Say how you are when you write--_and write_.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday Morning.
I this minute receive the Review--a poor business, truly! Is there a
reason for a man's wits dwindling the moment he gets into a critical
High-place to hold forth?--I have only glanced over the article
however. Well, one day _I_ am to write of you, dearest, and it must
come to something rather better than _that_!
I am forced to send now what is to be sent at all. Bless you, dearest.
I am trusting to hear from you--
Your R.B.
And I find by a note from a fairer friend and favourer of mine that in
the _New Quarterly_ 'Mr. Browning' figures pleasantly as 'one without
any sympathy for a human being!'--Then, for newts and efts at all
events!
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday Night.
[Post-mark, January 7, 1846.]
But, my sweet, there is safer going in letters than in visits, do you
not see? In the letter, one may go to the utmost limit of one's
supposed tether without danger--there is the distance so palpably
between the most audacious step _there_, and the next ... which is
nowhere, seeing it is not in the letter. Quite otherwise in personal
intercourse, where any indication of turning to a certain path, even,
might possibly be checked not for its own fault but lest, the path
once reached and proceeded in, some other forbidden turning might come
into sight, we will say. In the letter, all ended _there_, just there
... and you may think of that, and forgive; at all events, may avoid
speaking irrevocable words--and when, as to me, those words are
intensely _true, doom-words_--think, dearest! Because, as I told you
once, what most characterizes my feeling for you is the perfect
_respect_ in it, the full _belief_ ... (I shall get presently to poor
Robert's very avowal of 'owing you all esteem'!). It is on that I
build, and am secure--for how should I know, of myself, how to serve
you and be properly yours if it all was to be learnt by my own
interpreting, and what you professed to dislike you were to be
considered as wishing for, and what liking, as it seemed, you were
loathing at your heart, and if so many 'noes' made a 'yes,' and 'one
refusal no rebuff' and all that horrible bestiality which stout
gentlemen turn up the whites of their eyes to, when they rise after
dinner and pressing the right hand to the left side say, 'The toast be
dear woman!' Now, love, with this feeling in me from the beginning,--I
do believe,--_now_, when I am utterly blest in this gift of your love,
and least able to imagine what I should do without it,--I cannot but
believe, I say, that had you given me once a 'refusal'--clearly
derived from your own feelings, and quite apart from any fancied
consideration for my interests; had this come upon me, whether slowly
but inevitably in the course of events, or suddenly as precipitated by
any step of mine; I should, _believing you_, have never again renewed
directly or indirectly such solicitation; I should have begun to count
how many other ways were yet open to serve you and devote myself to
you ... but from _the outside_, now, and not in your livery! Now, if I
should have acted thus under _any_ circumstances, how could I but
redouble my endeavours at precaution after my own foolish--you know,
and forgave long since, and I, too, am forgiven in my own eyes, for
the cause, though not the manner--but could I do other than keep
'farther from you' than in the letters, dearest? For your own part in
that matter, seeing it with all the light you have since given me (and
_then_, not inadequately by my own light) I could, I do kiss your
feet, kiss every letter in your name, bless you with my whole heart
and soul if I could pour them out, from me, before you, to stay and be
yours; when I think on your motives and pure perfect generosity. It
was the plainness of _that_ which determined me to wait and be patient
and grateful and your own for ever in any shape or capacity you might
please to accept. Do you think that because I am so rich now, I could
not have been most rich, too, _then_--in what would seem little only
to _me_, only with this great happiness? I should have been proud
beyond measure--happy past all desert, to call and be allowed to see
you simply, speak with you and be spoken to--what am I more than
others? Don't think this mock humility--_it is not_--you take me in
your mantle, and we shine together, but I know my part in it! All this
is written breathlessly on a sudden fancy that you _might_--if not
now, at some future time--give other than this, the true reason, for
that discrepancy you see, that nearness in the letters, that early
farness in the visits! And, love, all love is but a passionate
_drawing closer_--I would be one with you, dearest; let my soul press
close to you, as my lips, dear life of my life.
_Wednesday._--You are entirely right about those poems of Horne's--I
spoke only of the effect of the first glance, and it is a principle
with me to begin by welcoming any strangeness, intention of
originality in men--the other way of safe copying precedents being
_so_ safe! So I began by praising all that was at all questionable in
the form ... reserving the ground-work for after consideration. The
Elf-story turns out a pure mistake, I think--and a common mistake,
too. Fairy stories, the good ones, were written for men and women,
and, being true, pleased also children; now, people set about writing
for children and miss them and the others too,--with that detestable
irreverence and plain mocking all the time at the very wonder they
profess to want to excite. All obvious bending down to the lower
capacity, determining not to be the great complete man one is, by
half; any patronizing minute to be spent in the nursery over the books
and work and healthful play, of a visitor who will presently bid
good-bye and betake himself to the Beefsteak Club--keep us from all
that! The Sailor Language is good in its way; but as wrongly used in
Art as real clay and mud would be, if one plastered them in the
foreground of a landscape in order to attain to so much truth, at all
events--the true thing to endeavour is the making a golden colour
which shall do every good in the power of the dirty brown. Well, then,
what a veering weathercock am I, to write so and now, _so_! Not
altogether,--for first it was but the stranger's welcome I gave, the
right of every new comer who must stand or fall by his behaviour once
admitted within the door. And then--when I know what Horne thinks
of--you, dearest; how he knew you first, and from the soul admired
you; and how little he thinks of my good fortune ... I _could_ NOT
begin by giving you a bad impression of anything he sends--he has such
very few rewards for a great deal of hard excellent enduring work, and
_none_, no reward, I do think, would he less willingly forego than
your praise and sympathy. But your opinion once expressed--truth
remains the truth--so, at least, I excuse myself ... and quite as much
for what I say _now_ as for what was said _then_! 'King John' is very
fine and full of purpose; 'The Noble Heart,' sadly faint and
uncharacteristic. The chief incident, too, turns on that poor
conventional fallacy about what constitutes a proper wrong to
resist--a piece of morality, after a different standard, is introduced
to complete another fashioned morality--a segment of a circle of
larger dimensions is fitted into a smaller one. Now, you may have your
own standard of morality in this matter of resistance to wrong, how
and when if at all. And you may quite understand and sympathize with
quite different standards innumerable of other people; but go from one
to the other abruptly, you cannot, I think. 'Bear patiently all
injuries--revenge in no case'--that is plain. 'Take what you conceive
to be God's part, do his evident work, stand up for good and destroy
evil, and co-operate with this whole scheme here'--_that_ is plain,
too,--but, call Otto's act _no_ wrong, or being one, not such as
should be avenged--and then, call the remark of a stranger that one is
a 'recreant'--just what needs the slight punishment of instant death
to the remarker--and ... where is the way? What _is_ clear?
--Not my letter! which goes on and on--'dear letters'--sweetest?
because they cost all the precious labour of making out? Well, I shall
see you to-morrow, I trust. Bless you, my own--I have not half said
what was to say even in the letter I thought to write, and which
proves only what you see! But at a thought I fly off with you, 'at a
cock-crow from the Grange.'--Ever your own.
Last night, I received a copy of the _New Quarterly_--now here is
popular praise, a sprig of it! Instead of the attack I supposed it to
be, from my foolish friend's account, the notice is outrageously
eulogistical, a stupidly extravagant laudation from first to last--and
in _three other_ articles, as my sister finds by diligent fishing,
they introduce my name with the same felicitous praise (except one
instance, though, in a good article by Chorley I am certain); and
_with_ me I don't know how many poetical _crétins_ are praised as
noticeably--and, in the turning of a page, somebody is abused in the
richest style of scavengering--only Carlyle! And I love him enough not
to envy him nor wish to change places, and giving him mine, mount into
his.
All which, let me forget in the thoughts of to-morrow! Bless you, my
Ba.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, January 7, 1846.]
But some things are indeed said very truly, and as I like to read
them--of _you_, I mean of course,--though I quite understand that it
is doing no manner of good to go back so to 'Paracelsus,' heading the
article 'Paracelsus and other poems,' as if the other poems could not
front the reader broadly by a divine right of their own. 'Paracelsus'
is a great work and will _live_, but the way to do you good with the
stiffnecked public (such good as critics can do in their degree) would
have been to hold fast and conspicuously the gilded horn of the last
living crowned creature led by you to the altar, saying 'Look _here_.'
What had he to do else, as a critic? Was he writing for the
_Retrospective Review_? And then, no attempt at analytical
criticism--or a failure, at the least attempt! all slack and in
sentences! Still these are right things to say, true things, worthy
things, said of you as a poet, though your poems do not find justice:
and I like, for my own part, the issuing from my cathedral into your
great world--the outermost temple of divinest consecration. I like
that figure and association, and none the worse for its being a
sufficient refutation of what he dared to impute, of your poetical
sectarianism, in another place--_yours_!
For me, it is all quite kind enough--only I object, on my own part
also, to being reviewed in the 'Seraphim,' when my better books are
nearer: and also it always makes me a little savage when people talk
of Tennysonianisms! I have faults enough as the Muses know,--but let
them be _my_ faults! When I wrote the 'Romaunt of Margret,' I had not
read a line of Tennyson. I came from the country with my eyes only
half open, and he had not penetrated where I had been living and
sleeping: and in fact when I afterwards tried to reach him here in
London, nothing could be found except one slim volume, so that, till
the collected works appeared ... _favente_ Moxon, ... I was ignorant
of his best _early_ productions; and not even for the rhythmetical
form of my 'Vision of the Poets,' was I indebted to the 'Two
Voices,'--three pages of my 'Vision' having been written several years
ago--at the beginning of my illness--and thrown aside, and taken up
again in the spring of 1844. Ah, well! there's no use talking! In a
solitary review which noticed my 'Essay on Mind,' somebody wrote ...
'this young lady imitates Darwin'--and I never could _read_ Darwin,
... was stopped always on the second page of the 'Loves of the Plants'
when I tried to read him to 'justify myself in having an opinion'--the
repulsion was too strong. Yet the 'young lady imitated Darwin' of
course, as the infallible critic said so.
And who are Mr. Helps and Miss Emma Fisher and the 'many others,'
whose company brings one down to the right plebeianism? The 'three
poets in three distant ages born' may well stare amazed!
After all you shall not by any means say that I upset the inkstand on
your review in a passion--because pray mark that the ink has over-run
some of your praises, and that if I had been angry to the overthrow of
an inkstand, it would not have been precisely _there_. It is the
second book spoilt by me within these two days--and my fingers were so
dabbled in blackness yesterday that to wring my hands would only have
made matters worse. Holding them up to Mr. Kenyon they looked dirty
enough to befit a poetess--as black 'as bard beseemed'--and he took
the review away with him to read and save it from more harm.
How could it be that you did not get my letter which would have
reached you, I thought, on Monday evening, or on Tuesday at the very
very earliest?--and how is it that I did not hear from you last night
again when I was unreasonable enough to expect it? is it true that you
_hate_ writing to me?
At that word, comes the review back from dear Mr. Kenyon, and the
letter which I enclose to show you how it accounts reasonably for the
ink--I did it 'in a pet,' he thinks! And I ought to buy you a new
book--certainly I ought--only it is not worth doing justice for--and I
shall therefore send it back to you spoilt as it is; and you must
forgive me as magnanimously as you can.
'Omne ignotum pro magnifico'--do you think _so_? I hope not indeed!
_vo quietando_--and everything else that I ought to do--except of
course, _that_ thinking of you which is so difficult.
May God bless you. Till to-morrow!
Your own always.
Mr. Kenyon refers to 'Festus'--of which I had said that the fine
things were worth looking for, in the design manqué.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, January 9, 1846.]
You never think, ever dearest, that I 'repent'--why what a word to
use! You never could _think_ such a word for a moment! If you were to
leave me even,--to decide that it is best for you to do it, and do
it,--I should accede at once of course, but never should I nor could I
'repent' ... regret anything ... be sorry for having known you and
loved you ... no! Which I say simply to prove that, in _no_ extreme
case, could I repent for my own sake. For yours, it might be
different.
_Not_ out of 'generosity' certainly, but from the veriest selfishness,
I choose here, before God, any possible present evil, rather than the
future consciousness of feeling myself less to you, on the whole, than
another woman might have been.
Oh, these vain and most heathenish repetitions--do I not vex you by
them, _you_ whom I would always please, and never vex? Yet they force
their way because you are the best noblest and dearest in the world,
and because your happiness is so precious a thing.
Cloth of frieze, be not too bold,
Though thou'rt matched with cloth of gold!
--_that_, beloved, was written for _me_. And you, if you would make me
happy, _always_ will look at yourself from my ground and by my light,
as I see you, and consent to be selfish in all things. Observe, that
if I were _vacillating_, I should not be so weak as to tease you with
the process of the vacillation: I should wait till my pendulum ceased
swinging. It is precisely because I am your own, past any retraction
or wish of retraction,--because I belong to you by gift and ownership,
and am ready and willing to prove it before the world at a word of
yours,--it is precisely for this, that I remind you too often of the
necessity of using this right of yours, not to your injury, of being
wise and strong for both of us, and of guarding your happiness which
is mine. I have said these things ninety and nine times over, and over
and over have you replied to them,--as yesterday!--and now, do not
speak any more. It is only my preachment for general use, and not for
particular application,--only to be _ready_ for application. I love
you from the deepest of my nature--the whole world is nothing to me
beside you--and what is so precious, is not far from being terrible.
'How _dreadful_ is this place.'
To hear you talk yesterday, is a gladness in the thought for
to-day,--it was with such a full assent that I listened to every word.
It is true, I think, that we see things (things apart from ourselves)
under the same aspect and colour--and it is certainly true that I have
a sort of instinct by which I seem to know your views of such subjects
as we have never looked at together. I know _you_ so well (yes, I
boast to myself of that intimate knowledge), that I seem to know also
the _idola_ of all things as they are in your eyes--so that never,
scarcely, I am curious,--never anxious, to learn what your opinions
may be. Now, _have_ I been curious or anxious? It was enough for me to
know _you_.
More than enough! You have 'left undone'--do you say? On the contrary,
you have done too much,--you _are_ too much. My cup,--which used to
hold at the bottom of it just the drop of Heaven dew mingling with the
absinthus,--has overflowed all this wine: and _that_ makes me look out
for the vases, which would have held it better, had you stretched out
your hand for them.
Say how you are--and do take care and exercise--and write to me,
dearest!