Month: February 2018

February 27, 1846.

To be sure my ‘first person’ was nonsensical, and, in that respect made speak properly, I hope, only he was cut short in the middle of his performance by the exigencies of the post. So, never mind what such persons say, my sweetest, because they know nothing at all  – – quod erat demonstrandum. But you, love, you speak roses, and hawthorn-blossoms when you tell me of the cloak put on, and the descent, and the entry, and staying and delaying. I will have had a hand in all that; I know what I wished all the morning, and now this much came true! But you should have seen the regimentals, if I could have so contrived it, for I confess to a Chinese love for bright red  – – the very names ‘vermilion’ ‘scarlet’ warm me, yet in this cold climate nobody wears red to comfort one’s eye save soldiers and fox hunters, and old women fresh from a Parish Christmas Distribution of cloaks. To dress in floating loose crimson silk, I almost understand being a Cardinal! Do you know anything of Nat Lee’s Tragedies? In one of them a man angry with a Cardinal cries  – –

Is not that good? and presently, when the same worthy is poisoned (that is the Cardinal)  – – they bid him  – – ‘now, Cardinal, lie down and roar!’

Think of thy scarlet sins!

Of the justice of all which, you will judge with no Mrs. Jameson for guide when we see the Sistina together, I trust! By the way, yesterday I went to Dulwich to see some pictures, by old Teniers, Murillo, Gainsborough, Raphael!  – – then twenty names about, and last but one, as if just thought of, ‘Correggio.’ The whole collection, including ‘a divine picture by Murillo,’ and Titian’s Daughter (hitherto supposed to be in the Louvre)  – – the whole I would, I think, have cheerfully given a pound or two for the privilege of not possessing  – – so execrable as sign-paintings even! ‘Are there worse poets in their way than painters?’ Yet the melancholy business is here  – – that the bad poet goes out of his way, writes his verses in the language he learned in order to do a hundred other things with it, all of which he can go on and do afterwards  – – but the painter has spent the best of his life in learning even how to produce such monstrosities as these, and to what other good do his acquisitions go? This short minute of life our one chance, an eternity on either side! and a man does not walk whistling and ruddy by the side of hawthorn hedges in spring, but shuts himself up and conies out after a dozen years with ‘Titian’s Daughter’ and, there, gone is his life, let somebody else try!

I have tried  – – my trial is made too!

To-morrow you shall tell me, dearest, that Mrs. Jameson wondered to see you so well  – – did she not wonder? Ah, to-morrow! There is a lesson from all this writing and mistaking and correcting and being corrected; and what, but that a word goes safely only from lip to lip, dearest? See how the cup slipped from the lip and snapped the chrystals, you say! But the writing is but for a time  – – ‘a time and times and half a time!’  – – would I knew when the prophetic weeks end! Still, one day, as I say, no more writing, (and great scandalization of the third person, peeping through the fringes of Flush’s ears!) meanwhile, I wonder whether if I meet Mrs. Jameson I may practise diplomacy and say carelessly ‘I should be glad to know what Miss B. is like  – – ‘ No, that I must not do, something tells me, ‘for reasons, for reasons’  – –

I do not know  – – you may perhaps have to wait a little longer for my ‘divine Murillo’ of a Tragedy. My sister is copying it as I give the pages, but  – – in fact my wise head does ache a little  – – it is inconceivable! As if it took a great storm to topple over some stone, and once the stone pushed from its right place, any bird’s foot, which would hardly bend the hawthorn spray, may set it trembling! The aching begins with reading the presentation-list at the Drawing-room quite naturally, and with no shame at all! But it is gentle, well-behaved aching now, so I do care, as you bid me, Ba, my Ba, whom I call Ba to my heart but could not, I really believe, call so before another, even your sister, if  – – if  – –

But Ba, I call you boldly here, and I dare kiss your dear, dear eyes, till to-morrow  – – Bless you, my own.

 

Thursday Evening.

February 27, 1846.

If all third persons were as foolish as this third person of yours, ever dearest, first and second persons might follow their own devices without losing much in the way of good counsel. But you are unlucky in your third person as far as the wits go, he talks a great deal of nonsense, and Flush, who is sensible, will have nothing to do with him, he says, any more than you will with Sir Moses: — he is quite a third person singular for the nonsense he talks!

So, instead of him, you shall hear what I have been doing to-day. The sun, which drew out you and the hawthorns, persuaded me that it was warm enough to go down-stairs — and I put on my cloak as if I were going into the snow, and went into the drawing-room and took Henrietta by surprise as she sate at the piano singing. Well, I meant to stay half an hour and come back again, for I am upon ‘Tinkler’s ground’ in the drawing-room and liable to whole droves of morning visitors — and Henrietta kept me, kept me, because she wanted me, besought me, to stay and see the great sight of Capt. Surtees Cook — plus his regimentals — fresh from the royal presence at St. James’s, and I never saw him in my life, though he is a sort of cousin. So, though I hated it as you may think,  . . . not liking to be unkind to my sister, I stayed and stayed one ten minutes after another, till it seemed plain that he wasn’t coming at all (as I told her) and that Victoria had kept him to dinner, enchanted with the regimentals. And half laughing and half quarrelling, still she kept me by force, until a knock came most significantly  . . . and ‘There is Surtees’ said she  . . . ‘now you must and shall stay! So foolish,’ (I had my hand on the door-handle to go out) ‘he, your own cousin too! who always calls you Ba, except before Papa.’ Which might have encouraged me perhaps, but I can’t be sure of it, as the very next moment apprized us both that no less a person than Mrs. Jameson was standing out in the passage. The whole 36th. regiment could scarcely have been more astounding to me. As to staying to see her in that room, with the prospect of the military descent in combination, I couldn’t have done it for the world! so I made Henrietta, who had drawn me into the scrape, take her up-stairs, and followed myself in a minute or two — and the corollary of this interesting history is, that being able to talk at all after all that ‘fuss,’ and after walking ‘up-stairs and down-stairs’ like the ancestor of your spider, proves my gigantic strength — now doesn’t it?

For the rest, ‘here be proofs’ that the first person can be as foolish as any third person in the world. What do you think?

And Mrs. Jameson was kind beyond speaking of, and talked of taking me to Italy. What do you say? It is somewhere about the fifth or sixth proposition of the sort which has come to me. I shall be embarrassed, it seems to me, by the multitude of escorts to Italy. But the kindness, one cannot laugh at so much kindness.

I wanted to hear her speak of you, and was afraid. I could not name you. Yet I did want to hear the last ‘Bell’ praised.

She goes to Ireland for two months soon, but prints a book first, a collection of essays. I have not seen Mr. Kenyon, with whom she dined yesterday. The Macreadys were to be there, and he told me a week ago that he very nearly committed himself in a ‘social mistake’ by inviting you to meet them.

Ah my hawthorn spray! Do you know, I caught myself pitying it for being gathered, with that green promise of leaves on it! There is room too on it for the feet of a bird! Still I shall keep it longer than it would have stayed in the hedge, that is certain!

The first you ever gave me was a yellow rose sent in a letter, and shall I tell you what that means — the yellow rose? ‘Infidelity,’ says the dictionary of flowers. You see what an omen,  . . . to begin with!

Also you see that I am not tired with the great avatar to-day — the ‘fell swoop’ rather — mine, into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Jameson’s on me.

And I shall hear to-morrow again, really? I ‘let‘ you. And you are best, kindest, dearest, every day. Did I ever tell you that you made me do what you choose? I fancied that I only thought so. May God bless you. I am your own.

Shall I have the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’ on Saturday? — any of it? But do not work — I beseech you to take care.

 

Thursday.

February 26, 1846.

As for the ‘third person,’ my sweet Ba, he was a wise speaker from the beginning; and in our case he will say, turning to me  – – ‘the late Robert Hall  – – when a friend admired that one with so high an estimate of the value of intellectuality in woman should yet marry some kind of cook-maid animal, as did the said Robert; wisely answered, “you can’t kiss Mind”! May you not discover eventually,’ (this is to me) ‘that mere intellectual endowments  – – though incontestably of the loftiest character  – – mere Mind, though that Mind be Miss B’s  – – cannot be kissed  – – nor, repent too late the absence of those humbler qualities, those softer affections which, like flowerets at the mountain’s foot, if not so proudly soaring as, as, as! . . .’ and so on, till one of us died, with laughing or being laughed at! So judges the third person! and if, to help him, we let him into your room at Wimpole Street, suffered him to see with Flush’s eyes, he would say with just as wise an air ‘True, mere personal affections may be warm enough, but does it augur well for the durability of an attachment that it should be wholly, exclusively based on such perishable attractions as the sweetness of a mouth, the beauty of an eye? I could wish, rather, to know that there was something of less transitory nature co-existent with this  – – some congeniality of Mental pursuit, some  – – ‘ Would he not say that? But I can’t do his platitudes justice because here is our post going out and I have been all the morning walking in the perfect joy of my heart, with your letter, and under its blessing  – – dearest, dearest Ba  – – let me say more to-morrow  – – only this now, that you  – – ah, what are you not to me! My dearest love, bless you  – – till to-morrow when I will strengthen the prayer; (no, lengthen it!)

Ever your own.

‘Hawthorn’  – – to show how Spring gets on!

 

February 26, 1846.

I confess that while I was writing those words I had a thought that they were not quite yours as you said them. Still it comes to something in their likeness, but we will not talk of it and break off the chrystals — they are so brittle, then? do you know that by an ‘instinct.’ But I agree that it is best not to talk — I ‘gave it up’ as a riddle long ago. Let there be ‘analysis’ even, and it will not be solution. I have my own thoughts of course, and you have yours, and the worst is that a third person looking down on us from some snow-capped height, and free from personal influences, would have his thoughts too, and he would think that if you had been reasonable as usual you would have gone to Italy. I have by heart (or by head at least) what the third person would think. The third person thundered to me in an abstraction for ever so long, and at intervals I hear him still, only you shall not to-day, because he talks ‘damnable iterations’ and teazes you. Nay, the first person is teazing you now perhaps, without going any further, and yet I must go a little further, just to say (after accepting all possible unlikelinesses and miracles, because everything was miraculous and impossible) that it was agreed between us long since that you did not love me for anything — your having no reason for it is the only way of your not seeming unreasonable. Also for my own sake. I like it to be so — I cannot have peace with the least change from it. Dearest, take the baron’s hawthorn bough which, in spite of his fine dream of it is dead since the other day, and so much the worse than when I despised it last — take that dead stick and push it upright into the sand as the tide rises, and the whole blue sea draws up its glittering breadth and length towards and around it. But what then? What does that prove?  . . . as the philosopher said of the poem. So we ought not to talk of such things; and we get warned off even in the accidental illustrations taken up to light us. Still, the stick certainly did not draw the sea.

Dearest and best you were yesterday, to write me the little note! You are better than the imaginations of my heart, and they, as far as they relate to you (not further) are not desperately wicked, I think. I always expect the kindest things from you, and you always are doing some kindness beyond what is expected, and this is a miracle too, like the rest, now isn’t it? When the knock came last night, I knew it was your letter, and not another’s. Just another little leaf of my Koran! How I thank you  . . . thank you! If I write too kind letters, as you say, why they may be too kind for me to send, but not for you to receive; and I suppose I think more of you than of me, which accounts for my writing them, accounts and justifies. And that is my reflection not now for the first time. For we break rules very often — as that exegetical third person might expound to you clearly out of the ninety-sixth volume of the ‘Code of Conventions,’ only you are not like another, nor have you been to me like another — you began with most improvident and (will you let me say?) unmasculine generosity, and Queen Victoria does not sit upon a mat after the fashion of Queen Pomare, nor should.

But  . . . but  . . . you know very fully that you are breaking faith in the matter of the ‘Tragedy’ and ‘Luria’ — you promised to rest — and you rest for three days. Is it so that people get well? or keep well? Indeed I do not think I shall let you have ‘Luria.’ Ah — be careful, I do beseech you — be careful. There is time for a pause, and the works will profit by it themselves. And you! And I  . . . if you are ill! —

For the rest I will let you walk in my field, and see my elms as much as you please  . . . though I hear about the shower bath with a little suspicion. Why, if it did you harm before, should it not again? and why should you use it, if it threatens harm? Now tell me if it hasn’t made you rather unwell since the new trial! — tell me, dear, dearest.

As for myself, I believe that you set about exhorting me to be busy, just that I might not reproach you for the over-business. Confess that that was the only meaning of the exhortation. But no, you are quite serious, you say. You even threaten me in a sort of underground murmur, which sounds like a nascent earthquake; and if I do not write so much a day directly, your stipendiary magistrateship will take away my license to be loved  . . . I am not to be Ba to you any longer  . . . you say! And is this right? now I ask you. Ever so many chrystals fell off by that stroke of the baton, I do assure you. Only you did not mean quite what you said so too articulately, and you will unsay it, if you please, and unthink it near the elms.

As for the writing, I will write  . . . I have written  . . . I am writing. You do not fancy that I have given up writing? — No. Only I have certainly been more loitering and distracted than usual in what I have done, which is not my fault — nor yours directly — and I feel an indisposition to setting about the romance, the hand of the soul shakes. I am too happy and not calm enough, I suppose, to have the right inclination. Well — it will come. But all in blots and fragments there are verses enough, to fill a volume done in the last year.

And if there were not  . . . if there were none  . . . I hold that I should be Ba, and also your Ba  . . . which is ‘insolence’  . . . will you say?

 

Wednesday Morning.

February 25, 1846.

Once you were pleased to say, my own Ba, that ‘I made you do as I would.’ I am quite sure, you make me speak as you would, and not at all as I mean  – – and for one instance, I never surely spoke anything half so untrue as that ‘I came with the intention of loving whomever I should find’  – – No! wreathed shells and hollows in ruins, and roofs of caves may transform a voice wonderfully, make more of it or less, or so change it as to almost alter, but turn a ‘no’ into a ‘yes’ can no echo (except the Irish one), and I said ‘no’ to such a charge, and still say ‘no.’ I did have a presentiment  – – and though it is hardly possible for me to look back on it now without lending it the true colours given to it by the event, yet I can put them aside, if I please, and remember that I not merely hoped it would not be so (not that the effect I expected to be produced would be less than in anticipation, certainly I did not hope that, but that it would range itself with the old feelings of simple reverence and sympathy and friendship, that I should love you as much as I supposed I could love, and no more) but in the confidence that nothing could occur to divert me from my intended way of life, I made  – – went on making arrangements to return to Italy. You know  – – did I not tell you  – – I wished to see you before I returned? And I had heard of you just so much as seemed to make it impossible such a relation could ever exist. I know very well, if you choose to refer to my letters you may easily bring them to bear a sense in parts, more agreeable to your own theory than to mine, the true one  – – but that was instinct, Providence  – – anything rather than foresight. Now I will convince you! yourself have noticed the difference between the letters and the writer; the greater ‘distance of the latter from you,’ why was that? Why, if not because the conduct began with him, with one who had now seen you  – – was no continuation of the conduct, as influenced by the feeling, of the letters  – – else, they, if near, should have enabled him, if but in the natural course of time and with increase of familiarity, to become nearer  – – but it was not so! The letters began by loving you after their way  – – but what a world-wide difference between that love and the true, the love from seeing and hearing and feeling, since you make me resolve, what now lies blended so harmoniously, into its component parts. Oh, I know what is old from what is new, and how chrystals may surround and glorify other vessels meant for ordinary service than Lord N’s! But I don’t know that handling may not snap them off, some of the more delicate ones; and if you let me, love, I will not again, ever again, consider how it came and whence, and when, so curiously, so pryingly, but believe that it was always so, and that it all came at once, all the same; the more unlikelinesses the better, for they set off the better the truth of truths that here, (‘how begot? how nourished?’)  – – here is the whole wondrous Ba filling my whole heart and soul; and over-filling it, because she is in all the world, too, where I look, where I fancy. At the same time, because all is so wondrous and so sweet, do you think that it would be so difficult for me to analyse it, and give causes to the effects in sufficiently numerous instances, even to ‘justify my presentiment?’ Ah, dear, dearest Ba, I could, could indeed, could account for all, or enough! But you are unconscious, I do believe, of your power, and the knowledge of it would be no added grace, perhaps! So let us go on  – – taking a lesson out of the world’s book in a different sense. You shall think I love you for  – – (tell me, you must, what for) while in my secret heart I know what my ‘mission of humanity’ means, and what telescopic and microscopic views it procures me. Enough  – – Wait, one word about the ‘too kind letters’  – – could not the same Montefiore understand that though he deserved not one of his thousand guineas, yet that he is in disgrace if they bate him of his next gift by merely ten? It is all too kind  – – but I shall feel the diminishing of the kindness, be very sure! Of that there is, however, not too alarming a sign in this dearest, because last of all  – – dearest letter of all  – – till the next! I looked yesterday over the ‘Tragedy,’ and think it will do after all. I will bring one part at least next time, and ‘Luria’ take away, if you let me, so all will be off my mind, and April and May be the welcomer? Don’t think I am going to take any extraordinary pains. There are some things in the ‘Tragedy’ I should like to preserve and print now, leaving the future to spring as it likes, in any direction, and these half-dead, half-alive works fetter it, if left behind.

Yet one thing will fetter it worse, only one thing  – – if you, in any respect, stay behind? You that in all else help me and will help me, beyond words  – – beyond dreams  – – if, because I find you, your own works stop  – – ‘then comes the Selah and the voice is hushed.’ Oh, no, no, dearest, so would the help cease to be help  – – the joy to be joy, Ba herself to be quite Ba, and my own Siren singing song for song. Dear love, will that be kind, and right, and like the rest? Write and promise that all shall be resumed, the romance-poem chiefly, and I will try and feel more yours than ever now. Am I not with you in the world, proud of you  – – and vain, too, very likely, which is all the sweeter if it is a sin as you teach me. Indeed dearest, I have set my heart on your fulfilling your mission  – – my heart is on it! Bless you, my Ba  – –

Your R.B.

I am so well as to have resumed the shower-bath (this morning)  – – and I walk, especially near the elms and stile  – – and mean to walk, and be very well  – – and you, dearest?

 

Tuesday.

February 24, 1846.

Ah, sweetest, in spite of our agreement, here is the note that sought not to go, but must  – – because, if there is no speaking of Mrs. Jamesons and such like without bringing in your dear name (not dearest name, my Ba!) what is the good of not writing it down, now, when I, though possessed with the love of it no more than usual, yet may speak, and to a hearer? And I have to thank you with all my heart for the good news of the increasing strength and less need for the opium  – – how I do thank you, my dearest  – – and desire to thank God through whose goodness it all is! This I could not but say now, to-morrow I will write at length, having been working a little this morning, with whatever effect. So now I will go out and see your elm-trees and gate, and think the thoughts over again, and coming home I shall perhaps find a letter.

Dearest, dearest  – – my perfect blessing you are!

May God continue his care for us. R.

 

February 24, 1846.

Ever dearest, it is only when you go away, when you are quite gone, out of the house and the street, that I get up and think properly, and with the right gratitude of your flowers. Such beautiful flowers you brought me this time too! looking like summer itself, and smelling! Doing the ‘honour due’ to the flowers, makes your presence a little longer with me, the sun shines back over the hill just by that time, and then drops, till the next letter.

If I had had the letter on Saturday as ought to have been, no, I could not have answered it so that you should have my answer on Sunday — no, I should still have had to write first.

Now you understand that I do not object to the writing first, but only to the hearing second. I would rather write than not — I! But to be written to is the chief gladness of course; and with all you say of liking to have my letters (which I like to hear quite enough indeed) you cannot pretend to think that yours are not more to me, most to me! Ask my guardian-angel and hear what he says! Yours will look another way for shame of measuring joys with him! Because as I have said before, and as he says now, you are all to me, all the light, all the life; I am living for you now. And before I knew you, what was I and where? What was the world to me, do you think? and the meaning of life? And now, when you come and go, and write and do not write, all the hours are chequered accordingly in so many squares of white and black, as if for playing at fox and goose  . . . only there is no fox, and I will not agree to be goose for one  . . . that is you perhaps, for being ‘too easily’ satisfied.

So my claim is that you are more to me than I can be to you at any rate. Mr. Fox said on Sunday that I was a ‘religious hermit’ who wrote ‘poems which ought to be read in a Gothic alcove’; and religious hermits, when they care to see visions, do it better, they all say, through fasting and flagellation and seclusion in dark places. St. Theresa, for instance, saw a clearer glory by such means, than your Sir Moses Montefiore through his hundred-guinea telescope. Think then, how every shadow of my life has helped to throw out into brighter, fuller significance, the light which comes to me from you  . . . think how it is the one light, seen without distractions.

I was thinking the other day that certainly and after all (or rather before all) I had loved you all my life unawares, that is, the idea of you. Women begin for the most part, (if ever so very little given to reverie) by meaning, in an aside to themselves, to love such and such an ideal, seen sometimes in a dream and sometimes in a book, and forswearing their ancient faith as the years creep on. I say a book, because I remember a friend of mine who looked everywhere for the original of Mr. Ward’s ‘Tremaine,’ because nothing would do for her, she insisted, except just that excess of so-called refinement, with the book-knowledge and the conventional manners, (loue qui peut, Tremaine), and ended by marrying a lieutenant in the Navy who could not spell. Such things happen every day, and cannot be otherwise, say the wise: — and this being otherwise with me is miraculous compensation for the trials of many years, though such abundant, overabundant compensation, that I cannot help fearing it is too much, as I know that you are too good and too high for me, and that by the degree in which I am raised up you are let down, for us two to find a level to meet on. One’s ideal must be above one, as a matter of course, you know. It is as far as one can reach with one’s eyes (soul-eyes), not reach to touch. And here is mine  . . . shall I tell you?  . . . even to the visible outward sign of the black hair and the complexion (why you might ask my sisters!) yet I would not tell you, if I could not tell you afterwards that, if it had been red hair quite, it had been the same thing, only I prove the coincidence out fully and make you smile half.

Yet indeed I did not fancy that I was to love you when you came to see me — no indeed  . . . any more than I did your caring on your side. My ambition when we began our correspondence, was simply that you should forget I was a woman (being weary and blasée of the empty written gallantries, of which I have had my share and all the more perhaps from my peculiar position which made them so without consequence), that you should forget that and let us be friends, and consent to teach me what you knew better than I, in art and human nature, and give me your sympathy in the meanwhile. I am a great hero-worshipper and had admired your poetry for years, and to feel that you liked to write to me and be written to was a pleasure and a pride, as I used to tell you I am sure, and then your letters were not like other letters, as I must not tell you again. Also you influenced me, in a way in which no one else did. For instance, by two or three half words you made me see you, and other people had delivered orations on the same subject quite without effect. I surprised everybody in this house by consenting to see you. Then, when you came, you never went away. I mean I had a sense of your presence constantly. Yes  . . . and to prove how free that feeling was from the remotest presentiment of what has occurred, I said to Papa in my unconsciousness the next morning  . . . ‘it is most extraordinary how the idea of Mr. Browning does beset me — I suppose it is not being used to see strangers, in some degree — but it haunts me  . . . it is a persecution.’ On which he smiled and said that ‘it was not grateful to my friend to use such a word.’ When the letter came . . ..

Do you know that all that time I was frightened of you? frightened in this way. I felt as if you had a power over me and meant to use it, and that I could not breathe or speak very differently from what you chose to make me. As to my thoughts, I had it in my head somehow that you read them as you read the newspaper — examined them, and fastened them down writhing under your long entomological pins — ah, do you remember the entomology of it all?

But the power was used upon me — and I never doubted that you had mistaken your own mind, the strongest of us having some exceptional weakness. Turning the wonder round in all lights, I came to what you admitted yesterday  . . . yes, I saw that very early  . . . that you had come here with the intention of trying to love whomever you should find,  . . . and also that what I had said about exaggerating the amount of what I could be to you, had just operated in making you more determined to justify your own presentiment in the face of mine. Well — and if that last clause was true a little, too  . . . why should I be sorry now  . . . and why should you have fancied for a moment, that the first could make me sorry. At first and when I did not believe that you really loved me, when I thought you deceived yourself, then, it was different. But now  . . . now  . . . when I see and believe your attachment for me, do you think that any cause in the world (except what diminished it) could render it less a source of joy to me? I mean as far as I myself am considered. Now if you ever fancy that I am vain of your love for me, you will be unjust, remember. If it were less dear, and less above me, I might be vain perhaps. But I may say before God and you, that of all the events of my life, inclusive of its afflictions, nothing has humbled me so much as your love. Right or wrong it may be, but true it is, and I tell you. Your love has been to me like God’s own love, which makes the receivers of it kneelers.

Why all this should be written, I do not know — but you set me thinking yesterday in that backward line, which I lean back to very often, and for once, as you made me write directly, why I wrote, as my thoughts went, that way.

Say how you are, beloved — and do not brood over that ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’ which I wish I had here with ‘Luria,’ because, so, you should not see it for a month at least. And take exercise and keep well — and remember how many letters I must have before Saturday. May God bless you. Do you want to hear me say

I cannot love you less . . .?

That is a doubtful phrase. And

I cannot love you more

is doubtful too, for reasons I could give. More or less, I really love you, but it does not sound right, even so, does it? I know what it ought to be, and will put it into the ‘seal’ and the ‘paper’ with the ineffable other things.

Dearest, do not go to St. Petersburg. Do not think of going, for fear it should come true and you should go, and while you were helping the Jews and teaching Nicholas, what (in that case) would become of your

Ba?

 

Saturday Morning.

February 23, 1846.

So all was altered, my love  – – and, instead of Miss T. and the other friend, I had your brother and Procter  – – to my great pleasure. After, I went to that place, and soon got away, and am very well this morning in the sunshine; which I feel with you, do I not? Yesterday after dinner we spoke of Mrs. Jameson, and, as my wont is  – – (Here your letter reaches me  – – let me finish this sentence now I have finished kissing you, dearest beyond all dearness  – – My own heart’s Ba!)  – – oh, as I am used, I left the talking to go on by itself, with the thought busied elsewhere, till at last my own voice startled me for I heard my tongue utter ‘Miss Barrett  . . . that is, Mrs. Jameson says’  . . . or ‘does  . . . or does not.’ I forget which! And if anybody noticed the gaucherie it must have been just your brother!

Now to these letters! I do solemnly, unaffectedly wonder how you can put so much pure felicity into an envelope so as that I shall get it as from the fount head. This to-day, those yesterday  – – there is, I see, and know, thus much goodness in line after line, goodness to be scientifically appreciated, proved there  – – but over and above, is it in the writing, the dots and traces, the seal, the paper  – – here does the subtle charm lie beyond all rational accounting for? The other day I stumbled on a quotation from J. Baptista Porta  – – wherein he avers that any musical instrument made out of wood possessed of medicinal properties retains, being put to use, such virtues undiminished,  – – and that, for instance, a sick man to whom you should pipe on a pipe of elder-tree would so receive all the advantage derivable from a decoction of its berries. From whence, by a parity of reasoning, I may discover, I think, that the very ink and paper were  – – ah, what were they? Curious thinking won’t do for me and the wise head which is mine, so I will lie and rest in my ignorance of content and understand that without any magic at all you simply wish to make one person  – – which of your free goodness proves to be your R.B.  – – to make me supremely happy, and that you have your wish  – – you do bless me! More and more, for the old treasure is piled undiminished and still the new comes glittering in. Dear, dear heart of my heart, life of my life, will this last, let me begin to ask? Can it be meant I shall live this to the end? Then, dearest, care also for the life beyond, and put in my mind how to testify here that I have felt, if I could not deserve that a gift beyond all gifts! I hope to work hard, to prove I do feel, as I say  – – it would be terrible to accomplish nothing now.

With which conviction  – – renewed conviction time by time, of your extravagance of kindness to me unworthy,  – – will it seem characteristically consistent when I pray you not to begin frightening me, all the same, with threats of writing less kindly? That must not be, love, for your sake now  – – if you had not thrown open those windows of heaven I should have no more imagined than that Syrian lord on whom the King leaned ‘how such things might be’  – – but, once their influence showered, I should know, too soon and easily, if they shut up again! You have committed your dear, dearest self to that course of blessing, and blessing on, on, for ever  – – so let all be as it is, pray, pray!

No  – – not all. No more, ever, of that strange suspicion  – – ‘insolent’  – – oh, what a word!  – – nor suppose I shall particularly wonder at its being fancied applicable to that, of all other passages of your letter! It is quite as reasonable to suspect the existence of such a quality there as elsewhere: how can such a thing, could such a thing come from you to me? But, dear Ba, do you know me better! Do feel that I know you, I am bold to believe, and that if you were to run at me with a pointed spear I should be sure it was a golden sanative, Machaon’s touch, for my entire good, that I was opening my heart to receive! As for words, written or spoken  – – I, who sin forty times in a day by light words, and untrue to the thought, I am certainly not used to be easily offended by other peoples’ words, people in the world. But your words! And about the ‘mission’; if it had not been a thing to jest at, I should not have begun, as I did  – – as you felt I did. I know now, what I only suspected then, and will tell you all the matter on Monday if you care to hear. The ‘humanity’ however, would have been unquestionable if I had chosen to exercise it towards the poor weak incapable creature that wants somebody, and urgently, I can well believe.

As for your apologue, it is naught  – – as you felt, and so broke off  – – for the baron knew well enough it was a spray of the magical tree which once planted in his domain would shoot up, and out, and all round, and be glorious with leaves and musical with birds’ nests, and a fairy safeguard and blessing thenceforward and for ever, when the foolish baton had been broken into ounces of gold, even if gold it were, and spent and vanished: for, he said, such gold lies in the highway, men pick it up, more of it or less; but this one slip of the flowering tree is all of it on this side Paradise. Whereon he laid it to his heart and was happy  – – in spite of his disastrous chase the night before, when so far from catching an unicorn, he saw not even a respectable prize-heifer, worth the oil-cake and rape-seed it had doubtless cost to rear her  – – ‘insolence!’

I found no opportunity of speaking to Mr. K. about Monday, but nothing was said of last Wednesday, and he must know I did not go yesterday. So, Monday is laughing in sunshine surely! Bless you, my sweetest. I love you with my whole heart; ever shall love you.

 

Friday Morning.

February 21, 1846.

As my sisters did not dine at home yesterday and I see nobody else in the evening, I never heard till just now and from Papa himself, that ‘George was invited to meet Mr. Browning and Mr. Procter.’ How surprised you will be. It must have been a sudden thought of Mr. Kenyon’s.

And I have been thinking, thinking since last night that I wrote you then a letter all but  . . . insolent  . . . which, do you know, I feel half ashamed to look back upon this morning — particularly what I wrote about ‘missions of humanity’ — now was it not insolent of me to write so? If I could take my letter again I would dip it into Lethe between the lilies, instead of the post office: — but I can’t — so if you wondered, you must forget as far as possible, and understand how it was, and that I was in brimming spirits when I wrote, from two causes  . . . first, because I had your letter which was a pure goodness of yours, and secondly because you were ‘noticeably’ better you said, or ‘noticeably well’ rather, to mind my quotations. So I wrote what I wrote, and gave it to Arabel when she came in at midnight, to give it to Henrietta who goes out before eight in the morning and often takes charge of my letters, and it was too late, at the earliest this morning, to feel a little ashamed. Miss Thomson told me that she had determined to change the type of the few pages of her letterpress which had been touched, and that therefore Mr. Burges’s revisions of my translations should be revised back again. She appears to be a very acute person, full of quick perceptions — naturally quick, and carefully trained — a little over anxious perhaps about mental lights, and opening her eyes still more than she sees, which is a common fault of clever people, if one must call it a fault. I like her, and she is kind and cordial. Will she ask you to help her book with a translation or two, I wonder. Perhaps — if the courage should come. Dearest, how I shall think of you this evening, and how near you will seem, not to be here. I had a letter from Mr. Mathews the other day, and smiled to read in it just what I had expected, that he immediately sent Landor’s verses on you to a few editors, friends of his, in order to their communication to the public. He received my apology for myself with the utmost graciousness. A kind good man he is.

After all, do you know, I am a little vexed that I should have even seemed to do wrong in my speech about the letters. It must have been wrong, if it seemed so to you, I fancy now. Only I really did no more mean to try your letters  . . . mine  . . . such as they are to me now, by the common critical measure, than the shepherds praised the pure tenor of the angels who sang ‘Peace upon earth’ to them. It was enough that they knew it for angels’ singing. So do you forgive me, beloved, and put away from you the thought that I have let in between us any miserable stuff ‘de métier,’ which I hate as you hate. And I will not say any more about it, not to run into more imprudences of mischief.

On the other hand I warn you against saying again what you began to say yesterday and stopped. Do not try it again. What may be quite good sense from me, is from you very much the reverse, and pray observe that difference. Or did you think that I was making my own road clear in the the thing I said about — ‘jilts’? No, you did not. Yet I am ready to repeat of myself as of others, that if I ceased to love you, I certainly would act out the whole consequence — but that is an impossible ‘if’ to my nature, supposing the conditions of it otherwise to be probable. I never loved anyone much and ceased to love that person. Ask every friend of mine, if I am given to change even in friendship! And to you . . .! Ah, but you never think of such a thing seriously — and you are conscious that you did not say it very sagely. You and I are in different positions. Now let me tell you an apologue in exchange for your Wednesday’s stories which I liked so, and mine perhaps may make you ‘a little wiser’ — who knows?

It befell that there stood in hall a bold baron, and out he spake to one of his serfs  . . . ‘Come thou; and take this baton of my baronie, and give me instead thereof that sprig of hawthorn thou holdest in thine hand.’ Now the hawthorn-bough was no larger a thing than might be carried by a wood-pigeon to the nest, when she flieth low, and the baronial baton was covered with fine gold, and the serf, turning it in his hands, marvelled greatly.

And he answered and said, ‘Let not my lord be in haste, nor jest with his servant. Is it verily his will that I should keep his golden baton? Let him speak again — lest it repent him of his gift.’

And the baron spake again that it was his will. ‘And I’ — he said once again — ‘shall it be lawful for me to keep this sprig of hawthorn, and will it not repent thee of thy gift?’

Then all the servants who stood in hall, laughed, and the serf’s hands trembled till they dropped the baton into the rushes, knowing that his lord did but jest . . ..

Which mine did not. Only, de te fabula narratur up to a point.

And I have your letter. ‘What did I expect?’ Why I expected just that, a letter in turn. Also I am graciously pleased (yes, and very much pleased!) to ‘let you write to-morrow.’ How you spoil me with goodness, which makes one ‘insolent’ as I was saying, now and then.

The worst is, that I write ‘too kind’ letters — I! — and what does that criticism mean, pray? It reminds me, at least, of  . . . now I will tell you what it reminds me of.

A few days ago Henrietta said to me that she was quite uncomfortable. She had written to somebody a not kind enough letter, she thought, and it might be taken ill. ‘Are you ever uncomfortable, Ba, after you have sent letters to the post?’ she asked me.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘sometimes, but from a reason just the very reverse of your reason, my letters, when they get into the post, seem too kind, — rather.’ And my sisters laughed  . . . laughed.

But if you think so beside, I must seriously set to work, you see, to correct that flagrant fault, and shall do better in time dis faventibus, though it will be difficult.

Mr. Kenyon’s dinner is a riddle which I cannot read. You are invited to meet Miss Thomson and Mr. Bayley and ‘no one else.’ George is invited to meet Mr. Browning and Mr. Procter and ‘no one else‘ — just those words. The ‘absolu‘ (do you remember Balzac’s beautiful story?) is just you and ‘no one else,’ the other elements being mere uncertainties, shifting while one looks for them.

Am I not writing nonsense to-night? I am not ‘too wise‘ in any case, which is some comfort. It puts one in spirits to hear of your being ‘well,’ ever and ever dearest. Keep so for me. May God bless you hour by hour. In every one of mine I am your own

Ba.

For Miss Mitford  . . .

But people are not angels quite  . . .

and she sees the whole world in stripes of black and white, it is her way. I feel very affectionately towards her, love her sincerely. She is affectionate to me beyond measure. Still, always I feel that if I were to vex her, the lower deep below the lowest deep would not be low enough for me. I always feel that. She would advertise me directly for a wretch proper.

Then, for all I said about never changing, I have ice enough over me just now to hold the sparrows! — in respect to a great crowd of people, and she is among them — for reasons — for reasons.

 

Friday Afternoon.

February 20, 1846.

Here is my Ba’s dearest first letter come four hours after the second, with ‘Mis-sent to Mitcham‘ written on its face as a reason,  – – one more proof of the negligence of somebody! But I do have it at last  – – what should I say? what do you expect me to say? And the first note seemed quite as much too kind as usual!

Let me write to-morrow, sweet? I am quite well and sure to mind all you bid me. I shall do no more than look in at that place (they are the cousins of a really good friend of mine, Dr. White  – – I go for him) if even that  – – for to-morrow night I must go out again, I fear  – – to pay the ordinary compliment for an invitation to the R.S.’s soirée at Lord Northampton’s. And then comes Monday  – – and to-night any unicorn I may see I will not find myself at liberty to catch. (N.B.  – – should you meditate really an addition to the ‘Elegant Extracts’  – – mind this last joke is none of mine but my father’s; when walking with me when a child, I remember, he bade a little urchin we found fishing with a stick and a string for sticklebacks in a ditch  – – ‘to mind that he brought any sturgeon he might catch to the king’  – – he having a claim on such a prize, by courtesy if not right).

As for Chorley, he is neither the one nor the other of those ugly things. One remembers Regan’s ‘Oh Heaven  – – so you will rail at me, when you are in the mood.’ But what a want of self-respect such judgments argue, or rather, want of knowledge what true self-respect is: ‘So I believed yesterday, and so now  – – and yet am neither hasty, nor inapprehensive, nor malevolent’  – – what then?

– – But I will say more of my mind  – – (not of that)  – – to-morrow, for time presses a little  – – so bless you my ever ever dearest  – – I love you wholly.

R.B.