The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 65

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Friday.

[Post-mark, March 20, 1846.]

I shall be late with my letter this morning because my sisters have been here talking, talking ... and I did not like to say exactly 'Go away that I may write.' Mr. Kenyon shortened our time yesterday too by a whole half-hour or three quarters--the stars are against us. He is coming on Sunday, however, he says, and if so, Monday will be safe and clear--and not a word was said after you went, about you: he was in a good joyous humour, as you saw, and the letter he brought was, oh! so complimentary to me--I will tell you. The writer doesn't see anything 'in Browning and Turner,' she confesses--'_may_ perhaps with time and study,' but for the present sees nothing,--only has wide-open eyes of admiration for E.B.B. ... now isn't it satisfactory to _me_? Do you understand the full satisfaction of just that sort of thing ... to be praised by somebody who sees nothing in Shakespeare?--to be found on the level of somebody so flat? Better the bad-word of the Britannia, ten times over! And best, to take no thought of bad or good words! ...

except such as I shall have to-night, perhaps! Shall I?

Will you be pleased to understand in the meanwhile a little about the 'risks' I am supposed to run, and not hold to such a G.o.dlike simplicity ('G.o.ds and bulls,' dearest!) as you made show of yesterday?

If we two went to the gaming-table, and you gave me a purse of gold to play with, should I have a right to talk proudly of 'my stakes?' and would any reasonable person say of both of us playing together as partners, that we ran 'equal risks'? I trow not--and so do _you_ ...

when you have not predetermined to be stupid, and mix up the rouge and noir into 'one red' of glorious confusion. What had I to lose on the point of happiness when you knew me first?--and if now I lose (as I certainly may according to your calculation) the happiness you have given me, why still I am your debtor for _the gift_ ... now see! Yet to bring you down into my ashes ... _that_ has been so intolerable a possibility to me from the first. Well, perhaps I run _more_ risk than you, under that one aspect. Certainly I never should forgive myself again if you were unhappy. 'What had _I_ to do,' I should think, 'with touching your life?' And if ever I am to think so, I would rather that I never had known you, seen your face, heard your voice--which is the uttermost sacrifice and abnegation. I could not say or sacrifice any more--not even for _you_! _You_, for _you_ ... is all I can!

Since you left me I have been making up my mind to your having the headache worse than ever, through the agreement with Moxon. I do, do beseech you to spare yourself, and let 'Luria' go as he is, and above all things not to care for my infinite foolishnesses as you see them in those notes. Remember that if you are ill, it is not so easy to say, 'Now I will be well again.' Ever dearest, care for me in yourself--say how you are.... I am not unwell to-day, but feel flagged and weak rather with the cold ... and look at your flowers for courage and an a.s.surance that the summer is within hearing. May G.o.d bless you ... blessing _us_, beloved!

Your own

BA.

Mr. Poe has sent me his poems and tales--so now I must write to thank him for his dedication. Just now I have the book. As to Mr.

Buckingham, he will go, Constantinople and back, before we talk of him.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Sat.u.r.day Morning.

[Post-mark, March 21, 1846.]

Dearest,--it just strikes me that I _might_ by some chance be kept in town this morning--(having to go to Milnes' breakfast there)--so as not to find the note I venture to expect, in time for an answer by our last post to-night. But I will try--this only is a precaution against the possibility. Dear, dear Ba! I cannot thank you, know not how to thank you for the notes! I adopt every one, of course, not as Ba's notes but as Miss Barrett's, not as Miss Barrett's but as anybody's, everybody's--such incontestable improvements they suggest. When shall I tell you more ... on Monday or Tuesday? _That_ I _must_ know--because you appointed Monday, 'if nothing happened--' and Mr. K.

happened--can you let me hear by our early post to-morrow--as on Monday I am to be with Moxon early, you know--and no letters arrive before 11-1/2 or 12. I was not very well yesterday, but to-day am much better--and you,--I say how _I_ am precisely to have a double right to know _all_ about you, dearest, in this snow and cold! How do you bear it? And Mr. K. spoke of '_that_ being your worst day.' Oh, dear dearest Ba, remember how I live in you--on the hopes, with the memory of you. Bless you ever!

R.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

[Post-mark, March 21, 1846.]

I do not understand how my letters limp so instead of flying as they ought with the feathers I give them, and how you did not receive last night, nor even early this morning, what left me at two o'clock yesterday. But I understand _now_ the not hearing from you--you were not well. Not well, not well ... _that_ is always 'happening' at least. And Mr. Moxon, who is to have his first sheet, whether you are well or ill! It is wrong ... yes, very wrong--and if one point of wrongness is touched, we shall not easily get right again--as I think mournfully, feeling confident (call me Ca.s.sandra, but I cannot jest about it) feeling certain that it will end (the means being so persisted in) by some serious illness--serious sorrow,--on yours and my part.

As to Monday, Mr. Kenyon said he would come again on Sunday--in which case, Monday will be clear. If he should not come on Sunday, he will or may on Monday,--yet--oh, in every case, perhaps you can come on Monday--there will be no time to let you know of Mr. Kenyon--and _probably_ we shall be safe, and your being in town seems to fix the day. For myself I am well enough, and the wind has changed, which will make me better--this cold weather oppresses and weakens me, but it is close to April and can't last and won't last--it is warmer already.

Beware of the notes! They are not Ba's--except for the insolence, nor EBB's--because of the carelessness. If I had known, moreover, that you were going to Moxon's on Monday, they should have gone to the fire rather than provoked you into superfluous work for the short interval.

Just so much are they despised of both EBB and Ba.

I am glad I did not hear from you yesterday because you were not well, and you _must never_ write when you are not well. But if you had been quite well, should I have heard?--_I doubt it_. You meant me to hear from you only once, from Thursday to Monday. Is it not the truth now that you hate writing to me?

The _Athenaeum_ takes up the 'Tales from Boccaccio' as if they were worth it, and imputes in an underground way the authors.h.i.+p to the members of the 'coterie' so called--do you observe _that_? There is an implication that persons named in the poem wrote the poem themselves.

And upon _whom_ does the critic mean to fix the song of 'Constancy'

... the song which is 'not to puzzle anybody' who knows the tunes of the song-writers! The perfection of commonplace it seems to me. It might have been written by the 'poet Bunn.' Don't you think so?

While I write this you are in town, but you will not read it till Sunday unless I am more fortunate than usual. On Monday then! And no word before? No--I shall be sure not to hear to-night. Now do try not to suffer through 'Luria.' Let Mr. Moxon wait a week rather. There is time enough.

Ever your

BA.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Sunday.

[Post-mark, March 23, 1846.]

Oh, my Ba--how you shall hear of this to-morrow--that is all: _I_ hate writing? See when presently I _only_ write to you daily, hourly if you let me? Just this _now_--I will be with you to-morrow in any case--I can go away _at once_, if need be, or stay--if you like you can stop me by sending a note for me _to Moxon's before_ 10 o'clock--if anything calls for such a measure.

Now briefly,--I am unwell and entirely irritated with this sad 'Luria'--I thought it a failure at first, I find it infinitely worse than I thought--it is a pure exercise of _cleverness_, even where most successful; clever attempted reproduction of what was conceived by another faculty, and foolishly let pa.s.s away. If I go on, even hurry the more to get on, with the printing,--it is to throw out and away from me the irritating obstruction once and forever. I have corrected it, cut it down, and it may stand and pledge me to doing better hereafter. I say, too, in excuse to myself, _unlike_ the woman at her spinning-wheel, 'He thought of his _flax_ on the whole far more than of his singing'--more of his life's sustainment, of dear, dear Ba he hates writing to, than of these wooden figures--no wonder all is as it is?

Here is a pure piece of the old Chorley leaven for you, just as it reappears ever and anon and throws one back on the mistrust all but abandoned! Chorley _knows_ I have not seen that Powell for nearly fifteen months--that I never heard of the book till it reached me in a blank cover--that I never contributed a line or word to it directly or indirectly--and I should think he _also knows_ that all the sham learning, notes &c., all that saves the book from the deepest deep of contempt, was contributed by Heraud (_a regular critic in the 'Athenaeum'_), who received his pay for the same: he knows I never spoke in my life to 'Jones or Stephens'--that there is no 'coterie' of which I can, by any extension of the word, form a part--that I am in this case at the mercy of a wretched creature who to get into my favour again (to speak the plain truth) put in the gross, disgusting flattery in the notes--yet Chorley, knowing this, none so well, and what the writer's end is--(to have it supposed I, and the others named--Talfourd, for instance--ARE his friends and helpers)--he condescends to _further_ it by such a notice, written with that observable and characteristic duplicity, that to poor gross stupid Powell it shall look like an admiring 'Oh, fie--_so_ clever but _so_ wicked'!--a kind of _D'Orsay's_ praise--while to the rest of his readers, a few depreciatory epithets--slight sneers convey his real sentiments, he trusts! And this he does, just because Powell buys an article of him once a quarter and would _expect_ notice. I think I hear Chorley--'You know, I _cannot_ praise such a book--it _is_ too bad'--as if, as if--oh, it makes one sicker than having written 'Luria,' there's one comfort! I shall call on Chorley and ask for _his_ account of the matter. Meantime n.o.body will read his foolish notice without believing as he and Powell desire! Bless you, my own Ba--to-morrow makes amends to R.B.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Tuesday.

[Post-mark, March 24, 1846.]

How ungrateful I was to your flowers yesterday, never looking at them nor praising them till they were put away, and yourself gone away--and _that_ was _your_ fault, be it remembered, because you began to tell me of the good news from Moxon's, and, in the joy of it, I missed the flowers ... for the nonce, you know. Afterward they had their due, and all the more that you were not there. My first business when you are out of the room and the house, and the street perhaps, is to arrange the flowers and to gather out of them all the thoughts you leave between the leaves and at the end of the stalks. And shall I tell you what happened, not yesterday, but the Thursday before? no, it was the Friday morning, when I found, or rather Wilson found and held up from my chair, a bunch of dead blue violets. Quite dead they seemed! You had dropped them and I had sate on them, and where we murdered them they had lain, poor things, all the night through. And Wilson thought it the vainest of labours when she saw me set about reviving them, cutting the stalks afresh, and dipping them head and ears into water--but then she did not know how you, and I, and ours, live under a miraculous dispensation, and could only simply be astonished when they took to blowing again as if they never had wanted the dew of the garden, ... yes, and when at last they outlived all the prosperity of the contemporary white violets which flourished in water from the beginning, and were free from the disadvantage of having been sate upon. Now you shall thank me for this letter, it is at once so amusing and instructive. After all, too, it teaches you what the great events of my life are, not that the resuscitation of your violets would not really be a great event to me, even if I led the life of a pirate, between fire and sea, otherwise. But take _you_ away ... out of my life!--and what remains? The only greenness I used to have (before you brought your flowers) was as the gra.s.s growing in deserted streets, ... which brings a proof, in every increase, of the extending desolation.

Dearest, I persist in thinking that you ought not to be too disdainful to explain your meaning in the Pomegranates. Surely you might say in a word or two that, your t.i.tle having been doubted about (to your surprise, you _might_ say!), you refer the doubters to the Jewish priest's robe, and the Rabbinical gloss ... for I suppose it is a gloss on the robe ... do you not think so? Consider that Mr. Kenyon and I may fairly represent the average intelligence of your readers,--and that _he_ was altogether in the clouds as to your meaning ... had not the most distant notion of it,--while I, taking hold of the priest's garment, missed the Rabbins and the distinctive significance, as completely as he did. Then for Vasari, it is not the handbook of the whole world, however it may be Mrs. Jameson's. Now why should you be too proud to teach such persons as only desire to be taught? I persist--I shall teaze you.

This morning my brothers have been saying ... 'Ah you had Mr. Browning with you yesterday, I see by the flowers,' ... just as if they said 'I see queen Mab has been with you.' Then Stormie took the opportunity of swearing to me by all his G.o.ds that your name was mentioned lately in the House of Commons--_is_ that true? or untrue? He forgot to tell me at the time, he says,--and you were named with others and in relation to copyright matters. _Is_ it true?

Mr. Hornblower Gill is the author of a Hymn to Pa.s.sion week, and wrote to me as the 'glorifier of pain!' to remind me that the best glory of a soul is shown in the joy of it, and that all chief poets except Dante have seen, felt, and written it so. Thus and therefore was matured his purpose of writing an 'ode to joy,' as I told you. The man seems to have very good thoughts, ... but he writes like a colder Cowley still ... no impulse, no heat for fusing ... no inspiration, in fact. Though I have scarcely done more than glance at his 'Pa.s.sion week,' and have little right to give an opinion.

If you have killed Luria as you helped to kill my violets, what shall I say, do you fancy? Well--we shall see! Do not kill yourself, beloved, in any case! The [Greek: iostephanoi Mousai] had better die themselves first! Ah--what am I writing? What nonsense? I mean, in deep earnest, the deepest, that you should take care and exercise, and not be vexed for Luria's sake--Luria will have his triumph presently!

May G.o.d bless you--prays your own

BA.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Tuesday Afternoon.

[Post-mark, March 24, 1846.]