The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 43

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

January 1, 1845 [1846].

How good you are--how best! it is a favourite play of my memory to take up the thought of what you were to me (to my mind gazing!) years ago, as the poet in an abstraction--then the thoughts of you, a little clearer, in concrete personality, as Mr. Kenyon's friend, who had dined with him on such a day, or met him at dinner on such another, and said some great memorable thing 'on Wednesday last,' and enquired kindly about _me_ perhaps on Thursday,--till I was proud! and so, the thoughts of you, nearer and nearer (yet still afar!) as the Mr.

Browning who meant to do me the honour of writing to me, and who did write; and who asked me once in a letter (does he remember?) 'not to lean out of the window while his foot was on the stair!'--to take up all those thoughts, and more than those, one after another, and tie them together with all _these_, which cannot be named so easily--which cannot be cla.s.sed in botany and Greek. It is a nosegay of mystical flowers, looking strangely and brightly, and keeping their May-dew through the Christmases--better than even _your_ flowers! And I am not 'ashamed' of mine, ... be very sure! no!

For the siren, I never suggested to you any such thing--why you do not pretend to have read such a suggestion in my letter certainly. _That_ would have been most exemplarily modest of me! would it not, O Ulysses?

And you meant to write, ... you _meant_! and went to walk in 'Poet's lane' instead, (in the 'Aonius of Highgate') which I remember to have read of--does not Hunt speak of it in his Memoirs?--and so now there is another track of light in the traditions of the place, and people may talk of the pomegranate-smell between the hedges. So you really have _hills_ at New Cross, and not hills by courtesy? I was at Hampstead once--and there was something attractive to me in that fragment of heath with its wild smell, thrown down ... like a Sicilian rose from Proserpine's lap when the car drove away, ... into all that arid civilization, 'laurel-clumps and invisible visible fences,' as you say!--and the grand, eternal smoke rising up in the distance, with its witness against nature! People grew severely in jest about c.o.c.kney landscape--but is it not true that the trees and gra.s.s in the close neighbourhood of great cities must of necessity excite deeper emotion than the woods and valleys will, a hundred miles off, where human creatures ruminate stupidly as the cows do, the 'county families'

es-_chewing_ all men who are not 'landed proprietors,' and the farmers never looking higher than to the fly on the uppermost turnip-leaf! Do you know at all what English country-life is, which the English praise so, and 'moralize upon into a thousand similes,' as that one greatest, purest, n.o.blest thing in the world--the purely English and excellent thing? It is to my mind simply and purely abominable, and I would rather live in a street than be forced to live it out,--that English country-life; for I don't mean life in the country. The social exigencies--why, nothing _can_ be so bad--nothing! That is the way by which Englishmen grow up to top the world in their peculiar line of respectable absurdities.

Think of my talking so as if I could be vexed with any one of them!

_I!_--On the contrary I wish them all a happy new year to abuse one another, or visit each of them his nearest neighbour whom he hates, three times a week, because 'the distance is so convenient,' and give great dinners in n.o.ble rivalship (venison from the Lord Lieutenant against turbot from London!), and talk popularity and game-law by turns to the tenantry, and beat down t.i.thes to the rector. This glorious England of ours; with its peculiar glory of the rural districts! And _my_ glory of patriotic virtue, who am so happy in spite of it all, and make a pretence of talking--talking--while I think the whole time of your letter. I think of your letter--I am no more a patriot than _that_!

May G.o.d bless you, best and dearest! You say things to me which I am not worthy to listen to for a moment, even if I was deaf dust the next moment.... I confess it humbly and earnestly as before G.o.d.

Yet He knows,--if the entireness of a gift means anything,--that I have not given with a reserve, that I am yours in my life and soul, for this year and for other years. Let me be used _for_ you rather than _against_ you! and that unspeakable, immeasurable grief of feeling myself a stone in your path, a cloud in your sky, may I be saved from it!--pray it for _me_ ... for _my_ sake rather than _yours_. For the rest, I thank you, I thank you. You will be always to me, what to-day you are--and that is all!--!

I am your own--

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

Sunday Night.

[Post-mark, January 5, 1846.]

Yesterday, nearly the last thing, I bade you 'think of me'--I wonder if you could misunderstand me in that?--As if my words or actions or any of my ineffectual outside-self _should_ be thought of, unless to be forgiven! But I do, dearest, feel confident that while I am in your mind--cared for, rather than thought about--no great harm can happen to me; and as, for great harm to reach me, it must pa.s.s through you, you will care for yourself; _my_self, best self!

Come, let us talk. I found Horne's book at home, and have had time to see that fresh beautiful things are there--I suppose 'Delora' will stand alone still--but I got pleasantly smothered with that odd shower of wood-spoils at the end, the dwarf-story; cup-ma.s.ses and fern and spotty yellow leaves,--all that, I love heartily--and there is good sailor-speech in the 'Ben Capstan'--though he does knock a man down with a 'crow-bar'--instead of a marling-spike or, even, a belaying-pin! The first tale, though good, seems least new and individual, but I must know more. At one thing I wonder--his not reprinting a quaint clever _real_ ballad, published before 'Delora,'

on the 'Merry Devil of Edmonton'--the first of his works I ever read.

No, the very first piece was a single stanza, if I remember, in which was this line: 'When bason-crested Quixote, lean and bold,'--good, is it not? Oh, while it strikes me, good, too, _is_ that 'Swineshead Monk' ballad! Only I miss the old chronicler's touch on the method of concocting the poison: 'Then stole this Monk into the Garden and under a certain herb found out a Toad, which, squeezing into a cup,' &c.

something to that effect. I suspect, _par parenthese_, you have found out by this time my odd liking for 'vermin'--you once wrote '_your_ snails'--and certainly snails are old clients of mine--but efts! Horne traced a line to me--in the rhymes of a ''prentice-hand' I used to look over and correct occasionally--taxed me (last week) with having altered the wise line 'Cold as a _lizard_ in a _sunny_ stream' to 'Cold as a newt hid in a shady brook'--for 'what do _you_ know about newts?' he asked of the author--who thereupon confessed. But never try and catch a speckled gray lizard when we are in Italy, love, and you see his tail hang out of the c.h.i.n.k of a wall, his winter-house--because the strange tail will snap off, drop from him and stay in your fingers--and though you afterwards learn that there is more desperation in it and glorious determination to be free, than positive pain (so people say who have no tails to be twisted off)--and though, moreover, the tail grows again after a sort--_yet_ ... don't do it, for it will give you a thrill! What a fine fellow our English water-eft is; 'Triton paludis Linnaei'--_e come guizza_ (_that_ you can't say in another language; cannot preserve the little in-and-out motion along with the straightforwardness!)--I always loved all those wild creatures G.o.d '_sets up for themselves_' so independently of us, so successfully, with their strange happy minute inch of a candle, as it were, to light them; while we run about and against each other with our great cressets and fire-pots. I once saw a solitary bee nipping a leaf round till it exactly fitted the front of a hole; his nest, no doubt; or tomb, perhaps--'Safe as Oedipus's grave-place, 'mid Colone's olives swart'--(Kiss me, my Siren!)--Well, it seemed awful to watch that bee--he seemed so _instantly_ from the teaching of G.o.d! aelian says that ... a _frog_, does he say?--some animal, having to swim across the Nile, never fails to provide himself with a bit of reed, which he bites off and holds in his mouth transversely and so puts from sh.o.r.e gallantly ... because when the water-serpent comes swimming to meet him, there is the reed, wider than his serpent's jaws, and no hopes of a swallow that time--now fancy the two meeting heads, the frog's wide eyes and the vexation of the snake!

Now, see! do I deceive you? Never say I began by letting down my dignity 'that with no middle flight intends to soar above the Aonian Mount'!--

My best, dear, dear one,--may you be better, less _depressed_, ... I can hardly imagine frost reaching you if I could be by you. Think what happiness you mean to give me,--what a life; what a death! 'I may change'--too true; yet, you see, as an eft was to me at the beginning so it continues--I _may_ take up stones and pelt the next I see--but--do you much fear that?--Now, _walk_, move, _guizza, anima mia dolce_. Shall I not know one day how far your mouth will be from mine as we walk? May I let that stay ... dearest, (the _line_ stay, not the mouth)?

I am not very well to-day--or, rather, have not been so--_now_, I am well and _with you_. I just say that, very needlessly, but for strict frankness' sake. Now, you are to write to me soon, and tell me all about your self, and to love me ever, as I love you ever, and bless you, and leave you in the hands of G.o.d--My own love!--

Tell me if I do wrong to send _this_ by a morning post--so as to reach you earlier than the evening--when you will ... write to me?

Don't let me forget to say that I shall receive the _Review_ to-morrow, and will send it directly.

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

Sunday.

[Post-mark, January 6, 1846.]

When you get Mr. Horne's book you will understand how, after reading just the first and the last poems, I could not help speaking coldly a little of it--and in fact, estimating his power as much as you can do, I did think and do, that the last was unworthy of him, and that the first might have been written by a writer of one tenth of his faculty.

But last night I read the 'Monk of Swineshead Abbey' and the 'Three Knights of Camelott' and 'Bedd Gelert' and found them all of different stuff, better, stronger, more consistent, and read them with pleasure and admiration. Do you remember this application, among the countless ones of shadow to the transiency of life? I give the first two lines for clearness--

Like to the cloud upon the hill We are a moment seen Or the _shadow of the windmill-sail Across yon sunny slope of green_.

New or not, and I don't remember it elsewhere, it is just and beautiful I think. Think how the shadow of the windmill-sail just touches the ground on a bright windy day! the shadow of a bird flying is not faster! Then the 'Three Knights' has beautiful things, with more definite and distinct images than he is apt to show--for his character is a vague grand ma.s.siveness,--like Stonehenge--or at least, if 'towers and battlements he sees' they are 'bosomed high' in dusky clouds ... it is a 'pa.s.sion-created imagery' which has no clear outline. In this ballad of the 'Knights,' and in the Monk's too, we may _look at_ things, as on the satyr who swears by his horns and mates not with his kind afterwards, 'While, _holding beards_, they dance in pairs--and that is all excellent and reminds one of those fine sylvan festivals, 'in Orion.' But now tell me if you like altogether 'Ben Capstan' and if you consider the sailor-idiom to be lawful in poetry, because I do not indeed. On the same principle we may have Yorkshire and Somersetshire 'sweet Doric'; and do recollect what it ended in of old, in the Blowsibella heroines. Then for the Elf story ... why should such things be written by men like Mr. Horne? I am vexed at it. Shakespeare and Fletcher did not write so about fairies:--Drayton did not. Look at the exquisite 'Nymphidia,' with its subtle sylvan consistency, and then at the lumbering coa.r.s.e ...

'_machina intersit_' ... Grandmama Grey!--to say nothing of the 'small dog' that isn't the 'small boy.' Mr. Horne succeeds better on a larger canva.s.s, and with weightier material; with blank verse rather than lyrics. He cannot make a fine stroke. He wants subtlety and elasticity in the thought and expression. Remember, I admire him honestly and earnestly. No one has admired more than I the 'Death of Marlowe,'

scenes in 'Cosmo,' and 'Orion' in much of it. But now tell me if you can accept with the same stretched out hand all these lyrical poems? I am going to write to him as much homage as can come truly. Who combines different faculties as you do, striking the whole octave? No one, at present in the world.

Dearest, after you went away yesterday and I began to consider, I found that there was nothing to be so over-glad about in the matter of the letters, for that, Sunday coming next to Sat.u.r.day, the best now is only as good as the worst before, and I can't hear from you, until Monday ... Monday! Did you think of _that_--you who took the credit of acceding so meekly! I shall not praise you in return at any rate. I shall have to wait ... till what o'clock on Monday, tempted in the meanwhile to fall into controversy against the 'new moons and sabbath days' and the pausing of the post in consequence.

You never guessed perhaps, what I look back to at this moment in the physiology of our intercourse, the curious double feeling I had about you--you personally, and you as the writer of these letters, and the crisis of the feeling, when I was positively vexed and jealous of myself for not succeeding better in making a unity of the two. I could not! And moreover I could not help but that the writer of the letters seemed nearer to me, long ... long ... and in spite of the postmark, than did the personal visitor who confounded me, and left me constantly under such an impression of its being all dream-work on his side, that I have stamped my feet on this floor with impatience to think of having to wait so many hours before the 'candid' closing letter could come with its confessional of an illusion. 'People say,'

I used to think, 'that women _always_ know, and certainly I do not know, and therefore ... therefore.'--The logic crushed on like Juggernaut's car. But in the letters it was different--the dear letters took me on the side of my own ideal life where I was able to stand a little upright and look round. I could read such letters for ever and answer them after a fashion ... that, I felt from the beginning. But _you_--!

_Monday._--Never too early can the light come. Thank you for my letter! Yet you look askance at me over 'newt and toad,' and praise so the Elf-story that I am ashamed to send you my ill humour on the same head. And you really like _that_? admire it? Grandmama Grey and the night cap and all? and 'shoetye and blue sky?' and is it really wrong of me to like certainly some touches and images, but not the whole, ... not the poem as a whole? I can take delight in the fantastical, and in the grotesque--but here there is a want of life and consistency, as it seems to me!--the elf is no elf and speaks no elf-tongue: it is not the right key to touch, ... this, ... for supernatural music. So I fancy at least--but I will try the poem again presently. You must be right--unless it should be your over-goodness opposed to my over-badness--I will not be sure. Or you wrote perhaps in an accidental mood of most excellent critical smoothness, such as Mr. Forster did his last _Examiner_ in, when he gave the all-hail to Mr. Harness as one of the best dramatists of the age!! Ah no!--not such as Mr. Forster's. Your soul does not enter into his secret--There can be nothing in common between you. For him to say such a word--he who knows--or ought to know!--And now let us agree and admire the bowing of the old ministrel over Bedd Gelert's unfilled grave--

The _long_ beard _fell_ like _snow_ into the grave With solemn grace

A poet, a friend, a generous man Mr. Horne is, even if no laureate for the fairies.

I have this moment a parcel of books via Mr. Moxon--Miss Martineau's two volumes--and Mr. Bailey sends his 'Festus,' very kindly, ... and 'Woman in the Nineteenth Century' from America from a Mrs. or a Miss Fuller--how I hate those 'Women of England,' 'Women and their Mission'

and the rest. As if any possible good were to be done by such expositions of rights and wrongs.

Your letter would be worth them all, if _you_ were less _you_! I mean, just this letter, ... all alive as it is with crawling buzzing wriggling cold-blooded warm-blooded creatures ... as all alive as your own pedant's book in the tree. And do you know, I think I like frogs too--particularly the very little leaping frogs, which are so high-hearted as to emulate the birds. I remember being scolded by my nurses for taking them up in my hands and letting them leap from one hand to the other. But for the toad!--why, at the end of the row of narrow beds which we called our gardens when we were children, grew an old thorn, and in the hollow of the root of the thorn, lived a toad, a great ancient toad, whom I, for one, never dared approach too nearly.

That he 'wore a jewel in his head' I doubted nothing at all. You must see it glitter if you stooped and looked steadily into the hole. And on days when he came out and sate swelling his black sides, I never looked steadily; I would run a hundred yards round through the shrubs, deeper than knee-deep in the long wet gra.s.s and nettles, rather than go past him where he sate; being steadily of opinion, in the profundity of my natural history-learning, that if he took it into his toad's head to spit at me I should drop down dead in a moment, poisoned as by one of the Medici.

Oh--and I had a field-mouse for a pet once, and should have joined my sisters in a rat's nest if I had not been ill at the time (as it was, the little rats were tenderly smothered by over-love!): and blue-bottle flies I used to feed, and hated your spiders for them; yet no, not much. My aversion proper ... call it horror rather ... was for the silent, cold, clinging, gliding _bat_; and even now, I think, I could not sleep in the room with that strange bird-mouse-creature, as it glides round the ceiling silently, silently as its shadow does on the floor. If you listen or look, there is not a wave of the wing--the wing never waves! A bird without a feather! a beast that flies! and so cold! as cold as a fish! It is the most supernatural-seeming of natural things. And then to see how when the windows are open at night those bats come sailing ... without a sound--and go ... you cannot guess where!--fade with the night-blackness!

You have not been well--which is my first thought if not my first word. Do walk, and do not work; and think ... what I could be thinking of, if I did not think of _you_ ... dear--dearest! 'As the doves fly to the windows,' so I think of you! As the prisoners think of liberty, as the dying think of Heaven, so I think of you. When I look up straight to G.o.d ... nothing, no one, used to intercept me--now there is _you_--only you under him! Do not use such words as those therefore any more, nor say that you are not to be thought of so and so. You are to be thought of every way. You must know what you are to me if you know at all what _I_ am,--and what I should be but for you.

So ... love me a little, with the spiders and the toads and the lizards! love me as you love the efts--and I will believe in _you_ as you believe ... in aelian--Will _that_ do?

Your own--

Say how you are when you write--_and write_.

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

Tuesday Morning.

I this minute receive the Review--a poor business, truly! Is there a reason for a man's wits dwindling the moment he gets into a critical High-place to hold forth?--I have only glanced over the article however. Well, one day _I_ am to write of you, dearest, and it must come to something rather better than _that_!

I am forced to send now what is to be sent at all. Bless you, dearest.

I am trusting to hear from you--