Author: RB

Sunday.

January 12, 1846.

I have no words for you, my dearest,  – – I shall never have.

You are mine, I am yours. Now, here is one sign of what I said  . . . that I must love you more than at first  . . . a little sign, and to be looked narrowly for or it escapes me, but then the increase it shows can only be little, so very little now  – – and as the fine French Chemical Analysts bring themselves to appreciate matter in its refined stages by millionths, so  – – ! At first I only thought of being happy in you,  – – in your happiness: now I most think of you in the dark hours that must come  – – I shall grow old with you, and die with you  – – as far as I can look into the night I see the light with me. And surely with that provision of comfort one should turn with fresh joy and renewed sense of security to the sunny middle of the day. I am in the full sunshine now; and after, all seems cared for,  – – is it too homely an illustration if I say the day’s visit is not crossed by uncertainties as to the return through the wild country at nightfall?  – – Now Keats speaks of ‘Beauty, that must die  – – and Joy whose hand is ever at his lips, bidding farewell!’ And who spoke of  – – looking up into the eyes and asking ‘And how long will you love us’?  – – There is a Beauty that will not die, a Joy that bids no farewell, dear dearest eyes that will love for ever!

And I  – – am to love no longer than I can. Well, dear  – – and when I can no longer  – – you will not blame me? You will do only as ever, kindly and justly; hardly more. I do not pretend to say I have chosen to put my fancy to such an experiment, and consider how that is to happen, and what measures ought to be taken in the emergency  – – because in the ‘universality of my sympathies’ I certainly number a very lively one with my own heart and soul, and cannot amuse myself by such a spectacle as their supposed extinction or paralysis. There is no doubt I should be an object for the deepest commiseration of you or any more fortunate human being. And I hope that because such a calamity does not obtrude itself on me as a thing to be prayed against, it is no less duly implied with all the other visitations from which no humanity can be altogether exempt  – – just as God bids us ask for the continuance of the ‘daily bread’!  – – ‘battle, murder and sudden death’ lie behind doubtless. I repeat, and perhaps in so doing only give one more example of the instantaneous conversion of that indignation we bestow in another’s case, into wonderful lenity when it becomes our own,  . . . that I only contemplate the possibility you make me recognize, with pity, and fear  . . . no anger at all; and imprecations of vengeance, for what? Observe, I only speak of cases possible; of sudden impotency of mind; that is possible  – – there are other ways of ‘changing,’ ‘ceasing to love’ &c. which it is safest not to think of nor believe in. A man may never leave his writing desk without seeing safe in one corner of it the folded slip which directs the disposal of his papers in the event of his reason suddenly leaving him  – – or he may never go out into the street without a card in his pocket to signify his address to those who may have to pick him up in an apoplectic fit  – – but if he once begins to fear he is growing a glass bottle, and, so, liable to be smashed,  – – do you see? And now, love, dear heart of my heart, my own, only Ba  – – see no more  – – see what I am, what God in his constant mercy ordinarily grants to those who have, as I, received already so much; much, past expression! It is but  – – if you will so please  – – at worst, forestalling the one or two years, for my sake; but you will be as sure of me one day as I can be now of myself  – – and why not now be sure? See, love  – – a year is gone by  – – we were in one relation when you wrote at the end of a letter ‘Do not say I do not tire you’ (by writing)  – – ‘I am sure I do.’ A year has gone by  – – Did you tire me then? Now, you tell me what is told; for my sake, sweet, let the few years go by; we are married, and my arms are round you, and my face touches yours, and I am asking you, ‘Were you not to me, in that dim beginning of 1846, a joy behind all joys, a life added to and transforming mine, the good I choose from all the possible gifts of God on this earth, for which I seemed to have lived; which accepting, I thankfully step aside and let the rest get what they can; what, it is very likely, they esteem more  – – for why should my eye be evil because God’s is good; why should I grudge that, giving them, I do believe, infinitely less, he gives them a content in the inferior good and belief in its worth? I should have wished that further concession, that illusion as I believe it, for their sakes  – – but I cannot undervalue my own treasure and so scant the only tribute of mere gratitude which is in my power to pay. Hear this said now before the few years; and believe in it now for then, dearest!

Must you see ‘Pauline’? At least then let me wait a few days; to correct the misprints which affect the sense, and to write you the history of it; what is necessary you should know before you see it. That article I suppose to be by Heraud  – – about two thirds  – – and the rest, or a little less, by that Mr. Powell  – – whose unimaginable, impudent vulgar stupidity you get some inkling of in the ‘Story from Boccaccio’  – – of which the words quoted were his, I am sure  – – as sure as that he knows not whether Boccaccio lived before or after Shakspeare, whether Florence or Rome be the more northern city,  – – one word of Italian in general, or letter of Boccaccio’s in particular. When I took pity on him once on a time and helped his verses into a sort of grammar and sense, I did not think he was a buyer of other men’s verses, to be printed as his own; thus he bought two modernisations of Chaucer  – – ‘Ugolino’ and another story from Leigh Hunt  – – and one, ‘Sir Thopas’ from Horne, and printed them as his own, as I learned only last week. He paid me extravagant court and, seeing no harm in the mere folly of the man, I was on good terms with him, till ten months ago he grossly insulted a friend of mine who had written an article for the Review  – – (which is as good as his, he being a large proprietor of the delectable property, and influencing the voices of his co-mates in council)  – – well, he insulted my friend, who had written that article at my special solicitation, and did all he could to avoid paying the price of it  – – Why?  – – Because the poor creature had actually taken the article to the Editor as one by his friend Serjeant Talfourd contributed for pure love of him, Powell the aforesaid,  – – cutting, in consequence, no inglorious figure in the eyes of Printer and Publisher! Now I was away all this time in Italy or he would never have ventured on such a piece of childish impertinence. And my friend being a true gentleman, and quite unused to this sort of ‘practice,’ in the American sense, held his peace and went without his ‘honorarium.’ But on my return, I enquired, and made him make a proper application, which Mr. Powell treated with all the insolence in the world  – – because, as the event showed, the having to write a cheque for ‘the Author of the Article’  – – that author’s name not being Talfourd’s  . . . there was certain disgrace! Since then (ten months ago) I have never seen him  – – and he accuses himself, observe, of ‘sucking my plots while I drink his tea’  – – one as much as the other! And now why do I tell you this, all of it? Ah,  – – now you shall hear! Because, it has often been in my mind to ask you what you know of this Mr. Powell, or ever knew. For he, (being profoundly versed in every sort of untruth, as every fresh experience shows me, and the rest of his acquaintance) he told me long ago, ‘he used to correspond with you, and that he quarrelled with you’  – – which I supposed to mean that he began by sending you his books (as with one and everybody) and that, in return to your note of acknowledgment, he had chosen to write again, and perhaps, again  – – is it so? Do not write one word in answer to me  – – the name of such a miserable nullity, and husk of a man, ought not to have a place in your letters  – – and that way he would get near to me again; near indeed this time!  – – So tell me, in a word  – – or do not tell me.

How I never say what I sit down to say! How saying the little makes me want to say the more! How the least of little things, once taken up as a thing to be imparted to you, seems to need explanations and commentaries; all is of importance to me  – – every breath you breathe, every little fact (like this) you are to know!

I was out last night  – – to see the rest of Frank Talfourd’s theatricals; and met Dickens and his set  – – so my evenings go away! If I do not bring the Act you must forgive me  – – yet I shall, I think; the roughness matters little in this stage. Chorley says very truly that a tragedy implies as much power kept back as brought out  – – very true that is. I do not, on the whole, feel dissatisfied  – – as was to be but expected  – – with the effect of this last  – – the shelve of the hill, whence the end is seen, you continuing to go down to it, so that at the very last you may pass off into a plain and so away  – – not come to a stop like your horse against a church wall. It is all in long speeches  – – the action, proper, is in them  – – they are no descriptions, or amplifications  – – but here, in a drama of this kind, all the events, (and interest), take place in the minds of the actors  . . . somewhat like ‘Paracelsus’ in that respect. You know, or don’t know, that the general charge against me, of late, from the few quarters I thought it worth while to listen to, has been that of abrupt, spasmodic writing  – – they will find some fault with this, of course.

How you know Chorley! That is precisely the man, that willow blowing now here now there  – – precisely! I wish he minded the Athenæum, its silence or eloquence, no more nor less than I  – – but he goes on painfully plying me with invitation after invitation, only to show me, I feel confident, that he has no part nor lot in the matter: I have two kind little notes asking me to go on Thursday and Saturday. See the absurd position of us both; he asks more of my presence than he can want, just to show his own kind feeling, of which I do not doubt; and I must try and accept more hospitality than suits me, only to prove my belief in that same! For myself  – – if I have vanity which such Journals can raise; would the praise of them raise it, they who praised Mr. Mackay’s own, own ‘Dead Pan,’ quite his own, the other day?  – – By the way, Miss Cushman informed me the other evening that the gentleman had written a certain ‘Song of the Bell’  . . . ‘singularly like Schiller’s; considering that Mr. M. had never seen it!’ I am told he writes for the Athenæum, but don’t know. Would that sort of praise be flattering, or his holding the tongue  – – which Forster, deep in the mysteries of the craft, corroborated my own notion about  – – as pure willingness to hurt, and confessed impotence and little clever spite, and enforced sense of what may be safe at the last? You shall see they will not notice  – – unless a fresh publication alters the circumstances  – – until some seven or eight months  – – as before; and then they will notice, and praise, and tell anybody who cares to enquire, ‘So we noticed the work.’ So do not you go expecting justice or injustice till I tell you. It answers me to be found writing so, so anxious to prove I understand the laws of the game, when that game is only ‘Thimble-rig’ and for prizes of gingerbread-nuts  – – Prize or no prize, Mr. Dilke does shift the pea, and so did from the beginning  – – as Charles Lamb’s pleasant sobriquet (Mr. Bilk, he would have it) testifies. Still he behaved kindly to that poor Frances Brown  – – let us forget him.

And now, my Audience, my crown-bearer, my path-preparer  – – I am with you again and out of them all  – – there, here, in my arms, is my proved palpable success! My life, my poetry, gained nothing, oh no!  – – but this found them, and blessed them. On Tuesday I shall see you, dearest  – – am much better; well to-day  – – are you well  – – or ‘scarcely to be called an invalid’? Oh, when I have you, am by you  – –

Bless you, dearest  – – And be very sure you have your wish about the length of the week  – – still Tuesday must come! And with it your own, happy, grateful

R.B.

 

Saturday.

January 10, 1846.

This is no letter  – – love,  – – I make haste to tell you  – – to-morrow I will write. For here has a friend been calling and consuming my very destined time, and every minute seemed the last that was to be; and an old, old friend he is, beside  – – so  – – you must understand my defection, when only this scrap reaches you to-night! Ah, love,  – – you are my unutterable blessing,  – – I discover you, more of you, day by day,  – – hour by hour, I do think!  – – I am entirely yours,  – – one gratitude, all my soul becomes when I see you over me as now  – – God bless my dear, dearest.

My ‘Act Fourth’ is done  – – but too roughly this time! I will tell you  – –

One kiss more, dearest!

Thanks for the Review.

 

Friday Morning.

As if I could deny you anything! Here is the Review  – – indeed it was foolish to mind your seeing it at all. But now, may I stipulate?  – – You shall not send it back  – – but on your table I shall find and take it next Tuesday  – – c’est convenu! The other precious volume has not yet come to hand (nor to foot) all through your being so sure that to carry it home would have been the death of me last evening!

I cannot write my feelings in this large writing, begun on such a scale for the Review’s sake; and just now  – – there is no denying it, and spite of all I have been incredulous about  – – it does seem that the fact is achieved and that I do love you, plainly, surely, more than ever, more than any day in my life before. It is your secret, the why, the how; the experience is mine. What are you doing to me?  – – in the heart’s heart.

Rest  – – dearest  – – bless you  – –

 

Tuesday Night.

January 7, 1846.

But, my sweet, there is safer going in letters than in visits, do you not see? In the letter, one may go to the utmost limit of one’s supposed tether without danger  – – there is the distance so palpably between the most audacious step there, and the next  . . . which is nowhere, seeing it is not in the letter. Quite otherwise in personal intercourse, where any indication of turning to a certain path, even, might possibly be checked not for its own fault but lest, the path once reached and proceeded in, some other forbidden turning might come into sight, we will say. In the letter, all ended there, just there  . . . and you may think of that, and forgive; at all events, may avoid speaking irrevocable words  – – and when, as to me, those words are intensely true, doom-words  – – think, dearest! Because, as I told you once, what most characterizes my feeling for you is the perfect respect in it, the full belief  . . . (I shall get presently to poor Robert’s very avowal of ‘owing you all esteem’!). It is on that I build, and am secure  – – for how should I know, of myself, how to serve you and be properly yours if it all was to be learnt by my own interpreting, and what you professed to dislike you were to be considered as wishing for, and what liking, as it seemed, you were loathing at your heart, and if so many ‘noes’ made a ‘yes,’ and ‘one refusal no rebuff’ and all that horrible bestiality which stout gentlemen turn up the whites of their eyes to, when they rise after dinner and pressing the right hand to the left side say, ‘The toast be dear woman!’ Now, love, with this feeling in me from the beginning,  – – I do believe,  – – now, when I am utterly blest in this gift of your love, and least able to imagine what I should do without it,  – – I cannot but believe, I say, that had you given me once a ‘refusal’  – – clearly derived from your own feelings, and quite apart from any fancied consideration for my interests; had this come upon me, whether slowly but inevitably in the course of events, or suddenly as precipitated by any step of mine; I should, believing you, have never again renewed directly or indirectly such solicitation; I should have begun to count how many other ways were yet open to serve you and devote myself to you  . . . but from the outside, now, and not in your livery! Now, if I should have acted thus under any circumstances, how could I but redouble my endeavours at precaution after my own foolish  – – you know, and forgave long since, and I, too, am forgiven in my own eyes, for the cause, though not the manner  – – but could I do other than keep ‘farther from you’ than in the letters, dearest? For your own part in that matter, seeing it with all the light you have since given me (and then, not inadequately by my own light) I could, I do kiss your feet, kiss every letter in your name, bless you with my whole heart and soul if I could pour them out, from me, before you, to stay and be yours; when I think on your motives and pure perfect generosity. It was the plainness of that which determined me to wait and be patient and grateful and your own for ever in any shape or capacity you might please to accept. Do you think that because I am so rich now, I could not have been most rich, too, then  – – in what would seem little only to me, only with this great happiness? I should have been proud beyond measure  – – happy past all desert, to call and be allowed to see you simply, speak with you and be spoken to  – – what am I more than others? Don’t think this mock humility  – – it is not  – – you take me in your mantle, and we shine together, but I know my part in it! All this is written breathlessly on a sudden fancy that you might  – – if not now, at some future time  – – give other than this, the true reason, for that discrepancy you see, that nearness in the letters, that early farness in the visits! And, love, all love is but a passionate drawing closer  – – I would be one with you, dearest; let my soul press close to you, as my lips, dear life of my life.

Wednesday.  – – You are entirely right about those poems of Horne’s  – – I spoke only of the effect of the first glance, and it is a principle with me to begin by welcoming any strangeness, intention of originality in men  – – the other way of safe copying precedents being so safe! So I began by praising all that was at all questionable in the form  . . . reserving the ground-work for after consideration. The Elf-story turns out a pure mistake, I think  – – and a common mistake, too. Fairy stories, the good ones, were written for men and women, and, being true, pleased also children; now, people set about writing for children and miss them and the others too,  – – with that detestable irreverence and plain mocking all the time at the very wonder they profess to want to excite. All obvious bending down to the lower capacity, determining not to be the great complete man one is, by half; any patronizing minute to be spent in the nursery over the books and work and healthful play, of a visitor who will presently bid good-bye and betake himself to the Beefsteak Club  – – keep us from all that! The Sailor Language is good in its way; but as wrongly used in Art as real clay and mud would be, if one plastered them in the foreground of a landscape in order to attain to so much truth, at all events  – – the true thing to endeavour is the making a golden colour which shall do every good in the power of the dirty brown. Well, then, what a veering weathercock am I, to write so and now, so! Not altogether,  – – for first it was but the stranger’s welcome I gave, the right of every new comer who must stand or fall by his behaviour once admitted within the door. And then  – – when I know what Horne thinks of  – – you, dearest; how he knew you first, and from the soul admired you; and how little he thinks of my good fortune  . . . I could not begin by giving you a bad impression of anything he sends  – – he has such very few rewards for a great deal of hard excellent enduring work, and none, no reward, I do think, would he less willingly forego than your praise and sympathy. But your opinion once expressed  – – truth remains the truth  – – so, at least, I excuse myself  . . . and quite as much for what I say now as for what was said then! ‘King John’ is very fine and full of purpose; ‘The Noble Heart,’ sadly faint and uncharacteristic. The chief incident, too, turns on that poor conventional fallacy about what constitutes a proper wrong to resist  – – a piece of morality, after a different standard, is introduced to complete another fashioned morality  – – a segment of a circle of larger dimensions is fitted into a smaller one. Now, you may have your own standard of morality in this matter of resistance to wrong, how and when if at all. And you may quite understand and sympathize with quite different standards innumerable of other people; but go from one to the other abruptly, you cannot, I think. ‘Bear patiently all injuries  – – revenge in no case’  – – that is plain. ‘Take what you conceive to be God’s part, do his evident work, stand up for good and destroy evil, and co-operate with this whole scheme here’  – – that is plain, too,  – – but, call Otto’s act no wrong, or being one, not such as should be avenged  – – and then, call the remark of a stranger that one is a ‘recreant’  – – just what needs the slight punishment of instant death to the remarker  – – and  . . . where is the way? What is clear?

– – Not my letter! which goes on and on  – – ‘dear letters’  – – sweetest? because they cost all the precious labour of making out? Well, I shall see you to-morrow, I trust. Bless you, my own  – – I have not half said what was to say even in the letter I thought to write, and which proves only what you see! But at a thought I fly off with you, ‘at a cock-crow from the Grange.’  – – Ever your own.

Last night, I received a copy of the New Quarterly  – – now here is popular praise, a sprig of it! Instead of the attack I supposed it to be, from my foolish friend’s account, the notice is outrageously eulogistical, a stupidly extravagant laudation from first to last  – – and in three other articles, as my sister finds by diligent fishing, they introduce my name with the same felicitous praise (except one instance, though, in a good article by Chorley I am certain); and with me I don’t know how many poetical crétins are praised as noticeably  – – and, in the turning of a page, somebody is abused in the richest style of scavengering  – – only Carlyle! And I love him enough not to envy him nor wish to change places, and giving him mine, mount into his.

All which, let me forget in the thoughts of to-morrow! Bless you, my Ba.

 

Tuesday Morning.

I this minute receive the Review  – – a poor business, truly! Is there a reason for a man’s wits dwindling the moment he gets into a critical High-place to hold forth?  – – I have only glanced over the article however. Well, one day I am to write of you, dearest, and it must come to something rather better than that!

I am forced to send now what is to be sent at all. Bless you, dearest. I am trusting to hear from you  – –

Your R.B.

And I find by a note from a fairer friend and favourer of mine that in the New Quarterly ‘Mr. Browning’ figures pleasantly as ‘one without any sympathy for a human being!’  – – Then, for newts and efts at all events!

 

Sunday Night.

January 5, 1846.

Yesterday, nearly the last thing, I bade you ‘think of me’  – – I wonder if you could misunderstand me in that?  – – As if my words or actions or any of my ineffectual outside-self should be thought of, unless to be forgiven! But I do, dearest, feel confident that while I am in your mind  – – cared for, rather than thought about  – – no great harm can happen to me; and as, for great harm to reach me, it must pass through you, you will care for yourself; myself, best self!

Come, let us talk. I found Horne’s book at home, and have had time to see that fresh beautiful things are there  – – I suppose ‘Delora’ will stand alone still  – – but I got pleasantly smothered with that odd shower of wood-spoils at the end, the dwarf-story; cup-masses and fern and spotty yellow leaves,  – – all that, I love heartily  – – and there is good sailor-speech in the ‘Ben Capstan’  – – though he does knock a man down with a ‘crow-bar’  – – instead of a marling-spike or, even, a belaying-pin! The first tale, though good, seems least new and individual, but I must know more. At one thing I wonder  – – his not reprinting a quaint clever real ballad, published before ‘Delora,’ on the ‘Merry Devil of Edmonton’  – – the first of his works I ever read. No, the very first piece was a single stanza, if I remember, in which was this line: ‘When bason-crested Quixote, lean and bold,’  – – good, is it not? Oh, while it strikes me, good, too, is that ‘Swineshead Monk’ ballad! Only I miss the old chronicler’s touch on the method of concocting the poison: ‘Then stole this Monk into the Garden and under a certain herb found out a Toad, which, squeezing into a cup,’ &c. something to that effect. I suspect, par parenthèse, you have found out by this time my odd liking for ‘vermin’  – – you once wrote ‘your snails’  – – and certainly snails are old clients of mine  – – but efts! Horne traced a line to me  – – in the rhymes of a ”prentice-hand’ I used to look over and correct occasionally  – – taxed me (last week) with having altered the wise line ‘Cold as a lizard in a sunny stream’ to ‘Cold as a newt hid in a shady brook’  – – for ‘what do you know about newts?’ he asked of the author  – – who thereupon confessed. But never try and catch a speckled gray lizard when we are in Italy, love, and you see his tail hang out of the chink of a wall, his winter-house  – – because the strange tail will snap off, drop from him and stay in your fingers  – – and though you afterwards learn that there is more desperation in it and glorious determination to be free, than positive pain (so people say who have no tails to be twisted off)  – – and though, moreover, the tail grows again after a sort  – – yet  . . . don’t do it, for it will give you a thrill! What a fine fellow our English water-eft is; ‘Triton paludis Linnaei’  – – e come guizza (that you can’t say in another language; cannot preserve the little in-and-out motion along with the straightforwardness!)  – – I always loved all those wild creatures God ‘sets up for themselves‘ so independently of us, so successfully, with their strange happy minute inch of a candle, as it were, to light them; while we run about and against each other with our great cressets and fire-pots. I once saw a solitary bee nipping a leaf round till it exactly fitted the front of a hole; his nest, no doubt; or tomb, perhaps  – – ‘Safe as Oedipus’s grave-place, ‘mid Colone’s olives swart’  – – (Kiss me, my Siren!)  – – Well, it seemed awful to watch that bee  – – he seemed so instantly from the teaching of God! Ælian says that  . . . a frog, does he say?  – – some animal, having to swim across the Nile, never fails to provide himself with a bit of reed, which he bites off and holds in his mouth transversely and so puts from shore gallantly  . . . because when the water-serpent comes swimming to meet him, there is the reed, wider than his serpent’s jaws, and no hopes of a swallow that time  – – now fancy the two meeting heads, the frog’s wide eyes and the vexation of the snake!

Now, see! do I deceive you? Never say I began by letting down my dignity ‘that with no middle flight intends to soar above the Aonian Mount’!  – –

My best, dear, dear one,  – – may you be better, less depressed,  . . . I can hardly imagine frost reaching you if I could be by you. Think what happiness you mean to give me,  – – what a life; what a death! ‘I may change’  – – too true; yet, you see, as an eft was to me at the beginning so it continues  – – I may take up stones and pelt the next I see  – – but  – – do you much fear that?  – – Now, walk, move, guizza, anima mia dolce. Shall I not know one day how far your mouth will be from mine as we walk? May I let that stay  . . . dearest, (the line stay, not the mouth)?

I am not very well to-day  – – or, rather, have not been so  – – now, I am well and with you. I just say that, very needlessly, but for strict frankness’ sake. Now, you are to write to me soon, and tell me all about your self, and to love me ever, as I love you ever, and bless you, and leave you in the hands of God  – – My own love!  – –

Tell me if I do wrong to send this by a morning post  – – so as to reach you earlier than the evening  – – when you will  . . . write to me?

Don’t let me forget to say that I shall receive the Review to-morrow, and will send it directly.

 

Wednesday, December 31, 1845.

I have been properly punished for so much treachery as went to that re-urging the prayer that you would begin writing, when all the time (after the first of those words had been spoken which bade me write) I was full of purpose to send my own note last evening; one which should do its best to thank you: but see, the punishment! At home I found a note from Mr. Horne  – – on the point of setting out for Ireland, too unwell to manage to come over to me; anxious, so he said, to see me before leaving London, and with only Tuesday or to-day to allow the opportunity of it, if I should choose to go and find him out. So I considered all things and determined to go  – – but not till so late did I determine on Tuesday, that there was barely time to get to Highgate  – – wherefore no letter reached you to beg pardon  . . . and now this undeserved  – – beyond the usual undeservedness  – – this last-day-of-the-Year’s gift  – – do you think or not think my gratitude weighs on me? When I lay this with the others, and remember what you have done for me  – – I do bless you  – – so as I cannot but believe must reach the all-beloved head all my hopes and fancies and cares fly straight to. Dearest, whatever change the new year brings with it, we are together  – – I can give you no more of myself  – – indeed, you give me now (back again if you choose, but changed and renewed by your possession) the powers that seemed most properly mine. I could only mean that, by the expressions to which you refer  – – only could mean that you were my crown and palm branch, now and for ever, and so, that it was a very indifferent matter to me if the world took notice of that fact or no. Yes, dearest, that is the meaning of the prophecy, which I was stupidly blind not to have read and taken comfort from long ago. You ARE the veritable Siren  – – and you ‘wait me,’ and will sing ‘song for song.’ And this is my first song, my true song  – – this love I bear you  – – I look into my heart and then let it go forth under that name  – – love. I am more than mistrustful of many other feelings in me: they are not earnest enough; so far, not true enough  – – but this is all the flower of my life which you call forth and which lies at your feet.

Now let me say it  – – what you are to remember. That if I had the slightest doubt, or fear, I would utter it to you on the instant  – – secure in the incontested stability of the main fact, even though the heights at the verge in the distance should tremble and prove vapour  – – and there would be a deep consolation in your forgiveness  – – indeed, yes; but I tell you, on solemn consideration, it does seem to me that  – – once take away the broad and general words that admit in their nature of any freight they can be charged with,  – – put aside love, and devotion, and trust  – – and then I seem to have said nothing of my feeling to you  – – nothing whatever.

I will not write more now on this subject. Believe you are my blessing and infinite reward beyond possible desert in intention,  – – my life has been crowned by you, as I said!

May God bless you ever  – – through you I shall be blessed. May I kiss your cheek and pray this, my own, all-beloved?

I must add a word or two of other things. I am very well now, quite well  – – am walking and about to walk. Horne, or rather his friends, reside in the very lane Keats loved so much  – – Millfield Lane. Hunt lent me once the little copy of the first Poems dedicated to him  – – and on the title-page was recorded in Hunt’s delicate characters that ‘Keats met him with this, the presentation-copy, or whatever was the odious name, in M  – –  – – Lane  – – called Poets’ Lane by the gods  – – Keats came running, holding it up in his hand.’ Coleridge had an affection for the place, and Shelley ‘knew‘ it  – – and I can testify it is green and silent, with pleasant openings on the grounds and ponds, through the old trees that line it. But the hills here are far more open and wild and hill-like; not with the eternal clump of evergreens and thatched summer house  – – to say nothing of the ‘invisible railing’ miserably visible everywhere.

You very well know what a vision it is you give me  – – when you speak of standing up by the table to care for my flowers  – – (which I will never be ashamed of again, by the way  – – I will say for the future; ‘here are my best’  – – in this as in other things.) Now, do you remember, that once I bade you not surprise me out of my good behaviour by standing to meet me unawares, as visions do, some day  – – but now  – – omne ignotum? No, dearest!

Ought I to say there will be two days more? till Saturday  – – and if one word comes, one line  – – think! I am wholly yours  – – yours, beloved!

R.B.

 

Saturday 4. p.m.

December 27, 1845.

I was forced to leave off abruptly on Christmas Morning  – – and now I have but a few minutes before our inexorable post leaves. I hoped to return from Town earlier. But I can say something  – – and Monday will make amends.

‘For ever’ and for ever I do love you, dearest  – – love you with my whole heart  – – in life, in death  – –

Yes; I did go to Mr. Kenyon’s  – – who had a little to forgive in my slack justice to his good dinner, but was for the rest his own kind self  – – and I went, also, to Moxon’s  – – who said something about my number’s going off ‘rather heavily’  – – so let it!

Too good, too, too indulgent you are, my own Ba, to ‘acts’ first or last; but all the same, I am glad and encouraged. Let me get done with these, and better things will follow.

Now, bless you, ever, my sweetest  – – I have you ever in my thoughts  – – And on Monday, remember, I am to see you.

Your own R.B.

See what I cut out of a Cambridge Advertiser of the 24th  – – to make you laugh!

 

25th Dec. [1845.]

My dear Christmas gift of a letter! I will write back a few lines, (all I can, having to go out now)  – – just that I may forever,  – – certainly during our mortal ‘forever’  – – mix my love for you, and, as you suffer me to say, your love for me  . . . dearest!  . . . these shall be mixed with the other loves of the day and live therein  – – as I write, and trust, and know  – – forever! While I live I will remember what was my feeling in reading, and in writing, and in stopping from either  . . . as I have just done  . . . to kiss you and bless you with my whole heart.  – – Yes, yes, bless you, my own!

All is right, all of your letter  . . . admirably right and just in the defence of the women I seemed to speak against; and only seemed  – – because that is a way of mine which you must have observed; that foolish concentrating of thought and feeling, for a moment, on some one little spot of a character or anything else indeed, and in the attempt to do justice and develop whatever may seem ordinarily to be overlooked in it,  – – that over vehement insisting on, and giving an undue prominence to, the same  – – which has the effect of taking away from the importance of the rest of the related objects which, in truth, are not considered at all  . . . or they would also rise proportionally when subjected to the same (that is, correspondingly magnified and dilated) light and concentrated feeling. So, you remember, the old divine, preaching on ‘small sins,’ in his zeal to expose the tendencies and consequences usually made little account of, was led to maintain the said small sins to be ‘greater than great ones.’ But then  . . . if you look on the world altogether, and accept the small natures, in their usual proportion with the greater  . . . things do not look quite so bad; because the conduct which is atrocious in those higher cases, of proposal and acceptance, may be no more than the claims of the occasion justify (wait and hear) in certain other cases where the thing sought for and granted is avowedly less by a million degrees. It shall all be traffic, exchange (counting spiritual gifts as only coin, for our purpose), but surely the formalities and policies and decencies all vary with the nature of the thing trafficked for. If a man makes up his mind during half his life to acquire a Pitt-diamond or a Pilgrim-pearl  – – [he] gets witnesses and testimony and so forth  – – but, surely, when I pass a shop where oranges are ticketed up seven for sixpence I offend no law by sparing all words and putting down the piece with a certain authoritative ring on the counter. If instead of diamonds you want  – – (being a king or queen)  – – provinces with live men on them  . . . there is so much more diplomacy required; new interests are appealed to  – – high motives supposed, at all events  – – whereas, when, in Naples, a man asks leave to black your shoe in the dusty street ‘purely for the honour of serving your Excellency’ you laugh and would be sorry to find yourself without a ‘grano’ or two  – – (six of which, about, make a farthing)  – – Now do you not see! Where so little is to be got, why offer much more? If a man knows that  . . . but I am teaching you! All I mean is, that, in Benedick’s phrase, ‘the world must go on.’ He who honestly wants his wife to sit at the head of his table and carve  . . . that is be his help-meat (not ‘help mete for him’)  – – he shall assuredly find a girl of his degree who wants the table to sit at; and some dear friend to mortify, who would be glad of such a piece of fortune; and if that man offers that woman a bunch of orange-flowers and a sonnet, instead of a buck-horn-handled sabre-shaped knife, sheathed in a ‘Every Lady Her Own Market-Woman, Being a Table of’ &c. &c.  – – then, I say he is  – –

Bless you, dearest  – – the clock strikes  – – and time is none  – – but  – – bless you!

Your own R.B.

 

Sunday Night.

December 22, 1845.

Now, ‘ought‘ you to be ‘sorry you sent that letter,’ which made, and makes me so happy  – – so happy  – – can you bring yourself to turn round and tell one you have so blessed with your bounty that there was a mistake, and you meant only half that largess? If you are not sensible that you do make me most happy by such letters, and do not warm in the reflection of your own rays, then I do give up indeed the last chance of procuring you happiness. My own ‘ought,’ which you object to, shall be withdrawn  – – being only a pure bit of selfishness; I felt, in missing the letter of yours, next day, that I might have drawn it down by one of mine,  – – if I had begged never so gently, the gold would have fallen  – – there was my omitted duty to myself which you properly blame. I should stand silently and wait and be sure of the ever-remembering goodness.

Let me count my gold now  – – and rub off any speck that stays the full shining. First  – – that thought  . . . I told you; I pray you, pray you, sweet  – – never that again  – – or what leads never so remotely or indirectly to it! On your own fancied ground, the fulfilment would be of necessity fraught with every woe that can fall in this life. I am yours for ever  – – if you are not here, with me  – – what then? Say, you take all of yourself away but just enough to live on; then, that defeats every kind purpose  . . . as if you cut away all the ground from my feet but so much as serves for bare standing room  . . . why still, I stand there  – – and is it the better that I have no broader space, when off that you cannot force me? I have your memory, the knowledge of you, the idea of you printed into my heart and brain,  – – on that, I can live my life  – – but it is for you, the dear, utterly generous creature I know you, to give me more and more beyond mere life  – – to extend life and deepen it  – – as you do, and will do. Oh, how I love you when I think of the entire truthfulness of your generosity to me  – – how, meaning and willing to give, you gave nobly! Do you think I have not seen in this world how women who do love will manage to confer that gift on occasion? And shall I allow myself to fancy how much alloy such pure gold as your love would have rendered endurable? Yet it came, virgin ore, to complete my fortune! And what but this makes me confident and happy? Can I take a lesson by your fancies, and begin frightening myself with saying  . . . ‘But if she saw all the world  – – the worthier, better men there  . . . those who would’ &c. &c. No, I think of the great, dear gift that it was; how I ‘won‘ nothing (the hateful word, and French thought)  – – did nothing by my own arts or cleverness in the matter  . . . so what pretence have the more artful or more clever for:  – – but I cannot write out this folly  – – I am yours for ever, with the utmost sense of gratitude  – – to say I would give you my life joyfully is little . . .. I would, I hope, do that for two or three other people  – – but I am not conscious of any imaginable point in which I would not implicitly devote my whole self to you  – – be disposed of by you as for the best. There! It is not to be spoken of  – – let me live it into proof, beloved!

And for ‘disappointment and a burden’  . . . now  – – let us get quite away from ourselves, and not see one of the filaments, but only the cords of love with the world’s horny eye. Have we such jarring tastes, then? Does your inordinate attachment to gay life interfere with my deep passion for society? ‘Have they common sympathy in each other’s pursuits?’  – – always asks Mrs. Tomkins! Well, here was I when you knew me, fixed in my way of life, meaning with God’s help to write what may be written and so die at peace with myself so far. Can you help me or no? Do you not help me so much that, if you saw the more likely peril for poor human nature, you would say, ‘He will be jealous of all the help coming from me,  – – none from him to me!’  – – And that would be a consequence of the help, all-too-great for hope of return, with any one less possessed than I with the exquisiteness of being transcended and the blest one.

But  – – ‘here comes the Selah and the voice is hushed’  – – I will speak of other things. When we are together one day  – – the days I believe in  – – I mean to set about that reconsidering ‘Sordello’  – – it has always been rather on my mind  – – but yesterday I was reading the ‘Purgatorio’ and the first speech of the group of which Sordello makes one struck me with a new significance, as well describing the man and his purpose and fate in my own poem  – – see; one of the burthened, contorted souls tells Virgil and Dante  – –

Which is just my Sordello’s story  . . . could I ‘do‘ it off hand, I wonder  – –

There were many singular incidents attending my work on that subject  – – thus, quite at the end, I found out there was printed and not published, a little historical tract by a Count V  – –  – – something, called ‘Sordello’  – – with the motto ‘Post fata resurgam’! I hope he prophesied. The main of this  – – biographical notices  – – is extracted by Muratori, I think. Last year when I set foot in Naples I found after a few minutes that at some theatre, that night, the opera was to be ‘one act of Sordello’ and I never looked twice, nor expended a couple of carlines on the libretto!

I wanted to tell you, in last letter, that when I spoke of people’s tempers you have no concern with ‘people’  – – I do not glance obliquely at your temper  – – either to discover it, or praise it, or adapt myself to it. I speak of the relation one sees in other cases  – – how one opposes passionate foolish people, but hates cold clever people who take quite care enough of themselves. I myself am born supremely passionate  – – so I was born with light yellow hair: all changes  – – that is the passion changes its direction and, taking a channel large enough, looks calmer, perhaps, than it should  – – and all my sympathies go with quiet strength, of course  – – but I know what the other kind is. As for the breakages of chairs, and the appreciation of Parisian meubles; manibus, pedibusque descendo in tuam sententiam, Ba, mi ocelle! (‘What was E.B. C?’ why, the first letter after, and not, E.B. B, my own B! There was no latent meaning in the C  – – but I had no inclination to go on to D, or E, for instance).

And so, love, Tuesday is to be our day  – – one day more  – – and then! And meanwhile ‘care‘ for me! a good word for you  – – but my care, what is that! One day I aspire to care, though! I shall not go away at any dear Mr. K.’s coming! They call me down-stairs to supper  – – and my fire is out, and you keep me from feeling cold and yet ask if I am well? Yes, well  – – yes, happy  – – and your own ever  – – I must bid God bless you  – – dearest!

R.B.