The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 58

I cannot love you less...?

_That_ is a doubtful phrase. And

I cannot love you more

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

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

BA?

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

Tuesday.

[Post-mark, February 24, 1846.]

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

Dearest, dearest--my perfect blessing you are!

May G.o.d continue his care for us. R.

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

Wednesday Morning.

[Post-mark, February 25, 1846.]

Once you were pleased to say, my own Ba, that 'I made you do as I would.' I am quite sure, you make me _speak_ as you would, and not at all as I mean--and for one instance, I never surely spoke anything half so untrue as that 'I came with the intention of loving whomever I should find'--No! wreathed sh.e.l.ls and hollows in ruins, and roofs of caves may transform a voice wonderfully, make more of it or less, or so change it as to almost alter, but turn a 'no' into a 'yes' can no echo (except the Irish one), and I said 'no' to such a charge, and still say 'no.' I _did_ have a presentiment--and though it is hardly possible for me to look back on it now without lending it the true colours given to it by the event, yet I _can_ put them aside, if I please, and remember that I not merely hoped it would not be so (_not_ that the effect I expected to be produced would be _less_ than in antic.i.p.ation, certainly I did not hope _that_, but that it would range itself with the old feelings of simple reverence and sympathy and friends.h.i.+p, that I should love you as much as I supposed I _could_ love, and no more) but in the confidence that nothing could occur to divert me from my intended way of life, I made--went on making arrangements to return to Italy. You know--did I not tell you--I wished to see you before I returned? And I had heard of you just so much as seemed to make it impossible such a relation could ever exist.

I know very well, if you choose to refer to my letters you may easily bring them to bear a sense in parts, more agreeable to your own theory than to mine, the true one--but that was instinct, Providence--anything rather than foresight. Now I will convince you!

yourself have noticed the difference between the _letters_ and the _writer_; the greater 'distance of the latter from you,' why was that?

Why, if not because the conduct _began_ with _him_, with one who had now seen you--was no continuation of the conduct, as influenced by the feeling, of the letters--else, they, if _near_, should have enabled him, if but in the natural course of time and with increase of familiarity, to become _nearer_--but it was not so! The letters began by loving you after their way--but what a world-wide difference between _that_ love and the true, the love from seeing and hearing and feeling, since you make me resolve, what now lies blended so harmoniously, into its component parts. Oh, I know what is old from what is new, and how chrystals may surround and glorify other vessels meant for ordinary service than Lord N's! But I _don't_ know that handling may not snap them off, some of the more delicate ones; and if you let me, love, I will not again, ever again, consider how it came and whence, and when, so curiously, so pryingly, but believe that it was always so, and that it all came at once, all the same; the more unlikelinesses the better, for they set off the better the truth of truths that here, ('how begot? how nourished?')--here is the whole wondrous Ba filling my whole heart and soul; and over-filling it, because she is in all the world, too, where I look, where I fancy. At the same time, because all is so wondrous and so sweet, do you think that it would be _so_ difficult for me to a.n.a.lyse it, and give causes to the effects in sufficiently numerous instances, even to 'justify my presentiment?' Ah, dear, dearest Ba, I could, could indeed, could account for all, or enough! But you are unconscious, I do believe, of your power, and the knowledge of it would be no added grace, perhaps!

So let us go on--taking a lesson out of the world's book in a different sense. You shall think I love you for--(tell me, you must, what for) while in my secret heart I know what my 'mission of humanity' means, and what telescopic and microscopic views it procures me. Enough--Wait, one word about the 'too kind letters'--could not the same Montefiore understand that though he deserved not one of his thousand guineas, yet that he is in disgrace if they bate him of his next gift by merely _ten_? It _is_ all too kind--but I shall feel the diminis.h.i.+ng of the kindness, be very sure! Of that there is, however, not too alarming a sign in this dearest, because last of all--dearest letter of all--till the next! I looked yesterday over the 'Tragedy,'

and think it will do after all. I will bring one part at least next time, and 'Luria' take away, if you let me, so all will be off my mind, and April and May be the welcomer? Don't think I am going to take any extraordinary pains. There are some things in the 'Tragedy' I should like to preserve and print now, leaving the future to spring as it likes, in any direction, and these half-dead, half-alive works fetter it, if left behind.

Yet one thing will fetter it worse, only one thing--if _you_, in any respect, stay behind? You that in all else help me and will help me, beyond words--beyond dreams--if, because I find you, your own works _stop_--'then comes the Selah and the voice is hushed.' Oh, no, no, dearest, _so_ would the help cease to be help--the joy to be joy, Ba herself to be _quite_ Ba, and my own Siren singing song for song. Dear love, will that be kind, and right, and like the rest? Write and promise that all shall be resumed, the romance-poem chiefly, and I will try and feel more yours than ever now. Am I not with you in the world, proud of you--and _vain_, too, very likely, which is all the sweeter if it is a sin as you teach me. Indeed dearest, I have set my heart on your fulfilling your mission--my heart is on it! Bless you, my Ba--

Your R.B.

I am so well as to have resumed the shower-bath (this morning)--and I walk, especially near the elms and stile--and mean to walk, and be very well--and you, dearest?

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

[Post-mark, February 26, 1846.]

I confess that while I was writing those words I had a thought that they were not quite yours as you said them. Still it comes to something in their likeness, but we will not talk of it and break off the chrystals--they _are_ so brittle, then? do you know _that_ by an 'instinct.' But I agree that it is best not to talk--I 'gave it up' as a riddle long ago. Let there be 'a.n.a.lysis' even, and it will not be solution. I have my own thoughts of course, and you have yours, and the worst is that a third person looking down on us from some snow-capped height, and free from personal influences, would have _his_ thoughts too, and _he_ would think that if you had been reasonable as usual you would have gone to Italy. I have by heart (or by head at least) what the third person would think. The third person thundered to me in an abstraction for ever so long, and at intervals I hear him still, only you shall not to-day, because he talks 'd.a.m.nable iterations' and teazes you. Nay, the first person is teazing you now perhaps, without going any further, and yet I must go a little further, just to say (after accepting all possible unlikelinesses and miracles, because everything was miraculous and impossible) that it was agreed between us long since that you did not love me for anything--your having no reason for it is the only way of your not seeming unreasonable. Also _for my own sake_. I like it to be so--I cannot have peace with the least change from it. Dearest, take the baron's hawthorn bough which, in spite of his fine dream of it is dead since the other day, and so much the worse than when I despised it last--take that dead stick and push it upright into the sand as the tide rises, and the whole blue sea draws up its glittering breadth and length towards and around it. But what then? What does _that prove_?

... as the philosopher said of the poem. So we ought not to talk of such things; and we get warned off even in the accidental ill.u.s.trations taken up to light us. Still, the stick certainly did not draw the sea.

Dearest and best you were yesterday, to write me the little note! You are better than the imaginations of my heart, and _they_, as far as they relate to you (not further) are _not_ desperately wicked, I think. I always expect the kindest things from you, and you always are doing some kindness beyond what is expected, and this is a miracle too, like the rest, now isn't it? When the knock came last night, I knew it was your letter, and not another's. Just another little leaf of my Koran! How I thank you ... thank you! If I write too kind letters, as you say, why they may be too kind for me to send, but not for you to receive; and I suppose I think more of you than of me, which accounts for my writing them, accounts and justifies. And _that_ is my reflection not now for the first time. For we break rules very often--as that exegetical third person might expound to you clearly out of the ninety-sixth volume of the 'Code of Conventions,' only you are not like another, nor have you been to me like another--you began with most improvident and (will you let me say?) _unmasculine_ generosity, and Queen Victoria does not sit upon a mat after the fas.h.i.+on of Queen Pomare, nor should.

But ... but ... you know very fully that you are breaking faith in the matter of the 'Tragedy' and 'Luria'--you promised to rest--and _you rest for three days_. Is it _so_ that people get well? or keep well?

Indeed I do not think I shall let you have 'Luria.' Ah--be careful, I do beseech you--be careful. There is time for a pause, and the works will profit by it themselves. And _you_! And I ... if you are ill!--

For the rest I will let you walk in my field, and see my elms as much as you please ... though I hear about the shower bath with a little suspicion. Why, if it did you harm before, should it not again? and why should you use it, if it threatens harm? Now tell me if it hasn't made you rather unwell since the new trial!--tell me, dear, dearest.

As for myself, I believe that you set about exhorting me to be busy, just that I might not reproach _you_ for the over-business. Confess that _that_ was the only meaning of the exhortation. But no, you are quite serious, you say. You even threaten me in a sort of underground murmur, which sounds like a nascent earthquake; and if I do not write so much a day directly, your stipendiary magistrates.h.i.+p will take away my license to be loved ... I am not to be Ba to you any longer ... you say! And is _this_ right? now I ask you. Ever so many chrystals fell off by that stroke of the baton, I do a.s.sure you. Only you did not mean quite what you said so too articulately, and you will unsay it, if you please, and unthink it near the elms.

As for the writing, I will write ... I have written ... I am writing.

You do not fancy that I have given up writing?--No. Only I have certainly been more loitering and distracted than usual in what I have done, which is not my fault--nor yours directly--and I feel an indisposition to setting about the romance, the hand of the soul shakes. I am too happy and not calm enough, I suppose, to have the right inclination. Well--it will come. But all in blots and fragments there are verses enough, to fill a volume done in the last year.

And if there were not ... if there were none ... I hold that I should be Ba, and also _your_ Ba ... which is 'insolence' ... will you say?

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

Thursday.

[Post-mark, February 26, 1846.]

As for the 'third person,' my sweet Ba, he was a wise speaker from the beginning; and in our case he will say, turning to me--'the late Robert Hall--when a friend admired that one with so high an estimate of the value of intellectuality in woman should yet marry some kind of cook-maid animal, as did the said Robert; wisely answered, "you can't kiss Mind"! May _you_ not discover eventually,' (this is to me) 'that mere intellectual endowments--though incontestably of the loftiest character--mere Mind, though that Mind be Miss B's--cannot be _kissed_--nor, repent too late the absence of those humbler qualities, those softer affections which, like flowerets at the mountain's foot, if not so proudly soaring as, as, as!...' and so on, till one of us died, with laughing or being laughed at! So judges the third person!

and if, to help him, we let him into your room at Wimpole Street, suffered him to see with Flush's eyes, he would say with just as wise an air 'True, mere personal affections may be warm enough, but does it augur well for the durability of an attachment that it should be _wholly, exclusively_ based on such perishable attractions as the sweetness of a mouth, the beauty of an eye? I could wish, rather, to know that there was something of less transitory nature co-existent with this--some congeniality of Mental pursuit, some--' Would he not say that? But I can't do his plat.i.tudes justice because here is our post going out and I have been all the morning walking in the perfect joy of my heart, with your letter, and under its blessing--dearest, dearest Ba--let me say more to-morrow--only this now, that you--ah, what are you not to me! My dearest love, bless you--till to-morrow when I will strengthen the prayer; (no, _lengthen_ it!)

Ever your own.

'Hawthorn'[1]--to show how Spring gets on!

[Footnote 1: Sprig of Hawthorn enclosed with letter.]

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

Thursday Evening.

[Post-mark, February 27, 1846.]

If all third persons were as foolish as this third person of yours, ever dearest, first and second persons might follow their own devices without losing much in the way of good counsel. But you are unlucky in your third person as far as the wits go, he talks a great deal of nonsense, and Flush, who is sensible, will have nothing to do with him, he says, any more than you will with Sir Moses:--he is quite a third person _singular_ for the nonsense he talks!

So, instead of him, you shall hear what I have been doing to-day. The sun, which drew out you and the hawthorns, persuaded me that it was warm enough to go down-stairs--and I put on my cloak as if I were going into the snow, and went into the drawing-room and took Henrietta by surprise as she sate at the piano singing. Well, I meant to stay half an hour and come back again, for I am upon 'Tinkler's ground' in the drawing-room and liable to whole droves of morning visitors--and Henrietta kept me, kept me, because she wanted me, besought me, to stay and see the great sight of Capt. Surtees Cook--_plus_ his regimentals--fresh from the royal presence at St.

James's, and I never saw him in my life, though he is a sort of cousin. So, though I hated it as you may think, ... not liking to be unkind to my sister, I stayed and stayed one ten minutes after another, till it seemed plain that he wasn't coming at all (as I told her) and that Victoria had kept him to dinner, enchanted with the regimentals. And half laughing and half quarrelling, still she kept me by force, until a knock came most significantly ... and '_There_ is Surtees' said she ... 'now you must and shall stay! So foolish,' (I had my hand on the door-handle to go out) 'he, your own cousin too!

who always calls you Ba, except before Papa.' Which might have encouraged me perhaps, but I can't be sure of it, as the very next moment apprized us both that no less a person than Mrs. Jameson was standing out in the pa.s.sage. The whole 36th. regiment could scarcely have been more astounding to me. As to staying to see her in that room, with the prospect of the military descent in combination, I couldn't have done it for the world! so I made Henrietta, who had drawn me into the sc.r.a.pe, take her up-stairs, and followed myself in a minute or two--and the corollary of this interesting history is, that being able to talk at all after all that 'fuss,' and after walking 'up-stairs and down-stairs' like the ancestor of your spider, proves my gigantic strength--now doesn't it?

For the rest, 'here be proofs' that the first person can be as foolish as any third person in the world. What do you think?

And Mrs. Jameson was kind beyond speaking of, and talked of taking me to Italy. What do you say? It is somewhere about the fifth or sixth proposition of the sort which has come to me. I shall be embarra.s.sed, it seems to me, by the mult.i.tude of escorts to Italy. But the kindness, one cannot laugh at so much kindness.