I shall be with you soon after this reaches you, I trust—now, I kiss you, however, and now, my Ba!
Letters! since you bid me send them,—do you not?—see what the longer says of the improved diction, freedom from difficulty &c. Who is to praise for that, my Ba? Oh, your R.B. wholly and solely to be sure!
E.B.B. to R.B.
Tuesday.
[April 21, 1846.]
I would not say to you yesterday, perhaps could not, that you wrote ever so much foolishness to me in the morning, dearest, and that I knew it ever so well. There is no use, no help, in discussing certain questions,—some sorts of extravagance grow by talking of,—shake this elixir, and you have more and more bubbles on the surface of it. So I would not speak—nor will I write much. Only I protest, from my understanding, from my heart—and besides I do assert the truth—clear of any ‘affectation,’ this time,—and it is that you always make me melancholy by using such words. It seems to me as if you were in the dark altogether, and held my hand for another’s: let the shutter be opened suddenly; and the hand ... is dropped perhaps ... must I not think such thoughts, when you speak such words? I ask you if it is not reasonable. No, I do not ask you. We will not argue whether eagles creep, or worms fly. And see if it is distrust on my part! Love, I have learnt to believe in. I see the new light which Reichenbach shows pouring forth visibly from these chrystals tossed out. But when you say that the blue, I see, is red, and that the little chrystals are the fixed stars of the Heavens, how am I to think of you but that you are deluded, mistaken?—and in what? in love itself? Ah,—if you could know—if you could but know for a full moment of conviction, how you depress and alarm me by saying such things, you never would say them afterwards, I know. So trust to me, even as I trust to you, and do not say them ever again, ... you, who ‘never flatter’. Is it not enough that you love me? Is there anything greater? And will you run the risk of ruining that great wonder by bringing it to the test of an ‘argumentum ad absurdum’ such as I might draw from your letter? Have pity on me, my own dearest, and consider how I must feel to see myself idealized away, little by little, like Ossian’s spirits into the mist ... till ... ‘Gone is the daughter of Morven’! And what if it is mist or moon-glory, if I stretch out my hands to you in vain, and must still fade away farther? Now you will not any more. When the world comes to judge between us two, or rather over us both, the world will say (even the purblind world, as I myself with wide-open eyes!) that I have not been generous with my gifts—no; you are in a position to choose ... and you might have chosen better— ... that is my immoveable conviction. It has been only your love for me,—which I believe in perfectly as love—and which, being love, does not come by pure logic, as the world itself may guess ... it has been only, wholly and purely your love for me which has made a level for us two to meet and stand together. There is my fact against your fiction! Now let us talk no more. We cannot agree, because we stand in different positions ... ‘I hear a voice you cannot hear’! ... I am on the black side of the knight’s shield. Presently you will hear perhaps, and see. Shall you love me then? When the ideal breaks off, when the light is gone, ... will you love me then for the love which I shall bear you then as now, ... the only real thing?
In the meantime I did but jest about the letters—I know you care for mine ... because I care for yours so infinitely: ... it is a lesson learnt by heart. To-night I shall write again!—
Your own
Ba.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, April 21, 1846.]