Chapter XIII: Part 13

Still it is not of _me_ that we are called to think—and I would not for the world refuse any last desire, if clearly signified, and if the power should be with me. He was not a common man—he had in him the stuff of greatness, this poor Haydon had; and we must consider reverently whatever rent garment he shall have left behind. Quite, in some respects, I think with you but your argument does appear to me to sweep out too far on one side, so that if you do not draw it back, Robert, you will efface all autobiography and confession—tear out a page bent over by many learners—I mean when you say that because he is above (now) the passions and frailties he has recorded, we should put from us the record. True, he is above it all—true, he has done with the old Haydon; like a man outgrowing his own childhood he will not spin this top any more. Oh, it is true—I feel it all just as you do. But, after all, a man outgrowing his childhood, may leave his top to children, and no one smile! This record is not for the angels, but for _us_, who are a little lower at highest. Three volumes perhaps may be taken from the twenty-six full of character and interest, and not without melancholy teaching. Only some competent and sturdy hand should manage the selection; as surely as mine is unfit for it. But where to seek _discretion_? _delicacy_?

Dearest, I speak the truth to you—I am not ill indeed. When I was at best in health I used sometimes to be a little weak and faint, and it has only been _so_ for this last day or two. By Wednesday the cloud will have passed. And, do you know, I have found out something from our long parting, ... I have found out that I love you better than even I thought. There’s a piece of finding out! My own dearest—what would become of me indeed, _if_ I could not see you on Wednesday nor on Thursday nor on Friday?—no breath I have, for going on. No breath I should have, for living on. I do kiss you through the distance——since you tell me. I love you with my soul.

Your own I am.

Three of the flowers and nearly all the little blue ones stay with me all this while to comfort me!! isn’t it kind of them?

Two letters to-day—and such letters! Ah—if you love me always but half as much—I will agree with you now for half! Yet, O Hesiod, half is not better than the whole, by any means! Yet ... if the whole went away, and did not leave me half!—

When I was a child I heard two married women talking. One said to the other ... ‘The most painful part of marriage is the first year, when the lover changes into the husband by slow degrees.’ The other woman agreed, as a matter of fact is agreed to. I listened with my eyes and ears, and never forgot it ... as you observe. It seemed to me, child as I was, a dreadful thing to have a husband by such a process. Now, it seems to me more dreadful.

Si l’âme est immortelle
L’amour ne l’est-il pas?

Beautiful verses—just to prove to you that I do not remember _only_ the disagreeable things ... only to teaze you with, like so many undeserved reproaches. And you so good, so best—Ah—but it is _that_ which frightens me! so far _best_!

You were foolish to begin to love me, you know, as always I told you, my beloved!—but since you _would_ begin, ... go on to do it as long as you can ... do not leave me in the wilderness. God bless you for me!—

I am your BA.

Think if people were to get hold of that imputation on poor Mrs. Norton—think!

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

Tuesday Morning in haste.
[Post-mark, July 7, 1846.]

Dearest, I am uncertain whether I can see you to-morrow. To-night I will write again—you shall hear. You tell me to _risk nothing_ ... which is what I feel. But I long, long to see you. You shall hear in the morning.

Read the note which Mr. Kenyon sends me from Mr. Forster. Very averse I feel, from applying, in the way prescribed, to Mr. Serjeant Talfourd. Tell me what to do, Robert ... my ‘famous in council!’ Sick at heart, it all makes me. Am I to write to Mr. Talfourd, do you think?

Oh, _you_ would manage it for me—but to mix _you_ up in it, will make a danger of a worse evil. May God bless you, my own. I may see you to-morrow perhaps after all—it is a ‘_perhaps_’ though ... and I am surely

Your BA.

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

Tuesday.
[Post-mark, July 7, 1846.]

Dearest, the first thing to say is the deep joyfulness of expecting to see you, really, to-morrow—mind, the engagement with Mr. Kenyon is nothing in the way. If you cannot let me stay the usual time—I can call, pass away the interval easily ... this is a superfluous word to your goodness which is superfluous in these ‘old ways of Ba’s’—dear Ba, whom I kiss with perfect love—and shall soon kiss in no dream! Landor is all well enough in one sentence ... happily turned _that_ is,—but I am vexed at his strange opinion of Goethe’s poem,—and the more, that a few years ago he wrote down as boldly that nothing had been written _so_ ‘Hellenic’ these two thousand years—(in a note to the ‘Satire on the Satirists’)—and of these opinions I think the earlier much nearer the truth. _Then_ he wrote so, because Wordsworth had depreciated Goethe—now, very likely, some maladroit applauder has said Landor’s own ‘Iphigenia’ is worthy of Goethe,—or similar platitudes.

Yes, dearest, you are quite right—and my words have a wrong sense, and one I did not mean they should bear, if they object to confessions and autobiographies in general. Only the littleness and temporary troubles, the petty battle with foes, which is but a moment’s work however the success may be, all _that_ might go when the occasion, real or fancied, is gone. I would have the customary ‘habits,’ as we say, of the man preserved, and if they were quilted and stiffened with steel and bristling all over with the offensive and defensive weapons the man judged necessary for his safety,—they should be composed and hung up decently—telling the true story of his life. But I should not preserve the fretful gesture,—lift the arm, as it was angrily lifted to keep off a wolf—which now turns out to have been only Flush in a fever of vigilance—half-drew the sword which—Ah, let me have done with this! You understand, if I do not. For the bad story,—the telling _that_, if it were true, is nearly as bad as inventing it. That poor woman is the hack-block of a certain class of redoubtable braggarts—there are such stories by the _dozen_ in circulation. All may have been misconception ... ‘advances’—to induce one more painter to introduce her face in his works.

My time is out ... I had much to say, but this letter of mine arrived by the afternoon post,—shame on the office! To-morrow!

Bless you, ever dearest dearest—

Your own.

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

Tuesday Evening
[Post-mark, July 8, 1846.]

Yes—I understand you perfectly—and it should be exactly as you say—and it is just _that_, which requires so much adroitness,—and such decision and strength of hand, to manage these responsibilities. Somebody is wanted to cut and burn, and be silent afterwards. I remember that bitter things are said of Shelley and Leigh Hunt beyond all the bitterness of alcohol. Olives do not taste so, though steeped in salt. There are some curious letters by poor Keats about Hunt, and _they_ too are bitter. It would be dreadful to suffer these miseries to sow themselves about the world, like so much thistle-down ... the world, where there are thistles enough already, to make fodder for its wild asses!

As to Landor ... oh, I did not remember the note you speak of in the satire you speak of—but you remember everything ... even _me_. Is it not true that Landor, too, is one of the men who carry their passions about with them into everything, as a boy would, pebbles ... muddying every clear water, with a stone here and a stone there. The end is, that we lose the image of himself in the serene depth, as we might have had it—and the little stone comes to stand for him. How unworthy of such a man as Landor, such weakness is! To _think_ with one’s temper!! One might as well be at once Don Quixote, and fight with a warming-pan.

But I did not remember the _former_ opinion. I took it for a constitutional fancy of Landor’s, and did not smile much more at it than at my own ‘profundity in German,’ which was a matter of course ... of course ... of course. For have I not the gift of tongues? Don’t I talk Syriac ... as well as Flush talks English—and Hebrew, like a prophetess ... and various other languages and dialects less familiarly known to persons in general than these aforesaid? So, profound indeed, must be the German and the Dutch! And perhaps it may not be worth while to answer Mr. Landor’s note for the mere purpose of telling him anything about it.

Dearest!—I have written all this before I would say a word of your coming, just to think a little more—and down all these pages I have been thinking, thinking, of _you_ ... of your possible coming ... what nonsense they must be! Well! and the end is that, let it be wise or unwise, I _must and will see you to-morrow_—I cannot do otherwise. It is just as if Flush had been shut up in a box for so many days. My spirits flag ... and I could find it in my heart to grow cross like Landor and deny Goethe. So come, dearest dearest—and let the world bark at our heels if it pleases. I will just turn round and set Flush at it.

For two or three days I have not been out—not for two days ... not out of this room. This evening at seven, when they were all going to dinner, I took Wilson with me and drove into the park for air. It will do me good perhaps—but your coming will, certainly. So come, my dearest beloved!—At three, remember.

Your own

BA.

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

PRIVATE

Wednesday 7 A.M.
[Post-mark, July 8, 1846.]

My own Ba, I received your note on my return from Talfourd’s last night. I am anxious to get the first post for this, so can only use the bare words,—if those. After dinner, Forster put a question to our host about the amount of the subscription; and in a minute the paper-bequest was introduced. Talfourd had received a letter from Miss Mitford, enclosing one from you (or a copy of one ... I did not hear)—whereat he pronounced so emphatically upon H.’s conduct in making you,—‘who could never have known the nature of the transaction nor the very serious consequences it involved’—the depositary of his pictures &c. on such occasions,—the words, ‘H. it seems, has been in the habit of using Miss B’s house &c.’ (or to that effect) had so offensive an implication,—that I felt obliged to say simply, you had never seen Haydon and were altogether amazed and distressed at his desire,—and that, for the other matter, what he chose to send, you could not, I supposed, bring yourself to refuse admittance to the house. I gave no particular account of my own means of knowledge, nor spoke further than to remove the impression from the minds of the people present that you must have ‘known’ Haydon, as they call ‘knowing’—and Forster, for one, expressed surprise at it. I ventured to repeat what I mentioned to you—‘that it seemed likely you were selected for the Editorship precisely on account of your isolation from the world.’

Soon after, Forster went away—and, up-stairs, I got Talfourd alone, and just told him that I was in the habit of corresponding with you, that you had made me acquainted with a few of the circumstances, and that you had at once thought of _him_, Talfourd, as the proper source of instruction on the subject. Talfourd’s reply amounted to this,—(in the fewest words possible). The _will_ &c. is of course an absurdity. The papers are the undoubted property of the creditors ... any attempt to publish them would subject you to an action at law. They were given prospectively to you _exactly for the reason I suggested_: they having been in the first instance offered to Talfourd. Haydon knew that T. would never print them in their offensive integrity, and hoped that _you would_—being quite of the average astuteness in worldly matters when his own vanity and selfishness were not concerned. They might, these papers, be published with advantage to Mrs. Haydon at some future time if the creditors permit—or without their permitting, if woven into a substantially new framework; as some ‘Haydon and his Times,’ or the like ... but there is nothing to call for such a step at present, even in that view of advantage to the family ... the subscription and other assistances being sufficient for their necessities. Therefore the course T. would recommend you to adopt is to let the deposit (_if_ you have one ... for he did not _know_, and I said nothing)—lie untouched—not giving them up to anybody, any creditor, to Mrs. H’s prejudice.

Now, can you do better than as Forster advises? Talfourd goes on circuit _to-morrow_—he said, ‘I can hear, or arrange anything with Miss B’s brother’—so that, if there should be no time, you can write by him, and entrust explanations &c. But would it not be best to get done with this matter directly—to write a BRIEF note in the course of to-day, mentioning the facts, and requesting advice? In order to leave you the time to do this,—should the post presently bring me a letter allowing me to see you at three ... unless the allowance is _very_ free, _very_ irresistible ... I will rather take to-morrow ... a piece of self-denial I fear I should not so readily bring myself to exhibit, were I not really obliged to pass your house to-day; so that even Ba will understand!

Miss Mitford’s note appears to have been none of the wisest—indeed a phrase or two I heard, were purely foolish: H. was said to have practised ‘Ion’s principle’!

T. had known Haydon most intimately and for a long time: he does not believe H. was mad—of a mad vanity, of course. His _last_ paper ... ‘Haydon’s Thoughts’ ... was a dissertation on the respective merits of Napoleon and Wellington—how wrong Haydon felt he had been to prefer the former ... and the why and the wherefore. All this wretched stuff, in a room theatrically arranged,—here his pictures, there ... God forgive us all, fools or wise by comparison! The debts are said to be £3,000 ... he having been an insolvent debtor ... how long before? His landlord, a poor man, is creditor for £1,200.

Here I will end, and wait: this is written in _all_ haste ... and is so altogether no proper letter of _mine_ that I shall put the necessary ‘Private’ at the top of it. _My_ letter shall go presently, if _I_ do not go, to my own Ba—

R.B.

Should you write to your brother ... will he need reminding that Talfourd is only to know we correspond,—not that we are personally acquainted? Had you not better mention this in any case?

God bless you, dearest,—what a letter from me to you—to Ba! _Time_, Time!

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

Thursday.
[Post-mark, July 9, 1846.]

My own darling, my Ba, do you know when I read those letters (as soon as I remembered I had got them,—for you hold me long after both doors, up and down stairs, shut) when I looked through them, under a gateway ... I was pricked at the heart to have thought so, and spoken so, of the poor writer. I will believe that he was good and even great when in communication with you—indeed all men are made, or make themselves, different in their approaches to different men—and the secret of goodness and greatness is in choosing _whom_ you will approach, and live with, in memory or imagination, through the crowding obvious people who seem to live with you. That letter about the glory of being a painter ‘if only for the neglect’ is most touching and admirable ... there is the serene spot attained, the solid siren’s isle amid the sea; and while _there_, he was safe and well ... but he would put out to sea again, after a breathing time, I suppose? though even a smaller strip of land was enough to maintain Blake, for one instance, in power and glory through the poor, fleeting ‘sixty years’—then comes the rest from cartooning and exhibiting. But there is no standing, one foot on land and one on the waves, now with the high aim in view, now with the low aim,—and all the strange mistaken talk about ‘prestiges,’ ‘Youth and its luck,’ Napoleon and the world’s surprise and interest. There comes the low aim between the other,—an organ grinds Mr. Jullien’s newest dance-tune, and Camoens is vexed that the ‘choral singing which brought angels down,’ can’t also draw street-passengers round.

I take your view of H.’s freedom, at that time, from the thoughts of what followed.

He was weak—a strong man would have borne what so many bear—what were his griefs, as grief _goes_? Do you remember I told you, when the news of Aliwal and the other battles came to England, of our gardener, and his son, a sergeant in one of the regiments engaged ... how the father could learn nothing at first, of course ... how they told him at the Horse Guards he should be duly informed in time, after his betters, whether this son was dead, or wounded. Since then, no news came ... ‘which is _good_ news’ the father persuaded himself to think ... so the apprehensions subside, and the hope confirms itself, more and more, while the old fellow digs and mows and rakes away, like a man painting historical pictures ... only without the love of it. Well, this morning we had his daughter here to say ‘the letter’ had arrived at last ... her brother was killed in the first battle, so there’s an end of the three months’ sickness of heart,—and the poor fellow must bear his loss ‘like a man’—or like a woman ... for I recollect another case, of an old woman whom my mother was in the habit of relieving,—who brought a letter one day which she could hardly understand—it was from her son, a sailor, and went on for a couple of pages about his good health and expectations,—then, in a different handwriting, somebody, ‘your son’s shipmate’ ‘took up his pen to inform you that he fell from the masthead into the sea and was drowned yesterday,—which he therefore thought it right to put in the unfinished letter.’ All which the old woman bore somehow,—seeing she lives yet.

Well,—ought not I to say Mr. Kenyon was as kind as usual, and his party as pleasant? No, for you know—what you cannot by possibility know, it seems, is, that I am not particularly engaged next Saturday! Ba, shall I really see you so soon? Bless you ever, my very, very own! I shall not hear to-day ... but to-morrow,—do but not keep me waiting for _that_ letter, and the mules shall be ready hours and hours, for any sign I will have, at La Cava!

Ever your R.

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

Thursday.
[Post-mark, July 9, 1846.]

See what an account we have this morning of La Cava ... ‘quite impossible for the winter.’ What does ‘quite impossible’ quite mean, I wonder? I feel disappointed. As to Palermo, you would rather be in Italy, and so would I, perhaps. Salerno seems questionable too; and Vietri ... what of Vietri? I don’t at all see why we should receive the responses of this friend of my friend who is not so very much my friend, as if they were oracular and final. There must be the right of appeal for us to other authorities. Will you investigate and think a little? For my part I shall not care to what place we go, except for the climate’s sake—the cheapness too should be considered a little: and, for the rest, every place which you should like, I should like, and which you liked most, I should like most—everything is novelty to _me_, remember.

My uncle Hedley has just come now, and I must quicken my writing. Oh—to be so troubled just now ... just now!—But I wrote to Mr. Serjeant Talfourd last night, and told him as fully and as briefly as I could the whole position ... and _that_ vexation I shall try now to throw behind me, after the fashion of dear Mr. Kenyon’s philosophy. I put the thought of you, beloved, between me and all other thoughts—surely I _can_, when you were here only yesterday. So much to think of, there is! One thing made me laugh in the recollection. Do you mean to tell Mrs. Jameson that you are going to marry me, ‘because it is intolerable to hear me talked of?’ That would be an original motive. ‘So speaks the great poet.’—

Ah Flush, Flush!—he did not hurt you really? You will forgive him for me? The truth is that he hates all unpetticoated people, and that though he does not hate _you_, he has a certain distrust of you, which any outward sign, such as the umbrella, reawakens. But if you had seen how sorry and ashamed he was yesterday! I slapped his ears and told him that he never should be loved again: and he sate on the sofa (sitting, not lying) with his eyes fixed on me all the time I did the flowers, with an expression of quite despair in his face. At last I said, ‘If you are good, Flush, you may come and say that you are sorry’ ... on which he dashed across the room and, trembling all over, kissed first one of my hands and then another, and put up his paws to be shaken, and looked into my face with such great beseeching eyes that you would certainly have forgiven him just as I did. It is not savageness. If he once loved you, you might pull his ears and his tail, and take a bone out of his mouth even, and he would not bite you. He has no savage caprices like other dogs and men I have known.

Writing of Flush, in my uncle comes, and then my cousin, and then my aunt ... _by relays!_ and now it is nearly four and this letter may be too late for the post which reaches you irregularly. So provoked I am!—but I shall write again, to-night, you know.

Dearest, you did me so much good yesterday! Say how your head is—and remember Saturday. Saturday will be clear through Chiswick—may the sun shine on it!—

Your own BA.

Think of the dreadful alternative as set forth in this MS.!—The English ... or a bad climate!—_Can_ it be true?

ENCLOSURE

[La Cava is _impossible_ for the winter owing to the damp and cold. At no season should any person remain out at the hour of sunset. An hour _afterwards_ the air is dry and healthy—[Is this at La Cava? Ba] This applies to all Italy, and is a precaution too often neglected. Salerno has bad air too near it, to be safe as a residence. Besides, it is totally without the resources of books, good food, or medical advice. Palermo would be agreeable in the winter, and not _very_ much frequented by English. _However, where good climate exists, English are to be found._ Murray’s ‘Southern Italy’ would give every particular as to the distance of La Cava from the sea.]

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

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

How I have waited for your letter to-night,—and it comes nearly at ten!—It comes at last—thank you for it, ever dearest.

And I knew—quite understood yesterday, that you were sorry for _me_, which made you angry with another ... but, as to poor Haydon, you are too generous and too pitiful to refuse him any justice. I was sure that the letters would touch you. The particular letter about the ‘back-ground’ and the ‘neglect’ and Napoleon, ... _that_, you will observe, was the last I had from him. Every word you say of it, I think and feel. Yes, it was just _so_! His conscience was not a sufficient witness, ... nor was God. He must also have the Royal Academy and the appreciators of Tom Thumb. A ‘weak man,’ of course he was,—for all vain men are weak men. They cannot stand alone. But that he had in him the elements of greatness—that he looked to noble aims in art and life, however distractedly, ... that his thoughts and feelings were not those of a common man, ... it is true, it is undeniable,—and you would think so more and more if you read through the packets of letters which I have of his—so fervid, so full of earnestness and individuality ... so alive with egotism which yet seemed to redeem itself. Mr. Kenyon said of the letter we have spoken of, that it was scarcely the production of a sane mind. But I who was used to his letters, saw nothing in it in the least unusual—he has written to me far wilder letters! That he ‘never should die,’ he had said once or twice before. Then Napoleon was a favourite subject of his ... constantly recurred to. He was not mad _then_!

Poor Haydon! Think what an agony, life was to him, so constituted!—his own genius a clinging curse! the fire and the clay in him seething and quenching one another!—the man seeing maniacally in all men the assassins of his fame! and, with the whole world against him, struggling for the thing which was his life, through night and day, in thoughts and in dreams ... struggling, stifling, breaking the hearts of the creatures dearest to him, in the conflict for which there was no victory, though he could not choose but fight it. Tell me if Laocoon’s anguish was not as an infant’s sleep, compared to this? And could a man, suffering _so_, stop to calculate very nicely the consideration due to A, and the delicacy which should be observed toward B? Was he scrupulously to ask himself whether this or that cry of his might not give C a headache? Indeed no, no. It is for _us_ rather to look back and consider! Poor Haydon.

As to grief as grief—of course he had no killing grief. But he _suffered_.

Often it has struck me as a curious thing (yet it is not perhaps curious) that suicides are occasioned nearly always by a mortified self-love ... by losses in money, which force a man into painful positions ... and scarcely ever by bereavement through death ... scarcely ever. The wound on the vanity is more irritating than the wound on the affections—and the word _Death_, if it does not make us recoil (which it does I think sometimes, ... even from the graves of beloved beings!), yet keeps us humble ... casts us down from our heights. We may despond, but we do not rebel—we feel God over us.

Ah—your poor gardener! All that hope is vain—and the many, many hopes which in a father’s heart must have preceded it! How sorry I am for him.[4]

You never can have a grief, dearest dearest, of which I shall not have half for my share. That is my right from henceforth ... and if I could have it _all_ ... _would_ I not, do you think, ... and give my love to you to keep instead? Yes, ... indeed yes! May God bless you always. I have walked out to-day, you did me so much good yesterday. As for Saturday, it certainly is our day, since you are not ‘particularly engaged’ to Miss Campbell. Saturday, the day after to-morrow! But the mules may wait long at La Cava for us, if the tradition, which I sent you, is trustworthy—may they not? I feel as disappointed ... as disappointed—

Your own, very own BA.

[4] [Some months later the discovery was made that there had been a mistake in the War Office in the name, and that the son was unharmed.—R.B.B.]

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

Friday.
[Post-mark, July 10, 1846.]

And _I_ am disappointed, dearest, in this news of La Cava—after which it would be madness to think of going there: the one reason we have to go at all is simply _for your health_—I mean, that if the seclusion were the main object, we might easily compass _that_ here. All places are utterly indifferent to me if I can inhabit them with you—why should Palermo please me less than Italy proper? The distance is considerable, however, and the journey expensive—I wonder whether the steamer will sail for Leghorn as last year. As for the travelling English, they are horrible, and at Florence, unbearable ... their voices in your ear at every turn ... and such voices!—I got to very nearly hate the Tribune for their sakes. Vietri is close to Salerno and must be obvious to the same condemnation. Your friend speaks from personal experience, I presume—she may well say that the baneful effects of the hour of sunset (_i.e._ the Ave-maria) are too much overlooked ‘in all Italy’—I never heard of them before—but an infinity of ‘crotchets’ go from Italian brain to brain about what, in eating or drinking or walking or sleeping, will be the death of you: still, they may know best. The most dreadful event that could happen to me would be your getting worse instead of better.... God knows what I should do! So whatever precaution we _can_ take, let us take.

Oh, poor Flush,—do you think I do not love and respect him for his jealous supervision,—his slowness to know another, having once known you? All my apprehension is that, in the imaginations down-stairs, he may very unconsciously play the part of the dog that is heard to ‘bark violently’ while something dreadful takes place: yet I do not sorrow over his slapped ears, as if they ever pained him very much—you dear Ba!

And to-morrow I shall see you. Are you, can you be, really ‘better’ after I have seen you? If it is not truth ... which I will not say ... such an assurance is the most consummate flattery I can imagine ... it may be recorded on my tombstone ‘R.B.—to whom this flattery was addressed, that, after the sight of him, Ba was better, she said.’ If it is truth ... may you say _that_, neither more nor less, day by day, year by year through our lives—and I shall have lived indeed!

How it rains—how it varies from hot to cold! a pretty vantage-ground whence we English can look and call other climates bad or indifferent! Now if to-morrow resembles to-day, will the Chiswick expedition hold good? I shall consider that I may go unless a letter comes to-morrow ... which would have to be written to-day. How pleasant it would be to make our days _always_ Wednesday and Saturday ... could not that be contrived? So much for considerateness and contentedness!

I want, now, to refer as little as possible to the sad subject ... but I am glad you have written,—glad too that you are not severe on me for some hasty speeches—which did, indeed, mean as you say ... vexation at your having been vexed. And, I will just add, you remark excellently on the wound to self-love making itself that remedy, rather than the wound to the affections ... yet there are instances ... Romilly loses his wife ... so does poor Laman Blanchard.

So I go on writing, writing about all but what my heart is full of! Let me kiss you, ever dearest—to-morrow will soon arrive—meanwhile, and forever I am your own.

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

Sunday.
[Post-mark, July 12, 1846.]

When I made you promise to refer no more to that subject in your letter (which I must wait a day and a night for, alas!), I did not engage myself to the like silence ... perhaps because I was not bidden—or, no! there is a better reason; I want to beg your pardon, dearest, for all that petulancy,—for the manner of what I said rather than the matter,—there is a rationality in it all, if I could express trulier what I feel—but the manner was foolish and wrong and unnecessary to _you_—so do forgive and forget it. You would understand and sympathize if you knew—not me, whom you do know in some degree,—but so much of my early life as would account for the actual horror and hatred I have of those particular doctrines of the world—and the especially foolish word about the ‘travelling’ meant something like the not unnatural thought that if in this main, sole event for all good and all evil in my life,—if _here_ the world plucked you from me by any of the innumerable lines it casts, with that indirectness, too,—_then_, I should simply go and live the rest of my days as far out of it as I could.

The simple thing to say is, that I who know you to be above me in all great or good feelings and therefore worship you, must be without excuse to talk inconsiderately as if I, sitting by you and speaking of the same subject, must needs feel more acutely, more strongly in one respect where, indeed, it wants very little pre-eminence in heart or brain to feel entirely the truth—a simplest of truths. It would have been laughable if I had broken out on Mrs. Proctor’s bitterness of speech, for instance ... just as though you were the slower of us two to see the nature of it! So I do again ask your pardon, dearest Ba! You said you loved me no less yesterday than ever—how must I love you and press closer to you more and more, and desire to see nothing of the world behind you, when I hear how the world thinks, and how you think! You only, only adorable woman, only imaginable love for me! And all the hastiness and petulancy comes from that ... someone seems to come close (in every such maxim of the world’s) and say ‘What is _she_—to so much a year? Could you be happy with her except in Mayfair—and there whom could you not be happy with!’

It is as I expected—Rachel plays on Wednesday in ‘Phèdre,’ and our friend writes to say he has secured places. May nothing overcast the perfect three hours on Tuesday,—those dear, dear spaces of dear brightness—why cannot a life be made up of these ... with the proper interposition of work, to justify God’s goodness so far as poor mortality and its endeavours can,—a week of Tuesdays—then a month—a year—a life! I must long to see you again,—always by far the most I long, the _next day_—the very day after I have seen you—when it is freshest in my mind what I did _not_ say while I might have said it,—nor ask while I might have been answered—nor learn while you would have taught me—no, it is indescribable. Did I call yesterday ‘unsatisfactory’? Would I had it back now! Or better, I will wish you here when I write, with the trees to see and the birds to hear through the open window—I see you on this old chair against the purple back ... or shall you lie on the sofa? Ba, how I love you, my own perfect unapproachable mistress.

Let me kiss your feet—and now your hands and your eyes—and your lips now, for the full pardon’s sake, my sweetest love—

Ever your own—

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

Sunday. 6 P.M.
[Post-mark, July 13, 1846.]

Ever, ever dearest, I have to _feel_ for you all through Sunday, and I hear no sound and see no light. How are you? how did you get home yesterday? I thought of you more than usual after you went, if I did not love you as much as usual.... What could _that_ doubt have been made of?

Dearest, I had a letter last night from Mrs. Jameson, who says that on _Tuesday or Wednesday_ at about four o’clock (though she is as little sure of the hour apparently as of the day), she means to come to see me. Now you are to consider whether this _grand peutêtre_ will shake our Tuesday, ... whether you would rather take Thursday instead, or will run the risk as it appears. I am ready to agree, either way. She is the most uncertain of uncertain people, and may not come at all ... it’s a case for what Hume used to call sceptical scepticism. Judge! Then I have heard (I forgot to tell you) from Mr. Horne—and ... did _you_ have two letters last week from your Bennet? ... because _I_ had,—flying leaves of ‘Mignonette,’ and other lyrical flowers.

When you had gone Arabel came to persuade me to go to the park in a cab, notwithstanding my too lively recollections of the last we chanced upon,—and I was persuaded, and so we tumbled one over another (yet not all those cabs are so rough!) to the nearest gate opening on the grass, and got out and walked a little. A lovely evening it was, but I wished somehow rather to be at home, and Flush had his foot pinched in shutting the cab-door, ... and altogether there was not much gain:—only, as for Flush’s foot, though he cried piteously and held it up, looking straight to me for sympathy, no sooner had he touched the grass than he began to run without a thought of it. Flush always makes the most of his misfortunes—he is of the Byronic school—_il se pose en victime_.

Now I will not write any more—I long to have my letter of to-morrow morning—I _long_ to have it.... Shall I not have it to-morrow morning? This is posted by my hand.

I loved you yesterday ... I love you to-day ... I shall love you to-morrow.

Every day I am yours.

BA.

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

Monday.
[Post-mark, July 13, 1846.]

My own Ba, your letter kisses me in its entire kindness—and I kiss it and you.—Mrs. Jameson may come or keep away ... (since you let me speak and decide, which is like you) ... she may appoint and reappoint, but Tuesday was given me and I will have it if her visit is the only obstacle—for what was all the confessing worth if not to account for such a phenomenon as my presence in your room when by any chance she might discover it? Beside, as you say, she is the most uncertain of engagement-holders ... no, indeed,—no Tuesday ought to be given up for _her_! Therefore, unless fresh orders arrive,—at three on Tuesday ... which is happily, happily to-morrow! You are my own sweetest to reach a letter to me with your own hand, as you tell me,—and the drive, and the walk to the Post Office—thank you, Ba! Perhaps ... dare I say ... you will answer that letter I sent yesterday ... because now I remember there is no prayer at the end to prevent you ... that is, from answering the main part of it—the reverting &c.

I wrote to Mr. Horne, but shall not hear from him—on Saturday I wrote. And Mr. Bennett’s two letters are considerately written,—directed, I mean,—in a hand and with a blue ink that I recognise,—consequently the contents give me no trouble. I wrote two or three lines to the ‘year of the world’ poet,—did you take the pains? Once on a time some unknown author sent me a Tragedy, ‘not published,’ called ‘Alessandro de’ Medici,’ with some striking scenes ... I wonder who could be the writer—did it ever fall in your way?

... As if I care!—can I care about anything that is not Ba? All else seems as idle as ... as,—now you shall have a real instance in point—as my dream last night. This morning at breakfast my mother asked me, the first thing, what could so amuse me as to make me call loudly ‘Bravo’ again and again, with abundance of laughter? (My room is next to hers and the door is left ajar). Whereupon I tried to recall my dream—and all that I can seize is a passage through a gallery of _Haydon’s_ pictures, one of which was a portrait of his wife; nor did a suspicion once cross my mind that the artist was not well and working somewhere in the vicinity all the time—How strange! I never dream if _quite_ well—and I suppose the present state of my head just amounts to _not_ being quite well. (It is better at any rate, and to-morrow—ought to be worse, that—Ba may prove her potency as of old).

Now I will kiss you and wait as well as I can till the full blessing. Dearest—dearest I am your own—

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

Monday Morning.
[Post-mark, July 14, 1846.]

I must write ... even if you come to-morrow. Dearest, if I told you all that nonsense on Saturday, it was for the sake of telling you all and of hearing you say ‘What nonsense’ afterwards. I never began by disguising anything from you ... did I? I always wished you to see how the arrows would strike out at us from that bush and this bush. At _us_. For, granting that you seriously thought it possible for such motives to divide me from you, ... ah, _granting_ it, ... and _you may well ask my pardon_!

The world! the world could as soon catch me with a ‘line’ so baited, as you could catch a trout with a silver sixpence at the end of a string. Not only do I think with you entirely on that subject, but I always thought like you. Always I have hated all their worldly systems, and not merely _now_, and since I _have loved you_. With a hundred a year between us, I would have married you, if _you_ had not been afraid. And so, think whether directly or ‘indirectly’ I am likely to be frightened into the breach of an engagement by what I repeated to you or by what is like unto it. No—my weaknesses are of a different class altogether.

The talk I talked over again to you, seemed to burn in my ears the longer on that Saturday, because, while it was being originally talked between Papa and my aunt (touching Arabella Hedley’s marriage), he had brought a paper for me to sign about some money placed on a railway, (not speculatively) ... and my aunt, by way of saying a lively thing, exclaimed, ‘Is that your marriage-settlement, my dear?’ ... which made me so nervous that I wrote my name wrong and vexed Papa into being almost cross with me. So one word got entwined with another, and all seemed to hang around me—Do you understand?

But you _do not_, how you pained me when you said _that_. Ah—I thought I saw you gone ... ‘so far, so far,’ as you said ... and myself left.

Yet I should deserve it of course, if I were to give you up for the sake of _that_! ... or for any other motive, ... except your advantage ... your own. I should deserve everything in such a case, but should feel nothing ... not even my punishment. _Could_ I? ... _being without a heart_?

Ah—after all my mistrust, did I ever mistrust you _so_? I have doubted your power to love me as you believed you loved me, perhaps—but your will to be true to one you loved, without reference to worldly influences, I never doubted, nor _could_. I think I will let you beg my pardon; you unjust, dearest....

To so much over-praise, there should be a little wronging, too ... and therefore you are not, after all, ‘unjust’ ... only ‘dearest’!...

Such a letter, besides, you have written, ... and there are two of them to-day! You will not go from me, I think, ‘so far, so far.’ You will not leave me behind, with the harpoon in me, to make red the salt wilderness of waters.

Altogether, then, I forgive you, Robert—and it is glorious for me to have something to forgive you for, who are the _best_ so out of measure!—I seize the opportunity.

And you come to-morrow! Which is right ... right! I was afraid that you would not come—And Mrs. Jameson is perfectly uncertain as you may read in this new note which reached me with yours to-night.

All the Hedleys have dined here. To-morrow will be clear of them ... _pure_ of them, I was going to write ... but I thought of Mrs. Hedley’s beaming affectionate face ... (so still lovely, she looked this evening, when she came up-stairs to kiss me!) ... and could not say such a wronging word. You would like her—you could not help it.

I was in the carriage to-day in Oxford Street ... and a sealed letter was thrown exactly at my head, my aunt and cousin and Henrietta being with me—a sealed letter sealed with arms (not of Agincourt!) and directed ‘For your perusal.’ Guess the meaning of that!—why just a tract by the Rev. Villiers of that parish, upon the enormous wickedness of frequenting plays and balls! Perhaps I looked as if my soul had entered into the secret of the Polka-dancers—who can say?

So, good-night, dearest dearest!—

I cannot give myself again to you,

being your own.

Of course this was written with the poker, as you will see by the calligraphy.

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

Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, July 15, 1846.]

And is it true of to-day as you said it would be, ever dearest, that you wish to be with me? Let me have the comfort, or luxury rather, of the thought of it, before to-morrow takes you a step farther off.

At dinner my aunt said to Papa ... ‘I have not seen Ba all day—and when I went to her room, to my astonishment a gentleman was sitting there.’ ‘Who was _that_?’ said Papa’s eyes to Arabel—‘Mr. Browning called here to-day,’ she answered—‘And Ba bowed her head,’ continued my aunt, ‘as if she meant to signify to me that I was not to come in’—‘Oh,’ cried Henrietta, ‘_that_ must have been a mistake of yours. Perhaps she meant just the contrary.’ ‘You should have gone in,’ Papa said, ‘and seen the _poet_.’ Now if she really were to do that the next time!—Yet I did not, you know, make the expelling gesture she thought she saw. Simply I was startled. As to Saturday we must try whether we cannot defend the position ... set the guns against the approaches to right and left ... we must try.

In speaking too of your visit this morning, Stormy said to her ... ‘Oh Mr. Browning is a _great_ friend of Ba’s! He comes here twice a week—is it twice a week or once, Arabel?’

While I write, the Hedleys come—and Mrs. Hedley is beseeching me into seeing Mr. Bevan, whom perhaps I must see, notwithstanding Flush’s wrongs.

By the way, I made quite clear to Flush that you left the cakes, and they were very graciously received indeed.

Dearest, since the last word was written, Mrs. Hedley came back leading Mr. Bevan, and Papa who had just entered the room found the door shut upon him.... I was nervous ... oh, so nervous! and the six feet, and something more, of Mr. Bevan seemed to me as if they never would end, so tall the man is. Well—and he sate down by me according to my aunt’s arrangement; and I, who began to talk a thousand miles from any such subject, with a good reason for the precaution, found myself thrown head-foremost into ecclesiastical architecture at the close of about three minutes—how he got there all his saints know best! It’s his subject ... par excellence. He talks to Arabella about arches and mullions—he can’t talk of anything else, I suspect. And because the Trinity is expressed in _such_ a form of church-building, the altar at the east, and the baptistery at the door, ... there’s no other lawful form of a church, none at all! Not that he has an opinion! he ‘adopts opinions,’ but would not think for himself for the world at the risk of ultimate damnation! Which was the amount of his talk to-day ... and really it does not strike me as wisdom, now that I set it down so. Yet the man expressed himself well and has a sensible face—he is a clever third-class man, I think—better than the mass for sense, but commonplace essentially. Only, inasmuch as ecclesiastical architecture is not _my_ subject, I may think otherwise of him when I know him otherwise. I do not dislike him now. And then I am conscious how you spoil me for common men, dearest! It is scarcely fair on them.

My aunt (Mrs. Hedley) said when she introduced him: ‘You are to understand this to be a great honour—for she never lets anybody come here except Mr. Kenyon, ... and a few other gentlemen’ ... (laughing). Said Papa—‘Only _one_ other gentleman, indeed. Only Mr. Browning, the poet—the man of the pomegranates.’ Was _that_ likely to calm me, do you think? How late it is—I must break off. To-night I shall write again. Dearest beloved,

I am your own always.

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

Wednesday.
[Post-mark, July 15, 1846.]

Dearest Ba, I am anxious to know what cannot yet be told me, how that unforeseen visit has worked—tell me the moment you can,—and fully, whatever happens.

‘Suspicious’—anything in the world rather than _that_, you are! When you have mistrusted your own power over me, I believed always in the mistrust ... which, indeed, matters little except to yourself. For if I would, certainly, have the truth seen as the truth, and our true position understood,—yet ... there is,—ought I not to be ashamed at saying?—an exquisite, _final_ grace and _endearingness_ in the ignorance, strange as I must account it. You doubly trust me,—with the treasure, and then, with the knowledge that it is a treasure, or _such_ a treasure.

Ba, when I think of it all, my whole heart becomes one gratitude to you,—I am only yours, grateful for ever. It is the only kind of thoughts in which you _shall_ not share (there are many in which you _cannot_) the thoughts to my inmost self as I go over what you say and do and try to clear up to myself the precise fascination in each: you shall not know what you do ... but shall continue to do and to let _me know_. I love you entirely. Where can you change so that I shall not love you more and more as I grow more able and worthier? I cannot sit for twenty-four hours by you as I sit for three—as it is, I take myself to task for not doing something here at home to justify in some measure my privilege and blessing—and the only thing that keeps conscience quiet comparatively is ... the old expedient that the Future engages to do for me what the Present cannot. Under your eyes, I will hope to work and attain your approval. _I know_ that when you were only the great Poet and not my Ba, I would have preferred _your_ praise, as competent to praise, to that of the whole world—I remember distinctly, and _know_ I should have done so. And now, if I put aside the Poet and only (what an ‘only’) see my dearest, dearest lady of that hair and eyes, and hands, and voice, and all the completeness that was trusted to my arms yesterday—why I feel that if she, never having written a line, said ‘What Miss Barrett may think I do not know, but _I_ am content with what you show me’—then, dearest, should not _I_ be content—?