[Postmark: June 9, 1846]
Monday Morning.
The stars threaten you with a long letter to-day, it seems,
for I stretch out my hand and take blindly the largest sheet.
Dearest, I have been driving out before your letter came . .
and to Hampstead! think of that. And see the proof of
it – this grew in the hedges when the sun rose to-day. We
had a great branch gathered, and ‘this was of it,’ starred
over with dog-roses. I did in the morning long for air,
through the suffocation yesterday, and the walking being
better for another day, my sisters persuaded me into the
carriage. Only I wanted to wait for your letter, my letter,
and could not – it did not come by the usual early post, and
the carriage was here before it . . so I had to go, thinking
of it all the way, and having it on my return ready to
gladden me. How you make me laugh with your phreno-
logist ! ‘For the interests of science’ you should have
given your name. Then, would have come the whole history
in the next lecture, . . how ‘Once in an omnibus he met
an individual with a forehead and eyes of mark, and knew
him at a glance for the first poet of the age.’ It would
have made a feature in the lecture, and highly developed, I
dare say, . . to suit the features in the omnibus. Just at
the moment of this observation I too was thinking of eyes
‘calm eyes’ did I say ? Yes, calm, serene . . which was
what struck me first of all, in the look of them was it ever
observed before, I wonder? The most serene spiritual eyes,
I ever saw – I thought that the first day I saw you. They
may be called by other names beside, but they shall not
lose the name I then gave them. Now to bear with the
horrible portrait in the matter of the eyes, is a hard thing –
Mr. Howitt must have his shut nearly, I think. The hair is
like – and nothing else. The mouth, the form of the cheek,
one is as unlike as the other. And the character of the
whole is most unlike of the whole – it is a vulgarized
caricature and I only wonder how I could have fastened
it inside of my ‘ Paracelsus ‘ frontispiece-fashion. When it
was hung up and framed, I did not know you face to face,
remember. Mr, Kenyon told me it was ‘ rather like.’ But
always and uninstructed I seemed to know that it was not
like you in some things . .
Monday Evening.
Observe how the sentence breaks off!
While I was writing it, came a ‘ tapping, tapping at the cham-
ber door,’ as sings my dedicator Edgar Poe. Flush barked
vociferously ; I threw down the pen and shut up the writing
case, . . and lo, Mrs. Jameson ! I suppose she did not
guess that I was writing to you. She brought me the
engravings of Xanthian marbles, and also her new essays
. . and was very kind as usual, and proposed to come some
day next week with a carriage to take me out, and all this
time, how we treat her ! Will she not have a right to com-
plain of being denied the degree of confidence we gave
(. . Mr. Kenyon gave for me . .) to Miss Bayley? Will
she not think hereafter ‘There was no need of their
deceiving me ? ‘ And yet I doubt how to retreat now.
Could I possibly say to her the next time she speaks of you
. . or could I not ? it would set her on suspecting perhaps.
She talked a little to-day of Italy, and plainly asked me what
thoughts I had of it, – to which I could answer truthfully
‘ No thoughts, but dreams.’ Then she insisted, ‘ But
whenever you have thoughts, you will let me know them ?
You will not be in Italy when I am there, without my
knowing it ? And where will you go – ? to Pisa ? . . to
Sienna ? to Naples ? ‘ And she advised . . ‘ Don’t go where
the English are, in any case.’ And encouraged like an
oracle, . . ‘ Remember that where there’s a will there’s a
way ‘ knowing no more what she spoke, than a Pythian on
the serpent’s skin.
Beloved, you are right in your fear about Mr. Lough.
I have decided not to go there. Oh, it is best certainly ;
and, quietly considered, I shall be happier as well as safer
in not going. We must walk softly on the snowdrifts of the
world, now that we have got to them.
For the rest, . . that is for the chief thing . . you wrote
foolishly in your first letter to-day, my beloved, – you can
write foolishly on occasion, let me grant to the critics. I
have just so much logic as to be able to see (though I am a
woman) that for me to be too good for you, and for you to
be too good for me, cannot be true at once, both ways.
Now I could discern and prove, from the beginning of the
beginning, that you were too good for me – it is too late
therefore to take up the other argument – the handle of it
was broken last year.
Also, I do not go to the world to ask it to appraise you
I would fain leave to Robins the things of Robins. I
hope you have repented all day to-day having written so
foolishly yesterday. Even Robins would not justify you.
Dearest, the avalanches are on us ! Uncle and aunts
coming down in a great crash ! My uncle Hedley comes
next week ! – on the second or third of July, the eldest of
my aunts, . . from Paris, . . who proposes to reside in
this house for a week it may be longer ! and, still in July,
the rest of the Hedleys, I think ! – everybody coming,
coming ! Their welcome will be somewhat of a ghastly
smile from me – for indeed I cannot be quite delighted, after
the fashion of a thoroughly dutiful niece.
Ah, never mind them ! Nobody can change anything,
if you do not change yourself. You have ‘ a right ‘ . . not
the ‘ shadow ‘ of one, but the very right . . to all I am, and
to all the life I live. Did you not see before, what I have
felt so long, that indeed you have a right to me and over
me?
I am your own
BA.