_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday.
[Post-mark, March 23, 1846.]
Oh, my Ba--how you shall hear of this to-morrow--that is all: _I_ hate
writing? See when presently I _only_ write to you daily, hourly if you
let me? Just this _now_--I will be with you to-morrow in any case--I
can go away _at once_, if need be, or stay--if you like you can stop
me by sending a note for me _to Moxon's before_ 10 o'clock--if
anything calls for such a measure.
Now briefly,--I am unwell and entirely irritated with this sad
'Luria'--I thought it a failure at first, I find it infinitely worse
than I thought--it is a pure exercise of _cleverness_, even where most
successful; clever attempted reproduction of what was conceived by
another faculty, and foolishly let pass away. If I go on, even hurry
the more to get on, with the printing,--it is to throw out and away
from me the irritating obstruction once and forever. I have corrected
it, cut it down, and it may stand and pledge me to doing better
hereafter. I say, too, in excuse to myself, _unlike_ the woman at her
spinning-wheel, 'He thought of his _flax_ on the whole far more than
of his singing'--more of his life's sustainment, of dear, dear Ba he
hates writing to, than of these wooden figures--no wonder all is as it
is?
Here is a pure piece of the old Chorley leaven for you, just as it
reappears ever and anon and throws one back on the mistrust all but
abandoned! Chorley _knows_ I have not seen that Powell for nearly
fifteen months--that I never heard of the book till it reached me in a
blank cover--that I never contributed a line or word to it directly or
indirectly--and I should think he _also knows_ that all the sham
learning, notes &c., all that saves the book from the deepest deep of
contempt, was contributed by Heraud (_a regular critic in the
'Athenæum'_), who received his pay for the same: he knows I never
spoke in my life to 'Jones or Stephens'--that there is no 'coterie' of
which I can, by any extension of the word, form a part--that I am in
this case at the mercy of a wretched creature who to get into my
favour again (to speak the plain truth) put in the gross, disgusting
flattery in the notes--yet Chorley, knowing this, none so well, and
what the writer's end is--(to have it supposed I, and the others
named--Talfourd, for instance--ARE his friends and helpers)--he
condescends to _further_ it by such a notice, written with that
observable and characteristic duplicity, that to poor gross stupid
Powell it shall look like an admiring 'Oh, fie--_so_ clever but _so_
wicked'!--a kind of _D'Orsay's_ praise--while to the rest of his
readers, a few depreciatory epithets--slight sneers convey his real
sentiments, he trusts! And this he does, just because Powell buys an
article of him once a quarter and would _expect_ notice. I think I
hear Chorley--'You know, I _cannot_ praise such a book--it _is_ too
bad'--as if, as if--oh, it makes one sicker than having written
'Luria,' there's one comfort! I shall call on Chorley and ask for
_his_ account of the matter. Meantime nobody will read his foolish
notice without believing as he and Powell desire! Bless you, my own
Ba--to-morrow makes amends to R.B.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, March 24, 1846.]
How ungrateful I was to your flowers yesterday, never looking at them
nor praising them till they were put away, and yourself gone away--and
_that_ was _your_ fault, be it remembered, because you began to tell
me of the good news from Moxon's, and, in the joy of it, I missed the
flowers ... for the nonce, you know. Afterward they had their due, and
all the more that you were not there. My first business when you are
out of the room and the house, and the street perhaps, is to arrange
the flowers and to gather out of them all the thoughts you leave
between the leaves and at the end of the stalks. And shall I tell you
what happened, not yesterday, but the Thursday before? no, it was the
Friday morning, when I found, or rather Wilson found and held up from
my chair, a bunch of dead blue violets. Quite dead they seemed! You
had dropped them and I had sate on them, and where we murdered them
they had lain, poor things, all the night through. And Wilson thought
it the vainest of labours when she saw me set about reviving them,
cutting the stalks afresh, and dipping them head and ears into
water--but then she did not know how you, and I, and ours, live under
a miraculous dispensation, and could only simply be astonished when
they took to blowing again as if they never had wanted the dew of the
garden, ... yes, and when at last they outlived all the prosperity of
the contemporary white violets which flourished in water from the
beginning, and were free from the disadvantage of having been sate
upon. Now you shall thank me for this letter, it is at once so amusing
and instructive. After all, too, it teaches you what the great events
of my life are, not that the resuscitation of your violets would not
really be a great event to me, even if I led the life of a pirate,
between fire and sea, otherwise. But take _you_ away ... out of my
life!--and what remains? The only greenness I used to have (before you
brought your flowers) was as the grass growing in deserted streets,
... which brings a proof, in every increase, of the extending
desolation.
Dearest, I persist in thinking that you ought not to be too disdainful
to explain your meaning in the Pomegranates. Surely you might say in a
word or two that, your title having been doubted about (to your
surprise, you _might_ say!), you refer the doubters to the Jewish
priest's robe, and the Rabbinical gloss ... for I suppose it is a
gloss on the robe ... do you not think so? Consider that Mr. Kenyon
and I may fairly represent the average intelligence of your
readers,--and that _he_ was altogether in the clouds as to your
meaning ... had not the most distant notion of it,--while I, taking
hold of the priest's garment, missed the Rabbins and the distinctive
significance, as completely as he did. Then for Vasari, it is not the
handbook of the whole world, however it may be Mrs. Jameson's. Now why
should you be too proud to teach such persons as only desire to be
taught? I persist--I shall teaze you.
This morning my brothers have been saying ... 'Ah you had Mr. Browning
with you yesterday, I see by the flowers,' ... just as if they said 'I
see queen Mab has been with you.' Then Stormie took the opportunity of
swearing to me by all his gods that your name was mentioned lately in
the House of Commons--_is_ that true? or untrue? He forgot to tell me
at the time, he says,--and you were named with others and in relation
to copyright matters. _Is_ it true?
Mr. Hornblower Gill is the author of a Hymn to Passion week, and wrote
to me as the 'glorifier of pain!' to remind me that the best glory of
a soul is shown in the joy of it, and that all chief poets except
Dante have seen, felt, and written it so. Thus and therefore was
matured his purpose of writing an 'ode to joy,' as I told you. The man
seems to have very good thoughts, ... but he writes like a colder
Cowley still ... no impulse, no heat for fusing ... no inspiration, in
fact. Though I have scarcely done more than glance at his 'Passion
week,' and have little right to give an opinion.
If you have killed Luria as you helped to kill my violets, what shall
I say, do you fancy? Well--we shall see! Do not kill yourself,
beloved, in any case! The [Greek: iostephanoi Mousai] had better die
themselves first! Ah--what am I writing? What nonsense? I mean, in
deep earnest, the deepest, that you should take care and exercise, and
not be vexed for Luria's sake--Luria will have his triumph presently!
May God bless you--prays your own