into the unseen, and not one of those poets has insulted his own genius by the production of whole poems, such as I could name of Wordsworth’s, the vulgarity of which is childish, and the childishness vulgar. Still, the wings of his genius are wide enough to cast a shadow over its feet, and our gratitude should be stronger than our critical acumen. Yes, I _will_ be a blind admirer of Wordsworth’s. I _will_ shut my eyes and be blind. Better so, than see too well for the thankfulness which is his due from me….
Yes, I mean to print as much as I can find and make room for, ‘Brown Rosary’ and all. I am glad you liked ‘Napoleon,'[89] but I shall be more glad if you decide when you see this new book that I have made some general progress in strength and expression. Sometimes I rise into hoping that I may have done so, or may do so still more.
The poet’s work is no light work. His wheat will not grow without labour any more than other kinds of wheat, and the sweat of the spirit’s brow is wrung by a yet harder necessity. And, thinking so, I am inclined to a little regret that you should have hastened your book even for the sake of a sentiment. Now you will be angry with me….
There are certain difficulties in the way of the critic unprofessional, as I know by experience. Our most sweet voices are scarcely admissible among the most sour ones of the regular brotherhood….
Harriet Martineau is quite well,’trudging miles together in the snow,’ when the snow was, and in great spirits. Wordsworth is to be in London in the spring. Tennyson is dancing the polka and smoking cloud upon cloud at Cheltenham. Robert Browning is meditating a new poem, and an excursion on the Continent. Miss Mitford came to spend a day with me some ten days ago; sprinkled, as to the soul, with meadow dews. Am I at the end of my account? I think so.
Did you read ‘Blackwood’? and in that case have you had deep delight in an exquisite paper by the Opium-eater, which my heart trembled through from end to end? What a poet that man is! how he vivifies words, or deepens them, and gives them profound significance….
I understand that poor Hood is supposed to be dying, really dying, at last. Sydney Smith’s last laugh mixes with his, or nearly so. But Hood had a deeper heart, in one sense, than Sydney Smith, and is the material of a greater man.
And what are you doing? Writing–reading–or musing of either? Are you a reviewer-man–in opposition to the writer? Once, reviewing was my besetting sin, but now it is only my frailty. Now that I lie here at the mercy of every reviewer, I save myself by an instinct of self-preservation from that ‘gnawing tooth’ (as Homer and Aeschylus did rightly call it), and spring forward into definite work and thought. Else, I should perish. Do you understand that? If you are a reviewer-man you will, and if not, you must set it down among those mysteries of mine which people talk of as profane.
May God bless you, &c. &c.
ELIZABETH BARRETT.
[Footnote 88: In the _Athenaeum_.]
[Footnote 89: ‘Crowned and Buried’ (_Poetical Works_, iii. 9).]
_To Mr. Westwood_
[Undated.]
You know as well as I do how the plague of rhymers, and of bad rhymes, is upon the land, and it was only three weeks ago that, at a ‘Literary Institute’ at Brighton, I heard of the Reverend somebody Stoddart gravely proposing ‘Poetry for the Million’ to his audience; he assuring them that ‘poets made a mystery of their art,’ but that in fact nothing except an English grammar, and a rhyming dictionary, and some instruction about counting on the fingers, was necessary in order to make a poet of any man!
_This_ is a fact. And to this extent has the art, once called divine, been desecrated among the educated classes of our country.
Very sincerely yours,
ELIZABETH BARRETT.
Besides the poems, to which reference has been made in the above letters, Miss Barrett was engaged, during the year 1843, in co-operating with her friend Mr. Home in the production of his great critical enterprise, ‘The New Spirit of the Age.’ In this the much daring author undertook no less a task than that of passing a sober and serious judgment on his principal living comrades in the world of letters. Not unnaturally he ended by bringing a hornets’ nest about his ears–alike of those who thought they should have been mentioned and were not, and of those who were mentioned but in terms which did not satisfy the good opinion of themselves with which Providence had been pleased to gift them. The volumes appeared under Home’s name alone, and he took the whole responsibility; but he invited assistance from others, and in particular used the collaboration of Miss Barrett to no small extent. She did not indeed contribute any complete essay to his work; but she expressed her opinion, when invited, on several writers, in a series of elaborate letters, which were subsequently worked up by Home into his own criticisms.[90] The secret of her cooperation was carefully kept, and she does not appear to have suffered any of the evil consequences of his indiscretions, real or imagined. Another contribution from her consisted of the suggestion of mottoes appropriate to each writer noticed at length; and in this work she had an unknown collaborator in the person of Robert Browning. So ends the somewhat uneventful year of 1843.
[Footnote 90: Her contributions to the essays on Tennyson and Carlyle have recently been printed in Messrs. Nichols and Wise’s _Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century_, i. 33, ii. 105.]
CHAPTER IV
1844-46
The year 1844 marks an important epoch in the life of Mrs. Browning. It was in this year that, as a result of the publication of her two volumes of ‘Poems,’ she won her general and popular recognition as a poetess whose rank was with the foremost of living writers. It was six years since she had published a volume of verse; and in the meanwhile she had been gaining strength and literary experience. She had tried her wings in the pages of popular periodicals. She had profited by the criticisms on her earlier work, and by intercourse with men of letters; and though her defects in literary art were by no means purged away, yet the flights of her inspiration were stronger and more assured. The result is that, although the volumes of 1844 do not contain absolutely her best work–no one with the ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ in his mind can affirm so much as that–they contain that which has been most generally popular, and which won her the position which for the rest of her life she held in popular estimation among the leaders of English poetry.
The principal poem in these two volumes is the ‘Drama of Exile.’ Of the genesis of this work, Miss Barrett gives the following account in a letter to Home, dated December 28 1843:
‘A volume full of manuscripts had been ready for more than a year, when suddenly, a short time ago, when I fancied I had no heavier work than to make copy and corrections, I fell upon a fragment of a sort of masque on “The First Day’s Exile from Eden”–or rather it fell upon me, and beset me till I would finish it.'[91]
[Footnote 91: _Letters to R.H. Home_, ii. 146.]
At one time it was intended to use its name as the title to the two volumes; but this design was abandoned, and they appeared under the simple description of ‘Poems, by Elizabeth Barrett Barrett.’ The ‘Vision of Poets’ comes next in length to the ‘Drama’; and among the shorter pieces were several which rank among her best work, ‘The Cry of the Children,’ ‘Wine of Cyprus,’ ‘The Dead Pan,’ ‘Bertha in the Lane,’ ‘Crowned and Buried,’ ‘The Mourning Mother,’ and ‘The Sleep,’ together with such popular favourites as ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,’ ‘The Romaunt of the Page,’ and ‘The Rhyme of the Duchess May.’ Since the publication of ‘The Seraphim’ volume, the new era of poetry had developed itself to a notable extent. Tennyson had published the best of his earlier verse, ‘Locksley Hall,’ ‘Ulysses,’ the ‘Morte d’Arthur,’ ‘The Lotus Eaters,’ ‘A Dream of Fair Women,’ and many more; Browning had issued his wonderful series of ‘Bells and Pomegranates,’ including ‘Pippa Passes,’ ‘King Victor and King Charles,’ ‘Dramatic Lyrics,’ ‘The Return of the Druses,’ and ‘The Blot on the ‘Scutcheon’; and it was among company such as this that Miss Barrett, by general consent, now took her place.
_To Mrs. Martin_
January 8, 1844.
Thank you again and again, my dearest Mrs. Martin, for your flowers, and the verses which gave them another perfume. The ‘incense of the heart’ lost not a grain of its perfume in coming so far, and not a leaf of the flowers was ruffled, and to see such gorgeous colours all on a sudden at Christmas time was like seeing a vision, and almost made Flush and me rub our eyes. Thank you, dearest Mrs. Martin; how kind of you! The grace of the verses and the brightness of the flowers were too much for me altogether. And when George exclaimed, ‘Why, she has certainly laid bare her greenhouse,’ I had not a word to say in justification of myself for being the cause of it.
Papa admired the branch of Australian origin so much that he walked all over the house with it. Beautiful it is indeed; but my eyes turn back to the camellias. I do believe that I like to look at a camellia better than at a rose; and then _these_ have a double association….
I meant to write a long letter to you to-day, but Mr. Kenyon has been to see me and cut my time short before post time. You remember, perhaps, how his brother married a German, and, after an exile of many years in Germany, returned last summer to England to settle. Well, he can’t bear us any longer! His wife is growing paler and paler with the pressure of English social habits, or rather unsocial habits; and he himself is a German at heart; and besides, being a man of a singularly generous nature, and accustomed to give away in handfuls of silver and gold one-third of every year’s income, he dislikes the social obligation of _spending_ it here. So they are going back. Poor Mr. Kenyon! I am full of sympathy with him. This returning to England was a dream of all last year to him. He gave up his house to the new comers, and bought a new one; and talked of the brightness secured to his latter years by the presence of his only remaining near relative; and I see that, for all his effort towards a bright view of the matter, he is disappointed–very. Should you suppose that four hundred pounds in Vienna go as far as a thousand in England? I should never have fancied it.
You shall hear from me, my dearest Mrs. Martin, in another few days; and I send this as it is, just because I am benighted by the post hour, and do not like to pass your kindness with even one day’s apparent neglect.
May God bless you and dear Mr. Martin. The kindest wishes for the long slope of coming year, and for the many, I trust, beyond it, belong to you from the deepest of our hearts.
But shall you not be coming–setting out–very soon, before I can write again?
Your affectionate
BA.
_To John Kenyan_
[?January 1844.]
I am so sorry, dear Mr. Kenyon, to hear–which I did, last night, for the first time–of your being unwell. I had hoped that to-day would bring a better account, but your note, with its next week prospect, is disappointing. The ‘ignominy’ would have been very preferable–to us, at least, particularly as it need not have lasted beyond to-day, dear Georgie being quite recovered, and at his law again, and no more symptoms of small-pox in anybody. We should all be well, if it were not for me and my cough, which is better, but I am not quite well, nor have yet been out.
A letter came to me from dear Miss Mitford a few days since, which I had hoped to talk to you about. Some of the subject of it is Mr. Kenyon’s ‘_only fault_,’ which ought, of course, to be a large one to weigh against the multitudinous ones of other people, but which seems to be: ‘He has the habit of walking in without giving notice. He thinks it saves trouble, whereas in a small family, and at a distance from a town, the effect is that one takes care to be provided for the whole time that one expects him, and then, by some exquisite ill luck, on the only day when one’s larder is empty, in he comes!’ And so, if you have not written to interrupt her in this process of indefinite expectation, the ‘only fault’ will, in her eyes, grow, as it ought, as large as fifty others.
I do hope, dear Mr. Kenyon, soon to hear that you are better–and well–and that your course of prophecy may not run smooth all through next week.
Very truly yours,
E. BARRETT.
Saturday.
_To John Kenyon_
Saturday night [about March 1844].
I return Mr. Burges’s criticism, which I omitted to talk to you of this morning, but which interested me much in the reading. Do let him understand how obliged to him I am for permitting me to look, for a moment, according to his view of the question. Perhaps my poetical sense is not convinced all through, and certainly my critical sense is not worth convincing, but I am delighted to be able to call by the name of Aeschylus, under the authority of Mr. Burges, those noble electrical lines (electrical for double reasons) which had struck me twenty times as Aeschylean, when I read them among the recognised fragments of Sophocles. You hear Aeschylus’s footsteps and voice in the lines. No other of the gods could tread so heavily, or speak so like thundering.
I wrote all this to begin with, hesitating how else to begin. My very dear and kind friend, you understand–do you not?–through an expression which, whether written or spoken, must remain imperfect, to what deep, full feeling of gratitude your kindness has moved me.[92] The good you have done me, and just at the moment when I should have failed altogether without it, and in more than one way, and in a deeper than the obvious degree–all this I know better than you do, and I thank you for it from the bottom of my heart. I shall never forget it, as long as I live to remember anything. The book may fail signally after all–_that_ is another question; but I shall not fail, to begin with, and _that_ I owe to _you_, for I was falling to pieces in nerves and spirits when you came to help me. I had only enough instinct left to be ashamed, a little, afterwards, of having sent you, in company, too, with Miss Martineau’s heroic cheerfulness, that note of weak because unavailing complaint. It was a long compressed feeling breaking suddenly into words. Forgive and forget that I ever so troubled you–no, ‘troubled’ is not the word for your kindness!–and remember, as I shall do, the great good you have done me.
May God bless you, my dear cousin.
Affectionately yours always,
E.B.B.
[Footnote 92: Referring to Mr. Kenyon’s encouraging comments on the ‘Drama of Exile,’ which he had seen in manuscript at a time when Miss Barrett was very despondent about it.]
This note is not to be answered.
I am thinking of writing to Moxon, as there does not seem much to arrange. The type and size of Tennyson’s books seem, upon examination, to suit my purpose excellently.
_To John Kenyan_
March 21, 1844.
No, you never sent me back Miss Martineau’s letter, my dear cousin; but you will be sure, or rather Mr. Crabb Robinson will, to find it in some too safe a place; and then I shall have it. In the meantime here are the other letters back again. You will think that I was keeping them for a deposit, a security, till I ‘had my ain again,’ but I have only been idle and busy together. They are the most interesting that can be, and have quite delighted me. By the way, _I_, who saw nothing to object to in the ‘Life in the Sick Room,’ object very much to her argument in behalf of it–an argument certainly founded on a miserable misapprehension of the special doctrine referred to in her letter. There is nothing so elevating and ennobling to the nature and mind of man as the view which represents it raised into communion with God Himself, by the justification and purification of God Himself. Plato’s dream brushed by the gate of this doctrine when it walked highest, and won for him the title of ‘Divine.’ That it is vulgarised sometimes by narrow-minded teachers in theory, and by hypocrites in action, might be an argument (if admitted at all) against all truth, poetry, and music!
On the other hand, I was glad to see the leaning on the Education question; in which all my friends the Dissenters did appear to me so painfully wrong and so unworthily wrong at once.
And Southey’s letters! I did quite delight in _them_! They are more _personal_ than any I ever saw of his; and have more warm every-day life in them.
The particular Paul Pry in question (to come down to _my_ life) never ‘intrudes.’ It is his peculiarity. And I put the stop exactly where I was bid; and was going to put Gabriel’s speech,[93] only–with the pen in my hand to do it–I found that the angel was a little too exclamatory altogether, and that he had cried out, ‘O ruined earth!’ and ‘O miserable angel!’ just before, approaching to the habit of a mere caller of names. So I altered the passage otherwise; taking care of your full stop after ‘despair.’ Thank you, my dear Mr. Kenyon.
Also I sent enough manuscript for the first sheet, and a note to Moxon yesterday, last night, thanking him for his courtesy about Leigh Hunt’s poems; and following your counsel in every point. ‘Only last night,’ you will say! But I have had _such_ a headache–and some very painful vexation in the prospect of my maid’s leaving me, who has been with me throughout my illness; so that I am much attached to her, with the best reasons for being so, while the idea of a stranger is scarcely tolerable to me under my actual circumstances.
The ‘Palm Leaves'[94] are full of strong thought and good thought–thought expressed excellently well; but of poetry, in the true sense, and of imagination in any, I think them bare and cold–somewhat wintry leaves to come from the East, surely, surely!
May the change of air be rapid in doing you good–the weather seems to be softening on purpose for you. May God bless you, dear Mr. Kenyon; I never can thank you enough. When you return I shall be rustling my ‘proofs’ about you, to prove my faith in your kindness.
Ever affectionately yours,
E.B.B.
[Footnote 93: In the ‘Drama of Exile,’ near the beginning (_Poetical Works_, i. 7).]
[Footnote 94: By Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
March 22, 1844.
My dearest Mr. Boyd,–I heard that once I wrote three times too long a letter to you; I am aware that nine times too long a silence is scarcely the way to make up for it. Forgive me, however, as far as you can, for every sort of fault. When I once begin to write to you, I do not know how to stop; and I have had so much to do lately as scarcely to know how to begin to write to you. _Hence these_ faults–not quite tears–in spite of my penitence and the quotation.
At last my book is in the press. My great poem (in the modest comparative sense), my ‘Masque of Exile’ (as I call it at last[95]), consists of some nineteen hundred or two thousand lines, and I call it ‘Masque of _Exile_’ because it refers to Lucifer’s exile, and to that other mystical exile of the Divine Being which was the means of the return homewards of my Adam and Eve. After the exultation of boldness of composition, I fell into one of my deepest fits of despondency, and at last, at the end of most painful vacillations, determined not to print it. Never was a manuscript so near the fire as my ‘Masque’ was. I had not even the instinct of applying for help to anybody. In the midst of this Mr. Kenyon came in by accident, and asked about my poem. I told him that I had given it up, despairing of my republic. In the kindest way he took it into his hands, and proposed to carry it home and read it, and tell me his impression. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I have a prejudice against these sacred subjects for poetry, but then I have another prejudice _for you_, and one may neutralise the other.’ The next day I had a letter from him with the returned manuscript–a letter which I was absolutely certain, before I opened it, would counsel _against_ the publication. On the contrary! His impression is clearly in favour of the poem, and, while he makes sundry criticisms on minor points, he considers it very superior as a whole to anything I ever did before–more sustained, and fuller in power. So my nerves are braced, and I grow a man again; and the manuscript, as I told you, is in the press. Moreover, you will be surprised to hear that I think of bringing out _two volumes of poems_ instead of one, by advice of Mr. Moxon, the publisher. Also, the Americans have commanded an American edition, to come out in numbers, either a little before or simultaneously with the English one, and provided with a separate preface for themselves.
There now! I have told you all this, knowing your kindness, and that you will care to hear of it.
It has given me the greatest concern to hear of dear Annie’s illness, and I do hope, both for your sake and for all our sakes, that we may have better news of her before long.
But I don’t mean to fall into another scrape to-day by writing too much. May God bless you, my very dear friend!
I am ever your affectionate
E.B.B.
[Footnote 95: There was, however, a still later last, when it became the ‘Drama of Exile.’]
_To H.S. Boyd_
April I, 1844.
My very dear Friend,–Your kind letter I was delighted to receive. You mistake a good deal the capacities in judgment of ‘the man.'[96] The ‘man’ is highly refined in his tastes, and leaning to the classical (I was going to say to _your_ classical, only suddenly I thought of Ossian) a good deal more than I do. He has written satires in the manner of Pope, which admirers of Pope have praised warmly and deservedly. If I had hesitated about the conclusiveness of his judgments, it would have been because of his confessed indisposition towards subjects religious and ways mystical, and his occasional insufficient indulgence for rhymes and rhythms which he calls ‘_Barrettian_.’ But these things render his favourable inclination towards my ‘Drama of Exile’ still more encouraging (as you will see) to my hopes for it.
Still, I do tremble a good deal inwardly when I come to think of what your own thoughts of my poem, and poems in their two-volume development, may finally be. I am afraid of you. You will tell me the truth as it appears to you–upon _that_ I may rely; and I should not wish you to suppress a single disastrous thought for the sake of the unpleasantness it may occasion to me. My own faith is that I have made progress since ‘The Seraphim,’ only it is too possible (as I confess to myself and you) that your opinion may be exactly contrary to it.
You are very kind in what you say about wishing to have some conversation, as the medium of your information upon architecture, with Octavius–Occy, as we call him. He is very much obliged to you, and proposes, if it should not be inconvenient to you, to call upon you on Friday, with Arabel, at about one o’clock. Friday is mentioned because it is a holiday, no work being done at Mr. Barry’s. Otherwise he is engaged every day (except, indeed, Sunday) from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon. May God bless you, dearest Mr. Boyd. I am ever
Your affectionate
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
[Footnote 96: John Kenyon: see the last letter.]
_To Mr. Westwood_
April 16, 1844.
… Surely, surely, it was not likely I should lean to utilitarianism in the notice on Carlyle, as I remember the writer of that article leans somewhere–_I_, who am reproached with trans-trans-transcendentalisms, and not without reason, or with insufficient reason.
Oh, and I should say also that Mr. Home, in his kindness, has enlarged considerably in his annotations and reflections on me personally.[97] My being in correspondence with all the Kings of the East, for instance, is an exaggeration, although literary work in one way will bring with it, happily, literary association in others…. Still, I am not a great letter writer, and I don’t write ‘elegant Latin verses,’ as all the gods of Rome know, and I have not been shut up in the dark for seven years by any manner of means. By the way, a barrister said to my barrister brother the other day, ‘I suppose your sister is dead?’ ‘Dead?’ said he, a little struck; ‘dead?’ ‘Why, yes. After Mr. Home’s account of her being sealed up hermetically in the dark for so many years, one can only calculate upon her being dead by this time.’
ELIZABETH BARRETT.
Several of the letters to Mr. Boyd which follow refer to that celebrated gift of Cyprus wine which led to the composition of one of Miss Barrett’s best known and most quoted poems.
[Footnote 97: In _The New Spirit of the Age_.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
June 18, 1844.
Thank you, my very dear friend! I write to you drunk with Cyprus. Nothing can be worthier of either gods or demi-gods; and if, as you say, Achilles did not drink of it, I am sorry for him. I suppose Jupiter had it instead, just then–Hebe pouring it, and Juno’s ox-eyes bellowing their splendour at it, if you will forgive me that broken metaphor, for the sake of Aeschylus’s genius, and my own particular intoxication.
Indeed, there _never was_, in modern days, such wine. Flush, to whom I offered the last drop in my glass, felt it was supernatural, and ran away. I have an idea that if he had drunk that drop, he would have talked afterwards–either Greek or English.
Never was such wine! The very taste of ideal nectar, only stiller, from keeping. If the bubbles of eternity were on it, _we_ should run away, perhaps, like Flush.
Still, the thought comes to me, ought I to take it from you? Is it right of me? are you not too kind in sending it? and should you be allowed to be too kind? In any case, you must, not think of sending me more than you have already sent. It is more than enough, and I am not less than very much obliged to you.
I have passed the middle of my second volume, and I only hope that critics may say of the rest that it smells of Greek wine. Dearest Mr. Boyd’s
Ever affectionate
E.B. BARRETT.
_To Mr. Westwood_
June 28, 1844.
My dear Mr. Westwood,–I have certainly and considerably increased the evidence of my own death by the sepulchral silence of the last few days. But after all I am not dead, not even _at heart_, so as to be insensible to your kind anxiety, and I can assure you of this, upon very fair authority, neither is the book dead yet. It has turned the corner of the _felo de se_, and if it is to die, it will be by the critics. The mystery of the long delay, it would not be very easy for me to explain, notwithstanding I hear Mr. Moxon says: ‘I suppose Miss Barrett is not in a hurry about her publication;’ and _I_ say: ‘I suppose Moxon is not in a hurry about the publication.’ There may be a little fault on my side, when I have kept a proof a day beyond the hour, or when ‘copy’ has put out new buds in my hands as I passed it to the printer’s. Still, in my opinion, it is a good deal more the fault of Mr. Moxon’s not being in a hurry, than in the excessive virtue of my patience, or vice of my indolence. Miss Mitford says, as you do, that she never heard of so slow-footed a book.
_To H.S. Boyd_
50 Wimpole Street:
Wednesday, August I, 1844 [postmark].
My very dear Friend,–Have you expected to hear from me? and are you vexed with me? I am a little ambitious of the first item–yet hopeful of an escape from the last. If you did but know how I am pressed for time, and how I have too much to do every day, you would forgive me for my negligence; even if you had sent me nectar instead of mountain,[98] and I had neglected laying my gratitude at your feet. Last Saturday, upon its being discovered that my first volume consisted of only 208 pages, and my second of 280 pages, Mr. Moxon uttered a cry of reprehension, and wished to tear me to pieces by his printers, as the Bacchantes did Orpheus. Perhaps you might have heard my head moaning all the way to St. John’s Wood! He wanted to tear away several poems from the end of the second volume, and tie them on to the end of the first! I could not and would not hear of this, because I had set my mind on having ‘Dead Pan’ to conclude with. So there was nothing for it but to finish a ballad poem called ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,’ which was lying by me, and I did so by writing, i.e. composing, _one hundred and forty lines last Saturday!_[99] I seemed to be in a dream all day! Long lines too–with fifteen syllables in each! I see you shake your head all this way off. Moreover it is a ‘romance of the age,’ treating of railroads, routes, and all manner of ‘temporalities,’ and in so radical a temper that I expect to be reproved for it by the Conservative reviews round. By the way, did I tell you of the good news I had from America the third of this month? The ‘Drama of Exile’ is in the hands of a New York publisher; and having been submitted to various chief critics of the country on its way, was praised loudly and extravagantly. This was, however, by a _private reading_ only. A bookseller at Philadelphia had announced it for publication–he intended to take it up when the English edition reached America; but upon its being represented to him that the New York publisher had proof sheets direct from the author and would give copy money, he abandoned his intention to the other. I confess I feel very much pleased at the kind spirit–the spirit of eager kindness indeed–with which the Americans receive my poetry. It is not wrong to be pleased, I hope. In this country there may be mortifications waiting for me; quite enough to keep my modesty in a state of cultivation. I do not know. I hope the work will be out this week, and _then_! Did I explain to you that what ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship’ was wanted for was to increase the size of the first volume, so as to restore the equilibrium of volumes, without dislocating ‘Pan’? Oh, how anxious I shall be to hear your opinion! If you tell me that I have lost my intellects, what in the world shall I do _then_–what _shall_ I do? My Americans–that is, my Americans who were in at the private reading, and perhaps I myself–are of opinion that I have made great progress since ‘The Seraphim.’ It seems to me that I have more _reach_, whether in thought or language. But then, to _you_ it may appear quite otherwise, and I shall be very melancholy if it does. Only you must tell me the _precise truth_; and I trust to you that you will let me have it in its integrity.
All the life and strength which are in me, seem to have passed into my poetry. It is my _pou sto_–not to move the world; but to live on in.
I must not forget to tell you that there is a poem towards the end of the second volume, called ‘Cyprus Wine,’ which I have done myself the honor and pleasure of associating with your name. I thought that you would not be displeased by it, as a proof of grateful regard from me.
Talking of wines, the Mountain has its attraction, but certainly is not to be compared to the Cyprus. You will see how I have praised the latter. Well, now I must say ‘good-bye,’ which you will praise _me_ for!
Dearest Mr. Boyd’s affectionate
E.B.B.
P.S.–_Nota bene_–I wish to forewarn you that I have cut away in the text none of my vowels by apostrophes. When I say ‘To efface,’ wanting two-syllable measure, I do not write ‘T’ efface’ as in the old fashion, but ‘To efface’ full length. This is the style of the day. Also you will find me a little lax perhaps in metre–a freedom which is the result not of carelessness, but of _conviction_, and indeed of much patient study of the great Fathers of English poetry–not meaning Mr. Pope. Be as patient with me as you can. You shall have the volumes as soon as they are ready.
[Footnote 98: Evidently a reference to the name of some wine (perhaps Montepulciano) sent her by Mr. Boyd. See the end of the letter.]
[Footnote 99: It will be observed that this is not quite the same as the current legend, which asserts that the whole poem (of 412 lines) was composed in twelve hours.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
August 6, 1844.
My very dear Friend,–I cannot be certain, from my recollections, whether I did or did not write to you before, as you suggest; but as you never received the letter and I was in a continual press of different thoughts, the probability is that I did not write. The Cyprus wine in the second vial I certainly _did_ receive; and was grateful to you with the whole force of the aroma of it. And now I will tell you an anecdote.
In the excess of my filial tenderness, I poured out a glass for papa, and offered it to him with my right hand.
‘_What is this_?’ said he.
‘_Taste it_,’ said I as laconically, but with more emphasis.
He raised it to his lips; and, after a moment, recoiled, with such a face as sinned against Adam’s image, and with a shudder of deep disgust.
‘Why,’ he said, ‘what most beastly and nauseous thing is this? Oh,’ he said, ‘what detestable drug is this? Oh, oh,’ he said, ‘I shall never, never, get this horrible taste out of my mouth.’
I explained with the proper degree of dignity that ‘it was Greek wine, Cyprus wine, and of very great value.’
He retorted with acrimony, that ‘it might be Greek, twice over; but that it was exceedingly beastly.’
I resumed, with persuasive argument, that ‘it could scarcely be beastly, inasmuch as the taste reminded one of oranges and orange flower together, to say nothing of the honey of Mount Hymettus.’
He took me up with stringent logic, ‘that any wine must positively be beastly, which, pretending to be wine, tasted sweet as honey, and that it was beastly on my own showing!’ I send you this report as an evidence of a curious opinion. But drinkers of port wine cannot be expected to judge of nectar–and I hold your ‘Cyprus’ to be pure nectar.
I shall have pleasure in doing what you ask me to do–that is, I _will_–if you promise never to call me Miss Barrett again. You have often quite vexed me by it. There is Ba–Elizabeth–Elzbeth–Ellie–any modification of my name you may call me by–but I won’t be called Miss Barrett by _you_. Do you understand? Arabel means to carry your copy of my book to you. And I beg you not to fancy that I shall be impatient for you to read the two volumes through. If you _ever_ read them through, it will be a sufficient compliment, and indeed I do not expect that you _ever will_.
May God bless you, dearest Mr. Boyd.
I remain,
Your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
The date of this last letter marks, as nearly as need be, the date of publication of Miss Barrett’s volumes. The letters which follow deal mainly with their reception, first at the hand of friends, and then by the regular critics. The general verdict of the latter was extremely complimentary. Mr. Chorley, in the ‘Athenaeum,'[100] described the volumes as ‘extraordinary,’ adding that ‘between her [Miss Barrett’s] poems and the slighter lyrics of most of the sisterhood, there is all the difference which exists between the putting-on of “singing robes” for altar service, and the taking up lute or harp to enchant an indulgent circle of friends and kindred.’ In the ‘Examiner,'[101] John Forster declared that ‘Miss Barrett is an undoubted poetess of a high and fine order as regards the first requisites of her art–imagination and expression…. She is a most remarkable writer, and her volumes contain not a little which the lovers of poetry will never willingly let die,’ a phrase then not quite so hackneyed as it has since become. The ‘Atlas'[102] asserted that ‘the present volumes show extraordinary powers, and, abating the failings of which all the followers of Tennyson are guilty, extraordinary genius.’ More influential even than these, ‘Blackwood'[103] paid her the compliment of a whole article, criticising her faults frankly, but declaring that ‘her poetical merits infinitively outweigh her defects. Her genius is profound, unsullied, and without a flaw.’ All agreed in assigning her a high, or the highest, place among the poetesses of England; but, as Miss Barrett herself pointed out, this, in itself, was no great praise.[104]
[Footnote 100: August 24, 1844.]
[Footnote 101: October 5, 1844.]
[Footnote 102: September 31, 1844.]
[Footnote 103: November 1844.]
[Footnote 104: See letter of January 3, 1845.]
With regard to individual poems, the critics did not take kindly to the ‘Drama of Exile,’ and ‘Blackwood’ in particular criticised it at considerable length, calling it ‘the least successful of her works.’ The subject, while half challenging comparison with Milton, lends itself only too readily to fancifulness and unreality, which were among the most besetting sins of Miss Barrett’s genius. The minor poems were incomparably more popular, and the favourite of all was that masterpiece of rhetorical sentimentality, ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.’ It must have been a little mortifying to the authoress to find this piece, a large part of which had been dashed off at a single heat in order to supply the printers’ needs, preferred to others on which she had employed all the labour of her deliberate art; but with the general tone of all the critics she had every reason to be as content as her letters show her to have been. Only two criticisms rankled: the one that she was a follower of Tennyson, the other that her rhymes were slovenly and careless. And these appeared, in varying shapes, in nearly all the reviews.
The former of these allegations is of little weight. Whatever qualities Miss Barrett may have shared with Tennyson, her substantial independence is unquestionable. It is a case rather of coincidence than imitation; or if imitation, it is of a slight and unconscious kind. The second criticism deserves fuller notice, because it is constantly repeated to this day. The following letters show how strongly Miss Barrett protested against it. As she told Horne,[105] with reference to this very subject: ‘If I fail ultimately before the public–that is, before the people–for an ephemeral popularity does not appear to me to be worth trying for–it will not be because I have shrunk from the amount of labour, where labour could do anything. I have _worked_ at poetry; it has not been with me reverie, but art.’ That her rhymes were inexact, especially in such poems as ‘The Dead Pan,’ she did not deny; but her defence was that the inexactness was due to a deliberate attempt to widen the artistic capabilities of the English language. Partly, perhaps, as a result of her acquaintance with Italian literature, she had a marked fondness for disyllabic rhymes; and since pure rhymes of this kind are not plentiful in English, she tried the experiment of using assonances instead. Hence such rhymes as _silence_ and _islands_, _vision_ and _procession_, _panther_ and _saunter_, examples which could be indefinitely multiplied if need were. Now it may be that a writer with a very sensitive ear would not have attempted such an experiment, and it is a fact that public taste has not approved it; but the experiment itself is as legitimate as, say, the metrical experiments in hexameters and hendecasyllabics of Longfellow or Tennyson, and whether approved or not it should be criticised as an experiment, not as mere carelessness. That Mrs. Browning’s ear was quite-capable of discerning true rhymes is shown by the fact that she tacitly abandoned her experiment in assonances. Not only in the pure and high art of the ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese,’ but even in ‘Casa Guidi Windows,’ the rhetorical and sometimes colloquial tone of which might have been thought to lend itself to such devices, imperfect rhymes occur but rarely not exceeding the limits allowed to himself by every poet who has rhymed _given_ and _heaven_; and the roll of those who have _not_ done so must be small indeed.
[Footnote 105: _Letters to R.H. Horne_, ii. 119.]
The point has seemed worth dwelling on, because it touches a commonplace of criticism as regards Mrs. Browning; but we may now make way for her own comments on her critics and friends.
_To H.S. Boyd_
Tuesday, August 13, 1844 [postmark].
My very dear Friend,–I must thank you for the great kindness with which you have responded to a natural expression of feeling on my part, and for all the pleasure of finding you pleased with the inscription of ‘Cyprus Wine.’ Your note has given me much true pleasure. Yes; if my verses survive me, I should wish them to relate the fact of my being your debtor for many happy hours.
And now I must explain to you that most of the ‘incorrectnesses’ you speak of may be ‘incorrectnesses,’ but are not _negligences_. I have a theory about double rhymes for which–I shall be attacked by the critics, but which I could justify perhaps on high authority, or at least analogy. In fact, these volumes of mine have more double rhymes than any two books of English poems that ever to my knowledge were printed; I mean of English poems _not comic_. Now, of double rhymes in use, which are perfect rhymes, you are aware how few there are, and yet you are also aware of what an admirable effect in making a rhythm various and vigorous, double rhyming is in English poetry. Therefore I have used a certain licence; and after much thoughtful study of the Elizabethan writers, have ventured it with the public. And do _you_ tell me, _you_ who object to the use of a different _vowel_ in a double rhyme, _why_ you rhyme (as everybody does, without blame from anybody) ‘given’ to ‘heaven,’ when you object to my rhyming ‘remember’ and ‘chamber’? The analogy surely is all on my side, and I _believe_ that the spirit of the English language is also.
I write all this because you will find many other sins of the sort, besides those in the ‘Cyprus Wine;’ and because I wish you to consider the subject as _a point for consideration_ seriously, and not to blame me as a writer of careless verses. If I deal too much in licences, it is not because I am idle, but because I am speculative for freedom’s sake. It is possible, you know, to be wrong conscientiously; and I stand up for my conscience only.
I thank you earnestly for your candour hitherto, and I beseech you to be candid to the end.
It is tawny as Rhea’s lion.
I know (although you don’t say so) you object to that line. Yet consider its structure. Does not the final ‘y’ of ‘tawny’ suppose an apostrophe and apocope? Do you not run ‘tawny as’ into two syllables naturally? I want you to see my principle.
With regard to blank verse, the great Fletcher admits sometimes seventeen syllables into his lines.
I hope Miss Heard received her copy, and that you will not think me arrogant in writing freely to you.
Believe me, I write only freely and not arrogantly; and I am impressed with the conviction that my work abounds with far more faults than you in your kindness will discover, notwithstanding your acumen.
Always your affectionate and grateful ELIBET.
_To H.S. Boyd_
Wednesday, August 14, 1844 [postmark].
My dearest Mr. Boyd,–I must thank you for the great great pleasure with which I have this moment read your note, the more welcome, as (without hypocrisy) I had worked myself up into a nervous apprehension, from your former one, that I should seem so ‘rudis atque incomposita’ to you, in consequence of certain licences, as to end by being intolerable. I know what an ear you have, and how you can hear the dust on the wheel as it goes on. Well, I wrote to you yesterday, to beg you to be patient and considerate.
But you are always given to surprise me with abundant kindness–with supererogatory kindness. I believe in _that_, certainly.
I am very very glad that you think me stronger and more perspicuous. For the perspicuity, I have struggled hard….
Your affectionate and grateful
ELZBETH.
_To Mr. Westwood_
50 Wimpole Street: August 22, 1844.
… Thank you for your welcome letter, so kind in its candour, _I_ angry that you should prefer ‘The Seraphim’! Angry? No _indeed, indeed_, I am grateful for ‘The Seraphim,’ and not exacting for the ‘Drama,’ and all the more because of a secret obstinate persuasion that the ‘Drama’ will have a majority of friends in the end, and perhaps deserve to have them. Nay, why should I throw perhapses over my own impressions, and be insincere to you who have honoured me by being sincere? Why should I dissemble my own belief that the ‘Drama’ is worth two or three ‘Seraphims’–_my own_ belief, you know, which is worth nothing, writers knowing themselves so superficially, and having such a natural leaning to their last work. Still, I may say honestly to you, that I have a far more modest value for ‘The Seraphim’ than your kindness suggests, and that I have seemed to myself to have a clear insight into the fact that that poem was only borne up by the minor poems published with it, from immediate destruction. There is a want of unity in it which vexes me to think of, and the other faults magnify themselves day by day, more and more, in my eyes. Therefore it is not that I care _more_ for the ‘Drama,’ but I care less for ‘The Seraphim.’ Both poems fall short of my aspiration and desire, but the ‘Drama’ seems to me fuller, freer and stronger, and worth the other three times over. If it has anything new, I think it must be something new into which I have lived, for certainly I wrote it sincerely and from an inner impulse. In fact, I never wrote any poem with so much sense of pleasure in the composition, and so rapidly, with continuous flow–from fifty to a hundred lines a day, and quite in a glow of pleasure and impulse all through. Still, you have not been used to see me in blank verse, and there may be something in that. That the poem is full of faults and imperfections I do not in the least doubt. I have vibrated between exultations and despondencies in the correcting and printing of it, though the composition went smoothly to an end, and I am prepared to receive the bastinado to the critical degree, I do assure you. The few opinions I have yet had are all to the effect that my advance on the former publication is very great and obvious, but then I am aware that people who thought exactly the contrary would be naturally backward in giving me their opinion…. Indeed, I thank you most earnestly. Truth and kindness, how rarely do they come together! I am very grateful to you. It is curious that ‘Duchess May’ is not a favorite of mine, and that I have sighed one or two secret wishes towards its extirpation, but other writers besides yourself have singled it out for praise in private letters to me. There has been no printed review yet, I believe; and when I think of them, I try to think of something else, for with no private friends among the critical body (not that I should desire to owe security in such a matter to private friendship) it is awful enough, this looking forward to be reviewed. Never mind, the ultimate prosperity of the book lies far above the critics, and can neither be mended nor made nor unmade by _them_.
_To John Kenyan_
Wednesday morning [August 1844].
I return Mr. Chorley’s[106] note, my dear cousin, with thankful thoughts of him–as of you. I wish I could persuade you of the rightness of my view about ‘Essays on Mind’ and such things, and how the difference between them and my present poems is not merely the difference between two schools, as you seemed to intimate yesterday, nor even the difference between immaturity and maturity; but that it is the difference between the dead and the living, between a copy and an individuality, between what is myself and what is not myself. To you who have a personal interest and–may I say? affection for me, the girl’s exercise assumes a factitious value, but to the public the matter is otherwise and ought to be otherwise. And for the ‘psychological’ side of the question, _do_ observe that I have not reputation enough to suggest a curiosity about _my legends_. Instead of your ‘legendary lore,’ it would be just a legendary bore. Now you understand what I mean. I do not underrate Pope nor his school, but I _do_ disesteem everything which, bearing the shape of a book, is not the true expression of a mind, and I know and feel (and so do _you_) that a girl’s exercise written when all the experience lay in books, and the mind was suited rather for intelligence than production, lying like an infant’s face with an undeveloped expression, must be valueless in itself, and if offered to the public directly or indirectly as a work of mine, highly injurious to me. Why, of the ‘Prometheus’ volume, even, you know what I think and desire. ‘The Seraphim,’ with all its feebleness and shortcomings and obscurities, yet is the first utterance of my own individuality, and therefore the only volume except the last which is not a disadvantage to me to have thought of, and happily for me, the early books, never having been advertised, nor reviewed, except by accident, once or twice, are as safe from the public as manuscript.
Oh, I shudder to think of the lines which might have been ‘nicked in,’ and all through Mr. Chorley’s good nature. As if I had not sins enough to ruin me in the new poems, without reviving juvenile ones, sinned when I knew no better. Perhaps you would like to have the series of epic poems which I wrote from nine years old to eleven. They might illustrate some doctrine of innate ideas, and enrich (to that end) the myths of metaphysicians.
And also agree with me in reverencing that wonderful genius _Keats_, who, rising as a grand exception from among the vulgar herd of juvenile versifiers, was an individual _man_ from the beginning, and spoke with his own voice, though surrounded by the yet unfamiliar murmur of antique echoes.[107] Leigh Hunt calls him ‘the young poet’ very rightly. Most affectionately and gratefully yours,
E.B.B.
Do thank Mr. Chorley for me, will you?
[Footnote 106: Henry Fothergill Chorley (1808-1872) was one of the principal members of the staff of the _Athenaeum_, especially in literary and musical matters. Dr. Garnett (in the _Dictionary of National Biography_) says of him, shortly after his first joining the staff in 1833, that ‘his articles largely contributed to maintain the reputation the _Athenaeum_ had already acquired for impartiality at a time when puffery was more rampant than ever before or since, and when the only other London literary journal of any pretension was notoriously venal.’ He also wrote several novels and dramas, which met with but little popular success.]
[Footnote 107: Compare Aurora Leigh’s asseveration:
‘By Keats’ soul, the man who never stepped In gradual progress like another man,
But, turning grandly on his central self, Ensphered himself in twenty perfect years And died, _not_ young.’
(‘Aurora Leigh,’ book i.; _Poetical Works_, vi. 38.)]
_To Mrs. Martin_
Thursday, August 1844.
Thank you, my dearest Mrs. Martin, for your most kind letter, a reply to which should certainly, as you desired, have met you at Colwall; only, right or wrong, I have been flurried, agitated, put out of the way altogether, by Stormie’s and Henry’s plan of going to Egypt. Ah, now you are surprised. Now you think me excusable for being silent two days beyond my time–yes, and _they have gone_, it is no vague speculation. You know, or perhaps you don’t know, that, a little time back, papa bought a ship, put a captain and crew of his own in it, and began to employ it in his favourite ‘Via Lactea’ of speculations. It has been once to Odessa with wool, I think; and now it has gone to Alexandria with coals. Stormie was wild to go to both places; and with regard to the last, papa has yielded. And Henry goes too. This was all arranged weeks ago, but nothing was said of it until last Monday to me; and when I heard it, I was a good deal moved of course, and although resigned now to their having their way in it, and their _pleasure_, which is better than their way, still I feel I have entered a new anxiety, and shall not be quite at ease again till they return….
And now to thank you, my ever-dearest Mrs. Martin, for your kind and welcome letter from the Lakes. I knew quite at the first page, and long before you said a word specifically, that dear Mr. Martin was better, and think that such a scene, even from under an umbrella, must have done good to the soul and body of both of you. I wish I could have looked through your eyes for once. But I suppose that neither through yours, nor through my own, am I ever likely to behold that sight. In the meantime it is with considerable satisfaction that I hear of your _failure of Wordsworth_, which was my salvation in a very awful sense. Why, if you had done such a thing, you would have put me to the shame of too much honor. The speculation consoles me entirely for your loss in respect to Rydal Hall and its poet. By the way, I heard the other day that Rogers, who was intending to visit him, said, ‘It is a bad time of year for it. The god is on his pedestal; and can only give gestures to his worshippers, and no conversation to his friends.’ …
Although you did not find a letter from me on your return to Colwall, I do hope that you found _me_–viz. my book, which Mr. Burden took charge of, and promised to deliver or see delivered. When you have read it, _do_ let me hear your own and Mr. Martin’s true impression; and whether you think it worse or better than ‘The Seraphim.’ The only review which has yet appeared or had time to appear has been a very kind and cordial one in the ‘Athenaeum.’ …
Your ever affectionate
BA.
_To Mr. Westwood_
August 31, 1844.
My dear Mr. Westwood,–I send you the manuscript you ask for, and also my certificate that, although I certainly was once a little girl, yet I never in my life had fair hair, or received lessons when you mention. I think a cousin of mine, now dead, may have done it. The ‘Barrett Barrett’ seems to specify my family. I have a little cousin with bright fair hair at this moment who is an Elizabeth Barrett (the subject of my ‘Portrait'[108]), but then she is a ‘Georgiana’ besides, and your friend must refer to times past. My hair is very dark indeed, and always was, as long as I remember, and also I have a friend who makes serious affidavit that I have never changed (except by being rather taller) since I was a year old. Altogether, you cannot make a case of identity out, and I am forced to give up the glory of being so long remembered for my cleverness.
You do wrong in supposing me inclined to underrate Mr. Melville’s power. He is inclined to High-Churchism, and to such doctrines as apostolical succession, and I, who, am a Dissenter, and a believer in a universal Christianity, recoil from the exclusive doctrine.
But then, that is not depreciatory of his power and eloquence–surely not.
E.B.
[Footnote 108: _Poetical Works_, iii. 172.]
_To Mr. Chorley_
50 Wimpole Street: Monday.
[About the end of August 1844.]
Dear Mr. Chorley,–Kindnesses are more frequent things with me than gladnesses, but I thank you earnestly for both in the letter I have this moment received.[109] You have given me a quick sudden pleasure which goes deeper (I am very sure) than self-love, for it must be something better than vanity that brings the tears so near the eyes. I thank you, dear Mr. Chorley.
After all, we are not quite strangers. I have had some early encouragement and direction from you, and much earlier (and later) literary pleasures from such of your writings as did not refer to me. I have studied ‘Music and Manners'[110] under you, and found an excuse for my love of romance-reading from your grateful fancy. Then, as dear Miss Mitford’s friend, you could not help being (however against your will!) a little my acquaintance; and this she daringly promised to make you in reality some day, till I took the fervour for prophecy.
Altogether I am justified, while I thank you as a stranger, to say one more word as a friend, and _that_ shall be the best word–‘_May God bless you_!’ The trials with which He tries us all are different, but our faces may be turned towards the end in cheerfulness, for ‘_to_ the end He has loved us.’ I remain,
Very faithfully, your obliged
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
You may trust me with the secret of your kindness to me. It shall not go farther.
[Footnote 109: A summary of its contents is given in the next letter but one.]
[Footnote 110: _Music and Manners in France and Germany: a Series of Travelling Sketches of Art and Society_, published by Mr. Chorley in 1841.]
_To H.S. Boyd_
Monday, September 1, 1844.
My dearest Mr. Boyd,–I thank you for the Cyprus, and also for a still sweeter amreeta–your praise. Certainly to be praised as you praise me might well be supposed likely to turn a sager head than mine, but I feel that (with all my sensitive and grateful appreciation of such words) I am removed rather below than above the ordinary temptations of vanity. Poetry is to me rather a passion than an ambition, and the gadfly which drives me along that road pricks deeper than an expectation of fame could do.
Moreover, there will be plenty of counter-irritation to prevent me from growing feverish under your praises. And as a beginning, I hear that the ‘John Bull’ newspaper has cut me up with sanguinary gashes, for the edification of its Sabbath readers. I have not seen it yet, but I hear so. The ‘Drama’ is the particular victim. Do not send for the paper. I will let you have it, if you should wish for it.
One thing is left to me to say. Arabel told you of a letter I had received from a professional critic, and I am sorry that she should have told you so without binding you to secrecy on the point at the same time. In fact, the writer of the letter begged me _not_ to speak of it, and I took an engagement to him _not_ to speak of it. Now it would be very unpleasant to me, and dishonorable to me, if, after entering into this engagement, the circumstance of the letter should come to be talked about. Of course you will understand that I do not object to your having been informed of the thing, only Arabel should have remembered to ask you not to mention again the name of the critic who wrote to me.
May God bless you, my very dear friend. I drink thoughts of you in Cyprus every day.
Your ever affectionate
ELIBET.
There is no review in the ‘Examiner’ yet, nor any continuation in the ‘Athenaeum.'[111]
[Footnote 111: The _Athenaeum_ had reserved the two longer poems, the ‘Drama of Exile’ and the ‘Vision of Poets,’ for possible notice in a second article, which, however, never appeared.]
_To Mrs. Martin_
September 10, 1844.
My dearest Mrs. Martin,–I will not lose a post in assuring you that I was not silent because of any disappointment from your previous letter. I could only feel the _kindness_ of that letter, and this was certainly the chief and uppermost feeling at the time of reading it, and since. Your preference of ‘The Seraphim’ one other person besides yourself has acknowledged to me in the same manner, and although I myself–perhaps from the natural leaning to last works, and perhaps from a wise recognition of the complete failure of the poem called ‘The Seraphim ‘–do disagree with you, yet I can easily forgive you for such a thought, and believe that you see sufficient grounds for entertaining it. More and more I congratulate myself (at any rate) for the decision I came to at the last moment, and in the face of some persuasions, to call the book ‘Poems,’ instead of trusting its responsibility to the ‘Drama,’ by such a title as ‘A Drama of Exile, and Poems.’ It is plain, as I anticipated, that for one person who is ever so little pleased with the ‘Drama,’ fifty at least will like the smaller poems. And perhaps they are right. The longer sustaining of a subject requires, of course, more power, and I may have failed in it altogether.
Yes, I think I may say that I am satisfied so far with the aspect of things in relation to the book. You see there has scarcely been time yet to give any except a sanguine or despondent judgment–I mean, there is scarcely room yet for forming a very rational inference of what will ultimately be, without the presentiments of hope or fear. The book came out too late in August for any chance of a mention in the September magazines, and at the dead time of year, when the very critics were thinking more of holiday innocence than of their carnivorous instincts. This will not hurt it ultimately, although it might have hurt a _novel_. The regular critics will come back to it; and in the meantime the newspaper critics are noticing it all round, with more or less admissions to its advantage. The ‘Atlas’ is the best of the newspapers for literary notices; and it spoke graciously on the whole; though I do protest against being violently attached to a ‘school.’ I have faults enough, I know; but it is just to say that they are at least my own. Well, then! It is true that the ‘Westminster Review’ says briefly what is great praise, and promises to take the earliest opportunity of reviewing me ‘at large.’ So that with regard to the critics, there seems to be a good prospect. Then I have had some very pleasant private letters–one from Carlyle; an oath from Miss Martineau to give her whole mind to the work and tell me her free and full opinion, which I have not received yet; an assurance from an acquaintance of Mrs. Jameson that she was much pleased. But the letter which pleased me most was addressed to me by a professional critic, personally unknown to me, who wrote to say that he had traced me up, step by step, ever since I began to print, and that my last volumes were so much better than any preceding them, and were such _living books_, that they restored to him the impulses of his youth and constrained him to thank me for the pleasant emotions they had excited. I cannot say the name of the writer of this letter, because he asked me not to do so, but of course it was very pleasant to read. Now you will not call me vain for speaking of this. I would not speak of it; only I want (you see) to prove to you how faithfully and gratefully I have a trust in your kindness and sympathy. It is certainly the best kindness to speak the truth to me. I have written those poems as well as I could, and I hope to write others better. I have not reached my own ideal; and I cannot expect to have satisfied other people’s expectation. But it is (as I sometimes say) the least ignoble part of me, that I love poetry better than I love my own successes in it.
I am glad that you like ‘The Lost Bower.’ The scene of that poem is the wood above the garden at Hope End.
It is very true, my dearest Mrs. Martin, all that you say about the voyage to Alexandria. And I do not feel the anxiety I _thought I should_. In fact, _I am surprised to feel so little anxiety_. Still, when they are at home again, I shall be happier than I am now, _that_ I feel strongly besides.
What I missed most in your first letter was what I do not miss in the second, the good news of dear Mr. Martin. Both he and you are very vainglorious, I suppose, about O’Connell; but although I was delighted on every account at his late victory,[112] or rather at the late victory of justice and constitutional law, he never was a hero of mine and is not likely to become one. If he had been (by the way) a hero of mine, I should have been quite ashamed of him for being so unequal to his grand position as was demonstrated by the speech from the balcony. Such poetry in the position, and such prose in the speech! He has not the stuff in him of which heroes are made. There is a thread of cotton everywhere crossing the silk….
With our united love to both of you,
Ever, dearest Mrs. Martin, most affectionately yours, BA.
[Footnote 112: The reversal by the House of Lords of his conviction in Ireland for conspiracy, which the English Court of Queen’s Bench had confirmed.]
_To Mrs. Martin_
Wednesday [about September 1844].
My dearest Mrs. Martin, … Did I tell you that Miss Martineau had promised and vowed to me to tell me the whole truth with respect to the poems? Her letter did not come until a few days ago, and for a full month after the publication; and I was so fearful of the probable sentence that my hands shook as they broke the seal. But such a pleasant letter! I have been overjoyed with it. She says that her ‘predominant impression is of the _originality_’–very pleasant to hear. I must not forget, however, to say that she complains of ‘want of variety’ in the general effect of the drama, and that she ‘likes Lucifer less than anything in the two volumes.’ You see how you have high backers. Still she talks of ‘immense advances,’ which consoles me again. In fact, there is scarcely a word to _require_ consolation in her letter, and what did not please me least–nay, to do myself justice, what put all the rest out of my head for some minutes with joy–is the account she gives of herself. For she is better and likely still to be better; she has recovered appetite and sleep, and lost the most threatening symptoms of disease; she has been out for the first time for four years and a half, lying on the grass flat, she says, with my books open beside her day after day. (That _does_ sound vain of me, but I cannot resist the temptation of writing it!) And the means–the means! Such means you would never divine! It is _mesmerism_. She is thrown into the magnetic trance twice a day; and the progress is manifest; and the hope for the future clear. Now, what do you both think? Consider what a case it is! No case of a weak-minded woman and a nervous affection; but of the most manlike woman in the three kingdoms–in the best sense of man–a woman gifted with admirable fortitude, as well as exercised in high logic, a woman of sensibility and of imagination certainly, but apt to carry her reason unbent wherever she sets her foot; given to utilitarian philosophy and the habit of logical analysis; and suffering under a disease which has induced change of structure and yielded to no tried remedy! Is it not wonderful, and past expectation? She suggests that I should try the means–but I understand that in cases like mine the remedy has done harm instead of good, by over-exciting the system. But her experience will settle the question of the reality of magnetism with a whole generation of infidels. For my own part, I have long been a believer, _in spite of papa_. Then I have had very kind letters from Mrs. Jameson, the ‘Ennuyee'[113] and from Mr. Serjeant Talfourd and some less famous persons. And a poet with a Welsh name wrote to me yesterday to say that he was writing a poem ‘similar to my “Drama of Exile,”‘ and begged me to subscribe to it. Now I tell you all this to make you smile, and because some of it will interest you more gravely. It will prove to dear unjust Mr. Martin that I do not distrust your sympathy. How could he think so of me? I am half vexed that he should think so. Indeed–indeed I am not so morbidly vain. Why, if you had told me that the books were without any sort of value in your eyes, do you imagine that I should not have valued you, reverenced you ever after for your truth, so sacred a thing in friendship? I really believe it would have been my predominant feeling. But you proved your truth without trying me so hardly; I had _both_ truth and praise from you, and surely quite enough, and _more_ than enough, as many would think, of the latter.
My dearest papa left us this morning to go for a few days into Cornwall for the purpose of examining a quarry in which he has bought or is about to buy shares, and he means to strike on for the Land’s End and to see Falmouth before he returns. It depresses me to think of his being away; his presence or the sense of his nearness having so much cheering and soothing influence with me; but it will be an excellent change for him, even if he does not, as he expects, dig an immense fortune out of the quarries….
Your affectionate and ever obliged
BA.
[Footnote 113: Mrs. Jameson’s earliest book, and one which achieved considerable popularity, was her _Diary of an Ennuyee_.]
_To Cornelius Mathews_
London, 50 Wimpole Street: October 1, 1844.
My dear Mr. Mathews,–I have just received your note, which, on the principle of single sighs or breaths being wafted from Indies to the poles, arrived quite safely, and I was very glad to have it. I shall fall into monotony if I go on to talk of my continued warm sense of your wonderful kindness to me, a stranger according to the manner of men; and, indeed, I have just this moment been writing a note to a friend two streets away, and calling it ‘wonderful kindness.’ I cannot, however, of course, allow you to run the tether of your impulse and furnish me with the reviews of my books and other things you speak of at your own expense, and I should prefer, if you would have the goodness to give the necessary direction to Messrs. Putnam & Co., that they should send what would interest me to see, together with a note of the pecuniary debt to themselves. I shall like to see the reviews, of course; and that you should have taken the first word of American judgment into your own mouth is a pleasant thought to me, and leaves me grateful. In England I have no reason so far to be otherwise than well pleased. There has not, indeed, been much yet besides newspaper criticisms–except ‘Ainsworth’s Magazine,’ which is benignant!–there has not been time. The monthly reviews give themselves ‘pause’ in such matters to set the plumes of their dignity, and I am rather glad than otherwise not to have the first fruits of their haste. The ‘Atlas,’ the best newspaper for literary reviews, excepting always the ‘Examiner,’ who does not speak yet, is generous to me, and I have reason to be satisfied with others. And our most influential quarterly (after the ‘Edinburgh’ and right ‘Quarterly’), the ‘Westminster Review,’ promises an early paper with passing words of high praise. What vexed me a little in one or two of the journals was an attempt made to fix me in a school, and the calling me a follower of Tennyson for my habit of using compound words, noun-substantives, which I used to do before I knew a page of Tennyson, and adopted from a study of our old English writers, and Greeks and even Germans. The custom is so far from being peculiar to Tennyson, that Shelley and Keats and Leigh Hunt are all redolent of it, and no one can read our old poets without perceiving the leaning of our Saxon to that species of coalition. Then I have had letters of great kindness from ‘Spirits of the Age,’ whose praises are so many crowns, and altogether am far from being out of spirits about the prospect of my work. I am glad, however, that I gave the name of ‘Poems’ to the work instead of admitting the ‘Drama of Exile’ into the title-page and increasing its responsibility; for one person who likes the ‘Drama,’ ten like the other poems. Both Carlyle and Miss Martineau select as favorite ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,’ which amuses and surprises me somewhat. In that poem I had endeavoured to throw conventionalities (turned asbestos for the nonce) into the fire of poetry, to make them glow and glitter as if they were not dull things. Well, I shall soon hear what _you_ like best–and worst. I wonder if you have been very carnivorous with me! I tremble a little to think of your hereditary claim to an instrument called the tomahawk. Still, I am sure I shall have to think _most_, ever as now, of your kindness; and _truth_ must be sacred to all of us, whether we have to suffer or be glad by it. As for Mr. Horne, I cannot answer for what he has received or not received. I had one note from him on silver paper (fear of postage having reduced him to a transparency) from Germany, and that is all, and I did not think him in good spirits in what he said of himself. I will tell him what you have the goodness to say, and something, too, on my own part. He has had a hard time of it with his ‘Spirit of the Age;’ the attacks on the book here being bitter in the extreme. Your ‘Democratic’ does not comfort him for the rest, by the way, and, indeed, he is almost past comfort on the subject. I had a letter the other day from Dr. Shelton Mackenzie, whom I do not know personally, but who is about to publish a ‘Living Author Dictionary,’ and who, by some association, talked of the effeminacy of ‘the American poets,’ so I begged him to read your poems on ‘Man’ and prepare an exception to his position. I wish to write more and must not.
Most faithfully yours,
E.B.B.
Am I the first with the great and good news for America and England that Harriet Martineau is better and likely to be better? She told me so herself, and attributes the change to the agency of _mesmerism_.
_To H.S. Boyd_
October 4, 1844.
My dearest Mr. Boyd,–… As to ‘The Lost Bower,’ I am penitent about having caused you so much disturbance. I sometimes fancy that a little varying of the accents, though at the obvious expense of injuring the smoothness of every line considered separately, gives variety of cadence and fuller harmony to the general effect. But I do not question that I deserve a great deal of blame on this point as on others. Many lines in ‘Isobel’s Child’ are very slovenly and weak from a multitude of causes. I hope you will like ‘The Lost Bower’ better when you try it again than you did at first, though I do not, of course, expect that you will not see much to cry out against. The subject of the poem was an actual fact of my childhood.
Oh, and I think I told you, when giving you the history of ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,’ that I wrote the _thirteen_ last pages of it in one day. I ought to have said _nineteen_ pages instead. But don’t tell anybody; only keep the circumstance in your mind when you need it and see the faults. Nobody knows of it except you and Mr. Kenyon and my own family for the reason I told you. I sent off that poem to the press piece-meal, as I never in my life did before with any poem. And since I wrote to you I have heard of Mr. Eagles, one of the first writers in ‘Blackwood’ and a man of very refined taste, adding another name to the many of those who have preferred it to anything in the two volumes. He says that he has read it at least six times aloud to various persons, and calls it a ‘beautiful _sui generis_ drama.’ On which Mr. Kenyon observes that I am ‘ruined for life, and shall be sure never to take pains with any poem again.’
The American edition (did Arabel tell you?) was to be out in New York a week ago, and was to consist of fifteen hundred copies in two volumes, as in England.
She sends you the verses and asks you to make allowances for the delay in doing so. I cannot help believing that if you were better read in Wordsworth you would appreciate him better. Ever since I knew what poetry is, I have believed in him as a great poet, and I do not understand how reasonably there can be a doubt of it. Will you remember that nearly all the first minds of the age have admitted his power (without going to intrinsic evidence), and then say that he _can_ be a mere Grub Street writer? It is not that he is only or chiefly admired by the _profanum vulgus_, that he is a mere popular and fashionable poet, but that men of genius in this and other countries unite in confessing his genius. And is not this a significant circumstance–significant, at least?…
Believe me, yourself, your affectionate and grateful ELIBET B.B.
How kind you are, far too kind, about the Cyprus wine; I thank you very much.
_To Mrs. Martin_
October 5, 1844.
My dearest Mrs. Martin,–… Well, papa came back from Cornwall just as I came back to my own room, and he was as pleased with his quarry as I was to have the sight again of his face. During his absence, Henrietta had a little polka (which did not bring the house down on its knees), and I had a transparent blind put up in my open window. There is a castle in the blind, and a castle gate-way, and two walks, and several peasants, and groves of trees which rise in excellent harmony with the fall of my green damask curtains–new, since you saw me last. Papa insults me with the analogy of a back window in a confectioner’s shop, but is obviously moved when the sunshine lights up the castle, notwithstanding. And Mr. Kenyon and everybody in the house grow ecstatic rather than otherwise, as they stand in contemplation before it, and tell me (what is obvious without their evidence) that the effect is beautiful, and that the whole room catches a light from it. Well, and then Mr. Kenyon has given me a new table, with a rail round it to consecrate it from Flush’s paws, and large enough to hold all my varieties of vanities.
I had another letter from Miss Martineau the other day, and she says she has a ‘hat of her own, a parasol of her own,’ and that she can ‘walk a mile with ease.’ _What do miracles mean_? Miracle or not, however, one thing is certain–it is very joyful; and her own sensations on being removed suddenly from the verge of the prospect of a most painful death–a most painful and lingering death–must be strange and overwhelming.
I hope I may hear soon from you that you had much pleasure at Clifton, and some benefit in the air and change, and that dear Mr. Martin and yourself are both as well as possible. Do you take in ‘Punch’? If not, you _ought_. Mr. Kenyon and I agreed the other day that we should be more willing ‘to take our politics’ from ‘Punch’ than from any other of the newspaper oracles. ‘Punch’ is very generous, and I like him for everything, except for his rough treatment of Louis Philippe, whom I believe to be a great man–for a king. And then, it is well worth fourpence to laugh once a week. I do recommend ‘Punch’ to you.[114] Douglas Jerrold is the editor, I fancy, and he has a troop of ‘wits,’ such as Planche, Titmarsh, and the author of ‘Little Peddlington,’ to support him….
Now I have written enough to tire you, I am sure. May God bless you both! Did you read ‘Coningsby,’ that very able book, without character, story, or specific teaching? It is well worth reading, and worth wondering over. D’Israeli, who is a man of genius, has written, nevertheless, books which will live longer, and move deeper. But everybody should read ‘Coningsby.’ It is a sign of the times. Believe me, my dearest Mrs. Martin,
Your very affectionate
BA.
_To John Kenyon_
Tuesday, October 8, 1844.
Thank you, my dearest cousin, for your kind little note, which I run the chance of answering by that Wednesday’s post you think you may wait for. So (_via_ your table) I set about writing to you, and the first word, of course, must be an expression of my contentment with the ‘Examiner’ review. Indeed, I am more than contented–delighted with it. I had some dread, vaguely fashioned, about the ‘Examiner’; the very delay looked ominous. And then, I thought to myself, though I did not say, that if Mr. Forster praised the verses on Flush to you, it was just because he had no sympathy for anything else. But it is all the contrary, you see, and I am the more pleased for the want of previous expectation; and I must add that if _you_ were so kind as to be glad of being associated with me by Mr. Forster’s reference, _I_ was so _human_ as to be very very glad of being associated with _you_ by the same. Also you shall criticise ‘Geraldine’ exactly as you like–mind, I don’t think it all so rough as the extracts appear to be, and some variety is attained by that playing at ball with the _pause_, which causes the apparent roughness–still you shall criticise ‘Geraldine’ exactly as you like. I have a great fancy for writing some day a longer poem of a like class–a poem comprehending the aspect and manners of modern life, and flinching at nothing of the conventional. I think it might be done with good effect. You said once that Tennyson had done it in ‘Locksley Hall,’ and I half agreed with you. But looking at ‘Locksley Hall’ again, I find that not much has been done in that _way_, noble and passionate and _full_ as the poem is in other ways. But there is no story, no _manners_, no modern allusion, except in the grand general adjuration to the ‘Mother-age,’ and no approach to the treatment of a conventionality. But Crabbe, as you say, has done it, and Campbell in his ‘Theodore’ in a few touches was near to do it; but _Hayley_ clearly apprehends the species of poem in his ‘Triumphs of Temper’ and ‘Triumphs of Music,’ and so did Miss Seward, who called it the ‘_poetical novel_.’ Now I do think that a true poetical novel–modern, and on the level of the manners of the day–might be as good a poem as any other, and much more popular besides. Do you not think so?
I had a letter from dear Miss Mitford this morning, with yours, but I can find nothing in it that you will care to hear again. She complains of the vagueness of ‘Coningsby,’ and praises the French writers–a sympathy between us, that last, which we wear hidden in our sleeves for the sake of propriety. Not a word of coming to London, though I asked. Neither have I heard again from Miss Martineau….
Ever most affectionately and gratefully yours, E.B.B.
[Footnote 114: It will be remembered that ‘Punch’ had only been in existence for three years at this time, which will account for this apparently superfluous advice.]
_To Mrs. Martin_
October 15, 1844.
… Not a word more have I heard from Miss Martineau; and shall not soon, perhaps, as she is commanded not to write, not to read–to do nothing, in fact, except the getting better. I am not, I confess, quite satisfied myself. But she herself appears to be so altogether, and she speaks of ‘_symptoms_ having given way,’ implying a structural change. Yes, I use the common phrase in respect to mesmerism, and think ‘there is something in it.’ Only I think, besides, that, if something, there must be a great deal in it. Clairvoyance has precisely the same evidence as the phenomenon of the trance has, and scientific and philosophical minds are recognising all the phenomena _as facts_ on all sides of us. Mr. Kenyon’s is the best distinction, and the immense quantity of _humbug_ which embroiders the truth over and over, and round and round, makes it needful: ‘I believe in mesmerism, but not in _mesmerists_.’
We have had no other letter from our Egyptians, but can wait a little longer without losing our patience.
The blind rises in favour, and the ivy would not fall, if it would but live. Alas! I am going to try _guano_ as a last resource. You see, in painting the windows, papa was forced to have it taken down, and the ivy that grows on ruins and oaks is not usually taken down ‘for the nonce.’ I think I shall have a myrtle grove in two or three large pots inside the window. I have a mind to try it.
I heard twice from dear Mr. Kenyon at Dover, where he was detained by the weather, but not since his entrance into France. Which is grand enough word for the French Majesty itself–‘entrance into France.’ By the way, I do hope you have some sympathy with me in my respect for the King of the French–that right kingly king, Louis Philippe. If France had _borne_ more liberty, he would not have withheld it, and, for the rest, and in all truly royal qualities, he is the noblest king, according to my idea, in Europe–the most royal king in the encouragement of art and literature, and in the honoring of artists and men of letters. Let a young unknown writer accomplish a successful tragedy, and the next day he sits at the king’s table–not in a metaphor, but face to face. See how different the matter is in our court, where the artists are shown up the back stairs, and where no poet (even by the back stairs) can penetrate, unless so fortunate as to be a banker also. What is the use of kings and queens in these days, except to encourage arts and letters? Really I cannot see. Anybody can hunt an otter out of a box–who has nerve enough.
I had a letter from America to-day, and heard that my book was not published there until the fifth of this October. Still, a few copies had preceded the publication, and made way among the critics, and several reviews were in the course of germinating very greenly. Yes, I was delighted with the ‘Examiner,’ and all the more so from having interpreted the long delay of the notice, the gloomiest manner possible. My friends try to persuade me that the book is making some impression, and I am willing enough to be convinced. Thank you for all your kind sympathy, my dear friend.
Now, do write to me soon again! Have you read Dr. Arnold’s Life? I have not, but am very anxious to do so, from the admirable extracts in the ‘Examiner’ of last Saturday, and also from what I hear of it in other quarters. That Dr. Arnold must have been _a man_, in the largest and noblest sense. May God bless you, both of you! I think of you, dearest Mrs. Martin, much, and remain
Your very affectionate
BA.
_To John Kenyon_
Saturday, October 29, 1844.
The moral of your letter, my dearest cousin, certainly is that no green herb of a secret will spring up and flourish between you and me.
The loss of Flush was a secret. My aunt’s intention of coming to England (for I know not how to explain what she said to you, but by the supposition of an unfulfilled intention!) was a secret. And Mr. Chorley’s letter to me was a third secret. All turned into light!
For the last, you may well praise me for discretion. The letter he wrote was pleasanter to me than many of the kindnesses (apart from your own) occasioned by my book–and when you asked me once ‘what letters I had received,’ if ever a woman deserved to be canonised for her silence, _I_ did! But the effort was necessary–for he particularly desired that I would not mention to ‘our common friends’ the circumstance of his having written to me; and ‘common friends’ could only stand for ‘Mr. Kenyon and Miss Mitford.’ Of course what you tell me, of his liking the poems better still, is delightful to hear; but he reviewed them in the ‘Athenaeum’ surely! The review we read in the ‘Athenaeum’ was by his hand–could not be mistaken …
Well; but Flushie! It is too true that he has been lost–lost and won; and true besides that I was a good deal upset by it _meo more_; and that I found it hard to eat and sleep as usual while he was in the hands of his enemies. It is a secret too. We would not tell papa of it. Papa would have been angry with the unfortunate person who took Flush out without a chain; and would have kicked against the pricks of the necessary bribing of the thief in order to the getting him back. Therefore we didn’t tell papa; and as I had a very bad convenient headache the day my eyes were reddest, I did not see him (except once) till Flush was on the sofa again. As to the thieves, you are very kind to talk daggers at them; and I feel no inclination to say ‘Don’t.’ It is quite too bad and cruel. And think of their exceeding insolence in taking Flush away from this very door, while Arabel was waiting to have the door opened on her return from her walk; and in observing (as they gave him back for six guineas and a half) that they intended to have him again at the earliest opportunity and that _then_ they must have _ten_ guineas! I tell poor Flushie (while he looks very earnestly in my face) that he and I shall be ruined at last, and that I shall have no money to buy him cakes; but the worst is the anxiety! Whether I am particularly silly, or not, I don’t know; they say here, that I am; but it seems to me impossible for anybody who really cares for a dog, to think quietly of his being in the hands of those infamous men. And then I know how poor Flushie must feel it. When he was brought home, he began to cry in his manner, whine, as if his heart was full! It was just what I was inclined to do myself–‘ and thus was Flushie lost and won.’
But we are both recovered now, thank you; and intend to be very prudent for the future. I am delighted to think of your being in England; it is the next best thing to your being in London. In regard to Miss Martineau, I agree with you word for word; but I cannot overcome an additional _horror_, which you do not express, or feel probably.
There is an excellent refutation of Puseyism in the ‘Edinburgh Review’–by whom? and I have been reading besides the admirable paper by Macaulay in the same number. And now I must be done; having resolved to let you hear without a post’s delay. Otherwise I might have American news for you, as I hear that a packet has come in.
My brothers arrived in great spirits at Malta, after a _three weeks’ voyage_ from Gibraltar; and must now be in Egypt, I think and trust.
May God bless you, my dear cousin.
Most affectionately yours,
E.B.B.
_To John Kenyan_
50 Wimpole Street: November 5, 1844.
Well, but am I really so bad? ‘ _Et tu_!’ Can _you_ call me careless? Remember all the altering of manuscript and proof–and remember how the obscurities used to fly away before your cloud-compelling, when you were the Jove of the criticisms! That the books (I won’t call them _our_ books when I am speaking of the faults) are remarkable for defects and superfluities of evil, I can see quite as well as another; but then I won’t admit that ‘ it comes’ of my carelessness, and refusing to take pains. On the contrary, my belief is, that very few writers called ‘ correct ‘ who have selected classical models to work from, pay more laborious attention than I do habitually to the forms of thought and expression. ‘ Lady Geraldine ‘ was an exception in her whole history. If I write fast sometimes (and the historical fact is that what has been written fastest, has pleased most), l am not apt to print without consideration. I appeal to Philip sober, if I am! My dearest cousin, do remember! As to the faults, I do not think of defending them, be very sure. My consolation is, that I may try to do better in time, if I may talk of time. The worst fault of all, as far as expression goes (the adjective-substantives, whether in prose or verse, I cannot make up my mind to consider faulty), is that kind of obscurity which is the same thing with inadequate expression. Be very sure–try to be very sure–that I am not obstinate and self-opiniated beyond measure. To _you_ in case, who have done so much for me, and who think of me so more than kindly, I feel it to be both duty and pleasure to defer and yield. Still, you know, we could not, if we were ten years about it, alter down the poems to the terms of all these reviewers. You would not desire it, if it were possible. I do not remember that you suggested any change in the verse on Aeschylus. The critic[115] mistakes my allusion, which was to the fact that in the acting of the Eumenides, when the great tragic poet did actually ‘frown as the gods did,’ women fell down fainting from the benches. I did not refer to the effect of his human countenance ‘during composition.’ But I am very grateful to the reviewer whoever he may be–very–and with need. See how the ‘Sun’ shines in response to ‘Blackwood’ (thank you for sending me that notice), when previously we had had but a wintry rag from the same quarter! No; if I am not spoilt by _your kindness_, I am not likely to be so by any of these exoteric praises, however beyond what I expected or deserved. And then I am like a bird with one wing broken. Throw it out of the window; and after the first feeling of pleasure in liberty, it falls heavily. I have had moments of great pleasure in hearing whatever good has been thought of the poems; but the feeling of _elation_ is too strong or rather too _long_ for me….
Can it be true that Mr. Newman has at last joined the Church of Rome?[116] If it is true, it will do much to prove to the most illogical minds the real character of the late movement. It will prove what the _point of sight_ is, as by the drawing of a straight line. Miss Mitford told me that he had lately sent a message to a R. Catholic convert from the English Church, to the effect–‘you have done a good deed, but not at a right time.’ It can but be a question of time, indeed, to the whole party; at least to such as are logical–and honest…. [_Unsigned_]
[Footnote 115: In _Blackwood_.]
[Footnote 116: Newman did not actually enter the Church of Rome until nearly a year later, in October 1845.]
_To John Kenyan_
50 Wimpole Street: November 8, 1844.
Thank you, my dear dear cousin, for the kind thought of sending me Mr. Eagles’s letter, and most for your own note. You know we _both_ saw that he couldn’t have written the paper in question; we _both_ were poets and prophets by that sign, but I hope he understands that I shall gratefully remember what his intention was. As to his ‘friend’ who told him that I had ‘imitated Tennyson,’ why I can only say and feel that it is very particularly provoking to hear such things said, and that I wish people would find fault with my ‘metre’ in the place of them. In the matter of ‘Geraldine’ I shall not be puffed up. I shall take to mind what you suggest. Of course, if you find it hard to read, it must be my fault. And then the fact of there being a _story_ to a poem will give a factitious merit in the eyes of many critics, which could not be an occasion of vainglory to the consciousness of the most vainglorious of writers. You made me smile by your suggestion about the aptitude of critics aforesaid for courting Lady Geraldines. Certes–however it may be–the poem has had more attention than its due. Oh, and I must tell you that I had a letter the other day from Mr. Westwood (one of my correspondents unknown) referring to ‘Blackwood,’ and observing on the mistake about Goethe. ‘Did you not mean “fell” the verb,’ he said, ‘or do _I_ mistake?’ So, you see, some people in the world did actually understand what I meant. I am eager to prove that possibility sometimes.
How full of life of mind Mr. Eagles’s letter is. Such letters always bring me to think of Harriet Martineau’s pestilent plan of doing to destruction half of the intellectual life of the world, by suppressing every mental breath breathed through the post office. She was not in a state of clairvoyance when she said such a thing. I have not heard from her, but you observed what the ‘Critic’ said of William Howitt’s being empowered by her to declare the circumstances of her recovery?
Again and again have I sent for Dr. Arnold’s ‘Life,’ and I do hope to have it to-day. I am certain, by the extracts, besides your opinion, that I shall be delighted with it.
Why shouldn’t Miss Martineau’s apocalyptic housemaid[117] tell us whether Flush has a soul, and what is its ‘future destination’? As to the fact of his soul, I have long had a strong opinion on it. The ‘grand peut-etre,’ to which ‘without revelation’ the human argument is reduced, covers dog-nature with the sweep of its fringes.
Did you ever read Bulwer’s ‘Eva, or the Unhappy Marriage’? _That_ is a sort of poetical novel, with modern manners inclusive. But Bulwer, although a poet in prose, writes all his rhythmetical compositions somewhat prosaically, providing an instance of that curious difference which exists between the poetical writer and the poet. It is easier to give the instance than the reason, but I suppose the cause of the rhythmetical impotence must lie somewhere in the want of the power of concentration. For is it not true that the most prolix poet is capable of briefer expression than the least prolix prose writer, or am I wrong?…
Your ever affectionate
E.B.B.
[Footnote 117: Miss Martineau, besides having been cured by mesmerism herself, was blest with a housemaid who had visions under the same influence, concerning which Miss Martineau subsequently wrote at great length in the _Athenaeum_.]
_To Cornelius Mathews_
50 Wimpole Street: November 14, 1844.
My dear Mr. Mathews,–I write to tell you–only that there is nothing to tell–only in guard of my gratitude, lest you should come to think all manner of evil of me and of my supposed propensity to let everything pass like Mr. Horne’s copies of the American edition of his work, _sub silentio_. Therefore I must write, and you are to please to understand that I have not up to this moment received either letter or book by the packet of October 10 which was charged, according to your intimation, with so much. I, being quite out of patience and out of breath with expectation, have repeatedly sent to Mr. Putnam, and he replies with undisturbed politeness that the ship has come in, and that his part and lot in her, together with mine, remain at the disposal of the Custom-house officers, and may remain some time longer. So you see how it is. I am waiting–simply _waiting_, and it is better to let you know that I am not forgetting instead.
In the meantime, your kindness will be glad to learn of the prosperity of my poems in my own country. I am more than satisfied in my most sanguine hope for them, and a little surprised besides. The critics have been good to me. ‘Blackwood’ and ‘Tait’ have this month both been generous, and the ‘New Monthly’ and ‘Ainsworth’s Magazine’ did what they could. Then I have the ‘Examiner’ in my favor, and such heads and hearts as are better and purer than the purely critical, and I am very glad altogether, and very grateful, and hope to live long enough to acknowledge, if not to justify, much unexpected kindness. Of course, some hard criticism is mixed with the liberal sympathy, as you will see in ‘Blackwood,’ but some of it I deserve, even in my own eyes; and all of it I am willing to be patient under. The strange thing is, that without a single personal friend among these critics, they should have expended on me so much ‘gentillesse,’ and this strangeness I feel very sensitively. Mr. Horne has not returned to England yet, and in a letter which I received from him some fortnight ago he desired to have my book sent to him to Germany, just as if he never meant to return to England again. I answered his sayings, and reiterated, in a way that would make you smile, my information about your having sent the American copies to him. I made my _oyez_ very plain and articulate. He won’t say again that he never heard of it–be sure of _that_. Well, and then Mr. Browning is not in England either, so that whatever you send for _him_ must await his return from the east or the west or the south, wherever he is. The new spirit of the age is a wandering spirit. Mr. Dickens is in Italy. Even Miss Mitford _talks_ of going to France, which is an extreme case for _her_. Do you never feel inclined to flash across the Atlantic to us, or can you really remain still in one place?
I must not forget to assure you, dear Mr. Mathews, as I may conscientiously do, even before I have looked into or received the ‘Democratic Review,’ that whatever fault you may find with me, my strongest feeling on reading your article will or must be _the sense of your kindness_. Of course I do not expect, nor should I wish, that your personal interest in me (proved in so many ways) would destroy your critical faculty in regard to me. Such an expectation, if I had entertained it, would have been scarcely honorable to either of us, and I may assure you that I never did entertain it. No; be at rest about the article. It is not likely that I shall think it ‘inadequate.’ And I may as well mention in connection with it that before you spoke of reviewing me _I_ (in my despair of Mr. Horne’s absence, and my impotency to assist your book) had thrown into my desk, to watch for some opportunity of publication, a review of your ‘Poems on Man,’ from my own hand, and that I am still waiting and considering and taking courage before I send it to some current periodical. There is a difficulty–there is a feeling of shyness on my part, because, as I told you, I have no personal friend or introduction among the pressmen or the critics, and because the ‘Athenaeum,’ which I should otherwise turn to first, has already treated of your work, and would not, of course, consent to reconsider an expressed opinion. Well, I shall do it somewhere. Forgive me the _appearance_ of my impotency under a general aspect.
Ah, you cannot guess at the estate of poetry in the eyes of even such poetical English publishers as Mr. Moxon, who can write sonnets himself. Poetry is in their eyes just a desperate speculation. A poet must have tried his public before he tries the publisher–that is, before he expects the publisher to run a risk for him. But I will make any effort you like to suggest for any work of yours; I only tell you how _things are_. By the way, if I ever told you that Tennyson was ill, I may as rightly tell you now that he is well, again, or was when I last heard of him. I do not know him personally. Also Harriet Martineau can walk five miles a day with ease, and believes in mesmerism with all her strength. Mr. Putnam had the goodness to write and open his reading room to me, who am in prison instead in mine.
May God bless you. Do let me hear from you soon, and believe me ever your friend,
E.B. BARRETT.
_To Mrs. Martin_
November 16, 1844.
My dearest Mrs. Martin, … To-day I perceive in the ‘contents’ of the new ‘Westminster Review’ that my poems are reviewed in it, and I hope that you will both be interested enough in my fortunes to read at the library what may be said of them. Did George tell you that he imagined (as I also did) the ‘Blackwood’ paper to be by Mr. Phillimore the barrister? Well, Mr. Phillimore denies it altogether, has in fact quarrelled with Christopher North, and writes no more for him, so that I am quite at a loss now where to carry my gratitude.
Do write to me soon. I hear that everybody should read Dr. Arnold’s ‘Life.’ Do you know also ‘E[=o]then,’ a work of genius? You have read, perhaps, Hewitt’s ‘Visits to Remarkable Places’ in the first series and second; and Mrs. Jameson’s ‘Visits and Sketches’ and ‘Life in Mexico.’ Do you know the ‘Santa Fe Expedition,’ and Custine’s ‘Russia,’ and ‘Forest Life’ by Mrs. Clavers? You will think that my associative process is in a most disorderly state, by all this running up and down the stairs of all sorts of subjects, in the naming of books. I would write a list, more as a list should be written, if I could see my way better, and this will do for a beginning in any case. You do not like romances, I believe, as I do, and then nearly every romance now-a-days sets about pulling the joints of one’s heart and soul out, as a process of course. ‘Ellen Middleton’ (which I have not read yet) is said to be very painful. Do you know Leigh Hunt’s exquisite essays called ‘The Indicator and Companion’ &c., published by Moxon? I hold them at once in delight and reverence. May God bless you both.
I am ever your affectionate
BA.
_To Mrs. Martin_
50 Wimpole Street:
Tuesday, November 26, 1844 [postmark].
My dearest Mrs. Martin,–I thank you much for your little notes; and you know too well how my sympathy answers you, ‘as face to face in a glass,’ for me to assure you of it here. Your account of yourselves altogether I take to be satisfactory, because I never expected anybody to gain strength very _rapidly_ while in the actual endurance of hard medical discipline. I am glad you have found out a trustworthy adviser at Dover, but I feel nevertheless that you may _both trust_ and _hope_ in Dr. Bright, of whom I heard the very highest praises the other day….
Now really I don’t know why I should fancy you to be so deeply interested in Dr. Bright, that all this detail should be necessary. What I _do_ want you to be interested in, is in Miss Martineau’s mesmeric experience,[118] for a copy of which, in the last ‘Athenaeum,’ I have sent ever since yesterday, in the intention of sending it to you. You will admit it to be curious as philosophy, and beautiful as composition; for the rest, I will not answer. Believing in mesmerism as an agency, I hesitate to assent to the necessary