The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 52

Tuesday Morning.

[Post-mark, February 4, 1846.]

You ought hardly,--ought you, my Ba?--to refer to _that_ letter or any expression in it; I had--and _have_, I trust--your forgiveness for what I wrote, meaning to be generous or at least just, G.o.d knows.

That, and the other like exaggerations were there to serve the purpose of what you properly call a _crisis_. I _did_ believe,--taking an expression, in the note that occasioned mine, in connection with an excuse which came in the postscript for not seeing me on the day previously appointed, I did fully believe that you were about to deny me admittance again unless I blotted out--not merely softened down--the past avowal. All was wrong, foolish, but from a good notion, I dare to say. And then, that particular exaggeration you bring most painfully to my mind--_that_ does not, after all, disagree with what I said and you repeat--does it, if you will think? I said my other '_likings_' (as you rightly set it down) _used_ to 'come and go,' and that my love for you _did not_, and that is true; the first clause as the last of the sentence, for my sympathies are very wide and general,--always have been--and the natural problem has been the giving unity to their object, concentrating them instead of dispersing. I seem to have foretold, _foreknown_ you in other likings of mine--now here ... when the liking '_came_' ... and now elsewhere ... when as surely the liking '_went_': and if they had stayed before the time would that have been a comfort to refer to? On the contrary, I am as little likely to be led by delusions as can be,--for Romeo _thinks_ he loves Rosaline, and is excused on all hands--whereas I saw the plain truth without one mistake, and 'looked to like, if looking liking moved--and no more deep _did_ I endart mine eye'--about which, first I was very sorry, and after rather proud--all which I seem to have told you before.--And now, when my whole heart and soul find you, and fall on you, and fix forever, I am to be dreadfully afraid the joy cannot last, seeing that

--it is so baseless a fear that no ill.u.s.tration will serve! Is it gone now, dearest, ever-dearest?

And as you amuse me sometimes, as now, by seeming surprised at some chance expression of a truth which is grown a veriest commonplace to _me_--like Charles Lamb's 'letter to an elderly man whose education had been neglected'--when he finds himself involuntarily communicating truths above the capacity and acquirements of his friend, and stops himself after this fashion--'If you look round the world, my dear Sir--for it _is_ round!--so I will make you laugh at me, if you will, for _my_ inordinate delight at hearing the success of your experiment with the opium. I never dared, nor shall dare inquire into your use of that--for, knowing you utterly as I do, I know you only bend to the most absolute necessity in taking more or less of it--so that increase of the quant.i.ty must mean simply increased weakness, illness--and diminution, diminished illness. And now there _is_ diminution! Dear, dear Ba--you speak of my silly head and its ailments ... well, and what brings on the irritation? A wet day or two spent at home; and what ends it all directly?--just an hour's walk! So with _me_: now,--fancy me shut in a room for seven years ... it is--no, _don't_ see, even in fancy, what is left of me then! But _you_, at the end; this is _all_ the harm: I wonder ... I confirm my soul in its belief in perpetual miraculousness ... I bless G.o.d with my whole heart that it is thus with you! And so, I will not even venture to say--so superfluous it were, though with my most earnest, most loving breath (I who _do_ love you more at every breath I draw; indeed, yes dearest,)--I _will not_ bid you--that is, pray you--to persevere! You have all my life bound to yours--save me from _my 'seven years'_--and G.o.d reward you!

Your own R.

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

[Post-mark, February 5, 1846.]

But I did not--dear, dearest--no indeed, I did not mean any harm about the letter. I wanted to show you how you had given me pleasure--and so,--did I give you pain? was _that_ my ingenuity? Forgive my unhappiness in it, and let it be as if it had not been. Only I will just say that what made me talk about 'the thorn in the flesh' from that letter so long, was a sort of conviction of your having put into it as much of the truth, _your_ truth, as admitted of the ultimate purpose of it, and not the least, slightest doubt of the key you gave me to the purpose in question. And so forgive me. Why did you set about explaining, as if I were doubting you? When you said once that it 'did not come and go,'--was it not enough? enough to make me feel happy as I told you? Did I require you to write a letter like this?

Now think for a moment, and know once for all, how from the beginning to these latter days and through all possible degrees of crisis, you have been to my apprehension and grat.i.tude, the best, most consistent, most n.o.ble ... the words falter that would speak of it all. In nothing and at no moment have you--I will not say--failed to _me_, but spoken or acted unworthily of yourself at the highest. What have you ever been to me except too generous? Ah--if I had been only half as generous, it is true that I never could have seen you again after that first meeting--it was the straight path perhaps. But I had not courage--I shrank from the thought of it--and then ... besides ... I could not believe that your mistake was likely to last,--I concluded that I might keep my friend.

Why should any remembrance be painful to _you_? I do not understand.

Unless indeed I should grow painful to you ... I myself!--seeing that every remembered separate thing has brought me nearer to you, and made me yours with a deeper trust and love.

And for that letter ... do you fancy that in _my_ memory the sting is not gone from it?--and that I do not carry the thought of it, as the Roman maidens, you speak of, their cool harmless snakes, at my heart always? So let the poor letter be forgiven, for the sake of the dear letter that was burnt, forgiven by _you_--until you grow angry with me instead--just till then.

And that you should care so much about the opium! Then _I_ must care, and get to do with less--at least. On the other side of your goodness and indulgence (a very little way on the other side) it might strike you as strange that I who have had no pain--no acute suffering to keep down from its angles--should need opium in any shape. But I have had restlessness till it made me almost mad: at one time I lost the power of sleeping quite--and even in the day, the continual aching sense of weakness has been intolerable--besides palpitation--as if one's life, instead of giving movement to the body, were imprisoned undiminished within it, and beating and fluttering impotently to get out, at all the doors and windows. So the medical people gave me opium--a preparation of it, called morphine, and ether--and ever since I have been calling it my amreeta draught, my elixir,--because the tranquillizing power has been wonderful. Such a nervous system I have--so irritable naturally, and so shattered by various causes, that the need has continued in a degree until now, and it would be dangerous to leave off the calming remedy, Mr. Jago says, except very slowly and gradually. But slowly and gradually something may be done--and you are to understand that I never _increased_ upon the prescribed quant.i.ty ... prescribed in the first instance--no! Now think of my writing all this to you!--

And after all the lotus-eaters are blessed beyond the opium-eaters; and the best of lotuses are such thoughts as I know.

Dear Miss Mitford comes to-morrow, and I am not glad enough. Shall I have a letter to make me glad? She will talk, talk, talk ... and I shall be hoping all day that not a word may be talked of ... _you_:--a forlorn hope indeed! There's a hope for a day like Thursday which is just in the middle between a Tuesday and a Sat.u.r.day!

Your head ... is it ... _how_ is it? tell me. And consider again if it could be possible that I could ever desire to reproach _you_ ... in what I said about the letter.

May G.o.d bless you, best and dearest. If you are the _compensation_ blessed is the evil that fell upon me: and _that_, I can say before G.o.d.

Your BA.

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

Friday.

[Post-mark, February 6, 1846.]

If I said you 'gave me pain' in anything, it was in the only way ever possible for you, my dearest--by giving _yourself_, in me, pain--being unjust to your own right and power as I feel them at my heart: and in that way, I see you will go on to the end, I getting called--in this very letter--'generous' &c. Well, let me fancy you see very, very deep into future chances and how I should behave on occasion. I shall hardly imitate you, I whose sense of the present and its claims of grat.i.tude already is beyond expression.

All the kind explaining about the opium makes me happier. 'Slowly and gradually' what may _not_ be done? Then see the bright weather while I write--lilacs, hawthorn, plum-trees all in bud; elders in leaf, rose-bushes with great red shoots; thrushes, whitethroats, hedge sparrows in full song--there can, let us hope, be nothing worse in store than a sharp wind, a week of it perhaps--and then comes what shall come--

And Miss Mitford yesterday--and has she fresh fears for you of my evil influence and Origenic power of 'raying out darkness' like a swart star? Why, the common sense of the world teaches that there is nothing people at fault in any faculty of expression are so intolerant of as the like infirmity in others--whether they are unconscious of, or indulgent to their own obscurity and fettered organ, the hindrance from the fettering of their neighbours' is redoubled. A man may think he is not deaf, or, at least, that you need not be so much annoyed by his deafness as you profess--but he will be quite aware, to say the least of it, when another man can't hear _him_; he will certainly not encourage him to stop his ears. And so with the converse; a writer who fails to make himself understood, as presumably in my case, may either believe in his heart that it is _not_ so ... that only as much attention and previous instructedness as the case calls for, would quite avail to understand him; or he may open his eyes to the fact and be trying hard to overcome it: but on which supposition is he led to confirm another in his unintelligibility? By the proverbial tenderness of the eye with the mote for the eye with the beam? If that beam were just such another mote--_then_ one might sympathize and feel no such inconvenience--but, because I have written a 'Sordello,' do I turn to just its _double_, Sordello the second, in your books, and so perforce see nothing wrong? 'No'--it is supposed--'but something _as_ obscure in its way.' Then down goes the bond of union at once, and I stand no nearer to view your work than the veriest proprietor of one thought and the two words that express it without obscurity at all--'bricks and mortar.' Of course an artist's whole problem must be, as Carlyle wrote to me, 'the expressing with articulate clearness the thought in him'--I am almost inclined to say that _clear expression_ should be his only work and care--for he is born, ordained, such as he is--and not born learned in putting what was born in him into words--what ever _can_ be clearly spoken, ought to be. But 'bricks and mortar' is very easily said--and some of the thoughts in 'Sordello' not so readily even if Miss Mitford were to try her hand on them.

I look forward to a real life's work for us both. _I_ shall do all,--under your eyes and with your hand in mine,--all I was intended to do: may but _you_ as surely go perfecting--by continuing--the work begun so wonderfully--'a rose-tree that beareth seven-times seven'--

I am forced to dine in town to-day with an old friend--'to-morrow'

always begins half the day before, like a Jewish sabbath. Did your sister tell you that I met her on the stairs last time? She did _not_ tell you that I had almost pa.s.sed by her--the eyes being still elsewhere and occupied. Now let me write out that--no--I will send the old ballad I told you of, for the strange coincidence--and it is very charming beside, is it not? Now goodbye, my sweetest, dearest--and tell me good news of yourself to-morrow, and be but half a quarter as glad to see me as I shall be blessed in seeing you. G.o.d bless you ever.

Your own

R.

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

Sat.u.r.day Morning.

[Post-mark, February 7, 1846.]

Dearest, to my sorrow I must, I fear, give up the delight of seeing you this morning. I went out unwell yesterday, and a long noisy dinner with speech-making, with a long tiresome walk at the end of it--these have given me such a bewildering headache that I really see some reason in what they say here about keeping the house. Will you forgive me--and let me forget it all on Monday? On _Monday_--unless I am told otherwise by the early post--And G.o.d bless you ever

Your own--

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

Sat.u.r.day.

[Post-mark, February 7, 1846.]

I felt it must be so ... that something must be the matter, ... and I had been so really unhappy for half an hour, that your letter which comes now at four, seems a little better, with all its bad news, than my fancies took upon themselves to be, without instruction. Now _was_ it right to go out yesterday when you were unwell, and to a great dinner?--but I shall not reproach you, dearest, dearest--I have no heart for it at this moment. As to Monday, of course it is as you like ... if you are well enough on Monday ... if it should be thought wise of you to come to London through the noise ... if ... you understand all the _ifs_ ... and among them the greatest if of all, ... for if you do love me ... _care_ for me even, you will not do yourself harm or run any risk of harm by going out _anywhere too soon_. On Monday, in case you are _considered well enough_, and otherwise Tuesday, Wednesday--I leave it to you. Still I _will_ ask one thing, whether you come on Monday or not. _Let_ me have a single line by the nearest post to say how you are. Perhaps for to-night it is not possible--oh no, it is nearly five now! but a word written on Sunday would be with me early on Monday morning, and I know you will let me have it, to save some of the anxious thoughts ... to break them in their course with some sort of certainty! May G.o.d bless you dearest of all!--I thought of you on Thursday, but did not speak of you, not even when Miss Mitford called Hood the greatest poet of the age ... she had been depreciating Carlyle, so I let you lie and wait on the same level, ...

that shelf of the rock which is above tide mark! I was glad even, that she did not speak of you; and, under cover of her speech of others, I had my thoughts of you deeply and safely. When she had gone at half past six, moreover, I grew over-hopeful, and made up my fancy to have a letter at eight! The branch she had pulled down, sprang upward skyward ... to that high possibility of a letter! Which did not come that day ... no!--and I revenged myself by writing a letter to _you_, which was burnt afterwards because I would not torment you for letters. Last night, came a real one--dearest! So we could not keep our sabbath to-day! It is a fast day instead, ... on my part. How should I feel (I have been thinking to myself), if I did not see you on Sat.u.r.day, and could not hope to see you on Monday, nor on Tuesday, nor on Wednesday, nor Thursday nor Friday, nor Sat.u.r.day again--if all the sabbaths were gone out of the world for me! May G.o.d bless you!--it has grown to be enough prayer!--as _you_ are enough (and all, besides) for

Your own

BA.

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

[Post-mark, February 7, 1846.]

The clock strikes--_three_; and I am here, not with you--and my 'fractious' headache at the very worst got suddenly better just now, and is leaving me every minute--as if to make me aware, with an undivided attention, that at this present you are waiting for me, and soon will be wondering--and it would be so easy now to dress myself and walk or run or ride--do anything that led to you ... but by no haste in the world could I reach you, I am forced to see, before a quarter to five--by which time I think my letter must arrive. Dear, dearest Ba, did you but know how vexed I am--with myself, with--this is absurd, of course. The cause of it all was my going out last night--yet that, neither, was to be helped, the party having been twice put off before--once solely on my account. And the sun shines, and you would shine--

Monday is to make all the amends in its power, is it not? Still, still I have lost my day.

Bless you, my ever-dearest.

Your R.