Author: RB

Monday.
February 16, 1846.

My long letter is with you, dearest, to show how serious my illness was ‘while you wrote’: unless you find that letter too foolish, as I do on twice thinking  – – or at all events a most superfluous bestowment of handwork while the heart was elsewhere, and with you  – – never more so! Dear, dear Ba, your adorable goodness sinks into me till it nearly pains,  – – so exquisite and strange is the pleasure: so you care for me, and think of me, and write to me!  – – I shall never die for you, and if it could be so, what would death prove? But I can live on, your own as now,  – – utterly your own.

Dear Ba, do you suppose we differ on so plain a point as that of the superior wisdom, and generosity, too, of announcing such a change &c. at the eleventh hour? There can be no doubt of it,  – – and now, what of it to me?

But I am not going to write to-day  – – only this  – – that I am better, having not been quite so well last night  – – so I shut up books (that is, of my own) and mean to think about nothing but you, and you, and still you, for a whole week  – – so all will come right, I hope! May I take Wednesday? And do you say that,  – – hint at the possibility of that, because you have been reached by my own remorse at feeling that if I had kept my appointment last Saturday (but one)  – – Thursday would have been my day this past week, and this very Monday had been gained? Shall I not lose a day for ever unless I get Wednesday and Saturday?  – – yet  . . . care  . . . dearest  – – let nothing horrible happen.

If I do not hear to the contrary to-morrow  – – or on Wednesday early  – –

But write and bless me dearest, most dear Ba. God bless you ever  – –

Sunday Afternoon.

February 16, 1846.

Here is the letter again, dearest: I suppose it gives me the same pleasure, in reading, as you  – – and Mr. K. as me, and anybody else as him; if all the correspondence which was claimed again and burnt on some principle or other some years ago be at all of the nature of this sample, the measure seems questionable. Burn anybody’s real letters, well and good: they move and live  – – the thoughts, feelings, and expressions even,  – – in a self-imposed circle limiting the experience of two persons only  – – there is the standard, and to that the appeal  – – how should a third person know? His presence breaks the line, so to speak, and lets in a whole tract of country on the originally inclosed spot  – – so that its trees, which were from side to side there, seem left alone and wondering at their sudden unimportance in the broad land; while its ‘ferns such as I never saw before’ and which have been petted proportionably, look extravagant enough amid the new spread of good honest grey grass that is now the earth’s general wear. So that the significance is lost at once, and whole value of such letters  – – the cypher changed, the vowel-points removed: but how can that affect clever writing like this? What do you, to whom it is addressed, see in it more than the world that wants to see it and shan’t have it? One understands shutting an unprivileged eye to the ineffable mysteries of those ‘upper-rooms,’ now that the broom and dust pan, stocking-mending and gingerbread-making are invested with such unforeseen reverence  . . . but the carriage-sweep and quarry, together with Jane and our baskets, and a pleasant shadow of Wordsworth’s Sunday hat preceding his own rapid strides in the direction of Miss Fenwick’s house  – – surely, ‘men’s eyes were made to see, so let them gaze’ at all this! And so I, gazing with a clear conscience, am very glad to hear so much good of a very good person and so well told. She plainly sees the proper use and advantage of a country-life; and that knowledge gets to seem a high point of attainment doubtless by the side of the Wordsworth she speaks of  – – for mine he shall not be as long as I am able! Was ever such a ‘great‘ poet before? Put one trait with the other  – – the theory of rural innocence  – – alternation of ‘vulgar trifles’ with dissertating with style of ‘the utmost grandeur that even you can conceive’ (speak for yourself, Miss M.!)  – – and that amiable transition from two o’clock’s grief at the death of one’s brother to three o’clock’s happiness in the ‘extraordinary mesmeric discourse’ of one’s friend. All this, and the rest of the serene and happy inspired daily life which a piece of ‘unpunctuality’ can ruin, and to which the guardian ‘angel’ brings as crowning qualification the knack of poking the fire adroitly  – – of this  – – what can one say but that  – – no, best hold one’s tongue and read the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ with finger in ear. Did not Shelley say long ago ‘He had no more imagination than a pint-pot’  – – though in those days he used to walk about France and Flanders like a man? Now, he is ‘most comfortable in his worldly affairs’ and just this comes of it! He lives the best twenty years of his life after the way of his own heart  – – and when one presses in to see the result of the rare experiment  . . . what the one alchemist whom fortune has allowed to get all his coveted materials and set to work at last in earnest with fire and melting-pot  – – what he produces after all the talk of him and the like of him; why, you get pulvis et cinis  – – a man at the mercy of the tongs and shovel!

Well! Let us despair at nothing, but, wishing success to the newer aspirant, expect better things from Miss M. when the ‘knoll,’ and ‘paradise,’ and their facilities, operate properly; and that she will make a truer estimate of the importance and responsibilities of ‘authorship’ than she does at present, if I understand rightly the sense in which she describes her own life as it means to be; for in one sense it is all good and well, and quite natural that she should like ‘that sort of strenuous handwork’ better than book-making; like the play better than the labour, as we are apt to do. If she realises a very ordinary scheme of literary life, planned under the eye of God not ‘the public,’ and prosecuted under the constant sense of the night’s coming which ends it good or bad  – – then, she will be sure to ‘like’ the rest and sport  – – teaching her maids and sewing her gloves and making delicate visitors comfortable  – – so much more rational a resource is the worst of them than gin-and-water, for instance. But if, as I rather suspect, these latter are to figure as a virtual half duty of the whole Man  – – as of equal importance (on the ground of the innocence and utility of such occupations) with the book-making aforesaid  – – always supposing that to be of the right kind  – – then I respect Miss M. just as I should an Archbishop of Canterbury whose business was the teaching A.B.C. at an infant-school  – – he who might set on the Tens to instruct the Hundreds how to convince the Thousands of the propriety of doing that and many other things. Of course one will respect him only the more if when that matter is off his mind he relaxes at such a school instead of over a chess-board; as it will increase our love for Miss M. to find that making ‘my good Jane (from Tyne-mouth)’  – – ‘happier and  – – I hope  – – wiser’ is an amusement, or more, after the day’s progress towards the ‘novel for next year’ which is to inspire thousands, beyond computation, with the ardour of making innumerable other Janes and delicate relatives happier and wiser  – – who knows but as many as Burns did, and does, so make happier and wiser? Only, his quarry and after-solace was that ‘marble bowl often replenished with whiskey’ on which Dr. Curry discourses mournfully, ‘Oh, be wiser Thou!’  – – and remember it was only after Lord Bacon had written to an end his Book  – – given us for ever the Art of Inventing  – – whether steam-engine or improved dust-pan  – – that he took on himself to do a little exemplary ‘hand work’; got out on that cold St. Alban’s road to stuff a fowl with snow and so keep it fresh, and got into his bed and died of the cold in his hands (‘strenuous hand work’  – – ) before the snow had time to melt. He did not begin in his youth by saying  – – ‘I have a horror of merely writing ‘Novum Organums’ and shall give half my energies to the stuffing fowls’!

All this it is my amusement, of an indifferent kind, to put down solely on the pleasant assurance contained in that postscript, of the one way of never quarrelling with Miss M.  – – ‘by joining in her plan and practice of plain speaking’  – – could she but ‘get people to do it!’ Well, she gets me for a beginner: the funny thing would be to know what Chorley’s desperate utterance amounted to! Did you ever hear of the plain speaking of some of the continental lottery-projectors? An estate on the Rhine, for instance, is to be disposed of, and the holder of the lucky ticket will find himself suddenly owner of a mediæval castle with an unlimited number of dependencies  – – vineyards, woods, pastures, and so forth  – – all only waiting the new master’s arrival  – – while inside, all is swept and garnished (not to say, varnished)  – – the tables are spread, the wines on the board, all is ready for the reception but  . . . here ‘plain speaking’ becomes necessary  – – it prevents quarrels, and, could the projector get people to practise it as he does all would be well; so he, at least, will speak plainly  – – you hear what is provided but, he cannot, dares not withhold what is not  – – there is then, to speak plainly,  – – no night cap! You will have to bring your own night cap. The projector furnishes somewhat, as you hear, but not all  – – and now  – – the worst is heard,  – – will you quarrel with him? Will my own dear, dearest Ba please and help me here, and fancy Chorley’s concessions, and tributes, and recognitions, and then, at the very end, the ‘plain words,’ to counterbalance all, that have been to overlook and pardon?

Oh, my own Ba, hear my plain speech  – – and how this is not an attempt to frighten you out of your dear wish to ‘hear from me’  – – no, indeed  – – but a whim, a caprice,  – – and now it is out! over, done with! And now I am with you again  – – it is to you I shall write next. Bless you, ever  – – my beloved. I am much better, indeed  – – and mean to be well. And you! But I will write  – – this goes for nothing  – – or only this, that I am your very own  – –

 

Friday Morning.

February 13, 1846.

Two nights ago I read the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’ once more, and though there were not a few points which still struck me as successful in design and execution, yet on the whole I came to a decided opinion, that it will be better to postpone the publication of it for the present. It is not a good ending, an auspicious wind-up of this series; subject-matter and style are alike unpopular even for the literary grex that stands aloof from the purer plebs, and uses that privilege to display and parade an ignorance which the other is altogether unconscious of  – – so that, if ‘Luria’ is clearish, the ‘Tragedy’ would be an unnecessary troubling the waters. Whereas, if I printed it first in order, my readers, according to custom, would make the (comparatively) little they did not see into, a full excuse for shutting their eyes at the rest, and we may as well part friends, so as not to meet enemies. But, at bottom, I believe the proper objection is to the immediate, first effect of the whole  – – its moral effect  – – which is dependent on the contrary supposition of its being really understood, in the main drift of it. Yet I don’t know; for I wrote it with the intention of producing the best of all effects  – – perhaps the truth is, that I am tired, rather, and desirous of getting done, and ‘Luria’ will answer my purpose so far. Will not the best way be to reserve this unlucky play and in the event of a second edition  – – as Moxon seems to think such an apparition possible  – – might not this be quietly inserted?  – – in its place, too, for it was written two or three years ago. I have lost, of late, interest in dramatic writing, as you know, and, perhaps, occasion. And, dearest, I mean to take your advice and be quiet awhile and let my mind get used to its new medium of sight; seeing all things, as it does, through you: and then, let all I have done be the prelude and the real work begin. I felt it would be so before, and told you at the very beginning  – – do you remember? And you spoke of Io ‘in the proem.’ How much more should follow now!

And if nothing follows, I have you.

I shall see you to-morrow and be happy. To-day  – – is it the weather or what?  – – something depresses me a little  – – to-morrow brings the remedy for it all. I don’t know why I mention such a matter; except that I tell you everything without a notion of after-consequence; and because your dearest, dearest presence seems under any circumstances as if created just to help me there; if my spirits rise they fly to you; if they fall, they hold by you and cease falling  – – as now. Bless you, Ba  – – my own best blessing that you are! But a few hours and I am with you, beloved!

Your own

 

Wednesday Morning.

February 11, 1846.

My sweetest ‘plague,’ did I really write that sentence so, without gloss or comment in close vicinity? I can hardly think it  – – but you know well, well where the real plague lay,  – – that I thought of you as thinking, in your infinite goodness, of untoward chances which had kept me from you  – – and if I did not dwell more particularly on that thinking of yours, which became as I say, in the knowledge of it, a plague when brought before me with the thought of you,  – – if I passed this slightly over it was for pure unaffected shame that I should take up the care and stop the ‘reverie serene’ of  – – ah, the rhyme lets me say  – – ‘sweetest eyes were ever seen’  – – were ever seen! And yourself confess, in the Saturday’s note, to having been ‘unhappy for half an hour till’ &c. &c.  – – and do not I feel that here, and am not I plagued by it?

Well, having begun at the end of your letter, dearest, I will go back gently (that is backwards) and tell you I ‘sate thinking’ too, and with no greater comfort, on the cold yesterday. The pond before the window was frozen (‘so as to bear sparrows’ somebody said) and I knew you would feel it  – – ‘but you are not unwell’  – – really? thank God  – – and the month wears on. Beside I have got a reassurance  – – you asked me once if I were superstitious, I remember (as what do I forget that you say?). However that may be, yesterday morning as I turned to look for a book, an old fancy seized me to try the ‘sortes’ and dip into the first page of the first I chanced upon, for my fortune; I said ‘what will be the event of my love for Her’  – – in so many words  – – and my book turned out to be  – – ‘Cerutti’s Italian Grammar!’  – – a propitious source of information  . . . the best to be hoped, what could it prove but some assurance that you were in the Dative Case, or I, not in the ablative absolute? I do protest that, with the knowledge of so many horrible pitfalls, or rather spring guns with wires on every bush  . . . such dreadful possibilities of stumbling on ‘conditional moods,’ ‘imperfect tenses,’ ‘singular numbers,’  – – I should have been too glad to put up with the safe spot for the sole of my foot though no larger than afforded by such a word as ‘Conjunction,’ ‘possessive pronoun  – – ,’ secure so far from poor Tippet’s catastrophe. Well, I ventured, and what did I find? This  – – which I copy from the book now  – – ‘If we love in the other world as we do in this, I shall love thee to eternity‘  – – from ‘Promiscuous Exercises,’ to be translated into Italian, at the end.

And now I reach Horne and his characteristics  – – of which I can tell you with confidence that they are grossly misrepresented where not altogether false  – – whether it proceed from inability to see what one may see, or disinclination, I cannot say. I know very little of Horne, but my one visit to him a few weeks ago would show the uncandidness of those charges: for instance, he talked a good deal about horses, meaning to ride in Ireland, and described very cleverly an old hunter he had hired once,  – – how it galloped and could not walk; also he propounded a theory of the true method of behaving in the saddle when a horse rears, which I besought him only to practise in fancy on the sofa, where he lay telling it. So much for professing his ignorance in that matter! On a sofa he does throw himself  – – but when thrown there, he can talk, with Miss Mitford’s leave, admirably,  – – I never heard better stories than Horne’s  – – some Spanish-American incidents of travel want printing  – – or have been printed, for aught I know. That he cares for nobody’s poetry is false, he praises more unregardingly of his own retreat, more unprovidingly for his own fortune,  – – (do I speak clearly?)  – – less like a man who himself has written somewhat in the ‘line’ of the other man he is praising  – – which ‘somewhat’ has to be guarded in its interests, &c., less like the poor professional praise of the ‘craft’ than any other I ever met  – – instance after instance starting into my mind as I write. To his income I never heard him allude  – – unless one should so interpret a remark to me this last time we met, that he had been on some occasion put to inconvenience by somebody’s withholding ten or twelve pounds due to him for an article, and promised in the confidence of getting them to a tradesman, which does not look like ‘boasting of his income’! As for the heiresses  – – I don’t believe one word of it, of the succession and transition and trafficking. Altogether, what miserable ‘set-offs’ to the achievement of an ‘Orion,’ a ‘Marlowe,’ a ‘Delora’! Miss Martineau understands him better.

Now I come to myself and my health. I am quite well now  – – at all events, much better, just a little turning in the head  – – since you appeal to my sincerity. For the coffee  – – thank you, indeed thank you, but nothing after the ‘oenomel‘ and before half past six. I know all about that song and its Greek original if Horne does not  – – and can tell you  – – , how truly . . .!

And by the bye, I have misled you as my wont is, on the subject of wine, ‘that I do not touch it’  – – not habitually, nor so as to feel the loss of it, that on a principle; but every now and then of course.

And now, ‘Luria’, so long as the parts cohere and the whole is discernible, all will be well yet. I shall not look at it, nor think of it, for a week or two, and then see what I have forgotten. Domizia is all wrong; I told you I knew that her special colour had faded,  – – it was but a bright line, and the more distinctly deep that it was so narrow. One of my half dozen words on my scrap of paper ‘pro memoria’ was, under the ‘Act V.’ ‘she loves‘  – – to which I could not bring it, you see! Yet the play requires it still,  – – something may yet be effected, though . . .. I meant that she should propose to go to Pisa with him, and begin a new life. But there is no hurry  – – I suppose it is no use publishing much before Easter  – – I will try and remember what my whole character did mean  – – it was, in two words, understood at the time by ‘panther’s-beauty’  – – on which hint I ought to have spoken! But the work grew cold, and you came between, and the sun put out the fire on the hearth nec vult panthera domari!

For the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’  – – that will surprise you, I think. There is no trace of you there,  – – you have not put out the black face of it  – – it is all sneering and disillusion  – – and shall not be printed but burned if you say the word  – – now wait and see and then say! I will bring the first of the two parts next Saturday.

And now, dearest, I am with you  – – and the other matters are forgotten already. God bless you, I am ever your own R. You will write to me I trust? And tell me how to bear the cold.

 

Sunday Morning.

February 9, 1846.

My dearest  – – there are no words,  – – nor will be to-morrow, nor even in the Island  – – I know that! But I do love you.

My arms have been round you for many minutes since the last word  – –

I am quite well now  – – my other note will have told you when the change began  – – I think I took too violent a shower bath, with a notion of getting better in as little time as possible,  – – and the stimulus turned mere feverishness to headache. However, it was no sooner gone, in a degree, than a worse plague came. I sate thinking of you  – – but I knew my note would arrive at about four o’clock or a little later  – – and I thought the visit for the quarter of an hour would as effectually prevent to-morrow’s meeting as if the whole two hours’ blessing had been laid to heart  – – to-morrow I shall see you, Ba  – – my sweetest. But there are cold winds blowing to-day  – – how do you bear them, my Ba? ‘Care‘ you, pray, pray, care for all I care about  – – and be well, if God shall please, and bless me as no man ever was blessed! Now I kiss you, and will begin a new thinking of you  – – and end, and begin, going round and round in my circle of discovery,  – – My lotos-blossom! because they loved the lotos, were lotos-lovers,  – – λωτου τ’ ερωτες, as Euripides writes in the Τρωαδες.

Your own

P.S. See those lines in the Athenæum on Pulci with Hunt’s translation  – – all wrong  – – ‘che non si sente,’ being  – – ‘that one does not hear him’ i.e. the ordinarily noisy fellow  – – and the rest, male, pessime! Sic verte, meo periculo, mî ocelle!

Now Ba thinks nothing can be worse than that? Then read this which I really told Hunt and got his praise for. Poor dear wonderful persecuted Pietro d’Abano wrote this quatrain on the people’s plaguing him about his mathematical studies and wanting to burn him  – – he helped to build Padua Cathedral, wrote a Treatise on Magic still extant, and passes for a conjuror in his country to this day  – – when there is a storm the mothers tell the children that he is in the air; his pact with the evil one obliged him to drink no milk; no natural human food! You know Tieck’s novel about him? Well, this quatrain is said, I believe truly, to have been discovered in a well near Padua some fifty years ago.

Affecting, is it not, in its simple, child like plaining? Now so, if I remember, I turned it  – – word for word  – –

Say that you forgive me to-morrow!

[The following is in E.B.B.’s handwriting.]

 

February 7, 1846.

The clock strikes  – – three; and I am here, not with you  – – and my ‘fractious’ headache at the very worst got suddenly better just now, and is leaving me every minute  – – as if to make me aware, with an undivided attention, that at this present you are waiting for me, and soon will be wondering  – – and it would be so easy now to dress myself and walk or run or ride  – – do anything that led to you  . . . but by no haste in the world could I reach you, I am forced to see, before a quarter to five  – – by which time I think my letter must arrive. Dear, dearest Ba, did you but know how vexed I am  – – with myself, with  – – this is absurd, of course. The cause of it all was my going out last night  – – yet that, neither, was to be helped, the party having been twice put off before  – – once solely on my account. And the sun shines, and you would shine  – –

Monday is to make all the amends in its power, is it not? Still, still I have lost my day.

Bless you, my ever-dearest.

Your R.

 

Saturday Morning.
February 7, 1846.

Dearest, to my sorrow I must, I fear, give up the delight of seeing you this morning. I went out unwell yesterday, and a long noisy dinner with speech-making, with a long tiresome walk at the end of it  – – these have given me such a bewildering headache that I really see some reason in what they say here about keeping the house. Will you forgive me  – – and let me forget it all on Monday? On Monday  – – unless I am told otherwise by the early post  – – And God bless you ever

Your own  – –

Friday.

February 6, 1846.

If I said you ‘gave me pain’ in anything, it was in the only way ever possible for you, my dearest  – – by giving yourself, in me, pain  – – being unjust to your own right and power as I feel them at my heart: and in that way, I see you will go on to the end, I getting called  – – in this very letter  – – ‘generous’ &c. Well, let me fancy you see very, very deep into future chances and how I should behave on occasion. I shall hardly imitate you, I whose sense of the present and its claims of gratitude already is beyond expression.

All the kind explaining about the opium makes me happier. ‘Slowly and gradually’ what may not be done? Then see the bright weather while I write  – – lilacs, hawthorn, plum-trees all in bud; elders in leaf, rose-bushes with great red shoots; thrushes, whitethroats, hedge sparrows in full song  – – there can, let us hope, be nothing worse in store than a sharp wind, a week of it perhaps  – – and then comes what shall come  – –

And Miss Mitford yesterday  – – and has she fresh fears for you of my evil influence and Origenic power of ‘raying out darkness’ like a swart star? Why, the common sense of the world teaches that there is nothing people at fault in any faculty of expression are so intolerant of as the like infirmity in others  – – whether they are unconscious of, or indulgent to their own obscurity and fettered organ, the hindrance from the fettering of their neighbours’ is redoubled. A man may think he is not deaf, or, at least, that you need not be so much annoyed by his deafness as you profess  – – but he will be quite aware, to say the least of it, when another man can’t hear him; he will certainly not encourage him to stop his ears. And so with the converse; a writer who fails to make himself understood, as presumably in my case, may either believe in his heart that it is not so  . . . that only as much attention and previous instructedness as the case calls for, would quite avail to understand him; or he may open his eyes to the fact and be trying hard to overcome it: but on which supposition is he led to confirm another in his unintelligibility? By the proverbial tenderness of the eye with the mote for the eye with the beam? If that beam were just such another mote  – – then one might sympathize and feel no such inconvenience  – – but, because I have written a ‘Sordello,’ do I turn to just its double, Sordello the second, in your books, and so perforce see nothing wrong? ‘No’  – – it is supposed  – – ‘but something as obscure in its way.’ Then down goes the bond of union at once, and I stand no nearer to view your work than the veriest proprietor of one thought and the two words that express it without obscurity at all  – – ‘bricks and mortar.’ Of course an artist’s whole problem must be, as Carlyle wrote to me, ‘the expressing with articulate clearness the thought in him’  – – I am almost inclined to say that clear expression should be his only work and care  – – for he is born, ordained, such as he is  – – and not born learned in putting what was born in him into words  – – what ever can be clearly spoken, ought to be. But ‘bricks and mortar’ is very easily said  – – and some of the thoughts in ‘Sordello’ not so readily even if Miss Mitford were to try her hand on them.

I look forward to a real life’s work for us both. I shall do all,  – – under your eyes and with your hand in mine,  – – all I was intended to do: may but you as surely go perfecting  – – by continuing  – – the work begun so wonderfully  – – ‘a rose-tree that beareth seven-times seven’  – –

I am forced to dine in town to-day with an old friend  – – ‘to-morrow’ always begins half the day before, like a Jewish sabbath. Did your sister tell you that I met her on the stairs last time? She did not tell you that I had almost passed by her  – – the eyes being still elsewhere and occupied. Now let me write out that  – – no  – – I will send the old ballad I told you of, for the strange coincidence  – – and it is very charming beside, is it not? Now goodbye, my sweetest, dearest  – – and tell me good news of yourself to-morrow, and be but half a quarter as glad to see me as I shall be blessed in seeing you. God bless you ever.

Your own

R.

 

Tuesday Morning.

February 4, 1846.

You ought hardly,  – – ought you, my Ba?  – – to refer to that letter or any expression in it; I had  – – and have, I trust  – – your forgiveness for what I wrote, meaning to be generous or at least just, God knows. That, and the other like exaggerations were there to serve the purpose of what you properly call a crisis. I did believe,  – – taking an expression, in the note that occasioned mine, in connection with an excuse which came in the postscript for not seeing me on the day previously appointed, I did fully believe that you were about to deny me admittance again unless I blotted out  – – not merely softened down  – – the past avowal. All was wrong, foolish, but from a good notion, I dare to say. And then, that particular exaggeration you bring most painfully to my mind  – – that does not, after all, disagree with what I said and you repeat  – – does it, if you will think? I said my other ‘likings‘ (as you rightly set it down) used to ‘come and go,’ and that my love for you did not, and that is true; the first clause as the last of the sentence, for my sympathies are very wide and general,  – – always have been  – – and the natural problem has been the giving unity to their object, concentrating them instead of dispersing. I seem to have foretold, foreknown you in other likings of mine  – – now here  . . . when the liking ‘came‘  . . . and now elsewhere  . . . when as surely the liking ‘went‘: and if they had stayed before the time would that have been a comfort to refer to? On the contrary, I am as little likely to be led by delusions as can be,  – – for Romeo thinks he loves Rosaline, and is excused on all hands  – – whereas I saw the plain truth without one mistake, and ‘looked to like, if looking liking moved  – – and no more deep did I endart mine eye’  – – about which, first I was very sorry, and after rather proud  – – all which I seem to have told you before.  – – And now, when my whole heart and soul find you, and fall on you, and fix forever, I am to be dreadfully afraid the joy cannot last, seeing that

– – it is so baseless a fear that no illustration will serve! Is it gone now, dearest, ever-dearest?

And as you amuse me sometimes, as now, by seeming surprised at some chance expression of a truth which is grown a veriest commonplace to me  – – like Charles Lamb’s ‘letter to an elderly man whose education had been neglected’  – – when he finds himself involuntarily communicating truths above the capacity and acquirements of his friend, and stops himself after this fashion  – – ‘If you look round the world, my dear Sir  – – for it is round!  – – so I will make you laugh at me, if you will, for my inordinate delight at hearing the success of your experiment with the opium. I never dared, nor shall dare inquire into your use of that  – – for, knowing you utterly as I do, I know you only bend to the most absolute necessity in taking more or less of it  – – so that increase of the quantity must mean simply increased weakness, illness  – – and diminution, diminished illness. And now there is diminution! Dear, dear Ba  – – you speak of my silly head and its ailments  . . . well, and what brings on the irritation? A wet day or two spent at home; and what ends it all directly?  – – just an hour’s walk! So with me: now,  – – fancy me shut in a room for seven years  . . . it is  – – no, don’t see, even in fancy, what is left of me then! But you, at the end; this is all the harm: I wonder  . . . I confirm my soul in its belief in perpetual miraculousness  . . . I bless God with my whole heart that it is thus with you! And so, I will not even venture to say  – – so superfluous it were, though with my most earnest, most loving breath (I who do love you more at every breath I draw; indeed, yes dearest,)  – – I will not bid you  – – that is, pray you  – – to persevere! You have all my life bound to yours  – – save me from my ‘seven years’  – – and God reward you!

Your own R.

 

Saturday.

January 31, 1846.

It is a relief to me this time to obey your wish, and reserve further remark on that subject till by and bye. And, whereas some people, I suppose, have to lash themselves up to the due point of passion, and choose the happy minutes to be as loving in as they possibly can  . . . (that is, in expression; the just correspondency of word to fact and feeling: for it  – – the love  – – may be very truly there, at the bottom, when it is got at, and spoken out)  – – quite otherwise, I do really have to guard my tongue and set a watch on my pen  . . . that so I may say as little as can well be likely to be excepted to by your generosity. Dearest, love means love, certainly, and adoration carries its sense with it  – – and so, you may have received my feeling in that shape  – – but when I begin to hint at the merest putting into practice one or the other profession, you ‘fly out’  – – instead of keeping your throne. So let this letter lie awhile, till my heart is more used to it, and after some days or weeks I will find as cold and quiet a moment as I can, and by standing as far off you as I shall be able, see more  – – ‘si minus propè stes, te capiet magis.’ Meanwhile, silent or speaking, I am yours to dispose of as that glove  – – not that hand.

I must think that Mr. Kenyon sees, and knows, and  . . . in his goodness  . . . hardly disapproves  – – he knows I could not avoid  – – escape you  – – for he knows, in a manner, what you are  . . . like your American; and, early in our intercourse, he asked me (did I tell you?) ‘what I thought of his young relative’  – – and I considered half a second to this effect  – – ‘if he asked me what I thought of the Queen-diamond they showed me in the crown of the Czar  – – and I answered truly  – – he would not return; “then of course you mean to try and get it to keep.”‘ So I did tell the truth in a very few words. Well, it is no matter.

I am sorry to hear of poor Tennyson’s condition. The projected book  – – title, scheme, all of it,  – – that is astounding;  – – and fairies? If ‘Thorpes and barnes, sheep-pens and dairies  – – this maketh that there ben no fairies’  – – locomotives and the broad or narrow gauge must keep the very ghosts of them away. But how the fashion of this world passes; the forms its beauty and truth take; if we have the making of such! I went last night, out of pure shame at a broken promise, to hear Miss Cushman and her sister in ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ The whole play goes  . . . horribly; ‘speak’ bids the Poet, and so M. Walladmir [Valdemar] moves his tongue and dispenses with his jaws. Whatever is slightly touched in, indicated, to give relief to something actually insisted upon and drawn boldly  . . . here, you have it gone over with an unremitting burnt-stick, till it stares black forever! Romeo goes whining about Verona by broad daylight. Yet when a schoolfellow of mine, I remember, began translating in class Virgil after this mode, ‘Sic fatur  – – so said Æneas; lachrymans  – – a-crying‘  . . . our pedagogue turned on him furiously  – – ‘D’ye think Æneas made such a noise  – – as you shall, presently?’ How easy to conceive a boyish half-melancholy, smiling at itself.

Then Tuesday, and not Monday  . . . and Saturday will be the nearer afterward. I am singularly well to-day  – – head quite quiet  – – and yesterday your penholder began its influence and I wrote about half my last act. Writing is nothing, nor praise, nor blame, nor living, nor dying, but you are all my true life; May God bless you ever  – –

R.