The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 47

in the dining-room, concocting one of the soliloquies beginning

Que suis je? autrefois un general Remain: Maintenant esclave de Carthage je souffre en vain.

Poor Regulus!--Can't you conceive how fine it must have been altogether? And these were my 'maturer works,' you are to understand, ... and 'the moon was bright at ten o'clock at night' years before. As to the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, I believed in them all quite seriously, and reconciled them to Christianity, which I believed in too after a fashion, as some greater philosophers have done--and went out one day with my pinafore full of little sticks (and a match from the housemaid's cupboard) to sacrifice to the blue-eyed Minerva who was my favourite G.o.ddess on the whole because she cared for Athens. As soon as I began to doubt about my G.o.ddesses, I fell into a vague sort of general scepticism, ... and though I went on saying 'the Lord's prayer' at nights and mornings, and the 'Bless all my kind friends'

afterwards, by the childish custom ... yet I ended this liturgy with a supplication which I found in 'King's Memoirs' and which took my fancy and met my general views exactly.... 'O G.o.d, if there be a G.o.d, save my soul if I have a soul.' Perhaps the theology of many thoughtful children is scarcely more orthodox than this: but indeed it is wonderful to myself sometimes how I came to escape, on the whole, as well as I have done, considering the commonplaces of education in which I was set, with strength and opportunity for breaking the bonds all round into liberty and license. Papa used to say ... 'Don't read Gibbon's history--it's not a proper book. Don't read "Tom Jones"--and none of the books on _this_ side, mind!' So I was very obedient and never touched the books on _that_ side, and only read instead Tom Paine's 'Age of Reason,' and Voltaire's 'Philosophical Dictionary,'

and Hume's 'Essays,' and Werther, and Rousseau, and Mary Wollstonecraft ... books, which I was never suspected of looking towards, and which were not 'on _that_ side' certainly, but which did as well.

How I am writing!--And what are the questions you did not answer? I shall remember them by the answers I suppose--but your letters always have a fulness to me and I never seem to wish for what is not in them.

But this is the end _indeed_.

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

Thursday Night.

[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]

Ever dearest--how you can write touching things to me; and how my whole being vibrates, as a string, to these! How have I deserved from G.o.d and you all that I thank you for? Too unworthy I am of all! Only, it was not, dearest beloved, what you feared, that was 'horrible,' it was what you _supposed_, rather! It was a mistake of yours. And now we will not talk of it any more.

_Friday morning._--For the rest, I will think as you desire: but I have thought a great deal, and there are certainties which I know; and I hope we _both_ are aware that nothing can be more hopeless than our position in some relations and aspects, though you do not guess perhaps that the very approach to the subject is shut up by dangers, and that from the moment of a suspicion entering _one_ mind, we should be able to meet never again in this room, nor to have intercourse by letter through the ordinary channel. I mean, that letters of yours, addressed to me here, would infallibly be stopped and destroyed--if not opened. Therefore it is advisable to hurry on nothing--on these grounds it is advisable. What should I do if I did not see you nor hear from you, without being able to feel that it was for your happiness? What should I do for a month even? And then, I might be thrown out of the window or its equivalent--I look back shuddering to the dreadful scenes in which poor Henrietta was involved who never offended as I have offended ... years ago which seem as present as to-day. She had forbidden the subject to be referred to until that consent was obtained--and at a word she gave up all--at a word. In fact she had no true attachment, as I observed to Arabel at the time--a child never submitted more meekly to a revoked holiday. Yet how she was made to suffer. Oh, the dreadful scenes! and only because she had seemed to feel a little. I told you, I think, that there was an obliquity--an eccentricity, or something beyond--on one cla.s.s of subjects. I hear how her knees were made to ring upon the floor, now!

she was carried out of the room in strong hysterics, and I, who rose up to follow her, though I was quite well at that time and suffered only by sympathy, fell flat down upon my face in a fainting-fit.

Arabel thought I was dead.

I have tried to forget it all--but now I must remember--and throughout our intercourse _I have remembered_. It is necessary to remember so much as to avoid such evils as are inevitable, and for this reason I would conceal nothing from you. Do _you_ remember, besides, that there can be no faltering on my 'part,' and that, if I should remain well, which is not proved yet, I will do for you what you please and as you please to have it done. But there is time for considering!

Only ... as you speak of 'counsel,' I will take courage to tell you that my _sisters know_, Arabel is in most of my confidences, and being often in the room with me, taxed me with the truth long ago--she saw that I was affected from some cause--and I told her. We are as safe with both of them as possible ... and they thoroughly understand that _if there should be any change it would not be your fault_.... I made them understand that thoroughly. From themselves I have received nothing but the most smiling words of kindness and satisfaction (I thought I might tell you so much), they have too much tenderness for me to fail in it now. My brothers, it is quite necessary not to draw into a dangerous responsibility. I have felt that from the beginning, and shall continue to feel it--though I hear and can observe that they are full of suspicions and conjectures, which are never unkindly expressed. I told you once that we held hands the faster in this house for the weight over our heads. But the absolute _knowledge_ would be dangerous for my brothers: with my sisters it is different, and I could not continue to conceal from _them_ what they had under their eyes; and then, Henrietta is in a like position. It was not wrong of me to let them know it?--no?

Yet of what consequence is all this to the other side of the question?

What, if _you_ should give pain and disappointment where you owe such pure grat.i.tude. But we need not talk of these things now. Only you have more to consider than _I_, I imagine, while the future comes on.

Dearest, let me have my way in one thing: let me see you on _Tuesday_ instead of on Monday--on Tuesday at the old hour. Be reasonable and consider. Tuesday is almost as near as the day before it; and on Monday, I shall be hurried at first, lest Papa should be still in the house, (no harm, but an excuse for nervousness: and I can't quote a n.o.ble Roman as you can, to the praise of my conscience!) and _you_ will be hurried at last, lest you should not be in time for Mr.

Forster. On the other hand, I will not let you be rude to the _Daily News_, ... no, nor to the _Examiner_. Come on Tuesday, then, instead of Monday, and let us have the usual hours in a peaceable way,--and if there is no obstacle,--that is, if Mr. Kenyon or some equivalent authority should not take note of your being here on Tuesday, why you can come again on the Sat.u.r.day afterwards--I do not see the difficulty. Are we agreed? On Tuesday, at three o'clock. Consider, besides, that the Monday arrangement would hurry you in every manner, and leave you f.a.gged for the evening--no, I will not hear of it. Not on my account, not on yours!

Think of me on Monday instead, and write before. Are not these two lawful letters? And do not they deserve an answer?

My life was ended when I knew you, and if I survive myself it is for your sake:--_that_ resumes all my feelings and intentions in respect to you. No 'counsel' could make the difference of a grain of dust in the balance. It _is so_, and not otherwise. If you changed towards me, it would be better for you I believe--and I should be only where I was before. While you do _not_ change, I look to you for my first affections and my first duty--and nothing but your bidding me, could make me look away.

In the midst of this, Mr. Kenyon came and I felt as if I could not talk to him. No--he does not 'see how it is.' He may have pa.s.sing thoughts sometimes, but they do not stay long enough to produce--even an opinion. He asked if you had been here long.

It may be wrong and ungrateful, but I do wish sometimes that the world were away--even the good Kenyon-aspect of the world.

And so, once more--may G.o.d bless you!

I am wholly yours--

_Tuesday_, remember! And say that you agree.

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

Sat.u.r.day.

[Post-mark, January 17, 1846.]

Did my own Ba, in the prosecution of her studies, get to a book on the forb--no, _un_forbidden shelf--wherein Voltaire pleases to say that 'si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer'? I feel, after reading these letters,--as ordinarily after seeing you, sweetest, or hearing from you,--that if _marriage_ did not exist, I should infallibly _invent_ it. I should say, no words, no _feelings_ even, do justice to the whole conviction and _religion_ of my soul--and though they may be suffered to represent some one minute's phase of it, yet, in their very fulness and pa.s.sion they do injustice to the _unrepresented, other minute's_, depth and breadth of love ... which let my whole life (I would say) be devoted to telling and proving and exemplifying, if not in one, then in another way--let me have the plain palpable power of this; the a.s.sured time for this ... something of the satisfaction ... (but for the fantasticalness of the ill.u.s.tration) ... something like the earnestness of some suitor in Chancery if he could once get Lord Lyndhurst into a room with him, and lock the door on them both, and know that his whole story _must_ be listened to now, and the 'rights of it,'--dearest, the love unspoken now you are to hear 'in all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth ... at the hour of death, and'--

If I did not _know_ this was so,--nothing would have been said, or sought for. Your friendship, the perfect pride in it, the wish for, and eager co-operation in, your welfare, all that is different, and, seen now, nothing.

I will care for it no more, dearest--I am wedded to you now. I believe no human being could love you more--that thought consoles me for my own imperfection--for when _that_ does strike me, as so often it will, I turn round on my pursuing self, and ask 'What if it were a claim then, what is in Her, demanded rationally, equitably, in return for what were in you--do you like _that_ way!'--And I do _not_, Ba--you, even, might not--when people everyday buy improveable ground, and eligible sites for building, and don't want every inch filled up, covered over, done to their hands! So take me, and make me what you can and will--and though never to be _more_ yours, yet more _like_ you, I may and must be--Yes, indeed--best, only love!

And am I not grateful to your sisters--entirely grateful for that crowning comfort; it is 'miraculous,' too, if you please--for _you_ shall know me by finger-tip intelligence or any art magic of old or new times--but they do not see me, know me--and must moreover be jealous of you, chary of you, as the daughters of Hesperus, of wonderers and wistful lookers up at the gold apple--yet instead of 'rapidly levelling eager eyes'--they are indulgent? Then--shall I wish capriciously they were _not_ your sisters, not so near you, that there might be a kind of grace in loving them for it'--but what grace can there be when ... yes, I will tell you--_no_, I will not--it is foolish!--and it is _not_ foolish in me to love the table and chairs and vases in your room.

Let me finish writing to-morrow; it would not become me to utter a word against the arrangement--and Sat.u.r.day promised, too--but though all concludes against the early hour on Monday, yet--but this is wrong--on Tuesday it shall be, then,--thank you, dearest! you let me keep up the old proper form, do you not?--I shall continue to thank, and be gratified &c. as if I had some untouched fund of thanks at my disposal to cut a generous figure with on occasion! And so, now, for your kind considerateness thank _you ... that I say_, which, G.o.d knows, _could_ not say, if I died ten deaths in one to do you good, 'you are repaid'--

To-morrow I will write, and answer more. I am pretty well, and will go out to-day--to-night. My Act is done, and copied--I will bring it. Do you see the _Athenaeum_? By Chorley surely--and kind and satisfactory.

I did not expect any notice for a long time--all that about the 'mist,' 'unchanged manner' and the like is politic concession to the Powers that Be ... because he might tell me that and much more with his own lips or unprofessional pen, and be thanked into the bargain, yet he does not. But I fancy he saves me from a rougher hand--the long extracts answer every purpose--

There is all to say yet--to-morrow!

And ever, ever your own; G.o.d bless you!

R.

Admire the clean paper.... I did not notice that I have been writing in a desk where a candle fell! See the bottoms of the other pages!

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

Sunday Evening.

[Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]

You may have seen, I put off all the weighty business part of the letter--but I shall do very little with it now. To be sure, a few words will serve, because you understand me, and believe in _enough_ of me. First, then, I am wholly satisfied, thoroughly made happy in your a.s.surance. I would build up an infinity of lives, if I could plan them, one on the other, and all resting on you, on your word--I fully believe in it,--of my feeling, the grat.i.tude, let there be no attempt to speak. And for 'waiting'; 'not hurrying',--I leave all with you henceforth--all you say is most wise, most convincing.

On the saddest part of all,--silence. You understand, and I can understand through you. Do you know, that I never _used_ to dream unless indisposed, and rarely then--(of late I dream of you, but quite of late)--and _those_ nightmare dreams have invariably been of _one_ sort. I stand by (powerless to interpose by a word even) and see the infliction of tyranny on the unresisting man or beast (generally the last)--and I wake just in time not to die: let no one try this kind of experiment on me or mine! Though I have observed that by a felicitous arrangement, the man with the whip puts it into use with an old horse commonly. I once knew a fine specimen of the boilingly pa.s.sionate, desperately respectable on the Eastern principle that reverences a madman--and this fellow, whom it was to be death to oppose, (some bloodvessel was to break)--he, once at a dinner party at which I was present, insulted his wife (a young pretty simple believer in his awful immunities from the ordinary terms that keep men in order)--brought the tears into her eyes and sent her from the room ...

purely to 'show off' in the eyes of his guests ... (all males, law-friends &c., he being a lawyer.) This feat accomplished, he, too, left us with an affectation of compensating relentment, to 'just say a word and return'--and no sooner was his back to the door than the biggest, stupidest of the company began to remark 'what a fortunate thing it was that Mr. So-and-so had such a submissive wife--not one of the women who would resist--that is, attempt to resist--and so exasperate our gentleman into ... Heaven only knew what!' I said it _was_, in one sense, a fortunate thing; because one of these women, without necessarily being the lion-tressed Bellona, would richly give him his desert, I thought--'Oh, indeed?' No--_this_ man was not to be opposed--wait, you might, till the fit was over, and then try what kind argument would do--and so forth to unspeakable nausea. Presently we went up-stairs--there sate the wife with dried eyes, and a smile at the tea-table--and by her, in all the pride of conquest, with her hand in his, our friend--disposed to be very good-natured of course. I listened _arrectis auribus_, and in a minute he said he did not know somebody I mentioned. I told him, _that_ I easily conceived--such a person would never condescend to know _him_, &c., and treated him to every consequence ingenuity could draw from that text--and at the end marched out of the room; and the valorous man, who had sate like a post, got up, took a candle, followed me to the door, and only said in unfeigned wonder, 'What _can_ have possessed you, my _dear_ B?'--All which I as much expected beforehand, as that the above mentioned man of the whip keeps quiet in the presence of an ordinary-couraged dog.

All this is quite irrelevant to _the_ case--indeed, I write to get rid of the thought altogether. But I do hold it the most stringent duty of all who can, to stop a condition, a relation of one human being to another which G.o.d never allowed to exist between Him and ourselves.

_Trees_ live and die, if you please, and accept will for a law--but with us, all commands surely refer to a previously-implanted conviction in ourselves of their rationality and justice. Or why declare that 'the Lord _is_ holy, just and good' unless there is recognised and independent conception of holiness and goodness, to which the subsequent a.s.sertion is referable? 'You know what _holiness_ is, what it is to be good? Then, He _is_ that'--not, '_that_ is _so_--because _he_ is that'; though, of course, when once the converse is demonstrated, this, too, follows, and may be urged for practical purposes. All G.o.d's urgency, so to speak, is on the _justice_ of his judgments, _rightness_ of his rule: yet why? one might ask--if one does believe that the rule _is_ his; why ask further?--Because, his is a 'reasonable service,' once for all.

Understand why I turn my thoughts in this direction. If it is indeed as you fear, and no endeavour, concession, on my part will avail, under any circ.u.mstances--(and by endeavour, I mean all heart and soul could bring the flesh to perform)--in that case, you will not come to me with a shadow past hope of chasing.

The likelihood is, I over frighten myself for you, by the involuntary contrast with those here--you allude to them--if I went with this letter downstairs and said simply 'I want this taken to the direction to-night, and am unwell and unable to go, will you take it now?' my father would not say a word, or rather would say a dozen cheerful absurdities about his 'wanting a walk,' 'just having been wishing to go out' &c. At night he sits studying my works--ill.u.s.trating them (I will bring you drawings to make you laugh)--and _yesterday_ I picked up a crumpled bit of paper ... 'his notion of what a criticism on this last number ought to be,--none, that have appeared, satisfying him!'--So judge of what he will say! And my mother loves me just as much more as must of necessity be.

Once more, understand all this ... for the clock scares me of a sudden--I meant to say more--far more.

But may G.o.d bless you ever--my own dearest, my Ba--

I am wholly your R.