The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 6

Let me hear how you are--Will you? and let me hear (if I can) that it was prudence or some unchristian virtue of the sort, and not a dreary necessity, which made you put aside the engagement for Tuesday--for Monday. I had been thinking so of seeing you on Tuesday ... with my sister's eyes--for the first sight.

And now if you have done killing the mules and the dogs, let me have a straight quick arrow for myself, if you please. Just a word, to say how you are. I ask for no more than a word, lest the writing should be hurtful to you.

May G.o.d bless you always.

Your friend,

E.B.B.

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

Monday.

[Post-mark, May 12, 1845.]

My dear, own friend, I am quite well now, or next to it--but this is how it was,--I have gone out a great deal of late, and my head took to ringing such a literal alarum that I wondered what was to come of it; and at last, a few evenings ago, as I was dressing for a dinner somewhere, I got really bad of a sudden, and kept at home to my friend's heartrending disappointment. Next morning I was no better--and it struck me that I should be really disappointing dear kind Mr. Kenyon, and wasting his time, if that engagement, too, were broken with as little warning,--so I thought it best to forego all hopes of seeing him, at such a risk. And that done, I got rid of every other promise to pay visits for next week and next, and told everybody, with considerable dignity, that my London season was over for this year, as it a.s.suredly is--and I shall be worried no more, and let walk in the garden, and go to bed at ten o'clock, and get done with what is most expedient to do, and my 'flesh shall come again like a little child's,' and one day, oh the day, I shall see you with my own, own eyes ... for, how little you understand me; or rather, yourself,--if you think I would dare see you, without your leave, that way! Do you suppose that your power of giving and refusing ends when you have shut your room-door? Did I not tell you I turned down another street, even, the other day, and why not down yours? And often as I see Mr. Kenyon, have I ever dreamed of asking any but the merest conventional questions about you; your health, and no more?

I will answer your letter, the last one, to-morrow--I have said nothing of what I want to say.

Ever yours

R.B.

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

Tuesday Morning.

[Post-mark, May 13, 1845.]

Did I thank you with any effect in the lines I sent yesterday, dear Miss Barrett? I know I felt most thankful, and, of course, began reasoning myself into the impropriety of allowing a 'more' or a 'most'

in feelings of that sort towards you. I am thankful for you, all about you--as, do you not know?

Thank you, from my soul.

Now, let me never pa.s.s occasion of speaking well of Horne, who deserves your opinion of him,--it is my own, too.--He has unmistakable genius, and is a fine, honest, enthusiastic chivalrous fellow--it is the fashion to affect to sneer at him, of late, I think--the people he has praised fancying that they 'pose' themselves sculpturesquely in playing the Greatly Indifferent, and the other kind shaking each other's hands in hysterical congratulations at having escaped such a dishonour: _I_ feel grateful to him, I know, for his generous criticism, and glad and proud of in any way approaching such a man's standard of poetical height. And he might be a disappointed man too,--for the players trifled with and teased out his very nature, which has a strange aspiration for the horrible tin-and-lacquer 'crown' they give one from their clouds (of smooth shaven deal done over blue)--and he don't give up the bad business yet, but thinks a 'small' theatre would somehow not be a theatre, and an actor not quite an actor ... I forget in what way, but the upshot is, he bates not a jot in that rouged, wigged, padded, empty-headed, heartless tribe of grimacers that came and canted me; not I, them;--a thing he cannot understand--_so_, I am not the one he would have picked out to praise, had he not been _loyal_. I know he admires your poetry properly. G.o.d help him, and send some great artist from the country, (who can read and write beside comprehending Shakspeare, and who 'exasperates his H's' when the feat is to be done)--to undertake the part of Cosmo, or Gregory, or what shall most soothe his spirit! The subject of your play is tempting indeed--and reminds one of that wild Drama of Calderon's which frightened Sh.e.l.ley just before his death--also, of Fuseli's theory with reference to his own Picture of Macbeth in the witches' cave ... wherein the apparition of the armed head from the cauldron is Macbeth's own.

'If you ask me, I must ask myself'--that is, when I am to see you--I will _never_ ask you! You do _not_ know what I shall estimate that permission at,--nor do I, quite--but you do--do not you? know so much of me as to make my 'asking' worse than a form--I do not 'ask' you to write to me--not _directly_ ask, at least.

I will tell you--I ask you _not_ to see me so long as you are unwell, or mistrustful of--

No, no, that is being too grand! Do see me when you can, and let me not be only writing myself

Yours

R.B.

A kind, so kind, note from Mr. Kenyon came. We, I and my sister, are to go in June instead.... I shall go nowhere till then; I am nearly well--all save one little wheel in my head that keeps on its

[Ill.u.s.tration: Music: ba.s.s clef, B-flat, _Sostenuto_]

That you are better I am most thankful.

'Next letter' to say how you must help me with all my new Romances and Lyrics, and Lays and Plays, and read them and heed them and end them and mend them!

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

Thursday.

[Post-mark, May 16, 1845.]

But how 'mistrustfulness'? And how 'that way?' What have I said or done, _I_, who am not apt to _be_ mistrustful of anybody and should be a miraculous monster if I began with _you_! What can I have said, I say to myself again and again.

One thing, at any rate, I have done, 'that way' or this way! I have made what is vulgarly called a 'piece of work' about little; or seemed to make it. Forgive me. I am shy by nature:--and by position and experience, ... by having had my nerves shaken to excess, and by leading a life of such seclusion, ... by these things together and by others besides, I have appeared shy and ungrateful to you. Only not mistrustful. You could not mean to judge me so. Mistrustful people do not write as I write, surely! for wasn't it a Richelieu or Mazarin (or who?) who said that with five lines from anyone's hand, he could take off his head for a corollary? I think so.

Well!--but this is to prove that I am not mistrustful, and to say, that if you care to come to see me you can come; and that it is my gain (as I feel it to be) and not yours, whenever you do come. You will not talk of having come afterwards I know, because although I am 'fast bound' to see one or two persons this summer (besides yourself, whom I receive of choice and willingly) I _cannot_ admit visitors in a general way--and putting the question of health quite aside, it would be unbecoming to lie here on the sofa and make a company-show of an infirmity, and hold a beggar's hat for sympathy. I should blame it in another woman--and the sense of it has had its weight with me sometimes.

For the rest, ... when you write, that _I_ do not know how you would value, &c. _nor yourself quite_, you touch very accurately on the truth ... and _so_ accurately in the last clause, that to read it, made me smile 'tant bien que mal.' Certainly you cannot 'quite know,'

or know at all, whether the least straw of pleasure can go to you from knowing me otherwise than on this paper--and I, for my part, 'quite know' my own honest impression, dear Mr. Browning, that none is likely to go to you. There is nothing to see in me; nor to hear in me--I never learnt to talk as you do in London; although I can admire that brightness of carved speech in Mr. Kenyon and others. If my poetry is worth anything to any eye, it is the flower of me. I have lived most and been most happy in it, and so it has all my colours; the rest of me is nothing but a root, fit for the ground and the dark. And if I write all this egotism, ... it is for shame; and because I feel ashamed of having made a fuss about what is not worth it; and because you are extravagant in caring so for a permission, which will be nothing to you afterwards. Not that I am not touched by your caring so at all! I am deeply touched now; and presently, ... I shall understand. Come then. There will be truth and simplicity for you in any case; and a friend. And do not answer this--I do not write it as a fly trap for compliments. Your spider would scorn me for it too much.

Also, ... as to the how and when. You are not well now, and it cannot be good for you to do anything but be quiet and keep away that dreadful musical note in the head. I entreat you not to think of coming until _that_ is all put to silence satisfactorily. When it is done, ... you must choose whether you would like best to come with Mr.

Kenyon or to come alone--and if you would come alone, you must just tell me on what day, and I will see you on any day unless there should be an unforeseen obstacle, ... any day after two, or before six. And my sister will bring you up-stairs to me; and we will talk; or _you_ will talk; and you will try to be indulgent, and like me as well as you can. If, on the other hand, you would rather come with Mr. Kenyon, you must wait, I imagine, till June,--because he goes away on Monday and is not likely immediately to return--no, on Sat.u.r.day, to-morrow.

In the meantime, why I should be '_thanked_,' is an absolute mystery to me--but I leave it!

You are generous and impetuous; _that_, I can see and feel; and so far from being of an inclination to mistrust you or distrust you, I do profess to have as much faith in your full, pure loyalty, as if I had known you personally as many years as I have appreciated your genius.

Believe this of me--for it is spoken truly.

In the matter of Shakespeare's 'poor players' you are severe--and yet I was glad to hear you severe--it is a happy excess, I think. When men of intense reality, as all great poets must be, give their hearts to be trodden on and tied up with ribbons in turn, by men of masks, there will be torture if there is not desecration. Not that I know much of such things--but I have _heard_. Heard from Mr. Kenyon; heard from Miss Mitford; who however is pa.s.sionately fond of the theatre as a writer's medium--_not at all_, from Mr. Horne himself, ... except what he has printed on the subject.

Yes--he has been infamously used on the point of the 'New Spirit'--only he should have been prepared for the infamy--it was leaping into a gulph, ... not to 'save the republic,' but '_pour rire_': it was not merely putting one's foot into a hornet's nest, but taking off a shoe and stocking to do it. And to think of d.i.c.kens being dissatisfied! To think of Tennyson's friends grumbling!--he himself did not, I hope and trust. For you, you certainly were not adequately treated--and above all, you were not placed with your _peers_ in that chapter--but that there was an intention to do you justice, and that there _is_ a righteous appreciation of you in the writer, I know and am sure,--and that _you_ should be sensible to this, is only what I should know and be sure of _you_. Mr. Horne is quite above the narrow, vicious, hateful jealousy of contemporaries, which we hear reproached, too justly sometimes, on men of letters.

I go on writing as if I were not going to see you--soon perhaps.

Remember that the how and the when rest with you--except that it cannot be before next week at the soonest. You are to decide.

Always your friend,

E.B.B.

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

Friday Night.

[Post-mark, May 17, 1845.]

My friend is not 'mistrustful' of me, no, because she don't fear I shall make mainprize of the stray cloaks and umbrellas down-stairs, or turn an article for _Colburn's_ on her sayings and doings up-stairs,--but spite of that, she does mistrust ... _so_ mistrust my common sense,--nay, uncommon and dramatic-poet's sense, if I am put on a.s.serting it!--all which pieces of mistrust I could detect, and catch struggling, and pin to death in a moment, and put a label in, with name, genus and species, just like a horrible entomologist; only I won't, because the first visit of the Northwind will carry the whole tribe into the Red Sea--and those horns and tails and scalewings are best forgotten altogether. And now will I say a cutting thing and have done. Have I trusted _my_ friend so,--or said even to myself, much less to her, she is even as--'Mr. Simpson' who desireth the honour of the acquaintance of Mr. B. whose admirable works have long been his, Simpson's, especial solace in private--and who accordingly is led to that personage by a mutual friend--Simpson blushing as only adorable ingenuousness can, and twisting the brim of his hat like a sailor giving evidence. Whereupon Mr. B. beginneth by remarking that the rooms are growing hot--or that he supposes Mr. S. has not heard if there will be another adjournment of the House to-night--whereupon Mr.

S. looketh up all at once, brusheth the brim smooth again with his sleeve, and takes to his a.s.surance once more, in something of a huff, and after staying his five minutes out for decency's sake, noddeth familiarly an adieu, and spinning round on his heel e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.eth mentally--'Well, I _did_ expect to see something different from that little yellow commonplace man ... and, now I come to think, there _was_ some precious trash in that book of his'--Have _I_ said 'so will Miss Barrett e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e?'