I must answer your questions: I am better—and will certainly have your injunction before my eyes and work quite moderately. Your letters come straight to me—my father's go to Town, except on extraordinary occasions, so that all come for my first looking-over. I saw Mr. K. last night at the Amateur Comedy—and heaps of old acquaintances—and came home tired and savage—and yearned literally, for a letter this morning, and so it came and I was well again. So, I am not even to have your low spirits leaning on mine? It was just because I always find you alike, and ever like yourself, that I seemed to discern a depth, when you spoke of 'some days' and what they made uneven where all is agreeable to me. Do not, now, deprive me of a right—a right ... to find you as you are; get no habit of being cheerful with me—I have universal sympathy and can show you a side of me, a true face, turn as you may. If you are cheerful ... so will I be ... if sad, my cheerfulness will be all the while behind, and propping up, any sadness that meets yours, if that should be necessary. As for my question about the opium ... you do not misunderstand that neither: I trust in the eventual consummation of my—shall I not say, our—hopes; and all that bears upon your health immediately or prospectively, affects me—how it affects me! Will you write again? Wednesday, remember! Mr. K. wants me to go to him one of the three next days after. I will bring you some letters ... one from Landor. Why should I trouble you about 'Pomfret.'
And Luria ... does it so interest you? Better is to come of it. How you lift me up!—
E.B.B. to R.B.
Monday.
[Post-mark, November 18, 1845.]
How you overcome me as always you do—and where is the answer to anything except too deep down in the heart for even the pearl-divers? But understand ... what you do not quite ... that I did not mistake you as far even as you say here and even 'for a moment.' I did not write any of that letter in a 'doubt' of you—not a word.... I was simply looking back in it on my own states of feeling, ... looking back from that point of your praise to what was better ... (or I should not have looked back)—and so coming to tell you, by a natural association, how the completely opposite point to that of any praise was the one which struck me first and most, viz. the no-reason of your reasoning ... acknowledged to be yours. Of course I acknowledge it to be yours, ... that high reason of no reason—I acknowledged it to be yours (didn't I?) in acknowledging that it made an impression on me. And then, referring to the traditions of my experience such as I told them to you, I meant, so, farther to acknowledge that I would rather be cared for in that unreasonable way, than for the best reason in the world. But all that was history and philosophy simply—was it not?—and not doubt of you.
The truth is ... since we really are talking truths in this world ... that I never have doubted you—ah, you know!—I felt from the beginning so sure of the nobility and integrity in you that I would have trusted you to make a path for my soul—that, you know. I felt certain that you believed of yourself every word you spoke or wrote—and you must not blame me if I thought besides sometimes (it was the extent of my thought) that you were self-deceived as to the nature of your own feelings. If you could turn over every page of my heart like the pages of a book, you would see nothing there offensive to the least of your feelings ... not even to the outside fringes of your man's vanity ... should you have any vanity like a man; which I do doubt. I never wronged you in the least of things—never ... I thank God for it. But 'self-deceived,' it was so easy for you to be: see how on every side and day by day, men are—and women too—in this sort of feelings. 'Self-deceived,' it was so possible for you to be, and while I thought it possible, could I help thinking it best for you that it should be so—and was it not right in me to persist in thinking it possible? It was my reverence for you that made me persist! What was I that I should think otherwise? I had been shut up here too long face to face with my own spirit, not to know myself, and, so, to have lost the common illusions of vanity. All the men I had ever known could not make your stature among them. So it was not distrust, but reverence rather. I sate by while the angel stirred the water, and I called it Miracle. Do not blame me now, ... my angel!
Nor say, that I 'do not lean' on you with all the weight of my 'past' ... because I do! You cannot guess what you are to me—you cannot—it is not possible:—and though I have said that before, I must say it again ... for it comes again to be said. It is something to me between dream and miracle, all of it—as if some dream of my earliest brightest dreaming-time had been lying through these dark years to steep in the sunshine, returning to me in a double light. Can it be, I say to myself, that you feel for me so? can it be meant for me? this from you?
If it is your 'right' that I should be gloomy at will with you, you exercise it, I do think—for although I cannot promise to be very sorrowful when you come, (how could that be?) yet from different motives it seems to me that I have written to you quite superfluities about my 'abomination of desolation,'—yes indeed, and blamed myself afterwards. And now I must say this besides. When grief came upon grief, I never was tempted to ask 'How have I deserved this of God,' as sufferers sometimes do: I always felt that there must be cause enough ... corruption enough, needing purification ... weakness enough, needing strengthening ... nothing of the chastisement could come to me without cause and need. But in this different hour, when joy follows joy, and God makes me happy, as you say, through you ... I cannot repress the ... 'How have I deserved this of Him?'—I know I have not—I know I do not.
Could it be that heart and life were devastated to make room for you?—If so, it was well done,—dearest! They leave the ground fallow before the wheat.
'Were you wrong in answering?' Surely not ... unless it is wrong to show all this goodness ... and too much, it may be for me. When the plants droop for drought and the copious showers fall suddenly, silver upon silver, they die sometimes of the reverse of their adversities. But no—that, even, shall not be a danger! And if I said 'Do not answer,' I did not mean that I would not have a doubt removed—(having no doubt!—) but I was simply unwilling to seem to be asking for golden words ... going down the aisles with that large silken purse, as quêteuse. Try to understand.