Author: RB

[Postmark: April 27, 1846]

See what a brain I have, — which means, you have ! The
book I ought to put in my pocket, — and fancy I leave on
the table, — is picked up in our lane and presented to me on
my return ; so my reason, which told you I had forgotten it,
the book, was wrong, and my instinct which told me,
all the time, that I could not forget even so poor a matter if
it tended to you, — that was right, as usual ? (Don’t think
that I forgot the said book on the former occasions . . I
wanted to look through it first, so as to be able to correct any
possible mistakings, in case you should ask, or should not
ask, my siren ! I read the book during the voyage.)

Will you tell me what number of the League contains
the notice of you ? I can get it directly. I did not ask
you yesterday, being just as much master of myself as I
commonly am when with you — but after-wisdom comes duly
for a consolation, and mine was apparent in a remark I made
last night — ‘ Here is truly an illusion broken ‘ I said — ‘ for
not very long ago I used to feel impatient at listening to
other people’s commendations of her, and as if they were
usurping my especial office, — they could not see what I see,
not utter what I could utter : and now, at the beginning of
my utterance, the hand closes my mouth, while its dear fellow
shuts my eyes, — I may not see what everybody sees, nor say
what the whole world says, — I, that was to excel them all in
either function ! So now I will change my policy and bid them
praise, praise, praise, praise, since I may not. Will you let
me hear them, my Ba ? You know Chesterfield forbids his
son to play on the instrument himself — ‘ for you can pay
musicians’ he says — ‘and hear them play.’ Where may I
hear this discourser of most excellent music ?

In your last letter you spoke of ‘ other women,’ and said
they might ‘ love ‘ me — just see ! They might love me because
of something in me, lovingness in me, which they never
could have evoked . . so the effect produces the cause, my
dear ‘ inverter ‘ ! If there had been a vague aimless feeling
in me, turning hither and thither for some object to attach
itself to and spend itself on, and you had chanced to be
that object, I should understand you were very little flattered
and how a poplar does as well for a vine-prop as a palm tree
— but whatever love of mine clings to you was created by
you, dearest, — they were not in me, I believed — those
feelings, — till you came. So that, mournful and degrading
as it sounds, still it would, I think, be more rational to confess
the possibility of their living on, though you withdrew, —
finding some other — oh no, it is, — that is as great an impossibility
as the other, — they came from you, they go to you,
what is the whole world to them !

May God bless you, repay you — He can —

Well Ba, do you see the Examiner ? That is very kind,
very generous of Forster. There are real difficulties in the
way of this prompt, efficient, serviceable notice — for he has
a tribe of friends, dramatists, actors ‘ conflicting interests ‘ &c.
&c. to keep the peace among, — and he quite understands
his trade — how compensation is to be made, and an
equilibrium kept in the praises so as to offend nobody, — yet
see how he writes, and with a heap of other business on his
shoulders ! I thank him very sincerely, I am sure.

Tell me how you are, beloved — all-beloved ! I am quite
well to-day, — have been out.

Do you remember our friend Bennett of Blackheath?
(Don’t ejaculate ‘ le Benêt ‘ ! ) He sent me letters lately —
and I returned a copy of ‘ Luria ‘ to save compliments and
words — here is his answer . . (I will at once confess I could
not read it, but Ba bids me send, and what am I but Ba’s
own, very very own ?)

[Postmark: April 24, 1846]

How I sympathize with poor Cloten when he complains
that ‘ he is in the habit of saying daily many things fully as
witty as those of Posthumus, men praise so — if men would
but note them ‘ ! — I feel jealous of the success and ‘ praise ‘
of my Ba, — falling as they do on the mere asides and interjectional
fits and starts of the play, — when its earnest soliloquy,
the very soul and substance of it all, never reaches
her ear, nor calls down her dear, dear words.

Yet do I say that I feel jealous ? Rather, I acquiesce
gladly in the ignorance . . because when the words, the
golden words, are brought in to me by the inferior agents,
and honestly transferred by them to the real moving powers
. . they, even, find the reward too much, too much, till they
— till they resolve (on the other side of a sheet) to keep
silence and be grateful till death help them to speak.

Well, my dear, own dearest . . the week has got to its
weary end, and to-morrow I shall trust to be with you. I
continue to feel better, — and this morning’s rain, in the
opinion of the learned, will be succeeded by warm weather.
May is just here, beside.

Let me say how a word of praise from your brother
gratifies me. I feel his kindness in other respects — feel it
deeply — as I do that of the rest of your family. Because . .
after these extravagant flatteries of mine you find such just
fault with, — wherein I go the length of attributing to you the
authorship of the ‘ Drama of Exile,’ and ‘ Geraldine ‘ and
‘ Bertha,’ and many more poems which I used to suppose my
Ba’s, — ^after that undue glorification, you will bear to be told,
by way of ‘set-off’ — that I cannot help thinking, you, of all
your family, are the most ignorant of your own value — very
ignorant you are, my sweet Ba, — but they cannot be, and
their kindness to me becomes centupled ‘ for reasons, for
reasons.’

Now let me kiss you — which kiss, as I am to really kiss
you to-morrow, my sweetest, I shall dare tell the truth of to
myself, and say ‘ The real will be better.’ At other times,
with a longer perspective of days, and days after them, until
. . why, then I make the best of pity and say ‘ Can the real
be better — what can be better than the best’? Still —
remember my ‘ peculiarity ‘ — with the greater I keep the less,
you let me say and praise me for saying — so, with all the
dear hope of to-morrow, — now, my Ba — and now, I kiss you.
May God bless you, best and dearest.

No letters that are letters — here is one however from
Arnould just arrived — an Oxford Prize Poet, and an admir-
able dear good fellow, for all his praise — which is better.

[Postmark: April 23, 1846]

Dear, dear Ba, I was never very ill, and now am very
much better, quite well, indeed. I mean to co-operate
with your wishes, and my doctor’s doings, which are luckily
gentle enough, — and so, how should I fail of bringing into
subjection this restive, ill-conditioned head of mine ?

This morning I have walked to town and back — leaving
myself barely time to write — but just before going out, I
got your letter, for which I was waiting ; and the joy of it,
the entire delight, carried me lightly out and in again. Ah,
my own Ba, — of the two ‘ extravagances which you never
write nor speak,’ — after all, if I must, I concede the praises
and eagle-soaring and, and — because, if I please, I can say,
if you do persist in making me, ‘ why, it may be so, — how
should I know, or Ba not know ? ‘ And as a man may
suppose himself poor and yet be rightful owner to a wonder-
ful estate somewhere (in novels &c) — so, I, the intellectually
poor &c &c — But, dearest, if you say ‘ My letters
tire you’ —— say that again — and then what unknown
gadge ought to stop the darling mouth ? How does honey
dew bind up the rose from opening ? Moreover it is one
peculiarity of my mind that it loses no pleasure, — must not
forego the former for the latter pleasure. How shall I ex-
plain ? I believe that, when I should have been your
husband for years, — years — if I were separated from you for
a day and a letter came — I think my heart would move to it
just as it now does — because now, when I see you, know
what that blessing is — still the very oldest first flutter of
delight at ‘ Miss Barrett’s ‘ writing it is all here, all !

Shall my heart flutter, then, to-morrow, my dear dear
heart’s heart ? And it shall be not April when I read it
your letter — but June and May — if it tells me you are well,
as I am well — now, if I say that, can you doubt what I
consider my present state ? But be better, dear Ba, and
make me better — I should like to breathe and move and
live by your allowance and pleasure — being your very very
own

R.B.

I see this morning a characteristic piece of news in the
paper. President Polk, with an eye to business, gets his
brother, a tall gaunt hungry man, appointed Ambassador to
Naples — why not? So he arrives a year ago, — finds the
Neapolitans speak Italian, or else French, or else German
— that is, the Diplomatic Body at Naples don’t speak
English — on which discovery, Polk secundus sees he may
as well amuse himself, so goes to Paris for half a year, —
then to Rome where he is now, seeing sights — who could
tell the Italians were not able to talk English ? Is not that
American entirely ? Carlyle told me of an American who
was commissioned by some learned body of his countrymen
to ask two questions . . ‘What C.’s opinion was as to
a future state?’ — and next ‘ what relation Goethe was to
Goethe’s mother’s husband ? ‘ —

[Postmark: April 22, 1846]

I never thought I should convince you, dearest — and I
was foolish to write so, since it makes you reply so. At all
events, I do not habitually offend in this kind — forty-nine
days out of fifty I hear my own praises from your lips, and
yet keep silence — on the fiftieth I protest gently — is that too
much ? Then I will be quiet altogether, my Ba, and get a
comfort out of the consciousness of obedience there at least.
But I should like some talking-bird to tell you the struggle
there is and what I could say. Shall I idealize you into mere
mist, Ba, and see the fine, fine, last of you ? Well, I cannot
even play with the fancy of that — so, one day, when so much
is to be cleared up between us, look for a word or two on
this matter also. Some savage speech about the ‘ hand I
was to have dropped ‘ — the whole ending with the Promethean
— Οὑτως ὑβρἰζειν τους ὑβρἰζοντας χρέων. Meantime
my revenge on the hand must be to kiss it — I kiss it.

Yesterday’s letters both arrived this morning by the 11½
post — was that right ? I add my mite of savageness to the
general treasury of wrath : every body is complaining . Still,
so long as I do get my letters, — such letters !

The cold wind continues — you will have kept the room
to-day no doubt — what colourless weather ; not the moist
fresh bright true April of old years ! I shall go out presently
— but with such an effort, such unwillingness ! I am better
however — and my mother still continues well — goes out
every morning — so there is hope for everybody. I ought to
tell you that I went to my doctor last evening — (remembering
to whom I promised I would do so, if need were, or good
seemed likely to follow) — and he speaks encouragingly and
I have engaged to be obedient ; perhaps, because he ordains
no very intolerable laws. He says I am better than when he
saw me last — and, as he wanted then to begin and prescribe,
. . . there is clearly a gain of about two months’ comfort !

Here strikes fatal four-o’clock ! To-morrow for more
writing ; and now, for the never-ending love, and thought of
my dearest dearest. May God bless you, Ba.

Your own ——

[Postmark: April 21, 1846]

My dearest Ba, my sweetest, only love must sit, if she
please, in the gondola chair and let me talk to-day, not
write to her — for my head aches, — from pure perversity, —
and a little from my morning spent over a novel of Balzac’s —
that is it, not any real illness, I know — however, the effect
is the same. Beside I got tired with the long walk from
Carlyle’s last night — for I went and saw him to heart’s
content — and he talked characteristically and well, and
constringingly, bracingly. He has been in the country a
little, — that is, has gone down to see his wife occasionally
who was on a visit at Croydon, whence she only returned
on Saturday. He told me he had read my last number ;
and that he had ‘been read to’ — some good reader had
recited ‘The Duchess ‘ to him. Altogether he said wonder-
fully kind things and was pleased to prophesy in the same
spirit ; God bless him ! We talked for three or four hours
— he asked me to come again soon, and I will.

Here are two letters — Chorley’s, one — and the other
from quite another kind of man, an old friend who ‘ docks ‘
ships or something like it ; a great lover of ‘ intelligibility in
writing,’ and heretofore a sufferer from my poetry.

My love, I lend you such things with exactly as much
vanity as . . no comparison will serve ! it is the French
vulgarism — comme . . n’importe quoi ! Celui me pousse à
la vanité comme — n’importe quoi !

Will you have a significative ‘ comme ‘ of another kind ?

‘ je me trouve bête ce matin comme . . trente-six oies ! ‘
— (I assure you this is no flower culled from Balzac this
morning — but a little ‘souvenir’ of an old play.)

Now, if I were to say to myself something is dear as

‘ thirty-six Bas ‘ — I should be scared, as when looking into a
mirror cut into façettes one is met on every side by the
same face, twenty times repeated. Nothing can add to my
conception of the one Ba — my one, only — ever dear,
dearest Ba — ‘what perfect nonsense’ says Ba — and nonsensical
I will be— —all she pleases so long as let live and
die her very own.

[Postmark: April 20, 1846]

Just now I read again your last note for a particular purpose
of thinking about the end of it . . where you say, as
you have said so many times, ‘that your hand was not
stretched out to the good — it came to you sleeping ‘ — etc. I
wanted to try and find out and be able to explain to myself,
and perhaps to you, why the wrongness in you should be so
exquisitely dear to me, dear as the rightness, or dearer, inasmuch
as it is the topmost grace of all, seen latest on leaving the contemplation of the others, and first on returning
to them – – because, Ba, that adorable spirit in all these
phrases, what I should adore without their embodiment in
these phrases which fall into my heart and stay there, that
strange unconsciousness of how the love-account really stands
between us, who was giver altogether and who taker, and, by
consequence, what is the befitting virtue for each of us, a
generous disposition to forgetfulness on the giver’s part, as of
everlasting remembrance and gratitude on the other — this unconsciousness is wrongs my heart’s darling, strangely wrong
by the contrast with your marvellous apprehension on other
points, every other point I am capable of following you to.
I solemnly assure you I cannot imagine any point of view
wherein I ought to appear to any rational creature the bene-
fitting party and you the benefitted — nor any matter in which
I can be supposed to be even magnanimous, (so that it might
be said, ‘ there is a sacrifice ‘ — ‘ that is to be borne with ‘
&c) — none where such a supposition is not degrading to me,
dishonouring and affronting. I know you, my Ba, not because
you are my Ba, but through the best exercise of whatever
power in me you too often praise, I know — that you are immeasurably
my superior, while you talk most eloquently and
affectingly to me, I know and could prove you are as much
my Poet as my Mistress ; if I suspected it before I knew
you, personally, how is it with me now I feel it every
day, I tell myself every day it is so. Yet you do not feel nor
know it — for you write thus to me. Well, — and this is what
I meant to say from the beginning of the letter, I love your
inability to feel it in spite of right and justice and rationality.
I would, — I will at a moment’s notice, give you back your
golden words, and lie under your mind supremacy as I take
unutterable delight in doing under your eye, your hand.
So Shakespeare chose to ‘ envy this man’s art and that man’s
scope ‘ in the Sonnets, But I did not mean to try and
explain what is unexplainable after all — (though I wisely said
I would try and explain ! ) You seem to me altogether . .
(if you think my words sounded like flattery, here shall come
at the end — anything but that !) you do seem, my precious
Ba, too entirely mine this minute, — my heart’s, my senses’,
my soul’s precise το καλον to last ! Too perfect for that !
The true power with the ignorance of it, the real hold of my
heart, as you can hold this letter, — yet the fear with it that
you may ‘ vex me ‘ by a word, — makes me angry. Well, —
if one must see an end of all perfection — still, to know one
was privileged to see it — Nay, it is safe now — for this present
, all my future would not pay, whatever your own future
turned to !

Yet if I had to say, ‘ I shall see her in a month or two —
perhaps — as this time last year I was saying in a kind of
contented feeling !

Thank God I shall see her to-morrow — my dearest, best,
only Ba cannot change by to-morrow ! — What nonsense !
The words break down, yet I will be trying to use them !

God bless my dearest, ever bless her.

I shall be with you soon after this reaches you, I trust —
now, I kiss you, however, and now, my Ba !

Letters ! since you bid me send them, — do you not ? —
see what the longer says of the improved diction, freedom
from difficulty &c. Who is to praise for that, my Ba ? Oh,
your R. B. wholly and solely to be sure !

[Postmark: April 18, 1846]

Saturday.

So my dear, own Ba has good sense, best sense — whatever Flush’s may be ! Do you think . . (to take the
extreme horn of a certain dilemma I see) . . that —

Now, dearest, somehow I can’t write the great proof
down — I will tell you on Monday — as to my good sense.
I was wrong to give such a praise to myself in the particular
case you were alluding to at the time — the good sense of the
bird which finds out its mate amid a forest-full of birds of
another kind ! Why the poorest brown butterfly will seek
out a brown stone in a gravel walk, or brown leaf in a flower
bed, to settle on and be happy (And I suppose even dear
Carlyle is no longer my brown leaf ; at least, I could not go
last night. I will, however, try again on Monday — after
leaving you — with that elixir in my veins).

Mrs. Paine’s note is charming. I thank you, dearest,
for sending it — (How I like being reminded of thanks, due
from me to you, which I may somehow come near the expression of ! I am silent about an infinity of blessings —
but I do say how grateful I am for this kindness ! ). Now,
there is the legitimate process ; the proper benefit received,
in the first instance, and profited by, and thence grows in
proper time the desire of being admitted to see you — so
different from the vulgar ‘ Georgianas ‘ who, possibly, hearing
of the privilege extended to such a person as this we speak
of, would say, with the triumphant chuckle of low cunning,
‘ ah, — I will get as far, by one stroke of the pen — by one
bold desire ” to be thought of as I think of her.” ‘ She
could but ask and be refused ! Whereas Mrs. Paine was
already in possession of much more dear, dear Ba, than
could be taken away even by a refusal — besides, her reverence-
would have made her understand and acquiesce even
in that. Therefore, I am glad, sympathisingly glad she is
rewarded, that good, gentle Mrs. Paine ! I will bring her
note with me.

Because, here is Mr. Kenyon’s, and Landor’s (which
had been sent to Moxon’s some days ago, whence the delay)
— and Mrs. Jameson’s. All kind and indulgent and flattering
in their various ways . . but, my Ba, my dear, dear Ba,
other praises disregarding, I but harken those of yours — only
saying — Ah, it is wrong to take the sacrificial vessel and
say, — ‘ See, it holds my draught of wine, too ‘ ! — I will not do
so, not parody your verses again. And I like to be praised
now, in a sense, much, much more than ever — but, darling,
oh how easily, if need were, I could know the world was
abusing at its loudest outside ; if you were inside . . though
but the thinnest of gauze canopies kept us from the buzzing !
This is only said on this subject, struck out by it, not of
it, — for the praise is good true praise and from the worthies
of our time — but — you, I love, — and there is the world-wide
difference. And what ought I to say to Mr. Kenyon’s
report of me ? Stand quietly, assentingly ? You will agree
to this at least, that he cannot know what he says — only be
disposed to hope and believe it is so : still, to speak so to
you — what would I not do to repay him, if that could be !
What a divinely merciful thought of God for our sake . .
that we cannot know each other — infallibly know — as we
know other things, in their qualities ! For instance, I bid
you know my love for you (which would be knowing me) — I
complain that you do not, cannot — yet, — if you could . . my
Ba, would you have been ever quite my Ba? If you said,
calmly as when judging of material objects, ‘ there is affection,
so much, and sincerity, and admiration &c., yes, that I see,
of course, for it is there plainly ‘ — So I should lose the
delight crowning the delight, — first of the fact, as I know it;
and then of this ; that you desired to know it, chose to lean
forward, and take my poor testimony for a fact, believing
through desire, or at least will to believe — so that I do, in the
exercise of common sense, adore you, more and more, as I
live to see more, and feel more. So let me kiss you, my
pearl of woman. Do I ‘ remember ‘ praying God to bless me
through the blessing on you ? Shall I ever forget to pray so,
rather ! My dear — dearest, I pray now, with all my heart ;
may He bless you — and what else can now bless your
own R ? —

[Postmark: April 17, 1846]

Friday.

No, my own dearest, I did not see you sit in your chair,
nor in mine, yesterday — did I write nothing about your walking with me by the garden wall, and on the hill, and looking
down on London ? And afterwards you went with me, indeed, to Talfourd’s (last night was that purgatorial business,
— how could I make you think it related to Monday ?) If
I have to put the least thing into words, so I put it always !
Being just like the family of somebody — ‘ who were one
and all so stupid ‘ said he — ‘ that if you bade them spell A B
they answered B A — ‘ Nay, I spell Happiness, and Blessing,
and all other good words if ever so many letters by that
same Ba ! But I want to go on and say you kept me from
such an undiluted evening of misery (because I saw you
through it all) — oh, such an evening ! — it shall be the last, I
think — and the going out is so near, — the bonnet is bought !
And you pretend not to know I would walk barefoot till I
dropped, if so I might attain to the sight of you, and it.
Do let me say, for gratitude’s sake — it is like the sign of
spring in Shelley’s ‘ Prometheus ‘ —

When ‘ mild winds shake the elder-brake,
And the wandering herdsmen know
That the white thorn soon will blow ‘ :

— that the flower of my life will blow ! Now let me
try and answer everything in Ba’s darling letters and so
not be ‘ vexed’ afterward, — recollecting how she asked
this, or bade me be sure to reply to that, and how I
answered, spelling A B for B A ! First, there is a famous
contrivance against fly tormentors, a genuine canopy, gnat-repelling enclosure of muslin which covers your bed wholly,
and into which once introduce yourself dexterously (because
the plagues try to follow slily) and lo, you are in a
syren’s isle within the isle, a world cut off from the outer
one by that fine hazy cloudish gauze — a delight it is ! Only,
if you let one persisting critic of a buzzer lie perdue, he
will have you at a glorious advantage — (not that one ever
bit ME, in England or elsewhere). And now — your letters,
— Miss Bennet’s letter that yon received ‘just after I had
gone ‘ — will you be edified if I tell you what I received the
moment I got home ? (once, beforehand — my experience
or yours, which would you rather not have ?) My sister
pointed with immense solemnity to a packet, — then delivered
a message, and then — but hear the message — a ‘ Mrs. George
Sharp’ (unless I mistake the name) lives next door to Dickens
and awfully respects him — she asks one aunt of mine, to ask
another, to ask my sister, to ask me . . who have never seen
or heard of this Mrs. George, — me who am, she has understood, a friend of Dickens, — to get inserted in the Daily
News some paragraph of a reasonable length in recommendation
of the accompanying packet of cough-drops, (lozenges,
or pills — for I was not rightly instructed which) — my fee,
I suppose, being the said packet of pillsI ! All comment is
beyond me.

Well, but your Mrs. Bennet — what a wretched, disgust-
ing sfacciataccia ! I would not be accessory to keeping those
soapy bubbles of stupid vanity from bursting, by sparing a
rough finger, certainly not. How ‘ ought you to be grateful,
perhaps ? ‘ For what on earth ?

Dearest, dearest Ba, — a ‘ passing ‘ headache of ‘ these
few days,’ what can I say, or do ? May God bless you, and
care for all. Still the comfort continues, it is not that you
have made an effort, and so grown worse.

I am pretty well, — I half determine to go out and see
Carlyle to-night, — so to forget a hasty resolution against
all company (‘ other ‘ company I had written . . as if to
honour it — Ba’s is one company, and those people’s !—
‘ another ‘ !) — I think I will go.

I spoke about Mr. Kenyon, — because I never would in
my life take a step for myself if that could be), apart from
your good, without being guided by you where possible —
much more, therefore, in a matter directly concerning you
rather than me, did I want your opinion as to the course
most proper, in the event of &c. I do not think it likely he
will speak, or I shall have to answer . . but if that did
happen, and you were not at hand, my own dearest, — how
I should be grieved if, answering wrongly, I gave you annoyance ! Here I seem to understand your wish.

My Ba, my only, utterly dear love, may God reward
you for your blessing to me — my whole heart turns to you
— and in your own. I kiss you, dearest — this morning a
very ordinary motivetto in the overture to ‘ Rabuco ‘ seemed
to tell you more than I ever shall — I sit and speak to you
by that now !

R. B.

No letters yet from ‘ anybody ‘ — the few received are
laudatory however — I will send you one from the old sailor-
friend I told you of— but, mark ! you must not send it back,
to show my eyes and grieve my heart, when the bulky letter
proves to be only this — returned ! Landor’s in due time, I
suppose ! This I send is to make you laugh . . My Ba’s
dear laugh can hurt nobody, not even my friend here — who
has praised her poems more to me, there’s my consolation,
— Consuelo —

[Postmark: April 16, 1846]

Thursday.

How are you now, dearest ? If the worse for my visit
. . No, there is no affectation in what I would say — you
might be worse, you know, through excitement, whether
pleasurable or the reverse. One comfort is, the walking,
going down-stairs, &c. have not occasioned it. I expect
everything from your going out of doors, that is to be — what
a joy to write it, think of it, expect it ! Oh, why are you not
here — where I sit writing ; whence, in a moment, I could get
to know why the lambs are bleating so, in the field behind —
I do not see it from either window in this room — but I see a
beautiful sunshine (2½ p.m.) and a chestnut tree leafy all
over, in a faint trembling chilly way, to be sure — and a holly
hedge I see, and shrubs, and blossomed trees over the
garden wall, — were you but here, dearest, dearest — how we
would go out, with Flush on before, for with a key I have,
I lock out the world, and then look down on it ; for there
is a vast view from our greatest hill — did I ever tell you that
Wordsworth was shown that hill or its neighbour ; someone
saying ‘ R. B. lives over there by that hill ‘ — ‘ Hill ‘ ? interposed
Wordsworth — we call that, such as that, a rise !
I must have told you, I think. (While I write, the sun gets
ever brighter — you must be down-stairs, I feel sure — )

I fully meant to go out this morning — but there is a
pressing note from my old young friend, Frank Talfourd, to
get me to witness — only another play and farce ! — and what
is to be done ?

Here shall be my ending ‘for reasons, for reasons.’
To-morrow I will write more ; my Monday — to have to wait
so long ! And when I do see you, I begin to pour out profusions of confusions of speech about Mrs. Procter and her
vain notions — to what earthly good ? . . as it is very easy
to ask now ! now that I am here again, alone again.

Dear, dearest Ba, I cannot serve you, nor even talk to
you . . but love you, — oh, that I must dare say I can do,
as none other could — as you have yet to know !

Bless you my very dearest, sweetest Ba — I am your
own, heart and soul —

[Postmark: April 14, 1846]

Tuesday Morning.

I waited till this second letter should arrive — feeling that
it would be easier to address the answer to this.

About the other, — that part which you bid me not refer
to. You are obeyed now — my time will come in its turn,
and I will try and speak. With respect to the immediate
leaving England, you will let me say, I think, that all my
own projects depend on that, — there will not be one least
objection made to it by my father or mother, I know beforehand. You perhaps misconceived something I said last
Saturday. I meant the obvious fact however — that while
there would be a best way of finding myself with you, still,
from the worst way (probably, of taking a house opposite
Mrs. Procter’s) — from that even, to the best way of any other
life I can imagine, — what a descent ! From the worst of roses
to the most flourishing of — dandelions. But we breathe
together, understand together, know, feel, live together . .
I feel every day less and less need of trying to assure you I
feel thus and thus — I seem to know that you must know !

Mrs. Procter is very exactly the Mrs. Procter I knew
long ago. What she says is of course purely foolish. The
world does seem incurably stupid on this, as other points. I
understand Mr. Kenyon’s implied kindness — that is, — understand
he may think he sees my true good in this life with
older and better instructed eyes than my own — so benevolent
people beg me ‘ not to go out in the open air — without
something about my neck,’ and would gird on a triple
worsted ‘ comforter ‘ there, entirely for my good, if I would
let them. ‘ Why, Mr. Procter wears one ! ‘ Ah, but without
it, what a cold he would catch !

The explanatory note fills up an unseemly blank page —
and does not come at the end of the ‘ Soul Tragedy ‘ —
prose after prose — still it does look awkwardly — but then I
don’t consider that it excludes this last from the ‘ Bells ‘ —
rather it says this is the last, (no nine if you like, — as
the title says ‘ eight and last ‘ — from whence will be this
advantage, that, in the case of another edition, all the lyrics
&c. may go together under one common head of Lyrics and
Romances — and the ‘ Soul’s Tragedy,’ profiting by the
general move-up of the rest of the numbers, after the fashion
of hackney coaches on a stand when one is called off, step
into the place and take the style of No. 8 — and the public
not find themselves defrauded of the proper quantity !)

And shall I indeed see you to-morrow, Ba ? I will tell
you many things, it seems to me now, but when I am with
you they always float out of mind. The feelings must
remain unwritten — unsung too, I fear. I very often fancy
that if I had never before resorted to that mode of expres-
sion, to singing, — poetry — now I should resort to it, discover
it ! Whereas now — my very use and experience of it deters
me — if one phrase of mine should seem ‘ poetical ‘ in Mrs.
Procter’s sense — a conscious exaggeration, — put in for effect !
only seem I say ! So I dare not try yet — but one day !

Ba, I kept your letter yesterday, about me — it lay by my
head at night — that its good might not go from me, — such
perfect good ! How strange to hear what you say of my
letters, — of such and such a letter — some seem kind, and
kinder and kindest — and how should I guess why ? My
life and love flow steadily under all those bubbles, or
many or less — it is through the under current that, whatever
you see, does appear, no doubt — but also where nothing
appears, — all is one depth !

Bless you, all dearest beloved.

To-morrow, Wednesday !

Ever your very own,