The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 28

To to-morrow!

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

Friday.

[Post-mark, October 17, 1845.]

Do tell me what you mean precisely by your 'Bells and Pomegranates'

t.i.tle. I have always understood it to refer to the Hebraic priestly garment--but Mr. Kenyon held against me the other day that your reference was different, though he had not the remotest idea how. And yesterday I forgot to ask, for not the first time. Tell me too why you should not in the new number satisfy, by a note somewhere, the Davuses of the world who are in the majority ('Davi sumus, non Oedipi') with a solution of this one Sphinx riddle. Is there a reason against it?

Occy continues to make progress--with a pulse at only eighty-four this morning. Are you learned in the pulse that I should talk as if you were? _I_, who have had my lessons? He takes scarcely anything yet but water, and his head is very hot still--but the progress is quite sure, though it may be a lingering case.

Your beautiful flowers!--none the less beautiful for waiting for water yesterday. As fresh as ever, they were; and while I was putting them into the water, I thought that your visit went on all the time. Other thoughts too I had, which made me look down blindly, quite blindly, on the little blue flowers, ... while I thought what I could not have said an hour before without breaking into tears which would have run faster then. To say now that I never can forget; that I feel myself bound to you as one human being cannot be more bound to another;--and that you are more to me at this moment than all the rest of the world; is only to say in new words that it would be a wrong against _myself_, to seem to risk your happiness and abuse your generosity. For _me_ ...

though you threw out words yesterday about the testimony of a 'third person,' ... it would be monstrous to a.s.sume it to be necessary to vindicate my trust of you--_I trust you implicitly_--and am not too proud to owe all things to you. But now let us wait and see what this winter does or undoes--while G.o.d does His part for good, as we know. I will never fail to you from any human influence whatever--_that_ I have promised--but you must let it be different from the other sort of promise which it would be a wrong to make. May G.o.d bless you--you, whose fault it is, to be too generous. You _are_ not like other men, as I could see from the beginning--no.

Shall I have the proof to-night, I ask myself.

And if you like to come on Monday rather than Tuesday, I do not see why there should be a 'no' to that. Judge from your own convenience.

Only we must be wise in the general practice, and abstain from too frequent meetings, for fear of difficulties. I am Ca.s.sandra you know, and smell the slaughter in the bath-room. It would make no difference in fact; but in comfort, much.

Ever your own--

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

Sat.u.r.day.

[Post-mark, October 18, 1845.]

I must not go on tearing these poor sheets one after the other,--the proper phrases _will not_ come,--so let them stay, while you care for my best interests in their best, only way, and say for _me_ what I would say if I could--dearest,--say it, as I feel it!

I am thankful to hear of the continued improvement of your brother. So may it continue with him! Pulses I know very little about--I go by your own impressions which are evidently favourable.

I will make a note as you suggest--or, perhaps, keep it for the closing number (the next), when it will come fitly in with two or three parting words I shall have to say. The Rabbis make Bells and Pomegranates symbolical of Pleasure and Profit, the gay and the grave, the Poetry and the Prose, Singing and Sermonizing--such a mixture of effects as in the original hour (that is quarter of an hour) of confidence and creation. I meant the whole should prove at last. Well, it _has_ succeeded beyond my most adventurous wishes in one respect--'Blessed eyes mine eyes have been, if--' if there was any sweetness in the tongue or flavour in the seeds to _her_. But I shall do quite other and better things, or shame on me! The proof has not yet come.... I should go, I suppose, and enquire this afternoon--and probably I will.

I weigh all the words in your permission to come on Monday ... do not think _I_ have not seen _that_ contingency from the first! Let it be Tuesday--no sooner! Meanwhile you are never away--never from your place here.

G.o.d bless my dearest.

Ever yours

R.B.

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

Monday Morning.

[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]

This arrived on Sat.u.r.day night--I just correct it in time for this our first post--will it do, the new matter? I can take it to-morrow--when I am to see you--if you are able to glance through it by then.

The 'Inscription,' how does that read?

There is strange temptation, by the way, in the s.p.a.ce they please to leave for the presumable 'motto'--'they but remind me of mine own conception' ... but one must give no clue, of a silk's breadth, to the '_Bower_,' _yet_, One day!

--Which G.o.d send you, dearest, and your

R.B.

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

[Post-mark, October 22, 1845.]

Even at the risk of teazing you a little I must say a few words, that there may be no misunderstanding between us--and this, before I sleep to-night. To-day and before to-day you surprised me by your manner of receiving my remark about your visits, for I believed I had sufficiently made clear to you long ago how certain questions were ordered in this house and how no exception was to be expected for my sake or even for yours. Surely I told you this quite plainly long ago.

I only meant to say in my last letter, in the same track ... (fearing in the case of your wishing to come oftener that you might think it unkind in me not to seem to wish the same) ... that if you came too often and it was _observed_, difficulties and vexations would follow as a matter of course, and it would be wise therefore to run no risk.

That was the head and front of what I meant to say. The weekly one visit is a thing established and may go on as long as you please--and there is no objection to your coming twice a week _now_ and _then_ ...

if now and then merely ... if there is no habit ... do you understand?

I may be prudent in an extreme perhaps--and certainly everybody in the house is not equally prudent!--but I did shrink from running any risk with that calm and comfort of the winter as it seemed to come on. And was it more than I said about the cloak? was there any newness in it?

anything to startle you? Still I do perfectly see that whether new or old, what it _involves_ may well be unpleasant to you--and that (however old) it may be apt to recur to your mind with a new increasing unpleasantness. We have both been carried too far perhaps, by late events and impulses--but it is never too late to come back to a right place, and I for my part come back to mine, and entreat you my dearest friend, first, _not to answer this_, and next, to weigh and consider thoroughly 'that particular contingency' which (I tell you plainly, I who know) the tongue of men and of angels would not modify so as to render less full of vexations to you. Let Pisa prove the excellent hardness of some marbles! Judge. From motives of self-respect, you may well walk an opposite way ... _you_.... When I told you once ... or twice ... that 'no human influence should' &c.

&c., ... I spoke for myself, quite over-looking you--and now that I turn and see you, I am surprised that I did not see you before ...

_there_. I ask you therefore to consider 'that contingency' well--not forgetting the other obvious evils, which the late decision about Pisa has aggravated beyond calculation ... for as the smoke rolls off we see the harm done by the fire. And so, and now ... is it not advisable for you to go abroad at once ... as you always intended, you know ...

now that your book is through the press? What if you go next week? I leave it to you. In any case _I entreat you not to answer this_--neither let your thoughts be too hard on me for what you may call perhaps vacillation--only that I stand excused (I do not say justified) before my own moral sense. May G.o.d bless you. If you go, I shall wait to see you till your return, and have letters in the meantime. I write all this as fast as I can to have it over. What I ask of you is, to consider alone and decide advisedly ... for both our sakes. If it should be your choice not to make an end now, ... why I shall understand _that_ by your not going ... or you may say '_no_' in a word ... for I require no '_protestations_' indeed--and _you_ may trust to _me_ ... it shall be as you choose. _You will consider my happiness most by considering your own_ ... and that is my last word.

_Wednesday morning._--I did not say half I thought about the poems yesterday--and their various power and beauty will be striking and surprising to your most accustomed readers. 'St. Praxed'--'Pictor Ignotus'--'The Ride'--'The d.u.c.h.ess'!--Of the new poems I like supremely the first and last ... that 'Lost Leader' which strikes so broadly and deep ... which n.o.body can ever forget--and which is worth all the journalizing and pamphleteering in the world!--and then, the last 'Thought' which is quite to be grudged to that place of fragments ... those grand sea-sights in the long lines. Should not these fragments be severed otherwise than by numbers? The last stanza but one of the 'Lost Mistress' seemed obscure to me. Is it so really? The end you have put to 'England in Italy' gives unity to the whole ...

just what the poem wanted. Also you have given some n.o.bler lines to the middle than met me there before. 'The d.u.c.h.ess' appears to me more than ever a new-minted golden coin--the rhythm of it answering to your own description, 'Speech half asleep, or song half awake?' You have right of trove to these novel effects of rhythm. Now if people do not cry out about these poems, what are we to think of the world?

May G.o.d bless you always--send me the next proof _in any case_.

Your

E.B.B.

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

[Post-mark, October 23, 1845.]

But I _must_ answer you, and be forgiven, too, dearest. I was (to begin at the beginning) surely not '_startled_' ... only properly aware of the deep blessing I have been enjoying this while, and not disposed to take its continuance as pure matter of course, and so treat with indifference the first shadow of a threatening intimation from without, the first hint of a possible abstraction from the quarter to which so many hopes and fears of mine have gone of late. In this case, knowing you, I was sure that if any imaginable form of displeasure could touch you without reaching me, I should not hear of it too soon--so I spoke--so _you_ have spoken--and so now you get 'excused'? No--wondered at, with all my faculty of wonder for the strange exalting way you will persist to think of me; now, once for all, I _will_ not pa.s.s for what I make no least pretence to. I quite understand the grace of your imaginary self-denial, and fidelity to a given word, and n.o.ble constancy; but it all happens to be none of mine, none in the least. I love you because I _love_ you; I see you 'once a week' because I cannot see you all day long; I think of you all day long, because I most certainly could not think of you once an hour less, if I tried, or went to Pisa, or 'abroad' (in every sense) in order to 'be happy' ... a kind of adventure which you seem to suppose you have in some way interfered with. Do, for this once, think, and never after, on the impossibility of your ever (you know I must talk your own language, so I shall say--) hindering any scheme of mine, stopping any supposable advancement of mine. Do you really think that before I found you, I was going about the world seeking whom I might devour, that is, be devoured by, in the shape of a wife ... do you suppose I ever dreamed of marrying? What would it mean for me, with my life I am hardened in--considering the rational chances; how the land is used to furnish its contingent of Shakespeare's women: or by 'success,' 'happiness' &c. &c. you never never can be seeing for a moment with the world's eyes and meaning 'getting rich' and all that?

Yet, put that away, and what do you meet at every turn, if you are hunting about in the dusk to catch my good, but yourself?

_I_ know who has got it, caught it, and means to keep it on his heart--the person most concerned--_I_, dearest, who cannot play the disinterested part of bidding _you_ forget your 'protestation' ...

what should I have to hold by, come what will, through years, through this life, if G.o.d shall so determine, if I were not sure, _sure_ that the first moment when you can suffer me with you 'in that relation,'

you will remember and act accordingly. I will, as you know, conform my life to _any_ imaginable rule which shall render it possible for your life to move with it and possess it, all the little it is worth.