The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 18

Bless you

R.B.

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

Tuesday.

[Post-mark, August 20, 1845.]

I fancied it was just _so_--as I did not hear and did not see you on Monday. Not that you were expected particularly--but that you would have written your own negative, it appeared to me, by some post in the day, if you had received my note in time. It happened well too, altogether, as you have a friend with you, though Mr. Kenyon does not come, and will not come, I dare say; for he spoke like a doubter at the moment; and as this Tuesday wears on, I am not likely to have any visitors on it after all, and may as well, if the rain quite ceases, go and spend my solitude on the park a little. Flush wags his tail at that proposition when I speak it loud out. And I am to write to you before Friday, and so, am writing, you see ... which I should not, should not have done if I had not been told; because it is not my turn to write, ... did you think it was?

Not a word of Malta! except from Mr. Kenyon who talked homilies of it last Sunday and wanted to speak them to Papa--but it would not do in any way--now especially--and in a little time there will be a decision for or against; and I am afraid of _both_ ... which is a happy state of preparation. Did I not tell you that early in the summer I did some translations for Miss Thomson's 'Cla.s.sical Alb.u.m,'

from Bion and Theocritus, and Nonnus the author of that large (not great) poem in some forty books of the 'Dionysiaca' ... and the paraphrases from Apuleius? Well--I had a letter from her the other day, full of compunction and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, and declaring the fact that Mr. Burges had been correcting all the proofs of the poems; leaving out and emending generally, according to his own particular idea of the pattern in the mount--is it not amusing? I have been wicked enough to write in reply that it is happy for her and all readers ... _sua si bona norint_ ... if during some half hour which otherwise might have been dedicated by Mr. Burges to patting out the lights of Sophocles and his peers, he was satisfied with the humbler devastation of E.B.B.

upon Nonnus. You know it is impossible to help being amused. This correcting is a mania with that man! And then I, who wrote what I did from the 'Dionysiaca,' with no respect for 'my author,' and an arbitrary will to 'put the case' of Bacchus and Ariadne as well as I could, for the sake of the art-ill.u.s.trations, ... those subjects Miss Thomson sent me, ... and did it all with full liberty and persuasion of soul that n.o.body would think it worth while to compare English with Greek and refer me back to Nonnus and detect my wanderings from the text!! But the critic was not to be cheated so! And I do not doubt that he has set me all 'to rights' from beginning to end; and combed Ariadne's hair close to her cheeks for me. Have _you_ known Nonnus, ... _you_ who forget nothing? and have known everything, I think? For it is quite startling, I must tell you, quite startling and humiliating, to observe how you combine such large tracts of experience of outer and inner life, of books and men, of the world and the arts of it; curious knowledge as well as general knowledge ... and deep thinking as well as wide acquisition, ... and you, looking none the older for it all!--yes, and being besides a man of genius and working your faculty and not wasting yourself over a surface or away from an end. Dugald Stewart said that genius made naturally a lop-sided mind--did he not? He ought to have known _you_. And _I_ who do ... a little ... (for I grow more loth than I was to a.s.sume the knowledge of you, my dear friend)--_I_ do not mean to use that word 'humiliation' in the sense of having felt the thing myself in any _painful_ way, ... because I never for a moment did, or _could_, you know,--never could ... never did ... except indeed when you have over praised me, which forced another personal feeling in. Otherwise it has always been quite pleasant to me to be 'startled and humiliated'--and more so perhaps than to be startled and exalted, if I might choose....

Only I did not mean to write all this, though you told me to write to you. But the rain which keeps one in, gives one an example of pouring on ... and you must endure as you can or will. Also ... as you have a friend with you 'from Italy' ... 'from Rome,' and commended me for my 'kindness and considerateness' in changing Tuesday to Friday ...

(wasn't it?...) shall I still be more considerate and put off the visit-day to next week? mind, you let it be as you like it best to be--I mean, as is most convenient 'for the nonce' to you and your friend--because all days are equal, as to that matter of convenience, to your other friend of this ilk,

E.B.B.

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

Wednesday Morning.

[Post-mark, August 20, 1845.]

Mauvaise, mauvaise, mauvaise, you know as I know, just as much, that your 'kindness and considerateness' consisted, not in putting off Tuesday for another day, but in caring for my coming at all; for my coming and being told at the door that you were engaged, and _I_ might call another time! And you are NOT, NOT my 'other friend,' any more than this head of mine is my _other_ head, seeing that I have got a violin which has a head too! All which, beware lest you get fully told in the letter I will write this evening, when I have done with my Romans--who are, it so happens, here at this minute; that is, have left the house for a few minutes with my sister--but are not 'with me,' as you seem to understand it,--in the house to stay. They were kind to me in Rome, (husband and wife), and I am bound to be of what use I may during their short stay. Let me lose no time in begging and praying you to cry 'hands off' to that dreadful Burgess; have not I got a ... but I will tell you to-night--or on Friday which is my day, please--Friday. Till when, pray believe me, with respect and esteem,

Your most obliged and disobliged at these blank endings--what have I done? G.o.d bless you ever dearest friend.

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

Thursday, 7 o'clock.

[Post-mark, August 21, 1845.]

I feel at home, this blue early morning, now that I sit down to write (or, _speak_, as I try and fancy) to you, after a whole day with those 'other friends'--dear good souls, whom I should be so glad to serve, and to whom service must go by way of last will and testament, if a few more hours of 'social joy,' 'kindly intercourse,' &c., fall to my portion. My friend the Countess began proceedings (when I first saw her, not yesterday) by asking 'if I had got as much money as I expected by any works published of late?'--to which I answered, of course, 'exactly as much'--_e grazioso_! (All the same, if you were to ask her, or the like of her, 'how much the stone-work of the Coliseum would fetch, properly burned down to lime?'--she would shudder from head to foot and call you 'barbaro' with good Trojan heart.) Now you suppose--(watch my rhetorical figure here)--you suppose I am going to congratulate myself on being so much for the better, _en pays de connaissance_, with my 'other friend,' E.B.B., number 2--or 200, why not?--whereas I mean to 'fulmine over Greece,' since thunder frightens you, for all the laurels,--and to have reason for your taking my own part and lot to yourself--I do, will, must, and _will_, again, wonder at _you_ and admire _you_, and so on to the climax. It is a fixed, immovable thing: so fixed that I can well forego talking about it. But if to talk you once begin, 'the King shall enjoy (or receive quietly) his own again'--I wear no bright weapon out of that Panoply ... or Panoplite, as I think you call Nonnus, nor ever, like Leigh Hunt's 'Johnny, ever blythe and bonny, went singing Nonny, nonny' and see to-morrow, what a vengeance I will take for your 'mere suspicion in that kind'! But to the serious matter ... nay, I said yesterday, I believe--keep off that Burgess--he is stark staring mad--mad, do you know? The last time I met him he told me he had recovered I forget how many of the lost books of Thucydides--found them imbedded in Suidas (I think), and had disengaged them from _his_ Greek, without loss of a letter, 'by an instinct he, Burgess, had'--(I spell his name wrongly to help the proper _hiss_ at the end). Then, once on a time, he found in the 'Christus Patiens,' an odd dozen of lines, clearly dropped out of the 'Prometheus,' and proving that aeschylus was aware of the invention of gunpowder. He wanted to help Dr. Leonhard Schmitz in his 'Museum'--and scared him, as Schmitz told me. What business has he, Burges, with English verse--and what on earth, or under it, has Miss Thomson to do with _him_. If she must displease one of two, why is Mr.

B. not to be thanked and 'sent to feed,' as the French say prettily?

At all events, do pray see what he has presumed to alter ... you can alter at sufficient warrant, profit by suggestion, I should think! But it is all Miss Thomson's shame and fault: because she is quite in her propriety, saying to such intermeddlers, gently for the sake of their poor weak heads, 'very good, I dare say, very desirable emendations, only the work is not mine, you know, but my friend's, and you must no more alter it without her leave, than alter this sketch, this ill.u.s.tration, because you think you could mend Ariadne's face or figure,--Fecit Tizia.n.u.s, scripsit E.B.B.' Dear friend, you will tell Miss Thomson to stop further proceedings, will you not? There! only, do mind what I say?

And now--till to-morrow! It seems an age since I saw you. I want to catch our first post ... (this phrase I ought to get stereotyped--I need it so constantly). The day is fine ... you will profit by it, I trust. 'Flush, wag your tail and grow restless and scratch at the door!'

G.o.d bless you,--my one friend, without an 'other'--bless you ever--

R.B.

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

Wednesday.

[Post-mark, August 25, 1845.]

But what have _I_ done that you should ask what have _you_ done? I have not brought any accusation, have I ... no, nor _thought_ any, I am sure--and it was only the 'kindness and considerateness'--argument that was irresistible as a thing to be retorted, when your thanks came so naturally and just at the corner of an application. And then, you know, it is gravely true, seriously true, sadly true, that I am always expecting to hear or to see how tired you are at last of me!--sooner or later, you know!--But I did not mean any seriousness in that letter. No, nor did I mean ... (to pa.s.s to another question ...) to provoke you to the

Mister Hayley ... so are _you_....

reply complimentary. All I observed concerning yourself, was the _combination_--which not an idiom in chivalry could treat grammatically as a thing common to _me_ and you, inasmuch as everyone who has known me for half a day, may know that, if there is anything peculiar in me, it lies for the most part in an extraordinary deficiency in this and this and this, ... there is no need to describe what. Only nuns of the strictest sect of the nunneries are rather wiser in some points, and have led less restricted lives than I have in others. And if it had not been for my 'carpet-work'--

Well--and do you know that I have, for the last few years, taken quite to despise book-knowledge and its effect on the mind--I mean when people _live by it_ as most readers by profession do, ... cloistering their souls under these roofs made with heads, when they might be under the sky. Such people grow dark and narrow and low, with all their pains.

_Friday._--I was writing you see before you came--and now I go on in haste to speak 'off my mind' some things which are on it. First ... of yourself; how can it be that you are unwell again, ... and that you should talk (now did you not?--did I not hear you say so?) of being 'weary in your soul' ... _you_? What should make _you_, dearest friend, weary in your soul; or out of spirits in any way?--Do ... tell me.... I was going to write without a pause--and almost I might, perhaps, ... even as one of the two hundred of your friends, ...

almost I might say out that 'Do tell me.' Or is it (which I am inclined to think most probable) that you are tired of a same life and want change? It may happen to anyone sometimes, and is independent of your will and choice, you know--and I know, and the whole world knows: and would it not therefore be wise of you, in that case, to fold your life new again and go abroad at once? What can make you weary in your soul, is a problem to me. You are the last from whom I should have expected such a word. And you did say so, I _think_. I _think_ that it was not a mistake of mine. And _you_, ... with a full liberty, and the world in your hand for every purpose and pleasure of it!--Or is it that, being unwell, your spirits are affected by _that_? But then you might be more unwell than you like to admit--. And I am teasing you with talking of it ... am I not?--and being disagreeable is only one third of the way towards being useful, it is good to remember in time.

And then the next thing to write off my mind is ... that you must not, you must not, make an unjust opinion out of what I said to-day. I have been uncomfortable since, lest you should--and perhaps it would have been better if I had not said it apart from all context in that way; only that you could not long be a friend of mine without knowing and seeing what so lies on the surface. But then, ... as far as I am concerned, ... no one cares less for a 'will' than I do (and this though I never had one, ... in clear opposition to your theory which holds generally nevertheless) for a will in the common things of life.

Every now and then there must of course be a crossing and vexation--but in one's mere pleasures and fantasies, one would rather be crossed and vexed a little than vex a person one loves ... and it is possible to get used to the harness and run easily in it at last; and there is a side-world to hide one's thoughts in, and 'carpet-work'

to be immoral on in spite of Mrs. Jameson, ... and the word 'literature' has, with me, covered a good deal of liberty as you must see ... real liberty which is never enquired into--and it has happened throughout my life by an accident (as far as anything is accident) that my own sense of right and happiness on any important point of overt action, has never run contrariwise to the way of obedience required of me ... while in things not exactly _overt_, I and all of us are apt to act sometimes up to the limit of our means of acting, with shut doors and windows, and no waiting for cognisance or permission. Ah--and that last is the worst of it all perhaps! to be forced into concealments from the heart naturally nearest to us; and forced away from the natural source of counsel and strength!--and then, the disingenuousness--the cowardice--the 'vices of slaves'!--and everyone you see ... all my brothers, ... constrained _bodily_ into submission ... apparent submission at least ... by that worst and most dishonouring of necessities, the necessity of _living_, everyone of them all, except myself, being dependent in money-matters on the inflexible will ... do you see? But what you do _not_ see, what you _cannot_ see, is the deep tender affection behind and below all those patriarchal ideas of governing grown up children 'in the way they _must_ go!' and there never was (under the strata) a truer affection in a father's heart ... no, nor a worthier heart in itself ... a heart loyaller and purer, and more compelling to grat.i.tude and reverence, than his, as I see it! The evil is in the system--and he simply takes it to be his duty to rule, and to make happy according to his own views of the propriety of happiness--he takes it to be his duty to rule like the Kings of Christendom, by divine right. But he loves us through and through it--and _I_, for one, love _him_! and when, five years ago, I lost what I loved best in the world beyond comparison and rivals.h.i.+p ... far better than himself as he knew ...

for everyone who knew _me_ could not choose but know what was my first and chiefest affection ... when I lost _that_, ... I felt that he stood the nearest to me on the closed grave ... or by the unclosing sea ... I do not know which nor could ask. And I will tell you that not only he has been kind and patient and forbearing to me through the tedious trial of this illness (far more trying to standers by than you have an idea of perhaps) but that he was generous and forbearing in that hour of bitter trial, and never reproached me as he might have done and as my own soul has not spared--never once said to me then or since, that if it had not been for _me_, the crown of his house would not have fallen. He _never did_ ... and he might have said it, and more--and I could have answered nothing. Nothing, except that I had paid my own price--and that the price I paid was greater than his _loss_ ... his!! For see how it was; and how, 'not with my hand but heart,' I was the cause or occasion of that misery--and though not with the intention of my heart but with its weakness, yet the _occasion_, any way!

They sent me down you know to Torquay--Dr. Chambers saying that I could not live a winter in London. The worst--what people call the worst--was apprehended for me at that time. So I was sent down with my sister to my aunt there--and he, my brother whom I loved so, was sent too, to take us there and return. And when the time came for him to leave me, _I_, to whom he was the dearest of friends and brothers in one ... the only one of my family who ... well, but I cannot write of these things; and it is enough to tell you that he was above us all, better than us all, and kindest and n.o.blest and dearest to _me_, beyond comparison, any comparison, as I said--and when the time came for him to leave me _I_, weakened by illness, could not master my spirits or drive back my tears--and my aunt kissed them away instead of reproving me as she should have done; and said that _she_ would take care that I should not be grieved ... _she_! ... and so she sate down and wrote a letter to Papa to tell him that he would 'break my heart' if he persisted in calling away my brother--As if hearts were broken _so_! I have thought bitterly since that my heart did not break for a good deal more than _that_! And Papa's answer was--burnt into me, as with fire, it is--that 'under such circ.u.mstances he did not refuse to suspend his purpose, but that he considered it to be _very wrong in me to exact such a thing_.' So there was no separation _then_: and month after month pa.s.sed--and sometimes I was better and sometimes worse--and the medical men continued to say that they would not answer for my life ... they! if I were agitated--and so there was no more talk of a separation. And once _he_ held my hand, ... how I remember! and said that he 'loved me better than them all and that he _would not_ leave me ... till I was well,' he said! how I remember _that_! And ten days from that day the boat had left the sh.o.r.e which never returned; never--and he _had_ left me! gone! For three days we waited--and I hoped while I could--oh--that awful agony of three days!

And the sun shone as it s.h.i.+nes to-day, and there was no more wind than now; and the sea under the windows was like this paper for smoothness--and my sisters drew the curtains back that I might see for myself how smooth the sea was, and how it could hurt n.o.body--and other boats came back one by one.

Remember how you wrote in your 'Gismond'

What says the body when they spring Some monstrous torture-engine's whole Strength on it? No more says the soul,

and you never wrote anything which _lived_ with me more than _that_.

It is such a dreadful truth. But you knew it for truth, I hope, by your genius, and not by such proof as mine--I, who could not speak or shed a tear, but lay for weeks and months half conscious, half unconscious, with a wandering mind, and too near to G.o.d under the crus.h.i.+ng of His hand, to pray at all. I expiated all my weak tears before, by not being able to shed then one tear--and yet they were forbearing--and no voice said 'You have done this.'

Do not notice what I have written to you, my dearest friend. I have never said so much to a living being--I never _could_ speak or write of it. I asked no question from the moment when my last hope went: and since then, it has been impossible for me to speak what was in me. I have borne to do it to-day and to you, but perhaps if you were to write--so do not let this be noticed between us again--_do not_! And besides there is no need! I do not reproach myself with such acrid thoughts as I had once--I _know_ that I would have died ten times over for _him_, and that therefore though it was wrong of me to be weak, and I have suffered for it and shall learn by it I hope; _remorse_ is not precisely the word for me--not at least in its full sense. Still you will comprehend from what I have told you how the spring of life must have seemed to break within me _then_; and how natural it has been for me to loathe the living on--and to lose faith (even without the loathing), to lose faith in myself ... which I have done on some points utterly. It is not from the cause of illness--no. And you will comprehend too that I have strong reasons for being grateful to the forbearance.... It would have been _cruel_, you think, to reproach me.

Perhaps so! yet the kindness and patience of the desisting from reproach, are positive things all the same.

Shall I be too late for the post, I wonder? Wilson tells me that you were followed up-stairs yesterday (I write on Sat.u.r.day this latter part) by somebody whom you probably took for my father. Which is Wilson's idea--and I hope not yours. No--it was neither father nor other relative of mine, but an old friend in rather an ill temper.

And so good-bye until Tuesday. Perhaps I shall ... not ... hear from you to-night. Don't let the tragedy or aught else do you harm--will you? and try not to be 'weary in your soul' any more--and forgive me this gloomy letter I half shrink from sending you, yet will send.

May G.o.d bless you.

E.B.B.

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

Wednesday Morning, [Post-mark, August 27, 1845.]