Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Think of me on Monday instead, and write before. Are not these two lawful letters? And do not they deserve an answer?

  My life was ended when I knew you, and if I survive myself it is for your sake: — that resumes all my feelings and intentions in respect to you. No ‘counsel’ could make the difference of a grain of dust in the balance. It is so, and not otherwise. If you changed towards me, it would be better for you I believe — and I should be only where I was before. While you do not change, I look to you for my first affections and my first duty — and nothing but your bidding me, could make me look away.

  In the midst of this, Mr. Kenyon came and I felt as if I could not talk to him. No — he does not ‘see how it is.’ He may have passing thoughts sometimes, but they do not stay long enough to produce — even an opinion. He asked if you had been here long.

  It may be wrong and ungrateful, but I do wish sometimes that the world were away — even the good Kenyon-aspect of the world.

  And so, once more — may God bless you!

  I am wholly yours —

  Tuesday, remember! And say that you agree.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Saturday.

  [Post-mark, January 17, 1846.]

  Did my own Ba, in the prosecution of her studies, get to a book on the forb — no, unforbidden shelf — wherein Voltaire pleases to say that ‘si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer’? I feel, after reading these letters, — as ordinarily after seeing you, sweetest, or hearing from you, — that if marriage did not exist, I should infallibly invent it. I should say, no words, no feelings even, do justice to the whole conviction and religion of my soul — and though they may be suffered to represent some one minute’s phase of it, yet, in their very fulness and passion they do injustice to the unrepresented, other minute’s, depth and breadth of love ... which let my whole life (I would say) be devoted to telling and proving and exemplifying, if not in one, then in another way — let me have the plain palpable power of this; the assured time for this ... something of the satisfaction ... (but for the fantasticalness of the illustration) ... something like the earnestness of some suitor in Chancery if he could once get Lord Lyndhurst into a room with him, and lock the door on them both, and know that his whole story must be listened to now, and the ‘rights of it,’ — dearest, the love unspoken now you are to hear ‘in all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth ... at the hour of death, and’ —

  If I did not know this was so, — nothing would have been said, or sought for. Your friendship, the perfect pride in it, the wish for, and eager co-operation in, your welfare, all that is different, and, seen now, nothing.

  I will care for it no more, dearest — I am wedded to you now. I believe no human being could love you more — that thought consoles me for my own imperfection — for when that does strike me, as so often it will, I turn round on my pursuing self, and ask ‘What if it were a claim then, what is in Her, demanded rationally, equitably, in return for what were in you — do you like that way!’ — And I do not, Ba — you, even, might not — when people everyday buy improveable ground, and eligible sites for building, and don’t want every inch filled up, covered over, done to their hands! So take me, and make me what you can and will — and though never to be more yours, yet more like you, I may and must be — Yes, indeed — best, only love!

  And am I not grateful to your sisters — entirely grateful for that crowning comfort; it is ‘miraculous,’ too, if you please — for you shall know me by finger-tip intelligence or any art magic of old or new times — but they do not see me, know me — and must moreover be jealous of you, chary of you, as the daughters of Hesperus, of wonderers and wistful lookers up at the gold apple — yet instead of ‘rapidly levelling eager eyes’ — they are indulgent? Then — shall I wish capriciously they were not your sisters, not so near you, that there might be a kind of grace in loving them for it’ — but what grace can there be when ... yes, I will tell you — no, I will not — it is foolish! — and it is not foolish in me to love the table and chairs and vases in your room.

  Let me finish writing to-morrow; it would not become me to utter a word against the arrangement — and Saturday promised, too — but though all concludes against the early hour on Monday, yet — but this is wrong — on Tuesday it shall be, then, — thank you, dearest! you let me keep up the old proper form, do you not? — I shall continue to thank, and be gratified &c. as if I had some untouched fund of thanks at my disposal to cut a generous figure with on occasion! And so, now, for your kind considerateness thank you ... that I say, which, God knows, could not say, if I died ten deaths in one to do you good, ‘you are repaid’ —

  To-morrow I will write, and answer more. I am pretty well, and will go out to-day — to-night. My Act is done, and copied — I will bring it. Do you see the Athenæum? By Chorley surely — and kind and satisfactory. I did not expect any notice for a long time — all that about the ‘mist,’ ‘unchanged manner’ and the like is politic concession to the Powers that Be ... because he might tell me that and much more with his own lips or unprofessional pen, and be thanked into the bargain, yet he does not. But I fancy he saves me from a rougher hand — the long extracts answer every purpose —

  There is all to say yet — to-morrow!

  And ever, ever your own; God bless you!

  R.

  Admire the clean paper.... I did not notice that I have been writing in a desk where a candle fell! See the bottoms of the other pages!

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Sunday Evening.

  [Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]

  You may have seen, I put off all the weighty business part of the letter — but I shall do very little with it now. To be sure, a few words will serve, because you understand me, and believe in enough of me. First, then, I am wholly satisfied, thoroughly made happy in your assurance. I would build up an infinity of lives, if I could plan them, one on the other, and all resting on you, on your word — I fully believe in it, — of my feeling, the gratitude, let there be no attempt to speak. And for ‘waiting’; ‘not hurrying’, — I leave all with you henceforth — all you say is most wise, most convincing.

  On the saddest part of all, — silence. You understand, and I can understand through you. Do you know, that I never used to dream unless indisposed, and rarely then — (of late I dream of you, but quite of late) — and those nightmare dreams have invariably been of one sort. I stand by (powerless to interpose by a word even) and see the infliction of tyranny on the unresisting man or beast (generally the last) — and I wake just in time not to die: let no one try this kind of experiment on me or mine! Though I have observed that by a felicitous arrangement, the man with the whip puts it into use with an old horse commonly. I once knew a fine specimen of the boilingly passionate, desperately respectable on the Eastern principle that reverences a madman — and this fellow, whom it was to be death to oppose, (some bloodvessel was to break) — he, once at a dinner party at which I was present, insulted his wife (a young pretty simple believer in his awful immunities from the ordinary terms that keep men in order) — brought the tears into her eyes and sent her from the room ... purely to ‘show off’ in the eyes of his guests ... (all males, law-friends &c., he being a lawyer.) This feat accomplished, he, too, left us with an affectation of compensating relentment, to ‘just say a word and return’ — and no sooner was his back to the door than the biggest, stupidest of the company began to remark ‘what a fortunate thing it was that Mr. So-and-so had such a submissive wife — not one of the women who would resist — that is, attempt to resist — and so exasperate our gentleman into ... Heaven only knew what!’ I said it was, in one sense, a fortunate thing; because one of these women, without necessarily being the lion-tressed Bellona, would richly give him his desert, I thought — ’Oh, indeed?’ No — this man was not to be opposed — wait, you might, till the fit was over, and then try what kind argument would do — and so forth to unspeakable nausea. Presently we went up-stairs — there sate
the wife with dried eyes, and a smile at the tea-table — and by her, in all the pride of conquest, with her hand in his, our friend — disposed to be very good-natured of course. I listened arrectis auribus, and in a minute he said he did not know somebody I mentioned. I told him, that I easily conceived — such a person would never condescend to know him, &c., and treated him to every consequence ingenuity could draw from that text — and at the end marched out of the room; and the valorous man, who had sate like a post, got up, took a candle, followed me to the door, and only said in unfeigned wonder, ‘What can have possessed you, my dear B?’ — All which I as much expected beforehand, as that the above mentioned man of the whip keeps quiet in the presence of an ordinary-couraged dog. All this is quite irrelevant to the case — indeed, I write to get rid of the thought altogether. But I do hold it the most stringent duty of all who can, to stop a condition, a relation of one human being to another which God never allowed to exist between Him and ourselves. Trees live and die, if you please, and accept will for a law — but with us, all commands surely refer to a previously-implanted conviction in ourselves of their rationality and justice. Or why declare that ‘the Lord is holy, just and good’ unless there is recognised and independent conception of holiness and goodness, to which the subsequent assertion is referable? ‘You know what holiness is, what it is to be good? Then, He is that’ — not, ‘that is so — because he is that’; though, of course, when once the converse is demonstrated, this, too, follows, and may be urged for practical purposes. All God’s urgency, so to speak, is on the justice of his judgments, rightness of his rule: yet why? one might ask — if one does believe that the rule is his; why ask further? — Because, his is a ‘reasonable service,’ once for all.

  Understand why I turn my thoughts in this direction. If it is indeed as you fear, and no endeavour, concession, on my part will avail, under any circumstances — (and by endeavour, I mean all heart and soul could bring the flesh to perform) — in that case, you will not come to me with a shadow past hope of chasing.

  The likelihood is, I over frighten myself for you, by the involuntary contrast with those here — you allude to them — if I went with this letter downstairs and said simply ‘I want this taken to the direction to-night, and am unwell and unable to go, will you take it now?’ my father would not say a word, or rather would say a dozen cheerful absurdities about his ‘wanting a walk,’ ‘just having been wishing to go out’ &c. At night he sits studying my works — illustrating them (I will bring you drawings to make you laugh) — and yesterday I picked up a crumpled bit of paper ... ‘his notion of what a criticism on this last number ought to be, — none, that have appeared, satisfying him!’ — So judge of what he will say! And my mother loves me just as much more as must of necessity be.

  Once more, understand all this ... for the clock scares me of a sudden — I meant to say more — far more.

  But may God bless you ever — my own dearest, my Ba —

  I am wholly your R.

  (Tuesday)

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Sunday.

  [Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]

  Your letter came just after the hope of one had past — the latest Saturday post had gone, they said, and I was beginning to be as vexed as possible, looking into the long letterless Sunday. Then, suddenly came the knock — the postman redivivus — just when it seemed so beyond hoping for — it was half past eight, observe, and there had been a post at nearly eight — suddenly came the knock, and your letter with it. Was I not glad, do you think?

  And you call the Athenæum ‘kind and satisfactory’? Well — I was angry instead. To make us wait so long for an ‘article’ like that, was not over-kind certainly, nor was it ‘satisfactory’ to class your peculiar qualities with other contemporary ones, as if they were not peculiar. It seemed to me cold and cautious, from the causes perhaps which you mention, but the extracts will work their own way with everybody who knows what poetry is, and for others, let the critic do his worst with them. For what is said of ‘mist’ I have no patience because I who know when you are obscure and never think of denying it in some of your former works, do hold that this last number is as clear and self-sufficing to a common understanding, as far as the expression and medium goes, as any book in the world, and that Mr. Chorley was bound in verity to say so. If I except that one stanza, you know, it is to make the general observation stronger. And then ‘mist’ is an infamous word for your kind of obscurity. You never are misty, not even in ‘Sordello’ — never vague. Your graver cuts deep sharp lines, always — and there is an extra-distinctness in your images and thoughts, from the midst of which, crossing each other infinitely, the general significance seems to escape. So that to talk of a ‘mist,’ when you are obscurest, is an impotent thing to do. Indeed it makes me angry.

  But the suggested virtue of ‘self-renunciation’ only made me smile, because it is simply nonsense ... nonsense which proves itself to be nonsense at a glance. So genius is to renounce itself — that is the new critical doctrine, is it? Now is it not foolish? To recognize the poetical faculty of a man, and then to instruct him in ‘self-renunciation’ in that very relation — or rather, to hint the virtue of it, and hesitate the dislike of his doing otherwise? What atheists these critics are after all — and how the old heathens understood the divinity of gifts better, beyond any comparison. We may take shame to ourselves, looking back.

  Now, shall I tell you what I did yesterday? It was so warm, so warm, the thermometer at 68 in this room, that I took it into my head to call it April instead of January, and put on a cloak and walked down-stairs into the drawing-room — walked, mind! Before, I was carried by one of my brothers, — even to the last autumn-day when I went out — I never walked a step for fear of the cold in the passages. But yesterday it was so wonderfully warm, and I so strong besides — it was a feat worthy of the day — and I surprised them all as much as if I had walked out of the window instead. That kind dear Stormie, who with all his shyness and awkwardness has the most loving of hearts in him, said that he was ‘so glad to see me’!

  Well! — setting aside the glory of it, it would have been as wise perhaps if I had abstained; our damp detestable climate reaches us otherwise than by cold, and I am not quite as well as usual this morning after an uncomfortable feverish night — not very unwell, mind, nor unwell at all in the least degree of consequence — and I tell you, only to show how susceptible I really am still, though ‘scarcely an invalid,’ say the complimenters.

  What a way I am from your letter — that letter — or seem to be rather — for one may think of one thing and yet go on writing distrustedly of other things. So you are ‘grateful’ to my sisters ... you! Now I beseech you not to talk such extravagances; I mean such extravagances as words like these imply — and there are far worse words than these, in the letter ... such as I need not put my finger on; words which are sense on my lips, but no sense at all on yours, and which make me disquietedly sure that you are under an illusion. Observe! — certainly I should not choose to have a ‘claim,’ see! Only, what I object to, in ‘illusions,’ ‘miracles,’ and things of that sort, is the want of continuity common to such. When Joshua caused the sun to stand still, it was not for a year even! — Ungrateful, I am!

  And ‘pretty well’ means ‘not well’ I am afraid — or I should be gladder still of the new act. You will tell me on Tuesday what ‘pretty well’ means, and if your mother is better — or I may have a letter to-morrow — dearest! May God bless you!

  To-morrow too, at half past three o’clock, how joyful I shall be that my ‘kind considerateness’ decided not to receive you until Tuesday. My very kind considerateness, which made me eat my dinner to-day!

  Your own

  Ba.

  A hundred letters I have, by this last, ... to set against Napoleon’s Hundred Days — did you know that?

  So much better I am to-night: it was nothing but a little chill from the damp — the fog, you see!

  R.B. to E.B.B.
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  Monday Morning.

  [Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]

  Love, if you knew but how vexed I was, so very few minutes after my note left last night; how angry with the unnecessary harshness into which some of the phrases might be construed — you would forgive me, indeed. But, when all is confessed and forgiven, the fact remains — that it would be the one trial I know I should not be able to bear; the repetition of these ‘scenes’ — intolerable — not to be written of, even my mind refuses to form a clear conception of them.

  My own loved letter is come — and the news; of which the reassuring postscript lets the interrupted joy flow on again. Well, and I am not to be grateful for that; nor that you do ‘eat your dinner’? Indeed you will be ingenious to prevent me! I fancy myself meeting you on ‘the stairs’ — stairs and passages generally, and galleries (ah, thou indeed!) all, with their picturesque accidents, of landing-places, and spiral heights and depths, and sudden turns and visions of half open doors into what Quarles calls ‘mollitious chambers’ — and above all, landing-places — they are my heart’s delight — I would come upon you unaware in a landing-place in my next dream! One day we may walk on the galleries round and over the inner court of the Doges’ Palace at Venice; and read, on tablets against the wall, how such an one was banished for an ‘enormous dig (intacco) into the public treasure’ — another for ... what you are not to know because his friends have got chisels and chipped away the record of it — underneath the ‘giants’ on their stands, and in the midst of the cortile the bronze fountains whence the girls draw water.