Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  There you have what a very clever man can say in choice Tuscan on a passage in Ælian which he takes care not to quote nor allude to, but which is the sole authority for the fact. Ælian, speaking of Socrates’ magnanimity, says that on the first representation, a good many foreigners being present who were at a loss to know ‘who could be this Socrates’ — the sage himself stood up that he might be pointed out to them by the auditory at large ... ‘which’ says Ælian — ’was no difficulty for them, to whom his features were most familiar, — the very potters being in the habit of decorating their vessels with his likeness’ — no doubt out of a pleasant and affectionate admiration. Yet see how ‘people’ can turn this out of its sense, — ’say’ their say on the simplest, plainest word or deed, and change it to its opposite! ‘God’s great gift of speech abused’ indeed!

  But what shall we hear of it there, my Siren?

  On Monday — is it not? Who was it looked into the room just at our leave-taking?

  Bless you, my ever dearest, — remember to walk, to go down-stairs — and be sure that I will endeavour to get well for my part. To-day I am very well — with this letter!

  Your own.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Friday Evening.

  [Post-mark, March 7, 1846.]

  Always you, is it, who torments me? always you? Well! I agree to bear the torments as Socrates his persecution by the potters: — and by the way he liked those potters, as Plato shows, and was fain to go to them for his illustrations ... as I to you for all my light. Also, while we are on the subject, I will tell you another fault of your Bartoli ... his ‘choice Tuscan’ filled one of my pages, in the place of my English better than Tuscan.

  For the letter you mentioned, I meant to have said in mine yesterday, that I was grateful to you for telling me of it — that was one of the prodigalities of your goodness to me ... not thrown away, in one sense, however superfluous. Do you ever think how I must feel when you overcome me with all this generous tenderness, only beloved! I cannot say it.

  Because it is colder to-day I have not been down-stairs but let to-morrow be warm enough — facilis descensus. There’s something infernal to me really, in the going down, and now too that our cousin is here! Think of his beginning to attack Henrietta the other day.... ‘So Mr. C. has retired and left the field to Surtees Cook. Oh ... you needn’t deny ... it’s the news of all the world except your father. And as to him, I don’t blame you — he never will consent to the marriage of son or daughter. Only you should consider, you know, because he won’t leave you a shilling, &c. &c....’ You hear the sort of man. And then in a minute after ... ‘And what is this about Ba?’ ‘About Ba’ said my sisters, ‘why who has been persuading you of such nonsense?’ ‘Oh, my authority is very good, — perfectly unnecessary for you to tell any stories, Arabel, — a literary friendship, is it?’ ... and so on ... after that fashion! This comes from my brothers of course, but we need not be afraid of its passing beyond, I think, though I was a good deal vexed when I heard first of it last night and have been in cousinly anxiety ever since to get our Orestes safe away from those Furies his creditors, into Brittany again. He is an intimate friend of my brothers besides the relationship, and they talk to him as to each other, only they oughtn’t to have talked that, and without knowledge too.

  I forgot to tell you that Mr. Kenyon was in an immoderate joy the day I saw him last, about Mr. Poe’s ‘Raven’ as seen in the Athenæum extracts, and came to ask what I knew of the poet and his poetry, and took away the book. It’s the rhythm which has taken him with ‘glamour’ I fancy. Now you will stay on Monday till the last moment, and go to him for dinner at six.

  Who ‘looked in at the door?’ Nobody. But Arabel a little way opened it, and hearing your voice, went back. There was no harm — is no fear of harm. Nobody in the house would find his or her pleasure in running the risk of giving me pain. I mean my brothers and sisters would not.

  Are you trying the music to charm the brain to stillness? Tell me. And keep from that ‘Soul’s Tragedy’ which did so much harm — oh, that I had bound you by some Stygian oath not to touch it.

  So my rock ... may the birds drop into your crevices the seeds of all the flowers of the world — only it is not for those, that I cling to you as the single rock in the salt sea.

  Ever I am

  Your own.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Saturday Morning.

  [Post-mark, March 7, 1846.]

  You call me ‘kind’; and by this time I have no heart to call you such names — I told you, did I not once? that ‘Ba’ had got to convey infinitely more of you to my sense than ‘dearest,’ ‘sweetest,’ all or any epithets that break down with their load of honey like bees — to say you are ‘kind,’ you that so entirely and unintermittingly bless me, — it will never do now, ‘Ba.’ All the same, one way there is to make even ‘Ba’ dearer, — ’my Ba,’ I say to myself!

  About my fears — whether of opening doors or entering people — one thing is observable and prevents the possibility of any misconception — I desire, have been in the habit of desiring, to increase them, far from diminishing — they relate, of course, entirely to you — and only through you affect me the least in the world. Put your well-being out of the question, so far as I can understand it to be involved, — and the pleasure and pride I should immediately choose would be that the whole world knew our position. What pleasure, what pride! But I endeavour to remember on all occasions — and perhaps succeed in too few — that it is very easy for me to go away and leave you who cannot go. I only allude to this because some people are ‘naturally nervous’ and all that — and I am quite of another kind.

  Last evening I went out — having been kept at home in the afternoon to see somebody ... went walking for hours. I am quite well to-day and, now your letter comes, my Ba, most happy. And, as the sun shines, you are perhaps making the perilous descent now, while I write — oh, to meet you on the stairs! And I shall really see you on Monday, dearest? So soon, it ought to feel, considering the dreary weeks that now get to go between our days! For music, I made myself melancholy just now with some ‘Concertos for the Harpsichord by Mr. Handel’ — brought home by my father the day before yesterday; — what were light, modern things once! Now I read not very long ago a French memoir of ‘Claude le Jeune’ called in his time the Prince of Musicians, — no, ‘Phoenix’ — the unapproachable wonder to all time — that is, twenty years after his death about — and to this pamphlet was prefixed as motto this startling axiom — ’In Music, the Beau Ideal changes every thirty years’ — well, is not that true? The Idea, mind, changes — the general standard ... so that it is no answer that a single air, such as many one knows, may strike as freshly as ever — they were not according to the Ideal of their own time — just now, they drop into the ready ear, — next hundred years, who will be the Rossini? who is no longer the Rossini even I remember — his early overtures are as purely Rococo as Cimarosa’s or more. The sounds remain, keep their character perhaps — the scale’s proportioned notes affect the same, that is, — the major third, or minor seventh — but the arrangement of these, the sequence the law — for them, if it should change every thirty years! To Corelli nothing seemed so conclusive in Heaven or earth as this

  I don’t believe there is one of his sonatas wherein that formula does not do duty. In these things of Handel that seems replaced by

  — that was the only true consummation! Then, — to go over the hundred years, — came Rossini’s unanswerable coda:

  which serves as base to the infinity of songs, gone, gone — so gone by! From all of which Ba draws this ‘conclusion’ that these may be worse things than Bartoli’s Tuscan to cover a page with! — yet, yet the pity of it! Le Jeune, the Phoenix, and Rossini who directed his letters to his mother as ‘mother of the famous composer’ — and Henry Lawes, and Dowland’s Lute, ah me!

  Well, my conclusion is the best, the everlasting, here and I trust elsewhere — I am your own, my Ba, ever
your

  R.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Tuesday Morning.

  [Post-mark, March 10, 1846.]

  Now I shall know what to believe when you talk of very bad and very indifferent doings of yours. Dearest, I read your ‘Soul’s Tragedy’ last night and was quite possessed with it, and fell finally into a mute wonder how you could for a moment doubt about publishing it. It is very vivid, I think, and vital, and impressed me more than the first act of ‘Luria’ did, though I do not mean to compare such dissimilar things, and for pure nobleness ‘Luria’ is unapproachable — will prove so, it seems to me. But this ‘Tragedy’ shows more heat from the first, and then, the words beat down more closely ... well! I am struck by it all as you see. If you keep it up to this passion, if you justify this high key-note, it is a great work, and worthy of a place next ‘Luria.’ Also do observe how excellently balanced the two will be, and how the tongue of this next silver Bell will swing from side to side. And you to frighten me about it. Yes, and the worst is (because it was stupid in me) the worst is that I half believed you and took the manuscript to be something inferior — for you — and the adviseableness of its publication, a doubtful case. And yet, after all, the really worst is, that you should prove yourself such an adept at deceiving! For can it be possible that the same

  ‘Robert Browning’

  who (I heard the other day) said once that he could ‘wait three hundred years,’ should not feel the life of centuries in this work too — can it be? Why all the pulses of the life of it are beating in even my ears!

  Tell me, beloved, how you are — I shall hear it to-night — shall I not? To think of your being unwell, and forced to go here and go there to visit people to whom your being unwell falls in at best among the secondary evils! — makes me discontented — which is one shade more to the uneasiness I feel. Will you take care, and not give away your life to these people? Because I have a better claim than they ... and shall put it in, if provoked ... shall. Then you will not use the shower-bath again — you promise? I dare say Mr. Kenyon observed yesterday how unwell you were looking — tell me if he didn’t! Now do not work, dearest! Do not think of Chiappino, leave him behind ... he has a good strong life of his own, and can wait for you. Oh — but let me remember to say of him, that he and the other personages appear to me to articulate with perfect distinctness and clearness ... you need not be afraid of having been obscure in this first part. It is all as lucid as noon.

  Shall I go down-stairs to-day? ‘No’ say the privy-councillors, ‘because it is cold,’ but I shall go peradventure, because the sun brightens and brightens, and the wind has gone round to the west.

  George had come home yesterday before you left me, but the stars were favourable to us and kept him out of this room. Now he is at Worcester — went this morning, on those never ending ‘rounds,’ poor fellow, which weary him I am sure.

  And why should music and the philosophy of it make you ‘melancholy,’ ever dearest, more than the other arts, which each has the seal of the age, modifying itself after a fashion and to one? Because it changes more, perhaps. Yet all the Arts are mediators between the soul and the Infinite, ... shifting always like a mist, between the Breath on this side, and the Light on that side ... shifted and coloured; mediators, messengers, projected from the Soul, to go and feel, for Her, out there!

  You don’t call me ‘kind’ I confess — but then you call me ‘too kind’ which is nearly as bad, you must allow on your part. Only you were not in earnest when you said that, as it appeared afterward. Were you, yesterday, in pretending to think that I owed you nothing ... I?

  May God bless you. He knows that to give myself to you, is not to pay you. Such debts are not so paid.

  Yet I am your

  Ba.

  People’s Journal for March 7th.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Tuesday Morning.

  [Post-mark, March 10, 1846.]

  Dear, dear Ba, if you were here I should not much speak to you, not at first — nor, indeed, at last, — but as it is, sitting alone, only words can be spoken, or (worse) written, and, oh how different to look into the eyes and imagine what might be said, what ought to be said, though it never can be — and to sit and say and write, and only imagine who looks above me, looks down, understanding and pardoning all! My love, my Ba, the fault you found once with some expressions of mine about the amount of imperishable pleasures already hoarded in my mind, the indestructible memories of you; that fault, which I refused to acquiesce under the imputation of, at first, you remember — well, what a fault it was, by this better light! If all stopped here and now; horrible! complete oblivion were the thing to be prayed for, rather! As it is, now, I must go on, must live the life out, and die yours. And you are doing your utmost to advance the event of events, — the exercise, and consequently (is it not?) necessarily improved sleep, and the projects for the fine days, the walking ... a pure bliss to think of! Well, now — I think I shall show seamanship of a sort, and ‘try another tack’ — do not be over bold, my sweetest; the cold is considerable, — taken into account the previous mildness. One ill-advised (I, the adviser, I should remember!) too early, or too late descent to the drawing-room, and all might be ruined, — thrown back so far ... seeing that our flight is to be prayed for ‘not in the winter’ — and one would be called on to wait, wait — in this world where nothing waits, rests, as can be counted on. Now think of this, too, dearest, and never mind the slowness, for the sureness’ sake! How perfectly happy I am as you stand by me, as yesterday you stood, as you seem to stand now!

  I will write to-morrow more: I came home last night with a head rather worse; which in the event was the better, for I took a little medicine and all is very much improved to-day. I shall go out presently, and return very early and take as much care as is proper — for I thought of Ba, and the sublimities of Duty, and that gave myself airs of importance, in short, as I looked at my mother’s inevitable arrow-root this morning. So now I am well; so now, is dearest Ba well? I shall hear to-night ... which will have its due effect, that circumstance, in quickening my retreat from Forster’s Rooms. All was very pleasant last evening — and your letter &c. went à qui de droit, and Mr. W. Junior had to smile good-naturedly when Mr. Burges began laying down this general law, that the sons of all men of genius were poor creatures — and Chorley and I exchanged glances after the fashion of two Augurs meeting at some street-corner in Cicero’s time, as he says. And Mr. Kenyon was kind, kinder, kindest, as ever, ‘and thus ends a wooing’! — no, a dinner — my wooing ends never, never; and so prepare to be asked to give, and give, and give till all is given in Heaven! And all I give you is just my heart’s blessing; God bless you, my dearest, dearest Ba!

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Tuesday Evening.

  [Post-mark, March 11, 1846.]

  You find my letter I trust, for it was written this morning in time; and if these two lines should not be flattery ... oh, rank flattery! ... why happy letter is it, to help to bring you home ten minutes earlier, when you never ought to have left home — no, indeed! I knew how it would be yesterday, and how you would be worse and not better. You are not fit to go out, dear dearest, to sit in the glare of lights and talk and listen, and have the knives and forks to rattle all the while and remind you of the chains of necessity. Oh — should I bear it, do you think? I was thinking, when you went away — after you had quite gone. You would laugh to see me at my dinner — Flush and me — Flush placing in me such an heroic confidence, that, after he has cast one discriminating glance on the plate, and, in the case of ‘chicken,’ wagged his tail with an emphasis, ... he goes off to the sofa, shuts his eyes and allows a full quarter of an hour to pass before he returns to take his share. Did you ever hear of a dog before who did not persecute one with beseeching eyes at mealtimes? And remember, this is not the effect of discipline. Also if another than myself happens to take coffee or break bread in the room here, he teazes straightway with eyes and paws, ... teazes like a com
mon dog and is put out of the door before he can be quieted by scolding. But with me he is sublime! Moreover he has been a very useful dog in his time (in the point of capacity), causing to disappear supererogatory dinners and impossible breakfasts which, to do him justice, is a feat accomplished without an objection on his side, always.

  So, when you write me such a letter, I write back to you about Flush. Dearest beloved, but I have read the letter and felt it in my heart, through and through! and it is as wise to talk of Flush foolishly, as to fancy that I could say how it is felt ... this letter! Only when you spoke last of breaking off with such and such recollections, it was the melancholy of the breaking off which I protested against, was it not? and not the insufficiency of the recollections. There might have been something besides in jest. Ah, but you remember, if you please, that I was the first to wish (wishing for my own part, if I could wish exclusively) to break off in the middle the silken thread, and you told me, not — you forbade me — do you remember? For, as happiness goes, the recollections were enough, ... are enough for me! I mean that I should acknowledge them to be full compensation for the bitter gift of life, such as it was, to me! if that subject-matter were broken off here! ‘Bona verba’ let me speak nevertheless. You mean, you say, to run all risks with me, and I don’t mean to draw back from my particular risk of ... what am I to do to you hereafter to make you vexed with me? What is there in marriage to make all these people on every side of us, (who all began, I suppose, by talking of love,) look askance at one another from under the silken mask ... and virtually hate one another through the tyranny of the stronger and the hypocrisy of the weaker party. It never could be so with us — I know that. But you grow awful to me sometimes with the very excess of your goodness and tenderness, and still, I think to myself, if you do not keep lifting me up quite off the ground by the strong faculty of love in you, I shall not help falling short of the hope you have placed in me — it must be ‘supernatural’ of you, to the end! or I fall short and disappoint you. Consider this, beloved. Now if I could put my soul out of my body, just to stand up before you and make it clear.