Author: RB

Saturday.

December 20, 1845.

I do not, nor will not think, dearest, of ever ‘making you happy’  – – I can imagine no way of working that end, which does not go straight to my own truest, only true happiness  – – yet in every such effort there is implied some distinction, some supererogatory grace, or why speak of it at all? You it is, are my happiness, and all that ever can be: you  – – dearest!

But never, if you would not, what you will not do I know, never revert to that frightful wish. ‘Disappoint me?’ ‘I speak what I know and testify what I have seen’  – – you shall ‘mystery’ again and again  – – I do not dispute that, but do not you dispute, neither, that mysteries are. But it is simply because I do most justice to the mystical part of what I feel for you, because I consent to lay most stress on that fact of facts that I love you, beyond admiration, and respect, and esteem and affection even, and do not adduce any reason which stops short of accounting for that, whatever else it would account for, because I do this, in pure logical justice  – – you are able to turn and wonder (if you do  . . . now) what causes it all! My love, only wait, only believe in me, and it cannot be but I shall, little by little, become known to you  – – after long years, perhaps, but still one day: I would say this now  – – but I will write more to-morrow. God bless my sweetest  – – ever, love, I am your

R.B.

But my letter came last night, did it not?

Another thing  – – no, to-morrow  – – for time presses, and, in all cases, Tuesday  – – remember!

 

Friday Morning.

December 19, 1845.

I ought to have written yesterday: so to-day when I need a letter and get none, there is my own fault besides, and the less consolation. A letter from you would light up this sad day. Shall I fancy how, if a letter lay there where I look, rain might fall and winds blow while I listened to you, long after the words had been laid to heart? But here you are in your place  – – with me who am your own  – – your own  – – and so the rhyme joins on,

Now, is that taken from your book? No  – – but from my book, which holds my verses as I write them; and as I open it, I read that.

And speaking of verse  – – somebody gave me a few days ago that Mr. Lowell’s book you once mentioned to me. Anyone who ‘admires’ you shall have my sympathy at once  – – even though he do change the laughing wine-mark into a ‘stain’ in that perfectly beautiful triplet  – – nor am I to be indifferent to his good word for myself (though not very happily connected with the criticism on the epithet in that ‘Yorkshire Tragedy’  – – which has better things, by the way  – – seeing that ‘white boy,’ in old language, meant just ‘good boy,’ a general epithet, as Johnson notices in the life of Dryden, whom the schoolmaster Busby was used to class with his ‘white boys’  – – this is hypercriticism, however). But these American books should not be reprinted here  – – one asks, what and where is the class to which they address themselves? for, no doubt, we have our congregations of ignoramuses that enjoy the profoundest ignorance imaginable on the subjects treated of; but these are evidently not the audience Mr. Lowell reckons on; rather, if one may trust the manner of his setting to work, he would propound his doctrine to the class. Always to be found, of spirits instructed up to a certain height and there resting  – – vines that run up a prop and there tangle and grow to a knot  – – which want supplying with fresh poles; so the provident man brings his bundle into the grounds, and sticks them in laterally or a-top of the others, as the case requires, and all the old stocks go on growing again  – – but here, with us, whoever wanted Chaucer, or Chapman, or Ford, got him long ago  – – what else have Lamb, and Coleridge, and Hazlitt and Hunt and so on to the end of their generations  . . . what else been doing this many a year? What one passage of all these, cited with the very air of a Columbus, but has been known to all who know anything of poetry this many, many a year? The others, who don’t know anything, are the stocks that have got to shoot, not climb higher  – – compost, they want in the first place! Ford’s and Crashaw’s rival Nightingales  – – why they have been dissertated on by Wordsworth and Coleridge, then by Lamb and Hazlitt, then worked to death by Hunt, who printed them entire and quoted them to pieces again, in every periodical he was ever engaged upon; and yet after all, here ‘Philip’  – – ‘must read’ (out of a roll of dropping papers with yellow ink tracings, so old!) something at which ‘John’ claps his hands and says ‘Really  – – that these ancients should own so much wit &c.’! The passage no longer looks its fresh self after this veritable passage from hand to hand: as when, in old dances, the belle began the figure with her own partner, and by him was transferred to the next, and so to the next  – – they ever beginning with all the old alacrity and spirit; but she bearing a still-accumulating weight of tokens of gallantry, and none the better for every fresh pushing and shoving and pulling and hauling  – – till, at the bottom of the room  – –

To which Mr. Lowell might say, that  – – No, I will say the true thing against myself  – – and it is, that when I turn from what is in my mind, and determine to write about anybody’s book to avoid writing that I love and love and love again my own, dearest love  – – because of the cuckoo-song of it,  – – then, I shall be in no better humour with that book than with Mr. Lowell’s!

But I have a new thing to say or sing  – – you never before heard me love and bless and send my heart after  – – ‘Ba’  – – did you? Ba  . . . and that is you! I tried  . . . (more than wanted) to call you that, on Wednesday! I have a flower here  – – rather, a tree, a mimosa, which must be turned and turned, the side to the light changing in a little time to the leafy side, where all the fans lean and spread  . . . so I turn your name to me, that side I have not last seen: you cannot tell how I feel glad that you will not part with the name  – – Barrett  – – seeing you have two of the same  – – and must always, moreover, remain my EBB!

Dearest ‘E.B.C.’  – – no, no! and so it will never be!

Have you seen Mr. Kenyon? I did not write  . . . knowing that such a procedure would draw the kind sure letter in return, with the invitation &c., as if I had asked for it! I had perhaps better call on him some morning very early.

Bless you, my own sweetest. You will write to me, I know in my heart!

Ever may God bless you!

R.B.

Monday Morning.

December 15, 1845.

Every word you write goes to my heart and lives there: let us live so, and die so, if God will. I trust many years hence to begin telling you what I feel now;  – – that the beam of the light will have reached you!  – – meantime it is here. Let me kiss your forehead, my sweetest, dearest.

Wednesday I am waiting for  – – how waiting for!

After all, it seems probable that there was no intentional mischief in that jeweller’s management of the ring. The divided gold must have been exposed to fire  – – heated thoroughly, perhaps,  – – and what became of the contents then! Well, all is safe now, and I go to work again of course. My next act is just done  – – that is, being done  – – but, what I did not foresee, I cannot bring it, copied, by Wednesday, as my sister went this morning on a visit for the week.

On the matters, the others, I will not think, as you bid me,  – – if I can help, at least. But your kind, gentle, good sisters! and the provoking sorrow of the right meaning at bottom of the wrong doing  – – wrong to itself and its plain purpose  – – and meanwhile, the real tragedy and sacrifice of a life!

If you should see Mr. Kenyon, and can find if he will be disengaged on Wednesday evening, I shall be glad to go in that case.

But I have been writing, as I say, and will leave off this, for the better communing with you. Don’t imagine I am unwell; I feel quite well, but a little tired, and the thought of you waits in such readiness! So, may God bless you, beloved!

I am all your own

R.B.

 

Friday.

December 12, 1845.

And now, my heart’s love, I am waiting to hear from you; my heart is full of you. When I try to remember what I said yesterday, that thought, of what fills my heart  – – only that makes me bear with the memory . . .. I know that even such imperfect, poorest of words must have come from thence if not bearing up to you all that is there  – – and I know you are ever above me to receive, and help, and forgive, and wait for the one day which I will never say to myself cannot come, when I shall speak what I feel  – – more of it  – – or some of it  – – for now nothing is spoken.

My all-beloved  – –

Ah, you opposed very rightly, I dare say, the writing that paper I spoke of! The process should be so much simpler! I most earnestly expect of you, my love, that in the event of any such necessity as was then alluded to, you accept at once in my name any conditions possible for a human will to submit to  – – there is no imaginable condition to which you allow me to accede that I will not joyfully bend all my faculties to comply with. And you know this  – – but so, also do you know more  . . . and yet ‘I may tire of you’  – – ‘may forget you’!

I will write again, having the long, long week to wait! And one of the things I must say, will be, that with my love, I cannot lose my pride in you  – – that nothing but that love could balance that pride  – – and that, blessing the love so divinely, you must minister to the pride as well; yes, my own  – – I shall follow your fame,  – – and, better than fame, the good you do  – – in the world  – – and, if you please, it shall all be mine  – – as your hand, as your eyes  – –

I will write and pray it from you into a promise  . . . and your promises I live upon.

May God bless you! your R.B.

 

Tuesday Morning.

December 9, 1845.

Well, then, I am no longer sorry that I did not read either of your letters  . . . for there were two in the collection. I did not read one word of them  – – and hear why. When your brother and I took the book between us in wonderment at the notion  – – we turned to the index, in large text-hand, and stopped at ‘Miss B.’  – – and he indeed read them, or some of them, but holding the volume at a distance which defied my short-sighted eye  – – all I saw was the faint small characters  – – and, do you know  . . . I neither trusted myself to ask a nearer look  . . . nor a second look  . . . as if I were studying unduly what I had just said was most unfairly exposed to view!  – – so I was silent, and lost you (in that)  – – then, and for ever, I promise you, now that you speak of vexation it would give you. All I know of the notes, that one is addressed to Talfourd in the third person  – – and when I had run through my own  . . . not far off  . . . (BA-BR)  – – I was sick of the book altogether. You are generous to me  – – but, to say the truth, I might have remembered the most justifying circumstance in my case  . . . which was, that my own ‘Paracelsus,’ printed a few months before, had been as dead a failure as ‘Ion’ a brilliant success  – – for, until just before . . .. Ah, really I forget!  – – but I know that until Forster’s notice in the Examiner appeared, every journal that thought worth while to allude to the poem at all, treated it with entire contempt  . . . beginning, I think, with the Athenæum which then made haste to say, a few days after its publication, ‘that it was not without talent but spoiled by obscurity and only an imitation of  – – Shelley’!  – – something to this effect, in a criticism of about three lines among their ‘Library Table’ notices. And that first taste was a most flattering sample of what the ‘craft’ had in store for me  – – since my publisher and I had fairly to laugh at his ‘Book’  – – (quite of another kind than the Serjeant’s)  – – in which he was used to paste extracts from newspapers and the like  – – seeing that, out of a long string of notices, one vied with its predecessor in disgust at my ‘rubbish,’ as their word went: but Forster’s notice altered a good deal  – – which I have to recollect for his good. Still, the contrast between myself and Talfourd was so utter  – – you remember the world’s-wonder ‘Ion’ made,  – – that I was determined not to pass for the curious piece of neglected merit I really was not  – – and so!  – –

But, dearest, why should you leave your own especial sphere of doing me good for another than yours?

Does the sun rake and hoe about the garden as well as thine steadily over it? Why must you, who give me heart and power, as nothing else did or could, to do well  – – concern yourself with what might be done by any good, kind ministrant only fit for such offices? Not that I feel, even, more bound to you for them  – – they have their weight, I know  . . . but what weight beside the divine gift of yourself? Do not, dear, dearest, care for making me known: you know me!  – – and they know so little, after all your endeavour, who are ignorant of what you are to me  – – if you  . . . well, but that will follow; if I do greater things one day  – – what shall they serve for, what range themselves under of right?  – –

Mr. Mathews sent me two copies of his poems  – – and, I believe, a newspaper, ‘when time was,’ about the ‘Blot in the Scutcheon’  – – and also, through Moxon  – – (I believe it was Mr. M.)  – – a proposition for reprinting  – – to which I assented of course  – – and there was an end to the matter.

And might I have stayed till five?  – – dearest, I will never ask for more than you give  – – but I feel every single sand of the gold showers  . . . spite of what I say above! I have an invitation for Thursday which I had no intention of remembering (it admitted of such liberty)  – – but now . . ..

Something I will say! ‘Polka,’ forsooth!  – – one lady whose head could not, and another whose feet could not, dance!  – – But I talked a little to your brother whom I like more and more: it comforts me that he is yours.

So, Thursday,  – – thank you from the heart! I am well, and about to go out. This week I have done nothing to ‘Luria’  – – is it that my ring is gone? There surely is something to forgive in me  – – for that shameful business  – – or I should not feel as I do in the matter: but you did forgive me.

God bless my own, only love  – – ever  – –

Yours wholly

R.B.

N.B. An antiquarian friend of mine in old days picked up a nondescript wonder of a coin. I just remember he described it as Rhomboid in shape  – – cut, I fancy, out of church-plate in troubled times. What did my friend do but get ready a box, lined with velvet, and properly compartmented, to have always about him, so that the next such coin he picked up, say in Cheapside, he might at once transfer to a place of safety  . . . his waistcoat pocket being no happy receptacle for the same. I saw the box  – – and encouraged the man to keep a vigilant eye.

Parallel. R.B. having found an unicorn . . ..

Do you forgive these strips of paper? I could not wait to send for more  – – having exhausted my stock.

 

Sunday Night.

December 8, 1845.

Well, I did see your brother last night  . . . and very wisely neither spoke nor kept silence in the proper degree, but said that ‘I hoped you were well’  – – from the sudden feeling that I must say something of you  – – not pretend indifference about you now  . . . and from the impossibility of saying the full of what I might; because other people were by  – – and after, in the evening, when I should have remedied the first imperfect expression, I had not altogether the heart. So, you, dearest, will clear me with him if he wonders, will you not? But it all hangs together; speaking of you,  – – to you,  – – writing to you  – – all is helpless and sorrowful work by the side of what is in my soul to say and to write  – – or is it not the natural consequence? If these vehicles of feelings sufficed  – – there would be the end!  – – And that my feeling for you should end! . . . For the rest, the headache which kept away while I sate with you, made itself amends afterward, and as it is unkind to that warm Talfourd to look blank at his hospitable endeavours, all my power of face went à qui de droit  – –

Did your brother tell you  . . . yes, I think  . . . of the portentous book, lettered II, and thick as a law-book, of congratulatory letters on the appearance of ‘Ion’?  – – But how under the B’s in the Index came ‘Miss Barrett’ and, woe’s me, ‘R.B.’! I don’t know when I have had so ghastly a visitation. There was the utterly forgotten letter, in the as thoroughly disused hand-writing, in the  . . . I fear  . . . still as completely obsolete feeling  – – no, not so bad as that  – – but at first there was all the novelty, and social admiration at the friend  – – it is truly not right to pluck all the rich soil from the roots and hold them up clean and dry as if they came so from all you now see, which is nothing at all  . . . like the Chinese Air-plant! Do you understand this? And surely ‘Ion’ is a very, very beautiful and noble conception, and finely executed,  – – a beautiful work  – – what has come after, has lowered it down by grade after grade  . . . it don’t stand apart on the hill, like a wonder, now it is built up to by other attempts; but the great difference is in myself. Another maker of another ‘Ion,’ finding me out and behaving as Talfourd did, would not find that me, so to be behaved to, so to be honoured  – – though he should have all the good will! Ten years ago!

And ten years hence!

Always understand that you do not take me as I was at the beginning  . . . with a crowd of loves to give to something and so get rid of their pain and burden. I have known what that ends in  – – a handful of anything may be as sufficient a sample, serve your purposes and teach you its nature, as well as whole heaps  – – and I know what most of the pleasures of this world are  – – so that I can be surer of myself, and make you surer, on calm demonstrated grounds, than if I had a host of objects of admiration or ambition yet to become acquainted with. You say, ‘I am a man and may change’  – – I answer, yes  – – but, while I hold my senses, only change for the presumable better  . . . not for the experienced worst.

Here is my Uncle’s foot on the stair  . . . his knock hurried the last sentence  – – here he is by me!  – – Understand what this would have led to, how you would have been proved logically my own, best, extreme want, my life’s end  – – yes; dearest! Bless you ever  – –

R.B.

 

December 3, 1845.

See, dearest, what the post brings me this minute! Now, is it not a good omen, a pleasant inconscious prophecy of what is to be? Be it well done, or badly  – – there are you, leading me up and onward, in his review as everywhere, at every future time! And our names will go together  – – be read together. In itself this is nothing to you, dear poet  – – but the unexpectedness, unintended significance of it has pleased me very much  – – does it not please you?  – – I thought I was to figure in that cold Quarterly all by myself, (for he writes for it)  – – but here you are close by me; it cannot but be for good. He has no knowledge whatever that I am even a friend of yours. Say you are pleased!

There was no writing yesterday for me  – – nor will there be much to-day. In some moods, you know, I turn and take a thousand new views of what you say  . . . and find fault with you to your surprise  – – at others, I rest on you, and feel all well, all best  . . . now, for one instance, even that phrase of the possibility ‘and what is to follow,’  – – even that I cannot except against  – – I am happy, contented; too well, too prodigally blessed to be even able to murmur just sufficiently loud to get, in addition to it all, a sweetest stopping of the mouth! I will say quietly and becomingly ‘Yes  – – I do promise you’  – – yet it is some solace to  – – No  – – I will not even couple the promise with an adjuration that you, at the same time, see that they care for me properly at Hanwell Asylum  . . . the best by all accounts: yet I feel so sure of you, so safe and confident in you! If any of it had been my work, my own  . . . distrust and foreboding had pursued me from the beginning; but all is yours  – – you crust me round with gold and jewelry like the wood of a sceptre; and why should you transfer your own work? Wood enough to choose from in the first instance, but the choice once made! . . . So I rest on you, for life, for death, beloved  – – beside you do stand, in my solemn belief, the direct miraculous gift of God to me  – – that is my solemn belief; may I be thankful!

I am anxious to hear from you  . . . when am I not?  – – but not before the American letter is written and sent. Is that done? And who was the visitor on Monday  – – and if &c. what did he remark?  – – And what is right or wrong with Saturday  – – is it to be mine?

Bless you, dearest  – – now and for ever  – – words cannot say how much I am your own.

 

Tuesday.

December 2, 1845.

I was happy, so happy before! But I am happier and richer now. My love  – – no words could serve here, but there is life before us, and to the end of it the vibration now struck will extend  – – I will live and die with your beautiful ring, your beloved hair  – – comforting me, blessing me.

Let me write to-morrow  – – when I think on all you have been and are to me, on the wonder of it and the deliciousness, it makes the paper words that come seem vainer than ever  – – To-morrow I will write.

May God bless you, my own, my precious  – –

I am all your own

R.B.

I have thought again, and believe it will be best to select the finger you intended  . . . as the alteration will be simpler, I find; and one is less liable to observation and comment.

Was not that Mr. Kenyon last evening? And did he ask, or hear, or say anything?

 

November 28, 1845.

Take it, dearest; what I am forced to think you mean  – – and take no more with it  – – for I gave all to give long ago  – – I am all yours  – – and now, mine; give me mine to be happy with!

You will have received my note of yesterday.  – – I am glad you are satisfied with Miss Bayley, whom I, too, thank  . . . that is, sympathize with,  . . . (not wonder at, though)  – – for her intention . . .. Well, may it all be for best  – – here or at Pisa, you are my blessing and life.

. . . How all considerate you are, you that are the kind, kind one! The post arrangement I will remember  – – to-day, for instance, will this reach you at 8? I shall be with you then, in thought. ‘Forget you!’  – – What does that mean, dearest?

And I might have stayed longer and you let me go. What does that mean, also tell me? Why, I make up my mind to go, always, like a man, and praise myself as I get through it  – – as when one plunges into the cold water  – – only  . . . ah, that too is no more a merit than any other thing I do  . . . there is the reward, the last and best! Or is it the ‘lure’?

I would not be ashamed of my soul if it might be shown you,  – – it is wholly grateful, conscious of you.

But another time, do not let me wrong myself so! Say, ‘one minute more.’

On Monday?  – – I am much better  – – and, having got free from an engagement for Saturday, shall stay quietly here and think the post never intending to come  – – for you will not let me wait longer?

Shall I dare write down a grievance of my heart, and not offend you? Yes, trusting in the right of my love  – – you tell me, sweet, here in the letter, ‘I do not look so well’  – – and sometimes, I ‘look better’  . . . how do you know? When I first saw you  – – I saw your eyes  – – since then, you, it should appear, see mine  – – but I only know yours are there, and have to use that memory as if one carried dried flowers about when fairly inside the garden-enclosure. And while I resolve, and hesitate, and resolve again to complain of this  – – (kissing your foot  . . . not boldly complaining, nor rudely)  – – while I have this on my mind, on my heart, ever since that May morning  . . . can it be?

– – No, nothing can be wrong now  – – you will never call me ‘kind’ again, in that sense, you promise! Nor think ‘bitterly’ of my kindness, that word!

Shall I see you on Monday?

God bless you my dearest  – – I see her now  – – and here and now the eyes open, wide enough, and I will kiss them  – – how gratefully!

Your own

R.B.

 

Thursday Morning.

November 27, 1845.

How are you? and Miss Bayley’s visit yesterday, and Mr. K.’s to-day  – – (He told me he should see you this morning  – – and I shall pass close by, having to be in town and near you,  – – but only the thought will reach you and be with you  – – ) tell me all this, dearest.

How kind Mr. Kenyon was last night and the day before! He neither wonders nor is much vexed, I dare believe  – – and I write now these few words to say so  – – My heart is set on next Thursday, remember  . . . and the prize of Saturday! Oh, dearest, believe for truth’s sake, that I would most frankly own to any fault, any imperfection in the beginning of my love of you; in the pride and security of this present stage it has reached  – – I would gladly learn, by the full lights now, what an insufficient glimmer it grew from,  . . . but there never has been change, only development and increased knowledge and strengthened feeling  – – I was made and meant to look for you and wait for you and become yours for ever. God bless you, and make me thankful!

And you will give me that? What shall save me from wreck: but truly? How must I feel to you!

Yours R.B.