Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  ‘Serve me right’ — I do not dare to complain. I wished for the safety of that letter so much that I finished by persuading myself of the probability of it: but ‘serve me right’ quite clearly. And yet — but no more ‘and yets’ about it. ‘And yets’ fray the silk.

  I see how the ‘turret’ stands in the new reading, triumphing over the ‘tower,’ and unexceptionable in every respect. Also I do hold that nobody with an ordinary understanding has the slightest pretence for attaching a charge of obscurity to this new number — there are lights enough for the critics to scan one another’s dull blank of visage by. One verse indeed in that expressive lyric of the ‘Lost Mistress,’ does still seem questionable to me, though you have changed a word since I saw it; and still I fancy that I rather leap at the meaning than reach it — but it is my own fault probably ... I am not sure. With that one exception I am quite sure that people who shall complain of darkness are blind ... I mean, that the construction is clear and unembarrassed everywhere. Subtleties of thought which are not directly apprehensible by minds of a common range, are here as elsewhere in your writings — but if to utter things ‘hard to understand’ from that cause be an offence, why we may begin with ‘our beloved brother Paul,’ you know, and go down through all the geniuses of the world, and bid them put away their inspirations. You must descend to the level of critic A or B, that he may look into your face.... Ah well! — ’Let them rave.’ You will live when all those are under the willows. In the meantime there is something better, as you said, even than your poetry — as the giver is better than the gift, and the maker than the creature, and you than yours. Yes — you than yours.... (I did not mean it so when I wrote it first ... but I accept the ‘bona verba,’ and use the phrase for the end of my letter) ... as you are better than yours; even when so much yours as your own

  E.B.B.

  May I see the first act first? Let me! — And you walk?

  Mr. Horne’s address is Hill Side, Fitzroy Park, Highgate.

  There is no reason against Saturday so far. Mr. Kenyon comes to-morrow, Friday, and therefore — ! — and if Saturday should become impracticable, I will write again.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Sunday Evening.

  [Post-mark, November 10, 1845.]

  When I come back from seeing you, and think over it all, there never is a least word of yours I could not occupy myself with, and wish to return to you with some ... not to say, all ... the thoughts and fancies it is sure to call out of me. There is nothing in you that does not draw out all of me. You possess me, dearest ... and there is no help for the expressing it all, no voice nor hand, but these of mine which shrink and turn away from the attempt. So you must go on, patiently, knowing me more and more, and your entire power on me, and I will console myself, to the full extent, with your knowledge — penetration, intuition — somehow I must believe you can get to what is here, in me, without the pretence of my telling or writing it. But, because I give up the great achievements, there is no reason I should not secure any occasion of making clear one of the less important points that arise in our intercourse ... if I fancy I can do it with the least success. For instance, it is on my mind to explain what I meant yesterday by trusting that the entire happiness I feel in the letters, and the help in the criticising might not be hurt by the surmise, even, that those labours to which you were born, might be suspended, in any degree, through such generosity to me. Dearest, I believed in your glorious genius and knew it for a true star from the moment I saw it; long before I had the blessing of knowing it was my star, with my fortune and futurity in it. And, when I draw back from myself, and look better and more clearly, then I do feel, with you, that the writing a few letters more or less, reading many or few rhymes of any other person, would not interfere in any material degree with that power of yours — that you might easily make one so happy and yet go on writing ‘Geraldines’ and ‘Berthas’ — but — how can I, dearest, leave my heart’s treasures long, even to look at your genius?... and when I come back and find all safe, find the comfort of you, the traces of you ... will it do — tell me — to trust all that as a light effort, an easy matter?

  Yet, if you can lift me with one hand, while the other suffices to crown you — there is queenliness in that, too!

  Well, I have spoken. As I told you, your turn comes now. How have you determined respecting the American Edition? You tell me nothing of yourself! It is all me you help, me you do good to ... and I take it all! Now see, if this goes on! I have not had every love-luxury, I now find out ... where is the proper, rationally to-be-expected — ’lovers’ quarrel’? Here, as you will find! ‘Iræ; amantium’.... I am no more ‘at a loss with my Naso,’ than Peter Ronsard. Ah, but then they are to be reintegratio amoris — and to get back into a thing, one must needs get for a moment first out of it ... trust me, no! And now, the natural inference from all this? The consistent inference ... the ‘self-denying ordinance’? Why — do you doubt? even this, — you must just put aside the Romance, and tell the Americans to wait, and make my heart start up when the letter is laid to it; the letter full of your news, telling me you are well and walking, and working for my sake towards the time — informing me, moreover, if Thursday or Friday is to be my day — .

  May God bless you, my own love.

  I will certainly bring you an Act of the Play ... for this serpent’s reason, in addition to the others ... that — No, I will tell you that — I can tell you now more than even lately!

  Ever your own

  R.B.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Monday.

  [Post-mark, November 11, 1845.]

  If it were possible that you could do me harm in the way of work, (but it isn’t) it would be possible, not through writing letters and reading manuscripts, but because of a reason to be drawn from your own great line

  What man is strong until he stands alone?

  What man ... what woman? For have I not felt twenty times the desolate advantage of being insulated here and of not minding anybody when I made my poems? — of living a little like a disembodied spirit, and caring less for suppositious criticism than for the black fly buzzing in the pane? — That made me what dear Mr. Kenyon calls ‘insolent,’ — untimid, and unconventional in my degree; and not so much by strength, you see, as by separation. You touch your greater ends by mere strength; breaking with your own hands the hampering threads which, in your position would have hampered me.

  Still ... when all is changed for me now, and different, it is not possible, ... for all the changing, nor for all your line and my speculation, ... that I should not be better and stronger for being within your influences and sympathies, in this way of writing as in other ways. We shall see — you will see. Yet I have been idle lately I confess; leaning half out of some turret-window of the castle of Indolence and watching the new sunrise — as why not? — Do I mean to be idle always? — no! — and am I not an industrious worker on the average of days? Indeed yes! Also I have been less idle than you think perhaps, even this last year, though the results seem so like trifling: and I shall set about the prose papers for the New York people, and the something rather better besides we may hope ... may I not hope, if you wish it? Only there is no ‘crown’ for me, be sure, except what grows from this letter and such letters ... this sense of being anything to one! there is no room for another crown. Have I a great head like Goethe’s that there should be room? and mine is bent down already by the unused weight — and as to bearing it, ... ‘Will it do, — tell me; to treat that as a light effort, an easy matter?’

  Now let me remember to tell you that the line of yours I have just quoted, and which has been present with me since you wrote it, Mr. Chorley has quoted too in his new novel of ‘Pomfret.’ You were right in your identifying of servant and waistcoat — and Wilson waited only till you had gone on Saturday, to give me a parcel and note; the novel itself in fact, which Mr. Chorley had the kindness to send me ‘some days or weeks,’ said the note, ‘previous to the publication
.’ Very goodnatured of him certainly: and the book seems to me his best work in point of sustainment and vigour, and I am in process of being interested in it. Not that he is a maker, even for this prose. A feeler ... an observer ... a thinker even, in a certain sphere — but a maker ... no, as it seems to me — and if I were he, I would rather herd with the essayists than the novelists where he is too good to take inferior rank and not strong enough to ‘go up higher.’ Only it would be more right in me to be grateful than to talk so — now wouldn’t it?

  And here is Mr. Kenyon’s letter back again — a kind good letter ... a letter I have liked to read (so it was kind and good in you to let me!) — and he was with me to-day and praising the ‘Ride to Ghent,’ and praising the ‘Duchess,’ and praising you altogether as I liked to hear him. The Ghent-ride was ‘very fine’ — and the

  Into the midnight they galloped abreast

  drew us out into the night as witnesses. And then, the ‘Duchess’ ... the conception of it was noble, and the vehicle, rhythm and all, most characteristic and individual ... though some of the rhymes ... oh, some of the rhymes did not find grace in his ears — but the incantation-scene, ‘just trenching on the supernatural,’ that was taken to be ‘wonderful,’ ... ‘showing extraordinary power, ... as indeed other things did ... works of a highly original writer and of such various faculty!’ — Am I not tired of writing your praises as he said then? So I shall tell you, instead of any more, that I went down to the drawing-room yesterday (because it was warm enough) by an act of supererogatory virtue for which you may praise me in turn. What weather it is! and how the year seems to have forgotten itself into April.

  But after all, how have I answered your letter? and how are such letters to be answered? Do we answer the sun when he shines? May God bless you ... it is my answer — with one word besides ... that I am wholly and ever your

  E.B.B.

  On Thursday as far as I know yet — and you shall hear if there should be an obstacle. Will you walk? If you will not, you know, you must be forgetting me a little. Will you remember me too in the act of the play? — but above all things in taking the right exercise, and in not overworking the head. And this for no serpent’s reason.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Two letters in one — Wednesday.

  [Post-mark, November 15, 1845.]

  I shall see you to-morrow and yet am writing what you will have to read perhaps. When you spoke of ‘stars’ and ‘geniuses’ in that letter, I did not seem to hear; I was listening to those words of the letter which were of a better silver in the sound than even your praise could be; and now that at last I come to hear them in their extravagance (oh such pure extravagance about ‘glorious geniuses’ — ) I can’t help telling you they were heard last, and deserved it.

  Shall I tell you besides? — The first moment in which I seemed to admit to myself in a flash of lightning the possibility of your affection for me being more than dream-work ... the first moment was that when you intimated (as you have done since repeatedly) that you cared for me not for a reason, but because you cared for me. Now such a ‘parceque’ which reasonable people would take to be irrational, was just the only one fitted to the uses of my understanding on the particular question we were upon ... just the ‘woman’s reason’ suitable to the woman ...; for I could understand that it might be as you said, and, if so, that it was altogether unanswerable ... do you see? If a fact includes its own cause ... why there it stands for ever — one of ‘earth’s immortalities’ — as long as it includes it.

  And when unreasonableness stands for a reason, it is a promising state of things, we may both admit, and proves what it would be as well not too curiously to enquire into. But then ... to look at it in a brighter aspect, ... I do remember how, years ago, when talking the foolishnesses which women will talk when they are by themselves, and not forced to be sensible, ... one of my friends thought it ‘safest to begin with a little aversion,’ and another, wisest to begin with a great deal of esteem, and how the best attachments were produced so and so, ... I took it into my head to say that the best was where there was no cause at all for it, and the more wholly unreasonable, the better still; that the motive should lie in the feeling itself and not in the object of it — and that the affection which could (if it could) throw itself out on an idiot with a goître would be more admirable than Abelard’s. Whereupon everybody laughed, and someone thought it affected of me and no true opinion, and others said plainly that it was immoral, and somebody else hoped, in a sarcasm, that I meant to act out my theory for the advantage of the world. To which I replied quite gravely that I had not virtue enough — and so, people laughed as it is fair to laugh when other people are esteemed to talk nonsense. And all this came back to me in the south wind of your ‘parceque,’ and I tell it as it came ... now.

  Which proves, if it proves anything, ... while I have every sort of natural pleasure in your praises and like you to like my poetry just as I should, and perhaps more than I should; yet why it is all behind ... and in its place — and why I have a tendency moreover to sift and measure any praise of yours and to separate it from the superfluities, far more than with any other person’s praise in the world.

  Friday evening. — Shall I send this letter or not? I have been ‘tra ‘l si e ‘l no,’ and writing a new beginning on a new sheet even — but after all you ought to hear the remote echo of your last letter ... far out among the hills, ... as well as the immediate reverberation, and so I will send it, — and what I send is not to be answered, remember!

  I read Luria’s first act twice through before I slept last night, and feel just as a bullet might feel, not because of the lead of it but because shot into the air and suddenly arrested and suspended. It (‘Luria’) is all life, and we know (that is, the reader knows) that there must be results here and here. How fine that sight of Luria is upon the lynx hides — how you see the Moor in him just in the glimpse you have by the eyes of another — and that laugh when the horse drops the forage, what wonderful truth and character you have in that! — And then, when he is in the scene — : ‘Golden-hearted Luria’ you called him once to me, and his heart shines already ... wide open to the morning sun. The construction seems to me very clear everywhere — and the rhythm, even over-smooth in a few verses, where you invert a little artificially — but that shall be set down on a separate strip of paper: and in the meantime I am snatched up into ‘Luria’ and feel myself driven on to the ends of the poet, just as a reader should.

  But you are not driven on to any ends? so as to be tired, I mean? You will not suffer yourself to be overworked because you are ‘interested’ in this work. I am so certain that the sensations in your head demand repose; and it must be so injurious to you to be perpetually calling, calling these new creations, one after another, that you must consent to be called to, and not hurry the next act, no, nor any act — let the people have time to learn the last number by heart. And how glad I am that Mr. Fox should say what he did of it ... though it wasn’t true, you know ... not exactly. Still, I do hold that as far as construction goes, you never put together so much unquestionable, smooth glory before, ... not a single entanglement for the understanding ... unless ‘the snowdrops’ make an exception — while for the undeniableness of genius it never stood out before your readers more plainly than in that same number! Also you have extended your sweep of power — the sea-weed is thrown farther (if not higher) than it was found before; and one may calculate surely now how a few more waves will cover the brown stones and float the sight up away through the fissure of the rocks. The rhythm (to touch one of the various things) the rhythm of that ‘Duchess’ does more and more strike me as a new thing; something like (if like anything) what the Greeks called pedestrian-metre, ... between metre and prose ... the difficult rhymes combining too quite curiously with the easy looseness of the general measure. Then ‘The Ride’ — with that touch of natural feeling at the end, to prove that it was not in brutal carelessness that the poor horse was driven through
all that suffering ... yes, and how that one touch of softness acts back upon the energy and resolution and exalts both, instead of weakening anything, as might have been expected by the vulgar of writers or critics. And then ‘Saul’ — and in a first place ‘St. Praxed’ — and for pure description, ‘Fortú’ and the deep ‘Pictor Ignotus’ — and the noble, serene ‘Italy in England,’ which grows on you the more you know of it — and that delightful ‘Glove’ — and the short lyrics ... for one comes to ‘select’ everything at last, and certainly I do like these poems better and better, as your poems are made to be liked. But you will be tired to hear it said over and over so, ... and I am going to ‘Luria,’ besides.

  When you write will you say exactly how you are? and will you write? And I want to explain to you that although I don’t make a profession of equable spirits, (as a matter of temperament, my spirits were always given to rock a little, up and down) yet that I did not mean to be so ungrateful and wicked as to complain of low spirits now and to you. It would not be true either: and I said ‘low’ to express a merely bodily state. My opium comes in to keep the pulse from fluttering and fainting ... to give the right composure and point of balance to the nervous system. I don’t take it for ‘my spirits’ in the usual sense; you must not think such a thing. The medical man who came to see me made me take it the other day when he was in the room, before the right hour and when I was talking quite cheerfully, just for the need he observed in the pulse. ‘It was a necessity of my position,’ he said. Also I do not suffer from it in any way, as people usually do who take opium. I am not even subject to an opium-headache. As to the low spirits I will not say that mine have not been low enough and with cause enough; but even then, ... why if you were to ask the nearest witnesses, ... say, even my own sisters, ... everybody would tell you, I think, that the ‘cheerfulness’ even then, was the remarkable thing in me — certainly it has been remarked about me again and again. Nobody has known that it was an effort (a habit of effort) to throw the light on the outside, — I do abhor so that ignoble groaning aloud of the ‘groans of Testy and Sensitude’ — yet I may say that for three years I never was conscious of one movement of pleasure in anything. Think if I could mean to complain of ‘low spirits’ now, and to you. Why it would be like complaining of not being able to see at noon — which would simply prove that I was very blind. And you, who are not blind, cannot make out what is written — so you need not try. May God bless you long after you have done blessing me!