Day: December 20, 2017

Saturday.

December 20, 1845.

I have your letter now, and now I am sorry I sent mine. If I wrote that you had ‘forgotten to write,’ I did not mean it; not a word! If I had meant it I should not have written it. But it would have been better for every reason to have waited just a little longer before writing at all. A besetting sin of mine is an impatience which makes people laugh when it does not entangle their silks, pull their knots tighter, and tear their books in cutting them open.

How right you are about Mr. Lowell! He has a refined fancy and is graceful for an American critic, but the truth is, otherwise, that he knows nothing of English poetry or the next thing to nothing, and has merely had a dream of the early dramatists. The amount of his reading in that direction is an article in the Retrospective Review which contains extracts; and he re-extracts the extracts, re-quotes the quotations, and, ‘a pede Herculem,’ from the foot infers the man, or rather from the sandal-string of the foot, infers and judges the soul of the man — it is comparative anatomy under the most speculative conditions. How a writer of his talents and pretensions could make up his mind to make up a book on such slight substratum, is a curious proof of the state of literature in America. Do you not think so? Why a lecturer on the English Dramatists for a ‘Young Ladies’ academy’ here in England, might take it to be necessary to have better information than he could gather from an odd volume of an old review! And then, Mr. Lowell’s naïveté in showing his authority, — as if the Elizabethan poets lay mouldering in inaccessible manuscript somewhere below the lowest deep of Shakespeare’s grave, — is curious beyond the rest! Altogether, the fact is an epigram on the surface-literature of America. As you say, their books do not suit us: — Mrs. Markham might as well send her compendium of the History of France to M. Thiers. If they knew more they could not give parsley crowns to their own native poets when there is greater merit among the rabbits. Mrs. Sigourney has just sent me — just this morning — her ‘Scenes in my Native Land’ and, peeping between the uncut leaves, I read of the poet Hillhouse, of ‘sublime spirit and Miltonic energy,’ standing in ‘the temple of Fame’ as if it were built on purpose for him. I suppose he is like most of the American poets, who are shadows of the true, as flat as a shadow, as colourless as a shadow, as lifeless and as transitory. Mr. Lowell himself is, in his verse-books, poetical, if not a poet — and certainly this little book we are talking of is grateful enough in some ways — you would call it a pretty book — would you not? Two or three letters I have had from him  . . . all very kind! — and that reminds me, alas! of some ineffable ingratitude on my own part! When one’s conscience grows too heavy, there is nothing for it but to throw it away! —

Do you remember how I tried to tell you what he said of you, and how you would not let me?

Mr. Mathews said of him, having met him once in society, that he was the concentration of conceit in appearance and manner. But since then they seem to be on better terms.

Where is the meaning, pray, of E.B.C.? your meaning, I mean?

My true initials are E.B.M.B. — my long name, as opposed to my short one, being Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett! — there’s a full length to take away one’s breath! — Christian name  . . . Elizabeth Barrett: — surname, Moulton Barrett. So long it is, that to make it portable, I fell into the habit of doubling it up and packing it closely,  . . . and of forgetting that I was a Moulton, altogether. One might as well write the alphabet as all four initials. Yet our family-name is Moulton Barrett, and my brothers reproach me sometimes for sacrificing the governorship of an old town in Norfolk with a little honourable verdigris from the Heralds’ Office. As if I cared for the Retrospective Review! Nevertheless it is true that I would give ten towns in Norfolk (if I had them) to own some purer lineage than that of the blood of the slave! Cursed we are from generation to generation! — I seem to hear the ‘Commination Service.’

May God bless you always, always! beyond the always of this world! —

Your

E.B.B.

Mr. Dickens’s ‘Cricket’ sings repetitions, and, with considerable beauty, is extravagant. It does not appear to me by any means one of his most successful productions, though quite free from what was reproached as bitterness and one-sidedness, last year.

You do not say how you are — not a word! And you are wrong in saying that you ‘ought to have written’ — as if ‘ought’ could be in place so! You never ‘ought’ to write to me you know! or rather  . . . if you ever think you ought, you ought not! Which is a speaking of mysteries on my part!

 

Saturday.

December 20, 1845.

I do not, nor will not think, dearest, of ever ‘making you happy’  – – I can imagine no way of working that end, which does not go straight to my own truest, only true happiness  – – yet in every such effort there is implied some distinction, some supererogatory grace, or why speak of it at all? You it is, are my happiness, and all that ever can be: you  – – dearest!

But never, if you would not, what you will not do I know, never revert to that frightful wish. ‘Disappoint me?’ ‘I speak what I know and testify what I have seen’  – – you shall ‘mystery’ again and again  – – I do not dispute that, but do not you dispute, neither, that mysteries are. But it is simply because I do most justice to the mystical part of what I feel for you, because I consent to lay most stress on that fact of facts that I love you, beyond admiration, and respect, and esteem and affection even, and do not adduce any reason which stops short of accounting for that, whatever else it would account for, because I do this, in pure logical justice  – – you are able to turn and wonder (if you do  . . . now) what causes it all! My love, only wait, only believe in me, and it cannot be but I shall, little by little, become known to you  – – after long years, perhaps, but still one day: I would say this now  – – but I will write more to-morrow. God bless my sweetest  – – ever, love, I am your

R.B.

But my letter came last night, did it not?

Another thing  – – no, to-morrow  – – for time presses, and, in all cases, Tuesday  – – remember!

 

Thursday Evening.

December 20, 1845.

Dearest, you know how to say what makes me happiest, you who never think, you say, of making me happy! For my part I do not think of it either; I simply understand that you are my happiness, and that therefore you could not make another happiness for me, such as would be worth having — not even you! Why, how could you? That was in my mind to speak yesterday, but I could not speak it — to write it, is easier.

Talking of happiness — shall I tell you? Promise not to be angry and I will tell you. I have thought sometimes that, if I considered myself wholly, I should choose to die this winter — now — before I had disappointed you in anything. But because you are better and dearer and more to be considered than I, I do not choose it. I cannot choose to give you any pain, even on the chance of its being a less pain, a less evil, than what may follow perhaps (who can say?), if I should prove the burden of your life.

For if you make me happy with some words, you frighten me with others — as with the extravagance yesterday — and seriously — too seriously, when the moment for smiling at them is past — I am frightened, I tremble! When you come to know me as well as I know myself, what can save me, do you think, from disappointing and displeasing you? I ask the question, and find no answer.

It is a poor answer, to say that I can do one thing well  . . . that I have one capacity largely. On points of the general affections, I have in thought applied to myself the words of Mme. de Stael, not fretfully, I hope, not complainingly, I am sure (I can thank God for most affectionate friends!) not complainingly, yet mournfully and in profound conviction — those words — ‘jamais je n’ai pas été aimée comme j’aime.’ The capacity of loving is the largest of my powers I think — I thought so before knowing you — and one form of feeling. And although any woman might love you — every woman, — with understanding enough to discern you by — (oh, do not fancy that I am unduly magnifying mine office) yet I persist in persuading myself that! Because I have the capacity, as I said — and besides I owe more to you than others could, it seems to me: let me boast of it. To many, you might be better than all things while one of all things: to me you are instead of all — to many, a crowning happiness — to me, the happiness itself. From out of the deep dark pits men see the stars more gloriously — and de profundis amavi —

It is a very poor answer! Almost as poor an answer as yours could be if I were to ask you to teach me to please you always; or rather, how not to displease you, disappoint you, vex you — what if all those things were in my fate?

And — (to begin!) — I am disappointed to-night. I expected a letter which does not come — and I had felt so sure of having a letter to-night  . . . unreasonably sure perhaps, which means doubly sure.

Friday. — Remember you have had two notes of mine, and that it is certainly not my turn to write, though I am writing.

Scarcely you had gone on Wednesday when Mr. Kenyon came. It seemed best to me, you know, that you should go — I had the presentiment of his footsteps — and so near they were, that if you had looked up the street in leaving the door, you must have seen him! Of course I told him of your having been here and also at his house; whereupon he enquired eagerly if you meant to dine with him, seeming disappointed by my negative. ‘Now I had told him,’ he said  . . . and murmured on to himself loud enough for me to hear, that ‘it would have been a peculiar pleasure &c.’ The reason I have not seen him lately is the eternal ‘business,’ just as you thought, and he means to come ‘oftener now,’ so nothing is wrong as I half thought.

As your letter does not come it is a good opportunity for asking what sort of ill humour, or (to be more correct) bad temper, you most particularly admire — sulkiness? — the divine gift of sitting aloof in a cloud like any god for three weeks together perhaps — pettishness?  . . . which will get you up a storm about a crooked pin or a straight one either? obstinacy? — which is an agreeable form of temper I can assure you, and describes itself — or the good open passion which lies on the floor and kicks, like one of my cousins? — Certainly I prefer the last, and should, I think, prefer it (as an evil), even if it were not the born weakness of my own nature — though I humbly confess (to you, who seem to think differently of these things) that never since I was a child have I upset all the chairs and tables and thrown the books about the room in a fury — I am afraid I do not even ‘kick,’ like my cousin, now. Those demonstrations were all done by the ‘light of other days’ — not a very full light, I used to be accustomed to think: — but you, — you think otherwise, you take a fury to be the opposite of ‘indifference,’ as if there could be no such thing as self-control! Now for my part, I do believe that the worst-tempered persons in the world are less so through sensibility than selfishness — they spare nobody’s heart, on the ground of being themselves pricked by a straw. Now see if it isn’t so. What, after all, is a good temper but generosity in trifles — and what, without it, is the happiness of life? We have only to look round us. I saw a woman, once, burst into tears, because her husband cut the bread and butter too thick. I saw that with my own eyes. Was it sensibility, I wonder! They were at least real tears and ran down her cheeks. ‘You always do it’! she said.

Why how you must sympathize with the heroes and heroines of the French romances (do you sympathize with them very much?) when at the slightest provocation they break up the tables and chairs, (a degree beyond the deeds of my childhood! — I only used to upset them) break up the tables and chairs and chiffoniers, and dash the china to atoms. The men do the furniture, and the women the porcelain: and pray observe that they always set about this as a matter of course! When they have broken everything in the room, they sink down quite (and very naturally) abattus. I remember a particular case of a hero of Frederic Soulié’s, who, in the course of an ’emotion,’ takes up a chair unconsciously, and breaks it into very small pieces, and then proceeds with his soliloquy. Well! — the clearest idea this excites in me, is of the low condition in Paris, of moral government and of upholstery. Because — just consider for yourself — how you would succeed in breaking to pieces even a three-legged stool if it were properly put together — as stools are in England — just yourself, without a hammer and a screw! You might work at it comme quatre, and find it hard to finish, I imagine. And then as a demonstration, a child of six years old might demonstrate just so (in his sphere) and be whipped accordingly.

How I go on writing! — and you, who do not write at all! — two extremes, one set against the other.

But I must say, though in ever such an ill temper (which you know is just the time to select for writing a panegyric upon good temper) that I am glad you do not despise my own right name too much, because I never was called Elizabeth by any one who loved me at all, and I accept the omen. So little it seems my name that if a voice said suddenly ‘Elizabeth,’ I should as soon turn round as my sisters would  . . . no sooner. Only, my own right name has been complained of for want of euphony  . . . Ba  . . . now and then it has — and Mr. Boyd makes a compromise and calls me Elibet, because nothing could induce him to desecrate his organs accustomed to Attic harmonies, with a Ba. So I am glad, and accept the omen.

But I give you no credit for not thinking that I may forget you  . . . I! As if you did not see the difference! Why, I could not even forget to write to you, observe! —

Whenever you write, say how you are. Were you wet on Wednesday?

Your own —