Author: RB

Sunday Night.

November 24, 1845.

But a word to-night, my love  – – for my head aches a little,  – – I had to write a long letter to my friend at New Zealand, and now I want to sit and think of you and get well  – – but I must not quite lose the word I counted on.

So, that way you will take my two days and turn them against me? Oh, you! Did I say the ‘root’ had been striking then, or rather, that the seeds, whence the roots take leisure and grow, they had been planted then  – – and might not a good heart and hand drop acorns enough to grow up into a complete Dodona-grove,  – – when the very rook, say farmers, hides and forgets whole navies of ship-wood one day to be, in his summer storing-journeys? But this shall do  – – I am not going to prove what may be, when here it is, to my everlasting happiness.

– – And ‘I am kind’  – – there again! Do I not know what you mean by that? Well it is some comfort that you make all even in some degree, and take from my faculties here what you give them, spite of my protesting, in other directions. So I could not when I first saw you admire you very much, and wish for your friendship, and be willing to give you mine, and desirous of any opportunity of serving you, benefiting you; I could not think the finding myself in a position to feel this, just this and no more, a sufficiently fortunate event  . . . but I must needs get up, or imitate, or  . . . what is it you fancy I do?  . . . an utterly distinct, unnecessary, inconsequential regard for you, which should, when it got too hard for shamming at the week’s end,  – – should simply spoil, in its explosion and departure, all the real and sufficing elements of an honest life-long attachment and affections! that I should do this, and think it a piece of kindness does . . ..

Now, I’ll tell you what it does deserve, and what it shall get. Give me, dearest beyond expression, what I have always dared to think I would ask you for  . . . one day! Give me  . . . wait  – – for your own sake, not mine who never, never dream of being worth such a gift  . . . but for your own sense of justice, and to say, so as my heart shall hear, that you were wrong and are no longer so, give me so much of you  – – all precious that you are  – – as may be given in a lock of your hair  – – I will live and die with it, and with the memory of you  – – this at the worst! If you give me what I beg,  – – shall I say next Tuesday  . . . when I leave you, I will not speak a word. If you do not, I will not think you unjust, for all my light words, but I will pray you to wait and remember me one day  – – when the power to deserve more may be greater  . . . never the will. God supplies all things: may he bless you, beloved! So I can but pray, kissing your hand.

R.B.

Now pardon me, dearest, for what is written  . . . what I cannot cancel, for the love’s sake that it grew from.

The Chronicle was through Moxon, I believe  – – Landor had sent the verses to Forster at the same time as to me, yet they do not appear. I never in my life less cared about people’s praise or blame for myself, and never more for its influence on other people than now  – – I would stand as high as I could in the eyes of all about you  – – yet not, after all, at poor Chorley’s expense whom your brother, I am sure, unintentionally, is rather hasty in condemning; I have told you of my own much rasher opinion and how I was ashamed and sorry when I corrected it after. C. is of a different species to your brother, differently trained, looking different ways  – – and for some of the peculiarities that strike at first sight, C. himself gives a good reason to the enquirer on better acquaintance. For ‘Vulgarity’  – – NO! But your kind brother will alter his view, I know, on further acquaintance  . . . and,  – – woe’s me  – – will find that ‘assumption’s’ pertest self would be troubled to exercise its quality at such a house as Mr. K.’s, where every symptom of a proper claim is met half way and helped onward far too readily.

Good night, now. Am I not yours  – – are you not mine? And can that make you happy too?

Bless you once more and for ever.

That scrap of Landor’s being for no other eye than mine  – – I made the foolish comment, that there was no blotting out  – – made it some four or five years ago, when I could read what I only guess at now, through my idle opening the hand and letting the caught bird go  – – but there used to be a real satisfaction to me in writing those grand Hebrew characters  – – the noble languages!

 

Friday Night.

November 22, 1845.

How good and kind to send me these books! (The letter I say nothing of, according to convention: if I wrote down ‘best and kindest’  . . . oh, what poorest words!) I shall tell you all about ‘Pomfret,’ be sure. Chorley talked of it, as we walked homewards together last night,  – – modestly and well, and spoke of having given away two copies only  . . . to his mother one, and the other to  – – Miss Barrett, and ‘she seemed interested in the life of it, entered into his purpose in it,’ and I listened to it all, loving Chorley for his loveability which is considerable at other times, and saying to myself what might run better in the child’s couplet  – – ‘Not more than others I deserve, Though God has given me more’!  – – Given me the letter which expresses surprise that I shall feel these blanks between the days when I see you longer and longer! So am I surprised  – – that I should have mentioned so obvious a matter at all; or leave unmentioned a hundred others its correlatives which I cannot conceive you to be ignorant of, you! When I spread out my riches before me, and think what the hour and more means that you endow one with, I do  – – not to say could  – – I do form resolutions, and say to myself  – – ‘If next time I am bidden stay away a fortnight, I will not reply by a word beyond the grateful assent.’ I do, God knows, lay up in my heart these priceless treasures,  – – shall I tell you? I never in my life kept a journal, a register of sights, or fancies, or feelings; in my last travel I put down on a slip of paper a few dates, that I might remember in England, on such a day I was on Vesuvius, in Pompeii, at Shelley’s grave; all that should be kept in memory is, with me, best left to the brain’s own process. But I have, from the first, recorded the date and the duration of every visit to you; the numbers of minutes you have given me  . . . and I put them together till they make  . . . nearly two days now; four-and-twenty-hour-long-days, that I have been by you  – – and I enter the room determining to get up and go sooner  . . . and I go away into the light street repenting that I went so soon by I don’t know how many minutes  – – for, love, what is it all, this love for you, but an earnest desiring to include you in myself, if that might be; to feel you in my very heart and hold you there for ever, through all chance and earthly changes!

There, I had better leave off; the words!

I was very glad to find myself with your brother yesterday; I like him very much and mean to get a friend in him  – – (to supply the loss of my friend  . . . Miss Barrett  – – which is gone, the friendship, so gone!) But I did not ask after you because I heard Moxon do it. Now of Landor’s verses: I got a note from Forster yesterday telling me that he, too, had received a copy  . . . so that there is no injunction to be secret. So I got a copy for dear Mr. Kenyon, and, lo! what comes! I send the note to make you smile! I shall reply that I felt in duty bound to apprise you; as I did. You will observe that I go to that too facile gate of his on Tuesday, my day  . . . from your house directly. The worst is that I have got entangled with invitations already, and must go out again, hating it, to more than one place.

I am very well  – – quite well; yes, dearest! The pain is quite gone; and the inconvenience, hard on its trace. You will write to me again, will you not? And be as brief as your heart lets you, to me who hoard up your words and get remote and imperfect ideas of what  . . . shall it be written? . . . anger at you could mean, when I see a line blotted out; a second-thoughted finger-tip rapidly put forth upon one of my gold pieces!

I rather think if Warburton reviews me it will be in the Quarterly, which I know he writes for. Hanmer is a very sculpturesque passionless high-minded and amiable man  . . . this coldness, as you see it, is part of him. I like his poems, I think, better than you  – – ‘the Sonnets,’ do you know them? Not ‘Fra Cipolla.’ See what is here, since you will not let me have only you to look at  – – this is Landor’s first opinion  – – expressed to Forster  – – see the date! and last of all, see me and know me, beloved! May God bless you!

 

Thursday Morning.

Here is the copy of Landor’s verses.

You know thoroughly, do you not, why I brought all those good-natured letters, desperate praise and all? Not, not out of the least vanity in the world  – – nor to help myself in your sight with such testimony: would it seem very extravagant, on the contrary, if I said that perhaps I laid them before your eyes in a real fit of compunction at not being, in my heart, thankful enough for the evident motive of the writers,  – – and so was determined to give them the ‘last honours’ if not the first, and not make them miss you because, through my fault, they had missed me? Does this sound too fantastical? Because it is strictly true: the most laudatory of all, I skimmed once over with my flesh creeping  – – it seemed such a death-struggle, that of good nature over  – – well, it is fresh ingratitude of me, so here it shall end.

I am not ungrateful to you  – – but you must wait to know that:  – – I can speak less than nothing with my living lips.

I mean to ask your brother how you are to-night  . . . so quietly!

God bless you, my dearest, and reward you.

Your R.B.

Mrs. Shelley  – – with the ‘Ricordi.’

Of course, Landor’s praise is altogether a different gift; a gold vase from King Hiram; beside he has plenty of conscious rejoicing in his own riches, and is not left painfully poor by what he sends away. That is the unpleasant point with some others  – – they spread you a board and want to gird up their loins and wait on you there. Landor says ‘come up higher and let us sit and eat together.’ Is it not that?

Now  – – you are not to turn on me because the first is my proper feeling to you,  . . . for poetry is not the thing given or taken between us  – – it is heart and life and myself, not mine, I give  – – give? That you glorify and change and, in returning then, give me!

 

Sunday Morning.

November 17, 1845.

At last your letter comes  – – and the deep joy  – – (I know and use to analyse my own feelings, and be sober in giving distinctive names to their varieties; this is deep joy,)  – – the true love with which I take this much of you into my heart,  . . . that proves what it is I wanted so long, and find at last, and am happy for ever. I must have more than ‘intimated’  – – I must have spoken plainly out the truth, if I do myself the barest justice, and told you long ago that the admiration at your works went away, quite another way and afar from the love of you. If I could fancy some method of what I shall say happening without all the obvious stumbling-blocks of falseness, &c. which no foolish fancy dares associate with you  . . . if you could tell me when I next sit by you  – – ‘I will undeceive you,  – – I am not the Miss B.  – – she is up-stairs and you shall see her  – – I only wrote those letters, and am what you see, that is all now left you’ (all the misapprehension having arisen from me, in some inexplicable way)  . . . I should not begin by saying anything, dear, dearest  – – but after that, I should assure you  – – soon make you believe that I did not much wonder at the event, for I have been all my life asking what connection there is between the satisfaction at the display of power, and the sympathy with  – – ever-increasing sympathy with  – – all imaginable weakness? Look now: Coleridge writes on and on,  – – at last he writes a note to his ‘War-Eclogue,’ in which he avers himself to have been actuated by a really  – – on the whole  – – benevolent feeling to Mr. Pitt when he wrote that stanza in which ‘Fire’ means to ‘cling to him everlastingly’  – – where is the long line of admiration now that the end snaps? And now  – – here I refuse to fancy  – – you know whether, if you never write another line, speak another intelligible word, recognize me by a look again  – – whether I shall love you less or more  . . . more; having a right to expect more strength with the strange emergency. And it is because I know this, build upon this entirely, that as a reasonable creature, I am bound to look first to what hangs farthest and most loosely from me  . . . what might go from you to your loss, and so to mine, to say the least  . . . because I want all of you, not just so much as I could not live without  – – and because I see the danger of your entirely generous disposition and cannot quite, yet, bring myself to profit by it in the quiet way you recommend. Always remember, I never wrote to you, all the years, on the strength of your poetry, though I constantly heard of you through Mr. K. and was near seeing you once, and might have easily availed myself of his intervention to commend any letter to your notice, so as to reach you out of the foolish crowd of rushers-in upon genius  . . . who come and eat their bread and cheese on the high-altar, and talk of reverence without one of its surest instincts  – – never quiet till they cut their initials on the cheek of the Medicean Venus to prove they worship her. My admiration, as I said, went its natural way in silence  – – but when on my return to England in December, late in the month, Mr. K. sent those Poems to my sister, and I read my name there  – – and when, a day or two after, I met him and, beginning to speak my mind on them, and getting on no better than I should now, said quite naturally  – – ‘if I were to write this, now?’  – – and he assured me with his perfect kindness, you would be even ‘pleased’ to hear from me under those circumstances  . . . nay,  – – for I will tell you all, in this, in everything  – – when he wrote me a note soon after to reassure me on that point  . . . then I did write, on account of my purely personal obligation, though of course taking that occasion to allude to the general and customary delight in your works: I did write, on the whole, unwillingly  . . . with consciousness of having to speak on a subject which I felt thoroughly concerning, and could not be satisfied with an imperfect expression of. As for expecting then what has followed  . . . I shall only say I was scheming how to get done with England and go to my heart in Italy. And now, my love  – – I am round you  . . . my whole life is wound up and down and over you . . .. I feel you stir everywhere. I am not conscious of thinking or feeling but about you, with some reference to you  – – so I will live, so may I die! And you have blessed me beyond the bond, in more than in giving me yourself to love; inasmuch as you believed me from the first  . . . what you call ‘dream-work’ was real of its kind, did you not think? and now you believe me, I believe and am happy, in what I write with my heart full of love for you. Why do you tell me of a doubt, as now, and bid me not clear it up, ‘not answer you?’ Have I done wrong in thus answering? Never, never do me direct wrong and hide for a moment from me what a word can explain as now. You see, you thought, if but for a moment, I loved your intellect  – – or what predominates in your poetry and is most distinct from your heart  – – better, or as well as you  – – did you not? and I have told you every thing,  – – explained everything  . . . have I not? And now I will dare  . . . yes, dearest, kiss you back to my heart again; my own. There  – – and there!

And since I wrote what is above, I have been reading among other poems that sonnet  – – ‘Past and Future’  – – which affects me more than any poem I ever read. How can I put your poetry away from you, even in these ineffectual attempts to concentrate myself upon, and better apply myself to what remains?  – – poor, poor work it is; for is not that sonnet to be loved as a true utterance of yours? I cannot attempt to put down the thoughts that rise; may God bless me, as you pray, by letting that beloved hand shake the less  . . . I will only ask, the less  . . . for being laid on mine through this life! And, indeed, you write down, for me to calmly read, that I make you happy! Then it is  – – as with all power  – – God through the weakest instrumentality  . . . and I am past expression proud and grateful  – – My love,

I am your

R.B.

I must answer your questions: I am better  – – and will certainly have your injunction before my eyes and work quite moderately. Your letters come straight to me  – – my father’s go to Town, except on extraordinary occasions, so that all come for my first looking-over. I saw Mr. K. last night at the Amateur Comedy  – – and heaps of old acquaintances  – – and came home tired and savage  – – and yearned literally, for a letter this morning, and so it came and I was well again. So, I am not even to have your low spirits leaning on mine? It was just because I always find you alike, and ever like yourself, that I seemed to discern a depth, when you spoke of ‘some days’ and what they made uneven where all is agreeable to me. Do not, now, deprive me of a right  – – a right  . . . to find you as you are; get no habit of being cheerful with me  – – I have universal sympathy and can show you a side of me, a true face, turn as you may. If you are cheerful  . . . so will I be  . . . if sad, my cheerfulness will be all the while behind, and propping up, any sadness that meets yours, if that should be necessary. As for my question about the opium  . . . you do not misunderstand that neither: I trust in the eventual consummation of my  – – shall I not say, our  – – hopes; and all that bears upon your health immediately or prospectively, affects me  – – how it affects me! Will you write again? Wednesday, remember! Mr. K. wants me to go to him one of the three next days after. I will bring you some letters  . . . one from Landor. Why should I trouble you about ‘Pomfret.’

And Luria  . . . does it so interest you? Better is to come of it. How you lift me up!  – –

 

Sunday Evening.

November 10, 1845.

When I come back from seeing you, and think over it all, there never is a least word of yours I could not occupy myself with, and wish to return to you with some  . . . not to say, all  . . . the thoughts and fancies it is sure to call out of me. There is nothing in you that does not draw out all of me. You possess me, dearest  . . . and there is no help for the expressing it all, no voice nor hand, but these of mine which shrink and turn away from the attempt. So you must go on, patiently, knowing me more and more, and your entire power on me, and I will console myself, to the full extent, with your knowledge  – – penetration, intuition  – – somehow I must believe you can get to what is here, in me, without the pretence of my telling or writing it. But, because I give up the great achievements, there is no reason I should not secure any occasion of making clear one of the less important points that arise in our intercourse  . . . if I fancy I can do it with the least success. For instance, it is on my mind to explain what I meant yesterday by trusting that the entire happiness I feel in the letters, and the help in the criticising might not be hurt by the surmise, even, that those labours to which you were born, might be suspended, in any degree, through such generosity to me. Dearest, I believed in your glorious genius and knew it for a true star from the moment I saw it; long before I had the blessing of knowing it was my star, with my fortune and futurity in it. And, when I draw back from myself, and look better and more clearly, then I do feel, with you, that the writing a few letters more or less, reading many or few rhymes of any other person, would not interfere in any material degree with that power of yours  – – that you might easily make one so happy and yet go on writing ‘Geraldines’ and ‘Berthas’  – – but  – – how can I, dearest, leave my heart’s treasures long, even to look at your genius? . . . and when I come back and find all safe, find the comfort of you, the traces of you  . . . will it do  – – tell me  – – to trust all that as a light effort, an easy matter?

Yet, if you can lift me with one hand, while the other suffices to crown you  – – there is queenliness in that, too!

Well, I have spoken. As I told you, your turn comes now. How have you determined respecting the American Edition? You tell me nothing of yourself! It is all me you help, me you do good to  . . . and I take it all! Now see, if this goes on! I have not had every love-luxury, I now find out  . . . where is the proper, rationally to-be-expected  – – ‘lovers’ quarrel‘? Here, as you will find! ‘Iræ; amantium’ . . .. I am no more ‘at a loss with my Naso,’ than Peter Ronsard. Ah, but then they are to be reintegratio amoris  – – and to get back into a thing, one must needs get for a moment first out of it  . . . trust me, no! And now, the natural inference from all this? The consistent inference  . . . the ‘self-denying ordinance’? Why  – – do you doubt? even this,  – – you must just put aside the Romance, and tell the Americans to wait, and make my heart start up when the letter is laid to it; the letter full of your news, telling me you are well and walking, and working for my sake towards the time  – – informing me, moreover, if Thursday or Friday is to be my day  – – .

May God bless you, my own love.

I will certainly bring you an Act of the Play  . . . for this serpent’s reason, in addition to the others  . . . that  – – No, I will tell you that  – – I can tell you now more than even lately!

Ever your own

R.B.

Just arrived!  – – (mind, the silent writing overflows the page, and laughs at the black words for Mr. Kenyon to read!)  – – But your note arrived earlier  – – more of that, when I write after this dreadful dispatching-business that falls on me  – – friend A. and B. and C. must get their copy, and word of regard, all by next post!  – –

Could you think that that untoward letter lived one moment after it returned to me? I burned it and cried ‘serve it right’! Poor letter,  – – yet I should have been vexed and offended then to be told I could love you better than I did already. ‘Live and learn!’ Live and love you  – – dearest, as loves you

R.B.

You will write to reassure me about Saturday, if not for other reasons. See your corrections  . . . and understand that in one or two instances in which they would seem not to be adopted, they are so, by some modification of the previous, or following line  . . . as in one of the Sorrento lines  . . . about a ‘turret’  – – see! (Can you give me Horne’s address  – – I would send then.)

 

Tuesday.

November 4, 1845.

Only a word to tell you Moxon promises the books for to-morrow, Wednesday  – – so towards evening yours will reach you  – – ‘parve liber, sine me ibis’  . . . would I were by you, then and ever! You see, and know, and understand why I can neither talk to you, nor write to you now, as we are now;  – – from the beginning, the personal interest absorbed every other, greater or smaller  – – but as one cannot well,  – – or should not,  – – sit quite silently, the words go on, about Horne, or what chances  – – while you are in my thought.

But when I have you  . . . so it seems  . . . in my very heart; when you are entirely with me  – – oh, the day  – – then it will all go better, talk and writing too.

Love me, my own love; not as I love you  – – not for  – – but I cannot write that. Nor do I ask anything, with all your gifts here, except for the luxury of asking. Withdraw nothing, then, dearest, from your

R.B.

 

Wednesday Night.

October 30, 1845.

Like your kindness  – – too, far too generous kindness,  – – all this trouble and correcting,  – – Continue reading “#142”

Tuesday 9 a.m.

[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]

I got this on coming home last night  – – have just run through it this morning, and send it that time may not be lost. Faults, faults; but I don’t know how I have got tired of this. The Tragedies will be better, at least the second  – –

At 3 this day! Bless you  – –

R.B.

 

October 27, 1845.

How does one make ‘silent promises’  . . . or, rather, how does the maker of them communicate that fact to whomsoever it may concern? I know, there have been many, very many unutterable vows and promises made,  – – that is, thought down upon  – – the white slip at the top of my notes,  – – such as of this note; and not trusted to the pen, that always comes in for the shame,  – – but given up, and replaced by the poor forms to which a pen is equal; and a glad minute I should account that, in which you collected and accepted those ‘promises’  – – because they would not be all so unworthy of me  – – much less you! I would receive, in virtue of them, the ascription of whatever worthiness is supposed to lie in deep, truest love, and gratitude  – –

Read my silent answer there too!

All your letter is one comfort: we will be happy this winter, and after, do not fear. I am most happy, to begin, that your brother is so much better: he must be weak and susceptible of cold, remember.

It was on my lip, I do think, last visit, or the last but one, to beg you to detach those papers from the Athenæum’s gâchis. Certainly this opportunity is most favourable, for every reason: you cannot hesitate, surely. At present those papers are lost  – – lost for practical purposes. Do pray reply without fail to the proposers; no, no harm of these really fine fellows, who could do harm (by printing incorrect copies, and perhaps eking out the column by suppositious matter  . . . ex-gr. they strengthened and lengthened a book of Dickens’, in Paris, by adding quant. suff. of Thackeray’s ‘Yellowplush Papers’  . . . as I discovered by a Parisian somebody praising the latter to me as Dickens’ best work!)  – – and who do really a good straightforward un-American thing. You will encourage ‘the day of small things’  – – though this is not small, nor likely to have small results. I shall be impatient to hear that you have decided. I like the progress of these Americans in taste, their amazing leaps, like grasshoppers up to the sun  – – from  . . . what is the ‘from,’ what depth, do you remember, say, ten or twelve years back?  – – to  – – Carlyle, and Tennyson, and you! So children leave off Jack of Cornwall and go on just to Homer.

I can’t conceive why my proof does not come  – – I must go to-morrow and see. In the other, I have corrected all the points you noted, to their evident improvement. Yesterday I took out ‘Luria’ and read it through  – – the skeleton  – – I shall hope to finish it soon now. It is for a purely imaginary stage,  – – very simple and straightforward. Would you  . . . no, Act by Act, as I was about to propose that you should read it; that process would affect the oneness I most wish to preserve.

On Tuesday  – – at last, I am with you. Till when be with me ever, dearest  – – God bless you ever  – –

R.B.