Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Sunday.

  [Post-mark, December 8, 1845.]

  Let me hear how you are, and that you are better instead of worse for the exertions of last night. After you left me yesterday I considered how we might have managed it more conveniently for you, and had the lamp in, and arranged matters so as to interpose less time between the going and the dining, even if you and George did not go together, which might have been best, but which I did not like quite to propose. Now, supposing that on Thursday you dine in town, remember not to be unnecessarily ‘perplext in the extreme’ where to spend the time before ... five, ... shall I say, at any rate? We will have the lamp, and I can easily explain if an observation should be made ... only it will not be, because our goers-out here never come home until six, and the head of the house, not until seven ... as I told you. George thought it worth while going to Mr. Talfourd’s yesterday, just to see the author of ‘Paracelsus’ dance the Polka ... should I not tell you?

  I am vexed by another thing which he tells me — vexed, if amused a little by the absurdity of it. I mean that absurd affair of the ‘Autography’ — now isn’t it absurd? And for neither you nor George to have the chivalry of tearing out that letter of mine, which was absurd too in its way, and which, knowing less of the world than I know now, I wrote as if writing for my private conscience, and privately repented writing in a day, and have gone on repenting ever since when I happened to think enough of it for repentance! Because if Mr. Serjeant Talfourd sent then his ‘Ion’ to me, he did it in mere good-nature, hearing by chance of me through the publisher of my ‘Prometheus’ at the moment, and of course caring no more for my ‘opinion’ than for the rest of me — and it was excessively bad taste in me to say more than the briefest word of thanks in return, even if I had been competent to say it. Ah well! — you see how it is, and that I am vexed you should have read it, ... as George says you did ... he laughing to see me so vexed. So I turn round and avenge myself by crying aloud against the editor of the ‘Autography’! Surely such a thing was never done before ... even by an author in the last stage of a mortal disease of self-love. To edit the common parlance of conventional flatteries, ... lettered in so many volumes, bound in green morocco, and laid on the drawing-room table for one’s own particular private public, — is it not a miracle of vanity ... neither more nor less?

  I took the opportunity of the letter to Mr. Mathews (talking of vanity ... mine!) to send Landor’s verses to America ... yours — so they will be in the American papers.... I know Mr. Mathews. I was speaking to him of your last number of ‘Bells and Pomegranates,’ and the verses came in naturally; just as my speaking did, for it is not the first time nor the second nor the third even that I have written to him of you, though I admire how in all those previous times I did it in pure disinterestedness, ... purely because your name belonged to my country and to her literature, ... and how I have a sort of reward at this present, in being able to write what I please without anyone’s saying ‘it is a new fancy.’ As for the Americans, they have ‘a zeal without knowledge’ for poetry. There is more love for verse among them than among the English. But they suffer themselves to be led in their choice of poets by English critics of average discernment; this is said of them by their own men of letters. Tennyson is idolized deep down in the bush woods (to their honour be it said), but to understand you sufficiently, they wait for the explanations of the critics. So I wanted them to see what Landor says of you. The comfort in these questions is, that there can be no question, except between the sooner and the later — a little sooner, and a little later: but when there is real love and zeal it becomes worth while to try to ripen the knowledge. They love Tennyson so much that the colour of his waistcoats is a sort of minor Oregon question ... and I like that — do not you?

  Monday. — Now I have your letter: and you will observe, without a finger post from me, how busily we have both been preoccupied in disavowing our own letters of old on ‘Ion’ — Mr. Talfourd’s collection goes to prove too much, I think — and you, a little too much, when you draw inferences of no-changes, from changes like these. Oh yes — I perfectly understand that every sort of inconstancy of purpose regards a ‘presumably better’ thing — but I do not so well understand how any presumable doubt is to be set to rest by that fact, ... I do not indeed. Have you seen all the birds and beasts in the world? have you seen the ‘unicorns’? — Which is only a pebble thrown down into your smooth logic; and we need not stand by to watch the bubbles born of it. And as to the ‘Ion’ letters, I am delighted that you have anything to repent, as I have everything. Certainly it is a noble play — there is the moral sublime in it: but it is not the work of a poet, ... and if he had never written another to show what was not in him, this might have been ‘predicated’ of it as surely, I hold. Still, it is a noble work — and even if you over-praised it, (I did not read your letter, though you read mine, alas!) you, under the circumstances, would have been less noble yourself not to have done so — only, how I agree with you in what you say against the hanging up of these dry roots, the soil shaken off! Such abominable taste — now isn’t it? ... though you do not use that word.

  I thought Mr. Kenyon would have come yesterday and that I might have something to tell you, of him at least.

  And George never told me of the thing you found to say to him of me, and which makes me smile, and would have made him wonder if he had not been suffering probably from some legal distraction at the moment, inasmuch as he knew perfectly that you had just left me. My sisters told him down-stairs and he came into this room just before he set off on Saturday, with a, ... ‘So I am to meet Mr. Browning?’ But he made no observation afterwards — none: and if he heard what you said at all (which I doubt), he referred it probably to some enforced civility on ‘Yorick’s’ part when the ‘last chapter’ was too much with him.

  I have written about ‘Luria’ in another place — you shall have the papers when I have read through the play. How different this living poetry is from the polished rhetoric of ‘Ion.’ The man and the statue are not more different. After all poetry is a distinct thing — it is here or it is not here ... it is not a matter of ‘taste,’ but of sight and feeling.

  As to the ‘Venice’ it gives proof (does it not?) rather of poetical sensibility than of poetical faculty? or did you expect me to say more? — of the perception of the poet, rather than of his conception. Do you think more than this? There are fine, eloquent expressions, and the tone of sentiment is good and high everywhere.

  Do not write ‘Luria’ if your head is uneasy — and you cannot say that it is not ... can you? Or will you if you can? In any case you will do what you can ... take care of yourself and not suffer yourself to be tired either by writing or by too much going out, and take the necessary exercise ... this, you will do — I entreat you to do it.

  May God bless and make you happy, as ... you will lose nothing if I say ... as I am yours —

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Tuesday Morning.

  [Post-mark, December 9, 1845.]

  Well, then, I am no longer sorry that I did not read either of your letters ... for there were two in the collection. I did not read one word of them — and hear why. When your brother and I took the book between us in wonderment at the notion — we turned to the index, in large text-hand, and stopped at ‘Miss B.’ — and he indeed read them, or some of them, but holding the volume at a distance which defied my short-sighted eye — all I saw was the faint small characters — and, do you know ... I neither trusted myself to ask a nearer look ... nor a second look ... as if I were studying unduly what I had just said was most unfairly exposed to view! — so I was silent, and lost you (in that) — then, and for ever, I promise you, now that you speak of vexation it would give you. All I know of the notes, that one is addressed to Talfourd in the third person — and when I had run through my own ... not far off ... (BA-BR) — I was sick of the book altogether. You are generous to me — but, to say the truth, I might have remembered the most justifying ci
rcumstance in my case ... which was, that my own ‘Paracelsus,’ printed a few months before, had been as dead a failure as ‘Ion’ a brilliant success — for, until just before.... Ah, really I forget! — but I know that until Forster’s notice in the Examiner appeared, every journal that thought worth while to allude to the poem at all, treated it with entire contempt ... beginning, I think, with the Athenæum which then made haste to say, a few days after its publication, ‘that it was not without talent but spoiled by obscurity and only an imitation of — Shelley’! — something to this effect, in a criticism of about three lines among their ‘Library Table’ notices. And that first taste was a most flattering sample of what the ‘craft’ had in store for me — since my publisher and I had fairly to laugh at his ‘Book’ — (quite of another kind than the Serjeant’s) — in which he was used to paste extracts from newspapers and the like — seeing that, out of a long string of notices, one vied with its predecessor in disgust at my ‘rubbish,’ as their word went: but Forster’s notice altered a good deal — which I have to recollect for his good. Still, the contrast between myself and Talfourd was so utter — you remember the world’s-wonder ‘Ion’ made, — that I was determined not to pass for the curious piece of neglected merit I really was not — and so! —

  But, dearest, why should you leave your own especial sphere of doing me good for another than yours?

  Does the sun rake and hoe about the garden as well as thine steadily over it? Why must you, who give me heart and power, as nothing else did or could, to do well — concern yourself with what might be done by any good, kind ministrant only fit for such offices? Not that I feel, even, more bound to you for them — they have their weight, I know ... but what weight beside the divine gift of yourself? Do not, dear, dearest, care for making me known: you know me! — and they know so little, after all your endeavour, who are ignorant of what you are to me — if you ... well, but that will follow; if I do greater things one day — what shall they serve for, what range themselves under of right? —

  Mr. Mathews sent me two copies of his poems — and, I believe, a newspaper, ‘when time was,’ about the ‘Blot in the Scutcheon’ — and also, through Moxon — (I believe it was Mr. M.) — a proposition for reprinting — to which I assented of course — and there was an end to the matter.

  And might I have stayed till five? — dearest, I will never ask for more than you give — but I feel every single sand of the gold showers ... spite of what I say above! I have an invitation for Thursday which I had no intention of remembering (it admitted of such liberty) — but now....

  Something I will say! ‘Polka,’ forsooth! — one lady whose head could not, and another whose feet could not, dance! — But I talked a little to your brother whom I like more and more: it comforts me that he is yours.

  So, Thursday, — thank you from the heart! I am well, and about to go out. This week I have done nothing to ‘Luria’ — is it that my ring is gone? There surely is something to forgive in me — for that shameful business — or I should not feel as I do in the matter: but you did forgive me.

  God bless my own, only love — ever —

  Yours wholly

  R.B.

  N.B. An antiquarian friend of mine in old days picked up a nondescript wonder of a coin. I just remember he described it as Rhomboid in shape — cut, I fancy, out of church-plate in troubled times. What did my friend do but get ready a box, lined with velvet, and properly compartmented, to have always about him, so that the next such coin he picked up, say in Cheapside, he might at once transfer to a place of safety ... his waistcoat pocket being no happy receptacle for the same. I saw the box — and encouraged the man to keep a vigilant eye.

  Parallel. R.B. having found an unicorn....

  Do you forgive these strips of paper? I could not wait to send for more — having exhausted my stock.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Tuesday Evening

  [Post-mark, December 10, 1845.]

  It was right of you to write ... (now see what jangling comes of not using the fit words.... I said ‘right,’ not to say ‘kind’) ... right of you to write to me to-day — and I had begun to be disappointed already because the post seemed to be past, when suddenly the knock brought the letter which deserves all this praising. If not ‘kind’ ... then kindest ... will that do better? Perhaps.

  Mr. Kenyon was here to-day and asked when you were coming again — and I, I answered at random ... ‘at the end of the week — Thursday or Friday’ — which did not prevent another question about ‘what we were consulting about.’ He said that he ‘must have you,’ and had written to beg you to go to his door on days when you came here; only murmuring something besides of neither Thursday nor Friday being disengaged days with him. Oh, my disingenuousness! — Then he talked again of ‘Saul.’ A true impression the poem has made on him! He reads it every night, he says, when he comes home and just before he goes to sleep, to put his dreams into order, and observed very aptly, I thought, that it reminded him of Homer’s shield of Achilles, thrown into lyrical whirl and life. Quite ill he took it of me the ‘not expecting him to like it so much’ and retorted on me with most undeserved severity (as I felt it), that I ‘never understood anybody to have any sensibility except myself.’ Wasn’t it severe, to come from dear Mr. Kenyon? But he has caught some sort of evil spirit from your ‘Saul’ perhaps; though admiring the poem enough to have a good spirit instead. And do you remember of the said poem, that it is there only as a first part, and that the next parts must certainly follow and complete what will be a great lyrical work — now remember. And forget ‘Luria’ ... if you are better forgetting. And forget me ... when you are happier forgetting. I say that too.

  So your idea of an unicorn is — one horn broken off. And you a poet! — one horn broken off — or hid in the blackthorn hedge! —

  Such a mistake, as our enlightened public, on their part, made, when they magnified the divinity of the brazen chariot, just under the thunder-cloud! I don’t remember the Athenæum, but can well believe that it said what you say. The Athenæum admires only what gods, men and columns reject. It applauds nothing but mediocrity — mark it, as a general rule! The good, they see — the great escapes them. Dare to breathe a breath above the close, flat conventions of literature, and you are ‘put down’ and instructed how to be like other people. By the way, see by the very last number, that you never think to write ‘peoples,’ on pain of writing what is obsolete — and these the teachers of the public! If the public does not learn, where is the marvel of it? An imitation of Shelley! — when if ‘Paracelsus’ was anything it was the expression of a new mind, as all might see — as I saw, let me be proud to remember, and I was not overdazzled by ‘Ion.’

  Ah, indeed if I could ‘rake and hoe’ ... or even pick up weeds along the walk, ... which is the work of the most helpless children, ... if I could do any of this, there would be some good of me: but as for ‘shining’ ... shining ... when there is not so much light in me as to do ‘carpet work’ by, why let anyone in the world, except you, tell me to shine, and it will just be a mockery! But you have studied astronomy with your favourite snails, who are apt to take a dark-lanthorn for the sun, and so. —

  And so, you come on Thursday, and I only hope that Mrs. Jameson will not come too, (the carpet work makes me think of her; and, not having come yet, she may come on Thursday by a fatal cross-stitch!) for I do not hear from her, and my precautions are ‘watched out,’ May God bless you always.

  Your own —

  But no — I did not forgive. Where was the fault to be forgiven, except in me, for not being right in my meaning?

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Friday.

  [Post-mark, December 12, 1845.]

  And now, my heart’s love, I am waiting to hear from you; my heart is full of you. When I try to remember what I said yesterday, that thought, of what fills my heart — only that makes me bear with the memory.... I know that even such imperfect, poorest of words must have come from thence if no
t bearing up to you all that is there — and I know you are ever above me to receive, and help, and forgive, and wait for the one day which I will never say to myself cannot come, when I shall speak what I feel — more of it — or some of it — for now nothing is spoken.

  My all-beloved —

  Ah, you opposed very rightly, I dare say, the writing that paper I spoke of! The process should be so much simpler! I most earnestly expect of you, my love, that in the event of any such necessity as was then alluded to, you accept at once in my name any conditions possible for a human will to submit to — there is no imaginable condition to which you allow me to accede that I will not joyfully bend all my faculties to comply with. And you know this — but so, also do you know more ... and yet ‘I may tire of you’ — ’may forget you’!

  I will write again, having the long, long week to wait! And one of the things I must say, will be, that with my love, I cannot lose my pride in you — that nothing but that love could balance that pride — and that, blessing the love so divinely, you must minister to the pride as well; yes, my own — I shall follow your fame, — and, better than fame, the good you do — in the world — and, if you please, it shall all be mine — as your hand, as your eyes —

  I will write and pray it from you into a promise ... and your promises I live upon.

  May God bless you! your R.B.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Friday.

  [Post-mark, December 13, 1845.]

  Do not blame me in your thoughts for what I said yesterday or wrote a day before, or think perhaps on the dark side of some other days when I cannot help it ... always when I cannot help it — you could not blame me if you saw the full motives as I feel them. If it is distrust, it is not of you, dearest of all! — but of myself rather: — it is not doubt of you, but for you. From the beginning I have been subject to the too reasonable fear which rises as my spirits fall, that your happiness might suffer in the end through your having known me: — it is for you I fear, whenever I fear: — and if you were less to me, ... should I fear do you think? — if you were to me only what I am to myself for instance, ... if your happiness were only as precious as my own in my own eyes, ... should I fear, do you think, then? Think, and do not blame me.