[Postmark: July 12, 1846]
Sunday.
When I made you promise to refer no more to that
subject in your letter (which I must wait a day and a night
for, alas !), I did not engage myself to the like silence . .
perhaps because I was not bidden or, no ! there is a
better reason ; I want to beg your pardon, dearest, for all
that petulancy, for the manner of what I said rather than
the matter, there is a rationality in it all, if I could
express trulier what I feel but the manner was foolish and
wrong and unnecessary to you so do forgive and forget it.
You would understand and sympathize if you knew not
me, whom you do know in some degree, but so much of
my early life as would account for the actual horror and
hatred I have of those particular doctrines of the world
and the especially foolish word about the ‘ travelling ‘ meant
something like the not unnatural thought that if in this
main, sole event for all good and all evil in my life, if here
the world plucked you from me by any of the innumerable
lines it casts, with that indirectness, too, then, I should
simply go and live the rest of my days as far out of it as I
could.
The simple thing to say is, that I who know you to be
above me in all great or good feelings and therefore
worship you, must be without excuse to talk inconsiderately
as if I, sitting by you and speaking of the same subject,
must needs feel more acutely, more strongly in one respect
where, indeed, it wants very little pre-eminence in heart or
brain to feel entirely the truth a simplest of truths. It
would have been laughable if I had broken out on Mrs.
Proctor’s bitterness of speech, for instance . . just as
though you were the slower of us two to see the nature of
it ! So I do again ask your pardon, dearest Ba ! You
said you loved me no less yesterday than ever how must I
love you and press closer to you more and more, and desire
to see nothing of the world behind you, when I hear how
the world thinks, and how you think ! You only, only
adorable woman, only imaginable love for me ! And all
the hastiness and petulancy comes from that . . someone
seems to come close (in every such maxim of the world’s)
and say ‘ What is she to so much a year ? Could you be
happy with her except in Mayfair and there whom could
you not be happy with ! ‘
It is as I expected Rachel plays on Wednesday in
‘ Phedre,’ and our friend writes to say he has secured places.
May nothing overcast the perfect three hours on Tuesday,
those dear, dear spaces of dear brightness why cannot
a life be made up of these . . with the proper interposition
of work, to justify God’s goodness so far as poor mortality
and its endeavours can, a week of Tuesdays then a
month a year a life ! I must long to see you again,
always by far the most I long, the next day the very day
after I have seen you when it is freshest in my mind what
I did not say while I might have said it, nor ask while I
might have been answered nor learn while you would
have taught me no, it is indescribable. Did I call yester-
day ‘ unsatisfactory ‘ ? Would I had it back now ! Or
better, I will wish you here when I write, with the trees to
see and the birds to hear through the open window I see
you on this old chair against the purple back . . or shall you
lie on the sofa? Ba, how I love you, my own perfect
unapproachable mistress.
Let me kiss your feet and now your hands and your
eyes and your lips now, for the full pardon’s sake, my
sweetest love
Ever your own