E.B.B. to R.B.

Wednesday.
[Post-mark, June 18, 1846.]

Dearest and ever dearest, try to forgive me when I fall so manifestly short of you in all things! It is the very sense of this which throws me on despairs sometimes of being other than a bane to your life—and then ... by way of a remedy ... I begin to be a torment to it directly. Forgive me. Whatever I may say I am as wholly yours as if you held me in your hand, and I would do for you any extravagance, as if it were a common thing, at a word—and what is before us is only a common thing, since I have looked to it from the beginning. Oh—I may talk when I am out of spirits—but you know, and I know best of all, that I could not withdraw myself from you, unless you said ‘Go’—could not—I have no power. Fine talking, it is of me, to talk of withdrawing myself from you! You know I could not at all do it, let ever so many special pleaders come to prove to me that you would be more prosperous and happy without me. ‘Then’ I would say ... ‘let him put me away. I can’t put myself away, because I am not mine but his.’ Assuredly I would say just that, and no more. So do you forget that I have teazed you and pained you ... pained you!... I will try not to pain you, my own, own dearest, any more. I have grown to love you instead of the whole world; and only one thing ... (you understand what that is ...) is dreadful and intolerable to me to imagine. But now it is done with; and you shall teach me hereafter to make you happy instead of the contrary. So ... yes—you are kissed this time! upon both eyes, ... that they may not see my faults. And afterwards I will tell you a paradox ... that if I loved you a hundred times less, I should run into such offences less in exact proportion. And finally I will give you a promise ... not to teaze you for a week—which were a wonderful feat for me! the teazer par excellence.

To-day I deserved to hear of your head being worse—but it is better, I thank God—and your mother is better—all such comforting news! But it was no news that you did not go to Greenwich to-day,—for Mrs. Jameson came for me to drive at about six, and she and I were in Regent’s Park until nearly eight. Then she went somewhere to dinner, and I, who had had tea, came home to supper! I like her very much—more and more, certainly—and we need not be mysterious up to the usual mark of mystery, because I told her ... told her ... what might be told—and she was gracious to the uttermost—not angry at all,—and said that ‘Truth was truth, and one could breathe in the atmosphere of it, and she was glad I had told her.’ Of you, she said, that she admired you more than ever—yes, more than ever—for the ‘manner in which as a man of honour you had kept the secret’—so you were praised, and I, not blamed ... and we shall not complain, if our end is as good as our beginning. Also we talked of your poetry and of you personally, and I was pleased, ... which proves a little what was said—and I heard how you were invited as a ‘celebrity’ for the Countess Hahn-Hahn to see you, and how you effaced yourself with ever so much gracefulness; yet not too much, to omit charming the whole room. Mrs. Jameson praises you always, as nobody does better. And to-morrow ... will you be surprised to hear that to-morrow at half-past four, I am to go again with her, ... to see Rogers’s pictures? Is it wrong? shall I get into a scrape? She promised laughingly that I should be incognita to the only companion she thought of taking ... a Mrs. Bracebridge, I think ... and Mr. Rogers himself is not to be visible—and she herself will mention it to nobody. It was hard to say ‘no’—yet perhaps ‘no’ would have been better. Do you think so? Mrs. Bracebridge is an artist and lives or lived on Mount Hymettus!—and she is not to hear my name even.

Now—good night, very dear!—most dear of all! I will not teaze you for a fortnight, I think. Ah—if ever I can do that again, you shall not be pained, ... you shall think that my heart and life are in you, and that, if they seem to flatter, it is that they go deeper. All I am is yours—which is different from ... all I have. ‘All I have,’ is when I may lean my head down on the shoulder—

So let me be your own

Ba.

Of those two letters, one was in the post before seven the evening before. Now, is it not too bad?

R.B. to E.B.B.

Thursday.
[Post-mark, June 18, 1846.]