Write of yourself, I do pray you—and also, how is your mother?
R.B. to E.B.B.
Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, September 4, 1846.]
You dearest, best Ba, I will say at the beginning of the letter, and not at the end, this time, that I am very much better—my head clear from pain, if a little uncertain—I was in the garden when your letter came. The worst is, that I am really forced to go and dine out to-day—but I shall take all imaginable care and get away early ... and be ready to go and see you at a minute’s notice, should a note signify your permission to-morrow ... if Mr. Kenyon’s visit is over, for instance. I have to attribute this effect to that abstinent system of yours. Depend on it, I shall be well and continue well now.
Dear Ba, I wrote under the notion (as I said) that poor Flush was safe by your side; and only took that occasion to point at what I must still consider the wrongness of the whole system of giving way to, instead of opposing, such proceedings. I think it lamentable weakness ... though I can quite understand and allow for it in you,—but weakness it essentially is, as you know perfectly. For see, you first put the matter in the gentlest possible light ... ‘who would give much time and trouble to the castigation of such a fellow as that!’ You ask—and immediately after, for another purpose, you very rightly rank this crime with that other enormous one, of the Spanish banditti—nay, you confess that, in this very case, any such injury to Flush as you dread would give you inexpressible grief. Is the threatening this outrage then so little a matter? Am I to think it a less matter if the same miscreant should strike you in the street because you would probably suffer less than by this that he has done? There is the inevitable inconsistency of wrong reasoning in all this. Say, as I told you on another subject,—‘I determine to resist no injury whatever, to be at the disposal of any villain in the world, trusting to God for protection here or recompense hereafter’—or take my course; which is the easier, and in the long run, however strangely it may seem, the more profitable, no one can doubt—but I take the harder—in all but the responsibility—which, without any cant, would be intolerable to me. Look at this ‘society’ with its ‘four thousand a year’—which unless its members are perfect fools they will go on to double and treble—would this have existed if a proper stand had been made at the beginning? The first silly man, woman or child who consented to pay five shillings, beyond the mere expense of keeping the dog (on the supposition of its having been found, not stolen), is responsible for all the harm—what could the thief do but go and steal another, and ask double for its ransom?
And see—dog-stealers so encouraged are the lowest of the vile—can neither write nor read, perhaps. One of the fraternity possesses this knowledge, however, and aims higher. Accordingly, instead of stealing your dog, he determines to steal your character; if a guinea (at the beginning) ransoms the one, ten pounds shall ransom the other; accordingly Mr. Barnard Gregory takes pen in hand and writes to some timid man, in the first instance, that unless he receives that sum, his character will be blasted. The timid man takes your advice ... says that the ‘love of an abstract principle’ must not run him into ‘cruel hazards’ ‘for the sake of a few guineas’—so he pays them—who would bother himself with such vermin as Gregory? So Gregory receives his pay for his five minutes’ penmanship—takes down a directory, and writes five hundred such letters. Serjeant Talfourd told me, counting them on his fingers, ‘such and such’ (naming them) cut their throats after robbing their families, employers &c., such fled the country—such went mad ... that was the commonest event.’ At last, even so poor a creature as the Duke of Brunswick, with his detestable character and painted face,—even he plucks up courage and turns on Gregory, grown by this time into a really formidable monster by these amiable victims to the other principle of easy virtue,—and the event is that this execrable ‘Abhorson’s’ trade is utterly destroyed—that form of atrocious persecution exists no longer. I am in no danger of being told, at next post delivery, that having been ‘tracked up Vere Street, down Bond Street, &c.’ into Wimpole Street my character and yours will be the subject of an article in the next Satirist unless ...
To all of which you have a great answer—‘What should I do if you were to be the victim?’ That my note yesterday, the second one, told you. I sacrifice myself ... all that belongs to me—but there are some interests which I belong to—I have no right, no more than inclination, in such a case, to think of myself if your safety is concerned, and as I could cut off a limb to save my head, so my head should fall most willingly to redeem yours ... I would pay every farthing I had in the world, and shoot with my own hand the receiver of it after a chase of fifty years—esteeming that to be a very worthy recompense for the trouble.
But why write all this string of truisms about the plainest thing in the world? All reformers are met at the outset by such dissuasion from their efforts. ‘Better suffer the grievance and get off as cheaply as you [can]—You, Mahomet,—what if the Caaba be only a black stone? You need only bow your head as the others, and make any inward remark you like on the blindness of the people. You, Hampden, have you really so little wit as to contest payment of a paltry 20s. at such risk?’
Ah, but here all the fuss is just about stealing a dog—two or three words, and the matter becomes simply ludicrous—very easily got rid of! One cannot take vengeance on the ‘great man’ with his cigar and room of pictures and burlesque dignities of mediation! Just so, when Robert was inclined to be sorry for the fate of Bertha’s sister, one can fancy what a relief and change would be operated in his feelings, if a good-natured friend send him a version of his mighty crime in Lord Rochester’s funny account of ‘forsaken damsels’ ... with the motto ‘Women have died ere now and worms have eaten them—but not for love—’ or ‘At lovers’ perjuries Jove laughs’ why, Robert is a ‘lady-killer’ like D’Orsay! Well, enough of sermonizing for the present; it is impossible for me to differ with you and treat that as a light matter ... or, what on earth would have been so little to wonder at, as that, loving Flush, you should determine to save him at any price? If ‘Chiappino’ were to assure you, in terms that you could not disbelieve, that in the event of your marrying me he would destroy himself,—would you answer, as I should, ‘Do so, and take the consequences,’—and think no more about the matter? I should absolutely leave it, as not my concern but God’s—nor should blame myself any more than if the poor man, being uncertain what to do, had said ‘If a man first passes the window—yes—if a woman—no’—and I, a total stranger, had passed.