I leave them to you! — only it is no secret that I should and must be glad to have the words you sent with the book, — which I should have seen at all events be sure, whether you had sent it or not. Should I not, do you think? And considering what the present generation of critics really is, the remarks on you may stand, although it is the dreariest impotency to complain of the want of flesh and blood and of human sympathy in general. Yet suffer them to say on — it is the stamp on the critical knife. There must be something eminently stupid, or farewell criticdom! And if anything more utterly untrue could be said than another, it is precisely that saying, which Mr. Mackay stands up to catch the reversion of! Do you indeed suppose that Heraud could have done this? I scarcely can believe it, though some things are said rightly as about the ‘intellectuality,’ and how you stand first by the brain, — which is as true as truth can be. Then, I shall have ‘Pauline’ in a day or two — yes, I shall and must, and will.

The ‘Ballad Poems and Fancies,’ the article calling itself by that name, seems indeed to be Mr. Chorley’s, and is one of his very best papers, I think. There is to me a want of colour and thinness about his writings in general, with a grace and savoir faire nevertheless, and always a rightness and purity of intention. Observe what he says of ‘many-sidedness’ seeming to trench on opinion and principle. That, he means for himself I know, for he has said to me that through having such largeness of sympathy he has been charged with want of principle — yet ‘many-sidedness’ is certainly no word for him. The effect of general sympathies may be evolved both from an elastic fancy and from breadth of mind, and it seems to me that he rather bends to a phase of humanity and literature than contains it — than comprehends it. Every part of a truth implies the whole; and to accept truth all round, does not mean the recognition of contradictory things: universal sympathies cannot make a man inconsistent, but, on the contrary, sublimely consistent. A church tower may stand between the mountains and the sea, looking to either, and stand fast: but the willow-tree at the gable-end, blown now toward the north and now toward the south while its natural leaning is due east or west, is different altogether  . . . as different as a willow-tree from a church tower.

Ah, what nonsense! There is only one truth for me all this time, while I talk about truth and truth. And do you know, when you have told me to think of you, I have been feeling ashamed of thinking of you so much, of thinking of only you — which is too much, perhaps. Shall I tell you? it seems to me, to myself, that no man was ever before to any woman what you are to me — the fulness must be in proportion, you know, to the vacancy  . . . and only I know what was behind — the long wilderness without the blossoming rose  . . . and the capacity for happiness, like a black gaping hole, before this silver flooding. Is it wonderful that I should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve — not you — but my own fate? Was ever any one taken suddenly from a lampless dungeon and placed upon the pinnacle of a mountain, without the head turning round and the heart turning faint, as mine do? And you love me more, you say? — Shall I thank you or God? Both, — indeed — and there is no possible return from me to either of you! I thank you as the unworthy may  . . . and as we all thank God. How shall I ever prove what my heart is to you? How will you ever see it as I feel it? I ask myself in vain.

Have so much faith in me, my only beloved, as to use me simply for your own advantage and happiness, and to your own ends without a thought of any others — that is all I could ask you with any disquiet as to the granting of it — May God bless you! —

Your

Ba.

But you have the review now — surely?

The Morning Chronicle attributes the authorship of ‘Modern Poets’ (our article) to Lord John Manners — so I hear this morning. I have not yet looked at the paper myself. The Athenæum, still abominably dumb! —

 

Friday Morning.

As if I could deny you anything! Here is the Review  – – indeed it was foolish to mind your seeing it at all. But now, may I stipulate?  – – You shall not send it back  – – but on your table I shall find and take it next Tuesday  – – c’est convenu! The other precious volume has not yet come to hand (nor to foot) all through your being so sure that to carry it home would have been the death of me last evening!

I cannot write my feelings in this large writing, begun on such a scale for the Review’s sake; and just now  – – there is no denying it, and spite of all I have been incredulous about  – – it does seem that the fact is achieved and that I do love you, plainly, surely, more than ever, more than any day in my life before. It is your secret, the why, the how; the experience is mine. What are you doing to me?  – – in the heart’s heart.

Rest  – – dearest  – – bless you  – –

 

Friday Morning.

January 9, 1846.

You never think, ever dearest, that I ‘repent’ — why what a word to use! You never could think such a word for a moment! If you were to leave me even, — to decide that it is best for you to do it, and do it, — I should accede at once of course, but never should I nor could I ‘repent’  . . . regret anything  . . . be sorry for having known you and loved you  . . . no! Which I say simply to prove that, in no extreme case, could I repent for my own sake. For yours, it might be different.

Not out of ‘generosity’ certainly, but from the veriest selfishness, I choose here, before God, any possible present evil, rather than the future consciousness of feeling myself less to you, on the whole, than another woman might have been.

Oh, these vain and most heathenish repetitions — do I not vex you by them, you whom I would always please, and never vex? Yet they force their way because you are the best noblest and dearest in the world, and because your happiness is so precious a thing.

— that, beloved, was written for me. And you, if you would make me happy, always will look at yourself from my ground and by my light, as I see you, and consent to be selfish in all things. Observe, that if I were vacillating, I should not be so weak as to tease you with the process of the vacillation: I should wait till my pendulum ceased swinging. It is precisely because I am your own, past any retraction or wish of retraction, — because I belong to you by gift and ownership, and am ready and willing to prove it before the world at a word of yours, — it is precisely for this, that I remind you too often of the necessity of using this right of yours, not to your injury, of being wise and strong for both of us, and of guarding your happiness which is mine. I have said these things ninety and nine times over, and over and over have you replied to them, — as yesterday! — and now, do not speak any more. It is only my preachment for general use, and not for particular application, — only to be ready for application. I love you from the deepest of my nature — the whole world is nothing to me beside you — and what is so precious, is not far from being terrible. ‘How dreadful is this place.’

To hear you talk yesterday, is a gladness in the thought for to-day, — it was with such a full assent that I listened to every word. It is true, I think, that we see things (things apart from ourselves) under the same aspect and colour — and it is certainly true that I have a sort of instinct by which I seem to know your views of such subjects as we have never looked at together. I know you so well (yes, I boast to myself of that intimate knowledge), that I seem to know also the idola of all things as they are in your eyes — so that never, scarcely, I am curious, — never anxious, to learn what your opinions may be. Now, have I been curious or anxious? It was enough for me to know you.

More than enough! You have ‘left undone’ — do you say? On the contrary, you have done too much, — you are too much. My cup, — which used to hold at the bottom of it just the drop of Heaven dew mingling with the absinthus, — has overflowed all this wine: and that makes me look out for the vases, which would have held it better, had you stretched out your hand for them.

Say how you are — and do take care and exercise — and write to me, dearest!

Ever your own —

Ba.

How right you are about ‘Ben Capstan,’ — and the illustration by the yellow clay. That is precisely what I meant, — said with more precision than I could say it. Art without an ideal is neither nature nor art. The question involves the whole difference between Madame Tussaud and Phidias.

I have just received Mr. Edgar Poe’s book — and I see that the deteriorating preface which was to have saved me from the vanity-fever produceable by the dedication, is cut down and away — perhaps in this particular copy only!

Tuesday is so near, as men count, that I caught myself just now being afraid lest the week should have no chance of appearing long to you! Try to let it be long to you — will you? My consistency is wonderful.

 

Wednesday.

January 7, 1846.

But some things are indeed said very truly, and as I like to read them — of you, I mean of course, — though I quite understand that it is doing no manner of good to go back so to ‘Paracelsus,’ heading the article ‘Paracelsus and other poems,’ as if the other poems could not front the reader broadly by a divine right of their own. ‘Paracelsus’ is a great work and will live, but the way to do you good with the stiffnecked public (such good as critics can do in their degree) would have been to hold fast and conspicuously the gilded horn of the last living crowned creature led by you to the altar, saying ‘Look here.’ What had he to do else, as a critic? Was he writing for the Retrospective Review? And then, no attempt at analytical criticism — or a failure, at the least attempt! all slack and in sentences! Still these are right things to say, true things, worthy things, said of you as a poet, though your poems do not find justice: and I like, for my own part, the issuing from my cathedral into your great world — the outermost temple of divinest consecration. I like that figure and association, and none the worse for its being a sufficient refutation of what he dared to impute, of your poetical sectarianism, in another place — yours!

For me, it is all quite kind enough — only I object, on my own part also, to being reviewed in the ‘Seraphim,’ when my better books are nearer: and also it always makes me a little savage when people talk of Tennysonianisms! I have faults enough as the Muses know, — but let them be my faults! When I wrote the ‘Romaunt of Margret,’ I had not read a line of Tennyson. I came from the country with my eyes only half open, and he had not penetrated where I had been living and sleeping: and in fact when I afterwards tried to reach him here in London, nothing could be found except one slim volume, so that, till the collected works appeared  . . . favente Moxon,  . . . I was ignorant of his best early productions; and not even for the rhythmetical form of my ‘Vision of the Poets,’ was I indebted to the ‘Two Voices,’ — three pages of my ‘Vision’ having been written several years ago — at the beginning of my illness — and thrown aside, and taken up again in the spring of 1844. Ah, well! there’s no use talking! In a solitary review which noticed my ‘Essay on Mind,’ somebody wrote  . . . ‘this young lady imitates Darwin’ — and I never could read Darwin,  . . . was stopped always on the second page of the ‘Loves of the Plants’ when I tried to read him to ‘justify myself in having an opinion’ — the repulsion was too strong. Yet the ‘young lady imitated Darwin’ of course, as the infallible critic said so.

And who are Mr. Helps and Miss Emma Fisher and the ‘many others,’ whose company brings one down to the right plebeianism? The ‘three poets in three distant ages born’ may well stare amazed!

After all you shall not by any means say that I upset the inkstand on your review in a passion — because pray mark that the ink has over-run some of your praises, and that if I had been angry to the overthrow of an inkstand, it would not have been precisely there. It is the second book spoilt by me within these two days — and my fingers were so dabbled in blackness yesterday that to wring my hands would only have made matters worse. Holding them up to Mr. Kenyon they looked dirty enough to befit a poetess — as black ‘as bard beseemed’ — and he took the review away with him to read and save it from more harm.

How could it be that you did not get my letter which would have reached you, I thought, on Monday evening, or on Tuesday at the very very earliest? — and how is it that I did not hear from you last night again when I was unreasonable enough to expect it? is it true that you hate writing to me?

At that word, comes the review back from dear Mr. Kenyon, and the letter which I enclose to show you how it accounts reasonably for the ink — I did it ‘in a pet,’ he thinks! And I ought to buy you a new book — certainly I ought — only it is not worth doing justice for — and I shall therefore send it back to you spoilt as it is; and you must forgive me as magnanimously as you can.

‘Omne ignotum pro magnifico’ — do you think so? I hope not indeed! vo quietando — and everything else that I ought to do — except of course, that thinking of you which is so difficult.

May God bless you. Till to-morrow!

Your own always.

Mr. Kenyon refers to ‘Festus’ — of which I had said that the fine things were worth looking for, in the design manqué.

 

Tuesday Night.

January 7, 1846.

But, my sweet, there is safer going in letters than in visits, do you not see? In the letter, one may go to the utmost limit of one’s supposed tether without danger  – – there is the distance so palpably between the most audacious step there, and the next  . . . which is nowhere, seeing it is not in the letter. Quite otherwise in personal intercourse, where any indication of turning to a certain path, even, might possibly be checked not for its own fault but lest, the path once reached and proceeded in, some other forbidden turning might come into sight, we will say. In the letter, all ended there, just there  . . . and you may think of that, and forgive; at all events, may avoid speaking irrevocable words  – – and when, as to me, those words are intensely true, doom-words  – – think, dearest! Because, as I told you once, what most characterizes my feeling for you is the perfect respect in it, the full belief  . . . (I shall get presently to poor Robert’s very avowal of ‘owing you all esteem’!). It is on that I build, and am secure  – – for how should I know, of myself, how to serve you and be properly yours if it all was to be learnt by my own interpreting, and what you professed to dislike you were to be considered as wishing for, and what liking, as it seemed, you were loathing at your heart, and if so many ‘noes’ made a ‘yes,’ and ‘one refusal no rebuff’ and all that horrible bestiality which stout gentlemen turn up the whites of their eyes to, when they rise after dinner and pressing the right hand to the left side say, ‘The toast be dear woman!’ Now, love, with this feeling in me from the beginning,  – – I do believe,  – – now, when I am utterly blest in this gift of your love, and least able to imagine what I should do without it,  – – I cannot but believe, I say, that had you given me once a ‘refusal’  – – clearly derived from your own feelings, and quite apart from any fancied consideration for my interests; had this come upon me, whether slowly but inevitably in the course of events, or suddenly as precipitated by any step of mine; I should, believing you, have never again renewed directly or indirectly such solicitation; I should have begun to count how many other ways were yet open to serve you and devote myself to you  . . . but from the outside, now, and not in your livery! Now, if I should have acted thus under any circumstances, how could I but redouble my endeavours at precaution after my own foolish  – – you know, and forgave long since, and I, too, am forgiven in my own eyes, for the cause, though not the manner  – – but could I do other than keep ‘farther from you’ than in the letters, dearest? For your own part in that matter, seeing it with all the light you have since given me (and then, not inadequately by my own light) I could, I do kiss your feet, kiss every letter in your name, bless you with my whole heart and soul if I could pour them out, from me, before you, to stay and be yours; when I think on your motives and pure perfect generosity. It was the plainness of that which determined me to wait and be patient and grateful and your own for ever in any shape or capacity you might please to accept. Do you think that because I am so rich now, I could not have been most rich, too, then  – – in what would seem little only to me, only with this great happiness? I should have been proud beyond measure  – – happy past all desert, to call and be allowed to see you simply, speak with you and be spoken to  – – what am I more than others? Don’t think this mock humility  – – it is not  – – you take me in your mantle, and we shine together, but I know my part in it! All this is written breathlessly on a sudden fancy that you might  – – if not now, at some future time  – – give other than this, the true reason, for that discrepancy you see, that nearness in the letters, that early farness in the visits! And, love, all love is but a passionate drawing closer  – – I would be one with you, dearest; let my soul press close to you, as my lips, dear life of my life.

Wednesday.  – – You are entirely right about those poems of Horne’s  – – I spoke only of the effect of the first glance, and it is a principle with me to begin by welcoming any strangeness, intention of originality in men  – – the other way of safe copying precedents being so safe! So I began by praising all that was at all questionable in the form  . . . reserving the ground-work for after consideration. The Elf-story turns out a pure mistake, I think  – – and a common mistake, too. Fairy stories, the good ones, were written for men and women, and, being true, pleased also children; now, people set about writing for children and miss them and the others too,  – – with that detestable irreverence and plain mocking all the time at the very wonder they profess to want to excite. All obvious bending down to the lower capacity, determining not to be the great complete man one is, by half; any patronizing minute to be spent in the nursery over the books and work and healthful play, of a visitor who will presently bid good-bye and betake himself to the Beefsteak Club  – – keep us from all that! The Sailor Language is good in its way; but as wrongly used in Art as real clay and mud would be, if one plastered them in the foreground of a landscape in order to attain to so much truth, at all events  – – the true thing to endeavour is the making a golden colour which shall do every good in the power of the dirty brown. Well, then, what a veering weathercock am I, to write so and now, so! Not altogether,  – – for first it was but the stranger’s welcome I gave, the right of every new comer who must stand or fall by his behaviour once admitted within the door. And then  – – when I know what Horne thinks of  – – you, dearest; how he knew you first, and from the soul admired you; and how little he thinks of my good fortune  . . . I could not begin by giving you a bad impression of anything he sends  – – he has such very few rewards for a great deal of hard excellent enduring work, and none, no reward, I do think, would he less willingly forego than your praise and sympathy. But your opinion once expressed  – – truth remains the truth  – – so, at least, I excuse myself  . . . and quite as much for what I say now as for what was said then! ‘King John’ is very fine and full of purpose; ‘The Noble Heart,’ sadly faint and uncharacteristic. The chief incident, too, turns on that poor conventional fallacy about what constitutes a proper wrong to resist  – – a piece of morality, after a different standard, is introduced to complete another fashioned morality  – – a segment of a circle of larger dimensions is fitted into a smaller one. Now, you may have your own standard of morality in this matter of resistance to wrong, how and when if at all. And you may quite understand and sympathize with quite different standards innumerable of other people; but go from one to the other abruptly, you cannot, I think. ‘Bear patiently all injuries  – – revenge in no case’  – – that is plain. ‘Take what you conceive to be God’s part, do his evident work, stand up for good and destroy evil, and co-operate with this whole scheme here’  – – that is plain, too,  – – but, call Otto’s act no wrong, or being one, not such as should be avenged  – – and then, call the remark of a stranger that one is a ‘recreant’  – – just what needs the slight punishment of instant death to the remarker  – – and  . . . where is the way? What is clear?

– – Not my letter! which goes on and on  – – ‘dear letters’  – – sweetest? because they cost all the precious labour of making out? Well, I shall see you to-morrow, I trust. Bless you, my own  – – I have not half said what was to say even in the letter I thought to write, and which proves only what you see! But at a thought I fly off with you, ‘at a cock-crow from the Grange.’  – – Ever your own.

Last night, I received a copy of the New Quarterly  – – now here is popular praise, a sprig of it! Instead of the attack I supposed it to be, from my foolish friend’s account, the notice is outrageously eulogistical, a stupidly extravagant laudation from first to last  – – and in three other articles, as my sister finds by diligent fishing, they introduce my name with the same felicitous praise (except one instance, though, in a good article by Chorley I am certain); and with me I don’t know how many poetical crétins are praised as noticeably  – – and, in the turning of a page, somebody is abused in the richest style of scavengering  – – only Carlyle! And I love him enough not to envy him nor wish to change places, and giving him mine, mount into his.

All which, let me forget in the thoughts of to-morrow! Bless you, my Ba.

 

Tuesday Morning.

I this minute receive the Review  – – a poor business, truly! Is there a reason for a man’s wits dwindling the moment he gets into a critical High-place to hold forth?  – – I have only glanced over the article however. Well, one day I am to write of you, dearest, and it must come to something rather better than that!

I am forced to send now what is to be sent at all. Bless you, dearest. I am trusting to hear from you  – –

Your R.B.

And I find by a note from a fairer friend and favourer of mine that in the New Quarterly ‘Mr. Browning’ figures pleasantly as ‘one without any sympathy for a human being!’  – – Then, for newts and efts at all events!

 

Sunday.

January 6, 1846.

When you get Mr. Horne’s book you will understand how, after reading just the first and the last poems, I could not help speaking coldly a little of it — and in fact, estimating his power as much as you can do, I did think and do, that the last was unworthy of him, and that the first might have been written by a writer of one tenth of his faculty. But last night I read the ‘Monk of Swineshead Abbey’ and the ‘Three Knights of Camelott’ and ‘Bedd Gelert’ and found them all of different stuff, better, stronger, more consistent, and read them with pleasure and admiration. Do you remember this application, among the countless ones of shadow to the transiency of life? I give the first two lines for clearness —

New or not, and I don’t remember it elsewhere, it is just and beautiful I think. Think how the shadow of the windmill-sail just touches the ground on a bright windy day! the shadow of a bird flying is not faster! Then the ‘Three Knights’ has beautiful things, with more definite and distinct images than he is apt to show — for his character is a vague grand massiveness, — like Stonehenge — or at least, if ‘towers and battlements he sees’ they are ‘bosomed high’ in dusky clouds  . . . it is a ‘passion-created imagery’ which has no clear outline. In this ballad of the ‘Knights,’ and in the Monk’s too, we may look at things, as on the satyr who swears by his horns and mates not with his kind afterwards, ‘While, holding beards, they dance in pairs — and that is all excellent and reminds one of those fine sylvan festivals, ‘in Orion.’ But now tell me if you like altogether ‘Ben Capstan’ and if you consider the sailor-idiom to be lawful in poetry, because I do not indeed. On the same principle we may have Yorkshire and Somersetshire ‘sweet Doric’; and do recollect what it ended in of old, in the Blowsibella heroines. Then for the Elf story  . . . why should such things be written by men like Mr. Horne? I am vexed at it. Shakespeare and Fletcher did not write so about fairies: — Drayton did not. Look at the exquisite ‘Nymphidia,’ with its subtle sylvan consistency, and then at the lumbering coarse  . . . ‘machina intersit‘  . . . Grandmama Grey! — to say nothing of the ‘small dog’ that isn’t the ‘small boy.’ Mr. Horne succeeds better on a larger canvass, and with weightier material; with blank verse rather than lyrics. He cannot make a fine stroke. He wants subtlety and elasticity in the thought and expression. Remember, I admire him honestly and earnestly. No one has admired more than I the ‘Death of Marlowe,’ scenes in ‘Cosmo,’ and ‘Orion’ in much of it. But now tell me if you can accept with the same stretched out hand all these lyrical poems? I am going to write to him as much homage as can come truly. Who combines different faculties as you do, striking the whole octave? No one, at present in the world.

Dearest, after you went away yesterday and I began to consider, I found that there was nothing to be so over-glad about in the matter of the letters, for that, Sunday coming next to Saturday, the best now is only as good as the worst before, and I can’t hear from you, until Monday  . . . Monday! Did you think of that — you who took the credit of acceding so meekly! I shall not praise you in return at any rate. I shall have to wait  . . . till what o’clock on Monday, tempted in the meanwhile to fall into controversy against the ‘new moons and sabbath days’ and the pausing of the post in consequence.

You never guessed perhaps, what I look back to at this moment in the physiology of our intercourse, the curious double feeling I had about you — you personally, and you as the writer of these letters, and the crisis of the feeling, when I was positively vexed and jealous of myself for not succeeding better in making a unity of the two. I could not! And moreover I could not help but that the writer of the letters seemed nearer to me, long  . . . long  . . . and in spite of the postmark, than did the personal visitor who confounded me, and left me constantly under such an impression of its being all dream-work on his side, that I have stamped my feet on this floor with impatience to think of having to wait so many hours before the ‘candid’ closing letter could come with its confessional of an illusion. ‘People say,’ I used to think, ‘that women always know, and certainly I do not know, and therefore  . . . therefore.’ — The logic crushed on like Juggernaut’s car. But in the letters it was different — the dear letters took me on the side of my own ideal life where I was able to stand a little upright and look round. I could read such letters for ever and answer them after a fashion  . . . that, I felt from the beginning. But you — !

Monday. — Never too early can the light come. Thank you for my letter! Yet you look askance at me over ‘newt and toad,’ and praise so the Elf-story that I am ashamed to send you my ill humour on the same head. And you really like that? admire it? Grandmama Grey and the night cap and all? and ‘shoetye and blue sky?’ and is it really wrong of me to like certainly some touches and images, but not the whole,  . . . not the poem as a whole? I can take delight in the fantastical, and in the grotesque — but here there is a want of life and consistency, as it seems to me! — the elf is no elf and speaks no elf-tongue: it is not the right key to touch,  . . . this,  . . . for supernatural music. So I fancy at least — but I will try the poem again presently. You must be right — unless it should be your over-goodness opposed to my over-badness — I will not be sure. Or you wrote perhaps in an accidental mood of most excellent critical smoothness, such as Mr. Forster did his last Examiner in, when he gave the all-hail to Mr. Harness as one of the best dramatists of the age!! Ah no! — not such as Mr. Forster’s. Your soul does not enter into his secret — There can be nothing in common between you. For him to say such a word — he who knows — or ought to know! — And now let us agree and admire the bowing of the old ministrel over Bedd Gelert’s unfilled grave —

A poet, a friend, a generous man Mr. Horne is, even if no laureate for the fairies.

I have this moment a parcel of books via Mr. Moxon — Miss Martineau’s two volumes — and Mr. Bailey sends his ‘Festus,’ very kindly,  . . . and ‘Woman in the Nineteenth Century’ from America from a Mrs. or a Miss Fuller — how I hate those ‘Women of England,’ ‘Women and their Mission’ and the rest. As if any possible good were to be done by such expositions of rights and wrongs.

Your letter would be worth them all, if you were less you! I mean, just this letter,  . . . all alive as it is with crawling buzzing wriggling cold-blooded warm-blooded creatures  . . . as all alive as your own pedant’s book in the tree. And do you know, I think I like frogs too — particularly the very little leaping frogs, which are so high-hearted as to emulate the birds. I remember being scolded by my nurses for taking them up in my hands and letting them leap from one hand to the other. But for the toad! — why, at the end of the row of narrow beds which we called our gardens when we were children, grew an old thorn, and in the hollow of the root of the thorn, lived a toad, a great ancient toad, whom I, for one, never dared approach too nearly. That he ‘wore a jewel in his head’ I doubted nothing at all. You must see it glitter if you stooped and looked steadily into the hole. And on days when he came out and sate swelling his black sides, I never looked steadily; I would run a hundred yards round through the shrubs, deeper than knee-deep in the long wet grass and nettles, rather than go past him where he sate; being steadily of opinion, in the profundity of my natural history-learning, that if he took it into his toad’s head to spit at me I should drop down dead in a moment, poisoned as by one of the Medici.

Oh — and I had a field-mouse for a pet once, and should have joined my sisters in a rat’s nest if I had not been ill at the time (as it was, the little rats were tenderly smothered by over-love!): and blue-bottle flies I used to feed, and hated your spiders for them; yet no, not much. My aversion proper  . . . call it horror rather  . . . was for the silent, cold, clinging, gliding bat; and even now, I think, I could not sleep in the room with that strange bird-mouse-creature, as it glides round the ceiling silently, silently as its shadow does on the floor. If you listen or look, there is not a wave of the wing — the wing never waves! A bird without a feather! a beast that flies! and so cold! as cold as a fish! It is the most supernatural-seeming of natural things. And then to see how when the windows are open at night those bats come sailing  . . . without a sound — and go  . . . you cannot guess where! — fade with the night-blackness!

You have not been well — which is my first thought if not my first word. Do walk, and do not work; and think  . . . what I could be thinking of, if I did not think of you  . . . dear — dearest! ‘As the doves fly to the windows,’ so I think of you! As the prisoners think of liberty, as the dying think of Heaven, so I think of you. When I look up straight to God  . . . nothing, no one, used to intercept me — now there is you — only you under him! Do not use such words as those therefore any more, nor say that you are not to be thought of so and so. You are to be thought of every way. You must know what you are to me if you know at all what I am, — and what I should be but for you.

So  . . . love me a little, with the spiders and the toads and the lizards! love me as you love the efts — and I will believe in you as you believe  . . . in Ælian — Will that do?

Your own —

Say how you are when you write — and write.

 

Sunday Night.

January 5, 1846.

Yesterday, nearly the last thing, I bade you ‘think of me’  – – I wonder if you could misunderstand me in that?  – – As if my words or actions or any of my ineffectual outside-self should be thought of, unless to be forgiven! But I do, dearest, feel confident that while I am in your mind  – – cared for, rather than thought about  – – no great harm can happen to me; and as, for great harm to reach me, it must pass through you, you will care for yourself; myself, best self!

Come, let us talk. I found Horne’s book at home, and have had time to see that fresh beautiful things are there  – – I suppose ‘Delora’ will stand alone still  – – but I got pleasantly smothered with that odd shower of wood-spoils at the end, the dwarf-story; cup-masses and fern and spotty yellow leaves,  – – all that, I love heartily  – – and there is good sailor-speech in the ‘Ben Capstan’  – – though he does knock a man down with a ‘crow-bar’  – – instead of a marling-spike or, even, a belaying-pin! The first tale, though good, seems least new and individual, but I must know more. At one thing I wonder  – – his not reprinting a quaint clever real ballad, published before ‘Delora,’ on the ‘Merry Devil of Edmonton’  – – the first of his works I ever read. No, the very first piece was a single stanza, if I remember, in which was this line: ‘When bason-crested Quixote, lean and bold,’  – – good, is it not? Oh, while it strikes me, good, too, is that ‘Swineshead Monk’ ballad! Only I miss the old chronicler’s touch on the method of concocting the poison: ‘Then stole this Monk into the Garden and under a certain herb found out a Toad, which, squeezing into a cup,’ &c. something to that effect. I suspect, par parenthèse, you have found out by this time my odd liking for ‘vermin’  – – you once wrote ‘your snails’  – – and certainly snails are old clients of mine  – – but efts! Horne traced a line to me  – – in the rhymes of a ”prentice-hand’ I used to look over and correct occasionally  – – taxed me (last week) with having altered the wise line ‘Cold as a lizard in a sunny stream’ to ‘Cold as a newt hid in a shady brook’  – – for ‘what do you know about newts?’ he asked of the author  – – who thereupon confessed. But never try and catch a speckled gray lizard when we are in Italy, love, and you see his tail hang out of the chink of a wall, his winter-house  – – because the strange tail will snap off, drop from him and stay in your fingers  – – and though you afterwards learn that there is more desperation in it and glorious determination to be free, than positive pain (so people say who have no tails to be twisted off)  – – and though, moreover, the tail grows again after a sort  – – yet  . . . don’t do it, for it will give you a thrill! What a fine fellow our English water-eft is; ‘Triton paludis Linnaei’  – – e come guizza (that you can’t say in another language; cannot preserve the little in-and-out motion along with the straightforwardness!)  – – I always loved all those wild creatures God ‘sets up for themselves‘ so independently of us, so successfully, with their strange happy minute inch of a candle, as it were, to light them; while we run about and against each other with our great cressets and fire-pots. I once saw a solitary bee nipping a leaf round till it exactly fitted the front of a hole; his nest, no doubt; or tomb, perhaps  – – ‘Safe as Oedipus’s grave-place, ‘mid Colone’s olives swart’  – – (Kiss me, my Siren!)  – – Well, it seemed awful to watch that bee  – – he seemed so instantly from the teaching of God! Ælian says that  . . . a frog, does he say?  – – some animal, having to swim across the Nile, never fails to provide himself with a bit of reed, which he bites off and holds in his mouth transversely and so puts from shore gallantly  . . . because when the water-serpent comes swimming to meet him, there is the reed, wider than his serpent’s jaws, and no hopes of a swallow that time  – – now fancy the two meeting heads, the frog’s wide eyes and the vexation of the snake!

Now, see! do I deceive you? Never say I began by letting down my dignity ‘that with no middle flight intends to soar above the Aonian Mount’!  – –

My best, dear, dear one,  – – may you be better, less depressed,  . . . I can hardly imagine frost reaching you if I could be by you. Think what happiness you mean to give me,  – – what a life; what a death! ‘I may change’  – – too true; yet, you see, as an eft was to me at the beginning so it continues  – – I may take up stones and pelt the next I see  – – but  – – do you much fear that?  – – Now, walk, move, guizza, anima mia dolce. Shall I not know one day how far your mouth will be from mine as we walk? May I let that stay  . . . dearest, (the line stay, not the mouth)?

I am not very well to-day  – – or, rather, have not been so  – – now, I am well and with you. I just say that, very needlessly, but for strict frankness’ sake. Now, you are to write to me soon, and tell me all about your self, and to love me ever, as I love you ever, and bless you, and leave you in the hands of God  – – My own love!  – –

Tell me if I do wrong to send this by a morning post  – – so as to reach you earlier than the evening  – – when you will  . . . write to me?

Don’t let me forget to say that I shall receive the Review to-morrow, and will send it directly.