The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 39

How happy I am with your letter to-night.

When I had sent away my last letter I began to remember, and could not help smiling to do so, that I had totally forgotten the great subject of my 'fame,' and the oath you administered about it--totally! Now how do you read that omen? If I forget myself, who is to remember me, do you think?--except _you_?--which brings me where I would stay.

Yes--'yours' it must be, but _you_, it had better be! But, to leave the vain superst.i.tions, let me go on to a.s.sure you that I did mean to answer that part of your former letter, and do mean to behave well and be obedient. Your wish would be enough, even if there could be likelihood without it of my doing nothing ever again. Oh, certainly I have been idle--it comes of lotus-eating--and, besides, of sitting too long in the sun. Yet 'idle' may not be the word! silent I have been, through too many thoughts to speak just _that_!--As to writing letters and reading ma.n.u.scripts' filling all my time, why I must lack 'vital energy' indeed--you do not mean seriously to fancy such a thing of me!

For the rest.... Tell me--Is it your opinion that when the apostle Paul saw the unspeakable things, being s.n.a.t.c.hed up into the third Heavens 'whether in the body or out of the body he could not tell,'--is it your opinion that, all the week after, he worked particularly hard at the tent-making? For my part, I doubt it.

I would not speak profanely or extravagantly--it is not the best way to thank G.o.d. But to say only that I was in the desert and that I am among the palm-trees, is to say nothing ... because it is easy to _understand how_, after walking straight on ... on ... furlong after furlong ... dreary day after dreary day, ... one may come to the end of the sand and within sight of the fountain:--there is nothing miraculous in _that_, you know!

Yet even in that case, to doubt whether it may not all be _mirage_, would be the natural first thought, the recurring dream-fear! now would it not? And you can reproach me for _my_ thoughts, as if _they_ were unnatural!

Never mind about the third act--the advantage is that you will not tire yourself perhaps the next week. What gladness it is that you should really seem better, and how much better _that_ is than even 'Luria.'

Mrs. Jameson came to-day--but I will tell you.

May G.o.d bless you now and always.

Your

E.B.B.

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

Tuesday Evening.

[Post-mark, December 17, 1845.]

Henrietta had a note from Mr. Kenyon to the effect that he was 'coming to see _Ba_' to-day if in any way he found it possible. Now he has not come--and the inference is that he will come to-morrow--in which case you will be convicted of not wis.h.i.+ng to be with him perhaps. So ...

would it not be advisable for you to call at his door for a moment--and _before_ you come here? Think of it. You know it would not do to vex him--would it?

Your

E.B.B.

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

Friday Morning.

[Post-mark, December 19, 1845.]

I ought to have written yesterday: so to-day when I need a letter and get none, there is my own fault besides, and the less consolation. A letter from you would light up this sad day. Shall I fancy how, if a letter lay _there_ where I look, rain might fall and winds blow while I listened to you, long after the _words_ had been laid to heart? But here you are in your place--with me who am your own--your own--and so the rhyme joins on,

She shall speak to me in places lone With a low and holy tone-- Ay: when I have lit my lamp at night She shall be present with my sprite: And I will say, whate'er it be, Every word she telleth me!

Now, is that taken from your book? No--but from _my_ book, which holds my verses as I write them; and as I open it, I read that.

And speaking of verse--somebody gave me a few days ago that Mr.

Lowell's book you once mentioned to me. Anyone who 'admires' _you_ shall have my sympathy at once--even though he _do_ change the laughing wine-_mark_ into a 'stain' in that perfectly beautiful triplet--nor am I to be indifferent to his good word for myself (though not very happily connected with the criticism on the epithet in that 'Yorks.h.i.+re Tragedy'--which has better things, by the way--seeing that 'white boy,' in old language, meant just 'good boy,'

a general epithet, as Johnson notices in the life of Dryden, whom the schoolmaster Busby was used to cla.s.s with his 'white boys'--this is hypercriticism, however). But these American books should not be reprinted here--one asks, what and where is the cla.s.s to which they address themselves? for, no doubt, we have our congregations of ignoramuses that enjoy the profoundest ignorance imaginable on the subjects treated of; but _these_ are evidently not the audience Mr.

Lowell reckons on; rather, if one may trust the manner of his setting to work, he would propound his doctrine to the cla.s.s. Always to be found, of spirits instructed up to a certain height and there resting--vines that run up a prop and there tangle and grow to a knot--which want supplying with fresh poles; so the provident man brings his bundle into the grounds, and sticks them in laterally or a-top of the others, as the case requires, and all the old stocks go on growing again--but here, with us, whoever _wanted_ Chaucer, or Chapman, or Ford, got him long ago--what else have Lamb, and Coleridge, and Hazlitt and Hunt and so on to the end of their generations ... what else been doing this many a year? What one pa.s.sage of all these, cited with the very air of a Columbus, but has been known to all who know anything of poetry this many, many a year?

The others, who don't know anything, are the stocks that have got to _shoot_, not climb higher--_compost_, they want in the first place!

Ford's and Crashaw's rival Nightingales--why they have been dissertated on by Wordsworth and Coleridge, then by Lamb and Hazlitt, then worked to death by Hunt, who printed them entire and quoted them to pieces again, in every periodical he was ever engaged upon; and yet after all, here 'Philip'--'must read' (out of a roll of dropping papers with yellow ink tracings, so old!) something at which 'John'

claps his hands and says 'Really--that these ancients should own so much wit &c.'! The _pa.s.sage_ no longer looks its fresh self after this veritable pa.s.sage from hand to hand: as when, in old dances, the belle began the figure with her own partner, and by him was transferred to the next, and so to the next--_they_ ever _beginning_ with all the old alacrity and spirit; but she bearing a still-acc.u.mulating weight of tokens of gallantry, and none the better for every fresh pus.h.i.+ng and shoving and pulling and hauling--till, at the bottom of the room--

To which Mr. Lowell might say, that--No, I will say the true thing against myself--and it is, that when I turn from what is in my mind, and determine to write about anybody's book to avoid writing that I love and love and love again my own, dearest love--because of the cuckoo-song of it,--_then_, I shall be in no better humour with that book than with Mr. Lowell's!

But I _have_ a new thing to say or sing--you never before heard me love and bless and send my heart after--'Ba'--did you? Ba ... and that is you! I TRIED ... (more than _wanted_) to call you _that_, on Wednesday! I have a flower here--rather, a tree, a mimosa, which must be turned and turned, the side to the light changing in a little time to the _leafy_ side, where all the fans lean and spread ... so I turn your name to me, that side I have not last seen: you cannot tell how I feel glad that you will not part with the name--Barrett--seeing you have two of the same--and must always, moreover, remain my EBB!

Dearest 'E.B.C.'--no, no! and so it will never be!

Have you seen Mr. Kenyon? I did not write ... knowing that such a procedure would draw the kind sure letter in return, with the invitation &c., as if I had asked for it! I had perhaps better call on him some morning very early.

Bless you, my own sweetest. You will write to me, I know in my heart!

Ever may G.o.d bless you!

R.B.

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

Thursday Evening.

[Post-mark, December 20, 1845.]

Dearest, you know how to say what makes me happiest, you who never think, you say, of making me happy! For my part I do not think of it either; I simply understand that you _are_ my happiness, and that therefore you could not make another happiness for me, such as would be worth having--not even _you_! Why, how could you? _That_ was in my mind to speak yesterday, but I could not speak it--to write it, is easier.

Talking of happiness--shall I tell you? Promise not to be angry and I will tell you. I have thought sometimes that, if I considered myself wholly, I should choose to die this winter--now--before I had disappointed you in anything. But because you are better and dearer and more to be considered than I, I do _not_ choose it. I _cannot_ choose to give you any pain, even on the chance of its being a less pain, a less evil, than what may follow perhaps (who can say?), if I should prove the burden of your life.

For if you make me happy with some words, you frighten me with others--as with the extravagance yesterday--and seriously--_too_ seriously, when the moment for smiling at them is past--I am frightened, I tremble! When you come to know me as well as I know myself, what can save me, do you think, from disappointing and displeasing you? I ask the question, and find no answer.

It is a poor answer, to say that I can do one thing well ... that I have one capacity largely. On points of the general affections, I have in thought applied to myself the words of Mme. de Stael, not fretfully, I hope, not complainingly, I am sure (I can thank G.o.d for most affectionate friends!) not complainingly, yet mournfully and in profound conviction--those words--'_jamais je n'ai pas ete aimee comme j'aime_.' The capacity of loving is the largest of my powers I think--I thought so before knowing you--and one form of feeling. And although any woman might love you--_every_ woman,--with understanding enough to discern you by--(oh, do not fancy that I am unduly magnifying mine office) yet I persist in persuading myself that!

Because I have the capacity, as I said--and besides I owe more to you than others could, it seems to me: let me boast of it. To many, you might be better than all things while one of all things: to me you are instead of all--to many, a crowning happiness--to me, the happiness itself. From out of the deep dark pits men see the stars more gloriously--and _de profundis amavi_--

It is a very poor answer! Almost as poor an answer as yours could be if I were to ask you to teach me to please you always; or rather, how not to displease you, disappoint you, vex you--what if all those things were in my fate?

And--(to begin!)--_I_ am disappointed to-night. I expected a letter which does not come--and I had felt so sure of having a letter to-night ... unreasonably sure perhaps, which means doubly sure.

_Friday._--Remember you have had two notes of mine, and that it is certainly not my turn to write, though I am writing.

Scarcely you had gone on Wednesday when Mr. Kenyon came. It seemed best to me, you know, that you should go--I had the presentiment of his footsteps--and so near they were, that if you had looked up the street in leaving the door, you must have seen him! Of course I told him of your having been here and also at his house; whereupon he enquired eagerly if you meant to dine with him, seeming disappointed by my negative. 'Now I had told him,' he said ... and murmured on to himself loud enough for me to hear, that 'it would have been a peculiar pleasure &c.' The reason I have not seen him lately is the eternal 'business,' just as you thought, and he means to come 'oftener now,' so nothing is wrong as I half thought.

As your letter does not come it is a good opportunity for asking what sort of ill humour, or (to be more correct) bad temper, you most particularly admire--sulkiness?--the divine gift of sitting aloof in a cloud like any G.o.d for three weeks together perhaps--pettishness? ...

which will get you up a storm about a crooked pin or a straight one either? obstinacy?--which is an agreeable form of temper I can a.s.sure you, and describes itself--or the good open pa.s.sion which lies on the floor and kicks, like one of my cousins?--Certainly I prefer the last, and should, I think, prefer it (as an evil), even if it were not the born weakness of my own nature--though I humbly confess (to _you_, who seem to think differently of these things) that never since I was a child have I upset all the chairs and tables and thrown the books about the room in a fury--I am afraid I do not even 'kick,' like my cousin, now. Those demonstrations were all done by the 'light of other days'--not a very full light, I used to be accustomed to think:--but _you_,--_you_ think otherwise, _you_ take a fury to be the opposite of 'indifference,' as if there could be no such thing as self-control!

Now for my part, I do believe that the worst-tempered persons in the world are less so through sensibility than selfishness--they spare n.o.body's heart, on the ground of being themselves p.r.i.c.ked by a straw.

Now see if it isn't so. What, after all, is a good temper but generosity in trifles--and what, without it, is the happiness of life?

We have only to look round us. I _saw_ a woman, once, burst into tears, because her husband cut the bread and b.u.t.ter too thick. I saw _that_ with my own eyes. Was it _sensibility_, I wonder! They were at least real tears and ran down her cheeks. 'You _always_ do it'! she said.