Author: EBB

February 26, 1846.

I confess that while I was writing those words I had a thought that they were not quite yours as you said them. Still it comes to something in their likeness, but we will not talk of it and break off the chrystals — they are so brittle, then? do you know that by an ‘instinct.’ But I agree that it is best not to talk — I ‘gave it up’ as a riddle long ago. Let there be ‘analysis’ even, and it will not be solution. I have my own thoughts of course, and you have yours, and the worst is that a third person looking down on us from some snow-capped height, and free from personal influences, would have his thoughts too, and he would think that if you had been reasonable as usual you would have gone to Italy. I have by heart (or by head at least) what the third person would think. The third person thundered to me in an abstraction for ever so long, and at intervals I hear him still, only you shall not to-day, because he talks ‘damnable iterations’ and teazes you. Nay, the first person is teazing you now perhaps, without going any further, and yet I must go a little further, just to say (after accepting all possible unlikelinesses and miracles, because everything was miraculous and impossible) that it was agreed between us long since that you did not love me for anything — your having no reason for it is the only way of your not seeming unreasonable. Also for my own sake. I like it to be so — I cannot have peace with the least change from it. Dearest, take the baron’s hawthorn bough which, in spite of his fine dream of it is dead since the other day, and so much the worse than when I despised it last — take that dead stick and push it upright into the sand as the tide rises, and the whole blue sea draws up its glittering breadth and length towards and around it. But what then? What does that prove?  . . . as the philosopher said of the poem. So we ought not to talk of such things; and we get warned off even in the accidental illustrations taken up to light us. Still, the stick certainly did not draw the sea.

Dearest and best you were yesterday, to write me the little note! You are better than the imaginations of my heart, and they, as far as they relate to you (not further) are not desperately wicked, I think. I always expect the kindest things from you, and you always are doing some kindness beyond what is expected, and this is a miracle too, like the rest, now isn’t it? When the knock came last night, I knew it was your letter, and not another’s. Just another little leaf of my Koran! How I thank you  . . . thank you! If I write too kind letters, as you say, why they may be too kind for me to send, but not for you to receive; and I suppose I think more of you than of me, which accounts for my writing them, accounts and justifies. And that is my reflection not now for the first time. For we break rules very often — as that exegetical third person might expound to you clearly out of the ninety-sixth volume of the ‘Code of Conventions,’ only you are not like another, nor have you been to me like another — you began with most improvident and (will you let me say?) unmasculine generosity, and Queen Victoria does not sit upon a mat after the fashion of Queen Pomare, nor should.

But  . . . but  . . . you know very fully that you are breaking faith in the matter of the ‘Tragedy’ and ‘Luria’ — you promised to rest — and you rest for three days. Is it so that people get well? or keep well? Indeed I do not think I shall let you have ‘Luria.’ Ah — be careful, I do beseech you — be careful. There is time for a pause, and the works will profit by it themselves. And you! And I  . . . if you are ill! —

For the rest I will let you walk in my field, and see my elms as much as you please  . . . though I hear about the shower bath with a little suspicion. Why, if it did you harm before, should it not again? and why should you use it, if it threatens harm? Now tell me if it hasn’t made you rather unwell since the new trial! — tell me, dear, dearest.

As for myself, I believe that you set about exhorting me to be busy, just that I might not reproach you for the over-business. Confess that that was the only meaning of the exhortation. But no, you are quite serious, you say. You even threaten me in a sort of underground murmur, which sounds like a nascent earthquake; and if I do not write so much a day directly, your stipendiary magistrateship will take away my license to be loved  . . . I am not to be Ba to you any longer  . . . you say! And is this right? now I ask you. Ever so many chrystals fell off by that stroke of the baton, I do assure you. Only you did not mean quite what you said so too articulately, and you will unsay it, if you please, and unthink it near the elms.

As for the writing, I will write  . . . I have written  . . . I am writing. You do not fancy that I have given up writing? — No. Only I have certainly been more loitering and distracted than usual in what I have done, which is not my fault — nor yours directly — and I feel an indisposition to setting about the romance, the hand of the soul shakes. I am too happy and not calm enough, I suppose, to have the right inclination. Well — it will come. But all in blots and fragments there are verses enough, to fill a volume done in the last year.

And if there were not  . . . if there were none  . . . I hold that I should be Ba, and also your Ba  . . . which is ‘insolence’  . . . will you say?

 

February 24, 1846.

Ever dearest, it is only when you go away, when you are quite gone, out of the house and the street, that I get up and think properly, and with the right gratitude of your flowers. Such beautiful flowers you brought me this time too! looking like summer itself, and smelling! Doing the ‘honour due’ to the flowers, makes your presence a little longer with me, the sun shines back over the hill just by that time, and then drops, till the next letter.

If I had had the letter on Saturday as ought to have been, no, I could not have answered it so that you should have my answer on Sunday — no, I should still have had to write first.

Now you understand that I do not object to the writing first, but only to the hearing second. I would rather write than not — I! But to be written to is the chief gladness of course; and with all you say of liking to have my letters (which I like to hear quite enough indeed) you cannot pretend to think that yours are not more to me, most to me! Ask my guardian-angel and hear what he says! Yours will look another way for shame of measuring joys with him! Because as I have said before, and as he says now, you are all to me, all the light, all the life; I am living for you now. And before I knew you, what was I and where? What was the world to me, do you think? and the meaning of life? And now, when you come and go, and write and do not write, all the hours are chequered accordingly in so many squares of white and black, as if for playing at fox and goose  . . . only there is no fox, and I will not agree to be goose for one  . . . that is you perhaps, for being ‘too easily’ satisfied.

So my claim is that you are more to me than I can be to you at any rate. Mr. Fox said on Sunday that I was a ‘religious hermit’ who wrote ‘poems which ought to be read in a Gothic alcove’; and religious hermits, when they care to see visions, do it better, they all say, through fasting and flagellation and seclusion in dark places. St. Theresa, for instance, saw a clearer glory by such means, than your Sir Moses Montefiore through his hundred-guinea telescope. Think then, how every shadow of my life has helped to throw out into brighter, fuller significance, the light which comes to me from you  . . . think how it is the one light, seen without distractions.

I was thinking the other day that certainly and after all (or rather before all) I had loved you all my life unawares, that is, the idea of you. Women begin for the most part, (if ever so very little given to reverie) by meaning, in an aside to themselves, to love such and such an ideal, seen sometimes in a dream and sometimes in a book, and forswearing their ancient faith as the years creep on. I say a book, because I remember a friend of mine who looked everywhere for the original of Mr. Ward’s ‘Tremaine,’ because nothing would do for her, she insisted, except just that excess of so-called refinement, with the book-knowledge and the conventional manners, (loue qui peut, Tremaine), and ended by marrying a lieutenant in the Navy who could not spell. Such things happen every day, and cannot be otherwise, say the wise: — and this being otherwise with me is miraculous compensation for the trials of many years, though such abundant, overabundant compensation, that I cannot help fearing it is too much, as I know that you are too good and too high for me, and that by the degree in which I am raised up you are let down, for us two to find a level to meet on. One’s ideal must be above one, as a matter of course, you know. It is as far as one can reach with one’s eyes (soul-eyes), not reach to touch. And here is mine  . . . shall I tell you?  . . . even to the visible outward sign of the black hair and the complexion (why you might ask my sisters!) yet I would not tell you, if I could not tell you afterwards that, if it had been red hair quite, it had been the same thing, only I prove the coincidence out fully and make you smile half.

Yet indeed I did not fancy that I was to love you when you came to see me — no indeed  . . . any more than I did your caring on your side. My ambition when we began our correspondence, was simply that you should forget I was a woman (being weary and blasée of the empty written gallantries, of which I have had my share and all the more perhaps from my peculiar position which made them so without consequence), that you should forget that and let us be friends, and consent to teach me what you knew better than I, in art and human nature, and give me your sympathy in the meanwhile. I am a great hero-worshipper and had admired your poetry for years, and to feel that you liked to write to me and be written to was a pleasure and a pride, as I used to tell you I am sure, and then your letters were not like other letters, as I must not tell you again. Also you influenced me, in a way in which no one else did. For instance, by two or three half words you made me see you, and other people had delivered orations on the same subject quite without effect. I surprised everybody in this house by consenting to see you. Then, when you came, you never went away. I mean I had a sense of your presence constantly. Yes  . . . and to prove how free that feeling was from the remotest presentiment of what has occurred, I said to Papa in my unconsciousness the next morning  . . . ‘it is most extraordinary how the idea of Mr. Browning does beset me — I suppose it is not being used to see strangers, in some degree — but it haunts me  . . . it is a persecution.’ On which he smiled and said that ‘it was not grateful to my friend to use such a word.’ When the letter came . . ..

Do you know that all that time I was frightened of you? frightened in this way. I felt as if you had a power over me and meant to use it, and that I could not breathe or speak very differently from what you chose to make me. As to my thoughts, I had it in my head somehow that you read them as you read the newspaper — examined them, and fastened them down writhing under your long entomological pins — ah, do you remember the entomology of it all?

But the power was used upon me — and I never doubted that you had mistaken your own mind, the strongest of us having some exceptional weakness. Turning the wonder round in all lights, I came to what you admitted yesterday  . . . yes, I saw that very early  . . . that you had come here with the intention of trying to love whomever you should find,  . . . and also that what I had said about exaggerating the amount of what I could be to you, had just operated in making you more determined to justify your own presentiment in the face of mine. Well — and if that last clause was true a little, too  . . . why should I be sorry now  . . . and why should you have fancied for a moment, that the first could make me sorry. At first and when I did not believe that you really loved me, when I thought you deceived yourself, then, it was different. But now  . . . now  . . . when I see and believe your attachment for me, do you think that any cause in the world (except what diminished it) could render it less a source of joy to me? I mean as far as I myself am considered. Now if you ever fancy that I am vain of your love for me, you will be unjust, remember. If it were less dear, and less above me, I might be vain perhaps. But I may say before God and you, that of all the events of my life, inclusive of its afflictions, nothing has humbled me so much as your love. Right or wrong it may be, but true it is, and I tell you. Your love has been to me like God’s own love, which makes the receivers of it kneelers.

Why all this should be written, I do not know — but you set me thinking yesterday in that backward line, which I lean back to very often, and for once, as you made me write directly, why I wrote, as my thoughts went, that way.

Say how you are, beloved — and do not brood over that ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’ which I wish I had here with ‘Luria,’ because, so, you should not see it for a month at least. And take exercise and keep well — and remember how many letters I must have before Saturday. May God bless you. Do you want to hear me say

I cannot love you less . . .?

That is a doubtful phrase. And

I cannot love you more

is doubtful too, for reasons I could give. More or less, I really love you, but it does not sound right, even so, does it? I know what it ought to be, and will put it into the ‘seal’ and the ‘paper’ with the ineffable other things.

Dearest, do not go to St. Petersburg. Do not think of going, for fear it should come true and you should go, and while you were helping the Jews and teaching Nicholas, what (in that case) would become of your

Ba?

 

Friday Morning.

February 21, 1846.

As my sisters did not dine at home yesterday and I see nobody else in the evening, I never heard till just now and from Papa himself, that ‘George was invited to meet Mr. Browning and Mr. Procter.’ How surprised you will be. It must have been a sudden thought of Mr. Kenyon’s.

And I have been thinking, thinking since last night that I wrote you then a letter all but  . . . insolent  . . . which, do you know, I feel half ashamed to look back upon this morning — particularly what I wrote about ‘missions of humanity’ — now was it not insolent of me to write so? If I could take my letter again I would dip it into Lethe between the lilies, instead of the post office: — but I can’t — so if you wondered, you must forget as far as possible, and understand how it was, and that I was in brimming spirits when I wrote, from two causes  . . . first, because I had your letter which was a pure goodness of yours, and secondly because you were ‘noticeably’ better you said, or ‘noticeably well’ rather, to mind my quotations. So I wrote what I wrote, and gave it to Arabel when she came in at midnight, to give it to Henrietta who goes out before eight in the morning and often takes charge of my letters, and it was too late, at the earliest this morning, to feel a little ashamed. Miss Thomson told me that she had determined to change the type of the few pages of her letterpress which had been touched, and that therefore Mr. Burges’s revisions of my translations should be revised back again. She appears to be a very acute person, full of quick perceptions — naturally quick, and carefully trained — a little over anxious perhaps about mental lights, and opening her eyes still more than she sees, which is a common fault of clever people, if one must call it a fault. I like her, and she is kind and cordial. Will she ask you to help her book with a translation or two, I wonder. Perhaps — if the courage should come. Dearest, how I shall think of you this evening, and how near you will seem, not to be here. I had a letter from Mr. Mathews the other day, and smiled to read in it just what I had expected, that he immediately sent Landor’s verses on you to a few editors, friends of his, in order to their communication to the public. He received my apology for myself with the utmost graciousness. A kind good man he is.

After all, do you know, I am a little vexed that I should have even seemed to do wrong in my speech about the letters. It must have been wrong, if it seemed so to you, I fancy now. Only I really did no more mean to try your letters  . . . mine  . . . such as they are to me now, by the common critical measure, than the shepherds praised the pure tenor of the angels who sang ‘Peace upon earth’ to them. It was enough that they knew it for angels’ singing. So do you forgive me, beloved, and put away from you the thought that I have let in between us any miserable stuff ‘de métier,’ which I hate as you hate. And I will not say any more about it, not to run into more imprudences of mischief.

On the other hand I warn you against saying again what you began to say yesterday and stopped. Do not try it again. What may be quite good sense from me, is from you very much the reverse, and pray observe that difference. Or did you think that I was making my own road clear in the the thing I said about — ‘jilts’? No, you did not. Yet I am ready to repeat of myself as of others, that if I ceased to love you, I certainly would act out the whole consequence — but that is an impossible ‘if’ to my nature, supposing the conditions of it otherwise to be probable. I never loved anyone much and ceased to love that person. Ask every friend of mine, if I am given to change even in friendship! And to you . . .! Ah, but you never think of such a thing seriously — and you are conscious that you did not say it very sagely. You and I are in different positions. Now let me tell you an apologue in exchange for your Wednesday’s stories which I liked so, and mine perhaps may make you ‘a little wiser’ — who knows?

It befell that there stood in hall a bold baron, and out he spake to one of his serfs  . . . ‘Come thou; and take this baton of my baronie, and give me instead thereof that sprig of hawthorn thou holdest in thine hand.’ Now the hawthorn-bough was no larger a thing than might be carried by a wood-pigeon to the nest, when she flieth low, and the baronial baton was covered with fine gold, and the serf, turning it in his hands, marvelled greatly.

And he answered and said, ‘Let not my lord be in haste, nor jest with his servant. Is it verily his will that I should keep his golden baton? Let him speak again — lest it repent him of his gift.’

And the baron spake again that it was his will. ‘And I’ — he said once again — ‘shall it be lawful for me to keep this sprig of hawthorn, and will it not repent thee of thy gift?’

Then all the servants who stood in hall, laughed, and the serf’s hands trembled till they dropped the baton into the rushes, knowing that his lord did but jest . . ..

Which mine did not. Only, de te fabula narratur up to a point.

And I have your letter. ‘What did I expect?’ Why I expected just that, a letter in turn. Also I am graciously pleased (yes, and very much pleased!) to ‘let you write to-morrow.’ How you spoil me with goodness, which makes one ‘insolent’ as I was saying, now and then.

The worst is, that I write ‘too kind’ letters — I! — and what does that criticism mean, pray? It reminds me, at least, of  . . . now I will tell you what it reminds me of.

A few days ago Henrietta said to me that she was quite uncomfortable. She had written to somebody a not kind enough letter, she thought, and it might be taken ill. ‘Are you ever uncomfortable, Ba, after you have sent letters to the post?’ she asked me.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘sometimes, but from a reason just the very reverse of your reason, my letters, when they get into the post, seem too kind, — rather.’ And my sisters laughed  . . . laughed.

But if you think so beside, I must seriously set to work, you see, to correct that flagrant fault, and shall do better in time dis faventibus, though it will be difficult.

Mr. Kenyon’s dinner is a riddle which I cannot read. You are invited to meet Miss Thomson and Mr. Bayley and ‘no one else.’ George is invited to meet Mr. Browning and Mr. Procter and ‘no one else‘ — just those words. The ‘absolu‘ (do you remember Balzac’s beautiful story?) is just you and ‘no one else,’ the other elements being mere uncertainties, shifting while one looks for them.

Am I not writing nonsense to-night? I am not ‘too wise‘ in any case, which is some comfort. It puts one in spirits to hear of your being ‘well,’ ever and ever dearest. Keep so for me. May God bless you hour by hour. In every one of mine I am your own

Ba.

For Miss Mitford  . . .

But people are not angels quite  . . .

and she sees the whole world in stripes of black and white, it is her way. I feel very affectionately towards her, love her sincerely. She is affectionate to me beyond measure. Still, always I feel that if I were to vex her, the lower deep below the lowest deep would not be low enough for me. I always feel that. She would advertise me directly for a wretch proper.

Then, for all I said about never changing, I have ice enough over me just now to hold the sparrows! — in respect to a great crowd of people, and she is among them — for reasons — for reasons.

 

Thursday Evening.

February 20, 1846.

And I offended you by praising your letters — or rather mine, if you please — as if I had not the right! Still, you shall not, shall not fancy that I meant to praise them in the way you seem to think — by calling them ‘graphic,’ ‘philosophic,’ — why, did I ever use such words? I agree with you that if I could play critic upon your letters, it would be an end! — but no, no  . . . I did not, for a moment. In what I said I went back to my first impressions — and they were vital letters, I said — which was the résumé of my thoughts upon the early ones you sent me, because I felt your letters to be you from the very first, and I began, from the beginning, to read every one several times over. Nobody, I felt, nobody of all these writers, did write as you did. Well! — and had I not a right to say that now at last, and was it not natural to say just that, when I was talking of other people’s letters and how it had grown almost impossible for me to read them; and do I deserve to be scolded? No indeed.

And if I had the misfortune to think now, when you say it is a fine day, that that is said in more music than it could be said in by another — where is the sin against you, I should like to ask. It is yourself who is the critic, I think, after all. But over all the brine, I hold my letters — just as Camoens did his poem. They are best to me — and they are best. I knew what they were, before I knew what you were — all of you. And I like to think that I never fancied anyone on a level with you, even in a letter.

What makes you take them to be so bad, I suppose, is just feeling in them how near we are. You say that! — not I.

Bad or good, you are better — yes, ‘better than the works and words’! — though it was very shameful of you to insinuate that I talked of fine speeches and passages and graphical and philosophical sentences, as if I had proposed a publication of ‘Elegant Extracts’ from your letters. See what blasphemy one falls into through a beginning of light speech! It is wiser to talk of St. Petersburg; for all Voltaire’s  . . . ‘ne disons pas de mal de Nicolas.’

Wiser — because you will not go. If you were going  . . . well! — but there is no danger — it would not do you good to go, I am so happy this time as to be able to think — and your ‘mission of humanity’ lies nearer — ‘strictly private and confidential’? but not in Harley Street — so if you go there, dearest, keep to the ‘one hour’ and do not suffer yourself to be tired and stunned in those hot rooms and made unwell again — it is plain that you cannot bear that sort of excitement. For Mr. Kenyon’s note,  . . . it was a great temptation to make a day of Friday — but I resist both for Monday’s sake and for yours, because it seems to me safer not to hurry you from one house to another till you are tired completely. I shall think of you so much the nearer for Mr. Kenyon’s note — which is something gained. In the meanwhile you are better, which is everything, or seems so. Ever dearest, do you remember what it is to me that you should be better, and keep from being worse again — I mean, of course, try to keep from being worse — be wise  . . . and do not stay long in those hot Harley Street rooms. Ah — now you will think that I am afraid of the unicorns! —

Through your being ill the other day I forgot, and afterwards went on forgetting, to speak of and to return the ballad — which is delightful; I have an unspeakable delight in those suggestive ballads, which seem to make you touch with the end of your finger the full warm life of other times  . . . so near they bring you, yet so suddenly all passes in them. Certainly there is a likeness to your Duchess — it is a curious crossing. And does it not strike you that a verse or two must be wanting in the ballad — there is a gap, I fancy.

Tell Mr. Kenyon (if he enquires) that you come here on Monday instead of Saturday — and if you can help it, do not mention Wednesday — it will be as well, not. You met Alfred at the door — he came up to me afterwards and observed that ‘at last he had seen you!’ ‘Virgilium tantum vidi!’

As to the thing which you try to say in the first page of this letter, and which you ‘stop’ yourself in saying  . . . I need not stop you in it . . ..

And now there is no time, if I am to sleep to-night. May God bless you, dearest, dearest.

I must be your own while He blesses me.

 

[Post-marks, Mis-sent to Mitcham. February 19 and 20, 1846.]

Best and kindest of all that ever were to be loved in dreams, and wondered at and loved out of them, you are indeed! I cannot make you feel how I felt that night when I knew that to save me an anxious thought you had come so far so late — it was almost too much to feel, and is too much to speak. So let it pass. You will never act so again, ever dearest — you shall not. If the post sins, why leave the sin to the post; and I will remember for the future, will be ready to remember, how postmen are fallible and how you live at the end of a lane — and not be uneasy about a silence if there should be one unaccounted for. For the Tuesday coming, I shall remember that too — who could forget it? . . . I put it in the niche of the wall, one golden lamp more of your giving, to throw light purely down to the end of my life — I do thank you. And the truth is, I should have been in a panic, had there been no letter that evening — I was frightened the day before, then reasoned the fears back and waited: and if there had been no letter after all — . But you are supernaturally good and kind. How can I ever ‘return’ as people say (as they might say in their ledgers)  . . . any of it all? How indeed can I who have not even a heart left of my own, to love you with?

I quite trust to your promise in respect to the medical advice, if walking and rest from work do not prevent at once the recurrence of those sensations — it was a promise, remember. And you will tell me the very truth of how you are — and you will try the music, and not be nervous, dearest. Would not riding be good for you — consider. And why should you be ‘alone’ when your sister is in the house? How I keep thinking of you all day — you cannot really be alone with so many thoughts  . . . such swarms of thoughts, if you could but see them, drones and bees together!

George came in from Westminster Hall after we parted yesterday and said that he had talked with the junior counsel of the wretched plaintiffs in the Ferrers case, and that the belief was in the mother being implicated, although not from the beginning. It was believed too that the miserable girl had herself taken step after step into the mire, involved herself gradually, the first guilt being an extravagance in personal expenses, which she lied and lied to account for in the face of her family. ‘Such a respectable family,’ said George, ‘the grandfather in court looking venerable, and everyone indignant upon being so disgraced by her!’ But for the respectability in the best sense, I do not quite see. That all those people should acquiesce in the indecency (according to every standard of English manners in any class of society) of thrusting the personal expenses of a member of their family on Lord Ferrers, she still bearing their name — and in those peculiar circumstances of her supposed position too — where is the respectability? And they are furious with her, which is not to be wondered at after all. Her counsel had an interview with her previous to the trial, to satisfy themselves of her good faith, and she was quite resolute and earnest, persisting in every statement. On the coming out of the anonymous letters, Fitzroy Kelly said to the juniors that if anyone could suggest a means of explanation, he would be eager to carry forward the case,  . . . but for him he saw no way of escaping from the fact of the guilt of their client. Not a voice could speak for her. So George was told. There is no ground for a prosecution for a conspiracy, he says, but she is open to the charge for forgery, of course, and to the dreadful consequences, though it is not considered at all likely that Lord Ferrers could wish to disturb her beyond the ruin she has brought on her own life.

Think of Miss Mitford’s growing quite cold about Mr. Chorley who has spent two days with her lately, and of her saying in a letter to me this morning that he is very much changed and grown to be ‘a presumptuous coxcomb.’ He has displeased her in some way — that is clear. What changes there are in the world.

Should I ever change to you, do you think,  . . . even if you came to ‘love me less’ — not that I meant to reproach you with that possibility. May God bless you, dear dearest. It is another miracle (beside the many) that I get nearer to the mountains yet still they seem more blue. Is not that strange?

Ever and wholly

Your Ba.

 

Monday Evening.

[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]

Now forgive me, dearest of all, but I must teaze you just a little, and entreat you, if only for the love of me, to have medical advice and follow it without further delay. I like to have recourse to these medical people quite as little as you can — but I am persuaded that it is necessary — that it is at least wise, for you to do so now, and, you see, you were ‘not quite so well’ again last night! So will you, for me? Would I not, if you wished it? And on Wednesday, yes, on Wednesday, come — that is, if coming on Wednesday should really be not bad for you, for you must do what is right and kind, and I doubt whether the omnibus-driving and the noises of every sort betwixt us, should not keep you away for a little while — I trust you to do what is best for both of us.

And it is not best  . . . it is not good even, to talk about ‘dying for me’  . . . oh, I do beseech you never to use such words. You make me feel as if I were choking. Also it is nonsense — because nobody puts out a candle for the light’s sake.

Write one line to me to-morrow — literally so little — just to say how you are. I know by the writing here, what is. Let me have the one line by the eight o’clock post to-morrow, Tuesday.

For the rest it may be my ‘goodness’ or my badness, but the world seems to have sunk away beneath my feet and to have left only you to look to and hold by. Am I not to feel, then, any trembling of the hand? the least trembling?

May God bless both of us — which is a double blessing for me notwithstanding my badness.

I trust you about Wednesday — and if it should be wise and kind not to come quite so soon, we will take it out of other days and lose not one of them. And as for anything ‘horrible’ being likely to happen, do not think of that either, — there can be nothing horrible while you are not ill. So be well — try to be well — use the means and, well or ill, let me have the one line to-morrow  . . . Tuesday. I send you the foolish letter I wrote to-day in answer to your too long one — too long, was it not, as you felt? And I, the writer of the foolish one, am twice-foolish, and push poor ‘Luria’ out of sight, and refuse to finish my notes on him till the harm he has done shall have passed away. In my badness I bring false accusation, perhaps, against poor Luria.

So till Wednesday — or as you shall fix otherwise.

Your

Ba.

 

Monday Morning.

February 17, 1846.

Méchant comme quatre! you are, and not deserving to be let see the famous letter — is there any grammar in that concatenation, can you tell me, now that you are in an arch-critical humour? And remember (turning back to the subject) that personally she and I are strangers and that therefore what she writes for me is naturally scene-painting to be looked at from a distance, done with a masterly hand and most amiable intention, but quite a different thing of course from the intimate revelations of heart and mind which make a living thing of a letter. If she had sent such to me, I should not have sent it to Mr. Kenyon, but then, she would not have sent it to me in any case. What she has sent me might be a chapter in a book and has the life proper to itself, and I shall not let you try it by another standard, even if you wished, but you don’t — for I am not so bête as not to understand how the jest crosses the serious all the way you write. Well — and Mr. Kenyon wants the letter the second time, not for himself, but for Mr. Crabb Robinson who promises to let me have a new sonnet of Wordsworth’s in exchange for the loan, and whom I cannot refuse because he is an intimate friend of Miss Martineau’s and once allowed me to read a whole packet of letters from her to him. She does not object (as I have read under her hand) to her letters being shown about in MS., notwithstanding the anathema against all printers of the same (which completes the extravagance of the unreason, I think) and people are more anxious to see them from their presumed nearness to annihilation. I, for my part, value letters (to talk literature) as the most vital part of biography, and for any rational human being to put his foot on the traditions of his kind in this particular class, does seem to me as wonderful as possible. Who would put away one of those multitudinous volumes, even, which stereotype Voltaire’s wrinkles of wit — even Voltaire? I can read book after book of such reading — or could! And if her principle were carried out, there would be an end! Death would be deader from henceforth. Also it is a wrong selfish principle and unworthy of her whole life and profession, because we should all be ready to say that if the secrets of our daily lives and inner souls may instruct other surviving souls, let them be open to men hereafter, even as they are to God now. Dust to dust, and soul-secrets to humanity — there are natural heirs to all these things. Not that I do not intimately understand the shrinking back from the idea of publicity on any terms — not that I would not myself destroy papers of mine which were sacred to me for personal reasons — but then I never would call this natural weakness, virtue — nor would I, as a teacher of the public, announce it and attempt to justify it as an example to other minds and acts, I hope.

How hard you are on the mending of stockings and the rest of it! Why not agree with me and like that sort of homeliness and simplicity in combination with such large faculty as we must admit there? Lord Bacon did a great deal of trifling besides the stuffing of the fowl you mention — which I did not remember: and in fact, all the great work done in the world, is done just by the people who know how to trifle — do you not think so? When a man makes a principle of ‘never losing a moment,’ he is a lost man. Great men are eager to find an hour, and not to avoid losing a moment. ‘What are you doing’ said somebody once (as I heard the tradition) to the beautiful Lady Oxford as she sate in her open carriage on the race-ground — ‘Only a little algebra,’ said she. People who do a little algebra on the race-ground are not likely to do much of anything with ever so many hours for meditation. Why, you must agree with me in all this, so I shall not be sententious any longer. Mending stockings is not exactly the sort of pastime I should choose — who do things quite as trifling without the utility — and even your Seigneurie peradventure . . .. I stop there for fear of growing impertinent. The argumentum ad hominem is apt to bring down the argumentum ad baculum, it is as well to remember in time.

For Wordsworth  . . . you are right in a measure and by a standard — but I have heard such really desecrating things of him, of his selfishness, his love of money, his worldly cunning (rather than prudence) that I felt a relief and gladness in the new chronicle; — and you can understand how that was. Miss Mitford’s doctrine is that everything put into the poetry, is taken out of the man and lost utterly by him. Her general doctrine about poets, quite amounts to that — I do not say it too strongly. And knowing that such opinions are held by minds not feeble, it is very painful (as it would be indeed in any case) to see them apparently justified by royal poets like Wordsworth. Ah, but I know an answer — I see one in my mind!

So again for the letters. Now ought I not to know about letters, I who have had so many  . . . from chief minds too, as society goes in England and America? And your letters began by being first to my intellect, before they were first to my heart. All the letters in the world are not like yours  . . . and I would trust them for that verdict with any jury in Europe, if they were not so far too dear! Mr. Kenyon wanted to make me show him your letters — I did show him the first, and resisted gallantly afterwards, which made him say what vexed me at the moment,  . . . ‘oh — you let me see only women’s letters,’ — till I observed that it was a breach of confidence, except in some cases,  . . . and that I should complain very much, if anyone, man or woman, acted so by myself. But nobody in the world writes like you — not so vitally — and I have a right, if you please, to praise my letters, besides the reason of it which is as good.

Ah — you made me laugh about Mr. Chorley’s free speaking — and, without the personal knowledge, I can comprehend how it could be nothing very ferocious  . . . some ‘pardonnez moi, vous êtes un ange.’ The amusing part is that by the same post which brought me the Ambleside document, I heard from Miss Mitford ‘that it was an admirable thing of Chorley to have persisted in not allowing Harriet Martineau to quarrel with him’  . . . so that there are laurels on both sides, it appears.

And I am delighted to hear from you to-day just so, though I reproach you in turn just so  . . . because you were not ‘depressed’ in writing all this and this and this which has made me laugh — you were not, dearest — and you call yourself better, ‘much better,’ which means a very little perhaps, but is a golden word, let me take it as I may. May God bless you. Wednesday seems too near (now that this is Monday and you are better) to be our day  . . . perhaps it does, — and Thursday is close beside it at the worst.

Dearest I am your own

Ba.

 

Saturday Evening.

February 16, 1846.

Ever dearest, though you wanted to make me say one thing displeasing to you to-day, I had not courage to say two instead  . . . which I might have done indeed and indeed! For I am capable of thinking both thoughts of ‘next year,’ as you suggested them: — because while you are with me I see only you, and you being you, I cannot doubt a power of yours nor measure the deep loving nature which I feel to be so deep — so that there may be ever so many ‘mores,’ and no ‘more’ wonder of mine! — but afterwards, when the door is shut and there is no ‘more’ light nor speaking until Thursday, why then, that I do not see you but me, — then comes the reaction, — the natural lengthening of the shadows at sunset, — and then, the ‘less, less, less’ grows to seem as natural to my fate, as the ‘more’ seemed to your nature — I being I!

Sunday. — Well! — you are to try to forgive it all! And the truth, over and under all, is, that I scarcely ever do think of the future, scarcely ever further than to your next visit, and almost never beyond, except for your sake and in reference to that view of the question which I have vexed you with so often, in fearing for your happiness. Once it was a habit of mind with me to live altogether in what I called the future — but the tops of the trees that looked towards Troy were broken off in the great winds, and falling down into the river beneath, where now after all this time they grow green again, I let them float along the current gently and pleasantly. Can it be better I wonder! And if it becomes worse, can I help it? Also the future never seemed to belong to me so little — never! It might appear wonderful to most persons, it is startling even to myself sometimes, to observe how free from anxiety I am — from the sort of anxiety which might be well connected with my own position here, and which is personal to myself. That is all thrown behind — into the bushes — long ago it was, and I think I told you of it before. Agitation comes from indecision — and I was decided from the first hour when I admitted the possibility of your loving me really. Now, — as the Euphuists used to say, — I am ‘more thine than my own’  . . . it is a literal truth — and my future belongs to you; if it was mine, it was mine to give, and if it was mine to give, it was given, and if it was given  . . . beloved . . ..

So you see!

Then I will confess to you that all my life long I have had a rather strange sympathy and dyspathy — the sympathy having concerned the genus jilt (as vulgarly called) male and female — and the dyspathy — the whole class of heroically virtuous persons who make sacrifices of what they call ‘love’ to what they call ‘duty.’ There are exceptional cases of course, but, for the most part, I listen incredulously or else with a little contempt to those latter proofs of strength — or weakness, as it may be: — people are not usually praised for giving up their religion, for unsaying their oaths, for desecrating their ‘holy things’ — while believing them still to be religious and sacramental! On the other side I have always and shall always understand how it is possible for the most earnest and faithful of men and even of women perhaps, to err in the convictions of the heart as well as of the mind, to profess an affection which is an illusion, and to recant and retreat loyally at the eleventh hour, on becoming aware of the truth which is in them. Such men are the truest of men, and the most courageous for the truth’s sake, and instead of blaming them I hold them in honour, for me, and always did and shall.

And while I write, you are ‘very ill’ — very ill! — how it looks, written down so! When you were gone yesterday and my thoughts had tossed about restlessly for ever so long, I was wise enough to ask Wilson how she thought you were looking,  . . . and she ‘did not know’  . . . she ‘had not observed’  . . . ‘only certainly Mr. Browning ran up-stairs instead of walking as he did the time before.’

Now promise me dearest, dearest — not to trifle with your health. Not to neglect yourself  . . . not to tire yourself  . . . and besides to take the advice of your medical friend as to diet and general treatment: — because there must be a wrong and a right in everything, and the right is very important under your circumstances  . . . if you have a tendency to illness. It may be right for you to have wine for instance. Did you ever try the putting your feet into hot water at night, to prevent the recurrence of the morning headache — for the affection of the head comes on early in the morning, does it not? just as if the sleeping did you harm. Now I have heard of such a remedy doing good — and could it increase the evil? — mustard mixed with the water, remember. Everything approaching to congestion is full of fear — I tremble to think of it — and I bring no remedy by this teazing neither! But you will not be ‘wicked’ nor ‘unkind,’ nor provoke the evil consciously — you will keep quiet and forswear the going out at nights, the excitement and noise of parties, and the worse excitement of composition — you promise. If you knew how I keep thinking of you, and at intervals grow so frightened! Think you, that you are three times as much to me as I can be to you at best and greatest, — because you are more than three times the larger planet — and because too, you have known other sources of light and happiness  . . . but I need not say this — and I shall hear on Monday, and may trust to you every day  . . . may I not? Yet I would trust my soul to you sooner than your own health.

May God bless you, dear, dearest. If the first part of the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’ should be written out, I can read that perhaps, without drawing you in to think of the second. Still it may be safer to keep off altogether for the present — and let it be as you incline. I do not speak of ‘Luria.’

Your own

BA.

If it were not for Mr. Kenyon, I should say, almost, Wednesday, instead of Thursday — I want to see you so much, and to see for myself about the looks and spirits, only it would not do if he found you here on Wednesday. Let him come to-morrow or on Tuesday, and Wednesday will be safe — shall we consider? what do you think?

 

February 12, 1846.

Ah, the ‘sortes’! Is it a double oracle — ‘swan and shadow’ — do you think? or do my eyes see double, dazzled by the light of it? ‘I shall love thee to eternity’ — I shall.

And as for the wine, I did not indeed misunderstand you ‘as my wont is,’ because I understood simply that ‘habitually’ you abstained from wine, and I meant exactly that perhaps it would be better for your health to take it habitually. It might, you know — not that I pretend to advise. Only when you look so much too pale sometimes, it comes into one’s thoughts that you ought not to live on cresses and cold water. Strong coffee, which is the nearest to a stimulant that I dare to take, as far as ordinary diet goes, will almost always deliver me from the worst of headaches, but there is no likeness, no comparison. And your ‘quite well’ means that dreadful ‘turning’ still  . . . still! Now do not think any more of the Domizias, nor ‘try to remember,’ which is the most wearing way of thinking. The more I read and read your ‘Luria,’ the grander it looks, and it will make its own road with all understanding men, you need not doubt, and still less need you try to make me uneasy about the harm I have done in ‘coming between,’ and all the rest of it. I wish never to do you greater harm than just that, and then with a white conscience ‘I shall love thee to eternity! . . . dearest! You have made a golden work out of your ‘golden-hearted Luria’ — as once you called him to me, and I hold it in the highest admiration — should, if you were precisely nothing to me. And still, the fifth act rises! That is certain. Nevertheless I seem to agree with you that your hand has vacillated in your Domizia. We do not know her with as full a light on her face, as the other persons — we do not see the panther, — no, certainly we do not — but you will do a very little for her which will be everything, after a time  . . . and I assure you that if you were to ask for the manuscript before, you should not have a page of it — now, you are only to rest. What a work to rest upon! Do consider what a triumph it is! The more I read, the more I think of it, the greater it grows — and as to ‘faded lines,’ you never cut a pomegranate that was redder in the deep of it. Also, no one can say ‘This is not clearly written.’ The people who are at ‘words of one syllable’ may be puzzled by you and Wordsworth together this time  . . . as far as the expression goes. Subtle thoughts you always must have, in and out of ‘Sordello’ — and the objectors would find even Plato (though his medium is as lucid as the water that ran beside the beautiful plane-tree!) a little difficult perhaps.

To-day Mr. Kenyon came, and do you know, he has made a beatific confusion between last Saturday and next Saturday, and said to me he had told Miss Thomson to mind to come on Friday if she wished to see me  . . . ‘remembering’ (he added) ‘that Mr. Browning took Saturday!!’ So I let him mistake the one week for the other — ‘Mr. Browning took Saturday,’ it was true, both ways. Well — and then he went on to tell me that he had heard from Mrs. Jameson who was at Brighton and unwell, and had written to say this and that to him, and to enquire besides — now, what do you think, she enquired besides? ‘how you and  . . . Browning were’ said Mr. Kenyon — I write his words. He is coming, perhaps to-morrow, or perhaps Sunday — Saturday is to have a twofold safety. That is, if you are not ill again. Dearest, you will not think of coming if you are ill  . . . unwell even. I shall not be frightened next time, as I told you — I shall have the precedent. Before, I had to think! ‘It has never happened so — there must be a cause — and if it is a very, very, bad cause, why no one will tell me  . . . it will not seem my concern’ — that was my thought on Saturday. But another time  . . . only, if it is possible to keep well, do keep well, beloved, and think of me instead of Domizia, and let there be no other time for your suffering  . . . my waiting is nothing. I shall remember for the future that you may have the headache — and do you remember it too!

For Mr. Horne I take your testimony gladly and believingly. She blots with her eyes sometimes. She hates  . . . and loves, in extreme degrees. We have, once or twice or thrice, been on the border of mutual displeasure, on this very subject, for I grew really vexed to observe the trust on one side and the dyspathy on the other — using the mildest of words. You see, he found himself, down in Berkshire, in quite a strange element of society, — he, an artist in his good and his evil, — and the people there, ‘county families,’ smoothly plumed in their conventions, and classing the ringlets and the aboriginal way of using water-glasses among offences against the Moral Law. Then, meaning to be agreeable, or fascinating perhaps, made it twenty times worse. Writing in albums about the graces, discoursing meditated impromptus at picnics, playing on the guitar in fancy dresses, — all these things which seemed to poor Orion as natural as his own stars I dare say, and just the things suited to the genus poet, and to himself specifically, — were understood by the natives and their ‘rural deities’ to signify, that he intended to marry one half the county, and to run away with the other. But Miss Mitford should have known better — she should. And she would have known better, if she had liked him — for the liking could have been unmade by no such offences. She is too fervent a friend — she can be. Generous too, she can be without an effort; and I have had much affection from her — and accuse myself for seeming to have less — but —

May God bless you! — I end in haste after this long lingering.

Your

Ba.

Not unwell — I am not! I forgot it, which proves how I am not.

 

Tuesday.

February 10, 1846.

Ever dearest, I have been possessed by your ‘Luria’ just as you would have me, and I should like you to understand, not simply how fine a conception the whole work seems to me, so developed, but how it has moved and affected me, without the ordinary means and dialect of pathos, by that calm attitude of moral grandeur which it has — it is very fine. For the execution, that too is worthily done — although I agree with you, that a little quickening and drawing in closer here and there, especially towards the close where there is no time to lose, the reader feels, would make the effect stronger — but you will look to it yourself — and such a conception must come in thunder and lightning, as a chief god would — must make its own way  . . . and will not let its poet go until he speaks it out to the ultimate syllable. Domizia disappoints me rather. You might throw a flash more of light on her face — might you not? But what am I talking? I think it a magnificent work — a noble exposition of the ingratitude of men against their ‘heroes,’ and (what is peculiar) an humane exposition  . . . not misanthropical, after the usual fashion of such things: for the return, the remorse, saves it — and the ‘Too late’ of the repentance and compensation covers with its solemn toll the fate of persecutors and victim. We feel that Husain himself could only say afterward  . . . ‘That is done.‘ And now — surely you think well of the work as a whole? You cannot doubt, I fancy, of the grandeur of it — and of the subtilty too, for it is subtle — too subtle perhaps for stage purposes, though as clear,  . . . as to expression  . . . as to medium  . . . as ‘bricks and mortar’  . . . shall I say?

There is one of the fine thoughts. And how fine he is, your Luria, when he looks back to his East, through the half-pardon and half-disdain of Domizia. Ah — Domizia! would it hurt her to make her more a woman  . . . a little  . . . I wonder!

So I shall begin from the beginning, from the first act, and read through  . . . since I have read the fifth twice over. And remember, please, that I am to read, besides, the ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’ and that I shall dun you for it presently. Because you told me it was finished, otherwise I would not speak a word, feeling that you want rest, and that I, who am anxious about you, would be crossing my own purposes by driving you into work. It is the overwork, the overwear of mind and heart (for the feelings come as much into use as the thoughts in these productions), that makes you so pale, dearest, that distracts your head, and does all the harm on Saturdays and so many other days besides.

To-day — how are you? It was right and just for me to write this time, after the two dear notes  . . . the one on Saturday night which made me praise you to myself and think you kinder than kindest, and the other on Monday morning which took me unaware — such a note, that was! Oh it was right and just that I should not teaze you to send me another after those two others, — yet I was very near doing it — yet I should like infinitely to hear to-day how you are — unreasonable! — Well! you will write now — you will answer what I am writing, and mention yourself particularly and sincerely — Remember! Above all, you will care for your head. I have been thinking since yesterday that, coming out of the cold, you might not have refused as usual to take something  . . . hot wine and water, or coffee? Will you have coffee with me on Saturday? ‘Shunning the salt,’ will you have the sugar? And do tell me, for I have been thinking, are you careful as to diet — and will such sublunary things as coffee and tea and cocoa affect your head — for or against! Then you do not touch wine — and perhaps you ought. Surely something may be found or done to do you good. If it had not been for me, you would be travelling in Italy by this time and quite well perhaps.

This morning I had a letter from Miss Martineau and really read it to the end without thinking it too long, which is extraordinary for me just now, and scarcely ordinary in the letter, and indeed it is a delightful letter, as letters go, which are not yours! You shall take it with you on Saturday to read, and you shall see that it is worth reading, and interesting for Wordsworth’s sake and her own. Mr. Kenyon has it now, because he presses on to have her letters, and I should not like to tell him that you had it first from me . . .. Also Saturday will be time enough.

Oh — poor Mr. Horne! shall I tell you some of his offences? That he desires to be called at four in the morning, and does not get up till eight. That he pours libations on his bare head out of the water-glasses at great dinners. That being in the midst of sportsmen — rural aristocrats — lords of soil — and all talking learnedly of pointers’ noses and spaniels’ ears; he has exclaimed aloud in a mocking paraphrase — ‘If I were to hold up a horse by the tail.’ The wit is certainly doubtful! — That being asked to dinner on Tuesday, he will go on Wednesday instead. — That he throws himself at full length with a gesture approaching to a ‘summerset’ on satin sofas. That he giggles. That he only thinks he can talk. That his ignorance on all subjects is astounding. That he never read the old ballads, nor saw Percy’s collection. That he asked who wrote ‘Drink to me only with thine eyes.’ That after making himself ridiculous in attempting to speak at a public meeting, he said to a compassionate friend ‘I got very well out of that.’ That, in writing his work on Napoleon, he employed a man to study the subject for him. That he cares for nobody’s poetry or fame except his own, and considers Tennyson chiefly illustrious as being his contemporary. That, as to politics, he doesn’t care ‘which side.’ That he is always talking of ‘my shares,’ ‘my income,’ as if he were a Kilmansegg. Lastly (and understand, this is my ‘lastly’ and not Miss Mitford’s, who is far from being out of breath so soon) that he has a mania for heiresses — that he has gone out at half past five and ‘proposed’ to Miss M or N with fifty thousand pounds, and being rejected (as the lady thought fit to report herself) came back to tea and the same evening ‘fell in love’ with Miss O or P  . . . with forty thousand — went away for a few months, and upon his next visit, did as much to a Miss Q or W, on the promise of four blood horses — has a prospect now of a Miss R or S — with hounds, perhaps.

Too, too bad — isn’t it? I would repeat none of it except to you — and as to the worst part, the last, why some may be coincidence, and some, exaggeration, for I have not the least doubt that every now and then a fine poetical compliment was turned into a serious thing by the listener, and then the poor poet had critics as well as listeners all round him. Also, he rather ‘wears his heart on his sleeve,’ there is no denying — and in other respects he is not much better, perhaps, than other men. But for the base traffic of the affair — I do not believe a word. He is too generous — has too much real sensibility. I fought his battle, poor Orion. ‘And so,’ she said ‘you believe it possible for a disinterested man to become really attached to two women, heiresses, on the same day?’ I doubted the fact. And then she showed me a note, an autograph note from the poet, confessing the M or N part of the business — while Miss O or P confessed herself, said Miss Mitford. But I persisted in doubting, notwithstanding the lady’s confessions, or convictions, as they might be. And just think of Mr. Horne not having tact enough to keep out of these multitudinous scrapes, for those few days which on three separate occasions he paid Miss Mitford in a neighbourhood where all were strangers to him, — and never outstaying his week! He must have been foolish, read it all how we may.

And so am I, to write this ‘personal talk’ to you when you will not care for it — yet you asked me, and it may make you smile, though Wordsworth’s tea-kettle outsings it all.

When your Monday letter came, I was reading the criticism on Hunt and his Italian poets, in the Examiner. How I liked to be pulled by the sleeve to your translations! — How I liked everything! — Pulci, Pietro  . . . and you, best!

Yet here’s a naiveté which I found in your letter! I will write it out that you may read it —

‘However it’ (the headache) ‘was no sooner gone in a degree, than a worse plague came — I sate thinking of you.’

Very satisfactory that is, and very clear.

May God bless you dearest, dearest! Be careful of yourself. The cold makes me languid, as heat is apt to make everybody; but I am not unwell, and keep up the fire and the thoughts of you.

Your worse  . . . worst plague

Your own

Ba.

I shall hear? yes! And admire my obedience in having written ‘a long letter’ to the letter!