Month: April 2018

[Postmark: April 29, 1846]

Oh, post, post, how I am plagued by what uses to de-
light me ! No letter, — and I cannot but think you have
written one, my Ba ! It will come perhaps at 3 o’clock.
Shame and again, shame !

Meantime I will tell you what a dear, merciful Ba you
are, in only threatening me with daggers, — when you play
at threatening, — instead of declaring you will frown at me.
. . Oh, but here ‘ Fear recoils, he knows well why, even at
the sound himself has made — ‘

The best of it is, that this was the second fright, and
by no means the most formidable. When I read that para-
graph beginning ‘ you need not think any more of going
with me to Italy ‘ — shall I only say I was alarmed ? With-
out a particle of affectation, I tell Ba, I am, cannot help
being, alarmed even now — we have been discussing possibilities
— and it is rather more possible than probable that
Miss Bayley may ‘ carry off’ my Ba, and her Flush, and, say,
an odd volume of the Cyclic Poets, all in her pocket . . she
being, if I remember, of the race of the Anakim — than that
I shall ever find in the wide world a flesh and blood woman
able to bear the weight of the ‘ feelings,’ I rest now upon
the B and the A which spell Ba s name, — only her name !

Forster sent a note last evening urging me to go and
dine with him and Leigh Hunt to-day, — there was no re-
fusing. There is sunshine — you may have been down-stairs
— but the wind continues.

I shall know to-morrow — but surely a letter is to come
presently — let me wait a little.

Nothing ! Pray write if anything have happened, my
own Ba !

No time — Ever your

[Postmark: April 29, 1846]

Dearest, you are not to blame the post, nor even me.
The reason you did not get the letter was simply that
Henrietta slept over the hour, and let it lie on the table till
past eight. Still, you should have had it before three per-
haps. Only the wrong was less a wrong than you fancied.

For my wrongs, dearest beloved, they are mine I confess,
and not yours . . ah, you are ‘ evilly persecuted, and en-
treated ‘ of me, I must allow. Yet as, with all my calumnious
imputations, I think softly to myself seven times seven times
a day that no living man is worthy to stand in your footsteps,
. . why you must try to forgive and (not) forget me. Do I
teaze you past enduring, sometimes ? Yes, yes. And wasn’t
it my fault about the ‘ imaginary woman ; ‘ that heiress, in
an hypothesis, of the ‘ love ‘ I ‘ made ‘ ? Yes, yes, yes — it
was, of course. Unless indeed she came out of thatfamous.
mist, which you fined me away into, . . the day you slew
and idealized me, remember ! — and, now I begin to consider,
I think she did ! So we will share the fault between us,
you and I. The odium of it, I was going to say — but
odium is by no means the right word, perhaps.

The truth of all is, that you are too much in the excess of
goodness, . . that you spoil me ! There it is ! Did I not
tell you, warn you, that I never was used to the purple and
fine linen of such an infinite tenderness ? If you give me
back my sackcloth, I shall know my right hand from my
left again, perhaps, . . guess where I stand . . what I am
. . recover my common sense. Will you ? no — do not.

And for the League newspaper, you mistook me, and I
forgot to say so in my letter yesterday. I told you only that
the League paper had mentioned me — not noticed me. It
was just . . I just shall tell you, that you may not spend
another thought on such a deep subject . . it was a mere
quotation from the ‘ cornships in the offing,’ with a prefatory
as that exquisite poet Miss B . . says I Now you are
done with the winter of your discontent? You are with
the snowdrops at any rate. But last year there was a
regular criticism on my poems in that League paper, and I
had every reason to thank the critic. I have heard too that
Cobden is a very gracious reader of mine . . and that his
Leeds (liege) subjects generally do me the honours of
popularity, more than any other people in England. There’s
glory for you, talking of palm-trees.

Ah — talking of palm-trees, you do not know what a
curious coincidence your thought is with a thought of mine,
which I shall not tell you now . . but some day perhaps.
There’s a mystery ! talking of Venice !

For Balzac, I have had my full or overfull pleasure from
that habit of his you speak of, . . and which seems to prove
his own good faith in the life and reality of his creations, in
such a striking manner. He is a writer of most wonderful
faculty — with an overflow of life everywhere — with the vision
and the utterance of a great seer. His French is another
language — he throws new metals into it . . malleable metals,
which fuse with the heat of his genius. There is no writer
in France, to my mind, at all comparable to Balzac — none
— but where is the reader in England to make the admission ?
— none, again . . is almost to be said.

But, dearest, you do not say how you are ; and that
silence is not lawful, and is too significant. For me, when
the wind changed for a few hours to-day, I went down-stairs
with Flush, and had my walk in the drawing-room. Mrs.
Jameson has written to proclaim her coming to-morrow at
four, — so I shall hear of ‘ Luria,’ I think. Remember to
bring my verses, if you please, on your Thursday. And if
dreaming of me should be good for making you love me,
let me be dreamt of . . go on to dream of me : and love
me, my beloved, ever so much, without grudging, — because
the love returns to you, all of it, . . as the wave to the sea ;
and with an addition of sundry grains of soiling sand, to
make you properly grateful. Take care of yourself — may
God take care of you for your own

Ba.

[Postmark: April 28, 1846]

Now bless you, my dearest, best Ba, for this letter that
comes at the eleventh hour, — which means, at 3 o’clock.
Was not I frightened ! I made sure you would write. Why,
our Post emulates the Italian glory . . nay, that is too savage
a saying — for in Venice or Rome I should have to go for this
to the office, and only get it at last through the forbearing
honesty of every other applicant for letters during the day,
or week — since to every man and woman who thrusts his
or her head in at the window at Venice, the clerk hands
coolly over the whole odd hundred, and turns to his rest
again till as many are taken as may be thought necessary.
But, Ba, dear dearest Ba, do you really mean to tell me I
said ‘ that ‘ . . of ‘ transferring feelings ‘ etc ? I hope I did, —
though I cannot imagine how I ever could — say so — for so
the greater fault will be Ba’s — who drives me from one Scylla
(see my critic’s account) into a worse Charybdis through pure
fear and aversion, — and then cries ‘ See where you are now ! ‘
I was retreating as far as possible from that imaginary
‘ woman who called out those feelings,’ — might have called
them out, — just as this April sun of ours makes date-palms
grow and bear — and because I said, of the two hypotheses,
the one which taught you the palms might be transplanted
and live on here, — that was the more rational . . you turn
and ask ‘ So your garden will rear palms.’ Now, I tell
Ba, — no, I will kiss Ba and so tell her.

How happy Miss Bayley’s testimony makes me ! One
never can be too sure of such a happiness. She has no
motive for thus confirming it. You ‘ look so well ‘ — and
she not merely sees it, but acts upon it, — is for deriving a
practical benefit from it, and forthwith. Then, Miss Bayley,
let me try and ‘ transfer ‘ . . ah, the palm is too firmly rooted
in my very heart, — I can but sprinkle you over with yellow
dust !

Oh, Ba ; not to tell me of the League ; the number ! —
will you please tell me ? One letter more I get, do I not ?
Then comes Thursday — my Thursday.

What you style ‘ impertinence ‘ in your Brother, is very
kind and good-natured to my thinking. Well, now —
see the way a newspaper criticism affects one, nearly the
only way ! If this had been an attack — how it would
affect you and me matters nothing — it might affect others dis-
agreeably — and through them, us. So I feel very much
obliged to Forster in this instance.

I kiss you with perfect love, my sweetest best Ba. May
God bless you.

R

[Postmark: April 28, 1846]

Very good Examiner ! — I am pleased with it and with
Mr. Forster for the nonce, though he talks a little nonsense
here and there, in order to be a true critic, and though he
doesn’t talk at all, scarcely, of the ‘ Soul’s Tragedy ‘ . . . how
is one to bear it ? That ‘ Tragedy ‘ has wonderful things in it
— thoughts, suggestions, . . and more and more I feel, that
you never did better dialogue than in the first part. Every
pulse of it is alive and individual — dramatic dialogue of the
best. Nobody in the world could write such dialogue —
now, you know, you must be patient and ‘ meke as maid,’
being in the course of the forty-nine days of enduring
praises. Praises, instead of ‘ bangs ‘ ! ! — consider that it
might be worse ! — dicit ipsissima Ba.

Think of my not hearing a word about the article in the
Examiner, until I had your note this morning. And the
Examiner was in the house since Saturday night, and no-
body to tell me ! I was in high vexation, reproaching
them all, to-day — till Stormie had the impertinence to turn
round and tell me that only Papa had read the paper, and that
‘ he had of course put it away to keep me from the impro-
priety of thinking too much about . . about ‘ . . yes, really
Stormie was so impertinent. For the rest, when Papa came
up-stairs at one o’clock, he had it in his hand.

At two, Miss Bayley came, and sate here two hours, and
thought me looking so well, with such improved looks from
last autumn, that I don’t mean to groan at all to you to-day
about the wind — it is a savage wind, as you say, and I wish
it were gone, and I am afraid of stirring from the room
while it lasts, but there’s an end . . and not of me, says Miss
Bayley. She doffed her bonnet and talked and talked, and
was agreeable and affectionate, and means to come constantly
to see me . . . ( ‘ only not on Thursday,’ I desired : )
and do you know, you need not think any more of my going
with you to Italy, for she has made up her mind to take me
herself . . there is no escape for me that I can see — it’s
fixed . . certain ! with a thousand generous benignities she
stifled my ‘ no’s ‘ . . and all I had breath to say at last, was,
that ‘there was time enough for plans of that kind.’
Seriously, I was quite embarrassed to know how to adjourn
the debate. And she is capable of ‘ arranging everything ‘
— of persisting, of insisting— who knows what? And so,
. . when I am ‘ withdrawn ‘ . . carried away . . then, shall
all my ‘ feelings,’ which are in you, be given to somebody
else ? is that the way — ?

Now I shall not make jests upon that . . I shall not :
first, I shall not, because it is ungrateful — and next and
principally, because my heart stands still only to think of
it . . ! Why did you say that to me ? I could be as jealous
(did I not tell you once ? ) as any one of your melodramatic
gitana heroines, who carries a poignard between the white-
satin sash and the spangles ? I perfectly understand, at this
distance, what jealousy is, would be, ought to be, must be —
though I never guessed at all what love was, at that distance,
and startled I am often and confounded, to see the im-
potency of my imagination.

Forgive the blottings out — I have not blotted out
lately . . have I now ? and it is pardonable once in a
hundred years or days.

The rest for to-morrow. Your correspondent of the first
letter you sent me really does write like a Bennet, though
he praises you. I could not help laughing very gently,
though he praises you. Good-night my only beloved . .
dearest ! As my Bennet says (Georgiana) when she catches
vehemently at the laurel . . ‘ I will not be forgot ‘ . . .

‘ I must die . . but I will not be forgot ‘ (in large
capitals ! ) But what she applies to the Delphic groves,
turns for me to something more ambitious. ‘ I will not be
forgot ‘ . . will I ? shall I ? not till Thursday at least . . being
ever and ever

Your own

Ba.

[Postmark: April 27, 1846]

Oh yes ; that paper is by Chorley, no doubt — I read it,
and quite wonder at him. I suppose he follows somebody’s
‘ lead ‘ — writes as he is directed — because I well remember
what he said on lending me ‘ Le Compagnon.’ There,
there is that other silly expenditure of pen and ink on the
English poets, or whatever they are. And in such work
may a man spend his youth and not a few available energies
— sad work altogether !

My love, I have done a fair day’s work this Monday, —
whoever may be idle— I thought I would call on Forster
this morning — he was out, and I crossed over to Moxon’s,
not seeing him, neither, and thence walked home — so that
to tell you I am well is superfluous enough, is it not ? But
while the sun shone brightest, (and it shines now) I said
‘ The cold wind is felt through it all, — she keeps the room ! ‘
The wind is unremitting, — savage. Do you bear it, dearest, or
suffer, as I fear ? (Speaking of Forster . . you see the Examiner,
I believe ? Or I will send it directly of course). I
entirely agree with you in your estimate of the comparative
value of French and English Romance-writers. I bade the
completest adieu to the latter on my first introduction to
Balzac, whom I greatly admire for his faculty, whatever he
may choose to do with it. Do you know a little sketch ‘ La
Messe de l’Athée,’ — most affecting to me. And for you, with
your love of a ‘ story,’ what an unceasing delight must be
that very ingenious way of his, by which he connects the
new novel with its predecessors — keeps telling you more
and more news yet of the people you have got interested in,
but seemed to have done with. Rastignac, Mme. d’Espard,
Desplein &c. — they keep alive, moving — it is not ingenious ?
Frédéric Soulié I know a little of (I let this reading drop
some ten years ago) and only George Sand’s early works :
by the way, the worst thing of all in that blessed article we
have been referring to, is the spiteful and quite uncalled for
introduction of the names of A. de Musset and De La-
mennais — what have the English families to do with that?,
Did you notice a stanza quoted from some lachrymose
rhymester to be laughed at (in the Article on Poetry) — in
which the writer complains of the illtreatment of false
friends, for’ says he’ I have felt their bangs.’ The
notion of one’s friend ‘ banging ‘ one is exhilarating when
one reflects that he might get a little pin, and prick, prick
after this fashion. No, it is probably a manner of writing, —
meant for the week’s life and the dozen readers. Here is a
note from his sister, by the way.

Now, dearest-dearest, good bye till to-morrow. I think
of you all day, and, if I dream, dream of you — and the end
of the thinking and of the dreaming is still new love, new
love of you, my sweetest, only beloved ! so I kiss you and
bless you from my heart of heart.

Ever your R.

[Postmark: April 27, 1846]

See what a brain I have, — which means, you have ! The
book I ought to put in my pocket, — and fancy I leave on
the table, — is picked up in our lane and presented to me on
my return ; so my reason, which told you I had forgotten it,
the book, was wrong, and my instinct which told me,
all the time, that I could not forget even so poor a matter if
it tended to you, — that was right, as usual ? (Don’t think
that I forgot the said book on the former occasions . . I
wanted to look through it first, so as to be able to correct any
possible mistakings, in case you should ask, or should not
ask, my siren ! I read the book during the voyage.)

Will you tell me what number of the League contains
the notice of you ? I can get it directly. I did not ask
you yesterday, being just as much master of myself as I
commonly am when with you — but after-wisdom comes duly
for a consolation, and mine was apparent in a remark I made
last night — ‘ Here is truly an illusion broken ‘ I said — ‘ for
not very long ago I used to feel impatient at listening to
other people’s commendations of her, and as if they were
usurping my especial office, — they could not see what I see,
not utter what I could utter : and now, at the beginning of
my utterance, the hand closes my mouth, while its dear fellow
shuts my eyes, — I may not see what everybody sees, nor say
what the whole world says, — I, that was to excel them all in
either function ! So now I will change my policy and bid them
praise, praise, praise, praise, since I may not. Will you let
me hear them, my Ba ? You know Chesterfield forbids his
son to play on the instrument himself — ‘ for you can pay
musicians’ he says — ‘and hear them play.’ Where may I
hear this discourser of most excellent music ?

In your last letter you spoke of ‘ other women,’ and said
they might ‘ love ‘ me — just see ! They might love me because
of something in me, lovingness in me, which they never
could have evoked . . so the effect produces the cause, my
dear ‘ inverter ‘ ! If there had been a vague aimless feeling
in me, turning hither and thither for some object to attach
itself to and spend itself on, and you had chanced to be
that object, I should understand you were very little flattered
and how a poplar does as well for a vine-prop as a palm tree
— but whatever love of mine clings to you was created by
you, dearest, — they were not in me, I believed — those
feelings, — till you came. So that, mournful and degrading
as it sounds, still it would, I think, be more rational to confess
the possibility of their living on, though you withdrew, —
finding some other — oh no, it is, — that is as great an impossibility
as the other, — they came from you, they go to you,
what is the whole world to them !

May God bless you, repay you — He can —

Well Ba, do you see the Examiner ? That is very kind,
very generous of Forster. There are real difficulties in the
way of this prompt, efficient, serviceable notice — for he has
a tribe of friends, dramatists, actors ‘ conflicting interests ‘ &c.
&c. to keep the peace among, — and he quite understands
his trade — how compensation is to be made, and an
equilibrium kept in the praises so as to offend nobody, — yet
see how he writes, and with a heap of other business on his
shoulders ! I thank him very sincerely, I am sure.

Tell me how you are, beloved — all-beloved ! I am quite
well to-day, — have been out.

Do you remember our friend Bennett of Blackheath?
(Don’t ejaculate ‘ le Benêt ‘ ! ) He sent me letters lately —
and I returned a copy of ‘ Luria ‘ to save compliments and
words — here is his answer . . (I will at once confess I could
not read it, but Ba bids me send, and what am I but Ba’s
own, very very own ?)

[Postmark: April 27, 1846 OR ]

Ever dearest you might have stayed ten minutes more.
George did not come in till half past six after all — but there
is the consciousness of being wise in one’s generation, which
consoles so many for their eternity as children of light, . .
yet doesn’t console me for my ten minutes, . . so it is as well
to say no more on this head !

I have glanced over the paper in the Athenæum and am
of an increased certainty that Mr. Chorley is the writer. It
is his way from beginning to end — and that is the way,
observe, in which little critics get to tread on the heels of
great writers who are too great to kick backwards. Think
of bringing George Sand to the level of the same sentence
with such a woman as Mrs. Ellis ! And then, the infinite
trash about the three eras in the Frenchwoman’s career, . .
which never would have been dragged into application there,
if the critic had heard of her last two volumes . . published
since the ‘ Meunier d’Angibault,’ ‘ Teverino ‘ and
‘ Isidora.’ One may be angry and sin not, over such inapplicable
commonplace. The motive of it, the low
expediency, is worse to me than the offence. Why mention
her at all . . why name in any fashion any of these
French writers, for the reception of whom the English mind
is certainly not prepared, unless they are to be named
worthily, recognised righteously ? It is just the principle of
the advice about the De Kocks ; whom people are to go
and see and deny their acquaintance afterwards. Why not
say boldly ‘ These writers have high faculty, and imagination
such as none of our romance-writers can pretend to — but
they have besides a devil — and we do not recommend them
as fit reading for English families ! ‘ Now wouldn’t it answer
every purpose ? Or silence would ! — silence, at least. But
this digging and nagging at great reputations, . . it is to me
quite insufferable : and not compensated for by the motive,
which is a truckling to conventions rather than to morals.
As if earnestness of aim was not, from the beginning, from
‘ Rose et Blanche ‘ and ‘ Indiana,’ a characteristic of George
Sand ! Really it is pitiful.

The ‘ Mysteries of the Heaths,’ I suppose to be a translation
of ‘ Sept Jours au Château,’ a very clever story from the
monstrous Hydra-headed imagination of Frederic Soulié.
Dumas is inferior to them all of course, yet a right good
storyteller when he is in the mind for storytelling ; — telling,
telling, telling, and never having done. You know I like
listening to stories — I agree with the great Sultan and would
forego ever so much cutting off of heads for the sake of a story
— it is a taste quite apart from a taste for literature : a storyteller,
I like, apart from the sweet voice. Now that book of
Dumas’s on the League wars, which distressed me so the
other day, by having the cruelty . . the ‘ villainie ‘ . . of
hanging its hero in the fourth volume . . (regularly hanging
him on a pair of gallows — wasn’t it too bad ?) that book
is amusing enough, more than amusing enough, to take
with one’s coffee . . which is my fashion, . . because you
are not here and I have nobody to talk to me. The hero
who was hanged, deserved it a little, I think, though the author
meant it for a pure misfortune and though no good romance-
reader in the world- such as I am, could bear to part with
the hero of four volumes in that manner, without pain ; but
the hero did deserve it a little when one came to consider.

In the first place, he was a traitor once or twice in war and
politics, and was quite ready to be so a third or fourth time,
. . only , . as he said to the lady he loved . . je perdrais
votre estime.’ ‘ Is that your only objection ‘ she enquired
‘ The only one ‘ he answered ! ( How frightfully true, that
those brilliant French writers have no moral sense at all ! do
not, for the most part, know right from wrong ! here, an
instance ! ) Then, from the beginning to the end of the four
volumes, he loves two women together . . a phénomène ‘
by no means uncommon, says the historian musingly, . .
and, except for the hanging, there might have been a difficulty
perhaps in the final arrangement. Yet oh . . to see
one’s hero, the hero of four volumes, and not a bad hero
either in some respects, hung up before one’s eyes ! . . it
wrongs the natural affections to think of it ! it made me
unhappy for a full hour ! There should be a society for the
prevention of cruelty to romance-readers, against the recurrence
of such things !

Pure nonsense I write to you, it seems to me.

What beautiful flowers you brought me ! — and the sweet-
brier is unfolding its leaves to-day, as if you did them, so, no
wrong. And I have been considering ; and there are not,
if you please, five but four days, between Saturday and
Thursday. In the meanwhile say how you are, dearest
dearest ! My thoughts are with you constantly . . indeed.
I could almost say, too much, . . because sometimes they
grow weak and tired . . not of you, who are best and beloved,
but of themselves, having been so long used to be sad,
May God bless you, . . bless you ! His best blessing for
me (after that ! ) were to make me worthy of you — but it
would take too many miracles.

Your

Ba.

Remember the letters, if they come.

[Postmark: April 24, 1846]

How I sympathize with poor Cloten when he complains
that ‘ he is in the habit of saying daily many things fully as
witty as those of Posthumus, men praise so — if men would
but note them ‘ ! — I feel jealous of the success and ‘ praise ‘
of my Ba, — falling as they do on the mere asides and interjectional
fits and starts of the play, — when its earnest soliloquy,
the very soul and substance of it all, never reaches
her ear, nor calls down her dear, dear words.

Yet do I say that I feel jealous ? Rather, I acquiesce
gladly in the ignorance . . because when the words, the
golden words, are brought in to me by the inferior agents,
and honestly transferred by them to the real moving powers
. . they, even, find the reward too much, too much, till they
— till they resolve (on the other side of a sheet) to keep
silence and be grateful till death help them to speak.

Well, my dear, own dearest . . the week has got to its
weary end, and to-morrow I shall trust to be with you. I
continue to feel better, — and this morning’s rain, in the
opinion of the learned, will be succeeded by warm weather.
May is just here, beside.

Let me say how a word of praise from your brother
gratifies me. I feel his kindness in other respects — feel it
deeply — as I do that of the rest of your family. Because . .
after these extravagant flatteries of mine you find such just
fault with, — wherein I go the length of attributing to you the
authorship of the ‘ Drama of Exile,’ and ‘ Geraldine ‘ and
‘ Bertha,’ and many more poems which I used to suppose my
Ba’s, — ^after that undue glorification, you will bear to be told,
by way of ‘set-off’ — that I cannot help thinking, you, of all
your family, are the most ignorant of your own value — very
ignorant you are, my sweet Ba, — but they cannot be, and
their kindness to me becomes centupled ‘ for reasons, for
reasons.’

Now let me kiss you — which kiss, as I am to really kiss
you to-morrow, my sweetest, I shall dare tell the truth of to
myself, and say ‘ The real will be better.’ At other times,
with a longer perspective of days, and days after them, until
. . why, then I make the best of pity and say ‘ Can the real
be better — what can be better than the best’? Still —
remember my ‘ peculiarity ‘ — with the greater I keep the less,
you let me say and praise me for saying — so, with all the
dear hope of to-morrow, — now, my Ba — and now, I kiss you.
May God bless you, best and dearest.

No letters that are letters — here is one however from
Arnould just arrived — an Oxford Prize Poet, and an admir-
able dear good fellow, for all his praise — which is better.

[Postmark: April 24, 1846]

Yes, you are better, I think. I thank God for that, first
of all. And, do you know, your note only just comes, and
it is past ten o’clock, and I had rung the bell to have the
letter-box investigated . . and then came the knock and
the letter ! Such a sinning post, it is, more and more.
But to come at last, is something — I am contented indeed.
And for being well, I am well too, if that is all. The wind
is a little hard on me ; but I keep in the room and think of
you and am thought of by you, and no wind, under such
circumstances, can do much harm perhaps : — it does not to
me anywise. So keep well, and believe that I am so : —
‘ well as you are well ‘ . . which sounds very well

What nonsense one comes to write when one is glad !
I observe that in myself constantly. All my wisdom seems
to depend on being pricked with pins . . or rather with
something sharper. And besides your being better, I am
glad through what you say here about your ‘ peculiarity ‘ !
Ah — how you have words in your coffers, of all sorts, . .
crowns to suit all heads . . and this, which I try on last,
suits mine better than the other glittering ones. Those
exaggerations, idealizations, with burning carbuncles in the
front of them, which made me sigh under the weight, . .
those are different — ! But when you say now that you do
not part with feelings, — that it is your peculiarity not
to wear them out, and that you are likely to care for the
sight of my handwriting as much after years as at first,
why you make me happy when you say such things, and
(see what faith I have !) I believe them, since you say them,
speaking of yourself. They are not after the fashion of men,
or women either — but, true of you, they may be, . . and I
take upon trust that they are : I accept such words from
you as means of gladness. The worst is — I mean, the
worst reasonableness that goes out to oppose them, is,
. . the fear lest, when your judgments have been corrected
by experience, the feelings may correct themselves.
But it is ungrateful to talk reason in the face of so much
love. I take up the gladness rather, and thank you and
bless you seven times over, to completion. You are the
best, I know, of all in the world. Did I tell you once that
my love was ‘something’ ? Yet it is nothing: because
there is no woman, let her heart be ever so made of stone
and steel, who could help loving you, . . I answer for all
women ! — so this is no merit of mine, though it is the best
thing I ever did in my life.

Dearest beloved, when I used to tell you to give me up,
and imagined to myself how I should feel if you did it, . .
and thought it would not be much worse than it was before
I knew you . . (a little better indeed, inasmuch as I had
the memory for ever . .) the chief pang was the idea of
another woman —— ! From that, I have turned back again
and again, recoiling like a horse set against too high a wall.
Therefore if I talk of what all women would do, I do not
mean that they should. ‘ Thirty-six Bas,’ we shall not have,
— shall we ? or I shall be like Flush, who, before he learnt to
be a philosopher, used to shiver with rage at sight of the
Flush in the looking-glass, and gnash his teeth impotently,
and quite howl. Now, — we shall not, dearest, have the
thirty-six Bas . . now, shall we ? Besides, one will be more
than enough, she fears to herself, for your comfort and
patience.

No more letters about ‘ Luria ‘ ? Did you see Moxon
when you were in town ?

Miss Bayley has not been here yet. To-morrow, perhaps.
When she comes, I shall not dare name you, but she will, I
think . . I seem sure of hearing her mind about ‘ Luria ‘ and
the ‘ Tragedy. ‘ George thinks the former ‘ very fine.’
Mr. Kenyon does not come, — and to-morrow (Friday) he
goes . . from London.

You will care for me always the same? But that is
like promising a charmed life, or an impossible immortality
to somebody — and nobody has either, except Louis Philippe.
May God bless you, — say how you are when you write
to-morrow.

Your own

Ba.

Oh — your learned Americans ! was it literal of Carlyle,
do you think, or a jest ?

[Postmark: April 23, 1846]

Dear, dear Ba, I was never very ill, and now am very
much better, quite well, indeed. I mean to co-operate
with your wishes, and my doctor’s doings, which are luckily
gentle enough, — and so, how should I fail of bringing into
subjection this restive, ill-conditioned head of mine ?

This morning I have walked to town and back — leaving
myself barely time to write — but just before going out, I
got your letter, for which I was waiting ; and the joy of it,
the entire delight, carried me lightly out and in again. Ah,
my own Ba, — of the two ‘ extravagances which you never
write nor speak,’ — after all, if I must, I concede the praises
and eagle-soaring and, and — because, if I please, I can say,
if you do persist in making me, ‘ why, it may be so, — how
should I know, or Ba not know ? ‘ And as a man may
suppose himself poor and yet be rightful owner to a wonder-
ful estate somewhere (in novels &c) — so, I, the intellectually
poor &c &c — But, dearest, if you say ‘ My letters
tire you’ —— say that again — and then what unknown
gadge ought to stop the darling mouth ? How does honey
dew bind up the rose from opening ? Moreover it is one
peculiarity of my mind that it loses no pleasure, — must not
forego the former for the latter pleasure. How shall I ex-
plain ? I believe that, when I should have been your
husband for years, — years — if I were separated from you for
a day and a letter came — I think my heart would move to it
just as it now does — because now, when I see you, know
what that blessing is — still the very oldest first flutter of
delight at ‘ Miss Barrett’s ‘ writing it is all here, all !

Shall my heart flutter, then, to-morrow, my dear dear
heart’s heart ? And it shall be not April when I read it
your letter — but June and May — if it tells me you are well,
as I am well — now, if I say that, can you doubt what I
consider my present state ? But be better, dear Ba, and
make me better — I should like to breathe and move and
live by your allowance and pleasure — being your very very
own

R.B.

I see this morning a characteristic piece of news in the
paper. President Polk, with an eye to business, gets his
brother, a tall gaunt hungry man, appointed Ambassador to
Naples — why not? So he arrives a year ago, — finds the
Neapolitans speak Italian, or else French, or else German
— that is, the Diplomatic Body at Naples don’t speak
English — on which discovery, Polk secundus sees he may
as well amuse himself, so goes to Paris for half a year, —
then to Rome where he is now, seeing sights — who could
tell the Italians were not able to talk English ? Is not that
American entirely ? Carlyle told me of an American who
was commissioned by some learned body of his countrymen
to ask two questions . . ‘What C.’s opinion was as to
a future state?’ — and next ‘ what relation Goethe was to
Goethe’s mother’s husband ? ‘ —