Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

Saturday Evening.

  This is the mere postscript to the letter I have just sent away. By a few minutes too late, comes what I have all day been waiting for, ... and besides (now it is just too late!) now I may have a skein of silk if I please, to make that knot with, ... for want of which, two locks meant for you, have been devoted to the infernal gods already ... fallen into a tangle and thrown into the fire ... and all the hair of my head might have followed, for I was losing my patience and temper fast, ... and the post to boot. So wisely I shut my letter, (after unwisely having driven everything to the last moment!) — and now I have silk to tie fast with ... to tie a ‘nodus’ ... ‘dignus’ of the celestial interposition — and a new packet shall be ready to go to you directly.

  At last I remember to tell you that the first letter you had from me this week, was forgotten, (not by me) forgotten, and detained, so, from the post — a piece of carelessness which Wilson came to confess to me too frankly for me to grumble as I should have done otherwise.

  For the staying longer, I did not mean to say you were wrong not to stay. In the first place you were keeping your father ‘in a maze,’ as you said yourself — and then, even without that, I never know what o’clock it is ... never. Mr. Kenyon tells me that I must live in a dream — which I do — time goes ... seeming to go round rather than go forward. The watch I have, broke its spring two years ago, and there I leave it in the drawer — and the clocks all round strike out of hearing, or at best, when the wind brings the sound, one upon another in a confusion. So you know more of time than I do or can.

  Till Monday then! I send the ‘Ricordi’ to take care of the rest ... of mine. It is a touching story — and there is an impracticable nobleness from end to end in the spirit of it. How slow (to the ear and mind) that Italian rhetoric is! a language for dreamers and declaimers. Yet Dante made it for action, and Machiavelli’s prose can walk and strike as well as float and faint.

  The ring is smaller than I feared at first, and may perhaps —

  Now you will not say a word. My excuse is that you had nothing to remember me by, while I had this and this and this and this ... how much too much!

  If I could be too much

  Your

  E.B.B.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Tuesday.

  [Post-mark, December 2, 1845.]

  I was happy, so happy before! But I am happier and richer now. My love — no words could serve here, but there is life before us, and to the end of it the vibration now struck will extend — I will live and die with your beautiful ring, your beloved hair — comforting me, blessing me.

  Let me write to-morrow — when I think on all you have been and are to me, on the wonder of it and the deliciousness, it makes the paper words that come seem vainer than ever — To-morrow I will write.

  May God bless you, my own, my precious —

  I am all your own

  R.B.

  I have thought again, and believe it will be best to select the finger you intended ... as the alteration will be simpler, I find; and one is less liable to observation and comment.

  Was not that Mr. Kenyon last evening? And did he ask, or hear, or say anything?

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  [Post-mark, December 3, 1845.]

  See, dearest, what the post brings me this minute! Now, is it not a good omen, a pleasant inconscious prophecy of what is to be? Be it well done, or badly — there are you, leading me up and onward, in his review as everywhere, at every future time! And our names will go together — be read together. In itself this is nothing to you, dear poet — but the unexpectedness, unintended significance of it has pleased me very much — does it not please you? — I thought I was to figure in that cold Quarterly all by myself, (for he writes for it) — but here you are close by me; it cannot but be for good. He has no knowledge whatever that I am even a friend of yours. Say you are pleased!

  There was no writing yesterday for me — nor will there be much to-day. In some moods, you know, I turn and take a thousand new views of what you say ... and find fault with you to your surprise — at others, I rest on you, and feel all well, all best ... now, for one instance, even that phrase of the possibility ‘and what is to follow,’ — even that I cannot except against — I am happy, contented; too well, too prodigally blessed to be even able to murmur just sufficiently loud to get, in addition to it all, a sweetest stopping of the mouth! I will say quietly and becomingly ‘Yes — I do promise you’ — yet it is some solace to — No — I will not even couple the promise with an adjuration that you, at the same time, see that they care for me properly at Hanwell Asylum ... the best by all accounts: yet I feel so sure of you, so safe and confident in you! If any of it had been my work, my own ... distrust and foreboding had pursued me from the beginning; but all is yours — you crust me round with gold and jewelry like the wood of a sceptre; and why should you transfer your own work? Wood enough to choose from in the first instance, but the choice once made!... So I rest on you, for life, for death, beloved — beside you do stand, in my solemn belief, the direct miraculous gift of God to me — that is my solemn belief; may I be thankful!

  I am anxious to hear from you ... when am I not? — but not before the American letter is written and sent. Is that done? And who was the visitor on Monday — and if &c. what did he remark? — And what is right or wrong with Saturday — is it to be mine?

  Bless you, dearest — now and for ever — words cannot say how much I am your own.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Tuesday Evening.

  [Post-mark, December 4, 1845.]

  No Mr. Kenyon after all — not yesterday, not to-day; and the knock at the door belonged perhaps to the post, which brought me a kind letter from Mrs. Jameson to ask how I was, and if she might come — but she won’t come on Saturday.... I shall ‘provide’ — she may as well (and better) come on a free day. On the other side, are you sure that Mr. Procter may not stretch out his hand and seize on Saturday (he was to dine with you, you said), or that some new engagement may not start up suddenly in the midst of it? I trust to you, in such a case, to alter our arrangement, without a second thought. Monday stands close by, remember, and there’s a Saturday to follow Monday ... and I should understand at a word, or apart from a word.

  Just as you understand how to ‘take me with guile,’ when you tell me that anything in me can have any part in making you happy ... you, who can say such words and call them ‘vain words.’ Ah, well! If I only knew certainly, ... more certainly than the thing may be known by either me or you, ... that nothing in me could have any part in making you unhappy, ... ah, would it not be enough ... that knowledge ... to content me, to overjoy me? but that lies too high and out of reach, you see, and one can’t hope to get at it except by the ladder Jacob saw, and which an archangel helped to hide away behind the gate of Heaven afterwards.

  Wednesday. — In the meantime I had a letter from you yesterday, and am promised another to-day. How ... I was going to say ‘kind’ and pull down the thunders ... how unkind ... will that do? ... how good you are to me — how dear you must be! Dear — dearest — if I feel that you love me, can I help it if, without any other sort of certain knowledge, the world grows lighter round me? being but a mortal woman, can I help it? no — certainly.

  I comfort myself by thinking sometimes that I can at least understand you, ... comprehend you in what you are and in what you possess and combine; and that, if doing this better than others who are better otherwise than I, I am, so far, worthier of the ... I mean that to understand you is something, and that I account it something in my own favour ... mine.

  Yet when you tell me that I ought to know some things, though untold, you are wrong, and speak what is impossible. My imagination sits by the roadside απεδιλος like the startled sea nymph in Æschylus, but never dares to put one unsandalled foot, unbidden, on a certain tract of ground — never takes a step there unled! and never (I write the simple truth) even as the alternative of the probability of your ceasing to care
for me, have I touched (untold) on the possibility of your caring more for me ... never! That you should continue to care, was the utmost of what I saw in that direction. So, when you spoke of a ‘strengthened feeling,’ judge how I listened with my heart — judge!

  ‘Luria’ is very great. You will avenge him with the sympathies of the world; that, I foresee.... And for the rest, it is a magnanimity which grows and grows, and which will, of a worldly necessity, fall by its own weight at last; nothing less being possible. The scene with Tiburzio and the end of the act with its great effects, are more pathetic than professed pathos. When I come to criticise, it will be chiefly on what I take to be a little occasional flatness in the versification, which you may remove if you please, by knotting up a few lines here and there. But I shall write more of ‘Luria,’ — and well remember in the meanwhile, that you wanted smoothness, you said.

  May God bless you. I shall have the letter to-night, I think gladly. Yes, — I thought of the greater safety from ‘comment’ — it is best in every way.

  I lean on you and trust to you, and am always, as to one who is all to me,

  Your own —

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  [Post-mark, December 4, 1845.]

  Why of course I am pleased — I should have been pleased last year, for the vanity’s sake of being reviewed in your company. Now, as far as that vice of vanity goes ... shall I tell you?... I would infinitely prefer to see you set before the public in your own right solitude, and supremacy, apart from me or any one else, ... this, as far as my vice of vanity goes, ... and because, vainer I am of my poet than of my poems ... pour cause. But since, according to the Quarterly régime, you were to be not apart but with somebody of my degree, I am glad, pleased, that it should be with myself: — and since I was to be there at all, I am pleased, very much pleased that it should be with you, — oh, of course I am pleased! — I am pleased that the ‘names should be read together’ as you say, ... and am happily safe from the apprehension of that ingenious idea of yours about ‘my leading you’ &c. ... quite happily safe from the apprehension of that idea’s occurring to any mind in the world, except just your own. Now if I ‘find fault’ with you for writing down such an extravagance, such an ungainly absurdity, (oh, I shall abuse it just as I shall choose!) can it be ‘to your surprise?’ can it? Ought you to say such things, when in the first place they are unfit in themselves and inapplicable, and in the second place, abominable in my eyes? The qualification for Hanwell Asylum is different peradventure from what you take it to be — we had better not examine it too nearly. You never will say such words again? It is your promise to me? Not those words — and not any in their likeness.

  Also ... nothing is my work ... if you please! What an omen you take in calling anything my work! If it is my work, woe on it — for everything turns to evil which I touch. Let it be God’s work and yours, and I may take breath and wait in hope — and indeed I exclaim to myself about the miracle of it far more even than you can do. It seems to me (as I say over and over ... I say it to my own thoughts oftenest) it seems to me still a dream how you came here at all, ... the very machinery of it seems miraculous. Why did I receive you and only you? Can I tell? no, not a word.

  Last year I had such an escape of seeing Mr. Horne; and in this way it was. He was going to Germany, he said, for an indefinite time, and took the trouble of begging me to receive him for ten minutes before he went. I answered with my usual ‘no,’ like a wild Indian — whereupon he wrote me a letter so expressive of mortification and vexation ... ‘mortification’ was one of the words used, I remember, ... that I grew ashamed of myself and told him to come any day (of the last five or six days he had to spare) between two and five. Well! — he never came. Either he was overcome with work and engagements of various sorts and had not a moment, (which was his way of explaining the matter and quite true I dare say) or he was vexed and resolved on punishing me for my caprices. If the latter was the motive, I cannot call the punishment effective, ... for I clapped my hands for joy when I felt my danger to be passed — and now of course, I have no scruples.... I may be as capricious as I please, ... may I not? Not that I ask you. It is a settled matter. And it is useful to keep out Mr. Chorley with Mr. Horne, and Mr. Horne with Mr. Chorley, and the rest of the world with those two. Only the miracle is that you should be behind the enclosure — within it ... and so! —

  That is my side of the wonder! of the machinery of the wonder, ... as I see it! — But there are greater things than these.

  Speaking of the portrait of you in the ‘Spirit of the Age’ ... which is not like ... no! — which has not your character, in a line of it ... something in just the forehead and eyes and hair, ... but even that, thrown utterly out of your order, by another bearing so unlike you...! speaking of that portrait ... shall I tell you? — Mr. Horne had the goodness to send me all those portraits, and I selected the heads which, in right hero-worship, were anything to me, and had them framed after a rough fashion and hung up before my eyes; Harriet Martineau’s ... because she was a woman and admirable, and had written me some kind letters — and for the rest, Wordsworth’s, Carlyle’s, Tennyson’s and yours. The day you paid your first visit here, I, in a fit of shyness not quite unnatural, ... though I have been cordially laughed at for it by everybody in the house ... pulled down your portrait, ... (there is the nail, under Wordsworth — ) and then pulled down Tennyson’s in a fit of justice, — because I would not have his hung up and yours away. It was the delight of my brothers to open all the drawers and the boxes, and whatever they could get access to, and find and take those two heads and hang them on the old nails and analyse my ‘absurdity’ to me, day after day; but at last I tired them out, being obstinate; and finally settled the question one morning by fastening the print of you inside your Paracelsus. Oh no, it is not like — and I knew it was not, before I saw you, though Mr. Kenyon said, ‘Rather like!’

  By the way Mr. Kenyon does not come. It is strange that he should not come: when he told me that he could not see me ‘for a week or a fortnight,’ he meant it, I suppose.

  So it is to be on Saturday? And I will write directly to America — the letter will be sent by the time you get this. May God bless you ever.

  It is not so much a look of ‘ferocity,’ ... as you say, ... in that head, as of expression by intention. Several people have said of it what nobody would say of you ... ‘How affected-looking.’ Which is too strong — but it is not like you, in any way, and there’s the truth.

  So until Saturday. I read ‘Luria’ and feel the life in him. But walk and do not work! do you?

  Wholly your

  E.B.B.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Sunday Night.

  [Post-mark, December 8, 1845.]

  Well, I did see your brother last night ... and very wisely neither spoke nor kept silence in the proper degree, but said that ‘I hoped you were well’ — from the sudden feeling that I must say something of you — not pretend indifference about you now ... and from the impossibility of saying the full of what I might; because other people were by — and after, in the evening, when I should have remedied the first imperfect expression, I had not altogether the heart. So, you, dearest, will clear me with him if he wonders, will you not? But it all hangs together; speaking of you, — to you, — writing to you — all is helpless and sorrowful work by the side of what is in my soul to say and to write — or is it not the natural consequence? If these vehicles of feelings sufficed — there would be the end! — And that my feeling for you should end!... For the rest, the headache which kept away while I sate with you, made itself amends afterward, and as it is unkind to that warm Talfourd to look blank at his hospitable endeavours, all my power of face went à qui de droit —

  Did your brother tell you ... yes, I think ... of the portentous book, lettered II, and thick as a law-book, of congratulatory letters on the appearance of ‘Ion’? — But how under the B’s in the Index came ‘Miss Barrett’ and, woe’s me, ‘R.B.’! I don’t
know when I have had so ghastly a visitation. There was the utterly forgotten letter, in the as thoroughly disused hand-writing, in the ... I fear ... still as completely obsolete feeling — no, not so bad as that — but at first there was all the novelty, and social admiration at the friend — it is truly not right to pluck all the rich soil from the roots and hold them up clean and dry as if they came so from all you now see, which is nothing at all ... like the Chinese Air-plant! Do you understand this? And surely ‘Ion’ is a very, very beautiful and noble conception, and finely executed, — a beautiful work — what has come after, has lowered it down by grade after grade ... it don’t stand apart on the hill, like a wonder, now it is built up to by other attempts; but the great difference is in myself. Another maker of another ‘Ion,’ finding me out and behaving as Talfourd did, would not find that me, so to be behaved to, so to be honoured — though he should have all the good will! Ten years ago!

  And ten years hence!

  Always understand that you do not take me as I was at the beginning ... with a crowd of loves to give to something and so get rid of their pain and burden. I have known what that ends in — a handful of anything may be as sufficient a sample, serve your purposes and teach you its nature, as well as whole heaps — and I know what most of the pleasures of this world are — so that I can be surer of myself, and make you surer, on calm demonstrated grounds, than if I had a host of objects of admiration or ambition yet to become acquainted with. You say, ‘I am a man and may change’ — I answer, yes — but, while I hold my senses, only change for the presumable better ... not for the experienced worst.

  Here is my Uncle’s foot on the stair ... his knock hurried the last sentence — here he is by me! — Understand what this would have led to, how you would have been proved logically my own, best, extreme want, my life’s end — yes; dearest! Bless you ever —

  R.B.

  E.B.B. to R.B.