Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  I remain, myself,

  Affectionately yours,

  BA.

  To Mrs. Martin

  Wednesday [December 1844].

  My dearest Mrs. Martin, — Hardly had my letter gone to you yesterday, when your kind present and not et arrived. I thank you for my boots with more than the warmth of the worsted, and feel all their merits to my soul (each sole) while I thank you. A pair of boots or shoes which ‘can’t be kicked off’ is something highly desirable for me, in Wilson’s opinion; and this is the first thing which struck her. But the ‘great idea’ ‘à propos des bottes,’ which occurred to myself, ought to be unspeakable, like Miss Martineau’s great ideas — for I do believe it was — that I needn’t have the trouble every morning, now, of putting on my stockings....

  My voice is thawing too, with all the rest. If the cold had lasted I should have been dumb in a day or two more, and as it was, I was forced to refuse to see Mrs. Jameson (who had the goodness to come again) because I couldn’t speak much above my breath. But I was tolerably well and brave upon the whole. Oh, these murderous English winters. The wonder is, how anybody can live through them....

  Did I tell you, or Mr. Martin, that Rogers the poet, at eighty-three or four years of age, bore the bank robbery with the light-hearted bearing of a man ‘young and bold,’ went out to dinner two or three times the same week, and said witty things on his own griefs. One of the other partners went to bed instead, and was not likely, I heard, to ‘get over it.’ I felt quite glad and proud for Rogers. He was in Germany last year, and this summer in Paris; but he first went to see Wordsworth at the Lakes.

  It is a fine thing when a light burns so clear down into the socket, isn’t it? I, who am not a devout admirer of the ‘Pleasures of Memory,’ do admire this perpetual youth and untired energy; it is a fine thing to my mind. Then, there are other noble characteristics about this Rogers. A common friend said the other day to Mr. Kenyon, ‘Rogers hates me, I know. He is always saying bitter speeches in relation to me, and yesterday he said so and so. But,’ he continued, ‘if I were in distress, there is one man in the world to whom I would go without doubt and without hesitation, at once, and as to a brother, and that man is Rogers.’ Not that I would choose to be obliged to a man who hated me; but it is an illustration of the fact that if Rogers is bitter in his words, which we all know he is, he is always benevolent and generous in his deeds. He makes an epigram on a man, and gives him a thousand pounds; and the deed is the truer expression of his own nature. An uncommon development of character, in any case.

  May God bless you both!

  Your most affectionate

  BA.

  I am going to tell you, in an antithesis, of the popularising of my poems. I had a sonnet the other day from Gutter Lane, Cheapside, and I heard that Count d’Orsay had written one of the stanzas of ‘Crowned and Buried’ at the bottom of an engraving of Napoleon which hangs in his room. Now I allow you to laugh at my vaingloriousness, and then you may pin it to Mrs. Best’s satisfaction in the dedication to Dowager Majesty. By the way — no, out of the way — it is whispered that when Queen Victoria goes to Strathfieldsea (how do you spell it?) she means to visit Miss Mitford, to which rumour Miss Mitford (being that rare creature, a sensible woman) says: ‘May God forbid.’

  To John Kenyan

  Wednesday morning [about December 1844].

  I thank you, my dear cousin, and did so silently the day before yesterday, when you were kind enough to bring me the review and write the good news in pencil. I should be delighted to see you (this is to certify) notwithstanding the frost; only my voice having suffered, and being the ghost of itself, you might find it difficult to hear me without inconvenience. Which is for you to consider, and not for me. And indeed the fog, in addition to the cold, makes it inexpedient for anyone to leave the house except upon business and compulsion.

  Oh no — we need not mind any scorn which assails Tennyson and us together. There is a dishonor that does honor — and ‘this is of it.’ I never heard of Barnes.

  Were you aware that the review you brought was in a newspaper called the ‘League,’ and laudatory to the utmost extravagance — praising us too for courage in opposing ‘war and monopoly’? — the ‘corn ships in the offing’ being duly named. I have heard that it is probably written by Mr. Cobden himself, who writes for the journal in question, and is an enthusiast in poetry. If I thought so to the point of conviction, do you know, I should be very much pleased? You remember that I am a sort of (magna) chartist — only going a little farther!

  Flush was properly ashamed of himself when he came upstairs again for his most ungrateful, inexplicable conduct towards you; and I lectured him well; and upon asking him to ‘promise never to behave ill to you again,’ he kissed my hands and wagged his tail most emphatically. It altogether amounted to an oath, I think. The truth is that Flush’s nervous system rather than his temper was in fault, and that, in that great cloak, he saw you as in a cloudy mystery. And then, when you stumbled over the bell rope, he thought the world was come to an end. He is not accustomed, you see, to the vicissitudes of life. Try to forgive him and me — for his ingratitude seems to ‘strike through’ to me; and I am not without remorse.

  Ever most affectionately yours,

  E.B.B.

  I inclose Mr. Chorley’s note which you left behind you, but which I did not see until just now. You know that I am not ashamed of ‘progress.’ On the contrary, my only hope is in it. But the question is not there, nor, I think, for the public, except in cases of ripe, established reputations, as I said before.

  To Mr. Westwood

  (On returning some illustrations of Spenser by Mr. Woods)

  December 11, 1844.

  ... With many thanks, cordial and true, I thank you for the pleasure I have enjoyed in connection with these proofs of genius. To be honest, it is my own personal opinion (I give it to you for as much as it is worth — not much!) that many of the subjects of these drawings are unfit for graphic representation. What we can bear to see in the poet’s vision, and sustained on the wings of his divine music, we shrink from a little when brought face to face with, as drawn out in black and white. You will understand what I mean. The horror and terror preponderate in the drawings, and what is sublime in the poet is apt to be extravagant in the artist — and this, not from a deficiency of power in the latter, but from a treading on ground forbidden except to the poet’s foot. I may be wrong, perhaps — I do not pretend to be right. I only tell you (as you ask for them) what my impressions are.

  I need not say that I wish all manner of success to your friend the artist, and laurels of the weight of gold while of the freshness of grass — alas! an impossible vegetable! — fabulous as the Halcyon!

  To H.S. Boyd

  Monday, December 24, 1844 [postmark].

  My dearest Mr. Boyd, — I wish I had a note from you to-day — which optative aorist I am not sure of being either grammatical or reasonable! Perhaps you have expected to hear from me with more reason....

  I fancied that you would be struck by Miss Martineau’s lucid and able style. She is a very admirable woman — and the most logical intellect of the age, for a woman. On this account it is that the men throw stones at her, and that many of her own sex throw dirt; but if I begin on this subject I shall end by gnashing my teeth. A righteous indignation fastens on me. I had a note from her the other day, written in a noble spirit, and saying, in reference to the insults lavished on her, that she was prepared from the first for publicity, and ventured it all for the sake of what she considered the truth — she was sustained, she said, by the recollection of Godiva.

  Do you remember who Godiva was — or shall I tell you? Think of it — Godiva of Coventry, and peeping Tom. The worst and basest is, that in this nineteenth century there are thousands of Toms to one.

  I think, however, myself, and with all my admiration for Miss Martineau, that her statement and her reasonings on it are not free from vagueness and apparent contradictions.
She writes in a state of enthusiasm, and some of her expressions are naturally coloured by her mood of mind and nerve.

  May this Christmas give you ease and pleasantness, in various ways, my dearest friend! My Christmas wish for myself is to hear that you are well. I cannot bear to think of you suffering. Are the nights better? May God bless you. Shall you not think it a great thing if the poems go into a second edition within the twelvemonth? I am surprised at your not being satisfied. Consider what poetry is, and that four months have not passed since the publication of mine; and that, where poems have to make their way by force of themselves, and not of name nor of fashion, the first three months cannot present the period of the quickest sale. That must be for afterwards. Think of me on Christmas Day, as of one who gratefully loves you.

  ELIBET.

  A passing reference in a previous letter (above, p. 217) has told of the beginning of another friendship, which was to hold a large place in Miss Barrett’s later life; and the next letter is the first now extant which was written to this new friend, Anna Jameson. Mrs. Jameson had not at this time written the works on sacred art with which her name is now chiefly associated; but she was already engaged in her long struggle to earn her livelihood by her pen. Her first work, ‘The Diary of an Ennuyée’ (1826), written before her marriage, had attracted considerable attention. Since then she had written her ‘Characteristics of Women,’ ‘Essays on Shakespeare’s Female Characters,’ ‘Visits and Sketches,’ and a number of compilations of less importance. Quite recently she had been engaged to write handbooks to the public and private art galleries of London, and had so embarked on the career of art authorship in which her best work was done.

  The beginning and end of the following letter are lost. The subject of it is the long and hostile comment which appeared in the ‘Athenaeum’ for December 28 on Miss Martineau’s letters on mesmerism.

  To Mrs. Jameson

  [End of December 1844.]

  ... For the ‘Athenaeum,’ I have always held it as a journal, first — in the very first rank — both in ability and integrity; and knowing Mr. Dilke is the ‘Athenaeum,’ I could make no mistake in my estimation of himself. I have personal reasons for gratitude to both him and his journal, and I have always felt that it was honorable to me to have them. Also, I do not at all think that because a woman is a woman, she is on that account to be spared the ordinary risks of the arena in literature and philosophy. I think no such thing. Logical chivalry would be still more radically debasing to us than any other. It is not therefore at all as a Harriet Martineau, but as a thinking and feeling Martineau (now don’t laugh), that I hold her to have been hardly used in the late controversy. And, if you don’t laugh at that, don’t be too grave either, with the thought of your own share and position in the matter; because, as must be obvious to everyone (yourself included), you did everything possible to you to prevent the catastrophe, and no man and no friend could have done better. My brother George told me of his conversation with you at Mr. Lough’s, but are you not mistaken in fancying that she blames you, that she is cold with you? I really think you must be. Why, if she is displeased with you she must be unjust, and is she ever unjust? I ask you. I should imagine not, but then, with all my insolence of talking of her as my friend, I only admire and love her at a distance, in her books and in her letters, and do not know her face to face, and in living womanhood at all. She wrote to me once, and since we have corresponded; and as in her kindness she has called me her friend, I leap hastily at an unripe fruit, perhaps, and echo back the word. She is your friend in a completer, or, at least, a more ordinary sense; and indeed it is impossible for me to believe without strong evidence that she could cease to be your friend on such grounds as are apparent. Perhaps she does not write because she cannot contain her wrath against Mr. Dilke (which, between ourselves, she cannot, very well), and respects your connection and regard for him. Is not that a ‘peradventure’ worth considering? I am sure that you have no right to be uneasy in any case.

  And now I do not like to send you this letter without telling you my impression about mesmerism, lest I seem reserved and ‘afraid of committing myself,’ as prudent people are. I will confess, then, that my impression is in favour of the reality of mesmerism to some unknown extent. I particularly dislike believing it, I would rather believe most other things in the world; but the evidence of the ‘cloud of witnesses’ does thunder and lightning so in my ears and eyes, that I believe, while my blood runs cold. I would not be practised upon — no, not for one of Flushie’s ears, and I hate the whole theory. It is hideous to my imagination, especially what is called phrenological mesmerism. After all, however, truth is to be accepted; and testimony, when so various and decisive, is an ascertainer of truth. Now do not tell Mr. Dilke, lest he excommunicate me.

  But I will not pity you for the increase of occupation produced by an increase of such comfort as your mother’s and sister’s presence must give. What it will be for you to have a branch to sun yourself on, after a long flight against the wind!

  To Mr. Chorley

  50 Wimpole Street: January 3, 1845.

  Dear Mr. Chorley, — I hope it will not be transgressing very much against the etiquette of journalism, or against the individual delicacy which is of more consequence to both of us, if I venture to thank you by one word for the pages which relate to me in your excellent article in the ‘New Quarterly.’ It is not my habit to thank or to remonstrate with my reviewers, and indeed I believe I may tell you that I never wrote to thank anyone before on these grounds. I could not thank anyone for praising me — I would not thank him for praising me against his conscience; and if he praised me to the measure of his conscience only, I should have little (as far as the praise went) to thank him for. Therefore I do not thank you for the praise in your article, but for the kind cordial spirit which pervades both praise and blame, for the willingness in praising, and for the gentleness in finding fault; for the encouragement without unseemly exaggeration, and for the criticisms without critical scorn. Allow me to thank you for these things and for the pleasure I have received by their means. I am bold to do it, because I hear that you confess the reviewership; and am the bolder, because I recognised your hand in an act of somewhat similar kindness in the ‘Athenaeum’ at the first appearance of the poems.

  While I am writing of the ‘New Quarterly,’ I take the liberty of making a remark, not of course in relation to myself — I know too well my duty to my judges — but to your view of the Vantage ground of the poetesses of England. It is a strong impression with me that previous to Joanna Baillie there was no such thing in England as a poetess; and that so far from triumphing over the rest of the world in that particular product, we lay until then under the feet of the world. We hear of a Marie in Brittany who sang songs worthy to be mixed with Chaucer’s for true poetic sweetness, and in Italy a Vittoria Colonna sang her noble sonnets. But in England, where is our poetess before Joanna Baillie — poetess in the true sense? Lady Winchilsea had an eye, as Wordsworth found out; but the Duchess of Newcastle had more poetry in her — the comparative praise proving the negative position — than Lady Winchilsea. And when you say of the French, that they have only epistolary women and wits, while we have our Lady Mary, why what would Lady Mary be to us but for her letters and her wit? Not a poetess, surely! unless we accept for poetry her graceful vers de société.

  Do forgive me if an impulse has carried me too far. It has been long ‘a fact,’ to my view of the matter, that Joanna Baillie is the first female poet in all senses in England; and I fell with the whole weight of fact and theory against the edge of your article.

  I recall myself now to my first intention of being simply, but not silently, grateful to you; and entreating you to pardon this letter too quickly to think it necessary-to answer it....

  I remain, very truly yours,

  ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

  To Mr. Chorley

  50 Wimpole Street: January 7, 1845.

  Dear Mr. Chorley, — You are
very good to deign to answer my impertinences, and not to be disgusted by my defamations of ‘the grandmothers,’ and (to diminish my perversity in your eyes) I am ready to admit at once that we are generally too apt to run into premature classification — the error of all imperfect knowledge; and into unreasonable exclusiveness — the vice of it. We spoil the shining surface of life by our black lines drawn through and through, as if ominously for a game of the fox and goose. For my part, however imperfect my practice may be, I am intimately convinced — and more and more since my long seclusion — that to live in a house with windows on every side, so as to catch both the morning and evening sunshine, is the best and brightest thing we have to do — to say nothing about the justest and wisest. Sympathies are our opportunities of good.

  Moreover, I know nothing of your ‘sweet mistress Anne.’ I never read a verse of hers. Ignorance goes for much, you see, in all our mal-criticisms, and my ignorance goes to this extent. I cannot write to you of your Anglo-American poetess.

  Also, in my sweeping speech about the grandmothers, I should have stopped before such instances as the exquisite ballad of ‘Auld Robin Gray,’ which is attributed to a woman, and the pathetic ‘Ballow my Babe,’ which tradition calls ‘Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament.’ I have certain doubts of my own, indeed, in relation to both origins, and with regard to ‘Robin Gray’ in particular; but doubts are not worthy stuff enough to be taken into an argument, and certainly, therefore, I should have admitted those two ballads as worthy poems before the Joannan aera.