Browning, knowing of their correspondence and acquaintance wrote to break the news of the suicide to Miss Barrett:
"I was just on the point of answering your dear letter,
in all the good spirits it might be expected to wake in me, when the sad news of
poor Haydon’s death stopped all; much I feel it, for the light words of my own
about his extravagance, as I had been told of it, but very much more on your
account, who were so lately in communication with him– I earnestly hope,—I will
trust—you have not been rudely apprised of this–I am
happy to remember that you do not see the newspaper in the morning,—others will
see it first: perhaps there may be no notice in the Chronicle at all, or on the
other hand, a more circumstantial one than this in the Times which barely
says—“that B R H. died suddenly at his residence—yesterday morning. He was in
his usual health on the previous evening, and it is believed that his decease
was hastened by pecuniary embarrassment”—and he is called “the unfortunate
gentleman”—which with the rest implies the very worst,
I fear. If by any chance this should be the first intimation you receive
of it .. do not think me stupid nor brutal,—for I thought again and again as to
the right course to take .. whether it would not be best to be silent altogether
and wait and see .. but in that case I should have surprised you more by my cold
letter,—such an one as I could bring myself to write,—for how were it possible
to speak of pictures and indifferent matters when you perhaps have been shocked,
made ill by this news? If I have done wrong, forgive me, my own best, dearest
Ba– I would give the world to know how you are. The storm too, and lightning may
have made you even more than ordinarily unfit to be startled and grieved– God
knows and must help you! I am but your devoted
RB
How glad I am you told me you had never seen him. And
perhaps he may be after all a mere acquaintance .. anything I will fancy that is
likely to relieve you of pain! Dearest dearest!"
You can feel Browning's impotence here. He wants to go to her but he does not have leave to, so he sends the letter and waits to be bidden. But she had heard the news already:
Oh yes—it has shocked me, this dreadful news of poor Mr
Haydon—it chilled the blood in my veins when I heard it from Alfred, who, seeing
the Times at the Great Western Terminus, wrote out the bare extract & sent
it to me by the post. He just thought that the Chronicle did not mention it, ..
& that I had not seen Mr Haydon .. he did not perhaps think how it would
shock me–
For, this, I cannot help thinking—Could
anyone .. could my own hand even—have averted what has happened?– My head
& heart have ached today over the inactive hand!– But, for the moment, it
was out of my power, without an application where it would have been
useless—& then, I never fancied this case to be more than a piece of a
continuous case .. of a habit fixed: two years ago he sent me boxes &
pictures precisely so, & took them back again—poor, poor Haydon!—as he will
not this time. And he said last week that Peel had sent him fifty pounds ..
adding .. ‘I do not however want charity, but employment.’ Also, I have
been told again & again (oh, never by you my beloved!) that to give
money there, was to drop it into a hole of the ground.
But if to have dropped it so, dust to dust, would have
saved a living man--what then?–
Yet of the three notes I had from him last week, the
first was written so lightly, that the second came to desire me not to attribute
to him a “want of feeling”. And who could think .. contemplate .. this calamity?
May God have mercy on the strongest of us, for we are weak. Oh, that a man so
high hearted & highly endowed .. a bold man, who has thrown down gauntlet
after gauntlet in the face of the world--that such a man should go mad for a few
paltry pounds! For he was mad if he killed himself!--of that I am as sure
as if I knew it. If he killed himself, he was mad first.
Some day, when I have the heart to look for it, you
shall see his last note. I understand now that there are touches in it of a
desperate pathos--but never could he have meditated self destruction while
writing that note. He said he should write six sets of lectures more .. six more
volumes. He said he was painting a new background to
a picture, which made him “feel as if his soul had wings”. And then he hoped his
brain would not turn. And he ‘gloried’ in the naval dangers of his son at sea.
And he repeated an old phrase of his, which I had heard from him often before,
& which now rings hollowly to the ears of my memory .. that he could’nt
& would’nt die. Strange &
dreadful!
It is nearly two years since we had a correspondence of
some few months--from which at last I receded, notwithstanding the individuality
& spirit of his letters, & my admiration for a certain fervour &
magnanimity of genius, no one could deny to him. His very faults partook of that
nobleness. But for a year & a half or more perhaps, I scarcely have written
or heard from him—until last week when he wrote to ask for a shelter for his
boxes & pictures. If you had enquired of me the week before, I might have
answered that I did not wish to renew the intercourse—yet who could help
being shocked & saddened? Would it have availed, to have dropped
something into that ‘hole in the ground’? Oh, to imagine that! Yet a
little would have been but as nothing!– & he did not ask even for a
little:—& I should have been ashamed to have offered but a little. Yet I
cannot turn the thought away— .. that I did not offer.
Henry went to the house as I begged him. His son came to
the door, & to a general enquiry ‘after the family’, said, that “Mr Haydon
was dead & that his family were quite as well as could be expected." That
horrible banality is all I know more than you know–
Yesterday at Rogers’s, Mrs Jameson led me to his picture
of Napoleon at St Helena. At the moment we
looked at it, his hand was scarcely cold, perhaps. Surely it was not made of the
commonest clay of men,—that hand!–
I pour out my thoughts to you, dearest dearest, as if it
were right rather to think of doing myself that good & relief, than of
you who have to read all. But you spoil me into an excess of liberty, by
your tenderness. Best in the world!– Oh—you help me to live– I am better &
lighter since I have drawn near to you even on this paper—already I am better
& lighter. And now I am going to dream of you .. to meet you on some
mystical landing place.. in order to be
quite well tomorrow. Oh—we are so selfish on this earth, that nothing grieves us
very long, let it be ever so grievous, unless we are touched in ourselves
.. in the apple of our eye .. in the quick of our heart .. in what you
are, & where you are .. my own dearest beloved!
So you need not be afraid for me! We all look to our own, as I to
you; the thunderbolts may strike the tops of the cedars, &, except in
the first start, none of us be moved. True it is of me—not of you
perhaps—certainly you are better than I, in all things. Best in the world, you
are!—no one is like you. Can you read what I have written? Do not love me less!
Do you think that I cannot feel you love me, through all this distance?
If you loved me less, I should know,—without a word or a sign. Because I live by
your loving me!"
Hardly can Miss Barrett write a bad letter. Is it any wonder that so many people wanted to correspond with her? Even as the thoughts spill onto the paper she wants to sympathize with Browning for causing him discomfort by having to read her letter. Again she is blind to her own power.
But this episode will not end here and Browning will act as knight-errant to run interference and save Miss Barrett's reputation when society asks, "What is her relationship with the married Haydon that he would send her his property to keep!"
oooo, I can't wait for the next installment
ReplyDeleteHold your horses Gentle Reader, we are talking letters through the penny post, not Instant Messenger. These things take time.
Delete