Ba.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Saturday.
[April 4, 1846.]
Oh, my two letters—and to turn from such letters to you, to my own Ba!—I very well know I am not grateful enough, if there is any grace in that, any power to avert punishment, as one hopes! But all my hope is in future endeavour—it is, my Ba,—this is earnest truth. And one thing that strikes me on hearing such prognostications of Mrs. Jameson’s opinion on our subject—is that—as far as I am concerned ... or yourself, indeed—we must make up our mind to endure the stress of it, and of such opinions generally, with all resignation ... and by the time we can answer,—why, alas, they are gone and forgotten, so that there’s no paying them for their impertinence. I mean, that I do not expect, as a foolish fanciful boy might, that on the sudden application of ‘Hymen’s torch’ (to give the old simile one chance more) your happiness will blaze out apparent to the whole world lying in darkness, like a wondrous ‘Catherine-wheel,’ now all blue, now red, and so die at the bed amid an universal clapping of hands—I trust a long life of real work ‘begun, carried on and ended,’ as it never otherwise could have been (certainly by me ... and if I dare hope, you, dearest, it is because you teach me to aspire to the height)—that the attainment of all that happiness of daily, hourly life in entire affection, which seeing that men of genius need rather more—ah, these words, I cannot look back and take up the thread of the sentence,—but I wanted to say—we will live the real answer, will we not, dearest, all the stupidity against ‘genius’ ‘poets,’ and the like, is got past the stage of being treated with patient consideration and gentle pity—it is too vexatious, if it will not lie still, out of the way, by this time. What is the crime, to his fellow man or woman (not to God, I know that—these are peculiar sins to Him—whether greater in His eyes, who shall say?)—but to mankind, what is crime which would have been prevented but for the ‘genius’ involved in it? A man of genius ill-treats his wife—well, take away the ‘genius’—does he so naturally improve? See the article in to-day’s Athenæum, about the French Duel—far enough from ‘men of genius’ these Dujarriers &c.—but go to-night into half the estaminets of Paris, and see whether the quarrels over dice and some wine present any more pleasing matter of contemplation au fond. Sin is sin everywhere and the worse, I think, for the grossness. Being fired at by a duellist is a little better, I think also, than being struck on the face by some ruffian. These are extreme cases—but go higher and it is the same thing. Poor, cowardly miscreated natures abound—if you could throw ‘genius’ into their composition, they would become more degraded still, I suppose!
I know I want every faculty I can by any possibility dare—want all, and much more, to teach me what you are, my own Ba, and what I should do to prove that I am taught, and do know.
I will write at length to you to-morrow, my all beloved. I am, somehow, overflowing with things to say, and the time is fearfully short—my proofs have just arrived, here they are, not even glanced over by me—(To-morrow, love! not one thing answered in my letters, as when I read and read them to-night I shall say to myself). Bless you, dearest, dearest
R.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Sunday.
[April 5, 1846.]
It seems to me the safest way to send back the proofs by the early Monday post: you may choose perhaps to bring the sheet corrected into town when you come, and so I shall let you have what you sent me, before you come to take it ... though I thought first of waiting. To-morrow I shall force you to tell me how you like the ‘Tragedy’ now! For my part, it delights me—and must raise your reputation as a poet and thinker ... must. Chiappino is highly dramatic in that first part, and speaks so finely sometimes that it is a wrench to one’s sympathies to find him overthrown. Do you know that, as far as the temper of the man goes, I am acquainted with a Chiappino ... just such a man, in the temper, the pride and the bitterness ... not in other things. When I read your manuscript I was reminded—but here in print it, seems to grow nearer and nearer. My Chiappino has tired me out at last—I have borne more from him than women ought to bear from men, because he was unfortunate and embittered in his nature and by circumstances, and because I regarded him as a friend of many years. Yet, as I have told him, anyone, who had not such confidence in me, would think really ill of me through reading the insolent letters which he has thought fit to address to me on what he called a pure principle of adoration. At last I made up my mind (and shall keep it so) to answer no letter of the kind. Men are ignoble in some things, past the conceiving of their fellows. Again and again I have said ... ‘Specify your charge against me’—but there is no charge. With the most reckless and dauntless inconsistency I am lifted halfway to the skies, and made a mark there for mud pellets—so that I have been excited sometimes to say quite passionately ... ‘If I am the filth of the earth, tread on me—if I am an angel of Heaven, respect me—but I can’t be both, remember.’ See where your Chiappino leads you ... and me! Though I shall not tell you the other name of mine. Whenever I see him now, I make Arabel stay in the room—otherwise I am afraid—he is such a violent man. A good man, though, in many respects, and quite an old friend. Some men grow incensed with the continual pricks of ill-fortune, like mad bulls: some grow tame and meek.