_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday Morning.
[Post-mark, July 14, 1845.]
Very well--I shall say no more on the subject--though it was not any
piece of formality on your part that I deprecated; nor even your
over-kindness exactly--I rather wanted you to be really, wisely kind,
and do me a greater favour then the next great one in degree; but you
must understand this much in me, how you can lay me under deepest
obligation. I daresay you think you have some, perhaps many, to whom
your well-being is of deeper interest than to me. Well, if that be
so, do for their sakes make every effort with the remotest chance of
proving serviceable to you; nor _set yourself against_ any little
irksomeness these carriage-drives may bring with them just at the
beginning; and you may say, if you like, 'how I shall delight those
friends, if I can make this newest one grateful'--and, as from the
known quantity one reasons out the unknown, this newest friend will be
one glow of gratitude, he knows that, if you can warm your finger-tips
and so do yourself that much real good, by setting light to a dozen
'Duchesses': why ought I not to say this when it is so true? Besides,
people profess as much to their merest friends--for I have been
looking through a poem-book just now, and was told, under the head of
Album-verses alone, that for A. the writer would die, and for B. die
too but a crueller death, and for C. too, and D. and so on. I wonder
whether they have since wanted to borrow money of him on the strength
of his professions. But you must remember we are in July; the 13th it
is, and summer will go and cold weather stay ('_come_' forsooth!)--and
now is the time of times. Still I feared the rain would hinder you on
Friday--but the thunder did not frighten me--for you: your father must
pardon me for holding most firmly with Dr. Chambers--his theory is
quite borne out by my own experience, for I have seen a man it were
foolish to call a coward, a great fellow too, all but die away in a
thunderstorm, though he had quite science enough to explain why there
was no immediate danger at all--whereupon his younger brother
suggested that he should just go out and treat us to a repetition of
Franklin's experiment with the cloud and the kite--a well-timed
proposition which sent the Explainer down with a white face into the
cellar. What a grand sight your tree was--_is_, for I see it. My
father has a print of a tree so struck--torn to ribbons, as you
describe--but the rose-mark is striking and new to me. We had a good
storm on our last voyage, but I went to bed at the end, as I
thought--and only found there had been lightning next day by the bare
poles under which we were riding: but the finest mountain fit of the
kind I ever saw has an unfortunately ludicrous association. It was at
Possagno, among the Euganean Hills, and I was at a poor house in the
town--an old woman was before a little picture of the Virgin, and at
every fresh clap she lighted, with the oddest sputtering muttering
mouthful of prayer imaginable, an inch of guttery candle, which, the
instant the last echo had rolled away, she as constantly blew out
again for saving's sake--having, of course, to _light the smoke_ of
it, about an instant after that: the expenditure in wax at which the
elements might be propitiated, you see, was a matter for curious
calculation. I suppose I ought to have bought the whole taper for some
four or five centesimi (100 of which make 8d. English) and so kept the
countryside safe for about a century of bad weather. Leigh Hunt tells
you a story he had from Byron, of kindred philosophy in a Jew who was
surprised by a thunderstorm while he was dining on bacon--he tried to
eat between-whiles, but the flashes were as pertinacious as he, so at
last he pushed his plate away, just remarking with a compassionate
shrug, 'all this fuss about a piece of pork!' By the way, what a
characteristic of an Italian _late_ evening is Summer-lightning--it
hangs in broad slow sheets, dropping from cloud to cloud, so long in
dropping and dying off. The 'bora,' which you only get at Trieste,
brings wonderful lightning--you are in glorious June-weather, fancy,
of an evening, under green shock-headed acacias, so thick and green,
with the cicalas stunning you above, and all about you men, women,
rich and poor, sitting standing and coming and going--and through all
the laughter and screaming and singing, the loud clink of the spoons
against the glasses, the way of calling for fresh 'sorbetti'--for all
the world is at open-coffee-house at such an hour--when suddenly there
is a stop in the sunshine, a blackness drops down, then a great white
column of dust drives straight on like a wedge, and you see the acacia
heads snap off, now one, then another--and all the people scream 'la
bora, la bora!' and you are caught up in their whirl and landed in
some interior, the man with the guitar on one side of you, and the boy
with a cageful of little brown owls for sale, on the other--meanwhile,
the thunder claps, claps, with such a persistence, and the rain, for a
finale, falls in a mass, as if you had knocked out the whole bottom of
a huge tank at once--then there is a second stop--out comes the
sun--somebody clinks at his glass, all the world bursts out laughing,
and prepares to pour out again,--but _you_, the stranger, _do_ make
the best of your way out, with no preparation at all; whereupon you
infallibly put your foot (and half your leg) into a river, really
that, of rainwater--that's a _Bora_ (and that comment of yours, a
justifiable pun!) Such things you get in Italy, but better, better,
the best of all things you do not (_I_ do not) get those. And I shall
see you on Wednesday, please remember, and bring you the rest of the
poem--that you should like it, gratifies me more than I will try to
say, but then, do not you be tempted by that pleasure of pleasing
which I think is your besetting sin--may it not be?--and so cut me off
from the other pleasure of being profited. As I told you, I like so
much to fancy that you see, and will see, what I do as _I_ see it,
while it is doing, as nobody else in the world should, certainly, even
if they thought it worth while to want--but when I try and build a
great building I shall want you to come with me and judge it and
counsel me before the scaffolding is taken down, and while you have to
make your way over hods and mortar and heaps of lime, and trembling
tubs of size, and those thin broad whitewashing brushes I always had a
desire to take up and bespatter with. And now goodbye--I am to see you
on Wednesday I trust--and to hear you say you are better, still
better, much better? God grant that, and all else good for you, dear
friend, and so for R.B.
ever yours.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
[Post-mark, July 18, 1845.]
I suppose nobody is ever expected to acknowledge his or her 'besetting
sin'--it would be unnatural--and therefore you will not be surprised
to hear me deny the one imputed to me for mine. I deny it quite and
directly. And if my denial goes for nothing, which is but reasonable,
I might call in a great cloud of witnesses, ... a thundercloud, ...
(talking of storms!) and even seek no further than this table for a
first witness; this letter, I had yesterday, which calls me ... let me
see how many hard names ... 'unbending,' ... 'disdainful,' ... 'cold
hearted,' ... 'arrogant,' ... yes, 'arrogant, as women always are when
men grow humble' ... there's a charge against all possible and
probable petticoats beyond mine and through it! Not that either they
or mine deserve the charge--we do not; to the lowest hem of us! for I
don't pass to the other extreme, mind, and adopt besetting sins 'over
the way' and in antithesis. It's an undeserved charge, and unprovoked!
and in fact, the very flower of self-love self-tormented into ill
temper; and shall remain unanswered, for _me_, ... and _should_, ...
even if I could write mortal epigrams, as your Lamia speaks them. Only
it serves to help my assertion that people in general who know
something of me, my dear friend, are not inclined to agree with you in
particular, about my having an 'over-pleasure in pleasing,' for a
besetting sin. If you had spoken of my sister Henrietta indeed, you
would have been right--_so_ right! but for _me_, alas, my sins are not
half as amiable, nor given to lean to virtue's side with half such a
grace. And then I have a pretension to speak the truth like a Roman,
even in matters of literature, where Mr. Kenyon says falseness is a
fashion--and really and honestly I should not be afraid ... I should
have no reason to be afraid, ... if all the notes and letters written
by my hand for years and years about presentation copies of poems and
other sorts of books were brought together and 'conferred,' as they
say of manuscripts, before my face--I should not shrink and be
ashamed. Not that I always tell the truth as I see it--_but_ I _never
do_ speak falsely with intention and consciousness--never--and I do
not find that people of letters are sooner offended than others are,
by the truth told in gentleness;--I do not remember to have offended
anyone in this relation, and by these means. Well!--but _from me to
you_; it is all different, you know--you must know how different it
is. I can tell you truly what I think of this thing and of that thing
in your 'Duchess'--but I must of a necessity hesitate and fall into
misgiving of the adequacy of my truth, so called. To judge at all of a
work of yours, I must _look up to it_, and _far up_--because whatever
faculty _I_ have is included in your faculty, and with a great rim all
round it besides! And thus, it is not at all from an over-pleasure in
pleasing _you_, not at all from an inclination to depreciate myself,
that I speak and feel as I do and must on some occasions; it is simply
the consequence of a true comprehension of you and of me--and apart
from it, I should not be abler, I think, but less able, to assist you
in anything. I do wish you would consider all this reasonably, and
understand it as a third person would in a moment, and consent not to
spoil the real pleasure I have and am about to have in your poetry, by
nailing me up into a false position with your gold-headed nails of
chivalry, which won't hold to the wall through this summer. Now you
will not answer this?--you will only understand it and me--and that I
am not servile but sincere, but earnest, but meaning what I say--and
when I say I am afraid, you will believe that I am afraid; and when I
say I have misgivings, you will believe that I have misgivings--you
will _trust_ me so far, and give me liberty to breathe and feel
naturally ... according to my own nature. Probably, or certainly
rather, I have one advantage over you, ... one, of which women are not
fond of boasting--that of _being older by years_--for the 'Essay on
Mind,' which was the first poem published by me (and rather more
printed than published after all), the work of my earliest youth, half
childhood, half womanhood, was published in 1826 I see. And if I told
Mr. Kenyon not to let you see that book, it was not for the date, but
because Coleridge's daughter was right in calling it a mere 'girl's
exercise'; because it is just _that_ and no more, ... no expression
whatever of my nature as it ever was, ... pedantic, and in some things
pert, ... and such as altogether, and to do myself justice (which I
would fain do of course), I was not in my whole life. Bad books are
never like their writers, you know--and those under-age books are
generally bad. Also I have found it hard work to _get into
expression_, though I began rhyming from my very infancy, much as you
did (and this, with no sympathy near to me--I have had to do without
sympathy in the full sense--), and even in my 'Seraphim' days, my
tongue clove to the roof of my mouth,--from leading so conventual
recluse a life, perhaps--and all my better poems were written last
year, the very best thing to come, if there should be any life or
courage to come; I scarcely know. Sometimes--it is the real truth--I
have haste to be done with it all. It is the real truth; however to
say so may be an ungrateful return for your kind and generous words,
... which I _do_ feel gratefully, let me otherwise feel as I will, ...
or must. But then you know you are liable to such prodigious mistakes
about besetting sins and even besetting virtues--to such a set of
small delusions, that are sure to break one by one, like other
bubbles, as you draw in your breath, ... as I see by the law of my own
star, my own particular star, the star I was born under, the star
_Wormwood_, ... on the opposite side of the heavens from the
constellations of 'the Lyre and the Crown.' In the meantime, it is
difficult to thank you, or _not_ to thank you, for all your
kindnesses--[Greek: algos de sigan]. Only Mrs. Jameson told me of Lady
Byron's saying 'that she knows she is burnt every day in effigy by
half the world, but that the effigy is so unlike herself as to be
inoffensive to her,' and just so, or rather just in the converse of
_so_, is it with me and your kindnesses. They are meant for quite
another than I, and are too far to be so near. The comfort is ... in
seeing you throw all those ducats out of the window, (and how many
ducats go in a figure to a 'dozen Duchesses,' it is profane to
calculate) the comfort is that you will not be the poorer for it in
the end; since the people beneath, are honest enough to push them back
under the door. Rather a bleak comfort and occupation though!--and you
may find better work for your friends, who are (some of them) weary
even unto death of the uses of this life. And now, you who are
generous, _be_ generous, and take no notice of all this. I speak of
myself, not of you so there is nothing for you to contradict or
discuss--and if there were, you would be really kind and give me my
way in it. Also you may take courage; for I promise not to vex you by
thanking you against _your_ will,--more than may be helped.
Some of this letter was written before yesterday and in reply of
course to yours--so it is to pass for two letters, being long enough
for just six. Yesterday you must have wondered at me for being in such
a maze altogether about the poems--and so now I rise to explain that
it was assuredly the wine song and no other which I read of yours in
_Hood's_. And then, what did I say of the Dante and Beatrice? Because
what I referred to was the exquisite page or two or three on that
subject in the 'Pentameron.' I do not remember anything else of
Landor's with the same bearing--do you? As to Montaigne, with the
threads of my thoughts smoothly disentangled, I can see nothing
coloured by him ... nothing. Do bring all the _Hood_ poems of your
own--inclusive of the 'Tokay,' because I read it in such haste as to
whirl up all the dust you saw, from the wheels of my chariot. The
'Duchess' is past speaking of here--but you will see how I am
delighted. And we must make speed--only taking care of your head--for
I heard to-day that Papa and my aunt are discussing the question of
sending me off either to Alexandria or Malta for the winter. Oh--it
is quite a passing talk and thought, I dare say! and it would not _be_
in any case, until September or October; though in every case, I
suppose, _I_ should not be much consulted ... and all cases and places
would seem better to me (if I were) than Madeira which the physicians
used to threaten me with long ago. So take care of your headache and
let us have the 'Bells' rung out clear before the summer ends ... and
pray don't say again anything about clear consciences or unclear ones,
in granting me the privilege of reading your manuscripts--which is all
clear privilege to me, with pride and gladness waiting on it. May God
bless you always my dear friend!