The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume I Part 9

He is in my mind one of the very first poets of the day, and has written to me so kindly (offering, although I never saw him in my life, to cater for me in literature, and send me down anything likely to interest me in the periodicals), that I cannot but think his amiability and genius do honor to one another.

Do you remember Mr. Caldicott who used to preach in the infant schoolroom at Sidmouth? He died here the death of a saint, as he had lived a saintly life, about three weeks ago. It affected me a good deal. But he was always so a.s.sociated in my thoughts more with heaven than earth, that scarcely a transition seems to have pa.s.sed upon his locality. 'Present with the Lord' is true of him now; even as 'having his conversation in heaven' was formerly. There is little difference.

May it be so with us all, with you and with me, my ever and very dear friend! In the meantime do not forget me. I never can forget _you_.

Your affectionate and grateful ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

Arabel desires her love to be offered to you.

_To H.S. Boyd_ 1 Beacon Terrace, Torquay: July 8, 1840.

My ever dear Friend,--I must write to you, although it is so very long, or at least seems so, since you wrote to me. But you say to Arabel in speaking of me that I '_used_ to care for what is poetical;'

therefore, perhaps you say to yourself sometimes that I _used_ to care for _you_! I am anxious to vindicate my ident.i.ty to you, in that respect above all.

It is a long, dreary time since I wrote to you. I admit the pause on my own part, while I charge you with another. But _your_ silence has embraced more pleasantness and less suffering to you than mine has to me, and I thank G.o.d for a prosperity in which my unchangeable regard for you causes me to share directly....

I have not rallied this summer as soon and well as I did last. I was very ill early in April at the time of our becoming conscious to our great affliction--so ill as to believe it utterly improbable, speaking humanly, that I ever should be any better. I am, however, a very great deal better, and gain strength by sensible degrees, however slowly, and do hope for the best--'the best' meaning one sight more of London.

In the meantime I have not yet been able to leave my bed.

To prove to you that I who 'used to care' for poetry do so still, and that I have not been absolutely idle lately, an 'Athenaeum' shall be sent to you containing a poem on the subject of the removal of Napoleon's ashes.[54] It is a fitter subject for you than for me.

Napoleon is no idol of _mine. I_ never made a 'setting sun' of him.

But my physician suggested the subject as a n.o.ble one and then there was something suggestive in the consideration that the 'Bellerophon'

lay on those very bay-waters opposite to my bed.

Another poem (which you won't like, I dare say) is called 'The Lay of the Rose,'[55] and appeared lately in a magazine. Arabel is going to write it out for you, she desires me to tell you with her best love.

Indeed, I have written lately (as far as ma.n.u.script goes) a good deal, only on all sorts of subjects and in as many shapes.

Lazarus would make a fine poem, wouldn't he? I lie here, weaving a great many schemes. I am seldom at a loss for thread.

Do write sometimes to me, and tell me if you do anything besides hearing the clocks strike and bells ring. My beloved papa is with me still. There are so many mercies close around me (and his presence is far from the least), that G.o.d's _Being_ seems proved to me, _demonstrated_ to me, by His manifested love. May His blessing in the full lovingness rest upon you always! Never fancy I can forget or think of you coldly.

Your affectionate and grateful ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

[Footnote 54: 'Crowned and Buried' _(Poetical Works_, iii. 9).]

[Footnote 55: _Poetical Works_, iii. 152.]

The above letter was written only three days before the tragedy which utterly wrecked Elizabeth Barrett's life for a time, and cast a deep shadow over it which never wholly pa.s.sed away--the death of her brother Edward through drowning. On July 11, he and two friends had gone for a sail in a small boat. They did not return when they were expected, and presently a rumour came that a boat, answering in appearance to theirs, had been seen to founder in Babbicombe Bay; but it was not until three days later that final confirmation of the disaster was obtained by the discovery of the bodies. What this blow meant to the bereaved sister cannot be told: the horror with which she refers to it, even at a distance of many years, shows how deeply it struck. It was the loss of the brother whom she loved best of all; and she had the misery of thinking that it was to attend on her that he had come to the place where he met his death. Little wonder if Torquay was thenceforward a memory from which she shrank, and if even the sound of the sea became a horror to her.

One natural consequence of this terrible sorrow is a long break in her correspondence. It is not until the beginning of 1841 that she seems to have resumed the thread of her life and to have returned to her literary occupations. Her health had inevitably suffered under the shock, and in the autumn of 1840 Miss Mitford speaks of not daring to expect more than a few months of lingering life. But when things were at the worst, she began unexpectedly to take a turn for the better.

Through the winter she slowly gathered strength, and with strength the desire to escape from Torquay, with its dreadful a.s.sociations, and to return to London. Meanwhile her correspondence with her friends revived, and with Horne in particular she was engaged during 1841 in an active interchange of views with regard to two literary projects.

Indeed, it was only the return to work that enabled her to struggle against the numbing effect of the calamity which had overwhelmed her.

Some time afterwards (in October 1843) she wrote to Mrs. Martin: 'For my own part and experience--I do not say it as a phrase or in exaggeration, but from very clear and positive conviction--I do believe that I should be _mad_ at this moment, if I had not forced back--dammed out--the current of rushing recollections by work, work, work.' One of the projects in which she was concerned was 'Chaucer Modernised,' a scheme for reviving interest in the father of English poetry, suggested in the first instance by Wordsworth, but committed to the care of Horne, as editor, for execution. According to the scheme as originally planned, all the princ.i.p.al poets of the day were to be invited to share the task of trans.m.u.ting Chaucer into modern language. Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, Horne, and others actually executed some portions of the work; Tennyson and Browning, it was hoped, would lend a hand with some of the later parts. Horne invited Miss Barrett to contribute, and, besides executing modernisations of 'Queen Annelida and False Arcite' and 'The Complaint of Annelida,'[56] she also advised generally on the work of the other writers during its progress through the press. The other literary project was for a lyrical drama, to be written in collaboration with Horne. It was to be called 'Psyche Apocalypte,' and was to be a drama on the Greek model, treating of the birth and self-realisation of the soul of man.

[Footnote 56: These versions are not reprinted in her collected _Poetical Works_, but are to be found in 'Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer modernised,' (1841).]

The sketch of its contents, given in the correspondence with Horne, will make the modern reader accept with equanimity the fact that it never progressed beyond the initial stage of drafting the plot. It is allegorical, philosophical, fantastic, unreal--everything which was calculated to bring out the worst characteristics of Miss Barrett's style and to intensify her faults. Fortunately her removal from Torquay to London interrupted the execution of the scheme. It was never seriously taken up again, and, though never explicitly abandoned, died a natural death from inanition, somewhat to the relief of Miss Barrett, who had come to recognise its impracticability.

Apart from the correspondence with Horne, which has been published elsewhere, very few letters are left from this period; but those which here follow serve to bridge over the interval until the departure from Torquay, which closes one well-marked period in the life of the poetess.

_To Mrs. Martin_ December 11, 1840.

My ever dearest Mrs. Martin,--I should have written to you without this last proof of your remembrance--this cape, which, warm and pretty as it is, I value so much more as the work of your hands and gift of your affection towards me. Thank you, dearest Mrs. Martin, and thank you too for _all the rest_--for all your sympathy and love. And do believe that although grief had so changed me from myself and warped me from my old instincts, as to prevent my looking forwards with pleasure to seeing you again, yet that full amends are made in the looking back with a pleasure more true because more tender than any old retrospections. Do give my love to dear Mr. Martin, and say what I could not have said even if I had seen him.

Shall you really, dearest Mrs. Martin, come again? Don't think we do not think of the hope you left us. Because we do indeed.

A note from papa has brought the comforting news that my dear, dear Stormie is in England again, in London, and looking perfectly well. It is a mercy which makes me very thankful, and would make me joyful if anything could. But the meanings of some words change as we live on.

Papa's note is hurried. It was a sixty-day pa.s.sage, and that is all he tells me. Yes--there is something besides about Sette and Occy being either unknown or misknown, through the fault of their growing. Papa is not near returning, I think. He has so much to do and see, and so much cause to be enlivened and renewed as to spirits, that I begged him not to think about me and stay away as long as he pleased. And the accounts of him and of all at home are satisfying, I thank G.o.d....

There is an east wind just now, which I feel. Nevertheless, Dr. Scully has said, a few minutes since, that I am as well as he could hope, considering the season.

May G.o.d bless you ever!

Your gratefully attached BA.

_To Mrs. Martin_ March 29, 1841.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Have you thought 'The dream has come true'?

I mean the dream of the flowers which you pulled for me and I wouldn't look at, even? I fear you must have thought that the dream about my ingrat.i.tude has come true.

And yet it has not. Dearest Mrs. Martin, it has _not_. I have not forgotten you or remembered you less affectionately through all the silence, or longed less for the letters I did not ask for. But the truth is, my faculties seem to hang heavily now, like flappers when the spring is broken. _My_ spring _is_ broken, and a separate exertion is necessary for the lifting up of each--and then it falls down again.

I never felt so before: there is no wonder that I should feel so now.

Nevertheless, I don't give up much to the pernicious languor--the tendency to lie down to sleep among the snows of a weary journey--I don't give up much to it. Only I find it sometimes at the root of certain negligences--for instance, of this toward _you_.

Dearest Mrs. Martin, receive my sympathy, _our_ sympathy, in the anxiety you have lately felt so painfully, and in the rejoicing for its happy issue. Do say when you write (I take for granted, you see, that you will write) how Mrs. B---- is now--besides the intelligence more nearly touching me, of your own and Mr. Martin's health and spirits. May G.o.d bless you both!

Ah! but you did not come: I was disappointed!

And Mrs. Hanford! Do you know, I tremble in my reveries sometimes, lest you should think it, guess it to be half unkind in me not to have made an exertion to see Mrs. Hanford. It was not from want of interest in her--least of all from want of love to _you_. But I have not stirred from my bed yet. But, to be honest, that was not the reason--I did not feel as if I _could_, without a painful effort, which, on the other hand, could not, I was conscious, result in the slightest shade of satisfaction to her, receive and talk to her. Perhaps it is hard for you to _fancy_ even how I shrink away from the very thought of seeing a human face--except those immediately belonging to me in love or relationship--(yours _does_, you know)--and a stranger's might be easier to look at than one long known....

For my own part, my dearest Mrs. Martin, my heart has been lightened lately by kind, _honest_ Dr. Scully (who would never give an opinion just to please me), saying that I am 'quite right' to mean to go to London, and shall probably be fit for the journey early in June.

He says that I may pa.s.s the winter there moreover, and with impunity--that wherever I am it will probably be necessary for me to remain shut up during the cold weather, and that under such circ.u.mstances it is quite possible to warm a London room to as safe a condition as a room _here_. So my heart is lightened of the fear of opposition: and the only means of regaining whatever portion of earthly happiness is not irremediably lost to me by the Divine decree, I am free to use. In the meantime, it really does seem to me that I make some progress in health--if the word in my lips be not a mockery.

Oh, I fancy I shall be strengthened to get home!

Your remarks on Chaucer pleased me very much. I am glad you liked what I did--or tried to do--and as to the criticisms, you were right--and they sha'n't be unattended to if the opportunity of correction be given to me.

Ever your affectionate BA.

_To H.S. Boyd_ August 28, 1841.

My very dear Friend,--I have fluctuated from one shadow of uncertainty and anxiety to another, all the summer, on the subject to which my last earthly wishes cling, and I delayed writing to you to be able to say I am going to London. I may say so now--as far as the human may say 'yes' or 'no' of their futurity. The carriage, a patent carriage with a bed in it, and set upon some hundreds of springs, is, I believe, on its road down to me, and immediately upon its arrival we begin our journey. Whether we shall ever complete it remains uncertain--_more_ so than other uncertainties. My physician appears a good deal alarmed, calls it an undertaking full of hazard, and myself the 'Empress Catherine' for insisting upon attempting it. But I must.

I go, as 'the doves to their windows,' to the only earthly daylight I see here. I go to rescue myself from the a.s.sociations of this dreadful place. I go to restore to my poor papa the companionships family.

Enough has been done and suffered for _me_. I thank G.o.d I am going home at last.