The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 30

Tell me how your mother is--tell me how you are ... you who never were to be told twice about walking. Gone the way of all promises, is that promise?

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

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

Wednesday Night.

[Post-mark, October 30, 1845.]

Like your kindness--too, far too generous kindness,--all this trouble and correcting,--and it is my proper office now, by this time, to sit still and receive, by right _Human_ (as opposed to Divine). When you see the pamphlet's self, you will find your own doing,--but where will you find the proofs of the best of all helping and counselling and inciting, unless in new works which shall justify the _unsatisfaction_, if I may not say shame, at these, these written before your time, my best love?

Are you doing well to-day? For I feel well, have walked some eight or nine miles--and my mother is very much better ... is singularly better. You know whether you rejoiced me or no by that information about the exercise _you_ had taken yesterday. Think what telling one that you grow stronger would mean!

'Vexatious' with you! Ah, prudence is all very right, and one ought, no doubt, to say, 'of course, we shall not expect a life exempt from the usual proportion of &c. &c.--' but truth is still more right, and includes the highest prudence besides, and I do believe that we shall be happy; that is, that _you_ will be happy: you see I dare confidently expect _the_ end to it all ... so it has always been with me in my life of wonders--absolute wonders, with G.o.d's hand over all.... And this last and best of all would never have begun so, and gone on so, to break off abruptly even here, in this world, for the little time.

So try, try, dearest, every method, take every measure of hastening such a consummation. Why, we shall see Italy together! I could, would, _will_ shut myself in four walls of a room with you and never leave you and be most of all _then_ 'a lord of infinite s.p.a.ce'--but, to travel with you to Italy, or Greece. Very vain, I know that, all such day dreaming! And ungrateful, too; with the real sufficing happiness here of being, and knowing that you know me to be, and suffer me to tell you I am yours, ever your own.

G.o.d bless you, my dearest--

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

[Post-mark, November 1, 1845.]

All to-day, Friday, Miss Mitford has been here! She came at two and went away at seven--and I feel as if I had been making a five-hour speech on the corn laws in Harriet Martineau's parliament; ... so tired I am. Not that dear Miss Mitford did not talk both for me and herself, ... for that, of course she did. But I was forced to answer once every ten minutes at least--and Flush, my usual companion, does not exact so much--and so I am tired and come to rest myself on this paper. Your name was not once spoken to-day; a little from my good fencing: when I saw you at the end of an alley of a.s.sociations, I pushed the conversation up the next--because I was afraid of questions such as every moment I expected, with a pair of woman's eyes behind them; and those are worse than Mr. Kenyon's, when he puts on his spectacles. So your name was not once spoken--not thought of, I do not say--perhaps when I once lost her at Chevy Chase and found her suddenly with Isidore the queen's hairdresser, my thoughts might have wandered off to you and your unanswered letter while she pa.s.sed gradually from that to this--I am not sure of the contrary. And Isidore, they say, reads Beranger, and is supposed to be the most literary person at court--and wasn't at Chevy Chase one must needs think.

One must needs write nonsense rather--for I have written it there. The sense and the truth is, that your letter went to the bottom of my heart, and that my thoughts have turned round it ever since and through all the talking to-day. Yes indeed, dreams! But what _is_ not dreaming is this and this--this reading of these words--this proof of this regard--all this that you are to me in fact, and which you cannot guess the full meaning of, dramatic poet as you are ... cannot ...

since you do not know what my life meant before you touched it, ...

and my angel at the gate of the prison! My wonder is greater than your wonders, ... I who sate here alone but yesterday, so weary of my own being that to take interest in my very poems I had to lift them up by an effort and separate them from myself and cast them out from me into the suns.h.i.+ne where I was not--feeling nothing of the light which fell on them even--making indeed a sort of pleasure and interest about that fact.i.tious personality a.s.sociated with them ... but knowing it to be all far on the outside of _me_ ... _myself_ ... not seeming to touch it with the end of my finger ... and receiving it as a mockery and a bitterness when people persisted in confounding one with another.

Morbid it was if you like it--perhaps very morbid--but all these heaps of letters which go into the fire one after the other, and which, because I am a woman and have written verses, it seems so amusing to the letter-writers of your s.e.x to write and see 'what will come of it,' ... some, from kind good motives I know, ... well, ... how could it all make for me even such a narrow strip of suns.h.i.+ne as Flush finds on the floor sometimes, and lays his nose along, with both ears out in the shadow? It was not for _me_ ... _me_ ... in any way: it was not within my reach--I did not seem to touch it as I said. Flush came nearer, and I was grateful to him ... yes, grateful ... for not being tired! I have felt grateful and flattered ... yes flattered ... when he has chosen rather to stay with me all day than go down-stairs.

Grateful too, with reason, I have been and am to my own family for not letting me see that I was a burthen. These are facts. And now how am I to feel when you tell me what you have told me--and what you 'could would and will' do, and _shall not_ do?... but when you tell me?

Only remember that such words make you freer and freer--if you can be freer than free--just as every one makes me happier and richer--too rich by you, to claim any debt. May G.o.d bless you always. When I wrote that letter to let you come the first time, do you know, the tears ran down my cheeks.... I could not tell why: partly it might be mere nervousness. And then, I was vexed with you for wis.h.i.+ng to come as other people did, and vexed with myself for not being able to refuse you as I did them.

When does the book come out? Not on the first, I begin to be glad.

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

I trust that you go on to take exercise--and that your mother is still better. Occy's worst symptom now is too great an appet.i.te ... a monster-appet.i.te indeed.

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

Tuesday.

[Post-mark, November 4, 1845.]

Only a word to tell you Moxon promises the books for to-morrow, Wednesday--so towards evening yours will reach you--'parve liber, sine me ibis' ... would I were by you, then and ever! You see, and know, and understand why I can neither talk to you, nor write to you _now_, as we are now;--from the beginning, the personal interest absorbed every other, greater or smaller--but as one cannot well,--or should not,--sit quite silently, the words go on, about Horne, or what chances--while you are in my thought.

But when I have you ... so it seems ... _in_ my very heart; when you are entirely with me--oh, the day--then it will all go better, talk and writing too.

Love me, my own love; not as I love you--not for--but I cannot write that. Nor do I ask anything, with all your gifts here, except for the luxury of asking. Withdraw nothing, then, dearest, from your

R.B.

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

Wednesday.

[Post-mark, November 6, 1845.]

I had your note last night, and am waiting for the book to-day; a true living breathing book, let the writer say of it what he will. Also when it comes it won't certainly come 'sine te.' Which is my comfort.

And now--not to make any more fuss about a matter of simple rest.i.tution--may I have my letter back?... I mean the letter which if you did not destroy ... did not punish for its sins long and long ago ... belongs to me--which, if destroyed, I must lose for my sins, ...

but, if undestroyed, which I may have back; may I not? is it not my own? must I not?--that letter I was made to return and now turn to ask for again in further expiation. Now do I ask humbly enough? And send it at once, if undestroyed--do not wait till Sat.u.r.day.

I have considered about Mr. Kenyon and it seems best, in the event of a question or of a remark equivalent to a question, to confess to the visits 'generally once a week' ... because he may hear, one, two, three different ways, ... not to say the other reasons and Chaucer's charge against 'doubleness.' I fear ... I fear that he (not Chaucer) will wonder a little--and he has looked at me with scanning spectacles already and talked of its being a mystery to him how you made your way here; and _I_, who though I can _bespeak_ self-command, have no sort of presence of mind (not so much as one would use to play at Jack straws) did not help the case at all. Well--it cannot be helped. Did I ever tell you what he said of you once--'_that you deserved to be a poet_--being one in your heart and life:' he said _that_ of you to me, and I thought it a n.o.ble encomium and deserving its application.

For the rest ... yes: you know I do--G.o.d knows I do. Whatever I can feel is for you--and perhaps it is not less, for not being simmered away in too much suns.h.i.+ne as with women accounted happier. _I_ am happy besides now--happy enough to die now.

May G.o.d bless you, dear--dearest--

Ever I am yours--

The book does not come--so I shall not wait. Mr. Kenyon came instead, and comes again on _Friday_ he says, and Sat.u.r.day seems to be clear still.

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

_Just_ arrived!--(mind, the _silent writing_ overflows the page, and laughs at the black words for Mr. Kenyon to read!)--But your note arrived earlier--more of that, when I write after this dreadful dispatching-business that falls on me--friend A. and B. and C. must get their copy, and word of regard, all by next post!--

Could you think _that_ that untoward letter lived one _moment_ after it returned to me? I burned it and cried 'serve it right'! Poor letter,--yet I should have been vexed and offended _then_ to be told I _could_ love you better than I did already. 'Live and _learn_!' Live and love you--dearest, as loves you

R.B.

You will write to rea.s.sure me about Sat.u.r.day, if not for other reasons. See your corrections ... and understand that in one or two instances in which they would seem not to be adopted, they _are_ so, by some modification of the previous, or following line ... as in one of the Sorrento lines ... about a 'turret'--see! (Can you give me Horne's address--I would send then.)

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