After you were gone I received from Mr. Lough a very gracious intimation that if I would go to see his studio, his statue of the Queen and other works, he would take care that no creature should be present, he would uncover all the works and provide a clear solitude for me—he ‘would not do it for a Duchess,’ he said, but he ‘would for me’! Now what am I to say. My sisters tell me that I can go quite easily. The place is very near, and there are no stairs. Well, I think I must go. It is very kind and considerate, and there would be a pleasure, of course. Do you know that statues have more power over me than all the pictures and all the colours thereof which the world can show? Mr. Kenyon told me once that it was a pure affectation of mine to say so—and for my own part I could not see for a long while what was the reason of a most unaffected preference. I think I see it now. Painting flatters the senses and makes the Ideal credible in a vulgar way. But with sculpture it is different—and there is a grand audacity in the power of an Ideal which, appealing directly to the Senses, and to the coarsest of them, the Touch, as well as the Sight, yet forces them to receive Beauty through the door of an Abstraction which is a means abhorrent to them. Have I written what I mean, I wonder, or do you understand it, without? Then there is a great deal, of course, in that grand white repose! Like the Ideas of the Platonic system, these great sculptures seem—when looked at from a distance.
When you were gone yesterday, and I had had my coffee and put on my bonnet, I went, with the intention of walking out, as far as the drawing-room, and there, failed: not even with your recommendation in my ears, beloved, could I get any further. Notwithstanding all my flatteries (meaning the flatteries of me!) I was not at best and strongest, yesterday, nor am even to-day, though it is nothing to mind or to mention—only I think I shall not try to walk out in this heat even to-day, and yesterday it seemed impossible. So I came back and lay on my own sofa, and presently began to read ‘Le Comte de Monte Cristo,’ the new book by Dumas, (observe how I waste my time—while you learn how not to fortify cities, out of Machiavelli!) and really he amuses me with his ‘Monte Cristo’ ... six volumes I am glad to see—he is the male Scheherazade certainly. Now that the hero is safe in a dungeon (of the Château d’If) it will be delightful to see how he will get out—somebody knocks at the wall already. Only the narrative is not always very clear to me, inasmuch as, when I read, I unconsciously interleave it with such thoughts of you as make very curious cross readings ... j’avais cru remarquer quelques infidelités ... he really seems to love me—l’homme n’est jamais qu’un homme ... never was any man like him—ses traits étaient bouleversés ... the calmest eyes I ever saw.... So, Dumas or Machiavelli, it is of the less consequence what I read, I suppose, while I apply so undestractedly.
May God bless you, ever beloved! I think of you, I love you—I forgot again your ‘Strafford’—Mr. Forster’s ‘Strafford,’ I beg his pardon for not attributing to him other men’s works. Not that I mean to be cross—not to him even.
I am your own.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Sunday.
[Post-mark, June 8, 1846.]
One thing you said yesterday which I want to notice and protest against, my Ba—you charged me with speaking depreciatingly of myself because you had set the example—‘I should not have thought of it but that you began.’ Now I am tired, just at this moment, and submissive altogether, and hopeful besides, on the whole,—so I will let you off with a simple but firmest of protests,—I did not think of imitating you, but spoke as I felt and knew,—and feel and know still. The world, generally, will inform you of this in its own good time and way, so ... taceo! (The last opinion of the world’s on the respective value of people and people, is unhappily too decisive. ‘And, after all, Mr. Langton is quite as good as the Duke’s daughter ... for he will have full twenty thousand a year!’) I suspect I was going to turn a pretty phrase and tell you I have only a heart, as the play-books prescribe,—when the said heart pricks me as if I reserved something—so I will confess to owning a ‘forehead and an eye’—one advantage over Pope, to whom folks used to remark ‘Sir, you have an eye’—and no more—whereas yesterday evening after leaving Ba, while I settled myself in the corner of our omnibus to think of her, a spruce gentleman stretched over, and amid the rumbling begged my pardon for being forced to remark that my forehead and eye interested him deeply, phrenologist as he was; and he was sure I must needs be somebody ... besides a passenger to Greenwich! So if Ba will trust in phrenology!—I will at least not be unkind to her as to the learned man—who left the vehicle in due time, lamenting that in return for his own confidence and pink bill (‘Mr. Hamilton, phrenologist and lecturer’ &c. &c.) I would not break my obstinate reserve and augustly pronounce ‘Am I a Beefeater now?’