[Footnote 1: A rough sketch follows in the original.]
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday Morning.
[Post-mark, April 18, 1845.]
If you did but know dear Mr. Browning how often I have written ... not
this letter I am about to write, but another better letter to you, ...
in the midst of my silence, ... you would not think for a moment that
the east wind, with all the harm it does to me, is able to do the
great harm of putting out the light of the thought of you to my mind;
for this, indeed, it has no power to do. I had the pen in my hand once
to write; and why it fell out, I cannot tell you. And you see, ... all
your writing will not change the wind! You wished all manner of good
to me one day as the clock struck ten; yes, and I assure you I was
better that day--and I must not forget to tell you so though it is so
long since. And _therefore_, I was logically bound to believe that you
had never thought of me since ... unless you thought east winds of me!
_That_ was quite clear; was it not? or would have been; if it had not
been for the supernatural conviction, I had above all, of your
kindness, which was too large to be taken in the hinge of a syllogism.
In fact I have long left off thinking that logic proves anything--it
_doesn't_, you know.
But your Lamia has taught you some subtle 'viperine' reasoning and
_motiving_, for the turning down one street instead of another. It was
conclusive.
Ah--but you will never persuade me that I am the better, or as well,
for the thing that I have not. We look from different points of view,
and yours is the point of attainment. Not that you do not truly say
that, when all is done, we must come home to place our engines, and
act by our own strength. I do not want material as material; no one
does--but every life requires a full experience, a various
experience--and I have a profound conviction that where a poet has
been shut from most of the outward aspects of life, he is at a
lamentable disadvantage. Can you, speaking for yourself, separate the
results in you from the external influences at work around you, that
you say so boldly that you get nothing from the world? You do not
_directly_, I know--but you do indirectly and by a rebound. Whatever
acts upon you, becomes _you_--and whatever you love or hate, whatever
charms you or is scorned by you, acts on you and becomes _you_. Have
you read the 'Improvisatore'? or will you? The writer seems to feel,
just as I do, the good of the outward life; and he is a poet in his
soul. It is a book full of beauty and had a great charm to me.
As to the Polkas and Cellariuses I do not covet them of course ... but
what a strange world you seem to have, to me at a distance--what a
strange husk of a world! How it looks to me like mandarin-life or
something as remote; nay, not mandarin-life but mandarin _manners_,
... life, even the outer life, meaning something deeper, in my account
of it. As to dear Mr. Kenyon I do not make the mistake of fancying
that many can look like him or talk like him or _be_ like him. I know
enough to know otherwise. When he spoke of me he should have said that
I was better notwithstanding the east wind. It is really true--I am
getting slowly up from the prostration of the severe cold, and feel
stronger in myself.
But Mrs. Norton discourses excellent music--and for the rest, there
are fruits in the world so over-ripe, that they will fall, ... without
being gathered. Let Maynooth witness to it! _if you think it worth
while_!
Ever yours,