Day: August 10, 2018

[Postmark: August 10, 1846]

Monday Morning.

You dearest Ba, do you write thus to put all thoughts
of fear out of my head, and make me confident nothing can
go ill with us if you feel so for me ? I seem to have a
presentiment that this afternoon, before this letter reaches
you, Mr. Kenyon will have spoken — and if the whole
world spoke its loudest, your words would be all I should
hear. Or are they trials, every such word, of my vanity and
weakness, — do you think, ‘ if anything can call them up,
this will ? ‘ No, I very well know your entire truth in this
and the other assurances I make my life bright with, —
through any darkness that can come. What you choose to
assert of yourself, I feel of myself every hour. But there
must be this disproportionateness in a beloved object —
before I knew you, women seemed not so much better than
myself, — therefore, no love for them ! There is no love
but from beneath, far beneath, — that is the law of its
nature — and now, no more of words — will there indeed be
need of no more, — as I dare hope and believe, will the
deeds suffice ? — not in their own value, no ! — but in
their plain, certain intention, — as a clear advance
beyond mere words? We shall soon know — if you live, you
will be mine, I must think — you have put these dear arms
too surely round my neck to be disengaged now. I cannot
presume to suggest thoughts to you resolutions for the
future — you must impart to me always, — but I do lift up
my heart in an aspiration to lead the life that seems
accorded by your side, under your eyes. — I cannot write
on this, dear Ba, — to say, I will live and work as I
ought, seems too presumptuous. Understand all, and help me
with your dearest hand, my own love !

As I say, I fancy Mr. Kenyon will speak — I only hope,
the caution will act both ways, and that he will see as
much inexpediency in altogether opposing as in encouraging
such a step. That you should pass another winter and the
risk of it — and perhaps many — that seems the worst fate.
Can he apprehend any worse evil than that ?

I observe in the Times to-day that the Peninsular &
Oriental Steam Company have advertised a ship from
Southampton to Genoa, Leghorn, Civita Vecchia and
Naples on the 30th September, and that ‘ thenceforth the
company will despatch a first-class steamer to those ports on
the 15th of every month. One more facility, should
circumstances require it. Are you sure that the France
journey with the delays and fatigue is preferable to this —
where if the expenses are greater, yet the uncertain expenses
are impossible ? You are to think, beloved.

Now, will you write to-night ? I may come to-morrow ?
Say one word — you have heard why I wanted to come, even
if Mr. Kenyon’s questions had not been put — otherwise,
Friday will be impossible — I can say, ‘ I called on
Saturday, and think of doing so next Friday — ‘ I must
see you to-morrow indeed, love !

Let me leave off here — I love you wholly, and bless you
ever as now — Your own R.

[Postmark: August 10, 1846]

Sunday.

Ever dearest, I shall write to you a little this morning
and try to manage to post myself what shall be written, too
early to permit the possibility (almost) of your being without
a letter to-morrow. Dearest, how you were with me yesterday,
after you went away ! — I thought, thought, thought of
you, — and the books I took up one by one . . (I tried a
romance too ‘ Les Femmes ‘ by a writer called Desnoyers
. . quite new, and weak and foolish enough as a story, but
full of clever things about shoe tyes . . philosophy in small
🙂 the books were all so many lorgnons through which I looked
at you again and again. Did you ever hear a story of the
late Lord Grey, that he was haunted by a head, a head
without a body ? If he turned to the right or left there it
was — if he looked up in the air, there it hung . . or down
to the floor, there it lay — or walked up or down stairs, there
it bounded before him — flop . . flop . . just on its chin,
‘ Alas, poor ghost ? ‘ And just such another, as far as the
haunting goes, were you to me, dearest, yesterday — only
that you were of the celestial rather than ghastly
apparitionery, and bore plainly with you airs from Heaven full
against my forehead. How did I ever deserve you — how
ever ? Never indeed ! And how can it seem right to submit to
so much happiness undeservedly, as the knowledge
of your affection gives, you who are ‘ great in everything, ‘
as Mr. Kenyon said the other day ! Shall I tell you how I
reconcile myself to the good ? Thus it is. First I think
that no woman in the world, let her be ever so much
better than I, could quite be said to deserve you — and that
therefore there may not be such harm in your taking the
one who will owe you most with the fullest consciousness !
If it may not be merit, it shall be gratitude — that is how I
look at it when I would keep myself from falling back into
the old fears. Ah ! you may prevent my rising up to
receive you . . though I did not know that I did . . it was
a pure instinct ! — but you cannot prevent my sinking down
to the feet of your spirit when I think of the love it has
given me from the beginning and not taken away. Dearest,
dearest — I am content to owe all to you — it is not too
much humiliation !

While I was writing, came Mr. Kenyon . . the spectacles
mended, and looking whole catechisms from behind them.
The first word was, ‘ Have you seen Browning lately ? ‘ I,
taken by surprise, answered en niaise, ‘Yes, yesterday.’
‘ And did he tell you that he was coming on Wednesday,
next Wednesday ? ‘ ‘He said something of it.’

A simpleton would have done better — to call me one
were too much honour ! — yet it seemed impossible to be
adroit under the fire of the full face, spectacles included.
The words came without the will. And now, what had we
better do ? Take Tuesday, that you may be able to say on
Wednesday, ‘ I was not there to-day ‘ . . ? or be frank for
the hour and let it all pass ? Think for us, Robert — I am
quite frightened at what I have done. It seemed to me
too, afterwards, that Mr. Kenyon looked grave. Still he
talked of Miss Mitford and Mr. Buckingham, and Landor,
and of going to the Lakes himself for a few days, and
laughed and jested in great good humour, the subject being
turned — he asked me too if I had ever discussed your
poetry with Miss Mitford, on which I said that she did not
much believe in you — ‘ Not even in ” Saul ” ? ‘ said he.
I don’t know what to think. I am in a fog off the Nore.
And he proposed coming to-morrow with a carriage, to
drive me up the Harrow road to see the train coming in,
and then to take me to his house, and, so, home, – all in
his infinite kindness. He comes at half-past three — let
me have your thoughts with me then — and the letter,
farther on. Two letters, I am to have to-morrow. If Sunday
is the worst day, Monday is the best, — of those I mean of
course, on which I do not see you. May God bless you,
my own beloved. I love you in the deepest of my heart ;
which seems ever to grow deeper. I live only for you ; and
feel that it is worth while.

Your BA.

[Postmark: August 10, 1846]

Sunday.

Just now I tore the few words I had begun of the letter
to you, Ba — they all went away, strangely afar from the
meaning begun in them, through my mind taking up the
thought that you were ‘ waiting ‘ for what I should write
— ‘waiting all day ‘ — and ready to call the poor joyful
service of love, ‘ goodness ‘ in me ! When such thoughts
arise, I am not fit to pay even that imperfect service —
I have only arms to receive you, kisses to give you — the
words seem too cold, indeed ! I sincerely believe this I
am to write now, will be the shorter because of the
intervention of you, — and that, like Flush, I shall
behave best when not looked at too much !

Then, in our life, — what I do earnestly in intention and
from love of you, that you will always accept and make the
best of ! How happy you make me, now and ever — in the
present happiness, in the assurance of the future’s even
greater happiness, I am obliged to believe ! It seemed
like a dream as I walked home last night and thought of
all over again, after a few hours’ talk with my old friends,
on subjects from which you were excluded, and of a kind
that brought my former feelings back again ; so as to be
understood, at least, and recognised as mine. ‘ All which
is changed now, ‘ I thought going home in the moonlight.
Chorley was apprised of my being there and came
good-naturedly — and we discussed delinquencies political
and literary : he says, times were never so bad as now —
people come without a notion of offending a critic, and
offer him money — ‘ will you do this for so much ‘ —
praise this or blame this ! He was in a bad humour, he
said ; at least teazed and tired — and really looked both,
so thaf I asked ‘ had you not better throw away a day on
our green dulness at Hatcham, strolling through it with me ? ‘
— ‘ Yes — this day next week, if you like ‘ — he answered
at once . . so that our Saturday will be gone . . so that our
Tuesday must be secured, my own Ba, and after it the Friday,
at an equal interval of time — do you let it be so? Saturday
would seem to be his only available day, poor Chorley — he
walked through the park with me and over the Bridge, at one
in the morning — in return for my proving, (I don’t quite
think that, however ! ) — proving, to Arnoultfs great
satisfaction at least, that Mr. Horne was a poet, and
moreover a dramatic one, — Chorley sees no good in him
beyond talent with an abundance of ‘ crotchets,’ and ‘ could
not read ” Orion ” for his life.’ I proved another thing too
— that Forster was not a whit behind his brethren of the
faculty, in literary morals — that the Examiner, named, was
quite as just and good as another paper, unnamed. Whereat
Chorley grew warm and lost his guard, and at last ;
declaring I forced him into corners and that speak he must ;
instanced the ‘ Examiner’s ‘ treatment of myself as not
generous . . ‘ Luria ‘ having been noticed as you remember a
week after the publication, and yet, or never, to be
reviewed in the Unnamed : Ces Miseres !

A fortnight ago when Rachel played in ‘ Andromaque ‘
‘ for the last time ‘ — Sarianna and I agreed that if she did
ever play again in it, we would go and see . . and lo,
contrary to all expectation she does repeat Hermione
to-morrow night, and we are to go. And you, Ba, you cannot
go — ought I to go ? One day, one not distant day, and
‘cannot’ will apply to us both — now, it seems to do me
good, with the crowd of its suggestions, this seeing Rachel ;
beside, Sarianna has just this only opportunity of going.

I am anxious to let the folly of that person spend itself
unaggravated by any notice of mine — I mean to you ; any
notice which should make you think it — (the folly) —
affected me as well as you ; but I do trust you will not
carry toleration too far in this case, nor furnish an
ungenerous, selfish man with weapons for your own annoyance.
‘ Insolent letters ‘ you ought to put up with from no one —
and as there is no need of concealment of my position now, I
think you will see a point when I may interfere. Always
rely on my being quietly firm, and never violent nor
exasperating : you alluded to some things which I cannot let
my fancy stop upon. Remember you are mine, now, — my
own, my very own. I know very well what a wretched
drunkenness there is in that sort of self-indulgence — what it
permits itself to do, all on the strength of its ‘ strong
feeling ‘ ‘ earnestness ‘ — stupid in execrable sophistry as
it is ! I have too a strong belief that the man who would bully
you, would drop into a fit at the sight of a man’s uplifted
little finger. Can this person be the ‘old friend in an ill
humour ‘ who followed me up-stairs one day ? I trust to
you — that is the end of all.

Now I will kiss you, my own Ba, and wait for my letter,
and then, Tuesday. Dearest, I am your own, your very
own.