Chapter XX: Part 20

Think of our waiting day after day to fall into the net so, yesterday! How I was provoked and vexed—but more for you, dearest dearest, than for me—much more for you. As for me I _saw you_, which was joy enough, let the hours be ever so clipped of their natural proportions—and then, you know, you were obliged to go soon, whether Mr. Kenyon had come or not come. After you were gone, nothing was said, and nothing asked, and it is delightful to have heard of those intended absences one after another till far into October: which will secure us from future embarrassments. See if he means to put us to the question!—not such a thing is in his thoughts.

And I said what you ‘would not have believed of me’! Have you forgiven me, beloved—for saying what you would not have believed of me,—understanding that I did not mean it very seriously, though I proved to be capable of saying it? Seriously, I don’t want to make unnecessary delays. It is a horrible position, however I may cover it with your roses and the thoughts of you—and far worse to myself than to you, inasmuch that what is painful to you once a week, is to me so continually. To hear the voice of my father and meet his eye makes me shrink back—to talk to my brothers leaves my nerves all trembling ... and even to receive the sympathy of my sisters turns into sorrow and fear, lest they should suffer through their affection for me. How I can look and sleep as well as I do, is a miracle exactly like the rest—or would be, if the love were not the deepest and strongest thing of all, and did not hold and possess me overcomingly. I feel myself to be yours notwithstanding every other influence, and being yours, cannot but be happy by you. Ah—let people talk as they please of the happiness of early youth! Mrs. Jameson did, the other day, when she wished kindly to take her young niece with her to the Continent, that she might enjoy what in a few years she could not so much enjoy. There is a sort of blind joy common perhaps to such times—a blind joy which blunts itself with its own leaps and bounds; peculiar to a time of comparative ignorance and inexperience of evil:—but I for my part, with all the capacity for happiness which I had from the beginning, I look back and listen to my whole life, and feel sure of what I have already told you, ... that I am _happier now than I ever was before_ ... infinitely happier now, through you ... infinitely happier; even now in this position I have just called ‘horrible.’ When I hear you say for instance, that you ‘love me _perceptibly_ more’ ... why I cannot, cannot be more happy than when I hear you say _that_—going to Italy seems nothing! a vulgar walk to Primrose Hill after being caught up to the third Heaven! I think nothing of Italy now, though I shall enjoy it of course when the time comes. I think only that you love me, that you are the angel of my life,—and for the despair and desolation behind me, they serve to mark the hour of your coming,—and they _are_ behind, as Italy is _before_. Never can you feel for me, Robert, as I feel for you ... it is not possible of course. I am yours in a way and degree which the tenderest of other women could not be at her will. Which you know. Why should I repeat it to you? Why, except that is a reason to prove that we cannot, as you say, ‘ever be a common wife and husband? But I don’t think I was intending to give proofs of _that_—no, indeed.

To-morrow I shall hear from you. Say how your mother is, in the second letter if you do not in the first. May God bless you and keep you, dearest beloved—

Your very own BA.

There is not much in the article by Mr. Chorley, but it is right and kind as far as it goes.

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

Sunday Morning.
[Post-mark, August 31, 1846.]

I wonder what I shall write to you, Ba—I could suppress my feelings here, as I do on other points, and say nothing of the hatefulness of this state of things which is prolonged so uselessly. There is the point—show me one good reason, or show of reason, why we gain anything by deferring our departure till next week instead of to-morrow, and I will bear to perform yesterday’s part for the amusement of Mr. Kenyon a dozen times over without complaint. But if the cold plunge _must_ be taken, all this shivering delay on the bank is hurtful as well as fruitless. I _do_ understand your anxieties, dearest—I take your fears and make them mine, while I put my own natural feeling of quite another kind away from us both, succeeding in _that_ beyond all expectation. There is no amount of patience or suffering I would not undergo to relieve you from these apprehensions. But if, on the whole, you really determine to act as we propose in spite of them,—why, a new leaf is turned over in our journal, an old part of our adventure done with, and a new one entered upon, altogether distinct from the other. Having once decided to go to Italy with me, the next thing to decide is on the best means of going—or rather, there is just this connection between the two measures, that by the success or failure of the last, the first will have to be justified or condemned. You tell me you have decided to go—then, dearest, you will be prepared to go earlier than you promised yesterday—by the end of September at very latest. In proportion to the too probable excitement and painful circumstances of the departure, the greater amount of advantages should be secured for the departure itself. How can I take you away in even the beginning of October? We shall be a fortnight on the journey—with the year, as everybody sees and says, a full month in advance ... cold mornings and dark evenings already. Everybody would cry out on such folly when it was found that we let the favourable weather escape, in full assurance that the Autumn would come to us unattended by any one beneficial circumstance.

My own dearest, I am wholly your own, for ever, and under every determination of yours. If you find yourself unable, or unwilling to make this effort, tell me so and plainly and at once—I will not offer a word in objection,—I will continue our present life, if you please, so far as may be desirable, and wait till next autumn, and the next and the next, till providence end our waiting. It is clearly not for me to pretend to instruct you in your duties to God and yourself; ... enough, that I have long ago chosen to accept your decision. If, on the other hand, you make up your mind to leave England now, you will be prepared by the end of September.

I should think myself the most unworthy of human beings if I could employ any arguments with the remotest show of a tendency to _frighten_ you into a compliance with any scheme of mine. Those methods are for people in another relation to you. But you love me, and, at lowest, shall I say, wish me well—and the fact is too obvious for me to commit any indelicacy in reminding you, that in any dreadful event to our journey of which I could accuse myself as the cause,—as of this undertaking to travel with you in the worst time of year when I could have taken the best,—in the case of your health being irretrievably shaken, for instance ... the happiest fate I should pray for would be to live and die in some corner where I might never hear a word of the English language, much less a comment in it on my own wretched imbecility,—to disappear and be forgotten.

So that must not be, for all our sakes. My family will give me to you that we may be both of us happy ... but for such an end—no!

Dearest, do you think all this earnestness foolish and uncalled for?—that I might know you spoke yesterday in mere jest,—as yourself said, ‘only to hear what I would say’? Ah but consider, my own Ba, the way of our life, as it is, and is to be—a word, a simple word from you, is not as a word is counted in the world—the word between us is different—I am guided by your will, which a word shall signify to me. Consider that just such a word, so spoken, even with that lightness, would make me lay my life at your feet at any minute. Should we gain anything by my trying, if I could, to deaden the sense of hearing, dull the medium of communication between us; and procuring that, instead of this prompt rising of my will at the first intimation from yours, the same effect should only follow after fifty speeches, and as many protestations of complete serious desire for their success on your part, accompanied by all kinds of acts and deeds and other evidences of the same?

At all events, God knows I have said this in the deepest, truest love of you. I will say no more, praying you to forgive whatever you shall judge to need forgiveness here,—dearest Ba! I will also say, if that may help me,—and what otherwise I might not have said,—that I am not too well this morning, and write with an aching head. My mother’s suffering continues too.

My friend Pritchard tells me that Brighton is not to be thought of under ordinary circumstances as a point of departure for Havre. Its one packet a week from Shoreham cannot get in if the wind and tide are unfavourable. There is the greatest uncertainty in consequence ... as I have heard before—while, of course, from Southampton, the departures are calculated punctually. He considers that the least troublesome plan, and the cheapest, is to go from London to Havre ... the voyage being so arranged that the river passage takes up the day and the sea-crossing the night—you reach Havre early in the morning and get to Paris by four o’clock, perhaps, in the afternoon ... in time to leave for Orleans and spend the night there, I suppose.

Do I make myself particularly remarkable for silliness when confronted by our friend as yesterday? And the shortest visit,—and comments of everybody. Oh, Mr. Hunter, methinks you should be of some use to me with those amiable peculiarities of yours, if you would just dye your hair black, take a stick in your hand, sink the clerical character you do such credit to, and have the goodness just to deliver yourself of one such epithet as _that_ pleasant one, the next time you find me on the steps of No. 50, with Mr. Kenyon somewhere higher up in the building. It is delectable work, this having to do with relatives and ‘freemen who have a right to beat their own negroes,’ and father Zeus with his paternal epistles, and peggings to the rock, and immense indignation at ‘this marriage you talk of’ which is to release his victim. Is Mr. Kenyon Hermes?

Εἰσελθέτω σε μήποθ’ ὡς ἐγὼ Διὸς
γνώμην φοβηθεὶς θηλύνους γενήσομαι,
καὶ λιπαρήσω τὸν μέγα στυγούμενον
γυναικομίμοις ὑπτιάσμασιν χερῶν,
λῦσαί με δεσμῶν τῶνδε· τοῦ παντὸς δέω.
_Chorus of Aunts_: ἡμῖν μὲν Ἑρμῆς οὐκ ἄκαιρα φαίνεται
λέγειν, κ.τ.λ.[6]

Well, bless you in any case—

Your own R.

[6]

[‘Oh, think no more
That I, fear-struck by Zeus to a woman’s mind
Will supplicate him, loathèd as he is,
With feminine upliftings of my hands,
To break these chains. Far from me be the thought!
_Chorus._ Our Hermes suits his reasons to the times;
At least I think so.’

Æschylus, _Prometheus_, 1002-6, 1036-7.]

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

Monday Morning.
[Post-mark, August 31, 1846.]

Here is dearest Ba’s dearest letter, because the latest, and it is one of her very kisses incorporated and made manifest—so perfectly kind! And should this make me ashamed of perhaps an over-earnestness in what I wrote yesterday? or not rather justify me to myself and to her—since it was on a passing fear of losing what I hold so infinitely precious, that the earnestness happened! My own Ba, you lap me over with love upon love ... there is my first and proper love, independent of any return, and there is _this_ return for what would reward itself. Do think how I must feel at the most transient suggestion of failure, and parting, and an end to all! You cannot expect I can lie quietly and let my life of life be touched. And ever, dearest, through the life which I trust is about to be permitted us,—ever I shall remember where my treasure is, and turn as vigilantly when it is approached. Beside, I was not very well, as I told you in excuse—I am much better now. Not that, upon reconsideration, I can alter my opinion on the proper course to take. We know all the miracles wrought in our favour hitherto ... are not the chances (speaking in that foolish way) against our expecting more? To-day is fine, sunny and warm, for instance, and looks as if cold weather were a long way off—but what are these fancies and appearances when weighed against the other possibility of a sudden _fall_ of the year? By six months more of days like this we should gain nothing, nothing in the world, you confess—by the other misfortune we lose everything perhaps.

Will you have a homely illustration? There is a tree against our wall here which produced weeks ago a gigantic apple—which my mother had set her heart on showing a cousin of mine who is learned in fruits and trees. I told her, ‘You had better pluck it at once—it will fall and be spoiled.’ She thought the next day or two would do its cheeks good,—just the next—so there it continued to hang till this morning, when she was about to go out with my sister—I said ‘now is the time—you are going to my aunt’s—let me pluck you the apple’—‘Oh,’ she said ‘I have been looking at it, trying it,—it hangs so firmly, ... not _this_ time, thank you!’ So she went without it, two hours ago—and just now, I turned to the tree with a boding presentiment—there lay our glory, bruised in the dirt, a sad wreck! ‘Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love!’ Rather, counsel me _through_ apples! Do you see the counsel?

Come, let me not be so ungrateful to the letter, to what you have done for me, as only to speak of what you are disinclined to do. I am very glad you succeeded in going to the chapel, and that the result was so favourable—see how the dangers disappear when one faces them! And the account of Mr. Stratten is very interesting, too—besides characteristic—do you see _how_? Find as great a saint as the world holds, who shall be acknowledged to be utterly disinterested, unbiassed by anything except truth and common justice,—a man of sense as well as piety—and succeed in convincing such an one of our right to do as we purpose,—and then—let _him_ lay the matter before your father! To no other use than to exasperate him against Mr. Stratten, deprive your sister of the privilege of seeing his family, and bring about a little more pain and trouble!

Let me think of something else ... of the happiness you profess to feel—which it makes me entirely happy to know. I will not try and put away the crown you give me. I just say the obvious truth, ... even what I _can_ do to make you happy, according to my ability, has yet to be experienced by you ... if my thoughts and wishes reach you with any effect at present, they will operate freelier when the obstruction is removed ... that is only natural. I shall live for you, for every minute in your life. May God bless me with such a life, as that it may be of use to you ... yours it must be whether of use or not, for I am wholly your R.

* * * * *

Here comes my mother back ... she is a little better to-day. I am much better as I said. And you? Let me get the kiss I lost on Saturday! (I dined at Arnould’s yesterday with Chorley and his brother, and the Cushmans.) Chorley goes to-night to Ostend.

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

Monday Night.
[Post-mark, September 1, 1846.]

You are better, dearest,—and so I will confess to having felt a little inclined to reproach you gently for the earlier letter, except that you were not well when you wrote it. That you should endure painfully and impatiently a position unworthy of you, is the natural consequence of the unworthiness—and I do hold that you would be justified at this moment, on the barest motives of self-respect, in abandoning the whole ground and leaving me to Mr. Kenyon and others. What I might complain of, is another thing—what I might complain of is, that I have not given you reason to _doubt me_ or my inclination to accede to any serious wish of yours relating to the step before us. On the contrary I told you in so many words in July, that, if you really wished to go in August rather than in September, I would make no difficulty—to which you answered, remember, that _October or November would do as well_. Now _is_ it fair, ever dearest, that you should turn round on me so quickly, and call in question my willingness to keep my engagement for years, if ever? Can I help it, if the circumstances around us are painful to both of us? Did I not keep repeating, from the beginning, that they _must_ be painful? Only you could not believe, you see, until you felt the pricks. And when all is done, and the doing shall be the occasion of new affronts, sarcasms, every form of injustice, will you be any happier then, than you are now that you only imagine the possibility of them? I tremble to answer that question—even to myself—! As for myself, though I cannot help feeling pain and fear, in encountering what is to be encountered, and though I sometimes fear, in addition, for _you_, lest you should overtask your serenity in bearing your own part in it, ... yet certainly I have never wavered for a moment from the decision on which all depends. I might fill up your quotations from ‘Prometheus,’ and say how no evil takes me unaware, having foreseen all from the beginning—but I have not the heart for filling up quotations. I mean to say only, that I never wavered from the promise I gave freely; and that I will keep it freely at any time you choose—that is, within a week of any time you choose. As to a light word ... why now, dear, judge me in justice! If I had written it, there might have been more wrong in it—but I spoke it lightly to show it was light, and in the next breath I told you that it was a jest. Will you not forgive me a word so spoken, Robert? will you rather set it against me as if habitually I threw to you levities in change for earnest devotion?—you imply _that_ of me. Or you _seem_ to imply it—you did not mean, you could not, a thought approaching to unkindness,—but it looks like _that_ in the letter, or _did_, this morning. And all the time, you pretended not to know very well, ... (dearest!) ... that what you made up your mind to wish and ask of me, I had not in my power to say ‘no’ to. Ah, you _knew_ that you had only to make up your mind, and to see that the thing was possible. So if September shall be possible, let it be September. I do not object nor hold back. To sail from the Thames has not the feasibility—and listen why! All the sailing or rather steaming from London begins _early_; and I told you how out of the question it was, for me to leave this house early. I could not, without involving my sisters. Arabel sleeps in my room, on the sofa, and is seldom out of the room before nine in the morning—and for me to draw her into a ruinous confidence, or to escape without a confidence at that hour, would be equally impossible. Now see if it is my fancy, my whim! And as for the expenses, _they_ are as nearly equal as a shilling and two sixpences can be—the expense of the sea-voyage from London to Havre, and of the land and sea voyage, through Southampton ... _or_ Brighton. But of course what you say of Brighton, keeps us to Southampton, of those two routes. We can go to Southampton and meet the packet ... take the river-steamer to Rouen, and proceed as rapidly as your programme shows. You are not angry with me, dearest, dearest? I did not mean any harm.

May God bless you always. _I_ am not angry either, understand, though I did think this morning that you were a little hard on me, just when I felt myself ready to give up the whole world for you at the holding up of a finger. And now say nothing of this. I kiss the end of the dear finger; and when _it_ is ready, _I_ am ready; I will not be reproached again. Being too much your own, very own

BA.

Tell me that you keep better. And your mother?

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

Tuesday—3 p.m.
[Post-mark, September 1, 1846.]

Dearest, when your letter kept away, all this morning, I never once fancied you might be angry ... I knew you must feel the love which produced the fear. And I will lay to my heart the little, gentlest blame that there is, in the spirit which dictated it. I know, my own Ba, your words have given me the right to doubt nothing from your generosity—but it is not the mere bidding ... no, at the thousandth repetition—which can make me help myself to all that treasure which you please to call mine: I shall perhaps get used to the generosity and readier to profit by it.

I have not time to write much; all is divinely kind of you, and I love you for forgiving me.

You could not leave at an early hour under those circumstances ... the moment I become aware of them, I fully see that.

Ah, but, Ba, am I so to blame for not taking your diamonds, while you disclaim a right over my pebbles even? May I ‘withdraw from the business’? &c., &c.

Kiss me, and do not say that again—and I will say you are ‘my own,’ as I always say,—my very own!

As for ‘sarcasms’ and the rest—I shall hardly do other than despise what will never be said _to_ me, for the best of reasons—except where is to be exception. I never objected to such miserable work as that—and the other day, my annoyance was not at anything which _might_ be fancied, by Mr. Kenyon or anybody else, but at what could not but be plainly seen—it was a fact, and not a fancy, that our visit was shortened &c., &c.

All which is foolish to think of—I will think of you and a better time.

You do not tell me how you are, Ba—and I left you with a headache. Will you tell me? And the post may come in earlier to-morrow,—at all events I will write at length ... not in this haste. And our day? When before have I been without a day, a fixed day, to look forward to?

Bless you, my dearest beloved—

Your own R.

I am pretty well to-day—not too well. My mother is no better than usual; we blame the wind, with or without reason. See this scrawl! Could anything make me write legibly, I wonder?

Ba.

BA.

βα.

Ba, Ba, Ba.

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

Tuesday.
[Post-mark, September 2, 1846.]

Here is a distress for me, dearest! I have lost my poor Flush—_lost_ him! You were a prophet when you said ‘Take care.’

This morning Arabel and I, and he with us, went in a cab to Vere Street where we had a little business, and he followed us as usual into a shop and out of it again, and was at my heels when I stepped up into the carriage. Having turned, I said ‘Flush,’ and Arabel looked round for Flush—there was no Flush! He had been caught up in that moment, from _under_ the wheels, do you understand? and the thief must have run with him and thrown him into a bag perhaps. It was such a shock to me—think of it! losing him in a moment, _so_! No wonder if I looked white, as Arabel said! So she began to comfort me by showing how certain it was that I should recover him for ten pounds at most, and we came home ever so drearily. Because _Flush_ doesn’t know that we can recover him, and he is in the extremest despair all this while, poor darling Flush, with his fretful fears, and pretty whims, and his fancy of being near me. All this night he will howl and lament, I know perfectly,—for I fear we shall not ransom him to-night. Henry went down for me directly to the captain of the banditti, who evidently knew all about it, said Henry,—and after a little form of consideration and enquiry, promised to let us hear something this evening, but has not come yet. In the morning perhaps he will come. Henry told him that I was resolved not to give much—but of course they will make me give what they choose—I am not going to leave Flush at their mercy, and they know that as well as I do. My poor Flush!

When we shall be at Pisa, dearest, we shall be away from the London dog-stealers—it will be one of the advantages. Another may be that I may have an opportunity of ‘forgiving’ you, which I have not had yet. I might reproach you a little in my letter, and I _did_, I believe; but the offending was not enough for any _forgiving_ to follow—it is too grand a word. Also your worst is better than my best, taking it on the whole. How then should I be able to _forgive_ you, my beloved, even _at Pisa_?

If we go to Southampton, we go straight from the railroad to the packet, without entering any hotel—and if we do _so_, _no_ greater expense is incurred than by the long water-passage from London. Also, we reach Havre alike in the morning, and have the day before us for Rouen, Paris and Orleans. Thereupon nothing is lost by losing the early hour for the departure. Then, if I accede to your _idée fixe_ about the marriage! Only do not let us put a long time between that and the setting out, and do not you come here afterwards—let us go away as soon as possible afterwards at least. You are afraid for me of my suffering from the autumnal cold when it is yet far off—while _I_ (observe this!) while _I_ am afraid for myself, of breaking down under quite a different set of causes, in nervous excitement and exhaustion. I belong to that pitiful order of weak women who cannot command their bodies with their souls at every moment, and who sink down in hysterical disorder when they ought to act and resist. Now I think and believe that I shall take strength from my attachment to you, and so go through to the end what is before us; but at the same time, knowing myself and fearing myself, I do desire to provoke the ‘demon’ as little as possible, and to be as quiet as the situation will permit. Still, where things _ought_ to be done, they of course _must_ be done. Only we should consider whether they really _ought_ to be done—not for the sake of the inconvenience to me, but of the consequence to both of us.

Do I frighten you, ever dearest? Oh no—I shall go through it, if I keep a breath of soul in me to live with. I shall go through it, as certainly as that I love you. I speak only of the accessory circumstances, that they may be kept as smooth as is practicable.

You are not well, my beloved—and I cannot even dream of making you better this time,—because you will think it wise for us not to meet for the next few days perhaps. Mr. Kenyon will come to see me, he said, before he leaves town, and he leaves it on the fourth, fifth or sixth of September. This is the first. So I will not let you come to be vexed as last time—no, indeed. But write to me instead—and pity me for Flush. Oh, I trust to have him back to-morrow. I had no headache, and was quite perfectly well this morning ... before I lost him.

Is your mother able to walk? is she worse on the whole than last week for instance? We may talk of September, but you cannot leave her, you know, dearest, if she should be _so_ ill! it would be unkind and wrong.

More, to-morrow! But I cannot be more to-morrow, your very own—

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

Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, September 2, 1846.]

Poor Flush—how sorry I am for you, my Ba! But you will recover him, I dare say ... not, perhaps directly; the delay seems to justify their charge at the end: poor fellow—was he no better than the rest of us, and did all that barking and fanciful valour spend itself on such enemies as Mr. Kenyon and myself, leaving only blandness and waggings of the tail for the man with the bag? I am sure you are grieved and frightened for our friend and follower, that was to be, at Pisa—will you not write a special note to tell me when you get him again?

For the rest—I will urge you no more by a single word—you shall arrange everything henceforward without a desire on my part,—an expressed one at least. Do not let our happiness be caught up from us, after poor Flush’s fashion—there may be no redemption from _that_ peril.

There can hardly be another way of carrying our purpose into effect than by that arrangement you consent to—except you choose to sacrifice a day and incur all costs of risk. Of course, the whole in the way and with the conditions that you shall determine.

Do you think, Ba, I apprehend nothing from the excitement and exhaustion attendant on it? I altogether apprehend it,—and am therefore the more anxious that no greater difficulty should be superinduced than is absolutely necessary. Because the first part of our adventure will be dangerous in _that_ way, I want the second part to be as safe as possible in another. I should care comparatively little about winter-travelling, even (knowing that one can take precautions)—if it were to be undertaken under really propitious circumstances, and you set forth with so much kindness to carry away as would keep you warm for a week or two—but the ‘winter wind that is not so unkind as &c.,’ may prove,—by adding its share of unkindness to the greater,—intolerable. Now, my last word is said, however—and a kiss follows!

I thank you, dearest, for your enquiries about my mother; and for the sympathy, and proposal of delay. She is better this morning, I hope. From the time that my sister went to Town, she discontinued the exercise which does her such evident good—and on Monday the walk began again—with no great effect yesterday because of the dull weather and sharp wind ... she kept at home—but this morning she is abroad, and will profit by this sunshine, I hope. My head will not get quite well, neither. I take both effects to be caused by the turn of the year.

Bless you, dearest—I cannot but acquiesce in your postponing our day for such reasons. Only, do not misconceive those few foolish words of impatience ... a great matter to bear truly! I shall be punished indeed if they prevent you from according to me one hour I should have otherwise possessed.

Bless you once again, my Ba.

My mother is returned—very much better indeed. Remember Flush—to write.

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

Wednesday Evening.
[Post-mark, September 3, 1846.]

‘Our friend and follower, that _was_ to be’—is _that_, then, your opinion of my poor darling Flush’s destiny— Ah,—I should not have been so quiet if I had not known differently and better. I ‘shall not recover him directly,’ you think! But, dearest, I am _sure_ that I _shall_. I am learned in the ways of the Philistines—I knew from the beginning where to apply and how to persuade. The worst is poor Flush’s fright and suffering. And then, it is inconvenient just now to pay the ransom for him. But we shall have time to-morrow if not to-night. Two hours ago the chief of the Confederacy came to call on Henry and to tell him that the ‘Society had the dog,’ having done us the honour of tracking us into Bond Street and out of Bond Street into Vere Street where he was kidnapped. Now he is in Whitechapel (poor Flush). And the great man was going down there at half past seven to meet other great men in council and hear the decision as to the ransom exacted, and would return with their _ultimatum_. Oh, the villainy of it is excellent, and then the humiliation of having to pay for your own vexations and anxieties! _Will_ they have the insolence, now, to make me pay ten pounds, as they said they would? But I must have Flush, you know—I can’t run any risk, and bargain and haggle. There is a dreadful tradition in this neighbourhood, of a lady who did _so_ having her dog’s head sent to her in a parcel. So I say to Henry—‘Get Flush back, whatever you do’—for Henry is angry as he may well be, and as _I_ should be if I was not too afraid ... and talks police-officers against thieves, and finds it very hard to attend to my instructions and be civil and respectful to their captain. There he found him, smoking a cigar in a room with pictures! They make some three or four thousand a year by their honourable employment. As to Flush’s following anyone ‘blandly,’ never think it. ‘He was caught up and gagged ... depend upon that. If he could have bitten, he would have bitten—if he could have yelled, he would have yelled. Indeed on a former occasion the ingenuous thief observed, that he ‘was a difficult dog to get, he was so distrustful.’ They had to drag him with a string, put him into a cab, they said, before. Poor Flush!

Dearest, I am glad that your mother is a little better—but why should the turn of the year make you suffer, ever dearest? I am not easy about you indeed. Remember not to use the shower-bath injudiciously—and remember to walk. _Do_ you walk enough?—it being as necessary for you as for your mother.

And as for _me_ you will not say a word more to _me_, you will leave me to my own devices now.

Which is just exactly what you must _not_ do. Ah, why do you say so, even, when you must not do it? Have I refused one proposition of yours when there were not strong obstacles, that you should have finished with me so, my beloved? For instance, I agreed to your plan about the marrying, and I agreed to go with you to Italy in the latter part of September—did I not? And what am I disagreeing in now? Don’t let me pass for disagreeable! And don’t, above all, refuse to think for me, and decide for me, or what will become of me, I cannot guess. I shall be worse off than Flush is now ... in his despair, at Whitechapel. Think of my being let loose upon a common, just when the thunder-clouds are gathering!! You would not be so cruel, _you_. All I meant to say was that it would be wise to make the occasions of excitement as few as possible, for the reasons I gave you. But I shall not fail, I believe—I should despise myself too much for failing—I should lose too much by the failure. Then there is an amulet which strengthens the heart of one,—let it incline to fail ever so. Believe of me that I shall not fail, dearest beloved—I shall not, if you love me enough to stand by—believe _that_ always.

The heart will sink indeed sometimes—as mine does to-night, I scarcely know why—but even while it sinks, I do not feel that I shall fail _so_—I do not. Dearest, I do not, either, ‘misconceive,’ as you desire me not: I only infer that you will think it best to avoid the chance of meeting Mr. Kenyon, who speaks to me, in a note received this morning, of intending to leave town next Monday—of coming here he does not speak,—and he may come and he may not come, on any intermediate day. He wrote for a book he lent me. If I do not see you until Monday, it will be hard—but judge! there was more of bitterness than of sweetness in the last visit.

Mr. Kenyon said in his note that he had seen Moxon, and that Tennyson was ‘disappointed’ with the mountains. Is not that strange? Is it a good or a bad sign when people are disappointed with the miracles of nature? I am accustomed to fancy it a bad sign. Because a man’s imagination ought to aggrandise, glorify, consecrate. A man sees with his mind, and mind is at fault when he does not see greatly, I think.

Moxon sent a civil message to me about my books ‘going off regularly.’

And now _I_ must go off—it is my turn. Do you love me to-night, dearest? I ask you ... through the air. I am your very own Ba.

Say how you are, I beseech you, and tell me always and particularly of your mother.

They are all here, gone to a picnic at Richmond.

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

Thursday.
[Post-mark, September 3, 1846.]

I am rejoiced that poor Flush is found again, dearest—altogether rejoiced.

And now that you probably have him by your side, I will tell you what I should have done in such a case, because it explains our two ways of seeing and meeting oppression lesser or greater. I would not have given five shillings on that fellow’s application. I would have said,—and in entire earnestness ‘_You_ are responsible for the proceedings of your gang, and _you_ I mark—don’t talk nonsense to me about cutting off heads or paws. Be as sure as that I stand here and tell you, I will spend my whole life in putting you down, the nuisance you declare yourself—and by every imaginable means I will be the death of you and as many of your accomplices as I can discover—but _you_ I have discovered and will never lose sight of—now try my sincerity, by delaying to produce the dog by to-morrow. And for the ten pounds—see!’ Whereupon I would give them to the first beggar in the street. You think I should receive Flush’s head? Perhaps—_so_ God allows matters to happen! on purpose, it may be, that I should vindicate him by the punishment I would exact.

Observe, Ba, this course ought not to be yours, because it _could_ not be—it would not suit your other qualities. But all religion, right and justice, with me, seem implied in such a resistance to wickedness and refusal to multiply it a hundredfold—for from this prompt payment of ten pounds for a few minutes’ act of the easiest villainy, there will be encouragement to—how many similar acts in the course of next month? And how will the poor owners fare who have not money enough for their dogs’ redemption? I suppose the gentleman, properly disgusted with such obstinacy, will threaten roasting at a slow fire to test the sincerity of attachment! No—the world would grow too detestable a den of thieves and oppressors that way! And this is too great a piece of indignation to be expressed when one has the sick vile headache that oppresses me this morning. Dearest, I am not inclined to be even as tolerant as usual. Will you be tolerant, my Ba, and forgive me—till to-morrow at least—when, what with physic, what with impatience, I shall be better one way or another?

Ever your own R.

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

Thursday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, September 4, 1846.]

When I had finished that letter this morning, dearest dearest, before I could seal it, even, (my sister did it for me ... and despatched it to the post at once) I became quite ill and so sick as to be forced to go up-stairs and throw myself on the bed. It is now six o’clock, and I feel better, and have some thoughts of breaking my fast to-day—but, first of all ... did whatever it may have been I wrote seem _cross_—unnecessarily angry, to you, dearest Ba? Because, I confess to having felt indignant at this sample of the evils done under the sun every day ... and as if it would be to no purpose though the whole world were peopled with Ba’s, instead of just Wimpole Street; as they would be just so many more soft cushions for the villainously-disposed to run pins into at their pleasure. Donne says that ‘Weakness invites, but silence _feasts_ oppression.’ And it is horrible to fancy how all the oppressors in their several ranks may, if they choose, twitch back to them by the heartstrings after various modes the weak and silent whose secret they have found out. No one should profit by those qualities in me, at least. Having formed a resolution, I would keep it, I hope, through fire and water, and the threatener of any piece of rascality, who (as commonly happens) should be without the full heart to carry it into effect, should pay me exactly the same for the threat ... which had determined my conduct once and for ever. But in this particular case, I ought to have told you (unless you divined it, as you might) that I would give all I am ever to be worth in the world to get back your Flush for you—for your interest is not _mine_, any more than the lake is the river that goes to feed it,—mine is only made to feed yours—I am yours, as we say—as I feel more and more every minute.

Are you not mine, too? And do you not forgive your own R?

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

Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, September 4, 1846.]

Ever dearest, you are not well—that is the first thing!—And that is the thing I saw first, when, opening your letter, my eyes fell on the ending sentence of it,—which disenchanted me in a moment from the hope of the day. Dearest—you have not been well for two or three days, it is plain,—and now you are very, very unwell—tell me if it is not so? I beseech you to let me hear the exact truth about you, for I am very uneasy, and it is dreadful to doubt about knowing the exact truth in all such cases. How everything goes against me this week! I cannot see you. I cannot comfort myself by knowing that you are well. And then poor Flush! You must let him pass as one of the evils, and you _will_, I know; for I have not got him back yet—no, indeed.

I should have done it. The archfiend, Taylor, the man whom you are going to spend your life in persecuting (the life that belongs to me, too!), came last night to say that they would accept six pounds, six guineas, with half a guinea for himself, considering the trouble of the mediation; and Papa desired Henry to refuse to pay, and not to tell me a word about it—all which I did not find out till this morning. Now it is less, as the money goes, than I had expected, and I was very vexed and angry, and wanted Henry to go at once and conclude the business—only he wouldn’t, talked of Papa, and persuaded me that Taylor would come to-day with a lower charge. He has not come—I knew he would not come,—and if people won’t do as I choose, I shall go down to-morrow morning myself and bring Flush back with me. All this time he is suffering and I am suffering. It may be very foolish—I do not say it is not—or it may even be ‘awful sin,’ as Mr. Boyd sends to assure me—but I cannot endure to run cruel hazards about my poor Flush for the sake of a few guineas, or even for the sake of abstract principles of justice—I cannot. _You_ say that _I_ cannot, ... but that _you would_. You would!—Ah dearest—most pattern of citizens, but you _would not_—I know you better. Your theory is far too good not to fall to pieces in practice. A man may love justice intensely; but the love of an abstract principle is not the strongest love—now is it? Let us consider a little, putting poor Flush out of the question. (You would bear, you say, to receive his head in a parcel—it would satisfy you to cut off Taylor’s in return). Do you mean to say that if the banditti came down on us in Italy and carried me off to the mountains, and, sending to you one of my ears, to show you my probable fate if you did not let them have ... how much may I venture to say I am worth? ... five or six scudi,—(is _that_ reasonable at all?) ... would your answer be ‘Not so many crazie’; and would you wait, poised upon abstract principles, for the other ear, and the catastrophe,—as was done in Spain not long ago? Would you, dearest? Because it is as well to know beforehand, perhaps.

Ah—how I am teazing you, my beloved, when you are not well. But indeed that life of yours is worthy of better uses than to scourge Taylor with, even if _I_ should not be worth the crazie.

I have seen nobody and heard nothing. I bought a pair of shoes to-day lined with flannel, to walk with on the bare floors of Italy in the winter. Is not _that_ being practical and coming to the point? I did it indeed!

May God bless you. I love you always and am your own.

Write of yourself, I _do pray you_—and also, how is your mother?

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

Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, September 4, 1846.]

You dearest, best Ba, I will say at the beginning of the letter, and not at the end, this time, that I am very much better—my head clear from pain, if a little _uncertain_—I was in the garden when your letter came. The worst is, that I am really forced to go and dine out to-day—but I shall take all imaginable care and get away early ... and be ready to go and see you at a minute’s notice, should a note signify your permission to-morrow ... if Mr. Kenyon’s visit is over, for instance. I have to attribute this effect to that abstinent system of yours. Depend on it, I shall be well and continue well now.

Dear Ba, I wrote under the notion (as I said) that poor Flush was safe by your side; and only took that occasion to point at what I must still consider the wrongness of the whole system of giving way to, instead of opposing, such proceedings. I think it lamentable weakness ... though I can quite understand and allow for it in you,—but weakness it essentially _is_, as _you_ know perfectly. For see, you first put the matter in the gentlest possible light ... ‘who would give much time and trouble to the castigation of such a fellow as _that_!’ You ask—and immediately after, for another purpose, you very rightly rank this crime with that other enormous one, of the Spanish banditti—nay, you confess that, in this very case, any such injury to Flush as you dread would give you inexpressible grief. Is the threatening this outrage then so little a matter? Am I to think it a less matter if the same miscreant should _strike_ you in the street because you would probably suffer less than by this that he _has_ done? There is the inevitable inconsistency of wrong reasoning in all this. Say, as I told you on another subject,—‘I determine to resist no injury whatever, to be at the disposal of any villain in the world, trusting to God for protection here or recompense hereafter’—or take my course; _which_ is the easier, and in the long run, however strangely it may seem, the more profitable, no one can doubt—but I take the harder—in all but the responsibility—which, without any cant, would be intolerable to me. Look at this ‘society’ with its ‘four thousand a year’—which unless its members are perfect fools they will go on to double and treble—would this have existed if a proper stand had been made at the beginning? The first silly man, woman or child who consented to pay five shillings, beyond the mere expense of keeping the dog (on the supposition of its having been found, _not_ stolen), is responsible for all the harm—what could the thief do but go and steal another, and ask double for its ransom?

And see—dog-stealers so encouraged are the lowest of the vile—can neither write nor read, perhaps. One of the fraternity possesses this knowledge, however, and aims higher. Accordingly, instead of stealing your dog, he determines to steal your character; if a guinea (at the beginning) ransoms the one, ten pounds shall ransom the other; accordingly Mr. Barnard Gregory takes pen in hand and writes to some timid man, in the first instance, that unless he receives that sum, his character will be blasted. The timid man takes your advice ... says that the ‘love of an abstract principle’ must not run him into ‘cruel hazards’ ‘for the sake of a few guineas’—so he pays them—who would bother himself with such vermin as Gregory? So Gregory receives his pay for his five minutes’ penmanship—takes down a directory, and writes five hundred such letters. Serjeant Talfourd told me, counting them on his fingers, ‘such and such’ (naming them) cut their throats after robbing their families, employers &c., such fled the country—such went mad ... _that_ was the commonest event.’ At last, even so poor a creature as the Duke of Brunswick, with his detestable character and painted face,—even _he_ plucks up courage and turns on Gregory, grown by this time into a really formidable monster by these amiable victims to the other principle of easy virtue,—and the event is that this execrable ‘Abhorson’s’ trade is utterly destroyed—that form of atrocious persecution exists no longer. I am in no danger of being told, at next post delivery, that having been ‘tracked up Vere Street, down Bond Street, &c.’ into Wimpole Street my character and yours will be the subject of an article in the next _Satirist_ unless ...

To all of which you have a great answer—‘What should I do if _you_ were to be the victim?’ That my note yesterday, the second one, told you. I sacrifice _myself_ ... all that belongs _to me_—but there are some interests which I belong to—I have no right, no more than inclination, in such a case, to think of myself if your safety is concerned, and as I could cut off a limb to save my head, so my head should fall most willingly to redeem yours ... I would pay every farthing I had in the world, and shoot with my own hand the receiver of it after a chase of fifty years—esteeming _that_ to be a very worthy recompense for the trouble.

But why write all this string of truisms about the plainest thing in the world? All reformers are met at the outset by such dissuasion from their efforts. ‘Better suffer the grievance and get off as cheaply as you [can]—You, Mahomet,—what if the Caaba _be_ only a black stone? You need only bow your head as the others, and make any inward remark you like on the blindness of the people. You, Hampden, have you really so little wit as to contest payment of a paltry 20_s._ at such risk?’