The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 51

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

Friday Morning.

[Post-mark, January 31, 1846.]

Let it be this way, ever dearest. If in the time of fine weather, I am not ill, ... _then_ ... _not now_ ... you shall decide, and your decision shall be duty and desire to me, both--I will make no difficulties. Remember, in the meanwhile, that I _have_ decided to let it be as you shall choose ... _shall_ choose. That I love you enough to give you up 'for your good,' is proof (to myself at least) that I love you enough for any other end:--but you thought _too much of me in the last letter_. Do not mistake me. I believe and trust in all your words--only you are generous unawares, as other men are selfish.

More, I meant to say of this; but you moved me as usual yesterday into the sunshine, and then I am dazzled and cannot see clearly. Still I see that you love me and that I am bound to you:--and 'what more need I see,' you may ask; while I cannot help looking out to the future, to the blue ridges of the hills, to the _chances_ of your being happy with me. Well! I am yours as _you_ see ... and not yours to teaze you.

You shall decide everything when the time comes for doing anything ...

and from this to then, I do not, dearest, expect you to use 'the liberty of leaping out of the window,' unless you are sure of the house being on fire! n.o.body shall push you out of the window--least of all, _I_.

For Italy ... you are right. We should be nearer the sun, as you say, and further from the world, as I think--out of hearing of the great storm of gossiping, when 'scirocco is loose.' Even if you liked to live altogether abroad, coming to England at intervals, it would be no sacrifice for me--and whether in Italy or England, we should have sufficient or more than sufficient means of living, without modifying by a line that 'good free life' of yours which you reasonably praise--which, if it had been necessary to modify, _we must have parted_, ... because I could not have borne to see you do it; though, that you once offered it for my sake, I never shall forget.

Mr. Kenyon stayed half an hour, and asked, after you went, if you had been here long. I reproached him with what they had been doing at his club (the Athenaeum) in blackballing Douglas Jerrold, for want of something better to say--and he had not heard of it. There were more black than white b.a.l.l.s, and d.i.c.kens was so enraged at the repulse of his friend that he gave in his own resignation like a privy councillor.

But the really bad news is of poor Tennyson--I forgot to tell you--I forget everything. He is seriously ill with an internal complaint and confined to his bed, as George heard from a common friend. Which does not prevent his writing a new poem--he has finished the second book of it--and it is in blank verse and a fairy tale, and called the 'University,' the university-members being all females. If George has not diluted the scheme of it with some law from the Inner Temple, I don't know what to think--it makes me open my eyes. Now isn't the world too old and fond of steam, for blank verse poems, in ever so many books, to be written on the fairies? I hope they may cure him, for the best deed they can do. He is not precisely in danger, understand--but the complaint may _run_ into danger--so the account went.

And you? how are you? Mind to tell me. May G.o.d bless you. Is Monday or Tuesday to be _our_ day? If it were not for Mr. Kenyon I should take courage and say Monday--but Tuesday and Sat.u.r.day would do as well--would they not?

Your own

BA.

Shall I have a letter?

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

Sat.u.r.day.

[Post-mark, January 31, 1846.]

It is a relief to me this time to obey your wish, and reserve further remark on _that_ subject till by and bye. And, whereas some people, I suppose, have to lash themselves up to the due point of pa.s.sion, and choose the happy minutes to be as loving in as they possibly can ...

(that is, in _expression_; the just correspondency of word to fact and feeling: for _it_--the love--may be very truly _there_, at the bottom, when it is got at, and spoken out)--quite otherwise, I do really have to guard my tongue and set a watch on my pen ... that so I may say as little as can well be likely to be excepted to by your generosity.

Dearest, _love_ means _love_, certainly, and adoration carries its sense with it--and _so_, you may have received my feeling in that shape--but when I begin to hint at the merest putting into practice one or the other profession, you 'fly out'--instead of keeping your throne. So let this letter lie awhile, till my heart is more used to it, and after some days or weeks I will find as cold and quiet a moment as I can, and by standing as far off you as I shall be able, see more--'si _minus prope_ stes, te capiet magis.' Meanwhile, silent or speaking, I am yours to dispose of as that _glove_--not that hand.

I must think that Mr. Kenyon sees, and knows, and ... in his goodness ... hardly disapproves--he knows I could not avoid--escape you--for he knows, in a manner, what you are ... like your American; and, early in our intercourse, he asked me (did I tell you?) 'what I thought of his young relative'--and I considered half a second to this effect--'if he asked me what I thought of the Queen-diamond they showed me in the crown of the Czar--and I answered truly--he would not return; "then of course you mean to try and get it to keep."' So I _did_ tell the truth in a very few words. Well, it is no matter.

I am sorry to hear of poor Tennyson's condition. The projected book--t.i.tle, scheme, all of it,--_that_ is astounding;--and fairies?

If 'Thorpes and barnes, sheep-pens and dairies--_this_ maketh that there ben no fairies'--locomotives and the broad or narrow gauge must keep the very ghosts of them away. But how the fashion of this world pa.s.ses; the forms its beauty and truth take; if _we_ have the making of such! I went last night, out of pure shame at a broken promise, to hear Miss Cushman and her sister in 'Romeo and Juliet.' The whole play goes ... horribly; 'speak' bids the Poet, and so M. Walladmir [Valdemar] moves his tongue and dispenses with his jaws. Whatever is slightly touched in, indicated, to give relief to something actually insisted upon and drawn boldly ... _here_, you have it gone over with an unremitting burnt-stick, till it stares black forever! Romeo goes whining about Verona by broad daylight. Yet when a schoolfellow of mine, I remember, began translating in cla.s.s Virgil after this mode, 'Sic fatur--so said aeneas; lachrymans--_a-crying_' ... our pedagogue turned on him furiously--'D'ye think aeneas made such a noise--as _you_ shall, presently?' How easy to conceive a boyish half-melancholy, smiling at itself.

Then _Tuesday_, and not Monday ... and Sat.u.r.day will be the nearer afterward. I am singularly well to-day--head quite quiet--and yesterday your penholder began its influence and I wrote about half my last act. Writing is nothing, nor praise, nor blame, nor living, nor dying, but you are all my true life; May G.o.d bless you ever--

R.

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

Friday Evening.

[Post-mark, February 2, 1846.]

Something, you said yesterday, made me happy--'that your liking for me did not come and go'--do you remember? Because there was a letter, written at a crisis long since, in which you showed yourself awfully, as a burning mountain, and talked of 'making the most of your fire-eyes,' and of having at intervals 'deep black pits of cold water'!--and the lava of that letter has kept running down into my thoughts of you too much, until quite of late--while even yesterday I was not too well instructed to be 'happy,' you see! Do not reproach me! I would not have 'heard your enemy say so'--it was your own word!

And the other long word _idiosyncrasy_ seemed long enough to cover it; and it might have been a matter of temperament, I fancied, that a man of genius, in the mystery of his nature, should find his feelings sometimes like dumb notes in a piano ... should care for people at half past eleven on Tuesday, and on Wednesday at noon prefer a black beetle. How you frightened me with your 'fire-eyes'! 'making the most of them' too! and the 'black pits,' which gaped ... _where_ did they gape? who could tell? Oh--but lately I have not been crossed so, of course, with those fabulous terrors--lately that horror of the burning mountain has grown more like a superst.i.tion than a rational fear!--and if I was glad ... happy ... yesterday, it was but as a tolerably sensible nervous man might be glad of a clearer moonlight, showing him that what he had half shuddered at for a sheeted ghoule, was only a white horse on the moor. Such a great white horse!--call it the 'mammoth horse'--the '_real_ mammoth,' this time!

Dearest, did I write you a cold letter the last time? Almost it seems so to me! the reason being that my feelings were near to overflow, and that I had to hold the cup straight to prevent the possible dropping on your purple underneath. _Your_ letter, the letter I answered, was in my heart ... _is_ in my heart--and all the yeses in the world would not be too many for such a letter, as I felt and feel. Also, perhaps, I gave you, at last, a merely formal distinction--and it comes to the same thing practically without any doubt! but I shrank, with a sort of instinct, from appearing (to myself, mind) to take a security from your words now (said too on an obvious impulse) for what should, would, _must_, depend on your deliberate wishes hereafter. You understand--you will not accuse me of over-cautiousness and the like.

On the contrary, you are all things to me, ... instead of all and better than all! You have fallen like a great luminous blot on the whole leaf of the world ... of life and time ... and I can see nothing beyond you, nor wish to see it. As to all that was evil and sadness to me, I do not feel it any longer--it may be raining still, but I am in the shelter and can scarcely tell. If you _could_ be _too dear_ to me you would be now--but you could not--I do not believe in those supposed excesses of pure affections--G.o.d cannot be too great.

Therefore it is a conditional engagement still--all the conditions being in your hands, except the necessary one, of my health. And shall I tell you what is 'not to be put in doubt _ever_'?--your goodness, _that_ is ... and every tie that binds me to you. 'Ordained, granted by G.o.d' it is, that I should owe the only happiness in my life to you, and be contented and grateful (if it were necessary) to stop with it at this present point. Still I _do not_--there seems no necessity yet.

May G.o.d bless you, ever dearest:--

Your own BA.

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

Sat.u.r.day.

[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]

Well I have your letter--and I send you the postscript to my last one, written yesterday you observe ... and being simply a postscript in some parts of it, _so_ far it is not for an answer. Only I deny the 'flying out'--perhaps you may do it a little more ... in your moments of starry centrifugal motion.

So you think that dear Mr. Kenyon's opinion of his 'young relative'--(neither young nor his relative--not very much of either!) is to the effect that you couldn't possibly 'escape' her--? It looks like the sign of the Red Dragon, put _so_ ... and your burning mountain is not too awful for the scenery.

Seriously ... gravely ... if it makes me three times happy that you should love me, yet I grow uneasy and even saddened when you say infatuated things such as this and this ... unless after all you mean a philosophical sarcasm on the worth of Czar diamonds. No--do not say such things! If you do, I shall end by being jealous of some ideal Czarina who must stand between you and me.... I shall think that it is not _I_ whom you look at ... and _pour cause_. 'Flying out,' _that_ would be!

And for Mr. Kenyon, I only know that I have grown the most ungrateful of human beings lately, and find myself almost glad when he does not come, certainly uncomfortable when he does--yes, _really_ I would rather not see him at all, and when you are not here. The sense of which and the sorrow for which, turn me to a hypocrite, and make me ask why he does not come &c. ... questions which never came to my lips before ... till I am more and more ashamed and sorry. Will it end, I wonder, by my ceasing to care for any one in the world, except, except...? or is it not rather that I feel trodden down by either his too great penetration or too great unconsciousness, both being overwhelming things from him to me. From a similar cause I hate writing letters to any of my old friends--I feel as if it were the merest swindling to attempt to give the least account of myself to anybody, and when their letters come and I know that nothing very fatal has happened to them, scarcely I can read to an end afterwards through the besetting care of having to answer it all. Then I am ign.o.ble enough to revenge myself on people for their stupidities ...

which never in my life I did before nor felt the temptation to do ...

and when they have a distaste for your poetry through want of understanding, I have a distaste for _them_ ... cannot help it--and you need not say it is wrong, because I know the whole iniquity of it, persisting nevertheless. As for dear Mr. Kenyon--with whom we began, and who thinks of you as appreciatingly and admiringly as one man can think of another,--do not imagine that, if he _should_ see anything, he can 'approve' of either your wisdom or my generosity, ... _he_, with his large organs of caution, and his habit of looking right and left, and round the corner a little way. Because, you know, ... if I should be ill _before_ ... why there, is a conclusion!--but if _afterward_ ... what? You who talk wildly of my generosity, whereas I only and most impotently tried to be generous, must see how both suppositions have their possibility. Nevertheless you are the master to run the latter risk. You have overcome ... to your loss perhaps--unless the judgment is revised. As to taking the half of my prison ... I could not even smile at _that_ if it seemed probable ...

I should recoil from your affection even under a shape so fatal to you ... dearest! No! There is a better probability before us I hope and believe--in spite of the _possibility_ which it is impossible to deny.

And now we leave this subject for the present.

_Sunday._--You are 'singularly well.' You are very seldom quite well, I am afraid--yet 'Luria' seems to have done no harm this time, as you are singularly well the day _after_ so much writing. Yet do not hurry that last act.... I won't have it for a long while yet.

Here I have been reading Carlyle upon Cromwell and he is very fine, very much himself, it seems to me, everywhere. Did Mr. Kenyon make you understand that I had said there was nothing in him but _manner_ ... I thought he said so--and I am confident that he never heard such an opinion from me, for good or for evil, ever at all. I may have observed upon those vulgar attacks on account of the so-called _mannerism_, the obvious fact, that an individuality, carried into the medium, the expression, is a feature in all men of genius, as Buffon teaches ... 'Le style, c'est _l'homme_.' But if the _whole man_ were style, if all Carlyleism were manner--why there would be no man, no Carlyle worth talking of. I wonder that Mr. Kenyon should misrepresent me so. Euphuisms there may be to the end of the world--affected parlances--just as a fop at heart may go without shoestrings to mimic the distractions of some great wandering soul--although _that_ is a bad comparison, seeing that what is called Carlyle's mannerism, is not his dress, but his physiognomy--or more than _that_ even.

But I do not forgive him for talking here against the 'ideals of poets' ... opposing their ideal by a mis-called _reality_, which is another sort, a baser sort, of ideal after all. He sees things in broad blazing lights--but he does not a.n.a.lyse them like a philosopher--do you think so? Then his praise for dumb heroic action as opposed to speech and singing, what is _that_--when all earnest thought, pa.s.sion, belief, and their utterances, are as much actions surely as the cutting off of fifty heads by one right hand. As if Shakespeare's actions were not greater than Cromwell's!--

But I shall write no more. Once more, may G.o.d bless you.

Wholly and only

Your BA.

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