Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  E.B.B.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Friday Morning.

  [Post-mark, July 25, 1845.]

  You would let me now, I dare say, call myself grateful to you — yet such is my jealousy in these matters — so do I hate the material when it puts down, (or tries) the immaterial in the offices of friendship; that I could almost tell you I was not grateful, and try if that way I could make you see the substantiality of those other favours you refuse to recognise, and reality of the other gratitude you will not admit. But truth is truth, and you are all generosity, and will draw none but the fair inference, so I thank you as well as I can for this also — this last kindness. And you know its value, too — how if there were another you in the world, who had done all you have done and whom I merely admired for that; if such an one had sent me such a criticism, so exactly what I want and can use and turn to good; you know how I would have told you, my you I saw yesterday, all about it, and been sure of your sympathy and gladness: — but the two in one!

  For the criticism itself, it is all true, except the over-eating — all the suggestions are to be adopted, the improvements accepted. I so thoroughly understand your spirit in this, that, just in this beginning, I should really like to have found some point in which I could coöperate with your intention, and help my work by disputing the effect of any alteration proposed, if it ought to be disputed — that would answer your purpose exactly as well as agreeing with you, — so that the benefit to me were apparent; but this time I cannot dispute one point. All is for best.

  So much for this ‘Duchess’ — which I shall ever rejoice in — wherever was a bud, even, in that strip of May-bloom, a live musical bee hangs now. I shall let it lie (my poem), till just before I print it; and then go over it, alter at the places, and do something for the places where I (really) wrote anyhow, almost, to get done. It is an odd fact, yet characteristic of my accomplishings one and all in this kind, that of the poem, the real conception of an evening (two years ago, fully) — of that, not a line is written, — though perhaps after all, what I am going to call the accessories in the story are real though indirect reflexes of the original idea, and so supersede properly enough the necessity of its personal appearance, so to speak. But, as I conceived the poem, it consisted entirely of the Gipsy’s description of the life the Lady was to lead with her future Gipsy lover — a real life, not an unreal one like that with the Duke. And as I meant to write it, all their wild adventures would have come out and the insignificance of the former vegetation have been deducible only — as the main subject has become now; of course it comes to the same thing, for one would never show half by half like a cut orange. —

  Will you write to me? caring, though, so much for my best interests as not to write if you can work for yourself, or save yourself fatigue. I think before writing — or just after writing — such a sentence — but reflection only justifies my first feeling; I would rather go without your letters, without seeing you at all, if that advantaged you — my dear, first and last friend; my friend! And now — surely I might dare say you may if you please get well through God’s goodness — with persevering patience, surely — and this next winter abroad — which you must get ready for now, every sunny day, will you not? If I venture to weary you again with all this, is there not the cause of causes, and did not the prophet write that ‘there was a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the E.B.B.’ led on to the fortune of

  Your R.B.

  Oh, let me tell you in the bitterness of my heart, that it was only 4 o’clock — that clock I enquired about — and that, ... no, I shall never say with any grace what I want to say ... and now dare not ... that you all but owe me an extra quarter of an hour next time: as in the East you give a beggar something for a few days running — then you miss him; and next day he looks indignant when the regular dole falls and murmurs — ’And, for yesterday?’ — Do I stay too long, I want to know, — too long for the voice and head and all but the spirit that may not so soon tire, — knowing the good it does. If you would but tell me.

  God bless you —

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Saturday.

  [Post-mark, July 28, 1845]

  You say too much indeed in this letter which has crossed mine — and particularly as there is not a word in it of what I most wanted to know and want to know ... how you are — for you must observe, if you please, that the very paper you pour such kindness on, was written after your own example and pattern, when, in the matter of my ‘Prometheus’ (such different wearying matter!), you took trouble for me and did me good. Judge from this, if even in inferior things, there can be gratitude from you to me! — or rather, do not judge — but listen when I say that I am delighted to have met your wishes in writing as I wrote; only that you are surely wrong in refusing to see a single wrongness in all that heap of weedy thoughts, and that when you look again, you must come to the admission of it. One of the thistles is the suggestion about the line

  Was it singing, was it saying,

  which you wrote so, and which I proposed to amend by an intermediate ‘or.’ Thinking of it at a distance, it grows clear to me that you were right, and that there should be and must be no ‘or’ to disturb the listening pause. Now should there? And there was something else, which I forget at this moment — and something more than the something else. Your account of the production of the poem interests me very much — and proves just what I wanted to make out from your statements the other day, and they refused, I thought, to let me, ... that you are more faithful to your first Idea than to your first plan. Is it so? or not? ‘Orange’ is orange — but which half of the orange is not predestinated from all eternity — : is it so?

  Sunday. — I wrote so much yesterday and then went out, not knowing very well how to speak or how to be silent (is it better to-day?) of some expressions of yours ... and of your interest in me — which are deeply affecting to my feelings — whatever else remains to be said of them. And you know that you make great mistakes, ... of fennel for hemlock, of four o’clocks for five o’clocks, and of other things of more consequence, one for another; and may not be quite right besides as to my getting well ‘if I please!’ ... which reminds me a little of what Papa says sometimes when he comes into this room unexpectedly and convicts me of having dry toast for dinner, and declares angrily that obstinacy and dry toast have brought me to my present condition, and that if I pleased to have porter and beefsteaks instead, I should be as well as ever I was, in a month!... But where is the need of talking of it? What I wished to say was this — that if I get better or worse ... as long as I live and to the last moment of life, I shall remember with an emotion which cannot change its character, all the generous interest and feeling you have spent on me — wasted on me I was going to write — but I would not provoke any answering — and in one obvious sense, it need not be so. I never shall forget these things, my dearest friend; nor remember them more coldly. God’s goodness! — I believe in it, as in His sunshine here — which makes my head ache a little, while it comes in at the window, and makes most other people gayer — it does me good too in a different way. And so, may God bless you! and me in this ... just this, ... that I may never have the sense, ... intolerable in the remotest apprehension of it ... of being, in any way, directly or indirectly, the means of ruffling your smooth path by so much as one of my flint-stones! — In the meantime you do not tire me indeed even when you go later for sooner ... and I do not tire myself even when I write longer and duller letters to you (if the last is possible) than the one I am ending now ... as the most grateful (leave me that word) of your friends.

  E.B.B.

  How could you think that I should speak to Mr. Kenyon of the book? All I ever said to him has been that you had looked through my ‘Prometheus’ for me — and that I was not disappointed in you, these two things on two occasions. I do trust that your head is better.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  [Post-mark, July 28, 1845.]

  How must I feel, and wh
at can, or could I say even if you let me say all? I am most grateful, most happy — most happy, come what will!

  Will you let me try and answer your note to-morrow — before Wednesday when I am to see you? I will not hide from you that my head aches now; and I have let the hours go by one after one — I am better all the same, and will write as I say — ’Am I better’ you ask!

  Yours I am, ever yours my dear friend R.B.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Thursday.

  [Post-mark, July 31, 1845.]

  In all I say to you, write to you, I know very well that I trust to your understanding me almost beyond the warrant of any human capacity — but as I began, so I shall end. I shall believe you remember what I am forced to remember — you who do me the superabundant justice on every possible occasion, — you will never do me injustice when I sit by you and talk about Italy and the rest.

  — To-day I cannot write — though I am very well otherwise — but I shall soon get into my old self-command and write with as much ‘ineffectual fire’ as before: but meantime, you will write to me, I hope — telling me how you are? I have but one greater delight in the world than in hearing from you.

  God bless you, my best, dearest friend — think what I would speak —

  Ever yours

  R.B.

  AUGUST, 1845

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Thursday.

  [Post-mark, August 2, 1845.]

  Let me write one word ... not to have it off my mind ... because it is by no means heavily on it; but lest I should forget to write it at all by not writing it at once. What could you mean, ... I have been thinking since you went away ... by applying such a grave expression as having a thing ‘off your mind’ to that foolish subject of the stupid book (mine), and by making it worth your while to account logically for your wish about my not mentioning it to Mr. Kenyon? You could not fancy for one moment that I was vexed in the matter of the book? or in the other matter of your wish? Now just hear me. I explained to you that I had been silent to Mr. Kenyon, first because the fact was so; and next and a little, because I wanted to show how I anticipated your wish by a wish of my own ... though from a different motive. Your motive I really did take to be (never suspecting my dear kind cousin of treason) to be a natural reluctancy of being convicted (forgive me!) of such an arch-womanly curiosity. For my own motive ... motives ... they are more than one ... you must trust me; and refrain as far as you can from accusing me of an over-love of Eleusinian mysteries when I ask you to say just as little about your visits here and of me as you find possible ... even to Mr. Kenyon ... as to every other person whatever. As you know ... and yet more than you know ... I am in a peculiar position — and it does not follow that you should be ashamed of my friendship or that I should not be proud of yours, if we avoid making it a subject of conversation in high places, or low places. There! that is my request to you — or commentary on what you put ‘off your mind’ yesterday — probably quite unnecessary as either request or commentary; yet said on the chance of its not being so, because you seemed to mistake my remark about Mr. Kenyon.

  And your head, how is it? And do consider if it would not be wise and right on that account of your health, to go with Mr. Chorley? You can neither work nor enjoy while you are subject to attacks of the kind — and besides, and without reference to your present suffering and inconvenience, you ought not to let them master you and gather strength from time and habit; I am sure you ought not. Worse last week than ever, you see! — and no prospect, perhaps, of bringing out your “Bells” this autumn, without paying a cost too heavy! — Therefore ... the therefore is quite plain and obvious! —

  Friday. — Just as it is how anxious Flush and I are, to be delivered from you; by these sixteen heads of the discourse of one of us, written before your letter came. Ah, but I am serious — and you will consider — will you not? what is best to be done? and do it. You could write to me, you know, from the end of the world; if you could take the thought of me so far.

  And for me, no, and yet yes, — I will say this much; that I am not inclined to do you injustice, but justice, when you come here — the justice of wondering to myself how you can possibly, possibly, care to come. Which is true enough to be unanswerable, if you please — or I should not say it. ‘As I began, so I shall end — ’ Did you, as I hope you did, thank your sister for Flush and for me? When you were gone, he graciously signified his intention of eating the cakes — brought the bag to me and emptied it without a drawback, from my hand, cake after cake. And I forgot the basket once again.

  And talking of Italy and the cardinals, and thinking of some cardinal points you are ignorant of, did you ever hear that I was one of

  ‘those schismatiques

  of Amsterdam’

  whom your Dr. Donne would have put into the dykes? unless he meant the Baptists, instead of the Independents, the holders of the Independent church principle. No — not ‘schismatical,’ I hope, hating as I do from the roots of my heart all that rending of the garment of Christ, which Christians are so apt to make the daily week-day of this Christianity so called — and caring very little for most dogmas and doxies in themselves — too little, as people say to me sometimes, (when they send me ‘New Testaments’ to learn from, with very kind intentions) — and believing that there is only one church in heaven and earth, with one divine High Priest to it; let exclusive religionists build what walls they please and bring out what chrisms. But I used to go with my father always, when I was able, to the nearest dissenting chapel of the Congregationalists — from liking the simplicity of that praying and speaking without books — and a little too from disliking the theory of state churches. There is a narrowness among the dissenters which is wonderful; an arid, grey Puritanism in the clefts of their souls: but it seems to me clear that they know what the ‘liberty of Christ’ means, far better than those do who call themselves ‘churchmen’; and stand altogether, as a body, on higher ground. And so, you see, when I talked of the sixteen points of my discourse, it was the foreshadowing of a coming event, and you have had it at last in the whole length and breadth of it. But it is not my fault if the wind began to blow so that I could not go out — as I intended — as I shall do to-morrow; and that you have received my dulness in a full libation of it, in consequence. My sisters said of the roses you blasphemed, yesterday, that they ‘never saw such flowers anywhere — anywhere here in London — ’ and therefore if I had thought so myself before, it was not so wrong of me. I put your roses, you see, against my letter, to make it seem less dull — and yet I do not forget what you say about caring to hear from me — I mean, I do not affect to forget it.

  May God bless you, far longer than I can say so.

  E.B.B.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Sunday Evening.

  [Post-mark, August 4, 1845.]

  I said what you comment on, about Mr. Kenyon, because I feel I must always tell you the simple truth — and not being quite at liberty to communicate the whole story (though it would at once clear me from the charge of over-curiosity ... if I much cared for that!) — I made my first request in order to prevent your getting at any part of it from him which should make my withholding seem disingenuous for the moment — that is, till my explanation came, if it had an opportunity of coming. And then, when I fancied you were misunderstanding the reason of that request — and supposing I was ambitious of making a higher figure in his eyes than your own, — I then felt it ‘on my mind’ and so spoke ... a natural mode of relief surely! For, dear friend, I have once been untrue to you — when, and how, and why, you know — but I thought it pedantry and worse to hold by my words and increase their fault. You have forgiven me that one mistake, and I only refer to it now because if you should ever make that a precedent, and put any least, most trivial word of mine under the same category, you would wrong me as you never wronged human being: — and that is done with. For the other matter, — the talk of my visits, it is impossible that any hint of them can ooze out of the
only three persons in the world to whom I ever speak of them — my father, mother and sister — to whom my appreciation of your works is no novelty since some years, and whom I made comprehend exactly your position and the necessity for the absolute silence I enjoined respecting the permission to see you. You may depend on them, — and Miss Mitford is in your keeping, mind, — and dear Mr. Kenyon, if there should be never so gentle a touch of ‘garrulous God-innocence’ about those kind lips of his. Come, let me snatch at that clue out of the maze, and say how perfect, absolutely perfect, are those three or four pages in the ‘Vision’ which present the Poets — a line, a few words, and the man there, — one twang of the bow and the arrowhead in the white — Shelley’s ‘white ideal all statue-blind’ is — perfect, — how can I coin words? And dear deaf old Hesiod — and — all, all are perfect, perfect! But ‘the Moon’s regality will hear no praise’ — well then, will she hear blame? Can it be you, my own you past putting away, you are a schismatic and frequenter of Independent Dissenting Chapels? And you confess this to me — whose father and mother went this morning to the very Independent Chapel where they took me, all those years back, to be baptised — and where they heard, this morning, a sermon preached by the very minister who officiated on that other occasion! Now will you be particularly encouraged by this successful instance to bring forward any other point of disunion between us that may occur to you? Please do not — for so sure as you begin proving that there is a gulf fixed between us, so sure shall I end proving that ... Anne Radcliffe avert it!... that you are just my sister: not that I am much frightened, but there are such surprises in novels! — Blame the next, — yes, now this is to be real blame! — And I meant to call your attention to it before. Why, why, do you blot out, in that unutterably provoking manner, whole lines, not to say words, in your letters — (and in the criticism on the ‘Duchess’) — if it is a fact that you have a second thought, does it cease to be as genuine a fact, that first thought you please to efface? Why give a thing and take a thing? Is there no significance in putting on record that your first impression was to a certain effect and your next to a certain other, perhaps completely opposite one? If any proceeding of yours could go near to deserve that harsh word ‘impertinent’ which you have twice, in speech and writing, been pleased to apply to your observations on me; certainly this does go as near as can be — as there is but one step to take from Southampton pier to New York quay, for travellers Westward. Now will you lay this to heart and perpend — lest in my righteous indignation I [some words effaced here]! For my own health — it improves, thank you! And I shall go abroad all in good time, never fear. For my ‘Bells,’ Mr. Chorley tells me there is no use in the world of printing them before November at earliest — and by that time I shall get done with these Romances and certainly one Tragedy (that could go to press next week) — in proof of which I will bring you, if you let me, a few more hundreds of lines next Wednesday. But, ‘my poet,’ if I would, as is true, sacrifice all my works to do your fingers, even, good — what would I not offer up to prevent you staying ... perhaps to correct my very verses ... perhaps read and answer my very letters ... staying the production of more ‘Berthas’ and ‘Caterinas’ and ‘Geraldines,’ more great and beautiful poems of which I shall be — how proud! Do not be punctual in paying tithes of thyme, mint, anise and cummin, and leaving unpaid the real weighty dues of the Law; nor affect a scrupulous acknowledgment of ‘what you owe me’ in petty manners, while you leave me to settle such a charge, as accessory to the hiding the Talent, as best I can! I have thought of this again and again, and would have spoken of it to you, had I ever felt myself fit to speak of any subject nearer home and me and you than Rome and Cardinal Acton. For, observe, you have not done ... yes, the ‘Prometheus,’ no doubt ... but with that exception have you written much lately, as much as last year when ‘you wrote all your best things’ you said, I think? Yet you are better now than then. Dearest friend, I intend to write more, and very likely be praised more, now I care less than ever for it, but still more do I look to have you ever before me, in your place, and with more poetry and more praise still, and my own heartfelt praise ever on the top, like a flower on the water. I have said nothing of yesterday’s storm ... thunder ... may you not have been out in it! The evening draws in, and I will walk out. May God bless you, and let you hold me by the hand till the end — Yes, dearest friend!