2208. EBB to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 12, 67–69.
[London]
[Postmark: 12 February 1846]
Ah, the ‘sortes’!– Is it a double oracle .. ‘swan & shadow’ [1] .. do you think? .. or do my eyes see double, dazzled by the light of it? ‘I shall love thee to eternity’– I shall.
And as for the wine, I did not indeed misunderstand you “as my wont is”, because I understood simply that “habitually” you abstained from wine, .. & I meant exactly that perhaps it would be better for your health to take it habitually– It might, you know—not that I pretend to advise. Only when you look so much too pale sometimes, it comes into one’s thoughts that you ought not to live on cresses & cold water– Strong coffee which is the nearest to a stimulant that I dare to take, as far as ordinary diet goes, will almost always deliver me from the worst of headaches .. but there is no likeness, no comparison– And your ‘quite well’ means that dreadful ‘turning’ still .. still! Now do not think any more of the Domizias, nor ‘try to remember’, which is the most wearing way of thinking. The more I read & read your Luria, the grander it looks—and it will make its own road with all understanding men, you need not doubt .. & still less need you try to make me uneasy about the harm I have done in “coming between”, & all the rest of it——. I wish never to do you greater harm than just that,—& then with a white conscience, ‘I shall love thee to eternity’ .. dearest!– You have made a golden work out of your ‘goldenhearted Luria’ .. as once you called him to me [2] —& I hold it in the highest admiration—should, if you were precisely nothing to me. And still, the fifth act rises! That is certain. Nevertheless I seem to agree with you that your hand has vacillated in your Domizia– We do not know her with as full a light on her face, as the other persons—we do not see the panther .. no, certainly we do not—but you will do a very little for her which will be everything, after a time .. & I assure you that if you were to ask for the manuscript before, you should not have a page of it—now, you are only to rest. What a work to rest upon! Do consider what a triumph it is!– The more I read, the more I think of it, the greater it grows——and as to “faded lines”, you never cut a pomegranate that was redder in the deep of it– [3] Also, no one can say ‘This is not clearly written’– The people who are at “words of one syllable” may be puzzled by you & Wordsworth together this time .. as far as the expression goes. Subtle thoughts you always must have, in & out of Sordello—& the objectors would find even Plato (though his medium is as lucid as the water that ran beside the beautiful plane tree!) a little difficult perhaps.
Today Mr Kenyon came .. & do you know, he has made a beatific confusion between last saturday & next saturday, & said to me he had told Miss Thomson to mind to come on friday if she wished to see me .. “remembering” (he added) “that Mr Browning took saturday!!”– So I let him mistake the one week for the other—‘Mr Browning took saturday’, it was true, both ways. Well—and then he went on to tell me that he had heard from Mrs Jameson who was at Brighton & unwell, & had written to say this & that to him, & to enquire besides .. now, what do you think, she enquired besides? .. “how you and .. Browning were” said Mr Kenyon—I write his words. He is coming .. perhaps tomorrow, or perhaps sunday—saturday is to have a twofold safety– That is, if you are not ill again– Dearest, you will not think of coming if you are ill .. unwell even. I shall not be frightened next time, as I told you– I shall have the precedent– Before, I had to think .. “It has never happened so—there must be a cause—and if it is a very, very, bad cause, why no one will tell me, .. it will not seem my concern”—that was my thought on saturday. But another time .. only, if it is possible to keep well, do keep well, beloved, & think of me instead of Domizia, & let there be no other time for your suffering––my waiting is nothing. I shall remember for the future that you may have the headache—& do you remember it too!
For Mr Horne I take your testimony gladly & believingly. She blots with her eyes sometimes. She hates .. & loves in extreme degrees. We have, once or twice or thrice, been on the border of mutual displeasure, on this very subject, .. for I grew really vexed to observe the trust on one side & the dyspathy on the other .. using the mildest of words. You see, he found himself, down in Berkshire, in quite a strange element of society, .. he, an artist in his good & his evil,—& the people there, “county families”, smoothly plumed in their conventions, & classing the ringlets & the aboriginal way of using waterglasses among offences against the Moral Law. Then .. meaning to be agreeable .. or fascinating perhaps, made it twenty times worse. Writing in albums about the Graces, discoursing meditated impromptus at pic nics, playing on the guitar in fancy dresses, .. all these things which seemed to poor Orion as natural as his own stars I dare say, & just the things suited to the genus poet, & to himself specifically, .. were understood by the natives & their ‘rural deities’ to signify, that he intended to marry one half the county, & to run away with the other. But Miss Mitford should have known better—she should– And she would have known better, if she had liked him——for the liking could have been unmade by no such offences. She is too fervent a friend—she can be. Generous too, she can be without an effort,—& I have had much affection for her—& accuse myself for seeming to have less—but
May God bless you!– I end in haste after this long lingering–
Your Ba–
Not unwell—I am not! I forgot it, which proves how I am not.
Address: Robert Browning Esqre / New Cross / Hatcham / Surrey.
Postmark: KP 12FE12 1846.
Dockets, in RB’s hand: 114.; + Saty Feb. 14 / 3–5.5m. p.m. (46).
Publication: RB-EBB, pp. 452–454.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Wordsworth, “Yarrow Unvisited” (1807), line 44.
2. In letter 1851. For EBB’s written notes on Luria, see vol. 11, pp. 393–399.
3. Cf. EBB, “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” lines 165–166.
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