"Sunday Evening.
When I come back from seeing you, and think over it all, there
never is a least word of yours I could not occupy myself with, and wish to
return to you with some .. not to say, all .. the thoughts & fancies it is
sure to call out of me:—there is nothing in you that does not draw out all of
me:—you possess me, dearest .. and there is no help for the expressing it all,
no voice nor hand, but these of mine which shrink and turn away from the
attempt: So you must go on, patiently, knowing me, more and more, and your
entire power on me, and I will console myself, to the full extent, with your
knowledge,—penetration,—intuition .. somehow I must believe you can get
to what is here, in me—without the pretence of my telling or writing it. But,
because I give up the great achievements, there is no reason I should not secure
any occasion of making clear one of the less important points that arise in our
intercourse .. if I fancy I can do it with the least success: for instance, it
is on my mind to explain what I meant yesterday by trusting that the entire
happiness I feel in the letters, and the help in the criticising might not be
hurt by the surmise, even, that those labours to which you were born, might be
suspended, in any degree, thro’ such generosity to me: dearest, I
believed in your glorious genius and knew it for a true star from the moment I
saw it,—long before I had the blessing of knowing it was my star, with my fortune and futurity in it—and, when I
draw back from myself, and look better and more clearly, then I do feel,
with you, that the writing a few letters more or less, reading many or few
rhymes of any other person, would not interfere in any material degree with that
power of yours—that you might easily make one so happy and yet go on writing
'Geraldines' and 'Berthas'—but—how can I, dearest, leave my heart’s treasures
long, even to look at your genius? .. and when I come back and find all safe,
find the comfort of you, the traces of you .. will it do,—tell me—to
treat all that as a light effort, an easy matter?
Yet, if you can lift me with one hand, while the other suffices
to crown you—there is queenliness in that, too!"
Browning can really turn it on when he wants to. This has to be one of his greatest efforts. His default position is that he cannot put what he feels into words and often he cannot. But then he makes your heart melt with his words.
Well, I have spoken. As I told you, your turn comes now: how have
you determined respecting the American Edition?—you
tell me nothing of yourself! It is all me you help,
me you do good to .. and I take it all! Now see if this goes on! I have not had
every love-luxury, I now find out .. where is the proper,
rationally-to-be-expected, 'lovers’ quarrel?' Here, as you will
find! 'Iræ amantium' .. I am no more 'at a loss with my Naso,' than Peter
Ronsard. Ah .. but then they are to be 'reintegratio
amoris' ['lovers’ quarrels are love’s renewals']—and to get back into a thing, one must
needs get for a moment first out of it .. trust me, no! And now, the natural
inference from all this? The consistent inference .. the 'self-denying
ordinance'? Why,—do you doubt?—even this,—you must just put aside the Romance,
and tell the Americans to wait, and make my heart
start up when the letter is laid to it,—the letter full of your news, telling me
you are well and walking, and working for my sake towards the time
I—informing me, moreover, if Thursday or Friday is to be my day–
May God bless you, my own love–
I will certainly bring you an Act of the Play .. for this serpent’s reason, in addition
to the others .. that– No, I will tell you that. I can tell you now more
than even lately!
Ever your own RB"
A beautifully rendered letter. He admonishes her to not stop her work for his sake and then mocking himself he selfishly tells her to put aside her Romance poem and the essay's for the American publisher and write a letter to him. I think the meeting on the 8th must have been very successful.
The quote is from his just published poem "The Glove."
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