December 12, 1845

Browning recorded his 34th meeting with Miss Barrett on the back of the envelope she mailed him on December 9, 1845 thusly: "+ Thursday. Dec. 11. / 3–4¾. p.m. "
This meeting led to some complications regarding a contingency plan. Browning had apparently suggested giving Mr. Barrett a letter explaining their situation in case they were ever discovered.

"Friday.

And now, my heart’s love, I am waiting to hear from you,—my heart is full of you: when I try to remember what I said yesterday, that thought, of what fills my heart,—only that makes me bear with the memory .. I know that even such imperfect, poorest of words must have come from thence if not bearing up to you all that is there—and I know you are ever above me to receive, and help, and forgive, and wait for the one day which I will never say to myself cannot come, when I shall speak what I feel—more of it—or some of it—for now nothing is spoken."

 

If Miss Barrett has a recurring theme of inadequacy Browning's theme is inarticulacy. (Is that a word? It must be, it passed muster with spellcheck.) He says his words are "imperfect, poorest" to convey his true feelings and next he will proceed to break your heart with breathtaking word images. He is like Scotty on Star Trek telling Captain Kirk that he will need 20 minutes to recharge the engines and then does it in 15: it makes him look like an engineering genius.

"My all-beloved–

Ah, you opposed very rightly, I dare say, the writing that paper I spoke of! The process should be so much simpler! I most earnestly EXPECT of you, my love, that in the event of any such necessity as was then alluded to, you accept at once in my name any conditions possible for a human will to submit to—there is no imaginable condition to which you allow me to accede that I will not joyfully bend all my faculties to comply with. —And you know this—but so, also, do you know more .. and yet 'I may tire of you'—'may forget you'.

___________________________________________________________

I will write again, having the long, long week to wait! And one of the things I must say, will be, that with my love, I cannot lose my pride in you—that nothing but that love, could balance that pride—and that, blessing the love so divinely, you must minister to the pride as well, yes, my own—I shall follow your fame,—and, better than fame, the good you do—in the world—and, if you please, it shall all be mine—as your hand, as your eyes–

I will write and pray it from you into a promise .. and your promises I live upon.

May God bless you!

your RB."

 

I have no acerbic comment to make about Browning's letter. When he gets it right, he gets it right.

 

Miss Barrett very much has their meeting on her mind today:

 

"Friday.

Do not blame me in your thoughts for what I said yesterday or wrote a day before, or think perhaps on the dark side of some other days when I cannot help it .. always when I cannot help it—you could not blame me if you saw the full motives as I feel them. If it is distrust, it is not of you, dearest of all!—but of myself rather:—it is not doubt of you, but for you. From the beginning I have been subject to the too reasonable fear which rises as my spirits fall, that your happiness might suffer in the end through your having known me:—it is for you, I fear, whenever I fear:—and if you were less to me, .. should I fear do you think?—if you were to me only what I am to myself for instance, .. if your happiness were only as precious as my own in my own eyes, .. should I fear, do you think, then? Think, & do not blame me.

To tell you to 'forget me when forgetting seemed happiest for you', .. (was it not that, I said?) proved more affection than might go in smoother words .. I could prove the truth of that out of my heart.

And for the rest, you need not fear any fear of mine—my fear will not cross a wish of yours, be sure! Neither does it prevent your being all to me .. all!—more than I used to take for all when I looked round the world, .. almost more than I took for all in my earliest dreams. You stand in between me & not merely the living who stood closest, but between me & the closer graves, .. & I reproach myself for this sometimes, &, so, ask you not to blame me for a different thing.

As to unfavorable influences, .. I can speak of them quietly, having forseen them from the first, .. & it is true, I have been thinking since yesterday, that I might be prevented from receiving you here, & should, if all were known: but with that act, the adverse power would end. It is not my fault if I have to choose between two affections,—only my pain: & I have not to choose between two duties, I feel, .. since I am yours, while I am of any worth to you at all. For the plan of the sealed letter it would correct no evil,—ah, you do not see, you do not understand. The danger does not come from the side to which a reason may go. Only one person holds the thunder—& I shall be thundered at; I shall not be reasoned with—it is impossible. I could tell you some dreary chronicles made for laughing & crying over; & you know that if I once thought I might be loved enough to be spared above others, I cannot think so now. In the meanwhile we need not for the present be afraid– Let there be ever so many suspectors, there will be no informers.– I suspect the suspectors, but the informers are out of the world I am very sure:—and then, the one person, by a curious anomaly, never draws an inference of this order, until the bare blade of it is thrust palpably into his hand, point outwards. So it has been in other cases than ours—& so it is, at this moment in the house, with others than ourselves."

 

She is describing her father, of course, and her sister Henrietta who had an understanding with her cousin Surtees Cook. Henrietta and Surtees' problem was money. They neither had money to set up an independent household. They did marry in 1850 after Cook approached Mr. Barrett who told him that he would not give his blessing to such a marriage. Henrietta was disowned and cut out of the Barrett will, just as EBB was. Such was the 'thunder' of Papa Barrett. He would not tolerate his children getting married.

 

"I have your letter to stop me—. If I had my whole life in my hands with your letter, could I thank you for it, I wonder, at all worthily?– I cannot believe that I could. Yet in life & in death I shall be grateful to you.–

But for the paper—no– Now, observe, that it would seem like a prepared apology for something wrong. And besides, .. the apology could be nothing but the offence in another form .. unless you said it was all a mistake .. (will you, again?) .. that it was all a mistake & you were only calling for your boots!—— Well, if you said that, it would be worth writing,—but anything less would be something worse than nothing, & would not save me .. which you were thinking of, I know,—would not save me the least of the stripes– For ‘conditions’––now I will tell you what I said once in a jest ..

'If a prince of Eldorado should come, with a pedigree of lineal descent from some signory in the moon in one hand, & a ticket of good-behaviour from the nearest Independent chapel, in the other' ....

'Why even then,' said my sister Arabel, 'it would not do.' And she was right, & we all agreed that she was right. It is an obliquity of the will—& one laughs at it till the turn comes for crying. Poor Henrietta has suffered silently, with that softest of possible natures, which hers is indeed,—beginning with implicit obedience, & ending with something as unlike it as possible: but, you see, where money is wanted, & where the dependance is total … see! And when once, in the case of the one dearest to me, .. when just at the last he was involved in the same grief, & I attempted to make over my advantages to him; (it could be no sacrifice, you know .. I did not want the money, & could buy nothing with it so good as his happiness, ..) why then, my hands were siezed & tied—& then & there, in the midst of the trouble, .. came the end of all!– I tell you all this, just to make you understand a little. Did I not tell you before? But there is no danger at present—& why ruffle this present with disquieting thoughts? why not leave that future to itself? For me, I sit in the track of the avalanche quite calmly .. so calmly as to surprise myself at intervals—& yet I know the reason of the calmness well."

 

She is referring to her brother 'Bro' who apparently was in love with a 'Monti Garden'. Mr. Footnote provides this quote from a letter Henrietta wrote to their brother Sam, September 14, 1839: "As October approaches, Bro’s spirits rise—you know perhaps, what happiness is likely to befall him then—that the Gardens are coming back then, & Monti will be here to ride with him. I hope you look forward with satisfaction to her being your sister—for I really think it is very likely to be—if poor Bro only had a sufficiency to maintain a wife!”

 

"For Mr Kenyon .. dear Mr Kenyon .. he will speak the softest of words, if any .. only he will think privately that you are foolish & that I am ungenerous—but I will not say so any more now, so as to teaze you.

There is another thing, of more consequence than his thoughts, which is often in my mind to ask you of—but there will be time for such questions—let us leave the winter to its own peace. If I should be ill again you will be reasonable & we both must submit to God’s necessity. Not, you know, that I have the least intention of being ill, if I can help it—& in the case of a tolerably mild winter, or with all this strength to use, there are probabilities for me—& then I have sunshine from you, which is better than Pisa’s.

And what more would you say? Do I not hear & understand!– It seems to me that I do both,—or why all this wonder & gratitude? If the devotion of the remainder of my life could prove that I hear,—would it be proof enough? Proof enough perhaps—but not gift enough.

May God bless you always–"

 

For all her apparent negativity and doubt she apparently had plenty of reason for it. If she goes with Browning there will be no coming back to Papa Barrett. She owes it to both of them to be sure that she is able and the he is aware of all the difficulties that go along with the act and what follows that act. I know I have said this before, but she is the realist in this relationship and he is the romantic. He seems to see no difficulties ahead.

 

"I have put some of the hair into a little locket which was given to me when I was a child by my favorite uncle, Papa’s only brother, who used to tell me that he loved me better than my own father did, & was jealous when I was not glad. It is through him in part, that I am richer than my sisters—through him & his mother—& a great grief it was & trial, when he died, a few years ago in Jamaica, proving by his last act that I was unforgotten. And now I remember how he once said to me .. 'Do you beware of ever loving!– If you do, you will not do it half: it will be for life & death.'

So I put the hair into his locket ..which I wear habitually, .. & which never had hair before .. the natural use of it being for perfume:—& this is the best perfume for all hours, besides the completing of a prophecy.

Your EBB"

 

Her uncle really does seem to be a prophet. He was the founder of the feast, you could say, for his verbal prophesy would have come to a bitter end without the gift of a small income for Miss Barrett. And for those who say that everything happens for a reason: if Bro had lived and Miss Barrett had made over her legacy to him she could never have afforded to marry the penniless poet. However, if that suggestion was made to Miss Barrett she most surely would have rejected it.

 

 

December 9, 1845

The embarrassment over the congratulatory letters to Talfourd continues on December 9th with some painful self admission by Browning about his literary failures:

"Tuesday Mg

Well then, I am no longer sorry that I did not read either of your letters .. for there were two in the collection: I did not read one word of them—and hear why: when your brother & I took the book between us in wonderment at the notion—we turned to the index, in large text-hand, and stopped at 'Miss B.'—and he, indeed read them, or some of them, but holding the volume at a distance which defied my shortsighted eye— all I saw was the faint small charactery—and, do you know .. I neither trusted myself to ask a nearer look .. nor a second look .. as if I were studying unduly what I had just said was most unfairly exposed to view!—so I was silent, and lost you (in that)—then, and forever, I promise you, now that you speak of vexation it would give you. All I know of the notes is, that one is addressed to Talfourd in the third person—and when I had run thro’ my own .. not far off .. (BA-BR)—I was sick of the book altogether– You are generous to me—but, to say the truth, I might have remembered the most justifying circumstance in my case .. which was, that my own 'Paracelsus,' printed a few months before, had been as dead a failure as 'Ion' a brilliant success—for, until just before .. ah, really I forget!—but I know that until Forster’s notice in the 'Examiner' appeared, every journal that thought worth while to allude to the poem at all, treated it with entire contempt .. beginning, I think, with the 'Athenæum' which then made haste to say, a few days after its publication, 'that it was not without talent but spoiled by obscurity and only an imitation of—Shelley!'—something to this effect, in a criticism of about three lines among their 'Library Table' notices: and that first taste was a most flattering sample of what the 'craft' had in store for me—since my publisher and I had fairly to laugh at his 'Book'—(quite of another kind than the Serjeant’s—) in which he was used to paste extracts from newspapers & the like—seeing that, out of a long string of notices, one vied with its predecessor in disgust at my 'rubbish,' as their word went: but Forster’s notice altered a good deal—which I have to recollect for his good. Still, the contrast between myself and Talfourd was so utter,—you remember the world’s-wonder 'Ion' made,—that I was determined not to pass for the envious piece of neglected merit I really was not—and so!–"

 

This is a novel idea: keep a scrapbook of all of your bad reviews and invite friends to your home and leave it on the coffee table to permit them to read from the book. Certainly less vain than allowing them to read the letters of praise and more fun as well.

 

Happily he turns to another subject: Miss Barrett's efforts to educate the Americans on Browning's brilliance.

"But, dearest, why should you leave your own especial sphere of doing me good for another than yours? Does the sun rake and hoe about the garden as well as shine steadily over it? Why must you, who give me heart and power, as nothing else did or could, to do well—concern yourself with what might be done by any good, kind ministrant only fit for such offices? Not that I feel, even, more bound to you for them—they have their weight, I know .. but what weight beside the divine gift of yourself? Do not, dear, dearest, care for making me known: you know me!—and they know so little, after all your endeavour, who are ignorant of what you are to me—if you .. well, but that will follow, .. if I do greater things one day—what shall they serve for, what range themselves under, of right?–

Mr Mathews sent me two copies of his poems—and, I believe, a newspaper, 'when time was', about the 'Blot in the ’Scutcheon'—and also, thro’ Moxon:—(I believe it was Mr M.)—a proposition for reprinting—to which I assented, of course—and there was an end to the matter.

And might I have stayed till five?—dearest, I will never ask for more than you give—but I feel every single sand of the gold showers .. spite of what I say above! I have an invitation for Thursday which I had no intention of remembering (it admitted of such liberty)—but now .."

Here Browning has written something and then marked it out so that no one can read it.

"(Something I will say!)

'Polka,' forsooth!—one lady whose head could not, and another whose feet could not, dance! —But I talked a little to your brother whom I like more and more: it comforts me that he is yours.

So, Thursday,—thank you from the heart! I am well, and about to go out. This week I have done nothing to 'Luria'—is it that my ring is gone? There surely is something to forgive in me—for that shameful business—or I should not feel as I do in the matter: but you did forgive me–"

He has sent his ring with her hair to be re sized. He cannot write poetry without it. Makes sense. Must have the ring to write the book!

"God bless my own, only love—ever–Yours wholly RB

N.B. An antiquarian friend of mine in old days picked up a non-descript wonder of a coin .. I just remember he described it as Rhomboid in shape—cut, I fancy, out of church-plate in troubled times. What did my friend do but get ready a box, lined with velvet, and properly compartmented, to have always about him, so that the next such coin he picked up, say in Cheapside, he might at once transfer to a place of safety .. his waistcoat pocket being no happy receptacle for the same. I saw the box—and encouraged the man to keep a vigilant eye.

Parallel. R.B. having found an unicorn ......

Do you forgive these strips of paper? I could not wait to send for more—having exhausted my stock."

 

Browning's unicorn is in a box in her father's house in Wimpole Street.

 

Next we hear from Miss Barrett:

 

"Tuesday evening.

It was right of you to write .. (now see what jangling comes of not using the fit words .. I said ‘right,’ not to say ‘kind’)—right of you to write to me today—and I had begun to be disappointed already because the post seemed to be past, when suddenly the knock brought the letter which deserves all this praising. If not ‘kind’ .. then kindest .. will that do better? Perhaps.

Mr Kenyon was here today & asked when you were coming again—& I, I answered at random .. 'at the end of the week—thursday or friday'—which did not prevent another question about ‘what we were consulting about.’ He said that he 'must have you,' & had written to beg you to go to his door on days when you came here,—only murmuring something besides of neither thursday nor friday being disengaged days with him. Oh, my disingenuousness!– Then he talked again of ‘Saul’– A true impression the poem has made on him!– He reads it every night, he says, when he comes home & just before he goes to sleep, to put his dreams into order, & observed very aptly, I thought, that it reminded him of Homer’s shield of Achilles, thrown into lyrical whirl & life. Quite ill he took it of me the ‘not expecting him to like it so much’ & retorted on me with most undeserved severity (as I felt it), that I 'never understood anybody to have any sensibility except myself'– Was’nt it severe, to come from dear Mr Kenyon? But he had caught some sort of evil spirit from your Saul perhaps; though admiring the poem enough to have a good spirit instead– And do you remember of the said poem, that it is there only as a first part, & that the next parts must certainly follow & complete what will be a great lyrical work—now remember– And forget ‘Luria’ .. if you are better forgetting. And forget me, .. when you are happier forgetting. I say that too.

So your idea of an unicorn is .. one horn broken off. And you, a poet!—one horn broken off—or hid in the black-thorn hedge!–"

This woman is maddening. She drags herself down (most intelligent men would rather have a unicorn with a broken horn than a braying donkey) and then builds him up, comforting him on his bad reviews:
 

"Such a mistake, as our enlightened public, on their part, made, when they magnified the divinity of the brazen chariot, just under the thunder-cloud! I dont remember the Athenæum, but can well believe that it said what you say. The Athenæum admires only what gods, men & columns reject. It applauds nothing but mediocrity——mark it, as a general rule! The good, they see—the great escapes them. Dare to breathe a breath above the close, flat conventions of literature, & you are 'put down' & instructed how to be like other people– By the way, see by the very last number, that you never think to write ‘peoples’, on pain of writing what is obsolete—& these the teachers of the public! If the public does not learn, where is the marvel of it? An imitation of Shelley’s—when if Paracelsus was anything it was the expression of a new mind, as all might see—as I saw, let me be proud to remember, & I was not overdazzled by Ion–"

Her words here about The Athenæum are true today. The greatest of men and women are seldom recognized for their greatness. The 'great men' of today are hidden from the public view due to the stifling mediocrity of all media.
 

"Ah, indeed if I could ‘rake & hoe’, .. or even pick up weeds along the walk, .. which is the work of the most helpless children, .. if I could do any of this, there would be some good of me: but as for ‘shining’ .. shining! .. when there is not so much light in me as to do ‘carpet work’ by, why let anyone in the world except you, tell me to shine, & it will just be a mockery! But you have studied astronomy with your favorite snails, who are apt to take a dark-lanthorn for the sun, & so.–

And so, you come on thursday, & I only hope that Mrs Jameson will not come too, (the carpet work makes me think of her,—&, not having come yet, she may come on thursday by a fatal cross-stitch!) for I do not hear from her, & my precautions are 'watched out.' May God bless you always.

Your own––

But no—I did not forgive. Where was the fault to be forgiven, except in me, for not being right in my meaning?–"

What are we going to do with Miss Barrett? How can we build her up so that she can see her own worth? Ah, well, we shall have to leave it to Browning. But then, if she was aware of her own worth would she still be mesmerized by Browning?

December 7, 1845

Following a visit to Wimpole Street on December 6th, after which Browning dined nearby at Mr. Serjeant Talfourd's home, the two poets have much to say to each other. We will begin with Browning:

"Sunday Night.

Well, I did see your brother last night .. and very wisely neither spoke nor kept silence in the proper degree, but said that 'I hoped you were well'—from the sudden feeling that I must say something of you .. not pretend indifference about you now .. and from the impossibility of saying the full of what I might,—because other people were by—and after, in the evening, when I should have remedied the first imperfect expression, I had not altogether the heart. So, you, dearest, will clear me with him if he wonders, will you not?– But it all hangs together,—speaking of you,—to you,—writing to you—all is helpless and sorrowful work by the side of what is in my soul to say and to write– Or is it not the natural consequence? if these vehicles of feeling sufficed—there would be the end!—and that my feeling for you should end!– For the rest, the headache which kept away while I sate with you, made itself amends afterward, and as it is unkind to that warm Talfourd to look blank at his hospitable endeavours, all my power of face went à qui de droit [to one of the law]–"

 

Which is to say that having to be careful in his small talk with George Barrett made him nervous and gave him a headache.

"Did your brother tell you .. yes, I think .. of the portentous book, lettered II, and thick as a law-book, of congratulatory letters on the appearance of 'Ion'?—and how under the B’s in the Index came 'Miss Barrett' and, woe’s me, 'RB.'! I don’t know when I have had so ghastly a visitation: there was the utterly forgotten letter, in the as thoroughly disused handwriting, in the .. I fear .. still as completely obsolete feeling .. no, not so bad as that—but at first there was all the novelty, and social admiration at the friend .. it is surely not right to pluck all the rich soil from the roots and hold them up clean and dry as if they came so, from all you now see, which is nothing at all .. like the Chinese air-plant! Do you understand this? And surely 'Ion' is a very, very beautiful and noble conception, and finely executed,—a beautiful work—what has come after, has lowered it down by grade after grade .. it don’t stand apart on the hill, like a wonder, now it is built up to by other attempts; but the great difference is in myself .. another maker of another Ion, finding me out and behaving as Talfourd did, would not find that me,—so to be behaved to, so to be honoured—tho’ he should have all the good will! Ten years ago!

And ten years hence!"

 

Typical English embarrassment and typical Browning. Embarrassed about something that she has never and will never see. And it gets worse. He realizes that he has dug himself a hole and now he has to start digging himself out:

"Always understand that you do not take me as I was at the beginning .. with a crowd of loves to give to something and so get rid of their pain & burthen: I have known what that ends in—a handful of anything may be as sufficient a sample, serve your purposes and teach you its nature, as well as whole heaps—and I know what most of the pleasures of this world are—so that I can be surer of myself, and make you surer, on calm demonstrated grounds, than if I had a host of objects of admiration or ambition yet to become acquainted with: you say, 'I am a man and may change'– I answer, yes—but, while I hold my senses,—only change for the presumeable better .. not for the experienced worst–"

 

He praised Talfourd's 'Ion' ten years ago but does not think so much of it now and is embarrassed that he praised it as strongly as he did and makes an excuse that he has changed--then he realizes that she will assume that this is a sign that he will change his mind about her in 'ten years'. This demonstrates that he understands how her mind works--she is not looking for examples of his inconstancy--only proofs that he is, after all, just a man. But he has made the error of planting the idea in her fertile head. If it takes root it will be his own fault.

 

In mid dig he is interrupted:

Here is my uncle’s foot on the stair .. his knock hurried the last sentence .. here is by me!– Understand what this would have led to, how you would have been proved logically my own, best, extreme want, my life’s end—yes, dearest! Bless you ever–Your RB

 

Well, I don't know how logical his argument would be; it is probably for the best that he was interrupted, it might have gotten worse. Will Miss Barrett let him off with only a warning?

 

"Sunday.

Let me hear how you are, & that you are better instead of worse for the exertions of last night. After you left me yesterday I considered how we might have managed it more conveniently for you, & had the lamp in, & arranged matters so as to interpose less time between the going & the dining, even if you & George did not go together, which might have been best but which I did not like quite to propose. Now, supposing that on thursday you dine in town, remember not to be unnecessarily ‘perplext in the extreme’ where to spend the time before .... five, .. shall I say, at any rate? We will have the lamp, & I can easily explain if an observation should be made … only it will not be, because our goers out here never come home until six, & the head of the house, not until seven .. as I told you. George thought it worth while going to Mr Talfourd’s yesterday, just to see the author of the ‘Paracelsus’ dance the polka … should I not tell you?"

 

Again she suggests that he stay longer on his visits. Methinks she must be enjoying these tete a tetes.

"I am vexed by another thing which he tells me—vexed, if amused a little by the absurdity of it. I mean that absurd affair of the 'autography'—now is’nt it absurd? and for neither you nor George to have the chivalry of tearing out that letter of mine, which was absurd too in its way, & which, knowing less of the world than I know now, I wrote as if writing for my private conscience, & privately repented writing in a day, & have gone on repenting ever since when I happened to think enough of it for repentance.! Because if Mr Serjeant Talfourd sent then his 'Ion' to me, he did it in mere goodnature, hearing by chance of me through the publisher of my ‘Prometheus’ at the moment, & of course caring no more for my ‘opinion’ than for the rest of me—and it was excessively bad taste in me to say more than the briefest word of thanks in return, even if I had been competent to say it– Ah well!—you see how it is, & that I am vexed you should have read it, .. as George says you did .. he laughing to see me so vexed. So I turn round & avenge myself by crying aloud against the editor of the ‘Autography’! Surely such a thing was never done before .. even by an author in the last stage of a mortal disease of selflove. To edit the common parlance of conventional flatteries, .. lettered in so many volumes, bound in green morocco, & laid on the drawingroom table for one’s own particular private public,—is it not a miracle of vanity .. neither more nor less?"

 

Isn't is wonderful that they are both so embarrassed in the same way, using the same argument: that was ten years ago and we were both so naive! What does this prove to me? They are both totally English, the most embarrassed race on the planet!

"I took the opportunity of the letter to Mr Mathews (talking of vanity … mine!) to send Landor’s verses to America .. yours—so they will be in the American papers .. I know Mr Mathews. I was speaking to him of your last number of Bells & Pomegranates, & the verses came in naturally,—just as my speaking did, for it is not the first time nor the second nor the third even that I have written to him of you, though I admire how in all those previous times I did it in pure disinterestedness, .. purely because your name belonged to my country & to her literature, .. & how I have a sort of reward at this present, in being able to write what I please without anyone’s saying 'it is a new fancy'– As for the Americans they have 'a zeal without knowledge' for poetry– There is more love for verse among them than among the English. But they suffer themselves to be led in their choice of poets by English critics of average discernment,—this is said of them by their own men of letters. Tennyson is idolized deep down in the back woods (to their honour be it said), but to understand you sufficiently, they wait for the explanations of the critics. So I wanted them to see what Landor says of you. The comfort in these questions, is, that there can be no question, except between the sooner & the later—a little sooner, & a little later: but when there is real love & zeal it becomes worth while to try to ripen the knowledge. They love Tennyson so much that the colour of his waistcoats is a sort of minor Oregon question .. & I like that—do not you?"

 

Isn't it fun how Miss Barrett enjoys the primitive Yanks? I suspect that the egalitarian nature of the Americans appeals to her liberal nature.

"Monday. Now I have your letter: & you will observe, without a finger post from me, how busily we have both been pre-occupied in disavowing our own letters of old on ‘Ion’– Mr Talfourd’s collection goes to prove too much, I think—& you, a little too much, when you draw inferences of no-changes, from changes like these. Oh yes—I perfectly understand that every sort of inconstancy of purpose regards a 'presumably better' thing—but I do not so well understand how any presumeable doubt is to be set to rest by that fact, .. I do not indeed. Have you seen all the birds & beasts in the world? have you seen the ‘unicorns’?!– Which is only a pebble thrown down into your smooth logic; & we need not stand by to watch the bubbles born of it. And as to the Ion-letters, I am delighted that you have anything to repent, as I have everything. Certainly it is a noble play—there is the moral sublime in it: but it is not the work of a poet, .. & if he had never written another to show what was not in him, this might have been ‘predicated’ of it as surely, I hold. Still, it is a noble work—& even if you over-praised it, (I did not read your letter, though you read mine, alas!) you, under the circumstances would have been less noble yourself not to have done so!—only, .. how I agree with you in what you say against the hanging up of these dry roots, .. the soil shaken off! Such abominable taste—now is’nt it? .. though you do not use that word."

 

He brought this on himself and she rebuts him beautifully! "...I do not so well understand how any presumeable doubt is to be set to rest by that fact....Have you seen the 'unicorns'?!" Boom! She made short work of that 'logical' proof.

"I thought Mr Kenyon would have come yesterday & that I might have something to tell you, of him at least.

And George never told me of the thing you found to say to him of me, & which makes me smile & would have made him wonder if he had not been suffering probably from some legal distraction at the moment, inasmuch as he knew perfectly that you had just left me. My sisters told him down stairs & he came into this room just before he set off on saturday, with a, .. 'So I am to meet Mr Browning'! But he made no observation afterwards .. none: & if he heard what you said at all, (which I doubt) he referred it probably to some enforced civility on ‘Yorick’s’ part when the ‘last chapter’ was too much with him.

 

Yes, the whole thing was absurd, "I hope your sister remains well since I left her side some 30 minutes ago."

"I have written about ‘Luria’ in another place—you shall have the papers when I have read through the play. How different this living poetry is from the polished rhetoric of Ion. The man & the statue are not more different. After all poetry is a distinct thing: it is here or it is not here .. it is not a matter of ‘taste’, but of sight & feeling."

 

How nimbly she uses the question of the quality of 'Ion' to praise the poetry and the poet she loves (though she dare not write the word.)

"As to the ‘Venice’ it gives proof (does it not?) rather of poetical sensibility than of poetical faculty? or did you expect me to say more?—of the perception of the poet, rather than of his conception. Do you think more than this? There are fine, eloquent expressions, & the tone of sentiment is good & high everywhere."

 

She is commenting on a poem by Browning's friend Alfred Domett. Feeling out Browning to see what toleration he will take in criticism of his friend's 'poetical faculty'?

"Do not write ‘Luria’ if your head is uneasy—& you cannot say that it is not .. can you? Or will you if you can? In any case you will do what you can .. take care of yourself & not suffer yourself to be tired either by writing or by too much going out, & take the necessary exercise .. this, you will do—I entreat you to do it.

May God bless & make you happy, as .. you will lose nothing if I say .. as I am yours–"

 

Fun letters today. I enjoyed those.

December 5, 1845

Under orders from Browning to write to Mr. Mathews in America before she wrote to Browning, Miss Barrett sends forth a long letter to Mr. Cornelius Mathews today to explain things:

"50 Wimpole Street,

December 5th 1845.

It is with shame and confusion of face, my dear Mr. Mathews, that I read your letter and remembered that it was to be enunciated of me 'the maid is not dead but sleepeth.' Nothing but being actually dead, I do humbly confess, could justify me before my own conscience and your sense of justice, and so there is nothing for me (being too, too much alive) but to creep on the knees of a contrite soul to the back door of your mercy and to pray her to be at home to me and let me in. Will you—can you forgive me?

'Not dead'—you say—'not even ill!' you repeat. Can such things be in that old land of corruption, and can they be pardonable?

Not dead—not even ill—I confess—nay, shamefully better I am! Shamefully well I am, and yet you must try to forgive me—try to be consoled for this handwriting of mine, in the proper place of that of my executors.

For here is the truth. I am always much better when it is summer, my complaint being weakness of the lungs, and for several summers I have made progress in the gross, though thrown back every winter in some degree on the spikes again. Did you ever 'do the sum' about the snail who crept and slept and crept and slept? I have, both in a sum and an experience. Still in this last summer my advances were very large. I was quite well in fact, only not quite strong of course,—able to go out in the carriage—able to get into the air and feel 'this is liberty again,' and then, I was on the verge of an expedition to Italy in which to hide myself from this winter,—and I felt that if I could go I should be well and strong like the enjoyers of the world’s life—and I was hindered in the going. It was too full a benediction for such a head as mine. Well,—and all these intentions and hopes and emotions, and some others yet stranger and deeper, absorbed me!"

 

Strange and deep emotions indeed.

 

"It was as if an oyster had the wings of an eagle, and lighted on Teneriffe. Now could he be expected to think any more of his sandbank or even of the curlew’s cry associated with his former immobility? and I, who am not naturally an oyster; but had an oyster’s life thrust on me—I could think of nothing but of the new budding of the new wings—but of the beating of my own heart. I forgot how to write and read. Try if you can understand. I mean to say, I thought of nothing long enough to write it down in letters and agree to engagements on it.– I could think of you sometimes. I could think that I was abominably ungrateful to you, and to some others. But I could not write, I read your 'Abel' and indeed did my best to get it reviewed by some one capable of entering into the peculiar life of that work."

 

She is describing being paralysed by being in love with Browning without mentioning being in love with anyone. The oyster analogy being suggestively apt for someone in love. She surely could have worked that into one of the sonnets, mayhaps she did and it ended up consigned to the fire. Perhaps one of the Blogoleers will give it a try.

"They answered me, that it was all in vain,—just as you anticipated,—that it was too peculiar, your little book—too deeply dyed in your national colours, to have a hope of success with readers here; and I could understand something of this from the effect of the book on myself. I could discern the talent—but it missed its hold on me precisely because there was a want of the necessary American stuff in me, to hold by. And I tell you this of your Abel, to prove how I have not been utterly self-absorbed—believe me, I have not. Also if adversity is good for me, I am now restored to my prison—shut up as of old,—not ill, but forced on the pain of being ill to keep my double doors shut doubly and my windows hermetically sealed, and a fire by day and by night; and having tasted of liberty, the slavery is bitter. I shake my chains impotently; forgive me for the sake of that piteous sound."

 

She is very delicate with her criticism of his American book but rather lays it on a bit thick with her pathetic appeal to her poor health. Given the state of womanhood in the 19th century she may as well use the state of her lungs to deflect blame. Hopefully Mr. Mathews will not think the less of her for this pathetic parry.

 

"Now,—your first charge finds me innocent—innocent. I never received Griswold’s poets,—never the Southern quarterly, Columbian Magazine, etc.—never, that packet. I sent repeatedly to Mr. Putnam’s, naming Griswold. And the answer has always been 'not received.' Several newspapers have come safely, for which I have silently thanked you. I had the remittance safely too, from Mr. Langley, and take shame on myself for not acknowledging it. [According to The Footnote King she received £14.] Will you be so kind?—but no. I should write to him, I think, with my own hand. I was very well satisfied with his report of the poems, and grateful to you all, notwithstanding appearances. As to the proposition about the prose miscellanies, I could not but be gratified by it, but I wish you to understand that I should be averse from the re-issue of the Athenæum papers without a complete course of rewriting. It has frequently been urged on me here to throw them (enlarging them in the process) into the shape of publishable chapters on English poetry and Greek Christian poetry, and if Mr. Langley likes to give me time, I do not object to placing a volume of miscellanies from the source designated, or others, in his hands. But should they not be put into proof in London and then transmitted? How should it be? You amuse me when you say that Mr. Poe has dedicated a book to me and abused me in the preface of it. That I should not think human justice—if it were not American. I know him for a writer of considerable power. And now may I hope without audacity to hear of you and of your doings? I am a penitent—believe it of me. How does 'Big Abel' succeed in his land? And what are you engaged on at present? For me, I have been an example of idleness, as you may gather.

Mrs. Butler [Fanny Kemble for you Blogoleers who have not been paying attention] brings to England a good report of American life, and professes an intention of growing old among you when her time comes. In the meanwhile she does not think of returning to the stage here, but rather of assisting her father in his Shakespearian readings, by which he makes some sixty pounds a week already. I understand Mr. Browning has just published another number of 'Bells and Pomegranates,' in which his great original faculty throws out new colours and expands in new combinations. A great poet he is—a greater poet he will be—for to work and to live are one with him. The 'Flight of the Duchess' in his last number, has wonderful things in it, and the versification is a study for poets."

 

"I understand Mr. Browning has just published...." Indeed? How could she possibly know this? Ah well, she has to promote her personal poet. She is certainly good at promotion: she has planted the seed of Browning's genius among the Americans:

 

 

"Walter Savage Landor has lately addressed the following verses to him:

To Robert Browning.

'There is delight in singing though none hear
Beside the singer; and there is delight
In praising, though the praiser sit alone
And see the praised far off him, far above.
Shakespeare is not our poet but the world’s,
Therefore on him no speech; and short for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale
No man hath walked along our roads with step
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse. But warmer climes
Give brighter plumage, stronger wing. The breeze
Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on
Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.'

Fine, generous lines, are they not? and never a better epithet chosen, than the word 'hale,' for Chaucer. Mr. Tennyson has a pension, you see, but for the rest, is said rather to smoke than to make poems. He has taken a whole turret to himself in the 'Castle of Indolence'. Dickens is about to cast himself headlong into the doubtful undertaking of the new daily paper, the 'Daily News.' The opinions against success are many. It is a great object to combine literature and civil philosophy, both of the highest and purest, and to give the man of letters in England that social status which on the continent is secured to him. But thinkers have observed first, That the English people will not have democracy in a journal apart from politics, viz., the old forms of party—that literature will not be permitted to keep place beside what are considered in this country graver questions—and that lastly, the social rank of men of letters must be given by society when it is ripe enough to discern and give, and cannot be snatched prematurely. While we offer dinners and memorials to a railway speculator, like Hudson, we are not in a condition—our hands are not clean enough—to invite poets across our thresholds. This England of ours is behind other nations in the true civilization. I cannot choose but think so. Dear Mr. Matthews, let me have your forgiveness soon, and believe in the continued grateful regard of

Elizabeth Barrett Barrett."

 

It is a smart Englishwoman who praises the egalitarian way of the Americans while begging forgiveness. Another example of Miss Barrett's letter writing gifts.

December 4, 1845

Miss Barrett is pleased that she and Browning will be reviewed together, but.....(there is always a but):

"Why of course I am pleased. I should have been pleased last year, for the vanity’s sake of being reviewed in your company. Now, as far as that vice of vanity goes … shall I tell you?, .. I would infinitely prefer to see you set before the public in your own right solitude & supremacy, apart from me or anyone else, .. this, as far as my vice of vanity goes, .. & because, vainer I am of my poet than of my poems .. pour cause [with reason]. But since, according to the Quarterly regime, you were to be not apart but with somebody of my degree, I am glad, pleased, that it should be with myself:—and since I was to be there at all, I am pleased, very much pleased that it should be with you .. oh, of course I am pleased!—I am pleased that the 'names should be read together' as you say, .. & am happily safe from the apprehension of that ingenious idea of yours about 'my leading you &c' .... quite happily safe from the apprehension of that idea’s occurring to any mind in the world, except just your own—. Now if I 'find fault' with you for writing down such an extravagance, such an ungainly absurdity, (oh, I shall abuse it just as I shall choose!) can it be 'to your surprise'?—can it? Ought you to say such things, when in the first place they are unfit in themselves & inapplicable, & in the second place, abominable in my eyes?– The qualification for Hanwell Asylum is different peradventure from what you take it to be—we had better not examine it too nearly. You never will say such words again? It is your promise to me?– Not those words—& not any in their likeness.

Also .. nothing is my work .. if you please! What an omen you take in calling anything my work! If it is my work, woe on it—for everything turns to evil which I touch. Let it be God’s work & yours, & I may take breath & wait in hope—& indeed I exclaim to myself about the miracle of it far more even than you can do. It seems to me (as I say over & over .. I say it to my own thoughts oftenest) it seems to me still a dream how you came here at all, .. the very machinery of it seems miraculous. Why did I receive you & only you? Can I tell? no, not a word.

Last year I had such an escape of seeing Mr Horne,—and in this way it was. He was going to Germany he said, for an indefinite time, & took the trouble of begging me to receive him for ten minutes before he went. I answered with my usual ‘no,’ like a wild Indian—whereupon he wrote me a letter so expressive of mortification & vexation .. 'mortification' was one of the words used, I remember, .. that I grew ashamed of myself & told him to come any day (of the last five or six days he had to spare) between two & five. Well!—he never came. Either he was overcome with work & engagements of various sorts & had not a moment, (which was his way of explaining the matter & quite true I dare say) or he was vexed & resolved on punishing me for my caprices. If the latter was the motive, I cannot call the punishment effective, .. for I clapped my hands for joy when I felt my danger to be passed—& now of course, I have no scruples .. I may be as capricious as I please, .. may I not? Not that I ask you. It is a settled matter. And it is useful to keep out Mr Chorley with Mr Horne & Mr Horne with Mr Chorley, & the rest of the world with those two. Only the miracle is that you should be behind the enclosure .. within it .. & so!——

That is my side of the wonder! of the machinery of the wonder, .. as I see it!– But there are greater things than these.

Speaking of the portrait of you in the ‘Spirit of the age’ .. which is not like .. no!—which has not your character, in a line of it .. something in just the forehead & eyes & hair, .. but even that, thrown utterly out of your order, by another bearing so unlike you.! speaking of that portrait .. shall I tell you?—— Mr Horne had the goodness to send me all those portraits, & I selected the heads which, in right hero-worship, were anything to me, & had them framed after a rough fashion & hung up before my eyes,—Harriet Martineau’s .. because she was a woman & admirable, & had written me some kind letters—& for the rest, Wordsworth’s, Carlyle’s, Tennyson’s & yours. The day you paid your first visit here, I, in a fit of shyness not quite unnatural, .. though I have been cordially laughed at for it by everybody in the house .. pulled down your portrait, .. (there is the nail, under Wordsworth!—) & then pulled down Tennyson’s in a fit of justice—because I would not have his hung up & your’s away. It was the delight of my brothers to open all the drawers & the boxes & whatever they could get access to, & find & take those two heads & hang them on the old nails & analyze my 'absurdity' to me, day after day,—but at last I tired them out, being obstinate, & finally settled the question one morning by fastening the print of you inside your Paracelsus. Oh no, it is not like—& I knew it was not, before I saw you, though Mr Kenyon said, 'Rather like!'

By the way Mr Kenyon does not come. It is strange that he should not come:—when he told me that he would not see me ‘for a week or a fortnight,’ he meant it, I suppose.

So it is to be on saturday? And I will write directly to America—the letter will be sent by the time you get this. May God bless you ever–

It is not so much a look of 'ferocity', .. as you say, .. in that head, as of expression by intention. Several people have said of it what nobody would say of you .. 'How affected-looking'! Which is too strong—but it is not like you, in any way, & there’s the truth.

So until Saturday. I read Luria & feel the life in him. But walk & do not work! do you?

Wholly your EBB."

 

This letter made me laugh out loud. Miss Barrett is so adamant with Browning. She is 'pleased' to be reviewed with him, but please be clear: her poetry is not on the same level as his and he is the only person in the world who ever thought such a thing and he is never to say such things again. Further, she had nothing to do with them being in love with each other. Fie on that. And never say that again. And do not mention the loony bin any more. Fie on all of that!

 

Then she entertains him with stories of how ridiculous she really is. She acted like a 'wild indian' by refusing to see Horne and was gleeful when he never showed up, then she hid Browning's bad portrait in her drawer. I suspect that Browning checked for the nail the next time he visited her room. Her letter today was rather 'wild indian' like. You never know how she is going to react to one of Browning's letters. He is so gaga in love with her and writes loving letters to build her up and she is having none of it. In her eyes she is nothing compared to him and totally unworthy of his love, and she feels the need to point out to him how silly she acts, the fact that he is with her in the enclosure is totally illogical and she can do nothing more than constantly warn him that he is mistaken in her. I don't know, perhaps this constant pushing is what draws him closer.

December 3, 1845

Browning sends Miss Barrett some exciting news today:

"See, dearest, what the post brings me this minute! Now, is it not a good omen, a pleasant inconscious prophecy of what is to be? Be it well done, or badly—there are you, leading me up and onward, in his review as everywhere, at every future time! And our names will go together—be read together. In itself this is nothing to you, dear poet—but the unexpectedness, unintended significance of it has pleased me very much—does it not please you?– I thought I was to figure in that cold 'Quarterly' all by myself, (for he writes for it)—but here you are close by me,—it cannot but be for good. He has no knowledge whatever that I am even a friend of yours. Say you are pleased!"

 

He has included a note from Eliot Warburton in which he announces that he will be reviewing Browning's new poems in an article which will include a review of Miss Barrett as well. And how excited is he? He is 'pleased' and he is practically begging her to be 'pleased' too. I wonder why he thinks she wouldn't be pleased. Well, you never know with Miss Barrett, she may see an ill omen.

"There was no writing yesterday for me—nor will there be much today: in some moods, you know, I turn and take a thousand new views of what you say .. and find fault with you to your surprise—at others, I rest on you, and feel all well, all best .. now, for one instance, even that phrase of the 'possibility' and what is to follow,—even that I cannot except against. I am happy, contented,—too well, too prodigally blessed to be even able to murmur just sufficiently loud to get, in addition to it all, a sweetest stopping of the mouth! I will say quietly and becomingly 'yes—I do promise you'—yet it is some solace to—no—I will not even couple the promise with an adjuration that you, at the same time, see that they care for me properly at Hanwell Asylum .. the best by all accounts:—yet I feel so sure of you, so safe and confident in you! If any of it had been my work, my own—distrust and foreboding had pursued me from the beginning,—but all is yours—you crust me round with gold and jewelry like the wood of a sceptre,—and why should you transfer your own work? Wood enough to choose from in the first instance, but the choice once made! … So I rest on you, for life, for death, beloved—beside you do stand, in my solemn belief, the direct miraculous gift of God to me—that is my solemn belief; may I be thankful!

 

The 'possibility' he refers to is in her last letter:

"My imagination sits by the roadside [unsandelled] like the startled sea nymph in Æschylus, but never dares to put one unsandalled foot, unbidden, on a certain tract of ground—never takes a step there unled! or never (I write the simple truth) even as the alternative of the probability of your ceasing to care for me, have I touched (untold) on the possibility of your caring more for me .. never! That you should continue to care, was the utmost of what I saw in that direction." But the next step for Browning is not caring more, only a simple kiss. He tries to get her to see that he is but a man made of simple wood and not an angelic being that she is not worthy of. He tries, but with such lovely words that he rather disproves his own argument.

 

"I am anxious to hear from you .. when am I not?—but not before the American letter is written and sent. Is that done? And who was the visitor on Monday—and if &c what did he remark?– And what is right or wrong with Saturday—is it to be mine?

Bless you, dearest—now and forever.

Words cannot say how much I am your own."

 

I admire that he describes her love as a gift to him from God. He says the right words to build her up and help her realize that she is a gift to him. Can she accept that Browning is being rewarded for something good which he has done? I doubt it. In the mean time Browning is so giddy that he thinks he is headed for the loony bin. It is not often in life that we get to feel so mind blowingly happy. It gives me joy to see it played out on paper by two articulate people.

 

 

December 2, 1845

Browning had visited Miss Barrett in Wimpole Street on December 1 but apparently SAID NOTHING about receiving Miss Barrett's hair as she had decreed. But he seems pretty 'happy' about it so he writes, which is apparently more acceptable than speaking about it:

"Tuesday.

I was happy, so happy before! But I am happier and richer now—My love—no words could serve here, but there is life before us, and to the end of it the vibration now struck will extend– I will live and die with your beautiful ring, your beloved hair—comforting me, blessing me.

Let me write to-morrow—when I think on all you have been and are to me, on the wonder of it and the deliciousness, it makes the paper words that come seem vainer than ever– To-morrow I will write.

May God bless you, my own, my precious,—

I am all your own RB

I have thought again, and believe it will be best to select the finger you intended .. as the alteration will be simpler, I find,—and one is less liable to observation and comment.

Was not that Mr Kenyon last evening? And did he ask, or hear, or say anything?"

 

Despite Miss Barrett's best efforts to keep Browning and Kenyon apart in her presence there was an apparent close encounter.

 

"Tuesday evening.

No Mr Kenyon after all—not yesterday, not today,—& the knock at the door belonged perhaps to the post, which brought me a kind letter from Mrs Jameson to ask how I was & if she might come—but she wont come on saturday .. I shall ‘provide’:—she may as well (& better) come on a free day. On the other side, are you sure that Mr Procter may not stretch out his hand & sieze on saturday, (he was to dine with you, you said) or that some new engagement may not start up suddenly in the midst of it.? I trust to you, in such a case, to alter our arrangement, without a second thought. Monday stands close by, remember, & there’s a saturday to follow monday .. and I should understand at a word, or apart from a word."

 

She is so accommodating to him, not wanting him to be bothered to come and see her if he has the slightest bother, oblivious to the fact that he would throw all other arrangements aside to be with her. Perhaps this is part of her general disbelief in her own worth.

 

"Just as you understand how to ‘take me with guile,’ when you tell me that anything in me can have any part in making you happy .. you, who can say such words & call them ‘vain’ words!– Ah, well! If I only knew certainly, .. more certainly than the thing may be known by either me or you, .. that nothing in me could have any part in making you unhappy, .. ah, would it not be enough .. that knowledge .. to content me, to overjoy me? but that lies too high & out of reach, you see, & one cant hope to get at it except by the ladder Jacob saw, & which an archangel helped to hide away behind the gate of Heaven afterwards."

 

Such a morbid girl.

 

"Wednesday/ In the meantime I had a letter from you yesterday & am promised another today– How … I was going to say 'kind' & pull down the thunders .. how unkind .. will that do? .. how good you are to me!—how dear you must be! Dear—dearest—if I feel that you love me, can I help it if, without any other sort of certain knowledge, the world grows lighter round me? being but a mortal woman, can I help it? no—certainly–

I comfort myself by thinking sometimes that I can at least understand you, .. comprehend you in what you are & in what you possess & combine,—& that, if doing this better than others who are better otherwise than I, I am, so far, worthier of the... … I mean that to understand you is something, & that I account it something in my own favour––mine.

Yet when you tell me that I ought to know some things, tho’ untold, you are wrong, & speak what is impossible. My imagination sits by the roadside απεδιλος[unsandaled]like the startled sea nymph in Æschylus, but never dares to put one unsandalled foot, unbidden, on a certain tract of ground—never takes a step there unled! or never (I write the simple truth) even as the alternative of the probability of your ceasing to care for me, have I touched (untold) on the possibility of your caring more for me .. never! That you should continue to care, was the utmost of what I saw in that direction. So, when you spoke of a 'strengthened feeling,' judge how I listened with my heart—judge!

 

She is in awe of his love for her. She is trying to justify herself to this love. There is no justification for love. She has not come to grasp this yet. Perhaps she never will. So she turns back to the one thing she is sure of: poetry.

 

"Luria is very great. You will avenge him with the sympathies of the world,—that, I forsee. And for the rest, it is a magnanimity which grows & grows, & which will, of a worldly necessity, fall by its own weight at last, nothing less being possible. The scene with Tiburzio & the end of the act with its great effects, are more pathetic than professed pathos– When I come to criticize, it will be chiefly on what I take to be a little occasional flatness in the versification, which you may remove if you please, by knotting up a few lines here & there. But I shall write more of Luria,—& will remember in the meanwhile, that you wanted smoothness, you said.

May God bless you. I shall have the letter tonight, I think gladly—yes,—I thought of the greater safety from ‘comment’—it is best in every way.

I lean on you & trust to you, & am always, as to one who is all to me,

Your own–"

 

A sweet letter today from our perplexed Miss Barrett; she just can't quite grasp what is happening to her.