The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 22

judge! The present is here to be seen ... speaking for itself! and the best future you can imagine for me, what a precarious thing it must be ... a thing for making burdens out of ... only not for your carrying, as I have vowed to my own soul. As dear Mr. Kenyon said to me to-day in his smiling kindness ... 'In ten years you may be strong perhaps'--or 'almost strong'! that being the encouragement of my best friends! What would he say, do you think, if he could know or guess...! what _could_ he say but that you were ... a poet!--and I ...

still worse! _Never_ let him know or guess!

And so if you are wise and would be happy (and you have excellent practical sense after all and should exercise it) you must leave me--these thoughts of me, I mean ... for if we might not be true friends for ever, I should have less courage to say the other truth.

But we may be friends always ... and cannot be so separated, that your happiness, in the knowledge of it, will not increase mine. And if you will be persuaded by me, as you say, you will be persuaded _thus_ ...

and consent to take a resolution and force your mind at once into another channel. Perhaps I might bring you reasons of the cla.s.s which you tell me 'would silence you for ever.' I might certainly tell you that my own father, if he knew that you had written to me _so_, and that I had answered you--_so_, even, would not forgive me at the end of ten years--and this, from none of the causes mentioned by me here and in no disrespect to your name and your position ... though he does not over-value poetry even in his daughter, and is apt to take the world's measures of the means of life ... but for the singular reason that he never _does_ tolerate in his family (sons or daughters) the development of one cla.s.s of feelings. Such an objection I could not bring to you of my own will--it rang hollow in my ears--perhaps I thought even too little of it:--and I brought to you what I thought much of, and cannot cease to think much of equally. Worldly thoughts, these are not at all, nor have been: there need be no soiling of the heart with any such:--and I will say, in reply to some words of yours, that you cannot despise the gold and gauds of the world more than I do, and should do even if I found a use for them. And if I _wished_ to be very poor, in the world's sense of poverty, I _could not_, with three or four hundred a year of which no living will can dispossess me. And is it not the chief good of money, the being free from the need of thinking of it? It seems so to me.

The obstacles then are of another character, and the stronger for being so. Believe that I am grateful to you--_how_ grateful, cannot be shown in words nor even in tears ... grateful enough to be truthful in all ways. You know I might have hidden myself from you--but I would not: and by the truth told of myself, you may believe in the earnestness with which I tell the other truths--of you ... and of this subject. The subject will not bear consideration--it breaks in our hands. But that G.o.d is stronger than we, cannot be a bitter thought to you but a holy thought ... while He lets me, as much as I can be anyone's, be only yours.

E.B.B.

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

[Post-mark, September 17, 1845.]

I do not know whether you imagine the precise effect of your letter on me--very likely you do, and write it just for that--for I conceive _all_ from your goodness. But before I tell you what is that effect, let me say in as few words as possible what shall stop any fear--though only for a moment and on the outset--that you have been misunderstood, that the goodness _outside_, and round and over all, hides all or any thing. I understand you to signify to me that you see, at this present, insurmountable obstacles to that--can I speak it--entire gift, which I shall own, was, while I dared ask it, above my hopes--and wishes, even, so it seems to me ... and yet could not but be asked, so plainly was it dictated to me, by something quite out of those hopes and wishes. Will it help me to say that once in this Aladdin-cavern I knew I ought to stop for no heaps of jewel-fruit on the trees from the very beginning, but go on to the lamp, _the_ prize, the last and best of all? Well, I understand you to p.r.o.nounce that at present you believe this gift impossible--and I acquiesce entirely--I submit wholly to you; repose on you in all the faith of which I am capable. Those obstacles are solely for _you_ to see and to declare ... had _I_ seen them, be sure I should never have mocked you or myself by affecting to pa.s.s them over ... what _were_ obstacles, I mean: but you _do_ see them, I must think,--and perhaps they strike me the more from my true, honest unfeigned inability to imagine what they are,--not that I shall endeavour. After what you _also_ apprise me of, I know and am joyfully confident that if ever they cease to be what you now consider them, you who see now _for me_, whom I implicitly trust in to see for me; you will _then_, too, see and remember me, and how I trust, and shall then be still trusting. And until you so see, and so inform me, I shall never utter a word--for that would involve the vilest of implications. I thank G.o.d--I _do_ thank him, that in this whole matter I have been, to the utmost of my power, not unworthy of his introducing you to me, in this respect that, being no longer in the first freshness of life, and having for many years now made up my mind to the impossibility of loving any woman ... having wondered at this in the beginning, and fought not a little against it, having acquiesced in it at last, and accounted for it all to myself, and become, if anything, rather proud of it than sorry ... I say, when real love, making itself at once recognized as such, _did_ reveal itself to me at last, I _did_ open my heart to it with a cry--nor care for its overturning all my theory--nor mistrust its effect upon a mind set in ultimate order, so I fancied, for the few years more--nor apprehend in the least that the new element would harm what was already organized without its help. Nor have I, either, been guilty of the more pardonable folly, of treating the new feeling after the pedantic fas.h.i.+ons and instances of the world. I have not spoken when _it_ did not speak, because 'one' might speak, or has spoken, or _should_ speak, and 'plead' and all that miserable work which, after all, I may well continue proud that I am not called to attempt. _Here_ for instance, _now_ ... 'one' should despair; but 'try again' first, and work blindly at removing those obstacles (--if I saw them, I should be silent, and only speak when a month hence, ten years hence, I could bid you look where they _were_)--and 'one' would do all this, not for the _play-acting's_ sake, or to 'look the character' ...

(_that_ would be something quite different from folly ...) but from a not unreasonable anxiety lest by too sudden a silence, too complete an acceptance of your will; the earnestness and endurance and unabatedness ... the _truth_, in fact, of what had already been professed, should get to be questioned--But I believe that you believe me--And now that all is clear between us I will say, what you will hear, without fearing for me or yourself, that I am utterly contented ... ('grateful' I have done with ... it must go--) I accept what you give me, what those words deliver to me, as--not all I asked for ...

as I said ... but as more than I ever hoped for,--_all_, in the best sense, that I deserve. That phrase in my letter which you objected to, and the other--may stand, too--I never attempted to declare, describe my feeling for you--one word of course stood for it all ... but having to put down some one _point_, so to speak, of it--you could not wonder if I took any extreme one _first_ ... never minding all the untold portion that _led_ up to it, made it possible and natural--it is true, 'I could not dream of _that_'--that I was eager to get the horrible notion away from never so flitting a visit to you, that you were thus and thus to me _on condition_ of my proving just the same to you--just as if we had waited to acknowledge that the moon lighted us till we ascertained within these two or three hundred years that the earth happens to light the moon as well! But I felt that, and so said it:--now you have declared what I should never have presumed to hope--and I repeat to you that I, with all to be thankful for to G.o.d, am most of all thankful for this the last of his providences ... which is no doubt, the natural and inevitable feeling, could one always see clearly. Your regard for me is _all_ success--let the rest come, or not come. In my heart's thankfulness I would ... I am sure I would promise anything that would gratify you ... but it would _not_ do that, to agree, in words, to change my affections, put them elsewhere &c. &c. That would be pure foolish talking, and quite foreign to the practical results which you will attain in a better way from a higher motive. I will cheerfully promise you, however, to be 'bound by no words,' blind to no miracle; in sober earnest, it is not because I renounced once for all oxen and the owning and having to do with them, that I will obstinately turn away from any unicorn when such an apparition blesses me ... but meantime I shall walk at peace on our hills here nor go looking in all corners for the bright curved horn!

And as for you ... if I did not dare 'to dream of that'--, now it is mine, my pride and joy prevent in no manner my taking the whole consolation of it at once, _now_--I will be confident that, if I obey you, I shall get no wrong for it--if, endeavouring to spare you fruitless pain, I do not eternally revert to the subject; do indeed 'quit' it just now, when no good can come of dwelling on it to you; you will never say to yourself--so I said--'the "generous impulse"

_has_ worn itself out ... time is doing his usual work--this was to be expected' &c. &c. You will be the first to say to me 'such an obstacle has ceased to exist ... or is now become one palpable to _you_, one _you_ may try and overcome'--and I shall be there, and ready--ten years hence as now--if alive.

One final word on the other matters--the 'worldly matters'--I shall own I alluded to them rather ostentatiously, because--because _that would be_ the _one_ poor sacrifice I could make you--one I would cheerfully make, but a sacrifice, and the only one: this careless 'sweet habitude of living'--this absolute independence of mine, which, if I had it not, my heart would starve and die for, I feel, and which I have fought so many good battles to preserve--for that has happened, too--this light rational life I lead, and know so well that I lead; this I could give up for nothing less than--what you know--but I _would_ give it up, not for you merely, but for those whose disappointment might re-act on you--and I should break no promise to myself--the money getting would not be for the sake of _it_; 'the labour not for that which is nought'--indeed the necessity of doing this, if at all, _now_, was one of the reasons which make me go on to that _last request of all_--at once; one must not be too old, they say, to begin their ways. But, in spite of all the babble, I feel sure that whenever I make up my mind to that, I can be rich enough and to spare--because along with what you have thought _genius_ in me, is certainly talent, what the world recognizes as such; and I have tried it in various ways, just to be sure that I _was_ a little magnanimous in never intending to use it. Thus, in more than one of the reviews and newspapers that laughed my 'Paracelsus' to scorn ten years ago--in the same column, often, of these reviews, would follow a most laudatory notice of an Elementary French book, on a new plan, which I '_did_' for my old French master, and he published--'_that_ was really an useful work'!--So that when the only obstacle is only that there is so much _per annum_ to be producible, you will tell me. After all it would be unfair in me not to confess that this was always intended to be _my_ own single stipulation--'an objection' which I could see, certainly,--but meant to treat myself to the little luxury of removing.

So, now, dearest--let me once think of that, and of you as my own, my dearest--this once--dearest, I have done with words for the present. I will wait. G.o.d bless you and reward you--I kiss your hands _now_. This is my comfort, that if you accept my feeling as all but _un_expressed now, more and more will become spoken--or understood, that is--we both live on--you will know better _what_ it was, how much and manifold, what one little word had to give out.

G.o.d bless you--

Your R.B.

On Thursday,--you remember?

This is Tuesday Night--

I called on Sat.u.r.day at the Office in St. Mary Axe--all uncertainty about the vessel's sailing again for Leghorn--it could not sail before the middle of the month--and only then _if_ &c. But if I would leave my card &c. &c.

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

Wednesday Morning.

[Post-mark, September 17, 1845.]

I write one word just to say that it is all over with Pisa; which was a probable evil when I wrote last, and which I foresaw from the beginning--being a prophetess, you know. I cannot tell you now how it has all happened--_only do not blame me_, for I have kept my ground to the last, and only yield when Mr. Kenyon and all the world see that there is no standing. I am ashamed almost of having put so much earnestness into a personal matter--and I spoke face to face and quite firmly--so as to pa.s.s with my sisters for the 'bravest person in the house' without contestation.

Sometimes it seems to me as if it _could not_ end so--I mean, that the responsibility of such a negative must be reconsidered ... and you see how Mr. Kenyon writes to me. Still, as the matter lies, ... no Pisa!

And, as I said before, my prophetic instincts are not likely to fail, such as they have been from the beginning.

If you wish to come, it must not be until Sat.u.r.day at soonest. I have a headache and am weary at heart with all this vexation--and besides there is no haste now: and when you do come, _if you do_, I will trust to you not to recur to one subject, which must lie where it fell ...

must! I had begun to write to you on Sat.u.r.day, to say how I had forgotten to give you your MSS. which were lying ready for you ... the _Hood_ poems. Would it not be desirable that you made haste to see them through the press, and went abroad with your Roman friends at once, to try to get rid of that uneasiness in the head? Do think of it--and more than think.

For me, you are not to fancy me unwell. Only, not to be worn a little with the last week's turmoil, were impossible--and Mr. Kenyon said to me yesterday that he quite wondered how I could bear it at all, do anything reasonable at all, and confine my misdoings to sending letters addressed to him at Brighton, when he was at Dover! If anything changes, you shall hear from--

E.B.B.

Mr. Kenyon returns to Dover immediately. His kindness is impotent in the case.

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

Wednesday Evening.

[Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]

But one word before we leave the subject, and then to leave it finally; but I cannot let you go on to fancy a mystery anywhere, in obstacles or the rest. You deserve at least a full frankness; and in my letter I meant to be fully frank. I even told you what was an absurdity, so absurd that I should far rather not have told you at all, only that I felt the need of telling you all: and no mystery is involved in that, except as an 'idiosyncrasy' is a mystery. But the 'insurmountable' difficulty is for you and everybody to see; and for me to feel, who have been a very byword among the talkers, for a confirmed invalid through months and years, and who, even if I were going to Pisa and had the best prospects possible to me, should yet remain liable to relapses and stand on precarious ground to the end of my life. Now that is no mystery for the trying of 'faith'; but a plain fact, which neither thinking nor speaking can make less a fact. But _don't_ let us speak of it.

I must speak, however, (before the silence) of what you said and repeat in words for which I gratefully thank you--and which are _not_ 'ostentatious' though unnecessary words--for, if I were in a position to accept sacrifices from you, I would not accept _such_ a sacrifice ... amounting to a sacrifice of duty and dignity as well as of ease and satisfaction ... to an exchange of higher work for lower work ...

and of the special work you are called to, for that which is work for anybody. I am not so ignorant of the right uses and destinies of what you have and are. You will leave the Solicitor-Generals.h.i.+ps to the Fitzroy Kellys, and justify your own nature; and besides, do me the little right, (_over_ the _over_-right you are always doing me) of believing that I would not bear or dare to do _you_ so much wrong, if I were in the position to do it.

And for all the rest I thank you--believe that I thank you ... and that the feeling is not so weak as the word. That _you_ should care at all for _me_ has been a matter of unaffected wonder to me from the first hour until now--and I cannot help the pain I feel sometimes, in thinking that it would have been better for you if you never had known me. May G.o.d turn back the evil of me! Certainly I admit that I cannot expect you ... just at this moment, ... to say more than you say, ...

and I shall try to be at ease in the consideration that you are as accessible to the 'unicorn' now as you ever could be at any former period of your life. And here I have done. I had done _living_, I thought, when you came and sought me out! and why? and to what end?

_That_, I cannot help thinking now. Perhaps just that I may pray for you--which were a sufficient end. If you come on Sat.u.r.day I trust you to leave this subject untouched,--as it must be indeed henceforth.

I am yours,

E.B.B.

No word more of Pisa--I shall not go, I think.

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

[Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]

Words!--it was written I should hate and never use them to any purpose. I will not say one word here--very well knowing neither word nor deed avails--from me.

My letter will have rea.s.sured you on the point you seem undecided about--whether I would speak &c.

I will come whenever you shall signify that I may ... whenever, acting in my best interests, you feel that it will not hurt you (weary you in any way) to see me--but I fear that on Sat.u.r.day I must be otherwhere--I enclose the letter from my old foe. Which could not but melt me for all my moroseness and I can hardly go and return for my sister in time. Will you tell me?

It is dark--but I want to save the post--

Ever yours

R.B.