Author: RB

Tuesday.

‘Out of window’ would be well, as I see the leap, if it ended (so far as I am concerned) in the worst way imaginable  – – I would I ‘run the risk’ (Ba’s other word) rationally, deliberately,  – – knowing what the ordinary law of chances in this world justifies in such a case; and if the result after all was unfortunate, it would be far easier to undergo the extremest penalty with so little to reproach myself for,  – – than to put aside the adventure,  – – waive the wondrous probability of such best fortune, in a fear of the barest possibility of an adverse event, and so go to my grave, Walter the Penniless, with an eternal recollection that Miss Burdett Coutts once offered to wager sundry millions with me that she could throw double-sixes a dozen times running  – – which wager I wisely refused to accept because it was not written in the stars that such a sequence might never be. I had rather, rather a thousand-fold lose my paltry stake, and be the one recorded victim to such an unexampled unluckiness that half a dozen mad comets, suns gone wrong, and lunatic moons must have come laboriously into conjunction for my special sake to bring it to pass, which were no slight honour, properly considered!  – – And this is my way of laughing, dearest Ba, when the excess of belief in you, and happiness with you, runs over and froths if it don’t sparkle  – – underneath is a deep, a sea not to be moved. But chance, chance! there is no chance here! I have gained enough for my life, I can only put in peril the gaining more than enough. You shall change altogether my dear, dearest love, and I will be happy to the last minute on what I can remember of this past year  – – I could do that. Now, jump with me out, Ba! If you feared for yourself  – – all would be different, sadly different  – – But saying what you do say, promising ‘the strength of arm’  – – do not wonder that I call it an assurance of all being ‘well’! All is best, as you promise  – – dear, darling Ba!  – – and I say, in my degree, with all the energy of my nature, as you say, promise as you promise  – – only meaning a worship of you that is solely fit for me, fit by position  – – are not you my ‘mistress?’ Come, some good out of those old conventions, in which you lost faith after the Bower’s disappearance, (it was carried by the singing angels, like the house at Loretto, to the Siren’s isle where we shall find it preserved in a beauty ‘very rare and absolute’)  – – is it not right you should be my Lady, my Queen? and you are, and ever must be, dear Ba. Because I am suffered to kiss the lips, shall I ever refuse to embrace the feet? and kiss lips, and embrace feet, love you wholly, my Ba! May God bless you  – –

Ever your own,

R.

It would be easy for Mr. Buckingham to find a Merchant-ship bound for some Mediterranean port, after a week or two in harbour, to another and perhaps a third  – – Naples, Palermo, Syra, Constantinople, and so on. The expense would be very trifling, but the want of comfort enormous for an invalid  – – the one advantage is the solitariness of the one passenger among all those rough new creatures. I like it much, and soon get deep into their friendship, but another has other ways of viewing matters. No one article provided by the ship in the way of provisions can anybody touch. Mr. B. must lay in his own stock, and the horrors of dirt and men’s ministry are portentous, yet by a little arrangement beforehand much might be done. Still, I only know my own powers of endurance, and counsel nobody to gain my experience. On the other hand, were all to do again, I had rather have seen Venice so, with the five or six weeks’ absolute rest of the mind’s eyes, than any other imaginable way,  – – except Balloon-travelling.

Do you think they meant Landor’s ‘Count Julian’  – – the ‘subject of his tragedy’ sure enough,  – – and that he was the friend of Southey? So it struck me  – –

 

March 16, 1846.

Indeed I would, dearest Ba, go with entire gladness and pride to see a light that came from your room  – – why should that surprise you? Well, you will know one day.

We understand each other too about the sofas and gilding  – – oh, I know you, my own sweetest! For me, if I had set those matters to heart, I should have turned into the obvious way of getting them  – – not out of it, as I did resolutely from the beginning. All I meant was, to express a very natural feeling  – – if one could give you diamonds for flowers, and if you liked diamonds,  – – then, indeed! As it is, wherever we are found shall be, if you please, ‘For the love’s sake found therein  – – sweetest house was ever seen!’

Mr. Kenyon must be merciful. Lilies are of all colours in Palestine  – – one sort is particularized as white with a dark blue spot and streak  – – the water lily, lotos, which I think I meant, is blue altogether.

I have walked this morning to town and back  – – I feel much better, ‘honestly’! The head better  – – the spirits rising  – – as how should they not, when you think all will go well in the end, when you write to me that you go down-stairs and are stronger  – – and when the rest is written?

Not more now, dearest, for time is pressing, but you will answer this,  – – the love that is not here,  – – not the idle words, and I will reply to-morrow. Thursday is so far away yet!

Bless you, my very own, only dearest!

 

Sunday.

March 16, 1846.

How will the love my heart is full of for you, let me be silent? Insufficient speech is better than no speech, in one regard  – – the speaker had tried words, and if they fail, hereafter he needs not reflect that he did not even try  – – so with me now, that loving you, Ba, with all my heart and soul, all my senses being lost in one wide wondering gratitude and veneration, I press close to you to say so, in this imperfect way, my dear dearest beloved! Why do you not help me, rather than take my words, my proper word, from me and call them yours, when yours they are not? You said lately love of you ‘made you humble’  – – just as if to hinder me from saying that earnest truth!  – – entirely true it is, as I feel ever more convincingly. You do not choose to understand it should be so, nor do I much care, for the one thing you must believe, must resolve to believe in its length and breadth, is that I do love you and live only in the love of you.

I will rest on the confidence that you do so believe! You know by this that it is no shadowy image of you and not you, which having attached myself to in the first instance, I afterward compelled my fancy to see reproduced, so to speak, with tolerable exactness to the original idea, in you, the dearest real you I am blessed with  – – you know what the eyes are to me, and the lips and the hair. And I, for my part, know now, while fresh from seeing you, certainly know, whatever I may have said a short time since, that you will go on to the end, that the arm round me will not let me go,  – – over such a blind abyss  – – I refuse to think, to fancy, towards what it would be to loose you now! So I give my life, my soul into your hand  – – the giving is a mere form too, it is yours, ever yours from the first  – – but ever as I see you, sit with you, and come away to think over it all, I find more that seems mine to give; you give me more life and it goes back to you.

I shall hear from you to-morrow  – – then, I will go out early and get done with some calls, in the joy and consciousness of what waits me, and when I return I will write a few words. Are these letters, these merest attempts at getting to talk with you through the distance  – – yet always with the consolation of feeling that you will know all, interpret all and forgive it and put it right  – – can such things be cared for, expected, as you say? Then, Ba, my life must be better  . . . with the closeness to help, and the ‘finding out the way’ for which love was always noted. If you begin making in fancy a lover to your mind, I am lost at once  – – but the one quality of affection for you, which would sooner or later have to be placed on his list of component graces; that I will dare start supply  – – the entire love you could dream of is here. You think you see some of the other adornments, and only too many; and you will see plainer one day, but with that I do not concern myself  – – you shall admire the true heroes  – – but me you shall love for the love’s sake. Let me kiss you, you, my dearest, dearest  – – God bless you ever  – –

 

March 12, 1846.

How I get to understand this much of Law  – – that prior possession is nine points of it! Just because your infinite adroitness got first hold of the point of view whence our connection looks like ‘a dream’  . . . I find myself shut out of my very own, unable to say what is oftenest in my thought; whereas the dear, miraculous dream you were, and are, my Ba! Only, vanish  – – that you will never! My own, and for ever!

Yesterday I read the poor, inconceivably inadequate notice in the People’s Journal. How curiously wrong, too, in the personal guesses! Sad work truly. For my old friend Mrs. Adams  – – no, I must be silent: the lyrics seem doggerel in its utter purity. And so the people are to be instructed in the new age of gold! I heard two days ago precisely what I told you  – – that there was a quarrel, &c. which this service was to smooth over, no doubt. Chorley told me, in a hasty word only, that all was over, Mr. Webster would not have anything to do with his play. The said W. is one of the poorest of poor creatures, and as Chorley was certainly forewarned, forearmed I will hope him to have been likewise  – – still it is very disappointing  – – he was apparently nearer than most aspirants to the prize,  – – having the best will of the actresses on whose shoulder the burthen was to lie. I hope they have been quite honest with him  – – knowing as I do the easy process of transferring all sorts of burthens, in that theatrical world, from responsible to irresponsible members of it, actors to manager, manager to actors, as the case requires. And it is a ‘hope deferred’ with Chorley; not for the second or third time. I am very glad that he cares no more than you tell me.

Still you go down-stairs, and still return safely, and every step leads us nearer to my ‘hope.’ How unremittingly you bless me  – – a visit promises a letter, a letter brings such news, crowns me with such words, and speaks of another visit  – – and so the golden links extend. Dearest words, dearest letters  – – as I add each to my heap, I say  – – I do say  – – ‘I was poor, it now seems, a minute ago, when I had not this!’ Bless you, dear, dear Ba. On Saturday I shall be with you, I trust  – – may God bless you! Ever your own

 

March 11, 1846.

Dear, dear Ba, but indeed I did return home earlier by two or three good hours than the night before  – – and to find no letter,  – – none of yours! That was reserved for this morning early, and then a rest came, a silence, over the thoughts of you  – – and now again, comes this last note! Oh, my love  – – why  – – what is it you think to do, or become ‘afterward,’ that you may fail in and so disappoint me? It is not very unfit that you should thus punish yourself, and that, sinning by your own ambition of growing something beyond my Ba even, you should ‘fear’ as you say! For, sweet, why wish, why think to alter ever by a line, change by a shade, turn better if that were possible, and so only rise the higher above me, get further from instead of nearer to my heart? What I expect, what I build my future on, am quite, quite prepared to ‘risk’ everything for,  – – is that one belief that you will not alter, will just remain as you are  – – meaning by ‘you,’ the love in you, the qualities I have known (for you will stop me, if I do not stop myself) what I have evidence of in every letter, in every word, every look. Keeping these, if it be God’s will that the body passes,  – – what is that? Write no new letters, speak no new words, look no new looks,  – – only tell me, years hence that the present is alive, that what was once, still is  – – and I am, must needs be, blessed as ever! You speak of my feeling as if it were a pure speculation  – – as if because I see somewhat in you I make a calculation that there must be more to see somewhere or other  – – where bdellium is found, the onyx-stone may be looked for in the mystic land of the four rivers! And perhaps  . . . ah, poor human nature!  – – perhaps I do think at times on what may be to find! But what is that to you? I offer for the bdellium  – – the other may be found or not found  . . . what I see glitter on the ground, that will suffice to make me rich as  – – rich as  – –

So bless you my own Ba! I would not wait for paper, and you must forgive half-sheets, instead of a whole celestial quire to my love and praise. Are you so well? So adventurous? Thank you from my heart of hearts. And I am quite well to-day (and have received a note from Procter just this minute putting off his dinner on account of the death of his wife’s sister’s husband abroad). Observe this sheet I take as I find  – – I mean, that the tear tells of no improper speech repented of  – – what English, what sense, what a soul’s tragedy! but then, what real, realest love and more than love for my ever dearest Ba possesses her own  – –

Tuesday Morning.

March 10, 1846.

Dear, dear Ba, if you were here I should not much speak to you, not at first  – – nor, indeed, at last,  – – but as it is, sitting alone, only words can be spoken, or (worse) written, and, oh how different to look into the eyes and imagine what might be said, what ought to be said, though it never can be  – – and to sit and say and write, and only imagine who looks above me, looks down, understanding and pardoning all! My love, my Ba, the fault you found once with some expressions of mine about the amount of imperishable pleasures already hoarded in my mind, the indestructible memories of you; that fault, which I refused to acquiesce under the imputation of, at first, you remember  – – well, what a fault it was, by this better light! If all stopped here and now; horrible! complete oblivion were the thing to be prayed for, rather! As it is, now, I must go on, must live the life out, and die yours. And you are doing your utmost to advance the event of events,  – – the exercise, and consequently (is it not?) necessarily improved sleep, and the projects for the fine days, the walking  . . . a pure bliss to think of! Well, now  – – I think I shall show seamanship of a sort, and ‘try another tack’  – – do not be over bold, my sweetest; the cold is considerable,  – – taken into account the previous mildness. One ill-advised (I, the adviser, I should remember!) too early, or too late descent to the drawing-room, and all might be ruined,  – – thrown back so far  . . . seeing that our flight is to be prayed for ‘not in the winter’  – – and one would be called on to wait, wait  – – in this world where nothing waits, rests, as can be counted on. Now think of this, too, dearest, and never mind the slowness, for the sureness’ sake! How perfectly happy I am as you stand by me, as yesterday you stood, as you seem to stand now!

I will write to-morrow more: I came home last night with a head rather worse; which in the event was the better, for I took a little medicine and all is very much improved to-day. I shall go out presently, and return very early and take as much care as is proper  – – for I thought of Ba, and the sublimities of Duty, and that gave myself airs of importance, in short, as I looked at my mother’s inevitable arrow-root this morning. So now I am well; so now, is dearest Ba well? I shall hear to-night  . . . which will have its due effect, that circumstance, in quickening my retreat from Forster’s Rooms. All was very pleasant last evening  – – and your letter &c. went à qui de droit, and Mr. W. Junior had to smile good-naturedly when Mr. Burges began laying down this general law, that the sons of all men of genius were poor creatures  – – and Chorley and I exchanged glances after the fashion of two Augurs meeting at some street-corner in Cicero’s time, as he says. And Mr. Kenyon was kind, kinder, kindest, as ever, ‘and thus ends a wooing’!  – – no, a dinner  – – my wooing ends never, never; and so prepare to be asked to give, and give, and give till all is given in Heaven! And all I give you is just my heart’s blessing; God bless you, my dearest, dearest Ba!

 

Saturday Morning.

March 7, 1846.

You call me ‘kind’; and by this time I have no heart to call you such names  – – I told you, did I not once? that ‘Ba’ had got to convey infinitely more of you to my sense than ‘dearest,’ ‘sweetest,’ all or any epithets that break down with their load of honey like bees  – – to say you are ‘kind,’ you that so entirely and unintermittingly bless me,  – – it will never do now, ‘Ba.’ All the same, one way there is to make even ‘Ba’ dearer,  – – ‘my Ba,’ I say to myself!

About my fears  – – whether of opening doors or entering people  – – one thing is observable and prevents the possibility of any misconception  – – I desire, have been in the habit of desiring, to increase them, far from diminishing  – – they relate, of course, entirely to you  – – and only through you affect me the least in the world. Put your well-being out of the question, so far as I can understand it to be involved,  – – and the pleasure and pride I should immediately choose would be that the whole world knew our position. What pleasure, what pride! But I endeavour to remember on all occasions  – – and perhaps succeed in too few  – – that it is very easy for me to go away and leave you who cannot go. I only allude to this because some people are ‘naturally nervous’ and all that  – – and I am quite of another kind.

Last evening I went out  – – having been kept at home in the afternoon to see somebody  . . . went walking for hours. I am quite well to-day and, now your letter comes, my Ba, most happy. And, as the sun shines, you are perhaps making the perilous descent now, while I write  – – oh, to meet you on the stairs! And I shall really see you on Monday, dearest? So soon, it ought to feel, considering the dreary weeks that now get to go between our days! For music, I made myself melancholy just now with some ‘Concertos for the Harpsichord by Mr. Handel’  – – brought home by my father the day before yesterday;  – – what were light, modern things once! Now I read not very long ago a French memoir of ‘Claude le Jeune’ called in his time the Prince of Musicians,  – – no, ‘Phoenix‘  – – the unapproachable wonder to all time  – – that is, twenty years after his death about  – – and to this pamphlet was prefixed as motto this startling axiom  – – ‘In Music, the Beau Ideal changes every thirty years’  – – well, is not that true? The Idea, mind, changes  – – the general standard  . . . so that it is no answer that a single air, such as many one knows, may strike as freshly as ever  – – they were not according to the Ideal of their own time  – – just now, they drop into the ready ear,  – – next hundred years, who will be the Rossini? who is no longer the Rossini even I remember  – – his early overtures are as purely Rococo as Cimarosa’s or more. The sounds remain, keep their character perhaps  – – the scale’s proportioned notes affect the same, that is,  – – the major third, or minor seventh  – – but the arrangement of these, the sequence the law  – – for them, if it should change every thirty years! To Corelli nothing seemed so conclusive in Heaven or earth as this

I don’t believe there is one of his sonatas wherein that formula does not do duty. In these things of Handel that seems replaced by

 – – that was the only true consummation! Then,  – – to go over the hundred years,  – – came Rossini’s unanswerable coda:

which serves as base to the infinity of songs, gone, gone  – – so gone by! From all of which Ba draws this ‘conclusion’ that these may be worse things than Bartoli’s Tuscan to cover a page with!  – – yet, yet the pity of it! Le Jeune, the Phoenix, and Rossini who directed his letters to his mother as ‘mother of the famous composer’  – – and Henry Lawes, and Dowland’s Lute, ah me!

Well, my conclusion is the best, the everlasting, here and I trust elsewhere  – – I am your own, my Ba, ever your

R.

 

Friday Morning.

March 6, 1846.

I am altogether your own, dearest  – – the words were only words and the playful feelings were play  – – while the fact has always been so irresistibly obvious as to make them break on and off it, fantastically like water turning to spray and spurts of foam on a great solid rock. Now you call the rock, a rock, but you must have known what chance you had of pushing it down when you sent all those light fancies and free-leaves, and refusals-to-hold-responsible, to do what they could. It is a rock; and may be quite barren of good to you,  – – not large enough to build houses on, not small enough to make a mantelpiece of, much less a pedestal for a statue, but it is real rock, that is all.

It is always I who ‘torment’ you  – – instead of taking the present and blessing you, and leaving the future to its own cares. I certainly am not apt to look curiously into what next week is to bring, much less next month or six months, but you, the having you, my own, dearest beloved, that is as different in kind as in degree from any other happiness or semblance of it that even seemed possible of realization. Then, now, the health is all to stay, or retard us  – – oh, be well, my Ba!

Let me speak of that letter  – – I am ashamed at having mentioned those circumstances, and should not have done so, but for their insignificance  – – for I knew that if you ever did hear of them, all any body would say would not amount to enough to be repeated to me and so get explained at once. Now that the purpose is gained, it seems little worth gaining. You bade me not send the letter: I will not.

As for ‘what people say’  – – ah  – – Here lies a book, Bartoli’s ‘Simboli’ and this morning I dipped into his Chapter XIX. His ‘Symbol’ is ‘Socrate fatto ritrar su’ Boccali’ and the theme of his dissertating, ‘L’indegnità del mettere in disprezzo i più degni filosofi dell’antichità.’ He sets out by enlarging on the horror of it  – – then describes the character of Socrates, then tells the story of the representation of the ‘Clouds,’and thus gets to his ‘symbol’  – – ‘le pazzie fatte spacciare a Socrate in quella commedia  . . . il misero in tanto scherno e derisione del pubblico, che perfino i vasai dipingevano il suo ritratto sopra gli orci, i fiaschi, i boccali, e ogni vasellamento da più vile servigio. Così quel sommo filosofo  . . . fu condotto a far di se par le case d’Atene una continua commedia, con solamente vederlo comparir così scontraffatto e ridicolo, come i vasai sel formavano d’invenzione’  – –

There you have what a very clever man can say in choice Tuscan on a passage in Ælian which he takes care not to quote nor allude to, but which is the sole authority for the fact. Ælian, speaking of Socrates’ magnanimity, says that on the first representation, a good many foreigners being present who were at a loss to know ‘who could be this Socrates’  – – the sage himself stood up that he might be pointed out to them by the auditory at large  . . . ‘which’ says Ælian  – – ‘was no difficulty for them, to whom his features were most familiar,  – – the very potters being in the habit of decorating their vessels with his likeness‘  – – no doubt out of a pleasant and affectionate admiration. Yet see how ‘people’ can turn this out of its sense,  – – ‘say’ their say on the simplest, plainest word or deed, and change it to its opposite! ‘God’s great gift of speech abused’ indeed!

But what shall we hear of it there, my Siren?

On Monday  – – is it not? Who was it looked into the room just at our leave-taking?

Bless you, my ever dearest,  – – remember to walk, to go down-stairs  – – and be sure that I will endeavour to get well for my part. To-day I am very well  – – with this letter!

Your own.

 

Wednesday Morning.

March 4, 1846.

Ah, sweetest, don’t mind people and their lies any more than I shall; if the toad does ‘take it into his toad’s head to spit at you’  – – you will not ‘drop dead,’ I warrant. All the same, if one may make a circuit through a flower-bed and see the less of his toad-habits and general ugliness, so much the better  – – no words can express my entire indifference (far below contempt) for what can be said or done. But one thing, only one, I choose to hinder being said, if I can  – – the others I would not if I could  – – why prevent the toad’s puffing himself out thrice his black bigness if it amuses him among those wet stones? We shall be in the sun.

I dare say I am unjust  – – hasty certainly, in the other matter  – – but all faults are such inasmuch as they are ‘mistakes of the intellect’  – – toads may spit or leave it alone,  – – but if I ever see it right, exercising my intellect, to treat any human beings like my ‘chattels’  – – I shall pay for that mistake one day or another, I am convinced  – – and I very much fear that you would soon discover what one fault of mine is, if you were to hear anyone assert such a right in my presence.

Well, I shall see you to-morrow  – – had I better come a little later, I wonder?  – – half-past three, for instance, staying, as last time, till  . . . ah, it is ill policy to count my treasure aloud! Or shall I come at the usual time to-morrow? If I do not hear, at the usual time!  – – because, I think you would  – – am sure you would have considered and suggested it, were it necessary.

Bless you, dearest  – – ever your own.

I said nothing about that Mr. Russell and his proposition  – – by all means, yes  – – let him do more good with that noble, pathetic ‘lay’  – – and do not mind the ‘burthen,’ if he is peremptory  – – so that he duly specify ‘by the singer‘  – – with that precaution nothing but good can come of his using it.

 

Tuesday.

March 3, 1846.

First and most important of all,  – – dearest, ‘angry’  – – with you, and for that! It is just as if I had spoken contemptuously of that Gallery I so love and so am grateful to  – – having been used to go there when a child, far under the age allowed by the regulations  – – those two Guidos, the wonderful Rembrandt of Jacob’s vision, such a Watteau, the triumphant three Murillo pictures, a Giorgione music-lesson group, all the Poussins with the ‘Armida’ and ‘Jupiter’s nursing’  – – and  – – no end to ‘ands’  – – I have sate before one, some one of those pictures I had predetermined to see, a good hour and then gone away  . . . it used to be a green half-hour’s walk over the fields. So much for one error, now for the second like unto it; what I meant by charging you with seeing, (not, not ‘looking for’)  – – seeing undue ‘security’ in that, in the form,  – – I meant to say ‘you talk about me being ‘free’ now, free till then, and I am rather jealous of the potency attributed to the form, with all its solemnity, because it is a form, and no more  – – yet you frankly agree with me that that form complied with, there is no redemption; yours I am then sure enough, to repent at leisure &c. &c.’ So I meant to ask, ‘then, all now said, all short of that particular form of saying it, all goes for comparatively nothing’? Here it is written down  – – you ‘wish to suspend all decisions as long as possible’  – – that form effects the decision, then,  – – till then, ‘where am I’? Which is just what Lord Chesterfield cautions people against asking when they tell stories. Love, Ba, my own heart’s dearest, if all is not decided now  – – why  – – hear a story, à propos of storytelling, and deduce what is deducible. A very old Unitarian minister met a still older evangelical brother  – – John Clayton (from whose son’s mouth I heard what you shall hear)  – – the two fell to argument about the true faith to be held  – – after words enough, ‘Well,’ said the Unitarian, as winding up the controversy with an amicable smile  – – ‘at least let us hope we are both engaged in the pursuit of Truth!’  – – ‘Pursuit do you say?’ cried the other, ‘here am I with my years eighty and odd  – – if I haven’t found Truth by this time where is my chance, pray?’ My own Ba, if I have not already decided, alas for me and the solemn words that are to help! Though in another point of view there would be some luxurious feeling, beyond the ordinary, in knowing one was kept safe to one’s heart’s good by yet another wall than the hitherto recognised ones. Is there any parallel in the notion I once heard a man deliver himself of in the street  – – a labourer talking with his friends about ‘wishes‘  – – and this one wished, if he might get his wish, ‘to have a nine gallon cask of strong ale set running that minute and his own mouth to be tied under it’  – – the exquisiteness of the delight was to be in the security upon security,  – – the being ‘tied.’ Now, Ba says I shall not be ‘chained’ if she can help!

But now  – – here all the jesting goes. You tell me what was observed in the ‘moment’s’ visit; by you, and (after, I suppose) by your sisters. First, I will always see with your eyes there  – – next, what I see I will never speak, if it pain you; but just this much truth I ought to say, I think. I always give myself to you for the worst I am,  – – full of faults as you will find, if you have not found them. But I will not affect to be so bad, so wicked, as I count wickedness, as to call that conduct other than intolerable  – – there, in my conviction of that, is your real ‘security’ and mine for the future as the present. That a father choosing to give out of his whole day some five minutes to a daughter, supposed to be prevented from participating in what he, probably, in common with the whole world of sensible men, as distinguished from poets and dreamers, consider every pleasure of life, by a complete foregoing of society  – – that he, after the Pisa business and the enforced continuance, and as he must believe, permanence of this state in which any other human being would go mad  – – I do dare say, for the justification of God, who gave the mind to be used in this world,  – – where it saves us, we are taught, or destroys us,  – – and not to be sunk quietly, overlooked, and forgotten; that, under these circumstances, finding  . . . what, you say, unless he thinks he does find, he would close the door of his house instantly; a mere sympathizing man, of the same literary tastes, who comes good-naturedly, on a proper and unexceptionable introduction, to chat with and amuse a little that invalid daughter, once a month, so far as is known, for an hour perhaps,  – – that such a father should show himself ‘not pleased plainly,’ at such a circumstance  . . . my Ba, it is shocking! See, I go wholly on the supposition that the real relation is not imagined to exist between us. I so completely could understand a repugnance to trust you to me were the truth known, that, I will confess, I have several times been afraid the very reverse of this occurrence would befall; that your father would have at some time or other thought himself obliged, by the usual feeling of people in such cases, to see me for a few minutes and express some commonplace thanks after the customary mode (just as Capt. Domett sent a heap of unnecessary thanks to me not long ago for sending now a letter now a book to his son in New Zealand  – – keeping up the spirits of poor dear Alfred now he is cut off from the world at large)  – – and if this had been done, I shall not deny that my heart would have accused me  – – unreasonably I know but still, suppression, and reserve, and apprehension  – – the whole of that is horrible always! But this way of looking on the endeavour of anybody, however humble, to just preserve your life, remedy in some degree the first, if it was the first, unjustifiable measure,  – – this being ‘displeased’  – – is exactly what I did not calculate upon. Observe, that in this only instance I am able to do as I shall be done by; to take up the arms furnished by the world, the usages of society  – – this is monstrous on the world’s showing! I say this now that I may never need recur to it  – – that you may understand why I keep such entire silence henceforth.

Get but well, keep but as well, and all is easy now. This wonderful winter  – – the spring  – – the summer  – – you will take exercise, go up and down stairs, get strong. I pray you, at your feet, to do this, dearest! Then comes Autumn, with the natural expectations, as after rouge one expects noir: the likelihood of a severe winter after this mild one, which to prevent, you reiterate your demand to go and save your life in Italy, ought you not to do that? And the matters brought to issue, (with even, if possible, less shadow of ground for a refusal than before, if you are well, plainly well enough to bear the voyage) there I will bid you ‘be mine in the obvious way’  – – if you shall preserve your belief in me  – – and you may in much, in all important to you. Mr. Kenyon’s praise is undeserved enough, but yesterday Milnes said I was the only literary man he ever knew, tenax propositi, able to make out a life for himself and abide in it  – – ‘for,’ he went on, ‘you really do live without any of this titillation and fussy dependence upon adventitious excitement of all kinds, they all say they can do without.’ That is more true  – – and I intend by God’s help to live wholly for you; to spend my whole energies in reducing to practice the feeling which occupies me, and in the practical operation of which, the other work I had proposed to do will be found included, facilitated  – – I shall be able  – – but of this there is plenty time to speak hereafter  – – I shall, I believe, be able to do this without even allowing the world to very much misinterpret  – – against pure lying there is no defence, but all up to that I hope to hinder or render unimportant  – – as you shall know in time and place.

I have written myself grave, but write to me, dear, dearest, and I will answer in a lighter mood  – – even now I can say how it was yesterday’s hurry happened. I called on Milnes  – – who told me Hanmer had broken a bone in his leg and was laid up, so I called on him too  – – on Moxon, by the way, (his brother telling me strangely cheering news, from the grimmest of faces, about my books selling and likely to sell  . . . your wishes, Ba!)  – – then in Bond Street about some business with somebody, then on Mrs. Montagu who was out walking all the time, and home too. I found a letter from Mr. Kenyon, perfectly kind, asking me to go on Monday to meet friends, and with yours to-day comes another confirming the choice of the day. How entirely kind he is!

I am very well, much better, indeed  – – taking that bath with sensibly good effect, to-night I go to Montagu’s again; for shame, having kept away too long.

And the rest shall answer yours  – – dear! Not ‘much to answer?’ And Beethoven, and Painting and  – – what is the rest and shall be answered! Bless you, now, my darling  – – I love you, ever shall love you, ever be your own.