Day: July 17, 2018

[Postmark: July 17, 1846]

Did you ever see a more uncongenial, colourless day than
this that brings me no letter ! I do not despair yet, how-
ever there will be a post presently. When I am without
the sight of you, and the voice of you, which a letter seems . .
I feel very accurately the justice of that figure by which I am
represented as ‘ able to leave you alone leaving you and
following my pleasure elsewhere ‘ so you have written and
spoken ! Well, to-day, I may follow my pleasures.

I will follow you, Ba, the thoughts of you, and long for
to-morrow.

No letter for me, the time is past. If you are well, my
own Ba, I will not mind . . more than I can. You had not
been out for two days the wind is high, too. May God
keep you at all times, ever dearest !

The sun shines again now I will hope to hear at six
o’clock.

I can tell you nothing better, I think, than this I heard
from Moxon the other day . . it really ought to be remem-
bered. Moxon was speaking of critics, the badness of their
pay, how many pounds a column the Times allowed, and
shillings the Athenaeum, and of the inevitable effects on
the performances of the poor fellows. ‘ How should they
be at the trouble of reading any difficult book so as to review
it, Landor, for instance?’ and indeed a friend of my own
has promised to write a notice in the Times but he com-
plains bitterly, he shall have to read the book, he can do
no less, and all for five or ten pounds’ ! All which
Moxon quite seemed to understand ‘ it will really take him
some three or four mornings to read enough of Landor to
be able to do anything effectually.’ I asked if there had
been any notices of the Book already ‘ Just so many,’ he
said ‘ as Forster had the power of getting done ‘- Mr.
White, a clergyman, has written a play for Macready, which
everybody describes as the poorest stuff imaginable, it is
immediately reviewed in Blackwood and the Edinburgh
‘ Because ‘ continues M, ‘he is a Blackwood reviewer, and
may do the like good turn to any of the confraternity.’

So here I will end, wanting to come to the kissing
dearest Ba, and bidding her remember to-morrow how my
heart sinks to-day in the silence.

Ever, dearest dearest, your very own.

[Postmark: July 17, 1846]

Thursday.

Dearest, if you feel that, must I not feel it more deeply ?
Twice or three times lately he has said to me ‘ my love ‘
and even ‘ my puss,’ his old words before he was angry
last year, . . and I quite quailed before them as if they were
so many knife-strokes. Anything but his kindness, I can
bear now.

Yet I am glad that you feel that . . The difficulty,
(almost the despair !) has been with me, to make you understand the two ends of truth . . both that he is not stone . .
and that he is immovable as stone. Perhaps only a very
peculiar nature could have held so long the position he
holds in his family. His hand would not lie so heavily,
without a pulse in it. Then he is upright faithful to
his conscience. You would respect him, . . and love him
perhaps in the end. For me, he might have been king and
father over me to the end, if he had thought it worth while
to love me openly enough yet, even so, he should not
have let you come too near. And you could not (so) have
come too near for he would have had my confidence from
the beginning, and no opportunity would have been permitted to you of proving your affection for me, and I should
have thought always what I thought at first. So the nightshade and the eglantine are twisted, twined, one in the
other, . . and the little pink roses lean up against the pale
poison of the berries — we cannot tear this from that, let us
think of it ever so much !

We must be humble and beseeching afterwards at least,
and try to get forgiven — Poor Papa ! I have turned it
over and over in my mind, whether it would be less offensive, less shocking to him, if an application were made first.
If I were strong, I think I should incline to it at all risks
but as it is, . . it might . . would, probably, . . take away the
power of action from me altogether. We should be separated, you see, from that moment, . . hindered from writing . .
hindered from meeting . . and I could evade nothing, as I
am not to say that I should have fainting fits at every
lifting of his voice, through that inconvenient nervous
temperament of mine which has so often made me ashamed
of myself. Then . . the positive disobedience might be a
greater offence than the unauthorised act. I shut my eyes
in terror sometimes. May God direct us to the best.

Oh — do not write about this, dearest, dearest? — I
throw myself out of it into the pure, sweet, deep thought of
you . . which is the love of you always. I am yours . . your
own. I never doubt of being yours. I feel too much
yours. It is might and right together. You are more to
me, beside, than the whole world.

Write nothing of this, dearest of all ! — it is of no use.
To-day . . this morning . . I went out in the carriage, and
we drove round the Park ; and Mrs. Jameson did not come
afterward. Will she put it off till Saturday ? I have heard
nothing against Saturday, by the way, worse than that con-
jecture of mine.

And I have written you, perhaps, a teazing, painful
letter . . I, who love you to-day ‘ as much as ever.’ It is
my destiny, I sometimes think, to torment you. And let
me say what I will, remember how nothing that I say can
mean a doubt you never shall have reason to reproach me
for the falseness of cowardice that double falseness . .
both to me and to you. Only I wish this were Christmas day, and we … even at Salerno . . in the ‘ bad air ‘ ! There’s
no harm in such a wish now is there ?

Ever and ever I am your own

BA.