Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Your beautiful flowers! — none the less beautiful for waiting for water yesterday. As fresh as ever, they were; and while I was putting them into the water, I thought that your visit went on all the time. Other thoughts too I had, which made me look down blindly, quite blindly, on the little blue flowers, ... while I thought what I could not have said an hour before without breaking into tears which would have run faster then. To say now that I never can forget; that I feel myself bound to you as one human being cannot be more bound to another; — and that you are more to me at this moment than all the rest of the world; is only to say in new words that it would be a wrong against myself, to seem to risk your happiness and abuse your generosity. For me ... though you threw out words yesterday about the testimony of a ‘third person,’ ... it would be monstrous to assume it to be necessary to vindicate my trust of you — I trust you implicitly — and am not too proud to owe all things to you. But now let us wait and see what this winter does or undoes — while God does His part for good, as we know. I will never fail to you from any human influence whatever — that I have promised — but you must let it be different from the other sort of promise which it would be a wrong to make. May God bless you — you, whose fault it is, to be too generous. You are not like other men, as I could see from the beginning — no.

  Shall I have the proof to-night, I ask myself.

  And if you like to come on Monday rather than Tuesday, I do not see why there should be a ‘no’ to that. Judge from your own convenience. Only we must be wise in the general practice, and abstain from too frequent meetings, for fear of difficulties. I am Cassandra you know, and smell the slaughter in the bath-room. It would make no difference in fact; but in comfort, much.

  Ever your own —

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Saturday.

  [Post-mark, October 18, 1845.]

  I must not go on tearing these poor sheets one after the other, — the proper phrases will not come, — so let them stay, while you care for my best interests in their best, only way, and say for me what I would say if I could — dearest, — say it, as I feel it!

  I am thankful to hear of the continued improvement of your brother. So may it continue with him! Pulses I know very little about — I go by your own impressions which are evidently favourable.

  I will make a note as you suggest — or, perhaps, keep it for the closing number (the next), when it will come fitly in with two or three parting words I shall have to say. The Rabbis make Bells and Pomegranates symbolical of Pleasure and Profit, the gay and the grave, the Poetry and the Prose, Singing and Sermonizing — such a mixture of effects as in the original hour (that is quarter of an hour) of confidence and creation. I meant the whole should prove at last. Well, it has succeeded beyond my most adventurous wishes in one respect — ’Blessed eyes mine eyes have been, if — ’ if there was any sweetness in the tongue or flavour in the seeds to her. But I shall do quite other and better things, or shame on me! The proof has not yet come.... I should go, I suppose, and enquire this afternoon — and probably I will.

  I weigh all the words in your permission to come on Monday ... do not think I have not seen that contingency from the first! Let it be Tuesday — no sooner! Meanwhile you are never away — never from your place here.

  God bless my dearest.

  Ever yours

  R.B.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Monday Morning.

  [In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]

  This arrived on Saturday night — I just correct it in time for this our first post — will it do, the new matter? I can take it to-morrow — when I am to see you — if you are able to glance through it by then.

  The ‘Inscription,’ how does that read?

  There is strange temptation, by the way, in the space they please to leave for the presumable ‘motto’ — ’they but remind me of mine own conception’ ... but one must give no clue, of a silk’s breadth, to the ‘Bower,’ yet, One day!

  — Which God send you, dearest, and your

  R.B.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  [Post-mark, October 22, 1845.]

  Even at the risk of teazing you a little I must say a few words, that there may be no misunderstanding between us — and this, before I sleep to-night. To-day and before to-day you surprised me by your manner of receiving my remark about your visits, for I believed I had sufficiently made clear to you long ago how certain questions were ordered in this house and how no exception was to be expected for my sake or even for yours. Surely I told you this quite plainly long ago. I only meant to say in my last letter, in the same track ... (fearing in the case of your wishing to come oftener that you might think it unkind in me not to seem to wish the same) ... that if you came too often and it was observed, difficulties and vexations would follow as a matter of course, and it would be wise therefore to run no risk. That was the head and front of what I meant to say. The weekly one visit is a thing established and may go on as long as you please — and there is no objection to your coming twice a week now and then ... if now and then merely ... if there is no habit ... do you understand? I may be prudent in an extreme perhaps — and certainly everybody in the house is not equally prudent! — but I did shrink from running any risk with that calm and comfort of the winter as it seemed to come on. And was it more than I said about the cloak? was there any newness in it? anything to startle you? Still I do perfectly see that whether new or old, what it involves may well be unpleasant to you — and that (however old) it may be apt to recur to your mind with a new increasing unpleasantness. We have both been carried too far perhaps, by late events and impulses — but it is never too late to come back to a right place, and I for my part come back to mine, and entreat you my dearest friend, first, not to answer this, and next, to weigh and consider thoroughly ‘that particular contingency’ which (I tell you plainly, I who know) the tongue of men and of angels would not modify so as to render less full of vexations to you. Let Pisa prove the excellent hardness of some marbles! Judge. From motives of self-respect, you may well walk an opposite way ... you.... When I told you once ... or twice ... that ‘no human influence should’ &c. &c., ... I spoke for myself, quite over-looking you — and now that I turn and see you, I am surprised that I did not see you before ... there. I ask you therefore to consider ‘that contingency’ well — not forgetting the other obvious evils, which the late decision about Pisa has aggravated beyond calculation ... for as the smoke rolls off we see the harm done by the fire. And so, and now ... is it not advisable for you to go abroad at once ... as you always intended, you know ... now that your book is through the press? What if you go next week? I leave it to you. In any case I entreat you not to answer this — neither let your thoughts be too hard on me for what you may call perhaps vacillation — only that I stand excused (I do not say justified) before my own moral sense. May God bless you. If you go, I shall wait to see you till your return, and have letters in the meantime. I write all this as fast as I can to have it over. What I ask of you is, to consider alone and decide advisedly ... for both our sakes. If it should be your choice not to make an end now, ... why I shall understand that by your not going ... or you may say ‘no’ in a word ... for I require no ‘protestations’ indeed — and you may trust to me ... it shall be as you choose. You will consider my happiness most by considering your own ... and that is my last word.

  Wednesday morning. — I did not say half I thought about the poems yesterday — and their various power and beauty will be striking and surprising to your most accustomed readers. ‘St. Praxed’ — ’Pictor Ignotus’ — ’The Ride’ — ’The Duchess’! — Of the new poems I like supremely the first and last ... that ‘Lost Leader’ which strikes so broadly and deep ... which nobody can ever forget — and which is worth all the journalizing and pamphleteering in the world! — and then, the last ‘Thought’ which is quite to be grudged to that place of fragments ... those grand sea-sights in the long lines. Should not these fragments be severed otherw
ise than by numbers? The last stanza but one of the ‘Lost Mistress’ seemed obscure to me. Is it so really? The end you have put to ‘England in Italy’ gives unity to the whole ... just what the poem wanted. Also you have given some nobler lines to the middle than met me there before. ‘The Duchess’ appears to me more than ever a new-minted golden coin — the rhythm of it answering to your own description, ‘Speech half asleep, or song half awake?’ You have right of trove to these novel effects of rhythm. Now if people do not cry out about these poems, what are we to think of the world?

  May God bless you always — send me the next proof in any case.

  Your

  E.B.B.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  [Post-mark, October 23, 1845.]

  But I must answer you, and be forgiven, too, dearest. I was (to begin at the beginning) surely not ‘startled’ ... only properly aware of the deep blessing I have been enjoying this while, and not disposed to take its continuance as pure matter of course, and so treat with indifference the first shadow of a threatening intimation from without, the first hint of a possible abstraction from the quarter to which so many hopes and fears of mine have gone of late. In this case, knowing you, I was sure that if any imaginable form of displeasure could touch you without reaching me, I should not hear of it too soon — so I spoke — so you have spoken — and so now you get ‘excused’? No — wondered at, with all my faculty of wonder for the strange exalting way you will persist to think of me; now, once for all, I will not pass for what I make no least pretence to. I quite understand the grace of your imaginary self-denial, and fidelity to a given word, and noble constancy; but it all happens to be none of mine, none in the least. I love you because I love you; I see you ‘once a week’ because I cannot see you all day long; I think of you all day long, because I most certainly could not think of you once an hour less, if I tried, or went to Pisa, or ‘abroad’ (in every sense) in order to ‘be happy’ ... a kind of adventure which you seem to suppose you have in some way interfered with. Do, for this once, think, and never after, on the impossibility of your ever (you know I must talk your own language, so I shall say — ) hindering any scheme of mine, stopping any supposable advancement of mine. Do you really think that before I found you, I was going about the world seeking whom I might devour, that is, be devoured by, in the shape of a wife ... do you suppose I ever dreamed of marrying? What would it mean for me, with my life I am hardened in — considering the rational chances; how the land is used to furnish its contingent of Shakespeare’s women: or by ‘success,’ ‘happiness’ &c. &c. you never never can be seeing for a moment with the world’s eyes and meaning ‘getting rich’ and all that? Yet, put that away, and what do you meet at every turn, if you are hunting about in the dusk to catch my good, but yourself?

  I know who has got it, caught it, and means to keep it on his heart — the person most concerned — I, dearest, who cannot play the disinterested part of bidding you forget your ‘protestation’ ... what should I have to hold by, come what will, through years, through this life, if God shall so determine, if I were not sure, sure that the first moment when you can suffer me with you ‘in that relation,’ you will remember and act accordingly. I will, as you know, conform my life to any imaginable rule which shall render it possible for your life to move with it and possess it, all the little it is worth.

  For your friends ... whatever can be ‘got over,’ whatever opposition may be rational, will be easily removed, I suppose. You know when I spoke lately about the ‘selfishness’ I dared believe I was free from, I hardly meant the low faults of ... I shall say, a different organization to mine — which has vices in plenty, but not those. Besides half a dozen scratches with a pen make one stand up an apparent angel of light, from the lawyer’s parchment; and Doctors’ Commons is one bland smile of applause. The selfishness I deprecate is one which a good many women, and men too, call ‘real passion’ — under the influence of which, I ought to say ‘be mine, what ever happens to you’ — but I know better, and you know best — and you know me, for all this letter, which is no doubt in me, I feel, but dear entire goodness and affection, of which God knows whether I am proud or not — and now you will let me be, will not you. Let me have my way, live my life, love my love.

  When I am, praying God to bless her ever,

  R.B.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  [Post-mark, October 24, 1845.]

  ‘And be forgiven’ ... yes! and be thanked besides — if I knew how to thank you worthily and as I feel ... only that I do not know it, and cannot say it. And it was not indeed ‘doubt’ of you — oh no — that made me write as I did write; it was rather because I felt you to be surely noblest, ... and therefore fitly dearest, ... that it seemed to me detestable and intolerable to leave you on this road where the mud must splash up against you, and never cry ‘gare.’ Yet I was quite enough unhappy yesterday, and before yesterday ... I will confess to-day, ... to be too gratefully glad to ‘let you be’ ... to ‘let you have your way’ — you who overcome always! Always, but where you tell me not to think of you so and so! — as if I could help thinking of you so, and as if I should not take the liberty of persisting to think of you just so. ‘Let me be’ — Let me have my way.’ I am unworthy of you perhaps in everything except one thing — and that, you cannot guess. May God bless you —

  Ever I am yours.

  The proof does not come!

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Friday.

  [Post-mark, October 25, 1845.]

  I wrote briefly yesterday not to make my letter longer by keeping it; and a few last words which belong to it by right, must follow after it ... must — for I want to say that you need not indeed talk to me about squares being not round, and of you being not ‘selfish’! You know it is foolish to talk such superfluities, and not a compliment.

  I won’t say to my knowledge of you and faith in you ... but to my understanding generally. Why should you say to me at all ... much less for this third or fourth time ... ‘I am not selfish?’ to me who never ... when I have been deepest asleep and dreaming, ... never dreamed of attributing to you any form of such a fault? Promise not to say so again — now promise. Think how it must sound to my ears, when really and truly I have sometimes felt jealous of myself ... of my own infirmities, ... and thought that you cared for me only because your chivalry touched them with a silver sound — and that, without them, you would pass by on the other side: — why twenty times I have thought that and been vexed — ungrateful vexation! In exchange for which too frank confession, I will ask for another silent promise ... a silent promise — no, but first I will say another thing.

  First I will say that you are not to fancy any the least danger of my falling under displeasure through your visits — there is no sort of risk of it for the present — and if I ran the risk of making you uncomfortable about that, I did foolishly, and what I meant to do was different. I wish you also to understand that even if you came here every day, my brothers and sisters would simply care to know if I liked it, and then be glad if I was glad: — the caution referred to one person alone. In relation to whom, however, there will be no ‘getting over’ — you might as well think to sweep off a third of the stars of Heaven with the motion of your eyelashes — this, for matter of fact and certainty — and this, as I said before, the keeping of a general rule and from no disrespect towards individuals: a great peculiarity in the individual of course. But ... though I have been a submissive daughter, and this from no effort, but for love’s sake ... because I loved him tenderly (and love him), ... and hoped that he loved me back again even if the proofs came untenderly sometimes — yet I have reserved for myself always that right over my own affections which is the most strictly personal of all things, and which involves principles and consequences of infinite importance and scope — even though I never thought (except perhaps when the door of life was just about to open ... before it opened) never thought it probable or possible that I should have occasion for the exercise; from without
and from within at once. I have too much need to look up. For friends, I can look any way ... round, and down even — the merest thread of a sympathy will draw me sometimes — or even the least look of kind eyes over a dyspathy — ’Cela se peut facilement.’ But for another relation — it was all different — and rightly so — and so very different — ’Cela ne se peut nullement’ — as in Malherbe.

  And now we must agree to ‘let all this be,’, and set ourselves to get as much good and enjoyment from the coming winter (better spent at Pisa!) as we can — and I begin my joy by being glad that you are not going since I am not going, and by being proud of these new green leaves in your bay which came out with the new number. And then will come the tragedies — and then, ... what beside? We shall have a happy winter after all ... I shall at least; and if Pisa had been better, London might be worse: and for me to grow pretentious and fastidious and critical about various sorts of purple ... I, who have been used to the brun foncé of Mme. de Sévigné, (foncé and enfoncé ...) — would be too absurd. But why does not the proof come all this time? I have kept this letter to go back with it.

  I had a proposition from the New York booksellers about six weeks ago (the booksellers who printed the poems) to let them re-print those prose papers of mine in the Athenæum, with additional matter on American literature, in a volume by itself — to be published at the same time both in America and England by Wiley and Putnam in Waterloo Place, and meaning to offer liberal terms, they said. Now what shall I do? Those papers are not fit for separate publication, and I am not inclined to the responsibility of them; and in any case, they must give as much trouble as if they were re-written (trouble and not poetry!), before I could consent to such a thing. Well! — and if I do not ... these people are just as likely to print them without leave ... and so without correction. What do you advise? What shall I do? All this time they think me sublimely indifferent, they who pressed for an answer by return of packet — and now it is past six ... eight weeks; and I must say something.