Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Sunday. — You are ‘singularly well.’ You are very seldom quite well, I am afraid — yet ‘Luria’ seems to have done no harm this time, as you are singularly well the day after so much writing. Yet do not hurry that last act.... I won’t have it for a long while yet.

  Here I have been reading Carlyle upon Cromwell and he is very fine, very much himself, it seems to me, everywhere. Did Mr. Kenyon make you understand that I had said there was nothing in him but manner ... I thought he said so — and I am confident that he never heard such an opinion from me, for good or for evil, ever at all. I may have observed upon those vulgar attacks on account of the so-called mannerism, the obvious fact, that an individuality, carried into the medium, the expression, is a feature in all men of genius, as Buffon teaches ... ‘Le style, c’est l’homme.’ But if the whole man were style, if all Carlyleism were manner — why there would be no man, no Carlyle worth talking of. I wonder that Mr. Kenyon should misrepresent me so. Euphuisms there may be to the end of the world — affected parlances — just as a fop at heart may go without shoestrings to mimic the distractions of some great wandering soul — although that is a bad comparison, seeing that what is called Carlyle’s mannerism, is not his dress, but his physiognomy — or more than that even.

  But I do not forgive him for talking here against the ‘ideals of poets’ ... opposing their ideal by a mis-called reality, which is another sort, a baser sort, of ideal after all. He sees things in broad blazing lights — but he does not analyse them like a philosopher — do you think so? Then his praise for dumb heroic action as opposed to speech and singing, what is that — when all earnest thought, passion, belief, and their utterances, are as much actions surely as the cutting off of fifty heads by one right hand. As if Shakespeare’s actions were not greater than Cromwell’s! —

  But I shall write no more. Once more, may God bless you.

  Wholly and only

  Your Ba.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Tuesday Morning.

  [Post-mark, February 4, 1846.]

  You ought hardly, — ought you, my Ba? — to refer to that letter or any expression in it; I had — and have, I trust — your forgiveness for what I wrote, meaning to be generous or at least just, God knows. That, and the other like exaggerations were there to serve the purpose of what you properly call a crisis. I did believe, — taking an expression, in the note that occasioned mine, in connection with an excuse which came in the postscript for not seeing me on the day previously appointed, I did fully believe that you were about to deny me admittance again unless I blotted out — not merely softened down — the past avowal. All was wrong, foolish, but from a good notion, I dare to say. And then, that particular exaggeration you bring most painfully to my mind — that does not, after all, disagree with what I said and you repeat — does it, if you will think? I said my other ‘likings’ (as you rightly set it down) used to ‘come and go,’ and that my love for you did not, and that is true; the first clause as the last of the sentence, for my sympathies are very wide and general, — always have been — and the natural problem has been the giving unity to their object, concentrating them instead of dispersing. I seem to have foretold, foreknown you in other likings of mine — now here ... when the liking ‘came’ ... and now elsewhere ... when as surely the liking ‘went’: and if they had stayed before the time would that have been a comfort to refer to? On the contrary, I am as little likely to be led by delusions as can be, — for Romeo thinks he loves Rosaline, and is excused on all hands — whereas I saw the plain truth without one mistake, and ‘looked to like, if looking liking moved — and no more deep did I endart mine eye’ — about which, first I was very sorry, and after rather proud — all which I seem to have told you before. — And now, when my whole heart and soul find you, and fall on you, and fix forever, I am to be dreadfully afraid the joy cannot last, seeing that

  — it is so baseless a fear that no illustration will serve! Is it gone now, dearest, ever-dearest?

  And as you amuse me sometimes, as now, by seeming surprised at some chance expression of a truth which is grown a veriest commonplace to me — like Charles Lamb’s ‘letter to an elderly man whose education had been neglected’ — when he finds himself involuntarily communicating truths above the capacity and acquirements of his friend, and stops himself after this fashion — ’If you look round the world, my dear Sir — for it is round! — so I will make you laugh at me, if you will, for my inordinate delight at hearing the success of your experiment with the opium. I never dared, nor shall dare inquire into your use of that — for, knowing you utterly as I do, I know you only bend to the most absolute necessity in taking more or less of it — so that increase of the quantity must mean simply increased weakness, illness — and diminution, diminished illness. And now there is diminution! Dear, dear Ba — you speak of my silly head and its ailments ... well, and what brings on the irritation? A wet day or two spent at home; and what ends it all directly? — just an hour’s walk! So with me: now, — fancy me shut in a room for seven years ... it is — no, don’t see, even in fancy, what is left of me then! But you, at the end; this is all the harm: I wonder ... I confirm my soul in its belief in perpetual miraculousness ... I bless God with my whole heart that it is thus with you! And so, I will not even venture to say — so superfluous it were, though with my most earnest, most loving breath (I who do love you more at every breath I draw; indeed, yes dearest,) — I will not bid you — that is, pray you — to persevere! You have all my life bound to yours — save me from my ‘seven years’ — and God reward you!

  Your own R.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  [Post-mark, February 5, 1846.]

  But I did not — dear, dearest — no indeed, I did not mean any harm about the letter. I wanted to show you how you had given me pleasure — and so, — did I give you pain? was that my ingenuity? Forgive my unhappiness in it, and let it be as if it had not been. Only I will just say that what made me talk about ‘the thorn in the flesh’ from that letter so long, was a sort of conviction of your having put into it as much of the truth, your truth, as admitted of the ultimate purpose of it, and not the least, slightest doubt of the key you gave me to the purpose in question. And so forgive me. Why did you set about explaining, as if I were doubting you? When you said once that it ‘did not come and go,’ — was it not enough? enough to make me feel happy as I told you? Did I require you to write a letter like this? Now think for a moment, and know once for all, how from the beginning to these latter days and through all possible degrees of crisis, you have been to my apprehension and gratitude, the best, most consistent, most noble ... the words falter that would speak of it all. In nothing and at no moment have you — I will not say — failed to me, but spoken or acted unworthily of yourself at the highest. What have you ever been to me except too generous? Ah — if I had been only half as generous, it is true that I never could have seen you again after that first meeting — it was the straight path perhaps. But I had not courage — I shrank from the thought of it — and then ... besides ... I could not believe that your mistake was likely to last, — I concluded that I might keep my friend.

  Why should any remembrance be painful to you? I do not understand. Unless indeed I should grow painful to you ... I myself! — seeing that every remembered separate thing has brought me nearer to you, and made me yours with a deeper trust and love.

  And for that letter ... do you fancy that in my memory the sting is not gone from it? — and that I do not carry the thought of it, as the Roman maidens, you speak of, their cool harmless snakes, at my heart always? So let the poor letter be forgiven, for the sake of the dear letter that was burnt, forgiven by you — until you grow angry with me instead — just till then.

  And that you should care so much about the opium! Then I must care, and get to do with less — at least. On the other side of your goodness and indulgence (a very little way on the other side) it might strike you as strange that I who have had no pain — no acute suffering to k
eep down from its angles — should need opium in any shape. But I have had restlessness till it made me almost mad: at one time I lost the power of sleeping quite — and even in the day, the continual aching sense of weakness has been intolerable — besides palpitation — as if one’s life, instead of giving movement to the body, were imprisoned undiminished within it, and beating and fluttering impotently to get out, at all the doors and windows. So the medical people gave me opium — a preparation of it, called morphine, and ether — and ever since I have been calling it my amreeta draught, my elixir, — because the tranquillizing power has been wonderful. Such a nervous system I have — so irritable naturally, and so shattered by various causes, that the need has continued in a degree until now, and it would be dangerous to leave off the calming remedy, Mr. Jago says, except very slowly and gradually. But slowly and gradually something may be done — and you are to understand that I never increased upon the prescribed quantity ... prescribed in the first instance — no! Now think of my writing all this to you! —

  And after all the lotus-eaters are blessed beyond the opium-eaters; and the best of lotuses are such thoughts as I know.

  Dear Miss Mitford comes to-morrow, and I am not glad enough. Shall I have a letter to make me glad? She will talk, talk, talk ... and I shall be hoping all day that not a word may be talked of ... you: — a forlorn hope indeed! There’s a hope for a day like Thursday which is just in the middle between a Tuesday and a Saturday!

  Your head ... is it ... how is it? tell me. And consider again if it could be possible that I could ever desire to reproach you ... in what I said about the letter.

  May God bless you, best and dearest. If you are the compensation blessed is the evil that fell upon me: and that, I can say before God.

  Your Ba.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Friday.

  [Post-mark, February 6, 1846.]

  If I said you ‘gave me pain’ in anything, it was in the only way ever possible for you, my dearest — by giving yourself, in me, pain — being unjust to your own right and power as I feel them at my heart: and in that way, I see you will go on to the end, I getting called — in this very letter — ’generous’ &c. Well, let me fancy you see very, very deep into future chances and how I should behave on occasion. I shall hardly imitate you, I whose sense of the present and its claims of gratitude already is beyond expression.

  All the kind explaining about the opium makes me happier. ‘Slowly and gradually’ what may not be done? Then see the bright weather while I write — lilacs, hawthorn, plum-trees all in bud; elders in leaf, rose-bushes with great red shoots; thrushes, whitethroats, hedge sparrows in full song — there can, let us hope, be nothing worse in store than a sharp wind, a week of it perhaps — and then comes what shall come —

  And Miss Mitford yesterday — and has she fresh fears for you of my evil influence and Origenic power of ‘raying out darkness’ like a swart star? Why, the common sense of the world teaches that there is nothing people at fault in any faculty of expression are so intolerant of as the like infirmity in others — whether they are unconscious of, or indulgent to their own obscurity and fettered organ, the hindrance from the fettering of their neighbours’ is redoubled. A man may think he is not deaf, or, at least, that you need not be so much annoyed by his deafness as you profess — but he will be quite aware, to say the least of it, when another man can’t hear him; he will certainly not encourage him to stop his ears. And so with the converse; a writer who fails to make himself understood, as presumably in my case, may either believe in his heart that it is not so ... that only as much attention and previous instructedness as the case calls for, would quite avail to understand him; or he may open his eyes to the fact and be trying hard to overcome it: but on which supposition is he led to confirm another in his unintelligibility? By the proverbial tenderness of the eye with the mote for the eye with the beam? If that beam were just such another mote — then one might sympathize and feel no such inconvenience — but, because I have written a ‘Sordello,’ do I turn to just its double, Sordello the second, in your books, and so perforce see nothing wrong? ‘No’ — it is supposed — ’but something as obscure in its way.’ Then down goes the bond of union at once, and I stand no nearer to view your work than the veriest proprietor of one thought and the two words that express it without obscurity at all — ’bricks and mortar.’ Of course an artist’s whole problem must be, as Carlyle wrote to me, ‘the expressing with articulate clearness the thought in him’ — I am almost inclined to say that clear expression should be his only work and care — for he is born, ordained, such as he is — and not born learned in putting what was born in him into words — what ever can be clearly spoken, ought to be. But ‘bricks and mortar’ is very easily said — and some of the thoughts in ‘Sordello’ not so readily even if Miss Mitford were to try her hand on them.

  I look forward to a real life’s work for us both. I shall do all, — under your eyes and with your hand in mine, — all I was intended to do: may but you as surely go perfecting — by continuing — the work begun so wonderfully — ’a rose-tree that beareth seven-times seven’ —

  I am forced to dine in town to-day with an old friend — ’to-morrow’ always begins half the day before, like a Jewish sabbath. Did your sister tell you that I met her on the stairs last time? She did not tell you that I had almost passed by her — the eyes being still elsewhere and occupied. Now let me write out that — no — I will send the old ballad I told you of, for the strange coincidence — and it is very charming beside, is it not? Now goodbye, my sweetest, dearest — and tell me good news of yourself to-morrow, and be but half a quarter as glad to see me as I shall be blessed in seeing you. God bless you ever.

  Your own R.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Saturday Morning.

  [Post-mark, February 7, 1846.]

  Dearest, to my sorrow I must, I fear, give up the delight of seeing you this morning. I went out unwell yesterday, and a long noisy dinner with speech-making, with a long tiresome walk at the end of it — these have given me such a bewildering headache that I really see some reason in what they say here about keeping the house. Will you forgive me — and let me forget it all on Monday? On Monday — unless I am told otherwise by the early post — And God bless you ever

  Your own —

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Saturday.

  [Post-mark, February 7, 1846.]

  I felt it must be so ... that something must be the matter, ... and I had been so really unhappy for half an hour, that your letter which comes now at four, seems a little better, with all its bad news, than my fancies took upon themselves to be, without instruction. Now was it right to go out yesterday when you were unwell, and to a great dinner? — but I shall not reproach you, dearest, dearest — I have no heart for it at this moment. As to Monday, of course it is as you like ... if you are well enough on Monday ... if it should be thought wise of you to come to London through the noise ... if ... you understand all the ifs ... and among them the greatest if of all, ... for if you do love me ... care for me even, you will not do yourself harm or run any risk of harm by going out anywhere too soon. On Monday, in case you are considered well enough, and otherwise Tuesday, Wednesday — I leave it to you. Still I will ask one thing, whether you come on Monday or not. Let me have a single line by the nearest post to say how you are. Perhaps for to-night it is not possible — oh no, it is nearly five now! but a word written on Sunday would be with me early on Monday morning, and I know you will let me have it, to save some of the anxious thoughts ... to break them in their course with some sort of certainty! May God bless you dearest of all! — I thought of you on Thursday, but did not speak of you, not even when Miss Mitford called Hood the greatest poet of the age ... she had been depreciating Carlyle, so I let you lie and wait on the same level, ... that shelf of the rock which is above tide mark! I was glad even, that she did not speak of you; and, under cover of her speech of others, I had my thoughts of you deeply an
d safely. When she had gone at half past six, moreover, I grew over-hopeful, and made up my fancy to have a letter at eight! The branch she had pulled down, sprang upward skyward ... to that high possibility of a letter! Which did not come that day ... no! — and I revenged myself by writing a letter to you, which was burnt afterwards because I would not torment you for letters. Last night, came a real one — dearest! So we could not keep our sabbath to-day! It is a fast day instead, ... on my part. How should I feel (I have been thinking to myself), if I did not see you on Saturday, and could not hope to see you on Monday, nor on Tuesday, nor on Wednesday, nor Thursday nor Friday, nor Saturday again — if all the sabbaths were gone out of the world for me! May God bless you! — it has grown to be enough prayer! — as you are enough (and all, besides) for