Monday 4 o’clock.
[Post-mark, May 11, 1846.]
Sweetest, I have this moment come from Town and Mrs. Jameson—the Marc-Antonio Prints kept us all the morning—and at last I said ‘There is a letter for me at home which I must go and answer.’ And now I cannot answer it—but I can love you and say so. God bless you, ever dearest. I have read your letter ... but only once. Now I shall begin my proper number of times—
Ever your very own
E.B.B. to R.B.
Monday.
[Post-mark, May 12, 1846.]
It is too bad, or too good, or something. Almost I could reproach you, and quite would thank you! yet do not let it be so again. You are supernaturally kind ... kindestest, bestestest ... and, so, dearestest by the merest justice; only, to think of your hastening home, as if you were under an obligation to write to me in the face of the seven worlds, ... that is too much, and shall not be again—now see that it shall not. I seem to hear the rattling of the chain all this distance. And do, for the future, let it be otherwise. When you are kept in London, or in any way hindered, or unwell, ... in any case of the sort, let the vow be kept by one line, which, too late for the day’s post, may reach me the next day,—and I shall not be uneasy at eight o’clock, but wait ‘as those who wait for the morning.’ In the meanwhile how I thank you! The second dear letter comes close in the footsteps of the first, as your goodnesses are so apt to do.
Well!—and whatever you may think about Wednesday, I am pleased, and feel every inclination to ‘return thanks’ myself in reply to the bishop of Lincoln. I send the letter back lest you should want it. The worst is that you are likely to have a very bad headache with the noise and confusion—and the bishop’s blessing on the dramatists of England, will not prevent it, I fear.
Look what is inside of this letter—look! I gathered it for you to-day when I was walking in the Regent’s Park. Are you surprised? Arabel and Flush and I were in the carriage—and the sun was shining with that green light through the trees, as if he carried down with him the very essence of the leaves, to the ground, ... and I wished so much to walk through a half open gate along a shaded path, that we stopped the carriage and got out and walked, and I put both my feet on the grass, ... which was the strangest feeling! ... and gathered this laburnum for you. It hung quite high up on the tree, the little blossom did, and Arabel said that certainly I could not reach it—but you see! It is a too generous return for all your flowers: or, to speak seriously, a proof that I thought of you and wished for you—which it was natural to do, for I never enjoyed any of my excursions as I did to-day’s—the standing under the trees and on the grass, was so delightful. It was like a bit of that Dreamland which is your especial dominion,—and I felt joyful enough for the moment, to look round for you, as for the cause. It seemed illogical, not to see you close by. And you were not far after all, if thoughts count as bringers near. Dearest, we shall walk together under the trees some day!
And all those strange people moving about like phantoms of life. How wonderful it looked to me!—and only you, ... the idea of you ... and myself seemed to be real there! And Flush a little, too!—
Ah—what ... next to nonsense, ... in the first letter, this morning! So you think that I meant to complain when we first met, of your ‘loving me only for my poetry’! Which I did not, simply because I did not believe that you loved me!—for any reason. For the rest, I am not over-particular, I fancy, about what I may be loved for. There is no good reason for loving me, certainly, and my earnest desire (as I have said again and again) is, that there should be by profession no reason at all. But if there is to be any sort of reason, why one is as welcome as another ... you may love me for my shoes, if you like it ... except that they wear out. I thought you did not love me at all—you loved out into the air, I thought—a love a priori, as the philosophers might say, and not by induction, any wise! Your only knowledge of me was by the poems (or most of it)—and what knowledge could that be, when I feel myself so far below my own aspirations, morally, spiritually? So I thought you did not love me at all—I did not believe in miracles then, nor in ‘Divine Legations’—but my miracle is as good as Constantine’s, you may tell your bishop on Wednesday when he has delivered his charge.