The Barretts of Wimpole Street Page #4

And my imagination supplied the rest.

Directly after I read your brave and lovely verses

I was greedy for anything and everything I could get about you.

Oh, what they must have told you !

Oh, nothing they told me about you personally

had the slightest interest for me.

Because I knew it already. And better than they.

Oh, Mr. Browning. Do my writings give me so hopelessly away ?

Hopelessly, utterly, entirely. To me.

Of course I can't speak for the rest of the world.

I'm afraid it will be quite useless...

... my ever trying to play act with you.

Quite useless.

I shall always have to be just myself ?

Always.

But you, you're never yourself in any of your poems.

It's always somebody else speaking through you.

Yes, and shall I tell you why ?

I'm a very modest man.

I am. really !

We didn't question that, Mr. Browning.

So modest, I fully realize that if I wrote about myself

my poems would be intolerably dull.

Oh, but those poems.

With their glad and great-hearted acceptance of life.

You can't imagine what they mean to me.

Here I am shut in by these four walls and...

... and they troupe into my room,

those wonderful people of yours.

Out of every age and country and...

... and all so tingling with life.

No, you'll never begin to realize just...

... just how much I do owe you.

You really mean that ?

Of course you do, or you wouldn't say it.

You don't find me difficult, obscure ?

Many people do.

Surely not.

Yet, to me it's simple and easy as the rule of three.

And to you ?

No, not quite always.

Sometimes there are passages that...

I've marked one or two in your Sordello which rather puzzled me.

Ah, Sordello.

Somebody once called it a horror of great gothic.

I've done my best to forget it.

Here it is.

All right...

But then, a passage torn from its context...

All petals, no prickles...

No prickles like trickles...

Well ?

Well, Miss Barrett...

... when that passage was written,

only God and Robert Browning understood it.

Now, only God understands it.

What do you say ? Shall we lighten

this great darkness by pitching it on the fire ?

No, indeed, we shall do nothing of the kind.

Please give me back the book.

I love Sordello.

You would.

Of curse you would. And shall I tell you why ?

Because it is a collossal failure

By a failure you mean an attempt.

Yes, you're right.

That's just why Sordello appeals to my very heart.

I too am always making collossal attempts.

And always failing.

But is not one such failure worth a hundred small successes ?

Oh, a thousand and more.

You think so too ?

But of course. I knew that.

Miss Barrett, you smiled when I told you

that your friends had no need to describe you because I knew you already.

But what you've just told me

about success and failure proves to me finally how right I was.

Tell me, did your fancy paint

my background with a very gloomy brush ?

The background possibly.

But the portrait of you I had painted with the true soul of you.

Ardent and lovely looking out of you.

Ardent and lovely.

Oh, Mr. Browning, you think you know me.

Too often impatient and rebelious.

Oh, what of it. I've no love for perfect patience under affliction.

My portrait is the portrait of a woman, not a saint.

I suppose people have told you that I...

... that I'm a dying woman.

We are all of us dying.

And you find me a very pitiful object ?

I find you as I pictured you.

Full of courage and gaiety.

And yet I'm not at all sure that my colors were too somber.

But...

No, no, listen to me.

Those colors are not yet dry.

They must be scraped off.

The whole background must be repainted.

And if only you will allow it,

I must have a hand in that splendid work.

But this is...

No, listen.

I'll get my brush in the sunrise, the sunset and the rainbow.

You say my verses have helped you but they are nothing.

It's I, I who am going to help you now.

We've come together at last,

and I don't intend to let you go again.

Give me your hand.

I've more strength than is good for one man.

Up to now I've spent a little of that surplus energy

in creating imaginary men and women.

But there's still so much to give.

Mayn't I give it to you ?

Don't you feel in your life tingling and prickling

up your fingers and arms right into your heart and brain ?

Oh, please.

Mr. Browning, please let go of my hand.

Well ?

You're really rather an overwhelming person...

... and in sober truth I...

Don't tell me that you're afraid of me.

You're not.

It's life you're afraid of, and that shouldn't be.

Life ?

Yes.

When life becomes a series of electric shocks I...

Was it as bad as all that ?

Indeed yes.

Do you affect other people in that way ?

They've often told me so.

No wonder I hesitated

about meeting you, much as I wanted to.

You know, you'll laugh at me, Mr. Browning,

but when my sister told me you were downstairs...

... I was so panic stricken that I almost

sent a message down saying that I was too unwell to receive you.

I think I must have been quite

as nervous as you at that moment...

... and I'm anything but a nervous man as a rule.

But that moment was the climax of my life.

Up to now.

Miss Barrett, do you remember the first letter I ever wrote you ?

Yes, indeed. It was a wonderful letter.

You may have thought I dashed it off

in a fit white out right out enthusiasm over your poems...

... but I didn't.

I weighed every word of every sentence.

And of one sentence in particular.

This sentence:
I love your books with all my heart.

And I love you, too.

Do you remember ?

Yes. I thought it was charmingly impulsive of you.

But there was nothing impulsive about it.

That sentence was as deeply felt

and anxiously thought over as any sentence I've ever written.

I hope I have many readers like you.

It's wonderful to think I may have good friends

all over the world whom I've never seen or heard of.

I'm not speaking of friendship but of love.

It's quite useless your trying to put aside the word with a smile and a jest.

I said love and I mean love.

Really, Mr. Browning, I must ask you to...

I'm insanely in love as any man alive.

In all these months

since I first read your poems I've been haunted by you.

And today you are the center of my life.

Mr. Browning...

If I were to take you seriously

it would have caused me the quick finish of a friendship which...

... promises to be very pleasant for both of us.

Why ?

You know very well that love

in the sense that you apparently use the word...

... has no place, and can have no place in my life.

Why ?

For many reasons, but let it suffice...

as I told you before...

... I am a dying woman.

I refuse to believe it.

If that were so, God would be cruel.

And I know that He's compassionate.

And life would be dark and evil, and I know that it's good.

You must never say such a thing again.

I forbid you to.

Forbid, Mr. Browning ?

Yes, forbid.

Isn't it only fair that if you forbid me to speak with you

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