E.B.B. to R.B.
50 Wimpole Street: March 20, 1845.
Whenever I delay to write to you, dear Mr. Browning, it is not, be sure, that I take my 'own good time,' but submit to my own bad time. It was kind of you to wish to know how I was, and not unkind of me to suspend my answer to your question—for indeed I have not been very well, nor have had much heart for saying so. This implacable weather! this east wind that seems to blow through the sun and moon! who can be well in such a wind? Yet for me, I should not grumble. There has been nothing very bad the matter with me, as there used to be—I only grow weaker than usual, and learn my lesson of being mortal, in a corner—and then all this must end! April is coming. There will be both a May and a June if we live to see such things, and perhaps, after all, we may. And as to seeing you besides, I observe that you distrust me, and that perhaps you penetrate my morbidity and guess how when the moment comes to see a living human face to which I am not accustomed, I shrink and grow pale in the spirit. Do you? You are learned in human nature, and you know the consequences of leading such a secluded life as mine—notwithstanding all my fine philosophy about social duties and the like—well—if you have such knowledge or if you have it not, I cannot say, but I do say that I will indeed see you when the warm weather has revived me a little, and put the earth 'to rights' again so as to make pleasures of the sort possible. For if you think that I shall not like to see you, you are wrong, for all your learning. But I shall be afraid of you at first—though I am not, in writing thus. You are Paracelsus, and I am a recluse, with nerves that have been all broken on the rack, and now hang loosely—quivering at a step and breath.
And what you say of society draws me on to many comparative thoughts of your life and mine. You seem to have drunken of the cup of life full, with the sun shining on it. I have lived only inwardly; or with sorrow, for a strong emotion. Before this seclusion of my illness, I was secluded still, and there are few of the youngest women in the world who have not seen more, heard more, known more, of society, than I, who am scarcely to be called young now. I grew up in the country—had no social opportunities, had my heart in books and poetry, and my experience in reveries. My sympathies drooped towards the ground like an untrained honeysuckle—and but for one, in my own house—but of this I cannot speak. It was a lonely life, growing green like the grass around it. Books and dreams were what I lived in—and domestic life only seemed to buzz gently around, like the bees about the grass. And so time passed, and passed—and afterwards, when my illness came and I seemed to stand at the edge of the world with all done, and no prospect (as appeared at one time) of ever passing the threshold of one room again; why then, I turned to thinking with some bitterness (after the greatest sorrow of my life had given me room and time to breathe) that I had stood blind in this temple I was about to leave—that I had seen no Human nature, that my brothers and sisters of the earth were names to me, that I had beheld no great mountain or river, nothing in fact. I was as a man dying who had not read Shakespeare, and it was too late! do you understand? And do you also know what a disadvantage this ignorance is to my art? Why, if I live on and yet do not escape from this seclusion, do you not perceive that I labour under signal disadvantages—that I am, in a manner, as a blind poet? Certainly, there is a compensation to a degree. I have had much of the inner life, and from the habit of self-consciousness and self-analysis, I make great guesses at Human nature in the main. But how willingly I would as a poet exchange some of this lumbering, ponderous, helpless knowledge of books, for some experience of life and man, for some....
But all grumbling is a vile thing. We should all thank God for our measures of life, and think them enough for each of us. I write so, that you may not mistake what I wrote before in relation to society, although you do not see from my point of view; and that you may understand what I mean fully when I say, that I have lived all my chief joys, and indeed nearly all emotions that go warmly by that name and relate to myself personally, in poetry and in poetry alone. Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live while I write—it is life, for me. Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe,—but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyfully. And thus, one lives in composition surely—not always—but when the wheel goes round and the procession is uninterrupted. Is it not so with you? oh—it must be so. For the rest, there will be necessarily a reaction; and, in my own particular case, whenever I see a poem of mine in print, or even smoothly transcribed, the reaction is most painful. The pleasure, the sense of power, without which I could not write a line, is gone in a moment; and nothing remains but disappointment and humiliation. I never wrote a poem which you could not persuade me to tear to pieces if you took me at the right moment! I have a seasonable humility, I do assure you.
How delightful to talk about oneself; but as you 'tempted me and I did eat,' I entreat your longsuffering of my sin, and ah! if you would but sin back so in turn! You and I seem to meet in a mild contrarious harmony ... as in the 'si no, si no' of an Italian duet. I want to see more of men, and you have seen too much, you say. I am in ignorance, and you, in satiety. 'You don't even care about reading now.' Is it possible? And I am as 'fresh' about reading, as ever I was—as long as I keep out of the shadow of the dictionaries and of theological controversies, and the like. Shall I whisper it to you under the memory of the last rose of last summer? I am very fond of romances; yes! and I read them not only as some wise people are known to do, for the sake of the eloquence here and the sentiment there, and the graphic intermixtures here and there, but for the story! just as little children would, sitting on their papa's knee. My childish love of a story never wore out with my love of plum cake, and now there is not a hole in it. I make it a rule, for the most part, to read all the romances that other people are kind enough to write—and woe to the miserable wight who tells me how the third volume endeth. Have you in you any surviving innocence of this sort? or do you call it idiocy? If you do, I will forgive you, only smiling to myself—I give you notice,—with a smile of superior pleasure! Mr. Chorley made me quite laugh the other day by recommending Mary Hewitt's 'Improvisatore,' with a sort of deprecating reference to the descriptions in the book, just as if I never read a novel—I! I wrote a confession back to him which made him shake his head perhaps, and now I confess to you, unprovoked. I am one who could have forgotten the plague, listening to Boccaccio's stories; and I am not ashamed of it. I do not even 'see the better part,' I am so silly.
Ah! you tempt me with a grand vision of Prometheus! I, who have just escaped with my life, after treading Milton's ground, you would send me to Æschylus's. No, I do not dare. And besides ... I am inclined to think that we want new forms, as well as thoughts. The old gods are dethroned. Why should we go back to the antique moulds, classical moulds, as they are so improperly called? If it is a necessity of Art to do so, why then those critics are right who hold that Art is exhausted and the world too worn out for poetry. I do not, for my part, believe this: and I believe the so-called necessity of Art to be the mere feebleness of the artist. Let us all aspire rather to Life, and let the dead bury their dead. If we have but courage to face these conventions, to touch this low ground, we shall take strength from it instead of losing it; and of that, I am intimately persuaded. For there is poetry everywhere; the 'treasure' (see the old fable) lies all over the field. And then Christianity is a worthy myth, and poetically acceptable.
I had much to say to you, or at least something, of the 'blind hopes' &c., but am ashamed to take a step into a new sheet. If you mean 'to travel,' why, I shall have to miss you. Do you really mean it? How is the play going on? and the poem?
May God bless you!
Ever and truly yours,
E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Monday Morning.
[Post-mark, March 31, 1845.]
When you read Don Quixote, my dear romance-reader, do you ever notice that flower of an incident of good fellowship where the friendly Squire of Him of the Moon, or the Looking glasses, (I forget which) passes to Sancho's dry lips, (all under a cork-tree one morning)—a plump wine-skin,—and do you admire dear brave Miguel's knowledge of thirsty nature when he tells you that the Drinker, having seriously considered for a space the Pleiads, or place where they should be, fell, as he slowly returned the shrivelled bottle to its donor, into a deep musing of an hour's length, or thereabouts, and then ... mark ... only then, fetching a profound sigh, broke silence with ... such a piece of praise as turns pale the labours in that way of Rabelais and the Teian (if he wasn't a Byzantine monk, alas!) and our Mr. Kenyon's stately self—(since my own especial poet à moi, that can do all with anybody, only 'sips like a fly,' she says, and so cares not to compete with these behemoths that drink up Jordan)—Well, then ... (oh, I must get quick to the sentence's end, and be brief as an oracle-explainer!)—the giver is you and the taker is I, and the letter is the wine, and the star-gazing is the reading the same, and the brown study is—how shall I deserve and be grateful enough to this new strange friend of my own, that has taken away my reproach among men, that have each and all their friend, so they say (... not that I believe all they say—they boast too soon sometimes, no doubt,—I once was shown a letter wherein the truth stumbled out after this fashion 'Dere Smith,—I calls you "dere" ... because you are so in your shop!')—and the great sigh is,—there is no deserving nor being grateful at all,—and the breaking silence is, and the praise is ... ah, there, enough of it! This sunny morning is as if I wished it for you—10 strikes by the clock now—tell me if at 10 this morning you feel any good from my heart's wishes for you—I would give you all you want out of my own life and gladness and yet keep twice the stock that should by right have sufficed the thin white face that is laughing at me in the glass yonder at the fancy of its making anyone afraid ... and now, with another kind of laugh, at the thought that when its owner 'travels' next, he will leave off Miss Barrett along with port wine—Dii meliora piis, and, among them to
Yours every where, and at all times yours
R. Browning.
I have all to say yet—next letter. R.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Tuesday Night.
[Post-mark, April 16, 1845.]
I heard of you, dear Miss Barrett, between a Polka and a Cellarius the other evening, of Mr. Kenyon—how this wind must hurt you! And yesterday I had occasion to go your way—past, that is, Wimpole Street, the end of it,—and, do you know, I did not seem to have leave from you to go down it yet, much less count number after number till I came to yours,—much least than less, look up when I did come there. So I went on to a viperine she-friend of mine who, I think, rather loves me she does so hate me, and we talked over the chances of certain other friends who were to be balloted for at the 'Athenæum' last night,—one of whom, it seems, was in a fright about it—'to such little purpose' said my friend—'for he is so inoffensive—now, if one were to style you that—' 'Or you'—I said—and so we hugged ourselves in our grimness like tiger-cats. Then there is a deal in the papers to-day about Maynooth, and a meeting presided over by Lord Mayor Gibbs, and the Reverend Mr. Somebody's speech. And Mrs. Norton has gone and book-made at a great rate about the Prince of Wales, pleasantly putting off till his time all that used of old to be put off till his mother's time;—altogether, I should dearly like to hear from you, but not till the wind goes, and sun comes—because I shall see Mr. Kenyon next week and get him to tell me some more. By the way, do you suppose anybody else looks like him? If you do, the first room full of real London people you go among you will fancy to be lighted up by a saucer of burning salt and spirits of wine in the back ground.
Monday—last night when I could do nothing else I began to write to you, such writing as you have seen—strange! The proper time and season for good sound sensible and profitable forms of speech—when ought it to have occurred, and how did I evade it in these letters of mine? For people begin with a graceful skittish levity, lest you should be struck all of a heap with what is to come, and that is sure to be the stuff and staple of the man, full of wisdom and sorrow,—and then again comes the fringe of reeds and pink little stones on the other side, that you may put foot on land, and draw breath, and think what a deep pond you have swum across. But you are the real deep wonder of a creature,—and I sail these paper-boats on you rather impudently. But I always mean to be very grave one day,—when I am in better spirits and can go fuori di me.
And one thing I want to persuade you of, which is, that all you gain by travel is the discovery that you have gained nothing, and have done rightly in trusting to your innate ideas—or not rightly in distrusting them, as the case may be. You get, too, a little ... perhaps a considerable, good, in finding the world's accepted moulds everywhere, into which you may run and fix your own fused metal,—but not a grain Troy-weight do you get of new gold, silver or brass. After this, you go boldly on your own resources, and are justified to yourself, that's all. Three scratches with a pen,14 even with this pen,—and you have the green little Syrenusa where I have sate and heard the quails sing. One of these days I shall describe a country I have seen in my soul only, fruits, flowers, birds and all.
Ever yours, dear Miss Barrett,
R. Browning.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Thursday Morning.
[Post-mark, April 18, 1845.]
If you did but know dear Mr. Browning how often I have written ... not this letter I am about to write, but another better letter to you, ... in the midst of my silence, ... you would not think for a moment that the east wind, with all the harm it does to me, is able to do the great harm of putting out the light of the thought of you to my mind; for this, indeed, it has no power to do. I had the pen in my hand once to write; and why it fell out, I cannot tell you. And you see, ... all your writing will not change the wind! You wished all manner of good to me one day as the clock struck ten; yes, and I assure you I was better that day—and I must not forget to tell you so though it is so long since. And therefore, I was logically bound to believe that you had never thought of me since ... unless you thought east winds of me! That was quite clear; was it not? or would have been; if it had not been for the supernatural conviction, I had above all, of your kindness, which was too large to be taken in the hinge of a syllogism. In fact I have long left off thinking that logic proves anything—it doesn't, you know.
But your Lamia has taught you some subtle 'viperine' reasoning and motiving, for the turning down one street instead of another. It was conclusive.
Ah—but you will never persuade me that I am the better, or as well, for the thing that I have not. We look from different points of view, and yours is the point of attainment. Not that you do not truly say that, when all is done, we must come home to place our engines, and act by our own strength. I do not want material as material; no one does—but every life requires a full experience, a various experience—and I have a profound conviction that where a poet has been shut from most of the outward aspects of life, he is at a lamentable disadvantage. Can you, speaking for yourself, separate the results in you from the external influences at work around you, that you say so boldly that you get nothing from the world? You do not directly, I know—but you do indirectly and by a rebound. Whatever acts upon you, becomes you—and whatever you love or hate, whatever charms you or is scorned by you, acts on you and becomes you. Have you read the 'Improvisatore'? or will you? The writer seems to feel, just as I do, the good of the outward life; and he is a poet in his soul. It is a book full of beauty and had a great charm to me.
As to the Polkas and Cellariuses I do not covet them of course ... but what a strange world you seem to have, to me at a distance—what a strange husk of a world! How it looks to me like mandarin-life or something as remote; nay, not mandarin-life but mandarin manners, ... life, even the outer life, meaning something deeper, in my account of it. As to dear Mr. Kenyon I do not make the mistake of fancying that many can look like him or talk like him or be like him. I know enough to know otherwise. When he spoke of me he should have said that I was better notwithstanding the east wind. It is really true—I am getting slowly up from the prostration of the severe cold, and feel stronger in myself.
But Mrs. Norton discourses excellent music—and for the rest, there are fruits in the world so over-ripe, that they will fall, ... without being gathered. Let Maynooth witness to it! if you think it worth while!
Ever yours,
Elizabeth B. Barrett.
And is it nothing to be 'justified to one's self in one's resources?' 'That's all,' indeed! For the 'soul's country' we will have it also—and I know how well the birds sing in it. How glad I was by the way to see your letter!
R.B. to E.B.B.
Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, April 30, 1845.]
If you did but know, dear Miss Barrett, how the 'full stop' after 'Morning' just above, has turned out the fullest of stops,—and how for about a quarter of an hour since the ink dried I have been reasoning out the why and wherefore of the stopping, the wisdom of it, and the folly of it....
By this time you see what you have got in me—You ask me questions, 'if I like novels,' 'if the "Improvisatore" is not good,' 'if travel and sightseeing do not effect this and that for one,' and 'what I am devising—play or poem,'—and I shall not say I could not answer at all manner of lengths—but, let me only begin some good piece of writing of the kind, and ... no, you shall have it, have what I was going to tell you stops such judicious beginnings,—in a parallel case, out of which your ingenuity shall, please, pick the meaning—There is a story of D'Israeli's, an old one, with an episode of strange interest, or so I found it years ago,—well, you go breathlessly on with the people of it, page after page, till at last the end must come, you feel—and the tangled threads draw to one, and an out-of-door feast in the woods helps you ... that is, helps them, the people, wonderfully on,—and, lo, dinner is done, and Vivian Grey is here, and Violet Fane there,—and a detachment of the party is drafted off to go catch butterflies, and only two or three stop behind. At this moment, Mr. Somebody, a good man and rather the lady's uncle, 'in answer to a question from Violet, drew from his pocket a small neatly written manuscript, and, seating himself on an inverted wine-cooler, proceeded to read the following brief remarks upon the characteristics of the Moeso-gothic literature'—this ends the page,—which you don't turn at once! But when you do, in bitterness of soul, turn it, you read—'On consideration, I' (Ben, himself) 'shall keep them for Mr. Colburn's New Magazine'—and deeply you draw thankful breath! (Note this 'parallel case' of mine is pretty sure to meet the usual fortune of my writings—you will ask what it means—and this it means, or should mean, all of it, instance and reasoning and all,—that I am naturally earnest, in earnest about whatever thing I do, and little able to write about one thing while I think of another)—
I think I will really write verse to you some day—this day, it is quite clear I had better give up trying.
No, spite of all the lines in the world, I will make an end of it, as Ophelia with her swan's-song,—for it grows too absurd. But remember that I write letters to nobody but you, and that I want method and much more. That book you like so, the Danish novel, must be full of truth and beauty, to judge from the few extracts I have seen in Reviews. That a Dane should write so, confirms me in an old belief—that Italy is stuff for the use of the North, and no more—pure Poetry there is none, nearly as possible none, in Dante even—material for Poetry in the pitifullest romancist of their thousands, on the contrary—strange that those great wide black eyes should stare nothing out of the earth that lies before them! Alfieri, with even grey eyes, and a life of travel, writes you some fifteen tragedies as colourless as salad grown under a garden glass with matting over it—as free, that is, from local colouring, touches of the soil they are said to spring from,—think of 'Saulle,' and his Greek attempts!
I expected to see Mr. Kenyon, at a place where I was last week, but he kept away. Here is the bad wind back again, and the black sky. I am sure I never knew till now whether the East or West or South were the quarter to pray for—But surely the weather was a little better last week, and you, were you not better? And do you know—but it's all self-flattery I believe,—still I cannot help fancying the East wind does my head harm too!
Ever yours faithfully,
R. Browning.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Thursday.
[Post-mark, May 2, 1845.]
People say of you and of me, dear Mr. Browning, that we love the darkness and use a sphinxine idiom in our talk; and really you do talk a little like a sphinx in your argument drawn from 'Vivian Grey.' Once I sate up all night to read 'Vivian Grey'; but I never drew such an argument from him. Not that I give it up (nor you up) for a mere mystery. Nor that I can 'see what you have got in you,' from a mere guess. But just observe! If I ask questions about novels, is it not because I want to know how much elbow-room there may be for our sympathies ... and whether there is room for my loose sleeves, and the lace lappets, as well as for my elbows; and because I want to see you by the refracted lights as well as by the direct ones; and because I am willing for you to know me from the beginning, with all my weaknesses and foolishnesses, ... as they are accounted by people who say to me 'no one would ever think, without knowing you, that you were so and so.' Now if I send all my idle questions to Colburn's Magazine, with other Gothic literature, and take to standing up in a perpendicular personality like the angel on the schoolman's needle, in my letters to come, without further leaning to the left or the right—why the end would be that you would take to 'running after the butterflies,' for change of air and exercise. And then ... oh ... then, my 'small neatly written manuscripts' might fall back into my desk...! (Not a 'full stop'!.)
Indeed ... I do assure you ... I never for a moment thought of 'making conversation' about the 'Improvisatore' or novels in general, when I wrote what I did to you. I might, to other persons ... perhaps. Certainly not to you. I was not dealing round from one pack of cards to you and to others. That's what you meant to reproach me for you know,—and of that, I am not guilty at all. I never could think of 'making conversation' in a letter to you—never. Women are said to partake of the nature of children—and my brothers call me 'absurdly childish' sometimes: and I am capable of being childishly 'in earnest' about novels, and straws, and such 'puppydogs' tails' as my Flush's! Also I write more letters than you do, ... I write in fact almost as you pay visits, ... and one has to 'make conversation' in turn, of course. But—give me something to vow by—whatever you meant in the 'Vivian Grey' argument, you were wrong in it! and you never can be much more wrong—which is a comfortable reflection.
Yet you leap very high at Dante's crown—or you do not leap, ... you simply extend your hand to it, and make a rustling among the laurel leaves, which is somewhat prophane. Dante's poetry only materials for the northern rhymers! I must think of that ... if you please ... before I agree with you. Dante's poetry seems to come down in hail, rather than in rain—but count me the drops congealed in one hailstone! Oh! the 'Flight of the Duchess'—do let us hear more of her! Are you (I wonder) ... not a 'self-flatterer,' ... but ... a flatterer.
Ever yours,
E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Saturday Morning.
[Post-mark, May 3, 1845.]
Now shall you see what you shall see—here shall be 'sound speech not to be reproved,'—for this morning you are to know that the soul of me has it all her own way, dear Miss Barrett, this green cool nine-in-the-morning time for my chestnut tree over there, and for me who only coaxed my good-natured—(really)—body up, after its three-hours' night-rest on condition it should lounge, or creep about, incognito and without consequences—and so it shall, all but my right-hand which is half-spirit and 'cuts' its poor relation, and passes itself off for somebody (that is, some soul) and is doubly active and ready on such occasions—Now I shall tell you all about it, first what last letter meant, and then more. You are to know, then that for some reason, that looked like an instinct, I thought I ought not to send shaft on shaft, letter-plague on letter, with such an uninterrupted clanging ... that I ought to wait, say a week at least having killed all your mules for you, before I shot down your dogs—but not being exactly Phoibos Apollon, you are to know further that when I did think I might go modestly on, ... ωμοι, let me get out of this slough of a simile, never mind with what dislocation of ancles! Plainly, from waiting and turning my eyes away (not from you, but from you in your special capacity of being written-to, not spoken-to) when I turned again you had grown formidable somehow—though that's not the word,—nor are you the person, either,—it was my fortune, my privilege of being your friend this one way, that it seemed a shame for me to make no better use of than taking it up with talk about books and I don't know what. Write what I will, you would read for once, I think—well, then,—what I shall write shall be—something on this book, and the other book, and my own books, and Mary Hewitt's books, and at the end of it—good bye, and I hope here is a quarter of an hour rationally spent. So the thought of what I should find in my heart to say, and the contrast with what I suppose I ought to say ... all these things are against me. But this is very foolish, all the same, I need not be told—and is part and parcel of an older—indeed primitive body of mine, which I shall never wholly get rid of, of desiring to do nothing when I cannot do all; seeing nothing, getting, enjoying nothing, where there is no seeing and getting and enjoying wholly—and in this case, moreover, you are you, and know something about me, if not much, and have read Bos on the art of supplying Ellipses, and (after, particularly, I have confessed all this, why and how it has been) you will subaudire when I pull out my Mediæval-Gothic-Architectural-Manuscript (so it was, I remember now,) and instruct you about corbeils and ogives ... though, after all, it was none of Vivian's doing, that,—all the uncle kind or man's, which I never professed to be. Now you see how I came to say some nonsense (I very vaguely think what) about Dante—some desperate splash I know I made for the beginning of my picture, as when a painter at his wits' end and hunger's beginning says 'Here shall the figure's hand be'—and spots that down, meaning to reach it naturally from the other end of his canvas,—and leaving off tired, there you see the spectral disjoined thing, and nothing between it and rationality. I intended to shade down and soften off and put in and leave out, and, before I had done, bring Italian Poets round to their old place again in my heart, giving new praise if I took old,—anyhow Dante is out of it all, as who knows but I, with all of him in my head and heart? But they do fret one, those tantalizing creatures, of fine passionate class, with such capabilities, and such a facility of being made pure mind of. And the special instance that vexed me, was that a man of sands and dog-roses and white rock and green sea-water just under, should come to Italy where my heart lives, and discover the sights and sounds ... certainly discover them. And so do all Northern writers; for take up handfuls of sonetti, rime, poemetti, doings of those who never did anything else,—and try and make out, for yourself, what ... say, what flowers they tread on, or trees they walk under,—as you might bid them, those tree and flower loving creatures, pick out of our North poetry a notion of what our daisies and harebells and furze bushes and brambles are—'Odorosi fioretti, rose porporine, bianchissimi gigli.' And which of you eternal triflers was it called yourself 'Shelley' and so told me years ago that in the mountains it was a feast
When one should find those globes of deep red gold—
Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.
so that when my Uncle walked into a sorb-tree, not to tumble sheer over Monte Calvano, and I felt the fruit against my face, the little ragged bare-legged guide fairly laughed at my knowing them so well—'Niursi—sorbi!' No, no,—does not all Naples-bay and half Sicily, shore and inland, come flocking once a year to the Piedigrotta fête only to see the blessed King's Volanti, or livery servants all in their best; as though heaven opened; and would not I engage to bring the whole of the Piano (of Sorrento) in likeness to a red velvet dressing gown properly spangled over, before the priest that held it out on a pole had even begun his story of how Noah's son Shem, the founder of Sorrento, threw it off to swim thither, as the world knows he did? Oh, it makes one's soul angry, so enough of it. But never enough of telling you—bring all your sympathies, come with loosest sleeves and longest lace-lappets, and you and yours shall find 'elbow room,' oh, shall you not! For never did man, woman or child, Greek, Hebrew, or as Danish as our friend, like a thing, not to say love it, but I liked and loved it, one liking neutralizing the rebellious stir of its fellow, so that I don't go about now wanting the fixed stars before my time; this world has not escaped me, thank God; and—what other people say is the best of it, may not escape me after all, though until so very lately I made up my mind to do without it;—perhaps, on that account, and to make fair amends to other people, who, I have no right to say, complain without cause. I have been surprised, rather, with something not unlike illness of late—I have had a constant pain in the head for these two months, which only very rough exercise gets rid of, and which stops my 'Luria' and much besides. I thought I never could be unwell. Just now all of it is gone, thanks to polking all night and walking home by broad daylight to the surprise of the thrushes in the bush here. And do you know I said 'this must go, cannot mean to stay, so I will not tell Miss Barrett why this and this is not done,'—but I mean to tell you all, or more of the truth, because you call me 'flatterer,' so that my eyes widened again! I, and in what? And of whom, pray? not of you, at all events,—of whom then? Do tell me, because I want to stand with you—and am quite in earnest there. And 'The Flight of the Duchess,' to leave nothing out, is only the beginning of a story written some time ago, and given to poor Hood in his emergency at a day's notice,—the true stuff and story is all to come, the 'Flight,' and what you allude to is the mere introduction—but the Magazine has passed into other hands and I must put the rest in some 'Bell' or other—it is one of my Dramatic Romances. So is a certain 'Saul' I should like to show you one day—an ominous liking—for nobody ever sees what I do till it is printed. But as you do know the printed little part of me, I should not be sorry if, in justice, you knew all I have really done,—written in the portfolio there,—though that would be far enough from this me, that wishes to you now. I should like to write something in concert with you, how I would try!
I have read your letter through again. Does this clear up all the difficulty, and do you see that I never dreamed of 'reproaching you for dealing out one sort of cards to me and everybody else'—but that ... why, 'that' which I have, I hope, said, so need not resay. I will tell you—Sydney Smith laughs somewhere at some Methodist or other whose wont was, on meeting an acquaintance in the street, to open at once on him with some enquiry after the state of his soul—Sydney knows better now, and sees that one might quite as wisely ask such questions as the price of Illinois stock or condition of glebe-land,—and I could say such—'could,'—the plague of it! So no more at present from your loving.... Or, let me tell you I am going to see Mr. Kenyon on the 12th inst.—that you do not tell me how you are, and that yet if you do not continue to improve in health ... I shall not see you—not—not—not—what 'knots' to untie! Surely the wind that sets my chestnut-tree dancing, all its baby-cone-blossoms, green now, rocking like fairy castles on a hill in an earthquake,—that is South West, surely! God bless you, and me in that—and do write to me soon, and tell me who was the 'flatterer,' and how he never was
Yours
R.B.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Monday—and Tuesday.
[Post-mark, May 6, 1845.]
So when wise people happen to be ill, they sit up till six o'clock in the morning and get up again at nine? Do tell me how Lurias can ever be made out of such ungodly imprudences. If the wind blows east or west, where can any remedy be, while such evil deeds are being committed? And what is to be the end of it? And what is the reasonableness of it in the meantime, when we all know that thinking, dreaming, creating people like yourself, have two lives to bear instead of one, and therefore ought to sleep more than others, ... throwing over and buckling in that fold of death, to stroke the life-purple smoother. You have to live your own personal life, and also Luria's life—and therefore you should sleep for both. It is logical indeed—and rational, ... which logic is not always ... and if I had 'the tongue of men and of angels,' I would use it to persuade you. Polka, for the rest, may be good; but sleep is better. I think better of sleep than I ever did, now that she will not easily come near me except in a red hood of poppies. And besides, ... praise your 'goodnatured body' as you like, ... it is only a seeming goodnature! Bodies bear malice in a terrible way, be very sure!—appear mild and smiling for a few short years, and then ... out with a cold steel; and the soul has it, 'with a vengeance,' ... according to the phrase! You will not persist, (will you?) in this experimental homicide. Or tell me if you will, that I may do some more tearing. It really, really is wrong. Exercise is one sort of rest and you feel relieved by it—and sleep is another: one being as necessary as the other.
This is the first thing I have to say. The next is a question. What do you mean about your manuscripts ... about 'Saul' and the portfolio? for I am afraid of hazardously supplying ellipses—and your 'Bos' comes to βους επι γλωσση.15 I get half bribed to silence by the very pleasure of fancying. But if it could be possible that you should mean to say you would show me.... Can it be? or am I reading this 'Attic contraction' quite the wrong way? You see I am afraid of the difference between flattering myself and being flattered; the fatal difference. And now will you understand that I should be too overjoyed to have revelations from the 'Portfolio,' ... however incarnated with blots and pen-scratches, ... to be able to ask impudently of them now? Is that plain?
It must be, ... at any rate, ... that if you would like to 'write something together' with me, I should like it still better. I should like it for some ineffable reasons. And I should not like it a bit the less for the grand supply of jests it would administer to the critical Board of Trade, about visible darkness, multiplied by two, mounting into palpable obscure. We should not mind ... should we? you would not mind, if you had got over certain other considerations deconsiderating to your coadjutor. Yes—but I dare not do it, ... I mean, think of it, ... just now, if ever: and I will tell you why in a Mediæval-Gothic-architectural manuscript.
The only poet by profession (if I may say so,) except yourself, with whom I ever had much intercourse even on paper, (if this is near to 'much') has been Mr. Horne. We approached each other on the point of one of Miss Mitford's annual editorships; and ever since, he has had the habit of writing to me occasionally; and when I was too ill to write at all, in my dreary Devonshire days, I was his debtor for various little kindnesses, ... for which I continue his debtor. In my opinion he is a truehearted and generous man. Do you not think so? Well—long and long ago, he asked me to write a drama with him on the Greek model; that is, for me to write the choruses, and for him to do the dialogue. Just then it was quite doubtful in my own mind, and worse than doubtful, whether I ever should write again; and the very doubtfulness made me speak my 'yes' more readily. Then I was desired to make a subject, ... to conceive a plan; and my plan was of a man, haunted by his own soul, ... (making her a separate personal Psyche, a dreadful, beautiful Psyche)—the man being haunted and terrified through all the turns of life by her. Did you ever feel afraid of your own soul, as I have done? I think it is a true wonder of our humanity—and fit subject enough for a wild lyrical drama. I should like to write it by myself at least, well enough. But with him I will not now. It was delayed ... delayed. He cut the plan up into scenes ... I mean into a list of scenes ... a sort of ground-map to work on—and there it lies. Nothing more was done. It all lies in one sheet—and I have offered to give up my copyright of idea in it—if he likes to use it alone—or I should not object to work it out alone on my own side, since it comes from me: only I will not consent now to a double work in it. There are objections—none, be it well understood, in Mr. Horne's disfavour,—for I think of him as well at this moment, and the same in all essential points, as I ever did. He is a man of fine imagination, and is besides good and generous. In the course of our acquaintance (on paper—for I never saw him) I never was angry with him except once; and then, I was quite wrong and had to confess it. But this is being too 'mediæval.' Only you will see from it that I am a little entangled on the subject of compound works, and must look where I tread ... and you will understand (if you ever hear from Mr. Kenyon or elsewhere that I am going to write a compound-poem with Mr. Horne) how it was true, and isn't true any more.
Yes—you are going to Mr. Kenyon's on the 12th—and yes—my brother and sister are going to meet you and your sister there one day to dinner. Shall I have courage to see you soon, I wonder! If you ask me, I must ask myself. But oh, this make-believe May—it can't be May after all! If a south-west wind sate in your chestnut tree, it was but for a few hours—the east wind 'came up this way' by the earliest opportunity of succession. As the old 'mysteries' showed 'Beelzebub with a bearde,' even so has the east wind had a 'bearde' of late, in a full growth of bristling exaggerations—the English spring-winds have excelled themselves in evil this year; and I have not been down-stairs yet.—But I am certainly stronger and better than I was—that is undeniable—and I shall be better still. You are not going away soon—are you? In the meantime you do not know what it is to be ... a little afraid of Paracelsus. So right about the Italians! and the 'rose porporine' which made me smile. How is the head?
Ever yours,
E.B.B.
Is the 'Flight of the Duchess' in the portfolio? Of course you must ring the Bell. That poem has a strong heart in it, to begin so strongly. Poor Hood! And all those thoughts fall mixed together. May God bless you.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Sunday—in the last hour of it.
[Post-mark, May 12, 1845.]
May I ask how the head is? just under the bag? Mr. Kenyon was here to-day and told me such bad news that I cannot sleep to-night (although I did think once of doing it) without asking such a question as this, dear Mr. Browning.
Let me hear how you are—Will you? and let me hear (if I can) that it was prudence or some unchristian virtue of the sort, and not a dreary necessity, which made you put aside the engagement for Tuesday—for Monday. I had been thinking so of seeing you on Tuesday ... with my sister's eyes—for the first sight.
And now if you have done killing the mules and the dogs, let me have a straight quick arrow for myself, if you please. Just a word, to say how you are. I ask for no more than a word, lest the writing should be hurtful to you.
May God bless you always.
Your friend,
E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Monday.
[Post-mark, May 12, 1845.]
My dear, own friend, I am quite well now, or next to it—but this is how it was,—I have gone out a great deal of late, and my head took to ringing such a literal alarum that I wondered what was to come of it; and at last, a few evenings ago, as I was dressing for a dinner somewhere, I got really bad of a sudden, and kept at home to my friend's heartrending disappointment. Next morning I was no better—and it struck me that I should be really disappointing dear kind Mr. Kenyon, and wasting his time, if that engagement, too, were broken with as little warning,—so I thought it best to forego all hopes of seeing him, at such a risk. And that done, I got rid of every other promise to pay visits for next week and next, and told everybody, with considerable dignity, that my London season was over for this year, as it assuredly is—and I shall be worried no more, and let walk in the garden, and go to bed at ten o'clock, and get done with what is most expedient to do, and my 'flesh shall come again like a little child's,' and one day, oh the day, I shall see you with my own, own eyes ... for, how little you understand me; or rather, yourself,—if you think I would dare see you, without your leave, that way! Do you suppose that your power of giving and refusing ends when you have shut your room-door? Did I not tell you I turned down another street, even, the other day, and why not down yours? And often as I see Mr. Kenyon, have I ever dreamed of asking any but the merest conventional questions about you; your health, and no more?
I will answer your letter, the last one, to-morrow—I have said nothing of what I want to say.
Ever yours
R.B.