Chapter III: Part 3

_After_ the question about the ‘Sirens’ song to Ulysses, dearest? Then directly _before_, I suppose, the other ‘difficult question’ talked of by your Sir Thomas Browne, as to ‘what name Achilles bore when he lived among the women.’ _That_, you think, will be an appropriate position for our ‘moot point’ which, once in England, was guilty of tiring you and making your head ache:—and as for Achilles’ name when he lived among women, it was Μῶρος you will readily guess, and I shall not dare to deny. Only ... only ... I never shall be convinced on the ‘previous question’ by the arguments of your letter—it is not possible.

May I say just one thing, without touching that specific subject? There is a certain class of sacrifice which men who live in society, should pay willingly to society ... the sacrifice of little or indifferent things, ... in respect to mere manners and costume. There is another class of sacrifice which should be refused by every righteous man though ever so eminently a social man, and though to the loss of his social position. Now you would be the last, I am sure, to confound these two classes of sacrifice—and you will admit that our question is simply _between them_ ... and to which of them, duelling belongs ... and not at all whether society is in itself a desirable thing and much rejoiced in by the Browns and Smiths. You refuse to wear a fool’s cap in the street, because society forbids you—which is well: but if, in order to avoid wearing it, you shoot the ‘foolish child’ who forces it upon you ... why you do _not_ well, by any means: it would not be well even for a Brown or a Smith—but for my poet of the ‘Bells and Pomegranates,’ it is very ill, wonderfully ill ... so ill, that I shut my eyes, and have the heartache (for the headache!) only to think of it. So I will not. Why should we see things so differently, ever dearest? If anyone had asked me, I could have answered for you that you saw it quite otherwise. And you would hang men even—you!

Well! Because I do ‘not rue’ (and am so much the more unfit to die) I am to be stabbed through the body by an act of ‘private judgment’ of my next neighbour. So I must take care and ‘rue’ when I do anything wrong—and I begin now, for being the means of tiring you, ... and for seeming to persist _so_! You may be right and I wrong, of course—I only speak as I _see_. And will not speak any more last words ... taking pardon for these. _I rue._

To-day I was down-stairs again—and if the sun shines on as brightly, I shall be out of doors before long perhaps.

Your headache! tell me how your headache is,—remember to tell me. When your letter came, I kissed it by a sort of instinct ... not that I do always at first sight (please to understand), but because the writing did not look angry ... not vexed writing. Then I read ... ‘First of all, kiss’....

So it seemed like magic.

Only I know that if I went on to write disagreeing disagreeable letters, you might not help to leave off loving me at the end. I seem to see through this crevice.

Good Heavens!—how dreadfully natural it would be to me, seem to me, if you _did_ leave off loving me! How it would be like the sun’s setting ... and no more wonder! Only, more darkness, more pain. May God bless you my only dearest! and me, by keeping me

Your

BA.

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

Thursday. 8 A.M.
[Post-mark, April 9, 1846.]

Dearest, I have to go out presently and shall not be able to return before night ... so that the letter I expect will only be read _then_, and answered to-morrow—what will it be, the letter? Nothing but dear and kind, I know ... even deserve to know, in a sense,—because I am sure all in _my_ letter was meant to be ‘read by your light.’ I submit, unfeignedly, to you, there as elsewhere—and,—as I said, I think,—I wrote _so_, precisely because it was never likely to be my own case. I should consider it the _most_ unhappy thing that could possibly happen to me,—(putting aside the dreadful possibilities one refuses to consider at all,—the _most_).

Have you made any discoveries about the disposition of Saturday? May I come, dearest? (On Saturday evening I shall see a friend who will tell me all he knows about ships and voyage expenses—or refer me to higher authorities.)

Bless you, now and ever, my own Ba. Do you know, next Saturday, in its position of successor to Good Friday, will be the anniversary of Mr. Kenyon’s asking me, some four years ago, ‘if _I would like to see_ Miss B.’ How I remember? I was staying with him for a couple of days. Now, I will ask myself ‘would you like to kiss Ba?’ ‘_Then comes the Selah._’ Goodbye, dearest-dearest!

Yours R.

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

Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 10, 1846.]

I thought you had not written to me to-night, ever dearest! Nine o’clock came and went, and I heard no postman’s knock; and I supposed that I did not deserve (in your mind) to hear it at all. At last I rang the bell and said to Wilson ... ‘Look in the letter-box—there may be a letter perhaps. If there should be none, you need not come up-stairs to tell me—I shall understand.’ So she left me, and, _that_ time, I listened for _footsteps_ ... the footsteps of my letter. If I had not heard them directly, what should I have thought?

You are good and kind, ... _too_ good and kind, ... always, always!—and I love you gratefully and shall to the end, and with an unspeakable apprehension of what you are in yourself, and towards me:—yet you cannot, you know,—you know you cannot, dearest ... ‘submit’ to me in an _opinion_, any more than I could to you, if I desired it ever so anxiously. We will talk no more however on this subject now. I have had some pain from it, of course ... but I am satisfied to have had the pain, for the knowledge ... which was as necessary as possible, under circumstances, for more reasons than one.

Dearest ... before I go to talk of something else ... will you be besought of me to consider within yourself, ... and not with me to teaze you; _why_ the ‘case,’ spoken of, should ‘never in likelihood be your own?’ Are you and yours charmed from the influence of offensive observations ... _personally_ offensive? ‘The most unhappy thing that could happen to you,’ is it, on that account, the farthest thing?

Now—! Mrs. Jameson was here to-day, and in the room before, almost, I heard of her being on the stairs. It is goodnatured of her to remember me in her brief visits to London—and she brought me two or three St. Sebastians with the arrows through them, etched by herself, to look at—very goodnatured! Once she spoke of you—‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you saw Mr. Browning’s last number! yes, I remember how you spoke of it. I suppose Mr. Kenyon lent you his copy’.... And before I could speak, she was on another subject. But I should not have had heart to say what I meant and predetermined to say, even if the opportunity to-day had been achieved. As if you could not be read except in Mr. Kenyon’s copy! I might have confessed to my own copy, even if not to my own original ... do you not think?

Before she came, I went down to the drawing-room, I and Flush, and found no one there ... and walked drearily up and down the rooms, and, so, came back to mine. May you have spent your day better. There was sunshine for you, as I could see. God bless you and keep you. Saturday may be clear for us, or may not—and if it should not be clear, certainly Monday and Tuesday will not ... what shall be done? Will you wait till Wednesday? or will you (now let it be as you choose!) come on Saturday, running the risk of finding only a parcel ... a book and a letter ... and so going away, if there should be reasons against the visit. Because last Monday was _known_ of, and I shall not ascertain until Saturday whether or not we shall be at liberty. Or ... shall we at once say _Wednesday_? It is for your decision. You go out on Saturday evening ... and perhaps altogether there may be a conspiracy against Saturday. Judge and decide.

I am writing as with the point of a pilgrim’s staff rather than a pen. ‘We are all strangers and pilgrims.’ Can you read anywise?

I think of you, bless you, love you—but it would have been better for you never to have seen my face perhaps, though Mr. Kenyon gave the first leave. _Perhaps!!_—I ‘flatter’ _myself_ to-night, in change for _you_.

Best beloved I am your

BA.

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

Friday—2 o’clock p.m.
[Post-mark, April 10, 1846.]

Ever dearest I wrote last night what might make you doubtful and uncomfortable about Saturday; being doubtful myself and not knowing what word to say of it. But just now Papa has been here in the room with me,—and a beatific Jamaica packet has just come in, as the post declares ... (Benedetta sia l’ora &c.!) and he will ‘hear more,’ he says, ‘_in the city to-morrow_!’—So we are safe. Come, if there should be no reason of your own for staying. For me, I seem to have more need than usual of seeing you. May God bless you. I am

Your

BA.

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

Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, April 10, 1846.]

Dearest, sweetest best—how can you, seeing so much, yet see that ‘possibility’—_I leave off loving_ you! and be ‘angry’ and ‘vexed’ and the rest! Well—take care I don’t answer fairly and plainly that I _can_ do all this—as the poor women had to confess in their bewilderment when grave judges asked ‘by which of the thirty-seven ways they were accustomed to signify their desire of his presence to Asmodeus—&c. &c.—But I cannot jest, nor trifle here—I protest in the most solemn way I am capable of conceiving, that I am altogether unable to imagine how or whence or why any possible form of anger or vexation or any thing akin can or could or should or shall ever rise in me to you—it is a sense hitherto undreamed of, a new faculty—altogether an inexplicable, impossible feeling. I am not called on, surely, to suppose cases of pure impossibility? To say, ‘if you did thus or thus,’—what I know you could no more do than go and kill cows with your own hand, and dig up kale grounds? But I _can_ fancy your being angry with me, very angry—and speaking the truth of the anger—that is to be _fancied_: and God knows I should in that case kiss _my_ letters, here, till you pleased to judge me not unworthy to kiss the hem of your garment again. My own Ba! My election is made or God made it for me,—and is irrevocable. I am wholly yours. I see you have yet to understand what that implies,—but you will one day. And in this, just said, I understand _serious_ anger, for serious offences; to which, despite my earnest endeavour, who shall say I may not be liable? What are you given me for but to make me better—and, in that, happier? If you could save my soul, ‘so as by fire,’ would your dear love shrink from that? But in the matter we really refer to.... Oh, Ba, did I not pray you at the beginning to _tell_ me the instant you detected anything to be altered by _human_ effort? to give me that chance of becoming more like you and worthier of you? and here where you think me gravely in the wrong, and I am growing conscious of being in the wrong,—one or two repetitions of such conduct as yours, such ‘disagreeable letters,’ and I _must_ ‘leave off’.... When I do _that_ on such ground ... I need imprecate no foolish sense on my head,—the very worst will be in full operation. I only wrote to justify an old feeling, exercised only in the case of others I have heard of—men called ‘cool murderers,’ ‘deliberate imbruers of their hands in,’ &c. &c.—and I meant just to say,—well,—I, and others, despise your society and only go into it now to be the surer that, when we leave it, we were not excluded as the children turn from the grapes because their teeth are set on edge, whatever may be the foxes’ pretext—but, for your own devoted followers be a little more merciful, and while you encourage them to spend a dozen years in a law-suit, lest they lose a few pounds ... but I won’t repeat the offence, dear—_you are right_ and I am wrong and will lay it to heart, and now kiss, not your feet this time, because I am the prouder, far from the more humble, by this admission and retractation——

Your note arrives here—Ba;—it would have been ‘better for me,’ _that_? Oh, dearest, let us marry soon, very soon, and end all this! If I could begin taking exceptions again, I might charge you with such wild conventionalism, such wondrous perversity of sight or blindness rather! _Can_ you, now, by this time, tell me or yourself that you could believe me happy with any other woman that ever breathed? I tell _you_, without affectation, that I lay the whole blame to myself ... that I feel that if I had spoken my love out _sufficiently_, all this doubt could never have been possible. You quite believe I am in earnest, know my own mind and speak as I feel, on these points we disputed about—yet _I am_ far from being sure of it, or so it seems now—but, as for loving you,—_there_ I mistake, or may be wrong, or may, or might or or—

_Now_ kiss me, my best-dearest beloved! It seems I am always understood _so_—the words are words, and faulty, and inexpressive, or wrongly expressive,—but when I live under your eyes, and die, you will never mistake,—you _do not now_, thank God, say to me—‘you want to go elsewhere for all you say the visit seems too brief’—and, ‘you would change me for another, for all you possess’—never do you _say_ such things—but when I am away, all the mistaking begins—let it end soon, come, dearest life of my life, light of my soul, heart’s joy of my heart!

You feel I _must_ see you to-morrow if possible—at all events I will call for the parcel. (What made you suppose I was engaged to-morrow night? The saying that I should meet my sea-faring friend, perhaps? But that is to be _here_—he comes here—at all events, I recollect no other engagement—if I had one with Death himself, I almost think I would go,—folly!) But let the parcel be ready (to put into my hand at once) and I will venture at 3 o’clock.

In truth, all yesterday I was very unwell,—going about sight-seeing with a friend and his lady-cousins, and afterward dining with them—I came home dead with intense boring—I rarely remember to have suffered so much. To-day I am rather better,—much better, indeed. If I can but see you for a few minutes to-morrow!

May God bless you, dearest—and show you the truth in me, the one truth which I dare hope compensates for much that is to be forgiven: when I told you at the beginning I was not worthy, was infinitely lower &c., you seemed incredulous! well now, you see! I, that you _would_ persist in hoping better things of, held such opinions as those—and so you begin setting me right, and so I am set far on towards right—is not all well, love? And now go on, when I give next occasion, and tell me more, and let me alter more, and thank you, if I can, _more_,—but not, not love you more, you, Ba, whom I love wholly,—with all my faculties, all my being. May God bless you, again—it all ends there—!

Your own R.

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

Sunday.
[Post-mark, April 13, 1846.]

I will not speak much of the letter, as you desire that I should not. And because everything you write must be answered in some way and sense, ... must have some result, there is the less need of words in the present case. Let me say only then, ever dearest, dearest, that I never felt towards you as I felt when I had read that letter ... never loved you so entirely! ... that it went to my heart, and stayed there, and seemed to mix with the blood of it ... believe this of me, dear dearest beloved! For the rest, there is no need for me to put aside carefully the assumption of being didactic to _you_ ... of being better than _you_, so as to teach you! ... ah, you are so fond of dressing me up in pontifical garments (‘for fun,’ as the children say!)—but because they are too large for me, they drop off always of themselves, ... they do not require my pulling them off: these extravagances get righted of their own accord. After all, too, you, ... with that præternatural submissiveness of yours, ... you know your power upon the whole, and understand, in the midst of the obeisances, that you can do very much what you please, with your High Priest. Εἴ τις αἴσθησἲς in the ghosts of the tribe of Levi, let them see and witness how it is!

And now, do _you_ see. It was just natural that when we differed for the first time I should fall into low spirits. In the night, at dream-time, when instead of dreams ‘deep thought falleth upon man,’ suddenly I have been sad even to tears, do you know, to think of _that_: and whenever I am not _glad_, the old fears and misgivings come back—no, you _do not understand_ ... you _cannot_, perhaps! But dear, dearest, never think of yourself that you have expressed ‘insufficiently’ your feelings for me. Insufficiently! No words but _just your own_, between heaven and earth, could have persuaded me that one such as you could love me! and the tongue of angels could not speak better words for that purpose, than just yours. Also, I know that you love me.... I do know it, my only dearest, and recognize it in the gratitude of my soul:—and it is through my want of familiarity with any happiness—through the want of use in carrying these weights of flowers, that I drop them again and again out of weak hands. Besides the _truth_ is, that I am _not_ worthy of you—and if you were to see it just as I see it, why there would be an end ... there, ... I sometimes think reasonably.

Well—now I shall be good for at least a fortnight. Do I not teaze you and give you trouble? I feel ashamed of myself sometimes. Let me go away from myself to talk of Mr. Kenyon, therefore!

For he came to-day, and arrived in town on Friday evening—(what an escape on Saturday!) and said of you, ... with those detestable spectacles—like the Greek burning glasses, turned full on my face ... ‘I suppose now that Mr. Browning’s book is done and there are no more excuses for coming, he will come _without_ excuses.’ Then, after talk upon other subjects, he began a long wandering sentence, the end of which I could see a mile off, about how he ‘ought to know better than I, but wished to enquire of me’ ... what, do you suppose? ... why, ‘what Mr. Browning’s objects in life were. Because Mrs. Procter had been saying that it was a pity he had not seven or eight hours a day of occupation,’ &c. &c. It is a good thing to be angry, as a refuge from being confounded: I really _could say_ something to _that_. And I did say that you ‘did not _require_ an occupation as a means of living ... having simple habits and desires—nor as an end of living, since you found one in the exercise of your genius! and that if Mr. Procter had looked as simply to his art as an end, he would have done better things.’

Which made Mr. Kenyon cry out ... ‘Ah now! you are spiteful! and you need not be, for there was nothing unkind in what she said.’ ‘But _absurd_’! ... I insisted—‘seeing that to put race horses into dray carts, was not usually done nor advised.’

You told me she was a worldly woman; and here is a proof, sent back to you. But what business have worldly women to talk their dust and ashes over high altars in that way? I was angry and sinned not—angry for the moment. Then Mr. Kenyon agreed with me, I think, and illustrated the subject by telling me how Wordsworth had given himself to the service of the temple from the beginning—‘though,’ observed Mr. Kenyon, ‘he did not escape _so_ from worldliness.’ But William Wordsworth is not Robert Browning. Mr. Kenyon spoke of your family and of yourself with the best and most reverent words.

And all this reminds me of what I have often and often mused about saying to you, and shrank back, and torn the paper now and then.... You know the subject you wanted to discuss, on Saturday. Now whenever the time shall come for discussing that subject, let this be a point agreed upon by both of us. The peculiarity of our circumstances will enable us to be free of the world ... of our friends even ... of all observation and examination, in certain respects: now let us use the advantage which falls to us from our misfortune,—and, since we must act for ourselves at last, let us resist the curiosity of the whole race of third persons ... even the affectionate interest of such friends as dear Mr. Kenyon, ... and put it into the power of nobody to say to himself or to another, ... ‘she had so much, and he, so much, in worldly possessions—or she had not so much and he had not so much.’ Try to understand what I mean. As it is not of the least importance to either of us, as long as we can live, whether the sixpence, we live by, came most from you or from me ... and as it will be as much mine as yours, and yours as mine when we are together ... why let us join in throwing a little dust in all the winking eyes round—oh, it is nonsense and weakness, I know—but I would rather, rather, see winking eyes than staring eyes. What has anybody to do with us? Even my own family ... why should they _ever_ see the farthest figure of _our_ affairs, as to mere money? There now—it is said, ... what I have had in my head so long to say. And one other word resumes my meditations on ‘the subject’ which will not be ripe for discussion for ever so many months ... and that other word is ... that if ever I am to wrong you so much as to be yours _so_, it is on the condition of leaving England within the fewest possible half hours afterwards. I told you _that_, long ago—so bear it in mind. I should not dare breathe in this England. Think!—There is my father—and there is yours! Do you imagine that I am _not afraid of your family_? and should be still more, if it were not for the great agony of fear on the side of my own house. Ah—I must love you unspeakably ... even to dare think of the possibility of such things. So we will not talk of them now. I write what I write, to throw it off my mind and have done. Bear it in yours, but do not refer to it—_I ask you not to refer to it_.

A long straggling letter, this is. I shall have mine to-morrow. And you will tell me if Wednesday or Thursday shall be our day; and above all, tell me how you are. Then the book will come. Remember to send one to Mrs. Jameson! I write in haste ... in haste—but one may think of you either in haste or at leisure, without blotting the air. Love me, beloved ... do not leave off to see if I deserve it. I am at least (which is at most)

Your very own.

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

Sunday.
[Post-mark, April 13, 1846.]

Dearest, unspeakably dear Ba,—would I were with you! But my heart stays with you: I write this, tired somewhat and out of spirits—for I have been writing notes this morning; getting rid of the arrears which turn out more considerable than I thought. And the moment I have done, I look to the chair and the picture and desire to be at rest with you; the perfect rest and happiness here on earth. But _do_ think, my own Ba, in the direction I indicated yesterday—any obstacle now, would be more than I could bear—I feel I _must_ live with you,—if but for a year, a month—to express the love which words cannot express, nor these letters, nor aught else.

See one thing! Through your adorable generosity, my beloved,—at the beginning you pleased to tell me my love was returned,—that I had gained your love; without your assurance, I should never have believed that possible, whatever you may think; but _you_, what you _say_, I _believe_; would in other matters believe, rather than my own senses; and _here_ I believed—in humbleness, God knows; but so it was. —Then, is there not this one poor fruit of that generosity, one reassuring consideration, if you will accept it, that, nearly a year ago, I was in possession of all I aspired to?—so that if I had been too weak for my accorded happiness—likely to be in due time satiated with it, and less and less impressed by it, and so on, till at last ‘_I changed_,’—would not this have happened inevitably _before now_? I had gained your love; one could not go on gaining it—but some other love might be gained! Indeed, I don’t see how, in certain instances (where there is what is called a ‘pursuit,’ and all the excitement of suspense, and alternating hope and fear, all ending in the marriage day, after the fashion of a Congreve comedy), how with the certainty of that kind of success, all the interest of the matter can avoid terminating. But it does seem to me, that the love I have gained is as nothing to the love I trust to gain. I want the love at our lives’ end, the love after trial, the love of _my_ love, when mine shall have had time and occasion to prove itself! I have already, from the beginning indeed, had quite enough magnanimity to avoid wishing for opportunities of doing so at your expense—I pray you may never be in dangers from which I rescue you, nor meet sorrow from which I divert you: but in the ordinary chances of life—I shall be there, and ready, and your own, heart and soul. Why do I say this to you?

All words are so weak,—_so_ weak!

Here,—(no, I shall have to send it to-morrow, I believe—well, here in the course of the day)—comes ‘Luria’ and the other—and I lay it at my dear Lady’s feet, wishing it were worthier of them, and only comforted, through all the conviction of the offering’s unworthiness, by knowing that _she_ will know,—the dear, peerless, all precious Ba I adore, will know—that I would give her my life gladlier at a word. See what I have written on the outside—‘to Miss Barrett’!—because I thought even leaving out the name might look suspiciously! But where no eye can see; save your dear eye ... _there_ is written a dedication.

Kiss me, dear Ba. May God bless you. Care for everything—if you should have taken cold last night, for instance! Talk of a sword suspended by a hair!—what is the feeling of one whose priceless jewel hangs over a gulf by a hair? Tell me all—I love you wholly and am wholly yours.

See the strangely dirty paper—it comes from my desk where, every now and then, a candle gets over-set; or the snuffers remain open, aghast at what I write!

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

Monday.
[Post-mark, April 14, 1846.]

Ever dearest I have your two letters; and because there are only two ‘great lights’ to rule the day and the night, I am not likely to hear from you again before to-morrow. Then you want Mrs. Jameson’s direction ... (it is just _Mrs. Jameson, Ealing_!) and here is the last ‘Bell and Pomegranate’—and, for all these reasons, I must write without waiting; I will not wait for the night. Thank you for the book, thank you! I turn over the leaves ever so proudly. Tell me how I can be proud of _you_, when I cannot be proud of your loving me:—I am certainly proud of _you_. One of my first searches was for the note explanatory of the title—and I looked, and looked, and looked, at the end, at the beginning, at the end again. At last I made up my mind that you had persisted in not explaining, or that the printer had dropped the manuscript. Why, what could make you thrust that note on all but the titlepage of the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’? Oh—I comprehend. Having submitted to explain, quite at the point of the bayonet, you determined at least to do it where nobody could see it done. Be frank and tell me that it was just _so_. Also the poor ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’ you have repudiated _so_ from the ‘Bells and Pomegranates’ ... pushing it gently aside. Well—you must allow it to be a curious dislocation—only it is not important—and I like the note, all except the sentence about ‘Faith and Works,’ which does not apply, I think, ... that instance. ‘Bells and Pomegranates’ is a symbolic phrase—which the other is not at all, however much difficult and doubtful theological argument may have arisen from it as a collective phrase. So I am the first critic, you see, notwithstanding that Mr. Forster waylaid the first copy. Ah no! I shall have my gladness out of the book presently, beyond the imagination of any possible critic. Who in the world shall measure gladnesses with me?

Tell me—I was going to write _that_ ‘Tell me’ in my yesterday’s letter, but at last I was hurried, and could not ... did you come into London on Sunday? did you walk past this house on the other side of the street, about two o’clock? Because just then I and Flush went down-stairs. The drawing-room had nobody in it, and the window being wide open, I walked straight to it to shut it. And there, across the street, walked somebody ... I am so near sighted that I could only see a shadow in a dimness ... but the shadow had, or seemed to have, a sign of you, a trace of you ... and instead of shutting the window I looked after it till it vanished. No, it was not _you_. I feel now that it was not you; and indeed yesterday I felt it was not you. But, for the moment, it made my heart stop beating, ... that insolent shadow, ... which pretended to be you and wasn’t. Some one, I dare say, who ‘has an occupation eight or nine hours a day’ and never does anything! I may speak against him, for deceiving me—it’s a pure justice.

To go back to the book ... you are perfectly right about ‘gadge,’ and in the view you take of the effect of such words. You misunderstood me if you fancied that I objected to the word—it was simply my ignorance which led me to doubt whether you had written ‘gag.’ Of course, the horror of those specialities is heightened by the very want of distinct understanding they meet with in us:—it is the rack in the shadow of the vault. Oh—I fully agree.

And now ... dearest dearest ... do not bring _reason_ to me to prove ... what, to prove? I never get anything by reason on this subject, be very sure!—and I like better to _feel_ that unreasonably you love me—to _feel_ that you love me as, last year, you did. Which I could not feel, last year, a whole day or even half a day together. _Now_ the black intervals are rarer ... which is of your goodness, beloved, and not of mine. For me, you read me indeed a famous lesson about faith, ... and set me an example of how _you_ ‘believed’! ... but it does not apply, this lesson, ... it does not resemble, this example!—inasmuch as what _you_ had to believe ... viz. that roses blow in June ... was not quite as difficult as what _I_ am called to believe, ... viz. that St. Cecilia’s angel-visitant had a crown of roses on, which eternally were budding and blowing. But I believe ... believe ... and want no ‘proof’ of the love, but just itself to prove it,—for nothing else is worthy. On the other side, I have the audacity to believe, as I think I have told you, that no woman in the world _could_ feel for you exactly what ... but, here, too, I had better shun the reasons, ... the ‘bonnes raisons’ which ‘le roy notre sire’ cannot abide.—What foolishness I am writing really! And is it to be for a ‘year,’ or a ‘month’—or a _week_,—better still? or we may end by a compromise for the two hours on Wednesdays, ... if it goes on so,—more sensibly.

I have heard to-day from Miss Martineau and from Mrs. Jameson, both—one talking Mesmer and the other Homer. I sent her (Mrs. J.) two versions of the daughters of Pandarus, the first in the metre you know, and the second in blank verse; ... and she does not decide which she likes best, she says graciously, whereas I could not guess which I liked worse, when I sent them on Saturday. Do let her have ‘Luria’ at once. She will take the right gladness in it, even as she appreciates you with the right words and thoughts. But surely you use too many stamps? Have you a pair of scales like Zeus and me? ... only mine are broken, or I would send you an authority on this important subject, as well as an opinion.

How did you _not_ get my letter, pray, by the first post on Monday? You ought to have had it! it was not my fault. And thinking of ‘causas rerum,’ ... I was to ‘catch cold,’ I suppose, on Saturday, because you went away?—there was no stronger motive. I did not however catch cold—ah, how you make me giddy with such words, as if I did really ‘hang over a gulph’!—not with _fear_ though! Is it possible, I say to myself, that I can be so much to him? to _him_! May God bless him! There was no harm meant by the black seal, I think? Tell me too of the headache, and whether the dinner is for Wednesday, and whether, in that case, _it_ is still to be preferred, with all its close clipping, to Thursday. Meantime the letter grows as if there was no such thing as shears!

Your own

BA.

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

Tuesday Morning.
[Post-mark, April 14, 1846.]

I waited till this second letter should arrive—feeling that it would be easier to address the answer to _this_.

About the other,—that part which you bid me not refer to. You are obeyed now—my time will come in its turn, and I will try and speak. With respect to the immediate leaving England, you will let me say, I think, that _all_ my own projects depend on that,—there will not be one least objection made to it by my father or mother, I know beforehand. You perhaps misconceived something I said last Saturday. I meant the obvious fact however—that while there would be a _best_ way of finding myself with you, still, from the _worst_ way (probably, of taking a house opposite Mrs. Procter’s)—from that even, to the _best_ way of any other life I can imagine,—what a descent! From the worst of roses to the most flourishing of—dandelions. But we breathe together, understand together, know, feel, live together ... I feel every day less and less need of trying to assure you _I_ feel thus and thus—I seem to know that _you_ must _know_!

Mrs. Procter is very exactly the Mrs. Procter I knew long ago. What she says is of course purely foolish. The world does seem incurably stupid on this, as other points. I understand Mr. Kenyon’s implied kindness—that is,—understand he may think he sees my true good in this life with older and better instructed eyes than my own—so benevolent people beg me ‘not to go out in the open air—without something about my neck,’ and would gird on a triple worsted ‘comforter’ there, entirely for my good, if I would let them. ‘Why, Mr. Procter wears one!’ Ah, but without it, what a cold he would catch!

The explanatory note fills up an unseemly blank page—and does not come at the end of the ‘Soul’s Tragedy’—prose after prose—still it does look awkwardly—but then I don’t consider that it excludes this last from the ‘Bells’—rather it says this _is_ the last, (_no, nine_ if you like,—as the title says ‘eight _and_ last’—from whence will be this advantage, that, in the case of another edition, all the lyrics &c. may go together under one common head of Lyrics and Romances—and the ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’ profiting by the general move-up of the rest of the numbers, after the fashion of hackney coaches on a stand when one is called off, step into the place and take the style of No. 8—and the public not find themselves defrauded of the proper quantity!)

And shall I indeed see you to-morrow, Ba? I will tell you many things, it seems to me now, but when I am with you they always float out of mind. The feelings must remain unwritten—unsung too, I fear. I very often fancy that if I had never before resorted to _that_ mode of expression, to singing,—poetry—_now_ I should resort to it, discover it! Whereas now—my very use and experience of it deters me—if one phrase of mine should seem ‘poetical’ in Mrs. Procter’s sense—a conscious exaggeration,—put in for effect! only _seem_, I say! So I dare not try yet—but one day!

Ba, I kept your letter yesterday, _about_ me—it lay by my head at night—that its good might not go from me,—such perfect good! How strange to hear what you say of my letters,—of such and such a letter—some seem kind, and kinder and kindest—and how should I guess why? My life and love flow steadily under all those bubbles, or many or less—it is through the under current that, whatever you see, _does_ appear, no doubt—but also where nothing appears,—all is one depth!

Bless you, all dearest beloved.

To-morrow, Wednesday!

Ever your very own,

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

Thursday.
[Post-mark, April 16, 1846.]

This morning, you would never guess what I have been doing.—Buying a bonnet! That looks like a serious purpose of going out, walking out, driving out ... now doesn’t it? And having chosen one a little like a Quaker’s, as I thought to myself, I am immediately assured by the learned that ‘nothing can be more fashionable’ ... which is a most satisfactory proof of blind instinct, ... feeling towards the Bude lights of the world, and which Mrs. Procter would highly esteem me for, if she did but know it.

In the meanwhile assure yourself that I understand perfectly your feeling about the subject of yesterday. Flies are flies, and yet they are vexatious with their buzzing, _as_ flies. Only Mrs. Jameson told me the other day that a remedy against the mosquitos ... _polvere di morchia_ ... had been discovered lately in Italy, so that the world might sleep there in peace—as _you_ may here ... let us talk no more of it. I think I should not have told you if I had not needed it for a talking-ladder to something else. For the rest, it is amusing to me, quite amusing, to observe how people cannot conceive of _work_ except under certain familiar forms. Men who dig in ditches have an idea that the man who leads the plough rather rests than works: and all men of out-door labour distrust the industry of the manufacturers in-doors—while both manufacturers and out-door labourers consider the holders of offices and clerkships as idle men ... gentlemen at ease. Then between all these classes and the intellectual worker, the difference is wider, and the want of perception more complete. The work of creation, nobody will admit ... though everybody has by heart, without laying it to heart, that God rested on the seventh day. Looking up to the stars at nights, they might as well take all to be motionless—though if there were no motion there would be no morning ... and they look for a morning after all. Why who could mind such obtuse stupidity? It is the stupidity of mankind, par excellence of foolishness! The hedger and ditcher they see working, but God they do not see working. If one built a palace without noise and confusion and the stroke of hammers, one would scarcely get credit for it in this world ... so full of virtue and admiration it is, to make a noise! Even I, you see, who said just now ‘Talk no more of it,’ talk more and more, and make more noise than is necessary. Here is an end though—we leave Mrs. Procter here. And do not think that the least word of disrespect was said of you—indeed it was not! neither disrespect nor reproach. So you and I will forgive everybody henceforward, for wishing you to be rich. And if Miss Procter would ‘commit suicide’ rather than live as you like to live, _I_ will not, as long as you are not tired of me—and _that, just now_ and as things are, is of a little more consequence perhaps....

Scarcely had you gone, dearest, yesterday, when I had two letters with the very prose of life in them, dropping its black blotchy oil upon all the bright colours of our poetry! I groaned in the spirit to read, and to have to answer them. First was a Miss Georgiana Bennet—did you ever hear of her?—_I_ never did before, but that was my base ignorance; for she is a most voluminous writer it appears ... and sent me five or six ‘_works_’ (observe), ... published under the ‘high sanction’ (and reiterated subscription) of ever so many Royal Highnesses and Right Reverends ... written in prose and verse, upon female education and the portrait of Harrison Ainsworth (‘I gaze upon that noble face, and bright expressive eyes!’), miscellaneous subjects of that sort!—also, there is a poem of some length, called ‘The Poetess,’ which sets forth in detail how Miss Georgiana Bennet has found the laurel on her brow a mere nightshade, and the glories of fame no comfort in the world. Well—all these books were sent to me, with a note hortative—giving indeed a very encouraging opinion of my poems generally, but desiring me to consider, that poets write both for the learned and the unlearned, and that in fact I am in the habit of using a great many hard words, much to the confusion of the latter large class of readers. She has heard (Georgiana has) that I am a classical scholar which of course (of course) accounts for this peculiarity ... but it is the duty of one’s friends to tell one of one’s faults, which is the principle she goes upon. In return for which benevolence, I am requested to send back a copy of my poems directly, and to ‘think of her, as she thinks of me.’ There an end. The next letter is from a Mrs. Milner, who used to edit the ‘Christian Mother’s Magazine’; the most idiotic tract-literature, that magazine was, but supported by the Queen dowager and a whole train of Duchesses proper—very proper indeed! She used to edit the ‘Christian Mother,’ but now she has ‘generalised’ it, she says, to the ‘Englishwoman’s Magazine’ and wants me to write for it and says....

Oh—I cannot have patience to go on to tell you. Besides you will take me to be too bitter, when I ought to be grateful perhaps! But if you knew how hard it is for me to have to read and write sometimes, as if you were not in the world with me ... as if.... Is it wrong to laugh a little, to put it off,—only to _you_, though? And do you know, I feel ill at ease in my conscience, on account of what I said (even to _you_) about Mrs. Paine, who came to see me, you remember; and because she has written me a letter which quite affected me, I shall send it for you to read, to undo any false impression. Then you will not dislike reading it on other grounds. She is very different from the Georgiana Bennets, and I am interested in her, and touched aright by what she says.

You will write. You think of me? I am better to-day, much—and it is strange to be so, when you are not here. Ever dearest, let your thoughts be with me—

I am your own....

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

Thursday.
[Post-mark, April 16, 1846.]

How are you now, dearest? If the worse for my visit.... No, there is no affectation in what I would say—you might be worse, you know, through _excitement_, whether pleasurable or the reverse. One comfort is, the walking, going down-stairs, &c. have not occasioned it. I expect everything from your going out of doors, that is to be—what a joy to write it, think of it, expect it! Oh, why are you not here—where I sit writing; whence, in a moment, I could get to know why the lambs are bleating so, in the field behind—I do not see it from either window in this room—but I see a beautiful sunshine (2½ p.m.) and a chestnut tree leafy all over, in a faint trembling chilly way, to be sure—and a holly hedge I see, and shrubs, and blossomed trees over the garden wall,—were you but here, dearest, dearest—how we would go out, with Flush on before, for with a key I have, I lock out the world, and then look down on it; for there is a vast view from our greatest hill—did I ever tell you that Wordsworth was shown that hill or its neighbour; someone saying ‘R.B. lives over _there_ by that HILL’—‘Hill’? interposed Wordsworth—‘_we_ call that, such as that, a _rise_’! I must have told you, I think. (While I write, the sun gets ever brighter—you must be down-stairs, I feel sure—)

I fully meant to go out this morning—but there is a pressing note from my old young friend, Frank Talfourd, to get me to witness—only another play and farce!—and what is to be done?

Here shall be my ending ‘for reasons, for reasons.’ To-morrow I will write more; my Monday—to have to wait so long! And when I _do_ see you, I begin to pour out profusions of confusions of speech about Mrs. Procter and her vain notions—to what earthly good? ... as it is very easy to ask _now_! now that I am here again, alone again.

Dear, dearest Ba, I cannot serve you, nor even talk to you ... but love you,—oh, that I must dare say I _can_ do, as none other could—as you have yet to know!

Bless you my very dearest, sweetest Ba—I am your own, heart and soul—

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

Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 17, 1846.]

Ah, the chestnut tree: do you think that I never saw the chestnut tree before? Long ago, I did ... a full year ago or more—more! A voice talked to me of the ‘west wind’ which ‘set dancing the baby cones of my chestnut tree’—nearly I remember the words. Do _you_, the time? It was early in the morning—‘before seven,’ said the voice!—too early in the morning for my dream to be—because a dream, says Lord Brougham when he tries at philosophy, a dream, if ever so long a dream, is all contained in the last moment of sleep, at the turn towards waking—so, late and not early!

No—you did not tell me of Wordsworth—not at least, after _that_ reading. Perhaps if Hatcham should not be swept away in the Railway ‘scirocco,’ I may see the ‘hill’ or the ‘rise’ at some distant day. Shall I, do you think? I would rather see it than Wordsworth’s mountains—‘for reasons, for reasons’ as you say. And talking of reasons, and reasonable people in general, I thought, ... after you went away on Wednesday, and I began to remember how you had commended your own common sense and mine,—I thought that it might be very well for you to do it, inasmuch as nobody else would, for you——! ὑπέρ σου as the theological critics intensify ὑπέρ to the genitive, ‘for reasons, for reasons.’

How ‘Luria’ takes possession of me more and more! _Such_ a noble work!—of a fulness, a moral grandeur!—and the language everywhere worthy. Tell me what you hear the people say—I shall be anxious, which you will not be—but, to _me_, you will forgive it. ‘The Soul’s Tragedy’ is wonderful—it suggests the idea of more various power than was necessary to the completion of ‘Luria’ ... though in itself not a comparable work. But you never wrote more vivid dramatic dialogue than that first part—it is exquisite art, it appears to me. Tell me what the people say!—and tell me what the gods say ... Landor, for instance!

Mr. Kenyon has not been here—and I dare not, even in a letter, be the first to talk to anyone of you. It is foolish of me perhaps—but if I whisper your name I expect to be directly answered by all the thunders of Heaven and cannons of earth. When I was writing to Miss Martineau the other day, for full ten minutes I held the pen ready charged with ink over a little white place, just to say ‘have you read,’ ... or ‘have you heard’ ... and at last I couldn’t write one word of those words ... I believe I said something about landed proprietors and agrarian laws instead.

So you ‘_felt_’ that I was down-stairs to-day! See how wrong feeling may be, when it has to do with such as I. For, dearest, notwithstanding your bright sunshine I did not go down-stairs ... only opened the window and let in the air. I have not been quite as well, as far as just sensation goes, as usual, these few days—but it is nothing, a passing common headache, as I told you, ... and your visit did good rather than harm, and to-morrow you may think of me as in the drawing-room. Oh, I _might_ have been there to-day, or yesterday, or the day before! but it was pleasanter to sit in the chair and be idle, so I sate! But you did not see me in my gondola chair—not _you_! you were thinking of the lambs instead, and looking over the wall to the ‘blossomed trees’ ... (what trees? cherry-trees? apple-trees? pear-trees?) and so, altogether, you lost your second sight of me and made mistakes. Ever dearest, is your head better? You will not say. You are _afraid_ to say, perhaps, that you were ill, through writing too many notes and not going out to take the right exercise. Ah, _do_ remember me for _that_ good! I heard yesterday that ‘Mr. Browning looked very pale as he came up-stairs.’ Which comes of Mr. Browning’s writing when he should be walking!—now doesn’t it?