Day: June 22, 2018

[Postmark: June 22, 1846]

Monday.

If I only thought for myself in this instance, I should at
once go and mount guard before your house so as to see
you, at least, for a moment as you leave it.

To hope for a word would never do . . you might be
startled, or simply not like such a measure, and in simili
incontri I will not run risks, but I should be able to see you,
my Ba . . why do I not go then ? People at doors and
windows are also able, alas, to see me too – so I stay . . if
this is staying away when I can see the curled-up feet and
kiss them beside, – ever dear feet !

Do you know the days and the times and the long
interval, – you, as I know ? How strange that you should
complain, and I become the happier ! If I could alter it,
and make you feel no subject for complaint any longer, I
would, – surely I would, and be happy in that too, I hope
. . yet the other happiness needs must be given up in that
case . . I cannot reason it out. I excuse my present selfish
happiness by feeling I would not exchange the sadness of
being away from you for any imaginable delight in which
you had no part. But I will have this delight, too, my
Ba, of imagining that you are gratified by what you will see
to-day. Tell me all, and what is said, and how you are at
the end.

Thank you meanwhile for the picture of poor Mr. Boyd
. . then he never has seen you, since he was blind so long
ago ! How strange and melancholy – you say he is ‘ cheer-
ful,’ however. In that case – think of unhappy Countess
Faustina with her ‘irresistible longings,’ and give her as
much of your commiseration as she ought to get. What a
horrible book . . how have I brought in what I prescribed
to myself ‘ silence about.’ Such characters as Faustina
produce the very worst possible effect on me – I don’t know
how they strike other people – but I am at once incited
‘ debellare superbos ‘ to try at least and pull down the
arrogant – contempt would be the most Christian of all the
feelings possible to be called forth by such a woman.
Let me get back to you, my own dearest- dearest, – I do
‘ love you to-day,’ if you must ask, and bidding me think
of you is all very well – never bid me not think of you ! –
and so never find out that there could be a bidding I am
unable to obey. But what is mere ‘ thinking ‘ ? I kiss your
hand, and your eyes, and now your lips, – and ask for my
heart back again, to give it and be ever giving it. No
words can tell how I am your own.

My mother is much better, – observably so, to-day.
Oh, dearest, – I want you to read Lander’s Dialogue between
Tasso and his Sister, in the second volume, – with the
exquisite Sorrentine scenery – do read it. I see your Tasso
with his prominent eyes as if they were ever just brightening
out of a sorrow that has broken over them.

How I like (‘ love ‘ is not my word now) but like Landor,
more and more !

[Postmark: June 22, 1846]

Sunday.

I write to you in the drawing-room, and have brought
down with me, I find, no smaller paper – but it can’t be
filled, can it ? though I have to tell you the great news
about the lilies . . that all, except two, are in full blow . .
and that the two are unfolding . . I can almost see the
leaves move. I told you how it would be. They will live,
. . and last longer than the roses, . . which I shall have
to tell you by history as well as prediction, presently. The
next news is not so good, – for I have had a note from Mrs.
Jameson to the effect that she will come to take me to the
pictures to-morrow, Monday – so that there will be no time
to be diplomatic. My hope was of your meeting her at
Mr. Carlyle’s, before she could arrange anything finally, –
and really I do feel as disappointed as if I had had a reason
for the hope. Now, unless we have another miracle, there’s
an end, I suppose.

Think of my having left Flush behind me fast asleep.
He dashes at the door in the most peremptory way, and
nearly throws me backward when I open it, with his leaping-
up-joy . . if it is not rather his reproach.

Now I am here all alone, except Flush – sitting, leaning
against the open window with my feet curled up, and, at
them, Flush curled up too ; and I writing on my knee more
meo. Rather cooler it seems, but rather too hot still it is, I
think. How did you get home ? how are you, dearest ?
And your mother ? tell me of her, and of you ! You
always, you know (do you know ?), leave your presence with
me in the flowers ; and, as the lilies unfold, of course I see
more and more of you in each apocalypse. Still, the
Saturday’s visit is the worst of all to come to an end, as
always I feel. In the first place stands Sunday, like a wall
without a door in it ! no letter ! Monday is a good day
and makes up a little, but it does not prevent Tuesday and
Wednesday following . . more intervening days than be-
tween the other meetings – or so it seems. I forgot to
tell you that yesterday I went to Mr. Boyd’s house . . not
to see him, but as a preliminary step to seeing him. Arabel
went to his room to tell him of my being there – we are
both perhaps rather afraid of meeting after all these years
of separation. Quite blind he is – and though scarcely
older than Mr. Kenyon (perhaps a year or two or three), so
nervous, that he has really made himself infirm, and now he
refuses to walk out or even to go down-stairs. A very
peculiar life he has led ever since he lost his sight, which he
did when he was quite a young man – and a very peculiar
person he is in all possible ways. His great faculty is . .
memory . . and his great passion . . Greek to which of
late he has added Ossian. Otherwise, he talks like a man
of slow mind, which he is, . . and with a child’s way of
looking at things, such as would make you smile – oh, he
talks in the most wonderfully childish way ! Poor Mr.
Boyd. He cares for me perhaps more than he cares for
any one else . . far more than for his own only daughter ;
but he is not a man of deep sensibility, and, if he heard of
my death, would merely sleep a little sounder the next
night. Once he said to me that whenever he felt sorry
about anything, he was inclined to go to sleep. An affec-
tionate and grateful regard . . grateful for many kindnesses
. . I bear him, for my part. He says that I should wear
the crown in poetry, if I would but follow Pope – but that
the dreadful system of running lines one into another
ruins everything. When I talk of memory, I mean merely
the mechanical faculty. The associative, which makes
the other a high power, he wants. So I went to his house
in St. John’s Wood yesterday, and saw the little garden.
Poor Mr. Boyd. There, he lives, all alone – and never
leaving his chair ! yet cheerful still, I hear, in all that
desolation. As for you and Tennyson, he never heard of
you . . he never guesses at the way of modern literature
. . and it is the intense compliment to me when he reads
verses of mine, ‘ notwithstanding my corrupt taste,’ . . to
quote his own words.

Dearest, do you love me to-day ? I think of you, which
is quite the same thing. Think of me to-morrow at half- past
four when Mrs. Jameson comes, and I shall have all that
exertion to go through without the hope of you. Only that
you are always there . . here ! – and I, your very own

BA.

[Postmark: June 22, 1846]

Sunday.

What I told you yesterday is very often in my thoughts,
my own Ba – that with respect to the love for you ‘ I see
what I know and testify what I have seen.’ I know what is,
and why it is – so far as my faculties of perception allow, of
course I rest on you just as I sate on the grass in the
garden this morning with the very earth’s immensity beneath :
that is very different from trusting to this chair which is firm
enough now, but might break down from a thousand causes.
How entirely I believe in you, Ba ! When you praise me,
I believe that you are in error, yet believe it none –– I know
I am not so truthful to you – not so invariably, in the least
as in the greatest matters – in the greatest, in the ordinary
even, I speak pure truth, – but the old conventional habits
cling, as I find out on reflection sometimes – but I aspire no
less to become altogether open to your sight as you are to
me, – I in my degree, – like a smallest of lake’s face under
the sky’s : and for this also I shall have to bless you, my only
Ba, – my only Ba !

I ought never . . I think I will not again . . attempt to
write down why I love you . . (not, NOT that it is done here,
but alluded-to, touched upon . .) The elements of the
love . . (I say ‘ the ‘ love, mine, because I will not know, nor
hear, nor be taught anything by anybody else about ‘ love,’
the one love everybody knows, it seems, and lives and dies
by) – my love’s elements are so many that the attempt to
describe them is to bring about this failure . . the first that
comes is taken up and treated of at length . . as that element
of ‘ trust’ just now . . and then, in the feeling of incompet-
ence which makes the pen sink away and turns the mind
off, the others are let pass by unnamed, much less
described, or at least acknowledged for the undeniable
elements they are. What were all the trust without –
and thus I could begin again ! Let me say no more now –
and forgive all the foolishness . . it is not for my wisdom
you are to love me, Ba ! Except that if you agreed too
heartily with me on that point, I should very likely be found
turning round on you with ‘ not wise, when I adore you so ? ‘
Wise or unwise, I do adore you, my Ba ! And more and
evermore ! But see how I need your letters to train mine,
to lead them into something more like the true way . . and
to-morrow the letter will come – will it not ? And mine shall
be less about myself and more about you – whom may God
bless, prays your own

R.