Wednesday Morning.
April 30, 1845.
If you did but know, dear Miss Barrett, how the ‘full stop’ after ‘Morning’ just above, has turned out the fullest of stops, – – and how for about a quarter of an hour since the ink dried I have been reasoning out the why and wherefore of the stopping, the wisdom of it, and the folly of it . . ..
By this time you see what you have got in me – – You ask me questions, ‘if I like novels,’ ‘if the “Improvisatore” is not good,’ ‘if travel and sightseeing do not effect this and that for one,’ and ‘what I am devising – – play or poem,’ – – and I shall not say I could not answer at all manner of lengths – – but, let me only begin some good piece of writing of the kind, and . . . no, you shall have it, have what I was going to tell you stops such judicious beginnings, – – in a parallel case, out of which your ingenuity shall, please, pick the meaning – – There is a story of D’Israeli’s, an old one, with an episode of strange interest, or so I found it years ago, – – well, you go breathlessly on with the people of it, page after page, till at last the end must come, you feel – – and the tangled threads draw to one, and an out-of-door feast in the woods helps you . . . that is, helps them, the people, wonderfully on, – – and, lo, dinner is done, and Vivian Grey is here, and Violet Fane there, – – and a detachment of the party is drafted off to go catch butterflies, and only two or three stop behind. At this moment, Mr. Somebody, a good man and rather the lady’s uncle, ‘in answer to a question from Violet, drew from his pocket a small neatly written manuscript, and, seating himself on an inverted wine-cooler, proceeded to read the following brief remarks upon the characteristics of the Moeso-gothic literature’ – – this ends the page, – – which you don’t turn at once! But when you do, in bitterness of soul, turn it, you read – – ‘On consideration, I’ (Ben, himself) ‘shall keep them for Mr. Colburn’s New Magazine‘ – – and deeply you draw thankful breath! (Note this ‘parallel case’ of mine is pretty sure to meet the usual fortune of my writings – – you will ask what it means – – and this it means, or should mean, all of it, instance and reasoning and all, – – that I am naturally earnest, in earnest about whatever thing I do, and little able to write about one thing while I think of another) – –
I think I will really write verse to you some day – – this day, it is quite clear I had better give up trying.
No, spite of all the lines in the world, I will make an end of it, as Ophelia with her swan’s-song, – – for it grows too absurd. But remember that I write letters to nobody but you, and that I want method and much more. That book you like so, the Danish novel, must be full of truth and beauty, to judge from the few extracts I have seen in Reviews. That a Dane should write so, confirms me in an old belief – – that Italy is stuff for the use of the North, and no more – – pure Poetry there is none, nearly as possible none, in Dante even – – material for Poetry in the pitifullest romancist of their thousands, on the contrary – – strange that those great wide black eyes should stare nothing out of the earth that lies before them! Alfieri, with even grey eyes, and a life of travel, writes you some fifteen tragedies as colourless as salad grown under a garden glass with matting over it – – as free, that is, from local colouring, touches of the soil they are said to spring from, – – think of ‘Saulle,’ and his Greek attempts!
I expected to see Mr. Kenyon, at a place where I was last week, but he kept away. Here is the bad wind back again, and the black sky. I am sure I never knew till now whether the East or West or South were the quarter to pray for – – But surely the weather was a little better last week, and you, were you not better? And do you know – – but it’s all self-flattery I believe, – – still I cannot help fancying the East wind does my head harm too!
Ever yours faithfully,
R. Browning.