_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, June 7, 1845.]
When I see all you have done for me in this 'Prometheus,' I feel more
than half ashamed both of it and of me for using your time so, and
forced to say in my own defence (not to you but myself) that I never
thought of meaning to inflict such work on you who might be doing so
much better things in the meantime both for me and for
others--because, you see, it is not the mere reading of the MS., but
the 'comparing' of the text, and the melancholy comparisons between
the English and the Greek, ... quite enough to turn you from your
[Greek: philanthrôpou tropou][1] that I brought upon you; and indeed I
did not mean so much, nor so soon! Yet as you have done it for me--for
me who expected a few jottings down with a pencil and a general
opinion; it is of course of the greatest value, besides the pleasure
and pride which come of it; and I must say of the translation, (before
putting it aside for the nonce), that the circumstance of your paying
it so much attention and seeing any good in it, is quite enough reward
for the writer and quite enough motive for self-gratulation, if it
were all torn to fragments at this moment--which is a foolish thing to
say because it is so obvious, and because you would know it if I said
it or not.
And while you were doing this for me, you thought it unkind of me not
to write to you; yes, and you think me at this moment the very
princess of apologies and excuses and depreciations and all the rest
of the small family of distrust--or of hypocrisy ... who knows? Well!
but you are wrong ... wrong ... to think so; and you will let me say
one word to show where you are wrong--not for you to controvert, ...
because it must relate to myself especially, and lies beyond your
cognizance, and is something which I _must know best_ after all. And
it is, ... that you persist in putting me into a false position, with
respect to _fixing days_ and the like, and in making me feel somewhat
as I did when I was a child, and Papa used to put me up on the
chimney-piece and exhort me to stand up straight like a hero, which I
did, straighter and straighter, and then suddenly 'was 'ware' (as we
say in the ballads) of the walls' growing alive behind me and
extending two stony hands to push me down that frightful precipice to
the rug, where the dog lay ... dear old Havannah, ... and where he and
I were likely to be dashed to pieces together and mix our uncanonised
bones. Now my present false position ... which is not the
chimney-piece's, ... is the necessity you provide for me in the shape
of my having to name this day, or that day, ... and of your coming
because I name it, and of my having to think and remember that you
come because I name it. Through a weakness, perhaps, or morbidness, or
one knows not how to define it, I _cannot help_ being uncomfortable in
having to do this,--it is impossible. Not that I distrust _you_--you
are the last in the world I could distrust: and then (although you may
be sceptical) I am naturally given to trust ... to a fault ... as some
say, or to a sin, as some reproach me:--and then again, if I were ever
such a distruster, it could not be of _you_. But if you knew me--! I
will tell you! if one of my brothers omits coming to this room for two
days, ... I never ask why it happened! if my own father omits coming
up-stairs to say 'good night,' I never say a word; and not from
indifference. Do try to make out these readings of me as a _dixit
Casaubonus_; and don't throw me down as a corrupt text, nor convict me
for an infidel which I am not. On the contrary I am grateful and happy
to believe that you like to come here; and even if you came here as a
pure act of charity and pity to me, as long as you _chose to come_ I
should not be too proud to be grateful and happy still. I could not be
proud to _you_, and I hope you will not fancy such a possibility,
which is the remotest of all. Yes, and _I_ am anxious to ask you to be
wholly generous and leave off such an interpreting philosophy as you
made use of yesterday, and forgive me when I beg you to fix your own
days for coming for the future. Will you? It is the same thing in one
way. If you like to come really every week, there is no hindrance to
it--you can do it--and the privilege and obligation remain equally
mine:--and if you name a day for coming on any week, where there is an
obstacle on my side, you will learn it from me in a moment. Why I
might as well charge _you_ with distrusting _me_, because you persist
in making me choose the days. And it is not for me to do it, but for
you--I must feel that--and I cannot help chafing myself against the
thought that for me to begin to fix days in this way, just because you
have quick impulses (like all imaginative persons), and wish me to do
it now, may bring me to the catastrophe of asking you to come when you
would rather not, ... which, as you say truly, would not be an
important vexation to you; but to me would be worse than vexation; to
_me_--and therefore I shrink from the very imagination of the
possibility of such a thing, and ask you to bear with me and let it be
as I prefer ... left to your own choice of the moment. And bear with
me above all--because this shows no want of faith in you ... none ...
but comes from a simple fact (with its ramifications) ... that you
know little of me personally yet, and that _you guess_, even, but very
little of the influence of a peculiar experience over me and out of
me; and if I wanted a proof of this, we need not seek further than the
very point of discussion, and the hard worldly thoughts you thought I
was thinking of you yesterday,--I, who thought not one of them! But I
am so used to discern the correcting and ministering angels by the
same footsteps on the ground, that it is not wonderful I should look
down there at any approach of a [Greek: philia taxis] whatever to this
personal _me_. Have I not been ground down to browns and blacks? and
is it my fault if I am not green? Not that it is my _complaint_--I
should not be justified in complaining; I believe, as I told you, that
there is more gladness than sadness in the world--that is, generally:
and if some natures have to be refined by the sun, and some by the
furnace (the less genial ones) both means are to be recognised as
_good_, ... however different in pleasurableness and painfulness, and
though furnace-fire leaves scorched streaks upon the fruit. I assured
you there was nothing I had any power of teaching you: and there _is_
nothing, except grief!--which I would not teach you, you know, if I
had the occasion granted.
It is a multitude of words about nothing at all, ... this--but I am
like Mariana in the moated grange and sit listening too often to the
mouse in the wainscot. Be as forbearing as you can--and believe how
profoundly it touches me that you should care to come here at all,
much more, so often! and try to understand that if I did not write as
you half asked, it was just because I failed at the moment to get up
enough pomp and circumstance to write on purpose to certify the
important fact of my being a little stronger or a little weaker on one
particular morning. That I am always ready and rejoiced to write to
you, you know perfectly well, and I have proved, by 'superfluity of
naughtiness' and prolixity through some twenty posts:--and this, and
therefore, you will agree altogether to attribute no more to me on
these counts, and determine to read me no more backwards with your
Hebrew, putting in your own vowel points without my leave! Shall it be
so?
Here is a letter grown from a note which it meant to be--and I have
been interrupted in the midst of it, or it should have gone to you
earlier. Let what I have said in it of myself pass unquestioned and
unnoticed, because it is of _me_ and not of _you_, ... and, if in any
wise lunatical, all the talking and writing in the world will not put
the implied moon into another quarter. Only be patient with me a
little, ... and let us have a smooth ground for the poems which I am
foreseeing the sight of with such pride and delight--Such pride and
delight!
And one thing ... which is chief, though it seems to come last!... you
_will_ have advice (will you not?) if that pain does not grow much
better directly? It cannot be prudent or even _safe_ to let a pain in
the head go on so long, and no remedy be attempted for it, ... and you
cannot be sure that it is a merely nervous pain and that it may not
have consequences; and this, quite apart from the consideration of
suffering. So you will see some one with an opinion to give, and take
it? _Do_, I beseech you. You will not say 'no'? Also ... if on
Wednesday you should be less well than usual, you will come on
Thursday instead, I hope, ... seeing that it must be right for you to
be quiet and silent when you suffer so, and a journey into London can
let you be neither. Otherwise, I hold to my day, ... Wednesday. And
may God bless you my dear friend.
Ever yours,