[Postmark: July 15, 1846]
Wednesday.
Dearest Ba, I am anxious to know what cannot yet be
told me, how that unforeseen visit has worked tell me the
moment you can, and fully, whatever happens.
‘ Suspicious ‘ anything in the world rather than that,
you are ! When you have mistrusted your own power over
me, I believed always in the mistrust . . which, indeed,
matters little except to yourself. For if I would, certainly,
have the truth seen as the truth, and our true position
understood, yet . . there is, ought I not to be ashamed
at saying ? an exquisite, final grace and endearingness in
the ignorance, strange as I must account it. You doubly
trust me, with the treasure, and then, with the knowledge
that it is a treasure, or such a treasure.
Ba, when I think of it all, my whole heart becomes one
gratitude to you, I am only yours, grateful for ever. It is
the only kind of thoughts in which you shall not share
(there are many in which you cannot) the thoughts to my
inmost self as I go over what you say and do and try to
clear up to myself the precise fascination in each : you shall
not know what you do . . but shall continue to do and to
let me know. I love you entirely. Where can you change
so that I shall not love you more and more as I grow more
able and worthier ? I cannot sit for twenty-four hours by
you as I sit for three as it is, I take myself to task for not
doing something here at home to justify in some measure
my privilege and blessing and the only thing that keeps
conscience quiet comparatively is . . the old expedient
that the Future engages to do for me what the Present
cannot. Under your eyes, I will hope to work and attain
your approval. I know that when you were only the great
Poet and not my Ba, I would have preferred your praise, as
competent to praise, to that of the whole world I
remember distinctly, and know I should have done so.
And now, if I put aside the Poet and only (what an ‘ only ‘)
see my dearest, dearest lady of that hair and eyes, and
hands, and voice, and all the completeness that was trusted
to my arms yesterday why I feel that if she, never having
written a line, said ‘ What Miss Barrett may think I do
not know, but I am content with what you show me ‘ then,
dearest, should not I be content ?
I called on Moxon and called at Carlyle’s to no pur-
pose. He was out, and will leave town (said the servant)
next Saturday. Mrs. Carlyle has already left it. So, no
Rag Fair for the present, or probably ever ! This was my
fault, I having let several Sundays go by I must write to
Mr. Kenyon and try if he will come on his own account.
Moxon tells me that he has sold fifteen hundred of Tenny-
son’s Poems in a year and is about to print another
edition in consequence. If that is the case, and Tennyson
gets, say, only half a crown by the sale of each copy,
expenses deducted, he will have received 178/., little
enough, as payments are made to Punch-literature, but
enough to live upon, whatever the awful fiat decides !
Tennyson ‘is going’ to Switzerland presently with Moxon
but is liable to fits of indecision. He did talk of going to
Italy (of course), but the other day, time being up, his
brother was forced to proceed alone. Moxon is coming
here first.
Now I will kiss you, dearest, and hope that Wimpole
Street stands where it did, unhurt by explosions of any-
kind. I have got a letter from Procter asking me to go to-
day, which I cannot do. Ever your own, very own R.