The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 66

My own dearest, if you _do_--(for I confess to nothing of the kind), but if you _should_ detect an unwillingness to write at certain times, what would that prove,--I mean, what that one need shrink from avowing? If I never had you before me except when writing letters to you--then! Why, we do not even _talk_ much now! witness Mr. Buckingham and his voyage that ought to have been discussed!--Oh, how coldly I should write,--how the bleak-looking paper would seem unpropitious to carry my feeling--if all had to begin and try to find words _this_ way!

Now, this morning I have been out--to town and back--and for all the walking my head aches--and I have the conviction that presently when I resign myself to think of you wholly, with only the pretext,--the make-believe of occupation, in the shape of some book to turn over the leaves of,--I shall see you and soon be well; so soon! You must know, there is a chair (one of the kind called gond_o_la-chairs by upholsterers--with an emphasized o)--which occupies the precise place, stands just in the same relation to this chair I sit on now, that yours stands in and occupies--to the left of the fire: and, how often, how _always_ I turn in the dusk and _see_ the dearest real Ba with me.

How entirely kind to take that trouble, give those sittings for me! Do you think the kindness has missed its due effect? _No, no_, I am glad,--(_knowing what I_ now _know_,--what you meant _should be_, and did all in your power to prevent) that I have _not_ received the picture, if anything short of an adequate likeness. 'Nil nisi--te!'

But I have set my heart on _seeing_ it--will you remember next time, next Sat.u.r.day?

I will leave off now. To-morrow, dearest, only dearest Ba, I will write a longer letter--the clock stops it this afternoon--it is later than I thought, and our poor crazy post! This morning, hoping against hope, I ran to meet our postman coming meditatively up the lane--with _a_ letter, indeed!--but Ba's will come to-night--and I will be happy, already _am_ happy, expecting it. Bless you, my own love,

Ever your--

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

Tuesday Evening.

[Post-mark, March 25, 1846.]

Ah; if I '_do_' ... if I '_should_' ... if I _shall_ ... if I _will_ ... if I _must_ ... what can all the 'ifs' prove, but a most hypothetical state of the conscience? And in brief, I beg you to stand convinced of one thing, that whenever the 'certain time' comes for to 'hate writing to me' confessedly, 'avowedly,' (oh what words!) _I shall not like it at all_--not for all the explanations ... and the sights in gondola chairs, which the person seen is none the better for! The [Greek: eidolon] sits by the fire--the real Ba is cold at heart through wanting her letter. And that's the doctrine to be preached now, ... is it? I 'shrink,' shrink from it. That's your word!--and mine! Dearest, I began by half a jest and end by half-gravity, which is the fault of your doctrine and not of me I think. Yet it is ungrateful to be grave, when practically you are good and just about the letters, and generous too sometimes, and I could not bear the idea of obliging you to write to me, even once ...

when.... Now do not fancy that I do not understand. I understand perfectly, on the contrary. Only do _you_ try not to dislike writing when you write, or not to write when you dislike it ... _that_, I ask of you, dear dearest--and forgive me for all this over-writing and teazing and vexing which is foolish and womanish in the bad sense. It is a way of meeting, ... the meeting in letters, ... and next to receiving a letter from you, I like to write one to you ... and, so, revolt from thinking it lawful for you to dislike.... Well! the G.o.ddess of Dulness herself couldn't have written _this_ better, anyway, nor more characteristically.

I will tell you how it is. You have spoilt me just as I have spoilt Flush. Flush looks at me sometimes with reproachful eyes 'a fendre le coeur,' because I refuse to give him my fur cuffs to tear to pieces.

And as for myself, I confess to being more than half jealous of the [Greek: eidolon] in the gondola chair, who isn't the real Ba after all, and yet is set up there to do away with the necessity 'at certain times' of writing to her. Which is worse than Flush. For Flush, though he began by s.h.i.+vering with rage and barking and howling and gnas.h.i.+ng his teeth at the brown dog in the gla.s.s, has learnt by experience what that image means, ... and now contemplates it, serene in natural philosophy. Most excellent sense, all this is!--and dauntlessly 'delivered!'

Your head aches, dearest. Mr. Moxon will have done his worst, however, presently, and then you will be a little better I do hope and trust--and the proofs, in the meanwhile, will do somewhat less harm than the ma.n.u.script. You will take heart again about 'Luria' ... which I agree with you, is more diffuse ... that is, less close, than any of your works, not diffuse in any bad sense, but round, copious, and another proof of that wonderful variety of faculty which is so striking in you, and which signalizes itself both in the thought and in the medium of the thought. You will appreciate 'Luria' in time--or others will do it for you. It is a n.o.ble work under every aspect. Dear 'Luria'! Do you remember how you told me of 'Luria' last year, in one of your early letters? Little I thought that ever, ever, I should feel so, while 'Luria' went to be printed! A long trail of thoughts, like the rack in the sky, follows his going. Can it be the same 'Luria,' I think, that 'golden-hearted Luria,' whom you talked of to me, when you complained of keeping 'wild company,' in the old dear letter? And I have learnt since, that '_golden-hearted_' is not a word for him only, or for him most. May G.o.d bless you, best and dearest! I am your own to live and to die--

BA.

_Say how you are._ I shall be down-stairs to-morrow if it keeps warm.

Miss Thomson wants me to translate the Hector and Andromache scene from the 'Iliad' for her book; and I am going to try it.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME