But if to have dropped it so, dust to dust, would have saved a living man—what then?
Yet of the three notes I had from him last week, the first was written so lightly, that the second came to desire me not to attribute to him a ‘want of feeling.’ And who could think ... contemplate ... this calamity? May God have mercy on the strongest of us, for we are weak. Oh, that a man so high hearted and highly endowed ... a bold man, who has thrown down gauntlet after gauntlet in the face of the world—that such a man should go mad for a few paltry pounds! For he was mad if he killed himself! of that I am as sure as if I knew it. If he killed himself, he was mad first.
Some day, when I have the heart to look for it, you shall see his last note. I understand now that there are touches in it of a desperate pathos—but never could he have meditated self-destruction while writing that note. He said he should write six sets of lectures more ... six more volumes. He said he was painting a new background to a picture, which made him ‘feel as if his soul had wings.’ And then he hoped his brain would not turn. And he ‘gloried’ in the naval dangers of his son at sea. And he repeated an old phrase of his, which I had heard from him often before, and which now rings hollowly to the ears of my memory ... that he couldn’t and wouldn’t die. Strange and dreadful!
It is nearly two years since we had a correspondence of some few months—from which at last I receded, notwithstanding the individuality and spirit of his letters, and my admiration for a certain fervour and magnanimity of genius, no one could deny to him. His very faults partook of that nobleness. But for a year and a half or more perhaps, I scarcely have written or heard from him—until last week when he wrote to ask for a shelter for his boxes and pictures. If you had enquired of me the week before, I might have answered that I did not wish to renew the intercourse—yet who could help being shocked and saddened? Would it have availed, to have dropped something into that ‘hole in the ground?’ Oh, to imagine that! Yet a little would have been but as nothing!—and he did not ask even for a little—and I should have been ashamed to have offered but a little. Yet I cannot turn the thought away—that I did not offer.
Henry went to the house as I begged him. His son came to the door, and to a general enquiry ‘after the family,’ said that ‘Mr. Haydon was dead and that his family were quite as well as could be expected.’ That horrible banality is all I know more than you know.
Yesterday at Rogers’s, Mrs. Jameson led me to his picture of Napoleon at St. Helena. At the moment we looked at it, his hand was scarcely cold, perhaps. Surely it was not made of the commonest clay of men—that hand!
I pour out my thoughts to you, dearest dearest, as if it were right rather to think of doing myself that good and relief, than of you who have to read all. But you spoil me into an excess of liberty, by your tenderness. Best in the world! Oh—you help me to live—I am better and lighter since I have drawn near to you even on this paper—already I am better and lighter. And now I am going to dream of you ... to meet you on some mystical landing place ... in order to be quite well to-morrow. Oh—we are so selfish on this earth, that nothing grieves us very long, let it be ever so grievous, unless we are touched in ourselves ... in the apple of our eye ... in the quick of our heart ... in what you are, and where you are ... my own dearest beloved! So you need not be afraid for me! We all look to our own, as I to you; the thunderbolts may strike the tops of the cedars, and, except in the first start, none of us be moved. True it is of me—not of you perhaps—certainly you are better than I, in all things. Best in the world, you are!—no one is like you. Can you read what I have written? Do not love me less! Do you think that I cannot feel you love me, through all this distance? If you loved me less, I should know, without a word or a sign. Because I live by your loving me! I am your
Ba.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, June 24, 1846.]