[Postmark: May 8?, 1846]
Beloved, my thoughts go to you this morning, loving
and blessing you ! May God bless you for both His worlds
— not for this alone. For me, if I can ever do or be any-
thing to you, it will be my uttermost blessing of all I ever
knew, or could know, as He knows. A year ago, I thought,
with a sort of mournful exultation, that I was pure of wishes.
Now, they recoil back on me in a spring-tide . . flow back,
wave upon wave, . . till I should lose breath to speak
them ! and it is nothing, to say that they concern another
… for they are so much the more intensely mine, and of
me. May God bless you, very dear ! dearest.
So I am to forget to-day, I am told in the letter.
Ah ! But I shall forget and remember what I please.
In the meanwhile I was surprised while writing thus to you
this morning . . as a good deed to begin with . . by Miss
Bayley’s coming. Remembering the seventh of May I
forgot Thursday, which she had named for her visit, and
altogether she took me by surprise. I thought it was
Wednesday ! She came — and then, Mr. Kenyon came, . .
and as they both went down-stairs together, Mrs. Jameson
came up. Miss Bayley is what is called strong-minded,
and with all her feeling for art and Beauty, talks of utility
like a Utilitarian of the highest, and professes to receive
nothing without proof, like a reasoner of the lowest. She
told me with a frankness for which I did not like her less,
that she was a materialist of the strictest order, and believed
in no soul and no future state. In the face of those con-
clusions, she said, she was calm and resigned. It is more
than I could be, as I confessed. My whole nature would
cry aloud against that most pitiful result of the struggle here
— a wrestling only for the dust, and not for the crown.
What a resistless melancholy would fall upon me if I had
such thoughts ! — and what a dreadful indifference. All grief,
to have itself to end in ! — all joy, to be based upon nothing-
ness ! — all love, to feel eternal separation under and over
it ! Dreary and ghastly, it would be ! I should not have
strength to love you; I think, if I had such a miserable
creed. And for life itself, . . would it be worth holding on
such terms, — with our blind Ideals making mocks and
mows at us wherever we turned? A game to throw up,
this life would be, as not worth playing to an end !
There’s a fit letter for the seventh of May ! — but why
was Thursday the seventh, and not Wednesday rather, which
would have let me escape visitors ? I thank God that I
can look over the grave with you, past the grave, . . and
hope to be worthier of you there at least.
Mrs. Jameson did not say much, being hoarse and weak
with a cold, but she told me of having met you at dinner,
and found you ‘ very agreeable.’ Also, beginning by a
word about Professor Longfellow, who has married, it
appears, and is a tolerably merciful husband for a poet . .
(‘ solving the problem of the possibility of such a thing,’
said she !) . . beginning so, she dropped into the subject of
marriage generally, and was inclined to repropose Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu’s septennial act . . which might be a
reform perhaps ! . . . . what do you think ? Have I not,
altogether, been listening to improving and memorable dis-
course on this seventh of May ? The ninth’s will be more
after my heart.
I like Mrs. Jameson, mind ! — and I like her views
on many subjects — exclusive of the septennial marriage
act, though.
How you amuse me by your account of the sponsorship !
the illustrious D’Orsay with his paletot reputation, in a cleft
stick of Alfred . . . Tennyson ! Bunn in the distance !
A curious combination it makes really . . and you read it
like a vates that you are ! —
So, good night — dearest ! — I think of you behind all
these passing clouds of subjects, my poet of the Lyre and
Crown ! Look down on your own
Ba.