[Postmark: June 17, 1846]
Tuesday Evening.
Best, . . best, you are, to write to me when you were
tired, and so ! When I am tired and write to you, it is too
apt to be what may trouble you. With you, how different !
In nothing do you show your strength more than in your
divine patience and tenderness towards me, till . . not
being used to it, I grow overwhelmed by it all, and would
give you my life at a word. Why did you love me, my
beloved, when you might have chosen from the most perfect
of all women and each would have loved you with the
perfectest of her nature ? That is my riddle in this world.
I can understand everything else . . I was never stopped
for the meaning of sorrow upon sorrow . . but that you
should love me I do not understand, and I think that I
never shall.
Do I remember? Yes indeed, I remember. How I
recurred and wondered afterwards, though at the moment
it seemed very simple and what was to be met with in our
philosophy every day. But there, you see, there’s the
danger of using mala verba ! The Fates catch them up
and knit them into the web ! Then I remember all the
more (though I should at any rate) through an imprudence
of my own (or a piece of ill-luck rather . . it shall not be
called an imprudence) of which I will tell you. I was
writing to Miss Mitford and of you – we differed about you
often, . . because she did not appreciate you properly, and
was fond of dwelling on the ‘ obscurity ‘ when I talked of
the light, – and I just then writing of you, added in my
headlong unreflecting way that I had had a real letter from
you which said that you loved me – ‘Oh but,’ – I wrote
on, ‘ you are not to mistake this, not to repeat it for of
course, it is simply the purest of philanthropies ‘ . . . some
words to that effect – and if yours was the purest of philan-
thropies, mine was the purest of innocences, as you may
well believe, . . for if I had had the shadow of a foresight,
I should not have fallen into the snare. So vexed I was
afterwards ! Not that she thought anything at the time,
or has referred to it since, or remembers a word now.
Only I was vexed in my innermost heart . . and am . . do
you know? . . that I should have spoken lightly of such
an expression of yours though you meant it lightly too.
Dearest ! It was a disguised angel and I should have
known it by its wings though they did not fly.
But I foresaw nothing, . . looked to you for nothing,
. . nothing can prove better to myself, than my having
mentioned the quaint word at all. For I know, and I hope
you know, how impossible it always has been to me to
choose for a subject of conversation and jest, things which
never should be spoken to friend or sister. But how was
I to foresee ? So the quaintness passed as quaintness with
me. And never from that time (you grew sacred too soon !),
never again from that moment, did I mention you to Miss
Mitford – oh yes, I did, when she talked of introducing
Mr. Chorley, and when I replied that, being a woman, I
would have my wilful way, and that my wilful way was to
see you instead. But except then . . and when I sent her
Mr. Landor’s verses on you . . not a word have I spoken
. . except in bare response. She thinks perhaps that my
old fervour about you has sunk into the socket – she
suspects nothing – in fact she does not understand what love
is . . and I never should think of asking her for sympathy.
She is one of the Black Stones, which, when I climb up
towards my Singing Tree and Golden Water, will howl
behind me and call names.
You had my second letter to-day, speaking of Landor,
and of Mr. Kenyon’s visit. At half-past six came Miss
Bayley, talking exceeding kindnesses of Italy, and entreating
me to use her . . to let her go with me and take care of me
and do me all manner of good. What kindness, really, in a
woman whom I have not seen six times in all ! I am very
grateful to her. She held my hands, and told me to write
to her if ever I had need of her – she would come at a
moment, go for a year ! – she would do anything for me I
desired ! And this woman to believe of herself that she
has no soul ! Help me to thank her in your thoughts of
her ! She said, by the way, that Mrs. Jameson had talked
to her of wishing to take me, . . but she thought (Miss
Bayley thought) that she (Mrs. Jameson) had too many
objects and too much vivacity . . it would not do so well,
she thought. In reply – I could just thank her, and scarcely
could do that, . . only I am sure she saw and felt that I
was grateful to her aright, let the words come ever so
wrong. To-morrow she leaves London for an indefinite time.
She told me too that a friend of hers, calling on Mrs.
Jameson, had found her on the point of coming to me
to-day, to drive out . . but she suffered from toothache and
was going to Cartwright’s first . . . and last, I suppose. I
dare say he put her to torture, to be classified with ‘ the
thumbscrew and the gadge’ . . some disabling torture,
for I have not seen her at all. So as at half-past seven
Henrietta was going out to dinner, Lizzie and I and Flush
took our places by her in the carriage, and went to Hyde
Park . . drove close by the Serpentine, and saw by the
ruffling of the water that there was a breath of wind more
than we felt. The shadows were gathering in quite fast,
shade upon shade ; and at last the silvery water seemed to
hold all the light left, as on the flat of a hand. Very much
I liked and enjoyed it. And, as we came home, the gas
was in the shops . . another strange sight for me – and we
all liked everything. Flush had his head out of the window
the whole way . . except when he saw a long whip, . . or
had a frightful vision at the water of somebody washing a
little dog . . which made him draw back into the carriage
with dilated eyes and quivering ears, and set about licking
my hands, for an ‘ Ora pro nobis.’ And Lizzie confided to
me, that, when she is ‘ grown up,’ she never will go out to
dinners like Henrietta, but drive in the park like Ba, instead
. . unless she can improve upon both, and live in a cottage
covered with roses, in the country. I, in the meantime,
between my companions, thought of neither of them more
than was necessary, but of somebody whom I had been
teazing perhaps . . dearest, was it so, indeed ? . . but I
avenge you by teazing myself back again ! A long rambling
letter, with nothing in it ! ‘ Passages, that lead to nothing ‘
and staircases, too ! May I be loved nevertheless, as
usual ? and forgiven for my ‘ secret faults ? ‘ You are the
whole world to me and the stars besides !
And I am your very own
BA.