[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.
