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Friday.

December 13, 1845.

Do not blame me in your thoughts for what I said yesterday or wrote a day before, or think perhaps on the dark side of some other days when I cannot help it  . . . always when I cannot help it — you could not blame me if you saw the full motives as I feel them. If it is distrust, it is not of you, dearest of all! — but of myself rather: — it is not doubt of you, but for you. From the beginning I have been subject to the too reasonable fear which rises as my spirits fall, that your happiness might suffer in the end through your having known me: — it is for you I fear, whenever I fear: — and if you were less to me,  . . . should I fear do you think? — if you were to me only what I am to myself for instance,  . . . if your happiness were only as precious as my own in my own eyes,  . . . should I fear, do you think, then? Think, and do not blame me.

To tell you to ‘forget me when forgetting seemed happiest for you,’  . . . (was it not that, I said?) proved more affection than might go in smoother words . . .. I could prove the truth of that out of my heart.

And for the rest, you need not fear any fear of mine — my fear will not cross a wish of yours, be sure! Neither does it prevent your being all to me  . . . all: more than I used to take for all when I looked round the world,  . . . almost more than I took for all in my earliest dreams. You stand in between me and not merely the living who stood closest, but between me and the closer graves,  . . . and I reproach myself for this sometimes, and, so, ask you not to blame me for a different thing.

As to unfavourable influences,  . . . I can speak of them quietly, having foreseen them from the first,  . . . and it is true, I have been thinking since yesterday, that I might be prevented from receiving you here, and should, if all were known: but with that act, the adverse power would end. It is not my fault if I have to choose between two affections; only my pain; and I have not to choose between two duties, I feel,  . . . since I am yours, while I am of any worth to you at all. For the plan of the sealed letter, it would correct no evil, — ah, you do not see, you do not understand. The danger does not come from the side to which a reason may go. Only one person holds the thunder — and I shall be thundered at; I shall not be reasoned with — it is impossible. I could tell you some dreary chronicles made for laughing and crying over; and you know that if I once thought I might be loved enough to be spared above others, I cannot think so now. In the meanwhile we need not for the present be afraid. Let there be ever so many suspectors, there will be no informers. I suspect the suspectors, but the informers are out of the world, I am very sure: — and then, the one person, by a curious anomaly, never draws an inference of this order, until the bare blade of it is thrust palpably into his hand, point outwards. So it has been in other cases than ours — and so it is, at this moment in the house, with others than ourselves.

I have your letter to stop me. If I had my whole life in my hands with your letter, could I thank you for it, I wonder, at all worthily? I cannot believe that I could. Yet in life and in death I shall be grateful to you. —

But for the paper — no. Now, observe, that it would seem like a prepared apology for something wrong. And besides — the apology would be nothing but the offence in another form — unless you said it was all a mistake — (will you, again?) — that it was all a mistake and you were only calling for your boots! Well, if you said that, it would be worth writing, but anything less would be something worse than nothing: and would not save me — which you were thinking of, I know — would not save me the least of the stripes. For ‘conditions’ — now I will tell you what I said once in a jest . . ..

‘If a prince of Eldorado should come, with a pedigree of lineal descent from some signory in the moon in one hand, and a ticket of good-behaviour from the nearest Independent chapel, in the other’ — ?

‘Why even then,’ said my sister Arabel, ‘it would not do.’ And she was right, and we all agreed that she was right. It is an obliquity of the will — and one laughs at it till the turn comes for crying. Poor Henrietta has suffered silently, with that softest of possible natures, which hers is indeed; beginning with implicit obedience, and ending with something as unlike it as possible: but, you see, where money is wanted, and where the dependence is total — see! And when once, in the case of the one dearest to me; when just at the last he was involved in the same grief, and I attempted to make over my advantages to him; (it could be no sacrifice, you know — I did not want the money, and could buy nothing with it so good as his happiness, — ) why then, my hands were seized and tied — and then and there, in the midst of the trouble, came the end of all! I tell you all this, just to make you understand a little. Did I not tell you before? But there is no danger at present — and why ruffle this present with disquieting thoughts? Why not leave that future to itself? For me, I sit in the track of the avalanche quite calmly  . . . so calmly as to surprise myself at intervals — and yet I know the reason of the calmness well.

For Mr. Kenyon — dear Mr. Kenyon — he will speak the softest of words, if any — only he will think privately that you are foolish and that I am ungenerous, but I will not say so any more now, so as to teaze you.

There is another thing, of more consequence than his thoughts, which is often in my mind to ask you of — but there will be time for such questions — let us leave the winter to its own peace. If I should be ill again you will be reasonable and we both must submit to God’s necessity. Not, you know, that I have the least intention of being ill, if I can help it — and in the case of a tolerably mild winter, and with all this strength to use, there are probabilities for me — and then I have sunshine from you, which is better than Pisa’s.

And what more would you say? Do I not hear and understand! It seems to me that I do both, or why all this wonder and gratitude? If the devotion of the remainder of my life could prove that I hear,  . . . would it be proof enough? Proof enough perhaps — but not gift enough.

May God bless you always.

I have put some of the hair into a little locket which was given to me when I was a child by my favourite uncle, Papa’s only brother, who used to tell me that he loved me better than my own father did, and was jealous when I was not glad. It is through him in part, that I am richer than my sisters — through him and his mother — and a great grief it was and trial, when he died a few years ago in Jamaica, proving by his last act that I was unforgotten. And now I remember how he once said to me: ‘Do you beware of ever loving! — If you do, you will not do it half: it will be for life and death.’

So I put the hair into his locket, which I wear habitually, and which never had hair before — the natural use of it being for perfume: — and this is the best perfume for all hours, besides the completing of a prophecy.

Your

E.B.B.

 

Friday.

December 12, 1845.

And now, my heart’s love, I am waiting to hear from you; my heart is full of you. When I try to remember what I said yesterday, that thought, of what fills my heart  – – only that makes me bear with the memory . . .. I know that even such imperfect, poorest of words must have come from thence if not bearing up to you all that is there  – – and I know you are ever above me to receive, and help, and forgive, and wait for the one day which I will never say to myself cannot come, when I shall speak what I feel  – – more of it  – – or some of it  – – for now nothing is spoken.

My all-beloved  – –

Ah, you opposed very rightly, I dare say, the writing that paper I spoke of! The process should be so much simpler! I most earnestly expect of you, my love, that in the event of any such necessity as was then alluded to, you accept at once in my name any conditions possible for a human will to submit to  – – there is no imaginable condition to which you allow me to accede that I will not joyfully bend all my faculties to comply with. And you know this  – – but so, also do you know more  . . . and yet ‘I may tire of you’  – – ‘may forget you’!

I will write again, having the long, long week to wait! And one of the things I must say, will be, that with my love, I cannot lose my pride in you  – – that nothing but that love could balance that pride  – – and that, blessing the love so divinely, you must minister to the pride as well; yes, my own  – – I shall follow your fame,  – – and, better than fame, the good you do  – – in the world  – – and, if you please, it shall all be mine  – – as your hand, as your eyes  – –

I will write and pray it from you into a promise  . . . and your promises I live upon.

May God bless you! your R.B.

 

Tuesday Evening

December 10, 1845.

It was right of you to write  . . . (now see what jangling comes of not using the fit words . . .. I said ‘right,’ not to say ‘kind’)  . . . right of you to write to me to-day — and I had begun to be disappointed already because the post seemed to be past, when suddenly the knock brought the letter which deserves all this praising. If not ‘kind’  . . . then kindest  . . . will that do better? Perhaps.

Mr. Kenyon was here to-day and asked when you were coming again — and I, I answered at random  . . . ‘at the end of the week — Thursday or Friday’ — which did not prevent another question about ‘what we were consulting about.’ He said that he ‘must have you,’ and had written to beg you to go to his door on days when you came here; only murmuring something besides of neither Thursday nor Friday being disengaged days with him. Oh, my disingenuousness! — Then he talked again of ‘Saul.’ A true impression the poem has made on him! He reads it every night, he says, when he comes home and just before he goes to sleep, to put his dreams into order, and observed very aptly, I thought, that it reminded him of Homer’s shield of Achilles, thrown into lyrical whirl and life. Quite ill he took it of me the ‘not expecting him to like it so much’ and retorted on me with most undeserved severity (as I felt it), that I ‘never understood anybody to have any sensibility except myself.’ Wasn’t it severe, to come from dear Mr. Kenyon? But he has caught some sort of evil spirit from your ‘Saul’ perhaps; though admiring the poem enough to have a good spirit instead. And do you remember of the said poem, that it is there only as a first part, and that the next parts must certainly follow and complete what will be a great lyrical work — now remember. And forget ‘Luria’  . . . if you are better forgetting. And forget me  . . . when you are happier forgetting. I say that too.

So your idea of an unicorn is — one horn broken off. And you a poet! — one horn broken off — or hid in the blackthorn hedge! —

Such a mistake, as our enlightened public, on their part, made, when they magnified the divinity of the brazen chariot, just under the thunder-cloud! I don’t remember the Athenæum, but can well believe that it said what you say. The Athenæum admires only what gods, men and columns reject. It applauds nothing but mediocrity — mark it, as a general rule! The good, they see — the great escapes them. Dare to breathe a breath above the close, flat conventions of literature, and you are ‘put down’ and instructed how to be like other people. By the way, see by the very last number, that you never think to write ‘peoples,’ on pain of writing what is obsolete — and these the teachers of the public! If the public does not learn, where is the marvel of it? An imitation of Shelley! — when if ‘Paracelsus’ was anything it was the expression of a new mind, as all might see — as I saw, let me be proud to remember, and I was not overdazzled by ‘Ion.’

Ah, indeed if I could ‘rake and hoe’  . . . or even pick up weeds along the walk,  . . . which is the work of the most helpless children,  . . . if I could do any of this, there would be some good of me: but as for ‘shining’  . . . shining  . . . when there is not so much light in me as to do ‘carpet work’ by, why let anyone in the world, except you, tell me to shine, and it will just be a mockery! But you have studied astronomy with your favourite snails, who are apt to take a dark-lanthorn for the sun, and so. —

And so, you come on Thursday, and I only hope that Mrs. Jameson will not come too, (the carpet work makes me think of her; and, not having come yet, she may come on Thursday by a fatal cross-stitch!) for I do not hear from her, and my precautions are ‘watched out,’ May God bless you always.

Your own —

But no — I did not forgive. Where was the fault to be forgiven, except in me, for not being right in my meaning?

 

Tuesday Morning.

December 9, 1845.

Well, then, I am no longer sorry that I did not read either of your letters  . . . for there were two in the collection. I did not read one word of them  – – and hear why. When your brother and I took the book between us in wonderment at the notion  – – we turned to the index, in large text-hand, and stopped at ‘Miss B.’  – – and he indeed read them, or some of them, but holding the volume at a distance which defied my short-sighted eye  – – all I saw was the faint small characters  – – and, do you know  . . . I neither trusted myself to ask a nearer look  . . . nor a second look  . . . as if I were studying unduly what I had just said was most unfairly exposed to view!  – – so I was silent, and lost you (in that)  – – then, and for ever, I promise you, now that you speak of vexation it would give you. All I know of the notes, that one is addressed to Talfourd in the third person  – – and when I had run through my own  . . . not far off  . . . (BA-BR)  – – I was sick of the book altogether. You are generous to me  – – but, to say the truth, I might have remembered the most justifying circumstance in my case  . . . which was, that my own ‘Paracelsus,’ printed a few months before, had been as dead a failure as ‘Ion’ a brilliant success  – – for, until just before . . .. Ah, really I forget!  – – but I know that until Forster’s notice in the Examiner appeared, every journal that thought worth while to allude to the poem at all, treated it with entire contempt  . . . beginning, I think, with the Athenæum which then made haste to say, a few days after its publication, ‘that it was not without talent but spoiled by obscurity and only an imitation of  – – Shelley’!  – – something to this effect, in a criticism of about three lines among their ‘Library Table’ notices. And that first taste was a most flattering sample of what the ‘craft’ had in store for me  – – since my publisher and I had fairly to laugh at his ‘Book’  – – (quite of another kind than the Serjeant’s)  – – in which he was used to paste extracts from newspapers and the like  – – seeing that, out of a long string of notices, one vied with its predecessor in disgust at my ‘rubbish,’ as their word went: but Forster’s notice altered a good deal  – – which I have to recollect for his good. Still, the contrast between myself and Talfourd was so utter  – – you remember the world’s-wonder ‘Ion’ made,  – – that I was determined not to pass for the curious piece of neglected merit I really was not  – – and so!  – –

But, dearest, why should you leave your own especial sphere of doing me good for another than yours?

Does the sun rake and hoe about the garden as well as thine steadily over it? Why must you, who give me heart and power, as nothing else did or could, to do well  – – concern yourself with what might be done by any good, kind ministrant only fit for such offices? Not that I feel, even, more bound to you for them  – – they have their weight, I know  . . . but what weight beside the divine gift of yourself? Do not, dear, dearest, care for making me known: you know me!  – – and they know so little, after all your endeavour, who are ignorant of what you are to me  – – if you  . . . well, but that will follow; if I do greater things one day  – – what shall they serve for, what range themselves under of right?  – –

Mr. Mathews sent me two copies of his poems  – – and, I believe, a newspaper, ‘when time was,’ about the ‘Blot in the Scutcheon’  – – and also, through Moxon  – – (I believe it was Mr. M.)  – – a proposition for reprinting  – – to which I assented of course  – – and there was an end to the matter.

And might I have stayed till five?  – – dearest, I will never ask for more than you give  – – but I feel every single sand of the gold showers  . . . spite of what I say above! I have an invitation for Thursday which I had no intention of remembering (it admitted of such liberty)  – – but now . . ..

Something I will say! ‘Polka,’ forsooth!  – – one lady whose head could not, and another whose feet could not, dance!  – – But I talked a little to your brother whom I like more and more: it comforts me that he is yours.

So, Thursday,  – – thank you from the heart! I am well, and about to go out. This week I have done nothing to ‘Luria’  – – is it that my ring is gone? There surely is something to forgive in me  – – for that shameful business  – – or I should not feel as I do in the matter: but you did forgive me.

God bless my own, only love  – – ever  – –

Yours wholly

R.B.

N.B. An antiquarian friend of mine in old days picked up a nondescript wonder of a coin. I just remember he described it as Rhomboid in shape  – – cut, I fancy, out of church-plate in troubled times. What did my friend do but get ready a box, lined with velvet, and properly compartmented, to have always about him, so that the next such coin he picked up, say in Cheapside, he might at once transfer to a place of safety  . . . his waistcoat pocket being no happy receptacle for the same. I saw the box  – – and encouraged the man to keep a vigilant eye.

Parallel. R.B. having found an unicorn . . ..

Do you forgive these strips of paper? I could not wait to send for more  – – having exhausted my stock.

 

Sunday.

December 8, 1845.

Let me hear how you are, and that you are better instead of worse for the exertions of last night. After you left me yesterday I considered how we might have managed it more conveniently for you, and had the lamp in, and arranged matters so as to interpose less time between the going and the dining, even if you and George did not go together, which might have been best, but which I did not like quite to propose. Now, supposing that on Thursday you dine in town, remember not to be unnecessarily ‘perplext in the extreme’ where to spend the time before  . . . five,  . . . shall I say, at any rate? We will have the lamp, and I can easily explain if an observation should be made  . . . only it will not be, because our goers-out here never come home until six, and the head of the house, not until seven  . . . as I told you. George thought it worth while going to Mr. Talfourd’s yesterday, just to see the author of ‘Paracelsus’ dance the Polka  . . . should I not tell you?

I am vexed by another thing which he tells me — vexed, if amused a little by the absurdity of it. I mean that absurd affair of the ‘Autography’ — now isn’t it absurd? And for neither you nor George to have the chivalry of tearing out that letter of mine, which was absurd too in its way, and which, knowing less of the world than I know now, I wrote as if writing for my private conscience, and privately repented writing in a day, and have gone on repenting ever since when I happened to think enough of it for repentance! Because if Mr. Serjeant Talfourd sent then his ‘Ion’ to me, he did it in mere good-nature, hearing by chance of me through the publisher of my ‘Prometheus’ at the moment, and of course caring no more for my ‘opinion’ than for the rest of me — and it was excessively bad taste in me to say more than the briefest word of thanks in return, even if I had been competent to say it. Ah well! — you see how it is, and that I am vexed you should have read it,  . . . as George says you did  . . . he laughing to see me so vexed. So I turn round and avenge myself by crying aloud against the editor of the ‘Autography’! Surely such a thing was never done before  . . . even by an author in the last stage of a mortal disease of self-love. To edit the common parlance of conventional flatteries,  . . . lettered in so many volumes, bound in green morocco, and laid on the drawing-room table for one’s own particular private public, — is it not a miracle of vanity  . . . neither more nor less?

I took the opportunity of the letter to Mr. Mathews (talking of vanity  . . . mine!) to send Landor’s verses to America  . . . yours — so they will be in the American papers . . .. I know Mr. Mathews. I was speaking to him of your last number of ‘Bells and Pomegranates,’ and the verses came in naturally; just as my speaking did, for it is not the first time nor the second nor the third even that I have written to him of you, though I admire how in all those previous times I did it in pure disinterestedness,  . . . purely because your name belonged to my country and to her literature,  . . . and how I have a sort of reward at this present, in being able to write what I please without anyone’s saying ‘it is a new fancy.’ As for the Americans, they have ‘a zeal without knowledge’ for poetry. There is more love for verse among them than among the English. But they suffer themselves to be led in their choice of poets by English critics of average discernment; this is said of them by their own men of letters. Tennyson is idolized deep down in the bush woods (to their honour be it said), but to understand you sufficiently, they wait for the explanations of the critics. So I wanted them to see what Landor says of you. The comfort in these questions is, that there can be no question, except between the sooner and the later — a little sooner, and a little later: but when there is real love and zeal it becomes worth while to try to ripen the knowledge. They love Tennyson so much that the colour of his waistcoats is a sort of minor Oregon question  . . . and I like that — do not you?

Monday. — Now I have your letter: and you will observe, without a finger post from me, how busily we have both been preoccupied in disavowing our own letters of old on ‘Ion’ — Mr. Talfourd’s collection goes to prove too much, I think — and you, a little too much, when you draw inferences of no-changes, from changes like these. Oh yes — I perfectly understand that every sort of inconstancy of purpose regards a ‘presumably better’ thing — but I do not so well understand how any presumable doubt is to be set to rest by that fact,  . . . I do not indeed. Have you seen all the birds and beasts in the world? have you seen the ‘unicorns’? — Which is only a pebble thrown down into your smooth logic; and we need not stand by to watch the bubbles born of it. And as to the ‘Ion’ letters, I am delighted that you have anything to repent, as I have everything. Certainly it is a noble play — there is the moral sublime in it: but it is not the work of a poet,  . . . and if he had never written another to show what was not in him, this might have been ‘predicated’ of it as surely, I hold. Still, it is a noble work — and even if you over-praised it, (I did not read your letter, though you read mine, alas!) you, under the circumstances, would have been less noble yourself not to have done so — only, how I agree with you in what you say against the hanging up of these dry roots, the soil shaken off! Such abominable taste — now isn’t it?  . . . though you do not use that word.

I thought Mr. Kenyon would have come yesterday and that I might have something to tell you, of him at least.

And George never told me of the thing you found to say to him of me, and which makes me smile, and would have made him wonder if he had not been suffering probably from some legal distraction at the moment, inasmuch as he knew perfectly that you had just left me. My sisters told him down-stairs and he came into this room just before he set off on Saturday, with a,  . . . ‘So I am to meet Mr. Browning?’ But he made no observation afterwards — none: and if he heard what you said at all (which I doubt), he referred it probably to some enforced civility on ‘Yorick’s’ part when the ‘last chapter’ was too much with him.

I have written about ‘Luria’ in another place — you shall have the papers when I have read through the play. How different this living poetry is from the polished rhetoric of ‘Ion.’ The man and the statue are not more different. After all poetry is a distinct thing — it is here or it is not here  . . . it is not a matter of ‘taste,’ but of sight and feeling.

As to the ‘Venice’ it gives proof (does it not?) rather of poetical sensibility than of poetical faculty? or did you expect me to say more? — of the perception of the poet, rather than of his conception. Do you think more than this? There are fine, eloquent expressions, and the tone of sentiment is good and high everywhere.

Do not write ‘Luria’ if your head is uneasy — and you cannot say that it is not  . . . can you? Or will you if you can? In any case you will do what you can  . . . take care of yourself and not suffer yourself to be tired either by writing or by too much going out, and take the necessary exercise  . . . this, you will do — I entreat you to do it.

May God bless and make you happy, as  . . . you will lose nothing if I say  . . . as I am yours —

 

Sunday Night.

December 8, 1845.

Well, I did see your brother last night  . . . and very wisely neither spoke nor kept silence in the proper degree, but said that ‘I hoped you were well’  – – from the sudden feeling that I must say something of you  – – not pretend indifference about you now  . . . and from the impossibility of saying the full of what I might; because other people were by  – – and after, in the evening, when I should have remedied the first imperfect expression, I had not altogether the heart. So, you, dearest, will clear me with him if he wonders, will you not? But it all hangs together; speaking of you,  – – to you,  – – writing to you  – – all is helpless and sorrowful work by the side of what is in my soul to say and to write  – – or is it not the natural consequence? If these vehicles of feelings sufficed  – – there would be the end!  – – And that my feeling for you should end! . . . For the rest, the headache which kept away while I sate with you, made itself amends afterward, and as it is unkind to that warm Talfourd to look blank at his hospitable endeavours, all my power of face went à qui de droit  – –

Did your brother tell you  . . . yes, I think  . . . of the portentous book, lettered II, and thick as a law-book, of congratulatory letters on the appearance of ‘Ion’?  – – But how under the B’s in the Index came ‘Miss Barrett’ and, woe’s me, ‘R.B.’! I don’t know when I have had so ghastly a visitation. There was the utterly forgotten letter, in the as thoroughly disused hand-writing, in the  . . . I fear  . . . still as completely obsolete feeling  – – no, not so bad as that  – – but at first there was all the novelty, and social admiration at the friend  – – it is truly not right to pluck all the rich soil from the roots and hold them up clean and dry as if they came so from all you now see, which is nothing at all  . . . like the Chinese Air-plant! Do you understand this? And surely ‘Ion’ is a very, very beautiful and noble conception, and finely executed,  – – a beautiful work  – – what has come after, has lowered it down by grade after grade  . . . it don’t stand apart on the hill, like a wonder, now it is built up to by other attempts; but the great difference is in myself. Another maker of another ‘Ion,’ finding me out and behaving as Talfourd did, would not find that me, so to be behaved to, so to be honoured  – – though he should have all the good will! Ten years ago!

And ten years hence!

Always understand that you do not take me as I was at the beginning  . . . with a crowd of loves to give to something and so get rid of their pain and burden. I have known what that ends in  – – a handful of anything may be as sufficient a sample, serve your purposes and teach you its nature, as well as whole heaps  – – and I know what most of the pleasures of this world are  – – so that I can be surer of myself, and make you surer, on calm demonstrated grounds, than if I had a host of objects of admiration or ambition yet to become acquainted with. You say, ‘I am a man and may change’  – – I answer, yes  – – but, while I hold my senses, only change for the presumable better  . . . not for the experienced worst.

Here is my Uncle’s foot on the stair  . . . his knock hurried the last sentence  – – here he is by me!  – – Understand what this would have led to, how you would have been proved logically my own, best, extreme want, my life’s end  – – yes; dearest! Bless you ever  – –

R.B.

 

December 4, 1845.

Why of course I am pleased — I should have been pleased last year, for the vanity’s sake of being reviewed in your company. Now, as far as that vice of vanity goes  . . . shall I tell you? . . . I would infinitely prefer to see you set before the public in your own right solitude, and supremacy, apart from me or any one else,  . . . this, as far as my vice of vanity goes,  . . . and because, vainer I am of my poet than of my poems  . . . pour cause. But since, according to the Quarterly régime, you were to be not apart but with somebody of my degree, I am glad, pleased, that it should be with myself: — and since I was to be there at all, I am pleased, very much pleased that it should be with you, — oh, of course I am pleased! — I am pleased that the ‘names should be read together’ as you say,  . . . and am happily safe from the apprehension of that ingenious idea of yours about ‘my leading you‘ &c.  . . . quite happily safe from the apprehension of that idea’s occurring to any mind in the world, except just your own. Now if I ‘find fault’ with you for writing down such an extravagance, such an ungainly absurdity, (oh, I shall abuse it just as I shall choose!) can it be ‘to your surprise?’ can it? Ought you to say such things, when in the first place they are unfit in themselves and inapplicable, and in the second place, abominable in my eyes? The qualification for Hanwell Asylum is different peradventure from what you take it to be — we had better not examine it too nearly. You never will say such words again? It is your promise to me? Not those words — and not any in their likeness.

Also  . . . nothing is my work  . . . if you please! What an omen you take in calling anything my work! If it is my work, woe on it — for everything turns to evil which I touch. Let it be God’s work and yours, and I may take breath and wait in hope — and indeed I exclaim to myself about the miracle of it far more even than you can do. It seems to me (as I say over and over  . . . I say it to my own thoughts oftenest) it seems to me still a dream how you came here at all,  . . . the very machinery of it seems miraculous. Why did I receive you and only you? Can I tell? no, not a word.

Last year I had such an escape of seeing Mr. Horne; and in this way it was. He was going to Germany, he said, for an indefinite time, and took the trouble of begging me to receive him for ten minutes before he went. I answered with my usual ‘no,’ like a wild Indian — whereupon he wrote me a letter so expressive of mortification and vexation  . . . ‘mortification’ was one of the words used, I remember,  . . . that I grew ashamed of myself and told him to come any day (of the last five or six days he had to spare) between two and five. Well! — he never came. Either he was overcome with work and engagements of various sorts and had not a moment, (which was his way of explaining the matter and quite true I dare say) or he was vexed and resolved on punishing me for my caprices. If the latter was the motive, I cannot call the punishment effective,  . . . for I clapped my hands for joy when I felt my danger to be passed — and now of course, I have no scruples . . .. I may be as capricious as I please,  . . . may I not? Not that I ask you. It is a settled matter. And it is useful to keep out Mr. Chorley with Mr. Horne, and Mr. Horne with Mr. Chorley, and the rest of the world with those two. Only the miracle is that you should be behind the enclosure — within it  . . . and so! —

That is my side of the wonder! of the machinery of the wonder,  . . . as I see it! — But there are greater things than these.

Speaking of the portrait of you in the ‘Spirit of the Age’  . . . which is not like  . . . no! — which has not your character, in a line of it  . . . something in just the forehead and eyes and hair,  . . . but even that, thrown utterly out of your order, by another bearing so unlike you . . .! speaking of that portrait  . . . shall I tell you? — Mr. Horne had the goodness to send me all those portraits, and I selected the heads which, in right hero-worship, were anything to me, and had them framed after a rough fashion and hung up before my eyes; Harriet Martineau’s  . . . because she was a woman and admirable, and had written me some kind letters — and for the rest, Wordsworth’s, Carlyle’s, Tennyson’s and yours. The day you paid your first visit here, I, in a fit of shyness not quite unnatural,  . . . though I have been cordially laughed at for it by everybody in the house  . . . pulled down your portrait,  . . . (there is the nail, under Wordsworth — ) and then pulled down Tennyson’s in a fit of justice, — because I would not have his hung up and yours away. It was the delight of my brothers to open all the drawers and the boxes, and whatever they could get access to, and find and take those two heads and hang them on the old nails and analyse my ‘absurdity’ to me, day after day; but at last I tired them out, being obstinate; and finally settled the question one morning by fastening the print of you inside your Paracelsus. Oh no, it is not like — and I knew it was not, before I saw you, though Mr. Kenyon said, ‘Rather like!’

By the way Mr. Kenyon does not come. It is strange that he should not come: when he told me that he could not see me ‘for a week or a fortnight,’ he meant it, I suppose.

So it is to be on Saturday? And I will write directly to America — the letter will be sent by the time you get this. May God bless you ever.

It is not so much a look of ‘ferocity,’  . . . as you say,  . . . in that head, as of expression by intention. Several people have said of it what nobody would say of you  . . . ‘How affected-looking.’ Which is too strong — but it is not like you, in any way, and there’s the truth.

So until Saturday. I read ‘Luria’ and feel the life in him. But walk and do not work! do you?

Wholly your

E.B.B.

Tuesday Evening.

December 4, 1845.

No Mr. Kenyon after all — not yesterday, not to-day; and the knock at the door belonged perhaps to the post, which brought me a kind letter from Mrs. Jameson to ask how I was, and if she might come — but she won’t come on Saturday . . .. I shall ‘provide’ — she may as well (and better) come on a free day. On the other side, are you sure that Mr. Procter may not stretch out his hand and seize on Saturday (he was to dine with you, you said), or that some new engagement may not start up suddenly in the midst of it? I trust to you, in such a case, to alter our arrangement, without a second thought. Monday stands close by, remember, and there’s a Saturday to follow Monday  . . . and I should understand at a word, or apart from a word.

Just as you understand how to ‘take me with guile,’ when you tell me that anything in me can have any part in making you happy  . . . you, who can say such words and call them ‘vain words.’ Ah, well! If I only knew certainly,  . . . more certainly than the thing may be known by either me or you,  . . . that nothing in me could have any part in making you unhappy,  . . . ah, would it not be enough  . . . that knowledge  . . . to content me, to overjoy me? but that lies too high and out of reach, you see, and one can’t hope to get at it except by the ladder Jacob saw, and which an archangel helped to hide away behind the gate of Heaven afterwards.

Wednesday. — In the meantime I had a letter from you yesterday, and am promised another to-day. How  . . . I was going to say ‘kind’ and pull down the thunders  . . . how unkind  . . . will that do?  . . . how good you are to me — how dear you must be! Dear — dearest — if I feel that you love me, can I help it if, without any other sort of certain knowledge, the world grows lighter round me? being but a mortal woman, can I help it? no — certainly.

I comfort myself by thinking sometimes that I can at least understand you,  . . . comprehend you in what you are and in what you possess and combine; and that, if doing this better than others who are better otherwise than I, I am, so far, worthier of the  . . . I mean that to understand you is something, and that I account it something in my own favour  . . . mine.

Yet when you tell me that I ought to know some things, though untold, you are wrong, and speak what is impossible. My imagination sits by the roadside απεδιλος like the startled sea nymph in Æschylus, but never dares to put one unsandalled foot, unbidden, on a certain tract of ground — never takes a step there unled! and never (I write the simple truth) even as the alternative of the probability of your ceasing to care for me, have I touched (untold) on the possibility of your caring more for me  . . . never! That you should continue to care, was the utmost of what I saw in that direction. So, when you spoke of a ‘strengthened feeling,’ judge how I listened with my heart — judge!

‘Luria’ is very great. You will avenge him with the sympathies of the world; that, I foresee . . .. And for the rest, it is a magnanimity which grows and grows, and which will, of a worldly necessity, fall by its own weight at last; nothing less being possible. The scene with Tiburzio and the end of the act with its great effects, are more pathetic than professed pathos. When I come to criticise, it will be chiefly on what I take to be a little occasional flatness in the versification, which you may remove if you please, by knotting up a few lines here and there. But I shall write more of ‘Luria,’ — and well remember in the meanwhile, that you wanted smoothness, you said.

May God bless you. I shall have the letter to-night, I think gladly. Yes, — I thought of the greater safety from ‘comment’ — it is best in every way.

I lean on you and trust to you, and am always, as to one who is all to me,

Your own —

 

December 3, 1845.

See, dearest, what the post brings me this minute! Now, is it not a good omen, a pleasant inconscious prophecy of what is to be? Be it well done, or badly  – – there are you, leading me up and onward, in his review as everywhere, at every future time! And our names will go together  – – be read together. In itself this is nothing to you, dear poet  – – but the unexpectedness, unintended significance of it has pleased me very much  – – does it not please you?  – – I thought I was to figure in that cold Quarterly all by myself, (for he writes for it)  – – but here you are close by me; it cannot but be for good. He has no knowledge whatever that I am even a friend of yours. Say you are pleased!

There was no writing yesterday for me  – – nor will there be much to-day. In some moods, you know, I turn and take a thousand new views of what you say  . . . and find fault with you to your surprise  – – at others, I rest on you, and feel all well, all best  . . . now, for one instance, even that phrase of the possibility ‘and what is to follow,’  – – even that I cannot except against  – – I am happy, contented; too well, too prodigally blessed to be even able to murmur just sufficiently loud to get, in addition to it all, a sweetest stopping of the mouth! I will say quietly and becomingly ‘Yes  – – I do promise you’  – – yet it is some solace to  – – No  – – I will not even couple the promise with an adjuration that you, at the same time, see that they care for me properly at Hanwell Asylum  . . . the best by all accounts: yet I feel so sure of you, so safe and confident in you! If any of it had been my work, my own  . . . distrust and foreboding had pursued me from the beginning; but all is yours  – – you crust me round with gold and jewelry like the wood of a sceptre; and why should you transfer your own work? Wood enough to choose from in the first instance, but the choice once made! . . . So I rest on you, for life, for death, beloved  – – beside you do stand, in my solemn belief, the direct miraculous gift of God to me  – – that is my solemn belief; may I be thankful!

I am anxious to hear from you  . . . when am I not?  – – but not before the American letter is written and sent. Is that done? And who was the visitor on Monday  – – and if &c. what did he remark?  – – And what is right or wrong with Saturday  – – is it to be mine?

Bless you, dearest  – – now and for ever  – – words cannot say how much I am your own.

 

Tuesday.

December 2, 1845.

I was happy, so happy before! But I am happier and richer now. My love  – – no words could serve here, but there is life before us, and to the end of it the vibration now struck will extend  – – I will live and die with your beautiful ring, your beloved hair  – – comforting me, blessing me.

Let me write to-morrow  – – when I think on all you have been and are to me, on the wonder of it and the deliciousness, it makes the paper words that come seem vainer than ever  – – To-morrow I will write.

May God bless you, my own, my precious  – –

I am all your own

R.B.

I have thought again, and believe it will be best to select the finger you intended  . . . as the alteration will be simpler, I find; and one is less liable to observation and comment.

Was not that Mr. Kenyon last evening? And did he ask, or hear, or say anything?