Day: July 10, 2018

[Postmark: July 10, 1846]

Friday.

And I am disappointed, dearest, in this news of La Cava
after which it would be madness to think of going there :
the one reason we have to go at all is simply for your health
I mean, that if the seclusion were the main object, we
might easily compass that here. All places are utterly in-
different to me if I can inhabit them with you why should
Palermo please me less than Italy proper? The distance
is considerable, however, and the journey expensive I
wonder whether the steamer will sail for Leghorn as last
year. As for the travelling English, they are horrible, and
at Florence, unbearable . . their voices in your ear at every
turn . . and such voices ! I got to very nearly hate the
Tribune for their sakes. Vietri is close to Salerno and
must be obvious to the same condemnation. Your friend
speaks from personal experience, I presume she may well
say that the baneful effects of the hour of sunset (i.e. the
Ave-maria) are too much overlooked ‘ in all Italy ‘ I never
heard of them before but an infinity of ‘ crotchets ‘ go
from Italian brain to brain about what, in eating or drinking
or walking or sleeping, will be the death of you : still, they
may know best. The most dreadful event that could
happen to me would be your getting worse instead of
better . . God knows what I should do ! So whatever
precaution we can take, let us take.

Oh, poor Flush, do you think I do not love and respect
him for his jealous supervision, his slowness to know
another, having once known you ? All my apprehension is
that, in the imaginations down-stairs, he may very unconsci-
ously play the part of the dog that is heard to ‘ bark violently ‘
while something dreadful takes place : yet I do not sorrow
over his slapped ears, as if they ever pained him very much
you dear Ba !

And to-morrow I shall see you. Are you, can you be,
really ‘ better ‘ after I have seen you ? If it is not truth . .
which I will not say . . such an assurance is the most
consummate flattery I can imagine . . it may be recorded
on my tombstone ‘R. B. to whom this flattery was ad-
dressed, that, after the sight of him, Ba was better, she
said.’ If it is truth . . may you say that, neither more
nor less, day by day, year by year through our lives and I
shall have lived indeed !

How it rains how it varies from hot to cold ! a pretty
vantage-ground whence we English can look and call other
climates bad or indifferent ! Now if to-morrow resembles
to-day, will the Chiswick expedition hold good ? I shall
consider that I may go unless a letter comes to-morrow . .
which would have to be written to-day. How pleasant it
would be to make our days always Wednesday and Satur-
day . . could not that be contrived ? So much for con-
siderateness and contentedness !

I want, now, to refer as little as possible to the sad
subject . . but I am glad you have written,- glad too that
you are not severe on me for some hasty speeches which
did, indeed, mean as you say . . vexation at your having
been vexed. And, I will just add, you remark excellently
on the wound to self-love making itself that remedy, rather
than the wound to the affections . . yet there are instances . .
Romilly loses his wife . . so does poor Laman Blanchard.

So I go on writing, writing about all but what my heart
is full of ! Let me kiss you, ever dearest to-morrow will
soon arrive meanwhile, and forever I am your own.

[Postmark: July 10, 1846]

How I have waited for your letter to-night, and it
comes nearly at ten ! It comes at last thank you for it,
ever dearest.

And I knew quite understood yesterday, that you were
sorry for me, which made you angry with another . . but, as to
poor Haydon, you are too generous and too pitiful to refuse
him any justice. I was sure that the letters would touch
you. The particular letter about the ‘ back-ground ‘ and
the ‘ neglect ‘ and Napoleon, . . that, you will observe, was
the last I had from him. Every word you say of it, I
think and feel. Yes, it was just so ! His conscience was
not a sufficient witness, . . nor was God. He must also
have the Royal Academy and the appreciators of Tom
Thumb. A ‘weak man,’ of course he was, for all vain
men are weak men. They cannot stand alone. But that
he had in him the elements of greatness that he looked to
noble aims in art and life, however distractedly, . . that his
thoughts and feelings were not those of a common man, . .
it is true, it is undeniable, and you would think so more
and more if you read through the packets of letters which
I have of his so fervid, so full of earnestness and individuality . . so alive with egotism which yet seemed to redeem
itself. Mr. Kenyon said of the letter we have spoken of,
that it was scarcely the production of a sane mind. But I
who was used to his letters, saw nothing in it in the least
unusual he has written to me far wilder letters ! That he
never should die,’ he had said once or twice before. Then
Napoleon was a favourite subject of his . . constantly re-
curred to. He was not mad then !

Poor Haydon ! Think what an agony, life was to him,
so constituted ! his own genius a clinging curse ! the
fire and the clay in him seething and quenching one
another ! the man seeing maniacally in all men the
assassins of his fame ! and, with the whole world against
him. struggling for the thing which was his life, through
night and day, in thoughts and in dreams . . struggling,
stifling, breaking the hearts of the creatures dearest to him,
in the conflict for which there was no victory, though he
could not choose but fight it. Tell me if Laocoon’s anguish
was not as an infant’s sleep, compared to this ? And could a
man, suffering so, stop to calculate very nicely the consideration due to A, and the delicacy which should be observed
toward B ? Was he scrupulously to ask himself whether
this or that cry of his might not give C a headache ?

Indeed no, no. It is for us rather to look back and consider !
Poor Haydon.

As to grief as grief of course he had no killing grief.
But he suffered.

Often it has struck me as a curious thing (yet it is not
perhaps curious) that suicides are occasioned nearly always
by a mortified self-love . . by losses in money, which force
a man into painful positions . . and scarcely ever by
bereavement through death . . scarcely ever. The wound
on the vanity is more irritating than the wound on the
affections and the word Death, if it does not make us
recoil (which it does I think sometimes, . . even from the
graves of beloved beings !), yet keeps us humble . . casts
us down from our heights. We may despond, but we do
not rebel we feel God over us.

Ah your poor gardener ! All that hope is vain and
the many, many hopes which in a father’s heart must have
preceded it ! How sorry I am for him.

You never can have a grief, dearest dearest, of which I
shall not have half for my share. That is my right from
henceforth . . and if I could have it all . . would I not,
do you think, . . and give my love to you to keep instead ?
Yes, . . indeed yes ! May God bless you always. I
have walked out to-day, you did me so much good yester-
day. As for Saturday, it certainly is our day, since you are
not ‘ particularly engaged ‘ to Miss Campbell. Saturday,
the day after to-morrow ! But the mules may wait long at
La Cava for us, if the tradition, which I sent you, is trustworthy may they not ? I feel as disappointed . . as disappointed

Your own, very own BA.