Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  And while you were doing this for me, you thought it unkind of me not to write to you; yes, and you think me at this moment the very princess of apologies and excuses and depreciations and all the rest of the small family of distrust — or of hypocrisy ... who knows? Well! but you are wrong ... wrong ... to think so; and you will let me say one word to show where you are wrong — not for you to controvert, ... because it must relate to myself especially, and lies beyond your cognizance, and is something which I must know best after all. And it is, ... that you persist in putting me into a false position, with respect to fixing days and the like, and in making me feel somewhat as I did when I was a child, and Papa used to put me up on the chimney-piece and exhort me to stand up straight like a hero, which I did, straighter and straighter, and then suddenly ‘was ‘ware’ (as we say in the ballads) of the walls’ growing alive behind me and extending two stony hands to push me down that frightful precipice to the rug, where the dog lay ... dear old Havannah, ... and where he and I were likely to be dashed to pieces together and mix our uncanonised bones. Now my present false position ... which is not the chimney-piece’s, ... is the necessity you provide for me in the shape of my having to name this day, or that day, ... and of your coming because I name it, and of my having to think and remember that you come because I name it. Through a weakness, perhaps, or morbidness, or one knows not how to define it, I cannot help being uncomfortable in having to do this, — it is impossible. Not that I distrust you — you are the last in the world I could distrust: and then (although you may be sceptical) I am naturally given to trust ... to a fault ... as some say, or to a sin, as some reproach me: — and then again, if I were ever such a distruster, it could not be of you. But if you knew me — ! I will tell you! if one of my brothers omits coming to this room for two days, ... I never ask why it happened! if my own father omits coming up-stairs to say ‘good night,’ I never say a word; and not from indifference. Do try to make out these readings of me as a dixit Casaubonus; and don’t throw me down as a corrupt text, nor convict me for an infidel which I am not. On the contrary I am grateful and happy to believe that you like to come here; and even if you came here as a pure act of charity and pity to me, as long as you chose to come I should not be too proud to be grateful and happy still. I could not be proud to you, and I hope you will not fancy such a possibility, which is the remotest of all. Yes, and I am anxious to ask you to be wholly generous and leave off such an interpreting philosophy as you made use of yesterday, and forgive me when I beg you to fix your own days for coming for the future. Will you? It is the same thing in one way. If you like to come really every week, there is no hindrance to it — you can do it — and the privilege and obligation remain equally mine: — and if you name a day for coming on any week, where there is an obstacle on my side, you will learn it from me in a moment. Why I might as well charge you with distrusting me, because you persist in making me choose the days. And it is not for me to do it, but for you — I must feel that — and I cannot help chafing myself against the thought that for me to begin to fix days in this way, just because you have quick impulses (like all imaginative persons), and wish me to do it now, may bring me to the catastrophe of asking you to come when you would rather not, ... which, as you say truly, would not be an important vexation to you; but to me would be worse than vexation; to me — and therefore I shrink from the very imagination of the possibility of such a thing, and ask you to bear with me and let it be as I prefer ... left to your own choice of the moment. And bear with me above all — because this shows no want of faith in you ... none ... but comes from a simple fact (with its ramifications) ... that you know little of me personally yet, and that you guess, even, but very little of the influence of a peculiar experience over me and out of me; and if I wanted a proof of this, we need not seek further than the very point of discussion, and the hard worldly thoughts you thought I was thinking of you yesterday, — I, who thought not one of them! But I am so used to discern the correcting and ministering angels by the same footsteps on the ground, that it is not wonderful I should look down there at any approach of a φιλια ταξις whatever to this personal me. Have I not been ground down to browns and blacks? and is it my fault if I am not green? Not that it is my complaint — I should not be justified in complaining; I believe, as I told you, that there is more gladness than sadness in the world — that is, generally: and if some natures have to be refined by the sun, and some by the furnace (the less genial ones) both means are to be recognised as good, ... however different in pleasurableness and painfulness, and though furnace-fire leaves scorched streaks upon the fruit. I assured you there was nothing I had any power of teaching you: and there is nothing, except grief! — which I would not teach you, you know, if I had the occasion granted.

  It is a multitude of words about nothing at all, ... this — but I am like Mariana in the moated grange and sit listening too often to the mouse in the wainscot. Be as forbearing as you can — and believe how profoundly it touches me that you should care to come here at all, much more, so often! and try to understand that if I did not write as you half asked, it was just because I failed at the moment to get up enough pomp and circumstance to write on purpose to certify the important fact of my being a little stronger or a little weaker on one particular morning. That I am always ready and rejoiced to write to you, you know perfectly well, and I have proved, by ‘superfluity of naughtiness’ and prolixity through some twenty posts: — and this, and therefore, you will agree altogether to attribute no more to me on these counts, and determine to read me no more backwards with your Hebrew, putting in your own vowel points without my leave! Shall it be so?

  Here is a letter grown from a note which it meant to be — and I have been interrupted in the midst of it, or it should have gone to you earlier. Let what I have said in it of myself pass unquestioned and unnoticed, because it is of me and not of you, ... and, if in any wise lunatical, all the talking and writing in the world will not put the implied moon into another quarter. Only be patient with me a little, ... and let us have a smooth ground for the poems which I am foreseeing the sight of with such pride and delight — Such pride and delight!

  And one thing ... which is chief, though it seems to come last!... you will have advice (will you not?) if that pain does not grow much better directly? It cannot be prudent or even safe to let a pain in the head go on so long, and no remedy be attempted for it, ... and you cannot be sure that it is a merely nervous pain and that it may not have consequences; and this, quite apart from the consideration of suffering. So you will see some one with an opinion to give, and take it? Do, I beseech you. You will not say ‘no’? Also ... if on Wednesday you should be less well than usual, you will come on Thursday instead, I hope, ... seeing that it must be right for you to be quiet and silent when you suffer so, and a journey into London can let you be neither. Otherwise, I hold to my day, ... Wednesday. And may God bless you my dear friend.

  Ever yours,

  E.B.B.

  You are right I see, nearly everywhere, if not quite everywhere in the criticisms — but of course I have not looked very closely — that is, I have read your papers but not in connection with a my side of the argument — but I shall lose the post after all.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Saturday Morning.

  [Post-mark, June 7, 1845.]

  I ventured to hope this morning might bring me news of you — First East-winds on you, then myself, then those criticisms! — I do assure you I am properly apprehensive. How are you? May I go on Wednesday without too much ανθαδια.

  Pray remember what I said and wrote, to the effect that my exceptions were, in almost every case, to the ‘reading’ — not to your version of it: but I have not specified the particular ones — not written down the Greek, of my suggested translations — have I? And if you do not find them in the margin of your copy, how you must wonder! Thus, in the last speech but one, of Hermes, I prefer Porson and Blomfield’s ει μηδ’ ατυχων τι χα
λα μανιων; — to the old combinations that include ευτυχη — though there is no MS. authority for emendation, it seems. But in what respect does Prometheus ‘fare well,’ or ‘better’ even, since the beginning? And is it not the old argument over again, that when a man fails he should repent of his ways? — And while thinking of Hermes, let me say that ‘μηδε μοι διπλας οδους προσβαλης’ is surely — ’Don’t subject me to the trouble of a second journey ... by paying no attention to the first.’ So says Scholiast A, and so backs him Scholiast B, especially created, it should appear, to show there could be in rerum naturâ such another as his predecessor. A few other remarks occur to me, which I will tell you if you please; now, I really want to know how you are, and write for that.

  Ever yours,

  R.B.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  [Post-mark, June 9, 1845.]

  Just after my note left, yours came — I will try so to answer it as to please you; and I begin by promising cheerfully to do all you bid me about naming days &c. I do believe we are friends now and for ever. There can be no reason, therefore, that I should cling tenaciously to any one or other time of meeting, as if, losing that, I lost everything — and, for the future, I will provide against sudden engagements, outrageous weather &c., to your heart’s content. Nor am I going to except against here and there a little wrong I could get up, as when you imply from my quick impulses and the like. No, my dear friend — for I seem sure I shall have quite, quite time enough to do myself justice in your eyes — Let time show!

  Perhaps I feel none the less sorely, when you ‘thank’ me for such company as mine, that I cannot avoid confessing to myself that it would not be so absolutely out of my power, perhaps, to contrive really and deserve thanks in a certain acceptation — I might really try, at all events, and amuse you a little better, when I do have the opportunity, — and I do not — but there is the thing! It is all of a piece — I do not seek your friendship in order to do you good — any good — only to do myself good. Though I would, God knows, do that too.

  Enough of this.

  I am much better, indeed, — but will certainly follow your advice should the pain return. And you — you have tried a new journey from your room, have you not?

  Do recollect, at any turn, any chance so far in my favour, — that I am here and yours should you want any fetching and carrying in this outside London world. Your brothers may have their own business to mind, Mr. Kenyon is at New York, we will suppose; here am I — what else, what else makes me count my cleverness to you, as I know I have done more than once, by word and letter, but the real wish to be set at work? I should have, I hope, better taste than to tell any everyday acquaintance, who could not go out, one single morning even, on account of a headache, that the weather was delightful, much less that I had been walking five miles and meant to run ten — yet to you I boasted once of polking and waltzing and more — but then would it not be a very superfluous piece of respect in the four-footed bird to keep his wings to himself because his Master Oceanos could fly forsooth? Whereas he begins to wave a flap and show how ready they are to be off — for what else were the good of him? Think of this — and

  Know me for yours

  R.B.

  For good you are, to those notes — you shall have more, — that is, the rest — on Wednesday then, at 3, except as you except. God bless you.

  Oh, let me tell you — I suppose Mr. Horne must be in town — as I received a letter two days ago, from the contriver of some literary society or other who had before written to get me to belong to it, protesting against my reasons for refusing, and begging that ‘at all events I would suspend my determination till I had been visited by Mr. H. on the subject’ — and, as they can hardly mean to bring him express from the Drachenfels for just that, he is returned no doubt — and as he is your friend, I take the opportunity of mentioning the course I shall pursue with him or any other friend of yours I may meet, — (and everybody else, I may add — ) the course I understand you to desire, with respect to our own intimacy. While I may acknowledge, I believe, that I correspond with you, I shall not, in any case, suffer it to be known that I see, or have seen you. This I just remind you of, lest any occasion of embarrassment should arise, for a moment, from your not being quite sure how I had acted in any case. — Con che, le bacio le mani — a rivederla!

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Tuesday Morning.

  [Post-mark, June 10, 1845.]

  I must thank you by one word for all your kindness and consideration — which could not be greater; nor more felt by me. In the first place, afterwards (if that should not be Irish dialect) do understand that my letter passed from my hands to go to yours on Friday, but was thrown aside carelessly down stairs and ‘covered up’ they say, so as not to be seen until late on Saturday; and I can only humbly hope to have been cross enough about it (having conscientiously tried) to secure a little more accuracy another time. — And then, ... if ever I should want anything done or found, ... (a roc’s egg or the like) you may believe me that I shall not scruple to ask you to be the finder; but at this moment I want nothing, indeed, except your poems; and that is quite the truth. Now do consider and think what I could possibly want in your ‘outside London world’; you, who are the ‘Genius of the lamp’! — Why if you light it and let me read your romances, &c., by it, is not that the best use for it, and am I likely to look for another? Only I shall remember what you say, gratefully and seriously; and if ever I should have a good fair opportunity of giving you trouble (as if I had not done it already!), you may rely upon my evil intentions; even though dear Mr. Kenyon should not actually be at New York, ... which he is not, I am glad to say, as I saw him on Saturday.

  Which reminds me that he knows of your having been here, of course! and will not mention it; as he understood from me that you would not. — Thank you! Also there was an especial reason which constrained me, on pain of appearing a great hypocrite, to tell Miss Mitford the bare fact of my having seen you — and reluctantly I did it, though placing some hope in her promise of discretion. And how necessary the discretion is, will appear in the awful statistical fact of our having at this moment, as my sisters were calculating yesterday, some forty relations in London — to say nothing of the right wing of the enemy. For Mr. Horne, I could have told you, and really I thought I had told you of his being in England.

  Last paragraph of all is, that I don’t want to be amused, ... or rather that I am amused by everything and anything. Why surely, surely, you have some singular ideas about me! So, till to-morrow,

  E.B.B.

  Instead of writing this note to you yesterday, as should have been, I went down-stairs — or rather was carried — and am not the worse.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Friday.

  [Post-mark, June 14, 1845.]

  Yes, the poem is too good in certain respects for the prizes given in colleges, (when all the pure parsley goes naturally to the rabbits), and has a great deal of beauty here and there in image and expression. Still I do not quite agree with you that it reaches the Tennyson standard any wise; and for the blank verse, I cannot for a moment think it comparable to one of the grand passages in ‘Oenone,’ and ‘Arthur’ and the like. In fact I seem to hear more in that latter blank verse than you do, ... to hear not only a ‘mighty line’ as in Marlowe, but a noble full orbicular wholeness in complete passages — which always struck me as the mystery of music and great peculiarity in Tennyson’s versification, inasmuch as he attains to these complete effects without that shifting of the pause practised by the masters, ... Shelley and others. A ‘linked music’ in which there are no links! — that, you would take to be a contradiction — and yet something like that, my ear has always seemed to perceive; and I have wondered curiously again and again how there could be so much union and no fastening. Only of course it is not model versification — and for dramatic purposes, it must be admitted to be bad.

  Which reminds me to be astonished for the secon
d time how you could think such a thing of me as that I wanted to read only your lyrics, ... or that I ‘preferred the lyrics’ ... or something barbarous in that way? You don’t think me ‘ambidexter,’ or ‘either-handed’ ... and both hands open for what poems you will vouchsafe to me; and yet if you would let me see anything you may have in a readable state by you, ... ‘The Flight of the Duchess’ ... or act or scene of ‘The Soul’s Tragedy,’ ... I shall be so glad and grateful to you! Oh — if you change your mind and choose to be bien prié, I will grant it is your right, and begin my liturgy directly. But this is not teazing (in the intention of it!) and I understand all about the transcription, and the inscrutableness of rough copies, — that is, if you write as I do, so that my guardian angel or M. Champollion cannot read what is written. Only whatever they can, (remember!) I can: and you are not to mind trusting me with the cacistography possible to mortal readers.

  The sun shines so that nobody dares complain of the east wind — and indeed I am better altogether. May God bless you, my dear friend.

  E.B.B.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  [Post-mark, June 14, 1845.]

  When I ask my wise self what I really do remember of the Prize poem, the answer is — both of Chapman’s lines a-top, quite worth any prize for their quoter — then, the good epithet of ‘Green Europe’ contrasting with Africa — then, deep in the piece, a picture of a Vestal in a vault, where I see a dipping and winking lamp plainest, and last of all the ominous ‘all was dark’ that dismisses you. I read the poem many years ago, and never since, though I have an impression that the versification is good, yet from your commentary I see I must have said a good deal more in its praise than that. But have you not discovered by this time that I go on talking with my thoughts away?