E.B.B. to R.B.
Monday Evening.
[Post-mark, September 15, 1846.]
First, God is to be thanked for this great joy of hearing that you are better, my ever dearest—it is a joy that floats over all the other emotions. Dearest, I am so glad! I had feared that excitement’s telling on you quite in another way. When the whole is done, and we have left England and the talkers thereof behind our backs, you will be well, steadfastly and satisfactorily, I do trust. In the meantime, there seems so much to do, that I am frightened to look towards the heaps of it. As to accoutrements, everything has been arranged as simply as possible that way—but still there are necessities—and the letters, the letters! I am paralysed when I think of having to write such words as ... ‘Papa, I am married; I hope you will not be too displeased.’ Ah, poor Papa! You are too sanguine if you expect any such calm from him as an assumption of indifference would imply. To the utmost, he will be angry,—he will cast me off as far from him. Well—there is no comfort in such thoughts. How I felt to-night when I saw him at seven o’clock, for the first time since Friday, and the event of Saturday! He spoke kindly too, and asked me how I was. Once I heard of his saying of me that I was ‘the purest woman he ever knew,’—which made me smile at the moment, or laugh I believe, outright, because I understood perfectly what he meant by that—viz—that I had not troubled him with the iniquity of love affairs, or any impropriety of seeming to think about being married. But now the whole sex will go down with me to the perdition of faith in any of us. See the effect of my wickedness!—‘Those women!’
But we will submit, dearest. I will put myself under his feet, to be forgiven a little, ... enough to be taken up again into his arms. I love him—he is my father—he has good and high qualities after all: he is my father above all. And you, because you are so generous and tender to me, will let me, you say, and help me to try to win back the alienated affection—for which, I thank you and bless you,—I did not thank you enough this morning. Surely I may say to him, too, ... ‘With the exception of this act, I have submitted to the least of your wishes all my life long. Set the life against the act, and forgive me, for the sake of the daughter you once loved.’ Surely I may say that,—and then remind him of the long suffering I have suffered,—and entreat him to pardon the happiness which has come at last.
And he will wish in return, that I had died years ago! For the storm will come and endure. And at last, perhaps, he will forgive us—it is my hope.
I accede to all you say of Mr. Kenyon. I will ask him for his address in the country, and we will send, when the moment comes, our letters together.
From Mrs. Jameson I had the letter I enclose, this morning, (full of kindness—is it not?) and another really as kind from Miss Bayley, who begs me, if I cannot go to Italy, to go to Hastings and visit her. To both I must write at some length. Will you write to Mrs. Jameson, besides what I shall write? And what are we to say as to travelling? As she is in Paris, perhaps we may let her have the solution of our problem sooner than the near people. May we? shall we? Yet we dare not, I suppose, talk too historically of what happened last Saturday. It is like the dates in the newspaper—advertisements, which we must eschew, as you observe.
Other things, too, you observe, my beloved, which are altogether out of date. In your ways towards me, you have acted throughout too much ‘the woman’s part,’ as that is considered. You loved me because I was lower than others, that you might be generous and raise me up:—very characteristic for a woman (in her ideal standard) but quite wrong for a man, as again and again I used to signify to you, Robert—but you went on and did it all the same. And now, you still go on—you persist—you will be the woman of the play, to the last; let the prompter prompt ever so against you. You are to do everything I like, instead of my doing what you like, ... and to ‘honour and obey’ me, in spite of what was in the vows last Saturday,—is that the way of it and of you? and are vows to be kept so, pray? after that fashion? Then, don’t put ‘at home’ at the corner of the cards, dearest! It is my command!
And forgive the inveterate jesting, which jests with eyes full of tears. I love you—I bless God for you. You are too good for me, as always I knew. I look up to you continually.
It is best, I continue to think, that you should not come here—best for you, because the position, if you were to try it, would be less tolerable than ever—and best for both of us, that in case the whole truth were ever discovered (I mean, of the previous marriage) we might be able to call it simply an act in order to security. I don’t know how to put my feeling into words, but I do seem to feel that it would be better, and less offensive to those whom we offend at any rate, to avoid all possible remark on this point. It seems better to a sort of instinct I have.