"Thursday evening.
Dearest you know how to say what makes me happiest, you who never
think, you say, of making me happy! For my part I do not think of it either– I
simply understand that you are my happiness, & that therefore you
could not make another happiness for me, such as would be worth having—not even
you! Why, how could you?– That was in my mind to speak yesterday,
but I could not speak it—to write it, is easier.
Talking of happiness, .. shall I tell you? Promise not to be
angry & I will tell you. I have thought sometimes that, if I considered
myself wholly, I should choose to die this winter .. now .. before I had
disappointed you in anything. But because you are better & dearer & more
to be considered than I, I do not choose it. I cannot choose to give you any pain, even on the chance of
its being a less pain, a less evil, than what may follow perhaps, (who can say?)
if I should prove the burden of your life.
For if you make me happy with some words, you frighten me with
others .. as with the extravagance yesterday!—& seriously, .. too
seriously, when the moment for smiling at them is past, .. I am frightened .. I
tremble! When you come to know me as well as I know myself, what can save me, do
you think, from disappointing & displeasing you? I ask the question, &
find no answer–
It is a poor answer, to say that I can do one thing well .. that
I have one capacity largely. On points of the general affections, I have in
thought applied to myself the words of Mdme de Stael .. not fretfully, I hope ..
not complainingly, I am sure .. (I can thank God for most affectionate friends!)
not complainingly, yet mournfully & in profound conviction .. those words ..
‘jamais je n’ai pas éte aimée comme j’aime’ [I have never been loved as I have loved]. The
capacity of loving is the largest of my powers I think– I thought so before
knowing you & one form of feeling. And although any woman might love you
.. every woman, .. with understanding enough to discern you by.—(oh, do
not fancy that I am unduly ‘magnifying mine office’) yet
I persist in persuading myself that .........! Because I have the capacity, as I
said!—and besides I owe more to you than others could, it seems to me!—let me
boast of it. To many, you might be better than all things while one of all
things:—to me you are instead of all!—to many, a crowning happiness.—to me, the
happiness itself. From out of the deep dark pits men see the stars more
gloriously—and de profundis amavi [Out of the depths have I loved]. .....
It is a very poor answer—! Almost as poor an answer as yours
could be if I were to ask you to teach me to please you always——or rather, how
not to displease you, disappoint you, vex you——what if all those things were
in my fate?"
She is morbid and a bit perverse but finally she admits that her love for Browning is profound. For the first time she uses the word 'love' in connection to him; today she does not simply 'care' for him.. She has a large capacity to love and she finally boasts in a self deprecating way: She can offer him nothing but the capacity to love him. She would rather die than hurt or disappoint him but does not chose to do so so as to not hurt him. Her convoluted reasoning is not unreasonable: what is worse than disappointing someone that you love and respect. Who among us doesn't at some point in their lives feel like a phony?
But she turns from her introspection to teazing:
"And .. (to begin! ..) I am
disappointed tonight. I expected a letter which does not come—& I had felt
so sure of having a letter tonight .. unreasonably sure perhaps, which means
doubly sure.
Friday. Remember you have had two notes of mine, &
that it is certainly not my turn to write, though I am writing.
Scarcely you had gone on wednesday when Mr Kenyon came. It seemed
best to me, you know, that you should go .. I had the presentiment of his
footsteps—&, so near they were, that if you had looked up the street in
leaving the door, you must have seen him! Of course I told him of your having
been here & also at his house, whereupon he enquired eagerly if you meant to
dine with him, seeming disappointed by my negative. 'Now I had told him,' he
said .. & murmured on to himself loud enough for me to hear, that 'it would
have been a peculiar pleasure &c'– The reason I have not seen him lately is
the eternal ‘business,’ just as you thought, & he means to come 'oftener
now'—so that nothing is wrong as I half thought.
As your letter does not come it is a good opportunity for asking
what sort of ill humour, or (to be more correct) bad temper, you most
particularly admire?—sulkiness? .. the divine gift of sitting aloof in a cloud
like any god for three weeks together perhaps—? pettishness .. which will get
you up a storm about a crooked pin or a straight one either? Obstinacy .. which
is an agreeable form of temper I can assure you, & describes itself?– Or the
good open passion which lies on the floor & kicks, like one of my cousins?– Certainly I prefer the last, & should
I think, prefer it, (as an evil) even if it were not the born weakness of my own
nature—though I humbly confess (to you, who seem to think differently of
these things) that never since I was a child, have I upset all the chairs &
tables & thrown the books about the room in a fury—I am afraid I do not even
‘kick’ .. like my cousin, now. Those demonstrations were all done by the 'light
of other days' .. not a very full light, I used to be
accustomed to think:—but you .. you think otherwise .. you
take a fury to be the opposite of ‘indifference’ .. as if there could be no such
thing as self-controul!. Now for my part, I do believe that the worst tempered
persons in the world, are less so through sensibility than selfishness—they
spare nobody’s heart, on the ground of being themselves pricked by a straw. Now
see if it is’nt so– What, after all, is a good temper but generosity in
trifles—& what without it, is the happiness of life?—we have only to look
round us. I saw a woman, once, burst into tears, because her husband cut
the bread & butter too thick. I saw that with my own eyes. Was it
sensibility, I wonder!– They were at least real tears & ran down her
cheeks. 'You always do it.'! she said."
I wonder what got them on the subject of 'ill humours'. We know Browning has a bad temper and Miss Barrett holds it all in and shuts down. They will be a good pair. Hopefully she will calm him down and he will draw her out.
"Why how you must sympathize with the heroes & heroines of the
French romances .. (do you sympathize with them very much? …) when at the
slightest provocation, they break up the tables & chairs, (a degree beyond
the deeds of my childhood!—I only used to upset them) break up the tables
& chairs & chiffoniers, & dash the china to atoms. The men do
the furniture, & the women the porcelain:—& pray observe that they
always set about this as a matter of course! When they have broken everything in
the room, they sink down quite (& very naturally) abattus [beaten down]! I remember a particular case of a hero of
Frederic Soulie’s who, in the course of an 'emotion,' takes up a chair
unconsciously, & breaks it into very small pieces, & then
proceeds with his soliloquy. Well!– The clearest idea this excites in me,
is of the low condition in Paris, of moral government & of upholstery.
Because .. just consider for yourself, .. how you would succeed in
breaking to pieces even a three-legged stool if it were properly put together as
stools are in England, .. just yourself, .. without a hammer & a
screw!—— You might work at it 'comme quatre [as hard as possible', &
find it hard to finish, I imagine. And then .. as a demonstration, … a child of
six years old might demonstrate just so (in his sphere) & be whipped
accordingly."
She obviously has never shopped at Rooms to Go (or as I am fond of calling it: Rooms to Glue). Just sayin'.
"How I go on writing!—& you, who do not write at all!—two
extremes, one set against the other.
But I must say, though in ever such an ill temper (which you know
is just the time to select for writing a panegyric upon good temper) that I am
glad you do not despise my own right name too much, because I never was called
Elizabeth by any one who loved me at all, & I accept the omen– So little it
seems my name that if a voice said suddenly ‘Elizabeth,’ I should as soon turn
round as my sisters would .. no sooner. Only, my own right name has been
complained of for want of euphony .. Ba .. now & then it has—& Mr
Boyd makes a compromise & calls me Elibet .. because nothing could
induce him to desecrate his organs accustomed to Attic harmonies, with a
Ba– So I am glad, & accept the omen.
But I give you no credit for not thinking that I may forget you
.. I!– As if you did not see the difference! Why, I could not even forget
to write to you, observe!——
Whenever you write, say, how you are. Were you wet on
wednesday?
Your own .."
What a wonderful letter. She begins with a bit of morbid, but loving, self examination and ends with an elegy on the joys of bad humor. I have a feeling that the visit of Wednesday was a success and the feeling has carried over into the next day.
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