Are we going to have a storm to-night? It lightens ... lightens!
R.B. to E.B.B.
Tuesday Morning
[Post-mark, June 23, 1846.]
I was just on the point of answering your dear letter, in all the good spirits it might be expected to wake in me, when the sad news of poor Haydon’s death stopped all; much I feel it, for the light words of my own about his extravagance, as I had been told of it, but very much more on your account, who were so lately in communication with him. I earnestly hope,—I will trust—you have not been rudely apprised of this—I am happy to remember that you do not see the newspaper in the morning,—others will see it first; perhaps there may be no notice in the Chronicle at all, or on the other hand, a more circumstantial one than this in the Times which barely says—‘that B.R.H. died suddenly at his residence—yesterday morning. He was in his usual health on the previous evening, and it is believed that his decease was hastened by pecuniary embarrassment’—and he is called ‘the unfortunate gentleman’—which with the rest implies the very worst, I fear. If by any chance this should be the first intimation you receive of it ... do not think me stupid nor brutal,—for I thought again and again as to the right course to take ... whether it would not be best to be silent altogether and wait and see ... but in that case I should have surprised you more by my cold letter,—such an one as I could bring myself to write,—for how were it possible to speak of pictures and indifferent matters when you perhaps have been shocked, made ill by this news? If I have done wrong, forgive me, my own best, dearest Ba—I would give the world to know how you are. The storm, too, and lightning may have made you even more than ordinarily unfit to be startled and grieved. God knows and must help you! I am but your devoted—
How glad I am you told me you had never seen him. And perhaps he may be after all a mere acquaintance ... anything I will fancy that is likely to relieve you of pain! Dearest dearest!
E.B.B. to R.B.
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, June 24, 1846.]
Ever tenderest, kindest and most beloved, I thank you from the quick of my heart, where the thought of you lives constantly! In this world full of sadness, of which I have had my part ... full of sadness and bitterness and wrong ... full of most ghastly contrasts of life and death, strength and weakness side by side ... it is too much, to have you to hold by, as the river rushes on ... too much good, too much grace for such as I, ... as I feel always, and cannot cease to feel!
Oh yes—it has shocked me, this dreadful news of poor Mr. Haydon—it chilled the blood in my veins when I heard it from Alfred, who, seeing the Times at the Great Western Terminus, wrote out the bare extract and sent it to me by the post. He just thought that the Chronicle did not mention it, ... and that I had not seen Mr. Haydon ... he did not perhaps think how it would shock me.
For, this I cannot help thinking. Could anyone—could my own hand even ... have averted what has happened? My head and heart have ached to-day over the inactive hand! But, for the moment, it was out of my power, without an application where it would have been useless—and then, I never fancied this case to be more than a piece of a continuous case ... of a habit fixed. Two years ago he sent me boxes and pictures precisely so, and took them back again—poor, poor Haydon!—as he will not this time. And he said last week that Peel had sent him fifty pounds ... adding ... ‘I do not however want charity, but employment.’ Also, I have been told again and again (oh, never by you my beloved!) that to give money there, was to drop it into a hole of the ground.