The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett | Page 4

of 'the
honour of my acquaintance,' but I will joyfully wait for the delight of
your friendship, and the spring, and my Chapel-sight after all!
Ever yours most faithfully,
R. BROWNING.
For Mr. Kenyon--I have a convenient theory about him, and his
otherwise quite unaccountable kindness to me; but 'tis quite night now,
and they call me.

_E.B.B. to R.B._
50 Wimpole Street: Jan. 15, 1845.
Dear Mr. Browning,--The fault was clearly with me and not with you.
When I had an Italian master, years ago, he told me that there was an
unpronounceable English word which absolutely expressed me, and
which he would say in his own tongue, as he could not in mine--'testa
lunga.' Of course, the signor meant headlong!--and now I have had
enough to tame me, and might be expected to stand still in my stall. But
you see I do not. Headlong I was at first, and headlong I
continue--precipitously rushing forward through all manner of nettles
and briars instead of keeping the path; guessing at the meaning of
unknown words instead of looking into the dictionary--tearing open
letters, and never untying a string,--and expecting everything to be
done in a minute, and the thunder to be as quick as the lightning. And
so, at your half word I flew at the whole one, with all its possible
consequences, and wrote what you read. Our common friend, as I think
he is, Mr. Horne, is often forced to entreat me into patience and
coolness of purpose, though his only intercourse with me has been by
letter. And, by the way, you will be sorry to hear that during his stay in
Germany he has been 'headlong' (out of a metaphor) twice; once, in
falling from the Drachenfels, when he only just saved himself by
catching at a vine; and once quite lately, at Christmas, in a fall on the
ice of the Elbe in skating, when he dislocated his left shoulder in a very
painful manner. He is doing quite well, I believe, but it was sad to have

such a shadow from the German Christmas tree, and he a stranger.
In art, however, I understand that it does not do to be headlong, but
patient and laborious--and there is a love strong enough, even in me, to
overcome nature. I apprehend what you mean in the criticism you just
intimate, and shall turn it over and over in my mind until I get practical
good from it. What no mere critic sees, but what you, an artist, know, is
the difference between the thing desired and the thing attained, between
the idea in the writer's mind and the [Greek: eidôlon] cast off in his
work. All the effort--the quick'ning of the breath and beating of the
heart in pursuit, which is ruffling and injurious to the general effect of a
composition; all which you call 'insistency,' and which many would call
superfluity, and which is superfluous in a sense--you can pardon,
because you understand. The great chasm between the thing I say, and
the thing I would say, would be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of
such kindnesses as yours, if the desire did not master the despondency.
'Oh for a horse with wings!' It is wrong of me to write so of
myself--only you put your finger on the root of a fault, which has, to
my fancy, been a little misapprehended. I do not say everything I think
(as has been said of me by master-critics) but I take every means to say
what I think, which is different!--or I fancy so!
In one thing, however, you are wrong. Why should you deny the full
measure of my delight and benefit from your writings? I could tell you
why you should not. You have in your vision two worlds, or to use the
language of the schools of the day, you are both subjective and
objective in the habits of your mind. You can deal both with abstract
thought and with human passion in the most passionate sense. Thus,
you have an immense grasp in Art; and no one at all accustomed to
consider the usual forms of it, could help regarding with reverence and
gladness the gradual expansion of your powers. Then you are
'masculine' to the height--and I, as a woman, have studied some of your
gestures of language and intonation wistfully, as a thing beyond me far!
and the more admirable for being beyond.
Of your new work I hear with delight. How good of you to tell me. And
it is not dramatic in the strict sense, I am to understand--(am I right in
understanding so?) and you speak, in your own person 'to the winds'?
no--but to the thousand living sympathies which will awake to