Chapter XIII: Part 13

_Tuesday evening._--What is written is written, ... all the above: and it is forbidden to me to write a word of what I could write down here ... forbidden for good reasons. So I am silent on _conditions_ ... those being ... first ... that you never do such things again ... no, you must not and shall not.... I _will not let it be_: and secondly, that you try to hear the unspoken words, and understand how your gift will remain with me while _I_ remain ... they need not be said--just as _it_ need not have been so beautiful, for that. The beauty drops 'full fathom five' into the deep thought which covers it. So I study my Machiavelli to contrive the possibility of wearing it, without being put to the question violently by all the curiosity of all my brothers;--the questions 'how' ... 'what' ... 'why' ... put round and edgeways. They are famous, some of them, for asking questions. I say to them--'well: how many more questions?' And now ... for _me_--_have_ I said a word?--_have_ I not been obedient? And by rights and in justice, there should have been a reproach ... if there could! Because, friendship or more than friendship, Pisa or no Pisa, it was unnecessary altogether from you to me ... but I have done, and you shall not be teazed.

_Wednesday._--Only ... I persist in the view of the _other_ question. This will not do for the '_sign_,' ... this, which, so far from being qualified for disproving a dream, is the beautiful image of a dream in itself ... _so_ beautiful: and with the very shut eyelids, and the "little folding of the hands to sleep." You see at a glance it will not do. And so--

Just as one might be interrupted while telling a fairy-tale, ... in the midst of the "and so's" ... just _so_, I have been interrupted by the coming in of Miss Bayley, and here she has been sitting for nearly two hours, from twelve to two nearly, and I like her, do you know. Not only she talks well, which was only a thing to expect, but she seems to _feel_ ... to have great sensibility--_and_ her kindness to me ... kindness of manner and words and expression, all together ... quite touched me.--I did not think of her being so loveable a person. Yet it was kind and generous, her proposition about Italy; (did I tell you how she made it to me through Mr. Kenyon long ago--when I was a mere stranger to her?) the proposition to go there with me herself. It was quite a grave, earnest proposal of hers--which was one of the reasons why I could not even _wish_ not to see her to-day. Because you see, it was a tremendous degree of experimental generosity, to think of going to Italy by sea with an invalid stranger, "seule _à_ seule." And she was wholly in earnest, wholly. Is there not good in the world after all?

Tell me how you are, for I am not at ease about you--You were not well even yesterday, I thought. If this goes on ... but it mustn't go on--oh, it must not. May God bless us more!

Do not fancy, in the meantime, that you stay here 'too long' for any observation that can be made. In the first place there is nobody to 'observe'--everybody is out till seven, except the one or two who will not observe if I tell them not. My sisters are glad when you come, because it is a gladness of mine, ... they observe. I have a great deal of liberty, to have so many chains; we all have, in this house: and though the liberty has melancholy motives, it saves some daily torment, and _I_ do not complain of it for one.

May God bless you! Do not forget me. Say how you are. What good can I do you with all my thoughts, when you keep unwell? See!--Facts are against fancies. As when I would not have the lamp lighted yesterday because it seemed to make it later, and you proved directly that it would not make it _earlier_, by getting up and going away!

Wholly and ever your

E.B.B.

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

[Post-mark, November 28, 1845.][1]

Take it, dearest; what I am forced to think you mean--and take _no more_ with it--for I gave all to give long ago--I am all yours--and now, _mine_; give me _mine_ to be happy with!

You will have received my note of yesterday.--I am glad you are satisfied with Miss Bayley, whom I, too, thank ... that is, sympathize with, ... (not wonder at, though)--for her intention.... Well, may it all be for best--here or at Pisa, you are my blessing and life.

... How all considerate you are, _you_ that are the kind, kind one! The post arrangement I will remember--to-day, for instance, will this reach you at 8? I shall be with you then, in thought. 'Forget you!'--_What_ does that mean, dearest?

And I might have stayed longer and you let me go. What does _that_ mean, also tell me? Why, I make up my mind to go, always, like a man, and praise myself as I get through it--as when one plunges into the cold water--ONLY ... ah, _that_ too is no more a merit than any other thing I do ... there is the reward, the last and best! Or is it the 'lure'?

I would not be ashamed of my soul if it might be shown you,--it is wholly grateful, conscious of you.

But another time, do not let me wrong myself _so_! Say, 'one minute more.'

On Monday?--I am _much_ better--and, having got free from an engagement for Saturday, shall stay quietly here and think the post never intending to come--for you will not let me wait longer?

Shall I dare write down a grievance of my heart, and not offend you? Yes, trusting in the right of my love--you tell me, sweet, here in the letter, 'I do not look so well'--and sometimes, I 'look better' ... _how do you know_? When I first saw you--_I saw your eyes_--since then, _you_, it should appear, see mine--but I only _know_ yours are there, and have to use that memory as if one carried dried flowers about when fairly inside the garden-enclosure. And while I resolve, and hesitate, and resolve again to complain of this--(kissing your foot ... not boldly complaining, nor rudely)--while I have this on my mind, on my heart, ever since that May morning ... can it be?

--No, nothing _can be_ wrong now--you will never call me 'kind' again, in that sense, you promise! Nor think 'bitterly' of my kindness, that word!

Shall I _see_ you on Monday?

God bless you my dearest--I see her now--and _here_ and _now_ the eyes open, wide _enough_, and I will kiss them--_how_ gratefully!

Your own

R.B.

[Footnote 1: Envelope endorsed by E.B.B. 'hair.']

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

Friday.
[Post-mark, December 1, 1845.]

It comes at eight o'clock--the post says eight ... _I_ say nearer half past eight ... it _comes_--and I thank you, thank you, as I can. Do you remember the purple lock of a king on which hung the fate of a city? _I_ do! And I need not in conscience--because this one here did not come to me by treason--'ego et rex meus,' on the contrary, do fairly give and take.

I meant at first only to send you what is in the ring ... which, by the way, will not fit you I know--(not certainly in the finger which it was meant for ...) as it would not Napoleon before you--but can easily be altered to the right size.... I meant at first to send you only what was in the ring: but your fashion is best so you shall have it both ways. Now don't say a word on Monday ... nor at all. As for the ring, recollect that I am forced to feel blindfold into the outer world, and take what is nearest ... by chance, not choice ... or it might have been better--a little better--perhaps. The _best_ of it is that it's the colour of your blue flowers. Now you will not say a word--I trust to you.

It is enough that you should have said these others, I think. Now _is_ it just of you? isn't it hard upon me? And if the charge is true, whose fault is it, pray? I have been ashamed and vexed with myself fifty times for being so like a little girl, ... for seeming to have 'affectations'; and all in vain: 'it was stronger than I,' as the French say. And for _you_ to complain! As if Haroun Alraschid after cutting off a head, should complain of the want of an obeisance!--Well!--I smile notwithstanding. Nobody can help smiling--both for my foolishness which is great, I confess, though somewhat exaggerated in your statement--(because if it was quite as bad as you say, you know, I never should have _seen you_ ... and _I have_!) and also for yours ... because you take such a very preposterously wrong way for overcoming anybody's shyness. Do you know, I have laughed ... really laughed at your letter. No--it has not been so bad. I have seen you at every visit, as well as I could with both eyes wide open--only that by a supernatural influence they won't stay open with _you_ as they are used to do with other people ... so now I tell you. And for the rest I promise nothing at all--as how can I, when it is quite beyond my control--and you have not improved my capabilities ... do you think you have? Why what nonsense we have come to--we, who ought to be 'talking Greek!' said Mr. Kenyon.

Yes--he came and talked of you, and told me how you had been speaking of ... me; and I have been thinking how I should have been proud of it a year ago, and how I could half scold you for it now. Ah yes--and Mr. Kenyon told me that you had spoken exaggerations--such exaggerations!--Now should there not be some scolding ... some?

But how did you expect Mr. Kenyon to 'wonder' at _you_, or be 'vexed' with _you_? That would have been strange surely. You are and always have been a chief favourite in that quarter ... appreciated, praised, loved, I think.

While I write, a letter from America is put into my hands, and having read it through with shame and confusion of face ... not able to help a smile though notwithstanding, ... I send it to you to show how you have made me behave!--to say nothing of my other offences to the kind people at Boston--and to a stray gentleman in Philadelphia who is to perform a pilgrimage next year, he says, ... to visit the Holy Land and your E.B.B. I was naughty enough to take _that_ letter to be a circular ... for the address of various 'Europ_a_ians.' In any case ... just see how I have behaved! and if it has not been worse than ... not opening one's eyes!--Judge. Really and gravely I am ashamed--I mean as to Mr. Mathews, who has been an earnest, kind friend to me--and I do mean to behave better. I say _that_ to prevent your scolding, you know. And think of Mr. Poe, with that great Roman justice of his (if not rather American!), dedicating a book to one and abusing one in the preface of the same. He wrote a review of me in just that spirit--the two extremes of laudation and reprehension, folded in on one another. You would have thought that it had been written by a friend and foe, each stark mad with love and hate, and writing the alternate paragraphs--a most curious production indeed.

And here I shall end. I have been waiting ... waiting for what does not come ... the ring ... sent to have the hair put in; but it won't come (now) until too late for the post, and you must hear from me before Monday ... you ought to have heard to-day. It has not been my fault--I have waited. Oh these people--who won't remember that it is possible to be out of patience! So I send you my letter now ... and what is in the paper now ... and the rest, you shall have after Monday. And you _will not say a word_ ... not then ... not at all!--I trust you. And may God bless you.

If ever you care less for me--I do not say it in distrust of you ... I trust you wholly--but you are a man, and free to care less, ... and if ever you _do_ ... why in that case you will destroy, burn, ... do all but send back ... enough is said for you to understand.

May God bless you. You are _best_ to me--best ... as I see ... in the world--and so, dearest aright to

Your

E.B.B.

Finished on Saturday evening. Oh--this thread of silk--And to post!! After all you must wait till Tuesday. I have no silk within reach and shall miss the post. Do forgive me.

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

Saturday Evening.

This is the mere postscript to the letter I have just sent away. By a few minutes too late, comes what I have all day been waiting for, ... and besides (now it is just too late!) now I may have a skein of silk if I please, to make that knot with, ... for want of which, two locks meant for you, have been devoted to the infernal gods already ... fallen into a tangle and thrown into the fire ... and all the hair of my head might have followed, for I was losing my patience and temper fast, ... and the post to boot. So wisely I shut my letter, (after unwisely having driven everything to the last moment!)--and now I have silk to tie fast with ... to tie a 'nodus' ... 'dignus' of the celestial interposition--and a new packet shall be ready to go to you directly.

At last I remember to tell you that the first letter you had from me this week, was forgotten, (not by _me_) forgotten, and detained, so, from the post--a piece of carelessness which Wilson came to confess to me too frankly for me to grumble as I should have done otherwise.

For the staying longer, I did not mean to say you were wrong not to stay. In the first place you were keeping your father 'in a maze,' as you said yourself--and then, even without that, I never know what o'clock it is ... never. Mr. Kenyon tells me that I must live in a dream--which I do--time goes ... seeming to go round rather than go forward. The watch I have, broke its spring two years ago, and there I leave it in the drawer--and the clocks all round strike out of hearing, or at best, when the wind brings the sound, one upon another in a confusion. So you know more of time than I do or can.

Till Monday then! I send the 'Ricordi' to take care of the rest ... of mine. It is a touching story--and there is an impracticable nobleness from end to end in the spirit of it. How _slow_ (to the ear and mind) that Italian rhetoric is! a language for dreamers and declaimers. Yet Dante made it for action, and Machiavelli's prose can walk and strike as well as float and faint.

The ring is smaller than I feared at first, and may perhaps--

Now you will not say a word. My excuse is that you had nothing to remember me by, while I had this and this and this and this ... how much too much!

If I could be too much

Your

E.B.B.

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

Tuesday.
[Post-mark, 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?

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

[Post-mark, 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.

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

Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, 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 _un_happy, ... 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 _un_kind ... 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 [Greek: apedilos] 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--

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

[Post-mark, 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.

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

Sunday Night.
[Post-mark, 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.

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

Sunday.
[Post-mark, 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--

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

Tuesday Morning.
[Post-mark, 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.

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

Tuesday Evening
[Post-mark, 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?

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

Friday.
[Post-mark, 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'!