Page:Every Woman's Encyclopedia Volume 1.djvu/295

 273 LOve I^OVE^ILETTERtS OF FAMOUS By LADY MARGARKT SACKVILLK ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING FEOPILE i T is difficult to say to what extent letters so intimate as those of the Brownings can be published without profanation. That a man's heart should be exposed in spirits of wine to gratify public curiosity is a proceeding open to criticism, at least on the score of good taste. The attitude of the individual reader, however, counts for much, and everyone, therefore, has the solution of the problem to a large extent in his or her own hands. When reading other love-letters one does not experience a like hesitation. Those letters belong to other times and other ways of thought. The letters of the Brownings, however, are so intimate and near ! In a sense, however, so utterly at one were both these poets with their poetry, nothing more is revealed in these letters than appeared in the " Sonnets of the Portuguese." These are merely Mrs. Browning's letters turned into poetry. This detracts a little from one's sense of intrusion, but emotion when expressed in verse usually guards itself in some way from too close contact with the crowd. Emotion, moreover, when it speaks without reserve or arriere pensee, when the world has no inhabitants save two lovers, gives a very different expression to its thoughts. Certainly never was there such a revelation of two noble spirits ! The spirit of Browning, the great-hearted man, filled to the brim with a rushing, burning, eager life which over- flowed the limits of speech like a mountain stream splashing from rock to rock, and the spirit of Elizabeth Barrett, through whose closed curtains (till they were so startlingly thrown back), the sun but rarely shone. Both had that belief in the ultimate goodness of life which is like a straight road leading through a desert, and from that road neither strayed until the end. Fate, so often employed in bringing together the wrong people and keeping the right ones apart, was in a radiant mood surely when it revealed the Brownings to each other. They recognised each other at once ; he at the first meeting, she only a little later. Not often do two lives ripen to such perfection. Not often is the best given without reservation to those who are worthy of the best. " God sends nuts to the toothless " is a proverb which is only too often proved to be true. Did Love enrich their Ver5e? To what extent, however, the coming together of these two poets enriched their poetry is, of course, impossible to tell. Browning already had written " Paracelsus," " Pippa Passes," and " Luria " (among other great poems) before his marriage. He would probably have done, therefore, what he had to do in any case, but it is fairly certain that had not her life been re-set to a large emotion, Elizabeth Browning could never have equalled the Portuguese sonnets. The only experience really useful to a great artist is that which, by pain or joy, quickens his imagination to declare the things it knows. He has not — like most men — to learn life ; he knows it in all its essentials from his birth. Experience sought for its own sake, save in urging him to the expres- sion of emotions which might otherwise lie dormant, will probably serve only to confuse the creative spirit. Had Mrs. Browning remained always behind closed shutters she would still have understood life in a way in which it is not understood even by those who have the whole world to walk in. This almost miraculous love, however, was necessary to awaken her full powers, although without it her genius would still have spoken. But rarely does one find great poets who possess character and strength equal to their poetry. The lives and poetry of the Brown- ings, however, are one, and the story of their love is but that of one of Robert Browning's poems lived to the full. Some Letter* The following letters are characteristic and, since characteristic, beautiful : How you write to me ! Are there any words to answer to these words, which, when I have read, I shut my eyes as one bewildered, and think blindly, or do not think ? Some feelings are deeper than the thoughts touch. My only beloved, it is thus with me, I stand by a miracle in your love, and it covers me, just for that you cannot see me ! May God grant that you never see me, for then we two shall be " happy," as you say, and I, in the only pos- sible manner, be very sure. Meanwhile, you do quite well not to speculate about mak- ing me happy ; your instinct knows, if you do not know, that it is implied in your own happiness, or rather (not to assume a magnanimity) in my sense of your being happy, not apart from me. As God s^es me, and as I know at all the motions of my own soul, I may assert to you that from the first moment of our being