Perhaps Mr. Tennyson will grow more solemn, like the sun, as his day goes on. In the meantime we have the noble ‘Two Voices,’ and, among other grand intimations of a teaching power, certain stanzas to J.K. (I think the initials are) on the death of his brother, which very deeply affected me.
Take away the last stanzas, which should be applied more definitely to the body, or cut away altogether as a lie against eternal verity, and the poem stands as one of the finest of monodies. The nature of human grief never surely was more tenderly intimated or touched — it brought tears to my eyes. Do read it. He is not a Christian poet, up to this time, but let us listen and hear his next songs. He is one of God’s singers, whether he knows it or does not know it.
I am thinking, lifting up my pen, what I can write to you which is likely to be interesting to you. After all I come to chaos and silence, and even old night — it is growing so dark. I live in London, to be sure, and except for the glory of it I might live in a desert, so profound is my solitude and so complete my isolation from things and persons without. I lie all day, and day after day, on the sofa, and my windows do not even look into the street. To abuse myself with a vain deceit of rural life I have had ivy planted in a box, and it has flourished and spread over one window, and strikes against the glass with a little stroke from the thicker leaves when the wind blows at all briskly. Then I think of forests and groves; it is my triumph when the leaves strike the window pane, and this is not a sound like a lament. Books and thoughts and dreams (almost too consciously dreamed, however, for me — the illusion of them has almost passed) and domestic tenderness can and ought to leave nobody lamenting. Also God’s wisdom, deeply steeped in His love, is as far as we can stretch out our hands.
To Mr. Westwood
50 Wimpole Street: December 26, 1843.
Dear Mr. Westwood, — You think me, perhaps, and not without apparent reason, ungrateful and insensible to your letter, but indeed I am neither one nor the other, and I am writing now to try and prove it to you. I was much touched by some tones of kindness in the letter, and it was welcome altogether, and I did not need the ‘owl’ which came after to waken me, because I was wide awake enough from the first moment; and now I see that you have been telling your beads, while I seemed to be telling nothing, in that dread silence of mine. May all true saints of poetry be propitious to the wearer of the ‘Rosary.’
In answer to a question which you put to me long ago on the subject of books of theology, I will confess to you that, although I have read rather widely the divinity of the Greek Fathers, Gregory, Chrysostom, and so forth, and have of course informed myself in the works generally of our old English divines, Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, and so forth, I am not by any means a frequent reader of books of theology as such, and as the men of our times have made them. I have looked into the ‘Tracts’ from curiosity and to hear what the world was talking of, and I was disappointed even in the degree of intellectual power displayed in them. From motives of a desire of theological instruction I very seldom read any book except God’s own. The minds of persons are differently constituted; and it is no praise to mine to admit that I am apt to receive less of what is called edification from human discourses on divine subjects, than disturbance and hindrance. I read the Scriptures every day, and in as simple a spirit as I can; thinking as little as possible of the controversies engendered in that great sunshine, and as much as possible of the heat and glory belonging to it. It is a sure fact in my eyes that we do not require so much more knowledge, as a stronger apprehension, by the faith and affections, of what we already know.
You will be sorry to hear that Mr. Tennyson is not well, although his friends talk of nervousness, and do not fear much ultimate mischief....
It is such a lovely May day, that I am afraid of breaking the spell by writing down Christmas wishes.
Very faithfully yours,
ELIZABETH BARRETT.
To Mr. Westwood
50 Wimpole Street: December 31, 1843.
If you do find the paper I was invited to write upon Wordsworth, you will see to which class of your admiring or abhorring friends I belong. Perhaps you will cry out quickly, ‘To the blind admirers, certes.’ And I have a high admiration of Wordsworth. His spirit has worked a good work, and has freed into the capacity of work other noble spirits. He took the initiative in a great poetic movement, and is not only to be praised for what he has done, but for what he has helped his age to do. For the rest, Byron has more passion and intensity, Shelley more fancy and music, Coleridge could see further 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,’ 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.
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 t
he 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. 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.
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.’
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. 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.
Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Page 156