Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  In the meantime, why I should be ‘thanked,’ is an absolute mystery to me — but I leave it!

  You are generous and impetuous; that, I can see and feel; and so far from being of an inclination to mistrust you or distrust you, I do profess to have as much faith in your full, pure loyalty, as if I had known you personally as many years as I have appreciated your genius. Believe this of me — for it is spoken truly.

  In the matter of Shakespeare’s ‘poor players’ you are severe — and yet I was glad to hear you severe — it is a happy excess, I think. When men of intense reality, as all great poets must be, give their hearts to be trodden on and tied up with ribbons in turn, by men of masks, there will be torture if there is not desecration. Not that I know much of such things — but I have heard. Heard from Mr. Kenyon; heard from Miss Mitford; who however is passionately fond of the theatre as a writer’s medium — not at all, from Mr. Horne himself, ... except what he has printed on the subject.

  Yes — he has been infamously used on the point of the ‘New Spirit’ — only he should have been prepared for the infamy — it was leaping into a gulph, ... not to ‘save the republic,’ but ‘pour rire’: it was not merely putting one’s foot into a hornet’s nest, but taking off a shoe and stocking to do it. And to think of Dickens being dissatisfied! To think of Tennyson’s friends grumbling! — he himself did not, I hope and trust. For you, you certainly were not adequately treated — and above all, you were not placed with your peers in that chapter — but that there was an intention to do you justice, and that there is a righteous appreciation of you in the writer, I know and am sure, — and that you should be sensible to this, is only what I should know and be sure of you. Mr. Horne is quite above the narrow, vicious, hateful jealousy of contemporaries, which we hear reproached, too justly sometimes, on men of letters.

  I go on writing as if I were not going to see you — soon perhaps. Remember that the how and the when rest with you — except that it cannot be before next week at the soonest. You are to decide.

  Always your friend,

  E.B.B.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Friday Night.

  [Post-mark, May 17, 1845.]

  My friend is not ‘mistrustful’ of me, no, because she don’t fear I shall make mainprize of the stray cloaks and umbrellas down-stairs, or turn an article for Colburn’s on her sayings and doings up-stairs, — but spite of that, she does mistrust ... so mistrust my common sense, — nay, uncommon and dramatic-poet’s sense, if I am put on asserting it! — all which pieces of mistrust I could detect, and catch struggling, and pin to death in a moment, and put a label in, with name, genus and species, just like a horrible entomologist; only I won’t, because the first visit of the Northwind will carry the whole tribe into the Red Sea — and those horns and tails and scalewings are best forgotten altogether. And now will I say a cutting thing and have done. Have I trusted my friend so, — or said even to myself, much less to her, she is even as — ’Mr. Simpson’ who desireth the honour of the acquaintance of Mr. B. whose admirable works have long been his, Simpson’s, especial solace in private — and who accordingly is led to that personage by a mutual friend — Simpson blushing as only adorable ingenuousness can, and twisting the brim of his hat like a sailor giving evidence. Whereupon Mr. B. beginneth by remarking that the rooms are growing hot — or that he supposes Mr. S. has not heard if there will be another adjournment of the House to-night — whereupon Mr. S. looketh up all at once, brusheth the brim smooth again with his sleeve, and takes to his assurance once more, in something of a huff, and after staying his five minutes out for decency’s sake, noddeth familiarly an adieu, and spinning round on his heel ejaculateth mentally — ’Well, I did expect to see something different from that little yellow commonplace man ... and, now I come to think, there was some precious trash in that book of his’ — Have I said ‘so will Miss Barrett ejaculate?’

  Dear Miss Barrett, I thank you for the leave you give me, and for the infinite kindness of the way of giving it. I will call at 2 on Tuesday — not sooner, that you may have time to write should any adverse circumstances happen ... not that they need inconvenience you, because ... what I want particularly to tell you for now and hereafter — do not mind my coming in the least, but — should you be unwell, for instance, — just send or leave word, and I will come again, and again, and again — my time is of no importance, and I have acquaintances thick in the vicinity.

  Now if I do not seem grateful enough to you, am I so much to blame? You see it is high time you saw me, for I have clearly written myself out!

  Ever yours,

  R.B.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Saturday.

  [Post-mark, May 17, 1845.]

  I shall be ready on Tuesday I hope, but I hate and protest against your horrible ‘entomology.’ Beginning to explain, would thrust me lower and lower down the circles of some sort of an ‘Inferno’; only with my dying breath I would maintain that I never could, consciously or unconsciously, mean to distrust you; or, the least in the world, to Simpsonize you. What I said, ... it was you that put it into my head to say it — for certainly, in my usual disinclination to receive visitors, such a feeling does not enter. There, now! There, I am a whole ‘giro’ lower! Now, you will say perhaps that I distrust you, and nobody else! So it is best to be silent, and bear all the ‘cutting things’ with resignation! that is certain.

  Still I must really say, under this dreadful incubus-charge of Simpsonism, ... that you, who know everything, or at least make awful guesses at everything in one’s feelings and motives, and profess to be able to pin them down in a book of classified inscriptions, ... should have been able to understand better, or misunderstand less, in a matter like this — Yes! I think so. I think you should have made out the case in some such way as it was in nature — viz. that you had lashed yourself up to an exorbitant wishing to see me, ... (you who could see, any day, people who are a hundredfold and to all social purposes, my superiors!) because I was unfortunate enough to be shut up in a room and silly enough to make a fuss about opening the door; and that I grew suddenly abashed by the consciousness of this. How different from a distrust of you! how different!

  Ah — if, after this day, you ever see any interpretable sign of distrustfulness in me, you may be ‘cutting’ again, and I will not cry out. In the meantime here is a fact for your ‘entomology.’ I have not so much distrust, as will make a doubt, as will make a curiosity for next Tuesday. Not the simplest modification of curiosity enters into the state of feeling with which I wait for Tuesday: — and if you are angry to hear me say so, ... why, you are more unjust than ever.

  (Let it be three instead of two — if the hour be as convenient to yourself.)

  Before you come, try to forgive me for my ‘infinite kindness’ in the manner of consenting to see you. Is it ‘the cruellest cut of all’ when you talk of infinite kindness, yet attribute such villainy to me? Well! but we are friends till Tuesday — and after perhaps.

  Ever yours,

  E.B.B.

  If on Tuesday you should be not well, pray do not come — Now, that is my request to your kindness.16

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Tuesday Evening.

  [Post-mark, May 21, 1845.]

  I trust to you for a true account of how you are — if tired, if not tired, if I did wrong in any thing, — or, if you please, right in any thing — (only, not one more word about my ‘kindness,’ which, to get done with, I will grant is exceptive) — but, let us so arrange matters if possible, — and why should it not be — that my great happiness, such as it will be if I see you, as this morning, from time to time, may be obtained at the cost of as little inconvenience to you as we can contrive. For an instance — just what strikes me — they all say here I speak very loud — (a trick caught from having often to talk with a deaf relative of mine). And did I stay too long?

  I will tell you unhesitatingly of such ‘corrigenda’ — nay, I will again say, do not humiliate me — do not
again, — by calling me ‘kind’ in that way.

  I am proud and happy in your friendship — now and ever. May God bless you!

  R.B.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Wednesday Morning.

  [Post-mark, May 22, 1845.]

  Indeed there was nothing wrong — how could there be? And there was everything right — as how should there not be? And as for the ‘loud speaking,’ I did not hear any — and, instead of being worse, I ought to be better for what was certainly (to speak it, or be silent of it,) happiness and honour to me yesterday.

  Which reminds me to observe that you are so restricting our vocabulary, as to be ominous of silence in a full sense, presently. First, one word is not to be spoken — and then, another is not. And why? Why deny me the use of such words as have natural feelings belonging to them — and how can the use of such be ‘humiliating’ to you? If my heart were open to you, you could see nothing offensive to you in any thought there or trace of thought that has been there — but it is hard for you to understand, with all your psychology (and to be reminded of it I have just been looking at the preface of some poems by some Mr. Gurney where he speaks of ‘the reflective wisdom of a Wordsworth and the profound psychological utterances of a Browning’) it is hard for you to understand what my mental position is after the peculiar experience I have suffered, and what τι εμοι και σοι17 a sort of feeling is irrepressible from me to you, when, from the height of your brilliant happy sphere, you ask, as you did ask, for personal intercourse with me. What words but ‘kindness’ ... but ‘gratitude’ — but I will not in any case be unkind and ungrateful, and do what is displeasing to you. And let us both leave the subject with the words — because we perceive in it from different points of view; we stand on the black and white sides of the shield; and there is no coming to a conclusion.

  But you will come really on Tuesday — and again, when you like and can together — and it will not be more ‘inconvenient’ to me to be pleased, I suppose, than it is to people in general — will it, do you think? Ah — how you misjudge! Why it must obviously and naturally be delightful to me to receive you here when you like to come, and it cannot be necessary for me to say so in set words — believe it of

  Your friend,

  E.B.B.

  [Mr. Browning’s letter, to which the following is in answer was destroyed, see page 268 of the present volume.]

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Friday Evening.

  [Post-mark, May 24, 1845.]

  I intended to write to you last night and this morning, and could not, — you do not know what pain you give me in speaking so wildly. And if I disobey you, my dear friend, in speaking, (I for my part) of your wild speaking, I do it, not to displease you, but to be in my own eyes, and before God, a little more worthy, or less unworthy, of a generosity from which I recoil by instinct and at the first glance, yet conclusively; and because my silence would be the most disloyal of all means of expression, in reference to it. Listen to me then in this. You have said some intemperate things ... fancies, — which you will not say over again, nor unsay, but forget at once, and for ever, having said at all; and which (so) will die out between you and me alone, like a misprint between you and the printer. And this you will do for my sake who am your friend (and you have none truer) — and this I ask, because it is a condition necessary to our future liberty of intercourse. You remember — surely you do — that I am in the most exceptional of positions; and that, just because of it, I am able to receive you as I did on Tuesday; and that, for me to listen to ‘unconscious exaggerations,’ is as unbecoming to the humilities of my position, as unpropitious (which is of more consequence) to the prosperities of yours. Now, if there should be one word of answer attempted to this; or of reference; I must not ... I will not see you again — and you will justify me later in your heart. So for my sake you will not say it — I think you will not — and spare me the sadness of having to break through an intercourse just as it is promising pleasure to me; to me who have so many sadnesses and so few pleasures. You will! — and I need not be uneasy — and I shall owe you that tranquillity, as one gift of many. For, that I have much to receive from you in all the free gifts of thinking, teaching, master-spirits, ... that, I know! — it is my own praise that I appreciate you, as none can more. Your influence and help in poetry will be full of good and gladness to me — for with many to love me in this house, there is no one to judge me ... now. Your friendship and sympathy will be dear and precious to me all my life, if you indeed leave them with me so long or so little. Your mistakes in me ... which I cannot mistake ( — and which have humbled me by too much honouring — ) I put away gently, and with grateful tears in my eyes; because all that hail will beat down and spoil crowns, as well as ‘blossoms.’

  If I put off next Tuesday to the week after — I mean your visit, — shall you care much? For the relations I named to you, are to be in London next week; and I am to see one of my aunts whom I love, and have not met since my great affliction — and it will all seem to come over again, and I shall be out of spirits and nerves. On Tuesday week you can bring a tomahawk and do the criticism, and I shall try to have my courage ready for it — Oh, you will do me so much good — and Mr. Kenyon calls me ‘docile’ sometimes I assure you; when he wants to flatter me out of being obstinate — and in good earnest, I believe I shall do everything you tell me. The ‘Prometheus’ is done — but the monodrama is where it was — and the novel, not at all. But I think of some half promises half given, about something I read for ‘Saul’ — and the ‘Flight of the Duchess’ — where is she?

  You are not displeased with me? no, that would be hail and lightning together — I do not write as I might, of some words of yours — but you know that I am not a stone, even if silent like one. And if in the unsilence, I have said one word to vex you, pity me for having had to say it — and for the rest, may God bless you far beyond the reach of vexation from my words or my deeds!

  Your friend in grateful regard,

  E.B.B.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Saturday Morning.

  [Post-mark, May 24, 1845.]

  Don’t you remember I told you, once on a time that you ‘knew nothing of me’? whereat you demurred — but I meant what I said, and knew it was so. To be grand in a simile, for every poor speck of a Vesuvius or a Stromboli in my microcosm there are huge layers of ice and pits of black cold water — and I make the most of my two or three fire-eyes, because I know by experience, alas, how these tend to extinction — and the ice grows and grows — still this last is true part of me, most characteristic part, best part perhaps, and I disown nothing — only, — when you talked of ‘knowing me’! Still, I am utterly unused, of these late years particularly, to dream of communicating anything about that to another person (all my writings are purely dramatic as I am always anxious to say) that when I make never so little an attempt, no wonder if I bungle notably — ’language,’ too is an organ that never studded this heavy heavy head of mine. Will you not think me very brutal if I tell you I could almost smile at your misapprehension of what I meant to write? — Yet I will tell you, because it will undo the bad effect of my thoughtlessness, and at the same time exemplify the point I have all along been honestly earnest to set you right upon ... my real inferiority to you; just that and no more. I wrote to you, in an unwise moment, on the spur of being again ‘thanked,’ and, unwisely writing just as if thinking to myself, said what must have looked absurd enough as seen apart from the horrible counterbalancing never-to-be-written rest of me — by the side of which, could it be written and put before you, my note would sink to its proper and relative place, and become a mere ‘thank you’ for your good opinion — which I assure you is far too generous — for I really believe you to be my superior in many respects, and feel uncomfortable till you see that, too — since I hope for your sympathy and assistance, and ‘frankness is everything in such a case.’ I do assure you, that had you read my note, only having ‘known’ so much of
me as is implied in having inspected, for instance, the contents, merely, of that fatal and often-referred-to ‘portfolio’ there (Dii meliora piis!), you would see in it, (the note not the portfolio) the blandest utterance ever mild gentleman gave birth to. But I forgot that one may make too much noise in a silent place by playing the few notes on the ‘ear-piercing fife’ which in Othello’s regimental band might have been thumped into decent subordination by his ‘spirit-stirring drum’ — to say nothing of gong and ophicleide. Will you forgive me, on promise to remember for the future, and be more considerate? Not that you must too much despise me, neither; nor, of all things, apprehend I am attitudinizing à la Byron, and giving you to understand unutterable somethings, longings for Lethe and all that — far from it! I never committed murders, and sleep the soundest of sleeps — but ‘the heart is desperately wicked,’ that is true, and though I dare not say ‘I know’ mine, yet I have had signal opportunities, I who began life from the beginning, and can forget nothing (but names, and the date of the battle of Waterloo), and have known good and wicked men and women, gentle and simple, shaking hands with Edmund Kean and Father Mathew, you and — Ottima! Then, I had a certain faculty of self-consciousness, years and years ago, at which John Mill wondered, and which ought to be improved by this time, if constant use helps at all — and, meaning, on the whole, to be a Poet, if not the Poet ... for I am vain and ambitious some nights, — I do myself justice, and dare call things by their names to myself, and say boldly, this I love, this I hate, this I would do, this I would not do, under all kinds of circumstances, — and talking (thinking) in this style to myself, and beginning, however tremblingly, in spite of conviction, to write in this style for myself — on the top of the desk which contains my ‘Songs of the Poets — no. i M.P.’, I wrote, — what you now forgive, I know! Because I am, from my heart, sorry that by a foolish fit of inconsideration I should have given pain for a minute to you, towards whom, on every account, I would rather soften and ‘sleeken every word as to a bird’ ... (and, not such a bird as my black self that go screeching about the world for ‘dead horse’ — corvus (picus) — mirandola!) I, too, who have been at such pains to acquire the reputation I enjoy in the world, — (ask Mr. Kenyon,) and who dine, and wine, and dance and enhance the company’s pleasure till they make me ill and I keep house, as of late: Mr. Kenyon, (for I only quote where you may verify if you please) he says my common sense strikes him, and its contrast with my muddy metaphysical poetry! And so it shall strike you — for though I am glad that, since you did misunderstand me, you said so, and have given me an opportunity of doing by another way what I wished to do in that, — yet, if you had not alluded to my writing, as I meant you should not, you would have certainly understood something of its drift when you found me next Tuesday precisely the same quiet (no, for I feel I speak too loudly, in spite of your kind disclaimer, but — ) the same mild man-about-town you were gracious to, the other morning — for, indeed, my own way of worldly life is marked out long ago, as precisely as yours can be, and I am set going with a hand, winker-wise, on each side of my head, and a directing finger before my eyes, to say nothing of an instinctive dread I have that a certain whip-lash is vibrating somewhere in the neighbourhood in playful readiness! So ‘I hope here be proofs,’ Dogberry’s satisfaction that, first, I am but a very poor creature compared to you and entitled by my wants to look up to you, — all I meant to say from the first of the first — and that, next, I shall be too much punished if, for this piece of mere inconsideration, you deprive me, more or less, or sooner or later, of the pleasure of seeing you, — a little over boisterous gratitude for which, perhaps, caused all the mischief! The reasons you give for deferring my visits next week are too cogent for me to dispute — that is too true — and, being now and henceforward ‘on my good behaviour,’ I will at once cheerfully submit to them, if needs must — but should your mere kindness and forethought, as I half suspect, have induced you to take such a step, you will now smile with me, at this new and very unnecessary addition to the ‘fears of me’ I have got so triumphantly over in your case! Wise man, was I not, to clench my first favourable impression so adroitly ... like a recent Cambridge worthy, my sister heard of; who, being on his theological (or rather, scripture-historical) examination, was asked by the Tutor, who wished to let him off easily, ‘who was the first King of Israel?’ — ’Saul’ answered the trembling youth. ‘Good!’ nodded approvingly the Tutor. ‘Otherwise called Paul,’ subjoined the youth in his elation! Now I have begged pardon, and blushingly assured you that was only a slip of the tongue, and that I did really mean all the while, (Paul or no Paul), the veritable son of Kish, he that owned the asses, and found listening to the harp the best of all things for an evil spirit! Pray write me a line to say, ‘Oh ... if that’s all!’ and remember me for good (which is very compatible with a moment’s stupidity) and let me not for one fault, (and that the only one that shall be), lose any pleasure ... for your friendship I am sure I have not lost — God bless you, my dear friend!