The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 64

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

[Post-mark, March 16, 1846.]

Indeed I would, dearest Ba, go with entire gladness and pride to see a light that came from your room--why should that surprise you? Well, you will _know_ one day.

We understand each other too about the sofas and gilding--oh, I know you, my own sweetest! For me, if I had set those matters to heart, I should have turned into the obvious way of getting them--not _out_ of it, as I did resolutely from the beginning. All I meant was, to express a very natural feeling--if one could give you diamonds for flowers, and if you liked diamonds,--then, indeed! As it is, wherever we are found shall be, if you please, 'For the love's sake found therein--sweetest _house_ was ever seen!'

Mr. Kenyon must be merciful. Lilies are of all colours in Palestine--one sort is particularized as _white_ with a dark blue spot and streak--the water lily, lotos, which I think I meant, is _blue_ altogether.

I have walked this morning to town and back--I feel much better, 'honestly'! The head better--the spirits rising--as how should they not, when _you_ think all will go well in the end, when you write to me that you go down-stairs and are stronger--and when the rest is written?

Not more now, dearest, for time is pressing, but you will answer this,--the love that is not here,--not the idle words, and I will reply to-morrow. Thursday is so far away yet!

Bless you, my very own, only dearest!

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

Monday Evening.

[Post-mark, March 17, 1846.]

Dearest, you are dearest always! Talk of Sirens, ... there must be some masculine ones 'rari nantes,' I fancy, (though we may not find them in unquestionable authorities like your aelian!) to justify this voice I hear. Ah, how you speak, with that pretension, too, to dumbness! What should people be made of, in order to bear such words, do you think? Will all the wax from all the altar-candles in the Sistine Chapel, keep the piercing danger from their ears? Being tied up a good deal tighter than Ulysses did not save _me_. Dearest dearest: I laugh, you see, as usual, not to cry! But deep down, deeper than the Sirens go, deep underneath the tides, _there_, I bless and love you with the voice that makes no sound.

Other human creatures (how often I do think it to myself!) have their good things scattered over their lives, sown here and sown there, down the slopes, and by the waysides. But with me ... I have mine all poured down on one spot in the midst of the sands!--if you knew what I feel at moments, and at half-hours, when I give myself up to the feeling freely and take no thought of red eyes. A woman once was killed with gifts, crushed with the weight of golden bracelets thrown at her: and, knowing myself, I have wondered more than a little, how it was that I could _bear_ this strange and unused gladness, without sinking as the emotion rose. Only I was incredulous at first, and the day broke slowly ... and the gifts fell like the rain ... softly; and G.o.d gives strength, by His providence, for sustaining blessings as well as stripes. Dearest--

For the rest I understand you perfectly--perfectly. It was simply to your _thoughts_, that I replied ... and that you need not say to yourself any more, as you did once to me when you brought me flowers, that you wished they were diamonds. It was simply to prevent the accident of such a _thought_, that I spoke out mine. You would not wish accidentally that you had a double-barrelled gun to give me, or a cardinal's hat, or a snuff box, and I meant to say that you _might as well_--as diamonds and satin sofas a la Chorley. Thoughts are something, and _your_ thoughts are something more. To be sure they are!

You are better you say, which makes me happy of course. And you will not make the 'better' worse again by doing wrong things--_that_ is my pet.i.tion. It was the excess of goodness to write those two letters for me in one day, and I thank you, thank you. Beloved, when you write, _let_ it be, if you choose, ever so few lines. Do not suffer me (for my own sake) to tire you, because two lines or three bring _you_ to me ... remember ... just as a longer letter would.

But where, pray, did I say, and when, that 'everything would end well?' Was _that_ in the dream, when we two met on the stairs? I did not really say so I think. And 'well' is how you understand it. If you jump out of the window you succeed in getting to the ground, somehow, dead or alive ... but whether _that_ means 'ending well,' depends on your way of considering matters. I am seriously of opinion nevertheless, that if 'the arm,' you talk of, _drops_, it will not be for weariness nor even for weakness, but because it is cut off at the shoulder. _I_ will not fail to you,--may G.o.d so deal with me, so bless me, so leave me, as I live only for you and _shall_. Do you doubt _that_, my only beloved! Ah, you know well--_too well_, people would say ... but I do not think it 'too well' myself, ... knowing _you_.

Your

BA.

Here is a gossip which Mr. Kenyon brought me on Sunday--disbelieving it himself, he a.s.severated, though Lady Chantrey said it 'with authority,'--that Mr. Harness had offered his hand heart and ecclesiastical dignities to Miss Burdett Coutts. It is Lady Chantrey's and Mr. Kenyon's _secret_, remember.

And ... will you tell me? How can a man spend four or five successive months on the sea, most cheaply--at the least pecuniary expense, I mean? Because Miss Mitford's friend Mr. Buckingham is ordered by his medical adviser to complete his cure by these means; and he is not rich. Could he go with sufficient comfort by a merchant's vessel to the Mediterranean ... and might he drift about among the Greek islands?

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

Tuesday.

'Out of window' would be well, as I see the leap, if it ended (_so far as I am concerned_) in the worst way imaginable--I would I 'run the risk' (Ba's other word) rationally, deliberately,--knowing what the ordinary law of chances in this world justifies in such a case; and if the result after all _was_ unfortunate, it would be far easier to undergo the extremest penalty with so little to reproach myself for,--than to put aside the adventure,--waive the wondrous probability of such best fortune, in a fear of the barest possibility of an adverse event, and so go to my grave, Walter the Penniless, with an eternal recollection that Miss Burdett Coutts once offered to wager sundry millions with me that she could throw double-sixes a dozen times running--which wager I wisely refused to accept because it was not written in the stars that such a sequence might never be. I had rather, rather a thousand-fold lose my paltry stake, and be the one recorded victim to such an unexampled unluckiness that half a dozen mad comets, suns gone wrong, and lunatic moons must have come laboriously into conjunction for my special sake to bring it to pa.s.s, which were no slight honour, properly considered!--And this is _my_ way of laughing, dearest Ba, when the excess of belief in you, and happiness with you, runs over and froths if it don't sparkle--underneath is a deep, a sea not to be moved. But chance, chance! there is _no_ chance here! I _have_ gained enough for my life, I can only put in peril the gaining more than enough. You shall change altogether my dear, dearest love, and I will be happy to the last minute on what I can remember of this past year--I _could_ do that.

_Now_, jump with me out, Ba! If you feared for yourself--all would be different, sadly different--But saying what you do say, promising 'the strength of arm'--do not wonder that I call it an a.s.surance of all being 'well'! All is _best_, as you promise--dear, darling Ba!--and I say, in my degree, with all the energy of my nature, _as you say_, promise as you promise--only meaning a wors.h.i.+p of you that is solely fit for me, fit by position--are not you my 'mistress?' Come, some good out of those old conventions, in which you lost faith after the Bower's disappearance, (it was carried by the singing angels, like the house at Loretto, to the Siren's isle where we shall find it preserved in a beauty 'very rare and absolute')--is it not right you should be my Lady, my Queen? and you are, and ever must be, dear Ba. Because I am suffered to kiss the lips, shall I ever refuse to embrace the feet?

and kiss lips, and embrace feet, love you _wholly_, my Ba! May G.o.d bless you--

Ever your own,

R.

It would be easy for Mr. Buckingham to find a Merchant-s.h.i.+p bound for some Mediterranean port, after a week or two in harbour, to another and perhaps a third--Naples, Palermo, Syra, Constantinople, and so on.

The expense would be very trifling, but the want of comfort _enormous_ for an invalid--the one advantage is the solitariness of the _one_ pa.s.senger among all those rough new creatures. _I_ like it much, and soon get deep into their friends.h.i.+p, but another has other ways of viewing matters. No one article provided by the s.h.i.+p in the way of provisions can anybody touch. Mr. B. must lay in his own stock, and the horrors of dirt and men's ministry are portentous, yet by a little arrangement beforehand much might be done. Still, I only know my own powers of endurance, and counsel n.o.body to gain my experience. On the other hand, were all to do again, I had rather have seen Venice _so_, with the five or six weeks' absolute rest of the mind's eyes, than any other imaginable way,--except Balloon-travelling.

Do you think they meant Landor's 'Count Julian'--the 'subject of his tragedy' sure enough,--and that _he_ was the friend of Southey? So it struck me--

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

Tuesday Evening.

[Post-mark, March 18, 1846.]

Ah well--we shall see. Only remember that it is not my fault if I throw the double sixes, and if you, on [_some sun-s.h.i.+ny_ day, (a day too late to help yourself) stand face to face with a milkwhite unicorn.][1] Ah--do not be angry. It is ungrateful of me to write so--I put a line through it to prove I have a conscience after all. I know that you love me, and I know it so well that I was reproaching myself severely not long ago, for seeming to love your love more than you. Let me tell you how I proved _that_, or seemed. For ever so long, you remember, I have been talking finely about giving you up for your good and so on. Which was sincere as far as the words went--but oh, the hypocrisy of our souls!--of mine, for instance! 'I would give you up for your good'--_but_ when I pressed upon myself the question whether (if I had the power) I would consent to make you willing to be given up, by throwing away your love into the river, in a ring like Charlemagne's, ... why I found directly that I would throw myself there sooner. I could not do it in fact--I shrank from the test. A very pitiful virtue of generosity, is your Ba's! Still, it is not possible, I think, that she should '_love your love more than you_.'

There must be a mistake in the calculation somewhere--a figure dropt.

It would be too bad for her!

Your account of your merchantmen, though with Venice in the distance, will scarcely be attractive to a confirmed invalid, I fear--and yet the steamers will be found expensive beyond his means. The sugar-vessels, which I hear most about, give out an insufferable smell and steam--let us talk of it a little on Thursday. On Monday I forgot.

For Landor's 'Julian,' oh no, I cannot fancy it to be probable that those Parisians should know anything of Landor, even by a mistake. Do you not suppose that the play is founded (confounded) on Sh.e.l.ley's poem, as the French use materials ... by distraction, into confusion?

The 'urn by the Adriatic' (which all the French know how to turn upside down) fixes the reference to Sh.e.l.ley--does it not?

Not a word of the head--what does _that_ mean, I wonder. I have not been down-stairs to-day--the wind is too cold--but you have walked?

... there was no excuse for you. G.o.d bless you, ever dearest. It is my last word till Thursday's first. A fine queen you have, by the way!--a queen Log, whom you had better leave in the bushes! Witness our hand....

BA--REGINA.

[Footnote 1: The words in brackets are struck out.]

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

[Post-mark, March 18, 1846.]

Indeed, dearest, you shall not have _last word_ as you think,--all the 'risk' shall not be mine, neither; how can I, in the event, throw ambs-ace (is not that the old word?) and not peril _your_ stakes too, when once we have common stock and are partners? When I see the unicorn and grieve proportionately, do you mean to say you are not going to grieve too, for my sake? And if so--why, _you_ clearly run exactly the same risk,--_must_,--unless you mean to rejoice in my sorrow! So your chance is my chance; my success your success, you say, and my failure, your failure, will you not say? You see, you see, Ba, my own--own! What do you think frightened me in your letter for a second or two? You write 'Let us talk on Thursday ... Monday I forgot'--which I read,--'no, not on Thursday--I had forgotten! It is to be _Monday_ when we meet next'!--whereat

... as a goose In death contracts his talons close,

as Hudibras sings--I clutched the letter convulsively--till relief came.

So till to-morrow--my all-beloved! Bless you. I am rather hazy in the head as Archer Gurney will find in due season--(he comes, I told you)--but all the morning I have been going for once and for ever through the 'Tragedy,' and it is _done_--(done _for_). Perhaps I may bring it to-morrow--if my sister can copy all; I cut out a huge kind of sermon from the middle and reserve it for a better time--still it is very long; so long! So, if I ask, may I have 'Luria' back to morrow? So shall printing begin, and headache end--and 'no more for the present from your loving'

R.B.