The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett | Page 8

I
ever write to you again--I mean, if you wish it--it may be in the other
extreme of shortness. So do not take me for a born heroine of
Richardson, or think that I sin always to this length, else,--you might
indeed repent your quotation from Juliet--which I guessed at once--and
of course--
I have no joy in this contract to-day! It is too unadvised, too rash and
sudden.
Ever faithfully yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
[Footnote 1: 'Not yet reached the prelude' (Aesch. _Prom._ 741).]

_R.B. to E.B.B._
Hatcham, Tuesday. [Post-mark, February 11, 1845.]
Dear Miss Barrett,--People would hardly ever tell falsehoods about a
matter, if they had been let tell truth in the beginning, for it is hard to
prophane one's very self, and nobody who has, for instance, used
certain words and ways to a mother or a father could, even if by the
devil's help he would, reproduce or mimic them with any effect to

anybody else that was to be won over--and so, if 'I love you' were
always outspoken when it might be, there would, I suppose, be no fear
of its desecration at any after time. But lo! only last night, I had to write,
on the part of Mr. Carlyle, to a certain ungainly, foolish gentleman who
keeps back from him, with all the fussy impotence of stupidity (not bad
feeling, alas! for that we could deal with) a certain MS. letter of
Cromwell's which completes the collection now going to press; and this
long-ears had to be 'dear Sir'd and obedient servanted' till I said (to use
a mild word) 'commend me to the sincerities of this kind of thing.'!
When I spoke of you knowing little of me, one of the senses in which I
meant so was this--that I would not well vowel-point my
common-place letters and syllables with a masoretic other sound and
sense, make my 'dear' something intenser than 'dears' in ordinary, and
'yours ever' a thought more significant than the run of its like. And all
this came of your talking of 'tiring me,' 'being too envious,' &c. &c.,
which I should never have heard of had the plain truth looked out of my
letter with its unmistakable eyes. Now, what you say of the 'bowing,'
and convention that is to be, and _tant de façons_ that are not to be,
helps me once and for ever--for have I not a right to say simply that, for
reasons I know, for other reasons I don't exactly know, but might if I
chose to think a little, and for still other reasons, which, most likely, all
the choosing and thinking in the world would not make me know, I had
rather hear from you than see anybody else. Never you care, dear noble
Carlyle, nor you, my own friend Alfred over the sea, nor a troop of true
lovers!--Are not their fates written? there! Don't you answer this, please,
but, mind it is on record, and now then, with a lighter conscience I shall
begin replying to your questions. But then--what I have printed gives
no knowledge of me--it evidences abilities of various kinds, if you
will--and a dramatic sympathy with certain modifications of passion ...
that I think--But I never have begun, even, what I hope I was born to
begin and end--'R.B. a poem'--and next, if I speak (and, God knows,
feel), as if what you have read were sadly imperfect demonstrations of
even mere ability, it is from no absurd vanity, though it might seem
so--these scenes and song-scraps are such mere and very escapes of my
inner power, which lives in me like the light in those crazy
Mediterranean phares I have watched at sea, wherein the light is ever
revolving in a dark gallery, bright and alive, and only after a weary

interval leaps out, for a moment, from the one narrow chink, and then
goes on with the blind wall between it and you; and, no doubt, then,
precisely, does the poor drudge that carries the cresset set himself most
busily to trim the wick--for don't think I want to say I have not worked
hard--(this head of mine knows better)--but the work has been inside,
and not when at stated times I held up my light to you--and, that there
is no self-delusion here, I would prove to you (and nobody else), even
by opening this desk I write on, and showing what stuff, in the way of
wood, I could make a great bonfire with, if I might only knock the
whole clumsy top off my tower! Of course, every writing body says the
same, so I gain nothing by the avowal; but when I remember how I
have done what was published, and half done what may never be, I