The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett Part 5

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

Wednesday Morning.

[Post-mark, April 30, 1845.]

If you did but know, dear Miss Barrett, how the 'full stop' after 'Morning' just above, has turned out the fullest of stops,--and how for about a quarter of an hour since the ink dried I have been reasoning out the why and wherefore of the stopping, the wisdom of it, and the folly of it....

By this time you see what you have got in me--You ask me questions, 'if I like novels,' 'if the "Improvisatore" is not good,' 'if travel and sightseeing do not effect this and that for one,' and 'what I am devising--play or poem,'--and I shall not say I could not answer at all manner of lengths--but, let me only begin some good piece of writing of the kind, and ... no, you shall have it, have what I was going to tell you stops such judicious beginnings,--in a parallel case, out of which your ingenuity shall, please, pick the meaning--There is a story of D'Israeli's, an old one, with an episode of strange interest, or so I found it years ago,--well, you go breathlessly on with the people of it, page after page, till at last the end _must_ come, you feel--and the tangled threads draw to one, and an out-of-door feast in the woods helps you ... that is, helps them, the people, wonderfully on,--and, lo, dinner is done, and Vivian Grey is here, and Violet Fane there,--and a detachment of the party is drafted off to go catch b.u.t.terflies, and only two or three stop behind. At this moment, Mr. Somebody, a good man and rather the lady's uncle, 'in answer to a question from Violet, drew from his pocket a small neatly written ma.n.u.script, and, seating himself on an inverted wine-cooler, proceeded to read the following brief remarks upon the characteristics of the Moeso-gothic literature'--this ends the page,--which you don't turn at once! But when you _do_, in bitterness of soul, turn it, you read--'On consideration, I' (Ben, himself) 'shall keep them for Mr. Colburn's _New Magazine_'--and deeply you draw thankful breath! (Note this 'parallel case' of mine is pretty sure to meet the usual fortune of my writings--you will ask what it means--and this it means, or should mean, all of it, instance and reasoning and all,--that I am naturally earnest, in earnest about whatever thing I do, and little able to write about one thing while I think of another)--

I think I will really write verse to you some day--_this_ day, it is quite clear I had better give up trying.

No, spite of all the lines in the world, I will make an end of it, as Ophelia with her swan's-song,--for it grows too absurd. But remember that I write letters to n.o.body but you, and that I want method and much more. That book you like so, the Danish novel, must be full of truth and beauty, to judge from the few extracts I have seen in Reviews. That a Dane should write so, confirms me in an old belief--that Italy is stuff for the use of the North, and no more--pure Poetry there is none, nearly as possible none, in Dante even--material for Poetry in the pitifullest romancist of their thousands, on the contrary--strange that those great wide black eyes should stare nothing out of the earth that lies before them! Alfieri, with even grey eyes, and a life of travel, writes you some fifteen tragedies as colourless as salad grown under a garden gla.s.s with matting over it--as free, that is, from local colouring, touches of the soil they are said to spring from,--think of 'Saulle,' and his Greek attempts!

I expected to see Mr. Kenyon, at a place where I was last week, but he kept away. Here is the bad wind back again, and the black sky. I am sure I never knew till now whether the East or West or South were the quarter to pray for--But surely the weather was a little better last week, and you, were you not better? And do you know--but it's all self-flattery I believe,--still I cannot help fancying the East wind does my head harm too!

Ever yours faithfully,

R. BROWNING.

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

Thursday.

[Post-mark, May 2, 1845.]

People say of you and of me, dear Mr. Browning, that we love the darkness and use a sphinxine idiom in our talk; and really you do talk a little like a sphinx in your argument drawn from 'Vivian Grey.' Once I sate up all night to read 'Vivian Grey'; but I never drew such an argument from him. Not that I give it up (nor _you_ up) for a mere mystery. Nor that I can '_see what you have got in you_,' from a mere guess. But just observe! If I ask questions about novels, is it not because I want to know how much elbow-room there may be for our sympathies ... and whether there is room for my loose sleeves, and the lace lappets, as well as for my elbows; and because I want to see _you_ by the refracted lights as well as by the direct ones; and because I am willing for you to know _me_ from the beginning, with all my weaknesses and foolishnesses, ... as they are accounted by people who say to me 'no one would ever think, without knowing you, that you were so and so.' Now if I send all my idle questions to _Colburn's Magazine_, with other Gothic literature, and take to standing up in a perpendicular personality like the angel on the schoolman's needle, in my letters to come, without further leaning to the left or the right--why the end would be that _you_ would take to 'running after the b.u.t.terflies,' for change of air and exercise. And then ... oh ...

then, my 'small neatly written ma.n.u.scripts' might fall back into my desk...! (_Not_ a 'full stop'!.)

Indeed ... I do a.s.sure you ... I never for a moment thought of 'making conversation' about the 'Improvisatore' or novels in general, when I wrote what I did to you. I might, to other persons ... perhaps.

Certainly not to _you_. I was not dealing round from one pack of cards to you and to others. That's what you meant to reproach me for you know,--and of that, I am not guilty at all. I never could think of 'making conversation' in a letter to _you_--never. Women are said to partake of the nature of children--and my brothers call me 'absurdly childish' sometimes: and I am capable of being childishly 'in earnest'

about novels, and straws, and such 'puppydogs' tails' as my Flush's!

Also I write more letters than you do, ... I write in fact almost as you pay visits, ... and one has to 'make conversation' in turn, of course. _But_--give me something to vow by--whatever you meant in the 'Vivian Grey' argument, you were wrong in it! and you never can be much more wrong--which is a comfortable reflection.

Yet you leap very high at Dante's crown--or you do not leap, ... you simply extend your hand to it, and make a rustling among the laurel leaves, which is somewhat prophane. Dante's poetry only materials for the northern rhymers! I must think of that ... if you please ...

before I agree with you. Dante's poetry seems to come down in hail, rather than in rain--but count me the drops congealed in one hailstone! Oh! the 'Flight of the d.u.c.h.ess'--do let us hear more of her! Are you (I wonder) ... not a 'self-flatterer,' ... but ... a flatterer.

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

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

Sat.u.r.day Morning.

[Post-mark, May 3, 1845.]

Now shall you see what you shall see--here shall be 'sound speech not to be reproved,'--for this morning you are to know that the soul of me has it all her own way, dear Miss Barrett, this green cool nine-in-the-morning time for my chestnut tree over there, and for me who only coaxed my good-natured--(really)--body up, after its three-hours' night-rest on condition it should lounge, or creep about, incognito and without consequences--and so it shall, all but my right-hand which is half-spirit and 'cuts' its poor relation, and pa.s.ses itself off for somebody (that is, some soul) and is doubly active and ready on such occasions--Now I shall tell you all about it, first what last letter meant, and then more. You are to know, then that for some reason, that looked like an instinct, I thought I ought not to send shaft on shaft, letter-plague on letter, with such an uninterrupted clanging ... that I ought to wait, say a week at least having killed all your mules for you, before I shot down your dogs--but not being exactly Phoibos Apollon, you are to know further that when I _did_ think I might go modestly on, ... [Greek: omoi], let me get out of this slough of a simile, never mind with what dislocation of ancles! Plainly, from waiting and turning my eyes away (not from _you_, but from you in your special capacity of being _written_-to, not spoken-to) when I turned again you had grown formidable somehow--though that's not the word,--nor are you the person, either,--it was my fortune, my privilege of being your friend this one way, that it seemed a shame for me to make no better use of than taking it up with talk about books and I don't know what. Write what I will, you would read for once, I think--well, then,--what I shall write shall be--something on this book, and the other book, and my own books, and Mary Hewitt's books, and at the end of it--good bye, and I hope here is a quarter of an hour rationally spent. So the thought of what I should find in my heart to say, and the contrast with what I suppose I ought to say ... all these things are against me. But this is very foolish, all the same, I need not be told--and is part and parcel of an older--indeed primitive body of mine, which I shall never wholly get rid of, of desiring to do nothing when I cannot do all; seeing nothing, getting, enjoying nothing, where there is no seeing and getting and enjoying _wholly_--and in this case, moreover, you are _you_, and know something about me, if not much, and have read Bos on the art of supplying Ellipses, and (after, particularly, I have confessed all this, why and how it has been) you will _subaudire_ when I pull out my Mediaeval-Gothic-Architectural-Ma.n.u.script (so it was, I remember now,) and instruct you about corbeils and ogives ... though, after all, it was none of Vivian's doing, that,--all the uncle kind or man's, which I never professed to be. Now you see how I came to say some nonsense (I very vaguely think _what_) about Dante--some desperate splash I know I made for the beginning of my picture, as when a painter at his wits' end and hunger's beginning says 'Here shall the figure's hand be'--and spots _that_ down, meaning to reach it naturally from the other end of his canvas,--and leaving off tired, there you see the spectral disjoined thing, and nothing between it and rationality. I intended to shade down and soften off and put in and leave out, and, before I had done, bring Italian Poets round to their old place again in my heart, giving new praise if I took old,--anyhow Dante is out of it all, as who knows but I, with all of him in my head and heart? But they do fret one, those tantalizing creatures, of fine pa.s.sionate cla.s.s, with such capabilities, and such a facility of being made pure mind of. And the special instance that vexed me, was that a man of sands and dog-roses and white rock and green sea-water just under, should come to Italy where my heart lives, and discover the sights and sounds ... certainly discover them. And so do all Northern writers; for take up handfuls of sonetti, rime, poemetti, doings of those who never did anything else,--and try and make out, for yourself, what ... say, what flowers they tread on, or trees they walk under,--as you might bid _them_, those tree and flower loving creatures, pick out of _our_ North poetry a notion of what _our_ daisies and harebells and furze bushes and brambles are--'Odorosi fioretti, rose porporine, bianchissimi gigli.' And which of you eternal triflers was it called yourself 'Sh.e.l.ley' and so told me years ago that in the mountains it was a feast

When one should find those globes of deep red gold-- Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear, Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.

so that when my Uncle walked into a sorb-tree, not to tumble sheer over Monte Calvano, and I felt the fruit against my face, the little ragged bare-legged guide fairly laughed at my knowing them so well--'Niursi--sorbi!' No, no,--does not all Naples-bay and half Sicily, sh.o.r.e and inland, come flocking once a year to the Piedigrotta fete only to see the blessed King's Volanti, or livery servants all in their best; as though heaven opened; and would not I engage to bring the whole of the Piano (of Sorrento) in likeness to a red velvet dressing gown properly spangled over, before the priest that held it out on a pole had even begun his story of how Noah's son Shem, the founder of Sorrento, threw it off to swim thither, as the world knows he did? Oh, it makes one's soul angry, so enough of it. But never enough of telling you--bring all your sympathies, come with loosest sleeves and longest lace-lappets, and you and yours shall find 'elbow room,' oh, shall you not! For never did man, woman or child, Greek, Hebrew, or as Danish as our friend, like a thing, not to say love it, but I liked and loved it, one liking neutralizing the rebellious stir of its fellow, so that I don't go about now wanting the fixed stars before my time; this world has not escaped me, thank G.o.d; and--what other people say is the best of it, may not escape me after all, though until so very lately I made up my mind to do without it;--perhaps, on that account, and to make fair amends to other people, who, I have no right to say, complain without cause. I have been surprised, rather, with something not unlike illness of late--I have had a constant pain in the head for these two months, which only very rough exercise gets rid of, and which stops my 'Luria' and much besides. I thought I never could be unwell. Just now all of it is gone, thanks to polking all night and walking home by broad daylight to the surprise of the thrushes in the bush here. And do you know I said 'this must _go_, cannot mean to stay, so I will not tell Miss Barrett why this and this is not done,'--but I mean to tell you all, or more of the truth, because you call me 'flatterer,' so that my eyes widened again! I, and in what? And of whom, pray? not of _you_, at all events,--of whom then? _Do_ tell me, because I want to stand with you--and am quite in earnest there. And 'The Flight of the d.u.c.h.ess,'

to leave nothing out, is only the beginning of a story written some time ago, and given to poor Hood in his emergency at a day's notice,--the true stuff and story is all to come, the 'Flight,' and what you allude to is the mere introduction--but the Magazine has pa.s.sed into other hands and I must put the rest in some 'Bell' or other--it is one of my Dramatic Romances. So is a certain 'Saul' I should like to show you one day--an ominous liking--for n.o.body ever sees what I do till it is printed. But as you _do_ know the printed little part of me, I should not be sorry if, in justice, you knew all I have _really_ done,--written in the portfolio there,--though that would be far enough from _this_ me, that wishes to you now. I should like to write something in concert with you, how I would try!

I have read your letter through again. Does this clear up all the difficulty, and do you see that I never dreamed of 'reproaching you for dealing out one sort of cards to me and everybody else'--but that ... why, '_that_' which I have, I hope, said, so need not resay. I will tell you--Sydney Smith laughs somewhere at some Methodist or other whose wont was, on meeting an acquaintance in the street, to open at once on him with some enquiry after the state of his soul--Sydney knows better now, and sees that one might quite as wisely ask such questions as the price of Illinois stock or condition of glebe-land,--and I _could_ say such--'could,'--the plague of it! So no more at present from your loving.... Or, let me tell you I am going to see Mr. Kenyon on the 12th inst.--that you do not tell me how you are, and that yet if you do not continue to improve in health ... I shall not see you--not--not--not--what 'knots' to untie! Surely the wind that sets my chestnut-tree dancing, all its baby-cone-blossoms, green now, rocking like fairy castles on a hill in an earthquake,--that is South West, surely! G.o.d bless you, and me in that--and do write to me soon, and tell me who was the 'flatterer,' and how he never was

Yours

R.B.

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

Monday--and Tuesday.

[Post-mark, May 6, 1845.]

So when wise people happen to be ill, they sit up till six o'clock in the morning and get up again at nine? Do tell me how Lurias can ever be made out of such unG.o.dly imprudences. If the wind blows east or west, where can any remedy be, while such evil deeds are being committed? And what is to be the end of it? And what is the reasonableness of it in the meantime, when we all know that thinking, dreaming, creating people like yourself, have two lives to bear instead of one, and therefore ought to sleep more than others, ...

throwing over and buckling in that fold of death, to stroke the life-purple smoother. You have to live your own personal life, and also Luria's life--and therefore you should sleep for both. It is logical indeed--and rational, ... which logic is not always ... and if I had 'the tongue of men and of angels,' I would use it to persuade you. Polka, for the rest, may be good; but sleep is better. I think better of sleep than I ever did, now that she will not easily come near me except in a red hood of poppies. And besides, ... praise your 'goodnatured body' as you like, ... it is only a seeming goodnature!

Bodies bear malice in a terrible way, be very sure!--appear mild and smiling for a few short years, and then ... out with a cold steel; and the _soul has it_, 'with a vengeance,' ... according to the phrase!

You will not persist, (will you?) in this experimental homicide. Or tell me if you will, that I may do some more tearing. It really, really is wrong. Exercise is one sort of rest and you feel relieved by it--and sleep is another: one being as necessary as the other.

This is the first thing I have to say. The next is a question. _What do you mean about your ma.n.u.scripts ... about 'Saul' and the portfolio?_ for I am afraid of hazardously supplying ellipses--and your 'Bos' comes to [Greek: bous epi glosse].[1] I get half bribed to silence by the very pleasure of fancying. But if it could be possible that you should mean to say you would show me.... Can it be? or am I reading this 'Attic contraction' quite the wrong way? You see I am afraid of the difference between flattering myself and being flattered; the fatal difference. And now will you understand that I should be too overjoyed to have revelations from the 'Portfolio,' ...

however incarnated with blots and pen-scratches, ... to be able to ask impudently of them now? Is that plain?

It must be, ... at any rate, ... that if _you_ would like to 'write something together' with me, _I_ should like it still better. I should like it for some ineffable reasons. And I should not like it a bit the less for the grand supply of jests it would administer to the critical Board of Trade, about visible darkness, multiplied by two, mounting into palpable obscure. We should not mind ... should we? _you_ would not mind, if you had got over certain other considerations deconsiderating to your coadjutor. Yes--but I dare not do it, ... I mean, think of it, ... just now, if ever: and I will tell you why in a Mediaeval-Gothic-architectural ma.n.u.script.

The only poet by profession (if I may say so,) except yourself, with whom I ever had much intercourse even on paper, (if this is near to 'much') has been Mr. Horne. We approached each other on the point of one of Miss Mitford's annual editors.h.i.+ps; and ever since, he has had the habit of writing to me occasionally; and when I was too ill to write at all, in my dreary Devons.h.i.+re days, I was his debtor for various little kindnesses, ... for which I continue his debtor. In my opinion he is a truehearted and generous man. Do you not think so?

Well--long and long ago, he asked me to write a drama with him on the Greek model; that is, for me to write the choruses, and for him to do the dialogue. Just then it was quite doubtful in my own mind, and worse than doubtful, whether I ever should write again; and the very doubtfulness made me speak my 'yes' more readily. Then I was desired to make a subject, ... to conceive a plan; and my plan was of a man, haunted by his own soul, ... (making her a separate personal Psyche, a dreadful, beautiful Psyche)--the man being haunted and terrified through all the turns of life by her. Did you ever feel afraid of your own soul, as I have done? I think it is a true wonder of our humanity--and fit subject enough for a wild lyrical drama. I should like to write it by myself at least, well enough. But with him I will not now. It was delayed ... delayed. He cut the plan up into scenes ... I mean into a list of scenes ... a sort of ground-map to work on--and there it lies. Nothing more was done. It all lies in one sheet--and I have offered to give up my copyright of idea in it--if he likes to use it alone--or I should not object to work it out alone on my own side, since it comes from me: only I will not consent now to a _double work_ in it. There are objections--none, be it well understood, in Mr. Horne's disfavour,--for I think of him as well at this moment, and the same in all essential points, as I ever did. He is a man of fine imagination, and is besides good and generous. In the course of our acquaintance (on paper--for I never saw him) I never was angry with him except once; and then, _I_ was quite wrong and had to confess it. But this is being too 'mediaeval.' Only you will see from it that I am a little entangled on the subject of compound works, and must look where I tread ... and you will understand (if you ever hear from Mr. Kenyon or elsewhere that I am going to write a compound-poem with Mr. Horne) how it _was_ true, and isn't true any more.

Yes--you are going to Mr. Kenyon's on the 12th--and yes--my brother and sister are going to meet you and your sister there one day to dinner. Shall I have courage to see you soon, I wonder! If you ask me, I must ask myself. But oh, this make-believe May--it can't be May after all! If a south-west wind sate in your chestnut tree, it was but for a few hours--the east wind 'came up this way' by the earliest opportunity of succession. As the old 'mysteries' showed 'Beelzebub with a bearde,' even so has the east wind had a 'bearde' of late, in a full growth of bristling exaggerations--the English spring-winds have excelled themselves in evil this year; and I have not been down-stairs yet.--_But_ I am certainly stronger and better than I was--that is undeniable--and I _shall_ be better still. You are not going away soon--are you? In the meantime you do not know what it is to be ... a little afraid of Paracelsus. So right about the Italians! and the 'rose porporine' which made me smile. How is the head?

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

Is the 'Flight of the d.u.c.h.ess' in the portfolio? Of course you must ring the Bell. That poem has a strong heart in it, to begin _so_ strongly. Poor Hood! And all those thoughts fall mixed together. May G.o.d bless you.

[Footnote 1: Aeschylus, _Agamemnon_ 36: 'An ox hath trodden on my tongue'--a Greek proverb implying silence.]

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

Sunday--in the last hour of it.

[Post-mark, May 12, 1845.]

May I ask how the head is? just under the bag? Mr. Kenyon was here to-day and told me such bad news that I cannot sleep to-night (although I did think once of doing it) without asking such a question as this, dear Mr. Browning.