_R.B. to E.B.B._
Saturday Morning.
[Post-mark, May 24, 1845.]
Don't you remember I told you, once on a time that you 'knew nothing
of me'? whereat you demurred--but I meant what I said, and knew it was
so. To be grand in a simile, for every poor speck of a Vesuvius or a
Stromboli in my microcosm there are huge layers of ice and pits of
black cold water--and I make the most of my two or three fire-eyes,
because I know by experience, alas, how these tend to extinction--and
the ice grows and grows--still this last is true part of me, most
characteristic part, _best_ part perhaps, and I disown
nothing--only,--when you talked of '_knowing_ me'! Still, I am utterly
unused, of these late years particularly, to dream of communicating
anything about _that_ to another person (all my writings are purely
dramatic as I am always anxious to say) that when I make never so
little an attempt, no wonder if I _bungle_ notably--'language,' too is
an organ that never studded this heavy heavy head of mine. Will you
not think me very brutal if I tell you I could almost smile at your
misapprehension of what I meant to write?--Yet I _will_ tell you,
because it will undo the bad effect of my thoughtlessness, and at the
same time exemplify the point I have all along been honestly earnest
to set you right upon ... my real inferiority to you; just that and no
more. I wrote to you, in an unwise moment, on the spur of being again
'thanked,' and, unwisely writing just as if thinking to myself, said
what must have looked absurd enough as seen apart from the horrible
counterbalancing never-to-be-written _rest of me_--by the side of
which, could it be written and put before you, my note would sink to
its proper and relative place, and become a mere 'thank you' for your
good opinion--which I assure you is far too generous--for I really
believe you to be my superior in many respects, and feel uncomfortable
till _you_ see that, too--since I hope for your sympathy and
assistance, and 'frankness is everything in such a case.' I do assure
you, that had you read my note, _only_ having '_known_' so much of me
as is implied in having inspected, for instance, the contents, merely,
of that fatal and often-referred-to 'portfolio' there (_Dii meliora
piis!_), you would see in it, (the note not the portfolio) the
blandest utterance ever mild gentleman gave birth to. But I forgot
that one may make too much noise in a silent place by playing the few
notes on the 'ear-piercing fife' which in Othello's regimental band
might have been thumped into decent subordination by his
'spirit-stirring drum'--to say nothing of gong and ophicleide. Will
you forgive me, on promise to remember for the future, and be more
considerate? Not that you must too much despise me, neither; nor, of
all things, apprehend I am attitudinizing à la Byron, and giving you
to understand unutterable somethings, longings for Lethe and all
that--far from it! I never committed murders, and sleep the soundest
of sleeps--but 'the heart is desperately wicked,' that is true, and
though I dare not say 'I know' mine, yet I have had signal
opportunities, I who began life from the beginning, and can forget
nothing (but names, and the date of the battle of Waterloo), and have
known good and wicked men and women, gentle and simple, shaking hands
with Edmund Kean and Father Mathew, you and--Ottima! Then, I had a
certain faculty of self-consciousness, years and years ago, at which
John Mill wondered, and which ought to be improved by this time, if
constant use helps at all--and, meaning, on the whole, to be a Poet,
if not _the_ Poet ... for I am vain and ambitious some nights,--I do
myself justice, and dare call things by their names to myself, and say
boldly, this I love, this I hate, this I would do, this I would not
do, under all kinds of circumstances,--and talking (thinking) in this
style _to myself_, and beginning, however tremblingly, in spite of
conviction, to write in this style _for myself_--on the top of the
desk which contains my 'Songs of the Poets--NO. I M.P.', I
wrote,--what you now forgive, I know! Because I am, from my heart,
sorry that by a foolish fit of inconsideration I should have given
pain for a minute to you, towards whom, on every account, I would
rather soften and 'sleeken every word as to a bird' ... (and, not such
a bird as my black self that go screeching about the world for 'dead
horse'--corvus (picus)--mirandola!) I, too, who have been at such
pains to acquire the reputation I enjoy in the world,--(ask Mr.
Kenyon,) and who dine, and wine, and dance and enhance the company's
pleasure till they make me ill and I keep house, as of late: Mr.
Kenyon, (for I only quote where you may verify if you please) _he_
says my common sense strikes him, and its contrast with my muddy
metaphysical poetry! And so it shall strike you--for though I am glad
that, since you _did_ misunderstand me, you said so, and have given me
an opportunity of doing by another way what I wished to do in
_that_,--yet, if you had _not_ alluded to my writing, as I meant you
should not, you would have certainly understood _something_ of its
drift when you found me next Tuesday precisely the same quiet (no, for
I feel I speak too loudly, in spite of your kind disclaimer, but--)
the same mild man-about-town you were gracious to, the other
morning--for, indeed, my own way of worldly life is marked out long
ago, as precisely as yours can be, and I am set going with a hand,
winker-wise, on each side of my head, and a directing finger before my
eyes, to say nothing of an instinctive dread I have that a certain
whip-lash is vibrating somewhere in the neighbourhood in playful
readiness! So 'I hope here be proofs,' Dogberry's satisfaction that,
first, I am but a very poor creature compared to you and entitled by
my wants to look up to you,--all I meant to say from the first of the
first--and that, next, I shall be too much punished if, for this piece
of mere inconsideration, you deprive me, more or less, or sooner or
later, of the pleasure of seeing you,--a little over boisterous
gratitude for which, perhaps, caused all the mischief! The reasons you
give for deferring my visits next week are too cogent for me to
dispute--that is too true--and, being now and henceforward 'on my good
behaviour,' I will at once cheerfully submit to them, if needs
must--but should your mere kindness and forethought, as I half
suspect, have induced you to take such a step, you will now smile with
me, at this new and very unnecessary addition to the 'fears of me' I
have got so triumphantly over in your case! Wise man, was I not, to
clench my first favourable impression so adroitly ... like a recent
Cambridge worthy, my sister heard of; who, being on his theological
(or rather, scripture-historical) examination, was asked by the Tutor,
who wished to let him off easily, 'who was the first King of
Israel?'--'Saul' answered the trembling youth. 'Good!' nodded
approvingly the Tutor. 'Otherwise called _Paul_,' subjoined the youth
in his elation! Now I have begged pardon, and blushingly assured you
_that_ was only a slip of the tongue, and that I did really _mean_ all
the while, (Paul or no Paul), the veritable son of Kish, he that owned
the asses, and found listening to the harp the best of all things for
an evil spirit! Pray write me a line to say, 'Oh ... if _that's_ all!'
and remember me for good (which is very compatible with a moment's
stupidity) and let me not for one fault, (and that the only one that
shall be), lose _any pleasure_ ... for your friendship I am sure I
have not lost--God bless you, my dear friend!