_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, September 9, 1845.]
One reason against printing the tragedies now, is your not being well
enough for the necessary work connected with them, ... a sure reason
and strong ... nay, chiefest of all. Plainly you are unfit for work
now--and even to complete the preparation of the lyrics, and take them
through the press, may be too much for you, I am afraid; and if so,
why you will not do it--will you?--you will wait for another year,--or
at least be satisfied for this, with bringing out a number of the old
size, consisting of such poems as are fairly finished and require no
retouching. 'Saul' for instance, you might leave--! You will not let
me hear when I am gone, of your being ill--you will take care ... will
you not? Because you see ... or rather _I_ see ... you are _not_
looking well at all--no, you are not! and even if you do not care for
that, you should and must care to consider how unavailing it will be
for you to hold those golden keys of the future with a more resolute
hand than your contemporaries, should you suffer yourself to be struck
down before the gate ... should you lose the physical power while
keeping the heart and will. Heart and will are great things, and
sufficient things in your case--but after all we carry a barrow-full
of clay about with us, and we must carry it a little carefully if we
mean to keep to the path and not run zigzag into the border of the
garden. A figure which reminds me ... and I wanted no figure to remind
me ... to ask you to thank your sister for me and from me for all her
kindness about the flowers. Now you will not forget? you must not.
When I think of the repeated trouble she has taken week after week,
and all for a stranger, I must think again that it has been very
kind--and I take the liberty of saying so moreover ... _as I am not
thanking you_. Also these flowers of yesterday, which yesterday you
disdained so, look full of summer and are full of fragrance, and when
they seem to say that it is not September, I am willing to be lied to
just _so_. For I wish it were not September. I wish it were July ...
or November ... two months before or after: and that this journey were
thrown behind or in front ... anywhere to be out of sight. You do not
know the courage it requires to hold the intention of it fast through
what I feel sometimes. If it (the courage) had been prophesied to me
only a year ago, the prophet would have been laughed to scorn.
Well!--but I want you to see. George's letter, and how he and Mrs.
Hedley, when she saw Papa's note of consent to me, give unhesitating
counsel. Burn it when you have read it. It is addressed to me ...
which you will doubt from the address of it perhaps ... seeing that it
goes [Greek: ba ... rbarizôn]. We are famous in this house for what
are called nick-names ... though a few of us have escaped rather by a
caprice than a reason: and I am never called anything else (never at
all) except by the nom de _paix_ which you find written in the
letter:--proving as Mr. Kenyon says, that I am just 'half a Ba-by' ...
no more nor less;--and in fact the name has that precise definition.
Burn the note when you have read it.
And then I take it into my head, as you do not distinguish my sisters,
you say, one from the other, to send you my own account of them in
these enclosed 'sonnets' which were written a few weeks ago, and
though only pretending to be 'sketches,' pretend to be like, as far as
they go, and _are_ like--my brothers thought--when I 'showed them
against' a profile drawn in pencil by Alfred, on the same subjects. I
was laughing and maintaining that mine should be as like as his--and
he yielded the point to me. So it is mere portrait-painting--and you
who are in 'high art,' must not be too scornful. Henrietta is the
elder, and the one who brought you into this room first--and Arabel,
who means to go with me to Pisa, has been the most with me through my
illness and is the least wanted in the house here, ... and perhaps ...
perhaps--is my favourite--though my heart smites me while I write that
unlawful word. They are both affectionate and kind to me in all
things, and good and lovable in their own beings--very unlike, for the
rest; one, most caring for the Polka, ... and the other for the sermon
preached at Paddington Chapel, ... _that_ is Arabel ... so if ever you
happen to know her you must try not to say before her how 'much you
hate &c.' Henrietta always 'managed' everything in the house even
before I was ill, ... because she liked it and I didn't, and I waived
my right to the sceptre of dinner-ordering.
I have been thinking much of your 'Sordello' since you spoke of
it--and even, I _had_ thought much of it before you spoke of it
yesterday; feeling that it might be thrown out into the light by your
hand, and greatly justify the additional effort. It is like a noble
picture with its face to the wall just now--or at least, in the
shadow. And so worthy as it is of you in all ways! individual all
through: you have _made_ even the darkness of it! And such a work as
it might become if you chose ... if you put your will to it! What I
meant to say yesterday was not that it wanted more additional verses
than the 'ten per cent' you spoke of ... though it does perhaps ... so
much as that (to my mind) it wants drawing together and fortifying in
the connections and associations ... which hang as loosely every here
and there, as those in a dream, and confound the reader who persists
in thinking himself awake.
How do you mean that I am 'lenient'? Do you not believe that I tell
you what I think, and as I think it? I may _think wrong_, to be
sure--but _that_ is not my fault:--and so there is no use reproaching
me generally, unless you can convict me definitely at the same
time:--is there, now?
And I have been reading and admiring these letters of Mr. Carlyle, and
receiving the greatest pleasure from them in every way. He is greatly
_himself always_--which is the hardest thing for a man to be, perhaps.
And what his appreciation of you is, it is easy to see--and what he
expects from you--notwithstanding that prodigious advice of his, to
write your next work in prose! Also Mrs. Carlyle's letter--thank you
for letting me see it. I admire _that_ too! It is as ingenious 'a
case' against poor Keats, as could well be drawn--but nobody who knew
very deeply what poetry _is_, _could_, you know, draw any case against
him. A poet of the senses, he may be and is, just as she says--but
then it is of the senses idealized; and no dream in a 'store-room'
would ever be like the 'Eve of St. Agnes,' unless dreamed by some
'animosus infans,' like Keats himself. Still it is all true ... isn't
it?... what she observes of the want of thought as thought. He was a
_seer_ strictly speaking. And what noble oppositions--(to go back to
Carlyle's letters) ... he writes to the things you were speaking of
yesterday! These letters are as good as Milton's picture for
convicting and putting to shame. Is not the difference between the men
of our day and 'the giants which were on the earth,' less ... far less
... in the faculty ... in the gift, ... or in the general intellect,
... than in the stature of the soul itself? Our inferiority is not in
what we can do, but in what we are. We should write poems like Milton
if [we] lived them like Milton.
I write all this just to show, I suppose, that I am not industrious as
you did me the honour of apprehending that I was going to be ...
packing trunks perhaps ... or what else in the way of 'active
usefulness.'
Say how you are--will you? And do take care, and walk and do what is
good for you. I shall be able to see you twice before I go. And oh,
this going! Pray for me, dearest friend. May God bless you.