Author: EBB

Thursday Night.
[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]

Ever dearest — how you can write touching things to me; and how my whole being vibrates, as a string, to these! How have I deserved from God and you all that I thank you for? Too unworthy I am of all! Only, it was not, dearest beloved, what you feared, that was ‘horrible,’ it was what you supposed, rather! It was a mistake of yours. And now we will not talk of it any more.

Friday morning. — For the rest, I will think as you desire: but I have thought a great deal, and there are certainties which I know; and I hope we both are aware that nothing can be more hopeless than our position in some relations and aspects, though you do not guess perhaps that the very approach to the subject is shut up by dangers, and that from the moment of a suspicion entering one mind, we should be able to meet never again in this room, nor to have intercourse by letter through the ordinary channel. I mean, that letters of yours, addressed to me here, would infallibly be stopped and destroyed — if not opened. Therefore it is advisable to hurry on nothing — on these grounds it is advisable. What should I do if I did not see you nor hear from you, without being able to feel that it was for your happiness? What should I do for a month even? And then, I might be thrown out of the window or its equivalent — I look back shuddering to the dreadful scenes in which poor Henrietta was involved who never offended as I have offended  . . . years ago which seem as present as to-day. She had forbidden the subject to be referred to until that consent was obtained — and at a word she gave up all — at a word. In fact she had no true attachment, as I observed to Arabel at the time — a child never submitted more meekly to a revoked holiday. Yet how she was made to suffer. Oh, the dreadful scenes! and only because she had seemed to feel a little. I told you, I think, that there was an obliquity — an eccentricity, or something beyond — on one class of subjects. I hear how her knees were made to ring upon the floor, now! she was carried out of the room in strong hysterics, and I, who rose up to follow her, though I was quite well at that time and suffered only by sympathy, fell flat down upon my face in a fainting-fit. Arabel thought I was dead.

I have tried to forget it all — but now I must remember — and throughout our intercourse I have remembered. It is necessary to remember so much as to avoid such evils as are inevitable, and for this reason I would conceal nothing from you. Do you remember, besides, that there can be no faltering on my ‘part,’ and that, if I should remain well, which is not proved yet, I will do for you what you please and as you please to have it done. But there is time for considering!

Only  . . . as you speak of ‘counsel,’ I will take courage to tell you that my sisters know, Arabel is in most of my confidences, and being often in the room with me, taxed me with the truth long ago — she saw that I was affected from some cause — and I told her. We are as safe with both of them as possible  . . . and they thoroughly understand that if there should be any change it would not be your fault . . .. I made them understand that thoroughly. From themselves I have received nothing but the most smiling words of kindness and satisfaction (I thought I might tell you so much), they have too much tenderness for me to fail in it now. My brothers, it is quite necessary not to draw into a dangerous responsibility. I have felt that from the beginning, and shall continue to feel it — though I hear and can observe that they are full of suspicions and conjectures, which are never unkindly expressed. I told you once that we held hands the faster in this house for the weight over our heads. But the absolute knowledge would be dangerous for my brothers: with my sisters it is different, and I could not continue to conceal from them what they had under their eyes; and then, Henrietta is in a like position. It was not wrong of me to let them know it? — no?

Yet of what consequence is all this to the other side of the question? What, if you should give pain and disappointment where you owe such pure gratitude. But we need not talk of these things now. Only you have more to consider than I, I imagine, while the future comes on.

Dearest, let me have my way in one thing: let me see you on Tuesday instead of on Monday — on Tuesday at the old hour. Be reasonable and consider. Tuesday is almost as near as the day before it; and on Monday, I shall be hurried at first, lest Papa should be still in the house, (no harm, but an excuse for nervousness: and I can’t quote a noble Roman as you can, to the praise of my conscience!) and you will be hurried at last, lest you should not be in time for Mr. Forster. On the other hand, I will not let you be rude to the Daily News,  . . . no, nor to the Examiner. Come on Tuesday, then, instead of Monday, and let us have the usual hours in a peaceable way, — and if there is no obstacle, — that is, if Mr. Kenyon or some equivalent authority should not take note of your being here on Tuesday, why you can come again on the Saturday afterwards — I do not see the difficulty. Are we agreed? On Tuesday, at three o’clock. Consider, besides, that the Monday arrangement would hurry you in every manner, and leave you fagged for the evening — no, I will not hear of it. Not on my account, not on yours!

Think of me on Monday instead, and write before. Are not these two lawful letters? And do not they deserve an answer?

My life was ended when I knew you, and if I survive myself it is for your sake: — that resumes all my feelings and intentions in respect to you. No ‘counsel’ could make the difference of a grain of dust in the balance. It is so, and not otherwise. If you changed towards me, it would be better for you I believe — and I should be only where I was before. While you do not change, I look to you for my first affections and my first duty — and nothing but your bidding me, could make me look away.

In the midst of this, Mr. Kenyon came and I felt as if I could not talk to him. No — he does not ‘see how it is.’ He may have passing thoughts sometimes, but they do not stay long enough to produce — even an opinion. He asked if you had been here long.

It may be wrong and ungrateful, but I do wish sometimes that the world were away — even the good Kenyon-aspect of the world.

And so, once more — may God bless you!

I am wholly yours —

Tuesday, remember! And say that you agree.

Thursday Morning.

January 17, 1846.

Our letters have crossed; and, mine being the longest, I have a right to expect another directly, I think. I have been calculating: and it seems to me — now what I am going to say may take its place among the paradoxes, — that I gain most by the short letters. Last week the only long one came last, and I was quite contented that the ‘old friend’ should come to see you on Saturday and make you send me two instead of the single one I looked for: it was a clear gain, the little short note, and the letter arrived all the same. I remember, when I was a child, liking to have two shillings and sixpence better than half a crown — and now it is the same with this fairy money, which will never turn all into pebbles, or beans, whatever the chronicles may say of precedents.

Arabel did tell Mr. Kenyon (she told me) that ‘Mr. Browning would soon go away’ — in reply to an observation of his, that ‘he would not stay as I had company’; and altogether it was better, — the lamp made it look late. But you do not appear in the least remorseful for being tempted of my black devil, my familiar, to ask such questions and leave me under such an impression — ‘mens conscia recti’ too!! —

And Mr. Kenyon will not come until next Monday perhaps. How am I? But I am too well to be asked about. Is it not a warm summer? The weather is as ‘miraculous’ as the rest, I think. It is you who are unwell and make people uneasy, dearest. Say how you are, and promise me to do what is right and try to be better. The walking, the changing of the air, the leaving off Luria  . . . do what is right, I earnestly beseech you. The other day, I heard of Tennyson being ill again,  . . . too ill to write a simple note to his friend Mr. Venables, who told George. A little more than a year ago, it would have been no worse a thing to me to hear of your being ill than to hear of his being ill! — How the world has changed since then! To me, I mean.

Did I say that ever  . . . that ‘I knew you must be tired?’ And it was not even so true as that the coming event threw its shadow before?

Thursday night. — I have begun on another sheet — I could not write here what was in my heart — yet I send you this paper besides to show how I was writing to you this morning. In the midst of it came a female friend of mine and broke the thread — the visible thread, that is.

And now, even now, at this safe eight o’clock, I could not be safe from somebody, who, in her goodnature and my illfortune, must come and sit by me — and when my letter was come — ‘why wouldn’t I read it? What wonderful politeness on my part.’ She would not and could not consent to keep me from reading my letter. She would stand up by the fire rather.

No, no, three times no. Brummel got into the carriage before the Regent,  . . . (didn’t he?) but I persisted in not reading my letter in the presence of my friend. A notice on my punctiliousness may be put down to-night in her ‘private diary.’ I kept the letter in my hand and only read it with those sapient ends of the fingers which the mesmerists make so much ado about, and which really did seem to touch a little of what was inside. Not all, however, happily for me! Or my friend would have seen in my eyes what they did not see.

May God bless you! Did I ever say that I had an objection to read the verses at six years old — or see the drawings either? I am reasonable, you observe! Only, ‘Pauline,’ I must have some day — why not without the emendations? But if you insist on them, I will agree to wait a little — if you promise at last to let me see the book, which I will not show. Some day, then! you shall not be vexed nor hurried for the day — some day. Am I not generous? And I was ‘precocious’ too, and used to make rhymes over my bread and milk when I was nearly a baby  . . . only really it was mere echo-verse, that of mine, and had nothing of mark or of indication, such as I do not doubt that yours had. I used to write of virtue with a large ‘V,’ and ‘Oh Muse’ with a harp, and things of that sort. At nine years old I wrote what I called ‘an epic’ — and at ten, various tragedies, French and English, which we used to act in the nursery. There was a French ‘hexameter’ tragedy on the subject of Regulus — but I cannot even smile to think of it now, there are so many grave memories — which time has made grave — hung around it. How I remember sitting in ‘my house under the sideboard,’ in the dining-room, concocting one of the soliloquies beginning

Poor Regulus! — Can’t you conceive how fine it must have been altogether? And these were my ‘maturer works,’ you are to understand,  . . . and ‘the moon was bright at ten o’clock at night’ years before. As to the gods and goddesses, I believed in them all quite seriously, and reconciled them to Christianity, which I believed in too after a fashion, as some greater philosophers have done — and went out one day with my pinafore full of little sticks (and a match from the housemaid’s cupboard) to sacrifice to the blue-eyed Minerva who was my favourite goddess on the whole because she cared for Athens. As soon as I began to doubt about my goddesses, I fell into a vague sort of general scepticism,  . . . and though I went on saying ‘the Lord’s prayer’ at nights and mornings, and the ‘Bless all my kind friends’ afterwards, by the childish custom  . . . yet I ended this liturgy with a supplication which I found in ‘King’s Memoirs’ and which took my fancy and met my general views exactly . . .. ‘O God, if there be a God, save my soul if I have a soul.’ Perhaps the theology of many thoughtful children is scarcely more orthodox than this: but indeed it is wonderful to myself sometimes how I came to escape, on the whole, as well as I have done, considering the commonplaces of education in which I was set, with strength and opportunity for breaking the bonds all round into liberty and license. Papa used to say  . . . ‘Don’t read Gibbon’s history — it’s not a proper book. Don’t read “Tom Jones” — and none of the books on this side, mind!’ So I was very obedient and never touched the books on that side, and only read instead Tom Paine’s ‘Age of Reason,’ and Voltaire’s ‘Philosophical Dictionary,’ and Hume’s ‘Essays,’ and Werther, and Rousseau, and Mary Wollstonecraft  . . . books, which I was never suspected of looking towards, and which were not ‘on that side’ certainly, but which did as well.

How I am writing! — And what are the questions you did not answer? I shall remember them by the answers I suppose — but your letters always have a fulness to me and I never seem to wish for what is not in them.

But this is the end indeed.

 

Tuesday Night.

January 14, 1846.

Ah Mr. Kenyon! — how he vexed me to-day. To keep away all the ten days before, and to come just at the wrong time after all! It was better for you, I suppose — believe — to go with him down-stairs — yes, it certainly was better: it was disagreeable enough to be very wise! Yet I, being addicted to every sort of superstition turning to melancholy, did hate so breaking off in the middle of that black thread  . . . (do you remember what we were talking of when they opened the door?) that I was on the point of saying ‘Stay one moment,’ which I should have repented afterwards for the best of good reasons. Oh, I should have liked to have ‘fastened off’ that black thread, and taken one stitch with a blue or a green one!

You do not remember what we were talking of? what you, rather, were talking of? And what I remember, at least, because it is exactly the most unkind and hard thing you ever said to me — ever dearest, so I remember it by that sign! That you should say such a thing to me — ! think what it was, for indeed I will not write it down here — it would be worse than Mr. Powell! Only the foolishness of it (I mean, the foolishness of it alone) saves it, smooths it to a degree! — the foolishness being the same as if you asked a man where he would walk when he lost his head. Why, if you had asked St. Denis beforehand, he would have thought it a foolish question.

And you! — you, who talk so finely of never, never doubting; of being such an example in the way of believing and trusting — it appears, after all, that you have an imagination apprehensive (or comprehensive) of ‘glass bottles’ like other sublunary creatures, and worse than some of them. For mark, that I never went any farther than to the stone-wall hypothesis of your forgetting me! — I always stopped there — and never climbed, to the top of it over the broken-bottle fortification, to see which way you meant to walk afterwards. And you, to ask me so coolly — think what you asked me. That you should have the heart to ask such a question!

And the reason — ! and it could seem a reasonable matter of doubt to you whether I would go to the south for my health’s sake! — And I answered quite a common ‘no’ I believe — for you bewildered me for the moment — and I have had tears in my eyes two or three times since, just through thinking back of it all  . . . of your asking me such questions. Now did I not tell you when I first knew you, that I was leaning out of the window? True, that was — I was tired of living  . . . unaffectedly tired. All I cared to live for was to do better some of the work which, after all, was out of myself, and which I had to reach across to do. But I told you. Then, last year, for duty’s sake I would have consented to go to Italy! but if you really fancy that I would have struggled in the face of all that difficulty — or struggled, indeed, anywise, to compass such an object as that — except for the motive of your caring for it and me — why you know nothing of me after all — nothing! And now, take away the motive, and I am where I was — leaning out of the window again. To put it in plainer words (as you really require information), I should let them do what they liked to me till I was dead — only I wouldn’t go to Italy — if anybody proposed Italy out of contradiction. In the meantime I do entreat you never to talk of such a thing to me any more.

You know, if you were to leave me by your choice and for your happiness, it would be another thing. It would be very lawful to talk of that.

And observe! I perfectly understand that you did not think of doubting me — so to speak! But you thought, all the same, that if such a thing happened, I should be capable of doing so and so.

Well — I am not quarrelling — I am uneasy about your head rather. That pain in it — what can it mean? I do beseech you to think of me just so much as will lead you to take regular exercise every day, never missing a day; since to walk till you are tired on Tuesday and then not to walk at all until Friday is not taking exercise, nor the thing required. Ah, if you knew how dreadfully natural every sort of evil seems to my mind, you would not laugh at me for being afraid. I do beseech you, dearest! And then, Sir John Hanmer invited you, besides Mr. Warburton, and suppose you went to him for a very little time — just for the change of air? or if you went to the coast somewhere. Will you consider, and do what is right, for me? I do not propose that you should go to Italy, observe, nor any great thing at which you might reasonably hesitate. And — did you ever try smoking as a remedy? If the nerves of the head chiefly are affected it might do you good, I have been thinking. Or without the smoking, to breathe where tobacco is burnt, — that calms the nervous system in a wonderful manner, as I experienced once myself when, recovering from an illness, I could not sleep, and tried in vain all sorts of narcotics and forms of hop-pillow and inhalation, yet was tranquillized in one half hour by a pinch of tobacco being burnt in a shovel near me. Should you mind it very much? the trying I mean?

Wednesday. — For ‘Pauline‘ — when I had named it to you I was on the point of sending for the book to the booksellers — then suddenly I thought to myself that I should wait and hear whether you very, very much would dislike my reading it. See now! Many readers have done virtuously, but I, (in this virtue I tell you of) surpassed them all! — And now, because I may, I ‘must read it’: — and as there are misprints to be corrected, will you do what is necessary, or what you think is necessary, and bring me the book on Monday? Do not send — bring it. In the meanwhile I send back the review which I forgot to give to you yesterday in the confusion. Perhaps you have not read it in your house, and in any case there is no use in my keeping it.

Shall I hear from you, I wonder! Oh my vain thoughts, that will not keep you well! And, ever since you have known me, you have been worse — that, you confess! — and what if it should be the crossing of my bad star? You of the ‘Crown’ and the ‘Lyre,’ to seek influences from the ‘chair of Cassiopeia’! I hope she will forgive me for using her name so! I might as well have compared her to a professorship of poetry in the university of Oxford, according to the latest election. You know, the qualification, there, is, — not to be a poet.

How vexatious, yesterday! The stars (talking of them) were out of spherical tune, through the damp weather, perhaps, and that scarlet sun was a sign! First Mr. Chorley! — and last, dear Mr. Kenyon; who will say tiresome things without any provocation. Did you walk with him his way, or did he walk with you yours? or did you only walk down-stairs together?

Write to me! Remember that it is a month to Monday. Think of your very own, who bids God bless you when she prays best for herself! —

E.B.B.

Say particularly how you are — now do not omit it. And will you have Miss Martineau’s books when I can lend them to you? Just at this moment I dare not, because they are reading them here.

Let Mr. Mackay have his full proprietary in his ‘Dead Pan’ — which is quite a different conception of the subject, and executed in blank verse too. I have no claims against him, I am sure!

But for the man! — To call him a poet! A prince and potentate of Commonplaces, such as he is! — I have seen his name in the Athenæum attached to a lyric or two  . . . poems, correctly called fugitive, — more than usually fugitive — but I never heard before that his hand was in the prose department.

 

Saturday.

January 10, 1846.

Kindest and dearest you are! — that is ‘my secret’ and for the others, I leave them to you! — only it is no secret that I should and must be glad to have the words you sent with the book, — which I should have seen at all events be sure, whether you had sent it or not. Should I not, do you think? And considering what the present generation of critics really is, the remarks on you may stand, although it is the dreariest impotency to complain of the want of flesh and blood and of human sympathy in general. Yet suffer them to say on — it is the stamp on the critical knife. There must be something eminently stupid, or farewell criticdom! And if anything more utterly untrue could be said than another, it is precisely that saying, which Mr. Mackay stands up to catch the reversion of! Do you indeed suppose that Heraud could have done this? I scarcely can believe it, though some things are said rightly as about the ‘intellectuality,’ and how you stand first by the brain, — which is as true as truth can be. Then, I shall have ‘Pauline’ in a day or two — yes, I shall and must, and will.

The ‘Ballad Poems and Fancies,’ the article calling itself by that name, seems indeed to be Mr. Chorley’s, and is one of his very best papers, I think. There is to me a want of colour and thinness about his writings in general, with a grace and savoir faire nevertheless, and always a rightness and purity of intention. Observe what he says of ‘many-sidedness’ seeming to trench on opinion and principle. That, he means for himself I know, for he has said to me that through having such largeness of sympathy he has been charged with want of principle — yet ‘many-sidedness’ is certainly no word for him. The effect of general sympathies may be evolved both from an elastic fancy and from breadth of mind, and it seems to me that he rather bends to a phase of humanity and literature than contains it — than comprehends it. Every part of a truth implies the whole; and to accept truth all round, does not mean the recognition of contradictory things: universal sympathies cannot make a man inconsistent, but, on the contrary, sublimely consistent. A church tower may stand between the mountains and the sea, looking to either, and stand fast: but the willow-tree at the gable-end, blown now toward the north and now toward the south while its natural leaning is due east or west, is different altogether  . . . as different as a willow-tree from a church tower.

Ah, what nonsense! There is only one truth for me all this time, while I talk about truth and truth. And do you know, when you have told me to think of you, I have been feeling ashamed of thinking of you so much, of thinking of only you — which is too much, perhaps. Shall I tell you? it seems to me, to myself, that no man was ever before to any woman what you are to me — the fulness must be in proportion, you know, to the vacancy  . . . and only I know what was behind — the long wilderness without the blossoming rose  . . . and the capacity for happiness, like a black gaping hole, before this silver flooding. Is it wonderful that I should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve — not you — but my own fate? Was ever any one taken suddenly from a lampless dungeon and placed upon the pinnacle of a mountain, without the head turning round and the heart turning faint, as mine do? And you love me more, you say? — Shall I thank you or God? Both, — indeed — and there is no possible return from me to either of you! I thank you as the unworthy may  . . . and as we all thank God. How shall I ever prove what my heart is to you? How will you ever see it as I feel it? I ask myself in vain.

Have so much faith in me, my only beloved, as to use me simply for your own advantage and happiness, and to your own ends without a thought of any others — that is all I could ask you with any disquiet as to the granting of it — May God bless you! —

Your

Ba.

But you have the review now — surely?

The Morning Chronicle attributes the authorship of ‘Modern Poets’ (our article) to Lord John Manners — so I hear this morning. I have not yet looked at the paper myself. The Athenæum, still abominably dumb! —

 

Friday Morning.

January 9, 1846.

You never think, ever dearest, that I ‘repent’ — why what a word to use! You never could think such a word for a moment! If you were to leave me even, — to decide that it is best for you to do it, and do it, — I should accede at once of course, but never should I nor could I ‘repent’  . . . regret anything  . . . be sorry for having known you and loved you  . . . no! Which I say simply to prove that, in no extreme case, could I repent for my own sake. For yours, it might be different.

Not out of ‘generosity’ certainly, but from the veriest selfishness, I choose here, before God, any possible present evil, rather than the future consciousness of feeling myself less to you, on the whole, than another woman might have been.

Oh, these vain and most heathenish repetitions — do I not vex you by them, you whom I would always please, and never vex? Yet they force their way because you are the best noblest and dearest in the world, and because your happiness is so precious a thing.

— that, beloved, was written for me. And you, if you would make me happy, always will look at yourself from my ground and by my light, as I see you, and consent to be selfish in all things. Observe, that if I were vacillating, I should not be so weak as to tease you with the process of the vacillation: I should wait till my pendulum ceased swinging. It is precisely because I am your own, past any retraction or wish of retraction, — because I belong to you by gift and ownership, and am ready and willing to prove it before the world at a word of yours, — it is precisely for this, that I remind you too often of the necessity of using this right of yours, not to your injury, of being wise and strong for both of us, and of guarding your happiness which is mine. I have said these things ninety and nine times over, and over and over have you replied to them, — as yesterday! — and now, do not speak any more. It is only my preachment for general use, and not for particular application, — only to be ready for application. I love you from the deepest of my nature — the whole world is nothing to me beside you — and what is so precious, is not far from being terrible. ‘How dreadful is this place.’

To hear you talk yesterday, is a gladness in the thought for to-day, — it was with such a full assent that I listened to every word. It is true, I think, that we see things (things apart from ourselves) under the same aspect and colour — and it is certainly true that I have a sort of instinct by which I seem to know your views of such subjects as we have never looked at together. I know you so well (yes, I boast to myself of that intimate knowledge), that I seem to know also the idola of all things as they are in your eyes — so that never, scarcely, I am curious, — never anxious, to learn what your opinions may be. Now, have I been curious or anxious? It was enough for me to know you.

More than enough! You have ‘left undone’ — do you say? On the contrary, you have done too much, — you are too much. My cup, — which used to hold at the bottom of it just the drop of Heaven dew mingling with the absinthus, — has overflowed all this wine: and that makes me look out for the vases, which would have held it better, had you stretched out your hand for them.

Say how you are — and do take care and exercise — and write to me, dearest!

Ever your own —

Ba.

How right you are about ‘Ben Capstan,’ — and the illustration by the yellow clay. That is precisely what I meant, — said with more precision than I could say it. Art without an ideal is neither nature nor art. The question involves the whole difference between Madame Tussaud and Phidias.

I have just received Mr. Edgar Poe’s book — and I see that the deteriorating preface which was to have saved me from the vanity-fever produceable by the dedication, is cut down and away — perhaps in this particular copy only!

Tuesday is so near, as men count, that I caught myself just now being afraid lest the week should have no chance of appearing long to you! Try to let it be long to you — will you? My consistency is wonderful.

 

Wednesday.

January 7, 1846.

But some things are indeed said very truly, and as I like to read them — of you, I mean of course, — though I quite understand that it is doing no manner of good to go back so to ‘Paracelsus,’ heading the article ‘Paracelsus and other poems,’ as if the other poems could not front the reader broadly by a divine right of their own. ‘Paracelsus’ is a great work and will live, but the way to do you good with the stiffnecked public (such good as critics can do in their degree) would have been to hold fast and conspicuously the gilded horn of the last living crowned creature led by you to the altar, saying ‘Look here.’ What had he to do else, as a critic? Was he writing for the Retrospective Review? And then, no attempt at analytical criticism — or a failure, at the least attempt! all slack and in sentences! Still these are right things to say, true things, worthy things, said of you as a poet, though your poems do not find justice: and I like, for my own part, the issuing from my cathedral into your great world — the outermost temple of divinest consecration. I like that figure and association, and none the worse for its being a sufficient refutation of what he dared to impute, of your poetical sectarianism, in another place — yours!

For me, it is all quite kind enough — only I object, on my own part also, to being reviewed in the ‘Seraphim,’ when my better books are nearer: and also it always makes me a little savage when people talk of Tennysonianisms! I have faults enough as the Muses know, — but let them be my faults! When I wrote the ‘Romaunt of Margret,’ I had not read a line of Tennyson. I came from the country with my eyes only half open, and he had not penetrated where I had been living and sleeping: and in fact when I afterwards tried to reach him here in London, nothing could be found except one slim volume, so that, till the collected works appeared  . . . favente Moxon,  . . . I was ignorant of his best early productions; and not even for the rhythmetical form of my ‘Vision of the Poets,’ was I indebted to the ‘Two Voices,’ — three pages of my ‘Vision’ having been written several years ago — at the beginning of my illness — and thrown aside, and taken up again in the spring of 1844. Ah, well! there’s no use talking! In a solitary review which noticed my ‘Essay on Mind,’ somebody wrote  . . . ‘this young lady imitates Darwin’ — and I never could read Darwin,  . . . was stopped always on the second page of the ‘Loves of the Plants’ when I tried to read him to ‘justify myself in having an opinion’ — the repulsion was too strong. Yet the ‘young lady imitated Darwin’ of course, as the infallible critic said so.

And who are Mr. Helps and Miss Emma Fisher and the ‘many others,’ whose company brings one down to the right plebeianism? The ‘three poets in three distant ages born’ may well stare amazed!

After all you shall not by any means say that I upset the inkstand on your review in a passion — because pray mark that the ink has over-run some of your praises, and that if I had been angry to the overthrow of an inkstand, it would not have been precisely there. It is the second book spoilt by me within these two days — and my fingers were so dabbled in blackness yesterday that to wring my hands would only have made matters worse. Holding them up to Mr. Kenyon they looked dirty enough to befit a poetess — as black ‘as bard beseemed’ — and he took the review away with him to read and save it from more harm.

How could it be that you did not get my letter which would have reached you, I thought, on Monday evening, or on Tuesday at the very very earliest? — and how is it that I did not hear from you last night again when I was unreasonable enough to expect it? is it true that you hate writing to me?

At that word, comes the review back from dear Mr. Kenyon, and the letter which I enclose to show you how it accounts reasonably for the ink — I did it ‘in a pet,’ he thinks! And I ought to buy you a new book — certainly I ought — only it is not worth doing justice for — and I shall therefore send it back to you spoilt as it is; and you must forgive me as magnanimously as you can.

‘Omne ignotum pro magnifico’ — do you think so? I hope not indeed! vo quietando — and everything else that I ought to do — except of course, that thinking of you which is so difficult.

May God bless you. Till to-morrow!

Your own always.

Mr. Kenyon refers to ‘Festus’ — of which I had said that the fine things were worth looking for, in the design manqué.

 

Sunday.

January 6, 1846.

When you get Mr. Horne’s book you will understand how, after reading just the first and the last poems, I could not help speaking coldly a little of it — and in fact, estimating his power as much as you can do, I did think and do, that the last was unworthy of him, and that the first might have been written by a writer of one tenth of his faculty. But last night I read the ‘Monk of Swineshead Abbey’ and the ‘Three Knights of Camelott’ and ‘Bedd Gelert’ and found them all of different stuff, better, stronger, more consistent, and read them with pleasure and admiration. Do you remember this application, among the countless ones of shadow to the transiency of life? I give the first two lines for clearness —

New or not, and I don’t remember it elsewhere, it is just and beautiful I think. Think how the shadow of the windmill-sail just touches the ground on a bright windy day! the shadow of a bird flying is not faster! Then the ‘Three Knights’ has beautiful things, with more definite and distinct images than he is apt to show — for his character is a vague grand massiveness, — like Stonehenge — or at least, if ‘towers and battlements he sees’ they are ‘bosomed high’ in dusky clouds  . . . it is a ‘passion-created imagery’ which has no clear outline. In this ballad of the ‘Knights,’ and in the Monk’s too, we may look at things, as on the satyr who swears by his horns and mates not with his kind afterwards, ‘While, holding beards, they dance in pairs — and that is all excellent and reminds one of those fine sylvan festivals, ‘in Orion.’ But now tell me if you like altogether ‘Ben Capstan’ and if you consider the sailor-idiom to be lawful in poetry, because I do not indeed. On the same principle we may have Yorkshire and Somersetshire ‘sweet Doric’; and do recollect what it ended in of old, in the Blowsibella heroines. Then for the Elf story  . . . why should such things be written by men like Mr. Horne? I am vexed at it. Shakespeare and Fletcher did not write so about fairies: — Drayton did not. Look at the exquisite ‘Nymphidia,’ with its subtle sylvan consistency, and then at the lumbering coarse  . . . ‘machina intersit‘  . . . Grandmama Grey! — to say nothing of the ‘small dog’ that isn’t the ‘small boy.’ Mr. Horne succeeds better on a larger canvass, and with weightier material; with blank verse rather than lyrics. He cannot make a fine stroke. He wants subtlety and elasticity in the thought and expression. Remember, I admire him honestly and earnestly. No one has admired more than I the ‘Death of Marlowe,’ scenes in ‘Cosmo,’ and ‘Orion’ in much of it. But now tell me if you can accept with the same stretched out hand all these lyrical poems? I am going to write to him as much homage as can come truly. Who combines different faculties as you do, striking the whole octave? No one, at present in the world.

Dearest, after you went away yesterday and I began to consider, I found that there was nothing to be so over-glad about in the matter of the letters, for that, Sunday coming next to Saturday, the best now is only as good as the worst before, and I can’t hear from you, until Monday  . . . Monday! Did you think of that — you who took the credit of acceding so meekly! I shall not praise you in return at any rate. I shall have to wait  . . . till what o’clock on Monday, tempted in the meanwhile to fall into controversy against the ‘new moons and sabbath days’ and the pausing of the post in consequence.

You never guessed perhaps, what I look back to at this moment in the physiology of our intercourse, the curious double feeling I had about you — you personally, and you as the writer of these letters, and the crisis of the feeling, when I was positively vexed and jealous of myself for not succeeding better in making a unity of the two. I could not! And moreover I could not help but that the writer of the letters seemed nearer to me, long  . . . long  . . . and in spite of the postmark, than did the personal visitor who confounded me, and left me constantly under such an impression of its being all dream-work on his side, that I have stamped my feet on this floor with impatience to think of having to wait so many hours before the ‘candid’ closing letter could come with its confessional of an illusion. ‘People say,’ I used to think, ‘that women always know, and certainly I do not know, and therefore  . . . therefore.’ — The logic crushed on like Juggernaut’s car. But in the letters it was different — the dear letters took me on the side of my own ideal life where I was able to stand a little upright and look round. I could read such letters for ever and answer them after a fashion  . . . that, I felt from the beginning. But you — !

Monday. — Never too early can the light come. Thank you for my letter! Yet you look askance at me over ‘newt and toad,’ and praise so the Elf-story that I am ashamed to send you my ill humour on the same head. And you really like that? admire it? Grandmama Grey and the night cap and all? and ‘shoetye and blue sky?’ and is it really wrong of me to like certainly some touches and images, but not the whole,  . . . not the poem as a whole? I can take delight in the fantastical, and in the grotesque — but here there is a want of life and consistency, as it seems to me! — the elf is no elf and speaks no elf-tongue: it is not the right key to touch,  . . . this,  . . . for supernatural music. So I fancy at least — but I will try the poem again presently. You must be right — unless it should be your over-goodness opposed to my over-badness — I will not be sure. Or you wrote perhaps in an accidental mood of most excellent critical smoothness, such as Mr. Forster did his last Examiner in, when he gave the all-hail to Mr. Harness as one of the best dramatists of the age!! Ah no! — not such as Mr. Forster’s. Your soul does not enter into his secret — There can be nothing in common between you. For him to say such a word — he who knows — or ought to know! — And now let us agree and admire the bowing of the old ministrel over Bedd Gelert’s unfilled grave —

A poet, a friend, a generous man Mr. Horne is, even if no laureate for the fairies.

I have this moment a parcel of books via Mr. Moxon — Miss Martineau’s two volumes — and Mr. Bailey sends his ‘Festus,’ very kindly,  . . . and ‘Woman in the Nineteenth Century’ from America from a Mrs. or a Miss Fuller — how I hate those ‘Women of England,’ ‘Women and their Mission’ and the rest. As if any possible good were to be done by such expositions of rights and wrongs.

Your letter would be worth them all, if you were less you! I mean, just this letter,  . . . all alive as it is with crawling buzzing wriggling cold-blooded warm-blooded creatures  . . . as all alive as your own pedant’s book in the tree. And do you know, I think I like frogs too — particularly the very little leaping frogs, which are so high-hearted as to emulate the birds. I remember being scolded by my nurses for taking them up in my hands and letting them leap from one hand to the other. But for the toad! — why, at the end of the row of narrow beds which we called our gardens when we were children, grew an old thorn, and in the hollow of the root of the thorn, lived a toad, a great ancient toad, whom I, for one, never dared approach too nearly. That he ‘wore a jewel in his head’ I doubted nothing at all. You must see it glitter if you stooped and looked steadily into the hole. And on days when he came out and sate swelling his black sides, I never looked steadily; I would run a hundred yards round through the shrubs, deeper than knee-deep in the long wet grass and nettles, rather than go past him where he sate; being steadily of opinion, in the profundity of my natural history-learning, that if he took it into his toad’s head to spit at me I should drop down dead in a moment, poisoned as by one of the Medici.

Oh — and I had a field-mouse for a pet once, and should have joined my sisters in a rat’s nest if I had not been ill at the time (as it was, the little rats were tenderly smothered by over-love!): and blue-bottle flies I used to feed, and hated your spiders for them; yet no, not much. My aversion proper  . . . call it horror rather  . . . was for the silent, cold, clinging, gliding bat; and even now, I think, I could not sleep in the room with that strange bird-mouse-creature, as it glides round the ceiling silently, silently as its shadow does on the floor. If you listen or look, there is not a wave of the wing — the wing never waves! A bird without a feather! a beast that flies! and so cold! as cold as a fish! It is the most supernatural-seeming of natural things. And then to see how when the windows are open at night those bats come sailing  . . . without a sound — and go  . . . you cannot guess where! — fade with the night-blackness!

You have not been well — which is my first thought if not my first word. Do walk, and do not work; and think  . . . what I could be thinking of, if I did not think of you  . . . dear — dearest! ‘As the doves fly to the windows,’ so I think of you! As the prisoners think of liberty, as the dying think of Heaven, so I think of you. When I look up straight to God  . . . nothing, no one, used to intercept me — now there is you — only you under him! Do not use such words as those therefore any more, nor say that you are not to be thought of so and so. You are to be thought of every way. You must know what you are to me if you know at all what I am, — and what I should be but for you.

So  . . . love me a little, with the spiders and the toads and the lizards! love me as you love the efts — and I will believe in you as you believe  . . . in Ælian — Will that do?

Your own —

Say how you are when you write — and write.

 

January 1, 1845 [1846].

How good you are — how best! it is a favourite play of my memory to take up the thought of what you were to me (to my mind gazing!) years ago, as the poet in an abstraction — then the thoughts of you, a little clearer, in concrete personality, as Mr. Kenyon’s friend, who had dined with him on such a day, or met him at dinner on such another, and said some great memorable thing ‘on Wednesday last,’ and enquired kindly about me perhaps on Thursday, — till I was proud! and so, the thoughts of you, nearer and nearer (yet still afar!) as the Mr. Browning who meant to do me the honour of writing to me, and who did write; and who asked me once in a letter (does he remember?) ‘not to lean out of the window while his foot was on the stair!’ — to take up all those thoughts, and more than those, one after another, and tie them together with all these, which cannot be named so easily — which cannot be classed in botany and Greek. It is a nosegay of mystical flowers, looking strangely and brightly, and keeping their May-dew through the Christmases — better than even your flowers! And I am not ‘ashamed’ of mine,  . . . be very sure! no!

For the siren, I never suggested to you any such thing — why you do not pretend to have read such a suggestion in my letter certainly. That would have been most exemplarily modest of me! would it not, O Ulysses?

And you meant to write,  . . . you meant! and went to walk in ‘Poet’s lane’ instead, (in the ‘Aonius of Highgate’) which I remember to have read of — does not Hunt speak of it in his Memoirs? — and so now there is another track of light in the traditions of the place, and people may talk of the pomegranate-smell between the hedges. So you really have hills at New Cross, and not hills by courtesy? I was at Hampstead once — and there was something attractive to me in that fragment of heath with its wild smell, thrown down  . . . like a Sicilian rose from Proserpine’s lap when the car drove away,  . . . into all that arid civilization, ‘laurel-clumps and invisible visible fences,’ as you say! — and the grand, eternal smoke rising up in the distance, with its witness against nature! People grew severely in jest about cockney landscape — but is it not true that the trees and grass in the close neighbourhood of great cities must of necessity excite deeper emotion than the woods and valleys will, a hundred miles off, where human creatures ruminate stupidly as the cows do, the ‘county families’ es-chewing all men who are not ‘landed proprietors,’ and the farmers never looking higher than to the fly on the uppermost turnip-leaf! Do you know at all what English country-life is, which the English praise so, and ‘moralize upon into a thousand similes,’ as that one greatest, purest, noblest thing in the world — the purely English and excellent thing? It is to my mind simply and purely abominable, and I would rather live in a street than be forced to live it out, — that English country-life; for I don’t mean life in the country. The social exigencies — why, nothing can be so bad — nothing! That is the way by which Englishmen grow up to top the world in their peculiar line of respectable absurdities.

Think of my talking so as if I could be vexed with any one of them! I! — On the contrary I wish them all a happy new year to abuse one another, or visit each of them his nearest neighbour whom he hates, three times a week, because ‘the distance is so convenient,’ and give great dinners in noble rivalship (venison from the Lord Lieutenant against turbot from London!), and talk popularity and game-law by turns to the tenantry, and beat down tithes to the rector. This glorious England of ours; with its peculiar glory of the rural districts! And my glory of patriotic virtue, who am so happy in spite of it all, and make a pretence of talking — talking — while I think the whole time of your letter. I think of your letter — I am no more a patriot than that!

May God bless you, best and dearest! You say things to me which I am not worthy to listen to for a moment, even if I was deaf dust the next moment . . .. I confess it humbly and earnestly as before God.

Yet He knows, — if the entireness of a gift means anything, — that I have not given with a reserve, that I am yours in my life and soul, for this year and for other years. Let me be used for you rather than against you! and that unspeakable, immeasurable grief of feeling myself a stone in your path, a cloud in your sky, may I be saved from it! — pray it for me  . . . for my sake rather than yours. For the rest, I thank you, I thank you. You will be always to me, what to-day you are — and that is all! — !

I am your own —

 

Tuesday.

December 30, 1845.

When you are gone I find your flowers; and you never spoke of nor showed them to me — so instead of yesterday I thank you to-day — thank you. Count among the miracles that your flowers live with me — I accept that for an omen, dear — dearest! Flowers in general, all other flowers, die of despair when they come into the same atmosphere  . . . used to do it so constantly and observably that it made me melancholy and I left off for the most part having them here. Now you see how they put up with the close room, and condescend to me and the dust — it is true and no fancy! To be sure they know that I care for them and that I stand up by the table myself to change their water and cut their stalk freshly at intervals — that may make a difference perhaps. Only the great reason must be that they are yours, and that you teach them to bear with me patiently.

Do not pretend even to misunderstand what I meant to say yesterday of dear Mr. Kenyon. His blame would fall as my blame of myself has fallen: he would say — will say — ‘it is ungenerous of her to let such a risk be run! I thought she would have been more generous.’ There, is Mr. Kenyon’s opinion as I foresee it! Not that it would be spoken, you know! he is too kind. And then, he said to me last summer, somewhere à propos to the flies or butterflies, that he had ‘long ceased to wonder at any extreme of foolishness produced by — love.’ He will of course think you very very foolish, but not ungenerously foolish like other people.

Never mind. I do not mind indeed. I mean, that, having said to myself worse than the worst perhaps of what can be said against me by any who regard me at all, and feeling it put to silence by the fact that you do feel so and so for me; feeling that fact to be an answer to all, — I cannot mind much, in comparison, the railing at second remove. There will be a nine days’ railing of it and no more: and if on the ninth day you should not exactly wish never to have known me, the better reason will be demonstrated to stand with us. On this one point the wise man cannot judge for the fool his neighbour. If you do love me, the inference is that you would be happier with than without me — and whether you do, you know better than another: so I think of you and not of them — always of you! When I talked of being afraid of dear Mr. Kenyon, I just meant that he makes me nervous with his all-scrutinizing spectacles, put on for great occasions, and his questions which seem to belong to the spectacles, they go together so: — and then I have no presence of mind, as you may see without the spectacles. My only way of hiding (when people set themselves to look for me) would be the old child’s way of getting behind the window curtains or under the sofa: — and even that might not be effectual if I had recourse to it now. Do you think it would? Two or three times I fancied that Mr. Kenyon suspected something — but if he ever did, his only reproof was a reduplicated praise of you — he praises you always and in relation to every sort of subject.

What a misomonsism you fell into yesterday, you who have much great work to do which no one else can do except just yourself! — and you, too, who have courage and knowledge, and must know that every work, with the principle of life in it, will live, let it be trampled ever so under the heel of a faithless and unbelieving generation — yes, that it will live like one of your toads, for a thousand years in the heart of a rock. All men can teach at second or third hand, as you said  . . . by prompting the foremost rows  . . . by tradition and translation: — all, except poets, who must preach their own doctrine and sing their own song, to be the means of any wisdom or any music, and therefore have stricter duties thrust upon them, and may not lounge in the στοα like the conversation-teachers. So much I have to say to you, till we are in the Siren’s island — and I, jealous of the Siren! —

The Siren waits thee singing song for song,

says Mr. Landor. A prophecy which refuses to class you with the ‘mute fishes,’ precisely as I do.

And are you not my ‘good’ — all my good now — my only good ever? The Italians would say it better without saying more.

I had a letter from Miss Martineau this morning who accounts for her long silence by the supposition, — put lately to an end by scarcely credible information from Mr. Moxon, she says — that I was out of England; gone to the South from the 20th of September. She calls herself the strongest of women, and talks of ‘walking fifteen miles one day and writing fifteen pages another day without fatigue,’ — also of mesmerizing and of being infinitely happy except in the continued alienation of two of her family who cannot forgive her for getting well by such unlawful means. And she is to write again to tell me of Wordsworth, and promises to send me her new work in the meanwhile — all very kind.

So here is my letter to you, which you asked for so ‘against the principles of universal justice.’ Yes, very unjust — very unfair it was — only, you make me do just as you like in everything. Now confess to your own conscience that even if I had not a lawful claim of a debt against you, I might come to ask charity with another sort of claim, oh ‘son of humanity.’ Think how much more need of a letter I have than you can have; and that if you have a giant’s power, ”tis tyrannous to use it like a giant.’ Who would take tribute from the desert? How I grumble. Do let me have a letter directly! remember that no other light comes to my windows, and that I wait ‘as those who watch for the morning’ — ‘lux mea!’

May God bless you — and mind to say how you are exactly, and don’t neglect the walking, pray do not.

Your own

And after all, those women! A great deal of doctrine commends and discommends itself by the delivery: and an honest thing may be said so foolishly as to disprove its very honesty. Now after all, what did she mean by that very silly expression about books, but that she did not feel as she considered herself capable of feeling — and that else but that was the meaning of the other woman? Perhaps it should have been spoken earlier — nay, clearly it should — but surely it was better spoken even in the last hour than not at all  . . . surely it is always and under all circumstances, better spoken at whatever cost — I have thought so steadily since I could think or feel at all. An entire openness to the last moment of possible liberty, at whatever cost and consequence, is the most honourable and most merciful way, both for men and women! perhaps for men in an especial manner. But I shall send this letter away, being in haste to get change for it.

 

Saturday.

December 27, 1845.

Yes, indeed, I have ‘observed that way’ in you, and not once, and not twice, and not twenty times, but oftener than any, — and almost every time  . . . do you know,  . . . with an uncomfortable feeling from the reflection that that is the way for making all sorts of mistakes dependent on and issuing in exaggeration. It is the very way! — the highway.

For what you say in the letter here otherwise, I do not deny the truth — as partial truth: — I was speaking generally quite. Admit that I am not apt to be extravagant in my esprit de sexe: the Martineau doctrines of intellectual equality &c., I gave them up, you remember, like a woman — most disgracefully, as Mrs. Jameson would tell me. But we are not on that ground now — we are on ground worth holding a brief for! — and when women fail here  . . . it is not so much our fault. Which was all I meant to say from the beginning.

It reminds me of the exquisite analysis in your ‘Luria,’ this third act, of the worth of a woman’s sympathy, — indeed of the exquisite double-analysis of unlearned and learned sympathies. Nothing could be better, I think, than this: —

except the characterizing of the ‘learned praise,’ which comes afterwards in its fine subtle truth. What would these critics do to you, to what degree undo you, who would deprive you of the exercise of the discriminative faculty of the metaphysicians? As if a poet could be great without it! They might as well recommend a watchmaker to deal only in faces, in dials, and not to meddle with the wheels inside! You shall tell Mr. Forster so.

And speaking of ‘Luria,’ which grows on me the more I read,  . . . how fine he is when the doubt breaks on him — I mean, when he begins  . . . ‘Why then, all is very well.’ It is most affecting, I think, all that process of doubt  . . . and that reference to the friends at home (which at once proves him a stranger, and intimates, by just a stroke, that he will not look home for comfort out of the new foreign treason) is managed by you with singular dramatic dexterity . . ..

And then, the direct approach . . ..

Do you not feel it to be success,  . . . ‘you now?’ I do, from my low ground as reader. The whole breaking round him of the cloud, and the manner in which he stands, facing it,  . . . I admire it all thoroughly. Braccio’s vindication of Florence strikes me as almost too poetically subtle for the man — but nobody could have the heart to wish a line of it away — that would be too much for critical virtue!

I had your letter yesterday morning early. The post-office people were so resolved on keeping their Christmas, that they would not let me keep mine. No post all day, after that general post before noon, which never brings me anything worth the breaking of a seal!

Am I to see you on Monday? If there should be the least, least crossing of that day,  . . . anything to do, anything to see, anything to listen to, — remember how Tuesday stands close by, and that another Monday comes on the following week. Now I need not say that every time, and you will please to remember it — Eccellenza! —

May God bless you —

Your

E.B.B.

From the New Monthly Magazine. ‘The admirers of Robert Browning’s poetry, and they are now very numerous, will be glad to hear of the issue by Mr. Moxon of a seventh series of the renowned “Bells” and delicious “Pomegranates,” under the title of “Dramatic Romances and Lyrics.”‘