The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 46

And observe! I perfectly understand that you did not think of _doubting me_--so to speak! But you thought, all the same, that if such a thing happened, I should be capable of doing so and so.

Well--I am not quarrelling--I am uneasy about your head rather. That pain in it--what can it mean? I do beseech you to think of me just so much as will lead you to take regular exercise every day, never missing a day; since to walk till you are tired on Tuesday and then not to walk at all until Friday is _not_ taking exercise, nor the thing required. Ah, if you knew how dreadfully natural every sort of evil seems to my mind, you would not laugh at me for being afraid. I do beseech you, dearest! And then, Sir John Hanmer invited you, besides Mr. Warburton, and suppose you went to _him_ for a very little time--just for the change of air? or if you went to the coast somewhere. Will you consider, and do what is right, _for me_? I do not propose that you should go to Italy, observe, nor any great thing at which you might reasonably hesitate. And--did you ever try smoking as a remedy? If the nerves of the head chiefly are affected it might do you good, I have been thinking. Or without the smoking, to breathe where tobacco is burnt,--_that_ calms the nervous system in a wonderful manner, as I experienced once myself when, recovering from an illness, I could not sleep, and tried in vain all sorts of narcotics and forms of hop-pillow and inhalation, yet was tranquillized in one half hour by a _pinch_ of _tobacco_ being burnt in a shovel near me. Should you mind it very much? the trying I mean?

_Wednesday._--For '_Pauline_'--when I had named it to you I was on the point of sending for the book to the booksellers--then suddenly I thought to myself that I should wait and hear whether you very, very much would dislike my reading it. See now! Many readers have done virtuously, but _I_, (in this virtue I tell you of) surpa.s.sed them all!--And now, because I may, I '_must_ read it':--and as there are misprints to be corrected, will you do what is necessary, or what you think is necessary, and bring me the book on Monday? Do not send--bring it. In the meanwhile I send back the review which I forgot to give to you yesterday in the confusion. Perhaps you have not read it in your house, and in any case there is no use in my keeping it.

Shall I hear from you, I wonder! Oh my vain thoughts, that will not keep you well! And, ever since you have known me, you have been worse--_that_, you confess!--and what if it should be the crossing of my bad star? _You_ of the 'Crown' and the 'Lyre,' to seek influences from the 'chair of Ca.s.siopeia'! I hope she will forgive me for using her name so! I might as well have compared her to a professors.h.i.+p of poetry in the university of Oxford, according to the latest election.

You know, the qualification, there, is,--_not to be a poet_.

How vexatious, yesterday! The stars (talking of _them_) were out of spherical tune, through the damp weather, perhaps, and that scarlet sun was a sign! First Mr. Chorley!--and last, dear Mr. Kenyon; who _will_ say tiresome things without any provocation. Did you walk with him his way, or did he walk with you yours? or did you only walk down-stairs together?

Write to me! Remember that it is a month to Monday. Think of your very own, who bids G.o.d bless you when she prays best for herself!--

E.B.B.

Say particularly how you are--now do not omit it. And will you have Miss Martineau's books when I can lend them to you? Just at this moment I _dare_ not, because they are reading them here.

Let Mr. Mackay have his full proprietary in his 'Dead Pan'--which is quite a different conception of the subject, and executed in blank verse too. I have no claims against him, I am sure!

But for the _man_!--To call him a poet! A prince and potentate of Commonplaces, such as he is!--I have seen his name in the _Athenaeum_ attached to a lyric or two ... poems, correctly called fugitive,--more than usually fugitive--but I never heard before that his hand was in the prose department.

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

Wednesday.

[Post-mark, January 14, 1846.]

Was I in the wrong, dearest, to go away with Mr. Kenyon? I _well knew and felt_ the price I was about to pay--but the thought _did_ occur that he might have been informed my probable time of departure was that of his own arrival--and that he would not know how very soon, alas, I should be _obliged_ to go--so ... to save you any least embarra.s.sment in the world, I got--just that shake of the hand, just that look--and no more! And was it all for nothing, all needless after all? So I said to myself all the way home.

When I am away from you--a crowd of things press on me for utterance--'I will say them, not write them,' I think:--when I see you--all to be said seems insignificant, irrelevant,--'they can be written, at all events'--I think _that_ too. So, feeling so much, I say so little!

I have just returned from Town and write for the Post--but _you_ mean to write, I trust.

_That_ was not obtained, that promise, to be happy with, as last time!

How are you?--tell me, dearest; a long week is to be waited now!

Bless you, my own, sweetest Ba.

I am wholly your

R.

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

Thursday.

[Post-mark, January 15, 1846.]

Dearest, dearer to my heart minute by minute, I had no wish to give you pain, G.o.d knows. No one can more readily consent to let a few years more or less of life go out of account,--be lost--but as I sate by you, you so full of the truest life, for this world as for the next,--and was struck by the possibility, all that might happen were I away, in the case of your continuing to acquiesce--dearest, it _is_ horrible--could not but speak. If in drawing you, all of you, closer to my heart, I hurt you whom I would--_outlive_ ... yes,--cannot speak here--forgive me, Ba.

My Ba, you are to consider now for me. Your health, your strength, it is all wonderful; that is not my dream, you know--but what all see.

Now, steadily care for us both--take time, take counsel if you choose; but at the end tell me what you will do for your part--thinking of me as utterly devoted, soul and body, to you, living wholly in your life, seeing good and ill only as you see,--being yours as your hand is,--or as your Flush, rather. Then I will, on my side, prepare. When I say 'take counsel'--I reserve my last right, the man's right of first speech. _I_ stipulate, too, and require to say my own speech in my own words or by letter--remember! But this living without you is too tormenting now. So begin thinking,--as for Spring, as for a New Year, as for a new life.

I went no farther than the door with Mr. Kenyon. He must see the truth; and--you heard the playful words which had a meaning all the same.

No more of this; only, think of it for me, love!

One of these days I shall write a long letter--on the omitted matters, unanswered questions, in your past letters. The present joy still makes me ungrateful to the previous one; but I remember. We are to live together one day, love!

Will you let Mr. Poe's book lie on the table on Monday, if you please, that I may read what he _does_ say, with my own eyes? _That_ I meant to ask, too!

How too, too kind you are--how you care for so little that affects me!

I am very much better--I went out yesterday, as you found: to-day I shall walk, beside seeing Chorley. And certainly, certainly I would go away for a week, if so I might escape being ill (and away from you) a fortnight; but I am _not_ ill--and will care, as you bid me, beloved!

So, you will send, and take all trouble; and all about that crazy Review! Now, you should not!--I will consider about your goodness. I hardly know if I care to read that kind of book just now.

Will you, and must you have 'Pauline'? If I could pray you to revoke that decision! For it is altogether foolish and _not_ boylike--and I shall, I confess, hate the notion of running over it--yet commented it must be; more than mere correction! I was unluckily _precocious_--but I had rather you _saw_ real infantine efforts (verses at six years old, and drawings still earlier) than this ambiguous, feverish--Why not wait? When you speak of the 'Bookseller'--I smile, in glorious security--having a whole bale of sheets at the house-top. He never knew my name even!--and I withdrew these after a very little time.

And now--here is a vexation. May I be with you (for this once) next Monday, at _two_ instead of _three_ o'clock? Forster's business with the new Paper obliges him, he says, to restrict his choice of days to _Monday_ next--and give up _my_ part of Monday I will never for fifty Forsters--now, sweet, mind that! Monday is no common day, but leads to a _Sat.u.r.day_--and if, as I ask, I get leave to call at 2--and to stay till 3-1/2--though I then lose nearly half an hour--yet all will be comparatively well. If there is any difficulty--one word and I re-appoint our party, his and mine, for the day the paper breaks down--not so long to wait, it strikes me!

Now, bless you, my precious Ba--I am your own--

--Your own R.

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

Thursday Morning.

[Post-mark, January 17, 1846.]

Our letters have crossed; and, mine being the longest, I have a right to expect another directly, I think. I have been calculating: and it seems to me--now what I am going to say may take its place among the paradoxes,--that I gain most by the short letters. Last week the only long one came last, and I was quite contented that the 'old friend'

should come to see you on Sat.u.r.day and make you send me two instead of the single one I looked for: it was a clear gain, the little short note, and the letter arrived all the same. I remember, when I was a child, liking to have two s.h.i.+llings and sixpence better than half a crown--and now it is the same with this fairy money, which will never turn all into pebbles, or beans, whatever the chronicles may say of precedents.

Arabel did tell Mr. Kenyon (she told me) that 'Mr. Browning would soon go away'--in reply to an observation of his, that 'he would not stay as I had company'; and altogether it was better,--the lamp made it look late. But you do not appear in the least remorseful for being tempted of my black devil, my familiar, to ask such questions and leave me under such an impression--'mens conscia recti' too!!--

And Mr. Kenyon will not come until next Monday perhaps. How am I? But I am too well to be asked about. Is it not a warm summer? The weather is as 'miraculous' as the rest, I think. It is you who are unwell and make people uneasy, dearest. Say how you are, and promise me to do what is right and try to be better. The walking, the changing of the air, the leaving off Luria ... do what is right, I earnestly beseech you. The other day, I heard of Tennyson being ill again, ... too ill to write a simple note to his friend Mr. Venables, who told George. A little more than a year ago, it would have been no worse a thing to me to hear of your being ill than to hear of his being ill!--How the world has changed since then! To _me_, I mean.

Did I say _that_ ever ... that 'I knew you must be tired?' And it was not even so true as that the coming event threw its shadow before?

_Thursday night._--I have begun on another sheet--I could not write here what was in my heart--yet I send you this paper besides to show how I was writing to you this morning. In the midst of it came a female friend of mine and broke the thread--the visible thread, that is.

And now, even now, at this safe eight o'clock, I could not be safe from somebody, who, in her goodnature and my illfortune, must come and sit by me--and when my letter was come--'why wouldn't I read it? What wonderful politeness on my part.' She would not and could not consent to keep me from reading my letter. She would stand up by the fire rather.

No, no, three times no. Brummel got into the carriage before the Regent, ... (didn't he?) but I persisted in not reading my letter in the presence of my friend. A notice on my punctiliousness may be put down to-night in her 'private diary.' I kept the letter in my hand and only read it with those sapient ends of the fingers which the mesmerists make so much ado about, and which really did seem to touch a little of what was inside. Not _all_, however, happily for me! Or my friend would have seen in my eyes what _they_ did not see.

May G.o.d bless you! Did I ever say that I had an objection to read the verses at six years old--or see the drawings either? I am reasonable, you observe! Only, 'Pauline,' I must have _some day_--why not without the emendations? But if you insist on them, I will agree to wait a little--if you promise _at last_ to let me see the book, which I will not show. Some day, then! you shall not be vexed nor hurried for the day--some day. Am I not generous? And _I_ was 'precocious' too, and used to make rhymes over my bread and milk when I was nearly a baby ... only really it was mere echo-verse, that of mine, and had nothing of mark or of indication, such as I do not doubt that yours had. I used to write of virtue with a large 'V,' and 'Oh Muse' with a harp, and things of that sort. At nine years old I wrote what I called 'an epic'--and at ten, various tragedies, French and English, which we used to act in the nursery. There was a French 'hexameter' tragedy on the subject of Regulus--but I cannot even smile to think of it now, there are so many grave memories--which time has made grave--hung around it. How I remember sitting in 'my house under the sideboard,'