Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series
Page 321
Some of this letter was written before yesterday and in reply of course to yours — so it is to pass for two letters, being long enough for just six. Yesterday you must have wondered at me for being in such a maze altogether about the poems — and so now I rise to explain that it was assuredly the wine song and no other which I read of yours in Hood’s. And then, what did I say of the Dante and Beatrice? Because what I referred to was the exquisite page or two or three on that subject in the ‘Pentameron.’ I do not remember anything else of Landor’s with the same bearing — do you? As to Montaigne, with the threads of my thoughts smoothly disentangled, I can see nothing coloured by him ... nothing. Do bring all the Hood poems of your own — inclusive of the ‘Tokay,’ because I read it in such haste as to whirl up all the dust you saw, from the wheels of my chariot. The ‘Duchess’ is past speaking of here — but you will see how I am delighted. And we must make speed — only taking care of your head — for I heard to-day that Papa and my aunt are discussing the question of sending me off either to Alexandria or Malta for the winter. Oh — it is quite a passing talk and thought, I dare say! and it would not be in any case, until September or October; though in every case, I suppose, I should not be much consulted ... and all cases and places would seem better to me (if I were) than Madeira which the physicians used to threaten me with long ago. So take care of your headache and let us have the ‘Bells’ rung out clear before the summer ends ... and pray don’t say again anything about clear consciences or unclear ones, in granting me the privilege of reading your manuscripts — which is all clear privilege to me, with pride and gladness waiting on it. May God bless you always my dear friend!
E.B.B.
You left behind your sister’s little basket — but I hope you did not forget to thank her for my carnations.
R.B. to E.B.B.
[no date]
I shall just say, at the beginning of a note as at the end, I am yours ever, and not till summer ends and my nails fall out, and my breath breaks bubbles, — ought you to write thus having restricted me as you once did, and do still? You tie me like a Shrove-Tuesday fowl to a stake and then pick the thickest cudgel out of your lot, and at my head it goes — I wonder whether you remembered having predicted exactly the same horror once before. ‘I was to see you — and you were to understand’ — Do you? do you understand — my own friend — with that superiority in years, too! For I confess to that — you need not throw that in my teeth ... as soon as I read your ‘Essay on Mind’ — (which of course I managed to do about 12 hours after Mr. K’s positive refusal to keep his promise, and give me the book) from preface to the ‘Vision of Fame’ at the end, and reflected on my own doings about that time, 1826 — I did indeed see, and wonder at, your advance over me in years — what then? I have got nearer you considerably — (if only nearer) — since then — and prove it by the remarks I make at favourable times — such as this, for instance, which occurs in a poem you are to see — written some time ago — which advises nobody who thinks nobly of the Soul, to give, if he or she can help, such a good argument to the materialist as the owning that any great choice of that Soul, which it is born to make and which — (in its determining, as it must, the whole future course and impulses of that soul) — which must endure for ever, even though the object that induced the choice should disappear — owning, I say, that such a choice may be scientifically determined and produced, at any operator’s pleasure, by a definite number of ingredients, so much youth, so much beauty, so much talent &c. &c., with the same certainty and precision that another kind of operator will construct you an artificial volcano with so much steel filings and flower of sulphur and what not. There is more in the soul than rises to the surface and meets the eye; whatever does that, is for this world’s immediate uses; and were this world all, all in us would be producible and available for use, as it is with the body now — but with the soul, what is to be developed afterward is the main thing, and instinctively asserts its rights — so that when you hate (or love) you shall not be so able to explain ‘why’ (‘You’ is the ordinary creature enough of my poem — he might not be so able.)
There, I will write no more. You will never drop me off the golden hooks, I dare believe — and the rest is with God — whose finger I see every minute of my life. Alexandria! Well, and may I not as easily ask leave to come ‘to-morrow at the Muezzin’ as next Wednesday at three?
God bless you — do not be otherwise than kind to this letter which it costs me pains, great pains to avoid writing better, as truthfuller — this you get is not the first begun. Come, you shall not have the heart to blame me; for, see, I will send all my sins of commission with Hood, — blame them, tell me about them, and meantime let me be, dear friend, yours,
R.B.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Monday.
[Post-mark, July 21, 1845.]
But I never did strike you or touch you — and you are not in earnest in the complaint you make — and this is really all I am going to say to-day. What I said before was wrung from me by words on your part, while you know far too well how to speak so as to make them go deepest, and which sometimes it becomes impossible, or over-hard to bear without deprecation: — as when, for instance, you talk of being ‘grateful’ to me!! — Well! I will try that there shall be no more of it — no more provocation of generosities — and so, (this once) as you express it, I ‘will not have the heart to blame’ you — except for reading my books against my will, which was very wrong indeed. Mr. Kenyon asked me, I remember, (he had a mania of sending my copybook literature round the world to this person and that person, and I was roused at last into binding him by a vow to do so no more) I remember he asked me ... ‘Is Mr. Browning to be excepted?’; to which I answered that nobody was to be excepted — and thus he was quite right in resisting to the death ... or to dinner-time ... just as you were quite wrong after dinner. Now, could a woman have been more curious? Could the very author of the book have done worse? But I leave my sins and yours gladly, to get into the Hood poems which have delighted me so — and first to the St. Praxed’s which is of course the finest and most powerful ... and indeed full of the power of life ... and of death. It has impressed me very much. Then the ‘Angel and Child,’ with all its beauty and significance! — and the ‘Garden Fancies’ ... some of the stanzas about the name of the flower, with such exquisite music in them, and grace of every kind — and with that beautiful and musical use of the word ‘meandering,’ which I never remember having seen used in relation to sound before. It does to mate with your ‘simmering quiet’ in Sordello, which brings the summer air into the room as sure as you read it. Then I like your burial of the pedant so much! — you have quite the damp smell of funguses and the sense of creeping things through and through it. And the ‘Laboratory’ is hideous as you meant to make it: — only I object a little to your tendency ... which is almost a habit, and is very observable in this poem I think, ... of making lines difficult for the reader to read ... see the opening lines of this poem. Not that music is required everywhere, nor in them certainly, but that the uncertainty of rhythm throws the reader’s mind off the rail ... and interrupts his progress with you and your influence with him. Where we have not direct pleasure from rhythm, and where no peculiar impression is to be produced by the changes in it, we should be encouraged by the poet to forget it altogether; should we not? I am quite wrong perhaps — but you see how I do not conceal my wrongnesses where they mix themselves up with my sincere impressions. And how could it be that no one within my hearing ever spoke of these poems? Because it is true that I never saw one of them — never! — except the ‘Tokay,’ which is inferior to all; and that I was quite unaware of your having printed so much with Hood — or at all, except this ‘Tokay,’ and this ‘Duchess’! The world is very deaf and dumb, I think — but in the end, we need not be afraid of its not learning its lesson.
Could you come — for I am going out in the carriage, and will not stay to write of your poems even, any more to-day �
� could you come on Thursday or Friday (the day left to your choice) instead of on Wednesday? If I could help it I would not say so — it is not a caprice. And I leave it to you, whether Thursday or Friday. And Alexandria seems discredited just now for Malta — and ‘anything but Madeira,’ I go on saying to myself. These Hood poems are all to be in the next ‘Bells’ of course — of necessity?
May God bless you my dear friend, my ever dear friend! —
E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Tuesday Morning.
[Post-mark, July 22, 1845.]
I will say, with your leave, Thursday (nor attempt to say anything else without your leave).
The temptation of reading the ‘Essay’ was more than I could bear: and a wonderful work it is every way; the other poems and their music — wonderful!
And you go out still — so continue better!
I cannot write this morning — I should say too much and have to be sorry and afraid — let me be safely yours ever, my own dear friend —
R.B.
I am but too proud of your praise — when will the blame come — at Malta?
E.B.B. to R.B.
[Post-mark, July 25, 1845.]
Are you any better to-day? and will you say just the truth of it? and not attempt to do any of the writing which does harm — nor of the reading even, which may do harm — and something does harm to you, you see — and you told me not long ago that you knew how to avoid the harm ... now, did you not? and what could it have been last week which you did not avoid, and which made you so unwell? Beseech you not to think that I am going to aid and abet in this wronging of yourself, for I will not indeed — and I am only sorry to have given you my querulous queries yesterday ... and to have omitted to say in relation to them, too, how they were to be accepted in any case as just passing thoughts of mine for your passing thoughts, ... some right, it may be ... some wrong, it must be ... and none, insisted on even by the thinker! just impressions, and by no means pretending to be judgments — now will you understand? Also, I intended (as a proof of my fallacy) to strike out one or two of my doubts before I gave the paper to you — so whichever strikes you as the most foolish of them, of course must be what I meant to strike out — (there’s ingenuity for you!). The poem did, for the rest, as will be suggested to you, give me the very greatest pleasure, and astonish me in two ways ... by the versification, mechanically considered; and by the successful evolution of pure beauty from all that roughness and rudeness of the sin of the boar-pinner — successfully evolved, without softening one hoarse accent of his voice. But there is to be a pause now — you will not write any more — no, nor come here on Wednesday, if coming into the roar of this London should make the pain worse, as I cannot help thinking it must — and you were not well yesterday morning, you admitted. You will take care? And if there should be a wisdom in going away...!
Was it very wrong of me, doing what I told you of yesterday? Very imprudent, I am afraid — but I never knew how to be prudent — and then, there is not a sharing of responsibility in any sort of imaginable measure; but a mere going away of so many thoughts, apart from the thinker, or of words, apart from the speaker, ... just as I might give away a pocket-handkerchief to be newly marked and mine no longer. I did not do — and would not have done, ... one of those papers singly. It would have been unbecoming of me in every way. It was simply a writing of notes ... of slips of paper ... now on one subject, and now on another ... which were thrown into the great cauldron and boiled up with other matter, and re-translated from my idiom where there seemed a need for it. And I am not much afraid of being ever guessed at — except by those Oedipuses who astounded me once for a moment and were after all, I hope, baffled by the Sphinx — or ever betrayed; because besides the black Stygian oaths and indubitable honour of the editor, he has some interest, even as I have the greatest, in being silent and secret. And nothing is mine ... if something is of me ... or from me, rather. Yet it was wrong and foolish, I see plainly — wrong in all but the motives. How dreadful to write against time, and with a side-ways running conscience! And then the literature of the day was wider than his knowledge, all round! And the booksellers were barking distraction on every side! — I had some of the mottos to find too! But the paper relating to you I never was consulted about — or in one particular way it would have been better, — as easily it might have been. May God bless you, my dear friend,