Author: RB

September 25, 1845.

You have said to me more than once that you wished I might never know certain feelings you had been forced to endure. I suppose all of us have the proper place where a blow should fall to be felt most  – – and I truly wish you may never feel what I have to bear in looking on, quite powerless, and silent, while you are subjected to this treatment, which I refuse to characterize  – – so blind is it for blindness. I think I ought to understand what a father may exact, and a child should comply with; and I respect the most ambiguous of love’s caprices if they give never so slight a clue to their all-justifying source. Did I, when you signified to me the probable objections  – – you remember what  – – to myself, my own happiness,  – – did I once allude to, much less argue against, or refuse to acknowledge those objections? For I wholly sympathize, however it go against me, with the highest, wariest, pride and love for you, and the proper jealousy and vigilance they entail  – – but now, and here, the jewel is not being over guarded, but ruined, cast away. And whoever is privileged to interfere should do so in the possessor’s own interest  – – all common sense interferes  – – all rationality against absolute no-reason at all. And you ask whether you ought to obey this no-reason? I will tell you: all passive obedience and implicit submission of will and intellect is by far too easy, if well considered, to be the course prescribed by God to Man in this life of probation  – – for they evade probation altogether, though foolish people think otherwise. Chop off your legs, you will never go astray; stifle your reason altogether and you will find it is difficult to reason ill. ‘It is hard to make these sacrifices!’  – – not so hard as to lose the reward or incur the penalty of an Eternity to come; ‘hard to effect them, then, and go through with them’  – – not hard, when the leg is to be cut off  – – that it is rather harder to keep it quiet on a stool, I know very well. The partial indulgence, the proper exercise of one’s faculties, there is the difficulty and problem for solution, set by that Providence which might have made the laws of Religion as indubitable as those of vitality, and revealed the articles of belief as certainly as that condition, for instance, by which we breathe so many times in a minute to support life. But there is no reward proposed for the feat of breathing, and a great one for that of believing  – – consequently there must go a great deal more of voluntary effort to this latter than is implied in the getting absolutely rid of it at once, by adopting the direction of an infallible church, or private judgment of another  – – for all our life is some form of religion, and all our action some belief, and there is but one law, however modified, for the greater and the less. In your case I do think you are called upon to do your duty to yourself; that is, to God in the end. Your own reason should examine the whole matter in dispute by every light which can be put in requisition; and every interest that appears to be affected by your conduct should have its utmost claims considered  – – your father’s in the first place; and that interest, not in the miserable limits of a few days’ pique or whim in which it would seem to express itself; but in its whole extent  . . . the hereafter which all momentary passion prevents him seeing  . . . indeed, the present on either side which everyone else must see. And this examination made, with whatever earnestness you will, I do think and am sure that on its conclusion you should act, in confidence that a duty has been performed  . . . difficult, or how were it a duty? Will it not be infinitely harder to act so than to blindly adopt his pleasure, and die under it? Who can not do that?

I fling these hasty rough words over the paper, fast as they will fall  – – knowing to whom I cast them, and that any sense they may contain or point to, will be caught and understood, and presented in a better light. The hard thing  . . . this is all I want to say  . . . is to act on one’s own best conviction  – – not to abjure it and accept another will, and say ‘there is my plain duty’  – – easy it is, whether plain or no!

How ‘all changes!’ When I first knew you  – – you know what followed. I supposed you to labour under an incurable complaint  – – and, of course, to be completely dependent on your father for its commonest alleviations; the moment after that inconsiderate letter, I reproached myself bitterly with the selfishness apparently involved in any proposition I might then have made  – – for though I have never been at all frightened of the world, nor mistrustful of my power to deal with it, and get my purpose out of it if once I thought it worth while, yet I could not but feel the consideration, of what failure would now be, paralyse all effort even in fancy. When you told me lately that ‘you could never be poor’  – – all my solicitude was at an end  – – I had but myself to care about, and I told you, what I believed and believe, that I can at any time amply provide for that, and that I could cheerfully and confidently undertake the removing that obstacle. Now again the circumstances shift  – – and you are in what I should wonder at as the veriest slavery  – – and I who could free you from it, I am here scarcely daring to write  . . . though I know you must feel for me and forgive what forces itself from me  . . . what retires so mutely into my heart at your least word  . . . what shall not be again written or spoken, if you so will  . . . that I should be made happy beyond all hope of expression by. Now while I dream, let me once dream! I would marry you now and thus  – – I would come when you let me, and go when you bade me  – – I would be no more than one of your brothers  – – ‘no more‘  – – that is, instead of getting to-morrow for Saturday, I should get Saturday as well  – – two hours for one  – – when your head ached I should be here. I deliberately choose the realization of that dream (  – – of sitting simply by you for an hour every day) rather than any other, excluding you, I am able to form for this world, or any world I know  – – And it will continue but a dream.

God bless my dearest E.B.B.

R.B.

You understand that I see you to-morrow, Friday, as you propose.

I am better  – – thank you  – – and will go out to-day.

You know what I am, what I would speak, and all I would do.

 

Wednesday Evening.

September 25, 1845.

I walked to town, this morning, and back again  – – so that when I found your note on my return, and knew what you had been enjoining me in the way of exercise, I seemed as if I knew, too, why that energetic fit had possessed me and why I succumbed to it so readily. You shall never have to intimate twice to me that such an insignificant thing, even, as the taking exercise should be done. Besides, I have many motives now for wishing to continue well. But Italy just now  – – Oh, no! My friends would go through Pisa, too.

On that subject I must not speak. And you have ‘more strength to lose,’ and are so well, evidently so well; that is, so much better, so sure to be still better  – – can it be that you will not go!

Here are your new notes on my verses. Where are my words for the thanks? But you know what I feel, and shall feel  – – ever feel  – – for these and for all. The notes would be beyond price to me if they came from some dear Phemius of a teacher  – – but from you!

The Theatricals ‘went off’ with great éclat, and the performance was really good, really clever or better. Forster’s ‘Kitely’ was very emphatic and earnest, and grew into great interest, quite up to the poet’s allotted tether, which is none of the longest. He pitched the character’s key note too gravely, I thought; beginning with certainty, rather than mere suspicion, of evil. Dickens’ ‘Bobadil’ was capital  – – with perhaps a little too much of the consciousness of entire cowardice  . . . which I don’t so willingly attribute to the noble would-be pacificator of Europe, besieger of Strigonium &c.  – – but the end of it all was really pathetic, as it should be, for Bobadil is only too clever for the company of fools he makes wonderment for: having once the misfortune to relish their society, and to need but too pressingly their ‘tobacco-money,’ what can he do but suit himself to their capacities?  – – And D. Jerrold was very amusing and clever in his ‘Country Gull’  – – And Mr. Leech superb in the Town Master Mathew. All were good, indeed, and were voted good, and called on, and cheered off, and praised heartily behind their backs and before the curtain. Stanfield’s function had exercise solely in the touching up (very effectively) sundry ‘Scenes’  – – painted scenes  – – and the dresses, which were perfect, had the advantage of Mr. Maclise’s experience. And  – – all is told!

And now; I shall hear, you promise me, if anything occurs  – – with what feeling, I wait and hope, you know. If there is no best of reasons against it, Saturday, you remember, is my day  – – This fine weather, too!

May God bless my dearest friend  – –

Ever yours

R.B.

 

Thursday Morning.

September 18, 1845.

But you, too, will surely want, if you think me a rational creature, my explanation  – – without which all that I have said and done would be pure madness, I think. It is just ‘what I see’ that I do see,  – – or rather it has proved, since I first visited you, that the reality was infinitely worse than I know it to be  . . . for at, and after the writing of that first letter, on my first visit, I believed  – – through some silly or misapprehended talk, collected at second hand too  – – that your complaint was of quite another nature  – – a spinal injury irremediable in the nature of it. Had it been so  – – now speak for me, for what you hope I am, and say how that should affect or neutralize what you were, what I wished to associate with myself in you? But as you now are:  – – then if I had married you seven years ago, and this visitation came now first, I should be ‘fulfilling a pious duty,’ I suppose, in enduring what could not be amended  – – a pattern to good people in not running away  . . . for where were now the use and the good and the profit and  – –

I desire in this life (with very little fluctuation for a man and too weak a one) to live and just write out certain things which are in me, and so save my soul. I would endeavour to do this if I were forced to ‘live among lions’ as you once said  – – but I should best do this if I lived quietly with myself and with you. That you cannot dance like Cerito does not materially disarrange this plan  – – nor that I might (beside the perpetual incentive and sustainment and consolation) get, over and above the main reward, the incidental, particular and unexpected happiness of being allowed when not working to rather occupy myself with watching you, than with certain other pursuits I might be otherwise addicted to  – – this, also, does not constitute an obstacle, as I see obstacles.

But you see them  – – and I see you, and know my first duty and do it resolutely if not cheerfully.

As for referring again, till leave by word or letter  – – you will see  – –

And very likely, the tone of this letter even will be misunderstood  – – because I studiously cut out all vain words, protesting &c.:  – – No  – – will it?

I said, unadvisedly, that Saturday was taken from me  . . . but it was dark and I had not looked at the tickets: the hour of the performance is later than I thought. If to-morrow does not suit you, as I infer, let it be Saturday  – – at 3  – – and I will leave earlier, a little, and all will be quite right here. One hint will apprise me.

God bless you, dearest friend.

R.B.

Something else just heard, makes me reluctantly strike out Saturday  – –

Monday then?

 

September 18, 1845.

Words!  – – it was written I should hate and never use them to any purpose. I will not say one word here  – – very well knowing neither word nor deed avails  – – from me.

My letter will have reassured you on the point you seem undecided about  – – whether I would speak &c.

I will come whenever you shall signify that I may  . . . whenever, acting in my best interests, you feel that it will not hurt you (weary you in any way) to see me  – – but I fear that on Saturday I must be otherwhere  – – I enclose the letter from my old foe. Which could not but melt me for all my moroseness and I can hardly go and return for my sister in time. Will you tell me?

It is dark  – – but I want to save the post  – –

Ever yours

R.B.

 

September 17, 1845.

I do not know whether you imagine the precise effect of your letter on me  – – very likely you do, and write it just for that  – – for I conceive all from your goodness. But before I tell you what is that effect, let me say in as few words as possible what shall stop any fear  – – though only for a moment and on the outset  – – that you have been misunderstood, that the goodness outside, and round and over all, hides all or any thing. I understand you to signify to me that you see, at this present, insurmountable obstacles to that  – – can I speak it  – – entire gift, which I shall own, was, while I dared ask it, above my hopes  – – and wishes, even, so it seems to me  . . . and yet could not but be asked, so plainly was it dictated to me, by something quite out of those hopes and wishes. Will it help me to say that once in this Aladdin-cavern I knew I ought to stop for no heaps of jewel-fruit on the trees from the very beginning, but go on to the lamp, the prize, the last and best of all? Well, I understand you to pronounce that at present you believe this gift impossible  – – and I acquiesce entirely  – – I submit wholly to you; repose on you in all the faith of which I am capable. Those obstacles are solely for you to see and to declare  . . . had I seen them, be sure I should never have mocked you or myself by affecting to pass them over  . . . what were obstacles, I mean: but you do see them, I must think,  – – and perhaps they strike me the more from my true, honest unfeigned inability to imagine what they are,  – – not that I shall endeavour. After what you also apprise me of, I know and am joyfully confident that if ever they cease to be what you now consider them, you who see now for me, whom I implicitly trust in to see for me; you will then, too, see and remember me, and how I trust, and shall then be still trusting. And until you so see, and so inform me, I shall never utter a word  – – for that would involve the vilest of implications. I thank God  – – I do thank him, that in this whole matter I have been, to the utmost of my power, not unworthy of his introducing you to me, in this respect that, being no longer in the first freshness of life, and having for many years now made up my mind to the impossibility of loving any woman  . . . having wondered at this in the beginning, and fought not a little against it, having acquiesced in it at last, and accounted for it all to myself, and become, if anything, rather proud of it than sorry  . . . I say, when real love, making itself at once recognized as such, did reveal itself to me at last, I did open my heart to it with a cry  – – nor care for its overturning all my theory  – – nor mistrust its effect upon a mind set in ultimate order, so I fancied, for the few years more  – – nor apprehend in the least that the new element would harm what was already organized without its help. Nor have I, either, been guilty of the more pardonable folly, of treating the new feeling after the pedantic fashions and instances of the world. I have not spoken when it did not speak, because ‘one’ might speak, or has spoken, or should speak, and ‘plead’ and all that miserable work which, after all, I may well continue proud that I am not called to attempt. Here for instance, now  . . . ‘one’ should despair; but ‘try again’ first, and work blindly at removing those obstacles (  – – if I saw them, I should be silent, and only speak when a month hence, ten years hence, I could bid you look where they were)  – – and ‘one’ would do all this, not for the play-acting’s sake, or to ‘look the character’  . . . (that would be something quite different from folly  . . .) but from a not unreasonable anxiety lest by too sudden a silence, too complete an acceptance of your will; the earnestness and endurance and unabatedness  . . . the truth, in fact, of what had already been professed, should get to be questioned  – – But I believe that you believe me  – – And now that all is clear between us I will say, what you will hear, without fearing for me or yourself, that I am utterly contented  . . . (‘grateful’ I have done with  . . . it must go  – – ) I accept what you give me, what those words deliver to me, as  – – not all I asked for  . . . as I said  . . . but as more than I ever hoped for,  – – all, in the best sense, that I deserve. That phrase in my letter which you objected to, and the other  – – may stand, too  – – I never attempted to declare, describe my feeling for you  – – one word of course stood for it all  . . . but having to put down some one point, so to speak, of it  – – you could not wonder if I took any extreme one first  . . . never minding all the untold portion that led up to it, made it possible and natural  – – it is true, ‘I could not dream of that‘  – – that I was eager to get the horrible notion away from never so flitting a visit to you, that you were thus and thus to me on condition of my proving just the same to you  – – just as if we had waited to acknowledge that the moon lighted us till we ascertained within these two or three hundred years that the earth happens to light the moon as well! But I felt that, and so said it:  – – now you have declared what I should never have presumed to hope  – – and I repeat to you that I, with all to be thankful for to God, am most of all thankful for this the last of his providences  . . . which is no doubt, the natural and inevitable feeling, could one always see clearly. Your regard for me is all success  – – let the rest come, or not come. In my heart’s thankfulness I would  . . . I am sure I would promise anything that would gratify you  . . . but it would not do that, to agree, in words, to change my affections, put them elsewhere &c. &c. That would be pure foolish talking, and quite foreign to the practical results which you will attain in a better way from a higher motive. I will cheerfully promise you, however, to be ‘bound by no words,’ blind to no miracle; in sober earnest, it is not because I renounced once for all oxen and the owning and having to do with them, that I will obstinately turn away from any unicorn when such an apparition blesses me  . . . but meantime I shall walk at peace on our hills here nor go looking in all corners for the bright curved horn! And as for you  . . . if I did not dare ‘to dream of that’  – – , now it is mine, my pride and joy prevent in no manner my taking the whole consolation of it at once, now  – – I will be confident that, if I obey you, I shall get no wrong for it  – – if, endeavouring to spare you fruitless pain, I do not eternally revert to the subject; do indeed ‘quit’ it just now, when no good can come of dwelling on it to you; you will never say to yourself  – – so I said  – – ‘the “generous impulse” has worn itself out  . . . time is doing his usual work  – – this was to be expected’ &c. &c. You will be the first to say to me ‘such an obstacle has ceased to exist  . . . or is now become one palpable to you, one you may try and overcome’  – – and I shall be there, and ready  – – ten years hence as now  – – if alive.

One final word on the other matters  – – the ‘worldly matters’  – – I shall own I alluded to them rather ostentatiously, because  – – because that would be the one poor sacrifice I could make you  – – one I would cheerfully make, but a sacrifice, and the only one: this careless ‘sweet habitude of living’  – – this absolute independence of mine, which, if I had it not, my heart would starve and die for, I feel, and which I have fought so many good battles to preserve  – – for that has happened, too  – – this light rational life I lead, and know so well that I lead; this I could give up for nothing less than  – – what you know  – – but I would give it up, not for you merely, but for those whose disappointment might re-act on you  – – and I should break no promise to myself  – – the money getting would not be for the sake of it; ‘the labour not for that which is nought’  – – indeed the necessity of doing this, if at all, now, was one of the reasons which make me go on to that last request of all  – – at once; one must not be too old, they say, to begin their ways. But, in spite of all the babble, I feel sure that whenever I make up my mind to that, I can be rich enough and to spare  – – because along with what you have thought genius in me, is certainly talent, what the world recognizes as such; and I have tried it in various ways, just to be sure that I was a little magnanimous in never intending to use it. Thus, in more than one of the reviews and newspapers that laughed my ‘Paracelsus’ to scorn ten years ago  – – in the same column, often, of these reviews, would follow a most laudatory notice of an Elementary French book, on a new plan, which I ‘did‘ for my old French master, and he published  – – ‘that was really an useful work’!  – – So that when the only obstacle is only that there is so much per annum to be producible, you will tell me. After all it would be unfair in me not to confess that this was always intended to be my own single stipulation  – – ‘an objection’ which I could see, certainly,  – – but meant to treat myself to the little luxury of removing.

So, now, dearest  – – let me once think of that, and of you as my own, my dearest  – – this once  – – dearest, I have done with words for the present. I will wait. God bless you and reward you  – – I kiss your hands now. This is my comfort, that if you accept my feeling as all but unexpressed now, more and more will become spoken  – – or understood, that is  – – we both live on  – – you will know better what it was, how much and manifold, what one little word had to give out.

God bless you  – –

Your R.B.

On Thursday,  – – you remember?

This is Tuesday Night  – –

I called on Saturday at the Office in St. Mary Axe  – – all uncertainty about the vessel’s sailing again for Leghorn  – – it could not sail before the middle of the month  – – and only then if &c. But if I would leave my card &c. &c.

 

Saturday Morning.
September 13, 1845.

Now, dearest, I will try and write the little I shall be able, in reply to your letter of last week  – – and first of all I have to entreat you, now more than ever, to help me and understand from the few words the feelings behind them  – – (should speak rather more easily, I think  – – but I dare not run the risk: and I know, after all, you will be just and kind where you can.) I have read your letter again and again. I will tell you  – – no, not you, but any imaginary other person, who should hear what I am going to avow; I would tell that person most sincerely there is not a particle of fatuity, shall I call it, in that avowal; cannot be, seeing that from the beginning and at this moment I never dreamed of winning your love. I can hardly write this word, so incongruous and impossible does it seem; such a change of our places does it imply  – – nor, next to that, though long after, would I, if I could, supplant one of any of the affections that I know to have taken root in you  – – that great and solemn one, for instance. I feel that if I could get myself remade, as if turned to gold, I would not even then desire to become more than the mere setting to that diamond you must always wear. The regard and esteem you now give me, in this letter, and which I press to my heart and bow my head upon, is all I can take and all too embarrassing, using all my gratitude. And yet, with that contented pride in being infinitely your debtor as it is, bound to you for ever as it is; when I read your letter with all the determination to be just to us both; I dare not so far withstand the light I am master of, as to refuse seeing that whatever is recorded as an objection to your disposing of that life of mine I would give you, has reference to some supposed good in that life which your accepting it would destroy (of which fancy I shall speak presently)  – – I say, wonder as I may at this, I cannot but find it there, surely there. I could no more ‘bind you by words,’ than you have bound me, as you say  – – but if I misunderstand you, one assurance to that effect will be but too intelligible to me  – – but, as it is, I have difficulty in imagining that while one of so many reasons, which I am not obliged to repeat to myself, but which any one easily conceives; while any one of those reasons would impose silence on me for ever (for, as I observed, I love you as you now are, and would not remove one affection that is already part of you,)  – – would you, being able to speak so, only say that you desire not to put ‘more sadness than I was born to,’ into my life?  – – that you ‘could give me only what it were ungenerous to give’?

Have I your meaning here? In so many words, is it on my account that you bid me ‘leave this subject’? I think if it were so, I would for once call my advantages round me. I am not what your generous self-forgetting appreciation would sometimes make me out  – – but it is not since yesterday, nor ten nor twenty years before, that I began to look into my own life, and study its end, and requirements, what would turn to its good or its loss  – – and I know, if one may know anything, that to make that life yours and increase it by union with yours, would render me supremely happy, as I said, and say, and feel. My whole suit to you is, in that sense, selfish  – – not that I am ignorant that your nature would most surely attain happiness in being conscious that it made another happy  – – but that best, best end of all, would, like the rest, come from yourself, be a reflection of your own gift.

Dearest, I will end here  – – words, persuasion, arguments, if they were at my service I would not use them  – – I believe in you, altogether have faith in you  – – in you. I will not think of insulting by trying to reassure you on one point which certain phrases in your letter might at first glance seem to imply  – – you do not understand me to be living and labouring and writing (and not writing) in order to be successful in the world’s sense? I even convinced the people here what was my true ‘honourable position in society,’ &c. &c. therefore I shall not have to inform you that I desire to be very rich, very great; but not in reading Law gratis with dear foolish old Basil Montagu, as he ever and anon bothers me to do;  – – much less  – – enough of this nonsense.

‘Tell me what I have a claim to hear’: I can hear it, and be as grateful as I was before and am now  – – your friendship is my pride and happiness. If you told me your love was bestowed elsewhere, and that it was in my power to serve you there, to serve you there would still be my pride and happiness. I look on and on over the prospect of my love, it is all onwards  – – and all possible forms of unkindness  . . . I quite laugh to think how they are behind  . . . cannot be encountered in the route we are travelling! I submit to you and will obey you implicitly  – – obey what I am able to conceive of your least desire, much more of your expressed wish. But it was necessary to make this avowal, among other reasons, for one which the world would recognize too. My whole scheme of life (with its wants, material wants at least, closely cut down) was long ago calculated  – – and it supposed you, the finding such an one as you, utterly impossible  – – because in calculating one goes upon chances, not on providence  – – how could I expect you? So for my own future way in the world I have always refused to care  – – any one who can live a couple of years and more on bread and potatoes as I did once on a time, and who prefers a blouse and a blue shirt (such as I now write in) to all manner of dress and gentlemanly appointment, and who can, if necessary, groom a horse not so badly, or at all events would rather do it all day long than succeed Mr. Fitzroy Kelly in the Solicitor-Generalship,  – – such an one need not very much concern himself beyond considering the lilies how they grow. But now I see you near this life, all changes  – – and at a word, I will do all that ought to be done, that every one used to say could be done, and let ‘all my powers find sweet employ’ as Dr. Watts sings, in getting whatever is to be got  – – not very much, surely. I would print these things, get them away, and do this now, and go to you at Pisa with the news  – – at Pisa where one may live for some £100 a year  – – while, lo, I seem to remember, I do remember, that Charles Kean offered to give me 500 of those pounds for any play that might suit him  – – to say nothing of Mr. Colburn saying confidentially that he wanted more than his dinner ‘a novel on the subject of Napoleon‘! So may one make money, if one does not live in a house in a row, and feel impelled to take the Princess’s Theatre for a laudable development and exhibition of one’s faculty.

Take the sense of all this, I beseech you, dearest  – – all you shall say will be best  – – I am yours  – –

Yes, Yours ever. God bless you for all you have been, and are, and will certainly be to me, come what He shall please!

R.B.

Thursday Morning.

September 11, 1845.

Here are your beautiful, and I am sure true sonnets; they look true  – – I remember the light hair, I find. And who paints, and dares exhibit, E.B.B.’s self? And surely ‘Alfred’s’ pencil has not foregone its best privilege, not left the face unsketched? Italians call such an ‘effect defective’  – – ‘l’andar a Roma senza vedere il Papa.’ He must have begun by seeing his Holiness, I know, and  . . . he will not trust me with the result, that my sister may copy it for me, because we are strangers, he and I, and I could give him nothing, nothing like the proper price for it  – – but you would lend it to me, I think, nor need I do more than thank you in my usual effective and very eloquent way  – – for I have already been allowed to visit you seventeen times, do you know; and this last letter of yours, fiftieth is the same! So all my pride is gone, pride in that sense  – – and I mean to take of you for ever, and reconcile myself with my lot in this life. Could, and would, you give me such a sketch? It has been on my mind to ask you ever since I knew you if nothing in the way of good portrait existed  – – and this occasion bids me speak out, I dare believe: the more, that you have also quieted  – – have you not?  – – another old obstinate and very likely impertinent questioning of mine  – – as to the little name which was neither Orinda, nor Sacharissa (for which thank providence) and is never to appear in books, though you write them. Now I know it and write it  – – ‘Ba’  – – and thank you, and your brother George, and only burned his kind letter because you bade me who know best. So, wish by wish, one gets one’s wishes  – – at least I do  – – for one instance, you will go to Italy

Why, ‘lean and harken after it’ as Donne says  – –

Don’t expect Neapolitan Scenery at Pisa, quite in the North, remember. Mrs. Shelley found Italy for the first time, real Italy, at Sorrento, she says. Oh that book  – – does one wake or sleep? The ‘Mary dear’ with the brown eyes, and Godwin’s daughter and Shelley’s wife, and who surely was something better once upon a time  – – and to go through Rome and Florence and the rest, after what I suppose to be Lady Londonderry’s fashion: the intrepidity of the commonplace quite astounds me. And then that way, when she and the like of her are put in a new place, with new flowers, new stones, faces, walls, all new  – – of looking wisely up at the sun, clouds, evening star, or mountain top and wisely saying ‘who shall describe that sight!’  – – Not you, we very well see  – – but why don’t you tell us that at Rome they eat roasted chestnuts, and put the shells into their aprons, the women do, and calmly empty the whole on the heads of the passengers in the street below; and that at Padua when a man drives his waggon up to a house and stops, all the mouse-coloured oxen that pull it from a beam against their foreheads sit down in a heap and rest. But once she travelled the country with Shelley on arm; now she plods it, Rogers in hand  – – to such things and uses may we come at last! Her remarks on art, once she lets go of Rio’s skirts, are amazing  – – Fra Angelico, for instance, only painted Martyrs, Virgins &c., she had no eyes for the divine bon-bourgeoisie of his pictures; the dear common folk of his crowds, those who sit and listen (spectacle at nose and bent into a comfortable heap to hear better) at the sermon of the Saint  – – and the children, and women,  – – divinely pure they all are, but fresh from the streets and market place  – – but she is wrong every where, that is, not right, not seeing what is to see, speaking what one expects to hear  – – I quarrel with her, for ever, I think.

I am much better, and mean to be well as you desire  – – shall correct the verses you have seen, and make them do for the present.

Saturday, then! And one other time only, do you say?

God bless you, my own, best friend.

Yours ever

R.B.

 

Friday Afternoon.

September 5, 1845.

What you tell me of Dr. Chambers, ‘all the good of you’ he said, and all I venture to infer; this makes me most happy and thankful. Do you use to attach our old τυφλας

ελπιδας (and the practice of instilling them) to that medical science in which Prometheus boasted himself proficient? I had thought the ‘faculty’ dealt in fears, on the contrary, and scared you into obedience: but I know most about the doctors in Molière. However the joyous truth is  – – must be, that you are better, and if one could transport you quietly to Pisa, save you all worry,  – – what might one not expect!

When I know your own intentions  – – measures, I should say, respecting your journey  – – mine will of course be submitted to you  – – it will just be ‘which day next  – – month’?  – – Not week, alas.

I can thank you now for this edition of your poems  – – I have not yet taken to read it, though  – – for it does not, each volume of it, open obediently to a thought, here, and here, and here, like my green books  . . . no, my Sister’s they are; so these you give me are really mine. And America, with its ten per cent., shall have my better word henceforth and for ever  . . . for when you calculate, there must have been a really extraordinary circulation; and in a few months: it is what newspapers call ‘a great fact.’ Have they reprinted the ‘Seraphim’? Quietly, perhaps!

I shall see you on Monday, then  – –

And my all-important headaches are tolerably kept under  – – headaches proper they are not  – – but the noise and slight turning are less troublesome  – – will soon go altogether.

Bless you ever  – – ever dearest friend.

R.B.

Oh, oh, oh! As many thanks for that precious card-box and jewel of a flower-holder as are consistent with my dismay at finding you only return them  . . . and not the costly brown paper wrappages also  . . . to say nothing of the inestimable pins with which my sister uses to fasten the same!

 

Tuesday Night.
September 3, 1845.

Before you leave London, I will answer your letter  – – all my attempts end in nothing now  – –

Dearest friend  – – I am yours ever

R.B.

But meantime, you will tell me about yourself, will you not? The parcel came a few minutes after my note left  – – Well, I can thank you for that; for the Poems,  – – though I cannot wear them round my neck  – – and for the too great trouble. My heart’s friend! Bless you  – –

Tuesday Evening.
September 3, 1845.

I rather hoped  . . . with no right at all  . . . to hear from you this morning or afternoon  – – to know how you are  – – that, ‘how are you,’ there is no use disguising, is,  – – vary it how one may  – – my own life’s question.  – –

I had better write no more, now. Will you not tell me something about you  – – the head; and that too, too warm hand  . . . or was it my fancy? Surely the report of Dr. Chambers is most satisfactory,  – – all seems to rest with yourself: you know, in justice to me, you do know that I know the all but mockery, the absurdity of anyone’s counsel ‘to be composed,’ &c. &c. But try, dearest friend!

God bless you  – –

I am yours

R.B.