The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 14

_R.B. to E.B.B._

[no date]

I shall just say, at the beginning of a note as at the end, I am yours _ever_, and not till summer ends and my nails fall out, and my breath breaks bubbles,--ought you to write thus having restricted me as you once did, and do still? You tie me like a Shrove-Tuesday fowl to a stake and then pick the thickest cudgel out of your lot, and at my head it goes--I wonder whether you remembered having predicted exactly the same horror once before. 'I was to see you--and you were to understand'--_Do_ you? do you understand--my own friend--with that superiority in years, too! For I confess to that--you need not throw that in my teeth ... as soon as I read your 'Essay on Mind'--(which of course I managed to do about 12 hours after Mr. K's positive refusal to keep his promise, and give me the book) from preface to the 'Vision of Fame' at the end, and reflected on my own doings about that time, 1826--I did indeed see, and wonder at, your advance over me in years--what then? I have got nearer you considerably--(if only nearer)--since then--and prove it by the remarks I make at favourable times--such as this, for instance, which occurs in a poem you are to see--written some time ago--which advises n.o.body who thinks n.o.bly of the Soul, to give, if he or she can help, such a good argument to the materialist as the owning that any great choice of that Soul, which it is born to make and which--(in its determining, as it must, the whole future course and impulses of that soul)--which must endure for ever, even though the object that induced the choice should disappear--owning, I say, that such a choice may be scientifically determined and produced, at any operator's pleasure, by a definite number of ingredients, so much youth, so much beauty, so much talent &c. &c., with the same certainty and precision that another kind of operator will construct you an artificial volcano with so much steel filings and flower of sulphur and what not. There is more in the soul than rises to the surface and meets the eye; whatever does _that_, is for this world's immediate uses; and were this world _all, all_ in us would be producible and available for use, as it _is_ with the body now--but with the soul, what is to be developed _afterward_ is the main thing, and instinctively a.s.serts its rights--so that when you hate (or love) you shall not be so able to explain 'why' ('You' is the ordinary creature enough of my poem--_he_ might not be so able.)

There, I will write no more. You will never drop _me_ off the golden hooks, I dare believe--and the rest is with G.o.d--whose finger I see every minute of my life. Alexandria! Well, and may I not as easily ask leave to come 'to-morrow at the Muezzin' as next Wednesday at three?

G.o.d bless you--do not be otherwise than kind to this letter which it costs me pains, great pains to avoid writing better, as truthfuller--this you get is not the first begun. Come, you shall not have the heart to blame me; for, see, I will send all my sins of commission with _Hood_,--blame _them_, tell me about them, and meantime let me be, dear friend, yours,

R.B.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Monday.

[Post-mark, July 21, 1845.]

But I never _did_ strike you or touch you--and you are not in earnest in the complaint you make--and this is really all I am going to say to-day. What I said before was wrung from me by words on your part, while you know far too well how to speak so as to make them go deepest, and which sometimes it becomes impossible, or over-hard to bear without deprecation:--as when, for instance, you talk of being 'grateful' to _me_!!--Well! I will try that there shall be no more of it--no more provocation of generosities--and so, (this once) as you express it, I 'will not have the heart to blame' you--except for reading my books against my will, which was very wrong indeed. Mr.

Kenyon asked me, I remember, (he had a mania of sending my copybook literature round the world to this person and that person, and I was roused at last into binding him by a vow to do so no more) I remember he asked me ... 'Is Mr. Browning to be excepted?'; to which I answered that n.o.body was to be excepted--and thus he was quite right in resisting to the death ... or to dinner-time ... just as you were quite wrong after dinner. Now, could a woman have been more curious?

Could the very author of the book have done worse? But I leave my sins and yours gladly, to get into the _Hood_ poems which have delighted me so--and first to the St. Praxed's which is of course the finest and most powerful ... and indeed full of the power of life ... and of death. It has impressed me very much. Then the 'Angel and Child,' with all its beauty and significance!--and the 'Garden Fancies' ... some of the stanzas about the name of the flower, with such exquisite music in them, and grace of every kind--and with that beautiful and musical use of the word 'meandering,' which I never remember having seen used in relation to _sound_ before. It does to mate with your '_simmering_ quiet' in Sordello, which brings the summer air into the room as sure as you read it. Then I like your burial of the pedant so much!--you have quite the damp smell of funguses and the sense of creeping things through and through it. And the 'Laboratory' is hideous as you meant to make it:--only I object a little to your tendency ... which is almost a habit, and is very observable in this poem I think, ... of making lines difficult for the reader to read ... see the opening lines of this poem. Not that music is required everywhere, nor in _them_ certainly, but that the uncertainty of rhythm throws the reader's mind off the _rail_ ... and interrupts his progress with you and your influence with him. Where we have not direct pleasure from rhythm, and where no peculiar impression is to be produced by the changes in it, we should be encouraged by the poet to _forget it altogether_; should we not? I am quite wrong perhaps--but you see how I do not conceal my wrongnesses where they mix themselves up with my sincere impressions. And how could it be that no one within my hearing ever spoke of these poems? Because it is true that I never saw one of them--never!--except the 'Tokay,' which is inferior to all; and that I was quite unaware of your having printed so much with Hood--or at all, except this 'Tokay,' and this 'd.u.c.h.ess'! The world is very deaf and dumb, I think--but in the end, we need not be afraid of its not learning its lesson.

Could you come--for I am going out in the carriage, and will not stay to write of your poems even, any more to-day--could you come on Thursday or Friday (the day left to your choice) instead of on Wednesday? If I could help it I would not say so--it is not a caprice.

And I leave it to you, whether Thursday or Friday. And Alexandria seems discredited just now for Malta--and 'anything but Madeira,' I go on saying to myself. These _Hood_ poems are all to be in the next 'Bells' of course--of necessity?

May G.o.d bless you my dear friend, my ever dear friend!--

E.B.B.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Tuesday Morning.

[Post-mark, July 22, 1845.]

I will say, with your leave, Thursday (nor attempt to say anything else without your leave).

The temptation of reading the 'Essay' was more than I could bear: and a wonderful work it is every way; the other poems and their music--wonderful!

And you go out still--so continue better!

I cannot write this morning--I should say too much and have to be sorry and afraid--let me be safely yours ever, my own dear friend--

R.B.

I am but too proud of your praise--when will the blame come--at Malta?

_E.B.B. to R.B._

[Post-mark, July 25, 1845.]

Are you any better to-day? and will you say just the truth of it? and not attempt to do any of the writing which does harm--nor of the reading even, which may do harm--and something does harm to you, you see--and you told me not long ago that you knew how to avoid the harm ... now, did you not? and what could it have been last week which you did not avoid, and which made you so unwell? Beseech you not to think that I am going to aid and abet in this wronging of yourself, for I will not indeed--and I am only sorry to have given you my querulous queries yesterday ... and to have omitted to say in relation to them, too, how they were to be accepted in any case as just pa.s.sing thoughts of mine for _your_ pa.s.sing thoughts, ... some right, it may be ...

some wrong, it must be ... and none, insisted on even by the thinker!

just impressions, and by no means pretending to be judgments--now _will_ you understand? Also, I intended (as a proof of my fallacy) to strike out one or two of my doubts before I gave the paper to you--so _whichever strikes you as the most foolish of them, of course must be what I meant to strike out_--(there's ingenuity for you!). The poem did, for the rest, as will be suggested to you, give me the very greatest pleasure, and astonish me in two ways ... by the versification, mechanically considered; and by the successful evolution of pure beauty from all that roughness and rudeness of the sin of the boar-pinner--successfully evolved, without softening one hoa.r.s.e accent of his voice. But there is to be a pause now--you will not write any more--no, nor come here on Wednesday, if coming into the roar of this London should make the pain worse, as I cannot help thinking it must--and you were not well yesterday morning, you admitted. You _will_ take care? And if there should be a wisdom in going away...!

Was it very wrong of me, doing what I told you of yesterday? Very imprudent, I am afraid--but I never knew how to be prudent--and then, there is not a sharing of responsibility in any sort of imaginable measure; but a mere going away of so many thoughts, apart from the thinker, or of words, apart from the speaker, ... just as I might give away a pocket-handkerchief to be newly marked and mine no longer. I did not do--and would not have done, ... one of those papers singly.

It would have been unbecoming of me in every way. It was simply a writing of notes ... of slips of paper ... now on one subject, and now on another ... which were thrown into the great cauldron and boiled up with other matter, and re-translated from my idiom where there seemed a need for it. And I am not much afraid of being ever guessed at--except by those Oedipuses who astounded me once for a moment and were after all, I hope, baffled by the Sphinx--or ever betrayed; because besides the black Stygian oaths and indubitable honour of the editor, he has some interest, even as I have the greatest, in being silent and secret. And nothing _is mine_ ... if something is _of me_ ... or _from_ me, rather. Yet it was wrong and foolish, I see plainly--wrong in all but the motives. How dreadful to write against time, and with a side-ways running conscience! And then the literature of the day was wider than his knowledge, all round! And the booksellers were barking distraction on every side!--I had some of the mottos to find too! But the paper relating to you I never was consulted about--or in _one particular way_ it would have been better,--as easily it might have been. May G.o.d bless you, my dear friend,

E.B.B.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Friday Morning.

[Post-mark, July 25, 1845.]

You would let me _now_, I dare say, call myself grateful to you--yet such is my jealousy in these matters--so do I hate the material when it puts down, (or tries) the immaterial in the offices of friends.h.i.+p; that I could almost tell you I was _not_ grateful, and try if that way I could make you see the substantiality of those other favours you refuse to recognise, and reality of the other grat.i.tude you will not admit. But truth is truth, and you are all generosity, and will draw none but the fair inference, so I thank you as well as I can for this _also_--this last kindness. And you know its value, too--how if there were another _you_ in the world, who had done all you have done and whom I merely admired for that; if such an one had sent me such a criticism, so exactly what I want and can use and turn to good; you know how I would have told you, my _you_ I saw yesterday, all about it, and been sure of your sympathy and gladness:--but the two in one!

For the criticism itself, it is all true, except the over-eating--all the suggestions are to be adopted, the improvements accepted. I so thoroughly understand your spirit in this, that, just in this beginning, I should really like to have found some point in which I could cooperate with your intention, and help my work by disputing the effect of any alteration proposed, if it ought to be disputed--_that_ would answer your purpose exactly as well as agreeing with you,--so that the benefit to me were apparent; but this time I cannot dispute one point. All is for best.

So much for this 'd.u.c.h.ess'--which I shall ever rejoice in--wherever was a bud, even, in that strip of May-bloom, a live musical bee hangs now. I shall let it lie (my poem), till just before I print it; and then go over it, alter at the places, and do something for the places where I (really) wrote anyhow, almost, to get done. It is an odd fact, yet characteristic of my accomplis.h.i.+ngs one and all in this kind, that of _the poem_, the real conception of an evening (two years ago, fully)--of _that_, not a line is written,--though perhaps after all, what I am going to call the accessories in the story are real though indirect reflexes of the original idea, and so supersede properly enough the necessity of its personal appearance, so to speak. But, as I conceived the poem, it consisted entirely of the Gipsy's description of the life the Lady was to lead with her future Gipsy lover--a _real_ life, not an unreal one like that with the Duke. And as I meant to write it, all their wild adventures would have come out and the insignificance of the former vegetation have been deducible only--as the main subject has become now; of course it comes to the same thing, for one would never show half by half like a cut orange.--

Will you write to me? caring, though, so much for my best interests as not to write if you can work for yourself, or save yourself fatigue. I _think_ before writing--or just after writing--such a sentence--but reflection only justifies my first feeling; I _would_ rather go without your letters, without seeing you at all, if that advantaged you--my dear, first and last friend; my friend! And now--surely I might dare say you may if you please get well through G.o.d's goodness--with persevering patience, surely--and this next winter abroad--which you must get ready for now, every sunny day, will you not? If I venture to weary you again with all this, is there not the cause of causes, and did not the prophet write that 'there was a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the E.B.B.' led on to the fortune of

Your R.B.

Oh, let me tell you in the bitterness of my heart, that it was only 4 o'clock--that clock I enquired about--and that, ... no, I shall never say with any grace what I want to say ... and now dare not ... that you all but owe me an extra quarter of an hour next time: as in the East you give a beggar something for a few days running--then you miss him; and next day he looks indignant when the regular dole falls and murmurs--'And, for yesterday?'--Do I stay too long, I _want_ to know,--too long for the voice and head and all but the spirit that may not so soon tire,--knowing the good it does. If you would but tell me.

G.o.d bless you--

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Sat.u.r.day.

[Post-mark, July 28, 1845]

You say too much indeed in this letter which has crossed mine--and particularly as there is not a word in it of what I most wanted to know and want to know ... _how you are_--for you must observe, if you please, that the very paper you pour such kindness on, was written after your own example and pattern, when, in the matter of my 'Prometheus' (such different wearying matter!), you took trouble for me and did me good. Judge from this, if even in inferior things, there can be grat.i.tude from you to me!--or rather, do not judge--but listen when I say that I am delighted to have met your wishes in writing as I wrote; only that you are surely wrong in refusing to see a single wrongness in all that heap of weedy thoughts, and that when you look again, you must come to the admission of it. One of the thistles is the suggestion about the line

Was it singing, was it saying,

which you wrote so, and which I proposed to amend by an intermediate 'or.' Thinking of it at a distance, it grows clear to me that you were right, and that there should be and must be no 'or' to disturb the listening pause. Now _should_ there? And there was something else, which I forget at this moment--and something more than the something else. Your account of the production of the poem interests me very much--and proves just what I wanted to make out from your statements the other day, and they refused, I thought, to let me, ... that you are more faithful to your first _Idea_ than to your first _plan_. Is it so? or not? 'Orange' is orange--but _which half_ of the orange is not predestinated from all eternity--: is it _so_?

_Sunday._--I wrote so much yesterday and then went out, not knowing very well how to speak or how to be silent (is it better to-day?) of some expressions of yours ... and of your interest in me--which are deeply affecting to my feelings--whatever else remains to be said of them. And you know that you make great mistakes, ... of fennel for hemlock, of four o'clocks for five o'clocks, and of other things of more consequence, one for another; and may not be quite right besides as to my getting well '_if I please_!' ... which reminds me a little of what Papa says sometimes when he comes into this room unexpectedly and convicts me of having dry toast for dinner, and declares angrily that obstinacy and dry toast have brought me to my present condition, and that if I _pleased_ to have porter and beefsteaks instead, I should be as well as ever I was, in a month!... But where is the need of talking of it? What I wished to say was this--that if I get better or worse ... as long as I live and to the last moment of life, I shall remember with an emotion which cannot change its character, all the generous interest and feeling you have spent on me--_wasted_ on me I was going to write--but I would not provoke any answering--and in one obvious sense, it need not be so. I never shall forget these things, my dearest friend; nor remember them more coldly. G.o.d's goodness!--I believe in it, as in His suns.h.i.+ne here--which makes my head ache a little, while it comes in at the window, and makes most other people gayer--it does _me_ good too in a different way. And so, may G.o.d bless you! and me in this ... just this, ... that I may never have the sense, ... intolerable in the remotest apprehension of it ... of being, in any way, directly or indirectly, the means of ruffling your smooth path by so much as one of my flint-stones!--In the meantime you do not tire me indeed even when you go later for sooner ... and I do not tire myself even when I write longer and duller letters to you (if the last is possible) than the one I am ending now ... as the most grateful (leave me that word) of your friends.