My dearest Ba, my sweetest, only love must sit, if she please, in the gondola chair and let me talk to-day, not write to her—for my head aches,—from pure perversity,—and a little from my morning spent over a novel of Balzac’s—that is it, not any real illness, I know—however, the effect is the same. Beside I got tired with the long walk from Carlyle’s last night—for I went and saw him to heart’s content—and he talked characteristically and well, and constringingly, bracingly. He has been in the country a little,—that is, has gone down to see his wife occasionally who was on a visit at Croydon, whence she only returned on Saturday. He told me he had read my last number; and that he had ‘been read to’—some good reader had recited ‘The Duchess’ to him. Altogether he said wonderfully kind things and was pleased to prophesy in the same spirit; God bless him! We talked for three or four hours—he asked me to come again soon, and I will.

Here are two letters—Chorley’s, one—and the other from quite another kind of man, an old friend who ‘docks’ ships or something like it; a great lover of ‘intelligibility in writing,’ and heretofore a sufferer from my poetry.

My love, I lend you such things with exactly as much vanity as ... no comparison will serve! it is the French vulgarism—comme ... n’importe quoi! Celui me pousse à la vanité comme—n’importe quoi!

Will you have a significative ‘comme’ of another kind? ‘je me trouve bête ce matin comme ... trente-six oies!’—(I assure you this is no flower culled from Balzac this morning—but a little ‘souvenir’ of an old play.)

Now, if I were to say to myself something is dear as ‘thirty-six Bas’—I should be scared, as when looking into a mirror cut into façettes one is met on every side by the same face, twenty times repeated. Nothing can add to my conception of the one Ba—my one, only—ever dear, dearest Ba—‘what perfect nonsense’ says Ba—and nonsensical I will be— —all she pleases so long as let live and die her very own.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, April 22, 1846.]

‘Vanity’! I never saw in you, my very dearest, even the short morning shadow of ‘vanity.’ ‘Vanity’ is not of you! You work as the cedars grow, upward, and without noise, and without turning to look on the darkness you cause upon the ground. It is only because you are best and dearest that you let me see the letters ... yes, and besides, because I have a little a right to have them sent to me,—since they concern me more than you,—and are, after a fashion, my letters. My letters? what am I saying? My letters, my true letters, are different indeed—and one of them came to-night to prove so!

But Mr. Chorley’s and the illegible man’s whose name begins with a D (or doesn’t) both gave me pleasure. If Mr. Chorley did not read ‘Luria’ at once, he speaks of you in the right words—and the naval illegible man, with his downright earnest way of being impressed, makes a better critic than need be sought for in the Athenæum synod. And what a triumph (after all!) and what a privilege, and what a good deed, is this carrying of the light down into the mines among the workmen, this bringing down of the angels of the Ideal into the very depth of the Real, where the hammer rings on the rough stone. The mission of Art, like that of Religion, is to the unlearned ... to the poor and to the blind—to make the rugged paths straight, and the wilderness to blossom as the rose—at least it seems so to me. And now, pray, why am I not to hear what Carlyle said? will you tell me? won’t you tell me? how shall I persuade you? If I can or not, I will say God bless him too ... since he spoke the right word, to do you good. For the manifest advance in clearness and directness of expression ... I quite forgot to take notice of what you said to me—and you, who never flatter!—about being the cause of it—I! Now do observe that the ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’ which is as light as day, I never touched with my finger, except in one place, I think ... to say ... ‘Just here there is a little shade.’ The fact is, that your obscurities, ... as far as they concern the medium, ... you have been throwing off gradually and surely this long while—you have a calmer mastery over imagery and language, and it was to be expected that you should. For me, I am the fly on the chariot, ... ‘How we drive!’ Shall I ever, ever, ever, be of any use or good to you? See what a thought you have thrown me into, from that height! Shall I ever, ever, be of any use, any good—and not, rather, the contrary to these? Love is something: and it is something to love you better than a better woman could: but ... but....

There is no use nor good in writing so, and you with a headache too! Why, how could you get that headache? First with not walking; then with walking—!! and reading Balzac. But you had been writing notes perhaps? or Carlyle had talked too ‘bracingly?’ or you fasted too long, being too late for his tea-kettle? The headache came at any rate. Did it go? tell me, dearest beloved! say how you are. And let me hear if your mother continues to be better. How happy that change must make you all! and shall I not thank God that it makes you happy?