Author: EBB

Saturday.

February 7, 1846.

I felt it must be so  . . . that something must be the matter,  . . . and I had been so really unhappy for half an hour, that your letter which comes now at four, seems a little better, with all its bad news, than my fancies took upon themselves to be, without instruction. Now was it right to go out yesterday when you were unwell, and to a great dinner? — but I shall not reproach you, dearest, dearest — I have no heart for it at this moment. As to Monday, of course it is as you like  . . . if you are well enough on Monday  . . . if it should be thought wise of you to come to London through the noise  . . . if  . . . you understand all the ifs  . . . and among them the greatest if of all,  . . . for if you do love me  . . . care for me even, you will not do yourself harm or run any risk of harm by going out anywhere too soon. On Monday, in case you are considered well enough, and otherwise Tuesday, Wednesday — I leave it to you. Still I will ask one thing, whether you come on Monday or not. Let me have a single line by the nearest post to say how you are. Perhaps for to-night it is not possible — oh no, it is nearly five now! but a word written on Sunday would be with me early on Monday morning, and I know you will let me have it, to save some of the anxious thoughts  . . . to break them in their course with some sort of certainty! May God bless you dearest of all! — I thought of you on Thursday, but did not speak of you, not even when Miss Mitford called Hood the greatest poet of the age  . . . she had been depreciating Carlyle, so I let you lie and wait on the same level,  . . . that shelf of the rock which is above tide mark! I was glad even, that she did not speak of you; and, under cover of her speech of others, I had my thoughts of you deeply and safely. When she had gone at half past six, moreover, I grew over-hopeful, and made up my fancy to have a letter at eight! The branch she had pulled down, sprang upward skyward  . . . to that high possibility of a letter! Which did not come that day  . . . no! — and I revenged myself by writing a letter to you, which was burnt afterwards because I would not torment you for letters. Last night, came a real one — dearest! So we could not keep our sabbath to-day! It is a fast day instead,  . . . on my part. How should I feel (I have been thinking to myself), if I did not see you on Saturday, and could not hope to see you on Monday, nor on Tuesday, nor on Wednesday, nor Thursday nor Friday, nor Saturday again — if all the sabbaths were gone out of the world for me! May God bless you! — it has grown to be enough prayer! — as you are enough (and all, besides) for

Your own

Ba.

 

February 5, 1846.

But I did not — dear, dearest — no indeed, I did not mean any harm about the letter. I wanted to show you how you had given me pleasure — and so, — did I give you pain? was that my ingenuity? Forgive my unhappiness in it, and let it be as if it had not been. Only I will just say that what made me talk about ‘the thorn in the flesh’ from that letter so long, was a sort of conviction of your having put into it as much of the truth, your truth, as admitted of the ultimate purpose of it, and not the least, slightest doubt of the key you gave me to the purpose in question. And so forgive me. Why did you set about explaining, as if I were doubting you? When you said once that it ‘did not come and go,’ — was it not enough? enough to make me feel happy as I told you? Did I require you to write a letter like this? Now think for a moment, and know once for all, how from the beginning to these latter days and through all possible degrees of crisis, you have been to my apprehension and gratitude, the best, most consistent, most noble  . . . the words falter that would speak of it all. In nothing and at no moment have you — I will not say — failed to me, but spoken or acted unworthily of yourself at the highest. What have you ever been to me except too generous? Ah — if I had been only half as generous, it is true that I never could have seen you again after that first meeting — it was the straight path perhaps. But I had not courage — I shrank from the thought of it — and then  . . . besides  . . . I could not believe that your mistake was likely to last, — I concluded that I might keep my friend.

Why should any remembrance be painful to you? I do not understand. Unless indeed I should grow painful to you  . . . I myself! — seeing that every remembered separate thing has brought me nearer to you, and made me yours with a deeper trust and love.

And for that letter  . . . do you fancy that in my memory the sting is not gone from it? — and that I do not carry the thought of it, as the Roman maidens, you speak of, their cool harmless snakes, at my heart always? So let the poor letter be forgiven, for the sake of the dear letter that was burnt, forgiven by you — until you grow angry with me instead — just till then.

And that you should care so much about the opium! Then I must care, and get to do with less — at least. On the other side of your goodness and indulgence (a very little way on the other side) it might strike you as strange that I who have had no pain — no acute suffering to keep down from its angles — should need opium in any shape. But I have had restlessness till it made me almost mad: at one time I lost the power of sleeping quite — and even in the day, the continual aching sense of weakness has been intolerable — besides palpitation — as if one’s life, instead of giving movement to the body, were imprisoned undiminished within it, and beating and fluttering impotently to get out, at all the doors and windows. So the medical people gave me opium — a preparation of it, called morphine, and ether — and ever since I have been calling it my amreeta draught, my elixir, — because the tranquillizing power has been wonderful. Such a nervous system I have — so irritable naturally, and so shattered by various causes, that the need has continued in a degree until now, and it would be dangerous to leave off the calming remedy, Mr. Jago says, except very slowly and gradually. But slowly and gradually something may be done — and you are to understand that I never increased upon the prescribed quantity  . . . prescribed in the first instance — no! Now think of my writing all this to you! —

And after all the lotus-eaters are blessed beyond the opium-eaters; and the best of lotuses are such thoughts as I know.

Dear Miss Mitford comes to-morrow, and I am not glad enough. Shall I have a letter to make me glad? She will talk, talk, talk  . . . and I shall be hoping all day that not a word may be talked of  . . . you: — a forlorn hope indeed! There’s a hope for a day like Thursday which is just in the middle between a Tuesday and a Saturday!

Your head  . . . is it  . . . how is it? tell me. And consider again if it could be possible that I could ever desire to reproach you  . . . in what I said about the letter.

May God bless you, best and dearest. If you are the compensation blessed is the evil that fell upon me: and that, I can say before God.

Your Ba.

 

Saturday.

[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]

Well I have your letter — and I send you the postscript to my last one, written yesterday you observe  . . . and being simply a postscript in some parts of it, so far it is not for an answer. Only I deny the ‘flying out’ — perhaps you may do it a little more  . . . in your moments of starry centrifugal motion.

So you think that dear Mr. Kenyon’s opinion of his ‘young relative’ — (neither young nor his relative — not very much of either!) is to the effect that you couldn’t possibly ‘escape’ her — ? It looks like the sign of the Red Dragon, put so  . . . and your burning mountain is not too awful for the scenery.

Seriously  . . . gravely  . . . if it makes me three times happy that you should love me, yet I grow uneasy and even saddened when you say infatuated things such as this and this  . . . unless after all you mean a philosophical sarcasm on the worth of Czar diamonds. No — do not say such things! If you do, I shall end by being jealous of some ideal Czarina who must stand between you and me . . .. I shall think that it is not I whom you look at  . . . and pour cause. ‘Flying out,’ that would be!

And for Mr. Kenyon, I only know that I have grown the most ungrateful of human beings lately, and find myself almost glad when he does not come, certainly uncomfortable when he does — yes, really I would rather not see him at all, and when you are not here. The sense of which and the sorrow for which, turn me to a hypocrite, and make me ask why he does not come &c.  . . . questions which never came to my lips before  . . . till I am more and more ashamed and sorry. Will it end, I wonder, by my ceasing to care for any one in the world, except, except . . .? or is it not rather that I feel trodden down by either his too great penetration or too great unconsciousness, both being overwhelming things from him to me. From a similar cause I hate writing letters to any of my old friends — I feel as if it were the merest swindling to attempt to give the least account of myself to anybody, and when their letters come and I know that nothing very fatal has happened to them, scarcely I can read to an end afterwards through the besetting care of having to answer it all. Then I am ignoble enough to revenge myself on people for their stupidities  . . . which never in my life I did before nor felt the temptation to do  . . . and when they have a distaste for your poetry through want of understanding, I have a distaste for them  . . . cannot help it — and you need not say it is wrong, because I know the whole iniquity of it, persisting nevertheless. As for dear Mr. Kenyon — with whom we began, and who thinks of you as appreciatingly and admiringly as one man can think of another, — do not imagine that, if he should see anything, he can ‘approve’ of either your wisdom or my generosity,  . . . he, with his large organs of caution, and his habit of looking right and left, and round the corner a little way. Because, you know,  . . . if I should be ill before  . . . why there, is a conclusion! — but if afterward  . . . what? You who talk wildly of my generosity, whereas I only and most impotently tried to be generous, must see how both suppositions have their possibility. Nevertheless you are the master to run the latter risk. You have overcome  . . . to your loss perhaps — unless the judgment is revised. As to taking the half of my prison  . . . I could not even smile at that if it seemed probable  . . . I should recoil from your affection even under a shape so fatal to you  . . . dearest! No! There is a better probability before us I hope and believe — in spite of the possibility which it is impossible to deny. And now we leave this subject for the present.

Sunday. — You are ‘singularly well.’ You are very seldom quite well, I am afraid — yet ‘Luria’ seems to have done no harm this time, as you are singularly well the day after so much writing. Yet do not hurry that last act . . .. I won’t have it for a long while yet.

Here I have been reading Carlyle upon Cromwell and he is very fine, very much himself, it seems to me, everywhere. Did Mr. Kenyon make you understand that I had said there was nothing in him but manner  . . . I thought he said so — and I am confident that he never heard such an opinion from me, for good or for evil, ever at all. I may have observed upon those vulgar attacks on account of the so-called mannerism, the obvious fact, that an individuality, carried into the medium, the expression, is a feature in all men of genius, as Buffon teaches  . . . ‘Le style, c’est l’homme.’ But if the whole man were style, if all Carlyleism were manner — why there would be no man, no Carlyle worth talking of. I wonder that Mr. Kenyon should misrepresent me so. Euphuisms there may be to the end of the world — affected parlances — just as a fop at heart may go without shoestrings to mimic the distractions of some great wandering soul — although that is a bad comparison, seeing that what is called Carlyle’s mannerism, is not his dress, but his physiognomy — or more than that even.

But I do not forgive him for talking here against the ‘ideals of poets’  . . . opposing their ideal by a mis-called reality, which is another sort, a baser sort, of ideal after all. He sees things in broad blazing lights — but he does not analyse them like a philosopher — do you think so? Then his praise for dumb heroic action as opposed to speech and singing, what is that — when all earnest thought, passion, belief, and their utterances, are as much actions surely as the cutting off of fifty heads by one right hand. As if Shakespeare’s actions were not greater than Cromwell’s! —

But I shall write no more. Once more, may God bless you.

Wholly and only

Your Ba.

 

Friday Evening.

February 2, 1846.

Something, you said yesterday, made me happy — ‘that your liking for me did not come and go’ — do you remember? Because there was a letter, written at a crisis long since, in which you showed yourself awfully, as a burning mountain, and talked of ‘making the most of your fire-eyes,’ and of having at intervals ‘deep black pits of cold water’! — and the lava of that letter has kept running down into my thoughts of you too much, until quite of late — while even yesterday I was not too well instructed to be ‘happy,’ you see! Do not reproach me! I would not have ‘heard your enemy say so’ — it was your own word! And the other long word idiosyncrasy seemed long enough to cover it; and it might have been a matter of temperament, I fancied, that a man of genius, in the mystery of his nature, should find his feelings sometimes like dumb notes in a piano  . . . should care for people at half past eleven on Tuesday, and on Wednesday at noon prefer a black beetle. How you frightened me with your ‘fire-eyes’! ‘making the most of them’ too! and the ‘black pits,’ which gaped  . . . where did they gape? who could tell? Oh — but lately I have not been crossed so, of course, with those fabulous terrors — lately that horror of the burning mountain has grown more like a superstition than a rational fear! — and if I was glad  . . . happy  . . . yesterday, it was but as a tolerably sensible nervous man might be glad of a clearer moonlight, showing him that what he had half shuddered at for a sheeted ghoule, was only a white horse on the moor. Such a great white horse! — call it the ‘mammoth horse’ — the ‘real mammoth,’ this time!

Dearest, did I write you a cold letter the last time? Almost it seems so to me! the reason being that my feelings were near to overflow, and that I had to hold the cup straight to prevent the possible dropping on your purple underneath. Your letter, the letter I answered, was in my heart  . . . is in my heart — and all the yeses in the world would not be too many for such a letter, as I felt and feel. Also, perhaps, I gave you, at last, a merely formal distinction — and it comes to the same thing practically without any doubt! but I shrank, with a sort of instinct, from appearing (to myself, mind) to take a security from your words now (said too on an obvious impulse) for what should, would, must, depend on your deliberate wishes hereafter. You understand — you will not accuse me of over-cautiousness and the like. On the contrary, you are all things to me,  . . . instead of all and better than all! You have fallen like a great luminous blot on the whole leaf of the world  . . . of life and time  . . . and I can see nothing beyond you, nor wish to see it. As to all that was evil and sadness to me, I do not feel it any longer — it may be raining still, but I am in the shelter and can scarcely tell. If you could be too dear to me you would be now — but you could not — I do not believe in those supposed excesses of pure affections — God cannot be too great.

Therefore it is a conditional engagement still — all the conditions being in your hands, except the necessary one, of my health. And shall I tell you what is ‘not to be put in doubt ever‘? — your goodness, that is  . . . and every tie that binds me to you. ‘Ordained, granted by God’ it is, that I should owe the only happiness in my life to you, and be contented and grateful (if it were necessary) to stop with it at this present point. Still I do not — there seems no necessity yet.

May God bless you, ever dearest: —

Your own Ba.

 

Friday Morning.

January 31, 1846.

Let it be this way, ever dearest. If in the time of fine weather, I am not ill,  . . . then  . . . not now  . . . you shall decide, and your decision shall be duty and desire to me, both — I will make no difficulties. Remember, in the meanwhile, that I have decided to let it be as you shall choose  . . . shall choose. That I love you enough to give you up ‘for your good,’ is proof (to myself at least) that I love you enough for any other end: — but you thought too much of me in the last letter. Do not mistake me. I believe and trust in all your words — only you are generous unawares, as other men are selfish.

More, I meant to say of this; but you moved me as usual yesterday into the sunshine, and then I am dazzled and cannot see clearly. Still I see that you love me and that I am bound to you: — and ‘what more need I see,’ you may ask; while I cannot help looking out to the future, to the blue ridges of the hills, to the chances of your being happy with me. Well! I am yours as you see  . . . and not yours to teaze you. You shall decide everything when the time comes for doing anything  . . . and from this to then, I do not, dearest, expect you to use ‘the liberty of leaping out of the window,’ unless you are sure of the house being on fire! Nobody shall push you out of the window — least of all, I.

For Italy  . . . you are right. We should be nearer the sun, as you say, and further from the world, as I think — out of hearing of the great storm of gossiping, when ‘scirocco is loose.’ Even if you liked to live altogether abroad, coming to England at intervals, it would be no sacrifice for me — and whether in Italy or England, we should have sufficient or more than sufficient means of living, without modifying by a line that ‘good free life’ of yours which you reasonably praise — which, if it had been necessary to modify, we must have parted,  . . . because I could not have borne to see you do it; though, that you once offered it for my sake, I never shall forget.

Mr. Kenyon stayed half an hour, and asked, after you went, if you had been here long. I reproached him with what they had been doing at his club (the Athenæum) in blackballing Douglas Jerrold, for want of something better to say — and he had not heard of it. There were more black than white balls, and Dickens was so enraged at the repulse of his friend that he gave in his own resignation like a privy councillor.

But the really bad news is of poor Tennyson — I forgot to tell you — I forget everything. He is seriously ill with an internal complaint and confined to his bed, as George heard from a common friend. Which does not prevent his writing a new poem — he has finished the second book of it — and it is in blank verse and a fairy tale, and called the ‘University,’ the university-members being all females. If George has not diluted the scheme of it with some law from the Inner Temple, I don’t know what to think — it makes me open my eyes. Now isn’t the world too old and fond of steam, for blank verse poems, in ever so many books, to be written on the fairies? I hope they may cure him, for the best deed they can do. He is not precisely in danger, understand — but the complaint may run into danger — so the account went.

And you? how are you? Mind to tell me. May God bless you. Is Monday or Tuesday to be our day? If it were not for Mr. Kenyon I should take courage and say Monday — but Tuesday and Saturday would do as well — would they not?

Your own

Ba.

Shall I have a letter?

 

Monday.

January 27, 1846.

You have had my letter and heard about the penholder. Your fancy of ‘not seeming grateful enough,’ is not wise enough for you, dearest; when you know that I know your common fault to be the undue magnifying of everything that comes from me, and I am always complaining of it outwardly and inwardly. That suddenly I should set about desiring you to be more grateful, — even for so great a boon as an old penholder, — would be a more astounding change than any to be sought or seen in a prime minister.

Another mistake you made concerning Henrietta and her opinion — and there’s no use nor comfort in leaving you in it. Henrietta says that the ‘anger would not be so formidable after all’! Poor dearest Henrietta, who trembles at the least bending of the brows  . . . who has less courage than I, and the same views of the future! What she referred to, was simply the infrequency of the visits. ‘Why was I afraid,’ she said — ‘where was the danger? who would be the informer?’ — Well! I will not say any more. It is just natural that you, in your circumstances and associations, should be unable to see what I have seen from the beginning — only you will not hereafter reproach me, in the most secret of your thoughts, for not having told you plainly. If I could have told you with greater plainness I should blame myself (and I do not) because it is not an opinion I have, but a perception. I see, I know. The result  . . . the end of all  . . . perhaps now and then I see that too  . . . in the ‘lucid moments’ which are not the happiest for anybody. Remember, in all cases, that I shall not repent of any part of our past intercourse; and that, therefore, when the time for decision comes, you will be free to look at the question as if you saw it then for the first moment, without being hampered by considerations about ‘all those yesterdays.’

For him  . . . he would rather see me dead at his foot than yield the point: and he will say so, and mean it, and persist in the meaning.

Do you ever wonder at me  . . . that I should write such things, and have written others so different? I have thought that in myself very often. Insincerity and injustice may seem the two ends, while I occupy the straight betwixt two — and I should not like you to doubt how this may be! Sometimes I have begun to show you the truth, and torn the paper; I could not. Yet now again I am borne on to tell you,  . . . to save you from some thoughts which you cannot help perhaps.

There has been no insincerity — nor is there injustice. I believe, I am certain, I have loved him better than the rest of his children. I have heard the fountain within the rock, and my heart has struggled in towards him through the stones of the rock  . . . thrust off  . . . dropping off  . . . turning in again and clinging! Knowing what is excellent in him well, loving him as my only parent left, and for himself dearly, notwithstanding that hardness and the miserable ‘system’ which made him appear harder still, I have loved him and been proud of him for his high qualities, for his courage and fortitude when he bore up so bravely years ago under the worldly reverses which he yet felt acutely — more than you and I could feel them — but the fortitude was admirable. Then came the trials of love — then, I was repulsed too often,  . . . made to suffer in the suffering of those by my side  . . . depressed by petty daily sadnesses and terrors, from which it is possible however for an elastic affection to rise again as past. Yet my friends used to say ‘You look broken-spirited’ — and it was true. In the midst, came my illness, — and when I was ill he grew gentler and let me draw nearer than ever I had done: and after that great stroke  . . . you know  . . . though that fell in the middle of a storm of emotion and sympathy on my part, which drove clearly against him, God seemed to strike our hearts together by the shock; and I was grateful to him for not saying aloud what I said to myself in my agony, ‘If it had not been for you‘ . . .! And comparing my self-reproach to what I imagined his self-reproach must certainly be (for if I had loved selfishly, he had not been kind), I felt as if I could love and forgive him for two  . . . (I knowing that serene generous departed spirit, and seeming left to represent it)  . . . and I did love him better than all those left to me to love in the world here. I proved a little my affection for him, by coming to London at the risk of my life rather than diminish the comfort of his home by keeping a part of my family away from him. And afterwards for long and long he spoke to me kindly and gently, and of me affectionately and with too much praise; and God knows that I had as much joy as I imagined myself capable of again, in the sound of his footstep on the stairs, and of his voice when he prayed in this room; my best hope, as I have told him since, being, to die beneath his eyes. Love is so much to me naturally — it is, to all women! and it was so much to me to feel sure at last that he loved me — to forget all blame — to pull the weeds up from that last illusion of life: — and this, till the Pisa-business, which threw me off, far as ever, again — farther than ever — when George said ‘he could not flatter me’ and I dared not flatter myself. But do you believe that I never wrote what I did not feel: I never did. And I ask one kindness more  . . . do not notice what I have written here. Let it pass. We can alter nothing by ever so many words. After all, he is the victim. He isolates himself — and now and then he feels it  . . . the cold dead silence all round, which is the effect of an incredible system. If he were not stronger than most men, he could not bear it as he does. With such high qualities too! — so upright and honourable — you would esteem him, you would like him, I think. And so  . . . dearest  . . . let that be the last word.

I dare say you have asked yourself sometimes, why it was that I never managed to draw you into the house here, so that you might make your own way. Now that is one of the things impossible to me. I have not influence enough for that. George can never invite a friend of his even. Do you see? The people who do come here, come by particular license and association  . . . Capt. Surtees Cook being one of them. Once  . . . when I was in high favour too  . . . I asked for Mr. Kenyon to be invited to dinner — he an old college friend, and living close by and so affectionate to me always — I felt that he must be hurt by the neglect, and asked. It was in vain. Now, you see —

May God bless you always! I wrote all my spirits away in this letter yesterday, and kept it to finish to-day  . . . being yours every day, glad or sad, ever beloved! —

Your Ba.

 

January 26, 1846.

I must begin by invoking my own stupidity! To forget after all the penholder! I had put it close beside me too on the table, and never once thought of it afterwards from first to last — just as I should do if I had a common-place book, the memoranda all turning to obliviscenda as by particular contact. So I shall send the holder with Miss Martineau’s books which you can read or not as you like  . . . they have beauty in passages  . . . but, trained up against the wall of a set design, want room for branching and blossoming, great as her skill is. I like her ‘Playfellow’ stories twice as well. Do you know them? Written for children, and in such a fine heroic child-spirit as to be too young and too old for nobody. Oh, and I send you besides a most frightful extract from an American magazine sent to me yesterday  . . . no, the day before  . . . on the subject of mesmerism — and you are to understand, if you please, that the Mr. Edgar Poe who stands committed in it, is my dedicator  . . . whose dedication I forgot, by the way, with the rest — so, while I am sending, you shall have his poems with his mesmeric experience and decide whether the outrageous compliment to E.B.B. or the experiment on M. Vandeleur [Valdemar] goes furthest to prove him mad. There is poetry in the man, though, now and then, seen between the great gaps of bathos . . .. ‘Politian’ will make you laugh — as the ‘Raven’ made me laugh, though with something in it which accounts for the hold it took upon people such as Mr. N.P. Willis and his peers — it was sent to me from four different quarters besides the author himself, before its publication in this form, and when it had only a newspaper life. Some of the other lyrics have power of a less questionable sort. For the author, I do not know him at all — never heard from him nor wrote to him — and in my opinion, there is more faculty shown in the account of that horrible mesmeric experience (mad or not mad) than in his poems. Now do read it from the beginning to the end. That ‘going out‘ of the hectic, struck me very much  . . . and the writhing away of the upper lip. Most horrible! — Then I believe so much of mesmerism, as to give room for the full acting of the story on me  . . . without absolutely giving full credence to it, understand.

Ever dearest, you could not think me in earnest in that letter? It was because I understood you so perfectly that I felt at liberty for the jesting a little — for had I not thought of that before, myself, and was I not reproved for speaking of it, when I said that I was content, for my part, even so? Surely you remember — and I should not have said it if I had not felt with you, felt and known, that ‘there is, with us, less for the future to give or take away than in the ordinary cases.’ So much less! All the happiness I have known has come to me through you, and it is enough to live for or die in — therefore living or dying I would thank God, and use that word ‘enough‘  . . . being yours in life and death. And always understanding that if either of us should go, you must let it be this one here who was nearly gone when she knew you, since I could not bear —

Now see if it is possible to write on this subject, unless one laughs to stop the tears. I was more wise on Friday.

Let me tell you instead of my sister’s affairs, which are so publicly talked of in this house that there is no confidence to be broken in respect to them — yet my brothers only see and hear, and are told nothing, to keep them as clear as possible from responsibility. I may say of Henrietta that her only fault is, her virtues being written in water — I know not of one other fault. She has too much softness to be able to say ‘no’ in the right place — and thus, without the slightest levity  . . . perfectly blameless in that respect,  . . . she says half a yes or a quarter of a yes, or a yes in some sort of form, too often — but I will tell you. Two years ago, three men were loving her, as they called it. After a few months, and the proper quantity of interpretations, one of them consoled himself by giving nick-names to his rivals. Perseverance and Despair he called them, and so, went up to the boxes to see out the rest of the play. Despair ran to a crisis, was rejected in so many words, but appealed against the judgment and had his claim admitted — it was all silence and mildness on each side  . . . a tacit gaining of ground, — Despair ‘was at least a gentleman,’ said my brothers. On which Perseverance came on with violent re-iterations, — insisted that she loved him without knowing it, or should — elbowed poor Despair into the open streets, who being a gentleman wouldn’t elbow again — swore that ‘if she married another he would wait till she became a widow, trusting to Providence’  . . . did wait every morning till the head of the house was out, and sate day by day, in spite of the disinclination of my sisters and the rudeness of all my brothers, four hours in the drawing-room  . . . let himself be refused once a week and sate all the longer  . . . allowed everybody in the house (and a few visitors) to see and hear him in fits of hysterical sobbing, and sate on unabashed, the end being that he sits now sole regnant, my poor sister saying softly, with a few tears of remorse for her own instability, that she is ‘taken by storm and cannot help it.’ I give you only the résumé of this military movement — and though I seem to smile, which it was impossible to avoid at some points of the evidence as I heard it from first one person and then another, yet I am woman enough rather to be glad that the decision is made so. He is sincerely attached to her, I believe; and the want of refinement and sensibility (for he understood her affections to be engaged to another at one time) is covered in a measure by the earnestness, — and justified too by the event — everybody being quite happy and contented, even to Despair, who has a new horse and takes lessons in music.

That’s love — is it not? And that’s my answer (if you look for it) to the question you asked me yesterday.

Yet do not think that I am turning it all to game. I could not do so with any real earnest sentiment  . . . I never could  . . . and now least, and with my own sister whom I love so. One may smile to oneself and yet wish another well — and so I smile to you — and it is all safe with you I know. He is a second or third cousin of ours and has golden opinions from all his friends and fellow-officers — and for the rest, most of these men are like one another . . .. I never could see the difference between fuller’s earth and common clay, among them all.

What do you think he has said since — to her too? — ‘I always persevere about everything. Once I began to write a farce — which they told me was as bad as could be. Well! — I persevered! — I finished it.’ Perfectly unconscious, both he and she were of there being anything mal à propos in that — and no kind of harm was meant, — only it expresses the man.

Dearest — it had better be Thursday I think — our day! I was showing to-day your father’s drawings, — and my brothers, and Arabel besides, admired them very much on the right grounds. Say how you are. You did not seem to me to answer frankly this time, and I was more than half uneasy when you went away. Take exercise, dear, dearest  . . . think of me enough for it, — and do not hurry ‘Luria.’ May God bless you!

Your own

Ba.

 

Thursday Night.

January 23, 1846.

Yes, I understand your ‘Luria’ — and there is to be more light; and I open the window to the east and wait for it — a little less gladly than for you on Saturday, dearest. In the meanwhile you have ‘lucid moments,’ and ‘strengthen’ yourself into the wisdom of learning to love me — and, upon consideration, it does not seem to be so hard after all  . . . there is ‘less for the future to take away’ than you had supposed — so that is the way? Ah, ‘these lucid moments, in which all things are thoroughly perceived‘; — what harm they do me! — And I am to ‘understand for you,’ you say! — Am I?

On the other side, and to make the good omen complete, I remembered, after I had sealed my last letter, having made a confusion between the ivory and horn gates, the gates of false and true visions, as I am apt to do — and my penholder belongs to the ivory gate,  . . . as you will perceive in your lucid moments — poor holder! But, as you forget me on Wednesdays, the post testifying,  . . . the sinecure may not be quite so certain as the Thursday’s letter says. And I too, in the meanwhile, grow wiser,  . . . having learnt something which you cannot do, — you of the ‘Bells and Pomegranates’: You cannot make a pen. Yesterday I looked round the world in vain for it.

Mr. Kenyon does not come — will not perhaps until Saturday! Which reminds me — Mr. Kenyon told me about a year ago that he had been painfully employed that morning in parting two — dearer than friends — and he had done it he said, by proving to either, that he or she was likely to mar the prospects of the other. ‘If I had spoken to each, of himself or herself,’ he said, ‘I never could have done it.’

Was not that an ingenious cruelty? The remembrance rose up in me like a ghost, and made me ask you once to promise what you promised  . . . (you recollect?) because I could not bear to be stabbed with my own dagger by the hand of a third person  . . . so! When people have lucid moments themselves, you know, it is different.

And shall I indeed have a letter to-morrow? Or, not having the penholder yet, will you . . ..

Goodnight. May God bless you —

Ever and wholly your

Ba.

 

Wednesday.

January 22, 1846.

Ever since I ceased to be with you — ever dearest, — have been with your ‘Luria,’ if that is ceasing to be with you — which it is, I feel at last. Yet the new act is powerful and subtle, and very affecting, it seems to me, after a grave, suggested pathos; the reasoning is done on every hand with admirable directness and adroitness, and poor Luria’s iron baptism under such a bright crossing of swords, most miserably complete. Still  . . . is he to die so? can you mean it? Oh — indeed I foresaw that — not a guess of mine ever touched such an end — and I can scarcely resign myself to it as a necessity, even now  . . . I mean, to the act, as Luria’s act, whether it is final or not — the act of suicide being so unheroical. But you are a dramatic poet and right perhaps, where, as a didactic poet, you would have been wrong,  . . . and, after the first shock, I begin to see that your Luria is the man Luria and that his ‘sun’ lights him so far and not farther than so, and to understand the natural reaction of all that generous trust and hopefulness, what naturally it would be. Also, it is satisfactory that Domizia, having put her woman’s part off to the last, should be too late with it — it will be a righteous retribution. I had fancied that her object was to isolate him,  . . . to make his military glory and national recompense ring hollowly to his ears, and so commend herself, drawing back the veil.

Puccio’s scornful working out of the low work, is very finely given, I think,  . . . and you have ‘a cunning right hand,’ to lift up Luria higher in the mind of your readers, by the very means used to pull down his fortunes — you show what a man he is by the very talk of his rivals  . . . by his ‘natural godship’ over Puccio. Then Husain is nobly characteristic — I like those streaks of Moorish fire in his speeches. ‘Why ’twas all fighting’ &c.  . . . that passage perhaps is over-subtle for a Husain — but too nobly right in the abstract to be altered, if it is so or not. Domizia talks philosophically besides, and how eloquently; — and very noble she is where she proclaims

But why not ‘spirits’ rather than ‘sprites,’ which has a different association by custom? ‘Spirits’ is quite short enough, it seems to me, for a last word — it sounds like a monosyllable that trembles — or thrills, rather. And, do you know, I agree with yourself a little when you say (as did you not say?) that some of the speeches — Domizia’s for instance — are too lengthy. I think I should like them to coil up their strength, here and there, in a few passages. Luria  . . . poor Luria  . . . is great and pathetic when he stands alone at last, and ‘all his waves have gone over him.’ Poor Luria! — And now, I wonder where Mr. Chorley will look, in this work, — along all the edges of the hills, — to find, or prove, his favourite ‘mist!’ On the glass of his own opera-lorgnon, perhaps: — shall we ask him to try that?

But first, I want to ask you something — I have had it in my head a long time, but it might as well have been in a box — and indeed if it had been in the box with your letters, I should have remembered to speak of it long ago. So now, at last, tell me — how do you write, O my poet? with steel pens, or Bramah pens, or goose-quills or crow-quills? — Because I have a penholder which was given to me when I was a child, and which I have used both then and since in the production of various great epics and immortal ‘works,’ until in these latter years it has seemed to me too heavy, and I have taken into service, instead of it, another two-inch-long instrument which makes Mr. Kenyon laugh to look at — and so, my fancy has run upon your having the heavier holder, which is not very heavy after all, and which will make you think of me whether you choose it or not, besides being made of a splinter from the ivory gate of old, and therefore not unworthy of a true prophet. Will you have it, dearest? Yes — because you can’t help it. When you come  . . . on Saturday! —

And for ‘Pauline,’  . . . I am satisfied with the promise to see it some day  . . . when we are in the isle of the sirens, or ready for wandering in the Doges’ galleries. I seem to understand that you would really rather wish me not to see it now  . . . and as long as I do see it! So that shall be! — Am I not good now, and not a teazer? If there is any poetical justice in ‘the seven worlds,’ I shall have a letter to-night.

By the way, you owe me two letters by your confession. A hundred and four of mine you have, and I, only a hundred and two of yours  . . . which is a ‘deficit’ scarcely creditable to me, (now is it?) when, according to the law and ordinance, a woman’s hundred and four letters would take two hundred and eight at least, from the other side, to justify them. Well — I feel inclined to wring out the legal per centage to the uttermost farthing; but fall into a fit of gratitude, notwithstanding, thinking of Monday, and how the second letter came beyond hope. Always better, you are, than I guess you to be, — and it was being best, to write, as you did, for me to hear twice on one day! — best and dearest!

But the first letter was not what you feared — I know you too well not to know how that letter was written and with what intention. Do you, on the other hand, endeavour to comprehend how there may be an eccentricity and obliquity in certain relations and on certain subjects, while the general character stands up worthily of esteem and regard — even of yours. Mr. Kenyon says broadly that it is monomania — neither more nor less. Then the principle of passive filial obedience is held — drawn (and quartered) from Scripture. He sees the law and the gospel on his side. Only the other day, there was a setting forth of the whole doctrine, I hear, down-stairs — ‘passive obedience, and particularly in respect to marriage.’ One after the other, my brothers all walked out of the room, and there was left for sole auditor, Captain Surtees Cook, who had especial reasons for sitting it out against his will, — so he sate and asked ‘if children were to be considered slaves’ as meekly as if he were asking for information. I could not help smiling when I heard of it. He is just succeeding in obtaining what is called an ‘adjutancy,’ which, with the half pay, will put an end to many anxieties.

Dearest — when, in the next dream, you meet me in the ‘landing-place,’ tell me why I am to stand up to be reviewed again. What a fancy, that is of yours, for ‘full-lengths’ — and what bad policy, if a fancy, to talk of it so! because you would have had the glory and advantage, and privilege, of seeing me on my feet twenty times before now, if you had not impressed on me, in some ineffable manner, that to stand on my head would scarcely be stranger. Nevertheless you shall have it your own way, as you have everything — which makes you so very, very, exemplarily submissive, you know!

Mr. Kenyon does not come — puts it off to Saturday perhaps.

The Daily News I have had a glance at. A weak leading article, I thought  . . . and nothing stronger from Ireland: — but enough advertisements to promise a long future. What do you think? or have you not seen the paper? No broad principles laid down. A mere newspaper-support of the ‘League.’

May God bless you. Say how you are — and do walk, and ‘care’ for yourself,

and, so, for your own

Ba.

Have I expressed to you at all how ‘Luria’ impresses me more and more? You shall see the ‘remarks’ with the other papers — the details of what strikes me.

 

Sunday.

January 19, 1846.

Your letter came just after the hope of one had past — the latest Saturday post had gone, they said, and I was beginning to be as vexed as possible, looking into the long letterless Sunday. Then, suddenly came the knock — the postman redivivus — just when it seemed so beyond hoping for — it was half past eight, observe, and there had been a post at nearly eight — suddenly came the knock, and your letter with it. Was I not glad, do you think?

And you call the Athenæum ‘kind and satisfactory’? Well — I was angry instead. To make us wait so long for an ‘article’ like that, was not over-kind certainly, nor was it ‘satisfactory’ to class your peculiar qualities with other contemporary ones, as if they were not peculiar. It seemed to me cold and cautious, from the causes perhaps which you mention, but the extracts will work their own way with everybody who knows what poetry is, and for others, let the critic do his worst with them. For what is said of ‘mist’ I have no patience because I who know when you are obscure and never think of denying it in some of your former works, do hold that this last number is as clear and self-sufficing to a common understanding, as far as the expression and medium goes, as any book in the world, and that Mr. Chorley was bound in verity to say so. If I except that one stanza, you know, it is to make the general observation stronger. And then ‘mist’ is an infamous word for your kind of obscurity. You never are misty, not even in ‘Sordello’ — never vague. Your graver cuts deep sharp lines, always — and there is an extra-distinctness in your images and thoughts, from the midst of which, crossing each other infinitely, the general significance seems to escape. So that to talk of a ‘mist,’ when you are obscurest, is an impotent thing to do. Indeed it makes me angry.

But the suggested virtue of ‘self-renunciation’ only made me smile, because it is simply nonsense  . . . nonsense which proves itself to be nonsense at a glance. So genius is to renounce itself — that is the new critical doctrine, is it? Now is it not foolish? To recognize the poetical faculty of a man, and then to instruct him in ‘self-renunciation’ in that very relation — or rather, to hint the virtue of it, and hesitate the dislike of his doing otherwise? What atheists these critics are after all — and how the old heathens understood the divinity of gifts better, beyond any comparison. We may take shame to ourselves, looking back.

Now, shall I tell you what I did yesterday? It was so warm, so warm, the thermometer at 68 in this room, that I took it into my head to call it April instead of January, and put on a cloak and walked down-stairs into the drawing-room — walked, mind! Before, I was carried by one of my brothers, — even to the last autumn-day when I went out — I never walked a step for fear of the cold in the passages. But yesterday it was so wonderfully warm, and I so strong besides — it was a feat worthy of the day — and I surprised them all as much as if I had walked out of the window instead. That kind dear Stormie, who with all his shyness and awkwardness has the most loving of hearts in him, said that he was ‘so glad to see me’!

Well! — setting aside the glory of it, it would have been as wise perhaps if I had abstained; our damp detestable climate reaches us otherwise than by cold, and I am not quite as well as usual this morning after an uncomfortable feverish night — not very unwell, mind, nor unwell at all in the least degree of consequence — and I tell you, only to show how susceptible I really am still, though ‘scarcely an invalid,’ say the complimenters.

What a way I am from your letter — that letter — or seem to be rather — for one may think of one thing and yet go on writing distrustedly of other things. So you are ‘grateful’ to my sisters  . . . you! Now I beseech you not to talk such extravagances; I mean such extravagances as words like these imply — and there are far worse words than these, in the letter  . . . such as I need not put my finger on; words which are sense on my lips, but no sense at all on yours, and which make me disquietedly sure that you are under an illusion. Observe! — certainly I should not choose to have a ‘claim,’ see! Only, what I object to, in ‘illusions,’ ‘miracles,’ and things of that sort, is the want of continuity common to such. When Joshua caused the sun to stand still, it was not for a year even! — Ungrateful, I am!

And ‘pretty well’ means ‘not well’ I am afraid — or I should be gladder still of the new act. You will tell me on Tuesday what ‘pretty well’ means, and if your mother is better — or I may have a letter to-morrow — dearest! May God bless you!

To-morrow too, at half past three o’clock, how joyful I shall be that my ‘kind considerateness’ decided not to receive you until Tuesday. My very kind considerateness, which made me eat my dinner to-day!

Your own

Ba.

A hundred letters I have, by this last,  . . . to set against Napoleon’s Hundred Days — did you know that?

So much better I am to-night: it was nothing but a little chill from the damp — the fog, you see!