Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Out comes the sun, in comes the Times and eleven strikes (it does) already, and I have to go to Town, and I have no alternative but that this story of the Critic and Poet, ‘the Bear and the Fiddle,’ should ‘begin but break off in the middle’; yet I doubt — nor will you henceforth, I know, say, ‘I vex you, I am sure, by this lengthy writing.’ Mind that spring is coming, for all this snow; and know me for yours ever faithfully,

  R. Browning.

  I don’t dare — yet I will — ask can you read this? Because I could write a little better, but not so fast. Do you keep writing just as you do now!

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  50 Wimpole Street, February 17, 1845.

  Dear Mr. Browning, — To begin with the end (which is only characteristic of the perverse like myself), I assure you I read your handwriting as currently as I could read the clearest type from font. If I had practised the art of reading your letters all my life, I couldn’t do it better. And then I approve of small MS. upon principle. Think of what an immense quantity of physical energy must go to the making of those immense sweeping handwritings achieved by some persons ... Mr. Landor, for instance, who writes as if he had the sky for a copybook and dotted his i’s in proportion. People who do such things should wear gauntlets; yes, and have none to wear; or they wouldn’t waste their time so. People who write — by profession — shall I say? — never should do it, or what will become of them when most of their strength retires into their head and heart, (as is the case with some of us and may be the case with all) and when they have to write a poem twelve times over, as Mr. Kenyon says I should do if I were virtuous? Not that I do it. Does anybody do it, I wonder? Do you, ever? From what you tell me of the trimming of the light, I imagine not. And besides, one may be laborious as a writer, without copying twelve times over. I believe there are people who will tell you in a moment what three times six is, without ‘doing it’ on their fingers; and in the same way one may work one’s verses in one’s head quite as laboriously as on paper — I maintain it. I consider myself a very patient, laborious writer — though dear Mr. Kenyon laughs me to scorn when I say so. And just see how it could be otherwise. If I were netting a purse I might be thinking of something else and drop my stitches; or even if I were writing verses to please a popular taste, I might be careless in it. But the pursuit of an Ideal acknowledged by the mind, will draw and concentrate the powers of the mind — and Art, you know, is a jealous god and demands the whole man — or woman. I cannot conceive of a sincere artist who is also a careless one — though one may have a quicker hand than another, in general, — and though all are liable to vicissitudes in the degree of facility — and to entanglements in the machinery, notwithstanding every degree of facility. You may write twenty lines one day — or even three like Euripides in three days — and a hundred lines in one more day — and yet on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the twenty and the three. And also, as you say, the lamp is trimmed behind the wall — and the act of utterance is the evidence of foregone study still more than it is the occasion to study. The deep interest with which I read all that you had the kindness to write to me of yourself, you must trust me for, as I find it hard to express it. It is sympathy in one way, and interest every way! And now, see! Although you proved to me with admirable logic that, for reasons which you know and reasons which you don’t know, I couldn’t possibly know anything about you; though that is all true — and proven (which is better than true) — I really did understand of you before I was told, exactly what you told me. Yes, I did indeed. I felt sure that as a poet you fronted the future — and that your chief works, in your own apprehension, were to come. Oh — I take no credit of sagacity for it; as I did not long ago to my sisters and brothers, when I professed to have knowledge of all their friends whom I never saw in my life, by the image coming with the name; and threw them into shouts of laughter by giving out all the blue eyes and black eyes and hazel eyes and noses Roman and Gothic ticketed aright for the Mr. Smiths and Miss Hawkinses, — and hit the bull’s eye and the true features of the case, ten times out of twelve! But you are different. You are to be made out by the comparative anatomy system. You have thrown out fragments of os ... sublime ... indicative of soul-mammothism — and you live to develop your nature, — if you live. That is easy and plain. You have taken a great range — from those high faint notes of the mystics which are beyond personality ... to dramatic impersonations, gruff with nature, ‘gr-r-r- you swine’; and when these are thrown into harmony, as in a manner they are in ‘Pippa Passes’ (which I could find in my heart to covet the authorship of, more than any of your works — ), the combinations of effect must always be striking and noble — and you must feel yourself drawn on to such combinations more and more. But I do not, you say, know yourself — you. I only know abilities and faculties. Well, then, teach me yourself — you. I will not insist on the knowledge — and, in fact, you have not written the R.B. poem yet — your rays fall obliquely rather than directly straight. I see you only in your moon. Do tell me all of yourself that you can and will ... before the R.B. poem comes out. And what is ‘Luria’? A poem and not a drama? I mean, a poem not in the dramatic form? Well! I have wondered at you sometimes, not for daring, but for bearing to trust your noble works into the great mill of the ‘rank, popular’ playhouse, to be ground to pieces between the teeth of vulgar actors and actresses. I, for one, would as soon have ‘my soul among lions.’ ‘There is a fascination in it,’ says Miss Mitford, and I am sure there must be, to account for it. Publics in the mass are bad enough; but to distil the dregs of the public and baptise oneself in that acrid moisture, where can be the temptation? I could swear by Shakespeare, as was once sworn ‘by those dead at Marathon,’ that I do not see where. I love the drama too. I look to our old dramatists as to our Kings and princes in poetry. I love them through all the deeps of their abominations. But the theatre in those days was a better medium between the people and the poet; and the press in those days was a less sufficient medium than now. Still, the poet suffered by the theatre even then; and the reasons are very obvious.

  How true — how true ... is all you say about critics. My convictions follow you in every word. And I delighted to read your views of the poet’s right aspect towards criticism — I read them with the most complete appreciation and sympathy. I have sometimes thought that it would be a curious and instructive process, as illustrative of the wisdom and apprehensiveness of critics, if anyone would collect the critical soliloquies of every age touching its own literature, (as far as such may be extant) and confer them with the literary product of the said ages. Professor Wilson has begun something of the kind apparently, in his initiatory paper of the last Blackwood number on critics, beginning with Dryden — but he seems to have no design in his notice — it is a mere critique on the critic. And then, he should have begun earlier than Dryden — earlier even than Sir Philip Sydney, who in the noble ‘Discourse on Poetry,’ gives such singular evidence of being stone-critic-blind to the gods who moved around him. As far as I can remember, he saw even Shakespeare but indifferently. Oh, it was in his eyes quite an unillumed age, that period of Elizabeth which we see full of suns! and few can see what is close to the eyes though they run their heads against it; the denial of contemporary genius is the rule rather than the exception. No one counts the eagles in the nest, till there is a rush of wings; and lo! they are flown. And here we speak of understanding men, such as the Sydneys and the Drydens. Of the great body of critics you observe rightly, that they are better than might be expected of their badness, only the fact of their influence is no less undeniable than the reason why they should not be influential. The brazen kettles will be taken for oracles all the world over. But the influence is for to-day, for this hour — not for to-morrow and the day after — unless indeed, as you say, the poet do himself perpetuate the influence by submitting to it. Do you know Tennyson? — that is, with a face to face knowledge? I have great admiration for him. In execution, he is exquisite, — a
nd, in music, a most subtle weigher out to the ear of fine airs. That such a poet should submit blindly to the suggestions of his critics, (I do not say that suggestions from without may not be accepted with discrimination sometimes, to the benefit of the acceptor), blindly and implicitly to the suggestions of his critics, is much as if Babbage were to take my opinion and undo his calculating machine by it. Napoleon called poetry science creuse — which, although he was not scientific in poetry himself, is true enough. But anybody is qualified, according to everybody, for giving opinions upon poetry. It is not so in chymistry and mathematics. Nor is it so, I believe, in whist and the polka. But then these are more serious things.

  Yes — and it does delight me to hear of your garden full of roses and soul full of comforts! You have the right to both — you have the key to both. You have written enough to live by, though only beginning to write, as you say of yourself. And this reminds me to remind you that when I talked of coveting most the authorship of your ‘Pippa,’ I did not mean to call it your finest work (you might reproach me for that), but just to express a personal feeling. Do you know what it is to covet your neighbour’s poetry? — not his fame, but his poetry? — I dare say not. You are too generous. And, in fact, beauty is beauty, and, whether it comes by our own hand or another’s, blessed be the coming of it! I, besides, feel that. And yet — and yet, I have been aware of a feeling within me which has spoken two or three times to the effect of a wish, that I had been visited with the vision of ‘Pippa,’ before you — and confiteor tibi — I confess the baseness of it. The conception is, to my mind, most exquisite and altogether original — and the contrast in the working out of the plan, singularly expressive of various faculty.

  Is the poem under your thumb, emerging from it? and in what metre? May I ask such questions?

  And does Mr. Carlyle tell you that he has forbidden all ‘singing’ to this perverse and froward generation, which should work and not sing? And have you told Mr. Carlyle that song is work, and also the condition of work? I am a devout sitter at his feet — and it is an effort to me to think him wrong in anything — and once when he told me to write prose and not verse, I fancied that his opinion was I had mistaken my calling, — a fancy which in infinite kindness and gentleness he stooped immediately to correct. I never shall forget the grace of that kindness — but then! For him to have thought ill of me, would not have been strange — I often think ill of myself, as God knows. But for Carlyle to think of putting away, even for a season, the poetry of the world, was wonderful, and has left me ruffled in my thoughts ever since. I do not know him personally at all. But as his disciple I ventured (by an exceptional motive) to send him my poems, and I heard from him as a consequence. ‘Dear and noble’ he is indeed — and a poet unaware of himself; all but the sense of music. You feel it so — do you not? And the ‘dear sir’ has let him have the ‘letter of Cromwell,’ I hope; and satisfied ‘the obedient servant.’ The curious thing in this world is not the stupidity, but the upper-handism of the stupidity. The geese are in the Capitol, and the Romans in the farmyard — and it seems all quite natural that it should be so, both to geese and Romans!

  But there are things you say, which seem to me supernatural, for reasons which I know and for reasons which I don’t know. You will let me be grateful to you, — will you not? You must, if you will or not. And also — I would not wait for more leave — if I could but see your desk — as I do your death’s heads and the spider-webs appertaining; but the soul of Cornelius Agrippa fades from me.

  Ever faithfully yours,

  Elizabeth B. Barrett.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Wednesday Morning — Spring!

  [Post-mark, February 26, 1845.]

  Real warm Spring, dear Miss Barrett, and the birds know it; and in Spring I shall see you, surely see you — for when did I once fail to get whatever I had set my heart upon? As I ask myself sometimes, with a strange fear.

  I took up this paper to write a great deal — now, I don’t think I shall write much — ’I shall see you,’ I say!

  That ‘Luria’ you enquire about, shall be my last play — for it is but a play, woe’s me! I have one done here, ‘A Soul’s Tragedy,’ as it is properly enough called, but that would not do to end with (end I will), and Luria is a Moor, of Othello’s country, and devotes himself to something he thinks Florence, and the old fortune follows — all in my brain yet, but the bright weather helps and I will soon loosen my Braccio and Puccio (a pale discontented man), and Tiburzio (the Pisan, good true fellow, this one), and Domizia the Lady — loosen all these on dear foolish (ravishing must his folly be), golden-hearted Luria, all these with their worldly-wisdom and Tuscan shrewd ways; and, for me, the misfortune is, I sympathise just as much with these as with him, — so there can no good come of keeping this wild company any longer, and ‘Luria’ and the other sadder ruin of one Chiappino — these got rid of, I will do as you bid me, and — say first I have some Romances and Lyrics, all dramatic, to dispatch, and then, I shall stoop of a sudden under and out of this dancing ring of men and women hand in hand, and stand still awhile, should my eyes dazzle, and when that’s over, they will be gone and you will be there, pas vrai? For, as I think I told you, I always shiver involuntarily when I look — no, glance — at this First Poem of mine to be. ‘Now,’ I call it, what, upon my soul, — for a solemn matter it is, — what is to be done now, believed now, so far as it has been revealed to me — solemn words, truly — and to find myself writing them to any one else! Enough now.

  I know Tennyson ‘face to face,’ — no more than that. I know Carlyle and love him — know him so well, that I would have told you he had shaken that grand head of his at ‘singing,’ so thoroughly does he love and live by it. When I last saw him, a fortnight ago, he turned, from I don’t know what other talk, quite abruptly on me with, ‘Did you never try to write a Song? Of all things in the world, that I should be proudest to do.’ Then came his definition of a song — then, with an appealing look to Mrs. C., ‘I always say that some day in spite of nature and my stars, I shall burst into a song’ (he is not mechanically ‘musical,’ he meant, and the music is the poetry, he holds, and should enwrap the thought as Donne says ‘an amber-drop enwraps a bee’), and then he began to recite an old Scotch song, stopping at the first rude couplet, ‘The beginning words are merely to set the tune, they tell me’ — and then again at the couplet about — or, to the effect that — ’give me’ (but in broad Scotch) ‘give me but my lass, I care not for my cogie.’ ‘He says,’ quoth Carlyle magisterially, ‘that if you allow him the love of his lass, you may take away all else, even his cogie, his cup or can, and he cares not,’ just as a professor expounds Lycophron. And just before I left England, six months ago, did not I hear him croon, if not certainly sing, ‘Charlie is my darling’ (‘my darling’ with an adoring emphasis), and then he stood back, as it were, from the song, to look at it better, and said ‘How must that notion of ideal wondrous perfection have impressed itself in this old Jacobite’s “young Cavalier” — (“They go to save their land, and the young Cavalier!!”) — when I who care nothing about such a rag of a man, cannot but feel as he felt, in speaking his words after him!’ After saying which, he would be sure to counsel everybody to get their heads clear of all singing! Don’t let me forget to clap hands, we got the letter, dearly bought as it was by the ‘Dear Sirs,’ &c., and insignificant scrap as it proved, but still it is got, to my encouragement in diplomacy.

  Who told you of my sculls and spider webs — Horne? Last year I petted extraordinarily a fine fellow, (a garden spider — there was the singularity, — the thin clever-even-for-a-spider-sort, and they are so ‘spirited and sly,’ all of them — this kind makes a long cone of web, with a square chamber of vantage at the end, and there he sits loosely and looks about), a great fellow that housed himself, with real gusto, in the jaws of a great scull, whence he watched me as I wrote, and I remember speaking to Horne about his good points. Phrenologists look gravely at that great scul
l, by the way, and hope, in their grim manner, that its owner made a good end. He looks quietly, now, out at the green little hill behind. I have no little insight to the feelings of furniture, and treat books and prints with a reasonable consideration. How some people use their pictures, for instance, is a mystery to me; very revolting all the same — portraits obliged to face each other for ever, — prints put together in portfolios. My Polidoro’s perfect Andromeda along with ‘Boors Carousing,’ by Ostade, — where I found her, — my own father’s doing, or I would say more.