Author: EBB

Sunday Night.

December 24, 1845.

But did I dispute? Surely not. Surely I believe in you and in ‘mysteries.’ Surely I prefer the no-reason to ever so much rationalism  . . . (rationalism and infidelity go together they say!). All which I may do, and be afraid sometimes notwithstanding, and when you overpraise me (not overlove) I must be frightened as I told you.

It is with me as with the theologians. I believe in you and can be happy and safe so; but when my ‘personal merits’ come into question in any way, even the least,  . . . why then the position grows untenable: it is no more ‘of grace.’

Do I tease you as I tease myself sometimes? But do not wrong me in turn! Do not keep repeating that ‘after long years’ I shall know you — know you! — as if I did not without the years. If you are forced to refer me to those long ears, I must deserve the thistles besides. The thistles are the corollary.

For it is obvious — manifest — that I cannot doubt of you, that I may doubt of myself, of happiness, of the whole world, — but of you — not: it is obvious that if I could doubt of you and act so I should be a very idiot, or worse indeed. And you  . . . you think I doubt of you whenever I make an interjection! — now do you not? And is it reasonable? — Of you, I mean?

Monday. — For my part, you must admit it to be too possible that you may be, as I say, ‘disappointed’ in me — it is too possible. And if it does me good to say so, even now perhaps  . . . if it is mere weakness to say so and simply torments you, why do you be magnanimous and forgive that  . . . let it pass as a weakness and forgive it so. Often I think painful things which I do not tell you and . . ..

While I write, your letter comes. Kindest of you it was, to write me such a letter, when I expected scarcely the shadow of one! — this makes up for the other letter which I expected unreasonably and which you ‘ought not‘ to have written, as was proved afterwards. And now why should I go on with that sentence? What had I to say of ‘painful things,’ I wonder? all the painful things seem gone  . . . vanished. I forget what I had to say. Only do you still think of this, dearest beloved; that I sit here in the dark but for you, and that the light you bring me (from my fault! — from the nature of my darkness!) is not a settled light as when you open the shutters in the morning, but a light made by candles which burn some of them longer and some shorter, and some brighter and briefer, at once — being ‘double-wicks,’ and that there is an intermission for a moment now and then between the dropping of the old light into the socket and the lighting of the new. Every letter of yours is a new light which burns so many hours  . . . and then! — I am morbid, you see — or call it by what name you like  . . . too wise or too foolish. ‘If the light of the body is darkness, how great is that darkness.’ Yet even when I grow too wise, I admit always that while you love me it is an answer to all. And I am never so much too foolish as to wish to be worthier for my own sake — only for yours: — not for my own sake, since I am content to owe all things to you.

And it could be so much to you to lose me! — and you say so, — and then think it needful to tell me not to think the other thought! As if that were possible! Do you remember what you said once of the flowers? — that you ‘felt a respect for them when they had passed out of your hands.’ And must it not be so with my life, which if you choose to have it, must be respected too? Much more with my life! Also, see that I, who had my warmest affections on the other side of the grave, feel that it is otherwise with me now — quite otherwise. I did not like it at first to be so much otherwise. And I could not have had any such thought through a weariness of life or any of my old motives, but simply to escape the ‘risk’ I told you of. Should I have said to you instead of it  . . . ‘Love me for ever‘? Well then,  . . . I do.

As to my ‘helping’ you, my help is in your fancy; and if you go on with the fancy, I perfectly understand that it will be as good as deeds. We have sympathy too — we walk one way — oh, I do not forget the advantages. Only Mrs. Tomkins’s ideas of happiness are below my ambition for you.

So often as I have said (it reminds me) that in this situation I should be more exacting than any other woman — so often I have said it: and so different everything is from what I thought it would be! Because if I am exacting it is for you and not for me — it is altogether for you — you understand that, dearest of all  . . . it is for you wholly. It never crosses my thought, in a lightning even, the question whether I may be happy so and so — I. It is the other question which comes always — too often for peace.

People used to say to me, ‘You expect too much — you are too romantic.’ And my answer always was that ‘I could not expect too much when I expected nothing at all’  . . . which was the truth — for I never thought (and how often I have said that!) I never thought that anyone whom I could love, would stoop to love me  . . . the two things seemed clearly incompatible to my understanding.

And now when it comes in a miracle, you wonder at me for looking twice, thrice, four times, to see if it comes through ivory or horn. You wonder that it should seem to me at first all illusion — illusion for you, — illusion for me as a consequence. But how natural.

It is true of me — very true — that I have not a high appreciation of what passes in the world (and not merely the Tomkins-world!) under the name of love; and that a distrust of the thing had grown to be a habit of mind with me when I knew you first. It has appeared to me, through all the seclusion of my life and the narrow experience it admitted of, that in nothing men — and women too — were so apt to mistake their own feelings, as in this one thing. Putting falseness quite on one side, quite out of sight and consideration, an honest mistaking of feeling appears wonderfully common, and no mistake has such frightful results — none can. Self-love and generosity, a mistake may come from either — from pity, from admiration, from any blind impulse — oh, when I look at the histories of my own female friends — to go no step further! And if it is true of the women, what must the other side be? To see the marriages which are made every day! worse than solitudes and more desolate! In the case of the two happiest I ever knew, one of the husbands said in confidence to a brother of mine — not much in confidence or I should not have heard it, but in a sort of smoking frankness, — that he had ‘ruined his prospects by marrying’; and the other said to himself at the very moment of professing an extraordinary happiness,  . . . ‘But I should have done as well if I had not married her.’

Then for the falseness — the first time I ever, in my own experience, heard that word which rhymes to glove and comes as easily off and on (on some hands!) — it was from a man of whose attentions to another woman I was at that time her confidante. I was bound so to silence for her sake, that I could not even speak the scorn that was in me — and in fact my uppermost feeling was a sort of horror  . . . a terror — for I was very young then, and the world did, at the moment, look ghastly!

The falseness and the calculations! — why how can you, who are just, blame women  . . . when you must know what the ‘system’ of man is towards them, — and of men not ungenerous otherwise? Why are women to be blamed if they act as if they had to do with swindlers? — is it not the mere instinct of preservation which makes them do it? These make women what they are. And your ‘honourable men,’ the most loyal of them, (for instance) is it not a rule with them (unless when taken unaware through a want of self-government) to force a woman (trying all means) to force a woman to stand committed in her affections  . . . (they with their feet lifted all the time to trample on her for want of delicacy) before they risk the pin-prick to their own personal pitiful vanities? Oh — to see how these things are set about by men! to see how a man carefully holding up on each side the skirts of an embroidered vanity to keep it quite safe from the wet, will contrive to tell you in so many words that he  . . . might love you if the sun shone! And women are to be blamed! Why there are, to be sure, cold and heartless, light and changeable, ungenerous and calculating women in the world! — that is sure. But for the most part, they are only what they are made  . . . and far better than the nature of the making  . . . of that I am confident. The loyal make the loyal, the disloyal the disloyal. And I give no more discredit to those women you speak of, than I myself can take any credit in this thing — I. Because who could be disloyal with you  . . . with whatever corrupt inclination? you, who are the noblest of all? If you judge me so,  . . . it is my privilege rather than my merit  . . . as I feel of myself.

Wednesday. — All but the last few lines of all this was written before I saw you yesterday, ever dearest — and since, I have been reading your third act which is perfectly noble and worthy of you both in the conception and expression, and carries the reader on triumphantly  . . . to speak for one reader. It seems to me too that the language is freer — there is less inversion and more breadth of rhythm. It just strikes me so for the first impression. At any rate the interest grows and grows. You have a secret about Domizia, I guess — which will not be told till the last perhaps. And that poor, noble Luria, who will be equal to the leap  . . . as it is easy to see. It is full, altogether, of magnanimities; — noble, and nobly put. I will go on with my notes, and those, you shall have at once  . . . I mean together  . . . presently. And don’t hurry and chafe yourself for the fourth act — now that you are better! To be ill again — think what that would be! Luria will be great now whatever you do — or whatever you do not. Will he not?

And never, never for a moment (I quite forgot to tell you) did I fancy that you were talking at me in the temper-observations — never. It was the most unprovoked egotism, all that I told you of my temper; for certainly I never suspected you of asking questions so. I was simply amused a little by what you said, and thought to myself (if you will know my thoughts on that serious subject) that you had probably lived among very good-tempered persons, to hold such an opinion about the innocuousness of ill-temper. It was all I thought, indeed. Now to fancy that I was capable of suspecting you of such a manoeuvre! Why you would have asked me directly; — if you had wished ‘curiously to enquire.’

An excellent solemn chiming, the passage from Dante makes with your ‘Sordello,’ and the ‘Sordello’ deserves the labour which it needs, to make it appear the great work it is. I think that the principle of association is too subtly in movement throughout it — so that while you are going straight forward you go at the same time round and round, until the progress involved in the motion is lost sight of by the lookers on. Or did I tell you that before?

You have heard, I suppose, how Dickens’s ‘Cricket’ sells by nineteen thousand copies at a time, though he takes Michael Angelo to be ‘a humbug’ — or for ‘though’ read ‘because.’ Tell me of Mr. Kenyon’s dinner and Moxon?

Is not this an infinite letter? I shall hear from you, I hope . . .. I ask you to let me hear soon. I write all sorts of things to you, rightly and wrongly perhaps; when wrongly forgive it. I think of you always. May God bless you. ‘Love me for ever,’ as

Your

Ba

 

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!

 

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 —

 

Tuesday Evening.
December 17, 1845.

Henrietta had a note from Mr. Kenyon to the effect that he was ‘coming to see Ba‘ to-day if in any way he found it possible. Now he has not come — and the inference is that he will come to-morrow — in which case you will be convicted of not wishing to be with him perhaps. So  . . . would it not be advisable for you to call at his door for a moment — and before you come here? Think of it. You know it would not do to vex him — would it?

Your            

E.B.B.

Monday.

December 16, 1845.

Mr. Kenyon has not come — he does not come so often, I think. Did he know from you that you were to see me last Thursday? If he did it might be as well, do you not think? to go to him next week. Will it not seem frequent, otherwise? But if you did not tell him of Thursday distinctly (I did not — remember!), he might take the Wednesday’s visit to be the substitute for rather than the successor of Thursday’s: and in that case, why not write a word to him yourself to propose dining with him as he suggested? He really wishes to see you — of that, I am sure. But you will know what is best to do, and he may come here to-morrow perhaps, and ask a whole set of questions about you; so my right hand may forget its cunning for any good it does. Only don’t send messages by me, please!

How happy I am with your letter to-night.

When I had sent away my last letter I began to remember, and could not help smiling to do so, that I had totally forgotten the great subject of my ‘fame,’ and the oath you administered about it — totally! Now how do you read that omen? If I forget myself, who is to remember me, do you think? — except you? — which brings me where I would stay. Yes — ‘yours’ it must be, but you, it had better be! But, to leave the vain superstitions, let me go on to assure you that I did mean to answer that part of your former letter, and do mean to behave well and be obedient. Your wish would be enough, even if there could be likelihood without it of my doing nothing ever again. Oh, certainly I have been idle — it comes of lotus-eating — and, besides, of sitting too long in the sun. Yet ‘idle’ may not be the word! silent I have been, through too many thoughts to speak just that! — As to writing letters and reading manuscripts’ filling all my time, why I must lack ‘vital energy’ indeed — you do not mean seriously to fancy such a thing of me! For the rest . . .. Tell me — Is it your opinion that when the apostle Paul saw the unspeakable things, being snatched up into the third Heavens ‘whether in the body or out of the body he could not tell,’ — is it your opinion that, all the week after, he worked particularly hard at the tent-making? For my part, I doubt it.

I would not speak profanely or extravagantly — it is not the best way to thank God. But to say only that I was in the desert and that I am among the palm-trees, is to say nothing  . . . because it is easy to understand how, after walking straight on  . . . on  . . . furlong after furlong  . . . dreary day after dreary day,  . . . one may come to the end of the sand and within sight of the fountain: — there is nothing miraculous in that, you know!

Yet even in that case, to doubt whether it may not all be mirage, would be the natural first thought, the recurring dream-fear! now would it not? And you can reproach me for my thoughts, as if they were unnatural!

Never mind about the third act — the advantage is that you will not tire yourself perhaps the next week. What gladness it is that you should really seem better, and how much better that is than even ‘Luria.’

Mrs. Jameson came to-day — but I will tell you.

May God bless you now and always.

Your

E.B.B.

 

Friday.

December 13, 1845.

Do not blame me in your thoughts for what I said yesterday or wrote a day before, or think perhaps on the dark side of some other days when I cannot help it  . . . always when I cannot help it — you could not blame me if you saw the full motives as I feel them. If it is distrust, it is not of you, dearest of all! — but of myself rather: — it is not doubt of you, but for you. From the beginning I have been subject to the too reasonable fear which rises as my spirits fall, that your happiness might suffer in the end through your having known me: — it is for you I fear, whenever I fear: — and if you were less to me,  . . . should I fear do you think? — if you were to me only what I am to myself for instance,  . . . if your happiness were only as precious as my own in my own eyes,  . . . should I fear, do you think, then? Think, and do not blame me.

To tell you to ‘forget me when forgetting seemed happiest for you,’  . . . (was it not that, I said?) proved more affection than might go in smoother words . . .. I could prove the truth of that out of my heart.

And for the rest, you need not fear any fear of mine — my fear will not cross a wish of yours, be sure! Neither does it prevent your being all to me  . . . all: more than I used to take for all when I looked round the world,  . . . almost more than I took for all in my earliest dreams. You stand in between me and not merely the living who stood closest, but between me and the closer graves,  . . . and I reproach myself for this sometimes, and, so, ask you not to blame me for a different thing.

As to unfavourable influences,  . . . I can speak of them quietly, having foreseen them from the first,  . . . and it is true, I have been thinking since yesterday, that I might be prevented from receiving you here, and should, if all were known: but with that act, the adverse power would end. It is not my fault if I have to choose between two affections; only my pain; and I have not to choose between two duties, I feel,  . . . since I am yours, while I am of any worth to you at all. For the plan of the sealed letter, it would correct no evil, — ah, you do not see, you do not understand. The danger does not come from the side to which a reason may go. Only one person holds the thunder — and I shall be thundered at; I shall not be reasoned with — it is impossible. I could tell you some dreary chronicles made for laughing and crying over; and you know that if I once thought I might be loved enough to be spared above others, I cannot think so now. In the meanwhile we need not for the present be afraid. Let there be ever so many suspectors, there will be no informers. I suspect the suspectors, but the informers are out of the world, I am very sure: — and then, the one person, by a curious anomaly, never draws an inference of this order, until the bare blade of it is thrust palpably into his hand, point outwards. So it has been in other cases than ours — and so it is, at this moment in the house, with others than ourselves.

I have your letter to stop me. If I had my whole life in my hands with your letter, could I thank you for it, I wonder, at all worthily? I cannot believe that I could. Yet in life and in death I shall be grateful to you. —

But for the paper — no. Now, observe, that it would seem like a prepared apology for something wrong. And besides — the apology would be nothing but the offence in another form — unless you said it was all a mistake — (will you, again?) — that it was all a mistake and you were only calling for your boots! Well, if you said that, it would be worth writing, but anything less would be something worse than nothing: and would not save me — which you were thinking of, I know — would not save me the least of the stripes. For ‘conditions’ — now I will tell you what I said once in a jest . . ..

‘If a prince of Eldorado should come, with a pedigree of lineal descent from some signory in the moon in one hand, and a ticket of good-behaviour from the nearest Independent chapel, in the other’ — ?

‘Why even then,’ said my sister Arabel, ‘it would not do.’ And she was right, and we all agreed that she was right. It is an obliquity of the will — and one laughs at it till the turn comes for crying. Poor Henrietta has suffered silently, with that softest of possible natures, which hers is indeed; beginning with implicit obedience, and ending with something as unlike it as possible: but, you see, where money is wanted, and where the dependence is total — see! And when once, in the case of the one dearest to me; when just at the last he was involved in the same grief, and I attempted to make over my advantages to him; (it could be no sacrifice, you know — I did not want the money, and could buy nothing with it so good as his happiness, — ) why then, my hands were seized and tied — and then and there, in the midst of the trouble, came the end of all! I tell you all this, just to make you understand a little. Did I not tell you before? But there is no danger at present — and why ruffle this present with disquieting thoughts? Why not leave that future to itself? For me, I sit in the track of the avalanche quite calmly  . . . so calmly as to surprise myself at intervals — and yet I know the reason of the calmness well.

For Mr. Kenyon — dear Mr. Kenyon — he will speak the softest of words, if any — only he will think privately that you are foolish and that I am ungenerous, but I will not say so any more now, so as to teaze you.

There is another thing, of more consequence than his thoughts, which is often in my mind to ask you of — but there will be time for such questions — let us leave the winter to its own peace. If I should be ill again you will be reasonable and we both must submit to God’s necessity. Not, you know, that I have the least intention of being ill, if I can help it — and in the case of a tolerably mild winter, and with all this strength to use, there are probabilities for me — and then I have sunshine from you, which is better than Pisa’s.

And what more would you say? Do I not hear and understand! It seems to me that I do both, or why all this wonder and gratitude? If the devotion of the remainder of my life could prove that I hear,  . . . would it be proof enough? Proof enough perhaps — but not gift enough.

May God bless you always.

I have put some of the hair into a little locket which was given to me when I was a child by my favourite uncle, Papa’s only brother, who used to tell me that he loved me better than my own father did, and was jealous when I was not glad. It is through him in part, that I am richer than my sisters — through him and his mother — and a great grief it was and trial, when he died a few years ago in Jamaica, proving by his last act that I was unforgotten. And now I remember how he once said to me: ‘Do you beware of ever loving! — If you do, you will not do it half: it will be for life and death.’

So I put the hair into his locket, which I wear habitually, and which never had hair before — the natural use of it being for perfume: — and this is the best perfume for all hours, besides the completing of a prophecy.

Your

E.B.B.

 

Tuesday Evening

December 10, 1845.

It was right of you to write  . . . (now see what jangling comes of not using the fit words . . .. I said ‘right,’ not to say ‘kind’)  . . . right of you to write to me to-day — and I had begun to be disappointed already because the post seemed to be past, when suddenly the knock brought the letter which deserves all this praising. If not ‘kind’  . . . then kindest  . . . will that do better? Perhaps.

Mr. Kenyon was here to-day and asked when you were coming again — and I, I answered at random  . . . ‘at the end of the week — Thursday or Friday’ — which did not prevent another question about ‘what we were consulting about.’ He said that he ‘must have you,’ and had written to beg you to go to his door on days when you came here; only murmuring something besides of neither Thursday nor Friday being disengaged days with him. Oh, my disingenuousness! — Then he talked again of ‘Saul.’ A true impression the poem has made on him! He reads it every night, he says, when he comes home and just before he goes to sleep, to put his dreams into order, and observed very aptly, I thought, that it reminded him of Homer’s shield of Achilles, thrown into lyrical whirl and life. Quite ill he took it of me the ‘not expecting him to like it so much’ and retorted on me with most undeserved severity (as I felt it), that I ‘never understood anybody to have any sensibility except myself.’ Wasn’t it severe, to come from dear Mr. Kenyon? But he has caught some sort of evil spirit from your ‘Saul’ perhaps; though admiring the poem enough to have a good spirit instead. And do you remember of the said poem, that it is there only as a first part, and that the next parts must certainly follow and complete what will be a great lyrical work — now remember. And forget ‘Luria’  . . . if you are better forgetting. And forget me  . . . when you are happier forgetting. I say that too.

So your idea of an unicorn is — one horn broken off. And you a poet! — one horn broken off — or hid in the blackthorn hedge! —

Such a mistake, as our enlightened public, on their part, made, when they magnified the divinity of the brazen chariot, just under the thunder-cloud! I don’t remember the Athenæum, but can well believe that it said what you say. The Athenæum admires only what gods, men and columns reject. It applauds nothing but mediocrity — mark it, as a general rule! The good, they see — the great escapes them. Dare to breathe a breath above the close, flat conventions of literature, and you are ‘put down’ and instructed how to be like other people. By the way, see by the very last number, that you never think to write ‘peoples,’ on pain of writing what is obsolete — and these the teachers of the public! If the public does not learn, where is the marvel of it? An imitation of Shelley! — when if ‘Paracelsus’ was anything it was the expression of a new mind, as all might see — as I saw, let me be proud to remember, and I was not overdazzled by ‘Ion.’

Ah, indeed if I could ‘rake and hoe’  . . . or even pick up weeds along the walk,  . . . which is the work of the most helpless children,  . . . if I could do any of this, there would be some good of me: but as for ‘shining’  . . . shining  . . . when there is not so much light in me as to do ‘carpet work’ by, why let anyone in the world, except you, tell me to shine, and it will just be a mockery! But you have studied astronomy with your favourite snails, who are apt to take a dark-lanthorn for the sun, and so. —

And so, you come on Thursday, and I only hope that Mrs. Jameson will not come too, (the carpet work makes me think of her; and, not having come yet, she may come on Thursday by a fatal cross-stitch!) for I do not hear from her, and my precautions are ‘watched out,’ May God bless you always.

Your own —

But no — I did not forgive. Where was the fault to be forgiven, except in me, for not being right in my meaning?

 

Sunday.

December 8, 1845.

Let me hear how you are, and that you are better instead of worse for the exertions of last night. After you left me yesterday I considered how we might have managed it more conveniently for you, and had the lamp in, and arranged matters so as to interpose less time between the going and the dining, even if you and George did not go together, which might have been best, but which I did not like quite to propose. Now, supposing that on Thursday you dine in town, remember not to be unnecessarily ‘perplext in the extreme’ where to spend the time before  . . . five,  . . . shall I say, at any rate? We will have the lamp, and I can easily explain if an observation should be made  . . . only it will not be, because our goers-out here never come home until six, and the head of the house, not until seven  . . . as I told you. George thought it worth while going to Mr. Talfourd’s yesterday, just to see the author of ‘Paracelsus’ dance the Polka  . . . should I not tell you?

I am vexed by another thing which he tells me — vexed, if amused a little by the absurdity of it. I mean that absurd affair of the ‘Autography’ — now isn’t it absurd? And for neither you nor George to have the chivalry of tearing out that letter of mine, which was absurd too in its way, and which, knowing less of the world than I know now, I wrote as if writing for my private conscience, and privately repented writing in a day, and have gone on repenting ever since when I happened to think enough of it for repentance! Because if Mr. Serjeant Talfourd sent then his ‘Ion’ to me, he did it in mere good-nature, hearing by chance of me through the publisher of my ‘Prometheus’ at the moment, and of course caring no more for my ‘opinion’ than for the rest of me — and it was excessively bad taste in me to say more than the briefest word of thanks in return, even if I had been competent to say it. Ah well! — you see how it is, and that I am vexed you should have read it,  . . . as George says you did  . . . he laughing to see me so vexed. So I turn round and avenge myself by crying aloud against the editor of the ‘Autography’! Surely such a thing was never done before  . . . even by an author in the last stage of a mortal disease of self-love. To edit the common parlance of conventional flatteries,  . . . lettered in so many volumes, bound in green morocco, and laid on the drawing-room table for one’s own particular private public, — is it not a miracle of vanity  . . . neither more nor less?

I took the opportunity of the letter to Mr. Mathews (talking of vanity  . . . mine!) to send Landor’s verses to America  . . . yours — so they will be in the American papers . . .. I know Mr. Mathews. I was speaking to him of your last number of ‘Bells and Pomegranates,’ and the verses came in naturally; just as my speaking did, for it is not the first time nor the second nor the third even that I have written to him of you, though I admire how in all those previous times I did it in pure disinterestedness,  . . . purely because your name belonged to my country and to her literature,  . . . and how I have a sort of reward at this present, in being able to write what I please without anyone’s saying ‘it is a new fancy.’ As for the Americans, they have ‘a zeal without knowledge’ for poetry. There is more love for verse among them than among the English. But they suffer themselves to be led in their choice of poets by English critics of average discernment; this is said of them by their own men of letters. Tennyson is idolized deep down in the bush woods (to their honour be it said), but to understand you sufficiently, they wait for the explanations of the critics. So I wanted them to see what Landor says of you. The comfort in these questions is, that there can be no question, except between the sooner and the later — a little sooner, and a little later: but when there is real love and zeal it becomes worth while to try to ripen the knowledge. They love Tennyson so much that the colour of his waistcoats is a sort of minor Oregon question  . . . and I like that — do not you?

Monday. — Now I have your letter: and you will observe, without a finger post from me, how busily we have both been preoccupied in disavowing our own letters of old on ‘Ion’ — Mr. Talfourd’s collection goes to prove too much, I think — and you, a little too much, when you draw inferences of no-changes, from changes like these. Oh yes — I perfectly understand that every sort of inconstancy of purpose regards a ‘presumably better’ thing — but I do not so well understand how any presumable doubt is to be set to rest by that fact,  . . . I do not indeed. Have you seen all the birds and beasts in the world? have you seen the ‘unicorns’? — Which is only a pebble thrown down into your smooth logic; and we need not stand by to watch the bubbles born of it. And as to the ‘Ion’ letters, I am delighted that you have anything to repent, as I have everything. Certainly it is a noble play — there is the moral sublime in it: but it is not the work of a poet,  . . . and if he had never written another to show what was not in him, this might have been ‘predicated’ of it as surely, I hold. Still, it is a noble work — and even if you over-praised it, (I did not read your letter, though you read mine, alas!) you, under the circumstances, would have been less noble yourself not to have done so — only, how I agree with you in what you say against the hanging up of these dry roots, the soil shaken off! Such abominable taste — now isn’t it?  . . . though you do not use that word.

I thought Mr. Kenyon would have come yesterday and that I might have something to tell you, of him at least.

And George never told me of the thing you found to say to him of me, and which makes me smile, and would have made him wonder if he had not been suffering probably from some legal distraction at the moment, inasmuch as he knew perfectly that you had just left me. My sisters told him down-stairs and he came into this room just before he set off on Saturday, with a,  . . . ‘So I am to meet Mr. Browning?’ But he made no observation afterwards — none: and if he heard what you said at all (which I doubt), he referred it probably to some enforced civility on ‘Yorick’s’ part when the ‘last chapter’ was too much with him.

I have written about ‘Luria’ in another place — you shall have the papers when I have read through the play. How different this living poetry is from the polished rhetoric of ‘Ion.’ The man and the statue are not more different. After all poetry is a distinct thing — it is here or it is not here  . . . it is not a matter of ‘taste,’ but of sight and feeling.

As to the ‘Venice’ it gives proof (does it not?) rather of poetical sensibility than of poetical faculty? or did you expect me to say more? — of the perception of the poet, rather than of his conception. Do you think more than this? There are fine, eloquent expressions, and the tone of sentiment is good and high everywhere.

Do not write ‘Luria’ if your head is uneasy — and you cannot say that it is not  . . . can you? Or will you if you can? In any case you will do what you can  . . . take care of yourself and not suffer yourself to be tired either by writing or by too much going out, and take the necessary exercise  . . . this, you will do — I entreat you to do it.

May God bless and make you happy, as  . . . you will lose nothing if I say  . . . as I am yours —

 

December 4, 1845.

Why of course I am pleased — I should have been pleased last year, for the vanity’s sake of being reviewed in your company. Now, as far as that vice of vanity goes  . . . shall I tell you? . . . I would infinitely prefer to see you set before the public in your own right solitude, and supremacy, apart from me or any one else,  . . . this, as far as my vice of vanity goes,  . . . and because, vainer I am of my poet than of my poems  . . . pour cause. But since, according to the Quarterly régime, you were to be not apart but with somebody of my degree, I am glad, pleased, that it should be with myself: — and since I was to be there at all, I am pleased, very much pleased that it should be with you, — oh, of course I am pleased! — I am pleased that the ‘names should be read together’ as you say,  . . . and am happily safe from the apprehension of that ingenious idea of yours about ‘my leading you‘ &c.  . . . quite happily safe from the apprehension of that idea’s occurring to any mind in the world, except just your own. Now if I ‘find fault’ with you for writing down such an extravagance, such an ungainly absurdity, (oh, I shall abuse it just as I shall choose!) can it be ‘to your surprise?’ can it? Ought you to say such things, when in the first place they are unfit in themselves and inapplicable, and in the second place, abominable in my eyes? The qualification for Hanwell Asylum is different peradventure from what you take it to be — we had better not examine it too nearly. You never will say such words again? It is your promise to me? Not those words — and not any in their likeness.

Also  . . . nothing is my work  . . . if you please! What an omen you take in calling anything my work! If it is my work, woe on it — for everything turns to evil which I touch. Let it be God’s work and yours, and I may take breath and wait in hope — and indeed I exclaim to myself about the miracle of it far more even than you can do. It seems to me (as I say over and over  . . . I say it to my own thoughts oftenest) it seems to me still a dream how you came here at all,  . . . the very machinery of it seems miraculous. Why did I receive you and only you? Can I tell? no, not a word.

Last year I had such an escape of seeing Mr. Horne; and in this way it was. He was going to Germany, he said, for an indefinite time, and took the trouble of begging me to receive him for ten minutes before he went. I answered with my usual ‘no,’ like a wild Indian — whereupon he wrote me a letter so expressive of mortification and vexation  . . . ‘mortification’ was one of the words used, I remember,  . . . that I grew ashamed of myself and told him to come any day (of the last five or six days he had to spare) between two and five. Well! — he never came. Either he was overcome with work and engagements of various sorts and had not a moment, (which was his way of explaining the matter and quite true I dare say) or he was vexed and resolved on punishing me for my caprices. If the latter was the motive, I cannot call the punishment effective,  . . . for I clapped my hands for joy when I felt my danger to be passed — and now of course, I have no scruples . . .. I may be as capricious as I please,  . . . may I not? Not that I ask you. It is a settled matter. And it is useful to keep out Mr. Chorley with Mr. Horne, and Mr. Horne with Mr. Chorley, and the rest of the world with those two. Only the miracle is that you should be behind the enclosure — within it  . . . and so! —

That is my side of the wonder! of the machinery of the wonder,  . . . as I see it! — But there are greater things than these.

Speaking of the portrait of you in the ‘Spirit of the Age’  . . . which is not like  . . . no! — which has not your character, in a line of it  . . . something in just the forehead and eyes and hair,  . . . but even that, thrown utterly out of your order, by another bearing so unlike you . . .! speaking of that portrait  . . . shall I tell you? — Mr. Horne had the goodness to send me all those portraits, and I selected the heads which, in right hero-worship, were anything to me, and had them framed after a rough fashion and hung up before my eyes; Harriet Martineau’s  . . . because she was a woman and admirable, and had written me some kind letters — and for the rest, Wordsworth’s, Carlyle’s, Tennyson’s and yours. The day you paid your first visit here, I, in a fit of shyness not quite unnatural,  . . . though I have been cordially laughed at for it by everybody in the house  . . . pulled down your portrait,  . . . (there is the nail, under Wordsworth — ) and then pulled down Tennyson’s in a fit of justice, — because I would not have his hung up and yours away. It was the delight of my brothers to open all the drawers and the boxes, and whatever they could get access to, and find and take those two heads and hang them on the old nails and analyse my ‘absurdity’ to me, day after day; but at last I tired them out, being obstinate; and finally settled the question one morning by fastening the print of you inside your Paracelsus. Oh no, it is not like — and I knew it was not, before I saw you, though Mr. Kenyon said, ‘Rather like!’

By the way Mr. Kenyon does not come. It is strange that he should not come: when he told me that he could not see me ‘for a week or a fortnight,’ he meant it, I suppose.

So it is to be on Saturday? And I will write directly to America — the letter will be sent by the time you get this. May God bless you ever.

It is not so much a look of ‘ferocity,’  . . . as you say,  . . . in that head, as of expression by intention. Several people have said of it what nobody would say of you  . . . ‘How affected-looking.’ Which is too strong — but it is not like you, in any way, and there’s the truth.

So until Saturday. I read ‘Luria’ and feel the life in him. But walk and do not work! do you?

Wholly your

E.B.B.

Tuesday Evening.

December 4, 1845.

No Mr. Kenyon after all — not yesterday, not to-day; and the knock at the door belonged perhaps to the post, which brought me a kind letter from Mrs. Jameson to ask how I was, and if she might come — but she won’t come on Saturday . . .. I shall ‘provide’ — she may as well (and better) come on a free day. On the other side, are you sure that Mr. Procter may not stretch out his hand and seize on Saturday (he was to dine with you, you said), or that some new engagement may not start up suddenly in the midst of it? I trust to you, in such a case, to alter our arrangement, without a second thought. Monday stands close by, remember, and there’s a Saturday to follow Monday  . . . and I should understand at a word, or apart from a word.

Just as you understand how to ‘take me with guile,’ when you tell me that anything in me can have any part in making you happy  . . . you, who can say such words and call them ‘vain words.’ Ah, well! If I only knew certainly,  . . . more certainly than the thing may be known by either me or you,  . . . that nothing in me could have any part in making you unhappy,  . . . ah, would it not be enough  . . . that knowledge  . . . to content me, to overjoy me? but that lies too high and out of reach, you see, and one can’t hope to get at it except by the ladder Jacob saw, and which an archangel helped to hide away behind the gate of Heaven afterwards.

Wednesday. — In the meantime I had a letter from you yesterday, and am promised another to-day. How  . . . I was going to say ‘kind’ and pull down the thunders  . . . how unkind  . . . will that do?  . . . how good you are to me — how dear you must be! Dear — dearest — if I feel that you love me, can I help it if, without any other sort of certain knowledge, the world grows lighter round me? being but a mortal woman, can I help it? no — certainly.

I comfort myself by thinking sometimes that I can at least understand you,  . . . comprehend you in what you are and in what you possess and combine; and that, if doing this better than others who are better otherwise than I, I am, so far, worthier of the  . . . I mean that to understand you is something, and that I account it something in my own favour  . . . mine.

Yet when you tell me that I ought to know some things, though untold, you are wrong, and speak what is impossible. My imagination sits by the roadside απεδιλος like the startled sea nymph in Æschylus, but never dares to put one unsandalled foot, unbidden, on a certain tract of ground — never takes a step there unled! and never (I write the simple truth) even as the alternative of the probability of your ceasing to care for me, have I touched (untold) on the possibility of your caring more for me  . . . never! That you should continue to care, was the utmost of what I saw in that direction. So, when you spoke of a ‘strengthened feeling,’ judge how I listened with my heart — judge!

‘Luria’ is very great. You will avenge him with the sympathies of the world; that, I foresee . . .. And for the rest, it is a magnanimity which grows and grows, and which will, of a worldly necessity, fall by its own weight at last; nothing less being possible. The scene with Tiburzio and the end of the act with its great effects, are more pathetic than professed pathos. When I come to criticise, it will be chiefly on what I take to be a little occasional flatness in the versification, which you may remove if you please, by knotting up a few lines here and there. But I shall write more of ‘Luria,’ — and well remember in the meanwhile, that you wanted smoothness, you said.

May God bless you. I shall have the letter to-night, I think gladly. Yes, — I thought of the greater safety from ‘comment’ — it is best in every way.

I lean on you and trust to you, and am always, as to one who is all to me,

Your own —