Day: July 6, 2018

[Postmark: July 6, 1846]

Monday.

When I read, after the reasons for not seeing you to-day,
this ó’still I leave it to you,’óbelieve, dearest, that I at
once made the sacrifice and determined to wait till Wednes-
day, óas seemed best for you, and therefore for me : but at
the letter’s very end, amid the sweetest, comes ‘ Wednesday
. . or must it be Thursday?’ What is than What ‘must’
is mine ? Shall you fear, or otherwise suffer, if we appoint
Wednesday ?

Oh, another year of this ! Yet I am not, I feel, ungrate-
ful to the Past . . all the obstacles in the world can do
nothing now, nothing : earlier they might have proved
formidable annoyances. I have seen enough of you, Ba,
for an eternity of belief in you . . and you, as you confess,
you cannot think ‘ I shall forget.’

All you can, you compensate me for the absence óthat

such letters, instead of being themselves the supremest
reward and last of gains, should beócompensation, at the
best ! Am I really to have you, all of you and altogether,
and always ? If you go out of your dream-life, can I lie
quietly in mine ? But I hold your hand and hear your
voice through it all.

How do these abrupt changes in the temperature affect
you ? Yesterday at noon, so oppressively hot ó this morn-
ing, a wind and a cold. Do you feel no worse than
usual ? If you do not tell me,ó you know, I cannot keep
away. Then, this disinspiriting bequest of poor Haydon’s
journal . . his ‘ writings ‘ ó from which all the harm came,
and, it should seem, is still to come to himself and every-
body beside ó let us all forget what came of those descrip-
tions and vindications and explanations interminable ; but
as for beginning another sorrowful issue of them,ó it is part
and parcel of the insanity ó and to lay the business of editing
the ‘ twenty-six ‘ (I think) volumes, with the responsibility,
on you ó most insane ! Unless, which one would avoic
supposing, the author trusted precisely to your ignorance of
facts and isolation from the people able to instruct you.
Take one little instance of how ‘ facts ‘ may be set downó
in the Athenceum was an account of Haydon’s quoting
Waller’s verse about the eagle reached by his own feather
on the arrow,ówhich he applied to Maclise and some
others, who had profited by their intimacy with him to turn
his precepts to account and so surpass him in public estima-
tion : now, Maclise was in Haydon’s company for the first
time at Talfourd’s on that evening when I met your brother
there,óso said Talfourd in an after-supper speech,óand
Forster, to whom I mentioned the circumstance, assured
me that Maclise ‘ called on Haydon for the first time only
a few months ago ‘ . . I suppose, shortly after. New, what
right has Maclise, a fine generous fellow, to be subjected to
such an imputation as that? With an impartial prudent
man, acquainted with the artists of the last thirty years,

the editing might turn to profit : I do hope for an exercise
of Mr. Kenyon’s caution here, at all events. And then how
horrible are all these posthumous revelations, óthese passions
of the now passionless, errors of the at length better-
instructed ! All falls unfitly, ungraciouslyóthe triumphs
or the despondencies, the hopes or fears, ofó whom ? He
is so far above it all now ! Even in this lifeóimagine a
proficient in an art or science, who, after thirty or sixty
years of progressive discovery, finds that some bookseller
has disinterred and is about publishing the raw first attempt
at a work which he was guilty of in the outset !

All of which you know better than Ió what do you not
know better ? Nor as well ? óthat I love you with my
whole heart, Ba, dearest Ba, and look up into your eyes for
all light and life. Bless you.

Your very own ó

I am going to Talfourd’s to-morrow (to dine)óand per-
haps to Chorley’s in the evening. If I can do any bidding of
yours at Talfourd’s . . but that seems improbable, with
Mr Kenyon, too ! But (this between our very selves] the
Talfourds, or at least Mrs T., please to take one of their
unimaginably stupid groundless dislikes to him.

[Postmark: July 6, 1846]
,

Sunday.

Will it do if you come on Wednesday, dearest ? It will
be safer I think — and, with people staying in the house, it
is necessary, you see, to consider a little. My aunt is so

tired with her journey that she is not likely to go out at all
to-morrow — and when I remember that you dine with Mr.
Kenyon on that Wednesday, it seems marked out for our
day. Still I leave it to you. Never have we been so long
parted, and perhaps by Wednesday you may forget me — ah
no ! Now I will not make the time longer by being
unkind . . or even unjust.

I meant to write you a long letter to-day, — but first my
aunt and cousin were here telling me all the statistics of
Arabella Hedley’s marriage, — and then Mr. Kenyon came,
. . and on such a very different subject, his talk was, that
he has left me quite depressed. It appears that poor Mr.
Haydon, in a paper entering into his reasons for self-destruc-
tion, says that he has left his manuscripts to me with a
desire for me to arrange the terms of their publication with
Longman. Of course it has affected me naturally . . such
a proof of trust when he had so many friends wiser and
stronger to look to — but I believe the reference to be simply
to the fact of his having committed to my care all his
private papers in a great trunk . . one of three which he
sent here. Two years ago when we corresponded, he made
me read a good part of his memoirs, which he thought of
publishing at that time ; and then he asked me (no, it was
a year and a half ago) to speak about them to some book-
seller . . to Longman, he said, I remember, then. I
explained, in reply, how I had not any influence with any
bookseller in the world ; advising him besides not to think
of printing, without considerable modification, what I had
read. In fact it was — with much that was individual and
interesting, — as unfit as possible for the general reader
— fervid and coarse at once, with personal references blood-
dyed at every page. At the last, I suppose, the idea came
back to him of my name in conjunction with Longman’s —
I cannot think that he meant me to do any editor’s work, for
which (with whatever earnestness of will) I must be com-
paratively unfit, both as a woman and as personally and

historically ignorant of the persons and times he writes of.
I should not know how one reference would fall innocently,
and another like a thunderbolt, on surviving persons, I
only know that without great modification, the Memoirs
should not appear at all . . that the scandal would be great
if they did. At the same time you will feel with me, I am
sure, you who always feel with me, that whatever is clearly
set for me to do, I should not shrink from under these
circumstances, whatever the unpleasantness may be, more
or less, involved in the doing. But if Mr. Serjeant Talfourd
is the executor . . is he not the obviously fit person?
Well ! there is no need to talk any more. Mr. Kenyon is to
try to see the paper. It was Mr. Forster who came to tell
him of this matter and to get him to communicate it to me.
Poor Haydon !

Dearest, I long for you to come and bring me a little
light. Tell me how you are — now tell me. Tell me too
how your mother is.

My aunt’s presence here has seemed to throw me back
suddenly and painfully into real life out of my dream-life
with you into the old dreary flats of real life. She does
not know your name even — she sees in me just Ba who is
not your Ba — and when she talks to me . . seeing me so
. . I catch the reflection of the cold abstraction as she
apprehends it, and feel myself for a moment a Ba who is
not your Ba . . sliding back into the melancholy of it !
Do you understand the curious process, I talk of so mistily?
Do you understand that she makes me sorrowful with not
talking of you while she talks to me ? Everything, in fact,
that divides us, I must suffer from — soI need not treat
metaphysically of causes and causes . . splitting the thinner
straws.

Once she looked to the table where the remains of
your flowers are, . . and said, ‘I suppose Miss Mitford
brought you those flowers.’ ‘No,’ I answered, ‘she did
not.’ ‘Oh no,’ began Arabel with a more suggestive voice,

‘not Miss Mitford’s flowers.’ But I turned the subject
quickly.

Robert ! — how did you manage to write me the dear
note from Mrs. Jameson’s ? how could you dare write and
direct it before her eyes ? What an audacity that was of
yours. Oh — and how I regretted the missing you, as you
proved it was a missing, by the letter ! Twice to miss you
on one day, seemed too much ill-luck . . . even for me, I
was going to write . . but that would have been a word of
my old life, before I knew that I was born to the best
fortune and happiest, which any woman could have, . . in
being loved by you.

Dearest, do not leave off loving me. Do not forget me
by Wednesday. Shall it be Wednesday? or must it be
Thursday? answer you.

I am your own

BA.

[Postmark: July 6, 1846]JH

You will have known by my two or three words that I
received your letter in time to set out for Mrs J.’s — she said
to me, directly and naturally, ‘you have missed a great
pleasure ‘ — and then accounted for your absence. Do not

be sorry, Ba, at my gladness . . for I was I hope glad
. . yes, I am sure, glad that you ran no risk if you will not
think of that, think of my risk if you had ‘fainted’ .. should
I have kept the secret, do you suppose ? Oh, dearest of
all dreamt-of dearness, – incur no unnecessary danger now,
at . . shall I dare trust, – the end of the adventure ! I
cannot fear for any mischance that may follow once let my}
arms be round you . . I mean, the blow seems then to fall
on both alike – now, what dismal, obscure months might be
prolonged between us before we meet next by a caprice
where the power is ! When have I been so long without
the blessing of your sight ! Yet how considerately you
have written, what amends you make, all that the case
admits of ! If I were less sure of my own mind, and what
it knows for best, I might understand the French lover’s
fancy of being separated from his mistress that he might be

written to and write .. but the very best I know, and have

ever in sight, and constantly shall strive after .. to see you

face to face, to live so and to die so – which I say, because it

ends all, all that can be ended .. and yet seems in itself so encountered – no death no end.

After all, I may see you to-morrow may I not ? There

is no more than a danger, an apprehension, that we may lose to-morrow also, is there ? You cannot tell me after this is

read . . I shall know before. If I receive no letter, mind, I go to you .. so that if the Post is in fault after its custom, and your note arrives at 3 o’clock you will know

why I seem to disobey it and call .. and I shall understand why you are not to be seen – but I will hope.

When you say these exquisitely dear and tender things, you know Ba, it is as if the sweet hand were on my mouth –

I cannot speak .. I try to seem as if I heard not, for all the

joy of hearing .. you give me a jewel and I cannot repeat, ‘you, you do give me a jewel.’ I am not worthy of any gift,

you must know, Ba, – never say you do not – but what you press on me, let me feel and half-see, and in the end, carry

away, but do not think I can, in set words, take them. At
most, they are, and shall be, half-gift half-loan for adornment’s sake, — mine to wear, yours to take back again.
Even this, all this ungracefulness, is proper, appropriate in
its way — I am penetrated with shame thinking on what you
say, and what my utmost devotion will deserve . . so
infinitely less will it deserve ! You are my very, very
angel.

Mrs Jameson showed me the lines you had sent her,
Horne’s very beautiful poem, — very earnest, very solemn
and pathetic, — worthy of Horne and the subject — and you
will do well to reward him as you propose. I think I will
also write two or three lines, — telling him that you called
my attention to the poem, — so that he may understand the
new friend does not drive out the old, as the old proverb
says. I will wait a day or two and write. And you are
herein, too, a dear good Ba, — to write me out the verses
in the characters I love best of all ! I may keep them,
I hope.

The weather is hot as ever : Ba, remember how I believe in you — is the indisposition ‘ nothing to signify ‘ ?
And remember the confidence I make you of every
slightest headache or what looks like it — tell me frankly as
Ba should, and will if she loves me ! I am very well . .
and my mother much better. I observe while I write, the
clouds gather propitiously for coolness if not rain — may| all
be as is best for you — ‘ and for me ? ‘ Then kiss me, really,
through the distance, and love me, my sweetest Ba !

I am your own —