R.B. to E.B.B.
Saturday.
[Post-mark, December 20, 1845.]
I do not, nor will not think, dearest, of ever 'making you happy'—I can imagine no way of working that end, which does not go straight to my own truest, only true happiness—yet in every such effort there is implied some distinction, some supererogatory grace, or why speak of it at all? You it is, are my happiness, and all that ever can be: you—dearest!
But never, if you would not, what you will not do I know, never revert to that frightful wish. 'Disappoint me?' 'I speak what I know and testify what I have seen'—you shall 'mystery' again and again—I do not dispute that, but do not you dispute, neither, that mysteries are. But it is simply because I do most justice to the mystical part of what I feel for you, because I consent to lay most stress on that fact of facts that I love you, beyond admiration, and respect, and esteem and affection even, and do not adduce any reason which stops short of accounting for that, whatever else it would account for, because I do this, in pure logical justice—you are able to turn and wonder (if you do ... now) what causes it all! My love, only wait, only believe in me, and it cannot be but I shall, little by little, become known to you—after long years, perhaps, but still one day: I would say this now—but I will write more to-morrow. God bless my sweetest—ever, love, I am your
R.B.
But my letter came last night, did it not?
Another thing—no, to-morrow—for time presses, and, in all cases, Tuesday—remember!
E.B.B. to R.B.
Saturday.
[Post-mark, December 20, 1845.]
I have your letter now, and now I am sorry I sent mine. If I wrote that you had 'forgotten to write,' I did not mean it; not a word! If I had meant it I should not have written it. But it would have been better for every reason to have waited just a little longer before writing at all. A besetting sin of mine is an impatience which makes people laugh when it does not entangle their silks, pull their knots tighter, and tear their books in cutting them open.
How right you are about Mr. Lowell! He has a refined fancy and is graceful for an American critic, but the truth is, otherwise, that he knows nothing of English poetry or the next thing to nothing, and has merely had a dream of the early dramatists. The amount of his reading in that direction is an article in the Retrospective Review which contains extracts; and he re-extracts the extracts, re-quotes the quotations, and, 'a pede Herculem,' from the foot infers the man, or rather from the sandal-string of the foot, infers and judges the soul of the man—it is comparative anatomy under the most speculative conditions. How a writer of his talents and pretensions could make up his mind to make up a book on such slight substratum, is a curious proof of the state of literature in America. Do you not think so? Why a lecturer on the English Dramatists for a 'Young Ladies' academy' here in England, might take it to be necessary to have better information than he could gather from an odd volume of an old review! And then, Mr. Lowell's naïveté in showing his authority,—as if the Elizabethan poets lay mouldering in inaccessible manuscript somewhere below the lowest deep of Shakespeare's grave,—is curious beyond the rest! Altogether, the fact is an epigram on the surface-literature of America. As you say, their books do not suit us:—Mrs. Markham might as well send her compendium of the History of France to M. Thiers. If they knew more they could not give parsley crowns to their own native poets when there is greater merit among the rabbits. Mrs. Sigourney has just sent me—just this morning—her 'Scenes in my Native Land' and, peeping between the uncut leaves, I read of the poet Hillhouse, of 'sublime spirit and Miltonic energy,' standing in 'the temple of Fame' as if it were built on purpose for him. I suppose he is like most of the American poets, who are shadows of the true, as flat as a shadow, as colourless as a shadow, as lifeless and as transitory. Mr. Lowell himself is, in his verse-books, poetical, if not a poet—and certainly this little book we are talking of is grateful enough in some ways—you would call it a pretty book—would you not? Two or three letters I have had from him ... all very kind!—and that reminds me, alas! of some ineffable ingratitude on my own part! When one's conscience grows too heavy, there is nothing for it but to throw it away!—
Do you remember how I tried to tell you what he said of you, and how you would not let me?
Mr. Mathews said of him, having met him once in society, that he was the concentration of conceit in appearance and manner. But since then they seem to be on better terms.
Where is the meaning, pray, of E.B.C.? your meaning, I mean?
My true initials are E.B.M.B.—my long name, as opposed to my short one, being Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett!—there's a full length to take away one's breath!—Christian name ... Elizabeth Barrett:—surname, Moulton Barrett. So long it is, that to make it portable, I fell into the habit of doubling it up and packing it closely, ... and of forgetting that I was a Moulton, altogether. One might as well write the alphabet as all four initials. Yet our family-name is Moulton Barrett, and my brothers reproach me sometimes for sacrificing the governorship of an old town in Norfolk with a little honourable verdigris from the Heralds' Office. As if I cared for the Retrospective Review! Nevertheless it is true that I would give ten towns in Norfolk (if I had them) to own some purer lineage than that of the blood of the slave! Cursed we are from generation to generation!—I seem to hear the 'Commination Service.'
May God bless you always, always! beyond the always of this world!—
Your
E.B.B.
Mr. Dickens's 'Cricket' sings repetitions, and, with considerable beauty, is extravagant. It does not appear to me by any means one of his most successful productions, though quite free from what was reproached as bitterness and one-sidedness, last year.
You do not say how you are—not a word! And you are wrong in saying that you 'ought to have written'—as if 'ought' could be in place so! You never 'ought' to write to me you know! or rather ... if you ever think you ought, you ought not! Which is a speaking of mysteries on my part!
R.B. to E.B.B.
Sunday Night.
[Post-mark, December 22, 1845.]
Now, 'ought' you to be 'sorry you sent that letter,' which made, and makes me so happy—so happy—can you bring yourself to turn round and tell one you have so blessed with your bounty that there was a mistake, and you meant only half that largess? If you are not sensible that you do make me most happy by such letters, and do not warm in the reflection of your own rays, then I do give up indeed the last chance of procuring you happiness. My own 'ought,' which you object to, shall be withdrawn—being only a pure bit of selfishness; I felt, in missing the letter of yours, next day, that I might have drawn it down by one of mine,—if I had begged never so gently, the gold would have fallen—there was my omitted duty to myself which you properly blame. I should stand silently and wait and be sure of the ever-remembering goodness.
Let me count my gold now—and rub off any speck that stays the full shining. First—that thought ... I told you; I pray you, pray you, sweet—never that again—or what leads never so remotely or indirectly to it! On your own fancied ground, the fulfilment would be of necessity fraught with every woe that can fall in this life. I am yours for ever—if you are not here, with me—what then? Say, you take all of yourself away but just enough to live on; then, that defeats every kind purpose ... as if you cut away all the ground from my feet but so much as serves for bare standing room ... why still, I stand there—and is it the better that I have no broader space, when off that you cannot force me? I have your memory, the knowledge of you, the idea of you printed into my heart and brain,—on that, I can live my life—but it is for you, the dear, utterly generous creature I know you, to give me more and more beyond mere life—to extend life and deepen it—as you do, and will do. Oh, how I love you when I think of the entire truthfulness of your generosity to me—how, meaning and willing to give, you gave nobly! Do you think I have not seen in this world how women who do love will manage to confer that gift on occasion? And shall I allow myself to fancy how much alloy such pure gold as your love would have rendered endurable? Yet it came, virgin ore, to complete my fortune! And what but this makes me confident and happy? Can I take a lesson by your fancies, and begin frightening myself with saying ... 'But if she saw all the world—the worthier, better men there ... those who would' &c. &c. No, I think of the great, dear gift that it was; how I 'won' nothing (the hateful word, and French thought)—did nothing by my own arts or cleverness in the matter ... so what pretence have the more artful or more clever for:—but I cannot write out this folly—I am yours for ever, with the utmost sense of gratitude—to say I would give you my life joyfully is little.... I would, I hope, do that for two or three other people—but I am not conscious of any imaginable point in which I would not implicitly devote my whole self to you—be disposed of by you as for the best. There! It is not to be spoken of—let me live it into proof, beloved!
And for 'disappointment and a burden' ... now—let us get quite away from ourselves, and not see one of the filaments, but only the cords of love with the world's horny eye. Have we such jarring tastes, then? Does your inordinate attachment to gay life interfere with my deep passion for society? 'Have they common sympathy in each other's pursuits?'—always asks Mrs. Tomkins! Well, here was I when you knew me, fixed in my way of life, meaning with God's help to write what may be written and so die at peace with myself so far. Can you help me or no? Do you not help me so much that, if you saw the more likely peril for poor human nature, you would say, 'He will be jealous of all the help coming from me,—none from him to me!'—And that would be a consequence of the help, all-too-great for hope of return, with any one less possessed than I with the exquisiteness of being transcended and the blest one.
But—'here comes the Selah and the voice is hushed'—I will speak of other things. When we are together one day—the days I believe in—I mean to set about that reconsidering 'Sordello'—it has always been rather on my mind—but yesterday I was reading the 'Purgatorio' and the first speech of the group of which Sordello makes one struck me with a new significance, as well describing the man and his purpose and fate in my own poem—see; one of the burthened, contorted souls tells Virgil and Dante—
Noi fummo già tutti per forza morti,
E peccatori infin' all' ultim' ora:
Quivi—lume del ciel ne fece accorti
Si chè, pentendo e perdonando, fora
Di vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati
Che del disio di se veder n'accora.23
Which is just my Sordello's story ... could I 'do' it off hand, I wonder—
And sinners were we to the extreme hour;
Then, light from heaven fell, making us aware,
So that, repenting us and pardoned, out
Of life we passed to God, at peace with Him
Who fills the heart with yearning Him to see.
There were many singular incidents attending my work on that subject—thus, quite at the end, I found out there was printed and not published, a little historical tract by a Count V—— something, called 'Sordello'—with the motto 'Post fata resurgam'! I hope he prophesied. The main of this—biographical notices—is extracted by Muratori, I think. Last year when I set foot in Naples I found after a few minutes that at some theatre, that night, the opera was to be 'one act of Sordello' and I never looked twice, nor expended a couple of carlines on the libretto!
I wanted to tell you, in last letter, that when I spoke of people's tempers you have no concern with 'people'—I do not glance obliquely at your temper—either to discover it, or praise it, or adapt myself to it. I speak of the relation one sees in other cases—how one opposes passionate foolish people, but hates cold clever people who take quite care enough of themselves. I myself am born supremely passionate—so I was born with light yellow hair: all changes—that is the passion changes its direction and, taking a channel large enough, looks calmer, perhaps, than it should—and all my sympathies go with quiet strength, of course—but I know what the other kind is. As for the breakages of chairs, and the appreciation of Parisian meubles; manibus, pedibusque descendo in tuam sententiam, Ba, mi ocelle! ('What was E.B. C?' why, the first letter after, and not, E.B. B, my own B! There was no latent meaning in the C—but I had no inclination to go on to D, or E, for instance).
And so, love, Tuesday is to be our day—one day more—and then! And meanwhile 'care' for me! a good word for you—but my care, what is that! One day I aspire to care, though! I shall not go away at any dear Mr. K.'s coming! They call me down-stairs to supper—and my fire is out, and you keep me from feeling cold and yet ask if I am well? Yes, well—yes, happy—and your own ever—I must bid God bless you—dearest!
R.B.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Sunday Night.
[Post-mark, December 24, 1845.]
But did I dispute? Surely not. Surely I believe in you and in 'mysteries.' Surely I prefer the no-reason to ever so much rationalism ... (rationalism and infidelity go together they say!). All which I may do, and be afraid sometimes notwithstanding, and when you overpraise me (not overlove) I must be frightened as I told you.
It is with me as with the theologians. I believe in you and can be happy and safe so; but when my 'personal merits' come into question in any way, even the least, ... why then the position grows untenable: it is no more 'of grace.'
Do I tease you as I tease myself sometimes? But do not wrong me in turn! Do not keep repeating that 'after long years' I shall know you—know you!—as if I did not without the years. If you are forced to refer me to those long ears, I must deserve the thistles besides. The thistles are the corollary.
For it is obvious—manifest—that I cannot doubt of you, that I may doubt of myself, of happiness, of the whole world,—but of you—not: it is obvious that if I could doubt of you and act so I should be a very idiot, or worse indeed. And you ... you think I doubt of you whenever I make an interjection!—now do you not? And is it reasonable?—Of you, I mean?
Monday.—For my part, you must admit it to be too possible that you may be, as I say, 'disappointed' in me—it is too possible. And if it does me good to say so, even now perhaps ... if it is mere weakness to say so and simply torments you, why do you be magnanimous and forgive that ... let it pass as a weakness and forgive it so. Often I think painful things which I do not tell you and....
While I write, your letter comes. Kindest of you it was, to write me such a letter, when I expected scarcely the shadow of one!—this makes up for the other letter which I expected unreasonably and which you 'ought not' to have written, as was proved afterwards. And now why should I go on with that sentence? What had I to say of 'painful things,' I wonder? all the painful things seem gone ... vanished. I forget what I had to say. Only do you still think of this, dearest beloved; that I sit here in the dark but for you, and that the light you bring me (from my fault!—from the nature of my darkness!) is not a settled light as when you open the shutters in the morning, but a light made by candles which burn some of them longer and some shorter, and some brighter and briefer, at once—being 'double-wicks,' and that there is an intermission for a moment now and then between the dropping of the old light into the socket and the lighting of the new. Every letter of yours is a new light which burns so many hours ... and then!—I am morbid, you see—or call it by what name you like ... too wise or too foolish. 'If the light of the body is darkness, how great is that darkness.' Yet even when I grow too wise, I admit always that while you love me it is an answer to all. And I am never so much too foolish as to wish to be worthier for my own sake—only for yours:—not for my own sake, since I am content to owe all things to you.
And it could be so much to you to lose me!—and you say so,—and then think it needful to tell me not to think the other thought! As if that were possible! Do you remember what you said once of the flowers?—that you 'felt a respect for them when they had passed out of your hands.' And must it not be so with my life, which if you choose to have it, must be respected too? Much more with my life! Also, see that I, who had my warmest affections on the other side of the grave, feel that it is otherwise with me now—quite otherwise. I did not like it at first to be so much otherwise. And I could not have had any such thought through a weariness of life or any of my old motives, but simply to escape the 'risk' I told you of. Should I have said to you instead of it ... 'Love me for ever'? Well then, ... I do.
As to my 'helping' you, my help is in your fancy; and if you go on with the fancy, I perfectly understand that it will be as good as deeds. We have sympathy too—we walk one way—oh, I do not forget the advantages. Only Mrs. Tomkins's ideas of happiness are below my ambition for you.
So often as I have said (it reminds me) that in this situation I should be more exacting than any other woman—so often I have said it: and so different everything is from what I thought it would be! Because if I am exacting it is for you and not for me—it is altogether for you—you understand that, dearest of all ... it is for you wholly. It never crosses my thought, in a lightning even, the question whether I may be happy so and so—I. It is the other question which comes always—too often for peace.
People used to say to me, 'You expect too much—you are too romantic.' And my answer always was that 'I could not expect too much when I expected nothing at all' ... which was the truth—for I never thought (and how often I have said that!) I never thought that anyone whom I could love, would stoop to love me ... the two things seemed clearly incompatible to my understanding.
And now when it comes in a miracle, you wonder at me for looking twice, thrice, four times, to see if it comes through ivory or horn. You wonder that it should seem to me at first all illusion—illusion for you,—illusion for me as a consequence. But how natural.
It is true of me—very true—that I have not a high appreciation of what passes in the world (and not merely the Tomkins-world!) under the name of love; and that a distrust of the thing had grown to be a habit of mind with me when I knew you first. It has appeared to me, through all the seclusion of my life and the narrow experience it admitted of, that in nothing men—and women too—were so apt to mistake their own feelings, as in this one thing. Putting falseness quite on one side, quite out of sight and consideration, an honest mistaking of feeling appears wonderfully common, and no mistake has such frightful results—none can. Self-love and generosity, a mistake may come from either—from pity, from admiration, from any blind impulse—oh, when I look at the histories of my own female friends—to go no step further! And if it is true of the women, what must the other side be? To see the marriages which are made every day! worse than solitudes and more desolate! In the case of the two happiest I ever knew, one of the husbands said in confidence to a brother of mine—not much in confidence or I should not have heard it, but in a sort of smoking frankness,—that he had 'ruined his prospects by marrying'; and the other said to himself at the very moment of professing an extraordinary happiness, ... 'But I should have done as well if I had not married her.'
Then for the falseness—the first time I ever, in my own experience, heard that word which rhymes to glove and comes as easily off and on (on some hands!)—it was from a man of whose attentions to another woman I was at that time her confidante. I was bound so to silence for her sake, that I could not even speak the scorn that was in me—and in fact my uppermost feeling was a sort of horror ... a terror—for I was very young then, and the world did, at the moment, look ghastly!
The falseness and the calculations!—why how can you, who are just, blame women ... when you must know what the 'system' of man is towards them,—and of men not ungenerous otherwise? Why are women to be blamed if they act as if they had to do with swindlers?—is it not the mere instinct of preservation which makes them do it? These make women what they are. And your 'honourable men,' the most loyal of them, (for instance) is it not a rule with them (unless when taken unaware through a want of self-government) to force a woman (trying all means) to force a woman to stand committed in her affections ... (they with their feet lifted all the time to trample on her for want of delicacy) before they risk the pin-prick to their own personal pitiful vanities? Oh—to see how these things are set about by men! to see how a man carefully holding up on each side the skirts of an embroidered vanity to keep it quite safe from the wet, will contrive to tell you in so many words that he ... might love you if the sun shone! And women are to be blamed! Why there are, to be sure, cold and heartless, light and changeable, ungenerous and calculating women in the world!—that is sure. But for the most part, they are only what they are made ... and far better than the nature of the making ... of that I am confident. The loyal make the loyal, the disloyal the disloyal. And I give no more discredit to those women you speak of, than I myself can take any credit in this thing—I. Because who could be disloyal with you ... with whatever corrupt inclination? you, who are the noblest of all? If you judge me so, ... it is my privilege rather than my merit ... as I feel of myself.
Wednesday.—All but the last few lines of all this was written before I saw you yesterday, ever dearest—and since, I have been reading your third act which is perfectly noble and worthy of you both in the conception and expression, and carries the reader on triumphantly ... to speak for one reader. It seems to me too that the language is freer—there is less inversion and more breadth of rhythm. It just strikes me so for the first impression. At any rate the interest grows and grows. You have a secret about Domizia, I guess—which will not be told till the last perhaps. And that poor, noble Luria, who will be equal to the leap ... as it is easy to see. It is full, altogether, of magnanimities;—noble, and nobly put. I will go on with my notes, and those, you shall have at once ... I mean together ... presently. And don't hurry and chafe yourself for the fourth act—now that you are better! To be ill again—think what that would be! Luria will be great now whatever you do—or whatever you do not. Will he not?
And never, never for a moment (I quite forgot to tell you) did I fancy that you were talking at me in the temper-observations—never. It was the most unprovoked egotism, all that I told you of my temper; for certainly I never suspected you of asking questions so. I was simply amused a little by what you said, and thought to myself (if you will know my thoughts on that serious subject) that you had probably lived among very good-tempered persons, to hold such an opinion about the innocuousness of ill-temper. It was all I thought, indeed. Now to fancy that I was capable of suspecting you of such a manoeuvre! Why you would have asked me directly;—if you had wished 'curiously to enquire.'
An excellent solemn chiming, the passage from Dante makes with your 'Sordello,' and the 'Sordello' deserves the labour which it needs, to make it appear the great work it is. I think that the principle of association is too subtly in movement throughout it—so that while you are going straight forward you go at the same time round and round, until the progress involved in the motion is lost sight of by the lookers on. Or did I tell you that before?
You have heard, I suppose, how Dickens's 'Cricket' sells by nineteen thousand copies at a time, though he takes Michael Angelo to be 'a humbug'—or for 'though' read 'because.' Tell me of Mr. Kenyon's dinner and Moxon?
Is not this an infinite letter? I shall hear from you, I hope.... I ask you to let me hear soon. I write all sorts of things to you, rightly and wrongly perhaps; when wrongly forgive it. I think of you always. May God bless you. 'Love me for ever,' as
Your
Ba
R.B. to E.B.B.
25th Dec. [1845.]
My dear Christmas gift of a letter! I will write back a few lines, (all I can, having to go out now)—just that I may forever,—certainly during our mortal 'forever'—mix my love for you, and, as you suffer me to say, your love for me ... dearest! ... these shall be mixed with the other loves of the day and live therein—as I write, and trust, and know—forever! While I live I will remember what was my feeling in reading, and in writing, and in stopping from either ... as I have just done ... to kiss you and bless you with my whole heart.—Yes, yes, bless you, my own!
All is right, all of your letter ... admirably right and just in the defence of the women I seemed to speak against; and only seemed—because that is a way of mine which you must have observed; that foolish concentrating of thought and feeling, for a moment, on some one little spot of a character or anything else indeed, and in the attempt to do justice and develop whatever may seem ordinarily to be overlooked in it,—that over vehement insisting on, and giving an undue prominence to, the same—which has the effect of taking away from the importance of the rest of the related objects which, in truth, are not considered at all ... or they would also rise proportionally when subjected to the same (that is, correspondingly magnified and dilated) light and concentrated feeling. So, you remember, the old divine, preaching on 'small sins,' in his zeal to expose the tendencies and consequences usually made little account of, was led to maintain the said small sins to be 'greater than great ones.' But then ... if you look on the world altogether, and accept the small natures, in their usual proportion with the greater ... things do not look quite so bad; because the conduct which is atrocious in those higher cases, of proposal and acceptance, may be no more than the claims of the occasion justify (wait and hear) in certain other cases where the thing sought for and granted is avowedly less by a million degrees. It shall all be traffic, exchange (counting spiritual gifts as only coin, for our purpose), but surely the formalities and policies and decencies all vary with the nature of the thing trafficked for. If a man makes up his mind during half his life to acquire a Pitt-diamond or a Pilgrim-pearl—[he] gets witnesses and testimony and so forth—but, surely, when I pass a shop where oranges are ticketed up seven for sixpence I offend no law by sparing all words and putting down the piece with a certain authoritative ring on the counter. If instead of diamonds you want—(being a king or queen)—provinces with live men on them ... there is so much more diplomacy required; new interests are appealed to—high motives supposed, at all events—whereas, when, in Naples, a man asks leave to black your shoe in the dusty street 'purely for the honour of serving your Excellency' you laugh and would be sorry to find yourself without a 'grano' or two—(six of which, about, make a farthing)—Now do you not see! Where so little is to be got, why offer much more? If a man knows that ... but I am teaching you! All I mean is, that, in Benedick's phrase, 'the world must go on.' He who honestly wants his wife to sit at the head of his table and carve ... that is be his help-meat (not 'help mete for him')—he shall assuredly find a girl of his degree who wants the table to sit at; and some dear friend to mortify, who would be glad of such a piece of fortune; and if that man offers that woman a bunch of orange-flowers and a sonnet, instead of a buck-horn-handled sabre-shaped knife, sheathed in a 'Every Lady Her Own Market-Woman, Being a Table of' &c. &c.—then, I say he is—
Bless you, dearest—the clock strikes—and time is none—but—bless you!
Your own R.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Saturday 4. p.m.
[Post-mark, December 27, 1845.]
I was forced to leave off abruptly on Christmas Morning—and now I have but a few minutes before our inexorable post leaves. I hoped to return from Town earlier. But I can say something—and Monday will make amends.
'For ever' and for ever I do love you, dearest—love you with my whole heart—in life, in death—
Yes; I did go to Mr. Kenyon's—who had a little to forgive in my slack justice to his good dinner, but was for the rest his own kind self—and I went, also, to Moxon's—who said something about my number's going off 'rather heavily'—so let it!
Too good, too, too indulgent you are, my own Ba, to 'acts' first or last; but all the same, I am glad and encouraged. Let me get done with these, and better things will follow.
Now, bless you, ever, my sweetest—I have you ever in my thoughts—And on Monday, remember, I am to see you.
Your own R.B.
See what I cut out of a Cambridge Advertiser24 of the 24th—to make you laugh!
E.B.B. to R.B.
Saturday.
[Post-mark, December 27, 1845.]
Yes, indeed, I have 'observed that way' in you, and not once, and not twice, and not twenty times, but oftener than any,—and almost every time ... do you know, ... with an uncomfortable feeling from the reflection that that is the way for making all sorts of mistakes dependent on and issuing in exaggeration. It is the very way!—the highway.
For what you say in the letter here otherwise, I do not deny the truth—as partial truth:—I was speaking generally quite. Admit that I am not apt to be extravagant in my esprit de sexe: the Martineau doctrines of intellectual equality &c., I gave them up, you remember, like a woman—most disgracefully, as Mrs. Jameson would tell me. But we are not on that ground now—we are on ground worth holding a brief for!—and when women fail here ... it is not so much our fault. Which was all I meant to say from the beginning.
It reminds me of the exquisite analysis in your 'Luria,' this third act, of the worth of a woman's sympathy,—indeed of the exquisite double-analysis of unlearned and learned sympathies. Nothing could be better, I think, than this:—
To the motive, the endeavour,—the heart's self—
Your quick sense looks; you crown and call aright
The soul of the purpose ere 'tis shaped as act,
Takes flesh i' the world, and clothes itself a king;
except the characterizing of the 'learned praise,' which comes afterwards in its fine subtle truth. What would these critics do to you, to what degree undo you, who would deprive you of the exercise of the discriminative faculty of the metaphysicians? As if a poet could be great without it! They might as well recommend a watchmaker to deal only in faces, in dials, and not to meddle with the wheels inside! You shall tell Mr. Forster so.
And speaking of 'Luria,' which grows on me the more I read, ... how fine he is when the doubt breaks on him—I mean, when he begins ... 'Why then, all is very well.' It is most affecting, I think, all that process of doubt ... and that reference to the friends at home (which at once proves him a stranger, and intimates, by just a stroke, that he will not look home for comfort out of the new foreign treason) is managed by you with singular dramatic dexterity....
... 'so slight, so slight,
And yet it tells you they are dead and gone'—
And then, the direct approach....
You now, so kind here, all you Florentines,
What is it in your eyes?—
Do you not feel it to be success, ... 'you now?' I do, from my low ground as reader. The whole breaking round him of the cloud, and the manner in which he stands, facing it, ... I admire it all thoroughly. Braccio's vindication of Florence strikes me as almost too poetically subtle for the man—but nobody could have the heart to wish a line of it away—that would be too much for critical virtue!
I had your letter yesterday morning early. The post-office people were so resolved on keeping their Christmas, that they would not let me keep mine. No post all day, after that general post before noon, which never brings me anything worth the breaking of a seal!
Am I to see you on Monday? If there should be the least, least crossing of that day, ... anything to do, anything to see, anything to listen to,—remember how Tuesday stands close by, and that another Monday comes on the following week. Now I need not say that every time, and you will please to remember it—Eccellenza!—
May God bless you—
Your
E.B.B.
From the New Monthly Magazine. 'The admirers of Robert Browning's poetry, and they are now very numerous, will be glad to hear of the issue by Mr. Moxon of a seventh series of the renowned "Bells" and delicious "Pomegranates," under the title of "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics."'
E.B.B. to R.B.
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, December 30, 1845.]
When you are gone I find your flowers; and you never spoke of nor showed them to me—so instead of yesterday I thank you to-day—thank you. Count among the miracles that your flowers live with me—I accept that for an omen, dear—dearest! Flowers in general, all other flowers, die of despair when they come into the same atmosphere ... used to do it so constantly and observably that it made me melancholy and I left off for the most part having them here. Now you see how they put up with the close room, and condescend to me and the dust—it is true and no fancy! To be sure they know that I care for them and that I stand up by the table myself to change their water and cut their stalk freshly at intervals—that may make a difference perhaps. Only the great reason must be that they are yours, and that you teach them to bear with me patiently.
Do not pretend even to misunderstand what I meant to say yesterday of dear Mr. Kenyon. His blame would fall as my blame of myself has fallen: he would say—will say—'it is ungenerous of her to let such a risk be run! I thought she would have been more generous.' There, is Mr. Kenyon's opinion as I foresee it! Not that it would be spoken, you know! he is too kind. And then, he said to me last summer, somewhere à propos to the flies or butterflies, that he had 'long ceased to wonder at any extreme of foolishness produced by—love.' He will of course think you very very foolish, but not ungenerously foolish like other people.
Never mind. I do not mind indeed. I mean, that, having said to myself worse than the worst perhaps of what can be said against me by any who regard me at all, and feeling it put to silence by the fact that you do feel so and so for me; feeling that fact to be an answer to all,—I cannot mind much, in comparison, the railing at second remove. There will be a nine days' railing of it and no more: and if on the ninth day you should not exactly wish never to have known me, the better reason will be demonstrated to stand with us. On this one point the wise man cannot judge for the fool his neighbour. If you do love me, the inference is that you would be happier with than without me—and whether you do, you know better than another: so I think of you and not of them—always of you! When I talked of being afraid of dear Mr. Kenyon, I just meant that he makes me nervous with his all-scrutinizing spectacles, put on for great occasions, and his questions which seem to belong to the spectacles, they go together so:—and then I have no presence of mind, as you may see without the spectacles. My only way of hiding (when people set themselves to look for me) would be the old child's way of getting behind the window curtains or under the sofa:—and even that might not be effectual if I had recourse to it now. Do you think it would? Two or three times I fancied that Mr. Kenyon suspected something—but if he ever did, his only reproof was a reduplicated praise of you—he praises you always and in relation to every sort of subject.
What a misomonsism you fell into yesterday, you who have much great work to do which no one else can do except just yourself!—and you, too, who have courage and knowledge, and must know that every work, with the principle of life in it, will live, let it be trampled ever so under the heel of a faithless and unbelieving generation—yes, that it will live like one of your toads, for a thousand years in the heart of a rock. All men can teach at second or third hand, as you said ... by prompting the foremost rows ... by tradition and translation:—all, except poets, who must preach their own doctrine and sing their own song, to be the means of any wisdom or any music, and therefore have stricter duties thrust upon them, and may not lounge in the στοα like the conversation-teachers. So much I have to say to you, till we are in the Siren's island—and I, jealous of the Siren!—
The Siren waits thee singing song for song,
says Mr. Landor. A prophecy which refuses to class you with the 'mute fishes,' precisely as I do.
And are you not my 'good'—all my good now—my only good ever? The Italians would say it better without saying more.
I had a letter from Miss Martineau this morning who accounts for her long silence by the supposition,—put lately to an end by scarcely credible information from Mr. Moxon, she says—that I was out of England; gone to the South from the 20th of September. She calls herself the strongest of women, and talks of 'walking fifteen miles one day and writing fifteen pages another day without fatigue,'—also of mesmerizing and of being infinitely happy except in the continued alienation of two of her family who cannot forgive her for getting well by such unlawful means. And she is to write again to tell me of Wordsworth, and promises to send me her new work in the meanwhile—all very kind.
So here is my letter to you, which you asked for so 'against the principles of universal justice.' Yes, very unjust—very unfair it was—only, you make me do just as you like in everything. Now confess to your own conscience that even if I had not a lawful claim of a debt against you, I might come to ask charity with another sort of claim, oh 'son of humanity.' Think how much more need of a letter I have than you can have; and that if you have a giant's power, ''tis tyrannous to use it like a giant.' Who would take tribute from the desert? How I grumble. Do let me have a letter directly! remember that no other light comes to my windows, and that I wait 'as those who watch for the morning'—'lux mea!'
May God bless you—and mind to say how you are exactly, and don't neglect the walking, pray do not.
Your own
And after all, those women! A great deal of doctrine commends and discommends itself by the delivery: and an honest thing may be said so foolishly as to disprove its very honesty. Now after all, what did she mean by that very silly expression about books, but that she did not feel as she considered herself capable of feeling—and that else but that was the meaning of the other woman? Perhaps it should have been spoken earlier—nay, clearly it should—but surely it was better spoken even in the last hour than not at all ... surely it is always and under all circumstances, better spoken at whatever cost—I have thought so steadily since I could think or feel at all. An entire openness to the last moment of possible liberty, at whatever cost and consequence, is the most honourable and most merciful way, both for men and women! perhaps for men in an especial manner. But I shall send this letter away, being in haste to get change for it.