Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  But if you think so beside, I must seriously set to work, you see, to correct that flagrant fault, and shall do better in time dis faventibus, though it will be difficult.

  Mr. Kenyon’s dinner is a riddle which I cannot read. You are invited to meet Miss Thomson and Mr. Bayley and ‘no one else.’ George is invited to meet Mr. Browning and Mr. Procter and ‘no one else’ — just those words. The ‘absolu’ (do you remember Balzac’s beautiful story?) is just you and ‘no one else,’ the other elements being mere uncertainties, shifting while one looks for them.

  Am I not writing nonsense to-night? I am not ‘too wise’ in any case, which is some comfort. It puts one in spirits to hear of your being ‘well,’ ever and ever dearest. Keep so for me. May God bless you hour by hour. In every one of mine I am your own

  Ba.

  For Miss Mitford ...

  But people are not angels quite ...

  and she sees the whole world in stripes of black and white, it is her way. I feel very affectionately towards her, love her sincerely. She is affectionate to me beyond measure. Still, always I feel that if I were to vex her, the lower deep below the lowest deep would not be low enough for me. I always feel that. She would advertise me directly for a wretch proper.

  Then, for all I said about never changing, I have ice enough over me just now to hold the sparrows! — in respect to a great crowd of people, and she is among them — for reasons — for reasons.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Saturday Morning.

  [Post-mark, February 23, 1846.]

  So all was altered, my love — and, instead of Miss T. and the other friend, I had your brother and Procter — to my great pleasure. After, I went to that place, and soon got away, and am very well this morning in the sunshine; which I feel with you, do I not? Yesterday after dinner we spoke of Mrs. Jameson, and, as my wont is — (Here your letter reaches me — let me finish this sentence now I have finished kissing you, dearest beyond all dearness — My own heart’s Ba!) — oh, as I am used, I left the talking to go on by itself, with the thought busied elsewhere, till at last my own voice startled me for I heard my tongue utter ‘Miss Barrett ... that is, Mrs. Jameson says’ ... or ‘does ... or does not.’ I forget which! And if anybody noticed the gaucherie it must have been just your brother!

  Now to these letters! I do solemnly, unaffectedly wonder how you can put so much pure felicity into an envelope so as that I shall get it as from the fount head. This to-day, those yesterday — there is, I see, and know, thus much goodness in line after line, goodness to be scientifically appreciated, proved there — but over and above, is it in the writing, the dots and traces, the seal, the paper — here does the subtle charm lie beyond all rational accounting for? The other day I stumbled on a quotation from J. Baptista Porta — wherein he avers that any musical instrument made out of wood possessed of medicinal properties retains, being put to use, such virtues undiminished, — and that, for instance, a sick man to whom you should pipe on a pipe of elder-tree would so receive all the advantage derivable from a decoction of its berries. From whence, by a parity of reasoning, I may discover, I think, that the very ink and paper were — ah, what were they? Curious thinking won’t do for me and the wise head which is mine, so I will lie and rest in my ignorance of content and understand that without any magic at all you simply wish to make one person — which of your free goodness proves to be your R.B. — to make me supremely happy, and that you have your wish — you do bless me! More and more, for the old treasure is piled undiminished and still the new comes glittering in. Dear, dear heart of my heart, life of my life, will this last, let me begin to ask? Can it be meant I shall live this to the end? Then, dearest, care also for the life beyond, and put in my mind how to testify here that I have felt, if I could not deserve that a gift beyond all gifts! I hope to work hard, to prove I do feel, as I say — it would be terrible to accomplish nothing now.

  With which conviction — renewed conviction time by time, of your extravagance of kindness to me unworthy, — will it seem characteristically consistent when I pray you not to begin frightening me, all the same, with threats of writing less kindly? That must not be, love, for your sake now — if you had not thrown open those windows of heaven I should have no more imagined than that Syrian lord on whom the King leaned ‘how such things might be’ — but, once their influence showered, I should know, too soon and easily, if they shut up again! You have committed your dear, dearest self to that course of blessing, and blessing on, on, for ever — so let all be as it is, pray, pray!

  No — not all. No more, ever, of that strange suspicion — ’insolent’ — oh, what a word! — nor suppose I shall particularly wonder at its being fancied applicable to that, of all other passages of your letter! It is quite as reasonable to suspect the existence of such a quality there as elsewhere: how can such a thing, could such a thing come from you to me? But, dear Ba, do you know me better! Do feel that I know you, I am bold to believe, and that if you were to run at me with a pointed spear I should be sure it was a golden sanative, Machaon’s touch, for my entire good, that I was opening my heart to receive! As for words, written or spoken — I, who sin forty times in a day by light words, and untrue to the thought, I am certainly not used to be easily offended by other peoples’ words, people in the world. But your words! And about the ‘mission’; if it had not been a thing to jest at, I should not have begun, as I did — as you felt I did. I know now, what I only suspected then, and will tell you all the matter on Monday if you care to hear. The ‘humanity’ however, would have been unquestionable if I had chosen to exercise it towards the poor weak incapable creature that wants somebody, and urgently, I can well believe.

  As for your apologue, it is naught — as you felt, and so broke off — for the baron knew well enough it was a spray of the magical tree which once planted in his domain would shoot up, and out, and all round, and be glorious with leaves and musical with birds’ nests, and a fairy safeguard and blessing thenceforward and for ever, when the foolish baton had been broken into ounces of gold, even if gold it were, and spent and vanished: for, he said, such gold lies in the highway, men pick it up, more of it or less; but this one slip of the flowering tree is all of it on this side Paradise. Whereon he laid it to his heart and was happy — in spite of his disastrous chase the night before, when so far from catching an unicorn, he saw not even a respectable prize-heifer, worth the oil-cake and rape-seed it had doubtless cost to rear her — ’insolence!’

  I found no opportunity of speaking to Mr. K. about Monday, but nothing was said of last Wednesday, and he must know I did not go yesterday. So, Monday is laughing in sunshine surely! Bless you, my sweetest. I love you with my whole heart; ever shall love you.

  E.B.B. to R.B.

  [Post-mark, February 24, 1846.]

  Ever dearest, it is only when you go away, when you are quite gone, out of the house and the street, that I get up and think properly, and with the right gratitude of your flowers. Such beautiful flowers you brought me this time too! looking like summer itself, and smelling! Doing the ‘honour due’ to the flowers, makes your presence a little longer with me, the sun shines back over the hill just by that time, and then drops, till the next letter.

  If I had had the letter on Saturday as ought to have been, no, I could not have answered it so that you should have my answer on Sunday — no, I should still have had to write first.

  Now you understand that I do not object to the writing first, but only to the hearing second. I would rather write than not — I! But to be written to is the chief gladness of course; and with all you say of liking to have my letters (which I like to hear quite enough indeed) you cannot pretend to think that yours are not more to me, most to me! Ask my guardian-angel and hear what he says! Yours will look another way for shame of measuring joys with him! Because as I have said before, and as he says now, you are all to me, all the light, all the life; I am living for you now. And before I knew you, what was I and where? What was the world to me,
do you think? and the meaning of life? And now, when you come and go, and write and do not write, all the hours are chequered accordingly in so many squares of white and black, as if for playing at fox and goose ... only there is no fox, and I will not agree to be goose for one ... that is you perhaps, for being ‘too easily’ satisfied.

  So my claim is that you are more to me than I can be to you at any rate. Mr. Fox said on Sunday that I was a ‘religious hermit’ who wrote ‘poems which ought to be read in a Gothic alcove’; and religious hermits, when they care to see visions, do it better, they all say, through fasting and flagellation and seclusion in dark places. St. Theresa, for instance, saw a clearer glory by such means, than your Sir Moses Montefiore through his hundred-guinea telescope. Think then, how every shadow of my life has helped to throw out into brighter, fuller significance, the light which comes to me from you ... think how it is the one light, seen without distractions.

  I was thinking the other day that certainly and after all (or rather before all) I had loved you all my life unawares, that is, the idea of you. Women begin for the most part, (if ever so very little given to reverie) by meaning, in an aside to themselves, to love such and such an ideal, seen sometimes in a dream and sometimes in a book, and forswearing their ancient faith as the years creep on. I say a book, because I remember a friend of mine who looked everywhere for the original of Mr. Ward’s ‘Tremaine,’ because nothing would do for her, she insisted, except just that excess of so-called refinement, with the book-knowledge and the conventional manners, (loue qui peut, Tremaine), and ended by marrying a lieutenant in the Navy who could not spell. Such things happen every day, and cannot be otherwise, say the wise: — and this being otherwise with me is miraculous compensation for the trials of many years, though such abundant, overabundant compensation, that I cannot help fearing it is too much, as I know that you are too good and too high for me, and that by the degree in which I am raised up you are let down, for us two to find a level to meet on. One’s ideal must be above one, as a matter of course, you know. It is as far as one can reach with one’s eyes (soul-eyes), not reach to touch. And here is mine ... shall I tell you? ... even to the visible outward sign of the black hair and the complexion (why you might ask my sisters!) yet I would not tell you, if I could not tell you afterwards that, if it had been red hair quite, it had been the same thing, only I prove the coincidence out fully and make you smile half.

  Yet indeed I did not fancy that I was to love you when you came to see me — no indeed ... any more than I did your caring on your side. My ambition when we began our correspondence, was simply that you should forget I was a woman (being weary and blasée of the empty written gallantries, of which I have had my share and all the more perhaps from my peculiar position which made them so without consequence), that you should forget that and let us be friends, and consent to teach me what you knew better than I, in art and human nature, and give me your sympathy in the meanwhile. I am a great hero-worshipper and had admired your poetry for years, and to feel that you liked to write to me and be written to was a pleasure and a pride, as I used to tell you I am sure, and then your letters were not like other letters, as I must not tell you again. Also you influenced me, in a way in which no one else did. For instance, by two or three half words you made me see you, and other people had delivered orations on the same subject quite without effect. I surprised everybody in this house by consenting to see you. Then, when you came, you never went away. I mean I had a sense of your presence constantly. Yes ... and to prove how free that feeling was from the remotest presentiment of what has occurred, I said to Papa in my unconsciousness the next morning ... ‘it is most extraordinary how the idea of Mr. Browning does beset me — I suppose it is not being used to see strangers, in some degree — but it haunts me ... it is a persecution.’ On which he smiled and said that ‘it was not grateful to my friend to use such a word.’ When the letter came....

  Do you know that all that time I was frightened of you? frightened in this way. I felt as if you had a power over me and meant to use it, and that I could not breathe or speak very differently from what you chose to make me. As to my thoughts, I had it in my head somehow that you read them as you read the newspaper — examined them, and fastened them down writhing under your long entomological pins — ah, do you remember the entomology of it all?

  But the power was used upon me — and I never doubted that you had mistaken your own mind, the strongest of us having some exceptional weakness. Turning the wonder round in all lights, I came to what you admitted yesterday ... yes, I saw that very early ... that you had come here with the intention of trying to love whomever you should find, ... and also that what I had said about exaggerating the amount of what I could be to you, had just operated in making you more determined to justify your own presentiment in the face of mine. Well — and if that last clause was true a little, too ... why should I be sorry now ... and why should you have fancied for a moment, that the first could make me sorry. At first and when I did not believe that you really loved me, when I thought you deceived yourself, then, it was different. But now ... now ... when I see and believe your attachment for me, do you think that any cause in the world (except what diminished it) could render it less a source of joy to me? I mean as far as I myself am considered. Now if you ever fancy that I am vain of your love for me, you will be unjust, remember. If it were less dear, and less above me, I might be vain perhaps. But I may say before God and you, that of all the events of my life, inclusive of its afflictions, nothing has humbled me so much as your love. Right or wrong it may be, but true it is, and I tell you. Your love has been to me like God’s own love, which makes the receivers of it kneelers.

  Why all this should be written, I do not know — but you set me thinking yesterday in that backward line, which I lean back to very often, and for once, as you made me write directly, why I wrote, as my thoughts went, that way.

  Say how you are, beloved — and do not brood over that ‘Soul’s Tragedy,’ which I wish I had here with ‘Luria,’ because, so, you should not see it for a month at least. And take exercise and keep well — and remember how many letters I must have before Saturday. May God bless you. Do you want to hear me say

  I cannot love you less...?

  That is a doubtful phrase. And

  I cannot love you more

  is doubtful too, for reasons I could give. More or less, I really love you, but it does not sound right, even so, does it? I know what it ought to be, and will put it into the ‘seal’ and the ‘paper’ with the ineffable other things.

  Dearest, do not go to St. Petersburg. Do not think of going, for fear it should come true and you should go, and while you were helping the Jews and teaching Nicholas, what (in that case) would become of your

  Ba?

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Tuesday.

  [Post-mark, February 24, 1846.]

  Ah, sweetest, in spite of our agreement, here is the note that sought not to go, but must — because, if there is no speaking of Mrs. Jamesons and such like without bringing in your dear name (not dearest name, my Ba!) what is the good of not writing it down, now, when I, though possessed with the love of it no more than usual, yet may speak, and to a hearer? And I have to thank you with all my heart for the good news of the increasing strength and less need for the opium — how I do thank you, my dearest — and desire to thank God through whose goodness it all is! This I could not but say now, to-morrow I will write at length, having been working a little this morning, with whatever effect. So now I will go out and see your elm-trees and gate, and think the thoughts over again, and coming home I shall perhaps find a letter.

  Dearest, dearest — my perfect blessing you are!

  May God continue his care for us. R.

  R.B. to E.B.B.

  Wednesday Morning.

  [Post-mark, February 25, 1846.]

  Once you were pleased to say, my own Ba, that ‘I made you do as I would.’ I am quite sure, you make me speak as you would, a
nd not at all as I mean — and for one instance, I never surely spoke anything half so untrue as that ‘I came with the intention of loving whomever I should find’ — No! wreathed shells and hollows in ruins, and roofs of caves may transform a voice wonderfully, make more of it or less, or so change it as to almost alter, but turn a ‘no’ into a ‘yes’ can no echo (except the Irish one), and I said ‘no’ to such a charge, and still say ‘no.’ I did have a presentiment — and though it is hardly possible for me to look back on it now without lending it the true colours given to it by the event, yet I can put them aside, if I please, and remember that I not merely hoped it would not be so (not that the effect I expected to be produced would be less than in anticipation, certainly I did not hope that, but that it would range itself with the old feelings of simple reverence and sympathy and friendship, that I should love you as much as I supposed I could love, and no more) but in the confidence that nothing could occur to divert me from my intended way of life, I made — went on making arrangements to return to Italy. You know — did I not tell you — I wished to see you before I returned? And I had heard of you just so much as seemed to make it impossible such a relation could ever exist. I know very well, if you choose to refer to my letters you may easily bring them to bear a sense in parts, more agreeable to your own theory than to mine, the true one — but that was instinct, Providence — anything rather than foresight. Now I will convince you! yourself have noticed the difference between the letters and the writer; the greater ‘distance of the latter from you,’ why was that? Why, if not because the conduct began with him, with one who had now seen you — was no continuation of the conduct, as influenced by the feeling, of the letters — else, they, if near, should have enabled him, if but in the natural course of time and with increase of familiarity, to become nearer — but it was not so! The letters began by loving you after their way — but what a world-wide difference between that love and the true, the love from seeing and hearing and feeling, since you make me resolve, what now lies blended so harmoniously, into its component parts. Oh, I know what is old from what is new, and how chrystals may surround and glorify other vessels meant for ordinary service than Lord N’s! But I don’t know that handling may not snap them off, some of the more delicate ones; and if you let me, love, I will not again, ever again, consider how it came and whence, and when, so curiously, so pryingly, but believe that it was always so, and that it all came at once, all the same; the more unlikelinesses the better, for they set off the better the truth of truths that here, (‘how begot? how nourished?’) — here is the whole wondrous Ba filling my whole heart and soul; and over-filling it, because she is in all the world, too, where I look, where I fancy. At the same time, because all is so wondrous and so sweet, do you think that it would be so difficult for me to analyse it, and give causes to the effects in sufficiently numerous instances, even to ‘justify my presentiment?’ Ah, dear, dearest Ba, I could, could indeed, could account for all, or enough! But you are unconscious, I do believe, of your power, and the knowledge of it would be no added grace, perhaps! So let us go on — taking a lesson out of the world’s book in a different sense. You shall think I love you for — (tell me, you must, what for) while in my secret heart I know what my ‘mission of humanity’ means, and what telescopic and microscopic views it procures me. Enough — Wait, one word about the ‘too kind letters’ — could not the same Montefiore understand that though he deserved not one of his thousand guineas, yet that he is in disgrace if they bate him of his next gift by merely ten? It is all too kind — but I shall feel the diminishing of the kindness, be very sure! Of that there is, however, not too alarming a sign in this dearest, because last of all — dearest letter of all — till the next! I looked yesterday over the ‘Tragedy,’ and think it will do after all. I will bring one part at least next time, and ‘Luria’ take away, if you let me, so all will be off my mind, and April and May be the welcomer? Don’t think I am going to take any extraordinary pains. There are some things in the ‘Tragedy’ I should like to preserve and print now, leaving the future to spring as it likes, in any direction, and these half-dead, half-alive works fetter it, if left behind.