Now I am here all alone, except Flush—sitting, leaning against the open window with my feet curled up, and, at them, Flush curled up too; and I writing on my knee more meo. Rather cooler it seems, but rather too hot still it is, I think. How did you get home? how are you, dearest? And your mother? tell me of her, and of you! You always, you know (do you know?), leave your presence with me in the flowers; and, as the lilies unfold, of course I see more and more of you in each apocalypse. Still, the Saturday’s visit is the worst of all to come to an end, as always I feel. In the first place stands Sunday, like a wall without a door in it! no letter! Monday is a good day and makes up a little, but it does not prevent Tuesday and Wednesday following ... more intervening days than between the other meetings—or so it seems. I forgot to tell you that yesterday I went to Mr. Boyd’s house ... not to see him, but as a preliminary step to seeing him. Arabel went to his room to tell him of my being there—we are both perhaps rather afraid of meeting after all these years of separation. Quite blind he is—and though scarcely older than Mr. Kenyon (perhaps a year or two or three), so nervous, that he has really made himself infirm, and now he refuses to walk out or even to go down-stairs. A very peculiar life he has led ever since he lost his sight, which he did when he was quite a young man—and a very peculiar person he is in all possible ways. His great faculty is ... memory ... and his great passion ... Greek—to which of late he has added Ossian. Otherwise, he talks like a man of slow mind, which he is, ... and with a child’s way of looking at things, such as would make you smile—oh, he talks in the most wonderfully childish way! Poor Mr. Boyd. He cares for me perhaps more than he cares for any one else ... far more than for his own only daughter; but he is not a man of deep sensibility, and, if he heard of my death, would merely sleep a little sounder the next night. Once he said to me that whenever he felt sorry about anything, he was inclined to go to sleep. An affectionate and grateful regard ... grateful for many kindnesses ... I bear him, for my part. He says that I should wear the crown in poetry, if I would but follow Pope—but that the dreadful system of running lines one into another ruins everything. When I talk of memory, I mean merely the mechanical faculty. The associative, which makes the other a high power, he wants. So I went to his house in St. John’s Wood yesterday, and saw the little garden. Poor Mr. Boyd. There, he lives, all alone—and never leaving his chair! yet cheerful still, I hear, in all that desolation. As for you and Tennyson, he never heard of you ... he never guesses at the way of modern literature ... and it is the intense compliment to me when he reads verses of mine, ‘notwithstanding my corrupt taste,’ ... to quote his own words.
Dearest, do you love me to-day? I think of you, which is quite the same thing. Think of me to-morrow at half-past four when Mrs. Jameson comes, and I shall have all that exertion to go through without the hope of you. Only that you are always there ... here!—and I, your very own
Ba.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Monday.
[Post-mark, June 22, 1846.]
If I only thought for myself in this instance, I should at once go and mount guard before your house so as to see you, at least, for a moment as you leave it.
To hope for a word would never do ... you might be startled, or simply not like such a measure, and in simili incontri I will not run risks, but I should be able to see you, my Ba ... why do I not go then? People at doors and windows are also able, alas, to see me too—so I stay ... if this is staying away when I can see the curled-up feet and kiss them beside,—ever-dear feet!
Do you know the days and the times and the long interval,—you, as I know? How strange that you should complain, and I become the happier! If I could alter it, and make you feel no subject for complaint any longer, I would,—surely I would, and be happy in that too, I hope ... yet the other happiness needs must be given up in that case ... I cannot reason it out. I excuse my present selfish happiness by feeling I would not exchange the sadness of being away from you for any imaginable delight in which you had no part. But I will have this delight, too, my Ba, of imagining that you are gratified by what you will see to-day. Tell me all, and what is said, and how you are at the end.
Thank you meanwhile for the picture of poor Mr. Boyd ... then he never has seen you, since he was blind so long ago! How strange and melancholy—you say he is ‘cheerful,’ however. In that case—think of unhappy Countess Faustina with her ‘irresistible longings,’ and give her as much of your commiseration as she ought to get. What a horrible book ... how have I brought in what I prescribed to myself ‘silence about.’ Such characters as Faustina produce the very worst possible effect on me—I don’t know how they strike other people—but I am at once incited ‘debellare superbos’—to try at least and pull down the arrogant—contempt would be the most Christian of all the feelings possible to be called forth by such a woman. Let me get back to you, my own dearest-dearest,—I do ‘love you to-day,’ if you must ask,—and bidding me think of you is all very well—never bid me not think of you!—and so never find out that there could be a bidding I am unable to obey. But what is mere ‘thinking’? I kiss your hand, and your eyes, and now your lips,—and ask for my heart back again, to give it and be ever giving it. No words can tell how I am your own.