Day: June 18, 2018

[Postmark: June 18, 1846]

Thursday.

Did you really kiss me on the two eyes, my Ba ? I can-
not say ‘ perhaps at the very time I was thinking of you,’ –
more than ‘ when I was breathing ‘ – I breathe always, think
of you always, kiss you almost always. You dear, dearest
Ba ! Do pain me so again and again, – if you will so cure me
every time ! But you should not imagine that I can mistake
the motive, – as if you loved me less and therefore wrote –
oh, no – but there is no getting rid of these mistakings before
the time : they bear their fruit and die away naturally . .
the hoe never cuts up all their roots. I shall trust to hear
you say one day I am past such mistaking – but – at Amalfi ?

I am very glad, love, you go to Mr. Rogers’ to-day – what
harm can follow ? The evil in the other case was a very
precise and especial one. They say his pictures are well
worth seeing. Tell me, make me’ see you seeing ! I am
glad, too, Mrs. Jameson knows . . but her graciousness I
expected, because the causes you were able to give her would
really operate just in that manner : indeed they are the sole
causes of the secresy we have observed. I cannot help
liking Mrs. Jameson more, much more since her acquaintance
with you. Hazlitt says somewhere that the misery of con-
sorting with country-people is felt when you try for their
sympathy as to favourite actors – ‘Liston ? ‘ says the pro-
vincial, ‘ never heard of him ‘ – but – whoever knows Miss
Barrett . . ‘ Ba,’ they are not going to be let know . . of
such a person I know something more than of any other.

Talking of Hahn-Hahn, read this note of Mrs. Carlyle’s –
although to my mortification I find that the wise man is not
so peremptory on the virtue of one of Ba’s qualities as I, the
ignorant man, must continue to be. Never mind, – perhaps
‘ in the long run ‘ I may love you as if you were exactly to
Mrs. Carlyle’s mind !

I want to tell you a thing not to be forgotten about
Florence as a residence for any time. You spoke of the
bad water at Ravenna . . which if a serious inconvenience
anywhere is a very plague in Italy ; well, the medical people,
according to Vallery, attribute the black hollow cheeks and
sunk eyes and general ill health of the Florentines to their
vile water ; impregnated with lead, I think. There is only
one good fountain in the city – that opposite Santa Croce ;
I religiously abstained from drinking water there – and felt
the privation the more from having just left Rome, where the
water is the most perfectly delicious and abundant and, they
say, wholesome – in the world. That one objection is de-
cisive against Ravenna – but then, why do the English all
live at Florence ?

It makes me happy to hear of your achievements and not
of any ill result – happy ! Is it quite so warm to-day ? If
it were to rain to-morrow (!), IF – our party would be post-
poned till the next day, Saturday, I believe . . there was a
kind of understanding to that effect – now, in that case,
might I go to you to-morrow ? In the case of real heavy
rain only – the letter to-morrow will tell me perhaps . .

Goodbye, dearest dearest ; I love you wholly –

[Postmark: June 18, 1846]

Wednesday.

Dearest and ever dearest, try to forgive me when I fall
so manifestly short of you in all things ! It is the very sense
of this which throws me on despairs sometimes of being
other than a bane to your life – and then . . by way of a
remedy . . I begin to be a torment to it directly. Forgive
me. Whatever I may say I am as wholly yours as if you
held me in your hand, and I would do for you any extrava-
gance, as if it were a common thing, at a word and what
is before us is only a common thing, since I have looked to
it from the beginning. Oh – I may talk when I am out of
spirits – but you know, and I know best of all, that I could
not withdraw myself from you, unless you said ‘ Go ‘ – could
not – I have no power. Fine talking, it is of me, to talk of
withdrawing myself from you ! You know I could not at all
do it, let ever so many special pleaders come to prove to
me that you would be more prosperous and happy without
me. ‘ Then ‘ I would say . . ‘ let him put me away. I can’t
put myself away, because I am not mine but his.’ Assuredly
I would say just that, and no more. So do you forget that
I have teazed you and pained you . . . pained you ! . . I will
try not to pain you, my own, own dearest, any more. I have
grown to love you instead of the whole world ; and only one
thing . . (you understand what that is . .) is dreadful and
intolerable to me to imagine. But now it is done with ;
and you shall teach me hereafter to make you happy instead
of the contrary. So . . yes – you are kissed this time !
upon both eyes, . . that they may not see my faults. And
afterwards I will tell you a paradox . . that if I loved you a
hundred times less, I should run into such offences less in
exact proportion. And finally I will give you a promise . .
not to teaze you for a week – which were a wonderful feat for
me ! the teazer par excellence.

To-day I deserved to hear of your head being worse –
but it is better, I thank God – and your mother is better – all
such comforting news ! But it was no news that you did not
go to Greenwich to-day, – for Mrs. Jameson came for me to
drive at about six, and she and I were in Regent’s Park
until nearly eight. Then she went somewhere to dinner,
and I, who had had tea, came home to supper ! I like her
very much – more and more, certainly – and we need not be
mysterious up to the usual mark of mystery, because I told
her . . told her . . what might be told – and she was
gracious to the uttermost – not angry at all, – and said that
‘ Truth was truth, and one could breathe in the atmosphere
of it, and she was glad I had told her.’ Of you, she said,
that she admired you more than ever – yes, more than ever –
for the ‘ manner in which as a man of honour you had
kept the secret ‘ – so you were praised, and I, not blamed
. . and we shall not complain, if our end is as good as our
beginning. Also we talked of your poetry and of you per-
sonally, and I was pleased, . . which proves a little what was
said – and I heard how you were invited as a ‘ celebrity ‘ for
the Countess Hahn-Hahn to see you, and how you effaced
yourself with ever so much gracefulness ; yet not too much,
to omit charming the whole room. Mrs. Jameson praises
you always, as nobody does better. And to-morrow . . will
you be surprised to hear that to-morrow at half-past four, I
am to go again with her, . . to see Rogers’s pictures ? Is it
wrong ? shall I get into a scrape ? She promised laughingly
that I should be incognita to the only companion she thought
of taking . . a Mrs. Bracebridge, I think . . and Mr. Rogers
himself is not to be visible and she herself will mention it
to nobody. It was hard to say ‘ no ‘ – yet perhaps ‘ no ‘
would have been better. Do you think so ? Mrs. Brace-
bridge is an artist and lives or lived on Mount Hymettus ! –
and she is not to hear my name even.

Now – good night, very dear ! – most dear of all ! I will
not teaze you for a fortnight, I think. Ah – if ever I can do
that again, you shall not be pained, . . you shall think that
my heart and life are in you, and that, if they seem to flatter,
it is that they go deeper. All I am is yours which is
different from . . all I have. ‘ All I have,’ is when I may
lean my head down on the shoulder –
So let me be your own
BA.

Of those two letters, one was in the post before seven the
evening before. Now, is it not too bad ?