Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Only I did not mean to write all this, though you told me to write to you. But the rain which keeps one in, gives one an example of pouring on ... and you must endure as you can or will. Also ... as you have a friend with you ‘from Italy’ ... ‘from Rome,’ and commended me for my ‘kindness and considerateness’ in changing Tuesday to Friday ... (wasn’t it?...) shall I still be more considerate and put off the visit-day to next week? mind, you let it be as you like it best to be — I mean, as is most convenient ‘for the nonce’ to you and your friend — because all days are equal, as to that matter of convenience, to your other friend of this ilk,

  E.B.B.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Wednesday Morning.

  [Post-mark, August 20, 1845.]

  Mauvaise, mauvaise, mauvaise, you know as I know, just as much, that your ‘kindness and considerateness’ consisted, not in putting off Tuesday for another day, but in caring for my coming at all; for my coming and being told at the door that you were engaged, and I might call another time! And you are not, not my ‘other friend,’ any more than this head of mine is my other head, seeing that I have got a violin which has a head too! All which, beware lest you get fully told in the letter I will write this evening, when I have done with my Romans — who are, it so happens, here at this minute; that is, have left the house for a few minutes with my sister — but are not ‘with me,’ as you seem to understand it, — in the house to stay. They were kind to me in Rome, (husband and wife), and I am bound to be of what use I may during their short stay. Let me lose no time in begging and praying you to cry ‘hands off’ to that dreadful Burgess; have not I got a ... but I will tell you to-night — or on Friday which is my day, please — Friday. Till when, pray believe me, with respect and esteem,

  Your most obliged and disobliged at these blank endings — what have I done? God bless you ever dearest friend.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Thursday, 7 o’clock.

  [Post-mark, August 21, 1845.]

  I feel at home, this blue early morning, now that I sit down to write (or, speak, as I try and fancy) to you, after a whole day with those ‘other friends’ — dear good souls, whom I should be so glad to serve, and to whom service must go by way of last will and testament, if a few more hours of ‘social joy,’ ‘kindly intercourse,’ &c., fall to my portion. My friend the Countess began proceedings (when I first saw her, not yesterday) by asking ‘if I had got as much money as I expected by any works published of late?’ — to which I answered, of course, ‘exactly as much’ — è grazioso! (All the same, if you were to ask her, or the like of her, ‘how much the stone-work of the Coliseum would fetch, properly burned down to lime?’ — she would shudder from head to foot and call you ‘barbaro’ with good Trojan heart.) Now you suppose — (watch my rhetorical figure here) — you suppose I am going to congratulate myself on being so much for the better, en pays de connaissance, with my ‘other friend,’ E.B.B., number 2 — or 200, why not? — whereas I mean to ‘fulmine over Greece,’ since thunder frightens you, for all the laurels, — and to have reason for your taking my own part and lot to yourself — I do, will, must, and will, again, wonder at you and admire you, and so on to the climax. It is a fixed, immovable thing: so fixed that I can well forego talking about it. But if to talk you once begin, ‘the King shall enjoy (or receive quietly) his own again’ — I wear no bright weapon out of that Panoply ... or Panoplite, as I think you call Nonnus, nor ever, like Leigh Hunt’s ‘Johnny, ever blythe and bonny, went singing Nonny, nonny’ and see to-morrow, what a vengeance I will take for your ‘mere suspicion in that kind’! But to the serious matter ... nay, I said yesterday, I believe — keep off that Burgess — he is stark staring mad — mad, do you know? The last time I met him he told me he had recovered I forget how many of the lost books of Thucydides — found them imbedded in Suidas (I think), and had disengaged them from his Greek, without loss of a letter, ‘by an instinct he, Burgess, had’ — (I spell his name wrongly to help the proper hiss at the end). Then, once on a time, he found in the ‘Christus Patiens,’ an odd dozen of lines, clearly dropped out of the ‘Prometheus,’ and proving that Æschylus was aware of the invention of gunpowder. He wanted to help Dr. Leonhard Schmitz in his ‘Museum’ — and scared him, as Schmitz told me. What business has he, Burges, with English verse — and what on earth, or under it, has Miss Thomson to do with him. If she must displease one of two, why is Mr. B. not to be thanked and ‘sent to feed,’ as the French say prettily? At all events, do pray see what he has presumed to alter ... you can alter at sufficient warrant, profit by suggestion, I should think! But it is all Miss Thomson’s shame and fault: because she is quite in her propriety, saying to such intermeddlers, gently for the sake of their poor weak heads, ‘very good, I dare say, very desirable emendations, only the work is not mine, you know, but my friend’s, and you must no more alter it without her leave, than alter this sketch, this illustration, because you think you could mend Ariadne’s face or figure, — Fecit Tizianus, scripsit E.B.B.’ Dear friend, you will tell Miss Thomson to stop further proceedings, will you not? There! only, do mind what I say?

  And now — till to-morrow! It seems an age since I saw you. I want to catch our first post ... (this phrase I ought to get stereotyped — I need it so constantly). The day is fine ... you will profit by it, I trust. ‘Flush, wag your tail and grow restless and scratch at the door!’

  God bless you, — my one friend, without an ‘other’ — bless you ever —

  R.B.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Wednesday.

  [Post-mark, August 25, 1845.]

  But what have I done that you should ask what have you done? I have not brought any accusation, have I ... no, nor thought any, I am sure — and it was only the ‘kindness and considerateness’ — argument that was irresistible as a thing to be retorted, when your thanks came so naturally and just at the corner of an application. And then, you know, it is gravely true, seriously true, sadly true, that I am always expecting to hear or to see how tired you are at last of me! — sooner or later, you know! — But I did not mean any seriousness in that letter. No, nor did I mean ... (to pass to another question ...) to provoke you to the

  Mister Hayley ... so are you....

  reply complimentary. All I observed concerning yourself, was the combination — which not an idiom in chivalry could treat grammatically as a thing common to me and you, inasmuch as everyone who has known me for half a day, may know that, if there is anything peculiar in me, it lies for the most part in an extraordinary deficiency in this and this and this, ... there is no need to describe what. Only nuns of the strictest sect of the nunneries are rather wiser in some points, and have led less restricted lives than I have in others. And if it had not been for my ‘carpet-work’ —

  Well — and do you know that I have, for the last few years, taken quite to despise book-knowledge and its effect on the mind — I mean when people live by it as most readers by profession do, ... cloistering their souls under these roofs made with heads, when they might be under the sky. Such people grow dark and narrow and low, with all their pains.

  Friday. — I was writing you see before you came — and now I go on in haste to speak ‘off my mind’ some things which are on it. First ... of yourself; how can it be that you are unwell again, ... and that you should talk (now did you not? — did I not hear you say so?) of being ‘weary in your soul’ ... you? What should make you, dearest friend, weary in your soul; or out of spirits in any way? — Do ... tell me.... I was going to write without a pause — and almost I might, perhaps, ... even as one of the two hundred of your friends, ... almost I might say out that ‘Do tell me.’ Or is it (which I am inclined to think most probable) that you are tired of a same life and want change? It may happen to anyone sometimes, and is independent of your will and choice, you know — and I know, and the whole world knows: and would it not therefore be wise of you, in that case, to fold your life new again and go abroad at once? What can make you weary
in your soul, is a problem to me. You are the last from whom I should have expected such a word. And you did say so, I think. I think that it was not a mistake of mine. And you, ... with a full liberty, and the world in your hand for every purpose and pleasure of it! — Or is it that, being unwell, your spirits are affected by that? But then you might be more unwell than you like to admit — . And I am teasing you with talking of it ... am I not? — and being disagreeable is only one third of the way towards being useful, it is good to remember in time.

  And then the next thing to write off my mind is ... that you must not, you must not, make an unjust opinion out of what I said to-day. I have been uncomfortable since, lest you should — and perhaps it would have been better if I had not said it apart from all context in that way; only that you could not long be a friend of mine without knowing and seeing what so lies on the surface. But then, ... as far as I am concerned, ... no one cares less for a ‘will’ than I do (and this though I never had one, ... in clear opposition to your theory which holds generally nevertheless) for a will in the common things of life. Every now and then there must of course be a crossing and vexation — but in one’s mere pleasures and fantasies, one would rather be crossed and vexed a little than vex a person one loves ... and it is possible to get used to the harness and run easily in it at last; and there is a side-world to hide one’s thoughts in, and ‘carpet-work’ to be immoral on in spite of Mrs. Jameson, ... and the word ‘literature’ has, with me, covered a good deal of liberty as you must see ... real liberty which is never enquired into — and it has happened throughout my life by an accident (as far as anything is accident) that my own sense of right and happiness on any important point of overt action, has never run contrariwise to the way of obedience required of me ... while in things not exactly overt, I and all of us are apt to act sometimes up to the limit of our means of acting, with shut doors and windows, and no waiting for cognisance or permission. Ah — and that last is the worst of it all perhaps! to be forced into concealments from the heart naturally nearest to us; and forced away from the natural source of counsel and strength! — and then, the disingenuousness — the cowardice — the ‘vices of slaves’! — and everyone you see ... all my brothers, ... constrained bodily into submission ... apparent submission at least ... by that worst and most dishonouring of necessities, the necessity of living, everyone of them all, except myself, being dependent in money-matters on the inflexible will ... do you see? But what you do not see, what you cannot see, is the deep tender affection behind and below all those patriarchal ideas of governing grown up children ‘in the way they must go!’ and there never was (under the strata) a truer affection in a father’s heart ... no, nor a worthier heart in itself ... a heart loyaller and purer, and more compelling to gratitude and reverence, than his, as I see it! The evil is in the system — and he simply takes it to be his duty to rule, and to make happy according to his own views of the propriety of happiness — he takes it to be his duty to rule like the Kings of Christendom, by divine right. But he loves us through and through it — and I, for one, love him! and when, five years ago, I lost what I loved best in the world beyond comparison and rivalship ... far better than himself as he knew ... for everyone who knew me could not choose but know what was my first and chiefest affection ... when I lost that, ... I felt that he stood the nearest to me on the closed grave ... or by the unclosing sea ... I do not know which nor could ask. And I will tell you that not only he has been kind and patient and forbearing to me through the tedious trial of this illness (far more trying to standers by than you have an idea of perhaps) but that he was generous and forbearing in that hour of bitter trial, and never reproached me as he might have done and as my own soul has not spared — never once said to me then or since, that if it had not been for me, the crown of his house would not have fallen. He never did ... and he might have said it, and more — and I could have answered nothing. Nothing, except that I had paid my own price — and that the price I paid was greater than his loss ... his!! For see how it was; and how, ‘not with my hand but heart,’ I was the cause or occasion of that misery — and though not with the intention of my heart but with its weakness, yet the occasion, any way!

  They sent me down you know to Torquay — Dr. Chambers saying that I could not live a winter in London. The worst — what people call the worst — was apprehended for me at that time. So I was sent down with my sister to my aunt there — and he, my brother whom I loved so, was sent too, to take us there and return. And when the time came for him to leave me, I, to whom he was the dearest of friends and brothers in one ... the only one of my family who ... well, but I cannot write of these things; and it is enough to tell you that he was above us all, better than us all, and kindest and noblest and dearest to me, beyond comparison, any comparison, as I said — and when the time came for him to leave me I, weakened by illness, could not master my spirits or drive back my tears — and my aunt kissed them away instead of reproving me as she should have done; and said that she would take care that I should not be grieved ... she! ... and so she sate down and wrote a letter to Papa to tell him that he would ‘break my heart’ if he persisted in calling away my brother — As if hearts were broken so! I have thought bitterly since that my heart did not break for a good deal more than that! And Papa’s answer was — burnt into me, as with fire, it is — that ‘under such circumstances he did not refuse to suspend his purpose, but that he considered it to be very wrong in me to exact such a thing.’ So there was no separation then: and month after month passed — and sometimes I was better and sometimes worse — and the medical men continued to say that they would not answer for my life ... they! if I were agitated — and so there was no more talk of a separation. And once he held my hand, ... how I remember! and said that he ‘loved me better than them all and that he would not leave me ... till I was well,’ he said! how I remember that! And ten days from that day the boat had left the shore which never returned; never — and he had left me! gone! For three days we waited — and I hoped while I could — oh — that awful agony of three days! And the sun shone as it shines to-day, and there was no more wind than now; and the sea under the windows was like this paper for smoothness — and my sisters drew the curtains back that I might see for myself how smooth the sea was, and how it could hurt nobody — and other boats came back one by one.

  Remember how you wrote in your ‘Gismond’

  What says the body when they spring

  Some monstrous torture-engine’s whole

  Strength on it? No more says the soul,

  and you never wrote anything which lived with me more than that. It is such a dreadful truth. But you knew it for truth, I hope, by your genius, and not by such proof as mine — I, who could not speak or shed a tear, but lay for weeks and months half conscious, half unconscious, with a wandering mind, and too near to God under the crushing of His hand, to pray at all. I expiated all my weak tears before, by not being able to shed then one tear — and yet they were forbearing — and no voice said ‘You have done this.’

  Do not notice what I have written to you, my dearest friend. I have never said so much to a living being — I never could speak or write of it. I asked no question from the moment when my last hope went: and since then, it has been impossible for me to speak what was in me. I have borne to do it to-day and to you, but perhaps if you were to write — so do not let this be noticed between us again — do not! And besides there is no need! I do not reproach myself with such acrid thoughts as I had once — I know that I would have died ten times over for him, and that therefore though it was wrong of me to be weak, and I have suffered for it and shall learn by it I hope; remorse is not precisely the word for me — not at least in its full sense. Still you will comprehend from what I have told you how the spring of life must have seemed to break within me then; and how natural it has been for me to loathe the living on — and to lose faith (even without the loathing), to lose faith in myself ... which I have done on some points utterly. It is not
from the cause of illness — no. And you will comprehend too that I have strong reasons for being grateful to the forbearance.... It would have been cruel, you think, to reproach me. Perhaps so! yet the kindness and patience of the desisting from reproach, are positive things all the same.