Day: August 31, 2018

[Postmark: August 31, 1846]

Monday Morning.

Here is dearest Ba’s dearest letter, because the latest, and it is one of her very kisses incorporated and made manifest – so perfectly kind ! And should this make me ashamed of perhaps an over-earnestness in what I wrote yesterday? or not rather justify me to myself and to her – since it was on a passing fear of losing what I hold so infinitely precious, that the earnestness happened ! My own Ba, you lap me over with love upon love . . there is my first and proper love, independent of any return, and there is this return for what would reward itself. Do think how I must feel at the most transient suggestion of failure, and parting, and an end to all ! You cannot expect I can lie quietly and let my life of life be touched. And ever, dearest, through the life which I trust is about to be permitted us, – ever I shall remember where my treasure is, and turn
as vigilantly when it is approached. Beside, I was not very well, as I told you in excuse – I am much better now. Not that, upon reconsideration, I can alter my opinion on the proper course to take. We know all the miracles wrought in our favour hitherto . . are not the chances (speaking in that foolish way) against our expecting more? To-day is fine, sunny and warm, for instance, and looks as if cold weather were a long way off – but what are these fancies and appearances when weighed against the other possibility of a sudden fall of the year ? By six months more of days like this we should gain nothing, nothing in the world, you confess – by the other misfortune we lose everything perhaps.

Will you have a homely illustration ? There is a tree against our wall here which produced weeks ago a gigantic apple – which my mother had set her heart on showing a cousin of mine who is learned in fruits and trees. I told her, ‘ You had better pluck it at once – it will fall and be spoiled.’ She thought the next day or two would do its cheeks good, – just the next – so there it continued to hang till this morning, when she was about to go out with my sister – I said ‘ now is the time – you are going to my aunt’s – let me pluck you the apple ‘ – ‘ Oh,’ she said ‘ I have been looking at it, trying it, – it hangs so firmly, . . not this time, thank you ! ‘ So she went without it, two hours ago – and just now, I turned to the tree with a boding presentiment – there lay our glory, bruised in the dirt, a sad wreck ! ‘ Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love ! ‘ Rather, counsel me through apples ! Do you see the counsel ?

Come, let me not be so ungrateful to the letter, to what you have done for me, as only to speak of what you are disinclined to do. I am very glad you succeeded in going to the chapel, and that the result was so favourable – see how the dangers disappear when one farces them ! And the account of Mr. Stratten is very interesting, too – besides characteristic – do you see how ? Find as great a saint as the world holds, who shall be acknowledged to be utterly disinterested, unbiassed by anything except truth and common justice, – a man of sense as well as piety – and succeed in convincing such an one of our right to do as we purpose, – and then – let him lay the matter before your father ! To no other use than to exasperate him against Mr. Stratten, deprive your sister of the privilege of seeing his family, and bring about a little more pain and trouble !

Let me think of something else . . of the happiness you profess to feel – which it makes me entirely happy to know. I will not try and put away the crown you give me. I just say the obvious truth, . . even what I can do to make you happy, according to my ability, has yet to be experienced by you . . if my thoughts and wishes reach you with any effect at present, they will operate freelier when the obstruction is removed . . that is only natural. I shall live for you, for every minute in your life. May God bless me with such a life, as that it may be of use to you . . yours it must be whether of use or not, for I am wholly your R.

Here comes my mother back . . she is a little better to-day. I am much better as I said. And you ? Let me get the kiss I lost on Saturday ! (I dined at Arnould’s yesterday with Chorley and his brother, and the Cushmans.) Chorley goes to-night to Ostend.

[Postmark: August 31, 1846]

I wonder what I shall write to you, Ba – I could suppress my feelings here, as I do on other points, and say nothing of the hatefulness of this state of things which is prolonged so uselessly. There is the point – show me one good reason, or show of reason, why we gain anything by deferring our departure till next week instead of to-morrow, and I will bear to perform yesterday’s part for the amusement of Mr. Kenyon a dozen times over without complaint. But if the cold plunge must be taken, all this shivering delay on the bank is hurtful as well as fruitless. I do understand your anxieties, dearest – I take your fears and make them mine, while I put my own natural feeling of quite another kind away from us both, succeeding in that beyond all expectation. There is no amount of patience or suffering I would not undergo to relieve you from these apprehensions. But if, on the whole, you really determine to act as we propose in spite of them, – why, a new leaf is turned over in our journal, an old part of our adventure done with, and a new one entered upon, altogether distinct from the other. Having once decided to go to Italy with me, the next thing to decide is on the best means of going – or rather, there is just this connection between the two measures, that by the success or failure of the last, the first will have to be justified or condemned. You tell me you have decided to go – then, dearest, you will be prepared to go earlier than you promised yesterday – by the end of September at very latest. In proportion to the too probable excitement and painful circumstances of the departure, the greater amount of advantages should be secured for the departure itself. How can I take you away in even the beginning of October ? We shall be a fortnight on the journey – with the year, as everybody sees and says, a full month in advance . . cold mornings and dark evenings already. Everybody would cry out on such folly when it was found that we let the favourable weather escape, in full assurance that the Autumn would come to us unattended by any one beneficial circumstance.

My own dearest, I am wholly your own, for ever, and under every determination of yours. If you find yourself unable, or unwilling to make this effort, tell me so and plainly and at once – I will not offer a word in objection, – I will continue our present life, if you please, so far as may be desirable, and wait till next autumn, and the next and the next, till providence end our waiting. It is clearly not for me to pretend to instruct you in your duties to God and yourself ; . . enough, that I have long ago chosen to accept your decision. If, on the other hand, you make up your mind to leave England now, you will be prepared by the end of September.

I should think myself the most unworthy of human beings if I could employ any arguments with the remotest show of a tendency to frighten you into a compliance with any scheme of mine. Those methods are for people in another relation to you. But you love me, and, at lowest, shall I say, wish me well – and the fact is too obvious for me to commit any indelicacy in reminding you, that in any dreadful event to our journey of which I could accuse myself as the cause, – as of this undertaking to travel with you in the worst time of year when I could have taken the best, – in the case of your health being irretrievably shaken, for instance . . the happiest fate I should pray for would be to live and die in some corner where I might never hear a word of the English language, much less a comment in it on my own wretched imbecility, – to disappear and be forgotten.

So that must not be, for all our sakes. My family will give me to you that we may be both of us happy . . but for such an end – no !

Dearest, do you think all this earnestness foolish and uncalled for? – that I might know you spoke yesterday in mere jest, – as yourself said, ‘ only to hear what I would say ‘ ? Ah but consider, my own Ba, the way of our life, as it is, and is to be – a word, a simple word from you, is not as a word is counted in the world – the word between us is different – I am guided by your will, which a word shall signify to me. Consider that just such a word, so spoken, even with that lightness, would make me lay my life at your feet at any minute. Should we gain anything by my trying, if I could, to deaden the sense of hearing, dull the medium of communication between us ; and procuring that, instead of this prompt rising of my will at the first intimation from yours, the same effect should only follow after fifty speeches, and as many protestations of complete serious desire for their success on your part, accompanied by all kinds of acts and deeds and other evidences of the same ?

At all events, God knows I have said this in the deepest, truest love of you. I will say no more, praying you to forgive whatever you shall judge to need forgiveness here, – dearest Ba ! I will also say, if that may help me, – and what otherwise I might not have said, – that I am not too well this morning, and write with an aching head. My mother’s suffering continues too.

My friend Pritchard tells me that Brighton is not to be thought of under ordinary circumstances as a point of departure for Havre. Its one packet a week from Shoreham cannot get in if the wind and tide are unfavourable. There is the greatest uncertainty in consequence . . as I have heard before – while, of course, from Southampton, the departures are calculated punctually. He considers that the least troublesome plan, and the cheapest, is to go from London to Havre . . the voyage being so arranged that the river passage takes up the day and the sea-crossing the night – you reach Havre early in the morning and get to Paris by four o’clock, perhaps, in the afternoon . . in time to leave for Orleans and spend the night there, I suppose.

Do I make myself particularly remarkable for silliness when confronted by our friend as yesterday ? And the shortest visit, – and comments of everybody. Oh, Mr. Hunter, methinks you should be of some use to me with those amiable peculiarities of yours, if you would just dye your hair black, take a stick in your hand, sink the clerical character you do such credit to, and have the goodness just to deliver yourself of one such epithet as that pleasant one, the next time you find me on the steps of No. 50, with Mr. Kenyon somewhere higher up in the building. It is delectable work, this having to do with relatives and ‘ freemen who have a right to beat their own negroes,’ and father Zeus with his paternal epistles, and peggings to the rock, and immense indignation at ‘ this marriage you talk of ‘ which is to release his victim. Is Mr. Kenyon Hermes ?

Well, bless you in any case –

Your own R.

[Postmark: August 31, 1846]
ED

I have just come from the vestry of Paddington chapel, and bore it very well, and saw nobody except one woman. Arabel went with me, and during the singing we escaped and stood outside the door. Now, that is over ; and the next time I shall care less. It was a rambling sermon, which I could hear distinctly through the open door, quite wanting in coherence, but with good and touching things in it, the more touching that they came from a preacher whose life is known to us – from Mr. Stratten, for whom I have the greatest respect, though he never looked into Shakespeare till he was fifty, and shut the book quickly, perhaps, afterward. He is the very ideal of his class ; and, with some of the narrow views peculiar to it, has a heart of miraculous breadth and depth ; loving further than he can see, pitying beyond what he can approve, having in him a divine Christian spirit, the ‘ love of love ‘ in the most expansive form. How that man is beloved by his congregation, the members of his church, by his children, his friends, is wonderful to see – for everybody seems to love him from afar, as a man is loved who is of a purer nature than others. There is that reverence in the love – and yet no fear. His children have been encouraged and instructed to speak aloud before him on religion and other subjects in all freedom of conscience – he turns to his little daughter seriously ‘to hear what she thinks.’ The other day his eldest son, whom he had hoped to see succeed him at Paddington, determined to enter the Church of England : his wife became quite ill with grief about it, and to himself perhaps it was a trial, a disappointment. With the utmost gentleness and tenderness however, he desired him to take time for thought and act according to his conscience. – I believe for my part that there never was a holier man . . ‘ except those bonds ‘ . . never a man who more resolutely trod under his feet every form of evil and selfish passion when it was once recognized – and looked to God and the Truth with a direct aspiration. Once I could not help writing to put our affairs into his hands to settle them for us – but that would be wrong – because Papa would forbid Arabel’s going to the chapel or communicating with his family, and it would be depriving her of a comfort she holds dear – oh no. And besides, you are wise in taking the other view.

Think of our waiting day after day to fall into the net so, yesterday ! How I was provoked and vexed – but more for you, dearest dearest, than for me – much more for you. As for me I saw you, which was joy enough, let the hours be ever so clipped of their natural proportions – and then, youknow, you were obliged to go soon, whether Mr. Kenyon had come or not come. After you were gone, nothing was said, and nothing asked, and it is delightful to have heard of those intended absences one after another till far into October : which will secure us from future embarrassments. See if he means to put us to the question ! – not such a thing is in his thoughts.

And I said what you ‘ would not have believed of me ‘ ! Have you forgiven me, beloved – for saying what you would not have believed of me, – understanding that I did not mean it very seriously, though I proved to be capable of saying it ? Seriously, I don’t want to make unnecessary delays. It is a horrible position, however I may cover it with your roses and the thoughts of you – and far worse to myself than to you, inasmuch that what is painful to you once a week, is to me so continually. To hear the voice of my father and meet his eye makes me shrink back – to talk to my brothers leaves my nerves all trembling . . and even to receive the sympathy of my sisters turns into sorrow and fear, lest they should suffer through their affection for me. How I can look and sleep as well as I do, is a miracle exactly like the rest – or would be, if the love were not the deepest and strongest thing of all, and did not hold and possess me overcomingly. I feel myself to be yours notwithstanding every other influence, and being yours, cannot but be happy by you. Ah – let people talk as they please of the happiness of early youth ! Mrs. Jameson did, the other day, when she wished kindly to take her young niece with her to the Continent, that she might enjoy what in a few years she could not so much enjoy. There is a sort of blind joy common perhaps to such times – a blind joy which blunts itself with its own leaps and bounds ; peculiar to a time of comparative ignorance and inexperience of evil : – but I for my part, with all the capacity for happiness which I had from the beginning, I look back and listen to my whole life, and feel sure of what I have already told you, . . that I am happier now than I ever was before . . infinitely happier now, through you . . infinitely happier ; even now in this position I have just called ‘ horrible.’ When I hear you say for instance, that you ‘ love me perceptibly more ‘ . . why I cannot, cannot be more happy than when I hear you say that – going to Italy seems nothing ! a vulgar walk to Primrose Hill after being caught up to the third Heaven ! I think nothing of Italy now, though I shall enjoy it of course when the time comes. I think only that you love me, that you are the angel of my life, – and for the despair and desolation behind me, they serve to mark the hour of your coming, – and they are behind, as Italy is before. Never can you feel for me, Robert, as I feel for you . . it is not possible of course. I am yours in a way and degree which the tenderest of other women could not be at her will. Which you know. Why should I repeat it to you ? Why, except that is a reason to prove that we cannot, as you say, ‘ ever be a common wife and husband.’ But I don’t think I was intending to give proofs of that –no, indeed.

To-morrow I shall hear from you. Say how your mother is, in the second letter if you do not in the first. May God bless you and keep you, dearest beloved –

Your very own BA.

There is not much in the article by Mr. Chorley, but it is right and kind as far as it goes.