[Postmark: April 10, 1846]
Friday Morning.
Dearest, sweetest best — how can you, seeing so much,
yet see that ‘ possibility ‘ — I leave off loving you ! and be
‘ angry ‘ and ‘ vexed ‘ and the rest ! Well — take care I don’t
answer fairly and plainly that I can do all this — as the poor
women had to confess in their bewilderment when grave
judges asked ‘ by which of the thirty-seven ways they were
accustomed to signify their desire of his presence to Asmodeus’ — &c. &c. — But I cannot jest, nor trifle here — I
protest in the most solemn way I am capable of conceiving,
that I am altogether unable to imagine how or whence or
why any possible form of anger or vexation or any thing
akin can or could or should or shall ever rise in me to you
— it is a sense hitherto undreamed of, a new faculty —
altogether an inexplicable, impossible feeling. I am not
called on, surely, to suppose cases of pure impossibility ?
To say, ‘ if you did thus or thus,’ — what I know you could
no more do than go and kill cows with your own hand, and
dig up kale grounds ? But I can fancy your being angry
with me, very angry — and speaking the truth of the anger —
that is to ‘ fancied’, and God knows I should in that case
kiss my letters, here, till you pleased to judge me not unworthy to kiss the hem of your garment again. My own Ba !
My election is made or God made it for me, — and is irrevocable. I am wholly yours. I see you have yet to understand
what that implies, — but you will one day. And in this, just
said, I understand serious anger, for serious offences ; to
which, despite my earnest endeavour, who shall say I may
not be liable ? What are you given me for but to make me
better — and, in that, happier ? If you could save my soul,
‘ so as by fire,’ would your dear love shrink from that ? But
in the matter we really refer to . . . Oh, Ba, did I not pray
you at the beginning to tell me the instant you detected
anything to be altered by human effort? to give me that
chance of becoming more like you and worthier of you ?
and here where you think me gravely in the wrong, and I
am growing conscious of being in the wrong, — one or two
repetitions of such conduct as yours, such ‘ disagreeable
letters,’ and I must ‘ leave off ‘ . . . When I do that on
such ground . . I need imprecate no foolish sense on my
head, — the very worst will be in full operation. I only wrote
to justify an old feeling, exercised only in the case of others
I have heard of — men called ‘ cool murderers,’ ‘ deliberate
imbruers of their hands in,’ &c. &c. — and I meant just to say,
— well, — I, and others, despise your society and only go into
it now to be the surer that, when we leave it, we were not
excluded as the children turn from the grapes because their
teeth are set on edge, whatever may be the foxes’ pretext —
but, for your own devoted followers be a little more merciful, and while you encourage them to spend a dozen years
in a law-suit, lest they lose a few pounds . . but I won’t
repeat the offence, dear — you are right and I am wrong and
will lay it to heart, and now kiss, not your feet this time,
because I am the prouder, far from the more humble, by
this admission and retractation —
Your note arrives here — Ba ; — it would have been
‘better for me,’ that? Oh, dearest, let us marry soon, very
soon, and end all this ! If I could begin taking exceptions
again, I might charge you with such wild conventionalism,
such wondrous perversity of sight or blindness rather ! Can
you, now, by this time, tell me or yourself that you could
believe me happy with any other woman that ever breathed ?
I tell you without affectation, that I lay the whole blame to
myself . . that I feel that if I had spoken my love out
sufficiently all this doubt could never have been possible.
You quite believe I am in earnest, know my own mind and
speak as I feel, on these points we disputed about — yet I
am far from being sure of it, or so it seems now — but, as for
loving you, — there I mistake, or may be wrong, or may, or
might or or —
Now kiss me, my best-dearest beloved ! It seems I
am always understood so — the words are words, and faulty,
and inexpressive, or wrongly expressive, — but when I live
under your eyes, and die, you will never mistake, — you do
not now, thank God, say to me — ‘ you want to go elsewhere
for all you say the visit seems too brief ‘ — and, ‘ you would
change me for another, for all you possess ‘ — never do you
say such things — but when I am away, all the mistaking
begins — let it end soon, come, dearest life of my life, light
of my soul, heart’s joy of my heart !
You feel I must see you to-morrow it possible — at all
events I will call for the parcel. (What made you suppose I
was engaged to-morrow night ? The saying that I should
meet my sea-faring friend, perhaps ? But that is to be here
— he comes here — at all events, I recollect no other engagement — if I had one with Death himself, I almost think I
would go, — folly ! But let the parcel be ready (to put into
my hand at once) and I will venture at 3 o’clock.
In truth, all yesterday I was very unwell, — going about
sight-seeing with a friend and his lady-cousins, and afterward
dining with them — I came home dead with intense boring
— I rarely remember to have suffered so much. To-day I
am rather better, — much better, indeed. If I can but see
you for a few minutes to-morrow !
May God bless you, dearest — and show you the truth in
me, the one truth which I dare hope compensates for much
that is to be forgiven : when I told you at the beginning I
was not worthy, was infinitely lower &c., you seemed incredulous! well now, you see ! I, that you would persist
in hoping better things of, held such opinions as those —
and so you begin setting me right, and so I am set far on
towards right — is not all well, love ? And now go on, when
I give next occasion, and tell me more, and let me alter
more, and thank you, if I can, more — but not, not love
you more, you, Ba, whom I love wholly, — with all my
faculties, all my being. May God bless you, again — it all
ends there — !
Your own R.