To the motive, the endeavour, — the heart’s self —
Your quick sense looks; you crown and call aright
The soul of the purpose ere ‘tis shaped as act,
Takes flesh i’ the world, and clothes itself a king;
except the characterizing of the ‘learned praise,’ which comes afterwards in its fine subtle truth. What would these critics do to you, to what degree undo you, who would deprive you of the exercise of the discriminative faculty of the metaphysicians? As if a poet could be great without it! They might as well recommend a watchmaker to deal only in faces, in dials, and not to meddle with the wheels inside! You shall tell Mr. Forster so.
And speaking of ‘Luria,’ which grows on me the more I read, ... how fine he is when the doubt breaks on him — I mean, when he begins ... ‘Why then, all is very well.’ It is most affecting, I think, all that process of doubt ... and that reference to the friends at home (which at once proves him a stranger, and intimates, by just a stroke, that he will not look home for comfort out of the new foreign treason) is managed by you with singular dramatic dexterity....
... ‘so slight, so slight,
And yet it tells you they are dead and gone’ —
And then, the direct approach....
You now, so kind here, all you Florentines,
What is it in your eyes? —
Do you not feel it to be success, ... ‘you now?’ I do, from my low ground as reader. The whole breaking round him of the cloud, and the manner in which he stands, facing it, ... I admire it all thoroughly. Braccio’s vindication of Florence strikes me as almost too poetically subtle for the man — but nobody could have the heart to wish a line of it away — that would be too much for critical virtue!
I had your letter yesterday morning early. The post-office people were so resolved on keeping their Christmas, that they would not let me keep mine. No post all day, after that general post before noon, which never brings me anything worth the breaking of a seal!
Am I to see you on Monday? If there should be the least, least crossing of that day, ... anything to do, anything to see, anything to listen to, — remember how Tuesday stands close by, and that another Monday comes on the following week. Now I need not say that every time, and you will please to remember it — Eccellenza! —
May God bless you —
Your
E.B.B.
From the New Monthly Magazine. ‘The admirers of Robert Browning’s poetry, and they are now very numerous, will be glad to hear of the issue by Mr. Moxon of a seventh series of the renowned “Bells” and delicious “Pomegranates,” under the title of “Dramatic Romances and Lyrics.”‘
E.B.B. to R.B.
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, December 30, 1845.]
When you are gone I find your flowers; and you never spoke of nor showed them to me — so instead of yesterday I thank you to-day — thank you. Count among the miracles that your flowers live with me — I accept that for an omen, dear — dearest! Flowers in general, all other flowers, die of despair when they come into the same atmosphere ... used to do it so constantly and observably that it made me melancholy and I left off for the most part having them here. Now you see how they put up with the close room, and condescend to me and the dust — it is true and no fancy! To be sure they know that I care for them and that I stand up by the table myself to change their water and cut their stalk freshly at intervals — that may make a difference perhaps. Only the great reason must be that they are yours, and that you teach them to bear with me patiently.
Do not pretend even to misunderstand what I meant to say yesterday of dear Mr. Kenyon. His blame would fall as my blame of myself has fallen: he would say — will say — ’it is ungenerous of her to let such a risk be run! I thought she would have been more generous.’ There, is Mr. Kenyon’s opinion as I foresee it! Not that it would be spoken, you know! he is too kind. And then, he said to me last summer, somewhere à propos to the flies or butterflies, that he had ‘long ceased to wonder at any extreme of foolishness produced by — love.’ He will of course think you very very foolish, but not ungenerously foolish like other people.
Never mind. I do not mind indeed. I mean, that, having said to myself worse than the worst perhaps of what can be said against me by any who regard me at all, and feeling it put to silence by the fact that you do feel so and so for me; feeling that fact to be an answer to all, — I cannot mind much, in comparison, the railing at second remove. There will be a nine days’ railing of it and no more: and if on the ninth day you should not exactly wish never to have known me, the better reason will be demonstrated to stand with us. On this one point the wise man cannot judge for the fool his neighbour. If you do love me, the inference is that you would be happier with than without me — and whether you do, you know better than another: so I think of you and not of them — always of you! When I talked of being afraid of dear Mr. Kenyon, I just meant that he makes me nervous with his all-scrutinizing spectacles, put on for great occasions, and his questions which seem to belong to the spectacles, they go together so: — and then I have no presence of mind, as you may see without the spectacles. My only way of hiding (when people set themselves to look for me) would be the old child’s way of getting behind the window curtains or under the sofa: — and even that might not be effectual if I had recourse to it now. Do you think it would? Two or three times I fancied that Mr. Kenyon suspected something — but if he ever did, his only reproof was a reduplicated praise of you — he praises you always and in relation to every sort of subject.
What a misomonsism you fell into yesterday, you who have much great work to do which no one else can do except just yourself! — and you, too, who have courage and knowledge, and must know that every work, with the principle of life in it, will live, let it be trampled ever so under the heel of a faithless and unbelieving generation — yes, that it will live like one of your toads, for a thousand years in the heart of a rock. All men can teach at second or third hand, as you said ... by prompting the foremost rows ... by tradition and translation: — all, except poets, who must preach their own doctrine and sing their own song, to be the means of any wisdom or any music, and therefore have stricter duties thrust upon them, and may not lounge in the στοα like the conversation-teachers. So much I have to say to you, till we are in the Siren’s island — and I, jealous of the Siren! —
The Siren waits thee singing song for song,
says Mr. Landor. A prophecy which refuses to class you with the ‘mute fishes,’ precisely as I do.
And are you not my ‘good’ — all my good now — my only good ever? The Italians would say it better without saying more.
I had a letter from Miss Martineau this morning who accounts for her long silence by the supposition, — put lately to an end by scarcely credible information from Mr. Moxon, she says — that I was out of England; gone to the South from the 20th of September. She calls herself the strongest of women, and talks of ‘walking fifteen miles one day and writing fifteen pages another day without fatigue,’ — also of mesmerizing and of being infinitely happy except in the continued alienation of two of her family who cannot forgive her for getting well by such unlawful means. And she is to write again to tell me of Wordsworth, and promises to send me her new work in the meanwhile — all very kind.
So here is my letter to you, which you asked for so ‘against the principles of universal justice.’ Yes, very unjust — very unfair it was — only, you make me do just as you like in everything. Now confess to your own conscience that even if I had not a lawful claim of a debt against you, I might come to ask charity with another sort of claim, oh ‘son of humanity.’ Think how much more need of a letter I have than you can have; and that if you have a giant’s power, ‘‘tis tyrannous to use it like a giant.’ Who would take tribute from the desert? How I grumble. Do let me have a letter directly! remember that no other light comes to my windows, and that I wait ‘as those who watch for the morning’ — ’lux mea!’
May God bless you — and mind to say how you are exactly, and don’t neglect the walking, pray do not.
Your own
And after all, those women! A great deal of doctrine commends and discommends itself by the delivery: and an honest thing may be said so foolishly as to disprove its very honesty. Now after all, what did she mean by that very silly expression about books, but that she did not feel as she considered herself capable of feeling — and that else but that was the meaning of the other woman? Perhaps it should have been spoken earlier — nay, clearly it should — but surely it was better spoken even in the last hour than not at all ... surely it is always and under all circumstances, better spoken at whatever cost — I have thought so steadily since I could think or feel at all. An entire openness to the last moment of possible liberty, at whatever cost and consequence, is the most honourable and most merciful way, both for men and women! perhaps for men in an especial manner. But I shall send this letter away, being in haste to get change for it.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Wednesday, December 31, 1845.
I have been properly punished for so much treachery as went to that re-urging the prayer that you would begin writing, when all the time (after the first of those words had been spoken which bade me write) I was full of purpose to send my own note last evening; one which should do its best to thank you: but see, the punishment! At home I found a note from Mr. Horne — on the point of setting out for Ireland, too unwell to manage to come over to me; anxious, so he said, to see me before leaving London, and with only Tuesday or to-day to allow the opportunity of it, if I should choose to go and find him out. So I considered all things and determined to go — but not till so late did I determine on Tuesday, that there was barely time to get to Highgate — wherefore no letter reached you to beg pardon ... and now this undeserved — beyond the usual undeservedness — this last-day-of-the-Year’s gift — do you think or not think my gratitude weighs on me? When I lay this with the others, and remember what you have done for me — I do bless you — so as I cannot but believe must reach the all-beloved head all my hopes and fancies and cares fly straight to. Dearest, whatever change the new year brings with it, we are together — I can give you no more of myself — indeed, you give me now (back again if you choose, but changed and renewed by your possession) the powers that seemed most properly mine. I could only mean that, by the expressions to which you refer — only could mean that you were my crown and palm branch, now and for ever, and so, that it was a very indifferent matter to me if the world took notice of that fact or no. Yes, dearest, that is the meaning of the prophecy, which I was stupidly blind not to have read and taken comfort from long ago. You ARE the veritable Siren — and you ‘wait me,’ and will sing ‘song for song.’ And this is my first song, my true song — this love I bear you — I look into my heart and then let it go forth under that name — love. I am more than mistrustful of many other feelings in me: they are not earnest enough; so far, not true enough — but this is all the flower of my life which you call forth and which lies at your feet.
Now let me say it — what you are to remember. That if I had the slightest doubt, or fear, I would utter it to you on the instant — secure in the incontested stability of the main fact, even though the heights at the verge in the distance should tremble and prove vapour — and there would be a deep consolation in your forgiveness — indeed, yes; but I tell you, on solemn consideration, it does seem to me that — once take away the broad and general words that admit in their nature of any freight they can be charged with, — put aside love, and devotion, and trust — and then I seem to have said nothing of my feeling to you — nothing whatever.
I will not write more now on this subject. Believe you are my blessing and infinite reward beyond possible desert in intention, — my life has been crowned by you, as I said!
May God bless you ever — through you I shall be blessed. May I kiss your cheek and pray this, my own, all-beloved?
I must add a word or two of other things. I am very well now, quite well — am walking and about to walk. Horne, or rather his friends, reside in the very lane Keats loved so much — Millfield Lane. Hunt lent me once the little copy of the first Poems dedicated to him — and on the title-page was recorded in Hunt’s delicate characters that ‘Keats met him with this, the presentation-copy, or whatever was the odious name, in M — — Lane — called Poets’ Lane by the gods — Keats came running, holding it up in his hand.’ Coleridge had an affection for the place, and Shelley ‘knew’ it — and I can testify it is green and silent, with pleasant openings on the grounds and ponds, through the old trees that line it. But the hills here are far more open and wild and hill-like; not with the eternal clump of evergreens and thatched summer house — to say nothing of the ‘invisible railing’ miserably visible everywhere.
You very well know what a vision it is you give me — when you speak of standing up by the table to care for my flowers — (which I will never be ashamed of again, by the way — I will say for the future; ‘here are my best’ — in this as in other things.) Now, do you remember, that once I bade you not surprise me out of my good behaviour by standing to meet me unawares, as visions do, some day — but now — omne ignotum? No, dearest!
Ought I to say there will be two days more? till Saturday — and if one word comes, one line — think! I am wholly yours — yours, beloved!
R.B.
JANUARY, 1846
E.B.B. to R.B.
January 1, 1845 .
How good you are — how best! it is a favourite play of my memory to take up the thought of what you were to me (to my mind gazing!) years ago, as the poet in an abstraction — then the thoughts of you, a little clearer, in concrete personality, as Mr. Kenyon’s friend, who had dined with him on such a day, or met him at dinner on such another, and said some great memorable thing ‘on Wednesday last,’ and enquired kindly about me perhaps on Thursday, — till I was proud! and so, the thoughts of you, nearer and nearer (yet still afar!) as the Mr. Browning who meant to do me the honour of writing to me, and who did write; and who asked me once in a letter (does he remember?) ‘not to lean out of the window while his foot was on the stair!’ — to take up all those thoughts, and more than those, one after another, and tie them together with all these, which cannot be named so easily — which cannot be classed in botany and Greek. It is a nosegay of mystical flowers, looking strangely and brightly, and keeping their May-dew through the Christmases — better than even your flowers! And I am not ‘ashamed’ of mine, ... be very sure! no!
For the siren, I never suggested to you any such thing — why you do not pretend to have read such a suggestion in my letter certainly. That would have been most exemplarily modest of me! would it not, O Ulysses?
And you meant to write, ... you meant! and went to walk in ‘Poet’s lane’ instead, (in the ‘Aonius of Highgate’) which I remember to have read of — does not Hunt speak of it in his Memoirs? — and so now there is another track of light in the traditions of the place, and people may talk of the pomegranate-smell between the hedges. So you really have hills at New Cross, and not hills by courtesy? I was at Hampstead once — and there was something attractive to me in that fragment of heath with its wild smell, thrown down ... like a Sicilian rose from Proserpine’s lap when the car drove away, ... into all that arid civilization, ‘laurel-clumps and invisible visible fences,’ as you say! — and the grand, eternal smoke rising up in the distance, with its witness against nature! People grew severely in jest about cockney landscape — but is it not true that the trees and grass in the close neighbourhood of great cities must of necessity excite deeper emotion than the woods and valleys will, a hundred miles off, where human creatures ruminate stupidly as the cows do, the ‘county families’ es-chewing all men who are not ‘landed proprietors,’ and the farmers never looking higher than to the fly on the uppermost turnip-leaf! Do you know at all what English country-life is, which the English praise so, and ‘moralize upon into a thou
sand similes,’ as that one greatest, purest, noblest thing in the world — the purely English and excellent thing? It is to my mind simply and purely abominable, and I would rather live in a street than be forced to live it out, — that English country-life; for I don’t mean life in the country. The social exigencies — why, nothing can be so bad — nothing! That is the way by which Englishmen grow up to top the world in their peculiar line of respectable absurdities.
Think of my talking so as if I could be vexed with any one of them! I! — On the contrary I wish them all a happy new year to abuse one another, or visit each of them his nearest neighbour whom he hates, three times a week, because ‘the distance is so convenient,’ and give great dinners in noble rivalship (venison from the Lord Lieutenant against turbot from London!), and talk popularity and game-law by turns to the tenantry, and beat down tithes to the rector. This glorious England of ours; with its peculiar glory of the rural districts! And my glory of patriotic virtue, who am so happy in spite of it all, and make a pretence of talking — talking — while I think the whole time of your letter. I think of your letter — I am no more a patriot than that!
May God bless you, best and dearest! You say things to me which I am not worthy to listen to for a moment, even if I was deaf dust the next moment.... I confess it humbly and earnestly as before God.
Yet He knows, — if the entireness of a gift means anything, — that I have not given with a reserve, that I am yours in my life and soul, for this year and for other years. Let me be used for you rather than against you! and that unspeakable, immeasurable grief of feeling myself a stone in your path, a cloud in your sky, may I be saved from it! — pray it for me ... for my sake rather than yours. For the rest, I thank you, I thank you. You will be always to me, what to-day you are — and that is all! — !
I am your own —
R.B. to E.B.B.
Sunday Night.
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 344