[Postmark: April 20, 1846]
Just now I read again your last note for a particular purpose
of thinking about the end of it . . where you say, as
you have said so many times, ‘that your hand was not
stretched out to the good — it came to you sleeping ‘ — etc. I
wanted to try and find out and be able to explain to myself,
and perhaps to you, why the wrongness in you should be so
exquisitely dear to me, dear as the rightness, or dearer, inasmuch
as it is the topmost grace of all, seen latest on leaving the contemplation of the others, and first on returning
to them – – because, Ba, that adorable spirit in all these
phrases, what I should adore without their embodiment in
these phrases which fall into my heart and stay there, that
strange unconsciousness of how the love-account really stands
between us, who was giver altogether and who taker, and, by
consequence, what is the befitting virtue for each of us, a
generous disposition to forgetfulness on the giver’s part, as of
everlasting remembrance and gratitude on the other — this unconsciousness is wrongs my heart’s darling, strangely wrong
by the contrast with your marvellous apprehension on other
points, every other point I am capable of following you to.
I solemnly assure you I cannot imagine any point of view
wherein I ought to appear to any rational creature the bene-
fitting party and you the benefitted — nor any matter in which
I can be supposed to be even magnanimous, (so that it might
be said, ‘ there is a sacrifice ‘ — ‘ that is to be borne with ‘
&c) — none where such a supposition is not degrading to me,
dishonouring and affronting. I know you, my Ba, not because
you are my Ba, but through the best exercise of whatever
power in me you too often praise, I know — that you are immeasurably
my superior, while you talk most eloquently and
affectingly to me, I know and could prove you are as much
my Poet as my Mistress ; if I suspected it before I knew
you, personally, how is it with me now I feel it every
day, I tell myself every day it is so. Yet you do not feel nor
know it — for you write thus to me. Well, — and this is what
I meant to say from the beginning of the letter, I love your
inability to feel it in spite of right and justice and rationality.
I would, — I will at a moment’s notice, give you back your
golden words, and lie under your mind supremacy as I take
unutterable delight in doing under your eye, your hand.
So Shakespeare chose to ‘ envy this man’s art and that man’s
scope ‘ in the Sonnets, But I did not mean to try and
explain what is unexplainable after all — (though I wisely said
I would try and explain ! ) You seem to me altogether . .
(if you think my words sounded like flattery, here shall come
at the end — anything but that !) you do seem, my precious
Ba, too entirely mine this minute, — my heart’s, my senses’,
my soul’s precise το καλον to last ! Too perfect for that !
The true power with the ignorance of it, the real hold of my
heart, as you can hold this letter, — yet the fear with it that
you may ‘ vex me ‘ by a word, — makes me angry. Well, —
if one must see an end of all perfection — still, to know one
was privileged to see it — Nay, it is safe now — for this present
, all my future would not pay, whatever your own future
turned to !
Yet if I had to say, ‘ I shall see her in a month or two —
perhaps — as this time last year I was saying in a kind of
contented feeling !
Thank God I shall see her to-morrow — my dearest, best,
only Ba cannot change by to-morrow ! — What nonsense !
The words break down, yet I will be trying to use them !
God bless my dearest, ever bless her.
I shall be with you soon after this reaches you, I trust —
now, I kiss you, however, and now, my Ba !
Letters ! since you bid me send them, — do you not ? —
see what the longer says of the improved diction, freedom
from difficulty &c. Who is to praise for that, my Ba ? Oh,
your R. B. wholly and solely to be sure !