return to England before the spring–which news proved me a prophet, and disappointed me at the same time, for one can’t enjoy even a prophecy in this world without something vexing. Indeed, I do long to see you again, dearest Mrs. Martin, and should always have the same pleasure in it, and affection for you, if my friends and acquaintances were as much multiplied as you _wrongly_ suppose them to be. But the truth is that I have almost none at all, in this place; and, except our relative Mr. Kenyon, not one literary in any sense. Dear Miss Mitford, one of the very kindest of human beings, lies buried in geraniums, thirty miles away. I could not conceive what Henrietta had been telling you, or what you meant, for a long time–until we conjectured that it must have been something about Lady Dacre, who kindly sent me her book, and intimated that she would be glad to receive me at her conversations–and you know me better than to doubt whether I would go or not. There was an equal unworthiness and unwillingness towards the honor of it. Indeed, dearest Mrs. Martin, it is almost surprising how we contrive to be as dull in London as in Devonshire–perhaps more so, for the sight of a multitude induces a sense of seclusion which one has not without it; and, besides, there were at Sidmouth many more known faces and listened-to voices than we see and hear in this place. No house yet! And you will scarcely have patience to read that papa has seen and likes another house in Devonshire Place, and that he _may_ take it, and we _may_ be settled in it, before the year closes. I myself think of the whole business indifferently. My thoughts have turned so long on the subject of houses, that the pivot is broken–and now they won’t turn any more. All that remains is, a sort of consciousness, that we should be more comfortable in a house with cleaner carpets, and taken for rather longer than a week at a time. Perhaps, after all, we are quite as well _sur le tapis_ as it is. It is a thousand to one but that the feeling of four red London walls closing around us for seven, eleven, or twenty-five years, would be a harsh and hard one, and make us cry wistfully to ‘get out.’ I am sure you will look up to your mountains, and down to your lakes, and enter into this conjecture.
Talking of mountains and lakes is itself a trying thing to us poor prisoners. Papa has talked several times of taking us into the country for two months this summer, and we have dreamt of it a hundred times in addition; but, after all, we are not likely to go I dare say. It would have been very delightful–and who knows what may take place next summer? We may not absolutely _die_, without seeing a tree. Henrietta has seen a great many. You will have heard, I dare say, of the enjoyment she had in her week at Camden House. She seems to have walked from seven in the morning to seven at night; and was quite delighted with the kindness within doors and the sunshine without. I assure you that, fresh as she was from the air and dew, she saluted us amidst the sentiment of our sisterly meeting just in this way–it was almost her first exclamation–‘What a very disagreeable smell there is here!’ And this, although she had brought geraniums enough from Camden to perfume the Haymarket!…
I am happy to announce to you that a new little dove has appeared from a shell–over which nobody had prognosticated good–on August 16, 1837. I and the senior doves appear equally delighted, and we all three, in the capacity of good sitters and indefatigable pullers-about, take a good deal of credit upon ourselves….
Arabel has begun oil painting, and without a master–and you can’t think how much effect and expression she has given to several of her own sketches, notwithstanding all difficulties. Poor Henrietta is without a piano, and is not to have one again _until we have another house_! This is something like ‘when Homer and Virgil are forgotten.’ _Speaking of Homer and Virgil_, I have been writing a ‘Romance of the Ganges,'[34] in order to illustrate an engraving in the new annual to be edited by Miss Mitford, Finden’s tableaux for 1838. It does not sound a _very_ Homeric undertaking–I confess I don’t hold any kind of annual, gild it as you please, in too much honour and awe–but from my wish to please her, and from the necessity of its being done in a certain time, I was ‘quite frightful,’ as poor old Cooke used to say, in order to express his own nervousness. But she was quite pleased–she is very soon pleased–and the ballad, gone the way of all writing, now-a-days, to the press. I do wish I could send you some kind of news that would interest you; but you see scarcely any except all this selfishness is in my beat. Dearest Bro draws and reads German, and I fear is dull notwithstanding. But we are every one of us more reconciled to London than we were. Well! I must not write any more. Whenever you think of me, dearest Mrs. Martin, remember how deeply and unchangeably I must regard you–both with my _mind_, my _affections_, and that part of either, called my gratitude. BA.
Henrietta’s kindest love and thanks for your letter. She desires me to say that she and Bro are going to dine with Mrs. Robert Martin to-morrow. I must tell you that Georgie and I went to hear Dr. Chalmers preach, three Sundays ago. His sermon was on a text whose extreme beauty would diffuse itself into any sermon preached upon it–God is love. His eloquence was very great, and his views noble and grasping. I expected much from his imagination, but not so much from his knowledge. It was truer to Scripture than I was prepared for, although there seemed to me some _want_ on the subject of the work of the Holy Spirit on the heart, which work we cannot dwell upon too emphatically. ‘He worketh in us to will and to do,’ and yet we are apt to will and do without a transmission of the praise to Him. May God bless you.
[Footnote 34: _Poetical Works_, ii. 83.]
_To Miss Commeline_
London: August 19, 1837.
My dear Miss Commeline,–I could not hear of your being in affliction without very frequent thoughts of you and a desire to express some of them in this way, and although so much time has passed I do hope that you will believe in the sympathy with which I, or rather _we_, have thought of you, and in the regard we shall not cease to feel for you even if we meet no more in this world. It is blessed to know both for ourselves and for each other that while there is a darkness that _must_ come to all, there is a light which _may_; and may He who is the light in the dark place be with you [now] and always, causing you to feel rather the glory that is in Him than the shadow which is in all beside–that so the sweetness of the consolation may pass the bitterness of even grief. Do give my love to Mrs. Commeline and to your sisters, and believe me, all of you, that the friends who have gone from your neighbourhood have not gone from my old remembrance, either of your kindness to them, or of their own feelings of interest in you.
Trusting to such old remembrances, I will believe that you care to know what we are doing and how we are settling–that word which has now been on our lips for years, which it is marvellous to think how it got upon human lips at all. We came from Sidmouth to try London and ourselves, and see whether or not we could live together; and after more than a year and a half close contact with smoke we find no very good excuse for not remaining in it; and papa is going on with his eternal hunt for houses–the wild huntsman in the ballad is nothing to him, all except the sublimity–intending very seriously to take the first he can. He is now about one in particular, but I won’t tell where it is because we have considered so many houses in particular that our considerations have come to be a jest in general. I shall be heartily glad, at least I _think_ so, for it is possible that the reality of being bricked up for a lease time may not be very agreeable. I think I shall be heartily glad when a house is taken, and we have made it look like our own with our furniture and pictures and books. I am so anxious to see my old books. I believe I shall begin at the beginning and read every story book through in the joy of meeting, and shall be as sedentary as ever I was in my own arm-chair. I remember when I was a child spreading my vitality, not over trees and flowers (I do that still–I still believe they have a certain animal susceptibility to pleasure and pain; ‘it is my creed,’ and, being Wordsworth’s besides, I am not ashamed of it), but over chairs and tables and books in particular, and being used to fancy a kind of love in them to suit my love to them. And so if I were a child I should have an intense pity for my poor folios, quartos, and duodecimos, to say nothing of the arm-chair, shut up all these weeks and months in boxes, without a rational eye to look upon them. Pray forgive me if I have written a great deal of nonsense–‘Je m’en doute.’
Henrietta has spent a fortnight at Chislehurst with the Martins, and was very joyous there, and came back to us with that happy triumphant air which I always fancy people ‘just from the country’ put on towards us hapless Londoners.
But you must not think I am a discontented person and grumble all day long at being in London. _There are many advantages here_, as I say to myself whenever it is particularly disagreeable; and if we can’t see even a leaf or a sparrow without soot on it, there are the parrots at the Zoological Gardens and the pictures at the Royal Academy; and real live poets above all, with their heads full of the trees and birds and sunshine of paradise. I have stood face to face with Wordsworth and Landor; and Miss Mitford, who is in herself what she is in her books, has become a dear friend of mine, but a distant one. She visits London at long intervals, and lives thirty miles away….
Bro and I were studying German together all last summer with Henry, before he left us to become a German, and I believe this is the last of my languages, for I have begun absolutely to detest the sight of a dictionary or grammar, which I never liked except as a means, and love poetry with an intenser love, if that be possible, than I ever did. Not that Greek is not as dear to me as ever, but I write more than I read, even of Greek poetry, and am resolute to work whatever little faculty I have, clear of imitations and conventionalisms which cloud and weaken more poetry (particularly now-a-days) than would be believed possible without looking into it….
As to society in London, I assure you that none of us have much, and that as for me, you would wonder at seeing how possible it is to live as secludedly in the midst of a multitude as in the centre of solitude. My doves are my chief acquaintances, and I am so very intimate with _them_ that they accept and even demand my assistance in building their innumerable nests. Do tell me if there is any hope of seeing any of you in London at any time. I say ‘do tell me,’ for I will venture to ask you, dear Miss Commeline, to write me a few lines in one of the idlest hours of one of your idlest days just to tell me a little about you, and whether Mrs. Commeline is tolerably well. Pray believe me under all circumstances,
Yours sincerely and affectionately,
E.B. BARRETT.
The spring of 1838 was marked by two events of interest to Miss Barrett and her family. In the first place, Mr. Barrett’s apparently interminable search for a house ended in his selection of 50 Wimpole Street, which continued to be his home for the rest of his life, and which is, consequently, more than any other house in London, to be associated with his daughter’s memory. The second event was the publication of ‘The Seraphim, and other Poems,’ which was Miss Barrett’s first serious appearance before the public, and in her own name, as a poet. The early letters of this year refer to the preparation of this volume, as well as to the authoress’s health, which was at this time in a very serious condition, owing to the breaking of a blood-vessel. Indeed, from this time until her marriage in 1846 she held her life on the frailest of tenures, and lived in all respects the life of an invalid.
_To H.S. Boyd_
Monday morning, March 27, 1838 [postmark].
My dear Friend,–I do hope that you may not be very angry, but papa thinks–and, indeed, I think–that as I have already _had_ two proof sheets and forty-eight pages, and the printers have gone on to the rest of the poem, it would not be very welcome to them if we were to ask them to retrace their steps. Besides, I would rather–_I_ for myself, _I_–that you had the whole poem at once and clearly printed before you, to insure as many chances as possible of your liking it. I am _promised_ to see the volume completed in three weeks from this time, so that the dreadful moment of your reading it–I mean the ‘Seraphim’ part of it–cannot be far off, and perhaps, the season being a good deal advanced even now, you might not, on consideration, wish me to retard the appearance of the book, except for some very sufficient reason. I feel very nervous about it–far more than I did when my ‘Prometheus’ crept out [of] the Greek, or I myself out of the shell, in the first ‘Essay on Mind.’ Perhaps this is owing to Dr. Chambers’s medicines, or perhaps to a consciousness that my present attempt _is_ actually, and will be considered by others, more a trial of strength than either of my preceding ones.
Thank you for the books, and especially for the _editio rarissima_, which I should as soon have thought of your trusting to me as of your admitting me to stand with gloves on within a yard of Baxter. This extraordinary confidence shall not be abused.
I thank you besides for your kind inquiries about my health. Dr. Chambers did not think me worse yesterday, notwithstanding the last cold days, which have occasioned some uncomfortable sensations, and he still thinks I shall be better in the summer season. In the meantime he has ordered me to take ice–out of sympathy with nature, I suppose; and not to speak a word, out of contradiction to my particular, human, feminine nature.
Whereupon I revenge myself, you see, by talking all this nonsense upon paper, and making you the victim.
To propitiate you, let me tell you that your commands have been performed to the letter, and that one Greek motto (from ‘Orpheus’) is given to the first part of ‘The Seraphim,’ and another from _Chrysostom_ to the second.
Henrietta desires me to say that she means to go to see you very soon. Give my very kind remembrance to Miss Holmes, and believe me,
Your affectionate friend,
E.B. BARRETT.
I saw Mr. Kenyon yesterday. He has a book just coming out.[35] I should like you to read it. If you would, you would thank me for saying so.
[Footnote 35: _Poems, for the most part occasional_, by John Kenyon.]
_To John Kenyon_[36]
[1838.]
Thank you, dearest Mr. Kenyon; and I should (and _shall_) thank Miss Thomson too for caring to spend a thought on me after all the Parisian glories and rationalities which I sympathise with by many degrees nearer than you seem to do. We, in this England here, are just social barbarians, to my mind–that is, we know how to read and write and think, and even talk on occasion; but we carry the old rings in our noses, and are proud of the flowers pricked into our cuticles. By so much are they better than we on the Continent, I always think. Life has a thinner rind, and so a livelier sap. And _that_ I can see in the books and the traditions, and always understand people who like living in France and Germany, and should like it myself, I believe, on some accounts.
Where did you get your Bacchanalian song? Witty, certainly, but the recollection of the _scores_ a little ghastly for the occasion, perhaps. You have yourself sung into silence, too, all possible songs of Bacchus, as the god and I know.
Here is a delightful letter from Miss Martineau. I cannot be so selfish as to keep it to myself. The sense of natural beauty and the _good_ sense of the remarks on rural manners are both exquisite of their kinds, and Wordsworth is Wordsworth as she knows him. Have I said that Friday will find me expecting the kind visit you promise? _That_, at least, is what I meant to say with all these words.
Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.
[Footnote 36: John Kenyon (1784-1856) was born in Jamaica, the son of a wealthy West Indian landowner, but came to England while quite a boy, and was a conspicuous figure in literary society during the second quarter of the century. He published some volumes of minor verse, but is best known for his friendships with many literary men and women, and for his boundless generosity and kindliness to all with whom he was brought into contact. Crabb Robinson described him as a man ‘whose life is spent in making people happy.’ He was a distant cousin of Miss Barrett, and a friend of Robert Browning, who dedicated to him his volume of ‘Dramatic Romances,’ besides writing and sending to him ‘Andrea del Sarto’ as a substitute for a print of the painter’s portrait which he had been unable to find. The best account of Kenyon is to be found in Mrs. Crosse’s ‘John Kenyon and his Friends’ (in _Red-Letter Days of My Life_, vol. i.).]
_To John Kenyon_
Wimpole Street: Sunday evening [1838?].
My dear Mr. Kenyon,–I am _so_ sorry to hear of your going, and I not able to say ‘good-bye’ to you, that–I am _not_ writing this note on that account.
It is a begging note, and now I am wondering to myself whether you will think me very childish or womanish, or silly enough to be both together (I know your thoughts upon certain parallel subjects), if I go on to do my begging fully. I hear that you are going to Mr. Wordsworth’s–to Rydal Mount–and I want you to ask _for yourself_, and then to send to me in a letter–by the post, I mean, two cuttings out of the garden–of myrtle or geranium; I care very little which, or what else. Only I say ‘myrtle’ because it is less given to die and I say _two_ to be sure of my chances of saving one. Will you? You would please me very much by doing it; and certainly not _dis_ please me by refusing to do it. Your broadest ‘no’ would not sound half so strange to me as my ‘little crooked thing’ does to you; but you see everybody in the world is fanciful about something, and why not _E.B.B._?
Dear Mr. Kenyon, I have a book of yours–M. Rio’s. If you want it before you go, just write in two words, ‘Send it,’ or I shall infer from your silence that I may keep it until you come back. No necessity for answering this otherwise. Is it as bad as asking for autographs, or worse? At any rate, believe me _in earnest_ this time–besides being, with every wish for your enjoyment of mountains and lakes and ‘cherry trees,’
Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.
_To H.S. Boyd_
[May 1838.]
My dear friend,–I am rather better than otherwise within the last few days, but fear that nothing will make me essentially so except the invisible sun. I am, however, a little better, and God’s will is always done in mercy.
As to the poems, do forgive me, dear Mr. Boyd; and refrain from executing your cruel threat of suffering ‘the desire of reading them to pass away.’
I have not one sheet of them; and papa–and, to say the truth, I myself–would so very much prefer your reading the preface first, that you must try to indulge us in our phantasy. The book Mr. Bentley half promises to finish the printing of this week. At any rate it is likely to be all done in the next: and you may depend upon having a copy _as soon_ as I have power over one.
With kind regards to Miss Holmes,
Believe me, your affectionate friend, E.B.B.
_To H.S. Boyd_
50 Wimpole Street; Wednesday [May 1838].
Thank you for your inquiry, my dear friend. I had begun to fancy that between Saunders and Otley and the ‘Seraphim’ I had fallen to the ground of your disfavour. But I do trust to be able to send you a copy before next Sunday.
I am thrown back a little just now by having caught a very bad cold, which has of course affected my cough. The worst seems, however, to be past, and Dr. Chambers told me yesterday that he expected to see me in two days nearly as well as before this casualty. And I have been, thank God, pretty well lately; and although when the stethoscope was applied three weeks ago, it did not speak very satisfactorily of the state of the lungs, yet Dr. Chambers seems to be hopeful still, and to talk of the wonders which the summer sunshine (when it does come) may be the means of doing for me. And people say that I look rather better than worse, even now.
Did you hear of an autograph of Shakespeare’s being sold lately for a very large sum (I _think_ it was above a hundred pounds) on the credit of its being the only genuine autograph extant? Is yours quite safe? And are _you_ so, in your opinion of its veritableness?
I have just finished a very long barbarous ballad for Miss Mitford and the Finden’s tableaux of this year. The title is ‘The Romaunt of the Page,'[37] and the subject not of my own choosing.
I believe that you will certainly have ‘The Seraphim’ this week. Do macadamise the frown from your brow in order to receive them.
Give my love to Miss Holmes.
Your affectionate friend,
E.B. BARRETT.
[Footnote 37: _Poetical Works_, ii. 40.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
June 7, 1838 [postmark].
My dear Mr. Boyd,–Papa is scarcely inclined, nor am I for myself, to send my book or books to the East Indies. Let them alone, poor things, until they can walk about a little! and then it will be time enough for them to ‘learn to _fly_.’
I am so sorry that Emily Harding saw Arabel and went away without this note, which I have been meaning to write to you for several days, and have been so absorbed and drawn away (all except my thoughts) by other things necessary to be done, that I was forced to defer it. My ballad,[38] containing a ladye dressed up like a page and galloping off to Palestine in a manner that would scandalise you, went to Miss Mitford this morning. But I augur from its length that she will not be able to receive it into Finden.
Arabel has told me what Miss Harding told her of your being in the act of going through my ‘Seraphim’ for the second time. For the feeling of interest in me which brought this labour upon you, I thank you, my dear friend. What your opinion _is_, and _will_ be, I am prepared to hear with a good deal of awe. You will _certainly not approve of the poem_.
There now! You see I am prepared. Therefore do not keep back one rough word, for friendship’s sake, but be as honest as–you could not help being, without this request.
If I should live, I shall write (_I believe_) better poems than ‘The Seraphim;’ which belief will help me to survive the condemnation heavy upon your lips.
Affectionately yours,
E.B. BARRETT.
[Footnote 38: ‘The Romaunt of the Page.’]
‘The Seraphim, and other Poems,’ a duodecimo of 360 pages, at last made its appearance at the end of May. At the time of its publication, English poetry was experiencing one of its periods of ebb between two flood tides of great achievement. Shelley, Keats, Byron, Scott, Coleridge were dead; Wordsworth had ceased to produce poetry of the first order; no fresh inspiration was to be expected from Landor, Southey, Rogers, Campbell, and such other writers of the Georgian era as still were numbered with the living. On the other hand, Tennyson, though already the most remarkable among the younger poets, was still but exercising himself in the studies in language and metrical music by which his consummate art was developed; Browning had published only ‘Pauline,’ ‘Paracelsus,’ and ‘Strafford;’ the other poets who have given distinction to the Victorian age had not begun to write. And between the veterans of the one generation and the young recruits of the next there was a singular want of writers of distinction. There was thus every opportunity for a new poet when Miss Barrett entered the lists with her first volume of acknowledged verse.
Its reception, on the whole, does credit alike to its own merits and to the critics who reviewed it. It does not contain any of those poems which have proved the most popular among its authoress’s complete works, except ‘Cowper’s Grave;’ but ‘The Seraphim’ was a poem which deserved to attract attention, and among the minor poems were ‘The Poet’s Vow,’ ‘Isobel’s Child,’ ‘The Romaunt of Margret,’ ‘My Doves,’ and ‘The Sea-mew.’ The volume did not suffice to win any wide reputation for Miss Barrett, and no second edition was called for; on the other hand, it was received with more than civility, with genuine cordiality, by several among the reviewers, though they did not fail to note its obvious defects. The ‘Athenaeum'[39] began its review with the following declaration:
This is an extraordinary volume–especially welcome as an evidence of female genius and accomplishment–but it is hardly less disappointing than extraordinary. Miss Barrett’s genius is of a high order; active, vigorous, and versatile, but unaccompanied by discriminating taste. A thousand strange and beautiful views flit across her mind, but she cannot look on them with steady gaze; her descriptions, therefore, are often shadowy and indistinct, and her language wanting in the simplicity of unaffected earnestness.
[Footnote 39: July 7, 1838.]
The ‘Examiner,'[40] after quoting at length from the preface and ‘The Seraphim,’ continued:
Who will deny to the writer of such verses as these (and they are not sparingly met with in the volume) the possession of many of the highest qualities of the divine art? We regret to have some restriction to add to an admission we make so gladly. Miss Barrett is indeed a genuine poetess, of no common order; yet is she in danger of being spoiled by over-ambition; and of realising no greater or more final reputation than a hectical one, like Crashaw’s. She has fancy, feeling, imagination, expression; but for want of some just equipoise or other, between the material and spiritual, she aims at flights which have done no good to the strongest, and therefore falls infinitely short, except in such detached passages as we have extracted above, of what a proper exercise of her genius would infallibly reach…. Very various, and in the main beautiful and true, are the minor poems. But the entire volume deserves more than ordinary attention.
[Footnote 40: June 24, 1838.]
The ‘Atlas,'[41] another paper whose literary judgments were highly esteemed at that date, was somewhat colder, and dwelt more on the faults of the volume, but added nevertheless that ‘there are occasional passages of great beauty, and full of deep poetical feeling. In ‘The Romaunt of Margret’ it detected the influence of Tennyson–a suggestion which Miss Barrett repudiated rather warmly; and it concluded with the declaration that the authoress ‘possesses a fine poetical temperament, and has given to the public, in this volume, a work of considerable merit.’
[Footnote 41: June 23, 1838.]
Such were the principal voices among the critical world when Miss Barrett first ventured into its midst; and she might well be satisfied with them. Two years later, the ‘Quarterly Review'[42] included her name in a review of ‘Modern English Poetesses,’ along with Caroline Norton, ‘V.,’ and others whose names are even less remembered to-day. But though the reviewer speaks of her genius and learning in high terms of admiration, he cannot be said to treat her sympathetically. He objects to the dogmatic positiveness of her prefaces, and protests warmly against her ‘reckless repetition of the name of God’–a charge which, in another connection, will be found fully and fairly met in one of her later letters. On points of technique he criticises her frequent use of the perfect participle with accented final syllable–‘kissed,’ ‘bowed,’ and the like–and her fondness for the adverb ‘very;’ both of which mannerisms he charges to the example of Tennyson. He condemns the ‘Prometheus,’ though recognising it as ‘a remarkable performance for a young lady.’ He criticises the subject of ‘The Seraphim,’ ‘from which Milton would have shrunk;’ but adds, ‘We give Miss Barrett, however, the full credit of a lofty purpose, and admit, moreover, that several particular passages in her poem are extremely fine; equally profound in thought and striking in expression.’ He sums up as follows:
[Footnote 42: September 1840.]
In a word, we consider Miss Barrett to be a woman of undoubted genius and most unusual learning; but that she has indulged her inclination for themes of sublime mystery, not certainly without displaying great power, yet at the expense of that clearness, truth, and proportion, which are essential to beauty; and has most unfortunately fallen into the trammels of a school or manner of writing, which, of all that ever existed–Lycophron, Lucan, and Gongora not forgotten–is most open to the charge of being _vitiis imitabile exemplar_.
So much for the reception of ‘The Seraphim’ volume by the outside world. The letters show how it appeared to the authoress herself.
The first of them deserves a word of special notice, because it is likewise the first in these volumes addressed to Miss Mary Russell Mitford, whose name holds a high and honourable place in the roll of Miss Barrett’s friends. Her own account of the beginning of the friendship should be quoted in any record of Mrs. Browning’s life.
‘My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett commenced about fifteen years ago.[43] She was certainly one of the most interesting persons that I had ever seen. Everybody who then saw her said the same; so that it is not merely the impression of my partiality or my enthusiasm. Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went together to Chiswick, that the translatress of the “Prometheus” of Aeschylus, the authoress of the “Essay on Mind,” was old enough to be introduced into company, in technical language, was ‘out.’ Through the kindness of another invaluable friend,[44] to whom I owe many obligations, but none so great as this, I saw much of her during my stay in town. We met so constantly and so familiarly that, in spite of the difference of age,[45] intimacy ripened into friendship, and after my return into the country we corresponded freely and frequently, her letters being just what letters ought to be–her own talk put upon paper.'[46]
[Footnote 43: This was written about the end of 1851.]
[Footnote 44: Probably John Kenyon, whom Miss Mitford elsewhere calls ‘the pleasantest man in London;’ he, on his side, said of Miss Mitford that ‘she was better and stronger than any of her books.’]
[Footnote 45: Nineteen years, Miss Mitford having been born in 1787.]
[Footnote 46: _Recollections of a Literary Life_, by Mary Russell Mitford, p. 155 (1859).]
Miss Barrett’s letters show how warmly she returned this feeling of friendship, which lasted until Miss Mitford’s death in 1855. Of the earlier letters many must have disappeared: for it is evident from Miss Mitford’s just quoted words, and also from many references in her published correspondence, that they were in constant communication during these years of Miss Barrett’s life in London. After her marriage, however, the extant letters are far more frequent, and will be found to fill a considerable place in the later pages of this work.
_To Miss Mitford_
50 Wimpole Street: Thursday [June 1838].
We thank you gratefully, dearest Miss Mitford. Papa and I and all of us thank you for your more than kindnesses. The extracts were both gladdening and surprising–and the one the more for being the other also. Oh! it was _so_ kind of you, in the midst of your multitude of occupations, to make time (out of love) to send them to us!
As to the ballad, dearest Miss Mitford, which you and Mr. Kenyon are indulgent enough to like, remember that he passed his criticism over it–before it went to you–and so if you did not find as many obscurities as he did in it, the reason is–_his_ merit and not mine. But don’t believe him–no!–don’t believe even Mr. Kenyon–whenever he says that I am _perversely_ obscure. Unfortunately obscure, not perversely–that is quite a wrong word. And the last time he used it to me (and then, I assure you, another word still worse was with it) I begged him to confine them for the future to his jesting moods. Because, _indeed_, I am not in the very least degree perverse in this fault of mine, which is my destiny rather than my choice, and comes upon me, I think, just where I would eschew it most. So little has perversity to do with its occurrence, that my fear of it makes me sometimes feel quite nervous and thought-tied in composition….
I have not seen Mr. Kenyon since I wrote last. All last week I was not permitted to get out of bed, and was haunted with leeches and blisters. And in the course of it, Lady Dacre was so kind as to call here, and to leave a note instead of the personal greeting which I was not able to receive. The honor she did me a year ago, in sending me her book, encouraged me to offer her my poems. I hesitated about doing so at first, lest it should appear as if my vanity were dreaming of a _return_; but Mr. Kenyon’s opinion turned the balance. I was very sorry not to have seen Lady Dacre and have written a reply to her note expressive of this regret. But, after all, this inaudible voice (except in its cough) could have scarcely made her understand that I was obliged by her visit, had I been able to receive it.
Dr. Chambers has freed me again into the drawing-room, and I am much better or he would not have done so. There is not, however, much strength or much health, nor any near prospect of regaining either. It is well that, in proportion to our feebleness, we may feel our dependence upon God.
I feel as if I had not said half, and they have come to ask me if I have not said _all_! My beloved friend, may you be happy in all ways!
Do write whenever you wish to talk and have no one to talk to nearer you than I am! _Indeed_, I did not forget Dr. Mitford when I wrote those words, although they look like it.
Your gratefully affectionate
E.B. BARRETT.
_To H.S. Boyd_
50 Wimpole Street: Wednesday morning [June 1838].
My dear Friend,–Do not think me depraved in ingratitude for not sooner thanking you for the pleasure, made so much greater by the surprise, which your note of judgment gave me. The truth is that I have been very unwell, and delayed answering it immediately until the painful physical feeling went away to make room for the pleasurable moral one–and this I fancied it would do every hour, so that I might be able to tell you at ease all that was in my thoughts. The fancy was a vain one. The pain grew worse and worse, and Dr. Chambers has been here for two successive days shaking his head as awfully as if it bore all Jupiter’s ambrosial curls; and is to be here again to-day, but with, I trust, a less grave countenance, inasmuch as the leeches last night did their duty, and I feel much better–God be thanked for the relief. But I am not yet as well as before this attack, and am still confined to my bed–and so you must rather imagine than read what I thought and felt in reading your wonderful note. Of course it pleased me very much, very very much–and, I dare say, would have made me vain by this time, if it had not been for the opportune pain and the sight of Dr. Chambers’s face.
I sent a copy of my book to Nelly Bordman _before_ I read your suggestion. I knew that her kind feeling for me would interest her in the sight of it.
Thank you once more, dear Mr. Boyd! May all my critics be gentle after the pattern of your gentleness!
Believe me, affectionately yours,
E.B. BARRETT.
_To H.S. Boyd_
50 Wimpole Street: June 17 [1838].
My dear Friend,–I send you a number of the ‘Atlas’ which you may keep. It is a favorable criticism, certainly–but I confess this of my vanity, that it has not altogether pleased me. You see what it is to be spoilt.
As to the ‘Athenaeum,’ although I am _not_ conscious of the quaintness and mannerism laid to my charge, and am very sure that I have always written too naturally (that is, too much from the impulse of thought and feeling) to have studied ‘_attitudes_,’ yet the critic was quite right in stating his opinion, and so am I in being grateful to him for the liberal praise he has otherwise given me. Upon the whole, I like his review better than even the ‘Examiner,’ notwithstanding my being perfectly satisfied with _that_.
Thank you for the question about my health. I am very tolerably well–for _me_: and am said to look better. At the same time I am aware of being always on the verge of an increase of illness–I mean, in a very excitable state–with a pulse that flies off at a word and is only to be caught by digitalis. But I am better–for the present–while the sun shines.
Thank you besides for your criticisms, which I shall hold in memory, and use whenever I am not particularly _obstinate_, in all my SUCCEEDING EDITIONS!
You will smile at that, and so do _I._
Arabel is walking in the Zoological Gardens with the Cliffes–but I think you will see her before long.
Your affectionate friend,
E.B. BARRETT.
Don’t let me forget to mention the Essays[47]. You shall have yours–and Miss Bordman hers–and the delay has not arisen from either forgetfulness or indifference on my part–although I never deny that I don’t like giving the Essay to anybody because I don’t like it. Now that sounds just like ‘a woman’s reason,’ but it isn’t, albeit so reasonable! I meant to say ‘because I don’t like the ESSAY.’
[Footnote 47: i.e. copies of the _Essay on Mind_.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
50 Wimpole Street: Thursday, June 21 [1838].
My dear Friend,–Notwithstanding this silence so ungrateful in appearance, I thank you at last, and very sincerely, for your kind letter. It made me laugh, and amused me–and gratified me besides. Certainly your ‘quality of mercy is not strained.’
My reason for not writing more immediately is that Arabel has meant, day after day, to go to you, and has had a separate disappointment for every day. She says now, ‘_Indeed_, I hope to see Mr. Boyd to-morrow.’ But _I_ say that I will not keep this answer of mine to run the risk of another day’s contingencies, and that _it_ shall go, whether _she_ does or not.
I am better a great deal than I was last week, and have been allowed by Dr. Chambers to come downstairs again, and occupy my old place on the sofa. My health remains, however, in what I cannot help considering myself, and in what, I _believe_, Dr. Chambers considers, a very precarious state, and my weakness increases, of course, under the remedies which successive attacks render necessary. Dr. Chambers deserves my confidence–and besides the skill with which he has met the different modifications of the complaint, I am grateful to him for a feeling and a sympathy which are certainly rare in such of his profession as have their attention diverted, as his must be, by an immense practice, to fifty objects in a day. But, notwithstanding all, one breath of the east wind undoes whatever he labours to do. It is well to look up and remember that in the eternal reality these second causes are no causes at all.
Don’t leave this note about for Arabel to see. I am anxious not to alarm her, or any one of my family: and it may please God to make me as well and strong again as ever. And, indeed, I am twice as well this week as I was last.
Your affectionate friend, dear Mr. Boyd, E.B. BARRETT.
I have seen an extract from a private letter of Mr. Chorley, editor of the ‘Athenaeum,'[48] which speaks _huge_ praises of my poems. If he were to say a tithe of them in print, it would be nine times above my expectation!
[Footnote 48: This is an error. Mr. Chorley was not editor of the _Athenaeum_, though he was one of its principal contributors.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
[June 1838.]
My dear Friend,–I begged your servant to wait–how long ago I am afraid to think–but certainly I must not make this note very long. I did intend to write to you to-day in any case. Since Saturday I have had my thanks ready at the end of my fingers waiting to slide along to the nib of my pen. Thank you for all your kindness and criticism, which is kindness too–thank you at last. Would that I deserved the praises as well as I do most of the findings-fault–and there is no time now to say more of _them_. Yet I believe I have something to say, and will find a time to say it in.
Dr. Chambers has just been here, and does not think me quite as well as usual. The truth is that I was rather excited and tired yesterday by rather too much talking and hearing talking, and suffer for it to-day in my _pulse_. But I am better on the whole.
Mr. Cross,[49] the great lion, the insect-making lion, came yesterday with Mr. Kenyon, and afterwards Lady Dacre. She is kind and gentle in her manner. She told me that she had ‘placed my book in the hands of Mr. Bobus Smith, the brother of Sidney Smith, and the best judge in England,’ and that it was to be returned to her on Tuesday. If I _should_ hear the ‘judgment,’ I will tell you, whether you care to hear it or not. There is no other review, as far as I am aware.
Give my love to Miss Bordman. When is she coming to see me?
The thunder did not do me any harm.
Your affectionate friend, in great haste, although your servant is not likely to think so, E.B.B.
[Footnote 49: Andrew Crosse, the electrician, who had recently published his observations of a remarkable development of insect life in connection with certain electrical experiments–a discovery which caused much controversy at the time, on account of its supposed bearings on the origin of life and the doctrine of creation.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
[June 1838.]
My dear Friend,–You must let me _feel_ my thanks to you, even when I do not _say_ them. I have put up your various notes together, and perhaps they may do me as much good hereafter, as they have already, for the most part, given me pleasure.
The ‘burden pure _have_ been’ certainly was a misprint, as certainly ‘nor man nor nature satisfy'[50] is ungrammatical. But I am _not_ so sure about the passage in Isobel:
I am not used to tears at nights Instead of slumber–nor to prayer.
Now I think that the passage may imply a repetition of the words with which it begins, after ‘nor’–thus–‘nor _am I used_ to prayer,’ &c. Either you or I may be right about it, and either ‘or’ or ‘nor’ may be grammatical. At least, so I pray.[51]
You did not answer one question. Do you consider that ‘_apolyptic_’ stands without excuse?[52]
I never read Greek to any person except yourself and Mr. MacSwiney, my brother’s tutor. To him I read longer than a few weeks, but then it was rather guessing and stammering and tottering through parts of Homer and extracts from Xenophon than reading. _You_ would not have called it reading if you had heard it.
I studied hard by myself afterwards, and the kindness with which afterwards still you assisted me, if yourself remembers gladly _I_ remember _gratefully_ and gladly.
I have just been told that your servant was desired by you _not to wait a minute_.
The wind is unfavorable for the sea. I do not think there is the least probability of my going before the end of next week, if then. You shall hear.
Affectionately yours,
E.B. BARRETT.
I am tolerably well. I have been forced to take digitalis again, which makes me feel weak; but still I am better, I think.
[Footnote 50: Altered in later editions to ‘satisfies.’]
[Footnote 51: In later editions ‘not’ is repeated instead of ‘nor,’ which looks like a compromise between her own opinion and Mr. Boyd’s.]
[Footnote 52: The poem entitled ‘Sounds,’ in the volume of 1838, contained the line ‘As erst in Patmos apolyptic John,’ presumably for ‘apocalyptic.’ This being naturally held to be ‘without excuse,’ the line was altered in subsequent editions to ‘As the seer-saint of Patmos, loving John.’]
In the course of this year the failure in Miss Barrett’s health had become so great that her doctor advised removal to a warmer climate for the winter. Torquay was the place selected, and thither she went in the autumn, accompanied by her brother Edward, her favourite companion from childhood. Other members of the family, including Mr. Barrett, joined them from time to time. At Torquay she was able to live, but no more, and it was found necessary for her to stay during the summers as well as the winters of the next three years. Letters from this period are scarce, though it is clear from Miss Mitford’s correspondence that a continuous interchange of letters was kept up between the two friends, and her acquaintanceship with Horne was now ripening into a close literary intimacy. A story relating to Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter, the hero of so many racy anecdotes, is contained in a letter of Miss Barrett’s which must have been written about Christmas of either 1838 or 1839:–
‘He [the bishop] was, however, at church on Christmas Day, and upon Mr. Elliot’s being mercifully inclined to omit the Athanasian Creed, prompted him most episcopally from the pew with a “whereas;” and further on in the Creed, when the benign reader substituted the word _condemnation_ for the terrible one–“Damnation!” exclaimed the bishop. The effect must have been rather startling.’
A slight acquaintance with the words of the Athanasian Creed will suggest that the story had suffered in accuracy before it reached Miss Barrett, who, of course, was unable to attend church, and whose own ignorance on the subject may be accounted for by remembering that she had been brought up as a Nonconformist. With a little correction, however, the story may be added to the many others on record with respect to ‘Henry of Exeter.’
The following letter is shown, by the similarity of its contents to the one which succeeds it, to belong to November 1839, when Miss Barrett was entering on her second winter in Torquay.
_To Mrs. Martin_
Beacon Terrace, Torquay: November 24 [1839].
My dearest Mrs. Martin,–Henrietta _shall not_ write to-day, whatever she may wish to do. I felt, in reading your unreproaching letter to her, as self-reproachful as anybody could with a great deal of innocence (in the way of the world) to fall back upon. I felt sorry, very sorry, not to have written something to you something sooner, which was a possible thing–although, since the day of my receiving your welcome letter, I have written scarcely at all, nor that little without much exertion. Had it been with me as usual, be sure that you should not have had any silence to complain of. Henrietta knew I wished to write, and felt, I suppose, unwilling to take my place when my filling it myself before long appeared possible. A long story–and not as entertaining as Mother Hubbard. But I would rather tire you than leave you under any wrong impression, where my regard and thankfulness to you, dearest Mrs. Martin, are concerned.
To reply to your kind anxiety about me, I may call myself decidedly better than I have been. Since October I I have not been out of bed–except just for an hour a day, when I am lifted to the sofa with the bare permission of my physician–who tells me that it is so much easier to make me worse than better, that he dares not permit anything like exposure or further exertion. I like him (Dr. Scully) very much, and although he evidently thinks my case in the highest degree precarious, yet knowing how much I bore last winter and understanding from him that the worst _tubercular_ symptoms have not actually appeared, I am willing to think it may be God’s will to keep me here still longer. I would willingly stay, if it were only for the sake of that tender affection of my beloved family which it so deeply affects me to consider. Dearest papa is with us now–to my great comfort and joy: and looking very well!–and astonishing everybody with his eternal youthfulness! Bro and Henrietta and Arabel besides, I can count as companions–and then there is dear Bummy! We are fixed at Torquay for the winter–that is, until the end of May: and after that, if I have any will or power and am alive to exercise either, I do trust and hope to go away. The death of my kind friend Dr. Bury was, as you suppose, a great grief and shock to me. How could it be otherwise, after his daily kindness to me for a year? And then his young wife and child–and the rapidity (a three weeks’ illness) with which he was hurried away from the energies and toils and honors of professional life to the stillness of _that_ death!
‘_God’s Will_’ is the only answer to the mystery of the world’s afflictions….
Don’t fancy me worse than I am–or that this bed-keeping is the result of a gradual sinking. It is not so. A feverish attack prostrated me on October 2–and such will leave their effects–and Dr. Scully is so afraid of leading me into danger by saying, ‘You may get up and dress as usual’ that you should not be surprised if (in virtue of being the senior Torquay physician and correspondingly prudent) he left me in this durance vile for a great part of the winter. I am decidedly better than I was a month ago, really and truly.
May God bless you, dearest Mrs. Martin! My best and kindest regards to Mr. Martin. Henrietta desires me to promise for her a letter to Colwall soon; but I think that one from Colwall should come first. May God bless you! Bro’s fancy just now is painting in water colours and he performs many sketches. Do you ever in your dreams of universal benevolence dream of travelling into Devonshire?
Love your affectionate BA,
–found guilty of egotism and stupidity ‘by this sign’ and at once!
_To H.S. Boyd_
1 Beacon Terrace, Torquay:
Wednesday, November 27, 1839.
If you can forgive me, my ever dear friend, for a silence which has not been intended, there will be another reason for being thankful to you, in addition to the many. To do myself justice, one of my earliest impulses on seeing my beloved Arabel, and recurring to the kindness with which you desired that happiness for me long before I possessed it, was to write and tell you how happy I felt. But she had promised, she said, to write herself, and moreover she and only she was to send you the ballad–in expectation of your dread judgment upon which I delayed my own writing. It came in the first letter we received in our new house, on the first of last October. An hour after reading it, I was upon my bed; was attacked by fever in the night, and from that bed have never even been lifted since–to these last days of November–except for one hour a day to the sofa at two yards’ distance. I am very much better now, and have been so for some time; but my physician is so persuaded, he says, that it is easier to do me harm than good, that he will neither permit any present attempt at further exertion, nor hint at the time when it may be advisable for him to permit it. Under the circumstances it has of course been more difficult than usual for me to write. Pray believe, my dear and kind friend, in the face of all circumstances and appearances, that I never forget you, nor am reluctant (oh, how could that be?) to write to you; and that you shall often have to pay ‘a penny for my thoughts’ under the new Postage Act–if it be in God’s wisdom and mercy to spare me through the winter. Under the new act I shall not mind writing ten words and then stopping. As it is, they would scarcely be worth eleven pennies.
Thank you again and again for your praise of the ballad, which both delighted and _surprised_ me … as I had scarcely hoped that you might like it at all. Think of Mr. Tilt’s never sending me a proof sheet. The consequences are rather deplorable, and, if they had occurred to you, might have suggested a deep melancholy for life. In my case, _I_, who am, you know, hardened to sins of carelessness, simply look _aghast_ at the misprints and mispunctuations coming in as a flood, and sweeping away meanings and melodies together. The annual itself is more splendid than usual, and its vignettes have illustrated my story–angels, devils and all–most beautifully. Miss Mitford’s tales (in prose) have suffered besides by reason of Mr. Tilt–but are attractive and graphic notwithstanding–and Mr. Horne has supplied a dramatic poem of great power and beauty.
How I rejoice with you in the glorious revelation (about to be) of Gregory’s second volume! The ‘De Virginitate’ poem will, in its new purple and fine linen, be more dazzling than ever.
Do you know that George is barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple–_is_? I have seen him gazetted.
My dearest papa is with me now, making me very happy of course. I have much reason to be happy–more to be grateful–yet am more obedient to the former than to the latter impulse. May the Giver of good give gratitude with as full a hand! May He bless _you_–and bring us together again, if no more in the flesh, yet in the spirit!
Your ever affectionate friend,
E.B. BARRETT.
Do write–when you are able and _least_ disinclined. Do you approve of Prince Albert or not?[53]
[Footnote 53: The engagement of Prince Albert to Queen Victoria took place in October 1839.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
Torquay: May 29, 1840.
My ever dear Friend,–It was very pleasant to me to see your seal upon a letter once more; and although the letter itself left me with a mournful impression of your having passed some time so much less happily than I would wish and pray for you, yet there remains the pleasant thought to me still that you have not altogether forgotten me. Do receive the expression of my most affectionate sympathy under this and every circumstance–and I fear that the shock to your nerves and spirits could not be a light one, however impressed you might be and must be with the surety and verity of God’s love working in all His will. Poor poor Patience! Coming to be so happy with you, with that joyous smile I thought so pretty! Do you not remember my telling you so? Well–it is well and better for her; happier for her, if God in Christ Jesus have received her, than her hopes were of the holiday time with you. The holiday is _for ever_ now….
I heard from Nelly Bordman only a few days before receiving your letter, and so far from preparing me for all this sadness and gloom, she pleased me with her account of you whom she had lately seen–dwelling upon your retrograde passage into youth, and the delight you were taking in the presence and society of some still more youthful, fair, and gay _monstrum amandum_, some prodigy of intellectual accomplishment, some little Circe who never turned anybodies into pigs. I learnt too from her for the first time that you were settled at Hampstead! Whereabout at Hampstead, and for how long? She didn’t tell me _that_, thinking of course that I knew something more about you than I do. Yes indeed; you _do_ treat me very shabbily. I agree with you in thinking so. To think that so many hills and woods should interpose between us–that I should be lying here, fast bound by a spell, a sleeping beauty in a forest, and that _you_, who used to be such a doughty knight, should not take the trouble of cutting through even a hazel tree with your good sword, to find out what had become of me. Now do tell me, the hazel tree being down at last, whether you mean to live at Hampstead, whether you have taken a house there and have carried your books there, and wear Hampstead grasshoppers in your bonnet (as they did at Athens) to prove yourself of the soil.
All this nonsense will make you think I am better, and indeed I am pretty well just now–quite, however, confined to the bed–except when lifted from it to the sofa baby-wise while they make it; even then apt to faint. Bad symptoms too do not leave me; and I am obliged to be blistered every few days–but I am free from any attack just now, and am a good deal less feverish than I am occasionally. There has been a consultation between an Exeter physician and my own, and they agree exactly, both hoping that with care I shall pass the winter, and rally in the spring, both hoping that I may be able to go about again with some comfort and independence, although I never can be fit again for anything like exertion….
Do you know, did you ever hear anything of Mr. Horne who wrote ‘Cosmo de Medici,’ and the ‘Death of Marlowe,’ and is now desecrating his powers (I beg your pardon) by writing the life of Napoleon? By the way, he is the author of a dramatic sketch in the last Finden.
He is in my mind one of the very first poets of the day, and has written to me so kindly (offering, although I never saw him in my life, to cater for me in literature, and send me down anything likely to interest me in the periodicals), that I cannot but think his amiability and genius do honor to one another.
Do you remember Mr. Caldicott who used to preach in the infant schoolroom at Sidmouth? He died here the death of a saint, as he had lived a saintly life, about three weeks ago. It affected me a good deal. But he was always so associated in my thoughts more with heaven than earth, that scarcely a transition seems to have passed upon his locality. ‘Present with the Lord’ is true of him now; even as ‘having his conversation in heaven’ was formerly. There is little difference.
May it be so with us all, with you and with me, my ever and very dear friend! In the meantime do not forget me. I never can forget _you_.
Your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
Arabel desires her love to be offered to you.
_To H.S. Boyd_
1 Beacon Terrace, Torquay: July 8, 1840.
My ever dear Friend,–I must write to you, although it is so very long, or at least seems so, since you wrote to me. But you say to Arabel in speaking of me that I ‘_used_ to care for what is poetical;’ therefore, perhaps you say to yourself sometimes that I _used_ to care for _you_! I am anxious to vindicate my identity to you, in that respect above all.
It is a long, dreary time since I wrote to you. I admit the pause on my own part, while I charge you with another. But _your_ silence has embraced more pleasantness and less suffering to you than mine has to me, and I thank God for a prosperity in which my unchangeable regard for you causes me to share directly….
I have not rallied this summer as soon and well as I did last. I was very ill early in April at the time of our becoming conscious to our great affliction–so ill as to believe it utterly improbable, speaking humanly, that I ever should be any better. I am, however, a very great deal better, and gain strength by sensible degrees, however slowly, and do hope for the best–‘the best’ meaning one sight more of London. In the meantime I have not yet been able to leave my bed.
To prove to you that I who ‘used to care’ for poetry do so still, and that I have not been absolutely idle lately, an ‘Athenaeum’ shall be sent to you containing a poem on the subject of the removal of Napoleon’s ashes.[54] It is a fitter subject for you than for me. Napoleon is no idol of _mine. I_ never made a ‘setting sun’ of him. But my physician suggested the subject as a noble one and then there was something suggestive in the consideration that the ‘Bellerophon’ lay on those very bay-waters opposite to my bed.
Another poem (which you won’t like, I dare say) is called ‘The Lay of the Rose,'[55] and appeared lately in a magazine. Arabel is going to write it out for you, she desires me to tell you with her best love. Indeed, I have written lately (as far as manuscript goes) a good deal, only on all sorts of subjects and in as many shapes.
Lazarus would make a fine poem, wouldn’t he? I lie here, weaving a great many schemes. I am seldom at a loss for thread.
Do write sometimes to me, and tell me if you do anything besides hearing the clocks strike and bells ring. My beloved papa is with me still. There are so many mercies close around me (and his presence is far from the least), that God’s _Being_ seems proved to me, _demonstrated_ to me, by His manifested love. May His blessing in the full lovingness rest upon you always! Never fancy I can forget or think of you coldly.
Your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
[Footnote 54: ‘Crowned and Buried’ _(Poetical Works_, iii. 9).]
[Footnote 55: _Poetical Works_, iii. 152.]
The above letter was written only three days before the tragedy which utterly wrecked Elizabeth Barrett’s life for a time, and cast a deep shadow over it which never wholly passed away–the death of her brother Edward through drowning. On July 11, he and two friends had gone for a sail in a small boat. They did not return when they were expected, and presently a rumour came that a boat, answering in appearance to theirs, had been seen to founder in Babbicombe Bay; but it was not until three days later that final confirmation of the disaster was obtained by the discovery of the bodies. What this blow meant to the bereaved sister cannot be told: the horror with which she refers to it, even at a distance of many years, shows how deeply it struck. It was the loss of the brother whom she loved best of all; and she had the misery of thinking that it was to attend on her that he had come to the place where he met his death. Little wonder if Torquay was thenceforward a memory from which she shrank, and if even the sound of the sea became a horror to her.
One natural consequence of this terrible sorrow is a long break in her correspondence. It is not until the beginning of 1841 that she seems to have resumed the thread of her life and to have returned to her literary occupations. Her health had inevitably suffered under the shock, and in the autumn of 1840 Miss Mitford speaks of not daring to expect more than a few months of lingering life. But when things were at the worst, she began unexpectedly to take a turn for the better. Through the winter she slowly gathered strength, and with strength the desire to escape from Torquay, with its dreadful associations, and to return to London. Meanwhile her correspondence with her friends revived, and with Horne in particular she was engaged during 1841 in an active interchange of views with regard to two literary projects. Indeed, it was only the return to work that enabled her to struggle against the numbing effect of the calamity which had overwhelmed her. Some time afterwards (in October 1843) she wrote to Mrs. Martin: ‘For my own part and experience–I do not say it as a phrase or in exaggeration, but from very clear and positive conviction–I do believe that I should be _mad_ at this moment, if I had not forced back–dammed out–the current of rushing recollections by work, work, work.’ One of the projects in which she was concerned was ‘Chaucer Modernised,’ a scheme for reviving interest in the father of English poetry, suggested in the first instance by Wordsworth, but committed to the care of Horne, as editor, for execution. According to the scheme as originally planned, all the principal poets of the day were to be invited to share the task of transmuting Chaucer into modern language. Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, Horne, and others actually executed some portions of the work; Tennyson and Browning, it was hoped, would lend a hand with some of the later parts. Horne invited Miss Barrett to contribute, and, besides executing modernisations of ‘Queen Annelida and False Arcite’ and ‘The Complaint of Annelida,'[56] she also advised generally on the work of the other writers during its progress through the press. The other literary project was for a lyrical drama, to be written in collaboration with Horne. It was to be called ‘Psyche Apocalypte,’ and was to be a drama on the Greek model, treating of the birth and self-realisation of the soul of man.
[Footnote 56: These versions are not reprinted in her collected _Poetical Works_, but are to be found in ‘Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer modernised,’ (1841).]
The sketch of its contents, given in the correspondence with Horne, will make the modern reader accept with equanimity the fact that it never progressed beyond the initial stage of drafting the plot. It is allegorical, philosophical, fantastic, unreal–everything which was calculated to bring out the worst characteristics of Miss Barrett’s style and to intensify her faults. Fortunately her removal from Torquay to London interrupted the execution of the scheme. It was never seriously taken up again, and, though never explicitly abandoned, died a natural death from inanition, somewhat to the relief of Miss Barrett, who had come to recognise its impracticability.
Apart from the correspondence with Horne, which has been published elsewhere, very few letters are left from this period; but those which here follow serve to bridge over the interval until the departure from Torquay, which closes one well-marked period in the life of the poetess.
_To Mrs. Martin_
December 11, 1840.
My ever dearest Mrs. Martin,–I should have written to you without this last proof of your remembrance–this cape, which, warm and pretty as it is, I value so much more as the work of your hands and gift of your affection towards me. Thank you, dearest Mrs. Martin, and thank you too for _all the rest_–for all your sympathy and love. And do believe that although grief had so changed me from myself and warped me from my old instincts, as to prevent my looking forwards with pleasure to seeing you again, yet that full amends are made in the looking back with a pleasure more true because more tender than any old retrospections. Do give my love to dear Mr. Martin, and say what I could not have said even if I had seen him.
Shall you really, dearest Mrs. Martin, come again? Don’t think we do not think of the hope you left us. Because we do indeed.
A note from papa has brought the comforting news that my dear, dear Stormie is in England again, in London, and looking perfectly well. It is a mercy which makes me very thankful, and would make me joyful if anything could. But the meanings of some words change as we live on. Papa’s note is hurried. It was a sixty-day passage, and that is all he tells me. Yes–there is something besides about Sette and Occy being either unknown or misknown, through the fault of their growing. Papa is not near returning, I think. He has so much to do and see, and so much cause to be enlivened and renewed as to spirits, that I begged him not to think about me and stay away as long as he pleased. And the accounts of him and of all at home are satisfying, I thank God….
There is an east wind just now, which I feel. Nevertheless, Dr. Scully has said, a few minutes since, that I am as well as he could hope, considering the season.
May God bless you ever!
Your gratefully attached
BA.
_To Mrs. Martin_
March 29, 1841.
My dearest Mrs. Martin,–Have you thought ‘The dream has come true’? I mean the dream of the flowers which you pulled for me and I wouldn’t look at, even? I fear you must have thought that the dream about my ingratitude has come true.
And yet it has not. Dearest Mrs. Martin, it has _not_. I have not forgotten you or remembered you less affectionately through all the silence, or longed less for the letters I did not ask for. But the truth is, my faculties seem to hang heavily now, like flappers when the spring is broken. _My_ spring _is_ broken, and a separate exertion is necessary for the lifting up of each–and then it falls down again. I never felt so before: there is no wonder that I should feel so now. Nevertheless, I don’t give up much to the pernicious languor–the tendency to lie down to sleep among the snows of a weary journey–I don’t give up much to it. Only I find it sometimes at the root of certain negligences–for instance, of this toward _you_.
Dearest Mrs. Martin, receive my sympathy, _our_ sympathy, in the anxiety you have lately felt so painfully, and in the rejoicing for its happy issue. Do say when you write (I take for granted, you see, that you will write) how Mrs. B—- is now–besides the intelligence more nearly touching me, of your own and Mr. Martin’s health and spirits. May God bless you both!
Ah! but you did not come: I was disappointed!
And Mrs. Hanford! Do you know, I tremble in my reveries sometimes, lest you should think it, guess it to be half unkind in me not to have made an exertion to see Mrs. Hanford. It was not from want of interest in her–least of all from want of love to _you_. But I have not stirred from my bed yet. But, to be honest, that was not the reason–I did not feel as if I _could_, without a painful effort, which, on the other hand, could not, I was conscious, result in the slightest shade of satisfaction to her, receive and talk to her. Perhaps it is hard for you to _fancy_ even how I shrink away from the very thought of seeing a human face–except those immediately belonging to me in love or relationship–(yours _does_, you know)–and a stranger’s might be easier to look at than one long known….
For my own part, my dearest Mrs. Martin, my heart has been lightened lately by kind, _honest_ Dr. Scully (who would never give an opinion just to please me), saying that I am ‘quite right’ to mean to go to London, and shall probably be fit for the journey early in June. He says that I may pass the winter there moreover, and with impunity–that wherever I am it will probably be necessary for me to remain shut up during the cold weather, and that under such circumstances it is quite possible to warm a London room to as safe a condition as a room _here_. So my heart is lightened of the fear of opposition: and the only means of regaining whatever portion of earthly happiness is not irremediably lost to me by the Divine decree, I am free to use. In the meantime, it really does seem to me that I make some progress in health–if the word in my lips be not a mockery. Oh, I fancy I shall be strengthened to get home!
Your remarks on Chaucer pleased me very much. I am glad you liked what I did–or tried to do–and as to the criticisms, you were right–and they sha’n’t be unattended to if the opportunity of correction be given to me.
Ever your affectionate
BA.
_To H.S. Boyd_
August 28, 1841.
My very dear Friend,–I have fluctuated from one shadow of uncertainty and anxiety to another, all the summer, on the subject to which my last earthly wishes cling, and I delayed writing to you to be able to say I am going to London. I may say so now–as far as the human may say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ of their futurity. The carriage, a patent carriage with a bed in it, and set upon some hundreds of springs, is, I believe, on its road down to me, and immediately upon its arrival we begin our journey. Whether we shall ever complete it remains uncertain–_more_ so than other uncertainties. My physician appears a good deal alarmed, calls it an undertaking full of hazard, and myself the ‘Empress Catherine’ for insisting upon attempting it. But I must. I go, as ‘the doves to their windows,’ to the only earthly daylight I see here. I go to rescue myself from the associations of this dreadful place. I go to restore to my poor papa the companionships family. Enough has been done and suffered for _me_. I thank God I am going home at last.
How kind it was in you, my very kind and ever very dear friend, to ask me to visit you at Hampstead! I felt myself smiling while I read that part of your letter, and laid it down and suffered the vision to arise of your little room and your great Gregory and your dear self scolding me softly as in the happy olden times for not reading slow enough. Well–we do not know what _may_ happen! I _may_ (even that is probable) read to you again. But now–ah, my dear friend–if you could imagine me such as I am!–you would not think I could visit you! Yet I am wonderfully better this summer; and if I can but reach home and bear the first painful excitement, it will do me more good than anything–I know it will! And if it does not, it will be _well_ even so.
I shall tell them to send you the ‘Athenaeum’ of last week, where I have a ‘House of Clouds,'[57] which papa likes so much that he would wish to live in it if it were not for the damp. There is not a clock in one room–that’s another objection. How are your clocks? Do they go? and do you like their voices as well as you used to do?
I think Annie is not with you; but in case of her still being so, do give her (and yourself too) Arabel’s love and mine. I wish I heard of you oftener. Is there nobody to write? May God bless you!
Your ever affectionate friend,
E.B.B.
_To H.S. Boyd_
August 31, 1831 [_sic_].
Thank you, my ever dear friend, with almost my last breath at Torquay, for your kindness about the Gregory, besides the kind note itself. It is, however, too late. We go, or mean at present to go, to-morrow; and the carriage which is to waft us through the air upon a thousand springs has actually arrived. You are not to think severely upon Dr. Scully’s candour with me as to the danger of the journey. He _does_ think it ‘likely to do me harm;’ therefore, you know, he was justified by his medical responsibility in laying before me all possible consequences. I have considered them all, and dare them gladly and gratefully. Papa’s domestic comfort is broken up by the separation in his family, and the associations of this place lie upon me, struggle as I may, like the oppression of a perpetual night-mare. It is an instinct of self-preservation which impels me to escape–or to try to escape. And In God’s mercy–though God forbid that I should deny either His mercy or His justice, if He should deny me–we may be together in Wimpole Street in a few days. Nelly Bordman has kindly written to me Mr. Jago’s favourable opinion of the patent carriages, and his conviction of my accomplishing the journey without inconvenience.
May God bless you, my dear dear friend! Give my love to dearest Annie! Perhaps, if I am ever really in Wimpole Street, _safe enough for Greek_, you will trust the poems to me which you mention. I care as much for poetry as ever, and could not more.
Your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
[Footnote 57: _Poetical Works_, iii. 186.]
CHAPTER III
1841-1843
In September 1841 the journey from Torquay was actually achieved, and Miss Barrett returned to her father’s house in London, from which she was never to be absent for more than a few hours at a time until the day, five years later, when she finally left it to join her husband, Robert Browning. Her life was that of an invalid, confined to her room for the greater part of each year, and unable to see any but a few intimate friends. Still, she regained some sort of strength, especially during the warmth of the summer months, and was able to throw herself with real interest into literary work. In a life such as this there are few outward events to record, and its story is best told in Miss Barrett’s own letters, which, for the most part, need little comment. The letters of the end of 1841 and beginning of 1842 are almost entirely written to Mr. Boyd, and the main subject of them is the series of papers on the Greek Christian poets and the English poets which, at the suggestion of Mr. Dilke, then editor of the ‘Athenaeum,’ she contributed to that periodical. Of the composition of original poetry we hear less at this time.
_To H.S. Boyd_
50 Wimpole Street: October 2, 1841.
My very dear Friend,–I thank you for the letter and books which crossed the threshold of this house before me, and looked like your welcome to me home. I have read the passages you wished me to read–I have read them _again_: for I remember reading them under your star (or the greater part of them) a long while ago. You, on the other hand, may remember of _me_, that I never could concede to you much admiration for your Gregory as a poet–not even to his grand work ‘De Virginitate.’ He is one of those writers, of whom there are instances in our own times, who are only poetical in prose.
The passage imitative of Chryses I cannot think much of. Try to be forgiving. It is toasted dry between the two fires of the Scriptures and Homer, and is as stiff as any dry toast out of the simile. To be sincere, I like dry toast better.
The Hymns and Prayers I very much prefer; and although I remembered a good deal about them, it has given me a pleasure you will approve of to go through them in this edition. The one which I like best, which I like far best, which I think worth all the rest (‘De Virginitate’ and all put together), is the _second_ upon page 292, beginning ‘Soi charis.’ It is very fine, I think, written out of the heart and for the heart, warm with a natural heat, and not toasted dry and brown and stiff at a fire by any means.
Dear Mr. Boyd, I coveted Arabel’s walk to you the other day. I shall often covet my neighbour’s walks, I believe, although (and may God be praised for it!) I am more happy–that is, nearing to the feeling of happiness now–than a month since I could believe possible to a heart so bruised and crushed as mine has [been] be at home is a blessing and a relief beyond what these words can say.
But, dear Mr. Boyd, you said something in a note to Arabel some little time ago, which I will ask of your kindness to avoid saying again. I have been through the whole summer very much better; and even if it were not so I should dread being annoyed by more medical speculations. Pray do not suggest any. I am not in a state to admit of experiments, and my case is a very clear and simple one. I have not _one symptom_ like those of my old illness; and after more than fifteen years’ absolute suspension of them, their recurrence is scarcely probable. My case is very clear: not tubercular consumption, not what is called a ‘decline,’ but an affection of the lungs which leans towards it. You know a blood-vessel broke three years ago, and I never quite got over it. Mr. Jago, not having seen me, could scarcely be justified in a conjecture of the sort, when the opinions of four able physicians, two of them particularly experienced in diseases of the chest, and the other two the most eminent of the faculty in the east and west of England, were decided and contrary, while coincident with each other. Besides, you see, I am becoming better–and I could not desire more than that. Dear Mr. Boyd, do not write a word about it any more, either to me or others. I am sure you would not willingly disturb me. Nelly Bordman is good and dear, but I can’t let her prescribe for me anything except her own affection.
I hope Arabel expressed for me my thankful sense of Mrs. Smith’s kind intention. But, indeed, although I would see _you_, dear Mr. Boyd, gladly, or an angel or a fairy or any very particular friend, I am not fit either in body or spirit for general society. I _can’t_ see people, and if I could it would be very bad for me. Is Mrs. Smith writing? Are you writing? Part of me is worn out; but the poetical part–that is, the _love_ of poetry–is growing in me as freshly and strongly as if it were watered every day. Did anybody ever love it and stop in the middle? I wonder if anybody ever did?… Believe me your affectionateE.B.B.
_To H.S. Boyd_
50 Wimpole Street: December 29, 1841.
My dear Friend,–I should not have been half as idle about transcribing these translations[58] if I had fancied you could care so much to have them as Arabel tells me you do. They are recommended to your mercy, O Greek Daniel! The _last_ sounds in my ears most like English poetry; but I assure you I took the least pains with it. The second is obscure as its original, if it do not (as it does not) equal it otherwise. The first is yet more unequal to the Greek. I praised that Greek poem above all of Gregory’s, for the reason that it has _unity and completeness_, for which, to speak generally, you may search the streets and squares and alleys of Nazianzum in vain. Tell me what you think of my part.
Ever affectionately yours,
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
Have you a Plotinus, and would you trust him to me in that case? Oh no, you do not tempt me with your musical clocks. My time goes to the best music when I read or write; and whatever money I can spend upon my own pleasures flows away in books.
[Footnote 58: Translations of three poems of Gregory Nazianzen, printed in the _Athenaeum_ of January 8, 1842.]
_To Mr. Westwood_[59]
50 Wimpole Street: January 2, 1842.
Miss Barrett, inferring Mr. Westwood from the handwriting, begs his acceptance of the unworthy little book[60] he does her the honour of desiring to see.
It is more unworthy than he could have expected when he expressed that desire, having been written in very early youth, when the mind was scarcely free in any measure from trammels and Popes, and, what is worse, when flippancy of language was too apt to accompany immaturity of opinion. The miscellaneous verses are, still more than the chief poem, ‘childish things’ in a strict literal sense, and the whole volume is of little interest even to its writer except for personal reasons–except for the traces of dear affections, since rudely wounded, and of that _love_ of poetry which began with her sooner than so soon, and must last as long as life does, without being subject to the changes of life. Little more, therefore, can remain for such a volume than to be humble and shrink from circulation. Yet Mr. Westwood’s kind words win it to his hands. Will he receive at the same moment the expression of touched and gratified feelings with which Miss Barrett read what he wrote on the subject of her later volumes, still very imperfect, although more mature and true to the _truth_ within? Indeed she is thankful for what he said so kindly in his note to her.
[Footnote 59: Mr. Thomas Westwood was the author of a volume of ‘Poems,’ published in 1840, ‘Beads from a Rosary’ (1843), ‘The Burden of the Bell’ (1850), and other volumes of verse. Several of his compositions were appearing occasionally in the _Athenaeum_ at the time when this correspondence with Miss Barrett commenced.]
[Footnote 60: The _Essay on Mind_.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
50 Wimpole Street: January 6, 1842.
My dear Friend,–I have done your bidding and sent the translations to the ‘Athenaeum,’ attaching to them an infamous prefatory note which says all sorts of harm of Gregory’s poetry. You will be very angry with it and me.
And you _may_ be angry for another reason–that in the midst of my true thankfulness for the emendations you sent me, I ventured to reject one or two of them. You are right, probably, and I wrong; but still, I thought within myself with a womanly obstinacy not altogether peculiar to me,–‘If he and I were to talk together about them, he would kindly give up the point to me–so that, now we cannot talk together, _I might as well take it_.’ Well, you will see what I have done. Try not to be angry with me. You shall have the ‘Athenaeum’ as soon as possible.
My dear Mr. Boyd, you know how I disbelieved the probability of these papers being accepted. You will comprehend my surprise on receiving last night a very courteous: note from the editor, which I would send to you if it were legible to anybody except people used to learn reading from the pyramids. He wishes me to contribute to the ‘Athenaeum’ some prose papers in the form of reviews–‘the review being a mere form, and the book a mere text.’ He is not very clear–but I fancy that a few translations of _excerpta_, with a prose analysis and synthesis of the original author’s genius, might suit his purpose. Now suppose I took up some of the early Christian Greek poets, and wrote a few continuous papers _so_?[61] Give me your advice, my dear friend! I think of Synesius, for one. Suppose you send me a list of the names which occur to you! _Will_ you advise me? Will you write directly? Will you make allowance for my teazing you? Will you lend me your little Synesius, and Clarke’s book? I mean the one commenced by Dr. Clarke and continued by his son. Above all things, however, I want the advice.
Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.
_To H.S. Boyd_
Wednesday, January 13, 1842 (postmark).
My dear Friend,–Thank you, thank you, for your kind suggestion and advice altogether. I had just (when your note arrived) finished two hymns of Synesius, one being the seventh and the other the ninth. Oh! I do remember that you performed upon the latter, and my modesty should have certainly bid me ‘avaunt’ from it. Nevertheless, it is so fine, so prominent in the first class of Synesius’s beauties, that I took courage and dismissed my scruples, and have produced a version which I have not compared to yours at all hitherto, but which probably is much rougher and _rather_ closer, winning in faith what it loses in elegance. ‘Elegance’ isn’t a word for me, you know, generally speaking. The barbarians herd with me, ‘by two and three.’
I had a letter to-day from Mr. Dilke, who agrees to everything, closes with the idea about ‘Christian Greek poets’ (only begging me to keep away from theology), and suggesting a subsequent reviewal of English poetical literature, from Chaucer down to our times.[62] Well, but the Greek poets. With all your kindness, I have scarcely sufficient materials for a full and minute survey of them. I have won a sight of the ‘Poetae Christiani,’ but the price is ruinous–_fourteen guineas_, and then the work consists almost entirely of Latin poets, deducting Gregory and Nonnus, and John Damascenus, and a cento from Homer by somebody or other. Turning the leaves rapidly, I do not see much else; and you know I may get a separate copy of John Dam., and have access to the rest. Try to turn in your head what I should do. Greg. Nyssen did not write poems, did he? Have I a chance of seeing your copy of Mr. Clarke’s book? It would be useful in the matters of chronology.
I humbly beg your pardon, and Gregory’s, for the insolence of my note. It was as brief as it could be, and did not admit of any extended reference and admiration to his qualities as an orator. But whoever read it to you should have explained that when I wrote ‘He was an orator,’ the word _orator_ was marked emphatically, so as to appear printed in capital letters of emphasis. Do not say ‘you _chose_,’ ‘you _chose_.’ I didn’t and don’t choose to be obstinate, indeed; but I can’t see the sense of that ‘heavenly soul.’
Ever your grateful and affectionate
E.B.B.
I shall have room for praising Gregory in these papers.
[Footnote 61: The series of papers on the Greek Christian Poets appeared in the _Athenaeum_ for February and March 1842; they are reprinted in the _Poetical Works_, v. 109-200.]
[Footnote 62: This scheme took shape in the series of papers on the English Poets which appeared in the _Athenaeum_ in the course of June and August 1842 (reprinted in _Poetical Works_, v. 201-290).]
_To H.S. Boyd_
February 4, 1842.
My dear Friend,–You must be thinking, if you are not a St. Boyd for good temper, that among the Gregorys and Synesiuses I have forgotten everything about you. No; indeed it has not been so. I have never _stopped_ being grateful to you for your kind notes, and the two last pieces of Gregory, although I did not say an overt ‘Thank you;’ but I have been very very busy besides, and thus I answered to myself for your being kind enough to pardon a silence which was compelled rather than voluntary.
Do you ever observe that as vexations don’t come alone, occupations don’t, and that, if you happen to be engaged upon one particular thing, it is the signal for your being waylaid by bundles of letters desiring immediate answers, and proof sheets or manuscript works whose writers request your opinion while their ‘printer waits’? The old saints are not responsible for all the filling up of my time. I have been _busy upon busy_.
The first part of my story about the Greek poets went to the ‘Athenaeum’ some days ago, but, although graciously received by the editor, it won’t appear this week, or I should have had a proof sheet (which was promised to me) before now. I must contrive to include all I have to say on the subject in _three parts_. They will admit, they tell me, a fourth _if I please_, but evidently they would prefer as much brevity as I could vouchsafe. Only two poets are in the first notice, and _twenty_ remain–and neither of the two is Gregory.
Will you let me see that volume of Gregory which contains the ‘Christus Patiens’? Send it by any boy on the heath, and I will remunerate him for the walk and the burden, and thank you besides. Oh, don’t be afraid! I am not going to charge it upon Gregory, but on the younger Apollinaris, whose claim is stronger, and I rather wish to refresh my recollection of the height and breadth of that tragic misdemeanour.
It is quite true that I never have suffered much pain, and equally so that I continue most decidedly better, notwithstanding the winter. I feel, too–I do hope not ungratefully–the blessing granted to me in the possibility of literary occupation,–which is at once occupation and distraction. Carlyle (not the infidel, but the philosopher) calls literature a ‘fireproof pleasure.’ How truly! How deeply I have felt that truth!
May God bless you, dear Mr. Boyd. I don’t despair of looking in your face one day yet before my last.
Ever your affectionate and obliged
E.B.B.
Arabel’s love.
_To H.S. Boyd_
March 2, 1842.
My ever very dear Friend,–Do receive the assurance that whether I leave out the right word or put in the wrong one, you never can be other to me than just _that_ while I live, and why not after I have ceased to live? And now–what have I done in the meantime, to be called ‘Miss Barrett’? ‘I pause for a reply.’
Of course it gives me very great pleasure to hear you speak so kindly of my first paper. Some _bona avis_ as good as a nightingale must have shaken its wings over me as I began it; and if it will but sit on the same spray while I go on towards the end, I shall rejoice exactly four-fold. The third paper went to Mr. Dilke to-day, and I was so fidgety about getting it away (and it seemed to cling to my writing case with both its hands), that I would not do any writing, even as little as this note, until it was quite gone out of sight. You know it is possible that he, the editor, may not please to have the _fourth_ paper; but even in that case, it is better for the ‘Remarks’ to remain fragmentary, than be compressed till they are as dry as a _hortus siccus_ of poets.
Certainly you do and must praise my number one too much. Number one (that’s myself) thinks so. I do really; and the supererogatory virtue of kindness may be acknowledged out of the pale of the Romish Church.
In regard to Gregory and Synesius, you will see presently that I have not wronged them altogether.
As you have ordered the ‘Athenaeums,’ I will not send one to-morrow so as to repeat my ill fortune of being too late. But tell me if you would like to have any from me, and how many.
It was very kind in you to pat Flush’s[63] head in defiance of danger and from pure regard for me. I kissed his head where you had patted it; which association of approximations I consider as an imitation of shaking hands with you and as the next best thing to it. You understand–don’t you?–that Flush is my constant companion, my friend, my amusement, lying with his head on one page of my folios while I read the other. (Not _your_ folios–I respect _your_ books, be sure.) Oh, I dare say, if the truth were known, Flush understands Greek excellently well.
I hope you are right in thinking that we shall meet again. Once I wished _not_ to live, but the faculty of life seems to have sprung up in me again, from under the crushing foot of heavy grief.
Be it all as God wills.
Believe me, your ever affectionate
E.B.B.
[Footnote 63: Miss Barrett’s dog, the gift of Miss Mitford. His praise is sung in her poem, ‘To Flush, my Dog’ (_Poetical Works_, iii. 19), and in many of the following letters. He accompanied his mistress to Italy, lived to a good old age, and now lies buried in the vaults of Casa Guidi.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
Saturday night, March 5, 1842.
My very dear Friend,–I am quite angry with myself for forgetting your questions when I answered your letter.
Could you really imagine that I have not looked into the Greek tragedians for years, with my true love for Greek poetry? That is asking a question, you will say, and not answering it. Well, then, I answer by a ‘Yes’ the one you put to me. I had two volumes of Euripides with me in Devonshire, and have read him as well as Aeschylus and Sophocles–that is _from_ them–both before and since I went there. You know I have gone through every line of the three tragedians long ago, in the way of regular, consecutive reading.
You know also that I had at different times read different dialogues of Plato; but when three years ago, and a few months previous to my leaving home, I became possessed of a complete edition of his works, edited by Bekker, why then I began with the first volume and went through the whole of his writings, both those I knew and those I did not know, one after another: and have at this time read, not only all that is properly attributed to Plato, but even those dialogues and epistles which pass falsely under his name–everything except two books I think, or three, of the treatise ‘De Legibus,’ which I shall finish in a week or two, as soon as I can take breath from Mr. Dilke.
Now the questions are answered.
Ever your affectionate and grateful friend, E.B.B.
_To H.S. Boyd_
Thursday, March 10, 1842 [postmark].
My very dear Friend,–I did not know until to-day whether the paper would appear on Saturday or not; but as I have now received the proof sheets, there can be no doubt of it. I have been and _am_ hurried and hunted almost into a corner through the pressing for the fourth paper, and the difficulty about books. You will forgive a very short note to night.
I have read of Aristotle only his Poetics, his Ethics, and his work upon Rhetoric, but I mean to take him regularly into both hands when I finish Plato’s last page. Aristophanes I took with me into Devonshire; and after all, I do not know much more of _him_ than three or four of his plays may stand for. Next week, my very dear friend, I shall be at your commands, and sit in spirit at your footstool, to hear and answer anything you may care to ask me–but oh! what have I done that you should talk to _me_ about ‘venturing,’ or ‘liberty,’ or anything of that kind?
From your affectionate and grateful catechumen, E.B.B.
_To H.S. Boyd_.
March 29, 1842.
My very dear Friend,–I received your long letter and receive your short one, and thank you for the pleasure of both. Of course I am very _very_ glad of your approval in the matter of the papers, and your kindness could not have wished to give me more satisfaction than it gave actually. Mr. Kenyon tells me that Mr. Burgess[64] has been reading and commending the papers, and has brought me from him a newly discovered scene of the ‘Bacchae’ of Euripides, edited by Mr. Burgess himself for the ‘Gentlemen’s Magazine,’ and of which he considers that the ‘Planctus Mariae,’ at least the passage I extracted from it, is an imitation. Should you care to see it? Say ‘Yes,’–and I will send it to you.
Do you think it was wrong to make _eternity_ feminine? I knew that the Greek word was not feminine; but imagined that the English personification should be so. Am I wrong in this? Will you consider the subject again?
Ah, yes! That was a mistake of mine about putting Constantine for Constantius. I wrote from memory, and the memory betrayed me. But say nothing about it. Nobody will find it out. I send you Silentiarius and some poems of Pisida in the same volume. Even if you had not asked for them, I should have asked you to look at some passages which are fine in both. It appears to me that Silentiarius writes difficult Greek, overlaying his description with a multitude of architectural and other far fetched words! Pisida is hard, too, occasionally, from other causes, particularly in the ‘Hexaemeron,’ which is not in the book I send you but in another very gigantic one (as tall as the Irish giants), which you may see if you please. I will send a coach and six with it if you please.
John Mauropus, of the Three Towns, I owe the knowledge of to _you. You_ lent me the book with his poems, you know. He is a great favorite of mine in all ways. I very much admire his poetry.
Believe me, ever your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
Pray tell me what you think. I am sorry to observe that the book I send you is marked very irregularly; that is, marked in some places, unmarked in others, just as I happened to be near or far from my pencil and inkstand. Otherwise I should have liked to compare judgments with you.
Keep the book as long as you please; it is my own.
[Footnote 64: George Burges, the classical scholar. He had in 1832 contributed to the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ (under a pseudonym) some lines purporting to be a newly discovered portion of the _Bacchae_, but really composed by himself on the basis of a parallel passage in the _Christus Patiens_. It is apparently to these lines that Miss Barrett alludes, though the ‘discovery’ was then nearly ten years old.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
50 Wimpole Street: April 2, 1842.
My very dear Friend,–… As to your kind desire to hear whatever in the way of favorable remark I have gathered together for fruit of my papers, I put on a veil and tell you that Mr. Kenyon thought it well done, although ‘labour thrown away, from the unpopularity of the subject;’ that Miss Mitford was very much pleased, with the warmheartedness common to her; that Mrs. Jamieson [_sic_] read them ‘with great pleasure’ unconsciously of the author; and that Mr. Home the poet and Mr. Browning the poet were not behind in approbation. Mr. Browning is said to be learned in Greek, especially in the dramatists; and of Mr. Home I should suspect something similar. Miss Mitford and Mrs. Jamieson, although very gifted and highly cultivated women, are not Grecians, and therefore judge the papers simply as English compositions.
The single unfavorable opinion _is_ Mr. Hunter’s, who thinks that the criticisms are not given with either sufficient seriousness or diffidence, and that there is a painful sense of effort through the whole. Many more persons may say so whose voices I do not hear. I am glad that yours, my dear indulgent friend, is not one of them.
Believe me, your ever affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
_To H.S. Boyd_
May 17, 1842.
My very dear Friend,–Have you thought all unkindness out of my silence? Yet the inference is not a true one, however it may look in logic.
You do not like Silentiarius _very much_ (that is _my_ inference), since you have kept him so short a time. And I quite agree with you that he is not a poet of the same interest as Gregory Nazianzen, however he may appear to me of more lofty cadence in his versification. My own impression is that John of Euchaita is worth two of each of them as a poet. His poems strike me as standing in the very first class of the productions of the Christian centuries. Synesius and John of Euchaita! I shall always think of those two together–not by their similarity, but their dignity.
I return you the books you lent me with true thanks, and also those which Mrs. Smith, I believe, left in your hands for me. I thank _you_ for them, and _you_ must be good enough to thank _her_. They were of use, although of a rather sublime indifference for poets generally….
I shall send you soon the series of the Greek papers you asked for, and also perhaps the first paper of a Survey of the English Poets, under the pretence of a review of ‘The Book of the Poets,’ a bookseller’s selection published lately. I begin from Langland, of Piers Plowman and the Malvern Hills. The first paper went to the editor last week, and I have heard nothing as to whether it will appear on Saturday or not, and perhaps if it does you won’t care to have it sent to you. Tell me if you do or don’t. I have suffered unpleasantly in the heart lately from this tyrannous dynasty of east winds, but have been well otherwise, and am better, in _that_. Flushie means to bark the next time he sees you in revenge for what you say of him.
Good bye, dear Mr. Boyd; think of me as
Your ever affectionate
E.B.B.
_To H.S. Boyd_
June 3, 1842.
My very dear Friend,–I disobeyed you in not simply letting you know