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

R.B.

I am but too proud of your praise—when will the blame come—at Malta?

[Post-mark, July 25, 1845.]

Are you any better to-day? and will you say just the truth of it? and not attempt to do any of the writing which does harm—nor of the reading even, which may do harm—and something does harm to you, you see—and you told me not long ago that you knew how to avoid the harm ... now, did you not? and what could it have been last week which you did not avoid, and which made you so unwell? Beseech you not to think that I am going to aid and abet in this wronging of yourself, for I will not indeed—and I am only sorry to have given you my querulous queries yesterday ... and to have omitted to say in relation to them, too, how they were to be accepted in any case as just passing thoughts of mine for your passing thoughts, ... some right, it may be ... some wrong, it must be ... and none, insisted on even by the thinker! just impressions, and by no means pretending to be judgments—now will you understand? Also, I intended (as a proof of my fallacy) to strike out one or two of my doubts before I gave the paper to you—so whichever strikes you as the most foolish of them, of course must be what I meant to strike out —(there's ingenuity for you!). The poem did, for the rest, as will be suggested to you, give me the very greatest pleasure, and astonish me in two ways ... by the versification, mechanically considered; and by the successful evolution of pure beauty from all that roughness and rudeness of the sin of the boar-pinner—successfully evolved, without softening one hoarse accent of his voice. But there is to be a pause now—you will not write any more—no, nor come here on Wednesday, if coming into the roar of this London should make the pain worse, as I cannot help thinking it must—and you were not well yesterday morning, you admitted. You will take care? And if there should be a wisdom in going away...!

Was it very wrong of me, doing what I told you of yesterday? Very imprudent, I am afraid—but I never knew how to be prudent—and then, there is not a sharing of responsibility in any sort of imaginable measure; but a mere going away of so many thoughts, apart from the thinker, or of words, apart from the speaker, ... just as I might give away a pocket-handkerchief to be newly marked and mine no longer. I did not do—and would not have done, ... one of those papers singly. It would have been unbecoming of me in every way. It was simply a writing of notes ... of slips of paper ... now on one subject, and now on another ... which were thrown into the great cauldron and boiled up with other matter, and re-translated from my idiom where there seemed a need for it. And I am not much afraid of being ever guessed at—except by those Oedipuses who astounded me once for a moment and were after all, I hope, baffled by the Sphinx—or ever betrayed; because besides the black Stygian oaths and indubitable honour of the editor, he has some interest, even as I have the greatest, in being silent and secret. And nothing is mine ... if something is of me ... or from me, rather. Yet it was wrong and foolish, I see plainly—wrong in all but the motives. How dreadful to write against time, and with a side-ways running conscience! And then the literature of the day was wider than his knowledge, all round! And the booksellers were barking distraction on every side!—I had some of the mottos to find too! But the paper relating to you I never was consulted about—or in one particular way it would have been better,—as easily it might have been. May God bless you, my dear friend,

E.B.B.

Friday Morning.

[Post-mark, July 25, 1845.]

You would let me now , I dare say, call myself grateful to you—yet such is my jealousy in these matters—so do I hate the material when it puts down, (or tries) the immaterial in the offices of friendship; that I could almost tell you I was not grateful, and try if that way I could make you see the substantiality of those other favours you refuse to recognise, and reality of the other gratitude you will not admit. But truth is truth, and you are all generosity, and will draw none but the fair inference, so I thank you as well as I can for this also —this last kindness. And you know its value, too—how if there were another you in the world, who had done all you have done and whom I merely admired for that; if such an one had sent me such a criticism, so exactly what I want and can use and turn to good; you know how I would have told you, my you I saw yesterday, all about it, and been sure of your sympathy and gladness:—but the two in one!

For the criticism itself, it is all true, except the over-eating—all the suggestions are to be adopted, the improvements accepted. I so thoroughly understand your spirit in this, that, just in this beginning, I should really like to have found some point in which I could coöperate with your intention, and help my work by disputing the effect of any alteration proposed, if it ought to be disputed— that would answer your purpose exactly as well as agreeing with you,—so that the benefit to me were apparent; but this time I cannot dispute one point. All is for best.

So much for this 'Duchess'—which I shall ever rejoice in—wherever was a bud, even, in that strip of May-bloom, a live musical bee hangs now. I shall let it lie (my poem), till just before I print it; and then go over it, alter at the places, and do something for the places where I (really) wrote anyhow, almost, to get done. It is an odd fact, yet characteristic of my accomplishings one and all in this kind, that of the poem , the real conception of an evening (two years ago, fully)—of that , not a line is written,—though perhaps after all, what I am going to call the accessories in the story are real though indirect reflexes of the original idea, and so supersede properly enough the necessity of its personal appearance, so to speak. But, as I conceived the poem, it consisted entirely of the Gipsy's description of the life the Lady was to lead with her future Gipsy lover—a real life, not an unreal one like that with the Duke. And as I meant to write it, all their wild adventures would have come out and the insignificance of the former vegetation have been deducible only—as the main subject has become now; of course it comes to the same thing, for one would never show half by half like a cut orange.—

Will you write to me? caring, though, so much for my best interests as not to write if you can work for yourself, or save yourself fatigue. I think before writing—or just after writing—such a sentence—but reflection only justifies my first feeling; I would rather go without your letters, without seeing you at all, if that advantaged you—my dear, first and last friend; my friend! And now—surely I might dare say you may if you please get well through God's goodness—with persevering patience, surely—and this next winter abroad—which you must get ready for now, every sunny day, will you not? If I venture to weary you again with all this, is there not the cause of causes, and did not the prophet write that 'there was a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the E.B.B.' led on to the fortune of

Your R.B.

Oh, let me tell you in the bitterness of my heart, that it was only 4 o'clock—that clock I enquired about—and that, ... no, I shall never say with any grace what I want to say ... and now dare not ... that you all but owe me an extra quarter of an hour next time: as in the East you give a beggar something for a few days running—then you miss him; and next day he looks indignant when the regular dole falls and murmurs—'And, for yesterday?'—Do I stay too long, I want to know,—too long for the voice and head and all but the spirit that may not so soon tire,—knowing the good it does. If you would but tell me.