Author: RB

Tuesday Evening.

May 21, 1845.

I trust to you for a true account of how you are  – – if tired, if not tired, if I did wrong in any thing,  – – or, if you please, right in any thing  – – (only, not one more word about my ‘kindness,’ which, to get done with, I will grant is exceptive)  – – but, let us so arrange matters if possible,  – – and why should it not be  – – that my great happiness, such as it will be if I see you, as this morning, from time to time, may be obtained at the cost of as little inconvenience to you as we can contrive. For an instance  – – just what strikes me  – – they all say here I speak very loud  – – (a trick caught from having often to talk with a deaf relative of mine). And did I stay too long?

I will tell you unhesitatingly of such ‘corrigenda’  – – nay, I will again say, do not humiliate me  – – do not again,  – – by calling me ‘kind’ in that way.

I am proud and happy in your friendship  – – now and ever. May God bless you!

R.B.

 

Friday Night.

May 17, 1845.

My friend is not ‘mistrustful’ of me, no, because she don’t fear I shall make mainprize of the stray cloaks and umbrellas down-stairs, or turn an article for Colburn’s on her sayings and doings up-stairs,  – – but spite of that, she does mistrust  . . . so mistrust my common sense,  – – nay, uncommon and dramatic-poet’s sense, if I am put on asserting it!  – – all which pieces of mistrust I could detect, and catch struggling, and pin to death in a moment, and put a label in, with name, genus and species, just like a horrible entomologist; only I won’t, because the first visit of the Northwind will carry the whole tribe into the Red Sea  – – and those horns and tails and scalewings are best forgotten altogether. Continue reading “#26”

Tuesday Morning.

May 13, 1845.

Did I thank you with any effect in the lines I sent yesterday, dear Miss Barrett? I know I felt most thankful, and, of course, began reasoning myself into the impropriety of allowing a ‘more’ or a ‘most’ in feelings of that sort towards you. I am thankful for you, all about you  – – as, do you not know?

Thank you, from my soul. Continue reading “#24”

Monday.

May 12, 1845.

My dear, own friend, I am quite well now, or next to it  – – but this is how it was,  – – I have gone out a great deal of late, and my head took to ringing such a literal alarum that I wondered what was to come of it; and at last, a few evenings ago, as I was dressing for a dinner somewhere, I got really bad of a sudden, and kept at home to my friend’s heartrending disappointment. Continue reading “#23”

Saturday Morning.
May 3, 1845.

Now shall you see what you shall see  – – here shall be ‘sound speech not to be reproved,’  – – for this morning you are to know that the soul of me has it all her own way, dear Miss Barrett, this green cool nine-in-the-morning time for my chestnut tree over there, and for me who only coaxed my good-natured  – – (really)  – – body up, after its three-hours’ night-rest on condition it should lounge, or creep about, incognito and without consequences  – – and so it shall, all but my right-hand which is half-spirit and ‘cuts’ its poor relation, and passes itself off for somebody (that is, some soul) and is doubly active and ready on such occasions  – – Now I shall tell you all about it, first what last letter meant, and then more. You are to know, then that for some reason, that looked like an instinct, I thought I ought not to send shaft on shaft, letter-plague on letter, with such an uninterrupted clanging  . . . that I ought to wait, say a week at least having killed all your mules for you, before I shot down your dogs  – – but not being exactly Phoibos Apollon, you are to know further that when I did think I might go modestly on,  . . . ωμοι, let me get out of this slough of a simile, never mind with what dislocation of ancles! Plainly, from waiting and turning my eyes away (not from you, but from you in your special capacity of being written-to, not spoken-to) when I turned again you had grown formidable somehow  – – though that’s not the word,  – – nor are you the person, either,  – – it was my fortune, my privilege of being your friend this one way, that it seemed a shame for me to make no better use of than taking it up with talk about books and I don’t know what. Write what I will, you would read for once, I think  – – well, then,  – – what I shall write shall be  – – something on this book, and the other book, and my own books, and Mary Hewitt’s books, and at the end of it  – – good bye, and I hope here is a quarter of an hour rationally spent. So the thought of what I should find in my heart to say, and the contrast with what I suppose I ought to say  . . . all these things are against me. But this is very foolish, all the same, I need not be told  – – and is part and parcel of an older  – – indeed primitive body of mine, which I shall never wholly get rid of, of desiring to do nothing when I cannot do all; seeing nothing, getting, enjoying nothing, where there is no seeing and getting and enjoying wholly  – – and in this case, moreover, you are you, and know something about me, if not much, and have read Bos on the art of supplying Ellipses, and (after, particularly, I have confessed all this, why and how it has been) you will subaudire when I pull out my Mediæval-Gothic-Architectural-Manuscript (so it was, I remember now,) and instruct you about corbeils and ogives  . . . though, after all, it was none of Vivian’s doing, that,  – – all the uncle kind or man’s, which I never professed to be. Now you see how I came to say some nonsense (I very vaguely think what) about Dante  – – some desperate splash I know I made for the beginning of my picture, as when a painter at his wits’ end and hunger’s beginning says ‘Here shall the figure’s hand be’  – – and spots that down, meaning to reach it naturally from the other end of his canvas,  – – and leaving off tired, there you see the spectral disjoined thing, and nothing between it and rationality. I intended to shade down and soften off and put in and leave out, and, before I had done, bring Italian Poets round to their old place again in my heart, giving new praise if I took old,  – – anyhow Dante is out of it all, as who knows but I, with all of him in my head and heart? But they do fret one, those tantalizing creatures, of fine passionate class, with such capabilities, and such a facility of being made pure mind of. And the special instance that vexed me, was that a man of sands and dog-roses and white rock and green sea-water just under, should come to Italy where my heart lives, and discover the sights and sounds  . . . certainly discover them. And so do all Northern writers; for take up handfuls of sonetti, rime, poemetti, doings of those who never did anything else,  – – and try and make out, for yourself, what  . . . say, what flowers they tread on, or trees they walk under,  – – as you might bid them, those tree and flower loving creatures, pick out of our North poetry a notion of what our daisies and harebells and furze bushes and brambles are  – – ‘Odorosi fioretti, rose porporine, bianchissimi gigli.’ And which of you eternal triflers was it called yourself ‘Shelley’ and so told me years ago that in the mountains it was a feast

so that when my Uncle walked into a sorb-tree, not to tumble sheer over Monte Calvano, and I felt the fruit against my face, the little ragged bare-legged guide fairly laughed at my knowing them so well  – – ‘Niursi  – – sorbi!’ No, no,  – – does not all Naples-bay and half Sicily, shore and inland, come flocking once a year to the Piedigrotta fête only to see the blessed King’s Volanti, or livery servants all in their best; as though heaven opened; and would not I engage to bring the whole of the Piano (of Sorrento) in likeness to a red velvet dressing gown properly spangled over, before the priest that held it out on a pole had even begun his story of how Noah’s son Shem, the founder of Sorrento, threw it off to swim thither, as the world knows he did? Oh, it makes one’s soul angry, so enough of it. But never enough of telling you  – – bring all your sympathies, come with loosest sleeves and longest lace-lappets, and you and yours shall find ‘elbow room,’ oh, shall you not! For never did man, woman or child, Greek, Hebrew, or as Danish as our friend, like a thing, not to say love it, but I liked and loved it, one liking neutralizing the rebellious stir of its fellow, so that I don’t go about now wanting the fixed stars before my time; this world has not escaped me, thank God; and  – – what other people say is the best of it, may not escape me after all, though until so very lately I made up my mind to do without it;  – – perhaps, on that account, and to make fair amends to other people, who, I have no right to say, complain without cause. I have been surprised, rather, with something not unlike illness of late  – – I have had a constant pain in the head for these two months, which only very rough exercise gets rid of, and which stops my ‘Luria’ and much besides. I thought I never could be unwell. Just now all of it is gone, thanks to polking all night and walking home by broad daylight to the surprise of the thrushes in the bush here. And do you know I said ‘this must go, cannot mean to stay, so I will not tell Miss Barrett why this and this is not done,’  – – but I mean to tell you all, or more of the truth, because you call me ‘flatterer,’ so that my eyes widened again! I, and in what? And of whom, pray? not of you, at all events,  – – of whom then? Do tell me, because I want to stand with you  – – and am quite in earnest there. And ‘The Flight of the Duchess,’ to leave nothing out, is only the beginning of a story written some time ago, and given to poor Hood in his emergency at a day’s notice,  – – the true stuff and story is all to come, the ‘Flight,’ and what you allude to is the mere introduction  – – but the Magazine has passed into other hands and I must put the rest in some ‘Bell’ or other  – – it is one of my Dramatic Romances. So is a certain ‘Saul’ I should like to show you one day  – – an ominous liking  – – for nobody ever sees what I do till it is printed. But as you do know the printed little part of me, I should not be sorry if, in justice, you knew all I have really done,  – – written in the portfolio there,  – – though that would be far enough from this me, that wishes to you now. I should like to write something in concert with you, how I would try!

I have read your letter through again. Does this clear up all the difficulty, and do you see that I never dreamed of ‘reproaching you for dealing out one sort of cards to me and everybody else’  – – but that  . . . why, ‘that‘ which I have, I hope, said, so need not resay. I will tell you  – – Sydney Smith laughs somewhere at some Methodist or other whose wont was, on meeting an acquaintance in the street, to open at once on him with some enquiry after the state of his soul  – – Sydney knows better now, and sees that one might quite as wisely ask such questions as the price of Illinois stock or condition of glebe-land,  – – and I could say such  – – ‘could,’  – – the plague of it! So no more at present from your loving . . .. Or, let me tell you I am going to see Mr. Kenyon on the 12th inst.  – – that you do not tell me how you are, and that yet if you do not continue to improve in health  . . . I shall not see you  – – not  – – not  – – not  – – what ‘knots’ to untie! Surely the wind that sets my chestnut-tree dancing, all its baby-cone-blossoms, green now, rocking like fairy castles on a hill in an earthquake,  – – that is South West, surely! God bless you, and me in that  – – and do write to me soon, and tell me who was the ‘flatterer,’ and how he never was

Yours         

R.B.

Wednesday Morning.
April 30, 1845.

If you did but know, dear Miss Barrett, how the ‘full stop’ after ‘Morning’ just above, has turned out the fullest of stops,  – – and how for about a quarter of an hour since the ink dried I have been reasoning out the why and wherefore of the stopping, the wisdom of it, and the folly of it . . ..

By this time you see what you have got in me  – – You ask me questions, ‘if I like novels,’ ‘if the “Improvisatore” is not good,’ ‘if travel and sightseeing do not effect this and that for one,’ and ‘what I am devising  – – play or poem,’  – – and I shall not say I could not answer at all manner of lengths  – – but, let me only begin some good piece of writing of the kind, and  . . . no, you shall have it, have what I was going to tell you stops such judicious beginnings,  – – in a parallel case, out of which your ingenuity shall, please, pick the meaning  – – There is a story of D’Israeli’s, an old one, with an episode of strange interest, or so I found it years ago,  – – well, you go breathlessly on with the people of it, page after page, till at last the end must come, you feel  – – and the tangled threads draw to one, and an out-of-door feast in the woods helps you  . . . that is, helps them, the people, wonderfully on,  – – and, lo, dinner is done, and Vivian Grey is here, and Violet Fane there,  – – and a detachment of the party is drafted off to go catch butterflies, and only two or three stop behind. At this moment, Mr. Somebody, a good man and rather the lady’s uncle, ‘in answer to a question from Violet, drew from his pocket a small neatly written manuscript, and, seating himself on an inverted wine-cooler, proceeded to read the following brief remarks upon the characteristics of the Moeso-gothic literature’  – – this ends the page,  – – which you don’t turn at once! But when you do, in bitterness of soul, turn it, you read  – – ‘On consideration, I’ (Ben, himself) ‘shall keep them for Mr. Colburn’s New Magazine‘  – – and deeply you draw thankful breath! (Note this ‘parallel case’ of mine is pretty sure to meet the usual fortune of my writings  – – you will ask what it means  – – and this it means, or should mean, all of it, instance and reasoning and all,  – – that I am naturally earnest, in earnest about whatever thing I do, and little able to write about one thing while I think of another)  – –

I think I will really write verse to you some day  – – this day, it is quite clear I had better give up trying.

No, spite of all the lines in the world, I will make an end of it, as Ophelia with her swan’s-song,  – – for it grows too absurd. But remember that I write letters to nobody but you, and that I want method and much more. That book you like so, the Danish novel, must be full of truth and beauty, to judge from the few extracts I have seen in Reviews. That a Dane should write so, confirms me in an old belief  – – that Italy is stuff for the use of the North, and no more  – – pure Poetry there is none, nearly as possible none, in Dante even  – – material for Poetry in the pitifullest romancist of their thousands, on the contrary  – – strange that those great wide black eyes should stare nothing out of the earth that lies before them! Alfieri, with even grey eyes, and a life of travel, writes you some fifteen tragedies as colourless as salad grown under a garden glass with matting over it  – – as free, that is, from local colouring, touches of the soil they are said to spring from,  – – think of ‘Saulle,’ and his Greek attempts!

I expected to see Mr. Kenyon, at a place where I was last week, but he kept away. Here is the bad wind back again, and the black sky. I am sure I never knew till now whether the East or West or South were the quarter to pray for  – – But surely the weather was a little better last week, and you, were you not better? And do you know  – – but it’s all self-flattery I believe,  – – still I cannot help fancying the East wind does my head harm too!

Ever yours faithfully, 

R. Browning.

Tuesday Night.
April 16, 1845.

I heard of you, dear Miss Barrett, between a Polka and a Cellarius the other evening, of Mr. Kenyon  – – how this wind must hurt you! And yesterday I had occasion to go your way  – – past, that is, Wimpole Street, the end of it,  – – and, do you know, I did not seem to have leave from you to go down it yet, much less count number after number till I came to yours,  – – much least than less, look up when I did come there. So I went on to a viperine she-friend of mine who, I think, rather loves me she does so hate me, and we talked over the chances of certain other friends who were to be balloted for at the ‘Athenæum’ last night,  – – one of whom, it seems, was in a fright about it  – – ‘to such little purpose’ said my friend  – – ‘for he is so inoffensive  – – now, if one were to style you that  – – ‘ ‘Or you’  – – I said  – – and so we hugged ourselves in our grimness like tiger-cats. Then there is a deal in the papers to-day about Maynooth, and a meeting presided over by Lord Mayor Gibbs, and the Reverend Mr. Somebody’s speech. And Mrs. Norton has gone and book-made at a great rate about the Prince of Wales, pleasantly putting off till his time all that used of old to be put off till his mother’s time;  – – altogether, I should dearly like to hear from you, but not till the wind goes, and sun comes  – – because I shall see Mr. Kenyon next week and get him to tell me some more. By the way, do you suppose anybody else looks like him? If you do, the first room full of real London people you go among you will fancy to be lighted up by a saucer of burning salt and spirits of wine in the back ground.

Monday  – – last night when I could do nothing else I began to write to you, such writing as you have seen  – – strange! The proper time and season for good sound sensible and profitable forms of speech  – – when ought it to have occurred, and how did I evade it in these letters of mine? For people begin with a graceful skittish levity, lest you should be struck all of a heap with what is to come, and that is sure to be the stuff and staple of the man, full of wisdom and sorrow,  – – and then again comes the fringe of reeds and pink little stones on the other side, that you may put foot on land, and draw breath, and think what a deep pond you have swum across. But you are the real deep wonder of a creature,  – – and I sail these paper-boats on you rather impudently. But I always mean to be very grave one day,  – – when I am in better spirits and can go fuori di me.

And one thing I want to persuade you of, which is, that all you gain by travel is the discovery that you have gained nothing, and have done rightly in trusting to your innate ideas  – – or not rightly in distrusting them, as the case may be. You get, too, a little  . . . perhaps a considerable, good, in finding the world’s accepted moulds everywhere, into which you may run and fix your own fused metal,  – – but not a grain Troy-weight do you get of new gold, silver or brass. After this, you go boldly on your own resources, and are justified to yourself, that’s all. Three scratches with a pen, even with this pen,  – – and you have the green little Syrenusa where I have sate and heard the quails sing. One of these days I shall describe a country I have seen in my soul only, fruits, flowers, birds and all.

Ever yours, dear Miss Barrett,

R. Browning.

Monday Morning.

March 31, 1845.

When you read Don Quixote, my dear romance-reader, do you ever notice that flower of an incident of good fellowship where the friendly Squire of Him of the Moon, or the Looking glasses, (I forget which) passes to Sancho’s dry lips, (all under a cork-tree one morning)  – – a plump wine-skin,  – – and do you admire dear brave Miguel’s knowledge of thirsty nature when he tells you that the Drinker, having seriously considered for a space the Pleiads, or place where they should be, fell, as he slowly returned the shrivelled bottle to its donor, into a deep musing of an hour’s length, or thereabouts, and then  . . . mark  . . . only then, fetching a profound sigh, broke silence with  . . . such a piece of praise as turns pale the labours in that way of Rabelais and the Teian (if he wasn’t a Byzantine monk, alas!) and our Mr. Kenyon’s stately self  – – (since my own especial poet à moi, that can do all with anybody, only ‘sips like a fly,’ she says, and so cares not to compete with these behemoths that drink up Jordan)  – – Well, then  . . . (oh, I must get quick to the sentence’s end, and be brief as an oracle-explainer!)  – – the giver is you and the taker is I, and the letter is the wine, and the star-gazing is the reading the same, and the brown study is  – – how shall I deserve and be grateful enough to this new strange friend of my own, that has taken away my reproach among men, that have each and all their friend, so they say ( . . . not that I believe all they say  – – they boast too soon sometimes, no doubt,  – – I once was shown a letter wherein the truth stumbled out after this fashion ‘Dere Smith,  – – I calls you “dere”  . . . because you are so in your shop!’)  – – and the great sigh is,  – – there is no deserving nor being grateful at all,  – – and the breaking silence is, and the praise is  . . . ah, there, enough of it! This sunny morning is as if I wished it for you  – – 10 strikes by the clock now  – – tell me if at 10 this morning you feel any good from my heart’s wishes for you  – – I would give you all you want out of my own life and gladness and yet keep twice the stock that should by right have sufficed the thin white face that is laughing at me in the glass yonder at the fancy of its making anyone afraid  . . . and now, with another kind of laugh, at the thought that when its owner ‘travels’ next, he will leave off Miss Barrett along with port wine  – – Dii meliora piis, and, among them to

Yours every where, and at all times yours

R. Browning.

I have all to say yet  – – next letter. R.B.

 

Tuesday Morning.
March 12, 1845.

Your letter made me so happy, dear Miss Barrett, that I have kept quiet this while; is it too great a shame if I begin to want more good news of you, and to say so? Because there has been a bitter wind ever since. Will you grant me a great favour? Always when you write, though about your own works, not Greek plays merely, put me in, always, a little official bulletin-line that shall say ‘I am better’ or ‘still better,’ will you? That is done, then  – – and now, what do I wish to tell you first? The poem you propose to make, for the times; the fearless fresh living work you describe, is the only Poem to be undertaken now by you or anyone that is a Poet at all; the only reality, only effective piece of service to be rendered God and man; it is what I have been all my life intending to do, and now shall be much, much nearer doing, since you will along with me. And you can do it, I know and am sure  – – so sure, that I could find in my heart to be jealous of your stopping in the way even to translate the Prometheus; though the accompanying monologue will make amends too. Or shall I set you a task I meant for myself once upon a time?  – – which, oh, how you would fulfil! Restore the Prometheus πυρφορος as Shelley did the Λυομενος; when I say ‘restore,’ I know, or very much fear, that the πυρφορος was the same with the πυρκαευς which, by a fragment, we sorrowfully ascertain to have been a Satyric Drama; but surely the capabilities of the subject are much greater than in this, we now wonder at; nay, they include all those of this last  – – for just see how magnificently the story unrolls itself. The beginning of Jupiter’s dynasty, the calm in Heaven after the storm, the ascending  – – (stop, I will get the book and give the words), οπως ταχιστα τον πατρωον εις θρονον καθεζετ’, ευθυς δαιμοσιν νεμει γερα αλλοισιν αλλα  – – κ.τ.λ., all the while Prometheus being the first among the first in honour, as καιτοι θεοισι τοις νεοις τουτοις γερα τις αλλος, η ‘γω, παντελως διωρισε? then the one black hand-cloudlet storming the joyous blue and gold everywhere, βροτων δε των ταλαιπωρων λογον ουκ εσχεν ουδενα, and the design of Zeus to blot out the whole race, and plant a new one. And Prometheus with his grand solitary εγω δ’ ετολμησα, and his saving them, as the first good, from annihilation. Then comes the darkening brow of Zeus, and estrangement from the benign circle of grateful gods, and the dissuasion of old confederates, and all the Right that one may fancy in Might, the strongest reasons παυεσθαι τροπου φιλανθρωπου coming from the own mind of the Titan, if you will, and all the while he shall be proceeding steadily in the alleviation of the sufferings of mortals whom, νηπιους οντας το πριν, εννους και φρενων επηβολους εθηκε, while still, in proportion, shall the doom he is about to draw on himself, manifest itself more and more distinctly, till at the last, he shall achieve the salvation of man, body (by the gift of fire) and soul (by even those τυφλαι ελπιδες, hopes of immortality), and so having rendered him utterly, according to the mythos here, independent of Jove  – – for observe, Prometheus in the play never talks of helping mortals more, of fearing for them more, of even benefiting them more by his sufferings. The rest is between Jove and himself; he will reveal the master-secret to Jove when he shall have released him, &c. There is no stipulation that the gifts to mortals shall be continued; indeed, by the fact that it is Prometheus who hangs on Caucasus while ‘the ephemerals possess fire,’ one sees that somehow mysteriously they are past Jove’s harming now. Well, this wholly achieved, the price is as wholly accepted, and off into the darkness passes in calm triumphant grandeur the Titan, with Strength and Violence, and Vulcan’s silent and downcast eyes, and then the gold clouds and renewed flushings of felicity shut up the scene again, with Might in his old throne again, yet with a new element of mistrust, and conscious shame, and fear, that writes significantly enough above all the glory and rejoicing that all is not as it was, nor will ever be. Such might be the framework of your Drama, just what cannot help striking one at first glance, and would not such a Drama go well before your translation? Do think of this and tell me  – – it nearly writes itself. You see, I meant the μεγ’ ωφελημα to be a deep great truth; if there were no life beyond this, I think the hope in one would be an incalculable blessing for this life, which is melancholy for one like Æschylus to feel, if he could only hope, because the argument as to the ulterior good of those hopes is cut clean away, and what had he left?

I do not find it take away from my feeling of the magnanimity of Prometheus that he should, in truth, complain (as he does from beginning to end) of what he finds himself suffering. He could have prevented all, and can stop it now  – – of that he never thinks for a moment. That was the old Greek way  – – they never let an antagonistic passion neutralise the other which was to influence the man to his praise or blame. A Greek hero fears exceedingly and battles it out, cries out when he is wounded and fights on, does not say his love or hate makes him see no danger or feel no pain. Æschylus from first word to last (ιδεσθε με, οια πασχω to εσορας με, ως

εκδικα πασχω) insists on the unmitigated reality of the punishment which only the sun, and divine ether, and the godhead of his mother can comprehend; still, still that is only what I suppose Æschylus to have done  – – in your poem you shall make Prometheus our way.

And now enough of Greek, which I am fast forgetting (for I never look at books I loved once)  – – it was your mention of the translation that brought out the old fast fading outlines of the Poem in my brain  – – the Greek poem, that is. You think  – – for I must get to you  – – that I ‘unconsciously exaggerate what you are to me.’ Now, you don’t know what that is, nor can I very well tell you, because the language with which I talk to myself of these matters is spiritual Attic, and ‘loves contractions,’ as grammarians say; but I read it myself, and well know what it means, that’s why I told you I was self-conscious  – – I meant that I never yet mistook my own feelings, one for another  – – there! Of what use is talking? Only do you stay here with me in the ‘House’ these few short years. Do you think I shall see you in two months, three months? I may travel, perhaps. So you have got to like society, and would enjoy it, you think? For me, I always hated it  – – have put up with it these six or seven years past, lest by foregoing it I should let some unknown good escape me, in the true time of it, and only discover my fault when too late; and now that I have done most of what is to be done, any lodge in a garden of cucumbers for me! I don’t even care about reading now  – – the world, and pictures of it, rather than writings about the world! But you must read books in order to get words and forms for ‘the public’ if you write, and that you needs must do, if you fear God. I have no pleasure in writing myself  – – none, in the mere act  – – though all pleasure in the sense of fulfilling a duty, whence, if I have done my real best, judge how heart-breaking a matter must it be to be pronounced a poor creature by critic this and acquaintance the other! But I think you like the operation of writing as I should like that of painting or making music, do you not? After all, there is a great delight in the heart of the thing; and use and forethought have made me ready at all times to set to work  – – but  – – I don’t know why  – – my heart sinks whenever I open this desk, and rises when I shut it. Yet but for what I have written you would never have heard of me  – – and through what you have written, not properly for it, I love and wish you well! Now, will you remember what I began my letter by saying  – – how you have promised to let me know if my wishing takes effect, and if you still continue better? And not even  . . . (since we are learned in magnanimity) don’t even tell me that or anything else, if it teases you,  – – but wait your own good time, and know me for  . . . if these words were but my own, and fresh-minted for this moment’s use! . . .

Yours ever faithfully,    

R. Browning.

Saturday Night, March 1 [1845].

Dear Miss Barrett,  – – I seem to find of a sudden  – – surely I knew before  – – anyhow, I do find now, that with the octaves on octaves of quite new golden strings you enlarged the compass of my life’s harp with, there is added, too, such a tragic chord, that which you touched, so gently, in the beginning of your letter I got this morning, ‘just escaping’ &c. But if my truest heart’s wishes avail, as they have hitherto done, you shall laugh at East winds yet, as I do! See now, this sad feeling is so strange to me, Continue reading “#11”