Author: RB

[Postmark: July 24, 1846]

Friday.

Sweet, sweet, sweet Ba, look to be kissed to-morrow till
it hurts you, — punished you ought to be for such a letter !
When the ancients were in doubt about a man’s identity
(the ancient fathers) they called him ‘ aut Erasmus (or
whoever it might be) aut — diabolus ! ‘ — no gradation, no
mean between best and worst ! Or do you think Flush bit me
and inoculated me with super-cynical snappishness ? Well,
I do think I should not have conducted myself as you consider
highly possible, — even if you had made, let me say at
once, the most preposterous of proposals, even that of going
without Wilson, or her substitute. I think and am sure I
should, like a rational being, write all the faster to try and
get you to reconsider the matter — convinced as I should be
that your perfect good sense would, after a few minutes’
examination, see that I could no more take you away without
such assistance than desire you to perform the passage
of the Mont Cenis on foot. Do I not remember that you
intended to be thus accompanied even when your sister was
to be of the party ? But the absolute necessity of what you
fancy I may object to . . it is not that, I complain about —
but of the strange notion, that whenever Fate shall decree
that you say, or do, or think anything, from which I shall
be forced to differ, — my proceedings will needs take this
fashion and colour — I shall ‘ sulk ‘ and say nothing, — or
perhaps turn aside grandly offended and meditative of noble
vengeance ! Oh, Ba, dearest, dearest beyond all words,
come for once and always into the heart which is your own,
and see how full it is of you, and if you say, that does not
prevent the head being weak and acting accordingly, I will
begin exemplifying the very point I want to convince you of
by at once writing and speaking and by every imaginable
means making you know, that the heart does teach the head
better than such foolishness — ought to do it, and does do it !

Do you believe me, Ba, my own ? Or, what nonsense !
Did you wonder at my letter when it did come ? Or did
it come? It was duly posted at Deptford — moreover the
‘ Thursday ‘ at the top was written ‘ Wednesday ‘ — because
all day long I was in that error — having been used to see
you on Mondays, and to calculate my time by the number
of days since I saw you — whence, knowing to my cost that
two days had gone by since such an event, I thought what
I wrote.

Now kiss me, my very own, for an end to every thing —
your doubt and my impudent making the most of it, — for
I do not doubt you, sweetest, truest, best love !

To-morrow brings me to you, Ba, I trust — I will be
careful to-day, never fear your

own devoted R.

[Postmark: July 23, 1846]

R. B. to E. B. B.

Wednesday.

I have just returned from Town and Mr. Kenyon’s, my
own Ba. I called, according to compact, to point out the
precise way he must go to reach us. He seemed to make sure
I was going to Wimpole Street — ‘ Oh, no ! ‘

So, losing Wimpole Street, I made haste home, and gain
my letter, — my dear letter : yesterday night, too, the first
letter arrived duly — you perfect in kindness !

My dearest — dearest, — you might go to Pisa without
shoes, — or feet to wear them, for aught I know, since you
may have wings, only folded away from me — but without your
Wilson, or some one in her capacity, you . . no, I will not
undertake to speak of you ; then, I, should be simply, exactly,
INSANE to move a step ; I would rather propose, let us live
on bread and water, and sail in the hold of a merchant-ship ;
THIS CANNOT be dispensed with ! It is most fortunate, most
providential, that Wilson is inclined to go — I am very
happy ; for a new servant, with even the best dispositions,
would never be able to anticipate your wants and wishes
during the voyage, at the very beginning. Yet you write of
this to me so, my Ba ! I think I will, in policy, begin the
anger at a good place. Yes, all the anger I am capable of
descends on the head — (not in kisses, whatever you may
fancy).

And so poor Flush suffered after all ! Dogs that are
dog-like would be at no such pains to tell you they would
not see you with comfort approached by a stranger who
might be — ! A ‘muzzle’? oh, no, — but suppose you have
him removed next time, and perhaps the next, till the whole
occurrence is out of his mind as the fly bite of last week
— because, if he sees me and begins his barking and valiant
snapping, and gets more and heavier vengeance downstairs,
perhaps, — his transient suspicion of me will confirm itself
into absolute dislike, hatred, whereas, after an interval, we
can renew acquaintance on a better footing. Dogs have
such memories ! My sister told me last week she saw in a
provincial newspaper an anecdote of one, — a miller’s dog,
that was a good fellow in the main, but chose to take an
especial dislike to one of his master’s customers, whom he
invariably flew at and annoyed — so much so that the man
declared he must carry his custom elsewhere unless the dog
was parted with : this the miller was unwilling to do ; so he
hit on an expedient — by some contrivance, the dog was
suffered to fall into a deep well, and bark himself hoarse
there in vain — no help came — till the obnoxious individual
arrived, let himself down and brought up the prisoner.
From which time nothing could exceed the devotion of the
dog to his rescuer ; whom he always insisted henceforth on
accompanying as far as his home, for one instance of it.

I wonder whether I have anywhere one of the sketches
my father made of my bulldog’s face.

What ‘ tired ‘ you, dearest ? You are not less well, I
trust ? Pray tell me, — and remember there are three days
before our Saturday. I am very much better — the walking
and riding of this morning did me good, too — and what
profits it, if you are not better also ? Love me in caring for
yourself, which is my truest self! And I will go on and
try to love you more than I do — for what may happen ?

Ever your own R.

[Postmark: July 22, 1846]

Tuesday.

How I long, my sweetest Ba, to know whether any heavy
price is to be paid for our three hours yesterday, — if your
Aunt knew or has discovered since ? I shall not murmur in
any case, I hope . . they are too delicious, these three-hour
visits — and if I could pay for them by myself, Ba, — what
would I not pay ?

Will you let me write something, and forgive me ?
Because it is, I know, quite unnecessary to be written, and,
beside, may almost seem an interference with your own
delicacy, — teaching it its duty ! However, I will venture
to go on, with your hand before my two eyes. Then, — you
remember what we were speaking of yesterday, — house-rents
and styles of living ? You will never overlook, through its
very obviousness, that to consult my feelings on the only point
in which they are sensitive to the world you must endeavour
to live as simply and cheaply as possible, down to my own
habitual simplicity and cheapness, — so that you shall come
and live with me, in a sense, rather than I with Miss
Campbell ! You see, Ba, if you have more money than you
want, you shall save it or spend it in pictures or parrots or
what you please . . you avoid all offence to me who never
either saved money nor spent it — but the large house, I
should be forced to stay in, — the carriage, to enter, I suppose.
And you see too, Ba, that the one point on which I desire
the world to be informed concerning our future life, will be
that it is ordered so — I wish they could hear we lived in one
room like George Sand in ‘ that happy year — ‘

No, there I have put down an absurdity — because, I
shall have to confess a weakness, at some time or other,
which is hardly reconcilable to that method of being happy
— why may I not tell you now, my adored Ba, to whom I
tell everything as it rises to me ? Now put the hand on my
eyes again — now that I have kissed it. I shall begin by
begging a separate room from yours — I could never brush
my hair and wash my face, I do think, before my own
father — I could not, I am sure, take off my coat before you
now — why should I ever ? The kitchen is an unknown
horror to me, — I come to the dining-room for whatever
repast there may be, — nor willingly stay too long there,
— and on the day on which poor Countess Peppa taught me
how maccaroni is made, — then began a quiet revolution,
(indeed a rapid one) against ‘ tagliolini,’ ‘ fettucce,’ ‘ lasagne,’
etc., etc., etc. – typical, typical !

What foolishness . . spare me, my own Ba, and don’t
answer one word, — do not even laugh, — for I know the
exceeding unnecessary foolishness of it !

Chorley has just sent me a note which I will send you
because it is most graceful in its modesty — but you must
not, if you please, return it to me in an envelope that ought
only to hold your own writing, — and so make my heart beat
at first, and my brows knit at last ! (Toss it into ‘ my room,’
at Pisa ! !)

Thus it is to be made happy and unwise ! Never mind
— make me happier still by telling me you are well and have
been out, and where, and when, and how — the footsteps of
you, Ba, should be kissed if I could follow them.

Bless you, ever dearest, dearest, as yesterday, and always
you bless me — I love you with all my heart and soul — yes
Ba!

Your own, very own.

[Postmark: July 20, 1846]

Monday Evening.

Certainly you do know me, my own Ba, beyond all other
knowledge possible to relatives, — that I know — in fact, I
found myself speaking unwarily on a subject where speech
is obliged to stop abruptly — the fault was mine for bringing
up terms, remarks &c. quite inapplicable out of this house, —
where all, as you understand, have seen me so long that
they do not see differences in me, — increases or diminutions ;
I am twice as blind, most likely, to them, after the same
fashion. Still, one is slow to concede an excuse to such
blindness — hence the ‘ hasty words ‘ I told you they charge
me with uttering.

I apprehend no danger from that, to your feeling for me —
it is your own speech my Ba, which I will take from you,
and use — my own general short-comings, you will inevitably
see and be sorry for — but there will be the more need
of your love, which I shall go on asking for daily and nightly
as if I never could have enough — which is the exact
fact ; and also, I shall grow fitter through the love to be
what you would have me, so the end may be better than the
beginning, let us hope.

Will you not do what you can with me who am your
very own ? as you are my own too, but for a different end
— I am yours to operate on, as you are my only lady to
dispose of what belongs to you. Dear, dearest Ba, it is so ;
will ever be so !

Yes, that notice by Chorley is very kind and gratifying.
I wanted — (quite apart from the poor good to me or my
books — but for Chorley’s own sake, I rather wanted) — some
decided streak of red, or spot, or spark, — some life in the
increasing grey of the ashes — this is true, live lovingness of
him — I will tell him so.

For Domett’s letter, — he means, by all that nonsense, that
my health is more in his estimation than any works producible
at its expense. All the calculation about so many
lines a day, so many a month &c., he knows to be absurd . .
you can’t write ‘ so many lines to-day,’ and add next day’s
complement, and so ‘ grow to an end ‘ — any more than you
can paint a picture by thumb-breadths. The other paragraph
about intelligibility laughs at itself all the time . . is
not to be taken for serious.

Indeed I did desire with a great desiring that you should
go out, and now I thank you for all the good account of the
walk, and victory over the wind : and how kind that sister
is ! — I shall never forget it.

My own head, since you will be teazed with intelligence
about it, was not very well yesterday, but is better decidedly
this morning — I, too, will go and put this letter in the post
and think of to-morrow . . for do not I keep to-morrow ?
I shall be with you unless another order comes . . may it
be averted ! And may you be happy always with me, as I
shall be through you . . nay, but half as happy, dearest Ba,
my very own !

Your R.

[Postmark: July 20, 1846]

Dearest Ba’s face of yesterday, with the smiles and
perfect sweetness, oh, the comfort it is to me through this
day of my especial heaviness ! I don’t know when I have
felt more stupid, and I seem to keep the closelier to you,
Ba. Is that one of my felicities of compliment ? I think if
you were here I should lay my head on your bosom, my
own beloved, and never raise it again. In your last
letter, you speak of those who care less for you than for a
‘ glass of claret ‘ there is something sublime, at all
events, astounding, in the position we occupy each of us,
I, and those less-carers, standing in respect to each other
so like England and Owhyhee, at which, they told me
when I was a boy, I should be pretty sure to arrive if I dug a
hole just through the earth, dropped to the centre and then,
turning round, climbed straight up!

I left here, yesterday, without taking the prints of
Dumas and Hugo there is a head ‘ for remembering ! ‘ and
justifying your commodations ! Chorley says, you see, my
acquisitions are rather accumulated than digested or
words to that effect I am sure at this moment the stupid,
heavy head knows not one thing, as a clear point of know-
ledge, taken in and laid by, orderly and separately. So let
me say here, while I do remember, that a letter from
Forster puts off his visit and Moxon’s till Monday should
any reason therefore, prevent your confirming to me the
gift of Tuesday, this other day will lie open but only in
that case, I trust because Tuesday objects not to Saturday,
does it? while Wednesday looks grave, and Thursday
frowns downright on the same ! Friday, remember, is Mr.
Kenyon’s day.

I wish, dearest, you would tell me precisely what you
have written all my affectionate pride in you rises at once
when I think of your poetry, that is and that is to be you
dear, dear Ba, can you not write on my shoulder while my
head lies as you permit?

I found at home on my return yesterday my friend
Pritchard, who brought me an old notice of Rachel by Jules
Janin of course there is no believing a word but he does say
that she was, at the time he wrote, perfectly ignorant of
the most ordinary rules of grammar, that, for instance, on
meeting him she remarked (alluding to her having played
previously at another theatre than the T. Frangais) ‘ C’était
moi que j’était au Gymnase ! ‘ to which he ought to have
answered, he thinks, ‘ Je le savions ! ‘ I will bring her
portrait, too, if you please and this memoir, untrustworthy
as it is.

I will go now and walk about, I think did you go out,
as you promised, love ? Ah, dearest, you to wonder I
could look up to you for ever as you stand, you who
once wrote to me that, in order to verify a date about
Shelley in a book I lent you, ‘ You had accomplished a
journey to the other end of the room, even ‘ ! And now !
I thankfully know this to be miraculous nor have I to ask
my spiritual director’s opinion thereon to whom, how on
earth can one surrender one’s private right of judgment
when it is only by the exercise of that very right that I
select him from the multitude of would-be directors of me
and the whole world ? What but a deliberate act of judg-
ment takes up Dr. Pusey of Oxford rather than Mrs. Fox of
Finsbury and is it for that pernicious first step that I
determine on never risking a second?

Bless you, ever dearest and do you bless your

very own R.

[Postmark: July 17, 1846]

Did you ever see a more uncongenial, colourless day than
this that brings me no letter ! I do not despair yet, how-
ever there will be a post presently. When I am without
the sight of you, and the voice of you, which a letter seems . .
I feel very accurately the justice of that figure by which I am
represented as ‘ able to leave you alone leaving you and
following my pleasure elsewhere ‘ so you have written and
spoken ! Well, to-day, I may follow my pleasures.

I will follow you, Ba, the thoughts of you, and long for
to-morrow.

No letter for me, the time is past. If you are well, my
own Ba, I will not mind . . more than I can. You had not
been out for two days the wind is high, too. May God
keep you at all times, ever dearest !

The sun shines again now I will hope to hear at six
o’clock.

I can tell you nothing better, I think, than this I heard
from Moxon the other day . . it really ought to be remem-
bered. Moxon was speaking of critics, the badness of their
pay, how many pounds a column the Times allowed, and
shillings the Athenaeum, and of the inevitable effects on
the performances of the poor fellows. ‘ How should they
be at the trouble of reading any difficult book so as to review
it, Landor, for instance?’ and indeed a friend of my own
has promised to write a notice in the Times but he com-
plains bitterly, he shall have to read the book, he can do
no less, and all for five or ten pounds’ ! All which
Moxon quite seemed to understand ‘ it will really take him
some three or four mornings to read enough of Landor to
be able to do anything effectually.’ I asked if there had
been any notices of the Book already ‘ Just so many,’ he
said ‘ as Forster had the power of getting done ‘- Mr.
White, a clergyman, has written a play for Macready, which
everybody describes as the poorest stuff imaginable, it is
immediately reviewed in Blackwood and the Edinburgh
‘ Because ‘ continues M, ‘he is a Blackwood reviewer, and
may do the like good turn to any of the confraternity.’

So here I will end, wanting to come to the kissing
dearest Ba, and bidding her remember to-morrow how my
heart sinks to-day in the silence.

Ever, dearest dearest, your very own.

[Postmark: July 16, 1846]

Thursday.

I should be doing your own dear face (which I see so perfectly through the distance) — too great a wrong if I so much
as answered the charge of ‘ not remembering.’ I see the
face smile above the hand that writes ! As if one may not
say that a division, a wound, smarts more on the first day,
and aches more on the next ! As if I do not prefer the
fresh sharp regret to the settling of . . what I trust in God
and you I never shall feel ! However, if it will please you
to know, I do feel to-day as earnest a longing to be with
you again as if your two letters were not here, — as if
Tuesday lay only an hour behind instead of the two
long days !

I think your Father’s words on those two occasions,
very kind, — very ! They confuse, — perhaps humble me . .
that is not the expression, but it may stay. I dare say he
is infinitely kind at bottom — I think so, that is, on my own
account, — because, come what will or may, I shall never
see otherwise than with your sight. If he could know me,
I think he would soon reconcile himself to all of it, — know
my heart’s purposes toward you. But that is impossible —
and with the sincere will to please him by any exertion or
sacrifice in my power, I shall very likely never have the
opportunity of picking up a glove he might drop. In old
novels, the implacable father is not seldom set upon by a
round dozen of ruffians with blacked faces from behind a
hedge, and just as the odds prove too many, suddenly a
stranger (to all save the reader) leaps over an adjacent ditch,
&c. ‘ Sir, under Providence, I owe you my life ! ‘ &c. &c.
How does Dumas improve on this in ‘ Monte Cristo ‘ — are
there ‘ new effects ? ‘ Absurdity ! Yet I would fain . .
fain ! you understand.

To talk about my ‘ spoiling you for other conversers ‘
is . . oh, leap over hedge and ditch, somebody, to the
rescue ! If I praise myself for anything in our intimacy it
is that I never . . but I won’t go into it. And putting my
own experience aside and in its place, it strikes me that
what Ba ranks as a ‘ third-rate man ‘ may pass justly for a
paragon and marvel among men as the world has a right to
class them. I am quite sure if I had been present and
much had uttered itself about mullions . . somebody would
have looked a very babe in knowledge, and perhaps made
Ba blush for him and her own waste of love and praise —
So he retreats where he may keep it all in virtue of being
what he is ever is, and shall be, her own R.

The river-voyage is not only the cheaper but by far the
more interesting . . all to consider is the fatigue to you ;
what else ?

I am very well to-day. Rachel’s ‘ Phedre ‘ was admirable
last night ; quite through Racine up to Euripides the
declaration-scene with Hippolytus exquisite . . I must
tell you —

[Postmark: July 15, 1846]

Wednesday.

Dearest Ba, I am anxious to know what cannot yet be
told me, how that unforeseen visit has worked tell me the
moment you can, and fully, whatever happens.

‘ Suspicious ‘ anything in the world rather than that,
you are ! When you have mistrusted your own power over
me, I believed always in the mistrust . . which, indeed,
matters little except to yourself. For if I would, certainly,
have the truth seen as the truth, and our true position
understood, yet . . there is, ought I not to be ashamed
at saying ? an exquisite, final grace and endearingness in
the ignorance, strange as I must account it. You doubly
trust me, with the treasure, and then, with the knowledge
that it is a treasure, or such a treasure.

Ba, when I think of it all, my whole heart becomes one
gratitude to you, I am only yours, grateful for ever. It is
the only kind of thoughts in which you shall not share
(there are many in which you cannot) the thoughts to my
inmost self as I go over what you say and do and try to
clear up to myself the precise fascination in each : you shall
not know what you do . . but shall continue to do and to
let me know. I love you entirely. Where can you change
so that I shall not love you more and more as I grow more
able and worthier ? I cannot sit for twenty-four hours by
you as I sit for three as it is, I take myself to task for not
doing something here at home to justify in some measure
my privilege and blessing and the only thing that keeps
conscience quiet comparatively is . . the old expedient
that the Future engages to do for me what the Present
cannot. Under your eyes, I will hope to work and attain
your approval. I know that when you were only the great
Poet and not my Ba, I would have preferred your praise, as
competent to praise, to that of the whole world I
remember distinctly, and know I should have done so.

And now, if I put aside the Poet and only (what an ‘ only ‘)
see my dearest, dearest lady of that hair and eyes, and
hands, and voice, and all the completeness that was trusted
to my arms yesterday why I feel that if she, never having
written a line, said ‘ What Miss Barrett may think I do
not know, but I am content with what you show me ‘ then,
dearest, should not I be content ?

I called on Moxon and called at Carlyle’s to no pur-
pose. He was out, and will leave town (said the servant)
next Saturday. Mrs. Carlyle has already left it. So, no
Rag Fair for the present, or probably ever ! This was my
fault, I having let several Sundays go by I must write to
Mr. Kenyon and try if he will come on his own account.
Moxon tells me that he has sold fifteen hundred of Tenny-
son’s Poems in a year and is about to print another
edition in consequence. If that is the case, and Tennyson
gets, say, only half a crown by the sale of each copy,
expenses deducted, he will have received 178/., little
enough, as payments are made to Punch-literature, but
enough to live upon, whatever the awful fiat decides !
Tennyson ‘is going’ to Switzerland presently with Moxon
but is liable to fits of indecision. He did talk of going to
Italy (of course), but the other day, time being up, his
brother was forced to proceed alone. Moxon is coming
here first.

Now I will kiss you, dearest, and hope that Wimpole
Street stands where it did, unhurt by explosions of any-
kind. I have got a letter from Procter asking me to go to-
day, which I cannot do. Ever your own, very own R.

[Postmark: July 13, 1846]

Monday.

My own Ba, your letter kisses me in its entire kindness – and I kiss it and you. – Mrs. Jameson may come or keep away . . (since you let me speak and decide, which is like you) . . she may appoint and reappoint, but Tuesday was given me and I will have it if her visit is the only obstacle – for what was all the confessing worth if not to account for such a phenomenon as my presence in your room when by any chance she might discover it? Beside, as you say, she is the most uncertain of engagement-holders . . no, indeed, – no Tuesday ought to be given up for her! Therefore, unless fresh orders arrive, – at three on Tuesday . . which is happily, happily to-morrow ! You are my own sweetest to reach a letter to me with your own hand, as you tell me, – and the drive, and the walk to the Post Office – thank you, Ba! Perhaps . . dare I say . . you will answer that letter I sent yesterday . . because now I remember there is no prayer at the end to prevent you . . that is, from answering the main part of it the reverting &c.

I wrote to Mr. Home, but shall not hear from him – on Saturday I wrote. And Mr. Bennett’s two letters are considerately written, – directed, – I mean, in a hand and with a blue ink that I recognise, – consequently the contents give me no trouble. I wrote two or three lines to the ‘year of the world’ poet, did you take the pains? Once on a time some unknown author sent me a Tragedy, ‘not published,’ called ‘Alessandro de’ Medici,’ with some striking scenes . . I wonder who could be the writer did it ever fall in your way ?

. . As if I care! – can I care about anything that is not Ba? All else seems as idle as . . as, – now you shall have a real instance in point – as my dream last night. This morning at breakfast my mother asked me, the first thing, what could so amuse me as to make me call loudly ‘Bravo’ again and again, with abundance of laughter? (My room is next to hers and the door is left ajar). Whereupon I tried to recall my dream – and all that I can seize is a passage through a gallery of Haydoffs pictures, one of which was a portrait of his wife; nor did a suspicion once cross my mind that the artist was not well and working somewhere in the vicinity all the time – How strange! I never dream if quite well – and I suppose the present state of my head just amounts to not being quite well. (It is better at any rate, and to-morrow – ought to be worse, that – Ba may prove her potency as of old).

Now I will kiss you and wait as well as I can till the full blessing. Dearest – dearest I am your own.

[Postmark: July 12, 1846]

Sunday.

When I made you promise to refer no more to that
subject in your letter (which I must wait a day and a night
for, alas !), I did not engage myself to the like silence . .
perhaps because I was not bidden or, no ! there is a
better reason ; I want to beg your pardon, dearest, for all
that petulancy, for the manner of what I said rather than
the matter, there is a rationality in it all, if I could
express trulier what I feel but the manner was foolish and
wrong and unnecessary to you so do forgive and forget it.
You would understand and sympathize if you knew not
me, whom you do know in some degree, but so much of
my early life as would account for the actual horror and
hatred I have of those particular doctrines of the world
and the especially foolish word about the ‘ travelling ‘ meant
something like the not unnatural thought that if in this
main, sole event for all good and all evil in my life, if here
the world plucked you from me by any of the innumerable
lines it casts, with that indirectness, too, then, I should
simply go and live the rest of my days as far out of it as I
could.

The simple thing to say is, that I who know you to be
above me in all great or good feelings and therefore
worship you, must be without excuse to talk inconsiderately
as if I, sitting by you and speaking of the same subject,
must needs feel more acutely, more strongly in one respect
where, indeed, it wants very little pre-eminence in heart or
brain to feel entirely the truth a simplest of truths. It
would have been laughable if I had broken out on Mrs.
Proctor’s bitterness of speech, for instance . . just as
though you were the slower of us two to see the nature of
it ! So I do again ask your pardon, dearest Ba ! You
said you loved me no less yesterday than ever how must I
love you and press closer to you more and more, and desire
to see nothing of the world behind you, when I hear how
the world thinks, and how you think ! You only, only
adorable woman, only imaginable love for me ! And all
the hastiness and petulancy comes from that . . someone
seems to come close (in every such maxim of the world’s)
and say ‘ What is she to so much a year ? Could you be
happy with her except in Mayfair and there whom could
you not be happy with ! ‘

It is as I expected Rachel plays on Wednesday in
‘ Phedre,’ and our friend writes to say he has secured places.
May nothing overcast the perfect three hours on Tuesday,
those dear, dear spaces of dear brightness why cannot
a life be made up of these . . with the proper interposition
of work, to justify God’s goodness so far as poor mortality
and its endeavours can, a week of Tuesdays then a
month a year a life ! I must long to see you again,
always by far the most I long, the next day the very day
after I have seen you when it is freshest in my mind what
I did not say while I might have said it, nor ask while I
might have been answered nor learn while you would
have taught me no, it is indescribable. Did I call yester-
day ‘ unsatisfactory ‘ ? Would I had it back now ! Or
better, I will wish you here when I write, with the trees to
see and the birds to hear through the open window I see
you on this old chair against the purple back . . or shall you
lie on the sofa? Ba, how I love you, my own perfect
unapproachable mistress.

Let me kiss your feet and now your hands and your
eyes and your lips now, for the full pardon’s sake, my
sweetest love

Ever your own