[Footnote 1: 'R. Benjamin of Tudela' added in Robert Browning's
handwriting.]
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday Afternoon.
[Post-mark, August 11, 1845.]
How good you are to the smallest thing I try and do--(to show I
_would_ please you for an instant if I could, rather than from any
hope such poor efforts as I am restricted to, can please you or
ought.) And that you should care for the note that was not there!--But
I was surprised by the summons to seal and deliver, since time and the
carrier were peremptory--and so, I dared divine, almost, I should hear
from you by our mid-day post--which happened--and the answer to
_that_, you received on Friday night, did you not? I had to go to
Holborn, of all places,--not to pluck strawberries in the Bishop's
Garden like Richard Crouchback, but to get a book--and there I carried
my note, thinking to expedite its delivery: this notelet of yours,
quite as little in its kind as my blue flowers,--this came last
evening--and here are my thanks, dear E.B.B.--dear friend.
In the former note there is a phrase I must not forget to call on you
to account for--that where it confesses to having done 'some
work--only nothing worth speaking of.' Just see,--will you be first
and only compact-breaker? Nor misunderstand me here, please, ... as I
said, I am quite rejoiced that you go out now, 'walk about' now, and
put off the writing that will follow thrice as abundantly, all because
of the stopping to gather strength ... so I want no new word, not to
say poem, not to say the romance-poem--let the 'finches in the
shrubberies grow restless in the dark'--_I_ am inside with the lights
and music: but what is done, is done, _pas vrai_? And 'worth' is, dear
my friend, pardon me, not in your arbitration quite.
Let me tell you an odd thing that happened at Chorley's the other
night. I must have mentioned to you that I forget my own verses so
surely after they are once on paper, that I ought, without
affectation, to mend them infinitely better, able as I am to bring
fresh eyes to bear on them--(when I say 'once on paper' that is just
what I mean and no more, for after the sad revising begins they do
leave their mark, distinctly or less so according to circumstances).
Well, Miss Cushman, the new American actress (clever and
truthful-looking) was talking of a new novel by the Dane Andersen, he
of the 'Improvisatore,' which will reach us, it should seem, in
translation, _viâ_ America--she had looked over two or three proofs of
the work in the press, and Chorley was anxious to know something about
its character. The title, she said, was capital--'Only a
Fiddler!'--and she enlarged on that word, 'Only,' and its
significance, so put: and I quite agreed with her for several minutes,
till first one reminiscence flitted to me, then another and at last I
was obliged to stop my praises and say 'but, now I think of it, _I_
seem to have written something with a similar title--nay, a play, I
believe--yes, and in five acts--'Only an Actress'--and from that
time, some two years or more ago to this, I have been every way
relieved of it'!--And when I got home, next morning, I made a dark
pocket in my russet horror of a portfolio give up its dead, and there
fronted me 'Only a Player-girl' (the real title) and the sayings and
doings of her, and the others--such others! So I made haste and just
tore out one sample-page, being Scene the First, and sent it to our
friend as earnest and proof I had not been purely dreaming, as might
seem to be the case. And what makes me recall it now is, that it was
Russian, and about a fair on the Neva, and booths and droshkies and
fish-pies and so forth, with the Palaces in the back ground. And in
Chorley's _Athenæum_ of yesterday you may read a paper of _very_
simple moony stuff about the death of Alexander, and that Sir James
Wylie I have seen at St. Petersburg (where he chose to mistake me for
an Italian--'M. l'Italien' he said another time, looking up from his
cards).... So I think to tell you.
Now I may leave off--I shall see you start, on Tuesday--hear perhaps
something definite about your travelling.
Do you know, 'Consuelo' wearies me--oh, wearies--and the fourth volume
I have all but stopped at--there lie the three following, but who
cares about Consuelo after that horrible evening with the Venetian
scamp, (where he bullies her, and it does answer, after all she says)
as we say? And Albert wearies too--it seems all false, all
writing--not the first part, though. And what easy work these
novelists have of it! a Dramatic poet has to _make_ you love or admire
his men and women,--they must _do_ and _say_ all that you are to see
and hear--really do it in your face, say it in your ears, and it is
wholly for _you_, in _your_ power, to _name_, characterize and so
praise or blame, _what_ is so said and done ... if you don't perceive
of yourself, there is no standing by, for the Author, and telling you.
But with these novelists, a scrape of the pen--out blurting of a
phrase, and the miracle is achieved--'Consuelo possessed to perfection
this and the other gift'--what would you more? Or, to leave dear
George Sand, pray think of Bulwer's beginning a 'character' by
informing you that lone, or somebody in 'Pompeii,' 'was endowed with
_perfect_ genius'--'genius'! What though the obliging informer might
write his fingers off before he gave the pitifullest proof that the
poorest spark of that same, that genius, had ever visited _him_?
_Ione_ has it '_perfectly_'--perfectly--and that is enough! Zeus with
the scales? with the false weights!
And now--till Tuesday good-bye, and be willing to get well as (letting
me send _porter_ instead of flowers--and beefsteaks too!) soon as may
be! and may God bless you, ever dear friend.