E.B.B. to R.B.
Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 17, 1846.]
Ah, the chestnut tree: do you think that I never saw the chestnut tree before? Long ago, I did ... a full year ago or more—more! A voice talked to me of the ‘west wind’ which ‘set dancing the baby cones of my chestnut tree’—nearly I remember the words. Do you, the time? It was early in the morning—‘before seven,’ said the voice!—too early in the morning for my dream to be—because a dream, says Lord Brougham when he tries at philosophy, a dream, if ever so long a dream, is all contained in the last moment of sleep, at the turn towards waking—so, late and not early!
No—you did not tell me of Wordsworth—not at least, after that reading. Perhaps if Hatcham should not be swept away in the Railway ‘scirocco,’ I may see the ‘hill’ or the ‘rise’ at some distant day. Shall I, do you think? I would rather see it than Wordsworth’s mountains—‘for reasons, for reasons’ as you say. And talking of reasons, and reasonable people in general, I thought, ... after you went away on Wednesday, and I began to remember how you had commended your own common sense and mine,—I thought that it might be very well for you to do it, inasmuch as nobody else would, for you——! ὑπέρ σου as the theological critics intensify ὑπέρ to the genitive, ‘for reasons, for reasons.’
How ‘Luria’ takes possession of me more and more! Such a noble work!—of a fulness, a moral grandeur!—and the language everywhere worthy. Tell me what you hear the people say—I shall be anxious, which you will not be—but, to me, you will forgive it. ‘The Soul’s Tragedy’ is wonderful—it suggests the idea of more various power than was necessary to the completion of ‘Luria’ ... though in itself not a comparable work. But you never wrote more vivid dramatic dialogue than that first part—it is exquisite art, it appears to me. Tell me what the people say!—and tell me what the gods say ... Landor, for instance!
Mr. Kenyon has not been here—and I dare not, even in a letter, be the first to talk to anyone of you. It is foolish of me perhaps—but if I whisper your name I expect to be directly answered by all the thunders of Heaven and cannons of earth. When I was writing to Miss Martineau the other day, for full ten minutes I held the pen ready charged with ink over a little white place, just to say ‘have you read,’ ... or ‘have you heard’ ... and at last I couldn’t write one word of those words ... I believe I said something about landed proprietors and agrarian laws instead.
So you ‘felt’ that I was down-stairs to-day! See how wrong feeling may be, when it has to do with such as I. For, dearest, notwithstanding your bright sunshine I did not go down-stairs ... only opened the window and let in the air. I have not been quite as well, as far as just sensation goes, as usual, these few days—but it is nothing, a passing common headache, as I told you, ... and your visit did good rather than harm, and to-morrow you may think of me as in the drawing-room. Oh, I might have been there to-day, or yesterday, or the day before! but it was pleasanter to sit in the chair and be idle, so I sate! But you did not see me in my gondola chair—not you! you were thinking of the lambs instead, and looking over the wall to the ‘blossomed trees’ ... (what trees? cherry-trees? apple-trees? pear-trees?) and so, altogether, you lost your second sight of me and made mistakes. Ever dearest, is your head better? You will not say. You are afraid to say, perhaps, that you were ill, through writing too many notes and not going out to take the right exercise. Ah, do remember me for that good! I heard yesterday that ‘Mr. Browning looked very pale as he came up-stairs.’ Which comes of Mr. Browning’s writing when he should be walking!—now doesn’t it?
Do you go to Mr. Serjeant Talfourd’s on Monday? and would it be better therefore if you came here on Tuesday? You could come on the next Saturday all the same—consider! Nobody shall leap into lions’ dens for me! so let us measure the convenience of things, as Miss Mitford would in marriages. ‘Convenance,’ though, she would say—which is more foolish than ‘convenience’ as I write it. She asserts that every marriage in her experience, beginning by any sort of love, has ended miserably—thus run her statistics in matrimony. Add, that she thinks—she told me last autumn—that all men without exception are essentially tyrants,—and that poets are a worse species of men, seeing that, all human feelings, they put into their verses, and leave them there ... add this, and this, and then calculate how, if I consulted her on our prospects (shall I?), she would see for me an infinite succession of indefinite thumbscrews and gadges!! Well—I am not afraid—except for you sometimes! for myself I accept my chances for life under the peine forte et dure. And I won’t speak to Miss Mitford, if you don’t to Mr. Kenyon ... and I beseech you to avoid by every legitimate means the doing that ... oh, do not ever speak that to him!
May God bless you my beloved!—Walk for my sake, and be well, try to be well! For me, I am so without trying, ... just as I am
Your own