Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  For what I ventured to say otherwise, would you not consent to join our sympathies, and receive the ‘choir’ (ah! but you are very cunningly subtle in your distinctions; I am afraid I was too simple for you) as agreeable writers of verses sometimes, leaving the word poet alone? Because, you see, what you call the ‘bad dispensation’ by no means accounts for the want of the faculty of poetry, strictly so called. England has had many learned women, not merely readers but writers of the learned languages, in Elizabeth’s time and afterwards — women of deeper acquirements than are common now in the greater diffusion of letters; and yet where were the poetesses? The divine breath which seemed to come and go, and, ere it went, filled the land with that crowd of true poets whom we call the old dramatists — why did it never pass, even in the lyrical form, over the lips of a woman? How strange! And can we deny that it was so? I look everywhere for grandmothers and see none. It is not in the filial spirit I am deficient, I do assure you — witness my reverent love of the grandfathers!

  Seriously, I do not presume to enter into argument with you, and this in relation to a critical paper which I admire in so many ways and am grateful for in some; but is not the poet a different man from the cleverest versifier, and is it not well for the world to be taught the difference? The divineness of poetry is far more to me than either pride of sex or personal pride, and, though willing to acknowledge the lowest breath of the inspiration, I cannot the ‘powder and patch.’ As powder and patch I may, but not as poetry. And though I in turn may suffer for this myself — though I too (anch’ io) may be turned out of ‘Arcadia,’ and told that I am not a poet, still, I should be content, I hope, that the divineness of poetry be proved in my humanness, rather than lowered to my uses.

  But you shall not think me exclusive. Of poor L.E.L., for instance, I could write with more praiseful appreciation than you can. It appears to me that she had the gift — though in certain respects she dishonored the art — and her latter lyrics are, many of them, of great beauty and melody, such as, having once touched the ear of a reader, live on in it. I observe in your ‘Life of Mrs. Hemans’ (shall I tell you how often I have read those volumes?) she (Mrs. H.) never appears, in any given letter or recorded opinion, to esteem her contemporary. The antagonism lay, probably, in the higher parts of Mrs. Hemans’s character and mind, and we are not to wonder at it.

  It is very pleasant to me to have your approbation of the sonnets on George Sand, on the points of feeling and lightness, on which all my readers have not absolved me equally, I have reason to know. I am more a latitudinarian in literature than it is generally thought expedient for women to be; and I have that admiration for genius, which dear Mr. Kenyon calls my ‘immoral sympathy with power;’ and if Madame Dudevant is not the first female genius of any country or age, I really do not know who is. And then she has certain noblenesses — granting all the evil and ‘perilous stuff’ — noblenesses and royalnesses which make me loyal. Do pardon me for intruding all this on you, though you cannot justify me — you, who are occupied beyond measure, and I, who know it! I have been under the delusion, too, during this writing, of having something like a friend’s claim to write and be troublesome. I have lived so near your friends that I keep the odour of them! A mere delusion, alas! my only personal right in respect to you being one that I am not likely to forget or waive — the right of being grateful to you.

  But so, and looking again at the last words of your letter, I see that you ‘wish,’ in the kindest of words, ‘to do something more for me.’ I hope some day to take this ‘something more’ of your kindness out in the pleasure of personal intercourse; and if, in the meantime, you should consent to flatter my delusion by letting me hear from you now and then, if ever you have a moment to waste and inclination to waste it, why I, on my side, shall always be ready to thank you for the ‘something more’ of kindness, as bound in the duty of gratitude. In any case I remain

  Truly and faithfully yours,

  ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

  To Mr. Chorley

  [The beginning of this letter is lost]

  ... to the awful consideration of the possibility of my reading a novel or caring for the story of it (proh pudor!), that I am probably, not to say certainly, the most complete and unscrupulous romance reader within your knowledge. Never was a child who cared more for ‘a story’ than I do; never even did I myself, as a child, care more for it than I do. My love of fiction began with my breath, and will end with it; and goes on increasing; and the heights and depths of the consumption which it has induced you may guess at perhaps, but it is a sublime idea from its vastness, and will gain on you but slowly. On my tombstone may be written ‘Ci-gît the greatest novel reader in the world,’ and nobody will forbid the inscription; and I approve of Gray’s notion of paradise more than of his lyrics, when he suggests the new, εις τους αιωνας [eis tous aiônas]. Are you shocked at me? Perhaps so. And you see I make no excuses, as an invalid might. Invalid or not, I should have a romance in a drawer, if not behind a pillow, and I might as well be true and say so. There is the love of literature, which is one thing, and the love of fiction, which is another. And then, I am not fastidious, as Mrs. Hemans was, in her high purity, and therefore the two loves have a race-course clear.

  This is a long preface to coming to speak of the ‘Improvisatore.’ I had sent for it already to the library, and shall dun them for it twice as much for the sake of what you say. Only I hope I may care for the story. I shall try.

  And for the rococo, I have more feeling for it, in a sense, than I once had, for, some two years ago, I passed through a long dynasty of French memoirs, which made me feel quite differently about the littlenesses of greatnesses. I measured them all from the heights of the ‘tabouret,’ and was a good Duchess, in the ‘non-natural’ meaning, for the moment. Those memoirs are charming of their kind, and if life were cut in filagree paper would be profitable reading to the soul. Do you not think so? And you mean besides, probably, that you care for beauty in detail, which we all should do if our senses were better educated.

  So the confession is not a dreadful one, after all, and mine may involve more evil, and would to ninety-nine out of a hundred ‘sensible and cultivated people.’ Think what Mrs. Ellis would say to the ‘Women of England’ about me in her fifteenth edition, if she knew!

  And do you know that dear Miss Mitford spent this day week with me, notwithstanding the rain?

  Very truly yours,

  ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

  I have forgotten what I particularly wished to say — viz. that I never thought of expecting to hear from you. I understand that when you write it is pure grace, and never to be expected. You have too much to do, I understand perfectly.

  The east wind seems to be blowing all my letters about to-day; the t’s and e’s wave like willows. Now if crooked e’s mean a ‘greenshade’ (not taken rurally), what awful significance can have the whole crooked alphabet?

  To Mrs. Martin

  Saturday, January 1844 [should be 1845].

  I must tell you, my dearest Mrs. Martin, Mr. Kenyon has read to me an extract from a private letter addressed by H. Martineau to Moxon the publisher, to the effect that Lord Morpeth was down on his knees in the middle of the room a few nights ago, in the presence of the somnambule J., and conversing with her in Greek and Latin, that the four Miss Liddels were also present, and that they five talked to her during one séance in five foreign languages, viz. Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and German. When the mesmeriser touches the organ of imitation on J.’s head, while the strange tongue is in the course of being addressed to her, she translates into English word for word what is said; but when the organ of language is touched, she simply answers in English what is said.

  My ‘few words of comment’ upon this are, that I feel to be more and more standing on my head — which does not mean, you will be pleased to observe, that I understand.

  Well, and how are you both going on? My voice is quite returned; and papa continues, I am so
rry to say, to have a bad cold and cough. He means to stay in the house to-day and try what prudence will do.

  We have heard from Henry, at Alexandria still, but a few days before sailing, and he and Stormie are bringing home, as a companion to Flushie, a beautiful little gazelle. What do you think of it? I would rather have it than the ‘babby,’ though the flourish of trumpets on the part of the possessors seems quite in favor of the latter.

  And I had a letter from Browning the poet last night, which threw me into ecstasies — Browning, the author of ‘Paracelsus,’ and king of the mystics.

  [The rest of this letter is missing.]

  To Mrs. Martin

  Saturday, January 1845.

  My dearest Mrs. Martin, — I believe our last letters crossed, and we might draw lots for the turn of receiving one, so that you are to take it for supererogatory virtue in me altogether if I begin to write to you as ‘at these presents.’ But I want to know how you both are, and if your last account may continue to be considered the true one. You have been poising yourself on the equal balance of letters, as weak consciences are apt to do, but I write that you may write, and also, a little, that I may thank you for the kindness of your last letter, which was so very kind.

  No, indeed, dearest Mrs. Martin. If I do not say oftener that I have a strong and grateful trust in your affection for me, and therefore in your interest in all that concerns me, it is not that it is less strong and grateful. What I said or sang of Miss Martineau’s letter was no consequence of a distrust of you, but of a feeling within myself that for me to show about such a letter was scarcely becoming, and, in the matter of modesty, nowise discreet. I suppose I was writing excuses to myself for showing it to you. I cannot otherwise account for the saying and singing. And, for the rest, nobody can say or sing that I am not frank enough to you — to the extent of telling all manner of nonsense about myself which can only be supposed to be interesting on the ground of your being presupposed to care a little for the person concerned. Now am I not frank enough? And by the way, I send you ‘The Seraphim’ at last, by this day’s railroad.

  Thursday.

  To prove to you that I had not forgotten you before your letter came, here is the fragment of an unfinished one which I send you, to begin with — an imperfect fossil letter, which no comparative anatomy will bring much sense out of — except the plain fact that you were not forgotten....

  From Alexandria we heard yesterday that they sailed from thence on the first of January, and the home passage may be long.

  The changes in Mary Minto on account of mesmerism were merely imaginary as far as I can understand. Nobody here observed any change in her. Oh no. These things will be fancied sometimes. That she is an enthusiastic girl, and that the subject took strong hold upon her, is true enough, and not the least in the world — according to my mind — to be wondered at. By the way, I had a letter and the present of a work on mesmerism — Mr. Newnham’s — from his daughter, who sent it to me the other day, in the kindest way, ‘out of gratitude for my poetry,’ as she says, and from a desire that it might do me physical good in the matter of health. I do not at all know her. I wrote to thank her, of course, for the kindness and sympathy which, as she expressed them, quite touched me; and to explain how I did not stand in reach just now of the temptations of mesmerism. I might have said that I shrank nearly as much from these ‘temptations’ as from Lord Bacon’s stew of infant children for the purposes of witchcraft.

  Well, then, I am getting deeper and deeper into correspondence with Robert Browning, poet and mystic, and we are growing to be the truest of friends. If I live a little longer shut up in this room, I shall certainly know everybody in the world. Mrs. Jameson came again yesterday, and was very agreeable, but tried vainly to convince me that the ‘Vestiges of Creation,’ which I take to be one of the most melancholy books in the world, is the most comforting, and that Lady Byron was an angel of a wife. I persisted (in relation to the former clause) in a ‘determinate counsel’ not to be a fully developed monkey if I could help it, but when Mrs. J. assured me that she knew all the circumstances of the separation, though she could not betray a confidence, and entreated me ‘to keep my mind open’ on a subject which would one day be set in the light, I stroked down my feathers as well as I could, and listened to reason. You know — or perhaps you do not know — that there are two women whom I have hated all my life long — Lady Byron and Marie Louise. To prove how false the public effigy of the former is, however, Mrs. Jameson told me that she knew nothing of mathematics, nothing of science, and that the element preponderating in her mind is the poetical element — that she cares much for my poetry! How deep in the knowledge of the depths of vanity must Mrs. J. be, to tell me that — now mustn’t she? But there was — yes, and is — a strong adverse feeling to work upon, and it is not worked away.

  Then, I have seen a copy of a note of Lord Morpeth to H. Martineau, to the effect that he considered the mesmeric phenomena witnessed by him (inclusive, remember, of the languages) to be ‘equally beautiful, wonderful, and undeniable’ but he is prudent enough to desire that no use should be made of this letter ... And now no more for to-day.

  With love to Mr. Martin, ever believe me

  Your affectionate

  BA.

  To John Kenyan

  Saturday, February 8, 1845.

  I return to you, dearest Mr. Kenyon, the two numbers of Jerold Douglas’s magazine, and I wish ‘by that same sign’ I could invoke your presence and advice on a letter I received this morning. You never would guess what it is, and you will wonder when I tell you that it offers a request from the Leeds Ladies’ Committee, authorised and backed by the London General Council of the League, to your cousin Ba, that she would write them a poem for the Corn Law Bazaar to be holden at Covent Garden next May. Now my heart is with the cause, and my vanity besides, perhaps, for I do not deny that I am pleased with the request so made, and if left to myself I should be likely at once to say ‘yes,’ and write an agricultural-evil poem to complete the factory-evil poem into a national-evil circle. And I do not myself see how it would be implicating my name with a political party to the extent of wearing a badge. The League is not a party, but ‘the meeting of the waters’ of several parties, and I am trying to persuade papa’s Whiggery that I may make a poem which will be a fair exponent of the actual grievance, leaving the remedy free for the hands of fixed-duty men like him, or free-trade women like myself. As to wearing the badge of a party, either in politics or religion, I may say that never in my life was I so far from coveting such a thing. And then poetry breathes in another outer air. And then there is not an existent set of any-kind-of-politics I could agree with if I tried — I, who am a sort of fossil republican! You shall see the letters when you come. Remember what the ‘League’ newspaper said of the ‘Cry of the Children.’

  Ever affectionately yours,

  E.B.B.

  To Miss Commeline

  50 Wimpole Street: [February-March 1845].

  My dear Miss Commeline, — I do hope that you will allow me to appear to remember you as I never have ceased to do in reality, and at a time when sympathy of friends is generally acceptable, to offer you mine as if I had some right of friendship to do so. And I am encouraged the more to attempt this because I never shall forget that in the hour of the bitterest agony of my life your brother wrote me a letter which, although I did not read it, I was too ill and distracted, I was yet shown the outside of some months afterwards and enabled to appreciate the sympathy fully. Such a kindness could not fail to keep alive in me (if the need of keeping alive were!) the memory of the various kindnesses received by me and mine from all your family, nor fail to excite me to desire to impress upon you my remembrance of you and my regard, and the interest with which I hear of your joys and sorrows whenever they are large enough to be seen from such a distance. Try to believe this of me, dear Miss Commeline, yourself, and let your sisters and your brother believe it also. If sorrow in its reaction makes us think of o
ur friends, let my name come among the list of yours to you, and with it let the thought come that I am not the coldest and least sincere. May God bless and comfort you, I say, with a full heart, knowing what afflictions like yours are and must be, but confident besides that ‘we know not what we do’ in weeping for the dearest. In our sorrow we see the rough side of the stuff; in our joys the smooth; and who shall say that when the taffeta is turned the most silk may not be in the sorrows? It is true, however, that sorrows are heavy, and that sometimes the conditions of life (which sorrows are) seem hard to us and overcoming, and I believe that much suffering is necessary before we come to learn that the world is a good place to live in and a good place to die in for even the most affectionate and sensitive.

  How glad I should be to hear from you some day, when it is not burdensome for you to write at length and fully concerning all of you — of your sister Maria, and of Laura, and of your brother, and of all your occupations and plans, and whether it enters into your dreams, not to say plans, ever to come to London, or to follow the track of your many neighbours across the seas, perhaps....

  For ourselves we have the happiness of seeing our dear papa so well, that I am almost justified in fancying happily that you would not think him altered. He has perpetual youth like the gods, and I may make affidavit to your brother nevertheless that we never boiled him up to it. Also his spirits are good and his ‘step on the stair’ so light as to comfort me for not being able to run up and down them myself. I am essentially better in health, but remain weak and shattered and at the mercy of a breath of air through a crevice; and thus the unusually severe winter has left me somewhat lower than usual without surprising anybody. Henrietta and Arabel are quite well and at home; George on circuit, always obliged by your proffered hospitality; and Charles John and Henry returning from a voyage to Alexandria in papa’s own vessel, the ‘Statira.’ I set you an imperfect example of egotism, and hope that you will double my I’s and we’s, and kindly trust to me for being interested in yours....