Day: August 19, 2018

[Postmark: August 19, 1846]

See my one piece of available paper for the minute ! Ought I to write on or wait ? No, I will tell Ba at once how I love her for giving me this one more letter with its delights. ‘ Finchley ‘ – I know very well – not that I ever saw the streets, and palaces, and cathedral, with these eyes . . but in ‘ Quarles’ Emblems,’ my childhood’s pet book, I well remember that an aspiring Soul, – (a squat little womanfigure with a loose gown, hair in a coil, and bare feet –) is seated on the world, a ‘ terrestrial ball,’ – which, that you may clearly perceive it to be our world, is somewhat parsimoniously scattered over with cities and towns – and one, the evident capital of the universe and Babylon’s despair for size, – occupying as it does a tract quite equal to all Europe’s due share on the hemisphere, is marked ‘ Finchley ‘ – Do you recognize ? Yet, if you will have it only the pretty village with the fields you describe so perfectly, I accept the sweetness and give up the glory, and your Finchley is mine for ever, you dearest – whom I see in the house, and in the carriage . . but how is it you escaped the rain, Ba ? Oh, it did not rain till later, now I think a little. Those are indeed strange circumstances . . and the ‘ independent ministry ‘ at the end, seems hard to account for . . or, why hard ? Well, this is not hard to feel and know, that it is perfect joy to hear you propose such travels and adventures – Greece with you, Egypt with you ! Will you please and tell me . . (not now, but whenever your conscience prompts you on the recurrence of that notable objection, if Miss Campbell’s desirableness is to recur) . . what other woman in the whole world and Finchley, would propose to go to Egypt instead of Belgravia ? Do our tastes coincide or no ? This is putting all on the lowest possible ground . . setting love aside even, to Miss Mitford’s heart’s fullest content ; if I were to choose among women, without love to give or take, and only for other advantages, do you think any advantage would compete with this single one, – ‘ she will feel happy in travelling with you to a distance.’ Love alters the scale, overbalances everything – at the beginning I fancied you could not leave England, you know. But it singularly affects my imagination, such a life with you, – led for the world, I hope, all the more effectually for being not led in the world. If their ways are not to be ours, all is better at a distance, and so I have put this down as, surely, one palpable, unmistakable advantage even you must confess I shall gain in marrying you – (I may only love Ba’s eyes and mouth in a sort of fearful secrecy so far as words go . . she stops all speech on that subject !)

Yes indeed, Ba, I always felt that ‘ Cyprus wine ‘ poem fill my heart with unutterable desires to you. There is so much of you in it. Observe, I do no foolish injustice in criticisms . . I quite understand a charm beside the charm the world can see. Some of your pansies are entirely beautiful in themselves . . I can set them before the visitors of a flower-show and bid all pronounce on them – others, beside their beauty, come to me as this dear one, in a letter, with a story of the plucking, with a sense of the fingers that held it. Bless you, ever dearest, dear beyond words, – you have given me already in this year and a half the entirest faith and purest kindness my heart can comprehend. Do lovers ‘abuse the beloved object’ – ‘try to shake off their chains ‘ &c. &c. ? Mine is not love then ! No one minute or moment of your life with me could have been other than it was without seeming less dear, less perfect in my memory – and for all, God reward you.

To-morrow, Thursday ! And to-night I will warily speak of not having seen you.

Your own.

[Postmark: August 19, 1846]
ED

Your mother is not well, dearest ? that is bad news indeed. And then, I think of your superstition of your being ill and well with her – take care and keep well, Robert, . . or of what use will it be that I should be well ? To-day we drove out, and were as far as Finchley, and I am none the worse at all for it. Do you know Finchley ? It is pretty and rural ; the ground rising and falling as if with the weight of verdure and dew ! fields, and hedgerows, and long slopes of grass thick and long enough, in its fresh greenness, quite to hide the nostrils of the grazing cows. The fields are little, too, as if the hedges wanted to get together. Then the village of Finchley straggles along the road with a line of cottages, or small houses, seeming to play at a village. No butchers, no bakers – only one shop in the place – but gardens, and creepers round the windows. Such a way from London, it looked ! Arabel wanted to call on a friend of hers, a daughter of Sir William Russell’s, who married an adopted son of Lamartine, and was in the navy, and is now an Independent minister officiating in this selfsame metropolis of Finchley. A concatenation, that is, altogether. Very poor they are – living on something less than two hundred a year, with five children, and the eldest five years old. And the children came out to us, everybody else being away – so I, who would have stayed in the carriage under other circumstances, was tempted out by the children and the cottage, and they dragged us along to see the drawing room, and dining room, and ‘Papa’s flowers,’ and their own particular book ‘ about the twenty-seven tailors ‘ ; and those of the children who could speak, thought Flush ‘ very cool ‘ for walking up-stairs without being asked. (The baby opened its immense eyes wider than ever, thinking unutterable things.) So as they had been so kind and hospitable to us, we could not do less (after a quantity of admiration upon the pretty house covered with roses, and the garden and lawn, and especially the literature of those twenty-seven tailors) we could not do less than offer to give them a drive . . which was accepted with acclamation. Think of our taking into the carriage, all five children, with their prodigious eyes and cheeks – the nurse on the coachbox, to take them home at the end of some quarter of a mile ! At the moment of parting, Alphonse Lamartine thought seriously of making a great scream – but upon Arabel’s perjuring herself by a promise to ‘ come again soon,’ we got away without that catastrophe. A worse one is, that you may think yourself obliged to read this amusing history. To make amends, I send you what I gathered for you in the garden ‘ Pansy ! – that’s for thoughts.’

How wise we are about Thursday ! or rather about Tuesday and Wednesday, perhaps.

As for Mr. Boyd, he had just heard your name, but he is blind and deaf to modern literature, and I am not anxious that he should know you much by your poetry. He asked some questions about you, and he enquired of Arabel particularly whether she thought we cared for each other enough. But to tell you the truth, his unqualified adhesion strikes me as less the result of his love for you, than of his anger towards another. I am sure he triumphs inwardly in the idea of a chain being broken which he has so often denounced in words that pained and vexed me – and then last year’s affair about Italy made him furious. Oh – I could see plainly by the sort of smile he smiled – but we need not talk of it – I am at the end too of my time. How good you are to me not to upbraid me for imprudence and womanly talkativeness ! You are too, too good. And you liked my verses to Mr. Boyd ! Which I like to hear, of course. Dearest –

Shall we go to Greece then, Robert? Let us, if you like it ! When we have used a little the charm of your Italy, and have been in England just to see that everybody is well, of yours and mine, . . (if you like that !) . . why straightway we can go ‘ among the islands ‘ – (and nearly as pleasant, it will be for me, as if I went there alone, having left you !). I should like to see Athens with my living eyes . . Athens was in all the dreams I dreamed, before I knew you. Why should we not see Athens, and Egypt too, and float down the mystical Nile, and stand in the shadow of the Pyramids ? All of it is more possible now, than walking up this street seemed to me last year.

Indeed, there is only one miracle for me, my beloved, – and that is your loving me. Everything else under the sun, and much over it, seems the merest commonplace and workday matter-of-fact. If I found myself, suddenly, riding in Paradise, on a white elephant of golden feet, . . I should shake the bridle, I fancy, with ever so much nonchalance, and absently wonder over ‘ that miracle ‘ of the previous world. Because ‘THAT’S for thoughts,’ as my flower says ! look at it and listen.

As for me, I am your very own –