Chapter XX: Part 20

_Méchant comme quatre!_ you are, and not deserving to be let see the famous letter--is there any grammar in _that_ concatenation, can you tell me, now that you are in an arch-critical humour? And remember (turning back to the subject) that personally she and I are strangers and that therefore what she writes for me is naturally scene-painting to be looked at from a distance, done with a masterly hand and most amiable intention, but quite a different thing of course from the intimate revelations of heart and mind which make a living thing of a letter. If she had sent such to me, I should not have sent it to Mr. Kenyon, but then, she would not have sent it to me in any case. What she _has_ sent me might be a chapter in a book and has the life proper to itself, and I shall not let you try it by another standard, even if you wished, but you don't--for I am not so _bête_ as not to understand how the jest crosses the serious all the way you write. Well--and Mr. Kenyon wants the letter the second time, not for himself, but for Mr. Crabb Robinson who promises to let me have a new sonnet of Wordsworth's in exchange for the loan, and whom I cannot refuse because he is an intimate friend of Miss Martineau's and once allowed me to read a whole packet of letters from her to him. She does not object (as I have read under her hand) to her letters being shown about in MS., notwithstanding the anathema against all printers of the same (which completes the extravagance of the unreason, I think) and people are more anxious to see them from their presumed nearness to annihilation. I, for my part, value letters (to talk literature) as the most vital part of biography, and for any rational human being to put his foot on the traditions of his kind in this particular class, does seem to me as wonderful as possible. Who would put away one of those multitudinous volumes, even, which stereotype Voltaire's wrinkles of wit--even Voltaire? I can read book after book of such reading--or could! And if her principle were carried out, there would be an end! Death would be deader from henceforth. Also it is a wrong selfish principle and unworthy of her whole life and profession, because we should all be ready to say that if the secrets of our daily lives and inner souls may instruct other surviving souls, let them be open to men hereafter, even as they are to God now. Dust to dust, and soul-secrets to humanity--there are natural heirs to all these things. Not that I do not intimately understand the shrinking back from the idea of publicity on any terms--not that I would not myself destroy papers of mine which were sacred to _me_ for personal reasons--but then I never would call this natural weakness, virtue--nor would I, as a teacher of the public, announce it and attempt to justify it as an example to other minds and acts, I hope.

How hard you are on the mending of stockings and the rest of it! Why not agree with me and like that sort of homeliness and simplicity in combination with such large faculty as we must admit _there_? Lord Bacon did a great deal of trifling besides the stuffing of the fowl you mention--which I did not remember: and in fact, all the great work done in the world, is done just by the people who know how to trifle--do you not think so? When a man makes a principle of 'never losing a moment,' he is a lost man. Great men are eager to find an hour, and not to avoid losing a moment. 'What are you doing' said somebody once (as I heard the tradition) to the beautiful Lady Oxford as she sate in her open carriage on the race-ground--'Only a little algebra,' said she. People who do a little algebra on the race-ground are not likely to do much of anything with ever so many hours for meditation. Why, you must agree with me in all this, so I shall not be sententious any longer. Mending stockings is not exactly the sort of pastime _I_ should choose--who do things quite as trifling without the utility--and even your Seigneurie peradventure.... I stop there for fear of growing impertinent. The _argumentum ad hominem_ is apt to bring down the _argumentum ad baculum_, it is as well to remember in time.

For Wordsworth ... you are right in a measure and by a standard--but I have heard such really desecrating things of him, of his selfishness, his love of money, his worldly _cunning_ (rather than prudence) that I felt a relief and gladness in the new chronicle;--and you can understand how _that_ was. Miss Mitford's doctrine is that everything put into the poetry, is taken out of the man and lost utterly by him. Her general doctrine about poets, quite amounts to that--I do not say it too strongly. And knowing that such opinions are held by minds not feeble, it is very painful (as it would be indeed in any case) to see them apparently justified by royal poets like Wordsworth. Ah, but I know an answer--I see one in my mind!

So again for the letters. Now ought I not to know about letters, I who have had so many ... from chief minds too, as society goes in England and America? And _your_ letters began by being first to my intellect, before they were first to my heart. All the letters in the world are not like yours ... and I would trust them for that verdict with any jury in Europe, if they were not so far too dear! Mr. Kenyon wanted to make me show him your letters--I did show him the first, and resisted gallantly afterwards, which made him say what vexed me at the moment, ... 'oh--you let me see only _women's_ letters,'--till I observed that it was a breach of confidence, except in some cases, ... and that _I_ should complain very much, if anyone, man or woman, acted so by myself. But nobody in the world writes like you--not so _vitally_--and I have a right, if you please, to praise my letters, besides the reason of it which is as good.

Ah--you made me laugh about Mr. Chorley's free speaking--and, without the personal knowledge, I can comprehend how it could be nothing very ferocious ... some 'pardonnez moi, vous êtes un ange.' The amusing part is that by the same post which brought me the Ambleside document, I heard from Miss Mitford 'that it was an admirable thing of Chorley to have persisted in not allowing Harriet Martineau to quarrel with him' ... so that there are laurels on both sides, it appears.

And I am delighted to hear from you to-day just _so_, though I reproach you in turn just _so_ ... because you were not 'depressed' in writing all this and this and this which has made me laugh--you were not, dearest--and you call yourself better, 'much better,' which means a very little perhaps, but is a golden word, let me take it as I may. May God bless you. Wednesday seems too near (now that this is Monday and you are better) to be _our_ day ... perhaps it does,--and Thursday _is_ close beside it at the worst.

Dearest I am your own

BA.

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

Monday Evening.
[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]

Now forgive me, dearest of all, but I must teaze you just a little, and entreat you, if only for the love of me, to have medical advice and follow it _without further delay_. I like to have recourse to these medical people quite as little as you can--but I am persuaded that it is necessary--that it is at least _wise_, for you to do so now, and, you see, you were 'not quite so well' again last night! So will you, for me? Would _I_ not, if you wished it? And on Wednesday, yes, on Wednesday, come--that is, if coming on Wednesday should really be not bad for you, for you _must_ do what is right and kind, and I doubt whether the omnibus-driving and the noises of every sort betwixt us, should not keep you away for a little while--I trust you to do what is best for both of us.

And it is not best ... it is not good even, to talk about 'dying for me' ... oh, I do beseech you never to use such words. You make me feel as if I were choking. Also it is nonsense--because nobody puts out a candle for the light's sake.

Write _one line_ to me to-morrow--literally so little--just to say how you are. I know by the writing here, what _is_. Let me have the one line by the eight o'clock post to-morrow, Tuesday.

For the rest it may be my 'goodness' or my badness, but the world seems to have sunk away beneath my feet and to have left only you to look to and hold by. Am I not to _feel_, then, any trembling of the hand? the least trembling?

May God bless both of us--which is a double blessing for me notwithstanding my badness.

_I trust you about Wednesday_--and if it should be wise and kind not to come quite so soon, we will take it out of other days and lose not one of them. And as for anything 'horrible' being likely to happen, do not think of that either,--there can be nothing horrible while you are not ill. So be well--try to be well--use the means and, well or ill, let me have the one line to-morrow ... Tuesday. I send you the foolish letter I wrote to-day in answer to your too long one--too long, was it not, as you felt? And I, the writer of the foolish one, am twice-foolish, and push poor 'Luria' out of sight, and refuse to finish my notes on him till the harm he has done shall have passed away. In my badness I bring false accusation, perhaps, against poor Luria.

So till Wednesday--or as you shall fix otherwise.

Your

BA.

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

6-1/2 Tuesday Evening.

My dearest, your note reaches me only _now_, with an excuse from the postman. The answer you expect, you shall have the only way possible. I must make up a parcel so as to be able to knock and give it. I shall be with you to-morrow, God willing--being quite well.

Bless you ever--

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

Thursday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 19, 1846.]

My sweetest, best, dearest Ba I _do_ love you less, much less already, and adore you more, more by so much more as I see of you, think of you--I am yours just as much as those flowers; and you may pluck those flowers to pieces or put them in your breast; it is not because you so bless me now that you may not if you please one day--you will stop me here; but it is the truth and I live in it.

I am quite well; indeed, this morning, _noticeably_ well, they tell me, and well I mean to keep if I can.

When I got home last evening I found this note--and I have _accepted_, that I might say I could also keep an engagement, if so minded, at Harley Street--thereby insinuating that other reasons _may_ bring me into the neighbourhood than _the_ reason--but I shall either not go there, or only for an hour at most. I also found a note headed 'Strictly private and confidential'--so here it goes from my mouth to my heart--pleasantly proposing that I should start in a few days for St. Petersburg, as secretary to somebody going there on a 'mission of humanity'--_grazie tante_!

Did you hear of my meeting someone at the door whom I take to have been one of your brothers?

One thing vexed me in your letter--I will tell you, the praise of _my_ letters. Now, one merit they have--in language mystical--that of having _no_ merit. If I caught myself trying to write finely, graphically &c. &c., nay, if I found myself conscious of having in my own opinion, so written, all would be over! yes, over! I should be respecting you inordinately, paying a proper tribute to your genius, summoning the necessary collectedness,--plenty of all that! But the feeling with which I write to you, not knowing that it is writing,--with _you_, face and mouth and hair and eyes opposite me, touching me, knowing that all _is_ as I say, and helping out the imperfect phrases from your own intuition--_that_ would be gone--and _what_ in its place? 'Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we write to Ambleside.' No, no, love, nor can it ever be so, nor should it ever be so if--even if, preserving all that intimate relation, with the carelessness, _still_, somehow, was obtained with no effort in the world, graphic writing and philosophic and what you please--for I _will_ be--_would_ be, better than my works and words with an infinite stock beyond what I put into convenient circulation whether in fine speeches fit to remember, or fine passages to quote. For the rest, I had meant to tell you before now, that you often put me 'in a maze' when you particularize letters of mine--'such an one was kind' &c. I know, sometimes I seem to give the matter up in despair, I take out paper and fall thinking on you, and bless you with my whole heart and then begin: 'What a fine day this is?' I distinctly remember having done that repeatedly--but the converse is not true by any means, that (when the expression may happen to fall more consentaneously to the mind's motion) that less is felt, oh no! But the particular thought at the time has not been of the _insufficiency_ of expression, as in the other instance.

Now I will leave off--to begin elsewhere--for I am always with you, beloved, best beloved! Now you will write? And walk much, and sleep more? Bless you, dearest--ever--

Your own,

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

[Post-marks, Mis-sent to Mitcham. February 19 and 20, 1846.]

Best and kindest of all that ever were to be loved in dreams, and wondered at and loved out of them, you are indeed! I cannot make you feel how I felt that night when I knew that to save me an anxious thought you had come so far so late--it was almost too much to feel, and _is_ too much to speak. So let it pass. You will never act so again, ever dearest--you shall not. If the post sins, why leave the sin to the post; and I will remember for the future, will be ready to remember, how postmen are fallible and how you live at the end of a lane--and not be uneasy about a silence if there should be one unaccounted for. For the Tuesday coming, I shall remember that too--who could forget it?... I put it in the niche of the wall, one golden lamp more of your giving, to throw light purely down to the end of my life--I do thank you. And the truth is, I _should_ have been in a panic, had there been no letter that evening--I was frightened the day before, then reasoned the fears back and waited: and if there had been no letter after all--. But you are supernaturally good and kind. How can I ever 'return' as people say (as they might say in their ledgers) ... any of it all? How indeed can I who have not even a heart left of my own, to love you with?

I quite trust to your promise in respect to the medical advice, if walking and rest from work do not prevent at once the recurrence of those sensations--it was a promise, remember. And you will tell me the very truth of how you are--and you will try the music, and not be nervous, dearest. Would not _riding_ be good for you--consider. And why should you be 'alone' when your sister is in the house? How I keep thinking of you all day--you cannot really be alone with so many thoughts ... such swarms of thoughts, if you could but see them, drones and bees together!

George came in from Westminster Hall after we parted yesterday and said that he had talked with the junior counsel of the wretched plaintiffs in the Ferrers case, and that the belief was in the mother being implicated, although not from the beginning. It was believed too that the miserable girl had herself taken step after step into the mire, involved herself gradually, the first guilt being an extravagance in personal expenses, which she lied and lied to account for in the face of her family. 'Such a respectable family,' said George, 'the grandfather in court looking venerable, and everyone indignant upon being so disgraced by her!' But for the respectability in the best sense, I do not quite see. That all those people should acquiesce in the indecency (according to every standard of English manners in any class of society) of thrusting the personal expenses of a member of their family on Lord Ferrers, she still bearing their name--and in those peculiar circumstances of her supposed position too--where is the respectability? And they are furious with her, which is not to be wondered at after all. Her counsel had an interview with her previous to the trial, to satisfy themselves of her good faith, and she was quite resolute and earnest, persisting in every statement. On the coming out of the anonymous letters, Fitzroy Kelly said to the juniors that if anyone could suggest a means of explanation, he would be eager to carry forward the case, ... but for him he saw no way of escaping from the fact of the guilt of their client. Not a voice could speak for her. So George was told. There is no ground for a prosecution for a conspiracy, he says, but she is open to the charge for _forgery_, of course, and to the dreadful consequences, though it is not considered at all likely that Lord Ferrers could wish to disturb her beyond the ruin she has brought on her own life.

Think of Miss Mitford's growing quite cold about Mr. Chorley who has spent two days with her lately, and of her saying in a letter to me this morning that he is very much changed and grown to be 'a presumptuous coxcomb.' He has displeased her in some way--that is clear. What changes there are in the world.

Should I ever change to _you_, do you think, ... even if you came to 'love me less'--not that I meant to reproach you with that possibility. May God bless you, dear dearest. It is another miracle (beside the many) that I get nearer to the mountains yet still they seem more blue. Is not _that_ strange?

Ever and wholly

Your BA.

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

Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, February 20, 1846.]

And I offended you by praising your letters--or rather _mine_, if you please--as if I had not the right! Still, you shall not, shall not fancy that I meant to praise them in the way you seem to think--by calling them 'graphic,' 'philosophic,'--why, did I ever use such words? I agree with you that if I could play critic upon your letters, it would be an end!--but no, no ... I did not, for a moment. In what I said I went back to my first impressions--and they were _vital_ letters, I said--which was the résumé of my thoughts upon the early ones you sent me, because I felt your letters to be _you_ from the very first, and I began, from the beginning, to read every one several times over. Nobody, I felt, nobody of all these writers, did write as you did. Well!--and had I not a right to say _that_ now at last, and was it not natural to say just _that_, when I was talking of other people's letters and how it had grown almost impossible for me to read them; and do I deserve to be scolded? No indeed.

And if I had the misfortune to think now, when you say it is a fine day, that _that_ is said in more music than it could be said in by another--where is the sin against _you_, I should like to ask. It is yourself who is the critic, I think, after all. But over all the brine, I hold my letters--just as Camoens did his poem. They are _best to me_--and they are _best_. I knew what _they_ were, before I knew what _you_ were--all of you. And I like to think that I never fancied anyone on a level with you, even in a letter.

What makes you take them to be so bad, I suppose, is just feeling in them how near we are. _You say that!_--not I.

Bad or good, you _are_ better--yes, 'better than the works and words'!--though it was very shameful of you to insinuate that I talked of fine speeches and passages and graphical and philosophical sentences, as if I had proposed a publication of 'Elegant Extracts' from your letters. See what blasphemy one falls into through a beginning of light speech! It is wiser to talk of St. Petersburg; for all Voltaire's ... '_ne disons pas de mal de Nicolas_.'

Wiser--because you will not go. If you were going ... well!--but there is no danger--it would not do you good to go, I am so happy this time as to be able to think--and your 'mission of humanity' lies nearer--'strictly private and confidential'? but not in Harley Street--so if you go _there_, dearest, keep to the 'one hour' and do not suffer yourself to be tired and stunned in those hot rooms and made unwell again--it is plain that you cannot bear that sort of excitement. For Mr. Kenyon's note, ... it was a great temptation to make a day of Friday--but I resist both for Monday's sake and for yours, because it seems to me safer not to hurry you from one house to another till you are tired completely. I shall think of you so much the nearer for Mr. Kenyon's note--which is something gained. In the meanwhile you are better, which is everything, or seems so. Ever dearest, do you remember what it is to me that you should be better, and keep from being worse again--I mean, of course, _try_ to keep from being worse--be wise ... and do not stay long in those hot Harley Street rooms. Ah--now you will think that I am afraid of the unicorns!--

Through your being ill the other day I forgot, and afterwards went on forgetting, to speak of and to return the ballad--which is delightful; I have an unspeakable delight in those suggestive ballads, which seem to make you touch with the end of your finger the full warm life of other times ... so near they bring you, yet so suddenly all passes in them. Certainly there is a likeness to your Duchess--it is a curious crossing. And does it not strike you that a verse or two must be wanting in the ballad--there is a gap, I fancy.

Tell Mr. Kenyon (if he enquires) that you come here on Monday instead of Saturday--and if you can help it, do not mention Wednesday--it will be as well, not. You met Alfred at the door--he came up to me afterwards and observed that 'at last he had seen you!' 'Virgilium tantum vidi!'

As to the thing which you try to say in the first page of this letter, and which you 'stop' yourself in saying ... _I_ need not stop you in it....

And now there is no time, if I am to sleep to-night. May God bless you, dearest, dearest.

I must be your own while He blesses _me_.

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

Friday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, February 20, 1846.]

Here is my Ba's dearest _first_ letter come four hours after the second, with '_Mis-sent to Mitcham_' written on its face as a reason,--one more proof of the negligence of somebody! But I _do_ have it at last--what should I say? what do you expect me to say? And the first note seemed quite as much too kind as usual!

Let me write to-morrow, sweet? I am quite well and sure to mind all you bid me. I shall do no more than look in at that place (they are the cousins of a really good friend of mine, Dr. White--I go for _him_) if even that--for to-morrow night I must go out again, I fear--to pay the ordinary compliment for an invitation to the R.S.'s _soirée_ at Lord Northampton's. And then comes Monday--and to-night any unicorn I may see I will not find myself at liberty to catch. (N.B.--should you meditate really an addition to the 'Elegant Extracts'--mind this last joke is none of mine but my father's; when walking with me when a child, I remember, he bade a little urchin we found fishing with a stick and a string for sticklebacks in a ditch--'to mind that he brought any sturgeon he might catch to the king'--he having a claim on such a prize, by courtesy if not right).

As for Chorley, he is neither the one nor the other of those ugly things. One remembers Regan's 'Oh Heaven--so you will rail at _me_, when you are in the mood.' But what a want of self-respect such judgments argue, or rather, want of knowledge what true self-respect is: 'So I believed yesterday, and _so_ now--and yet am neither hasty, nor inapprehensive, nor malevolent'--what then?

--But I will say more of my mind--(not of that)--to-morrow, for time presses a little--so bless you my ever ever dearest--I love you wholly.

R.B.

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

Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 21, 1846.]

As my sisters did not dine at home yesterday and I see nobody else in the evening, I never heard till just now and _from Papa himself_, that 'George was invited to meet Mr. Browning and Mr. Procter.' How surprised you will be. It must have been a sudden thought of Mr. Kenyon's.

And I have been thinking, thinking since last night that I wrote you then a letter all but ... insolent ... which, do you know, I feel half ashamed to look back upon this morning--particularly what I wrote about 'missions of humanity'--now was it not insolent of me to write so? If I could take my letter again I would dip it into Lethe between the lilies, instead of the post office:--but I can't--so if you wondered, you must forget as far as possible, and understand how it was, and that I was in brimming spirits when I wrote, from two causes ... first, because I had your letter which was a pure goodness of yours, and secondly because you were 'noticeably' better you said, or 'noticeably well' rather, to mind my quotations. So I wrote what I wrote, and gave it to Arabel when she came in at midnight, to give it to Henrietta who goes out before eight in the morning and often takes charge of my letters, and it was too late, at the earliest this morning, to feel a little ashamed. Miss Thomson told me that she had determined to change the type of the few pages of her letterpress which had been touched, and that therefore Mr. Burges's revisions of my translations should be revised back again. She appears to be a very acute person, full of quick perceptions--naturally quick, and carefully trained--a little over anxious perhaps about mental lights, and opening her eyes still more than she sees, which is a common fault of clever people, if one must call it a fault. I like her, and she is kind and cordial. Will she ask you to help her book with a translation or two, I wonder. Perhaps--if the courage should come. Dearest, how I shall think of you this evening, and how near you will seem, not to be here. I had a letter from Mr. Mathews the other day, and smiled to read in it just what I had expected, that he immediately sent Landor's verses on you to a _few editors_, friends of his, in order to their communication to the public. He received my apology for myself with the utmost graciousness. A kind good man he is.

After all, do you know, I am a little vexed that I should have even _seemed_ to do wrong in my speech about the letters. It must have been wrong, if it seemed so to you, I fancy now. Only I really did no more mean to try your letters ... mine ... such as they are to me now, by the common critical measure, than the shepherds praised the pure tenor of the angels who sang 'Peace upon earth' to them. It was enough that they knew it for angels' singing. So do _you_ forgive me, beloved, and put away from you the thought that I have let in between us any miserable stuff 'de métier,' which I hate as you hate. And I will not say any more about it, not to run into more imprudences of mischief.

On the other hand I warn you against saying again what you began to say yesterday and stopped. Do not try it again. What may be quite good sense from me, is from _you_ very much the reverse, and pray observe that difference. Or did you think that I was making my own road clear in the the thing I said about--'jilts'? No, you did not. Yet I am ready to repeat of myself as of others, that if I ceased to love you, I certainly would act out the whole consequence--but _that_ is an impossible 'if' to my nature, supposing the conditions of it otherwise to be probable. I never loved anyone much and ceased to love that person. Ask every friend of mine, if I am given to change even in friendship! _And to you...!_ Ah, but you never think of such a thing seriously--and you are conscious that you did not say it very sagely. You and I are in different positions. Now let me tell you an apologue in exchange for your Wednesday's stories which I liked so, and mine perhaps may make you 'a little wiser'--who knows?

It befell that there stood in hall a bold baron, and out he spake to one of his serfs ... 'Come thou; and take this baton of my baronie, and give me instead thereof that sprig of hawthorn thou holdest in thine hand.' Now the hawthorn-bough was no larger a thing than might be carried by a wood-pigeon to the nest, when she flieth low, and the baronial baton was covered with fine gold, and the serf, turning it in his hands, marvelled greatly.

And he answered and said, 'Let not my lord be in haste, nor jest with his servant. Is it verily his will that I should keep his golden baton? Let him speak again--lest it repent him of his gift.'

And the baron spake again that it was his will. 'And I'--he said once again--'shall it be lawful for me to keep this sprig of hawthorn, and will it not repent thee of thy gift?'

Then all the servants who stood in hall, laughed, and the serf's hands trembled till they dropped the baton into the rushes, knowing that his lord did but jest....

Which mine did not. Only, _de te fabula narratur_ up to a point.

And I have your letter. 'What did I expect?' Why I expected just _that_, a letter in turn. Also I am graciously pleased (yes, and very much pleased!) to '_let_ you write to-morrow.' How you spoil me with goodness, which makes one 'insolent' as I was saying, now and then.

The worst is, that I write 'too kind' letters--I!--and what does that criticism mean, pray? It reminds me, at least, of ... now I will tell you what it reminds me of.

A few days ago Henrietta said to me that she was quite uncomfortable. She had written to somebody a not kind enough letter, she thought, and it might be taken ill. 'Are _you_ ever uncomfortable, Ba, after you have sent letters to the post?' she asked me.

'Yes,' I said, 'sometimes, but from a reason just the very reverse of your reason, _my_ letters, when they get into the post, seem too kind,--rather.' And my sisters laughed ... laughed.

But if _you_ think so beside, I must seriously set to work, you see, to correct that flagrant fault, and shall do better in time _dis faventibus_, though it will be difficult.

Mr. Kenyon's dinner is a riddle which I cannot read. _You_ are invited to meet Miss Thomson and Mr. Bayley and '_no one else_.' George is invited to meet Mr. Browning and Mr. Procter and '_no one else_'--just those words. The '_absolu_' (do you remember Balzac's beautiful story?) is just _you_ and 'no one else,' the other elements being mere uncertainties, shifting while one looks for them.

Am I not writing nonsense to-night? I am not 'too _wise_' in any case, which is some comfort. It puts one in spirits to hear of your being 'well,' ever and ever dearest. Keep so for _me_. May God bless you hour by hour. In every one of mine I am your own

BA.

For Miss Mitford ...

But people are not angels quite ...

and she sees the whole world in stripes of black and white, it is her way. I feel very affectionately towards her, love her sincerely. She is affectionate to _me_ beyond measure. Still, always I feel that if I were to vex her, the lower deep below the lowest deep would not be low enough for _me_. I always feel _that_. She would advertise me directly for a wretch proper.

Then, for all I said about never changing, I have ice enough over me just now to hold the sparrows!--in respect to a great crowd of people, and she is among them--for reasons--for reasons.

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

Saturday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 23, 1846.]

So all was altered, my love--and, instead of Miss T. and the other friend, I had your brother and Procter--to my great pleasure. After, I went to that place, and soon got away, and am very well this morning in the sunshine; which I feel with you, do I not? Yesterday after dinner we spoke of Mrs. Jameson, and, as my wont is--(Here your letter reaches me--let me finish this sentence now I have finished kissing you, dearest beyond all dearness--My own heart's Ba!)--oh, as I am used, I left the talking to go on by itself, with the thought busied elsewhere, till at last my own voice startled me for I heard my tongue utter 'Miss Barrett ... that is, Mrs. Jameson says' ... or 'does ... or does not.' I forget which! And if anybody noticed the _gaucherie_ it must have been just your brother!

Now to these letters! I do solemnly, unaffectedly wonder how you can put so much pure felicity into an envelope so as that I shall get it as from the fount head. This to-day, those yesterday--there is, I see, and know, thus much goodness in line after line, goodness to be scientifically appreciated, _proved there_--but over and above, is it in the writing, the dots and traces, the seal, the paper--here does the subtle charm lie beyond all rational accounting for? The other day I stumbled on a quotation from J. Baptista Porta--wherein he avers that any musical instrument made out of wood possessed of medicinal properties retains, being put to use, such virtues undiminished,--and that, for instance, a sick man to whom you should pipe on a pipe of elder-tree would so receive all the advantage derivable from a decoction of its berries. From whence, by a parity of reasoning, I may discover, I think, that the very ink and paper were--ah, what were they? Curious thinking won't do for me and the wise head which is mine, so I will lie and rest in my ignorance of content and understand that without any magic at all you simply wish to make one person--which of your free goodness proves to be your R.B.--to make me supremely happy, and that you have your wish--you _do_ bless me! More and more, for the old treasure is piled undiminished and still the new comes glittering in. Dear, dear heart of my heart, life of my life, _will this last_, let _me_ begin to ask? Can it be meant I shall live this to the end? Then, dearest, care also for the life beyond, and put in my mind how to testify here that I have felt, if I could not deserve that a gift beyond all gifts! I hope to work hard, to prove I do feel, as I say--it would be terrible to accomplish nothing now.

With which conviction--renewed conviction time by time, of your extravagance of kindness to me unworthy,--will it seem characteristically consistent when I pray you not to begin frightening me, all the same, with threats of writing _less_ kindly? That must not be, love, for _your_ sake now--if you had not thrown open those windows of heaven I should have no more imagined than that Syrian lord on whom the King leaned 'how such things might be'--but, once their influence showered, I should know, too soon and easily, if they shut up again! You have committed your dear, dearest self to that course of blessing, and blessing on, on, for ever--so let all be as it is, pray, _pray_!

No--not _all_. No more, ever, of that strange suspicion--'insolent'--oh, what a word!--nor suppose I shall particularly wonder at its being fancied applicable to _that_, of all other passages of your letter! It is quite as reasonable to suspect the existence of such a quality _there_ as elsewhere: how _can_ such a thing, _could_ such a thing come from you to me? But, dear Ba, _do_ you know me better! _Do_ feel that I know you, I am bold to believe, and that if you were to run at me with a pointed spear I should be sure it was a golden sanative, Machaon's touch, for my entire good, that I was opening my heart to receive! As for words, written or spoken--I, who sin forty times in a day by light words, and untrue to the thought, I am certainly not used to be easily offended by other peoples' words, people in the world. But _your_ words! And about the 'mission'; if it had not been a thing to jest at, I should not have begun, as I did--as you felt I did. I know now, what I only suspected then, and will tell you all the matter on Monday if you care to hear. The 'humanity' however, would have been unquestionable if I had chosen to exercise it towards the poor weak incapable creature that wants _somebody_, and urgently, I can well believe.

As for your apologue, it is naught--as you felt, and so broke off--for the baron knew well enough it was a spray of the magical tree which once planted in his domain would shoot up, and out, and all round, and be glorious with leaves and musical with birds' nests, and a fairy safeguard and blessing thenceforward and for ever, when the foolish baton had been broken into ounces of gold, even if gold it _were_, and spent and vanished: for, he said, such gold lies in the highway, men pick it up, more of it or less; but this one slip of the flowering tree is all of it on this side Paradise. Whereon he laid it to his heart and was happy--in spite of his disastrous chase the night before, when so far from catching an unicorn, he saw not even a respectable prize-heifer, worth the oil-cake and rape-seed it had doubtless cost to rear her--'insolence!'

I found no opportunity of speaking to Mr. K. about Monday, but nothing was said of last Wednesday, and he must know I did not go yesterday. So, Monday is laughing in sunshine surely! Bless you, my sweetest. I love you with my whole heart; ever shall love you.

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

[Post-mark, February 24, 1846.]

Ever dearest, it is only when you go away, when you are quite gone, out of the house and the street, that I get up and think properly, and with the right gratitude of your flowers. Such beautiful flowers you brought me this time too! looking like summer itself, and smelling! Doing the 'honour due' to the flowers, makes your presence a little longer with me, the sun shines back over the hill just by that time, and then drops, till the next letter.

If I had had the letter on Saturday as ought to have been, no, I could _not_ have answered it so that you should have my answer on Sunday--no, I should still have had to write first.

Now you understand that I do not object to the writing first, but only to the hearing second. I would rather write than not--I! But to be written to is the chief gladness of course; and with all you say of liking to have my letters (which I like to hear quite enough indeed) you cannot pretend to think that _yours_ are not more to _me_, most to _me_! Ask my guardian-angel and hear what he says! Yours will look another way for shame of measuring joys with him! Because as I have said before, and as he says now, you are all to me, all the light, all the life; I am living for you now. And before I knew you, what was I and where? What was the world to me, do you think? and the meaning of life? And now, when you come and go, and write and do not write, all the hours are chequered accordingly in so many squares of white and black, as if for playing at fox and goose ... only there is no fox, and I will not agree to be goose for one ... _that_ is _you_ perhaps, for being 'too easily' satisfied.

So my claim is that you are more to me than I can be to you at any rate. Mr. Fox said on Sunday that I was a 'religious hermit' who wrote 'poems which ought to be read in a Gothic alcove'; and religious hermits, when they care to see visions, do it better, they all say, through fasting and flagellation and seclusion in dark places. St. Theresa, for instance, saw a clearer glory by such means, than your Sir Moses Montefiore through his hundred-guinea telescope. Think then, how every shadow of my life has helped to throw out into brighter, fuller significance, the light which comes to me from you ... think how it is the one light, seen without distractions.

_I_ was thinking the other day that certainly and after all (or rather before all) I had loved you all my life unawares, that is, the idea of you. Women begin for the most part, (if ever so very little given to reverie) by meaning, in an aside to themselves, to love such and such an ideal, seen sometimes in a dream and sometimes in a book, and forswearing their ancient faith as the years creep on. I say a book, because I remember a friend of mine who looked everywhere for the original of Mr. Ward's 'Tremaine,' because nothing would do for _her_, she insisted, except just _that_ excess of so-called refinement, with the book-knowledge and the conventional manners, (_loue qui peut_, Tremaine), and ended by marrying a lieutenant in the Navy who could not spell. Such things happen every day, and cannot be otherwise, say the wise:--and _this_ being otherwise with _me_ is miraculous compensation for the trials of many years, though such abundant, overabundant compensation, that I cannot help fearing it is too much, as I know that you are too good and too high for me, and that by the degree in which I am raised up you are let down, for us two to find a level to meet on. One's ideal must be above one, as a matter of course, you know. It is as far as one can reach with one's eyes (soul-eyes), not reach to touch. And here is mine ... shall I tell you? ... even to the visible outward sign of the black hair and the complexion (why you might ask my sisters!) yet I would not tell you, if I could not tell you afterwards that, if it had been red hair quite, it had been the same thing, only I prove the coincidence out fully and make you smile half.

Yet indeed I did not fancy that I was to love _you_ when you came to see me--no indeed ... any more than I did your caring on your side. My ambition when we began our correspondence, was simply that you should forget I was a woman (being weary and _blasée_ of the empty written gallantries, of which I have had my share and all the more perhaps from my peculiar position which made them so without consequence), that you should forget _that_ and let us be friends, and consent to teach me what you knew better than I, in art and human nature, and give me your sympathy in the meanwhile. I am a great hero-worshipper and had admired your poetry for years, and to feel that you liked to write to me and be written to was a pleasure and a pride, as I used to tell you I am sure, and then your letters were not like other letters, as I must not tell you again. Also you _influenced_ me, in a way in which no one else did. For instance, by two or three half words you made me see you, and other people had delivered orations on the same subject quite without effect. I surprised everybody in this house by consenting to see you. Then, when you came, you never went away. I mean I had a sense of your presence constantly. Yes ... and to prove how free that feeling was from the remotest presentiment of what has occurred, I said to Papa in my unconsciousness the next morning ... 'it is most extraordinary how the idea of Mr. Browning does beset me--I suppose it is not being used to see strangers, in some degree--but it haunts me ... it is a persecution.' On which he smiled and said that 'it was not grateful to my friend to use such a word.' When the letter came....

Do you know that all that time I was frightened of you? frightened in this way. I felt as if you had a power over me and meant to use it, and that I could not breathe or speak very differently from what you chose to make me. As to my thoughts, I had it in my head somehow that you read _them_ as you read the newspaper--examined them, and fastened them down writhing under your long entomological pins--ah, do you remember the entomology of it all?

But the power was used upon _me_--and I never doubted that you had mistaken your own mind, the strongest of us having some exceptional weakness. Turning the wonder round in all lights, I came to what you admitted yesterday ... yes, I saw _that_ very early ... that you had come here with the intention of trying to love whomever you should find, ... and also that what I had said about exaggerating the amount of what I could be to you, had just operated in making you more determined to justify your own presentiment in the face of mine. Well--and if that last clause was true a little, too ... why should I be sorry now ... and why should you have fancied for a moment, that the first could make me sorry. At first and when I did not believe that you really loved me, when I thought you deceived yourself, _then_, it was different. But now ... now ... when I see and believe your attachment for me, do you think that any cause in the world (except what diminished it) could render it less a source of joy to me? I mean as far as I myself am considered. Now if you ever fancy that I am _vain_ of your love for me, you will be unjust, remember. If it were less dear, and less above me, I might be vain perhaps. But I may say _before_ God and you, that of all the events of my life, inclusive of its afflictions, nothing has humbled me so much as your love. Right or wrong it may be, but true it _is_, and I tell you. Your love has been to me like God's own love, which makes the receivers of it kneelers.

Why all this should be written, I do not know--but you set me thinking yesterday in that backward line, which I lean back to very often, and for once, as you made me write directly, why I wrote, as my thoughts went, that way.

Say how you are, beloved--and do not brood over that 'Soul's Tragedy,' which I wish I had here with 'Luria,' because, so, you should not see it for a month at least. And take exercise and keep well--and remember how many letters I must have before Saturday. May God bless you. Do you want to hear me say

I cannot love you less...?

_That_ is a doubtful phrase. And

I cannot love you more

is doubtful too, for reasons I could give. More or less, I really love you, but it does not sound right, even _so_, does it? I know what it ought to be, and will put it into the 'seal' and the 'paper' with the ineffable other things.

Dearest, do not go to St. Petersburg. Do not think of going, for fear it should come true and you should go, and while you were helping the Jews and teaching Nicholas, what (in that case) would become of your

BA?

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

Tuesday.
[Post-mark, February 24, 1846.]

Ah, sweetest, in spite of our agreement, here is the note that sought not to go, but must--because, if there is no speaking of Mrs. Jamesons and such like without bringing in your dear name (not _dearest_ name, my Ba!) what is the good of not writing it down, now, when I, though possessed with the love of it no more than usual, yet _may_ speak, and to a hearer? And I have to thank you with all my heart for the good news of the increasing strength and less need for the opium--how I do thank you, my dearest--and desire to thank God through whose goodness it all is! This I could not but say now, to-morrow I will write at length, having been working a little this morning, with whatever effect. So now I will go out and see your elm-trees and gate, and think the thoughts over again, and coming home I shall perhaps find a letter.

Dearest, dearest--my perfect blessing you are!

May God continue his care for us. R.

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

Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 25, 1846.]