Robert Browning - The Complete Works of Robert Browning - Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition

My faults, my faults—Shall I help you? Ah—you see them too well, I fear. And do you know that I also have something of your feeling about 'being about to begin ,' or I should dare to praise you for having it. But in you, it is different—it is, in you, a virtue. When Prometheus had recounted a long list of sorrows to be endured by Io, and declared at last that he was μηδεπω εν προοιμιοις, 2poor Io burst out crying. And when the author of 'Paracelsus' and the 'Bells and Pomegranates' says that he is only 'going to begin' we may well (to take 'the opposite idea,' as you write) rejoice and clap our hands. Yet I believe that, whatever you may have done, you will do what is greater. It is my faith for you.

And how I should like to know what poets have been your sponsors, 'to promise and vow' for you,—and whether you have held true to early tastes, or leapt violently from them, and what books you read, and what hours you write in. How curious I could prove myself!—(if it isn't proved already).

But this is too much indeed, past all bearing, I suspect. Well, but if I ever write to you again—I mean, if you wish it—it may be in the other extreme of shortness. So do not take me for a born heroine of Richardson, or think that I sin always to this length, else,—you might indeed repent your quotation from Juliet—which I guessed at once—and of course—

I have no joy in this contract to-day!

It is too unadvised, too rash and sudden.

Ever faithfully yours,

Elizabeth B. Barrett.

Hatcham, Tuesday.

[Post-mark, February 11, 1845.]

Dear Miss Barrett,—People would hardly ever tell falsehoods about a matter, if they had been let tell truth in the beginning, for it is hard to prophane one's very self, and nobody who has, for instance, used certain words and ways to a mother or a father could , even if by the devil's help he would , reproduce or mimic them with any effect to anybody else that was to be won over—and so, if 'I love you' were always outspoken when it might be, there would, I suppose, be no fear of its desecration at any after time. But lo! only last night, I had to write, on the part of Mr. Carlyle, to a certain ungainly, foolish gentleman who keeps back from him, with all the fussy impotence of stupidity (not bad feeling, alas! for that we could deal with) a certain MS. letter of Cromwell's which completes the collection now going to press; and this long-ears had to be 'dear Sir'd and obedient servanted' till I said (to use a mild word) 'commend me to the sincerities of this kind of thing.'! When I spoke of you knowing little of me, one of the senses in which I meant so was this—that I would not well vowel-point my common-place letters and syllables with a masoretic other sound and sense, make my 'dear' something intenser than 'dears' in ordinary, and 'yours ever' a thought more significant than the run of its like. And all this came of your talking of 'tiring me,' 'being too envious,' &c. &c., which I should never have heard of had the plain truth looked out of my letter with its unmistakable eyes. Now , what you say of the 'bowing,' and convention that is to be, and tant de façons that are not to be, helps me once and for ever—for have I not a right to say simply that, for reasons I know, for other reasons I don't exactly know, but might if I chose to think a little, and for still other reasons, which, most likely, all the choosing and thinking in the world would not make me know, I had rather hear from you than see anybody else. Never you care, dear noble Carlyle, nor you, my own friend Alfred over the sea, nor a troop of true lovers!—Are not their fates written? there! Don't you answer this, please, but, mind it is on record, and now then, with a lighter conscience I shall begin replying to your questions. But then—what I have printed gives no knowledge of me—it evidences abilities of various kinds, if you will—and a dramatic sympathy with certain modifications of passion ... that I think—But I never have begun, even, what I hope I was born to begin and end—'R.B. a poem'—and next, if I speak (and, God knows, feel), as if what you have read were sadly imperfect demonstrations of even mere ability, it is from no absurd vanity, though it might seem so—these scenes and song-scraps are such mere and very escapes of my inner power, which lives in me like the light in those crazy Mediterranean phares I have watched at sea, wherein the light is ever revolving in a dark gallery, bright and alive, and only after a weary interval leaps out, for a moment, from the one narrow chink, and then goes on with the blind wall between it and you; and, no doubt, then , precisely, does the poor drudge that carries the cresset set himself most busily to trim the wick—for don't think I want to say I have not worked hard—(this head of mine knows better)—but the work has been inside , and not when at stated times I held up my light to you—and, that there is no self-delusion here, I would prove to you (and nobody else), even by opening this desk I write on, and showing what stuff, in the way of wood, I could make a great bonfire with, if I might only knock the whole clumsy top off my tower! Of course, every writing body says the same, so I gain nothing by the avowal; but when I remember how I have done what was published, and half done what may never be, I say with some right, you can know but little of me. Still, I hope sometimes, though phrenologists will have it that I cannot , and am doing better with this darling 'Luria'—so safe in my head, and a tiny slip of paper I cover with my thumb!

Then you inquire about my 'sensitiveness to criticism,' and I shall be glad to tell you exactly, because I have, more than once, taken a course you might else not understand. I shall live always—that is for me—I am living here this 1845, that is for London. I write from a thorough conviction that it is the duty of me, and with the belief that, after every drawback and shortcoming, I do my best, all things considered—that is for me , and, so being, the not being listened to by one human creature would, I hope, in nowise affect me. But of course I must, if for merely scientific purposes, know all about this 1845, its ways and doings, and something I do know, as that for a dozen cabbages, if I pleased to grow them in the garden here, I might demand, say, a dozen pence at Covent Garden Market,—and that for a dozen scenes, of the average goodness, I may challenge as many plaudits at the theatre close by; and a dozen pages of verse, brought to the Rialto where verse-merchants most do congregate, ought to bring me a fair proportion of the Reviewers' gold currency, seeing the other traders pouch their winnings, as I do see. Well, when they won't pay me for my cabbages, nor praise me for my poems, I may, if I please, say 'more's the shame,' and bid both parties 'decamp to the crows,' in Greek phrase, and yet go very lighthearted back to a garden-full of rose-trees, and a soul-full of comforts. If they had bought my greens I should have been able to buy the last number of Punch , and go through the toll-gate of Waterloo Bridge, and give the blind clarionet-player a trifle, and all without changing my gold. If they had taken to my books, my father and mother would have been proud of this and the other 'favourable critique,' and—at least so folks hold—I should have to pay Mr. Moxon less by a few pounds, whereas—but you see! Indeed I force myself to say ever and anon, in the interest of the market-gardeners regular, and Keatses proper, 'It's nothing to you , critics, hucksters, all of you, if I have this garden and this conscience—I might go die at Rome, or take to gin and the newspaper, for what you would care!' So I don't quite lay open my resources to everybody. But it does so happen, that I have met with much more than I could have expected in this matter of kindly and prompt recognition. I never wanted a real set of good hearty praisers—and no bad reviewers—I am quite content with my share. No—what I laughed at in my 'gentle audience' is a sad trick the real admirers have of admiring at the wrong place—enough to make an apostle swear. That does make me savage— never the other kind of people; why, think now—take your own 'Drama of Exile' and let me send it to the first twenty men and women that shall knock at your door to-day and after—of whom the first five are the Postman, the seller of cheap sealing-wax, Mr. Hawkins Junr, the Butcher for orders, and the Tax-gatherer—will you let me, by Cornelius Agrippa's assistance, force these five and these fellows to read, and report on, this 'Drama'—and, when I have put these faithful reports into fair English, do you believe they would be better than, if as good, as, the general run of Periodical criticisms? Not they, I will venture to affirm. But then—once again, I get these people together and give them your book, and persuade them, moreover, that by praising it, the Postman will be helping its author to divide Long Acre into two beats, one of which she will take with half the salary and all the red collar,—that a sealing-wax vendor will see red wafers brought into vogue, and so on with the rest—and won't you just wish for your Spectators and Observers and Newcastle-upon-Tyne—Hebdomadal Mercuries back again! You see the inference—I do sincerely esteem it a perfectly providential and miraculous thing that they are so well-behaved in ordinary, these critics; and for Keats and Tennyson to 'go softly all their days' for a gruff word or two is quite inexplicable to me, and always has been. Tennyson reads the Quarterly and does as they bid him, with the most solemn face in the world—out goes this, in goes that, all is changed and ranged. Oh me!