_R.B. to E.B.B._
Saturday 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
passes 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: ômoi], 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 Mediæval-Gothic-Architectural-Manuscript (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
passionate class, 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 'Shelley' 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, shore and inland, come flocking once a year to the Piedigrotta
fête 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 God; 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 Duchess,'
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
passed 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 nobody 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! God bless you, and me in that--and do write to me
soon, and tell me who was the 'flatterer,' and how he never was