The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning
and by making it worth your while to account logically for your wish about my not mentioning it to Mr. Kenyon? You could not fancy for one moment that I was vexed in the matter of the book? or in the other matter of your wish? Now just hear me. I explained to you that I had been silent to Mr. Kenyon, first because the fact was so; and next and a little, because I wanted to show how I anticipated your wish by a wish of my own ... though from a different motive. Your motive I really did take to be (never suspecting my dear kind cousin of treason) to be a natural reluctancy of being convicted (forgive me!) of such an arch-womanly curiosity. For my own motive ... motives ... they are more than one ... you must trust me; and refrain as far as you can from accusing me of an over-love of Eleusinian mysteries when I ask you to say just as little about your visits here and of me as you find possible ... even to Mr. Kenyon ... as to every other person whatever. As you know ... and yet more than you know ... I am in a peculiar position—and it does not follow that you should be ashamed of my friendship or that I should not be proud of yours, if we avoid making it a subject of conversation in high places, or low places. There! that is my request to you—or commentary on what you put 'off your mind' yesterday—probably quite unnecessary as either request or commentary; yet said on the chance of its not being so, because you seemed to mistake my remark about Mr. Kenyon.
And your head, how is it? And do consider if it would not be wise and right on that account of your health, to go with Mr. Chorley? You can neither work nor enjoy while you are subject to attacks of the kind—and besides, and without reference to your present suffering and inconvenience, you ought not to let them master you and gather strength from time and habit; I am sure you ought not. Worse last week than ever, you see!—and no prospect, perhaps, of bringing out your "Bells" this autumn, without paying a cost too heavy!—Therefore ... the therefore is quite plain and obvious!—
Friday.—Just as it is how anxious Flush and I are, to be delivered from you; by these sixteen heads of the discourse of one of us, written before your letter came. Ah, but I am serious—and you will consider—will you not? what is best to be done? and do it. You could write to me, you know, from the end of the world; if you could take the thought of me so far.
And for me, no, and yet yes,—I will say this much; that I am not inclined to do you injustice, but justice, when you come here—the justice of wondering to myself how you can possibly, possibly, care to come. Which is true enough to be unanswerable, if you please—or I should not say it. 'As I began, so I shall end—' Did you, as I hope you did, thank your sister for Flush and for me? When you were gone, he graciously signified his intention of eating the cakes—brought the bag to me and emptied it without a drawback, from my hand, cake after cake. And I forgot the basket once again.
And talking of Italy and the cardinals, and thinking of some cardinal points you are ignorant of, did you ever hear that I was one of
'those schismatiques
of Amsterdam'
whom your Dr. Donne would have put into the dykes? unless he meant the Baptists, instead of the Independents, the holders of the Independent church principle. No—not 'schismatical,' I hope, hating as I do from the roots of my heart all that rending of the garment of Christ, which Christians are so apt to make the daily week-day of this Christianity so called—and caring very little for most dogmas and doxies in themselves—too little, as people say to me sometimes, (when they send me 'New Testaments' to learn from, with very kind intentions)—and believing that there is only one church in heaven and earth, with one divine High Priest to it; let exclusive religionists build what walls they please and bring out what chrisms. But I used to go with my father always, when I was able, to the nearest dissenting chapel of the Congregationalists—from liking the simplicity of that praying and speaking without books—and a little too from disliking the theory of state churches. There is a narrowness among the dissenters which is wonderful; an arid, grey Puritanism in the clefts of their souls: but it seems to me clear that they know what the 'liberty of Christ' means, far better than those do who call themselves 'churchmen'; and stand altogether, as a body, on higher ground. And so, you see, when I talked of the sixteen points of my discourse, it was the foreshadowing of a coming event, and you have had it at last in the whole length and breadth of it. But it is not my fault if the wind began to blow so that I could not go out—as I intended—as I shall do to-morrow; and that you have received my dulness in a full libation of it, in consequence. My sisters said of the roses you blasphemed, yesterday, that they 'never saw such flowers anywhere—anywhere here in London—' and therefore if I had thought so myself before, it was not so wrong of me. I put your roses, you see, against my letter, to make it seem less dull—and yet I do not forget what you say about caring to hear from me—I mean, I do not affect to forget it.
May God bless you, far longer than I can say so.
E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Sunday Evening.
[Post-mark, August 4, 1845.]
I said what you comment on, about Mr. Kenyon, because I feel I must always tell you the simple truth—and not being quite at liberty to communicate the whole story (though it would at once clear me from the charge of over-curiosity ... if I much cared for that!)—I made my first request in order to prevent your getting at any part of it from him which should make my withholding seem disingenuous for the moment—that is, till my explanation came, if it had an opportunity of coming. And then, when I fancied you were misunderstanding the reason of that request—and supposing I was ambitious of making a higher figure in his eyes than your own,—I then felt it 'on my mind' and so spoke ... a natural mode of relief surely! For, dear friend, I have once been untrue to you—when, and how, and why, you know—but I thought it pedantry and worse to hold by my words and increase their fault. You have forgiven me that one mistake, and I only refer to it now because if you should ever make that a precedent, and put any least, most trivial word of mine under the same category, you would wrong me as you never wronged human being:—and that is done with. For the other matter,—the talk of my visits, it is impossible that any hint of them can ooze out of the only three persons in the world to whom I ever speak of them—my father, mother and sister—to whom my appreciation of your works is no novelty since some years, and whom I made comprehend exactly your position and the necessity for the absolute silence I enjoined respecting the permission to see you. You may depend on them,—and Miss Mitford is in your keeping, mind,—and dear Mr. Kenyon, if there should be never so gentle a touch of 'garrulous God-innocence' about those kind lips of his. Come, let me snatch at that clue out of the maze, and say how perfect, absolutely perfect, are those three or four pages in the 'Vision' which present the Poets—a line, a few words, and the man there,—one twang of the bow and the arrowhead in the white—Shelley's 'white ideal all statue-blind' is—perfect,—how can I coin words? And dear deaf old Hesiod—and—all, all are perfect, perfect! But 'the Moon's regality will hear no praise'—well then, will she hear blame? Can it be you, my own you past putting away, you are a schismatic and frequenter of Independent Dissenting Chapels? And you confess this to me—whose father and mother went this morning to the very Independent Chapel where they took me, all those years back, to be baptised—and where they heard, this morning, a sermon preached by the very minister who officiated on that other occasion! Now will you be particularly encouraged by this successful instance to bring forward any other point of disunion between us that may occur to you? Please do not—for so sure as you begin proving that there is a gulf fixed between us, so sure shall I end proving that ... Anne Radcliffe avert it!... that you are just my sister: not that I am much frightened, but there are such surprises in novels!—Blame the next,—yes, now this is to be real blame!—And I meant to call your attention to it before. Why, why, do you blot out, in that unutterably provoking manner, whole lines, not to say words, in your letters—(and in the criticism on the 'Duchess')—if it is a fact that you have a second thought, does it cease to be as genuine a fact, that first thought you please to efface? Why give a thing and take a thing? Is there no significance in putting on record that your first impression was to a certain effect and your next to a certain other, perhaps completely opposite one? If any proceeding