The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning
imagine, at your brother's improved state.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Tuesday,
[Post-mark, October 15, 1845.]
Will this note reach you at the 'fatal hour' ... or sooner? At any rate it is forced to ask you to take Thursday for Wednesday, inasmuch as Mr. Kenyon in his exceeding kindness has put off his journey just for me, he says, because he saw me depressed about the decision, and wished to come and see me again to-morrow and talk the spirits up, I suppose. It is all so kind and good, that I cannot find a voice to grumble about the obligation it brings of writing thus. And then, if you suffer from cold and influenza, it will be better for you not to come for another day, ... I think that, for comfort. Shall I hear how you are to-night, I wonder? Dear Occy 'turned the corner,' the physician said, yesterday evening, and, although a little fluctuating to-day, remains on the whole considerably better. They were just in time to keep the fever from turning to typhus.
How fast you print your book, for it is to be out on the first of November! Why it comes out suddenly like the sun. Mr. Kenyon asked me if I had seen anything you were going to print; and when I mentioned the second part of the 'Duchess' and described how your perfect rhymes, perfectly new, and all clashing together as by natural attraction, had put me at once to shame and admiration, he began to praise the first part of the same poem (which I had heard him do before, by the way) and extolled it as one of your most striking productions.
And so until Thursday! May God bless you—
and as the heart goes, ever yours.
I am glad for Tennyson, and glad for Keats. It is well to be able to be glad about something—is is it not? about something out of ourselves. And (in myself) I shall be most glad, if I have a letter to-night. Shall I?
R.B. to E.B.B.
[Post-mark, October 15, 1845.]
Thanks, my dearest, for the good news—of the fever's abatement—it is good, too, that you write cheerfully, on the whole: what is it to me that you write is of me ... I shall never say that! Mr. Kenyon is all kindness, and one gets to take it as not so purely natural a thing, the showing kindness to those it concerns, and belongs to,—well! On Thursday, then,—to-morrow! Did you not get a note of mine, a hurried note, which was meant for yesterday-afternoon's delivery?
Mr. Forster came yesterday and was very profuse of graciosities: he may have, or must have meant well, so we will go on again with the friendship, as the snail repairs his battered shell.
My poems went duly to press on Monday night—there is not much correctable in them,—you make, or you spoil, one of these things; that is, I do. I have adopted all your emendations, and thrown in lines and words, just a morning's business; but one does not write plays so. You may like some of my smaller things, which stop interstices, better than what you have seen; I shall wonder to know. I am to receive a proof at the end of the week—will you help me and over-look it. ('Yes'—she says ... my thanks I do not say!—)
While writing this, the Times catches my eye (it just came in) and something from the Lancet is extracted, a long article against quackery—and, as I say, this is the first and only sentence I read—'There is scarcely a peer of the realm who is not the patron of some quack pill or potion: and the literati too, are deeply tainted. We have heard of barbarians who threw quacks and their medicines into the sea: but here in England we have Browning, a prince of poets, touching the pitch which defiles and making Paracelsus the hero of a poem. Sir E.L. Bulwer writes puffs for the water doctors in a style worthy of imitation by the scribe that does the poetical for Moses and Son. Miss Martineau makes a finessing servant girl her physician-general: and Richard Howitt and the Lady aforesaid stand God-father and mother to the contemptible mesmeric vagaries of Spencer Hall.'—Even the sweet incense to me fails of its effect if Paracelsus is to figure on a level with Priessnitz, and 'Jane'!
What weather, now at last! Think for yourself and for me—could you not go out on such days?
I am quite well now—cold, over and gone. Did I tell you my Uncle arrived from Paris on Monday, as they hoped he would—so my travel would have been to great purpose!
Bless my dearest—my own!
R.B.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, October 16, 1845.]
Your letter which should have reached me in the morning of yesterday, I did not receive until nearly midnight—partly through the eccentricity of our new postman whose good pleasure it is to make use of the letter-box without knocking; and partly from the confusion in the house, of illness in different ways ... the very servants being ill, ... one of them breaking a blood-vessel—for there is no new case of fever; ... and for dear Occy, he grows better slowly day by day. And just so late last night, five letters were found in the letter-box, and mine ... yours ... among them—which accounts for my beginning to answer it only now.
What am I to say but this ... that I know what you are ... and that I know also what you are to me,—and that I should accept that knowledge as more than sufficient recompense for worse vexations than these late ones. Therefore let no more be said of them: and no more need be said, even if they were not likely to prove their own end good, as I believe with you. You may be quite sure that I shall be well this winter, if in any way it should be possible, and that I will not be beaten down, if the will can do anything. I admire how, if all had happened so but a year ago, (yet it could not have happened quite so!), I should certainly have been beaten down—and how it is different now, ... and how it is only gratitude to you, to say that it is different now. My cage is not worse but better since you brought the green groundsel to it—and to dash oneself against the wires of it will not open the door. We shall see ... and God will oversee. And in the meantime you will not talk of extravagances; and then nobody need hold up the hand—because, as I said and say, I am yours, your own—only not to hurt you. So now let us talk of the first of November and of the poems which are to come out then, and of the poems which are to come after then—and of the new avatar of 'Sordello,' for instance, which you taught me to look for. And let us both be busy and cheerful—and you will come and see me throughout the winter, ... if you do not decide rather on going abroad, which may be better ... better for your health's sake?—in which case I shall have your letters.
And here is another ... just arrived. How I thank you. Think of the Times! Still it was very well of them to recognise your principality. Oh yes—do let me see the proof—I understand too about the 'making and spoiling.'
Almost you forced me to smile by thinking it worth while to say that you are 'not selfish.' Did Sir Percival say so to Sir Gawaine across the Round Table, in those times of chivalry to which you belong by the soul? Certainly you are not selfish! May God bless you.
Ever your
E.B.B.
The fever may last, they say, for a week longer, or even a fortnight—but it decreases. Yet he is hot still, and very weak.
To to-morrow!
E.B.B. to R.B.
Friday.
[Post-mark, October 17, 1845.]
Do tell me what you mean precisely by your 'Bells and Pomegranates' title. I have always understood it to refer to the Hebraic priestly garment—but Mr. Kenyon held against me the other day that your reference was different, though he had not the remotest idea how. And yesterday I forgot to ask, for not the first time. Tell me too why you should not in the new number satisfy, by a note somewhere, the Davuses of the world who are in the majority ('Davi sumus, non Oedipi') with a solution of this one Sphinx riddle. Is there a reason against it?
Occy continues to make progress—with a pulse at