So my dear, own Ba has good sense, best sense—whatever Flush’s may be! Do you think ... (to take the extreme horn of a certain dilemma I see) ... that—
Now, dearest, somehow I can’t write the great proof down—I will tell you on Monday—as to my good sense. I was wrong to give such a praise to myself in the particular case you were alluding to at the time—the good sense of the bird which finds out its mate amid a forest-full of birds of another kind! Why the poorest brown butterfly will seek out a brown stone in a gravel walk, or brown leaf in a flower bed, to settle on and be happy——(And I suppose even dear Carlyle is no longer my brown leaf; at least, I could not go last night. I will, however, try again on Monday—after leaving you—with that elixir in my veins).
Mrs. Paine’s note is charming. I thank you, dearest, for sending it—(How I like being reminded of thanks, due from me to you, which I may somehow come near the expression of! I am silent about an infinity of blessings—but I do say how grateful I am for this kindness!). Now, there is the legitimate process; the proper benefit received, in the first instance, and profited by, and thence grows in proper time the desire of being admitted to see you—so different from the vulgar ‘Georgianas’ who, possibly, hearing of the privilege extended to such a person as this we speak of, would say, with the triumphant chuckle of low cunning, ‘ah,—I will get as far, by one stroke of the pen—by one bold desire “to be thought of as I think of her.”’ She could but ask and be refused! Whereas Mrs. Paine was already in possession of much more dear, dear Ba, than could be taken away even by a refusal—besides, her reverence would have made her understand and acquiesce even in that. Therefore, I am glad, sympathisingly glad she is rewarded, that good, gentle Mrs. Paine! I will bring her note with me.
Because, here is Mr. Kenyon’s, and Landor’s (which had been sent to Moxon’s some days ago, whence the delay)—and Mrs. Jameson’s. All kind and indulgent and flattering in their various ways ... but, my Ba, my dear, dear Ba, other praises disregarding, I but harken those of yours—only saying—Ah, it is wrong to take the sacrificial vessel and say,—‘See, it holds my draught of wine, too’!—I will not do so, not parody your verses again. And I like to be praised now, in a sense, much, much more than ever—but, darling, oh how easily, if need were, I could know the world was abusing at its loudest outside; if you were inside ... though but the thinnest of gauze canopies kept us from the buzzing! This is only said on this subject, struck out by it, not of it,—for the praise is good true praise and from the worthies of our time—but—you, I love,—and there is the world-wide difference. And what ought I to say to Mr. Kenyon’s report of me? Stand quietly, assentingly? You will agree to this at least, that he cannot know what he says—only be disposed to hope and believe it is so: still, to speak so to you—what would I not do to repay him, if that could be! What a divinely merciful thought of God for our sake ... that we cannot know each other—infallibly know—as we know other things, in their qualities! For instance, I bid you know my love for you (which would be knowing me)—I complain that you do not, cannot—yet,—if you could ... my Ba, would you have been ever quite my Ba? If you said, calmly as when judging of material objects, ‘there is affection, so much, and sincerity, and admiration &c., yes, that I see, of course, for it is there, plainly’—So I should lose the delight crowning the delight,—first of the fact, as I know it; and then of this; that you desired to know it, chose to lean forward, and take my poor testimony for a fact, believing through desire, or at least will to believe—so that I do, in the exercise of common sense, adore you, more and more, as I live to see more, and feel more. So let me kiss you, my pearl of woman. Do I ‘remember’ praying God to bless me through the blessing on you? Shall I ever forget to pray so, rather! My dear—dearest, I pray now, with all my heart; may He bless you—and what else can now bless your own R?—
R.B. to E.B.B.
Sunday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, April 20, 1846.]
Just now I read again your last note for a particular purpose of thinking about the end of it ... where you say, as you have said so many times, ‘that your hand was not stretched out to the good—it came to you sleeping’—etc. I wanted to try and find out and be able to explain to myself, and perhaps to you, why the wrongness in you should be so exquisitely dear to me, dear as the rightness, or dearer, inasmuch as it is the topmost grace of all, seen latest on leaving the contemplation of the others, and first on returning to them——because, Ba, that adorable spirit in all these phrases, what I should adore without their embodiment in these phrases which fall into my heart and stay there, that strange unconsciousness of how the love-account really stands between us, who was giver altogether and who taker, and, by consequence, what is the befitting virtue for each of us, a generous disposition to forgetfulness on the giver’s part, as of everlasting remembrance and gratitude on the other—this unconsciousness is wrong, my heart’s darling, strangely wrong by the contrast with your marvellous apprehension on other points, every other point I am capable of following you to. I solemnly assure you I cannot imagine any point of view wherein I ought to appear to any rational creature the benefitting party and you the benefitted—nor any matter in which I can be supposed to be even magnanimous, (so that it might be said, ‘there, is a sacrifice’—‘that, is to be borne with’ &c.)—none where such a supposition is not degrading to me, dishonouring and affronting. I know you, my Ba, not because you are my Ba, but through the best exercise of whatever power in me you too often praise, I know—that you are immeasurably my superior, while you talk most eloquently and affectingly to me, I know and could prove you are as much my Poet as my Mistress; if I suspected it before I knew you, personally, how is it with me now? I feel it every day; I tell myself every day it is so. Yet you do not feel nor know it—for you write thus to me. Well,—and this is what I meant to say from the beginning of the letter, I love your inability to feel it in spite of right and justice and rationality. I would,—I will, at a moment’s notice, give you back your golden words, and lie under your mind supremacy as I take unutterable delight in doing under your eye, your hand. So Shakespeare chose to ‘envy this man’s art and that man’s scope’ in the Sonnets. But I did not mean to try and explain what is unexplainable after all—(though I wisely said I would try and explain!) You seem to me altogether ... (if you think my words sounded like flattery, here shall come at the end—anything but that!) you do seem, my precious Ba, too entirely mine this minute,—my heart’s, my senses’, my soul’s precise τὸ καλόν to last! Too perfect for that! The true power with the ignorance of it, the real hold of my heart, as you can hold this letter,—yet the fear with it that you may ‘vex me’ by a word,—makes me angry. Well,—if one must see an end of all perfection—still, to know one was privileged to see it—Nay, it is safe now—for this present, all my future would not pay, whatever your own future turned to!
Yet if I had to say, ‘I shall see her in a month or two—perhaps’—as this time last year I was saying in a kind of contented feeling!
Thank God I shall see her to-morrow—my dearest, best, only Ba cannot change by to-morrow!—What nonsense! The words break down, yet I will be trying to use them!
God bless my dearest, ever bless her.