My own ever dearest, when I try to thank you for such a letter as yesterday’s, ... for any proof, in fact, of your affection, ... I cannot speak: but you know, of this and all things, that I understand, feel—you must know it very well. There is only one thing I can do as I ought, and it is to love you; and the more I live, not ‘the less’ but the more I am able to love you—believe it of me. And for the less, ... we never will return to that foolish subject, ... but for the ‘less you spoke of when you said ‘you do not love me less?’ ... why I thought at the moment and feel now, that it would be too late, as I am, ever, upon any possible ground, to love you less. If you loved me less ... even!—or (to leave that) if you were to come to me and say that you had murdered a man—why I may imagine such things, you know—but I cannot imagine the possibility of my loving you less, as a consequence of your failing so! I am yours in the deepest of my affections:—not unreasonably, certainly, as I see you and know you—but if it were to turn unreasonable ... I mean, if you took away the appearance of reasonableness ... still I should be yours in the deepest of my affections ... it is too late for a difference there.
Mrs. Jameson has just now sent me a proof with the ‘Daughters of Pandarus,’ which she is to call for presently and therefore I must come to an end with this note. How I shall think of you to-morrow! And if it should be fine, I may perhaps drive in the park near the gardens ... take my sisters to the gate of the gardens, and feel that you are inside! That will be something, if it is feasible. And if it is fine or not, and if I go or not, I shall remember our first day, the only day of my life which God blessed visibly to me, the only day undimmed with a cloud ... my great compensation-day, which it was worth while being born for!
Your very own
Ba.
Oh—you will not see me to-morrow, remember! I tell you only out of cunning ... to win a thought!
R.B. to E.B.B.
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, May 19, 1846].
With this day expires the first year since you have been yourself to me—putting aside the anticipations, and prognostications, and even assurances from all reasons short of absolute sight and hearing,—excluding the five or six months of these, there remains a year of this intimacy. You accuse me of talking extravagantly sometimes. I will be quiet here,—is the tone too subdued if I say, such a life—made up of such years—I would deliberately take rather than any other imaginable one in which fame and worldly prosperity and the love of the whole human race should combine, excluding ‘that of yours—to which I hearken’—only wishing the rest were there for a moment that you might see and know that I did turn from them to you. My dearest, inexpressibly dearest. How can I thank you? I feel sure you need not have been so kind to me, so perfectly kind and good,—I should have remained your own, gratefully, entirely your own, through the bare permission to love you, or even without it—seeing that I never dreamed of stipulating at the beginning for ‘a return,’ and ‘reward,’—but I also believe, joyfully, that no course but the course you have taken would have raised me above my very self, as I feel on looking back. I began by loving you in comparison with all the world,—now, I love you, my Ba, in the face of your past self, as I remember it.
All words are foolish—but I kiss your feet and offer you my heart and soul, dearest, dearest Ba.