On Thursday as far as I know yet--and you shall hear if there should
be an obstacle. _Will you walk?_ If you will not, you know, you must
be forgetting me a little. Will you remember me too in the act of the
play?--but above all things in taking the right exercise, and in not
overworking the head. And this for no serpent's reason.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Two letters in one--Wednesday.
[Post-mark, November 15, 1845.]
I shall see you to-morrow and yet am writing what you will have to
read perhaps. When you spoke of 'stars' and 'geniuses' in that letter,
I did not seem to hear; I was listening to those words of the letter
which were of a better silver in the sound than even your praise could
be; and now that at last I come to hear them in their extravagance (oh
such pure extravagance about 'glorious geniuses'--) I can't help
telling you they were heard last, and deserved it.
Shall I tell you besides?--The first moment in which I seemed to admit
to myself in a flash of lightning the _possibility_ of your affection
for me being more than dream-work ... the first moment was _that_ when
you intimated (as you have done since repeatedly) that you cared for
me not for a reason, but because you cared for me. Now such a
'parceque' which reasonable people would take to be irrational, was
just the only one fitted to the uses of my understanding on the
particular question we were upon ... just the 'woman's reason'
suitable to the woman ...; for I could understand that it might be as
you said, and, if so, that it was altogether unanswerable ... do you
see? If a fact includes its own cause ... why there it stands for
ever--one of 'earth's immortalities'--_as long as it includes it_.
And when unreasonableness stands for a reason, it is a promising state
of things, we may both admit, and proves what it would be as well not
too curiously to enquire into. But then ... to look at it in a
brighter aspect, ... I do remember how, years ago, when talking the
foolishnesses which women will talk when they are by themselves, and
not forced to be sensible, ... one of my friends thought it 'safest to
begin with a little aversion,' and another, wisest to begin with a
great deal of esteem, and how the best attachments were produced so
and so, ... I took it into my head to say that the best was where
there was no cause at all for it, and the more wholly unreasonable,
the better still; that the motive should lie in the feeling itself and
not in the object of it--and that the affection which could (if it
could) throw itself out on an idiot with a goître would be more
admirable than Abelard's. Whereupon everybody laughed, and someone
thought it affected of me and no true opinion, and others said plainly
that it was immoral, and somebody else hoped, in a sarcasm, that I
meant to act out my theory for the advantage of the world. To which I
replied quite gravely that I had not virtue enough--and so, people
laughed as it is fair to laugh when other people are esteemed to talk
nonsense. And all this came back to me in the south wind of your
'parceque,' and I tell it as it came ... now.
Which proves, if it proves anything, ... while I have every sort of
natural pleasure in your praises and like you to like my poetry just
as I should, and perhaps more than I should; yet _why_ it is all
behind ... and in its place--and _why_ I have a tendency moreover to
sift and measure any praise of yours and to separate it from the
superfluities, far more than with any other person's praise in the
world.
_Friday evening._--Shall I send this letter or not? I have been 'tra
'l si e 'l no,' and writing a new beginning on a new sheet even--but
after all you ought to hear the remote echo of your last letter ...
far out among the hills, ... as well as the immediate reverberation,
and so I will send it,--and what I send is not to be answered,
remember!
I read Luria's first act twice through before I slept last night, and
feel just as a bullet might feel, not because of the lead of it but
because shot into the air and suddenly arrested and suspended. It
('Luria') is all life, and we know (that is, the reader knows) that
there must be results here and here. How fine that sight of Luria is
upon the lynx hides--how you see the Moor in him just in the glimpse
you have by the eyes of another--and that laugh when the horse drops
the forage, what wonderful truth and character you have in
_that_!--And then, when _he_ is in the scene--: 'Golden-hearted Luria'
you called him once to me, and his heart shines already ... wide open
to the morning sun. The construction seems to me very clear
everywhere--and the rhythm, even over-smooth in a few verses, where
you invert a little artificially--but that shall be set down on a
separate strip of paper: and in the meantime I am snatched up into
'Luria' and feel myself driven on to the ends of the poet, just as a
reader should.
But _you_ are not driven on to any ends? so as to be tired, I mean?
You will not suffer yourself to be overworked because you are
'interested' in this work. I am so certain that the sensations in your
head _demand_ repose; and it must be so injurious to you to be
perpetually calling, calling these new creations, one after another,
that you must consent to be called _to_, and not hurry the next act,
no, nor any act--let the people have time to learn the last number by
heart. And how glad I am that Mr. Fox should say what he did of it ...
though it wasn't true, you know ... not exactly. Still, I do hold that
as far as construction goes, you never put together so much
unquestionable, smooth glory before, ... not a single entanglement for
the understanding ... unless 'the snowdrops' make an exception--while
for the undeniableness of genius it never stood out before your
readers more plainly than in that same number! Also you have extended
your sweep of power--the sea-weed is thrown farther (if not higher)
than it was found before; and one may calculate surely now how a few
more waves will cover the brown stones and float the sight up away
through the fissure of the rocks. The rhythm (to touch one of the
various things) the rhythm of that 'Duchess' does more and more strike
me as a new thing; something like (if like anything) what the Greeks
called pedestrian-metre, ... between metre and prose ... the difficult
rhymes combining too quite curiously with the easy looseness of the
general measure. Then 'The Ride'--with that touch of natural feeling
at the end, to prove that it was not in brutal carelessness that the
poor horse was driven through all that suffering ... yes, and how that
one touch of softness acts back upon the energy and resolution and
exalts both, instead of weakening anything, as might have been
expected by the vulgar of writers or critics. And then 'Saul'--and in
a first place 'St. Praxed'--and for pure description, 'Fortú' and the
deep 'Pictor Ignotus'--and the noble, serene 'Italy in England,' which
grows on you the more you know of it--and that delightful 'Glove'--and
the short lyrics ... for one comes to _'select' everything_ at last,
and certainly I do like these poems better and better, as your poems
are made to be liked. But you will be tired to hear it said over and
over so, ... and I am going to 'Luria,' besides.
When you write will you say exactly how you are? and will you write?
And I want to explain to you that although I don't make a profession
of equable spirits, (as a matter of temperament, my spirits were
always given to rock a little, up and down) yet that I did not mean to
be so ungrateful and wicked as to complain of low spirits now and to
you. It would not be true either: and I said 'low' to express a merely
bodily state. My opium comes in to keep the pulse from fluttering and
fainting ... to give the right composure and point of balance to the
nervous system. I don't take it for 'my spirits' in the usual sense;
you must not think such a thing. The medical man who came to see me
made me take it the other day when he was in the room, before the
right hour and when I was talking quite cheerfully, just for the need
he observed in the pulse. 'It was a necessity of my position,' he
said. Also I do not suffer from it in any way, as people usually do
who take opium. I am not even subject to an opium-headache. As to the
low spirits I will not say that mine _have not_ been low enough and
with cause enough; but _even then_, ... why if you were to ask the
nearest witnesses, ... say, even my own sisters, ... everybody would
tell you, I think, that the 'cheerfulness' even _then_, was the
remarkable thing in me--certainly it has been remarked about me again
and again. Nobody has known that it was an effort (a habit of effort)
to throw the light on the outside,--I do abhor so that ignoble
groaning aloud of the 'groans of Testy and Sensitude'--yet I may say
that for three years I never was conscious of one movement of pleasure
in anything. Think if I could mean to complain of 'low spirits' now,
and to you. Why it would be like complaining of not being able to see
at noon--which would simply prove that I was very blind. And you, who
are not blind, cannot make out what is written--so you _need not try_.
May God bless you long after you have done blessing me!