Robert and Elizabeth

August 8, 1845.

Just to show what may be lost by my crossings out, I will tell you the story of the one in the ‘Duchess’ — and in fact it is almost worth telling to a metaphysician like you, on other grounds, that you may draw perhaps some psychological good from the absurdity of it. Hear, then. When I had done writing the sheet of annotations and reflections on your poem I took up my pencil to correct the passages reflected on with the reflections, by the crosses you may observe, just glancing over the writing as I did so. Well! and, where that erasure is, I found a line purporting to be extracted from your ‘Duchess,’ with sundry acute criticisms and objections quite undeniably strong, following after it; only, to my amazement, as I looked and looked, the line so acutely objected to and purporting, as I say, to, be taken from the ‘Duchess,’ was by no means to be found in the ‘Duchess,’  . . . nor anything like it,  . . . and I am certain indeed that, in the ‘Duchess’ or out of it, you never wrote such a bad line in your life. And so it became a proved thing to me that I had been enacting, in a mystery, both poet and critic together — and one so neutralizing the other, that I took all that pains you remark upon to cross myself out in my double capacity,  . . . and am now telling the story of it notwithstanding. And there’s an obvious moral to the myth, isn’t there? for critics who bark the loudest, commonly bark at their own shadow in the glass, as my Flush used to do long and loud, before he gained experience and learnt the γνωθι σεαυτον in the apparition of the brown dog with the glittering dilating eyes,  . . . and as I did, under the erasure. And another moral springs up of itself in this productive ground; for, you see,  . . . ‘quand je m’efface il n’ya pas grand mal.’

And I am to be made to work very hard, am I? But you should remember that if I did as much writing as last summer, I should not be able to do much else,  . . . I mean, to go out and walk about  . . . for really I think I could manage to read your poems and write as I am writing now, with ever so much head-work of my own going on at the same time. But the bodily exercise is different, and I do confess that the novelty of living more in the outer life for the last few months than I have done for years before, make me idle and inclined to be idle — and everybody is idle sometimes — even you perhaps — are you not? For me, you know, I do carpet-work — ask Mrs. Jameson — and I never pretend to be in a perpetual motion of mental industry. Still it may not be quite as bad as you think: I have done some work since ‘Prometheus’ — only it is nothing worth speaking of and not a part of the romance-poem which is to be some day if I live for it — lyrics for the most part, which lie written illegibly in pure Egyptian — oh, there is time enough, and too much perhaps! and so let me be idle a little now, and enjoy your poems while I can. It is pure enjoyment and must be — but you do not know how much, or you would not talk as you do sometimes  . . . so wide of any possible application.

And do not talk again of what you would ‘sacrifice’ for me. If you affect me by it, which is true, you cast me from you farther than ever in the next thought. That is true.

The poems  . . . yours  . . . which you left with me, — are full of various power and beauty and character, and you must let me have my own gladness from them in my own way.

Now I must end this letter. Did you go to Chelsea and hear the divine philosophy?

Tell me the truth always  . . . will you? I mean such truths as may be painful to me though truths . . ..

May God bless you, ever dear friend.

E.B.B.

 

Sunday Evening.

August 4, 1845.

I said what you comment on, about Mr. Kenyon, because I feel I must always tell you the simple truth  – – Continue reading “#72”

Thursday.

August 2, 1845.

Let me write one word  . . . not to have it off my mind  . . . because it is by no means heavily on it; but lest I should forget to write it at all by not writing it at once. What could you mean,  . . . I have been thinking since you went away  . . . by applying such a grave expression as having a thing ‘off your mind’ to that foolish subject of the stupid book (mine), and by making it worth your while to account logically for your wish about my not mentioning it to Mr. Kenyon? You could not fancy for one moment that I was vexed in the matter of the book? or in the other matter of your wish? Now just hear me. Continue reading “#71”

Thursday.

July 31, 1845.

In all I say to you, write to you, I know very well that I trust to your understanding me almost beyond the warrant of any human capacity  – – but as I began, so I shall end. I shall believe you remember what I am forced to remember  – – you who do me the superabundant justice on every possible occasion,  – – you will never do me injustice when I sit by you and talk about Italy and the rest.

– – To-day I cannot write  – – though I am very well otherwise  – – but I shall soon get into my old self-command and write with as much ‘ineffectual fire’ as before: but meantime, you will write to me, I hope  – – telling me how you are? I have but one greater delight in the world than in hearing from you.

God bless you, my best, dearest friend  – – think what I would speak  – –

Ever yours

R.B.

 

July 28, 1845.

How must I feel, and what can, or could I say even if you let me say all? I am most grateful, most happy  – – most happy, come what will!

Will you let me try and answer your note to-morrow  – – before Wednesday when I am to see you? I will not hide from you that my head aches now; and I have let the hours go by one after one  – – I am better all the same, and will write as I say  – – ‘Am I better’ you ask!

Yours I am, ever yours my dear friend R.B.

Saturday.

July 28, 1845

You say too much indeed in this letter which has crossed mine — and particularly as there is not a word in it of what I most wanted to know and want to know  . . . how you are — for you must observe, if you please, that the very paper you pour such kindness on, was written after your own example and pattern, when, in the matter of my ‘Prometheus’ (such different wearying matter!), you took trouble for me and did me good. Judge from this, if even in inferior things, there can be gratitude from you to me! — or rather, do not judge — but listen when I say that I am delighted to have met your wishes in writing as I wrote; only that you are surely wrong in refusing to see a single wrongness in all that heap of weedy thoughts, and that when you look again, you must come to the admission of it. One of the thistles is the suggestion about the line

Was it singing, was it saying,

which you wrote so, and which I proposed to amend by an intermediate ‘or.’ Thinking of it at a distance, it grows clear to me that you were right, and that there should be and must be no ‘or’ to disturb the listening pause. Now should there? And there was something else, which I forget at this moment — and something more than the something else. Your account of the production of the poem interests me very much — and proves just what I wanted to make out from your statements the other day, and they refused, I thought, to let me,  . . . that you are more faithful to your first Idea than to your first plan. Is it so? or not? ‘Orange’ is orange — but which half of the orange is not predestinated from all eternity — : is it so?

Sunday. — I wrote so much yesterday and then went out, not knowing very well how to speak or how to be silent (is it better to-day?) of some expressions of yours  . . . and of your interest in me — which are deeply affecting to my feelings — whatever else remains to be said of them. And you know that you make great mistakes,  . . . of fennel for hemlock, of four o’clocks for five o’clocks, and of other things of more consequence, one for another; and may not be quite right besides as to my getting well ‘if I please!’  . . . which reminds me a little of what Papa says sometimes when he comes into this room unexpectedly and convicts me of having dry toast for dinner, and declares angrily that obstinacy and dry toast have brought me to my present condition, and that if I pleased to have porter and beefsteaks instead, I should be as well as ever I was, in a month! . . . But where is the need of talking of it? What I wished to say was this — that if I get better or worse  . . . as long as I live and to the last moment of life, I shall remember with an emotion which cannot change its character, all the generous interest and feeling you have spent on me — wasted on me I was going to write — but I would not provoke any answering — and in one obvious sense, it need not be so. I never shall forget these things, my dearest friend; nor remember them more coldly. God’s goodness! — I believe in it, as in His sunshine here — which makes my head ache a little, while it comes in at the window, and makes most other people gayer — it does me good too in a different way. And so, may God bless you! and me in this  . . . just this,  . . . that I may never have the sense,  . . . intolerable in the remotest apprehension of it  . . . of being, in any way, directly or indirectly, the means of ruffling your smooth path by so much as one of my flint-stones! — In the meantime you do not tire me indeed even when you go later for sooner  . . . and I do not tire myself even when I write longer and duller letters to you (if the last is possible) than the one I am ending now  . . . as the most grateful (leave me that word) of your friends.

E.B.B.

How could you think that I should speak to Mr. Kenyon of the book? All I ever said to him has been that you had looked through my ‘Prometheus’ for me — and that I was not disappointed in you, these two things on two occasions. I do trust that your head is better.

 

Friday Morning.

July 25, 1845.

You would let me now, I dare say, call myself grateful to you  – – yet such is my jealousy in these matters  – – so do I hate the material when it puts down, (or tries) the immaterial in the offices of friendship; that I could almost tell you I was not grateful, and try if that way I could make you see the substantiality of those other favours you refuse to recognise, and reality of the other gratitude you will not admit. But truth is truth, and you are all generosity, and will draw none but the fair inference, so I thank you as well as I can for this also  – – this last kindness. And you know its value, too  – – how if there were another you in the world, who had done all you have done and whom I merely admired for that; if such an one had sent me such a criticism, so exactly what I want and can use and turn to good; you know how I would have told you, my you I saw yesterday, all about it, and been sure of your sympathy and gladness:  – – but the two in one!

For the criticism itself, it is all true, except the over-eating  – – all the suggestions are to be adopted, the improvements accepted. I so thoroughly understand your spirit in this, that, just in this beginning, I should really like to have found some point in which I could coöperate with your intention, and help my work by disputing the effect of any alteration proposed, if it ought to be disputed  – – that would answer your purpose exactly as well as agreeing with you,  – – so that the benefit to me were apparent; but this time I cannot dispute one point. All is for best.

So much for this ‘Duchess’  – – which I shall ever rejoice in  – – wherever was a bud, even, in that strip of May-bloom, a live musical bee hangs now. I shall let it lie (my poem), till just before I print it; and then go over it, alter at the places, and do something for the places where I (really) wrote anyhow, almost, to get done. It is an odd fact, yet characteristic of my accomplishings one and all in this kind, that of the poem, the real conception of an evening (two years ago, fully)  – – of that, not a line is written,  – – though perhaps after all, what I am going to call the accessories in the story are real though indirect reflexes of the original idea, and so supersede properly enough the necessity of its personal appearance, so to speak. But, as I conceived the poem, it consisted entirely of the Gipsy’s description of the life the Lady was to lead with her future Gipsy lover  – – a real life, not an unreal one like that with the Duke. And as I meant to write it, all their wild adventures would have come out and the insignificance of the former vegetation have been deducible only  – – as the main subject has become now; of course it comes to the same thing, for one would never show half by half like a cut orange.  – –

Will you write to me? caring, though, so much for my best interests as not to write if you can work for yourself, or save yourself fatigue. I think before writing  – – or just after writing  – – such a sentence  – – but reflection only justifies my first feeling; I would rather go without your letters, without seeing you at all, if that advantaged you  – – my dear, first and last friend; my friend! And now  – – surely I might dare say you may if you please get well through God’s goodness  – – with persevering patience, surely  – – and this next winter abroad  – – which you must get ready for now, every sunny day, will you not? If I venture to weary you again with all this, is there not the cause of causes, and did not the prophet write that ‘there was a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the E.B.B.’ led on to the fortune of

Your R.B.

Oh, let me tell you in the bitterness of my heart, that it was only 4 o’clock  – – that clock I enquired about  – – and that,  . . . no, I shall never say with any grace what I want to say  . . . and now dare not  . . . that you all but owe me an extra quarter of an hour next time: as in the East you give a beggar something for a few days running  – – then you miss him; and next day he looks indignant when the regular dole falls and murmurs  – – ‘And, for yesterday?’  – – Do I stay too long, I want to know,  – – too long for the voice and head and all but the spirit that may not so soon tire,  – – knowing the good it does. If you would but tell me.

God bless you  – –

 

July 25, 1845.

Are you any better to-day? and will you say just the truth of it? and not attempt to do any of the writing which does harm — nor of the reading even, which may do harm — and something does harm to you, you see — and you told me not long ago that you knew how to avoid the harm  . . . now, did you not? and what could it have been last week which you did not avoid, and which made you so unwell? Beseech you not to think that I am going to aid and abet in this wronging of yourself, for I will not indeed — and I am only sorry to have given you my querulous queries yesterday  . . . and to have omitted to say in relation to them, too, how they were to be accepted in any case as just passing thoughts of mine for your passing thoughts,  . . . some right, it may be  . . . some wrong, it must be  . . . and none, insisted on even by the thinker! just impressions, and by no means pretending to be judgments — now will you understand? Also, I intended (as a proof of my fallacy) to strike out one or two of my doubts before I gave the paper to you — so whichever strikes you as the most foolish of them, of course must be what I meant to strike out — (there’s ingenuity for you!). The poem did, for the rest, as will be suggested to you, give me the very greatest pleasure, and astonish me in two ways  . . . by the versification, mechanically considered; and by the successful evolution of pure beauty from all that roughness and rudeness of the sin of the boar-pinner — successfully evolved, without softening one hoarse accent of his voice. But there is to be a pause now — you will not write any more — no, nor come here on Wednesday, if coming into the roar of this London should make the pain worse, as I cannot help thinking it must — and you were not well yesterday morning, you admitted. You will take care? And if there should be a wisdom in going away . . .!

Was it very wrong of me, doing what I told you of yesterday? Very imprudent, I am afraid — but I never knew how to be prudent — and then, there is not a sharing of responsibility in any sort of imaginable measure; but a mere going away of so many thoughts, apart from the thinker, or of words, apart from the speaker,  . . . just as I might give away a pocket-handkerchief to be newly marked and mine no longer. I did not do — and would not have done,  . . . one of those papers singly. It would have been unbecoming of me in every way. It was simply a writing of notes  . . . of slips of paper  . . . now on one subject, and now on another  . . . which were thrown into the great cauldron and boiled up with other matter, and re-translated from my idiom where there seemed a need for it. And I am not much afraid of being ever guessed at — except by those Oedipuses who astounded me once for a moment and were after all, I hope, baffled by the Sphinx — or ever betrayed; because besides the black Stygian oaths and indubitable honour of the editor, he has some interest, even as I have the greatest, in being silent and secret. And nothing is mine  . . . if something is of me  . . . or from me, rather. Yet it was wrong and foolish, I see plainly — wrong in all but the motives. How dreadful to write against time, and with a side-ways running conscience! And then the literature of the day was wider than his knowledge, all round! And the booksellers were barking distraction on every side! — I had some of the mottos to find too! But the paper relating to you I never was consulted about — or in one particular way it would have been better, — as easily it might have been. May God bless you, my dear friend,

E.B.B.

 

Tuesday Morning.

July 22, 1845.

I will say, with your leave, Thursday (nor attempt to say anything else without your leave).

The temptation of reading the ‘Essay’ was more than I could bear: and a wonderful work it is every way; the other poems and their music  – – wonderful!

And you go out still  – – so continue better!

I cannot write this morning  – – I should say too much and have to be sorry and afraid  – – let me be safely yours ever, my own dear friend  – –

R.B.

I am but too proud of your praise  – – when will the blame come  – – at Malta?

 

Monday.
July 21, 1845.

But I never did strike you or touch you — and you are not in earnest in the complaint you make — and this is really all I am going to say to-day. What I said before was wrung from me by words on your part, while you know far too well how to speak so as to make them go deepest, and which sometimes it becomes impossible, or over-hard to bear without deprecation: — as when, for instance, you talk of being ‘grateful’ to me!! — Well! I will try that there shall be no more of it — no more provocation of generosities — and so, (this once) as you express it, I ‘will not have the heart to blame’ you — except for reading my books against my will, which was very wrong indeed. Mr. Kenyon asked me, I remember, (he had a mania of sending my copybook literature round the world to this person and that person, and I was roused at last into binding him by a vow to do so no more) I remember he asked me  . . . ‘Is Mr. Browning to be excepted?’; to which I answered that nobody was to be excepted — and thus he was quite right in resisting to the death  . . . or to dinner-time  . . . just as you were quite wrong after dinner. Now, could a woman have been more curious? Could the very author of the book have done worse? But I leave my sins and yours gladly, to get into the Hood poems which have delighted me so — and first to the St. Praxed’s which is of course the finest and most powerful  . . . and indeed full of the power of life  . . . and of death. It has impressed me very much. Then the ‘Angel and Child,’ with all its beauty and significance! — and the ‘Garden Fancies’  . . . some of the stanzas about the name of the flower, with such exquisite music in them, and grace of every kind — and with that beautiful and musical use of the word ‘meandering,’ which I never remember having seen used in relation to sound before. It does to mate with your ‘simmering quiet’ in Sordello, which brings the summer air into the room as sure as you read it. Then I like your burial of the pedant so much! — you have quite the damp smell of funguses and the sense of creeping things through and through it. And the ‘Laboratory’ is hideous as you meant to make it: — only I object a little to your tendency  . . . which is almost a habit, and is very observable in this poem I think,  . . . of making lines difficult for the reader to read  . . . see the opening lines of this poem. Not that music is required everywhere, nor in them certainly, but that the uncertainty of rhythm throws the reader’s mind off the rail  . . . and interrupts his progress with you and your influence with him. Where we have not direct pleasure from rhythm, and where no peculiar impression is to be produced by the changes in it, we should be encouraged by the poet to forget it altogether; should we not? I am quite wrong perhaps — but you see how I do not conceal my wrongnesses where they mix themselves up with my sincere impressions. And how could it be that no one within my hearing ever spoke of these poems? Because it is true that I never saw one of them — never! — except the ‘Tokay,’ which is inferior to all; and that I was quite unaware of your having printed so much with Hood — or at all, except this ‘Tokay,’ and this ‘Duchess’! The world is very deaf and dumb, I think — but in the end, we need not be afraid of its not learning its lesson.

Could you come — for I am going out in the carriage, and will not stay to write of your poems even, any more to-day — could you come on Thursday or Friday (the day left to your choice) instead of on Wednesday? If I could help it I would not say so — it is not a caprice. And I leave it to you, whether Thursday or Friday. And Alexandria seems discredited just now for Malta — and ‘anything but Madeira,’ I go on saying to myself. These Hood poems are all to be in the next ‘Bells’ of course — of necessity?

May God bless you my dear friend, my ever dear friend! —

E.B.B.