The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 19

On the subject of your letter--quite irrespective of the injunction in it--I would not have dared speak; now, at least. But I may permit myself, perhaps, to say I am _most_ grateful, _most grateful_, dearest friend, for this admission to partic.i.p.ate, in my degree, in these feelings. There is a better thing than being happy in your happiness; I feel, now that you teach me, it is so. I will write no more now; though that sentence of 'what you are _expecting_,--that I shall be tired of you &c.,'--though I _could_ blot that out of your mind for ever by a very few words _now_,--for you _would believe_ me at this moment, close on the other subject:--but I will take no such advantage--I will wait.

I have many things (indifferent things, after those) to say; will you write, if but a few lines, to change the a.s.sociations for that purpose? Then I will write too.--

May G.o.d bless you,--in what is past and to come! I pray that from my heart, being yours

R.B.

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

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

But your 'Saul' is un.o.bjectionable as far as I can see, my dear friend. He was tormented by an evil spirit--but how, we are not told ... and the consolation is not obliged to be definite, ... is it? A singer was sent for as a singer--and all that you are called upon to be true to, are the general characteristics of David the chosen, standing between his sheep and his dawning hereafter, between innocence and holiness, and with what you speak of as the 'gracious gold locks' besides the chrism of the prophet, on his own head--and surely you have been happy in the tone and spirit of these lyrics ...

broken as you have left them. Where is the wrong in all this? For the right and beauty, they are more obvious--and I cannot tell you how the poem holds me and will not let me go until it blesses me ... and so, where are the 'sixty lines' thrown away? I do beseech you ... you who forget nothing, ... to remember them directly, and to go on with the rest ... _as_ directly (be it understood) as is not injurious to your health. The whole conception of the poem, I like ... and the execution is exquisite up to this point--and the sight of Saul in the tent, just struck out of the dark by that sunbeam, 'a thing to see,' ... not to say that afterwards when he is visibly 'caught in his fangs' like the king serpent, ... the sight is grander still. How could you doubt about this poem....

At the moment of writing which, I receive your note. Do _you_ receive my a.s.surances from the deepest of my heart that I never did otherwise than _'believe' you_ ... never did nor shall do ... and that you completely misinterpreted my words if you drew another meaning from them. Believe _me_ in this--will you? I could not believe _you_ any more for anything you could say, now or hereafter--and so do not avenge yourself on my unwary sentences by remembering them against me for evil. I did not mean to vex you ... still less to suspect you--indeed I did not! and moreover it was quite your fault that I did not blot it out after it was written, whatever the meaning was. So you forgive me (altogether) for your own sins: you must:--

For my part, though I have been sorry since to have written you such a gloomy letter, the sorrow unmakes itself in hearing you speak so kindly. Your sympathy is precious to me, I may say. May G.o.d bless you.

Write and tell me among the 'indifferent things' something not indifferent, how you are yourself, I mean ... for I fear you are not well and thought you were not looking so yesterday.

Dearest friend, I remain yours,

E.B.B.

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

Friday Evening.

[Post-mark, August 30, 1845].

I do not hear; and come to you to ask the alms of just one line, having taken it into my head that something is the matter. It is not so much exactingness on my part, as that you spoke of meaning to write as soon as you received a note of mine ... which went to you five minutes afterwards ... which is three days ago, or will be when you read this. Are you not well--or what? Though I have tried and _wished_ to remember having written in the last note something very or even a little offensive to you, I failed in it and go back to the worse fear.

For you could not be vexed with me for talking of what was 'your fault' ... 'your own fault,' viz. in having to read sentences which, but for your commands, would have been blotted out. You could not very well take _that_ for serious blame! from _me_ too, who have so much reason and provocation for blaming the archangel Gabriel.--No--you could not misinterpret so,--and if you could not, and if you are not displeased with me, you must be unwell, I think. I took for granted yesterday that you had gone out as before--but to-night it is different--and so I come to ask you to be kind enough to write one word for me by some post to-morrow. Now remember ... I am not asking for a letter--but for a _word_ ... or line strictly speaking.

Ever yours, dear friend,

E.B.B.

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

[Post-mark, August 30, 1845.]

This sweet Autumn Evening, Friday, comes all golden into the room and makes me write to you--not think of you--yet what shall I write?

It must be for another time ... after Monday, when I am to see you, you know, and hear if the headache be gone, since your note would not round to the perfection of kindness and comfort, and tell me so.

G.o.d bless my dearest friend.

R.B.

I am much better--well, indeed--thank you.

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

[Post-mark, August 30, 1845.]

Can you understand me _so_, dearest friend, after all? Do you see me--when I am away, or with you--'taking offence' at words, 'being vexed' at words, or deeds of yours, even if I could not immediately trace them to their source of entire, pure kindness; as I have hitherto done in every smallest instance?

I believe in _you_ absolutely, utterly--I believe that when you bade me, that time, be silent--that such was your bidding, and I was silent--dare I say I think you did not know at that time the power I have over myself, that I could sit and speak and listen as I have done since? Let me say now--_this only once_--that I loved you from my soul, and gave you my life, so much of it as you would take,--and all that is _done_, not to be altered now: it was, in the nature of the proceeding, wholly independent of any return on your part. I will not think on extremes you might have resorted to; as it is, the a.s.surance of your friends.h.i.+p, the intimacy to which you admit me, _now_, make the truest, deepest joy of my life--a joy I can never think fugitive while we are in life, because I KNOW, as to me, I _could_ not willingly displease you,--while, as to you, your goodness and understanding will always see to the bottom of involuntary or ignorant faults--always help me to correct them. I have done now. If I thought you were like other women I have known, I should say so much!--but--(my first and last word--I _believe_ in you!)--what you could and would give me, of your affection, you would give n.o.bly and simply and as a giver--you would not need that I tell you--(_tell_ you!)--what would be supreme happiness to me in the event--however distant--

I repeat ... I call on your justice to remember, on your intelligence to believe ... that this is merely a more precise stating the _first_ subject; to put an end to any possible misunderstanding--to prevent your henceforth believing that because I _do not write_, from thinking too deeply of you, I am offended, vexed &c. &c. I will never recur to this, nor shall you see the least difference in my manner next Monday: it is indeed, always before me ... how I know nothing of you and yours. But I think I ought to have spoken when I did--and to speak clearly ... or more clearly what I do, as it is my pride and duty to fall back, now, on the feeling with which I have been in the meantime--Yours--G.o.d bless you--

R.B.

Let me write a few words to lead into Monday--and say, you have probably received my note. I am much better--with a little headache, which is all, and fast going this morning. Of yours you say nothing--I trust you see your ... dare I say your _duty_ in the Pisa affair, as all else _must_ see it--shall I hear on Monday? And my 'Saul' that you are so lenient to.

Bless you ever--

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

Sunday.

[August 31, 1845.]

I did not think you were angry--I never said so. But you might reasonably have been wounded a little, if you had suspected me of blaming you for any bearing of yours towards myself; and this was the amount of my fear--or rather hope ... since I conjectured most that you were not well. And after all you did think ... do think ... that in some way or for some moment I blamed you, disbelieved you, distrusted you--or why this letter? How have I provoked this letter?

Can I forgive myself for having even seemed to have provoked it? and will you believe me that if for the past's sake you sent it, it was unnecessary, and if for the future's, irrelevant? Which I say from no want of sensibility to the words of it--your words always make themselves felt--but in fulness of purpose not to suffer you to hold to words because they have been said, nor to say them as if to be holden by them. Why, if a thousand more such words were said by you to me, how could they operate upon the future or present, supposing me to choose to keep the possible modification of your feelings, as a probability, in my sight and yours? Can you help my sitting with the doors all open if I think it right? I do attest to you--while I trust you, as you must see, in word and act, and while I am confident that no human being ever stood higher or purer in the eyes of another, than you do in mine,--that you would still stand high and remain unalterably my friend, if the probability in question became a fact, as now at this moment. And this I must say, since you have said other things: and this alone, which _I_ have said, concerns the future, I remind you earnestly.

My dearest friend--you have followed the most _generous_ of impulses in your whole bearing to me--and I have recognised and called by its name, in my heart, each one of them. Yet I cannot help adding that, of us two, yours has not been quite the hardest part ... I mean, to a generous nature like your own, to which every sort of n.o.bleness comes easily. Mine has been more difficult--and I have sunk under it again and again: and the sinking and the effort to recover the duty of a lost position, may have given me an appearance of vacillation and lightness, unworthy at least of _you_, and perhaps of both of us.

Notwithstanding which appearance, it was right and just (only just) of you, to believe in me--in my truth--because I have never failed to you in it, nor been capable of _such_ failure: the thing I have said, I have meant ... always: and in things I have not said, the silence has had a reason somewhere different perhaps from where you looked for it.

And this brings me to complaining that you, who profess to believe in me, do yet obviously believe that it was only merely silence, which I required of you on one occasion--and that if I had 'known your power over yourself,' I should not have minded ... no! In other words you believe of me that I was thinking just of my own (what shall I call it for a motive base and small enough?) my own scrupulousness ... freedom from embarra.s.sment! of myself in the least of me; in the tying of my shoestrings, say!--so much and no more! Now this is so wrong, as to make me impatient sometimes in feeling it to be your impression: I asked for silence--but _also_ and chiefly for the putting away of ...

you know very well what I asked for. And this was sincerely done, I attest to you. You wrote once to me ... oh, long before May and the day we met: that you 'had been so happy, you should be now justified to yourself in taking any step most hazardous to the happiness of your life'--but if you were justified, could _I_ be therefore justified in abetting such a step,--the step of wasting, in a sense, your best feelings ... of emptying your water gourds into the sand? What I thought then I think now--just what any third person, knowing you, would think, I think and feel. I thought too, at first, that the feeling on your part was a mere generous impulse, likely to expand itself in a week perhaps. It affects me and has affected me, very deeply, more than I dare attempt to say, that you should persist _so_--and if sometimes I have felt, by a sort of instinct, that after all you would not go on to persist, and that (being a man, you know) you might mistake, a little unconsciously, the strength of your own feeling; you ought not to be surprised; when I felt it was more advantageous and happier for you that it should be so. _In any case_, I shall never regret my own share in the events of this summer, and your friends.h.i.+p will be dear to me to the last. You know I told you so--not long since. And as to what you say otherwise, you are right in thinking that I would not hold by unworthy motives in avoiding to speak what you had any claim to hear. But what could I speak that would not be unjust to you? Your life! if you gave it to me and I put my whole heart into it; what should I put but anxiety, and more sadness than you were born to? What could I give you, which it would not be ungenerous to give? Therefore we must leave this subject--and I must trust you to leave it without one word more; (too many have been said already--but I could not let your letter pa.s.s quite silently ...

as if I had nothing to do but to receive all as matter of course _so_!) while you may well trust _me_ to remember to my life's end, as the grateful remember; and to feel, as those do who have felt sorrow (for where these pits are dug, the water will stand), the full price of your regard. May G.o.d bless you, my dearest friend. I shall send this letter after I have seen you, and hope you may not have expected to hear sooner.

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

_Monday, 6 p.m._--I send in _dis_obedience to your commands, Mrs.

Sh.e.l.ley's book--but when books acc.u.mulate and when besides, I want to let you have the American edition of my poems ... famous for all manner of blunders, you know; what is to be done but have recourse to the parcel-medium? You were in jest about being at Pisa _before or as soon as we were_?--oh no--that must not be indeed--we must wait a little!--even if you determine to go at all, which is a question of doubtful expediency. Do take more exercise, this week, and make war against those dreadful sensations in the head--now, will you?