Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  As my ‘Seagull’ won’t, but you will find it in my new edition, and the ‘Doves’ and everything else worth a straw of my writing. Here’s a fact which you must try to settle with your theories of simplicity and popularity: None of these simple poems of mine have been favorites with general readers. The unintelligible ones are always preferred, I observe, by extracters, compilers, and ladies and gentlemen who write to tell me that I’m a muse. The very Corn Law Leaguers in the North used to leave your ‘Seagulls’ to fly where they could, and clap hands over mysteries of iniquity. Dearest Miss Mitford — for the rest, don’t mistake what I write to you sometimes — don’t fancy that I undervalue simplicity and think nothing of legitimate fame — I only mean to say that the vogue which begins with the masses generally comes to nought (Béranger is an exceptional case, from the form of his poems, obviously), while the appreciation beginning with the few always ends with the masses. Wasn’t Wordsworth, for instance, both simple and unpopular, when he was most divine? To go to the great from the small, when I complain of the lamentable weakness of much in my ‘Seraphim’ volume, I don’t complain of the ‘Seagull’ and ‘Doves’ and the simple verses, but exactly of the more ambitious ones. I have had to rewrite pages upon pages of that volume. Oh, such feeble rhymes, and turns of thought — such a dingy mistiness! Even Robert couldn’t say a word for much of it. I took great pains with the whole, and made considerable portions new, only your favourites were not touched — not a word touched, I think, in the ‘Seagull,’ and scarcely a word in the ‘Doves.’ You won’t complain of me a great deal, I do hope and trust. Also I put back your ‘little words’ into the ‘House of Clouds.’ The two volumes are to come out, it appears, at the end of October; not before, because Mr. Chapman wished to inaugurate them for his new house in Piccadilly. There are some new poems, and one rather long ballad written at request of anti-slavery friends in America. I arranged that it should come next to the ‘Cry of the Children,’ to appear impartial as to national grievances....

  Oh — Balzac — what a loss! One of the greatest and (most) original writers of the age gone from us! To hear this news made Robert and me very melancholy. Indeed, there seems to be fatality just now with the writers of France. Soulié, Bernard, gone too; George Sand translating Mazzini; Sue in a socialistical state of decadence — what he means by writing such trash as the ‘Péchés’ I really can’t make out; only Alexandre Dumas keeping his head up gallantly, and he seems to me to write better than ever. Here is a new book, just published, by Jules Sandeau, called ‘Sacs et Parchemins’! Have you seen it? It miraculously comes to us from the little Siena library.

  We stay in this villa till our month is out, and then we go for a week into Siena that I may be nearer the churches and pictures, and see something of the cathedral and Sodomas. We calculated that it was cheaper to move our quarters than to have a carriage to and fro, and then Dr. Harding recommended repeated change of air for me, and he has proved his ability so much (so kindly too!) that we are bound to act on his opinions as closely as we can. Perhaps we may even go to Volterra afterwards, if the finances will allow of it. If we do, it may be for another week at farthest, and then we return to Florence. You had better direct there as usual. And do write and tell me much of yourself, and set me down in your thoughts as quite well, and ever yours in warm and grateful affection.

  E.B.B.

  To Miss Mitford

  Florence: November 13, 1850 [postmark].

  I meant to cross your second letter, and so, my very dear friend, you are a second time a prophetess as to my intentions, while I am still more grateful than I could have been with the literal fulfilment. Delightful it is to hear from you — do always write when you can. And though this second letter speaks of your having been unwell, still I shall continue to flatter myself that upon the whole ‘the better part prevails,’ and that if the rains don’t wash you away this winter, I may have leave to think of you as strengthening and to strengthen still. Meanwhile you certainly, as you say, have roots to your feet. Never was anyone so pure as you from the drop of gypsey blood which tingles in my veins and my husband’s, and gives us every now and then a fever for roaming, strong enough to carry us to Mount Caucasus if it were not for the healthy state of depletion observable in the purse. I get fond of places, so does he. We both of us grew rather pathetical on leaving our Sienese villa, and shrank from parting with the pig. But setting out on one’s travels has a great charm; oh, I should like to be able to pay our way down the Nile, and into Greece, and into Germany, and into Spain! Every now and then we take out the road-books, calculate the expenses, and groan in the spirit when it’s proved for the hundredth time that we can’t do it. One must have a home, you see, to keep one’s books in and one’s spring-sofas in; but the charm of a home is a home to come back to. Do you understand? No, not you! You have as much comprehension of the pleasure of ‘that sort of thing’ as in the peculiar taste of the three ladies who hung themselves in a French balloon the other day, operatically nude, in order, I conjecture, to the ultimate perfection of French delicacy in morals and manners....

  I long to see your papers, and dare say they are charming. At the same time, just because they are sure to be charming (and notwithstanding their kindness to me, notwithstanding that I live in a glass house myself, warmed by such rare stoves!) I am a little in fear that your generosity and excess of kindness may run the risk of lowering the ideal of poetry in England by lifting above the mark the names of some poetasters. Do you know, you take up your heart sometimes by mistake, to admire with, when you ought to use it only to love with? and this is apt to be dangerous, with your reputation and authority in matters of literature. See how impertinent I am! But we should all take care to teach the world that poetry is a divine thing, should we not? that is, not mere verse-making, though the verses be pretty in their way. Rather perish every verse I ever wrote, for one, than help to drag down an inch that standard of poetry which, for the sake of humanity as well as literature, should be kept high. As for simplicity and clearness, did I ever deny that they were excellent qualities? Never, surely. Only, they will not make poetry; and absolutely vain they are, and indeed all other qualities, without the essential thing, the genius, the inspiration, the insight — let us call it what we please — without which the most accomplished verse-writers had far better write prose, for their own sakes as for the world’s — don’t you think so? Which I say, because I sighed aloud over many names in your list, and now have taken pertly to write out the sigh at length. Too charmingly you are sure to have written — and see the danger! But Miss Fanshawe is well worth your writing of (let me say that I am sensible warmly of that) as one of the most witty of our wits in verse, men or women. I have only seen manuscript copies of some of her verses, and that years ago, but they struck me very much; and really I do not remember another female wit worthy to sit beside her, even in French literature. Motherwell is a true poet. But oh, I don’t believe in your John Clares, Thomas Davises, Whittiers, Hallocks — and still less in other names which it would be invidious to name again. How pert I am! But you give me leave to be pert, and you know the meaning of it all, after all. Your editor quarrelled a little with me once, and I with him, about the ‘poetesses of the united empire,’ in whom I couldn’t or wouldn’t find a poet, though there are extant two volumes of them, and Lady Winchilsea at the head. I hold that the writer of the ballad of ‘Robin Gray’ was our first poetess rightly so called, before Joanna Baillie.

  Mr. Lever is in Florence, I believe, now, and was at the Baths of Lucca in the summer. We never see him; it is curious. He made his way to us with the sunniest of faces and cordialest of manners at Lucca; and I, who am much taken by manner, was quite pleased with him, and wondered how it was that I didn’t like his books. Well, he only wanted to see that we had the right number of eyes and no odd fingers. Robert, in return for his visit, called on him three times, I think, and I left my card on Mrs. Lever. But he never came again — he had seen enough of us, he cou
ld put down in his private diary that we had neither claw nor tail; and there an end, properly enough. In fact, he lives a different life from ours: he in the ballroom and we in the cave, nothing could be more different; and perhaps there are not many subjects of common interest between us. I have seen extracts in the ‘Examiner’ from Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’ which seemed to me exquisitely beautiful and pathetical. Oh, there’s a poet, talking of poets. Have you read Wordsworth’s last work — the legacy? With regard to the elder Miss Jewsbury, do you know, I take Mr. Chorley’s part against you, because, although I know her only by her writings, the writings seem to me to imply a certain vigour and originality of mind, by no means ordinary. For instance, the fragments of her letters in his ‘Memorials of Mrs. Hemans’ are much superior to any other letters almost in the volume — certainly to Mrs. Hemans’s own. Isn’t this so? And so you talk, you in England, of Prince Albert’s ‘folly,’ do you really? Well, among the odd things we lean to in Italy is to an actual belief in the greatness and importance of the future exhibition. We have actually imagined it to be a noble idea, and you take me by surprise in speaking of the general distaste to it in England. Is it really possible? For the agriculturists, I am less surprised at coldness on their part; but do you fancy that the manufacturers and free-traders are cold too? Is Mr. Chorley against it equally? Yes, I am glad to hear of Mrs. Butler’s success — or Fanny Kemble’s, ought I to say? Our little Wiedeman, who can’t speak a word yet, waxes hotter in his ecclesiastical and musical passion. Think of that baby (just cutting his eyeteeth) screaming in the streets till he is taken into the churches, kneeling on his knees to the first sound of music, and folding his hands and turning up his eyes in a sort of ecstatical state. One scarcely knows how to deal with the sort of thing: it is too soon for religious controversy. He crosses himself, I assure you. Robert says it is as well to have the eyeteeth and the Puseyistical crisis over together. The child is a very curious imaginative child, but too excitable for his age, that’s all I complain of ... God bless you, my much loved friend. Write to

  Your ever affectionate

  E.B.B.

  What books by Soulié have appeared since his death? Do you remember? I have just got ‘Les Enfants de l’Amour,’ by Sue. I suppose he will prove in it the illegitimacy of legitimacy, and vice versâ. Sue is in decided decadence, for the rest, since he has taken to illustrating Socialism!

  To Miss I. Blagden

  [Florence:] Sunday morning [about 1850].

  My dear Miss Blagden, — In spite of all your drawing kindness, we find it impossible to go to you on Monday. We are expecting friends from Rome who will remain only a few days, perhaps, in Florence. Now it seems to me that you very often pass our door. Do you not too often leave the trace of your goodness with me? And would it not be better of you still, if you would at once make use of us and give us pleasure by pausing here, you and Miss Agassiz, to rest and refresh yourselves with tea, coffee, or whatever else you may choose? We shall be delighted to see you always, and don’t fancy that I say so out of form or ‘tinkling cymbalism.’

  Thank you for your intention about the ‘Leader.’ Robert and I shall like much to see anything of John Mill’s on the subject of Socialism or any other. By the ‘British Review,’ do you mean the North British? I read a clever article in that review some months ago on the German Socialists, ably embracing in its analysis the fraternity in France, and attributed, I have since heard, to Dr. Hanna, the son-in-law and biographer of Chalmers. Christian Socialists are by no means a new sect, the Moravians representing the theory with as little offence and absurdity as may be. What is it, after all, but an out-of-door extension of the monastic system? The religious principle, more or less apprehended, may bind men together so, absorbing their individualities, and presenting an aim beyond the world; but upon merely human and earthly principles no such system can stand, I feel persuaded, and I thank God for it. If Fourierism could be realised (which it surely cannot) out of a dream, the destinies of our race would shrivel up under the unnatural heat, and human nature would, in my mind, be desecrated and dishonored — because I do not believe in purification without suffering, in progress without struggle, in virtue without temptation. Least of all do I consider happiness the end of man’s life. We look to higher things, have nobler ambitions.

  Also, in every advancement of the world hitherto, the individual has led the masses. Thus, to elicit individuality has been the object of the best political institutions and governments. Now, in these new theories, the individual is ground down into the multitude, and society must be ‘moving all together if it moves at all’ — restricting the very possibility of progress by the use of the lights of genius. Genius is always individual.

  Here’s a scribble upon grave matters! I ought to be acknowledging instead your scrupulous honesty, as illustrated by five-franc pieces and Tuscan florins. Make us as useful as you can do, for the future; and please us by coming often. I am afraid your German Baroness could not make an arrangement with you, as you do not mention her. Give our best regards to Miss Agassiz, and accept them yourself, dear Miss Blagden, from

  Your affectionate

  ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

  To Mr. Westwood

  Florence: Thursday, December 12, 1850.

  My dear Mr. Westwood, — Your book has not reached us yet, and so if I waited for that, to write, I might wait longer still. But I don’t wait for that, because you bade me not to do so, and besides we have only this moment finished reading ‘In Memoriam,’ and it was a sort of miracle with us that we got it so soon....

  December 13. — The above sentences were written yesterday, and hardly had they been written when your third letter came with its enclosure. How very kind you are to me, and how am I to thank you enough! If you had not sent me the ‘Athenaeum’ article I never should have seen it probably, for my husband only saw it in the reading room, where women don’t penetrate (because in Italy we can’t read, you see), and where the periodicals are kept so strictly, like Hesperian apples, by the dragons of the place, that none can be stolen away even for half an hour. So he could only wish me to catch sight of that article — and you are good enough to send it and oblige us both exceedingly. For which kindness thank you, thank you! The favor shown to me in it is extreme, and I am as grateful as I ought to be. Shall I ask the ‘Note and Query’ magazine why the ‘Athenaeum’ does show me so much favor, while, as in a late instance, so little justice is shown to my husband? It’s a problem, like another. As for poetry, I hope to do better things in it yet, though I have a child to ‘stand in my sunshine,’ as you suppose he must; but he only makes the sunbeams brighter with his glistening curls, little darling — and who can complain of that? You can’t think what a good, sweet, curious, imagining child he is. Half the day I do nothing but admire him — there’s the truth. He doesn’t talk yet much, but he gesticulates with extraordinary force of symbol, and makes surprising revelations to us every half-hour or so. Meanwhile Flush loses nothing, I assure you. On the contrary, he is hugged and kissed (rather too hard sometimes), and never is permitted to be found fault with by anybody under the new régime. If Flush is scolded, Baby cries as matter of course, and he would do admirably for a ‘whipping-boy’ if that excellent institution were to be revived by Young England and the Tractarians for the benefit of our deteriorated generations. I was ill towards the end of last summer, and we had to go to Siena for the sake of getting strength again, and there we lived in a villa among a sea of little hills, and wrapt up in vineyards and olive yards, enjoying everything. Much the worst of Italy is, the drawback about books. Somebody said the other day that we ‘sate here like posterity’ — reading books with the gloss off them. But our case in reality is far more dreary, seeing that Prince Posterity will have glossy books of his own. How exquisite ‘In Memoriam’ is, how earnest and true; after all, the gloss never can wear off books like that.

  And as to your book, it will come, it will come, and meantime I may assure you that poster
ity is very impatient for it. The Italian poem will be read with the interest which is natural. You know it’s a more than doubtful point whether Shakespeare ever saw Italy out of a vision, yet he and a crowd of inferior writers have written about Venice and vineyards as if born to the manner of them. We hear of Carlyle travelling in France and Germany — but I must leave room for the words you ask for from a certain hand below.

  Ever dear Mr. Westwood’s obliged and faithful

  E.B.B.

  And the ‘certain hand’ will write its best (and far better than any poor ‘Pippa Passes’) in recording a feeling which does not pass at all, that of gratitude for all such generous sympathy as dear Mr. Westwood’s for E.B.B. and (in his proper degree) R. BROWNING.

  To Miss Mitford

  Florence: December 13, 1850.

  Did I write a scolding letter, dearest Miss Mitford? So much the better, when people deserve to be scolded. The worst is, however, that it sometimes does them no sort of good, and that they will sit on among the ruins of Carthage, let ever so many messages come from Italy. My only hope now is, that you will have a mild winter in England, as we seem likely to have it here; and that in the spring, by the help of some divine interposition of friends supernaturally endowed (after the manner of Mr. Chorley), you may be made to go away into a house with fast walls and chimneys. Certainly, if you could be made to write, anything else is possible. That’s my comfort. And the other’s my hope, as I said; and so between hope and consolation I needn’t scold any more. Let me tell you what I have heard of Mrs. Gaskell, for fear I should forget it later. She is connected by marriage with Mrs. A.T. Thompson, and from a friend of Mrs. Thompson’s it came to me, and really seems to exonerate Chapman & Hall from the charge advanced against them. ‘Mary Barton’ was shown in manuscript to Mrs. Thompson, and failed to please her; and, in deference to her judgment, certain alterations were made. Subsequently it was offered to all or nearly all the publishers in London and rejected. Chapman & Hall accepted and gave a hundred pounds, as you heard, for the copyright of the work; and though the success did not, perhaps (that is quite possible), induce any liberality with regard to copies, they gave another hundred pounds upon printing the second edition, and it was not in the bond to do so. I am told that the liberality of the proceeding was appreciated by the author and her friends accordingly — and there’s the end of my story. Two hundred pounds is a good price — isn’t it? — for a novel, as times go. Miss Lynn had only a hundred and fifty for her Egyptian novel, or perhaps for the Greek one. Taking the long run of poetry (if it runs at all), I am half given to think that it pays better than the novel does, in spite of everything. Not that we speak out of golden experience; alas, no! We have had not a sou from our books for a year past, the booksellers being bound of course to cover their own expenses first. Then this Christmas account has not yet reached us. But the former editions paid us regularly so much a year, and so will the present ones, I hope. Only I was not thinking of them, in preferring what may strike you as an extravagant paradox, but of Tennyson’s returns from Moxon last year, which I understand amounted to five hundred pounds. To be sure, ‘In Memoriam’ was a new success, which should not prevent our considering the fact of a regular income proceeding from the previous books. A novel flashes up for a season and does not often outlast it. For ‘Mary Barton’ I am a little, little disappointed, do you know. I have just done reading it. There is power and truth — she can shake and she can pierce — but I wish half the book away, it is so tedious every now and then; and besides I want more beauty, more air from the universal world — these classbooks must always be defective as works of art. How could I help being disappointed a little when Mrs. Jameson told me that ‘since the “Bride of Lammermoor,” nothing had appeared equal to “Mary Barton”?’ Then the style of the book is slovenly, and given to a kind of phraseology which would be vulgar even as colloquial English. Oh, it is a powerful book in many ways. You are not to set me down as hypercritical. Probably the author will, write herself clear of many of her faults: she has strength enough. As to ‘In Memoriam,’ I have seen it, I have read it — dear Mr. Kenyon had the goodness to send it to me by an American traveller — and now I really do disagree with you, for the book has gone to my heart and soul; I think it full of deep pathos and beauty. All I wish away is the marriage hymn at the end, and that for every reason I wish away — it’s a discord in the music. The monotony is a part of the position — (the sea is monotonous, and so is lasting grief.) Your complaint is against fate and humanity rather than against the poet Tennyson. Who that has suffered has not felt wave after wave break dully against one rock, till brain and heart, with all their radiances, seemed lost in a single shadow? So the effect of the book is artistic, I think, and indeed I do not wonder at the opinion which has reached us from various quarters that Tennyson stands higher through having written it. You see, what he appeared to want, according to the view of many, was an earnest personality and direct purpose. In this last book, though of course there is not room in it for that exercise of creative faculty which elsewhere established his fame, he appeals heart to heart, directly as from his own to the universal heart, and we all feel him nearer to us — I do — and so do others. Have you read a poem called ‘the Roman’ which was praised highly in the ‘Athenaeum,’ but did not seem to Robert to justify the praise in the passages extracted? written by somebody with certainly a nom de guerre — Sidney Yendys. Observe, Yendys is Sidney reversed. Have you heard anything about it, or seen? The ‘Athenaeum’ has been gracious to me beyond gratitude almost; nothing could by possibility be kinder. A friend of mine sent me the article from Brussels — a Mr. Westwood, who writes poems himself; yes, and poetical poems too, written with an odorous, fresh sense of poetry about them. He has not original power, more’s the pity: but he has stayed near the rose in the ‘sweet breath and buddings of the spring,’ and although that won’t make anyone live beyond spring-weather, it is the expression of a sensitive and aspirant nature; and the man is interesting and amiable — an old correspondent of mine, and kind to me always. From the little I know of Mr. Bennett, I should say that Mr. Westwood stood much higher in the matter of gifts, though I fear that neither of them will make way in that particular department of literature selected by them for action. Oh, my dearest friend, you may talk about coteries, but the English society at Florence (from what I hear of the hum of it at a distance) is worse than any coterie-society in the world. A coterie, if I understand the thing, is informed by a unity of sentiment, or faith, or prejudice; but this society here is not informed at all. People come together to gamble or dance, and if there’s an end, why so much the better; but there’s not an end in most cases, by any manner of means, and against every sort of innocence. Mind, I imply nothing about Mr. Lever, who lives irreproachably with his wife and family, rides out with his children in a troop of horses to the Cascine, and yet is as social a person as his joyous temperament leads him to be. But we live in a cave, and peradventure he is afraid of the damp of us — who knows? We know very few residents in Florence, and these, with chance visitors, chiefly Americans, are all that keep us from solitude; every now and then in the evening somebody drops in to tea. Would, indeed, you were near! but should I be satisfied with you ‘once a week,’ do you fancy. Ah, you would soon love Robert. You couldn’t help it, I am sure. I should be soon turned down to an underplace, and, under the circumstances, would not struggle. Do you remember once telling me that ‘all men are tyrants’? — as sweeping an opinion as the Apostle’s, that ‘all men are liars.’ Well, if you knew Robert you would make an exception certainly. Talking of the artistical English here, somebody told me the other day of a young Cambridge or Oxford man who deducted from his researches in Rome and Florence that ‘Michael Angelo was a wag.’ Another, after walking through the Florentine galleries, exclaimed to a friend of mine, ‘I have seen nothing here equal to those magnificent pictures in Paris by Paul de Kock.’ My friend humbly suggested that he might mean Paul de la Roche. But see w
hat English you send us for the most part. We have had one very interesting visitor lately, the grandson of Goethe. He did us the honour, he said, of spending two days in Florence on our account, he especially wishing to see Robert on account of some sympathy of view about ‘Paracelsus.’ There can scarcely be a more interesting young man — quite young he seems, and full of aspiration of the purest kind towards the good and true and beautiful, and not towards the poor laurel crowns attainable from any possible public. I don’t know when I have been so charmed by a visitor, and indeed Robert and I paid him the highest compliment we could, by wishing, one to another, that our little Wiedeman might be like him some day. I quite agree with you about the church of your Henry. It surprises me that a child of seven years should find pleasure even once a day in the long English service — too long, according to my doxy, for matured years. As to fanaticism, it depends on a defect of intellect rather than on an excess of the adoring faculty. The latter cannot, I think, be too fully developed. How I shall like you to see our Wiedeman! He is a radiant little creature, really, yet he won’t talk; he does nothing but gesticulate, only making his will and pleasure wonderfully clear and supreme, I assure you. He’s a tyrant, ready made for your theory. If your book is ‘better than I expect,’ what will it be? God bless you! Be well, and love me, and write to me, for I am your ever affectionate