The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning
conveniently to enclose to him back again a MS. of his own I had offered with another of his, by his desire, to Colburn's Magazine, as the productions of a friend of mine, when he was in Germany and afraid of his proper fatal onymousness, yet in difficulty how to approach the magazines as a nameless writer (you will not mention this of course). And when he was in Germany, I remember, ... writing just as your first letter came ... that I mentioned it to him, and was a little frankly proud of it! but since, your name has not occurred once—not once, certainly!—and it is strange.... Only he can't have heard of your having been here, and it must have been a chance-remark—altogether! taking an imaginary emphasis from my evil conscience perhaps. Talking of evils, how wrong of you to make that book for me! and how ill I thanked you after all! Also, I couldn't help feeling more grateful still for the Duchess ... who is under ban: and for how long I wonder?
My dear friend, I am ever yours,
E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, July 9, 1845.]
You are all that is good and kind: I am happy and thankful the beginning (and worst of it) is over and so well. The Park and Mr. Kenyon's all in good time—and your sister was most prudent—and you mean to try again: God bless you, all to be said or done—but, as I say it, no vain word. No doubt it was a mere chance-thought, and à propos de bottes of Horne—neither he or any other can know or even fancy how it is. Indeed, though on other grounds I should be all so proud of being known for your friend by everybody, yet there's no denying the deep delight of playing the Eastern Jew's part here in this London—they go about, you know by travel-books, with the tokens of extreme destitution and misery, and steal by blind ways and by-paths to some blank dreary house, one obscure door in it—which being well shut behind them, they grope on through a dark corridor or so, and then, a blaze follows the lifting a curtain or the like, for they are in a palace-hall with fountains and light, and marble and gold, of which the envious are never to dream! And I, too, love to have few friends, and to live alone, and to see you from week to week. Do you not suppose I am grateful?
And you do like the 'Duchess,' as much as you have got of it? that delights me, too—for every reason. But I fear I shall not be able to bring you the rest to-morrow—Thursday, my day—because I have been broken in upon more than one morning; nor, though much better in my head, can I do anything at night just now. All will come right eventually, I hope, and I shall transcribe the other things you are to judge.
To-morrow then—only (and that is why I would write) do, do know me for what I am and treat me as I deserve in that one respect, and go out, without a moment's thought or care, if to-morrow should suit you—leave word to that effect and I shall be as glad as if I saw you or more—reasoned gladness, you know. Or you can write—though that is not necessary at all,—do think of all this!
I am yours ever, dear friend,
R.B.
E.B.B. to R.B.
[Post-mark, July 12, 1845.]
You understand that it was not a resolution passed in favour of formality, when I said what I did yesterday about not going out at the time you were coming—surely you do; whatever you might signify to a different effect. If it were necessary for me to go out every day, or most days even, it would be otherwise; but as it is, I may certainly keep the day you come, free from the fear of carriages, let the sun shine its best or worst, without doing despite to you or injury to me—and that's all I meant to insist upon indeed and indeed. You see, Jupiter Tonans was good enough to come to-day on purpose to deliver me—one evil for another! for I confess with shame and contrition, that I never wait to enquire whether it thunders to the left or the right, to be frightened most ingloriously. Isn't it a disgrace to anyone with a pretension to poetry? Dr. Chambers, a part of whose office it is, Papa says, 'to reconcile foolish women to their follies,' used to take the side of my vanity, and discourse at length on the passive obedience of some nervous systems to electrical influences; but perhaps my faint-heartedness is besides traceable to a half-reasonable terror of a great storm in Herefordshire, where great storms most do congregate, (such storms!) round the Malvern Hills, those mountains of England. We lived four miles from their roots, through all my childhood and early youth, in a Turkish house my father built himself, crowded with minarets and domes, and crowned with metal spires and crescents, to the provocation (as people used to observe) of every lightning of heaven. Once a storm of storms happened, and we all thought the house was struck—and a tree was so really, within two hundred yards of the windows while I looked out—the bark, rent from the top to the bottom ... torn into long ribbons by the dreadful fiery hands, and dashed out into the air, over the heads of other trees, or left twisted in their branches—torn into shreds in a moment, as a flower might be, by a child! Did you ever see a tree after it has been struck by lightning? The whole trunk of that tree was bare and peeled—and up that new whiteness of it, ran the finger-mark of the lightning in a bright beautiful rose-colour (none of your roses brighter or more beautiful!) the fever-sign of the certain death—though the branches themselves were for the most part untouched, and spread from the peeled trunk in their full summer foliage; and birds singing in them three hours afterwards! And, in that same storm, two young women belonging to a festive party were killed on the Malvern Hills—each sealed to death in a moment with a sign on the chest which a common seal would cover—only the sign on them was not rose-coloured as on our tree, but black as charred wood. So I get 'possessed' sometimes with the effects of these impressions, and so does one, at least, of my sisters, in a lower degree—and oh!—how amusing and instructive all this is to you! When my father came into the room to-day and found me hiding my eyes from the lightning, he was quite angry and called 'it disgraceful to anybody who had ever learnt the alphabet'—to which I answered humbly that 'I knew it was'—but if I had been impertinent, I might have added that wisdom does not come by the alphabet but in spite of it? Don't you think so in a measure? non obstantibus Bradbury and Evans? There's a profane question—and ungrateful too ... after the Duchess—I except the Duchess and her peers—and be sure she will be the world's Duchess and received as one of your most striking poems. Full of various power the poem is.... I cannot say how deeply it has impressed me—but though I want the conclusion, I don't wish for it; and in this, am reasonable for once! You will not write and make yourself ill—will you? or read 'Sybil' at unlawful hours even? Are you better at all? What a letter! and how very foolishly to-day
I am yours,
E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Sunday Morning.
[Post-mark, July 14, 1845.]
Very well—I shall say no more on the subject—though it was not any piece of formality on your part that I deprecated; nor even your over-kindness exactly—I rather wanted you to be really, wisely kind, and do me a greater favour then the next great one in degree; but you must understand this much in me, how you can lay me under deepest obligation. I daresay you think you have some, perhaps many, to whom your well-being is of deeper interest than to me. Well, if that be so, do for their sakes make every effort with the remotest chance of proving serviceable to you; nor set yourself against any little irksomeness these carriage-drives may bring with them just at the beginning; and you may say, if you like, 'how I shall delight those friends, if I can make this newest one grateful'—and, as from the known quantity one reasons out the unknown, this newest friend will be one glow of gratitude, he knows that, if you can warm your finger-tips and so do yourself that much real good, by setting light to a dozen 'Duchesses': why ought I not to say this when it is so true? Besides, people profess as much to their merest friends—for I have been looking through a poem-book just now, and was told, under the head of Album-verses alone, that for A. the writer would die, and for B. die too but a crueller death, and for C. too, and D. and so on. I wonder whether they have since wanted to borrow money of him on the strength of his professions. But you must remember we are in July; the 13th it is, and summer will go and cold weather stay ('come' forsooth!)—and