The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett | Page 5

hear you.
A great dramatic power may develop itself otherwise than in the formal

drama; and I have been guilty of wishing, before this hour (for reasons
which I will not thrust upon you after all my tedious writing), that you
would give the public a poem unassociated directly or indirectly with
the stage, for a trial on the popular heart. I reverence the drama, but--
But I break in on myself out of consideration for you. I might have
done it, you will think, before. I vex your 'serene sleep of the virtuous'
like a nightmare. Do not say 'No.' I am sure I do! As to the vain
parlance of the world, I did not talk of the 'honour of your acquaintance'
without a true sense of honour, indeed; but I shall willingly exchange it
all (and now, if you please, at this moment, for fear of worldly
mutabilities) for the 'delight of your friendship.'
Believe me, therefore, dear Mr. Browning,
Faithfully yours, and gratefully,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
For Mr. Kenyon's kindness, as I see it, no theory will account. I class it
with mesmerism for that reason.

_R.B. to E.B.B._
New Cross, Hatcham, Monday Night. [Post-mark, January 28, 1845.]
Dear Miss Barrett,--Your books lie on my table here, at arm's length
from me, in this old room where I sit all day: and when my head aches
or wanders or strikes work, as it now or then will, I take my chance for
either green-covered volume, as if it were so much fresh trefoil to feel
in one's hands this winter-time,--and round I turn, and, putting a
decisive elbow on three or four half-done-with 'Bells' of mine, read,
read, read, and just as I have shut up the book and walked to the
window, I recollect that you wanted me to find faults there, and that, in
an unwise hour, I engaged to do so. Meantime, the days go by (the
whitethroat is come and sings now) and as I would not have you 'look
down on me from your white heights' as promise breaker, evader, or
forgetter, if I could help: and as, if I am very candid and contrite, you
may find it in your heart to write to me again--who knows?--I shall say

at once that the said faults cannot be lost, must be somewhere, and shall
be faithfully brought you back whenever they turn up,--as people tell
one of missing matters. I am rather exacting, myself, with my own
gentle audience, and get to say spiteful things about them when they
are backward in their dues of appreciation--but really, _really_--could I
be quite sure that anybody as good as--I must go on, I suppose, and
say--as myself, even, were honestly to feel towards me as I do, towards
the writer of 'Bertha,' and the 'Drama,' and the 'Duchess,' and the 'Page'
and--the whole two volumes, I should be paid after a fashion, I know.
One thing I can do--pencil, if you like, and annotate, and dissertate
upon that I love most and least--I think I can do it, that is.
Here an odd memory comes--of a friend who,--volunteering such a
service to a sonnet-writing somebody, gave him a taste of his quality in
a side-column of short criticisms on sonnet the First, and starting off
the beginning three lines with, of course, 'bad, worse, worst'--made by a
generous mintage of words to meet the sudden run of his epithets,
'worser, worserer, worserest' pay off the second terzet in full--no
'badder, badderer, badderest' fell to the _Second's_ allowance, and
'worser' &c. answered the demands of the Third; 'worster, worsterer,
worsterest' supplied the emergency of the Fourth; and, bestowing his
last 'worserestest and worstestest' on lines 13 and 14, my friend
(slapping his forehead like an emptied strong-box) frankly declared
himself bankrupt, and honourably incompetent, to satisfy the
reasonable expectations of the rest of the series!
What an illustration of the law by which opposite ideas suggest
opposite, and contrary images come together!
See now, how, of that 'Friendship' you offer me (and here Juliet's word
rises to my lips)--I feel sure once and for ever. I have got already, I see,
into this little pet-handwriting of mine (not anyone else's) which
scratches on as if theatrical copyists (ah me!) and BRADBURY AND
EVANS' READER were not! But you shall get something better than
this nonsense one day, if you will have patience with me--hardly better,
though, because this does me real good, gives real relief, to write. After
all, you know nothing, next to nothing of me, and that stops me. Spring
is to come, however!
If you hate writing to me as I hate writing to nearly everybody, I pray
you never write--if you do, as you say, care for anything I have done.