Category: Uncategorized

[Postmark: June 26, 1846]

Friday Morning.

I drew the table to the fire before I wrote this. Here
is cool weather, grateful to those overcome by last week’s
heat, I suppose ! – much as one conceives of a day’s starva-
tion being grateful to people who were overfeasted some
time back. But the coolness (that is, piercing cold as the
north wind can make) sets me to ponder on what you said
yesterday, – of considering summer as beginning next Wed-
nesday, or there about, and ending by consequence with
September. Our time is ‘ at the Summer’s end ‘ : and it
does strike me that there may be but too many interpositions
beside that of ‘ my own will ‘ . . far too many. If those
equinoctial winds disturb the sea, the cold weather adds
to the difficulties of the land-journey . . then the will may
interpose or stand aloof . . I cannot take you and kill you
. . really, inevitably kill you ! As it is .. or rather, as it
might be, I should feel during a transit under the most
favourable circumstances possible, somewhat as the per-
former of that trick by which a full glass of water resting in
the open hand is made to describe a circle from above to
below and back without spilling a drop – through some good-
natured suspension, in the operator’s interest, of just a
fundamental law of the universe, no more ! Therefore if
any September weather shall happen in September . . let us
understand and wait . . another year ! and another, and
another.

Now, have I ever, with all those askings, asked you once
too often, that is, unnecessarily – ‘if this should be,’ – or
‘ when this should be ? ‘ What is my ‘ will ‘ to do with it ?
Can I keep the winds away, alas ? My own will has all
along been annihilated before you, – with respect to you – I
should never be able to say ‘ she shall dine on fish, or fruit,’
‘She i shall wear silk, gloves or ‘thread gloves’ – even to
exercise in fancy that much ‘ will over you ‘ is revolting – I
will this, never to be ‘ over you ‘ if I could !

So, you decide here as elsewhere – but do decide, Ba,
my own only Ba – do think, to decide. I can know nothing
here as to what is gained or lost by delay or anticipation – I
only refer to the few obvious points of the advantage of
our ‘ flight not being in the winter ‘ – and the consideration
that the difficulty in another quarter will never be less nor
more, – therefore is out of the question.

I will tell you something I meant to speak of yesterday.
Mrs. Jameson said Mr. Kenyon had assured her, with the
kindest intentions, that it was quite vain to make those
offers of company to Pisa or elsewhere, for your Father
would never give his consent, and the very rationality of the
plan, and probability of the utmost benefit following the
adoption of it, would be the harder to forego the more they
were entertained – whereupon, ‘having the passions of his
kind he spoke some certain things ‘ – bitter and unavoid-
able. Then Mrs J. spoke too, as you may imagine ; ap-
parently from better knowledge than even I possess. Now
I repeat this to your common- sense, my Ba – it is not hard to
see that you must be silent and suffering, where no other
can or will be either – so that if a verdict needs must be
pronounced on our conduct, it will be ‘ the world’s ‘ and
not an individual’s – and for once a fair one. Mrs. Jame-
son’s very words were . . (writing from what has been, observe
what is irrevocably past, and not what may be) – ‘ I feel
unhappy when in her presence . . impelled to do her some
service, and impeded. Can nothing be done to rescue
her from this ? ought it to continue ? ‘ So speaks – not your
lover ! – who, as he told you, did long to answer ‘ someone
with attempt, at least ! ‘ But it was best, for Mrs. Jameson
would be blamed afterward, as Mr. K. might be abused, as
ourselves will be vituperated, as my family must be
calumniated . . by whom

Do you feel me kiss your feet while I write this ? I
think you must, Ba ! There is surely, – I trust, surely no
impatience here, in this as in the other letter – if there is, I
will endeavour to repress it . . but it will be difficult – for I
love you, and am not a stock nor a stone.

And as we are now, – another year !

Well, kissing the feet answers everything, declares
everything – and I kiss yours, my own Ba.

[Postmark: June 24, 1846]

Wednesday.

But, dearest love – I have just come in later than I ex-
pected, I am happy to say . . for your note only just arrives
too, they say . . and I should have been frightened more
than I need say. All blessing on you, Ba. I have seen
no paper. – but Countess Hahn-Hahn said across Carlyle’s
table that poor H. had attempted to shoot himself and then
chosen another method – too successful. Horrible indeed –
All to say now is, I shall be with you to-morrow, – my
very own, dearest of all dear created things my life and
pride and joy – (Bless you). R.

There is nothing in to-day’s Times I find –

[Postmark: June 24, 1846]

Tuesday.

Ever tenderest, kindest and most beloved, I thank you
from the quick of my heart, where the thought of you lives
constantly ! In this world full of sadness, of which I have
had my part . . full of sadness and bitterness and wrong
. . full of most ghastly contrasts of life and death, strength
and weakness side by side . . it is too much, to have you
to hold by, as the river rushes on . . too much good, too
much grace for such as I, .. as I feel always, and cannot
cease to feel !

Oh yes – it has shocked me, -this dreadful news of poor
Mr. Haydon – it chilled the blood in my veins when I heard
it from Alfred, who, seeing the Times at the Great Western
Terminus, wrote out the bare extract and sent it to me
by the post. He just thought that the Chronicle did not
mention it, . . and that I had not seen Mr. Haydon . . he
did not perhaps think how it would shock me.

For, this I cannot help thinking. Could anyone –
could my own hand even . . have averted what has happened”?
My head and heart have ached to-day over the inactive
hand ! But, for the moment, it was out of my power, with-
out an application where it would have been useless and
then, I never fancied this case to be more than a piece of a
continuous case . . of a habit fixed. Two years ago he sent
me boxes and pictures precisely so, and took them back
again poor, poor Haydon ! – as he will not this time. And
he said last week that Peel had sent him fifty pounds . .
adding . . ‘ I do not however want charity, but employ-
ment.’ Also, I have been told again and again (oh, never
by you my beloved ! ) that to give money there, was to drop
it into a hole of the ground.

But if to have dropped it so, dust to dust, would have
saved a living man – what then?

Yet of the three notes I had from him last week, the
first was written so lightly, that the second came to desire
me not to attribute to him a ‘ want of feeling.’ And who
could thjnk . . contemplate . . this calamity ? May God
have mercy on the strongest of us, for we are weak. Oh,
that a man so high hearted and highly endowed . . a bold
man, who has thrown down gauntlet after gauntlet in the
face of the world – that such a man should go mad for a
few paltry pounds ! For he was mad if he killed himself !
of that I am as sure as if I knew it. If he killed himself,
he was mad first. .

Some day, when I have the heart to look for it, you
shall see his last note. I understand now that there are
touches in it of a desperate pathos – but never could he
have meditated self-destruction while writing that note.
He said he should write six sets, of lectures more . . six
more volumes. He said he was painting a new background
to a picture, which made him ‘ feel as if his soul had wings.’
And then he hoped his brain would not turn. And he
‘ gloried ‘ in the naval dangers of his son at sea. And he
repeated an old phrase of his, which I had heard from him
often before, and which now rings hollowly to the ears of
my memory . . that he couldrit and wouldn’t die. Strange
and dreadful !

It is nearly two years since we had a correspondence of
some few months – from which at last I receded, notwith-
standing the individuality and spirit of his letters, and my
admiration for a certain fervour and magnanimity of genius,
no one could deny to him. His very faults partook of that
nobleness. But for a year and a half or more perhaps, I
scarcely have written or heard from him – until last week
when he wrote to ask for a shelter for his boxes and pictures.
If you had enquired of me the week before, I might have
answered that I did not wish to renew the intercourse –
yet who could help being shocked and saddened ? Would
it have availed, to have dropped something into that ‘ hole
in the ground ? ‘ Oh, to imagine that \ Yet a little would
have been but as nothing ! – and he did not ask even for a
little and I should have been ashamed to have offered
but a little. Yet I cannot turn the thought away – that
I did not offer.

Henry went to the house as I begged him. His son
came to the door, and to a general enquiry ‘after the
family,’ said that ‘Mr. Haydon was dead and that his
family were quite as well as could be expected.’ That
horrible banality is all I know more than you know.

Yesterday at Rogers’s, Mrs. Jameson led me to his
picture of Napoleon at St. Helena. At the moment we
looked at it, his hand was scarcely cold, perhaps. Surely
it was not made of the commonest clay of men – that
hand !

I pour out my thoughts to you, dearest dearest, as if it
were right rather to think of doing myself that good and
relief, than of you who have to read all. But you spoil me
into an excess of liberty, by your tenderness. Best in the
world ! Oh – you help me to live – I am better and lighter
since I have drawn near to you even on this paper – already
I am better and lighter. And now I am going to dream of
you . . to meet you on some mystical landing place . . in
order to be quite well to-morrow. Oh – we are so selfish
on this earth, that nothing grieves us very long, let it be
ever so grievous, unless we are touched in ourselves . . in
the apple of our eye . . in the quick of our heart . . in
what you are, and where you are . . my own dearest
beloved ! So you need not be afraid for me ! We all look
to our own, as I to you ; the thunderbolts may strike the
tops of the cedars, and, except in the first start, none of us
be moved. True it is of me – not of you perhaps – certainly
you are better than I, in all things. Best in the world, you
are ! – no one is like you. Can you read what I have
written ? Do not love me less ! Do you think that I
cannot feel you love me, through all this distance? If you
loved me less, I should know, without a word or a sign.
Because I live by your loving me ! I am your

BA.

[Postmark: June 23, 1846]

Tuesday Morning

I was just on the point of answering your dear letter, in
all the good spirits it might be expected to wake in me,
when the sad news of poor Haydon’s death stopped all ;
much I feel it, for the light words of my own about his
extravagance, as I had been told of it, but very much more
on your account, who were so lately in communication with
him. I earnestly hope, – I will trust – you have not been
rudely apprised of this – I am happy to remember that you
do not see the newspaper in the morning, – others will see it
first ; perhaps there may be no notice in the Chronicle at all,
or on the other hand, a more circumstantial one than this
in the Times which barely says – ‘that B.R.H. died suddenly
at his residence – yesterday morning. He was in his usual
health on the previous evening, and it is believed that his
decease was hastened by pecuniary embarrassment’ – and
he is called ‘ the unfortunate gentleman ‘ – which with the
rest implies the very worst, I fear. If by any chance this
should be the first intimation you receive of it . . do not
think me stupid nor brutal, – for I thought again and again
as to the right course to take . . whether it would not be
best to be silent altogether and wait and see . . but in that
case I should have surprised you more by my cold letter, –
such an one as I could bring myself to write, – for how were
it possible to speak of pictures and indifferent matters when
you perhaps have been shocked, made ill by this news ? If
I have done wrong, forgive me, my own best, dearest Ba –
I would give the world to know how you are. The storm,
too, and lightning may have made you even more than
ordinarily unfit to be startled and grieved. God knows and
must help you ! I am but your devoted –

How glad I am you told me you had never seen him.
And perhaps he may be after all a mere acquaintance . .
anything I will fancy that is likely to relieve you of pain !
Dearest dearest !

[Postmark: June 23, 1846]

Monday Evening.

Well – I did look everywhere for you to-day, – but not
more than I always do – always I do, when I go out, look
for you in the streets . . round the corners ! And Mrs.
Jameson came alone and she and I were alone at Mr.
Rogers’s, and you must help me to thank her some day for
her unspeakable kindness to me, though she did not leap to
the height of the inspiration of managing to let us see those
pictures together. Ah – if she had, it would have been too
much. As it is, she gave me a great deal of pleasure in
the kindest of ways . . and I let it be pleasure, by mixing
it with enough thoughts of you – (otherwise how could it
be pleasure ?) – and she showed the pictures, and instructed
me, really taking pains and instructing me . . and tellin g
me how Rubens painted landscapes . . as how should my
ignorance guess ? . . . and various other unknown things
The first word as we reached the door, frightened me – for
she said that perhaps we might see Mr. Rogers . . which
was a little beyond our covenant – but we did not see him,
and I suppose the Antinous on the staircase is not at all
like him. Grand it is, in its serene beauty. On a colossal
scale, in white marble. For the pictures, they are full
of wonder and divinity – each giving the measure of a
man’s soul. And think . . sketches from the hand of
Michael Angelo and Raphael ! And a statuette in clay,
alive with the life of Michael Angelo’s finger – the blind
eyes looking . . seeing . . as if in scorn of all clay !
And the union of energy and meditation in the whole
attitude ! You have seen the marble of that figure in
Florence. Then, a divine Virgin and child, worn and faded
to a shadow of Raphael’s genius, as Mrs. Jameson explained
to me and the famous ‘ Ecce Homo ‘ of Guido . . and
Rubens’ magnificent ‘ version ‘ as she called it, of Andrea
Mantegna’s ‘Triumph of Julius Caesar.’ So triumphing to
this day ! And Titian, and Tintoretto . . . and what did
not strike me the least, . . a portrait of Rembrandt by him-
self, which if his landscapes, as they say, were ‘ dug out of
nature,’ looks as if it were dug out of humanity. Such a
rugged, dark, deep subterraneous face, . . yet inspired !
seeming to realize that God took clay and breathed into the
nostrils of it. There are both the clay, and the divinity !
And think ! I saw the agreement between the bookseller
and Milton for the sale of Paradise Lost ! with Milton’s
signature and seal ! and ‘ Witnessed by William Greene,
Mr. Milton’s servant.’ How was it possible not to feel
giddy with such sights ! Almost I could have run my head
against the wall, I felt, with bewilderment – and Mrs.
Jameson must have been edified, I have thought since,
through my intense stupidity. I saw too the first edition of
‘ Paradise Lost.’ The rooms are elegant, with no pretension
to splendour . . which is good taste, a part of the good
taste everywhere. Only, on the chimney-piece of the
dining-room, were two small busts, beautiful busts, white
with marble, . . and representing – now, whom, of gods
and men, would you select for your Lares . . to help your
digestion and social merriment ? . . . Caligula and Nero
in childhood! The ‘childhood’ is horribly suggestive to me!
On the side-board is Pope’s bust, by Roubillac – a too ex
pressive, miserable face – drawn with disease and bitter
thoughts, and very painful, I felt, to look at. These things
I liked least, in the selection and arrangement. Every-
thing beside was admirable : and I write and write of it all
as if I were not tired – but I am . . and most with the
excitement and newness. Mrs. Jameson breakfasted with
Mr. Rogers yesterday, she said, and met the Countess
Hahn-Hahn, who was talking of modern literature when
her host suddenly stopped her with a question . . ‘ Did you
ever read Addison ? ‘

How late it is. Must I have done, before I have half
done?

What I did not tell you yesterday is very much in my
thoughts . . do you know ? /, too, ‘ see what I know and
testify what I have felt . . and, as far as my faculties of
perception go ! ‘ I am confident that you had better not
look for a single reason for loving me. Which is worst ?
A bad reason, or no reason at all ? A bad reason, I think
– and accept the alternative. Ah . . my own only beloved.
And how you write to me to-night ! I will read what you
tell me in Landor . . but no words of inspired lips or
pen . . no poet’s word, of the divinest, . . ever went to
my heart as yours in these letters ! Do I not love you ?
am I not your own ? And while deserving nothing of all of
it, I feel it at least – respond to it – my heart is in your
hand. May God bless you . . ‘ and me in that ,’ – because
even He could not bless me without that. Which He
knows.

Your own.

But there is much beauty in Faustina oh, surely !
The lilies, all in blow except one . . which is blowing.
Are we going to have a storm to-night ? It lightens . .
lightens !

[Postmark: June 22, 1846]

Monday.

If I only thought for myself in this instance, I should at
once go and mount guard before your house so as to see
you, at least, for a moment as you leave it.

To hope for a word would never do . . you might be
startled, or simply not like such a measure, and in simili
incontri I will not run risks, but I should be able to see you,
my Ba . . why do I not go then ? People at doors and
windows are also able, alas, to see me too – so I stay . . if
this is staying away when I can see the curled-up feet and
kiss them beside, – ever dear feet !

Do you know the days and the times and the long
interval, – you, as I know ? How strange that you should
complain, and I become the happier ! If I could alter it,
and make you feel no subject for complaint any longer, I
would, – surely I would, and be happy in that too, I hope
. . yet the other happiness needs must be given up in that
case . . I cannot reason it out. I excuse my present selfish
happiness by feeling I would not exchange the sadness of
being away from you for any imaginable delight in which
you had no part. But I will have this delight, too, my
Ba, of imagining that you are gratified by what you will see
to-day. Tell me all, and what is said, and how you are at
the end.

Thank you meanwhile for the picture of poor Mr. Boyd
. . then he never has seen you, since he was blind so long
ago ! How strange and melancholy – you say he is ‘ cheer-
ful,’ however. In that case – think of unhappy Countess
Faustina with her ‘irresistible longings,’ and give her as
much of your commiseration as she ought to get. What a
horrible book . . how have I brought in what I prescribed
to myself ‘ silence about.’ Such characters as Faustina
produce the very worst possible effect on me – I don’t know
how they strike other people – but I am at once incited
‘ debellare superbos ‘ to try at least and pull down the
arrogant – contempt would be the most Christian of all the
feelings possible to be called forth by such a woman.
Let me get back to you, my own dearest- dearest, – I do
‘ love you to-day,’ if you must ask, and bidding me think
of you is all very well – never bid me not think of you ! –
and so never find out that there could be a bidding I am
unable to obey. But what is mere ‘ thinking ‘ ? I kiss your
hand, and your eyes, and now your lips, – and ask for my
heart back again, to give it and be ever giving it. No
words can tell how I am your own.

My mother is much better, – observably so, to-day.
Oh, dearest, – I want you to read Lander’s Dialogue between
Tasso and his Sister, in the second volume, – with the
exquisite Sorrentine scenery – do read it. I see your Tasso
with his prominent eyes as if they were ever just brightening
out of a sorrow that has broken over them.

How I like (‘ love ‘ is not my word now) but like Landor,
more and more !

[Postmark: June 22, 1846]

Sunday.

I write to you in the drawing-room, and have brought
down with me, I find, no smaller paper – but it can’t be
filled, can it ? though I have to tell you the great news
about the lilies . . that all, except two, are in full blow . .
and that the two are unfolding . . I can almost see the
leaves move. I told you how it would be. They will live,
. . and last longer than the roses, . . which I shall have
to tell you by history as well as prediction, presently. The
next news is not so good, – for I have had a note from Mrs.
Jameson to the effect that she will come to take me to the
pictures to-morrow, Monday – so that there will be no time
to be diplomatic. My hope was of your meeting her at
Mr. Carlyle’s, before she could arrange anything finally, –
and really I do feel as disappointed as if I had had a reason
for the hope. Now, unless we have another miracle, there’s
an end, I suppose.

Think of my having left Flush behind me fast asleep.
He dashes at the door in the most peremptory way, and
nearly throws me backward when I open it, with his leaping-
up-joy . . if it is not rather his reproach.

Now I am here all alone, except Flush – sitting, leaning
against the open window with my feet curled up, and, at
them, Flush curled up too ; and I writing on my knee more
meo. Rather cooler it seems, but rather too hot still it is, I
think. How did you get home ? how are you, dearest ?
And your mother ? tell me of her, and of you ! You
always, you know (do you know ?), leave your presence with
me in the flowers ; and, as the lilies unfold, of course I see
more and more of you in each apocalypse. Still, the
Saturday’s visit is the worst of all to come to an end, as
always I feel. In the first place stands Sunday, like a wall
without a door in it ! no letter ! Monday is a good day
and makes up a little, but it does not prevent Tuesday and
Wednesday following . . more intervening days than be-
tween the other meetings – or so it seems. I forgot to
tell you that yesterday I went to Mr. Boyd’s house . . not
to see him, but as a preliminary step to seeing him. Arabel
went to his room to tell him of my being there – we are
both perhaps rather afraid of meeting after all these years
of separation. Quite blind he is – and though scarcely
older than Mr. Kenyon (perhaps a year or two or three), so
nervous, that he has really made himself infirm, and now he
refuses to walk out or even to go down-stairs. A very
peculiar life he has led ever since he lost his sight, which he
did when he was quite a young man – and a very peculiar
person he is in all possible ways. His great faculty is . .
memory . . and his great passion . . Greek to which of
late he has added Ossian. Otherwise, he talks like a man
of slow mind, which he is, . . and with a child’s way of
looking at things, such as would make you smile – oh, he
talks in the most wonderfully childish way ! Poor Mr.
Boyd. He cares for me perhaps more than he cares for
any one else . . far more than for his own only daughter ;
but he is not a man of deep sensibility, and, if he heard of
my death, would merely sleep a little sounder the next
night. Once he said to me that whenever he felt sorry
about anything, he was inclined to go to sleep. An affec-
tionate and grateful regard . . grateful for many kindnesses
. . I bear him, for my part. He says that I should wear
the crown in poetry, if I would but follow Pope – but that
the dreadful system of running lines one into another
ruins everything. When I talk of memory, I mean merely
the mechanical faculty. The associative, which makes
the other a high power, he wants. So I went to his house
in St. John’s Wood yesterday, and saw the little garden.
Poor Mr. Boyd. There, he lives, all alone – and never
leaving his chair ! yet cheerful still, I hear, in all that
desolation. As for you and Tennyson, he never heard of
you . . he never guesses at the way of modern literature
. . and it is the intense compliment to me when he reads
verses of mine, ‘ notwithstanding my corrupt taste,’ . . to
quote his own words.

Dearest, do you love me to-day ? I think of you, which
is quite the same thing. Think of me to-morrow at half- past
four when Mrs. Jameson comes, and I shall have all that
exertion to go through without the hope of you. Only that
you are always there . . here ! – and I, your very own

BA.

[Postmark: June 22, 1846]

Sunday.

What I told you yesterday is very often in my thoughts,
my own Ba – that with respect to the love for you ‘ I see
what I know and testify what I have seen.’ I know what is,
and why it is – so far as my faculties of perception allow, of
course I rest on you just as I sate on the grass in the
garden this morning with the very earth’s immensity beneath :
that is very different from trusting to this chair which is firm
enough now, but might break down from a thousand causes.
How entirely I believe in you, Ba ! When you praise me,
I believe that you are in error, yet believe it none –– I know
I am not so truthful to you – not so invariably, in the least
as in the greatest matters – in the greatest, in the ordinary
even, I speak pure truth, – but the old conventional habits
cling, as I find out on reflection sometimes – but I aspire no
less to become altogether open to your sight as you are to
me, – I in my degree, – like a smallest of lake’s face under
the sky’s : and for this also I shall have to bless you, my only
Ba, – my only Ba !

I ought never . . I think I will not again . . attempt to
write down why I love you . . (not, NOT that it is done here,
but alluded-to, touched upon . .) The elements of the
love . . (I say ‘ the ‘ love, mine, because I will not know, nor
hear, nor be taught anything by anybody else about ‘ love,’
the one love everybody knows, it seems, and lives and dies
by) – my love’s elements are so many that the attempt to
describe them is to bring about this failure . . the first that
comes is taken up and treated of at length . . as that element
of ‘ trust’ just now . . and then, in the feeling of incompet-
ence which makes the pen sink away and turns the mind
off, the others are let pass by unnamed, much less
described, or at least acknowledged for the undeniable
elements they are. What were all the trust without –
and thus I could begin again ! Let me say no more now –
and forgive all the foolishness . . it is not for my wisdom
you are to love me, Ba ! Except that if you agreed too
heartily with me on that point, I should very likely be found
turning round on you with ‘ not wise, when I adore you so ? ‘
Wise or unwise, I do adore you, my Ba ! And more and
evermore ! But see how I need your letters to train mine,
to lead them into something more like the true way . . and
to-morrow the letter will come – will it not ? And mine shall
be less about myself and more about you – whom may God
bless, prays your own

R.

[Postmark: June 19, 1846]

Friday Morning.

I shall hardly be able, I am afraid, to get your letter . .
if one should come through your dear goodness, my own Ba
. . . before I go out . . having to meet the Procters’ party in
Town : so I will just write my joy at its being little more now
than twenty-four hours before I shall see you, I trust. The
day is cool and nearer rain than I fancied probable – but, oh
the task-work, Egyptian bondage, that much going-out would
be to me, who am tired (unreasonably) beforehand on this
first and most likely last occasion during the year. It is a
pity that I am so ignorant about Hahn-Hahn’s books – one,
‘ Faustina,’ I got last night, but have neither heart nor time to
‘ get it up ‘ in a couple of hours.

Something you said on Mrs. Jameson’s authority amused
me – the encomium on my grace in sitting still to see the
play and not jumping on the stage to act too – as if it were
not the best privilege one finds in being ‘known’ never
so little, that it dispenses one from having to make oneself
known. When you are shipwrecked among Caribbee
Indians you are forced to begin professing ‘ I can make
baskets, and tell fortunes, and foresee eclipses so don’t
eat me ! ‘ And even there if they threatened nothing of
the kind, I should be content to live and die as unhonoured
as one of their own cabbage-trees.

I must go now – the day gets hotter, but then our day
draws nearer – All my heart is yours, best of dearest loves,
my own Ba, as I am your own –

[Postmark: June 19, 1846]

Thursday Evening.

But I have not been to Mr. Rogers’s to-day, after all. I
had a note from Mrs. Jameson, to put off our excursion to
Saturday . . if I consented to Saturday ! but of course I
would not consent to Saturday – and as she intimated that
another day would do as well, we shall have another day
fixed, I suppose. What a good fruit it would be of the con-
fession I made in the park, if she were to ask you to go ! ! !
Oh, I should like that – I should like it notwithstanding the
drawbacks. It would be a fair gain upon the usual times of
meeting – only that I could not care quite as much for the
pictures – yet, those too, I should like to see with you, rather
than apart from you. And you never saw them . . you ! Is
there a hope of her asking you when you are at Greenwich
together ? Now I have got this into my head, it will not go
out again – oh, you must try and enchant her properly at
Greenwich and lead her into asking you. Yet, with you or
without you in the body, the spirit of you and the influence
of you are always close to my spirit when it discerns any
beauty or feels any joy ; if I am happy on any day it is
through you wholly, whether you are absent or present,
dearest, and ever dearest !

And so, instead of Mr. Rogers’s pictures, I have been
seeing you in my thoughts, as I sate here all alone to-day.
When everybody was at dinner I remembered that I had
not been out – it was nearly eight . . there was no com-
panion for me unless I called one from the dinner-table ;
and Wilson, whom I thought of, had taken holiday. There-
fore I put on my bonnet, as a knight of old took his sword,
– aspiring to the pure heroic, – and called Flush, and
walked down-stairs and into the street, all alone – that was
something great ! And, with just Flush, I walked there, up
and down in glorious independence. Belgium might have
felt so in casting off the yoke. As to Flush, he frightened
me a little and spoilt my vain-glory – for Flush has a very
good, stout vain-glory of his own, and, although perfectly
fond of me, has no idea whatever of being ruled over by
me ! (he looks beautiful scorn out of his golden eyes, when
I order him to do this or this) . . and Flush chose to walk
on the opposite side of the street, – he would, – he insisted
on it ! and every moment I expected him to disappear into
some bag of the dogstealers, as an end to his glory, à lui.
Happily, however, I have no moral with which to point my
tale – it’s a very immoral story, and shows neither Flush nor
myself punished for our sins. Often, I am not punished
for my sins, . . am I ? You know that . . dearest, dearest !
But then, even you are not punished for your sins . . .
when you flatter so ! Ah, it is happy for you, and for your
reputation in good taste and sense, that you cannot very
well say such things except to me, who cannot believe them.
For the rest, the eyes were certainly blinded, . . being kissed
too hard.

How I like Mrs. Carlyle’s note ! You will go of course.
But it will not rain to-morrow, and you shall not have the
advantage of coming through it to me, . . for this reason
(among others far better), that I have engaged to see, at
three or four perhaps, a friend of ours from the country. She
is in London for only two days and wrote to beg me to see
her, and to-day I escaped by half a rudeness, and, if I do
to-morrow, it will be by a whole rudeness. So, not to-morrow !
And, if Saturday should be taken from us, we must find
three days somehow next week – it will be easily done.

As to Florence, the flood of English is the worst water
of all in the argument. And then Dr. Chambers ‘ warned
me off’ Florence, as being too cold for the winter. It would
be as well not to begin by being ill ; and half I am afraid of
Ravenna – though Ravenna may not be cold, and though
Shelley may belie it altogether. ‘A miserable place’ he
calls it in the ‘ Letters.’ Still I observe that his first impres-
sions are apt to be darker than remain. For instance, he
began by hating Pisa, and preferred it to most places, after-
wards. There is Pisa by the way ! Or your Sorrento . .
Salerno . . Amalfi . . you shall consider if you please – find
a new place if you like.

It is my last letter perhaps till I see you. May God bless
you, I lift up my heart to say. How happy I ought to be, . .
and am, . . with your thoughts all round me, so, as you
describe ! Let them call me your very own

BA.