Chapter III: Part 3

If you did but know dear Mr. Browning how often I have written ... not this letter I am about to write, but another better letter to you, ... in the midst of my silence, ... you would not think for a moment that the east wind, with all the harm it does to me, is able to do the great harm of putting out the light of the thought of you to my mind; for this, indeed, it has no power to do. I had the pen in my hand once to write; and why it fell out, I cannot tell you. And you see, ... all your writing will not change the wind! You wished all manner of good to me one day as the clock struck ten; yes, and I assure you I was better that day--and I must not forget to tell you so though it is so long since. And _therefore_, I was logically bound to believe that you had never thought of me since ... unless you thought east winds of me! _That_ was quite clear; was it not? or would have been; if it had not been for the supernatural conviction, I had above all, of your kindness, which was too large to be taken in the hinge of a syllogism. In fact I have long left off thinking that logic proves anything--it _doesn't_, you know.

But your Lamia has taught you some subtle 'viperine' reasoning and _motiving_, for the turning down one street instead of another. It was conclusive.

Ah--but you will never persuade me that I am the better, or as well, for the thing that I have not. We look from different points of view, and yours is the point of attainment. Not that you do not truly say that, when all is done, we must come home to place our engines, and act by our own strength. I do not want material as material; no one does--but every life requires a full experience, a various experience--and I have a profound conviction that where a poet has been shut from most of the outward aspects of life, he is at a lamentable disadvantage. Can you, speaking for yourself, separate the results in you from the external influences at work around you, that you say so boldly that you get nothing from the world? You do not _directly_, I know--but you do indirectly and by a rebound. Whatever acts upon you, becomes _you_--and whatever you love or hate, whatever charms you or is scorned by you, acts on you and becomes _you_. Have you read the 'Improvisatore'? or will you? The writer seems to feel, just as I do, the good of the outward life; and he is a poet in his soul. It is a book full of beauty and had a great charm to me.

As to the Polkas and Cellariuses I do not covet them of course ... but what a strange world you seem to have, to me at a distance--what a strange husk of a world! How it looks to me like mandarin-life or something as remote; nay, not mandarin-life but mandarin _manners_, ... life, even the outer life, meaning something deeper, in my account of it. As to dear Mr. Kenyon I do not make the mistake of fancying that many can look like him or talk like him or _be_ like him. I know enough to know otherwise. When he spoke of me he should have said that I was better notwithstanding the east wind. It is really true--I am getting slowly up from the prostration of the severe cold, and feel stronger in myself.

But Mrs. Norton discourses excellent music--and for the rest, there are fruits in the world so over-ripe, that they will fall, ... without being gathered. Let Maynooth witness to it! _if you think it worth while_!

Ever yours,

ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

And _is it_ nothing to be 'justified to one's self in one's resources?' '_That's all_,' indeed! For the 'soul's country' we will have it also--and I know how well the birds sing in it. How glad I was by the way to see your letter!

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, April 30, 1845.]

If you did but know, dear Miss Barrett, how the 'full stop' after 'Morning' just above, has turned out the fullest of stops,--and how for about a quarter of an hour since the ink dried I have been reasoning out the why and wherefore of the stopping, the wisdom of it, and the folly of it....

By this time you see what you have got in me--You ask me questions, 'if I like novels,' 'if the "Improvisatore" is not good,' 'if travel and sightseeing do not effect this and that for one,' and 'what I am devising--play or poem,'--and I shall not say I could not answer at all manner of lengths--but, let me only begin some good piece of writing of the kind, and ... no, you shall have it, have what I was going to tell you stops such judicious beginnings,--in a parallel case, out of which your ingenuity shall, please, pick the meaning--There is a story of D'Israeli's, an old one, with an episode of strange interest, or so I found it years ago,--well, you go breathlessly on with the people of it, page after page, till at last the end _must_ come, you feel--and the tangled threads draw to one, and an out-of-door feast in the woods helps you ... that is, helps them, the people, wonderfully on,--and, lo, dinner is done, and Vivian Grey is here, and Violet Fane there,--and a detachment of the party is drafted off to go catch butterflies, and only two or three stop behind. At this moment, Mr. Somebody, a good man and rather the lady's uncle, 'in answer to a question from Violet, drew from his pocket a small neatly written manuscript, and, seating himself on an inverted wine-cooler, proceeded to read the following brief remarks upon the characteristics of the Moeso-gothic literature'--this ends the page,--which you don't turn at once! But when you _do_, in bitterness of soul, turn it, you read--'On consideration, I' (Ben, himself) 'shall keep them for Mr. Colburn's _New Magazine_'--and deeply you draw thankful breath! (Note this 'parallel case' of mine is pretty sure to meet the usual fortune of my writings--you will ask what it means--and this it means, or should mean, all of it, instance and reasoning and all,--that I am naturally earnest, in earnest about whatever thing I do, and little able to write about one thing while I think of another)--

I think I will really write verse to you some day--_this_ day, it is quite clear I had better give up trying.

No, spite of all the lines in the world, I will make an end of it, as Ophelia with her swan's-song,--for it grows too absurd. But remember that I write letters to nobody but you, and that I want method and much more. That book you like so, the Danish novel, must be full of truth and beauty, to judge from the few extracts I have seen in Reviews. That a Dane should write so, confirms me in an old belief--that Italy is stuff for the use of the North, and no more--pure Poetry there is none, nearly as possible none, in Dante even--material for Poetry in the pitifullest romancist of their thousands, on the contrary--strange that those great wide black eyes should stare nothing out of the earth that lies before them! Alfieri, with even grey eyes, and a life of travel, writes you some fifteen tragedies as colourless as salad grown under a garden glass with matting over it--as free, that is, from local colouring, touches of the soil they are said to spring from,--think of 'Saulle,' and his Greek attempts!

I expected to see Mr. Kenyon, at a place where I was last week, but he kept away. Here is the bad wind back again, and the black sky. I am sure I never knew till now whether the East or West or South were the quarter to pray for--But surely the weather was a little better last week, and you, were you not better? And do you know--but it's all self-flattery I believe,--still I cannot help fancying the East wind does my head harm too!

Ever yours faithfully,

R. BROWNING.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Thursday.
[Post-mark, May 2, 1845.]

People say of you and of me, dear Mr. Browning, that we love the darkness and use a sphinxine idiom in our talk; and really you do talk a little like a sphinx in your argument drawn from 'Vivian Grey.' Once I sate up all night to read 'Vivian Grey'; but I never drew such an argument from him. Not that I give it up (nor _you_ up) for a mere mystery. Nor that I can '_see what you have got in you_,' from a mere guess. But just observe! If I ask questions about novels, is it not because I want to know how much elbow-room there may be for our sympathies ... and whether there is room for my loose sleeves, and the lace lappets, as well as for my elbows; and because I want to see _you_ by the refracted lights as well as by the direct ones; and because I am willing for you to know _me_ from the beginning, with all my weaknesses and foolishnesses, ... as they are accounted by people who say to me 'no one would ever think, without knowing you, that you were so and so.' Now if I send all my idle questions to _Colburn's Magazine_, with other Gothic literature, and take to standing up in a perpendicular personality like the angel on the schoolman's needle, in my letters to come, without further leaning to the left or the right--why the end would be that _you_ would take to 'running after the butterflies,' for change of air and exercise. And then ... oh ... then, my 'small neatly written manuscripts' might fall back into my desk...! (_Not_ a 'full stop'!.)

Indeed ... I do assure you ... I never for a moment thought of 'making conversation' about the 'Improvisatore' or novels in general, when I wrote what I did to you. I might, to other persons ... perhaps. Certainly not to _you_. I was not dealing round from one pack of cards to you and to others. That's what you meant to reproach me for you know,--and of that, I am not guilty at all. I never could think of 'making conversation' in a letter to _you_--never. Women are said to partake of the nature of children--and my brothers call me 'absurdly childish' sometimes: and I am capable of being childishly 'in earnest' about novels, and straws, and such 'puppydogs' tails' as my Flush's! Also I write more letters than you do, ... I write in fact almost as you pay visits, ... and one has to 'make conversation' in turn, of course. _But_--give me something to vow by--whatever you meant in the 'Vivian Grey' argument, you were wrong in it! and you never can be much more wrong--which is a comfortable reflection.

Yet you leap very high at Dante's crown--or you do not leap, ... you simply extend your hand to it, and make a rustling among the laurel leaves, which is somewhat prophane. Dante's poetry only materials for the northern rhymers! I must think of that ... if you please ... before I agree with you. Dante's poetry seems to come down in hail, rather than in rain--but count me the drops congealed in one hailstone! Oh! the 'Flight of the Duchess'--do let us hear more of her! Are you (I wonder) ... not a 'self-flatterer,' ... but ... a flatterer.

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Saturday Morning.
[Post-mark, May 3, 1845.]

Now shall you see what you shall see--here shall be 'sound speech not to be reproved,'--for this morning you are to know that the soul of me has it all her own way, dear Miss Barrett, this green cool nine-in-the-morning time for my chestnut tree over there, and for me who only coaxed my good-natured--(really)--body up, after its three-hours' night-rest on condition it should lounge, or creep about, incognito and without consequences--and so it shall, all but my right-hand which is half-spirit and 'cuts' its poor relation, and passes itself off for somebody (that is, some soul) and is doubly active and ready on such occasions--Now I shall tell you all about it, first what last letter meant, and then more. You are to know, then that for some reason, that looked like an instinct, I thought I ought not to send shaft on shaft, letter-plague on letter, with such an uninterrupted clanging ... that I ought to wait, say a week at least having killed all your mules for you, before I shot down your dogs--but not being exactly Phoibos Apollon, you are to know further that when I _did_ think I might go modestly on, ... [Greek: ômoi], let me get out of this slough of a simile, never mind with what dislocation of ancles! Plainly, from waiting and turning my eyes away (not from _you_, but from you in your special capacity of being _written_-to, not spoken-to) when I turned again you had grown formidable somehow--though that's not the word,--nor are you the person, either,--it was my fortune, my privilege of being your friend this one way, that it seemed a shame for me to make no better use of than taking it up with talk about books and I don't know what. Write what I will, you would read for once, I think--well, then,--what I shall write shall be--something on this book, and the other book, and my own books, and Mary Hewitt's books, and at the end of it--good bye, and I hope here is a quarter of an hour rationally spent. So the thought of what I should find in my heart to say, and the contrast with what I suppose I ought to say ... all these things are against me. But this is very foolish, all the same, I need not be told--and is part and parcel of an older--indeed primitive body of mine, which I shall never wholly get rid of, of desiring to do nothing when I cannot do all; seeing nothing, getting, enjoying nothing, where there is no seeing and getting and enjoying _wholly_--and in this case, moreover, you are _you_, and know something about me, if not much, and have read Bos on the art of supplying Ellipses, and (after, particularly, I have confessed all this, why and how it has been) you will _subaudire_ when I pull out my Mediæval-Gothic-Architectural-Manuscript (so it was, I remember now,) and instruct you about corbeils and ogives ... though, after all, it was none of Vivian's doing, that,--all the uncle kind or man's, which I never professed to be. Now you see how I came to say some nonsense (I very vaguely think _what_) about Dante--some desperate splash I know I made for the beginning of my picture, as when a painter at his wits' end and hunger's beginning says 'Here shall the figure's hand be'--and spots _that_ down, meaning to reach it naturally from the other end of his canvas,--and leaving off tired, there you see the spectral disjoined thing, and nothing between it and rationality. I intended to shade down and soften off and put in and leave out, and, before I had done, bring Italian Poets round to their old place again in my heart, giving new praise if I took old,--anyhow Dante is out of it all, as who knows but I, with all of him in my head and heart? But they do fret one, those tantalizing creatures, of fine passionate class, with such capabilities, and such a facility of being made pure mind of. And the special instance that vexed me, was that a man of sands and dog-roses and white rock and green sea-water just under, should come to Italy where my heart lives, and discover the sights and sounds ... certainly discover them. And so do all Northern writers; for take up handfuls of sonetti, rime, poemetti, doings of those who never did anything else,--and try and make out, for yourself, what ... say, what flowers they tread on, or trees they walk under,--as you might bid _them_, those tree and flower loving creatures, pick out of _our_ North poetry a notion of what _our_ daisies and harebells and furze bushes and brambles are--'Odorosi fioretti, rose porporine, bianchissimi gigli.' And which of you eternal triflers was it called yourself 'Shelley' and so told me years ago that in the mountains it was a feast

When one should find those globes of deep red gold--
Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.

so that when my Uncle walked into a sorb-tree, not to tumble sheer over Monte Calvano, and I felt the fruit against my face, the little ragged bare-legged guide fairly laughed at my knowing them so well--'Niursi--sorbi!' No, no,--does not all Naples-bay and half Sicily, shore and inland, come flocking once a year to the Piedigrotta fête only to see the blessed King's Volanti, or livery servants all in their best; as though heaven opened; and would not I engage to bring the whole of the Piano (of Sorrento) in likeness to a red velvet dressing gown properly spangled over, before the priest that held it out on a pole had even begun his story of how Noah's son Shem, the founder of Sorrento, threw it off to swim thither, as the world knows he did? Oh, it makes one's soul angry, so enough of it. But never enough of telling you--bring all your sympathies, come with loosest sleeves and longest lace-lappets, and you and yours shall find 'elbow room,' oh, shall you not! For never did man, woman or child, Greek, Hebrew, or as Danish as our friend, like a thing, not to say love it, but I liked and loved it, one liking neutralizing the rebellious stir of its fellow, so that I don't go about now wanting the fixed stars before my time; this world has not escaped me, thank God; and--what other people say is the best of it, may not escape me after all, though until so very lately I made up my mind to do without it;--perhaps, on that account, and to make fair amends to other people, who, I have no right to say, complain without cause. I have been surprised, rather, with something not unlike illness of late--I have had a constant pain in the head for these two months, which only very rough exercise gets rid of, and which stops my 'Luria' and much besides. I thought I never could be unwell. Just now all of it is gone, thanks to polking all night and walking home by broad daylight to the surprise of the thrushes in the bush here. And do you know I said 'this must _go_, cannot mean to stay, so I will not tell Miss Barrett why this and this is not done,'--but I mean to tell you all, or more of the truth, because you call me 'flatterer,' so that my eyes widened again! I, and in what? And of whom, pray? not of _you_, at all events,--of whom then? _Do_ tell me, because I want to stand with you--and am quite in earnest there. And 'The Flight of the Duchess,' to leave nothing out, is only the beginning of a story written some time ago, and given to poor Hood in his emergency at a day's notice,--the true stuff and story is all to come, the 'Flight,' and what you allude to is the mere introduction--but the Magazine has passed into other hands and I must put the rest in some 'Bell' or other--it is one of my Dramatic Romances. So is a certain 'Saul' I should like to show you one day--an ominous liking--for nobody ever sees what I do till it is printed. But as you _do_ know the printed little part of me, I should not be sorry if, in justice, you knew all I have _really_ done,--written in the portfolio there,--though that would be far enough from _this_ me, that wishes to you now. I should like to write something in concert with you, how I would try!

I have read your letter through again. Does this clear up all the difficulty, and do you see that I never dreamed of 'reproaching you for dealing out one sort of cards to me and everybody else'--but that ... why, '_that_' which I have, I hope, said, so need not resay. I will tell you--Sydney Smith laughs somewhere at some Methodist or other whose wont was, on meeting an acquaintance in the street, to open at once on him with some enquiry after the state of his soul--Sydney knows better now, and sees that one might quite as wisely ask such questions as the price of Illinois stock or condition of glebe-land,--and I _could_ say such--'could,'--the plague of it! So no more at present from your loving.... Or, let me tell you I am going to see Mr. Kenyon on the 12th inst.--that you do not tell me how you are, and that yet if you do not continue to improve in health ... I shall not see you--not--not--not--what 'knots' to untie! Surely the wind that sets my chestnut-tree dancing, all its baby-cone-blossoms, green now, rocking like fairy castles on a hill in an earthquake,--that is South West, surely! God bless you, and me in that--and do write to me soon, and tell me who was the 'flatterer,' and how he never was

Yours

R.B.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Monday--and Tuesday.
[Post-mark, May 6, 1845.]

So when wise people happen to be ill, they sit up till six o'clock in the morning and get up again at nine? Do tell me how Lurias can ever be made out of such ungodly imprudences. If the wind blows east or west, where can any remedy be, while such evil deeds are being committed? And what is to be the end of it? And what is the reasonableness of it in the meantime, when we all know that thinking, dreaming, creating people like yourself, have two lives to bear instead of one, and therefore ought to sleep more than others, ... throwing over and buckling in that fold of death, to stroke the life-purple smoother. You have to live your own personal life, and also Luria's life--and therefore you should sleep for both. It is logical indeed--and rational, ... which logic is not always ... and if I had 'the tongue of men and of angels,' I would use it to persuade you. Polka, for the rest, may be good; but sleep is better. I think better of sleep than I ever did, now that she will not easily come near me except in a red hood of poppies. And besides, ... praise your 'goodnatured body' as you like, ... it is only a seeming goodnature! Bodies bear malice in a terrible way, be very sure!--appear mild and smiling for a few short years, and then ... out with a cold steel; and the _soul has it_, 'with a vengeance,' ... according to the phrase! You will not persist, (will you?) in this experimental homicide. Or tell me if you will, that I may do some more tearing. It really, really is wrong. Exercise is one sort of rest and you feel relieved by it--and sleep is another: one being as necessary as the other.

This is the first thing I have to say. The next is a question. _What do you mean about your manuscripts ... about 'Saul' and the portfolio?_ for I am afraid of hazardously supplying ellipses--and your 'Bos' comes to [Greek: bous epi glôssê].[1] I get half bribed to silence by the very pleasure of fancying. But if it could be possible that you should mean to say you would show me.... Can it be? or am I reading this 'Attic contraction' quite the wrong way? You see I am afraid of the difference between flattering myself and being flattered; the fatal difference. And now will you understand that I should be too overjoyed to have revelations from the 'Portfolio,' ... however incarnated with blots and pen-scratches, ... to be able to ask impudently of them now? Is that plain?

It must be, ... at any rate, ... that if _you_ would like to 'write something together' with me, _I_ should like it still better. I should like it for some ineffable reasons. And I should not like it a bit the less for the grand supply of jests it would administer to the critical Board of Trade, about visible darkness, multiplied by two, mounting into palpable obscure. We should not mind ... should we? _you_ would not mind, if you had got over certain other considerations deconsiderating to your coadjutor. Yes--but I dare not do it, ... I mean, think of it, ... just now, if ever: and I will tell you why in a Mediæval-Gothic-architectural manuscript.

The only poet by profession (if I may say so,) except yourself, with whom I ever had much intercourse even on paper, (if this is near to 'much') has been Mr. Horne. We approached each other on the point of one of Miss Mitford's annual editorships; and ever since, he has had the habit of writing to me occasionally; and when I was too ill to write at all, in my dreary Devonshire days, I was his debtor for various little kindnesses, ... for which I continue his debtor. In my opinion he is a truehearted and generous man. Do you not think so? Well--long and long ago, he asked me to write a drama with him on the Greek model; that is, for me to write the choruses, and for him to do the dialogue. Just then it was quite doubtful in my own mind, and worse than doubtful, whether I ever should write again; and the very doubtfulness made me speak my 'yes' more readily. Then I was desired to make a subject, ... to conceive a plan; and my plan was of a man, haunted by his own soul, ... (making her a separate personal Psyche, a dreadful, beautiful Psyche)--the man being haunted and terrified through all the turns of life by her. Did you ever feel afraid of your own soul, as I have done? I think it is a true wonder of our humanity--and fit subject enough for a wild lyrical drama. I should like to write it by myself at least, well enough. But with him I will not now. It was delayed ... delayed. He cut the plan up into scenes ... I mean into a list of scenes ... a sort of ground-map to work on--and there it lies. Nothing more was done. It all lies in one sheet--and I have offered to give up my copyright of idea in it--if he likes to use it alone--or I should not object to work it out alone on my own side, since it comes from me: only I will not consent now to a _double work_ in it. There are objections--none, be it well understood, in Mr. Horne's disfavour,--for I think of him as well at this moment, and the same in all essential points, as I ever did. He is a man of fine imagination, and is besides good and generous. In the course of our acquaintance (on paper--for I never saw him) I never was angry with him except once; and then, _I_ was quite wrong and had to confess it. But this is being too 'mediæval.' Only you will see from it that I am a little entangled on the subject of compound works, and must look where I tread ... and you will understand (if you ever hear from Mr. Kenyon or elsewhere that I am going to write a compound-poem with Mr. Horne) how it _was_ true, and isn't true any more.

Yes--you are going to Mr. Kenyon's on the 12th--and yes--my brother and sister are going to meet you and your sister there one day to dinner. Shall I have courage to see you soon, I wonder! If you ask me, I must ask myself. But oh, this make-believe May--it can't be May after all! If a south-west wind sate in your chestnut tree, it was but for a few hours--the east wind 'came up this way' by the earliest opportunity of succession. As the old 'mysteries' showed 'Beelzebub with a bearde,' even so has the east wind had a 'bearde' of late, in a full growth of bristling exaggerations--the English spring-winds have excelled themselves in evil this year; and I have not been down-stairs yet.--_But_ I am certainly stronger and better than I was--that is undeniable--and I _shall_ be better still. You are not going away soon--are you? In the meantime you do not know what it is to be ... a little afraid of Paracelsus. So right about the Italians! and the 'rose porporine' which made me smile. How is the head?

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

Is the 'Flight of the Duchess' in the portfolio? Of course you must ring the Bell. That poem has a strong heart in it, to begin _so_ strongly. Poor Hood! And all those thoughts fall mixed together. May God bless you.

[Footnote 1: Aeschylus, _Agamemnon_ 36: 'An ox hath trodden on my tongue'--a Greek proverb implying silence.]

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Sunday--in the last hour of it.
[Post-mark, May 12, 1845.]

May I ask how the head is? just under the bag? Mr. Kenyon was here to-day and told me such bad news that I cannot sleep to-night (although I did think once of doing it) without asking such a question as this, dear Mr. Browning.

Let me hear how you are--Will you? and let me hear (if I can) that it was prudence or some unchristian virtue of the sort, and not a dreary necessity, which made you put aside the engagement for Tuesday--for Monday. I had been thinking so of seeing you on Tuesday ... with my sister's eyes--for the first sight.

And now if you have done killing the mules and the dogs, let me have a straight quick arrow for myself, if you please. Just a word, to say how you are. I ask for no more than a word, lest the writing should be hurtful to you.

May God bless you always.

Your friend,

E.B.B.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Monday.
[Post-mark, May 12, 1845.]

My dear, own friend, I am quite well now, or next to it--but this is how it was,--I have gone out a great deal of late, and my head took to ringing such a literal alarum that I wondered what was to come of it; and at last, a few evenings ago, as I was dressing for a dinner somewhere, I got really bad of a sudden, and kept at home to my friend's heartrending disappointment. Next morning I was no better--and it struck me that I should be really disappointing dear kind Mr. Kenyon, and wasting his time, if that engagement, too, were broken with as little warning,--so I thought it best to forego all hopes of seeing him, at such a risk. And that done, I got rid of every other promise to pay visits for next week and next, and told everybody, with considerable dignity, that my London season was over for this year, as it assuredly is--and I shall be worried no more, and let walk in the garden, and go to bed at ten o'clock, and get done with what is most expedient to do, and my 'flesh shall come again like a little child's,' and one day, oh the day, I shall see you with my own, own eyes ... for, how little you understand me; or rather, yourself,--if you think I would dare see you, without your leave, that way! Do you suppose that your power of giving and refusing ends when you have shut your room-door? Did I not tell you I turned down another street, even, the other day, and why not down yours? And often as I see Mr. Kenyon, have I ever dreamed of asking any but the merest conventional questions about you; your health, and no more?

I will answer your letter, the last one, to-morrow--I have said nothing of what I want to say.

Ever yours

R.B.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Tuesday Morning.
[Post-mark, May 13, 1845.]

Did I thank you with any effect in the lines I sent yesterday, dear Miss Barrett? I know I felt most thankful, and, of course, began reasoning myself into the impropriety of allowing a 'more' or a 'most' in feelings of that sort towards you. I am thankful for you, all about you--as, do you not know?

Thank you, from my soul.

Now, let me never pass occasion of speaking well of Horne, who deserves your opinion of him,--it is my own, too.--He has unmistakable genius, and is a fine, honest, enthusiastic chivalrous fellow--it is the fashion to affect to sneer at him, of late, I think--the people he has praised fancying that they 'pose' themselves sculpturesquely in playing the Greatly Indifferent, and the other kind shaking each other's hands in hysterical congratulations at having escaped such a dishonour: _I_ feel grateful to him, I know, for his generous criticism, and glad and proud of in any way approaching such a man's standard of poetical height. And he might be a disappointed man too,--for the players trifled with and teased out his very nature, which has a strange aspiration for the horrible tin-and-lacquer 'crown' they give one from their clouds (of smooth shaven deal done over blue)--and he don't give up the bad business yet, but thinks a 'small' theatre would somehow not be a theatre, and an actor not quite an actor ... I forget in what way, but the upshot is, he bates not a jot in that rouged, wigged, padded, empty-headed, heartless tribe of grimacers that came and canted me; not I, them;--a thing he cannot understand--_so_, I am not the one he would have picked out to praise, had he not been _loyal_. I know he admires your poetry properly. God help him, and send some great artist from the country, (who can read and write beside comprehending Shakspeare, and who 'exasperates his H's' when the feat is to be done)--to undertake the part of Cosmo, or Gregory, or what shall most soothe his spirit! The subject of your play is tempting indeed--and reminds one of that wild Drama of Calderon's which frightened Shelley just before his death--also, of Fuseli's theory with reference to his own Picture of Macbeth in the witches' cave ... wherein the apparition of the armed head from the cauldron is Macbeth's own.

'If you ask me, I must ask myself'--that is, when I am to see you--I will _never_ ask you! You do _not_ know what I shall estimate that permission at,--nor do I, quite--but you do--do not you? know so much of me as to make my 'asking' worse than a form--I do not 'ask' you to write to me--not _directly_ ask, at least.

I will tell you--I ask you _not_ to see me so long as you are unwell, or mistrustful of--

No, no, that is being too grand! Do see me when you can, and let me not be only writing myself

Yours

R.B.

A kind, so kind, note from Mr. Kenyon came. We, I and my sister, are to go in June instead.... I shall go nowhere till then; I am nearly well--all save one little wheel in my head that keeps on its

That you are better I am most thankful.

'Next letter' to say how you must help me with all my new Romances and Lyrics, and Lays and Plays, and read them and heed them and end them and mend them!

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Thursday.
[Post-mark, May 16, 1845.]

But how 'mistrustfulness'? And how 'that way?' What have I said or done, _I_, who am not apt to _be_ mistrustful of anybody and should be a miraculous monster if I began with _you_! What can I have said, I say to myself again and again.

One thing, at any rate, I have done, 'that way' or this way! I have made what is vulgarly called a 'piece of work' about little; or seemed to make it. Forgive me. I am shy by nature:--and by position and experience, ... by having had my nerves shaken to excess, and by leading a life of such seclusion, ... by these things together and by others besides, I have appeared shy and ungrateful to you. Only not mistrustful. You could not mean to judge me so. Mistrustful people do not write as I write, surely! for wasn't it a Richelieu or Mazarin (or who?) who said that with five lines from anyone's hand, he could take off his head for a corollary? I think so.

Well!--but this is to prove that I am not mistrustful, and to say, that if you care to come to see me you can come; and that it is my gain (as I feel it to be) and not yours, whenever you do come. You will not talk of having come afterwards I know, because although I am 'fast bound' to see one or two persons this summer (besides yourself, whom I receive of choice and willingly) I _cannot_ admit visitors in a general way--and putting the question of health quite aside, it would be unbecoming to lie here on the sofa and make a company-show of an infirmity, and hold a beggar's hat for sympathy. I should blame it in another woman--and the sense of it has had its weight with me sometimes.

For the rest, ... when you write, that _I_ do not know how you would value, &c. _nor yourself quite_, you touch very accurately on the truth ... and _so_ accurately in the last clause, that to read it, made me smile 'tant bien que mal.' Certainly you cannot 'quite know,' or know at all, whether the least straw of pleasure can go to you from knowing me otherwise than on this paper--and I, for my part, 'quite know' my own honest impression, dear Mr. Browning, that none is likely to go to you. There is nothing to see in me; nor to hear in me--I never learnt to talk as you do in London; although I can admire that brightness of carved speech in Mr. Kenyon and others. If my poetry is worth anything to any eye, it is the flower of me. I have lived most and been most happy in it, and so it has all my colours; the rest of me is nothing but a root, fit for the ground and the dark. And if I write all this egotism, ... it is for shame; and because I feel ashamed of having made a fuss about what is not worth it; and because you are extravagant in caring so for a permission, which will be nothing to you afterwards. Not that I am not touched by your caring so at all! I am deeply touched now; and presently, ... I shall understand. Come then. There will be truth and simplicity for you in any case; and a friend. And do not answer this--I do not write it as a fly trap for compliments. Your spider would scorn me for it too much. Also, ... as to the how and when. You are not well now, and it cannot be good for you to do anything but be quiet and keep away that dreadful musical note in the head. I entreat you not to think of coming until _that_ is all put to silence satisfactorily. When it is done, ... you must choose whether you would like best to come with Mr. Kenyon or to come alone--and if you would come alone, you must just tell me on what day, and I will see you on any day unless there should be an unforeseen obstacle, ... any day after two, or before six. And my sister will bring you up-stairs to me; and we will talk; or _you_ will talk; and you will try to be indulgent, and like me as well as you can. If, on the other hand, you would rather come with Mr. Kenyon, you must wait, I imagine, till June,--because he goes away on Monday and is not likely immediately to return--no, on Saturday, to-morrow.

In the meantime, why I should be '_thanked_,' is an absolute mystery to me--but I leave it!

You are generous and impetuous; _that_, I can see and feel; and so far from being of an inclination to mistrust you or distrust you, I do profess to have as much faith in your full, pure loyalty, as if I had known you personally as many years as I have appreciated your genius. Believe this of me--for it is spoken truly.

In the matter of Shakespeare's 'poor players' you are severe--and yet I was glad to hear you severe--it is a happy excess, I think. When men of intense reality, as all great poets must be, give their hearts to be trodden on and tied up with ribbons in turn, by men of masks, there will be torture if there is not desecration. Not that I know much of such things--but I have _heard_. Heard from Mr. Kenyon; heard from Miss Mitford; who however is passionately fond of the theatre as a writer's medium--_not at all_, from Mr. Horne himself, ... except what he has printed on the subject.

Yes--he has been infamously used on the point of the 'New Spirit'--only he should have been prepared for the infamy--it was leaping into a gulph, ... not to 'save the republic,' but '_pour rire_': it was not merely putting one's foot into a hornet's nest, but taking off a shoe and stocking to do it. And to think of Dickens being dissatisfied! To think of Tennyson's friends grumbling!--he himself did not, I hope and trust. For you, you certainly were not adequately treated--and above all, you were not placed with your _peers_ in that chapter--but that there was an intention to do you justice, and that there _is_ a righteous appreciation of you in the writer, I know and am sure,--and that _you_ should be sensible to this, is only what I should know and be sure of _you_. Mr. Horne is quite above the narrow, vicious, hateful jealousy of contemporaries, which we hear reproached, too justly sometimes, on men of letters.

I go on writing as if I were not going to see you--soon perhaps. Remember that the how and the when rest with you--except that it cannot be before next week at the soonest. You are to decide.

Always your friend,

E.B.B.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Friday Night.
[Post-mark, May 17, 1845.]

My friend is not 'mistrustful' of me, no, because she don't fear I shall make mainprize of the stray cloaks and umbrellas down-stairs, or turn an article for _Colburn's_ on her sayings and doings up-stairs,--but spite of that, she does mistrust ... _so_ mistrust my common sense,--nay, uncommon and dramatic-poet's sense, if I am put on asserting it!--all which pieces of mistrust I could detect, and catch struggling, and pin to death in a moment, and put a label in, with name, genus and species, just like a horrible entomologist; only I won't, because the first visit of the Northwind will carry the whole tribe into the Red Sea--and those horns and tails and scalewings are best forgotten altogether. And now will I say a cutting thing and have done. Have I trusted _my_ friend so,--or said even to myself, much less to her, she is even as--'Mr. Simpson' who desireth the honour of the acquaintance of Mr. B. whose admirable works have long been his, Simpson's, especial solace in private--and who accordingly is led to that personage by a mutual friend--Simpson blushing as only adorable ingenuousness can, and twisting the brim of his hat like a sailor giving evidence. Whereupon Mr. B. beginneth by remarking that the rooms are growing hot--or that he supposes Mr. S. has not heard if there will be another adjournment of the House to-night--whereupon Mr. S. looketh up all at once, brusheth the brim smooth again with his sleeve, and takes to his assurance once more, in something of a huff, and after staying his five minutes out for decency's sake, noddeth familiarly an adieu, and spinning round on his heel ejaculateth mentally--'Well, I _did_ expect to see something different from that little yellow commonplace man ... and, now I come to think, there _was_ some precious trash in that book of his'--Have _I_ said 'so will Miss Barrett ejaculate?'

Dear Miss Barrett, I thank you for the leave you give me, and for the infinite kindness of the way of giving it. I will call at 2 on Tuesday--not sooner, that you may have time to write should any adverse circumstances happen ... not that they need inconvenience you, because ... what I want particularly to tell you for now and hereafter--do not mind my coming in the least, but--should you be unwell, for instance,--just send or leave word, and I will come again, and again, and again--my time is of _no_ importance, and I have acquaintances thick in the vicinity.

Now if I do not seem grateful enough to you, _am_ I so much to blame? You see it is high time you _saw_ me, for I have clearly written myself _out_!

Ever yours,

R.B.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Saturday.
[Post-mark, May 17, 1845.]

I shall be ready on Tuesday I hope, but I hate and protest against your horrible 'entomology.' Beginning to explain, would thrust me lower and lower down the circles of some sort of an 'Inferno'; only with my dying breath I would maintain that I never could, consciously or unconsciously, mean to distrust you; or, the least in the world, to Simpsonize you. What I said, ... it was _you_ that put it into my head to say it--for certainly, in my usual disinclination to receive visitors, such a feeling does not enter. There, now! There, I am a whole 'giro' lower! Now, you will say perhaps that I distrust _you_, and nobody else! So it is best to be silent, and bear all the 'cutting things' with resignation! _that_ is certain.

Still I must really say, under this dreadful incubus-charge of Simpsonism, ... that you, who know everything, or at least make awful guesses at everything in one's feelings and motives, and profess to be able to pin them down in a book of classified inscriptions, ... should have been able to understand better, or misunderstand less, in a matter like this--Yes! I think so. I think you should have made out the case in some such way as it was in nature--viz. that you had lashed yourself up to an exorbitant wishing to see me, ... (you who could see, any day, people who are a hundredfold and to all social purposes, my superiors!) because I was unfortunate enough to be shut up in a room and silly enough to make a fuss about opening the door; and that I grew suddenly abashed by the consciousness of this. How different from a distrust of _you_! how different!

Ah--if, after this day, you ever see any interpretable sign of distrustfulness in me, you may be 'cutting' again, and I will not cry out. In the meantime here is a fact for your 'entomology.' I have not so much _distrust_, as will make a _doubt_, as will make a _curiosity_ for next Tuesday. Not the simplest modification of _curiosity_ enters into the state of feeling with which I wait for Tuesday:--and if you are angry to hear me say so, ... why, you are more unjust than ever.

(Let it be three instead of two--if the hour be as convenient to yourself.)

Before you come, try to forgive me for my 'infinite kindness' in the manner of consenting to see you. Is it 'the cruellest cut of all' when you talk of infinite kindness, yet attribute such villainy to me? Well! but we are friends till Tuesday--and after perhaps.

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

If on Tuesday you should be not well, _pray do not come_--Now, that is my request to your kindness.[1]

[Footnote 1: Envelope endorsed by Robert Browning:--Tuesday, May 20, 1845, 3-4-1/2 p.m.]

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, May 21, 1845.]

I trust to you for a true account of how you are--if tired, if not tired, if I did wrong in any thing,--or, if you please, _right_ in any thing--(only, not one more word about my 'kindness,' which, to get done with, I will grant is exceptive)--but, let us so arrange matters if possible,--and why should it not be--that my great happiness, such as it will be if I see you, as this morning, from time to time, may be obtained at the cost of as little inconvenience to you as we can contrive. For an instance--just what strikes me--they all say here I speak very loud--(a trick caught from having often to talk with a deaf relative of mine). And did I stay too long?

I will tell _you_ unhesitatingly of such 'corrigenda'--nay, I will again say, do not humiliate me--_do not_ again,--by calling me 'kind' in that way.

I am proud and happy in your friendship--now and ever. May God bless you!

R.B.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, May 22, 1845.]

Indeed there was nothing wrong--how could there be? And there was everything right--as how should there not be? And as for the 'loud speaking,' I did not hear any--and, instead of being worse, I ought to be better for what was certainly (to speak it, or be silent of it,) happiness and honour to me yesterday.

Which reminds me to observe that you are so restricting our vocabulary, as to be ominous of silence in a full sense, presently. First, one word is not to be spoken--and then, another is not. And why? Why deny me the use of such words as have natural feelings belonging to them--and how can the use of such be 'humiliating' to _you_? If my heart were open to you, you could see nothing offensive to you in any thought there or trace of thought that has been there--but it is hard for you to understand, with all your psychology (and to be reminded of it I have just been looking at the preface of some poems by some Mr. Gurney where he speaks of 'the reflective wisdom of a Wordsworth and the profound psychological utterances of a Browning') it is hard for you to understand what my mental position is after the peculiar experience I have suffered, and what [Greek: ti emoi kai soi][1] a sort of feeling is irrepressible from me to you, when, from the height of your brilliant happy sphere, you ask, as you did ask, for personal intercourse with me. What words but 'kindness' ... but 'gratitude'--but I will not in any case be _un_kind and _un_grateful, and do what is displeasing to you. And let us both leave the subject with the words--because we perceive in it from different points of view; we stand on the black and white sides of the shield; and there is no coming to a conclusion.

But you will come really on Tuesday--and again, when you like and can together--and it will not be more 'inconvenient' to me to be pleased, I suppose, than it is to people in general--will it, do you think? Ah--how you misjudge! Why it must obviously and naturally be delightful to me to receive you here when you like to come, and it cannot be necessary for me to say so in set words--believe it of

Your friend,

E.B.B.

[Mr. Browning's letter, to which the following is in answer was destroyed, see page 268 of the present volume.]

[Footnote 1: 'What have I to do with thee?']

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Friday Evening.
[Post-mark, May 24, 1845.]