Author: EBB

Sunday.

March 16, 1846.

Ever dearest I am going to say one word first of all lest I should forget it afterward, of the two or three words which you said yesterday and so passingly that you probably forget to-day having said them at all. We were speaking of Mr. Chorley and his house, and you said that you did not care for such and such things for yourself, but that for others — now you remember the rest. And I just want to say what it would have been simpler to have said at the time — only not so easy — (I couldn’t say it at the time) that you are not if you please to fancy that because I am a woman I have not the pretension to do with as little in any way as you yourself  . . . no, it is not that I mean to say . . .. I mean that you are not, if you please, to fancy that, because I am a woman, I look to be cared for in those outside things, or should have the slightest pleasure in any of them. So never wish nor regret in your thoughts to be able or not to be able to care this and this for me; for while you are thinking so, our thoughts go different ways, which is wrong. Mr. Fox did me a great deal too much honour in calling me ‘a religious hermit’; he was ‘curiously’ in fault, as you saw. It is not my vocation to sit on a stone in a cave — I was always too fond of lolling upon sofas or in chairs nearly as large, — and this, which I sit in, was given to me when I was a child by my uncle, the uncle I spoke of to you once, and has been lolled in nearly ever since  . . . when I was well enough. Well — that is a sort of luxury, of course — but it is more idle than expensive, as a habit, and I do believe that it is the ‘head and foot of my offending’ in that matter. Yes — ‘confiteor tibi’ besides, that I do hate white dimity curtains, which is highly improper for a religious hermit of course, but excusable in me who would accept brown serge as a substitute with ever so much indifference. It is the white light which comes in the dimity which is so hateful to me. To ‘go mad in white dimity’ seems perfectly natural, and consequential even. Set aside these foibles, and one thing is as good as another with me, and the more simplicity in the way of living, the better. If I saw Mr. Chorley’s satin sofas and gilded ceilings I should call them very pretty I dare say, but never covet the possession of the like — it would never enter my mind to do so. Then Papa has not kept a carriage since I have been grown up (they grumble about it here in the house, but when people have once had great reverses they get nervous about spending money) so I shall not miss the Clarence and greys  . . . and I do entreat you not to put those two ideas together again of me and the finery which has nothing to do with me. I have talked a great deal too much of all this, you will think, but I want you, once for all, to apply it broadly to the whole of the future both in the general view and the details, so that we need not return to the subject. Judge for me as for yourself — what is good for you is good for me. Otherwise I shall be humiliated, you know; just as far as I know your thoughts.

Mr. Kenyon has been here to-day — and I have been down-stairs — two great events! He was in brilliant spirits and sate talking ever so long, and named you as he always does. Something he asked, and then said suddenly  . . . ‘But I don’t see why I should ask you, when I ought to know him better than you can.’ On which I was wise enough to change colour, as I felt, to the roots of my hair. There is the effect of a bad conscience! and it has happened to me before, with Mr. Kenyon, three times — once particularly, when I could have cried with vexation (to complete the effects!), he looked at me with such infinite surprise in a dead pause of any speaking. That was in the summer; and all to be said for it now, is, that it couldn’t be helped: couldn’t!

Mr. Kenyon asked of ‘Saul.’ (By the way, you never answered about the blue lilies.) He asked of ‘Saul’ and whether it would be finished in the new number. He hangs on the music of your David. Did you read in the Athenæum how Jules Janin — no, how the critic on Jules Janin (was it the critic? was it Jules Janin? the glorious confusion is gaining on me I think) has magnificently confounded places and persons in Robert Southey’s urn by the Adriatic and devoted friendship for Lord Byron? And immediately the English observer of the phenomenon, after moralizing a little on the crass ignorance of Frenchmen in respect to our literature, goes on to write like an ignoramus himself, on Mme. Charles Reybaud, encouraging that pure budding novelist, who is in fact a hack writer of romances third and fourth rate, of questionable purity enough, too. It does certainly appear wonderful that we should not sufficiently stand abreast here in Europe, to justify and necessitate the establishment of an European review — journal rather — (the ‘Foreign Review,’ so called, touching only the summits of the hills) a journal which might be on a level with the intelligent readers of all the countries of Europe, and take all the rising reputations of each, with the national light on them as they rise, into observation and judgment. If nobody can do this, it is a pity I think to do so much less — both in France and England — to snatch up a French book from over the Channel as ever and anon they do in the Athenæum, and say something prodigiously absurd of it, till people cry out ‘oh oh’ as in the House of Commons.

Oh — oh — and how wise I am to-day, as if I were a critic myself! Yesterday I was foolish instead — for I couldn’t get out of my head all the evening how you said that you would come ‘to see a candle held up at the window.’ Well! but I do not mean to love you any more just now — so I tell you plainly. Certainly I will not. I love you already too much perhaps. I feel like the turning Dervishes turning in the sun when you say such words to me — and I never shall love you any ‘less,’ because it is too much to be made less of.

And you write to-morrow? and will tell me how you are? honestly will tell me? May God bless you, most dear!

I am yours — ‘Tota tua est’

Ba.

 

March 12, 1846.

When my Orpheus writes ‘Περι λιθων’ he makes a great mistake about onyxes — there is more true onyx in this letter of his that I have just read, than he will ever find in the desert land he goes to. And for what ‘glitters on the ground,’ it reminds me of the yellow metal sparks found in the Malvern Hills, and how we used to laugh years ago at one of our geological acquaintances, who looked mole-hills up that mountain-range in the scorn of his eyes, saying  . . . ‘Nothing but mica!!’ Is anybody to be rich through ‘mica’, I wonder? through ‘Nothing but mica?’ ‘As rich as — as rich as’  . . . Walter the Pennyless?

Dearest, best you are nevertheless, and it is a sorry jest which I can break upon your poverty, with that golden heart of yours so apprehended of mine! Why if I am ‘ambitious’ — is it not because you love me as if I were worthier of your love, and that, so, I get frightened of the opening of your eyelids to the unworthiness? ‘A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep’ — there, is my ‘ambition for afterward.’ Oh — you do not understand how with an unspeakable wonder, an astonishment which keeps me from drawing breath, I look to this Dream, and ‘see your face as the face of an angel,’ and fear for the vanishing,  . . . because dreams and angels do pass away in this world. But you, I understand you, and all your goodness past expression, past belief of mine, if I had not known you  . . . just you. If it will satisfy you that I should know you, love you, love you — why then indeed — because I never bowed down to any of the false gods I know the gold from the mica,  . . . I! ‘My own beloved’ — you should have my soul to stand on if it could make you stand higher. Yet you shall not call me ‘ambitious.’

To-day I went down-stairs again, and wished to know whether you were walking in your proportion — and your letter does call you ‘better,’ whether you walked enough or not, and it bears the Deptford post-mark. On Saturday I shall see how you are looking. So pale you were last time! I know Mr. Kenyon must have observed it, (dear Mr. Kenyon  . . . for being ‘kinder and kindest’) and that one of the ‘augurs’ marvelled at the other! By the way I forgot yesterday to tell you how Mr. Burges’s ‘apt remark’ did amuse me. And Mr. Kenyon who said much the same words to me last week in relation to this very Wordsworth junior, writhed, I am sure, and wished the ingenious observer with the lost plays of Æschylus — oh, I seem to see Mr. Kenyon’s face! He was to have come to tell me how you all behaved at dinner that day, but he keeps away  . . . you have given him too much to think of perhaps.

I heard from Miss Mitford to-day that Mr. Chorley’s hope is at an end in respect to the theatre, and (I must tell you) she praises him warmly for his philosophy and fortitude under the disappointment. How much philosophy does it take, — please to instruct me, — in order to the decent bearing of such disasters? Can I fancy one, shorter than you by a whole head of the soul, condescending to ‘bear‘ such things? No, indeed.

Be good and kind, and do not work at the ‘Tragedy’  . . . do not.

So you and I have written out all the paper in London! At least, I send and send in vain to have more envelopes ‘after my kind,’ and the last answer is, that a ‘fresh supply will arrive in eight days from Paris, and that in the meanwhile they are quite out in the article.’ An awful sign of the times, is this famine of envelopes  . . . not to speak of the scarcity of little sheets: — and the augurs look to it all of course.

For my part I think more of Chiappino — Chiappino holds me fast.

But I must let you go — it is too late. This dearest letter, which you sent me! I thank you for it with ever so much dumbness. May God bless you and keep you, and make you happy for me.

Your Ba.

Tuesday Evening.
March 11, 1846.

You find my letter I trust, for it was written this morning in time; and if these two lines should not be flattery  . . . oh, rank flattery!  . . . why happy letter is it, to help to bring you home ten minutes earlier, when you never ought to have left home — no, indeed! I knew how it would be yesterday, and how you would be worse and not better. You are not fit to go out, dear dearest, to sit in the glare of lights and talk and listen, and have the knives and forks to rattle all the while and remind you of the chains of necessity. Oh — should I bear it, do you think? I was thinking, when you went away — after you had quite gone. You would laugh to see me at my dinner — Flush and me — Flush placing in me such an heroic confidence, that, after he has cast one discriminating glance on the plate, and, in the case of ‘chicken,’ wagged his tail with an emphasis,  . . . he goes off to the sofa, shuts his eyes and allows a full quarter of an hour to pass before he returns to take his share. Did you ever hear of a dog before who did not persecute one with beseeching eyes at mealtimes? And remember, this is not the effect of discipline. Also if another than myself happens to take coffee or break bread in the room here, he teazes straightway with eyes and paws,  . . . teazes like a common dog and is put out of the door before he can be quieted by scolding. But with me he is sublime! Moreover he has been a very useful dog in his time (in the point of capacity), causing to disappear supererogatory dinners and impossible breakfasts which, to do him justice, is a feat accomplished without an objection on his side, always.

So, when you write me such a letter, I write back to you about Flush. Dearest beloved, but I have read the letter and felt it in my heart, through and through! and it is as wise to talk of Flush foolishly, as to fancy that I could say how it is felt  . . . this letter! Only when you spoke last of breaking off with such and such recollections, it was the melancholy of the breaking off which I protested against, was it not? and not the insufficiency of the recollections. There might have been something besides in jest. Ah, but you remember, if you please, that I was the first to wish (wishing for my own part, if I could wish exclusively) to break off in the middle the silken thread, and you told me, not — you forbade me — do you remember? For, as happiness goes, the recollections were enough,  . . . are enough for me! I mean that I should acknowledge them to be full compensation for the bitter gift of life, such as it was, to me! if that subject-matter were broken off here! ‘Bona verba’ let me speak nevertheless. You mean, you say, to run all risks with me, and I don’t mean to draw back from my particular risk of  . . . what am I to do to you hereafter to make you vexed with me? What is there in marriage to make all these people on every side of us, (who all began, I suppose, by talking of love,) look askance at one another from under the silken mask  . . . and virtually hate one another through the tyranny of the stronger and the hypocrisy of the weaker party. It never could be so with us — I know that. But you grow awful to me sometimes with the very excess of your goodness and tenderness, and still, I think to myself, if you do not keep lifting me up quite off the ground by the strong faculty of love in you, I shall not help falling short of the hope you have placed in me — it must be ‘supernatural’ of you, to the end! or I fall short and disappoint you. Consider this, beloved. Now if I could put my soul out of my body, just to stand up before you and make it clear.

I did go to the drawing-room to-day  . . . would  . . . should  . . . did. The sun came out, the wind changed  . . . where was the obstacle? I spent a quarter of an hour in a fearful solitude, listening for knocks at the door, as a ghost-fearer might at midnight, and ‘came home’ none the worse in any way. Be sure that I shall ‘take care’ better than you do, and there, is the worst of it all — for you let people make you ill, and do it yourself upon occasion.

You know from my letter how I found you out in the matter of the ‘Soul’s Tragedy.’ Oh! so bad  . . . so weak, so unworthy of your name! If some other people were half a quarter as much the contrary!

And so, good-night, dear dearest. In spite of my fine speeches about ‘recollections,’ I should be unhappy enough to please you, with only those  . . . without you beside! I could not take myself back from being

Your own —

Tuesday Morning.

March 10, 1846.

Now I shall know what to believe when you talk of very bad and very indifferent doings of yours. Dearest, I read your ‘Soul’s Tragedy’ last night and was quite possessed with it, and fell finally into a mute wonder how you could for a moment doubt about publishing it. It is very vivid, I think, and vital, and impressed me more than the first act of ‘Luria’ did, though I do not mean to compare such dissimilar things, and for pure nobleness ‘Luria’ is unapproachable — will prove so, it seems to me. But this ‘Tragedy’ shows more heat from the first, and then, the words beat down more closely  . . . well! I am struck by it all as you see. If you keep it up to this passion, if you justify this high key-note, it is a great work, and worthy of a place next ‘Luria.’ Also do observe how excellently balanced the two will be, and how the tongue of this next silver Bell will swing from side to side. And you to frighten me about it. Yes, and the worst is (because it was stupid in me) the worst is that I half believed you and took the manuscript to be something inferior — for you — and the adviseableness of its publication, a doubtful case. And yet, after all, the really worst is, that you should prove yourself such an adept at deceiving! For can it be possible that the same

‘Robert Browning’

who (I heard the other day) said once that he could ‘wait three hundred years,’ should not feel the life of centuries in this work too — can it be? Why all the pulses of the life of it are beating in even my ears!

Tell me, beloved, how you are — I shall hear it to-night — shall I not? To think of your being unwell, and forced to go here and go there to visit people to whom your being unwell falls in at best among the secondary evils! — makes me discontented — which is one shade more to the uneasiness I feel. Will you take care, and not give away your life to these people? Because I have a better claim than they  . . . and shall put it in, if provoked  . . . shall. Then you will not use the shower-bath again — you promise? I dare say Mr. Kenyon observed yesterday how unwell you were looking — tell me if he didn’t! Now do not work, dearest! Do not think of Chiappino, leave him behind  . . . he has a good strong life of his own, and can wait for you. Oh — but let me remember to say of him, that he and the other personages appear to me to articulate with perfect distinctness and clearness  . . . you need not be afraid of having been obscure in this first part. It is all as lucid as noon.

Shall I go down-stairs to-day? ‘No’ say the privy-councillors, ‘because it is cold,’ but I shall go peradventure, because the sun brightens and brightens, and the wind has gone round to the west.

George had come home yesterday before you left me, but the stars were favourable to us and kept him out of this room. Now he is at Worcester — went this morning, on those never ending ’rounds,’ poor fellow, which weary him I am sure.

And why should music and the philosophy of it make you ‘melancholy,’ ever dearest, more than the other arts, which each has the seal of the age, modifying itself after a fashion and to one? Because it changes more, perhaps. Yet all the Arts are mediators between the soul and the Infinite,  . . . shifting always like a mist, between the Breath on this side, and the Light on that side  . . . shifted and coloured; mediators, messengers, projected from the Soul, to go and feel, for Her, out there!

You don’t call me ‘kind’ I confess — but then you call me ‘too kind’ which is nearly as bad, you must allow on your part. Only you were not in earnest when you said that, as it appeared afterward. Were you, yesterday, in pretending to think that I owed you nothing  . . . I?

May God bless you. He knows that to give myself to you, is not to pay you. Such debts are not so paid.

Yet I am your

Ba.

People’s Journal for March 7th.

 

Friday Evening.

March 7, 1846.

Always you, is it, who torments me? always you? Well! I agree to bear the torments as Socrates his persecution by the potters: — and by the way he liked those potters, as Plato shows, and was fain to go to them for his illustrations  . . . as I to you for all my light. Also, while we are on the subject, I will tell you another fault of your Bartoli  . . . his ‘choice Tuscan’ filled one of my pages, in the place of my English better than Tuscan.

For the letter you mentioned, I meant to have said in mine yesterday, that I was grateful to you for telling me of it — that was one of the prodigalities of your goodness to me  . . . not thrown away, in one sense, however superfluous. Do you ever think how I must feel when you overcome me with all this generous tenderness, only beloved! I cannot say it.

Because it is colder to-day I have not been down-stairs but let to-morrow be warm enough — facilis descensus. There’s something infernal to me really, in the going down, and now too that our cousin is here! Think of his beginning to attack Henrietta the other day . . .. ‘So Mr. C. has retired and left the field to Surtees Cook. Oh  . . . you needn’t deny  . . . it’s the news of all the world except your father. And as to him, I don’t blame you — he never will consent to the marriage of son or daughter. Only you should consider, you know, because he won’t leave you a shilling, &c. &c . . ..’ You hear the sort of man. And then in a minute after  . . . ‘And what is this about Ba?’ ‘About Ba’ said my sisters, ‘why who has been persuading you of such nonsense?’ ‘Oh, my authority is very good, — perfectly unnecessary for you to tell any stories, Arabel, — a literary friendship, is it?’  . . . and so on  . . . after that fashion! This comes from my brothers of course, but we need not be afraid of its passing beyond, I think, though I was a good deal vexed when I heard first of it last night and have been in cousinly anxiety ever since to get our Orestes safe away from those Furies his creditors, into Brittany again. He is an intimate friend of my brothers besides the relationship, and they talk to him as to each other, only they oughtn’t to have talked that, and without knowledge too.

I forgot to tell you that Mr. Kenyon was in an immoderate joy the day I saw him last, about Mr. Poe’s ‘Raven’ as seen in the Athenæum extracts, and came to ask what I knew of the poet and his poetry, and took away the book. It’s the rhythm which has taken him with ‘glamour’ I fancy. Now you will stay on Monday till the last moment, and go to him for dinner at six.

Who ‘looked in at the door?’ Nobody. But Arabel a little way opened it, and hearing your voice, went back. There was no harm — is no fear of harm. Nobody in the house would find his or her pleasure in running the risk of giving me pain. I mean my brothers and sisters would not.

Are you trying the music to charm the brain to stillness? Tell me. And keep from that ‘Soul’s Tragedy’ which did so much harm — oh, that I had bound you by some Stygian oath not to touch it.

So my rock  . . . may the birds drop into your crevices the seeds of all the flowers of the world — only it is not for those, that I cling to you as the single rock in the salt sea.

Ever I am

Your own.

 

Thursday.

March 6, 1846.

Ever dearest I lose no time in writing, you see, so as to be written to at the soonest — and there is another reason which makes me hasten to write  . . . it is not all mercantile calculation. I want you to understand me.

Now listen! I seem to understand myself: it seems to me that every word I ever said to you on one subject, is plainly referable to a class of feelings of which you could not complain  . . . could not. But this is my impression; and yours is different: — you do not understand, you do not see by my light, and perhaps it is natural that you should not, as we stand on different steps of the argument. Still I, who said what I did, for you, and from an absorbing consideration of what was best for you, cannot consent, even out of anxiety for your futurity, to torment you now, to vex you by a form of speech which you persist in translating into a want of trust in you  . . . (I, want trust in you!!) into a need of more evidence about you from others  . . . (could you say so?) and even into an indisposition on my part to fulfil my engagement — no, dearest dearest, it is not right of you. And therefore, as you have these thoughts reasonably or unreasonably, I shall punish you for them at once, and ‘chain’ you  . . . (as you wish to be chained), chain you, rivet you — do you feel how the little fine chain twists round and round you? do you hear the stroke of the riveting? and you may feel that too. Now, it is done — now, you are chained — Bia has finished the work — I, Ba! (observe the anagram!) and not a word do you say, of Prometheus, though you have the conscience of it all, I dare say. Well! you must be pleased,  . . . as it was ‘the weight of too much liberty’ which offended you: and now you believe, perhaps, that I trust you, love you, and look to you over the heads of the whole living world, without any one head needing to stoop; you must, if you please, because you belong to me now and shall believe as I choose. There’s a ukase for you! Cry out  . . . repent  . . . and I will loose the links, and let you go again — shall it be ‘My dear Miss Barrett?’

Seriously, you shall not think of me such things as you half said, if not whole said, to-day. If all men were to speak evil of you, my heart would speak of you the more good — that would be the one result with me. Do I not know you, soul to soul? should I believe that any of them could know you as I know you? Then for the rest, I am not afraid of ‘toads’ now, not being a child any longer. I am not inclined to mind, if you do not mind, what may be said about us by the benevolent world, nor will other reasons of a graver kind affect me otherwise than by the necessary pain. Therefore the whole rests with you — unless illness should intervene — and you will be kind and good (will you not?) and not think hard thoughts of me ever again — no. It wasn’t the sense of being less than you had a right to pretend to, which made me speak what you disliked — for it is I who am ‘unworthy,’ and not another — not certainly that other!

I meant to write more to-night of subjects farther off us, but my sisters have come up-stairs and I must close my letter quickly. Beloved, take care of your head! Ah, do not write poems, nor read, nor neglect the walking, nor take that shower-bath. Will you, instead, try the warm bathing? Surely the experiment is worth making for a little while. Dearest beloved, do it for your own

Ba.

 

Tuesday Evening.

March 4, 1846.

Yes, but, dearest, you mistake me, or you mistake yourself. I am sure I do not over-care for forms — it is not my way to do it — and in this case  . . . no. Still you must see that here is a fact as well as a form, and involving a frightful quantity of social inconvenience (to use the mildest word) if too hastily entered on. I deny altogether looking for, or ‘seeing’ any ‘security’ in it for myself — it is a mere form for the heart and the happiness: illusions may pass after as before. Still the truth is that if they were to pass with you now, you stand free to act according to the wide-awakeness of your eyes, and to reform your choice  . . . see! whereas afterward you could not carry out such a reformation while I was alive, even if I helped you. All I could do for you would be to walk away. And you pretend not to see this broad distinction? — ah. For me I have seen just this and no more, and have felt averse to forestall, to seem to forestall even by an hour, or a word, that stringency of the legal obligation from which there is in a certain sense no redemption. Tie up your drinker under the pour of his nine gallons, and in two minutes he will moan and writhe (as you perfectly know) like a Brinvilliers under the water-torture. That he asked to be tied up, was unwise on his own principle of loving ale. And you sha’n’t be ‘chained’ up, if you were to ask twenty times: if you have found truth or not in the water-well.

You do not see aright what I meant to tell you on another subject. If he was displeased, (and it was expressed by a shadow a mere negation of pleasure) it was not with you as a visitor and my friend. You must not fancy such a thing. It was a sort of instinctive indisposition towards seeing you here — unexplained to himself, I have no doubt — of course unexplained, or he would have desired me to receive you never again, that would have been done at once and unscrupulously. But without defining his own feeling, he rather disliked seeing you here — it just touched one of his vibratory wires, brushed by and touched it — oh, we understand in this house. He is not a nice observer, but, at intervals very wide, he is subject to lightnings — call them fancies, sometimes right, sometimes wrong. Certainly it was not in the character of a ‘sympathising friend’ that you made him a very little cross on Monday. And yet you never were nor will be in danger of being thanked, he would not think of it. For the reserve, the apprehension — dreadful those things are, and desecrating to one’s own nature — but we did not make this position, we only endure it. The root of the evil is the miserable misconception of the limits and character of parental rights — it is a mistake of the intellect rather than of the heart. Then, after using one’s children as one’s chattels for a time, the children drop lower and lower toward the level of the chattels, and the duties of human sympathy to them become difficult in proportion. And (it seems strange to say it, yet it is true) love, he does not conceive of at all. He has feeling, he can be moved deeply, he is capable of affection in a peculiar way, but that, he does not understand, any more than he understands Chaldee, respecting it less of course.

And you fancy that I could propose Italy again? after saying too that I never would? Oh no, no — yet there is time to think of this, a superfluity of time,  . . . ‘time, times and half a time’ and to make one’s head swim with leaning over a precipice is not wise. The roar of the world comes up too, as you hear and as I heard from the beginning. There will be no lack of ‘lying,’ be sure — ‘pure lying’ too — and nothing you can do, dearest dearest, shall hinder my being torn to pieces by most of the particularly affectionate friends I have in the world. Which I do not think of much, any more than of Italy. You will be mad, and I shall be bad  . . . and that will be the effect of being poets! ‘Till when, where are you?’ — why in the very deepest of my soul — wherever in it is the fountain head of loving! beloved, there you are!

Some day I shall ask you ‘in form,’ — as I care so much for forms, it seems, — what your ‘faults’ are, these immense multitudinous faults of yours, which I hear such talk of, and never, never, can get to see. Will you give me a catalogue raisonnée of your faults? I should like it, I think. In the meantime they seem to be faults of obscurity, that is, invisible faults, like those in the poetry which do not keep it from selling as I am so, so glad to understand. I am glad too that Mr. Milnes knows you a little.

Now I must end, there is no more time to-night. God bless you, very dearest! Keep better  . . . try to be well — as I do for you since you ask me. Did I ever think that you would think it worth while to ask me that? What a dream! reaching out into the morning! To-day however I did not go down-stairs, because it was colder and the wind blew its way into the passages: — if I can to-morrow without risk, I will,  . . . be sure  . . . be sure. Till Thursday then! — till eternity!

‘Till when, where am I,’ but with you? and what, but yours

Your

Ba.

I have been writing ‘autographs’ (save my mark) for the North and the South to-day  . . . the Fens, and Golden Square. Somebody asked for a verse,  . . . from either ‘Catarina’ or ‘Flush’  . . . ‘those poems’ &c. &c.! Such a concatenation of criticisms. So I preferred Flush of course — i.e. gave him the preferment.

 

Monday Evening.

March 3, 1846.

Upon the whole, I think, I am glad when you are kept in town and prevented from writing what you call ‘much’ to me. Because in the first place, the little from you, is always much to me — and then, besides, the letter comes, and with it the promise of another! Two letters have I had from you to-day, ever dearest! How I thank you! — yes, indeed! It was like yourself to write yesterday  . . . to remember what a great gap there would have been otherwise, as it looked on this side — here. The worst of Saturday is (when you come on it) that Sunday follows — Saturday night bringing no letter. Well, it was very good of you, best of you!

For the ‘analyzing’ I give it up willingly, only that I must say what altogether I forgot to say in my last letter, that it was not I, if you please, who spoke of the chrystals breaking away! And you, to quote me with that certainty! “The chrystals are broken off,” you say.’ I say!! When it was in your letter, and not at all in mine!!

The truth is that I was stupid, rather, about the Dulwich collection — it was my fault. I caught up the idea of the gallery out of a heap of other thoughts, and really might have known better if I had given myself a chance, by considering.

Mr. Kenyon came to-day, and has taken out a licence, it seems to me, for praising you, for he praised and praised. Somebody has told him (who had spent several days with you in a house with a large library) that he came away ‘quite astounded by the versatility of your learning’ — and that, to complete the circle, you discoursed as scientifically on the training of greyhounds and breeding of ducks as if you had never done anything else all your life. Then dear Mr. Kenyon talked of the poems; and hoped, very earnestly I am sure, that you would finish ‘Saul’ — which you ought to do, must do — only not now. By the way Mrs. Coleridge had written to him to enquire whether you had authority for the ‘blue lilies,’ rather than white. Then he asked about ‘Luria’ and ‘whether it was obscure’; and I said, not unless the people, who considered it, began by blindfolding themselves.

And where do you think Mr. Kenyon talks of going next February — a long while off to be sure? To Italy of course. Everybody I ever heard of seems to be going to Italy next winter. He visits his brother at Vienna, and ‘may cross the Alps and get to Pisa’ — it is the shadow of a scheme — nothing certain, so far.

I did not go down-stairs to-day because the wind blew and the thermometer fell. To-morrow, perhaps I may. And you, dearest dearest, might have put into the letters how you were when you wrote them. You might — but you did not feel well and would not say so. Confess that that was the reason. Reason or no reason, mention yourself to-morrow, and for the rest, do not write a long letter so as to increase the evil. There was nothing which I can remember as requiring an answer in what I wrote to you, and though I will have my letter of course, it shall be as brief as possible, if briefness is good for you — now always remember that. Why if I, who talk against ‘Luria,’ should work the mischief myself, what should I deserve? I should be my own jury directly and not recommend to mercy  . . . not to mine. Do take care — care for me just so much.

And, except that taking care of your health, what would you do for me that you have not done? You have given me the best of the possible gifts of one human soul to another, you have made my life new, and am I to count these things as small and insufficient? Ah, you know, you know that I cannot, ought not, will not.

May God bless you. He blesses me in letting me be grateful to you as your Ba.

 

Sunday.

March 2, 1846.

You never could think that I meant any insinuation against you by a word of what was said yesterday, or that I sought or am likely to seek a ‘security’! do you know it was not right of you to use such an expression — indeed no. You were angry with me for just one minute, or you would not have used it — and why? Now what did I say that was wrong or unkind even by construction? If I did say anything, it was three times wrong, and unjust as well as unkind, and wronged my own heart and consciousness of all that you are to me, more than it could you. But you began speaking of yourself just as a woman might speak under the same circumstances (you remember what you said), and then I, remembering that all the men in the world would laugh such an idea to scorn, said something to that effect, you know. I once was in company with a man, however, who valued himself very much on his constancy to a woman who was so deeply affected by it that she became his wife at last  . . . and the whole neighbourhood came out to stare at him on that ground as a sort of monster. And can you guess what the constancy meant? Seven years before, he loved that woman, he said, and she repulsed him. ‘And in the meantime, how many?’ I had the impertinence to ask a female friend who told me the tale. ‘Why,’ she answered with the utmost simplicity, ‘I understand that Miss A. and Miss B. and Mrs. C. would not listen to him, but he took Miss D.’s rejection most to heart.’ That was the head and front of his ‘constancy’ to Miss E., who had been loved, she boasted, for seven years  . . . that is, once at the beginning and once at the end. It was just a coincidence of the ‘premier pas’ and the ‘pis aller.’

Beloved, I could not mean this for you; you are not made of such stuff, as we both know.

And for myself, it was my compromise with my own scruples, that you should not be ‘chained’ to me, not in the merest metaphor, that you should not seem to be bound, in honour or otherwise, so that if you stayed with me it should be your free choice to stay, not the consequence of a choice so many months before. That was my compromise with my scruples, and not my doubt of your affection — and least of all, was it an intention of trifling with you sooner or later that made me wish to suspend all decisions as long as possible. I have decided (for me) to let it be as you shall please — now I told you that before. Either we will live on as we are, until an obstacle arises, — for indeed I do not look for a ‘security’ where you suppose, and the very appearance of it there, is what most rebuts me — or I will be yours in the obvious way, to go out of England the next half-hour if possible. As to the steps to be taken (or not taken) before the last step, we must think of those. The worst is that the only question is about a form. Virtually the evil is the same all round, whatever we do. Dearest, it was plain to see yesterday evening when he came into this room for a moment at seven o’clock, before going to his own to dress for dinner  . . . plain to see, that he was not altogether pleased at finding you here in the morning. There was no pretext for objecting gravely — but it was plain that he was not pleased. Do not let this make you uncomfortable, he will forget all about it, and I was not scolded, do you understand. It was more manner, but my sisters thought as I did of the significance: — and it was enough to prove to me (if I had not known) what a desperate game we should be playing if we depended on a yielding nerve there.

And to-day I went down-stairs (to prove how my promises stand) though I could find at least ten good excuses for remaining in my own room, for our cousin, Sam Barrett, who brought the interruption yesterday and put me out of humour (it wasn’t the fault of the dear little cousin, Lizzie  . . . my ‘portrait’  . . . who was ‘so sorry,’ she said, dear child, to have missed Papa somewhere on the stairs!) the cousin who should have been in Brittany yesterday instead of here, sate in the drawing-room all this morning, and had visitors there, and so I had excellent excuses for never moving from my chair. Yet, the field being clear at half-past two! I went for half an hour, just — just for you. Did you think of me, I wonder? It was to meet your thoughts that I went, dear dearest.

How clever these sketches are. The expression produced by such apparently inadequate means is quite striking; and I have been making my brothers admire them, and they ‘wonder you don’t think of employing them in an illustrated edition of your works.’ Which might be, really! Ah, you did not ask for ‘Luria’! Not that I should have let you have it! — I think I should not indeed. Dearest, you take care of the head  . . . and don’t make that tragedy of the soul one for mine, by letting it make you ill. Beware too of the shower-bath — it plainly does not answer for you at this season. And walk, and think of me for your good, if such a combination should be possible.

And I think of you  . . . if I do not of Italy. Yet I forget to speak to you of the Dulwich Gallery. I never saw those pictures, but am astonished that the whole world should be wrong in praising them. ‘Divine’ is a bad word for Murillo in any case — because he is intensely human in his most supernatural subjects. His beautiful Trinity in the National Gallery, which I saw the last time I went out to look at pictures, has no deity in it — and I seem to see it now. And do you remember the visitation of the angels to Abraham (the Duke of Sutherland’s picture — is it not?) where the mystic visitors look like shepherds who had not even dreamt of God? But I always understood that that Dulwich Gallery was famous for great works — you surprise me! And for painters  . . . their badness is more ostentatious than that of poets — they stare idiocy out of the walls, and set the eyes of sensitive men on edge. For the rest, however, I very much doubt whether they wear their lives more to rags, than writers who mistake their vocation in poetry do. There is a mechanism in poetry as in the other art — and, to men not native to the way of it, it runs hard and heavily. The ‘cudgelling of the brain’ is as good labour as the grinding of the colours,  . . . do you not think?

If ever I am in the Sistine Chapel, it will not be with Mrs. Jameson — no. If ever I should be there, what teaching I shall want, I who have seen so few pictures, and love them only as children do, with an unlearned love, just for the sake of the thoughts they bring. Wonderfully ignorant I am, to have had eyes and ears so long! There is music, now, which lifts the hair on my head, I feel it so much,  . . . yet all I know of it as art, all I have heard of the works of the masters in it, has been the mere sign and suggestion, such as the private piano may give. I never heard an oratorio, for instance, in my life — judge by that! It is a guess, I make, at all the greatness and divinity  . . . feeling in it, though, distinctly and certainly, that a composer like Beethoven must stand above the divinest painter in soul-godhead, and nearest to the true poet, of all artists. And this I felt in my guess, long before I knew you. But observe how, if I had died in this illness, I should have left a sealed world behind me! you, unknown too — unguessed at, you,  . . . in many respects, wonderfully unguessed at! Lately I have learnt to despise my own instincts. And apart from those — and you,  . . . it was right for me to be melancholy, in the consciousness of passing blindfolded under all the world-stars, and of going out into another side of the creation, with a blank for the experience of this  . . . the last revelation, unread! How the thought of it used to depress me sometimes!

Talking of music, I had a proposition the other day from certain of Mr. Russell’s (the singer’s) friends, about his setting to music my ‘Cry of the Children.’ His programme exhibits all the horrors of the world, I see! Lifeboats  . . . madhouses  . . . gamblers’ wives  . . . all done to the right sort of moaning. His audiences must go home delightfully miserable, I should fancy. He has set the ‘Song of the Shirt’  . . . and my ‘Cry of the Children’ will be acceptable, it is supposed, as a climax of agony. Do you know this Mr. Russell, and what sort of music he suits to his melancholy? But to turn my ‘Cry’ to a ‘Song,’ a burden, it is said, is required — he can’t sing it without a burden! and behold what has been sent ‘for my approval’ . . .. I shall copy it verbatim for you . . ..

 . . . accompaniment agitato, imitating the roar of the machinery!

This is not endurable  . . . ought not to be  . . . should it now? Do tell me.

May God bless you, very dearest! Let me hear how you are — and think how I am

Your own . . ..

 

Thursday Evening.

February 27, 1846.

If all third persons were as foolish as this third person of yours, ever dearest, first and second persons might follow their own devices without losing much in the way of good counsel. But you are unlucky in your third person as far as the wits go, he talks a great deal of nonsense, and Flush, who is sensible, will have nothing to do with him, he says, any more than you will with Sir Moses: — he is quite a third person singular for the nonsense he talks!

So, instead of him, you shall hear what I have been doing to-day. The sun, which drew out you and the hawthorns, persuaded me that it was warm enough to go down-stairs — and I put on my cloak as if I were going into the snow, and went into the drawing-room and took Henrietta by surprise as she sate at the piano singing. Well, I meant to stay half an hour and come back again, for I am upon ‘Tinkler’s ground’ in the drawing-room and liable to whole droves of morning visitors — and Henrietta kept me, kept me, because she wanted me, besought me, to stay and see the great sight of Capt. Surtees Cook — plus his regimentals — fresh from the royal presence at St. James’s, and I never saw him in my life, though he is a sort of cousin. So, though I hated it as you may think,  . . . not liking to be unkind to my sister, I stayed and stayed one ten minutes after another, till it seemed plain that he wasn’t coming at all (as I told her) and that Victoria had kept him to dinner, enchanted with the regimentals. And half laughing and half quarrelling, still she kept me by force, until a knock came most significantly  . . . and ‘There is Surtees’ said she  . . . ‘now you must and shall stay! So foolish,’ (I had my hand on the door-handle to go out) ‘he, your own cousin too! who always calls you Ba, except before Papa.’ Which might have encouraged me perhaps, but I can’t be sure of it, as the very next moment apprized us both that no less a person than Mrs. Jameson was standing out in the passage. The whole 36th. regiment could scarcely have been more astounding to me. As to staying to see her in that room, with the prospect of the military descent in combination, I couldn’t have done it for the world! so I made Henrietta, who had drawn me into the scrape, take her up-stairs, and followed myself in a minute or two — and the corollary of this interesting history is, that being able to talk at all after all that ‘fuss,’ and after walking ‘up-stairs and down-stairs’ like the ancestor of your spider, proves my gigantic strength — now doesn’t it?

For the rest, ‘here be proofs’ that the first person can be as foolish as any third person in the world. What do you think?

And Mrs. Jameson was kind beyond speaking of, and talked of taking me to Italy. What do you say? It is somewhere about the fifth or sixth proposition of the sort which has come to me. I shall be embarrassed, it seems to me, by the multitude of escorts to Italy. But the kindness, one cannot laugh at so much kindness.

I wanted to hear her speak of you, and was afraid. I could not name you. Yet I did want to hear the last ‘Bell’ praised.

She goes to Ireland for two months soon, but prints a book first, a collection of essays. I have not seen Mr. Kenyon, with whom she dined yesterday. The Macreadys were to be there, and he told me a week ago that he very nearly committed himself in a ‘social mistake’ by inviting you to meet them.

Ah my hawthorn spray! Do you know, I caught myself pitying it for being gathered, with that green promise of leaves on it! There is room too on it for the feet of a bird! Still I shall keep it longer than it would have stayed in the hedge, that is certain!

The first you ever gave me was a yellow rose sent in a letter, and shall I tell you what that means — the yellow rose? ‘Infidelity,’ says the dictionary of flowers. You see what an omen,  . . . to begin with!

Also you see that I am not tired with the great avatar to-day — the ‘fell swoop’ rather — mine, into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Jameson’s on me.

And I shall hear to-morrow again, really? I ‘let‘ you. And you are best, kindest, dearest, every day. Did I ever tell you that you made me do what you choose? I fancied that I only thought so. May God bless you. I am your own.

Shall I have the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’ on Saturday? — any of it? But do not work — I beseech you to take care.