Month: February 2017

50 Wimpole Street: Feb. 27, 1845.

Yes, but, dear Mr. Browning, I want the spring according to the new ‘style’ (mine), and not the old one of you and the rest of the poets. To me unhappily, the snowdrop is much the same as the snow — it feels as cold underfoot — and I have grown sceptical about ‘the voice of the turtle,’ the east winds blow so loud. April is a Parthian with a dart, and May (at least the early part of it) a spy in the camp. That is my idea of what you call spring; mine, in the new style! A little later comes my spring; and indeed after such severe weather, from which I have just escaped with my life, I may thank it for coming at all. Continue reading “#10”

Wednesday Morning  – – Spring!

February 26, 1845.

Real warm Spring, dear Miss Barrett, and the birds know it; and in Spring I shall see you, surely see you  – – for when did I once fail to get whatever I had set my heart upon? As I ask myself sometimes, with a strange fear.

I took up this paper to write a great deal  – – now, I don’t think I shall write much  – – ‘I shall see you,’ I say!

That ‘Luria’ you enquire about, Continue reading “#9”

50 Wimpole Street, February 17, 1845.

Dear Mr. Browning, — To begin with the end (which is only characteristic of the perverse like myself), I assure you I read your handwriting as currently as I could read the clearest type from font. If I had practised the art of reading your letters all my life, I couldn’t do it better. And then I approve of small MS. upon principle. Think of what an immense quantity of physical energy must go to the making of those immense sweeping handwritings achieved by some persons  . . . Continue reading “#8”

Hatcham, Tuesday.
February 11, 1845.

Dear Miss Barrett,  – – People would hardly ever tell falsehoods about a matter, if they had been let tell truth in the beginning, for it is hard to prophane one’s very self, and nobody who has, for instance, used certain words and ways to a mother or a father could, even if by the devil’s help he would, reproduce or mimic them with any effect to anybody else that was to be won over  – – and so, if ‘I love you’ were always outspoken when it might be, there would, I suppose, be no fear of its desecration at any after time. But lo! only last night, Continue reading “#7”

50 Walpole Street: Feb. 3, 1845.

Why how could I hate to write to you, dear Mr. Browning? Could you believe in such a thing? If nobody likes writing to everybody (except such professional letter writers as you and I are not), yet everybody likes writing to somebody, and it would be strange and contradictory if I were not always delighted both to hear from you and to write to you, this talking upon paper being as good a social pleasure as another, when our means are somewhat straitened. As for me, Continue reading “#6”