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[Postmark: June 18, 1846]

Thursday.

Did you really kiss me on the two eyes, my Ba ? I can-
not say ‘ perhaps at the very time I was thinking of you,’ –
more than ‘ when I was breathing ‘ – I breathe always, think
of you always, kiss you almost always. You dear, dearest
Ba ! Do pain me so again and again, – if you will so cure me
every time ! But you should not imagine that I can mistake
the motive, – as if you loved me less and therefore wrote –
oh, no – but there is no getting rid of these mistakings before
the time : they bear their fruit and die away naturally . .
the hoe never cuts up all their roots. I shall trust to hear
you say one day I am past such mistaking – but – at Amalfi ?

I am very glad, love, you go to Mr. Rogers’ to-day – what
harm can follow ? The evil in the other case was a very
precise and especial one. They say his pictures are well
worth seeing. Tell me, make me’ see you seeing ! I am
glad, too, Mrs. Jameson knows . . but her graciousness I
expected, because the causes you were able to give her would
really operate just in that manner : indeed they are the sole
causes of the secresy we have observed. I cannot help
liking Mrs. Jameson more, much more since her acquaintance
with you. Hazlitt says somewhere that the misery of con-
sorting with country-people is felt when you try for their
sympathy as to favourite actors – ‘Liston ? ‘ says the pro-
vincial, ‘ never heard of him ‘ – but – whoever knows Miss
Barrett . . ‘ Ba,’ they are not going to be let know . . of
such a person I know something more than of any other.

Talking of Hahn-Hahn, read this note of Mrs. Carlyle’s –
although to my mortification I find that the wise man is not
so peremptory on the virtue of one of Ba’s qualities as I, the
ignorant man, must continue to be. Never mind, – perhaps
‘ in the long run ‘ I may love you as if you were exactly to
Mrs. Carlyle’s mind !

I want to tell you a thing not to be forgotten about
Florence as a residence for any time. You spoke of the
bad water at Ravenna . . which if a serious inconvenience
anywhere is a very plague in Italy ; well, the medical people,
according to Vallery, attribute the black hollow cheeks and
sunk eyes and general ill health of the Florentines to their
vile water ; impregnated with lead, I think. There is only
one good fountain in the city – that opposite Santa Croce ;
I religiously abstained from drinking water there – and felt
the privation the more from having just left Rome, where the
water is the most perfectly delicious and abundant and, they
say, wholesome – in the world. That one objection is de-
cisive against Ravenna – but then, why do the English all
live at Florence ?

It makes me happy to hear of your achievements and not
of any ill result – happy ! Is it quite so warm to-day ? If
it were to rain to-morrow (!), IF – our party would be post-
poned till the next day, Saturday, I believe . . there was a
kind of understanding to that effect – now, in that case,
might I go to you to-morrow ? In the case of real heavy
rain only – the letter to-morrow will tell me perhaps . .

Goodbye, dearest dearest ; I love you wholly –

[Postmark: June 18, 1846]

Wednesday.

Dearest and ever dearest, try to forgive me when I fall
so manifestly short of you in all things ! It is the very sense
of this which throws me on despairs sometimes of being
other than a bane to your life – and then . . by way of a
remedy . . I begin to be a torment to it directly. Forgive
me. Whatever I may say I am as wholly yours as if you
held me in your hand, and I would do for you any extrava-
gance, as if it were a common thing, at a word and what
is before us is only a common thing, since I have looked to
it from the beginning. Oh – I may talk when I am out of
spirits – but you know, and I know best of all, that I could
not withdraw myself from you, unless you said ‘ Go ‘ – could
not – I have no power. Fine talking, it is of me, to talk of
withdrawing myself from you ! You know I could not at all
do it, let ever so many special pleaders come to prove to
me that you would be more prosperous and happy without
me. ‘ Then ‘ I would say . . ‘ let him put me away. I can’t
put myself away, because I am not mine but his.’ Assuredly
I would say just that, and no more. So do you forget that
I have teazed you and pained you . . . pained you ! . . I will
try not to pain you, my own, own dearest, any more. I have
grown to love you instead of the whole world ; and only one
thing . . (you understand what that is . .) is dreadful and
intolerable to me to imagine. But now it is done with ;
and you shall teach me hereafter to make you happy instead
of the contrary. So . . yes – you are kissed this time !
upon both eyes, . . that they may not see my faults. And
afterwards I will tell you a paradox . . that if I loved you a
hundred times less, I should run into such offences less in
exact proportion. And finally I will give you a promise . .
not to teaze you for a week – which were a wonderful feat for
me ! the teazer par excellence.

To-day I deserved to hear of your head being worse –
but it is better, I thank God – and your mother is better – all
such comforting news ! But it was no news that you did not
go to Greenwich to-day, – for Mrs. Jameson came for me to
drive at about six, and she and I were in Regent’s Park
until nearly eight. Then she went somewhere to dinner,
and I, who had had tea, came home to supper ! I like her
very much – more and more, certainly – and we need not be
mysterious up to the usual mark of mystery, because I told
her . . told her . . what might be told – and she was
gracious to the uttermost – not angry at all, – and said that
‘ Truth was truth, and one could breathe in the atmosphere
of it, and she was glad I had told her.’ Of you, she said,
that she admired you more than ever – yes, more than ever –
for the ‘ manner in which as a man of honour you had
kept the secret ‘ – so you were praised, and I, not blamed
. . and we shall not complain, if our end is as good as our
beginning. Also we talked of your poetry and of you per-
sonally, and I was pleased, . . which proves a little what was
said – and I heard how you were invited as a ‘ celebrity ‘ for
the Countess Hahn-Hahn to see you, and how you effaced
yourself with ever so much gracefulness ; yet not too much,
to omit charming the whole room. Mrs. Jameson praises
you always, as nobody does better. And to-morrow . . will
you be surprised to hear that to-morrow at half-past four, I
am to go again with her, . . to see Rogers’s pictures ? Is it
wrong ? shall I get into a scrape ? She promised laughingly
that I should be incognita to the only companion she thought
of taking . . a Mrs. Bracebridge, I think . . and Mr. Rogers
himself is not to be visible and she herself will mention it
to nobody. It was hard to say ‘ no ‘ – yet perhaps ‘ no ‘
would have been better. Do you think so ? Mrs. Brace-
bridge is an artist and lives or lived on Mount Hymettus ! –
and she is not to hear my name even.

Now – good night, very dear ! – most dear of all ! I will
not teaze you for a fortnight, I think. Ah – if ever I can do
that again, you shall not be pained, . . you shall think that
my heart and life are in you, and that, if they seem to flatter,
it is that they go deeper. All I am is yours which is
different from . . all I have. ‘ All I have,’ is when I may
lean my head down on the shoulder –
So let me be your own
BA.

Of those two letters, one was in the post before seven the
evening before. Now, is it not too bad ?

[Postmark: June 17, 1846]

Wednesday Morning.

My own Ba, I release ‘ you from just as much as you
would easily dispense me from observing in that mutual
promise. Indeed, it has become one unnecessary for our
present relation and knowledge : it was right at the begin-
ning for either to say to the other, using calm words, ‘ It is
your good I seek, not mine,’ and as if it were demonstrated
that I should secure yours at the expense of mine by leaving
you I would endeavour to do it – so, you assure me, you
would act by me. The one point to ascertain therefore, is –
what will amount to a demonstration ; and I for my part
apprize you that no other person in the world can by any
possibility know so much of me as to be entitled to pro-
nounce in the matter – to say ‘ it is for good or for evil ‘ –
therefore, you will no more be justified in giving up to that
kind of demonstration what I consent you shall give up to
one clearly furnished by myself, the only authentic one – than
you would be justified in paying my money, entrusted to
you, on the presentation of a cheque signed by somebody
else . . somebody who loves me better than himself, my
best of friends, truest of advisers &c. &c. It skills not,
boots not – ‘ John Smith ‘ is not R.B., nor B. A. and because
R.B. or B.A. shall be instantly attended to, – the counterfeit
must be refused.’ Just this, so rational and right, I under-
stood you to bid me promise – and so much you have
promised me, a proper precaution for the earlier time when
the friend might seem to argue with some plausibility
‘ really I understand my friend’s interests better than you can.’
But now, who dares assure me that ? I disbelieve it – one
only knows better, can ever know better – yourself ; and I
will obey yourself. So with me – I know better my own
good than you do yet, I think. When I tell you that good
requires such a step as you speak of, you shall acquiesce ;
I will tell you on the instant, as you, in your own case,
should tell me on the instant. I needed not ask you to
promise, as I foolishly did, that you would not act in the
saddest of ways – professing to see what could never be, and
believe what must be untrue. At the beginning, at the first
day, suppose Mr. Kenyon had said – you prevent his getting
such a place, which brings in so much honour and wealth –
or marrying such a person who would effect the same – you
might have assented then, in your comparative ignorance,
just as you could not have objected had he said, ‘ If you
hold Mr. B. to his engagement to come here on the Derby
Day you will ruin him assuredly, for his heart and soul are on
” the turf ” and his betting-book will go to wreck.’ To this
you could never bring yourself to pretend an assent – it
would be no argument if he went on saying ‘ – Why, A and B
and C go to races and bet on them ‘ – you know I do not
so you know my estimate of honour and wealth and the rest,
apart . . I will not say from the love of you, – but from my
own life as I had traced it years ago, and as it is still traced
for me to its end, – your love coming to help it in every
smallest particular, to supply the undreamed-of omissions
in the plan of it, and remove the obstructions best seen
now that they are removed or removable. There is a calmest
‘ of calm ‘ statements of the good of you to me.

My dearest Ba, you say ‘ let us both think ‘ – think of
of this, you ! Do not for God’s sake introduce an element
of uncertainty and restlessness and dissatisfaction into the
feeling whereon my life lies. To speak for myself, this
matter is concluded, done with, – I am yours, you are mine,
and not to give use to refinements upon refinements as to
what is the being most of all each other’s, which might end
in your loving me best while I was turned a Turk in the
East, or my – you know the inquisition does all for the
pure love of the victim’s soul. Let us have common sense –
and think, in its most ordinary exercise, what would my
life be worth now without you – as I, – putting on your own
crown, accepting your own dearest assurance, – dare believe
your life would be incomplete now without mine – so you
have allowed me to believe. Then our course is plain. If
you dare make the effort, we will do as we propose, if not,
not : I have nothing to do but take your hand . . there is
not one difficulty in my path, – nor in yours on my account,
that is for me. If I change my views, and desire hereafter
what I altogether turn from now, – in what conceivable
respect will your being my wife hinder me ? If I accept the
Embassy which Young England in the person of Milnes has
promised me – you shall offer no impediment. If I rather
aspire to ‘ dine out ‘ here in London, you shall stay at home
and be good-natured. I shall attain to all these delights just
as easily with you as without you, I suppose ; ‘ No, I cannot
marry some other woman and by her means and connec-
tions and connexions ‘ – No – because first and least of all,
I begin by drawing on myself the entire cataract of shame
and disgrace in the mouth of the world, – direct accusation or
rather condemnation, against which not a word can be
urged in mitigation, because all would be the pure simple
truth – I do this, who have been fretfully wincing under the
mere apprehension of catching a mere spatter or two of
gossiping scandal – which a very few words would get rid of,
seeing that, in fact, the falseness of the imputation will be
apparent to everybody with eyes to see – for after all, here I
am, living to my own pleasure and my father and mother’s,
and at liberty to do so for ever, as mortals say. Well, and
so having gone under the whole real cataract instead of the
sprinkling impertinence of the half a dozen sprinklings from
the mop at the nursery- window which an upward look and cry
will stop at once, – so having mended the matter, I commit a
sin which I turn and ask you, should you be ever at peace with
God and yourself if you sate still and suffered me to commit, –
not on account of me and my harm to follow in both worlds,
– but in mere justice to your ‘ neighbour,’ – on whom you
would see inflicted this infamous wrong ?

Dear, dear, dear Ba, I kiss you, kiss my heart out unto
you, – best love, one love ! I see above what I will not think
over again, look over again – but what then ? Can I be
quiet when I hear the least, least motion about my treasure,
and my heart that is there, with it ? Then no more, I
beseech you, love, never one word more of all that !
Whenever I can hear such words calmly, I shall be
fit for agreeing to them, – let all be now. These two
kindest of letters both come in together to my blessing –
my entire blessing ! I was writing the last line when they
came – I will just say now, that the Greenwich affair is put
off till Friday. Do not I understand Miss Bayley ! And
do I understand you, my Ba, when I venture this time –
because of the words and the pain I shall not hide that
they did give me, to feel that, even beyond my kissing
you, you kiss this one time your own R.B.

My mother is much better, and out – she is walking
with my sister. I am very well – in the joy perhaps . . but
really much better – and have been so.

My two hundredth letter from her! I, poor?

[Postmark: June 17, 1846]

Tuesday Evening.

Best, . . best, you are, to write to me when you were
tired, and so ! When I am tired and write to you, it is too
apt to be what may trouble you. With you, how different !
In nothing do you show your strength more than in your
divine patience and tenderness towards me, till . . not
being used to it, I grow overwhelmed by it all, and would
give you my life at a word. Why did you love me, my
beloved, when you might have chosen from the most perfect
of all women and each would have loved you with the
perfectest of her nature ? That is my riddle in this world.
I can understand everything else . . I was never stopped
for the meaning of sorrow upon sorrow . . but that you
should love me I do not understand, and I think that I
never shall.

Do I remember? Yes indeed, I remember. How I
recurred and wondered afterwards, though at the moment
it seemed very simple and what was to be met with in our
philosophy every day. But there, you see, there’s the
danger of using mala verba ! The Fates catch them up
and knit them into the web ! Then I remember all the
more (though I should at any rate) through an imprudence
of my own (or a piece of ill-luck rather . . it shall not be
called an imprudence) of which I will tell you. I was
writing to Miss Mitford and of you – we differed about you
often, . . because she did not appreciate you properly, and
was fond of dwelling on the ‘ obscurity ‘ when I talked of
the light, – and I just then writing of you, added in my
headlong unreflecting way that I had had a real letter from
you which said that you loved me – ‘Oh but,’ – I wrote
on, ‘ you are not to mistake this, not to repeat it for of
course, it is simply the purest of philanthropies ‘ . . . some
words to that effect – and if yours was the purest of philan-
thropies, mine was the purest of innocences, as you may
well believe, . . for if I had had the shadow of a foresight,
I should not have fallen into the snare. So vexed I was
afterwards ! Not that she thought anything at the time,
or has referred to it since, or remembers a word now.
Only I was vexed in my innermost heart . . and am . . do
you know? . . that I should have spoken lightly of such
an expression of yours though you meant it lightly too.
Dearest ! It was a disguised angel and I should have
known it by its wings though they did not fly.

But I foresaw nothing, . . looked to you for nothing,
. . nothing can prove better to myself, than my having
mentioned the quaint word at all. For I know, and I hope
you know, how impossible it always has been to me to
choose for a subject of conversation and jest, things which
never should be spoken to friend or sister. But how was
I to foresee ? So the quaintness passed as quaintness with
me. And never from that time (you grew sacred too soon !),
never again from that moment, did I mention you to Miss
Mitford – oh yes, I did, when she talked of introducing
Mr. Chorley, and when I replied that, being a woman, I
would have my wilful way, and that my wilful way was to
see you instead. But except then . . and when I sent her
Mr. Landor’s verses on you . . not a word have I spoken
. . except in bare response. She thinks perhaps that my
old fervour about you has sunk into the socket – she
suspects nothing – in fact she does not understand what love
is . . and I never should think of asking her for sympathy.
She is one of the Black Stones, which, when I climb up
towards my Singing Tree and Golden Water, will howl
behind me and call names.

You had my second letter to-day, speaking of Landor,
and of Mr. Kenyon’s visit. At half-past six came Miss
Bayley, talking exceeding kindnesses of Italy, and entreating
me to use her . . to let her go with me and take care of me
and do me all manner of good. What kindness, really, in a
woman whom I have not seen six times in all ! I am very
grateful to her. She held my hands, and told me to write
to her if ever I had need of her – she would come at a
moment, go for a year ! – she would do anything for me I
desired ! And this woman to believe of herself that she
has no soul ! Help me to thank her in your thoughts of
her ! She said, by the way, that Mrs. Jameson had talked
to her of wishing to take me, . . but she thought (Miss
Bayley thought) that she (Mrs. Jameson) had too many
objects and too much vivacity . . it would not do so well,
she thought. In reply – I could just thank her, and scarcely
could do that, . . only I am sure she saw and felt that I
was grateful to her aright, let the words come ever so
wrong. To-morrow she leaves London for an indefinite time.

She told me too that a friend of hers, calling on Mrs.
Jameson, had found her on the point of coming to me
to-day, to drive out . . but she suffered from toothache and
was going to Cartwright’s first . . . and last, I suppose. I
dare say he put her to torture, to be classified with ‘ the
thumbscrew and the gadge’ . . some disabling torture,
for I have not seen her at all. So as at half-past seven
Henrietta was going out to dinner, Lizzie and I and Flush
took our places by her in the carriage, and went to Hyde
Park . . drove close by the Serpentine, and saw by the
ruffling of the water that there was a breath of wind more
than we felt. The shadows were gathering in quite fast,
shade upon shade ; and at last the silvery water seemed to
hold all the light left, as on the flat of a hand. Very much
I liked and enjoyed it. And, as we came home, the gas
was in the shops . . another strange sight for me – and we
all liked everything. Flush had his head out of the window
the whole way . . except when he saw a long whip, . . or
had a frightful vision at the water of somebody washing a
little dog . . which made him draw back into the carriage
with dilated eyes and quivering ears, and set about licking
my hands, for an ‘ Ora pro nobis.’ And Lizzie confided to
me, that, when she is ‘ grown up,’ she never will go out to
dinners like Henrietta, but drive in the park like Ba, instead
. . unless she can improve upon both, and live in a cottage
covered with roses, in the country. I, in the meantime,
between my companions, thought of neither of them more
than was necessary, but of somebody whom I had been
teazing perhaps . . dearest, was it so, indeed ? . . but I
avenge you by teazing myself back again ! A long rambling
letter, with nothing in it ! ‘ Passages, that lead to nothing ‘
and staircases, too ! May I be loved nevertheless, as
usual ? and forgiven for my ‘ secret faults ? ‘ You are the
whole world to me and the stars besides !

And I am your very own

BA.

[Postmark: June 17, 1846]

Tuesday. 6 o’clock.

Beloved, this weather, which makes Flush cross, perhaps
helped to make me depressed this morning. I had not
slept well, and ought not to have written to you till the
effect of it had gone off. Now I feel more as if I had been
with you yesterday. Ah well ! I don’t, can’t remember
what I wrote . . and some of it was wise . . for I ought
not to have promised that, . . and you must loose me, that
I may be loosed in Heaven, from the bands of it. Only
you are not to go to Greenwich (you go to Greenwich
to-morrow, do you not ?) thinking that I wanted to teaze you.
There is just one meaning to all my words, let them be sad
or gay . . and it is, that your happiness is precious. For
myself, if we were to part now and for ever, I should still owe
you the only happiness of my life. But nobody is talking of
parting, you know – I am yours, and cannot be put away from
you except by your own hand. Which is decided ! What
I ask of you, is to spare me the pang of causing you to
suffer on my account, . . and you may suffer sometimes, I
fear, through all your affection for me, . . and indirectly, if
not directly.

Two visitors I have had to-day – dear Mr. Kenyon, and
Lady Margaret Cocks. She is going to Italy – (oh, of
course !) to Rome. He came to tell me that the books
came to me from Landor himself, and that I must write
to him to thank him properly. Mrs. Jameson I do not see,
nor Miss Bayley.

How hot it will be for you to-morrow ! Try to be
amused and not too tired, dearest beloved, and tell me in
your letters how the head is.

While the heart beats (mine !) I am your own.

I am going in the carriage presently and shall write
again to-night. Won’t that be three times in a day according
to order?

[Postmark: June 16, 1846]

Tuesday.

I have just returned from Town – some twelve miles at
least I must have walked in this extreme heat . . so what
has become of the headache ? And now I sit down to write
what Ba will read . . what has become of the heat and
fatigue ? In this sense Ba ‘ looks cool at me ! ‘

I shall just write that I love, and love you, and love you
again – my own Ba – just this, lest you learn the comfort of
a respite from hearing what you are doomed to hear, with
variations, all the days of your life. But not much more
than this shall I write, because the love lies still in me, and
deep, as water does, – cannot run forth in rivulets and sparkle,
this hot weather ; but then how I love her when I can only
say so, – how I feel her . . as in an old opera’s one line that
stays in my recollection the tropical sun is described on the
ocean – ‘fervid on the glittering flood’ – so she lies on
me.

See the pure nonsense, my own Ba, and laugh at it,
but not at what lies at bottom of it, because that is true as
truth, true as Ba’s self in its way.

I called on Forster this morning : he says Landor is in
high delight at the congratulatory letters he has received –
so you must write, dearest, and add the queen-rose to his
garland. F– talks about some 500 copies or did he
say 300 ? being sold already . . so there is hope for
Landor’s lovers.

So I should have written once . . but like Virgil’s
shepherd . . ‘ know I now what love is ! ‘ – Do you re-
member that the first word I ever wrote to you was ‘ I love
you, dear Miss Barrett ? ‘ It was so, – could not but be so –
and I always loved you, as I shall always.

Tell me all you can about your dearest self, my own
love. I am so happy in you, in your perfect goodness and
truth, – in all of you.

Be careful this fatiguing weather . . the evenings and
mornings are the only working time of the day, as in the
beginning of things. But all day long is rest-time to love
you, dear, and kiss you, as now – kisses

Your own.

[Postmark: June 16, 1846]

Tuesday.

As to ‘ practical sense ‘ I never saw, I confess, much to
praise you for – but you began by making a great profession
of it, please to remember – and, otherwise, you certainly
ought to know more of the world and the wisdom thereof
than I, or you are dull, dearest mine, and one might as well
call the sun so on this burning dazzling morning, when
everything is at a white heat. Then for the ‘ calmness ‘
…. I did not call your eyes ‘ green ‘ after all . . nor did
I mean what you would force on me for a meaning in the
other way : you pretend to misunderstand? Eyes, at
least, that had the mastery with me from the beginning !
and it was so long, so long (as you observed yourself), that
I could not lift up mine against them they were the mystic
crystal walls, so long !

After you were gone yesterday and I had done with the
roses (exquisite roses !) and had my coffee, I saw my uncle
Hedley who had been inquiring about me, said my sisters,
all the afternoon, . . for it was he who came when we heard
the greetings on the stairs – and he told me that his wife and
daughter were to be in London early in July . . so that we
shall have the whole squadron sooner than we thought –
drawn up like a very squadron . . my other aunt, Miss
Clarke, coming at the same time, and my cousin with her,
Arlette Butler. But only those two will be in the house
here, and they will not be for very long, nor will they be
much in the way, I hope.

Shall I tell you ? I repented yesterday . . I repented
last night . . I repent to-day, having made the promise you
asked of me. I could scarcely sleep at all last night,
through thinking that I ought not to have made it. Be
generous, and free me from that promise. To be true to
you in the real right sense, I need no promises at all and if
an argument were addressed to me in order to separate us,
I should see through the piteous ingenuity of it, I think,
whatever ground it took, and admit no judgment and
authority over your life to be higher than your own. But I
have misgivings about that promise, because I can conceive
of circumstances . . Loose me from my promise, and let
me be grateful to you, my beloved, in all things and ways,
and hold you to be generous in the least as in the greatest.
What I asked of you, was as different as our positions are
– different beyond what you see or can see. No third
person can see, no second person can see . . what my
position is and has been . . I do not enter on it here.
But there is just and only one way in which I may be in-
jured by you, . . and that is, in being allowed to injure you
– so remember, remember, . . to the last available moment.

Then . . I have lived so in a dream for very long ! –
and everything, all undertakings, all movements, seem easy
in dream-life. The sense of this has lately startled me. To
waken up suddenly and find that I have wronged you –
what more misery ? – and I feel already that I am bringing
you into a position which will by some or many be
accounted unworthy of you. Well – we will not talk of it –
not now ! there is time for the grave consideration which
must be. Let us both think.

And may God bless you, ever dearest ! You are the
best and most generous of all in the world ! Whatever my
mistake may be, it is not concerning that. Also I love you,
love you. Premature things I say sometimes, which are
foolish always. Tell me how you are . . tell me how your
mother is – but speak of your own head . . tam chari . .
particularly. Overcoming, the heat is – and I do hope that
Mrs. Jameson won’t come after all.

Your
BA.

[Postmark: June 15, 1846]

Sunday.

May I venture to speak to dearest Ba as if I had seen
her or heard from her since I wrote yesterday, – and that
seeing or that hearing had brought the usual comfort and
assurance, – and forgiveness when needed, but delight at all
times ? Do you forgive me indeed, Ba ?

I shall know to-morrow – which ‘ to-morrow ‘ is your to-
day. I am soon to be with you to-day. I trust there is
occasion to exercise fancy and say – ‘ When we meet on your
return from Tunbridge a month hence,’ or two, or three . .
to go on fancying ! What should I do, – be able to do ?
and if I understood you rightly the letter-communication
would be hindered, if not stopped altogether. Thus is one
the sport of one’s own wishes. Fine weather is desired . .
fine enough to drive people out of town into the country !

As it is, I have been sufficiently punished for that foolish
letter, which has lost me the last two or three days of your
life and deeds, my Ba. You went to Mr. Kenyon’s – may
have gone elsewhere (and gathered roses I did not deserve
to receive) – but I do not know, and shall not recover my
loss not ever . . because if you tell me now, you exclude
something new you would say otherwise . . if you write it on
Tuesday, what becomes of Tuesday’s own stock of matter
for chronicling?

Well, the proper word in my mouth is – I am sorry to
the heart, and will try never to offend so again. How you
wrote to me, also ! How you rise above yourself while I
get no nearer where you were first of all, no nearer than
ever ! But so it should be ! so may it ever be !

I believe the fault comes from a too-sweet sense of the
freedom of being true with you, telling you all, hiding
nothing. Carlyle was saying in his fine way, he understood
why the Romans confined acting to their slaves . . it was
no employment for a free man to amuse people . . be bound
to do that, and if other faculties interposed, tending to
other results on an audience than amusement, be bidden
suppress them accordingly . . and so, he thought, it would
be one day with our amusers, writers of fun, concocters of
comic pieces. I feel it delicious to be free when most
bound to you, Ba, – to be able to love on in all the liberty
of the implied subjection . . so I am angry to you, despond-
ing sometimes to you, as well as joyous and hopeful – well,
well, I love, at any rate, do love you with heart and soul,
my Ba, – ever shall love you, dearest above all dearness :
God bless you !

[Postmark: June 15, 1846]

Saturday Morning.

I wrote last night when my head was still struggling and
swimming between two tides of impressions received from
the excitement and fatigue of the day. Mr. Kenyon (dear
Mr. Kenyon in his exquisite kindness !) took me to see the
strange new sight (to me !) of the Great Western . . the
train coming in : and we left the carriage and had chairs –
and the rush of the people and the earth-thunder of the
engine almost overcame me . . not being used to such
sights and sounds in this room, remember ! ! and after-
wards I read and answered your letter with a whirling head.
I cannot be sure how I answered it, my head whirled so. I
only hope . . hope . . hope . . that it did not seem un-
worthy of your goodness and generosity – for that would
be unworthy of my perception of them and reverence for
them, besides. You do not, in particular, I do hope, mis-
understand my reasons for refusing to improve what you
call my ‘ advantages,’ by turning them into disadvantages
for you. Really it struck me at the moment and strikes me
new every time I think of it, that it would be monstrous in
me to stop at such an idea long enough to examine it. To
do such a thing would complete the ‘ advantages ‘ of my
alliance – if that is a desire of yours. And if I were to be
ill afterwards, there would be the crown of the crown. Now
ask yourself if I ought –

I cannot conceive of the possibility of a ‘ calumny ‘ on
such a pretext – there seems no room for it. You will how-
ever have it in your power hereafter, without injury to either
of us, to do yourself full justice in this particular – only
neither now nor hereafter shall I consent to let in sordid
withering cares with your life. God has not made it so
and it shall not be so by an act of mine.

And after all, shall we be so much . . so much too
rich ? do you fancy that Miss Kilmansegg is made of brass
compared to me ? It is not so bad, be very sure. If Arabel
should not offend Papa, she will be richer hereafter than we
are . . yet not rich even so. Why are you fanciful in that
way ? People are more likely to say that I have taken you
in. The sign of the Red Dragon ! as you suggested once
yourself !

I could make you laugh, if it were not too hot to laugh,
with telling you how I really do not know what my ‘ advan-
tages ‘ are – specifically so many, and so many. I am not
‘ allowed ‘ to spend what I might – but the motive is of
course a kind one – there is no mistaking that. Poor
Papa ! He attends just to those pecuniary interests which
no one cares for, with a scrupulous attention. Nearly two
hundred a year of ship shares I never touch. Then there is
the interest of six thousand pounds (not less at any rate) in
the funds – and I referred to the principal of that, when I
said yesterday, that when we had ceased to need it, it might
return to my family, since it came from them, if you chose.
But this is all air – and nothing shall be said of it now – and
whatever may be said hereafter, shall come from you, and be
your word rather than mine. So I beseech you, by your
affection for me, to speak no more of this hateful subject,
which I have entered for a moment lest you should exaggerate
to yourself and mistake me for the least in the world of an
heiress. As to Lord Monteagle, we can do without him, I
think – and unless he would give us a house to keep, or
something of that sort, at Sorrento or Ravenna, I do not
exactly see what he can do for us. To make an agreement
with a periodical, would be more a possibility perhaps but
it is not a necessity – there is no sort of need, in fact and
why should you be tormented ‘in the multitude of the
thoughts within you,’ utterly in vain ?

As to your family . . I understand your natural desire
of giving your confidence at the fullest to your father and
mother, who deserve and claim it . . I understand that you
should speak and listen to them, and cross no wish of theirs,
and in nothing displease and pain them. But I do not
understand the argument by which you involve the question
with other questions . . when you say, for instance, that I
‘ ought not to countenance the preposterousness and
tyranny.’ How do I seem to countenance what I revolt
from ? Do you mean that we ought to do what we are
about, openly ? It is the only meaning I can attach to your
words. Well – If you choose it to be so, knowing what
I have told you, let it be so. I can however, as I
said yesterday, answer only for my will and mind, and
not for my strength and body – and if the end should be
different from the end you looked for, you will not blame
me, being just, . . any more than I shall blame myself.
May God bless you, ever dearest !

I am your own as ever.

[Postmark: June 13, 1846]

Saturday.

Dearest, all dearest beyond my heart’s uttering, will you
forgive me for that foolish letter, and the warmth, and – FOR
ALL, – more than ever I thought to have needed to ask for-
giveness for ! I love you in every imaginable way. All was
wrong, absurd, in that letter – do you forgive now, – while I
kiss your feet, my own, own Ba ?

For see why it was wrong . . my father and mother will
NOT BE PAINED IN ANY DEGREE : they will believe what I
say, exactly what I say. I wrote on and on in a heat at the
sudden ridiculous fancy of the matter’s taking place some
fine morning, without a word of previous intimation, – ‘ I am
going away, never mind where, – with somebody, never
concern yourselves whom, – to stay, if for ever, is it any busi-
ness of yours to enquire ? ‘ All which was . . what was it ?
a method of confirming you in your complimentary belief in
my ‘calmness ‘ – or that other in my ‘ good practical sense ‘
– oh, Ba, Ba, how I deserve you ! I will only say, I agree in
all you write – it will be clearly best, and I can obviate every
untowardness here . . show that all is pure kindness and
provident caution . . so easy all will be ! And for the other
matters, I will fear nothing.

But you do – you DO understand what caused the sudden
fancy . . how I thought ‘ not show them my pride of prides,
my miraculous, altogether peerless and incomparable Ba ! ‘
It was not flying from your counsel, – oh, no !

So, is your hand in mine, or rather mine in yours again,
sweetest, best love ? All will be well. Follow out your in-
tention, as you spoke of it to me, in every point. Do not
for God’s sake run the risk, or rather, encounter the certainty
of hearing words which most likely have not anything like
the significance to the speaker that they would convey to the
hearer and so let us go quietly away. I will care nothing
about diplomatism or money-getting extraordinary why,
my own works sell and sell and are likely to sell, Moxon
says. And I mean to write wondrous works, you may be
sure, and sell them too, – and out of it all may easily come
some fifty or sixty horrible pounds a year, – on which one
lives famously in Ravenna, I dare say : think of Ravenna,
Ba ! – it seems the place of places, with the pines and the
sea, and Dante, and no English, and all Ba.

My Ba, I see you on Monday, do I not ? You let me
come then, do you not ? I am on fire to see you and know
you love me . . not as I love you . . that can never be ! I
am your own

R.

I resolve, after a long pause and much irresolution, to
write down as much as I shall be able, of an obvious fact . .
If the saddest fate I can imagine should be reserved for me . .
I should wish, you would wish to live the days out worthily,
not end them – nor go mad in them to prevent which, I
should need distraction, the more violent the better, – and it
would have to be forced on me in the only way possible –
therefore, after my death, I return nothing to your family, be
assured. You will not recur to this !