Patmore told me in his quiet way that his criticisms—his book on which he had been expending a world of pains, is altogether superseded by the appearance of ‘Ulrici on Shakespeare’—‘the very words of many of his more important paragraphs are the same.’ That astounds one a little, does it not?
And what, what do you suppose Tennyson’s business to have been at Dickens’—what caused all the dining and repining? He has been sponsor to Dickens’ child in company with Count D’Orsay, and accordingly the novus homo glories in the prænomina, Alfred D’Orsay Tennyson Dickens! Ah, Charlie, if this don’t prove to posterity that you might have been a Tennyson and were a D’Orsay—why excellent labour will have been lost! You observe, ‘Alfred’ is common to both the godfather and the—devil-father, as I take the Count to be: so Milnes has been goodnaturedly circulating the report that in good truth it is the Alfred of neither personage, but of—Mr. Alfred Bunn. When you remember what the form of sponsorship is, to what it pledges you in the ritual of the Church of England— —and then remember that Mr. Dickens is an enlightened Unitarian,—you will get a curious notion of the man, I fancy.
Have you not forgotten that birthday? Do, my Ba, forget it—my day, as I told you, is the 20th—my true, happiest day! But I thank you all I can, dearest—All good to me comes through you, or for you—every wish and hope ends in you. May God bless you, ever dear Ba.—
Your own R.
E.B.B. to R.B.
May 7th, 1846.
Beloved, my thoughts go to you this morning, loving and blessing you! May God bless you for both His worlds—not for this alone. For me, if I can ever do or be anything to you, it will be my uttermost blessing of all I ever knew, or could know, as He knows. A year ago, I thought, with a sort of mournful exultation, that I was pure of wishes. Now, they recoil back on me in a spring-tide ... flow back, wave upon wave, ... till I should lose breath to speak them! and it is nothing, to say that they concern another ... for they are so much the more intensely mine, and of me. May God bless you, very dear! dearest.
So I am to forget to-day, I am told in the letter. Ah! But I shall forget and remember what I please. In the meanwhile I was surprised while writing thus to you this morning ... as a good deed to begin with ... by Miss Bayley’s coming. Remembering the seventh of May I forgot Thursday, which she had named for her visit, and altogether she took me by surprise. I thought it was Wednesday! She came and then, Mr. Kenyon came, ... and as they both went down-stairs together, Mrs. Jameson came up. Miss Bayley is what is called strong-minded, and with all her feeling for art and Beauty, talks of utility like a Utilitarian of the highest, and professes to receive nothing without proof, like a reasoner of the lowest. She told me with a frankness for which I did not like her less, that she was a materialist of the strictest order, and believed in no soul and no future state. In the face of those conclusions, she said, she was calm and resigned. It is more than I could be, as I confessed. My whole nature would cry aloud against that most pitiful result of the struggle here—a wrestling only for the dust, and not for the crown. What a resistless melancholy would fall upon me if I had such thoughts!—and what a dreadful indifference. All grief, to have itself to end in!—all joy, to be based upon nothingness!—all love, to feel eternal separation under and over it! Dreary and ghastly, it would be! I should not have strength to love you, I think, if I had such a miserable creed. And for life itself, ... would it be worth holding on such terms,—with our blind Ideals making mocks and mows at us wherever we turned? A game to throw up, this life would be, as not worth playing to an end!
There’s a fit letter for the seventh of May!—but why was Thursday the seventh, and not Wednesday rather, which would have let me escape visitors? I thank God that I can look over the grave with you, past the grave, ... and hope to be worthier of you there at least.
Mrs. Jameson did not say much, being hoarse and weak with a cold, but she told me of having met you at dinner, and found you ‘very agreeable.’ Also, beginning by a word about Professor Longfellow, who has married, it appears, and is a tolerably merciful husband for a poet ... (‘solving the problem of the possibility of such a thing,’ said she!) ... beginning so, she dropped into the subject of marriage generally, and was inclined to repropose Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s septennial act ... which might be a reform perhaps! ... what do you think? Have I not, altogether, been listening to improving and memorable discourse on this seventh of May? The ninth’s will be more after my heart.