Month: February 2018

February 12, 1846.

Ah, the ‘sortes’! Is it a double oracle — ‘swan and shadow’ — do you think? or do my eyes see double, dazzled by the light of it? ‘I shall love thee to eternity’ — I shall.

And as for the wine, I did not indeed misunderstand you ‘as my wont is,’ because I understood simply that ‘habitually’ you abstained from wine, and I meant exactly that perhaps it would be better for your health to take it habitually. It might, you know — not that I pretend to advise. Only when you look so much too pale sometimes, it comes into one’s thoughts that you ought not to live on cresses and cold water. Strong coffee, which is the nearest to a stimulant that I dare to take, as far as ordinary diet goes, will almost always deliver me from the worst of headaches, but there is no likeness, no comparison. And your ‘quite well’ means that dreadful ‘turning’ still  . . . still! Now do not think any more of the Domizias, nor ‘try to remember,’ which is the most wearing way of thinking. The more I read and read your ‘Luria,’ the grander it looks, and it will make its own road with all understanding men, you need not doubt, and still less need you try to make me uneasy about the harm I have done in ‘coming between,’ and all the rest of it. I wish never to do you greater harm than just that, and then with a white conscience ‘I shall love thee to eternity! . . . dearest! You have made a golden work out of your ‘golden-hearted Luria’ — as once you called him to me, and I hold it in the highest admiration — should, if you were precisely nothing to me. And still, the fifth act rises! That is certain. Nevertheless I seem to agree with you that your hand has vacillated in your Domizia. We do not know her with as full a light on her face, as the other persons — we do not see the panther, — no, certainly we do not — but you will do a very little for her which will be everything, after a time  . . . and I assure you that if you were to ask for the manuscript before, you should not have a page of it — now, you are only to rest. What a work to rest upon! Do consider what a triumph it is! The more I read, the more I think of it, the greater it grows — and as to ‘faded lines,’ you never cut a pomegranate that was redder in the deep of it. Also, no one can say ‘This is not clearly written.’ The people who are at ‘words of one syllable’ may be puzzled by you and Wordsworth together this time  . . . as far as the expression goes. Subtle thoughts you always must have, in and out of ‘Sordello’ — and the objectors would find even Plato (though his medium is as lucid as the water that ran beside the beautiful plane-tree!) a little difficult perhaps.

To-day Mr. Kenyon came, and do you know, he has made a beatific confusion between last Saturday and next Saturday, and said to me he had told Miss Thomson to mind to come on Friday if she wished to see me  . . . ‘remembering’ (he added) ‘that Mr. Browning took Saturday!!’ So I let him mistake the one week for the other — ‘Mr. Browning took Saturday,’ it was true, both ways. Well — and then he went on to tell me that he had heard from Mrs. Jameson who was at Brighton and unwell, and had written to say this and that to him, and to enquire besides — now, what do you think, she enquired besides? ‘how you and  . . . Browning were’ said Mr. Kenyon — I write his words. He is coming, perhaps to-morrow, or perhaps Sunday — Saturday is to have a twofold safety. That is, if you are not ill again. Dearest, you will not think of coming if you are ill  . . . unwell even. I shall not be frightened next time, as I told you — I shall have the precedent. Before, I had to think! ‘It has never happened so — there must be a cause — and if it is a very, very, bad cause, why no one will tell me  . . . it will not seem my concern’ — that was my thought on Saturday. But another time  . . . only, if it is possible to keep well, do keep well, beloved, and think of me instead of Domizia, and let there be no other time for your suffering  . . . my waiting is nothing. I shall remember for the future that you may have the headache — and do you remember it too!

For Mr. Horne I take your testimony gladly and believingly. She blots with her eyes sometimes. She hates  . . . and loves, in extreme degrees. We have, once or twice or thrice, been on the border of mutual displeasure, on this very subject, for I grew really vexed to observe the trust on one side and the dyspathy on the other — using the mildest of words. You see, he found himself, down in Berkshire, in quite a strange element of society, — he, an artist in his good and his evil, — and the people there, ‘county families,’ smoothly plumed in their conventions, and classing the ringlets and the aboriginal way of using water-glasses among offences against the Moral Law. Then, meaning to be agreeable, or fascinating perhaps, made it twenty times worse. Writing in albums about the graces, discoursing meditated impromptus at picnics, playing on the guitar in fancy dresses, — all these things which seemed to poor Orion as natural as his own stars I dare say, and just the things suited to the genus poet, and to himself specifically, — were understood by the natives and their ‘rural deities’ to signify, that he intended to marry one half the county, and to run away with the other. But Miss Mitford should have known better — she should. And she would have known better, if she had liked him — for the liking could have been unmade by no such offences. She is too fervent a friend — she can be. Generous too, she can be without an effort; and I have had much affection from her — and accuse myself for seeming to have less — but —

May God bless you! — I end in haste after this long lingering.

Your

Ba.

Not unwell — I am not! I forgot it, which proves how I am not.

 

Wednesday Morning.

February 11, 1846.

My sweetest ‘plague,’ did I really write that sentence so, without gloss or comment in close vicinity? I can hardly think it  – – but you know well, well where the real plague lay,  – – that I thought of you as thinking, in your infinite goodness, of untoward chances which had kept me from you  – – and if I did not dwell more particularly on that thinking of yours, which became as I say, in the knowledge of it, a plague when brought before me with the thought of you,  – – if I passed this slightly over it was for pure unaffected shame that I should take up the care and stop the ‘reverie serene’ of  – – ah, the rhyme lets me say  – – ‘sweetest eyes were ever seen’  – – were ever seen! And yourself confess, in the Saturday’s note, to having been ‘unhappy for half an hour till’ &c. &c.  – – and do not I feel that here, and am not I plagued by it?

Well, having begun at the end of your letter, dearest, I will go back gently (that is backwards) and tell you I ‘sate thinking’ too, and with no greater comfort, on the cold yesterday. The pond before the window was frozen (‘so as to bear sparrows’ somebody said) and I knew you would feel it  – – ‘but you are not unwell’  – – really? thank God  – – and the month wears on. Beside I have got a reassurance  – – you asked me once if I were superstitious, I remember (as what do I forget that you say?). However that may be, yesterday morning as I turned to look for a book, an old fancy seized me to try the ‘sortes’ and dip into the first page of the first I chanced upon, for my fortune; I said ‘what will be the event of my love for Her’  – – in so many words  – – and my book turned out to be  – – ‘Cerutti’s Italian Grammar!’  – – a propitious source of information  . . . the best to be hoped, what could it prove but some assurance that you were in the Dative Case, or I, not in the ablative absolute? I do protest that, with the knowledge of so many horrible pitfalls, or rather spring guns with wires on every bush  . . . such dreadful possibilities of stumbling on ‘conditional moods,’ ‘imperfect tenses,’ ‘singular numbers,’  – – I should have been too glad to put up with the safe spot for the sole of my foot though no larger than afforded by such a word as ‘Conjunction,’ ‘possessive pronoun  – – ,’ secure so far from poor Tippet’s catastrophe. Well, I ventured, and what did I find? This  – – which I copy from the book now  – – ‘If we love in the other world as we do in this, I shall love thee to eternity‘  – – from ‘Promiscuous Exercises,’ to be translated into Italian, at the end.

And now I reach Horne and his characteristics  – – of which I can tell you with confidence that they are grossly misrepresented where not altogether false  – – whether it proceed from inability to see what one may see, or disinclination, I cannot say. I know very little of Horne, but my one visit to him a few weeks ago would show the uncandidness of those charges: for instance, he talked a good deal about horses, meaning to ride in Ireland, and described very cleverly an old hunter he had hired once,  – – how it galloped and could not walk; also he propounded a theory of the true method of behaving in the saddle when a horse rears, which I besought him only to practise in fancy on the sofa, where he lay telling it. So much for professing his ignorance in that matter! On a sofa he does throw himself  – – but when thrown there, he can talk, with Miss Mitford’s leave, admirably,  – – I never heard better stories than Horne’s  – – some Spanish-American incidents of travel want printing  – – or have been printed, for aught I know. That he cares for nobody’s poetry is false, he praises more unregardingly of his own retreat, more unprovidingly for his own fortune,  – – (do I speak clearly?)  – – less like a man who himself has written somewhat in the ‘line’ of the other man he is praising  – – which ‘somewhat’ has to be guarded in its interests, &c., less like the poor professional praise of the ‘craft’ than any other I ever met  – – instance after instance starting into my mind as I write. To his income I never heard him allude  – – unless one should so interpret a remark to me this last time we met, that he had been on some occasion put to inconvenience by somebody’s withholding ten or twelve pounds due to him for an article, and promised in the confidence of getting them to a tradesman, which does not look like ‘boasting of his income’! As for the heiresses  – – I don’t believe one word of it, of the succession and transition and trafficking. Altogether, what miserable ‘set-offs’ to the achievement of an ‘Orion,’ a ‘Marlowe,’ a ‘Delora’! Miss Martineau understands him better.

Now I come to myself and my health. I am quite well now  – – at all events, much better, just a little turning in the head  – – since you appeal to my sincerity. For the coffee  – – thank you, indeed thank you, but nothing after the ‘oenomel‘ and before half past six. I know all about that song and its Greek original if Horne does not  – – and can tell you  – – , how truly . . .!

And by the bye, I have misled you as my wont is, on the subject of wine, ‘that I do not touch it’  – – not habitually, nor so as to feel the loss of it, that on a principle; but every now and then of course.

And now, ‘Luria’, so long as the parts cohere and the whole is discernible, all will be well yet. I shall not look at it, nor think of it, for a week or two, and then see what I have forgotten. Domizia is all wrong; I told you I knew that her special colour had faded,  – – it was but a bright line, and the more distinctly deep that it was so narrow. One of my half dozen words on my scrap of paper ‘pro memoria’ was, under the ‘Act V.’ ‘she loves‘  – – to which I could not bring it, you see! Yet the play requires it still,  – – something may yet be effected, though . . .. I meant that she should propose to go to Pisa with him, and begin a new life. But there is no hurry  – – I suppose it is no use publishing much before Easter  – – I will try and remember what my whole character did mean  – – it was, in two words, understood at the time by ‘panther’s-beauty’  – – on which hint I ought to have spoken! But the work grew cold, and you came between, and the sun put out the fire on the hearth nec vult panthera domari!

For the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’  – – that will surprise you, I think. There is no trace of you there,  – – you have not put out the black face of it  – – it is all sneering and disillusion  – – and shall not be printed but burned if you say the word  – – now wait and see and then say! I will bring the first of the two parts next Saturday.

And now, dearest, I am with you  – – and the other matters are forgotten already. God bless you, I am ever your own R. You will write to me I trust? And tell me how to bear the cold.

 

Tuesday.

February 10, 1846.

Ever dearest, I have been possessed by your ‘Luria’ just as you would have me, and I should like you to understand, not simply how fine a conception the whole work seems to me, so developed, but how it has moved and affected me, without the ordinary means and dialect of pathos, by that calm attitude of moral grandeur which it has — it is very fine. For the execution, that too is worthily done — although I agree with you, that a little quickening and drawing in closer here and there, especially towards the close where there is no time to lose, the reader feels, would make the effect stronger — but you will look to it yourself — and such a conception must come in thunder and lightning, as a chief god would — must make its own way  . . . and will not let its poet go until he speaks it out to the ultimate syllable. Domizia disappoints me rather. You might throw a flash more of light on her face — might you not? But what am I talking? I think it a magnificent work — a noble exposition of the ingratitude of men against their ‘heroes,’ and (what is peculiar) an humane exposition  . . . not misanthropical, after the usual fashion of such things: for the return, the remorse, saves it — and the ‘Too late’ of the repentance and compensation covers with its solemn toll the fate of persecutors and victim. We feel that Husain himself could only say afterward  . . . ‘That is done.‘ And now — surely you think well of the work as a whole? You cannot doubt, I fancy, of the grandeur of it — and of the subtilty too, for it is subtle — too subtle perhaps for stage purposes, though as clear,  . . . as to expression  . . . as to medium  . . . as ‘bricks and mortar’  . . . shall I say?

There is one of the fine thoughts. And how fine he is, your Luria, when he looks back to his East, through the half-pardon and half-disdain of Domizia. Ah — Domizia! would it hurt her to make her more a woman  . . . a little  . . . I wonder!

So I shall begin from the beginning, from the first act, and read through  . . . since I have read the fifth twice over. And remember, please, that I am to read, besides, the ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’ and that I shall dun you for it presently. Because you told me it was finished, otherwise I would not speak a word, feeling that you want rest, and that I, who am anxious about you, would be crossing my own purposes by driving you into work. It is the overwork, the overwear of mind and heart (for the feelings come as much into use as the thoughts in these productions), that makes you so pale, dearest, that distracts your head, and does all the harm on Saturdays and so many other days besides.

To-day — how are you? It was right and just for me to write this time, after the two dear notes  . . . the one on Saturday night which made me praise you to myself and think you kinder than kindest, and the other on Monday morning which took me unaware — such a note, that was! Oh it was right and just that I should not teaze you to send me another after those two others, — yet I was very near doing it — yet I should like infinitely to hear to-day how you are — unreasonable! — Well! you will write now — you will answer what I am writing, and mention yourself particularly and sincerely — Remember! Above all, you will care for your head. I have been thinking since yesterday that, coming out of the cold, you might not have refused as usual to take something  . . . hot wine and water, or coffee? Will you have coffee with me on Saturday? ‘Shunning the salt,’ will you have the sugar? And do tell me, for I have been thinking, are you careful as to diet — and will such sublunary things as coffee and tea and cocoa affect your head — for or against! Then you do not touch wine — and perhaps you ought. Surely something may be found or done to do you good. If it had not been for me, you would be travelling in Italy by this time and quite well perhaps.

This morning I had a letter from Miss Martineau and really read it to the end without thinking it too long, which is extraordinary for me just now, and scarcely ordinary in the letter, and indeed it is a delightful letter, as letters go, which are not yours! You shall take it with you on Saturday to read, and you shall see that it is worth reading, and interesting for Wordsworth’s sake and her own. Mr. Kenyon has it now, because he presses on to have her letters, and I should not like to tell him that you had it first from me . . .. Also Saturday will be time enough.

Oh — poor Mr. Horne! shall I tell you some of his offences? That he desires to be called at four in the morning, and does not get up till eight. That he pours libations on his bare head out of the water-glasses at great dinners. That being in the midst of sportsmen — rural aristocrats — lords of soil — and all talking learnedly of pointers’ noses and spaniels’ ears; he has exclaimed aloud in a mocking paraphrase — ‘If I were to hold up a horse by the tail.’ The wit is certainly doubtful! — That being asked to dinner on Tuesday, he will go on Wednesday instead. — That he throws himself at full length with a gesture approaching to a ‘summerset’ on satin sofas. That he giggles. That he only thinks he can talk. That his ignorance on all subjects is astounding. That he never read the old ballads, nor saw Percy’s collection. That he asked who wrote ‘Drink to me only with thine eyes.’ That after making himself ridiculous in attempting to speak at a public meeting, he said to a compassionate friend ‘I got very well out of that.’ That, in writing his work on Napoleon, he employed a man to study the subject for him. That he cares for nobody’s poetry or fame except his own, and considers Tennyson chiefly illustrious as being his contemporary. That, as to politics, he doesn’t care ‘which side.’ That he is always talking of ‘my shares,’ ‘my income,’ as if he were a Kilmansegg. Lastly (and understand, this is my ‘lastly’ and not Miss Mitford’s, who is far from being out of breath so soon) that he has a mania for heiresses — that he has gone out at half past five and ‘proposed’ to Miss M or N with fifty thousand pounds, and being rejected (as the lady thought fit to report herself) came back to tea and the same evening ‘fell in love’ with Miss O or P  . . . with forty thousand — went away for a few months, and upon his next visit, did as much to a Miss Q or W, on the promise of four blood horses — has a prospect now of a Miss R or S — with hounds, perhaps.

Too, too bad — isn’t it? I would repeat none of it except to you — and as to the worst part, the last, why some may be coincidence, and some, exaggeration, for I have not the least doubt that every now and then a fine poetical compliment was turned into a serious thing by the listener, and then the poor poet had critics as well as listeners all round him. Also, he rather ‘wears his heart on his sleeve,’ there is no denying — and in other respects he is not much better, perhaps, than other men. But for the base traffic of the affair — I do not believe a word. He is too generous — has too much real sensibility. I fought his battle, poor Orion. ‘And so,’ she said ‘you believe it possible for a disinterested man to become really attached to two women, heiresses, on the same day?’ I doubted the fact. And then she showed me a note, an autograph note from the poet, confessing the M or N part of the business — while Miss O or P confessed herself, said Miss Mitford. But I persisted in doubting, notwithstanding the lady’s confessions, or convictions, as they might be. And just think of Mr. Horne not having tact enough to keep out of these multitudinous scrapes, for those few days which on three separate occasions he paid Miss Mitford in a neighbourhood where all were strangers to him, — and never outstaying his week! He must have been foolish, read it all how we may.

And so am I, to write this ‘personal talk’ to you when you will not care for it — yet you asked me, and it may make you smile, though Wordsworth’s tea-kettle outsings it all.

When your Monday letter came, I was reading the criticism on Hunt and his Italian poets, in the Examiner. How I liked to be pulled by the sleeve to your translations! — How I liked everything! — Pulci, Pietro  . . . and you, best!

Yet here’s a naiveté which I found in your letter! I will write it out that you may read it —

‘However it’ (the headache) ‘was no sooner gone in a degree, than a worse plague came — I sate thinking of you.’

Very satisfactory that is, and very clear.

May God bless you dearest, dearest! Be careful of yourself. The cold makes me languid, as heat is apt to make everybody; but I am not unwell, and keep up the fire and the thoughts of you.

Your worse  . . . worst plague

Your own

Ba.

I shall hear? yes! And admire my obedience in having written ‘a long letter’ to the letter!

 

Sunday Morning.

February 9, 1846.

My dearest  – – there are no words,  – – nor will be to-morrow, nor even in the Island  – – I know that! But I do love you.

My arms have been round you for many minutes since the last word  – –

I am quite well now  – – my other note will have told you when the change began  – – I think I took too violent a shower bath, with a notion of getting better in as little time as possible,  – – and the stimulus turned mere feverishness to headache. However, it was no sooner gone, in a degree, than a worse plague came. I sate thinking of you  – – but I knew my note would arrive at about four o’clock or a little later  – – and I thought the visit for the quarter of an hour would as effectually prevent to-morrow’s meeting as if the whole two hours’ blessing had been laid to heart  – – to-morrow I shall see you, Ba  – – my sweetest. But there are cold winds blowing to-day  – – how do you bear them, my Ba? ‘Care‘ you, pray, pray, care for all I care about  – – and be well, if God shall please, and bless me as no man ever was blessed! Now I kiss you, and will begin a new thinking of you  – – and end, and begin, going round and round in my circle of discovery,  – – My lotos-blossom! because they loved the lotos, were lotos-lovers,  – – λωτου τ’ ερωτες, as Euripides writes in the Τρωαδες.

Your own

P.S. See those lines in the Athenæum on Pulci with Hunt’s translation  – – all wrong  – – ‘che non si sente,’ being  – – ‘that one does not hear him’ i.e. the ordinarily noisy fellow  – – and the rest, male, pessime! Sic verte, meo periculo, mî ocelle!

Now Ba thinks nothing can be worse than that? Then read this which I really told Hunt and got his praise for. Poor dear wonderful persecuted Pietro d’Abano wrote this quatrain on the people’s plaguing him about his mathematical studies and wanting to burn him  – – he helped to build Padua Cathedral, wrote a Treatise on Magic still extant, and passes for a conjuror in his country to this day  – – when there is a storm the mothers tell the children that he is in the air; his pact with the evil one obliged him to drink no milk; no natural human food! You know Tieck’s novel about him? Well, this quatrain is said, I believe truly, to have been discovered in a well near Padua some fifty years ago.

Affecting, is it not, in its simple, child like plaining? Now so, if I remember, I turned it  – – word for word  – –

Say that you forgive me to-morrow!

[The following is in E.B.B.’s handwriting.]

 

February 7, 1846.

The clock strikes  – – three; and I am here, not with you  – – and my ‘fractious’ headache at the very worst got suddenly better just now, and is leaving me every minute  – – as if to make me aware, with an undivided attention, that at this present you are waiting for me, and soon will be wondering  – – and it would be so easy now to dress myself and walk or run or ride  – – do anything that led to you  . . . but by no haste in the world could I reach you, I am forced to see, before a quarter to five  – – by which time I think my letter must arrive. Dear, dearest Ba, did you but know how vexed I am  – – with myself, with  – – this is absurd, of course. The cause of it all was my going out last night  – – yet that, neither, was to be helped, the party having been twice put off before  – – once solely on my account. And the sun shines, and you would shine  – –

Monday is to make all the amends in its power, is it not? Still, still I have lost my day.

Bless you, my ever-dearest.

Your R.

 

Saturday.

February 7, 1846.

I felt it must be so  . . . that something must be the matter,  . . . and I had been so really unhappy for half an hour, that your letter which comes now at four, seems a little better, with all its bad news, than my fancies took upon themselves to be, without instruction. Now was it right to go out yesterday when you were unwell, and to a great dinner? — but I shall not reproach you, dearest, dearest — I have no heart for it at this moment. As to Monday, of course it is as you like  . . . if you are well enough on Monday  . . . if it should be thought wise of you to come to London through the noise  . . . if  . . . you understand all the ifs  . . . and among them the greatest if of all,  . . . for if you do love me  . . . care for me even, you will not do yourself harm or run any risk of harm by going out anywhere too soon. On Monday, in case you are considered well enough, and otherwise Tuesday, Wednesday — I leave it to you. Still I will ask one thing, whether you come on Monday or not. Let me have a single line by the nearest post to say how you are. Perhaps for to-night it is not possible — oh no, it is nearly five now! but a word written on Sunday would be with me early on Monday morning, and I know you will let me have it, to save some of the anxious thoughts  . . . to break them in their course with some sort of certainty! May God bless you dearest of all! — I thought of you on Thursday, but did not speak of you, not even when Miss Mitford called Hood the greatest poet of the age  . . . she had been depreciating Carlyle, so I let you lie and wait on the same level,  . . . that shelf of the rock which is above tide mark! I was glad even, that she did not speak of you; and, under cover of her speech of others, I had my thoughts of you deeply and safely. When she had gone at half past six, moreover, I grew over-hopeful, and made up my fancy to have a letter at eight! The branch she had pulled down, sprang upward skyward  . . . to that high possibility of a letter! Which did not come that day  . . . no! — and I revenged myself by writing a letter to you, which was burnt afterwards because I would not torment you for letters. Last night, came a real one — dearest! So we could not keep our sabbath to-day! It is a fast day instead,  . . . on my part. How should I feel (I have been thinking to myself), if I did not see you on Saturday, and could not hope to see you on Monday, nor on Tuesday, nor on Wednesday, nor Thursday nor Friday, nor Saturday again — if all the sabbaths were gone out of the world for me! May God bless you! — it has grown to be enough prayer! — as you are enough (and all, besides) for

Your own

Ba.

 

Saturday Morning.
February 7, 1846.

Dearest, to my sorrow I must, I fear, give up the delight of seeing you this morning. I went out unwell yesterday, and a long noisy dinner with speech-making, with a long tiresome walk at the end of it  – – these have given me such a bewildering headache that I really see some reason in what they say here about keeping the house. Will you forgive me  – – and let me forget it all on Monday? On Monday  – – unless I am told otherwise by the early post  – – And God bless you ever

Your own  – –

Friday.

February 6, 1846.

If I said you ‘gave me pain’ in anything, it was in the only way ever possible for you, my dearest  – – by giving yourself, in me, pain  – – being unjust to your own right and power as I feel them at my heart: and in that way, I see you will go on to the end, I getting called  – – in this very letter  – – ‘generous’ &c. Well, let me fancy you see very, very deep into future chances and how I should behave on occasion. I shall hardly imitate you, I whose sense of the present and its claims of gratitude already is beyond expression.

All the kind explaining about the opium makes me happier. ‘Slowly and gradually’ what may not be done? Then see the bright weather while I write  – – lilacs, hawthorn, plum-trees all in bud; elders in leaf, rose-bushes with great red shoots; thrushes, whitethroats, hedge sparrows in full song  – – there can, let us hope, be nothing worse in store than a sharp wind, a week of it perhaps  – – and then comes what shall come  – –

And Miss Mitford yesterday  – – and has she fresh fears for you of my evil influence and Origenic power of ‘raying out darkness’ like a swart star? Why, the common sense of the world teaches that there is nothing people at fault in any faculty of expression are so intolerant of as the like infirmity in others  – – whether they are unconscious of, or indulgent to their own obscurity and fettered organ, the hindrance from the fettering of their neighbours’ is redoubled. A man may think he is not deaf, or, at least, that you need not be so much annoyed by his deafness as you profess  – – but he will be quite aware, to say the least of it, when another man can’t hear him; he will certainly not encourage him to stop his ears. And so with the converse; a writer who fails to make himself understood, as presumably in my case, may either believe in his heart that it is not so  . . . that only as much attention and previous instructedness as the case calls for, would quite avail to understand him; or he may open his eyes to the fact and be trying hard to overcome it: but on which supposition is he led to confirm another in his unintelligibility? By the proverbial tenderness of the eye with the mote for the eye with the beam? If that beam were just such another mote  – – then one might sympathize and feel no such inconvenience  – – but, because I have written a ‘Sordello,’ do I turn to just its double, Sordello the second, in your books, and so perforce see nothing wrong? ‘No’  – – it is supposed  – – ‘but something as obscure in its way.’ Then down goes the bond of union at once, and I stand no nearer to view your work than the veriest proprietor of one thought and the two words that express it without obscurity at all  – – ‘bricks and mortar.’ Of course an artist’s whole problem must be, as Carlyle wrote to me, ‘the expressing with articulate clearness the thought in him’  – – I am almost inclined to say that clear expression should be his only work and care  – – for he is born, ordained, such as he is  – – and not born learned in putting what was born in him into words  – – what ever can be clearly spoken, ought to be. But ‘bricks and mortar’ is very easily said  – – and some of the thoughts in ‘Sordello’ not so readily even if Miss Mitford were to try her hand on them.

I look forward to a real life’s work for us both. I shall do all,  – – under your eyes and with your hand in mine,  – – all I was intended to do: may but you as surely go perfecting  – – by continuing  – – the work begun so wonderfully  – – ‘a rose-tree that beareth seven-times seven’  – –

I am forced to dine in town to-day with an old friend  – – ‘to-morrow’ always begins half the day before, like a Jewish sabbath. Did your sister tell you that I met her on the stairs last time? She did not tell you that I had almost passed by her  – – the eyes being still elsewhere and occupied. Now let me write out that  – – no  – – I will send the old ballad I told you of, for the strange coincidence  – – and it is very charming beside, is it not? Now goodbye, my sweetest, dearest  – – and tell me good news of yourself to-morrow, and be but half a quarter as glad to see me as I shall be blessed in seeing you. God bless you ever.

Your own

R.

 

February 5, 1846.

But I did not — dear, dearest — no indeed, I did not mean any harm about the letter. I wanted to show you how you had given me pleasure — and so, — did I give you pain? was that my ingenuity? Forgive my unhappiness in it, and let it be as if it had not been. Only I will just say that what made me talk about ‘the thorn in the flesh’ from that letter so long, was a sort of conviction of your having put into it as much of the truth, your truth, as admitted of the ultimate purpose of it, and not the least, slightest doubt of the key you gave me to the purpose in question. And so forgive me. Why did you set about explaining, as if I were doubting you? When you said once that it ‘did not come and go,’ — was it not enough? enough to make me feel happy as I told you? Did I require you to write a letter like this? Now think for a moment, and know once for all, how from the beginning to these latter days and through all possible degrees of crisis, you have been to my apprehension and gratitude, the best, most consistent, most noble  . . . the words falter that would speak of it all. In nothing and at no moment have you — I will not say — failed to me, but spoken or acted unworthily of yourself at the highest. What have you ever been to me except too generous? Ah — if I had been only half as generous, it is true that I never could have seen you again after that first meeting — it was the straight path perhaps. But I had not courage — I shrank from the thought of it — and then  . . . besides  . . . I could not believe that your mistake was likely to last, — I concluded that I might keep my friend.

Why should any remembrance be painful to you? I do not understand. Unless indeed I should grow painful to you  . . . I myself! — seeing that every remembered separate thing has brought me nearer to you, and made me yours with a deeper trust and love.

And for that letter  . . . do you fancy that in my memory the sting is not gone from it? — and that I do not carry the thought of it, as the Roman maidens, you speak of, their cool harmless snakes, at my heart always? So let the poor letter be forgiven, for the sake of the dear letter that was burnt, forgiven by you — until you grow angry with me instead — just till then.

And that you should care so much about the opium! Then I must care, and get to do with less — at least. On the other side of your goodness and indulgence (a very little way on the other side) it might strike you as strange that I who have had no pain — no acute suffering to keep down from its angles — should need opium in any shape. But I have had restlessness till it made me almost mad: at one time I lost the power of sleeping quite — and even in the day, the continual aching sense of weakness has been intolerable — besides palpitation — as if one’s life, instead of giving movement to the body, were imprisoned undiminished within it, and beating and fluttering impotently to get out, at all the doors and windows. So the medical people gave me opium — a preparation of it, called morphine, and ether — and ever since I have been calling it my amreeta draught, my elixir, — because the tranquillizing power has been wonderful. Such a nervous system I have — so irritable naturally, and so shattered by various causes, that the need has continued in a degree until now, and it would be dangerous to leave off the calming remedy, Mr. Jago says, except very slowly and gradually. But slowly and gradually something may be done — and you are to understand that I never increased upon the prescribed quantity  . . . prescribed in the first instance — no! Now think of my writing all this to you! —

And after all the lotus-eaters are blessed beyond the opium-eaters; and the best of lotuses are such thoughts as I know.

Dear Miss Mitford comes to-morrow, and I am not glad enough. Shall I have a letter to make me glad? She will talk, talk, talk  . . . and I shall be hoping all day that not a word may be talked of  . . . you: — a forlorn hope indeed! There’s a hope for a day like Thursday which is just in the middle between a Tuesday and a Saturday!

Your head  . . . is it  . . . how is it? tell me. And consider again if it could be possible that I could ever desire to reproach you  . . . in what I said about the letter.

May God bless you, best and dearest. If you are the compensation blessed is the evil that fell upon me: and that, I can say before God.

Your Ba.

 

Tuesday Morning.

February 4, 1846.

You ought hardly,  – – ought you, my Ba?  – – to refer to that letter or any expression in it; I had  – – and have, I trust  – – your forgiveness for what I wrote, meaning to be generous or at least just, God knows. That, and the other like exaggerations were there to serve the purpose of what you properly call a crisis. I did believe,  – – taking an expression, in the note that occasioned mine, in connection with an excuse which came in the postscript for not seeing me on the day previously appointed, I did fully believe that you were about to deny me admittance again unless I blotted out  – – not merely softened down  – – the past avowal. All was wrong, foolish, but from a good notion, I dare to say. And then, that particular exaggeration you bring most painfully to my mind  – – that does not, after all, disagree with what I said and you repeat  – – does it, if you will think? I said my other ‘likings‘ (as you rightly set it down) used to ‘come and go,’ and that my love for you did not, and that is true; the first clause as the last of the sentence, for my sympathies are very wide and general,  – – always have been  – – and the natural problem has been the giving unity to their object, concentrating them instead of dispersing. I seem to have foretold, foreknown you in other likings of mine  – – now here  . . . when the liking ‘came‘  . . . and now elsewhere  . . . when as surely the liking ‘went‘: and if they had stayed before the time would that have been a comfort to refer to? On the contrary, I am as little likely to be led by delusions as can be,  – – for Romeo thinks he loves Rosaline, and is excused on all hands  – – whereas I saw the plain truth without one mistake, and ‘looked to like, if looking liking moved  – – and no more deep did I endart mine eye’  – – about which, first I was very sorry, and after rather proud  – – all which I seem to have told you before.  – – And now, when my whole heart and soul find you, and fall on you, and fix forever, I am to be dreadfully afraid the joy cannot last, seeing that

– – it is so baseless a fear that no illustration will serve! Is it gone now, dearest, ever-dearest?

And as you amuse me sometimes, as now, by seeming surprised at some chance expression of a truth which is grown a veriest commonplace to me  – – like Charles Lamb’s ‘letter to an elderly man whose education had been neglected’  – – when he finds himself involuntarily communicating truths above the capacity and acquirements of his friend, and stops himself after this fashion  – – ‘If you look round the world, my dear Sir  – – for it is round!  – – so I will make you laugh at me, if you will, for my inordinate delight at hearing the success of your experiment with the opium. I never dared, nor shall dare inquire into your use of that  – – for, knowing you utterly as I do, I know you only bend to the most absolute necessity in taking more or less of it  – – so that increase of the quantity must mean simply increased weakness, illness  – – and diminution, diminished illness. And now there is diminution! Dear, dear Ba  – – you speak of my silly head and its ailments  . . . well, and what brings on the irritation? A wet day or two spent at home; and what ends it all directly?  – – just an hour’s walk! So with me: now,  – – fancy me shut in a room for seven years  . . . it is  – – no, don’t see, even in fancy, what is left of me then! But you, at the end; this is all the harm: I wonder  . . . I confirm my soul in its belief in perpetual miraculousness  . . . I bless God with my whole heart that it is thus with you! And so, I will not even venture to say  – – so superfluous it were, though with my most earnest, most loving breath (I who do love you more at every breath I draw; indeed, yes dearest,)  – – I will not bid you  – – that is, pray you  – – to persevere! You have all my life bound to yours  – – save me from my ‘seven years’  – – and God reward you!

Your own R.