Month: August 2018

[Postmark: August 21, 1846]

I think – now that the week is over with its opportunities, – and now that no selfish complaining can take advantage of your goodness, – that I will ask you how I feel, do you suppose, without my proper quantity of ‘ morphine ‘ ? May I call you my morphine?

And speaking of ‘ proper quantities ‘ – there were some remarks of yours which I altogether acquiesced in, yesterday, about a humiliating dependence in money-matters ; though I should be the first to except myself from feeling buite with the world there – I have told you, indeed, – but my case is not everybody’s. I hate being master, and alone, and absolute disposer in points where real love will save me the trouble . . because there are infinitely more and greater points where the solitary action and will, with their responsibility, cannot be avoided. I suppose that is Goethe’s meaning when he says every man has liberty enough – political liberty and social : so that when they let him write ‘ Faust ‘ after his own fashion, he does not mind how they dispose of his money, or even limit his own footsteps. Ah, – but there are the good thousands all round who don’t want to write ‘ Fausts,’ and only have money to spend and walks to take, and how do they like such an arrangement ? Moreover, I should be perhaps more refractory than anybody, if what I cheerfully agree to, as happening to take my fancy, were forced on me, as the only reasonable course. All men ought to be independent, whatever Carlyle may say. And so, too, I like being alone, myself – but I should be sorry to see the ordinary friends I have, live alone. Do you understand all this, Ba? Will you make me say it, in your mind, intelligibly? And then will you say still more of your own till the true thing is completely said ? And, after all, will you kiss me ? ‘

As I asked you yesterday . . because of a most foolish, thoughtless allusion, – which I only trust you never noticed . . do not you allude to it, not even to forgive me, dearest, dearest. I would rather be unforgiven than pain you afresh to do it . . but perhaps you did not notice my silly expression after all . . I wished your dear hands before my eyes, I know ! Still you would know it was only thoughtlessness.

All this sad morning the blackness has been quite enough to justify our fire . . we have had one there two or three days. But now the sun comes out – and I will hope you follow him, – after Mr. Kenyon’s visit ? That is to be I think !

I never write anything bearable, even for me, on these days when no letter from you leads me on phrase by phrase . . I am thrown too completely on the general feelings – ‘ Do you love Ba ? then tell her that ! ‘ Yes, indeed ! It is easier to leave all the love untold, having to speak for the moment of Finchley only ! Finchley, – the cottage, – Ba entering it – Flush following her . . now I come to something I wanted to say ! In the paper, this morning, is a paragraph about the bold villainy of dog-stealers. There is an ‘ organised society ‘ of these fellows, and they seize and convey away everybody’s Flushes, ‘ if such a one ever were,’ as Iago rhymes of his perfect wife. So friend Flush must go his high ways only, and keep out of alleys and dark corners : beside in Pisa, he must guard the house. In earnest, I warn you, Ba !

Now tell me – will there be any impediment to Tuesday ?

I think I will go out into this sunshine while it lasts. I am very well considering there are three days to wait, but a walk will do no harm, – nor will I.

All speech to you shall be ever simple, simplest. I can only love you and say so, – and I do love you, best beloved !

Your own, very own.

[Postmark: August 21, 1846]

Dearest, this is to be a brief letter, though my heart shall find room in whatever goes to you. Yesterday cost us nothing – no observation was made : we were in all security notwithstanding the forebodings on either side. May they find such an end in circumstances of still more consequence. Dearest, your flowers are beautiful beyond their beauty of yesterday which I praised – they think themselves still in the garden ; we have done them no sort of wrong. What a luring thought you leave with me in the flowers ! How I look at them as a sign of you, left behind – your footstep in the ground ! It has been so from the beginning. And yet sometimes you try to prove that you are not always good. You !

If you are not good, it is because you are best. I will admit so much.

Oh, to look back ! It is so wonderful to me to look back on my life and my old philosophy of life, made of the necessities of sorrow and the resolution to attain to something better than a perpetual moaning and complaint, – to that state of neutralized emotion to which I did attain – that serenity which meant the failure of hope ! Can I look back to such things, and not thank you next to God ? For you, who had the power, to stoop to having the will, – is it not worthy of thanks ? So I thank you and love you and shall always, however it may be hereafter. I could not feel otherwise to you, I think, than by my feeling at this moment.

How Papa has startled me. He came in while I was writing . . (I shut the writing-case as he walked over the floor – ) and then, after the usual talk of the weather, and how the nights ‘ were growing cold,’ . . he said suddenly . . looking to the table . . ‘ What a beautiful colour those little blue flowers have – ‘ Calling them just so, . . ‘ little blue flowers.’ I could scarcely answer I was so frightened – but he observed nothing and turned and left the room with his favourite enquiry pour rire, as to whether he ‘ could do anything for me in the City.’

Do anything for me in the City ! Well – do you do something for me, by thinking of me and loving me, Robert. Dear you are, never to be tired of me, with so much reason for it as I know. May God bless you, very dear ! – and ever dearest ! I am your own too entirely to need to say so.

Ba.

[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 –

[Postmark: August 18, 1846]

Let it be on Thursday then, dearest, for the reasons you mention. I will say nothing of my own desires to meet you sooner . . they are corrected by the other desires to spend my whole life with you. After all, these are the critical weeks now approaching or indeed present there shall be no fault I can avoid. So, till Thursday

Chorley said very little . . he is all discreetness and forbearance, here as on other points. He goes to Birmingham at the end of this week, and returning after some three or four days, leaves London for Paris – probably next Saturday week. From Paris he thinks of going to Holland . . a good step, and of staying at Scheven . . ing . . what is the Bath’s name ? – not a good step, I told him, because of the mortal ugliness of the place – which I well remember . it may have improved in ten years, to be sure. There, ‘walking on the sands,’ (sands in a heapy slope, not a traversable flat) he means to ‘ grow to an end ‘ with his Tragedy . . there is a noble ardour in his working which one cannot help admiring – he has a few weeks’ holiday, is jaded to death with writing, and yet will write away his brief time of respite and restoratives – for what ? He wondered whether there was any chance of our meeting in Paris – ‘ our ‘ meaning him and myself.

As for your communication to Mr. Boyd – how could you do otherwise, my own Ba ? I am altogether regardless of whatever danger there may be, in the great delight at his sympathy and approval of your intention : he probably never heard my name before . . but his own will ever be associated divinely in my memory with those verses which always have affected me profoundly . . perhaps on the whole, more profoundly than any others you ever wrote : that is hard to prove to myself, – but I really think so – the personal allusions in it went straight to my heart at the beginning. I remember, too, how he loved and loves you . . you told me, Ba : so I am most grateful to him, – as I ever shall feel to those who, knowing you, judge me worthy of being capable of knowing you and taking your impress, and becoming yours sufficiently for your happiness.

Are you so well, dearest, in your walks, – after your rides ? Does that rejoice me or no, when I would rather hear you had been happy, than simply see you without such an assurance ? I am very well, since you ask – but my mother is not – her head being again affected. Yet the late improvement gives ground for hope . . nor is this a very violent attack in itself.

I suppose it was in Mrs. Jameson’s mind, as you apprehend – you must always be fond of her – (and such will be always my way of rewarding people I am fond of !)

God bless you, dearest – I love you all I can, Ba. I see another ship is advertised to sail – (a steamer) for Naples, and other southern ports – but no higher. When you are well and disposed to go to Greece, take me, my love. I should feel too happy for this world, I think, among the islands with you.

My very own, I am yours –

[Postmark: August 18, 1846]
ED

For these two dear letters, I thank you, dearest ! You are best, as ever ! And that is all I have to tell you, almost – for I have seen nobody, heard nothing . . except that Eugene Sue can paint, . . which Miss Mitford told me this morning in a note of hers, . . in which, besides, she complains of the fatigue she suffers from the visitors who go to see after her the Reading prison, as the next ‘ sight ‘ of the neighbourhood. Better to live in Cheapside, than among the oaks, on such conditions ! As to Mr. Kenyon, he does not approach me. So he may come to-morrow, perhaps, or even on Wednesday. Would it not appear the top of wisdom if you deferred our day to Thursday’s sun ! – now consider ! It would be a decided gain, surely, to be able to say to him on Wednesday that you had not seen me since you and he saw me together. So I propose Thursday if you permit it. Next week we may take up our two days again, as one takes up so many dropt silken stitches, . . and we will be careful that the beads do not run off in the meantime. To-day George came from circuit. He asked, for nearly a first question, whether I had thought of Italy – ‘Yes, I had thought of it – but there was time to think more.’ I am uneasy a little under George’s eyes.

You did not tell me of Mr. Chorley . . whether he put questions about the Continent, or pbserved on the mysteries in you. Does he go himself, and when ? A curious ‘ fact ‘ is, that Mrs. Jameson was in the next house to us this morning, and also a few days ago ; yet never came here – the reason certainly being a reluctance to seem to tread in upon the recalling confidence. I felt sorry, and obliged to her – both at once. Talking of confidences, I neglected to tell you when you were here last, that one more had escaped us. It was not by my choice, if by my fault. I wrote something in a note to Mr. Boyd some weeks ago, which nobody except himself would have paused to think over ; but he, like a prisoner in a dungeon, sounds every stone of the walls round him, and discerns a hollowness, detects a wooden beam, . . patiently pricks out the mortar with a pin – all this, in his rayless, compamonless Dark, – poor Mr. Boyd ! The time before I last went to see him, he asked me if I were going to be a nun – there, was the first guess! On the next visit he puts his question precisely right – I tried to evade – then, promised to be frank in a little time – but being pressed on all sides, and drawn on by a solemn vow of secrecy, I allowed him to see the truth – and he lives such an isolated life, that it is perfectly safe with him, setting the oath aside. Also, he was very good and kind, and approved highly of the whole, and exhorted me, with ever such exhortation, to keep to my purpose, and to allow no consideration in the world or out of the world, to make any difference – quoting the moral philosophers as to the rights of such questions. Is there harm in his knowing ? He knows nobody, talks to nobody, and is very faithful to his word. Just as I, you will retort, was foolish in mine ! Yet I do assure you, mine was a sort of word, which to nine hundred and ninety nine persons, would have suggested nothing – only he mused over it, turned it into all lights, and had nothing to do but that. Afterwards he was proud, and asked . . ‘ Was I not acute ? ‘ It was a pleasure to him, one could not grudge.

Are you well, ever dearest ? I am well. And yesterday, while they were at dinner, I walked out alone, or with Flush – twice to the corner of the street, turning it, to post your letter. May God bless you. Surely we feel alike in many, many things – the convolvuluses grow together ; twisted together and you lift me up from the ground ; you ! I am your very own –

Mr. Mathews said nothing more than I told you very briefly but he sent the review, he said – and it has not come.

[Postmark: August 17, 1846]

I come home from Town for my letters . . the two I ventured to expect, and here they meet me. As I said, you had written, and I thanked you then, and now, too, just as if I had been despairing all along – and over and above, there are some especial thanks to pay, – for when I could not otherwise disengage myself from a dinner a little way out of town, – having unawares confessed to the day’s being at my disposal, . . I said – ‘ I expect letters at home which must be answered ‘ – and here I am.

Or rather, here you are, dearest, – in, I do think, your dearest mood. I must shift my ground already, alter my moment of time, and avow that it is now I love you the best, the completest. Do you want to know how much kindness I can bear? If I ever am so happy as to speak so as to please you, it may be only your own kindness overflowing and running back to you – I feel every day, often in every day, the regret follow some thought of you, – that this thought, for instance, if I could secure and properly tell you this only, you would know my love for what it is, – and yet that this thought will pass unexpressed like the others ! Well, I do not care – rightly considered, there is not so much to regret – the words should lead to acts, and be felt insufficient.

Now we collect then, from Mr. Kenyon’s caution, or discretion, or pity, or ignorance, that he will not interpose, and that there will be one great effort, and acknowledgment for all ? I should certainly like it so best. You seem stronger than to need the process of preparatory disclosures, now to one, now to another friend. It is clearly best as it is like to be . . for perhaps the chances are in our favour that the few weeks more will be uninterrupted.

My time is gone – and nothing said ! For to-morrow, all rests with you . . if the note bids me go, I shall be in absolute readiness – otherwise on Wednesday . . just as you seem to discern the times and the seasons.

Bless you my own best, dearest Ba – your own R.

[Postmark: August 17, 1846]

Your sight of Widdicombe was highly dramatic – and the policeman ‘ intersit nodo ‘ as well as any god of them all. What a personage Widdicombe must be ! Think of the mental state of a man, who could gravely apply to his own face false moustachios and rouge before a looking-glass. There is something in it to wonder over, as over the megalosaurie and prodigions of ridicules. Mind – when I talked of rouge improving a complexion for the nonce, I was thinking of women ; not of men, in whom that sort of colouring (even if it were natural) is detestable, or, to measure one’s language, very ugly indeed. I have seen a man, of whom it was related that he painted his lips – so that at dinner, with every course, was removed a degree of bloom ; the lips paled at the soup, grew paler at the mutton, became white at the fricandeau and ghastly at the pudding – till with the orange at dessert, his nearest neighbours drew back their chairs a little, expecting him to fall flat in a fainting-fit. But he was very rich, and could only talk charmingly out of those painted lips. There were women who ‘couldn’t conceive why people should call him a fool.’ To every Bottom’s head (not to wrong Bottom by such a comparison), there will be a special Titania – see if there will not !

So you go on Wednesday to this club-dinner, really. And you come to me also on Wednesday. Does that remain decided? I have had a letter from that poor Chiappino, to desire a ‘ last interview ‘ . . which is promised to be ‘ pacific.’ Oh – such stuff ! Am I to hold a handkerchief to my eyes and sob a little ? Your policeman is necessary to the full development of the drama, I think. And I forgot to tell you that there were two things in which I had shown great want of feeling – one, the venturing to enclose your verses – the other . . (now listen !) the other . . the having said that ‘ I was sincerely sorry for all his real troubles.’ Which I do remember having said once, when I was out of patience – as how can any one be patient continually ? and how was I especially to condole with him in lawn and weepers, on the dreadful fact of your existence in the world ? Well – he has real troubles unfortunately, and he is going away to live in a village somewhere. Poor Chiappino! A little occupation would be the best thing that could happen for him ; it would be better than prosperity without it. When a man spins evermore on his own axis, like a child’s toy I saw the other day, . . what is the use of him but to make a noise ? No greater tormentor is there, than self-love, . . even to self. And no greater instance of this, than this !

Dearest beloved, to turn away from the whole world to you . . when I do, do I lose anything . . or not rather gain all ? Sometimes I feel to wish that I had more to sacrifice to you, so as to prove something of what is in me – but you do not require sacrifice . . it is enough, you say, that I should be happy through you. How like those words are to you ! – how they are said in your own idiom ! And for myself, I am contented to think that, . . if such things can really satisfy you, . . you would find with difficulty elsewhere in the world than here, a woman as perfectly empty of life and gladness, except what comes to her from your hands. Many would be happy through you :– but to be happy through only you, is my advantage . . my boast. In this, I shall be better than the others.

Why, if you were to drive me from you after a little, in what words could I reproach you, but just in these . . ‘ You might have left me to die before.’ Still I should be your debtor, my beloved, as now I am

Your very own

BA.

I told you that I was going to the chapel one Sunday but I have not been yet. I had not courage. May God bless you ! –

[Postmark: August 17, 1846]

No, my own dearest, your letter does not arrive on Saturday, but this morning – what then ? You will not be prevented from your usual ways of entire goodness to me by that! You will continue to write through the remainder of the writing-time? This one letter reaches me, – if another was sent, it stays back till to-morrow – so I do get a blessing by your endeavour, and am grateful as ever, my own Ba ! After all, neither of us loses, – effectually loses – anything – for my letter always comes in its good time, – it is not cast hopelessly away – and do you suppose that you lose any of the gladness and thanks ? Rather, you get them doubly – for all along, all through the suspense, I have been (invariably) sure of the deed when promised, and of the unchanging love, when only expected . . so that when the letter finds me at last, the joy being unaccountably unabated do you not see that there is a gain somehow ? I told you on Friday I loved you more at that instant than at any previous time – I will show you why, because I can show you, I think – though it seems at first an irrational word . . for always having loved you wholly, how can I, still only loving you wholly, speak of ‘ more ‘ or ‘ less ‘ ? This is why – I used to see you once a week, to sit with you for an hour and a half – to receive a letter, or two, or three, during the week – and I loved you, Ba, wholly, as I say, and reckoned time for no time in the intervals of seeing you and hearing from you. Now I see you twice in the week, and stay with you the three hours, and have letter on dear letter, – and the distance is, at least, the same, between the days, and between the letters – I will only affirm it is the same – so I must love you more – because if you were to bring me back to the old allowance of you, – the one short visit, the two or three letters, – I should be starved with what once feasted me ! (If you do not understand Flush does !) Seriously, does not that go to prove, I love you more ! Increased strength comes insensibly thus, – is only ascertained by such process of induction . . once you crossed the room to look out Shelley’s age in a book, and were not tired – now you cross London to see the trains arrive, and (I trust) are not tired . . So – you are stronger.

Dearest, I know your very meaning, in what you said of religion, and responded to it with my whole soul – what you express now, is for us both . . those are my own feelings, my convictions beside – instinct confirmed by reason. Look at that injunction to ‘ love God with all the heart, and soul, and strength ‘ and then imagine yourself bidding any faculty, that arises towards the love of him, be still ! If in a meeting house, with the blank white walls, and a simple doctrinal exposition, – all the senses should turn (from where they lie neglected) to all that sunshine in the Sistine with its music and painting, which would lift them at once to Heaven, – why should you not go forth ? – to return just as quickly, when they are nourished into a luxuriance that extinguishes, what is called, Reason’s pale wavering light, lamp or whatever it is – for I have got into a confusion with thinking of our convolvuluses that climb and tangle round the rose-trees – which might be lamps or tapers ! See the levity ! No – this sort of levity only exists because of the strong conviction, I do believe ! There seems no longer need of earnestness in assertion, or proof . . so it runs lightly over, like foam on the top of a wave.

Chorley came and was very agreeable and communicative. You shall tell me more about Mr. Mathews and his review. And with respect to his lady-friend, you will see her, I think. But first tell me of Mr. Kenyon, and yourself – how you are, and what I am to do, when to see you.

Now goodbye, my own Ba – ‘goodbye.’ Be prepared for all fantasticalness that may happen ! Perhaps some day I shall shake hands with you, simply, and go . . just to remember the more exquisitely where I once was, and where you let me stay now, you dearest, dearest heart of my heart, soul of my soul ! But the shaking-hands, at a very distant time ! Now – let me kiss you, beloved – and so I do kiss you –

Ever your own.

[Postmark: August 17, 1846]

How I thank for your letter, ever beloved. You were made perfectly to be loved – and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long. Did I tell you that before, so often as I have thought it ? It is that which makes me take it all as visionary good – for when one’s Ideal comes down to one, and walks beside one suddenly, what is it possible to do but to cry out . . ‘a dream’ ? You are the best . . best. And if you loved me only and altogether for pity, (and I think that, more than you think, the sentiment operated upon your generous chivalrous nature), and if you confessed it to me and proved it, and I knew it absolutely – what then ? As long as it was love, should I accept it less gladly, do you imagine, because of the root ? Should I think it less a gift ? should I be less grateful, . . or more ? Ah – I have my ‘theory of causation’ about it all – but we need not dispute, and will not, on any such metaphysics. Your loving me is enough to satisfy me – and if you did it because I sate rather on a green chair than a yellow one, it would be enough still for me : – only it would not, for you – because your motives are as worthy always as your acts. – Dearest !

So let us talk of the great conference in Mr. Kenyon’s carriage, in which joined himself, Arabel, Flush and I. First he said . . ‘Did Browning stay much longer with you ?’ ‘Yes – some time.’ This was as we were going on our way toward some bridge, whence to look at the Birmingham train. As we came back, he said, with an epical leap in medias res . . ‘What an extraordinary memory our friend Browning has.’ ‘Very extraordinary’ – said I – ‘and how it is raining.’ I give you Arabel’s report of my reply, for I did not myself exactly remember the full happiness of it – and she assured me besides that he looked . . looked at me . . as a man may look . . And this was everything spoken of you throughout the excursion.

But he spoke of me and observed how well I was – on which Arabel said ‘Yes – she considered me quite well ; and that nothing was the matter now but sham.’ Then the railroads were discussed in relation to me . . and she asked him – ‘Shouldn’t she try them a little, before she undertakes this great journey to Italy ?’ ‘Oh’ . . he replied – ‘she is going on no great journey.’ ‘Yes, she will, perhaps – Ba is inclined to be a great deal too wild, and now that she is getting well, I do assure you, Mr. Kenyon.’

To sit upon thorns, would express rather a ‘velvet cushion’ than where I was sitting, while she talked this foolishness. I have been upbraiding her since, very seriously; and I can only hope that the words were taken for mere jest – du bout des lévres.

Moreover Mr. Kenyon is not going away on Thursday – he has changed his plans : he has put off Cambridge till the ‘spring’ – he meets Miss Bayley nowhere – he holds his police-station in London. ‘When are you going’ I asked in my despair, trying to look satisfied. He did not know – ‘not directly, at any rate’ – ‘I need not hope to get rid of him,’ he said aside perhaps.

But we saw the great roaring, grinding Thing . . a great blind mole, it looked for blackness. We got out of the carriage to see closer – and Flush was so frightened at the roar of it, that he leapt upon the coach-box. Also it rained, – and I had ever so many raindrops on my gown and in my face even, . . which pleased me nearly as much as the railroad sight. It is something new for me to be rained upon, you know.

As for happiness – the words which you use so tenderly are in my heart already, making me happy, . . I am happy by you. Also I may say solemnly, that the greatest proof of love I could give you, is to be happy because of you – and even you cannot judge and see how great a proof that is. You have lifted my very soul up into the light of your soul, and I am not ever likely to mistake it for the common daylight. May God bless you, ever ever dearest!

I am your own