"Two letters in one– Wednesday.
I shall see you tomorrow & yet am writing what you will have
to read perhaps. When you spoke of ‘stars’ & ‘geniuses’ in that letter, I
did not seem to hear,—I was listening to those words of the letter which were of
a better silver in the sound than even your praise could be: and now that at
last I come to hear them in their extravagance (oh such pure extravagance about
'glorious geniuses'—) I cant help telling you they were heard last, &
deserved it.
Shall I tell you besides?– The first moment in which I seemed to
admit to myself in a flash of lightning the possibility of your affection
for me being more than dream-work .. the first moment was that when you
intimated (as you have done since repeatedly) that you cared for me not for a
reason, but because you cared for me. Now
such a ‘parceque’[because] which reasonable
people wd take to be irrational, was just the only one fitted to the uses of my
understanding on the particular question we were upon .. just the ‘woman’s
reason’ suitable to the woman ..: for I could understand that it might be as you
said, & if so, that it was altogether unanswerable .. do you see?– If a fact
includes its own cause .. why there it stands for ever—one of 'earth’s
immortalities' —as long as it includes it–"
The thing I pick out of this paragraph is her reluctance to use the word love. Browning wrote in his letter of October 23, "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..." But she writes it here as "...you cared for me not for a reason, but because you cared for me." She is very careful not to use the word in connection to Browning. She will write that she loves her father and her siblings, but not the man that she is betrothed to.
"And when unreasonableness stands for a reason, it is a promising
state of things, we may both admit, & proves what it would be as well not
too curiously to enquire into. But then .. to look at it in a brighter aspect,
.. I do remember how, years ago, when talking the foolishnesses which women will
talk when they are by themselves, & not forced to be sensible, .. one of my
friends thought it 'safest to begin with a little aversion,' & another,
wisest to begin with a great deal of esteem, & how the best attachments were
produced so & so, .. I took it into my head to say that the best was where
there was no cause at all for it, &, the more wholly unreasonable, the
better still, .. that the motive shd lie in the feeling itself & not in the
object of it, & that the affection which could (if it could) throw itself
out on an idiot with a goitre would be more admirable than Abelard’s. Whereupon everybody laughed, & someone
thought it affected of me & no true opinion, & others said plainly that
it was immoral, & somebody else hoped in a sarcasm, that I meant to act out
my theory for the advantage of the world. To which I replied quite gravely that
I had not virtue enough .. & so, people laughed as it is fair to laugh when
other people are esteemed to talk nonsense. And all this came back to me in the
south wind of your ‘parceque’, & I tell it as it came .. now.
Which proves, if it proves anything, .. while I have every sort
of natural pleasure in your praises & like you to like my poetry just as I
should, & perhaps more than I should,—yet why it is all behind ..
& in its place—& why I have a tendency moreover to sift &
measure any praise of yours & to separate it from the superfluities, far
more than with any other person’s praise in the world."
She enjoys his praise of her poetry (and herself) but she does not trust his praise.....because it is not rational! Just as him 'caring' for her is not rational or as she puts it 'reasonable.'
Friday evening/ Shall I send this letter or not? I have
been ‘tra ’l si e ’l no’ [between yes and no] & writing a new
beginning on a new sheet even—but after all you ought to hear the remote echo of
your last letter .. far out among the hills, .. as well as the immediate
reverberation, & so I will send it,—& what I send is not to be answered,
remember!
___________________
I read Luria’s first act twice through before I slept last night,
& feel just as a bullet might feel, not because of the lead of it but
because shot into the air & suddenly arrested
& suspended. It (‘Luria’) is all life, & we know (that is, the reader
knows) that there must be results here & here. How fine that sight of Luria
is upon the lynx hides—how you see the Moor in him just in the glimpse you have
by the eyes of another—& that laugh when the horse drops the forage, what
wonderful truth & character you have in that!– And then, when
he is in the scene—! ‘Golden-hearted Luria’ you called him once to me, & his heart shines already .. wide open
to the morning sun– The construction seems to me very clear everywhere—& the
rhythm, even over-smooth in a few verses, where you invert a little
artificially—but that shall be set down on a separate strip of paper: & in the meantime I am snatched up into
‘Luria’ & feel myself driven on to the ends of the poet, just as a reader
should."
She has included a sheet of notes she made as she read Luria--which is not published with the letter. You get a taste of her review here. How she loves to dissect poetry.
"But you are not driven on to any ends? so as to be tired,
I mean? You will not suffer yourself to be overworked because you are
‘interested’ in this work. I am so certain that the sensations in your head
demand repose,—& it must be so injurious to you to be perpetually
calling, calling these new creations, one after another, that you must consent
to be called to, & not hurry the next act, no, nor any act—let the
people have time to learn the last number by heart. And how glad I am that Mr
Fox should say what he did of it .. though it was’nt
true you know .. not exactly. Still, I do hold that as far as construction goes,
you never put together so much unquestionable, smooth glory before, .. not a
single entanglement for the understanding .. unless ‘the snowdrops’ make an
exception—while for the undeniableness of genius it
never stood out before your readers more plainly than in that same number!– Also
you have extended your sweep of power—the sea-weed is thrown farther (if not
higher) than it was found before,—& one may calculate surely now how a few
more waves will cover the brown stones & float the sight up away through the
fissure of the rocks– The rhythm (to touch one of the various things) the rhythm
of that ‘Duchess’ does more & more strike me as a new thing; something like
(if like anything) what the Greeks called pedestrian metre,—between metre & prose .. the
difficult rhymes combining too quite curiously with the easy looseness of the
general measure. Then the Ride—with that touch of natural feeling at the end, to
prove that it was not in brutal carelessness that the poor horse was driven
through all that suffering. Yes, & how that one touch of softness acts back
upon the energy & resolution & exalts both, instead of weakening
anything, as might have been expected by the vulgar of writers or critics. And
then ‘Saul’—& in a first place ‘St Praxed’—& for pure description,
Fortù .. & the deep ‘Pictor Ignotus’—&
the noble, serene ‘Italy in England,’ which grows on you the more you know of
it—& the delightful ‘Glove’—& the short lyrics .. for one comes to
‘select’ everything at last, & certainly I do like these poems
better & better, as your poems are made to be liked. But you will be tired
to hear it said over & over so, .. & I am going to ‘Luria’, besides."
Apparently Mr. Fox wrote to Browning regarding the new book and he has shared the letter with Miss Barrett, but we do not know what he said that she considered kind but not true. Whatever it was it gave her an opportunity to praise his poetry to such an extent that she decides she better pull back.
When you write will you say exactly how you are? and will you
write?– And I want to explain to you that although I dont make a profession of
equable spirits, (as a matter of temperament, my spirits were always given to
rock a little, up & down) yet that I did not mean to be so ungrateful &
wicked as to complain of low spirits now & to you. It would not be true
either: & I said 'low' to express a merely bodily state. My opium comes in
to keep the pulse from fluttering & fainting .. to give the right composure
& point of balance to the nervous system. I dont take it for ‘my spirits’ in
the usual sense,—you must not think such a thing. The medical man who came to
see me made me take it the other day when he was in the room, before the right
hour & when I was talking quite cheerfully, just for the need he observed in
the pulse– ‘It was a necessity of my position,’ he said. Also I do not suffer
from it in any way, as people usually do who take opium. I am not even subject
to an opium-headache. —As to the low spirits I will not say that mine have
not been low enough & with cause enough, .. but even then, .. why
if you were to ask the nearest witnesses, .. say, even my own sisters, ..
everybody would tell you, I think, that the ‘cheerfulness’ even then, was
the remarkable thing in me .. certainly it has been remarked about me again
& again. Nobody has known that it was an effort (a habit of effort) to throw
the light on the outside,—I do abhor so that ignoble groaning aloud of the
'groans of Testy & Sensitive'—yet I may say that
for three years I never was conscious of one movement of pleasure in anything.
Think if I could mean to complain of ‘low spirits’ now, & to you!"
She is apologizing for her previous letter which she realizes was not an appropriate response to his words of love.
"<…>
Why it would be like complaining of not being able to see at
noon—which would simply prove that I was very blind. And you, who are not blind,
cannot make out what is written .. so you need
not try– May God bless you long after you have done blessing me!–Your own EBB"
Miss Barrett has crossed out a line of two and teazes Browning that he cannot possibly figure out what she has written.
"Now I am half tempted to tear this letter in two (& it is
long enough for three) & to send you only the latter half– But you will
understand—you will not think that there is a contradiction between the first
& last .. you cannot– One is a truth of me—& the other a truth of
you—& we two are different, you know.
You are not over-working in ‘Luria’? That you should not,
is a truth too–
I observed that Mr Kenyon put in ‘Junior’ to your address.
Ought that to be done? or does my fashion of directing find you without
hesitation?——"
Does she fear that Browning's father will read her letters? That might be interesting.
"Mr Kenyon asked me for Mr Chorley’s book, or you should have it–
Shall I send it to you presently?"
What is the deal with Kenyon? Does he take precedent in all things? It is a wonder Browning has anything to do with that man!
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