2419. RB to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 13, 55.
[London]
Tuesday. [Postmark: 16 June 1846]
I have just returned from Town—some twelve miles at least I must have walked in this extreme heat .. so what has become of the headache? And now I sit down to write what Ba will read .. what has become of the heat & fatigue? In this sense Ba “looks cool at me”!
I shall just write that I love, and love you and love you again—my own Ba—just this, lest you learn the comfort of a respite from hearing what you are doomed to hear, with variations, all the days of your life: but not much more than this shall I write, because the love lies still in me, and deep, as water does,—cannot run forth in rivulets and sparkle, this hot weather; but then how I love her when I can only say so,—how I feel her .. as in an old opera’s one line that stays in my recollection the tropical sun is described on the ocean—“fervid on the glittering flood” [1] —so she lies on me–
—See the pure nonsense, my own Ba, and laugh at it, but not at what lies at bottom of it, because that is true as truth, true as Ba’s self in its way–
I called on Forster this morning: he says Landor is in high delight at the congratulatory letters he has received—so you must write, dearest, and add the queen-rose to his garland: F— talks about some 500 copies .. or did he say 300?—being sold already .. so there is hope for Landor’s lovers ..
So I should have written once .. but like Virgil’s shepherd .. “now I know what love is!”– [2] Do you remember that the first word I ever wrote to you was “I love you, dear Miss Barrett”? It was so,—could not but be so—and I always loved you, as I shall always–
Tell me all you can about your dearest self, my own love. I am so happy in you, in your perfect goodness and truth,—in all of you–
Be careful this fatiguing weather .. the evenings and mornings are the only working time of the day, as in the beginning of things. But all day long is rest-time to love you, dear, and kiss you as now—kisses
Your own RB
Address: Miss Barrett, / 50. Wimpole Street.
Postmark: 8NT8 JU16 1846 O.
Docket, in EBB’s hand: 207.
Publication: RB-EBB, pp. 786–787.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. We have been unable to identify this quotation.
2. Vergil, Eclogues, VIII, 44
___________________
