_E.B.B. to R.B._
50 Walpole Street: Feb. 3, 1845.
[Transcriber's Note: So in original. Should be "Wimpole Street."]
Why how could I hate to write to you, dear Mr. Browning? Could you
believe in such a thing? If nobody likes writing to everybody (except
such professional letter writers as you and I are _not_), yet
everybody likes writing to somebody, and it would be strange and
contradictory if I were not always delighted both to hear from _you_
and to write to _you_, this talking upon paper being as good a social
pleasure as another, when our means are somewhat straitened. As for
me, I have done most of my talking by post of late years--as people
shut up in dungeons take up with scrawling mottoes on the walls. Not
that I write to many in the way of regular correspondence, as our
friend Mr. Horne predicates of me in his romances (which is mere
romancing!), but that there are a few who will write and be written to
by me without a sense of injury. Dear Miss Mitford, for instance. You
do not know her, I think, personally, although she was the first to
tell me (when I was very ill and insensible to all the glories of the
world except poetry), of the grand scene in 'Pippa Passes.' _She_ has
filled a large drawer in this room with delightful letters, heart-warm
and soul-warm, ... driftings of nature (if sunshine could drift like
snow), and which, if they should ever fall the way of all writing,
into print, would assume the folio shape as a matter of course, and
take rank on the lowest shelf of libraries, with Benedictine editions
of the Fathers, [Greek: k.t.l.]. I write this to you to show how I can
have pleasure in letters, and never think them too long, nor too
frequent, nor too illegible from being written in little 'pet hands.'
I can read any MS. except the writing on the pyramids. And if you will
only promise to treat me _en bon camarade_, without reference to the
conventionalities of 'ladies and gentlemen,' taking no thought for
your sentences (nor for mine), nor for your blots (nor for mine), nor
for your blunt speaking (nor for mine), nor for your badd speling (nor
for mine), and if you agree to send me a blotted thought whenever you
are in the mind for it, and with as little ceremony and less
legibility than you would think it necessary to employ towards your
printer--why, _then_, I am ready to sign and seal the contract, and to
rejoice in being 'articled' as your correspondent. Only _don't_ let us
have any constraint, any ceremony! _Don't_ be civil to me when you
feel rude,--nor loquacious when you incline to silence,--nor yielding
in the manners when you are perverse in the mind. See how out of the
world I am! Suffer me to profit by it in almost the only profitable
circumstance, and let us rest from the bowing and the courtesying,
you and I, on each side. You will find me an honest man on the whole,
if rather hasty and prejudging, which is a different thing from
prejudice at the worst. And we have great sympathies in common, and I
am inclined to look up to you in many things, and to learn as much of
everything as you will teach me. On the other hand you must prepare
yourself to forbear and to forgive--will you? While I throw off the
ceremony, I hold the faster to the kindness.
Is it true, as you say, that I 'know so "little"' of you? And is it
true, as others say, that the productions of an artist do not partake
of his real nature, ... that in the minor sense, man is not made in
the image of God? It is _not_ true, to my mind--and therefore it is
not true that I know little of you, except in as far as it is true
(which I believe) that your greatest works are to come. Need I assure
you that I shall always hear with the deepest interest every word you
will say to me of what you are doing or about to do? I hear of the
'old room' and the '"Bells" lying about,' with an interest which you
may guess at, perhaps. And when you tell me besides, of _my poems
being there_, and of your caring for them so much beyond the tide-mark
of my hopes, the pleasure rounds itself into a charm, and prevents its
own expression. Overjoyed I am with this cordial sympathy--but it is
better, I feel, to try to justify it by future work than to thank you
for it now. I think--if I may dare to name myself with you in the
poetic relation--that we both have high views of the Art we follow,
and stedfast purpose in the pursuit of it, and that we should not,
either of _us_, be likely to be thrown from the course, by the casting
of any Atalanta-ball of speedy popularity. But I do not know, I cannot
guess, whether you are liable to be pained deeply by hard criticism
and cold neglect, such as original writers like yourself are too often
exposed to--or whether the love of Art is enough for you, and the
exercise of Art the filling joy of your life. Not that praise must not
always, of necessity, be delightful to the artist, but that it may be
redundant to his content. Do you think so? or not? It appears to me
that poets who, like Keats, are highly susceptible to criticism, must
be jealous, in their own persons, of the future honour of their works.
Because, if a work is worthy, honour must follow it, though the worker
should not live to see that following overtaking. Now, is it not
enough that the work be honoured--enough I mean, for the worker? And
is it not enough to keep down a poet's ordinary wearing anxieties, to
think, that if his work be worthy it will have honour, and, if not,
that 'Sparta must have nobler sons than he'? I am writing nothing
applicable, I see, to anything in question, but when one falls into a
favourite train of thought, one indulges oneself in thinking on. I
began in thinking and wondering what sort of artistic constitution you
had, being determined, as you may observe (with a sarcastic smile at
the impertinence), to set about knowing as much as possible of you
immediately. Then you spoke of your 'gentle audience' (_you began_),
and I, who know that you have not one but many enthusiastic
admirers--the 'fit and few' in the intense meaning--yet not the
_diffused_ fame which will come to you presently, wrote on, down the
margin of the subject, till I parted from it altogether. But, after
all, we are on the proper matter of sympathy. And after all, and after
all that has been said and mused upon the 'natural ills,' the anxiety,
and wearing out experienced by the true artist,--is not the _good_
immeasurably greater than the _evil_? Is it not great good, and great
joy? For my part, I wonder sometimes--I surprise myself wondering--how
without such an object and purpose of life, people find it worth while
to live at all. And, for happiness--why, my only idea of happiness, as
far as my personal enjoyment is concerned, (but I have been
straightened in some respects and in comparison with the majority of
livers!) lies deep in poetry and its associations. And then, the
escape from pangs of heart and bodily weakness--when you throw off
_yourself_--what you feel to be _yourself_--into another atmosphere
and into other relations where your life may spread its wings out new,
and gather on every separate plume a brightness from the sun of the
sun! Is it possible that imaginative writers should be so fond of
depreciating and lamenting over their own destiny? Possible,
certainly--but reasonable, not at all--and grateful, less than
anything!
My faults, my faults--Shall I help you? Ah--you see them too well, I
fear. And do you know that _I_ also have something of your feeling
about 'being about to _begin_,' or I should dare to praise you for
having it. But in you, it is different--it is, in you, a virtue. When
Prometheus had recounted a long list of sorrows to be endured by Io,
and declared at last that he was [Greek: mêdepô en prooimiois],[1]
poor Io burst out crying. And when the author of 'Paracelsus' and the
'Bells and Pomegranates' says that he is only 'going to begin' we may
well (to take 'the opposite idea,' as you write) rejoice and clap our
hands. Yet I believe that, whatever you may have done, you _will_ do
what is greater. It is my faith for you.
And how I should like to know what poets have been your sponsors, 'to
promise and vow' for you,--and whether you have held true to early
tastes, or leapt violently from them, and what books you read, and
what hours you write in. How curious I could prove myself!--(if it
isn't proved already).
But this is too much indeed, past all bearing, I suspect. Well, but if
I ever write to you again--I mean, if you wish it--it may be in the
other extreme of shortness. So do not take me for a born heroine of
Richardson, or think that I sin always to this length, else,--you
might indeed repent your quotation from Juliet--which I guessed at
once--and of course--
I have no joy in this contract to-day!
It is too unadvised, too rash and sudden.
Ever faithfully yours,