One thing I can do — pencil, if you like, and annotate, and dissertate upon that I love most and least — I think I can do it, that is.
Here an odd memory comes — of a friend who, — volunteering such a service to a sonnet-writing somebody, gave him a taste of his quality in a side-column of short criticisms on sonnet the First, and starting off the beginning three lines with, of course, ‘bad, worse, worst’ — made by a generous mintage of words to meet the sudden run of his epithets, ‘worser, worserer, worserest’ pay off the second terzet in full — no ‘badder, badderer, badderest’ fell to the Second’s allowance, and ‘worser’ &c. answered the demands of the Third; ‘worster, worsterer, worsterest’ supplied the emergency of the Fourth; and, bestowing his last ‘worserestest and worstestest’ on lines 13 and 14, my friend (slapping his forehead like an emptied strong-box) frankly declared himself bankrupt, and honourably incompetent, to satisfy the reasonable expectations of the rest of the series!
What an illustration of the law by which opposite ideas suggest opposite, and contrary images come together!
See now, how, of that ‘Friendship’ you offer me (and here Juliet’s word rises to my lips) — I feel sure once and for ever. I have got already, I see, into this little pet-handwriting of mine (not anyone else’s) which scratches on as if theatrical copyists (ah me!) and Bradbury and Evans’ Reader were not! But you shall get something better than this nonsense one day, if you will have patience with me — hardly better, though, because this does me real good, gives real relief, to write. After all, you know nothing, next to nothing of me, and that stops me. Spring is to come, however!
If you hate writing to me as I hate writing to nearly everybody, I pray you never write — if you do, as you say, care for anything I have done. I will simply assure you, that meaning to begin work in deep earnest, begin without affectation, God knows, — I do not know what will help me more than hearing from you, — and therefore, if you do not so very much hate it, I know I shall hear from you — and very little more about your ‘tiring me.’
Ever yours faithfully,
Robert Browning.
FEBRUARY, 1845
E.B.B. to R.B.
50 Walpole Street: Feb. 3, 1845.
[Transcriber’s Note: So in original. Should be “Wimpole Street.”]
Why how could I hate to write to you, dear Mr. Browning? Could you believe in such a thing? If nobody likes writing to everybody (except such professional letter writers as you and I are not), yet everybody likes writing to somebody, and it would be strange and contradictory if I were not always delighted both to hear from you and to write to you, this talking upon paper being as good a social pleasure as another, when our means are somewhat straitened. As for me, I have done most of my talking by post of late years — as people shut up in dungeons take up with scrawling mottoes on the walls. Not that I write to many in the way of regular correspondence, as our friend Mr. Horne predicates of me in his romances (which is mere romancing!), but that there are a few who will write and be written to by me without a sense of injury. Dear Miss Mitford, for instance. You do not know her, I think, personally, although she was the first to tell me (when I was very ill and insensible to all the glories of the world except poetry), of the grand scene in ‘Pippa Passes.’ She has filled a large drawer in this room with delightful letters, heart-warm and soul-warm, ... driftings of nature (if sunshine could drift like snow), and which, if they should ever fall the way of all writing, into print, would assume the folio shape as a matter of course, and take rank on the lowest shelf of libraries, with Benedictine editions of the Fathers, κ.τ.λ. I write this to you to show how I can have pleasure in letters, and never think them too long, nor too frequent, nor too illegible from being written in little ‘pet hands.’ I can read any MS. except the writing on the pyramids. And if you will only promise to treat me en bon camarade, without reference to the conventionalities of ‘ladies and gentlemen,’ taking no thought for your sentences (nor for mine), nor for your blots (nor for mine), nor for your blunt speaking (nor for mine), nor for your badd speling (nor for mine), and if you agree to send me a blotted thought whenever you are in the mind for it, and with as little ceremony and less legibility than you would think it necessary to employ towards your printer — why, then, I am ready to sign and seal the contract, and to rejoice in being ‘articled’ as your correspondent. Only don’t let us have any constraint, any ceremony! Don’t be civil to me when you feel rude, — nor loquacious when you incline to silence, — nor yielding in the manners when you are perverse in the mind. See how out of the world I am! Suffer me to profit by it in almost the only profitable circumstance, and let us rest from the bowing and the courtesying, you and I, on each side. You will find me an honest man on the whole, if rather hasty and prejudging, which is a different thing from prejudice at the worst. And we have great sympathies in common, and I am inclined to look up to you in many things, and to learn as much of everything as you will teach me. On the other hand you must prepare yourself to forbear and to forgive — will you? While I throw off the ceremony, I hold the faster to the kindness.
Is it true, as you say, that I ‘know so “little”‘ of you? And is it true, as others say, that the productions of an artist do not partake of his real nature, ... that in the minor sense, man is not made in the image of God? It is not true, to my mind — and therefore it is not true that I know little of you, except in as far as it is true (which I believe) that your greatest works are to come. Need I assure you that I shall always hear with the deepest interest every word you will say to me of what you are doing or about to do? I hear of the ‘old room’ and the ‘“Bells” lying about,’ with an interest which you may guess at, perhaps. And when you tell me besides, of my poems being there, and of your caring for them so much beyond the tide-mark of my hopes, the pleasure rounds itself into a charm, and prevents its own expression. Overjoyed I am with this cordial sympathy — but it is better, I feel, to try to justify it by future work than to thank you for it now. I think — if I may dare to name myself with you in the poetic relation — that we both have high views of the Art we follow, and stedfast purpose in the pursuit of it, and that we should not, either of us, be likely to be thrown from the course, by the casting of any Atalanta-ball of speedy popularity. But I do not know, I cannot guess, whether you are liable to be pained deeply by hard criticism and cold neglect, such as original writers like yourself are too often exposed to — or whether the love of Art is enough for you, and the exercise of Art the filling joy of your life. Not that praise must not always, of necessity, be delightful to the artist, but that it may be redundant to his content. Do you think so? or not? It appears to me that poets who, like Keats, are highly susceptible to criticism, must be jealous, in their own persons, of the future honour of their works. Because, if a work is worthy, honour must follow it, though the worker should not live to see that following overtaking. Now, is it not enough that the work be honoured — enough I mean, for the worker? And is it not enough to keep down a poet’s ordinary wearing anxieties, to think, that if his work be worthy it will have honour, and, if not, that ‘Sparta must have nobler sons than he’? I am writing nothing applicable, I see, to anything in question, but when one falls into a favourite train of thought, one indulges oneself in thinking on. I began in thinking and wondering what sort of artistic constitution you had, being determined, as you may observe (with a sarcastic smile at the impertinence), to set about knowing as much as possible of you immediately. Then you spoke of your ‘gentle audience’ (you began), and I, who know that you have not one but many enthusiastic admirers — the ‘fit and few’ in the intense meaning — yet not the diffused fame which will come to you presently, wrote on, down the margin of the subject, till I parted from it altogether. But, after all, we are on the proper matter of sympathy. And after all, and after all that has been said and mused upon the ‘natural ills,’ the anxiety, and wearing out experienced by the true artist, — is not the good immeasurably greater tha
n the evil? Is it not great good, and great joy? For my part, I wonder sometimes — I surprise myself wondering — how without such an object and purpose of life, people find it worth while to live at all. And, for happiness — why, my only idea of happiness, as far as my personal enjoyment is concerned, (but I have been straightened in some respects and in comparison with the majority of livers!) lies deep in poetry and its associations. And then, the escape from pangs of heart and bodily weakness — when you throw off yourself — what you feel to be yourself — into another atmosphere and into other relations where your life may spread its wings out new, and gather on every separate plume a brightness from the sun of the sun! Is it possible that imaginative writers should be so fond of depreciating and lamenting over their own destiny? Possible, certainly — but reasonable, not at all — and grateful, less than anything!
My faults, my faults — Shall I help you? Ah — you see them too well, I fear. And do you know that I also have something of your feeling about ‘being about to begin,’ or I should dare to praise you for having it. But in you, it is different — it is, in you, a virtue. When Prometheus had recounted a long list of sorrows to be endured by Io, and declared at last that he was μηδεπω εν προοιμιοις,2 poor Io burst out crying. And when the author of ‘Paracelsus’ and the ‘Bells and Pomegranates’ says that he is only ‘going to begin’ we may well (to take ‘the opposite idea,’ as you write) rejoice and clap our hands. Yet I believe that, whatever you may have done, you will do what is greater. It is my faith for you.
And how I should like to know what poets have been your sponsors, ‘to promise and vow’ for you, — and whether you have held true to early tastes, or leapt violently from them, and what books you read, and what hours you write in. How curious I could prove myself! — (if it isn’t proved already).
But this is too much indeed, past all bearing, I suspect. Well, but if I ever write to you again — I mean, if you wish it — it may be in the other extreme of shortness. So do not take me for a born heroine of Richardson, or think that I sin always to this length, else, — you might indeed repent your quotation from Juliet — which I guessed at once — and of course —
I have no joy in this contract to-day!
It is too unadvised, too rash and sudden.
Ever faithfully yours,
Elizabeth B. Barrett.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Hatcham, Tuesday.
[Post-mark, February 11, 1845.]
Dear Miss Barrett, — People would hardly ever tell falsehoods about a matter, if they had been let tell truth in the beginning, for it is hard to prophane one’s very self, and nobody who has, for instance, used certain words and ways to a mother or a father could, even if by the devil’s help he would, reproduce or mimic them with any effect to anybody else that was to be won over — and so, if ‘I love you’ were always outspoken when it might be, there would, I suppose, be no fear of its desecration at any after time. But lo! only last night, I had to write, on the part of Mr. Carlyle, to a certain ungainly, foolish gentleman who keeps back from him, with all the fussy impotence of stupidity (not bad feeling, alas! for that we could deal with) a certain MS. letter of Cromwell’s which completes the collection now going to press; and this long-ears had to be ‘dear Sir’d and obedient servanted’ till I said (to use a mild word) ‘commend me to the sincerities of this kind of thing.’! When I spoke of you knowing little of me, one of the senses in which I meant so was this — that I would not well vowel-point my common-place letters and syllables with a masoretic other sound and sense, make my ‘dear’ something intenser than ‘dears’ in ordinary, and ‘yours ever’ a thought more significant than the run of its like. And all this came of your talking of ‘tiring me,’ ‘being too envious,’ &c. &c., which I should never have heard of had the plain truth looked out of my letter with its unmistakable eyes. Now, what you say of the ‘bowing,’ and convention that is to be, and tant de façons that are not to be, helps me once and for ever — for have I not a right to say simply that, for reasons I know, for other reasons I don’t exactly know, but might if I chose to think a little, and for still other reasons, which, most likely, all the choosing and thinking in the world would not make me know, I had rather hear from you than see anybody else. Never you care, dear noble Carlyle, nor you, my own friend Alfred over the sea, nor a troop of true lovers! — Are not their fates written? there! Don’t you answer this, please, but, mind it is on record, and now then, with a lighter conscience I shall begin replying to your questions. But then — what I have printed gives no knowledge of me — it evidences abilities of various kinds, if you will — and a dramatic sympathy with certain modifications of passion ... that I think — But I never have begun, even, what I hope I was born to begin and end — ’R.B. a poem’ — and next, if I speak (and, God knows, feel), as if what you have read were sadly imperfect demonstrations of even mere ability, it is from no absurd vanity, though it might seem so — these scenes and song-scraps are such mere and very escapes of my inner power, which lives in me like the light in those crazy Mediterranean phares I have watched at sea, wherein the light is ever revolving in a dark gallery, bright and alive, and only after a weary interval leaps out, for a moment, from the one narrow chink, and then goes on with the blind wall between it and you; and, no doubt, then, precisely, does the poor drudge that carries the cresset set himself most busily to trim the wick — for don’t think I want to say I have not worked hard — (this head of mine knows better) — but the work has been inside, and not when at stated times I held up my light to you — and, that there is no self-delusion here, I would prove to you (and nobody else), even by opening this desk I write on, and showing what stuff, in the way of wood, I could make a great bonfire with, if I might only knock the whole clumsy top off my tower! Of course, every writing body says the same, so I gain nothing by the avowal; but when I remember how I have done what was published, and half done what may never be, I say with some right, you can know but little of me. Still, I hope sometimes, though phrenologists will have it that I cannot, and am doing better with this darling ‘Luria’ — so safe in my head, and a tiny slip of paper I cover with my thumb!
Then you inquire about my ‘sensitiveness to criticism,’ and I shall be glad to tell you exactly, because I have, more than once, taken a course you might else not understand. I shall live always — that is for me — I am living here this 1845, that is for London. I write from a thorough conviction that it is the duty of me, and with the belief that, after every drawback and shortcoming, I do my best, all things considered — that is for me, and, so being, the not being listened to by one human creature would, I hope, in nowise affect me. But of course I must, if for merely scientific purposes, know all about this 1845, its ways and doings, and something I do know, as that for a dozen cabbages, if I pleased to grow them in the garden here, I might demand, say, a dozen pence at Covent Garden Market, — and that for a dozen scenes, of the average goodness, I may challenge as many plaudits at the theatre close by; and a dozen pages of verse, brought to the Rialto where verse-merchants most do congregate, ought to bring me a fair proportion of the Reviewers’ gold currency, seeing the other traders pouch their winnings, as I do see. Well, when they won’t pay me for my cabbages, nor praise me for my poems, I may, if I please, say ‘more’s the shame,’ and bid both parties ‘decamp to the crows,’ in Greek phrase, and yet go very lighthearted back to a garden-full of rose-trees, and a soul-full of comforts. If they had bought my greens I should have been able to buy the last number of Punch, and go through the toll-gate of Waterloo Bridge, and give the blind clarionet-player a trifle, and all without changing my gold. If they had taken to my books, my father and mother would have been proud of this and the other ‘favourable critique,’ and — at least so folks hold — I should have to pay Mr. Moxon less by a few pounds, whereas — but you see! Indeed I force myself to say ever and anon, in the interest of the market-gardeners regular, and Keatses proper, ‘It’s nothing to you, critics, huck
sters, all of you, if I have this garden and this conscience — I might go die at Rome, or take to gin and the newspaper, for what you would care!’ So I don’t quite lay open my resources to everybody. But it does so happen, that I have met with much more than I could have expected in this matter of kindly and prompt recognition. I never wanted a real set of good hearty praisers — and no bad reviewers — I am quite content with my share. No — what I laughed at in my ‘gentle audience’ is a sad trick the real admirers have of admiring at the wrong place — enough to make an apostle swear. That does make me savage — never the other kind of people; why, think now — take your own ‘Drama of Exile’ and let me send it to the first twenty men and women that shall knock at your door to-day and after — of whom the first five are the Postman, the seller of cheap sealing-wax, Mr. Hawkins Junr, the Butcher for orders, and the Tax-gatherer — will you let me, by Cornelius Agrippa’s assistance, force these five and these fellows to read, and report on, this ‘Drama’ — and, when I have put these faithful reports into fair English, do you believe they would be better than, if as good, as, the general run of Periodical criticisms? Not they, I will venture to affirm. But then — once again, I get these people together and give them your book, and persuade them, moreover, that by praising it, the Postman will be helping its author to divide Long Acre into two beats, one of which she will take with half the salary and all the red collar, — that a sealing-wax vendor will see red wafers brought into vogue, and so on with the rest — and won’t you just wish for your Spectators and Observers and Newcastle-upon-Tyne — Hebdomadal Mercuries back again! You see the inference — I do sincerely esteem it a perfectly providential and miraculous thing that they are so well-behaved in ordinary, these critics; and for Keats and Tennyson to ‘go softly all their days’ for a gruff word or two is quite inexplicable to me, and always has been. Tennyson reads the Quarterly and does as they bid him, with the most solemn face in the world — out goes this, in goes that, all is changed and ranged. Oh me!
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 309