Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  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.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Tuesday Morning.

  [Post-mark, May 13, 1845.]

  Did I thank you with any effect in the lines I sent yesterday, dear Miss Barrett? I know I felt most thankful, and, of course, began reasoning myself into the impropriety of allowing a ‘more’ or a ‘most’ in feelings of that sort towards you. I am thankful for you, all about you — as, do you not know?

  Thank you, from my soul.

  Now, let me never pass occasion of speaking well of Horne, who deserves your opinion of him, — it is my own, too. — He has unmistakable genius, and is a fine, honest, enthusiastic chivalrous fellow — it is the fashion to affect to sneer at him, of late, I think — the people he has praised fancying that they ‘pose’ themselves sculpturesquely in playing the Greatly Indifferent, and the other kind shaking each other’s hands in hysterical congratulations at having escaped such a dishonour: I feel grateful to him, I know, for his generous criticism, and glad and proud of in any way approaching such a man’s standard of poetical height. And he might be a disappointed man too, — for the players trifled with and teased out his very nature, which has a strange aspiration for the horrible tin-and-lacquer ‘crown’ they give one from their clouds (of smooth shaven deal done over blue) — and he don’t give up the bad business yet, but thinks a ‘small’ theatre would somehow not be a theatre, and an actor not quite an actor ... I forget in what way, but the upshot is, he bates not a jot in that rouged, wigged, padded, empty-headed, heartless tribe of grimacers that came and canted me; not I, them; — a thing he cannot understand — so, I am not the one he would have picked out to praise, had he not been loyal. I know he admires your poetry properly. God help him, and send some great artist from the country, (who can read and write beside comprehending Shakspeare, and who ‘exasperates his H’s’ when the feat is to be done) — to undertake the part of Cosmo, or Gregory, or what shall most soothe his spirit! The subject of your play is tempting indeed — and reminds one of that wild Drama of Calderon’s which frightened Shelley just before his death — also, of Fuseli’s theory with reference to his own Picture of Macbeth in the witches’ cave ... wherein the apparition of the armed head from the cauldron is Macbeth’s own.

  ‘If you ask me, I must ask myself’ — that is, when I am to see you — I will never ask you! You do not know what I shall estimate that permission at, — nor do I, quite — but you do — do not you? know so much of me as to make my ‘asking’ worse than a form — I do not ‘ask’ you to write to me — not directly ask, at least.

  I will tell you — I ask you not to see me so long as you are unwell, or mistrustful of —

  No, no, that is being too grand! Do see me when you can, and let me not be only writing myself

  Yours

  R.B.

  A kind, so kind, note from Mr. Kenyon came. We, I and my sister, are to go in June instead.... I shall go nowhere till then; I am nearly well — all save one little wheel in my head that keeps on its

  That you are better I am most thankful.

  ‘Next letter’ to say how you must help me with all my new Romances and Lyrics, and Lays and Plays, and read them and heed them and end them and mend them!

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Thursday.

  [Post-mark, May 16, 1845.]

  But how ‘mistrustfulness’? And how ‘that way?’ What have I said or done, I, who am not apt to be mistrustful of anybody and should be a miraculous monster if I began with you! What can I have said, I say to myself again and again.

  One thing, at any rate, I have done, ‘that way’ or this way! I have made what is vulgarly called a ‘piece of work’ about little; or seemed to make it. Forgive me. I am shy by nature: — and by position and experience, ... by having had my nerves shaken to excess, and by leading a life of such seclusion, ... by these things together and by others besides, I have appeared shy and ungrateful to you. Only not mistrustful. You could not mean to judge me so. Mistrustful people do not write as I write, surely! for wasn’t it a Richelieu or Mazarin (or who?) who said that with five lines from anyone’s hand, he could take off his head for a corollary? I think so.

  Well! — but this is to prove that I am not mistrustful, and to say, that if you care to come to see me you can come; and that it is my gain (as I feel it to be) and not yours, whenever you do come. You will not talk of having come afterwards I know, because although I am ‘fast bound’ to see one or two persons this summer (besides yourself, whom I receive of choice and willingly) I cannot admit visitors in a general way — and putting the question of health quite aside, it would be unbecoming to lie here on the sofa and make a company-show of an infirmity, and hold a beggar’s hat for sympathy. I should blame it in another woman — and the sense of it has had its weight with me sometimes.

  For the rest, ... when you write, that I do not know how you would value, &c. nor yourself quite, you touch very accurately on the truth ... and so accurately in the last clause, that to read it, made me smile ‘tant bien que mal.’ Certainly you cannot ‘quite know,’ or know at all, whether the least straw of pleasure can go to you from knowing me otherwise than on this paper — and I, for my part, ‘quite know’ my own honest impression, dear Mr. Browning, that none is likely to go to you. There is nothing to see in me; nor to hear in me — I never learnt to talk as you do in London; although I can admire that brightness of carved speech in Mr. Kenyon and others. If my poetry is worth anything to any eye, it is the flower of me. I have lived most and been most happy in it, and so it has all my colours; the rest of me is nothing but a root, fit for the ground and the dark. And if I write all this egotism, ... it is for shame; and because I feel ashamed of having made a fuss about what is not worth it; and because you are extravagant in caring so for
a permission, which will be nothing to you afterwards. Not that I am not touched by your caring so at all! I am deeply touched now; and presently, ... I shall understand. Come then. There will be truth and simplicity for you in any case; and a friend. And do not answer this — I do not write it as a fly trap for compliments. Your spider would scorn me for it too much. Also, ... as to the how and when. You are not well now, and it cannot be good for you to do anything but be quiet and keep away that dreadful musical note in the head. I entreat you not to think of coming until that is all put to silence satisfactorily. When it is done, ... you must choose whether you would like best to come with Mr. Kenyon or to come alone — and if you would come alone, you must just tell me on what day, and I will see you on any day unless there should be an unforeseen obstacle, ... any day after two, or before six. And my sister will bring you up-stairs to me; and we will talk; or you will talk; and you will try to be indulgent, and like me as well as you can. If, on the other hand, you would rather come with Mr. Kenyon, you must wait, I imagine, till June, — because he goes away on Monday and is not likely immediately to return — no, on Saturday, to-morrow.