The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 40

Why how you must sympathize with the heroes and heroines of the French romances (_do_ you sympathize with them very much?) when at the slightest provocation they break up the tables and chairs, (a degree beyond the deeds of my childhood!--_I_ only used to upset them) break up the tables and chairs and chiffoniers, and dash the china to atoms.

The men _do_ the furniture, and the women the porcelain: and pray observe that they always set about this as a matter of course! When they have broken everything in the room, they sink down quite (and very naturally) _abattus_. I remember a particular case of a hero of Frederic Soulie's, who, in the course of an 'emotion,' takes up a chair _unconsciously_, and breaks it into very small pieces, and then proceeds with his soliloquy. Well!--the clearest idea this excites in _me_, is of the low condition in Paris, of moral government and of upholstery. Because--just consider for yourself--how _you_ would succeed in breaking to pieces even a three-legged stool if it were properly put together--as stools are in England--just yourself, without a hammer and a screw! You might work at it _comme quatre_, and find it hard to finish, I imagine. And then as a demonstration, a child of six years old might demonstrate just so (in his sphere) and be whipped accordingly.

How I go on writing!--and you, who do not write at all!--two extremes, one set against the other.

But I must say, though in ever such an ill temper (which you know is just the time to select for writing a panegyric upon good temper) that I am glad you do not despise my own right name too much, because I never was called Elizabeth by any one who loved me at all, and I accept the omen. So little it seems my name that if a voice said suddenly 'Elizabeth,' I should as soon turn round as my sisters would ... no sooner. Only, my own right name has been complained of for want of euphony ... _Ba_ ... now and then it has--and Mr. Boyd makes a compromise and calls me _Elibet_, because nothing could induce him to desecrate his organs accustomed to Attic harmonies, with a _Ba_. So I am glad, and accept the omen.

But I give you no credit for not thinking that I may forget you ... I!

As if you did not see the difference! Why, _I_ could not even forget to _write_ to _you_, observe!--

Whenever you write, say how you are. Were you wet on Wednesday?

Your own--

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

Sat.u.r.day.

[Post-mark, December 20, 1845.]

I do not, nor will not think, dearest, of ever 'making you happy'--I can imagine no way of working that end, which does not go straight to my own truest, only true happiness--yet in every such effort there is implied some distinction, some supererogatory grace, or why speak of it at all? _You_ it is, are my happiness, and all that ever can be: YOU--dearest!

But never, if you would not, what you will not do I know, never revert to _that_ frightful wish. 'Disappoint me?' 'I speak what I know and testify what I have seen'--you shall 'mystery' again and again--I do not dispute that, but do not _you_ dispute, neither, that mysteries are. But it is simply because I do most justice to the mystical part of what I feel for you, because I consent to lay most stress on that fact of facts that I love you, beyond admiration, and respect, and esteem and affection even, and do not adduce any reason which stops short of accounting for _that_, whatever else it would account for, because I do this, in pure logical justice--_you_ are able to turn and wonder (if you _do ... now_) what causes it all! My love, only wait, only believe in me, and it cannot be but I shall, little by little, become known to you--after long years, perhaps, but still one day: I _would_ say _this_ now--but I will write more to-morrow. G.o.d bless my sweetest--ever, love, I am your

R.B.

But my letter came last night, did it not?

Another thing--no, _to-morrow_--for time presses, and, in all cases, _Tuesday_--remember!

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

Sat.u.r.day.

[Post-mark, December 20, 1845.]

I have your letter now, and now I am sorry I sent mine. If I wrote that you had 'forgotten to write,' I did not mean it; not a word! If I had meant it I should not have written it. But it would have been better for every reason to have waited just a little longer before writing at all. A besetting sin of mine is an impatience which makes people laugh when it does not entangle their silks, pull their knots tighter, and tear their books in cutting them open.

How right you are about Mr. Lowell! He has a refined fancy and is graceful for an American critic, but the truth is, otherwise, that he knows nothing of English poetry or the next thing to nothing, and has merely had a dream of the early dramatists. The amount of his reading in that direction is an article in the _Retrospective Review_ which contains extracts; and he re-extracts the extracts, re-quotes the quotations, and, 'a pede Herculem,' from the foot infers the man, or rather from the sandal-string of the foot, infers and judges the soul of the man--it is comparative anatomy under the most speculative conditions. How a writer of his talents and pretensions could make up his mind to make up a book on such slight substratum, is a curious proof of the state of literature in America. Do you not think so? Why a lecturer on the English Dramatists for a 'Young Ladies' academy'

here in England, might take it to be necessary to have better information than he could gather from an odd volume of an old review!

And then, Mr. Lowell's navete in showing his authority,--as if the Elizabethan poets lay mouldering in inaccessible ma.n.u.script somewhere below the lowest deep of Shakespeare's grave,--is curious beyond the rest! Altogether, the fact is an epigram on the surface-literature of America. As you say, their books do not suit us:--Mrs. Markham might as well send her compendium of the History of France to M. Thiers. If they _knew_ more they could not give parsley crowns to their own native poets when there is greater merit among the rabbits. Mrs.

Sigourney has just sent me--just this morning--her 'Scenes in my Native Land' and, peeping between the uncut leaves, I read of the poet Hillhouse, of 'sublime spirit and Miltonic energy,' standing in 'the temple of Fame' as if it were built on purpose for him. I suppose he is like most of the American poets, who are shadows of the true, as flat as a shadow, as colourless as a shadow, as lifeless and as transitory. Mr. Lowell himself is, in his verse-books, poetical, if not a poet--and certainly this little book we are talking of is grateful enough in some ways--you would call it a _pretty book_--would you not? Two or three letters I have had from him ... all very kind!--and _that_ reminds me, alas! of some ineffable ingrat.i.tude on my own part! When one's conscience grows too heavy, there is nothing for it but to throw it away!--

Do you remember how I tried to tell you what he said of you, and how you would not let me?

Mr. Mathews said of _him_, having met him once in society, that he was the concentration of conceit in appearance and manner. But since then they seem to be on better terms.

Where is the meaning, pray, of E.B._C._? _your_ meaning, I mean?

My true initials are E.B.M.B.--my long name, as opposed to my short one, being Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett!--there's a full length to take away one's breath!--Christian name ... Elizabeth Barrett:--surname, Moulton Barrett. So long it is, that to make it portable, I fell into the habit of doubling it up and packing it closely, ... and of forgetting that I was a _Moulton_, altogether. One might as well write the alphabet as all four initials. Yet our family-name is _Moulton Barrett_, and my brothers reproach me sometimes for sacrificing the governorship of an old town in Norfolk with a little honourable verdigris from the Heralds' Office. As if I cared for the _Retrospective Review_! Nevertheless it is true that I would give ten towns in Norfolk (if I had them) to own some purer lineage than that of the blood of the slave! Cursed we are from generation to generation!--I seem to hear the 'Commination Service.'

May G.o.d bless you always, always! beyond the always of this world!--

Your

E.B.B.

Mr. d.i.c.kens's 'Cricket' sings repet.i.tions, and, with considerable beauty, is extravagant. It does not appear to me by any means one of his most successful productions, though quite free from what was reproached as bitterness and one-sidedness, last year.

You do not say how you are--not a word! And you are wrong in saying that you 'ought to have written'--as if 'ought' could be in place _so_! You _never 'ought' to write to me you know_! or rather ... if you ever think you ought, you ought not! Which is a speaking of mysteries on my part!

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

Sunday Night.

[Post-mark, December 22, 1845.]

Now, '_ought_' you to be 'sorry you sent that letter,' which made, and makes me so happy--so happy--can you bring yourself to turn round and tell one you have so blessed with your bounty that there was a mistake, and you meant only half that largess? If you are not sensible that you _do_ make me most happy by such letters, and do not warm in the reflection of your own rays, then I _do_ give up indeed the last chance of procuring _you_ happiness. My own 'ought,' which you object to, shall be withdrawn--being only a pure bit of selfishness; I felt, in missing the letter of yours, next day, that I _might_ have drawn it down by one of mine,--if I had begged never so gently, the gold would have fallen--_there_ was my omitted duty to myself which you properly blame. I should stand silently and wait and be sure of the ever-remembering goodness.

Let me count my gold now--and rub off any speck that stays the full shining. First--_that thought_ ... I told you; I pray you, pray you, sweet--never that again--or what leads never so remotely or indirectly to it! On _your own fancied ground_, the fulfilment would be of necessity fraught with every woe that can fall in this life. I am yours for ever--if you are not _here_, with me--what then? Say, you take all of yourself away but just enough to live on; then, _that_ defeats every kind purpose ... as if you cut away all the ground from my feet but so much as serves for bare standing room ... why still, I _stand_ there--and is it the better that I have no broader s.p.a.ce, when off _that_ you cannot force me? I have your memory, the knowledge of you, the idea of you printed into my heart and brain,--on that, I can live my life--but it is for you, the dear, utterly generous creature I know you, to give me more and more beyond mere life--to extend life and deepen it--as you do, and will do. Oh, _how_ I love you when I think of the entire truthfulness of your generosity to me--how, meaning and willing to _give_, you gave _n.o.bly_! Do you think I have not seen in this world how women who _do_ love will manage to confer that gift on occasion? And shall I allow myself to fancy how much alloy such pure gold as _your_ love would have rendered endurable? Yet it came, virgin ore, to complete my fortune! And what but this makes me confident and happy? _Can_ I take a lesson by your fancies, and begin frightening myself with saying ... 'But if she saw all the world--the worthier, better men there ... those who would' &c.

&c. No, I think of the great, dear _gift_ that it was; how I '_won_'

NOTHING (the hateful word, and _French_ thought)--did nothing by my own arts or cleverness in the matter ... so what pretence have the _more_ artful or more clever for:--but I cannot write out this folly--I am yours for ever, with the utmost sense of grat.i.tude--to say I would give you my life joyfully is little.... I would, I hope, do that for two or three other people--but I am not conscious of any imaginable point in which I would not implicitly devote my whole self to you--be disposed of by you as for the best. There! It is not to be spoken of--let me _live_ it into proof, beloved!

And for 'disappointment and a burden' ... now--let us get quite away from ourselves, and not see one of the filaments, but only the _cords_ of love with the world's h.o.r.n.y eye. Have we such jarring tastes, then?

Does your inordinate attachment to gay life interfere with my deep pa.s.sion for society? 'Have they common sympathy in each other's pursuits?'--always asks Mrs. Tomkins! Well, here was I when you knew me, fixed in my way of life, meaning with G.o.d's help to write what may be written and so die at peace with myself so far. Can you help me or no? Do you _not_ help me so much that, if you saw the more likely peril for poor human nature, you would say, 'He will be jealous of all the help coming from me,--none from him to me!'--And _that would_ be a consequence of the help, all-too-great for hope of return, with any one less possessed than I with the exquisiteness of being _transcended_ and the _blest_ one.

But--'here comes the Selah and the voice is hushed'--I will speak of other things. When we are together one day--the days I believe in--I mean to set about that reconsidering 'Sordello'--it has always been rather on my mind--but yesterday I was reading the 'Purgatorio' and the first speech of the group of which Sordello makes one struck me with a new significance, as well describing the man and his purpose and fate in my own poem--see; one of the burthened, contorted souls tells Virgil and Dante--

Noi fummo gia tutti per forza morti, E _peccatori infin' all' ultim' ora_: QUIVI--_lume del ciel ne fece accorti Si che, pentendo e perdonando, fora Di vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati Che del disio di se veder n'accora._[1]

Which is just my Sordello's story ... could I '_do_' it off hand, I wonder--

And sinners were we to the extreme hour; _Then_, light from heaven fell, making us aware, So that, repenting us and pardoned, out Of life we pa.s.sed to G.o.d, at peace with Him Who fills the heart with yearning Him to see.

There were many singular incidents attending my work on that subject--thus, quite at the end, I found out there _was printed_ and not published, a little historical tract by a Count V---- something, called 'Sordello'--with the motto 'Post fata resurgam'! I hope he prophesied. The main of this--biographical notices--is extracted by Muratori, I think. Last year when I set foot in Naples I found after a few minutes that at some theatre, that night, the opera was to be 'one act of Sordello' and I never looked twice, nor expended a couple of carlines on the _libretto_!

I wanted to tell you, in last letter, that when I spoke of people's tempers _you_ have no concern with 'people'--I do not glance obliquely at _your_ temper--either to discover it, or praise it, or adapt myself to it. I speak of the relation one sees in other cases--how one opposes pa.s.sionate foolish people, but hates cold clever people who take quite care enough of themselves. I myself am born supremely pa.s.sionate--so I was born with light yellow hair: all changes--that is the pa.s.sion changes its direction and, taking a channel large enough, looks calmer, perhaps, than it should--and all my sympathies go with quiet strength, of course--but I know what the other kind is. As for the breakages of chairs, and the appreciation of Parisian _meubles_; manibus, pedibusque descendo in tuam sententiam, Ba, mi ocelle! ('What was E.B. C?' why, the first letter after, and _not_, E.B. _B_, my own _B_! There was no latent meaning in the C--but I had no inclination to go on to D, or E, for instance).

And so, love, Tuesday is to be our day--one day more--and then! And meanwhile '_care_' for me! a good word for you--but _my_ care, what is that! One day I aspire to _care_, though! I shall not go away at any dear Mr. K.'s coming! They call me down-stairs to supper--and my fire is out, and you keep me from feeling cold and yet ask if I am well?

Yes, well--yes, happy--and your own ever--I must bid G.o.d bless you--dearest!

R.B.

[Footnote 1: 'Purg.' v. 52 7.]