[Footnote 1: 'Not yet reached the prelude' (Aesch. _Prom._ 741).]
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Hatcham, Tuesday.
[Post-mark, February 11, 1845.]
Dear Miss Barrett,--People would hardly ever tell falsehoods about a
matter, if they had been let tell truth in the beginning, for it is
hard to prophane one's very self, and nobody who has, for instance,
used certain words and ways to a mother or a father _could_, even if
by the devil's help he _would_, reproduce or mimic them with any
effect to anybody else that was to be won over--and so, if 'I love
you' were always outspoken when it might be, there would, I suppose,
be no fear of its desecration at any after time. But lo! only last
night, I had to write, on the part of Mr. Carlyle, to a certain
ungainly, foolish gentleman who keeps back from him, with all the
fussy impotence of stupidity (not bad feeling, alas! for _that_ we
could deal with) a certain MS. letter of Cromwell's which completes
the collection now going to press; and this long-ears had to be 'dear
Sir'd and obedient servanted' till I _said_ (to use a mild word)
'commend me to the sincerities of this kind of thing.'! When I spoke
of you knowing little of me, one of the senses in which I meant so was
this--that I would not well vowel-point my common-place letters and
syllables with a masoretic _other_ sound and sense, make my 'dear'
something intenser than 'dears' in ordinary, and 'yours ever' a
thought more significant than the run of its like. And all this came
of your talking of 'tiring me,' 'being too envious,' &c. &c., which I
should never have heard of had the plain truth looked out of my letter
with its unmistakable eyes. _Now_, what you say of the 'bowing,' and
convention that is to be, and _tant de façons_ that are not to be,
helps me once and for ever--for have I not a right to say simply that,
for reasons I know, for other reasons I don't exactly know, but might
if I chose to think a little, and for still other reasons, which, most
likely, all the choosing and thinking in the world would not make me
know, I had rather hear from you than see anybody else. Never you
care, dear noble Carlyle, nor you, my own friend Alfred over the sea,
nor a troop of true lovers!--Are not their fates written? there! Don't
you answer this, please, but, mind it is on record, and now then, with
a lighter conscience I shall begin replying to your questions. But
then--what I have printed gives _no_ knowledge of me--it evidences
abilities of various kinds, if you will--and a dramatic sympathy with
certain modifications of passion ... _that_ I think--But I never have
begun, even, what I hope I was born to begin and end--'R.B. a
poem'--and next, if I speak (and, God knows, feel), as if what you
have read were sadly imperfect demonstrations of even mere ability, it
is from no absurd vanity, though it might seem so--these scenes and
song-scraps _are_ such mere and very escapes of my inner power, which
lives in me like the light in those crazy Mediterranean phares I have
watched at sea, wherein the light is ever revolving in a dark gallery,
bright and alive, and only after a weary interval leaps out, for a
moment, from the one narrow chink, and then goes on with the blind
wall between it and you; and, no doubt, _then_, precisely, does the
poor drudge that carries the cresset set himself most busily to trim
the wick--for don't think I want to say I have not worked hard--(this
head of mine knows better)--but the work has been _inside_, and not
when at stated times I held up my light to you--and, that there is no
self-delusion here, I would prove to you (and nobody else), even by
opening this desk I write on, and showing what stuff, in the way of
wood, I _could_ make a great bonfire with, if I might only knock the
whole clumsy top off my tower! Of course, every writing body says the
same, so I gain nothing by the avowal; but when I remember how I have
done what was published, and half done what may never be, I say with
some right, you can know but little of me. Still, I _hope_ sometimes,
though phrenologists will have it that I _cannot_, and am doing
better with this darling 'Luria'--so safe in my head, and a tiny slip
of paper I cover with my thumb!
Then you inquire about my 'sensitiveness to criticism,' and I shall be
glad to tell you exactly, because I have, more than once, taken a
course you might else not understand. I shall live always--that is for
me--I am living here this 1845, that is for London. I write from a
thorough conviction that it is the duty of me, and with the belief
that, after every drawback and shortcoming, I do my best, all things
considered--that is for _me_, and, so being, the not being listened to
by one human creature would, I hope, in nowise affect me. But of
course I must, if for merely scientific purposes, know all about this
1845, its ways and doings, and something I do know, as that for a
dozen cabbages, if I pleased to grow them in the garden here, I might
demand, say, a dozen pence at Covent Garden Market,--and that for a
dozen scenes, of the average goodness, I may challenge as many
plaudits at the theatre close by; and a dozen pages of verse, brought
to the Rialto where verse-merchants most do congregate, ought to bring
me a fair proportion of the Reviewers' gold currency, seeing the other
traders pouch their winnings, as I do see. Well, when they won't pay
me for my cabbages, nor praise me for my poems, I may, if I please,
say 'more's the shame,' and bid both parties 'decamp to the crows,' in
Greek phrase, and _yet_ go very lighthearted back to a garden-full of
rose-trees, and a soul-full of comforts. If they had bought my greens
I should have been able to buy the last number of _Punch_, and go
through the toll-gate of Waterloo Bridge, and give the blind
clarionet-player a trifle, and all without changing my gold. If they
had taken to my books, my father and mother would have been proud of
this and the other 'favourable critique,' and--at least so folks
hold--I should have to pay Mr. Moxon less by a few pounds,
whereas--but you see! Indeed I force myself to say ever and anon, in
the interest of the market-gardeners regular, and Keatses proper,
'It's nothing to _you_, critics, hucksters, all of you, if I _have_
this garden and this conscience--I might go die at Rome, or take to
gin and the newspaper, for what _you_ would care!' So I don't quite
lay open my resources to everybody. But it does so happen, that I have
met with much more than I could have expected in this matter of kindly
and prompt recognition. I never wanted a real set of good hearty
praisers--and no bad reviewers--I am quite content with my share.
No--what I laughed at in my 'gentle audience' is a sad trick the real
admirers have of admiring at the wrong place--enough to make an
apostle swear. _That_ does make me savage--_never_ the other kind of
people; why, think now--take your own 'Drama of Exile' and let _me_
send it to the first twenty men and women that shall knock at your
door to-day and after--of whom the first five are the Postman, the
seller of cheap sealing-wax, Mr. Hawkins Junr, the Butcher for orders,
and the Tax-gatherer--will you let me, by Cornelius Agrippa's
assistance, force these five and these fellows to read, and report on,
this 'Drama'--and, when I have put these faithful reports into fair
English, do you believe they would be better than, if as good, as, the
general run of Periodical criticisms? Not they, I will venture to
affirm. But then--once again, I get these people together and give
them your book, and persuade them, moreover, that by praising it, the
Postman will be helping its author to divide Long Acre into two beats,
one of which she will take with half the salary and all the red
collar,--that a sealing-wax vendor will see red wafers brought into
vogue, and so on with the rest--and won't you just wish for your
_Spectators_ and _Observers_ and Newcastle-upon-Tyne--Hebdomadal
_Mercuries_ back again! You see the inference--I do sincerely esteem
it a perfectly providential and miraculous thing that they are so
well-behaved in ordinary, these critics; and for Keats and Tennyson to
'go softly all their days' for a gruff word or two is quite
inexplicable to me, and always has been. Tennyson reads the
_Quarterly_ and does as they bid him, with the most solemn face in the
world--out goes this, in goes that, all is changed and ranged. Oh me!
Out comes the sun, in comes the _Times_ and eleven strikes (it _does_)
already, and I have to go to Town, and I have no alternative but that
this story of the Critic and Poet, 'the Bear and the Fiddle,' should
'begin but break off in the middle'; yet I doubt--nor will you
henceforth, I know, say, 'I vex you, I am sure, by this lengthy
writing.' Mind that spring is coming, for all this snow; and know me
for yours ever faithfully,