Author: RB

Thursday.

July 31, 1845.

In all I say to you, write to you, I know very well that I trust to your understanding me almost beyond the warrant of any human capacity  – – but as I began, so I shall end. I shall believe you remember what I am forced to remember  – – you who do me the superabundant justice on every possible occasion,  – – you will never do me injustice when I sit by you and talk about Italy and the rest.

– – To-day I cannot write  – – though I am very well otherwise  – – but I shall soon get into my old self-command and write with as much ‘ineffectual fire’ as before: but meantime, you will write to me, I hope  – – telling me how you are? I have but one greater delight in the world than in hearing from you.

God bless you, my best, dearest friend  – – think what I would speak  – –

Ever yours

R.B.

 

July 28, 1845.

How must I feel, and what can, or could I say even if you let me say all? I am most grateful, most happy  – – most happy, come what will!

Will you let me try and answer your note to-morrow  – – before Wednesday when I am to see you? I will not hide from you that my head aches now; and I have let the hours go by one after one  – – I am better all the same, and will write as I say  – – ‘Am I better’ you ask!

Yours I am, ever yours my dear friend R.B.

Friday Morning.

July 25, 1845.

You would let me now, I dare say, call myself grateful to you  – – yet such is my jealousy in these matters  – – so do I hate the material when it puts down, (or tries) the immaterial in the offices of friendship; that I could almost tell you I was not grateful, and try if that way I could make you see the substantiality of those other favours you refuse to recognise, and reality of the other gratitude you will not admit. But truth is truth, and you are all generosity, and will draw none but the fair inference, so I thank you as well as I can for this also  – – this last kindness. And you know its value, too  – – how if there were another you in the world, who had done all you have done and whom I merely admired for that; if such an one had sent me such a criticism, so exactly what I want and can use and turn to good; you know how I would have told you, my you I saw yesterday, all about it, and been sure of your sympathy and gladness:  – – but the two in one!

For the criticism itself, it is all true, except the over-eating  – – all the suggestions are to be adopted, the improvements accepted. I so thoroughly understand your spirit in this, that, just in this beginning, I should really like to have found some point in which I could coöperate with your intention, and help my work by disputing the effect of any alteration proposed, if it ought to be disputed  – – that would answer your purpose exactly as well as agreeing with you,  – – so that the benefit to me were apparent; but this time I cannot dispute one point. All is for best.

So much for this ‘Duchess’  – – which I shall ever rejoice in  – – wherever was a bud, even, in that strip of May-bloom, a live musical bee hangs now. I shall let it lie (my poem), till just before I print it; and then go over it, alter at the places, and do something for the places where I (really) wrote anyhow, almost, to get done. It is an odd fact, yet characteristic of my accomplishings one and all in this kind, that of the poem, the real conception of an evening (two years ago, fully)  – – of that, not a line is written,  – – though perhaps after all, what I am going to call the accessories in the story are real though indirect reflexes of the original idea, and so supersede properly enough the necessity of its personal appearance, so to speak. But, as I conceived the poem, it consisted entirely of the Gipsy’s description of the life the Lady was to lead with her future Gipsy lover  – – a real life, not an unreal one like that with the Duke. And as I meant to write it, all their wild adventures would have come out and the insignificance of the former vegetation have been deducible only  – – as the main subject has become now; of course it comes to the same thing, for one would never show half by half like a cut orange.  – –

Will you write to me? caring, though, so much for my best interests as not to write if you can work for yourself, or save yourself fatigue. I think before writing  – – or just after writing  – – such a sentence  – – but reflection only justifies my first feeling; I would rather go without your letters, without seeing you at all, if that advantaged you  – – my dear, first and last friend; my friend! And now  – – surely I might dare say you may if you please get well through God’s goodness  – – with persevering patience, surely  – – and this next winter abroad  – – which you must get ready for now, every sunny day, will you not? If I venture to weary you again with all this, is there not the cause of causes, and did not the prophet write that ‘there was a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the E.B.B.’ led on to the fortune of

Your R.B.

Oh, let me tell you in the bitterness of my heart, that it was only 4 o’clock  – – that clock I enquired about  – – and that,  . . . no, I shall never say with any grace what I want to say  . . . and now dare not  . . . that you all but owe me an extra quarter of an hour next time: as in the East you give a beggar something for a few days running  – – then you miss him; and next day he looks indignant when the regular dole falls and murmurs  – – ‘And, for yesterday?’  – – Do I stay too long, I want to know,  – – too long for the voice and head and all but the spirit that may not so soon tire,  – – knowing the good it does. If you would but tell me.

God bless you  – –

 

Tuesday Morning.

July 22, 1845.

I will say, with your leave, Thursday (nor attempt to say anything else without your leave).

The temptation of reading the ‘Essay’ was more than I could bear: and a wonderful work it is every way; the other poems and their music  – – wonderful!

And you go out still  – – so continue better!

I cannot write this morning  – – I should say too much and have to be sorry and afraid  – – let me be safely yours ever, my own dear friend  – –

R.B.

I am but too proud of your praise  – – when will the blame come  – – at Malta?

 

[no date]

I shall just say, at the beginning of a note as at the end, I am yours ever, and not till summer ends and my nails fall out, and my breath breaks bubbles,  – – ought you to write thus having restricted me as you once did, and do still? You tie me like a Shrove-Tuesday fowl to a stake and then pick the thickest cudgel out of your lot, and at my head it goes  – – I wonder whether you remembered having predicted exactly the same horror once before. ‘I was to see you  – – and you were to understand’  – – Do you? do you understand  – – my own friend  – – with that superiority in years, too! For I confess to that  – – you need not throw that in my teeth  . . . as soon as I read your ‘Essay on Mind’  – – (which of course I managed to do about 12 hours after Mr. K’s positive refusal to keep his promise, and give me the book) from preface to the ‘Vision of Fame’ at the end, and reflected on my own doings about that time, 1826  – – I did indeed see, and wonder at, your advance over me in years  – – what then? I have got nearer you considerably  – – (if only nearer)  – – since then  – – and prove it by the remarks I make at favourable times  – – such as this, for instance, which occurs in a poem you are to see  – – written some time ago  – – which advises nobody who thinks nobly of the Soul, to give, if he or she can help, such a good argument to the materialist as the owning that any great choice of that Soul, which it is born to make and which  – – (in its determining, as it must, the whole future course and impulses of that soul)  – – which must endure for ever, even though the object that induced the choice should disappear  – – owning, I say, that such a choice may be scientifically determined and produced, at any operator’s pleasure, by a definite number of ingredients, so much youth, so much beauty, so much talent &c. &c., with the same certainty and precision that another kind of operator will construct you an artificial volcano with so much steel filings and flower of sulphur and what not. There is more in the soul than rises to the surface and meets the eye; whatever does that, is for this world’s immediate uses; and were this world all, all in us would be producible and available for use, as it is with the body now  – – but with the soul, what is to be developed afterward is the main thing, and instinctively asserts its rights  – – so that when you hate (or love) you shall not be so able to explain ‘why’ (‘You’ is the ordinary creature enough of my poem  – – he might not be so able.)

There, I will write no more. You will never drop me off the golden hooks, I dare believe  – – and the rest is with God  – – whose finger I see every minute of my life. Alexandria! Well, and may I not as easily ask leave to come ‘to-morrow at the Muezzin’ as next Wednesday at three?

God bless you  – – do not be otherwise than kind to this letter which it costs me pains, great pains to avoid writing better, as truthfuller  – – this you get is not the first begun. Come, you shall not have the heart to blame me; for, see, I will send all my sins of commission with Hood,  – – blame them, tell me about them, and meantime let me be, dear friend, yours,

R.B.

 

Sunday Morning.

July 14, 1845.

Very well  – – I shall say no more on the subject  – – though it was not any piece of formality on your part that I deprecated; nor even your over-kindness exactly  – – Continue reading “#61”

Wednesday Morning.

July 9, 1845.

You are all that is good and kind: I am happy and thankful the beginning (and worst of it) is over and so well. The Park and Mr. Kenyon’s all in good time  – – and your sister was most prudent  – – and you mean to try again: God bless you, all to be said or done  – – but, as I say it, no vain word. No doubt it was a mere chance-thought, and à propos de bottes of Horne  – – Continue reading “#59”

Monday Afternoon.

[Post-mark July 7, 1845.]

While I write this,  – – 3 o’clock you may be going out, I will hope, for the day is very fine, perhaps all the better for the wind: yet I got up this morning sure of bad weather. I shall not try to tell you how anxious I am for the result and to know it. You will of course feel fatigued at first  – – but persevering, as you mean to do, do you not?  – – persevering, the event must be happy. Continue reading “#57”

Tuesday Morning.

[July 1, 1845]

How are you  – – may I hope to hear soon?

I don’t know exactly what possessed me to set my next day so far off as Saturday  – – as it was said, however, so let it be. Continue reading “#55”

Friday Morning.

June 27, 1845.

Let me make haste and write down To-morrow, Saturday, and not later, lest my selfishness be thoroughly got under in its struggle with a better feeling that tells me you must be far too tired for another visitor this week. Continue reading “#52”