Chapter XIX: Part 19

I felt it must be so ... that something must be the matter, ... and I had been so really unhappy for half an hour, that your letter which comes now at four, seems a little better, with all its bad news, than my fancies took upon themselves to be, without instruction. Now _was_ it right to go out yesterday when you were unwell, and to a great dinner?--but I shall not reproach you, dearest, dearest--I have no heart for it at this moment. As to Monday, of course it is as you like ... if you are well enough on Monday ... if it should be thought wise of you to come to London through the noise ... if ... you understand all the _ifs_ ... and among them the greatest if of all, ... for if you do love me ... _care_ for me even, you will not do yourself harm or run any risk of harm by going out _anywhere too soon_. On Monday, in case you are _considered well enough_, and otherwise Tuesday, Wednesday--I leave it to you. Still I _will_ ask one thing, whether you come on Monday or not. _Let_ me have a single line by the nearest post to say how you are. Perhaps for to-night it is not possible--oh no, it is nearly five now! but a word written on Sunday would be with me early on Monday morning, and I know you will let me have it, to save some of the anxious thoughts ... to break them in their course with some sort of certainty! May God bless you dearest of all!--I thought of you on Thursday, but did not speak of you, not even when Miss Mitford called Hood the greatest poet of the age ... she had been depreciating Carlyle, so I let you lie and wait on the same level, ... that shelf of the rock which is above tide mark! I was glad even, that she did not speak of you; and, under cover of her speech of others, I had my thoughts of you deeply and safely. When she had gone at half past six, moreover, I grew over-hopeful, and made up my fancy to have a letter at eight! The branch she had pulled down, sprang upward skyward ... to that high possibility of a letter! Which did not come that day ... no!--and I revenged myself by writing a letter to _you_, which was burnt afterwards because I would not torment you for letters. Last night, came a real one--dearest! So we could not keep our sabbath to-day! It is a fast day instead, ... on my part. How should I feel (I have been thinking to myself), if I did not see you on Saturday, and could not hope to see you on Monday, nor on Tuesday, nor on Wednesday, nor Thursday nor Friday, nor Saturday again--if all the sabbaths were gone out of the world for me! May God bless you!--it has grown to be enough prayer!--as _you_ are enough (and all, besides) for

Your own

BA.

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

[Post-mark, February 7, 1846.]

The clock strikes--_three_; and I am here, not with you--and my 'fractious' headache at the very worst got suddenly better just now, and is leaving me every minute--as if to make me aware, with an undivided attention, that at this present you are waiting for me, and soon will be wondering--and it would be so easy now to dress myself and walk or run or ride--do anything that led to you ... but by no haste in the world could I reach you, I am forced to see, before a quarter to five--by which time I think my letter must arrive. Dear, dearest Ba, did you but know how vexed I am--with myself, with--this is absurd, of course. The cause of it all was my going out last night--yet that, neither, was to be helped, the party having been twice put off before--once solely on my account. And the sun shines, and you would shine--

Monday is to make all the amends in its power, is it not? Still, still I have lost my day.

Bless you, my ever-dearest.

Your R.

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

Sunday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 9, 1846.]

My dearest--there are no words,--nor will be to-morrow, nor even in the Island--I know that! But I do love you.

My arms have been round you for many minutes since the last word--

I am quite well now--my other note will have told you when the change began--I think I took too violent a shower bath, with a notion of getting better in as little time as possible,--and the stimulus turned mere feverishness to headache. However, it was no sooner gone, in a degree, than a worse plague came. I sate thinking of you--but I knew my note would arrive at about four o'clock or a little later--and I thought the visit for the quarter of an hour would as effectually prevent to-morrow's meeting as if the whole two hours' blessing had been laid to heart--to-morrow I shall see you, Ba--my sweetest. But there are cold winds blowing to-day--how do you bear them, my Ba? '_Care_' you, pray, pray, care for all _I_ care about--and be well, if God shall please, and bless me as no man ever was blessed! Now I kiss you, and will begin a new thinking of you--and end, and begin, going round and round in my circle of discovery,--_My_ lotos-blossom! because they _loved_ the lotos, were lotos-lovers,--[Greek: lôtou t' erôtes], as Euripides writes in the [Greek: Trôades].

Your own

P.S. See those lines in the _Athenæum_ on Pulci with Hunt's translation--all wrong--'_che non si sente_,' being--'that one does not _hear_ him' i.e. the ordinarily noisy fellow--and the rest, male, pessime! Sic verte, meo periculo, mî ocelle!

Where's Luigi Pulci, that one don't the man see?
He just now yonder in the copse has '_gone it_' (_n_'andò)
Because across his mind there came a fancy;
He'll wish to fancify, perhaps, a sonnet!

Now Ba thinks nothing can be worse than that? Then read _this_ which I really told Hunt and got his praise for. Poor dear wonderful persecuted Pietro d'Abano wrote this quatrain on the people's plaguing him about his mathematical studies and wanting to burn him--he helped to build Padua Cathedral, wrote a Treatise on Magic still extant, and passes for a conjuror in his country to this day--when there is a storm the mothers tell the children that he is in the air; his pact with the evil one obliged him to drink no _milk_; no natural human food! You know Tieck's novel about him? Well, this quatrain is said, I believe truly, to have been discovered in a well near Padua some fifty years ago.

Studiando le mie cifre, col compasso
Rilevo, che presto sarò sotterra--
Perchè del mio saper si fa gran chiasso,
E gl'ignoranti m'hanno mosso guerra.

Affecting, is it not, in its simple, child like plaining? Now so, if I remember, I turned it--word for word--

Studying my ciphers, with the compass
I reckon--who soon shall be below ground,
Because of my lore they make great 'rumpus,'
And against me war makes each dull rogue round.

Say that you forgive me to-morrow!

[The following is in E.B.B.'s handwriting.]

With my compass I take up my ciphers, poor scholar;
Who myself shall be taken down soon under the ground ...
Since the world at my learning roars out in its choler,
And the blockheads have fought me all round.

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

Tuesday.
[Post-mark, February 10, 1846.]

Ever dearest, I have been possessed by your 'Luria' just as you would have me, and I should like you to understand, not simply how fine a conception the whole work seems to me, so developed, but how it has moved and affected me, without the ordinary means and dialect of pathos, by that calm attitude of moral grandeur which it has--it is very fine. For the execution, _that_ too is worthily done--although I agree with you, that a little quickening and drawing in closer here and there, especially towards the close where there is no time to lose, the reader feels, would make the effect stronger--but you will look to it yourself--and such a conception _must_ come in thunder and lightning, as a chief god would--_must_ make its own way ... and will not let its poet go until he speaks it out to the ultimate syllable. Domizia disappoints me rather. You might throw a flash more of light on her face--might you not? But what am I talking? I think it a magnificent work--a noble exposition of the ingratitude of men against their 'heroes,' and (what is peculiar) an _humane_ exposition ... not misanthropical, after the usual fashion of such things: for the return, the remorse, saves it--and the 'Too late' of the repentance and compensation covers with its solemn toll the fate of persecutors and victim. We feel that Husain himself could only say afterward ... '_That is done._' And now--surely you think well of the work as a whole? You cannot doubt, I fancy, of the grandeur of it--and of the _subtilty_ too, for it is subtle--too subtle perhaps for stage purposes, though as clear, ... as to expression ... as to medium ... as 'bricks and mortar' ... shall I say?

'A people is but the attempt of many
To rise to the completer life of one.'

There is one of the fine thoughts. And how fine _he_ is, your Luria, when he looks back to his East, through the half-pardon and half-disdain of Domizia. Ah--Domizia! would it hurt her to make her more a woman ... a little ... I wonder!

So I shall begin from the beginning, from the first act, and read _through_ ... since I have read the fifth twice over. And remember, please, that I am to read, besides, the 'Soul's Tragedy,' and that I shall dun you for it presently. Because you told me it was finished, otherwise I would not speak a word, feeling that you want rest, and that I, who am anxious about you, would be crossing my own purposes by driving you into work. It is the overwork, the overwear of mind and heart (for the feelings come as much into use as the thoughts in these productions), that makes you so pale, dearest, that distracts your head, and does all the harm on Saturdays and so many other days besides.

To-day--how are you? It _was_ right and just for me to write this time, after the two dear notes ... the one on Saturday night which made me praise you to myself and think you kinder than kindest, and the other on Monday morning which took me unaware--such a note, _that_ was! Oh it _was_ right and just that I should not teaze you to send me another after those two others,--yet I was very near doing it--yet I should like infinitely to hear to-day how you are--unreasonable!--Well! you will write now--you will answer what I am writing, and mention yourself particularly and sincerely--Remember! Above all, you will care for your head. I have been thinking since yesterday that, coming out of the cold, you might not have refused as usual to take something ... hot wine and water, or coffee? Will you have coffee with me on Saturday? 'Shunning the salt,' will you have the sugar? And do tell me, for I have been thinking, are you careful as to diet--and will such sublunary things as coffee and tea and cocoa affect your head--_for_ or _against_! Then you do not touch wine--and perhaps you ought. Surely something may be found or done to do you good. If it had not been for me, you would be travelling in Italy by this time and quite well perhaps.

This morning I had a letter from Miss Martineau and really read it to the end without thinking it too long, which is extraordinary for me just now, and scarcely ordinary in the letter, and indeed it is a delightful letter, as letters go, which are not yours! You shall take it with you on Saturday to read, and you shall see that it is worth reading, and interesting for Wordsworth's sake and her own. Mr. Kenyon has it now, because he presses on to have her letters, and I should not like to tell him that you had it first from me.... Also Saturday will be time enough.

Oh--poor Mr. Horne! shall I tell you some of his offences? That he desires to be called at four in the morning, and does not get up till eight. That he pours libations on his bare head out of the water-glasses at great dinners. That being in the midst of sportsmen--rural aristocrats--lords of soil--and all talking learnedly of pointers' noses and spaniels' ears; he has exclaimed aloud in a mocking paraphrase--'If I were to hold up a horse by the tail.' The wit is certainly doubtful!--That being asked to dinner on Tuesday, he will go on Wednesday instead.--That he throws himself at full length with a gesture approaching to a 'summerset' on satin sofas. That he giggles. That he only _thinks_ he can talk. That his ignorance on all subjects is astounding. That he never read the old ballads, nor saw Percy's collection. That he asked _who_ wrote 'Drink to me only with thine eyes.' That after making himself ridiculous in attempting to speak at a public meeting, he said to a compassionate friend 'I got very well out of _that_.' That, in writing his work on Napoleon, he employed a man to study the subject for him. That he cares for nobody's poetry or fame except his own, and considers Tennyson chiefly illustrious as being his contemporary. That, as to politics, he doesn't care '_which_ side.' That he is always talking of 'my shares,' 'my income,' as if he were a Kilmansegg. Lastly (and understand, this is _my_ 'lastly' and not Miss Mitford's, who is far from being out of breath so soon) that he has a mania for heiresses--that he has gone out at half past five and 'proposed' to Miss M or N with fifty thousand pounds, and being rejected (as the lady thought fit to report herself) came back to tea and the same evening 'fell in love' with Miss O or P ... with forty thousand--went away for a few months, and upon his next visit, did as much to a Miss Q or W, on the promise of four blood horses--has a prospect now of a Miss R or S--with hounds, perhaps.

Too, too bad--isn't it? I would repeat none of it except to you--and as to the worst part, the last, why some may be coincidence, and some, exaggeration, for I have not the least doubt that every now and then a fine poetical compliment was turned into a serious thing by the listener, and then the poor poet had critics as well as listeners all round him. Also, he rather 'wears his heart on his sleeve,' there is no denying--and in other respects he is not much better, perhaps, than other men. But for the base traffic of the affair--I do not believe a word. He is too generous--has too much real sensibility. I fought his battle, poor Orion. 'And so,' she said 'you believe it possible for a disinterested man to become really attached to two women, heiresses, on the same day?' I doubted the _fact_. And then she showed me a note, an autograph note from the poet, confessing the M or N part of the business--while Miss O or P confessed herself, said Miss Mitford. But I persisted in doubting, notwithstanding the lady's confessions, or convictions, as they might be. And just think of Mr. Horne not having tact enough to keep out of these multitudinous scrapes, for those few days which on three separate occasions he paid Miss Mitford in a neighbourhood where all were strangers to him,--and never outstaying his week! He must have been _foolish_, read it all how we may.

And so am _I_, to write this 'personal talk' to you when you will not care for it--yet you asked me, and it may make you smile, though Wordsworth's tea-kettle outsings it all.

When your Monday letter came, I was reading the criticism on Hunt and his Italian poets, in the _Examiner_. How I liked to be pulled by the sleeve to your translations!--How I liked everything!--Pulci, Pietro ... and you, best!

Yet here's a naiveté which I found in your letter! I will write it out that you may read it--

'However it' (the headache) 'was no sooner gone in a degree, than a worse plague came--_I sate thinking of you_.'

Very satisfactory _that_ is, and very clear.

May God bless you dearest, dearest! Be careful of yourself. The cold makes me _languid_, as heat is apt to make everybody; but I am not unwell, and keep up the fire and the thoughts of you.

Your worse ... worst plague

Your own

BA.

I shall hear? yes! And admire my obedience in having written 'a long letter' _to_ the letter!

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

Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 11, 1846.]

My sweetest 'plague,' _did_ I really write that sentence so, without gloss or comment in close vicinity? I can hardly think it--but you know well, well where the real plague lay,--that I thought of you as thinking, in your infinite goodness, of untoward chances which had kept me from you--and if I did not dwell more particularly on that thinking of _yours_, which became as I say, in the knowledge of it, a plague when brought before me _with_ the thought of you,--if I passed this slightly over it was for pure unaffected shame that I should take up the care and stop the 'reverie serene' of--ah, the rhyme _lets_ me say--'sweetest eyes were ever seen'--were _ever_ seen! And yourself confess, in the Saturday's note, to having been 'unhappy for half an hour till' &c. &c.--and do not I feel _that_ here, and am not I plagued by it?

Well, having begun at the end of your letter, dearest, I will go back gently (that is backwards) and tell you I 'sate thinking' too, and with no greater comfort, on the cold yesterday. The pond before the window was frozen ('so as to bear sparrows' somebody said) and I knew you would feel it--'but you are not unwell'--really? thank God--and the month wears on. Beside I have got a reassurance--you asked me once if I were superstitious, I remember (as what do I forget that you say?). However that may be, yesterday morning as I turned to look for a book, an old fancy seized me to try the 'sortes' and dip into the first page of the first I chanced upon, for my fortune; I said 'what will be the event of my love for Her'--in so many words--and my book turned out to be--'Cerutti's Italian Grammar!'--a propitious source of information ... the best to be hoped, what could it prove but some assurance that you were in the Dative Case, or I, not in the ablative absolute? I do protest that, with the knowledge of so many horrible pitfalls, or rather spring guns with wires on every bush ... such dreadful possibilities of stumbling on 'conditional moods,' 'imperfect tenses,' 'singular numbers,'--I should have been too glad to put up with the safe spot for the sole of my foot though no larger than afforded by such a word as 'Conjunction,' 'possessive pronoun--,' secure so far from poor Tippet's catastrophe. Well, I ventured, and what did I find? _This_--which I copy from the book now--'_If we love in the other world as we do in this, I shall love thee to eternity_'--from 'Promiscuous Exercises,' to be translated into Italian, at the end.

And now I reach Horne and his characteristics--of which I can tell you with confidence that they are grossly misrepresented where not altogether false--whether it proceed from inability to see what one may see, or disinclination, I cannot say. I know very little of Horne, but my one visit to him a few weeks ago would show the uncandidness of those charges: for instance, he talked a good deal about horses, meaning to ride in Ireland, and described very cleverly an old hunter he had hired once,--how it galloped and could not walk; also he propounded a theory of the true method of behaving in the saddle when a horse rears, which I besought him only to practise in fancy on the sofa, where he lay telling it. So much for professing his ignorance in that matter! On a sofa he does throw himself--but when thrown there, he can talk, with Miss Mitford's leave, admirably,--I never heard better stories than Horne's--some Spanish-American incidents of travel want printing--or have been printed, for aught I know. That he cares for nobody's poetry is _false_, he praises more unregardingly of his own retreat, more unprovidingly for his own fortune,--(do I speak clearly?)--less like a man who himself has written somewhat in the 'line' of the other man he is praising--which 'somewhat' has to be guarded in its interests, &c., less like the poor professional praise of the 'craft' than any other I ever met--instance after instance starting into my mind as I write. To his income I never heard him allude--unless one should so interpret a remark to me this last time we met, that he had been on some occasion put to inconvenience by somebody's withholding ten or twelve pounds due to him for an article, and promised in the confidence of getting them to a tradesman, which does not look like 'boasting of his income'! As for the heiresses--I don't believe one word of it, of the succession and transition and trafficking. Altogether, what miserable 'set-offs' to the achievement of an 'Orion,' a 'Marlowe,' a 'Delora'! Miss Martineau understands him better.

Now I come to myself and my health. I am quite well now--at all events, much better, just a little turning in the head--since you appeal to my sincerity. For the coffee--thank you, indeed thank you, but nothing after the '_oenomel_' and before half past six. _I_ know all about that song and its Greek original if Horne does not--and can tell you--, how truly...!

The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine--
But might I of Jove's nectar sup
I would not change for thine! _No, no, no!_

And by the bye, I have misled you as my wont is, on the subject of wine, 'that I do not touch it'--not habitually, nor so as to feel the loss of it, that on a principle; but every now and then of course.

And now, 'Luria', so long as the parts cohere and the whole is discernible, all will be well yet. I shall not look at it, nor think of it, for a week or two, and then see what I have forgotten. Domizia is all wrong; I told you I knew that her special colour had faded,--it was but a bright line, and the more distinctly deep that it was so narrow. One of my half dozen words on my scrap of paper 'pro memoria' was, under the 'Act V.' '_she loves_'--to which I could not bring it, you see! Yet the play requires it still,--something may yet be effected, though.... I meant that she should propose to go to Pisa with him, and begin a new life. But there is no hurry--I suppose it is no use publishing much before Easter--I will try and remember what my whole character _did_ mean--it was, in two words, understood at the time by 'panther's-beauty'--on which hint I ought to have spoken! But the work grew cold, and you came between, and the sun put out the fire on the hearth _nec vult panthera domari_!

For the 'Soul's Tragedy'--_that_ will surprise you, I think. There is no trace of you there,--you have not put out the black face of _it_--it is all sneering and _disillusion_--and shall not be printed but burned if you say the word--now wait and see and then say! I will bring the first of the two parts next Saturday.

And now, dearest, I am with you--and the other matters are forgotten already. God bless you, I am ever your own R. You will write to me I trust? And tell me how to bear the cold.

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

[Post-mark, February 12, 1846.]

Ah, the 'sortes'! Is it a double oracle--'swan and shadow'--do you think? or do my eyes see double, dazzled by the light of it? 'I shall love thee to eternity'--I _shall_.

And as for the wine, I did not indeed misunderstand you 'as my wont is,' because I understood simply that 'habitually' you abstained from wine, and I meant exactly that perhaps it would be better for your health to take it habitually. It _might_, you know--not that I pretend to advise. Only when you look so much too pale sometimes, it comes into one's thoughts that you ought not to live on cresses and cold water. Strong coffee, which is the nearest to a stimulant that I dare to take, as far as ordinary diet goes, will almost always deliver _me_ from the worst of headaches, but there is no likeness, no comparison. And your 'quite well' means that dreadful 'turning' still ... still! Now do not think any more of the Domizias, nor 'try to remember,' which is the most wearing way of thinking. The more I read and read your 'Luria,' the grander it looks, and it will make its own road with all understanding men, you need not doubt, and still less need you try to make me uneasy about the harm I have done in 'coming between,' and all the rest of it. I wish never to do you greater harm than just _that_, and then with a white conscience 'I shall love thee to eternity!... dearest! You have made a golden work out of your 'golden-hearted Luria'--as once you called him to me, and I hold it in the highest admiration--_should_, if you were precisely nothing to me. And still, the fifth act _rises_! That is certain. Nevertheless I seem to agree with you that your hand has vacillated in your Domizia. We do not know her with as full a light on her face, as the other persons--we do not see the _panther_,--no, certainly we do not--but you will do a very little for her which will be everything, after a time ... and I assure you that if you were to ask for the manuscript before, you should not have a page of it--_now_, you are only to rest. What a work to rest upon! Do consider what a triumph it is! The more I read, the more I think of it, the greater it grows--and as to 'faded lines,' you never cut a pomegranate that was redder in the deep of it. Also, no one can say 'This is not clearly written.' The people who are at 'words of one syllable' may be puzzled by you and Wordsworth together this time ... as far as the expression goes. Subtle thoughts you always must have, in and out of 'Sordello'--and the objectors would find even Plato (though his medium is as lucid as the water that ran beside the beautiful plane-tree!) a little difficult perhaps.

To-day Mr. Kenyon came, and do you know, he has made a beatific confusion between last Saturday and next Saturday, and said to me he had told Miss Thomson to mind to come on Friday if she wished to see me ... 'remembering' (he added) 'that Mr. Browning took _Saturday_!!' So I let him mistake the one week for the other--'Mr. Browning took Saturday,' it was true, both ways. Well--and then he went on to tell me that he had heard from Mrs. Jameson who was at Brighton and unwell, and had written to say this and that to him, and to enquire besides--now, what do you think, she enquired besides? 'how you and ... Browning were' said Mr. Kenyon--I write his words. He is coming, perhaps to-morrow, or perhaps Sunday--Saturday is to have a twofold safety. That is, if you are not ill again. Dearest, you will not think of coming if you are ill ... unwell even. I shall not be frightened next time, as I told you--I shall have the precedent. Before, I had to think! 'It has never happened _so_--there must be a cause--and if it is a very, very, bad cause, why no one will tell _me_ ... it will not seem _my_ concern'--_that_ was my thought on Saturday. But another time ... only, if it is possible to keep well, do keep well, beloved, and think of me instead of Domizia, and let there be no other time for your suffering ... my waiting is nothing. I shall remember for the future that you may have the headache--and do you remember it too!

For Mr. Horne I take your testimony gladly and believingly. _She blots_ with her _eyes_ sometimes. She hates ... and loves, in extreme degrees. We have, once or twice or thrice, been on the border of mutual displeasure, on this very subject, for I grew really vexed to observe the trust on one side and the _dyspathy_ on the other--using the mildest of words. You see, he found himself, down in Berkshire, in quite a strange element of society,--he, an artist in his good and his evil,--and the people there, 'county families,' smoothly plumed in their conventions, and classing the ringlets and the aboriginal way of using water-glasses among offences against the Moral Law. Then, meaning to be agreeable, or fascinating perhaps, made it twenty times worse. Writing in albums about the graces, discoursing meditated impromptus at picnics, playing on the guitar in fancy dresses,--all these things which seemed to poor Orion as natural as his own stars I dare say, and just the things suited to the _genus_ poet, and to himself specifically,--were understood by the natives and their 'rural deities' to signify, that he intended to marry one half the county, and to run away with the other. But Miss Mitford should have known better--_she_ should. And she _would_ have known better, if she had liked him--for the liking could have been unmade by no such offences. She is too fervent a friend--she can be. Generous too, she can be without an effort; and I have had much affection from her--and accuse myself for seeming to have less--but--

May God bless you!--I end in haste after this long lingering.

Your

BA.

Not unwell--_I_ am not! I forgot it, which proves how I am not.

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

Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 13, 1846.]

Two nights ago I read the 'Soul's Tragedy' once more, and though there were not a few points which still struck me as successful in design and execution, yet on the whole I came to a decided opinion, that it will be better to postpone the publication of it for the present. It is not a good ending, an auspicious wind-up of this series; subject-matter and style are alike unpopular even for the literary _grex_ that stands aloof from the purer _plebs_, and uses that privilege to display and parade an ignorance which the other is altogether unconscious of--so that, if 'Luria' is _clearish_, the 'Tragedy' would be an unnecessary troubling the waters. Whereas, if I printed it first in order, my readers, according to custom, would make the (comparatively) little they did not see into, a full excuse for shutting their eyes at the rest, and we may as well part friends, so as not to meet enemies. But, at bottom, I believe the proper objection is to the immediate, _first_ effect of the whole--its moral effect--which is dependent on the contrary supposition of its being really understood, in the main drift of it. Yet I don't know; for I wrote it with the intention of producing the best of all effects--perhaps the truth is, that I am tired, rather, and desirous of getting done, and 'Luria' will answer my purpose so far. Will not the best way be to reserve this unlucky play and in the event of a second edition--as Moxon seems to think such an apparition possible--might not this be quietly inserted?--in its place, too, for it was written two or three years ago. I have lost, of late, interest in dramatic writing, as you know, and, perhaps, occasion. And, dearest, I mean to take your advice and be quiet awhile and let my mind get used to its new medium of sight; seeing all things, as it does, through you: and then, let all I have done be the prelude and the real work begin. I felt it would be so before, and told you at the very beginning--do you remember? And you spoke of Io 'in the proem.' How much more should follow now!

And if nothing follows, I have _you_.

I shall see you to-morrow and be happy. To-day--is it the weather or what?--something depresses me a little--to-morrow brings the remedy for it all. I don't know why I mention such a matter; except that I tell you everything without a notion of after-consequence; and because your dearest, dearest presence seems under any circumstances as if created just to help me _there_; if my spirits rise they fly to you; if they fall, they hold by you and cease falling--as now. Bless you, Ba--my own best blessing that you are! But a few hours and I am with you, beloved!

Your own

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

Saturday Evening.
[Post-mark, February 16, 1846.]

Ever dearest, though you wanted to make me say one thing displeasing to you to-day, I had not courage to say two instead ... which I might have done indeed and indeed! For I am capable of thinking both thoughts of 'next year,' as you suggested them:--because while you are with me I see only _you_, and you being you, I cannot doubt a power of yours nor measure the deep loving nature which I feel to be so deep--so that there may be ever so many 'mores,' and no 'more' wonder of mine!--but afterwards, when the door is shut and there is no 'more' light nor speaking until Thursday, why _then_, that I do not see _you_ but _me_,--_then_ comes the reaction,--the natural lengthening of the shadows at sunset,--and _then_, the 'less, less, less' grows to seem as natural to my fate, as the 'more' seemed to your nature--I being I!

_Sunday._--Well!--you are to try to forgive it all! And the truth, over and under all, is, that I scarcely ever do think of the future, scarcely ever further than to your next visit, and almost never beyond, except for your sake and in reference to that view of the question which I have vexed you with so often, in fearing for your happiness. Once it was a habit of mind with me to live altogether in what I called the future--but the tops of the trees that looked towards Troy were broken off in the great winds, and falling down into the river beneath, where now after all this time they grow green again, I let them float along the current gently and pleasantly. Can it be better I wonder! And if it becomes worse, can I help it? Also the future never seemed to belong to me so little--never! It might appear wonderful to most persons, it is startling even to myself sometimes, to observe how free from anxiety I am--from the sort of anxiety which might be well connected with my own position _here_, and which is personal to myself. _That_ is all thrown behind--into the bushes--long ago it was, and I think I told you of it before. Agitation comes from indecision--and _I_ was decided from the first hour when I admitted the possibility of your loving me really. Now,--as the Euphuists used to say,--I am 'more thine than my own' ... it is a literal truth--and my future belongs to you; if it was mine, it was mine to give, and if it was mine to give, it was given, and if it was given ... beloved....

So you see!

Then I will confess to you that all my life long I have had a rather strange sympathy and dyspathy--the sympathy having concerned the genus _jilt_ (as vulgarly called) male and female--and the dyspathy--the whole class of heroically virtuous persons who make sacrifices of what they call 'love' to what they call 'duty.' There are exceptional cases of course, but, for the most part, I listen incredulously or else with a little contempt to those latter proofs of strength--or weakness, as it may be:--people are not usually praised for giving up their religion, for unsaying their oaths, for desecrating their 'holy things'--while believing them still to be religious and sacramental! On the other side I have always and shall always understand how it is possible for the most earnest and faithful of men and even of women perhaps, to err in the convictions of the heart as well as of the mind, to profess an affection which is an illusion, and to recant and retreat loyally at the eleventh hour, on becoming aware of the truth which is in them. Such men are the truest of men, and the most courageous for the truth's sake, and instead of blaming them I hold them in honour, for me, and always did and shall.

And while I write, you are 'very ill'--very ill!--how it looks, written down _so_! When you were gone yesterday and my thoughts had tossed about restlessly for ever so long, I was wise enough to ask Wilson how _she_ thought you were looking, ... and she 'did not know' ... she 'had not observed' ... 'only certainly Mr. Browning ran up-stairs instead of walking as he did the time before.'

Now promise me dearest, dearest--not to trifle with your health. Not to neglect yourself ... not to tire yourself ... and besides to take the advice of your medical friend as to diet and general treatment:--because there must be a wrong and a right in everything, and the right is very important under your circumstances ... if you have a tendency to illness. It may be right for you to have wine for instance. Did you ever try the putting your feet into hot water at night, to prevent the recurrence of the morning headache--for the affection of the head comes on early in the morning, does it not? just as if the sleeping did you harm. Now I have heard of such a remedy doing good--and could it _increase_ the evil?--mustard mixed with the water, remember. Everything approaching to _congestion_ is full of fear--I tremble to think of it--and I bring no remedy by this teazing neither! But you will not be 'wicked' nor 'unkind,' nor provoke the evil consciously--you will keep quiet and forswear the going out at nights, the excitement and noise of parties, and the worse excitement of composition--you promise. If you knew how I keep thinking of you, and at intervals grow so frightened! Think _you_, that you are three times as much to me as I can be to you at best and greatest,--because you are more than three times the larger planet--and because too, you have known other sources of light and happiness ... but I need not say this--and I shall hear on Monday, and may trust to you every day ... may I not? Yet I would trust my soul to you sooner than your own health.

May God bless you, dear, dearest. If the first part of the 'Soul's Tragedy' should be written out, I can read _that_ perhaps, without drawing you in to think of the second. Still it may be safer to keep off altogether for the present--and let it be as you incline. I do not speak of 'Luria.'

Your own

BA.

If it were not for Mr. Kenyon, I should say, almost, Wednesday, instead of Thursday--I want to see you so much, and to see for myself about the looks and spirits, only it would not do if he found you here on Wednesday. Let him come to-morrow or on Tuesday, and Wednesday will be safe--shall we consider? what do you think?

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

Sunday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, February 16, 1846.]

Here is the letter again, dearest: I suppose it gives me the same pleasure, in reading, as you--and Mr. K. as me, and anybody else as him; if all the correspondence which was claimed again and burnt on some principle or other some years ago be at all of the nature of this sample, the measure seems questionable. Burn anybody's _real_ letters, well and good: they move and live--the thoughts, feelings, and expressions even,--in a self-imposed circle limiting the experience of two persons only--_there_ is the standard, and to _that_ the appeal--how should a third person know? His presence breaks the line, so to speak, and lets in a whole tract of country on the originally inclosed spot--so that its trees, which were from side to side there, seem left alone and wondering at their sudden unimportance in the broad land; while its 'ferns such as I never saw before' and which have been petted proportionably, look extravagant enough amid the new spread of good honest grey grass that is now the earth's general wear. So that the significance is lost at once, and whole value of such letters--the cypher changed, the vowel-points removed: but how can that affect clever writing like this? What do you, to whom it is addressed, see in it more than the world that wants to see it and shan't have it? One understands shutting an unprivileged eye to the ineffable mysteries of those 'upper-rooms,' now that the broom and dust pan, stocking-mending and gingerbread-making are invested with such unforeseen reverence ... but the carriage-sweep and quarry, together with Jane and our baskets, and a pleasant shadow of Wordsworth's Sunday hat preceding his own rapid strides in the direction of Miss Fenwick's house--surely, 'men's eyes were made to see, so let them gaze' at all _this_! And so I, gazing with a clear conscience, am very glad to hear so much good of a very good person and so well told. She plainly sees the proper use and advantage of a country-life; and _that_ knowledge gets to seem a high point of attainment doubtless by the side of the Wordsworth she speaks of--for _mine_ he shall not be as long as I am able! Was ever such a '_great_' poet before? Put one trait with the other--the theory of rural innocence--alternation of 'vulgar trifles' with dissertating with style of 'the utmost grandeur that _even you_ can conceive' (speak for yourself, Miss M.!)--and that amiable transition from two o'clock's grief at the death of one's brother to three o'clock's happiness in the 'extraordinary mesmeric discourse' of one's friend. All this, and the rest of the serene and happy inspired daily life which a piece of 'unpunctuality' can ruin, and to which the guardian 'angel' brings as crowning qualification the knack of poking the fire adroitly--of this--what can one say but that--no, best hold one's tongue and read the 'Lyrical Ballads' with finger in ear. Did not Shelley say long ago 'He had no more _imagination_ than a pint-pot'--though in those days he used to walk about France and Flanders like a man? _Now_, he is 'most comfortable in his worldly affairs' and just this comes of it! He lives the best twenty years of his life after the way of his own heart--and when one presses in to see the result of the rare experiment ... what the _one_ alchemist whom fortune has allowed to get all his coveted materials and set to work at last in earnest with fire and melting-pot--what _he_ produces after all the talk of him and the like of him; why, you get _pulvis et cinis_--a man at the mercy of the tongs and shovel!

Well! Let us despair at nothing, but, wishing success to the newer aspirant, expect better things from Miss M. when the 'knoll,' and 'paradise,' and their facilities, operate properly; and that she will make a truer estimate of the importance and responsibilities of 'authorship' than she does at present, if I understand rightly the sense in which she describes her own life as it means to be; for in one sense it is all good and well, and quite natural that she should like 'that sort of strenuous handwork' better than book-making; like the play better than the labour, as we are apt to do. If she realises a very ordinary scheme of literary life, planned under the eye of God not 'the public,' and prosecuted under the constant sense of the night's coming which ends it good or bad--then, she will be sure to 'like' the rest and sport--teaching her maids and sewing her gloves and making delicate visitors comfortable--so much more rational a resource is the worst of them than gin-and-water, for instance. But if, as I rather suspect, these latter are to figure as a virtual _half_ duty of the whole Man--as of equal importance (on the ground of the innocence and utility of such occupations) with the book-making aforesaid--always supposing _that_ to be of the right kind--_then_ I respect Miss M. just as I should an Archbishop of Canterbury whose business was the teaching A.B.C. at an infant-school--he who might set on the Tens to instruct the Hundreds how to convince the Thousands of the propriety of doing that and many other things. Of course one will respect him only the more if when _that_ matter is off his mind he relaxes at such a school instead of over a chess-board; as it will increase our love for Miss M. to find that making 'my good Jane (from Tyne-mouth)'--'happier and--I hope--wiser' is an amusement, or more, after the day's progress towards the 'novel for next year' which is to inspire thousands, beyond computation, with the ardour of making innumerable other Janes and delicate relatives happier and wiser--who knows but as many as Burns did, and does, so make happier and wiser? Only, _his quarry_ and after-solace was that 'marble bowl often replenished with whiskey' on which Dr. Curry discourses mournfully, 'Oh, be wiser Thou!'--and remember it was only _after_ Lord Bacon had written to an end _his_ Book--given us for ever the Art of Inventing--whether steam-engine or improved dust-pan--that he took on himself to do a little exemplary 'hand work'; got out on that cold St. Alban's road to stuff a fowl with snow and so keep it fresh, and got into his bed and died of the cold in his hands ('strenuous _hand_ work'--) before the snow had time to melt. He did not begin in his youth by saying--'I have a horror of merely writing 'Novum Organums' and shall give half my energies to the stuffing fowls'!

All this it is _my_ amusement, of an indifferent kind, to put down solely on the pleasant assurance contained in that postscript, of the one way of never quarrelling with Miss M.--'by joining in her plan and practice of plain speaking'--could she but 'get people to do it!' Well, she gets me for a beginner: the funny thing would be to know what Chorley's desperate utterance amounted to! Did you ever hear of the plain speaking of some of the continental lottery-projectors? An estate on the Rhine, for instance, is to be disposed of, and the holder of the lucky ticket will find himself suddenly owner of a mediæval castle with an unlimited number of dependencies--vineyards, woods, pastures, and so forth--all only waiting the new master's arrival--while inside, all is swept and garnished (not to say, varnished)--the tables are spread, the wines on the board, all is ready for the reception _but_ ... here 'plain speaking' becomes necessary--it prevents quarrels, and, could the projector get people to practise it as he does all would be well; so he, at least, will speak plainly--you hear what _is_ provided but, he cannot, dares not withhold what is _not_--there is then, to speak plainly,--no night cap! You _will_ have to bring your own night cap. The projector furnishes somewhat, as you hear, but not _all_--and now--the worst is heard,--will you quarrel with him? Will my own dear, dearest Ba please and help me here, and fancy Chorley's concessions, and tributes, and recognitions, and then, at the very end, the 'plain words,' to counterbalance all, that have been to overlook and pardon?

Oh, my own Ba, hear _my_ plain speech--and how this is _not_ an attempt to frighten you out of your dear wish to '_hear_ from me'--no, indeed--but a whim, a caprice,--and now it is out! over, done with! And now I am with you again--it is to _you_ I shall write next. Bless you, ever--my beloved. I am much better, indeed--and mean to be well. And you! But I will write--this goes for nothing--or only _this_, that I am your very own--

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

Monday.
[Post-mark, February 16, 1846.]

My long letter is with you, dearest, to show how serious my illness was 'while you wrote': unless you find that letter too foolish, as I do on twice thinking--or at all events a most superfluous bestowment of handwork while the heart was elsewhere, and with you--never more so! Dear, dear Ba, your adorable goodness sinks into me till it nearly pains,--so exquisite and strange is the pleasure: _so_ you care for me, and think of me, and write to me!--I shall never die for you, and if it could be so, what would death prove? But I can live on, your own as now,--utterly your own.

Dear Ba, do you suppose we differ on so plain a point as that of the superior wisdom, and generosity, too, of announcing such a change &c. at the eleventh hour? There can be no doubt of it,--and now, what of it to me?

But I am not going to write to-day--only this--that I am better, having not been quite so well last night--so I shut up books (that is, of my own) and mean to think about nothing but you, and you, and still you, for a whole week--so all will come right, I hope! _May_ I take Wednesday? And do you say that,--hint at the possibility of that, because you have been reached by my own remorse at feeling that if I had kept my appointment _last_ Saturday (but one)--Thursday would have been my day this past week, and this very Monday had been gained? Shall I not lose a day for ever unless I get Wednesday and Saturday?--yet ... care ... dearest--let nothing horrible happen.

If I do not hear to the contrary to-morrow--or on Wednesday early--

But write and bless me dearest, most dear Ba. God bless you ever--

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

Monday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 17, 1846.]