[Postmark: July 20, 1846]
Dearest Ba’s face of yesterday, with the smiles and
perfect sweetness, oh, the comfort it is to me through this
day of my especial heaviness ! I don’t know when I have
felt more stupid, and I seem to keep the closelier to you,
Ba. Is that one of my felicities of compliment ? I think if
you were here I should lay my head on your bosom, my
own beloved, and never raise it again. In your last
letter, you speak of those who care less for you than for a
‘ glass of claret ‘ there is something sublime, at all
events, astounding, in the position we occupy each of us,
I, and those less-carers, standing in respect to each other
so like England and Owhyhee, at which, they told me
when I was a boy, I should be pretty sure to arrive if I dug a
hole just through the earth, dropped to the centre and then,
turning round, climbed straight up!
I left here, yesterday, without taking the prints of
Dumas and Hugo there is a head ‘ for remembering ! ‘ and
justifying your commodations ! Chorley says, you see, my
acquisitions are rather accumulated than digested or
words to that effect I am sure at this moment the stupid,
heavy head knows not one thing, as a clear point of know-
ledge, taken in and laid by, orderly and separately. So let
me say here, while I do remember, that a letter from
Forster puts off his visit and Moxon’s till Monday should
any reason therefore, prevent your confirming to me the
gift of Tuesday, this other day will lie open but only in
that case, I trust because Tuesday objects not to Saturday,
does it? while Wednesday looks grave, and Thursday
frowns downright on the same ! Friday, remember, is Mr.
Kenyon’s day.
I wish, dearest, you would tell me precisely what you
have written all my affectionate pride in you rises at once
when I think of your poetry, that is and that is to be you
dear, dear Ba, can you not write on my shoulder while my
head lies as you permit?
I found at home on my return yesterday my friend
Pritchard, who brought me an old notice of Rachel by Jules
Janin of course there is no believing a word but he does say
that she was, at the time he wrote, perfectly ignorant of
the most ordinary rules of grammar, that, for instance, on
meeting him she remarked (alluding to her having played
previously at another theatre than the T. Frangais) ‘ C’était
moi que j’était au Gymnase ! ‘ to which he ought to have
answered, he thinks, ‘ Je le savions ! ‘ I will bring her
portrait, too, if you please and this memoir, untrustworthy
as it is.
I will go now and walk about, I think did you go out,
as you promised, love ? Ah, dearest, you to wonder I
could look up to you for ever as you stand, you who
once wrote to me that, in order to verify a date about
Shelley in a book I lent you, ‘ You had accomplished a
journey to the other end of the room, even ‘ ! And now !
I thankfully know this to be miraculous nor have I to ask
my spiritual director’s opinion thereon to whom, how on
earth can one surrender one’s private right of judgment
when it is only by the exercise of that very right that I
select him from the multitude of would-be directors of me
and the whole world ? What but a deliberate act of judg-
ment takes up Dr. Pusey of Oxford rather than Mrs. Fox of
Finsbury and is it for that pernicious first step that I
determine on never risking a second?
Bless you, ever dearest and do you bless your
very own R.