Chapter XI: Part 11

Even at the risk of teazing you a little I must say a few words, that there may be no misunderstanding between us--and this, before I sleep to-night. To-day and before to-day you surprised me by your manner of receiving my remark about your visits, for I believed I had sufficiently made clear to you long ago how certain questions were ordered in this house and how no exception was to be expected for my sake or even for yours. Surely I told you this quite plainly long ago. I only meant to say in my last letter, in the same track ... (fearing in the case of your wishing to come oftener that you might think it unkind in me not to seem to wish the same) ... that if you came too often and it was _observed_, difficulties and vexations would follow as a matter of course, and it would be wise therefore to run no risk. That was the head and front of what I meant to say. The weekly one visit is a thing established and may go on as long as you please--and there is no objection to your coming twice a week _now_ and _then_ ... if now and then merely ... if there is no habit ... do you understand? I may be prudent in an extreme perhaps--and certainly everybody in the house is not equally prudent!--but I did shrink from running any risk with that calm and comfort of the winter as it seemed to come on. And was it more than I said about the cloak? was there any newness in it? anything to startle you? Still I do perfectly see that whether new or old, what it _involves_ may well be unpleasant to you--and that (however old) it may be apt to recur to your mind with a new increasing unpleasantness. We have both been carried too far perhaps, by late events and impulses--but it is never too late to come back to a right place, and I for my part come back to mine, and entreat you my dearest friend, first, _not to answer this_, and next, to weigh and consider thoroughly 'that particular contingency' which (I tell you plainly, I who know) the tongue of men and of angels would not modify so as to render less full of vexations to you. Let Pisa prove the excellent hardness of some marbles! Judge. From motives of self-respect, you may well walk an opposite way ... _you_.... When I told you once ... or twice ... that 'no human influence should' &c. &c., ... I spoke for myself, quite over-looking you--and now that I turn and see you, I am surprised that I did not see you before ... _there_. I ask you therefore to consider 'that contingency' well--not forgetting the other obvious evils, which the late decision about Pisa has aggravated beyond calculation ... for as the smoke rolls off we see the harm done by the fire. And so, and now ... is it not advisable for you to go abroad at once ... as you always intended, you know ... now that your book is through the press? What if you go next week? I leave it to you. In any case _I entreat you not to answer this_--neither let your thoughts be too hard on me for what you may call perhaps vacillation--only that I stand excused (I do not say justified) before my own moral sense. May God bless you. If you go, I shall wait to see you till your return, and have letters in the meantime. I write all this as fast as I can to have it over. What I ask of you is, to consider alone and decide advisedly ... for both our sakes. If it should be your choice not to make an end now, ... why I shall understand _that_ by your not going ... or you may say '_no_' in a word ... for I require no '_protestations_' indeed--and _you_ may trust to _me_ ... it shall be as you choose. _You will consider my happiness most by considering your own_ ... and that is my last word.

_Wednesday morning._--I did not say half I thought about the poems yesterday--and their various power and beauty will be striking and surprising to your most accustomed readers. 'St. Praxed'--'Pictor Ignotus'--'The Ride'--'The Duchess'!--Of the new poems I like supremely the first and last ... that 'Lost Leader' which strikes so broadly and deep ... which nobody can ever forget--and which is worth all the journalizing and pamphleteering in the world!--and then, the last 'Thought' which is quite to be grudged to that place of fragments ... those grand sea-sights in the long lines. Should not these fragments be severed otherwise than by numbers? The last stanza but one of the 'Lost Mistress' seemed obscure to me. Is it so really? The end you have put to 'England in Italy' gives unity to the whole ... just what the poem wanted. Also you have given some nobler lines to the middle than met me there before. 'The Duchess' appears to me more than ever a new-minted golden coin--the rhythm of it answering to your own description, 'Speech half asleep, or song half awake?' You have right of trove to these novel effects of rhythm. Now if people do not cry out about these poems, what are we to think of the world?

May God bless you always--send me the next proof _in any case_.

Your

E.B.B.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

[Post-mark, October 23, 1845.]

But I _must_ answer you, and be forgiven, too, dearest. I was (to begin at the beginning) surely not '_startled_' ... only properly aware of the deep blessing I have been enjoying this while, and not disposed to take its continuance as pure matter of course, and so treat with indifference the first shadow of a threatening intimation from without, the first hint of a possible abstraction from the quarter to which so many hopes and fears of mine have gone of late. In this case, knowing you, I was sure that if any imaginable form of displeasure could touch you without reaching me, I should not hear of it too soon--so I spoke--so _you_ have spoken--and so now you get 'excused'? No--wondered at, with all my faculty of wonder for the strange exalting way you will persist to think of me; now, once for all, I _will_ not pass for what I make no least pretence to. I quite understand the grace of your imaginary self-denial, and fidelity to a given word, and noble constancy; but it all happens to be none of mine, none in the least. I love you because I _love_ you; I see you 'once a week' because I cannot see you all day long; I think of you all day long, because I most certainly could not think of you once an hour less, if I tried, or went to Pisa, or 'abroad' (in every sense) in order to 'be happy' ... a kind of adventure which you seem to suppose you have in some way interfered with. Do, for this once, think, and never after, on the impossibility of your ever (you know I must talk your own language, so I shall say--) hindering any scheme of mine, stopping any supposable advancement of mine. Do you really think that before I found you, I was going about the world seeking whom I might devour, that is, be devoured by, in the shape of a wife ... do you suppose I ever dreamed of marrying? What would it mean for me, with my life I am hardened in--considering the rational chances; how the land is used to furnish its contingent of Shakespeare's women: or by 'success,' 'happiness' &c. &c. you never never can be seeing for a moment with the world's eyes and meaning 'getting rich' and all that? Yet, put that away, and what do you meet at every turn, if you are hunting about in the dusk to catch my good, but yourself?

_I_ know who has got it, caught it, and means to keep it on his heart--the person most concerned--_I_, dearest, who cannot play the disinterested part of bidding _you_ forget your 'protestation' ... what should I have to hold by, come what will, through years, through this life, if God shall so determine, if I were not sure, _sure_ that the first moment when you can suffer me with you 'in that relation,' you will remember and act accordingly. I will, as you know, conform my life to _any_ imaginable rule which shall render it possible for your life to move with it and possess it, all the little it is worth.

For your friends ... whatever can be 'got over,' whatever opposition may be rational, will be easily removed, I suppose. You know when I spoke lately about the 'selfishness' I dared believe I was free from, I hardly meant the low faults of ... I shall say, a different organization to mine--which has vices in plenty, but not those. Besides half a dozen scratches with a pen make one stand up an apparent angel of light, from the lawyer's parchment; and Doctors' Commons is one bland smile of applause. The selfishness I deprecate is one which a good many women, and men too, call 'real passion'--under the influence of which, I ought to say 'be mine, what ever happens to _you_'--but I know better, and you know best--and you know me, for all this letter, which is no doubt in me, I feel, but dear entire goodness and affection, of which God knows whether I am proud or not--and now you will let me be, will not you. Let me have my way, live my life, love my love.

When I am, praying God to bless her ever,

R.B.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

[Post-mark, October 24, 1845.]

'_And be forgiven_' ... yes! and be thanked besides--if I knew how to thank you worthily and as I feel ... only that I do not know it, and cannot say it. And it was not indeed 'doubt' of you--oh no--that made me write as I did write; it was rather because I felt you to be surely noblest, ... and therefore fitly dearest, ... that it seemed to me detestable and intolerable to leave you on this road where the mud must splash up against you, and never cry 'gare.' Yet I was quite enough unhappy yesterday, and before yesterday ... I will confess to-day, ... to be too gratefully glad to 'let you be' ... to 'let you have your way'--you who overcome always! Always, but where you tell me not to think of you so and so!--as if I could help thinking of you _so_, and as if I should not take the liberty of persisting to think of you just so. 'Let me be'--Let me have my way.' I am unworthy of you perhaps in everything except one thing--and _that_, you cannot guess. May God bless you--

Ever I am yours.

The proof does not come!

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Friday.
[Post-mark, October 25, 1845.]

I wrote briefly yesterday not to make my letter longer by keeping it; and a few last words which belong to it by right, must follow after it ... must--for I want to say that you need not indeed talk to me about squares being not round, and of _you_ being not 'selfish'! You know it is foolish to talk such superfluities, and not a compliment.

I won't say to my knowledge of you and faith in you ... but to my understanding generally. Why should you say to me at all ... much less for this third or fourth time ... 'I am not selfish?' to _me_ who never ... when I have been deepest asleep and dreaming, ... never dreamed of attributing to you any form of such a fault? Promise not to say so again--now promise. Think how it must sound to my ears, when really and truly I have sometimes felt jealous of myself ... of my own infirmities, ... and thought that you cared for me only because your chivalry touched them with a silver sound--and that, without them, you would pass by on the other side:--why twenty times I have thought _that_ and been vexed--ungrateful vexation! In exchange for which too frank confession, I will ask for another silent promise ... a silent promise--no, but first I will say another thing.

First I will say that you are not to fancy any the least danger of my falling under displeasure through your visits--there is no sort of risk of it _for the present_--and if I ran the risk of making you uncomfortable about _that_, I did foolishly, and what I meant to do was different. I wish you also to understand that _even if you came here every day_, my brothers and sisters would simply care to know if I liked it, and then be glad if I was glad:--the caution referred to one person alone. In relation to _whom_, however, there will be no 'getting over'--you might as well think to sweep off a third of the stars of Heaven with the motion of your eyelashes--this, for matter of fact and certainty--and this, as I said before, the keeping of a general rule and from no disrespect towards individuals: a great peculiarity _in the individual_ of course. But ... though I have been a submissive daughter, and this from no effort, but for love's sake ... because I loved him tenderly (and love him), ... and hoped that he loved me back again even if the proofs came untenderly sometimes--yet I have reserved for myself _always_ that right over my own affections which is the most strictly personal of all things, and which involves principles and consequences of infinite importance and scope--even though I _never_ thought (except perhaps when the door of life was just about to open ... before it opened) never thought it probable or possible that I should have occasion for the exercise; from without and from within at once. I have too much need to look up. For friends, I can look any way ... round, and _down_ even--the merest thread of a sympathy will draw me sometimes--or even the least look of kind eyes over a dyspathy--'Cela se peut facilement.' But for another relation--it was all different--and rightly so--and so very different--'Cela ne se peut nullement'--as in Malherbe.

And now we must agree to 'let all this be,', and set ourselves to get as much good and enjoyment from the coming winter (better spent at Pisa!) as we can--and I begin my joy by being glad that you are not going since I am not going, and by being proud of these new green leaves in your bay which came out with the new number. And then will come the tragedies--and then, ... what beside? We shall have a happy winter after all ... _I_ shall at least; and if Pisa had been better, London might be worse: and for _me_ to grow pretentious and fastidious and critical about various sorts of _purple_ ... I, who have been used to the _brun foncé_ of Mme. de Sévigné, (_foncé_ and _enfoncé_ ...)--would be too absurd. But why does not the proof come all this time? I have kept this letter to go back with it.

I had a proposition from the New York booksellers about six weeks ago (the booksellers who printed the poems) to let them re-print those prose papers of mine in the _Athenæum_, with additional matter on American literature, in a volume by itself--to be published at the same time both in America and England by Wiley and Putnam in Waterloo Place, and meaning to offer liberal terms, they said. Now what shall I do? Those papers are not fit for separate publication, and I am not inclined to the responsibility of them; and in any case, they must give as much trouble as if they were re-written (trouble and not poetry!), before I could consent to such a thing. Well!--and if I do not ... these people are just as likely to print them without leave ... and so without correction. What do you advise? What shall I do? All this time they think me sublimely indifferent, they who pressed for an answer by return of packet--and now it is past six ... eight weeks; and I must say something.

Am I not 'femme qui parle' to-day? And let me talk on ever so, the proof won't come. May God bless you--and me as I am

Yours,

E.B.B.

And the silent promise I would have you make is this--that if ever you should leave me, it shall be (though you are not 'selfish') for your sake--and not for mine: for your good, and not for mine. I ask it--not because I am disinterested; but because one class of motives would be valid, and the other void--simply for that reason.

Then the _femme qui parle_ (looking back over the parlance) did not mean to say on the first page of this letter that she was ever for a moment _vexed in her pride_ that she should owe anything to her adversities. It was only because adversities are accidents and not essentials. If it had been prosperities, it would have been the same thing--no, not the same thing!--but far worse.

Occy is up to-day and doing well.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

[Post-mark, October 27, 1845.]

How does one make 'silent promises' ... or, rather, how does the maker of them communicate that fact to whomsoever it may concern? I know, there have been many, very many unutterable vows and promises made,--that is, _thought_ down upon--the white slip at the top of my notes,--such as of this note; and not trusted to the pen, that always comes in for the shame,--but given up, and replaced by the poor forms to which a pen is equal; and a glad minute I should account _that_, in which you collected and accepted _those_ 'promises'--because they would not be all so unworthy of me--much less you! I would receive, in virtue of _them_, the ascription of whatever worthiness is supposed to lie in deep, truest love, and gratitude--

Read my silent answer there too!

All your letter is one comfort: we will be happy this winter, and after, do not fear. I am most happy, to begin, that your brother is so much better: he must be weak and susceptible of cold, remember.

It was on my lip, I do think, _last_ visit, or the last but one, to beg you to detach those papers from the _Athenæum's gâchis_. Certainly this opportunity is _most_ favourable, for every reason: you cannot hesitate, surely. At present those papers are lost--_lost_ for practical purposes. Do pray reply without fail to the proposers; no, no harm of these really fine fellows, who _could_ do harm (by printing incorrect copies, and perhaps eking out the column by suppositious matter ... ex-gr. they strengthened and lengthened a book of Dickens', in Paris, by adding quant. suff. of Thackeray's 'Yellowplush Papers' ... as I discovered by a Parisian somebody praising the latter to me as Dickens' best work!)--and who _do_ really a good straightforward un-American thing. You will encourage 'the day of small things'--though this is not small, nor likely to have small results. I shall be impatient to hear that you have decided. I like the progress of these Americans in taste, their amazing leaps, like grasshoppers up to the sun--from ... what is the '_from_,' what depth, do you remember, say, ten or twelve years back?--_to_--Carlyle, and Tennyson, and you! So children leave off Jack of Cornwall and go on just to Homer.

I can't conceive why my proof does not come--I must go to-morrow and see. In the other, I have corrected all the points you noted, to their evident improvement. Yesterday I took out 'Luria' and read it through--the skeleton--I shall hope to finish it soon now. It is for a purely imaginary stage,--very simple and straightforward. Would you ... no, Act by Act, as I was about to propose that you should read it; that process would affect the oneness I most wish to preserve.

On Tuesday--at last, I am with you. Till when be with me ever, dearest--God bless you ever--

R.B.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Tuesday 9 a.m.
[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]

I got this on coming home last night--have just run through it this morning, and send it that time may not be lost. Faults, faults; but I don't know how I have got tired of this. The Tragedies will be better, at least the second--

At 3 this day! Bless you--

R.B.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

I write in haste, not to lose time about the proof. You will see on the papers here my doubtfulnesses such as they are--but silence swallows up the admirations ... and there is no time. 'Theocrite' overtakes that wish of mine which ran on so fast--and the 'Duchess' grows and grows the more I look--and 'Saul' is noble and must have his full royalty some day. Would it not be well, by the way, to print it in the meanwhile as a fragment confessed ... sowing asterisks at the end. Because as a poem of yours it stands there and wants unity, and people can't be expected to understand the difference between incompleteness and defect, unless you make a sign. For the new poems--they are full of beauty. You throw largesses out on all sides without counting the coins: how beautiful that 'Night and Morning' ... and the 'Earth's Immortalities' ... and the 'Song' too. And for your 'Glove,' all women should be grateful,--and Ronsard, honoured, in this fresh shower of music on his old grave ... though the chivalry of the interpretation, as well as much beside, is so plainly yours, ... could only be yours perhaps. And even _you_ are forced to let in a third person ... close to the doorway ... before you can do any good. What a noble lion you give us too, with the 'flash on his forehead,' and 'leagues in the desert already' as we look on him! And then, with what a 'curious felicity' you turn the subject 'glove' to another use and strike De Lorge's blow back on him with it, in the last paragraph of your story! And the versification! And the lady's speech--(to return!) so calm, and proud--yet a little bitter!

Am I not to thank you for all the pleasure and pride in these poems? while you stand by and try to talk them down, perhaps.

Tell me how your mother is--tell me how you are ... you who never were to be told twice about walking. Gone the way of all promises, is that promise?

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Wednesday Night.
[Post-mark, October 30, 1845.]

Like your kindness--too, far too generous kindness,--all this trouble and correcting,--and it is my proper office now, by this time, to sit still and receive, by right _Human_ (as opposed to Divine). When you see the pamphlet's self, you will find your own doing,--but where will you find the proofs of the best of all helping and counselling and inciting, unless in new works which shall justify the _unsatisfaction_, if I may not say shame, at these, these written before your time, my best love?

Are you doing well to-day? For I feel well, have walked some eight or nine miles--and my mother is very much better ... is singularly better. You know whether you rejoiced me or no by that information about the exercise _you_ had taken yesterday. Think what telling one that you grow stronger would mean!

'Vexatious' with you! Ah, prudence is all very right, and one ought, no doubt, to say, 'of course, we shall not expect a life exempt from the usual proportion of &c. &c.--' but truth is still more right, and includes the highest prudence besides, and I do believe that we shall be happy; that is, that _you_ will be happy: you see I dare confidently expect _the_ end to it all ... so it has always been with me in my life of wonders--absolute wonders, with God's hand over all.... And this last and best of all would never have begun so, and gone on so, to break off abruptly even here, in this world, for the little time.

So try, try, dearest, every method, take every measure of hastening such a consummation. Why, we shall see Italy together! I could, would, _will_ shut myself in four walls of a room with you and never leave you and be most of all _then_ 'a lord of infinite space'--but, to travel with you to Italy, or Greece. Very vain, I know that, all such day dreaming! And ungrateful, too; with the real sufficing happiness here of being, and knowing that you know me to be, and suffer me to tell you I am yours, ever your own.

God bless you, my dearest--

_E.B.B. to R.B._

[Post-mark, November 1, 1845.]

All to-day, Friday, Miss Mitford has been here! She came at two and went away at seven--and I feel as if I had been making a five-hour speech on the corn laws in Harriet Martineau's parliament; ... so tired I am. Not that dear Miss Mitford did not talk both for me and herself, ... for that, of course she did. But I was forced to answer once every ten minutes at least--and Flush, my usual companion, does not exact so much--and so I am tired and come to rest myself on this paper. Your name was not once spoken to-day; a little from my good fencing: when I saw you at the end of an alley of associations, I pushed the conversation up the next--because I was afraid of questions such as every moment I expected, with a pair of woman's eyes behind them; and those are worse than Mr. Kenyon's, when he puts on his spectacles. So your name was not once spoken--not thought of, I do not say--perhaps when I once lost her at Chevy Chase and found her suddenly with Isidore the queen's hairdresser, my thoughts might have wandered off to you and your unanswered letter while she passed gradually from that to this--I am not sure of the contrary. And Isidore, they say, reads Béranger, and is supposed to be the most literary person at court--and wasn't at Chevy Chase one must needs think.

One must needs write nonsense rather--for I have written it there. The sense and the truth is, that your letter went to the bottom of my heart, and that my thoughts have turned round it ever since and through all the talking to-day. Yes indeed, dreams! But what _is_ not dreaming is this and this--this reading of these words--this proof of this regard--all this that you are to me in fact, and which you cannot guess the full meaning of, dramatic poet as you are ... cannot ... since you do not know what my life meant before you touched it, ... and my angel at the gate of the prison! My wonder is greater than your wonders, ... I who sate here alone but yesterday, so weary of my own being that to take interest in my very poems I had to lift them up by an effort and separate them from myself and cast them out from me into the sunshine where I was not--feeling nothing of the light which fell on them even--making indeed a sort of pleasure and interest about that factitious personality associated with them ... but knowing it to be all far on the outside of _me_ ... _myself_ ... not seeming to touch it with the end of my finger ... and receiving it as a mockery and a bitterness when people persisted in confounding one with another. Morbid it was if you like it--perhaps very morbid--but all these heaps of letters which go into the fire one after the other, and which, because I am a woman and have written verses, it seems so amusing to the letter-writers of your sex to write and see 'what will come of it,' ... some, from kind good motives I know, ... well, ... how could it all make for me even such a narrow strip of sunshine as Flush finds on the floor sometimes, and lays his nose along, with both ears out in the shadow? It was not for _me_ ... _me_ ... in any way: it was not within my reach--I did not seem to touch it as I said. Flush came nearer, and I was grateful to him ... yes, grateful ... for not being tired! I have felt grateful and flattered ... yes flattered ... when he has chosen rather to stay with me all day than go down-stairs. Grateful too, with reason, I have been and am to my own family for not letting me see that I was a burthen. These are facts. And now how am I to feel when you tell me what you have told me--and what you 'could would and will' do, and _shall not_ do?... but when you tell me?

Only remember that such words make you freer and freer--if you can be freer than free--just as every one makes me happier and richer--too rich by you, to claim any debt. May God bless you always. When I wrote that letter to let you come the first time, do you know, the tears ran down my cheeks.... I could not tell why: partly it might be mere nervousness. And then, I was vexed with you for wishing to come as other people did, and vexed with myself for not being able to refuse you as I did them.

When does the book come out? Not on the first, I begin to be glad.

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

I trust that you go on to take exercise--and that your mother is still better. Occy's worst symptom now is too great an appetite ... a monster-appetite indeed.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Tuesday.
[Post-mark, November 4, 1845.]

Only a word to tell you Moxon promises the books for to-morrow, Wednesday--so towards evening yours will reach you--'parve liber, sine me ibis' ... would I were by you, then and ever! You see, and know, and understand why I can neither talk to you, nor write to you _now_, as we are now;--from the beginning, the personal interest absorbed every other, greater or smaller--but as one cannot well,--or should not,--sit quite silently, the words go on, about Horne, or what chances--while you are in my thought.

But when I have you ... so it seems ... _in_ my very heart; when you are entirely with me--oh, the day--then it will all go better, talk and writing too.

Love me, my own love; not as I love you--not for--but I cannot write that. Nor do I ask anything, with all your gifts here, except for the luxury of asking. Withdraw nothing, then, dearest, from your

R.B.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Wednesday.
[Post-mark, November 6, 1845.]

I had your note last night, and am waiting for the book to-day; a true living breathing book, let the writer say of it what he will. Also when it comes it won't certainly come 'sine te.' Which is my comfort.

And now--not to make any more fuss about a matter of simple restitution--may I have my letter back?... I mean the letter which if you did not destroy ... did not punish for its sins long and long ago ... belongs to me--which, if destroyed, I must lose for my sins, ... but, if undestroyed, which I may have back; may I not? is it not my own? must I not?--that letter I was made to return and now turn to ask for again in further expiation. Now do I ask humbly enough? And send it at once, if undestroyed--do not wait till Saturday.

I have considered about Mr. Kenyon and it seems best, in the event of a question or of a remark equivalent to a question, to confess to the visits 'generally once a week' ... because he may hear, one, two, three different ways, ... not to say the other reasons and Chaucer's charge against 'doubleness.' I fear ... I fear that he (not Chaucer) will wonder a little--and he has looked at me with scanning spectacles already and talked of its being a mystery to him how you made your way here; and _I_, who though I can _bespeak_ self-command, have no sort of presence of mind (not so much as one would use to play at Jack straws) did not help the case at all. Well--it cannot be helped. Did I ever tell you what he said of you once--'_that you deserved to be a poet_--being one in your heart and life:' he said _that_ of you to me, and I thought it a noble encomium and deserving its application.

For the rest ... yes: you know I do--God knows I do. Whatever I can feel is for you--and perhaps it is not less, for not being simmered away in too much sunshine as with women accounted happier. _I_ am happy besides now--happy enough to die now.

May God bless you, dear--dearest--

Ever I am yours--

The book does not come--so I shall not wait. Mr. Kenyon came instead, and comes again on _Friday_ he says, and Saturday seems to be clear still.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

_Just_ arrived!--(mind, the _silent writing_ overflows the page, and laughs at the black words for Mr. Kenyon to read!)--But your note arrived earlier--more of that, when I write after this dreadful dispatching-business that falls on me--friend A. and B. and C. must get their copy, and word of regard, all by next post!--

Could you think _that_ that untoward letter lived one _moment_ after it returned to me? I burned it and cried 'serve it right'! Poor letter,--yet I should have been vexed and offended _then_ to be told I _could_ love you better than I did already. 'Live and _learn_!' Live and love you--dearest, as loves you

R.B.

You will write to reassure me about Saturday, if not for other reasons. See your corrections ... and understand that in one or two instances in which they would seem not to be adopted, they _are_ so, by some modification of the previous, or following line ... as in one of the Sorrento lines ... about a 'turret'--see! (Can you give me Horne's address--I would send then.)

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, November 7, 1845.]

I see and know; read and mark; and only hope there is no harm done by my meddling; and lose the sense of it all in the sense of beauty and power everywhere, which nobody could kill, if they took to meddling more even. And now, what will people say to this and this and this--or 'O seclum insipiens et inficetum!' or rather, O ungrateful right hand which does not thank you first! I do thank you. I have been reading everything with new delight; and at intervals remembering in inglorious complacency (for which you must try to forgive me) that Mr. Forster is no longer anything like an enemy. And yet (just see what contradiction!) the _British Quarterly_ has been abusing me so at large, that I can only take it to be the achievement of a very particular friend indeed,--of someone who positively never reviewed before and tries his new sword on me out of pure friendship. Only I suppose it is not the general rule, and that there are friends 'with a difference.' Not that you are to fancy me pained--oh no!--merely surprised. I was prepared for anything almost from the quarter in question, but scarcely for being hung 'to the crows' so publicly ... though within the bounds of legitimate criticisms, mind. But oh--the creatures of your sex are not always magnanimous--_that_ is true. And to put _you_ between me and all ... the thought of _you_ ... in a great eclipse of the world ... _that_ is happy ... only, too happy for such as I am; as my own heart warns me hour by hour.

'Serve _me_ right'--I do not dare to complain. I wished for the safety of that letter so much that I finished by persuading myself of the probability of it: but 'serve _me_ right' quite clearly. And yet--but no more 'and yets' about it. 'And yets' fray the silk.

I see how the 'turret' stands in the new reading, triumphing over the 'tower,' and unexceptionable in every respect. Also I do hold that nobody with an ordinary understanding has the slightest pretence for attaching a charge of obscurity to this new number--there are lights enough for the critics to scan one another's dull blank of visage by. One verse indeed in that expressive lyric of the 'Lost Mistress,' does still seem questionable to me, though you have changed a word since I saw it; and still I fancy that I rather leap at the meaning than reach it--but it is my own fault probably ... I am not sure. With that one exception I _am quite_ sure that people who shall complain of darkness are blind ... I mean, that the construction is clear and unembarrassed everywhere. Subtleties of thought which are not directly apprehensible by minds of a common range, are here as elsewhere in your writings--but if to utter things 'hard to understand' from _that_ cause be an offence, why we may begin with 'our beloved brother Paul,' you know, and go down through all the geniuses of the world, and bid them put away their inspirations. You must descend to the level of critic A or B, that he may look into your face.... Ah well!--'Let them rave.' You will live when all _those_ are under the willows. In the meantime there is something better, as you said, even than your poetry--as the giver is better than the gift, and the maker than the creature, and _you_ than _yours_. Yes--_you_ than _yours_.... (I did not mean it so when I wrote it first ... but I accept the 'bona verba,' and use the phrase for the end of my letter) ... as _you_ are better than _yours_; even when so much yours as your own

E.B.B.

May I see the first act first? Let me!--And you walk?

Mr. Horne's address is Hill Side, Fitzroy Park, Highgate.

There is no reason against Saturday so far. Mr. Kenyon comes to-morrow, Friday, and therefore--!--and if Saturday should become impracticable, I will write again.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Sunday Evening.
[Post-mark, November 10, 1845.]

When I come back from seeing you, and think over it all, there never is a least word of yours I could not occupy myself with, and wish to return to you with some ... not to say, all ... the thoughts and fancies it is sure to call out of me. There is nothing in you that does not draw out all of me. You possess me, dearest ... and there is no help for the expressing it all, no voice nor hand, but these of mine which shrink and turn away from the attempt. So you must go on, patiently, knowing me more and more, and your entire power on me, and I will console myself, to the full extent, with your knowledge--penetration, intuition--_somehow_ I must believe you can get to what is here, in me, without the pretence of my telling or writing it. But, because I give up the great achievements, there is no reason I should not secure any occasion of making clear one of the less important points that arise in our intercourse ... if I fancy I can do it with the least success. For instance, it is on my mind to explain what I meant yesterday by trusting that the entire happiness I feel in the letters, and the help in the criticising might not be hurt by the surmise, even, that those labours to which you were born, might be suspended, in any degree, through such generosity to _me_. Dearest, I believed in your glorious genius and knew it for a true star from the moment I saw it; long before I had the blessing of knowing it was MY star, with my fortune and futurity in it. And, when I draw back from myself, and look better and more clearly, then I _do_ feel, with you, that the writing a few letters more or less, reading many or few rhymes of any other person, would not interfere in any material degree with that power of yours--that you might easily make one so happy and yet go on writing 'Geraldines' and 'Berthas'--but--how can I, dearest, leave my heart's treasures long, even to look at your genius?... and when I come back and find all safe, find the comfort of you, the traces of you ... _will_ it do--tell me--to trust all that as a light effort, an easy matter?

Yet, if you can lift me with one hand, while the other suffices to crown you--there is queenliness in _that_, too!

Well, I have spoken. As I told you, your turn comes now. How have you determined respecting the American Edition? You tell me nothing of yourself! It is all ME you help, me you do good to ... and I take it all! Now see, if this goes on! I have not had _every_ love-luxury, I now find out ... where is the proper, rationally to-be-expected--'_lovers' quarrel_'? _Here_, as you will find! 'Iræ; amantium'.... I am no more 'at a loss with my Naso,' than Peter Ronsard. Ah, but then they are to be _reintegratio amoris_--and to get back into a thing, one must needs get for a moment first out of it ... trust me, no! And now, the natural inference from all this? The consistent inference ... the 'self-denying ordinance'? Why--do you doubt? even this,--you must just put aside the Romance, and tell the Americans to wait, and make my heart start up when the letter is laid to it; the letter full of your news, telling me you are well and walking, and working for my sake towards _the time_--informing me, moreover, if Thursday or Friday is to be my day--.

May God bless you, my own love.

I will certainly bring you an Act of the Play ... for this serpent's reason, in addition to the others ... that--No, I will _tell_ you that--I can tell you now more than even lately!

Ever your own

R.B.

(See Vol. I., p. 270)]

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Monday.
[Post-mark, November 11, 1845.]

If it were possible that you could do me harm in the way of work, (but it isn't) it would be possible, not through writing letters and reading manuscripts, but because of a reason to be drawn from your own great line

What man is strong until he stands alone?

What man ... what woman? For have I not felt twenty times the desolate advantage of being insulated here and of not minding anybody when I made my poems?--of living a little like a disembodied spirit, and caring less for suppositious criticism than for the black fly buzzing in the pane?--_That_ made me what dear Mr. Kenyon calls 'insolent,'--untimid, and unconventional in my degree; and not so much by strength, you see, as by separation. _You_ touch your greater ends by mere strength; breaking with your own hands the hampering threads which, in your position would have hampered _me_.

Still ... when all is changed for me now, and different, it is not possible, ... for all the changing, nor for all your line and my speculation, ... that I should not be better and stronger for being within your influences and sympathies, in this way of writing as in other ways. We shall see--you will see. Yet I have been idle lately I confess; leaning half out of some turret-window of the castle of Indolence and watching the new sunrise--as why not?--Do I mean to be idle always?--no!--and am I not an industrious worker on the average of days? Indeed yes! Also I have been less idle than you think perhaps, even this last year, though the results seem so like trifling: and I shall set about the prose papers for the New York people, and the something rather better besides we may hope ... may _I_ not hope, if _you_ wish it? Only there is no 'crown' for me, be sure, except what grows from this letter and such letters ... this sense of being anything to _one_! there is no room for another crown. Have I a great head like Goethe's that there should be room? and mine is bent down already by the unused weight--and as to bearing it, ... 'Will it do,--tell me; to treat _that_ as a light effort, an easy matter?'

Now let me remember to tell you that the line of yours I have just quoted, and which has been present with me since you wrote it, Mr. Chorley has quoted too in his new novel of 'Pomfret.' You were right in your identifying of servant and waistcoat--and Wilson waited only till you had gone on Saturday, to give me a parcel and note; the novel itself in fact, which Mr. Chorley had the kindness to send me 'some days or weeks,' said the note, 'previous to the publication.' Very goodnatured of him certainly: and the book seems to me his best work in point of sustainment and vigour, and I am in process of being interested in it. Not that he is a _maker_, even for this prose. A feeler ... an observer ... a thinker even, in a certain sphere--but a maker ... no, as it seems to me--and if I were he, I would rather herd with the essayists than the novelists where he is too good to take inferior rank and not strong enough to 'go up higher.' Only it would be more right in me to be grateful than to talk so--now wouldn't it?

And here is Mr. Kenyon's letter back again--a kind good letter ... a letter I have liked to read (so it was kind and good in you to let me!)--and he was with me to-day and praising the 'Ride to Ghent,' and praising the 'Duchess,' and praising you altogether as I liked to hear him. The Ghent-ride was 'very fine'--and the

Into the midnight they galloped abreast

drew us out into the night as witnesses. And then, the 'Duchess' ... the conception of it was noble, and the vehicle, rhythm and all, most characteristic and individual ... though some of the rhymes ... oh, some of the rhymes did not find grace in his ears--but the incantation-scene, 'just trenching on the supernatural,' _that_ was taken to be 'wonderful,' ... 'showing extraordinary power, ... as indeed other things did ... works of a highly original writer and of such various faculty!'--Am I not tired of writing your praises as he said then? So I shall tell you, instead of any more, that I went down to the drawing-room yesterday (because it was warm enough) by an act of supererogatory virtue for which you may praise _me_ in turn. What weather it is! and how the year seems to have forgotten itself into April.

But after all, how have I answered your letter? and how _are_ such letters to be answered? Do we answer the sun when he shines? May God bless you ... it is my answer--with one word besides ... that I am wholly and ever your

E.B.B.

On Thursday as far as I know yet--and you shall hear if there should be an obstacle. _Will you walk?_ If you will not, you know, you must be forgetting me a little. Will you remember me too in the act of the play?--but above all things in taking the right exercise, and in not overworking the head. And this for no serpent's reason.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Two letters in one--Wednesday.
[Post-mark, November 15, 1845.]

I shall see you to-morrow and yet am writing what you will have to read perhaps. When you spoke of 'stars' and 'geniuses' in that letter, I did not seem to hear; I was listening to those words of the letter which were of a better silver in the sound than even your praise could be; and now that at last I come to hear them in their extravagance (oh such pure extravagance about 'glorious geniuses'--) I can't help telling you they were heard last, and deserved it.

Shall I tell you besides?--The first moment in which I seemed to admit to myself in a flash of lightning the _possibility_ of your affection for me being more than dream-work ... the first moment was _that_ when you intimated (as you have done since repeatedly) that you cared for me not for a reason, but because you cared for me. Now such a 'parceque' which reasonable people would take to be irrational, was just the only one fitted to the uses of my understanding on the particular question we were upon ... just the 'woman's reason' suitable to the woman ...; for I could understand that it might be as you said, and, if so, that it was altogether unanswerable ... do you see? If a fact includes its own cause ... why there it stands for ever--one of 'earth's immortalities'--_as long as it includes it_.

And when unreasonableness stands for a reason, it is a promising state of things, we may both admit, and proves what it would be as well not too curiously to enquire into. But then ... to look at it in a brighter aspect, ... I do remember how, years ago, when talking the foolishnesses which women will talk when they are by themselves, and not forced to be sensible, ... one of my friends thought it 'safest to begin with a little aversion,' and another, wisest to begin with a great deal of esteem, and how the best attachments were produced so and so, ... I took it into my head to say that the best was where there was no cause at all for it, and the more wholly unreasonable, the better still; that the motive should lie in the feeling itself and not in the object of it--and that the affection which could (if it could) throw itself out on an idiot with a goître would be more admirable than Abelard's. Whereupon everybody laughed, and someone thought it affected of me and no true opinion, and others said plainly that it was immoral, and somebody else hoped, in a sarcasm, that I meant to act out my theory for the advantage of the world. To which I replied quite gravely that I had not virtue enough--and so, people laughed as it is fair to laugh when other people are esteemed to talk nonsense. And all this came back to me in the south wind of your 'parceque,' and I tell it as it came ... now.

Which proves, if it proves anything, ... while I have every sort of natural pleasure in your praises and like you to like my poetry just as I should, and perhaps more than I should; yet _why_ it is all behind ... and in its place--and _why_ I have a tendency moreover to sift and measure any praise of yours and to separate it from the superfluities, far more than with any other person's praise in the world.

_Friday evening._--Shall I send this letter or not? I have been 'tra 'l si e 'l no,' and writing a new beginning on a new sheet even--but after all you ought to hear the remote echo of your last letter ... far out among the hills, ... as well as the immediate reverberation, and so I will send it,--and what I send is not to be answered, remember!

I read Luria's first act twice through before I slept last night, and feel just as a bullet might feel, not because of the lead of it but because shot into the air and suddenly arrested and suspended. It ('Luria') is all life, and we know (that is, the reader knows) that there must be results here and here. How fine that sight of Luria is upon the lynx hides--how you see the Moor in him just in the glimpse you have by the eyes of another--and that laugh when the horse drops the forage, what wonderful truth and character you have in _that_!--And then, when _he_ is in the scene--: 'Golden-hearted Luria' you called him once to me, and his heart shines already ... wide open to the morning sun. The construction seems to me very clear everywhere--and the rhythm, even over-smooth in a few verses, where you invert a little artificially--but that shall be set down on a separate strip of paper: and in the meantime I am snatched up into 'Luria' and feel myself driven on to the ends of the poet, just as a reader should.