The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume I Part 33

I am so vexed about those poems appearing just now in 'Blackwood.'[150] Papa must think it _impudent_ of me. It is unfortunate.

[Footnote 150: _Blackwood's Magazine_ for October 1846 contained the following poems by Mrs. Browning, some phrases in which might certainly be open to comment if they were supposed to have been deliberately chosen for publication at this particular time: 'A Woman's Shortcomings,' 'A Man's Requirements,' 'Maude's Spinning,' 'A Dead Rose,' 'Change on Change,' 'A Reed,' and 'Hector in the Garden.']

_To Miss Mitford_ [Pisa]: November 5, 1846.

I have your letter, ever dearest Miss Mitford, and it is welcome even more than your letters have been used to be to me--the last charm was to come, you see, by this distance. For all your affection and solicitude, may you trust my grat.i.tude; and if you love me a little, I love you indeed, and never shall cease. The only difference shall be that two may love you where one did, and for my part I will answer for it that if you could love the poor one you will not refuse any love to the other when you come to know him. I never could bear to speak to you of _him_ since quite the beginning, or rather I never could dare.

But when you know him and understand how the mental gifts are scarcely half of him, you will not wonder at your friend, and, indeed, two years of steadfast affection from such a man would have, overcome any woman's heart. I have been neither much wiser nor much foolisher than all the shes in the world, only much happier--the difference is in the happiness. Certainly I am not likely to repent of having given myself to him. I cannot, for all the pain received from another quarter, the comfort for which is that my conscience is pure of the sense of having broken the least known duty, and that the same consequence would follow any marriage of any member of my family with any possible man or woman. I look to time, and reason, and natural love and pity, and to the justification of the events acting through all; I look on so and hope, and in the meanwhile it has been a great comfort to have had not merely the indulgence but the approbation and sympathy of most of my old personal friends--oh, such kind letters; for instance, yesterday one came from dear Mrs. Martin, who has known me, she and her husband, since the very beginning of my womanhood, and both of them are acute, thinking people, with heads as strong as their hearts.

I in my haste left England without a word to them, for which they might naturally have reproached me; instead of which they write to say that never _for a moment_ have they doubted my having acted for the best and happiest, and to a.s.sure me that, having sympathised with me in every sorrow and trial, they delightedly feel with me in the new joy; nothing could be more cordially kind. See how I write to you as if I could speak--all these little things which are great things when seen in the light. Also R, and I are not in the least tired of one another notwithstanding the very perpetual _tete-a-tete_ into which we have fallen, and which (past the first fortnight) would be rather a trial in many cases. Then our housekeeping may end perhaps in being a proverb among the nations, for at the beginning it makes Mrs. Jameson laugh heartily. It disappoints her theories, she admits--finding that, albeit poets, we abstain from burning candles at both ends at once, just as if we did statistics and historical abstracts by nature instead. And do not think that the trouble falls on me. Even the pouring out of the coffee is a divided labour, and the ordering of the dinner is quite out of my hands. As for me, when I am so good as to let myself be carried upstairs, and so angelical as to sit still on the sofa, and so considerate, moreover, as _not_ to put my foot into a puddle, why _my_ duty is considered done to a perfection which is worthy of all adoration; it really is not very hard work to please this taskmaster. For Pisa, we both like it extremely. The city is full of beauty and repose, and the purple mountains gloriously seem to beckon us on deeper into the vineland. We have rooms close to the Duomo and Leaning Tower, in the great Collegio built by Vasari, three excellent bedrooms and a sitting-room, matted and carpeted, looking comfortable even for England. For the last fortnight, except the very last few sunny days, we have had rain; but the climate is as mild as possible, no cold, with all the damp. Delightful weather we had for the travelling. Ah, you, with your terrors of travelling, how you amuse me! Why, the constant change of air in the continued fine weather made me better and better instead of worse. It did me infinite good. Mrs. Jameson says she 'won't call me _improved_, but _transformed_ rather.' I like the new sights and the movement; my spirits rise; I live--I can adapt myself. If you really tried it and got as far as Paris you would be drawn on, I fancy, and on--on to the East perhaps with H. Martineau, or at least as near it as we are here.

By the way, or out of the way, it struck me as unfortunate that my poems should have been printed _just now_ in 'Blackwood;' I wish it had been otherwise. Then I had a letter from one of my Leeds readers the other day to expostulate about the _inappropriateness_ of certain of them! The fact is that I sent a heap of verses swept from my desk and belonging to old feelings and impressions, and not imagining that they were to be used in that quick way. There can't be very much to like, I fear, apart from your goodness for what calls itself mine.

Love me, dearest dear Miss Mitford, my dear kind friend--love me, I beg of you, still and ever, only ceasing when I cease to think of you; I will allow of that clause. Mrs. Jameson and Gerardine are staying at the hotel here in Pisa still, and we manage to see them every day; so good and true and affectionate she is, and so much we shall miss her when she goes, which will be in a day or two now. She goes to Florence, to Siena, to Rome to complete her work upon art, which is the object of her Italian journey. I read your vivid and glowing description of the picture to her, or rather I showed your picture to her, and she quite believes with you that it is most probably a _Velasquez_. Much to be congratulated the owner must be. I mean to know something about pictures some day. Robert does, and I shall get him to open my eyes for me with a little instruction. You know that in this place are to be seen the first steps of art, and it will be interesting to trace them from it as we go farther ourselves. Our present residence we have taken for six months; but we have dreams, dreams, and we discuss them like soothsayers over the evening's roasted chestnuts and grapes. Flush highly approves of Pisa (and the roasted chestnuts), because here he goes out every day and speaks Italian to the little dogs. Oh, Mr. Chorley, such a kind, feeling note he wrote to Robert from Germany, when he read of our marriage in 'Galignani;' we were both touched by it. And Monckton Milnes and others--very kind all. But in a particular manner I remember the kindness of my valued friend Mr. Horne, who never failed me nor could fail. Will you explain to him, or rather ask him to understand, why I did not answer his last note? I forget even Balzac here; tell me what he writes, and help me to love that dear, generous Mr. Kenyon, whom I can love without help. And let me love you, and you love me.

Your ever affectionate and grateful E.B.B.

_To Mrs. Jameson_ Collegio Ferdinando [Pisa]: Sat.u.r.day, November 23, 1846 [postmark].

We were delighted to have your note, dearest Aunt Nina, and I answer it with my feet on your stool, so that my feet are full of you even if my head is not, always. Now, I shall not go a sentence farther without thanking you for that comfort; you scarcely guessed perhaps what a comfort it would be, that stool of yours. I am even apt to sit on it for hours together, leaning against the sofa, till I get to be scolded for putting myself so into the fire, and prophesied of in respect to the probability of a 'general conflagration' of stools and Bas; on which the prophet is to leap from the Leaning Tower, and Flush to be left to make the funeral oration of the establishment. In the meantime, it really is quite a comfort that our housekeeping should be your 'example' at Florence; we have edifying countenances whenever we think of it. And Robert will not by any means believe that you pa.s.sed us on our own ground, though the eleven pauls a week for breakfast, and my humility, seemed to suggest something of the sort. I am so glad, we are both so glad, that you are enjoying yourself at the fullest and highest among the wonders of art, and cannot be chilled in the soul by any of those fatal winds you speak of. For me, I am certainly better here at Pisa, though the penalty is to see Frate Angelico's picture with the remembrance of you rather than the presence. Here, indeed, we have had a little too much cold for two days; there was a feeling of frost in the air, and a most undeniable east wind which prevented my going out, and made me feel less comfortable than usual at home. But, after all, one felt ashamed to call it _cold_, and Robert found the heat on the Arno insupportable; which set us both mourning over our 'situation' at the Collegio, where one of us could not get out on such days without a blow on the chest from the 'wind at the corner.' Well, experience teaches, and we shall be taught, and the cost of it is not so very much after all. We have seen your professor once since you left us (oh, the leaving!), or _spoken_ to him once, I should say, when he came in one evening and caught us reading, sighing, yawning over 'Nicol de' Lapi,' a romance by the son-in law of Manzoni. Before we could speak, he called it 'excellent, tres beau,' one of their very best romances, upon which, of course, dear Robert could not bear to offend his literary and national susceptibilities by a doubt even. _I_, not being so humane, thought that any suffering reader would be justified (under the rack-wheel) in crying out against such a book, as the dullest, heaviest, stupidest, lengthiest. Did you ever read it? If not, _don't_. When a father-in-law imitates Scott, and a son-in-law imitates his father-in-law, think of the consequences! Robert, in his zeal for Italy and against Eugene Sue, tried to persuade me at first (this was before the scene with your professor) that 'really, Ba, it wasn't so bad,' 'really you are too hard to be pleased,' and so on; but after two or three chapters, the dullness grew too strong for even his benevolence, and the yawning catastrophe (supposed to be peculiar to the 'Guida') overthrew him as completely as it ever did me, though we both resolved to hold on by the stirrup to the end of the two volumes. The catalogue of the library (for observe that we subscribe now--the object is attained!) offers a most melancholy insight into the actual literature of Italy. Translations, translations, translations from third and fourth and fifth rate French and English writers, chiefly French; the roots of thought, here in Italy, seem dead in the ground. It is well that they have great memories--nothing else lives.

We have had the kindest of letters from dear n.o.ble Mr. Kenyon; who, by the way, speaks of you as we like to hear him. d.i.c.kens is going to Paris for the winter, and Mrs. Butler[151] (he adds) is expected in London. Dear Mr. Kenyon calls me 'crotchety,' but Robert 'an incarnation of the good and the true,' so that I have everything to thank him for. There are n.o.ble people who take the world's side and make it seem 'for the _nonce_' almost respectable; but he gives up all the talk and fine schemes about money-making, and allows us to wait to see whether we want it or not--the money, I mean.

It is Monday, and I am only finis.h.i.+ng this note. In the midst came letters from my sisters, making me feel so glad that I could not write. Everybody is well and happy, and dear papa _in high spirits_ and _having people to dine with him every day_, so that I have not really done anyone harm in doing myself all this good. It does not indeed bring us a step nearer to the forgiveness, but to hear of his being in good spirits makes me inclined to jump, with Gerardine.[152]

Dear Geddie! How pleased I am to hear of her being happy, particularly (perhaps) as she is not too happy to forget _me_. Is all that glory of art making her very ambitious to work and enter into the court of the Temple?...

Robert's love to you both. We often talk of our prospect of meeting you again. And for the _past_, dearest Aunt Nina, believe of me that I feel to you more gratefully than ever I can say, and remain, while I live,

Your faithful and affectionate BA.

[Footnote 151: Better known as f.a.n.n.y Kemble.]

[Footnote 152: Miss Gerardine Bate, Mrs. Jameson's niece.]

_To Miss Mitford_ Pisa: December 19, [1846].

Ever dearest Miss Mitford, your kindest letter is three times welcome as usual. On the day you wrote it in the frost, I was sitting out of doors, just in my summer mantilla, and complaining 'of the heat this December!' But woe comes to the discontented. Within these three or four days we too have had frost--yes, and a little snow, for the first time, say the Pisans, during five years. Robert says that the mountains are powdered toward Lucca, and I, who cannot see the mountains, can see the cathedral--the Duomo--how it glitters whitely at the summit, between the blue sky and its own walls of yellow marble. Of course I do not stir an inch from the fire, yet have to struggle a little against my old languor. Only, you see, this can't last! it is exceptional weather, and, up to the last few days, has been divine. And then, after all we talk of frost, my bedroom, which has no fireplace, shows not an English sign on the window, and the air is not _metallic_ as in England. The sun, too, is so hot that the women are seen walking with fur capes and parasols, a curious combination.

I hope you had your visit from Mr. Chorley, and that you both had the usual pleasure from it. Indeed I _am_ touched by what you tell me, and was touched by his note to my husband, written in the first surprise; and because Robert has the greatest regard for him, besides my own personal reasons, I do count him in the forward rank of our friends.

You will hear that he has obliged us by accepting a trustees.h.i.+p to a settlement, forced upon me in spite of certain professions or indispositions of mine; but as my husband's gifts, I had no right, it appeared, by refusing it to place him in a false position for the sake of what dear Mr. Kenyon calls my 'crotchets.' Oh, dear Mr. Kenyon! His kindness and goodness to us have been past thinking of, past thanking for; we can only fall into silence. He has thrust his hand into the fire for us by writing to papa himself, by taking up the management of my small money-matters when nearer hands let them drop, by justifying us with the whole weight of his personal influence; all this in the very face of his own habits and susceptibilities. He has resolved that I shall not miss the offices of father, brother, friend, nor the tenderness and sympathy of them all. And this man is called a mere man of the world, and would be called so rightly if the world were a place for angels. I shall love him dearly and gratefully to my last breath; we both shall....

Robert and I are deep in the fourth month of wedlock; there has not been a shadow between us, nor a _word_ (and I have observed that all married people confess to _words_), and that the only change I can lay my finger on in him is simply and clearly an increase of affection.

Now I need not say it if I did not please, and I should not please, you know, to tell a story. The truth is, that I who always did certainly believe in love, yet was as great a sceptic as you about the evidences thereof, and having held twenty times that Jacob's serving fourteen years for Rachel was not too long by fourteen days, I was not a likely person (with my loathing dread of marriage as a loveless state, and absolute contentment with single life as the alternative to the great majorities of marriages), I was not likely to accept a feeling not genuine, though from the hand of Apollo himself, crowned with his various G.o.ds.h.i.+ps. Especially too, in my position, I could not, would not, should not have done it. Then, genuine feelings are genuine feelings, and do not pa.s.s like a cloud. We are as happy as people can be, I do believe, yet are living in a way to _try_ this new relations.h.i.+p of ours--in the utmost seclusion and perpetual _tete-a-tete_--no amus.e.m.e.nt nor distraction from without, except some of the very dullest Italian romances which throw us back on the memory of Balzac with reiterated groans. The Italians seem to hang on translations from the French--as we find from the library--not merely of Balzac, but Dumas, your Dumas, and reaching lower--long past De k.o.c.k--to the third and fourth rate novelists. What is purely Italian is, as far as we have read, purely dull and conventional. There is no breath nor pulse in the Italian genius. Mrs. Jameson writes to us from Florence that in politics and philosophy the people are getting alive--which may be, for aught we know to the contrary, the poetry and imagination leave them room enough by immense vacancies.

Yet we delight in Italy, and dream of 'pleasures new' for the summer--_pastures_ new, I should have said--but it comes to the same thing. The _padrone_ in this house sent us in as a gift (in gracious recognition, perhaps, of our lawful paying of bills) an immense dish of oranges--two hanging on a stalk with the green leaves still moist with the morning's dew--every great orange of twelve or thirteen with its own stalk and leaves. Such a pretty sight! And better oranges, I beg to say, never were eaten, when we are barbarous enough to eat them day by day after our two o'clock dinner, softening, with the vision of them, the winter which has just shown itself. Almost I have been as pleased with the oranges as I was at Avignon by the _pomegranate_ given to me much in the same way. Think of my being singled out of all our caravan of travellers--Mrs. Jameson and Gerardine Jameson[153]

both there--for that significant gift of the pomegranates! I had never seen one before, and, of course, proceeded instantly to cut one 'deep down the middle'[154]--accepting the omen. Yet, in shame and confusion of face, I confess to not being able to appreciate it properly. Olives and pomegranates I set on the same shelf, to be just looked at and called by their names, but by no means eaten bodily.

But you mistake me, dearest friend, about the 'Blackwood' verses. I never thought of writing _applicative poems_--the heavens forfend!

Only that just _then_, [in] the midst of all the talk, _any_ verses of mine should come into print--and some of them to that _particular effect_--looked unlucky. I dare say poor papa (for instance) thought me turned suddenly to bra.s.s itself. Well, it is perhaps more my fancy than anything else, and was only an impression, even there. Mr.

Chorley will tell you of a play of his, which I hope will make its way, though I do wonder how people can bear to write for the theatres in the present state of things. Robert is busy preparing a new edition of his collected poems which are to be so clear that everyone who has understood them hitherto will lose all distinction. We both mean to be as little idle as possible.... We shall meet one day in joy, I do hope, and then you will love my husband for his own sake, as for mine you do not hate him now.

Your ever affectionate E.B.B.

[Footnote 153: This surname is a mistake on Mrs. Browning's part; see her letter of October 1, 1849.]

[Footnote 154: See _Lady Geraldine's Courts.h.i.+p_, stanza xli.]

_To H.S. Boyd_ [Pisa:] December 21 [1846].

You must let me tell you, my dearest Mr. Boyd, that I dreamed of you last night, and that you were looking very well in my dream, and that you told me to break a crust from a loaf of bread which lay by you on the table; which I accept on recollection as a sacramental sign between us, of peace and affection. Wasn't it strange that I should dream so of you? Yet no; thinking awake of you, the sleeping thoughts come naturally. Believe of me this Christmas time, as indeed at every time, that I do not forget you, and that all the distance and change of country can make no difference. Understand, too (for _that_ will give pleasure to your goodness), that I am very happy, and not unwell, though it is almost Christmas....

Dearest friend, are you well and in good spirits? Think of me over the Cyprus, between the cup and the lip, though bad things are said to fall out so. We have, instead of Cyprus, _Montepulciano_, the famous 'King of Wine,' crowned king, you remember, by the grace of a poet!

Your Cyprus, however, keeps supremacy over me, and will not abdicate the divine right of being a.s.sociated with you. I speak of wine, but we live here the most secluded, quiet life possible--reading and writing, and talking of all things in heaven and earth, and a little besides; and sometimes even laughing as if we had twenty people to laugh with us, or rather _hadn't_. We know not a creature, I am happy to say, except an Italian professor (of the university here) who called on us the other evening and praised aloud the scholars of England. 'English Latin was best,' he said, 'and English Greek foremost.' Do you clap your hands?

The new pope is more liberal than popes in general, and people write odes to him in consequence.

Robert is going to bring out a new edition of his collected poems, and you are not to read any more, if you please, till this is done.

I heard of Carlyle's saying the other day 'that he hoped more from Robert Browning, for the people of England, than from any living English writer,' which pleased me, of course. I am just sending off an anti-slavery poem for America,[155] too ferocious, perhaps, for the Americans to publish: but they asked for a poem and shall have it.

If I ask for a letter, shall I have it, I wonder? Remember me and love me a little, and pray for me, dearest friend, and believe how gratefully and ever affectionately

I am your

ELIBET,

though Robert always calls me _Ba_, and thinks it the prettiest name in the world! which is a proof, you will say, not only of blind love but of deaf love.

[Footnote 155: 'The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point' _(Poetical Works_, ii. 192). It was first printed in a collection called _The Liberty Bell_, for sale at the Boston National Anti-slavery Bazaar of 1848. It was separately printed in England in 1849 as a small pamphlet, which is now a rare bibliographical curiosity.]

It was during the stay at Pisa, and early in the year 1847, that Mr.

Browning first became acquainted with his wife's 'Sonnets from the Portuguese.' Written during the course of their courts.h.i.+p and engagement, they were not shown even to him until some months after their marriage. The story of it was told by Mr. Browning in later life to Mr. Edmund Gosse, with leave to make it known to the world in general; and from Mr. Gosse's publication it is here quoted in his own words.[156]

[Footnote 156: '_Critical Kit-Kats_,' by E. Gosse, p. 2 (1896).]

'Their custom was, Mr. Browning said, to write alone, and not to show each other what they had written. This was a rule which he sometimes broke through, but she never. He had the habit of working in a downstairs room, where their meals were spread, while Mrs. Browning studied in a room on the floor above. One day, early in 1847, their breakfast being over, Mrs. Browning went upstairs, while her husband stood at the window watching the street till the table should be cleared. He was presently aware of some one behind him, although the servant was gone. It was Mrs. Browning, who held him by the shoulder to prevent his turning to look at her, and at the same time pushed a packet of papers into the pocket of his coat. She told him to read that, and to tear it up if he did not like it; and then she fled again to her own room.'

The sonnets were intended for her husband's eye alone; in the first instance, not even for his. No poems can ever have been composed with less thought of the public; perhaps for that very reason they are unmatched for simplicity and sincerity in all Mrs. Browning's work.

Her genius in them has full mastery over its material, as it has in few of her other poems. All impurities of style or rhythm are purged away by the fire of love; and they stand, not only highest among the writings of their auth.o.r.ess, but also in the very forefront of English love-poems. With the single exception of Rossetti, no modern English poet has written of love with such genius, such beauty, and such sincerity, as the two who gave the most beautiful example of it in their own lives.

Fortunately for all those who love true poetry, Mr. Browning judged rightly of the obligation laid upon him by the possession of these poems. 'I dared not,' he said, 'reserve to myself the finest sonnets written in any language since Shakespeare's.' Accordingly he persuaded his wife to commit the printing of them to her friend, Miss Mitford; and in the course of the year they appeared in a slender volume, ent.i.tled 'Sonnets, by E.B.B.,' with the imprint 'Reading, 1847,' and marked 'Not for publication.' It was not until three years later that they were offered to the general public, in the volumes of 1850.

Here first they appeared under the t.i.tle of 'Sonnets from the Portuguese'--a t.i.tle suggested by Mr. Browning (in preference to his wife's proposal, 'Sonnets translated from the Bosnian') for the sake of its half-allusion to her other poem, 'Catarina to Camoens,' which was one of his chief favourites among her works.

To these sonnets there is, however, no allusion in the letters here published, which say little for some time of her own work.

_To Miss Mitford_ February 8, 1847.