Author: EBB

[Postmark: May 25, 1846]

Sunday.

When you came yesterday I had scarcely done my
grumbling over the AthenÊum, which really seems to me
to select its subjects from the things least likely to interest
and elevate. It goes on its own level perhaps — but to
call itself a Journal of Art and Literature afterwards, is too
much to bear patiently when one turns it over and considers.
Lady Hester Stanhope’s physician, antiquities of the mayors
of London, stories re-collected from the magazines by Signor
Marcotti— and this is literature . . art ! Without thinking
of ‘ Luria,’ it is natural and righteous to be angry even after
the sun has gone down. These are your teachers, O Israel !
Mr. Dilke may well fly to the Daily News for congenial
occupation and leave literature behind him, and nobody
hang on the wheels of his chariot, crying, ‘ Come back, Mr.
Dilke.’

Talking of chariots, George met you, he said, yesterday,
wheeling down Oxford Street, . . (this he told me when he
came in . .) going as fast as an express train, and far too
fast, of course, either to recognize or be recognized.

Oh — I forgot to tell you one thing about the review in
the Methodist Quarterly. You observe there some very
absurd remarks about Tennyson — but, just there, is an
extract from the ‘ Spirit of the Age,’ about his ‘ coming out
of himself as the nightingale from under the leaves,’ . . you
see that ? Well . . it is curious that precisely what is
quoted there is some of my writing, when I contributed to
Mr. Home’s book. It amused me to recognize it, (as you
did not George) . . but I was vexed too at the foolish
deduction, because. …

In the midst I had to hold my Sunday-levee, when for
the only day in the week and for one half hour I have to
see all my brothers and sisters at once : on the week days,
one being in one place and one in another, and the visits to
me only coming by twos and threes. Well, and Alfred,
who never had said a word to me before, gave me the
opportunity of saying ‘ no, no, it is not true ‘ — followed hard
by a remark from somebody else, that ‘ of course Ba must
know, as she and Mr. Browning are such very intimate
friends,’ and a good deal of laughter on all sides : on which,
without any transition and with an exceeding impertinence,
Alfred threw himself down on the sofa and declared that
he felt inclined to be very ill, . . for that then perhaps
(such things being heard of) some young lady might come
to visit him^ to talk sympathetically on the broad and
narrow gauge ! Altogether, I shall leave you for the future
to . . . contradict yourself ! I did not mean to do it this
time, only that Alfred forced me into it. But he said . . .
‘ How the Miss Cokers praised him ! …” It was delightful,”
they cried, ” to see a man of such a great genius condescend
to little people like them.” ‘ So they are better than the
AthenÊum, and I shall not have them spoken of ungently,
mind, even if they do romance a little wildly, and marry me,
next time, to the man in the moon.

In the meantime, dearest, it is no moonshine that I was
out walking to-day again, and that I walked up all these
stairs with my own feet on returning. I sate down on the
stairs two or three times, but I could not rest in the
drawing-room because somebody was there, and I was not carried,
as usual — see how vain-glorious I am. And what a summersense
in the air — and how lovely the strips of sky between
the houses ! And yet I may tell you truly, that, constantly,
through these vivid impressions, I am thinking and feeling
that mournful and bitter would be to me this return into
life, apart from you, apart from the consideration of you.
How could ever I have borne it, I keep feeling constantly.
But you are there, in the place of memory. Ah — you said
yesterday that you were not ungrateful ! I cannot say so.
I blame myself often. And yet again I think that the wrong
may be pardoned to me, for that those affections had
worked out on me their uttermost pang — nearly unto death
I had felt them — and now if I am to live, it must be by
other means — or I should die still, and not live. Also I
owe you gratitude —— do I not owe you gratitude ? Then,
I cannot help it . . right or wrong, I cannot help it . . you
are all to me, and, beloved — whichever way I look, I only
can see you. If wrong, it is not for you to be severe on
me —

Your own
Ba.

Thursday.

This is not to be called a letter, please to understand,
because to write a letter to you once a day is enough in all
reason. But I want to send you the review you asked for
at the same time with the drawings which I kept too long
I thought months ago, — but I have looked over them again
and again. Then there is the book on Junius — and lastly,
the song which I want you to have . . the ‘ Toll Slowly ‘-
that is my gift to you, for as much as it is worth, and not
to be sent back to me if you please. As for the Notes on
Naples, I shall keep them for the present, having need to
study about Amalfi.

Now I am going out in the carriage, and shall drive
round the park perhaps. You will not think much of the
Aiusic — but it being the first music I had heard for years
and years, and in itself so overwhelmingly melancholy, it
affected me so that I should scarcely hear it to the end. I
went down-stairs on purpose to hear it and be able to thank
the composer rightly. But she has done better things, I
am sure.

Your own

Ba.

Observe — I disobey in nothing by sending this parcel.
There is too much for you to carry. Don’t forget to bring
me my Statesmen which is a lawful burden.

[Postmark: May 22, 1846]

Thursday.

Dearest, when your letter came I was cutting open the
leaves of Dickens’ ‘ Letters from Italy ‘ which Papa had
brought in — so I am glad to have your thoughts of the
book to begin with. Before your letter came I had sent
you the review, as you will find. What changes, what
changes ! And the sonnet was purely manuscript, and for
the good of the world should remain so. Oh — you cannot
care for all this trash- such trash ! Why I had a manu-
script sonnet sent to me last autumn by ‘ person or persons
unknown,’ … ‘ To EBB on her departure from England
to Pisa.’ Can you fancy that melodious piece of gossipping ?
Then a lady of the city, famous, I believe, for haberdashery,
used to address all her poems to me — which really was
original . . for she would write five or six ‘ poems ‘ on an
evening, and sweep them up and send them to me once a
fortnight, upon faith, hope and charity, seaweed and moonshine,
cornlaws and the immortality of the soul, and take
me for her standing muse, properly thou’d and thee’d all
through. What a good vengeance it would be upon your
unjust charges, if I set you to read a volume or two of those
‘ poems ‘ . . . which all went into the fire — so you need
not be frightened.

And to-day I had a rose-tree sent to me by somebody
who has laid close siege to me this long while, and whom I
have escaped hitherto . . but who has encamped, she says,
’till July ‘in 16 Wimpole Street. She writes too on her
card . . ‘ When are you going to Italy ? ‘

Ah ! you, who blame me (half blame me) for ‘ seeing
women,’ do not know how difficult it is to help it sometimes,
without being in appearance ungrateful and almost brutal.
Just because I am unwell, they teaze me more, I believe.
Now that Miss Heaton . . oh, I need not go back, but it
was not of my choice, be sure. You being a man are
different, — and perhaps you make people afraid and keep
them off. They do not thrust their hands through the bars
where the lion is, as they do with the giraffe. Once I had
this proposition — ‘ If we mayn’t come in, will you stand up
at the window that we may see ? ‘ Now ! — And there’s the
essence of at least ten MS. sonnets ! —— so don’t complain
any more.

As for Mr. Kenyon, he had his ‘ collation,’ I understand —
and he said that he was expecting Mrs. Jameson and sundries
— but he referred to some ‘ friends from the country who
would not be so mad as to come,’ and whom I knew to be
yourselves. You were quite, quite right not to come.
To-day you are right too . . in thinking that I — was out.
I was in the park nearly an hour, Arabel and Flush and I :
and perhaps if to-morrow should be fine, I may walk in the
street ; so think of me and help me. This is my last letter
before I see you again, dear dearest. Oh — but I heard
yesterday . . and it was not a tradition of the elders this
time . . it was ‘ vivid in the pages of contemporary history ‘
… in fact one of my brothers heard it at the Flower Show
and brought it home as the newest news, . . that ‘ Mr.
Browning is to be married immediately to Miss Campbell.’
The tellers of the news were ‘ intimate friends ‘ of yours,
they said, and knew it from the highest authority —

Laugh ! — Why should not they talk, being women ?
My brother did not tell me, but he told it down-stairs — and
Arabel was amused, she said, at some of the faces round.
At that turn of the road they lost the track of the hare.
Not an observation was made by anybody.

May God bless you — Think of me. I am ever and
ever

Your own

Ba.

Wednesday, May 20.

Was it very wrong of me that never did I once think of
the possibility of your coming here with Mr. Kenyon ?
Never once had I the thought of it. If I had, I should
have put it away by saying aloud ‘ Don’t come ‘ ; because as
you say, it would have prevented Saturday’s coming, the
coming to-day would, . . and also, as you do not say, it would
have been infinitely hard for me to meet you and Mr. Kenyon
in one battalion. Oh no, no ! The gods forefend that you
should come in that way ! It was bad enough as it was,
to-day, when while he sate here his ten minutes, (first showing
me a sonnet from America, which began ‘ Daughter of
GrÊcian Genius ! ‘) he turned those horrible spectacles full
on me and asked, ‘ Does Mrs. Jameson know that Mr.
Browning comes here?’ ‘No,’ said I, — suddenly abashed,
though I had borne the sonnet like a hero. ‘ Well, then !
I advise you to give directions to the servants that when she
or anyone else asks for you, they should not say Mr.
Browning is with you — as they said the other day to Miss
Bayley who told me of it.’ Now, wasn’t that pleasant to
hear? I thanked him for his advice, and felt as uncomfortable
as was well possible — and am, at this moment, a
little in doubt how he was thinking while he spoke. Perhaps
after the fashion of my sisters, when they cry out ‘ Such a
state of things never was heard of before ! ‘ Not that they
have uttered one word of opposition . . not, from the first
they knew, . . understand ! — but that they are frightened
at what may be said by people who take for granted that we
are strangers, you and I, to one another. Ah ! — a little
more, a little less . . of what consequence is it ?

Such a day, to-day ! — it was finer last year I remember !
and Tuesday, instead of Wednesday ! Your sister was right,
very right — though mine went — but the distance was less,
with us. A party of twelve went from this house — ‘ among
us but not of us.’ For my part, I have not stirred from my
room of course — the carriage was out of the question. And,
if you please, I never ‘ promised’ to be at the park gate— oh
indeed, I never meditated seeing you even from afar — I
thought only that I should hear a little distant music and
remember that, where it sounded, you were, that was all,
. . and too much, the stars made out, and so drove down the
clouds.

Poor Mr. Kenyon was grave — depressed about his
friend, who is in a desperate state — dying in fact. He
returns to Portsmouth to-morrow to be with him till the
change comes.

Dearest, how are you ? Never now will you condescend
to say how you are. Which is not to be allowed in this
second year of our reign. I am very well. Yesterday I
heard some delightful matrimonial details of an ‘ establishment’
in Regent’s Park, quite like an old pastoral in the
quickness of the repartee. ‘ I hate you ‘ — ‘ I abhor you ‘
— ‘ I never liked you ‘ — ‘ I always detested you.’ A cup and
saucer thrown bodily, here, by the lady ! On which the
gentleman upsets her, . . chair and all, . . flat on the floor.
The witness, who is a friend of mine, gets frightened and
begins to. cry. She was invited to the house to be godmother
to their child, and now she is pressed to stay longer to witness
the articles of separation.

Oh, I suppose such things are common enough ! — But
what is remarkable here, is the fact that neither party is a
poet, by the remotest courtesy.
Goodnight, dear dearest —

I am your

Ba.

[Postmark: May 20, 1846]

Tuesday Evening.

Do you remember how, when poor Abou Hassan, in the
Arabian story, awakens from sleep in the Sultan’s chamber,
to the sound of instruments of music, he is presently
complimented by the grand vizier on the royal wisdom displayed
throughout his reign . . do you remember ? Because just
as he listened, do I listen, when you talk to me about ‘he
course I have taken ‘… I, who have just had the wit
to sit still in my chair with my eyes half shut, and dream
. . dream ! — Ah, whether I am asleep or awake, what do I
know . . even now ? As to the ‘ course I have taken,’ it
has been somewhere among the stars . . or under the trees
of the Hesperides, at lowest. . .

Why how can I write to you such foolishness ? Rather
I should be serious, grave, and keep away from myths and
images, and speak the truth plainly. And speaking the
truth plainly, I, when I look back, dearest beloved, see that
you have done for me everything, instead of my doing anything
for you — that you have lifted me . . . Can I speak ?
Heavens ! — how I had different thoughts of you and of
myself and of the world and of life, last year at this hour !
The spirits who look backward over the grave, cannot feel
much otherwise from my feeling as I look back. As to
your thanking me, that is monstrous, it seems to me. It is
the action of your own heart alone, which has appeared to
do you any good. For myself, if I do not spoil your life, it
is the nearest to deserving thanks that I can come. Think
what I was when you saw me first . . laid there on the
sofa as an object of the merest compassion ! and of a
sadder spirit than even the face showed ! and then think
of all your generosity and persistence in goodness. Think
of it !— shall I ever cease ? Not while the heart beats,
which beats for you.

And now as the year has rounded itself to ‘ the perfect
round,’ I will speak of that first letter, about which so many
words were, . . just to say, this time, that I am glad now,
yes, glad, . . as we were to have a miracle, . . to have
it so, a born-miracle from the beginning. I feel glad, now,
that nothing was between the knowing and the loving . .
and that the beloved eyes were never cold discerners and
analyzers of me at any time. I am glad and grateful to you,
my own altogether dearest ! Yet the letter was read in pain
and agitation, and you have scarcely guessed how much. I
could not sleep night after night, — could not, — and my fear
was at nights, lest the feverishness should make me talk deliriously
and tell the secret aloud. Judge if the deeps of my
heart were not shaken. From the first you had that power
over me, notwithstanding those convictions which I also had
and which you know.

For it was not the character of the letter apart from you,
which shook me, — I could prove that to you — I received
and answered very calmly, with most absolute calmness, a
letter of the kind last summer . . knowing in respect to the
writer of it, (just as I thought of you) that a moment’s
enthusiasm had carried him a good way past his discretion.
I am sure that he was perfectly satisfied with my way of
answering his letter . . as I was myself. But you . . you
. . I could not escape so from you. You were stronger than
I, from the beginning, and I felt the mastery in you by the
first word and first look.

Dearest and most generous. No man was ever like you,
I know ! May God keep me from laying a blot on one day
of yours ! — on one hour ! and rather blot out mine !

For my life, it is yours, as this year has been yours.
But how can it make you happy, such a thing as my life ?
There I wonder still. It never made me happy, without
you ! — .

Your very own

Ba.

Mrs. Jameson was here to-day and brought a message
from Mr. Kenyon, who comes to-morrow at one. The sun
does not promise to come besides — does he ?

Mrs. Jameson goes to Brighton on Thursday, and returns
in a day or two to spend another month or six weeks in
town, changing her lodgings.

[Postmark: May 19, 1846]

Tuesday Morning.

My own ever dearest, when I try to thank you for such
a letter as yesterday’s, . . for any proof, in fact, of your
affection, . . I cannot speak : but you know, of this and all
things, that I understand, feel — you must know it very well.
There is only one thing I can do as I ought, and it is to
love you ; and the more I live, not ‘ the less ‘ but the more I
am able to love you — believe it of me. And for the less, . .
we never will return to that foolish subject, . . but for the
‘ less ‘ you spoke of when you said ‘ you do not love me
less?’ . . . why I thought at the moment and feel now,
that it would be too late, as I am, ever, upon any possible
ground, to love you less. If you loved me less . . even !
— or (to leave that) if you were to come to me and say that
you had murdered a man — why I may imagine such things,
you know — but I cannot imagine the possibility of my
loving you less, as a consequence of your failing so ! I am
yours in the deepest of my affections : — not unreasonably,
certainly, as I see you and know you — but if it were to turn
unreasonable . . I mean, if you took away the appearance
of reasonableness . . still I should be yours in the deepest
of my affections . . it is too late for a difference there.
Mrs. Jameson has just now sent me a proof with the
‘ Daughters of Pandarus,’ which she is to call for presently
and therefore I must come to an end with this note. How
I shall think of you to-morrow ! And if it should be fine, I
may perhaps drive in the park near the gardens . . take
my sisters to the gate of the gardens, and feel that you are
inside ! That will be something, if it is feasible. And if
it is fine or not, and if I go or not, I shall remember our
first day, the only day of my life which God blessed visibly
to me, the only day undimmed with a cloud . . my great
compensation-day, which it was worth while being born
for !

Your very own

Ba.

Oh — YOU will not see me to-morrow, remember ! I tell
you only out of cunning . . to win a thought !

[Postmark: May 16, 1846]

Saturday Morning.

You shall hear from me on this Sunday, though it
cannot be as an answer, dearest, to your letter of to-night.
But I being so wretchedly tired last night, and ‘ yawning ‘
being, to your mind, so ‘ intolerable,’ it is as well to leave a
better impression with you than that . . though there is
nothing to say, and the east wind blows on virulently.

The AthenÊum has put me out of humour for the day
. . besides. Not a word of ‘Luria’ — not a word of the
Literary Fund dinner, and a great, drawling carrying out
of the ‘ Poetry for the Million ‘ article . . as if all this trash
could not die of itself ! — as if it were not dead of itself! —
That the critics of a country should set themselves to such
work . . is as if the Premier of England took his official
seat in the window to kill flies, . . talking, with his first
finger out, of ‘ my administration.’ Only flies are flies and
have fly-life in them : they are nobler game than those.

Mrs. Jameson, while she was here the five minutes
yesterday, talked, in an under-breath to my under-breath
opposition, her opinion about the present age. ‘ That the
present age did not, could’ not, ought not, to express itself
by Art, . . though the next age would.’ She is surprisingly
wrong, it appears to me. There is no predominant character
in the age, she says, to be so expressed ! there is no
unity, to bear expression.

But art surely, if art is anything, is the expression, not
of the characteristics of an age except accidentally, . . essentially
it is the expression of Humanity in the individual
being — and unless we are men no longer, I cannot conceive
how such an argument as hers can be upheld for a
moment. Also it is exasperating to hear such things.

Then I do not believe, for one, that genius in the arts
is a mere reflection of the character of the times. Genius
precedes surely, — initiates. It is genius which gives an
Age its character and imposes its own colour …. But I
shall not write any more. Her paper on ‘ Titian’s House at
Venice,’ which she let me read in proof, and which is one
of the essays she is printing now, is full of beauty and truth,
and I admired it heartily. Then there is a quotation about
the ‘calm, cold, beautiful regard,’ of ‘Virgin child and
saint’ . . . which you may remember perhaps. I know
you will like the essay and feel it to be Venetian.

That you were feeling the east wind, beloved, meant
that you were not well, though you have quite left off telling
me a word of yourself lately. And why ? It shall not be
so next week, — now shall it ? May God bless you. I am
afraid of going down-stairs, because of the double-knocks.
It will be great gain to have the loudest noises from the
cicale. Except when somebody else is noisy, — which is a
noise I am always forgetting, just as if it were impossible.

Your own

Ba.

[Postmark: May 16, 1846]

Not even do you yawn in vain then, O you ! And
this, then, is what Cicero called ‘ oscitans sapientia ? ‘ The
argument of the yawn ought in fact, to be conclusive. !

But, dearest, if it was ‘ intolerable ‘ to see you yawn
yesterday, still less supportable was it to-day when I had all
the yawning to myself, and proved nothing by it. Tired I
am beyond your conceiving of . . tired ! You saw how I
broke off in my letter to you this morning. Well — that was
Miss Heaton, who came yesterday and left the packet you
saw, and came again to-day and sate here exactly three hours.
Now imagine that ! Three hours of incessant restless
talking. At the end I was blanched, as everybody could see,
and Mrs. Jameson who came afterwards for five minutes
and was too unwell herself to stay, seriously exhorted me
not to exert myself too much lest I should pay the penalty.
And I had not been down-stairs even — only been ground
down in the talking-mill. Arabel told her too, before she
came up-stairs, that I was expecting a friend — ‘ Oh ‘ . . said
she to me, ‘ I shall go away directly anyone comes.’ And
again presently . . ‘ Pray tell me when I ought to go away ‘ !
(As if I could say Go. She deserved it, but I couldn’t !)
And then . . ‘ How good of you to let me sit here and talk ! ‘
So good of me, when I was wishing her . . only at Leeds in
the High Street, between a dissenter and a churchman —
anywhere but opposite to my eyes ! Yet she has very bright
ones, and cheeks redder than your roses ; and she is kind
and cordial … as I thought in the anguish of my soul,
when I tried to be grateful to her. Certainly I should have
been more so, if she had stayed a little less, talked a little
less — it is awful to think how some women can talk !
Happily she leaves London to-morrow morning, and will not
be here again till next year, if then. She talked biography
too … ah, I did not mean to tell you — but it is better to
tell you at once and have done . . only she desired me not
to mention it . . only she little knew what she was doing !
You will not mention it. She told me that ‘ her informant
about Mr. Browning, . . was a lady to whom he had been
engaged . . that there had been a very strong attachment on
both sides, but that everything was broken off by her on the
ground of religious differences — that it happened years ago
and that the lady was married.’ At first I exclaimed im-
prudently enough (but how could it be otherwise ?) that it
was not true — but I caught at the bridle in a minute or two
and let her have it her own way. Do not answer this — it
is nonsense, I know — but it helped to tire me with the rest.
Wasn’t it a delightful day for me ? At the end of the three
hours, she threw her arms round me and kissed me some
half dozen times and wished me ‘ goodbye ‘ till next year.
Wilson found me standing in the middle of the room, look-
ing as she said, ‘ like a ghost.’ And no wonder ! The
‘ vile wind ‘ out of doors was nothing to it.

Dearest, you are well ? Your letter says nothing. Only
one more letter, and then Monday. Ah — it is the sweetest
of flattery to say that you ‘ need ‘ me — but isn’t it difficult
to understand ? Yet while you even fancy that you have
such a need, you may be sure (let Charles Fox break his
promises ever so ! ) of your own

Ba

{1846|} {AND|} {Elizabeth|} {Barrett|} {Barrett|} {157|}

[Postmark: May 15, 1846]

The treader on your footsteps was Miss Bayley, who
left a card and ‘ would come another day.’ She must have
seen you . . . One of these days, ‘ scirocco ‘ will be ‘ loose ‘
— we may as well be prepared for it. To keep it off as long
as possible is all that can be. But when it comes it will not
uproot my palm-trees, I think, though it should throw flat
the olives.

Papa brought me some flowers yesterday when he came
home . . and they went a little to my heart as I took them. I
put them into glasses near yours, and they look faded this
morning nevertheless, while your roses, for all your cruelty
to them, are luxuriant in beauty as if they had just finished
steeping themselves in garden-dew. I look gravely from
one set of flowers to the other — I cannot draw a glad omen
— I wish he had not given me these. Dearest, there seems
little kindness in teazing you with such thoughts . . but
they come and I write them : and let them come ever so
sadly, I do not for a moment doubt . . hesitate. One may
falter, where one does not fail. And for the rest, . . it is my
fault, and not my sorrow rather, that we act so ? It is by
choice that we act so ? If he had let me I should have
loved him out of a heart altogether open to him. It is
not my fault that he would not let me. Now it is too late
— I am not his nor my own, any more.

This morning I have had American letters of the kindest
. . from Massachusetts — and a review on my poems, quite
extravagant indeed, in the Methodist Quarterly, One of
these letters is so like another, that I need only tell you
of them . . written too by people . . Lydias and Richards . .
never heard of before by either of us. The review repeats
the fabulous story in the ‘ Spirit of the Age,’ about unknown
tongues and a seven years’ eclipse in total darkness — but I
say to myself . . . after all, the real myth is scarcely less
wonderful. If I have not all this knowledge … I have
you . . . which is greater, better ! ‘ Not less wonderful ‘ did

I say ? when it is the miracle

Oh, these people ! — I am seized and bound. More to-night !
from

Your own

Ba.

Say how you are.

[Postmark: May 13, 1846]

When you began to speak of the islands, the three
islands, I thought you were going to propose that you should
live in one, and Flush in one, and I in the third : and almost
it was so, . . only that you took, besides, the ‘ farthest ‘ for
yourself ! Observe ! — always I write nonsense, when you
send me a letter which moves me like this, . . dearest, . .
my own !

To-day Mrs. Jameson has been here, and having left with
me a proof about Titian, she comes again to-morrow to take
it. I think her quite a lovable person now — I like her
more and more. How she talked of you to-day, and called
you the most charming companion in the world, setting you
too on your right throne as ‘ poet of the age.’ Wouldn’t it have
been an ‘ effect ‘ in the midst of all, if I had burst out crying ?
And what with being flurried, frightened, and a little nervous
from not sleeping well last night, I assure you it was quite
possible — but happily, on every account, I escaped that
‘ dramatic situation.’ I wish . . no, I can’t wish that she
wouldn’t talk of you as she does whenever she comes here.
And then, to make it better, she told me how you had
recited ‘ in a voice and manner as good as singing,’ my
‘ Catarina.’ How are such things to be borne, do you think,
when people are not made of marble ? But I took a long
breath, and held my mask on with both hands.

You will tell me of the Marc Antonio prints, — will you
not ? Remember them on Thursday. Raffael’s — are they
not ? I shall expect ever so much teaching, and showing,
and explaining . . I, who have seen and heard nothing of
pictures and music, from you who know everything . . so
the cicale must not be too loud for that. Did ever anyone
say to you that you were like Raffael’s portrait — not in the
eyes, which are quite different, but in the lower part of the
face, the mouth, and also the brow ? It has struck me some-
times — and I had it on my lips to-day as a question to Mrs.
Jameson. I think I was mad to-day altogether. But she
did not see it — (I mean my madness . . not your likeness !)
went away unconsciously.

Here, at last, is the letter ! Careless that I was
yesterday ! —

And you take me to be too generous if you fancy that I
proposed giving up the daily letter which is my daily bread.
I meant only that you should not, for the sake of a particular
post, tire yourself, hurry yourself, . . do what you did
yesterday. As for the daily letter, I am Ba — not Miss
Barrett. Now, am I Miss Barrett ? am I not Ba rather,
and your Ba ? I should like to hear what will be heard to-morrow.
Oh — I should like to be under the table, or in a
pasty, after the fashion of the queen’s dwarf when Elizabeth
was queen and Shakespeare poet. Shall you be nervous,
as I was with Mrs. Jameson ? Oh no, — why should you be
nervous ? You will do it all well and gracefully — I am not
afraid for you. It is simply out of vain-glory that I wish to
be there ! Only . . the dramatists of England . . where
in the world are they just now ? Or will somebody prove
ten of them, — because nought after one, makes exactly ten ?
Mr. Horne indeed. But I wish the toast had been ‘the
poets of England,’ rather. May God bless you, any way !
‘ I love you whatever comes of it.’ Yes, unless sorrow of
yours should come of it, that is what I like to hear. Better it
is, than a thousand praises of this thing and that thing, which
never were mine . . alas ! — Also, loving me so, you can be
made happy with laburnum-leaves ! — Dearest — most dear !
Dare I speak, do you think ?

Exactly at eight to-morrow, and exactly at three the next
day, I shall be with you — being at any hour

Your very own.

The walk did me no harm. But you say nothing of
yourself !

1846 AND Elizabeth Barrett Barrett 151