The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning
then, the last 'Thought' which is quite to be grudged to that place of fragments ... those grand sea-sights in the long lines. Should not these fragments be severed otherwise than by numbers? The last stanza but one of the 'Lost Mistress' seemed obscure to me. Is it so really? The end you have put to 'England in Italy' gives unity to the whole ... just what the poem wanted. Also you have given some nobler lines to the middle than met me there before. 'The Duchess' appears to me more than ever a new-minted golden coin—the rhythm of it answering to your own description, 'Speech half asleep, or song half awake?' You have right of trove to these novel effects of rhythm. Now if people do not cry out about these poems, what are we to think of the world?
May God bless you always—send me the next proof in any case.
Your
E.B.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
[Post-mark, October 23, 1845.]
But I must answer you, and be forgiven, too, dearest. I was (to begin at the beginning) surely not 'startled' ... only properly aware of the deep blessing I have been enjoying this while, and not disposed to take its continuance as pure matter of course, and so treat with indifference the first shadow of a threatening intimation from without, the first hint of a possible abstraction from the quarter to which so many hopes and fears of mine have gone of late. In this case, knowing you, I was sure that if any imaginable form of displeasure could touch you without reaching me, I should not hear of it too soon—so I spoke—so you have spoken—and so now you get 'excused'? No—wondered at, with all my faculty of wonder for the strange exalting way you will persist to think of me; now, once for all, I will not pass for what I make no least pretence to. I quite understand the grace of your imaginary self-denial, and fidelity to a given word, and noble constancy; but it all happens to be none of mine, none in the least. I love you because I love you; I see you 'once a week' because I cannot see you all day long; I think of you all day long, because I most certainly could not think of you once an hour less, if I tried, or went to Pisa, or 'abroad' (in every sense) in order to 'be happy' ... a kind of adventure which you seem to suppose you have in some way interfered with. Do, for this once, think, and never after, on the impossibility of your ever (you know I must talk your own language, so I shall say—) hindering any scheme of mine, stopping any supposable advancement of mine. Do you really think that before I found you, I was going about the world seeking whom I might devour, that is, be devoured by, in the shape of a wife ... do you suppose I ever dreamed of marrying? What would it mean for me, with my life I am hardened in—considering the rational chances; how the land is used to furnish its contingent of Shakespeare's women: or by 'success,' 'happiness' &c. &c. you never never can be seeing for a moment with the world's eyes and meaning 'getting rich' and all that? Yet, put that away, and what do you meet at every turn, if you are hunting about in the dusk to catch my good, but yourself?
I know who has got it, caught it, and means to keep it on his heart—the person most concerned—I, dearest, who cannot play the disinterested part of bidding you forget your 'protestation' ... what should I have to hold by, come what will, through years, through this life, if God shall so determine, if I were not sure, sure that the first moment when you can suffer me with you 'in that relation,' you will remember and act accordingly. I will, as you know, conform my life to any imaginable rule which shall render it possible for your life to move with it and possess it, all the little it is worth.
For your friends ... whatever can be 'got over,' whatever opposition may be rational, will be easily removed, I suppose. You know when I spoke lately about the 'selfishness' I dared believe I was free from, I hardly meant the low faults of ... I shall say, a different organization to mine—which has vices in plenty, but not those. Besides half a dozen scratches with a pen make one stand up an apparent angel of light, from the lawyer's parchment; and Doctors' Commons is one bland smile of applause. The selfishness I deprecate is one which a good many women, and men too, call 'real passion'—under the influence of which, I ought to say 'be mine, what ever happens to you'—but I know better, and you know best—and you know me, for all this letter, which is no doubt in me, I feel, but dear entire goodness and affection, of which God knows whether I am proud or not—and now you will let me be, will not you. Let me have my way, live my life, love my love.
When I am, praying God to bless her ever,
R.B.
E.B.B. to R.B.
[Post-mark, October 24, 1845.]
'And be forgiven' ... yes! and be thanked besides—if I knew how to thank you worthily and as I feel ... only that I do not know it, and cannot say it. And it was not indeed 'doubt' of you—oh no—that made me write as I did write; it was rather because I felt you to be surely noblest, ... and therefore fitly dearest, ... that it seemed to me detestable and intolerable to leave you on this road where the mud must splash up against you, and never cry 'gare.' Yet I was quite enough unhappy yesterday, and before yesterday ... I will confess to-day, ... to be too gratefully glad to 'let you be' ... to 'let you have your way'—you who overcome always! Always, but where you tell me not to think of you so and so!—as if I could help thinking of you so, and as if I should not take the liberty of persisting to think of you just so. 'Let me be'—Let me have my way.' I am unworthy of you perhaps in everything except one thing—and that, you cannot guess. May God bless you—
Ever I am yours.
The proof does not come!
E.B.B. to R.B.
Friday.
[Post-mark, October 25, 1845.]
I wrote briefly yesterday not to make my letter longer by keeping it; and a few last words which belong to it by right, must follow after it ... must—for I want to say that you need not indeed talk to me about squares being not round, and of you being not 'selfish'! You know it is foolish to talk such superfluities, and not a compliment.
I won't say to my knowledge of you and faith in you ... but to my understanding generally. Why should you say to me at all ... much less for this third or fourth time ... 'I am not selfish?' to me who never ... when I have been deepest asleep and dreaming, ... never dreamed of attributing to you any form of such a fault? Promise not to say so again—now promise. Think how it must sound to my ears, when really and truly I have sometimes felt jealous of myself ... of my own infirmities, ... and thought that you cared for me only because your chivalry touched them with a silver sound—and that, without them, you would pass by on the other side:—why twenty times I have thought that and been vexed—ungrateful vexation! In exchange for which too frank confession, I will ask for another silent promise ... a silent promise—no, but first I will say another thing.
First I will say that you are not to fancy any the least danger of my falling under displeasure through your visits—there is no sort of risk of it for the present—and if I ran the risk of making you uncomfortable about that, I did foolishly, and what I meant to do was different. I wish you also to understand that even if you came here every day, my brothers and sisters would simply care to know if I liked it, and then be glad if I was glad:—the caution referred to one person alone. In relation to whom, however, there will be no 'getting over'—you might as well think to sweep off a third of the stars of Heaven with the motion of your eyelashes—this, for matter of fact and certainty—and this, as I said before, the keeping of a general rule and from no disrespect towards individuals: a great peculiarity in the individual of course. But ... though I have been a submissive daughter, and this from no effort, but for love's sake ... because I loved him tenderly (and love him), ... and hoped that he loved me back again even if the proofs came untenderly sometimes—yet I have reserved for myself always that right over my own affections which is the most strictly personal of all things, and which involves principles and consequences of infinite importance and scope—even though I never thought (except perhaps when the door of life was just about to open ... before it opened) never thought it probable or possible that I should have occasion