Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  For ‘Hector and Andromache,’ would you like me to try to do it for you? It would amuse me, and you should not be bound to do more with what I send you than to throw it into the fire if it did not meet your wishes precisely. The same observation applies, remember, to this little sheet, which I have kept — delayed sending — just because I wanted to let you have a trial of my strength on ‘Andromache’ in the same envelope; but the truth is that it is not begun yet, partly through other occupation, and partly through the lassitude which the cold wind of the last few days always brings down on me. Yesterday I made an effort, and felt like a broken stick — not even a bent one! So wait for a warm day (and what a season we have had! I have been walking up and down stairs and pretending to be quite well), and I will promise to do my best, and certainly an inferior hand may get nearer to touch the great Greek lion’s mane than Pope’s did.

  Will you give my love to dear Miss Bayley? She shall hear from me — and you shall, in a day or two. And do not mind Mr. Kenyon. He ‘roars as softly as a sucking dove;’ nevertheless he is an intolerant monster, as I half told him the other day.

  Believe me, dear Miss Thomson,

  Affectionately yours,

  E.B.B.

  To Mr. Westwood

  50 Wimpole Street: May 22, 1845.

  Did you persevere with ‘Sordello’? I hope so. Be sure that we may all learn (as poets) much and deeply from it, for the writer speaks true oracles. When you have read it through, then read for relaxation and recompense the last ‘Bell and Pomegranate’ by the same poet, his ‘Colombo’s Birthday,’ which is exquisite. Only ‘Pippa Passes’ I lean to, or kneel to, with the deepest reverence. Wordsworth has been in town, and is gone. Tennyson is still here. He likes London, I hear, and hates Cheltenham, where he resides with his family, and he smokes pipe after pipe, and does not mean to write any more poems. Are we to sing a requiem?

  Believe me, faithfully yours,

  ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT.

  To H.S. Boyd

  Saturday, July 21, 1845 [postmark].

  My very dear Friend, — You are kind to exceeding kindness, and I am as grateful as any of your long-ago kind invitations ever found me. It is something pleasant, indeed, and like a return to life, to be asked by you to spend two or three days in your house, and I thank you for this pleasantness, and for the goodness, on your own part, which induced it. You may be perfectly sure that no Claypon, though he should live in Arcadia, would be preferred by me to you as a host, and I wonder how you could entertain the imagination of such a thing. Mr. Kenyon, indeed, has asked me repeatedly to spend a few hours on a sofa in his house, and, the Regent’s Park being so much nearer than you are, I had promised to think of it. But I have not yet found it possible to accomplish even that quarter of a mile’s preferment, and my ambition is forced to be patient when I begin to think of St. John’s Wood. I am considerably stronger, and increasing in strength, and in time, with a further advance of the summer, I may do ‘such things — what they are yet, I know not.’ Yes, I know that they relate to you, and that I have a hope, as well as an earnest, affectionate desire, to sit face to face with you once more before this summer closes. Do, in the meantime, believe that I am very grateful to you for your kind, considerate proposal, and that it is not made in vain for my wishes, and that I am not likely willingly ‘to spend two or three days’ with anybody in the world before I do so with yourself.

  Mr. Hunter has not paid us his usual Saturday’s visit, and therefore I have no means of answering the questions you put in relation to him. We will ask him about ‘times and seasons’ when next we see him, and you shall hear.

  Did you ever hear much of Robert Montgomery, commonly called Satan Montgomery because the author of ‘Satan,’ of the ‘Omnipresence of the Deity,’ and of various poems which pass through edition after edition, nobody knows how or why? I understand that his pew (he is a clergyman) is sown over with red rosebuds from ladies of the congregation, and that the same fair hands have made and presented to him, in the course of a single season, one hundred pairs of slippers. Whereupon somebody said to this Reverend Satan, ‘I never knew before, Mr. Montgomery, that you were a centipede’

  Dearest Mr. Boyd’s affectionate and grateful

  ELIBET.

  Through the summer of 1845, Miss Barrett, as usual, recovered strength, but so slightly that her doctor urged that she should not face the winter in England. Plans were accordingly made for her going abroad, to which the following letters refer, but the scheme ultimately broke down before the prohibition of Mr. Barrett — a prohibition for which no valid reason was put forward, and which, to say the least, bore the colour of unaccountable indifference to his daughter’s health and wishes. The matter is of some importance on account of its bearing on the action taken by Miss Barrett in the autumn of the following year.

  To Mrs. Martin

  Monday, July 29, 1845 [postmark].

  My dearest Mrs. Martin, — I am ashamed not to have written before, and yet have courage enough to ask you to write to me as soon as you can. Day by day I have had good intentions enough (the fact is) about writing, to seem to deserve some good deeds from you, which is contrary to all wisdom and reason, I know, but is rather natural, after all. What my deeds have been, you will be apt to ask. Why, all manner of idleness, which is the most interrupting, you know, of all things. The Hedleys have been flitting backwards and forwards, staying, some of them, for a month at a time in London, and then going, and then coming again; and I have had other visitors, few but engrossing ‘after their kind.’ And I have been getting well — which is a process — going out into the carriage two or three times a week, abdicating my sofa for my armchair, moving from one room to another now and then, and walking about mine quite as well as, and with considerably more complacency than, a child of two years old. Altogether, I do think that if you were kind enough to be glad to see me looking better when you were in London, you would be kind enough to be still gladder if you saw me now. Everybody praises me, and I look in the looking-glass with a better conscience. Also, it is an improving improvement, and will be, until, you know, the last hem of the garment of summer is lost sight of, and then — and then — I must either follow to another climate, or be ill again — that I know, and am prepared for. It is but dreary work, this undoing of my Penelope web in the winter, after the doing of it through the summer, and the more progress one makes in one’s web, the more dreary the prospect of the undoing of all these fine silken stitches. But we shall see....

  Ever your affectionate

  BA.

  To Mrs. Martin

  Tuesday [October 1845].

  My dearest Mrs. Martin, — Do believe that I have not been, as I have seemed, perhaps, forgetful of you through this silence. This last proof of your interest and affection for me — in your letter to Henrietta — quite rouses me to speak out my remembrance of you, and I have been remembering you all the time that I did not speak, only I was so perplexed and tossed up and down by doubts and sadnesses as to require some shock from without to force the speech from me. Your verses, in their grace of kindness, and the ivy from Wordsworth’s cottage, just made me think to myself that I would write to you before I left England, but when you talk really of coming to see me, why, I must speak! You overcome me with the sense of your goodness to me.

  Yet, after all, I will not have you come! The farewells are bad enough which come to us, without our going to seek them, and I would rather wait and meet you on the Continent, or in England again, than see you now, just to part from you. And you cannot guess how shaken I am, and how I cling to every plank of a little calm. Perhaps I am going on the 17th or 20th. Certainly I have made up my mind to do it, and shall do it as a bare matter of duty; and it is one of the most painful acts of duty which my whole life has set before me. The road is as rough as possible, as far as I can see it. At the same time, being absolutely convinced from my own experience and perceptions, and the unhesitating advice of two able medical men (Dr. Chambers,
one of them), that to escape the English winter will be everything for me, and that it involves the comfort and usefulness of the rest of my life, I have resolved to do it, let the circumstances of the doing be as painful as they may. If you were to see me you would be astonished to see the work of the past summer; but all these improvements will ebb away with the sun — while I am assured of permanent good if I leave England. The struggle with me has been a very painful one; I cannot enter on the how and wherefore at this moment. I had expected more help than I have found, and am left to myself, and thrown so on my own sense of duty as to feel it right, for the sake of future years, to make an effort to stand by myself as I best can. At the same time, I will not tell you that at the last hour something may not happen to keep me at home. That is neither impossible nor improbable. If, for instance, I find that I cannot have one of my brothers with me, why, the going in that case would be out of the question. Under ordinary circumstances I shall go, and if the experiment of going fails, why, then I shall have had the satisfaction of having tried it, and of knowing that it is God’s will which keeps me a prisoner, and makes me a burden. As it is, I have been told that if I had gone years ago I should be well now; that one lung is very slightly affected, but the nervous system absolutely shattered, as the state of the pulse proves. I am in the habit of taking forty drops of laudanum a day, and cannot do with less, that is, the medical man told me that I could not do with less, saying so with his hand on the pulse. The cold weather, they say, acts on the lungs, and produces the weakness indirectly, whereas the necessary shutting up acts on the nerves and prevents them from having a chance of recovering their tone. And thus, without any mortal disease, or any disease of equivalent seriousness, I am thrown out of life, out of the ordinary sphere of its enjoyment and activity, and made a burden to myself and to others. Whereas there is a means of escape from these evils, and God has opened the door of escape, as wide as I see it!

  In all ways, for my own happiness’s sake I do need a proof that the evil is irremediable. And this proof (or the counter-proof) I am about to seek in Italy.

  Dr. Chambers has advised Pisa, and I go in the direct steamer from the Thames to Leghorn. I have good courage, and as far as my own strength goes, sufficient means.

  Dearest Mrs. Martin, more than I thought at first of telling you, I have told you. Much beside there is, painful to talk of, but I hope I have determined to do what is right, and that the determination has not been formed ungently, unscrupulously, nor unaffectionately in respect to the feelings of others. I would die for some of those, but there, has been affection opposed to affection.

  This in confidence, of course. May God bless both of you! Pray for me, dearest Mrs. Martin. Make up your mind to go somewhere soon — shall you not? — before the winter shuts the last window from which you see the sun.

  Dr. Chambers said that he would ‘answer for it’ that the voyage would rather do me good than harm. Let me suffer sea sickness or not, he said, he would answer for its doing me no harm.

  I hope to take Arabel with me, and either Storm or Henry. This is my hope.

  Gratefully and affectionately I think of all your kindness and interest. May dear Mr. Martin lose nothing in this coming winter! I shall think of you, and not cease to love you. Moreover, you shall hear again from

  Your ever affectionate

  BA.

  To H.S. Boyd

  October 27, 1845 [postmark].

  My very dear Friend, — It is so long since I wrote that I must write, I must ruffle your thoughts with a little breath from my side. Listen to me, my dear friend. That I have not written has scarcely been my fault, but my misfortune rather, for I have been quite unstrung and overcome by agitation and anxiety, and thought that I should be able to tell you at last of being calmer and happier, but it was all in vain. I do not leave England, my dear friend. It is decided that I remain on in my prison. It was my full intention to go. I considered it to be a clear duty, and I made up my mind to perform it, let the circumstances be ever so painfully like obstacles; but when the moment came it appeared impossible for me to set out alone, and also impossible to take my brother and sister with me without involving them in difficulties and displeasure. Now what I could risk for myself I could not risk for others, and the very kindness with which they desired me not to think of them only made me think of them more, as was natural and just. So Italy is given up, and I fall back into the hands of God, who is merciful, trusting Him with the time that shall be.

  Arabel would have gone to tell you all this a fortnight since, but one of my brothers has been ill with fever which was not exactly typhus, but of the typhoid character, and we knew that you would rather not see her under the circumstances. He is very much better (it is Octavius), and has been out of bed to-day and yesterday.

  Do not reproach me either for not writing or for not going, my very dear friend. I have been too heavy-hearted for words; and as to the deeds, you would not have wished me to lead others into difficulties, the extent and result of which no one could calculate. It would not have been just of me.

  And you, how are you, and what are you doing?

  May God bless you, my dear dear friend!

  Ever yours I am, affectionately and gratefully,

  E.B.B.

  To Mr. Chorley

  50 Wimpole Street: November 1845.

  I must trouble you with another letter of thanks, dear Mr. Chorley, now that I have to thank you for the value of the work as well as the kindness of the gift, for I have read your three volumes of ‘Pomfret’ with interest and moral assent, and with great pleasure in various ways: it is a pure, true book without effort, which, in these days of gesture and rolling of the eyes, is an uncommon thing. Also you make your ‘private judgment’ work itself out quietly as a simple part of the love of truth, instead of being the loud heroic virtue it is so apt in real life to profess itself, seldom moving without drums and trumpets and the flying of party colours. All these you have put down rightly, wisely, and boldly, and it was, in my mind, no less wise than bold of you to let in that odour of Tyrrwhitism into the folds of the purple, and so prevent the very possibility of any ‘prestige.’ If I complained it might be that your ‘private judgment’ confines its reference to ‘public opinion,’ and shuns, too proudly perhaps, the higher and deeper relations of human responsibility. But there are difficulties, I see, and you choose your path advisedly, of course. The best character in the book I take to be Rose; I cannot hesitate in selecting him. He is so lifelike with the world’s conventional life that you hear his footsteps when he walks, and, indeed, I think his boots were apt to creak just the soupçon of a creak, just as a gentleman’s boots might, and he is excellently consistent, even down to the choice of a wife whom he could patronise. I hope you like your own Mr. Rose, and that you will forgive me for jilting Grace for Helena, which I could not help any more than Walter could. But now, may I venture to ask a question? Would it not have been wise of you if, on the point of reserve, you had thrown a deeper shade of opposition into the characters or rather manners of these women? Helena sits like a statue (and could Grace have done more?) when she wins Walter’s heart in Italy. Afterwards, and by fits at the time, indeed, the artist fire bursts from her, but there was a great deal of smouldering when there should have been a clear heat to justify Walter’s change of feeling. And then, in respect to that, do you really think that your Grace was generous, heroic (with the evidence she had of the change) in giving up her engagement? For her own sake, could she have done otherwise? I fancy not; the position seems surrounded by its own necessities, and no room for a doubt. I write on my own doubts, you see, and you will smile at them, or understand all through them that if the book had not interested me like a piece of real life, I should not find myself backbiting as if all these were ‘my neighbours.’ The pure tender feeling of the closing scenes touched me to better purpose, believe me, and I applaud from my heart and conscience your rejection of that low creed of ‘poetical justice’ which is neither jus
tice nor poetry which is as degrading to virtue as false to experience, and which, thrown from your book, raises it into a pure atmosphere at once.

  I could go on talking, but remind myself (I do hope in time) that I might show my gratitude better. With sincere wishes for the success of the work (for just see how practically we come to trust to poetical justices after all our theories — I, I mean, and mine!), and with respect and esteem for the writer,

  I remain very truly yours,

  ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT.

  To Mrs. Jameson

  50 Wimpole Street: December 1, 1845.

  My dear Mrs. Jameson, — I receive your letter, as I must do every sign of your being near and inclined to think of me in kindness, gladly, and assure you at once that whenever you can spend a half-hour on me you will find me enough myself to have a true pleasure in welcoming you, say any day except next Saturday or the Monday immediately following.

  As soon as I heard of your return to England I ventured to hope that some good might come of it to me in my room here, besides the general good, which I look for with the rest of the public, when the censer swings back into the midst of us again. And how good of you, dear Mrs. Jameson, to think of me there where the perfumes were set burning; it makes me glad and grand that you should have been able to do so. Also the kind wishes which came with the thoughts (you say) were not in vain, for I have been very idle and very well; the angel of the summer has done more for me even than usual, and till the last wave of his wing I took myself to be quite well and at liberty, and even now I am as well as anyone can be who has heard the prison door shut for a whole winter at least, and knows it to be the only English alternative of a grave. Which is a gloomy way of saying that I am well but forced to shut myself up with disagreeable precautions all round, and I ought to be gratified instead of gloomy. Believe me that I shall be so when you come to see me, remaining in the meanwhile