On March 5, we posted a letter from Elizabeth Barrett Barrett to her future husband Robert Browning, in which she shared some ideas inspired by her work on a translation of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. In today’s letter, she thanks him for his comments on the translation, addresses his anxieties about their relationship, and confesses some of her own.
Friday Morning.
[Postmark, June 7, 1845]
When I see all you have done for me in this ‘Prometheus,’ I feel more than half ashamed both of it and of me for using your time so, and forced to say in my own defence (not to you but myself) that I never thought of meaning to inflict such work on you who might be doing so much better things in the meantime both for me and for others … and indeed I did not mean so much, nor so soon! Yet as you have done it for me … it is of course of the greatest value, besides the pleasure and pride which come of it; and I must say of the translation, (before putting it aside for the nonce), that the circumstance of your paying it so much attention and seeing any good in it, is quite enough reward for the writer and quite enough motive for self-gratulation, if it were all torn to fragments at this moment—which is a foolish thing to say because it is so obvious, and because you would know it if I said it or not.
And while you were doing this for me, you thought it unkind of me not to write to you; yes, and you think me at this moment the very princess of apologies and excuses and depreciations and all the rest of the small family of distrust—or of hypocrisy … who knows? Well! but you are wrong … wrong … to think so; and you will let me say one word to show where you are wrong—not for you to controvert, … because it must relate to myself especially, and lies beyond your cognizance, and is something which I must know best after all. And it is, … that you persist in putting me into a false position, with respect to fixing days and the like, and in making me feel somewhat as I did when I was a child, and Papa used to put me up on the chimney-piece and exhort me to stand up straight like a hero, which I did, straighter and straighter, and then suddenly ‘was ’ware’ (as we say in the ballads) of the walls’ growing alive behind me and extending two stony hands to push me down that frightful precipice to the rug, where the dog lay … dear old Havannah, … and where he and I were likely to be dashed to pieces together and mix our uncanonised bones. Now my present false position … is the necessity you provide for me in the shape of my having to name this day, or that day, … and of your coming because I name it … I cannot help being uncomfortable in having to do this,—it is impossible. Not that I distrust you … I am naturally given to trust … to a fault … as some say, or to a sin, as some reproach me:—and then again, if I were ever such a distruster, it could not be of you. But if you knew me—! I will tell you! … if my own father omits coming up-stairs to say ‘good night,’ I never say a word; and not from indifference. Do try to make out these readings of me as a dixit Casaubonus; and don’t throw me down as a corrupt text, nor convict me for an infidel which I am not. On the contrary I am grateful and happy to believe that you like to come here; and even if you came here as a pure act of charity and pity to me, as long as you chose to come I should not be too proud to be grateful and happy still. I could not be proud to you, and I hope you will not fancy such a possibility, which is the remotest of all. Yes, and I am anxious to ask you to be wholly generous and leave off such an interpreting philosophy as you made use of yesterday, and forgive me when I beg you to fix your own days for coming for the future. Will you? … I cannot help chafing myself against the thought that for me to begin to fix days in this way, just because you have quick impulses (like all imaginative persons), and wish me to do it now, may bring me to the catastrophe of asking you to come when you would rather not … and therefore I shrink from the very imagination of the possibility of such a thing, and ask you to bear with me and let it be as I prefer … left to your own choice of the moment. … I am so used to discern the correcting and ministering angels by the same footsteps on the ground, that it is not wonderful I should look down there at any approach of a φιλια ταξις whatever to this personal me. Have I not been ground down to browns and blacks? and is it my fault if I am not green? Not that it is my complaint—I should not be justified in complaining; I believe, as I told you, that there is more gladness than sadness in the world—that is, generally: and if some natures have to be refined by the sun, and some by the furnace(the less genial ones) both means are to be recognised as good, … however different in pleasurableness and painfulness, and though furnace-fire leaves scorched streaks upon the fruit. …
It is a multitude of words about nothing at all, … this—but I am like Mariana in the moated grange and sit listening too often to the mouse in the wainscot. …
Also … if on Wednesday you should be less well than usual, you will come on Thursday instead, I hope … Otherwise, I hold to my day … Wednesday. And may God bless you my dear friend.
Ever yours,
E.B.B.
You are right I see, nearly everywhere, if not quite everywhere in the criticisms—but of course I have not looked very closely—that is, I have read your papers but not in connection with a my side of the argument—but I shall lose the post after all.