Day: April 17, 2018

[Postmark: April 17, 1846]

Friday.

No, my own dearest, I did not see you sit in your chair,
nor in mine, yesterday — did I write nothing about your walking with me by the garden wall, and on the hill, and looking
down on London ? And afterwards you went with me, indeed, to Talfourd’s (last night was that purgatorial business,
— how could I make you think it related to Monday ?) If
I have to put the least thing into words, so I put it always !
Being just like the family of somebody — ‘ who were one
and all so stupid ‘ said he — ‘ that if you bade them spell A B
they answered B A — ‘ Nay, I spell Happiness, and Blessing,
and all other good words if ever so many letters by that
same Ba ! But I want to go on and say you kept me from
such an undiluted evening of misery (because I saw you
through it all) — oh, such an evening ! — it shall be the last, I
think — and the going out is so near, — the bonnet is bought !
And you pretend not to know I would walk barefoot till I
dropped, if so I might attain to the sight of you, and it.
Do let me say, for gratitude’s sake — it is like the sign of
spring in Shelley’s ‘ Prometheus ‘ —

When ‘ mild winds shake the elder-brake,
And the wandering herdsmen know
That the white thorn soon will blow ‘ :

— that the flower of my life will blow ! Now let me
try and answer everything in Ba’s darling letters and so
not be ‘ vexed’ afterward, — recollecting how she asked
this, or bade me be sure to reply to that, and how I
answered, spelling A B for B A ! First, there is a famous
contrivance against fly tormentors, a genuine canopy, gnat-repelling enclosure of muslin which covers your bed wholly,
and into which once introduce yourself dexterously (because
the plagues try to follow slily) and lo, you are in a
syren’s isle within the isle, a world cut off from the outer
one by that fine hazy cloudish gauze — a delight it is ! Only,
if you let one persisting critic of a buzzer lie perdue, he
will have you at a glorious advantage — (not that one ever
bit ME, in England or elsewhere). And now — your letters,
— Miss Bennet’s letter that yon received ‘just after I had
gone ‘ — will you be edified if I tell you what I received the
moment I got home ? (once, beforehand — my experience
or yours, which would you rather not have ?) My sister
pointed with immense solemnity to a packet, — then delivered
a message, and then — but hear the message — a ‘ Mrs. George
Sharp’ (unless I mistake the name) lives next door to Dickens
and awfully respects him — she asks one aunt of mine, to ask
another, to ask my sister, to ask me . . who have never seen
or heard of this Mrs. George, — me who am, she has understood, a friend of Dickens, — to get inserted in the Daily
News some paragraph of a reasonable length in recommendation
of the accompanying packet of cough-drops, (lozenges,
or pills — for I was not rightly instructed which) — my fee,
I suppose, being the said packet of pillsI ! All comment is
beyond me.

Well, but your Mrs. Bennet — what a wretched, disgust-
ing sfacciataccia ! I would not be accessory to keeping those
soapy bubbles of stupid vanity from bursting, by sparing a
rough finger, certainly not. How ‘ ought you to be grateful,
perhaps ? ‘ For what on earth ?

Dearest, dearest Ba, — a ‘ passing ‘ headache of ‘ these
few days,’ what can I say, or do ? May God bless you, and
care for all. Still the comfort continues, it is not that you
have made an effort, and so grown worse.

I am pretty well, — I half determine to go out and see
Carlyle to-night, — so to forget a hasty resolution against
all company (‘ other ‘ company I had written . . as if to
honour it — Ba’s is one company, and those people’s !—
‘ another ‘ !) — I think I will go.

I spoke about Mr. Kenyon, — because I never would in
my life take a step for myself if that could be), apart from
your good, without being guided by you where possible —
much more, therefore, in a matter directly concerning you
rather than me, did I want your opinion as to the course
most proper, in the event of &c. I do not think it likely he
will speak, or I shall have to answer . . but if that did
happen, and you were not at hand, my own dearest, — how
I should be grieved if, answering wrongly, I gave you annoyance ! Here I seem to understand your wish.

My Ba, my only, utterly dear love, may God reward
you for your blessing to me — my whole heart turns to you
— and in your own. I kiss you, dearest — this morning a
very ordinary motivetto in the overture to ‘ Rabuco ‘ seemed
to tell you more than I ever shall — I sit and speak to you
by that now !

R. B.

No letters yet from ‘ anybody ‘ — the few received are
laudatory however — I will send you one from the old sailor-
friend I told you of— but, mark ! you must not send it back,
to show my eyes and grieve my heart, when the bulky letter
proves to be only this — returned ! Landor’s in due time, I
suppose ! This I send is to make you laugh . . My Ba’s
dear laugh can hurt nobody, not even my friend here — who
has praised her poems more to me, there’s my consolation,
— Consuelo —

[Postmark: April 17, 1846]

Thursday Evening.

Ah, the chestnut tree : do you think that I never saw
the chestnut tree before ? Long ago, I did . . a full year
ago or more — more ! A voice talked to me of the ‘ west
wind ‘ which ‘ set dancing the baby cones of my chestnut
tree ‘ — nearly I remember the words. Do you, the time ?
It was early in the morning — ‘ before seven,’ said the voice !
— too early in the morning for my dream to be — because
a dream, says Lord Brougham when he tries at philosophy, a dream, if ever so long a dream, is all contained
in the last moment of sleep, at the turn towards waking
— so, late and not early !

No — you did not tell me of Wordsworth — not at least,
after that reading. Perhaps if Hatcham should not be
swept away in the Railway ‘ scirocco,’ I may see the ‘ hill ‘ or
the ‘ rise ‘ at some distant day. Shall I, do you think ? I
would rather see it than Wordsworth’s mountains — ‘for
reasons, for reasons ‘ as you say. And talking of reasons,
and reasonable people in general, I thought, . . after you
went away on Wednesday, and I began to remember how
you had commended your own common sense and mine,
— I thought that it might be very well for you to do it,
inasmuch as nobody else would, for you – – ὑπερ σου as the
theological critics intensify ὑπερ to the genitive, ‘ for reasons,
for reasons.’

How ‘Luria’ takes possession of me more and more !
Such a noble work ! — of a fulness, a moral grandeur ! — and
the language everywhere worthy. Tell me what you hear
the people say — I shall be anxious, which you will not be
— but, to me, you will forgive it. ‘ The Soul’s Tragedy ‘ is
wonderful — it suggests the idea of more various power than
was necessary to the completion of ‘ Luria ‘ . . though in
itself not a comparable work. But you never wrote more
vivid dramatic dialogue than that first part — it is exquisite
art, it appears to me. Tell me what the people say ! — and
tell me what the gods say . . Landor, for instance !

Mr. Kenyon has not been here — and I dare not, even in
a letter, be the first to talk to anyone of you. It is foolish
of me perhaps — but if I whisper your name I expect to be
directly answered by all the thunders of Heaven and
cannons of earth. When I was writing to Miss Martineau
the other day, for full ten minutes I held the pen ready
charged with ink over a little white place, just to say ‘ have
you read,’ . . or ‘ have you heard ‘ . . . and at last I couldn’t
write one word of those words . . I believe I said something about landed proprietors and agrarian laws instead.

So you ‘felt’ that I was down-stairs to-day ! See how
wrong feeling may be, when it has to do with such as I.
For, dearest, notwithstanding your bright sunshine I did
not go down-stairs . . only opened the window and let in
the air. I have not been quite as well, as far as just sensation goes, as usual, these few days — but it is nothing, a
passing common headache, as I told you, . . and your visit
did good rather than harm, and to-morrow you may think of
me as in the drawing-room. Oh, I might have been there
to-day, or yesterday, or the day before ! but it was pleasanter
to sit in the chair and be idle, so I sate ! But you did not
see me in my gondola chair — not you ! you were thinking
of the lambs instead, and looking over the wall to the
‘ blossomed trees ‘ . . (what trees ? cherry-trees ? apple-trees ?
pear-trees ?) and so, altogether, you lost your second sight of
me and made mistakes. Ever dearest, is your head better ?
You will not say. You are afraid to say, perhaps, that you
were ill, through writing too many notes and not going out
to take the right exercise. Ah, do remember me for that
good ! I heard yesterday that ‘ Mr. Browning looked very
pale as he came up-stairs.’ Which comes of Mr. Browning’s
writing when he should be walking ! — now doesn’t it ?

Do you go to Mr. Serjeant Talfourd’s on Monday?
and would it be better therefore if you came here on
Tuesday ? You could come on the next Saturday all the
same — consider ! Nobody shall leap into lions’ dens for
me ! so let us measure the convenience of things, as Miss
Mitford would in marriages. ‘ Convenance, ‘ though, she
would say — which is more foolish than ‘ convenience ‘ as I
write it. She asserts that every marriage in her experience
beginning by any sort of love has ended miserably — thus
run her statistics in matrimony. Add, that she thinks —
she told me last autumn — that all men without exception
are essentially tyrants, — and that poets are a worse species
of men, seeing that, all human feelings, they put into
their verses, and leave them there . . . add this, and this,
and then calculate how, if I consulted her on our prospects
(shall I ?), she would see for me an infinite succession of
indefinite thumbscrews and gadges ! ! Well — I am not
afraid — except for you sometimes ! for myself I accept my
chances for life under the peine forte et dure. And I
won’t speak to Miss Mitford, if you don’t to Mr. Kenyon . .
and I beseech you to avoid by every legitimate means the
doing that . . oh, do not ever speak that to him !

May God bless you my beloved ! — Walk for my sake,
and be well, try to be well ! For me, I am so without
trying, . . just as I am

Your own

Ba.