May I venture to speak to dearest Ba as if I had seen her or heard from her since I wrote yesterday,—and that seeing or that hearing had brought the usual comfort and assurance,—and forgiveness when needed, but delight at all times? Do you forgive me indeed, Ba?
I shall know to-morrow—which ‘to-morrow’ is your to-day. I am soon to be with you to-day. I trust there is [no] occasion to exercise fancy and say—‘When we meet on your return from Tunbridge a month hence,’ or two, or three ... to go on fancying! What should I do,—be able to do? and if I understood you rightly the letter-communication would be hindered, if not stopped altogether. Thus is one the sport of one’s own wishes. Fine weather is desired ... fine enough to drive people out of town into the country!
As it is, I have been sufficiently punished for that foolish letter, which has lost me the last two or three days of your life and deeds, my Ba. You went to Mr. Kenyon’s—may have gone elsewhere (and gathered roses I did not deserve to receive)—but I do not know, and shall not recover my loss—not ever ... because if you tell me now, you exclude something new you would say otherwise ... if you write it on Tuesday, what becomes of Tuesday’s own stock of matter for chronicling?
Well, the proper word in my mouth is—I am sorry to the heart, and will try never to offend so again. How you wrote to me, also! How you rise above yourself while I get no nearer where you were first of all, no nearer than ever! But so it should be! so may it ever be!
I believe the fault comes from a too-sweet sense of the freedom of being true with you, telling you all, hiding nothing. Carlyle was saying in his fine way, he understood why the Romans confined acting to their slaves ... it was no employment for a free man to amuse people ... be bound to do that, and if other faculties interposed, tending to other results on an audience than amusement, be bidden suppress them accordingly ... and so, he thought, it would be one day with our amusers, writers of fun, concocters of comic pieces. I feel it delicious to be free when most bound to you, Ba,—to be able to love on in all the liberty of the implied subjection ... so I am angry to you, desponding sometimes to you, as well as joyous and hopeful—well, well, I love, at any rate,—do love you with heart and soul, my Ba,—ever shall love you, dearest above all dearness: God bless you!
E.B.B. to R.B.
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, June 16, 1846.]
As to ‘practical sense’ I never saw, I confess, much to praise you for—but you began by making a great profession of it, please to remember—and, otherwise, you certainly ought to know more of the world and the wisdom thereof than I, or you are dull, dearest mine, and one might as well call the sun so on this burning dazzling morning, when everything is at a white heat. Then for the ‘calmness’ ... I did not call your eyes ‘green’ after all ... nor did I mean what you would force on me for a meaning in the other way:—you pretend to misunderstand? Eyes, at least, that had the mastery with me from the beginning! and it was so long, so long (as you observed yourself), that I could not lift up mine against them—they were the mystic crystal walls, so long!
After you were gone yesterday and I had done with the roses (exquisite roses!) and had my coffee, I saw my uncle Hedley who had been inquiring about me, said my sisters, all the afternoon, ... for it was he who came when we heard the greetings on the stairs—and he told me that his wife and daughter were to be in London early in July ... so that we shall have the whole squadron sooner than we thought—drawn up like a very squadron ... my other aunt, Miss Clarke, coming at the same time, and my cousin with her, Arlette Butler. But only those two will be in the house here, and they will not be for very long, nor will they be much in the way, I hope.
Shall I tell you? I repented yesterday ... I repented last night ... I repent to-day, having made the promise you asked of me. I could scarcely sleep at all last night, through thinking that I ought not to have made it. Be generous, and free me from that promise. To be true to you in the real right sense, I need no promises at all—and if an argument were addressed to me in order to separate us, I should see through the piteous ingenuity of it, I think, whatever ground it took, and admit no judgment and authority over your life to be higher than your own. But I have misgivings about that promise, because I can conceive of circumstances.... Loose me from my promise, and let me be grateful to you, my beloved, in all things and ways, and hold you to be generous in the least as in the greatest. What I asked of you, was as different as our positions are—different beyond what you see or can see. No third person can see,—no second person can see ... what my position is and has been ... I do not enter on it here. But there is just and only one way in which I may be injured by you, ... and that is, in being allowed to injure you—so remember, remember, ... to the last available moment.