Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  I dare say you have asked yourself sometimes, why it was that I never managed to draw you into the house here, so that you might make your own way. Now that is one of the things impossible to me. I have not influence enough for that. George can never invite a friend of his even. Do you see? The people who do come here, come by particular license and association ... Capt. Surtees Cook being one of them. Once ... when I was in high favour too ... I asked for Mr. Kenyon to be invited to dinner — he an old college friend, and living close by and so affectionate to me always — I felt that he must be hurt by the neglect, and asked. It was in vain. Now, you see —

  May God bless you always! I wrote all my spirits away in this letter yesterday, and kept it to finish to-day ... being yours every day, glad or sad, ever beloved! —

  Your Ba.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Tuesday.

  [Post-mark, January 27, 1846.]

  Why will you give me such unnecessary proofs of your goodness? Why not leave the books for me to take away, at all events? No — you must fold up, and tie round, and seal over, and be at all the pains in the world with those hands I see now. But you only threaten; say you ‘shall send’ — as yet, and nothing having come, I do pray you, if not too late, to save me the shame — add to the gratitude you never can now, I think ... only think, for you are a siren, and I don’t know certainly to what your magic may not extend. Thus, in not so important a matter, I should have said, the day before yesterday, that no letter from you could make my heart rise within me, more than of old ... unless it should happen to be of twice the ordinary thickness ... and then there’s a fear at first lest the over-running of my dealt-out measure should be just a note of Mr. Kenyon’s, for instance! But yesterday the very seal began with ‘Ba’ — Now, always seal with that seal my letters, dearest! Do you recollect Donne’s pretty lines about seals?

  Quondam fessus Amor loquens Amato,

  Tot et tanta loquens amica, scripsit:

  Tandem et fessa manus dedit Sigillum.

  And in his own English,

  When love, being weary, made an end

  Of kind expressions to his friend,

  He writ; when hand could write no more,

  He gave the seal — and so left o’er.

  (By the way, what a mercy that he never noticed the jingle in posse of ending ‘expressions’ and beginning ‘impressions.’)

  How your account of the actors in the ‘Love’s Labour Lost’ amused me! I rather like, though, the notion of that steady, business-like pursuit of love under difficulties; and the sobbing proves something surely! Serjt. Talfourd says — is it not he who says it? — ’All tears are not for sorrow.’ I should incline to say, from my own feeling, that no tears were. They only express joy in me, or sympathy with joy — and so is it with you too, I should think.

  Understand that I do not disbelieve in Mesmerism — I only object to insufficient evidence being put forward as quite irrefragable. I keep an open sense on the subject — ready to be instructed; and should have refused such testimony as Miss Martineau’s if it had been adduced in support of something I firmly believed — ’non tali auxilio’ — indeed, so has truth been harmed, and only so, from the beginning. So, I shall read what you bid me, and learn all I can.

  I am not quite so well this week — yesterday some friends came early and kept me at home — for which I seem to suffer a little; less, already, than in the morning — so I will go out and walk away the whirring ... which is all the mighty ailment. As for ‘Luria’ I have not looked at it since I saw you — which means, saw you in the body, because last night I saw you; as I wonder if you know!

  Thursday, and again I am with you — and you will forget nothing ... how the farewell is to be returned? Ah, my dearest, sweetest Ba; how entirely I love you!

  May God bless you ever —

  R.

  2. p.m. Your parcel arrives ... the penholder; now what shall I say? How am I to use so fine a thing even in writing to you? I will give it you again in our Isle, and meantime keep it where my other treasures are — my letters and my dear ringlet.

  Thank you — all I can thank.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Wednesday.

  [Post-mark, January 28, 1846.]

  Ever dearest — I will say, as you desire, nothing on that subject — but this strictly for myself: you engaged me to consult my own good in the keeping or breaking our engagement; not your good as it might even seem to me; much less seem to another. My only good in this world — that against which all the world goes for nothing — is to spend my life with you, and be yours. You know that when I claim anything, it is really yourself in me — you give me a right and bid me use it, and I, in fact, am most obeying you when I appear most exacting on my own account — so, in that feeling, I dare claim, once for all, and in all possible cases (except that dreadful one of your becoming worse again ... in which case I wait till life ends with both of us), I claim your promise’s fulfilment — say, at the summer’s end: it cannot be for your good that this state of things should continue. We can go to Italy for a year or two and be happy as day and night are long. For me, I adore you. This is all unnecessary, I feel as I write: but you will think of the main fact as ordained, granted by God, will you not, dearest? — so, not to be put in doubt ever again — then, we can go quietly thinking of after matters. Till to-morrow, and ever after, God bless my heart’s own, own Ba. All my soul follows you, love — encircles you — and I live in being yours.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Friday Morning.

  [Post-mark, January 31, 1846.]

  Let it be this way, ever dearest. If in the time of fine weather, I am not ill, ... then ... not now ... you shall decide, and your decision shall be duty and desire to me, both — I will make no difficulties. Remember, in the meanwhile, that I have decided to let it be as you shall choose ... shall choose. That I love you enough to give you up ‘for your good,’ is proof (to myself at least) that I love you enough for any other end: — but you thought too much of me in the last letter. Do not mistake me. I believe and trust in all your words — only you are generous unawares, as other men are selfish.

  More, I meant to say of this; but you moved me as usual yesterday into the sunshine, and then I am dazzled and cannot see clearly. Still I see that you love me and that I am bound to you: — and ‘what more need I see,’ you may ask; while I cannot help looking out to the future, to the blue ridges of the hills, to the chances of your being happy with me. Well! I am yours as you see ... and not yours to teaze you. You shall decide everything when the time comes for doing anything ... and from this to then, I do not, dearest, expect you to use ‘the liberty of leaping out of the window,’ unless you are sure of the house being on fire! Nobody shall push you out of the window — least of all, I.

  For Italy ... you are right. We should be nearer the sun, as you say, and further from the world, as I think — out of hearing of the great storm of gossiping, when ‘scirocco is loose.’ Even if you liked to live altogether abroad, coming to England at intervals, it would be no sacrifice for me — and whether in Italy or England, we should have sufficient or more than sufficient means of living, without modifying by a line that ‘good free life’ of yours which you reasonably praise — which, if it had been necessary to modify, we must have parted, ... because I could not have borne to see you do it; though, that you once offered it for my sake, I never shall forget.

  Mr. Kenyon stayed half an hour, and asked, after you went, if you had been here long. I reproached him with what they had been doing at his club (the Athenæum) in blackballing Douglas Jerrold, for want of something better to say — and he had not heard of it. There were more black than white balls, and Dickens was so enraged at the repulse of his friend that he gave in his own resignation like a privy councillor.

  But the really bad news is of poor Tennyson — I forgot to tell you — I forget everything. He is seriously ill with an internal complaint and confined to his bed, as George heard from a common
friend. Which does not prevent his writing a new poem — he has finished the second book of it — and it is in blank verse and a fairy tale, and called the ‘University,’ the university-members being all females. If George has not diluted the scheme of it with some law from the Inner Temple, I don’t know what to think — it makes me open my eyes. Now isn’t the world too old and fond of steam, for blank verse poems, in ever so many books, to be written on the fairies? I hope they may cure him, for the best deed they can do. He is not precisely in danger, understand — but the complaint may run into danger — so the account went.

  And you? how are you? Mind to tell me. May God bless you. Is Monday or Tuesday to be our day? If it were not for Mr. Kenyon I should take courage and say Monday — but Tuesday and Saturday would do as well — would they not?

  Your own

  Ba.

  Shall I have a letter?

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Saturday.

  [Post-mark, January 31, 1846.]

  It is a relief to me this time to obey your wish, and reserve further remark on that subject till by and bye. And, whereas some people, I suppose, have to lash themselves up to the due point of passion, and choose the happy minutes to be as loving in as they possibly can ... (that is, in expression; the just correspondency of word to fact and feeling: for it — the love — may be very truly there, at the bottom, when it is got at, and spoken out) — quite otherwise, I do really have to guard my tongue and set a watch on my pen ... that so I may say as little as can well be likely to be excepted to by your generosity. Dearest, love means love, certainly, and adoration carries its sense with it — and so, you may have received my feeling in that shape — but when I begin to hint at the merest putting into practice one or the other profession, you ‘fly out’ — instead of keeping your throne. So let this letter lie awhile, till my heart is more used to it, and after some days or weeks I will find as cold and quiet a moment as I can, and by standing as far off you as I shall be able, see more — ’si minus propè stes, te capiet magis.’ Meanwhile, silent or speaking, I am yours to dispose of as that glove — not that hand.

  I must think that Mr. Kenyon sees, and knows, and ... in his goodness ... hardly disapproves — he knows I could not avoid — escape you — for he knows, in a manner, what you are ... like your American; and, early in our intercourse, he asked me (did I tell you?) ‘what I thought of his young relative’ — and I considered half a second to this effect — ’if he asked me what I thought of the Queen-diamond they showed me in the crown of the Czar — and I answered truly — he would not return; “then of course you mean to try and get it to keep.”‘ So I did tell the truth in a very few words. Well, it is no matter.

  I am sorry to hear of poor Tennyson’s condition. The projected book — title, scheme, all of it, — that is astounding; — and fairies? If ‘Thorpes and barnes, sheep-pens and dairies — this maketh that there ben no fairies’ — locomotives and the broad or narrow gauge must keep the very ghosts of them away. But how the fashion of this world passes; the forms its beauty and truth take; if we have the making of such! I went last night, out of pure shame at a broken promise, to hear Miss Cushman and her sister in ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ The whole play goes ... horribly; ‘speak’ bids the Poet, and so M. Walladmir [Valdemar] moves his tongue and dispenses with his jaws. Whatever is slightly touched in, indicated, to give relief to something actually insisted upon and drawn boldly ... here, you have it gone over with an unremitting burnt-stick, till it stares black forever! Romeo goes whining about Verona by broad daylight. Yet when a schoolfellow of mine, I remember, began translating in class Virgil after this mode, ‘Sic fatur — so said Æneas; lachrymans — a-crying’ ... our pedagogue turned on him furiously — ’D’ye think Æneas made such a noise — as you shall, presently?’ How easy to conceive a boyish half-melancholy, smiling at itself.

  Then Tuesday, and not Monday ... and Saturday will be the nearer afterward. I am singularly well to-day — head quite quiet — and yesterday your penholder began its influence and I wrote about half my last act. Writing is nothing, nor praise, nor blame, nor living, nor dying, but you are all my true life; May God bless you ever —

  R.

  FEBRUARY, 1846

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Friday Evening.

  [Post-mark, February 2, 1846.]

  Something, you said yesterday, made me happy — ’that your liking for me did not come and go’ — do you remember? Because there was a letter, written at a crisis long since, in which you showed yourself awfully, as a burning mountain, and talked of ‘making the most of your fire-eyes,’ and of having at intervals ‘deep black pits of cold water’! — and the lava of that letter has kept running down into my thoughts of you too much, until quite of late — while even yesterday I was not too well instructed to be ‘happy,’ you see! Do not reproach me! I would not have ‘heard your enemy say so’ — it was your own word! And the other long word idiosyncrasy seemed long enough to cover it; and it might have been a matter of temperament, I fancied, that a man of genius, in the mystery of his nature, should find his feelings sometimes like dumb notes in a piano ... should care for people at half past eleven on Tuesday, and on Wednesday at noon prefer a black beetle. How you frightened me with your ‘fire-eyes’! ‘making the most of them’ too! and the ‘black pits,’ which gaped ... where did they gape? who could tell? Oh — but lately I have not been crossed so, of course, with those fabulous terrors — lately that horror of the burning mountain has grown more like a superstition than a rational fear! — and if I was glad ... happy ... yesterday, it was but as a tolerably sensible nervous man might be glad of a clearer moonlight, showing him that what he had half shuddered at for a sheeted ghoule, was only a white horse on the moor. Such a great white horse! — call it the ‘mammoth horse’ — the ‘real mammoth,’ this time!

  Dearest, did I write you a cold letter the last time? Almost it seems so to me! the reason being that my feelings were near to overflow, and that I had to hold the cup straight to prevent the possible dropping on your purple underneath. Your letter, the letter I answered, was in my heart ... is in my heart — and all the yeses in the world would not be too many for such a letter, as I felt and feel. Also, perhaps, I gave you, at last, a merely formal distinction — and it comes to the same thing practically without any doubt! but I shrank, with a sort of instinct, from appearing (to myself, mind) to take a security from your words now (said too on an obvious impulse) for what should, would, must, depend on your deliberate wishes hereafter. You understand — you will not accuse me of over-cautiousness and the like. On the contrary, you are all things to me, ... instead of all and better than all! You have fallen like a great luminous blot on the whole leaf of the world ... of life and time ... and I can see nothing beyond you, nor wish to see it. As to all that was evil and sadness to me, I do not feel it any longer — it may be raining still, but I am in the shelter and can scarcely tell. If you could be too dear to me you would be now — but you could not — I do not believe in those supposed excesses of pure affections — God cannot be too great.

  Therefore it is a conditional engagement still — all the conditions being in your hands, except the necessary one, of my health. And shall I tell you what is ‘not to be put in doubt ever’? — your goodness, that is ... and every tie that binds me to you. ‘Ordained, granted by God’ it is, that I should owe the only happiness in my life to you, and be contented and grateful (if it were necessary) to stop with it at this present point. Still I do not — there seems no necessity yet.

  May God bless you, ever dearest: —

  Your own Ba.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  Saturday.

  [In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]

  Well I have your letter — and I send you the postscript to my last one, written yesterday you observe ... and being simply a postscript in some parts of it, so far it is not for an answer. Only I deny the ‘flying out’ — perhaps you may do it a little more ... in your mom
ents of starry centrifugal motion.

  So you think that dear Mr. Kenyon’s opinion of his ‘young relative’ — (neither young nor his relative — not very much of either!) is to the effect that you couldn’t possibly ‘escape’ her — ? It looks like the sign of the Red Dragon, put so ... and your burning mountain is not too awful for the scenery.

  Seriously ... gravely ... if it makes me three times happy that you should love me, yet I grow uneasy and even saddened when you say infatuated things such as this and this ... unless after all you mean a philosophical sarcasm on the worth of Czar diamonds. No — do not say such things! If you do, I shall end by being jealous of some ideal Czarina who must stand between you and me.... I shall think that it is not I whom you look at ... and pour cause. ‘Flying out,’ that would be!

  And for Mr. Kenyon, I only know that I have grown the most ungrateful of human beings lately, and find myself almost glad when he does not come, certainly uncomfortable when he does — yes, really I would rather not see him at all, and when you are not here. The sense of which and the sorrow for which, turn me to a hypocrite, and make me ask why he does not come &c. ... questions which never came to my lips before ... till I am more and more ashamed and sorry. Will it end, I wonder, by my ceasing to care for any one in the world, except, except...? or is it not rather that I feel trodden down by either his too great penetration or too great unconsciousness, both being overwhelming things from him to me. From a similar cause I hate writing letters to any of my old friends — I feel as if it were the merest swindling to attempt to give the least account of myself to anybody, and when their letters come and I know that nothing very fatal has happened to them, scarcely I can read to an end afterwards through the besetting care of having to answer it all. Then I am ignoble enough to revenge myself on people for their stupidities ... which never in my life I did before nor felt the temptation to do ... and when they have a distaste for your poetry through want of understanding, I have a distaste for them ... cannot help it — and you need not say it is wrong, because I know the whole iniquity of it, persisting nevertheless. As for dear Mr. Kenyon — with whom we began, and who thinks of you as appreciatingly and admiringly as one man can think of another, — do not imagine that, if he should see anything, he can ‘approve’ of either your wisdom or my generosity, ... he, with his large organs of caution, and his habit of looking right and left, and round the corner a little way. Because, you know, ... if I should be ill before ... why there, is a conclusion! — but if afterward ... what? You who talk wildly of my generosity, whereas I only and most impotently tried to be generous, must see how both suppositions have their possibility. Nevertheless you are the master to run the latter risk. You have overcome ... to your loss perhaps — unless the judgment is revised. As to taking the half of my prison ... I could not even smile at that if it seemed probable ... I should recoil from your affection even under a shape so fatal to you ... dearest! No! There is a better probability before us I hope and believe — in spite of the possibility which it is impossible to deny. And now we leave this subject for the present.