Day: April 3, 2018

[Postmark: April 3, 1846]

I want to tell you a thing before I forget it, my own Ba
— a thing that pleased me to find out this morning. A few
days ago there was a paragraph in the newspaper about
Lord Compton and his ways at Rome. His address was to
be read in the general list of working-artists kept for public
inspection at Monaldini’s news-room, and the Earl’s self
was to be found in fraternal association with ‘ young art,’ at
board and sporting-place, wearing the same distinctive
blouse and Louis IL hat with great flaps ; even his hair as
picturesquely disordered as the best of them — (the artists,
not flaps) — at all which the reporter seemed scarcely to
know whether he ought to laugh or cry. This I read in the
Daily News with other gossip about Rome, last Wednesday.
But this morning a Cambridge Advertiser of the same day
reaches me — and there, under the head of College news
(after recording that Mr A. has been appointed to this ‘
vicarage, and Mr B. licensed to the other curacy) — one
finds this — ‘The Earl Compton, M.A. (Hon. 1837) — is of
great fame in Rome as a Painter ! ‘ — which the other
authority wholly forgot to mention ; supposing, no doubt,
all the love went to the blouse and flapped hat aforesaid !
Now, is it not a good instance of that fascination which the
true life at Rome (apart from the stupidities of the travelling
English) exercises every now and then on susceptible
people ? The best thing for an English Earl to do, — (who
will be a Marquis one day) — would be to stay here and
vindicate his title by honest work with the opportunities it .
affords him — but if he cannot rise to the dignity of the best
part, surely this, he chooses, is better than many others —
being caught as some noblemen were yesterday, for instance,
superintending a dog-fight in some horrible den of thieves
in St. Giles’s. I don’t know, after all, why I tell you this, —
but that amid all the dull doings of the notable dull ones
there, and their ‘ honours ‘ — (such a wonder of a man was
Smith’s prize-man, — another had got to be gloriously first
in the Classical Tripos) — this bit of ‘fame at Rome’
seemed like a break of blue real sky with a star in it, shining
through the canvas sham clouds and oil-paper moons of
a theatre.

Now I get to you, my Ba ! How strange ! It does so
happen that I took the pen and laid out the paper with, I
really think, a completer, deeper yearning of love to you
than usual even — I seemed to have a thousand things that
I could say now — and on touching the paper . . see — I
start off with a foolish story and still foolisher comment as
if there were no Ba close at my head all the time, straight
before my eyes too ! So it is with me — I give the expressing
part up at once ! It must be understood, inferred, —
(proved, never !) All nonsense, so I will stay — and try to
be wise to-morrow — now, I have no note to guide me and
half put into my mouth what I ought to say. So, dear,
dear Ba, goodbye ! I very well know what this letter is
worth — yet because of the love and endeavour unseen, may
I not have the hand to kiss — and without the glove ? It is
kissed, whether you give it or no, — for there are two long
days more to wait — and then comes Monday ! Bless you
till then, and ever, my dearest : My own Ba —

Your R.

[Postmark: April 3, 1846]

Friday

Dearest, your flowers make the whole room look like
April, they are so full of colours . . growing fuller and
fuller as we get nearer to the sun. The wind was melancholy too, all last night — oh, I think the wind melancholy,
just as you do, — or more than you do perhaps for having
spent so many restless days and nights close on the sea-
shore in Devonshire. I seem now always to hear the sea in
the wind, voice within voice ! But I like a sudden wind
not too loud, — a wind which you hear the rain in rather
than the sea — and I like the half cloudy half sunny April
weather, such as we have it here in England, with a west or
south wind — I like and enjoy that ! and remember vividly
how I used to like to walk or wade nearly up to my waist in
the wet grass or weeds, with the sun overhead, and the
wind darkening or lightening the verdure all round.

But none of it was happiness, dearest dearest. Happiness does not come with the sun or the rain. Since my
illness, when the door of the future seemed shut and locked
before my face, and I did not tire myself with knocking
any more, I thought I was happier, happy, I thought,
just because I was tranquil unto death. Now I know life
from death, . . and the unsorrowful life for the first time
since I was a woman ; though I sit here on the edge of a
precipice in a position full of anxiety and danger. What
matter, … if one shuts one’s eyes, and listens to the birds
singing? Do you know, I am glad — I could almost
thank God — that Papa keeps so far from me . . that he
has given up coming in the evening . . I could almost
thank God. If he were affectionate, and made me, or let
me, feel myself necessary to him, . . how should I bear
(even with my reason on my side) to prepare to give him
pain ? So that the Pisa business last year, by sounding
the waters, was good in its way . . and the pang that came
with it to me, was also good. He feels ! — he loves me . .
but it is not (this, I mean to say) to the trying degrees of
feeling and love . . trying to me. Ah, well ! In any case,
I should have ended probably, in giving up all for you —
I do not profess otherwise. I used to think I should, if
ever I loved anyone — and if the love of you is different
from, it is greater than, anything preconceived . . divined.

Mrs. Jameson, the other day, brought out a theory of
hers which I refused to receive, and which I thought to
myself she would apply to me some day. with the rest of
what Miss Mitford calls ‘ those good-for-nothing poets and
poetesses.’ She maintained, (Mrs. Jameson did) that
‘artistical natures never learn wisdom from experience —
that sorrow teaches them nothing — leaves no trace at all
— that the mind is modified in no way by passion —
suffering.’ Which I disbelieved quite, and ventured to say
on the other side, that although practically a man or woman
might not be wiser, through perhaps the interception of a
vivid apprehension of the present, which might put back
the influence of the future over actions, . . yet that it was
impossible for a self-conscious nature (which all these
artistic natures are) and a sensitive nature, not to receive
some sort of modification from things suffered — ‘ No ‘ — she
said, they did not ! she had known and loved such — and
they were like children, all of them, — essentially immature.’
But she did not persuade me. What is inequality of nature,
as Dugald Stewart observed it, (and did he not say that men
of genius had lop-sided minds ?) is different, I think, from
immaturity in her sense of the word. We were talking of
her friend Mrs. Butler, which brought us to the subject.
Presently she will say of you and me . . ‘ Just see there !
she meant no harm, poor thing, I dare say — but she acts
like a child ! And, for him, his is the imbecility of most
regent genius . . such as I am to live to see confessed
imperial, or I die a disappointed woman.’ !

Do you hear? I do, distinctly. You in the meantime,
are looking at the ‘ locks ‘ . . just as poor Louis Seize did
when they were preparing his guillotine.

May God bless you, my own dearest — Think of me a
little — as you say !

Your

Ba.