The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 34

_Oh, you!_ Did I say the 'root' had been striking then, or rather, that the seeds, whence the roots take leisure and grow, _they_ had been planted then--and might not a good heart and hand drop acorns enough to grow up into a complete Dodona-grove,--when the very rook, say farmers, hides and forgets whole navies of s.h.i.+p-wood one day to be, in his summer storing-journeys? But this shall do--I am not going to prove what _may_ be, when here it _is_, to my everlasting happiness.

--And 'I am kind'--there again! Do I not know what you mean by that?

Well it is some comfort that you make all even in some degree, and take from my faculties here what you give them, spite of my protesting, in other directions. So I could not when I first saw you admire you very much, and wish for your friends.h.i.+p, and be willing to give you mine, and desirous of any opportunity of serving you, benefiting you; I could not think the finding myself in a position to feel this, just this and no more, a sufficiently fortunate event ...

but I must needs get up, or imitate, or ... what is it you fancy I do?

... an utterly distinct, unnecessary, inconsequential regard for you, which should, when it got too hard for shamming at the week's end,--should simply spoil, in its explosion and departure, all the real and sufficing elements of an honest life-long attachment and affections! that I should do this, and think it a piece of kindness does....

Now, I'll tell you what it _does_ deserve, and what it shall get. Give me, dearest beyond expression, what I have always dared to think I would ask you for ... one day! Give me ... wait--for your own sake, not mine who never, never dream of being worth such a gift ... but for your own sense of justice, and to _say_, so as my heart shall hear, that you were wrong and are no longer so, give me so much of you--all precious that you are--as may be given in a lock of your hair--I will live and die with it, and with the memory of you--this _at_ the _worst_! If you give me what I beg,--shall I say next Tuesday ... when I leave you, I will not speak a word. If you do not, I will not think you unjust, for all my light words, but I will pray you to wait and remember me one day--when the power to deserve more may be greater ...

never the will. G.o.d supplies all things: may he bless you, beloved! So I can but pray, kissing your hand.

R.B.

Now pardon me, dearest, for what is written ... what I cannot cancel, for the love's sake that it grew from.

The _Chronicle_ was through Moxon, I believe--Landor had sent the verses to Forster at the same time as to me, yet they do not appear. I never in my life less cared about people's praise or blame for myself, and never more for its influence on _other people_ than now--I would stand as high as I could in the eyes of all about you--yet not, after all, at poor Chorley's expense whom your brother, I am sure, unintentionally, is rather hasty in condemning; I have told you of my own much rasher opinion and how I was ashamed and sorry when I corrected it after. C. is of a different species to your brother, differently trained, looking different ways--and for some of the peculiarities that strike at first sight, C. himself gives a good reason to the enquirer on better acquaintance. For 'Vulgarity'--NO!

But your kind brother will alter his view, I know, on further acquaintance ... and,--woe's me--will find that 'a.s.sumption's' pertest self would be troubled to exercise its quality at such a house as Mr.

K.'s, where every symptom of a proper claim is met half way and helped onward far too readily.

Good night, now. Am I not yours--are you not mine? And can that make _you_ happy too?

Bless you once more and for ever.

That sc.r.a.p of Landor's being for no other eye than mine--I made the foolish comment, that there was no blotting out--made it some four or five years ago, when I could read what I only guess at now, through my idle opening the hand and letting the caught bird go--but there used to be a real satisfaction to me in writing those grand Hebrew characters--the n.o.ble languages!

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

Monday.

[Post-mark, November 24, 1845.]

But what unlawful things have I said about 'kindness'? I did not mean any harm--no, indeed! And as to thinking ... as to having ever thought, that you could 'imitate' (can this word be 'imitate'?) an unfelt feeling or a feeling unsupposed to be felt ... I may solemnly a.s.sure you that I never, never did so. 'Get up'--'imitate'!! But it was the contrary ... _all_ the contrary! From the beginning, now _did_ I not believe you too much? Did I not believe you even in your contradiction of yourself ... in your _yes_ and _no_ on the same subject, ... and take the world to be turning round backwards and myself to have been shut up here till I grew mad, ... rather than disbelieve you either way? Well!--You know it as well as I can tell you, and I will not, any more. If I have been 'wrong,' it was not _so_ ... nor indeed _then_ ... it is not _so_, though it is _now_, perhaps.

Therefore ... but wait! I never gave away what you ask me to give _you_, to a human being, except my nearest relatives and once or twice or thrice to female friends, ... never, though reproached for it; and it is just three weeks since I said last to an asker that I was 'too great a prude for such a thing'! it was best to antic.i.p.ate the accusation!--And, prude or not, I could not--I never could--_something_ would not let me. And now ... what am I to do ...

'for my own sake and not yours?' Should you have it, or not? Why I suppose ... _yes_. I suppose that 'for my own sense of justice and in order to show that I was wrong' (which is wrong--you wrote a wrong word there ... 'right,' you meant!) 'to show that I was _right_ and am no longer so,' ... I suppose you must have it, 'Oh, _You_,' ... who have your way in everything! Which does not mean ... Oh, vous, qui avez toujours raison--far from it.

Also ... which does not mean that I shall give you what you ask for, _to-morrow_,--because I shall not--and one of my conditions is (with others to follow) that _not a word be said to-morrow_, you understand.

Some day I will send it perhaps ... as you _knew_ I should ... ah, as you knew I should ... notwithstanding that 'getting up' ... that 'imitation' ... of humility: as you knew _too_ well I should!

Only I will not teaze you as I might perhaps; and now that your headache has begun again--the headache again: the worse than headache!

See what good my wishes do! And try to understand that if I speak of my being 'wrong' now in relation to you ... of my being right before, and wrong now, ... I mean wrong for your sake, and not for mine ...

wrong in letting you come out into the desert here to me, you whose place is by the waters of Damascus. But I need not tell you over again--you _know_. May G.o.d bless you till to-morrow and past it for ever. Mr. Kenyon brought me your note yesterday to read about the 'order in the b.u.t.ton-hole'--ah!--or 'oh, _you_,' may I not re-echo? It enrages me to think of Mr. Forster; publis.h.i.+ng too as he does, at a moment, the very sweepings of Landor's desk! Is the motive of the reticence to be looked for somewhere among the cinders?--Too bad it is. So, till to-morrow! and you shall not be 'kind' any more.

Your

E.B.B.

But how, 'a _foolish_ comment'? Good and true rather! And I admired the _writing_[1] ... worthy of the reeds of Jordan!

[Footnote 1: Mr. Browning's letter is written in an unusually bold hand.]

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

Thursday Morning.

[Post-mark, November 27, 1845.]

How are you? and Miss Bayley's visit yesterday, and Mr. K.'s to-day--(He told me he should see you this morning--and _I_ shall pa.s.s close by, having to be in town and near you,--but only the thought will reach you and be with you--) tell me all this, dearest.

How kind Mr. Kenyon was last night and the day before! He neither wonders nor is much vexed, I dare believe--and I write now these few words to say so--My heart is set on next Thursday, remember ... and the prize of Sat.u.r.day! Oh, dearest, believe for truth's sake, that I WOULD most frankly own to any fault, any imperfection in the beginning of my love of you; in the pride and security of this present stage it has reached--I _would_ gladly learn, by the full lights now, what an insufficient glimmer it grew from, ... but there _never has been change_, only development and increased knowledge and strengthened feeling--I was made and meant to look for you and wait for you and become yours for ever. G.o.d bless you, and make me thankful!

And you _will_ give me _that_? What shall save me from wreck: but truly? How must I feel to you!

Yours R.B.

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

Monday Evening.

[Post-mark, November 27, 1845.]

Now you must not blame me--you must not. To make a promise is one thing, and to keep it, quite another: and the conclusion you see 'as from a tower.' Suppose I had an oath in heaven somewhere ... near to 'coma Berenices,' ... never to give you what you ask for! ... would not such an oath be stronger than a mere half promise such as I sent you a few hours ago? Admit that it would--and that I am not to blame for saying now ... (listen!) that I _never can_ nor _will give you this thing_;--only that I will, if you please, exchange it for another thing--you understand. _I_ too will avoid being 'a.s.suming'; I will not pretend to be generous, no, nor 'kind.' It shall be pure merchandise or nothing at all. Therefore determine!--remembering always how our 'ars poetica,' after Horace, recommends 'dare et petere vicissim'--which is making a clatter of pedantry to take advantage of the noise ... because perhaps I ought to be ashamed to say this to you, and perhaps I _am_! ... yet say it none the less.

And ... less lightly ... if you have right and reason on your side, may I not have a little on mine too? And shall I not care, do you think?... Think!

Then there is another reason for me, entirely mine. You have come to me as a dream comes, as the best dreams come ... dearest--and so there is need to me of 'a sign' to know the difference between dream and vision--and _that_ is my completest reason, my own reason--you have none like it; none. A ticket to know the horn-gate from the ivory, ...

ought I not to have it? Therefore send it to me before I send you anything, and if possible by that Lewisham post which was the most frequent bringer of your letters until these last few came, and which reaches me at eight in the evening when all the world is at dinner and my solitude most certain. Everything is so still then, that I have heard the footsteps of a letter of yours ten doors off ... or more, perhaps. Now beware of imagining from this which I say, that there is a strict police for my correspondence ... (it is not so--) nor that I do not like hearing from you at any and every hour: it _is_ so. Only I would make the smoothest and sweetest of roads for ... and you _understand_, and do not _imagine_ beyond.

_Tuesday evening._--What is written is written, ... all the above: and it is forbidden to me to write a word of what I could write down here ... forbidden for good reasons. So I am silent on _conditions_ ...

those being ... first ... that you never do such things again ... no, you must not and shall not.... I _will not let it be_: and secondly, that you try to hear the unspoken words, and understand how your gift will remain with me while _I_ remain ... they need not be said--just as _it_ need not have been so beautiful, for that. The beauty drops 'full fathom five' into the deep thought which covers it. So I study my Machiavelli to contrive the possibility of wearing it, without being put to the question violently by all the curiosity of all my brothers;--the questions 'how' ... 'what' ... 'why' ... put round and edgeways. They are famous, some of them, for asking questions. I say to them--'well: how many more questions?' And now ... for _me_--_have_ I said a word?--_have_ I not been obedient? And by rights and in justice, there should have been a reproach ... if there could!

Because, friends.h.i.+p or more than friends.h.i.+p, Pisa or no Pisa, it was unnecessary altogether from you to me ... but I have done, and you shall not be teazed.

_Wednesday._--Only ... I persist in the view of the _other_ question.

This will not do for the '_sign_,' ... this, which, so far from being qualified for disproving a dream, is the beautiful image of a dream in itself ... _so_ beautiful: and with the very shut eyelids, and the "little folding of the hands to sleep." You see at a glance it will not do. And so--

Just as one might be interrupted while telling a fairy-tale, ... in the midst of the "and so's" ... just _so_, I have been interrupted by the coming in of Miss Bayley, and here she has been sitting for nearly two hours, from twelve to two nearly, and I like her, do you know. Not only she talks well, which was only a thing to expect, but she seems to _feel_ ... to have great sensibility--_and_ her kindness to me ...

kindness of manner and words and expression, all together ... quite touched me.--I did not think of her being so loveable a person. Yet it was kind and generous, her proposition about Italy; (did I tell you how she made it to me through Mr. Kenyon long ago--when I was a mere stranger to her?) the proposition to go there with me herself. It was quite a grave, earnest proposal of hers--which was one of the reasons why I could not even _wish_ not to see her to-day. Because you see, it was a tremendous degree of experimental generosity, to think of going to Italy by sea with an invalid stranger, "seule _a_ seule." And she was wholly in earnest, wholly. Is there not good in the world after all?

Tell me how you are, for I am not at ease about you--You were not well even yesterday, I thought. If this goes on ... but it mustn't go on--oh, it must not. May G.o.d bless us more!

Do not fancy, in the meantime, that you stay here 'too long' for any observation that can be made. In the first place there is n.o.body to 'observe'--everybody is out till seven, except the one or two who will not observe if I tell them not. My sisters are glad when you come, because it is a gladness of mine, ... they observe. I have a great deal of liberty, to have so many chains; we all have, in this house: and though the liberty has melancholy motives, it saves some daily torment, and _I_ do not complain of it for one.

May G.o.d bless you! Do not forget me. Say how you are. What good can I do you with all my thoughts, when you keep unwell? See!--Facts are against fancies. As when I would not have the lamp lighted yesterday because it seemed to make it later, and you proved directly that it would not make it _earlier_, by getting up and going away!

Wholly and ever your

E.B.B.