Author: RB

Sunday Evening.

March 2, 1846.

One or two words, if no more, I must write to dearest Ba, the night would go down in double blackness if I had neither written nor been written to! So here is another piece of ‘kindness’ on my part, such as I have received praise for of late! My own sweetest, there is just this good in such praise, that by it one comes to something pleasantly definite amid the hazy uncertainties of mere wishes and possibilities  – – while my whole heart does, does so yearn, love, to do something to prove its devotion for you; and, now and then, amuses itself with foolish imaginings of real substantial services to which it should be found equal if fortune so granted; suddenly you interpose with thanks, in such terms as would all too much reward the highest of even those services which are never to be; and for what?  – – for a note, a going to Town, a  – –  – – ! Well, there are definite beginnings certainly, if you will recognise them  – – I mean, that since you do accept, far from ‘despising this day of small things,’ then I may take heart, and be sure that even though none of the great achievements should fall to my happy chance, still the barrenest, flattest life will  – – must of needs produce in its season better fruits than these poor ones  – – I keep it, value it, now, that it may produce such.

Also I determine never again to ‘analyse,’ nor let you analyse if the sweet mouth can be anyway stopped: the love shall be one and indivisible  – – and the Loves we used to know from

(which is surely the next line). Now am I not anxious to know what your father said? And if anybody else said or wondered  . . . how hould I know? Of all fighting  – – the warfare with shadows  – – what a work is there. But tell me,  – – and, with you for me  – –

Bless me dearest ever, as the face above mine blesses me  – –

Your own

Sir Moses set off this morning, I hear  – – somebody yesterday called the telescope an ‘optical delusion,’ anticipating many more of the kind! So much for this ‘wandering Jew.’

 

March 2, 1846.

Dearest, I have been kept in town and just return in time to say why you have no note  . . . to-morrow I will write  . . . so much there is to say on the subject of this letter I find.

Bless you, all beloved  – –

R.B.

Oh, do not sleep another night on that horrible error I have led you into! The ‘Dulwich Gallery’!  – – !!!  – – oh, no. Only some pictures to be sold at the Greyhound Inn, Dulwich  – – ‘the genuine property of a gentleman deceased.’

 

February 27, 1846.

To be sure my ‘first person’ was nonsensical, and, in that respect made speak properly, I hope, only he was cut short in the middle of his performance by the exigencies of the post. So, never mind what such persons say, my sweetest, because they know nothing at all  – – quod erat demonstrandum. But you, love, you speak roses, and hawthorn-blossoms when you tell me of the cloak put on, and the descent, and the entry, and staying and delaying. I will have had a hand in all that; I know what I wished all the morning, and now this much came true! But you should have seen the regimentals, if I could have so contrived it, for I confess to a Chinese love for bright red  – – the very names ‘vermilion’ ‘scarlet’ warm me, yet in this cold climate nobody wears red to comfort one’s eye save soldiers and fox hunters, and old women fresh from a Parish Christmas Distribution of cloaks. To dress in floating loose crimson silk, I almost understand being a Cardinal! Do you know anything of Nat Lee’s Tragedies? In one of them a man angry with a Cardinal cries  – –

Is not that good? and presently, when the same worthy is poisoned (that is the Cardinal)  – – they bid him  – – ‘now, Cardinal, lie down and roar!’

Think of thy scarlet sins!

Of the justice of all which, you will judge with no Mrs. Jameson for guide when we see the Sistina together, I trust! By the way, yesterday I went to Dulwich to see some pictures, by old Teniers, Murillo, Gainsborough, Raphael!  – – then twenty names about, and last but one, as if just thought of, ‘Correggio.’ The whole collection, including ‘a divine picture by Murillo,’ and Titian’s Daughter (hitherto supposed to be in the Louvre)  – – the whole I would, I think, have cheerfully given a pound or two for the privilege of not possessing  – – so execrable as sign-paintings even! ‘Are there worse poets in their way than painters?’ Yet the melancholy business is here  – – that the bad poet goes out of his way, writes his verses in the language he learned in order to do a hundred other things with it, all of which he can go on and do afterwards  – – but the painter has spent the best of his life in learning even how to produce such monstrosities as these, and to what other good do his acquisitions go? This short minute of life our one chance, an eternity on either side! and a man does not walk whistling and ruddy by the side of hawthorn hedges in spring, but shuts himself up and conies out after a dozen years with ‘Titian’s Daughter’ and, there, gone is his life, let somebody else try!

I have tried  – – my trial is made too!

To-morrow you shall tell me, dearest, that Mrs. Jameson wondered to see you so well  – – did she not wonder? Ah, to-morrow! There is a lesson from all this writing and mistaking and correcting and being corrected; and what, but that a word goes safely only from lip to lip, dearest? See how the cup slipped from the lip and snapped the chrystals, you say! But the writing is but for a time  – – ‘a time and times and half a time!’  – – would I knew when the prophetic weeks end! Still, one day, as I say, no more writing, (and great scandalization of the third person, peeping through the fringes of Flush’s ears!) meanwhile, I wonder whether if I meet Mrs. Jameson I may practise diplomacy and say carelessly ‘I should be glad to know what Miss B. is like  – – ‘ No, that I must not do, something tells me, ‘for reasons, for reasons’  – –

I do not know  – – you may perhaps have to wait a little longer for my ‘divine Murillo’ of a Tragedy. My sister is copying it as I give the pages, but  – – in fact my wise head does ache a little  – – it is inconceivable! As if it took a great storm to topple over some stone, and once the stone pushed from its right place, any bird’s foot, which would hardly bend the hawthorn spray, may set it trembling! The aching begins with reading the presentation-list at the Drawing-room quite naturally, and with no shame at all! But it is gentle, well-behaved aching now, so I do care, as you bid me, Ba, my Ba, whom I call Ba to my heart but could not, I really believe, call so before another, even your sister, if  – – if  – –

But Ba, I call you boldly here, and I dare kiss your dear, dear eyes, till to-morrow  – – Bless you, my own.

 

Thursday.

February 26, 1846.

As for the ‘third person,’ my sweet Ba, he was a wise speaker from the beginning; and in our case he will say, turning to me  – – ‘the late Robert Hall  – – when a friend admired that one with so high an estimate of the value of intellectuality in woman should yet marry some kind of cook-maid animal, as did the said Robert; wisely answered, “you can’t kiss Mind”! May you not discover eventually,’ (this is to me) ‘that mere intellectual endowments  – – though incontestably of the loftiest character  – – mere Mind, though that Mind be Miss B’s  – – cannot be kissed  – – nor, repent too late the absence of those humbler qualities, those softer affections which, like flowerets at the mountain’s foot, if not so proudly soaring as, as, as! . . .’ and so on, till one of us died, with laughing or being laughed at! So judges the third person! and if, to help him, we let him into your room at Wimpole Street, suffered him to see with Flush’s eyes, he would say with just as wise an air ‘True, mere personal affections may be warm enough, but does it augur well for the durability of an attachment that it should be wholly, exclusively based on such perishable attractions as the sweetness of a mouth, the beauty of an eye? I could wish, rather, to know that there was something of less transitory nature co-existent with this  – – some congeniality of Mental pursuit, some  – – ‘ Would he not say that? But I can’t do his platitudes justice because here is our post going out and I have been all the morning walking in the perfect joy of my heart, with your letter, and under its blessing  – – dearest, dearest Ba  – – let me say more to-morrow  – – only this now, that you  – – ah, what are you not to me! My dearest love, bless you  – – till to-morrow when I will strengthen the prayer; (no, lengthen it!)

Ever your own.

‘Hawthorn’  – – to show how Spring gets on!

 

Wednesday Morning.

February 25, 1846.

Once you were pleased to say, my own Ba, that ‘I made you do as I would.’ I am quite sure, you make me speak as you would, and not at all as I mean  – – and for one instance, I never surely spoke anything half so untrue as that ‘I came with the intention of loving whomever I should find’  – – No! wreathed shells and hollows in ruins, and roofs of caves may transform a voice wonderfully, make more of it or less, or so change it as to almost alter, but turn a ‘no’ into a ‘yes’ can no echo (except the Irish one), and I said ‘no’ to such a charge, and still say ‘no.’ I did have a presentiment  – – and though it is hardly possible for me to look back on it now without lending it the true colours given to it by the event, yet I can put them aside, if I please, and remember that I not merely hoped it would not be so (not that the effect I expected to be produced would be less than in anticipation, certainly I did not hope that, but that it would range itself with the old feelings of simple reverence and sympathy and friendship, that I should love you as much as I supposed I could love, and no more) but in the confidence that nothing could occur to divert me from my intended way of life, I made  – – went on making arrangements to return to Italy. You know  – – did I not tell you  – – I wished to see you before I returned? And I had heard of you just so much as seemed to make it impossible such a relation could ever exist. I know very well, if you choose to refer to my letters you may easily bring them to bear a sense in parts, more agreeable to your own theory than to mine, the true one  – – but that was instinct, Providence  – – anything rather than foresight. Now I will convince you! yourself have noticed the difference between the letters and the writer; the greater ‘distance of the latter from you,’ why was that? Why, if not because the conduct began with him, with one who had now seen you  – – was no continuation of the conduct, as influenced by the feeling, of the letters  – – else, they, if near, should have enabled him, if but in the natural course of time and with increase of familiarity, to become nearer  – – but it was not so! The letters began by loving you after their way  – – but what a world-wide difference between that love and the true, the love from seeing and hearing and feeling, since you make me resolve, what now lies blended so harmoniously, into its component parts. Oh, I know what is old from what is new, and how chrystals may surround and glorify other vessels meant for ordinary service than Lord N’s! But I don’t know that handling may not snap them off, some of the more delicate ones; and if you let me, love, I will not again, ever again, consider how it came and whence, and when, so curiously, so pryingly, but believe that it was always so, and that it all came at once, all the same; the more unlikelinesses the better, for they set off the better the truth of truths that here, (‘how begot? how nourished?’)  – – here is the whole wondrous Ba filling my whole heart and soul; and over-filling it, because she is in all the world, too, where I look, where I fancy. At the same time, because all is so wondrous and so sweet, do you think that it would be so difficult for me to analyse it, and give causes to the effects in sufficiently numerous instances, even to ‘justify my presentiment?’ Ah, dear, dearest Ba, I could, could indeed, could account for all, or enough! But you are unconscious, I do believe, of your power, and the knowledge of it would be no added grace, perhaps! So let us go on  – – taking a lesson out of the world’s book in a different sense. You shall think I love you for  – – (tell me, you must, what for) while in my secret heart I know what my ‘mission of humanity’ means, and what telescopic and microscopic views it procures me. Enough  – – Wait, one word about the ‘too kind letters’  – – could not the same Montefiore understand that though he deserved not one of his thousand guineas, yet that he is in disgrace if they bate him of his next gift by merely ten? It is all too kind  – – but I shall feel the diminishing of the kindness, be very sure! Of that there is, however, not too alarming a sign in this dearest, because last of all  – – dearest letter of all  – – till the next! I looked yesterday over the ‘Tragedy,’ and think it will do after all. I will bring one part at least next time, and ‘Luria’ take away, if you let me, so all will be off my mind, and April and May be the welcomer? Don’t think I am going to take any extraordinary pains. There are some things in the ‘Tragedy’ I should like to preserve and print now, leaving the future to spring as it likes, in any direction, and these half-dead, half-alive works fetter it, if left behind.

Yet one thing will fetter it worse, only one thing  – – if you, in any respect, stay behind? You that in all else help me and will help me, beyond words  – – beyond dreams  – – if, because I find you, your own works stop  – – ‘then comes the Selah and the voice is hushed.’ Oh, no, no, dearest, so would the help cease to be help  – – the joy to be joy, Ba herself to be quite Ba, and my own Siren singing song for song. Dear love, will that be kind, and right, and like the rest? Write and promise that all shall be resumed, the romance-poem chiefly, and I will try and feel more yours than ever now. Am I not with you in the world, proud of you  – – and vain, too, very likely, which is all the sweeter if it is a sin as you teach me. Indeed dearest, I have set my heart on your fulfilling your mission  – – my heart is on it! Bless you, my Ba  – –

Your R.B.

I am so well as to have resumed the shower-bath (this morning)  – – and I walk, especially near the elms and stile  – – and mean to walk, and be very well  – – and you, dearest?

 

Tuesday.

February 24, 1846.

Ah, sweetest, in spite of our agreement, here is the note that sought not to go, but must  – – because, if there is no speaking of Mrs. Jamesons and such like without bringing in your dear name (not dearest name, my Ba!) what is the good of not writing it down, now, when I, though possessed with the love of it no more than usual, yet may speak, and to a hearer? And I have to thank you with all my heart for the good news of the increasing strength and less need for the opium  – – how I do thank you, my dearest  – – and desire to thank God through whose goodness it all is! This I could not but say now, to-morrow I will write at length, having been working a little this morning, with whatever effect. So now I will go out and see your elm-trees and gate, and think the thoughts over again, and coming home I shall perhaps find a letter.

Dearest, dearest  – – my perfect blessing you are!

May God continue his care for us. R.

 

Saturday Morning.

February 23, 1846.

So all was altered, my love  – – and, instead of Miss T. and the other friend, I had your brother and Procter  – – to my great pleasure. After, I went to that place, and soon got away, and am very well this morning in the sunshine; which I feel with you, do I not? Yesterday after dinner we spoke of Mrs. Jameson, and, as my wont is  – – (Here your letter reaches me  – – let me finish this sentence now I have finished kissing you, dearest beyond all dearness  – – My own heart’s Ba!)  – – oh, as I am used, I left the talking to go on by itself, with the thought busied elsewhere, till at last my own voice startled me for I heard my tongue utter ‘Miss Barrett  . . . that is, Mrs. Jameson says’  . . . or ‘does  . . . or does not.’ I forget which! And if anybody noticed the gaucherie it must have been just your brother!

Now to these letters! I do solemnly, unaffectedly wonder how you can put so much pure felicity into an envelope so as that I shall get it as from the fount head. This to-day, those yesterday  – – there is, I see, and know, thus much goodness in line after line, goodness to be scientifically appreciated, proved there  – – but over and above, is it in the writing, the dots and traces, the seal, the paper  – – here does the subtle charm lie beyond all rational accounting for? The other day I stumbled on a quotation from J. Baptista Porta  – – wherein he avers that any musical instrument made out of wood possessed of medicinal properties retains, being put to use, such virtues undiminished,  – – and that, for instance, a sick man to whom you should pipe on a pipe of elder-tree would so receive all the advantage derivable from a decoction of its berries. From whence, by a parity of reasoning, I may discover, I think, that the very ink and paper were  – – ah, what were they? Curious thinking won’t do for me and the wise head which is mine, so I will lie and rest in my ignorance of content and understand that without any magic at all you simply wish to make one person  – – which of your free goodness proves to be your R.B.  – – to make me supremely happy, and that you have your wish  – – you do bless me! More and more, for the old treasure is piled undiminished and still the new comes glittering in. Dear, dear heart of my heart, life of my life, will this last, let me begin to ask? Can it be meant I shall live this to the end? Then, dearest, care also for the life beyond, and put in my mind how to testify here that I have felt, if I could not deserve that a gift beyond all gifts! I hope to work hard, to prove I do feel, as I say  – – it would be terrible to accomplish nothing now.

With which conviction  – – renewed conviction time by time, of your extravagance of kindness to me unworthy,  – – will it seem characteristically consistent when I pray you not to begin frightening me, all the same, with threats of writing less kindly? That must not be, love, for your sake now  – – if you had not thrown open those windows of heaven I should have no more imagined than that Syrian lord on whom the King leaned ‘how such things might be’  – – but, once their influence showered, I should know, too soon and easily, if they shut up again! You have committed your dear, dearest self to that course of blessing, and blessing on, on, for ever  – – so let all be as it is, pray, pray!

No  – – not all. No more, ever, of that strange suspicion  – – ‘insolent’  – – oh, what a word!  – – nor suppose I shall particularly wonder at its being fancied applicable to that, of all other passages of your letter! It is quite as reasonable to suspect the existence of such a quality there as elsewhere: how can such a thing, could such a thing come from you to me? But, dear Ba, do you know me better! Do feel that I know you, I am bold to believe, and that if you were to run at me with a pointed spear I should be sure it was a golden sanative, Machaon’s touch, for my entire good, that I was opening my heart to receive! As for words, written or spoken  – – I, who sin forty times in a day by light words, and untrue to the thought, I am certainly not used to be easily offended by other peoples’ words, people in the world. But your words! And about the ‘mission’; if it had not been a thing to jest at, I should not have begun, as I did  – – as you felt I did. I know now, what I only suspected then, and will tell you all the matter on Monday if you care to hear. The ‘humanity’ however, would have been unquestionable if I had chosen to exercise it towards the poor weak incapable creature that wants somebody, and urgently, I can well believe.

As for your apologue, it is naught  – – as you felt, and so broke off  – – for the baron knew well enough it was a spray of the magical tree which once planted in his domain would shoot up, and out, and all round, and be glorious with leaves and musical with birds’ nests, and a fairy safeguard and blessing thenceforward and for ever, when the foolish baton had been broken into ounces of gold, even if gold it were, and spent and vanished: for, he said, such gold lies in the highway, men pick it up, more of it or less; but this one slip of the flowering tree is all of it on this side Paradise. Whereon he laid it to his heart and was happy  – – in spite of his disastrous chase the night before, when so far from catching an unicorn, he saw not even a respectable prize-heifer, worth the oil-cake and rape-seed it had doubtless cost to rear her  – – ‘insolence!’

I found no opportunity of speaking to Mr. K. about Monday, but nothing was said of last Wednesday, and he must know I did not go yesterday. So, Monday is laughing in sunshine surely! Bless you, my sweetest. I love you with my whole heart; ever shall love you.

 

Friday Afternoon.

February 20, 1846.

Here is my Ba’s dearest first letter come four hours after the second, with ‘Mis-sent to Mitcham‘ written on its face as a reason,  – – one more proof of the negligence of somebody! But I do have it at last  – – what should I say? what do you expect me to say? And the first note seemed quite as much too kind as usual!

Let me write to-morrow, sweet? I am quite well and sure to mind all you bid me. I shall do no more than look in at that place (they are the cousins of a really good friend of mine, Dr. White  – – I go for him) if even that  – – for to-morrow night I must go out again, I fear  – – to pay the ordinary compliment for an invitation to the R.S.’s soirée at Lord Northampton’s. And then comes Monday  – – and to-night any unicorn I may see I will not find myself at liberty to catch. (N.B.  – – should you meditate really an addition to the ‘Elegant Extracts’  – – mind this last joke is none of mine but my father’s; when walking with me when a child, I remember, he bade a little urchin we found fishing with a stick and a string for sticklebacks in a ditch  – – ‘to mind that he brought any sturgeon he might catch to the king’  – – he having a claim on such a prize, by courtesy if not right).

As for Chorley, he is neither the one nor the other of those ugly things. One remembers Regan’s ‘Oh Heaven  – – so you will rail at me, when you are in the mood.’ But what a want of self-respect such judgments argue, or rather, want of knowledge what true self-respect is: ‘So I believed yesterday, and so now  – – and yet am neither hasty, nor inapprehensive, nor malevolent’  – – what then?

– – But I will say more of my mind  – – (not of that)  – – to-morrow, for time presses a little  – – so bless you my ever ever dearest  – – I love you wholly.

R.B.

 

Thursday Morning.

February 19, 1846.

My sweetest, best, dearest Ba I do love you less, much less already, and adore you more, more by so much more as I see of you, think of you  – – I am yours just as much as those flowers; and you may pluck those flowers to pieces or put them in your breast; it is not because you so bless me now that you may not if you please one day  – – you will stop me here; but it is the truth and I live in it.

I am quite well; indeed, this morning, noticeably well, they tell me, and well I mean to keep if I can.

When I got home last evening I found this note  – – and I have accepted, that I might say I could also keep an engagement, if so minded, at Harley Street  – – thereby insinuating that other reasons may bring me into the neighbourhood than the reason  – – but I shall either not go there, or only for an hour at most. I also found a note headed ‘Strictly private and confidential’  – – so here it goes from my mouth to my heart  – – pleasantly proposing that I should start in a few days for St. Petersburg, as secretary to somebody going there on a ‘mission of humanity’  – – grazie tante!

Did you hear of my meeting someone at the door whom I take to have been one of your brothers?

One thing vexed me in your letter  – – I will tell you, the praise of my letters. Now, one merit they have  – – in language mystical  – – that of having no merit. If I caught myself trying to write finely, graphically &c. &c., nay, if I found myself conscious of having in my own opinion, so written, all would be over! yes, over! I should be respecting you inordinately, paying a proper tribute to your genius, summoning the necessary collectedness,  – – plenty of all that! But the feeling with which I write to you, not knowing that it is writing,  – – with you, face and mouth and hair and eyes opposite me, touching me, knowing that all is as I say, and helping out the imperfect phrases from your own intuition  – – that would be gone  – – and what in its place? ‘Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we write to Ambleside.’ No, no, love, nor can it ever be so, nor should it ever be so if  – – even if, preserving all that intimate relation, with the carelessness, still, somehow, was obtained with no effort in the world, graphic writing and philosophic and what you please  – – for I will be  – – would be, better than my works and words with an infinite stock beyond what I put into convenient circulation whether in fine speeches fit to remember, or fine passages to quote. For the rest, I had meant to tell you before now, that you often put me ‘in a maze’ when you particularize letters of mine  – – ‘such an one was kind’ &c. I know, sometimes I seem to give the matter up in despair, I take out paper and fall thinking on you, and bless you with my whole heart and then begin: ‘What a fine day this is?’ I distinctly remember having done that repeatedly  – – but the converse is not true by any means, that (when the expression may happen to fall more consentaneously to the mind’s motion) that less is felt, oh no! But the particular thought at the time has not been of the insufficiency of expression, as in the other instance.

Now I will leave off  – – to begin elsewhere  – – for I am always with you, beloved, best beloved! Now you will write? And walk much, and sleep more? Bless you, dearest  – – ever  – –

Your own,

 

6-1/2 Tuesday Evening.

My dearest, your note reaches me only now, with an excuse from the postman. The answer you expect, you shall have the only way possible. I must make up a parcel so as to be able to knock and give it. I shall be with you to-morrow, God willing  – – being quite well.

Bless you ever  – –