_E.B.B. to R.B._
Sunday.
[Post-mark, December 8, 1845.]
Let me hear how you are, and that you are better instead of worse for
the exertions of last night. After you left me yesterday I considered
how we might have managed it more conveniently for you, and had the
lamp in, and arranged matters so as to interpose less time between the
going and the dining, even if you and George did not go together,
which might have been best, but which I did not like quite to propose.
Now, supposing that on Thursday you dine in town, remember not to be
unnecessarily 'perplext in the extreme' where to spend the time before
... _five_, ... shall I say, at any rate? We will have the lamp, and I
can easily explain if an observation should be made ... only it will
not be, because our goers-out here never come home until six, and the
head of the house, not until seven ... as I told you. George thought
it worth while going to Mr. Talfourd's yesterday, just to see the
author of 'Paracelsus' dance the Polka ... should I not tell you?
I am vexed by another thing which he tells _me_--vexed, if amused a
little by the absurdity of it. I mean that absurd affair of the
'Autography'--now _isn't_ it absurd? And for neither you nor George to
have the chivalry of tearing out that letter of mine, which was absurd
too in its way, and which, knowing less of the world than I know now,
I wrote as if writing for my private conscience, and privately
repented writing in a day, and have gone on repenting ever since when
I happened to think enough of it for repentance! Because if Mr.
Serjeant Talfourd sent then his 'Ion' to _me_, he did it in mere
good-nature, hearing by chance of me through the publisher of my
'Prometheus' at the moment, and of course caring no more for my
'opinion' than for the rest of me--and it was excessively bad taste in
me to say more than the briefest word of thanks in return, even if I
had been competent to say it. Ah well!--you see how it is, and that I
am vexed _you_ should have read it, ... as George says you did ... he
laughing to see me so vexed. So I turn round and avenge myself by
crying aloud against the editor of the 'Autography'! Surely such a
thing was never done before ... even by an author in the last stage of
a mortal disease of self-love. To edit the common parlance of
conventional flatteries, ... lettered in so many volumes, bound in
green morocco, and laid on the drawing-room table for one's own
particular private public,--is it not a miracle of vanity ... neither
more nor less?
I took the opportunity of the letter to Mr. Mathews (talking of vanity
... _mine_!) to send Landor's verses to America ... yours--so they
will be in the American papers.... I know Mr. Mathews. I was speaking
to him of your last number of 'Bells and Pomegranates,' and the verses
came in naturally; just as my speaking did, for it is not the first
time nor the second nor the third even that I have written to him of
you, though I admire how in all those previous times I did it in pure
disinterestedness, ... purely because your name belonged to my country
and to her literature, ... and how I have a sort of reward at this
present, in being able to write what I please without anyone's saying
'it is a new fancy.' As for the Americans, they have 'a zeal without
knowledge' for poetry. There is more love for _verse_ among them than
among the English. But they suffer themselves to be led in their
choice of poets by English critics of average discernment; this is
said of them by their own men of letters. Tennyson is idolized deep
down in the bush woods (to their honour be it said), but to
understand _you_ sufficiently, they wait for the explanations of the
critics. So I wanted them to see what Landor says of you. The comfort
in these questions is, that there can be _no_ question, except between
the sooner and the later--a little sooner, and a little later: but
when there is real love and zeal it becomes worth while to try to
ripen the knowledge. They love Tennyson so much that the colour of his
waistcoats is a sort of minor Oregon question ... and I like that--do
not _you_?
_Monday._--Now I have your letter: and you will observe, without a
finger post from me, how busily we have both been preoccupied in
disavowing our own letters of old on 'Ion'--Mr. Talfourd's collection
goes to prove too much, I think--and you, a little too much, when you
draw inferences of no-changes, from changes like these. Oh yes--I
perfectly understand that every sort of inconstancy of purpose regards
a 'presumably better' thing--but I do not so well understand how any
presumable doubt is to be set to rest by that fact, ... I do not
indeed. Have you seen all the birds and beasts in the world? have you
seen the 'unicorns'?--Which is only a pebble thrown down into your
smooth logic; and we need not stand by to watch the bubbles born of
it. And as to the 'Ion' letters, I am delighted that you have anything
to repent, as I have everything. Certainly it is a noble play--there
is the moral sublime in it: but it is not the work of a poet, ... and
if he had never written another to show what was _not_ in him, this
might have been 'predicated' of it as surely, I hold. Still, it is a
noble work--and even if you over-praised it, (I did not read your
letter, though you read mine, alas!) you, under the circumstances,
would have been less noble yourself not to have done so--only, how I
agree with you in what you say against the hanging up of these dry
roots, the soil shaken off! Such abominable taste--now isn't it? ...
though you do not use that word.
I thought Mr. Kenyon would have come yesterday and that I might have
something to tell you, of him at least.
And George never told me of the thing you found to say to him of me,
and which makes me smile, and would have made him wonder if he had not
been suffering probably from some legal distraction at the moment,
inasmuch as _he knew perfectly that you had just left me_. My sisters
told him down-stairs and he came into this room just before he set off
on Saturday, with a, ... '_So_ I am to meet Mr. Browning?' But he made
no observation afterwards--none: and if he heard what you said at all
(which I doubt), he referred it probably to some enforced civility on
'Yorick's' part when the 'last chapter' was too much with him.
I have written about 'Luria' in another place--you shall have the
papers when I have read through the play. How different this living
poetry is from the polished rhetoric of 'Ion.' The man and the statue
are not more different. After all poetry is a distinct thing--it is
here or it is not here ... it is not a matter of '_taste_,' but of
sight and feeling.
As to the 'Venice' it gives proof (does it not?) rather of poetical
sensibility than of poetical faculty? or did you expect me to say
more?--of the perception of the poet, rather than of his conception.
Do you think more than this? There are fine, eloquent expressions, and
the tone of sentiment is good and high everywhere.
Do not write 'Luria' if your head is uneasy--and you cannot say that
it is not ... can you? Or will you if you can? In any case you will do
what you can ... take care of yourself and not suffer yourself to be
tired either by writing or by too much going out, and take the
necessary exercise ... this, you will do--I entreat you to do it.
May God bless and make you happy, as ... you will lose nothing if I
say ... as I am yours--
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday Morning.
[Post-mark, December 9, 1845.]
Well, then, I am no longer sorry that I did _not_ read _either_ of
your letters ... for there were two in the collection. I did not read
one word of them--and hear why. When your brother and I took the book
between us in wonderment at the notion--we turned to the index, in
large text-hand, and stopped at 'Miss B.'--and _he_ indeed read them,
or some of them, but holding the volume at a distance which defied my
short-sighted eye--all _I_ saw was the _faint_ small characters--and,
do you know ... I neither trusted myself to ask a nearer look ... nor
a second look ... as if I were studying unduly what I had just said
was most unfairly exposed to view!--so I was silent, and lost you (in
that)--then, and for ever, I promise you, now that you speak of
vexation it would give you. _All_ I know of the notes, that _one_ is
addressed to Talfourd in the third person--and when I had run through
my own ... not far off ... (BA-BR)--I was sick of the book altogether.
You are generous to me--but, to say the truth, I might have remembered
the most justifying circumstance in my case ... which was, that my own
'Paracelsus,' printed a few months before, had been as dead a failure
as 'Ion' a brilliant success--for, until just before.... Ah, really I
forget!--but I know that until Forster's notice in the _Examiner_
appeared, _every_ journal that thought worth while to allude to the
poem at all, treated it with entire contempt ... beginning, I think,
with the _Athenæum_ which _then_ made haste to say, a few days after
its publication, 'that it was not without talent but spoiled by
obscurity and only an imitation of--Shelley'!--something to this
effect, in a criticism of about three lines among their 'Library
Table' notices. And that first taste was a most flattering sample of
what the 'craft' had in store for me--since my publisher and I had
fairly to laugh at _his_ 'Book'--(quite of another kind than the
Serjeant's)--in which he was used to paste extracts from newspapers
and the like--seeing that, out of a long string of notices, one vied
with its predecessor in disgust at my 'rubbish,' as their word went:
but Forster's notice altered a good deal--which I have to recollect
for his good. Still, the contrast between myself and Talfourd was so
_utter_--you remember the world's-wonder 'Ion' made,--that I was
determined not to pass for the curious piece of neglected merit I
really _was not_--and so!--
But, dearest, why should you leave your own especial sphere of doing
me good for another than yours?
Does the sun rake and hoe about the garden as well as thine steadily
over it? _Why_ must you, who give me heart and power, as nothing else
did or could, to do well--concern yourself with what might be done by
any good, kind ministrant _only_ fit for such offices? Not that I
_feel_, even, more bound to you for them--they have their weight, I
_know_ ... but _what_ weight beside the divine gift of yourself? Do
not, dear, dearest, care for making me known: _you_ know me!--and
_they_ know so little, after all your endeavour, who are ignorant of
what _you_ are to me--if you ... well, but that _will_ follow; if I do
greater things one day--what shall they serve for, what range
themselves under of right?--
Mr. Mathews sent me two copies of his poems--and, I believe, a
newspaper, 'when time was,' about the 'Blot in the Scutcheon'--and
also, through Moxon--(I _believe_ it was Mr. M.)--a proposition for
reprinting--to which I assented of course--and there was an end to the
matter.
And might I have stayed _till five_?--dearest, I will never ask for
more than you give--but I feel every single sand of the gold showers
... spite of what I say above! I _have_ an invitation for Thursday
which I had no intention of remembering (it admitted of such
liberty)--but _now_....
Something I will _say_! 'Polka,' forsooth!--one lady whose _head_
could not, and another whose feet could not, dance!--But I talked a
little to your brother whom I like more and more: it comforts me that
he is yours.
So, _Thursday_,--thank you from the heart! I am well, and about to go
out. This week I have done nothing to 'Luria'--is it that my _ring_ is
gone? There surely _is_ something to forgive in me--for that shameful
business--or I should not feel as I do in the matter: but you _did_
forgive me.