Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Yours affectionately,

  E.B. BARRETT.

  To H.S. Boyd

  Saturday, March 3, 1845.

  My dearest Friend, — I am aware that I should have written to you before, but the cold weather is apt to disable me and to make me feel idle when it does not do so quite. Now I am going to write about your remarks on the ‘Dublin Review.’

  Certainly I agree with you that there can be no necessity for explaining anything about the tutorship if you do not kick against the pricks of the insinuation yourself, and especially as I consider that you were in a sense my ‘tutor,’ inasmuch as I may say, both that nobody ever taught me so much Greek as you, and also that without you I should have probably lived and died without any knowledge of the Greek Fathers. The Greek classics I should have studied by love and instinct; but the Fathers would probably have remained in their sepulchres, as far as my reading them was concerned. Therefore, very gratefully do I turn to you as my ‘tutor’ in the best sense, and the more persons call you so, the better it is for the pleasures of my gratitude. The review amused me by hitting on the right meaning there, and besides by its percipiency about your remembering me during your travels in the East, and sending me home the Cyprus wine. Some of these reviewers have a wonderful gift at inferences. The ‘Metropolitan Magazine’ for March (which is to be sent to you when papa has read it) contains a flaming article in my favour, calling me ‘the friend of Wordsworth,’ and, moreover, a very little lower than the angels. You shall see it soon, and it is only just out, of course, being the March number. The praise is beyond thanking for, and then I do not know whom to thank — I cannot at all guess at the writer.

  I have had a kind note from Lord Teynham, whose oblivion I had ceased to doubt, it seemed so proved to me that he had forgotten me. But he writes kindly, and it gave me pleasure to have some sign of recollection, if not of regard, from one whom I consider with unalterable and grateful respect, and shall always, although I am aware that he denies all sympathy to my works and ways in literature and the world. In fact, and to set my poetry aside, he has joined that ‘strait sect’ of the Plymouth Brethren, and, of course, has straitened his views since we met, and I, by the reaction of solitude and suffering, have broken many bands which held me at that time. He was always straiter than I, and now the difference is immense. For I think the world wider than I once thought it, and I see God’s love broader than I once saw it. To the ‘Touch not, taste not, handle not’ of the strict religionists, I feel inclined to cry, ‘Touch, taste, handle, all things are pure.’ But I am writing this for you and not for him, and you probably will agree with me, if you think as you used to think, at least.

  But I do not agree with you on the League question, nor on the woman question connected with it, only we will not quarrel to-day, and I have written enough already without an argument at the end.

  Can you guess what I have been doing lately? Washing out my conscience, effacing the blot on my escutcheon, performing an expiation, translating over again from the Greek the ‘Prometheus’ of Aeschylus.

  Yes, my very dear friend, I could not bear to let that frigid, rigid exercise, called a version and called mine, cold as Caucasus, and flat as the neighbouring plain, stand as my work. A palinodia, a recantation was necessary to me, and I have achieved it. Do you blame me or not? Perhaps I may print it in a magazine, but this is not decided. How delighted I am to think of your being well. It makes me very happy.

  Your ever affectionate and grateful

  ELIBET.

  To Mr. Westwood

  March 4, 1845.

  I reproach myself, dear Mr. W., for my silence, and began to do so before your kind note reminded me of its unkindness. I had indeed my pen in my hand three days ago to write to you, but a cross fate plucked at my sleeve for the ninety-ninth time, and left me guilty. And you do not write to reproach me! You only avenge yourself softly by keeping back all news of your health, and by not saying a word of the effect on you of the winter which has done its spiriting so ungently. Which brings me down to myself. For somebody has been dreaming of me, and dreams, you know, must go by contraries. And how could it be otherwise? Although I am on the whole essentially better — on the whole! — yet the peculiar severity of the winter has acted on me, and the truth is that for the last month, precisely the last month, I have been feeling (off and on, as people say) very uncomfortable. Not that I am essentially worse, but essentially better, on the contrary, only that the feeling of discomfort and trouble at the heart (physically) will come with the fall of the thermometer, and the voice will go!...

  And then I have another question to enunciate — will the oracle answer?

  Do you know who wrote the article in the ‘Metropolitan’? Beseech you, answer me. I have a suspicion, true, that the critics have been supernaturally kind to me, but the kindness of this ‘Metropolitan’ critic so passes the ordinary limit of kindness, metropolitan or critical, that I cannot but look among my personal friends for the writer of the article. Coming to personal friends, I reject one on one ground and one on another — for one the graciousness is too graceful, and for another the grace almost too gracious. I am puzzled and dizzy with doubt; and — is it you? Answer me, will you? If so, I should owe so much gratitude to you. Suffer me to pay it! — permit the pleasure to me of paying it! — for I know too much of the pleasures of gratitude to be willing to lose one of them.

  To John Kenyan

  March 6, .

  Thank you, dearest Mr. Kenyon — they are very fine. The poetry is in them, rather than in Blair. And now I send them back, and Cunningham and Jerrold, with thanks on thanks; and if you will be kind enough not to insist on my reading the letters to Travis within the ‘hour,’ they shall wait for the ‘Responsibility,’ and the two go to you together.

  And as to the tiring, it has not been much, and the happy day was well worth being tired for. It is better to be tired with pleasure than with frost; and if I have the last fatigue too, why it is March, and it is the hour of my martyrdom always. But I am not ill — only uncomfortable.

  Ah, the ‘relenting’! it is rather a bad sign, I am afraid; notwithstanding the subtilty of your consolations; but I stroke down my philosophy, to make it shine, like a cat’s back in the dark. The argument from more deserving poets who prosper less is not very comforting, is it? I trow not.

  But as to the review, be sure — be very sure that it is not Mr. Browning’s. How you could think even of Mr. Browning, surprises me. Now, as for me, I know as well as he does himself that he has had nothing to do with it.

  I should rather suspect Mr. Westwood, the author of some fugitive poems, who writes to me sometimes; and the suspicion having occurred to me, I have written to put the question directly. You shall hear, if I hear in reply.

  May God bless you always. I have heard from dear Miss Mitford.

  Ever affectionately yours,

  E.B.B.

  To H.S. Boyd

  March 29, 1845 [postmark].

  My dearest Mr. Boyd, — As Arabel has written out for you the glorification of ‘Peter of York,’ I shall use an edge of the same paper to ‘fall on your sense’ with my gratitude about the Cyprus wine. Indeed, I could almost upbraid you for sending me another bottle. It is most supererogatory kindness in you to think of such a thing. And I accept it, nevertheless, with thanks instead of remonstrances, and promise you to drink your health in and the spring in together, and the east wind out, if you do not object to it. I have been better for several days, but my heart is not yet very orderly — not being able to recover the veins, I suppose, all in a moment.

  For the rest, you always mean what is right and affectionate, and I am not apt to mistake your meanings in this respect. Be indulgent to me as far as you can, when it appears to you that I sink far below your religious standard, as I am sure I must do oftener than you remind me. Also, it certainly does appear, to my mind, that we are not, as Christians, called to the exclusive expression of Christian doctrine, either in poetry or prose. A
ll truth and all beauty and all music belong to God — He is in all things; and in speaking of all, we speak of Him. In poetry, which includes all things, ‘the diapason closeth full in God.’ I would not lose a note of the lyre, and whatever He has included in His creation I take to be holy subject enough for me. That I am blamed for this view by many, I know, but I cannot see it otherwise, and when you pay your visit to ‘Peter of York’ and me, and are able to talk everything over, we shall agree tolerably well, I do not doubt.

  Ah, what a dream! What a thought! Too good even to come true!

  I did not think that you would much like the ‘Duchess May;’ but among the profanum vulgus you cannot think how successful it has been. There was an account in one of the fugitive reviews of a lady falling into hysterics on the perusal of it, although that was nothing to the gush of tears of which there is a tradition, down the Plutonian cheeks of a lawyer unknown, over ‘Bertha in the Lane.’ But these things should not make anybody vain. It is the story that has power with people, just what you do not care for!

  About the reviews you ask a difficult question; but I suppose the best, as reviews, are the ‘Dublin Review,’ ‘Blackwood,’ the ‘New Quarterly,’ and the last ‘American,’ I forget the title at this moment, the Whig ‘American,’ not the Democratic. The most favorable to me are certainly the American unremembered, and the late ‘Metropolitan,’ which last was written, I hear, by Mr. Charles Grant, a voluminous writer, but no poet. I consider myself singularly happy in my reviews, and to have full reason for gratitude to the profession.

  I forgot to say that what the Dublin reviewer did me the honor of considering an Irishism was the expression ‘Do you mind’ in ‘Cyprus Wine.’ But he was wrong, because it occurs frequently among our elder English writers, and is as British as London porter.

  Now see how you throw me into figurative liquids, by your last Cyprus. It is the true celestial, this last. But Arabel pleased me most by bringing back so good an account of you.

  Your ever affectionate and grateful

  ELIBET.

  To John Kenyan

  Friday [about January-March 1845].

  Dearest Mr. Kenyon, — If your good nature is still not at ease, through doubting about how to make Lizzy happy in a book, you will like to hear perhaps that I have thought of a certain ‘Family Robinson Crusoe,’ translated from the German, I think, not a Robinson purified, mind, but a Robinson multiplied and compounded. Children like reading it, I believe. And then there is a ‘Masterman Ready,’ or some name like it, by Captain Marryat, also popular with young readers. Or ‘Seaward’s Narrative,’ by Miss Porter, would delight her, as it did me, not so many years ago.

  I mention these books, but know nothing of their price; and only because you asked me, I do mention them. The fact is that she is not hard to please as to literature, and will be delighted with anything.

  To-day Mr. Poe sent me a volume containing his poems and tales collected, so now I must write and thank him for his dedication. What is to be said, I wonder, when a man calls you the ‘noblest of your sex’? ‘Sir, you are the most discerning of yours.’ Were you thanked for the garden ticket yesterday? No, everybody was ungrateful, down to Flush, who drinks day by day out of his new purple cup, and had it properly explained how you gave it to him (I explained that), and yet never came upstairs to express to you his sense of obligation.

  Affectionately yours always,

  E.B.B.

  To John Kenyan

  Saturday [beginning of April 1845].

  My dearest Cousin, — After all I/ said to you, said the other day, about Apuleius, and about what couldn’t, shouldn’t, and mustn’t be done in the matter, I ended by trying the unlawful art of translating this prose into verse, and, one after another, have done all the subjects of the Poniatowsky gems Miss Thompson sent the list of, except two, which I am doing and shall finish anon. In the meantime it comes into my head that it is just as well for you to look over my doings, and judge whether anything in them is to the purpose, or at all likely to be acceptable. Especially I am anxious to impress on you that, if I could think for a moment you would hesitate about rejecting the whole in a body, from any consideration for me, I should not merely be vexed but pained. Am I not your own cousin, to be ordered about as you please? And so take notice that I will not bear the remotest approach to ceremony in the matter. What is wrong? what is right? what is too much? those are the only considerations.

  Apuleius is florid, which favored the poetical design on his sentences. Indeed he is more florid than I have always liked to make my verses. It is not, of course, an absolute translation, but as a running commentary on the text it is sufficiently faithful.

  But probably (I say to myself) you do not want so many illustrations, and all too from one hand?

  The two I do not send are ‘Psyche contemplating Cupid asleep,’ and ‘Psyche and the Eagle.’

  And I wait to hear how Polyphemus is to look — and also Adonis.

  The Magazine goes to you with many thanks. The sonnet is full of force and expression, and I like it as well as ever I did — better even!

  Oh — such happy news to-day! The ‘Statira’ is at Plymouth, and my brothers quite well, notwithstanding their hundred days on the sea! It makes me happy.

  Yours most affectionately,

  BA.

  You shall have your ‘Radical’ almost immediately. I am ashamed. In such haste.

  To H.S. Boyd

  April 3, 1845.

  My very dear Friend, — I have been intending every day to write to tell you that the Cyprus wine is as nectareous as possible, so fit for the gods, in fact, that I have been forced to leave it off as unfit for me; it made me so feverish. But I keep it until the sun shall have made me a little less mortal; and in the meantime recognise thankfully both its high qualities and your kind ones. How delightful it is to have this sense of a summer at hand. Shall I see you this summer, I wonder. That is a question among my dreams.

  By the last American packet I had two letters, one from a poet of Massachusetts, and another from a poetess: the he, Mr. Lowell, and the she, Mrs. Sigourney. She says that the sound of my poetry is stirring the ‘deep green forests of the New World;’ which sounds pleasantly, does it not? And I understand from Mr. Moxon that a new edition will be called for before very long, only not immediately....

  Your affectionate and grateful friend,

  ELIBET.

  Arabel and Mr. Hunter talk of paying you a visit some day.

  To Mrs. Martin

  April 3, 1845.

  My dearest Mrs. Martin, — I wrote to you not many days ago, but I must tell you that our voyagers are safe in Sandgate break in ‘an ugly hulk’ (as poor Stormie says despondingly), suffering three or four days of quarantine agony, and that we expect to see them on Monday or Tuesday in the full bloom of their ill humour. I am happy to think, according to the present symptoms, that the mania for sea voyages is considerably abated. ‘Nothing could be more miserable,’ exclaims Storm; ‘the only comfort of the whole four months is the safety of the beans, tell papa’ — and the safety of the beans is rather a Pythagoraean equivalent for four months’ vexation, though not a bean of them all should have lost in freshness and value! He could scarcely write, he said, for the chilblains on his hands, and was in utter destitution of shirts and sheets. Oh! I have very good hopes that for the future Wimpole Street may be found endurable.

  Well, and you are at once angry and satisfied, I suppose, about Maynooth; just as I am! satisfied with the justice as far as it goes, and angry and disgusted at the hideous shrieks of intolerance and bigotry which run through the country. The dissenters have very nearly disgusted me, what with the Education clamour, and the Presbyterian chapel cry, and now this Maynooth cry; and certainly it is wonderful how people can see rights as rights in their own hands, and as wrongs in the hands of their opposite neighbours. Moreover it seems to me atrocious that we who insist on seven millions of Catholics supporting a church they call heretical, shoul
d dare to talk of our scruples (conscientious scruples forsooth!) about assisting with a poor pittance of very insufficient charity their ‘damnable idolatry.’ Why, every cry of complaint we utter is an argument against the wrong we have been committing for years and years, and must be so interpreted by every honest and disinterested thinker in the world. Of course I should prefer the Irish establishment coming down, to any endowment at all; I should prefer a trial of the voluntary system throughout Ireland; but as it is adjudged on all hands impossible to attempt this in the actual state of parties and countries, why this Maynooth grant and subsequent endowment of the Catholic Church in Ireland seem the simple alternative, obviously and on the first principles of justice. Macaulay was very great, was he not? He appeared to me conclusive in logic and sentiment. The sensation everywhere is extraordinary, I am sorry really to say!

  Wordsworth is in London, having been commanded up to the Queen’s ball. He went in Rogers’s court dress, or did I tell you so the other day? And I hear that the fair Majesty of England was quite ‘fluttered’ at seeing him. ‘She had not a word to say,’ said Mrs. Jameson, who came to see me the other day and complained of the omission as ‘unqueenly;’ but I disagreed with her and thought the being ‘fluttered’ far the highest compliment. But she told me that a short time ago the Queen confessed she never had read Wordsworth, on which a maid of honour observed, ‘That is a pity, he would do your Majesty a great deal of good.’ Mrs. Jameson declared that Miss Murray, a maid of honour, very deeply attached to the Queen, assured her (Mrs. J.) of the answer being quite as abrupt as that; as direct, and to the purpose; and no offence intended or received. I like Mrs. Jameson better the more I see her, and with grateful reason, she is so kind. Now do write directly, and let me hear of you [in d]etail. And tell Mr. Martin to make a point of coming home to us, with no grievances but political ones. The Bazaar is to be something sublime in its degree, and I shall have a sackcloth feeling all next week. All the rail carriages will be wound up to radiate into it, I hear, and the whole country is to be shot into the heart of London.