A kind, so kind, note from Mr. Kenyon came. We, I and my sister, are
to go in June instead.... I shall go nowhere till then; I am nearly
well--all save one little wheel in my head that keeps on its
[Illustration: Music: bass clef, B-flat, _Sostenuto_]
That you are better I am most thankful.
'Next letter' to say how you must help me with all my new Romances and
Lyrics, and Lays and Plays, and read them and heed them and end them
and mend them!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Thursday.
[Post-mark, May 16, 1845.]
But how 'mistrustfulness'? And how 'that way?' What have I said or
done, _I_, who am not apt to _be_ mistrustful of anybody and should be
a miraculous monster if I began with _you_! What can I have said, I
say to myself again and again.
One thing, at any rate, I have done, 'that way' or this way! I have
made what is vulgarly called a 'piece of work' about little; or seemed
to make it. Forgive me. I am shy by nature:--and by position and
experience, ... by having had my nerves shaken to excess, and by
leading a life of such seclusion, ... by these things together and by
others besides, I have appeared shy and ungrateful to you. Only not
mistrustful. You could not mean to judge me so. Mistrustful people do
not write as I write, surely! for wasn't it a Richelieu or Mazarin (or
who?) who said that with five lines from anyone's hand, he could take
off his head for a corollary? I think so.
Well!--but this is to prove that I am not mistrustful, and to say,
that if you care to come to see me you can come; and that it is my
gain (as I feel it to be) and not yours, whenever you do come. You
will not talk of having come afterwards I know, because although I am
'fast bound' to see one or two persons this summer (besides yourself,
whom I receive of choice and willingly) I _cannot_ admit visitors in a
general way--and putting the question of health quite aside, it would
be unbecoming to lie here on the sofa and make a company-show of an
infirmity, and hold a beggar's hat for sympathy. I should blame it in
another woman--and the sense of it has had its weight with me
sometimes.
For the rest, ... when you write, that _I_ do not know how you would
value, &c. _nor yourself quite_, you touch very accurately on the
truth ... and _so_ accurately in the last clause, that to read it,
made me smile 'tant bien que mal.' Certainly you cannot 'quite know,'
or know at all, whether the least straw of pleasure can go to you from
knowing me otherwise than on this paper--and I, for my part, 'quite
know' my own honest impression, dear Mr. Browning, that none is likely
to go to you. There is nothing to see in me; nor to hear in me--I
never learnt to talk as you do in London; although I can admire that
brightness of carved speech in Mr. Kenyon and others. If my poetry is
worth anything to any eye, it is the flower of me. I have lived most
and been most happy in it, and so it has all my colours; the rest of
me is nothing but a root, fit for the ground and the dark. And if I
write all this egotism, ... it is for shame; and because I feel
ashamed of having made a fuss about what is not worth it; and because
you are extravagant in caring so for a permission, which will be
nothing to you afterwards. Not that I am not touched by your caring so
at all! I am deeply touched now; and presently, ... I shall
understand. Come then. There will be truth and simplicity for you in
any case; and a friend. And do not answer this--I do not write it as a
fly trap for compliments. Your spider would scorn me for it too much.
Also, ... as to the how and when. You are not well now, and it cannot
be good for you to do anything but be quiet and keep away that
dreadful musical note in the head. I entreat you not to think of
coming until _that_ is all put to silence satisfactorily. When it is
done, ... you must choose whether you would like best to come with Mr.
Kenyon or to come alone--and if you would come alone, you must just
tell me on what day, and I will see you on any day unless there should
be an unforeseen obstacle, ... any day after two, or before six. And
my sister will bring you up-stairs to me; and we will talk; or _you_
will talk; and you will try to be indulgent, and like me as well as
you can. If, on the other hand, you would rather come with Mr. Kenyon,
you must wait, I imagine, till June,--because he goes away on Monday
and is not likely immediately to return--no, on Saturday, to-morrow.
In the meantime, why I should be '_thanked_,' is an absolute mystery
to me--but I leave it!
You are generous and impetuous; _that_, I can see and feel; and so far
from being of an inclination to mistrust you or distrust you, I do
profess to have as much faith in your full, pure loyalty, as if I had
known you personally as many years as I have appreciated your genius.
Believe this of me--for it is spoken truly.
In the matter of Shakespeare's 'poor players' you are severe--and yet
I was glad to hear you severe--it is a happy excess, I think. When men
of intense reality, as all great poets must be, give their hearts to
be trodden on and tied up with ribbons in turn, by men of masks, there
will be torture if there is not desecration. Not that I know much of
such things--but I have _heard_. Heard from Mr. Kenyon; heard from
Miss Mitford; who however is passionately fond of the theatre as a
writer's medium--_not at all_, from Mr. Horne himself, ... except what
he has printed on the subject.
Yes--he has been infamously used on the point of the 'New
Spirit'--only he should have been prepared for the infamy--it was
leaping into a gulph, ... not to 'save the republic,' but '_pour
rire_': it was not merely putting one's foot into a hornet's nest, but
taking off a shoe and stocking to do it. And to think of Dickens being
dissatisfied! To think of Tennyson's friends grumbling!--he himself
did not, I hope and trust. For you, you certainly were not adequately
treated--and above all, you were not placed with your _peers_ in that
chapter--but that there was an intention to do you justice, and that
there _is_ a righteous appreciation of you in the writer, I know and
am sure,--and that _you_ should be sensible to this, is only what I
should know and be sure of _you_. Mr. Horne is quite above the narrow,
vicious, hateful jealousy of contemporaries, which we hear reproached,
too justly sometimes, on men of letters.
I go on writing as if I were not going to see you--soon perhaps.
Remember that the how and the when rest with you--except that it
cannot be before next week at the soonest. You are to decide.
Always your friend,