3690. RB to John Ruskin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 29–31.
Paris,
Dec 10. ’55.
My dear Ruskin—for so you shall let me begin, with the honest friendliness that befits—you never were more in the wrong than when you professed to say “your unpleasant things” to me,—this is pleasant & proper at all points, over-liberal of praise here & there, kindly & sympathetic everywhere, and with enough of yourself in even—what I fancy .. the misjudging to make the whole letter precious indeed. [1] I wanted to thank you thus much at once,—that is, when the letter reached me; but the stress of lodging-hunting was too sore—& only now that I can sit down for a minute without self-reproach, do I allow my thoughts to let go south-aspects, warm bedrooms & the like, & begin as you see. For the deepnesses you think you discern,—may they be more than mere blacknesses! For the hopes you entertain of what may come of subsequent readings,—all success to them! For your bewilderment more especially noted—how shall I help that? We don’t read poetry the same way, by the same law, it is too clear. I cannot begin writing poetry, till my imag<inary> [2] reader has conceded licences to me which you demur at altogether. I know that I don’t make out my conception by my language—all poetry being a putting the infinite within the finite. You would have me paint it all plain out, which can’t be: but by various artifices I try to make shift with touches & bits of outlines which succeed if they bear the conception from me to you. You ought,—I think,—keep pace with the thought tripping from ledge to ledge of my “glaciers,” as y<ou> call them,—not stand poking your alpen-stock into the holes, & dem<on>strating that no foot could have stood there—suppose it sprang over there? In prose you may criticise so—because that is the absolute representation of portions of truth,—what chronicling is to history—but in asking for more ultimates you must accept less mediates, nor expect that a Druid stone-circle will be traced for you with <as> few <breaks> to the eye, as the north crescent & south crescent that go together so cleverly in many a suburb. Why, you look at my little song as if it were Hobbs’ or Nobbs’ lease of his house, [3] or testament of his devisings, wherein, I grant you, not a “then & there,” “to him & his heirs,” “to have & to hold” & so on would be superfluous: & so you begin– “Stand still [4] —why?”– For the reason indicated in the verse, to be sure—to let me draw him [5] —& because he is at present going his way & fancying nobody notices him,—& moreover, “going on” (as we say) against the injustice of that,—& lastly, inasmuch as one night he’ll fail us, [6] as a star is apt to drop out of heaven, in authentic astronomic records, & I want to make the most of my time. So much may be in “stand still”—and how much more was (for instance) in that “stay!” of Samuel’s (I. xv. 16.) [7] So could I twit you through the whole series of your objurgations, but the declaring my own notion of the law on the subject will do. And why,—I prithee, friend & fellow student—why, having told the Poet what you read,—may I not turn to the bystanders & tell them a bit of my mind about their own stupid thanklessness & mistaking? Is the jump too much there? The whole is all but a simultaneous feeling with me.
The other hard measure you deal me I won’t bear—about my requiring you to pronounce words short & long, exactly as I like. Nay, but exactly as the language likes, in this case. Fold-skirts [8] not a trochee? A spondee [9] possible in English? Two of the “longest monosyllables” continuing to be each of the old length when in junction? Sentence: let the delinquent be forced to supply the stonecutter with a thousand companions to “Affliction sore—long time he bore” [10] —after the fashion of “He lost his life—by a pen-knife”—He turned to clay—Last Good Friday. <“Departed> hence,—nor owed six-pence” and so on—so would pronounce a jury accustomed from the nipple to say lord & landlord, bridge & Cambridge, Gog & Magog, man & woman, house & workhouse, coal & charcoal, cloth & broadcloth, skirts & fold-skirts, more & once more,—in short! Once—more I prayed!—is the confession of a self-searching professor! “I stand here for law!” [11]
—The last charge,—I cannot answer, for you may be right in preferring it, however unwitting I am of the fact. I may put Robert Browning into Pippa & other men & maids—if so, peccavi: [12] but I don’t see myself in them, at all events.
Do you think poetry was ever generally understood—or can be? Is the business of it to tell people what they know already, as they know it, & so precisely that they shall be able to cry out—“Here you should supply this—that, you evidently pass over, & I’ll help you, from my own stock”? It is all teaching, on the contrary, and the people hate to be taught. They say otherwise, make foolish fables about Orpheus enchanting stocks & stones, [13] poets standing up and being worshipped,—all nonsense & impossible dreaming. A poet’s affair is with God, to whom he is accountable, & of whom is his reward—look elsewhere & you find misery enough. Do you believe people understand “Hamlet”? The last time I saw it acted, the heartiest applause of the night went to a little by-play of the actor’s own—who, to simulate madness in a hurry, plucked forth his handkerchief & flourished it hither & thither: [14] certainly a third of the play, with no end of subtle things, had been (as from time immemorial) suppressed with the auditory’s amplest acquiescence & benediction. Are these wasted therefore? No—they act upon a very few, who react upon the rest: as Goldsmith says “Some Lords, my acquaintance, that settle the nation, are pleased to be kind”– [15]
Don’t let me lose my lord by any seeming self-sufficiency or petulance: I look on my own shortcomings too sorrowfully, try to remedy them too earnestly: but I shall never change my point of sight or feel other than disconcerted & apprehensive when the public, critics & all, begin to understand & approve me. But what right have you to disconcert me in the other way? Why won’t you ask the next perfumer for a packet of orris-root? [16] Don’t everybody know ’tis a corruption of Iris-root—the Florentine lily, the giagg[i]olo, [17] of world-wide fame as a good savour? And because “Iris” means so many objects already & I use the old word, you blame me! But I write in the blind-dark & bitter cold, & past post-time as I fear. Take my truest thanks, & understand at least this rough writing—&, at all events, the real affection with which I venture to regard you. And “I” means my wife as well as
Yours ever faithfully
Robert Browning
After a day or two at 3 Rue du Colysée, Chs. Elysées.
Publication: Cook, pp. xxxiv–xxxvi.
Manuscript: Ruskin Museum.
1. RB is responding to letter 3685.
2. The manuscript has been damaged, affecting text here and below. Text supplied in angle brackets is taken from Cook.
3. Cf. “Popularity” (1855), line 58.
4. “Popularity,” line 1.
5. Cf. “Popularity,” line 2.
6. Cf. “Popularity,” line 3.
7. In I Samuel 15:16, Samuel bids Saul “Stay, and I will tell thee what the Lord hath said to me this night.”
8. “Saul” (1855), line 20.
9. Two consecutive stressed syllables; RB voices a widespread scepticism about the existence of genuine spondees in English. A trochee is a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one.
10. Part of a common nineteenth-century headstone inscription, parodied in David Copperfield (1850), chapter 2: “I look up at the monumental tablets on the wall, and try to think of Mr. Bodgers late of this parish, and what the feelings of Mrs. Bodgers must have been, when affliction sore, long time Mr. Bodgers bore, and physicians were in vain.”
11. The Merchant of Venice, IV, 1, 142.
12. “I have sinned.”
13. Orpheus, son of the Muse Calliope, was such a master of the lyre that even inanimate objects were moved by his music.
14. Doubtless William Charles Macready; RB saw him play Hamlet many times in the 1830’s and 1840’s. George Henry Lewes wrote of Macready in the role: “His Hamlet I thought bad, due allowance being made for the intelligence it displayed. He was lachrymose and fretful: too fond of a cambric pocket-handkerchief to be really affecting” (On Actors and the Art of Acting, 1875, p. 35).
15. Oliver Goldsmith, The Haunch of Venison, A Poetical Epistle to Lord Clare (2nd ed., 1776), lines 43–44.
16. “Fra Lippo Lippi” (1855), line 351.
17. “Iris,” the rhizomes of which are used in perfumes and aromatherapy.
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