Do you feel me kiss your feet while I write this? I think you must, Ba! There is surely,—I trust, surely no impatience here, in this as in the other letter—if there is, I will endeavour to repress it ... but it will be difficult—for I love you, and am not a stock nor a stone.
And as we are now,—another year!
Well, kissing the feet answers everything, declares everything—and I kiss yours, my own Ba.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, June 26, 1846.]
Arabel insists on my going out in the carriage, but I will not, I say, before I have written my letter—and while we talk, the rain comes down like a guardian angel, and I cannot go out before I have written my letter, as is apparent to all. Dearest, you did me such good yesterday with seeing you and hearing you, that I slept better and am better altogether, and after a little change into the air, shall be well—and how is your head? Now do not forget to tell me particularly. Say too whether you found your friend and had the right quantity of talk and got home without being the worse for him ... or me!
I have not had the heart to look at the newspapers, but hear that Sir Robert Peel has provided liberally for the present necessities of the poor Haydons. And do you know, the more I think the more I am inclined to conclude that the money-distress was merely an additional irritation, and that the despair leading to the revolt against life, had its root in disappointed ambition. The world did not recognize his genius, and he punished the world by withdrawing the light. If he had not that thought in him, I am wrong. The cartoon business, and his being refused employment in the Houses of Parliament ... that was bitter: and then came his opposition with Tom Thumb and the dwarfs triumph ... he talked bitterly of that in a letter to me of last week. He was a man, you see, who carried his whole being and sensibility on the outside of him; nay, worse than so, since in the thoughts and opinions of the world. All the audacity and bravery and self-exultation which drew on him so much ridicule were an agony in disguise—he could not live without reputation, and he wrestled for it, struggled for it, kicked for it, forgetting grace of attitude in the pang. When all was vain, he went mad and died. Poor Haydon! He measures things differently now! and let us now be right and just in our admeasurement of what he was—for, with all his weaknesses, he was not certainly far from being a great man.
It is hope and help, to be able to look away from all such thoughts, to you, dearest beloved, who do not partake of the faults and feeblenesses of these lower geniuses. There is hope and help for the world in you—and if for the world, why for me indeed much more. You do not know ... ah, you do not know—how I look up to you and trust perfectly in you. You are above all these clouds—your element is otherwise—men are not your taskmasters that you should turn to them for recompense. ‘Shall I always think the same of you,’ you asked yesterday. But I never think the same of you; because day by day you look greater and feel dearer. Only there is a deep gulph of another question, close beside that, which suggests itself, and makes me shudder to look down.
And now, the rain is over, and I shall dine briefly, and go out in the carriage.
May God bless you ... très bon!—très cher, pour cause.