Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  I am ashamed to have kept Carlyle so long, but I quite failed in trying to read him at my “usual pace — he won’t be read quick. After all, and full of beauty and truth as that book is, and strongly as it takes hold of my sympathies, there is nothing new in it — not even a new Carlyleism, which I do not say by way of blaming the book, because the author of it might use words like the apostle’s: ‘To write the same things unto you, to me indeed is not grievous, and to you it is safe.’ The world being blind and deaf and rather stupid, requires a reiteration of certain uncongenial truths....

  Thank you for the address.

  Ever affectionately yours,

  E.B.B.

  I observe that the most questionable rhymes are not objected to by Mr. Merivale; also — but this letter is too long already.

  To Mrs. Martin

  May 3, 1843.

  My dearest Mrs. Martin, — If you promised (which you did), I ought to have promised — and therefore we may ask each other’s pardon....

  How is the dog? and how does dear Mr. Martin find himself in Arcadia? Do we all stand in his recollection like a species of fog, or a concentrated essence of brick wall? How I wish — and since I said it aloud to you I have often wished it over in a whisper — that you would put away your romance, or cut it in two, and spend six months of the year in London with us! Miss Mitford believes that wishes, if wished hard enough, realise themselves, but my experience has taught me a less cheerful creed. Only if wishes do realise themselves!

  Miss Mitford is at Bath, where she has spent one week and is about to spend two, and then goes on her way into Devonshire. She amused me so the other day by desiring me to look at the date of Mr. Landor’s poems in their first edition, because she was sure that it must be fifty years since, and she finds him at this 1843, the very Lothario of Bath, enchanting the wives, making jealous the husbands, and ‘enjoying,’ altogether, the worst of reputations. I suggested that if she proved him to be seventy-five, as long as he proved himself enchanting, it would do no manner of good in the way of practical ethics; and that, besides, for her to travel round the world to investigate gentlemen’s ages was invidious, and might be alarming as to the safe inscrutability of ladies’ ages. She is delighted with the scenery of Bath, which certainly, take it altogether, marble and mountains, is the most beautiful town I ever looked upon. Cheltenham, I think, is a mere commonplace to it, although the avenues are beautiful, to be sure....

  Mrs. Southey complains that she has lost half her income by her marriage, and her friend Mr. Landor is anxious to persuade, by the means of intermediate friends, Sir Robert Peel to grant her a pension. She is said to be in London now, and has at least left Keswick for ever. It is not likely that Wordsworth should come here this year, which I am sorry for now, although I should certainly be sorry if he did come. A happy state of contradiction, not confined either to that particular movement or no-movement, inasmuch as I was gratified by his sending me the poem you saw, and yet read it with such extreme pain as to incapacitate me from judging of it. Such stuff we are made of!

  This is a long letter — and you are tired, I feel by instinct!

  May God bless you, my dearest Mrs. Martin. Give my love to Mr. Martin, and think of me as

  Your very affectionate,

  BA.

  Henry and Daisy have been to see the lying in state, as lying stark and dead is called whimsically, of the Duke of Sussex. It was a fine sight, they say.

  To H.S. Boyd

  May 9, 1843 [postmark].

  My very dear Friend, — I thank you much for the copies of your ‘Anti-Puseyistic Pugilism.’ The papers reached my hands quite safely and so missed setting the world on fire; and I shall be as wary of them evermore (be sure) as if they were gunpowder. Pray send them to Mary Hunter. Why not? Why should you think that I was likely to ‘object’ to your doing so? She will laugh. I laughed, albeit in no smiling mood; for I have been transmigrating from one room to another, and your packet found me half tired and half excited, and whole grave. But I could not choose but laugh at your Oxford charge; and when I had counted your great guns and javelin points and other military appurtenances of the Punic war, I said to myself — or to Flush, ‘Well, Mr. Boyd will soon be back again with the dissenters.’ Upon which I think Flush said, ‘That’s a comfort.’

  Mary’s direction is, 111 London Road, Brighton. You ought to send the verses to her yourself, if you mean to please her entirely: and I cannot agree with you that there is the slightest danger in sending them by the post. Letters are never opened, unless you tempt the flesh by putting sovereigns, or shillings, or other metallic substances inside the envelope; and if the devil entered into me causing me to write a libel against the Queen, I would send it by the post fearlessly from John o’ Groat’s to Land’s End inclusive.

  One of your best puns, if not the best,

  Hatching succession apostolical,

  With other falsehoods diabolical,

  lies in an octosyllabic couplet; and what business has that in your heroic libel?

  The ‘pearl’ of maidens sends her love to you.

  Your very affectionate

  ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

  To H.S. Boyd

  May 14, 1843.

  My very dear Friend, — I hear with wonder from Arabel of your repudiation of my word ‘octosyllabic’ for the two lines in your controversial poem. Certainly, if you count the syllables on your fingers, there are ten syllables in each line: of that I am perfectly aware; but the lines are none the less belonging to the species of versification called octosyllabic. Do you not observe, my dearest Mr. Boyd, that the final accent and rhyme fall on the eighth syllable instead of the tenth, and that that single circumstance determines the class of verse — that they are in fact octosyllabic verses with triple rhymes?

  Hatching succession apostolical,

  With other falsehoods diabolical.

  Pope has double rhymes in his heroic verses, but how does he manage them? Why, he admits eleven syllables, throwing the final accent and rhyme on the tenth, thus:

  Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow,

  The rest is nought but leather and prunella.

  Again, if there is a double rhyme to an octosyllabic verse, there are always nine syllables in that verse, the final accent and rhyme falling on the eighth syllable, thus:

  Compound for sins that we’re inclined to,

  By damning those we have no mind to.

  (‘Hudibras.’)

  Again, if there is a triple rhyme to an octosyllabic verse (precisely the present case) there must always be ten syllables in that verse, the final accent and rhyme falling on the eighth syllable; thus from ‘Hudibras’ again:

  Then in their robes the penitentials

  Are straight presented with credentials.

  Remember how in arms and politics,

  We still have worsted all your holy tricks.

  You will admit that these last couplets are precisely of the same structure as yours, and certainly they are octosyllabics, and made use of by Butler in an octosyllabic poem, whereas yours, to be rendered of the heroic structure, should run thus:

  Hatching at ease succession apostolical,

  With many other falsehoods diabolical.

  I have written a good deal about an oversight on your part of little consequence; but as you charged me with a mistake made in cold blood and under corrupt influences from Lake-mists, why I was determined to make the matter clear to you. And as to the influences, if I were guilty of this mistake, or of a thousand mistakes, Wordsworth would not be guilty in me. I think of him now, exactly as I thought of him during the first years of my friendship for you, only with an equal admiration. He was a great poet to me always, and always, while I have a soul for poetry, will be so; yet I said, and say in an under-voice, but steadfastly, that Coleridge was the grander genius. There is scarcely anything newer in my estimation of Wordsworth than in the colour of my eyes!

  Perhaps I was wrong in saying ‘a pun.’
But I thought I apprehended a double sense in your application of the term ‘Apostolical succession’ to Oxford’s ‘breeding’ and ‘hatching,’ words which imply succession in a way unecclesiastical.

  After all which quarrelling, I am delighted to have to talk of your coming nearer to me — within reach — almost within my reach. Now if I am able to go in a carriage at all this summer, it will be hard but that I manage to get across the park and serenade you in Greek under your window.

  Your ever affectionate

  ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

  To H.S. Boyd

  May 18, 1843.

  My very dear Friend, — Yes, you have surprised me!

  I always have thought of you, and I always think and say, that you are truthful and candid in a supreme degree, and therefore it is not your candour about Wordsworth which surprises me.

  He had the kindness to send me the poem upon Grace Darling when it first appeared; and with a curious mixture of feelings (for I was much gratified by his attention in sending it) I yet read it with so much pain from the nature of the subject, that my judgment was scarcely free to consider the poetry — I could scarcely determine to myself what I thought of it from feeling too much.

  But I do confess to you, my dear friend, that I suspect — through the mist of my sensations — the poem in question to be very inferior to his former poems; I confess that the impression left on my mind is, of its decided inferiority, and I have heard that the poet’s friends and critics (all except one) are mourning over its appearance; sighing inwardly, ‘Wordsworth is old.’

  One thing is clear to me, however, and over that I rejoice and triumph greatly. If you can esteem this poem of ‘Grace Darling,’ you must be susceptible to the grandeur and beauty of the poems which preceded it; and the cause of your past reluctance to recognise the poet’s power must be, as I have always suspected, from your having given a very partial attention and consideration to his poetry. You were partial in your attention I, perhaps, was injudicious in my extracts; but with your truth and his genius, I cannot doubt but that the time will come for your mutual amity. Oh that I could stand as a herald of peace, with my wool-twisted fillet! I do not understand the Greek metres as well as you do, but I understand Wordsworth’s genius better, and do you forgive that it should console me.

  I will ask about his collegian extraction. Such a question never occurred to me. Apollo taught him under the laurels, while all the Muses looked through the boughs.

  Your ever affectionate

  ELIZABETH B. BARRETT,

  Oh, yes, it delights me that you should be nearer. Of course you know that Wordsworth is Laureate.

  To John Kenyan

  May 19, 1843,

  Thank you, my dear cousin, for all your kindness to me. There is ivy enough for a thyrsus, and I almost feel ready to enact a sort of Bacchus triumphalis ‘for jollitie,’ as I see it already planted, and looking in at me through the window. I never thought to see such a sight as that in my London room, and am overwhelmed with my own glory.

  And then Mr. Browning’s note! Unless you say ‘nay’ to me, I shall keep this note, which has pleased me so much, yet not more than it ought. Now, I forgive Mr. Merivale for his hard thoughts of my easy rhymes. But all this pleasure, my dear Mr. Kenyon, I owe to you, and shall remember that I do.

  Ever affectionately yours,

  E.B.B.

  To Mrs. Martin

  May 26, 1843.

  ... I thank you for your part in the gaining of my bed, dearest Mrs. Martin, most earnestly; and am quite ready to believe that it was gained by wishdom, which believing is wisdom! No, you would certainly never recognise my prison if you were to see it. The bed, like a sofa and no Bed; the large table placed out in the room, towards the wardrobe end of it; the sofa rolled where a sofa should be rolled — opposite the arm-chair: the drawers crowned with a coronal of shelves fashioned by Sette and Co. (of papered deal and crimson merino) to carry my books; the washing table opposite turned into a cabinet with another coronal of shelves; and Chaucer’s and Homer’s busts in guard over these two departments of English and Greek poetry; three more busts consecrating the wardrobe which there was no annihilating; and the window — oh, I must take a new paragraph for the window, I am out of breath.

  In the window is fixed a deep box full of soil, where are springing up my scarlet runners, nasturtiums, and convolvuluses, although they were disturbed a few days ago by the revolutionary insertion among them of a great ivy root with trailing branches so long and wide that the top tendrils are fastened to Henrietta’s window of the higher storey, while the lower ones cover all my panes. It is Mr. Kenyon’s gift. He makes the like to flourish out of mere flowerpots, and embower his balconies and windows, and why shouldn’t this flourish with me? But certainly — there is no shutting my eyes to the fact that it does droop a little. Papa prophesies hard things against it every morning, ‘Why, Ba, it looks worse and worse,’ and everybody preaches despondency. I, however, persist in being sanguine, looking out for new shoots, and making a sure pleasure in the meanwhile by listening to the sound of the leaves against the pane, as the wind lifts them and lets them fall. Well, what do you think of my ivy? Ask Mr. Martin, if he isn’t jealous already.

  Have you read ‘The Neighbours,’ Mary Howitt’s translation of Frederica Bremer’s Swedish? Yes, perhaps. Have you read ‘The Home,’ fresh from the same springs? Do, if you have not. It has not only charmed me, but made me happier and better: it is fuller of Christianity than the most orthodox controversy in Christendom; and represents to my perception or imagination a perfect and beautiful embodiment of Christian outward life from the inward, purely and tenderly. At the same time, I should tell you that Sette says, ‘I might have liked it ten years ago, but it is too young and silly to give me any pleasure now.’ For me, however, it is not too young, and perhaps it won’t be for you and Mr. Martin. As to Sette, he is among the patriarchs, to say nothing of the lawyers — and there we leave him....

  Ever your affectionate

  BA.

  To John Kenyan

  50 Wimpole Street:

  Wednesday, or is it Thursday? [summer 1843].

  My dear Cousin, — ... I send you my friend Mr. Horne’s new epic, and beg you, if you have an opportunity, to drop it at Mr. Eagles’ feet, so that he may pick it up and look at it. I have not gone through it (I have another copy), but it appears to me to be full of fine things. As to the author’s fantasy of selling it for a farthing, I do not enter into the secret of it — unless, indeed, he should intend a sarcasm on the age’s generous patronage of poetry, which is possible.

  To John Kenyan

  June 30, 1843.

  Thank you, my dear Mr. Kenyon, for the Camden Society books, and also for these which I return; and also for the hope of seeing you, which I kept through yesterday. I honor Mrs. Coleridge for the readiness of reasoning and integrity in reasoning, for the learning, energy, and impartiality which she has brought to her purpose, and I agree with her in many of her objects; and disagree, by opposing her opponents with a fuller front than she is always inclined to do. In truth, I can never see anything in these sacramental ordinances except a prospective sign in one (Baptism), and a memorial sign in the other, the Lord’s Supper, and could not recognise either under any modification as a peculiar instrument of grace, mystery, or the like. The tendencies we have towards making mysteries of God’s simplicities are as marked and sure as our missing the actual mystery upon occasion. God’s love is the true mystery, and the sacraments are only too simple for us to understand. So you see I have read the book in spite of prophecies. After all I should like to cut it in two — it would be better for being shorter — and it might be clearer also. There is, in fact, some dullness and perplexity — a few passages which are, to my impression, contradictory of the general purpose — something which is not generous, about nonconformity — and what I cannot help considering a superfluous tenderness for Puseyism. Moreover she is certainly wrong in imagining that the ante-Nicene
fathers did not as a body teach regeneration by baptism — even Gregory Nazianzen, the most spiritual of many, did, and in the fourth century. But, after all, as a work of theological controversy it is very un-bitter and well-poised, gentle, and modest, and as the work of a woman you must admire it and we be proud of it — that remains certain at last.

  Poor Mr. Haydon! I am so sorry for his reverse in the cartoons. It is a thunderbolt to him. I wonder, in the pauses of my regret, whether Mr. Selous is your friend — whether ‘Boadicea visiting the Druids,’ suggested by you, I think, as a subject, is this victorious ‘Boadicea’ down for a hundred pound prize? You will tell me when you come.

  I have just heard an uncertain rumour of the arrival of your brother. If it is not all air, I congratulate you heartily upon a happiness only not past my appreciation.

  Ever affectionately yours,

  E.B.B.

  I send the copy of ‘Orion’ for yourself, which you asked for. It is in the fourth edition.

  To Mrs. Martin

  July 8, 1843.

  Thank you, my dearest Mrs. Martin, for your kind sign of interest in the questioning note, although I will not praise the stenography of it. I shall be as brief to-day as you, not quite out of revenge, but because I have been writing to George and am the less prone to activities from having caught cold in an inscrutable manner, and being stiff and sore from head to foot and inclined to be a little feverish and irritable of nerves. No, it is not of the slightest consequence; I tell you the truth. But I would have written to you the day before yesterday if it had not been for this something between cramp and rheumatism, which was rather unbearable at first, but yesterday was better, and is to-day better than better, and to-morrow will leave me quite well, if I may prophesy. I only mention it lest you should have upbraided me for not answering your note in a moment, as it deserved to be answered. So don’t put any nonsense into Georgie’s head — forgive me for beseeching you! I have been very well — downstairs seven or eight times; lying on the floor in Papa’s room; meditating the chair, which would have amounted to more than a meditation except for this little contrariety. In a day or two more, if this cool warmth perseveres in serving me, and no Ariel refills me ‘with aches,’ I shall fulfil your kind wishes perhaps and be out — and so, no more about me!...