Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  People complain of Dr. Chambers and call him rough and unfeeling — neither of which I ever found him for a moment — and I like him for his truthfulness, which is the nature of the man, though it is essential to medical morality never to let a patient think himself mortal while it is possible to prevent it, and even Dr. Chambers may incline to this on occasion. Still he need not have said all the good he said to me on Saturday — he used not to say any of it; and he must have thought some of it: and, any way, the Pisa-case is strengthened all round by his opinion and injunction, so that all my horror and terror at the thoughts of his visit, (and it’s really true that I would rather suffer to a certain extent than be cured by means of those doctors!) had some compensation. How are you? do not forget to say! I found among some papers to-day, a note of yours which I asked Mr. Kenyon to give me for an autograph, two years ago.

  May God bless you, dearest friend. And I have a dispensation from ‘beef and porter’ εις τους αιωνας. ‘On no account’ was the answer!

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Friday Afternoon.

  [Post-mark, September 5, 1845.]

  What you tell me of Dr. Chambers, ‘all the good of you’ he said, and all I venture to infer; this makes me most happy and thankful. Do you use to attach our old τυφλας ελπιδας (and the practice of instilling them) to that medical science in which Prometheus boasted himself proficient? I had thought the ‘faculty’ dealt in fears, on the contrary, and scared you into obedience: but I know most about the doctors in Molière. However the joyous truth is — must be, that you are better, and if one could transport you quietly to Pisa, save you all worry, — what might one not expect!

  When I know your own intentions — measures, I should say, respecting your journey — mine will of course be submitted to you — it will just be ‘which day next — month’? — Not week, alas.

  I can thank you now for this edition of your poems — I have not yet taken to read it, though — for it does not, each volume of it, open obediently to a thought, here, and here, and here, like my green books ... no, my Sister’s they are; so these you give me are really mine. And America, with its ten per cent., shall have my better word henceforth and for ever ... for when you calculate, there must have been a really extraordinary circulation; and in a few months: it is what newspapers call ‘a great fact.’ Have they reprinted the ‘Seraphim’? Quietly, perhaps!

  I shall see you on Monday, then —

  And my all-important headaches are tolerably kept under — headaches proper they are not — but the noise and slight turning are less troublesome — will soon go altogether.

  Bless you ever — ever dearest friend.

  R.B.

  Oh, oh, oh! As many thanks for that precious card-box and jewel of a flower-holder as are consistent with my dismay at finding you only return them ... and not the costly brown paper wrappages also ... to say nothing of the inestimable pins with which my sister uses to fasten the same!

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Saturday.

  [Post-mark, September 8, 1845.]

  I am in the greatest difficulty about the steamers. Will you think a little for me and tell me what is best to do? It appears that the direct Leghorn steamer will not sail on the third, and may not until the middle of October, and if forced to still further delay, which is possible, will not at all. One of my brothers has been to Mr. Andrews of St. Mary Axe and heard as much as this. What shall I do? The middle of October, say my sisters ... and I half fear that it may prove so ... is too late for me — to say nothing for the uncertainty which completes the difficulty.

  On the 20th of September (on the other hand) sails the Malta vessel; and I hear that I may go in it to Gibraltar and find a French steamer there to proceed by. Is there an objection to this — except the change of steamers ... repeated ... for I must get down to Southampton — and the leaving England so soon? Is any better to be done? Do think for me a little. And now that the doing comes so near ... and in this dead silence of Papa’s ... it all seems impossible, ... and I seem to see the stars constellating against me, and give it as my serious opinion to you that I shall not go. Now, mark.

  But I have had the kindest of letters from dear Mr. Kenyon, urging it — .

  Well — I have no time for writing any more — and this is only a note of business to bespeak your thoughts about the steamers. My wisdom looks back regretfully ... only rather too late ... on the Leghorn vessel of the third of September. It would have been wise if I had gone then.

  May God bless you, dearest friend.

  E.B.B.

  But if your head turns still, ... do you walk enough? Is there not fault in your not walking, by your own confession? Think of this first — and then, if you please, of the steamers.

  So, till Monday! —

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Tuesday.

  [Post-mark, September 9, 1845.]

  One reason against printing the tragedies now, is your not being well enough for the necessary work connected with them, ... a sure reason and strong ... nay, chiefest of all. Plainly you are unfit for work now — and even to complete the preparation of the lyrics, and take them through the press, may be too much for you, I am afraid; and if so, why you will not do it — will you? — you will wait for another year, — or at least be satisfied for this, with bringing out a number of the old size, consisting of such poems as are fairly finished and require no retouching. ‘Saul’ for instance, you might leave — ! You will not let me hear when I am gone, of your being ill — you will take care ... will you not? Because you see ... or rather I see ... you are not looking well at all — no, you are not! and even if you do not care for that, you should and must care to consider how unavailing it will be for you to hold those golden keys of the future with a more resolute hand than your contemporaries, should you suffer yourself to be struck down before the gate ... should you lose the physical power while keeping the heart and will. Heart and will are great things, and sufficient things in your case — but after all we carry a barrow-full of clay about with us, and we must carry it a little carefully if we mean to keep to the path and not run zigzag into the border of the garden. A figure which reminds me ... and I wanted no figure to remind me ... to ask you to thank your sister for me and from me for all her kindness about the flowers. Now you will not forget? you must not. When I think of the repeated trouble she has taken week after week, and all for a stranger, I must think again that it has been very kind — and I take the liberty of saying so moreover ... as I am not thanking you. Also these flowers of yesterday, which yesterday you disdained so, look full of summer and are full of fragrance, and when they seem to say that it is not September, I am willing to be lied to just so. For I wish it were not September. I wish it were July ... or November ... two months before or after: and that this journey were thrown behind or in front ... anywhere to be out of sight. You do not know the courage it requires to hold the intention of it fast through what I feel sometimes. If it (the courage) had been prophesied to me only a year ago, the prophet would have been laughed to scorn. Well! — but I want you to see. George’s letter, and how he and Mrs. Hedley, when she saw Papa’s note of consent to me, give unhesitating counsel. Burn it when you have read it. It is addressed to me ... which you will doubt from the address of it perhaps ... seeing that it goes βα ... ρβαριζων. We are famous in this house for what are called nick-names ... though a few of us have escaped rather by a caprice than a reason: and I am never called anything else (never at all) except by the nom de paix which you find written in the letter: — proving as Mr. Kenyon says, that I am just ‘half a Ba-by’ ... no more nor less; — and in fact the name has that precise definition. Burn the note when you have read it.

  And then I take it into my head, as you do not distinguish my sisters, you say, one from the other, to send you my own account of them in these enclosed ‘sonnets’ which were written a few weeks ago, and though only pretending to be ‘sketches,’ pretend to be like, as far as they go,
and are like — my brothers thought — when I ‘showed them against’ a profile drawn in pencil by Alfred, on the same subjects. I was laughing and maintaining that mine should be as like as his — and he yielded the point to me. So it is mere portrait-painting — and you who are in ‘high art,’ must not be too scornful. Henrietta is the elder, and the one who brought you into this room first — and Arabel, who means to go with me to Pisa, has been the most with me through my illness and is the least wanted in the house here, ... and perhaps ... perhaps — is my favourite — though my heart smites me while I write that unlawful word. They are both affectionate and kind to me in all things, and good and lovable in their own beings — very unlike, for the rest; one, most caring for the Polka, ... and the other for the sermon preached at Paddington Chapel, ... that is Arabel ... so if ever you happen to know her you must try not to say before her how ‘much you hate &c.’ Henrietta always ‘managed’ everything in the house even before I was ill, ... because she liked it and I didn’t, and I waived my right to the sceptre of dinner-ordering.

  I have been thinking much of your ‘Sordello’ since you spoke of it — and even, I had thought much of it before you spoke of it yesterday; feeling that it might be thrown out into the light by your hand, and greatly justify the additional effort. It is like a noble picture with its face to the wall just now — or at least, in the shadow. And so worthy as it is of you in all ways! individual all through: you have made even the darkness of it! And such a work as it might become if you chose ... if you put your will to it! What I meant to say yesterday was not that it wanted more additional verses than the ‘ten per cent’ you spoke of ... though it does perhaps ... so much as that (to my mind) it wants drawing together and fortifying in the connections and associations ... which hang as loosely every here and there, as those in a dream, and confound the reader who persists in thinking himself awake.

  How do you mean that I am ‘lenient’? Do you not believe that I tell you what I think, and as I think it? I may think wrong, to be sure — but that is not my fault: — and so there is no use reproaching me generally, unless you can convict me definitely at the same time: — is there, now?

  And I have been reading and admiring these letters of Mr. Carlyle, and receiving the greatest pleasure from them in every way. He is greatly himself always — which is the hardest thing for a man to be, perhaps. And what his appreciation of you is, it is easy to see — and what he expects from you — notwithstanding that prodigious advice of his, to write your next work in prose! Also Mrs. Carlyle’s letter — thank you for letting me see it. I admire that too! It is as ingenious ‘a case’ against poor Keats, as could well be drawn — but nobody who knew very deeply what poetry is, could, you know, draw any case against him. A poet of the senses, he may be and is, just as she says — but then it is of the senses idealized; and no dream in a ‘store-room’ would ever be like the ‘Eve of St. Agnes,’ unless dreamed by some ‘animosus infans,’ like Keats himself. Still it is all true ... isn’t it?... what she observes of the want of thought as thought. He was a seer strictly speaking. And what noble oppositions — (to go back to Carlyle’s letters) ... he writes to the things you were speaking of yesterday! These letters are as good as Milton’s picture for convicting and putting to shame. Is not the difference between the men of our day and ‘the giants which were on the earth,’ less ... far less ... in the faculty ... in the gift, ... or in the general intellect, ... than in the stature of the soul itself? Our inferiority is not in what we can do, but in what we are. We should write poems like Milton if [we] lived them like Milton.

  I write all this just to show, I suppose, that I am not industrious as you did me the honour of apprehending that I was going to be ... packing trunks perhaps ... or what else in the way of ‘active usefulness.’

  Say how you are — will you? And do take care, and walk and do what is good for you. I shall be able to see you twice before I go. And oh, this going! Pray for me, dearest friend. May God bless you.

  E.B.B.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Thursday Morning.

  [Post-mark, September 11, 1845.]

  Here are your beautiful, and I am sure true sonnets; they look true — I remember the light hair, I find. And who paints, and dares exhibit, E.B.B.’s self? And surely ‘Alfred’s’ pencil has not foregone its best privilege, not left the face unsketched? Italians call such an ‘effect defective’ — ’l’andar a Roma senza vedere il Papa.’ He must have begun by seeing his Holiness, I know, and ... he will not trust me with the result, that my sister may copy it for me, because we are strangers, he and I, and I could give him nothing, nothing like the proper price for it — but you would lend it to me, I think, nor need I do more than thank you in my usual effective and very eloquent way — for I have already been allowed to visit you seventeen times, do you know; and this last letter of yours, fiftieth is the same! So all my pride is gone, pride in that sense — and I mean to take of you for ever, and reconcile myself with my lot in this life. Could, and would, you give me such a sketch? It has been on my mind to ask you ever since I knew you if nothing in the way of good portrait existed — and this occasion bids me speak out, I dare believe: the more, that you have also quieted — have you not? — another old obstinate and very likely impertinent questioning of mine — as to the little name which was neither Orinda, nor Sacharissa (for which thank providence) and is never to appear in books, though you write them. Now I know it and write it — ’Ba’ — and thank you, and your brother George, and only burned his kind letter because you bade me who know best. So, wish by wish, one gets one’s wishes — at least I do — for one instance, you will go to Italy

  Why, ‘lean and harken after it’ as Donne says —

  Don’t expect Neapolitan Scenery at Pisa, quite in the North, remember. Mrs. Shelley found Italy for the first time, real Italy, at Sorrento, she says. Oh that book — does one wake or sleep? The ‘Mary dear’ with the brown eyes, and Godwin’s daughter and Shelley’s wife, and who surely was something better once upon a time — and to go through Rome and Florence and the rest, after what I suppose to be Lady Londonderry’s fashion: the intrepidity of the commonplace quite astounds me. And then that way, when she and the like of her are put in a new place, with new flowers, new stones, faces, walls, all new — of looking wisely up at the sun, clouds, evening star, or mountain top and wisely saying ‘who shall describe that sight!’ — Not you, we very well see — but why don’t you tell us that at Rome they eat roasted chestnuts, and put the shells into their aprons, the women do, and calmly empty the whole on the heads of the passengers in the street below; and that at Padua when a man drives his waggon up to a house and stops, all the mouse-coloured oxen that pull it from a beam against their foreheads sit down in a heap and rest. But once she travelled the country with Shelley on arm; now she plods it, Rogers in hand — to such things and uses may we come at last! Her remarks on art, once she lets go of Rio’s skirts, are amazing — Fra Angelico, for instance, only painted Martyrs, Virgins &c., she had no eyes for the divine bon-bourgeoisie of his pictures; the dear common folk of his crowds, those who sit and listen (spectacle at nose and bent into a comfortable heap to hear better) at the sermon of the Saint — and the children, and women, — divinely pure they all are, but fresh from the streets and market place — but she is wrong every where, that is, not right, not seeing what is to see, speaking what one expects to hear — I quarrel with her, for ever, I think.

  I am much better, and mean to be well as you desire — shall correct the verses you have seen, and make them do for the present.

  Saturday, then! And one other time only, do you say?

  God bless you, my own, best friend.

  Yours ever

  R.B.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Thursday.

  [Post-mark, September 11, 1845.]

  Will you come on Friday ... to-morrow ... instead of Saturday — will it be the same thing? Because I have heard from Mr. Kenyon, who is to be in London
on Friday evening he says, and therefore may mean to visit me on Saturday I imagine. So let it be Friday — if you should not, for any reason, prove Monday to be better still.

  May God bless you —

  Ever yours,

  E.B.B.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Saturday Morning.

  [Post-mark, September 13, 1845.]

  Now, dearest, I will try and write the little I shall be able, in reply to your letter of last week — and first of all I have to entreat you, now more than ever, to help me and understand from the few words the feelings behind them — (should speak rather more easily, I think — but I dare not run the risk: and I know, after all, you will be just and kind where you can.) I have read your letter again and again. I will tell you — no, not you, but any imaginary other person, who should hear what I am going to avow; I would tell that person most sincerely there is not a particle of fatuity, shall I call it, in that avowal; cannot be, seeing that from the beginning and at this moment I never dreamed of winning your love. I can hardly write this word, so incongruous and impossible does it seem; such a change of our places does it imply — nor, next to that, though long after, would I, if I could, supplant one of any of the affections that I know to have taken root in you — that great and solemn one, for instance. I feel that if I could get myself remade, as if turned to gold, I would not even then desire to become more than the mere setting to that diamond you must always wear. The regard and esteem you now give me, in this letter, and which I press to my heart and bow my head upon, is all I can take and all too embarrassing, using all my gratitude. And yet, with that contented pride in being infinitely your debtor as it is, bound to you for ever as it is; when I read your letter with all the determination to be just to us both; I dare not so far withstand the light I am master of, as to refuse seeing that whatever is recorded as an objection to your disposing of that life of mine I would give you, has reference to some supposed good in that life which your accepting it would destroy (of which fancy I shall speak presently) — I say, wonder as I may at this, I cannot but find it there, surely there. I could no more ‘bind you by words,’ than you have bound me, as you say — but if I misunderstand you, one assurance to that effect will be but too intelligible to me — but, as it is, I have difficulty in imagining that while one of so many reasons, which I am not obliged to repeat to myself, but which any one easily conceives; while any one of those reasons would impose silence on me for ever (for, as I observed, I love you as you now are, and would not remove one affection that is already part of you,) — would you, being able to speak so, only say that you desire not to put ‘more sadness than I was born to,’ into my life? — that you ‘could give me only what it were ungenerous to give’?