The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 4

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

50 Wimpole Street: March 20, 1845.

Whenever I delay to write to you, dear Mr. Browning, it is not, be sure, that I take my 'own good time,' but submit to my own bad time.

It was kind of you to wish to know how I was, and not unkind of me to suspend my answer to your question--for indeed I have not been very well, nor have had much heart for saying so. This implacable weather!

this east wind that seems to blow through the sun and moon! who can be well in such a wind? Yet for me, I should not grumble. There has been nothing very bad the matter with me, as there used to be--I only grow weaker than usual, and learn my lesson of being mortal, in a corner--and then all this must end! April is coming. There will be both a May and a June if we live to see such things, and perhaps, after all, we may. And as to seeing _you_ besides, I observe that you distrust me, and that perhaps you penetrate my morbidity and guess how when the moment comes to see a living human face to which I am not accustomed, I shrink and grow pale in the spirit. Do you? You are learned in human nature, and you know the consequences of leading such a secluded life as mine--notwithstanding all my fine philosophy about social duties and the like--well--if you have such knowledge or if you have it not, I cannot say, but I do say that I will indeed see you when the warm weather has revived me a little, and put the earth 'to rights' again so as to make pleasures of the sort possible. For if you think that I shall not _like_ to see you, you are wrong, for all your learning. But I shall be afraid of you at first--though I am not, in writing thus. You are Paracelsus, and I am a recluse, with nerves that have been all broken on the rack, and now hang loosely--quivering at a step and breath.

And what you say of society draws me on to many comparative thoughts of your life and mine. You seem to have drunken of the cup of life full, with the sun shining on it. I have lived only inwardly; or with _sorrow_, for a strong emotion. Before this seclusion of my illness, I was secluded still, and there are few of the youngest women in the world who have not seen more, heard more, known more, of society, than I, who am scarcely to be called young now. I grew up in the country--had no social opportunities, had my heart in books and poetry, and my experience in reveries. My sympathies drooped towards the ground like an untrained honeysuckle--and but for _one_, in my own house--but of this I cannot speak. It was a lonely life, growing green like the gra.s.s around it. Books and dreams were what I lived in--and domestic life only seemed to buzz gently around, like the bees about the gra.s.s. And so time pa.s.sed, and pa.s.sed--and afterwards, when my illness came and I seemed to stand at the edge of the world with all done, and no prospect (as appeared at one time) of ever pa.s.sing the threshold of one room again; why then, I turned to thinking with some bitterness (after the greatest sorrow of my life had given me room and time to breathe) that I had stood blind in this temple I was about to leave--that I had seen no Human nature, that my brothers and sisters of the earth were _names_ to me, that I had beheld no great mountain or river, nothing in fact. I was as a man dying who had not read Shakespeare, and it was too late! do you understand? And do you also know what a disadvantage this ignorance is to my art? Why, if I live on and yet do not escape from this seclusion, do you not perceive that I labour under signal disadvantages--that I am, in a manner, as a _blind poet_? Certainly, there is a compensation to a degree. I have had much of the inner life, and from the habit of self-consciousness and self-a.n.a.lysis, I make great guesses at Human nature in the main.

But how willingly I would as a poet exchange some of this lumbering, ponderous, helpless knowledge of books, for some experience of life and man, for some....

But all grumbling is a vile thing. We should all thank G.o.d for our measures of life, and think them enough for each of us. I write so, that you may not mistake what I wrote before in relation to society, although you do not see from my point of view; and that you may understand what I mean fully when I say, that I have lived all my chief _joys_, and indeed nearly all emotions that go warmly by that name and relate to myself personally, in poetry and in poetry alone.

Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live while I write--it is life, for me. Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe,--but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of being, pa.s.sionately and joyfully. And thus, one lives in composition surely--not always--but when the wheel goes round and the procession is uninterrupted. Is it not so with you? oh--it must be so. For the rest, there will be necessarily a reaction; and, in my own particular case, whenever I see a poem of mine in print, or even smoothly transcribed, the reaction is most painful. The pleasure, the sense of power, without which I could not write a line, is gone in a moment; and nothing remains but disappointment and humiliation. I never wrote a poem which you could not persuade me to tear to pieces if you took me at the right moment! I have a _seasonable_ humility, I do a.s.sure you.

How delightful to talk about oneself; but as you 'tempted me and I did eat,' I entreat your longsuffering of my sin, and ah! if you would but sin back so in turn! You and I seem to meet in a mild contrarious harmony ... as in the 'si no, si no' of an Italian duet. I want to see more of men, and you have seen too much, you say. I am in ignorance, and you, in satiety. 'You don't even care about reading now.' Is it possible? And I am as 'fresh' about reading, as ever I was--as long as I keep out of the shadow of the dictionaries and of theological controversies, and the like. Shall I whisper it to you under the memory of the last rose of last summer? _I am very fond of romances_; yes! and I read them not only as some wise people are known to do, for the sake of the eloquence here and the sentiment there, and the graphic intermixtures here and there, but for the story! just as little children would, sitting on their papa's knee. My childish love of a story never wore out with my love of plum cake, and now there is not a hole in it. I make it a rule, for the most part, to read all the romances that other people are kind enough to write--and woe to the miserable wight who tells me how the third volume endeth. Have you in you any surviving innocence of this sort? or do you call it idiocy? If you do, I will forgive you, only smiling to myself--I give you notice,--with a smile of superior pleasure! Mr. Chorley made me quite laugh the other day by recommending Mary Hewitt's 'Improvisatore,'

with a sort of deprecating reference to the _descriptions_ in the book, just as if I never read a novel--_I!_ I wrote a confession back to him which made him shake his head perhaps, and now I confess to _you_, unprovoked. I am one who could have forgotten the plague, listening to Boccaccio's stories; and I am not ashamed of it. I do not even 'see the better part,' I am so silly.

Ah! you tempt me with a grand vision of Prometheus! _I_, who have just escaped with my life, after treading Milton's ground, you would send me to aeschylus's. No, _I do not dare_. And besides ... I am inclined to think that we want new _forms_, as well as thoughts. The old G.o.ds are dethroned. Why should we go back to the antique moulds, cla.s.sical moulds, as they are so improperly called? If it is a necessity of Art to do so, why then those critics are right who hold that Art is exhausted and the world too worn out for poetry. I do not, for my part, believe this: and I believe the so-called necessity of Art to be the mere feebleness of the artist. Let us all aspire rather to _Life_, and let the dead bury their dead. If we have but courage to face these conventions, to touch this low ground, we shall take strength from it instead of losing it; and of that, I am intimately persuaded. For there is poetry _everywhere_; the 'treasure' (see the old fable) lies all over the field. And then Christianity is a worthy _myth_, and poetically acceptable.

I had much to say to you, or at least something, of the 'blind hopes'

&c., but am ashamed to take a step into a new sheet. If you mean 'to travel,' why, I shall have to miss you. Do you really mean it? How is the play going on? and the poem?

May G.o.d bless you!

Ever and truly yours,

E.B.B.

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

Monday Morning.

[Post-mark, 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 gla.s.ses, (I forget which) pa.s.ses 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 s.p.a.ce 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 _a 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 gla.s.s 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.

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

Tuesday Night.

[Post-mark, 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 'Athenaeum'

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 bra.s.s. After this, you go boldly on your own resources, and are justified to yourself, that's all. Three scratches with a pen,[1] 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.

[Footnote 1: A rough sketch follows in the original.]

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

Thursday Morning.

[Post-mark, April 18, 1845.]

If you did but know dear Mr. Browning how often I have written ... not this letter I am about to write, but another better letter to you, ...

in the midst of my silence, ... you would not think for a moment that the east wind, with all the harm it does to me, is able to do the great harm of putting out the light of the thought of you to my mind; for this, indeed, it has no power to do. I had the pen in my hand once to write; and why it fell out, I cannot tell you. And you see, ... all your writing will not change the wind! You wished all manner of good to me one day as the clock struck ten; yes, and I a.s.sure you I was better that day--and I must not forget to tell you so though it is so long since. And _therefore_, I was logically bound to believe that you had never thought of me since ... unless you thought east winds of me!

_That_ was quite clear; was it not? or would have been; if it had not been for the supernatural conviction, I had above all, of your kindness, which was too large to be taken in the hinge of a syllogism.

In fact I have long left off thinking that logic proves anything--it _doesn't_, you know.

But your Lamia has taught you some subtle 'viperine' reasoning and _motiving_, for the turning down one street instead of another. It was conclusive.

Ah--but you will never persuade me that I am the better, or as well, for the thing that I have not. We look from different points of view, and yours is the point of attainment. Not that you do not truly say that, when all is done, we must come home to place our engines, and act by our own strength. I do not want material as material; no one does--but every life requires a full experience, a various experience--and I have a profound conviction that where a poet has been shut from most of the outward aspects of life, he is at a lamentable disadvantage. Can you, speaking for yourself, separate the results in you from the external influences at work around you, that you say so boldly that you get nothing from the world? You do not _directly_, I know--but you do indirectly and by a rebound. Whatever acts upon you, becomes _you_--and whatever you love or hate, whatever charms you or is scorned by you, acts on you and becomes _you_. Have you read the 'Improvisatore'? or will you? The writer seems to feel, just as I do, the good of the outward life; and he is a poet in his soul. It is a book full of beauty and had a great charm to me.

As to the Polkas and Cellariuses I do not covet them of course ... but what a strange world you seem to have, to me at a distance--what a strange husk of a world! How it looks to me like mandarin-life or something as remote; nay, not mandarin-life but mandarin _manners_, ... life, even the outer life, meaning something deeper, in my account of it. As to dear Mr. Kenyon I do not make the mistake of fancying that many can look like him or talk like him or _be_ like him. I know enough to know otherwise. When he spoke of me he should have said that I was better notwithstanding the east wind. It is really true--I am getting slowly up from the prostration of the severe cold, and feel stronger in myself.

But Mrs. Norton discourses excellent music--and for the rest, there are fruits in the world so over-ripe, that they will fall, ... without being gathered. Let Maynooth witness to it! _if you think it worth while_!

Ever yours,

ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

And _is it_ nothing to be 'justified to one's self in one's resources?' '_That's all_,' indeed! For the 'soul's country' we will have it also--and I know how well the birds sing in it. How glad I was by the way to see your letter!