Chapter XVIII: Part 18

You did not tell me of Mr. Chorley ... whether he put questions about the Continent, or observed on the mysteries in you. Does he go himself, and when? A curious ‘fact’ is, that Mrs. Jameson was in the next house to us this morning, and also a few days ago; yet never came here—the reason certainly being a reluctance to seem to tread in upon the recalling confidence. I felt sorry, and obliged to her—both at once. Talking of confidences, I neglected to tell you when you were here last, that one more had escaped us. It was not by my choice, if by my fault. I wrote something in a note to Mr. Boyd some weeks ago, which nobody except himself would have paused to think over; but he, like a prisoner in a dungeon, sounds every stone of the walls round him, and discerns a hollowness, detects a wooden beam, ... patiently pricks out the mortar with a pin—all this, in his rayless, companionless Dark,—poor Mr. Boyd! The time before I last went to see him, he asked me if I were going to be a nun—there, was the first guess! On the next visit he puts his question precisely right—_I_ tried to evade—then, promised to be frank in a little time—but being pressed on all sides, and drawn on by a solemn vow of secrecy, I allowed him to see the truth—and he lives such an isolated life, that it is perfectly safe with him, setting the oath aside. Also, he was very good and kind, and approved highly of the whole, and exhorted me, with ever such exhortation, to keep to my purpose, and to allow no consideration in the world or out of the world, to make any difference—quoting the moral philosophers as to the rights of such questions. Is there harm in his knowing? He knows nobody, talks to nobody, and is very faithful to his word. Just as _I_, you will retort, was foolish in mine! Yet I do assure you, mine was a sort of word, which to nine hundred and ninety nine persons, would have suggested nothing—only _he_ mused over it, turned it into all lights, and had nothing to do but _that_. Afterwards he was proud, and asked ... ‘Was I not acute?’ It was a pleasure to him, one could not grudge.

Are you well, ever dearest? _I_ am well. And yesterday, while they were at dinner, I walked out alone, or with Flush—twice to the corner of the street, turning it, to post your letter. May God bless you. Surely we feel alike in many, many things—the convolvuluses grow together; twisted together—and you lift me up from the ground; you! I am your very own—

Mr. Mathews said nothing more than I told you—very briefly—but he _sent_ the review, he said—and it has not come.

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

Tuesday Morning
[Post-mark, August 18, 1846.]

Let it be on Thursday then, dearest, for the reasons you mention. I will say nothing of my own desires to meet you sooner ... they are corrected by the other desires to spend my whole life with you. After all, these are the critical weeks now approaching or indeed present—there shall be no fault I can avoid. So, till Thursday—

Chorley said very little ... he is all discreetness and forbearance, here as on other points. He goes to Birmingham at the end of this week, and returning after some three or four days, leaves London for Paris—probably next Saturday week. From Paris he thinks of going to Holland ... a good step,—and of staying at Scheven ... ing ... what is the Bath’s name?—not a good step, I told him, because of the mortal ugliness of the place—which I well remember ... it may have improved in ten years, to be sure. There, ‘walking on the sands,’ (sands in a heapy slope, not a traversable flat) he means to ‘grow to an end’ with his Tragedy ... there is a noble ardour in his working which one cannot help admiring—he has a few weeks’ holiday, is jaded to death with writing, and yet will write away his brief time of respite and restoratives—for what? He wondered whether there was any chance of our meeting in Paris—‘our’ meaning him and myself.

As for your communication to Mr. Boyd—how could you do otherwise, my own Ba? I am altogether regardless of whatever danger there may be, in the great delight at his sympathy and approval of your intention: he probably never heard my name before ... but his own will ever be associated divinely in my memory with those verses which always have affected me profoundly ... perhaps on the whole, _more_ profoundly than any others you ever wrote: _that_ is hard to prove to myself,—but I really think so—the personal allusions in it went straight to my heart at the beginning. I remember, too, how he loved and loves you ... you told me, Ba: so I am most grateful to him,—as I ever shall feel to those who, knowing you, judge me worthy of being capable of knowing you and taking your impress, and becoming yours sufficiently for your happiness.

Are you so well, dearest, in your walks,—after your rides? Does that rejoice me or no, when I would rather hear you had been happy, than simply see you without such an assurance? I am very well, since you ask—but my mother is not—her head being again affected. Yet the late improvement gives ground for hope ... nor is this a very violent attack in itself.

I suppose it _was_ in Mrs. Jameson’s mind, as you apprehend—you must always be fond of her—(and such will be always my way of rewarding people _I_ am fond of!)

God bless you, dearest—I love you all I can, Ba. I see another ship is advertised to sail—(a steamer) for Naples, and other southern ports—but no higher. When you are well and disposed to go to Greece, take me, my love. I should feel too happy for this world, I think, among the islands with you.

My very own, I am yours—

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

Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, August 19, 1846.]

Your mother is not well, dearest? _that_ is bad news indeed. And then, I think of your superstition of your being ill and well with her—take care and keep well, Robert, ... or of what use will it be that _I_ should be well? To-day we drove out, and were as far as Finchley, and I am none the worse at all for it. Do you know Finchley? It is pretty and rural; the ground rising and falling as if with the weight of verdure and dew! fields, and hedgerows, and long slopes of grass thick and long enough, in its fresh greenness, quite to hide the nostrils of the grazing cows. The fields are little, too, as if the hedges wanted to get together. Then the village of Finchley straggles along the road with a line of cottages, or small houses, seeming to _play_ at a village. No butchers, no bakers—only one shop in the place—but gardens, and creepers round the windows. Such a way from London, it looked! Arabel wanted to call on a friend of hers, a daughter of Sir William Russell’s, who married an adopted son of _Lamartine_, and was in the navy, and is now an Independent minister officiating in this selfsame metropolis of Finchley. A concatenation, _that_ is, altogether. Very poor they are—living on something less than two hundred a year, with five children, and the eldest five years old. And the children came out to us, everybody else being away—so I, who would have stayed in the carriage under other circumstances, was tempted out by the children and the cottage, and they dragged us along to see the drawing room, and dining room, and ‘Papa’s flowers,’ and their own particular book ‘about the twenty-seven tailors’; and those of the children who could speak, thought Flush ‘very cool’ for walking up-stairs without being asked. (The baby opened its immense eyes wider than ever, thinking unutterable things.) So as they had been so kind and hospitable to us, we could not do less (after a quantity of admiration upon the pretty house covered with roses, and the garden and lawn, and especially the literature of those twenty-seven tailors) we could not do less than offer to give them a drive ... which was accepted with acclamation. Think of our taking into the carriage, all five children, with their prodigious eyes and cheeks—the nurse on the coachbox, to take them home at the end of some quarter of a mile! At the moment of parting, Alphonse Lamartine thought seriously of making a great scream—but upon Arabel’s perjuring herself by a promise to ‘come again soon,’ we got away without that catastrophe. A worse one is, that you may think yourself obliged to read this amusing history. To make amends, I send you what I gathered for you in the garden ‘Pansy!—that’s for thoughts.’[5]

How wise we are about Thursday! or rather about Tuesday and Wednesday, perhaps.

As for Mr. Boyd, he had just heard your name, but he is blind and deaf to modern literature, and I am not anxious that he should know you much by your poetry. He asked some questions about you, and he enquired of Arabel particularly whether she thought we cared for each other enough. But to tell you the truth, his unqualified adhesion strikes me as less the result of his love for _you_, than of his anger towards another. I am sure he triumphs inwardly in the idea of a chain being broken which he has so often denounced in words that pained and vexed me—and then last year’s affair about Italy made him furious. Oh—I could see plainly by the sort of smile he smiled—but we need not talk of it—I am at the end too of my time. How good you are to me not to upbraid me for imprudence and womanly talkativeness! You are too, too good. And you liked my verses to Mr. Boyd! Which _I_ like to hear, of course. Dearest—

Shall we go to Greece then, Robert? _Let_ us, if you like it! When we have used a little the charm of your Italy, and have been in England just to see that everybody is well, of yours and mine, ... (if you like _that_!) ... why straightway we can go ‘among the islands’—(and _nearly_ as pleasant, it will be for me, as if I went there alone, having left you!). I should like to see Athens with my living eyes ... Athens was in all the dreams I dreamed, before I knew you. Why should we not see Athens, and Egypt too, and float down the mystical Nile, and stand in the shadow of the Pyramids? _All_ of it is more possible now, than walking up this street seemed to me last year.

Indeed, there is only one miracle for _me_, my beloved,—and _that_ is your loving me. Everything else under the sun, and much over it, seems the merest commonplace and workday matter-of-fact. If I found myself, suddenly, riding in Paradise, on a white elephant of golden feet, ... I should shake the bridle, I fancy, with ever so much nonchalance, and absently wonder over ‘that miracle’ of the previous world. Because ‘_THAT’S for thoughts_,’ as my flower says! look at it and listen.

As for me, I am your very own—

[5] [The flower is enclosed with the letter.]

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

Wednesday.
[Post-mark, August 19, 1846.]

See my one piece of available paper for the minute! Ought I to write on or wait? No, I will tell Ba at once how I love her for giving me this one more letter with its delights. ‘Finchley’—I know very well—not that I ever saw the streets, and palaces, and cathedral, with these eyes ... but in ‘Quarles’ Emblems,’ my childhood’s pet book, I well remember that an aspiring Soul,—(a squat little woman-figure with a loose gown, hair in a coil, and bare feet—) is seated on the world, a ‘terrestrial ball,’—which, that you may clearly perceive it to be our world, is somewhat parsimoniously scattered over with cities and towns—and one, the evident capital of the universe and Babylon’s despair for size,—occupying as it does a tract quite equal to all Europe’s due share on the hemisphere, is marked ‘Finchley’—Do you recognize? Yet, if you will have it only the pretty village with the fields you describe so perfectly, I accept the sweetness and give up the glory, and your Finchley is mine for ever, you dearest—whom I see in the house, and in the carriage ... but how is it you escaped the rain, Ba? Oh, it did not rain till later, now I think a little. Those are indeed strange circumstances ... and the ‘independent ministry’ at the end, seems hard to account for ... or, why hard? Well, _this_ is _not_ hard to feel and know, that it is perfect joy to hear you propose such travels and adventures—Greece _with you_, Egypt _with you_! Will you please and tell me ... (not _now_, but whenever your conscience prompts you on the recurrence of that notable objection, if Miss Campbell’s desirableness _is_ to recur) ... what other woman in the whole world and Finchley, would propose to go to Egypt instead of Belgravia? Do our tastes coincide or no? This is putting all on the lowest possible ground ... setting love aside even, to Miss Mitford’s heart’s fullest content; if I were to choose among women, without love to give or take, and only for _other_ advantages, do you think _any_ advantage would compete with this single one,—‘she will feel happy in travelling with you to a distance.’ Love alters the scale, overbalances everything—at the beginning I fancied you could not leave England, you know. But it singularly affects my imagination, such a life with you,—led _for_ the world, I hope, all the more effectually for being not led _in_ the world. If their ways are not to be ours, all is better at a distance, and _so_ I have put this down as, surely, _one_ palpable, unmistakable _advantage_ even _you_ must confess I shall gain in marrying you—(I may only love Ba’s eyes and mouth in a sort of fearful secrecy so far as words go ... she stops all speech on that subject!)

Yes indeed, Ba, I always felt that ‘Cyprus wine’ poem fill my heart with unutterable desires to you. There is so much of you in it. Observe, I do no foolish injustice in criticisms ... I quite understand a charm _beside_ the charm the world can see. Some of your pansies are entirely beautiful in themselves.... I can set them before the visitors of a flower-show and bid all pronounce on them—others, beside their beauty, come to me as _this_ dear one, in a letter, with a story of the plucking, with a _sense_ of the fingers that held it. Bless you, ever dearest, dear beyond words,—you have given me already in this year and a half the entirest faith and purest kindness my heart can comprehend. Do lovers ‘abuse the beloved object’—‘try to shake off their chains’ &c. &c.? Mine is not love then! No one minute or moment of your life with me could have been other than it was without seeming less dear, less perfect in my memory—and for all, God reward you.

To-morrow, Thursday! And to-night I will warily speak of not having seen you.

Your own.

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

Friday.
[Post-mark, August 21, 1846.]

Dearest, this is to be a brief letter, though my heart shall find room in whatever goes to you. Yesterday cost us nothing—no observation was made: we were in all security notwithstanding the forebodings on either side. May they find such an end in circumstances of still more consequence. Dearest, your flowers are beautiful beyond their beauty of yesterday which I praised—they think themselves still in the garden; we have done them no sort of wrong. What a luring thought you leave with me in the flowers! How I look at them as a sign of you, left behind—your footstep in the ground! It has been so from the beginning. And yet sometimes you try to prove that you are not always good. You!

If you are not good, it is because you are _best_. I will admit so much.

Oh, to look back! It is so wonderful to me to look back on my life and my old philosophy of life, made of the necessities of sorrow and the resolution to attain to something better than a perpetual moaning and complaint,—to that state of neutralized emotion to which I did attain—that serenity which meant the failure of hope! _Can_ I look back to such things, and not thank you next to God? For you, who had the _power_, to stoop to having the will,—is it not worthy of thanks? So I thank you and love you and shall always, however it may be hereafter. I could not feel otherwise to you, I think, than by my feeling at this moment.

How Papa has startled me. He came in while I was writing ... (I shut the writing-case as he walked over the floor—) and then, after the usual talk of the weather, and how the nights ‘were growing cold,’ ... he said suddenly ... looking to the table ... ‘What a beautiful colour those little blue flowers have—’ Calling them just _so_, ... ‘little blue flowers.’ I could scarcely answer I was so frightened—but he observed nothing and turned and left the room with his favourite enquiry _pour rire_, as to whether he ‘could do anything for me in the City.’

Do anything for _me_ in the City! Well—do _you_ do something for me, by thinking of me and loving me, Robert. Dear you are, never to be tired of me, with so much reason for it as I know. May God bless you, very dear!—and ever dearest! I am your own too entirely to need to say so.

_Ba._

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

Friday.
[Post-mark, August 21, 1846.]

I think—now that the week is over with its opportunities,—and now that no selfish complaining can take advantage of your goodness,—that I will ask you how _I_ feel, do you suppose, without my proper quantity of ‘morphine’? May I call you my morphine?

And speaking of ‘proper quantities’—there were some remarks of yours which I altogether acquiesced in, yesterday, about a humiliating dependence in money-matters; though I should be the first to except myself from feeling _buite_ with the world there—I have told you, indeed,—but my case is not everybody’s. I hate being _master_, and alone, and absolute disposer in points where real love will save me the trouble ... because there are infinitely more and greater points where the solitary action and will, with their responsibility, cannot be avoided. I suppose _that_ is Goethe’s meaning when he says every man has liberty enough—political liberty and social: so that when they let him write ‘Faust’ after his own fashion, he does not mind how they dispose of his money, or even limit his own footsteps. Ah,—but there are the good thousands all round who don’t want to write ‘Fausts,’ and only have money to spend and walks to take, and how do _they_ like such an arrangement? Moreover, I should be perhaps more refractory than anybody, if what I cheerfully agree to, as happening to take my fancy, were forced on me, as the only reasonable course. All men ought to be independent, whatever Carlyle may say. And so, too, I like being alone, myself—but I should be sorry to see the ordinary friends I have, live alone. Do you understand all this, Ba? Will you make me say it, in your mind, intelligibly? And then will you say still more of your own till the true thing is completely said? And, after all, will you kiss me?’

As I asked you yesterday ... because of a most foolish, thoughtless allusion,—which I only trust you never noticed ... do not you allude to it, not even to forgive me, dearest, dearest. I would rather be unforgiven than pain you afresh to do it ... but perhaps you did not notice my silly expression after all.... I wished your dear hands before my eyes, I know! Still you would know it was only thoughtlessness.

All this sad morning the blackness has been quite enough to justify our fire ... we have had one there two or three days. But now the sun comes out—and I will hope you follow him,—after Mr. Kenyon’s visit? _That_ is to be I think!

I never write anything bearable, even for _me_, on these days when no letter from you leads me on phrase by phrase ... I am thrown too completely on the general feelings—‘Do you love Ba?—then tell her _that_!’ Yes, indeed! It is easier to leave all the love untold, having to speak for the moment of Finchley only! Finchley,—the cottage,—Ba entering it—Flush following her ... now I come to something I wanted to say! In the paper, this morning, is a paragraph about the bold villainy of _dog-stealers_. There is an ‘organised society’ of these fellows, and they seize and convey away everybody’s Flushes, ‘if such a one ever _were_,’ as Iago rhymes of his perfect wife. So friend Flush must go his _high_ ways only, and keep out of alleys and dark corners: beside in Pisa, he must guard the house. In earnest, I warn you, Ba!

Now tell me—will there be any impediment to Tuesday?

I think I will go out into this sunshine while it lasts. I am very well considering there are three days to wait, but a walk will do no harm,—nor will I.

All speech to you shall be ever simple, simplest. I can only love you and say so,—and I do love you, best beloved!

Your own, very own.

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

Friday Evening.
[Post-mark, August 22, 1846.]

Can I be as good for you as morphine is for me, I wonder ... even at the cost of being as bad also? Can’t you leave me off without risking your life,—nor go on with me without running the hazards of all poison. Ah!—it will not do, so. The figure exceeds me, let _it_ be ever so fatal. I may not be your morphine, even if I shall be your Ba!—you _see_!

You are my prophet though, in a few things. For instance, Mr. Kenyon came to-day, and sate here I really believe two hours, talking of poor Papa ... (oh! not of _us_, my prophet!) and at length, of the Pyrenees and of Switzerland, and of the characteristics of mountain scenery—full of interest it all was, and I thought (while he talked) that when you and I had done with the crocodiles, we might look for a chamois or two. If I ‘drive,’ I shall drive that way, I think still ... that is, ever since four o’clock, I _have_ thought. Mr. Kenyon said ... ‘You had a visitor yesterday!’ ‘Yes’ said I—‘Mr. Browning came.’ ‘You mean that he actually _did_ come, through that pouring rain! Well—he told me he was coming: but when I saw the rain, I imagined it to be out of the question.’ Just observe his subtlety. Imagining that you did not come yesterday he concluded of course that you would come to-day,—and straightway hurried here himself! Moreover he seems to me to have resolved on never again leaving London! Because Mr. Eagles goes to the seaside instead of to the Quantock hills, Mr. Kenyon has written to Landor a proposition toward a general renouncement of the adventure. Quite cross I felt, to hear of it! And it doesn’t unruffle me to be told, even that he goes to Richmond on Tuesday and sleeps there and spends the Wednesday. Nothing _can_ unruffle me. So tiresome it is! Then I am provoked a little by the news he brought me of ‘Miss Martineau’s leaving the Lakes for a month or two’—seeing that _if_ she leaves the Lakes, it is for London—there are nets on all sides of us. I am under a promise to see her, and I shrink both from herself and her consequences. Now, _is_ it not tiresome? Those are coming, and these are _not_ going away. The hunters are upon us ... and where we run, we run into the nets.

Dearest, I have been considering one thing, and do _you_ consider whether, if we _do_ achieve this peculiar madness of going to Italy, we should take any books, and what they should be. A few books of the small editions would be desirable perhaps—and then it were well for us to arrange it so that we should not take duplicates, and that the possession of the duodecimo should ‘have the preference’ ... do you understand? Also, this arrangement being made, and the time approaching, I had better perhaps send you _my_ part of the books, so as to save the difficulty of taking more packets than absolutely were necessary, from this house. It will be very difficult to remove things without exciting observation—and _my sisters must not observe_. The consequences would be frightful if they were suspected of knowing; and, poor things, I could not drive them into acting a part.

My own beloved, when my courage seems to bend and break, I turn to you and look at you ... as men see visions! _It is enough, always._ Did you ever give me pain by a purpose of yours?—do you not rather keep me from all pain?—do we blame the wind that breathes gently, because a reed or a weed trembles in it? I could not feel much pain while sitting near you, I think—unless you suffered a little, ... or looked as if you did not love me. And _that_ was not at least yesterday.

May God bless you dearest, ever dearest.

I am your own.

Say how your mother is—and how you are. _Don’t_ neglect this.

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

Saturday.
[Post-mark, August 22, 1846.]

Your first note reached me at six o’clock yesterday ... did the dear living spirit inside help it along in spite of all the post’s hindrances? And this second comes duly. When you know I am most at a loss how to thank you, invariably you begin thanking _me_! Is that because of my own practice of saying a foolish thing and then, to cover it, asking you to kiss me? I think I will tell you now what that foolish thing was,—lest you, missing it, should go hunting and find worse, and far worse. I will just remind you, that on your enumerating your brothers and sisters, I said without a moment’s thought ‘so, _you are seven_’!... And you know how Wordsworth applied that phrase ... and in the sudden fear of wounding dearest Ba, I took such refuge for myself, rather than her! Will you kiss me now, my own love? And say nothing, but let it die away here, this stupidity of mine.

I hardly conceive what Mr. Kenyon means ... except perhaps a sort of general exhortation to take care, and—I mean, if he came for the purpose of catching me _only_,—he ought either to know or not know, keep silence or speak, approve or condemn ... and to do _neither_ being so easy, his own cautiousness would keep him away, I should have thought.

About your books, you speak altogether wisely: in this first visit to Italy we had better take only enough to live upon,—travelling books,—and return for the rest. And so with everything else. I shall put papers &c. into a room and turn the key on them and my death’s heads—because when we come back (think of you and me ... why, we shall walk arm in arm,—would Flush object to carry an umbrella in his mouth? And so let Lough cut us in marble, all three!)—well, when we come back, all can be done leisurely and considerately. And _then_, Greece, Egypt, Syria, the Chamois-country, as Ba pleases!

Ba, Lord Byron is altogether in my affection again ... I have read on to the end, and am quite sure of the great qualities which the last ten or fifteen years had partially obscured. Only a little longer life and all would have been gloriously right again. I read this book of Moore’s too long ago: but I always retained my first feeling for Byron in many respects ... the interest in the places he had visited, in relics of him. I would at any time have gone to Finchley to see a curl of his hair or one of his gloves, I am sure—while Heaven knows that I could not get up enthusiasm enough to cross the room if at the other end of it all Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey were condensed into the little China bottle yonder, after the Rosicrucian fashion ... they seem to ‘have their reward’ and want nobody’s love or faith. Just one of those trenchant opinions which I found fault with Byron for uttering,—as ‘proving nothing’! But telling a weakness to Ba is not telling it to ‘the world,’ as poor authors phrase it!

By the way, Chorley has written another very kind paper, in that little journal of to-day, ‘Colombe’s Birthday’—I have only glanced at it however. See his goodwill: I will bring it on Tuesday, if you please in goodness. I was not _quite_ so well ... (there is the bare truth ...) this morning early—but the little there was to _go_, _has_ gone, and I am about to go out. My mother continues indisposed. The connection between our ailings is no fanciful one. A few weeks ago when my medical adviser was speaking about the pain and its cause ... my mother sitting by me ... he exclaimed ‘Why, has anybody to search far for a cause of whatever nervous disorder you may suffer from, when _there_ sits your mother ... whom you so absolutely resemble ... I can trace every feature &c. &c.’ To which I did _not_ answer, ‘And will anybody wonder that the said disorder flies away, when there sits my Ba, whom I so thoroughly adore.’

Yes, there you sit, Ba!

And here I kiss you, best beloved,—my very own as I am your own—

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

Saturday.
[Post-mark, August 22, 1846.]

I begin to write before one this morning, with the high resolve that you shall have a letter on Sunday, to-morrow, at least,—it shall be put into the post so precisely at the right hour. At two I am going out in the carriage to Mr. Boyd’s and other places,—and dining duties are to be performed before then, and before now I have had a visitor. Guess whom—Mrs. Jameson. So I am on a ‘narrow neck of land’ ... such as Wesley wrote hymns about; ... and _stans in pede uno_ on it—can make for you but a hurried letter.

She came in with a questioning face, and after wondering to find me visible so soon, plunged into the centre of the question and asked ‘what was settled ... what I was doing about Italy.—’ ‘Just nothing,’ I told her. ‘She found me as she left me, able to say no word.’

‘But what _are_ you going to do—’ throwing herself back in the chair with a sudden—‘but oh, I must not enquire.’

I went on to say that ‘in the first place my going would not take place till quite the end of September if so soon,—that I had determined to make no premature fuss,—and that, for the actual present, nothing was either to be done or said.

‘Very sudden then, it is to be. In fact, there is only an _elopement_ for you—’ she observed laughing.

So I was obliged to laugh.

(But, dearest, nobody will use such a word surely to the _event_. We shall be in such an obvious exercise of Right by Daylight—surely nobody will use such a word.)

I talked of Mr. Kenyon,—how he had been with me yesterday and brought the mountains of the Earth into my room—‘which was almost too much,’ I said, ‘for a prisoner.’ ‘Yes—but if you go to Italy....’

‘But Mr. Kenyon thinks I shall not. In his opinion, my case is desperate.’

‘But I tell you that it is not. Nobody’s case is desperate when the will is not at fault. And a woman’s will when she wills thoroughly as I hope you do, is strong enough to overcome. When I hear people say that _circumstances are against them_, I always retort, ... you mean _that your will is not with you_! I believe in the will—I have faith in it.’

There is an oracle for us, to remember for good! She goes to Paris, she says, with her niece, between the seventh and tenth of September,—and after a few days at Paris she goes to Orleans for the cathedral’s sake—but what follows is doubtful ... Italy is doubtful. Only that my opinion is, as I told her, that if Italy is doubtful here in London, at Orleans, when she gets there, it will be certain. She will not resist the attraction towards the South. She looked at me all the while she told me this ... looked into my eyes, like a Diviner.

On Monday morning she comes to see me again. It is all painful, or rather unpleasant. One should not use strong words out of place, and there will remain too much use for this. How I teaze you now!

Believe me, through it all, that when I think of the very worst of the future, I love you the best, and feel most certain of never hesitating. As long as you choose to have me, my beloved, I have chosen—I am yours already—

and your own always—

_Ba_.

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

Sunday Morning.
[Post-mark, August 24, 1846.]

But dearest—Did you not understand that I understood? I know your words better than you think, you see. Were you afraid to trust me to give a chase to them in my recollection, lest I should fall blindly upon some ‘Secret Sin’ of yours? a wild boar, instead of a poor little coney belonging to the rocks of my desolation?—such as it was before you made the yellow furze grow everywhere on it? Now, it is like me for wickedness, to begin talking of your ‘Secret Sins,’ just by this opportunity. You overcome me with goodness—there’s the real truth, and the whole of it.

While I am writing, comes in Arabel with such a face. My brother had been talking, talking of me. Stormie suddenly touched her and said—‘Is it true that there is an engagement between Mr. Browning and Ba—?’ She was taken unaware, but had just power to say ‘You had better ask them, if you want to know. What nonsense, Storm.’ ‘Well,’ he resumed, ‘I’ll ask Ba when I go up-stairs.’ George was by, looking as grave as if antedating his judgeship. Think how frightened I was, Robert ... expecting them up-stairs every minute,—for all my brothers come here on Sunday, all together. But they came, and not a single word was said—not on that subject, and I talked on every other in a sort of hurried way—I was so frightened.

Saturday Mr. Boyd and I talked on _it_ for two hours nearly, he would not let me go with his kindness. Nothing, he said, would make him gladder than our having gone, and escaped the storms. In fact, what with affection for me, and disaffection in other directions, he thinks of nothing besides, I do believe. He only wishes that he had known last year, in order to exhort me properly. The very triumph of reason and righteousness, he considers the whole affair. But I told you what Mr. Boyd is—dear, poor Mr. Boyd! Talking such pure childishness sometimes, in such pure Attic—yet one of the very most upright men, after all, that I ever dreamt of—one of the men born shepherds—with a crook in the hand, instead of the metaphorical ‘silver spoon in the mouth.’ Good, dear Mr. Boyd,—I am very grateful to him for his goodness to me just now. I assure you that he takes us up exactly as if we were Ossian and Macpherson, or a criticism of Porson’s, or a new chapter of Bentley on Phalaris. By the way, _do you believe in Ossian_? Let me be properly prepared for that question.

But I have a question for you of my own. Listen to me, my Famous in Council, and give me back words of wisdom. A long, long while ago, nearly a year since perhaps, I wrote to the Blackwoods of Edinburgh to mention my new ‘Prometheus,’ and to ask if they would care to use it in their magazine, _that_, and verses more my own; whether they would care to have them at the usual magazine terms—I had some lyrics by me, and people have constantly advised me to print in Blackwood, with the prospect of republishing in the independent form. You get at the public so, and are paid for your poems instead of paying for them. Did I tell you all this before—and about my having written the enquiry? At any rate, no reply came—I concluded that Mr. Blackwood did not think it worth while to write, and eschewed the poems—and the subject passed from my thoughts till last night. Then came a very civil note. The authorities receiving nothing from me, were afraid that their answer to my letter had not reached me, and therefore wrote again. They would ‘like to see’ my ‘Prometheus’ though apprehensive of its being unfit for the Magazine—but particularly desire to have all manner of lyrics, whatever I have by me. Now, what do you think? What shall I do? Would it not be well to let this door between us and Blackwood stand open. One is not in the worst company there—they pay well,—and you have the opportunity of standing face to face with the public at any moment—without hindering the solemner interviews. When we are in Italy, particularly...! Do you see? Tell me your thoughts.

Since I began this letter, I have been to the Scotch Church in our neighbourhood—and it has all been in vain—I could not stay. We heard that a French minister, a M. Alphonse Monod of Montauban, was to preach at three o’clock, in French—and counting on a small congregation, and Arabel (through a knowledge of the localities) encouraging me with the prospect of sitting close to the door, and retiring back into the entrance-hall when the singing began, so as to escape that excitement—I agreed to make the trial, and she and I set out in a cab from the cab-stand hard by ... to which we walked. But the church was filling, obviously filling, as we arrived ... and grew fuller and fuller. We went in and came out again, and I sate down on the stairs—and the people came faster and faster, and I could not keep the tears out of my eyes to begin with. One gets nervous among all these people if a straw stirs. So Arabel after due observations on every side, decided that it would be too much of a congregation for me, and that I had better go home to Flush—(poor Flush having been left at home in a state of absolute despair). She therefore put me into a cab and sent me to Wimpole Street, and stayed behind herself to hear M. Monod—there’s my adventure to-day. When I opened my door on my return, Flush threw himself upon me with a most ecstatical agony, and for full ten minutes did not cease jumping and kissing my hands—he thought he had lost me for certain, this time. Oh! and you warn me against the danger of losing _him_. Indeed I take care and take thought too—those ‘organised banditti’ are not merely banditti _de comedie_—they are a dreadful reality. Did I not tell you once that they had announced to me that I should not have Flush back the _next time_, for less than ten guineas? But you will let him come with us to Italy, instead—will you not, dear, dearest? in good earnest, will you not? Because, if I leave him behind, he will be teazed for my sins in this house—or I could not be sure of the reverse of it. And even if he escaped that fate, consider how he would break his heart about me. Dogs pine to death sometimes—and if ever a dog loved a man, or a woman, Flush loves me. But you say that he shall keep the house at Pisa—and you mean it, I hope and I think?—you are in earnest. May God bless you,—_so_, I say my prayers, though I missed the Church. To-morrow, comes my letter ... come my two letters! the happy Monday! The happier Tuesday, if on Tuesday comes the writer of the letters!

His very own BA.

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

Sunday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, August 24, 1846.]

This time, they brought me your letter at six o’clock yesterday evening: was I startled, or no, do you think, as I received it? But all proved right, and kind as ever, or kinder. By the post-mark, I see you _did_ go out. Can you care in this way for my disappointments and remedy them? If I did not love you, how I would begin _now_! Every day shows me more to love in you, dearest, and I open my arms as wide as I can ... ‘incomprehensible’ Ba, as Donne would say! Also he would say much better things, however.

What a visitation! Miss Martineau is the more formidable friend, however—Mrs. Jameson will be contented with a little confidence, you see, and ask no questions—but I doubt if you arrange matters so easily with the new-comer. Because no great delicacy can be kept alive with all that conceit—and such conceit! A lady told me a few weeks ago that she had seen a letter in which Miss M. gave as her reason for not undertaking _then_, during the London season, this very journey which empty London is to benefit from now, ‘that at such a time she should be _mobbed to death_’: whereupon the lady went on to comment, ‘Miss M. little knows what London is, and how many nearly as notable objects may be found to divert its truculence from herself’—Tom Thumb, and Ibrahim Pacha, to wit.

Why do you suspect that you ‘teaze’ me when you say ‘there will remain too much use for the word “painful”’? Do you not know more of me by this time, my own Ba? When I have spoken of the probable happiness of our future life—of the chances in our favour from a community of tastes and feelings,—I have really done it on your account, not mine. I very well know that there would be an exquisite, secret happiness _through_ pain with you, or for you—but it is not for me to insist on _that_, with that divine diffidence in your own worth which meets me wherever I turn to approach you, and puts me so gently aside ... so I rather retire and content myself with occupying the ground you _do_ concede ... and since you will only hear of my being happy in the obvious, ordinary way, I tell you, with perfect truth, that you, and only you, can make me thus—that only you, of all women, look in the direction that I look, and feel as I feel, and live for the ends of my life; and beside that, see with my eyes the most natural and immediate way of reaching them, through a simple life, retirements from the world here (not from the real world), travel, and the rest. But all the while I know ... do not _you_ know, Ba? ... that the joy’s essence is in the life with you, for the sake of you, not of the mere vulgar happiness; and that if any of our calculations should fail, it will be a surprise, a delight, a pride to me to take the new taste you shall prescribe, or leave the old one you forbid. My life being yours, what matters the change which you effect in it?

Here, you mean not even so much as this by your ‘painful’—‘Elopement’! Let them call it ‘felony’ or ‘burglary’—so long as they don’t go to church with us, and propose my health after breakfast! Now you fancy this a gratuitous piece of impertinence, do you not, Ba? You are wrong, sweet: I speak from directest experience—having dreamed, the night before last, that we were married, and that on adjourning to the house of a friend of mine, his brother, a young fop I know slightly, made a speech, about a certain desk or dressing-case, which he ended by presenting to me in the name of the house! Whereto I replied in a strain of the most alarming fluency ( ... all in the dream, I need not tell you)—‘and then I woke.’ Oh _can_ I have smiled, higher up in the letter, at Miss Martineau’s over-excitability on the subject of ‘mobbing’ here? The greatest coward is the wisest man ... even the suspicion of such mobs ought to keep people at their lakes, or send them to their Pisas.

By the way, Byron speaks of plucking oranges in his garden at Pisa ... I saw just a courtyard with a high wall—which may have been a garden ... but a gloomier one than the palace, even, warrants. They have painted the front fresh staring yellow and changed its name ... there being another Casa Lanfranchi on the other side of the Arno.

Now I will kiss you, dearest: used you to divine that at the very beginning, I have sometimes shortened the visit in order to arrive at the time of taking your hand?

You will write to me to-night, I think—Tuesday is our day, remember. May God bless you, my very very dearest—

Your R.

That sonnet will not turn up—it is neither in Vasari, nor Dolce, nor Castiglione ... probably in Richardson’s ‘Painting’ which somebody has borrowed—but I will find it yet, knowing that it must be near at hand.

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

Monday Morning.
[Post-mark, August 24, 1846.]

My own dearest, let me say the most urgent thing first. You hear these suspicions of your brothers. Will you consider if, during this next month, we do not risk too much in seeing each other as usual? We risk everything ... and what do we gain, in the face of that? I can learn no more about you, be taught no new belief in your absolute peerlessness—I have taken my place at your feet for ever: all my use of the visits is, therefore, the perfect delight of them ... and to hazard a whole life of such delight for the want of self-denial during a little month,—that would be horrible. I altogether sympathise with your brothers’ impatience, or curiosity, or anxiety, or ‘graveness’—and am prepared for their increasing and growing to heights difficult or impossible to be borne. But do you not think we may avoid compelling any premature crisis of this kind? I am guided by your feelings, as I seem to perceive them, in this matter; the harm to be apprehended is _through_ the harm to _them_—to your brothers. If they determine on avowedly _knowing_ what we intend, I do not see which to fear most; the tacit acquiescence in our scheme which may draw down a vengeance on them without doing us the least good,—or the open opposition which would bring about just so much additional misfortune. I _know_, now, your perfect adequacy to any pain and danger you will incur for our love’s sake—I believe in you as you would have me believe: but give yourself to me, dearest dearest Ba, the entire creature you are, and not a lacerated thing only reaching my arms to sink there. Perhaps this is all a sudden fancy, not justified by circumstances, arising from my ignorance of the characters of those I talk about; that is for you to decide—your least word reassures me, as always. But I fear much for _you_, to make up, perhaps, for there being nothing else in the world fit to fear: I exclude direct visitations of God, which cannot be feared, after all—dreadful dooms to which we should bow. But the ‘fear’ _proper_, means with me an apprehension that, with all my best effort, it may be unable to avert some misfortune ... the effort going on all the time: and _this_ is a real effort, dearest Ba, this letter: consider it thus. I will (if possible) send it to town, so as to reach you earlier and allow you to write _one line_ in reply. You have heard all I can say ... say you, _shall I come to-morrow?_ If you think it advisable, I will come and be most happy.

Another thing: you see your excitement about the church and the crowd.... My own love, are you able,—with all that great, wonderful heart of yours,—to bear the railway fatigues, and the entering and departure from Paris and Orleans and the other cities and towns? Would not the long sea-voyage be infinitely better, if a little dearer? Or what can be _dear_ if it prevents all that risk, or rather certainty, of excitement and fatigue? You see, the packet sails on the 30th September and the _15th October_. As three of us go, they would probably make some reduction in price. Ah, even here, I must smile ... will you affirm that ever _an approximation to a doubt_ crossed your mind about Flush? I think your plans with respect to ‘Blackwood’ most excellent—I see _many_ advantages.

* * * * *

Here is the carriage for my sister, who is going to stay in town at the Arnoulds’ for a week,—with Mrs. A. in it to fetch her. I shall give this letter to be put in the post—I have _all_ to say, but the _very_ essential is said—understand me, my best, only love, and forgive my undue alarm, for the sake of the love that prompts it. Write the one line ... do not let me do myself wrong by my anxiety—if I _may_ come, _let me_! Bless you, Ba.

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

Monday Evening.
[Post-mark, August 25, 1846.]

Dearest, how you frightened me with the sight of your early letter! But it is only your wisdom,—which by this time should scarcely startle me,—there’s a compliment, to begin with, you see, in change for all the praises; ... my ‘peerlessness’ (!!!) being settled like the Corn Law repeal!—oh, you want no more evidence of it, not you! (poor blind you!) and the other witnesses are bidden to ‘stand down’—‘I may smile even _now_’ ... as you say _quoad_ Flush, ... smile at your certainty as you smile at my doubt. Will you let me smile, and not call it a peerless insolence, or ingratitude,—dearest you?

For dearest you are, and best in the world, ... it all comes to _that_, ... and considerate for me always: and at once I agree with you that for this interval it will be wise for us to set the visits, ... ‘our days’ ... far apart, ... nearly a week apart, perhaps, so as to escape the dismal evils we apprehend. I agree in all you say—in all. At the same time, the cloud has passed for the present—nothing has been said more, and not a word to me; and nobody appears out of humour with me. They will be displeased of course, in the first movement ... we must expect _that_ ... they will be vexed at the occasion given to conversation and so on. But it will be a passing feeling, and their hearts and their knowledge of circumstances may be trusted to justify me thoroughly. I do not fear offending them—there is no room for fear. At this point of the business too, you place the alternative rightly—their approbation or their disapprobation is equally to be escaped from. Also, we may be certain that they would press the applying for permission—and I might perhaps, in the storm excited, among so many opinions and feelings, fail to myself and you, through weakness of the body. Not of the _Will_! And for my affections and my conscience, they turn to you—and untremblingly turn.

Will you come on _Wednesday_ rather than Tuesday then? It is only one day later than we meant at first, but it nearly completes a week of separation; and we can then go to next week for the next day. Also, on Wednesday we secure Mr. Kenyon’s absence. He will be still at Richmond.

Your letter which startled me by coming early, yet came too late for you to receive the answer to it to-night. But I will send it to the post to-night; and I write hurriedly to be in time for that end.