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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
+(1 of 2), by Frederic G. Kenyon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2)
+
+Author: Frederic G. Kenyon
+
+Release Date: July 25, 2004 [EBook #13018]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING LETTERS, VOL. 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Jonathan Ingram, Bill Hershey and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Elizabeth Barrett Browning]
+
+
+
+
+THE LETTERS
+OF
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
+
+
+EDITED WITH BIOGRAPHICAL ADDITIONS
+BY
+FREDERIC G. KENYON
+
+_WITH PORTRAITS_
+
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES
+
+VOLUME I.
+
+_THIRD EDITION_
+
+
+1898
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The writer of any narrative of Mrs. Browning's life, or the editor of
+a collection of her letters, is met at the outset of his task by the
+knowledge that both Mrs. Browning herself and her husband more than,
+once expressed their strong dislike of any such publicity in regard to
+matters of a personal and private character affecting themselves. The
+fact that expressions to this effect are publicly extant is one which
+has to be faced or evaded; but if it could not be fairly faced, and
+the apparent difficulty removed, the present volumes would never
+have seen the light. It would be a poor qualification for the task of
+preparing a record of Mrs. Browning's life, to be willing therein to
+do violence to her own expressed wishes and those of her husband. But
+the expressions to which reference has been made are limited, either
+formally or by implication, to publications made during their own
+lifetime. They shrank, as any sensitive person must shrink, from
+seeing their private lives, their personal characteristics, above
+all, their sorrows and bereavements, offered to the inspection and
+criticism of the general public; and it was to such publications that
+their protests referred. They could not but be aware that the details
+of their lives would be of interest to the public which read and
+admired their works, and there is evidence that they recognised that
+the public has some claims with regard to writers who have appealed
+to, and partly lived by, its favour. They only claimed that during
+their own lifetime their feelings should be consulted first; when they
+should have passed away, the rights of the public would begin.
+
+It is in this spirit that the following collection of Mrs. Browning's
+letters has now been prepared, in the conviction that the lovers of
+English literature will be glad to make a closer and more intimate
+acquaintance with one--or, it may truthfully be said, with two--of
+the most interesting literary characters of the Victorian age. It is a
+selection from a large mass of letters, written at all periods in Mrs.
+Browning's life, which Mr. Browning, after his wife's death, reclaimed
+from the friends to whom they had been written, or from their
+representatives. No doubt, Mr. Browning's primary object was to
+prevent publications which would have been excessively distressing
+to his feelings; but the letters, when once thus collected, were
+not destroyed (as was the case with many of his own letters), but
+carefully preserved, and so passed into the possession of his son,
+Mr. R. Barrett Browning, with whose consent they are now published. In
+this collection are comprised the letters to Miss Browning (the poet's
+sister, whose consent has also been freely given to the publication),
+Mr. H.S. Boyd, Mrs. Martin, Miss Mitford, Mrs. Jameson, Mr. John
+Kenyon, Mr. Chorley, Miss Blagden, Miss Haworth, and Miss Thomson
+(Madame Emil Braun).[1] To these have been added a number of letters
+which have been kindly lent by their possessors for the purpose of the
+present volumes.
+
+[Footnote 1: Mrs. Sutherland-Orr had access to these letters for her
+biography of Robert Browning, and quotes several passages from
+them. With this exception, none of the letters have been published
+previously; and the published letters of Miss Barrett to Mr. R.H.
+Horne have not been drawn upon, except for biographical information.]
+
+
+The duties of the editor have been mainly those of selection and
+arrangement. With regard to the former task one word is necessary. It
+may be thought that the almost entire absence of bitterness (except on
+certain political topics), of controversy, of personal ill feeling
+of any kind, is due to editorial excisions. This is not the case.
+The number of passages that have been removed for fear of hurting the
+feelings of persons still living is almost infinitesimal; and in
+these the cause of offence is always something inherent in the facts
+recorded, not in the spirit in which they are mentioned. No person had
+less animosity than Mrs. Browning; it seems as though she could hardly
+bring herself to speak harshly of anyone. The omissions that have been
+made are almost wholly of passages containing little or nothing of
+interest, or repetitions of what has been said elsewhere; and
+they have been made with the object of diminishing the bulk and
+concentrating the interest of the collection, never with the purpose
+of modifying the representation of the writer's character.
+
+The task of arranging the letters has been more arduous owing to Mrs.
+Browning's unfortunate habit of prefixing no date's, or incomplete
+ones, to her letters. Many of them are dated merely by the day of the
+week or month, and can only be assigned to their proper place in the
+series on internal evidence. In some cases, however, the envelopes
+have been preserved, and the date is then often provided by the
+postmarks. These supply fixed points by which the others can be
+tested; and ultimately all have fallen into line in chronological
+order, and with at least approximate dates to each letter.
+
+The correspondence, thus arranged in chronological order, forms an
+almost continuous record of Mrs. Browning's life, from the early
+days in Herefordshire to her death in Italy in 1861; but in order to
+complete the record, it has been thought well to add connecting links
+of narrative, which should serve to bind the whole together into the
+unity of a biography. It is a chronicle, rather than a biography in
+the artistic sense of the term; a chronicle of the events of a life in
+which there were but few external events of importance, and in which
+the subject of the picture is, for the most part, left to paint her
+own portrait, and that, moreover, unconsciously. Still, this is a
+method which may be held to have its advantages, in that it can hardly
+be affected by the feelings or prejudices of the biographer; and if
+it does not present a finished portrait to the reader, it provides him
+with the materials from which he can form a portrait for himself. The
+external events are placed upon record, either in the letters or in
+the connecting links of narrative; the character and opinions of Mrs.
+Browning reveal themselves in her correspondence; and her genius is
+enshrined in her poetry. And these three elements make up all that may
+be known of her personality, all with which a biographer has to deal.
+
+It is essentially her character, not her genius, that is presented
+to the reader of these letters. There are some letter-writers whose
+genius is so closely allied with their daily life that it shines
+through into their familiar correspondence with their friends, and
+their letters become literature. Such, in their very different ways,
+with very different types of genius and very different habits of daily
+life, are Gray, Cowper, Lamb, perhaps Fitzgerald. But letter-writers
+such as these are few. More often the correspondence of men and women
+of letters is valuable for the light it throws upon the character and
+opinions of those whose character and opinions we are led to regard
+with admiration or respect, or at least interest, on account of their
+other writings. In these cases it may be held that the publication
+is justifiable or not, according as the character which it reveals is
+affected favourably or the reverse. Not all truth, even about famous
+men, is useful for publication, but only such as enables us to
+appreciate better the works which have made them famous. Their highest
+selves are expressed in their literary work; and it is a poor service
+to truth to insist on bringing to light the fact that they also had
+lower selves--common, dull, it may be vicious. What illustrates their
+genius and enhances our respect for their character, may rightly be
+made known; but what shakes our belief and mars our enjoyment in them,
+is simply better left in obscurity.
+
+With regard to Mrs. Browning, however, there is no room for doubt
+upon these points. These letters, familiarly written to her private
+friends, without the smallest idea of publication, treating of the
+thoughts that came uppermost in the ordinary language of conversation,
+can lay no claim to make a new revelation of her genius. On the other
+hand, perhaps because the circumstances of Mrs. Browning's life
+cut her off to an unusual extent from personal intercourse with her
+friends, and threw her back upon letter-writing as her principal means
+of communication with them, they contain an unusually full revelation
+of her character. And this is not wholly unconnected with her literary
+genius, since her personal convictions, her moral character, entered
+more fully than is often the case into the composition of her poetry.
+Her best poetry is that which is most full of her personal emotions.
+The 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' the 'Cry of the Children,'
+'Cowper's Grave,' the 'Dead Pan,' 'Aurora Leigh,' and all the Italian
+poems, owe their value to the pure and earnest character, the strong
+love of truth and right, the enthusiasm on behalf of what is oppressed
+and the indignation against all kinds of oppression and wrong, which
+were prominent elements in a personality of exceptional worth and
+beauty.
+
+An editor can generally serve his readers best by remaining in the
+background; but he is allowed one moment for the expression of his
+personal feelings, when he thanks those who have assisted him in his
+work. In the present case there are many to whom it is a pleasure to
+offer such thanks. In the first place, I have to thank Mr. R. Barrett
+Browning and Miss Browning most cordially for having accepted the
+proposal of the publishers (Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., to whom
+likewise my gratitude is due) to put so pleasant and congenial a
+task into my hands. Mr. Browning has also contributed a number of
+suggestions and corrections while the sheets have been passing through
+the press. I have also to thank those who have been kind enough to
+offer letters in their possession for inclusion in these volumes: Lady
+Alwyne Compton for the letters to Mr. Westwood; Mrs. Arthur Severn
+for the letters to Mr. Ruskin; Mr. G.L. Craik for the letters to Miss
+Mulock; Mrs. Commeline for the letters to Miss Commeline; Mr. T.J.
+Wise for the letters to Mr. Cornelius Mathews; Mr. C. Aldrich for
+the letter to Mrs. Kinney; Col. T.W. Higginson for a letter to Miss
+Channing; and the Rev. G. Bainton for a letter to Mr. Kenyon. It
+has not been possible to print all the letters which have been thus
+offered; but this does not diminish the kindness of the lenders, nor
+the gratitude of the editor.
+
+Finally, I should wish to offer my sincere thanks to Lady Edmond
+Fitzmaurice for much assistance and advice in the selection and
+revision of the letters; a labour which her friendship with Mr.
+Browning towards the close of his life has prompted her to bestow most
+freely and fully upon this memorial of his wife.
+
+F.G.K.
+
+_July 1897_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+1806-1835
+
+Birth--Hope End--Early Poems--Sidmouth--'Prometheus'
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+1835-1841
+
+London--Magazine Poems--'The Seraphim and other Poems'--Torquay--Death
+of Edward Barrett--Return to London
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+1841-1843
+
+Wimpole Street--'The Greek Christian Poets'--'The English
+Poets'--'The New Spirit of the Age'--Miscellaneous Letters
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+1844-1846
+
+The 'Poems' of 1844--Miss Martineau and Mesmerism--Pro-posed
+Journey to Italy
+
+CHAPTER V
+1846-1849
+
+Friendship with Robert Browning--Love and Marriage--Paris
+and Pisa--Florence--Vallombrosa--Casa Guidi--Italian Politics
+in 1848
+
+CHAPTER VI
+1849-1851
+
+Birth of a Son--Death of Mrs. Browning, senior--Bagni di
+Lucca--New Edition of Poems--Siena--Florentine Life
+
+PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. _Frontispiece_ CASA GUIDI
+
+
+
+
+THE LETTERS
+OF
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+1806-1835
+
+
+Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, still better known to the world as
+Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was born on March 6, 1806, the eldest
+child of Edward and Mary Moulton Barrett. I Both the date and place
+of her birth have been matters of uncertainty and dispute, and even so
+trustworthy an authority as the 'Dictionary of National Biography' is
+inaccurate with respect to them. All doubt has, however, been set at
+rest by the discovery of the entry of her birth in the parish register
+of Kelloe Church, in the county of Durham.[2] She was born at Coxhoe
+Hall, the residence of Mr. Barrett's only brother, Samuel, about
+five miles south of the city of Durham. Her father, whose name was
+originally Edward Barrett Moulton, had assumed the additional surname
+of Barrett on the death of his maternal grandfather, to whose estates
+in Jamaica he was the heir. Of Mr. Barrett it is recorded by Mr.
+Browning, in the notes prefixed by him to the collected edition of his
+wife's poems, that 'on the early death of his father he was brought
+from Jamaica to England when a very young child, as a ward of the
+late Chief Baron Lord Abinger, then Mr. Scarlett, whom he frequently
+accompanied in his post-chaise when on circuit. He was sent to Harrow,
+but received there so savage a punishment for a supposed offence
+(burning the toast)'--which, indeed, has been a 'supposed offence' at
+other schools than Harrow--'by the youth whose fag he had become, that
+he was withdrawn from the school by his mother, and the delinquent
+was expelled. At the age of sixteen he was sent by Mr. Scarlett to
+Cambridge, and thence, for an early marriage, went to Northumberland.'
+His wife was Miss Mary Graham-Clarke, daughter of J. Graham-Clarke,
+of Fenham Hall, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but of her nothing seems to be
+known, and her comparatively early death causes her to be little heard
+of in the record of her daughter's life.
+
+[Footnote 2: See _Notes and Queries_ for July 20, 1889, supplemented
+by a note from Mr. Browning himself in the same paper on August 24.]
+
+Nothing is to be gained by trying to trace back the genealogy of the
+Barrett family, and it need merely be noted that it had been
+connected for some generations with the island of Jamaica, and owned
+considerable estates there.[3] It is a curious coincidence that Robert
+Browning was likewise in part of West Indian descent, and so, too, was
+John Kenyon, the lifelong friend of both, by whose means the poet and
+poetess were first introduced to one another.
+
+[Footnote 3: These estates still remain in the family, and Mr. Charles
+Barrett, the eldest surviving brother of Mrs. Browning, now lives
+there.]
+
+The family of Mr. Edward Barrett was a fairly large one, consisting,
+besides Elizabeth, of two daughters, Henrietta and Arabel, and eight
+sons--Edward, whose tragic death at Torquay saddened so much of his
+sister's life, Charles (the 'Stormie' of the letters), Samuel, George,
+Henry, Alfred, Septimus, and Octavius; Mr. Barrett's inventiveness
+having apparently given out with the last two members of his family,
+reducing him to the primitive method of simple enumeration, an
+enumeration in which, it may be observed, the daughters counted for
+nothing. Not many of these, however, can have been born at Coxhoe; for
+while Elizabeth was still an infant--apparently about the beginning
+of the year 1809--Mr. Barrett removed to his newly purchased estate
+of Hope End, in Herefordshire, among the Malvern hills, and only a few
+miles from Malvern itself. It is to Hope End that the admirers of Mrs.
+Browning must look as the real home of her childhood and youth. Here
+she spent her first twenty years of conscious life. Here is the scene
+of the childish reminiscences which are to be found among her earlier
+poems, of 'Hector in the Garden,' 'The Lost Bower,' and 'The Deserted
+Garden.' And here too her earliest verses were written, and the
+foundations laid of that omnivorous reading of literature of all sorts
+and kinds, which was so strong a characteristic of her tastes and
+leanings.
+
+On this subject she may be left to tell her own tale. In a letter
+written on October 5, 1843, to Mr. R.H. Horne, she furnishes him with
+the following biographical details for his study of her in 'The New
+Spirit of the Age.' They supply us with nearly all that we know of her
+early life and writings.
+
+'And then as to stories, my story amounts to the knife-grinder's, with
+nothing at all for a catastrophe. A bird in a cage would have as good
+a story, Most of my events, and nearly all my intense pleasures, have
+passed in my _thoughts_. I wrote verses--as I dare say many have done
+who never wrote any poems--very early; at eight years old and earlier.
+But, what is less common, the early fancy turned into a will, and
+remained with me, and from that day to this, poetry has been a
+distinct object with me--an object to read, think, and live for. And I
+could make you laugh, although you could not make the public laugh,
+by the narrative of nascent odes, epics, and didactics crying aloud on
+obsolete muses from childish lips. The Greeks were my demi-gods, and
+haunted me out of Pope's Homer, until I dreamt more of Agamemnon than
+of Moses the black pony. And thus my great "epic" of eleven or twelve
+years old, in four books, and called "The Battle of Marathon," and of
+which fifty copies were printed because papa was bent upon spoiling
+me--is Pope's Homer done over again, or rather undone; for, although a
+curious production for a child, it gives evidence only of an
+imitative faculty and an ear, and a good deal of reading in a peculiar
+direction. The love of Pope's Homer threw me into Pope on one side and
+into Greek on the other, and into Latin as a help to Greek--and the
+influence of all these tendencies is manifest so long afterwards as
+in my "Essay on Mind," a didactic poem written when I was seventeen or
+eighteen, and long repented of as worthy of all repentance. The poem
+is imitative in its form, yet is not without traces of an individual
+thinking and feeling--the bird pecks through the shell in it. With
+this it has a pertness and pedantry which did not even then belong to
+the character of the author, and which I regret now more than I do the
+literary defectiveness.
+
+'All this time, and indeed the greater part of my life, we lived at
+Hope End, a few miles from Malvern, in a retirement scarcely broken to
+me except by books and my own thoughts, and it is a beautiful country,
+and was a retirement happy in many ways, although the very peace of it
+troubles the heart as it looks back. There I had my fits of Pope, and
+Byron, and Coleridge, and read Greek as hard under the trees as some
+of your Oxonians in the Bodleian; gathered visions from Plato and the
+dramatists, and eat and drank Greek and made my head ache with it. Do
+you know the Malvern Hills? The hills of Piers Plowman's Visions? They
+seem to me my native hills; for, although I was born in the county of
+Durham, I was an infant when I went first into their neighbourhood,
+and lived there until I had passed twenty by several years. Beautiful,
+beautiful hills they are! And yet, not for the whole world's beauty
+would I stand in the sunshine and the shadow of them any more. It
+would be a mockery, like the taking back of a broken flower to its
+stalk.'[4]
+
+[Footnote 4: R.H. Horne, _Letters of E.B. Browning_, i. 158-161.]
+
+So, while the young Robert Browning was enthusiastically declaiming
+passages of Pope's Homer, and measuring out heroic couplets with
+his hand round the dining table in Camberwell, Elizabeth Barrett was
+drinking from the same fount of inspiration among the Malvern Hills,
+and was already turning it to account in the production of her first
+epic. The fifty copies of the 'Battle of Marathon,' which Mr. Barrett,
+proud of his daughter's precocity, insisted on having printed, bear
+the date of 1819. Only five of them are now known to exist, and these
+are all in private hands; even the British Museum possesses only the
+reprint which the hero-worship of the present generation caused to be
+produced in 1891. Seven years later, when she had just reached the
+age of twenty, her first volume of verse was offered to the world
+in general. It was entitled 'An Essay on Mind, and other Poems,' and
+included, besides the didactic poem after the manner of Pope which
+formed the _pièce de rèsistance_, a number of shorter pieces, several
+of which, as she informed Horne,[5] had been written when she was not
+more than thirteen.
+
+[Footnote 5: R.H. Horne, _Letters of E.B. Browning_, i. 164.]
+
+It was during the years at Hope End that Elizabeth Barrett was
+first attacked by serious illness. 'At fifteen,' she says in her
+autobiographical letter, already quoted in part, 'I nearly died;' and
+this may be connected with a statement by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, to
+the effect that 'one day, when Elizabeth was about fifteen, the young
+girl, impatient for her ride, tried to saddle her pony alone, in a
+field, and fell with the saddle upon her, in some way injuring her
+spine so seriously that she was for years upon her back.'[6] The
+latter part of this statement cannot indeed be quite accurate; for
+her period of long confinement to a sick-room was of later date, and
+began, according to her own statement, from a different cause. Mr.
+R. Barrett Browning states that the injury to the spine was not
+discovered for some time, but was afterwards attributed, not to a
+fall, but to a strain whilst tightening her pony's girths. No doubt
+this injury contributed towards the general weakness of health to
+which she was always subject.
+
+[Footnote 6: _Dict. of Nat. Biography_, vii. 78.]
+
+Of her earliest letters, belonging to the Hope End period, very few
+have been preserved, and most of those which remain are of little
+interest. The first to be printed here belongs to the period of her
+mother's last illness, which ended in her death on October 1, 1828. It
+is addressed to Mrs. James Martin, a lifelong friend, whose name will
+appear frequently in these pages. At the time when it was written she
+was living near Tewkesbury, within visiting distance of the Barretts.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Hope End: Thursday, [about September 1828].
+
+My dear Mrs. Martin,--I am happy to be able to tell you that Mr.
+Garden was here two days ago, and that he has not thought it necessary
+to adopt any violent measure with regard to our beloved invalid.
+He seems entirely to rely, for her ultimate restoration, upon a
+discipline as to diet, and a course of strengthening medicine. This
+is most satisfactory to us; and her spirits have been soothed and
+tranquillised by his visit. She has slept quietly for the last few
+nights, and reports herself to be _brisker_ and stronger, and to
+be comparatively free from pain. This account is, perhaps, too
+favorable,[7] and will appear so to you when you see her, as I am
+afraid you will, not looking much better, _much_ more cheerful, than
+when you paid us your last visit. But when we are very _willing_ to
+hope, we are apt to be too _ready_ to hope: though really, without
+being _too_ sanguine, we may consider quiet nights and diminished pain
+to be satisfactory signs of amendment. I know you will be glad to hear
+of them, and I hope you will _witness_ them very soon, in spite of
+this repulsive snow. It will do mama good, and I am sure it will give
+us all pleasure, to benefit by some of your charitable pilgrimages
+over the hill.
+
+With our best regards, and sincerest thanks for your kind interest
+
+Believe me, dear Mrs. Martin, most truly yours,
+
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 7: Mrs. Browning usually spells such words as 'favour,'
+'honour,' and the like, without the _u_, after the fashion which one
+is accustomed to regard as American.]
+
+
+
+_To Miss Commeline_
+Hope End: Monday, [October 1828].
+
+My dear Miss Commeline,--Thank you for the sympathy and interest
+which you have extended towards us in our heavy affliction. Even _you_
+cannot know _all_ that we have lost; but God knows, and it has pleased
+Him to take away the blessing that He gave. And all _must_ be right
+since He doeth all! Indeed we did not foresee this great grief! If we
+had we could not have felt it less; but I should not then have been
+denied the consolation of being with her at the last.
+
+It is idle to speak now of such thoughts, and circumstances have
+unquestionably been rightly and mercifully ordered. We are all well
+and composed--poor papa supporting us by his own surpassing fortitude.
+It is an inexpressible comfort to me to witness his calmness.
+
+I cannot say that we shall not be glad to see you, but the weather is
+dreary and the distance long: and if you were to come, we might not be
+able to meet you and to speak to you with calmness. In that case you
+would receive a melancholy impression which I should like to spare
+you. Perhaps it would be better for you and less selfish in us, if
+we were to defer this meeting a little while longer--but do what you
+prefer doing! I can never forget the regard and esteem entertained for
+you by one whose tenderness and watchfulness I have felt every day
+and hour since she gave me that life which her loss embitters--whose
+memory is more precious to me than any earthly blessing left behind; I
+have written what is ungrateful, and what I ought not to have written,
+and what I ought not to feel, and do not always feel, but I did not
+just then remember that I had so much left to love.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Boyd_
+Hope End: Saturday morning, [1828-1832].
+
+My dear Mrs. Boyd,--You were quite wrong in supposing that papa was
+likely to complain about 'the number of letters from Malvern;' and as
+to my doing so, why did you suggest that? To fill up a sentence, or
+to conjure up some kind of limping excuse for idle people? Among
+idle people, perhaps you have written _me_ down. But the reason of
+my silence was far more reasonable than yours. I have been engaged in
+alternately wishing in earnest and wishing in vain for the power of
+saying when I could go to Malvern--and in being unwell besides. For
+the last week I have not been at all well, and indeed was obliged
+yesterday to go to bed after breakfast instead of after tea, where
+I contrived to abstract myself out of a good deal of pain into Lord
+Byron's Life by Moore. To-day this abstraction is not necessary; I am
+much better; and, indeed, little remains of the indisposition but
+the _vulgar fractions_ of a cough and cold. I dare say (and Occyta[8]
+agrees with me) cold was at the bottom of it all, for I was so very
+wise as to lie down upon the grass last Monday, when the sun was
+shining deceitfully, though the snow was staring at me from the
+hedges, with an expression anything but dog-daysical!
+
+Henrietta's face-ache is quite well, and I don't mean to give any more
+bulletins to-day. I hope your 'tolerably well' is turned into 'quite
+well' too by this time.
+
+In reply to your query, I will mention that _the existence_ actually
+extended until Thursday without the visit here--a phenomenon in
+physics and metaphysics. I was desired by a note a short time
+previously, 'to embrace all my circle with the utmost tenderness,'
+_as proxy_. Considering the extent of the said circle, this was a very
+comprehensive request, and a very unreasonable one to offer to anyone
+less than the hundred-armed Indian god Baly. I am glad that
+your alternative of a house is so near to the right side of the
+turnpike--in which case, a _miss_ is certainly not as _bad_ as
+a _mile_. May Place is to be vacated in May, though its present
+inhabitants do not leave Malvern. I mention this to you, but pray
+don't _re-mention_ it to anybody. The rent is 15£. Mr. Boyd[9] will
+not be angry with me for not going to see him sooner than I can. At
+least, I am sure he ought not. Though you are all kind enough to wish
+me to go, I always think and know (which is consolatory to everything
+but my vanity) that no one can wish it half as much as I myself do.
+
+Believe me, dear Mrs. Boyd, affectionately yours,
+
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 8: Octavius, her youngest brother.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Hugh Stuart Boyd, the blind scholar whose friendship with
+Elizabeth Barrett is commemorated in her poem, 'Wine of Cyprus,'
+and in three sonnets expressly addressed to him. He was at this time
+living at Great Malvern, where Miss Barrett frequently visited him,
+reading and discussing Greek literature with him, especially the works
+of the Greek Christian Fathers. But to call him her tutor, as has more
+than once been done, is a mistake: see Miss Barrett's letter to; him
+of March 3, 1845. Her knowledge of Greek was due to her volunteering
+to share her brother Edward's work under his tutor, Mr. MacSwiney.]
+
+
+The fear 1832 brought a great change in the fortunes of the Barrett
+family, and may be said to mark the end of the purely formative period
+in Elizabeth Barrett's life. Hitherto she had been living in the home
+and among the surroundings of her childhood, absorbing literature
+rather than producing it; or if producing it, still mainly for her own
+amusement and instruction, rather than with any view of appealing to
+the general public. But in 1832 this home was broken up by the sale,
+of Hope End,[10] and with the removal thence we seem to find
+her embarking definitely on literature as the avowed pursuit and
+occupation of her life. Sidmouth in Devonshire was the place to which
+the Barrett family now removed, and the letters begin henceforth to be
+longer and more frequent, and to tell a more connected tale.
+
+[Footnote 10: Mr. Ingram, in his _Life of E.B. Browning_ ('Eminent
+Women' Series) connects this fact with the abolition of colonial
+slavery, and a consequent decrease in Mr. Barrett's income; but since
+the abolition only took place in 1833, while Hope End was given up in
+the preceding year, this conclusion does not appear to be certain.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+[Sidmouth: September 1832.]
+
+How can I thank you enough, dearest Mrs. Martin, for your letter?
+How kind of you to write so soon and so very kindly! The postmark and
+handwriting were in themselves pleasant sights to me, and the kindness
+yet more welcome. Believe that I am grateful to you for _all_ your
+kindness--for your kindness now, and your kindness in the days which
+are past. Some of those past days were very happy, and some of them
+very sorrowful--more sorrowful than even our last days at dear, dear
+Hope End. _Then_, I well recollect, though I could not then thank you
+as I ought, how you _felt for_ us and _with_ us. Do not think I can
+ever forget _that time_, or _you_. I had written a note to you, which
+the bearer of Bummy's and Arabel's to Colwall[11] omitted to take.
+Afterwards I thought it best to spare you any more farewells, which
+are upon human lips, of all words, the most natural, and of all the
+most painful.
+
+They told us of our having past your carriage in Ledbury. Dear
+Mrs. Martin, I cannot dwell upon the pain of that first hour of our
+journey; but you will know what it must have been. The dread of it,
+for some hours before, was almost worse; but it is all over now,
+blessed be God. Before the first day's journey was at end, we felt
+inexpressibly relieved--relieved from the restlessness and anxiety
+which have so long oppressed us--and now we are calmer and happier
+than we have been for very long. If we could only have papa and Bro
+and Sette[12] with us! About half an hour before we set off, papa
+found out that he _could not_ part with Sette, who sleeps with
+him, and is always an amusing companion to him. Papa was, however,
+unwilling to separate him perforce from his little playfellows, and
+asked him whether he wished very much to go. Sette's heart was quite
+full, but he answered immediately, 'Oh, no, papa, I would _much_
+rather stay with _you_.' He is a dear affectionate little thing. He
+and Bro being with poor Papa, we are far more comfortable about him
+than we should otherwise be--and perhaps our going was his sharpest
+pang. I hope it was, as it is over. Do not think, dear Mrs. Martin,
+that you or Mr. Martin can ever 'intrude'--you know you use that
+word in your letter. I have often been afraid, on account of papa not
+having been for so long a time at Colwall, lest you should fancy that
+he did not value your society and your kindness. Do not fancy it.
+Painful circumstances produce--as we have often had occasion to
+observe--different effects upon different minds; and some feeling,
+with which I certainly have no sympathy has made papa shrink from
+society of any kind lately. He would not even attend the religious
+societies in Ledbury, which he was so much pledged to support, and so
+interested in supporting. If you knew how much he has talked of you,
+and asked every particular about you, you could not fancy that his
+regard for you was estranged. He has an extraordinary degree of
+strength of mind on most points--and strong feeling, when it is not
+allowed to run in the natural channel, will sometimes force its way
+where it is not expected. You will think it strange; but never up to
+this moment has he even alluded to the subject, before _us_--never, at
+the moment of parting with us. And yet, though he had not power to say
+_one word_, he could play at cricket with the boys on the very last
+evening.
+
+We slept at the York House in Bath. Bath is a beautiful town _as
+a town_, and the country harmonises well with it, without being a
+beautiful country. As _mere country_, nobody would stand still to look
+at it; though as town country, many bodies would. Somersetshire in
+general seems to be hideous, and I could fancy from the walls which
+intersect it in every direction, that they had been turned to stone
+by looking at the _Gorgonic_ scenery. The part of Devonshire through
+which our journey lay is nothing _very_ pretty, though it must be
+allowed to be beautiful after Somersetshire. We arrived here almost
+in the dark, and were besieged by the crowd of disinterested
+tradespeople, who _would_ attend us through the town to our house, to
+help to unload the carriages. This was not a particularly agreeable
+reception in spite of its cordiality; and the circumstance of there
+being not a human being in our house, and not even a rushlight
+burning, did not reassure us. People were tired of expecting us every
+day for three weeks. Nearly the whole way from Honiton to this place
+is a descent. Poor dear Bummy said she thought we were going into
+the _bowels of the earth_, but suspect she thought we were going
+much deeper. Between you and me, she does not seem _delighted_ with
+Sidmouth; but her spirits are a great deal better, and in time she
+will, I dare say, be better pleased. _We_ like very much what we have
+seen of it. The town is small and not superfluously clean, but, of
+course, the respectable houses are not a part of the town. Ours is one
+which the Grand Duchess Helena had, not at all _grand_, but extremely
+comfortable and cheerful, with a splendid sea view in front, and
+pleasant green, hills and trees behind. The drawing-room's four
+windows all look to the sea, and I am never tired of looking out of
+them. I was doing so, with a most hypocritical book before me, when
+your letter arrived, and I _felt_ all that you said in it. I always
+thought that the sea was the sublimest object in nature. Mont
+Blanc--Niagara must be nothing to it. _There_, the Almighty's form
+glasses itself in tempests--and not only in tempests, but in calm--in
+space, in eternal motion, in eternal regularity. How can we look at
+it, and consider our puny sorrows, and not say, 'We are dumb--because
+_Thou_ didst it'? Indeed, dear Mrs. Martin, we must feel every hour,
+and we shall feel every year, that what He did is _well done_--and not
+only well, but mercifully.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. H----, with whom papa is slightly acquainted, have
+called upon us, and shown us many kind attentions. They are West India
+people, not very polished, but certainly _very_ good-natured. We hear
+that the place is extremely full and gay; but this is, of course, only
+an _on dit_ to us at present. I have been riding a donkey two or three
+times, and enjoy very much going to the edge of the sea. The air has
+made me sleep more soundly than I have done for some time, and I dare
+say it will do me a great deal of good in every way.
+
+You may suppose what a southern climate this is, when I tell you that
+myrtles and verbena, three or four feet high, and hydrangeas are in
+flower in the gardens--even in ours, which is about a hundred and
+fifty yards from the sea. I have written to the end of my paper. Give
+our kindest regards to Mr. Martin, and ever believe me,
+
+Your affectionate and grateful
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 11: The Martins' home near Malvern, about a mile from Hope
+End.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Her brothers Edward and Septimus.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+[Sidmouth:] Wednesday, September 27, 1832 [postmark].
+
+How very kind of you, dearest Mrs. Martin, to write to me so much at
+length and at such a time. Indeed, it was exactly the time when, if
+we were where we have been, we should have wished you to walk over
+the hill and talk to us; and although, after all that the most zealous
+friends of letter writing can say for it, it is _not_ such a happy
+thing as talking with those you care for, yet it is the next happiest
+thing. I am sure I thought so when I read your letter ...
+
+And now I must tell you about ourselves. Papa and Bro and Sette have
+made us so much happier by coming, and we have the comfort of seeing
+dear papa in good spirits, and not only satisfied but pleased with
+this place. It is scarcely possible, at least it seems so to me, to do
+otherwise than admire the beauty of the country. It is the very land
+of green lanes and pretty thatched cottages. I don't mean the kind of
+cottages which are generally thatched, with pigstyes and cabbages and
+dirty children, but thatched cottages with verandas and shrubberies,
+and sounds from the harp or piano coming through the windows. When
+you stand upon any of the hills which stand round Sidmouth, the whole
+valley seems to be thickly wooded down to the very verge of the sea,
+and these pretty villas to be springing from the ground almost as
+thickly and quite as naturally as the trees themselves. There are
+certainly many more houses out of the town than in it, and they all
+stand apart, yet near, hiding in their own shrubberies, or behind the
+green rows of elms which wall in the secluded lanes on either side.
+Such a number of green lanes I never saw; some of them quite black
+with foliage, where it is twilight in the middle of the day, and
+others letting in beautiful glimpses of the spreading heathy hills
+or of the sunny sea. I am sure you would like the transition from the
+cliffs, from the bird's eye view to, I was going to say, the mole's
+eye view, but I believe moles don't see quite clearly enough to suit
+my purpose. There are a great number of people here. Sam was at an
+evening party a week ago where there were a hundred and twenty people;
+but they don't walk about the parade and show themselves as one might
+expect. _We_ know only the Herrings and Mrs. and the Miss Polands
+and Sir John Kean. Mrs. and Miss Weekes, and Mr. and Mrs. James have
+called upon us, but we were out when they came. I suppose it will be
+necessary to return their visits and to know them; and when we do,
+you shall hear about them, and about everybody whom we know. I
+am certainly much better in health, stronger than I was, and less
+troubled with the cough. Every day I attend [_word torn out_]
+their walks on my donkey, if we do not go in a boat, which is still
+pleasanter. I believe Henrietta walks out about _three_ times a day.
+She is looking particularly well, and often talks, and I am sure still
+oftener thinks, of you. You know how fond of you she is. Papa walks
+out with her--and _us_; and we all, down to
+
+Occyta, breakfast and drink tea together. The dining takes place at
+five o'clock. To-morrow, if this lovely weather will stand still and
+be accommodating, we talk of rowing to Dawlish, which is about ten
+miles off. We have had a few cases of cholera, at least _suspicious_
+cases: one a fortnight before we arrived, and five since, in
+the course of a month. All dead except one. I confess a little
+nervousness; but it is wearing away. The disease does not seem to make
+any progress; and for the last six days there have been no patients at
+all.
+
+Do let us hear very soon, my dear Mrs. Martin, how you are--how your
+spirits are, and whether Rome is still in your distance. Surely no
+plan could be more delightful for you than this plan; and if you don't
+stay _very_ long away, I shall be sorry to hear of your abandoning it.
+Do you recollect your promise of coming to see us? _We_ do.
+
+You must have had quite enough now of my 'little hand' and of my
+details. Do not go to Matton or to the Bartons or to Eastnor without
+giving my love. How often my thoughts are at _home_! I cannot help
+calling it so still in my thoughts. I may like other places, but no
+other place can ever appear to me to deserve that name.
+
+Dearest Mrs. Martin's affectionate
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Sidmouth: December 14, 1832.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I hope you are very angry indeed with us for
+not writing. We are as penitent as we ought to be--that is, I am,
+for I believe I am the idle person; yet not altogether idle, but
+procrastinating and waiting for news rather more worthy of being read
+in Rome than any which even now I can send you.... And now, my dear
+Mrs. Martin, I mean to thank you, as I ought to have done long ago,
+for your kindness in offering to procure for me the _Archbishop of
+Dublin's_[13] valuable opinion upon my 'Prometheus. I am sure that if
+you have not thought me very ungrateful, you must be very indulgent.
+My mind was at one time so crowded by painful thoughts, that they shut
+out many others which are interesting to me; and among other things, I
+forgot once or twice, when I had an opportunity, to thank _you_, dear
+Mrs. Martin. I believe I should have taken advantage of your proposal,
+but papa said to me, 'If he criticises your manuscript in a manner
+which does not satisfy you, you won't be easy without defending
+yourself, and he might be drawn into taking more trouble than you
+have now any idea of giving him.' I sighed a little at losing such an
+opportunity of gaining a great advantage, but there seemed to be some
+reason in what papa said I have completed a preface and notes to my
+translation; and since doing so, a work of exactly the same character
+by a Mr. Medwin has been published, and commended in Bulwer's
+magazine.[14] Therefore it is probable enough that my trouble,
+excepting as far as my own amusement went, has been in vain. But papa
+means to try Mr. Valpy, I believe. He left us since I began to write
+this letter, with a promise of returning before Christmas Day. We
+_do_ miss him. Mr. Boyd has made me quite angry by publishing his
+translations by rotation in numbers of the 'Wesleyan Magazine,'
+instead of making them up into a separate publication, as I had
+persuaded him to do. There is the effect, you see, of going, even for
+a time, out of my reach! The readers of the 'Wesleyan Magazine' are
+pious people, but not cultivated, nor, for the most part, capable of
+estimating either the talents of Gregory or his translator's. I have
+begun already to _insist_ upon another publication in a separate form,
+and shall gain my point, I dare say. I have been reading Bulwer's
+novels and Mrs. Trollope's libels, and Dr. Parr's works. I am sure
+_you_ are not an admirer of Mrs. Trollope's. She has neither the
+delicacy nor the candour which constitute true nobility of mind and
+her extent of talent forms but a scanty veil to shadow her other
+defects. Bulwer has quite delighted me. He has all the dramatic talent
+which Scott has, and all the passion which Scott has not, and
+he appears to me to be besides a far profounder discriminator of
+character. There are very fine things in his 'Denounced.' We subscribe
+to the best library here, but the best is not a good one. I have,
+however, a table-load of my own books, and with them I can always be
+satisfied. Do you know that Mr. Curzon has left Ledbury? We were glad
+to receive your letter from Dover although it told us that you were
+removing so far from us. Do let us hear of your enjoying Italy. Is
+there much English society in Rome, and is it like English society
+here? I can scarcely fancy an invitation card, 'Mrs. Huggin-muggin at
+home,' carried through the _Via Sacra_. I am sure my 'little hand' has
+done its duty to-day. I shall leave the corners to Henrietta. Give
+our kindest regards to Mr. Martin, and ever believe me, my dear Mrs.
+Martin,
+
+Your affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 13: Archbishop Whately.]
+
+[Footnote 14: _The New Monthly Magazine_, at this time edited by
+Bulwer, afterwards the first Lord Lytton.]
+
+
+The letter just printed contains the first allusion in Miss Barrett's
+letters to any of her own writings. The translation of the 'Prometheus
+Bound' of Aeschylus was the first-fruits of the removal to Sidmouth.
+It was written, as she told Horne eleven years afterwards, 'in twelve
+days, and should have been thrown into the fire afterwards--the only
+means of giving it a little warmth.'[15] Indeed, so dissatisfied
+did she subsequently become with it, that she did what she could to
+suppress it, and in the collected edition of 1850 substituted another
+version, written in 1845, which she hoped would secure the final
+oblivion of her earlier attempt.[16] The letter given above shows that
+the composition of the earlier version took place at the end of 1832;
+and in the following year it was published by Mr. Valpy, along with
+some shorter poems, of which Miss Barrett subsequently wrote that 'a
+few of the fugitive poems may be worth a little, perhaps; but they
+have not so much goodness as to overcome the badness of the blasphemy
+of Aeschylus.' The volume, which was published anonymously, received
+two sentences of contemptuous notice from the 'Athenaeum,' in which
+the reviewer advised 'those who adventure in the hazardous lists of
+poetic translation to touch anyone rather than Aeschylus, and they may
+take warning by the author before us.'[17]
+
+[Footnote 15: _Letters to R.H. Home_, i. 162.]
+
+[Footnote 16: It need hardly be said that the literary resurrectionist
+has been too much for her, and the version of 1833 has recently
+been reprinted. Of this reprint the best that can be said is that it
+provides an occasion for an essay by Mrs. Meynell.]
+
+[Footnote 17: _Athenaeum_, June 8, 1833.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Sidmouth: May 27, 1833.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I am half afraid of your being very angry
+indeed with me; and perhaps it would be quite as well to spare this
+sheet of paper an angry look of yours, by consigning it over to
+Henrietta. Yet do believe me, I have been anxious to write to you a
+long time, and did not know where to direct my letter. The history
+of all my unkindness to you is this: I delayed answering your kind
+welcome letter from Rome, for three weeks, because Henrietta was at
+Torquay, and I knew that she would like to write in it, and because
+I was unreasonable enough to expect to hear every day of her coming
+home. At the end of the three weeks, and on consulting your dates and
+plans, I found out that you would probably have quitted Rome before
+any letter of mine arrived there. Since then, I have been inquiring,
+and all in vain, about where I could find you out. All I could hear
+was, that you were somewhere between Italy and England; and all I
+could do was, to wait patiently, and throw myself at your feet as soon
+as you came within sight and hearing. And now do be as generous as you
+can, my dear Mrs. Martin, and try to forgive one who never _could_ be
+guilty of the fault of forgetting you, notwithstanding appearances. We
+heard only yesterday of your being expected at Colwall. And although
+we cannot welcome you there, otherwise than in this way, at the
+distance of 140 miles, yet we must welcome you in this way, and assure
+both of you how glad we are that the same island holds all of us once
+more. It pleased us very much to hear how you were enjoying yourselves
+in Rome; and you must please us now by telling us that you are
+enjoying yourselves at Colwall, and that you bear the change with
+English philosophy. The fishing at Abbeville was a link between
+the past and the present; and would make the transition between the
+eternal city and the eternal tithes a little less striking. My wonder
+is how you could have persuaded yourselves to keep your promise and
+leave Italy as soon as you did. Tell me how you managed it. And tell
+me everything about yourselves--how you are and how you feel, and
+whether you look backwards or forwards with the most pleasure, and
+whether the influenza has been among your welcomers to England.
+Henrietta and Arabel and Daisy[18] were confined by it to their beds
+for several days and the two former are only now recovering their
+strength. Three or four of the other boys had symptoms which were not
+strong enough to put them to bed. As for me, I have been quite well
+all the spring, and almost all the winter. I don't know when I have
+been so long well as I have been lately; without a cough or anything
+else disagreeable. Indeed, if I may place the influenza in a
+parenthesis, we have all been perfectly well, in spite of our
+fishing and boating and getting wet three times a day. There is good
+trout-fishing at the Otter, and the noble river Sid, which, if I liked
+to stand in it, _might_ cover my ankles. And lately, Daisy and
+Sette and Occyta have studied the art of catching shrimps, and soak
+themselves up to their waists like professors. My love of water
+concentrates itself in the boat; and this I enjoy very much, when the
+sea is as blue and calm as the sky, which it has often been lately. Of
+society we have had little indeed; but Henrietta had more than much
+of it at Torquay during three months; and as for me, you know I don't
+want any though I am far from meaning to speak disrespectfully of _Mr.
+Boyds_, which has been a pleasure and comfort to me. His house is
+not farther than a five minutes' walk from ours; and I often make it
+_four_ in my haste to get there. Ask Eliza Cliffe to lend you the May
+number of the 'Wesleyan Magazine;' and if you have an opportunity of
+procuring last December's number, _do_ procure _that_. There are
+some translations in each of them, which I think you will like. The
+December translation is my favourite, though I was amanuensis only
+in the May one. Henrietta and Arabel have a drawing master, and are
+meditating soon beginning to sketch out of doors--that is, if before
+the meditation is at an end we do not leave Sidmouth. Our plans are
+quite uncertain; and papa has not, I believe, made up his mind whether
+or not to take this house on after the beginning of next month;
+when our engagement with our present landlord closes. If we do leave
+Sidmouth, you know as well as I do where we shall go. Perhaps to
+Boulogne! perhaps to the Swan River. The West Indians are irreparably
+ruined if the Bill passes. Papa says that in the case of its passing,
+nobody in his senses would think of even attempting the culture of
+sugar, and that they had better hang weights to the sides of the
+island of Jamaica and sink it at once. Don't you think certain heads
+might be found heavy enough for the purpose? No insinuation, I assure
+you, against the Administration, in spite of the dagger in their right
+hands. Mr. Atwood seems to me a demi-god of ingratitude! So much for
+the 'fickle reek of popular breath' to which men have erected their
+temple of the winds--who would trust a feather to it? I am almost more
+sorry for poor Lord Grey who is going to ruin us, than for our poor
+selves who are going to be ruined. You will hear that my 'Prometheus
+and other Poems' came into light a few weeks ago--a fortnight ago, I
+think. I dare say I shall wish it out of the light before I have done
+with it. And I dare say Henrietta is wishing me anywhere, rather than
+where I am. Certainly I have past _all bounds_. Do write soon, and
+tell us everything about Mr. Martin and yourself. And ever believe me,
+dearest Mrs. Martin,
+
+Your affectionate
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 18: Alfred, the fifth brother.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Sidmouth: September 7, 1833.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Are you a _little_ angry _again_? I do hope
+not. I should have written long ago if it had not been for Henrietta;
+and Henrietta would have written very lately if it had not been for
+me: and we must beg of you to forgive us both for the sake of each
+other. Thank you for the kind letter which I have been so tardy in
+thanking you for, but which was not, on that account, the less gladly
+received. Do believe how much it pleases me _always_ to see and read
+dear Mrs. Martin's handwriting. But I must try to tell you some
+less ancient truths. We are still in the ruinous house. Without any
+poetical fiction, the walls are too frail for even _me_, who enjoy the
+situation in a most particularly particular manner, to have any desire
+to pass the winter within them. One wind we have had the privilege of
+hearing already; and down came the tiles while we were at dinner, and
+made us all think that down something else was coming. We have had
+one chimney pulled down to prevent it from tumbling down; and have
+received especial injunctions from the bricklayers not to lean too
+much out of the windows, for fear the walls should follow the destiny
+of the chimney. Altogether there is every reasonable probability
+that the whole house will in the course of next winter be as like
+Persepolis as anything so ugly can be! If another house which will fit
+us can be found in Sidmouth, I am sure papa will take it; but, as he
+said the other day, 'If I can't find a house, I must go.' I hope he
+may find one, and as near the sea as this ruin. I have enjoyed its
+moonlight and its calmness all the summer; and am prepared to enjoy
+its tempestuousness of the winter with as true an enjoyment. What we
+shall do ultimately, I do not even dream; and, if I know papa, _he_
+does not. My visions of the future are confined to 'what shall I
+write or read next,' and 'when shall we next go out in the boat,' and
+_they_, you know, can do no harm to anybody. Of one thing I have a
+comforting certainty--that wherever we may go or stay, the decree
+which moves or fixes us will and must be the 'wisest virtuousest
+discreetest best!' ...
+
+So, I will change the subject to myself. You told me that you were
+going to read my book, and I want to know what you think of it. If you
+were given to compliment and insincerity, I should be afraid of asking
+you; because, among other _evident_ reasons, I might then appear to
+be asking for your praise instead of your opinion. As it is--I want to
+know what you think of my book. Is the translation stiff? If you know
+me at all (and I venture to hope that you do) you will be certain that
+I shall _like_ your honesty, and love you for being honest, even if
+you put on the very blackest of black caps....
+
+Of course you know that the late Bill has ruined the West Indians.
+That is settled. The consternation here is very great. Nevertheless I
+am glad, and always shall be, that the negroes are--virtually--free!
+
+May God bless you, dear Mrs. Martin!
+Ever believe me, your affectionate
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Sidmouth: Friday [1834].
+
+My dear Friend,--I don't know how I shall begin to persuade you not to
+be angry with me, but perhaps the best plan will be to confess as many
+sins as would cover this sheet of paper, and then to go on with my
+merits. Certainly I am altogether guiltless of your charge of not
+noticing your book's arrival because no Calvinism arrived with it.
+I told you the bare truth when I told you _why_ I did not write
+immediately. The passage relating to Calvinism I certainly read,
+and as certainly was sorry for; but as certainly as both those
+certainties, such reading and such regret had nothing whatever to do
+with the silence which made you so angry with me.
+
+The other particular thing of which I should have written is Mr.
+Parker and my letters. I am more and, more sorry that you should have
+sent them to him at all--not that their loss is any loss to anybody,
+but that I scarcely like the idea--indeed, I don't like it at all--of
+their remaining, worthless as they are, at Mr. P.'s mercy. As for
+my writing about them, I should not be able to make up my mind to
+do _that_. You know I had nothing to do with their being sent to Mr.
+Parker, and was indeed in complete ignorance of it. Besides, I should
+be half ashamed to write to him now on any subject. A very long
+interregnum took place in our correspondence, which was his own work;
+and when he wrote to me the summer before last, I delayed from week
+to week, and then from month to month, answering it. And now I feel
+ashamed to write at all.
+
+Perhaps you will wonder why I am not ashamed to write to _you_. Indeed
+I have meant to do it very, very often. Don't be severe upon me. I am
+always afraid of writing to you too often, and so the opposite fault
+is apt to be run into--of writing too seldom. IF THAT is a _fault_.
+You see my scepticism is becoming faster and faster developed.
+
+Let me hear from you soon, if you are not angry. I have been reading
+the Bridgewater treatise, and am now trying to understand Prout upon
+Chemistry. I shall be worth something at last, shall I not? Who knows
+but what I may die a glorious death under the _pons asinorum_ after
+all? Prout (if I succeed in understanding him) does not hold that
+matter is infinitely divisible; and so I suppose the seeds of
+matter--the ultimate molecules--are a kind of _tertium quid_ between
+matter and spirit. Certainly I can't believe that any kind of matter,
+primal or ultimate, can be _indivisible_, which it must according to
+his view.
+
+Chalmers's treatise is, as to eloquence, surpassingly beautiful; as to
+matter, I could not walk with him all the way, although I longed to
+do it, for he walked on flowers, and under shade--'no tree on which a
+fine bird did not sit.' ...
+
+Believe me, your affectionate friend,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Sidmouth: September 14, [1834].
+
+My dear Mr. Boyd,--I won't ask you to forgive me for not writing
+before, because I know very well that you would rather have not heard
+from me immediately.... And so, you and Mrs. Mathew have been tearing
+to pieces--to the very rags--all my elaborate theology! And when Mr.
+Young is 'strong enough,' he is to help you at your cruel work! 'The
+points upon which you and I differed' are so numerous, that if I
+really _am_ wrong upon every one of them, Mrs. Mathew has indeed
+reason to 'punish me with hard thoughts.' Well, she can't help my
+feeling for her much esteem, although I never saw her. And if I _were_
+to see her, I would not argue with her; I would only ask her to let me
+love her. I am weary of controversy in religion, and should be so
+were I stronger and more successful in it than I am or care to be. The
+command is not 'argue with one another,' but 'love one another.' It
+is better to love than to convince. They who lie on the bosom of Jesus
+must lie there _together_!
+
+Not a word about your book![19] Don't you mean to tell me anything
+of it? I saw a review of it--rather a satisfactory one--I think in an
+_August_ number of the 'Athenaeum.' If you will look into 'Fraser's
+Magazine' for August, at an article entitled 'Rogueries of Tom Moore,'
+you will be amused with a notice of the 'Edinburgh Review's' criticism
+in the text, and of yourself in a note. We have had a crowded Bible
+meeting, and a Church Missionary and London Missionary meeting
+besides; and I went last Tuesday to the Exmouth Bible meeting with
+Mrs. Maling, Miss Taylor, and Mr. Hunter. We did not return until
+half-past one in the morning.... The Bishop of Barbadoes and the Dean
+of Winchester were walking together on the beach yesterday, making
+Sidmouth look quite episcopal. You would not have despised it _half so
+much_, had you been here.
+
+Do you know any person who would like to send his or her son to
+Sidmouth, for the sake of the climate, and private instruction: and
+if you do, will you mention it to me? I am very sorry to hear of Mrs.
+Boyd being so unwell. Arabel had a letter two days ago from Annie, and
+as it mentions Mrs. Boyd's having gone to Dover, I trust that she is
+well again. Should she be returned, give my love to her.
+
+The black-edged paper may make you wonder at its cause. Our dear
+aunt Mrs. Butler died last month at Dieppe--and died _in Jesus_. Miss
+Clarke is going, if she is not gone, to Italy for the winter.
+
+Believe me, affectionately yours,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+Write to me whenever you _dislike it least_, and tell me what your
+plans are. I hear nothing about our leaving Sidmouth.
+
+[Footnote 19: _The Fathers not Papists_, including a reprint of some
+translations from the Greek Fathers, which Mr. Boyd had published
+previously.]
+
+
+_To Miss Commeline_
+September 22, 1834 [Sidmouth].
+
+I am afraid that there can be no chance of my handwriting at least
+being unforgotten by you, dear Miss Commeline, but in the case of your
+having a very long memory you may remember the name which shall be
+written at the end of this note, and which belongs to one who does
+not, nor is likely to forget you! I was much, _much_ obliged to you
+for the kind few lines you wrote to me--how long ago! No, do not
+remember how long--do not remember _that_ for fear you should think me
+unkind, and--what I am not! I have intended again and again to answer
+your note, and I am doing it--_at last_! Are you all quite well? Mrs.
+Commeline and all of you? Shall I ever see any of you again? Perhaps
+I shall not; but even if I do not, I shall not cease to wish you to be
+well and happy 'in the body or out of the body.'
+
+We came to Sidmouth for two months, and you see we are here still; and
+when we are likely to go is as uncertain as ever. I like the place,
+and some of its inhabitants. I like the greenness and the tranquillity
+and the sea; and the solitude of one dear seat which hangs over it,
+and which is too far or too lonely for many others to like besides
+myself. We are living in a thatched cottage, with a green lawn bounded
+by a _Devonshire lane_. Do you know what that is? Milton did when he
+wrote of 'hedgerow elms and hillocks green.' Indeed Sidmouth is a nest
+among elms; and the lulling of the sea and the shadow of the hills
+make it a peaceful one. But there are no majestic features in the
+country. It is all green and fresh and secluded; and the grandeur is
+concentrated upon the ocean without deigning to have anything to do
+with the earth. I often find my thoughts where my footsteps once used
+to be! but there is no use in speaking of that....
+
+Pray believe me, affectionately yours,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Sidmouth: Friday, December 19, 1834 [postmark].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--... We have lately had deep anxiety with
+regard to our dear papa. He left us two months ago to do his London
+business: and a few weeks since we were told by a letter from him that
+he was ill; he giving us to understand that his complaint was of
+a rheumatic character. By the next coach, we were so daring (I can
+scarcely understand how we managed it) as to send Henry to him:
+thinking that it would be better to be scolded than to suffer him to
+be alone and in suffering at a London hotel. We were not scolded: but
+my prayer to be permitted to follow Henry was condemned to silence:
+and what was said being said emphatically, I was obliged to submit,
+and to be
+
+thankful for the unsatisfactory accounts which for many days
+afterwards we received.... I cannot help being anxious and fearful.
+You know he is _all_ left to us--and that without him we should indeed
+be orphans and desolate. Therefore you may well know what feelings
+those are with which we look back upon his danger; and forwards to any
+threatening of a return of it.... It may not be so. Do not, when you
+write, allude to my fearing about it. Our only feeling now should
+certainly be a deep feeling of thankfulness towards that God of all
+consolation Who has permitted us to know His love in the midst of many
+griefs; and Who while He has often cast upon us the sorrow and the
+shadow, has yet enabled us to recognise it as that 'shadow of the
+wings of the Almighty,' wherein we may 'rejoice.' We shall probably
+see our dear papa next week. At least we know that he is only waiting
+for strength and that he is already able to go out--I fear, not to
+_walk_ out. Here we are all well. Belle Vue is sold, and we shall
+probably have to leave it in March: but I do not think that we shall
+do so before. Henrietta is still very anxious to leave Sidmouth
+altogether; and I still feel that I shall very much grieve to leave
+it: so that it is happy for us that neither is the _decider_ on this
+point. I have often thought that it is happier _not_ to do what one
+pleases, and perhaps you will agree with me--if you don't please at
+the present moment to do something very particular. And do tell me,
+dear Mrs. Martin, what you are pleasing to do, and what you are doing:
+for it seems to me, and indeed is, a long time since I heard of
+you and Mr. Martin _in detail_. Miss Maria Commeline sent a note to
+Henrietta a fortnight ago: and in it was honorable mention of you--but
+I won't interfere with the sublimities of your imagination, by telling
+you what it was.... I should like to hear something of Hope End:
+whether there are many alterations, and whether the new lodge, of
+which I heard, is built. Even now, the thought stands before me
+sometimes like an object in a dream that I shall see no more those
+hills and trees which seemed to me once almost like portions of my
+existence. This is not meant for murmuring. I have had much happiness
+at Sidmouth, though with a character of its own. Henrietta and Arabel
+and I are the only guardians just now of the three youngest boys, the
+only ones at home: and I assure you, we have not too little to do.
+They are no longer _little_ boys. There is an anxiety among us just
+now to have letters from Jamaica--from my dear dear Bro--but the
+packet is only 'expected.' The last accounts were comforting ones;
+and I am living on the hope of seeing him back again in the spring.
+Stormie and Georgie are doing well at Glasgow. So Dr. Wardlaw says....
+Henrietta's particular love to you; and _do_ believe me always,
+
+Your affectionate
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+You have of course heard of poor Mrs. Boyd's death. Mr. Boyd and his
+daughter are both in London, and likely, I think, to remain there.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Sidmouth: Tuesday [spring 1835].
+
+My dear Mr. Boyd,--... Now I am going to tell you the only good news I
+know, and you will be glad, I know, to be told what I am going to
+tell you. Dear Georgie has taken his degree, and very honorably, at
+Glasgow, and is coming to us in all the dignity of a Bachelor of Arts.
+He was examined in Logic, Moral Philosophy, Greek and Latin, of course
+publicly: and we have heard from a fellow student of his, that his
+answers were more pertinent than those of any other of the examined,
+and elicited much applause. Mr. Groube is the fellow student--but he
+has ceased to be one, having found the Glasgow studies too heavy for
+his health. Stormie shrank from the public examination, on account of
+the hesitation in his speech. He would not go up; although, according
+to report, as well qualified as Georgie. Mr. Groube says that the
+ladies of Glasgow are preparing to break their hearts for Georgie's
+departure: and he and Stormie leave Glasgow on May I. Now, I am sure
+you will rejoice with me in the result of the examination. Do you not,
+dear friend? I was very anxious about it; and almost resigned to hear
+of a failure--for Georgie was in great alarm and prepared us for the
+very worst. Therefore the surprise and pleasure were great.
+
+I can't tell you of our plans; although the Glasgow students come to
+us in a week and this house will be too small to receive them. We
+may leave Sidmouth immediately, or not at all. I shall soon be quite
+qualified to write a poem on the 'Pleasures of _Doubt_'--and a very
+good subject it will be. The pleasures of certainty are generally far
+less enjoyable--I mean as pleasures go in this unpleasing world. Papa
+is in London, and much better when we heard from him last--and we are
+awaiting his decree....
+
+And now what remains for me to tell you? I believe I have read more
+Hebrew than Greek lately; yet the dear Greek is not less dear than
+ever. Who reads Greek to you? Who holds my office? Some one, I hope,
+with an articulation of more congenial slowness.
+
+Give Annie my kind love. May God preserve both of you!
+
+Believe me, your affectionate friend,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+1835-1841
+
+The residence of the Barretts at Sidmouth had never been a very
+settled one--never intended to be permanent, and yet never having a
+fixed term nor any reason for a fixed term. Hence it spread itself
+gradually over a space of nearly three years, before the long
+contemplated move to London actually took place. During the latter
+part of that period, however, extant letters of Miss Barrett are
+almost wholly wanting, and there is little information from any other
+source as to the course of her life. It was apparently in the summer
+of 1835 that Sidmouth was finally left behind, Mr. Barrett having
+then taken a house at 74 Gloucester Place (near Baker Street), which,
+though never regarded as more than a temporary residence, continued to
+be the home of his family for the next three years.
+
+The move to London was followed by two results of great importance
+for Elizabeth Barrett. In the first place, her health, which had never
+been strong, broke down altogether in the London atmosphere, and it is
+from some time shortly after the arrival in Gloucester Place that
+the beginning of her invalid life must be dated. On the other hand,
+residence in London brought her into the neighbourhood of new friends;
+and although the number of those admitted to see her in her sick-room
+was always small, we yet owe to this fact the commencement of some of
+her closest friendships, notably those with her distant cousin, John
+Kenyon, and with Miss Mitford, the authoress of 'Our Village,' and of
+a correspondence on a much fuller and more elaborate scale than any of
+the earlier period. To this, no doubt, the fact of her confinement to
+her room contributed not a little; for being unable to go out and see
+her friends, much of her communication with them was necessarily by
+letter. At the same time her literary activity was increasing. She
+began to contribute poems to various magazines, and to be brought
+thereby into connection with literary men; and she was also employed
+on the longer compositions which went to make up her next volume of
+published verse.
+
+All this was, however, only of gradual development; and for some time
+her correspondence is limited to Mr. Boyd, who was now living in St.
+John's Wood, and Mrs. Martin. The exact date of the first letter is
+uncertain, but it seems to belong to a time soon after the arrival of
+the Barretts in town.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[74 Gloucester Place, London: autumn 1835.]
+
+My dear Mr. Boyd,--As Georgie is going to do what I am afraid I shall
+not be able to do to-day--namely, to visit _you_--he must take with
+him a few lines from _Porsonia_ _greeting_, to say how glad I am to
+feel myself again at only a short distance from you, and how still
+gladder I shall be when the same room holds both of us. Don't be angry
+because I have not visited you immediately. You know--or you _will_
+know, if you consider--I cannot open the window and fly.
+
+Papa and I were very much obliged to you for the poison--and are ready
+to smile upon you whenever you give us the opportunity, as graciously
+as Socrates did upon his executioner. How much you will have to say
+to me about the Greeks, unless you begin first to abuse me about
+the _Romans_; and if you begin _that_, the peroration will be a
+very pathetic one, in my being turned out of your doors. Such is my
+prophecy.
+
+Papa has been telling me of your abusing my stanzas on Mrs. Hemans's
+death. I had a presentiment that you would: and behold, why I said
+nothing to you of them. Of course, I maintain, _versus_ both you and
+papa, that they are very much to be admired: as well as everything
+else proceeding from or belonging to ME. Upon which principle, I hope
+you will admire George particularly.
+
+Believe me, dear Mr. Boyd, your affectionate friend,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+Arabel's and my love to Annie. Won't she come to see us?
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+74 Gloucester Place, Portman Square, London: Jan. I, 1836.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I am half willing and half unwilling to write
+to you when, among such dearer interests and deep anxieties, you may
+perhaps be scarcely at liberty to attend to what I write. And yet I
+_will_ write, if it be only briefly, that you may not think--if you
+think of us at all--that we have changed our hearts with our residence
+so much as to forget to sympathise with you, dear Mrs. Martin, or to
+neglect to apprise you ourselves of our movements. Indeed, a letter
+to you should have been written among my first letters on arriving in
+London, only Henrietta (my scape-goat, _you_ will say) said, '_I_ will
+write to Mrs. Martin.' And then after I had waited, and determined
+to write without waiting any longer, we heard of poor Mrs. Hanford's
+affliction and your anxiety, and I have considered day after day
+whether or not I should intrude upon you; until I find myself--_thus_!
+
+I do hope that you have from the hand of God those consolations which
+only He in Jesus Christ can give to the so afflicted. For I know well
+that you are afflicted with the afflicted, and that with you sympathy
+is suffering; and that while the tenderest earthly comfort is
+administered by your presence and kindness to your dear friends, you
+will feel bitterly for them what a little thing earthly comfort is,
+when the earthly beloved perish before them. May He who is the Beloved
+in the sight of His Father and His Church be near to them and you, and
+cause you to _feel_ as well as _know_ the truth, that what is sudden
+sorrow, to our judgments, is only long-prepared mercy in _His_ will
+whose names are _Wisdom_ and _Love_. Should it not be, dear friend,
+that the tears of our human eyes ought to serve the happy and touching
+purpose of reminding us of those tears of Jesus which He shed in
+assuming our sorrow with our flesh? And the memory of those tears
+involves all comfort. A recognition of the oneness of the human nature
+of that Divine Saviour who ever liveth, with ours which perishes and
+sorrows so; an assurance drawn from thence of _His_ sympathy who sits
+on the throne of God, with us who suffer in the dust of earth, and
+of all those doctrines of redemption and sanctification and happiness
+which come from Him and by Him.
+
+Now you will forgive me for writing all this, dearest Mrs. Martin. I
+like to write my thoughts and feelings out of my own head and heart,
+just as they suggest themselves, when I write to you; and I cannot
+think of affliction, particularly when it comes near to me in the
+affliction or anxiety of dear friends, without looking back and
+remembering what voice of God used to sound softly to me when none
+other could speak comfort. You will forgive me, and not be angry with
+me for trying, or seeming to try, to be a sermon writer.
+
+Perhaps, dear Mrs. Martin, when you do feel inclined and able to
+write, you would write me a few lines. Remember, I do not ask for them
+_now_. No, do not think of writing now. I shall very much like to hear
+how your dear charge is--whether there should appear any prospect of
+improvement; and how poor Mrs. Hanford bears up against this heavy
+calamity; and whether the anxiety and nursing affect your health. But
+we shall try to hear this from the Biddulphs; and so do put me out of
+your head, except when its thoughts would dwell on those on earth who
+sympathise with you and care for you.
+
+You see we are in London after all, and poor Sidmouth left afar. I
+am almost inclined to say 'poor us' instead of 'poor Sidmouth.' But
+I dare say I shall soon be able to see in my dungeon, and begin to be
+amused with the spiders. Half my soul, in the meantime, seems to have
+stayed behind on the seashore, which I love more than ever now that I
+cannot walk on it in the body. London is wrapped up like a mummy, in
+a yellow mist, so closely that I have had scarcely a glimpse of its
+countenance since we came. Well, I am trying to like it all very much,
+and I dare say that in time I may change my taste and my senses--and
+succeed. We are in a house large enough to hold us, for four months,
+at the end of which time, if the experiment of our being able to live
+in London succeed, I _believe_ that papa's intention is to take an
+unfurnished house and have his furniture from Ledbury. You may wonder
+at me, but I wish that were settled _so_, and _now_. I am _satisfied_
+with London, although I cannot enjoy it. We are not likely, in the
+case of leaving it, to return to Devonshire, and I should look with
+weary eyes to another strangership and pilgrimage even among green
+fields that know not these fogs. Papa's object in settling here refers
+to my brothers. George will probably enter as a barrister student at
+the Inner Temple on the fifth or sixth of this month, and he will
+have the advantage of his home by our remaining where we are. Another
+advantage of London is, that we shall see here those whom we might see
+nowhere else. This year, dear Mrs. Martin, may it bring with it the
+true pleasure of seeing _you_! Three have gone, and we have not seen
+you.... May God bless you and all that you care for, being with you
+always as the God of consolation and peace.
+
+Your affectionate
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+It is from the middle of this year that Miss Barrett's active
+appearance as an author may be dated. Hitherto her publications had
+been confined to a few small anonymous volumes, printed rather to
+please herself and her friends than with any idea of appealing to a
+wider public. She was now anxious to take this farther step, and, with
+that object, to obtain admission to some of the literary magazines.
+This was obtained through the instrumentality of Mr. R.H. Home,
+subsequently best known as the author of 'Orion.' He was at this
+time personally unknown to Miss Barrett, but an application through a
+common friend led both to the opening to the poetess of the pages of
+the 'New Monthly Magazine,' then edited by Bulwer, and also to the
+commencement of a friendship which has left its mark in the two
+volumes of published letters to Mr. Home. The following is Mr. Home's
+account of the opening of the acquaintance ('Letters,' i. 7, 8):
+
+
+    'My first introduction to Miss Barrett was by a note from Mrs.
+    Orme, inclosing one from the young lady containing a short
+    poem with the modest request to be frankly told whether it
+    might be ranked as poetry or merely verse. As there could be
+    no doubt in the recipient's mind on that point, the poem was
+    forwarded to Colburn's "New Monthly," edited at that time by
+    Mr. Bulwer (afterwards the late [first] Lord Lytton), where it
+    duly appeared in the current number. The next manuscript sent
+    to me was "The Dead Pan," and the poetess at once started on
+    her bright and noble career.'
+
+The poem with which Miss Barrett thus made her bow to the world of
+letters was 'The Romaunt of Margret,'[20] which appeared in the July
+number of the magazine. Mr. Home must, however, have been in error
+in speaking of 'The Dead Pan' as its successor, since that was not
+written till some years later. More probably it was 'The Poet's
+Vow,[21] which was printed in the October number of the 'New Monthly.'
+
+[Footnote 20: _Poetical Works_, ii. 3.]
+
+[Footnote 21: _Ib_. i. 277.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[London:] October 14, Friday [1836].
+
+My dear Friend,--Be as little angry with me as you can. I have not
+been very well for a day or two, and shall enjoy a visit to you on
+Monday so much more than I shall be able to do to-day, that I will ask
+you to forgive my not going to you this week, and to receive me kindly
+on that day instead--provided, you know, it is not wet.
+
+The [Greek: Achaiides] approach the [Greek: Achaioi][22] more
+tremblingly than usual, with the 'New Monthly Magazine' in their
+hands. Now pray don't annoy yourself by reading a single word which
+you would rather not read except for the sake of being kind to me.
+And my prophecy is, that even by annoying yourself and making a
+_strenuous_ effort, the whole force of friendship would not carry you
+down the first page. Georgie says you want to know the verdict of the
+'Athenaeum.' That paper unfortunately has been lent out of the house;
+but my memory enables me to send you the words very correctly, I
+think. After some observations on other periodicals, the writer goes
+on to say: 'The "New Monthly Magazine" has not one heavy article. It
+is rich in poetry, including some fine sonnets by the Corn Law Rhymer,
+and a fine although too dreamy ballad, "The Poet's Vow." We are
+almost tempted to pause and criticise the work of a writer of so much
+inspiration and promise as the author of this poem, and exhort him
+once again, to greater clearness of expression and less quaintness in
+the choice of his phraseology; but this is not the time or place for
+digression.'
+
+You see my critic has condemned me with a very gracious countenance.
+Do put on yours,
+
+And believe me, affectionately yours,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+I forgot to say that you surprised and pleased me at the same time by
+your praise of my 'Sea-mew.'[23] Love to Annie. We were glad to hear
+that she did not _continue_ unwell, and that you are well again, too.
+I hope you have had no return of the rheumatic pain.
+
+[Footnote 22: Miss Barrett's Greek is habitually written without
+accents or breathings.]
+
+[Footnote 23: _Poetical Works_, ii. 278.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[74 Gloucester Place:] Saturday, [October 1836].
+
+My dear Friend,--I am much disappointed in finding myself at the end
+of this week without having once seen you--particularly when your two
+notes are waiting all this time to be answered. Do believe that they
+were not, either of them, addressed to an ungrateful person, and that
+the only reason of their being received _silently_ was my hope of
+answering them more agreeably to both of us--by talking instead of
+writing.
+
+Yes; you have read my mystery.[24]
+
+You paid a tithe to your human nature in reading only _nine-tenths_
+of it, and the rest was a pure gift to your friendship for me, and is
+taken and will be remembered as such. But you have a cruel heart for
+a parody, and this one tried my sensibility so much that I cried--with
+laughing. I confess to you notwithstanding, it was _very fair_, and
+dealt its blow with a shining pointed weapon.
+
+But what will you say to me when I confess besides that, in the face
+of all your kind encouragement, my Drama of the Angels[25] has never
+been touched until the last three days? It was _not_ out of pure
+idleness on my part, nor of disregard to your admonition; but when my
+thoughts were distracted with other things, books just begun inclosing
+me all around, a whole load of books upon my conscience, I could not
+possibly rise up to the gate of heaven and write about my angels.
+You know one can't sometimes sit down to the sublunary, occupation
+of reading Greek, unless one feels _free_ to it. And writing poetry
+requires a double liberty, and an inclination which comes only of
+itself.
+
+But I have begun. I tried the blank metre once, and it _would not
+do_, and so I had to begin again in lyrics. Something above an hundred
+lines is written, and now I am in two panics, just as if one were not
+enough. First, because it seems to me a very daring subject--a subject
+almost beyond our sympathies, and therefore quite beyond the sphere of
+human poetry. Perhaps when all is written courageously, I shall have
+no courage left to publish it. Secondly, because all my tendencies
+towards mysticism will be called into terrible operation by this
+dreaming upon angels.
+
+    Yes; you _will_ read a mystery,
+
+but don't make any rash resolutions about reading anything. As I have
+begun, I certainly will go on with the writing.
+
+Here is a question for you:
+
+Am I to accept your generous sacrifice of reading nine-tenths of my
+'Vow,' as an atonement for your WANT OF CONFIDENCE IN ME? Oh,
+your conscience will understand very well what I mean, without a
+dictionary.
+
+Arabel and I intend to pay you a visit on Monday, and if we can, and
+it is convenient to you, we are inclined to invite ourselves to your
+dinner table. But this is all dependent on the weather.
+
+Believe me, dear Mr. Boyd, your affectionate friend,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 24: An allusion to the first line of 'The Poet's Vow.']
+
+[Footnote 25: The 'Seraphim,' published in 1838.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[74 Gloucester Place:] November 26, 1836 [postmark].
+
+My dear Mr. Boyd,--I have been so busy that I have not been able until
+this morning to take breath or _inspiration_ to answer your lyrics.
+You shall see me soon, but I am sorry to say it can't be Monday or
+Tuesday.
+
+I have had another note from the editor of the 'New Monthly
+Magazine'--very flattering, and praying for farther supplies. The
+Angels were not ready, and I was obliged to send something else, which
+I will not ask you to read. So don't be very uneasy.
+
+Arabel's and my best love to Annie. And believe me in a great hurry,
+for I won't miss this post,
+
+Yours affectionately,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+  Your lyrics found me dull as prose
+  Among a file of papers
+  And analysing London fogs
+  To nothing but the vapours.
+
+  They knew their part; but through the fog
+  Their flaming lightning raising;
+  They missed my fancy, and instead,
+  My choler set a-blazing.
+
+  Quoth I, 'I need not care a pin
+  For charge unjust, unsparing;
+  Yet oh! for ancient bodkin[26] keen,
+  To punish this _Pindáring_.
+
+  'Yet oh! that I, a female Jove,
+  These fogs sublime might float on,
+  Where, eagle-like, my dove might show
+  A very [Greek: _ugron nôton_].[27]
+
+  'Then lightning should for lightning flash,
+  Vexation for vexation,
+  And shades of St. John's Wood should glow
+  In awful conflagration.'
+
+  I spoke; when lo! my birds of peace,
+  The vengeance disallowing,
+  Replied, 'Coo, coo!' But _keep in mind_,
+  That _cooing_ is not _cowing_.[28]
+
+[Footnote 26: The bodkin seems to be a favourite weapon with ancient
+dames whose genius was for killing (note by E.B.B.).]
+
+[Footnote 27: A reference to Pindar, _Pyth_.i. 9.]
+
+[Footnote 28: These verses are inclosed with the foregoing letter, as
+a retort to Mr. Boyd's parody.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+74 Gloucester Place: December 7, 1836.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Indeed I have long felt the need of writing
+to you (I mean the need to myself), and although so many weeks and
+even months have passed away in silence, they have not done so in lack
+of affection and thought.
+
+I had wished very much to have been able to tell you in this letter
+where we had taken our house, or where we were going to take it. We
+remain, however, in our usual state of conscious ignorance, although
+there is a good deal of talking and walking about a house in Wimpole
+Street--which, between ourselves, I am not very anxious to live in,
+on account of the gloominesses of that street, and of that part of the
+street, whose walls look so much like Newgate's turned inside out. I
+would rather go on, in my old way, inhabiting castles in the air than
+that particular house. Nevertheless, if it _is_ decided upon, I dare
+say I shall contrive to be satisfied with it, and sleep and wake very
+much as I should in any other. It will certainly be a point gained
+to be settled somewhere, and I do so long to sit in my own
+armchair--strange as it will look out of my own room--and to read from
+my own books.... For our own particular parts, our healths continue
+good--none of us, I think, the worse for fog or wind. As to wind, we
+were almost elevated into the prerogative of _pigs_ in the late storm.
+We could almost _see_ it, and the feeling it might have been fatal to
+us. Bro and I were moralising about shipwrecks, in the dining-room,
+when down came the chimney through the skylight into the entrance
+passage. You may imagine the crashing effect of the bricks bounding
+from the staircase downwards, breaking the stone steps in the process,
+in addition to the falling in of twenty-four large panes of glass,
+frames and all. We were terrified out of all propriety, and there has
+been a dreadful calumny about Henrietta and me--that we had the hall
+door open for the purpose of going out into the street with our
+hair on end, if Bro had not _encouraged_ us by shutting the door and
+locking it. I confess to opening the door, but deny the purpose of
+it--at least, maintain that I only meant to keep in reserve a way of
+escape, _in case_, as seemed probable, the whole house was on its
+way to the ground. Indeed, we should think much of the _mercy_ of the
+escape. Bro had been on the staircase only five minutes before. Sarah
+the housemaid was actually there. She looked up accidentally and saw
+the nodding chimneys, and ran down into the drawing-room to papa,
+shrieking, but escaping with one graze of the hand from one brick. How
+did _you_ fare in the wind? I never much imagined before that anything
+so true to nature as a real live storm could make itself heard in our
+streets. But it has come too surely, and carried away with it, besides
+our chimney, all that was left to us of the country, in the shape of
+the Kensington Garden trees. Now do write to me, dearest Mrs. Martin,
+and soon, and tell me all you can of your chances and mischances, and
+how Mr. Martin is getting on with the parish, and yourself with the
+parishioners. But you have more the name of living at Colwall than the
+thing. You seem to me to lead a far more wandering life than we,
+for all our homelessness and 'pilgrim shoon.' Why, you have been in
+Ireland since I last said a word to you, even upon paper....
+
+I sometimes think that a pilgrim's life is the wisest--at least, the
+most congenial to the 'uses of this world.' We give our sympathies and
+associations to our hills and fields, and then the providence of God
+gives _them_ to another, It is better, perhaps, to keep a stricter
+_identity_, by calling only our thoughts our own.
+
+Was there anybody in the world who ever loved London for itself? Did
+Dr. Johnson, in his paradise of Fleet Street, love the pavement and
+the walls? I doubt _that_--whether I ought to do so or not--though I
+don't doubt at all that one may be contented and happy here, and love
+much _in_ the place. But the place and the privileges of it don't mix
+together in one's love, as is done among the hills and by the seaside.
+
+I or Henrietta must have told you that one of my privileges has been
+to see Wordsworth twice. He was very kind to me, and let me hear
+his conversation. I went with him and Miss Mitford to Chiswick, and
+thought all the way that I must certainly be dreaming. I saw her
+almost every day of her week's visit to London (this was all long ago,
+while you were in France); and she, who overflows with warm affections
+and generous benevolences, showed me every present and absent
+kindness, professing to love me, and asking me to write to her. Her
+novel is to be published soon after Christmas, and I believe a new
+tragedy is to appear about the same time, 'under the protection of Mr.
+Forrest.' Papa has given me the first two volumes of Wordsworth's new
+edition. The engraving in the first is his _own face_. You might think
+me affected if I told you all I felt in seeing the living face.
+His manners are very simple, and his conversation not at all
+_prominent_--if you quite understand what I mean by _that_. I do
+myself, for I saw at the same time Landor--the brilliant Landor!--and
+_felt_ the difference between great genius and eminent talent; All
+these visions have passed now. I hear and see nothing, except my doves
+and the fireplace, and am doing little else than [_words torn out_]
+write all day long. And then people ask me what I _mean_ in [_words
+torn out_]. I hope you were among the six who understood or half
+understood my 'Poet's Vow'--that is, if you read it at all. Uncle
+Hedley made a long pause at the first part. But I have been reading,
+too, Sheridan Knowles's play of the 'Wreckers.' It is full of passion
+and pathos, and made me shed a great many tears. How do you get on
+with the reading society? Do you see much or anything of Lady Margaret
+Cocks, from whom I never hear now? I promised to let her have 'Ion,'
+if I could, before she left Brighton, but the person to whom it was
+lent did not return it to me in time. Will you tell her this, if you
+do see her, and give her my kind regards at the same time? Dear Bell
+was so sorry not to have seen you. If she had, you would have thought
+her looking _very_ well, notwithstanding the thinness--perhaps, in
+some measure, on account of it--and in _eminent_ spirits. I have not
+seen her in such spirits for very, very long. And there she is, down
+at Torquay, with the Hedleys and Butlers, making quite a colony of it,
+and everybody, in each several letter, grumbling in an undertone at
+the dullness of the place. What would _I_ give to see the waves once
+more! But perhaps if I were there, I should grumble too. It is a
+happiness to them to be _together_, and that, I am sure, they all
+feel....
+
+Believe me, dearest Mrs. Martin, your affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+Oh that you would call me Ba![29]
+
+
+[Footnote 29: Elizabeth Barrett's 'pet name' (see her poem, _Poetical
+Works_, ii. 249), given to her as a child by her brother Edward, and
+used by her family and friends, and by herself in her letters to them,
+throughout her life.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[74 Gloucester Place:]
+Thursday, December 15, 1836 [postmark].
+
+My dear Mr. Boyd,--... Two mornings since, I saw in the paper, under
+the head of literary news, that a change of editorship was taking
+place in the 'New Monthly Magazine;' and that Theodore Hook was to
+preside in the room of Mr. Hall. I am so much too modest and too wise
+to expect the patronage of two editors in succession, that I expect
+both my poems in a return cover, by every twopenny post. Besides, what
+has Theodore Hook to do with Seraphim? So, I shall leave that poem of
+mine to your imagination; which won't be half as troublesome to you as
+if I asked you to read it; begging you to be assured--to write it down
+in your critical rubric--that it is the very finest composition you
+ever read, _next_ (of course) to the beloved 'De Virginitate' of
+Gregory Nazianzen.[30]
+
+Mr. Stratten has just been here. I admire him more than I ever did,
+for his admiration of my doves. By the way, I am sure he thought them
+the most agreeable of the whole party; for he said, what he never did
+before, that he could sit here for an hour! Our love to Annie--and
+forgive me for Baskettiring a letter to you. I mean, of course, as to
+size, not type.
+
+Yours affectionately,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+Is your poem printed yet?
+
+  [Footnote 30:Do you mind that deed of Até
+  Which you bound me to so fast,--
+  Reading 'De Virginitate,'
+  From the first line to the last?
+  How I said at ending solemn,
+  As I turned and looked at you,
+  That Saint Simeon on the column
+  Had had somewhat less to do?
+
+'Wine of Cyprus' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 139)]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[74 Gloucester Place:] Tuesday [Christmas 1836].
+
+My dear Friend,--I am very much obliged to you for the _two_ copies
+of your poem, so beautifully printed, with such 'majestical' types,
+on such 'magnifical' paper, as to be almost worthy of Baskett himself.
+You are too liberal in sending me more than one copy; and pray accept
+in return a duplicate of gratitude.
+
+As to my 'Seraphim,' they are not returned to me, as in the case of
+their being unaccepted, I expressly begged they might be. Had the old
+editor been the present one, my inference would of course be, that
+their insertion was a determined matter; but as it is, I don't
+know what to think.[31] A long list of great names, belonging to
+_intending_ contributors, appeared in the paper a day or two ago, and
+among them was Miss Mitford's.
+
+Are you wroth with me for not saying a word about going to see
+you? Arabel and I won't affirm it mathematically--but we are,
+metaphysically, _talking_ of paying our visit to you next Tuesday.
+Don't expect us, nevertheless.
+
+Yours affectionately,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+What are my Christmas good wishes to be? That you may hold a Field in
+your right hand, and a Baskerville in your left, before the year is
+out! That degree of happiness will satisfy at least the _bodily_ part
+of you.
+
+You may wish, in return, for _me_, that I may learn to write rather
+more legibly than 'at these presents.'
+
+Our love to Annie.
+
+Won't you send your new poem to Mr. Barker, to the care of Mr. Valpy,
+with your Christmas benedictions?
+
+[Footnote 31: As a matter of fact, 'The Seraphim' was not printed in
+the _New Monthly_, being probably thought too long.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_.
+[74 Gloucester Place:] January 23, 1837 [postmark].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I am standing in Henrietta's place, she
+says--but not, _I_ say, to answer your letter to _her_ yesterday, but
+your letter to _me_, some weeks ago--which I meant to answer much
+more immediately if the _ignis fatuus_ of a house (you see to what
+a miserable fatuity I am reduced, of applying your pure country
+metaphors to our brick pollutions) had not been gliding just
+before us, and I had not much wished to be able to tell you of our
+settlement. As it is, however, I must write, and shall keep a solemn
+silence on the solemn subject of our shifting plans....
+
+No! I was not at all disappointed in Wordsworth, although perhaps I
+should not have singled him from the multitude as a great man. There
+is a _reserve_ even in his countenance, which does not lighten
+as Landor's does, whom I saw the same evening. His eyes have more
+meekness than brilliancy; and in his slow even articulation there
+is rather the solemnity and calmness of _truth_ itself, than the
+animation and energy of those who seek for it. As to my being quite at
+my ease when I spoke to him, why how could you ask such a question? I
+trembled both in my soul and body. But he was very kind, and sate
+near me and talked to me as long as he was in the room--and recited
+a translation by Cary of a sonnet of Dante's--and altogether, it was
+quite a dream! Landor too--Walter Savage Landor ... in whose hands
+the ashes of antiquity burn again--gave me two Greek epigrams he had
+lately written ... and talked brilliantly and prominently until Bro
+(he and I went together) abused him for _ambitious_ singularity and
+affectation. But it was very interesting. And dear Miss Mitford too!
+and Mr. Raymond, a great Hebraist and the ancient author of 'A Cure
+for a Heartache!' I never walked in the skies before; and perhaps
+never shall again, when so many stars are out! I shall at least see
+dear Miss Mitford, who wrote to me not long ago to say that she would
+soon be in London with 'Otto,' her new tragedy, which was written at
+Mr. Forrest's own request, he in the most flattering manner having
+applied to her a stranger, as the authoress of 'Rienzi,' for a
+dramatic work worthy of his acting--after rejecting many plays offered
+to him, and among them Mr. Knowles's.... She says that her play will
+be quite opposed, in its execution, to 'Ion,' as unlike it 'as a
+ruined castle overhanging the Rhine, to a Grecian temple.' And I do
+not doubt that it will be full of ability; although my own opinion
+is that she stands higher as the authoress of 'Our Village' than of
+'Rienzi,' and writes prose better than poetry, and transcends rather
+in Dutch minuteness and high finishing, than in Italian ideality and
+passion. I think besides that Mr. Forrest's rejection of any play
+of Sheridan Knowles must refer rather to its unfitness for the
+development of his own personal talent, than to its abstract demerit,
+whatever Transatlantic tastes he may bring with him. The published
+title of the last play is 'The Daughter,' not 'The Wreckers,' although
+I believe it was acted as the last. I am very anxious to read 'Otto,'
+not to _see_ it. I am not going to see it, notwithstanding an offered
+temptation to sit in the authoress's own box. With regard to 'Ion,'
+I think it is a beautiful work, but beautiful _rather_ morally than
+intellectually. Is this right or not? Its moral tone is very noble,
+and sends a grand and touching harmony into the midst of the full
+discord of this utilitarian age. As dramatic _poetry_, it seems to me
+to want, not beauty, but power, passion, and condensation. This is my
+_doxy_ about 'Ion.' Its author[32] made me very proud by sending it to
+me, although we do not know him personally. I have _heard_ that he is
+a most amiable man (who else could have written 'Ion'?), but that he
+was a little _elevated_ by his popularity last year!...
+
+I have read Combe's 'Phrenology,' but not the 'Constitution of Man.'
+The 'Phrenology' is very clever, and amusing; but I do not think it
+logical or satisfactory. I forget whether 'slowness of the pulse' _is_
+mentioned in it as a symptom of the poetical aestus. I am afraid, if
+it be a symptom, I dare not take my place even in the 'forlorn hope of
+poets' in this age so forlorn as to its poetry; for my pulse is in a
+continual flutter and my feet not half cold enough for a pedestal--so
+I must make my honours over to poor papa straightway. He has been
+shivering and shuddering through the cold weather; and partaking our
+influenza in the warmer. I am very sorry that you should have been a
+sufferer too. It seems to have been a universal pestilence, even down
+in Devonshire, where dear Bummy and the whole colony have had their
+share of 'groans.' And one of my doves shook its pretty head and
+ruffled its feathers and shut its eyes, and became subject to pap and
+nursing and other infirmities for two or three days, until I was in
+great consternation for the result. But it is well again--cooing as
+usual; and so indeed we all are. But indeed, I can't write a
+sentence more without saying some of the evil it deserves--of the
+utilitarianisms of this corrupt age--among some of the chief of which
+are steel pens!
+
+I am so glad that you liked my 'Romaunt,' and so resigned that you did
+not understand some of my 'Poet's Vow,' and so obliged that you should
+care to go on reading what I write. They vouchsafed to publish in the
+first number of the new series of the 'New Monthly' a little poem of
+mine called 'The Island,'[33] but so incorrectly that I was glad at
+the additional oblivion of my signature. If you see it, pray alter the
+last senseless line of the first page into 'Leaf sounds with water, in
+your ear,' and put 'amreeta' instead of 'amneta' on the second page;
+and strike out '_of_' in the line which names Aeschylus! There are
+other blunders, [but] these are intolerable, and cast me out of my
+'contentment' for some time. I have begged for [proof] sheets in
+future; and as none have come for the ensuing month, I suppose I shall
+have nothing in the next number. They have a lyrical dramatic poem of
+mine, 'The Two Seraphim,' which, whenever it appears, I shall like to
+have your opinion of. As to the incomprehensible line in the 'Poet's
+Vow' of which you asked me the meaning, 'One making one in strong
+compass,' I meant to express how that oneness of God, 'in whom are all
+things,' produces a oneness or sympathy (sympathy being the tendency
+of many to become one) in all things. Do you understand? or is the
+explanation to be explained? The unity of God preserves a unity in
+men--that is, a perpetual sympathy between man and man--which sympathy
+we must be subject to, if not in our joys, yet in our griefs. I
+believe the subject itself involves the necessity of some mysticism;
+but I must make no excuses. I am afraid that my very Seraphim will not
+be thought to stand in a very clear light, even at heaven's gate. But
+this is much _asay_ about nothing ...
+
+The Bishop of Exeter is staying and preaching at Torquay. Do you not
+envy them all for making part of his congregation? I am sure I do
+_as much_. I envy you your before-breakfast activity. I am never a
+_complete man_ without my breakfast--it seems to be some integral part
+of my soul. _You_ 'read all O'Connell's speeches.' I never read any of
+them--unless they take me by surprise. I keep my devotion for _unpaid_
+patriots; but Miss Mitford is another devotee of Mr. O'Connell ...
+
+Dearest Mrs. Martin's affectionate
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+Thank you for the 'Ba' in Henrietta's letter. If you knew how many
+people, whom I have known only within this year or two, whether I like
+them or not, say 'Ba, Ba,' quite naturally and pastorally, you would
+not come to me with the detestable 'Miss B.'
+
+[Footnote 32: Serjeant Talfourd.]
+
+[Footnote 33: _Poetical Works_, ii. 248.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+London: August 16, 1837.
+
+My dear Mrs. Martin,--It seems a long long time since we had any
+intercourse; and the answer to your last pleasant letter to Henrietta
+_must_ go to you from me. We have heard of you that you don't mean to
+return to England before the spring--which news proved me a prophet,
+and disappointed me at the same time, for one can't enjoy even a
+prophecy in this world without something vexing. Indeed, I do long to
+see you again, dearest Mrs. Martin, and should always have the same
+pleasure in it, and affection for you, if my friends and acquaintances
+were as much multiplied as you _wrongly_ suppose them to be. But the
+truth is that I have almost none at all, in this place; and, except
+our relative Mr. Kenyon, not one literary in any sense. Dear Miss
+Mitford, one of the very kindest of human beings, lies buried in
+geraniums, thirty miles away. I could not conceive what Henrietta
+had been telling you, or what you meant, for a long time--until we
+conjectured that it must have been something about Lady Dacre, who
+kindly sent me her book, and intimated that she would be glad to
+receive me at her conversations--and you know me better than to
+doubt whether I would go or not. There was an equal unworthiness and
+unwillingness towards the honor of it. Indeed, dearest Mrs. Martin,
+it is almost surprising how we contrive to be as dull in London as in
+Devonshire--perhaps more so, for the sight of a multitude induces a
+sense of seclusion which one has not without it; and, besides, there
+were at Sidmouth many more known faces and listened-to voices than we
+see and hear in this place. No house yet! And you will scarcely
+have patience to read that papa has seen and likes another house in
+Devonshire Place, and that he _may_ take it, and we _may_ be settled
+in it, before the year closes. I myself think of the whole business
+indifferently. My thoughts have turned so long on the subject of
+houses, that the pivot is broken--and now they won't turn any more.
+All that remains is, a sort of consciousness, that we should be more
+comfortable in a house with cleaner carpets, and taken for rather
+longer than a week at a time. Perhaps, after all, we are quite as well
+_sur le tapis_ as it is. It is a thousand to one but that the feeling
+of four red London walls closing around us for seven, eleven, or
+twenty-five years, would be a harsh and hard one, and make us cry
+wistfully to 'get out.' I am sure you will look up to your mountains,
+and down to your lakes, and enter into this conjecture.
+
+Talking of mountains and lakes is itself a trying thing to us poor
+prisoners. Papa has talked several times of taking us into the country
+for two months this summer, and we have dreamt of it a hundred times
+in addition; but, after all, we are not likely to go I dare say. It
+would have been very delightful--and who knows what may take place
+next summer? We may not absolutely _die_, without seeing a tree.
+Henrietta has seen a great many. You will have heard, I dare say, of
+the enjoyment she had in her week at Camden House. She seems to have
+walked from seven in the morning to seven at night; and was quite
+delighted with the kindness within doors and the sunshine without. I
+assure you that, fresh as she was from the air and dew, she saluted us
+amidst the sentiment of our sisterly meeting just in this way--it was
+almost her first exclamation--'What a very disagreeable smell there is
+here!' And this, although she had brought geraniums enough from Camden
+to perfume the Haymarket!...
+
+I am happy to announce to you that a new little dove has appeared
+from a shell--over which nobody had prognosticated good--on August
+16, 1837. I and the senior doves appear equally delighted, and we
+all three, in the capacity of good sitters and indefatigable
+pullers-about, take a good deal of credit upon ourselves....
+
+Arabel has begun oil painting, and without a master--and you can't
+think how much effect and expression she has given to several of her
+own sketches, notwithstanding all difficulties. Poor Henrietta is
+without a piano, and is not to have one again _until we have another
+house_! This is something like 'when Homer and Virgil are forgotten.'
+_Speaking of Homer and Virgil_, I have been writing a 'Romance of the
+Ganges,'[34] in order to illustrate an engraving in the new annual
+to be edited by Miss Mitford, Finden's tableaux for 1838. It does not
+sound a _very_ Homeric undertaking--I confess I don't hold any kind of
+annual, gild it as you please, in too much honour and awe--but from
+my wish to please her, and from the necessity of its being done in a
+certain time, I was 'quite frightful,' as poor old Cooke used to
+say, in order to express his own nervousness. But she was quite
+pleased--she is very soon pleased--and the ballad, gone the way of
+all writing, now-a-days, to the press. I do wish I could send you some
+kind of news that would interest you; but you see scarcely any except
+all this selfishness is in my beat. Dearest Bro draws and reads
+German, and I fear is dull notwithstanding. But we are every one of
+us more reconciled to London than we were. Well! I must not write
+any more. Whenever you think of me, dearest Mrs. Martin, remember how
+deeply and unchangeably I must regard you--both with my _mind_, my
+_affections_, and that part of either, called my gratitude. BA.
+
+Henrietta's kindest love and thanks for your letter. She desires me
+to say that she and Bro are going to dine with Mrs. Robert Martin
+to-morrow. I must tell you that Georgie and I went to hear Dr.
+Chalmers preach, three Sundays ago. His sermon was on a text whose
+extreme beauty would diffuse itself into any sermon preached upon
+it--God is love. His eloquence was very great, and his views noble and
+grasping. I expected much from his imagination, but not so much from
+his knowledge. It was truer to Scripture than I was prepared for,
+although there seemed to me some _want_ on the subject of the work
+of the Holy Spirit on the heart, which work we cannot dwell upon too
+emphatically. 'He worketh in us to will and to do,' and yet we are apt
+to will and do without a transmission of the praise to Him. May God
+bless you.
+
+[Footnote 34: _Poetical Works_, ii. 83.]
+
+
+_To Miss Commeline_
+London: August 19, 1837.
+
+My dear Miss Commeline,--I could not hear of your being in affliction
+without very frequent thoughts of you and a desire to express some of
+them in this way, and although so much time has passed I do hope that
+you will believe in the sympathy with which I, or rather _we_, have
+thought of you, and in the regard we shall not cease to feel for you
+even if we meet no more in this world. It is blessed to know both
+for ourselves and for each other that while there is a darkness that
+_must_ come to all, there is a light which _may_; and may He who is
+the light in the dark place be with you [now] and always, causing you
+to feel rather the glory that is in Him than the shadow which is in
+all beside--that so the sweetness of the consolation may pass the
+bitterness of even grief. Do give my love to Mrs. Commeline and to
+your sisters, and believe me, all of you, that the friends who have
+gone from your neighbourhood have not gone from my old remembrance,
+either of your kindness to them, or of their own feelings of interest
+in you.
+
+Trusting to such old remembrances, I will believe that you care to
+know what we are doing and how we are settling--that word which has
+now been on our lips for years, which it is marvellous to think how
+it got upon human lips at all. We came from Sidmouth to try London and
+ourselves, and see whether or not we could live together; and after
+more than a year and a half close contact with smoke we find no very
+good excuse for not remaining in it; and papa is going on with his
+eternal hunt for houses--the wild huntsman in the ballad is nothing
+to him, all except the sublimity--intending very seriously to take
+the first he can. He is now about one in particular, but I won't tell
+where it is because we have considered so many houses in particular
+that our considerations have come to be a jest in general. I shall
+be heartily glad, at least I _think_ so, for it is possible that
+the reality of being bricked up for a lease time may not be very
+agreeable. I think I shall be heartily glad when a house is taken, and
+we have made it look like our own with our furniture and pictures and
+books. I am so anxious to see my old books. I believe I shall begin at
+the beginning and read every story book through in the joy of meeting,
+and shall be as sedentary as ever I was in my own arm-chair. I
+remember when I was a child spreading my vitality, not over trees and
+flowers (I do that still--I still believe they have a certain animal
+susceptibility to pleasure and pain; 'it is my creed,' and, being
+Wordsworth's besides, I am not ashamed of it), but over chairs and
+tables and books in particular, and being used to fancy a kind of love
+in them to suit my love to them. And so if I were a child I should
+have an intense pity for my poor folios, quartos, and duodecimos, to
+say nothing of the arm-chair, shut up all these weeks and months in
+boxes, without a rational eye to look upon them. Pray forgive me if I
+have written a great deal of nonsense--'Je m'en doute.'
+
+Henrietta has spent a fortnight at Chislehurst with the Martins, and
+was very joyous there, and came back to us with that happy triumphant
+air which I always fancy people 'just from the country' put on towards
+us hapless Londoners.
+
+But you must not think I am a discontented person and grumble all day
+long at being in London. _There are many advantages here_, as I say to
+myself whenever it is particularly disagreeable; and if we can't see
+even a leaf or a sparrow without soot on it, there are the parrots at
+the Zoological Gardens and the pictures at the Royal Academy; and real
+live poets above all, with their heads full of the trees and birds and
+sunshine of paradise. I have stood face to face with Wordsworth and
+Landor; and Miss Mitford, who is in herself what she is in her books,
+has become a dear friend of mine, but a distant one. She visits London
+at long intervals, and lives thirty miles away....
+
+Bro and I were studying German together all last summer with Henry,
+before he left us to become a German, and I believe this is the last
+of my languages, for I have begun absolutely to detest the sight of a
+dictionary or grammar, which I never liked except as a means, and love
+poetry with an intenser love, if that be possible, than I ever did.
+Not that Greek is not as dear to me as ever, but I write more than I
+read, even of Greek poetry, and am resolute to work whatever little
+faculty I have, clear of imitations and conventionalisms which
+cloud and weaken more poetry (particularly now-a-days) than would be
+believed possible without looking into it....
+
+As to society in London, I assure you that none of us have much, and
+that as for me, you would wonder at seeing how possible it is to
+live as secludedly in the midst of a multitude as in the centre
+of solitude. My doves are my chief acquaintances, and I am so very
+intimate with _them_ that they accept and even demand my assistance in
+building their innumerable nests. Do tell me if there is any hope of
+seeing any of you in London at any time. I say 'do tell me,' for I
+will venture to ask you, dear Miss Commeline, to write me a few lines
+in one of the idlest hours of one of your idlest days just to tell me
+a little about you, and whether Mrs. Commeline is tolerably well. Pray
+believe me under all circumstances,
+
+Yours sincerely and affectionately,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+The spring of 1838 was marked by two events of interest to Miss
+Barrett and her family. In the first place, Mr. Barrett's apparently
+interminable search for a house ended in his selection of 50 Wimpole
+Street, which continued to be his home for the rest of his life, and
+which is, consequently, more than any other house in London, to
+be associated with his daughter's memory. The second event was
+the publication of 'The Seraphim, and other Poems,' which was Miss
+Barrett's first serious appearance before the public, and in her
+own name, as a poet. The early letters of this year refer to the
+preparation of this volume, as well as to the authoress's health,
+which was at this time in a very serious condition, owing to the
+breaking of a blood-vessel. Indeed, from this time until her marriage
+in 1846 she held her life on the frailest of tenures, and lived in all
+respects the life of an invalid.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Monday morning, March 27, 1838 [postmark].
+
+My dear Friend,--I do hope that you may not be very angry, but papa
+thinks--and, indeed, I think--that as I have already _had_ two proof
+sheets and forty-eight pages, and the printers have gone on to the
+rest of the poem, it would not be very welcome to them if we were
+to ask them to retrace their steps. Besides, I would rather--_I_ for
+myself, _I_--that you had the whole poem at once and clearly printed
+before you, to insure as many chances as possible of your liking it.
+I am _promised_ to see the volume completed in three weeks from this
+time, so that the dreadful moment of your reading it--I mean the
+'Seraphim' part of it--cannot be far off, and perhaps, the season
+being a good deal advanced even now, you might not, on consideration,
+wish me to retard the appearance of the book, except for some very
+sufficient reason. I feel very nervous about it--far more than I did
+when my 'Prometheus' crept out [of] the Greek, or I myself out of
+the shell, in the first 'Essay on Mind.' Perhaps this is owing to Dr.
+Chambers's medicines, or perhaps to a consciousness that my present
+attempt _is_ actually, and will be considered by others, more a trial
+of strength than either of my preceding ones.
+
+Thank you for the books, and especially for the _editio rarissima_,
+which I should as soon have thought of your trusting to me as of your
+admitting me to stand with gloves on within a yard of Baxter. This
+extraordinary confidence shall not be abused.
+
+I thank you besides for your kind inquiries about my health. Dr.
+Chambers did not think me worse yesterday, notwithstanding the last
+cold days, which have occasioned some uncomfortable sensations, and he
+still thinks I shall be better in the summer season. In the meantime
+he has ordered me to take ice--out of sympathy with nature, I suppose;
+and not to speak a word, out of contradiction to my particular, human,
+feminine nature.
+
+Whereupon I revenge myself, you see, by talking all this nonsense upon
+paper, and making you the victim.
+
+To propitiate you, let me tell you that your commands have been
+performed to the letter, and that one Greek motto (from 'Orpheus')
+is given to the first part of 'The Seraphim,' and another from
+_Chrysostom_ to the second.
+
+Henrietta desires me to say that she means to go to see you very soon.
+Give my very kind remembrance to Miss Holmes, and believe me,
+
+Your affectionate friend,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+I saw Mr. Kenyon yesterday. He has a book just coming out.[35] I
+should like you to read it. If you would, you would thank me for
+saying so.
+
+[Footnote 35: _Poems, for the most part occasional_, by John Kenyon.]
+
+
+_To John Kenyon_[36]
+[1838.]
+
+Thank you, dearest Mr. Kenyon; and I should (and _shall_) thank Miss
+Thomson too for caring to spend a thought on me after all the Parisian
+glories and rationalities which I sympathise with by many degrees
+nearer than you seem to do. We, in this England here, are just social
+barbarians, to my mind--that is, we know how to read and write and
+think, and even talk on occasion; but we carry the old rings in our
+noses, and are proud of the flowers pricked into our cuticles. By so
+much are they better than we on the Continent, I always think. Life
+has a thinner rind, and so a livelier sap. And _that_ I can see in the
+books and the traditions, and always understand people who like living
+in France and Germany, and should like it myself, I believe, on some
+accounts.
+
+Where did you get your Bacchanalian song? Witty, certainly, but
+the recollection of the _scores_ a little ghastly for the occasion,
+perhaps. You have yourself sung into silence, too, all possible songs
+of Bacchus, as the god and I know.
+
+Here is a delightful letter from Miss Martineau. I cannot be so
+selfish as to keep it to myself. The sense of natural beauty and the
+_good_ sense of the remarks on rural manners are both exquisite of
+their kinds, and Wordsworth is Wordsworth as she knows him. Have I
+said that Friday will find me expecting the kind visit you promise?
+_That_, at least, is what I meant to say with all these words.
+
+Ever affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 36: John Kenyon (1784-1856) was born in Jamaica, the son
+of a wealthy West Indian landowner, but came to England while quite
+a boy, and was a conspicuous figure in literary society during the
+second quarter of the century. He published some volumes of minor
+verse, but is best known for his friendships with many literary men
+and women, and for his boundless generosity and kindliness to all with
+whom he was brought into contact. Crabb Robinson described him as a
+man 'whose life is spent in making people happy.' He was a distant
+cousin of Miss Barrett, and a friend of Robert Browning, who dedicated
+to him his volume of 'Dramatic Romances,' besides writing and sending
+to him 'Andrea del Sarto' as a substitute for a print of the painter's
+portrait which he had been unable to find. The best account of Kenyon
+is to be found in Mrs. Crosse's 'John Kenyon and his Friends' (in
+_Red-Letter Days of My Life_, vol. i.).]
+
+
+_To John Kenyon_
+Wimpole Street: Sunday evening [1838?].
+
+My dear Mr. Kenyon,--I am _so_ sorry to hear of your going, and I not
+able to say 'good-bye' to you, that--I am _not_ writing this note on
+that account.
+
+It is a begging note, and now I am wondering to myself whether you
+will think me very childish or womanish, or silly enough to be both
+together (I know your thoughts upon certain parallel subjects), if
+I go on to do my begging fully. I hear that you are going to Mr.
+Wordsworth's--to Rydal Mount--and I want you to ask _for yourself_,
+and then to send to me in a letter--by the post, I mean, two cuttings
+out of the garden--of myrtle or geranium; I care very little which, or
+what else. Only I say 'myrtle' because it is less given to die and I
+say _two_ to be sure of my chances of saving one. Will you? You would
+please me very much by doing it; and certainly not _dis_ please me by
+refusing to do it. Your broadest 'no' would not sound half so strange
+to me as my 'little crooked thing' does to you; but you see everybody
+in the world is fanciful about something, and why not _E.B.B._?
+
+Dear Mr. Kenyon, I have a book of yours--M. Rio's. If you want it
+before you go, just write in two words, 'Send it,' or I shall infer
+from your silence that I may keep it until you come back. No necessity
+for answering this otherwise. Is it as bad as asking for autographs,
+or worse? At any rate, believe me _in earnest_ this time--besides
+being, with every wish for your enjoyment of mountains and lakes and
+'cherry trees,'
+
+Ever affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[May 1838.]
+
+My dear friend,--I am rather better than otherwise within the last
+few days, but fear that nothing will make me essentially so except
+the invisible sun. I am, however, a little better, and God's will is
+always done in mercy.
+
+As to the poems, do forgive me, dear Mr. Boyd; and refrain from
+executing your cruel threat of suffering 'the desire of reading them
+to pass away.'
+
+I have not one sheet of them; and papa--and, to say the truth, I
+myself--would so very much prefer your reading the preface first, that
+you must try to indulge us in our phantasy. The book Mr. Bentley half
+promises to finish the printing of this week. At any rate it is likely
+to be all done in the next: and you may depend upon having a copy _as
+soon_ as I have power over one.
+
+With kind regards to Miss Holmes,
+Believe me, your affectionate friend,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street; Wednesday [May 1838].
+
+Thank you for your inquiry, my dear friend. I had begun to fancy that
+between Saunders and Otley and the 'Seraphim' I had fallen to the
+ground of your disfavour. But I do trust to be able to send you a copy
+before next Sunday.
+
+I am thrown back a little just now by having caught a very bad cold,
+which has of course affected my cough. The worst seems, however, to be
+past, and Dr. Chambers told me yesterday that he expected to see me
+in two days nearly as well as before this casualty. And I have been,
+thank God, pretty well lately; and although when the stethoscope was
+applied three weeks ago, it did not speak very satisfactorily of the
+state of the lungs, yet Dr. Chambers seems to be hopeful still, and to
+talk of the wonders which the summer sunshine (when it does come) may
+be the means of doing for me. And people say that I look rather better
+than worse, even now.
+
+Did you hear of an autograph of Shakespeare's being sold lately for a
+very large sum (I _think_ it was above a hundred pounds) on the credit
+of its being the only genuine autograph extant? Is yours quite safe?
+And are _you_ so, in your opinion of its veritableness?
+
+I have just finished a very long barbarous ballad for Miss Mitford and
+the Finden's tableaux of this year. The title is 'The Romaunt of the
+Page,'[37] and the subject not of my own choosing.
+
+I believe that you will certainly have 'The Seraphim' this week. Do
+macadamise the frown from your brow in order to receive them.
+
+Give my love to Miss Holmes.
+Your affectionate friend,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 37: _Poetical Works_, ii. 40.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+June 7, 1838 [postmark].
+
+My dear Mr. Boyd,--Papa is scarcely inclined, nor am I for myself, to
+send my book or books to the East Indies. Let them alone, poor things,
+until they can walk about a little! and then it will be time enough
+for them to 'learn to _fly_.'
+
+I am so sorry that Emily Harding saw Arabel and went away without this
+note, which I have been meaning to write to you for several days, and
+have been so absorbed and drawn away (all except my thoughts) by
+other things necessary to be done, that I was forced to defer it. My
+ballad,[38] containing a ladye dressed up like a page and galloping
+off to Palestine in a manner that would scandalise you, went to Miss
+Mitford this morning. But I augur from its length that she will not be
+able to receive it into Finden.
+
+Arabel has told me what Miss Harding told her of your being in the act
+of going through my 'Seraphim' for the second time. For the feeling
+of interest in me which brought this labour upon you, I thank you, my
+dear friend. What your opinion _is_, and _will_ be, I am prepared to
+hear with a good deal of awe. You will _certainly not approve of the
+poem_.
+
+There now! You see I am prepared. Therefore do not keep back one rough
+word, for friendship's sake, but be as honest as--you could not help
+being, without this request.
+
+If I should live, I shall write (_I believe_) better poems than 'The
+Seraphim;' which belief will help me to survive the condemnation heavy
+upon your lips.
+
+Affectionately yours,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 38: 'The Romaunt of the Page.']
+
+
+'The Seraphim, and other Poems,' a duodecimo of 360 pages, at last
+made its appearance at the end of May. At the time of its publication,
+English poetry was experiencing one of its periods of ebb between
+two flood tides of great achievement. Shelley, Keats, Byron, Scott,
+Coleridge were dead; Wordsworth had ceased to produce poetry of the
+first order; no fresh inspiration was to be expected from Landor,
+Southey, Rogers, Campbell, and such other writers of the Georgian era
+as still were numbered with the living. On the other hand, Tennyson,
+though already the most remarkable among the younger poets, was still
+but exercising himself in the studies in language and metrical music
+by which his consummate art was developed; Browning had published only
+'Pauline,' 'Paracelsus,' and 'Strafford;' the other poets who have
+given distinction to the Victorian age had not begun to write. And
+between the veterans of the one generation and the young recruits of
+the next there was a singular want of writers of distinction. There
+was thus every opportunity for a new poet when Miss Barrett entered
+the lists with her first volume of acknowledged verse.
+
+Its reception, on the whole, does credit alike to its own merits and
+to the critics who reviewed it. It does not contain any of those poems
+which have proved the most popular among its authoress's complete
+works, except 'Cowper's Grave;' but 'The Seraphim' was a poem which
+deserved to attract attention, and among the minor poems were 'The
+Poet's Vow,' 'Isobel's Child,' 'The Romaunt of Margret,' 'My Doves,'
+and 'The Sea-mew.' The volume did not suffice to win any wide
+reputation for Miss Barrett, and no second edition was called for; on
+the other hand, it was received with more than civility, with genuine
+cordiality, by several among the reviewers, though they did not fail
+to note its obvious defects. The 'Athenaeum'[39] began its review with
+the following declaration:
+
+    This is an extraordinary volume--especially welcome as an
+    evidence of female genius and accomplishment--but it is hardly
+    less disappointing than extraordinary. Miss Barrett's genius
+    is of a high order; active, vigorous, and versatile, but
+    unaccompanied by discriminating taste. A thousand strange and
+    beautiful views flit across her mind, but she cannot look on
+    them with steady gaze; her descriptions, therefore, are
+    often shadowy and indistinct, and her language wanting in the
+    simplicity of unaffected earnestness.
+
+[Footnote 39: July 7, 1838.]
+
+The 'Examiner,'[40] after quoting at length from the preface and 'The
+Seraphim,' continued:
+
+    Who will deny to the writer of such verses as these (and they
+    are not sparingly met with in the volume) the possession of
+    many of the highest qualities of the divine art? We regret
+    to have some restriction to add to an admission we make so
+    gladly. Miss Barrett is indeed a genuine poetess, of no common
+    order; yet is she in danger of being spoiled by over-ambition;
+    and of realising no greater or more final reputation than
+    a hectical one, like Crashaw's. She has fancy, feeling,
+    imagination, expression; but for want of some just equipoise
+    or other, between the material and spiritual, she aims
+    at flights which have done no good to the strongest, and
+    therefore falls infinitely short, except in such detached
+    passages as we have extracted above, of what a proper exercise
+    of her genius would infallibly reach.... Very various, and
+    in the main beautiful and true, are the minor poems. But the
+    entire volume deserves more than ordinary attention.
+
+[Footnote 40: June 24, 1838.]
+
+The 'Atlas,'[41] another paper whose literary judgments were highly
+esteemed at that date, was somewhat colder, and dwelt more on
+the faults of the volume, but added nevertheless that 'there are
+occasional passages of great beauty, and full of deep poetical
+feeling. In 'The Romaunt of Margret' it detected the influence of
+Tennyson--a suggestion which Miss Barrett repudiated rather warmly;
+and it concluded with the declaration that the authoress 'possesses
+a fine poetical temperament, and has given to the public, in this
+volume, a work of considerable merit.'
+
+[Footnote 41: June 23, 1838.]
+
+Such were the principal voices among the critical world when Miss
+Barrett first ventured into its midst; and she might well be satisfied
+with them. Two years later, the 'Quarterly Review'[42] included her
+name in a review of 'Modern English Poetesses,' along with Caroline
+Norton, 'V.,' and others whose names are even less remembered to-day.
+But though the reviewer speaks of her genius and learning in high
+terms of admiration, he cannot be said to treat her sympathetically.
+He objects to the dogmatic positiveness of her prefaces, and protests
+warmly against her 'reckless repetition of the name of God'--a charge
+which, in another connection, will be found fully and fairly met in
+one of her later letters. On points of technique he criticises
+her frequent use of the perfect participle with accented final
+syllable--'kissed,' 'bowed,' and the like--and her fondness for the
+adverb 'very;' both of which mannerisms he charges to the example of
+Tennyson. He condemns the 'Prometheus,' though recognising it as 'a
+remarkable performance for a young lady.' He criticises the subject of
+'The Seraphim,' 'from which Milton would have shrunk;' but adds, 'We
+give Miss Barrett, however, the full credit of a lofty purpose, and
+admit, moreover, that several particular passages in her poem
+are extremely fine; equally profound in thought and striking in
+expression.' He sums up as follows:
+
+[Footnote 42: September 1840.]
+
+    In a word, we consider Miss Barrett to be a woman of undoubted
+    genius and most unusual learning; but that she has indulged
+    her inclination for themes of sublime mystery, not certainly
+    without displaying great power, yet at the expense of that
+    clearness, truth, and proportion, which are essential to
+    beauty; and has most unfortunately fallen into the trammels
+    of a school or manner of writing, which, of all that ever
+    existed--Lycophron, Lucan, and Gongora not forgotten--is most
+    open to the charge of being _vitiis imitabile exemplar_.
+
+So much for the reception of 'The Seraphim' volume by the outside
+world. The letters show how it appeared to the authoress herself.
+
+The first of them deserves a word of special notice, because it is
+likewise the first in these volumes addressed to Miss Mary Russell
+Mitford, whose name holds a high and honourable place in the roll
+of Miss Barrett's friends. Her own account of the beginning of the
+friendship should be quoted in any record of Mrs. Browning's life.
+
+'My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett commenced about fifteen
+years ago.[43] She was certainly one of the most interesting persons
+that I had ever seen. Everybody who then saw her said the same;
+so that it is not merely the impression of my partiality or my
+enthusiasm. Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls
+falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes,
+richly fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such
+a look of youthfulness that I had some difficulty in persuading a
+friend, in whose carriage we went together to Chiswick, that the
+translatress of the "Prometheus" of Aeschylus, the authoress of the
+"Essay on Mind," was old enough to be introduced into company,
+in technical language, was 'out.' Through the kindness of another
+invaluable friend,[44] to whom I owe many obligations, but none so
+great as this, I saw much of her during my stay in town. We met so
+constantly and so familiarly that, in spite of the difference of
+age,[45] intimacy ripened into friendship, and after my return into
+the country we corresponded freely and frequently, her letters being
+just what letters ought to be--her own talk put upon paper.'[46]
+
+[Footnote 43: This was written about the end of 1851.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Probably John Kenyon, whom Miss Mitford elsewhere calls
+'the pleasantest man in London;' he, on his side, said of Miss Mitford
+that 'she was better and stronger than any of her books.']
+
+[Footnote 45: Nineteen years, Miss Mitford having been born in 1787.]
+
+[Footnote 46: _Recollections of a Literary Life_, by Mary Russell
+Mitford, p. 155 (1859).]
+
+Miss Barrett's letters show how warmly she returned this feeling of
+friendship, which lasted until Miss Mitford's death in 1855. Of the
+earlier letters many must have disappeared: for it is evident from
+Miss Mitford's just quoted words, and also from many references in
+her published correspondence, that they were in constant communication
+during these years of Miss Barrett's life in London. After her
+marriage, however, the extant letters are far more frequent, and will
+be found to fill a considerable place in the later pages of this work.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+50 Wimpole Street: Thursday [June 1838].
+
+We thank you gratefully, dearest Miss Mitford. Papa and I and all of
+us thank you for your more than kindnesses. The extracts were both
+gladdening and surprising--and the one the more for being the other
+also. Oh! it was _so_ kind of you, in the midst of your multitude of
+occupations, to make time (out of love) to send them to us!
+
+As to the ballad, dearest Miss Mitford, which you and Mr. Kenyon are
+indulgent enough to like, remember that he passed his criticism
+over it--before it went to you--and so if you did not find as many
+obscurities as he did in it, the reason is--_his_ merit and not mine.
+But don't believe him--no!--don't believe even Mr. Kenyon--whenever
+he says that I am _perversely_ obscure. Unfortunately obscure, not
+perversely--that is quite a wrong word. And the last time he used it
+to me (and then, I assure you, another word still worse was with it)
+I begged him to confine them for the future to his jesting moods.
+Because, _indeed_, I am not in the very least degree perverse in this
+fault of mine, which is my destiny rather than my choice, and comes
+upon me, I think, just where I would eschew it most. So little has
+perversity to do with its occurrence, that my fear of it makes me
+sometimes feel quite nervous and thought-tied in composition....
+
+I have not seen Mr. Kenyon since I wrote last. All last week I was
+not permitted to get out of bed, and was haunted with leeches and
+blisters. And in the course of it, Lady Dacre was so kind as to call
+here, and to leave a note instead of the personal greeting which I was
+not able to receive. The honor she did me a year ago, in sending me
+her book, encouraged me to offer her my poems. I hesitated about doing
+so at first, lest it should appear as if my vanity were dreaming of
+a _return_; but Mr. Kenyon's opinion turned the balance. I was very
+sorry not to have seen Lady Dacre and have written a reply to her
+note expressive of this regret. But, after all, this inaudible voice
+(except in its cough) could have scarcely made her understand that I
+was obliged by her visit, had I been able to receive it.
+
+Dr. Chambers has freed me again into the drawing-room, and I am much
+better or he would not have done so. There is not, however, much
+strength or much health, nor any near prospect of regaining either.
+It is well that, in proportion to our feebleness, we may feel our
+dependence upon God.
+
+I feel as if I had not said half, and they have come to ask me if I
+have not said _all_! My beloved friend, may you be happy in all ways!
+
+Do write whenever you wish to talk and have no one to talk to nearer
+you than I am! _Indeed_, I did not forget Dr. Mitford when I wrote
+those words, although they look like it.
+
+Your gratefully affectionate
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street: Wednesday morning [June 1838].
+
+My dear Friend,--Do not think me depraved in ingratitude for not
+sooner thanking you for the pleasure, made so much greater by the
+surprise, which your note of judgment gave me. The truth is that I
+have been very unwell, and delayed answering it immediately until the
+painful physical feeling went away to make room for the pleasurable
+moral one--and this I fancied it would do every hour, so that I might
+be able to tell you at ease all that was in my thoughts. The fancy was
+a vain one. The pain grew worse and worse, and Dr. Chambers has been
+here for two successive days shaking his head as awfully as if it bore
+all Jupiter's ambrosial curls; and is to be here again to-day, but
+with, I trust, a less grave countenance, inasmuch as the leeches last
+night did their duty, and I feel much better--God be thanked for the
+relief. But I am not yet as well as before this attack, and am still
+confined to my bed--and so you must rather imagine than read what I
+thought and felt in reading your wonderful note. Of course it pleased
+me very much, very very much--and, I dare say, would have made me vain
+by this time, if it had not been for the opportune pain and the sight
+of Dr. Chambers's face.
+
+I sent a copy of my book to Nelly Bordman _before_ I read your
+suggestion. I knew that her kind feeling for me would interest her in
+the sight of it.
+
+Thank you once more, dear Mr. Boyd! May all my critics be gentle after
+the pattern of your gentleness!
+
+Believe me, affectionately yours,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street: June 17 [1838].
+
+My dear Friend,--I send you a number of the 'Atlas' which you may
+keep. It is a favorable criticism, certainly--but I confess this of my
+vanity, that it has not altogether pleased me. You see what it is to
+be spoilt.
+
+As to the 'Athenaeum,' although I am _not_ conscious of the quaintness
+and mannerism laid to my charge, and am very sure that I have always
+written too naturally (that is, too much from the impulse of thought
+and feeling) to have studied '_attitudes_,' yet the critic was quite
+right in stating his opinion, and so am I in being grateful to him for
+the liberal praise he has otherwise given me. Upon the whole, I like
+his review better than even the 'Examiner,' notwithstanding my being
+perfectly satisfied with _that_.
+
+Thank you for the question about my health. I am very tolerably
+well--for _me_: and am said to look better. At the same time I am
+aware of being always on the verge of an increase of illness--I mean,
+in a very excitable state--with a pulse that flies off at a word
+and is only to be caught by digitalis. But I am better--for the
+present--while the sun shines.
+
+Thank you besides for your criticisms, which I shall hold in memory,
+and use whenever I am not particularly _obstinate_, in all my
+SUCCEEDING EDITIONS!
+
+You will smile at that, and so do _I._
+
+Arabel is walking in the Zoological Gardens with the Cliffes--but I
+think you will see her before long.
+
+Your affectionate friend,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+Don't let me forget to mention the Essays[47]. You shall have
+yours--and Miss Bordman hers--and the delay has not arisen from either
+forgetfulness or indifference on my part--although I never deny that
+I don't like giving the Essay to anybody because I don't like it.
+Now that sounds just like 'a woman's reason,' but it isn't, albeit so
+reasonable! I meant to say 'because I don't like the ESSAY.'
+
+[Footnote 47: i.e. copies of the _Essay on Mind_.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street: Thursday, June 21 [1838].
+
+My dear Friend,--Notwithstanding this silence so ungrateful in
+appearance, I thank you at last, and very sincerely, for your kind
+letter. It made me laugh, and amused me--and gratified me besides.
+Certainly your 'quality of mercy is not strained.'
+
+My reason for not writing more immediately is that Arabel has meant,
+day after day, to go to you, and has had a separate disappointment for
+every day. She says now, '_Indeed_, I hope to see Mr. Boyd to-morrow.'
+But _I_ say that I will not keep this answer of mine to run the risk
+of another day's contingencies, and that _it_ shall go, whether _she_
+does or not.
+
+I am better a great deal than I was last week, and have been allowed
+by Dr. Chambers to come downstairs again, and occupy my old place
+on the sofa. My health remains, however, in what I cannot help
+considering myself, and in what, I _believe_, Dr. Chambers considers,
+a very precarious state, and my weakness increases, of course, under
+the remedies which successive attacks render necessary. Dr. Chambers
+deserves my confidence--and besides the skill with which he has met
+the different modifications of the complaint, I am grateful to him
+for a feeling and a sympathy which are certainly rare in such of his
+profession as have their attention diverted, as his must be, by an
+immense practice, to fifty objects in a day. But, notwithstanding all,
+one breath of the east wind undoes whatever he labours to do. It is
+well to look up and remember that in the eternal reality these second
+causes are no causes at all.
+
+Don't leave this note about for Arabel to see. I am anxious not to
+alarm her, or any one of my family: and it may please God to make me
+as well and strong again as ever. And, indeed, I am twice as well this
+week as I was last.
+
+Your affectionate friend, dear Mr. Boyd,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+I have seen an extract from a private letter of Mr. Chorley, editor
+of the 'Athenaeum,'[48] which speaks _huge_ praises of my poems. If he
+were to say a tithe of them in print, it would be nine times above my
+expectation!
+
+[Footnote 48: This is an error. Mr. Chorley was not editor of the
+_Athenaeum_, though he was one of its principal contributors.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[June 1838.]
+
+My dear Friend,--I begged your servant to wait--how long ago I am
+afraid to think--but certainly I must not make this note very long. I
+did intend to write to you to-day in any case. Since Saturday I have
+had my thanks ready at the end of my fingers waiting to slide along
+to the nib of my pen. Thank you for all your kindness and criticism,
+which is kindness too--thank you at last. Would that I deserved the
+praises as well as I do most of the findings-fault--and there is no
+time now to say more of _them_. Yet I believe I have something to say,
+and will find a time to say it in.
+
+Dr. Chambers has just been here, and does not think me quite as well
+as usual. The truth is that I was rather excited and tired yesterday
+by rather too much talking and hearing talking, and suffer for it
+to-day in my _pulse_. But I am better on the whole.
+
+Mr. Cross,[49] the great lion, the insect-making lion, came yesterday
+with Mr. Kenyon, and afterwards Lady Dacre. She is kind and gentle in
+her manner. She told me that she had 'placed my book in the hands of
+Mr. Bobus Smith, the brother of Sidney Smith, and the best judge
+in England,' and that it was to be returned to her on Tuesday. If I
+_should_ hear the 'judgment,' I will tell you, whether you care to
+hear it or not. There is no other review, as far as I am aware.
+
+Give my love to Miss Bordman. When is she coming to see me?
+
+The thunder did not do me any harm.
+
+Your affectionate friend, in great haste, although your servant is not
+likely to think so, E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 49: Andrew Crosse, the electrician, who had recently
+published his observations of a remarkable development of insect life
+in connection with certain electrical experiments--a discovery which
+caused much controversy at the time, on account of its supposed
+bearings on the origin of life and the doctrine of creation.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[June 1838.]
+
+My dear Friend,--You must let me _feel_ my thanks to you, even when
+I do not _say_ them. I have put up your various notes together, and
+perhaps they may do me as much good hereafter, as they have already,
+for the most part, given me pleasure.
+
+The 'burden pure _have_ been' certainly was a misprint, as certainly
+'nor man nor nature satisfy'[50] is ungrammatical. But I am _not_ so
+sure about the passage in Isobel:
+
+I am not used to tears at nights Instead of slumber--nor to prayer.
+
+Now I think that the passage may imply a repetition of the words with
+which it begins, after 'nor'--thus--'nor _am I used_ to prayer,' &c.
+Either you or I may be right about it, and either 'or' or 'nor' may be
+grammatical. At least, so I pray.[51]
+
+You did not answer one question. Do you consider that '_apolyptic_'
+stands without excuse?[52]
+
+I never read Greek to any person except yourself and Mr. MacSwiney,
+my brother's tutor. To him I read longer than a few weeks, but then
+it was rather guessing and stammering and tottering through parts of
+Homer and extracts from Xenophon than reading. _You_ would not have
+called it reading if you had heard it.
+
+I studied hard by myself afterwards, and the kindness with which
+afterwards still you assisted me, if yourself remembers gladly _I_
+remember _gratefully_ and gladly.
+
+I have just been told that your servant was desired by you _not to
+wait a minute_.
+
+The wind is unfavorable for the sea. I do not think there is the least
+probability of my going before the end of next week, if then. You
+shall hear.
+
+Affectionately yours,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+I am tolerably well. I have been forced to take digitalis again, which
+makes me feel weak; but still I am better, I think.
+
+[Footnote 50: Altered in later editions to 'satisfies.']
+
+[Footnote 51: In later editions 'not' is repeated instead of 'nor,'
+which looks like a compromise between her own opinion and Mr. Boyd's.]
+
+[Footnote 52: The poem entitled 'Sounds,' in the volume of 1838,
+contained the line 'As erst in Patmos apolyptic John,' presumably for
+'apocalyptic.' This being naturally held to be 'without excuse,'
+the line was altered in subsequent editions to 'As the seer-saint of
+Patmos, loving John.']
+
+
+In the course of this year the failure in Miss Barrett's health had
+become so great that her doctor advised removal to a warmer climate
+for the winter. Torquay was the place selected, and thither she
+went in the autumn, accompanied by her brother Edward, her favourite
+companion from childhood. Other members of the family, including Mr.
+Barrett, joined them from time to time. At Torquay she was able to
+live, but no more, and it was found necessary for her to stay during
+the summers as well as the winters of the next three years. Letters
+from this period are scarce, though it is clear from Miss Mitford's
+correspondence that a continuous interchange of letters was kept up
+between the two friends, and her acquaintanceship with Horne was now
+ripening into a close literary intimacy. A story relating to Bishop
+Phillpotts of Exeter, the hero of so many racy anecdotes, is contained
+in a letter of Miss Barrett's which must have been written about
+Christmas of either 1838 or 1839:--
+
+'He [the bishop] was, however, at church on Christmas Day, and upon
+Mr. Elliot's being mercifully inclined to omit the Athanasian Creed,
+prompted him most episcopally from the pew with a "whereas;" and
+further on in the Creed, when the benign reader substituted the
+word _condemnation_ for the terrible one--"Damnation!" exclaimed the
+bishop. The effect must have been rather startling.'
+
+A slight acquaintance with the words of the Athanasian Creed will
+suggest that the story had suffered in accuracy before it reached Miss
+Barrett, who, of course, was unable to attend church, and whose own
+ignorance on the subject may be accounted for by remembering that
+she had been brought up as a Nonconformist. With a little correction,
+however, the story may be added to the many others on record with
+respect to 'Henry of Exeter.'
+
+The following letter is shown, by the similarity of its contents
+to the one which succeeds it, to belong to November 1839, when Miss
+Barrett was entering on her second winter in Torquay.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Beacon Terrace, Torquay: November 24 [1839].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Henrietta _shall not_ write to-day, whatever
+she may wish to do. I felt, in reading your unreproaching letter
+to her, as self-reproachful as anybody could with a great deal of
+innocence (in the way of the world) to fall back upon. I felt sorry,
+very sorry, not to have written something to you something sooner,
+which was a possible thing--although, since the day of my receiving
+your welcome letter, I have written scarcely at all, nor that little
+without much exertion. Had it been with me as usual, be sure that
+you should not have had any silence to complain of. Henrietta knew I
+wished to write, and felt, I suppose, unwilling to take my place when
+my filling it myself before long appeared possible. A long story--and
+not as entertaining as Mother Hubbard. But I would rather tire
+you than leave you under any wrong impression, where my regard and
+thankfulness to you, dearest Mrs. Martin, are concerned.
+
+To reply to your kind anxiety about me, I may call myself decidedly
+better than I have been. Since October I I have not been out of
+bed--except just for an hour a day, when I am lifted to the sofa with
+the bare permission of my physician--who tells me that it is so much
+easier to make me worse than better, that he dares not permit anything
+like exposure or further exertion. I like him (Dr. Scully) very
+much, and although he evidently thinks my case in the highest degree
+precarious, yet knowing how much I bore last winter and understanding
+from him that the worst _tubercular_ symptoms have not actually
+appeared, I am willing to think it may be God's will to keep me here
+still longer. I would willingly stay, if it were only for the sake of
+that tender affection of my beloved family which it so deeply affects
+me to consider. Dearest papa is with us now--to my great comfort
+and joy: and looking very well!--and astonishing everybody with his
+eternal youthfulness! Bro and Henrietta and Arabel besides, I can
+count as companions--and then there is dear Bummy! We are fixed at
+Torquay for the winter--that is, until the end of May: and after that,
+if I have any will or power and am alive to exercise either, I do
+trust and hope to go away. The death of my kind friend Dr. Bury
+was, as you suppose, a great grief and shock to me. How could it be
+otherwise, after his daily kindness to me for a year? And then his
+young wife and child--and the rapidity (a three weeks' illness) with
+which he was hurried away from the energies and toils and honors of
+professional life to the stillness of _that_ death!
+
+'_God's Will_' is the only answer to the mystery of the world's
+afflictions....
+
+Don't fancy me worse than I am--or that this bed-keeping is the result
+of a gradual sinking. It is not so. A feverish attack prostrated me
+on October 2--and such will leave their effects--and Dr. Scully is so
+afraid of leading me into danger by saying, 'You may get up and dress
+as usual' that you should not be surprised if (in virtue of being the
+senior Torquay physician and correspondingly prudent) he left me
+in this durance vile for a great part of the winter. I am decidedly
+better than I was a month ago, really and truly.
+
+May God bless you, dearest Mrs. Martin! My best and kindest regards
+to Mr. Martin. Henrietta desires me to promise for her a letter to
+Colwall soon; but I think that one from Colwall should come first. May
+God bless you! Bro's fancy just now is painting in water colours and
+he performs many sketches. Do you ever in your dreams of universal
+benevolence dream of travelling into Devonshire?
+
+Love your affectionate BA,
+
+--found guilty of egotism and stupidity 'by this sign' and at once!
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+1 Beacon Terrace, Torquay:
+Wednesday, November 27, 1839.
+
+If you can forgive me, my ever dear friend, for a silence which has
+not been intended, there will be another reason for being thankful to
+you, in addition to the many. To do myself justice, one of my earliest
+impulses on seeing my beloved Arabel, and recurring to the kindness
+with which you desired that happiness for me long before I possessed
+it, was to write and tell you how happy I felt. But she had promised,
+she said, to write herself, and moreover she and only she was to send
+you the ballad--in expectation of your dread judgment upon which I
+delayed my own writing. It came in the first letter we received in our
+new house, on the first of last October. An hour after reading it, I
+was upon my bed; was attacked by fever in the night, and from that
+bed have never even been lifted since--to these last days of
+November--except for one hour a day to the sofa at two yards'
+distance. I am very much better now, and have been so for some time;
+but my physician is so persuaded, he says, that it is easier to do
+me harm than good, that he will neither permit any present attempt at
+further exertion, nor hint at the time when it may be advisable for
+him to permit it. Under the circumstances it has of course been more
+difficult than usual for me to write. Pray believe, my dear and kind
+friend, in the face of all circumstances and appearances, that I never
+forget you, nor am reluctant (oh, how could that be?) to write to you;
+and that you shall often have to pay 'a penny for my thoughts' under
+the new Postage Act--if it be in God's wisdom and mercy to spare me
+through the winter. Under the new act I shall not mind writing ten
+words and then stopping. As it is, they would scarcely be worth eleven
+pennies.
+
+Thank you again and again for your praise of the ballad, which both
+delighted and _surprised_ me ... as I had scarcely hoped that you
+might like it at all. Think of Mr. Tilt's never sending me a proof
+sheet. The consequences are rather deplorable, and, if they had
+occurred to you, might have suggested a deep melancholy for life.
+In my case, _I_, who am, you know, hardened to sins of carelessness,
+simply look _aghast_ at the misprints and mispunctuations coming in as
+a flood, and sweeping away meanings and melodies together. The annual
+itself is more splendid than usual, and its vignettes have illustrated
+my story--angels, devils and all--most beautifully. Miss Mitford's
+tales (in prose) have suffered besides by reason of Mr. Tilt--but are
+attractive and graphic notwithstanding--and Mr. Horne has supplied a
+dramatic poem of great power and beauty.
+
+How I rejoice with you in the glorious revelation (about to be) of
+Gregory's second volume! The 'De Virginitate' poem will, in its new
+purple and fine linen, be more dazzling than ever.
+
+Do you know that George is barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple--_is_?
+I have seen him gazetted.
+
+My dearest papa is with me now, making me very happy of course. I have
+much reason to be happy--more to be grateful--yet am more obedient
+to the former than to the latter impulse. May the Giver of good
+give gratitude with as full a hand! May He bless _you_--and bring us
+together again, if no more in the flesh, yet in the spirit!
+
+Your ever affectionate friend,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+Do write--when you are able and _least_ disinclined. Do you approve of
+Prince Albert or not?[53]
+
+[Footnote 53: The engagement of Prince Albert to Queen Victoria took
+place in October 1839.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Torquay: May 29, 1840.
+
+My ever dear Friend,--It was very pleasant to me to see your seal
+upon a letter once more; and although the letter itself left me with
+a mournful impression of your having passed some time so much less
+happily than I would wish and pray for you, yet there remains the
+pleasant thought to me still that you have not altogether forgotten
+me. Do receive the expression of my most affectionate sympathy under
+this and every circumstance--and I fear that the shock to your nerves
+and spirits could not be a light one, however impressed you might be
+and must be with the surety and verity of God's love working in all
+His will. Poor poor Patience! Coming to be so happy with you, with
+that joyous smile I thought so pretty! Do you not remember my telling
+you so? Well--it is well and better for her; happier for her, if God
+in Christ Jesus have received her, than her hopes were of the holiday
+time with you. The holiday is _for ever_ now....
+
+I heard from Nelly Bordman only a few days before receiving your
+letter, and so far from preparing me for all this sadness and
+gloom, she pleased me with her account of you whom she had lately
+seen--dwelling upon your retrograde passage into youth, and the
+delight you were taking in the presence and society of some still
+more youthful, fair, and gay _monstrum amandum_, some prodigy of
+intellectual accomplishment, some little Circe who never turned
+anybodies into pigs. I learnt too from her for the first time that you
+were settled at Hampstead! Whereabout at Hampstead, and for how long?
+She didn't tell me _that_, thinking of course that I knew something
+more about you than I do. Yes indeed; you _do_ treat me very shabbily.
+I agree with you in thinking so. To think that so many hills and woods
+should interpose between us--that I should be lying here, fast bound
+by a spell, a sleeping beauty in a forest, and that _you_, who used
+to be such a doughty knight, should not take the trouble of cutting
+through even a hazel tree with your good sword, to find out what
+had become of me. Now do tell me, the hazel tree being down at last,
+whether you mean to live at Hampstead, whether you have taken a
+house there and have carried your books there, and wear Hampstead
+grasshoppers in your bonnet (as they did at Athens) to prove yourself
+of the soil.
+
+All this nonsense will make you think I am better, and indeed I am
+pretty well just now--quite, however, confined to the bed--except when
+lifted from it to the sofa baby-wise while they make it; even then
+apt to faint. Bad symptoms too do not leave me; and I am obliged to be
+blistered every few days--but I am free from any attack just now, and
+am a good deal less feverish than I am occasionally. There has been
+a consultation between an Exeter physician and my own, and they agree
+exactly, both hoping that with care I shall pass the winter, and rally
+in the spring, both hoping that I may be able to go about again with
+some comfort and independence, although I never can be fit again for
+anything like exertion....
+
+Do you know, did you ever hear anything of Mr. Horne who wrote 'Cosmo
+de Medici,' and the 'Death of Marlowe,' and is now desecrating his
+powers (I beg your pardon) by writing the life of Napoleon? By the
+way, he is the author of a dramatic sketch in the last Finden.
+
+He is in my mind one of the very first poets of the day, and has
+written to me so kindly (offering, although I never saw him in my
+life, to cater for me in literature, and send me down anything likely
+to interest me in the periodicals), that I cannot but think his
+amiability and genius do honor to one another.
+
+
+Do you remember Mr. Caldicott who used to preach in the infant
+schoolroom at Sidmouth? He died here the death of a saint, as he had
+lived a saintly life, about three weeks ago. It affected me a good
+deal. But he was always so associated in my thoughts more with heaven
+than earth, that scarcely a transition seems to have passed upon his
+locality. 'Present with the Lord' is true of him now; even as 'having
+his conversation in heaven' was formerly. There is little difference.
+
+May it be so with us all, with you and with me, my ever and very dear
+friend! In the meantime do not forget me. I never can forget _you_.
+
+Your affectionate and grateful
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+Arabel desires her love to be offered to you.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+1 Beacon Terrace, Torquay: July 8, 1840.
+
+My ever dear Friend,--I must write to you, although it is so very
+long, or at least seems so, since you wrote to me. But you say to
+Arabel in speaking of me that I '_used_ to care for what is poetical;'
+therefore, perhaps you say to yourself sometimes that I _used_ to
+care for _you_! I am anxious to vindicate my identity to you, in that
+respect above all.
+
+It is a long, dreary time since I wrote to you. I admit the pause on
+my own part, while I charge you with another. But _your_ silence has
+embraced more pleasantness and less suffering to you than mine has to
+me, and I thank God for a prosperity in which my unchangeable regard
+for you causes me to share directly....
+
+I have not rallied this summer as soon and well as I did last. I was
+very ill early in April at the time of our becoming conscious to our
+great affliction--so ill as to believe it utterly improbable, speaking
+humanly, that I ever should be any better. I am, however, a very great
+deal better, and gain strength by sensible degrees, however slowly,
+and do hope for the best--'the best' meaning one sight more of London.
+In the meantime I have not yet been able to leave my bed.
+
+To prove to you that I who 'used to care' for poetry do so still, and
+that I have not been absolutely idle lately, an 'Athenaeum' shall
+be sent to you containing a poem on the subject of the removal of
+Napoleon's ashes.[54] It is a fitter subject for you than for me.
+Napoleon is no idol of _mine. I_ never made a 'setting sun' of him.
+But my physician suggested the subject as a noble one and then there
+was something suggestive in the consideration that the 'Bellerophon'
+lay on those very bay-waters opposite to my bed.
+
+Another poem (which you won't like, I dare say) is called 'The Lay of
+the Rose,'[55] and appeared lately in a magazine. Arabel is going to
+write it out for you, she desires me to tell you with her best love.
+Indeed, I have written lately (as far as manuscript goes) a good deal,
+only on all sorts of subjects and in as many shapes.
+
+Lazarus would make a fine poem, wouldn't he? I lie here, weaving a
+great many schemes. I am seldom at a loss for thread.
+
+Do write sometimes to me, and tell me if you do anything besides
+hearing the clocks strike and bells ring. My beloved papa is with me
+still. There are so many mercies close around me (and his presence
+is far from the least), that God's _Being_ seems proved to me,
+_demonstrated_ to me, by His manifested love. May His blessing in
+the full lovingness rest upon you always! Never fancy I can forget or
+think of you coldly.
+
+Your affectionate and grateful
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 54: 'Crowned and Buried' _(Poetical Works_, iii. 9).]
+
+[Footnote 55: _Poetical Works_, iii. 152.]
+
+
+The above letter was written only three days before the tragedy which
+utterly wrecked Elizabeth Barrett's life for a time, and cast a
+deep shadow over it which never wholly passed away--the death of her
+brother Edward through drowning. On July 11, he and two friends had
+gone for a sail in a small boat. They did not return when they were
+expected, and presently a rumour came that a boat, answering in
+appearance to theirs, had been seen to founder in Babbicombe Bay;
+but it was not until three days later that final confirmation of the
+disaster was obtained by the discovery of the bodies. What this blow
+meant to the bereaved sister cannot be told: the horror with which she
+refers to it, even at a distance of many years, shows how deeply it
+struck. It was the loss of the brother whom she loved best of all; and
+she had the misery of thinking that it was to attend on her that he
+had come to the place where he met his death. Little wonder if Torquay
+was thenceforward a memory from which she shrank, and if even the
+sound of the sea became a horror to her.
+
+One natural consequence of this terrible sorrow is a long break in her
+correspondence. It is not until the beginning of 1841 that she seems
+to have resumed the thread of her life and to have returned to her
+literary occupations. Her health had inevitably suffered under the
+shock, and in the autumn of 1840 Miss Mitford speaks of not daring to
+expect more than a few months of lingering life. But when things were
+at the worst, she began unexpectedly to take a turn for the better.
+Through the winter she slowly gathered strength, and with strength the
+desire to escape from Torquay, with its dreadful associations, and
+to return to London. Meanwhile her correspondence with her friends
+revived, and with Horne in particular she was engaged during 1841 in
+an active interchange of views with regard to two literary projects.
+Indeed, it was only the return to work that enabled her to struggle
+against the numbing effect of the calamity which had overwhelmed her.
+Some time afterwards (in October 1843) she wrote to Mrs. Martin:
+'For my own part and experience--I do not say it as a phrase or
+in exaggeration, but from very clear and positive conviction--I do
+believe that I should be _mad_ at this moment, if I had not forced
+back--dammed out--the current of rushing recollections by work, work,
+work.' One of the projects in which she was concerned was 'Chaucer
+Modernised,' a scheme for reviving interest in the father of English
+poetry, suggested in the first instance by Wordsworth, but committed
+to the care of Horne, as editor, for execution. According to the
+scheme as originally planned, all the principal poets of the day were
+to be invited to share the task of transmuting Chaucer into modern
+language. Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, Horne, and others actually executed
+some portions of the work; Tennyson and Browning, it was hoped, would
+lend a hand with some of the later parts. Horne invited Miss Barrett
+to contribute, and, besides executing modernisations of 'Queen
+Annelida and False Arcite' and 'The Complaint of Annelida,'[56] she
+also advised generally on the work of the other writers during its
+progress through the press. The other literary project was for a
+lyrical drama, to be written in collaboration with Horne. It was to be
+called 'Psyché Apocalypté,' and was to be a drama on the Greek model,
+treating of the birth and self-realisation of the soul of man.
+
+[Footnote 56: These versions are not reprinted in her collected
+_Poetical Works_, but are to be found in 'Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer
+modernised,' (1841).]
+
+The sketch of its contents, given in the correspondence with Horne,
+will make the modern reader accept with equanimity the fact that it
+never progressed beyond the initial stage of drafting the plot. It is
+allegorical, philosophical, fantastic, unreal--everything which was
+calculated to bring out the worst characteristics of Miss Barrett's
+style and to intensify her faults. Fortunately her removal from
+Torquay to London interrupted the execution of the scheme. It
+was never seriously taken up again, and, though never explicitly
+abandoned, died a natural death from inanition, somewhat to the relief
+of Miss Barrett, who had come to recognise its impracticability.
+
+Apart from the correspondence with Horne, which has been published
+elsewhere, very few letters are left from this period; but those which
+here follow serve to bridge over the interval until the departure
+from Torquay, which closes one well-marked period in the life of the
+poetess.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+December 11, 1840.
+
+My ever dearest Mrs. Martin,--I should have written to you without
+this last proof of your remembrance--this cape, which, warm and pretty
+as it is, I value so much more as the work of your hands and gift of
+your affection towards me. Thank you, dearest Mrs. Martin, and thank
+you too for _all the rest_--for all your sympathy and love. And do
+believe that although grief had so changed me from myself and warped
+me from my old instincts, as to prevent my looking forwards with
+pleasure to seeing you again, yet that full amends are made in the
+looking back with a pleasure more true because more tender than any
+old retrospections. Do give my love to dear Mr. Martin, and say what I
+could not have said even if I had seen him.
+
+Shall you really, dearest Mrs. Martin, come again? Don't think we do
+not think of the hope you left us. Because we do indeed.
+
+A note from papa has brought the comforting news that my dear, dear
+Stormie is in England again, in London, and looking perfectly well. It
+is a mercy which makes me very thankful, and would make me joyful if
+anything could. But the meanings of some words change as we live on.
+Papa's note is hurried. It was a sixty-day passage, and that is all he
+tells me. Yes--there is something besides about Sette and Occy being
+either unknown or misknown, through the fault of their growing. Papa
+is not near returning, I think. He has so much to do and see, and so
+much cause to be enlivened and renewed as to spirits, that I begged
+him not to think about me and stay away as long as he pleased. And the
+accounts of him and of all at home are satisfying, I thank God....
+
+There is an east wind just now, which I feel. Nevertheless, Dr. Scully
+has said, a few minutes since, that I am as well as he could hope,
+considering the season.
+
+May God bless you ever!
+Your gratefully attached
+BA.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+March 29, 1841.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Have you thought 'The dream has come true'?
+I mean the dream of the flowers which you pulled for me and I wouldn't
+look at, even? I fear you must have thought that the dream about my
+ingratitude has come true.
+
+And yet it has not. Dearest Mrs. Martin, it has _not_. I have not
+forgotten you or remembered you less affectionately through all the
+silence, or longed less for the letters I did not ask for. But the
+truth is, my faculties seem to hang heavily now, like flappers when
+the spring is broken. _My_ spring _is_ broken, and a separate exertion
+is necessary for the lifting up of each--and then it falls down again.
+I never felt so before: there is no wonder that I should feel so now.
+Nevertheless, I don't give up much to the pernicious languor--the
+tendency to lie down to sleep among the snows of a weary journey--I
+don't give up much to it. Only I find it sometimes at the root of
+certain negligences--for instance, of this toward _you_.
+
+Dearest Mrs. Martin, receive my sympathy, _our_ sympathy, in the
+anxiety you have lately felt so painfully, and in the rejoicing for
+its happy issue. Do say when you write (I take for granted, you see,
+that you will write) how Mrs. B---- is now--besides the intelligence
+more nearly touching me, of your own and Mr. Martin's health and
+spirits. May God bless you both!
+
+Ah! but you did not come: I was disappointed!
+
+And Mrs. Hanford! Do you know, I tremble in my reveries sometimes,
+lest you should think it, guess it to be half unkind in me not to have
+made an exertion to see Mrs. Hanford. It was not from want of interest
+in her--least of all from want of love to _you_. But I have not
+stirred from my bed yet. But, to be honest, that was not the reason--I
+did not feel as if I _could_, without a painful effort, which, on the
+other hand, could not, I was conscious, result in the slightest shade
+of satisfaction to her, receive and talk to her. Perhaps it is hard
+for you to _fancy_ even how I shrink away from the very thought of
+seeing a human face--except those immediately belonging to me in love
+or relationship--(yours _does_, you know)--and a stranger's might be
+easier to look at than one long known....
+
+For my own part, my dearest Mrs. Martin, my heart has been lightened
+lately by kind, _honest_ Dr. Scully (who would never give an opinion
+just to please me), saying that I am 'quite right' to mean to go to
+London, and shall probably be fit for the journey early in June.
+He says that I may pass the winter there moreover, and with
+impunity--that wherever I am it will probably be necessary for me
+to remain shut up during the cold weather, and that under such
+circumstances it is quite possible to warm a London room to as safe
+a condition as a room _here_. So my heart is lightened of the fear
+of opposition: and the only means of regaining whatever portion of
+earthly happiness is not irremediably lost to me by the Divine decree,
+I am free to use. In the meantime, it really does seem to me that I
+make some progress in health--if the word in my lips be not a mockery.
+Oh, I fancy I shall be strengthened to get home!
+
+Your remarks on Chaucer pleased me very much. I am glad you liked what
+I did--or tried to do--and as to the criticisms, you were right--and
+they sha'n't be unattended to if the opportunity of correction be
+given to me.
+
+Ever your affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+August 28, 1841.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I have fluctuated from one shadow of uncertainty
+and anxiety to another, all the summer, on the subject to which my
+last earthly wishes cling, and I delayed writing to you to be able to
+say I am going to London. I may say so now--as far as the human may
+say 'yes' or 'no' of their futurity. The carriage, a patent carriage
+with a bed in it, and set upon some hundreds of springs, is, I
+believe, on its road down to me, and immediately upon its arrival
+we begin our journey. Whether we shall ever complete it remains
+uncertain--_more_ so than other uncertainties. My physician appears a
+good deal alarmed, calls it an undertaking full of hazard, and myself
+the 'Empress Catherine' for insisting upon attempting it. But I must.
+I go, as 'the doves to their windows,' to the only earthly daylight I
+see here. I go to rescue myself from the associations of this dreadful
+place. I go to restore to my poor papa the companionships family.
+Enough has been done and suffered for _me_. I thank God I am going
+home at last.
+
+How kind it was in you, my very kind and ever very dear friend, to ask
+me to visit you at Hampstead! I felt myself smiling while I read that
+part of your letter, and laid it down and suffered the vision to arise
+of your little room and your great Gregory and your dear self scolding
+me softly as in the happy olden times for not reading slow enough.
+Well--we do not know what _may_ happen! I _may_ (even that is
+probable) read to you again. But now--ah, my dear friend--if you could
+imagine me such as I am!--you would not think I could visit you! Yet
+I am wonderfully better this summer; and if I can but reach home
+and bear the first painful excitement, it will do me more good than
+anything--I know it will! And if it does not, it will be _well_ even
+so.
+
+I shall tell them to send you the 'Athenaeum' of last week, where I
+have a 'House of Clouds,'[57] which papa likes so much that he would
+wish to live in it if it were not for the damp. There is not a clock
+in one room--that's another objection. How are your clocks? Do they
+go? and do you like their voices as well as you used to do?
+
+I think Annie is not with you; but in case of her still being so, do
+give her (and yourself too) Arabel's love and mine. I wish I heard of
+you oftener. Is there nobody to write? May God bless you!
+
+Your ever affectionate friend,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+August 31, 1831 [_sic_].
+
+Thank you, my ever dear friend, with almost my last breath at Torquay,
+for your kindness about the Gregory, besides the kind note itself. It
+is, however, too late. We go, or mean at present to go, to-morrow;
+and the carriage which is to waft us through the air upon a thousand
+springs has actually arrived. You are not to think severely upon Dr.
+Scully's candour with me as to the danger of the journey. He _does_
+think it 'likely to do me harm;' therefore, you know, he was justified
+by his medical responsibility in laying before me all possible
+consequences. I have considered them all, and dare them gladly and
+gratefully. Papa's domestic comfort is broken up by the separation in
+his family, and the associations of this place lie upon me, struggle
+as I may, like the oppression of a perpetual night-mare. It is an
+instinct of self-preservation which impels me to escape--or to try
+to escape. And In God's mercy--though God forbid that I should deny
+either His mercy or His justice, if He should deny me--we may be
+together in Wimpole Street in a few days. Nelly Bordman has kindly
+written to me Mr. Jago's favourable opinion of the patent carriages,
+and his conviction of my accomplishing the journey without
+inconvenience.
+
+May God bless you, my dear dear friend! Give my love to dearest Annie!
+Perhaps, if I am ever really in Wimpole Street, _safe enough for
+Greek_, you will trust the poems to me which you mention. I care as
+much for poetry as ever, and could not more.
+
+Your affectionate and grateful
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 57: _Poetical Works_, iii. 186.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+1841-1843
+
+
+In September 1841 the journey from Torquay was actually achieved, and
+Miss Barrett returned to her father's house in London, from which she
+was never to be absent for more than a few hours at a time until the
+day, five years later, when she finally left it to join her husband,
+Robert Browning. Her life was that of an invalid, confined to her room
+for the greater part of each year, and unable to see any but a
+few intimate friends. Still, she regained some sort of strength,
+especially during the warmth of the summer months, and was able to
+throw herself with real interest into literary work. In a life such
+as this there are few outward events to record, and its story is best
+told in Miss Barrett's own letters, which, for the most part, need
+little comment. The letters of the end of 1841 and beginning of 1842
+are almost entirely written to Mr. Boyd, and the main subject of them
+is the series of papers on the Greek Christian poets and the English
+poets which, at the suggestion of Mr. Dilke, then editor of the
+'Athenaeum,' she contributed to that periodical. Of the composition of
+original poetry we hear less at this time.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street: October 2, 1841.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I thank you for the letter and books which
+crossed the threshold of this house before me, and looked like your
+welcome to me home. I have read the passages you wished me to read--I
+have read them _again_: for I remember reading them under your star
+(or the greater part of them) a long while ago. You, on the other
+hand, may remember of _me_, that I never could concede to you much
+admiration for your Gregory as a poet--not even to his grand work 'De
+Virginitate.' He is one of those writers, of whom there are instances
+in our own times, who are only poetical in prose.
+
+The passage imitative of Chryses I cannot think much of. Try to be
+forgiving. It is toasted dry between the two fires of the Scriptures
+and Homer, and is as stiff as any dry toast out of the simile. To be
+sincere, I like dry toast better.
+
+The Hymns and Prayers I very much prefer; and although I remembered a
+good deal about them, it has given me a pleasure you will approve of
+to go through them in this edition. The one which I like best, which I
+like far best, which I think worth all the rest ('De Virginitate'
+and all put together), is the _second_ upon page 292, beginning 'Soi
+charis.' It is very fine, I think, written out of the heart and for
+the heart, warm with a natural heat, and not toasted dry and brown and
+stiff at a fire by any means.
+
+Dear Mr. Boyd, I coveted Arabel's walk to you the other day. I shall
+often covet my neighbour's walks, I believe, although (and may God be
+praised for it!) I am more happy--that is, nearing to the feeling of
+happiness now--than a month since I could believe possible to a heart
+so bruised and crushed as mine has [been] be at home is a blessing and
+a relief beyond what these words can say.
+
+But, dear Mr. Boyd, you said something in a note to Arabel some little
+time ago, which I will ask of your kindness to avoid saying again. I
+have been through the whole summer very much better; and even if it
+were not so I should dread being annoyed by more medical speculations.
+Pray do not suggest any. I am not in a state to admit of experiments,
+and my case is a very clear and simple one. I have not _one symptom_
+like those of my old illness; and after more than fifteen years'
+absolute suspension of them, their recurrence is scarcely probable. My
+case is very clear: not tubercular consumption, not what is called a
+'decline,' but an affection of the lungs which leans towards it. You
+know a blood-vessel broke three years ago, and I never quite got over
+it. Mr. Jago, not having seen me, could scarcely be justified in a
+conjecture of the sort, when the opinions of four able physicians,
+two of them particularly experienced in diseases of the chest, and
+the other two the most eminent of the faculty in the east and west of
+England, were decided and contrary, while coincident with each other.
+Besides, you see, I am becoming better--and I could not desire more
+than that. Dear Mr. Boyd, do not write a word about it any more,
+either to me or others. I am sure you would not willingly disturb me.
+Nelly Bordman is good and dear, but I can't let her prescribe for me
+anything except her own affection.
+
+I hope Arabel expressed for me my thankful sense of Mrs. Smith's kind
+intention. But, indeed, although I would see _you_, dear Mr. Boyd,
+gladly, or an angel or a fairy or any very particular friend, I am
+not fit either in body or spirit for general society. I _can't_ see
+people, and if I could it would be very bad for me. Is Mrs. Smith
+writing? Are you writing? Part of me is worn out; but the poetical
+part--that is, the _love_ of poetry--is growing in me as freshly and
+strongly as if it were watered every day. Did anybody ever love it and
+stop in the middle? I wonder if anybody ever did?... Believe me your
+affectionateE.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street: December 29, 1841.
+
+My dear Friend,--I should not have been half as idle about
+transcribing these translations[58] if I had fancied you could care so
+much to have them as Arabel tells me you do. They are recommended to
+your mercy, O Greek Daniel! The _last_ sounds in my ears most like
+English poetry; but I assure you I took the least pains with it. The
+second is obscure as its original, if it do not (as it does not) equal
+it otherwise. The first is yet more unequal to the Greek. I praised
+that Greek poem above all of Gregory's, for the reason that it has
+_unity and completeness_, for which, to speak generally, you may
+search the streets and squares and alleys of Nazianzum in vain. Tell
+me what you think of my part.
+
+Ever affectionately yours,
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+Have you a Plotinus, and would you trust him to me in that case? Oh
+no, you do not tempt me with your musical clocks. My time goes to the
+best music when I read or write; and whatever money I can spend upon
+my own pleasures flows away in books.
+
+[Footnote 58: Translations of three poems of Gregory Nazianzen,
+printed in the _Athenaeum_ of January 8, 1842.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_[59]
+50 Wimpole Street: January 2, 1842.
+
+Miss Barrett, inferring Mr. Westwood from the handwriting, begs his
+acceptance of the unworthy little book[60] he does her the honour of
+desiring to see.
+
+It is more unworthy than he could have expected when he expressed that
+desire, having been written in very early youth, when the mind was
+scarcely free in any measure from trammels and Popes, and, what is
+worse, when flippancy of language was too apt to accompany immaturity
+of opinion. The miscellaneous verses are, still more than the chief
+poem, 'childish things' in a strict literal sense, and the whole
+volume is of little interest even to its writer except for personal
+reasons--except for the traces of dear affections, since rudely
+wounded, and of that _love_ of poetry which began with her sooner than
+so soon, and must last as long as life does, without being subject
+to the changes of life. Little more, therefore, can remain for such
+a volume than to be humble and shrink from circulation. Yet Mr.
+Westwood's kind words win it to his hands. Will he receive at the same
+moment the expression of touched and gratified feelings with which
+Miss Barrett read what he wrote on the subject of her later volumes,
+still very imperfect, although more mature and true to the _truth_
+within? Indeed she is thankful for what he said so kindly in his note
+to her.
+
+[Footnote 59: Mr. Thomas Westwood was the author of a volume of
+'Poems,' published in 1840, 'Beads from a Rosary' (1843), 'The Burden
+of the Bell' (1850), and other volumes of verse. Several of his
+compositions were appearing occasionally in the _Athenaeum_ at the
+time when this correspondence with Miss Barrett commenced.]
+
+[Footnote 60: The _Essay on Mind_.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street: January 6, 1842.
+
+My dear Friend,--I have done your bidding and sent the translations
+to the 'Athenaeum,' attaching to them an infamous prefatory note which
+says all sorts of harm of Gregory's poetry. You will be very angry
+with it and me.
+
+And you _may_ be angry for another reason--that in the midst of my
+true thankfulness for the emendations you sent me, I ventured to
+reject one or two of them. You are right, probably, and I wrong; but
+still, I thought within myself with a womanly obstinacy not altogether
+peculiar to me,--'If he and I were to talk together about them, he
+would kindly give up the point to me--so that, now we cannot talk
+together, _I might as well take it_.' Well, you will see what I have
+done. Try not to be angry with me. You shall have the 'Athenaeum' as
+soon as possible.
+
+My dear Mr. Boyd, you know how I disbelieved the probability of these
+papers being accepted. You will comprehend my surprise on receiving
+last night a very courteous: note from the editor, which I would
+send to you if it were legible to anybody except people used to
+learn reading from the pyramids. He wishes me to contribute to the
+'Athenaeum' some prose papers in the form of reviews--'the review
+being a mere form, and the book a mere text.' He is not very
+clear--but I fancy that a few translations of _excerpta_, with a prose
+analysis and synthesis of the original author's genius, might suit
+his purpose. Now suppose I took up some of the early Christian Greek
+poets, and wrote a few continuous papers _so_?[61] Give me your
+advice, my dear friend! I think of Synesius, for one. Suppose you send
+me a list of the names which occur to you! _Will_ you advise me? Will
+you write directly? Will you make allowance for my teazing you? Will
+you lend me your little Synesius, and Clarke's book? I mean the one
+commenced by Dr. Clarke and continued by his son. Above all things,
+however, I want the advice.
+
+Ever affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Wednesday, January 13, 1842 (postmark).
+
+My dear Friend,--Thank you, thank you, for your kind suggestion and
+advice altogether. I had just (when your note arrived) finished two
+hymns of Synesius, one being the seventh and the other the ninth.
+Oh! I do remember that you performed upon the latter, and my modesty
+should have certainly bid me 'avaunt' from it. Nevertheless, it is so
+fine, so prominent in the first class of Synesius's beauties, that I
+took courage and dismissed my scruples, and have produced a version
+which I have not compared to yours at all hitherto, but which probably
+is much rougher and _rather_ closer, winning in faith what it loses
+in elegance. 'Elegance' isn't a word for me, you know, generally
+speaking. The barbarians herd with me, 'by two and three.'
+
+I had a letter to-day from Mr. Dilke, who agrees to everything, closes
+with the idea about 'Christian Greek poets' (only begging me to keep
+away from theology), and suggesting a subsequent reviewal of English
+poetical literature, from Chaucer down to our times.[62] Well, but
+the Greek poets. With all your kindness, I have scarcely sufficient
+materials for a full and minute survey of them. I have won a sight of
+the 'Poetae Christiani,' but the price is ruinous--_fourteen guineas_,
+and then the work consists almost entirely of Latin poets, deducting
+Gregory and Nonnus, and John Damascenus, and a cento from Homer by
+somebody or other. Turning the leaves rapidly, I do not see much else;
+and you know I may get a separate copy of John Dam., and have access
+to the rest. Try to turn in your head what I should do. Greg. Nyssen
+did not write poems, did he? Have I a chance of seeing your copy of
+Mr. Clarke's book? It would be useful in the matters of chronology.
+
+I humbly beg your pardon, and Gregory's, for the insolence of my note.
+It was as brief as it could be, and did not admit of any extended
+reference and admiration to his qualities as an orator. But whoever
+read it to you should have explained that when I wrote 'He was an
+orator,' the word _orator_ was marked emphatically, so as to appear
+printed in capital letters of emphasis. Do not say 'you _chose_,' 'you
+_chose_.' I didn't and don't choose to be obstinate, indeed; but I
+can't see the sense of that 'heavenly soul.'
+
+Ever your grateful and affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+I shall have room for praising Gregory in these papers.
+
+[Footnote 61: The series of papers on the Greek Christian Poets
+appeared in the _Athenaeum_ for February and March 1842; they are
+reprinted in the _Poetical Works_, v. 109-200.]
+
+[Footnote 62: This scheme took shape in the series of papers on the
+English Poets which appeared in the _Athenaeum_ in the course of June
+and August 1842 (reprinted in _Poetical Works_, v. 201-290).]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+February 4, 1842.
+
+My dear Friend,--You must be thinking, if you are not a St. Boyd for
+good temper, that among the Gregorys and Synesiuses I have forgotten
+everything about you. No; indeed it has not been so. I have never
+_stopped_ being grateful to you for your kind notes, and the two last
+pieces of Gregory, although I did not say an overt 'Thank you;' but
+I have been very very busy besides, and thus I answered to myself for
+your being kind enough to pardon a silence which was compelled rather
+than voluntary.
+
+Do you ever observe that as vexations don't come alone, occupations
+don't, and that, if you happen to be engaged upon one particular
+thing, it is the signal for your being waylaid by bundles of letters
+desiring immediate answers, and proof sheets or manuscript works whose
+writers request your opinion while their 'printer waits'? The old
+saints are not responsible for all the filling up of my time. I have
+been _busy upon busy_.
+
+The first part of my story about the Greek poets went to the
+'Athenaeum' some days ago, but, although graciously received by the
+editor, it won't appear this week, or I should have had a proof sheet
+(which was promised to me) before now. I must contrive to include all
+I have to say on the subject in _three parts_. They will admit, they
+tell me, a fourth _if I please_, but evidently they would prefer as
+much brevity as I could vouchsafe. Only two poets are in the first
+notice, and _twenty_ remain--and neither of the two is Gregory.
+
+Will you let me see that volume of Gregory which contains the
+'Christus Patiens'? Send it by any boy on the heath, and I will
+remunerate him for the walk and the burden, and thank you besides. Oh,
+don't be afraid! I am not going to charge it upon Gregory, but on the
+younger Apollinaris, whose claim is stronger, and I rather wish to
+refresh my recollection of the height and breadth of that tragic
+misdemeanour.
+
+It is quite true that I never have suffered much pain, and equally so
+that I continue most decidedly better, notwithstanding the winter. I
+feel, too--I do hope not ungratefully--the blessing granted to me in
+the possibility of literary occupation,--which is at once occupation
+and distraction. Carlyle (not the infidel, but the philosopher) calls
+literature a 'fireproof pleasure.' How truly! How deeply I have felt
+that truth!
+
+May God bless you, dear Mr. Boyd. I don't despair of looking in your
+face one day yet before my last.
+
+Ever your affectionate and obliged
+E.B.B.
+
+Arabel's love.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+March 2, 1842.
+
+My ever very dear Friend,--Do receive the assurance that whether I
+leave out the right word or put in the wrong one, you never can be
+other to me than just _that_ while I live, and why not after I have
+ceased to live? And now--what have I done in the meantime, to be
+called 'Miss Barrett'? 'I pause for a reply.'
+
+Of course it gives me very great pleasure to hear you speak so kindly
+of my first paper. Some _bona avis_ as good as a nightingale must have
+shaken its wings over me as I began it; and if it will but sit on
+the same spray while I go on towards the end, I shall rejoice exactly
+four-fold. The third paper went to Mr. Dilke to-day, and I was so
+fidgety about getting it away (and it seemed to cling to my writing
+case with both its hands), that I would not do any writing, even as
+little as this note, until it was quite gone out of sight. You know it
+is possible that he, the editor, may not please to have the _fourth_
+paper; but even in that case, it is better for the 'Remarks' to remain
+fragmentary, than be compressed till they are as dry as a _hortus
+siccus_ of poets.
+
+Certainly you do and must praise my number one too much. Number one
+(that's myself) thinks so. I do really; and the supererogatory virtue
+of kindness may be acknowledged out of the pale of the Romish Church.
+
+In regard to Gregory and Synesius, you will see presently that I have
+not wronged them altogether.
+
+As you have ordered the 'Athenaeums,' I will not send one to-morrow
+so as to repeat my ill fortune of being too late. But tell me if you
+would like to have any from me, and how many.
+
+It was very kind in you to pat Flush's[63] head in defiance of danger
+and from pure regard for me. I kissed his head where you had patted
+it; which association of approximations I consider as an imitation
+of shaking hands with you and as the next best thing to it. You
+understand--don't you?--that Flush is my constant companion, my
+friend, my amusement, lying with his head on one page of my folios
+while I read the other. (Not _your_ folios--I respect _your_ books,
+be sure.) Oh, I dare say, if the truth were known, Flush understands
+Greek excellently well.
+
+I hope you are right in thinking that we shall meet again. Once I
+wished _not_ to live, but the faculty of life seems to have sprung up
+in me again, from under the crushing foot of heavy grief.
+
+Be it all as God wills.
+
+Believe me, your ever affectionate
+
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 63: Miss Barrett's dog, the gift of Miss Mitford. His praise
+is sung in her poem, 'To Flush, my Dog' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 19),
+and in many of the following letters. He accompanied his mistress to
+Italy, lived to a good old age, and now lies buried in the vaults of
+Casa Guidi.]
+
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Saturday night, March 5, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I am quite angry with myself for forgetting your
+questions when I answered your letter.
+
+Could you really imagine that I have not looked into the Greek
+tragedians for years, with my true love for Greek poetry? That is
+asking a question, you will say, and not answering it. Well, then,
+I answer by a 'Yes' the one you put to me. I had two volumes of
+Euripides with me in Devonshire, and have read him as well as
+Aeschylus and Sophocles--that is _from_ them--both before and since
+I went there. You know I have gone through every line of the three
+tragedians long ago, in the way of regular, consecutive reading.
+
+You know also that I had at different times read different dialogues
+of Plato; but when three years ago, and a few months previous to my
+leaving home, I became possessed of a complete edition of his works,
+edited by Bekker, why then I began with the first volume and went
+through the whole of his writings, both those I knew and those I did
+not know, one after another: and have at this time read, not only all
+that is properly attributed to Plato, but even those dialogues and
+epistles which pass falsely under his name--everything except two
+books I think, or three, of the treatise 'De Legibus,' which I shall
+finish in a week or two, as soon as I can take breath from Mr. Dilke.
+
+Now the questions are answered.
+
+Ever your affectionate and grateful friend,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Thursday, March 10, 1842 [postmark].
+
+My very dear Friend,--I did not know until to-day whether the paper
+would appear on Saturday or not; but as I have now received the proof
+sheets, there can be no doubt of it. I have been and _am_ hurried and
+hunted almost into a corner through the pressing for the fourth paper,
+and the difficulty about books. You will forgive a very short note to
+night.
+
+I have read of Aristotle only his Poetics, his Ethics, and his work
+upon Rhetoric, but I mean to take him regularly into both hands when I
+finish Plato's last page. Aristophanes I took with me into Devonshire;
+and after all, I do not know much more of _him_ than three or four of
+his plays may stand for. Next week, my very dear friend, I shall be at
+your commands, and sit in spirit at your footstool, to hear and answer
+anything you may care to ask me--but oh! what have I done that you
+should talk to _me_ about 'venturing,' or 'liberty,' or anything of
+that kind?
+
+From your affectionate and grateful catechumen,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_.
+March 29, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I received your long letter and receive your
+short one, and thank you for the pleasure of both. Of course I am very
+_very_ glad of your approval in the matter of the papers, and your
+kindness could not have wished to give me more satisfaction than
+it gave actually. Mr. Kenyon tells me that Mr. Burgess[64] has been
+reading and commending the papers, and has brought me from him a newly
+discovered scene of the 'Bacchae' of Euripides, edited by Mr. Burgess
+himself for the 'Gentlemen's Magazine,' and of which he considers that
+the 'Planctus Mariae,' at least the passage I extracted from it, is an
+imitation. Should you care to see it? Say 'Yes,'--and I will send it
+to you.
+
+Do you think it was wrong to make _eternity_ feminine? I knew that
+the Greek word was not feminine; but imagined that the English
+personification should be so. Am I wrong in this? Will you consider
+the subject again?
+
+Ah, yes! That was a mistake of mine about putting Constantine for
+Constantius. I wrote from memory, and the memory betrayed me. But say
+nothing about it. Nobody will find it out. I send you Silentiarius and
+some poems of Pisida in the same volume. Even if you had not asked for
+them, I should have asked you to look at some passages which are fine
+in both. It appears to me that Silentiarius writes difficult Greek,
+overlaying his description with a multitude of architectural and
+other far fetched words! Pisida is hard, too, occasionally, from other
+causes, particularly in the 'Hexaëmeron,' which is not in the book
+I send you but in another very gigantic one (as tall as the Irish
+giants), which you may see if you please. I will send a coach and six
+with it if you please.
+
+John Mauropus, of the Three Towns, I owe the knowledge of to _you.
+You_ lent me the book with his poems, you know. He is a great favorite
+of mine in all ways. I very much admire his poetry.
+
+Believe me, ever your affectionate and grateful
+
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+Pray tell me what you think. I am sorry to observe that the book I
+send you is marked very irregularly; that is, marked in some places,
+unmarked in others, just as I happened to be near or far from
+my pencil and inkstand. Otherwise I should have liked to compare
+judgments with you.
+
+Keep the book as long as you please; it is my own.
+
+[Footnote 64: George Burges, the classical scholar. He had in 1832
+contributed to the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (under a pseudonym) some
+lines purporting to be a newly discovered portion of the _Bacchae_,
+but really composed by himself on the basis of a parallel passage
+in the _Christus Patiens_. It is apparently to these lines that Miss
+Barrett alludes, though the 'discovery' was then nearly ten years
+old.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street: April 2, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--... As to your kind desire to hear whatever in
+the way of favorable remark I have gathered together for fruit of my
+papers, I put on a veil and tell you that Mr. Kenyon thought it well
+done, although 'labour thrown away, from the unpopularity of
+the subject;' that Miss Mitford was very much pleased, with the
+warmheartedness common to her; that Mrs. Jamieson [_sic_] read them
+'with great pleasure' unconsciously of the author; and that Mr. Home
+the poet and Mr. Browning the poet were not behind in approbation. Mr.
+Browning is said to be learned in Greek, especially in the dramatists;
+and of Mr. Home I should suspect something similar. Miss Mitford and
+Mrs. Jamieson, although very gifted and highly cultivated women,
+are not Grecians, and therefore judge the papers simply as English
+compositions.
+
+The single unfavorable opinion _is_ Mr. Hunter's, who thinks that
+the criticisms are not given with either sufficient seriousness or
+diffidence, and that there is a painful sense of effort through the
+whole. Many more persons may say so whose voices I do not hear. I am
+glad that yours, my dear indulgent friend, is not one of them.
+
+Believe me, your ever affectionate
+
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+May 17, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--Have you thought all unkindness out of my
+silence? Yet the inference is not a true one, however it may look in
+logic.
+
+You do not like Silentiarius _very much_ (that is _my_ inference),
+since you have kept him so short a time. And I quite agree with you
+that he is not a poet of the same interest as Gregory Nazianzen,
+however he may appear to me of more lofty cadence in his
+versification. My own impression is that John of Euchaita is worth two
+of each of them as a poet. His poems strike me as standing in the very
+first class of the productions of the Christian centuries. Synesius
+and John of Euchaita! I shall always think of those two together--not
+by their similarity, but their dignity.
+
+I return you the books you lent me with true thanks, and also those
+which Mrs. Smith, I believe, left in your hands for me. I thank _you_
+for them, and _you_ must be good enough to thank _her_. They were of
+use, although of a rather sublime indifference for poets generally....
+
+I shall send you soon the series of the Greek papers you asked for,
+and also perhaps the first paper of a Survey of the English Poets,
+under the pretence of a review of 'The Book of the Poets,' a
+bookseller's selection published lately. I begin from Langland, of
+Piers Plowman and the Malvern Hills. The first paper went to the
+editor last week, and I have heard nothing as to whether it will
+appear on Saturday or not, and perhaps if it does you won't care
+to have it sent to you. Tell me if you do or don't. I have suffered
+unpleasantly in the heart lately from this tyrannous dynasty of east
+winds, but have been well otherwise, and am better, in _that_. Flushie
+means to bark the next time he sees you in revenge for what you say of
+him.
+
+Good bye, dear Mr. Boyd; think of me as
+
+Your ever affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+June 3, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I disobeyed you in not simply letting you know
+of the publication of my 'English Poets,' because I did not know
+myself when the publication was to take place, and I hope you will
+forgive the innocent crime and accept the first number going to you
+with this note. I warn you that there will be two numbers more at
+_least_. Therefore do not prepare yourself for perhaps the impossible
+magnanimity of reading them through.
+
+And now I am fit for rivalship with your clocks, papa having given me
+an Aeolian harp for the purpose. Do you know the music of an Aeolian
+harp, and that nothing below the spherical harmonies is so sweet
+and soft and mournfully wild? The amusing part of it is (after the
+poetical) that Flushie is jealous and thinks it is alive, and takes
+it as very hard that I should say 'beautiful' to anything except his
+ears!
+
+Arabel talks of going to see you; but if you are sensible to this
+intense and most overcoming heat, you will pardon her staying away for
+the present.
+
+We have heard to-day that Annie proposes to publish her Miscellany by
+subscription; and although I know it to be the only way, compatible
+with publication at all, to avoid a pecuniary loss, yet the custom
+is so entirely abandoned except in the case of persons of a lower
+condition of life than _your daughter_, that I am sorry to think of
+the observations it may excite. The whole scheme has appeared to me
+from the beginning _most foolish_, and if you knew what I know of
+the state and fortune of our ephemeral literature, you would use
+what influence you have with her to induce her to condemn her
+'contributions' to the adorning of a private annual rather than the
+purpose in unhappy question. I wish I dared to appeal through my true
+love for her to her own good sense once more.
+
+My very dear friend's affectionate and grateful
+E.B.B.
+
+If you _do_ read any of the papers, let me know, I beseech you, your
+full and free opinion of them.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+June 22, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I thank you gratefully for your two notes, with
+their united kindness and candour--the latter still rarer than the
+former, if less 'sweet upon the tongue.' Sir William Alexander's
+tragedy _(that_ is the right name, I think, Sir William Alexander,
+Earl of Stirling) you will not find mentioned among my dramatic
+notices, because I was much pressed for room, and had to treat the
+whole subject as briefly as possible, striking off, like the Roman,
+only the heads of the flowers, and I did not, besides, receive your
+injunction until my third paper on the dramatists was finished and in
+the press. When you read it you will find some notice of that tragedy
+by Marlowe, the first knowledge of which I owe to you, my dear Mr.
+Boyd, as how much besides? And then comes the fourth paper, and I
+tremble to anticipate the possible--nay, the very probable--scolding I
+may have from you, upon my various heresies as to Dryden and Pope and
+Queen Anne's versificators. In the meantime you have breathing time,
+for Mr. Dilke, although very gracious and courteous to my offence of
+extending the two papers he asked for _into four_,[65] yet could find
+no room in the 'Athenaeum' last week for me, and only _hopes_ for it
+this week. And after this week comes the British Association business,
+which always fills every column for a month, so that a further delay
+is possible enough. 'It will increase,' says Mr. Dilke, 'the zest of
+the reader,' whereas _I_ say (at least think) that it will help him
+quite to forget me. I explain all this lest you should blame me for
+neglect to yourself in not sending the papers. I am so pleased that
+you like at least the second article. That is encouragement to me.
+
+Flushie did not seem to think the harp alive when it was taken out of
+the window and laid close to him. He examined it particularly, and
+is a philosophical dog. But I am sure that at first and while it was
+playing he thought so.
+
+In the same way he can't bear me to look into a glass, because he
+thinks there is a little brown dog inside every looking glass, and he
+is jealous of its being so close to _me_. He used to tremble and bark
+at it, but now he is _silently_ jealous, and contents himself with
+squeezing close, close to me and kissing me expressively.
+
+My very dear friend's ever gratefully affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 65: Ultimately five.]
+
+
+_To John Kenyon_
+50 Wimpole Street: Sunday night [September 1842].
+
+My dear Mr. Kenyon,--Having missed my pleasure to-day by a coincidence
+worse for me than for you, I must, tired as I am to-night, tell
+you--ready for to-morrow's return of the books--what I have waited
+three whole days hoping to tell you by word of mouth. But mind, before
+I begin, I don't do so out of despair ever to see you again, because I
+trust steadfastly to your kindness to _come_ again when _you_ are not
+'languid' and I am alone as usual; only that I dare not keep back from
+you any longer the following message of Miss Mitford. She says: 'Won't
+he take us in his way to Torquay? or from Torquay? Beg him to do
+so--and of all love, to tell us _when_.' Afterwards, again: 'I think
+my father is better. Tell Mr. Kenyon what I say, and stand my friend
+with him and beg him to come.'
+
+Which I do in the most effectual way--in her own words.
+
+She is much pleased by means of your introduction. 'Tell dear Mr.
+Kenyon how very very much I like Mrs. Leslie. She seems all that is
+good and kind, and to add great intelligence and agreeableness to
+these prime qualities.'
+
+Now I have done with being a messenger of the gods, and verily my
+caduceus is trembling in my hand.
+
+O Mr. Kenyon! what have you done? You will know the interpretation of
+the reproach, your conscience holding the key of the cypher.
+
+In the meantime I ought to be thanking you for your great kindness
+about this divine Tennyson.[66] Beautiful! beautiful! After all, it
+is a noble thing to be a poet. But notwithstanding the poetry of the
+novelties--and you will observe that his two preceding volumes (only
+one of which I had seen before, having inquired for the other vainly)
+are included in these two--nothing appears to me quite equal to
+'Oenone,' and perhaps a few besides of my ancient favorites. That is
+not said in disparagement of the last, but in admiration of the
+first. There is, in fact, more thought--more bare brave working of the
+intellect--in the latter poems, even if we miss something of the high
+ideality, and the music that goes with it, of the older ones. Only I
+am always inclined to believe that philosophic thinking, like music,
+is involved, however occultly, in high ideality of any kind.
+
+You have not a key to the cypher of this at least, and I am so tired
+that one word seems tumbling over another all the way.
+
+Ever affectionately yours,
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+You will let me keep your beautiful ballad and the gods[67] a little
+longer.
+
+[Footnote 66: This refers to the recent publication of Tennyson's
+_Poems_, in two volumes, the first containing a re-issue of poems
+previously published, while the second was wholly new, and included
+such poems as the 'Morte d'Arthur,' 'Ulysses,' and 'Locksley Hall.']
+
+[Footnote 67: No doubt Mr. Kenyon's translation of Schiller's 'Gods
+of Greece,' which was the occasion of Miss Barrett's poem 'The Dead
+Pan.']
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+September 14, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I have made you wait a long time for the 'North
+American Review,' because when your request came it was no longer
+within my reach, and because since then I have not been so well
+as usual from a sweep of the wing of the prevailing epidemic. Now,
+however, I am _better_ than I was even before the attack, only wishing
+that it were possible to hook-and-eye on another summer to the hem
+of the garment of this last sunny one. At the end of such a double
+summer, to measure things humanly, I might be able to go to see you at
+Hampstead. Nevertheless, winters and adversities are more fit for us
+than a constant sun.
+
+I suppose, dear Mr. Boyd, you want only to have this review read to
+you, and not _written_. Because it isn't out of laziness that I send
+the book to you; and Arabel would copy whatever you please willingly,
+provided you wished it. Keep the book as long as you please. I have
+put a paper mark and a pencil mark at the page and paragraph where I
+am taken up. It seems to me that the condemnation of 'The Seraphim' is
+not too hard. The poem wants _unity_.
+
+As to your 'words of fire' about Wordsworth, if I had but a cataract
+at command I would try to quench them. His powers should not be judged
+of by my extracts or by anybody's extracts from his last-published
+volume.[68] Do you remember his grand ode upon Childhood--worth, to my
+apprehension, just twenty of Dryden's 'St. Cecilia's Day'--his sonnet
+upon Westminster Bridge, his lyric on a lark, in which the lark's
+music swells and exults, and the many noble and glorious passages
+of his 'Excursion'? You must not indeed blame me for estimating
+Wordsworth at _his height_, and on the other side I readily confess to
+you that he is occasionally, and not unfrequently, heavy and dull, and
+that Coleridge had an intenser genius. Tell me if you know anything of
+Tennyson. He has just published two volumes of poetry, one of which is
+a republication, but both full of inspiration.
+
+Ever my very dear friend's affectionate and grateful
+E.B.B.
+
+
+[Footnote 68: _Poems, chiefly of early and late years, including The
+Borderers, a Tragedy_ (1842).]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+50 Wimpole Street: October 22, 1842.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Waiting first for you to write to me, and
+then waiting that I might write to you cheerfully, has ended by making
+so long a silence that I am almost ashamed to break it. And perhaps,
+even if I were not ashamed, you would be angry--perhaps you _are_
+angry, and don't much care now whether or not you ever hear from me
+again. Still I must write, and I must moreover ask you to write to me
+again; and I must in particular assure you that I have continued to
+love you sincerely, notwithstanding all the silence which might seem
+to say the contrary. What I should like best just now is to have a
+letter speaking comfortable details of your being comparatively well
+again; yet I hope on without it that you really are so much better as
+to be next to quite well. It was with great concern that I heard
+of the indisposition which hung about you, dearest Mrs. Martin,
+so long--I who had congratulated myself when I saw you last on the
+promise of good health in your countenance. May God bless you, and
+keep you better! And may you take care of yourself, and remember how
+many love you in the world, from dear Mr. Martin down to--E.B.B.
+
+Well, now I must look around me and consider what there is to tell
+you. But I have been uneasy in various ways, sometimes by reason and
+sometimes by fantasy; and even now, although my dear old friend Dr.
+Scully is something better, he lies, I fear, in a very precarious
+state, while dearest Miss Mitford's letters from the deathbed of her
+father make my heart ache as surely almost as the post comes. There
+is nothing more various in character, nothing which distinguishes
+one human being from another more strikingly, than the expression of
+feeling, the manner in which it influences the outward man. If I were
+in her circumstances, I should sit paralysed--it would be impossible
+to me to write or to cry. And she, who loves and feels with the
+intensity of a nature warm in everything, seems to turn to sympathy
+by the very instinct of grief, and sits at the deathbed of her last
+relative, writing there, in letter after letter, every symptom,
+physical or moral--even to the very words of the raving of a delirium,
+and those, heart-breaking words! I could not write such letters; but I
+know she feels as deeply as any mourner in the world can. And all this
+reminds me of what you once asked me about the inscriptions in
+Lord Brougham's villa at Nice. There are probably as many different
+dialects for the heart as for the tongue, are there not?...
+
+And now you will kindly like to have a word said about myself, and it
+need not be otherwise than a word to give your kindness pleasure. The
+long splendid summer, exhausting as the heat was to me sometimes, did
+me essential good, and left me walking about the room and equal to
+going downstairs (which I achieved four or five times), and even to
+going out in the chair, without suffering afterwards. And, best of
+all, the spitting of blood (I must tell you), which more or less kept
+by me continually, _stopped quite_ some six weeks ago, and I have thus
+more reasonable hopes of being really and essentially better than
+I could have with such a symptom loitering behind accidental
+improvements. Weak enough, and with a sort of pulse which is not
+excellent, I certainly remain; but still, if I escape any decided
+attack this winter--and I am in garrison now--there are expectations
+of further good for next summer, and I may recover some moderate
+degree of health and strength again, and be able to _do_ good instead
+of receiving it only.
+
+I write under the eyes of Wordsworth. Not Wordsworth's living eyes,
+although the actual living poet had the infinite kindness to ask Mr.
+Kenyon twice last summer when he was in London, if he might not
+come to see me. Mr. Kenyon said 'No'--I couldn't have said 'No' to
+Wordsworth, though I had never gone to sleep again afterwards. But
+this Wordsworth who looks on me now is Wordsworth in a picture. Mr.
+Haydon the artist, with the utmost kindness, has sent me the portrait
+he was painting of the great poet--an unfinished portrait--and I am
+to keep it until he wants to finish it. Such a head! such majesty! and
+the poet stands musing upon Helvellyn! And all that--poet, Helvellyn,
+and all--is in my room![69]
+
+Give my kind love to Mr. Martin--_our_ kind love, indeed, to both of
+you--and believe me, my dearest Mrs. Martin,
+
+Your ever affectionate BA.
+
+Is there any hope for us of you before the winter ends? Do consider.
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Monday, October 31, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I have put off from day to day sending you
+these volumes, and in the meantime _I have had a letter from the great
+poet_! Did Arabel tell you that my sonnet on the picture was sent to
+Mr. Haydon, and that Mr. Haydon sent it to Mr. Wordsworth? The result
+was that Mr. Wordsworth wrote to me. King John's barons were never
+better pleased with their Charta than I am with this letter.[70]
+
+But I won't tell you any more about it until you have read the poems
+which I send you. Read first, to put you into good humour, the sonnet
+written on Westminster Bridge, vol. iii. page 78. Then take from the
+sixth volume, page 152, the passage beginning 'Within the soul' down
+to page 153 at 'despair,' and again at page 155 beginning with
+
+  I have seen
+  A curious child, &c.
+
+down to page 157 to the end of the paragraph. If you admit these
+passages to be fine poetry, I wish much that you would justify me
+further by reading, out of the _second_ volume, the two poems called
+'Laodamia' and 'Tintern Abbey' at page 172 and page 161. I will not
+ask you to read any more; but I dare say you will rush on of your own
+account, in which case there is a fine ode upon the 'Power of Sound'
+in the same volume. Wordsworth is a philosophical and Christian poet,
+with depths in his soul to which poor Byron could never reach. Do be
+candid. Nay, I need not say so, because you always are, as I am,
+
+Your ever affectionate
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 69: It was this picture that called forth the sonnet, 'On
+a Portrait of Wordsworth by B.R. Haydon' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 62),
+alluded to in the next letter.]
+
+[Footnote 70: The following is the letter from Wordsworth which gave
+such pleasure to Miss Barrett, and which she treasured among her
+papers for the rest of her life. Two slips of the pen have been
+corrected between brackets.
+
+'Rydal Mount: Oct. 26, '42.
+
+'Dear Miss Barrett,--Through our common friend Mr. Haydon I have
+received a sonnet which his portrait of me suggested. I should have
+thanked you sooner for that effusion of a feeling towards myself, with
+which I am much gratified, but I have been absent from home and much
+occupied.
+
+'The conception of your sonnet is in full accordance with the
+painter's intended work, and the expression vigorous; yet the word
+"ebb," though I do not myself object to it, nor wish to have it
+altered, will I fear prove obscure to nine readers out of ten.
+
+  "A vision free
+  And noble, Haydon, hath thine art released."
+
+Owing to the want of inflections in our language the construction here
+is obscure. Would it not be a little [better] thus? I was going to
+write a small change in the order of the words, but I find it would
+not remove the objection. The verse, as I take it, would be somewhat
+clearer thus, if you would tolerate the redundant syllable:
+
+  "By a vision free
+  And noble, Haydon, is thine art released."
+
+I had the gratification of receiving, a good while ago, two copies of
+a volume of your writing, which I have read with much pleasure, and
+beg that the thanks which I charged a friend to offer may be repeated
+[to] you.
+
+'It grieved me much to hear from Mr. Kenyon that your health is so
+much deranged. But for that cause I should have presumed to call upon
+you when I was in London last spring.
+
+'With every good wish, I remain, dear Miss Barrett, your much obliged
+
+'WM. WORDSWORTH.'
+
+[Postmark: Ambleside, Oct. 28, 1842.]
+
+It may be added that although Miss Barrett altered the passage
+criticised by the great poet, she did not accept his amendment. It now
+runs
+
+  'A noble vision free
+  Our Haydon's hand has flung out from the mist.
+
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+December 4, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--You will think me in a discontented state of
+mind when I knit my brows like a 'sleeve of care' over your kind
+praises. But the truth is, I _won't_ be praised for being liberal in
+Calvinism and love of Byron. _I_ liberal in commending Byron! Take out
+my heart and try it! look at it and compare it with yours; and answer
+and tell me if I do not love and admire Byron more warmly than you
+yourself do. I suspect it indeed. Why, I am always reproached for my
+love to Byron. Why, people say to me, '_You_, who overpraise Byron!'
+Why, when I was a little girl (and, whatever you may think, my
+tendency is not to cast off my old loves!) I used to think seriously
+of dressing up like a boy and running away to be Lord Byron's page.
+And _I_ to be praised now for being 'liberal' in admitting the merit
+of his poetry! _I_!
+
+As for the Calvinism, I don't choose to be liberal there either.
+I don't call myself a Calvinist. I hang suspended between the two
+doctrines, and hide my eyes in God's love from the sights which other
+people _say_ they see. I believe simply that the saved are saved by
+grace, and that they shall hereafter know it fully; and that the lost
+are lost by their choice and free will--by choosing to sin and die;
+and I believe absolutely that the deepest damned of all the lost will
+not dare to whisper to the nearest devil that reproach of Martha: 'If
+the Lord had been near me, I had not died.' But of the means of the
+working of God's grace, and of the time of the formation of the
+Divine counsels, I know nothing, guess nothing, and struggle to
+guess nothing; and my persuasion is that when people talk of what was
+ordained or approved by God before the foundations of the world, their
+tendency is almost always towards a confusion of His eternal nature
+with the human conditions of ours; and to an oblivion of the fact that
+with _Him_ there can be no after nor before.
+
+At any rate, I do not find it good for myself to examine any more the
+brickbats of controversy--there is more than enough to think of in
+truths clearly revealed; more than enough for the exercise of the
+intellect and affections and adorations. I would rather not suffer
+myself to be disturbed, and perhaps irritated, where it is not likely
+that I should ever be informed. And although you tell me that your
+system of investigation is different from some others, answer me with
+your accustomed candour, and admit, my very dear friend, that this
+argument does not depend upon the construction of a Greek sentence or
+the meaning of a Greek word. Let a certain word[71] be 'fore-know' or
+'publicly _favor_,' room for a stormy controversy yet remains. I went
+through the Romans with you partially, and wholly by myself, by your
+desire, and in reference to the controversy, long ago; and I could not
+then, and cannot now, enter into that view of Taylor and Adam Clarke,
+and yourself I believe, as to the _Jews and Gentiles_. Neither could
+I conceive that a particular part of the epistle represents an actual
+dialogue between a Jew and Gentile, since the form of question and
+answer appears to me there simply rhetorical. The Apostle Paul was
+learned in rhetoric; and I think he described so, by a rhetorical and
+vivacious form, that struggle between the flesh and the spirit common
+to all Christians; the spirit being triumphant through God in Christ
+Jesus. These are my impressions. Yours are different. And since we
+should not probably persuade each other, and since we are both of us
+fond of and earnest in what we fancy to be the truth, why should
+we cast away the thousand sympathies we rejoice in, religious and
+otherwise, for the sake of a fruitless contention? 'What!' you would
+say (by the time we had quarrelled half an hour), 'can't you talk
+without being excited?' Half an hour afterwards: 'Pray _do_ lower
+your voice--it goes through my head!' In another ten minutes: 'I could
+scarcely have believed you to be so obstinate.' In another: 'Your
+prejudices are insurmountable, and your reason most womanly--you are
+degenerated to the last degree.' In another--why, _then_ you would
+turn me and Flush out of the room and so finish the controversy
+victoriously.
+
+Was I wrong too, dearest Mr. Boyd, in sending the poems to the
+'Athenaeum'? Well, I meant to be right. I fancied that you would
+rather they were sent; and as your _name_ was not attached, there
+could be no harm in leaving them to the editor's disposal. They
+are not inserted, as I anticipated. The religious character was a
+sufficient objection--their character of _prayer_. Mr. Dilke begged me
+once, while I was writing for him, to write the name of God and Jesus
+Christ as little as I could, because those names did not accord with
+the secular character of the journal!
+
+Ever your affectionate and grateful
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+Tell me how you like the sonnet; but you won't (I prophesy) like it.
+Keep the 'Athenaeum.'
+
+[Footnote 71: The Greek [Greek: progignôskein], used in Romans viii.
+29.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+December 24, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I am afraid that you will infer from my silence
+that you have affronted me into ill temper by your parody upon my
+sonnet. Yet 'lucus a non lucendo' were a truer derivation. I laughed
+and thanked you over the parody, and put off writing to you until I
+had the headache, which forced me to put it off again....
+
+May God bless you, my dear Mr. Boyd. Mr. Savage Landor once said that
+anybody who could write a parody deserved to be shot; but as he has
+written one himself since saying so, he has probably changed his mind.
+Arabel sends her love.
+
+Ever your affectionate and grateful
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+January 5, 1842 [1843].
+
+My very dear Friend,--My surprise was inexpressible at your utterance
+of the name. What! Ossian superior as a poet to Homer! Mr. Boyd saying
+so! Mr. Boyd treading down the neck of Aeschylus while he praises
+Ossian! The fact appears to me that anomalous thing among believers--a
+miracle without an occasion.
+
+I confess I never, never should have guessed the name; not though
+I had guessed to Doomsday. In the first place I do not believe in
+Ossian, and having partially examined the testimony (for I don't
+pretend to any exact learning about it) I consider him as the poetical
+_lay figure_ upon which Mr. Macpherson dared to cast his personality.
+There is a sort of phraseology, nay, an identity of occasional
+phrases, from the antique--but that these so-called Ossianic poems
+were ever discovered and translated as they stand in their present
+form, I believe in no wise. As Dr. Johnson wrote to Macpherson, so I
+would say, 'Mr. Macpherson, I thought you an impostor, and think so
+still.'
+
+It is many years ago since I looked at Ossian, and I never did much
+delight in him, as that fact proves. Since your letter came I have
+taken him up again, and have just finished 'Carthon.' There are
+beautiful passages in it, the most beautiful beginning, I think,
+'Desolate is the dwelling of Moina,' and the next place being filled
+by that address to the sun you magnify so with praise. But the charm
+of these things is the _only_ charm of all the poems. There is a sound
+of wild vague music in a monotone--nothing is articulate, nothing
+_individual_, nothing various. Take away a few poetical phrases from
+these poems, and they are colourless and bare. Compare them with the
+old burning ballads, with a wild heart beating in each. How cold they
+grow in the comparison! Compare them with Homer's grand breathing
+personalities, with Aeschylus's--nay, but I cannot bear upon my lips
+or finger the charge of the blasphemy of such comparing, even for
+religion's sake....
+
+I had another letter from America a few days since, from an American
+poet of Boston who is establishing a magazine, and asked for
+contributions from my pen. The Americans are as good-natured to me as
+if they took me for the high Radical I am, you know.
+
+You won't be angry with me for my obliquity (as you will consider it)
+about Ossian. You know I always talk sincerely to you, and you have
+not made me afraid of telling you the truth--that is, _my_ truth, the
+truth of my belief and opinions.
+
+I do not defend much in the 'Idiot Boy.' Wordsworth is a great poet,
+but he does not always write equally.
+
+And that reminds me of a distinction you suggest between Ossian and
+Homer. _I_ fashion it in this way: Homer sometimes nods, but Ossian
+_makes his readers nod_.
+
+Ever your affectionate
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+Did I tell you that I had been reading through a manuscript
+translation of the 'Gorgias' of Plato, by Mr. Hyman of Oxford, who is
+a stepson of Mr. Haydon's the artist? It is an excellent translation
+with learned notes, but it is _not elegant_. He means to try the
+public upon it, but, as I have intimated to him, the Christians of the
+present day are not civilised enough for Plato.
+
+Arabel's love.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[About the end of January 1843.]
+
+My very dear Friend,--The image you particularly admire in Ossian, I
+admire with you, although I am not sure that I have not seen it or its
+like somewhere in a classical poet, Greek or Latin. Perhaps Lord
+Byron remembered it when in the 'Siege of Corinth' he said of
+his Francesca's uplifted arm, 'You might have seen the moon shine
+through.' It reminds me also that Maclise the artist, a man of
+poetical imagination, gives such a transparency to the ghost of Banquo
+in his picture of Macbeth's banquet, that we can discern through it
+the lights of the festival. That is good poetry for a painter, is it
+not?
+
+I send you the magazines which I have just received from America, and
+which contain, one of them, 'The Cry of the Human,' and the other,
+four of my sonnets. My correspondent tells me that the 'Cry' is
+considered there one of the most successful of my poems, but you
+probably will not think so. Tell me exactly what you do think. At
+page 343 of 'Graham's Magazine,' _Editor's Table_, is a review of
+me, which, however extravagant in its appreciation, will give your
+kindness pleasure. I confess to a good deal of pleasure myself from
+these American courtesies, expressed not merely in the magazines,
+but in the newspapers; a heap of which has been sent to me by my
+correspondent--the 'New York Tribune,' 'The Union,' 'The Union Flag,'
+&c.--all scattered over with extracts from my books and benignant
+words about their writer. Among the extracts is the whole of the
+review of Wordsworth from the London 'Athenaeum,' an unconscious
+compliment, as they do not guess at the authorship, and one which you
+won't thank them for. Keep the magazines, as I have duplicates.
+
+Dearest Mr. Boyd, since you admit that I am not prejudiced about
+Ossian, I take courage to tell you what I am thinking of.
+
+_I am thinking_ (this is said in a whisper, and in confidence--of two
+kinds), _I am thinking that you don't admire him quite as much as you
+did three weeks ago_.
+
+Ever most affectionately yours,
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+Arabel not being here, I send her love without asking for it.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+January 30, 1843.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Thank you for your letter and for dear Mr.
+Martin's thought of writing one! Ah! _I_ thought he would not write,
+but not for the reason you say; it was something more palpable and
+less romantic! Well, I will not grumble any more about not having my
+letter, since you are coming, and since you seem, my dear Mrs. Martin,
+something in better spirits than your note from Southampton bore
+token of. Madeira is the Promised Land, you know; and you should hope
+hopefully for your invalid from his pilgrimage there. You should hope
+with those who hope, my dearest Mrs. Martin....
+
+Our '_event_' just now is a new purchase of a 'Holy Family,' supposed
+to be by Andrea del Sarto. It has displaced the Glover over the
+chimney-piece in the drawing-room, and dear Stormie and Alfred nearly
+broke their backs in carrying it upstairs for me to see before the
+placing. It is probably a fine picture, and I seem to see my
+way through the dark of my ignorance, to admire the grouping and
+colouring, whatever doubt as to the expression and divinity may occur
+otherwise. Well, you will judge. I won't tell you _how_ I think of it.
+And you won't care if I do. There is also a new very pretty landscape
+piece, and you may imagine the local politics of the arrangement and
+hanging, with their talk and consultation; while _I_, on the storey
+higher, have my arranging to manage of my pretty new books and my
+three hyacinths, and a pot of primroses which dear Mr. Kenyon had the
+good nature to carry himself through the streets to our door. But all
+the flowers forswear me, and die either suddenly or gradually as soon
+as they become aware of the want of fresh air and light in my room.
+Talking of air and light, what exquisite weather this is! What a
+summer in winter! It is the fourth day since I have had the fire wrung
+from me by the heat of temperature, and I sit here _very warm indeed_,
+notwithstanding that bare grate. Nay, yesterday I had the door thrown
+open for above an hour, and was warm still! You need not ask, you see,
+how I am.
+
+Tell me, have you read Mr. Dickens's 'America;' and what is your
+thought of it like? If I were an American, it would make me rabid, and
+certain of the free citizens _are_ furious, I understand, while others
+'speak peace and ensue it,' admire as much of the book as deserves
+any sort of admiration, and attribute the blameable parts to the
+prejudices of the party with whom the writer 'fell in,' and not to
+a want of honesty or brotherhood in his own intentions. I admire Mr.
+Dickens as an imaginative writer, and I love the Americans--I cannot
+possibly admire or love this book. Does Mr. Martin? Do _you_?
+
+Henrietta would send her love to you if I could hear her voice nearer
+than I do actually, as she sings to the guitar downstairs. And her
+love is not the only one to be sent. Give mine to dear Mr. Martin,
+though he can't make up his mind to the bore of writing to me. And
+remember us all, both of you, as we do you.
+
+Dearest Mrs. Martin, your affectionate BA.
+
+
+_To James Martin_
+February 6, 1843.
+
+You make us out, my dear Mr. Martin, to be such perfect parallel lines
+that I should be half afraid of completing the definition by our never
+meeting, if it were not for what you say afterwards, of the coming
+to London, and of promising to come and see Flush. If you should be
+travelling while I am writing, it was only what happened to me when I
+wrote not long ago to dearest Mrs. Martin, and everybody in this house
+cried out against the fatuity of the coincidence. As if I could know
+that she was travelling, when nobody told me, and I wasn't a witch!
+If the same thing happens to-day, believe in the innocence of my
+ignorance. I shall be consoled if it does--for certain reasons. But
+for none in the world can I help thanking you for your letter, which
+gave me so much pleasure from the first sight of the handwriting to
+the thought of the kindness spent upon me in it, that after all I
+cannot thank you as I would.
+
+Yet I won't let you fancy me of such an irrational state of simplicity
+as not to be fully aware that _you_, with your 'nature of the fields
+and forests,' look down disdainfully and with an inward heat of
+glorying, upon _me_ who have all my pastime in books--dead and
+seethed. Perhaps, if it were a little warmer, I might even grant that
+you are right in your pride. As it is, I grumble feebly to myself
+something about the definition of _nature_, and how we in the town
+(which 'God made' just as He made your hedges) have _our_ share
+of nature too; and then I have secret thoughts of the state of the
+thermometer, and wonder how people can breathe out of doors. In the
+meantime, Flush, who is a better philosopher, pushes deep into
+my furs, and goes to sleep. Perhaps I should fear the omen for my
+correspondent.
+
+Oh yes! That picture in 'Boz' is beautiful. For my own part, and by a
+natural womanly contradiction, I have never cared so much in my life
+for flowers as since being shut out from gardens--unless, indeed, in
+the happy days of old when I had a garden of my own, and cut it out
+into a great Hector of Troy, in relievo, with a high heroic box nose
+and shoeties of columbine.[72] But that was long ago. Now I count the
+buds of my primrose with a new kind of interest, and you never
+saw such a primrose! I begin to believe in Ovid, and look for a
+metamorphosis. The leaves are turning white and springing up as high
+as corn. Want of air, and of sun, I suppose. I should be loth to think
+it--want of friendship to _me_!
+
+Do you know that the royal Boz lives close to us, three doors from Mr.
+Kenyon in Harley Place? The new numbers appear to me admirable, and
+full of life and blood--whatever we may say to the thick rouging and
+extravagance of gesture. There is a beauty, a tenderness, too, in the
+organ scene, which is worthy of the gilliflowers. But my admiration
+for 'Boz' fell from its 'sticking place,' I confess, a good furlong,
+when I read Victor Hugo; and my creed is, that, _not_ in his
+tenderness, which is as much his own as his humour, but in his serious
+powerful Jew-trial scenes, he has followed Hugo closely, and never
+scarcely looked away from 'Les Trois Jours d'un Condamné.'
+
+If you should not be on the road, I hope you won't be very long
+before you are, and that dearest Mrs. Martin will put off building her
+greenhouse--you see I believe she _will_ build it--until she gets home
+again.
+
+How kind of you and of her to have poor old Mrs. Barker at Colwall!
+
+Do believe me, both of you, with love from all of _us_,
+
+Very affectionately yours,
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 72: See 'Hector in the Garden' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 37).]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+February 21, 1843.
+
+Thank you, my very dear friend, I am as well as the east wind will
+suffer me to be; and _that_, indeed, is not very well, my heart being
+fuller of all manner of evil than is necessary to its humanity. But
+the wind is changed, and the frost is gone, and it is not quite out of
+my fancy yet that I may see you next summer. _You and summer are not
+out of the question yet_. Therefore, you see, I cannot be very deep
+in tribulation. But you may consider it a bad symptom that I have just
+finished a poem of some five hundred lines in stanzas, called 'The
+Lost Bower,'[73] and about nothing at all in particular.
+
+As to Arabel, she is not an icicle. There are flowers which blow in
+the frost--when we brambles are brown with their inward death--and she
+is of them, dear thing. _You_ are not a bramble, though, and I hope
+that when you talk of 'feeling the cold,' you mean simply to refer
+to your sensation, and not to your health. Remember also, dearest Mr.
+Boyd, what a glorious winter we have had. Take away the last ten days
+and a few besides, and call the whole summer rather than winter. Ought
+we to complain, really? Really, no.
+
+I venture another prophecy upon the shoulders of the ast, though my
+hand shakes so that nobody will read it.
+
+_You can't abide my 'Cry of the Human,' and four sonnets_. They have
+none of them found favor in your eyes.
+
+In or out of favor,
+
+Ever your affectionate E.B.B.
+
+Do you think that next summer you _might, could_, or _would_ walk
+across the park to see me--supposing always that I fail in my
+aspiration to go and see you? I only ask by way of _hypothesis_.
+Consider and revolve it so. We live on the verge of the town rather
+than in it, and our noises are cousins to silence; and you should pass
+into a room where the silence is most absolute. Flush's breathing is
+my loudest sound, and then the watch's tickings, and then my own heart
+when it beats too turbulently. Judge of the quiet and the solitude!
+
+[Footnote 73: _Poetical Works_, iii. 105.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+April 19, 1843.
+
+My very dear Friend,--The earth turns round, to be sure, and we turn
+with it, but I never anticipated the day and the hour for _you_ to
+turn round and be guilty of high treason to our Greeks. I cry '_Ai_!
+_ai_!' as if I were a chorus, and all vainly. For, you see, arguing
+about it will only convince you of my obstinacy, and not a bit of
+Homer's supremacy. Ossian has wrapt you in a cloud, a fog, a true
+Scotch mist. You have caught cold in the critical faculty, perhaps. At
+any rate, I can't see a bit more of your reasonableness than I can see
+of Fingal. _Sic transit_! Homer like the darkened half of the moon
+in eclipse! You have spoilt for me now the finest image in your
+Ossian-Macpherson.
+
+My dearest Mr. Boyd, you will find as few believers in the genuineness
+of these volumes among the most accomplished antiquarians in poetry
+as in the genuineness of Chatterton's Rowley, and of Ireland's
+Shakespeare. The latter impostures boasted of disciples in the first
+instance, but the discipleship perished by degrees, and the place
+thereof, during this present 1843, knows it no more. So has it been
+with the belief in Macpherson's Ossian. Of those who believed in the
+poems at the first sight of them, who kept his creed to the end? And
+speaking so, I speak of Macpherson's contemporaries whom you respect.
+
+I do not consider Walter Scott a great poet, but he was highly
+accomplished in matters of poetical antiquarianism, and is certainly
+citable as an authority on this question.
+
+Try not to be displeased with me. I cannot conceal from you that my
+astonishment is profound and unutterable at your new religion--your
+new faith in this pseud-Ossian--and your desecration, in his service,
+of the old Hellenic altars. And by the way, my own figure reminds me
+to inquire of you whether you are not sometimes struck with a _want_
+in him--a want very grave in poetry, and very strange in antique
+poetry--the want of devotional feeling and conscience of God. Observe,
+that all antique poets rejoice greatly and abundantly in their divine
+mythology; and that if this Ossian be both antique and godless, he is
+an exception, a discrepancy, a monster in the history of letters and
+experience of humanity. As such I leave him.
+
+Oh, how angry you will be with me. But you seemed tolerably prepared
+in your last letter for my being in a passion.... Ever affectionately
+yours,
+
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+Why should I be angry with Flush? _He_ does not believe in Ossian. Oh,
+I assure you he doesn't.
+
+
+The following letter was called forth by a criticism of Mr. Kenyon's
+on Miss Barrett's poem, _The Dead Pan_, which he had seen in
+manuscript; but it also meets some criticisms which others had made
+upon her last volume (see above, p. 65).
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+Wimpole Street: March 25, 1843.
+
+My very dear Cousin,--Your kindness having touched me much, and your
+good opinion, whether literary or otherwise, being of great price to
+me, it is even with tears in my eyes that I begin to write to you upon
+a difference between us. And what am I to say? To admit, of course,
+in the first place, the injuriousness to the 'popularity,' of the
+scriptural tone. But am I to sacrifice a principle to popularity?
+Would you advise me to do so? Should I be more worthy of your kindness
+by doing so? and could you (apart from the kindness) call my refusal
+to do so either perverseness or obstinacy? Even if you could, I hope
+you will try a little to be patient with me, and to forgive, at least,
+what you find it impossible to approve.
+
+My dear cousin, if you had not reminded me of Wordsworth's
+exclamation--
+
+  I would rather be
+  A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn--
+
+and if he had never made it, I do think that its significance would
+have occurred to me, by a sort of instinct, in connection with this
+discussion. Certainly _I_ would rather be a pagan whose religion
+was actual, earnest, continual--for week days, work days, and song
+days--than I would be a _Christian_ who, from whatever motive, shrank
+from hearing or uttering the name of Christ out of a 'church.' I am no
+fanatic, but I like truth and earnestness in all things, and I cannot
+choose but believe that such a Christian shows but ill beside such
+a pagan. What pagan poet ever thought of casting his gods out of
+his poetry? In what pagan poem do they not shine and thunder? And if
+_I_--to approach the point in question--if _I_, writing a poem the
+end of which is the extolment of what I consider to be Christian truth
+over the pagan myths shrank even _there_ from naming the name of my
+God lest it should not meet the sympathies of some readers, or lest it
+should offend the delicacies of other readers, or lest, generally,
+it should be unfit for the purposes of poetry in what more forcible
+manner than by that act (I appeal to Philip against Philip) can I
+controvert my own poem, or secure to myself and my argument a logical
+and unanswerable shame? If Christ's name is improperly spoken in that
+poem, then indeed is Schiller right, and the true gods of poetry are
+to be sighed for mournfully. For be sure that _Burns_ was right, and
+that a poet without devotion is below his own order, and that poetry
+without religion will gradually lose its elevation. And then, my dear
+friend, we do not live among dreams. The Christian religion is true or
+it is not, and if it is true it offers the highest and purest objects
+of contemplation. And the poetical faculty, which expresses the
+highest moods of the mind, passes naturally to the highest objects.
+Who can separate these things? Did Dante? Did Tasso? Did Petrarch? Did
+Calderon? Did Chaucer? Did the poets of our best British days? Did any
+one of these shrink from speaking out Divine names when the occasion
+came? Chaucer, with all his jubilee of spirit and resounding laughter,
+had the name of Jesus Christ and God as frequently to familiarity on
+his lips as a child has its father's name. You say 'our religion
+is not vital--not week-day--enough.' Forgive me, but _that_ is a
+confession of a wrong, not an argument. And if a poet be a poet, it is
+his business to work for the elevation and purification of the public
+mind, rather than for his own popularity! while if he be not a poet,
+no sacrifice of self-respect will make amends for a defective faculty,
+nor _ought_ to make amends.
+
+My conviction is that the _poetry of Christianity_ will one day be
+developed greatly and nobly, and that in the meantime we are wrong,
+poetically as morally, in desiring to restrain it. No, I never felt
+repelled by any Christian phraseology in Cowper--although he is not a
+favorite poet of mine from other causes--nor in Southey, nor even
+in James Montgomery, nor in Wordsworth where he writes
+'ecclesiastically,' nor in Christopher North, nor in Chateaubriand,
+nor in Lamartine.
+
+It is but two days ago since I had a letter--and not from a
+fanatic--to reproach my poetry for not being Christian enough, and
+this is not the first instance, nor the second, of my receiving such
+a reproach. I tell you this to open to you the possibility of another
+side to the question, which makes, you see, a triangle of it!
+
+Can you bear with such a long answer to your letter, and forbear
+calling it a 'preachment'? There may be such a thing as an awkward and
+untimely introduction of religion, I know, and I have possibly
+been occasionally guilty in this way. But for _my principle_ I must
+contend, for it is a poetical principle _and more_, and an entire
+sincerity in respect to it is what I owe to you and to myself. Try to
+forgive me, dear Mr. Kenyon. I would propitiate your indulgence for me
+by a libation of your own eau de Cologne poured out at your feet!
+It is excellent eau de Cologne, and you are very kind to me,
+but, notwithstanding all, there is a foreboding within me that my
+'conventicleisms' will be inodorous in your nostrils.
+
+[_Incomplete_.]
+
+
+_To John Kenyon_
+Tuesday [about March 1843].
+
+My very dear Cousin,--I have read your letter again and again, and
+feel your kindness fully and earnestly. You have advised me about the
+poem,[74] entering into the questions referring to it with the warmth
+rather of the author of it than the critic of it, and this I am
+sensible of as absolutely as anyone can be. At the same time, I have a
+strong perception rather than opinion about the poem, and also, if you
+would not think it too serious a word to use in such a place, I have
+a _conscience_ about it. It was not written in a desultory fragmentary
+way, the last stanzas thrown in, as they might be thrown out, but with
+a _design_, which leans its whole burden on the last stanzas. In fact,
+the last stanzas were in my mind to say, and all the others presented
+the mere avenue to the end of saying them. Therefore I cannot throw
+them out--I cannot yield to the temptation even of pleasing _you_ by
+doing so; I make a compromise with myself, and _do not throw them
+out, and do not print the poem_. Now say nothing against this, my dear
+cousin, because I am obstinate, as you know, as you have good evidence
+for knowing. I _will not_ either alter or print it. Then you have your
+manuscript copy, which you can cut into any shape you please as long
+as you keep it out of print; and seeing that the poem really does
+belong to you, having had its origin in your paraphrase of Schiller's
+stanzas, I see a great deal of poetical justice in the manuscript
+copyright remaining in your hands. For the rest I shall have quite
+enough to print and to be responsible for without it, and I am quite
+satisfied to let it be silent for a few years until either I or you
+(as may be the case even with _me_!) shall have revised our judgments
+in relation to it.
+
+This being settled, you must suffer me to explain (for mere personal
+reasons, and not for the good of the poem) that no mortal priest (of
+St. Peter's or otherwise) is referred to in a particular stanza, but
+the Saviour Himself. Who is 'the High Priest of our profession,' and
+the only 'priest' recognised in the New Testament. In the same way the
+altar candles are altogether spiritual, or they could not be supposed,
+even by the most amazing poetical exaggeration, to 'light the earth
+and skies.' I explain this, only that I may not appear to you to have
+compromised the principle of the poem, by compromising any truth (such
+in my eyes) for the sake of a poetical effect.
+
+And now I will not say any more. I know that you will be inclined
+to cry, 'Print it in any case,' but I will entreat of your kindness,
+which I have so much right to trust in while entreating, _not to say
+one such word. Be kind, and let me follow my own way silently_. I have
+not, indeed, like a spoilt child in a fret, thrown the poem up because
+I would not alter it, though you have done much to spoil me. I act
+advisedly, and have made up my mind as to what is the wisest and best
+thing to do, and personally the pleasantest to myself, after a good
+deal of serious reflection. 'Pan is dead,' and so best, for the
+present at least.
+
+I shall take your advice about the preface in every respect, and
+thanks for the letter and Taylor's memoirs.
+
+Miss Mitford talks of coming to town for a day, and of bringing Flush
+with her, as soon as the weather settles, and to-day looks so like
+it that I have mused this morning on the possibility of breaking
+my prison doors and getting into the next room. Only there is a
+forbidding north wind, they say.
+
+Don't be vexed with me, dear Mr. Kenyon. You know there are
+obstinacies in the world as well as mortalities, and thereto
+appertaining. And then you will perceive through all mine, that it is
+difficult for me to act against your judgment so far as to put my own
+tenacity into print.
+
+Ever gratefully and affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 74: 'The Dead Pan' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 280).]
+
+
+It is to the honour of America that it recognised from the first the
+genius of Miss Barrett; and for a large part of her life some of the
+closest of her personal and literary connections were with Americans.
+The same is true in both respects of Robert Browning. As appears from
+some letters printed farther on in these volumes, at a time when the
+sale of his poems in England was almost infinitesimal, they were known
+and highly prized in the United States. Expressions of Mrs. Browning's
+sympathy with America and of gratitude for the kindly feelings of
+Americans recur frequently in the letters, and it is probable that
+there are still extant in the States many letters written to friends
+and correspondents there. Only three or four such have been made
+available for the present collection; and of these the first follows
+here in its place in the chronological sequence. It was written to Mr.
+Cornelius Mathews, then editor of 'Graham's Magazine,' who had
+invited Miss Barrett to send contributions to his periodical. The warm
+expression in it of sympathy with the poetry of Robert Browning, whom
+she did not yet know personally, is especially interesting to readers
+of this later day, who, like the spectators at a Greek tragedy, watch
+the development of a drama of which the _dénouement_ is already known
+to them.
+
+
+_To Cornelius Mathews_
+50 Wimpole Street: April 28, 1843.
+
+My dear Mr. Mathews,--In replying to your kind letter I send some
+more verse for Graham's, praying such demi-semi-gods as preside over
+contributors to magazines that I may not appear over-loquacious to
+my editor. Of course it is not intended to thrust three or four poems
+into one number. My pluralities go to you simply to 'bide your
+time,' and be used one by one as the opportunity is presented. In the
+meanwhile you have received, I hope, a short letter written to explain
+my unwillingness to apply, as you desired me at first, to Wiley and
+Putnam--an unwillingness justified by what you told me afterwards.
+I did not apply, nor have I applied, and I would rather not apply
+at all. Perhaps I shall hear from them presently. The pamphlet on
+International Copyright is welcome at a distance, but it has not come
+near me yet; and for all your kindness in relation to the prospective
+gift of your works I thank you again and earnestly. You are kind to me
+in many ways, and I would willingly know as much of your intellectual
+habits as you teach me of your genial feelings. This 'Pathfinder'
+(what an excellent name for an American journal!) I also owe to you,
+with the summing up of your performances in it, and with a notice
+of Mr. Browning's 'Blot on the Scutcheon,' which would make one
+poet furious (the 'infelix Talfourd') and another a little
+melancholy--namely, Mr. Browning himself. There is truth on both
+sides, but it seems to me hard truth on Browning. I do assure you I
+never saw him in my life--do not know him even by correspondence--and
+yet, whether through fellow-feeling for Eleusinian mysteries, or
+whether through the more generous motive of appreciation of his
+powers, I am very sensitive to the thousand and one stripes with which
+the assembly of critics doth expound its vocation over him, and the
+'Athenaeum,' for instance, made me quite cross and misanthropical last
+week.[75] The truth is--and the world should know the truth--it is
+easier to find a more faultless writer than a poet of equal genius.
+Don't let us fall into the category of the sons of Noah. Noah was once
+drunk, indeed, but once he built the ark. Talking of poets, would
+your 'Graham's Miscellany' care at all to have occasional poetical
+contributions from Mr. Horne? I am in correspondence with him, and
+I think I could manage an arrangement upon the same terms as my
+engagement rests on, if you please and your friends please, that is,
+and without formality, if it should give you any pleasure. He is a
+writer of great power, I think. And this reminds me that you may be
+looking all the while for the 'Athenaeum's' reply to your friend's
+proposition--of which I lost no time in apprising the editor, Mr.
+Dilke, and here are some of his words: 'An American friend who had
+been long in England, and often conversed with me on the subject,
+resolved on his return to establish such a correspondence. In all
+things worth knowing--all reviews of good books' (which 'are published
+first or simultaneously,' says Mr. Dilke, 'in London'), 'he was
+anticipated, and after some months he was driven of necessity to
+geological surveys, centenary celebrations, progress of railroads,
+manufactures, &c., and thus the prospect was abandoned altogether.'
+Having made this experiment, Mr. Dilke is unwilling to risk another.
+Neither must we blame him for the reserve. When the international
+copyright shall at once protect the national _meum_ and _tuum_ in
+literature and give it additional fullness and value, we shall cease
+to say insolently to you that what we want of your books we will get
+without your help, but as it is, the Mr. Dilkes of us have nothing
+much more courteous to do. I wish I could have been of any use to
+your friend--I have done what I could. In regard to critical papers
+of mine, I would willingly give myself up to you, seeing your good
+nature; but it is the truth that I never published any prose papers
+at all except the series on the Greek Christian poets and the other
+series on the English poets in the 'Athenaeum' of last year, and both
+of which you have probably seen. Afterwards I threw up my brief and
+went back to my poetry, in which I feel that I must do whatever I am
+equal to doing at all. That life is short and art long appears to us
+more true than usual when we lie all day long on a sofa and are as
+frightened of the east wind as if it were a tiger. Life is not only
+short, but uncertain, and art is not only long, but absorbing. What
+have I to do with writing '_scandal_' (as Mr. Jones would say) upon
+my neighbour's work, when I have not finished my own? So I threw up my
+brief into Mr. Dilke's hands, and went back to my verses. Whenever I
+print another volume you shall have it, if Messrs. Wiley and Putnam
+will convey it to you. How can I send you, by the way, anything I may
+have to send you? Why will you not, as a nation, embrace our great
+penny post scheme, and hold our envelopes in all acceptation? You do
+not know--cannot guess--what a wonderful liberty our Rowland Hill has
+given to British spirits, and how we '_flash_ a thought' instead of
+'wafting' it from our extreme south to our extreme north, paying 'a
+penny for our thought' and for the electricity included. I recommend
+you our penny postage as the most successful revolution since the
+'glorious three days' of Paris.
+
+And so, you made merry with my scorn of my 'Prometheus.' Believe
+me--believe me absolutely--I did not strike that others might spare,
+but from an earnest remorse. When you know me better, you will know,
+I hope, that I am _true_, whether right or wrong, and you know already
+that I am right in this thing, the only merit of the translation being
+its closeness. Can I be of any use to you, dear Mr. Mathews? When I
+can, make use of me. You surprise and disappoint me in your sketch of
+the Boston poet, for the letter he wrote to me struck me as frank and
+honest. I wonder if he made any use of the verses I sent him; and
+I wonder what I sent him--for I never made a note of it, through
+negligence, and have quite forgotten. Are you acquainted with
+Mrs. Sigourney? She has offended us much by her exposition of Mrs.
+Southey's letter, and I must say not without cause. I rejoice in the
+progress of 'Wakondah,' wishing the influences of mountain and river
+to be great over him and in him. And so I will say the 'God bless you'
+your kindness cares to hear, and remain,
+
+Sincerely and thankfully yours,
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+_(Endorsed in another hand)_
+E.B. Barrett, London, received May 12, 1843,
+4 poems, previously furnished to _Graham's Magazine_, $50.
+
+[Footnote 75: The _Athenaeum_ of April 22 contained a review of
+Browning's 'Dramatic Lyrics,' charging him with taking pleasure in
+being enigmatical, and declaring this to be a sign of weakness, not
+strength. It spoke of many of the pieces composing the volume as being
+rather fragments and sketches than having any right to independent
+existence.]
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+May 1, 1843
+
+My dear Cousin,--Here is my copyright for you, and you will see that I
+have put 'word' instead of 'sound,' as certainly the proper 'word.' Do
+let me thank you once more for all the trouble and interest you have
+taken with me and in me. Observe besides that I have altered the title
+according to your unconscious suggestion, and made it 'The Dead
+Pan,' which is a far better name, I think, than the repetition of the
+_refrain_.
+
+But I spoil my exemplary docility so far, by confessing that I don't
+like 'scornful children' half--no, not half so well as my 'railing
+children,' although, to be sure, you proved to me that the last was
+nigh upon nonsense. You proved it--that is, you almost proved it, for
+don't we say--at least, _mightn't_ we say--'the thunder was silent'?
+'_thunder_' involving the idea of noise, as much as 'railing children'
+do. Consider this--I give it up to you.[76]
+
+I am ashamed to have kept Carlyle so long, but I quite failed in
+trying to read him at my "usual pace--he _won't_ be read quick. After
+all, and full of beauty and truth as that book is, and strongly as it
+takes hold of my sympathies, there is nothing new in it--not even a
+new Carlyleism, which I do not say by way of blaming the book, because
+the author of it might use words like the apostle's: 'To write the
+same things unto you, to me indeed is not grievous, and to you it is
+safe.' The world being blind and deaf and rather stupid, requires a
+reiteration of certain uncongenial truths....
+
+Thank you for the address.
+Ever affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+I observe that the _most questionable rhymes_ are not objected to by
+Mr. Merivale; also--but this letter is too long already.
+
+[Footnote 76: Mr. Kenyon's view evidently prevailed, for stanza 19 now
+has 'scornful children.']
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+May 3, 1843.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--If _you_ promised (which you did), _I_ ought
+to have promised--and therefore we may ask each other's pardon....
+
+How is the dog? and how does dear Mr. Martin find himself in Arcadia?
+Do we all stand in his recollection like a species of fog, or a
+concentrated essence of brick wall? How I wish--and since I said it
+aloud to you I have often wished it over in a whisper--that you would
+put away your romance, or cut it in two, and spend six months of the
+year in London with us! Miss Mitford believes that wishes, if wished
+hard enough, realise themselves, but my experience has taught me a
+less cheerful creed. Only if wishes _do_ realise themselves!
+
+Miss Mitford is at Bath, where she has spent one week and is about to
+spend two, and then goes on her way into Devonshire. She amused me so
+the other day by desiring me to look at the date of Mr. Landor's poems
+in their first edition, because she was sure that it must be fifty
+years since, and she finds him at this 1843, the very Lothario
+of Bath, enchanting the wives, making jealous the husbands, and
+'enjoying,' altogether, the worst of reputations. I suggested that
+if she proved him to be seventy-five, as long as he proved himself
+enchanting, it would do no manner of good in the way of practical
+ethics; and that, besides, for her to travel round the world to
+investigate gentlemen's ages was invidious, and might be alarming as
+to the safe inscrutability of ladies' ages. She is delighted with the
+_scenery of Bath_, which certainly, take it altogether, marble and
+mountains, is the most beautiful town I ever looked upon. Cheltenham,
+I think, is a mere commonplace to it, although the avenues are
+beautiful, to be sure....
+
+Mrs. Southey complains that she has lost half her income by her
+marriage, and her friend Mr. Landor is anxious to persuade, by the
+means of intermediate friends, Sir Robert Peel to grant her a pension.
+She is said to be in London now, and has at least left Keswick for
+ever. It is not likely that Wordsworth should come here this year,
+which I am sorry for now, although I should certainly be sorry if he
+did come. A happy state of contradiction, not confined either to that
+particular movement or no-movement, inasmuch as I was gratified by his
+sending me the poem you saw, and yet read it with such extreme pain as
+to incapacitate me from judging of it. Such stuff we are made of!
+
+This is a long letter--and you are tired, I feel by instinct!
+
+May God bless you, my dearest Mrs. Martin. Give my love to Mr. Martin,
+and think of me as
+
+Your very affectionate,
+
+BA.
+
+Henry and Daisy have been to see the _lying in state_, as lying stark
+and dead is called whimsically, of the Duke of Sussex. It was a fine
+sight, they say.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+May 9, 1843 [postmark].
+
+My very dear Friend,--I thank you much for the copies of your
+'Anti-Puseyistic Pugilism.' The papers reached my hands quite safely
+and so missed setting the world on fire; and I shall be as wary of
+them evermore (be sure) as if they were gunpowder. Pray send them
+to Mary Hunter. Why not? Why should you think that I was likely to
+'object' to your doing so? She will laugh. _I_ laughed, albeit in no
+smiling mood; for I have been transmigrating from one room to another,
+and your packet found me half tired and half excited, and _whole_
+grave. But I could not choose but laugh at your Oxford charge; and
+when I had counted your great guns and javelin points and other
+military appurtenances of the Punic war, I said to myself--or to
+Flush, 'Well, Mr. Boyd will soon be back again with the dissenters.'
+Upon which I think Flush said, 'That's a comfort.'
+
+Mary's direction is, 111 London Road, Brighton. You ought to send
+the verses to her yourself, if you mean to please her entirely: and
+I cannot agree with you that there is the slightest danger in sending
+them by the post. Letters are never opened, unless you tempt the flesh
+by putting sovereigns, or shillings, or other metallic substances
+inside the envelope; and if the devil entered into me causing me
+to write a libel against the Queen, I would send it by the post
+fearlessly from John o' Groat's to Land's End inclusive.
+
+One of your best puns, if not the best,
+
+  Hatching succession apostolical,
+  With other falsehoods diabolical,
+
+lies in an octosyllabic couplet; and what business has _that_ in your
+heroic libel?
+
+The 'pearl' of maidens sends her love to you.
+
+Your very affectionate
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+May 14, 1843.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I hear with wonder from Arabel of your
+repudiation of my word 'octosyllabic' for the two lines in your
+controversial poem. Certainly, if you count the syllables on your
+fingers, there are ten syllables in each line: of _that_ I am
+perfectly aware; but the lines are none the less belonging to the
+species of versification called octosyllabic. Do you not observe, my
+dearest Mr. Boyd, that the final accent and rhyme fall on the eighth
+syllable instead of the tenth, and that _that_ single circumstance
+determines the class of verse--that they are in fact octosyllabic
+verses with triple rhymes?
+
+  Hatching succession apostolical,
+  With other falsehoods diabolical.
+
+Pope has double rhymes in his heroic verses, but how does he manage
+them? Why, he admits eleven syllables, throwing the final accent and
+rhyme on the tenth, thus:
+
+  Worth makes the man, and want of it the f_e_llow,
+  The rest is nought but leather and prun_e_lla.
+
+Again, if there is a double rhyme to an octosyllabic verse, there
+are always _nine_ syllables in that verse, the final accent and rhyme
+falling on the eighth syllable, thus:
+
+  Compound for sins that we're incl_i_ned to,
+  By damning those we have no m_i_nd to.
+
+('Hudibras.')
+
+Again, if there is a triple rhyme to an octosyllabic verse (precisely
+the present case) there must always be ten syllables in that verse,
+the final accent and rhyme falling on the eighth syllable; thus from
+'Hudibras' again:
+
+  Then in their robes the penit_e_ntials
+  Are straight presented with cred_e_ntials.
+  Remember how in arms and p_o_litics,
+  We still have worsted all your h_o_ly tricks.
+
+You will admit that these last couplets are precisely of the same
+structure as yours, and certainly they are octosyllabics, and made use
+of by Butler in an octosyllabic poem, whereas yours, to be rendered of
+the heroic structure, should run thus:
+
+  Hatching at ease succession apostolical,
+  With many other falsehoods diabolical.
+
+I have written a good deal about an oversight on your part of little
+consequence; but as you charged me with a mistake made in cold blood
+and under corrupt influences from Lake-mists, why I was determined to
+make the matter clear to you. And as to the _influences_, if I were
+guilty of this mistake, or of a thousand mistakes, Wordsworth would
+not be guilty _in_ me. I think of him now, exactly as I thought of him
+during the first years of my friendship for you, only with _an equal_
+admiration. He was a great poet to me always, and always, while I have
+a soul for poetry, will be so; yet I said, and say in an under-voice,
+but steadfastly, that Coleridge was the grander genius. There is
+scarcely anything newer in my estimation of Wordsworth than in the
+colour of my eyes!
+
+Perhaps I was wrong in saying '_a pun._' But I thought I apprehended a
+double sense in your application of the term 'Apostolical succession'
+to Oxford's 'breeding' and 'hatching,' words which imply succession in
+a way unecclesiastical.
+
+After all which quarrelling, I am delighted to have to talk of your
+coming nearer to me--within reach--almost within my reach. Now if I am
+able to go in a carriage at all this summer, it will be hard but that
+I manage to get across the park and serenade you in Greek under your
+window.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+May 18, 1843.
+
+My very dear Friend,--Yes, you have surprised me!
+
+I always have thought of you, and I always think and say, that you are
+truthful and candid in a supreme degree, and therefore it is not your
+candour about Wordsworth which surprises me.
+
+He had the kindness to send me the poem upon Grace Darling when it
+first appeared; and with a curious mixture of feelings (for I was much
+gratified by his attention in sending it) I yet read it with _so_ much
+pain from the nature of the subject, that my judgment was scarcely
+free to consider the poetry--I could scarcely determine to myself what
+I _thought_ of it from feeling too much.
+
+_But_ I do confess to you, my dear friend, that I suspect--through the
+mist of my sensations--the poem in question to be very inferior to his
+former poems; I confess that the impression left on my mind is, of
+its decided inferiority, and I have heard that the poet's friends and
+critics (all except _one_) are mourning over its appearance; sighing
+inwardly, 'Wordsworth is old.'
+
+One thing is clear to me, however, and over _that_ I rejoice and
+triumph greatly. If you can esteem this poem of 'Grace Darling,' you
+must be susceptible to the grandeur and beauty of the poems which
+preceded it; and the cause of your past reluctance to recognise the
+poet's power must be, as I have always suspected, from your having
+given a very partial attention and consideration to his poetry. You
+were partial in your attention _I_, perhaps, was injudicious in my
+extracts; but with your truth and his genius, I cannot doubt but that
+the time will come for your mutual amity. Oh that I could stand as a
+herald of peace, with my wool-twisted fillet! I do not understand the
+Greek metres as well as you do, but I understand Wordsworth's genius
+better, and do you forgive that it should console me.
+
+I will ask about his collegian extraction. Such a question never
+occurred to me. Apollo taught him under the laurels, while all the
+Muses looked through the boughs.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT,
+
+Oh, yes, it delights me that you should be nearer. Of course you know
+that Wordsworth is Laureate.[77]
+
+[Footnote 77: Wordsworth was nominated Poet Laureate after the death
+of Southey in March 1843.]
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+May 19, 1843,
+
+Thank you, my dear cousin, for all your kindness to me. There is
+ivy enough for a thyrsus, and I almost feel ready to enact a sort of
+Bacchus triumphalis 'for jollitie,' as I see it already planted, and
+looking in at me through the window. I never thought to see such a
+sight as _that_ in my London room, and am overwhelmed with my own
+glory.
+
+And then Mr. Browning's note! Unless you say 'nay' to me, I shall keep
+this note, which has pleased me so much, yet not more than it ought.
+_Now_, I forgive Mr. Merivale for his hard thoughts of my easy rhymes.
+But all this pleasure, my dear Mr. Kenyon, I owe to _you_, and shall
+remember that I do.
+
+Ever affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+May 26, 1843.
+
+... I thank you for your part in the gaining of my bed, dearest Mrs.
+Martin, most earnestly; and am quite ready to believe that it
+was gained by _wishdom_, which believing is wisdom! No, you would
+certainly never recognise my prison if you were to see it. The bed,
+like a sofa and no Bed; the large table placed out in the room,
+towards the wardrobe end of it; the sofa rolled where a sofa should be
+rolled--opposite the arm-chair: the drawers crowned with a coronal
+of shelves fashioned by Sette and Co. (of papered deal and crimson
+merino) to carry my books; the washing table opposite turned into a
+cabinet with another coronal of shelves; and Chaucer's and Homer's
+busts in guard over these two departments of English and Greek
+poetry; three more busts consecrating the wardrobe which there was no
+annihilating; and the window--oh, I must take a new paragraph for the
+window, I am out of breath.
+
+In the window is fixed a deep box full of soil, where are _springing
+up_ my scarlet runners, nasturtiums, and convolvuluses, although they
+were disturbed a few days ago by the revolutionary insertion among
+them of a great ivy root with trailing branches so long and wide that
+the top tendrils are fastened to Henrietta's window of the higher
+storey, while the lower ones cover all my panes. It is Mr. Kenyon's
+gift. He makes the like to flourish out of mere flowerpots, and
+embower his balconies and windows, and why shouldn't this flourish
+with me? But certainly--there is no shutting my eyes to the fact that
+it does droop a little. Papa prophesies hard things against it every
+morning, 'Why, Ba, it looks worse and worse,' and everybody preaches
+despondency. I, however, persist in being sanguine, looking out for
+new shoots, and making a sure pleasure in the meanwhile by listening
+to the sound of the leaves against the pane, as the wind lifts them
+and lets them fall. Well, what do you think of my ivy? Ask Mr. Martin,
+if he isn't jealous already.
+
+Have you read 'The Neighbours,' Mary Howitt's translation of Frederica
+Bremer's Swedish? Yes, perhaps. Have you read 'The Home,'[1] fresh
+from the same springs? _Do_, if you have not. It has not only charmed
+me, but made me happier and better: it is fuller of Christianity than
+the most orthodox controversy in Christendom; and represents to
+my perception or imagination a perfect and beautiful embodiment of
+Christian outward life from the inward, purely and tenderly. At the
+same time, I should tell you that Sette says, 'I might have liked it
+ten years ago, but it is too young and silly to give me any pleasure
+now.' For _me_, however, it is not too young, and perhaps it won't be
+for you and Mr. Martin. As to Sette, he is among the patriarchs, to
+say nothing of the lawyers--and there we leave him....
+
+Ever your affectionate
+BA.
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+50 Wimpole Street:
+Wednesday, or is it Thursday? [summer 1843].
+
+My dear Cousin,--... I send you my friend Mr. Horne's new epic,[78]
+and beg you, if you have an opportunity, to drop it at Mr. Eagles'
+feet, so that he may pick it up and look at it. I have not gone
+through it (I have another copy), but it appears to me to be full of
+fine things. As to the author's fantasy of selling it for a farthing,
+I do not enter into the secret of it--unless, indeed, he should
+intend a sarcasm on the age's generous patronage of poetry, which is
+possible.
+
+[Footnote 78: _Orion_, the early editions of which were sold at a
+farthing, in accordance with a fancy of the author. Miss Barrett
+reviewed it in the _Athenaum_ (July 1843).]
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+June 30, 1843.
+
+Thank you, my dear Mr. Kenyon, for the Camden Society books, and also
+for these which I return; and also for the hope of seeing you, which
+I kept through yesterday. I honor Mrs. Coleridge for the readiness of
+reasoning and integrity in reasoning, for the learning, energy, and
+impartiality which she has brought to her purpose, and I agree with
+her in many of her objects; and disagree, by opposing her opponents
+with a fuller front than she is always inclined to do. In truth, I
+can never see anything in these sacramental ordinances except a
+prospective sign in one (Baptism), and a memorial sign in the
+other, the Lord's Supper, and could not recognise either under any
+modification as a peculiar instrument of grace, mystery, or the like.
+The tendencies we have towards making mysteries of God's simplicities
+are as marked and sure as our missing the actual mystery upon
+occasion. God's love is the true mystery, and the sacraments are only
+too simple for us to understand. So you see I have read the book in
+spite of prophecies. After all I should like to cut it in two--it
+would be better for being shorter--and it might be clearer also. There
+is, in fact, some dullness and perplexity--a few passages which are,
+to my impression, contradictory of the general purpose--something
+which is not generous, about nonconformity--and what I cannot help
+considering a superfluous tenderness for Puseyism. Moreover she is
+certainly wrong in imagining that the ante-Nicene fathers did not as
+a body teach regeneration by baptism--even Gregory Nazianzen, the most
+spiritual of many, did, and in the fourth century. But, after all,
+as a work of theological controversy it is very un-bitter and
+well-poised, gentle, and modest, and as the work of a woman _you_ must
+admire it and _we_ be proud of it--_that_ remains certain at last.
+
+Poor Mr. Haydon! I am so sorry for his reverse in the cartoons.[79] It
+is a thunderbolt to him. I wonder, in the pauses of my regret, whether
+Mr. Selous is _your_ friend--whether 'Boadicea visiting the Druids,'
+suggested by you, I think, as a subject, is this victorious 'Boadicea'
+down for a hundred pound prize? You will tell me when you come.
+
+I have just heard an uncertain rumour of the arrival of your brother.
+If it is not all air, I congratulate you heartily upon a happiness
+only not past my appreciation.
+
+Ever affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+I send the copy of 'Orion' for _yourself_, which you asked for. It is
+in the fourth edition.
+
+[Footnote 79: This refers to the competition for the cartoons to be
+painted in the Houses of Parliament, in which Haydon was unsuccessful.
+The disappointment was the greater, inasmuch as the scheme for
+decorating the building with historical pictures was mainly due to his
+initiative.]
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+July 8, 1843.
+
+Thank you, my dearest Mrs. Martin, for your kind sign of interest in
+the questioning note, although I will not praise the _stenography_ of
+it. I shall be as brief to-day as you, not quite out of revenge,
+but because I have been writing to George and am the less prone to
+activities from having caught cold in an inscrutable manner, and being
+stiff and sore from head to foot and inclined to be a little feverish
+and irritable of nerves. No, it is not of the slightest consequence;
+I tell you the truth. But I would have written to you the day before
+yesterday if it had not been for this something between cramp and
+rheumatism, which was rather unbearable at first, but yesterday was
+better, and is to-day better than better, and to-morrow will leave me
+quite well, if I may prophesy. I only mention it lest you should have
+upbraided me for not answering your note in a moment, as it deserved
+to be answered. So don't put any nonsense into Georgie's head--forgive
+me for beseeching you! I have been very well--downstairs seven or
+eight times; lying on the floor in Papa's room; meditating _the
+chair_, which would have amounted to more than a meditation except
+for this little contrariety. In a day or two more, if this cool warmth
+perseveres in serving me, and no Ariel refills me 'with aches,' I
+shall fulfil your kind wishes perhaps and be out--and so, no more
+about me!...
+
+Oh, I do believe you think me a Cockney--a metropolitan barbarian! But
+I persist in seeing no merit and no superior innocence in being shut
+up even in precincts of rose-trees, away from those great sources
+of human sympathy and occasions of mental elevation and instruction
+without which many natures grow narrow, many others gloomy, and
+perhaps, if the truth were known, very few prosper entirely, lit is
+not that I, who have always lived a good deal in solitude and live
+in it still more now, and love the country even painfully in my
+recollections of it, would decry either one or the other--solitude
+is most effective in a contrast, and if you do not break the bark
+you cannot bud the tree, and, in short (not to be _in long_), I could
+write a dissertation, which I will spare you, 'about it and about it.'
+...
+
+Tell George to lend you--nay, I think I will be generous and let him
+give you, although the author gave me the book--the copy of the new
+epic, 'Orion,' which he has with him. You have probably observed the
+advertisement, and are properly instructed that Mr. Horne the poet,
+who has sold three editions already at a farthing a copy, and is
+selling a fourth at a shilling, and is about to sell a fifth at half
+a crown (on the precise principle of the aërial machine--launching
+himself into popularity by a first impulse on the people), is my
+unknown friend, with whom I have corresponded these four years without
+having seen his face. Do you remember the beech leaves sent to me from
+Epping Forest? Yes, you must. Well, the sender is the poet, and the
+poem I think a very noble one, and I want you to think so too. So
+hereby I empower you to take it away from George and keep it for my
+sake--if you will!
+
+Dear Mr. Martin was so kind as to come and see me as you commanded,
+and I must tell you that I thought him looking so better than well
+that I was more than commonly glad to see him. Give my love to him,
+and join me in as much metropolitan missionary zeal as will bring you
+both to London for six months of the year. Oh, I wish you would come!
+Not that it is necessary for _you_, but that it will be _so_ good for
+_us_.
+
+My ivy is growing, and I have _green blinds_, against which there is
+an outcry. They say that I do it out of envy, and for the equalisation
+of complexions.
+
+Ever your affectionate,
+BA.
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+50 Wimpole Street: August 1843.
+
+Dear Mr. Westwood,--I thank you very much for the kindness of your
+questioning, and am able to answer that notwithstanding the, as it
+seems to you, fatal significance of a woman's silence, I am alive
+enough to be sincerely grateful for any degree of interest spent upon
+me. As to Flush, he should thank you too, but at the present moment he
+is quite absorbed in finding a cool place in this room to lie down in,
+having sacrificed his usual favorite place at my feet, his head upon
+them, oppressed by the torrid necessity of a thermometer above 70. To
+Flopsy's acquaintance he would aspire gladly, only hoping that Flopsy
+does not 'delight to bark and bite,' like dogs in general, because if
+he does Flush would as soon be acquainted with a _cat_, he says, for
+he does not pretend to be a hero. Poor Flush! 'the bright summer days
+on which I am ever likely to take him out for a ramble over hill and
+meadow' are never likely to shine! But he follows, or rather leaps
+into my wheeled chair, and forswears merrier company even now, to be
+near me. I am a good deal better, it is right to say, and look forward
+to a possible prospect of being better still, though I may be shut out
+from climbing the Brocken otherwise than in a vision.
+
+You will see by the length of the 'Legend'[80] which I send to you (in
+its only printed form) _why_ I do not send it to you in manuscript.
+Keep the book as long as you please. My new volume is not yet in the
+press, but I am writing more and more in a view to it, pleased with
+the thought that some kind hands are already stretched out in welcome
+and acceptance of what it may become. Not as idle as I appear, I have
+also been writing some fugitive verses for American magazines. This is
+my confession. Forgive its tediousness, and believe me thankfully and
+very sincerely yours,
+
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 80: _The Lay of the Brown Rosary_.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+50 Wimpole Street: September 2, 1843.
+
+Dear Mr. Westwood,--Your letter comes to remind me how much I ought to
+be ashamed of myself.... I received the book in all safety, and read
+your kind words about my 'Rosary' with more grateful satisfaction than
+appears from the evidence. It is great pleasure to me to have written
+for such readers, and it is great hope to me to be able to write for
+them. The transcription of the 'Rosary' is a compliment which I never
+anticipated, or you should have had the manuscript copy you asked for,
+although I have not a perfect one in my hands. The poem is full of
+faults, as, indeed, all my poems appear to myself to be when I look
+back upon them instead of looking down. I hope to be worthier in
+poetry some day of the generous appreciation which you and your
+friends have paid me in advance.
+
+Tennyson is a great poet, I think, and Browning, the author of
+'Paracelsus,' has to my mind very noble capabilities. Do you know Mr.
+Horne's 'Orion,' the poem published for a farthing, to the wonder of
+booksellers and bookbuyers who could not understand 'the speculation
+in its eyes?' There are very fine things in this poem, and altogether
+I recommend it to your attention. But what is 'wanting' in Tennyson?
+He can think, he can feel, and his language is highly expressive,
+characteristic, and harmonious. I am very fond of Tennyson. He makes
+me thrill sometimes to the end of my fingers, as only a true great
+poet can.
+
+You praise me kindly, and if, indeed, the considerations you speak of
+could be true of me, I am not one who could lament having 'learnt in
+suffering what I taught in song.' In any case, working for the future
+and counting gladly on those who are likely to consider any work of
+mine acceptable to themselves, I shall be very sure not to forget my
+friends at Enfield.
+
+Dear Mr. Westwood, I remain sincerely yours,
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+September 4, 1843. Finished September 5.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin, ... I have had a great gratification within
+this week or two in receiving a letter--nay, two letters--from Miss
+Martineau, one of the last strangers in the world from whom I had any
+right to expect a kindness. Yet most kind, most touching in kindness,
+were both of these letters, so much so that I was not far from crying
+for pleasure as I read them. She is very hopelessly ill, you are
+probably aware, at Tynemouth in Northumberland, suffering agonies from
+internal cancer, and conquering occasional repose by the strength of
+opium, but 'almost forgetting' (to use her own words) 'to wish for
+health, in the intense enjoyment of pleasures independent of the
+body.' She sent me a little work of hers called 'Traditions of
+Palestine.' Her friends had hoped by the stationary character of some
+symptoms that the disease was suspended, but lately it is said to be
+gaining ground, and the serenity and elevation of her mind are more
+and more triumphantly evident as the bodily pangs thicken....
+
+And now I am going to tell you what will surprise you, if you do not
+know it already. Stormie and Georgie are passing George's vacation on
+the Rhine. You are certainly surprised if you did not know it. Papa
+signed and sealed them away on the ground of its being good and
+refreshing for both of them, and I was even mixed up a little with the
+diplomacy of it, until I found _they were going_, and then it was a
+hard, terrible struggle with me to be calm and see them go. But _that_
+was childish, and when I had heard from them at Ostend I grew more
+satisfied again, and attained to think less of the fatal influences of
+_my star_. They went away in great spirits, Stormie 'quite elated,' to
+use his own words, and then at the end of the six weeks they _must_ be
+at home at Sessions; and no possible way of passing the interim could
+be pleasanter and better and more exhilarating for themselves. The
+plan was to go from Ostend by railroad to Brussels and Cologne, then
+to pass down the Rhine to Switzerland, spend a few days at Geneva, and
+a week in Paris as they return. The only fear is that Stormie won't go
+to Paris. We have too many friends there--a strange obstacle.
+
+Dearest Mrs. Martin, I am doing something more than writing you a
+letter, I think.
+
+May God bless you all with the most enduring consolations! Give my
+love to Mr. Martin, and believe also, both of you, in my sympathy. I
+am glad that your poor Fanny should be so supported. May God bless her
+and all of you!
+
+Dearest Mrs. Martin's affectionate
+BA.
+
+I am very well for _me_, and was out in the chair yesterday.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+September 8, 1843.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I ask you humbly not to fancy me in a passion
+whenever I happen to be silent. For a woman to be silent is ominous, I
+know, but it need not be significant of anything quite so terrible as
+ill-humour. And yet it always happens so; if I do not write I am sure
+to be cross in your opinion. You set me down directly as 'hurt,' which
+means _irritable_; or 'offended,' which means _sulky_; your ideal of
+me having, in fact, 'its finger in its eye' all day long.
+
+I, on the contrary, humbled as I was by your hard criticism of my soft
+rhymes about Flush,[81] waited for Arabel to carry a message for me,
+begging to know whether you would care at all to see my 'Cry of the
+Children'[82] before I sent it to you. But Arabel went without telling
+me that she was going: twice she went to St. John's Wood and made no
+sign; and now I find myself thrown on my own resources. Will you see
+the 'Cry of the Human'[83] or not? It will not please you, probably.
+It wants melody. The versification is eccentric to the ear, and the
+subject (the factory miseries) is scarcely an agreeable one to the
+fancy. Perhaps altogether you had better not see it, because I know
+you think me to be deteriorating, and I don't want you to have further
+hypothetical evidence of so false an opinion. Humbled as I am, I say
+'so false an opinion.' Frankly, if not humbly, I believe myself to
+have gained power since the time of the publication of the 'Seraphim,'
+and lost nothing except happiness. Frankly, if not humbly!
+
+With regard to the 'House of Clouds'[84] I disagree both with you and
+Miss Mitford, thinking it, comparatively with my other poems, neither
+so bad nor so good as you two account it. It has certainly been
+singled out for great praise both at home and abroad, and only
+the other day Mr. Horne wrote to me to reproach me for not having
+mentioned it to him, because he came upon it accidentally and
+considered it 'one of my best productions.' Mr. Kenyon holds the same
+opinion. As for Flush's verses, they are what I call cobweb verses,
+thin and light enough; and Arabel was mistaken in telling you that
+Miss Mitford gave the prize to them. Her words were, 'They are as
+tender and true as anything you ever wrote, but nothing is equal to
+the "House of Clouds."' Those were her words, or to that effect, and I
+refer to them to you, not for the sake of Flush's verses, which really
+do not appear even to myself, their writer, worth a defence, but for
+the sake of _your_ judgment of _her_ accuracy in judging.
+
+Lately I have received two letters from the profoundest woman thinker
+in England, Miss Martineau--letters which touched me deeply while they
+gave me pleasure I did not expect.
+
+My poor Flush has fallen into tribulation. Think of Catiline, the
+great savage Cuba bloodhound belonging to this house, attempting last
+night to worry him just as the first Catiline did Cicero. Flush was
+rescued, but not before he had been wounded severely: and this morning
+he is on three legs and in great depression of spirits. My poor, poor
+Flushie! He lies on my sofa and looks up to me with most pathetic
+eyes.
+
+Where is Annie? If I send my love to her, will it ever be found again?
+
+May God bless you both!
+Dearest Mr. Boyd's affectionate and grateful
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 81: 'To Flush, my dog' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 19).]
+
+[Footnote 82: Published in _Blackwood's Magazine_ for August 1843, and
+called forth by Mr. Horne's report as assistant commissioner on the
+employment of children in mines and manufactories.]
+
+[Footnote 83: Evidently a slip of the pen for 'Children.']
+
+[Footnote 84: _Poetical Works_, iii. 186. Mr. Boyd's opinion of it may
+be learnt from Miss Barrett's letter to Horne, dated August 31, 1843
+(_Letters to R.H. Horne_, i. 84): 'Mr. Boyd told me that he had read
+my papers on the Greek Fathers with the more satisfaction because he
+had inferred from my "House of Clouds" that illness had _impaired my
+faculties_.']
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Monday, September 19, 1843.
+
+My own dear Friend,--I should have written instantly to explain myself
+out of appearances which did me injustice, only I have been in such
+distress as to have no courage for writing. Flush was stolen away,
+and for three days I could neither sleep nor eat, nor do anything much
+more rational than cry. _Confiteor tibi_, oh reverend father. And if
+you call me very silly, I am so used to the reproach throughout the
+week as to be hardened to the point of vanity. The worst of it is,
+now, that there will be no need of more 'Houses of Clouds' to prove to
+you the deterioration of my faculties. Q.E.D.
+
+In my own defence, I really believe that my distress arose somewhat
+less from the mere separation from dear little Flushie than from the
+consideration of how he was breaking his heart, cast upon the cruel
+world. Formerly, when he has been prevented from sleeping on my bed he
+has passed the night in moaning piteously, and often he has refused to
+eat from a strange hand. And then he loves me, heart to heart; there
+was no exaggeration in my verses about him, if there was no poetry.
+And when I heard that he cried in the street and then vanished, there
+was little wonder that I, on my part, should cry in the house.
+
+With great difficulty we hunted the dog-banditti into their caves of
+the city, and bribed them into giving back their victim. Money was the
+least thing to think of in such case; I would have given a thousand
+pounds if I had had them in my hand. The audacity of the wretched men
+was marvellous. They said that they had been 'about stealing Flush
+these two years,' and warned us plainly to take care of him for the
+future.
+
+The joy of the meeting between Flush and me would be a good subject
+for a Greek ode--I recommend it to you. It might take rank next to the
+epical parting of Hector and Andromache. He dashed up the stairs into
+my room and into my arms, where I hugged him and kissed him, black as
+he was--black as if imbued in a distillation of St. Giles's. Ah, I
+can break jests about it _now_, you see. Well, to go back to the
+explanations I promised to give you, I must tell you that Arabel
+_perfectly forgot_ to say a word to me about 'Blackwood' and your wish
+that I should send the magazine. It was only after I heard that you
+had procured it yourself, and after I mentioned this to her, that she
+remembered her omission all at once. Therefore I am quite vexed and
+disappointed, I beg you to believe--_I_, who have pleasure in giving
+you any printed verses of mine that you care to have. Never mind! I
+may print another volume before long, and lay it at your feet. In
+the meantime, you _endure_ my 'Cry of the Children' better than I had
+anticipated--just because I never anticipated your being able to read
+it to the end, and was over-delicate of placing it in your hands
+on that very account. My dearest Mr. Boyd, you are right in your
+complaint against the rhythm. The first stanza came into my head in a
+hurricane, and I was obliged to make the other stanzas like it--_that_
+is the whole mystery of the iniquity. If you look Mr. Lucas from head
+to foot, you will never find such a rhythm on his person. The whole
+crime of the versification belongs to _me_. So blame _me_, and by no
+means another poet, and I will humbly confess that I deserve to be
+blamed in some _measure_. There is a roughness, my own ear being
+witness, and I give up the body of my criminal to the rod of your
+castigation, kissing the last as if it were Flush.
+
+A report runs in London that Mr. Boyd says of Elizabeth Barrett: 'She
+is a person of the most perverted judgment in England.' Now, if this
+be true, I shall not mend my evil position in your opinion, my very
+dear friend, by confessing that I differ with you, the more the longer
+I live, on the ground of what you call 'jumping lines.' I am speaking
+not of particular cases, but of the principle, the general principle,
+of these cases, and the tenacity of my judgment does not arise from
+the teaching of 'Mr. Lucas,' but from the deeper study of the old
+master-poets--English poets--those of the Elizabeth and James ages,
+before the corruption of French rhythms stole in with Waller and
+Denham, and was acclimated into a national inodorousness by Dryden
+and Pope. We differ so much upon this subject that we must proceed
+by agreeing to differ, and end, perhaps, by finding it agreeable to
+differ; there can be no possible use in an argument. Only you must be
+upright in justice, and find Wordsworth innocent of misleading me. So
+far from having read him more within these three years, I have read
+him _less_, and have taken no new review, I do assure you, of his
+position and character as a poet, and these facts are testified unto
+by the other fact that my poetry, neither in its best features nor its
+worst, is adjusted after the fashion of his school.
+
+But I am writing too much; you will have no patience with me. 'The
+Excursion' is accused of being lengthy, and so you will tell me that I
+convict myself of plagiarism, _currente calamo_.
+
+I have just finished a poem of some eight hundred lines, called
+'The Vision of Poets,'[85] philosophical, allegorical--anything but
+popular. It is in stanzas, every one an octosyllabic triplet, which
+you will think odd, and I have not _sanguinity_ enough to defend.
+
+May God bless you, my dearest Mr. Boyd! Yes, I heard--I was glad to
+hear--of your having resumed that which used to be so great a pleasure
+to you--Miss Marcus's society. I remain,
+
+Affectionately and gratefully yours,
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+My love to dear Annie.
+
+[Footnote 85: _Poetical Works_, i. 223.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+October 1843.
+
+You are probably right in respect to Tennyson, for whom, with all
+my admiration of him, I would willingly secure more exaltation and a
+broader clasping of truth. Still, it is not possible to have so
+much beauty without a certain portion of truth, the position of the
+Utilitarians being true in the inverse. But I think as I did of 'uses'
+and 'responsibilities,' and do hold that the poet is a preacher and
+must look to his doctrine.
+
+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,[86] 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.
+
+[Footnote 86: The lines 'To J.S.,' which begin:
+
+  'The wind that beats the mountain blows
+  More softly round the open wold.'
+
+
+
+_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....[87]
+
+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.
+
+[Footnote 87: About the same date she writes to Home (_Letters to R.H.
+Horne_, i. 86): 'I am very glad to hear that nothing really very bad
+is the matter with Tennyson. If anything were to happen to Tennyson,
+the world should go into mourning.']
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+50 Wimpole Street: December 31, 1843.
+
+If you do find the paper I was invited to write upon Wordsworth[88],
+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,'[89] 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.
+
+[Footnote 88: In the _Athenaeum_.]
+
+[Footnote 89: 'Crowned and Buried' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 9).]
+
+
+_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 the 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.[90] 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.
+
+[Footnote 90: Her contributions to the essays on Tennyson and Carlyle
+have recently been printed in Messrs. Nichols and Wise's _Literary
+Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century_, i. 33, ii. 105.]
+
+
+
+
+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.'[91]
+
+[Footnote 91: _Letters to R.H. Home_, ii. 146.]
+
+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.[92]
+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.
+
+May God bless you, my dear cousin.
+
+Affectionately yours always,
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 92: Referring to Mr. Kenyon's encouraging comments on the
+'Drama of Exile,' which he had seen in manuscript at a time when Miss
+Barrett was very despondent about it.]
+
+
+This note is not to be answered.
+
+I am thinking of writing to Moxon, as there does not seem much to
+arrange. The type and size of Tennyson's books seem, upon examination,
+to suit my purpose excellently.
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+March 21, 1844.
+
+No, you never sent me back Miss Martineau's letter, my dear cousin;
+but you will be sure, or rather Mr. Crabb Robinson will, to find it in
+some too safe a place; and then I shall have it. In the meantime here
+are the other letters back again. You will think that I was keeping
+them for a deposit, a security, till I 'had my ain again,' but I have
+only been idle and busy together. They are the most interesting that
+can be, and have quite delighted me. By the way, _I_, who saw nothing
+to object to in the 'Life in the Sick Room,' object very much to her
+argument in behalf of it--an argument certainly founded on a miserable
+misapprehension of the special doctrine referred to in her letter.
+There is nothing so elevating and ennobling to the nature and mind
+of man as the view which represents it raised into communion with God
+Himself, by the justification and purification of God Himself. Plato's
+dream brushed by the gate of this doctrine when it walked highest, and
+won for him the title of 'Divine.' That it is vulgarised sometimes by
+narrow-minded teachers in theory, and by hypocrites in action, might
+be an argument (if admitted at all) against all truth, poetry, and
+music!
+
+On the other hand, I was glad to see the leaning on the Education
+question; in which all my friends the Dissenters did appear to me so
+painfully wrong and so unworthily wrong at once.
+
+And Southey's letters! I did quite delight in _them_! They are more
+_personal_ than any I ever saw of his; and have more warm every-day
+life in them.
+
+The particular Paul Pry in question (to come down to _my_ life) never
+'intrudes.' It is his peculiarity. And I put the stop exactly where I
+was bid; and was going to put Gabriel's speech,[93] only--with the
+pen in my hand to do it--I found that the angel was a little too
+exclamatory altogether, and that he had cried out, 'O ruined earth!'
+and 'O miserable angel!' just before, approaching to the habit of a
+mere caller of names. So I altered the passage otherwise; taking care
+of your full stop after 'despair.' Thank you, my dear Mr. Kenyon.
+
+Also I sent enough manuscript for the first sheet, and a note to
+Moxon yesterday, last night, thanking him for his courtesy about Leigh
+Hunt's poems; and following your counsel in every point. 'Only last
+night,' you will say! But I have had _such_ a headache--and some very
+painful vexation in the prospect of my maid's leaving me, who has been
+with me throughout my illness; so that I am much attached to her,
+with the best reasons for being so, while the idea of a stranger is
+scarcely tolerable to me under my actual circumstances.
+
+The 'Palm Leaves'[94] are full of strong thought and good
+thought--thought expressed excellently well; but of poetry, in
+the true sense, and of imagination in any, I think them bare and
+cold--somewhat wintry leaves to come from the East, surely, surely!
+
+May the change of air be rapid in doing you good--the weather seems to
+be softening on purpose for you. May God bless you, dear Mr. Kenyon;
+I never can thank you enough. When you return I shall be rustling my
+'proofs' about you, to prove my faith in your kindness.
+
+Ever affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 93: In the 'Drama of Exile,' near the beginning (_Poetical
+Works_, i. 7).]
+
+[Footnote 94: By Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+March 22, 1844.
+
+My dearest Mr. Boyd,--I heard that once I wrote three times too long
+a letter to you; I am aware that nine times too long a silence is
+scarcely the way to make up for it. Forgive me, however, as far as you
+can, for every sort of fault. When I once begin to write to you, I do
+not know how to stop; and I have had so much to do lately as scarcely
+to know how to begin to write to you. _Hence these_ faults--not quite
+tears--in spite of my penitence and the quotation.
+
+At last my book is in the press. My great poem (in the modest
+comparative sense), my 'Masque of Exile' (as I call it at last[95]),
+consists of some nineteen hundred or two thousand lines, and I call it
+'Masque of _Exile_' because it refers to Lucifer's exile, and to that
+other mystical exile of the Divine Being which was the means of the
+return homewards of my Adam and Eve. After the exultation of boldness
+of composition, I fell into one of my deepest fits of despondency, and
+at last, at the end of most painful vacillations, determined not to
+print it. Never was a manuscript so near the fire as my 'Masque' was.
+I had not even the instinct of applying for help to anybody. In the
+midst of this Mr. Kenyon came in by accident, and asked about my poem.
+I told him that I had given it up, despairing of my republic. In the
+kindest way he took it into his hands, and proposed to carry it home
+and read it, and tell me his impression. 'You know,' he said, 'I have
+a prejudice against these sacred subjects for poetry, but then I have
+another prejudice _for you_, and one may neutralise the other.' The
+next day I had a letter from him with the returned manuscript--a
+letter which I was absolutely certain, before I opened it, would
+counsel _against_ the publication. On the contrary! His impression is
+clearly in favour of the poem, and, while he makes sundry criticisms
+on minor points, he considers it very superior as a whole to anything
+I ever did before--more sustained, and fuller in power. So my nerves
+are braced, and I grow a man again; and the manuscript, as I told you,
+is in the press. Moreover, you will be surprised to hear that I think
+of bringing out _two volumes of poems_ instead of one, by advice
+of Mr. Moxon, the publisher. Also, the Americans have commanded an
+American edition, to come out in numbers, either a little before or
+simultaneously with the English one, and provided with a separate
+preface for themselves.
+
+There now! I have told you all this, knowing your kindness, and that
+you will care to hear of it.
+
+It has given me the greatest concern to hear of dear Annie's illness,
+and I do hope, both for your sake and for all our sakes, that we may
+have better news of her before long.
+
+But I don't mean to fall into another scrape to-day by writing too
+much. May God bless you, my very dear friend!
+
+I am ever your affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+
+[Footnote 95: There was, however, a still later last, when it became
+the 'Drama of Exile.']
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+April I, 1844.
+
+My very dear Friend,--Your kind letter I was delighted to receive. You
+mistake a good deal the capacities in judgment of 'the man.'[96] The
+'man' is highly refined in his tastes, and leaning to the classical
+(I was going to say to _your_ classical, only suddenly I thought of
+Ossian) a good deal more than I do. He has written satires in the
+manner of Pope, which admirers of Pope have praised warmly and
+deservedly. If I had hesitated about the conclusiveness of his
+judgments, it would have been because of his confessed indisposition
+towards subjects religious and ways mystical, and his occasional
+insufficient indulgence for rhymes and rhythms which he calls
+'_Barrettian_.' But these things render his favourable inclination
+towards my 'Drama of Exile' still more encouraging (as you will see)
+to my hopes for it.
+
+Still, I do tremble a good deal inwardly when I come to think of
+what your own thoughts of my poem, and poems in their two-volume
+development, may finally be. I am afraid of you. You will tell me the
+truth as it appears to you--upon _that_ I may rely; and I should not
+wish you to suppress a single disastrous thought for the sake of the
+unpleasantness it may occasion to me. My own faith is that I have made
+progress since 'The Seraphim,' only it is too possible (as I confess
+to myself and you) that your opinion may be exactly contrary to it.
+
+You are very kind in what you say about wishing to have some
+conversation, as the medium of your information upon architecture,
+with Octavius--Occy, as we call him. He is very much obliged to you,
+and proposes, if it should not be inconvenient to you, to call upon
+you on Friday, with Arabel, at about one o'clock. Friday is mentioned
+because it is a holiday, no work being done at Mr. Barry's. Otherwise
+he is engaged every day (except, indeed, Sunday) from nine in the
+morning to five in the afternoon. May God bless you, dearest Mr. Boyd.
+I am ever
+
+Your affectionate
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 96: John Kenyon: see the last letter.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+April 16, 1844.
+
+... Surely, surely, it was not likely I should lean to utilitarianism
+in the notice on Carlyle, as I remember the writer of that
+article leans somewhere--_I_, who am reproached with
+trans-trans-transcendentalisms, and not without reason, or with
+insufficient reason.
+
+Oh, and I should say also that Mr. Home, in his kindness, has enlarged
+considerably in his annotations and reflections on me personally.[97]
+My being in correspondence with all the Kings of the East, for
+instance, is an exaggeration, although literary work in one way will
+bring with it, happily, literary association in others.... Still, I am
+not a great letter writer, and I don't write 'elegant Latin verses,'
+as all the gods of Rome know, and I have not been shut up in the dark
+for seven years by any manner of means. By the way, a barrister said
+to my barrister brother the other day, 'I suppose your sister is
+dead?' 'Dead?' said he, a little struck; 'dead?' 'Why, yes. After Mr.
+Home's account of her being sealed up hermetically in the dark for so
+many years, one can only calculate upon her being dead by this time.'
+
+ELIZABETH BARRETT.
+
+Several of the letters to Mr. Boyd which follow refer to that
+celebrated gift of Cyprus wine which led to the composition of one of
+Miss Barrett's best known and most quoted poems.
+
+[Footnote 97: In _The New Spirit of the Age_.]
+
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+June 18, 1844.
+
+Thank you, my very dear friend! I write to you drunk with Cyprus.
+Nothing can be worthier of either gods or demi-gods; and if, as you
+say, Achilles did not drink of it, I am sorry for him. I suppose
+Jupiter had it instead, just then--Hebe pouring it, and Juno's ox-eyes
+bellowing their splendour at it, if you will forgive me that broken
+metaphor, for the sake of Aeschylus's genius, and my own particular
+intoxication.
+
+Indeed, there _never was_, in modern days, such wine. Flush, to whom
+I offered the last drop in my glass, felt it was supernatural, and
+ran away. I have an idea that if he had drunk that drop, he would have
+talked afterwards--either Greek or English.
+
+Never was such wine! The very taste of ideal nectar, only stiller,
+from keeping. If the bubbles of eternity were on it, _we_ should run
+away, perhaps, like Flush.
+
+Still, the thought comes to me, ought I to take it from you? Is it
+right of me? are you not too kind in sending it? and should you be
+allowed to be too kind? In any case, you must, not think of sending me
+more than you have already sent. It is more than enough, and I am not
+less than very much obliged to you.
+
+I have passed the middle of my second volume, and I only hope that
+critics may say of the rest that it smells of Greek wine. Dearest Mr.
+Boyd's
+
+Ever affectionate
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+June 28, 1844.
+
+My dear Mr. Westwood,--I have certainly and considerably increased
+the evidence of my own death by the sepulchral silence of the last few
+days. But after all I am not dead, not even _at heart_, so as to be
+insensible to your kind anxiety, and I can assure you of this, upon
+very fair authority, neither is the book dead yet. It has turned the
+corner of the _felo de se_, and if it is to die, it will be by the
+critics. The mystery of the long delay, it would not be very easy for
+me to explain, notwithstanding I hear Mr. Moxon says: 'I suppose Miss
+Barrett is not in a hurry about her publication;' and _I_ say: 'I
+suppose Moxon is not in a hurry about the publication.' There may be
+a little fault on my side, when I have kept a proof a day beyond the
+hour, or when 'copy' has put out new buds in my hands as I passed it
+to the printer's. Still, in my opinion, it is a good deal more the
+fault of Mr. Moxon's not being in a hurry, than in the excessive
+virtue of my patience, or vice of my indolence. Miss Mitford says, as
+you do, that she never heard of so slow-footed a book.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street:
+Wednesday, August I, 1844 [postmark].
+
+My very dear Friend,--Have you expected to hear from me? and are you
+vexed with me? I am a little ambitious of the first item--yet hopeful
+of an escape from the last. If you did but know how I am pressed for
+time, and how I have too much to do every day, you would forgive
+me for my negligence; even if you had sent me nectar instead of
+mountain,[98] and I had neglected laying my gratitude at your
+feet. Last Saturday, upon its being discovered that my first volume
+consisted of only 208 pages, and my second of 280 pages, Mr. Moxon
+uttered a cry of reprehension, and wished to tear me to pieces by his
+printers, as the Bacchantes did Orpheus. Perhaps you might have heard
+my head moaning all the way to St. John's Wood! He wanted to tear away
+several poems from the end of the second volume, and tie them on to
+the end of the first! I could not and would not hear of this, because
+I had set my mind on having 'Dead Pan' to conclude with. So there was
+nothing for it but to finish a ballad poem called 'Lady Geraldine's
+Courtship,' which was lying by me, and I did so by writing, i.e.
+composing, _one hundred and forty lines last Saturday!_[99] I seemed
+to be in a dream all day! Long lines too--with fifteen syllables in
+each! I see you shake your head all this way off. Moreover it is a
+'romance of the age,' treating of railroads, routes, and all manner
+of 'temporalities,' and in so radical a temper that I expect to be
+reproved for it by the Conservative reviews round. By the way, did I
+tell you of the good news I had from America the third of this month?
+The 'Drama of Exile' is in the hands of a New York publisher; and
+having been submitted to various chief critics of the country on its
+way, was praised loudly and extravagantly. This was, however, by a
+_private reading_ only. A bookseller at Philadelphia had announced it
+for publication--he intended to take it up when the English edition
+reached America; but upon its being represented to him that the New
+York publisher had proof sheets direct from the author and would give
+copy money, he abandoned his intention to the other. I confess I feel
+very much pleased at the kind spirit--the spirit of eager kindness
+indeed--with which the Americans receive my poetry. It is not wrong
+to be pleased, I hope. In this country there may be mortifications
+waiting for me; quite enough to keep my modesty in a state of
+cultivation. I do not know. I hope the work will be out this week, and
+_then_! Did I explain to you that what 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship'
+was wanted for was to increase the size of the first volume, so as to
+restore the equilibrium of volumes, without dislocating 'Pan'? Oh, how
+anxious I shall be to hear your opinion! If you tell me that I have
+lost my intellects, what in the world shall I do _then_--what _shall_
+I do? My Americans--that is, my Americans who were in at the private
+reading, and perhaps I myself--are of opinion that I have made
+great progress since 'The Seraphim.' It seems to me that I have more
+_reach_, whether in thought or language. But then, to _you_ it may
+appear quite otherwise, and I shall be very melancholy if it does.
+Only you must tell me the _precise truth_; and I trust to you that you
+will let me have it in its integrity.
+
+All the life and strength which are in me, seem to have passed into my
+poetry. It is my _pou sto_--not to move the world; but to live on in.
+
+I must not forget to tell you that there is a poem towards the end of
+the second volume, called 'Cyprus Wine,' which I have done myself the
+honor and pleasure of associating with your name. I thought that you
+would not be displeased by it, as a proof of grateful regard from me.
+
+Talking of wines, the Mountain has its attraction, but certainly is
+not to be compared to the Cyprus. You will see how I have praised the
+latter. Well, now I must say 'good-bye,' which you will praise _me_
+for!
+
+Dearest Mr. Boyd's affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+P.S.--_Nota bene_--I wish to forewarn you that I have cut away in the
+text none of my vowels by apostrophes. When I say 'To efface,'
+wanting two-syllable measure, I do not write 'T' efface' as in the old
+fashion, but 'To efface' full length. This is the style of the day.
+Also you will find me a little lax perhaps in metre--a freedom which
+is the result not of carelessness, but of _conviction_, and indeed of
+much patient study of the great Fathers of English poetry--not meaning
+Mr. Pope. Be as patient with me as you can. You shall have the volumes
+as soon as they are ready.
+
+
+[Footnote 98: Evidently a reference to the name of some wine (perhaps
+Montepulciano) sent her by Mr. Boyd. See the end of the letter.]
+
+[Footnote 99: It will be observed that this is not quite the same as
+the current legend, which asserts that the whole poem (of 412 lines)
+was composed in twelve hours.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+August 6, 1844.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I cannot be certain, from my recollections,
+whether I did or did not write to you before, as you suggest; but
+as you never received the letter and I was in a continual press of
+different thoughts, the probability is that I did not write. The
+Cyprus wine in the second vial I certainly _did_ receive; and was
+grateful to you with the whole force of the aroma of it. And now I
+will tell you an anecdote.
+
+In the excess of my filial tenderness, I poured out a glass for papa,
+and offered it to him with my right hand.
+
+'_What is this_?' said he.
+
+'_Taste it_,' said I as laconically, but with more emphasis.
+
+He raised it to his lips; and, after a moment, recoiled, with such
+a face as sinned against Adam's image, and with a shudder of deep
+disgust.
+
+'Why,' he said, 'what most beastly and nauseous thing is this? Oh,' he
+said, 'what detestable drug is this? Oh, oh,' he said, 'I shall never,
+never, get this horrible taste out of my mouth.'
+
+I explained with the proper degree of dignity that 'it was Greek wine,
+Cyprus wine, and of very great value.'
+
+He retorted with acrimony, that 'it might be Greek, twice over; but
+that it was exceedingly beastly.'
+
+I resumed, with persuasive argument, that 'it could scarcely be
+beastly, inasmuch as the taste reminded one of oranges and orange
+flower together, to say nothing of the honey of Mount Hymettus.'
+
+He took me up with stringent logic, 'that any wine must positively be
+beastly, which, pretending to be wine, tasted sweet as honey, and
+that it was beastly on my own showing!' I send you this report as an
+evidence of a curious opinion. But drinkers of port wine cannot be
+expected to judge of nectar--and I hold your 'Cyprus' to be pure
+nectar.
+
+I shall have pleasure in doing what you ask me to do--that is,
+I _will_--if you promise never to call me Miss Barrett again.
+You have often quite vexed me by it. There is
+Ba--Elizabeth--Elzbeth--Ellie--any modification of my name you may
+call me by--but I won't be called Miss Barrett by _you_. Do you
+understand? Arabel means to carry your copy of my book to you. And I
+beg you not to fancy that I shall be impatient for you to read the
+two volumes through. If you _ever_ read them through, it will be
+a sufficient compliment, and indeed I do not expect that you _ever
+will_.
+
+May God bless you, dearest Mr. Boyd.
+
+I remain,
+
+Your affectionate and grateful
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+The date of this last letter marks, as nearly as need be, the date of
+publication of Miss Barrett's volumes. The letters which follow deal
+mainly with their reception, first at the hand of friends, and then by
+the regular critics. The general verdict of the latter was extremely
+complimentary. Mr. Chorley, in the 'Athenaeum,'[100] described the
+volumes as 'extraordinary,' adding that 'between her [Miss Barrett's]
+poems and the slighter lyrics of most of the sisterhood, there is all
+the difference which exists between the putting-on of "singing robes"
+for altar service, and the taking up lute or harp to enchant an
+indulgent circle of friends and kindred.' In the 'Examiner,'[101] John
+Forster declared that 'Miss Barrett is an undoubted poetess of a high
+and fine order as regards the first requisites of her art--imagination
+and expression.... She is a most remarkable writer, and her volumes
+contain not a little which the lovers of poetry will never willingly
+let die,' a phrase then not quite so hackneyed as it has since become.
+The 'Atlas'[102] asserted that 'the present volumes show extraordinary
+powers, and, abating the failings of which all the followers of
+Tennyson are guilty, extraordinary genius.' More influential even than
+these, 'Blackwood'[103] paid her the compliment of a whole article,
+criticising her faults frankly, but declaring that 'her poetical
+merits infinitively outweigh her defects. Her genius is profound,
+unsullied, and without a flaw.' All agreed in assigning her a high,
+or the highest, place among the poetesses of England; but, as
+Miss Barrett herself pointed out, this, in itself, was no great
+praise.[104]
+
+[Footnote 100: August 24, 1844.]
+
+[Footnote 101: October 5, 1844.]
+
+[Footnote 102: September 31, 1844.]
+
+[Footnote 103: November 1844.]
+
+[Footnote 104: See letter of January 3, 1845.]
+
+With regard to individual poems, the critics did not take kindly to
+the 'Drama of Exile,' and 'Blackwood' in particular criticised it at
+considerable length, calling it 'the least successful of her works.'
+The subject, while half challenging comparison with Milton, lends
+itself only too readily to fancifulness and unreality, which were
+among the most besetting sins of Miss Barrett's genius. The minor
+poems were incomparably more popular, and the favourite of all was
+that masterpiece of rhetorical sentimentality, 'Lady Geraldine's
+Courtship.' It must have been a little mortifying to the authoress to
+find this piece, a large part of which had been dashed off at a single
+heat in order to supply the printers' needs, preferred to others on
+which she had employed all the labour of her deliberate art; but with
+the general tone of all the critics she had every reason to be as
+content as her letters show her to have been. Only two criticisms
+rankled: the one that she was a follower of Tennyson, the other that
+her rhymes were slovenly and careless. And these appeared, in varying
+shapes, in nearly all the reviews.
+
+The former of these allegations is of little weight. Whatever
+qualities Miss Barrett may have shared with Tennyson, her substantial
+independence is unquestionable. It is a case rather of coincidence
+than imitation; or if imitation, it is of a slight and unconscious
+kind. The second criticism deserves fuller notice, because it is
+constantly repeated to this day. The following letters show how
+strongly Miss Barrett protested against it. As she told Horne,[105]
+with reference to this very subject: 'If I fail ultimately before the
+public--that is, before the people--for an ephemeral popularity does
+not appear to me to be worth trying for--it will not be because I have
+shrunk from the amount of labour, where labour could do anything. I
+have _worked_ at poetry; it has not been with me reverie, but art.'
+That her rhymes were inexact, especially in such poems as 'The Dead
+Pan,' she did not deny; but her defence was that the inexactness was
+due to a deliberate attempt to widen the artistic capabilities of the
+English language. Partly, perhaps, as a result of her acquaintance
+with Italian literature, she had a marked fondness for disyllabic
+rhymes; and since pure rhymes of this kind are not plentiful in
+English, she tried the experiment of using assonances instead. Hence
+such rhymes as _silence_ and _islands_, _vision_ and _procession_,
+_panther_ and _saunter_, examples which could be indefinitely
+multiplied if need were. Now it may be that a writer with a very
+sensitive ear would not have attempted such an experiment, and it is a
+fact that public taste has not approved it; but the experiment itself
+is as legitimate as, say, the metrical experiments in hexameters and
+hendecasyllabics of Longfellow or Tennyson, and whether approved
+or not it should be criticised as an experiment, not as mere
+carelessness. That Mrs. Browning's ear was quite-capable of discerning
+true rhymes is shown by the fact that she tacitly abandoned her
+experiment in assonances. Not only in the pure and high art of the
+'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' but even in 'Casa Guidi Windows,' the
+rhetorical and sometimes colloquial tone of which might have been
+thought to lend itself to such devices, imperfect rhymes occur but
+rarely not exceeding the limits allowed to himself by every poet who
+has rhymed _given_ and _heaven_; and the roll of those who have _not_
+done so must be small indeed.
+
+[Footnote 105: _Letters to R.H. Horne_, ii. 119.]
+
+The point has seemed worth dwelling on, because it touches a
+commonplace of criticism as regards Mrs. Browning; but we may now make
+way for her own comments on her critics and friends.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Tuesday, August 13, 1844 [postmark].
+
+My very dear Friend,--I must thank you for the great kindness with
+which you have responded to a natural expression of feeling on
+my part, and for all the pleasure of finding you pleased with the
+inscription of 'Cyprus Wine.' Your note has given me much true
+pleasure. Yes; if my verses survive me, I should wish them to relate
+the fact of my being your debtor for many happy hours.
+
+And now I must explain to you that most of the 'incorrectnesses' you
+speak of may be 'incorrectnesses,' but are not _negligences_. I have
+a theory about double rhymes for which--I shall be attacked by the
+critics, but which I could justify perhaps on high authority, or at
+least analogy. In fact, these volumes of mine have more double rhymes
+than any two books of English poems that ever to my knowledge were
+printed; I mean of English poems _not comic_. Now, of double rhymes
+in use, which are perfect rhymes, you are aware how few there are, and
+yet you are also aware of what an admirable effect in making a rhythm
+various and vigorous, double rhyming is in English poetry. Therefore
+I have used a certain licence; and after much thoughtful study of the
+Elizabethan writers, have ventured it with the public. And do _you_
+tell me, _you_ who object to the use of a different _vowel_ in a
+double rhyme, _why_ you rhyme (as everybody does, without blame from
+anybody) 'given' to 'heaven,' when you object to my rhyming 'remember'
+and 'chamber'? The analogy surely is all on my side, and I _believe_
+that the spirit of the English language is also.
+
+I write all this because you will find many other sins of the sort,
+besides those in the 'Cyprus Wine;' and because I wish you to consider
+the subject as _a point for consideration_ seriously, and not to blame
+me as a writer of careless verses. If I deal too much in licences, it
+is not because I am idle, but because I am speculative for freedom's
+sake. It is possible, you know, to be wrong conscientiously; and I
+stand up for my conscience only.
+
+I thank you earnestly for your candour hitherto, and I beseech you to
+be candid to the end.
+
+  It is tawny as Rhea's lion.
+
+I know (although you don't say so) you object to that line. Yet
+consider its structure. Does not the final 'y' of 'tawny' suppose an
+apostrophe and apocope? Do you not run 'tawny as' into two syllables
+naturally? I want you to see my principle.
+
+With regard to blank verse, the great Fletcher admits sometimes
+seventeen syllables into his lines.
+
+I hope Miss Heard received her copy, and that you will not think me
+arrogant in writing freely to you.
+
+Believe me, I write only freely and not arrogantly; and I am impressed
+with the conviction that my work abounds with far more faults than you
+in your kindness will discover, notwithstanding your acumen.
+
+Always your affectionate and grateful
+ELIBET.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Wednesday, August 14, 1844 [postmark].
+
+My dearest Mr. Boyd,--I must thank you for the great great pleasure
+with which I have this moment read your note, the more welcome,
+as (without hypocrisy) I had worked myself up into a nervous
+apprehension, from your former one, that I should seem so 'rudis atque
+incomposita' to you, in consequence of certain licences, as to end by
+being intolerable. I know what an ear you have, and how you can hear
+the dust on the wheel as it goes on. Well, I wrote to you yesterday,
+to beg you to be patient and considerate.
+
+But you are always given to surprise me with abundant kindness--with
+supererogatory kindness. I believe in _that_, certainly.
+
+I am very very glad that you think me stronger and more perspicuous.
+For the perspicuity, I have struggled hard....
+
+Your affectionate and grateful
+ELZBETH.
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+50 Wimpole Street: August 22, 1844.
+
+... Thank you for your welcome letter, so kind in its candour, _I_
+angry that you should prefer 'The Seraphim'! Angry? No _indeed,
+indeed_, I am grateful for 'The Seraphim,' and not exacting for the
+'Drama,' and all the more because of a secret obstinate persuasion
+that the 'Drama' will have a majority of friends in the end, and
+perhaps deserve to have them. Nay, why should I throw perhapses over
+my own impressions, and be insincere to you who have honoured me by
+being sincere? Why should I dissemble my own belief that the 'Drama'
+is worth two or three 'Seraphims'--_my own_ belief, you know, which is
+worth nothing, writers knowing themselves so superficially, and having
+such a natural leaning to their last work. Still, I may say honestly
+to you, that I have a far more modest value for 'The Seraphim' than
+your kindness suggests, and that I have seemed to myself to have a
+clear insight into the fact that that poem was only borne up by the
+minor poems published with it, from immediate destruction. There is a
+want of unity in it which vexes me to think of, and the other faults
+magnify themselves day by day, more and more, in my eyes. Therefore
+it is not that I care _more_ for the 'Drama,' but I care less for 'The
+Seraphim.' Both poems fall short of my aspiration and desire, but the
+'Drama' seems to me fuller, freer and stronger, and worth the other
+three times over. If it has anything new, I think it must be something
+new into which I have lived, for certainly I wrote it sincerely and
+from an inner impulse. In fact, I never wrote any poem with so much
+sense of pleasure in the composition, and so rapidly, with continuous
+flow--from fifty to a hundred lines a day, and quite in a glow of
+pleasure and impulse all through. Still, you have not been used to see
+me in blank verse, and there may be something in that. That the poem
+is full of faults and imperfections I do not in the least doubt. I
+have vibrated between exultations and despondencies in the correcting
+and printing of it, though the composition went smoothly to an end,
+and I am prepared to receive the bastinado to the critical degree, I
+do assure you. The few opinions I have yet had are all to the effect
+that my advance on the former publication is very great and obvious,
+but then I am aware that people who thought exactly the contrary would
+be naturally backward in giving me their opinion.... Indeed, I thank
+you most earnestly. Truth and kindness, how rarely do they come
+together! I am very grateful to you. It is curious that 'Duchess May'
+is not a favorite of mine, and that I have sighed one or two secret
+wishes towards its extirpation, but other writers besides yourself
+have singled it out for praise in private letters to me. There has
+been no printed review yet, I believe; and when I think of them, I
+try to think of something else, for with no private friends among
+the critical body (not that I should desire to owe security in such a
+matter to private friendship) it is awful enough, this looking forward
+to be reviewed. Never mind, the ultimate prosperity of the book lies
+far above the critics, and can neither be mended nor made nor unmade
+by _them_.
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+Wednesday morning [August 1844].
+
+I return Mr. Chorley's[106] note, my dear cousin, with thankful
+thoughts of him--as of you. I wish I could persuade you of the
+rightness of my view about 'Essays on Mind' and such things, and how
+the difference between them and my present poems is not merely the
+difference between two schools, as you seemed to intimate yesterday,
+nor even the difference between immaturity and maturity; but that it
+is the difference between the dead and the living, between a copy and
+an individuality, between what is myself and what is not myself. To
+you who have a personal interest and--may I say? affection for me,
+the girl's exercise assumes a factitious value, but to the public
+the matter is otherwise and ought to be otherwise. And for the
+'psychological' side of the question, _do_ observe that I have not
+reputation enough to suggest a curiosity about _my legends_. Instead
+of your 'legendary lore,' it would be just a legendary bore. Now you
+understand what I mean. I do not underrate Pope nor his school, but I
+_do_ disesteem everything which, bearing the shape of a book, is not
+the true expression of a mind, and I know and feel (and so do _you_)
+that a girl's exercise written when all the experience lay in books,
+and the mind was suited rather for intelligence than production,
+lying like an infant's face with an undeveloped expression, must
+be valueless in itself, and if offered to the public directly or
+indirectly as a work of mine, highly injurious to me. Why, of the
+'Prometheus' volume, even, you know what I think and desire. 'The
+Seraphim,' with all its feebleness and shortcomings and obscurities,
+yet is the first utterance of my own individuality, and therefore the
+only volume except the last which is not a disadvantage to me to have
+thought of, and happily for me, the early books, never having been
+advertised, nor reviewed, except by accident, once or twice, are as
+safe from the public as manuscript.
+
+Oh, I shudder to think of the lines which might have been 'nicked in,'
+and all through Mr. Chorley's good nature. As if I had not sins enough
+to ruin me in the new poems, without reviving juvenile ones, sinned
+when I knew no better. Perhaps you would like to have the series of
+epic poems which I wrote from nine years old to eleven. They might
+illustrate some doctrine of innate ideas, and enrich (to that end) the
+myths of metaphysicians.
+
+And also agree with me in reverencing that wonderful genius _Keats_,
+who, rising as a grand exception from among the vulgar herd of
+juvenile versifiers, was an individual _man_ from the beginning, and
+spoke with his own voice, though surrounded by the yet unfamiliar
+murmur of antique echoes.[107] Leigh Hunt calls him 'the young poet'
+very rightly. Most affectionately and gratefully yours,
+
+E.B.B.
+
+Do thank Mr. Chorley for me, will you?
+
+[Footnote 106: Henry Fothergill Chorley (1808-1872) was one of the
+principal members of the staff of the _Athenaeum_, especially in
+literary and musical matters. Dr. Garnett (in the _Dictionary of
+National Biography_) says of him, shortly after his first joining the
+staff in 1833, that 'his articles largely contributed to maintain the
+reputation the _Athenaeum_ had already acquired for impartiality at a
+time when puffery was more rampant than ever before or since, and
+when the only other London literary journal of any pretension was
+notoriously venal.' He also wrote several novels and dramas, which met
+with but little popular success.]
+
+[Footnote 107: Compare Aurora Leigh's asseveration:
+
+  'By Keats' soul, the man who never stepped
+  In gradual progress like another man,
+  But, turning grandly on his central self,
+  Ensphered himself in twenty perfect years
+  And died, _not_ young.'
+
+('Aurora Leigh,' book i.; _Poetical Works_, vi. 38.)]
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Thursday, August 1844.
+
+Thank you, my dearest Mrs. Martin, for your most kind letter, a reply
+to which should certainly, as you desired, have met you at Colwall;
+only, right or wrong, I have been flurried, agitated, put out of the
+way altogether, by Stormie's and Henry's plan of going to Egypt. Ah,
+now you are surprised. Now you think me excusable for being silent
+two days beyond my time--yes, and _they have gone_, it is no vague
+speculation. You know, or perhaps you don't know, that, a little time
+back, papa bought a ship, put a captain and crew of his own in it, and
+began to employ it in his favourite 'Via Lactea' of speculations. It
+has been once to Odessa with wool, I think; and now it has gone to
+Alexandria with coals. Stormie was wild to go to both places; and with
+regard to the last, papa has yielded. And Henry goes too. This was all
+arranged weeks ago, but nothing was said of it until last Monday
+to me; and when I heard it, I was a good deal moved of course, and
+although resigned now to their having their way in it, and their
+_pleasure_, which is better than their way, still I feel I have
+entered a new anxiety, and shall not be quite at ease again till they
+return....
+
+And now to thank you, my ever-dearest Mrs. Martin, for your kind and
+welcome letter from the Lakes. I knew quite at the first page, and
+long before you said a word specifically, that dear Mr. Martin was
+better, and think that such a scene, even from under an umbrella, must
+have done good to the soul and body of both of you. I wish I could
+have looked through your eyes for once. But I suppose that neither
+through yours, nor through my own, am I ever likely to behold that
+sight. In the meantime it is with considerable satisfaction that I
+hear of your _failure of Wordsworth_, which was my salvation in a very
+awful sense. Why, if you had done such a thing, you would have put me
+to the shame of too much honor. The speculation consoles me entirely
+for your loss in respect to Rydal Hall and its poet. By the way, I
+heard the other day that Rogers, who was intending to visit him, said,
+'It is a bad time of year for it. The god is on his pedestal; and
+can only give gestures to his worshippers, and no conversation to his
+friends.' ...
+
+Although you did not find a letter from me on your return to Colwall,
+I do hope that you found _me_--viz. my book, which Mr. Burden took
+charge of, and promised to deliver or see delivered. When you have
+read it, _do_ let me hear your own and Mr. Martin's true impression;
+and whether you think it worse or better than 'The Seraphim.' The only
+review which has yet appeared or had time to appear has been a very
+kind and cordial one in the 'Athenaeum.' ...
+
+Your ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+August 31, 1844.
+
+My dear Mr. Westwood,--I send you the manuscript you ask for, and also
+my certificate that, although I certainly was once a little girl,
+yet I never in my life had fair hair, or received lessons when you
+mention. I think a cousin of mine, now dead, may have done it. The
+'Barrett Barrett' seems to specify my family. I have a little cousin
+with bright fair hair at this moment who is an Elizabeth Barrett (the
+subject of my 'Portrait'[108]), but then she is a 'Georgiana' besides,
+and your friend must refer to times past. My hair is very dark indeed,
+and always was, as long as I remember, and also I have a friend who
+makes serious affidavit that I have never changed (except by being
+rather taller) since I was a year old. Altogether, you cannot make a
+case of identity out, and I am forced to give up the glory of being so
+long remembered for my cleverness.
+
+You do wrong in supposing me inclined to underrate Mr. Melville's
+power. He is inclined to High-Churchism, and to such doctrines as
+apostolical succession, and I, who, am a Dissenter, and a believer in
+a universal Christianity, recoil from the exclusive doctrine.
+
+But then, that is not depreciatory of his power and eloquence--surely
+not.
+
+E.B.
+
+[Footnote 108: _Poetical Works_, iii. 172.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Chorley_
+50 Wimpole Street: Monday.
+[About the end of August 1844.]
+
+Dear Mr. Chorley,--Kindnesses are more frequent things with me than
+gladnesses, but I thank you earnestly for both in the letter I have
+this moment received.[109] You have given me a quick sudden pleasure
+which goes deeper (I am very sure) than self-love, for it must be
+something better than vanity that brings the tears so near the eyes. I
+thank you, dear Mr. Chorley.
+
+After all, we are not quite strangers. I have had some early
+encouragement and direction from you, and much earlier (and later)
+literary pleasures from such of your writings as did not refer to me.
+I have studied 'Music and Manners'[110] under you, and found an excuse
+for my love of romance-reading from your grateful fancy. Then, as dear
+Miss Mitford's friend, you could not help being (however against your
+will!) a little my acquaintance; and this she daringly promised to
+make you in reality some day, till I took the fervour for prophecy.
+
+Altogether I am justified, while I thank you as a stranger, to say one
+more word as a friend, and _that_ shall be the best word--'_May God
+bless you_!' The trials with which He tries us all are different, but
+our faces may be turned towards the end in cheerfulness, for '_to_ the
+end He has loved us.' I remain,
+
+Very faithfully, your obliged
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+You may trust me with the secret of your kindness to me. It shall not
+go farther.
+
+[Footnote 109: A summary of its contents is given in the next letter
+but one.]
+
+[Footnote 110: _Music and Manners in France and Germany: a Series of
+Travelling Sketches of Art and Society_, published by Mr. Chorley in
+1841.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Monday, September 1, 1844.
+
+My dearest Mr. Boyd,--I thank you for the Cyprus, and also for a still
+sweeter amreeta--your praise. Certainly to be praised as you praise
+me might well be supposed likely to turn a sager head than mine, but
+I feel that (with all my sensitive and grateful appreciation of such
+words) I am removed rather below than above the ordinary temptations
+of vanity. Poetry is to me rather a passion than an ambition, and
+the gadfly which drives me along that road pricks deeper than an
+expectation of fame could do.
+
+Moreover, there will be plenty of counter-irritation to prevent me
+from growing feverish under your praises. And as a beginning, I hear
+that the 'John Bull' newspaper has cut me up with sanguinary gashes,
+for the edification of its Sabbath readers. I have not seen it yet,
+but I hear so. The 'Drama' is the particular victim. Do not send for
+the paper. I will let you have it, if you should wish for it.
+
+One thing is left to me to say. Arabel told you of a letter I had
+received from a professional critic, and I am sorry that she should
+have told you so without binding you to secrecy on the point at the
+same time. In fact, the writer of the letter begged me _not_ to speak
+of it, and I took an engagement to him _not_ to speak of it. Now it
+would be very unpleasant to me, and dishonorable to me, if, after
+entering into this engagement, the circumstance of the letter should
+come to be talked about. Of course you will understand that I do not
+object to your having been informed of the thing, only Arabel should
+have remembered to ask you not to mention again the name of the critic
+who wrote to me.
+
+May God bless you, my very dear friend. I drink thoughts of you in
+Cyprus every day.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+ELIBET.
+
+There is no review in the 'Examiner' yet, nor any continuation in the
+'Athenaeum.'[111]
+
+[Footnote 111: The _Athenaeum_ had reserved the two longer poems, the
+'Drama of Exile' and the 'Vision of Poets,' for possible notice in a
+second article, which, however, never appeared.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+September 10, 1844.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I will not lose a post in assuring you that
+I was not silent because of any disappointment from your previous
+letter. I could only feel the _kindness_ of that letter, and this was
+certainly the chief and uppermost feeling at the time of reading it,
+and since. Your preference of 'The Seraphim' one other person besides
+yourself has acknowledged to me in the same manner, and although I
+myself--perhaps from the natural leaning to last works, and perhaps
+from a wise recognition of the complete failure of the poem called
+'The Seraphim '--do disagree with you, yet I can easily forgive you
+for such a thought, and believe that you see sufficient grounds for
+entertaining it. More and more I congratulate myself (at any rate)
+for the decision I came to at the last moment, and in the face of
+some persuasions, to call the book 'Poems,' instead of trusting its
+responsibility to the 'Drama,' by such a title as 'A Drama of Exile,
+and Poems.' It is plain, as I anticipated, that for one person who is
+ever so little pleased with the 'Drama,' fifty at least will like the
+smaller poems. And perhaps they are right. The longer sustaining of a
+subject requires, of course, more power, and I may have failed in it
+altogether.
+
+Yes, I think I may say that I am satisfied so far with the aspect of
+things in relation to the book. You see there has scarcely been time
+yet to give any except a sanguine or despondent judgment--I mean,
+there is scarcely room yet for forming a very rational inference of
+what will ultimately be, without the presentiments of hope or fear.
+The book came out too late in August for any chance of a mention in
+the September magazines, and at the dead time of year, when the
+very critics were thinking more of holiday innocence than of their
+carnivorous instincts. This will not hurt it ultimately, although it
+might have hurt a _novel_. The regular critics will come back to it;
+and in the meantime the newspaper critics are noticing it all round,
+with more or less admissions to its advantage. The 'Atlas' is the best
+of the newspapers for literary notices; and it spoke graciously on
+the whole; though I do protest against being violently attached to
+a 'school.' I have faults enough, I know; but it is just to say that
+they are at least my own. Well, then! It is true that the 'Westminster
+Review' says briefly what is great praise, and promises to take the
+earliest opportunity of reviewing me 'at large.' So that with regard
+to the critics, there seems to be a good prospect. Then I have had
+some very pleasant private letters--one from Carlyle; an oath from
+Miss Martineau to give her whole mind to the work and tell me her free
+and full opinion, which I have not received yet; an assurance from an
+acquaintance of Mrs. Jameson that she was much pleased. But the letter
+which pleased me most was addressed to me by a professional critic,
+personally unknown to me, who wrote to say that he had traced me up,
+step by step, ever since I began to print, and that my last volumes
+were so much better than any preceding them, and were such _living
+books_, that they restored to him the impulses of his youth and
+constrained him to thank me for the pleasant emotions they had
+excited. I cannot say the name of the writer of this letter, because
+he asked me not to do so, but of course it was very pleasant to read.
+Now you will not call me vain for speaking of this. I would not
+speak of it; only I want (you see) to prove to you how faithfully
+and gratefully I have a trust in your kindness and sympathy. It is
+certainly the best kindness to speak the truth to me. I have written
+those poems as well as I could, and I hope to write others better. I
+have not reached my own ideal; and I cannot expect to have satisfied
+other people's expectation. But it is (as I sometimes say) the least
+ignoble part of me, that I love poetry better than I love my own
+successes in it.
+
+I am glad that you like 'The Lost Bower.' The scene of that poem is
+the wood above the garden at Hope End.
+
+It is very true, my dearest Mrs. Martin, all that you say about the
+voyage to Alexandria. And I do not feel the anxiety I _thought I
+should_. In fact, _I am surprised to feel so little anxiety_. Still,
+when they are at home again, I shall be happier than I am now, _that_
+I feel strongly besides.
+
+What I missed most in your first letter was what I do not miss in the
+second, the good news of dear Mr. Martin. Both he and you are very
+vainglorious, I suppose, about O'Connell; but although I was delighted
+on every account at his late victory,[112] or rather at the late
+victory of justice and constitutional law, he never was a hero of mine
+and is not likely to become one. If he had been (by the way) a hero of
+mine, I should have been quite ashamed of him for being so unequal to
+his grand position as was demonstrated by the speech from the balcony.
+Such poetry in the position, and such prose in the speech! He has not
+the stuff in him of which heroes are made. There is a thread of cotton
+everywhere crossing the silk....
+
+With our united love to both of you,
+Ever, dearest Mrs. Martin, most affectionately yours,
+BA.
+
+
+
+[Footnote 112: The reversal by the House of Lords of his conviction in
+Ireland for conspiracy, which the English Court of Queen's Bench had
+confirmed.]
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Wednesday [about September 1844].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin, ... Did I tell you that Miss Martineau had
+promised and vowed to me to tell me the whole truth with respect to
+the poems? Her letter did not come until a few days ago, and for a
+full month after the publication; and I was so fearful of the probable
+sentence that my hands shook as they broke the seal. But such a
+pleasant letter! I have been overjoyed with it. She says that her
+'predominant impression is of the _originality_'--very pleasant to
+hear. I must not forget, however, to say that she complains of 'want
+of variety' in the general effect of the drama, and that she 'likes
+Lucifer less than anything in the two volumes.' You see how you have
+high backers. Still she talks of 'immense advances,' which consoles me
+again. In fact, there is scarcely a word to _require_ consolation
+in her letter, and what did not please me least--nay, to do myself
+justice, what put all the rest out of my head for some minutes with
+joy--is the account she gives of herself. For she is better and likely
+still to be better; she has recovered appetite and sleep, and lost the
+most threatening symptoms of disease; she has been out for the first
+time for four years and a half, lying on the grass flat, she says,
+with my books open beside her day after day. (That _does_ sound vain
+of me, but I cannot resist the temptation of writing it!) And
+the means--the means! Such means you would never divine! It is
+_mesmerism_. She is thrown into the magnetic trance twice a day; and
+the progress is manifest; and the hope for the future clear. Now,
+what do you both think? Consider what a case it is! No case of a
+weak-minded woman and a nervous affection; but of the most manlike
+woman in the three kingdoms--in the best sense of man--a woman gifted
+with admirable fortitude, as well as exercised in high logic, a woman
+of sensibility and of imagination certainly, but apt to carry her
+reason unbent wherever she sets her foot; given to utilitarian
+philosophy and the habit of logical analysis; and suffering under a
+disease which has induced change of structure and yielded to no tried
+remedy! Is it not wonderful, and past expectation? She suggests that
+I should try the means--but I understand that in cases like mine the
+remedy has done harm instead of good, by over-exciting the system. But
+her experience will settle the question of the reality of magnetism
+with a whole generation of infidels. For my own part, I have long been
+a believer, _in spite of papa_. Then I have had very kind letters from
+Mrs. Jameson, the 'Ennuyée'[113] and from Mr. Serjeant Talfourd and
+some less famous persons. And a poet with a Welsh name wrote to me
+yesterday to say that he was writing a poem 'similar to my "Drama of
+Exile,"' and begged me to subscribe to it. Now I tell you all this to
+make you smile, and because some of it will interest you more gravely.
+It will prove to dear unjust Mr. Martin that I do not distrust your
+sympathy. How could he think so of me? I am half vexed that he should
+think so. Indeed--indeed I am not so morbidly vain. Why, if you had
+told me that the books were without any sort of value in your eyes,
+do you imagine that I should not have valued you, reverenced you
+ever after for your truth, so sacred a thing in friendship? I really
+believe it would have been my predominant feeling. But you proved your
+truth without trying me so hardly; I had _both_ truth and praise from
+you, and surely quite enough, and _more_ than enough, as many would
+think, of the latter.
+
+My dearest papa left us this morning to go for a few days into
+Cornwall for the purpose of examining a quarry in which he has bought
+or is about to buy shares, and he means to strike on for the Land's
+End and to see Falmouth before he returns. It depresses me to think
+of his being away; his presence or the sense of his nearness having
+so much cheering and soothing influence with me; but it will be an
+excellent change for him, even if he does not, as he expects, dig an
+immense fortune out of the quarries....
+
+Your affectionate and ever obliged
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 113: Mrs. Jameson's earliest book, and one which achieved
+considerable popularity, was her _Diary of an Ennuyée_.]
+
+
+_To Cornelius Mathews_
+London, 50 Wimpole Street: October 1, 1844.
+
+My dear Mr. Mathews,--I have just received your note, which, on the
+principle of single sighs or breaths being wafted from Indies to the
+poles, arrived quite safely, and I was very glad to have it. I shall
+fall into monotony if I go on to talk of my continued warm sense of
+your wonderful kindness to me, a stranger according to the manner of
+men; and, indeed, I have just this moment been writing a note to
+a friend two streets away, and calling it 'wonderful kindness.'
+I cannot, however, of course, allow you to run the tether of your
+impulse and furnish me with the reviews of my books and other things
+you speak of at your own expense, and I should prefer, if you would
+have the goodness to give the necessary direction to Messrs. Putnam
+& Co., that they should send what would interest me to see, together
+with a note of the pecuniary debt to themselves. I shall like to see
+the reviews, of course; and that you should have taken the first word
+of American judgment into your own mouth is a pleasant thought to
+me, and leaves me grateful. In England I have no reason so far to
+be otherwise than well pleased. There has not, indeed, been much yet
+besides newspaper criticisms--except 'Ainsworth's Magazine,' which
+is benignant!--there has not been time. The monthly reviews give
+themselves 'pause' in such matters to set the plumes of their dignity,
+and I am rather glad than otherwise not to have the first fruits of
+their haste. The 'Atlas,' the best newspaper for literary reviews,
+excepting always the 'Examiner,' who does not speak yet, is generous
+to me, and I have reason to be satisfied with others. And our most
+influential quarterly (after the 'Edinburgh' and right 'Quarterly'),
+the 'Westminster Review,' promises an early paper with passing words
+of high praise. What vexed me a little in one or two of the journals
+was an attempt made to fix me in a school, and the calling me
+a follower of Tennyson for my habit of using compound words,
+noun-substantives, which I used to do before I knew a page of
+Tennyson, and adopted from a study of our old English writers, and
+Greeks and even Germans. The custom is so far from being peculiar to
+Tennyson, that Shelley and Keats and Leigh Hunt are all redolent of
+it, and no one can read our old poets without perceiving the leaning
+of our Saxon to that species of coalition. Then I have had letters of
+great kindness from 'Spirits of the Age,' whose praises are so many
+crowns, and altogether am far from being out of spirits about the
+prospect of my work. I am glad, however, that I gave the name of
+'Poems' to the work instead of admitting the 'Drama of Exile' into the
+title-page and increasing its responsibility; for one person who likes
+the 'Drama,' ten like the other poems. Both Carlyle and Miss Martineau
+select as favorite 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship,' which amuses and
+surprises me somewhat. In that poem I had endeavoured to throw
+conventionalities (turned asbestos for the nonce) into the fire of
+poetry, to make them glow and glitter as if they were not dull things.
+Well, I shall soon hear what _you_ like best--and worst. I wonder if
+you have been very carnivorous with me! I tremble a little to think of
+your hereditary claim to an instrument called the tomahawk. Still, I
+am sure I shall have to think _most_, ever as now, of your kindness;
+and _truth_ must be sacred to all of us, whether we have to suffer
+or be glad by it. As for Mr. Horne, I cannot answer for what he has
+received or not received. I had one note from him on silver paper
+(fear of postage having reduced him to a transparency) from Germany,
+and that is all, and I did not think him in good spirits in what he
+said of himself. I will tell him what you have the goodness to say,
+and something, too, on my own part. He has had a hard time of it with
+his 'Spirit of the Age;' the attacks on the book here being bitter in
+the extreme. Your 'Democratic' does not comfort him for the rest, by
+the way, and, indeed, he is almost past comfort on the subject. I had
+a letter the other day from Dr. Shelton Mackenzie, whom I do not know
+personally, but who is about to publish a 'Living Author Dictionary,'
+and who, by some association, talked of the effeminacy of 'the
+American poets,' so I begged him to read your poems on 'Man' and
+prepare an exception to his position. I wish to write more and must
+not.
+
+Most faithfully yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+Am I the first with the great and good news for America and England
+that Harriet Martineau is better and likely to be better? She told me
+so herself, and attributes the change to the agency of _mesmerism_.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+October 4, 1844.
+
+My dearest Mr. Boyd,--... As to 'The Lost Bower,' I am penitent about
+having caused you so much disturbance. I sometimes fancy that a little
+varying of the accents, though at the obvious expense of injuring
+the smoothness of every line considered separately, gives variety
+of cadence and fuller harmony to the general effect. But I do not
+question that I deserve a great deal of blame on this point as on
+others. Many lines in 'Isobel's Child' are very slovenly and weak from
+a multitude of causes. I hope you will like 'The Lost Bower' better
+when you try it again than you did at first, though I do not, of
+course, expect that you will not see much to cry out against. The
+subject of the poem was an actual fact of my childhood.
+
+Oh, and I think I told you, when giving you the history of 'Lady
+Geraldine's Courtship,' that I wrote the _thirteen_ last pages of it
+in one day. I ought to have said _nineteen_ pages instead. But don't
+tell anybody; only keep the circumstance in your mind when you need it
+and see the faults. Nobody knows of it except you and Mr. Kenyon and
+my own family for the reason I told you. I sent off that poem to the
+press piece-meal, as I never in my life did before with any poem.
+And since I wrote to you I have heard of Mr. Eagles, one of the first
+writers in 'Blackwood' and a man of very refined taste, adding another
+name to the many of those who have preferred it to anything in the
+two volumes. He says that he has read it at least six times aloud to
+various persons, and calls it a 'beautiful _sui generis_ drama.' On
+which Mr. Kenyon observes that I am 'ruined for life, and shall be
+sure never to take pains with any poem again.'
+
+The American edition (did Arabel tell you?) was to be out in New
+York a week ago, and was to consist of fifteen hundred copies in two
+volumes, as in England.
+
+She sends you the verses and asks you to make allowances for the delay
+in doing so. I cannot help believing that if you were better read in
+Wordsworth you would appreciate him better. Ever since I knew what
+poetry is, I have believed in him as a great poet, and I do not
+understand how reasonably there can be a doubt of it. Will you
+remember that nearly all the first minds of the age have admitted
+his power (without going to intrinsic evidence), and then say that
+he _can_ be a mere Grub Street writer? It is not that he is only or
+chiefly admired by the _profanum vulgus_, that he is a mere popular
+and fashionable poet, but that men of genius in this and other
+countries unite in confessing his genius. And is not this a
+significant circumstance--significant, at least?...
+
+Believe me, yourself, your affectionate and grateful
+ELIBET B.B.
+
+How kind you are, far too kind, about the Cyprus wine; I thank you
+very much.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+October 5, 1844.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--... Well, papa came back from Cornwall just
+as I came back to my own room, and he was as pleased with his quarry
+as I was to have the sight again of his face. During his absence,
+Henrietta had a little polka (which did not bring the house down on
+its knees), and I had a transparent blind put up in my open window.
+There is a castle in the blind, and a castle gate-way, and two walks,
+and several peasants, and groves of trees which rise in excellent
+harmony with the fall of my green damask curtains--new, since you
+saw me last. Papa insults me with the analogy of a back window in a
+confectioner's shop, but is obviously moved when the sunshine lights
+up the castle, notwithstanding. And Mr. Kenyon and everybody in
+the house grow ecstatic rather than otherwise, as they stand in
+contemplation before it, and tell me (what is obvious without their
+evidence) that the effect is beautiful, and that the whole room
+catches a light from it. Well, and then Mr. Kenyon has given me a new
+table, with a rail round it to consecrate it from Flush's paws, and
+large enough to hold all my varieties of vanities.
+
+I had another letter from Miss Martineau the other day, and she says
+she has a 'hat of her own, a parasol of her own,' and that she can
+'walk a mile with ease.' _What do miracles mean_? Miracle or not,
+however, one thing is certain--it is very joyful; and her own
+sensations on being removed suddenly from the verge of the prospect
+of a most painful death--a most painful and lingering death--must be
+strange and overwhelming.
+
+I hope I may hear soon from you that you had much pleasure at Clifton,
+and some benefit in the air and change, and that dear Mr. Martin and
+yourself are both as well as possible. Do you take in 'Punch'? If not,
+you _ought_. Mr. Kenyon and I agreed the other day that we should be
+more willing 'to take our politics' from 'Punch' than from any other
+of the newspaper oracles. 'Punch' is very generous, and I like him for
+everything, except for his rough treatment of Louis Philippe, whom
+I believe to be a great man--for a king. And then, it is well worth
+fourpence to laugh once a week. I do recommend 'Punch' to you.[114]
+Douglas Jerrold is the editor, I fancy, and he has a troop of 'wits,'
+such as Planché, Titmarsh, and the author of 'Little Peddlington,' to
+support him....
+
+Now I have written enough to tire you, I am sure. May God bless
+you both! Did you read 'Coningsby,' that very able book, without
+character, story, or specific teaching? It is well worth reading, and
+worth wondering over. D'Israeli, who is a man of genius, has written,
+nevertheless, books which will live longer, and move deeper. But
+everybody should read 'Coningsby.' It is a sign of the times. Believe
+me, my dearest Mrs. Martin,
+
+Your very affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To John Kenyon_
+Tuesday, October 8, 1844.
+
+Thank you, my dearest cousin, for your kind little note, which I run
+the chance of answering by that Wednesday's post you think you may
+wait for. So (_via_ your table) I set about writing to you, and the
+first word, of course, must be an expression of my contentment with
+the 'Examiner' review. Indeed, I am more than contented--delighted
+with it. I had some dread, vaguely fashioned, about the 'Examiner';
+the very delay looked ominous. And then, I thought to myself, though
+I did not say, that if Mr. Forster praised the verses on Flush to you,
+it was just because he had no sympathy for anything else. But it is
+all the contrary, you see, and I am the more pleased for the want of
+previous expectation; and I must add that if _you_ were so kind as to
+be glad of being associated with me by Mr. Forster's reference, _I_
+was so _human_ as to be very very glad of being associated with _you_
+by the same. Also you shall criticise 'Geraldine' exactly as you
+like--mind, I don't think it all so rough as the extracts appear to
+be, and some variety is attained by that playing at ball with
+the _pause_, which causes the apparent roughness--still you shall
+criticise 'Geraldine' exactly as you like. I have a great fancy for
+writing some day a longer poem of a like class--a poem comprehending
+the aspect and manners of modern life, and flinching at nothing of the
+conventional. I think it might be done with good effect. You said once
+that Tennyson had done it in 'Locksley Hall,' and I half agreed with
+you. But looking at 'Locksley Hall' again, I find that not much has
+been done in that _way_, noble and passionate and _full_ as the poem
+is in other ways. But there is no story, no _manners_, no modern
+allusion, except in the grand general adjuration to the 'Mother-age,'
+and no approach to the treatment of a conventionality. But Crabbe, as
+you say, has done it, and Campbell in his 'Theodore' in a few touches
+was near to do it; but _Hayley_ clearly apprehends the species of poem
+in his 'Triumphs of Temper' and 'Triumphs of Music,' and so did Miss
+Seward, who called it the '_poetical novel_.' Now I do think that a
+true poetical novel--modern, and on the level of the manners of the
+day--might be as good a poem as any other, and much more popular
+besides. Do you not think so?
+
+I had a letter from dear Miss Mitford this morning, with yours, but I
+can find nothing in it that you will care to hear again. She complains
+of the vagueness of 'Coningsby,' and praises the French writers--a
+sympathy between us, that last, which we wear hidden in our sleeves
+for the sake of propriety. Not a word of coming to London, though I
+asked. Neither have I heard again from Miss Martineau....
+
+Ever most affectionately and gratefully yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 114: It will be remembered that 'Punch' had only been in
+existence for three years at this time, which will account for this
+apparently superfluous advice.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+October 15, 1844.
+
+... Not a word more have I heard from Miss Martineau; and shall not
+soon, perhaps, as she is commanded not to write, not to read--to do
+nothing, in fact, except the getting better. I am not, I confess,
+quite satisfied myself. But she herself appears to be so altogether,
+and she speaks of '_symptoms_ having given way,' implying a structural
+change. Yes, I use the common phrase in respect to mesmerism, and
+think 'there is something in it.' Only I think, besides, that,
+if something, there must be a great deal in it. Clairvoyance has
+precisely the same evidence as the phenomenon of the trance has, and
+scientific and philosophical minds are recognising all the phenomena
+_as facts_ on all sides of us. Mr. Kenyon's is the best distinction,
+and the immense quantity of _humbug_ which embroiders the truth
+over and over, and round and round, makes it needful: 'I believe in
+mesmerism, but not in _mesmerists_.'
+
+We have had no other letter from our Egyptians, but can wait a little
+longer without losing our patience.
+
+The blind rises in favour, and the ivy would not fall, if it would but
+live. Alas! I am going to try _guano_ as a last resource. You see, in
+painting the windows, papa was forced to have it taken down, and the
+ivy that grows on ruins and oaks is not usually taken down 'for the
+nonce.' I think I shall have a myrtle grove in two or three large pots
+inside the window. I have a mind to try it.
+
+I heard twice from dear Mr. Kenyon at Dover, where he was detained by
+the weather, but not since his entrance into France. Which is grand
+enough word for the French Majesty itself--'entrance into France.' By
+the way, I do hope you have some sympathy with me in my respect for
+the King of the French--that right kingly king, Louis Philippe. If
+France had _borne_ more liberty, he would not have withheld it, and,
+for the rest, and in all truly royal qualities, he is the noblest
+king, according to my idea, in Europe--the most royal king in the
+encouragement of art and literature, and in the honoring of artists
+and men of letters. Let a young unknown writer accomplish a successful
+tragedy, and the next day he sits at the king's table--not in a
+metaphor, but face to face. See how different the matter is in our
+court, where the artists are shown up the back stairs, and where no
+poet (even by the back stairs) can penetrate, unless so fortunate
+as to be a banker also. What is the use of kings and queens in these
+days, except to encourage arts and letters? Really I cannot see.
+Anybody can hunt an otter out of a box--who has nerve enough.
+
+I had a letter from America to-day, and heard that my book was not
+published there until the fifth of this October. Still, a few copies
+had preceded the publication, and made way among the critics, and
+several reviews were in the course of germinating very greenly. Yes,
+I was delighted with the 'Examiner,' and all the more so from having
+interpreted the long delay of the notice, the gloomiest manner
+possible. My friends try to persuade me that the book is making some
+impression, and I am willing enough to be convinced. Thank you for all
+your kind sympathy, my dear friend.
+
+Now, do write to me soon again! Have you read Dr. Arnold's Life? I
+have not, but am very anxious to do so, from the admirable extracts
+in the 'Examiner' of last Saturday, and also from what I hear of it in
+other quarters. That Dr. Arnold must have been _a man_, in the largest
+and noblest sense. May God bless you, both of you! I think of you,
+dearest Mrs. Martin, much, and remain
+
+Your very affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To John Kenyon_
+Saturday, October 29, 1844.
+
+The moral of your letter, my dearest cousin, certainly is that no
+green herb of a secret will spring up and flourish between you and me.
+
+The loss of Flush was a secret. My aunt's intention of coming to
+England (for I know not how to explain what she said to you, but by
+the supposition of an unfulfilled intention!) was a secret. And Mr.
+Chorley's letter to me was a third secret. All turned into light!
+
+For the last, you may well praise me for discretion. The letter he
+wrote was pleasanter to me than many of the kindnesses (apart from
+your own) occasioned by my book--and when you asked me once 'what
+letters I had received,' if ever a woman deserved to be canonised
+for her silence, _I_ did! But the effort was necessary--for he
+particularly desired that I would not mention to 'our common friends'
+the circumstance of his having written to me; and 'common friends'
+could only stand for 'Mr. Kenyon and Miss Mitford.' Of course what you
+tell me, of his liking the poems better still, is delightful to hear;
+but he reviewed them in the 'Athenaeum' surely! The review we read in
+the 'Athenaeum' was by his hand--could not be mistaken ...
+
+Well; but Flushie! It is too true that he has been lost--lost and won;
+and true besides that I was a good deal upset by it _meo more_; and
+that I found it hard to eat and sleep as usual while he was in the
+hands of his enemies. It is a secret too. We would not tell papa of
+it. Papa would have been angry with the unfortunate person who took
+Flush out without a chain; and would have kicked against the pricks of
+the necessary bribing of the thief in order to the getting him back.
+Therefore we didn't tell papa; and as I had a very bad convenient
+headache the day my eyes were reddest, I did not see him (except once)
+till Flush was on the sofa again. As to the thieves, you are very kind
+to talk daggers at them; and I feel no inclination to say 'Don't.' It
+is quite too bad and cruel. And think of their exceeding insolence
+in taking Flush away from this very door, while Arabel was waiting to
+have the door opened on her return from her walk; and in observing (as
+they gave him back for six guineas and a half) that they intended to
+have him again at the earliest opportunity and that _then_ they must
+have _ten_ guineas! I tell poor Flushie (while he looks very earnestly
+in my face) that he and I shall be ruined at last, and that I shall
+have no money to buy him cakes; but the worst is the anxiety! Whether
+I am particularly silly, or not, I don't know; they say here, that I
+am; but it seems to me impossible for anybody who really cares for a
+dog, to think quietly of his being in the hands of those infamous men.
+And then I know how poor Flushie must feel it. When he was brought
+home, he began to cry in his manner, whine, as if his heart was full!
+It was just what I was inclined to do myself--' and thus was Flushie
+lost and won.'
+
+But we are both recovered now, thank you; and intend to be very
+prudent for the future. I am delighted to think of your being in
+England; it is the next best thing to your being in London. In regard
+to Miss Martineau, I agree with you word for word; but I cannot
+overcome an additional _horror_, which you do not express, or feel
+probably.
+
+There is an excellent refutation of Puseyism in the 'Edinburgh
+Review'--by whom? and I have been reading besides the admirable
+paper by Macaulay in the same number. And now I must be done; having
+resolved to let you hear without a post's delay. Otherwise I might
+have American news for you, as I hear that a packet has come in.
+
+My brothers arrived in great spirits at Malta, after a _three weeks'
+voyage_ from Gibraltar; and must now be in Egypt, I think and trust.
+
+May God bless you, my dear cousin.
+
+Most affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+50 Wimpole Street: November 5, 1844.
+
+Well, but am I really so bad? ' _Et tu_!' Can _you_ call me careless?
+Remember all the altering of manuscript and proof--and remember how
+the obscurities used to fly away before your cloud-compelling, when
+you were the Jove of the criticisms! That the books (I won't call
+them _our_ books when I am speaking of the faults) are remarkable for
+defects and superfluities of evil, I can see quite as well as another;
+but then I won't admit that ' it comes' of my carelessness, and
+refusing to take pains. On the contrary, my belief is, that very few
+writers called ' correct ' who have selected classical models to work
+from, pay more laborious attention than I do habitually to the forms
+of thought and expression. ' Lady Geraldine ' was an exception in her
+whole history. If I write fast sometimes (and the historical fact is
+that what has been written fastest, has pleased most), l am not apt
+to print without consideration. I appeal to Philip sober, if I am!
+My dearest cousin, do remember! As to the faults, I do not think of
+defending them, be very sure. My consolation is, that I may try to do
+better in time, if I may talk of time. The worst fault of all, as far
+as expression goes (the adjective-substantives, whether in prose or
+verse, I cannot make up my mind to consider faulty), is that kind of
+obscurity which is the same thing with inadequate expression. Be very
+sure--try to be very sure--that I am not obstinate and self-opiniated
+beyond measure. To _you_ in case, who have done so much for me, and
+who think of me so more than kindly, I feel it to be both duty and
+pleasure to defer and yield. Still, you know, we could not, if we were
+ten years about it, alter down the poems to the terms of all these
+reviewers. You would not desire it, if it were possible. I do not
+remember that you suggested any change in the verse on Aeschylus. The
+critic[115] mistakes my allusion, which was to the fact that in the
+acting of the Eumenides, when the great tragic poet did actually
+'frown as the gods did,' women fell down fainting from the benches.
+I did not refer to the effect of his human countenance 'during
+composition.' But I am very grateful to the reviewer whoever he may
+be--very--and with need. See how the 'Sun' shines in response to
+'Blackwood' (thank you for sending me that notice), when previously we
+had had but a wintry rag from the same quarter! No; if I am not spoilt
+by _your kindness_, I am not likely to be so by any of these exoteric
+praises, however beyond what I expected or deserved. And then I am
+like a bird with one wing broken. Throw it out of the window; and
+after the first feeling of pleasure in liberty, it falls heavily. I
+have had moments of great pleasure in hearing whatever good has been
+thought of the poems; but the feeling of _elation_ is too strong or
+rather too _long_ for me....
+
+Can it be true that Mr. Newman has at last joined the Church of
+Rome?[116] If it is true, it will do much to prove to the most
+illogical minds the real character of the late movement. It will prove
+what the _point of sight_ is, as by the drawing of a straight line.
+Miss Mitford told me that he had lately sent a message to a R.
+Catholic convert from the English Church, to the effect--'you have
+done a good deed, but not at a right time.' It can but be a question
+of time, indeed, to the whole party; at least to such as are
+logical--and honest.... [_Unsigned_]
+
+[Footnote 115: In _Blackwood_.]
+
+[Footnote 116: Newman did not actually enter the Church of Rome until
+nearly a year later, in October 1845.]
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+50 Wimpole Street: November 8, 1844.
+
+Thank you, my dear dear cousin, for the kind thought of sending me Mr.
+Eagles's letter, and most for your own note. You know we _both_ saw
+that he couldn't have written the paper in question; we _both_ were
+poets and prophets by that sign, but I hope he understands that I
+shall gratefully remember what his intention was. As to his 'friend'
+who told him that I had 'imitated Tennyson,' why I can only say and
+feel that it is very particularly provoking to hear such things said,
+and that I wish people would find fault with my 'metre' in the place
+of them. In the matter of 'Geraldine' I shall not be puffed up. I
+shall take to mind what you suggest. Of course, if you find it hard to
+read, it must be my fault. And then the fact of there being a _story_
+to a poem will give a factitious merit in the eyes of many critics,
+which could not be an occasion of vainglory to the consciousness of
+the most vainglorious of writers. You made me smile by your suggestion
+about the aptitude of critics aforesaid for courting Lady Geraldines.
+Certes--however it may be--the poem has had more attention than its
+due. Oh, and I must tell you that I had a letter the other day
+from Mr. Westwood (one of my correspondents unknown) referring to
+'Blackwood,' and observing on the mistake about Goethe. 'Did you not
+mean "fell" the verb,' he said, 'or do _I_ mistake?' So, you see, some
+people in the world did actually understand what I meant. I am eager
+to prove that possibility sometimes.
+
+How full of life of mind Mr. Eagles's letter is. Such letters always
+bring me to think of Harriet Martineau's pestilent plan of doing to
+destruction half of the intellectual life of the world, by suppressing
+every mental breath breathed through the post office. She was not in
+a state of clairvoyance when she said such a thing. I have not heard
+from her, but you observed what the 'Critic' said of William Howitt's
+being empowered by her to declare the circumstances of her recovery?
+
+Again and again have I sent for Dr. Arnold's 'Life,' and I do hope to
+have it to-day. I am certain, by the extracts, besides your opinion,
+that I shall be delighted with it.
+
+Why shouldn't Miss Martineau's apocalyptic housemaid[117] tell us
+whether Flush has a soul, and what is its 'future destination'? As
+to the fact of his soul, I have long had a strong opinion on it. The
+'grand peut-être,' to which 'without revelation' the human argument is
+reduced, covers dog-nature with the sweep of its fringes.
+
+Did you ever read Bulwer's 'Eva, or the Unhappy Marriage'? _That_ is
+a sort of poetical novel, with modern manners inclusive. But Bulwer,
+although a poet in prose, writes all his rhythmetical compositions
+somewhat prosaically, providing an instance of that curious difference
+which exists between the poetical writer and the poet. It is easier
+to give the instance than the reason, but I suppose the cause of the
+rhythmetical impotence must lie somewhere in the want of the power of
+concentration. For is it not true that the most prolix poet is capable
+of briefer expression than the least prolix prose writer, or am I
+wrong?...
+
+Your ever affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 117: Miss Martineau, besides having been cured by mesmerism
+herself, was blest with a housemaid who had visions under the same
+influence, concerning which Miss Martineau subsequently wrote at great
+length in the _Athenaeum_.]
+
+
+_To Cornelius Mathews_
+50 Wimpole Street: November 14, 1844.
+
+My dear Mr. Mathews,--I write to tell you--only that there is nothing
+to tell--only in guard of my gratitude, lest you should come to
+think all manner of evil of me and of my supposed propensity to let
+everything pass like Mr. Horne's copies of the American edition of his
+work, _sub silentio_. Therefore I must write, and you are to please to
+understand that I have not up to this moment received either letter or
+book by the packet of October 10 which was charged, according to your
+intimation, with so much. I, being quite out of patience and out of
+breath with expectation, have repeatedly sent to Mr. Putnam, and he
+replies with undisturbed politeness that the ship has come in, and
+that his part and lot in her, together with mine, remain at the
+disposal of the Custom-house officers, and may remain some time
+longer. So you see how it is. I am waiting--simply _waiting_, and it
+is better to let you know that I am not forgetting instead.
+
+In the meantime, your kindness will be glad to learn of the prosperity
+of my poems in my own country. I am more than satisfied in my most
+sanguine hope for them, and a little surprised besides. The critics
+have been good to me. 'Blackwood' and 'Tait' have this month both been
+generous, and the 'New Monthly' and 'Ainsworth's Magazine' did what
+they could. Then I have the 'Examiner' in my favor, and such heads and
+hearts as are better and purer than the purely critical, and I am very
+glad altogether, and very grateful, and hope to live long enough to
+acknowledge, if not to justify, much unexpected kindness. Of course,
+some hard criticism is mixed with the liberal sympathy, as you will
+see in 'Blackwood,' but some of it I deserve, even in my own eyes; and
+all of it I am willing to be patient under. The strange thing is, that
+without a single personal friend among these critics, they should have
+expended on me so much 'gentillesse,' and this strangeness I feel
+very sensitively. Mr. Horne has not returned to England yet, and in a
+letter which I received from him some fortnight ago he desired to have
+my book sent to him to Germany, just as if he never meant to return to
+England again. I answered his sayings, and reiterated, in a way
+that would make you smile, my information about your having sent the
+American copies to him. I made my _oyez_ very plain and articulate.
+He won't say again that he never heard of it--be sure of _that_. Well,
+and then Mr. Browning is not in England either, so that whatever you
+send for _him_ must await his return from the east or the west or
+the south, wherever he is. The new spirit of the age is a wandering
+spirit. Mr. Dickens is in Italy. Even Miss Mitford _talks_ of going to
+France, which is an extreme case for _her_. Do you never feel inclined
+to flash across the Atlantic to us, or can you really remain still in
+one place?
+
+I must not forget to assure you, dear Mr. Mathews, as I may
+conscientiously do, even before I have looked into or received the
+'Democratic Review,' that whatever fault you may find with me, my
+strongest feeling on reading your article will or must be _the sense
+of your kindness_. Of course I do not expect, nor should I wish, that
+your personal interest in me (proved in so many ways) would destroy
+your critical faculty in regard to me. Such an expectation, if I had
+entertained it, would have been scarcely honorable to either of us,
+and I may assure you that I never did entertain it. No; be at
+rest about the article. It is not likely that I shall think it
+'inadequate.' And I may as well mention in connection with it that
+before you spoke of reviewing me _I_ (in my despair of Mr. Horne's
+absence, and my impotency to assist your book) had thrown into my
+desk, to watch for some opportunity of publication, a review of your
+'Poems on Man,' from my own hand, and that I am still waiting and
+considering and taking courage before I send it to some current
+periodical. There is a difficulty--there is a feeling of shyness on
+my part, because, as I told you, I have no personal friend or
+introduction among the pressmen or the critics, and because the
+'Athenaeum,' which I should otherwise turn to first, has already
+treated of your work, and would not, of course, consent to reconsider
+an expressed opinion. Well, I shall do it somewhere. Forgive me the
+_appearance_ of my impotency under a general aspect.
+
+Ah, you cannot guess at the estate of poetry in the eyes of even
+such poetical English publishers as Mr. Moxon, who can write sonnets
+himself. Poetry is in their eyes just a desperate speculation. A poet
+must have tried his public before he tries the publisher--that is,
+before he expects the publisher to run a risk for him. But I will make
+any effort you like to suggest for any work of yours; I only tell you
+how _things are_. By the way, if I ever told you that Tennyson was
+ill, I may as rightly tell you now that he is well, again, or was
+when I last heard of him. I do not know him personally. Also Harriet
+Martineau can walk five miles a day with ease, and believes in
+mesmerism with all her strength. Mr. Putnam had the goodness to write
+and open his reading room to me, who am in prison instead in mine.
+
+May God bless you. Do let me hear from you soon, and believe me ever
+your friend,
+
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+November 16, 1844.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin, ... To-day I perceive in the 'contents' of the
+new 'Westminster Review' that my poems are reviewed in it, and I hope
+that you will both be interested enough in my fortunes to read at the
+library what may be said of them. Did George tell you that he imagined
+(as I also did) the 'Blackwood' paper to be by Mr. Phillimore the
+barrister? Well, Mr. Phillimore denies it altogether, has in fact
+quarrelled with Christopher North, and writes no more for him, so that
+I am quite at a loss now where to carry my gratitude.
+
+Do write to me soon. I hear that everybody should read Dr. Arnold's
+'Life.' Do you know also 'E[=o]then,' a work of genius? You have read,
+perhaps, Hewitt's 'Visits to Remarkable Places' in the first series
+and second; and Mrs. Jameson's 'Visits and Sketches' and 'Life
+in Mexico.' Do you know the 'Santa Fé Expedition,' and Custine's
+'Russia,' and 'Forest Life' by Mrs. Clavers? You will think that my
+associative process is in a most disorderly state, by all this running
+up and down the stairs of all sorts of subjects, in the naming of
+books. I would write a list, more as a list should be written, if I
+could see my way better, and this will do for a beginning in any case.
+You do not like romances, I believe, as I do, and then nearly every
+romance now-a-days sets about pulling the joints of one's heart and
+soul out, as a process of course. 'Ellen Middleton' (which I have
+not read yet) is said to be very painful. Do you know Leigh Hunt's
+exquisite essays called 'The Indicator and Companion' &c., published
+by Moxon? I hold them at once in delight and reverence. May God bless
+you both.
+
+I am ever your affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+50 Wimpole Street:
+Tuesday, November 26, 1844 [postmark].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I thank you much for your little notes; and
+you know too well how my sympathy answers you, 'as face to face in a
+glass,' for me to assure you of it here. Your account of yourselves
+altogether I take to be satisfactory, because I never expected anybody
+to gain strength very _rapidly_ while in the actual endurance of hard
+medical discipline. I am glad you have found out a trustworthy adviser
+at Dover, but I feel nevertheless that you may _both trust_ and _hope_
+in Dr. Bright, of whom I heard the very highest praises the other
+day....
+
+Now really I don't know why I should fancy you to be so deeply
+interested in Dr. Bright, that all this detail should be necessary.
+What I _do_ want you to be interested in, is in Miss Martineau's
+mesmeric experience,[118] for a copy of which, in the last
+'Athenaeum,' I have sent ever since yesterday, in the intention of
+sending it to you. You will admit it to be curious as philosophy, and
+beautiful as composition; for the rest, I will not answer. Believing
+in mesmerism as an agency, I hesitate to assent to the necessary
+connection between Miss Martineau's cure and the power; and also I am
+of opinion that unbelievers will not very generally become converts
+through her representations. There is a tone of exaltation which
+will be observed upon, and one or two sentences are suggestive to
+scepticism. I will send it to you when I get the number. I understand
+that an intimate friend of hers (a lady) travelled down from the
+south of England to Tynemouth, simply to try to prevent the public
+exposition, but could not prevail. Mr. Milnes has, besides, been her
+visitor. He is fully a believer, she says, and affirms to having seen
+the same phenomena in the East, but regards the whole subject with
+_horror_. This still appears to be Mrs. Jameson's feeling, as you
+know it is mine. Mrs. Jameson came again to this door with a note, and
+overcoming by kindness, was let in on Saturday last; and sate with me
+for nearly an hour, and so ran into what my sisters call 'one of my
+sudden intimacies' that there was an embrace for a farewell. Of course
+she won my affections through my vanity (Mr. Martin will be sure to
+say, so I hasten to anticipate him) and by exaggerations about my
+poetry; but really, and although my heart beat itself almost to pieces
+for fear of seeing her as she walked upstairs, I do think I should
+have liked her _without the flattery_. She is very light--has the
+lightest of eyes, the lightest of complexions; no eyebrows, and what
+looked to me like very pale red hair, and thin lips of no colour at
+all. But with all this indecision of exterior the expression is
+rather acute than soft; and the conversation in its principal
+characteristics, analytical and examinative; throwing out no thought
+which is not as clear as glass--critical, in fact, in somewhat of
+an austere sense. I use 'austere,' of course, in its intellectual
+relation, for nothing in the world could be kinder, or more graciously
+kind, than her whole manner and words were to me. She is coming again
+in two or three days, she says. Yes, and she said of Miss Martineau's
+paper in the 'Athenaeum,' that she very much doubted the wisdom of
+publishing it now; and that for the public's sake, if not for her own,
+Miss M. should have waited till the excitement of recovered health
+had a little subsided. She said of mesmerism altogether that she was
+inclined to believe it, but had not finally made up her convictions.
+She used words so exactly like some I have used myself that I must
+repeat them, 'that if there was _anything_ in it, there was _so much_,
+it became scarcely possible to limit consequences, and the subject
+grew awful to contemplate.' ...
+
+On Saturday I had some copies of my American edition, which dazzle the
+English one; and one or two reviews, transatlantically transcendental
+in 'oilie flatterie.' And I heard yesterday from the English publisher
+Moxon, and he was 'happy to tell me that the work was selling very
+well,' and this without an inquiry on my part. To say the truth, I
+was _afraid_ to inquire. It is good news altogether. The 'Westminster
+Review' won't be out till next month.
+
+Wordsworth is so excited about the railroad that his wife persuaded
+him to go away to recover his serenity, but he has returned raging
+worse than ever. He says that fifty members of Parliament have
+promised him their opposition. He is wrong, I think, but I also
+consider that if the people remembered his genius and his age, and
+suspended the obnoxious Act for a few years, they would be right....
+
+May God bless you both.
+
+Most affectionately yours,
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 118: The _Athenaum_ of November 23 contained the first of
+a series of articles by Miss Martineau, giving her experiences of
+mesmerism.]
+
+
+_To James Martin_
+December 10, 1844.
+
+I have been thinking of you, my dear Mr. Martin, more and more the
+colder it has been, and had made up my mind to write to-day, let me
+feel as dull as I might. So, the vane only turns to _you_ instead
+of to dearest Mrs. Martin in consequence of your letter--your letter
+makes _that_ difference. I should have written to Dover in any
+case....
+
+You are to know that Miss Martineau's mesmeric experience is only
+peculiar as being Harriet Martineau's, otherwise it exhibits the mere
+commonplaces of the agency. You laugh, I see. I wish I could laugh
+too. I mean, I seriously wish that I could disbelieve in the reality
+of the power, which is in every way most repulsive to me....
+
+Mrs. Martin is surprised at me and others on account of our 'horror.'
+Surely it is a natural feeling, and she would herself be liable to it
+if she were _more credulous_. The agency seems to me like the shaking
+of the flood-gates placed by the Divine Creator between the unprepared
+soul and the unseen world. Then--the subjection of the will and vital
+powers of one individual to those of another, to the extent of the
+apparent solution of the very identity, is abhorrent from me. And then
+(as to the expediency of the matter, and to prove how far believers
+may be carried) there is even now a religious sect at Cheltenham, of
+persons who call themselves advocates of the 'third revelation,' and
+profess to receive their system of theology entirely from patients in
+the sleep.
+
+In the meantime, poor Miss Martineau, as the consequence of her desire
+to speak the truth as she apprehends it, is overwhelmed with atrocious
+insults from all quarters. For my own part I would rather fall into
+the hands of God than of man, and suffer as she did in the body,
+instead of being the mark of these cruel observations. But she has
+singular strength of mind, and calmly continues her testimony.
+
+Miss Mitford writes to me: 'Be sure it is _all true_. I see it every
+day in my Jane'--her maid, who is mesmerised for deafness, but not,
+I believe, with much success curatively. As a remedy, the success
+has been far greater in the Martineau case than in others. With
+Miss Mitford's maid, the sleep is, however, produced; and the girl
+professed, at the third _séance_, to be able to _see behind her_.
+
+I am glad I have so much interesting matter to look forward to in the
+'Eldon Memoirs' as Pincher's biography. I am only in the first volume.
+Are English chancellors really made of such stuff? I couldn't have
+thought it. Pincher will help to reconcile me to the Law Lords
+perhaps.
+
+And, to turn from Tory legislators, I am vainglorious in announcing to
+you that the Anti-Corn-Law League has taken up my poems on the top of
+its pikes as antithetic to 'War and Monopoly.' Have I not had a sonnet
+from Gutter Lane? And has not the journal called the 'League' reviewed
+me into the third heaven, high up--above the pure ether of the five
+points? Yes, indeed. Of course I should be a (magna) chartist for
+evermore, even without the previous predilection.
+
+And what do you and Mrs. Martin say about O'Connell? Did you read
+last Saturday's 'Examiner'? Tell her that I welcomed her kind letter
+heartily, and that this is an answer to both of you. My best love
+to her always. May God bless you, dear Mr. Martin! Probably I have
+written your patience to an end. If papa or anybody were in the room,
+I should have a remembrance for you.
+
+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[119] 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[120] (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.'
+
+[Footnote 119: A great robbery from Rogers' bank on November 23,
+1844, in which the thieves carried off 40,000£ worth of notes, besides
+specie and securities.]
+
+[Footnote 120: Strathfieldsaye, the Duke of Wellington's house.]
+
+
+_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.[121]
+
+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.
+
+[Footnote 121: William Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, the first part of
+whose _Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect_ appeared in 1844.]
+
+
+_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.'[122] 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_.
+
+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[123] 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.
+
+[Footnote 122: Probably Miss Anne Seward, a minor poetess who enjoyed
+considerable popularity at the end of the eighteenth century. Her
+elegies on Captain Cook and Major André went through several editions,
+as did her _Louisa_, a poetical novel, a class of composition in
+which she was the predecessor of Mrs. Browning herself. Her collected
+poetical works were edited after her death by Sir Walter Scott
+(1810).]
+
+[Footnote 123: The real name of George Sand.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Chorley_
+[_The beginning of this letter is lost_]
+[1845]
+
+... 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 reading of romances ever new, [Greek: _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.'[124]
+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,'[125] 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?
+
+[Footnote 124: By Hans Andersen; an English translation by Mary Howitt
+was published in 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 125: Duchesses in the French court had the privilege of
+seating themselves on a _tabouret_ or stool while the King took his
+meals; hence the _droit du tabouret_ comes to mean the rank of a
+duchess.]
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Saturday, January 1844 [should be 1845].[126]
+
+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 sorry 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_.]
+
+[Footnote 126: The mention of her brothers being at Alexandria is
+sufficient to show that 1845 must be the true date.]
+
+
+
+_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'[127] 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.
+
+[Footnote 127: A copy of the 1838 volume for which Mrs. Martin had
+asked.]
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+Saturday, February 8, 1845.
+
+I return to you, dearest Mr. Kenyon, the two numbers of Jerold
+Douglas's[128] 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.
+
+[Footnote 128: Evidently a slip of the pen for Douglas Jerrold, whose
+'Shilling Magazine' began to come out in 1845.]
+
+
+_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 our 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....
+
+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, [1845].
+
+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[129] 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.
+
+[Footnote 129: By Porson, on the authenticity of I John v. 7.]
+
+
+_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,'[130] 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. All 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.
+
+[Footnote 130: A monster bell for York Minster, then being exhibited
+at the Baker Street Bazaar. Mr. Boyd was an enthusiast on bells and
+bell ringing.]
+
+
+_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.[131]
+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.
+
+[Footnote 131: No doubt _The Swiss Family Robinson_.]
+
+
+_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.[132] 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_.
+
+[Footnote 132: These versions were not published in Mrs. Browning's
+lifetime, but were included in the posthumous _Last Poems_ (1862).
+They now appear in the _Poetical Works_, v. 72-83.]
+
+
+_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[133] 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, should _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.
+
+May God bless you.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+I hear that Guizot suffers intensely, and that there are fears lest he
+may sink. Not that the complaint is mortal.
+
+[Footnote 133: Referring to the Pythagorean doctrine of the sanctity
+of beans.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+Wimpole Street: April 9, 1845.
+
+Poor Hood! Ah! I had feared that the scene was closing on him. And I
+am glad that a little of the poor gratitude of the world is laid down
+at his door just now to muffle to his dying ear the harsher sounds
+of life. I forgive much to Sir Robert for the sake of that
+letter--though, after all, the minister is not high-hearted, or made
+of heroic stuff.[134]
+
+I am delighted that you should appreciate Mr. Browning's high
+power--very high, according to my view--very high, and various. Yes,
+'Paracelsus' you _should_ have. 'Sordello' has many fine things in
+it, but, having been thrown down by many hands as unintelligible, and
+retained in mine as certainly of the Sphinxine literature, with all
+its power, I hesitate to be imperious to you in my recommendations of
+it. Still, the book _is_ worth being _studied_--study is necessary
+to it, as, indeed, though in a less degree, to all the works of this
+poet; study is peculiarly necessary to it. He is a true poet, and a
+poet, I believe, of a large '_future in-rus, about to be_.' He is only
+growing to the height he will attain.
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+April 1845.
+
+The sin of Sphinxine literature I admit. Have I not struggled hard to
+renounce it? Do I not, day by day? Do you know that I have been
+told that _I_ have written things harder to interpret than Browning
+himself?--only I cannot, cannot believe it--he is so very hard. Tell
+me honestly (and although I attributed the excessive good nature of
+the 'Metropolitan' criticism to you, I _know_ that you can speak the
+truth _truly_!) if anything like the Sphinxineness of Browning, you
+discover in me; take me as far back as 'The Seraphim' volume and
+answer! As for Browning, the fault is certainly great, and the
+disadvantage scarcely calculable, it is so great. He cuts his language
+into bits, and one has to join them together, as young children do
+their dissected maps, in order to make any meaning at all, and to
+study hard before one can do it. Not that I grudge the study or the
+time. The depth and power of the significance (when it is apprehended)
+glorifies the puzzle. With you and me it is so; but with the majority
+of readers, even of readers of poetry, it is not and cannot be so.
+
+The consequence is, that he is not read except in a peculiar circle
+very strait and narrow. He will not die, because the principle of
+life is in him, but he will not live the warm summer life which is
+permitted to many of very inferior faculty, because he does not come
+out into the sun.
+
+Faithfully your friend,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 134: Hood died on May 3, 1845; while on his deathbed he
+received from Sir Robert Peel the notification that he had conferred
+on him a pension of 100£ a year, with remainder to his wife.]
+
+
+The following letter relates to the controversy raging round Miss
+Martineau and her mesmerism. Miss Barrett had evidently referred to it
+in a letter to Mr. Chorley, which has not been preserved.
+
+
+_To Mr. Chorley_
+50 Wimpole Street: April 28, 1845.
+
+Dear Mr. Chorley,--I felt quite sure that you would take my postscript
+for a womanish thing, and a little doubtful whether you would not
+take the whole allusion (in or out of a postscript) for an impertinent
+thing; but the impulse to speak was stronger than the fear of
+speaking; and from the peculiarities of my position, I have come to
+write by impulses just as other people talk by them. Still, if I had
+known that the subject was so painful to you, I certainly would not
+have touched on it, strong as my feeling has been about it, and full
+and undeniable as is my sympathy with our noble-minded friend, both as
+a woman and a thinker. Not that I consider (of course I cannot) that
+she has made out anything like a '_fact_' in the Tynemouth story--not
+that I think the evidence offered in any sort sufficient; take it as
+it was in the beginning and unimpugned--not that I have been otherwise
+than of opinion throughout that she was precipitate and indiscreet,
+however generously so, in her mode and time of advocating the mesmeric
+question; but that she is at liberty as a thinking being (in my mind)
+to hold an opinion, the grounds of which she cannot yet justify to
+the world. Do you not think she may be? Have you not opinions yourself
+beyond what you can prove to others? Have we not all? And because some
+of the links of the outer chain of a logical argument fail, or seem to
+fail, are we therefore to have our 'honours' questioned, because we
+do not yield what is suspended to an inner uninjured chain of at once
+subtler and stronger formation? For what I venture to object to in the
+argument of the 'Athenaeum' is the making a _moral obligation_ of an
+_intellectual act_, which is the first step and gesture (is it not?)
+in all persecution for opinion; and the involving of the 'honour' of
+an opponent in the motion of recantation she is invited to. This I do
+venture to exclaim against. I do cry aloud against this; and I do say
+this, that when we call it 'hard,' we are speaking of it softly. Why,
+consider how it is! The 'Athenaeum' has done quite enough to _disprove
+the proving_ of the wreck story,[135] and no more at all. The
+disproving of the proof of the wreck story is indeed enough to
+disprove the wreck story and to disprove mesmerism itself (as far as
+the proof of mesmerism depends on the proof of the wreck story, and
+no farther) with all doubters and undetermined inquirers; but with the
+very large class of previous _believers_, this disproof of a proof
+is a mere accident, and cannot be expected to have much logical
+consequence. Believing that such things may be as this revelation of
+a wreck, they naturally are less exacting of the stabilities of the
+proving process. What we think probable we do not call severely for
+the proof of. Moreover Miss Martineau is not only a believer in the
+mysteries of mesmerism (and she wrote to me the other day that in
+Birmingham, where she is, she has present cognisance of _three cases
+of clairvoyance_), but she is a believer in the personal integrity
+of her witnesses. She has what she has well called an 'incommunicable
+confidence.' And this, however incommunicable, is sufficiently
+comprehensible to all persons who know what personal faith is, to
+place her 'honour,' I do maintain, high above any suspicion, any
+charge with the breath of man's lips. I am sure you agree with me,
+dear Mr. Chorley--ah! it will be a comfort and joy together. Dear Miss
+Mitford and I often quarrel softly about literary life and its toils
+and sorrows, she against and I in favour of; but we never could differ
+about the worth and comfort of domestic affection.
+
+Ever sincerely yours,
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+I am delighted to hear of the novel. And the comedy?
+
+[Footnote 135: One of the visions of Miss Martineau's 'apocalyptic
+housemaid' related to the wreck of a vessel in which the Tynemouth
+people were much interested. Unfortunately it appeared that news of
+the wreck had reached the town shortly before her vision, and that she
+had been out of doors immediately before submitting to the mesmeric
+trance.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Chorley_
+50 Wimpole Street: April 28, 1845.
+
+Dear Mr. Chorley,--... For Miss Martineau, is it not true that she
+_has_ admitted her wreck story to have no proof? Surely she has.
+Surely she said that the evidence was incapable, at this point of
+time, of justification to the _exoteric_, and that the question had
+sunk now to one of character, to which her opponent answered that it
+had always _been_ one of character. And you must admit that the direct
+and unmitigated manner of depreciating the reputation, not merely
+of Jane Arrowsmith, but of Mrs. Wynyard, a personal friend of Miss
+Martineau's to whom she professes great obligations, could not be
+otherwise than exasperating to a woman of her generous temper, and
+this just in the crisis of her gratitude for her restoration to life
+and enjoyment by the means (as she considers it) of this friend. Not
+that I feel at all convinced of her having been cured by mesmerism;
+I have told her openly that I doubt it a little, and she is not angry
+with me for saying so. Also, the wreck story, and (as you suggest)
+the three new cases of clairvoyance; why, one _cannot_, you know, give
+one's specific convictions to general sweeping testimonies, with a
+mist all round them. Still, I do lean to believing this _class_ of
+mysteries, and I see nothing more incredible in the apocalypse of
+the wreck and other marvels of clairvoyance, than in that singular
+adaptation of another person's senses, which is a common phenomenon
+of the simple forms of mesmerism. If it is credible that a person in
+a mesmeric sleep can taste the sourness of the vinegar on
+another person's palate, I am ready to go the whole length of the
+transmigration of senses. But after all, except from hearing so much,
+I am as ignorant as you are, in my own experience. One of my sisters
+was thrown into a sort of swoon, and could not open her eyelids,
+though she heard what passed, once or twice or thrice; and she might
+have been a prophetess by this time, perhaps, if, partly from her own
+feeling on the subject, and partly from mine, she had not determined
+never to try the experiment again. It is hideous and detestable to my
+imagination; as I confessed to you, it makes my blood run backwards;
+and if I were _you_, I would not (with the nervous weakness you speak
+of) throw myself into the way of it, I really would not. Think of a
+female friend of mine begging me to give her a lock of my hair, or
+rather begging my sister to 'get it for her,' that she might send
+it to a celebrated prophet of mesmerism in Paris, to have an oracle
+concerning me. Did you ever, since the days of the witches, hear a
+more ghastly proposition? It shook me so with horror, I had scarcely
+voice to say 'no,' hough I _did_ say it very emphatically at last, I
+assure you. A lock of my hair for a Parisian prophet? Why, if I had
+yielded, I should have felt the steps of pale spirits treading as
+thick as snow all over my sofa and bed, by day and night, and pulling
+a corresponding lock of hair on my head at awful intervals. _I_, who
+was born with a double set of nerves, which are always out of
+order; the most excitable person in the world, and nearly the most
+superstitious. I should have been scarcely sane at the end of a
+fortnight, I believe of myself! Do you remember the little spirit in
+gold shoe-buckles, who was a familiar of Heinrich Stilling's? Well,
+I should have had a French one to match the German, with Balzac's
+superfine boot-polish in place of the buckles, as surely as I lie here
+a mortal woman.
+
+I congratulate you (amid all cares and anxieties) upon the view
+of Naples in the distance, but chiefly on your own happy and just
+estimate of your selected position in life. It does appear to me
+wonderfully and mournfully wrong, when men of letters, as it is too
+much the fashion for them to do, take to dishonoring their profession
+by fruitless bewailings and gnashings of teeth; when, all the time,
+it must be their own fault if it is not the noblest in the world. Miss
+Mitford treats me as a blind witness in this case; because I have seen
+nothing of the literary world, or any other sort of world, and yet cry
+against her 'pen and ink' cry. It is the cry I least like to hear from
+her lips, of all others; and it is unworthy of them altogether. On the
+lips of a woman of letters, it sounds like jealousy (which it
+cannot be with _her_), as on the lips of a woman of the world, like
+ingratitude. Madame Girardin's 'Ecole des Journalistes' deserved Jules
+Janin's reproof of it; and there is something noble and touching in
+that feeling of brotherhood among men of letters, which he invokes.
+I am so glad to hear you say that I am right, glad for your sake and
+glad for mine. In fact, there is something which is attractive to
+_me_, and which has been attractive ever since I was as high as this
+table, even in the old worn type of Grub Street authors and garret
+poets. Men and women of letters are the first in the whole world to
+me, and I would rather be the least among them, than 'dwell in the
+courts of princes.'
+
+Forgive me for writing so fast and far. Just as if you had nothing to
+do but to read me. Oh, for patience for the novel.
+
+I am, faithfully yours,
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To Miss Thomson_[136]
+50 Wimpole Street: Friday, May 16, 1845 [postmark].
+
+I write one line to thank you, dear Miss Thomson, for _your_
+translation (so far too liberal, though true to the spirit of my
+intention) of my work for your album. How could it _not_ be a pleasure
+to me to work for you?
+
+As to my using those manuscripts otherwise than in your service, I
+do not at all think of it, and I wish to say this. Perhaps I do not
+(also) partake quite your 'divine fury' for converting our sex into
+Greek scholarship, and I do not, I confess, think it as desirable as
+you do. Where there is a love for poetry, and thirst for beauty strong
+enough to justify labour, let these impulses, which are noble, be
+obeyed; but in the case of the multitude it is different; and the
+mere _fashion of scholarship_ among women would be a disagreeable vain
+thing, and worse than vain. You, who are a Greek yourself, know that
+the Greek language is not to be learnt in a flash of lightning and
+by Hamiltonian systems, but that it swallows up year after year of
+studious life. Now I have a 'doxy' (as Warburton called it), that
+there is no exercise of the mind so little profitable to the mind
+as the study of languages. It is the nearest thing to a passive
+recipiency--is it not?--as a mental action, though it leaves one as
+weary as ennui itself. Women want to be made to _think actively_:
+their apprehension is quicker than that of men, but their defect lies
+for the most part in the logical faculty and in the higher mental
+activities. Well, and then, to remember how our own English poets
+are neglected and scorned; our poets of the Elizabethan age! I would
+rather that my countrywomen began by loving _these_.
+
+Not that I would blaspheme against Greek poetry, or depreciate the
+knowledge of the language as an attainment. I congratulate _you_ on
+it, though I never should think of trying to convert other women into
+a desire for it. Forgive me.
+
+To think of Mr. Burges's comparing my Nonnus to the right Nonnus makes
+my hair stand on end, and the truth is I had flattered myself that
+nobody would take such trouble. I have not much reverence for Nonnus,
+and have pulled him and pushed him and made him stand as I chose,
+never fearing that my naughty impertinences would be brought to light.
+For the rest, I thank you gratefully (and may I respectfully and
+gratefully thank Miss Bayley?) for the kind words of both of you, both
+in this letter and as my sister heard them. It is delightful to me
+to find such grace in the eyes of dearest Mr. Kenyon's friends, and I
+remain, dear Miss Thomson,
+
+
+Truly yours, and gladly,
+E.B.B.
+
+If there should be anything more at any time for me to do, I trust to
+your trustfulness.
+
+[Footnote 136: Afterwards Mdme. Emil Braun; see the letter of
+January 9, 1850. At this time she was engaged in editing an album
+or anthology, to which she had asked Miss Barrett to contribute some
+classical translations.]
+
+
+_To Miss Thomson_
+50 Wimpole Street: Monday [1845].
+
+My dear Miss Thomson,--Believe of me that it can only give me pleasure
+when you are affectionate enough to treat me as a friend; and for
+the rest, nobody need apologise for taking another into the
+vineyards--least Miss Bayley and yourself to _me_. At the first
+thought I felt sure that there must be a great deal about vines in
+these Greeks of ours, and am surprised, I confess, in turning from one
+to another, to find how few passages of length are quotable, and how
+the images drop down into a line or two. Do you know the passage in
+the seventh 'Odyssey' where there is a vineyard in different stages of
+ripeness?--of which Pope has made the most, so I tore up what I
+began to write, and leave you to him. It is in Alcinous' gardens, and
+between the first and second hundred lines of the book. The one from
+the 'Iliad,' open to Miss Bayley's objection, is yet too beautiful
+and appropriate, I fancy, for you to throw over. Curious it is that
+my first recollection went from that shield of Achilles to Hesiod's
+'Shield of Hercules,' from which I send you a version--leaving out
+of it what dear Miss Bayley would object to on a like ground with the
+other:
+
+  Some gathered grapes, with reap-hooks in their hands,
+  While others bore off from the gathering hands
+  Whole baskets-full of bunches, black and white,
+  From those great ridges heaped up into fight,
+  With vine-leaves and their curling tendrils. So
+  They bore the baskets ...
+
+  ... Yes! and all were saying
+  Their jests, while each went staggering in a row
+  Beneath his grape-load to the piper's playing.
+  The grapes were purple-ripe. And here, in fine,
+  Men trod them out, and there they drained the wine.
+
+In the 'Works and Days' Hesiod says again, what is not worth your
+listening to, perhaps:
+
+  And when that Sinus and Orion come
+  To middle heaven, and when Aurora--she
+  O' the rosy fingers--looks inquiringly
+  Full on Arcturus, straightway gather home
+  The general vintage. And, I charge you, see
+  All, in the sun and open air, outlaid
+  Ten days and nights, and five days in the shade.
+  The sixth day, pour in vases the fine juice--
+  The gift of Bacchus, who gives joys for use.
+
+Anacreon talks to the point so well that you must forgive him, I
+think, for being Anacreontic, and take from his hands what is not
+defiled. The translation you send me does not 'smell of Anacreon,' nor
+please me. Where did you get it? Would this be at all fresher?
+
+  Grapes that wear a purple skin,
+  Men and maidens carry in,
+  Brimming baskets on their shoulders,
+  Which they topple one by one
+  Down the winepress. Men are holders
+  Of the place there, and alone
+  Tread the grapes out, crush them down,
+  Letting loose the soul of wine--
+  Praising Bacchus as divine,
+  With the loud songs called his own!
+
+You are aware of the dresser of the vine in Homer's 'Hymn to Mercury'
+translated so exquisitely by Shelley, and of a very beautiful single
+figure in Theocritus besides. Neither probably would suit your
+purpose. In the 'Pax' of Aristophanes there is an idle 'Chorus' who
+talks of looking at the vines and watching the grapes ripen, and
+eating them at last, but there is nothing of vineyard work in it, so I
+dismiss the whole.
+
+For 'Hector and Andromache,' would you like me to try to do it for
+you? It would amuse me, and you should not be bound to do more with
+what I send you than to throw it into the fire if it did not meet
+your wishes precisely. The same observation applies, remember, to this
+little sheet, which I have _kept_--delayed sending--just because I
+wanted to let you have a trial of my strength on 'Andromache' in the
+same envelope; but the truth is that it is not _begun_ yet, partly
+through other occupation, and partly through the lassitude which the
+cold wind of the last few days always brings down on me. Yesterday I
+made an effort, and felt like a broken stick--not even a bent one!
+So wait for a warm day (and what a season we have had! I have been
+walking up and down stairs and pretending to be quite well), and I
+will promise to do my best, and certainly an inferior hand may get
+nearer to touch the great Greek lion's mane than Pope's did.
+
+Will you give my love to dear Miss Bayley? She shall hear from me--and
+_you_ shall, in a day or two. And do not mind Mr. Kenyon. He 'roars as
+softly as a sucking dove;' nevertheless he is an intolerant monster,
+as I half told him the other day.
+
+Believe me, dear Miss Thomson,
+Affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+50 Wimpole Street: May 22, 1845.
+
+Did you persevere with 'Sordello'? I hope so. Be sure that we may all
+learn (as poets) much and deeply from it, for the writer speaks true
+oracles. When you have read it through, then read for relaxation
+and recompense the last 'Bell and Pomegranate' by the same poet, his
+'Colombo's Birthday,' which is exquisite. Only 'Pippa Passes' I lean
+to, or kneel to, with the deepest reverence. Wordsworth has been in
+town, and is gone. Tennyson is still here. He likes London, I hear,
+and hates Cheltenham, where he resides with his family, and he smokes
+pipe after pipe, and does not mean to write any more poems. Are we to
+sing a requiem?
+
+Believe me, faithfully yours,
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Saturday, July 21, 1845 [postmark].
+
+My very dear Friend,--You are kind to exceeding kindness, and I am as
+grateful as any of your long-ago kind invitations ever found me. It is
+something pleasant, indeed, and like a return to life, to be asked by
+you to spend two or three days in your house, and I thank you for this
+pleasantness, and for the goodness, on your own part, which induced
+it. You may be perfectly sure that no Claypon, though he should live
+in Arcadia, would be preferred by me to _you_ as a host, and I wonder
+how you could entertain the imagination of such a thing. Mr. Kenyon,
+indeed, has asked me repeatedly to spend a few hours on a sofa in his
+house, and, the Regent's Park being so much nearer than you are, I
+had promised to think of it. But I have not yet found it possible to
+accomplish even that quarter of a mile's preferment, and my ambition
+is forced to be patient when I begin to think of St. John's Wood. I am
+considerably stronger, and increasing in strength, and in time, with
+a further advance of the summer, I may do 'such things--what they are
+yet, I know not.' Yes, I _know_ that they relate to _you_, and that I
+have a hope, as well as an earnest, affectionate desire, to sit face
+to face with you once more before this summer closes. Do, in the
+meantime, believe that I am very grateful to you for your kind,
+considerate proposal, and that it is not made in vain for my wishes,
+and that I am not likely willingly 'to spend two or three days' with
+anybody in the world before I do so with yourself.
+
+Mr. Hunter has not paid us his usual Saturday's visit, and therefore
+I have no means of answering the questions you put in relation to him.
+We will ask him about 'times and seasons' when next we see him, and
+you shall hear.
+
+Did you ever hear much of Robert Montgomery, commonly called Satan
+Montgomery because the author of 'Satan,' of the 'Omnipresence of the
+Deity,' and of various poems which pass through edition after
+edition, nobody knows how or _why_? I understand that his pew (he is
+a clergyman) is sown over with red rosebuds from ladies of the
+congregation, and that the same fair hands have made and presented to
+him, in the course of a single season, one hundred pairs of slippers.
+Whereupon somebody said to this Reverend Satan, 'I never knew before,
+Mr. Montgomery, that you were a _centipede_'
+
+Dearest Mr. Boyd's affectionate and grateful
+ELIBET.
+
+
+Through the summer of 1845, Miss Barrett, as usual, recovered
+strength, but so slightly that her doctor urged that she should not
+face the winter in England. Plans were accordingly made for her
+going abroad, to which the following letters refer, but the scheme
+ultimately broke down before the prohibition of Mr. Barrett--a
+prohibition for which no valid reason was put forward, and which, to
+say the least, bore the colour of unaccountable indifference to his
+daughter's health and wishes. The matter is of some importance on
+account of its bearing on the action taken by Miss Barrett in the
+autumn of the following year.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Monday, July 29, 1845 [postmark].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I am ashamed not to have written before, and
+yet have courage enough to ask you to write to me as soon as you
+can. Day by day I have had good intentions enough (the fact is)
+about writing, to seem to deserve some good deeds from you, which
+is contrary to all wisdom and reason, I know, but is rather natural,
+after all. What _my_ deeds have been, you will be apt to ask. Why, all
+manner of idleness, which is the most interrupting, you know, of
+all things. The Hedleys have been flitting backwards and forwards,
+staying, some of them, for a month at a time in London, and then
+going, and then coming again; and I have had other visitors, few but
+engrossing 'after their kind.' And I have been _getting well_--which
+is a process--going out into the carriage two or three times a week,
+abdicating my sofa for my armchair, moving from one room to another
+now and then, and walking about mine quite as well as, and with
+considerably more complacency than, a child of two years old.
+Altogether, I do think that if you were kind enough to be glad to see
+me looking better when you were in London, you would be kind enough to
+be still gladder if you saw me now. Everybody praises me, and I
+look in the looking-glass with a better conscience. Also, it is an
+improving improvement, and will be, until, you know, the last hem of
+the garment of summer is lost sight of, and then--and then--I must
+either follow to another climate, or be ill again--_that_ I know, and
+am prepared for. It is but dreary work, this undoing of my Penelope
+web in the winter, after the doing of it through the summer, and the
+more progress one makes in one's web, the more dreary the prospect of
+the undoing of all these fine silken stitches. But we shall see....
+
+Ever your affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Tuesday [October 1845].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Do believe that I have not been, as I have
+seemed, perhaps, forgetful of you through this silence. This last
+proof of your interest and affection for me--in your letter to
+Henrietta--quite rouses me to _speak out_ my remembrance of you, and
+I have been remembering you all the time that I did not speak, only I
+was so perplexed and tossed up and down by doubts and sadnesses as
+to require some shock from without to force the speech from me. Your
+verses, in their grace of kindness, and the ivy from Wordsworth's
+cottage, just made me think to myself that I would write to you before
+I left England, but when you talk really of coming to see me, why, I
+must speak! You overcome me with the sense of your goodness to me.
+
+Yet, after all, I will not have you come! The farewells are bad enough
+which come to us, without our going to seek them, and I would rather
+wait and meet you on the Continent, or in England again, than see you
+now, just to part from you. And you cannot guess how shaken I am, and
+how I cling to every plank of a little calm. Perhaps I am going on the
+17th or 20th. Certainly I have made up my mind to do it, and shall do
+it as a bare matter of duty; and it is one of the most painful acts
+of duty which my whole life has set before me. The road is as rough as
+possible, as far as I can see it. At the same time, being absolutely
+convinced from my own experience and perceptions, and the unhesitating
+advice of two able medical men (Dr. Chambers, one of them), that to
+escape the English winter will be _everything for me_, and that it
+involves the comfort and usefulness of the rest of my life, I have
+resolved to do it, let the circumstances of the doing be as painful
+as they may. If you were to see me you would be astonished to see the
+work of the past summer; but all these improvements will ebb away with
+the sun--while I am assured of permanent good if I leave England. The
+struggle with me has been a very painful one; I cannot enter on the
+how and wherefore at this moment. I had expected more help than I have
+found, and am left to myself, and thrown so on my own sense of duty as
+to feel it right, for the sake of future years, to make an effort to
+stand by myself as I best can. At the same time, I will not tell you
+that at the last hour something may not happen to keep me at home.
+_That_ is neither impossible nor improbable. If, for instance, I find
+that I cannot have one of my brothers with me, why, the going in that
+case would be out of the question. Under ordinary circumstances I
+shall go, and if the experiment of going fails, why, then I shall have
+had the satisfaction of having tried it, and of knowing that it is
+God's will which keeps me a prisoner, and makes me a burden. As it is,
+I have been told that if I had gone years ago I _should be well
+now_; that one lung is very slightly affected, but the nervous system
+_absolutely shattered_, as the state of the pulse proves. I am in the
+habit of taking forty drops of laudanum a day, and _cannot do with
+less_, that is, the medical man _told me_ that I could not do with
+less, saying so with his hand on the pulse. The cold weather, they
+say, acts on the lungs, and produces the weakness indirectly, whereas
+the necessary shutting up acts on the _nerves_ and prevents them from
+having a chance of recovering their tone. And thus, without any mortal
+disease, or any disease of equivalent seriousness, I am thrown out of
+life, out of the ordinary sphere of its enjoyment and activity, and
+made a burden to myself and to others. Whereas there is a means of
+escape from these evils, and God has opened the door of escape, as
+wide as I see it!
+
+In all ways, for my own _happiness's sake_ I do need _a proof_ that
+the evil is irremediable. And this proof (or the counter-proof) I am
+about to seek in Italy.
+
+Dr. Chambers has advised _Pisa_, and I go in the direct steamer from
+the Thames to Leghorn. I have good courage, and as far as my own
+strength goes, sufficient means.
+
+Dearest Mrs. Martin, more than I thought at first of telling you, I
+have told you. Much beside there is, painful to talk of, but I hope
+I have determined to do what is right, and that the determination
+has not been formed ungently, unscrupulously, nor unaffectionately in
+respect to the feelings of others. I would die for some of those, but
+there, has been affection opposed to affection.
+
+This in confidence, of course. May God bless both of you! Pray for me,
+dearest Mrs. Martin. Make up your mind to go somewhere soon--shall you
+not?--before the winter shuts the last window from which you see the
+sun.
+
+Dr. Chambers said that he would 'answer for it' that the voyage would
+rather do me good than harm. Let me suffer sea sickness or not, he
+said, he would answer for its doing me no harm.
+
+I hope to take Arabel with me, and either Storm or Henry. This is my
+hope.
+
+Gratefully and affectionately I think of all your kindness and
+interest. May dear Mr. Martin lose nothing in this coming winter! I
+shall think of you, and not cease to love you. Moreover, you shall
+hear again from
+
+Your ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+October 27, 1845 [postmark].
+
+My very dear Friend,--It is so long since I wrote that I must write, I
+must ruffle your thoughts with a little breath from my side. Listen
+to me, my dear friend. That I have not written has scarcely been my
+fault, but my misfortune rather, for I have been quite unstrung and
+overcome by agitation and anxiety, and thought that I should be able
+to tell you at last of being calmer and happier, but it was all in
+vain. I do not leave England, my dear friend. It is decided that I
+remain on in my prison. It was my full intention to go. I considered
+it to be a clear duty, and I made up my mind to perform it, let the
+circumstances be ever so painfully like obstacles; but when the
+moment came it appeared impossible for me to set out alone, and also
+impossible to take my brother and sister with me without involving
+them in difficulties and displeasure. Now what I could risk for myself
+I could not risk for others, and the very kindness with which they
+desired me not to think of them only made me think of them more, as
+was natural and just. So Italy is given up, and I fall back into the
+hands of God, who is merciful, trusting Him with the time that shall
+be.
+
+Arabel would have gone to tell you all this a fortnight since, but one
+of my brothers has been ill with fever which was not exactly typhus,
+but of the typhoid character, and we knew that you would rather
+not see her under the circumstances. He is very much better (it is
+Octavius), and has been out of bed to-day and yesterday.
+
+Do not reproach me either for not writing or for not going, my very
+dear friend. I have been too heavy-hearted for words; and as to the
+deeds, you would not have wished me to lead others into difficulties,
+the extent and result of which no one could calculate. It would not
+have been just of me.
+
+And _you_, how are you, and what are you doing?
+
+May God bless you, my dear dear friend!
+
+Ever yours I am, affectionately and gratefully,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To Mr. Chorley_
+50 Wimpole Street: November 1845.
+
+I must trouble you with another letter of thanks, dear Mr. Chorley,
+now that I have to thank you for the value of the work as well as
+the kindness of the gift, for I have read your three volumes of
+'Pomfret'[137] with interest and moral assent, and with great pleasure
+in various ways: it is a pure, true book without effort, which, in
+these days of gesture and rolling of the eyes, is an uncommon thing.
+Also you make your 'private judgment' work itself out quietly as a
+simple part of the love of truth, instead of being the loud heroic
+virtue it is so apt in real life to profess itself, seldom moving
+without drums and trumpets and the flying of party colours. All these
+you have put down rightly, wisely, and boldly, and it was, in my mind,
+no less wise than bold of you to let in that odour of Tyrrwhitism into
+the folds of the purple, and so prevent the very possibility of any
+'prestige.' If I complained it might be that your 'private judgment'
+confines its reference to 'public opinion,' and shuns, too proudly
+perhaps, the higher and deeper relations of human responsibility. But
+there are difficulties, I see, and you choose your path advisedly, of
+course. The best character in the book I take to be _Rose_; I
+cannot hesitate in selecting him. He is so lifelike with the world's
+conventional life that you hear his footsteps when he walks, and,
+indeed, I think his boots were apt to creak just the _soupçon_ of
+a creak, just as a gentleman's boots might, and he is excellently
+consistent, even down to the choice of a wife whom he could patronise.
+I hope you like your own Mr. Rose, and that you will forgive me for
+jilting Grace for Helena, which I could not help any more than Walter
+could. But now, may I venture to ask a question? Would it not have
+been wise of you if, on the point of _reserve_, you had thrown a
+deeper shade of opposition into the characters or rather manners of
+these women? Helena sits like a statue (and could Grace have done
+more?) when she wins Walter's heart in Italy. Afterwards, and by fits
+at the time, indeed, the artist fire bursts from her, but there was a
+great deal of smouldering when there should have been a clear heat to
+justify Walter's change of feeling. And then, in respect to _that_,
+do you really think that your Grace was generous, heroic (with the
+evidence she had of the change) in giving up her engagement? For her
+own sake, could she have done otherwise? I fancy not; the position
+seems surrounded by its own necessities, and no room for a doubt.
+I write on my own doubts, you see, and you will smile at them, or
+understand all through them that if the book had not interested me
+like a piece of real life, I should not find myself _backbiting_ as if
+all these were 'my neighbours.' The pure tender feeling of the closing
+scenes touched me to better purpose, believe me, and I applaud from
+my heart and conscience your rejection of that low creed of 'poetical
+justice' which is neither justice nor poetry which is as degrading
+to virtue as false to experience, and which, thrown from your book,
+raises it into a pure atmosphere at once.
+
+
+I could go on talking, but remind myself (I do hope in time) that I
+might show my gratitude better. With sincere wishes for the success
+of the work (for just see how practically we come to trust to poetical
+justices after all our theories--_I_, I mean, and _mine_!), and with
+respect and esteem for the writer,
+
+I remain very truly yours,
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 137: A novel by Mr. Chorley, a copy of which he had
+presented to Miss Barrett.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+50 Wimpole Street: December 1, 1845.
+
+My dear Mrs. Jameson,--I receive your letter, as I must do every sign
+of your being near and inclined to think of me in kindness, gladly,
+and assure you at once that whenever you can spend a half-hour on me
+you will find me enough myself to have a true pleasure in welcoming
+you, say any day except next Saturday or the Monday immediately
+following.
+
+As soon as I heard of your return to England I ventured to hope that
+some good might come of it to me in my room here, besides the general
+good, which I look for with the rest of the public, when the censer
+swings back into the midst of us again. And how good of you, dear Mrs.
+Jameson, to think of me there where the perfumes were set burning; it
+makes me glad and grand that you should have been able to do so. Also
+the kind wishes which came with the thoughts (you say) were not in
+vain, for I have been very idle and very _well_; the angel of the
+summer has done more for me even than usual, and till the last wave of
+his wing I took myself to be quite well and at liberty, and even now
+I am as well as anyone can be who has heard the prison door shut for a
+whole winter at least, and knows it to be the only English alternative
+of a grave. Which is a gloomy way of saying that I am well but forced
+to shut myself up with disagreeable precautions all round, and I ought
+to be gratified instead of gloomy. Believe me that I _shall_ be so
+when you come to see me, remaining in the meanwhile
+
+Most truly yours,
+ELIZABETH BARRETT.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Friday [about December 1845].
+
+I am the guilty person, dearest Mrs. Martin! You would have heard from
+Henrietta at least yesterday, only I persisted in promising to write
+instead of her; and so, if there are reproaches, let them fall. Not
+that I am audacious and without shame! But I have grown familiar with
+an evil conscience as to these matters of not writing when I ought;
+and long ago I grew familiar with your mercy and power of pardoning;
+and then--and then--if silence and sulkiness are proved crimes of mine
+to ever such an extreme, why it would not be unnatural. Do you think I
+was born to live the life of an oyster, such as I _do_ live here? And
+so, the moaning and gnashing of teeth are best done alone and without
+taking anyone into confidence. And so, this is all I have to say for
+myself, which perhaps you will be glad of; for you will be ready
+to agree with me that next to such faults of idleness, negligence,
+silence (call them by what names you please!) as I have been guilty
+of, is the repentance of them, if indeed the latter be not the most
+unpardonable of the two.
+
+And what are you doing so late in Herefordshire? Is dear Mr. Martin
+too well, and tempting the demons? I do hope that the next news of you
+will be of your being about to approach the sun and visit us on the
+road. You do not give your wisdom away to your friends, all of it, I
+hope and trust--not even to Reynolds.
+
+Tell Mr. Martin that a new great daily newspaper, professing
+'_ultraism_' at the right end (meaning his and mine), is making
+'mighty preparation,' to be called the 'Daily News,'[138] to be
+edited by Dickens and to combine with the most liberal politics such
+literature as gives character to the French journals--the objects
+being both to help the people and to give a _status_ to men of
+letters, socially and politically--great objects which will not
+be attained, I fear, by any such means. In the first place, I have
+misgivings as to Dickens. He has not, I think, _breadth_ of mind
+enough for such work, with all his gifts; but we shall see. An immense
+capital has been offered and actually advanced. Be good patriots
+and order the paper. And talking of papers, I hope you read in the
+'Morning Chronicle' Landor's verses to my friend and England's poet,
+Mr. Browning.[139] They have much beauty.
+
+You know that Occy has been ill, and that he is well? I hope you are
+not so behindhand in our news as not to know. For me, I am not yet
+undone by the winter. I still sit in my chair and walk about the room.
+But the prison doors are shut close, and I could dash myself
+against them sometimes with a passionate impatience of the need-less
+captivity. I feel so intimately and from evidence, how, with air and
+warmth together in any fair proportion, I should be as well and happy
+as the rest of the world, that it is intolerable--well, it is better
+to sympathise quietly with Lady--and other energetic runaways, than
+amuse you with being riotous to no end; and it is _best_ to write
+one's own epitaph still more quietly, is it not?...
+
+And oh how lightly I write, and then sigh to think of what different
+colours my spirits and my paper are. Do you know what it is to
+laugh, that you may not cry? Yet I hold a comfort fast.... Your very
+affectionate
+
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 138: The first number of the _Daily News_ appeared on
+January 2l, 1846, under the editorship of Charles Dickens.]
+
+[Footnote 139: The well-known lines beginning, 'There is delight in
+singing.' They appeared in the _Morning Chronicle_ for November 22,
+1845.]
+
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Saturday [February-March 1846].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Indeed it has been tantalising and provoking
+to have you close by without being able to gather a better advantage
+from it than the knowledge that you were suffering. So passes the
+world and the glory of it. I have been vexed into a high state of
+morality, I assure you. Now that you are gone away I hear from you
+again; and it does seem to me that almost always it happens so, and
+that you come to London to be ill and leave it before you can be well
+again. It is a comfort in every case to know of your being better, and
+Hastings is warm and quiet, and the pretty country all round (mind you
+go and see the 'Rocks' _par excellence_)! will entice you into very
+gentle exercise. At the same time, don't wish me into the house you
+speak of. I can lose nothing here, shut up in my prison, and the
+nightingales come to my windows and sing through the sooty panes. If
+I were at Hastings I should risk the chance of recovering liberty, and
+the consolations of slavery would not reach me as they do here. Also,
+if I were to set my heart upon Hastings, I might break it at leisure;
+there would be exactly as much difficulty in turning my face that way
+as towards Italy--ah, you do not understand! And _I do, at last_, I am
+sorry to say; and it has been very long, tedious and reluctant work,
+the learning of the lesson....
+
+Did Henrietta tell you that I heard at last from Miss Martineau, who
+thought me in Italy, she said, and therefore was silent? She has sent
+me her new work (have you read it?) and speaks of her strength and of
+being able to walk fifteen miles a day, which seems to me like a fairy
+tale, or the 'Three-leagued Boots' at least.
+
+What am I doing, to tell you of? Nothing! The winter is kind, and
+this divine 'muggy' weather (is _that_ the technical word and spelling
+thereof?), which gives all reasonable people colds in their heads,
+leaves _me_ the hope of getting back to the summer without much
+injury. A friend of mine--one of the greatest poets in England
+too--brought me primroses and polyanthuses the other day, as they are
+grown in Surrey![140] Surely it must be nearer spring than we think.
+
+Dearest Mrs. Martin, write and say how you are. And say, God bless
+you, both the yous, and mention Mr. Martin particularly, and what your
+plans are.
+
+Ever your affectionate
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 140:
+
+  Beloved, them hast brought me many flowers
+  Plucked in the garden, all the summer through,
+  And winter, and it seemed as if they grew
+  In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers.
+
+_Sonnets from the Portuguese_, xliv.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Tuesday [end of June 1846].
+
+So, my dearest Mrs. Martin, you are quite angry with all of us and
+with me chiefly. Oh, you need not say no! I see it, I understand it,
+and shall therefore take up my own cause precisely as if I were an
+injured person. In the first place, dearest Mrs. Martin, when you
+wrote to me (at last!) to say that we were both guilty correspondents,
+you should have spoken in the singular number; for I was not guilty
+at all, I beg to say, while you were on the Continent. You were
+uncertain, you said, on going, where you should go and how long
+you should stay, and you promised to write and give me some sort of
+address--a promise never kept--and where was I to write to you? I
+heard for the first time, from the Peytons, of your being at Pau, and
+then you were expected at home. So innocent I am, and because it is
+a pleasure rather rare to make a sincere profession of innocence, I
+meant to write to you at least ten days ago; and then (believe me you
+will, without difficulty) the dreadful death of poor Mr. Haydon,[141]
+the artist, quite upset me, and made me disinclined to write a word
+beyond necessary ones. I thank God that I never saw him--poor gifted
+Haydon--but, a year and a half ago, we had a correspondence which
+lasted through several months and was very pleasant while it lasted.
+Then it was dropped, and only a few days before the event he wrote
+three or four notes to me to ask me to take charge of some papers
+and pictures, which I acceded to as once I had done before. He was
+constantly in pecuniary difficulty, and in apprehension of the seizure
+of goods; and nothing of _fear_ suggested itself to my mind--nothing.
+The shock was very great. Oh! I do not write to you to write of this.
+Only I would have you understand the real case, and that it is not an
+excuse, and that it was natural for me to be shaken a good deal. No
+artist is left behind with equal largeness of poetical conception! If
+the hand had always obeyed the soul, he would have been a genius of
+the first order. As it is, he lived on the _slope_ of greatness
+and could not be steadfast and calm. His life was one long agony of
+self-assertion. Poor, poor Haydon! See how the world treats those who
+try too openly for its gratitude! 'Tom Thumb for ever' over the heads
+of the giants.
+
+So you heard that I was quite well? Don't believe everything you hear.
+But I am really in _a way_ to be well, if I could have such sunshine
+as we have been burning in lately, and a fair field of peace besides.
+Generally, I am able to go out every day, either walking or in
+the carriage--'_walking_' means as far as Queen Anne's Street. The
+wonderful winter did not cast me down, and the hot summer helps me up
+higher. Now, to _keep in the sun_ is the problem to solve; and if
+I can do it, I shall be 'as well as anybody.' If I can't, as ill as
+ever. Which is the _résumé_ of me, without a word more....
+
+Your ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 141: He committed suicide on June 22, under the influence
+of the disappointment caused by the indifference of the public to his
+pictures, the final instance of which was its flocking to see General
+Tom Thumb and neglecting Haydon's large pictures of 'Aristides'
+and 'Nero,' which were being exhibited in an adjoining room of the
+Egyptian Hall.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+June 27, 1846 [postmark].
+
+Dearest Mr. Boyd,--Let me be clear of your reproaches for not going
+to you this week. The truth is that I have been so much shocked and
+shaken by the dreadful suicide of poor Mr. Haydon, the artist, I had
+not spirits for it. He was not personally my friend. I never saw him
+face to face. But we had corresponded, and one of his last acts was an
+act of _trust_ towards me. Also I admired his genius. And all to end
+_so_! It has naturally affected me much.
+
+So I could not come, but in a few days I _will_ come; and in the
+meantime, I have had the sound of your voice to think of, more than
+I could think of the deep melodious bells, though they made the right
+and solemn impression. How I felt, to be under your roof again!
+
+  May God bless you, my very dear friend.
+  These words in the greatest haste.
+
+From your ever affectionate
+ELIBET
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+1846-1849
+
+
+It is now time to tell the story of the romance which, during the last
+eighteen months, had entered into Elizabeth Barrett's life, and was
+destined to divert its course into new and happier channels. It is
+a story which fills one of the brightest pages in English literary
+history.
+
+The foregoing letters have shown something of Miss Barrett's
+admiration for the poetry of Robert Browning, and contain allusions
+to the beginning of their personal acquaintance. Her knowledge of his
+poetry dates back to the appearance of 'Paracelsus,' not to 'Pauline,'
+of which there is no mention in her letters, and which had been
+practically withdrawn from circulation by the author. Her personal
+acquaintance with him was of much later date, and was directly due
+to the publication of the 'Poems' in 1844. Chancing to express his
+admiration of them to Mr. Kenyon, who had been his friend since 1839
+and his father's school-fellow in years long distant, Mr. Browning
+was urged by him to write to Miss Barrett himself, and tell her of
+his pleasure in her work. Possibly the allusion to him in 'Lady
+Geraldine's Courtship' may have been felt as furnishing an excuse for
+addressing her; however that may be, he took Mr. Kenyon's advice,
+and in January 1845 we find Miss Barrett in 'ecstasies' over a letter
+(evidently the first) from 'Browning the poet, Browning the author of
+"Paracelsus" and king of the mystics' (see p. 236, above).
+
+The correspondence, once begun, continued to flourish, and in the
+course of the same month Miss Barrett tells Mrs. Martin that she is
+'getting deeper and deeper into correspondence with Robert Browning,
+poet and mystic; and we are growing to be the truest of friends.' At
+the end of May, when the return of summer brought her a renewal of
+strength, they met face to face for the first time; and from that time
+Robert Browning was included in the small list of privileged friends
+who were admitted to visit her in person.
+
+How this friendship ripened into love, and love into courtship, it is
+not for us to inquire too closely. Something has been told already in
+Mrs. Orr's 'Life of Robert Browning;' something more is told in the
+long and most interesting letter which stands first in the present
+chapter. More precious than either is the record of her fluctuating
+feelings which Mrs. Browning has enshrined for ever in her 'Sonnets
+from the Portuguese,' and in the handful of other poems--'Life
+and Love,' 'A Denial,' 'Proof and Disproof,' 'Inclusions,'
+'Insufficiency,'[142] which likewise belong to this period and
+describe its hesitations, its sorrows and its overwhelming joys. In
+the difficult circumstances under which they were placed, the conduct
+of both was without reproach. Mr. Browning knew that he was asking to
+be allowed to take charge of an invalid's life--believed indeed
+that she was even worse than was really the case, and that she was
+hopelessly incapacitated from ever standing on her feet--but was sure
+enough of his love to regard that as no obstacle. Miss Barrett, for
+her part, shrank from burdening the life of the man she loved with
+a responsibility so trying and perhaps so painful, and refused his
+unchanging devotion for his sake, not for her own.
+
+[Footnote 142: _Poetical Works_, iv. 20-32.]
+
+The situation was complicated by the character of Mr. Barrett, and by
+the certainty--for such it was to his daughter--that he would refuse
+to entertain the idea of her marriage, or, indeed, that of any of his
+children. The truth of this view was absolutely vindicated not only in
+the case of Elizabeth, but also in those of two others of the family
+in later years. The reasons for his feeling it is probable he could
+not have explained to himself. He was fond of his family after his own
+fashion--proud, too, of his daughter's genius; but he could not,
+it would seem, regard them in any other light than as belonging to
+himself. The wish to leave his roof and to enter into new relations
+was looked upon as unfilial treachery; and no argument or persuasion
+could shake him from his fixed idea. So long as this disposition could
+be regarded as the result of a devoted love of his children, it
+could be accepted with respect, if not with full acquiescence; but
+circumstances brought the proof that this was not the case, and
+thereby ultimately paved the way to Elizabeth's marriage.
+
+These circumstances are stated in several of her letters, and alluded
+to in several others, but it may help to the understanding of them
+if a brief summary be given here. In the autumn of 1845, as described
+above, Miss Barrett's doctors advised her to winter abroad. The
+advice was strongly pressed, as offering a good prospect of a real
+improvement of health, and as the only way of avoiding the annual
+relapse brought on by the English winter. One or more of her brothers
+could have gone with her, and she was willing and able to try the
+experiment; but in face of this express medical testimony, Mr. Barrett
+interposed a refusal. This indifference to her health naturally
+wounded Miss Barrett very deeply; but it also gave her the right of
+taking her fate into her own hands. Convinced at last that no refusal
+on her part could alter Mr. Browning's devotion to her, and that
+marriage with him, so far from being an increase of risk to her
+health, offered the only means by which she might hope for an
+improvement in it, she gave him the conditional promise that if she
+came safely through the then impending winter, she would consent to a
+definite engagement.
+
+The winter of 1845-6 was an exceptionally mild one, and she suffered
+less than usual; and in the spring of 1846 her lover claimed her
+promise. Throughout the summer she continued to gain strength, being
+able, not only to drive out, but even to walk short distances, and to
+visit a few of her special friends such as Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Boyd.
+Accordingly it was agreed that at the end of the summer they should
+be married, and leave England for Italy before the cold weather should
+return. The uselessness of asking her father's consent was so evident,
+and the certainty that it would only result in the exclusion of Mr.
+Browning from the house so clear, that no attempt was made to obtain
+it. Only her two sisters were aware of what was going on; but even
+they were not informed of the final arrangements for the marriage, in
+order that they might not be involved in their father's anger when it
+should become known. For the same reason the secret was kept from so
+close a friend of both parties as Mr. Kenyon; though both he and Mr.
+Boyd, and possibly also Mrs. Jameson, had suspicions amounting to
+different degrees of certainty as to the real state of affairs. It had
+been intended that they should wait until the end of September, but
+a project for a temporary removal of the family into the country
+precipitated matters; and on September 12, accompanied only by her
+maid, Wilson, Miss Barrett slipped from the house and was married to
+Robert Browning in Marylebone Church.[143] The associations which that
+ponderous edifice has gained from this act for all lovers of English
+poetry tempt one to forgive its unromantic appearance, and to remember
+rather the pilgrimages which Robert Browning on his subsequent visits
+to England never failed to pay to its threshold.
+
+[Footnote 143: Mrs. Sutherland Orr says that the marriage took place
+in St. Pancras Church; but this is a mistake, as the parish register
+of St. Marylebone proves.]
+
+For a week after the marriage Mrs. Browning--by which more familiar
+name we now have the right to call her--remained in her father's
+house; her husband refraining from seeing her, since he could not now
+ask for her by her proper name without betraying their secret.
+Then, on September 19, accompanied once more by her maid and the
+ever-beloved Flushie, she left her home, to which she was never
+to return, crossed the Channel with her husband to Havre, and so
+travelled on to Paris. Her father's anger, if not loud, was deep and
+unforgiving. From that moment he cast her off and disowned her. He
+would not read or open her letters; he would not see her when she
+returned to England. Even the birth of her child brought no relenting;
+he expressed no sympathy or anxiety, he would not look upon its face.
+He died as he lived, unrelenting, cut off by his own unbending anger
+from a daughter who could with difficulty bring herself to speak a
+harsh word of him, even to her most intimate friends.
+
+It was a more unexpected and consequently an even more bitter blow to
+find that her brothers at first disapproved of her action; the
+more so, since they had sympathised with her in the struggle of the
+previous autumn. This disapprobation was, however, less deep-seated,
+resting partly upon doubts as to the practical prudence of the match,
+partly, no doubt, upon a natural annoyance at having been kept in the
+dark. Such an estrangement could only be temporary, and as time went
+on was replaced by a full renewal of the old affection towards herself
+and a friendly acceptance of her husband. With her sisters, on the
+other hand, there was never a shadow of difference or estrangement.
+That love remained unaffected; and almost the only circumstance that
+caused Mrs. Browning to regret her enforced absence from England was
+the separation which it entailed from her two sisters.
+
+In Paris the fugitives found a friend who proved a friend indeed. A
+few weeks earlier Mrs. Jameson, knowing of the needs of Miss Barrett's
+health, had offered to take her to Italy; but her offer had been
+refused. Her astonishment may be imagined when, after this short
+interval of time, she found her invalid friend in Paris as the wife of
+Robert Browning. The prospect filled her with almost as much dismay as
+pleasure. 'I have here,' she wrote to a friend from Paris, 'a poet
+and a poetess--two celebrities who have run away and married under
+circumstances peculiarly interesting, and such as to render imprudence
+the height of prudence. Both excellent; but God help them! for I know
+not how the two poet heads and poet hearts will get on through this
+prosaic world.'[144] Mrs. Jameson, who was travelling with her young
+niece, Miss Geraldine Bate,[145] lent her aid to smooth the path of
+her poet friends, and it was in her company that, after a week's rest
+in Paris, the Brownings proceeded on their journey to Italy. It is
+easy to imagine what a comfort her presence must have been to the
+invalid wife and her naturally anxious husband; and this journey
+sealed a friendship of no ordinary depth and warmth. Mrs. Browning
+bore the journey wonderfully, though suffering much from fatigue.
+During a rest of two days at Avignon, a pilgrimage was made to
+Vaucluse, in honour of Petrarch and his Laura; and there, as Mrs.
+Macpherson has recorded in an often quoted passage of her biography of
+her aunt, 'there, at the very source of the "chiare, fresche e dolci
+acque," Mr. Browning took his wife up in his arms, and carrying her
+across the shallow, curling water, seated her on a rock that rose
+throne-like in the middle of the stream. Thus love and poetry took
+a new possession of the spot immortalised by Petrarch's loving
+fancy.'[146]
+
+[Footnote 144: _Memoirs of Anna Jameson_, by G. Macpherson, p. 218.]
+
+[Footnote 145: Afterwards Mrs. Macpherson, and Mrs. Jameson's
+biographer.]
+
+[Footnote 146: _Memoirs_, p. 231.]
+
+So at the beginning of October the party reached Pisa; and there
+the newly wedded pair settled for the winter. Here first since the
+departure from London was there leisure to renew the intercourse with
+friends at home, to answer congratulations and good wishes, to explain
+what might seem strange and unaccountable. From this point Mrs.
+Browning's correspondence contains nearly a full record of her life,
+and can be left to tell its own story in better language than the
+biographer's. The first letter to Mrs. Martin is an 'apologia pro
+connubio suo' in fullest detail; the others carry on the story from
+the point at which that leaves it.
+
+With regard to this first letter, full as it is of the most intimate
+personal and family revelations, it has seemed right to give it
+entire. The marriage of Robert and Elizabeth Browning has passed into
+literary history, and it is only fair that it should be set, once for
+all, in its true light. Those who might be pained by any expressions
+in it have passed away; and those in whose character and reputation
+the lovers of English literature are interested have nothing to fear
+from the fullest revelation. If anything were kept back, false and
+injurious surmises might be formed; the truth leaves little room for
+controversy, and none for slander.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Collegio Ferdinando, Pisa; October 20(?), 1846.[147]
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Will you believe that I began a letter to you
+before I took this step, to give you the whole story of the impulses
+towards it, feeling strongly that I owed what I considered my
+justification to such dear friends as yourself and Mr. Martin, that
+you might not hastily conclude that you had thrown away upon one
+who was quite unworthy the regard of years? I had begun such a
+letter--when, by the plan of going to Little Bookham, my plans were
+all hurried forward--changed--driven prematurely into action, and the
+last hours of agitation and deep anguish--for it was the deepest
+of its kind, to leave Wimpole Street and those whom I tenderly
+loved--_so_ would not admit of my writing or thinking: only I was able
+to think that my beloved sisters would send you some account of me
+when I was gone. And now I hear from them that your generosity has not
+waited for a letter from me to do its best for me, and that instead
+of being vexed, as you might well be, at my leaving England without
+a word sent to you, you have used kind offices in my behalf, you
+have been more than the generous and affectionate friend I always
+considered you. So my first words must be that I am deeply grateful
+to you, my very dear friend, and that to the last moment of my life I
+shall remember the claim you have on my gratitude. Generous people are
+inclined to acquit generously; but it has been very painful to me to
+observe that with all my mere friends I have found more sympathy and
+_trust_, than in those who are of my own household and who have
+been daily witnesses of my life. I do not say this for papa, who is
+peculiar and in a peculiar position; but it pained me that----, who
+_knew_ all that passed last year--for instance, about Pisa--who knew
+that the alternative of making a single effort to secure my health
+during the winter was the severe displeasure I have incurred now, and
+that the fruit of yielding myself a prisoner was the sense of being of
+no use nor comfort to any soul; papa having given up coming to see
+me except for five minutes, a day; ==--, who said to me with his own
+lips, 'He does not love you--do not think it' (said and repeated it
+two months ago)--that ---- should now turn round and reproach me for
+want of affection towards my family, for not letting myself drop
+like a dead weight into the abyss, a sacrifice without an object and
+expiation--this did surprise me and pain me--pained me more than all
+papa's dreadful words. But the personal feeling is nearer with most of
+us than the tenderest feeling for another; and my family had been so
+accustomed to the idea of my living on and on in that room, that while
+my heart was eating itself, their love for me was consoled, and at
+last the evil grew scarcely perceptible. It was no want of love in
+them, and quite natural in itself: we all get used to the thought of a
+tomb; and I was buried, that was the whole. It was a little thing even
+for myself a short time ago, and really it would be a pneumatological
+curiosity if I could describe and let you see how perfectly for years
+together, after what broke my heart at Torquay, I lived on the outside
+of my own life, blindly and darkly from day to day, as completely dead
+to hope of any kind as if I had my face against a grave, never feeling
+a personal instinct, taking trains of thought to carry out as an
+occupation absolutely indifferent to the _me_ which is in every human
+being. Nobody quite understood this of me, because I am not morally
+a coward, and have a hatred of all the forms of audible groaning. But
+God knows what is within, and how utterly I had abdicated myself and
+thought it not worth while to put out my finger to touch my share of
+life. Even my poetry, which suddenly grew an interest, was a thing on
+the outside of me, a thing to be done, and then done! What people said
+of it did not touch _me_. A thoroughly morbid and desolate state it
+was, which I look back now to with the sort of horror with which one
+would look to one's graveclothes, if one had been clothed in them by
+mistake during a trance.
+
+[Footnote 147: The date at the head of the letter is October 2,
+but that is certainly a slip of the pen, since at that date, as the
+following letter to Miss Mitford shows, they had not reached Pisa.
+See also the reference to 'six weeks of marriage' on p. 295. The Pisa
+postmark appears to be October 20 (or later), and the English postmark
+is November 5.]
+
+And now I will tell you. It is nearly two years ago since I have known
+Mr. Browning. Mr. Kenyon wished to bring him to see me five years ago,
+as one of the lions of London who roared the gentlest and was best
+worth my knowing; but I refused then, in my blind dislike to seeing
+strangers. Immediately, however, after the publication of my last
+volumes, he wrote to me, and we had a correspondence which ended in my
+agreeing to receive him as I never had received any other man. I
+did not know why, but it was utterly impossible for me to refuse to
+receive him, though I consented against my will. He writes the most
+exquisite letters possible, and has a way of putting things which I
+have not, a way of putting aside--so he came. He came, and with
+our personal acquaintance began his attachment for me, a sort of
+_infatuation_ call it, which resisted the various denials which were
+my plain duty at the beginning, and has persisted past them all. I
+began with--a grave assurance that I was in an exceptional position
+and saw him just in consequence of it, and that if ever he recurred to
+that subject again I never could see him again while I lived; and
+he believed me and was silent. To my mind, indeed, it was a bare
+impulse--a generous man of quick sympathies taking up a sudden
+interest with both hands! So I thought; but in the meantime the
+letters and the visits rained down more and more, and in every one
+there was something which was too slight to analyse and notice, but
+too decided not to be understood; so that at last, when the 'proposed
+respect' of the silence gave way, it was rather less dangerous.
+So then I showed him how he was throwing into the ashes his best
+affections--how the common gifts of youth and cheerfulness were behind
+me--how I had not strength, even of _heart_, for the ordinary duties
+of life--everything I told him and showed him. 'Look at this--and
+this,' throwing down all my disadvantages. To which he did not answer
+by a single compliment, but simply that he had not then to choose,
+and that I might be right or he might be right, he was not there to
+decide; but that he loved me and should to his last hour. He said
+that the freshness of youth had passed with him also, and that he
+had studied the world out of books and seen many women, yet had never
+loved one until he had seen me. That he knew himself, and knew that,
+if ever so repulsed, he should love me to his last hour--it should be
+first and last. At the same time, he would not tease me, he would wait
+twenty years if I pleased, and then, if life lasted so long for both
+of us, then when it was ending perhaps, I might understand him and
+feel that I might have trusted him. For my health, he had believed
+when he first spoke that I was suffering from an incurable injury of
+the spine, and that he never could hope to see me stand up before his
+face, and he appealed to my womanly sense of what a pure attachment
+should be--whether such a circumstance, if it had been true, was
+inconsistent with it. He preferred, he said, of free and deliberate
+choice, to be allowed to sit only an hour a day by my side, to the
+fulfilment of the brightest dream which should exclude me, in any
+possible world.
+
+I tell you so much, my ever dear friend, that you may see the manner
+of man I have had to do with, and the sort of attachment which for
+nearly two years has been drawing and winning me. I know better than
+any in the world, indeed, what Mr. Kenyon once unconsciously said
+before me--that 'Robert Browning is great in everything.' Then, when
+you think how this element of an affection so pure and persistent,
+cast into my dreary life, must have acted on it--how little by little
+I was drawn into the persuasion that something was left, and that
+still I could do something to the happiness of another--and he what he
+was, for I have deprived myself of the privilege of praising him--then
+it seemed worth while to take up with that unusual energy (for me!),
+expended in vain last year, the advice of the physicians that I should
+go to a warm climate for the winter. Then came the Pisa conflict
+of last year. For years I had looked with a sort of indifferent
+expectation towards Italy, knowing and feeling that I should escape
+there the annual relapse, yet, with that _laisser aller_ manner which
+had become a habit to me, unable to form a definite wish about it. But
+last year, when all this happened to me, and I was better than
+usual in the summer, I _wished_ to make the experiment--to live the
+experiment out, and see whether there was hope for me or not hope.
+Then came Dr. Chambers, with his encouraging opinion. 'I wanted simply
+a warm climate and _air_,' he said; 'I might be well if I pleased.'
+Followed what you know--or do not precisely know--the pain of it was
+acutely felt by me; for I never had doubted but that papa would catch
+at any human chance of restoring my health. I was under the delusion
+always that the difficulty of making such trials lay in _me_, and not
+in _him_. His manner of acting towards me last summer was one of the
+most painful griefs of my life, because it involved a disappointment
+in the affections. My dear father is a very peculiar person. He is
+naturally stern, and has exaggerated notions of authority, but these
+things go with high and noble qualities; and as for feeling, the water
+is under the rock, and I had faith. Yes, and have it. I admire such
+qualities as he has--fortitude, integrity. I loved him for his courage
+in adverse circumstances which were yet felt by him more literally
+than I could feel them. Always he has had the greatest power over my
+heart, because I am of those weak women who reverence strong men. By a
+word he might have bound me to him hand and foot. Never has he spoken
+a gentle word to me or looked a kind look which has not made in me
+large results of gratitude, and throughout my illness the sound of his
+step on the stairs has had the power of quickening my pulse--I have
+loved him so and love him. Now if he had said last summer that he was
+reluctant for me to leave him--if he had even allowed me to think
+_by mistake_ that his affection for me was the motive of such
+reluctance--I was ready to give up Pisa in a moment, and I told him
+as much. Whatever my new impulses towards life were, my love for him
+(taken so) would have resisted all--I loved him so dearly. But his
+course was otherwise, quite otherwise, and I was wounded to the
+bottom of my heart--cast off when I was ready to cling to him. In the
+meanwhile, at my side was another; I was driven and I was drawn. Then
+at last I said, 'If you like to let this winter decide it, you may. I
+will allow of no promises nor engagement. I cannot go to Italy, and I
+know, as nearly as a human creature can know any fact, that I shall be
+ill again through the influence of this English winter. If I am, you
+will see plainer the foolishness of this persistence; if I am not, I
+will do what you please.' And his answer was, 'If you are ill and keep
+your resolution of not marrying me under those circumstances, I will
+keep mine and love you till God shall take us both.' This was in last
+autumn, and the winter came with its miraculous mildness, as you know,
+and I was saved as I dared not hope; my word therefore was claimed
+in the spring. Now do you understand, and will you feel for me? An
+application to my father was certainly the obvious course, if it had
+not been for his peculiar nature and my peculiar position. But there
+is no speculation in the case; it is a matter of _knowledge_ that if
+Robert had applied to him in the first instance he would have been
+forbidden the house without a moment's scruple; and if in the last (as
+my sisters thought best as a respectable _form_), I should have been
+incapacitated from any after-exertion by the horrible scenes to which,
+as a thing of course, I should have been exposed. Papa will not bear
+some subjects, it is a thing _known_; his peculiarity takes that
+ground to the largest. Not one of his children will ever marry without
+a breach, which we all know, though he probably does not--deceiving
+himself in a setting up of _obstacles_, whereas the real obstacle is
+in his own mind. In my case there was, or would have been, a great
+deal of apparent reason to hold by; my health would have been motive
+enough--ostensible motive. I see that precisely as others may see
+it. Indeed, if I were charged now with want of generosity for casting
+myself so, a dead burden, on the man I love, nothing of the sort could
+surprise me. It was what occurred to myself, that thought was, and
+what occasioned a long struggle and months of agitation, and which
+nothing could have overcome but the very uncommon affection of a very
+uncommon person, reasoning out to me the great fact of love making its
+own level. As to vanity and selfishness blinding me, certainly I
+may have made a mistake, and the future may prove it, but still more
+certainly I was not blinded _so_. On the contrary, never have I been
+more humbled, and never less in danger of considering any personal
+pitiful advantage, than throughout this affair. You, who are generous
+and a woman, will believe this of me, even if you do not comprehend
+the _habit_ I had fallen into of casting aside the consideration of
+possible happiness of my own. But I was speaking of papa. Obvious it
+was that the application to him was a mere form. I knew the result of
+it. I had made up my mind to act upon my full right of taking my own
+way. I had long believed such an act (the most strictly personal act
+of one's life) to be within the rights of every person of mature age,
+man or woman, and I had resolved to exercise that right in my own case
+by a resolution which had slowly ripened. All the other doors of life
+were shut to me, and shut me in as in a prison, and only before
+this door stood one whom I loved best and who loved me best, and who
+invited me out through it for the good's sake which he thought I
+could do him. Now if for the sake of the mere form I had applied to
+my father, and if, as he would have done directly, he had set up his
+'curse' against the step I proposed to take, would it have been doing
+otherwise than placing a knife in his hand? A few years ago, merely
+through the reverberation of what he said to another on a subject like
+this, I fell on the floor in a fainting fit, and was almost delirious
+afterwards. I cannot bear some words. I would much rather have blows
+without them. In my actual state of nerves and physical weakness, it
+would have been the sacrifice of my whole life--of my convictions,
+of my affections, and, above all, of what the person dearest to me
+persisted in calling _his_ life, and the good of it--if I had observed
+that 'form.' Therefore, wrong or right, I determined not to observe
+it, and, wrong or right, I did and do consider that in not doing so I
+sinned against no duty. That I was _constrained_ to act clandestinely,
+and did not _choose_ to do so, God is witness, and will set it down as
+my heavy misfortune and not my fault. Also, up to the very last act we
+stood in the light of day for the whole world, if it pleased, to judge
+us. I never saw him out of the Wimpole Street house; he came twice a
+week to see me--or rather, three times in the fortnight, openly in
+the sight of all, and this for nearly two years, and neither more
+nor less. Some jests used to be passed upon us by my brothers, and I
+allowed them without a word, but it would have been infamous in me to
+have taken any into my confidence who would have suffered, as a direct
+consequence, a blighting of his own prospects. My secrecy towards them
+all was my simple duty towards them all, and what they call want of
+affection was an affectionate consideration for them. My sisters did
+indeed know the truth to a certain point. They knew of the attachment
+and engagement--I could not help that--but the whole of the event I
+kept from them with a strength and resolution which really I did not
+know to be in me, and of which nothing but a sense of the injury to
+be done to them by a fuller confidence, and my tender gratitude
+and attachment to them for all their love and goodness, could have
+rendered me capable. Their faith in me, and undeviating affection for
+me, I shall be grateful for to the end of my existence, and to
+the extent of my power of feeling gratitude. My dearest
+sisters!--especially, let me say, my own beloved Arabel, who, with
+no consolation except the exercise of a most generous tenderness, has
+looked only to what she considered my good--never doubting me, never
+swerving for one instant in her love for me. May God reward her as I
+cannot. Dearest Henrietta loves me too, but loses less in me, and has
+reasons for not misjudging me. But both my sisters have been faultless
+in their bearing towards me, and never did I love them so tenderly as
+I love them now.
+
+The only time I met R.B. clandestinely was in the parish church, where
+we were married before two witnesses--it was the first and only time.
+I looked, he says, more dead than alive, and can well believe it, for
+I all but fainted on the way, and had to stop for sal volatile at a
+chemist's shop. The support through it all was _my trust in him_,
+for no woman who ever committed a like act of trust has had stronger
+motives to hold by. Now may I not tell you that his genius, and all
+but miraculous attainments, are the least things in him, the moral
+nature being of the very noblest, as all who ever knew him admit? Then
+he has had that wide experience of men which ends by throwing the mind
+back on itself and God; there is nothing incomplete in him, except
+as all humanity is incompleteness. The only wonder is how such a man,
+whom any woman could have loved, should have loved _me_; but men of
+genius, you know, are apt to love with their imagination. Then there
+is something in the sympathy, the strange, straight sympathy which
+unites us on all subjects. If it were not that I look up to him, we
+should be too alike to be together perhaps, but I know my place better
+than he does, who is too humble. Oh, you cannot think how well we
+get on after six weeks of marriage. If I suffer again it will not be
+through _him_. Some day, dearest Mrs. Martin, I will show you and dear
+Mr. Martin how his _prophecy was fulfilled_, saving some picturesque
+particulars. I did not know before that Saul was among the prophets.
+
+My poor husband suffered very much from the constraint imposed on him
+by my position, and did, for the first time in his life, for my sake
+do that in secret which he could not speak upon the housetops. _Mea
+culpa_ all of it! If one of us two is to be blamed, it is I, at whose
+representation of circumstances he submitted to do violence to his
+own self-respect. I would not suffer him to tell even our dear common
+friend Mr. Kenyon. I felt that it would be throwing on dear Mr. Kenyon
+a painful responsibility, and involve him in the blame ready to fall.
+And dear dear Mr. Kenyon, like the noble, generous friend I love so
+deservedly, comprehends all at a word, sends us _not_ his forgiveness,
+but his sympathy, his affection, the kindest words which can be
+written! I cannot tell you all his inexpressible kindness to us both.
+He justifies us to the uttermost, and, in that, all the grateful
+attachment we had, each on our side, so long professed towards him.
+Indeed, in a note I had from him yesterday, he uses this strong
+expression after gladly speaking of our successful journey: 'I
+considered that you had _perilled your life_ upon this undertaking,
+and, reflecting upon your last position, I thought that _you had done
+well_.' But my life was not perilled in the journey. The agitation and
+fatigue were evils, to be sure, and Mrs. Jameson, who met us in Paris
+by a happy accident, thought me 'looking horribly ill' at first, and
+persuaded us to rest there for a week on the promise of accompanying
+us herself to Pisa to help Robert to take care of me. He, who was in
+a fit of terror about me, agreed at once, and so she came with us, she
+and her young niece, and her kindness leaves us both very grateful. So
+kind she was, and is--for still she is in Pisa--opening her arms to
+us and calling us 'children of light' instead of ugly names, and
+declaring that she should have been 'proud' to have had anything to
+do with our marriage. Indeed, we hear every day kind speeches and
+messages from people such as Mr. Chorley of the 'Athenaeum,' who 'has
+tears in his eyes,' Monckton Milnes, Barry Cornwall, and other friends
+of my husband's, but who only know _me_ by my books, and I want the
+love and sympathy of those who love me and whom I love. I was talking
+of the influence of the journey. The change of air has done me
+wonderful good notwithstanding the fatigue, and I am renewed to the
+point of being able to throw off most of my invalid habits; and of
+walking quite like a woman. Mrs. Jameson said the other day, 'You are
+not _improved_, you are _transformed_.' We have most comfortable rooms
+here at Pisa and have taken them for six months, in the best situation
+for health, and close to the Duomo and Leaning Tower. It is a
+beautiful, solemn city, and we have made acquaintance with Professor
+Ferucci, who is about to admit us to [a sight][148] of the [University
+Lib]rary. We shall certainly [spend] next summer in Italy _somewhere_,
+and [talk] of Rome for the next winter, but, of course, this is all in
+air. Let me hear
+
+from you, dearest Mrs. Martin, and direct, 'M. Browning, Poste
+Restante, Pisa'--it is best. Just before we left Paris I wrote to my
+aunt Jane, and from Marseilles to Bummy, but from neither have I heard
+yet.
+
+With best love to dearest Mr. Martin, ever both my dear kind friends,
+
+Your affectionate and grateful
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 148: The original is torn here.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_[149]
+Moulins: October 2, 1846.
+
+I began to write to you, my beloved friend, earlier, that I might
+follow your kindest wishes literally, and also to thank you at once
+for your goodness to me, for which may God bless you. But the fatigue
+and agitation have been very great, and I was forced to break off--as
+now I dare not revert to what is behind. I will tell you more another
+day. At Orleans, with your kindest letter, I had one from my dearest,
+gracious friend Mr. Kenyon, who, in his goodness, does more than
+exculpate--even _approves_--he wrote a joint letter to both of us.
+But oh, the anguish I have gone through! You are good, you are kind. I
+thank you from the bottom of my heart for saying to me that you would
+have gone to the church with me. _Yes, I know you would_. And for
+that very reason I forbore involving you in such a responsibility and
+drawing you into such a net. I took Wilson with me. I had courage to
+keep the secret to my sisters for their sakes, though I will tell you
+in strict confidence that it was known to them _potentially_, that
+is, the attachment and engagement were known, the necessity remaining
+that, for stringent reasons affecting their own tranquillity, they
+should be able to say at last, 'We were not instructed in this and
+this.' The dearest, fondest, most affectionate of sisters they are to
+me, and if the sacrifice of a life, or of all prospect of happiness,
+would have worked any lasting good to them, it should have been made
+even in the hour I left them. I knew _that_ by the anguish I suffered
+in it. But a sacrifice, without good to anyone--I shrank from it. And
+also, it was the sacrifice of _two_. And _he_, as you say, had done
+everything for me, had loved me for reasons which had helped to weary
+me of myself, loved me heart to heart persistently--in spite of my own
+will--drawn me back to life and hope again when I had done with both.
+My life seemed to belong to him and to none other at last, and I had
+no power to speak a word. Have faith in me, my dearest friend, till
+you can know him. The intellect is so little in comparison to all the
+rest, to the womanly tenderness, the inexhaustible goodness, the high
+and noble aspiration of every hour. Temper, spirits, manners: there is
+not a flaw anywhere. I shut my eyes sometimes and fancy it all a dream
+of my guardian angel. Only, if it had been a dream, the pain of some
+parts of it would have awakened me before now; it is not a dream. I
+have borne all the emotion of fatigue miraculously well, though, of
+course, a good deal exhausted at times. We had intended to hurry on
+to the South at once, but at Paris we met Mrs. Jameson, who opened her
+arms to us with the most literal affectionateness, _kissed us both_,
+and took us by surprise by calling us 'wise people, wild poets or
+not.' Moreover, she fixed us in an apartment above her own in the
+Hôtel de la Ville de Paris, that I might rest for a week, and crowned
+the rest of her goodnesses by agreeing to accompany us to Pisa, where
+she was about to travel with her young niece. Therefore we are five
+travelling, Wilson being with me. Oh, yes, Wilson came; her attachment
+to me never shrank for a moment. And Flush came and I assure you that
+nearly as much attention has been paid to Flush as to me from the
+beginning, so that he is perfectly reconciled, and would be happy
+if the people at the railroads were not barbarians, and immovable in
+their evil designs of shutting him up in a box when we travel that
+way.
+
+You understand now, ever dearest Miss Mitford, how the pause has
+come about writing. The week at Paris! Such a strange week it was,
+altogether like a vision. Whether in the body or out of the body I
+cannot tell scarcely. Our Balzac should be flattered beyond measure
+by my thinking of him at all. Which I did, but of _you_ more. I will
+write and tell you more about Paris. You should go there indeed. And
+to our hotel, if at all. Once we were at the Louvre, but we kept very
+still of course, and were satisfied with the _idea_ of Paris. I
+could have borne to live on there, it was all so strange and full of
+contrast....
+
+Now you will write--I feel my way on the paper to write this.
+Nothing is changed between us, nothing can ever interfere with sacred
+confidences, remember. I do not show letters, you need not fear my
+turning traitress.... Pray for me, dearest friend, that the bitterness
+of old affections may not be too bitter with me, and that God may turn
+those salt waters sweet again.
+
+Pray for your grateful and loving
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 149: This letter is of earlier date than the last, having
+been written _en route_ between Orleans and Lyons; but it has seemed
+better to place the more detailed narrative first.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+[Pisa:] November 5, [1846].
+
+It was pleasant to me, my dearest friend, to think while I was reading
+your letter yesterday, that almost by that time you had received mine,
+and could not even seem to doubt a moment longer whether I admitted
+your claim of hearing and of speaking to the uttermost. I recognised
+you too entirely as my friend. Because you had put faith in me, so
+much the more reason there was that I should justify it as far as I
+could, and with as much frankness (which was a part of my gratitude to
+you) as was possible from a woman to a woman. Always I have felt that
+you have believed in me and loved me; and, for the sake of the past
+and of the present, your affection and your esteem are more to me than
+I could afford to lose, even in these changed and happy circumstances.
+So I thank you once more, my dear kind friends, I thank you both--I
+never shall forget your goodness. I feel it, of course, the more
+deeply, in proportion to the painful disappointment in other
+quarters.... Am I, bitter? The feeling, however, passes while I write
+it out, and my own affection for everybody will wait patiently to
+be 'forgiven' in the proper form, when everybody shall be at leisure
+properly. Assuredly, in the meanwhile, however, my case is not to be
+classed with other cases--what happened to me could not have happened,
+perhaps, with any other family in England.... I hate and loathe
+everything too which is clandestine--we _both_ do, Robert and I; and
+the manner the whole business was carried on in might have instructed
+the least acute of the bystanders. The flowers standing perpetually
+on my table for the last two years were brought there by one hand,
+as everybody knew; and really it would have argued an excess of
+benevolence in an unmarried man with quite enough resources in London,
+to pay the continued visits he paid to me without some strong motive
+indeed. Was it his fault that he did not associate with everybody in
+the house as well as with me? He desired it; but no--that was not to
+be. The endurance of the pain of the position was not the least proof
+of his attachment to me. How I thank you for believing in him--how
+grateful it makes me! He will justify to the uttermost that faith. We
+have been married two months, and every hour has bound me to him more
+and more; if the beginning was well, still better it is now--that is
+what he says to me, and I say back again day by day. Then it is an
+'advantage,' to have an inexhaustible companion who talks wisdom of
+all things in heaven and earth, and shows besides as perpetual a
+good humour and gaiety as if he were--a fool, shall I say? or a
+considerable quantity more, perhaps. As to our domestic affairs, it is
+not to _my_ honour and glory that the 'bills' are made up every week
+and paid more regularly 'than hard beseems,' while dear Mrs. Jameson
+laughs outright at our miraculous prudence and economy, and declares
+that it is past belief and precedent that we should not burn the
+candles at both ends, and the next moment will have it that we remind
+her of the children in a poem of Heine's who set up housekeeping in
+a tub, and inquired gravely the price of coffee. Ah, but she has
+left Pisa at last--left it yesterday. It was a painful parting to
+everybody. Seven weeks spent in such close neighbourhood--a month of
+it under the same roof and in the same carriages--will fasten
+people together, and then travelling _shakes_ them together. A more
+affectionate, generous woman never lived than Mrs. Jameson, and it
+is pleasant to be sure that she loves us both from her heart, and not
+only _du bout des lèvres_. Think of her making Robert promise (as he
+has told me since) that in the case of my being unwell he would write
+to her instantly, and she would come at once if anywhere in Italy. So
+kind, so like her. She spends the winter in Rome, but an intermediate
+month at Florence, and we are to keep tryst with her somewhere in the
+spring, perhaps at Venice. If not, she says that she will come back
+here, for that certainly she will see us. She would have stayed
+altogether perhaps, if it had not been for her book upon art which she
+is engaged to bring out next year, and the materials for which are to
+be _sought_. As to Pisa, she liked it just as we like it. Oh, it is so
+beautiful and so full of repose, yet not _desolate_: it is rather the
+repose of sleep than of death. Then after the first ten days of rain,
+which seemed to refer us fatally to Alfieri's 'piove e ripiove,' came
+as perpetual a divine sunshine, such cloudless, exquisite weather that
+we ask whether it may not be June instead of November. Every day I am
+out walking while the golden oranges look at me over the walls, and
+when I am tired Robert and I sit down on a stone to watch the lizards.
+We have been to your seashore, too, and seen your island, only he
+insists on it (Robert does) that it is not Corsica but Gorgona, and
+that Corsica is not in sight. _Beautiful_ and blue the island was,
+however, in any case. It might have been Romero's instead of either.
+Also we have driven up to the foot of mountains, and seen them
+reflected down in the little pure lake of Ascuno, and we have seen the
+pine woods, and met the camels laden with faggots all in a line. So
+now ask me again if I enjoy my liberty as you expect. My head goes
+round sometimes, that is all. I never was happy before in my life. Ah,
+but, of course, the painful thoughts recur!
+
+There are some whom I love too tenderly to be easy under their
+displeasure, or even under their injustice. Only it, seems to me
+that with time and patience my poor dearest papa will be melted into
+opening his arms to us--will be melted into a clearer understanding of
+motives and intentions; I cannot believe that he will forget me, as he
+says he will, and go on thinking me to be dead rather than alive and
+happy. So I manage to hope for the best, and all that remains, all
+my life here, _is_ best already, could not be better or happier. And
+willingly tell dear Mr. Martin I would take him and you for witnesses
+of it, and in the meanwhile he is not to send me tantalising messages;
+no, indeed, unless you really, really, should let yourselves be wafted
+our way, and could you do so much better at Pau? particularly if Fanny
+Hanford should come here. Will she really? The climate is described by
+the inhabitants as a 'pleasant spring throughout the winter,' and if
+you were to see Robert and me threading our path along the shady side
+everywhere to avoid the 'excessive heat of the sun' in this November
+(!) it would appear a good beginning. We are not in the warm orthodox
+position by the Arno because we heard with our ears one of the best
+physicians of the place advise against it. 'Better,' he said, 'to have
+cool rooms to live in and warm walks to go out along.' The rooms we
+have are rather over-cool perhaps; we are obliged to have a little
+fire in the sitting-room, in the mornings and evenings that is; but
+I do not fear for the winter, there is too much difference to my
+feelings between this November and any English November I ever knew.
+We have our dinner from the Trattoria at two o'clock, and can dine our
+favorite way on thrushes and chianti with a miraculous cheapness, and
+no trouble, no cook, no kitchen; the prophet Elijah or the lilies of
+the field took as little thought for their dining, which exactly suits
+us. It is a continental fashion which we never cease commending. Then
+at six we have coffee, and rolls of milk, made of milk, I mean, and at
+nine our supper (call it supper, if you please) of roast chestnuts and
+grapes. So you see how primitive we are, and how I forget to praise
+the eggs at breakfast. The worst of Pisa is, or would be to some
+persons, that, socially speaking, it has its dullnesses; it is not
+lively like Florence, not in that way. But we do not want society, we
+shun it rather. We like the Duomo and the Campo Santo instead. Then
+we know a little of Professor Ferucci, who gives us access to the
+University library, and we subscribe to a modern one, and we have
+plenty of writing to do of our own. If we can do anything for Fanny
+Hanford, let us know. It would be too happy, I suppose, to have to do
+it for yourselves. Think, however, I am quite well, quite well. I can
+thank God, too, for being alive and well. Make dear Mr. Martin keep
+well, and not forget himself in the Herefordshire cold--draw him into
+the sun somewhere. Now write and tell me everything of your plans and
+of you both, dearest friends. My husband bids me say that he desires
+to have my friends for his own friends, and that he is grateful to you
+for not crossing that feeling. Let him send his regards to you. And
+let me be throughout all changes,
+
+Your ever faithful and most affectionate
+BA.
+
+I am expecting every day to hear from my dearest sisters. Write to
+them and love them for me.
+
+This letter has been kept for several days from different causes. Will
+you inclose the little note to Miss Mitford? I do not hear from home,
+and am uneasy.
+
+May God bless you!
+
+
+November 9.
+
+I am so vexed about those poems appearing just now in
+'Blackwood.'[150] Papa must think it _impudent_ of me. It is
+unfortunate.
+
+[Footnote 150: _Blackwood's Magazine_ for October 1846 contained
+the following poems by Mrs. Browning, some phrases in which might
+certainly be open to comment if they were supposed to have been
+deliberately chosen for publication at this particular time: 'A
+Woman's Shortcomings,' 'A Man's Requirements,' 'Maude's Spinning,' 'A
+Dead Rose,' 'Change on Change,' 'A Reed,' and 'Hector in the Garden.']
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+[Pisa]: November 5, 1846.
+
+I have your letter, ever dearest Miss Mitford, and it is welcome even
+more than your letters have been used to be to me--the last charm
+was to come, you see, by this distance. For all your affection and
+solicitude, may you trust my gratitude; and if you love me a little,
+I love you indeed, and never shall cease. The only difference shall be
+that two may love you where one did, and for my part I will answer for
+it that if you could love the poor one you will not refuse any love
+to the other when you come to know him. I never could bear to speak to
+you of _him_ since quite the beginning, or rather I never could dare.
+But when you know him and understand how the mental gifts are scarcely
+half of him, you will not wonder at your friend, and, indeed, two
+years of steadfast affection from such a man would have, overcome any
+woman's heart. I have been neither much wiser nor much foolisher than
+all the shes in the world, only much happier--the difference is in the
+happiness. Certainly I am not likely to repent of having given myself
+to him. I cannot, for all the pain received from another quarter, the
+comfort for which is that my conscience is pure of the sense of having
+broken the least known duty, and that the same consequence would
+follow any marriage of any member of my family with any possible man
+or woman. I look to time, and reason, and natural love and pity, and
+to the justification of the events acting through all; I look on so
+and hope, and in the meanwhile it has been a great comfort to have had
+not merely the indulgence but the approbation and sympathy of most
+of my old personal friends--oh, such kind letters; for instance,
+yesterday one came from dear Mrs. Martin, who has known me, she and
+her husband, since the very beginning of my womanhood, and both of
+them are acute, thinking people, with heads as strong as their hearts.
+I in my haste left England without a word to them, for which they
+might naturally have reproached me; instead of which they write to say
+that never _for a moment_ have they doubted my having acted for the
+best and happiest, and to assure me that, having sympathised with me
+in every sorrow and trial, they delightedly feel with me in the new
+joy; nothing could be more cordially kind. See how I write to you as
+if I could speak--all these little things which are great things when
+seen in the light. Also R, and I are not in the least tired of one
+another notwithstanding the very perpetual _tête-à-tête_ into which
+we have fallen, and which (past the first fortnight) would be rather a
+trial in many cases. Then our housekeeping may end perhaps in being a
+proverb among the nations, for at the beginning it makes Mrs. Jameson
+laugh heartily. It disappoints her theories, she admits--finding that,
+albeit poets, we abstain from burning candles at both ends at once,
+just as if we did statistics and historical abstracts by nature
+instead. And do not think that the trouble falls on me. Even the
+pouring out of the coffee is a divided labour, and the ordering of the
+dinner is quite out of my hands. As for me, when I am so good as to
+let myself be carried upstairs, and so angelical as to sit still on
+the sofa, and so considerate, moreover, as _not_ to put my foot into
+a puddle, why _my_ duty is considered done to a perfection which is
+worthy of all adoration; it really is not very hard work to please
+this taskmaster. For Pisa, we both like it extremely. The city is
+full of beauty and repose, and the purple mountains gloriously seem
+to beckon us on deeper into the vineland. We have rooms close to the
+Duomo and Leaning Tower, in the great Collegio built by Vasari, three
+excellent bedrooms and a sitting-room, matted and carpeted, looking
+comfortable even for England. For the last fortnight, except the very
+last few sunny days, we have had rain; but the climate is as mild as
+possible, no cold, with all the damp. Delightful weather we had for
+the travelling. Ah, you, with your terrors of travelling, how you
+amuse me! Why, the constant change of air in the continued fine
+weather made me better and better instead of worse. It did me
+infinite good. Mrs. Jameson says she 'won't call me _improved_, but
+_transformed_ rather.' I like the new sights and the movement; my
+spirits rise; I live--I can adapt myself. If you really tried it and
+got as far as Paris you would be drawn on, I fancy, and on--on to the
+East perhaps with H. Martineau, or at least as near it as we are here.
+By the way, or out of the way, it struck me as unfortunate that my
+poems should have been printed _just now_ in 'Blackwood;' I wish it
+had been otherwise. Then I had a letter from one of my Leeds readers
+the other day to expostulate about the _inappropriateness_ of certain
+of them! The fact is that I sent a heap of verses swept from my desk
+and belonging to old feelings and impressions, and not imagining that
+they were to be used in that quick way. There can't be very much to
+like, I fear, apart from your goodness for what calls itself mine.
+Love me, dearest dear Miss Mitford, my dear kind friend--love me, I
+beg of you, still and ever, only ceasing when I cease to think of you;
+I will allow of that clause. Mrs. Jameson and Gerardine are staying at
+the hotel here in Pisa still, and we manage to see them every day; so
+good and true and affectionate she is, and so much we shall miss
+her when she goes, which will be in a day or two now. She goes to
+Florence, to Siena, to Rome to complete her work upon art, which
+is the object of her Italian journey. I read your vivid and glowing
+description of the picture to her, or rather I showed your picture
+to her, and she quite believes with you that it is most probably a
+_Velasquez_. Much to be congratulated the owner must be. I mean to
+know something about pictures some day. Robert does, and I shall get
+him to open my eyes for me with a little instruction. You know that
+in this place are to be seen the first steps of art, and it will be
+interesting to trace them from it as we go farther ourselves. Our
+present residence we have taken for six months; but we have dreams,
+dreams, and we discuss them like soothsayers over the evening's
+roasted chestnuts and grapes. Flush highly approves of Pisa (and the
+roasted chestnuts), because here he goes out every day and speaks
+Italian to the little dogs. Oh, Mr. Chorley, such a kind, feeling
+note he wrote to Robert from Germany, when he read of our marriage
+in 'Galignani;' we were both touched by it. And Monckton Milnes and
+others--very kind all. But in a particular manner I remember the
+kindness of my valued friend Mr. Horne, who never failed me nor could
+fail. Will you explain to him, or rather ask him to understand, why I
+did not answer his last note? I forget even Balzac here; tell me what
+he writes, and help me to love that dear, generous Mr. Kenyon, whom I
+can love without help. And let me love you, and you love me.
+
+Your ever affectionate and grateful
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+Collegio Ferdinando [Pisa]:
+Saturday, November 23, 1846 [postmark].
+
+We were delighted to have your note, dearest Aunt Nina, and I answer
+it with my feet on your stool, so that my feet are full of you even if
+my head is not, always. Now, I shall not go a sentence farther without
+thanking you for that comfort; you scarcely guessed perhaps what a
+comfort it would be, that stool of yours. I am even apt to sit on it
+for hours together, leaning against the sofa, till I get to be scolded
+for putting myself so into the fire, and prophesied of in respect to
+the probability of a 'general conflagration' of stools and Bas; on
+which the prophet is to leap from the Leaning Tower, and Flush to
+be left to make the funeral oration of the establishment. In the
+meantime, it really is quite a comfort that our housekeeping should be
+your 'example' at Florence; we have edifying countenances whenever we
+think of it. And Robert will not by any means believe that you passed
+us on our own ground, though the eleven pauls a week for breakfast,
+and my humility, seemed to suggest something of the sort. I am so
+glad, we are both so glad, that you are enjoying yourself at the
+fullest and highest among the wonders of art, and cannot be chilled
+in the soul by any of those fatal winds you speak of. For me, I am
+certainly better here at Pisa, though the penalty is to see Frate
+Angelico's picture with the remembrance of you rather than the
+presence. Here, indeed, we have had a little too much cold for two
+days; there was a feeling of frost in the air, and a most undeniable
+east wind which prevented my going out, and made me feel less
+comfortable than usual at home. But, after all, one felt ashamed to
+call it _cold_, and Robert found the heat on the Arno insupportable;
+which set us both mourning over our 'situation' at the Collegio, where
+one of us could not get out on such days without a blow on the chest
+from the 'wind at the corner.' Well, experience teaches, and we shall
+be taught, and the cost of it is not so very much after all. We have
+seen your professor once since you left us (oh, the leaving!), or
+_spoken_ to him once, I should say, when he came in one evening and
+caught us reading, sighing, yawning over 'Nicolò de' Lapi,' a romance
+by the son-in law of Manzoni. Before we could speak, he called it
+'excellent, très beau,' one of their very best romances, upon which,
+of course, dear Robert could not bear to offend his literary and
+national susceptibilities by a doubt even. _I_, not being so humane,
+thought that any suffering reader would be justified (under the
+rack-wheel) in crying out against such a book, as the dullest,
+heaviest, stupidest, lengthiest. Did you ever read it? If not,
+_don't_. When a father-in-law imitates Scott, and a son-in-law
+imitates his father-in-law, think of the consequences! Robert, in his
+zeal for Italy and against Eugène Sue, tried to persuade me at first
+(this was before the scene with your professor) that 'really, Ba, it
+wasn't so bad,' 'really you are too hard to be pleased,' and so on;
+but after two or three chapters, the dullness grew too strong for even
+his benevolence, and the yawning catastrophe (supposed to be peculiar
+to the 'Guida') overthrew him as completely as it ever did me, though
+we both resolved to hold on by the stirrup to the end of the two
+volumes. The catalogue of the library (for observe that we subscribe
+now--the object is attained!) offers a most melancholy insight
+into the actual literature of Italy. Translations, translations,
+translations from third and fourth and fifth rate French and English
+writers, chiefly French; the roots of thought, here in Italy, seem
+dead in the ground. It is well that they have great memories--nothing
+else lives.
+
+We have had the kindest of letters from dear noble Mr. Kenyon; who,
+by the way, speaks of you as we like to hear him. Dickens is going to
+Paris for the winter, and Mrs. Butler[151] (he adds) is expected
+in London. Dear Mr. Kenyon calls me 'crotchety,' but Robert 'an
+incarnation of the good and the true,' so that I have everything to
+thank him for. There are noble people who take the world's side and
+make it seem 'for the _nonce_' almost respectable; but he gives up all
+the talk and fine schemes about money-making, and allows us to wait to
+see whether we want it or not--the money, I mean.
+
+It is Monday, and I am only finishing this note. In the midst came
+letters from my sisters, making me feel so glad that I could not
+write. Everybody is well and happy, and dear papa _in high spirits_
+and _having people to dine with him every day_, so that I have not
+really done anyone harm in doing myself all this good. It does not
+indeed bring us a step nearer to the forgiveness, but to hear of his
+being in good spirits makes me inclined to jump, with Gerardine.[152]
+Dear Geddie! How pleased I am to hear of her being happy, particularly
+(perhaps) as she is not too happy to forget _me_. Is all that glory of
+art making her very ambitious to work and enter into the court of the
+Temple?...
+
+Robert's love to you both. We often talk of our prospect of meeting
+you again. And for the _past_, dearest Aunt Nina, believe of me that
+I feel to you more gratefully than ever I can say, and remain, while I
+live,
+
+Your faithful and affectionate
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 151: Better known as Fanny Kemble.]
+
+[Footnote 152: Miss Gerardine Bate, Mrs. Jameson's niece.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Pisa: December 19, [1846].
+
+Ever dearest Miss Mitford, your kindest letter is three times welcome
+as usual. On the day you wrote it in the frost, I was sitting out of
+doors, just in my summer mantilla, and complaining 'of the heat this
+December!' But woe comes to the discontented. Within these three or
+four days we too have had frost--yes, and a little snow, for the
+first time, say the Pisans, during five years. Robert says that
+the mountains are powdered toward Lucca, and I, who cannot see the
+mountains, can see the cathedral--the Duomo--how it glitters whitely
+at the summit, between the blue sky and its own walls of yellow
+marble. Of course I do not stir an inch from the fire, yet have to
+struggle a little against my old languor. Only, you see, this can't
+last! it is exceptional weather, and, up to the last few days, has
+been divine. And then, after all we talk of frost, my bedroom, which
+has no fireplace, shows not an English sign on the window, and the
+air is not _metallic_ as in England. The sun, too, is so hot that
+the women are seen walking with fur capes and parasols, a curious
+combination.
+
+I hope you had your visit from Mr. Chorley, and that you both had the
+usual pleasure from it. Indeed I _am_ touched by what you tell me, and
+was touched by his note to my husband, written in the first surprise;
+and because Robert has the greatest regard for him, besides my own
+personal reasons, I do count him in the forward rank of our friends.
+You will hear that he has obliged us by accepting a trusteeship to
+a settlement, forced upon me in spite of certain professions or
+indispositions of mine; but as my husband's gifts, I had no right, it
+appeared, by refusing it to place him in a false position for the sake
+of what dear Mr. Kenyon calls my 'crotchets.' Oh, dear Mr. Kenyon! His
+kindness and goodness to us have been past thinking of, past thanking
+for; we can only fall into silence. He has thrust his hand into the
+fire for us by writing to papa himself, by taking up the management of
+my small money-matters when nearer hands let them drop, by justifying
+us with the whole weight of his personal influence; all this in the
+very face of his own habits and susceptibilities. He has resolved
+that I shall not miss the offices of father, brother, friend, nor the
+tenderness and sympathy of them all. And this man is called a mere man
+of the world, and would be called so rightly if the world were a place
+for angels. I shall love him dearly and gratefully to my last breath;
+we both shall....
+
+Robert and I are deep in the fourth month of wedlock; there has not
+been a shadow between us, nor a _word_ (and I have observed that all
+married people confess to _words_), and that the only change I can lay
+my finger on in him is simply and clearly an increase of affection.
+Now I need not say it if I did not please, and I should not please,
+you know, to tell a story. The truth is, that I who always did
+certainly believe in love, yet was as great a sceptic as you about the
+evidences thereof, and having held twenty times that Jacob's serving
+fourteen years for Rachel was not too long by fourteen days, I was
+not a likely person (with my loathing dread of marriage as a loveless
+state, and absolute contentment with single life as the alternative
+to the great majorities of marriages), I was not likely to accept a
+feeling not genuine, though from the hand of Apollo himself, crowned
+with his various godships. Especially too, in my position, I could
+not, would not, should not have done it. Then, genuine feelings are
+genuine feelings, and do not pass like a cloud. We are as happy as
+people can be, I do believe, yet are living in a way to _try_ this
+new relationship of ours--in the utmost seclusion and perpetual
+_téte-à-téte_--no amusement nor distraction from without, except some
+of the very dullest Italian romances which throw us back on the
+memory of Balzac with reiterated groans. The Italians seem to hang on
+translations from the French--as we find from the library--not merely
+of Balzac, but Dumas, your Dumas, and reaching lower--long past De
+Kock--to the third and fourth rate novelists. What is purely Italian
+is, as far as we have read, purely dull and conventional. There is no
+breath nor pulse in the Italian genius. Mrs. Jameson writes to us
+from Florence that in politics and philosophy the people are getting
+alive--which may be, for aught we know to the contrary, the poetry and
+imagination leave them room enough by immense vacancies.
+
+Yet we delight in Italy, and dream of 'pleasures new' for the
+summer--_pastures_ new, I should have said--but it comes to the same
+thing. The _padrone_ in this house sent us in as a gift (in gracious
+recognition, perhaps, of our lawful paying of bills) an immense dish
+of oranges--two hanging on a stalk with the green leaves still moist
+with the morning's dew--every great orange of twelve or thirteen with
+its own stalk and leaves. Such a pretty sight! And better oranges, I
+beg to say, never were eaten, when we are barbarous enough to eat them
+day by day after our two o'clock dinner, softening, with the vision
+of them, the winter which has just shown itself. Almost I have been
+as pleased with the oranges as I was at Avignon by the _pomegranate_
+given to me much in the same way. Think of my being singled out of
+all our caravan of travellers--Mrs. Jameson and Gerardine Jameson[153]
+both there--for that significant gift of the pomegranates! I had never
+seen one before, and, of course, proceeded instantly to cut one 'deep
+down the middle'[154]--accepting the omen. Yet, in shame and confusion
+of face, I confess to not being able to appreciate it properly. Olives
+and pomegranates I set on the same shelf, to be just looked at and
+called by their names, but by no means eaten bodily.
+
+But you mistake me, dearest friend, about the 'Blackwood' verses. I
+never thought of writing _applicative poems_--the heavens forfend!
+Only that just _then_, [in] the midst of all the talk, _any_ verses
+of mine should come into print--and some of them to that _particular
+effect_--looked unlucky. I dare say poor papa (for instance) thought
+me turned suddenly to brass itself. Well, it is perhaps more my
+fancy than anything else, and was only an impression, even there. Mr.
+Chorley will tell you of a play of his, which I hope will make its
+way, though I do wonder how people can bear to write for the theatres
+in the present state of things. Robert is busy preparing a new edition
+of his collected poems which are to be so clear that everyone who has
+understood them hitherto will lose all distinction. We both mean to
+be as little idle as possible.... We shall meet one day in joy, I do
+hope, and then you will love my husband for his own sake, as for mine
+you do not hate him now.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 153: This surname is a mistake on Mrs. Browning's part; see
+her letter of October 1, 1849.]
+
+[Footnote 154: See _Lady Geraldine's Courtship_, stanza xli.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[Pisa:] December 21 [1846].
+
+You must let me tell you, my dearest Mr. Boyd, that I dreamed of you
+last night, and that you were looking very well in my dream, and that
+you told me to break a crust from a loaf of bread which lay by you
+on the table; which I accept on recollection as a sacramental sign
+between us, of peace and affection. Wasn't it strange that I should
+dream so of you? Yet no; thinking awake of you, the sleeping thoughts
+come naturally. Believe of me this Christmas time, as indeed at every
+time, that I do not forget you, and that all the distance and change
+of country can make no difference. Understand, too (for _that_ will
+give pleasure to your goodness), that I am very happy, and not unwell,
+though it is almost Christmas....
+
+Dearest friend, are you well and in good spirits? Think of me over
+the Cyprus, between the cup and the lip, though bad things are said to
+fall out so. We have, instead of Cyprus, _Montepulciano_, the famous
+'King of Wine,' crowned king, you remember, by the grace of a poet!
+Your Cyprus, however, keeps supremacy over me, and will not abdicate
+the divine right of being associated with you. I speak of wine, but we
+live here the most secluded, quiet life possible--reading and writing,
+and talking of all things in heaven and earth, and a little besides;
+and sometimes even laughing as if we had twenty people to laugh with
+us, or rather _hadn't_. We know not a creature, I am happy to say,
+except an Italian professor (of the university here) who called on us
+the other evening and praised aloud the scholars of England. 'English
+Latin was best,' he said, 'and English Greek foremost.' Do you clap
+your hands?
+
+The new pope is more liberal than popes in general, and people write
+odes to him in consequence.
+
+Robert is going to bring out a new edition of his collected poems,
+and you are not to read any more, if you please, till this is done.
+I heard of Carlyle's saying the other day 'that he hoped more from
+Robert Browning, for the people of England, than from any living
+English writer,' which pleased me, of course. I am just sending off
+an anti-slavery poem for America,[155] too ferocious, perhaps, for the
+Americans to publish: but they asked for a poem and shall have it.
+
+If I ask for a letter, shall I have it, I wonder? Remember me and
+love me a little, and pray for me, dearest friend, and believe how
+gratefully and ever affectionately
+
+I am your
+
+ELIBET,
+
+though Robert always calls me _Ba_, and thinks it the prettiest name
+in the world! which is a proof, you will say, not only of blind love
+but of deaf love.
+
+[Footnote 155: 'The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point' _(Poetical
+Works_, ii. 192). It was first printed in a collection called _The
+Liberty Bell_, for sale at the Boston National Anti-slavery Bazaar
+of 1848. It was separately printed in England in 1849 as a small
+pamphlet, which is now a rare bibliographical curiosity.]
+
+
+It was during the stay at Pisa, and early in the year 1847, that Mr.
+Browning first became acquainted with his wife's 'Sonnets from
+the Portuguese.' Written during the course of their courtship and
+engagement, they were not shown even to him until some months after
+their marriage. The story of it was told by Mr. Browning in later
+life to Mr. Edmund Gosse, with leave to make it known to the world in
+general; and from Mr. Gosse's publication it is here quoted in his own
+words.[156]
+
+[Footnote 156: '_Critical Kit-Kats_,' by E. Gosse, p. 2 (1896).]
+
+'Their custom was, Mr. Browning said, to write alone, and not to show
+each other what they had written. This was a rule which he sometimes
+broke through, but she never. He had the habit of working in a
+downstairs room, where their meals were spread, while Mrs. Browning
+studied in a room on the floor above. One day, early in 1847, their
+breakfast being over, Mrs. Browning went upstairs, while her husband
+stood at the window watching the street till the table should be
+cleared. He was presently aware of some one behind him, although the
+servant was gone. It was Mrs. Browning, who held him by the shoulder
+to prevent his turning to look at her, and at the same time pushed
+a packet of papers into the pocket of his coat. She told him to read
+that, and to tear it up if he did not like it; and then she fled again
+to her own room.'
+
+The sonnets were intended for her husband's eye alone; in the first
+instance, not even for his. No poems can ever have been composed with
+less thought of the public; perhaps for that very reason they are
+unmatched for simplicity and sincerity in all Mrs. Browning's work.
+Her genius in them has full mastery over its material, as it has in
+few of her other poems. All impurities of style or rhythm are purged
+away by the fire of love; and they stand, not only highest among the
+writings of their authoress, but also in the very forefront of English
+love-poems. With the single exception of Rossetti, no modern English
+poet has written of love with such genius, such beauty, and such
+sincerity, as the two who gave the most beautiful example of it in
+their own lives.
+
+Fortunately for all those who love true poetry, Mr. Browning judged
+rightly of the obligation laid upon him by the possession of these
+poems. 'I dared not,' he said, 'reserve to myself the finest sonnets
+written in any language since Shakespeare's.' Accordingly he persuaded
+his wife to commit the printing of them to her friend, Miss Mitford;
+and in the course of the year they appeared in a slender volume,
+entitled 'Sonnets, by E.B.B.,' with the imprint 'Reading, 1847,' and
+marked 'Not for publication.' It was not until three years later that
+they were offered to the general public, in the volumes of 1850.
+Here first they appeared under the title of 'Sonnets from the
+Portuguese'--a title suggested by Mr. Browning (in preference to his
+wife's proposal, 'Sonnets translated from the Bosnian') for the sake
+of its half-allusion to her other poem, 'Catarina to Camoens,' which
+was one of his chief favourites among her works.
+
+To these sonnets there is, however, no allusion in the letters here
+published, which say little for some time of her own work.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+February 8, 1847.
+
+But, my dearest Miss Mitford, your scheme about Leghorn is drawn out
+in the clouds. Now just see how impossible. Leghorn is fifteen miles
+off, and though there is a railroad there is no liberty for French
+books to wander backwards and forwards without inspection and seizure.
+Why, do remember that we are in Italy after all! Nevertheless, I will
+tell you what we have done: transplanted our subscription from the
+Italian library, which was wearing us away into a misanthropy, or at
+least despair of the wits of all Southerns, into a library which has
+a tolerable supply of French books, and gives us the privilege
+besides of having a French newspaper, the 'Siècle,' left with us every
+evening. Also, this library admits (is allowed to admit on certain
+conditions) some books forbidden generally by the censureship, which
+is of the strictest; and though Balzac appears very imperfectly, I
+am delighted to find him at all, and shall dun the bookseller for the
+'Instruction criminelle,' which I hope discharges your Lucien as a
+'forçat'--neither man nor woman--and true poet, least of all....
+
+The 'Siècle' has for a _feuilleton_ a new romance of Soulié's, called
+'Saturnin Fichet,' which is really not good, and tiresome to boot.
+Robert and I began by each of us reading it, but after a little while
+he left me alone, being certain that no good could come of such a
+work. So, of course, ever since, I have been exclaiming and exclaiming
+as to the wonderful improvement and increasing beauty and glory of
+it, just to justify myself, and to make him sorry for not having
+persevered! The truth is, however, that but for obstinacy I should
+give up too. Deplorably dull the story is, and there is a crowd of
+people each more indifferent than each, to you; the pith of the plot
+being (very characteristically) that the hero has somebody exactly
+like him. To the reader, it's _all one_ in every sense--who's who, and
+what's what. Robert is a warm admirer of Balzac and has read most of
+his books, but certainly--oh certainly--he does not in a general way
+appreciate our French people quite with our warmth; he takes too high
+a standard, I tell him, and won't listen to a story for a story's
+sake. I can bear to be amused, you know without a strong pull on my
+admiration. So we have great wars sometimes, and I put up Dumas' flag,
+or Soulié's, or Eugène Sue's (yet he was properly possessed by the
+'Mystères de Paris') and carry it till my arms ache. The plays and
+vaudevilles he knows far more of than I do, and always maintains
+they are the happiest growth of the French school--setting aside the
+_masters_, observe--for Balzac and George Sand hold all their honours;
+and, before your letter came, he had told me about the 'Kean' and the
+other dramas. Then we read together the other day the 'Rouge et Noir,'
+that powerful book of Stendhal's (Beyle), and he thought it very
+striking, and observed--what I had thought from the first and again
+and again--that it was exactly like Balzac _in the raw_, in the
+material and undeveloped conception. What a book it is really, and so
+full of pain and bitterness, and the gall of iniquity! The new Dumas
+I shall see in time, perhaps, and it is curious that Robert had just
+been telling me the very story you speak of in your letter, from the
+'Causes Célèbres.' I never read it--the more shame! Dearest friend,
+all this talk of French books and no talk about _you_--the _most_
+shame! You don't tell me enough of yourself, and I want to hear,
+because (besides the usual course of reasons) Mr. Chorley spoke of you
+as if you were not as cheerful as usual; do tell me. Ah! if you fancy
+that I do not love you as near, through being so far, you are unjust
+to me as you never were before. For myself, the brightness round me
+has had a cloud on it lately by an illness of poor Wilson's.... She
+would not go to Dr. Cook till I was terrified one night, while she was
+undressing me, by her sinking down on the sofa in a shivering fit. Oh,
+so frightened I was, and Robert ran out for a physician; and I could
+have shivered too, with the fright. But she is convalescent now,
+thank God! and in the meanwhile I have acquired a heap of practical
+philosophy, and have learnt how it is possible (in certain conditions
+of the human frame) to comb out and twist up one's own hair, and lace
+one's very own stays, and cause hooks and eyes to meet behind one's
+very own back, besides making toast and water for Wilson--which last
+miracle, it is only just to say, was considerably assisted by Robert's
+counsels 'not quite to set fire to the bread' while one was toasting
+it. He was the best and kindest all that time, as even _he_ could be,
+and carried the kettle when it was too heavy for me, and helped me
+with heart and head. Mr. Chorley could not have praised him too much,
+be very sure. I, who always rather appreciated him, do set down the
+thoughts I had as merely unjust things; he exceeds them all, indeed.
+Yes, Mr. Chorley has been very kind to us. I had a kind note myself
+from him a few days since, and do you know that we have a sort of hope
+of seeing him in Italy this year, with dearest Mr. Kenyon, who has the
+goodness to crown his goodness by a 'dream' of coming to see us? We
+leave Pisa in April (did I tell you that?) and pass through Florence
+towards the north of Italy--to _Venice_, for instance. In the way of
+writing, I have not done much yet--just finished my rough sketch of
+an anti-slavery ballad and sent it off to America, where nobody will
+print it, I am certain, because I could not help making it bitter. If
+they _do_ print it, I shall thank them more boldly in earnest than
+I fancy now. Tell me of Mary Howitt's new collection of ballads--are
+they good? I warmly wish that Mr. Chorley may succeed with his play;
+but how can Miss Cushman promise a hundred nights for an untried
+work?... Perhaps you may find the two last numbers of the 'Bells and
+Pomegranates' less obscure--it seems so to me. Flush has grown an
+absolute monarch and barks one distracted when he wants a door opened.
+Robert spoils him, I think. Do think of me as your ever affectionate
+and grateful
+
+BA.
+
+Have you seen 'Agnes de Misanie,' the new play by the author of
+'Lucretia'? A witty feuilletoniste says of it that, besides all the
+unities of Aristotle, it comprises, from beginning to end, _unity of
+situation_. Not bad, is it? Madame Ancelot has just succeeded with a
+comedy, called 'Une Année à Paris.' By the way, _shall you go to Paris
+this spring_?[157]
+
+[Footnote 157: A list of the works composing Balzac's _Comédie
+Humaine_ is attached to this letter for Miss Mitford's benefit.]
+
+
+From Mr. Browning's family, though she had as yet had no opportunity
+of making acquaintance with them face to face, Mrs. Browning from the
+first met with an affectionate reception. The following is the first
+now extant of a series of letters written by her to Miss Browning,
+the poet's sister. The abrupt and private nature of the marriage
+never seems to have caused the slightest coldness of feeling in this
+quarter, though it must have caused anxiety; and the tone of the early
+letters, in which so new and unfamiliar a relation had to be taken up,
+does equal honour to the writer and to the recipient.
+
+
+_To Miss Browning_
+[Pisa: about February 1847.]
+
+I must begin by thanking dearest Sarianna again for her note, and by
+assuring her that the affectionate tone of it quite made me happy and
+grateful together--that I am grateful to _all of you_: do _feel_ that
+I am. For the rest, when I see (afar off) Robert's minute manuscripts,
+a certain distrust steals over me of anything I can possibly tell you
+of our way of living, lest it should be the vainest of repetitions,
+and by no means worth repeating, both at once. Such a quiet silent
+life it is--going to hear the Friar preach in the Duomo, a grand event
+in it, and the wind laying flat all our schemes about Volterra and
+Lucca! I have had to give up even the Friar for these three days past;
+there is nothing for me when I have driven out Robert to take his
+necessary walk but to sit and watch the pinewood blaze. He is grieved
+about the illness of his cousin, only I do hope that your next letter
+will confirm the happy change which stops the further anxiety, and
+come soon for that purpose, besides others. Your letters never can
+come too often, remember, even when they have not to speak of illness,
+and I for my part must always have a thankful interest in your cousin
+for the kind part he took in the happiest event of my life. You have
+to tell us too of your dear mother--Robert is so anxious about her
+always. How deeply and tenderly he loves her and all of you, never
+could have been more manifest than now when he is away from you and
+has to talk _of_ you instead of _to_ you. By the way (or rather out
+of the way) I quite took your view of the purposed ingratitude to poor
+Miss Haworth[158]--it would have been worse in him than the sins of
+'Examiner' and 'Athenaeum.' If authors won't feel for one another,
+there's an end of the world of writing! Oh, I think he proposed it in
+a moment of hardheartedness--we all put on tortoiseshell now and then,
+and presently come out into the sun as sensitively as ever. Besides
+Miss Haworth has written to us very kindly; and kindness doesn't
+spring up everywhere, like the violets in your gravel walks. See how I
+understand Hatcham. Do try to love me a little, dearest Sarianna, and
+(with my grateful love always to your father and mother) let me be
+your affectionate sister,
+
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING,
+or rather BA.
+
+[Footnote 158: Miss E.F. Haworth (several letters to whom are given
+farther on) was an old friend of Robert Browning's, and published a
+volume of verse in 1847, to which this passage seems to allude.]
+
+
+The correspondence with Mr. Westwood, which had lapsed for a
+considerable time, was resumed with the following letter:
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+Collegio Ferdinando, Pisa: March 10, 1847.
+
+If really, my dear Mr. Westwood, it was an 'ill temper' in you,
+causing the brief note, it was a most flattering ill temper, and I
+thank you just as I have had reason to do for the good nature which
+has caused you to bear with me so often and so long. You have been
+misled on some points. I did not go to Italy last year, or rather the
+year before last! I was disappointed and forced to stay in Wimpole
+Street after all; but the winter being so mild, so miraculously mild
+for England you may remember, I was spared my winter relapse and
+left liberty for new plans such as I never used to think were in
+my destiny! Such a change it is to me, such a strange happiness and
+freedom, and you must not in your kindness wish me back again, but
+rather be contented, like a friend as you are, to hear that I am very
+happy and very well, and still doubtful whether all the brightness can
+be meant for _me_! It is just as if the sun rose again at 7 o'clock
+P.M. The strangeness seems so great....
+
+I am now very well, and so happy as not to think much of it, except
+for the sake of another. And do you fancy how I feel, carried; into
+the visions of nature from my gloomy room. Even now I walk as in a
+dream. We made a pilgrimage from Avignon to Vaucluse in right poetical
+duty, and I and my husband sate upon two stones in the midst of the
+fountain which in its dark prison of rocks flashes and roars and
+testifies to the memory of Petrarch. It was louder and fuller than
+usual when we were there, on account of the rains; and Flush, though
+by no means born to be a hero, considered my position so outrageous
+that he dashed through the water to me, splashing me all over, so he
+is baptised in Petrarch's name. The scenery is full of grandeur, the
+rocks sheathe themselves into the sky, and nothing grows there except
+a little cypress here and there, and a straggling olive tree; and the
+fountain works out its soul in its stony prison, and runs away in a
+green rapid stream. Such a striking sight it is. I sate upon deck,
+too, in our passage from Marseilles to Genoa, and had a vision of
+mountains, six or seven deep, one behind another. As to Pisa, call it
+a beautiful town, you cannot do less with Arno and its palaces, and
+above all the wonderful Duomo and Campo Santo, and Leaning Tower and
+Baptistery, all of which are a stone's throw from our windows. We
+have rooms in a great college-house built by Vasari, and fallen into
+desuetude from collegiate purposes; and here we live the quietest and
+most _tête-à-tête_ of lives, knowing nobody, hearing nothing, and for
+nearly three months together never catching a glimpse of a paper. Oh,
+how wrong you were about the 'Times'! Now, however, we subscribe to a
+French and Italian library, and have a French newspaper every evening,
+the 'Siècle,' and so look through a loophole at the world. Yet, not
+too proud are we, even now, for all the news you will please to send
+us in charity: 'da obolum Belisario!'
+
+What do you mean about poor Tennyson? I heard of him last on his
+return from a visit to the Swiss mountains, which 'disappointed him,'
+he was _said to say_. Very wrong, either of mountains or poet!
+
+Tell me if you make acquaintance with Mrs. Hewitt's new ballads.
+
+Mrs. Jameson is engaged in a work on art which will be very
+interesting....
+
+Flush's love to your Flopsy. Flush has grown very overbearing in this
+Italy, I think because my husband spoils him (if not for the glory
+at Vaucluse); Robert declares that the said Flush considers him, my
+husband, to be created for the especial purpose of doing him service,
+and really it looks rather like it.
+
+Never do I see the 'Athenaeum' now, but before I left England some
+pure gushes between the rocks reminded me of you. Tell me all you can;
+it will all be like rain upon dry ground. My husband bids me offer his
+regards to you--if you will accept them; and that you may do it ask
+your heart. I will assure you (aside) that his poetry is as the prose
+of his nature: he himself is so much better and higher than his own
+works.
+
+
+In the middle of April the Brownings left Pisa and journeyed to
+Florence, arriving there on April 20. There, however, the programme
+was arrested, and, save for an abortive excursion to Vallombrosa,
+whence they were repulsed by the misogynist principles of the monks,
+they continued to reside in Florence for the remainder of the year.
+Their first abode was in the Via delle Belle Donne; but after the
+return from Vallombrosa, in August, they moved across the river, and
+took furnished rooms in the Palazzo Guidi, the building which, under
+the name of 'Casa Guidi,' is for ever associated with their memory.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Florence: April 24, 1847.
+
+I received your letter, my dearest friend, by this day's post, and
+wrote a little note directly to the office as a trap for the feet
+of your travellers. If they escape us after all, therefore, they may
+praise their stars for it rather than my intentions--_our_ intentions,
+I should say, for Robert will gladly do everything he can in the way
+of expounding a text or two of the glories of Florence, and we both
+shall be much pleased and cordially pleased to learn more of Fanny
+and her brother than the glance at Pisa could teach us. As for me, she
+will let me have a little talking for my share: I can't walk about or
+see anything. I lie here flat on the sofa in order to be wise; I rest
+and take port wine by wineglasses; and a few more days of it will
+prepare me, I hope and trust, for an interview with the Venus de'
+Medici. Think of my having been in Florence since Tuesday, this
+being Saturday, and not a step taken into the galleries. It seems a
+disgrace, a sort of involuntary disgraceful act, or rather no-act,
+which to complain of relieves one to some degree. And how kind of you
+to wish to hear from me of myself! There is nothing really much the
+matter with me; I am just _weak_, sleeping and eating dreadfully well
+considering that Florence isn't seen yet, and 'looking well,' too,
+says Mrs. Jameson, who, with her niece, is our guest just now. It
+would have been wise if I had rested longer at Pisa, but, you see,
+there was a long engagement to meet Mrs. Jameson here, and she
+expressed a very kind unwillingness to leave Italy without keeping it:
+also she had resolved to come out of her way on purpose for this, and,
+as I had the consent of my physician, we determined to perform our
+part of the compact; and in order to prepare for the longer journey I
+went out in the carriage a little too soon, perhaps, and a little too
+long. At least, if I had kept quite still I should have been strong
+by this time--not that I have done myself harm in the serious sense,
+observe--and now the affair is accomplished, I shall be wonderfully
+discreet and self-denying, and resist Venuses and Apollos like some
+one wiser than the gods themselves. My chest is very well; there has
+been no symptom of evil in that quarter.... We took the whole coupé
+of the diligence--but regretted our first plan of the _vettura_
+nevertheless--and now are settled in very comfortable rooms in the
+'Via delle Belle Donne' just out of the Piazza Santa Maria Novella,
+very superior rooms to our apartment in Pisa, in which we were cheated
+to the uttermost with all the subtlety of Italy and to the full
+extent of our ignorance; think what _that_ must have been! Our present
+apartment, with the hire of a grand piano and music, does not cost us
+so much within ever so many francisconi. Oh, and you don't frighten me
+though we are on the north side of the Arno! We have taken our rooms
+for two months, and may be here longer, and the fear of the heat was
+stronger with me than the fear of the cold, or we might have been in
+the Pitti and 'arrostiti' by this time. We expected dear Mrs.
+Jameson on Saturday, but she came on Friday evening, having suddenly
+remembered that it was Shakespeare's birthday, and bringing with her
+from Arezzo a bottle of wine to 'drink to his memory with two other
+poets,' so there was a great deal of merriment, as you may fancy, and
+Robert played Shakespeare's favorite air, 'The Light of Love,' and
+everybody was delighted to meet everybody, and Roman news and Pisan
+dullness were properly discussed on every side. She saw a good deal
+of Cobden in Rome, and went with him to the Sistine Chapel. He has no
+feeling for art, and, being very true and earnest, could only do his
+best to _try_ to admire Michael Angelo; but here and there, where he
+understood, the pleasure was expressed with a blunt characteristic
+simplicity. Standing before the statue of Demosthenes, he said:
+'That man is persuaded himself of what he speaks, and will therefore
+persuade others.' She liked him exceedingly. For my part, I should
+join in more admiration if it were not for his having _accepted
+money_, but paid patriots are no heroes of mine. 'Verily they have
+their reward.' O'Connell had arrived in Rome, and it was considered
+that he came only to die. Among the artists, Gibson and Wyatt were
+doing great things; she wishes us to know Gibson particularly. As to
+the Pope he lives in an atmosphere of love and admiration, and 'he is
+doing _what he can_,' Mrs. Jameson believes. Robert says: 'A dreadful
+situation, after all, for a man of understanding and honesty! I pity
+him from my soul, for he can, at best, only temporise with truth.'
+But human nature is doomed to pay a high price for its opportunities.
+Delighted I am to have your good account of dear Mr. Martin, though
+you are naughty people to persist in going to England so soon. Do
+write to me and tell me all about both of you. I will do what I
+can--like the Pope--but what can I do? Yes, indeed, I mean to enjoy
+art and nature too; one shall not exclude the other. This Florence
+seems divine as we pass the bridges, and my husband, who knows
+everything, is to teach and show me all the great wonders, so that I
+am reasonably impatient to try my advantages. His kind regards to you
+both, and my best love, dearest friends....
+
+Your very affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+Florence: May 12, [1847].
+
+I was afraid, we both were afraid for you, dearest friend, when we
+saw the clouds gather and heard the rain fall as it did that day at
+Florence. It seemed impossible that you should be beyond the evil
+influence, should you have travelled ever so fast; but, after all,
+a storm in the Apennines, like many a moral storm, will be better
+perhaps than a calm to look back upon. We talked of you and thought of
+you, and missed you at coffee time, and regretted that so pleasant a
+week (for us) should have gone so fast, as fast as a dull week, or,
+rather, a good deal faster. Dearest friend, do believe that we _felt_
+your goodness in Coming to us--in making us an object--before you left
+Italy; it fills up the measure of goodness and kindness for which we
+shall thank and love you all our lives. Never fancy that we can forget
+you or be less touched by the memory of what you have been to us in
+affection and sympathy--never. And don't _you_ lose sight of _us_; do
+write often, and do, _do_ make haste and come back to Italy, and
+then make use of us in any and every possible way as house-takers
+or house-mates, for we are ready to accept the lowest place or the
+highest. The week you gave us would be altogether bright and glad if
+it had not been for the depression and anxiety on your part. May God
+turn it all to gain and satisfaction in some unlooked-for way. To be a
+_road-maker_ is weary work, even across the Apennines of life. We
+have not science enough for it if we have strength, which we haven't
+either. Do you remember how Sindbad shut his eyes and let himself
+be carried over the hills by an eagle? _That_ was better than to set
+about breaking stones. Also what you could do you have done; you have
+finished your part, and the sense of a fulfilled duty is in itself
+satisfying--is and must be. My sympathies go with you entirely, while
+I wish your dear Gerardine to be happy; I wish it from my heart....
+Just after you left us arrived our box with the precious deeds, which
+are thrown into the cabinet for want of witnesses. And then Robert
+has had a letter from Mr. Forster with the date of _Shakespeare's
+birthday_, and overflowing with kindness really both to himself and
+me. It quite touched me, that letter. Also we have had a visitation
+from an American, but on the point of leaving Florence and very tame
+and inoffensive, and we bore it very well considering. He sent us
+a new literary periodical of the old world, in which, among other
+interesting matter, I had the pleasure of reading an account of my own
+'blindness,' taken from a French paper (the 'Presse'), and mentioned
+with humane regret. Well! and what more news is there to tell you?
+I have been out once, only once, and only for an inglorious glorious
+drive round the Piazza Gran Duca, past the Duomo, outside the walls,
+and in again at the Cascine. It was like the trail of a vision in the
+evening sun. I saw the Perseus in a sort of flash. The Duomo is more
+after the likeness of a Duomo than Pisa can show; I like those masses
+in ecclesiastical architecture. Now we are plotting how to, engage
+a carriage for a month's service without ruining ourselves, for we
+_must_ see, and I _can't_ walk and see, though much stronger than when
+we parted, and looking much better, as Robert and the looking glass
+both do testify. I have seemed at last 'to leap to a conclusion' of
+convalescence. But the heat--oh, so hot it is. If it is half as hot
+with you, you must be calling on the name of St. Lawrence by this
+time, and require no 'turning.' I should not like to travel under
+such a sun. It would be too like playing at snapdragon. Yes, 'brightly
+happy.' Women generally _lose_ by marriage, but I have gained the
+world by mine. If it were not for some griefs, which are and must be
+griefs, I should be too happy perhaps, which is good for nobody. May
+God bless you, my dear, dearest friend! Robert must be content with
+sending his love to-day, and shall write another day. We both love you
+every day. My love and a kiss to dearest Gerardine, who is to remember
+to write to me.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Florence: May 26, 1847.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+I should have answered your letter, my dearest friend, more quickly,
+but when it came I was ill, as you may have heard, and afterwards I
+wished to wait until I could send you information about the Leaning
+Tower and the bells[159]. The book you required, about the cathedral,
+Robert has tried in vain to procure for you. Plenty of such books,
+but _not in English_. In London such things are to be found, I
+should think, without difficulty, for instance, 'Murray's Handbook
+to Northern Italy,' though rather dear (12_s._), would give you
+sufficiently full information upon the ecclesiastical glories both of
+Pisa and of this beautiful Florence, from whence I write to you.... I
+will answer for the harmony of the bells, as we lived within a stone's
+throw of them, and they began at four o'clock every morning and
+rang my dreams apart. The Pasquareccia (the fourth) especially has
+a profound note in it, which may well have thrilled horror to the
+criminal's heart.[160] It was ghastly in its effects; dropped into
+the deep of night like a thought of death. Often have I said, 'Oh, how
+ghastly!' and then turned on my pillow and dreamed a bad dream. But if
+the bell founders at Pisa have a merited reputation, let no one say as
+much for the bellringers. The manner in which all the bells of all
+the churches in the city are shaken together sometimes would certainly
+make you groan in despair of your ears. The discord is fortunately
+indescribable. Well--but here we are at Florence, the most beautiful
+of the cities devised by man....
+
+In the meanwhile I have seen the Venus, I have seen the divine
+Raphaels. I have stood by Michael Angelo's tomb in Santa Croce. I
+have looked at the wonderful Duomo. This cathedral! After all, the
+elaborate grace of the Pisan cathedral is one thing, and the massive
+grandeur of this of Florence is another and better thing; it struck
+me with a sense of the sublime in architecture. At Pisa we say, 'How
+beautiful!' here we say nothing; it is enough if we can breathe. The
+mountainous marble masses overcome as we look up--we feel the weight
+of them on the soul. Tesselated marbles (the green treading its
+elaborate pattern into the dim yellow, which seems the general hue of
+the structure) climb against the sky, self-crowned with that prodigy
+of marble domes. It struck me as a wonder in architecture. I had
+neither seen nor imagined the like of it in any way. It seemed
+to carry its theology out with it; it signified more than a mere
+building. Tell me everything you want to know. I shall like to answer
+a thousand questions. Florence is beautiful, as I have said before,
+and must say again and again, most beautiful. The river rushes through
+the midst of its palaces like a crystal arrow, and it is hard to tell,
+when you see all by the clear sunset, whether those churches, and
+houses, and windows, and bridges, and people walking, in the water or
+out of the water, are the real walls, and windows, and bridges, and
+people, and churches. The only difference is that, down below, there
+is a double movement; the movement of the stream besides the movement
+of life. For the rest, the distinctness of the eye is as great in one
+as in the other.... Remember me to such of my friends as remember me
+kindly when unreminded by me. I am very happy--happier and happier.
+
+ELIBET.
+
+Robert's best regards to you always.
+
+[Footnote 159: It will be remembered that Mr. Boyd took a great
+interest in bells and bell ringing. The passage omitted below contains
+an extract from Murray's _Handbook_ with reference to the bells of
+Pisa.]
+
+[Footnote 160: This bell was tolled on the occasion of an execution.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+Palazzo Guidi, Via Maggio, Florence:
+August 7, 1847 [postmark].
+
+You will be surprised perhaps, and perhaps not, dearest friend,
+to find that we are still at Florence. Florence 'holds us with a
+glittering eye;' there's a charm cast round us, and we can't get away.
+In the first place, your news of Recoaro came so late that, as you
+said yourself, we ought to have been there before your letter reached
+us. Nobody would encourage us to go north on any grounds, indeed,
+and if anybody speaks a word now in favour of Venice, straight comes
+somebody else speaking the direct contrary. Altogether, we took to
+making a plan of our own--a great, wild, delightful plan of plunging
+into the mountains and spending two or three months at the monastery
+of Vallombrosa, until the heat was passed, and dear Mr. Kenyon
+decided, and we could either settle for the winter at Florence or pass
+on to Rome. Could anything look more delightful than that? Well, we
+got a letter of recommendation to the abbot, and left our apartment,
+Via delle Belle Donne, a week before our three months were done,
+thoroughly burned out by the sun; set out at four in the morning,
+reached Pelago, and from thence travelled five miles along a 'via non
+rotabile' through the most romantic scenery. Oh, such mountains!--as
+if the whole world were alive with mountains--such ravines--black in
+spite of flashing waters in them--such woods and rocks--travelled
+in basket sledges drawn by four white oxen--Wilson and I and the
+luggage--and Robert riding step by step. We were four hours doing the
+five miles, so you may fancy what rough work it was. Whether I was
+most tired or charmed was a _tug_ between body and soul. The worst was
+that, there being a new abbot at the monastery--an austere man jealous
+of his sanctity and the approach of women--our letter, and Robert's
+eloquence to boot, did nothing for us, and we were ingloriously and
+ignominiously expelled at the end of five days. For three days we were
+welcome; for two more we kept our ground; but after _that_, out we
+were thrust, with baggage and expectations. Nothing could be much more
+provoking. And yet we came back very merrily for disappointed people
+to Florence, getting up at three in the morning, and rolling or
+sliding (as it might happen) down the precipitous path, and seeing
+round us a morning glory of mountains, clouds, and rising sun, such
+as we never can forget--back to Florence and our old lodgings, and an
+eatable breakfast of coffee and bread, and a confession one to another
+that if we had won the day instead of losing it, and spent our summer
+with the monks, we should have grown considerably _thinner_ by the
+victory. They make their bread, I rather imagine, with the sawdust of
+their fir trees, and, except oil and wine--yes, and plenty of beef
+(of _fleisch_, as your Germans say, of all kinds, indeed), which isn't
+precisely the fare to suit us--we were thrown for nourishment on the
+great sights around. Oh, but so beautiful were mountains and forests
+and waterfalls that I could have kept my ground happily for the two
+months--even though the only book I saw there was the chronicle of
+their San Gualberto. Is he not among your saints? Being routed fairly,
+and having breakfasted fully at our old apartment, Robert went out to
+find cool rooms, if possible, and make the best of our position, and
+now we are settled magnificently in this Palazzo Guidi on a first
+floor in an apartment which _looks_ quite beyond our means, and _would
+be_ except in the dead part of the season--a suite of spacious rooms
+opening on a little terrace and furnished elegantly--rather to suit
+our predecessor the Russian prince than ourselves--but cool and in a
+delightful situation, six paces from the Piazza Pitti, and with right
+of daily admission to the Boboli gardens. We pay what we paid in the
+Via Belle Donne. Isn't this prosperous? You would be surprised to see
+_me_, I think, I am so very well (and look so)--dispensed from being
+carried upstairs, and inclined to take a run, for a walk, every now
+and then. I scarcely recognise myself or my ways, or my own spirits,
+all is so different....
+
+We have made the acquaintance of Mr. Powers,[161] who is
+delightful--of a most charming simplicity, with those great burning
+eyes of his. Tell me what you think of his boy listening to the
+shell. Oh, your Raphaels! how divine! And M. Angelo's sculptures! His
+pictures I leap up to in vain, and fall back regularly. Write of your
+book and yourself, and write soon; and let me be, as always, your
+affectionate BA.
+
+We are here for two months certain, and perhaps longer. Do write.
+
+Dear Aunt Nina,--Ba has said something for me, I hope. In any case, my
+love goes with hers, I trust you are well and happy, as we are, and as
+we would make you if we could. Love to Geddie. Ever yours, [R.B.]
+
+[Footnote 161: The American sculptor.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Florence: August 7, 1847.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--How I have been longing to get this letter,
+which comes at last, and justifies the longing by the pleasure it
+gives!... How kind, how affectionate you are to me, and how strong
+your claim is that I should thrust on you, in defiance of good taste
+and conventions, every evidence and assurance of my happiness, so
+as to justify your _faith_ to yourselves and others. Indeed, indeed,
+dearest Mrs. Martin, you may 'exult' for me--and this though it should
+all end here and now. The uncertainties of life and death seem nothing
+to me. A year (nearly) is saved from the darkness, and if that
+one year has compensated for those that preceded it--which it has,
+abundantly--why, let it for those that shall follow, if it so please
+God. Come what may, I feel as if I never could have a right to murmur.
+I have been happy enough. Brought about too it was, indeed, by a sort
+of miracle which to this moment, when I look back, bewilders me to
+think of; and if you knew the details, counted the little steps,
+and could; compare my moral position three years and a half ago with
+_this_, you would come to despise San Gualberto's miraculous tree at
+Vallombrosa, which, being dead, gave out green leaves in recognition
+of his approach, as testified by the inscription--do you remember? But
+you can't stop to-day to read mine, so rather I shall tell you of our
+exploit in the mountains. Only one thing I must say first, one thing
+which you must forgive me for the vanity of resolving to say at last,
+having had it in my head very often. There's a detestable engraving,
+which, if you have the ill luck to see (and you _may_, because,
+horrible to relate, it is in the shop windows), will you have the
+kindness, for my sake, not to fancy _like Robert_?--it being, as he
+says himself, the very image of '_a young man at Waterloo House_, in
+a moment of inspiration--"A lovely blue, ma'am."' It is as like Robert
+as Flush. And now I am going to tell you of Vallombrosa. You heard how
+we meant to stay two months there, and you are to imagine how we got
+up at three in the morning to escape the heat (imagine me!)--and with
+all our possessions and a 'dozen of port' (which my husband doses me
+with twice a day because once it was necessary) proceeded to Pelago
+by vettura, and from thence in two sledges, drawn each by two
+white bullocks up to the top of the holy mountain. (Robert was on
+horseback.) Precisely it must be as you left it. Who can make a road
+up a house? We were four hours going five miles, and I with all my
+goodwill was dreadfully tired, and scarcely in appetite for the beef
+and oil with which we were entertained at the House of Strangers. We
+are simple people about diet, and had said over and over that we would
+live on eggs and milk and bread and butter during these two months. We
+might as well have said that we would live on manna from heaven.
+The things we had fixed on were just the impossible things. Oh, that
+bread, with the fetid smell, which stuck in the throat like Macbeth's
+amen! I am not surprised, you recollect it! The hens had 'got them to
+a nunnery,' and objected to lay eggs, and the milk and the holy water
+stood confounded. But of course we spread the tablecloth, just as you
+did, over all drawbacks of the sort; and the beef and oil, as I
+said, and the wine too, were liberal and excellent, and we made our
+gratitude apparent in Robert's best Tuscan--in spite of which we
+were turned out ignominiously at the end of five days, having been
+permitted to overstay the usual three days by only two. No, nothing
+could move the lord abbot. He is a new abbot, and; given to sanctity,
+and has set his face against women. 'While he is abbot,' he said to
+our mediating monk, 'he _will_ be abbot. So he is abbot, and we had to
+come back to Florence.' As I read in the 'Life of San Gualberto,' laid
+on the table for the edification of strangers, the brothers attain to
+sanctification, among other means, by cleaning out pigsties with
+their bare hands, without spade or shovel; but _that_ is uncleanliness
+enough--they wouldn't touch the little finger of a woman. Angry I was,
+I do assure you. I should have liked to stay there, in spite of the
+bread. We should have been only a little thinner at the end. And
+the scenery--oh, how magnificent! How we enjoyed that great, silent,
+ink-black pine wood! And do you remember the sea of mountains to the
+left? How grand it is! We were up at three in the morning again to
+return to Florence, and the glory of that morning sun breaking the
+clouds to pieces among the hills is something ineffaceable from my
+remembrance. We came back ignominiously to our old rooms, but found it
+impossible to stay on account of the suffocating heat, yet we scarcely
+could go far from Florence, because of Mr. Kenyon and our hope of
+seeing him here (since lost). A perplexity ended by Robert's discovery
+of our present apartments, on the Pitti side of the river (indeed,
+close to the Grand Duke's palace), consisting of a suite of spacious
+and delightful rooms, which come within our means only from the
+deadness of the summer season, comparatively quite cool, and with
+a terrace which I enjoy to the uttermost through being able to walk
+there without a bonnet, by just stepping out of the window. The church
+of San Felice is opposite, so we haven't a neighbour to look through
+the sunlight or moonlight and take observations. Isn't that pleasant
+altogether? We ordered back the piano and the book subscription, and
+settled for two months, and forgave the Vallombrosa monks for the
+wrong they did us, like secular Christians. What is to come after, I
+can't tell you. But probably we shall creep slowly along toward Rome,
+and spend some hot time of it at Perugia, which is said to be cool
+enough. I think more of other things, wishing that my dearest, kindest
+sisters had a present as bright as mine--to think nothing at all of
+the future. Dearest Henrietta's position has long made me uneasy, and,
+since she frees me into confidence by her confidence to you, I will
+tell you so. Most undesirable it is that this should be continued, and
+yet where is there a door open to escape?[162] ... My dear brothers
+have the illusion that nobody should marry on less than two thousand a
+year. Good heavens! how preposterous it does seem to me! _We_ scarcely
+spend three hundred, and I have every luxury, I ever had, and which
+it would be so easy to give up, at need; and Robert wouldn't sleep,
+I think, if an unpaid bill dragged itself by any chance into another
+week. He says that when people get into 'pecuniary difficulties,' his
+'sympathies always go with the butchers and bakers.' So we keep out of
+scrapes yet, you see....
+
+Your grateful and most affectionate
+BA.
+
+We have had the most delightful letter from Carlyle, who has the
+goodness to say that not for years has a marriage occurred in his
+private circle in which he so heartily rejoiced as in ours. He is a
+personal friend of Robert's, so that I have reason to be very proud
+and glad.
+
+Robert's best regards to you both always, and he is no believer in
+magnetism (only _I_ am). Do mention Mr. C. Hanford's health. How
+strange that he should come to witness my marriage settlement! Did you
+hear?
+
+[Footnote 162: Miss Henrietta Barrett was engaged to Captain Surtees
+Cook, an engagement of which her brothers, as well as her father,
+disapproved, partly on the ground of insufficiency of income.
+Ultimately the difficulty was solved in the same way as in the case of
+Mrs. Browning.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: August 20, [1847],
+
+I have received your letter at last, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, not
+the missing letter, but the one which comes to make up for it and to
+catch up my thoughts, which were grumbling at high tide, I do assure
+you.... As you observed last year (not without reason), these are the
+days of marrying and giving in marriage. Mr. Horne, you see[163] ...
+With all my heart I hope he may be very happy. Men risk a good deal in
+marriage, though not as much as women do; and on the other hand, the
+singleness of a man when his youth is over is a sadder thing than the
+saddest which an unmarried woman can suffer. Nearly all my friends
+of both sexes have been draining off into marriage these two years,
+scarcely one will be left in the sieve, and I may end by saying that
+I have happiness enough for my own share to be divided among them all
+and leave everyone, contented. For me, I take it for pure magic, this
+life of mine. Surely nobody was ever so happy before. I shall wake
+some morning with my hair all dripping out of the enchanted bucket,
+or if not we shall both claim the 'Flitch' next September, if you can
+find one for us in the land of Cockaigne, drying in expectancy of the
+revolution in Tennyson's 'Commonwealth.' Well, I don't agree with Mr.
+Harness in admiring the lady of 'Locksley Hall.' I _must_ either pity
+or despise a woman who could have married Tennyson and chose a common
+man. If happy in her choice, I despise her. That's matter of opinion,
+of course. You may call it matter of foolishness when I add that I
+personally would rather be teased a little and smoked over a good deal
+by a man whom I could look up to and be proud of, than have my feet
+kissed all day by a Mr. Smith in boots and a waistcoat, and thereby
+chiefly distinguished. Neither I nor another, perhaps, had quite a
+right to expect a combination of qualities, such as meet, though, in
+my husband, who is as faultless and pure in his private life as any
+Mr. Smith of them all, who would not owe five shillings, who lives
+like a woman in abstemiousness on a pennyworth of wine a day, never
+touches a cigar even.... Do you hear, as we do, from Mr. Forster, that
+his[164] new poem is his best work? As soon as you read it, let me
+have your opinion. The subject seems almost identical with one of
+Chaucer's. Is it not so? We have spent here the most delightful of
+summers, notwithstanding the heat, and I begin to comprehend the
+possibility of St. Lawrence's ecstasies on the gridiron. Very hot it
+certainly has been and is, yet there have been cool intermissions; and
+as we have spacious and airy rooms, and as Robert lets me sit all day
+in my white dressing gown without a single masculine criticism, and
+as we can step out of the window on a sort of balcony terrace which is
+quite private and swims over with moonlight in the evenings, and as
+we live upon water melons and iced water and figs and all manner of
+fruit, we bear the heat with an angelic patience and felicity which
+really are edifying. We tried to make the monks of Vallombrosa let
+us stay with them for two months, but their new abbot said or
+implied that Wilson and I stank in his nostrils, being women, and San
+Gualberto, the establishes of their order, had enjoined on them only
+the mortification of cleaning out pigsties without fork or shovel.
+So here a couple of women besides was (as Dickens's American said) 'a
+piling it up rayther too mountainious.' So we were sent away at the
+end of five days. So provoking! Such scenery, such hills, such a
+sea of hills looking alive among the clouds. _Which_ rolled, it was
+difficult to discern. Such pine woods, supernaturally silent, with the
+ground black as ink, such chestnut and beech forests hanging from the
+mountains, such rocks and torrents, such chasms and ravines. There
+were eagles there, too, [and] there was _no road_. Robert went on
+horseback, and Flush, Wilson, and I were drawn in a sledge (i.e.
+an old hamper, a basket wine hamper without a wheel) by two white
+bullocks up the precipitous mountains. Think of my travelling in that
+fashion in those wild places at four o'clock in the morning, a little
+frightened, dreadfully tired, but in an ecstasy of admiration above
+all! It was a sight to see before one died and went away to another
+world. Well, but being expelled ignominiously at the end of five days,
+we had to come back to Florence, and find a new apartment cooler than
+the old, and wait for dear Mr. Kenyon. And dear Mr. Kenyon does
+not come (not this autumn, but he may perhaps at the first dawn of
+spring), and on September 20 we take up our knapsacks and turn our
+faces towards Rome, I think, creeping slowly along, with a pause at
+Arezzo, and a longer pause at Perugia, and another perhaps at Terni.
+Then we plan to take an apartment we have heard of, over the Tarpeian
+Rock, and enjoy Rome as we have enjoyed Florence. More can scarcely
+be. This Florence is unspeakably beautiful, by grace both of nature
+and art, and the wheels of life slide on upon the grass (according
+to continental ways) with little trouble and less expense. Dinner,
+'unordered,' comes through the streets and spreads itself on our
+table, as hot as if we had smelt cutlets hours before. The science
+of material life is understood here and in France. Now tell me, what
+right has England to be the dearest country in the world? But I love
+dearly dear England, and we hope to spend many a green summer in her
+yet. The winters you will excuse us, will you not? People who are,
+like us, neither rich nor strong, claim such excuses. I am wonderfully
+well, and far better and stronger than before what you call the Pisan
+'crisis.' Robert declares that nobody would know me, I _look_ so much
+better. And you heard from dearest Henrietta. Ah, both of my dearest
+sisters have been perfect to me. No words can express my feelings
+towards their goodness. Otherwise, I have good accounts from home of
+my father's excellent health and spirits, which is better even than
+to hear of his loving and missing me. I had a few kind lines yesterday
+from Miss Martineau, who invites us from Florence to Westmoreland. She
+wants to talk to me, she says, of 'her beloved Jordan.' She is
+looking forward to a winter of work by the lakes, and to a summer of
+gardening. The kindest of letters Robert has had from Carlyle, who
+makes us very happy by what he says of our marriage. Shakespeare's
+favorite air of the 'Light of Love,' with the full evidence of
+its being Shakespeare's favorite air, is given in Charles Knight's
+edition. Seek for it there. Now do write to me and at length, and tell
+me everything of yourself. Flush hated Vallombrosa, and was frightened
+out of his wits by the pine forests. Flush likes civilised life, and
+the society of little dogs with turned-up tails, such as Florence
+abounds with. Unhappily it abounds also with _fleas_, which afflict
+poor Flush to the verge sometimes of despair. Fancy Robert and me
+down on our knees combing him, with a basin of water on one side! He
+suffers to such a degree from fleas that I cannot bear to witness it.
+He tears off his pretty curls through the irritation. Do you know of a
+remedy? Direct to me, Poste Restante, Florence. Put _via_ France. Let
+me hear, do; and everything of yourself, mind. Is Mrs. Partridge in
+better spirits? Do you read any new French books? Dearest friend, let
+me offer you my husband's cordial regards, with the love of your own
+affectionate
+
+E.B.B., BA.
+
+[Footnote 163: Mr. Horne was just engaged to be married.]
+
+[Footnote 164: Tennyson's _Princess_ had just been published.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+Florence: September 1847.
+
+Yes, indeed, my dear Mr. Westwood, I have seen 'friars.' We have been
+on a pilgrimage to Vallombrosa, and while my husband rode up and down
+the precipitous mountain paths, I and my maid and Flush were dragged
+in a hamper by two white bullocks--and such scenery; such hilly peaks,
+such black ravines and gurgling waters, and rocks and forests above
+and below, and at last such a monastery and such friars, who wouldn't
+let us stay with them beyond five days for fear of corrupting the
+fraternity. The monks had a new abbot, a St. Sejanus of a holy
+man, and a petticoat stank in his nostrils, said he, and all the I
+beseeching which we could offer him with joined hands was classed with
+the temptations of St. Anthony. So we had to come away as we went, and
+get the better as we could of our disappointment, and really it was
+a disappointment not to be able to stay our two months out in the
+wilderness as we had planned it, to say nothing of the heat of
+Florence, to which at the moment it was not pleasant to return. But
+we got new lodgings in the shade and comforted ourselves as well as we
+could. 'Comforted'--there's a word for Florence--that ingratitude was
+a slip of the pen, believe me. Only we had set our hearts upon a two
+months' seclusion in the deep of the pine forests (which have such
+a strange dialect in the silence they speak with), and the mountains
+were divine, and it was provoking to be crossed in our ambitions by
+that little holy abbot with the red face, and to be driven out of
+Eden, even to Florence. It is said, observe, that Milton took his
+description of Paradise from Vallombrosa--so driven out of Eden we
+were, literally. To Florence, though! and what Florence is, the tongue
+of man or poet may easily fail to describe. The most beautiful of
+cities, with the golden Arno shot through the breast of her like an
+arrow, and 'non dolet' all the same. For what helps to charm here
+is the innocent gaiety of the people, who, for ever at feast day and
+holiday celebrations, come and go along the streets, the women in
+elegant dresses and with glittering fans, shining away every thought
+of Northern cares and taxes, such as make people grave in England.
+No little orphan on a house step but seems to inherit, naturally
+his slice of water-melon and bunch of purple grapes, and the rich
+fraternise with the poor as we are unaccustomed to see them, listening
+to the same music and walking in the same gardens, and looking at the
+same Raphaels even! Also we were glad to be here just now, when there
+is new animation and energy given to Italy by this new wonderful
+Pope, who is a great man and doing greatly. I hope you give him your
+sympathies. Think how seldom the liberation of a people begins from
+the throne, _à fortiori_ from a papal throne, which is so high and
+straight.[165] And the spark spreads! here is even our Grand
+Duke conceding the civic guard,[166] and forgetting his Austrian
+prejudices. The world learns, it is pleasant to observe....
+
+So well I am, dear Mr. Westwood, and so happy after a year's trial of
+the stuff of marriage, happier than ever, perhaps, and the revolution
+is so complete that one has to learn to stand up straight and steadily
+(like a landsman in a sailing ship) before one can do any work with
+one's hand and brain.
+
+We have had a delightful letter from Carlyle, who loves my husband, I
+am proud to say.
+
+  [Footnote 165:'This country saving is a glorious thing:
+  And if a common man achieved it? well.
+  Say, a rich man did? excellent. A king?
+  That grows sublime. A priest? Improbable.
+  A pope? Ah, there we stop, and cannot bring
+  Our faith up to the leap, with history's bell
+
+  So heavy round the neck of it--albeit
+  We fain would grant the possibility
+  For thy sake, Pio Nono!'
+
+_Casa Guidi Windows_, part i.]
+
+[Footnote 166: The grant of a National Guard was made by the Grand
+Duke of Tuscany on September 4, 1847, in defiance of the threat of
+Austria to occupy any Italian state in which such a concession was
+made to popular aspirations.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+[Florence:] October I, 1847 [postmark].
+
+Ever dearest Miss Mitford,--I am delighted to have your letter, and
+lose little time in replying to it. The lost letter meanwhile does not
+appear. The moon has it, to make more shine on these summer nights; if
+still one may say 'summer' now that September is deep and that we are
+cool as people hoped to be when at hottest.... Do tell me your full
+thought of the commonwealth of women.[168] I begin by agreeing with
+you as to his implied under-estimate of women; his women are
+too voluptuous; however, of the most refined voluptuousness. His
+gardener's daughter, for instance, is just a rose: and 'a Rose,'
+one might beg all poets to observe, is as precisely _sensual_ as
+fricasseed chicken, or even boiled beef and carrots. Did you read Mrs.
+Butler's 'Year of Consolation,' and how did you think of it in the
+main? As to Mr. Home's illustrations of national music, I don't know;
+I feel a little jealous of his doing well what many inferior men have
+done well--men who couldn't write 'Orion' and the 'Death of Marlowe.'
+Now, dearest dear Miss Mitford, you shall call him 'tiresome' if you
+like, because I never heard him talk, and he may be tiresome for aught
+I know, of course; but you _sha'n't_ say that he has not done some
+fine things in poetry. Now, you _know_ what the first book of 'Orion'
+is, and 'Marlowe,' and 'Cosmo;' and you _sha'n't_ say that you don't
+know it, and that when you forgot it for a moment, I did not remind
+you.... It was our plan to leave Florence on the 21st. We stay,
+however, one month longer, half through temptation, half through
+reason. Which is strongest, who knows? We quite love Florence, and
+have delightful rooms; and then, though I am quite well now as to my
+general health, it is thought better for me to travel a month hence.
+So I suppose we shall stay. In the meanwhile our Florentines kept the
+anniversary of our wedding day (and the establishment of the civic
+guard) most gloriously a day or two or three ago, forty thousand
+persons flocking out of the neighbourhood to help the expression of
+public sympathy and overflowing the city. The procession passed under
+our eyes into the Piazza Pitti, where the Grand Duke and all his
+family stood at the palace window melting into tears, to receive the
+thanks of his people. The joy and exultation on all sides were most
+affecting to look upon. Grave men kissed one another, and grateful
+young women lifted up their children to the level of their own smiles,
+and the children themselves mixed their shrill little _vivas_ with
+the shouts of the people. At once, a more frenetic gladness and a more
+innocent manifestation of gladness were never witnessed. During three
+hours and a half the procession wound on past our windows, and every
+inch of every house seemed alive with gazers all that time, the white
+handkerchiefs fluttering like doves, and clouds of flowers and laurel
+leaves floating down on the heads of those who passed. Banners, too,
+with inscriptions to suit the popular feeling--'Liberty'--the 'Union
+of Italy'--the 'Memory of the Martyrs'--'Viva Pio Nono'--'Viva
+Leopoldo Secondo'--were quite stirred with the breath of the shouters.
+I am glad to have seen that sight, and to be in Italy at this moment,
+when such sights are to be seen.[167] My wrist aches a little even now
+with the waving I gave to my handkerchief, I assure you, for Robert
+and I and Flush sate the whole sight out at the window, and would not
+be reserved with the tribute of our sympathy. Flush had his two
+front paws over the window sill, with his ears hanging down, but he
+confessed at last that he thought they were rather long about it,
+particularly as it had nothing to do with dinner and chicken bones
+and subjects of consequence. He is less tormented and looks better;
+in excellent spirits and appetite always--and _thinner_, like your
+Flush--and very fond of Robert, as indeed he ought to be. On the
+famous evening of that famous day I have been speaking of, we lost
+him--he ran away and stayed away all night--which was too bad,
+considering that it was our anniversary besides, and that he had no
+right to spoil it. But I imagine he was bewildered with the crowd and
+the illumination, only as he _did_ look so very guilty and conscious
+of evil on his return, there's room for suspecting him of having been
+very much amused, 'motu proprio,' as our Grand Duke says in the
+edict. He was found at nine o'clock in the morning at the door of our
+apartment, waiting to be let in--mind, I don't mean the Grand Duke.
+Very few acquaintances have we made at Florence, and very quietly
+lived out our days. Mr. Powers the sculptor is our chief friend and
+favorite, a most charming, simple, straight-forward, genial American,
+as simple as the man of genius he has proved himself needs be. He
+sometimes comes to talk and take coffee with us, and we like him much.
+His wife is an amiable woman, and they have heaps of children from
+thirteen downwards, all, except the eldest boy, Florentines, and the
+sculptor has eyes like a wild Indian's, so black and full of light.
+You would scarcely wonder if they clave the marble without the help of
+his hands. We have seen besides the Hoppners, Lord Byron's friends at
+Venice, you will remember. And Miss Boyle, the niece of the Earl
+of Cork, and authoress and poetess on her own account, having been
+introduced once to Robert in London at Lady Morgan's, has hunted
+us out and paid us a visit. A very vivacious little person, with
+sparkling talk enough. Lord Holland has lent her mother and herself
+the famous Careggi Villa, where Lorenzo the Magnificent died, and they
+have been living there among the vines these four months. These and a
+few American visitors are all we have seen at Florence. We live a
+far more solitary life than you do, in your village and with
+the 'prestige' of the country wrapping you round. Pray give your
+sympathies to our Pope, and call him a great man. For liberty
+to spring from a throne is wonderful, but from a papal throne is
+miraculous. That's my doxy. I suppose dear Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Chorley
+are still abroad. French books I get at, but at scarcely a new one,
+which is very provoking. At Rome it may be better. I have not read
+'Martin' even, since the first volume in England, nor G. Sand's
+'Lucretia.'
+
+May God bless you. Think sometimes of your ever affectionate
+
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 167: In Tennyson's _Princess_.]
+
+[Footnote 168: A picture of the same scene in verse will be found in
+_Casa Guidi Windows_, part i.:
+
+  'Shall I say
+  What made my heart beat with exulting love
+  A few weeks back,' &c.]
+
+The 'month' lengthened itself out, and December found the Brownings
+still in Florence, and definitely established there for the winter.
+During this time, although there is no allusion to it in the letters,
+Mrs. Browning must have been engaged in writing the first part of
+'Casa Guidi Windows' with its hopeful aspirations for Italian liberty.
+It was, indeed, a time when hope seemed justifiable. Pius IX. had
+ascended the papal throne--then a temporal as well as a spiritual
+sovereignty--in June 1846, with the reputation of being anxious to
+introduce liberal reforms, and even to promote the formation of a
+united Italy. The English Government was diplomatically advocating
+reform, in spite of the opposition of Austria; and its representative,
+Lord Minto, who was sent on a special mission to Italy to bring this
+influence to bear on the rulers of the various Italian States, was
+received with enthusiastic joy by the zealots for Italian liberty. The
+Grand Duke of Tuscany, as was noticed above, had taken the first
+step in the direction of popular government by the institution of a
+National Guard; and Charles Albert of Piedmont was always supposed to
+have the cause of Italy at heart in spite of the vacillations of his
+policy. The catastrophe of 1848 was still in the distance; and for
+the moment a friend of freedom and of Italy might be permitted to hope
+much.
+
+Yet a difference will be noticed between the tone of Mrs. Browning's
+letters at this time and that which marks her language in 1859. In
+1847 she was still comparatively new to the country. She is interested
+in the experiment which she sees enacted before her; she feels, as any
+poet must feel, the attraction of the idea of a free and united Italy.
+But her heart is not thrown into the struggle as it was at a later
+time. She can write, and does, for the most part, write, of other
+matters. The disappointment of Milan and Novara could not break her
+heart, as the disappointment of Villafranca went near to doing. They
+are not, indeed, so much as mentioned in detail in the letters that
+follow. It is in 'Casa Guidi Windows'--the first part written
+in 1847-8, the second in 1851--that her reflections upon Italian
+politics, alike in their hopes and in their failures, must be sought.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: December 8, 1847.
+
+Have you thought me long, my dearest Miss Mitford, in writing? When
+your letter came we were distracted by various uncertainties, torn by
+wild horses of sundry speculations, and then, when one begins by delay
+in answering a letter, you are aware how a silence grows and grows.
+Also I heard _of_ you through my sisters and Mrs. Duprey[?], and
+_that_ made me lazier still. Now don't treat me according to the
+Jewish law, an eye for an eye; no! but a heart for a heart, if you
+please; and you never can have reason to reproach mine for not loving
+you. Think what we have done since I wrote last to you. Taken two
+houses, that is, two apartments, each for six months, presigning the
+contract. You will set it down as excellent poet's work in the way of
+domestic economy; but the fault was altogether mine as usual, and
+my husband, to please me, took rooms which I could not be pleased
+by three days, through the absence of sunshine and warmth. The
+consequence was that we had to pay heaps of guineas away for leave
+to go away ourselves, any alternative being preferable to a return of
+illness, and I am sure I should have been ill if we had persisted in
+staying there. You can scarcely fancy the wonderful difference which
+the sun makes in Italy. Oh, he isn't a mere 'round O' in the air in
+this Italy, I assure you! He makes us feel that he rules the day to
+all intents and purposes. So away we came into the blaze of him here
+in the Piazza Pitti, precisely opposite the Grand Duke's palace, I
+with my remorse, and poor Robert without a single reproach. Any other
+man, a little lower than the angels, would have stamped and sworn a
+little for the mere relief of the thing, but as to _his_ being angry
+with _me_ for any cause, except not eating enough dinner, the said
+sun would turn the wrong way first. So here we are on the Pitti till
+April, in small rooms yellow with sunshine from morning to evening;
+and most days I am able to get out into the piazza, and walk up and
+down for some twenty minutes without feeling a shadow of breath from
+the actual winter. Also it is pleasant to be close to the Raffaels,
+to say nothing of the immense advantage of the festa days, when,
+day after day, the civic guard comes to show the whole population of
+Florence, their Grand Duke inclusive, the new helmets and epaulettes
+and the glory thereof. They have swords, too, I believe, somewhere.
+The crowds come and come, like children to see rows of dolls, only the
+children would tire sooner than the Tuscans. Robert said musingly the
+other morning as we stood at the window, 'Surely, after all this, they
+would _use_ those muskets.' It's a problem, a 'grand peut-être.' I
+was rather amused by hearing lately that our civic heroes had the
+gallantry to propose to the ancient military that these last should
+do the night work, i.e. when nobody was looking on and there was no
+credit, as they found it dull and fatiguing. Ah, one laughs, you see;
+one can't help it now and then. But at the real and rising feeling of
+the people by night and day one doesn't laugh indeed. I hear and
+see with the deepest sympathy of soul, on the contrary. I love the
+Italians, too, and none the less that something of the triviality and
+innocent vanity of children abounds in them. A delightful and most
+welcome letter was the last you sent me, my dearest friend. Your
+bridal visit must have charmed you, and I am glad you had the gladness
+of witnessing some of the happiness of your friend, Mrs. Acton Tyndal,
+_you_ who have such quick sympathies, and to whom the happiness of a
+friend is a gain counted in your own. The swan's shadow is something
+in a clear water. For poor Mrs.----, if she is really, as you say Mrs.
+Tyndal thinks, pining in an access of literary despondency, why _that_
+only proves to me that she is not happy otherwise, that her life
+and soul are not sufficiently filled for her woman's need. I cannot
+believe of any woman that she can think of _fame first_. A woman of
+genius may be absorbed, indeed, in the exercise of an active power,
+engrossed in the charges of the course and the combat; but this is
+altogether different to a vain and bitter longing for prizes, and what
+prizes, oh, gracious heavens! The empty cup of cold metal! _so_ cold,
+_so_ empty to a woman with a heart. So, if your friend's belief is
+true, still more deeply do I pity that other friend, who is supposed
+to be unhappy from such a cause. A few days ago I saw a bride of
+my own family, Mrs. Reynolds, Arlette Butler, who married Captain
+Reynolds some five months since.... Many were her exclamations at
+seeing me. She declared that such a change was never seen, I was
+so transfigured with my betterness: 'Oh, Ba, it is quite wonderful
+indeed!' We had been calculated on, during her three months in Rome,
+as a 'piece of resistance,' and it was a disappointment to find us
+here in a corner with the salt. Just as I was praised was poor Flush
+criticised. Flush has not recovered from the effects yet of the summer
+plague of fleas, and his curls, though growing, are not grown. I never
+saw him in such spirits nor so ugly; and though Robert and I flatter
+ourselves upon 'the sensible improvement,' Arlette could only see him
+with reference to the past, when in his Wimpole Street days he was
+sleek and over fat, and she cried aloud at the loss of his beauty.
+Then we have had [another] visitor, Mr. Hillard, an American critic,
+who reviewed me in [the old] world, and so came to _view_ me in the
+new, a very intelligent man, of a good, noble spirit. And Miss Boyle,
+ever and anon, comes at night, at nine o'clock, to catch us at our
+hot chestnuts and mulled wine, and warm her feet at our fire; and
+a kinder, more cordial little creature, full of talent and
+accomplishment, never had the world's polish on it. Very amusing, too,
+she is, and original, and a good deal of laughing she and Robert make
+between them. Did I tell you of her before, and how she is the niece
+of Lord Cork, and poetess by grace of certain Irish Muses? Neither
+of us know her writings in any way, but we like her, and for the best
+reasons. And this is nearly all, I think, we see of the 'face divine,'
+masculine and feminine, and I can't make Robert go out a single
+evening, not even to a concert, nor to hear a play of Alfieri's, yet
+we fill up our days with books and music (and a little writing has
+its share), and wonder at the clock for galloping. It's twenty-four
+o'clock with us almost as soon as we begin to count. Do tell me of
+Tennyson's book, and of Miss Martineau's. I was grieved to hear a
+distant murmur of a rumour of an apprehension of a return of her
+complaint: somebody said that she could not bear the _pressure of
+dress_, and that the exhaustion resulting from the fits of absorption
+in work and enthusiasm on the new subject of Egypt was painfully
+great, and that her friends feared for her. I should think that the
+bodily excitement and fatigue of her late travels must have been
+highly hazardous, and that indeed, throughout her convalescence, she
+should have more spared herself in climbing hills and walking and
+riding distances. A strain obviously might undo everything. Still, I
+do hope that the bitter cup may not be filled for her again. What a
+wonderful discovery this substitute for ether inhalations[169] seems
+to be. Do you hear anything of its operation in your neighbourhood? We
+have had a letter from Mr. Horne, who appears happy, and speaks of his
+success in lecturing on Ireland, and of a new novel which he is about
+to publish in a separate form after having printed it in a magazine.
+We have not set up the types even of our _plans_ about a book, very
+distinctly, but we shall do something some day, and you shall hear
+of it the evening before. Being too happy doesn't agree with literary
+activity quite as well as I should have thought; and then, dear Mr.
+Kenyon can't persuade us that we are not rich enough, so as to bring
+into force a lower order of motives. He talks of Rome still. Now
+write, dear, dearest Miss Mitford, and tell me of yourself and your
+health, and do, _do_ love me as you used to do. As to French books,
+one may swear, but you can't get a new publication, except by
+accident, at this excellent celebrated library of Vieusseux, and I
+am reduced to read some of my favorites over again, I and Robert
+together. You ought to hear how we go to single combat, ever and anon,
+with shield and lance. The greatest quarrel we have had since our
+marriage, by the way (always excepting my crying conjugal wrong of not
+eating enough!), was brought up by Masson's pamphlet on the Iron Mask
+and Fouquet. I wouldn't be persuaded that Fouquet was 'in it,' and
+so 'the anger of my lord waxed hot.' To this day he says sometimes:
+'Don't be cross, Ba! _Fouquet wasn't the Iron Mask after all_.'
+
+God bless you, dearest Miss Mitford.
+Your ever affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+We are here till April.
+
+[Footnote 169: Chloroform, then beginning to come into use.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+Florence: December 1847.
+
+Indeed, my dear friend, you have a right to complain of _me_, whether
+or not _we_ had any in thinking ourselves deeply injured creatures
+by your last silence. Yet when in your letter which came at last, you
+said, 'Write directly,' I _meant_ to write directly; I did not take
+out my vengeance in a foregone malice, be very sure. Just at the time
+we were in a hard knot of uncertainties about Rome and Venice and
+Florence, and a cold house and a warm house; for instance we managed
+(that is _I_ did, for altogether it was my fault) to take two
+apartments in the course of ten days, each for a term of six months,
+getting out of one of them by leaving the skirts of our garments,
+_rent_, literally, in the hand of the proprietor. You have heard most
+of this, I dare say, from Mr. Kenyon or my sisters. Now, too, you are
+aware of our being in Piazza Pitti, in a charmed circle of sun blaze.
+Our rooms are small, but of course as cheerful as being under the very
+eyelids of the sun must make everything; and we have a cook in the
+house who takes the office of _traiteur_ on him and gives us English
+mutton chops at Florentine prices, both of us quite well and in
+spirits, and (though you never will believe this) happier than ever.
+For my own part, you know I need not say a word if it were not true,
+and I must say to you, who saw the beginning with us, that this end of
+fifteen months is just fifteen times better and brighter; the mystical
+'moon' growing larger and larger till scarcely room is left for any
+stars at all: the only differences which have touched me being the
+more and more happiness. It would have been worse than unreasonable if
+in marrying I had expected one quarter of such happiness, and indeed I
+did not, to do myself justice, and every now and then I look round
+in astonishment and thankfulness together, yet with a sort of horror,
+seeing that this is not heaven after all. We live just as we did when
+you knew us, just as shut-up a life. Robert never goes anywhere except
+to take a walk with Flush, which isn't my fault, as you may imagine:
+he has not been out one evening of the fifteen months; but what with
+music and books and writing and talking, we scarcely know how the days
+go, it's such a gallop on the grass. We are going through some of
+old Sacchetti's novelets now: characteristic work for Florence, if
+somewhat dull elsewhere. Boccaccios can't be expected to spring up
+with the vines in rows, even in this climate. We got a newly printed
+addition to Savonarola's poems the other day, very flat and cold, they
+did not catch fire when he was burnt. The most poetic thing in the
+book is his face on the first page, with that eager, devouring soul in
+the eyes of it. You may suppose that I am able sometimes to go over
+to the gallery and adore the Raphaels, and Robert will tell you of the
+divine Apollino which you missed seeing in Poggio Imperiale, and which
+I shall be set face to face before, some day soon, I hope....
+
+Father Prout was in Florence for some two hours in passing to Rome,
+and of course, according to contract of spirits of the air, Robert met
+him, and heard a great deal of you and Geddie (saw Geddie's picture,
+by the way, and thought it very like), was told much to the advantage
+of Mr. Macpherson,[170] and at the end of all, kissed in the open
+street as the speaker was about to disappear in the diligence. When
+you write, tell me of the _book_. Surely it will be out anon, and then
+you will be free, shall you not? Have you seen Tennyson's new poem,
+and what of it? Miss Martineau is to discourse about Egypt, I suppose;
+but in the meanwhile do you hear that she forswears mesmerism, as Mr.
+Spenser Hall does, according to the report Robert brings me home from
+the newspaper reading. Now I shall leave him room to stand on and
+speak a word to you. Give my love to Gerardine, and don't forget to
+mention her letter. I hope you are happy about your friends, and that,
+in particular, Lady Byron's health is strengthening and to strengthen.
+Always my dear friend's
+
+Most affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+Dear Aunt Nina,--A corner is just the place for eating Christmas pies
+in, but for venting Christmas wishes, hardly! What has Ba told you and
+wished you in the way of love? I wish you the same and love you the
+same, but Geddie, being part of you, gets her due part. We are as
+happy as two owls in a hole, two toads under a tree stump; or any
+other queer two poking creatures that we let live, after the fashion
+of their black hearts, only Ba is fat and rosy; yes, indeed! Florence
+is empty and pleasant. Goodbye, therefore, till next year--shall it
+not be then we meet? God bless you. R.B.
+
+[Footnote 170: Miss Bate's _fiancé_.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: February 22, [1848].
+
+Your letter, my dearest friend, which was written, a part at least,
+before Christmas, came lingering in long after the new year had seen
+out its matins. Oh, I had wondered so, and wished so over the long
+silence. My fault, perhaps in a measure, for I know how silent _I_ was
+before. Yes, and you tell me of your having been unwell (bad news),
+and of your dear Flush's death, which made me sorrowful for you, as
+I might reasonably be. And now tell me more. Have you a successor to
+him? Once you told me that one of the race was in training, but as you
+say nothing now I am all in a doubt. Let me hear everything. If I had
+been you, I think I should have preferred some quite other kind of
+dog, as the unlikeness of a likeness would be apt to bring a pain to
+me; but people can't reason about feelings, and feelings are like the
+colour of eyes, not the same in different faces, however general may
+be the proximity of noses.... The great subject with _everybody_ just
+now is the new hope of Italy, and the liberal constitution, given
+nobly by our good, excellent Grand Duke, whose praise is in all the
+houses, streets, and piazzas. The other evening, the evening after the
+gift, he went privately to the opera, was recognised, and in a burst
+of triumph and a glory of waxen torches was brought back to the Pitti
+by the people. I was undressing to go to bed, had my hair down over my
+shoulders under Wilson's ministry, when Robert called me to look out
+of the window and see. Through the dark night a great flock of stars
+seemed sweeping up the piazza, but not in silence, nor with very
+heavenly noises. The '_Evvivas_' were deafening. So glad I was. _I,
+too_, stood at the window and clapped my hands. If ever Grand Duke
+deserved benediction this Duke does. We hear that he was quite moved,
+overpowered, and wept like a child. Nevertheless the most of Italy is
+under the cloud, and God knows how all may end as the thunder ripens.
+Now I mustn't, I suppose, write politics. Our plans about England are
+afloat. Impossible to know what we shall do, but if not this summer,
+the summer after _must_ help us to the sight of some beloved faces. It
+will be a midsummer dream, and we shall return to winter in Italy. My
+Flush is as well as ever, and perhaps gayer than ever I knew him. He
+runs out in the piazza whenever he pleases, and plays with the dogs
+when they are pretty enough, and wags his tail at the sentinels and
+civic guard, and takes the Grand Duke as a sort of neighbour of his,
+whom it is proper enough to patronise, but who has considerably less
+inherent merit and dignity than the spotted spaniel in the alley
+to the left. We have been reading over again 'André' and 'Leone
+Leoni,'[171] and Robert is in an enthusiasm about the first. Happy
+person, you are, to get so at new books. Blessed is the man who reads
+Balzac, or even Dumas. I have got to admire Dumas doubly since that
+fight and scramble for his brains in Paris. Now do think of me and
+love me, and let me be as ever your affectionate
+
+BA.
+
+Robert's regards always. Say particularly how you are, and may God
+bless you, dearest Miss Mitford, and make you happy.
+
+[Footnote 171: Novels by George Sand.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: April 15, [1848].
+
+... My Flush has recovered his beauty, and is in more vivacious
+spirits than I remember to have seen him. Still, the days come when he
+will have no pleasure and plenty of fleas, poor dog, for Savonarola's
+martyrdom here in Florence is scarcely worse than Flush's in the
+summer. Which doesn't prevent his enjoying the spring, though, and
+just now, when, by medical command, I drive out two hours every day,
+his delight is to occupy the seat in the carriage opposite to Robert
+and me, and look disdainfully on all the little dogs who walk afoot.
+We drive day by day through the lovely Cascine (where the trees have
+finished and spread their webs of full greenery, undimmed by the sun
+yet), first sweeping through the city, past such a window where Bianca
+Capello looked out to see the Duke go by,[172] and past such a door
+where Lapo stood, and past the famous stone where Dante drew his chair
+out to sit.[173] Strange, to have all that old-world life about us,
+and the blue sky so bright besides, and ever so much talk on our lips
+about the new French revolution, and the King of Prussia's cunning,
+and the fuss in Germany and elsewhere. Not to speak of our own
+particular troubles and triumphs in Lombardy close by. The English are
+flying from Florence, by the way, in a helter skelter, just as they
+always do fly, except (to do them justice) on a field of battle. The
+family Englishman is a dreadful coward, be it admitted frankly. See
+how they run from France, even to my dear excellent Uncle Hedley, who
+has too many little girls in his household to stay longer at Tours.
+Oh, I don't _blame_ him exactly. I only wish that he had waited a
+little longer, the time necessary for being quite reassured. He has
+great stakes in the country--a house at Tours and in Paris, and twenty
+thousand pounds in the Rouen railway. But Florence will fall upon her
+feet we may all be certain, let the worst happen that can. Meanwhile,
+republicans as I and my, husband are by profession, we very anxiously,
+anxiously even to pain, look on the work being attempted and done just
+now by the theorists in Paris; far from half approving of it we are,
+and far from being absolutely confident of the durability of the other
+half. Tell me what you think, and if you are not anxious too. As to
+communism, surely the practical part of _that_, the only not dangerous
+part, is attainable simply by the consent of individuals who may try
+the experiment of associating their families in order to the cheaper
+employment of the means of life, and successfully in many cases. But
+make a government scheme of _even so much_, and you seem to trench on
+the individual liberty. All such patriarchal planning in a government
+issues naturally into absolutism, and is adapted to states of society
+more or less barbaric. Liberty and civilisation when married together
+lawfully rather evolve individuality than tend to generalisation.
+Is this not true? I fear, I fear that mad theories promising the
+impossible may, in turn, make the people mad. I Louis Blanc knows
+not what he says. Have I not mentioned to you a very gifted woman, a
+sculptress, Mademoiselle de Fauveau, who lives in Florence with her
+mother practising her profession, an exile from France, in consequence
+of their royalist opinions and participation in the Vendée struggle,
+some sixteen or fifteen years? On that occasion she was mistaken for
+and allowed herself to be arrested as Madame de la Roche Jacquelin;
+therefore she has justified, by suffering in the cause, her passionate
+attachment to it. A most interesting person she is; she called upon us
+a short time ago and interested us much. And Mrs. Jameson would tell
+you that her celebrity in her art is not comparative 'for a woman,'
+but that, since Benvenuto Cellini, more beautiful works of the kind
+have not been accomplished. An exquisite fountain she has lately
+done for the Emperor of Russia. She has workmen under her, and is as
+'professional' in every respect as if neither woman nor noble. At the
+first throb of this revolution of course she dreamt the impossible
+about that dear 'Henri Cinq,' who is as much out of the question
+as Henri Quatre himself; and now it ends with the 'French Legation'
+coming to settle in the house precisely opposite to hers, with a
+hideous sign-painting appended O the Gallic cock on one leg and at
+full crow inscribed, 'Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.' This, and the
+death of her favorite dog, whom, after seventeen years' affection, she
+was forced to have destroyed on account of a combination of diseases,
+has quite saddened the sculptress. When she came to see us I observed
+that after so long a residence at Florence she must regard it as a
+second country. 'Ah non!' (the answer was) 'il n'y a pas de seconde
+patrie.' What you tell me of 'Jane Eyre' makes me long to see the
+book. I may long, I fancy. It is dismal to have to disappoint my
+dearest sisters, who hoped for me in England this summer, but our
+English visit _must_ be for next summer instead; there seems too
+much against it just now. The drawback of Italy is the distance from
+England. If it were but as near as Paris, for instance, why in that
+case we should settle here at once, I do think, the conveniences and
+luxuries of life are of such incredible cheapness, the climate so
+divine, and the way of things altogether so serene and suited to our
+tastes and instincts. But to give up England and the _English_, the
+dear, dearest treasure of English love, is impossible, so we just
+linger and linger. The Boyles go to England from the press of panic,
+Lady Boyle being old and infirm. Ah, but your talking friend would
+interest you, and you might accept the talk in infinitesimal
+doses, you know. Lamartine has surely acted down the fallacy of the
+impractical tendencies of imaginative men. I am full of France just
+now. Are you all prepared for an outbreak in Ireland? I hope so. My
+husband has the second edition of his collected poems[174] in the
+press by this time, by grace of Chapman and Hall, who accept all
+risks. You speak of Tennyson's vexation about the reception of
+the 'Princess.' Why did Mr. Harness and others, who 'never could
+understand' his former divine works, praise this in manuscript
+till the poet's hope grew to the height of his ambition? Strangely
+unfortunate. We have not read it yet. I hear that Tennyson had the
+other day everything packed for Italy, then turned his face toward
+Ireland, and went there. Oh, for a talk with you. But this is a sort
+of talk, isn't it? Accept my husband's regards. As to my love, I throw
+it to you over the [sea] with both hands. God bless you.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 172: See Browning's _The Statue and the Bust_.]
+
+[Footnote 173: 'the stone Called Dante's--a plain flat stone scarce
+discerned From others in the pavement--whereupon He used to bring his
+quiet chair out, turned To Brunelleschi's church, and pour alone The
+lava of his spirit when it burned.' _Casa Guidi Windows_, part i.]
+
+[Footnote 174: This edition, published in 1849 in two volumes
+contained only _Paracelsus_ and the plays and poems of the _Bells and
+Pomegranates_ series.]
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+[Florence:] May I, [1848].
+
+My dearest Mr. Kenyon,--Surely it is quite wrong that we three,
+Robert, you, and I, should be satisfied with writing little dry notes,
+as short as so many proclamations, and those of the order of your
+anti-Chartist magistracy, 'Whereas certain evil disposed persons &c.
+&c.,' instead of our anti-Austrian Grand duchy's 'O figli amati'
+(how characteristic of the north and the south, to be sure, is this
+contrast! Yet, after all, they might have managed it rather better
+in England!)--little dry notes brief and business-like as an
+anti-Chartist proclamation! And, indeed, two of us are by no means
+satisfied, whatever the third may be. The other day we were looking
+over some of the dear delightful letters you used to write to us.
+Real letters those were, and not little dry notes at all. Robert said,
+'When I write to dear Mr. Kenyon I really do feel overcome by the
+sense of what I owe to him, and so, as it is beyond words to say, why
+generally I say as little as possible of anything, keeping myself to
+matters of business.' An alternative very objectionable, I told him;
+for to have 'a dumb devil' from ever such grateful and sentimental
+reasons, when the Alps stand betwixt friend, is damnatory in the
+extreme. Then, as _you_ are not 'too grateful' to _us_, why don't
+_you_ write? Pray do, my dear friend. Let us all write as we used to
+do. And to make sure of it, I begin.
+
+Since I ended last the world has turned over on its other side, in
+order, one must hope, to some happy change in the dream. Our friend,
+Miss Bayley, in that very kind letter which has just reached me and
+shall be answered directly (will you tell her with my thankful love?),
+asks if Robert and I are communists, and then half draws back her
+question into a discreet reflection that _I_, at least, was never
+much celebrated for acumen on political economy. Most true indeed! And
+therefore, and on that very ground, is it not the more creditable to
+me that I don't set up for a communist immediately? In proportion to
+the ignorance might be the stringency of the embrace of 'la vérité
+sociale:' so I claim a little credit that it isn't. For really we
+are not communists, farther than to admit the wisdom of voluntary
+association in matters of material life among the poorer classes. And
+to legislate even on such points seems as objectionable as possible;
+all intermeddlings of government with domesticities, from Lacedaemon
+to Peru, were and must be objectionable; and of the growth of
+absolutism, let us, theorise as we choose. I would have the government
+educate the people absolutely, and _then_ give room for the individual
+to develop himself into life freely. Nothing can be more hateful to me
+than this communist idea of quenching individualities in the mass. As
+if the hope of the world did not always consist in the eliciting
+of the individual man from the background of the masses, in the
+evolvement of individual genius, virtue, magnanimity. Do you know how
+I love France and the French? Robert laughs at me for the mania of it,
+or used to laugh long before this revolution. When I was a prisoner,
+my other mania for imaginative literature used to be ministered to
+through the prison bars by Balzac, George Sand, and the like immortal
+improprieties. They kept the colour in my life to some degree and did
+good service in their time to me, I can assure you, though in dear
+discreet England women oughtn't to confess to such reading, I believe,
+or you told me so yourself one day. Well, but through reading the
+books I grew to love France, in a mania too; and the interest, which
+all must feel in the late occurrences there, has been with me, and is,
+quite painful. I read the newspapers as I never did in my life, and
+hope and fear in paroxysms, yes, and am guilty of thinking far more
+of Paris than of Lombardy itself, and try to understand financial
+difficulties and social theories with the best will in the world;
+much as Flush tries to understand me when I tell him that barking and
+jumping may be unseasonable things. Both of us open our eyes a good
+deal, but the comprehension is questionable after all. What, however,
+I do seem least of all to comprehend, is your hymn of triumph in
+England, just because you have a lower ideal of liberty than the
+French people have. See if in Louis Philippe's time France was not
+in many respects more advanced than England is now, property better
+divided, hereditary privilege abolished! Are we to blow with the
+trumpet because we respect the ruts while everywhere else they are
+mending the roads? I do not comprehend. As to the Chartists, it is
+only a pity in my mind that you have not more of them. That's their
+fault. Mine, you will say, is being pert about politics when you would
+rather have anything else in a letter from Italy. You have heard of
+my illness, and will have been sorry for me, I am certain; but with
+blessings edging me round, I need not catch at a thistle in the hedge
+to make a 'sorrowful complaignte' of. Our plans have floated round and
+round, in and out of all the bays and creeks of the Happy Islands....
+
+Meanwhile here we are--and when do you mean to come to see us, pray?
+Mind, I hold by the skirts of the vision for next winter. Why, surely
+_you_ won't talk of 'disturbances' and 'revolutions,' and the like
+disloyal reasons which send our brave countrymen flying on all sides,
+as if every separate individual expected to be bombarded _per
+se_. Now, mind you come; dear dear Mr. Kenyon, how delighted past
+expression we should be to see you! Ah, do you fancy that I have no
+regret for our delightful gossips? If I have the feeling I told you of
+for Balzac and George Sand, what must I have for _you_? Now come,
+and let us see you! And still sooner, if you please, write to us--and
+write of yourself and in detail--and tell us particularly, first if
+the winter has left no sign of a cough with you, and next, what you
+mean by something which suggests to my fancy that you have a book in
+the course of printing. Is that true? Tell me all about it--_all_! Who
+can be interested, pray, if _I_ am not? For your and Mr. Chorley's
+and Mr. Forster's kind dealings with Robert's poems I thank you
+gratefully; and as a third volume can bring up the rear quickly in the
+case of success, I make no wailing for my 'Luria,' however dear it may
+be.[175]
+
+[Illustration: _Casa Guidi From a Photograph_]
+
+You are not to fancy that I am unwell now. On the contrary, I am
+nearly as strong as ever, and go out in the carriage for two hours
+every day, besides a little walk sometimes. Not a word more to-day.
+Write--do--and you shall hear from us at length. Robert sends his own
+love, I suppose. We both love you from our hearts.
+
+Your ever affectionate and grateful
+BA.
+(who can't read over, and writes in such a hurry!)
+
+It was about this time, as appears from the following letter, that
+the Brownings finally anchored themselves in Florence by taking an
+unfurnished suite of rooms in the Palazzo Guidi, and making there
+a home for themselves, Here, in the Via Maggio, almost opposite the
+Pitti Palace, and within easy distance of the Ponte Vecchio, is the
+dwelling known to all lovers of English poetry as Casa Guidi, and
+bearing now upon its walls the name of the English poetess whose life
+and writings formed, in the graceful words of the Italian poet,
+'a golden ring between Italy and England.' Whatever might be their
+migrations--and they were many, especially in later years--Casa Guidi
+was henceforth their home.[176]
+
+[Footnote 175: Apparently it had been proposed to omit _Luria_ from
+the new edition; but, if so, the intention was not carried out.]
+
+[Footnote 176: It will interest many readers to know that Casa Guidi
+is now the property of Mr. R. Barrett Browning.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+May 28, 1848.
+
+... And now I must tell you what we have done since I wrote last,
+little thinking of doing so. You see our problem was to get to England
+as much in our summers as possible, the expense of the intermediate
+journeys making it difficult of solution. On examination of the whole
+case, it appeared manifest that we were throwing money into the like
+to hear you talk of poor France; how I hope that you are able to hope
+for her. Oh, this absurdity of communism and mythological fête-ism!
+where can it end? They had better have kept Louis Philippe after
+all, if they are no more practical. Your Madame must be insufferable
+indeed, seeing that her knowledge of these subjects and men did not
+make her sufferable to you. My curiosity never is exhausted. What I
+hold is that the French have a higher ideal than we, and that all
+this clambering, leaping, struggling of indefinite awkwardness simply
+proves it. But _success in the republic_ is different still. I fear
+for them. My uncle and his family are safe at Tunbridge Wells, my aunt
+longing to be able to get back again. For those who are still nearer
+to me, I have no heart to speak of _them_, loving them as I do and
+must to the end, whatever that end may be; but my dearest sisters
+write often to me--never let me miss their affection. I am quite well
+again, and strong, and Robert and I go out after tea in a wandering
+walk to sit in the Loggia and look at the Perseus, or, better still,
+at the divine sunsets on the Arno, turning it to pure gold under the
+bridges. After more than twenty months of marriage, we are happier
+than ever--I may say _we_. Italy will regenerate herself in all
+senses, I hope and believe. In Florence we are very quiet, and the
+English fly in proportion. N.B.--_Always_ first fly the majors and
+gallant captains, unless there's a general. How I should like to see
+dear Mr. Horne's poem! _He's_ bold, at least--yes, and has a great
+heart to be bold with. A cloud has fallen on me some few weeks ago, in
+the illness and death of my dear friend Mr. Boyd,[177] but he did not
+suffer, and is not to be mourned by those without hope [_sic_]. Still,
+it has been a cloud. May God bless you, my beloved friend. Write soon,
+and of yourself, to your ever affectionate
+
+BA.
+
+My husband's regards go to you, of course.
+
+[Footnote 177: Mr. Boyd died on May 10, 1848.]
+
+
+_To Miss Browning_
+[Florence: about June 1848.]
+
+My dearest Sarianna,--At last, you see, I give sign of life. The
+_love_, I hope you believed in without sign or symbol; and even
+for the rest, Robert promised to answer for me like godfather or
+godmother, and bear the consequence of my sins....
+
+We are a little uneasy just now as to whether you will be overjoyed or
+_under_ joyed by our new scheme of taking an unfurnished apartment.
+It would spoil all, for instance, if your dear mother seemed
+disappointed--vexed--in the least degree. And I can understand how,
+to persons at a distance and of course unable to understand the
+whole circumstances of the case, the fact of an apartment taken and
+furnished may seem to involve some dreadful giving up for ever and
+ever of country and family--which would be as dreadful to us as to
+you! How could we give you up, do you think, when we love you more and
+more? Oh no. If Robert has succeeded in making clear the subject to
+you, you will all perceive, just as _we know_, that we have simply
+thus solved the problem of making our small income carry us to
+England, not only next summer, but many a summer after. We should like
+to give every summer to dear England, and hide away from the cold only
+when it comes. By our scheme we shall have saved money even at the end
+of the present year; while for afterward, here's a residence--that is,
+a_pied à terre_--in Italy, all but free when we wish to use it; and
+when we care to let it, producing eight or ten pounds a month in help
+of travelling expenses. It's the best investment for Mr. Moxon's money
+we could have looked the world over for. So the learned tell us; and
+after all, you know, we only pay in the proportion of your working
+classes in the Pancras building contrived for them by the philanthropy
+of your Southwood Smiths. I do wish you could see what rooms we have,
+what ceilings, what height and breadth, what a double terrace for
+orange trees; how cool, how likely to be warm, how perfect every way!
+Robert leaned once to a ground floor in the Frescobaldi Palace, being
+bewitched by a garden full of camellias, and a little pond of gold and
+silver fish; but while he saw the fish I saw the mosquitos in clouds,
+such an apocalypse of them as has not yet been visible to me in all
+Florence, and I dread mosquitos more than Austrians; and he, in his
+unspeakable goodness, deferred to my fear in a moment and gave up the
+camellias without one look behind. A heavy conscience I should have if
+it were not that the camellia garden was certainly less private than
+our terrace here, where we can have camellias also if we please. How
+pretty and pleasant your cottage at Windsor must be! We had a long
+_muse_ over your father's sketch of it, and set faces at the windows.
+That the dear invalid is better for the change must have brightened
+it, too, to her companions, and the very sound of a 'forest' is
+something peculiarly delightful and untried to me. I know hills well,
+and of the sea too much; but now I want forests, or quite, quite
+mountains, such as you have not in England.
+
+Robert says that if 'Blackwood' likes to print a poem of mine and send
+you the proofs, you will be so very good as to like to correct them.
+To me it seems too much to ask, when you have work for him to do
+beside. Will it be too much, or is nothing so to your kindness? I
+would ask my _other_ sisters, who would gladly, dear things, do it for
+me; but I have misgivings through their being so entirely unaccustomed
+to occupations of the sort, or any critical reading of poetry of
+any sort. Robert is quite well and in the best spirits, and has the
+headache now only very occasionally. I am as well as he, having quite
+recovered my strength and power of walking. So we wander to the bridge
+of Trinità every evening after tea to see the sunset on the Arno. May
+God bless you all! Give my true love to your father and mother, and my
+loving thanks to yourself for that last stitch in the stool. How good
+you are, Sarianna, to your ever affectionate sister
+
+BA.
+
+Always remind your dear mother that we are no more _bound_ here than
+when in furnished lodgings. It is a mere name.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Palazzo Guidi: June 20, [1848].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Now I am going to answer your letter, which I
+all but lost, and got ever so many days beyond the right day, because
+you directed it to Mrs. _William_ Browning. Pray remember
+_Robert Browning_ for the future, in right descent from _Robert
+Brunnyng_,[178] the first English poet. Mrs. Jameson says, 'It's
+ominous of the actual Robert's being the _last_ English poet;' a
+saying which I give you to remember us by, rejecting the omen....
+We have grown to be Florentine citizens, as perhaps you have heard.
+Health and means both forbade our settlement in England; and the
+journey backwards and forwards being another sort of expense, and very
+necessary with our ties and affections, we had to think how to live
+here, when we were here, at the cheapest. The difference between
+taking a furnished apartment and an unfurnished one is something
+immense. For our furnished rooms we have had always to pay some four
+guineas a month; and unfurnished rooms of equal pretension we could
+have for twelve a year, and the furniture (out and out) for fifty
+pounds. This calculation, together with the consideration that we
+could let our apartment whenever we travelled and receive back the
+whole cost, could not choose, of course, but determine us. On coming
+to the point, however, we grew ambitious, and preferred giving
+five-and-twenty guineas for a noble suite of rooms in the Palazzo
+Guidi, a stone's throw from the Pitti, and furnishing them after
+our own taste rather than after our economy, the economy having a
+legitimate share of respect notwithstanding; and the satisfactory
+thing being that the whole expense of this furnishing--rococo chairs,
+spring sofas, carved bookcases, satin from cardinals' beds, and the
+rest--is covered by the proceeds of our books during the last two
+winters. This is satisfying, isn't it? We shall stand safe within the
+borders of our narrow income even this year, and next year comes the
+harvest! We shall go to England in the spring, and return _home_
+to Italy. Do you understand? Mr. Kenyon, our friend and counsellor,
+writes to applaud--such prudence was never known before among poets.
+Then we have a plan, that when the summer (this summer) grows too hot,
+we shall just take up our carpet-bag and Wilson and plunge into the
+mountains in search of the monasteries beyond Vallombrosa, from
+Arezzo go to St. Sepolchro in the Apennines, and thence to Fano on the
+seashore, making a round back perhaps (after seeing the great fair at
+Sinigaglia) to Ravenna and Bologna home. As to Rome, our plan is to
+give up Rome next winter, seeing that we _must_ go to England in the
+spring. I _must_ see my dearest sisters and whoever else dear will see
+me, and Robert _must_ see his family beside; and going to Rome will
+take us too far from the route and cost too much; and then we are not
+inclined to give the first-fruits of our new apartment to strangers if
+we could let it ever so easily this year. You can't think how well
+the rooms look already; you must come and see them, you and dear Mr.
+Martin. Three immense rooms we have, and a fourth small one for a
+book room and winter room--windows opening on a little terrace,
+eight windows to the south; two good bedrooms behind, with a smaller
+terrace, and kitchen, &c., all on a first floor and Count Guidi's
+favorite suite. The Guidi were connected by marriage with the Ugolino
+of Pisa, Dante's Ugolino, only we shun all traditions of the Tower
+of Famine, and promise to give you excellent coffee whenever you will
+come to give us the opportunity. We shall have vines and myrtles
+and orange trees on the terrace, and I shall have a watering-pot and
+garden just as you do, though it must be on the bricks instead of the
+ground. For temperature, the stoves are said to be very effective in
+the winter, and in the summer we are cool and airy; the advantage
+of these thick-walled palazzos is coolness in summer and warmth in
+winter. I am very well and quite strong again, or rather, stronger
+than ever, and able to walk as far as Cellini's Perseus in the
+moonlight evenings, on the other side of the Arno. Oh, that Arno in
+the sunset, with the moon and evening star standing by, how divine it
+is!...
+
+Think of me as ever your most affectionate
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 178: Otherwise known as Robert Mannyng, or Robert de Brunne,
+author of the _Handlyng Synne_ and a _Chronicle of England_. He
+flourished about 1288-1338.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: July 4, [1848].
+
+It does grieve me, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, to hear of the
+suffering which has fallen upon you! Oh, rheumatism or not, whatever
+the name may be, do take care, do consider, and turn your dear face
+toward the seaside; somewhere where you can have warm sea bathing
+and sea air, and be able to associate the word 'a drive' not with mad
+ponies, but the mildest of donkeys, on a flat sand. The good it would
+do you is incalculable, I am certain; it is precisely a case for
+change of air, with quiet....
+
+As for when you come to Florence, we won't have 'a pony carriage
+between us,' if you please, because we may have a carriage and a pair
+of horses and a coachman, and pay as little as for the pony-chair in
+England. For three hundred a year one may live much like the Grand
+Duchess, and go to the opera in the evening at fivepence-halfpenny
+inclusive. Indeed, poor people should have their patriotism tenderly
+dealt with, when, after certain experiments, they decide on living
+upon the whole on the Continent. The differences are past belief,
+beyond expectation, and when the sunshine is thrown in, the head turns
+at once, and you fall straight into absenteeism. Ah, for the 'long
+chats' and the 'having England at one another's fireside!' You talk of
+delightful things indeed. We are very quiet, politically speaking,
+and though we hear now and then of melancholy mothers who have to part
+with their sons for Lombardy,[179] and though there are processions
+for the blessing of flags and an occasional firing of guns for a
+victory, or a cry in the streets, 'Notizie della guerra--leggete,
+signori;' this is all we know of Radetsky in Florence; while, for
+civil politics, the meeting of the senate took place a few days since
+to the satisfaction of everybody, and the Grand Duke's speech was
+generally admired. The elections have returned moderate men, and many
+land-proprietors, and Robert, who went out to see the procession of
+members, was struck by the grave thoughtful faces and the dignity
+of expression. We are going some day to hear the debates, but it has
+pleased their signoria to fix upon twelve (noon) for meeting, and
+really I do not dare to go out in the sun. The hour is sufficiently
+conclusive against dangerous enthusiasm. Poor France, poor France!
+News of the dreadful massacre at Paris just reaches us, and the
+letters and newspapers not arriving to-day, everybody fears a
+continuation of the crisis. How is it to end? Who 'despairs of the
+republic?' Why, _I_ do! I fear, I fear, that it cannot stand in
+France, and you seem to have not much more hope. My husband has a
+little, with melancholy intermediate prospects; but my own belief
+that the people have had enough of democratic institutions and will be
+impatient for a kingship anew. Whom will they have? How did you feel
+when the cry was raised, 'Vive l'Empereur'? Only Prince Napoleon is a
+Napoleon cut out in paper after all. The Prince de Joinville is said
+to be very popular. It makes me giddy to think of the awful precipices
+which surround France--to think, too, that the great danger is on the
+question of _property_, which is perhaps divided there more justly
+than in any other country of Europe. Lamartine has comprehended
+nothing, that is clear, even if his amount of energy had been
+effectual.... Yes, do send me the list of Balzac, _after_ 'Les Misères
+de la Vie Conjugale,' I mean. I left him in the midst of 'La Femme de
+Soixante Ans,' who seemed on the point of turning the heads of all
+'la jeunesse' around her; and, after all, she did not strike me as so
+charming. But Balzac charms me, let him write what he will; he's an
+inspired man. Tell me, too, exactly what Sue has done after 'Martin.'
+I read only one volume of 'Martin.' And did poor Soulié finish his
+'Dramas'? And after 'Lucretia' what did George Sand write? When Robert
+and I are ambitious, we talk of buying Balzac in full some day, to put
+him up in our bookcase from the convent, if the carved-wood angels,
+infants and serpents, should not finish mouldering away in horror at
+the touch of him. But I fear it will rather be an expensive purchase,
+even here. Would that he gave up the drama, for which, as you observe,
+he has no faculty whatever. In fact, the faculty he has is the very
+reverse of the dramatic, ordinarily understood.... Dearest Mr. Kenyon
+is called quite well and delightful by the whole world, though he
+suffered from cough in the winter; and he is bringing out a new book
+of poems, a 'Day at Tivoli,' and others; and he talks energetically of
+coming to Florence this autumn. Also, we have hopes of Mr. Chorley. I
+congratulate you on the going away of Madame. Coming and going bring
+very various associations in this life of ours. Why, if _you_ were
+to come we should appreciate our fortune, and you should have my
+particular chair, which Robert calls mine because I like sitting in a
+cloud; it's so sybaritically soft a chair. Now I love you for the kind
+words you say of _him_, who deserves the best words of the best women
+and men, wherever spoken! Yes, indeed, I am happy. Otherwise, I should
+have a stone where the heart is, and sink by the weight of it.
+You must have faith in me, for I never can make you thoroughly
+to understand what he is, of himself, and to me--the noblest and
+perfectest of human beings. After a year and ten months' absolute
+soul-to-soul intercourse and union, I have to look higher still for my
+first ideal. You won't blame me for bad taste that I say these things,
+for can I help it, when I am writing my heart to you? It is a heart
+which runs over very often with a grateful joy for a most peculiar
+destiny, even in the midst of some bitter drawbacks which I need not
+allude to farther....
+
+May God bless you continually, even as I am
+
+Your affectionate
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 179: The insurrection of Lombardy against Austrian rule
+had taken place in March, and was immediately followed by war between
+Sardinia and Austria, in which the Italians gained some initial
+successes. Fighting continued through the summer, and was temporarily
+closed by an armistice in August.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+Palazzo Guidi: July 15, [1848].
+
+Now at last, my very dear friend, I am writing to you, and the
+reproach you sent to me in your letter shall not be driven inwardly
+any more by my self-reproaches. Wasn't it your fault after all, a
+little, that we did not hear one another's voice oftener? You are
+_so long_ in writing. Then I have been putting off and putting off my
+letter to you, just because I wanted to make a full letter of it; and
+Robert always says that it's the bane of a correspondence to make a
+full letter a condition of writing at all. But so much I had to tell
+you! while the mere outline of facts you had from others, I knew.
+Which is just said that you may forgive us both, and believe that we
+think of you and love you, yes, and talk of you, even when we don't
+write to you, and that we shall write to you for the future more
+regularly, indeed. Your letter, notwithstanding its reproach, was
+very welcome and very kind, only you must be fagged with the book, and
+saddened by Lady Byron's state of health, and anxious about Gerardine
+perhaps. The best of all was the prospect you hold out to us of coming
+to Italy this year. Do, do come. Delighted we shall be to see you in
+Florence, and wise it will be in you to cast behind your back both the
+fear of Radetsky and as much English care as may be. Now, would it not
+do infinite good to Lady Byron if you could carry her with you into
+the sun? Surely it would do her great good; the change, the calm, the
+atmosphere of beauty and brightness, which harmonises so wonderfully
+with every shade of human feeling. Florence just now, and thanks to
+the panic, is tolerably _clean_ of the English--you scarcely see an
+English face anywhere--and perhaps this was a circumstance that helped
+to give Robert courage to take our apartment here and 'settle down.'
+You were surprised at so decided a step I dare say, and, I believe,
+though too considerate to say it in your letter, you have wondered in
+your thoughts at our fixing at Florence instead of Rome, and without
+seeing more of Italy before the finality of making a choice. But
+observe, Florence is wonderfully cheap, one lives here for just
+nothing; and the convenience in respect to England, letters, and
+the facility of letting our house in our absence, is incomparable
+altogether. At Rome a house would be habitable only half the year, and
+the distance and the expense are objections at the first sight of the
+subject.... Altogether, if I could but get a supply of French books,
+turning the cock easily, it would be perfect; but as to _anything_ new
+in the book way, Vieusseux seems to have made a vow against it, and
+poor Robert comes and goes in a state of desperation between me and
+the bookseller ('But what _can_ I do, Ba?'), and only brings news
+of some pitiful revolution or other which promises a full flush of
+republican virtues and falls off into the fleur de lis as usual. Think
+of our not having read 'Lucretia' yet--George Sand's. And Balzac is
+six or seven works deep from us; but these are evils to be borne. We
+live on just in the same way, having very few visitors, and receiving
+them in the quietest of hospitalities. Mr. Ware, the American, who
+wrote the 'Letters from Palmyra,' and is a delightful, earnest, simple
+person, comes to have coffee with us once or twice a week, and very
+much we like him. Mr. Hillard, another cultivated American friend of
+ours, you have in London, and we should gladly have kept longer.
+Mr. Powers does not spend himself much upon visiting, which is quite
+right, but we do hope to see a good deal of Mademoiselle de Fauveau.
+Robert exceedingly admires her. As to Italian society, one may as
+well take to longing for the evening star, for it seems quite as
+inaccessible; and indeed, of society of any sort, we have not much,
+nor wish for it, nor miss it. Dearest friend, if I could open my heart
+to you in all seriousness, you would see nothing there but a sort
+of enduring wonder of happiness--yes, and some gratitude, I do hope,
+besides. Could everything be well in England, I should only have to
+melt out of the body at once in the joy and the glow of it. Happier
+and happier I have been, month after month; and when I hear _him_ talk
+of being happy too, my very soul seems to swim round with feelings
+which cannot be spoken. But I tell you a little, because I owe the
+telling to you, and also that you may set down in your philosophy the
+possibility of book-making creatures living happily together. I admit,
+though, to begin (or end), that my husband is an exceptional human
+being, and that it wouldn't be just to measure another by him. We
+are planning a great deal of enjoyment in this 'going to the fair' at
+Sinigaglia, meaning to go by Arezzo and San Sepolchro, and Urbino, to
+Fano, where we shall pitch our tent for the benefit, as Robert says,
+of the sea air and the oysters. Fano is very habitable, and we may
+get to Pesaro and the footsteps of Castiglione's 'courtier,' to say
+nothing of Bernardo Tasso; and Ancona beckons from the other side
+of Sinigaglia, and Loreto beside, only we shall have to restrain
+our flights a little. The passage of the Apennine is said to be
+magnificent, and, altogether, surely it must be delightful; and we
+take only two carpet bags--not to be weighed down by 'impedimenta,'
+and have our own home, left in charge of the porter, to return to at
+last, I am very well and shall be better for the change, though Robert
+is dreadfully afraid, as usual, that I shall fall to pieces at the
+first motion....
+
+May God bless you!
+Ever I am your affectionate
+BA.
+
+Write to Florence as usual--Poste Restante. You will hear how we are
+in great hopes of dear Mr. Kenyon.
+
+Dear Aunt Nina,--Only a word in all the hurry of setting off. We love
+you as you love us, and are pretty nearly as happy as you would have
+us. All love and prosperity to dear Geddie, too; what do you say of
+'Landor,' and my not sending it to Forster or somebody? _Che che_ (as
+the Tuscans exclaim), _who_ was it promised to call at my people's,
+who would have tendered it forthwith? I will see about it as it is.
+Goodbye, dearest aunt, and let no revolution disturb your good will to
+Ba and
+
+R.B.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: August 24, 1848.
+
+Ever dearest Miss Mitford,--It's great comfort to have your letter;
+for as it came more lingeringly than usual, I had time to be a little
+anxious, and even my husband has confessed since that he thought what
+he would not say aloud for fear of paining me, as to the probability
+of your being less well than usual. Your letters come so regularly
+to the hour, you see, that when it strikes without them, we ask why.
+Thank God, you are better after all, and reviving in spirits, as I saw
+at the first glance before the words said it clearly....
+
+As for ourselves, we have scarcely done so well, yet well; having
+enjoyed a great deal in spite of drawbacks. Murray, the traitor, sent
+us to Fano as a 'delightful summer residence for an English family,'
+and we found it uninhabitable from the heat, vegetation scorched with
+paleness, the very air swooning in the sun, and the gloomy looks of
+the inhabitants sufficiently corroborative of their words, that no
+drop of rain or dew ever falls there during the summer. A 'circulating
+library' 'which doesn't give out books,' and 'a refined and
+intellectual Italian society' (I quote Murray for that phrase) which
+'never reads a book through' (I quote Mrs. Wiseman, Dr. Wiseman's
+mother, who has lived in Fano seven years), complete the advantages
+of the place, yet the churches are beautiful, and a divine picture
+of Guercino's is worth going all that way to see.[180] By a happy
+accident we fell in with Mrs. Wiseman, who, having married her
+daughter to Count Gabrielli with ancestral possessions in Fano, has
+lived on there from year to year, in a state of permanent moaning
+as far as I could apprehend. She is a very intelligent and vivacious
+person, and having been used to the best French society, bears but ill
+this exile from the common civilities of life. I wish Dr. Wiseman, of
+whose childhood and manhood she spoke with touching pride, would
+ask her to minister to the domestic rites of his bishop's palace in
+Westminster; there would be no hesitation, I fancy, in her acceptance
+of the invitation. Agreeable as she and her daughter were, however, we
+fled from Fano after three days, and, finding ourselves cheated out of
+our dream of summer coolness, resolved on substituting for it what
+the Italians call 'un bel giro.' So we went to Ancona, a striking sea
+city, holding up against the brown rocks and elbowing out the purple
+tides, beautiful to look upon. An exfoliation of the rock itself, you
+would call the houses that seem to grow there, so identical is the
+colour and character. I should like to visit Ancona again when there
+is a little air and shadow; we stayed a week as it was, living upon
+fish and cold water. Water, water, was the cry all day long, and
+really you should have seen me (or you should not have seen me) lying
+on the sofa, and demoralised out of all sense of female vanity, not
+to say decency, with dishevelled hair at full length, and 'sans gown,
+sans stays, sans shoes, sans everything,' except a petticoat and white
+dressing wrapper. I said something feebly once about the waiter; but
+I don't think I meant it for earnest, for when Robert said, 'Oh, don't
+mind, dear,' certainly I didn't mind in the least. People _don't_,
+I suppose, when they are in ovens, or in exhausted receivers. Never
+before did I guess what heat was--that's sure. We went to Loreto for a
+day, back through Ancona, Sinigaglia (oh, I forgot to tell you, there
+was no fair this year at Sinigaglia; Italy will be content, I suppose,
+with selling her honour), Fano, Pesaro, Rimini to Ravenna, back again
+over the Apennines from Forli. A 'bel giro,' wasn't it? Ravenna, where
+Robert positively wanted to go to live once, has itself put an end to
+those yearnings. The churches are wonderful: holding an atmosphere
+of purple glory, and if one could live just in them, or in Dante's
+tomb--well, otherwise keep me from Ravenna. The very antiquity of the
+houses is whitewashed, and the marshes on all sides send up stenches
+new and old, till the hot air is sick with them. To get to the pine
+forest, which is exquisite, you have to go a mile along the canal, the
+exhalations pursuing you step for step, and, what ruffled me more
+than all beside, we were not admitted into the house of Dante's tomb
+'without an especial permission from the authorities.' Quite furious I
+was about this, and both of us too angry to think of applying: but
+we stood at the grated window and read the pathetic inscription as
+plainly as if we had touched the marble. We stood there between three
+and four in the morning, and then went straight on to Florence from
+that tomb of the exiled poet. Just what we should have done, had the
+circumstances been arranged in a dramatic intention. From Forli, the
+air grew pure and quick again; and the exquisite, almost visionary
+scenery of the Apennines, the wonderful variety of shape and colour,
+the sudden transitions and vital individuality of those mountains, the
+chestnut forests dropping by their own weight into the deep ravines,
+the rocks cloven and clawed by the living torrents, and the hills,
+hill above hill, piling up their grand existences as if they did it
+themselves, changing colour in the effort--of these things I cannot
+give you any idea, and if words could not, painting could not either.
+Indeed, the whole scenery of our journey, except when we approached
+the coast, was full of beauty. The first time we crossed the Apennine
+(near Borgo San Sepolcro) we did it by moonlight, and the flesh was
+weak, and one fell asleep, and saw things between sleep and wake, only
+the effects were grand and singular so, even though of course we lost
+much in the distinctness. Well, but you will understand from all this
+that we were delighted to get home--_I_ was, I assure you. Florence
+seemed as cool as an oven after the fire; indeed, we called it quite
+cool, and I took possession of my own chair and put up my feet on the
+cushions and was charmed, both with having been so far and coming back
+so soon. Three weeks brought us home. Flush was a fellow traveller of
+course, and enjoyed it in the most obviously amusing manner. Never
+was there so good a dog in a carriage before his time! Think of Flush,
+too! He has a supreme contempt for trees and hills or anything of that
+kind, and, in the intervals of natural scenery, he drew in his head
+from the window and didn't consider it worth looking at; but when the
+population thickened, and when a village or a town was to be passed
+through, then his eyes were starting out of his head with eagerness;
+he looked east, he looked west, you would conclude that he was taking
+notes or preparing them. His eagerness to get into the carriage first
+used to amuse the Italians. Ah, poor Italy! I am as mortified as
+an Italian ought to be. They have only the rhetoric of patriots and
+soldiers, I fear! Tuscany is to be spared forsooth, if she lies still,
+and here she lies, eating ices and keeping the feast of the Madonna.
+Perdoni! but she has a review in the Cascine besides, and a gallant
+show of some 'ten thousand men' they are said to have made of it--only
+don't think that I and Robert went out to see that sight. We should
+have sickened at it too much. An amiable, refined people, too, these
+Tuscans are, conciliating and affectionate. When you look out into
+the streets on feast days, you would take it for one great 'rout,'
+everybody appears dressed for a drawing room, and you can scarcely
+discern the least difference between class and class, from the Grand
+Duchess to the Donna di facenda; also there is no belying of the
+costume in the manners, the most gracious and graceful courtesy
+and gentleness being apparent in the thickest crowds. This is all
+attractive and delightful; but the people wants _stamina_, wants
+conscience, wants self-reverence. Dante's soul has died out of
+the land. Enough of this. As for France, I have 'despaired of the
+republic' for very long, but the nation is a great nation, and will
+right itself under some flag, white or red. Don't you think so? Thank
+you for the news of our authors, it is as 'the sound of a trumpet afar
+off,' and I am like the war-horse. Neglectful that I am, I forgot to
+tell you before that you heard quite rightly about Mr. Thackeray's
+wife, who is ill _so_. Since your question, I had in gossip from
+England that the book 'Jane Eyre' was written by a governess in his
+house, and that the preface to the foreign edition refers to him
+in some marked way. We have not seen the book at all. But the first
+letter in which you mentioned your Oxford student caught us in the
+midst of his work upon art.[181] Very vivid, very graphic, full of
+sensibility, but inconsequent in some of the reasoning, it seemed to
+me, and rather flashy than full in the metaphysics. Robert, who
+knows a good deal about art, to which knowledge I of course have no
+pretence, could agree with him only by snatches, and we, both of
+us, standing before a very expressive picture of Domenichino's (the
+'David'--at Fano) wondered how he could blaspheme so against a great
+artist. Still, he is no ordinary man, and for a critic to be so much
+a poet is a great thing. Also, we have by no means, I should imagine,
+seen the utmost of his stature. How kindly you speak to me of my
+dearest sisters. Yes, go to see them whenever you are in London, they
+are worthy of the gladness of receiving you. And will you write soon
+to me, and tell me everything of yourself, how you are, how home
+agrees with you, and the little details which are such gold dust to
+absent friends....
+
+May God bless you, my beloved friend. Let me ever be (my husband
+joining in all warm regards) your most affectionate
+
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 180:'Guercino drew this angel I saw teach
+  (Alfred, dear friend!) that little child to pray
+  Holding his little hands up, each to each
+  Pressed gently, with his own head turned away,
+  Over the earth where so much lay before him
+  Of work to do, though heaven was opening o'er him,
+  And he was left at Fano by the beach.
+
+  'We were at Fano, and three times we went
+  To sit and see him in his chapel there,
+  And drink his beauty to our soul's content
+  My angel with me too.']
+
+[Footnote 181: The first two volumes of _Modern Painters_ bore no
+author's name, but were described as being 'by a graduate of Oxford.'
+At a later date Mrs. Browning made Mr. Ruskin's acquaintance, as some
+subsequent letters testify.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: October 10, 1848.
+
+My ever dearest Miss Mitford,--Have you not thought some hard thoughts
+of me, for not instantly replying to a letter which necessarily must
+have been, to one who loved you, of such painful interest? Do I not
+love you truly? Yes, indeed. But while preparing to write to you
+my deep regret at hearing that you had been so ill, illness came in
+another form to prevent me from writing, my husband being laid up for
+nearly a month with fever and ulcerated sore throat. I had not the
+heart to write a line to anyone, much less to prepare a packet to
+escort your letter free from foreign postage; and to make you pay for
+a chapter of Lamentations' without the spirit of prophecy, would have
+been too hard on you, wouldn't it? Quite unhappy I have been over
+those burning hands and languid eyes, the only unhappiness I ever had
+by _them_, and then he wouldn't see a physician; and if it hadn't been
+that, just at the right moment, Mr. Mahony, the celebrated Jesuit, and
+Father Prout of 'Fraser,' knowing everything as those Jesuits are apt
+to do, came in to us on his way to Rome, pointed out that the fever
+got ahead through weakness and mixed up with his own kind hand a
+potion of eggs and port wine, to the horror of our Italian servant,
+who lifted up his eyes at such a prescription for a fever, crying, 'O
+Inglesi, Inglesi!' the case would have been far worse, I have no kind
+of doubt. For the eccentric prescription gave the power of sleeping,
+and the pulse grew quieter directly. I shall always be grateful to
+Father Prout, always. The very sight of some one with a friend's name
+and a cheerful face, his very jests at me for being a 'bambina' and
+frightened without cause, were as comforting as the salutation of
+angels. Also, he has been in Florence ever since, and we have seen
+him every day; he came to doctor and remained to talk. A very singular
+person, of whom the world tells a thousand and one tales, you know,
+but of whom I shall speak as I find him, because the utmost kindness
+and warmheartedness have characterised his whole bearing towards us.
+Robert met him years ago at dinner at Emerson Tennent's, and since has
+crossed paths with him on various points of Europe. The first time I
+saw him was as he stood on a rock at Leghorn, at our disembarkation
+in Italy. Not refined in a social sense by any manner of means, yet
+a most accomplished scholar and vibrating all over with learned
+associations and vivid combinations of fancy and experience--having
+seen all the ends of the earth and the men thereof, and possessing the
+art of talk and quotation to an amusing degree. In another week or
+two he will be at Rome.... How graphically you give us your Oxford
+student! Well! the picture is more distinct than Turner's, and if you
+had called it, in the manner of the Master, 'A Rock Limpet,' we
+should have recognised in it the corresponding type of the gifted and
+eccentric writer in question. Very eloquent he is, I agree at once,
+and true views he takes of Art in the abstract, true and elevating. It
+is in the application of connective logic that he breaks away from one
+so violently.... We are expecting our books by an early vessel, and
+are about to be very busy, building up a rococo bookcase of carved
+angels and demons. Also we shall get up curtains, and get down bedroom
+carpets, and finish the remainder of our furnishing business, now
+that the hot weather is at an end. I say 'at an end,' though the glass
+stands at seventy. As to the 'war,' _that_ is rather different, it is
+painful to feel ourselves growing gradually cooler and cooler on the
+subject of Italian patriotism, valour, and good sense; but the process
+is inevitable. The child's play between the Livornese and our Grand
+Duke provokes a thousand pleasantries. Every now and then a day is
+fixed for a revolution in Tuscany, but up to the present time a shower
+has come and put it off. Two Sundays ago Florence was to have been
+'sacked' by Leghorn, when a drizzle came and saved us. You think this
+a bad joke of mine or an impotent sarcasm, perhaps; whereas I merely
+speak historically. Brave men, good men, even sensible men there are
+of course in the land, but they are not strong enough for the times
+or for masterdom. For France, it is a great nation; but even in
+France they want a man, and Cavaignacso[182] only a soldier. If Louis
+Napoleon had the muscle of his uncle's little finger in his soul, he
+would be president, and king; but he is flaccid altogether, you see,
+and Joinville stands nearer to the royal probability after all.
+'Henri Cinq' is said to be too closely espoused to the Church, and his
+connections at Naples and Parma don't help his cause. Robert has more
+hope of the _republic_ than I have: but call ye _this_ a republic? Do
+you know that Miss Martineau takes up the 'History of England' under
+Charles Knight, in the continuation of a popular book? I regret her
+fine imagination being so wasted. So you saw Mr. Chorley? What a
+pleasant flashing in the eyes! We hear of him in Holland and Norway.
+Dear Mr. Kenyon won't stir from England, we see plainly. Ah! Frederic
+Soulié! he is too dead, I fear. Perhaps he goes on, though, writing
+romances, after the fashion of poor Miss Pickering, that prove
+nothing. I long for my French fountains of living literature, which,
+pure or impure, plashed in one's face so pleasantly. Some old French
+'Mémoires' we have got at lately, 'Brienne' for instance. It is
+curious how the leaders of the last revolution (under Louis XVIII.)
+seem to have despised one another. Brienne is very dull and flat. For
+Puseyism, it runs counter to the spirit of our times, after all, and
+will never achieve a church. May God bless you! Robert's regards go
+with the love of your ever affectionate
+
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 182: At this time President of the Council, after
+suppressing the Communist rising of June 1848.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Florence: December 3, 1848.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--It seemed long to me that you had not
+written, and it seems long to me now that I have not answered the kind
+letter which came at last. Then Henrietta told me of your being unwell
+at the moment of her mad excursion into Herefordshire. Altogether
+I want to speak to you and hear from you, and shall be easier and
+gladder when both are done. Do forgive my sins and write directly, and
+tell me everything about both of you, and how you are in spirits and
+health, and whether you really make up your minds to see more danger
+in the stormy influences of the Continent in the moral point of view
+than in those of England in the physical. For my part I hold to my
+original class of fear, and would rather face two or three revolutions
+than an east wind of an English winter. If I were you I would go to
+Pau as usual and take poor Abd-el-Kader's place (my husband is furious
+about the treatment of Abd-el-Kader, so I hear a good deal about
+him[183]), or I would go to Italy and try Florence, where really
+democratic ministries roar as gently as sucking doves, particularly
+when they are safe in place. We have listened to dreadful
+rumours--Florence was to have been sacked several times by the
+Livornese; the Grand Duke went so far as to send away his family
+to Siena, and we had 'Morte a Fiorentini!' chalked up on the walls.
+Still, somehow or other, the peace has been kept in Florentine
+fashion; it has rained once or twice, which is always enough here to
+moderate the most revolutionary when they wear their best surtouts,
+and I look forward to an unbroken tranquillity just as I used to
+do, even though the windows of the Ridolfi Palace (the ambassador in
+London) were smashed the other evening a few yards from ours. Perhaps
+a gentle and affectionate approach to contempt for our Florentines
+mixes a little with this feeling of security, but what then? They
+are an amiable, refined, graceful people, with much of the artistic
+temperament as distinguished from that of men of genius--effeminate,
+no, rather _feminine_ in a better sense--of a fancy easily turned into
+impulse, but with no strenuous and determinate strength in them. What
+they comprehend best in the 'Italian League' is probably a league to
+wear silk velvet and each a feather in his hat, to carry flags and cry
+_vivas_, and keep a grand festa day in the piazzas. Better and happier
+in this than in stabbing prime ministers, or hanging up their dead
+bodies to shoot at; and not much more childish than these French
+patriots and republicans, who crown their great deeds by electing to
+the presidency such a man as Prince Louis Napoleon, simply because
+'C'est le neveu de son oncle!'[184] A curious precedent for a
+president, certainly; but, oh heavens and earth, what curious things
+abroad everywhere just now, inclusive of the sea serpent! I agree
+with you that much of all is very melancholy and disheartening, though
+holding fast by my hope and belief that good will be the end, as it
+always _is_ God's end to man's frenzies, and that all we observe is
+but the fermentation necessary to the new wine, which presently we
+shall drink pure. Meanwhile, the saddest thing is the impossibility
+(which I, for one, feel) to sympathise, to go along with, the _people_
+to whom and to whose cause all my natural sympathies yearn. The
+word 'Liberty' ceases to make me thrill, as at something great and
+unmistakable, as, for instance, the other great words Truth, and
+Justice; do. The salt has lost its savour, the meaning has escaped
+from the term; we know nothing of what people will _do_ when they
+aspire to Liberty. The holiness of liberty is desecrated by the sign
+of the ass's hoof. Fixed principles, either of opinion or action, seem
+clearly gone out of the world. The principle of Destruction is in the
+place of the principle of Re-integration, or of Radical Reform, as we
+called it in England. I look all round and can sympathise nowhere.
+The rulers hold by rottenness, and the people leap into the abyss,
+and nobody knows why this is, or why that is. As to France, my tears
+(which I really couldn't help at the time of the expulsion of poor
+Louis Philippe and his family, not being very strong just then) are
+justified, it appears, though my husband thought them foolish (and so
+did I), and though we both began by an adhesion to the Republic in
+the cordial manner. But, just see, the Republic was a 'man in an iron
+mask' or helmet, and turns out a military dictatorship, a throttling
+of the press, a starving of the finances, and an election of Louis
+Napoleon to be President. Louis Philippe was better than all this,
+take him at worst, and at worst he did _not_ deserve the mud and
+stones cast at him, which I have always maintained and maintain still.
+England might have got up ('happy country') more crying grievances
+than France at the moment of outbreak; but what makes outbreaks
+now-a-days is not 'the cause, my soul,' but the stuff of the people.
+You are huckaback on the other side of the Channel, and you wear out
+the poor Irish linen, let the justice of the case be what it may.
+Politics enough and too much, surely, especially now when they are
+depressing to you, and more or less to everybody.... We are still
+in the slow agonies of furnishing our apartment. You see, being
+the poorest and most prudent of possible poets, we had to solve the
+problem of taking our furniture out of our year's income (proceeds
+of poems and the like), and of not getting into debt. Oh, I take no
+credit to myself; I was always in debt in my little way ('small _im_
+morals,' as Dr. Bowring might call it) before I married, but Robert,
+though a poet and dramatist by profession, being descended from
+the blood of all the Puritans, and educated by the strictest of
+dissenters, has a sort of horror about the dreadful fact of owing
+five shillings five days, which I call quite morbid in its degree and
+extent, and which is altogether unpoetical according to the traditions
+of the world. So we have been dragging in by inches our chairs and
+tables throughout the summer, and by no means look finished and
+furnished at this late moment, the slow Italians coming at the heels
+of our slowest intentions with the putting up of our curtains, which
+begin to be necessary in this November tramontana. Yet in a month or
+three weeks we shall look quite comfortable--before Christmas; and
+in the meantime we heap up the pine wood and feel perfectly warm
+with these thick palace walls between us and the outside air. Also my
+husband's new edition is on the _edge_ of coming out, and we have had
+an application from Mr. Phelps, of Sadler's Wells, for leave to act
+his 'Blot on the 'Scutcheon,' which, if it doesn't succeed, its
+public can have neither hearts nor intellects (that being an impartial
+opinion), and which, if it succeeds, will be of pecuniary advantage to
+us. Look out in the papers.... My love and my husband's go to you, our
+dear friends. Let me be always
+
+Your affectionate and grateful
+BA.
+
+
+While Italy shows herself so politically demoralised, and the blood of
+poor Russia smokes from the ground, the ground seems to care no more
+for it than the newspapers, or anybody else.
+
+Such a jar of flowers we have to keep December. White roses, as in
+June.
+
+[Footnote 183: Abd-el-Kader surrendered to the French in Algeria early
+in 1848, under an express promise that he should be sent either to
+Alexandria or to St. Jean d'Acre; in spite of which he was sent to
+France and kept there as a prisoner for several years.]
+
+[Footnote 184: Louis Napoleon was elected President of the French
+Republic by a popular vote on December 10.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: December 16, [1848].
+
+... You are wondering, perhaps, how we are so fool-hardy as to keep on
+furnishing rooms in the midst of 'anarchy,' the Pope a fugitive, and
+the crowned heads packing up. Ah, but we have faith in the _softness_
+of our Florentines, who must be well spurred up to the leap before
+they do any harm. These things look worse at a distance than they do
+near, although, seen far and near, nothing _can_ be worse than the
+evidence of demoralisation of people, governors, and journalists, in
+the sympathy given everywhere to the assassination of poor Rossi.[185]
+If Rossi was retrocessive, he was at least a constitutional minister,
+and constitutional means of opposing him were open to all, but Italy
+understands nothing constitutional; liberty is a fair word and a
+watchword, nothing more; an idea it is not in the minds of any. The
+poor Pope I deeply pity; he is a weak man with the noblest and most
+disinterested intentions. His faithful flock have nearly broken his
+heart by the murder of his two personal friends, Rossi and Palma, and
+the threat, which they sent him by embassy, of murdering every man,
+woman, and child in the Quirinal, with the exception of his Holiness,
+unless he accepted their terms. He should have gone out to them and so
+died, but having missed that opportunity, nothing remained but flight.
+He was a mere Pope hostage as long as he stayed in Rome. Curious, the
+'intervention of the French,' so long desired by the Italians,
+and vouchsafed _so_.[186] The Florentines open their eyes in mute
+astonishment, and some of them 'won't read the journals any more.' The
+boldest say softly that the _Romans are sure not to bear it_. And what
+is to happen in France? Why, what a world we have just now.... Father
+Prout is gone to Rome for a fortnight, has stayed three weeks, and
+day by day we expect him back again. I don't understand how the Prout
+papers should have hurt him ecclesiastically, but that he should be
+_known_ for their writer is not astonishing, as the secret was never,
+I believe, attempted to be kept. We have been, at least _I_ have
+been, a little anxious lately about the fate of the 'Blot on the
+'Scutcheon,' which Mr. Phelps applied for my husband's permission to
+revive at Sadler's. Of course, putting the request was a mere form,
+as he had every right to act the play, and there was nothing to answer
+but one thing. Only it made one anxious--made _me_ anxious--till we
+heard the result, and we, both of us, are very grateful to dear Mr.
+Chorley, who not only made it his business to be at the theatre the
+first night, but, before he slept, sat down like a true friend to give
+us the story of the result, and never, he says, was a more complete
+and legitimate success. The play went straight to the heart of the
+audience, it seems, and we hear of its continuance on the stage from
+the papers. So far, so well. You may remember, or may not have heard,
+how Macready brought it out and put his foot on it in the flash of
+a quarrel between manager and author, and Phelps, knowing the whole
+secret and feeling the power of the play, determined on making a
+revival of it on his own theatre, which was wise, as the event proves.
+Mr. Chorley called his acting really 'fine.' I see the second edition
+of the 'Poetical Works' advertised at last in the 'Athenaeum,' and
+conclude it to be coming out directly. Also my second edition is
+called for, only nothing is yet arranged on that point. We have had a
+most interesting letter from Mr. Home, giving terrible accounts, to be
+sure, of the submersion of all literature in England and France since
+the French Revolution, but noble and instructive proof of individual
+wave-riding energy, such as I have always admired in him. He and his
+wife, he says, live chiefly on the produce of their garden, and keep
+a cheerful heart for the rest; even the 'Institutes' expect gratuitous
+lectures, so that the sweat of the brain seems less productive than
+the sweat of the brow. I am glad that Mr. Serjeant Talfourd and his
+wife spoke affectionately of my husband, for he is attached to both
+of them.... My Flush has grown to be passionately fond of grapes,
+devouring bunch after bunch, and looking so fat and well that we
+attribute some virtue to them. When he goes to England he will be as
+much in a strait as an Italian who related to us his adventures in
+London; he had had a long walk in the heat, and catching sight of
+grapes hanging up in a grocer's shop, he stopped short to have a
+pennyworth, as he said inwardly to himself. Down he sat and made out
+a Tuscan luncheon in purple bunches. At last, taking out his purse to
+look for the halfpence: 'Fifteen shillings, sir, if you please,' said
+the shopman. Now do write soon, and speak particularly of your health,
+and take care of it and don't be too complaisant to visitors. May God
+bless you, my very dear friend! Think of me as
+
+Ever your affectionate and grateful
+E.B.B.
+_My husband's regards always._
+
+[Footnote 185: Count Pellegrino Rossi, chief minister to the Pope, was
+assassinated in Rome, at the entrance of the Chamber of Deputies,
+on November 15, 1848. Ten days later the Pope fled to Gaeta, and his
+experiments in 'reform' came to a final end.]
+
+[Footnote 186: The Pope, having declared war against Austria before
+his flight, had invited French support, with the concurrence of his
+people; being expelled from Rome, he invited (and obtained) French
+help to restore him, in spite of the desperate opposition of his
+people.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+1849-1851
+
+There is here a pause of two months in the correspondence of Mrs.
+Browning, during which the happiness of her already happy life was
+crowned by the birth, on March 9, 1849, of her son, Robert Wiedeman
+Barrett Browning.[187] How great a part this child henceforward played
+in her life will be shown abundantly by the letters that follow. Some
+passages referring to the child's growth, progress, and performances
+have been omitted, partly in the necessary reduction of the bulk of
+the correspondence, and partly because too much of one subject may
+weary the reader. But enough has been left to show that, in the case
+of Mrs. Browning (and of her husband likewise), the parent was by no
+means lost in the poet. There is little in what she says which might
+not equally be said, and is in substance said, by hundreds of happy
+mothers in every age; but it would be a suppression of one essential
+part of her nature, and an injury to the pleasant picture which the
+whole life of this poet pair presents, if her enthusiasms over her
+child were omitted or seriously curtailed. Biographers are fond of
+elaborating the details in which the lives of poets have not conformed
+to the standard of the moral virtues; let us at least recognise
+that, in the case of Robert and Elizabeth Browning, the moral and the
+intellectual virtues flourished side by side, each contributing its
+share to the completeness of the whole character.
+
+[Footnote 187: Wiedeman was the maiden name of Mr. Browning's mother,
+her father having been a German who settled in Scotland and married a
+Scotch wife.]
+
+The joy of this firstborn's birth was, however, very quickly dimmed
+by the news of the death, only a few days later, of Mr. Browning's
+mother, to whom he was devotedly attached. Her death was very sudden,
+and the shock of the reaction completely prostrated him for a long
+time. The following letters from Mrs. Browning tell how he felt this
+loss.
+
+
+_To Miss Browning_
+April i, 1849 [postmark].
+
+I do indeed from the bottom of my heart pity you and grieve with you,
+my dearest Sarianna. I may grieve with you as well as for you; for I
+too have lost. Believe that, though I never saw her face; I loved that
+pure and tender spirit (tender to me even at this distance), and that
+she will be dear and sacred to me to the end of my own life.
+
+Dearest Sarianna, I thank you for your consideration and admirable
+self-control in writing those letters. I do thank and bless you.
+If the news had come unbroken by such precaution to my poor darling
+Robert, it would have nearly killed him, I think. As it is, he has
+been able to cry from the first, and I am able to tell you that though
+dreadfully affected, of course, for you know his passionate love for
+her, he is better and calmer now--much better. He and I dwell on
+the hope that you and your dear father will come to us at once.
+Come--dear, dear Sarianna--I will at least love you as you
+deserve--you and him--if I can do no more. If you would comfort
+Robert, come.
+
+No day has passed since our marriage that he has not fondly talked of
+her. I know how deep in his dear heart her memory lies. God comfort
+you, my dearest Sarianna. The blessing of blessed duties heroically
+fulfilled _must_ be With you. May the blessing of the Blessed in
+heaven be added to the rest!
+
+Robert stops me. My dear love to your father.
+
+Your ever attached sister, BA.
+
+
+_To Miss Browning_
+[April 1849.]
+
+You will have comfort in hearing, my dearest Sarianna, that Robert
+is better on the whole than when I wrote last, though still very much
+depressed. I wish I could get him to go somewhere or do something--at
+any rate God's comforts are falling like dew on all this affliction,
+and must in time make it look a green memory to you both. Continually
+he thinks of you and of his father--believe how continually and
+tenderly he thinks of you. Dearest Sarianna, I feel so in the quick
+of my heart how you must feel, that I scarcely have courage to entreat
+you to go out and take the necessary air and exercise, and yet that
+is a duty, clear as other duties, and to be discharged like others
+by you, as fully, and with as little shrinking of the will. If your
+health should suffer, what grief upon grief to those who grieve
+already! And besides, we who have to live are not to lie down under
+the burden. There will be time enough for lying down presently, very
+soon; and in the meanwhile there is plenty of God's work to do with
+the body and with the soul, and we have to do it as cheerfully as
+we can. Dearest Sarianna, you can look behind and before, on blessed
+memories and holy hopes--love is as full for you as ever in the old
+relation, even though her life in the world is cut off. There is no
+drop of bitterness in all this flood of sorrow. In the midst of the
+great anguish which God has given, you have to thank Him for some
+blessing with every pang as it comes. Never was a more beautiful,
+serene, assuring death than this we are all in tears for--for, believe
+me, my very dear sister, I have mourned with you, knowing what we all
+have lost, I who never saw her nor shall see her until a few years
+shall bring us all together to the place where none mourn nor are
+parted. Sarianna, will it not be possible, do you think, for you and
+your father to come here, if only for a few months? Then you might
+decide on the future upon more knowledge than you have now. It
+would be comfort and joy to Robert and me if we could all of us live
+together henceforward. Think what you would like, and how you would
+best like it. Your living on _even through this summer at that house_,
+I, who have well known the agony of such bindings to the rack, do
+protest against. Dearest Sarianna, it is not good or right either
+for you or for your dear father. For Robert to go back to that house
+unless it were to do one of you some good, think how it would be with
+_him_! Tell us now (for he yearns towards you--we both do), what is
+the best way of bringing us all together, so as to do every one of us
+some good? If Florence is too far off, is there any other place where
+we could meet and arrange for the future? Could not your dear father's
+leave of absence be extended this summer, out of consideration of what
+has happened, and would he not be so enabled to travel with you and
+meet us _somewhere_? We will do anything. For my part, I am full of
+anxiety; and for Robert, you may guess what his is, you who know him.
+Very bitter has it been to me to have interposed unconsciously as
+I have done and deprived him of her last words and kisses--very
+bitter--and nothing could be so consolatory to me as to give him back
+to _you_ at least. So think for me, dearest Sarianna--think for your
+father and yourself, think for Robert--and remember that Robert and
+I will do anything which shall appear possible to you. May God bless
+you, both of you! Give my true love to your father. Feeling for you
+and with you always and most tenderly, I am your affectionate sister,
+BA.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: April 30, 1849.
+
+I am writing to you, _at last_, you will say, ever dearest Miss
+Mitford; but, except once to Wimpole Street, this is the first packet
+of letters which goes from me since my confinement. You will have
+heard how our joy turned suddenly into deep sorrow by the death of my
+husband's mother. An unsuspected disease (ossification of the heart)
+terminated in a fatal way, and she lay in the insensibility precursive
+of the grave's, when the letter, written in such gladness by my poor
+husband, and announcing the birth of his child, reached her address.
+'It would have made her heart bound,' said her daughter to us. Poor,
+tender heart, the last throb was too near. The medical men would not
+allow the news to be communicated. The next joy she felt was to be in
+heaven itself. My husband has been in the deepest anguish, and indeed,
+except for the courageous consideration of his sister, who wrote two
+letters of preparation saying that 'she was not well,' and she 'was
+very ill,' when in fact all was over, I am frightened to think what
+the result would have been to him. He has loved his mother as such
+passionate natures only can love, and I never saw a man so bowed down
+in an extremity of sorrow--never. Even now the depression is great,
+and sometimes when I leave him alone a little and return to the room,
+I find him in tears. I do earnestly wish to change the scene and air;
+but where to go? England looks terrible now. He says it would break
+his heart to see his mother's roses over the wall, and the place
+where she used to lay her scissors and gloves. Which I understand so
+thoroughly that I can't say, 'Let us go to England.' We must wait and
+see what his father and sister will choose to do or choose us to
+do, for of course a duty plainly seen would draw us anywhere. My own
+dearest sisters will be painfully disappointed by any change of plan,
+only they are too good and kind not to understand the difficulty, not
+to see the motive. So do _you_, I am certain. It has been very very
+painful altogether, this drawing together of life and death. Robert
+was too enraptured at my safety, and with his little son, and the
+sudden reaction was terrible. You see how natural that was. How kind
+of you to write that note to him full of affectionate expressions
+towards me! Thank you, dearest friend. He had begged my sisters to let
+you know of my welfare, and I hope they did; and now it is my turn
+to know of _you_, and so I do entreat you not to delay, but to let me
+hear exactly how you are and what your plans are for the summer. Do
+you think of Paris seriously? Am I not a sceptic about your voyages
+round the world? It's about the only thing that I don't thoroughly
+believe you _can_ do. But (not to be impertinent) I want to hear so
+much! I want first and chiefly to hear of your health; and occupations
+next, and next your plans for the summer. Louis Napoleon is
+astonishing the world, you see, by his firmness and courage;
+and though really I don't make out the aim and end of his French
+republicans in going to Rome to extinguish the republic there, I wait
+before I swear at him for it till my information becomes fuller. If
+they have at Rome such a republic as we have had in Florence, without
+a public, imposed by a few bawlers and brawlers on many mutes and
+cowards, why, the sooner it goes to pieces the better, of course.
+Probably the French Government acts upon information. In any case, if
+the Romans are in earnest they may resist eight thousand men.[1] We
+shall see. My _faith_ in every species of Italian is, however, nearly
+tired out. I don't believe they are men at all, much less heroes
+and patriots. Since I wrote last to you, I think we have had two
+revolutions here at Florence, Grand Duke out, Grand Duke in.[188] The
+bells in the church opposite rang for both. They first planted a tree
+of liberty close to our door, and, then they pulled it down. The same
+tune, sung under the windows, did for 'Viva la republica!' and 'Viva
+Leopoldo!' The genuine popular feeling is certainly for the Grand Duke
+('O, santissima madre di Dio!' said our nurse, clasping her hands,
+'how the people do love him!'); only nobody would run the risk of a
+pin's prick to save the ducal throne. If the Leghornese, who put up
+Guerazzi on its ruins, had not refused to pay at certain Florentine
+cafés, we shouldn't have had revolution the second, and all this
+shooting in the street! Dr. Harding, who was coming to see me, had
+time to get behind a stable door, just before there was a fall against
+it of four shot corpses; and Robert barely managed to get home
+across the bridges. He had been out walking in the city, apprehending
+nothing, when the storm gathered and broke. Sad and humiliating it all
+has been, and the author of 'Vanity Fair' might turn it to better uses
+for a chapter. By the way, we have just been reading 'Vanity Fair.'
+Very clever, very effective, but cruel to human nature. A painful
+book, and not the pain that purifies and exalts. Partial truths after
+all, and those not wholesome. But I certainly had no idea that
+Mr. Thackeray had intellectual force for such a book; the power is
+considerable. For Balzac, Balzac may have gone out of the world as
+far as we are concerned. Isn't it hard on us? exiles from Balzac! The
+bookseller here, having despaired of the republic and the Grand Duchy
+both, I suppose, and taking for granted on the whole that the world
+must be coming shortly to an end, doesn't give us the sign of a new
+book. We ought to, be done with such vanities. There! and almost I
+have done my paper without a single word to you of the _baby_! Ah, you
+won't believe that I forgot him even if I pretend, so I won't. He is
+a lovely, fat, strong child, with double chins and rosy cheeks, and
+a great wide chest, undeniable lungs, I can assure you. Dr. Harding
+called him 'a robust child' the other day, and 'a more beautiful child
+he never saw.' I never saw a child half as beautiful, for my part....
+Dear Mr. Chorley has written the kindest letter to my husband. I much
+regard him indeed. May God bless you. Let me ever be (with Robert's
+thanks and warm remembrance),
+
+Your most affectionate
+BA.
+
+Flush's jealousy of the baby would amuse you. For a whole fortnight
+he fell into deep melancholy and was proof against all attentions
+lavished on him. Now he begins to be consoled a little and even
+condescends to patronise the cradle.
+
+Footnote 1: As they did until the 8,000 had been increased to 35,000.]
+
+[Footnote 188: A revolution, fomented chiefly by the Leghornese,
+expelled the Grand Duke in March 1849; about seven weeks later a
+counter-revolution, chiefly by the peasantry, recalled him.]
+
+
+_To Miss Browning_
+[Florence:] May 2, 1849.
+
+Robert gives me this blank, and three minutes to write across it.
+Thank you, my very dear Sarianna, for all your kindness and affection.
+I understand what I have lost. I know the worth of a tenderness such
+as you speak of, and I feel that for the sake of my love for Robert
+she was ready out of the fullness of her heart to love _me_ also. It
+has been bitter to me that I have unconsciously deprived him of the
+personal face-to-face shining out of her angelic nature for more than
+two years, but she has forgiven me, and we shall all meet, when it
+pleases God, before His throne. In the meanwhile, my dearest Sarianna,
+we are thinking much of you, and neither of us can bear the thought of
+your living on where you are. If you could imagine the relief it would
+be to us--to me as well as to Robert--to be told frankly what we ought
+to do, where we ought to go, to please you best--you and your dearest
+father--you would think the whole matter over and use plain words in
+the speaking of it. Robert naturally shrinks from the idea of going to
+New Cross under the circumstances of dreary change, and for his sake
+England has grown suddenly to me a land of clouds. Still, to see you
+and his father, and to be some little comfort to you both, would be
+the best consolation to him, I am very sure; and so, dearest Sarianna,
+think of us and speak to us. Could not your father get a long
+vacation? Could we not meet somewhere? Think how we best may comfort
+ourselves by comforting you. Never think of us, Sarianna, as apart
+from you--as if our interest or our pleasure _could_ be apart from
+yours. The child is so like Robert that I can believe in the other
+likeness, and may the inner nature indeed, as you say, be after
+that pure image! He is so fat and rosy and strong that almost I am
+sceptical of his being my child. I suppose he is, after all. May God
+bless you, both of you. I am ashamed to send all these letters, but
+Robert makes me. He is better, but still much depressed sometimes, and
+over your letters he drops heavy tears. Then he treasures them up
+and reads them again and again. Better, however, on the whole, he
+is certainly. Poor little babe, who was too much rejoiced over at
+_first_, fell away by a most natural recoil (even _I_ felt it to be
+_most natural_) from all that triumph, but Robert is still very fond
+of him, and goes to see him bathed every morning, and walks up and
+down on the terrace with him in his arms. If your dear father can toss
+and rock babies as Robert can, he will be a nurse in great favour.
+
+Dearest Sarianna, take care of yourself, and do walk out. No grief in
+the world was ever freer from the corroding drop of bitterness--was
+ever sweeter, holier, and more hopeful than this of yours must be.
+Love is for you on both sides of the grave, and the blossoms of love
+meet over it. May God's love, too, bless you!
+
+Your ever affectionate sister,
+BA.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Florence: May 14, [1849].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--At last I come to thank you for all your
+kindness, all your goodness, all your sympathy for both of us. Robert
+would have written to you in the first instance (for we _both_ thought
+of you) if we had not agreed that you would hear as quickly from
+Henrietta, we not knowing your direct address. Also your welcome
+little note should have had an immediate acknowledgment from him if he
+had not been so depressed at that time that I was glad to ask him to
+wait till I should be ready to write myself. In fact, he has suffered
+most acutely from the affliction you have since of course heard of;
+and just because he was _too happy_ when the child was born, the pain
+was overwhelming afterwards. That is easy to understand, I think.
+While he was full of joy for the child, his mother was dying at a
+distance, and the very thought of accepting that new affection for
+the old became a thing to recoil from--do you not see? So far from
+suffering less through the particular combination of circumstances,
+as some people seemed to fancy he would, he suffered much more, I
+am certain, and very naturally. Even now he is looking very
+unwell--thinner and paler than usual, and his spirits, which used to
+be so good, have not rallied. I long to get him away from Florence
+somewhere--_where_, I can't fix my wishes; our English plans seem flat
+on the ground for the present, _that_ is one sad certainty. My dearest
+sisters will be very grieved if we don't go to England, and yet how
+can I even try to persuade my husband back into the scene of old
+associations where he would feel so much pain? Do I not know what I
+myself should suffer in some places? And he loved his mother with all
+his power of loving, which is deeper and more passionate than love is
+with common men. She hearts of men are generally strong in proportion
+to their heads. Well, I am not to send you such a dull letter though,
+after waiting so long, and after receiving so much to speak thankfully
+of. My child you never would believe to be _my child_, from the
+evidence of his immense cheeks and chins--for pray don't suppose that
+he has only one chin. People call him a lovely child, and if _I_ were
+to call him the same it wouldn't be very extraordinary, only I assure
+you 'a robust child' I may tell you that he is with a sufficient
+modesty, and also that Wilson says he is universally admired in
+various tongues when she and the nurse go out with him to the
+Cascine--'What a beautiful baby!' and 'Che bel bambino!' He has had
+a very stormy entrance upon life, poor little fellow; and when he was
+just three days old, a grand festa round the liberty tree planted at
+our door, attended with military music, civic dancing and singing, and
+the firing of cannons and guns from morning to night, made him start
+in his cradle, and threw my careful nurse into paroxysms of devotion
+before the 'Vergine Santissima' that I mightn't have a fever in
+consequence. Since then the tree of liberty has come down with a crash
+and we have had another festa as noisy on that occasion. Revolution
+and counter-revolution, Guerazzi[189] and Leopold, sacking of Florence
+and entrance of the Austrian army--we live through everything, you
+see, and baby grows fat indiscriminately. For my part, I am altogether
+_blasée_ about revolutions and invasions. Don't think it want of
+feeling in me, or want of sympathy with 'the people,' but really I
+can't help a certain political latitudinarianism from creeping over me
+in relation to this Tuscany. You ought to be here to understand what I
+mean and how I think. Oh heavens! how ignoble it all has been and
+is! A revolution made by boys and _vivas_, and unmade by boys and
+_vivas_--no, there was blood shed in the unmaking--some horror and
+terror, but not as much patriotism and truth as could lift up the
+blood from the kennel. The counter-revolution was strictly _counter_,
+observe. I mean, that if the Leghornese troops here bad paid their
+debts at the Florentine coffee houses, the Florentines would have let
+their beloved Grand Duke stay on at Gaeta to the end of the world. The
+Grand Duke, too, whose part I have been taking hitherto (because he
+did seem to me a good man, more sinned against than sinning)--the
+Grand Duke I give up from henceforth, seeing that he has done this
+base thing of taking again his Austrian titles in his proclamations
+coincidently with the approach of the Austrians. Of Rome, knowing
+nothing, I don't like to speak. If a republic _in earnest_ is
+established there, Louis Napoleon should not try to set his foot on
+it. Dearest Mrs. Martin, how you mistake me about France, and how too
+lightly I must have spoken. If you knew how I admire the French as
+a nation! Robert always calls them '_my beloved French_.' Their
+very faults appear to me to arise from an excess of ideality land
+aspiration; but I was vexed rather at their selection of Louis
+Napoleon--a selection since justified by the firmness and apparent
+integrity of the man. His reputation in England, you will admit, did
+not promise the conclusion. Will he be emperor, do you imagine? And
+shall I ever have done talking politics? I would far rather talk of
+_you_, after all. Henrietta tells me of your looking well, but of your
+not being strong yet. Now do, _for once_, have a fit of egotism and
+tell me a little about yourself.... Surely I ought especially to thank
+you, dearest kind friend, for your goodness in writing to--, of which
+Henrietta very properly told me. I never shall forget this and other
+proofs of your affection for me, and shall remember them with warm
+gratitude always. As to--, I have held out both [my] hands, and my
+husband's hands in mine, again and again to him; he cannot possibly,
+in the secret place of his heart, expect more from either of us. My
+husband would have written to him in the first place, but for the
+obstacles raised by himself and others, and now what _could_ Robert
+write and say except the bare repetition of what I have said over and
+over for him and myself? It is exactly an excuse--not more and not
+less. Just before I was ill I sent my last messages, because, with
+certain hazards before me, my heart turned to them naturally. I might
+as well have turned to a rock.--has been by far the kindest, and has
+written to me two or three little notes, and one since the birth of
+our child. I love them all far too well to be proud, and my husband
+loves me too well not to wish to be friends with every one of them; we
+have neither of us any stupid feeling about 'keeping up our dignity.'
+Yes, I had a letter from--some time ago, in which something was said
+of Robert's being careless of reconciliation. I answered it most
+explicitly and affectionately, with every possible assurance from
+Robert, and offering them from himself the affection of a brother. Not
+a word in answer! To my poor dearest papa I have written very lately,
+and as my letter has not, after a week, been sent back, I catch at
+the hope of his being moved a little. If he neither sends it back nor
+replies severely, I shall take courage to write to him again after a
+while. It will be an immense gain to get him only to read my letters.
+My father and my brothers hold quite different positions, of
+course, and though he has acted sternly towards me, I, knowing his
+peculiarities, do not feel embittered and astonished and disappointed
+as in the other cases. Absolutely happy my marriage has been--never
+could there be a happier marriage (as there are no marriages in
+heaven); but dear Henrietta is quite wrong in fancying, or seeming to
+fancy, that this quarrel with my family has given or gives me slight
+pain. Old affections are not so easily trodden out of me, indeed, and
+while I live unreconciled to them, there must be a void and drawback.
+Do write to me and tell me of both of you, my very dear friends. Don't
+fancy that we are not anxious for brave Venice and Sicily, and that we
+don't hate this Austrian invasion. But Tuscany has acted a vile part
+altogether--_so_ vile, that I am sceptical about the Romans. We expect
+daily the Austrians in Florence, and have made up our minds to be
+very kind. May God bless you! Do write, and mention your health
+particularly, as I am anxious about it. I am quite well myself, and,
+as ever,
+
+Your affectionate
+BA.
+
+Don't you both like Macaulay's History? We are delighted just now with
+it.
+
+[Footnote 189: Chief administrator of the Republic of Tuscany during
+the short absence of the Grand Duke Leopold.]
+
+
+_To Miss Browning_
+[Florence: about June 1849.]
+
+I must say to my dearest Sarianna how delighted we are at the thought
+of seeing her in Florence. I wish it had been before the autumn, but
+since autumn is decided for we must be content to reap our golden
+harvest at the time for such things. Certainly the summer heat of
+Florence is terrible enough--only we should have carried you with us
+into the shade somewhere to the sea or to the mountains--and Robert
+has, of course, told you of our Spezzia plan. The 'fatling of the
+flock' has been sheared closely of his long petticoats. Did he tell
+you that? And you can't think how funny the little creature looks
+without his train, his wise baby face appearing to approve of the
+whole arrangement. He talks to himself now and smiles at everybody,
+and admired my roses so much the other day that he wanted to eat
+them; having a sublime transcendental notion about the mouth being
+the receptacle of all beauty and glory in this world. Tell your dear
+father that certainly he _is_ a 'sweet baby,' there's no denying it.
+We lay him down on the floor to let him kick at ease, and he makes
+violent efforts to get up by himself, and Wilson declares that the
+least encouragement would set him walking. Robert's nursing does
+not mend his spirits much. I shall be very glad to get him away from
+Florence; he has suffered too much here to rally as I long to see him
+do, because, dearest Sarianna, we have to live after all; and to live
+rightly we must turn our faces forward and press forward and not look
+backward morbidly for the footsteps in the dust of those beloved ones
+who travelled with us but yesterday. They themselves are not
+behind but before, and we carry with us our tenderness living and
+undiminished towards them, to be completed when the round of this life
+is complete for us also. Dearest Sarianna, why do I say such things,
+but because I have known what grief is? Oh, and how I could have
+compounded with you, grief for grief, mine for yours, for _I_ had no
+last words nor gestures, Sarianna. God keep you from such a helpless
+bitter agony as mine then was. Dear Sarianna, you will think of us
+and of Florence, my dear sister, and remember how you have made us
+a promise and have to keep it. May God bless you and comfort you.
+We think of you and love you continually, and I am always your most
+affectionate
+
+BA.
+
+
+In July the move from Florence, of which Mrs. Browning speaks in the
+above letter, was effected, the place ultimately chosen for escape
+from the summer heat in the valley of the Arno being the Bagni
+di Lucca. Here three months were spent, as the following letters
+describe. By this time the struggle for Italian liberty had ended in
+failure everywhere. The battle of Novara, on March 23, had prostrated
+Piedmont, and caused the abdication of its king, Charles Albert. The
+Tuscan Republic had come and gone, and the Grand Duke had re-entered
+his capital under the protection of Austrian bayonets. Sicily had been
+reduced to subjection to the Bourbons of Naples. On July 2 the French
+entered Rome, bringing back the Pope cured of his leanings to reform
+and constitutional government; on the 24th, Venice, after an heroic
+resistance, capitulated to the Austrians. The struggle was over for
+the time; the longing for liberty becomes, of necessity, silent; and
+we hear little, for a space, of Italian politics. For the moment it
+might seem justifiable to despair of the republic.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Bagni di Lucca, Toscana: [about July 1849].
+
+At last, you will say, dearest friend. The truth is, I have not been
+forgetting you (how far from that!) but wandering in search of cool
+air and a cool bough among all the olive trees to build our summer
+nest on. My husband has been suffering beyond what one could shut
+one's eyes to in consequence of the great mental shock of last
+March--loss of appetite, loss of sleep, looks quite worn and altered.
+His spirits never rallied except with an effort, and every letter from
+New Cross threw him back into deep depressions. I was very anxious,
+and feared much that the end of it all (the intense heat of Florence
+assisting) would be a nervous fever or something similar. And I had
+the greatest difficulty in persuading him to leave Florence for a
+month or two--he who generally delights so in travelling, had no
+mind for change or movement. I had to say and swear that baby and I
+couldn't bear the heat, and that we must and would go away. _Ce
+que femme veut_, if the latter is at all reasonable, or the former
+persevering. At last I gained the victory. It was agreed that we two
+should go on an exploring journey to find out where we could have
+most shadow at least expense; and we left our child with his nurse and
+Wilson while we were absent. We went along the coast to Spezzia, saw
+Carrara with the white marble mountains, passed through the olive
+forests and the vineyards, avenues of acacia trees, chestnut woods,
+glorious surprises of most exquisite scenery. I say olive forests
+advisedly; the olive grows like a forest tree in those regions,
+shading the ground with tents of silvery network. The olive near
+Florence is but a shrub in comparison, and I have learnt to despise
+a little, too, the Florentine vine, which does not swing such
+portcullises of massive dewy green from one tree to another as along
+the whole road where we travelled. Beautiful, indeed, it was. Spezzia
+wheels the blue sea into the arms of the wooded mountains, and we had
+a glance at Shelley's house at Lerici. It was melancholy to me, of
+course. I was not sorry that the lodgings we inquired about were
+far above our means. We returned on our steps (after two days in the
+dirtiest of possible inns), saw Seravezza, a village in the mountains,
+where rock, river, and wood enticed us to stay, and the inhabitants
+drove us off by their unreasonable prices. It is curious, but just in
+proportion to the want of civilisation the prices rise in Italy. If
+you haven't cups and saucers you are made to pay for plate. Well, so
+finding no rest for the sole of our feet, I persuaded Robert to go to
+the Baths of Lucca, only to see them. We were to proceed afterwards
+to San Marcello or some safer wilderness. We had both of us, but he
+chiefly, the strongest prejudice against these Baths of Lucca, taking
+them for a sort of wasp's nest of scandal and gaming, and expecting to
+find everything trodden flat by the Continental English; yet I wanted
+to see the place, because it is a place to see after all. So we came,
+and were so charmed by the exquisite beauty of the scenery, by the
+coolness of the climate and the absence of our countrymen, political
+troubles serving admirably our private requirements, that we made an
+offer for rooms on the spot, and returned to Florence for baby and the
+rest of our establishment without further delay. Here we are, then; we
+have been here more than a fortnight. We have taken an apartment for
+the season--four months--paying twelve pounds for the whole term,
+and hoping to be able to stay till the end of October. The living is
+cheaper than even at Florence, so that there has been no extravagance
+in coming here. In fact, Florence is scarcely tenable during the
+summer from the excessive heat by day and night, even if there were no
+particular motive for leaving it. We have taken a sort of eagle's nest
+in this place, the highest house of the highest of the three villages
+which are called the Bagni di Lucca, and which lie at the heart of a
+hundred mountains sung to continually by a rushing mountain stream.
+The sound of the river and of the cicala is all the noise we hear.
+Austrian drums and carriage wheels cannot vex us; God be thanked for
+it; the silence is full of joy and consolation. I think my husband's
+spirits are better already and his appetite improved. Certainly little
+babe's great cheeks are growing rosier and rosier. He is out all day
+when the sun is not too strong, and Wilson will have it that he is
+prettier than the whole population of babies here. He fixes his
+blue eyes on everybody and smiles universal benevolence, rather too
+indiscriminately it might be if it were not for Flush. But certainly,
+on the whole he prefers Flush. He pulls his ears and rides on him, and
+Flush, though his dignity does not approve of being used as a pony,
+only protests by turning his head round to kiss the little bare
+dimpled feet. A merrier, sweeter-tempered child there can't be than
+our baby, and people wonder at his being so forward at four months
+old and think there must be a mistake in his age. He is so strong that
+when I put out two fingers and he has seized them in his fists he can
+draw himself up on his feet, but we discourage this forwardness, which
+is not desirable, say the learned. Children of friends of mine at ten
+months and a year can't do so much. Is it not curious that _my_ child
+should be remarkable for strength and fatness? He has a beaming,
+thinking little face, too; oh, I wish you could see it. Then my
+own strength has wonderfully improved, just as my medical friends
+prophesied; and it seems like a dream when I find myself able to climb
+the hills with Robert and help him to lose himself in the forests.
+I have been growing stronger and stronger, and where it is to stop I
+can't tell, really; I can do as much, or more, now than at any point
+of my life since I arrived at woman's estate. The air of this place
+seems to penetrate the heart and not the lungs only; it draws you,
+raises you, excites you. Mountain air without its keenness, sheathed
+in Italian sunshine, think what _that_ must be! And the beauty and
+the solitude--for with a few paces we get free of the habitations
+of men--all is delightful to me. What is peculiarly beautiful and
+wonderful is the variety of the shapes of the mountains. They are a
+multitude, and yet there is no likeness. None, except where the golden
+mist comes and transfigures them into one glory. For the rest, the
+mountain there wrapt in the chestnut forest is not like that bare peak
+which tilts against the sky, nor like that serpent twine of another
+which seems to move and coil in the moving coiling shadow. Oh, I wish
+you were here. You would enjoy the shade of the chestnut trees, and
+the sound of the waterfalls, and at nights seem to be living among the
+stars; the fireflies are so thick, you would like that too. We have
+subscribed to a French library where there are scarcely any new books.
+I have read Bernard's 'Gentilhomme Campagnard' (see how _arriérés_ we
+are in French literature!), and thought it the dullest and worst of
+his books. I wish I could see the 'Memoirs of Louis Napoleon,' but
+there is no chance of such good fortune. All this egotism has been
+written with a heart full of thoughts of you and anxieties for you.
+Do write to me directly and say first how your precious health is, and
+then that you have ceased to suffer pain for your friends.... But your
+dear self chiefly--how are you, my dearest Miss Mitford? I do long so
+for good news of you. On our arrival here Mr. Lever called on us. A
+most cordial vivacious manner, a glowing countenance, with the animal
+spirits somewhat predominant over the intellect, yet the intellect by
+no means in default; you can't help being surprised into being pleased
+with him, whatever your previous inclination may be. Natural too, and
+a _gentleman_ past mistake. His eldest daughter is nearly grown up,
+and his youngest six months old. He has children of every sort of
+intermediate age almost, but he himself is young enough still. Not the
+slightest Irish accent. He seems to have spent nearly his whole life
+on the Continent and by no means to be tired of it. Ah, dearest Miss
+Mitford, hearts feel differently, adjust themselves differently before
+the prick of sorrow, and I confess I agree with Robert. There are
+places stained with the blood of my heart for ever, and where I could
+not bear to stand again. If duty called him to New Cross it would be
+otherwise, but his sister is rather inclined to come to us, I think,
+for a few weeks in the autumn perhaps. Only these are scarcely times
+for plans concerning foreign travel. It is something to talk of. It
+has been a great disappointment to me the not going to England this
+year, but I could not run the risk of the bitter pain to him. May God
+bless you from all pain! Love me and write to me, who am ever and ever
+your affectionate E.B.B.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+Bagni di Lucca: August 11, 1849.
+
+I thank you, dearest friend, for your most affectionate and welcome
+letter would seem to come by instinct, and we have thanked you in our
+thoughts long before this moment, when I begin at last to write some
+of them. Do believe that to value your affection and to love you back
+again are parts of our life, and that it must be always delightful to
+us to read in your handwriting or to hear in your voice that we are
+not exiled from your life. Give us such an assurance whenever you can.
+Shall we not have it face to face at Florence, when the booksellers
+let you go? And meantime there is the post; do write to us.... Did
+you ever see this place, I wonder? The coolness, the charm of the
+mountains, whose very heart you seem to hear beating in the rush of
+the little river, the green silence of the chestnut forests, and the
+seclusion which anyone may make for himself by keeping clear of
+the valley-villages; all these things drew us. We took a delightful
+apartment over the heads of the whole world in the highest house
+of the Bagni Caldi, where only the donkeys and the _portantini_ can
+penetrate, and where we sit at the open windows and hear nothing but
+the cicale. Not a mosquito! think of that! The thermometer ranges
+from sixty-eight to seventy-four, but the seventy-four has been a
+rare excess: the nights, mornings, and evenings are exquisitely cool.
+Robert and I go out and lose ourselves in the woods and mountains, and
+sit by the waterfalls on the starry and moonlit nights, and neither
+by night nor day have the fear of picnics before our eyes. We were
+observing the other day that we never met anybody except a monk girt
+with a rope, now and then, or a barefooted peasant. The sight of a
+pink parasol never startles us into unpleasant theories of comparative
+anatomy. One cause, perhaps, may be that on account of political
+matters it is a delightfully 'bad season,' but, also, we are too
+high for the ordinary walkers, who keep to the valley and the flatter
+roads. Robert is better, looking better, and in more healthy spirits;
+and we are both enjoying this great sea of mountains and our way of
+life here altogether. Of course, we remembered to go back to Florence
+for baby and the rest of our little establishment, and we mean to
+stay as long as we can, perhaps to the end of October. Baby is in
+the triumph of health and full-blown roses, and as he does not hide
+himself in the woods like his ancestors, but smiles at everybody, he
+is the most popular of possible babies.... We had him baptised
+before we left Florence, without godfathers and godmothers, in the
+simplicities of the French Lutheran Church. I gave him your kiss as a
+precious promise that you would love him one day like a true dear
+Aunt Nina; and I promise you on my part that he shall be taught
+to understand both the happiness and the honour of it. Robert is
+expecting a visit from his sister in the course of this autumn. She
+has suffered much, and the change will be good for her, even if, as
+she says, she can stay with us only a few weeks. With her we shall
+have your book, to be disinherited of which so long has been hard on
+us. Robert's own we have not seen yet. It must be satisfactory to you
+to have had such a clear triumph after all the dust and toil of the
+way. And now tell me, won't it be _necessary_ for you to come again to
+Italy for what remains to be done? Poor Florence is quiet enough under
+the heel of Austria, and Leopold 'l'intrepido,' as he was happily
+called by a poet of Viareggio in a welcoming burst of inspiration,
+sits undisturbed at the Pitti. I despair of the republic in Italy, or
+rather of Italy altogether. The instructed are not patriotic, and the
+patriots are not instructed. We want not only a _man_, but men, and we
+must throw, I fear, the bones of their race behind us before the true
+deliverers can spring up. Still, it is not all over; there will be
+deliverance presently, but it will not be now. We are full of painful
+sympathy for poor Venice. There! why write more about politics? It
+makes us sick enough to think of Austrians in our Florence without
+writing the thought out into greater expansion. Only don't let the
+'Times' newspaper persuade you that there is no stepping with impunity
+out of England. ... We have 'lectures on Shakespeare' just now by a
+Mr. Stuart, who is enlightening the English barbarians at the
+lower village, and quoting Mrs. Jameson to make his discourse more
+brilliant. We like to hear 'Mrs. Jameson observes.' Give our love to
+dear Gerardine. I am anxious for her happiness and yours involved in
+it. Love and remember us, dearest friend.
+
+Your E.B.B., or rather, BA.
+
+
+The following note is added in Mr. Browning's handwriting:
+
+Dear Aunt Nina,--Will there be three years before I see you again? And
+Geddie; does she not come to Italy? When we passed through Pisa the
+other day, we went to your old inn in love of you, and got your very
+room to dine in (the landlord is dead and gone, as is Peveruda--of the
+other house, you remember). There were the old vile prints, the old
+look-out into the garden, with its orange trees and painted sentinel
+watching them. Ba must have told you about our babe, and the little
+else there is to tell--that is, for _her_ to tell, for she is not
+likely to encroach upon _my_ story which I _could_ tell of her
+entirely angel nature, as divine a heart as God ever made; I know more
+of her every day; I, who thought I knew something of her five years
+ago! I think I know you, too, so I love you and am
+
+Ever yours and dear Geddie's
+R.B.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Bagni di Lucca: August 31, 1849.
+
+I told Mr. Lever what you thought of him, dearest friend, and then
+he said, all in a glow and animation, that you were not only his
+own delight but the delight of his children, which is affection by
+refraction, isn't it? Quite gratified he seemed by the hold of your
+good opinion. Not only is he the notability _par excellence_ of these
+Baths of Lucca, where he has lived a whole year, during the snows upon
+the mountains, but he presides over the weekly balls at the casino
+where the English 'do congregate' (all except Robert and me), and is
+said to be the light of the flambeaux and the spring of the dancers.
+There is a general desolation when he _will_ retire to play whist.
+In addition to which he really seems to be loving and loveable in his
+family. You always see him with his children and his wife; he drives
+her and her baby up and down along the only carriageable road of
+Lucca: so set down that piece of domestic life on the bright side in
+the broad charge against married authors; now do. I believe he is to
+return to Florence this winter with his family, having had enough of
+the mountains. Have you read 'Roland Cashel,' isn't _that_ the name of
+his last novel? The 'Athenaeum' said of it that it was '_new ground_,'
+and praised it. I hear that he gets a hundred pounds for each monthly
+number. Oh, how glad I was to have your letter, written in such pain,
+read in such pleasure! It was only fair to tell me in the last lines
+that the face-ache was better, to keep off a fit of remorse. I do
+hope that Mr. May is not right about neuralgia, because that is more
+difficult to cure than pain which arises from the teeth. Tell me how
+you are in all ways. I look into your letters eagerly for news of your
+health, then of your spirits, which are a part of health. The cholera
+makes me very frightened for my dearest people in London, and silence,
+the last longer than usual, ploughs up my days and nights into long
+furrows. The disease rages in the neighbourhood of my husband's
+family, and though Wimpole Street has been hitherto clear, who can
+calculate on what may be? My head goes round to think of it. And papa,
+who _will_ keep going into that horrible city! Even if my sisters and
+brothers should go into the country as every year, he will be left, he
+is no more movable than St. Paul's. My sister-in-law will probably not
+come to us as soon as she intended, through a consideration for her
+father, who ought not, Robert thinks, to stay alone in the midst of
+such contingencies, so perhaps we may go to seek her ourselves in the
+spring, if she does not seek us out before in Italy. God keep us all,
+and near to one another. Love runs dreadful risks in the world. Yet
+Love is, how much the best thing in the world? We have had a great
+event in our house. Baby has cut a tooth.... His little happy laugh is
+always ringing through the rooms. He is afraid of nobody or nothing
+in the world, and was in fits of ecstasy at the tossing of the horse's
+head, when he rode on Wilson's knee five or six miles the other day to
+a village in the mountains--screaming for joy, she said. He is not six
+months yet by a fortnight! His father loves him; passionately, and the
+sentiment is reciprocated, I assure you. We have had the coolest
+of Italian summers at these Baths of Lucca, the thermometer at the
+hottest hour of the hottest day only at seventy-six, and generally at
+sixty-eight or seventy. The nights invariably cool. Now the freshness
+of the air is growing almost too fresh. I only hope we shall be able
+(for the cold) to keep our intention of staying here till the end of
+October, I have enjoyed it so entirely, and shall be so sorry to break
+off this happy silence into the Austrian drums at poor Florence. And
+then we want to see the vintage. Some grapes are ripe already, but
+it is not vintage time. We have every kind of good fruit, great
+water-melons, which with both arms I can scarcely carry, at twopence
+halfpenny each, and figs and peaches cheap in proportion. And the
+place agrees with Baby, and has done good to my husband's spirits,
+though the only 'amusement' or distraction he has is looking at the
+mountains and climbing among the woods with me. Yes, we have been
+reading some French romances, 'Monte Cristo,' for instance, I for
+the second time--but I have liked it, to read it with him. That Dumas
+certainly has power; and to think of the scramble there was for his
+brains a year or two ago in Paris! For a man to write so much and
+so well together is a miracle. Do you mean that they have left off
+writing--those French writers--or that they have tired you out with
+writing that looks faint beside the rush of facts, as the range of
+French politics show those? Has not Eugène Sue been illustrating
+the passions? Somebody told me so. Do _you_ tell me how you like
+the French President, and whether he will ever, in your mind, sit on
+Napoleon's throne. It seems to me that he has given proof, as far
+as the evidence goes, of prudence, integrity, and conscientious
+patriotism; the situation is difficult, and he fills it honorably. The
+Rome business has been miserably managed; this is the great blot on
+the character of his government. But I, for my own part (my husband is
+not so minded), do consider that the French motive has been good, the
+intention pure, the occupation of Rome by the Austrians being imminent
+and the French intervention the only means (with the exception of a
+European war) of saving Rome from the hoof of the Absolutists. At the
+same time if Pius IX. is the obstinate idiot he seems to be, good and
+tenderhearted man as he surely is, and if the old abuses are to be
+restored, why Austria might as well have done her own dirty work
+and saved French hands from the disgrace of it. It makes us two very
+angry. Robert especially is furious. We are not within reach of the
+book you speak of, 'Portraits des Orateurs Français' oh, we might
+nearly as well live on a desert island as far as modern books go. And
+here, at Lucca, even Robert can't catch sight of even the 'Athenaeum.'
+We have a two-day old 'Galignani,' and think ourselves royally off;
+and then this little shop with French books in it, just a few, and the
+'Gentilhomme Campagnard' the latest published. Yes, but somebody lent
+us the first volume of 'Chateaubriand's Mémoires.' Have you seen it?
+Curiously uninteresting, considering 'the man and the hour.' He writes
+of his youth with a grey goose quill; the paper is all wrinkled.
+And then he is not frank; he must have more to tell than he tells. I
+looked for a more intense and sincere book _outre tombe_ certainly. I
+am busy about my new edition, that is all at present, but some things
+are written. Good of Mr. Chorley (he is _good_) to place you face
+to face with Robert's books, and I am glad you like 'Colombe' and
+'Luria.' Dear Mr. Kenyon's poems we have just received and are about
+to read, and I am delighted at a glance to see that he has inserted
+the 'Gipsy Carol,' which in MS. was such a favorite of mine. Really,
+is he so rich? I am glad of it, if he is. Money could not be in more
+generous and intelligent hands. Dearest Miss Mitford, you are only
+just in being trustful of my affection for you. Never do I forget nor
+cease to love you. Write and tell me of your dear self; how you are
+_exactly_, and whether you have been at Three Mile Cross all the
+summer. May God bless you. Robert's regards. Can you read? Love a
+little your
+
+  Ever affectionate
+  E.B.B.
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+Bagni di Lucca: October 1, [1849].
+
+There seems to be a fatality about our letters, dearest friend, only
+the worst fate comes to me! I lose, and you are _near_ losing! And I
+should not have liked you to lose any least proof of my thinking of
+you, lest a worst loss should happen to me as a consequence, even
+worse than the loss of your letters; for then, perhaps, and by
+degrees, you might leave off thinking of Robert and me, which, rich
+as we are in this mortal world, I do assure you we could neither of
+us afford.... We have had much quiet enjoyment here in spite of
+everything, read some amusing books (Dumas and Sue--shake your head!),
+and seen our child grow fuller of roses and understanding day by day.
+Before he was six months old he would stretch out his hands and his
+feet too, when bidden to do so, and his little mouth to kiss you. This
+is said to be a miracle of forwardness among the learned. He knows
+Robert and me quite well as 'Papa' and 'Mama,' and laughs for joy when
+he meets us out of doors. Robert is very fond of him, and threw
+me into a fit of hilarity the other day by springing away from his
+newspaper in an indignation against me because he hit his head against
+the floor rolling over and over. 'Oh, Ba, I really can't trust you!'
+Down Robert was on the carpet in a moment, to protect the precious
+head. He takes it to be made of Venetian glass, I am certain. We may
+leave this place much sooner than the end of October, as everything
+depends upon the coming in of the cold. It will be the end of October,
+won't it, before Gerardine can reach Florence? I wish I knew. We have
+made an excursion into the mountains, five miles deep, with all our
+household, baby and all, on horseback and donkeyback, and people open
+their eyes at our having performed such an exploit--I and the child.
+Because it is five miles straight up the Duomo; you wonder how any
+horse could keep its footing, the way is so precipitous, up the
+exhausted torrent courses, and with a palm's breadth between you and
+the headlong ravines. Such scenery. Such a congregation of mountains:
+looking alive in the stormy light we saw them by. We dined with the
+goats, and baby lay on my shawl rolling and laughing. He wasn't in the
+least tired, not he! I won't say so much for myself. The Mr. Stuart
+who lectured here on Shakespeare (I think I told you that) couldn't
+get through a lecture without quoting you, and wound up by a
+declaration that no English critic had done so much for the divine
+poet as a woman--Mrs. Jameson. He appears to be a cultivated and
+refined person, and especially versed in German criticism, and we mean
+to _use_ his society a little when we return to Florence, where he
+resides.... What am I to say about Robert's idleness and mine? I
+scold him about it in a most anti-conjugal manner, but, you know, his
+spirits and nerves have been shaken of late; we must have patience.
+As for me, I am much better, and do something, really, now and then.
+Wait, and you shall have us both on you; too soon, perhaps. May God
+bless you. How are your friends? Lady Byron, Madame de Goethe. The
+dreadful cholera has made us anxious about England.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+Mr. Browning adds the following note:
+
+Dear Aunt Nina,--Ba will have told you everything, and how we wish
+you and Geddie all manner of happiness. I hope we shall be in Florence
+when she passes through it. The place is otherwise distasteful to me,
+with the creeping curs and the floggers of the same. But the weather
+is breaking up here, and I suppose we ought to go back soon. Shall
+you indeed come to Italy next year? That will indeed be pleasant
+to expect. We hope to go to England in the spring. What comes of
+'hoping,' however, we [know] by this time.
+
+Ever yours affectionately,
+R.B.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Bagni di Lucca: October 2, 1849.
+
+Thank you, my dearest Miss Mitford: It is great comfort to know
+that you are better, and that the cholera does not approach your
+neighbourhood. My brothers and sisters have gone to Worthing for a
+few weeks; and though my father (dearest Papa!) is not persuadeable, I
+fear, into joining them, yet it is something to know that the horrible
+pestilence is abating in London. Oh, it has made me so anxious: I
+have caught with such a frightened haste at the newspaper to read
+the 'returns,' leaving even such subjects as Rome and the President's
+letter to quite the last, as if they were indifferent, or, at most,
+bits of Mrs. Manning's murder. By the way and talking of murder, how
+do you account for the crown of wickedness which England bears just
+now over the heads of the nations, in murders of all kinds, by poison,
+by pistol, by knife? In this poor Tuscany, which has not brains enough
+to govern itself, as you observe, and as really I can't deny, there
+have been two murders (properly so called) since we came, just three
+years ago, one from jealousy and one from revenge (respectable motives
+compared to the advantages of the burying societies!), and the horror
+on all sides was great, as if the crime were some rare prodigy, which,
+indeed, it is in this country. We have _no punishment of death_ here,
+observe! The people are gentle, courteous, refined, and tenderhearted.
+What Balzac would call 'femmelette.' All Tuscany is 'Lucien' himself.
+The leaning to the artistic nature without the strength of genius
+implies demoralisation in most cases, and it is this which makes
+your 'good for nothing poets and poetesses,' about which I love so to
+battle with you. Genius, I maintain always, you know, is a purifying
+power and goes with high moral capacities. Well, and so you invite us
+home to civilisation and 'the "Times" newspaper.' We _mean_ to go next
+spring, and shall certainly do so unless something happen to catch us
+and keep us in a net. But always something does happen: and I have so
+often built upon seeing England, and been precipitated from the fourth
+storey, that I have learnt to think warily now. I hunger and thirst
+for the sight of some faces; must I not long, do you think, to see
+your face? And then, I shall be properly proud to show my child
+to those who loved me before him. He is beginning to understand
+everything--chiefly in Italian, of course, as his nurse talks in her
+sleep, I fancy, and can't be silent a second in the day--and when told
+to 'dare un bacio a questo povero Flush,' he mixes his little face
+with Flush's ears in a moment.... You would wonder to see Flush just
+now. He suffered this summer from the climate somewhat as usual,
+though not nearly as much as usual; and having been insulted oftener
+than once by a supposition of 'mange,' Robert wouldn't bear it
+any longer (he is as fond of Flush as I am), and, taking a pair of
+scissors, clipped him all over into the likeness of a lion, much
+to his advantage in both health and appearance. In the winter he is
+always quite well; but the heat and the fleas together are too much
+in the summer. The affection between baby and him is not equal, baby's
+love being far the stronger. He, on the other hand, looks down upon
+baby. What bad news you tell me of our French writers! What! Is it
+possible that Dumas even is struck dumb by the revolution? His first
+works are so incomparably the worst that I can't admit your theory of
+the 'first runnings.' So of Balzac. So of Sue! George Sand is probably
+writing 'banners' for the 'Reds,' which, considering the state of
+parties in France, does not really give me a higher opinion of
+her intelligence or virtue. Ledru Rollin's[190] _confidante_ and
+councillor can't occupy an honorable position, and I am sorry, for
+her sake and ours. When we go to Florence we must try to get the
+'Portraits' and Lamartine's autobiography, which I still more long to
+see. So, two women were in love with him, were they? That must be a
+comfort to look back upon, now, when nobody will have him. I see by
+extracts from his newspaper in Galignani that he can't be accused of
+temporising with the Socialists any longer, whatever other charge may
+be brought against him: and if, as he says, it was he who made the
+French republic, he is by no means irreproachable, having made a bad
+and false thing. The President's letter about Rome[191] has delighted
+us. A letter worth writing and reading! We read it first in the
+Italian papers (long before it was printed in Paris), and the amusing
+thing was that where he speaks of the 'hostile influences' (of the
+cardinals) they had misprinted it '_orribili_ influenze,' which must
+have turned still colder the blood in the veins of Absolutist readers.
+The misprint was not corrected until long after--more than a week, I
+think. The Pope is just a pope; and, since you give George Sand
+credit for having known it, I am the more vexed that Blackwood (under
+'orribili influenze') did not publish the poem I wrote two years
+ago,[192] in the full glare and burning of the Pope-enthusiasm, which
+Robert and I never caught for a moment. Then, _I_ might have passed
+a little for a prophetess as well as George Sand! Only, to confess a
+truth, the same poem would have proved how fairly I was taken in by
+our Tuscan Grand Duke. Oh, the traitor!
+
+I saw the 'Ambarvalia'[193] reviewed somewhere--I fancy in the
+'Spectator '--and was not much struck by the extracts. They may,
+however, have been selected without much discrimination, and probably
+were. I am very glad that you like the gipsy carol in dear Mr.
+Kenyon's volume, because it is, and was in MS., a great favorite of
+mine. There are excellent things otherwise, as must be when he says
+them: one of the most radiant of benevolences with one of the most
+refined of intellects! How the paper seems to dwindle as I would fain
+talk on more. I have performed a great exploit, ridden on a donkey
+five miles deep into the mountains to an almost inaccessible volcanic
+ground not far from the stars. Robert on horseback, and Wilson and the
+nurse (with baby) on other donkeys; guides, of course. We set off at
+eight in the morning and returned at six P.M., after dining on the
+mountain pinnacle, I dreadfully tired, but the child laughing as
+usual, and burnt Brick-colour for all bad effect. No horse or ass,
+untrained to the mountains, could have kept foot a moment where we
+penetrated, and even as it was one could not help the natural thrill.
+No road except the bed of exhausted torrents above and through the
+chestnut forests, and precipitous beyond what you would think possible
+for ascent or descent. Ravines tearing the ground to pieces under
+your feet. The scenery, sublime and wonderful, satisfied us wholly,
+however, as we looked round on the world of innumerable mountains
+bound faintly with the grey sea, and not a human habitation. I hope
+you will go to London this winter; it will be good for you, it seems
+to me. Take care of yourself, my much and ever loved friend! I love
+you and think of you indeed. Write of your health, remembering this,
+
+And your affectionate,
+E.B.B.
+
+My husband's regards always. You had better, I think, direct to
+_Florence_, as we shall be there in the course of October.
+
+[Footnote 190: Minister of the Interior in the Republic of 1848, and
+one of the most prominent f the advanced Republican leaders.]
+
+[Footnote 191: A letter, addressed to a private friend but intended
+to be made public, denouncing the reactionary and oppressive
+administration of the restored Pope.]
+
+[Footnote 192: Probably the first part of _Casa Guidi Windows_.]
+
+[Footnote 193: By A.H. Clough and T. Burbidge.]
+
+
+To Florence, accordingly, they returned in October, and settled down
+once more in Casa Guidi for the winter. Mrs. Browning's principal
+literary occupation at this time was the preparation of a new edition
+of her poems, including nearly all the contents of the 'Seraphim'
+volume of 1838, more or less revised, as well as the 'Poems' of
+1844. This edition, published in 1850, has formed the basis of all
+subsequent editions of her poems. Meanwhile her husband was engaged
+in the preparation of 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day,' which was also
+published in the course of 1850.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: December I, 1849.
+
+My ever loved friend, you will have wondered at this unusual silence;
+and so will my sisters to whom I wrote just now, after a pause as
+little in my custom. It was not the fault of my head and heart, but of
+this unruly body, which has been laid up again in the way of all flesh
+of mine....
+
+I am well again now, only obliged to keep quiet and give up my grand
+walking excursions, which poor Robert used to be so boastful of. If he
+is vain about anything in the world, it is about my improved health,
+and I used to say to him, 'But you needn't talk so much to people of
+how your wife walked here with you and there with you, as if a wife
+with a pair of feet was a miracle of nature.' Now the poor feet have
+fallen into their old ways again. Ah, but if God pleases it won't be
+for long....
+
+The American authoress, Miss Fuller, with whom we had had some slight
+intercourse by letter, and who has been at Rome during the siege, as
+a devoted friend of the republicans and a meritorious attendant on
+the hospitals, has taken us by surprise at Florence, retiring from the
+Roman field with a husband and child above a year old. Nobody had even
+suspected a word of this underplot, and her American friends stood in
+mute astonishment before this apparition of them here. The husband is
+a Roman marquis, appearing amiable and gentlemanly, and having fought
+well, they say, at the siege, but with no pretension to cope with his
+wife on any ground appertaining to the intellect. She talks, and he
+listens. I always wonder at that species of marriage; but people are
+so different in their matrimonial ideals that it may answer sometimes.
+This Mdme. Ossoli saw George Sand in Paris--was at one of her
+soirées--and called her 'a magnificent creature.' The soirée was 'full
+of rubbish' in the way of its social composition, which George Sand
+likes, _nota bene_. If Mdme. Ossoli called it '_rubbish_' it must have
+been really rubbish--not expressing anything conventionally so--she
+being one of the out and out _Reds_ and scorners of grades of society.
+She said that she did not see Balzac. Balzac went into the world
+scarcely at all, frequenting the lowest cafés, so that it was
+difficult to track him out. Which information I receive doubtingly.
+The rumours about Balzac with certain parties in Paris are not likely
+to be too favorable nor at all reliable, I should fancy; besides,
+I never entertain disparaging thoughts of my demi-gods unless they
+should be forced upon me by evidence you must know. I have not made
+a demi-god of Louis Napoleon, by the way--no, and I don't mean it. I
+expect some better final result than he has just proved himself to be
+of the French Revolution, with all its bitter and cruel consequences
+hitherto, so I can't quite agree with you. Only so far, that he
+has shown himself up to this point to be an upright man with noble
+impulses, and that I give him much of my sympathy and respect in the
+difficult position held by him. A man of genius he does not seem to
+be--and what, after all, will he manage to do at Rome? I don't take
+up the frantic Republican cry in Italy. I know too well the want of
+knowledge and the consequent want of i effective faith and energy
+among the Italians; but there is a stain upon France in the present
+state of the Roman affair, and I don't shut my eyes to that either. To
+cast Rome helpless and bound into the hands of the priests is dishonor
+to the actors, however we consider the act; and for the sake of
+France, even more than for the sake of Italy, I yearn to see the act
+cancelled. Oh, we have had the sight of Clough and Burbidge, at last.
+Clough has more thought, Burbidge more music; but I am disappointed
+in the book on the whole. What I like infinitely better is Clough's
+'Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich,' a 'long vacation pastoral,' written in
+loose and more-than-need-be unmusical hexameters, but full of vigour
+and freshness, and with passages and indeed whole scenes of great
+beauty and eloquence. It seems to have been written before the other
+poems. Try to get it, if you have not read it already. I feel certain
+you will like it and think all the higher of the poet. Oh, it strikes
+both Robert and me as being worth twenty of the other little book,
+with its fragmentary, dislocated, unartistic character. Arnold's
+volume has two good poems in it: 'The Sick King of Bokhara' and 'The
+Deserted Merman.' I like them both. But none of these writers
+are _artists_, whatever they may be in future days. Have you read
+'Shirley,' and is it as good as 'Jane Eyre'? We heard not long since
+that Mr. Chorley had discovered the author, _the_ 'Currer Bell.' A
+woman, most certainly. We hear, too, that three large editions of the
+'Princess' are sold. So much the happier for England and poetry.
+
+Dearest dear Miss Mitford, mind you write to me, and don't pay me out
+in my own silence! _You_ have not been ill, I hope and trust. Write
+and tell me every little thing of yourself--how you are, and whether
+there is still danger of your being uprooted from Three Mile Cross. I
+love and think of you always. Fancy Flush being taken in the light
+of a rival by baby! Oh, baby was quite jealous the other day, and
+strugggled and kicked to get to me because he saw Flush leaning his
+pretty head on my lap. There's a great strife for privileges between
+those two. May God bless you! My husband's kind regards always, while
+I am your most
+
+Affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: January 9, 1850.
+
+Thank you, ever dearest Miss Mitford, for this welcome letter written
+on your birthday! May the fear of small-pox have passed away long
+before now, and every hope and satisfaction have strengthened and
+remained!...
+
+May God bless you and give you many happy years, you who can do so
+much towards the happiness of others. May I not answer for my own?...
+
+Little Wiedeman began to crawl on Christmas Day. Before, he used to
+roll. We throw things across the floor and he crawls for them like a
+little dog, on all fours....
+
+He has just caught a cold, which I make more fuss about than I ought,
+say the wise; but I can't get resigned to the association of any sort
+of suffering with his laughing dimpled little body--it is the blowing
+about in the wind of such a heap of roses. So you prefer 'Shirley' to
+'Jane Eyre'! Yet I hear from nobody such an opinion; yet you are very
+probably right, for 'Shirley' may suffer from the natural reaction
+of the public mind. What you tell me of Tennyson interests me
+as everything about him must. I like to think of him digging
+gardens--room for cabbage and all. At the same time, what he says
+about the public '_hating_ poetry' is certainly not a word for
+Tennyson. Perhaps no true poet, having claims upon attention _solely_
+through his poetry, has attained so certain a success with such short
+delay. Instead of being pelted (as nearly every true poet has been),
+he stands already on a pedestal, and is recognised as a master spirit
+not by a coterie but by the great public. Three large editions of the
+'Princess' have already been sold. If he isn't satisfied after all, I
+think he is wrong. Divine poet as he is, and no laurel being too leafy
+for him, yet he must be an unreasonable man, and not understanding
+of the growth of the laurel trees and the nature of a reading public.
+With regard to the other garden-digger, dear Mr. Home, I wish as you
+do that I could hear something satisfactory of him. I wrote from Lucca
+in the summer, and have no answer. The latest word concerning him is
+the announcement in the 'Athenaeum' of a third edition of his 'Gregory
+the Seventh,' which we were glad to see, but very, very glad we should
+be to have news of his prosperity in the flesh as well as in the
+_litterae scriptae_....
+
+I have not been out of doors these two months, but people call me
+'looking well,' and a newly married niece of Miss Bayley's, the
+accomplished Miss Thomson, who has become the wife of Dr. Emil Braun
+(the learned German secretary of the Archaeological Society), and just
+passed through Florence on her way to Rome, where they are to reside,
+declared that the change she saw in me was miraculous--'wonderful
+indeed.' I took her to look at Wiedeman in his cradle, fast asleep,
+and she won my heart (over again, for always she was a favorite of
+mine) by exclaiming at his prettiness. Charmed, too, we both were
+with Dr. Braun--I mean Robert and I were charmed. He has a mixture of
+fervour and simplicity which is still more delightfully picturesque
+in his foreign English. Oh, he speaks English perfectly, only with an
+obvious accent enough. I am sure we should be cordial friends, if the
+lines had fallen to us in the same pleasant places; but he is fixed
+at Rome, and we are half afraid of the enervating effects of the Roman
+climate on the constitutions of children. Tell me, do you hear often
+from Mr. Chorley? It quite pains us to observe from his manner of
+writing the great depression of his spirits. His mother was ill in
+the summer, but plainly the sadness does not arise entirely or chiefly
+from this cause. He seems to me over-worked, taxed in the spirit. I
+advise nobody to give up work; but that 'Athenaeum' labour is a sort
+of treadmill discipline in which there is no progress, nor triumph,
+and I do wish he would give that up and come out to us with a new set
+of anvils and hammers. Only, of course, he couldn't do it, even if he
+would, while there is illness in his family. May there be a whole sun
+of success shining on the new play! Robert is engaged on a poem,[194]
+and I am busy with my edition. So much to correct, I find, and many
+poems to add. Plainly 'Jane Eyre' was by a woman. It used to astound
+me when sensible people said otherwise. Write to me, will you? I long
+to hear again. Tell me everything of yourself; accept my husband's
+true regards, and think of me as your
+
+Ever affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 194: _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_.]
+
+
+_To Miss Browning_
+Florence: January 29, 1850.
+
+My dearest Sarianna,--I have waited to thank you for your great and
+ready kindness about the new edition, until now when it is fairly on
+its way to England. Thank you, thank you! I am only afraid, not that
+you will find anything too 'learned,' as you suggest, but a good many
+things too careless, I was going to say, only Robert, with various
+deep sighs for 'his poor Sarianna,' devoted himself during several
+days to rearranging my arrangements, and simplifying my complications.
+It was the old story of Order and Disorder over again. He pulled out
+the knotted silks with an indefatigable patience, so that really
+you will owe to _him_ every moment of ease and facility which may be
+enjoyable in the course of the work. I am afraid that at the easiest
+you will find it a vexatious business, but I throw everything on
+your kindness, and am not distrustful on such a point of weights and
+measures.
+
+Your letter was full of sad news. Robert was deeply affected at the
+account of the illness of his cousin--was in tears before he could end
+the letter. I do hope that in a day or two we may hear from you that
+the happy change was confirmed as time passed on. I do hope so; it
+will be joy, not merely to Robert, but to me, for indeed I never
+forget the office which his kindness performed for both of us at a
+crisis ripe with all the happiness of my life.
+
+Then it was sad to hear of your dear father suffering from lumbago.
+May the last of it have passed away long before you get what I am
+writing! Tell him with my love that Wiedeman shall hear some day (if
+we all live) the verses he wrote to him; and I have it in my head that
+little Wiedeman will be very sensitive to verses and kindness too--he
+likes to hear anything rhythmical and musical, and he likes to
+be petted and kissed--the most affectionate little creature he
+is--sitting on my knee, while I give him books to turn the leaves
+over (a favorite amusement), every two minutes he puts up his little
+rosebud of a mouth to have a kiss. His cold is quite gone, and he has
+taken advantage of the opportunity to grow still fatter; as to his
+activities, there's no end to them. His nurse and I agree that he
+doesn't remain quiet a moment in the day....[195]
+
+Now the love of nephews can't bear any more, Sarianna, can it? Only
+your father will take my part and say that it isn't tedious--beyond
+pardoning.
+
+May God bless both of you, and enable you to send a brighter letter
+next time. Robert will be very anxious.
+
+Your ever affectionate sister
+BA.
+Mention yourself, _do_.
+
+[Footnote 195: A long description of the baby's meals and daily
+programme follows, the substance of which can probably be imagined by
+connoisseurs in the subject.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: February 18, 1850.
+
+Ever dearest Miss Mitford, you _always_ give me pleasure, so for
+love's sake don't say that you 'seldom give it,' and such a magical
+act as conjuring up for me the sight of a new poem by Alfred
+Tennyson[196] is unnecessary to prove you a right beneficent
+enchantress. Thank you, thank you. We are not so unworthy of your
+redundant kindness as to abuse it by a word spoken or sign signified.
+You may trust us indeed. But now you know how free and sincere I
+am always! Now tell me. Apart from the fact of this lyric's being a
+fragment of fringe from the great poet's 'singing clothes' (as Leigh
+Hunt says somewhere), and apart from a certain sweetness and rise and
+fall in the rhythm, do you really see much for admiration in the poem?
+Is it _new_ in, any way? I admire Tennyson with the most worshipping
+part of the multitude, as you are aware, but I do _not_ perceive much
+in this lyric, which strikes me, and Robert also (who goes with me
+throughout), as quite inferior to the other lyrical snatches in the
+'Princess.' By the way, if he introduces it in the 'Princess,' it
+will be the only _rhymed_ verse in the work. Robert thinks that he was
+thinking of the Rhine echoes in writing it, and not of any heard in
+his Irish travels. I hear that Tennyson has taken rooms above Mr.
+Forster's in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and is going to try a London life.
+So says Mr. Kenyon.... I am writing with an easier mind than when
+I wrote last, for I was for a little time rendered very unhappy (so
+unhappy that I couldn't touch on the subject, which is always the way
+with me when pain passes a certain point), by hearing accidentally
+that papa was unwell and looking altered. My sister persisted in
+replying to my anxieties that they were unfounded, that I was quite
+absurd, indeed, in being anxious at all; only people are not generally
+reformed from their absurdities through being scolded for them. Now,
+however, it really appears that the evil has passed. He left his
+doctor who had given him lowering medicines, and, coincidently with
+the leaving, he has recovered looks and health altogether. Arabel says
+that I should think he was looking as well as ever, if I saw him, and
+that appetite and spirits are even redundant. Thank God.... To
+have this good news has made me very happy, and I overflow to you
+accordingly. Oh, there is pain enough from that quarter, without
+hearing of his being out of health. I write to him continually and
+he does not now return my letters, which is a melancholy something
+gained. Now enough of such a subject.
+
+I certainly don't think that the qualities, half savage and half
+freethinking, expressed in 'Jane Eyre' are likely to suit a model
+governess or schoolmistress; and it amuses me to consider them in
+that particular relation. Your account falls like dew upon the parched
+curiosity of some of our friends here, to whom (as mere gossip, which
+did not leave you responsible) I couldn't resist the temptation
+of communicating it. People _are_ so curious--even here among the
+Raffaels--about this particular authorship, yet nobody seems to have
+read 'Shirley'; we are too slow in getting new books. First Galignani
+has to pirate them himself, and then to hand us over the spoils.
+By the way, there's to be an international copyright, isn't there?
+Something is talked of it in the 'Athenaeum.' Meanwhile the Americans
+have already reprinted my husband's new edition. 'Landthieves, I mean
+pirates.' I used to take that for a slip of the pen in Shakespeare;
+but it was a slip of the pen into prophecy. Sorry I am at Mrs. ----
+falling short of your warm-hearted ideas about her! Can you understand
+a woman's hating a girl because it is not a boy--her first child too?
+I understand it so little that scarcely I can believe it. Some women
+_have_, however, undeniably an indifference to children, just as many
+men have, though it must be unnatural and morbid in both sexes.
+Men often affect it--very foolishly, if they count upon the scenic
+effects; affectation never succeeds well, and this sort of affectation
+is peculiarly unbecoming, except in old bachelors, for there is a
+pathetic side to the question so viewed. For my part and my husband's,
+we may be frank and say that we have caught up our parental pleasures
+with a sort of passion. But then, Wiedeman is such a darling little
+creature; who _could_ help loving the child?... Little darling! So
+much mischief was not often put before into so small a body. Fancy
+the child's upsetting the water jugs till he is drenched (which charms
+him), pulling the brooms to pieces, and having serious designs upon
+cutting up his frocks with a pair of scissors. He laughs like an imp
+when he can succeed in doing anything wrong. Now, see what you get, in
+return for your kindness of 'liking to hear about' him! Almost I have
+the grace to be ashamed a little. Just before I had your letter we
+sent my new edition to England. I gave much time to the revision, and
+did not omit reforming some of the rhymes, although you must consider
+that the irregularity of these in a certain degree rather falls in
+with my system than falls out through my carelessness. So much the
+worse, you will say, when a person is _systematically_ bad. The work
+will include the best poems of the 'Seraphim' volume, strengthened and
+improved as far as the circumstances admitted of. I had not the heart
+to leave out the wretched sonnet to yourself, for your dear sake; but
+I rewrote the latter half of it (for really it wasn't a sonnet at all,
+and 'Una and her lion' are rococo), and so placed it with my other
+poems of the same class. There are some new, verses also.[197] The
+Miss Hardings I have seen, and talked with them of _you_, a sure way
+of finding them delightful. But, my dearest friend, I shall not see
+any of the Trollope party--it is not likely. You can scarcely image to
+yourself the retired life we live, or how we have retreated from
+the kind advances of the English society here. Now people seem to
+understand that we are to be left alone; that nothing is to be made of
+us. The fact is, we are not like our child, who kisses everybody who
+smiles at him! Neither my health nor our pecuniary circumstances, nor
+our inclinations perhaps, would admit of our entering into English
+society here, which is kept up much after the old English models, with
+a proper disdain for Continental simplicities of expense. We have just
+heard from Father Prout, who often, he says, sees Mr. Horne, 'who is
+as dreamy as ever.' So glad I am, for I was beginning to be uneasy
+about him. He has not answered my letter from Lucca. The verses in the
+'Athenaeum'[198] are on Sophia Cottrell's child.
+
+May God bless you, dearest friend. Speak of _yourself_ more
+particularly to your ever affectionate
+
+E.B.B.
+
+Robert's kindest regards. Tell us of Mr. Chorley's play, do.
+
+[Footnote 196: Apparently the _Echo-song_ which now precedes canto
+iv. of the _Princess_, though one is surprised at the opinion here
+expressed of it. It will be remembered that this and the other lyrical
+interludes did not appear in the original edition of the _Princess_.]
+
+[Footnote 197: Notably the _Sonnets from the Portuguese_.]
+
+[Footnote 198: 'A Child's Death at Florence,' which appeared in the
+_Athenaeum_ of December 22, 1849.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Florence: February 22, 1850.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Have you wondered that I did not write
+before? It was not that I did not thank you in my heart for your kind,
+considerate letter, but I was unconquerably uncomfortable about papa;
+and, what with the weather, which always has me in its power somehow,
+and other things, I fell into a dislike of writing, which I hope you
+didn't mistake for ingratitude, because it was not in the least like
+the same fault. Now the severe weather (such weather for Italy!) has
+broken up, and I am relieved in all ways, having received the most
+happy satisfactory news from Wimpole Street, and the assurance from my
+sisters that if I were to see papa I should think him looking as well
+as ever. He grew impatient with Dr. Elliotson's medicines which, it
+appears, were of a very lowering character--suddenly gave them up,
+and as suddenly recovered his looks and all the rest, and everybody
+at home considers him to be _quite well_. It has relieved me of a
+mountain's weight, and I thank God with great joy. Oh, you must have
+understood how natural it was for me to be unhappy under the other
+circumstances. But if you thought, dearest friend, that _they_
+were necessary to induce me to write to him the humblest and most
+beseeching of letters, you do not know how I feel his alienation or my
+own love for him. I With regard to my brothers, it is quite different,
+though even towards _them_ I may faithfully say that my affection
+has borne itself higher than my pride. But as to papa, I have never
+contended about the right or the wrong, I have never irritated him by
+seeming to suppose that his severity to me has been more than justice.
+I have confined myself simply to a supplication for--his forgiveness
+of what he called, in his own words, the only fault of my life towards
+him, and an expression of the love which even I must feel I for him,
+whether he forgives me or not. This has been done in letter after
+letter, and they are not sent back--it is all. In my last letter, I
+ventured to ask him to let it be an understood thing that he should
+before the world, and to every practical purpose, act out his idea of
+justice by excluding me formally, me and mine, from every advantage
+he intended his other children--that, having so been just, he might
+afford to be merciful by giving me his forgiveness and affection--all
+I asked and desired. My husband and I had talked this over again and
+again; only it was a difficult thing to say, you see. At last I took
+courage and said it, because, doing it, papa might seem to himself to
+reconcile his notion of strict justice, and whatever remains of pity
+and tenderness might still be in his heart towards me, if there are
+any such. I _know_ he has strong feelings at bottom--otherwise, should
+I love him so?--but he has adopted a bad system, and he (as well as I)
+is crushed by it.... If I were to write to you the political rumours
+we hear every day, you would scarcely think our situation improved in
+safety by the horrible Austrian army. Florence bristles with cannon on
+all sides, and at the first movement we are promised to be bombarded.
+On the other hand, if the red republicans get uppermost there will be
+a universal massacre; not a priest, according to their own profession,
+will be left alive in Italy. The constitutional party hope they are
+gaining strength, but the progress which depends on intellectual
+growth must necessarily be slow. That the Papacy has for ever lost its
+prestige and power over souls is the only evident truth; bright and
+strong enough to cling to. I hear even devout women say: 'This cursed
+Pope! it's all his fault.' Protestant places of worship are thronged
+with Italian faces, and the minister of the Scotch church at Leghorn
+has been threatened with exclusion from the country if he admits
+Tuscans to the church communion. Politically speaking, much will
+depend upon France, and I have strong hope for France, though it is
+so strictly the fashion to despair of her. Tell me dear Mr. Martin's
+impression and your own--everything is good that comes from you. But
+most _particularly_, tell me how you both are--tell me whether you are
+strong again, dearest Mrs. Martin, for indeed I do not like to hear of
+your being in the least like an invalid. Do speak of yourself a little
+more. Do you know, you are very unsatisfactory as a letter-writer when
+you write about yourself--the reason being that you never do write
+about yourself except by the suddenest snatches, when you can't
+possibly help the reference....
+
+Robert sends his true regards with those of your
+Gratefully affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+April 2, [1850].
+
+You have perhaps thought us ungrateful people, my ever dear friend,
+for this long delay in thanking you for your beautiful and welcome
+present.[199] Here is the truth. Though we had the books from Rome
+last month, they were snatched from us by impatient hands before we
+had finished the first volume. The books are hungered and thirsted
+for in Florence, and, although the English reading club has them,
+they can't go fast enough from one to another. Four of our friends
+entreated us for the reversion, and although it really is only
+just that we should be let read our own books first, yet Robert's
+generosity can't resist the need of this person who is 'going away,'
+and of that person who is 'so particularly anxious'--for particular
+reasons perhaps--so we renounce the privilege you gave us (with the
+pomps of this world) and are still waiting to finish even the first
+volume. Our cultivated friends the Ogilvys, who had the work from us
+earliest, because they were going to Naples, were charmed with it. Mr.
+Kirkup the artist, who disputes with Mr. Bezzi the glory of finding
+Dante's portrait--yes, and breathes fire in the dispute--has it now.
+Madame Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, the American authoress, who brought
+from the siege of Rome a noble marquis as her husband, asks for it.
+And your adorer Mr. Stuart, who has lectured upon Shakespeare all
+the winter, entreats for it. So when we shall be free to enjoy it
+thoroughly for ourselves remains doubtful. Robert promises every day,
+'You shall have it next, certainly,' and I only hope you will put
+him and me in your next edition of the martyrs, for such a splendid
+exercise of the gifts of self-renunciation. But don't fancy that
+we have not been delighted with the sight of the books, with your
+kindness, and besides with the impressions gathered from a rapid
+examination of the qualities of the work. It seems to us in every
+way a valuable and most interesting work; it must render itself
+a _necessity_ for art students, and general readers and seers of
+pictures like me, who carry rather sentiment than science into
+the consideration of such subjects. We much admire your
+introduction--excellent in all ways, besides the grace and eloquence.
+Altogether, the work must set you higher with a high class of the
+public, and I congratulate you on what is the gain of all of us.
+Robert has begun a little pencil list of trifling criticisms he means
+to finish. We both cry aloud at what you say of Guercino's angels,
+and never would have said if you had been to Fano and seen his divine
+picture of the 'Guardian Angel,' which affects me every time I think
+of it. Our little Wiedeman had his part of pleasure in the book by
+being let look at the engravings. He screamed for joy at the miracle
+of so many bird-men, and kissed some of them very reverentially, which
+is his usual way of expressing admiration....
+
+Whether you will like Robert's new book I don't know, but I am sure
+you will admit the originality and power in it. I wish we had the
+option of giving it to you, but Chapman & Hall never seem to think
+of our giving copies away, nor leave them at our disposal. There is
+nothing _Italian_ in the book; poets are apt to be most present with
+the distant. A remark of Wilson's[200] used to strike me as eminently
+true--that the perfectest descriptive poem (descriptive of rural
+scenery) would _be_ naturally produced in a London cellar. I have read
+'Shirley' lately; it is not equal to 'Jane Eyre' in spontaneousness
+and earnestness. I found it heavy, I confess, though in the mechanical
+part of the writing--the compositional _savoir faire_--there is an
+advance. Robert has exhumed some French books, just now, from a little
+circulating library which he had not tried, and we have been making
+ourselves uncomfortable over Balzac's 'Cousin Pons.' But what a
+wonderful writer he is! Who else could have taken such a subject, out
+of the lowest mud of humanity, and glorified and consecrated it? He is
+wonderful--there is not another word for him--profound, as Nature is.
+S I complain of Florence for the want of books. We have to dig and dig
+before we can get anything new, and _I_ can read the newspapers only
+through Robert's eyes, who only can read them at Vieusseux's in a room
+sacred from the foot of woman. And this isn't always satisfactory to
+me, as whenever he falls into a state of disgust with any political
+_régime_, he throws the whole subject over and won't read a word
+more about it. Every now and then, for instance, he ignores France
+altogether, and I, who am more tolerant and more curious, find myself
+suspended over an hiatus _(valde deflendus_), and what's to be said
+and done? M. Thiers' speech--'Thiers is a rascal; I make a point of
+not reading one word said by M. Thiers.' M. Prudhon--'Prudhon is a
+madman; who cares for Prudhon?' The President--'The President's an
+ass; _he_ is not worth thinking of.' And so we treat of politics.
+
+I wish you would write to us a little oftener (or rather, a good deal)
+and tell us much of yourself. It made me very sorry that you should
+be suffering in the grief of your sister--you whose sympathies are so
+tender and quick! May it be better with you now! Mention Lady Byron. I
+shall be glad to hear that she is stronger notwithstanding this cruel
+winter. We have lovely weather here now, and I am quite well and able
+to walk out, and little Wiedeman rolls with Flush on the grass of
+the Cascine. Dear kind Wilson is doatingly fond of the child, and
+sometimes gives it as her serious opinion that 'there never _was_ such
+a child before.' Of course I don't argue the point much. Now, will
+you write to us? Speak of your plans particularly when you do. We have
+taken this apartment on for another year from May. May God bless you!
+Robert unites in affectionate thanks and thoughts of all kinds, with
+your
+
+E.B.B.--rather, BA.
+
+This letter has waited some days to be sent away, as you will see by
+the date.
+
+[Footnote 199: Mrs. Jameson's _Legends of the Monastic Orders_, which
+had just been published.]
+
+[Footnote 200: Presumably _not_ Mrs. Browning's maid, but 'Christopher
+North.']
+
+
+At the end of March 1850, the long-deferred marriage of Mrs.
+Browning's sister, Henrietta, to Captain Surtees Cook took place. It
+is of interest here mainly as illustrating Mr. Barrett's behaviour
+to his daughters. An application for his consent only elicited the
+pronouncement, 'If Henrietta marries you, she turns her back on this
+house for ever,' and a letter to Henrietta herself reproaching her
+with the 'insult' she had offered him in asking his consent when she
+had evidently made up her mind to the conclusion, and declaring
+that, if she married, her name should never again be mentioned in his
+presence. The marriage having thereupon taken place, his decision was
+forthwith put into practice, and a second child was thenceforward an
+exile from her father's house.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: [end of] April 1850.
+
+You will have seen in the papers, dearest friend, the marriage of my
+sister Henrietta, and will have understood why I was longer silent
+than usual. Indeed, the event has much moved me, and so much of the
+emotion was painful--painfulness being inseparable from events of the
+sort in our family--that I had to make an effort to realise to myself
+the reasonable degree of gladness and satisfaction in her release from
+a long, anxious, transitional state, and her prospect of happiness
+with a man who has loved her constantly and who is of an upright,
+honest, reliable, and religious mind. Our father's objections were to
+his Tractarian opinions and insufficient income. I have no sympathy
+myself with Tractarian opinions, but I cannot under the circumstances
+think an objection of the kind tenable by a third person, and in truth
+we all know that if it had not been this objection, it would have been
+another--there was no escape any way. An engagement of five years
+and an attachment still longer were to have some results; and I can't
+regret, or indeed do otherwise than approve from my heart, what she
+has done from hers. Most of her friends and relatives have considered
+that there was no choice, and that her step is abundantly justified.
+At the same time, I thank God that a letter sent to me to ask my
+advice never reached me (the _second_ letter of my sisters' lost,
+since I left them), because no advice _ought_ to be given on any
+subject of the kind, and because I, especially, should have shrunk
+from accepting such a responsibility. So I only heard of the marriage
+three days before it took place--no, four days before--and was upset,
+as you may suppose, by the sudden news. Captain Surtees Cook's sister
+was one of the bridesmaids, and his brother performed the ceremony.
+The _means_ are very small of course--he has not much, and my sister
+has nothing--still it seems to me that they will have enough to live
+prudently on, and he looks out for a further appointment. Papa 'will
+never again let her name be mentioned in his hearing,' he _says_, but
+we must hope. The dreadful business passed off better on the whole
+than poor Arabel expected, and things are going on as quietly as
+usual in Wimpole Street now. I feel deeply for _her_, who in her
+pure disinterestedness just pays the price and suffers the loss.
+She represents herself, however, to be relieved at the crisis being
+passed. I earnestly hope for her sake that we may be able to get to
+England this year--a sight of us will be some comfort. Henrietta is to
+live at Taunton for the present, as he has a military situation there,
+and they are preparing for a round of visits among their many friends
+who are anxious to have them previous to their settling. All this, you
+see, will throw me back with papa, even if I can be supposed to have
+gained half a step, and I doubt it. Oh yes, dearest Miss Mitford. I
+have indeed again and again thought of your 'Emily,' stripping the
+situation of 'the favour and prettiness' associated with that heroine.
+Wiedeman might compete, though, in darlingness with the child, as the
+poem shows him. Still, I can accept no omen. My heart sinks when I
+dwell upon peculiarities difficult to analyse. I love him very deeply.
+When I write to him, I lay myself at his feet. Even if I had gained
+half a step (and I doubt it, as I said), see how I must be thrown back
+by the indisposition to receive others. But I cannot write of this
+subject. Let us change it....
+
+Madame Ossoli sails for America in a few days, with the hope of
+returning to Italy, and indeed I cannot believe that her Roman husband
+will be easily naturalised among the Yankees. A very interesting
+person she is, far better than her writings--thoughtful, spiritual
+in her habitual mode of mind; not only exalted, but _exaltée_ in her
+opinions, and yet calm in manner. We shall be sorry to lose her. We
+have lost, besides, our friends Mr. and Mrs. Ogilvy, cultivated and
+refined people: they occupied the floor above us the last winter, and
+at the Baths of Lucca and Florence we have seen much of them for
+a year past. She published some time since a volume of 'Scottish
+Minstrelsy,' graceful and flowing, and aspires strenuously towards
+poetry; a pretty woman with three pretty children, of quick
+perceptions and active intelligence and sensibility. They are upright,
+excellent people in various ways, and it is a loss to us that they
+should have gone to Naples now. Dearest friend, how your letter
+delighted me with its happy account of your improved strength. Take
+care of yourself, do, to lose no ground. The power of walking must
+refresh your spirits as well as widen your daily pleasures. I am so
+glad. Thank God. We have heard from Mr. Chorley, who seems to have
+received very partial gratification in respect to his play and yet
+prepares for more plays, more wrestlings in the same dust. Well, I
+can't make it out. A man of his sensitiveness to choose to appeal to
+the coarsest side of the public--which, whatever you dramatists may
+say, you all certainly do--is incomprehensible to me. Then I cannot
+help thinking that he might achieve other sorts of successes more
+easily and surely. Your criticism is very just. But _I_ like his
+'Music and Manners in Germany' better than anything he has done. I
+believe I always _did_ like it best, and since coming to Florence I
+have heard cultivated Americans speak of it with enthusiasm, yes, with
+enthusiasm. 'Pomfret' they would scarcely believe to be by the same
+author. I agree with you, but it is a pity indeed for him to tie
+himself to the wheels of the 'Athenaeum,' to _approfondir_ the ruts;
+what other end? And, by the way, the 'Athenaeum,' since Mr. Dilke
+left it, has grown duller and duller, colder and colder, flatter
+and flatter. Mr. Dilke was not brilliant, but he was a Brutus in
+criticism; and though it was his speciality to condemn his most
+particular friends to the hangman, the survivors thought there was
+something grand about it on the whole, and nobody could hold him in
+contempt. Now it is all different. We have not even 'public virtue' to
+fasten our admiration to. You will be sure to think I am vexed at the
+article on my husband's new poem.[201] Why, certainly I am vexed! Who
+would _not_ be vexed with such misunderstanding and mistaking. Dear
+Mr. Chorley writes a letter to appreciate most generously: so you see
+how little power he has in the paper to insert an opinion, or stop an
+injustice. On the same day came out a burning panegyric of six columns
+in the 'Examiner,' a curious cross-fire. If you read the little book
+(I wish I could send you a copy, but Chapman & Hall have not offered
+us copies, and you will catch sight of it somewhere), I hope you will
+like things in it at least. It seems to me full of power. Two hundred
+copies went off in the first fortnight, which is a good beginning
+in these days. So I am to confess to a satisfaction in the American
+piracies. Well, I confess, then. Only it is rather a complex smile
+with which one hears: 'Sir or Madam, we are selling your book at half
+price, as well printed as in England.' 'Those apples we stole from
+your garden, we sell at a halfpenny, instead of a penny as you do;
+they are much appreciated.' Very gratifying indeed. It's worth
+while to rob us, that's plain, and there's something magnificent in
+supplying a distant market with apples out of one's garden. Still the
+smile is complex in its character, and the morality--simple, that's
+all I meant to say. A letter from Henrietta and her husband, glowing
+with happiness; it makes _me_ happy. She says, 'I wonder if I shall be
+as happy as you, Ba.' God grant it. It was signified to her that she
+should at once give up her engagement of five years, or leave the
+house. She married directly. I do not understand how it could be
+otherwise, indeed. My brothers have been kind and affectionate, I am
+glad to say; in her case, poor dearest papa does injustice chiefly to
+his own nature, by these severities, hard as they seem. Write soon and
+talk of yourself to
+
+Ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+I am rejoicing in the People's Edition of your work. 'Viva!' (Robert's
+best regards.)
+
+[Footnote 201: The _Athenaeum_ review of _Christmas Eve and Easter
+Day_, while recognising the beauty of many passages in the two poems,
+criticised strongly the discussion of theological subjects in 'doggrel
+verse;' and its analysis of the theology would hardly be satisfactory
+to the author.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+Florence: May 4, [1850],
+
+Dearest Friend,--This little note will be given to you by the Mr.
+Stuart of whom I once told you that he was holding you up to the
+admiration of all Florence and the Baths of Lucca as the best English
+critic of Shakespeare, in his lectures on the great poet....
+
+Robert bids me say that he wrote you a constrained half-dozen lines
+by Mr. Henry Greenough, who asked for a letter of introduction to you,
+while the asker was sitting in the room, and the form of 'dear Mrs.
+Jameson' couldn't well be escaped from. He loves you as well as ever,
+you are to understand, through every complication of forms, and you
+are to love him, and _me_, for I come in as a part of him, if you
+please. Did you get my thanks for the dear Petrarch pen (so steeped in
+double-distilled memories that it seems scarcely fit to be steeped in
+ink), and our appreciation as well as gratitude for the books--which,
+indeed, charm us more and more? Robert has been picking up pictures at
+a few pauls each, 'hole and corner' pictures which the 'dealers' had
+not found out; and the other day he covered himself with glory by
+discovering and seizing on (in a corn shop a mile from Florence) five
+pictures among heaps of trash; and one of the best judges in Florence
+(Mr. Kirkup) throws out such names for them as Cimabue, Ghirlandaio,
+Giottino, a crucifixion painted on a banner, Giottesque, if not
+Giotto, but _unique_, or nearly so, on account of the linen material,
+and a little Virgin by a Byzantine master. The curious thing is that
+two angel pictures, for which he had given a scudo last year, prove
+to have been each sawn off the sides of the Ghirlandaio, so called,
+representing the 'Eterno Padre' clothed in a mystical garment and
+encircled by a rainbow, the various tints of which, together with the
+scarlet tips of the flying seraphs' wings, are darted down into the
+smaller pictures and complete the evidence, line for line. It has been
+a grand altar-piece, cut to bits. Now come and see for yourself. We
+can't say decidedly yet whether it will be possible or impossible for
+us to go to England this year, but in any case you must come to see
+Gerardine and Italy, and we shall manage to catch you by the skirts
+then--so do come. Never mind the rumbling of political thunders,
+because, even if a storm breaks, you will slip under cover in these
+days easily, whether in France or Italy. I can't make out, for my
+part, how anybody can be afraid of such things.
+
+Will you be among the likers or dislikers, I wonder sometimes, of
+Robert's new book? The _faculty_, you will recognise, in all cases; he
+can do anything he chooses. I have complained of the _asceticism_ in
+the second part, but he said it was 'one side of the question.' Don't
+think that he has taken to the cilix--indeed he has not--but it is his
+way to _see_ things as passionately as other people _feel_ them....
+
+Chapman & Hall offer us no copies, or you should have had one, of
+course. So Wordsworth is gone--a great light out of heaven.
+
+May God bless you, my dear friend!
+
+Love your affectionate and grateful, for so many
+reasons,
+BA.
+
+
+The death of Wordsworth on April 23 left the Laureateship vacant,
+and though there was probably never any likelihood of Mrs. Browning's
+being invited to succeed him, it is worth noticing that her claims
+were advocated by so prominent a paper as the 'Athenaeum,' which not
+only urged that the appointment would be eminently suitable under a
+female sovereign, but even expressed its opinion that 'there is no
+living poet of either sex who can prefer a higher claim than Mrs.
+Elizabeth Barrett Browning.' No doubt there would have been a certain
+appropriateness in the post of Laureate to a Queen being held by a
+poetess, but the claims of Tennyson to the primacy of English poetry
+were rightly regarded as paramount. The fact that in Robert Browning
+there was a poet of equal calibre with Tennyson, though of so
+different a type, seems to have occurred to no one.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: June 15, 1850.
+
+My ever dear Friend,--How it grieves me that you should have been
+so unwell again! From what you say about the state of the house, I
+conclude that your health suffers from that cause precisely; and that
+when you are warmly and dryly walled in, you will be less liable to
+these attacks, grievous to your friends as to you. Oh, I don't praise
+anybody, I assure you, for wishing to entice you to live near them.
+We come over the Alps for a sunny climate; what should we not do for
+a moral atmosphere like yours? I dare say you have chosen excellently
+your new residence, and I hope you will get over the fuss of it with
+great courage, remembering the advantages which it is likely to secure
+to you. Tell me as much as you can about it all, that I may shift the
+scene in the right grooves, and be able to imagine you to myself out
+of Three Mile Cross. You have the local feeling so eminently that I
+have long been resolved on never asking you to migrate. Doves
+won't travel with swallows; who should persuade them? This is no
+migration--only a shifting from one branch to another. With Reading
+on one side of you still, you will lose nothing, neither sight nor
+friend. Oh, do write to me as soon as you can, and say that the
+deepening summer has done you good and given you strength; say it,
+if possible. I shall be very anxious for the next letter.... My only
+objection to Florence is the distance from London, and the expense of
+the journey. One's heart is pulled at through different English
+ties and can't get the right rest, and I think we shall move
+northwards--try France a little, after a time. The present year has
+been full of petty vexation to us about the difficulty of going to
+England, and it becomes more and more doubtful whether we can attain
+to the means of doing it. There are four of us and the child, you
+see, and precisely this year we are restricted in means, as far as our
+present knowledge goes; but I can't say yet, only I do very much
+fear. Nobody will believe our promises, I think, any more, and my
+poor Arabel will be in despair, and I shall lose the opportunity of
+_authenticating_ Wiedeman; for, as Robert says, all our fine stories
+about him will go for nothing, and he will be set down as a sham
+child. If not sham, how could human vanity resist the showing him off
+bodily? That sounds reasonable....
+
+Certainly you are disinterested about America, and, of course, all
+of us who have hearts and heads must feel the sympathy of a greater
+nation to be more precious than a thick purse. Still, it is not just
+and dignified, this vantage ground of American pirates. Liking the
+ends and motives, one disapproves the means. Yes, even _you_ do; and
+if I were an American I should dissent with still more emphasis. It
+should be made a point of honour with the nation, if there is no
+point of law against the re publishers. For my own part, I have every
+possible reason to thank and love America; she has been very kind to
+me, and the visits we receive here from delightful and cordial persons
+of that country have been most gratifying to us. The American minister
+at the court of Vienna, with his family, did not pass through Florence
+the other day without coming to see us--General Watson Webbe-with
+an air of moral as well as military command in his brow and eyes. He
+looked, and talked too, like one of oar dignities of the Old World.
+The go-ahead principle didn't seem the least over-strong in him, nor
+likely to disturb his official balance. What is to happen next in
+France? Do you trust still your President? He is in a hard position,
+and, if he leaves the Pope where he is, in a dishonored one. As for
+the change in the electoral law and the increase of income, I see
+nothing in either to make an outcry against. There is great injustice
+everywhere and a rankling party-spirit, and to speak the truth and act
+it appears still more difficult than usual. I was sorry, do you know,
+to hear of dear Mr. Horne's attempt at Shylock; he is fit for higher
+things. Did I tell you how we received and admired his Judas Iscariot?
+Yes, surely I did. He says that Louis Blanc is a friend of his and
+much with him, speaking with enthusiasm. I should be more sorry at
+his being involved with the Socialists than with Shylock--still more
+sorry; for I love liberty so intensely that I hate Socialism. I hold
+it to be the most desecrating and dishonouring to humanity of all
+creeds. I would rather (for _me_) live under the absolutism of
+Nicholas of Russia than in a Fourier machine, with my individuality
+sucked out of me by a social air-pump. Oh, if you happen to write
+again to Mrs. Deane, thank her much for her kind anxiety; but, indeed,
+if I had lost my darling I should not write verses about it.[202] As
+for the Laureateship, it won't be given to _me_, be sure, though the
+suggestion has gone the round of the English newspapers--'Galignani'
+and all--and notwithstanding that most kind and flattering
+recommendation of the 'Athenaeum,' for which I am sure we should
+be grateful to Mr. Chorley. I think Leigh Hunt should have the
+Laureateship. He has condescended to wish for it, and has 'worn his
+singing clothes' longer than most of his contemporaries, deserving
+the price of long as well as noble service. Whoever has it will be, of
+course, exempted from Court lays; and the distinction of the title and
+pension should remain for Spenser's sake, if not for Wordsworth's. We
+are very anxious to know about Tennyson's new work, 'In Memoriam.'
+Do tell us about it. You are aware that it was written years ago, and
+relates to a son of Mr. Hallam, who was Tennyson's intimate friend
+and the betrothed of his sister. I have heard, through someone who had
+seen the MS., that it is full of beauty and pathos.... Dearest, ever
+dear Miss Mitford, speak particularly of your health. May God bless
+you, prays
+
+Your ever affectionate
+E.B.B.
+Robert's kindest regards.
+
+[Footnote 202: Referring to the lines entitled _A Child's Grave at
+Florence_, which had apparently been misunderstood as implying the
+death of Mrs. Browning's own child.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: July 8, 1850.
+
+My dearest Miss Mitford,--I this moment have your note; and as a
+packet of ours is going to England, I snatch up a pen to do what I can
+with it in the brief moments between this and post time. I don't wait
+till it shall be possible to write at length, because I have something
+immediate to say to you. Your letter is delightful, yet it is not
+for _that_ that I rush so upon answering it. Nor even is it for the
+excellent news of your consenting, for dear Mr. Chorley's sake, to
+give us some more of your 'papers,'[203] though 'blessed be the hour,
+and month, and year' when he set about editing the 'Ladies' Companion'
+and persuading you to do such a thing. No, what I want to say is
+strictly personal to me. You are the kindest, warmest-hearted, most
+affectionate of critics, and precisely as such it is that you have
+thrown me into a paroxysm of terror. My dearest friend, _for the
+love of me_--I don't argue the point with you--but I beseech you
+humbly,--kissing the hem of your garment, and by all sacred and tender
+recollections of sympathy between you and me, _don't_ breathe a word
+about any juvenile performance of mine--_don't_, if you have any love
+left for me. Dear friend, 'disinter' anybody or anything you please,
+but don't disinter _me_, unless you mean the ghost of my vexation to
+vex you ever after. 'Blessed be she who spares these stones.' All the
+saints know that I have enough to answer for since I came to my
+mature mind, and that I had difficulty enough in making most of the
+'Seraphim' volume presentable a little in my new edition, because it
+was too ostensible before the public to be caught back; but if the
+sins of my rawest juvenility are to be thrust upon me--and sins are
+extant of even twelve or thirteen, or earlier, and I was in print once
+when I was ten, I think--what is to become of me? I shall groan
+as loud as Christian did. Dearest Miss Mitford, now forgive this
+ingratitude which is gratitude all the time. I love you and thank you;
+but, right or wrong, mind what I say, and let me love and thank you
+still more. When you see my new edition you will see that everything
+worth a straw I ever wrote is there, and if there were strength in
+conjuration I would conjure you to pass an act of oblivion on the
+stubble that remains--if anything does remain, indeed. Now, more than
+enough of this. For the rest, I am delighted. I am even so generous as
+not to be jealous of Mr. Chorley for prevailing with you when nobody
+else could. I had given it up long ago; I never thought you would stir
+a pen again. By what charm did he prevail? Your series of papers will
+be delightful, I do not doubt; though I never could see anything in
+some of your heroes, American or Irish. Longfellow is a poet; I don't
+refer to _him_. Still, whatever you say will be worth hearing, and the
+_guide_ through 'Pompeii' will be better than many of the ruins. 'The
+Pleader's Guide' I never heard of before. Praed has written some
+sweet and tender things. Then I shall like to hear you on Beaumont and
+Fletcher, and Andrew Marvell.
+
+I have seen nothing of Tennyson's new poem. Do you know if the
+echo-song is the most popular of his verses? It is only another proof
+to my mind of the no-worth of popularity. That song would be eminently
+sweet for a common writer, but Tennyson has done better, surely; his
+eminences are to be seen above. As for the laurel, in a sense he is
+worthier of it than Leigh Hunt; only Tennyson can wait, that is the
+single difference.
+
+So anxious I am about your house. Your health seems to me mainly
+to depend on your moving, and I do urge your moving; if not there,
+elsewhere. May God bless you, ever dear friend!
+
+I dare say you will think I have given too much importance to the
+rococo verses you had the goodness to speak of; but I have a horror of
+being disinterred, there's the truth! Leave the violets to grow
+over me. Because that wretched school-exercise of a version of the
+'Prometheus' had been named by two or three people, wasn't I at the
+pains of making a new translation before I left England, so to erase a
+sort of half-visible and half invisible 'Blot on the Scutcheon'? After
+such an expenditure of lemon-juice, you will not wonder that I should
+trouble you with all this talk about nothing....
+
+I am so delighted that you are to lift up your voice again, and so
+grateful to Mr. Chorley.
+
+Ah yes, if we go to Paris we shall draw you. Mr. Chorley shan't have
+all the triumphs to himself.
+
+Not a word more, says Robert, or the post will be missed. God bless
+you! Do take care of yourself, and _don't_ stay in that damp house.
+And do make allowances for love.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+How glad I shall be if it is true that Tennyson is married! I believe
+in the happiness of marriage, for men especially.
+
+[Footnote 203: These are the papers subsequently published under the
+title _Recollections of a Literary Life_. Among them was an article
+on the Brownings, giving biographical detail with respect to Mrs.
+Browning's early life, especially as to the loss of her brother,
+which caused extreme pain to her sensitive nature, as a later letter
+testifies.]
+
+
+Through the greater part of the summer of 1850 the Brownings held fast
+in Florence, and it was not until September, when Mrs. Browning was
+recovering from a rather sharp attack of illness, that they took a
+short holiday, going for a few weeks to Siena, a place which they were
+again to visit some years later, during the last two summers of Mrs.
+Browning's life. The letter announcing their arrival is the first in
+the present collection addressed to Miss Isa Blagden. Miss Blagden was
+a resident in Florence for many years, and was a prominent member of
+English society there. Her friendship, not only with Mrs. Browning,
+but with her husband, was of a very intimate character, and was
+continued after Mrs. Browning's death until the end of her own life in
+1872.
+
+
+_To Miss I. Blagden_
+Siena: September [1850].
+
+Here I am keeping my promise, my dear Miss Blagden. We arrived quite
+safely, and I was not too tired to sleep at night, though tired of
+course, and the baby was a miracle of goodness all the way, only
+inclining once to a _rabbia_ through not being able to get at the
+electric telegraph, but in ecstasies otherwise at everything new. We
+had to stay at the inn all night. We heard of a multitude of villas,
+none of which could be caught in time for the daylight. On Sunday,
+however, just as we were beginning to give it up, in Robert came with
+good news, and we were settled in half an hour afterwards here, a
+small house of some seven rooms, two miles from Siena, and situated
+delightfully in its own grounds of vineyard and olive ground, not to
+boast too much of a pretty little square flower-garden. The grapes
+hang in garlands (too tantalising to Wiedeman) about the walls and
+before them, and, through and over, we have magnificent views of a
+noble sweep of country, undulating hills and various verdure, and,
+on one side, the great Maremma extending to the foot of the Roman
+mountains. Our villa is on a hill called 'poggio dei venti,' and the
+winds give us a turn accordingly at every window. It is delightfully
+cool, and I have not been able to bear my window open at night since
+our arrival; also we get good milk and bread and eggs and wine, and
+are not much at a loss for anything. Think of my forgetting to tell
+you (Robert would not forgive me for that) how we have a _specola_ or
+sort of belvedere at the top of the house, which he delights in, and
+which I shall enjoy presently, when I have recovered my taste for
+climbing staircases. He carried me up once, but the being carried
+down was so much like being carried down the flue of a chimney, that I
+waive the whole privilege for the future. What is better, to my mind,
+is the expected fact of being able to get books at Siena--_nearly_ as
+well as at Brecker's, really; though Dumas fils seems to fill up many
+of the interstices where you think you have found something.
+_Three_ pauls a month, the subscription is; and for seven, we get a
+'Galignani,' or are promised to get it. We pay for our villa ten scudi
+the month, so that altogether it is not ruinous. The air is as fresh
+as English air, without English dampness and transition; yes, and
+we have English lanes with bowery tops of trees, and brambles and
+blackberries, and not a wall anywhere, except the walls of our villa.
+
+For my part, I am recovering strength, I hope and believe. Certainly
+I can move about from one room to another, without reeling much: but
+I still look so ghastly, as to 'back recoil,' perfectly knowing 'Why,'
+from everything in the shape of a looking glass. Robert has found an
+armchair for me at Siena. To say the truth, my time for enjoying this
+country life, except the enchanting silence and the look from the
+window, has not come yet: I must wait for a little more strength.
+Wiedeman's cheeks are beginning to redden already, and he delights
+in the pigeons and the pig and the donkey and a great yellow dog and
+everything else now; only he would change all your trees (except the
+apple trees), he says, for the Austrian band at any moment. He is
+rather a town baby....
+
+Our drawback is, dear Miss Blagden, that we have not room to take you
+in. So sorry we both are indeed. Write and tell me whether you have
+decided about Vallombrosa. I hope we shall see much of you still at
+Florence, if not here. We could give you everything here except a bed.
+
+Robert's kindest regards with those of
+Your ever affectionate
+ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.
+
+My love to Miss Agassiz, whenever you see her.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Siena: September 24, 1850.
+
+To think that it is more than two months since I wrote last to you, my
+beloved friend, makes the said two months seem even longer to me than
+otherwise they would necessarily be--a slow, heavy two months in every
+case, 'with all the weights of care and death hung at them.' Your
+letter reached me when I was confined to my bed, and could scarcely
+read it, for all the strength at my heart.... As soon as I could be
+moved, and before I could walk from one room to another, Dr. Harding
+insisted on the necessity of change of air (for my part, I seemed to
+myself more fit to change the world than the air), and Robert carried
+me into the railroad like a baby, and off we came here to Siena. We
+took a villa a mile and _a_ half from the town, a villa situated on a
+windy hill (called 'poggio al vento'), with magnificent views from
+all the windows, and set in the midst of its own vineyard and olive
+ground, apple trees and peach trees, not to speak of a little square
+flower-garden, for which we pay _eleven shillings one penny
+farthing the week_; and at the end of these three weeks, our medical
+comforter's prophecy, to which I listened so incredulously, is
+fulfilled, and I am able to walk a mile, and am really as well as ever
+in all essential respects.... Our poor little darling, too (see
+what disasters!), was ill four-and-twenty hours from a species of
+sunstroke, and frightened us with a heavy hot head and glassy staring
+eyes, lying in a half-stupor. Terrible, the silence that fell suddenly
+upon the house, without the small pattering feet and the singing
+voice. But God spared us; he grew quite well directly and sang louder
+than ever. Since we came here his cheeks have turned into roses....
+
+What still further depressed me during our latter days at Florence
+was the dreadful event in America--the loss of our poor friend Madame
+Ossoli,[204] affecting in itself, and also through association with
+that past, when the arrowhead of anguish was broken too deeply into my
+life ever to be quite drawn out. Robert wanted to keep the news
+from me till I was stronger, but we live too _close_ for him to keep
+anything from me, and then I should have known it from the first
+letter or visitor, so there was no use trying. The poor Ossolis spent
+part of their last evening in Italy with us, he and she and their
+child, and we had a note from her off Gibraltar, speaking of the
+captain's death from smallpox. Afterwards it appears that her
+child caught the disease and lay for days between life and death;
+_recovered_, and then came the final agony. 'Deep called unto deep,'
+indeed. Now she is where there is no more grief and 'no more sea;' and
+none of the restless in this world, none of the ship-wrecked in heart
+ever seemed to me to want peace more than she did. We saw much of her
+last winter; and over a great gulf of differing opinion we both felt
+drawn strongly to her. High and pure aspiration she had--yes, and a
+tender woman's heart--and we honoured the truth and courage in her,
+rare in woman or man. The work she was preparing upon Italy would
+probably have been more equal to her faculty than anything previously
+produced by her pen (her other writings being curiously inferior to
+the impressions her conversation gave you); indeed, she told me it was
+the only production to which she had given time and labour. But,
+if rescued, the manuscript would be nothing but the raw material. I
+believe nothing was finished; nor, if finished, could the work
+have been otherwise than deeply coloured by those blood colours of
+Socialistic views, which would have drawn the wolves on her, with a
+still more howling enmity, both in England and America. Therefore it
+was better for her to go. Only God and a few friends can be expected
+to distinguish between the pure personality of a woman and her
+professed opinions. She was chiefly known in America, I believe, by
+oral lectures and a connection with the newspaper press, neither of
+them happy means of publicity. Was she happy in anything, I wonder?
+She told me that she never was. May God have made her happy in her
+death!
+
+Such gloom she had in leaving Italy! So full she was of sad
+presentiment! Do you know she gave a _Bible_ as a parting gift
+from her child to ours, writing in it '_In memory of_ Angelo Eugene
+Ossoli'--a strange, prophetical expression? That last evening a
+prophecy was talked of jestingly--an old prophecy made to poor Marquis
+Ossoli, 'that he should shun the sea, for that it would be fatal to
+him.' I remember how she turned to me smiling and said, 'Our ship is
+called the "Elizabeth," and I accept the omen.'
+
+Now I am making you almost dull perhaps, and myself certainly duller.
+Rather let me tell you, dearest Miss Mitford, how delightedly I look
+forward to reading whatever you have written or shall write. You write
+'as well as twenty years ago'! Why, I should think so, indeed. Don't I
+know what your letters are? Haven't I had faith in you always? Haven't
+I, in fact, teased you half to death in proof of it? I, who was a sort
+of Brutus, and oughtn't to have done it, you hinted. Moreover, Robert
+is a great admirer of yours, as I must have told you before, and has
+the pretension (unjustly though, as I tell _him_) to place you still
+higher among writers than I do, so that we are two in expectancy here.
+May Mr. Chorley's periodical live a thousand years!
+
+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.[205]
+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.
+
+
+[Footnote 204: Drowned with her husband on their way to America.]
+
+[Footnote 205: _The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point_.]
+
+
+_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 could 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 posterity 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 what 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
+
+BA.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Florence: January 30, 1851.
+
+Here I am at last, dearest friend. But you forget how you told me,
+when you wrote your 'long letter,' that you were going away into chaos
+somewhere, and that your address couldn't be known yet. It was this
+which made me delay the answer to that welcome letter--and to begin
+to 'put off' is fatal, as perhaps you know. Now forgive me, and I will
+behave better in future, indeed....
+
+I am quite well, and looking well, they say; but the frightful
+illness of the autumn left me paler and thinner long after the perfect
+recovery. The physician told Robert afterwards that few women would
+have recovered at all; and when I left Siena I was as able to
+walk, and as well in every respect as ever, notwithstanding
+everything--think, for instance, of my walking to St. Miniato, here
+in Florence! You remember, perhaps, what that pull is. I dare say you
+heard from Henrietta how we enjoyed our rustication at Siena. It is
+pleasant even to look back on it. We were obliged to look narrowly
+at the economies, more narrowly than usual; but the cheapness of the
+place suited the occasion, and the little villa, like a mere tent
+among the vines, charmed us, though the doors didn't shut, and though
+(on account of the smallness) Robert and I had to whisper all our talk
+whenever Wiedeman was asleep. Oh, I wish you were in Italy. I wish
+you had come here this winter which has been so mild, and which, with
+ordinary prudence, would certainly have suited dear Mr. Martin.... I
+tried to dissuade the Peytons from making the experiment, through the
+fear of its not answering.... We can't get them into society, you
+see, because we are out of it, having struggled to keep out of it
+with hands and feet, and partially having succeeded, knowing scarcely
+anybody except bringers of letters of introduction, and those chiefly
+Americans and not residents in Florence. The other day, however, Mrs.
+Trollope and her daughter-in-law called on us, and it is settled that
+we are to know them; though Robert had made a sort of vow never to
+sit in the same room with the author of certain books directed against
+liberal institutions and Victor Hugo's poetry. I had a longer battle
+to fight, on the matter of this vow, than any since my marriage, and
+had some scruples at last of taking advantage of the pure goodness
+which induced him to yield to my wishes; but I _did_, because I hate
+to seem ungracious and unkind to people; and human beings, besides,
+are better than their books, than their principles, and even than
+their everyday actions, sometimes. I am always crying out: 'Blessed be
+the inconsistency of men.' Then I thought it probable that, the first
+shock of the cold water being over, he would like the proposed new
+acquaintances very much--and so it turns out. She was very agreeable,
+and kind, and good-natured, and talked much about _you_, which was
+a charm of itself; and we mean to be quite friends, and to lend
+each other books, and to forget one another's offences, in print or
+otherwise. Also, she admits us on her private days; for she has public
+days (dreadful to relate!), and is in the full flood and flow of
+Florentine society. Do write to me, will you? or else I shall set
+you down as vexed with me. The state of politics here is dismal.
+Newspapers put down; Protestant places of worship shut up. It is so
+bad that it must soon be better. What are you both thinking of the
+'Papal aggression'?[206] 'Are you frightened? Are you frenzied? For my
+part I can't get up much steam about it. The 'Great Insult' was simply
+a great mistake, the consequence (natural enough) of the Tractarian
+idiocies as enacted in Italy.
+
+God bless both of you, dearest and always remembered friends! Robert's
+best regards, he says.
+
+Your affectionate
+BA.
+
+Tell me your thoughts about France. I am so anxious about the crisis
+there.[207] We have had a very interesting visit lately from the
+grandson of Goethe.
+
+[Footnote 206: The Papal Bull appointing Roman Catholic bishops
+throughout England was issued on September 24, 1850, and England was
+now in the throes of the anti-papal excitement produced by it.]
+
+[Footnote 207: "Where Louis Napoleon was engaged in his series of
+encroachments on the power of the Assembly and intrigues for the
+imperial throne."]
+
+
+_To Miss Browning_
+Florence: April 23, 1851 [postmark].
+
+My dearest Sarianna,--I do hope that Robert takes his share of the
+blame in using and abusing you as we have done. It was altogether too
+bad--shameful--to send that last MS. for you to copy out; and I did,
+indeed, make a little outcry about it, only he insisted on having it
+so. Was it very wrong, I wonder? Your kindness and affectionateness I
+never doubt of; but if you are not quite strong just now, you might be
+teased, in spite of your heart, by all that copying work--not pleasant
+at any time. Well, believe that I thank you, at least gratefully, for
+what you have done. So quickly too! The advertisement at the end
+of the week proves how you must have worked for me. Thank you, dear
+Sarianna.
+
+Robert will have told you our schemes, and how we are going to work,
+and are to love you _near_ for the future, I hope. You, who are wise,
+will approve of us, I think, for keeping on our Florentine apartment,
+so as to run no more risk than is necessary in making the Paris
+experiment. We shall let the old dear rooms, and make money by them,
+and keep them to fall back upon, in case we fail at Paris. 'But
+we'll not fail.' Well, I hope not, though I am very brittle still and
+susceptible to climate. Dearest Sarianna, it will do you infinite
+good to come over to us every now and then--you want change, absolute
+change of scene and air and climate, I am confident; and you never
+will be right till you have had it. We talk, Robert and I, of carrying
+you back with us to Rome next year as an English trophy. Meanwhile you
+will see Wiedeman, you and dear Mr. Browning. Don't expect to see a
+baby of Anak, that's all. Robert is always measuring him on the door,
+and reporting such wonderful growth (some inch a week, I think), that
+if you receive his reports you will cry out on beholding the child. At
+least, you'll say: 'How little he must have been to be no larger now.'
+You'll fancy he must have begun from a mustard-seed! The fact is, he
+is small, only full of life and joy to the brim. I am not afraid of
+your not loving him, nor of his not loving you. He has a loving little
+heart, I assure you. If anyone pricks a finger with a needle he begins
+to cry--he can't bear to see the least living thing hurt. And when
+he loves, it is well. Robert says I must finish, so here ends dearest
+Sarianna's
+
+Ever affectionate sister
+BA.
+
+
+
+
+END OF THE FIRST VOLUME SMITH, ELDER, & CO.'S NEW BOOKS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+=DEEDS THAT WON THE EMPIRE.= By the Rev. W.H. FITCHETT, THIRD EDITION.
+With 11 Plans and 16 Portraits. Crown 8vo. 6s.
+
+=INDIAN FRONTIER POLICY.= An Historical Sketch. By General Sir JOHN
+ADYE, G.C.B., R.A. With Map. Demy 8vo. 3s. 6d.
+
+=THE STORY OF THE CHURCH OF EGYPT:= being an Outline of the History of
+the Egyptians under their successive Masters from the Roman Conquest
+until now. By E.L. BUTCHER, Author of 'A Strange Journey,' 'A Black
+Jewel,' &c. In 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 16s.
+
+=LORD COCHRANE'S TRIAL BEFORE LORD ELLENBOROUGH= IN 1814. By J.B.
+ATLAY. With a Preface by EDWARD DOWNES LAW, Commander Royal Navy, With
+Portrait. 8vo. 18s.
+
+=THE LIFE OF SIR JOHN HAWLEY GLOVER, R.N., G.C.M.G.= By Lady GLOVER.
+Edited by the Right Hon. Sir RICHARD TEMPLE, Bart., G.C.S.I., D.C.L.,
+LL.D., F.R.S. With Portrait and Maps. Demy 8vo. 14s.
+
+=THE LETTERS OF ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.= Edited, with Biographical
+Additions, by FREDERIC G. KENYON. In 2 vols. With Portraits. THIRD
+EDITION. Crown 8vo. 15s. net.
+
+=THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ARTHUR YOUNG.= With Selections from his
+Correspondence. Edited by M. BETHAM EDWARDS. With 2 Portraits and 2
+Views. Large crown 8vo. 12s. 6d.
+
+=THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE, 1821-1833.= By W. ALISON PHILLIPS,
+M.A., late Scholar of Merton College, Senior Scholar of St. John's
+College, Oxford. With Map. Large crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.
+
+=TWELVE YEARS IN A MONASTERY.= By JOSEPH MCCABE, late FATHER ANTONY,
+O.S.F. Large crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.
+
+=STUDIES IN BOARD SCHOOLS.= By CHARLES MORLEY. Crown 8vo. 6s.
+
+=FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XV.= By JAMES BRECK PERKINS, Author of 'France
+Under the Regency.' In 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 16s.
+
+=A BROWNING COURTSHIP;= and other Stories. By ELIZA ORNE WHITE, Author
+of 'The Coming of Theodora' &c. Small post 8vo. 5s.
+
+=THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ELIZABETH BARRETT= BROWNING, 1 volume. With
+Portrait and Facsimile of the MS. of a 'Sonnet from the Portuguese.'
+Large crown 8vo. bound in cloth, with gilt top, 7s. 6d.
+
+*** =This Edition is uniform with the Two-volume Edition of Robert
+Browning's Complete Works.=
+
+=THE GREY LADY.= By HENRY SETON MERRIMAN, Author of 'The Sowers,'
+'With Edged Tools,' 'In Kedar's Tents,' &c. New Edition. With 12
+Full-page Illustrations by ARTHUR RACKHAM. Crown 8vo. 6s.
+
+=MARCELLA.= By Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD. Cheap Popular Edition. Crown 8vo.
+bound in limp cloth, 2s. 6d.
+
+=FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND.= By MATTHEW ARNOLD. Second Edition. Small crown
+8vo. bound in white cloth, 4s. 6d.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+=NEW NOVELS.=
+
+
+=DEBORAH OF TOD'S.= By Mrs. HENRY DE LA PASTURE, Author of 'A Toy
+Tragedy,' 'The Little Squire,' &c. Crown 8vo. 6s.
+
+=THE MILLS OF GOD.= By FRANCIS H. HARDY. Crown 8vo. 6s.
+
+=JAN: an Afrikander.= By ANNA HOWARTH. Crown 8vo. 6s.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
+(1 of 2), by Frederic G. Kenyon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2)
+
+Author: Frederic G. Kenyon
+
+Release Date: July 25, 2004 [EBook #13018]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING LETTERS, VOL. 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Jonathan Ingram, Bill Hershey and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<p class="figure">
+    <a href="images/001.jpg">
+    <img width="60%" src="images/001.jpg" alt="001.jpg" /></a><br />
+
+Elizabeth Barrett Browning<br />
+From a Photograph of a Marble Bust</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h1>THE LETTERS</h1>
+<h3>OF</h3>
+<h1>ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING</h1>
+<br />
+<br />
+<h2>EDITED WITH BIOGRAPHICAL ADDITIONS</h2>
+<h3>BY</h3>
+<h2>FREDERIC G. KENYON</h2>
+
+<h3><i>WITH PORTRAITS</i></h3>
+<br />
+
+<h2>IN TWO VOLUMES</h2>
+
+<h3>VOLUME I.</h3>
+
+<h3><i>THIRD EDITION</i></h3>
+<br />
+<h2>LONDON</h2>
+<h2>SMITH, ELDER, &amp; CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE</h2>
+<h2>1898</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="PREFACE"></a><h2>PREFACE</h2>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<p>The writer of any narrative of Mrs. Browning's life, or the
+editor of a collection of her letters, is met at the outset of
+his task by the knowledge that both Mrs. Browning herself
+and her husband more than, once expressed their strong
+dislike of any such publicity in regard to matters of a
+personal and private character affecting themselves. The
+fact that expressions to this effect are publicly extant is one
+which has to be faced or evaded; but if it could not be
+fairly faced, and the apparent difficulty removed, the present
+volumes would never have seen the light. It would be a
+poor qualification for the task of preparing a record of Mrs.
+Browning's life, to be willing therein to do violence to her
+own expressed wishes and those of her husband. But the
+expressions to which reference has been made are limited,
+either formally or by implication, to publications made
+during their own lifetime. They shrank, as any sensitive
+person must shrink, from seeing their private lives, their
+personal characteristics, above all, their sorrows and
+bereavements, offered to the inspection and criticism of the
+general public; and it was to such publications that their
+protests referred. They could not but be aware that the
+details of their lives would be of interest to the public which
+read and admired their works, and there is evidence that
+they recognised that the public has some claims with regard
+to writers who have appealed to, and partly lived by, its
+favour. They only claimed that during their own lifetime
+their feelings should be consulted first; when they should
+have passed away, the rights of the public would begin.</p>
+
+<p>It is in this spirit that the following collection of Mrs.
+Browning's letters has now been prepared, in the conviction
+that the lovers of English literature will be glad to make a
+closer and more intimate acquaintance with one&mdash;or, it may
+truthfully be said, with two&mdash;of the most interesting literary
+characters of the Victorian age. It is a selection from a
+large mass of letters, written at all periods in Mrs. Browning's
+life, which Mr. Browning, after his wife's death, reclaimed
+from the friends to whom they had been written, or
+from their representatives. No doubt, Mr. Browning's primary
+object was to prevent publications which would have been
+excessively distressing to his feelings; but the letters, when
+once thus collected, were not destroyed (as was the case
+with many of his own letters), but carefully preserved, and
+so passed into the possession of his son, Mr. R. Barrett
+Browning, with whose consent they are now published. In
+this collection are comprised the letters to Miss Browning
+(the poet's sister, whose consent has also been freely given
+to the publication), Mr. H.S. Boyd, Mrs. Martin, Miss
+Mitford, Mrs. Jameson, Mr. John Kenyon, Mr. Chorley,
+Miss Blagden, Miss Haworth, and Miss Thomson (Madame
+Emil Braun).<a name="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> To these have been added a number of
+letters which have been kindly lent by their possessors for
+the purpose of the present volumes.</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>The duties of the editor have been mainly those of
+selection and arrangement. With regard to the former task
+one word is necessary. It may be thought that the almost
+entire absence of bitterness (except on certain political
+topics), of controversy, of personal ill feeling of any kind,
+is due to editorial excisions. This is not the case. The
+number of passages that have been removed for fear of
+hurting the feelings of persons still living is almost
+infinitesimal; and in these the cause of offence is always
+something inherent in the facts recorded, not in the spirit
+in which they are mentioned. No person had less animosity
+than Mrs. Browning; it seems as though she could hardly
+bring herself to speak harshly of anyone. The omissions
+that have been made are almost wholly of passages
+containing little or nothing of interest, or repetitions of what
+has been said elsewhere; and they have been made with
+the object of diminishing the bulk and concentrating
+the interest of the collection, never with the purpose of
+modifying the representation of the writer's character.</p>
+
+<p>The task of arranging the letters has been more arduous
+owing to Mrs. Browning's unfortunate habit of prefixing no
+date's, or incomplete ones, to her letters. Many of them are
+dated merely by the day of the week or month, and can
+only be assigned to their proper place in the series on
+internal evidence. In some cases, however, the envelopes
+have been preserved, and the date is then often provided by
+the postmarks. These supply fixed points by which the
+others can be tested; and ultimately all have fallen into
+line in chronological order, and with at least approximate
+dates to each letter.</p>
+
+<p>The correspondence, thus arranged in chronological
+order, forms an almost continuous record of Mrs. Browning's
+life, from the early days in Herefordshire to her death in
+Italy in 1861; but in order to complete the record, it has
+been thought well to add connecting links of narrative,
+which should serve to bind the whole together into the
+unity of a biography. It is a chronicle, rather than a
+biography in the artistic sense of the term; a chronicle of
+the events of a life in which there were but few external
+events of importance, and in which the subject of the
+picture is, for the most part, left to paint her own portrait,
+and that, moreover, unconsciously. Still, this is a method
+which may be held to have its advantages, in that it can
+hardly be affected by the feelings or prejudices of the
+biographer; and if it does not present a finished portrait to
+the reader, it provides him with the materials from which
+he can form a portrait for himself. The external events are
+placed upon record, either in the letters or in the connecting
+links of narrative; the character and opinions of Mrs.
+Browning reveal themselves in her correspondence; and
+her genius is enshrined in her poetry. And these three
+elements make up all that may be known of her personality,
+all with which a biographer has to deal.</p>
+
+<p>It is essentially her character, not her genius, that is presented
+to the reader of these letters. There are some letter-writers
+whose genius is so closely allied with their daily life
+that it shines through into their familiar correspondence
+with their friends, and their letters become literature.
+Such, in their very different ways, with very different types
+of genius and very different habits of daily life, are Gray,
+Cowper, Lamb, perhaps Fitzgerald. But letter-writers such
+as these are few. More often the correspondence of men
+and women of letters is valuable for the light it throws upon
+the character and opinions of those whose character and
+opinions we are led to regard with admiration or respect, or
+at least interest, on account of their other writings. In
+these cases it may be held that the publication is justifiable
+or not, according as the character which it reveals is affected
+favourably or the reverse. Not all truth, even about famous
+men, is useful for publication, but only such as enables us
+to appreciate better the works which have made them
+famous. Their highest selves are expressed in their literary
+work; and it is a poor service to truth to insist on bringing
+to light the fact that they also had lower selves&mdash;common,
+dull, it may be vicious. What illustrates their genius and
+enhances our respect for their character, may rightly be
+made known; but what shakes our belief and mars our
+enjoyment in them, is simply better left in obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to Mrs. Browning, however, there is no
+room for doubt upon these points. These letters, familiarly
+written to her private friends, without the smallest idea of
+publication, treating of the thoughts that came uppermost
+in the ordinary language of conversation, can lay no claim
+to make a new revelation of her genius. On the other
+hand, perhaps because the circumstances of Mrs. Browning's
+life cut her off to an unusual extent from personal intercourse
+with her friends, and threw her back upon letter-writing
+as her principal means of communication with them,
+they contain an unusually full revelation of her character.
+And this is not wholly unconnected with her literary genius,
+since her personal convictions, her moral character, entered
+more fully than is often the case into the composition of her
+poetry. Her best poetry is that which is most full of her
+personal emotions. The 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,'
+the 'Cry of the Children,' 'Cowper's Grave,' the 'Dead Pan,'
+'Aurora Leigh,' and all the Italian poems, owe their value
+to the pure and earnest character, the strong love of truth
+and right, the enthusiasm on behalf of what is oppressed
+and the indignation against all kinds of oppression and
+wrong, which were prominent elements in a personality of
+exceptional worth and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>An editor can generally serve his readers best by remaining
+in the background; but he is allowed one moment for
+the expression of his personal feelings, when he thanks those
+who have assisted him in his work. In the present case
+there are many to whom it is a pleasure to offer such thanks.
+In the first place, I have to thank Mr. R. Barrett Browning
+and Miss Browning most cordially for having accepted the
+proposal of the publishers (Messrs. Smith, Elder &amp; Co., to
+whom likewise my gratitude is due) to put so pleasant and
+congenial a task into my hands. Mr. Browning has also
+contributed a number of suggestions and corrections while
+the sheets have been passing through the press. I have also
+to thank those who have been kind enough to offer letters
+in their possession for inclusion in these volumes: Lady
+Alwyne Compton for the letters to Mr. Westwood; Mrs.
+Arthur Severn for the letters to Mr. Ruskin; Mr. G.L. Craik
+for the letters to Miss Mulock; Mrs. Commeline for the
+letters to Miss Commeline; Mr. T.J. Wise for the letters to
+Mr. Cornelius Mathews; Mr. C. Aldrich for the letter to Mrs.
+Kinney; Col. T.W. Higginson for a letter to Miss Channing;
+and the Rev. G. Bainton for a letter to Mr. Kenyon. It
+has not been possible to print all the letters which have
+been thus offered; but this does not diminish the kindness
+of the lenders, nor the gratitude of the editor.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, I should wish to offer my sincere thanks to Lady
+Edmond Fitzmaurice for much assistance and advice in the
+selection and revision of the letters; a labour which her
+friendship with Mr. Browning towards the close of his life
+has prompted her to bestow most freely and fully upon this
+memorial of his wife.</p>
+
+<p>F.G.K.</p>
+
+<p><i>July 1897</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="CONTENTS"></a><h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<h3>OF</h3>
+<h2>THE FIRST VOLUME</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br />
+<h2><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></h2>
+<h3>1806-1835</h3>
+<h4>Birth&mdash;Hope End&mdash;Early Poems&mdash;Sidmouth&mdash;'Prometheus'</h4>
+<br />
+<br />
+<h2><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></h2>
+<h3>1835-1841</h3>
+<h4>London&mdash;Magazine Poems&mdash;'The Seraphim and other Poems'&mdash;Torquay&mdash;Death<br />
+of Edward Barrett&mdash;Return to London</h4>
+<br />
+<br />
+<h2><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></h2>
+<h3>1841-1843</h3>
+<h4>Wimpole Street&mdash;'The Greek Christian Poets'&mdash;'The English<br />
+Poets'&mdash;'The New Spirit of the Age'&mdash;Miscellaneous Letters</h4>
+<br />
+<br />
+<h2><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></h2>
+<h3>1844-1846</h3>
+<h4>The 'Poems' of 1844&mdash;Miss Martineau and Mesmerism&mdash;Pro-posed<br />
+Journey to Italy</h4>
+<br />
+<br />
+<h2><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></h2>
+<h3>1846-1849</h3>
+<h4>Friendship with Robert Browning&mdash;Love and Marriage&mdash;Paris<br />
+and Pisa&mdash;Florence&mdash;Vallombrosa&mdash;Casa Guidi&mdash;Italian Politics<br />
+in 1848</h4>
+<br />
+<br />
+<h2><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></h2>
+<h3>1849-1851</h3>
+<h4>Birth of a Son&mdash;Death of Mrs. Browning, senior&mdash;Bagni di<br />
+Lucca&mdash;New Edition of Poems&mdash;Siena&mdash;Florentine Life</h4>
+<br />
+<br />
+<h3>PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.<br />
+<i>Frontispiece</i> CASA GUIDI</h3>
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>THE LETTERS</h1>
+<h3>OF</h3>
+<h1>ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING</h1>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="CHAPTER_I"></a><h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>1806-1835</h3>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<p>Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, still better known to the
+world as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was born on March 6,
+1806, the eldest child of Edward and Mary Moulton
+Barrett. I Both the date and place of her birth have been
+matters of uncertainty and dispute, and even so trustworthy
+an authority as the 'Dictionary of National Biography' is
+inaccurate with respect to them. All doubt has, however,
+been set at rest by the discovery of the entry of her birth
+in the parish register of Kelloe Church, in the county of
+Durham.<a name="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> She was born at Coxhoe Hall, the residence of
+Mr. Barrett's only brother, Samuel, about five miles south
+of the city of Durham. Her father, whose name was
+originally Edward Barrett Moulton, had assumed the
+additional surname of Barrett on the death of his maternal
+grandfather, to whose estates in Jamaica he was the heir.
+Of Mr. Barrett it is recorded by Mr. Browning, in the notes
+prefixed by him to the collected edition of his wife's poems,
+that 'on the early death of his father he was brought from
+Jamaica to England when a very young child, as a ward of the
+late Chief Baron Lord Abinger, then Mr. Scarlett, whom he
+frequently accompanied in his post-chaise when on circuit.
+He was sent to Harrow, but received there so savage a
+punishment for a supposed offence (burning the toast)'&mdash;which,
+indeed, has been a 'supposed offence' at other
+schools than Harrow&mdash;'by the youth whose fag he had
+become, that he was withdrawn from the school by his
+mother, and the delinquent was expelled. At the age of
+sixteen he was sent by Mr. Scarlett to Cambridge, and thence,
+for an early marriage, went to Northumberland.' His wife
+was Miss Mary Graham-Clarke, daughter of J. Graham-Clarke,
+of Fenham Hall, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but of her
+nothing seems to be known, and her comparatively early
+death causes her to be little heard of in the record of her
+daughter's life.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is to be gained by trying to trace back the
+genealogy of the Barrett family, and it need merely be noted
+that it had been connected for some generations with the
+island of Jamaica, and owned considerable estates there.<a name="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3"><sup>[3]</sup></a>
+It is a curious coincidence that Robert Browning was likewise
+in part of West Indian descent, and so, too, was John
+Kenyon, the lifelong friend of both, by whose means the
+poet and poetess were first introduced to one another.</p>
+
+<p>The family of Mr. Edward Barrett was a fairly large one,
+consisting, besides Elizabeth, of two daughters, Henrietta
+and Arabel, and eight sons&mdash;Edward, whose tragic death at
+Torquay saddened so much of his sister's life, Charles (the
+'Stormie' of the letters), Samuel, George, Henry, Alfred,
+Septimus, and Octavius; Mr. Barrett's inventiveness having
+apparently given out with the last two members of his
+family, reducing him to the primitive method of simple
+enumeration, an enumeration in which, it may be observed,
+the daughters counted for nothing. Not many of these,
+however, can have been born at Coxhoe; for while Elizabeth
+was still an infant&mdash;apparently about the beginning of the
+year 1809&mdash;Mr. Barrett removed to his newly purchased
+estate of Hope End, in Herefordshire, among the Malvern
+hills, and only a few miles from Malvern itself. It is to
+Hope End that the admirers of Mrs. Browning must
+look as the real home of her childhood and youth. Here
+she spent her first twenty years of conscious life. Here is
+the scene of the childish reminiscences which are to be
+found among her earlier poems, of 'Hector in the Garden,'
+'The Lost Bower,' and 'The Deserted Garden.' And here
+too her earliest verses were written, and the foundations
+laid of that omnivorous reading of literature of all sorts and
+kinds, which was so strong a characteristic of her tastes
+and leanings.</p>
+
+<p>On this subject she may be left to tell her own tale. In
+a letter written on October 5, 1843, to Mr. R.H. Horne, she
+furnishes him with the following biographical details for his
+study of her in 'The New Spirit of the Age.' They supply
+us with nearly all that we know of her early life and writings.</p>
+
+<p>'And then as to stories, my story amounts to the knife-grinder's,
+with nothing at all for a catastrophe. A bird in a
+cage would have as good a story, Most of my events, and
+nearly all my intense pleasures, have passed in my <i>thoughts</i>.
+I wrote verses&mdash;as I dare say many have done who never
+wrote any poems&mdash;very early; at eight years old and earlier.
+But, what is less common, the early fancy turned into a will,
+and remained with me, and from that day to this, poetry
+has been a distinct object with me&mdash;an object to read, think,
+and live for. And I could make you laugh, although you
+could not make the public laugh, by the narrative of nascent
+odes, epics, and didactics crying aloud on obsolete muses
+from childish lips. The Greeks were my demi-gods, and
+haunted me out of Pope's Homer, until I dreamt more of
+Agamemnon than of Moses the black pony. And thus my
+great &quot;epic&quot; of eleven or twelve years old, in four books,
+and called &quot;The Battle of Marathon,&quot; and of which fifty
+copies were printed because papa was bent upon spoiling
+me&mdash;is Pope's Homer done over again, or rather undone;
+for, although a curious production for a child, it gives
+evidence only of an imitative faculty and an ear, and a good
+deal of reading in a peculiar direction. The love of Pope's
+Homer threw me into Pope on one side and into Greek on
+the other, and into Latin as a help to Greek&mdash;and the
+influence of all these tendencies is manifest so long afterwards
+as in my &quot;Essay on Mind,&quot; a didactic poem written
+when I was seventeen or eighteen, and long repented of as
+worthy of all repentance. The poem is imitative in its form,
+yet is not without traces of an individual thinking and feeling&mdash;the
+bird pecks through the shell in it. With this it has
+a pertness and pedantry which did not even then belong to
+the character of the author, and which I regret now more
+than I do the literary defectiveness.</p>
+
+<p>'All this time, and indeed the greater part of my life, we
+lived at Hope End, a few miles from Malvern, in a retirement
+scarcely broken to me except by books and my own
+thoughts, and it is a beautiful country, and was a retirement
+happy in many ways, although the very peace of it troubles
+the heart as it looks back. There I had my fits of Pope,
+and Byron, and Coleridge, and read Greek as hard under
+the trees as some of your Oxonians in the Bodleian;
+gathered visions from Plato and the dramatists, and eat
+and drank Greek and made my head ache with it. Do you
+know the Malvern Hills? The hills of Piers Plowman's
+Visions? They seem to me my native hills; for, although
+I was born in the county of Durham, I was an infant when
+I went first into their neighbourhood, and lived there until
+I had passed twenty by several years. Beautiful, beautiful
+hills they are! And yet, not for the whole world's beauty
+would I stand in the sunshine and the shadow of them any
+more. It would be a mockery, like the taking back of a
+broken flower to its stalk.'<a name="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4"><sup>[4]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>So, while the young Robert Browning was enthusiastically
+declaiming passages of Pope's Homer, and measuring out
+heroic couplets with his hand round the dining table in
+Camberwell, Elizabeth Barrett was drinking from the same
+fount of inspiration among the Malvern Hills, and was
+already turning it to account in the production of her first
+epic. The fifty copies of the 'Battle of Marathon,' which
+Mr. Barrett, proud of his daughter's precocity, insisted on
+having printed, bear the date of 1819. Only five of them
+are now known to exist, and these are all in private hands;
+even the British Museum possesses only the reprint which
+the hero-worship of the present generation caused to be produced
+in 1891. Seven years later, when she had just reached
+the age of twenty, her first volume of verse was offered to
+the world in general. It was entitled 'An Essay on Mind,
+and other Poems,' and included, besides the didactic poem
+after the manner of Pope which formed the <i>pi&egrave;ce de r&egrave;sistance</i>,
+a number of shorter pieces, several of which, as she informed
+Horne,<a name="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5"><sup>[5]</sup></a> had been written when she was not more than
+thirteen.</p>
+
+<p>It was during the years at Hope End that Elizabeth
+Barrett was first attacked by serious illness. 'At fifteen,'
+she says in her autobiographical letter, already quoted in
+part, 'I nearly died;' and this may be connected with a
+statement by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, to the effect that
+'one day, when Elizabeth was about fifteen, the young
+girl, impatient for her ride, tried to saddle her pony alone,
+in a field, and fell with the saddle upon her, in some way
+injuring her spine so seriously that she was for years upon
+her back.'<a name="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> The latter part of this statement cannot indeed
+be quite accurate; for her period of long confinement to a
+sick-room was of later date, and began, according to her
+own statement, from a different cause. Mr. R. Barrett
+Browning states that the injury to the spine was not
+discovered for some time, but was afterwards attributed, not
+to a fall, but to a strain whilst tightening her pony's girths.
+No doubt this injury contributed towards the general weakness
+of health to which she was always subject.</p>
+
+<p>Of her earliest letters, belonging to the Hope End
+period, very few have been preserved, and most of those
+which remain are of little interest. The first to be printed
+here belongs to the period of her mother's last illness,
+which ended in her death on October 1, 1828. It is
+addressed to Mrs. James Martin, a lifelong friend, whose
+name will appear frequently in these pages. At the time
+when it was written she was living near Tewkesbury, within
+visiting distance of the Barretts.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Hope End: Thursday, [about September 1828].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mrs. Martin,&mdash;I am happy to be able to tell
+you that Mr. Garden was here two days ago, and that he
+has not thought it necessary to adopt any violent measure
+with regard to our beloved invalid. He seems entirely to
+rely, for her ultimate restoration, upon a discipline as to
+diet, and a course of strengthening medicine. This is most
+satisfactory to us; and her spirits have been soothed and
+tranquillised by his visit. She has slept quietly for the last
+few nights, and reports herself to be <i>brisker</i> and stronger,
+and to be comparatively free from pain. This account is,
+perhaps, too favorable,<a name="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7"><sup>[7]</sup></a> and will appear so to you when
+you see her, as I am afraid you will, not looking much
+better, <i>much</i> more cheerful, than when you paid us your last
+visit. But when we are very <i>willing</i> to hope, we are apt to
+be too <i>ready</i> to hope: though really, without being <i>too</i>
+sanguine, we may consider quiet nights and diminished pain
+to be satisfactory signs of amendment. I know you will be
+glad to hear of them, and I hope you will <i>witness</i> them very
+soon, in spite of this repulsive snow. It will do mama
+good, and I am sure it will give us all pleasure, to benefit by
+some of your charitable pilgrimages over the hill.</p>
+
+<p>With our best regards, and sincerest thanks for your
+kind interest</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, dear Mrs. Martin, most truly yours,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p><i>To Miss Commeline</i><br />
+Hope End: Monday, [October 1828].</p>
+
+
+<p></p>
+<p>My dear Miss Commeline,&mdash;Thank you for the sympathy
+and interest which you have extended towards us in our heavy
+affliction. Even <i>you</i> cannot know <i>all</i> that we have lost;
+but God knows, and it has pleased Him to take away the
+blessing that He gave. And all <i>must</i> be right since He
+doeth all! Indeed we did not foresee this great grief! If we
+had we could not have felt it less; but I should not then
+have been denied the consolation of being with her at the last.</p>
+
+<p>It is idle to speak now of such thoughts, and circumstances
+have unquestionably been rightly and mercifully
+ordered. We are all well and composed&mdash;poor papa
+supporting us by his own surpassing fortitude. It is an
+inexpressible comfort to me to witness his calmness.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot say that we shall not be glad to see you, but
+the weather is dreary and the distance long: and if you
+were to come, we might not be able to meet you and to
+speak to you with calmness. In that case you would
+receive a melancholy impression which I should like to
+spare you. Perhaps it would be better for you and less
+selfish in us, if we were to defer this meeting a little while
+longer&mdash;but do what you prefer doing! I can never forget
+the regard and esteem entertained for you by one whose
+tenderness and watchfulness I have felt every day and hour
+since she gave me that life which her loss embitters&mdash;whose
+memory is more precious to me than any earthly
+blessing left behind; I have written what is ungrateful,
+and what I ought not to have written, and what I ought
+not to feel, and do not always feel, but I did not just then
+remember that I had so much left to love.</p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>To Mrs. Boyd</i><br />
+Hope End: Saturday morning, [1828-1832].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mrs. Boyd,&mdash;You were quite wrong in supposing
+that papa was likely to complain about 'the number of
+letters from Malvern;' and as to my doing so, why did you
+suggest that? To fill up a sentence, or to conjure up some
+kind of limping excuse for idle people? Among idle people,
+perhaps you have written <i>me</i> down. But the reason of my
+silence was far more reasonable than yours. I have been
+engaged in alternately wishing in earnest and wishing in
+vain for the power of saying when I could go to Malvern&mdash;and
+in being unwell besides. For the last week I have not
+been at all well, and indeed was obliged yesterday to go to
+bed after breakfast instead of after tea, where I contrived to
+abstract myself out of a good deal of pain into Lord
+Byron's Life by Moore. To-day this abstraction is not
+necessary; I am much better; and, indeed, little remains of
+the indisposition but the <i>vulgar fractions</i> of a cough and
+cold. I dare say (and Occyta<a name="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8"><sup>[8]</sup></a> agrees with me) cold was at
+the bottom of it all, for I was so very wise as to lie down
+upon the grass last Monday, when the sun was shining
+deceitfully, though the snow was staring at me from the
+hedges, with an expression anything but dog-daysical!</p>
+
+<p>Henrietta's face-ache is quite well, and I don't mean to
+give any more bulletins to-day. I hope your 'tolerably
+well' is turned into 'quite well' too by this time.</p>
+
+<p>In reply to your query, I will mention that <i>the existence</i>
+actually extended until Thursday without the visit here&mdash;a
+phenomenon in physics and metaphysics. I was desired by
+a note a short time previously, 'to embrace all my circle
+with the utmost tenderness,' <i>as proxy</i>. Considering the
+extent of the said circle, this was a very comprehensive
+request, and a very unreasonable one to offer to anyone less
+than the hundred-armed Indian god Baly. I am glad that
+your alternative of a house is so near to the right side of
+the turnpike&mdash;in which case, a <i>miss</i> is certainly not as <i>bad</i>
+as a <i>mile</i>. May Place is to be vacated in May, though its
+present inhabitants do not leave Malvern. I mention this
+to you, but pray don't <i>re-mention</i> it to anybody. The rent
+is 15&pound;. Mr. Boyd<a name="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9"><sup>[9]</sup></a> will not be angry with me for not
+going to see him sooner than I can. At least, I am sure he
+ought not. Though you are all kind enough to wish me to
+go, I always think and know (which is consolatory to everything
+but my vanity) that no one can wish it half as much
+as I myself do.</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, dear Mrs. Boyd, affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>The fear 1832 brought a great change in the fortunes of
+the Barrett family, and may be said to mark the end of the
+purely formative period in Elizabeth Barrett's life. Hitherto
+she had been living in the home and among the surroundings
+of her childhood, absorbing literature rather than producing
+it; or if producing it, still mainly for her own
+amusement and instruction, rather than with any view of
+appealing to the general public. But in 1832 this home
+was broken up by the sale, of Hope End,<a name="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10"><sup>[10]</sup></a> and with the
+removal thence we seem to find her embarking definitely on
+literature as the avowed pursuit and occupation of her life.
+Sidmouth in Devonshire was the place to which the Barrett
+family now removed, and the letters begin henceforth to be
+longer and more frequent, and to tell a more connected tale.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+[Sidmouth: September 1832.]<br />
+
+<p>How can I thank you enough, dearest Mrs. Martin, for
+your letter? How kind of you to write so soon and so
+very kindly! The postmark and handwriting were in themselves
+pleasant sights to me, and the kindness yet more
+welcome. Believe that I am grateful to you for <i>all</i> your
+kindness&mdash;for your kindness now, and your kindness in the
+days which are past. Some of those past days were very
+happy, and some of them very sorrowful&mdash;more sorrowful
+than even our last days at dear, dear Hope End. <i>Then</i>, I
+well recollect, though I could not then thank you as I ought,
+how you <i>felt for</i> us and <i>with</i> us. Do not think I can ever
+forget <i>that time</i>, or <i>you</i>. I had written a note to you, which
+the bearer of Bummy's and Arabel's to Colwall<a name="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> omitted
+to take. Afterwards I thought it best to spare you any
+more farewells, which are upon human lips, of all words,
+the most natural, and of all the most painful.</p>
+
+<p>They told us of our having past your carriage in
+Ledbury. Dear Mrs. Martin, I cannot dwell upon the
+pain of that first hour of our journey; but you will know
+what it must have been. The dread of it, for some hours
+before, was almost worse; but it is all over now, blessed be
+God. Before the first day's journey was at end, we felt
+inexpressibly relieved&mdash;relieved from the restlessness and
+anxiety which have so long oppressed us&mdash;and now we
+are calmer and happier than we have been for very long.
+If we could only have papa and Bro and Sette<a name="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12"><sup>[12]</sup></a> with us!
+About half an hour before we set off, papa found out that
+he <i>could not</i> part with Sette, who sleeps with him, and is
+always an amusing companion to him. Papa was, however,
+unwilling to separate him perforce from his little playfellows,
+and asked him whether he wished very much to go. Sette's
+heart was quite full, but he answered immediately, 'Oh, no,
+papa, I would <i>much</i> rather stay with <i>you</i>.' He is a dear
+affectionate little thing. He and Bro being with poor
+Papa, we are far more comfortable about him than we
+should otherwise be&mdash;and perhaps our going was his
+sharpest pang. I hope it was, as it is over. Do not
+think, dear Mrs. Martin, that you or Mr. Martin can ever
+'intrude'&mdash;you know you use that word in your letter. I
+have often been afraid, on account of papa not having been
+for so long a time at Colwall, lest you should fancy that he
+did not value your society and your kindness. Do not
+fancy it. Painful circumstances produce&mdash;as we have often
+had occasion to observe&mdash;different effects upon different
+minds; and some feeling, with which I certainly have no
+sympathy has made papa shrink from society of any kind
+lately. He would not even attend the religious societies
+in Ledbury, which he was so much pledged to support, and
+so interested in supporting. If you knew how much he
+has talked of you, and asked every particular about you, you
+could not fancy that his regard for you was estranged. He
+has an extraordinary degree of strength of mind on most
+points&mdash;and strong feeling, when it is not allowed to run in
+the natural channel, will sometimes force its way where it is
+not expected. You will think it strange; but never up to
+this moment has he even alluded to the subject, before
+<i>us</i>&mdash;never, at the moment of parting with us. And yet,
+though he had not power to say <i>one word</i>, he could play
+at cricket with the boys on the very last evening.</p>
+
+<p>We slept at the York House in Bath. Bath is a beautiful
+town <i>as a town</i>, and the country harmonises well with
+it, without being a beautiful country. As <i>mere country</i>,
+nobody would stand still to look at it; though as town
+country, many bodies would. Somersetshire in general
+seems to be hideous, and I could fancy from the walls which
+intersect it in every direction, that they had been turned to
+stone by looking at the <i>Gorgonic</i> scenery. The part of
+Devonshire through which our journey lay is nothing <i>very</i>
+pretty, though it must be allowed to be beautiful after
+Somersetshire. We arrived here almost in the dark, and
+were besieged by the crowd of disinterested tradespeople,
+who <i>would</i> attend us through the town to our house, to
+help to unload the carriages. This was not a particularly
+agreeable reception in spite of its cordiality; and
+the circumstance of there being not a human being in our
+house, and not even a rushlight burning, did not reassure
+us. People were tired of expecting us every day for three
+weeks. Nearly the whole way from Honiton to this place
+is a descent. Poor dear Bummy said she thought we were
+going into the <i>bowels of the earth</i>, but suspect she
+thought we were going much deeper. Between you and
+me, she does not seem <i>delighted</i> with Sidmouth; but her
+spirits are a great deal better, and in time she will, I dare
+say, be better pleased. <i>We</i> like very much what we have
+seen of it. The town is small and not superfluously clean,
+but, of course, the respectable houses are not a part of the
+town. Ours is one which the Grand Duchess Helena had,
+not at all <i>grand</i>, but extremely comfortable and cheerful,
+with a splendid sea view in front, and pleasant green, hills and
+trees behind. The drawing-room's four windows all
+look to the sea, and I am never tired of looking out of
+them. I was doing so, with a most hypocritical book
+before me, when your letter arrived, and I <i>felt</i> all that you
+said in it. I always thought that the sea was the sublimest
+object in nature. Mont Blanc&mdash;Niagara must be nothing
+to it. <i>There</i>, the Almighty's form glasses itself in
+tempests&mdash;and not only in tempests, but in calm&mdash;in space,
+in eternal motion, in eternal regularity. How can we look at
+it, and consider our puny sorrows, and not say, 'We are
+dumb&mdash;because <i>Thou</i> didst it'? Indeed, dear Mrs. Martin,
+we must feel every hour, and we shall feel every year, that what
+He did is <i>well done</i>&mdash;and not only well, but mercifully.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. and Mrs. H&mdash;&mdash;, with whom papa is slightly acquainted,
+have called upon us, and shown us many kind attentions.
+They are West India people, not very polished, but certainly
+<i>very</i> good-natured. We hear that the place is
+extremely full and gay; but this is, of course, only an <i>on dit</i>
+to us at present. I have been riding a donkey two or three
+times, and enjoy very much going to the edge of the sea.
+The air has made me sleep more soundly than I have done
+for some time, and I dare say it will do me a great deal of
+good in every way.</p>
+
+<p>You may suppose what a southern climate this is, when
+I tell you that myrtles and verbena, three or four feet high,
+and hydrangeas are in flower in the gardens&mdash;even in ours,
+which is about a hundred and fifty yards from the sea. I
+have written to the end of my paper. Give our kindest
+regards to Mr. Martin, and ever believe me,</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate and grateful<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+[Sidmouth:] Wednesday, September 27, 1832 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>How very kind of you, dearest Mrs. Martin, to write to
+me so much at length and at such a time. Indeed, it was
+exactly the time when, if we were where we have been, we
+should have wished you to walk over the hill and talk to us;
+and although, after all that the most zealous friends of
+letter writing can say for it, it is <i>not</i> such a happy thing as
+talking with those you care for, yet it is the next happiest
+thing. I am sure I thought so when I read your letter ...</p>
+
+<p>And now I must tell you about ourselves. Papa and Bro
+and Sette have made us so much happier by coming, and
+we have the comfort of seeing dear papa in good spirits,
+and not only satisfied but pleased with this place. It is
+scarcely possible, at least it seems so to me, to do otherwise
+than admire the beauty of the country. It is the very land
+of green lanes and pretty thatched cottages. I don't mean the
+kind of cottages which are generally thatched, with pigstyes
+and cabbages and dirty children, but thatched cottages with
+verandas and shrubberies, and sounds from the harp or piano
+coming through the windows. When you stand upon any of
+the hills which stand round Sidmouth, the whole valley seems
+to be thickly wooded down to the very verge of the sea, and
+these pretty villas to be springing from the ground almost
+as thickly and quite as naturally as the trees themselves.
+There are certainly many more houses out of the town than
+in it, and they all stand apart, yet near, hiding in their own
+shrubberies, or behind the green rows of elms which wall in
+the secluded lanes on either side. Such a number of green
+lanes I never saw; some of them quite black with foliage,
+where it is twilight in the middle of the day, and others
+letting in beautiful glimpses of the spreading heathy hills or
+of the sunny sea. I am sure you would like the transition
+from the cliffs, from the bird's eye view to, I was going to
+say, the mole's eye view, but I believe moles don't see
+quite clearly enough to suit my purpose. There are a great
+number of people here. Sam was at an evening party a
+week ago where there were a hundred and twenty people;
+but they don't walk about the parade and show themselves
+as one might expect. <i>We</i> know only the Herrings and
+Mrs. and the Miss Polands and Sir John Kean. Mrs. and
+Miss Weekes, and Mr. and Mrs. James have called upon us,
+but we were out when they came. I suppose it will be necessary
+to return their visits and to know them; and when we do,
+you shall hear about them, and about everybody whom we
+know. I am certainly much better in health, stronger than
+I was, and less troubled with the cough. Every day I
+attend [<i>word torn out</i>] their walks on my donkey, if
+we do not go in a boat, which is still pleasanter. I believe
+Henrietta walks out about <i>three</i> times a day. She is
+looking particularly well, and often talks, and I am sure
+still oftener thinks, of you. You know how fond of you she
+is. Papa walks out with her&mdash;and <i>us</i>; and we all, down to
+Occyta, breakfast and drink tea together. The dining takes
+place at five o'clock. To-morrow, if this lovely weather will
+stand still and be accommodating, we talk of rowing to
+Dawlish, which is about ten miles off. We have had a few
+cases of cholera, at least <i>suspicious</i> cases: one a fortnight
+before we arrived, and five since, in the course of a month.
+All dead except one. I confess a little nervousness; but it is
+wearing away. The disease does not seem to make any
+progress; and for the last six days there have been no
+patients at all.</p>
+
+<p>Do let us hear very soon, my dear Mrs. Martin, how you
+are&mdash;how your spirits are, and whether Rome is still in your
+distance. Surely no plan could be more delightful for you
+than this plan; and if you don't stay <i>very</i> long away, I shall
+be sorry to hear of your abandoning it. Do you recollect
+your promise of coming to see us? <i>We</i> do.</p>
+
+<p>You must have had quite enough now of my 'little
+hand' and of my details. Do not go to Matton or to the
+Bartons or to Eastnor without giving my love. How often
+my thoughts are at <i>home</i>! I cannot help calling it so still
+in my thoughts. I may like other places, but no other
+place can ever appear to me to deserve that name.</p>
+
+<p>Dearest Mrs. Martin's affectionate<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p><br />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Sidmouth: December 14, 1832.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;I hope you are very angry
+indeed with us for not writing. We are as penitent as
+we ought to be&mdash;that is, I am, for I believe I am the idle
+person; yet not altogether idle, but procrastinating and
+waiting for news rather more worthy of being read in Rome
+than any which even now I can send you.... And
+now, my dear Mrs. Martin, I mean to thank you, as I
+ought to have done long ago, for your kindness in offering
+to procure for me the <i>Archbishop of Dublin's</i><a name="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13"><sup>[13]</sup></a> valuable
+opinion upon my 'Prometheus. I am sure that if you
+have not thought me very ungrateful, you must be very
+indulgent. My mind was at one time so crowded by
+painful thoughts, that they shut out many others which are
+interesting to me; and among other things, I forgot once
+or twice, when I had an opportunity, to thank <i>you</i>, dear Mrs.
+Martin. I believe I should have taken advantage of your
+proposal, but papa said to me, 'If he criticises your manuscript
+in a manner which does not satisfy you, you won't be
+easy without defending yourself, and he might be drawn
+into taking more trouble than you have now any idea of
+giving him.' I sighed a little at losing such an opportunity
+of gaining a great advantage, but there seemed to be some
+reason in what papa said I have completed a preface and
+notes to my translation; and since doing so, a work of
+exactly the same character by a Mr. Medwin has been
+published, and commended in Bulwer's magazine.<a name="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14"><sup>[14]</sup></a> Therefore
+it is probable enough that my trouble, excepting as far
+as my own amusement went, has been in vain. But papa
+means to try Mr. Valpy, I believe. He left us since I
+began to write this letter, with a promise of returning before
+Christmas Day. We <i>do</i> miss him. Mr. Boyd has made me
+quite angry by publishing his translations by rotation in
+numbers of the 'Wesleyan Magazine,' instead of making
+them up into a separate publication, as I had persuaded
+him to do. There is the effect, you see, of going, even for
+a time, out of my reach! The readers of the 'Wesleyan
+Magazine' are pious people, but not cultivated, nor, for the
+most part, capable of estimating either the talents of
+Gregory or his translator's. I have begun already to <i>insist</i>
+upon another publication in a separate form, and shall gain
+my point, I dare say. I have been reading Bulwer's novels
+and Mrs. Trollope's libels, and Dr. Parr's works. I am
+sure <i>you</i> are not an admirer of Mrs. Trollope's. She has
+neither the delicacy nor the candour which constitute true
+nobility of mind and her extent of talent forms but a
+scanty veil to shadow her other defects. Bulwer has quite
+delighted me. He has all the dramatic talent which Scott
+has, and all the passion which Scott has not, and he appears
+to me to be besides a far profounder discriminator of
+character. There are very fine things in his 'Denounced.'
+We subscribe to the best library here, but the best is not a
+good one. I have, however, a table-load of my own books,
+and with them I can always be satisfied. Do you know
+that Mr. Curzon has left Ledbury? We were glad to
+receive your letter from Dover although it told us that you
+were removing so far from us. Do let us hear of your enjoying
+Italy. Is there much English society in Rome,
+and is it like English society here? I can scarcely fancy
+an invitation card, 'Mrs. Huggin-muggin at home,' carried
+through the <i>Via Sacra</i>. I am sure my 'little hand' has done
+its duty to-day. I shall leave the corners to Henrietta.
+Give our kindest regards to Mr. Martin, and ever believe me,
+my dear Mrs. Martin,</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<p>The letter just printed contains the first allusion in
+Miss Barrett's letters to any of her own writings. The
+translation of the 'Prometheus Bound' of Aeschylus was
+the first-fruits of the removal to Sidmouth. It was written, as
+she told Horne eleven years afterwards, 'in twelve days, and
+should have been thrown into the fire afterwards&mdash;the only
+means of giving it a little warmth.'<a name="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15"><sup>[15]</sup></a> Indeed, so dissatisfied
+did she subsequently become with it, that she did what she
+could to suppress it, and in the collected edition of 1850
+substituted another version, written in 1845, which she
+hoped would secure the final oblivion of her earlier attempt.<a name="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16"><sup>[16]</sup></a>
+The letter given above shows that the composition of the
+earlier version took place at the end of 1832; and in the
+following year it was published by Mr. Valpy, along with
+some shorter poems, of which Miss Barrett subsequently
+wrote that 'a few of the fugitive poems may be worth a
+little, perhaps; but they have not so much goodness as to
+overcome the badness of the blasphemy of Aeschylus.'
+The volume, which was published anonymously, received
+two sentences of contemptuous notice from the 'Athenaeum,'
+in which the reviewer advised 'those who adventure in the
+hazardous lists of poetic translation to touch anyone rather
+than Aeschylus, and they may take warning by the author
+before us.'<a name="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17"><sup>[17]</sup></a></p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<br /><i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Sidmouth: May 27, 1833.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;I am half afraid of your being
+very angry indeed with me; and perhaps it would be quite
+as well to spare this sheet of paper an angry look of yours,
+by consigning it over to Henrietta. Yet do believe me,
+I have been anxious to write to you a long time, and did
+not know where to direct my letter. The history of all my
+unkindness to you is this: I delayed answering your kind
+welcome letter from Rome, for three weeks, because
+Henrietta was at Torquay, and I knew that she would like
+to write in it, and because I was unreasonable enough to
+expect to hear every day of her coming home. At the end
+of the three weeks, and on consulting your dates and plans,
+I found out that you would probably have quitted Rome
+before any letter of mine arrived there. Since then, I have
+been inquiring, and all in vain, about where I could find
+you out. All I could hear was, that you were somewhere
+between Italy and England; and all I could do was, to
+wait patiently, and throw myself at your feet as soon as you
+came within sight and hearing. And now do be as generous
+as you can, my dear Mrs. Martin, and try to forgive one
+who never <i>could</i> be guilty of the fault of forgetting you,
+notwithstanding appearances. We heard only yesterday of
+your being expected at Colwall. And although we cannot
+welcome you there, otherwise than in this way, at the
+distance of 140 miles, yet we must welcome you in this
+way, and assure both of you how glad we are that the same
+island holds all of us once more. It pleased us very much
+to hear how you were enjoying yourselves in Rome; and
+you must please us now by telling us that you are enjoying
+yourselves at Colwall, and that you bear the change with
+English philosophy. The fishing at Abbeville was a link
+between the past and the present; and would make the
+transition between the eternal city and the eternal tithes
+a little less striking. My wonder is how you could have
+persuaded yourselves to keep your promise and leave Italy
+as soon as you did. Tell me how you managed it. And
+tell me everything about yourselves&mdash;how you are and how
+you feel, and whether you look backwards or forwards with
+the most pleasure, and whether the influenza has been
+among your welcomers to England. Henrietta and Arabel
+and Daisy<a name="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18"><sup>[18]</sup></a> were confined by it to their beds for several days
+and the two former are only now recovering their strength.
+Three or four of the other boys had symptoms which were
+not strong enough to put them to bed. As for me, I have
+been quite well all the spring, and almost all the winter. I
+don't know when I have been so long well as I have been
+lately; without a cough or anything else disagreeable.
+Indeed, if I may place the influenza in a parenthesis, we
+have all been perfectly well, in spite of our fishing and
+boating and getting wet three times a day. There is good
+trout-fishing at the Otter, and the noble river Sid, which, if
+I liked to stand in it, <i>might</i> cover my ankles. And lately,
+Daisy and Sette and Occyta have studied the art of catching
+shrimps, and soak themselves up to their waists like professors.
+My love of water concentrates itself in the boat;
+and this I enjoy very much, when the sea is as blue and
+calm as the sky, which it has often been lately. Of society
+we have had little indeed; but Henrietta had more than
+much of it at Torquay during three months; and as for me,
+you know I don't want any though I am far from meaning
+to speak disrespectfully of <i>Mr. Boyds</i>, which has been a
+pleasure and comfort to me. His house is not farther than
+a five minutes' walk from ours; and I often make it <i>four</i> in
+my haste to get there. Ask Eliza Cliffe to lend you the
+May number of the 'Wesleyan Magazine;' and if you have
+an opportunity of procuring last December's number, <i>do</i>
+procure <i>that</i>. There are some translations in each of them,
+which I think you will like. The December translation is
+my favourite, though I was amanuensis only in the May one.
+Henrietta and Arabel have a drawing master, and are
+meditating soon beginning to sketch out of doors&mdash;that is,
+if before the meditation is at an end we do not leave
+Sidmouth. Our plans are quite uncertain; and papa has
+not, I believe, made up his mind whether or not to take this
+house on after the beginning of next month; when our
+engagement with our present landlord closes. If we do
+leave Sidmouth, you know as well as I do where we shall
+go. Perhaps to Boulogne! perhaps to the Swan River.
+The West Indians are irreparably ruined if the Bill passes.
+Papa says that in the case of its passing, nobody in his
+senses would think of even attempting the culture of sugar,
+and that they had better hang weights to the sides of the
+island of Jamaica and sink it at once. Don't you think
+certain heads might be found heavy enough for the purpose?
+No insinuation, I assure you, against the Administration, in
+spite of the dagger in their right hands. Mr. Atwood seems
+to me a demi-god of ingratitude! So much for the 'fickle
+reek of popular breath' to which men have erected their
+temple of the winds&mdash;who would trust a feather to it? I am
+almost more sorry for poor Lord Grey who is going to ruin
+us, than for our poor selves who are going to be ruined.
+You will hear that my 'Prometheus and other Poems' came
+into light a few weeks ago&mdash;a fortnight ago, I think. I dare
+say I shall wish it out of the light before I have done with
+it. And I dare say Henrietta is wishing me anywhere,
+rather than where I am. Certainly I have past <i>all bounds</i>.
+Do write soon, and tell us everything about Mr. Martin and
+yourself. And ever believe me, dearest Mrs. Martin,</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Sidmouth: September 7, 1833.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;Are you a <i>little</i> angry <i>again</i>?
+I do hope not. I should have written long ago if it had not
+been for Henrietta; and Henrietta would have written very
+lately if it had not been for me: and we must beg of you to
+forgive us both for the sake of each other. Thank you for
+the kind letter which I have been so tardy in thanking you
+for, but which was not, on that account, the less gladly
+received. Do believe how much it pleases me <i>always</i> to
+see and read dear Mrs. Martin's handwriting. But I must
+try to tell you some less ancient truths. We are still in the
+ruinous house. Without any poetical fiction, the walls are
+too frail for even <i>me</i>, who enjoy the situation in a most
+particularly particular manner, to have any desire to pass the
+winter within them. One wind we have had the privilege of
+hearing already; and down came the tiles while we were at
+dinner, and made us all think that down something else was
+coming. We have had one chimney pulled down to prevent
+it from tumbling down; and have received especial injunctions
+from the bricklayers not to lean too much out of the
+windows, for fear the walls should follow the destiny of the
+chimney. Altogether there is every reasonable probability
+that the whole house will in the course of next winter be as
+like Persepolis as anything so ugly can be! If another
+house which will fit us can be found in Sidmouth, I am
+sure papa will take it; but, as he said the other day, 'If I
+can't find a house, I must go.' I hope he may find one,
+and as near the sea as this ruin. I have enjoyed its moonlight
+and its calmness all the summer; and am prepared to
+enjoy its tempestuousness of the winter with as true an
+enjoyment. What we shall do ultimately, I do not even
+dream; and, if I know papa, <i>he</i> does not. My visions of
+the future are confined to 'what shall I write or read next,'
+and 'when shall we next go out in the boat,' and <i>they</i>, you
+know, can do no harm to anybody. Of one thing I have a
+comforting certainty&mdash;that wherever we may go or stay, the
+decree which moves or fixes us will and must be the 'wisest
+virtuousest discreetest best!' ...</p>
+
+<p>So, I will change the subject to myself. You told me
+that you were going to read my book, and I want to know
+what you think of it. If you were given to compliment and
+insincerity, I should be afraid of asking you; because,
+among other <i>evident</i> reasons, I might then appear to be
+asking for your praise instead of your opinion. As it is&mdash;I
+want to know what you think of my book. Is the translation
+stiff? If you know me at all (and I venture to hope
+that you do) you will be certain that I shall <i>like</i> your
+honesty, and love you for being honest, even if you put on
+the very blackest of black caps....</p>
+
+<p>Of course you know that the late Bill has ruined the
+West Indians. That is settled. The consternation here is
+very great. Nevertheless I am glad, and always shall be,
+that the negroes are&mdash;virtually&mdash;free!</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you, dear Mrs. Martin!</p>
+
+<p>Ever believe me, your affectionate<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Sidmouth: Friday [1834].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Friend,&mdash;I don't know how I shall begin to
+persuade you not to be angry with me, but perhaps the best
+plan will be to confess as many sins as would cover this
+sheet of paper, and then to go on with my merits. Certainly
+I am altogether guiltless of your charge of not noticing
+your book's arrival because no Calvinism arrived with it.
+I told you the bare truth when I told you <i>why</i> I did not
+write immediately. The passage relating to Calvinism I
+certainly read, and as certainly was sorry for; but as
+certainly as both those certainties, such reading and such
+regret had nothing whatever to do with the silence which
+made you so angry with me.</p>
+
+<p>The other particular thing of which I should have
+written is Mr. Parker and my letters. I am more and,
+more sorry that you should have sent them to him at all&mdash;not
+that their loss is any loss to anybody, but that I scarcely
+like the idea&mdash;indeed, I don't like it at all&mdash;of their
+remaining, worthless as they are, at Mr. P.'s mercy. As
+for my writing about them, I should not be able to make
+up my mind to do <i>that</i>. You know I had nothing to do
+with their being sent to Mr. Parker, and was indeed
+in complete ignorance of it. Besides, I should be half
+ashamed to write to him now on any subject. A very long
+interregnum took place in our correspondence, which was
+his own work; and when he wrote to me the summer before
+last, I delayed from week to week, and then from month to
+month, answering it. And now I feel ashamed to write at all.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps you will wonder why I am not ashamed to
+write to <i>you</i>. Indeed I have meant to do it very, very
+often. Don't be severe upon me. I am always afraid of
+writing to you too often, and so the opposite fault is apt to
+be run into&mdash;of writing too seldom. IF THAT is a <i>fault</i>.
+You see my scepticism is becoming faster and faster
+developed.</p>
+
+<p>Let me hear from you soon, if you are not angry. I
+have been reading the Bridgewater treatise, and am now
+trying to understand Prout upon Chemistry. I shall be
+worth something at last, shall I not? Who knows but
+what I may die a glorious death under the <i>pons asinorum</i>
+after all? Prout (if I succeed in understanding him) does
+not hold that matter is infinitely divisible; and so I suppose
+the seeds of matter&mdash;the ultimate molecules&mdash;are a kind of
+<i>tertium quid</i> between matter and spirit. Certainly I can't
+believe that any kind of matter, primal or ultimate, can be
+<i>indivisible</i>, which it must according to his view.</p>
+
+<p>Chalmers's treatise is, as to eloquence, surpassingly
+beautiful; as to matter, I could not walk with him all the
+way, although I longed to do it, for he walked on flowers,
+and under shade&mdash;'no tree on which a fine bird did not
+sit.' ...</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, your affectionate friend,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Sidmouth: September 14, [1834].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mr. Boyd,&mdash;I won't ask you to forgive me for
+not writing before, because I know very well that you would
+rather have not heard from me immediately....
+And so, you and Mrs. Mathew have been tearing to
+pieces&mdash;to the very rags&mdash;all my elaborate theology! And
+when Mr. Young is 'strong enough,' he is to help you at
+your cruel work! 'The points upon which you and I
+differed' are so numerous, that if I really <i>am</i> wrong upon
+every one of them, Mrs. Mathew has indeed reason to
+'punish me with hard thoughts.' Well, she can't help my
+feeling for her much esteem, although I never saw her.
+And if I <i>were</i> to see her, I would not argue with her; I
+would only ask her to let me love her. I am weary of
+controversy in religion, and should be so were I stronger
+and more successful in it than I am or care to be. The
+command is not 'argue with one another,' but 'love one
+another.' It is better to love than to convince. They who
+lie on the bosom of Jesus must lie there <i>together</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Not a word about your book!<a name="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19"><sup>[19]</sup></a> Don't you mean to
+tell me anything of it? I saw a review of it&mdash;rather a
+satisfactory one&mdash;I think in an <i>August</i> number of the
+'Athenaeum.' If you will look into 'Fraser's Magazine'
+for August, at an article entitled 'Rogueries of Tom
+Moore,' you will be amused with a notice of the 'Edinburgh
+Review's' criticism in the text, and of yourself in a note.
+We have had a crowded Bible meeting, and a Church
+Missionary and London Missionary meeting besides; and I
+went last Tuesday to the Exmouth Bible meeting with
+Mrs. Maling, Miss Taylor, and Mr. Hunter. We did not
+return until half-past one in the morning.... The Bishop
+of Barbadoes and the Dean of Winchester were walking
+together on the beach yesterday, making Sidmouth look
+quite episcopal. You would not have despised it <i>half so
+much</i>, had you been here.</p>
+
+<p>Do you know any person who would like to send his
+or her son to Sidmouth, for the sake of the climate, and
+private instruction: and if you do, will you mention it to me?
+I am very sorry to hear of Mrs. Boyd being so unwell.
+Arabel had a letter two days ago from Annie, and as it
+mentions Mrs. Boyd's having gone to Dover, I trust that
+she is well again. Should she be returned, give my love to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The black-edged paper may make you wonder at its
+cause. Our dear aunt Mrs. Butler died last month at
+Dieppe&mdash;and died <i>in Jesus</i>. Miss Clarke is going, if she
+is not gone, to Italy for the winter.</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>Write to me whenever you <i>dislike at least</i>, and tell me
+what your plans are. I hear nothing about our leaving
+Sidmouth.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Commeline</i><br />
+September 22, 1834 [Sidmouth].<br />
+
+<p>I am afraid that there can be no chance of my handwriting
+at least being unforgotten by you, dear Miss
+Commeline, but in the case of your having a very long
+memory you may remember the name which shall be written
+at the end of this note, and which belongs to one who does
+not, nor is likely to forget you! I was much, <i>much</i> obliged
+to you for the kind few lines you wrote to me&mdash;how long
+ago! No, do not remember how long&mdash;do not remember
+<i>that</i> for fear you should think me unkind, and&mdash;what I am
+not! I have intended again and again to answer your note,
+and I am doing it&mdash;<i>at last</i>! Are you all quite well?
+Mrs. Commeline and all of you? Shall I ever see any of you
+again? Perhaps I shall not; but even if I do not, I shall
+not cease to wish you to be well and happy 'in the body or
+out of the body.'</p>
+
+<p>We came to Sidmouth for two months, and you see we
+are here still; and when we are likely to go is as uncertain as
+ever. I like the place, and some of its inhabitants. I like
+the greenness and the tranquillity and the sea; and the
+solitude of one dear seat which hangs over it, and which is
+too far or too lonely for many others to like besides myself.
+We are living in a thatched cottage, with a green lawn
+bounded by a <i>Devonshire lane</i>. Do you know what that is?
+Milton did when he wrote of 'hedgerow elms and hillocks
+green.' Indeed Sidmouth is a nest among elms; and the
+lulling of the sea and the shadow of the hills make it a peaceful
+one. But there are no majestic features in the country. It is
+all green and fresh and secluded; and the grandeur is concentrated
+upon the ocean without deigning to have anything
+to do with the earth. I often find my thoughts
+where my footsteps once used to be! but there is no use in
+speaking of that....</p>
+
+<p>Pray believe me, affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Sidmouth: Friday, December 19, 1834 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;... We have lately had deep
+anxiety with regard to our dear papa. He left us two months
+ago to do his London business: and a few weeks since we
+were told by a letter from him that he was ill; he giving us to
+understand that his complaint was of a rheumatic character.
+By the next coach, we were so daring (I can scarcely understand
+how we managed it) as to send Henry to him: thinking
+that it would be better to be scolded than to suffer him
+to be alone and in suffering at a London hotel. We were
+not scolded: but my prayer to be permitted to follow
+Henry was condemned to silence: and what was said being
+said emphatically, I was obliged to submit, and to be</p>
+
+<p>thankful for the unsatisfactory accounts which for many days
+afterwards we received.... I cannot help being anxious
+and fearful. You know he is <i>all</i> left to us&mdash;and that without
+him we should indeed be orphans and desolate. Therefore
+you may well know what feelings those are with which we
+look back upon his danger; and forwards to any threatening
+of a return of it.... It may not be so. Do not, when
+you write, allude to my fearing about it. Our only feeling
+now should certainly be a deep feeling of thankfulness
+towards that God of all consolation Who has permitted us
+to know His love in the midst of many griefs; and Who
+while He has often cast upon us the sorrow and the shadow,
+has yet enabled us to recognise it as that 'shadow of the
+wings of the Almighty,' wherein we may 'rejoice.' We
+shall probably see our dear papa next week. At least we
+know that he is only waiting for strength and that he is
+already able to go out&mdash;I fear, not to <i>walk</i> out. Here we
+are all well. Belle Vue is sold, and we shall probably have
+to leave it in March: but I do not think that we shall do
+so before. Henrietta is still very anxious to leave Sidmouth
+altogether; and I still feel that I shall very much grieve to
+leave it: so that it is happy for us that neither is the
+<i>decider</i> on this point. I have often thought that it is
+happier <i>not</i> to do what one pleases, and perhaps you will
+agree with me&mdash;if you don't please at the present moment
+to do something very particular. And do tell me, dear
+Mrs. Martin, what you are pleasing to do, and what you are
+doing: for it seems to me, and indeed is, a long time since
+I heard of you and Mr. Martin <i>in detail</i>. Miss Maria
+Commeline sent a note to Henrietta a fortnight ago: and
+in it was honorable mention of you&mdash;but I won't interfere
+with the sublimities of your imagination, by telling you what
+it was.... I should like to hear something of Hope End:
+whether there are many alterations, and whether the new
+lodge, of which I heard, is built. Even now, the thought
+stands before me sometimes like an object in a dream that
+I shall see no more those hills and trees which seemed to
+me once almost like portions of my existence. This is not
+meant for murmuring. I have had much happiness at
+Sidmouth, though with a character of its own. Henrietta
+and Arabel and I are the only guardians just now of the
+three youngest boys, the only ones at home: and I assure
+you, we have not too little to do. They are no longer <i>little</i>
+boys. There is an anxiety among us just now to have letters
+from Jamaica&mdash;from my dear dear Bro&mdash;but the packet is
+only 'expected.' The last accounts were comforting ones;
+and I am living on the hope of seeing him back again in
+the spring. Stormie and Georgie are doing well at Glasgow.
+So Dr. Wardlaw says.... Henrietta's particular love to you;
+and <i>do</i> believe me always,</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>You have of course heard of poor Mrs. Boyd's death.
+Mr. Boyd and his daughter are both in London, and likely,
+I think, to remain there.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Sidmouth: Tuesday [spring 1835].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mr. Boyd,&mdash;... Now I am going to tell you the
+only good news I know, and you will be glad, I know, to
+be told what I am going to tell you. Dear Georgie has
+taken his degree, and very honorably, at Glasgow, and is
+coming to us in all the dignity of a Bachelor of Arts. He
+was examined in Logic, Moral Philosophy, Greek and
+Latin, of course publicly: and we have heard from a
+fellow student of his, that his answers were more pertinent
+than those of any other of the examined, and elicited much
+applause. Mr. Groube is the fellow student&mdash;but he has
+ceased to be one, having found the Glasgow studies too
+heavy for his health. Stormie shrank from the public
+examination, on account of the hesitation in his speech.
+He would not go up; although, according to report, as
+well qualified as Georgie. Mr. Groube says that the ladies
+of Glasgow are preparing to break their hearts for Georgie's
+departure: and he and Stormie leave Glasgow on May I.
+Now, I am sure you will rejoice with me in the result of
+the examination. Do you not, dear friend? I was very
+anxious about it; and almost resigned to hear of a failure&mdash;for
+Georgie was in great alarm and prepared us for the
+very worst. Therefore the surprise and pleasure were
+great.</p>
+
+<p>I can't tell you of our plans; although the Glasgow
+students come to us in a week and this house will be too
+small to receive them. We may leave Sidmouth immediately,
+or not at all. I shall soon be quite qualified to
+write a poem on the 'Pleasures of <i>Doubt</i>'&mdash;and a very good
+subject it will be. The pleasures of certainty are generally
+far less enjoyable&mdash;I mean as pleasures go in this unpleasing
+world. Papa is in London, and much better when we
+heard from him last&mdash;and we are awaiting his decree....</p>
+
+<p>And now what remains for me to tell you? I believe I
+have read more Hebrew than Greek lately; yet the dear
+Greek is not less dear than ever. Who reads Greek to
+you? Who holds my office? Some one, I hope, with an
+articulation of more congenial slowness.</p>
+
+<p>Give Annie my kind love. May God preserve both of
+you!</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, your affectionate friend,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="CHAPTER_II"></a><h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>1835-1841</h3>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>The residence of the Barretts at Sidmouth had never been
+a very settled one&mdash;never intended to be permanent, and
+yet never having a fixed term nor any reason for a fixed
+term. Hence it spread itself gradually over a space of
+nearly three years, before the long contemplated move to
+London actually took place. During the latter part of that
+period, however, extant letters of Miss Barrett are almost
+wholly wanting, and there is little information from any
+other source as to the course of her life. It was apparently
+in the summer of 1835 that Sidmouth was finally left behind,
+Mr. Barrett having then taken a house at 74 Gloucester
+Place (near Baker Street), which, though never regarded as
+more than a temporary residence, continued to be the home
+of his family for the next three years.</p>
+
+<p>The move to London was followed by two results of
+great importance for Elizabeth Barrett. In the first place,
+her health, which had never been strong, broke down
+altogether in the London atmosphere, and it is from some
+time shortly after the arrival in Gloucester Place that the
+beginning of her invalid life must be dated. On the other
+hand, residence in London brought her into the neighbourhood
+of new friends; and although the number of those
+admitted to see her in her sick-room was always small, we
+yet owe to this fact the commencement of some of her
+closest friendships, notably those with her distant cousin,
+John Kenyon, and with Miss Mitford, the authoress of
+'Our Village,' and of a correspondence on a much fuller
+and more elaborate scale than any of the earlier period.
+To this, no doubt, the fact of her confinement to her room
+contributed not a little; for being unable to go out and see
+her friends, much of her communication with them was
+necessarily by letter. At the same time her literary activity
+was increasing. She began to contribute poems to various
+magazines, and to be brought thereby into connection with
+literary men; and she was also employed on the longer
+compositions which went to make up her next volume of
+published verse.</p>
+
+<p>All this was, however, only of gradual development;
+and for some time her correspondence is limited to Mr.
+Boyd, who was now living in St. John's Wood, and Mrs.
+Martin. The exact date of the first letter is uncertain, but
+it seems to belong to a time soon after the arrival of the
+Barretts in town.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+[74 Gloucester Place, London: autumn 1835.]<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mr. Boyd,&mdash;As Georgie is going to do what I
+am afraid I shall not be able to do to-day&mdash;namely, to visit
+<i>you</i>&mdash;he must take with him a few lines from <i>Porsonia</i>
+<i>greeting</i>, to say how glad I am to feel myself again at only
+a short distance from you, and how still gladder I shall be
+when the same room holds both of us. Don't be angry
+because I have not visited you immediately. You know&mdash;or
+you <i>will</i> know, if you consider&mdash;I cannot open the
+window and fly.</p>
+
+<p>Papa and I were very much obliged to you for the
+poison&mdash;and are ready to smile upon you whenever you
+give us the opportunity, as graciously as Socrates did upon
+his executioner. How much you will have to say to me
+about the Greeks, unless you begin first to abuse me about
+the <i>Romans</i>; and if you begin <i>that</i>, the peroration will be
+a very pathetic one, in my being turned out of your doors.
+Such is my prophecy.</p>
+
+<p>Papa has been telling me of your abusing my stanzas on
+Mrs. Hemans's death. I had a presentiment that you
+would: and behold, why I said nothing to you of them.
+Of course, I maintain, <i>versus</i> both you and papa, that they
+are very much to be admired: as well as everything else
+proceeding from or belonging to ME. Upon which
+principle, I hope you will admire George particularly.</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, dear Mr. Boyd, your affectionate friend,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>Arabel's and my love to Annie. Won't she come to see
+us?</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+74 Gloucester Place, Portman Square, London: Jan. I, 1836.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;I am half willing and half
+unwilling to write to you when, among such dearer interests
+and deep anxieties, you may perhaps be scarcely at liberty
+to attend to what I write. And yet I <i>will</i> write, if it
+be only briefly, that you may not think&mdash;if you think of us
+at all&mdash;that we have changed our hearts with our residence so
+much as to forget to sympathise with you, dear Mrs. Martin,
+or to neglect to apprise you ourselves of our movements.
+Indeed, a letter to you should have been written among my
+first letters on arriving in London, only Henrietta (my
+scape-goat, <i>you</i> will say) said, '<i>I</i> will write to Mrs.
+Martin.' And then after I had waited, and determined to write
+without waiting any longer, we heard of poor Mrs.
+Hanford's affliction and your anxiety, and I have considered
+day after day whether or not I should intrude upon you;
+until I find myself&mdash;<i>thus</i>!</p>
+
+<p>I do hope that you have from the hand of God those
+consolations which only He in Jesus Christ can give to the
+so afflicted. For I know well that you are afflicted with
+the afflicted, and that with you sympathy is suffering; and
+that while the tenderest earthly comfort is administered by
+your presence and kindness to your dear friends, you will
+feel bitterly for them what a little thing earthly comfort is,
+when the earthly beloved perish before them. May He who
+is the Beloved in the sight of His Father and His Church
+be near to them and you, and cause you to <i>feel</i> as well
+as <i>know</i> the truth, that what is sudden sorrow, to our
+judgments, is only long-prepared mercy in <i>His</i> will whose
+names are <i>Wisdom</i> and <i>Love</i>. Should it not be, dear
+friend, that the tears of our human eyes ought to serve the
+happy and touching purpose of reminding us of those
+tears of Jesus which He shed in assuming our sorrow with
+our flesh? And the memory of those tears involves all
+comfort. A recognition of the oneness of the human nature
+of that Divine Saviour who ever liveth, with ours which
+perishes and sorrows so; an assurance drawn from thence
+of <i>His</i> sympathy who sits on the throne of God, with us
+who suffer in the dust of earth, and of all those doctrines
+of redemption and sanctification and happiness which come
+from Him and by Him.</p>
+
+<p>Now you will forgive me for writing all this, dearest
+Mrs. Martin. I like to write my thoughts and feelings out
+of my own head and heart, just as they suggest themselves,
+when I write to you; and I cannot think of affliction, particularly
+when it comes near to me in the affliction or anxiety
+of dear friends, without looking back and remembering
+what voice of God used to sound softly to me when none other
+could speak comfort. You will forgive me, and not be angry
+with me for trying, or seeming to try, to be a sermon writer.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, dear Mrs. Martin, when you do feel inclined
+and able to write, you would write me a few lines.
+Remember, I do not ask for them <i>now</i>. No, do not think
+of writing now. I shall very much like to hear how your
+dear charge is&mdash;whether there should appear any prospect of
+improvement; and how poor Mrs. Hanford bears up against
+this heavy calamity; and whether the anxiety and nursing
+affect your health. But we shall try to hear this from the
+Biddulphs; and so do put me out of your head, except
+when its thoughts would dwell on those on earth who
+sympathise with you and care for you.</p>
+
+<p>You see we are in London after all, and poor Sidmouth
+left afar. I am almost inclined to say 'poor us' instead of
+'poor Sidmouth.' But I dare say I shall soon be able
+to see in my dungeon, and begin to be amused with
+the spiders. Half my soul, in the meantime, seems to
+have stayed behind on the seashore, which I love more
+than ever now that I cannot walk on it in the body.
+London is wrapped up like a mummy, in a yellow mist, so
+closely that I have had scarcely a glimpse of its countenance
+since we came. Well, I am trying to like it all very much,
+and I dare say that in time I may change my taste and my
+senses&mdash;and succeed. We are in a house large enough to
+hold us, for four months, at the end of which time, if the experiment
+of our being able to live in London succeed, I <i>believe</i>
+that papa's intention is to take an unfurnished house and
+have his furniture from Ledbury. You may wonder at me,
+but I wish that were settled <i>so</i>, and <i>now</i>. I am
+<i>satisfied</i> with London, although I cannot enjoy it.
+We are not likely, in the case of leaving it, to return to
+Devonshire, and I should look with weary eyes to another
+strangership and pilgrimage even among green fields that
+know not these fogs. Papa's object in settling here refers
+to my brothers. George will probably enter as a barrister
+student at the Inner Temple on the fifth or sixth of this
+month, and he will have the advantage of his home by our
+remaining where we are. Another advantage of London is, that
+we shall see here those whom we might see nowhere else. This
+year, dear Mrs. Martin, may it bring with it the true pleasure
+of seeing <i>you</i>! Three have gone, and we have not seen
+you.... May God bless you and all that you care for,
+being with you always as the God of consolation and
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p><br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>It is from the middle of this year that Miss Barrett's
+active appearance as an author may be dated. Hitherto her
+publications had been confined to a few small anonymous
+volumes, printed rather to please herself and her friends
+than with any idea of appealing to a wider public. She
+was now anxious to take this farther step, and, with that
+object, to obtain admission to some of the literary
+magazines. This was obtained through the instrumentality
+of Mr. R.H. Home, subsequently best known as the
+author of 'Orion.' He was at this time personally unknown
+to Miss Barrett, but an application through a common friend
+led both to the opening to the poetess of the pages of the
+'New Monthly Magazine,' then edited by Bulwer, and also
+to the commencement of a friendship which has left its mark
+in the two volumes of published letters to Mr. Home. The
+following is Mr. Home's account of the opening of the
+acquaintance ('Letters,' i. 7, 8):</p>
+
+
+<blockquote><p>'My first introduction to Miss Barrett was by a note
+from Mrs. Orme, inclosing one from the young lady containing
+a short poem with the modest request to be frankly
+told whether it might be ranked as poetry or merely verse.
+As there could be no doubt in the recipient's mind on that
+point, the poem was forwarded to Colburn's &quot;New Monthly,&quot;
+edited at that time by Mr. Bulwer (afterwards the late [first]
+Lord Lytton), where it duly appeared in the current number.
+The next manuscript sent to me was &quot;The Dead Pan,&quot; and
+the poetess at once started on her bright and noble career.'</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The poem with which Miss Barrett thus made her bow
+to the world of letters was 'The Romaunt of Margret,'<a name="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20"><sup>[20]</sup></a>
+which appeared in the July number of the magazine.
+Mr. Home must, however, have been in error in speaking
+of 'The Dead Pan' as its successor, since that was not
+written till some years later. More probably it was 'The
+Poet's Vow,<a name="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21"><sup>[21]</sup></a> which was printed in the October number of
+the 'New Monthly.'</p><br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+[London:] October 14, Friday [1836].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Friend,&mdash;Be as little angry with me as you can.
+I have not been very well for a day or two, and shall enjoy a
+visit to you on Monday so much more than I shall be able
+to do to-day, that I will ask you to forgive my not going to you
+this week, and to receive me kindly on that day instead&mdash;provided,
+you know, it is not wet.</p>
+
+<p>The &#945;&#967;&#945;&#953;&#953;&#948;&#949;&#962; [Achaiides] approach the &#945;&#967;&#945;&#953;&#959;&#953; [Achaioi]<a name="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22"><sup>[22]</sup></a> more tremblingly
+than usual, with the 'New Monthly Magazine' in their hands.
+Now pray don't annoy yourself by reading a single word
+which you would rather not read except for the sake of
+being kind to me. And my prophecy is, that even by
+annoying yourself and making a <i>strenuous</i> effort, the whole
+force of friendship would not carry you down the first
+page. Georgie says you want to know the verdict of the
+'Athenaeum.' That paper unfortunately has been lent out
+of the house; but my memory enables me to send you the
+words very correctly, I think. After some observations on
+other periodicals, the writer goes on to say: 'The &quot;New
+Monthly Magazine&quot; has not one heavy article. It is rich
+in poetry, including some fine sonnets by the Corn Law
+Rhymer, and a fine although too dreamy ballad, &quot;The
+Poet's Vow.&quot; We are almost tempted to pause and criticise
+the work of a writer of so much inspiration and promise as
+the author of this poem, and exhort him once again, to
+greater clearness of expression and less quaintness in the
+choice of his phraseology; but this is not the time or place
+for digression.'</p>
+
+<p>You see my critic has condemned me with a very
+gracious countenance. Do put on yours,</p>
+
+And believe me, affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.<br />
+<br />
+
+<p>I forgot to say that you surprised and pleased me at the
+same time by your praise of my 'Sea-mew.'<a name="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23"><sup>[23]</sup></a> Love to Annie.
+We were glad to hear that she did not <i>continue</i> unwell, and
+that you are well again, too. I hope you have had no return
+of the rheumatic pain.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+[74 Gloucester Place:] Saturday, [October 1836].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Friend,&mdash;I am much disappointed in finding
+myself at the end of this week without having once seen
+you&mdash;particularly when your two notes are waiting all this
+time to be answered. Do believe that they were not, either
+of them, addressed to an ungrateful person, and that the
+only reason of their being received <i>silently</i> was my hope of
+answering them more agreeably to both of us&mdash;by talking
+instead of writing.</p>
+
+<p>Yes; you have read my mystery.<a name="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24"><sup>[24]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>You paid a tithe to your human nature in reading only
+<i>nine-tenths</i> of it, and the rest was a pure gift to your friendship
+for me, and is taken and will be remembered as such.
+But you have a cruel heart for a parody, and this one tried
+my sensibility so much that I cried&mdash;with laughing. I
+confess to you notwithstanding, it was <i>very fair</i>, and dealt
+its blow with a shining pointed weapon.</p>
+
+<p>But what will you say to me when I confess besides
+that, in the face of all your kind encouragement, my Drama
+of the Angels<a name="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25"><sup>[25]</sup></a> has never been touched until the last three
+days? It was <i>not</i> out of pure idleness on my part, nor of
+disregard to your admonition; but when my thoughts were
+distracted with other things, books just begun inclosing me
+all around, a whole load of books upon my conscience, I
+could not possibly rise up to the gate of heaven and write
+about my angels. You know one can't sometimes sit down
+to the sublunary, occupation of reading Greek, unless one
+feels <i>free</i> to it. And writing poetry requires a double liberty,
+and an inclination which comes only of itself.</p>
+
+<p>But I have begun. I tried the blank metre once, and
+it <i>would not do</i>, and so I had to begin again in lyrics.
+Something above an hundred lines is written, and now I
+am in two panics, just as if one were not enough. First,
+because it seems to me a very daring subject&mdash;a subject
+almost beyond our sympathies, and therefore quite beyond
+the sphere of human poetry. Perhaps when all is written
+courageously, I shall have no courage left to publish it.
+Secondly, because all my tendencies towards mysticism will
+be called into terrible operation by this dreaming upon
+angels. Yes; you <i>will</i> read a mystery,
+but don't make any rash resolutions about reading anything.
+As I have begun, I certainly will go on with the writing.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a question for you:</p>
+
+<p>Am I to accept your generous sacrifice of reading nine-tenths
+of my 'Vow,' as an atonement for your WANT OF CONFIDENCE IN ME?
+Oh, your conscience will understand very well what I mean, without
+a dictionary.</p>
+
+<p>Arabel and I intend to pay you a visit on Monday, and
+if we can, and it is convenient to you, we are inclined to
+invite ourselves to your dinner table. But this is all
+dependent on the weather.</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, dear Mr. Boyd, your affectionate friend,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+[74 Gloucester Place:] November 26, 1836 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mr. Boyd,&mdash;I have been so busy that I have
+not been able until this morning to take breath or <i>inspiration</i>
+to answer your lyrics. You shall see me soon, but I am
+sorry to say it can't be Monday or Tuesday.</p>
+
+<p>I have had another note from the editor of the 'New
+Monthly Magazine'&mdash;very flattering, and praying for farther
+supplies. The Angels were not ready, and I was obliged
+to send something else, which I will not ask you to read. So
+don't be very uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>Arabel's and my best love to Annie. And believe me in
+a great hurry, for I won't miss this post,</p>
+
+<p>Yours affectionately,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot">
+Your lyrics found me dull as prose<br />
+Among a file of papers<br />
+And analysing London fogs<br />
+To nothing but the vapours.<br />
+<br />
+They knew their part; but through the fog<br />
+Their flaming lightning raising;<br />
+They missed my fancy, and instead,<br />
+My choler set a-blazing.<br />
+<br />
+Quoth I, 'I need not care a pin<br />
+For charge unjust, unsparing;<br />
+Yet oh! for ancient bodkin<a name="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26"><sup>[26]</sup></a> keen,<br />
+To punish this <i>Pind&aacute;ring</i>.<br />
+<br />
+'Yet oh! that I, a female Jove,<br />
+These fogs sublime might float on,<br />
+Where, eagle-like, my dove might show<br />
+A very &#965;&#947;&#961;&#959;&#957; &#957;&#969;&#964;&#959;&#957; [ugron n&ocirc;ton].<a name="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27"><sup>[27]</sup></a><br />
+<br />
+'Then lightning should for lightning flash,<br />
+Vexation for vexation,<br />
+And shades of St. John's Wood should glow<br />
+In awful conflagration.'<br />
+<br />
+I spoke; when lo! my birds of peace,<br />
+The vengeance disallowing,<br />
+Replied, 'Coo, coo!' But <i>keep in mind</i>,<br />
+That <i>cooing</i> is not <i>cowing</i>.<a name="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28"><sup>[28]</sup></a></div><br />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+74 Gloucester Place: December 7, 1836.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;Indeed I have long felt the
+need of writing to you (I mean the need to myself), and
+although so many weeks and even months have passed away
+in silence, they have not done so in lack of affection and
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>I had wished very much to have been able to tell you in
+this letter where we had taken our house, or where we were
+going to take it. We remain, however, in our usual state
+of conscious ignorance, although there is a good deal of
+talking and walking about a house in Wimpole Street&mdash;which,
+between ourselves, I am not very anxious to live in,
+on account of the gloominesses of that street, and of that part
+of the street, whose walls look so much like Newgate's turned
+inside out. I would rather go on, in my old way, inhabiting
+castles in the air than that particular house. Nevertheless,
+if it <i>is</i> decided upon, I dare say I shall contrive to be satisfied
+with it, and sleep and wake very much as I should in
+any other. It will certainly be a point gained to be settled
+somewhere, and I do so long to sit in my own armchair&mdash;strange
+as it will look out of my own room&mdash;and to read
+from my own books.... For our own particular parts, our
+healths continue good&mdash;none of us, I think, the worse for
+fog or wind. As to wind, we were almost elevated into the
+prerogative of <i>pigs</i> in the late storm. We could almost <i>see</i>
+it, and the feeling it might have been fatal to us. Bro and
+I were moralising about shipwrecks, in the dining-room,
+when down came the chimney through the skylight into the
+entrance passage. You may imagine the crashing effect of
+the bricks bounding from the staircase downwards, breaking
+the stone steps in the process, in addition to the falling in
+of twenty-four large panes of glass, frames and all. We
+were terrified out of all propriety, and there has been a
+dreadful calumny about Henrietta and me&mdash;that we had
+the hall door open for the purpose of going out into the
+street with our hair on end, if Bro had not <i>encouraged</i> us by
+shutting the door and locking it. I confess to opening the
+door, but deny the purpose of it&mdash;at least, maintain that I
+only meant to keep in reserve a way of escape, <i>in case</i>, as
+seemed probable, the whole house was on its way to the
+ground. Indeed, we should think much of the <i>mercy</i> of
+the escape. Bro had been on the staircase only five
+minutes before. Sarah the housemaid was actually there.
+She looked up accidentally and saw the nodding chimneys,
+and ran down into the drawing-room to papa, shrieking, but
+escaping with one graze of the hand from one brick. How
+did <i>you</i> fare in the wind? I never much imagined before
+that anything so true to nature as a real live storm could
+make itself heard in our streets. But it has come too
+surely, and carried away with it, besides our chimney, all that
+was left to us of the country, in the shape of the Kensington
+Garden trees. Now do write to me, dearest Mrs. Martin,
+and soon, and tell me all you can of your chances and
+mischances, and how Mr. Martin is getting on with the
+parish, and yourself with the parishioners. But you have
+more the name of living at Colwall than the thing. You
+seem to me to lead a far more wandering life than we, for
+all our homelessness and 'pilgrim shoon.' Why, you have
+been in Ireland since I last said a word to you, even upon
+paper....</p>
+
+<p>I sometimes think that a pilgrim's life is the wisest&mdash;at
+least, the most congenial to the 'uses of this world.' We
+give our sympathies and associations to our hills and fields,
+and then the providence of God gives <i>them</i> to another,
+It is better, perhaps, to keep a stricter <i>identity</i>, by calling
+only our thoughts our own.</p>
+
+<p>Was there anybody in the world who ever loved London for
+itself? Did Dr. Johnson, in his paradise of Fleet Street,
+love the pavement and the walls? I doubt <i>that</i>&mdash;whether
+I ought to do so or not&mdash;though I don't doubt at all that one
+may be contented and happy here, and love much <i>in</i> the
+place. But the place and the privileges of it don't mix together
+in one's love, as is done among the hills and by the seaside.</p>
+
+<p>I or Henrietta must have told you that one of my
+privileges has been to see Wordsworth twice. He was very
+kind to me, and let me hear his conversation. I went with
+him and Miss Mitford to Chiswick, and thought all the way
+that I must certainly be dreaming. I saw her almost every
+day of her week's visit to London (this was all long ago,
+while you were in France); and she, who overflows with
+warm affections and generous benevolences, showed me every
+present and absent kindness, professing to love me, and
+asking me to write to her. Her novel is to be published
+soon after Christmas, and I believe a new tragedy is to appear
+about the same time, 'under the protection of Mr. Forrest.'
+Papa has given me the first two volumes of Wordsworth's
+new edition. The engraving in the first is his <i>own face</i>.
+You might think me affected if I told you all I felt in seeing
+the living face. His manners are very simple, and his
+conversation not at all <i>prominent</i>&mdash;if you quite understand
+what I mean by <i>that</i>. I do myself, for I saw at the same
+time Landor&mdash;the brilliant Landor!&mdash;and <i>felt</i> the difference
+between great genius and eminent talent; All these visions
+have passed now. I hear and see nothing, except my doves
+and the fireplace, and am doing little else than [<i>words torn
+out</i>] write all day long. And then people ask me what
+I <i>mean</i> in [<i>words torn out</i>]. I hope you were among the
+six who understood or half understood my 'Poet's Vow'&mdash;that
+is, if you read it at all. Uncle Hedley made a long
+pause at the first part. But I have been reading, too,
+Sheridan Knowles's play of the 'Wreckers.' It is full of
+passion and pathos, and made me shed a great many tears.
+How do you get on with the reading society? Do you see
+much or anything of Lady Margaret Cocks, from whom I
+never hear now? I promised to let her have 'Ion,' if I
+could, before she left Brighton, but the person to whom it
+was lent did not return it to me in time. Will you tell her
+this, if you do see her, and give her my kind regards at
+the same time? Dear Bell was so sorry not to have seen
+you. If she had, you would have thought her looking <i>very</i>
+well, notwithstanding the thinness&mdash;perhaps, in some measure,
+on account of it&mdash;and in <i>eminent</i> spirits. I have not
+seen her in such spirits for very, very long. And there she
+is, down at Torquay, with the Hedleys and Butlers, making
+quite a colony of it, and everybody, in each several letter,
+grumbling in an undertone at the dullness of the place.
+What would <i>I</i> give to see the waves once more! But
+perhaps if I were there, I should grumble too. It is a
+happiness to them to be <i>together</i>, and that, I am sure, they
+all feel....</p>
+
+Believe me, dearest Mrs. Martin, your affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.<br />
+
+<p>Oh that you would call me Ba!<a name="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29"><sup>[29]</sup></a></p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+[74 Gloucester Place:]<br />
+Thursday, December 15, 1836 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mr. Boyd,&mdash;... Two mornings since, I saw in
+the paper, under the head of literary news, that a change of
+editorship was taking place in the 'New Monthly Magazine;'
+and that Theodore Hook was to preside in the room of Mr.
+Hall. I am so much too modest and too wise to expect
+the patronage of two editors in succession, that I expect
+both my poems in a return cover, by every twopenny post.
+Besides, what has Theodore Hook to do with Seraphim?
+So, I shall leave that poem of mine to your imagination;
+which won't be half as troublesome to you as if I asked you
+to read it; begging you to be assured&mdash;to write it down in
+your critical rubric&mdash;that it is the very finest composition you
+ever read, <i>next</i> (of course) to the beloved 'De Virginitate'
+of Gregory Nazianzen.<a name="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30"><sup>[30]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stratten has just been here. I admire him more
+than I ever did, for his admiration of my doves. By the
+way, I am sure he thought them the most agreeable of the
+whole party; for he said, what he never did before, that he
+could sit here for an hour! Our love to Annie&mdash;and forgive
+me for Baskettiring a letter to you. I mean, of course,
+as to size, not type.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Yours affectionately,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>Is your poem printed yet?</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+[74 Gloucester Place:] Tuesday [Christmas 1836].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Friend,&mdash;I am very much obliged to you for the
+<i>two</i> copies of your poem, so beautifully printed, with such
+'majestical' types, on such 'magnifical' paper, as to be
+almost worthy of Baskett himself. You are too liberal in
+sending me more than one copy; and pray accept in return
+a duplicate of gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>As to my 'Seraphim,' they are not returned to me, as in
+the case of their being unaccepted, I expressly begged they
+might be. Had the old editor been the present one, my
+inference would of course be, that their insertion was a
+determined matter; but as it is, I don't know what to
+think.<a name="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31"><sup>[31]</sup></a> A long list of great names, belonging to <i>intending</i>
+contributors, appeared in the paper a day or two ago, and
+among them was Miss Mitford's.</p>
+
+<p>Are you wroth with me for not saying a word about going
+to see you? Arabel and I won't affirm it mathematically&mdash;but
+we are, metaphysically, <i>talking</i> of paying our visit to
+you next Tuesday. Don't expect us, nevertheless.</p>
+
+<p>Yours affectionately,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>What are my Christmas good wishes to be? That you
+may hold a Field in your right hand, and a Baskerville in
+your left, before the year is out! That degree of happiness
+will satisfy at least the <i>bodily</i> part of you.</p>
+
+<p>You may wish, in return, for <i>me</i>, that I may learn to
+write rather more legibly than 'at these presents.'</p>
+
+<p>Our love to Annie.</p>
+
+<p>Won't you send your new poem to Mr. Barker, to the
+care of Mr. Valpy, with your Christmas benedictions?</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i>.<br />
+[74 Gloucester Place:] January 23, 1837 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;I am standing in Henrietta's place,
+she says&mdash;but not, <i>I</i> say, to answer your letter to <i>her</i>
+yesterday, but your letter to <i>me</i>, some weeks ago&mdash;which I
+meant to answer much more immediately if the <i>ignis fatuus</i>
+of a house (you see to what a miserable fatuity I am
+reduced, of applying your pure country metaphors to our
+brick pollutions) had not been gliding just before us, and I
+had not much wished to be able to tell you of our settlement.
+As it is, however, I must write, and shall keep a
+solemn silence on the solemn subject of our shifting
+plans....</p>
+
+<p>No! I was not at all disappointed in Wordsworth,
+although perhaps I should not have singled him from the
+multitude as a great man. There is a <i>reserve</i> even in his
+countenance, which does not lighten as Landor's does,
+whom I saw the same evening. His eyes have more meekness
+than brilliancy; and in his slow even articulation
+there is rather the solemnity and calmness of <i>truth</i> itself,
+than the animation and energy of those who seek for it.
+As to my being quite at my ease when I spoke to him,
+why how could you ask such a question? I trembled
+both in my soul and body. But he was very kind, and sate
+near me and talked to me as long as he was in the room&mdash;and
+recited a translation by Cary of a sonnet of Dante's&mdash;and
+altogether, it was quite a dream! Landor too&mdash;Walter
+Savage Landor ... in whose hands the ashes of
+antiquity burn again&mdash;gave me two Greek epigrams he had lately
+written ... and talked brilliantly and prominently until Bro (he
+and I went together) abused him for <i>ambitious</i> singularity
+and affectation. But it was very interesting. And dear Miss
+Mitford too! and Mr. Raymond, a great Hebraist and the ancient
+author of 'A Cure for a Heartache!' I never walked in the
+skies before; and perhaps never shall again, when so many
+stars are out! I shall at least see dear Miss Mitford, who
+wrote to me not long ago to say that she would soon be in
+London with 'Otto,' her new tragedy, which was written at
+Mr. Forrest's own request, he in the most flattering manner
+having applied to her a stranger, as the authoress of 'Rienzi,'
+for a dramatic work worthy of his acting&mdash;after rejecting
+many plays offered to him, and among them Mr. Knowles's....
+She says that her play will be quite opposed, in its
+execution, to 'Ion,' as unlike it 'as a ruined castle
+overhanging the Rhine, to a Grecian temple.' And I do not
+doubt that it will be full of ability; although my own
+opinion is that she stands higher as the authoress of 'Our
+Village' than of 'Rienzi,' and writes prose better than poetry,
+and transcends rather in Dutch minuteness and high finishing,
+than in Italian ideality and passion. I think besides
+that Mr. Forrest's rejection of any play of Sheridan Knowles
+must refer rather to its unfitness for the development of his
+own personal talent, than to its abstract demerit, whatever
+Transatlantic tastes he may bring with him. The published
+title of the last play is 'The Daughter,' not 'The Wreckers,'
+although I believe it was acted as the last. I am very
+anxious to read 'Otto,' not to <i>see</i> it. I am not going to
+see it, notwithstanding an offered temptation to sit in the
+authoress's own box. With regard to 'Ion,' I think it is a
+beautiful work, but beautiful <i>rather</i> morally than
+intellectually. Is this right or not? Its moral tone is very
+noble, and sends a grand and touching harmony into the
+midst of the full discord of this utilitarian age. As dramatic
+<i>poetry</i>, it seems to me to want, not beauty, but power,
+passion, and condensation. This is my <i>doxy</i> about 'Ion.'
+Its author<a name="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32"><sup>[32]</sup></a> made me very proud by sending it to me, although
+we do not know him personally. I have <i>heard</i> that he is a
+most amiable man (who else could have written 'Ion'?), but
+that he was a little <i>elevated</i> by his popularity last year!...</p>
+
+<p>I have read Combe's 'Phrenology,' but not the 'Constitution
+of Man.' The 'Phrenology' is very clever, and amusing;
+but I do not think it logical or satisfactory. I forget
+whether 'slowness of the pulse' <i>is</i> mentioned in it as a
+symptom of the poetical aestus. I am afraid, if it be a
+symptom, I dare not take my place even in the 'forlorn hope
+of poets' in this age so forlorn as to its poetry; for my pulse
+is in a continual flutter and my feet not half cold enough
+for a pedestal&mdash;so I must make my honours over to poor
+papa straightway. He has been shivering and shuddering
+through the cold weather; and partaking our influenza in
+the warmer. I am very sorry that you should have been a
+sufferer too. It seems to have been a universal pestilence,
+even down in Devonshire, where dear Bummy and the
+whole colony have had their share of 'groans.' And one of
+my doves shook its pretty head and ruffled its feathers and
+shut its eyes, and became subject to pap and nursing and
+other infirmities for two or three days, until I was in great
+consternation for the result. But it is well again&mdash;cooing as
+usual; and so indeed we all are. But indeed, I can't write
+a sentence more without saying some of the evil it deserves&mdash;of
+the utilitarianisms of this corrupt age&mdash;among some of
+the chief of which are steel pens!</p>
+
+<p>I am so glad that you liked my 'Romaunt,' and so
+resigned that you did not understand some of my 'Poet's
+Vow,' and so obliged that you should care to go on reading
+what I write. They vouchsafed to publish in the first
+number of the new series of the 'New Monthly' a little
+poem of mine called 'The Island,'<a name="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33"><sup>[33]</sup></a> but so incorrectly that I
+was glad at the additional oblivion of my signature. If you
+see it, pray alter the last senseless line of the first page into
+'Leaf sounds with water, in your ear,' and put 'amreeta'
+instead of 'amneta' on the second page; and strike out '<i>of</i>'
+in the line which names Aeschylus! There are other
+blunders, [but] these are intolerable, and cast me out of my
+'contentment' for some time. I have begged for [proof]
+sheets in future; and as none have come for the ensuing
+month, I suppose I shall have nothing in the next number.
+They have a lyrical dramatic poem of mine, 'The Two
+Seraphim,' which, whenever it appears, I shall like to have
+your opinion of. As to the incomprehensible line in the
+'Poet's Vow' of which you asked me the meaning, 'One
+making one in strong compass,' I meant to express how
+that oneness of God, 'in whom are all things,' produces a
+oneness or sympathy (sympathy being the tendency of many
+to become one) in all things. Do you understand? or is
+the explanation to be explained? The unity of God
+preserves a unity in men&mdash;that is, a perpetual sympathy
+between man and man&mdash;which sympathy we must be subject
+to, if not in our joys, yet in our griefs. I believe the subject
+itself involves the necessity of some mysticism; but I must
+make no excuses. I am afraid that my very Seraphim will
+not be thought to stand in a very clear light, even at
+heaven's gate. But this is much <i>asay</i> about nothing ...</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop of Exeter is staying and preaching at
+Torquay. Do you not envy them all for making part of
+his congregation? I am sure I do <i>as much</i>. I envy you
+your before-breakfast activity. I am never a <i>complete man</i>
+without my breakfast&mdash;it seems to be some integral part of
+my soul. <i>You</i> 'read all O'Connell's speeches.' I never
+read any of them&mdash;unless they take me by surprise. I keep
+my devotion for <i>unpaid</i> patriots; but Miss Mitford is another
+devotee of Mr. O'Connell ...</p>
+
+<p>Dearest Mrs. Martin's affectionate<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>Thank you for the 'Ba' in Henrietta's letter. If you
+knew how many people, whom I have known only within
+this year or two, whether I like them or not, say 'Ba, Ba,'
+quite naturally and pastorally, you would not come to me
+with the detestable 'Miss B.'</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+London: August 16, 1837.<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mrs. Martin,&mdash;It seems a long long time since
+we had any intercourse; and the answer to your last
+pleasant letter to Henrietta <i>must</i> go to you from me. We
+have heard of you that you don't mean to return to England
+before the spring&mdash;which news proved me a prophet, and
+disappointed me at the same time, for one can't enjoy even
+a prophecy in this world without something vexing. Indeed,
+I do long to see you again, dearest Mrs. Martin, and should
+always have the same pleasure in it, and affection for you,
+if my friends and acquaintances were as much multiplied as
+you <i>wrongly</i> suppose them to be. But the truth is that I
+have almost none at all, in this place; and, except our
+relative Mr. Kenyon, not one literary in any sense. Dear
+Miss Mitford, one of the very kindest of human beings, lies
+buried in geraniums, thirty miles away. I could not conceive
+what Henrietta had been telling you, or what you
+meant, for a long time&mdash;until we conjectured that it must
+have been something about Lady Dacre, who kindly sent
+me her book, and intimated that she would be glad to receive
+me at her conversations&mdash;and you know me better than to
+doubt whether I would go or not. There was an equal
+unworthiness and unwillingness towards the honor of it.
+Indeed, dearest Mrs. Martin, it is almost surprising how we
+contrive to be as dull in London as in Devonshire&mdash;perhaps
+more so, for the sight of a multitude induces a sense of
+seclusion which one has not without it; and, besides, there
+were at Sidmouth many more known faces and listened-to
+voices than we see and hear in this place. No house yet!
+And you will scarcely have patience to read that papa has
+seen and likes another house in Devonshire Place, and that
+he <i>may</i> take it, and we <i>may</i> be settled in it, before the year
+closes. I myself think of the whole business indifferently.
+My thoughts have turned so long on the subject of houses,
+that the pivot is broken&mdash;and now they won't turn any more.
+All that remains is, a sort of consciousness, that we should
+be more comfortable in a house with cleaner carpets, and
+taken for rather longer than a week at a time. Perhaps,
+after all, we are quite as well <i>sur le tapis</i> as it is. It is a
+thousand to one but that the feeling of four red London
+walls closing around us for seven, eleven, or twenty-five years,
+would be a harsh and hard one, and make us cry wistfully
+to 'get out.' I am sure you will look up to your mountains,
+and down to your lakes, and enter into this conjecture.</p>
+
+<p>Talking of mountains and lakes is itself a trying thing
+to us poor prisoners. Papa has talked several times of
+taking us into the country for two months this summer, and
+we have dreamt of it a hundred times in addition; but,
+after all, we are not likely to go I dare say. It would have
+been very delightful&mdash;and who knows what may take place
+next summer? We may not absolutely <i>die</i>, without seeing
+a tree. Henrietta has seen a great many. You will have
+heard, I dare say, of the enjoyment she had in her week at
+Camden House. She seems to have walked from seven in
+the morning to seven at night; and was quite delighted with
+the kindness within doors and the sunshine without. I
+assure you that, fresh as she was from the air and dew, she
+saluted us amidst the sentiment of our sisterly meeting just
+in this way&mdash;it was almost her first exclamation&mdash;'What a
+very disagreeable smell there is here!' And this, although
+she had brought geraniums enough from Camden to perfume
+the Haymarket!...</p>
+
+<p>I am happy to announce to you that a new little dove
+has appeared from a shell&mdash;over which nobody had prognosticated
+good&mdash;on August 16, 1837. I and the senior doves appear equally
+delighted, and we all three, in the capacity of good sitters
+and indefatigable pullers-about, take a good deal of credit
+upon ourselves....</p>
+
+<p>Arabel has begun oil painting, and without a master&mdash;and
+you can't think how much effect and expression she has
+given to several of her own sketches, notwithstanding all
+difficulties. Poor Henrietta is without a piano, and is not
+to have one again <i>until we have another house</i>! This is something
+like 'when Homer and Virgil are forgotten.' <i>Speaking
+of Homer and Virgil</i>, I have been writing a 'Romance
+of the Ganges,'<a name="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34"><sup>[34]</sup></a> in order to illustrate an engraving in the
+new annual to be edited by Miss Mitford, Finden's tableaux
+for 1838. It does not sound a <i>very</i> Homeric undertaking&mdash;I
+confess I don't hold any kind of annual, gild it as you
+please, in too much honour and awe&mdash;but from my wish to
+please her, and from the necessity of its being done in a
+certain time, I was 'quite frightful,' as poor old Cooke used
+to say, in order to express his own nervousness. But she
+was quite pleased&mdash;she is very soon pleased&mdash;and the ballad,
+gone the way of all writing, now-a-days, to the press. I do
+wish I could send you some kind of news that would interest
+you; but you see scarcely any except all this selfishness is
+in my beat. Dearest Bro draws and reads German, and I
+fear is dull notwithstanding. But we are every one of us
+more reconciled to London than we were. Well! I must
+not write any more. Whenever you think of me, dearest
+Mrs. Martin, remember how deeply and unchangeably I
+must regard you&mdash;both with my <i>mind</i>, my <i>affections</i>,
+and that part of either, called my gratitude. BA.</p>
+
+<p>Henrietta's kindest love and thanks for your letter. She
+desires me to say that she and Bro are going to dine with
+Mrs. Robert Martin to-morrow. I must tell you that
+Georgie and I went to hear Dr. Chalmers preach, three
+Sundays ago. His sermon was on a text whose extreme
+beauty would diffuse itself into any sermon preached upon it&mdash;God
+is love. His eloquence was very great, and his views
+noble and grasping. I expected much from his imagination,
+but not so much from his knowledge. It was truer to
+Scripture than I was prepared for, although there seemed
+to me some <i>want</i> on the subject of the work of the Holy
+Spirit on the heart, which work we cannot dwell upon too
+emphatically. 'He worketh in us to will and to do,' and
+yet we are apt to will and do without a transmission of the
+praise to Him. May God bless you.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Commeline</i><br />
+London: August 19, 1837.<br />
+
+<p>My dear Miss Commeline,&mdash;I could not hear of your
+being in affliction without very frequent thoughts of you
+and a desire to express some of them in this way, and
+although so much time has passed I do hope that you will
+believe in the sympathy with which I, or rather <i>we</i>, have
+thought of you, and in the regard we shall not cease to feel
+for you even if we meet no more in this world. It is
+blessed to know both for ourselves and for each other that
+while there is a darkness that <i>must</i> come to all, there is a
+light which <i>may</i>; and may He who is the light in the dark
+place be with you [now] and always, causing you to feel
+rather the glory that is in Him than the shadow which is in
+all beside&mdash;that so the sweetness of the consolation may pass
+the bitterness of even grief. Do give my love to Mrs.
+Commeline and to your sisters, and believe me, all of you,
+that the friends who have gone from your neighbourhood
+have not gone from my old remembrance, either of your
+kindness to them, or of their own feelings of interest in
+you.</p>
+
+<p>Trusting to such old remembrances, I will believe that
+you care to know what we are doing and how we are
+settling&mdash;that word which has now been on our lips for
+years, which it is marvellous to think how it got upon
+human lips at all. We came from Sidmouth to try London
+and ourselves, and see whether or not we could live
+together; and after more than a year and a half close contact
+with smoke we find no very good excuse for not remaining
+in it; and papa is going on with his eternal hunt for houses&mdash;the
+wild huntsman in the ballad is nothing to him, all
+except the sublimity&mdash;intending very seriously to take the
+first he can. He is now about one in particular, but I won't
+tell where it is because we have considered so many houses
+in particular that our considerations have come to be a jest
+in general. I shall be heartily glad, at least I <i>think</i> so, for
+it is possible that the reality of being bricked up for a lease
+time may not be very agreeable. I think I shall be heartily
+glad when a house is taken, and we have made it look like
+our own with our furniture and pictures and books. I am
+so anxious to see my old books. I believe I shall begin at
+the beginning and read every story book through in the joy of
+meeting, and shall be as sedentary as ever I was in my own
+arm-chair. I remember when I was a child spreading my
+vitality, not over trees and flowers (I do that still&mdash;I still
+believe they have a certain animal susceptibility to pleasure
+and pain; 'it is my creed,' and, being Wordsworth's besides, I
+am not ashamed of it), but over chairs and tables and books
+in particular, and being used to fancy a kind of love in them
+to suit my love to them. And so if I were a child I should
+have an intense pity for my poor folios, quartos, and
+duodecimos, to say nothing of the arm-chair, shut up all
+these weeks and months in boxes, without a rational eye to
+look upon them. Pray forgive me if I have written a great
+deal of nonsense&mdash;'Je m'en doute.'</p>
+
+<p>Henrietta has spent a fortnight at Chislehurst with the
+Martins, and was very joyous there, and came back to us
+with that happy triumphant air which I always fancy people
+'just from the country' put on towards us hapless
+Londoners.</p>
+
+<p>But you must not think I am a discontented person and
+grumble all day long at being in London. <i>There are many
+advantages here</i>, as I say to myself whenever it is particularly
+disagreeable; and if we can't see even a leaf or a sparrow
+without soot on it, there are the parrots at the Zoological
+Gardens and the pictures at the Royal Academy; and real
+live poets above all, with their heads full of the trees and
+birds and sunshine of paradise. I have stood face to face
+with Wordsworth and Landor; and Miss Mitford, who is in
+herself what she is in her books, has become a dear friend of
+mine, but a distant one. She visits London at long intervals,
+and lives thirty miles away....</p>
+
+<p>Bro and I were studying German together all last
+summer with Henry, before he left us to become a German,
+and I believe this is the last of my languages, for I have
+begun absolutely to detest the sight of a dictionary or
+grammar, which I never liked except as a means, and love
+poetry with an intenser love, if that be possible, than I ever
+did. Not that Greek is not as dear to me as ever, but I
+write more than I read, even of Greek poetry, and am
+resolute to work whatever little faculty I have, clear of
+imitations and conventionalisms which cloud and weaken
+more poetry (particularly now-a-days) than would be
+believed possible without looking into it....</p>
+
+<p>As to society in London, I assure you that none of us
+have much, and that as for me, you would wonder at seeing
+how possible it is to live as secludedly in the midst of a
+multitude as in the centre of solitude. My doves are my
+chief acquaintances, and I am so very intimate with <i>them</i>
+that they accept and even demand my assistance in building
+their innumerable nests. Do tell me if there is any hope of
+seeing any of you in London at any time. I say 'do tell
+me,' for I will venture to ask you, dear Miss Commeline, to
+write me a few lines in one of the idlest hours of one of your
+idlest days just to tell me a little about you, and whether
+Mrs. Commeline is tolerably well. Pray believe me under
+all circumstances,</p>
+
+<p>Yours sincerely and affectionately,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>The spring of 1838 was marked by two events of interest
+to Miss Barrett and her family. In the first place, Mr.
+Barrett's apparently interminable search for a house ended
+in his selection of 50 Wimpole Street, which continued to
+be his home for the rest of his life, and which is,
+consequently, more than any other house in London, to be
+associated with his daughter's memory. The second event
+was the publication of 'The Seraphim, and other Poems,'
+which was Miss Barrett's first serious appearance before the
+public, and in her own name, as a poet. The early letters
+of this year refer to the preparation of this volume, as well
+as to the authoress's health, which was at this time in a very
+serious condition, owing to the breaking of a blood-vessel.
+Indeed, from this time until her marriage in 1846 she held
+her life on the frailest of tenures, and lived in all respects the
+life of an invalid.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Monday morning, March 27, 1838 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Friend,&mdash;I do hope that you may not be very
+angry, but papa thinks&mdash;and, indeed, I think&mdash;that as I
+have already <i>had</i> two proof sheets and forty-eight pages,
+and the printers have gone on to the rest of the poem, it
+would not be very welcome to them if we were to ask them
+to retrace their steps. Besides, I would rather&mdash;<i>I</i> for
+myself, <i>I</i>&mdash;that you had the whole poem at once and
+clearly printed before you, to insure as many chances as
+possible of your liking it. I am <i>promised</i> to see the volume
+completed in three weeks from this time, so that the dreadful
+moment of your reading it&mdash;I mean the 'Seraphim' part of
+it&mdash;cannot be far off, and perhaps, the season being a good
+deal advanced even now, you might not, on consideration,
+wish me to retard the appearance of the book, except for
+some very sufficient reason. I feel very nervous about it&mdash;far
+more than I did when my 'Prometheus' crept out [of]
+the Greek, or I myself out of the shell, in the first 'Essay
+on Mind.' Perhaps this is owing to Dr. Chambers's
+medicines, or perhaps to a consciousness that my present
+attempt <i>is</i> actually, and will be considered by others, more
+a trial of strength than either of my preceding ones.</p>
+
+<p>Thank you for the books, and especially for the <i>editio
+rarissima</i>, which I should as soon have thought of your
+trusting to me as of your admitting me to stand with gloves
+on within a yard of Baxter. This extraordinary confidence
+shall not be abused.</p>
+
+<p>I thank you besides for your kind inquiries about my
+health. Dr. Chambers did not think me worse yesterday,
+notwithstanding the last cold days, which have occasioned
+some uncomfortable sensations, and he still thinks I shall
+be better in the summer season. In the meantime he has
+ordered me to take ice&mdash;out of sympathy with nature, I
+suppose; and not to speak a word, out of contradiction to
+my particular, human, feminine nature.</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon I revenge myself, you see, by talking all this
+nonsense upon paper, and making you the victim.</p>
+
+<p>To propitiate you, let me tell you that your commands
+have been performed to the letter, and that one Greek
+motto (from 'Orpheus') is given to the first part of 'The
+Seraphim,' and another from <i>Chrysostom</i> to the second.</p>
+
+<p>Henrietta desires me to say that she means to go to see
+you very soon. Give my very kind remembrance to
+Miss Holmes, and believe me,</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate friend,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>I saw Mr. Kenyon yesterday. He has a book just
+coming out.<a name="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35"><sup>[35]</sup></a> I should like you to read it. If you would,
+you would thank me for saying so.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To John Kenyon</i><a name="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36"><sup>[36]</sup></a><br />
+[1838.]<br />
+
+<p>Thank you, dearest Mr. Kenyon; and I should (and
+<i>shall</i>) thank Miss Thomson too for caring to spend a
+thought on me after all the Parisian glories and rationalities
+which I sympathise with by many degrees nearer than you
+seem to do. We, in this England here, are just social
+barbarians, to my mind&mdash;that is, we know how to read and
+write and think, and even talk on occasion; but we carry
+the old rings in our noses, and are proud of the flowers
+pricked into our cuticles. By so much are they better than
+we on the Continent, I always think. Life has a thinner
+rind, and so a livelier sap. And <i>that</i> I can see in the books
+and the traditions, and always understand people who like
+living in France and Germany, and should like it myself,
+I believe, on some accounts.</p>
+
+<p>Where did you get your Bacchanalian song? Witty,
+certainly, but the recollection of the <i>scores</i> a little ghastly
+for the occasion, perhaps. You have yourself sung into
+silence, too, all possible songs of Bacchus, as the god and I
+know.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a delightful letter from Miss Martineau. I cannot
+be so selfish as to keep it to myself. The sense of natural
+beauty and the <i>good</i> sense of the remarks on rural manners
+are both exquisite of their kinds, and Wordsworth is Wordsworth
+as she knows him. Have I said that Friday will find
+me expecting the kind visit you promise? <i>That</i>, at least,
+is what I meant to say with all these words.</p>
+
+<p>Ever affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To John Kenyon</i><br />
+Wimpole Street: Sunday evening [1838?].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mr. Kenyon,&mdash;I am <i>so</i> sorry to hear of your
+going, and I not able to say 'good-bye' to you, that&mdash;I
+am <i>not</i> writing this note on that account.</p>
+
+<p>It is a begging note, and now I am wondering to myself
+whether you will think me very childish or womanish, or
+silly enough to be both together (I know your thoughts upon
+certain parallel subjects), if I go on to do my begging fully.
+I hear that you are going to Mr. Wordsworth's&mdash;to
+Rydal Mount&mdash;and I want you to ask <i>for yourself</i>, and then
+to send to me in a letter&mdash;by the post, I mean, two
+cuttings out of the garden&mdash;of myrtle or geranium; I care
+very little which, or what else. Only I say 'myrtle' because
+it is less given to die and I say <i>two</i> to be sure of my
+chances of saving one. Will you? You would please me
+very much by doing it; and certainly not <i>dis</i> please me by
+refusing to do it. Your broadest 'no' would not sound
+half so strange to me as my 'little crooked thing' does to
+you; but you see everybody in the world is fanciful about
+something, and why not <i>E.B.B.</i>?</p>
+
+<p>Dear Mr. Kenyon, I have a book of yours&mdash;M. Rio's.
+If you want it before you go, just write in two words,
+'Send it,' or I shall infer from your silence that I may keep
+it until you come back. No necessity for answering this
+otherwise. Is it as bad as asking for autographs, or worse?
+At any rate, believe me <i>in earnest</i> this time&mdash;besides
+being, with every wish for your enjoyment of mountains and
+lakes and 'cherry trees,'</p>
+
+<p>Ever affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+[May 1838.]<br />
+
+<p>My dear friend,&mdash;I am rather better than otherwise
+within the last few days, but fear that nothing will make me
+essentially so except the invisible sun. I am, however, a little
+better, and God's will is always done in mercy.</p>
+
+<p>As to the poems, do forgive me, dear Mr. Boyd; and
+refrain from executing your cruel threat of suffering 'the
+desire of reading them to pass away.'</p>
+
+<p>I have not one sheet of them; and papa&mdash;and, to say the
+truth, I myself&mdash;would so very much prefer your reading the
+preface first, that you must try to indulge us in our phantasy.
+The book Mr. Bentley half promises to finish the printing
+of this week. At any rate it is likely to be all done in the
+next: and you may depend upon having a copy <i>as soon</i> as
+I have power over one.</p>
+
+<p>With kind regards to Miss Holmes,</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, your affectionate friend,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street; Wednesday [May 1838].<br />
+
+<p>Thank you for your inquiry, my dear friend. I had
+begun to fancy that between Saunders and Otley and the
+'Seraphim' I had fallen to the ground of your disfavour. But
+I do trust to be able to send you a copy before next Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>I am thrown back a little just now by having caught a
+very bad cold, which has of course affected my cough. The
+worst seems, however, to be past, and Dr. Chambers told me
+yesterday that he expected to see me in two days nearly as
+well as before this casualty. And I have been, thank God,
+pretty well lately; and although when the stethoscope was
+applied three weeks ago, it did not speak very satisfactorily
+of the state of the lungs, yet Dr. Chambers seems to be
+hopeful still, and to talk of the wonders which the summer
+sunshine (when it does come) may be the means of doing
+for me. And people say that I look rather better than
+worse, even now.</p>
+
+<p>Did you hear of an autograph of Shakespeare's being
+sold lately for a very large sum (I <i>think</i> it was above a
+hundred pounds) on the credit of its being the only genuine
+autograph extant? Is yours quite safe? And are <i>you</i> so,
+in your opinion of its veritableness?</p>
+
+<p>I have just finished a very long barbarous ballad for Miss
+Mitford and the Finden's tableaux of this year. The title
+is 'The Romaunt of the Page,'<a name="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37"><sup>[37]</sup></a> and the subject not of my
+own choosing.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that you will certainly have 'The Seraphim' this
+week. Do macadamise the frown from your brow in order
+to receive them.</p>
+
+<p>Give my love to Miss Holmes.</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate friend,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+June 7, 1838 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mr. Boyd,&mdash;Papa is scarcely inclined, nor am I
+for myself, to send my book or books to the East Indies.
+Let them alone, poor things, until they can walk about a
+little! and then it will be time enough for them to 'learn
+to <i>fly</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>I am so sorry that Emily Harding saw Arabel and went
+away without this note, which I have been meaning to write
+to you for several days, and have been so absorbed and
+drawn away (all except my thoughts) by other things
+necessary to be done, that I was forced to defer it. My
+ballad,<a name="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38"><sup>[38]</sup></a> containing a ladye dressed up like a page and
+galloping off to Palestine in a manner that would scandalise
+you, went to Miss Mitford this morning. But I augur from
+its length that she will not be able to receive it into Finden.</p>
+
+<p>Arabel has told me what Miss Harding told her of your
+being in the act of going through my 'Seraphim' for the
+second time. For the feeling of interest in me which
+brought this labour upon you, I thank you, my dear friend.
+What your opinion <i>is</i>, and <i>will</i> be, I am prepared to hear
+with a good deal of awe. You will <i>certainly not approve of
+the poem</i>.</p>
+
+<p>There now! You see I am prepared. Therefore do
+not keep back one rough word, for friendship's sake, but be
+as honest as&mdash;you could not help being, without this request.</p>
+
+<p>If I should live, I shall write (<i>I believe</i>) better poems
+than 'The Seraphim;' which belief will help me to survive
+the condemnation heavy upon your lips.</p>
+
+<p>Affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>'The Seraphim, and other Poems,' a duodecimo of 360
+pages, at last made its appearance at the end of May. At
+the time of its publication, English poetry was experiencing
+one of its periods of ebb between two flood tides of great
+achievement. Shelley, Keats, Byron, Scott, Coleridge were
+dead; Wordsworth had ceased to produce poetry of the
+first order; no fresh inspiration was to be expected from
+Landor, Southey, Rogers, Campbell, and such other writers
+of the Georgian era as still were numbered with the living.
+On the other hand, Tennyson, though already the most
+remarkable among the younger poets, was still but exercising
+himself in the studies in language and metrical music by
+which his consummate art was developed; Browning had
+published only 'Pauline,' 'Paracelsus,' and 'Strafford;' the
+other poets who have given distinction to the Victorian age
+had not begun to write. And between the veterans of the
+one generation and the young recruits of the next there was
+a singular want of writers of distinction. There was thus
+every opportunity for a new poet when Miss Barrett entered
+the lists with her first volume of acknowledged verse.</p>
+
+<p>Its reception, on the whole, does credit alike to its own
+merits and to the critics who reviewed it. It does not
+contain any of those poems which have proved the most
+popular among its authoress's complete works, except
+'Cowper's Grave;' but 'The Seraphim' was a poem which
+deserved to attract attention, and among the minor poems
+were 'The Poet's Vow,' 'Isobel's Child,' 'The Romaunt of
+Margret,' 'My Doves,' and 'The Sea-mew.' The volume did
+not suffice to win any wide reputation for Miss Barrett, and
+no second edition was called for; on the other hand, it was
+received with more than civility, with genuine cordiality, by
+several among the reviewers, though they did not fail to note
+its obvious defects. The 'Athenaeum'<a name="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39"><sup>[39]</sup></a> began its review
+with the following declaration:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>This is an extraordinary volume&mdash;especially welcome as an
+evidence of female genius and accomplishment&mdash;but it is hardly less
+disappointing than extraordinary. Miss Barrett's genius is of a high
+order; active, vigorous, and versatile, but unaccompanied by
+discriminating taste. A thousand strange and beautiful views flit
+across her mind, but she cannot look on them with steady gaze; her
+descriptions, therefore, are often shadowy and indistinct, and her
+language wanting in the simplicity of unaffected earnestness.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The 'Examiner,'<a name="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40"><sup>[40]</sup></a> after quoting at length from the
+preface and 'The Seraphim,' continued:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Who will deny to the writer of such verses as these (and they are not
+sparingly met with in the volume) the possession of many of the
+highest qualities of the divine art? We regret to have some restriction
+to add to an admission we make so gladly. Miss Barrett is indeed a
+genuine poetess, of no common order; yet is she in danger of being
+spoiled by over-ambition; and of realising no greater or more final
+reputation than a hectical one, like Crashaw's. She has fancy, feeling,
+imagination, expression; but for want of some just equipoise or other,
+between the material and spiritual, she aims at flights which have done
+no good to the strongest, and therefore falls infinitely short, except in
+such detached passages as we have extracted above, of what a proper
+exercise of her genius would infallibly reach.... Very various, and
+in the main beautiful and true, are the minor poems. But the entire
+volume deserves more than ordinary attention.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The 'Atlas,'<a name="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41"><sup>[41]</sup></a> another paper whose literary judgments
+were highly esteemed at that date, was somewhat colder,
+and dwelt more on the faults of the volume, but added
+nevertheless that 'there are occasional passages of great
+beauty, and full of deep poetical feeling. In 'The Romaunt
+of Margret' it detected the influence of Tennyson&mdash;a suggestion
+which Miss Barrett repudiated rather warmly; and it
+concluded with the declaration that the authoress 'possesses
+a fine poetical temperament, and has given to the public, in
+this volume, a work of considerable merit.'</p>
+
+<p>Such were the principal voices among the critical world
+when Miss Barrett first ventured into its midst; and she
+might well be satisfied with them. Two years later, the
+'Quarterly Review'<a name="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42"><sup>[42]</sup></a> included her name in a review of
+'Modern English Poetesses,' along with Caroline Norton,
+'V.,' and others whose names are even less remembered
+to-day. But though the reviewer speaks of her genius and
+learning in high terms of admiration, he cannot be said to
+treat her sympathetically. He objects to the dogmatic
+positiveness of her prefaces, and protests warmly against her
+'reckless repetition of the name of God'&mdash;a charge which,
+in another connection, will be found fully and fairly met in
+one of her later letters. On points of technique he criticises
+her frequent use of the perfect participle with accented final
+syllable&mdash;'kissed,' 'bowed,' and the like&mdash;and her fondness
+for the adverb 'very;' both of which mannerisms he charges
+to the example of Tennyson. He condemns the 'Prometheus,'
+though recognising it as 'a remarkable performance for a
+young lady.' He criticises the subject of 'The Seraphim,'
+'from which Milton would have shrunk;' but adds, 'We give
+Miss Barrett, however, the full credit of a lofty purpose, and
+admit, moreover, that several particular passages in her
+poem are extremely fine; equally profound in thought and
+striking in expression.' He sums up as follows:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>In a word, we consider Miss Barrett to be a woman of undoubted
+genius and most unusual learning; but that she has indulged her
+inclination for themes of sublime mystery, not certainly without
+displaying great power, yet at the expense of that clearness, truth,
+and proportion, which are essential to beauty; and has most
+unfortunately fallen into the trammels of a school or manner of
+writing, which, of all that ever existed&mdash;Lycophron, Lucan, and
+Gongora not forgotten&mdash;is most open to the charge of being <i>vitiis
+imitabile exemplar</i>.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>So much for the reception of 'The Seraphim' volume by
+the outside world. The letters show how it appeared to the
+authoress herself.</p>
+
+<p>The first of them deserves a word of special notice,
+because it is likewise the first in these volumes addressed to
+Miss Mary Russell Mitford, whose name holds a high and
+honourable place in the roll of Miss Barrett's friends. Her
+own account of the beginning of the friendship should be
+quoted in any record of Mrs. Browning's life.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>'My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett commenced
+about fifteen years ago.<a name="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43"><sup>[43]</sup></a> She was certainly one of
+the most interesting persons that I had ever seen. Everybody
+who then saw her said the same; so that it is not
+merely the impression of my partiality or my enthusiasm.
+Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls
+falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender
+eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam,
+and such a look of youthfulness that I had some difficulty
+in persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went together
+to Chiswick, that the translatress of the &quot;Prometheus&quot; of
+Aeschylus, the authoress of the &quot;Essay on Mind,&quot; was old
+enough to be introduced into company, in technical language,
+was 'out.' Through the kindness of another invaluable
+friend,<a name="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44"><sup>[44]</sup></a> to whom I owe many obligations, but none so great
+as this, I saw much of her during my stay in town. We
+met so constantly and so familiarly that, in spite of the
+difference of age,<a name="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45"><sup>[45]</sup></a> intimacy ripened into friendship, and
+after my return into the country we corresponded freely and
+frequently, her letters being just what letters ought to
+be&mdash;her own talk put upon paper.'<a name="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46"><sup>[46]</sup></a></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Miss Barrett's letters show how warmly she returned this
+feeling of friendship, which lasted until Miss Mitford's
+death in 1855. Of the earlier letters many must have disappeared:
+for it is evident from Miss Mitford's just quoted
+words, and also from many references in her published
+correspondence, that they were in constant communication
+during these years of Miss Barrett's life in London. After
+her marriage, however, the extant letters are far more
+frequent, and will be found to fill a considerable place in the
+later pages of this work.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: Thursday [June 1838].<br />
+
+<p>We thank you gratefully, dearest Miss Mitford. Papa
+and I and all of us thank you for your more than kindnesses.
+The extracts were both gladdening and surprising&mdash;and the
+one the more for being the other also. Oh! it was <i>so</i>
+kind of you, in the midst of your multitude of occupations,
+to make time (out of love) to send them to us!</p>
+
+<p>As to the ballad, dearest Miss Mitford, which you and
+Mr. Kenyon are indulgent enough to like, remember that
+he passed his criticism over it&mdash;before it went to you&mdash;and
+so if you did not find as many obscurities as he did in it,
+the reason is&mdash;<i>his</i> merit and not mine. But don't believe
+him&mdash;no!&mdash;don't believe even Mr. Kenyon&mdash;whenever he
+says that I am <i>perversely</i> obscure. Unfortunately obscure,
+not perversely&mdash;that is quite a wrong word. And the last
+time he used it to me (and then, I assure you, another word
+still worse was with it) I begged him to confine them for
+the future to his jesting moods. Because, <i>indeed</i>, I am not
+in the very least degree perverse in this fault of mine, which
+is my destiny rather than my choice, and comes upon me,
+I think, just where I would eschew it most. So little has
+perversity to do with its occurrence, that my fear of it makes
+me sometimes feel quite nervous and thought-tied in
+composition....</p>
+
+<p>I have not seen Mr. Kenyon since I wrote last. All
+last week I was not permitted to get out of bed, and was
+haunted with leeches and blisters. And in the course of it,
+Lady Dacre was so kind as to call here, and to leave a
+note instead of the personal greeting which I was not able
+to receive. The honor she did me a year ago, in sending
+me her book, encouraged me to offer her my poems. I
+hesitated about doing so at first, lest it should appear as if
+my vanity were dreaming of a <i>return</i>; but Mr. Kenyon's
+opinion turned the balance. I was very sorry not to have
+seen Lady Dacre and have written a reply to her note expressive
+of this regret. But, after all, this inaudible voice
+(except in its cough) could have scarcely made her understand
+that I was obliged by her visit, had I been able to
+receive it.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Chambers has freed me again into the drawing-room,
+and I am much better or he would not have done so.
+There is not, however, much strength or much health, nor
+any near prospect of regaining either. It is well that, in
+proportion to our feebleness, we may feel our dependence
+upon God.</p>
+
+<p>I feel as if I had not said half, and they have come to ask
+me if I have not said <i>all</i>! My beloved friend, may you be
+happy in all ways!</p>
+
+<p>Do write whenever you wish to talk and have no one to
+talk to nearer you than I am! <i>Indeed</i>, I did not forget Dr.
+Mitford when I wrote those words, although they look
+like it.</p>
+
+<p>Your gratefully affectionate<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: Wednesday morning [June 1838].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Friend,&mdash;Do not think me depraved in ingratitude
+for not sooner thanking you for the pleasure,
+made so much greater by the surprise, which your note of
+judgment gave me. The truth is that I have been very
+unwell, and delayed answering it immediately until the
+painful physical feeling went away to make room for the
+pleasurable moral one&mdash;and this I fancied it would do every
+hour, so that I might be able to tell you at ease all that was
+in my thoughts. The fancy was a vain one. The pain
+grew worse and worse, and Dr. Chambers has been here
+for two successive days shaking his head as awfully as if it
+bore all Jupiter's ambrosial curls; and is to be here again
+to-day, but with, I trust, a less grave countenance, inasmuch
+as the leeches last night did their duty, and I feel much
+better&mdash;God be thanked for the relief. But I am not yet
+as well as before this attack, and am still confined to my
+bed&mdash;and so you must rather imagine than read what I
+thought and felt in reading your wonderful note. Of course
+it pleased me very much, very very much&mdash;and, I dare say,
+would have made me vain by this time, if it had not been
+for the opportune pain and the sight of Dr. Chambers's
+face.</p>
+
+<p>I sent a copy of my book to Nelly Bordman <i>before</i> I read
+your suggestion. I knew that her kind feeling for me would
+interest her in the sight of it.</p>
+
+<p>Thank you once more, dear Mr. Boyd! May all my
+critics be gentle after the pattern of your gentleness!</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: June 17 [1838].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Friend,&mdash;I send you a number of the 'Atlas'
+which you may keep. It is a favorable criticism, certainly&mdash;but
+I confess this of my vanity, that it has not altogether
+pleased me. You see what it is to be spoilt.</p>
+
+<p>As to the 'Athenaeum,' although I am <i>not</i> conscious of
+the quaintness and mannerism laid to my charge, and am
+very sure that I have always written too naturally (that is,
+too much from the impulse of thought and feeling) to have
+studied '<i>attitudes</i>,' yet the critic was quite right in stating
+his opinion, and so am I in being grateful to him for the
+liberal praise he has otherwise given me. Upon the whole,
+I like his review better than even the 'Examiner,' notwithstanding
+my being perfectly satisfied with <i>that</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Thank you for the question about my health. I am
+very tolerably well&mdash;for <i>me</i>: and am said to look better.
+At the same time I am aware of being always on the verge
+of an increase of illness&mdash;I mean, in a very excitable state&mdash;with
+a pulse that flies off at a word and is only to be
+caught by digitalis. But I am better&mdash;for the present&mdash;while
+the sun shines.</p>
+
+<p>Thank you besides for your criticisms, which I shall
+hold in memory, and use whenever I am not particularly
+<i>obstinate</i>, in all my SUCCEEDING EDITIONS!</p>
+
+<p>You will smile at that, and so do <i>I.</i></p>
+
+<p>Arabel is walking in the Zoological Gardens with the
+Cliffes&mdash;but I think you will see her before long.</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate friend,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>Don't let me forget to mention the Essays<a name="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47"><sup>[47]</sup></a>. You shall
+have yours&mdash;and Miss Bordman hers&mdash;and the delay has
+not arisen from either forgetfulness or indifference on my
+part&mdash;although I never deny that I don't like giving the
+Essay to anybody because I don't like it. Now that sounds
+just like 'a woman's reason,' but it isn't, albeit so reasonable!
+I meant to say 'because I don't like the ESSAY.'</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: Thursday, June 21 [1838].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Friend,&mdash;Notwithstanding this silence so ungrateful
+in appearance, I thank you at last, and very sincerely,
+for your kind letter. It made me laugh, and amused
+me&mdash;and gratified me besides. Certainly your 'quality of
+mercy is not strained.'</p>
+
+<p>My reason for not writing more immediately is that
+Arabel has meant, day after day, to go to you, and has had
+a separate disappointment for every day. She says now,
+'<i>Indeed</i>, I hope to see Mr. Boyd to-morrow.' But <i>I</i> say
+that I will not keep this answer of mine to run the risk of
+another day's contingencies, and that <i>it</i> shall go, whether
+<i>she</i> does or not.</p>
+
+<p>I am better a great deal than I was last week, and have
+been allowed by Dr. Chambers to come downstairs again,
+and occupy my old place on the sofa. My health remains,
+however, in what I cannot help considering myself, and in
+what, I <i>believe</i>, Dr. Chambers considers, a very precarious
+state, and my weakness increases, of course, under the
+remedies which successive attacks render necessary. Dr.
+Chambers deserves my confidence&mdash;and besides the skill
+with which he has met the different modifications of the
+complaint, I am grateful to him for a feeling and a
+sympathy which are certainly rare in such of his profession
+as have their attention diverted, as his must be, by an immense
+practice, to fifty objects in a day. But, notwithstanding
+all, one breath of the east wind undoes whatever
+he labours to do. It is well to look up and remember that in
+the eternal reality these second causes are no causes at all.</p>
+
+<p>Don't leave this note about for Arabel to see. I am
+anxious not to alarm her, or any one of my family: and it
+may please God to make me as well and strong again as ever.
+And, indeed, I am twice as well this week as I was last.</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate friend, dear Mr. Boyd,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>I have seen an extract from a private letter of Mr.
+Chorley, editor of the 'Athenaeum,'<a name="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48"><sup>[48]</sup></a> which speaks <i>huge</i>
+praises of my poems. If he were to say a tithe of them in
+print, it would be nine times above my expectation!</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+[June 1838.]<br />
+
+<p>My dear Friend,&mdash;I begged your servant to wait&mdash;how
+long ago I am afraid to think&mdash;but certainly I must not
+make this note very long. I did intend to write to you
+to-day in any case. Since Saturday I have had my thanks
+ready at the end of my fingers waiting to slide along to the
+nib of my pen. Thank you for all your kindness and
+criticism, which is kindness too&mdash;thank you at last.
+Would that I deserved the praises as well as I do most of
+the findings-fault&mdash;and there is no time now to say more of
+<i>them</i>. Yet I believe I have something to say, and will find
+a time to say it in.</p>
+
+
+<p>Dr. Chambers has just been here, and does not think
+me quite as well as usual. The truth is that I was rather
+excited and tired yesterday by rather too much talking and
+hearing talking, and suffer for it to-day in my <i>pulse</i>. But
+I am better on the whole.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cross,<a name="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49"><sup>[49]</sup></a> the great lion, the insect-making lion, came
+yesterday with Mr. Kenyon, and afterwards Lady Dacre.
+She is kind and gentle in her manner. She told me that
+she had 'placed my book in the hands of Mr. Bobus Smith,
+the brother of Sidney Smith, and the best judge in England,'
+and that it was to be returned to her on Tuesday. If I
+<i>should</i> hear the 'judgment,' I will tell you, whether you care
+to hear it or not. There is no other review, as far as I am
+aware.</p>
+
+<p>Give my love to Miss Bordman. When is she coming
+to see me?</p>
+
+<p>The thunder did not do me any harm.</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate friend, in great haste, although your
+servant is not likely to think so, E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+[June 1838.]<br />
+
+<p>My dear Friend,&mdash;You must let me <i>feel</i> my thanks to
+you, even when I do not <i>say</i> them. I have put up your
+various notes together, and perhaps they may do me as
+much good hereafter, as they have already, for the most
+part, given me pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>The 'burden pure <i>have</i> been' certainly was a misprint,
+as certainly 'nor man nor nature satisfy'<a name="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50"><sup>[50]</sup></a> is ungrammatical.
+But I am <i>not</i> so sure about the passage in Isobel:</p>
+
+<p>I am not used to tears at nights
+Instead of slumber&mdash;nor to prayer.</p>
+
+<p>Now I think that the passage may imply a repetition of the
+words with which it begins, after 'nor'&mdash;thus&mdash;'nor <i>am I used</i>
+to prayer,' &amp;c. Either you or I may be right about it, and
+either 'or' or 'nor' may be grammatical. At least, so I pray.<a name="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51"><sup>[51]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>You did not answer one question. Do you consider
+that '<i>apolyptic</i>' stands without excuse?<a name="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52"><sup>[52]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>I never read Greek to any person except yourself and
+Mr. MacSwiney, my brother's tutor. To him I read longer
+than a few weeks, but then it was rather guessing and
+stammering and tottering through parts of Homer and
+extracts from Xenophon than reading. <i>You</i> would not have
+called it reading if you had heard it.</p>
+
+<p>I studied hard by myself afterwards, and the kindness
+with which afterwards still you assisted me, if yourself
+remembers gladly <i>I</i> remember <i>gratefully</i> and gladly.</p>
+
+<p>I have just been told that your servant was desired by
+you <i>not to wait a minute</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The wind is unfavorable for the sea. I do not think
+there is the least probability of my going before the end of
+next week, if then. You shall hear.</p>
+
+<p>Affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>I am tolerably well. I have been forced to take
+digitalis again, which makes me feel weak; but still I am
+better, I think.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>In the course of this year the failure in Miss Barrett's
+health had become so great that her doctor advised removal
+to a warmer climate for the winter. Torquay was the place
+selected, and thither she went in the autumn, accompanied
+by her brother Edward, her favourite companion from childhood.
+Other members of the family, including Mr. Barrett,
+joined them from time to time. At Torquay she was able
+to live, but no more, and it was found necessary for her to
+stay during the summers as well as the winters of the next
+three years. Letters from this period are scarce, though it is
+clear from Miss Mitford's correspondence that a continuous
+interchange of letters was kept up between the two friends,
+and her acquaintanceship with Horne was now ripening
+into a close literary intimacy. A story relating to Bishop
+Phillpotts of Exeter, the hero of so many racy anecdotes,
+is contained in a letter of Miss Barrett's which must have
+been written about Christmas of either 1838 or 1839:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'He [the bishop] was, however, at church on Christmas
+Day, and upon Mr. Elliot's being mercifully inclined to
+omit the Athanasian Creed, prompted him most episcopally
+from the pew with a &quot;whereas;&quot; and further on in the
+Creed, when the benign reader substituted the word <i>condemnation</i>
+for the terrible one&mdash;&quot;Damnation!&quot; exclaimed the
+bishop. The effect must have been rather startling.'</p>
+
+<p>A slight acquaintance with the words of the Athanasian
+Creed will suggest that the story had suffered in accuracy
+before it reached Miss Barrett, who, of course, was unable
+to attend church, and whose own ignorance on the subject
+may be accounted for by remembering that she had been
+brought up as a Nonconformist. With a little correction,
+however, the story may be added to the many others on
+record with respect to 'Henry of Exeter.'</p>
+
+<p>The following letter is shown, by the similarity of its
+contents to the one which succeeds it, to belong to November
+1839, when Miss Barrett was entering on her second winter
+in Torquay.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Beacon Terrace, Torquay: November 24 [1839].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;Henrietta <i>shall not</i> write to-day,
+whatever she may wish to do. I felt, in reading your
+unreproaching letter to her, as self-reproachful as anybody
+could with a great deal of innocence (in the way of the
+world) to fall back upon. I felt sorry, very sorry, not to
+have written something to you something sooner, which was
+a possible thing&mdash;although, since the day of my receiving
+your welcome letter, I have written scarcely at all, nor that
+little without much exertion. Had it been with me as
+usual, be sure that you should not have had any silence to
+complain of. Henrietta knew I wished to write, and felt, I
+suppose, unwilling to take my place when my filling it
+myself before long appeared possible. A long story&mdash;and
+not as entertaining as Mother Hubbard. But I would rather
+tire you than leave you under any wrong impression, where
+my regard and thankfulness to you, dearest Mrs. Martin,
+are concerned.</p>
+
+<p>To reply to your kind anxiety about me, I may call
+myself decidedly better than I have been. Since October I
+I have not been out of bed&mdash;except just for an hour a day,
+when I am lifted to the sofa with the bare permission of my
+physician&mdash;who tells me that it is so much easier to make
+me worse than better, that he dares not permit anything like
+exposure or further exertion. I like him (Dr. Scully) very
+much, and although he evidently thinks my case in the
+highest degree precarious, yet knowing how much I bore
+last winter and understanding from him that the worst
+<i>tubercular</i> symptoms have not actually appeared, I am
+willing to think it may be God's will to keep me here still
+longer. I would willingly stay, if it were only for the sake
+of that tender affection of my beloved family which it so
+deeply affects me to consider. Dearest papa is with us
+now&mdash;to my great comfort and joy: and looking very
+well!&mdash;and astonishing everybody with his eternal youthfulness!
+Bro and Henrietta and Arabel besides, I can count as
+companions&mdash;and then there is dear Bummy! We are
+fixed at Torquay for the winter&mdash;that is, until the end of
+May: and after that, if I have any will or power and am
+alive to exercise either, I do trust and hope to go away.
+The death of my kind friend Dr. Bury was, as you suppose,
+a great grief and shock to me. How could it be otherwise,
+after his daily kindness to me for a year? And then his
+young wife and child&mdash;and the rapidity (a three weeks' illness)
+with which he was hurried away from the energies and toils
+and honors of professional life to the stillness of <i>that</i> death!</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>'<i>God's Will</i>' is the only answer to the mystery of the
+world's afflictions....</p></div>
+
+<p>Don't fancy me worse than I am&mdash;or that this bed-keeping
+is the result of a gradual sinking. It is not so. A
+feverish attack prostrated me on October 2&mdash;and such will
+leave their effects&mdash;and Dr. Scully is so afraid of leading me
+into danger by saying, 'You may get up and dress as usual'
+that you should not be surprised if (in virtue of being the
+senior Torquay physician and correspondingly prudent) he
+left me in this durance vile for a great part of the winter. I
+am decidedly better than I was a month ago, really and
+truly.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you, dearest Mrs. Martin! My best
+and kindest regards to Mr. Martin. Henrietta desires me to
+promise for her a letter to Colwall soon; but I think that
+one from Colwall should come first. May God bless you!
+Bro's fancy just now is painting in water colours and he
+performs many sketches. Do you ever in your dreams of
+universal benevolence dream of travelling into Devonshire?</p>
+
+Love your affectionate BA,<br />
+
+<p>&mdash;found guilty of egotism and stupidity 'by this sign' and
+at once!</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+1 Beacon Terrace, Torquay:<br />
+Wednesday, November 27, 1839.<br />
+
+<p>If you can forgive me, my ever dear friend, for a silence
+which has not been intended, there will be another reason
+for being thankful to you, in addition to the many. To do
+myself justice, one of my earliest impulses on seeing my
+beloved Arabel, and recurring to the kindness with which
+you desired that happiness for me long before I possessed
+it, was to write and tell you how happy I felt. But she had
+promised, she said, to write herself, and moreover she and
+only she was to send you the ballad&mdash;in expectation of your
+dread judgment upon which I delayed my own writing. It
+came in the first letter we received in our new house, on the
+first of last October. An hour after reading it, I was upon
+my bed; was attacked by fever in the night, and from that
+bed have never even been lifted since&mdash;to these last
+days of November&mdash;except for one hour a day to the
+sofa at two yards' distance. I am very much better now,
+and have been so for some time; but my physician is so
+persuaded, he says, that it is easier to do me harm than good,
+that he will neither permit any present attempt at further
+exertion, nor hint at the time when it may be advisable for
+him to permit it. Under the circumstances it has of course
+been more difficult than usual for me to write. Pray believe,
+my dear and kind friend, in the face of all circumstances and
+appearances, that I never forget you, nor am reluctant (oh,
+how could that be?) to write to you; and that you shall often
+have to pay 'a penny for my thoughts' under the new
+Postage Act&mdash;if it be in God's wisdom and mercy to
+spare me through the winter. Under the new act I shall
+not mind writing ten words and then stopping. As it is,
+they would scarcely be worth eleven pennies.</p>
+
+<p>Thank you again and again for your praise of the ballad,
+which both delighted and <i>surprised</i> me ... as I had
+scarcely hoped that you might like it at all. Think of Mr.
+Tilt's never sending me a proof sheet. The consequences
+are rather deplorable, and, if they had occurred to you,
+might have suggested a deep melancholy for life. In my
+case, <i>I</i>, who am, you know, hardened to sins of carelessness,
+simply look <i>aghast</i> at the misprints and mispunctuations
+coming in as a flood, and sweeping away meanings and
+melodies together. The annual itself is more splendid than
+usual, and its vignettes have illustrated my story&mdash;angels,
+devils and all&mdash;most beautifully. Miss Mitford's tales (in
+prose) have suffered besides by reason of Mr. Tilt&mdash;but are
+attractive and graphic notwithstanding&mdash;and Mr. Horne has
+supplied a dramatic poem of great power and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>How I rejoice with you in the glorious revelation (about
+to be) of Gregory's second volume! The 'De Virginitate'
+poem will, in its new purple and fine linen, be more
+dazzling than ever.</p>
+
+<p>Do you know that George is barrister-at-law of the Inner
+Temple&mdash;<i>is</i>? I have seen him gazetted.</p>
+
+<p>My dearest papa is with me now, making me very happy
+of course. I have much reason to be happy&mdash;more to be
+grateful&mdash;yet am more obedient to the former than to the
+latter impulse. May the Giver of good give gratitude with
+as full a hand! May He bless <i>you</i>&mdash;and bring us together
+again, if no more in the flesh, yet in the spirit!
+again, if no more in the flesh, yet in the spirit!</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate friend,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>Do write&mdash;when you are able and <i>least</i> disinclined.
+Do you approve of Prince Albert or not?<a name="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53"><sup>[53]</sup></a></p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Torquay: May 29, 1840.<br />
+
+<p>My ever dear Friend,&mdash;It was very pleasant to me to see
+your seal upon a letter once more; and although the letter
+itself left me with a mournful impression of your having
+passed some time so much less happily than I would wish
+and pray for you, yet there remains the pleasant thought to
+me still that you have not altogether forgotten me. Do
+receive the expression of my most affectionate sympathy
+under this and every circumstance&mdash;and I fear that the shock
+to your nerves and spirits could not be a light one, however
+impressed you might be and must be with the surety and
+verity of God's love working in all His will. Poor poor
+Patience! Coming to be so happy with you, with that
+joyous smile I thought so pretty! Do you not remember
+my telling you so? Well&mdash;it is well and better for her;
+happier for her, if God in Christ Jesus have received her,
+than her hopes were of the holiday time with you. The
+holiday is <i>for ever</i> now....</p>
+
+<p>I heard from Nelly Bordman only a few days before
+receiving your letter, and so far from preparing me for all
+this sadness and gloom, she pleased me with her account of
+you whom she had lately seen&mdash;dwelling upon your
+retrograde passage into youth, and the delight you were
+taking in the presence and society of some still more youthful,
+fair, and gay <i>monstrum amandum</i>, some prodigy of intellectual
+accomplishment, some little Circe who never turned
+anybodies into pigs. I learnt too from her for the first time
+that you were settled at Hampstead! Whereabout at
+Hampstead, and for how long? She didn't tell me <i>that</i>,
+thinking of course that I knew something more about you
+than I do. Yes indeed; you <i>do</i> treat me very shabbily.
+I agree with you in thinking so. To think that so many
+hills and woods should interpose between us&mdash;that I should
+be lying here, fast bound by a spell, a sleeping beauty in a
+forest, and that <i>you</i>, who used to be such a doughty knight,
+should not take the trouble of cutting through even a hazel
+tree with your good sword, to find out what had become of
+me. Now do tell me, the hazel tree being down at last,
+whether you mean to live at Hampstead, whether you have
+taken a house there and have carried your books there, and
+wear Hampstead grasshoppers in your bonnet (as they did
+at Athens) to prove yourself of the soil.</p>
+
+<p>All this nonsense will make you think I am better, and
+indeed I am pretty well just now&mdash;quite, however, confined
+to the bed&mdash;except when lifted from it to the sofa baby-wise
+while they make it; even then apt to faint. Bad symptoms
+too do not leave me; and I am obliged to be blistered every
+few days&mdash;but I am free from any attack just now, and am
+a good deal less feverish than I am occasionally. There
+has been a consultation between an Exeter physician and
+my own, and they agree exactly, both hoping that with care
+I shall pass the winter, and rally in the spring, both hoping
+that I may be able to go about again with some comfort and
+independence, although I never can be fit again for anything
+like exertion....</p>
+
+<p>Do you know, did you ever hear anything of Mr. Horne
+who wrote 'Cosmo de Medici,' and the 'Death of Marlowe,'
+and is now desecrating his powers (I beg your pardon) by
+writing the life of Napoleon? By the way, he is the author
+of a dramatic sketch in the last Finden.</p>
+
+<p>He is in my mind one of the very first poets of the day,
+and has written to me so kindly (offering, although I never
+saw him in my life, to cater for me in literature, and send
+me down anything likely to interest me in the periodicals),
+that I cannot but think his amiability and genius do honor
+to one another.</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>Do you remember Mr. Caldicott who used to preach in
+the infant schoolroom at Sidmouth? He died here the
+death of a saint, as he had lived a saintly life, about three
+weeks ago. It affected me a good deal. But he was always
+so associated in my thoughts more with heaven than earth,
+that scarcely a transition seems to have passed upon his
+locality. 'Present with the Lord' is true of him now; even
+as 'having his conversation in heaven' was formerly.
+There is little difference.</p>
+
+<p>May it be so with us all, with you and with me, my ever
+and very dear friend! In the meantime do not forget me.</p>
+
+<p>I never can forget <i>you</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate and grateful<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>Arabel desires her love to be offered to you.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+1 Beacon Terrace, Torquay: July 8, 1840.<br />
+
+<p>My ever dear Friend,&mdash;I must write to you, although it
+is so very long, or at least seems so, since you wrote to me.
+But you say to Arabel in speaking of me that I '<i>used</i> to
+care for what is poetical;' therefore, perhaps you say to
+yourself sometimes that I <i>used</i> to care for <i>you</i>! I am
+anxious to vindicate my identity to you, in that respect
+above all.</p>
+
+<p>It is a long, dreary time since I wrote to you. I admit
+the pause on my own part, while I charge you with another.
+But <i>your</i> silence has embraced more pleasantness and less
+suffering to you than mine has to me, and I thank God for
+a prosperity in which my unchangeable regard for you
+causes me to share directly....</p>
+
+<p>I have not rallied this summer as soon and well as I
+did last. I was very ill early in April at the time of our
+becoming conscious to our great affliction&mdash;so ill as to
+believe it utterly improbable, speaking humanly, that I
+ever should be any better. I am, however, a very great
+deal better, and gain strength by sensible degrees, however
+slowly, and do hope for the best&mdash;'the best' meaning one
+sight more of London. In the meantime I have not yet
+been able to leave my bed.</p>
+
+<p>To prove to you that I who 'used to care' for poetry do
+so still, and that I have not been absolutely idle lately, an
+'Athenaeum' shall be sent to you containing a poem on
+the subject of the removal of Napoleon's ashes.<a name="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54"><sup>[54]</sup></a> It is a
+fitter subject for you than for me. Napoleon is no idol of
+<i>mine. I</i> never made a 'setting sun' of him. But my
+physician suggested the subject as a noble one and then
+there was something suggestive in the consideration that
+the 'Bellerophon' lay on those very bay-waters opposite to
+my bed.</p>
+
+<p>Another poem (which you won't like, I dare say) is
+called 'The Lay of the Rose,'<a name="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55"><sup>[55]</sup></a> and appeared lately in a
+magazine. Arabel is going to write it out for you, she
+desires me to tell you with her best love. Indeed, I have
+written lately (as far as manuscript goes) a good deal, only
+on all sorts of subjects and in as many shapes.</p>
+
+<p>Lazarus would make a fine poem, wouldn't he? I lie
+here, weaving a great many schemes. I am seldom at a
+loss for thread.</p>
+
+<p>Do write sometimes to me, and tell me if you do anything
+besides hearing the clocks strike and bells ring. My
+beloved papa is with me still. There are so many mercies
+close around me (and his presence is far from the least),
+that God's <i>Being</i> seems proved to me, <i>demonstrated</i> to me,
+by His manifested love. May His blessing in the full
+lovingness rest upon you always! Never fancy I can forget
+or think of you coldly.</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate and grateful<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>The above letter was written only three days before the
+tragedy which utterly wrecked Elizabeth Barrett's life for a
+time, and cast a deep shadow over it which never wholly
+passed away&mdash;the death of her brother Edward through
+drowning. On July 11, he and two friends had gone for a
+sail in a small boat. They did not return when they were
+expected, and presently a rumour came that a boat, answering
+in appearance to theirs, had been seen to founder in
+Babbicombe Bay; but it was not until three days later that
+final confirmation of the disaster was obtained by the
+discovery of the bodies. What this blow meant to the
+bereaved sister cannot be told: the horror with which she
+refers to it, even at a distance of many years, shows how
+deeply it struck. It was the loss of the brother whom she
+loved best of all; and she had the misery of thinking that
+it was to attend on her that he had come to the place
+where he met his death. Little wonder if Torquay was
+thenceforward a memory from which she shrank, and if
+even the sound of the sea became a horror to her.</p>
+
+<p>One natural consequence of this terrible sorrow is
+a long break in her correspondence. It is not until
+the beginning of 1841 that she seems to have resumed
+the thread of her life and to have returned to
+her literary occupations. Her health had inevitably
+suffered under the shock, and in the autumn of 1840
+Miss Mitford speaks of not daring to expect more than
+a few months of lingering life. But when things were
+at the worst, she began unexpectedly to take a turn
+for the better. Through the winter she slowly gathered
+strength, and with strength the desire to escape from
+Torquay, with its dreadful associations, and to return
+to London. Meanwhile her correspondence with her
+friends revived, and with Horne in particular she was
+engaged during 1841 in an active interchange of views with
+regard to two literary projects. Indeed, it was only the
+return to work that enabled her to struggle against the
+numbing effect of the calamity which had overwhelmed her.
+Some time afterwards (in October 1843) she wrote to
+Mrs. Martin: 'For my own part and experience&mdash;I do not
+say it as a phrase or in exaggeration, but from very clear and
+positive conviction&mdash;I do believe that I should be <i>mad</i> at
+this moment, if I had not forced back&mdash;dammed out&mdash;the
+current of rushing recollections by work, work, work.'
+One of the projects in which she was concerned was
+'Chaucer Modernised,' a scheme for reviving interest in the
+father of English poetry, suggested in the first instance by
+Wordsworth, but committed to the care of Horne, as editor,
+for execution. According to the scheme as originally
+planned, all the principal poets of the day were to be
+invited to share the task of transmuting Chaucer into
+modern language. Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, Horne, and
+others actually executed some portions of the work;
+Tennyson and Browning, it was hoped, would lend a hand
+with some of the later parts. Horne invited Miss Barrett
+to contribute, and, besides executing modernisations of
+'Queen Annelida and False Arcite' and 'The Complaint of
+Annelida,'<a name="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56"><sup>[56]</sup></a> she also advised generally on the work of the
+other writers during its progress through the press. The
+other literary project was for a lyrical drama, to be written
+in collaboration with Horne. It was to be called 'Psych&eacute;
+Apocalypt&eacute;,' and was to be a drama on the Greek model,
+treating of the birth and self-realisation of the soul of man.</p>
+
+<p>The sketch of its contents, given in the correspondence
+with Horne, will make the modern reader accept with
+equanimity the fact that it never progressed beyond the
+initial stage of drafting the plot. It is allegorical,
+philosophical, fantastic, unreal&mdash;everything which was
+calculated to bring out the worst characteristics of Miss
+Barrett's style and to intensify her faults. Fortunately her
+removal from Torquay to London interrupted the execution
+of the scheme. It was never seriously taken up again, and,
+though never explicitly abandoned, died a natural death
+from inanition, somewhat to the relief of Miss Barrett, who
+had come to recognise its impracticability.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the correspondence with Horne, which has
+been published elsewhere, very few letters are left from this
+period; but those which here follow serve to bridge over the
+interval until the departure from Torquay, which closes one
+well-marked period in the life of the poetess.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+December 11, 1840.<br />
+
+<p>My ever dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;I should have written to
+you without this last proof of your remembrance&mdash;this
+cape, which, warm and pretty as it is, I value so much more
+as the work of your hands and gift of your affection towards
+me. Thank you, dearest Mrs. Martin, and thank you too
+for <i>all the rest</i>&mdash;for all your sympathy and love. And do
+believe that although grief had so changed me from myself
+and warped me from my old instincts, as to prevent my looking
+forwards with pleasure to seeing you again, yet that full
+amends are made in the looking back with a pleasure more
+true because more tender than any old retrospections. Do
+give my love to dear Mr. Martin, and say what I could not
+have said even if I had seen him.</p>
+
+<p>Shall you really, dearest Mrs. Martin, come again?
+Don't think we do not think of the hope you left us.
+Because we do indeed.</p>
+
+<p>A note from papa has brought the comforting news that
+my dear, dear Stormie is in England again, in London, and
+looking perfectly well. It is a mercy which makes me very
+thankful, and would make me joyful if anything could.
+But the meanings of some words change as we live on.
+Papa's note is hurried. It was a sixty-day passage, and that
+is all he tells me. Yes&mdash;there is something besides about
+Sette and Occy being either unknown or misknown, through
+the fault of their growing. Papa is not near returning, I
+think. He has so much to do and see, and so much cause
+to be enlivened and renewed as to spirits, that I begged him
+not to think about me and stay away as long as he pleased.
+And the accounts of him and of all at home are satisfying,
+I thank God....</p>
+
+<p>There is an east wind just now, which I feel. Nevertheless,
+Dr. Scully has said, a few minutes since, that I am
+as well as he could hope, considering the season.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you ever!</p>
+
+<p>Your gratefully attached<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+March 29, 1841.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;Have you thought 'The
+dream has come true'? I mean the dream of the flowers
+which you pulled for me and I wouldn't look at, even? I
+fear you must have thought that the dream about my ingratitude
+has come true.</p>
+
+<p>And yet it has not. Dearest Mrs. Martin, it has <i>not</i>.
+I have not forgotten you or remembered you less affectionately
+through all the silence, or longed less for the
+letters I did not ask for. But the truth is, my faculties
+seem to hang heavily now, like flappers when the spring is
+broken. <i>My</i> spring <i>is</i> broken, and a separate exertion
+is necessary for the lifting up of each&mdash;and then it falls
+down again. I never felt so before: there is no wonder
+that I should feel so now. Nevertheless, I don't give up
+much to the pernicious languor&mdash;the tendency to lie
+down to sleep among the snows of a weary journey&mdash;I
+don't give up much to it. Only I find it sometimes at the
+root of certain negligences&mdash;for instance, of this toward
+
+<i>you</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Dearest Mrs. Martin, receive my sympathy, <i>our</i> sympathy,
+in the anxiety you have lately felt so painfully, and in the
+rejoicing for its happy issue. Do say when you write (I
+take for granted, you see, that you will write) how Mrs.
+B&mdash;&mdash; is now&mdash;besides the intelligence more nearly touching me,
+of your own and Mr. Martin's health and spirits. May God
+bless you both!</p>
+
+<p>Ah! but you did not come: I was disappointed!</p>
+
+<p>And Mrs. Hanford! Do you know, I tremble in my
+reveries sometimes, lest you should think it, guess it to
+be half unkind in me not to have made an exertion to see
+Mrs. Hanford. It was not from want of interest in her&mdash;least
+of all from want of love to <i>you</i>. But I have not
+stirred from my bed yet. But, to be honest, that was
+not the reason&mdash;I did not feel as if I <i>could</i>, without a
+painful effort, which, on the other hand, could not, I was
+conscious, result in the slightest shade of satisfaction to her,
+receive and talk to her. Perhaps it is hard for you to <i>fancy</i>
+even how I shrink away from the very thought of seeing a
+human face&mdash;except those immediately belonging to me
+in love or relationship&mdash;(yours <i>does</i>, you know)&mdash;and a
+stranger's might be easier to look at than one long
+known....</p>
+
+<p>For my own part, my dearest Mrs. Martin, my heart has
+been lightened lately by kind, <i>honest</i> Dr. Scully (who would
+never give an opinion just to please me), saying that I am
+'quite right' to mean to go to London, and shall probably
+be fit for the journey early in June. He says that I may
+pass the winter there moreover, and with impunity&mdash;that
+wherever I am it will probably be necessary for me to remain
+shut up during the cold weather, and that under such
+circumstances it is quite possible to warm a London room to
+as safe a condition as a room <i>here</i>. So my heart is lightened
+of the fear of opposition: and the only means of regaining
+whatever portion of earthly happiness is not irremediably
+lost to me by the Divine decree, I am free to use. In the
+meantime, it really does seem to me that I make some progress
+in health&mdash;if the word in my lips be not a mockery.
+Oh, I fancy I shall be strengthened to get home!</p>
+
+<p>Your remarks on Chaucer pleased me very much. I am
+glad you liked what I did&mdash;or tried to do&mdash;and as to the
+criticisms, you were right&mdash;and they sha'n't be unattended
+to if the opportunity of correction be given to me.</p>
+
+<p>Ever your affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+August 28, 1841.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;I have fluctuated from one
+shadow of uncertainty and anxiety to another, all the summer,
+on the subject to which my last earthly wishes cling, and I
+delayed writing to you to be able to say I am going to
+London. I may say so now&mdash;as far as the human may say
+'yes' or 'no' of their futurity. The carriage, a patent
+carriage with a bed in it, and set upon some hundreds of
+springs, is, I believe, on its road down to me, and immediately
+upon its arrival we begin our journey. Whether we
+shall ever complete it remains uncertain&mdash;<i>more</i> so than
+other uncertainties. My physician appears a good deal
+alarmed, calls it an undertaking full of hazard, and myself
+the 'Empress Catherine' for insisting upon attempting it.
+But I must. I go, as 'the doves to their windows,' to the
+only earthly daylight I see here. I go to rescue myself from
+the associations of this dreadful place. I go to restore to
+my poor papa the companionships family. Enough
+has been done and suffered for <i>me</i>. I thank God I am
+going home at last.</p>
+
+<p>How kind it was in you, my very kind and ever very dear
+friend, to ask me to visit you at Hampstead! I felt myself
+smiling while I read that part of your letter, and laid it down
+and suffered the vision to arise of your little room and your
+great Gregory and your dear self scolding me softly as in the
+happy olden times for not reading slow enough. Well&mdash;we
+do not know what <i>may</i> happen! I <i>may</i> (even that is
+probable) read to you again. But now&mdash;ah, my dear friend&mdash;if
+you could imagine me such as I am!&mdash;you would not
+think I could visit you! Yet I am wonderfully better this
+summer; and if I can but reach home and bear the first
+painful excitement, it will do me more good than anything&mdash;I
+know it will! And if it does not, it will be <i>well</i> even
+so.</p>
+
+<p>I shall tell them to send you the 'Athenaeum' of last
+week, where I have a 'House of Clouds,'<a name="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57"><sup>[57]</sup></a> which papa
+likes so much that he would wish to live in it if it were not
+for the damp. There is not a clock in one room&mdash;that's
+another objection. How are your clocks? Do they go?
+and do you like their voices as well as you used to do?</p>
+
+<p>I think Annie is not with you; but in case of her still
+being so, do give her (and yourself too) Arabel's love and
+mine. I wish I heard of you oftener. Is there nobody to
+write? May God bless you!</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate friend,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+August 31, 1831 [<i>sic</i>].<br />
+
+<p>Thank you, my ever dear friend, with almost my last
+breath at Torquay, for your kindness about the Gregory,
+besides the kind note itself. It is, however, too late. We
+go, or mean at present to go, to-morrow; and the carriage
+which is to waft us through the air upon a thousand springs
+has actually arrived. You are not to think severely upon
+Dr. Scully's candour with me as to the danger of the
+journey. He <i>does</i> think it 'likely to do me harm;' therefore,
+you know, he was justified by his medical responsibility in
+laying before me all possible consequences. I have considered
+them all, and dare them gladly and gratefully.
+Papa's domestic comfort is broken up by the separation in
+his family, and the associations of this place lie upon me,
+struggle as I may, like the oppression of a perpetual night-mare.
+It is an instinct of self-preservation which impels me
+to escape&mdash;or to try to escape. And In God's mercy&mdash;though
+God forbid that I should deny either His mercy or
+His justice, if He should deny me&mdash;we may be together in
+Wimpole Street in a few days. Nelly Bordman has kindly
+written to me Mr. Jago's favourable opinion of the patent
+carriages, and his conviction of my accomplishing the
+journey without inconvenience.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you, my dear dear friend! Give my love
+to dearest Annie! Perhaps, if I am ever really in Wimpole
+Street, <i>safe enough for Greek</i>, you will trust the poems to
+me which you mention. I care as much for poetry as ever,
+and could not more.</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate and grateful<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="CHAPTER_III"></a><h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<h3>1841-1843</h3>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<p>In September 1841 the journey from Torquay was actually
+achieved, and Miss Barrett returned to her father's house
+in London, from which she was never to be absent for
+more than a few hours at a time until the day, five years
+later, when she finally left it to join her husband, Robert
+Browning. Her life was that of an invalid, confined to
+her room for the greater part of each year, and unable to
+see any but a few intimate friends. Still, she regained some
+sort of strength, especially during the warmth of the summer
+months, and was able to throw herself with real interest into
+literary work. In a life such as this there are few outward
+events to record, and its story is best told in Miss Barrett's
+own letters, which, for the most part, need little comment.
+The letters of the end of 1841 and beginning of 1842 are
+almost entirely written to Mr. Boyd, and the main subject
+of them is the series of papers on the Greek Christian poets
+and the English poets which, at the suggestion of Mr. Dilke,
+then editor of the 'Athenaeum,' she contributed to that
+periodical. Of the composition of original poetry we hear
+less at this time.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: October 2, 1841.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;I thank you for the letter and
+books which crossed the threshold of this house before me,
+and looked like your welcome to me home. I have read the
+passages you wished me to read&mdash;I have read them <i>again</i>:
+for I remember reading them under your star (or the
+greater part of them) a long while ago. You, on the other
+hand, may remember of <i>me</i>, that I never could concede to
+you much admiration for your Gregory as a poet&mdash;not even
+to his grand work 'De Virginitate.' He is one of those
+writers, of whom there are instances in our own times, who
+are only poetical in prose.</p>
+
+<p>The passage imitative of Chryses I cannot think much
+of. Try to be forgiving. It is toasted dry between the two
+fires of the Scriptures and Homer, and is as stiff as any dry
+toast out of the simile. To be sincere, I like dry toast better.</p>
+
+<p>The Hymns and Prayers I very much prefer; and
+although I remembered a good deal about them, it has
+given me a pleasure you will approve of to go through them
+in this edition. The one which I like best, which I like far
+best, which I think worth all the rest ('De Virginitate' and
+all put together), is the <i>second</i> upon page 292, beginning
+'Soi charis.' It is very fine, I think, written out of the
+heart and for the heart, warm with a natural heat, and not
+toasted dry and brown and stiff at a fire by any means.</p>
+
+<p>Dear Mr. Boyd, I coveted Arabel's walk to you the
+other day. I shall often covet my neighbour's walks, I
+believe, although (and may God be praised for it!) I am
+more happy&mdash;that is, nearing to the feeling of happiness
+now&mdash;than a month since I could believe possible to a heart
+so bruised and crushed as mine has [been] be at
+home is a blessing and a relief beyond what these words
+can say.</p>
+
+<p>But, dear Mr. Boyd, you said something in a note
+to Arabel some little time ago, which I will ask of your
+kindness to avoid saying again. I have been through the
+whole summer very much better; and even if it were not so
+I should dread being annoyed by more medical speculations.
+Pray do not suggest any. I am not in a state to admit of
+experiments, and my case is a very clear and simple one. I
+have not <i>one symptom</i> like those of my old illness; and after
+more than fifteen years' absolute suspension of them, their
+recurrence is scarcely probable. My case is very clear: not
+tubercular consumption, not what is called a 'decline,' but
+an affection of the lungs which leans towards it. You know
+a blood-vessel broke three years ago, and I never quite got
+over it. Mr. Jago, not having seen me, could scarcely be
+justified in a conjecture of the sort, when the opinions of
+four able physicians, two of them particularly experienced in
+diseases of the chest, and the other two the most eminent
+of the faculty in the east and west of England, were decided
+and contrary, while coincident with each other. Besides, you
+see, I am becoming better&mdash;and I could not desire more than
+that. Dear Mr. Boyd, do not write a word about it any
+more, either to me or others. I am sure you would not
+willingly disturb me. Nelly Bordman is good and dear,
+but I can't let her prescribe for me anything except her own
+affection.</p>
+
+<p>I hope Arabel expressed for me my thankful sense of
+Mrs. Smith's kind intention. But, indeed, although I
+would see <i>you</i>, dear Mr. Boyd, gladly, or an angel or a
+fairy or any very particular friend, I am not fit either in body
+or spirit for general society. I <i>can't</i> see people, and if I
+could it would be very bad for me. Is Mrs. Smith writing?
+Are you writing? Part of me is worn out; but the poetical
+part&mdash;that is, the <i>love</i> of poetry&mdash;is growing in me as freshly
+and strongly as if it were watered every day. Did anybody
+ever love it and stop in the middle? I wonder if anybody
+ever did?...</p>
+
+<p>Believe me your affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: December 29, 1841.<br />
+
+<p>My dear Friend,&mdash;I should not have been half as idle
+about transcribing these translations<a name="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58"><sup>[58]</sup></a> if I had fancied you
+could care so much to have them as Arabel tells me you
+do. They are recommended to your mercy, O Greek
+Daniel! The <i>last</i> sounds in my ears most like English
+poetry; but I assure you I took the least pains with it.
+The second is obscure as its original, if it do not (as it does
+not) equal it otherwise. The first is yet more unequal to
+the Greek. I praised that Greek poem above all of
+Gregory's, for the reason that it has <i>unity and completeness</i>,
+for which, to speak generally, you may search the streets
+and squares and alleys of Nazianzum in vain. Tell me
+what you think of my part.</p>
+
+<p>Ever affectionately yours,<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>Have you a Plotinus, and would you trust him to me in
+that case? Oh no, you do not tempt me with your musical
+clocks. My time goes to the best music when I read or
+write; and whatever money I can spend upon my own
+pleasures flows away in books.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><a name="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59"><sup>[59]</sup></a><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: January 2, 1842.<br />
+
+<p>Miss Barrett, inferring Mr. Westwood from the handwriting,
+begs his acceptance of the unworthy little book<a name="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60"><sup>[60]</sup></a> he
+does her the honour of desiring to see.</p>
+
+<p>It is more unworthy than he could have expected when
+he expressed that desire, having been written in very early
+youth, when the mind was scarcely free in any measure
+from trammels and Popes, and, what is worse, when
+flippancy of language was too apt to accompany immaturity
+of opinion. The miscellaneous verses are, still more than
+the chief poem, 'childish things' in a strict literal sense,
+and the whole volume is of little interest even to its writer
+except for personal reasons&mdash;except for the traces of dear
+affections, since rudely wounded, and of that <i>love</i> of poetry
+which began with her sooner than so soon, and must last
+as long as life does, without being subject to the changes of
+life. Little more, therefore, can remain for such a volume
+than to be humble and shrink from circulation. Yet
+Mr. Westwood's kind words win it to his hands. Will he
+receive at the same moment the expression of touched and
+gratified feelings with which Miss Barrett read what he
+wrote on the subject of her later volumes, still very
+imperfect, although more mature and true to the <i>truth</i>
+within? Indeed she is thankful for what he said so kindly
+in his note to her.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: January 6, 1842.<br />
+
+<p>My dear Friend,&mdash;I have done your bidding and sent
+the translations to the 'Athenaeum,' attaching to them an
+infamous prefatory note which says all sorts of harm of
+Gregory's poetry. You will be very angry with it and me.</p>
+
+<p>And you <i>may</i> be angry for another reason&mdash;that in the
+midst of my true thankfulness for the emendations you
+sent me, I ventured to reject one or two of them. You
+are right, probably, and I wrong; but still, I thought within
+myself with a womanly obstinacy not altogether peculiar
+to me,&mdash;'If he and I were to talk together about them,
+he would kindly give up the point to me&mdash;so that, now
+we cannot talk together, <i>I might as well take it</i>.' Well,
+you will see what I have done. Try not to be angry with
+me. You shall have the 'Athenaeum' as soon as possible.</p>
+
+<p>My dear Mr. Boyd, you know how I disbelieved the
+probability of these papers being accepted. You will comprehend
+my surprise on receiving last night a very courteous:
+note from the editor, which I would send to you if it were
+legible to anybody except people used to learn reading
+from the pyramids. He wishes me to contribute to the
+'Athenaeum' some prose papers in the form of reviews&mdash;'the
+review being a mere form, and the book a mere text.' He is
+not very clear&mdash;but I fancy that a few translations of
+<i>excerpta</i>, with a prose analysis and synthesis of the
+original author's genius, might suit his purpose. Now suppose
+I took up some of the early Christian Greek poets, and wrote
+a few continuous papers <i>so</i>?<a name="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61"><sup>[61]</sup></a> Give me your advice, my dear
+friend! I think of Synesius, for one. Suppose you send me a list
+of the names which occur to you! <i>Will</i> you advise me? Will
+you write directly? Will you make allowance for my
+teazing you? Will you lend me your little Synesius, and
+Clarke's book? I mean the one commenced by Dr.
+Clarke and continued by his son. Above all things, however,
+I want the advice.</p>
+
+<p>Ever affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Wednesday, January 13, 1842 (postmark).<br />
+
+<p>My dear Friend,&mdash;Thank you, thank you, for your kind
+suggestion and advice altogether. I had just (when your
+note arrived) finished two hymns of Synesius, one being
+the seventh and the other the ninth. Oh! I do remember
+that you performed upon the latter, and my modesty should
+have certainly bid me 'avaunt' from it. Nevertheless, it is so
+fine, so prominent in the first class of Synesius's beauties,
+that I took courage and dismissed my scruples, and have
+produced a version which I have not compared to yours at
+all hitherto, but which probably is much rougher and <i>rather</i>
+closer, winning in faith what it loses in elegance. 'Elegance'
+isn't a word for me, you know, generally speaking. The
+barbarians herd with me, 'by two and three.'</p>
+
+<p>I had a letter to-day from Mr. Dilke, who agrees to everything,
+closes with the idea about 'Christian Greek poets'
+(only begging me to keep away from theology), and
+suggesting a subsequent reviewal of English poetical
+literature, from Chaucer down to our times.<a name="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62"><sup>[62]</sup></a> Well, but the
+Greek poets. With all your kindness, I have scarcely
+sufficient materials for a full and minute survey of them. I
+have won a sight of the 'Poetae Christiani,' but the price is
+ruinous&mdash;<i>fourteen guineas</i>, and then the work consists
+almost entirely of Latin poets, deducting Gregory and
+Nonnus, and John Damascenus, and a cento from Homer
+by somebody or other. Turning the leaves rapidly, I do
+not see much else; and you know I may get a separate
+copy of John Dam., and have access to the rest. Try
+to turn in your head what I should do. Greg. Nyssen
+did not write poems, did he? Have I a chance of
+seeing your copy of Mr. Clarke's book? It would be
+useful in the matters of chronology.</p>
+
+<p>I humbly beg your pardon, and Gregory's, for the
+insolence of my note. It was as brief as it could be, and
+did not admit of any extended reference and admiration
+to his qualities as an orator. But whoever read it to you
+should have explained that when I wrote 'He was an
+orator,' the word <i>orator</i> was marked emphatically, so as to
+appear printed in capital letters of emphasis. Do not say
+'you <i>chose</i>,' 'you <i>chose</i>.' I didn't and don't choose to be
+obstinate, indeed; but I can't see the sense of that 'heavenly
+soul.'</p>
+
+<p>Ever your grateful and affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>I shall have room for praising Gregory in these
+papers.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+February 4, 1842.<br />
+
+<p>My dear Friend,&mdash;You must be thinking, if you are not
+a St. Boyd for good temper, that among the Gregorys and
+Synesiuses I have forgotten everything about you. No;
+indeed it has not been so. I have never <i>stopped</i> being
+grateful to you for your kind notes, and the two last pieces
+of Gregory, although I did not say an overt 'Thank you;'
+but I have been very very busy besides, and thus I answered
+to myself for your being kind enough to pardon a silence
+which was compelled rather than voluntary.</p>
+
+<p>Do you ever observe that as vexations don't come alone,
+occupations don't, and that, if you happen to be engaged
+upon one particular thing, it is the signal for your being
+waylaid by bundles of letters desiring immediate answers,
+and proof sheets or manuscript works whose writers request
+your opinion while their 'printer waits'? The old saints
+are not responsible for all the filling up of my time. I have
+been <i>busy upon busy</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The first part of my story about the Greek poets went
+to the 'Athenaeum' some days ago, but, although graciously
+received by the editor, it won't appear this week, or I should
+have had a proof sheet (which was promised to me) before
+now. I must contrive to include all I have to say on the
+subject in <i>three parts</i>. They will admit, they tell me, a
+fourth <i>if I please</i>, but evidently they would prefer as much
+brevity as I could vouchsafe. Only two poets are in the
+first notice, and <i>twenty</i> remain&mdash;and neither of the two is
+Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>Will you let me see that volume of Gregory which contains
+the 'Christus Patiens'? Send it by any boy on the
+heath, and I will remunerate him for the walk and the
+burden, and thank you besides. Oh, don't be afraid! I
+am not going to charge it upon Gregory, but on the younger
+Apollinaris, whose claim is stronger, and I rather wish to
+refresh my recollection of the height and breadth of that
+tragic misdemeanour.</p>
+
+<p>It is quite true that I never have suffered much pain,
+and equally so that I continue most decidedly better,
+notwithstanding the winter. I feel, too&mdash;I do hope not
+ungratefully&mdash;the blessing granted to me in the possibility
+of literary occupation,&mdash;which is at once occupation and
+distraction. Carlyle (not the infidel, but the philosopher)
+calls literature a 'fireproof pleasure.' How truly! How
+deeply I have felt that truth!</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you, dear Mr. Boyd. I don't despair of
+looking in your face one day yet before my last.</p>
+
+<p>Ever your affectionate and obliged<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>Arabel's love.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+March 2, 1842.<br />
+
+<p>My ever very dear Friend,&mdash;Do receive the assurance
+that whether I leave out the right word or put in the wrong
+one, you never can be other to me than just <i>that</i> while I
+live, and why not after I have ceased to live? And now&mdash;what
+have I done in the meantime, to be called 'Miss
+Barrett'? 'I pause for a reply.'</p>
+
+<p>Of course it gives me very great pleasure to hear you
+speak so kindly of my first paper. Some <i>bona avis</i> as
+good as a nightingale must have shaken its wings over me
+as I began it; and if it will but sit on the same spray
+while I go on towards the end, I shall rejoice exactly four-fold.
+The third paper went to Mr. Dilke to-day, and I was
+so fidgety about getting it away (and it seemed to cling to
+my writing case with both its hands), that I would not do
+any writing, even as little as this note, until it was quite
+gone out of sight. You know it is possible that he, the
+editor, may not please to have the <i>fourth</i> paper; but even
+in that case, it is better for the 'Remarks' to remain fragmentary,
+than be compressed till they are as dry as a <i>hortus
+siccus</i> of poets.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly you do and must praise my number one too
+much. Number one (that's myself) thinks so. I do really;
+and the supererogatory virtue of kindness may be acknowledged
+out of the pale of the Romish Church.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to Gregory and Synesius, you will see presently
+that I have not wronged them altogether.</p>
+
+<p>As you have ordered the 'Athenaeums,' I will not send
+one to-morrow so as to repeat my ill fortune of being too
+late. But tell me if you would like to have any from me,
+and how many.</p>
+
+<p>It was very kind in you to pat Flush's<a name="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63"><sup>[63]</sup></a> head in defiance
+of danger and from pure regard for me. I kissed his head
+where you had patted it; which association of approximations
+I consider as an imitation of shaking hands with you
+and as the next best thing to it. You understand&mdash;don't
+you?&mdash;that Flush is my constant companion, my friend, my
+amusement, lying with his head on one page of my folios
+while I read the other. (Not <i>your</i> folios&mdash;I respect <i>your</i>
+books, be sure.) Oh, I dare say, if the truth were known,
+Flush understands Greek excellently well.</p>
+
+<p>I hope you are right in thinking that we shall meet
+again. Once I wished <i>not</i> to live, but the faculty of life
+seems to have sprung up in me again, from under the
+crushing foot of heavy grief.</p>
+
+<p>Be it all as God wills.</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, your ever affectionate</p>
+
+<p>E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Saturday night, March 5, 1842.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;I am quite angry with myself for
+forgetting your questions when I answered your letter.</p>
+
+<p>Could you really imagine that I have not looked into the
+Greek tragedians for years, with my true love for Greek
+poetry? That is asking a question, you will say, and not
+answering it. Well, then, I answer by a 'Yes' the one you
+put to me. I had two volumes of Euripides with me in
+Devonshire, and have read him as well as Aeschylus and
+Sophocles&mdash;that is <i>from</i> them&mdash;both before and since I
+went there. You know I have gone through every line of
+the three tragedians long ago, in the way of regular, consecutive
+reading.</p>
+
+<p>You know also that I had at different times read different
+dialogues of Plato; but when three years ago, and a few
+months previous to my leaving home, I became possessed
+of a complete edition of his works, edited by Bekker, why
+then I began with the first volume and went through the
+whole of his writings, both those I knew and those I did not
+know, one after another: and have at this time read, not
+only all that is properly attributed to Plato, but even those
+dialogues and epistles which pass falsely under his name&mdash;everything
+except two books I think, or three, of the treatise
+'De Legibus,' which I shall finish in a week or two, as soon
+as I can take breath from Mr. Dilke.</p>
+
+<p>Now the questions are answered.</p>
+
+<p>Ever your affectionate and grateful friend,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Thursday, March 10, 1842 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;I did not know until to-day
+whether the paper would appear on Saturday or not; but as
+I have now received the proof sheets, there can be no doubt
+of it. I have been and <i>am</i> hurried and hunted almost into
+a corner through the pressing for the fourth paper, and the
+difficulty about books. You will forgive a very short note
+to night.</p>
+
+<p>I have read of Aristotle only his Poetics, his Ethics, and
+his work upon Rhetoric, but I mean to take him regularly
+into both hands when I finish Plato's last page. Aristophanes
+I took with me into Devonshire; and after all, I do not
+know much more of <i>him</i> than three or four of his plays may
+stand for. Next week, my very dear friend, I shall be at
+your commands, and sit in spirit at your footstool, to hear
+and answer anything you may care to ask me&mdash;but oh! what
+have I done that you should talk to <i>me</i> about 'venturing,'
+or 'liberty,' or anything of that kind?</p>
+
+<p>From your affectionate and grateful catechumen,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i>.<br />
+March 29, 1842.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;I received your long letter and
+receive your short one, and thank you for the pleasure of
+both. Of course I am very <i>very</i> glad of your approval in
+the matter of the papers, and your kindness could not have
+wished to give me more satisfaction than it gave actually.
+Mr. Kenyon tells me that Mr. Burgess<a name="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64"><sup>[64]</sup></a> has been reading and
+commending the papers, and has brought me from him a
+newly discovered scene of the 'Bacchae' of Euripides, edited
+by Mr. Burgess himself for the 'Gentlemen's Magazine,' and
+of which he considers that the 'Planctus Mariae,' at least the
+passage I extracted from it, is an imitation. Should you
+care to see it? Say 'Yes,'&mdash;and I will send it to you.</p>
+
+<p>Do you think it was wrong to make <i>eternity</i> feminine?
+I knew that the Greek word was not feminine; but imagined
+that the English personification should be so. Am I wrong
+in this? Will you consider the subject again?</p>
+
+<p>Ah, yes! That was a mistake of mine about putting
+Constantine for Constantius. I wrote from memory, and
+the memory betrayed me. But say nothing about it.
+Nobody will find it out. I send you Silentiarius and some
+poems of Pisida in the same volume. Even if you had not
+asked for them, I should have asked you to look at some
+passages which are fine in both. It appears to me that
+Silentiarius writes difficult Greek, overlaying his description
+with a multitude of architectural and other far fetched words!
+Pisida is hard, too, occasionally, from other causes, particularly
+in the 'Hexa&euml;meron,' which is not in the book I send
+you but in another very gigantic one (as tall as the Irish
+giants), which you may see if you please. I will send a
+coach and six with it if you please.</p>
+
+<p>John Mauropus, of the Three Towns, I owe the knowledge
+of to <i>you. You</i> lent me the book with his poems, you know.
+He is a great favorite of mine in all ways. I very much
+admire his poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, ever your affectionate and grateful<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>Pray tell me what you think. I am sorry to observe
+that the book I send you is marked very irregularly; that
+is, marked in some places, unmarked in others, just as I
+happened to be near or far from my pencil and inkstand.
+Otherwise I should have liked to compare judgments with you.</p>
+
+<p>Keep the book as long as you please; it is my own.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: April 2, 1842.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;... As to your kind desire to
+hear whatever in the way of favorable remark I have
+gathered together for fruit of my papers, I put on a veil and
+tell you that Mr. Kenyon thought it well done, although
+'labour thrown away, from the unpopularity of the subject;'
+that Miss Mitford was very much pleased, with the warmheartedness
+common to her; that Mrs. Jamieson [<i>sic</i>] read
+them 'with great pleasure' unconsciously of the author;
+and that Mr. Home the poet and Mr. Browning the poet
+were not behind in approbation. Mr. Browning is said to
+be learned in Greek, especially in the dramatists; and of
+Mr. Home I should suspect something similar. Miss
+Mitford and Mrs. Jamieson, although very gifted and highly
+cultivated women, are not Grecians, and therefore judge the
+papers simply as English compositions.</p>
+
+<p>The single unfavorable opinion <i>is</i> Mr. Hunter's, who
+thinks that the criticisms are not given with either sufficient
+seriousness or diffidence, and that there is a painful sense of
+effort through the whole. Many more persons may say so
+whose voices I do not hear. I am glad that yours, my dear
+indulgent friend, is not one of them.</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, your ever affectionate<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+May 17, 1842.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;Have you thought all unkindness
+out of my silence? Yet the inference is not a true one,
+however it may look in logic.</p>
+
+<p>You do not like Silentiarius <i>very much</i> (that is <i>my</i>
+inference), since you have kept him so short a time. And I
+quite agree with you that he is not a poet of the same
+interest as Gregory Nazianzen, however he may appear to
+me of more lofty cadence in his versification. My own
+impression is that John of Euchaita is worth two of each of
+them as a poet. His poems strike me as standing in the
+very first class of the productions of the Christian centuries.
+Synesius and John of Euchaita! I shall always think of
+those two together&mdash;not by their similarity, but their dignity.</p>
+
+<p>I return you the books you lent me with true thanks,
+and also those which Mrs. Smith, I believe, left in your
+hands for me. I thank <i>you</i> for them, and <i>you</i> must be good
+enough to thank <i>her</i>. They were of use, although of a rather
+sublime indifference for poets generally....</p>
+
+<p>I shall send you soon the series of the Greek papers you
+asked for, and also perhaps the first paper of a Survey of the
+English Poets, under the pretence of a review of 'The Book
+of the Poets,' a bookseller's selection published lately. I
+begin from Langland, of Piers Plowman and the Malvern
+Hills. The first paper went to the editor last week, and I
+have heard nothing as to whether it will appear on Saturday
+or not, and perhaps if it does you won't care to have it sent
+to you. Tell me if you do or don't. I have suffered
+unpleasantly in the heart lately from this tyrannous dynasty
+of east winds, but have been well otherwise, and am better,
+in <i>that</i>. Flushie means to bark the next time he sees you
+in revenge for what you say of him.</p>
+
+<p>Good bye, dear Mr. Boyd; think of me as</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+June 3, 1842.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;I disobeyed you in not simply
+letting you know of the publication of my 'English Poets,'
+because I did not know myself when the publication was to
+take place, and I hope you will forgive the innocent crime
+and accept the first number going to you with this note. I
+warn you that there will be two numbers more at <i>least</i>.
+Therefore do not prepare yourself for perhaps the impossible
+magnanimity of reading them through.</p>
+
+<p>And now I am fit for rivalship with your clocks, papa
+having given me an Aeolian harp for the purpose. Do you
+know the music of an Aeolian harp, and that nothing below
+the spherical harmonies is so sweet and soft and mournfully
+wild? The amusing part of it is (after the poetical) that
+Flushie is jealous and thinks it is alive, and takes it as very
+hard that I should say 'beautiful' to anything except his
+ears!</p>
+
+<p>Arabel talks of going to see you; but if you are sensible
+to this intense and most overcoming heat, you will pardon
+her staying away for the present.</p>
+
+<p>We have heard to-day that Annie proposes to publish
+her Miscellany by subscription; and although I know it to
+be the only way, compatible with publication at all, to avoid
+a pecuniary loss, yet the custom is so entirely abandoned except
+in the case of persons of a lower condition of life than
+<i>your daughter</i>, that I am sorry to think of the observations
+it may excite. The whole scheme has appeared to me from
+the beginning <i>most foolish</i>, and if you knew what I know of
+the state and fortune of our ephemeral literature, you would
+use what influence you have with her to induce her to
+condemn her 'contributions' to the adorning of a private
+annual rather than the purpose in unhappy question. I
+wish I dared to appeal through my true love for her to her
+own good sense once more.</p>
+
+<p>My very dear friend's affectionate and grateful<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>If you <i>do</i> read any of the papers, let me know, I beseech
+you, your full and free opinion of them.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+June 22, 1842.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;I thank you gratefully for your
+two notes, with their united kindness and candour&mdash;the latter
+still rarer than the former, if less 'sweet upon the tongue.'
+Sir William Alexander's tragedy <i>(that</i> is the right name, I
+think, Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling) you will not
+find mentioned among my dramatic notices, because I was
+much pressed for room, and had to treat the whole subject
+as briefly as possible, striking off, like the Roman, only the
+heads of the flowers, and I did not, besides, receive your
+injunction until my third paper on the dramatists was
+finished and in the press. When you read it you will find
+some notice of that tragedy by Marlowe, the first knowledge of
+which I owe to you, my dear Mr. Boyd, as how much besides?
+And then comes the fourth paper, and I tremble to anticipate
+the possible&mdash;nay, the very probable&mdash;scolding I may
+have from you, upon my various heresies as to Dryden and
+Pope and Queen Anne's versificators. In the meantime
+you have breathing time, for Mr. Dilke, although very
+gracious and courteous to my offence of extending the two
+papers he asked for <i>into four</i>,<a name="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65"><sup>[65]</sup></a> yet could find no room in
+the 'Athenaeum' last week for me, and only <i>hopes</i> for it this
+week. And after this week comes the British Association
+business, which always fills every column for a month, so
+that a further delay is possible enough. 'It will increase,'
+says Mr. Dilke, 'the zest of the reader,' whereas <i>I</i> say (at
+least think) that it will help him quite to forget me. I explain
+all this lest you should blame me for neglect to yourself in
+not sending the papers. I am so pleased that you like at
+least the second article. That is encouragement to me.</p>
+
+<p>Flushie did not seem to think the harp alive when it was
+taken out of the window and laid close to him. He
+examined it particularly, and is a philosophical dog. But I
+am sure that at first and while it was playing he thought so.</p>
+
+<p>In the same way he can't bear me to look into a glass,
+because he thinks there is a little brown dog inside every
+looking glass, and he is jealous of its being so close to <i>me</i>.
+He used to tremble and bark at it, but now he is <i>silently</i>
+jealous, and contents himself with squeezing close, close to
+me and kissing me expressively.</p>
+
+<p>My very dear friend's ever gratefully affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To John Kenyon</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: Sunday night [September 1842].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mr. Kenyon,&mdash;Having missed my pleasure
+to-day by a coincidence worse for me than for you, I must,
+tired as I am to-night, tell you&mdash;ready for to-morrow's
+return of the books&mdash;what I have waited three whole
+days hoping to tell you by word of mouth. But mind,
+before I begin, I don't do so out of despair ever to
+see you again, because I trust steadfastly to your kindness
+to <i>come</i> again when <i>you</i> are not 'languid' and I am
+alone as usual; only that I dare not keep back from you
+any longer the following message of Miss Mitford. She
+says: 'Won't he take us in his way to Torquay? or from
+Torquay? Beg him to do so&mdash;and of all love, to tell us
+<i>when</i>.' Afterwards, again: 'I think my father is better.
+Tell Mr. Kenyon what I say, and stand my friend with him
+and beg him to come.'</p>
+
+<p>Which I do in the most effectual way&mdash;in her own
+words.</p>
+
+<p>She is much pleased by means of your introduction.
+'Tell dear Mr. Kenyon how very very much I like Mrs.
+Leslie. She seems all that is good and kind, and to add
+great intelligence and agreeableness to these prime qualities.'</p>
+
+<p>Now I have done with being a messenger of the gods,
+and verily my caduceus is trembling in my hand.</p>
+
+<p>O Mr. Kenyon! what have you done? You will know
+the interpretation of the reproach, your conscience holding
+the key of the cypher.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime I ought to be thanking you for your
+great kindness about this divine Tennyson.<a name="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66"><sup>[66]</sup></a> Beautiful!
+beautiful! After all, it is a noble thing to be a poet.
+But notwithstanding the poetry of the novelties&mdash;and
+you will observe that his two preceding volumes (only
+one of which I had seen before, having inquired for the
+other vainly) are included in these two&mdash;nothing appears
+to me quite equal to 'Oenone,' and perhaps a few besides
+of my ancient favorites. That is not said in disparagement
+of the last, but in admiration of the first. There is, in
+fact, more thought&mdash;more bare brave working of the
+intellect&mdash;in the latter poems, even if we miss something
+of the high ideality, and the music that goes with it, of the
+older ones. Only I am always inclined to believe that
+philosophic thinking, like music, is involved, however
+occultly, in high ideality of any kind.</p>
+
+<p>You have not a key to the cypher of this at least, and I
+am so tired that one word seems tumbling over another all
+the way.</p>
+
+<p>Ever affectionately yours,<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>You will let me keep your beautiful ballad and the gods<a name="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67"><sup>[67]</sup></a>
+a little longer.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+September 14, 1842.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;I have made you wait a long
+time for the 'North American Review,' because when your
+request came it was no longer within my reach, and because
+since then I have not been so well as usual from a sweep of
+the wing of the prevailing epidemic. Now, however, I am
+<i>better</i> than I was even before the attack, only wishing that it
+were possible to hook-and-eye on another summer to the hem
+of the garment of this last sunny one. At the end of such a
+double summer, to measure things humanly, I might be able
+to go to see you at Hampstead. Nevertheless, winters and
+adversities are more fit for us than a constant sun.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose, dear Mr. Boyd, you want only to have this
+review read to you, and not <i>written</i>. Because it isn't out of
+laziness that I send the book to you; and Arabel would
+copy whatever you please willingly, provided you wished it.
+Keep the book as long as you please. I have put a paper
+mark and a pencil mark at the page and paragraph where
+I am taken up. It seems to me that the condemnation of
+'The Seraphim' is not too hard. The poem wants <i>unity</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As to your 'words of fire' about Wordsworth, if I had
+but a cataract at command I would try to quench them.
+His powers should not be judged of by my extracts or by
+anybody's extracts from his last-published volume.<a name="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68"><sup>[68]</sup></a> Do you
+remember his grand ode upon Childhood&mdash;worth, to my
+apprehension, just twenty of Dryden's 'St. Cecilia's Day'&mdash;his
+sonnet upon Westminster Bridge, his lyric on a lark, in
+which the lark's music swells and exults, and the many
+noble and glorious passages of his 'Excursion'? You
+must not indeed blame me for estimating Wordsworth
+at <i>his height</i>, and on the other side I readily confess to you
+that he is occasionally, and not unfrequently, heavy and dull,
+and that Coleridge had an intenser genius. Tell me if you
+know anything of Tennyson. He has just published two
+volumes of poetry, one of which is a republication, but
+both full of inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>Ever my very dear friend's affectionate and grateful<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: October 22, 1842.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;Waiting first for you to write
+to me, and then waiting that I might write to you cheerfully,
+has ended by making so long a silence that I am almost
+ashamed to break it. And perhaps, even if I were not
+ashamed, you would be angry&mdash;perhaps you <i>are</i> angry,
+and don't much care now whether or not you ever
+hear from me again. Still I must write, and I must
+moreover ask you to write to me again; and I must in
+particular assure you that I have continued to love you
+sincerely, notwithstanding all the silence which might seem
+to say the contrary. What I should like best just now is to
+have a letter speaking comfortable details of your being
+comparatively well again; yet I hope on without it that you
+really are so much better as to be next to quite well. It
+was with great concern that I heard of the indisposition
+which hung about you, dearest Mrs. Martin, so long&mdash;I
+who had congratulated myself when I saw you last on the
+promise of good health in your countenance. May God
+bless you, and keep you better! And may you take care
+of yourself, and remember how many love you in the world,
+from dear Mr. Martin down to&mdash;E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>Well, now I must look around me and consider what
+there is to tell you. But I have been uneasy in various
+ways, sometimes by reason and sometimes by fantasy; and
+even now, although my dear old friend Dr. Scully is something
+better, he lies, I fear, in a very precarious state, while
+dearest Miss Mitford's letters from the deathbed of her
+father make my heart ache as surely almost as the post
+comes. There is nothing more various in character,
+nothing which distinguishes one human being from another
+more strikingly, than the expression of feeling, the manner
+in which it influences the outward man. If I were in
+her circumstances, I should sit paralysed&mdash;it would be
+impossible to me to write or to cry. And she, who loves
+and feels with the intensity of a nature warm in everything,
+seems to turn to sympathy by the very instinct of grief, and
+sits at the deathbed of her last relative, writing there, in
+letter after letter, every symptom, physical or moral&mdash;even
+to the very words of the raving of a delirium, and those,
+heart-breaking words! I could not write such letters; but
+I know she feels as deeply as any mourner in the world can.
+And all this reminds me of what you once asked me about
+the inscriptions in Lord Brougham's villa at Nice. There
+are probably as many different dialects for the heart as for
+the tongue, are there not?...</p>
+
+<p>And now you will kindly like to have a word said about
+myself, and it need not be otherwise than a word to give
+your kindness pleasure. The long splendid summer,
+exhausting as the heat was to me sometimes, did me
+essential good, and left me walking about the room and
+equal to going downstairs (which I achieved four or
+five times), and even to going out in the chair, without
+suffering afterwards. And, best of all, the spitting of
+blood (I must tell you), which more or less kept by me
+continually, <i>stopped quite</i> some six weeks ago, and I
+have thus more reasonable hopes of being really and
+essentially better than I could have with such a symptom
+loitering behind accidental improvements. Weak enough,
+and with a sort of pulse which is not excellent, I certainly
+remain; but still, if I escape any decided attack this winter&mdash;and
+I am in garrison now&mdash;there are expectations of
+further good for next summer, and I may recover some
+moderate degree of health and strength again, and be able
+to <i>do</i> good instead of receiving it only.</p>
+
+<p>I write under the eyes of Wordsworth. Not Wordsworth's
+living eyes, although the actual living poet had the
+infinite kindness to ask Mr. Kenyon twice last summer
+when he was in London, if he might not come to see me.
+Mr. Kenyon said 'No'&mdash;I couldn't have said 'No' to
+Wordsworth, though I had never gone to sleep again
+afterwards. But this Wordsworth who looks on me now is
+Wordsworth in a picture. Mr. Haydon the artist, with the
+utmost kindness, has sent me the portrait he was painting
+of the great poet&mdash;an unfinished portrait&mdash;and I am to
+keep it until he wants to finish it. Such a head! such
+majesty! and the poet stands musing upon Helvellyn!
+And all that&mdash;poet, Helvellyn, and all&mdash;is in my room!<a name="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69"><sup>[69]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>Give my kind love to Mr. Martin&mdash;<i>our</i> kind love, indeed,
+to both of you&mdash;and believe me, my dearest Mrs. Martin,</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate BA.</p>
+
+<p>Is there any hope for us of you before the winter ends?
+Do consider.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Monday, October 31, 1842.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;I have put off from day to day
+sending you these volumes, and in the meantime <i>I have
+had a letter from the great poet</i>! Did Arabel tell you that my
+sonnet on the picture was sent to Mr. Haydon, and that Mr.
+Haydon sent it to Mr. Wordsworth? The result was that
+Mr. Wordsworth wrote to me. King John's barons were never
+better pleased with their Charta than I am with this letter.<a name="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70"><sup>[70]</sup></a></p>
+<br />
+
+<p>But I won't tell you any more about it until you have
+read the poems which I send you. Read first, to put you
+into good humour, the sonnet written on Westminster
+Bridge, vol. iii. page 78. Then take from the sixth volume,
+page 152, the passage beginning 'Within the soul' down to
+page 153 at 'despair,' and again at page 155 beginning with</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot">
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I have seen</span><br />
+A curious child, &amp;c.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>down to page 157 to the end of the paragraph. If you admit
+these passages to be fine poetry, I wish much that you would
+justify me further by reading, out of the <i>second</i> volume, the
+two poems called 'Laodamia' and 'Tintern Abbey' at page
+172 and page 161. I will not ask you to read any more; but
+I dare say you will rush on of your own account, in which
+case there is a fine ode upon the 'Power of Sound' in the
+same volume. Wordsworth is a philosophical and Christian
+poet, with depths in his soul to which poor Byron could
+never reach. Do be candid. Nay, I need not say so,
+because you always are, as I am,</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+December 4, 1842.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;You will think me in a discontented
+state of mind when I knit my brows like a 'sleeve of
+care' over your kind praises. But the truth is, I <i>won't</i> be
+praised for being liberal in Calvinism and love of Byron.
+<i>I</i> liberal in commending Byron! Take out my heart and
+try it! look at it and compare it with yours; and answer
+and tell me if I do not love and admire Byron more warmly
+than you yourself do. I suspect it indeed. Why, I am
+always reproached for my love to Byron. Why, people say
+to me, '<i>You</i>, who overpraise Byron!' Why, when I was
+a little girl (and, whatever you may think, my tendency is
+not to cast off my old loves!) I used to think seriously of
+dressing up like a boy and running away to be Lord Byron's
+page. And <i>I</i> to be praised now for being 'liberal' in
+admitting the merit of his poetry! <i>I</i>!</p>
+
+<p>As for the Calvinism, I don't choose to be liberal there
+either. I don't call myself a Calvinist. I hang suspended
+between the two doctrines, and hide my eyes in God's love
+from the sights which other people <i>say</i> they see. I believe
+simply that the saved are saved by grace, and that they
+shall hereafter know it fully; and that the lost are lost by
+their choice and free will&mdash;by choosing to sin and die; and
+I believe absolutely that the deepest damned of all the lost
+will not dare to whisper to the nearest devil that reproach
+of Martha: 'If the Lord had been near me, I had not
+died.' But of the means of the working of God's grace,
+and of the time of the formation of the Divine counsels, I
+know nothing, guess nothing, and struggle to guess nothing;
+and my persuasion is that when people talk of what was
+ordained or approved by God before the foundations of the
+world, their tendency is almost always towards a confusion
+of His eternal nature with the human conditions of ours;
+and to an oblivion of the fact that with <i>Him</i> there can be
+no after nor before.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate, I do not find it good for myself to examine
+any more the brickbats of controversy&mdash;there is more
+than enough to think of in truths clearly revealed; more
+than enough for the exercise of the intellect and affections
+and adorations. I would rather not suffer myself to be
+disturbed, and perhaps irritated, where it is not likely that
+I should ever be informed. And although you tell me
+that your system of investigation is different from some
+others, answer me with your accustomed candour, and
+admit, my very dear friend, that this argument does
+not depend upon the construction of a Greek sentence or
+the meaning of a Greek word. Let a certain word<a name="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71"><sup>[71]</sup></a> be
+'fore-know' or 'publicly <i>favor</i>,' room for a stormy
+controversy yet remains. I went through the Romans with
+you partially, and wholly by myself, by your desire, and
+in reference to the controversy, long ago; and I could not
+then, and cannot now, enter into that view of Taylor and
+Adam Clarke, and yourself I believe, as to the <i>Jews and
+Gentiles</i>. Neither could I conceive that a particular part of
+the epistle represents an actual dialogue between a Jew and
+Gentile, since the form of question and answer appears to
+me there simply rhetorical. The Apostle Paul was learned in
+rhetoric; and I think he described so, by a rhetorical and
+vivacious form, that struggle between the flesh and the
+spirit common to all Christians; the spirit being triumphant
+through God in Christ Jesus. These are my impressions.
+Yours are different. And since we should not probably
+persuade each other, and since we are both of us fond of
+and earnest in what we fancy to be the truth, why should
+we cast away the thousand sympathies we rejoice in,
+religious and otherwise, for the sake of a fruitless
+contention? 'What!' you would say (by the time we had
+quarrelled half an hour), 'can't you talk without being
+excited?' Half an hour afterwards: 'Pray <i>do</i> lower your
+voice&mdash;it goes through my head!' In another ten minutes:
+'I could scarcely have believed you to be so obstinate.'
+In another: 'Your prejudices are insurmountable, and your
+reason most womanly&mdash;you are degenerated to the last degree.'
+In another&mdash;why, <i>then</i> you would turn me and Flush
+out of the room and so finish the controversy victoriously.</p>
+
+<p>Was I wrong too, dearest Mr. Boyd, in sending the
+poems to the 'Athenaeum'? Well, I meant to be right. I
+fancied that you would rather they were sent; and as your
+<i>name</i> was not attached, there could be no harm in leaving
+them to the editor's disposal. They are not inserted, as I
+anticipated. The religious character was a sufficient
+objection&mdash;their character of <i>prayer</i>. Mr. Dilke begged
+me once, while I was writing for him, to write the name of God
+and Jesus Christ as little as I could, because those names
+did not accord with the secular character of the journal!</p>
+
+<p>Ever your affectionate and grateful<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>Tell me how you like the sonnet; but you won't (I
+prophesy) like it. Keep the 'Athenaeum.'</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+December 24, 1842.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;I am afraid that you will infer
+from my silence that you have affronted me into ill temper
+by your parody upon my sonnet. Yet 'lucus a non lucendo'
+were a truer derivation. I laughed and thanked you over
+the parody, and put off writing to you until I had the headache,
+which forced me to put it off again....</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you, my dear Mr. Boyd. Mr. Savage
+Landor once said that anybody who could write a parody
+deserved to be shot; but as he has written one himself
+since saying so, he has probably changed his mind. Arabel
+sends her love.</p>
+
+<p>Ever your affectionate and grateful<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+January 5, 1842 [1843].<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;My surprise was inexpressible at
+your utterance of the name. What! Ossian superior as a
+poet to Homer! Mr. Boyd saying so! Mr. Boyd treading
+down the neck of Aeschylus while he praises Ossian!
+The fact appears to me that anomalous thing among
+believers&mdash;a miracle without an occasion.</p>
+
+<p>I confess I never, never should have guessed the name;
+not though I had guessed to Doomsday. In the first place I
+do not believe in Ossian, and having partially examined the
+testimony (for I don't pretend to any exact learning about
+it) I consider him as the poetical <i>lay figure</i> upon which Mr.
+Macpherson dared to cast his personality. There is a sort
+of phraseology, nay, an identity of occasional phrases, from
+the antique&mdash;but that these so-called Ossianic poems were
+ever discovered and translated as they stand in their present
+form, I believe in no wise. As Dr. Johnson wrote to
+Macpherson, so I would say, 'Mr. Macpherson, I thought
+you an impostor, and think so still.'</p>
+
+<p>It is many years ago since I looked at Ossian, and I
+never did much delight in him, as that fact proves. Since
+your letter came I have taken him up again, and have just
+finished 'Carthon.' There are beautiful passages in it, the
+most beautiful beginning, I think, 'Desolate is the dwelling
+of Moina,' and the next place being filled by that address to
+the sun you magnify so with praise. But the charm of
+these things is the <i>only</i> charm of all the poems. There is
+a sound of wild vague music in a monotone&mdash;nothing is
+articulate, nothing <i>individual</i>, nothing various. Take away
+a few poetical phrases from these poems, and they are
+colourless and bare. Compare them with the old burning
+ballads, with a wild heart beating in each. How cold
+they grow in the comparison! Compare them with Homer's
+grand breathing personalities, with Aeschylus's&mdash;nay, but I
+cannot bear upon my lips or finger the charge of the
+blasphemy of such comparing, even for religion's sake....</p>
+
+<p>I had another letter from America a few days since, from
+an American poet of Boston who is establishing a magazine,
+and asked for contributions from my pen. The Americans
+are as good-natured to me as if they took me for the high
+Radical I am, you know.</p>
+
+<p>You won't be angry with me for my obliquity (as you
+will consider it) about Ossian. You know I always talk
+sincerely to you, and you have not made me afraid of telling
+you the truth&mdash;that is, <i>my</i> truth, the truth of my belief and
+opinions.</p>
+
+<p>I do not defend much in the 'Idiot Boy.' Wordsworth
+is a great poet, but he does not always write equally.</p>
+
+<p>And that reminds me of a distinction you suggest
+between Ossian and Homer. <i>I</i> fashion it in this way:
+Homer sometimes nods, but Ossian <i>makes his readers nod</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Ever your affectionate<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>Did I tell you that I had been reading through a manuscript
+translation of the 'Gorgias' of Plato, by Mr. Hyman of
+Oxford, who is a stepson of Mr. Haydon's the artist? It
+is an excellent translation with learned notes, but it is <i>not
+elegant</i>. He means to try the public upon it, but, as I have
+intimated to him, the Christians of the present day are not
+civilised enough for Plato.</p>
+
+<p>Arabel's love.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+[About the end of January 1843.]<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;The image you particularly admire
+in Ossian, I admire with you, although I am not sure that
+I have not seen it or its like somewhere in a classical poet,
+Greek or Latin. Perhaps Lord Byron remembered it when
+in the 'Siege of Corinth' he said of his Francesca's uplifted
+arm, 'You might have seen the moon shine through.' It
+reminds me also that Maclise the artist, a man of poetical
+imagination, gives such a transparency to the ghost of
+Banquo in his picture of Macbeth's banquet, that we can
+discern through it the lights of the festival. That is good
+poetry for a painter, is it not?</p>
+
+<p>I send you the magazines which I have just received
+from America, and which contain, one of them, 'The Cry
+of the Human,' and the other, four of my sonnets. My
+correspondent tells me that the 'Cry' is considered there
+one of the most successful of my poems, but you probably
+will not think so. Tell me exactly what you do think. At
+page 343 of 'Graham's Magazine,' <i>Editor's Table</i>, is a review
+of me, which, however extravagant in its appreciation, will
+give your kindness pleasure. I confess to a good deal of
+pleasure myself from these American courtesies, expressed
+not merely in the magazines, but in the newspapers; a heap
+of which has been sent to me by my correspondent&mdash;the
+'New York Tribune,' 'The Union,' 'The Union Flag,' &amp;c.&mdash;all
+scattered over with extracts from my books and benignant
+words about their writer. Among the extracts is the whole
+of the review of Wordsworth from the London 'Athenaeum,'
+an unconscious compliment, as they do not guess at the
+authorship, and one which you won't thank them for. Keep
+the magazines, as I have duplicates.</p>
+
+<p>Dearest Mr. Boyd, since you admit that I am not
+prejudiced about Ossian, I take courage to tell you what I
+am thinking of.</p>
+
+<p><i>I am thinking</i> (this is said in a whisper, and in
+confidence&mdash;of two kinds), <i>I am thinking that you don't
+admire him quite as much as you did three weeks ago</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Ever most affectionately yours,<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>Arabel not being here, I send her love without asking
+for it.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+January 30, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;Thank you for your letter
+and for dear Mr. Martin's thought of writing one! Ah! <i>I</i>
+thought he would not write, but not for the reason you say;
+it was something more palpable and less romantic! Well,
+I will not grumble any more about not having my letter,
+since you are coming, and since you seem, my dear Mrs.
+Martin, something in better spirits than your note from
+Southampton bore token of. Madeira is the Promised Land,
+you know; and you should hope hopefully for your invalid
+from his pilgrimage there. You should hope with those
+who hope, my dearest Mrs. Martin....</p>
+
+<p>Our '<i>event</i>' just now is a new purchase of a 'Holy
+Family,' supposed to be by Andrea del Sarto. It has displaced
+the Glover over the chimney-piece in the drawing-room,
+and dear Stormie and Alfred nearly broke their backs
+in carrying it upstairs for me to see before the placing. It is
+probably a fine picture, and I seem to see my way through
+the dark of my ignorance, to admire the grouping and
+colouring, whatever doubt as to the expression and divinity
+may occur otherwise. Well, you will judge. I won't tell
+you <i>how</i> I think of it. And you won't care if I do. There
+is also a new very pretty landscape piece, and you may
+imagine the local politics of the arrangement and hanging,
+with their talk and consultation; while <i>I</i>, on the storey
+higher, have my arranging to manage of my pretty new
+books and my three hyacinths, and a pot of primroses which
+dear Mr. Kenyon had the good nature to carry himself
+through the streets to our door. But all the flowers forswear
+me, and die either suddenly or gradually as soon as they
+become aware of the want of fresh air and light in my room.
+Talking of air and light, what exquisite weather this is!
+What a summer in winter! It is the fourth day since I
+have had the fire wrung from me by the heat of temperature,
+and I sit here <i>very warm indeed</i>, notwithstanding that bare
+grate. Nay, yesterday I had the door thrown open for
+above an hour, and was warm still! You need not ask, you
+see, how I am.</p>
+
+<p>Tell me, have you read Mr. Dickens's 'America;' and
+what is your thought of it like? If I were an American, it
+would make me rabid, and certain of the free citizens <i>are</i>
+furious, I understand, while others 'speak peace and
+ensue it,' admire as much of the book as deserves any sort of
+admiration, and attribute the blameable parts to the prejudices
+of the party with whom the writer 'fell in,' and not
+to a want of honesty or brotherhood in his own intentions.
+I admire Mr. Dickens as an imaginative writer, and I love
+the Americans&mdash;I cannot possibly admire or love this book.
+Does Mr. Martin? Do <i>you</i>?</p>
+
+<p>Henrietta would send her love to you if I could hear
+her voice nearer than I do actually, as she sings to the
+guitar downstairs. And her love is not the only one to be
+sent. Give mine to dear Mr. Martin, though he can't make
+up his mind to the bore of writing to me. And remember
+us all, both of you, as we do you.</p>
+
+<p>Dearest Mrs. Martin, your affectionate BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To James Martin</i><br />
+February 6, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>You make us out, my dear Mr. Martin, to be such perfect
+parallel lines that I should be half afraid of completing the
+definition by our never meeting, if it were not for what you
+say afterwards, of the coming to London, and of promising
+to come and see Flush. If you should be travelling while I
+am writing, it was only what happened to me when I wrote
+not long ago to dearest Mrs. Martin, and everybody in this
+house cried out against the fatuity of the coincidence. As
+if I could know that she was travelling, when nobody told
+me, and I wasn't a witch! If the same thing happens to-day,
+believe in the innocence of my ignorance. I shall be consoled
+if it does&mdash;for certain reasons. But for none in the
+world can I help thanking you for your letter, which gave
+me so much pleasure from the first sight of the handwriting
+to the thought of the kindness spent upon me in it, that
+after all I cannot thank you as I would.</p>
+
+<p>Yet I won't let you fancy me of such an irrational state
+of simplicity as not to be fully aware that <i>you</i>, with your
+'nature of the fields and forests,' look down disdainfully and
+with an inward heat of glorying, upon <i>me</i> who have all my
+pastime in books&mdash;dead and seethed. Perhaps, if it were
+a little warmer, I might even grant that you are right in
+your pride. As it is, I grumble feebly to myself something
+about the definition of <i>nature</i>, and how we in the town
+(which 'God made' just as He made your hedges) have <i>our</i>
+share of nature too; and then I have secret thoughts of
+the state of the thermometer, and wonder how people can
+breathe out of doors. In the meantime, Flush, who is a
+better philosopher, pushes deep into my furs, and goes to
+sleep. Perhaps I should fear the omen for my correspondent.</p>
+
+<p>Oh yes! That picture in 'Boz' is beautiful. For my
+own part, and by a natural womanly contradiction, I have
+never cared so much in my life for flowers as since being
+shut out from gardens&mdash;unless, indeed, in the happy days of
+old when I had a garden of my own, and cut it out into a
+great Hector of Troy, in relievo, with a high heroic box nose
+and shoeties of columbine.<a name="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72"><sup>[72]</sup></a> But that was long ago. Now
+I count the buds of my primrose with a new kind of interest,
+and you never saw such a primrose! I begin to believe in
+Ovid, and look for a metamorphosis. The leaves are turning
+white and springing up as high as corn. Want of air, and
+of sun, I suppose. I should be loth to think it&mdash;want of
+friendship to <i>me</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Do you know that the royal Boz lives close to us, three
+doors from Mr. Kenyon in Harley Place? The new
+numbers appear to me admirable, and full of life and
+blood&mdash;whatever we may say to the thick rouging and
+extravagance of gesture. There is a beauty, a tenderness,
+too, in the organ scene, which is worthy of the gilliflowers.
+But my admiration for 'Boz' fell from its 'sticking place,' I
+confess, a good furlong, when I read Victor Hugo; and my
+creed is, that, <i>not</i> in his tenderness, which is as much his
+own as his humour, but in his serious powerful Jew-trial
+scenes, he has followed Hugo closely, and never scarcely
+looked away from 'Les Trois Jours d'un Condamn&eacute;.'</p>
+
+<p>If you should not be on the road, I hope you won't be
+very long before you are, and that dearest Mrs. Martin will
+put off building her greenhouse&mdash;you see I believe she <i>will</i>
+build it&mdash;until she gets home again.</p>
+
+<p>How kind of you and of her to have poor old Mrs.
+Barker at Colwall!</p>
+
+<p>Do believe me, both of you, with love from all of <i>us</i>,</p>
+
+<p>Very affectionately yours,<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+February 21, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>Thank you, my very dear friend, I am as well as the
+east wind will suffer me to be; and <i>that</i>, indeed, is not very
+well, my heart being fuller of all manner of evil than is
+necessary to its humanity. But the wind is changed, and
+the frost is gone, and it is not quite out of my fancy yet that
+I may see you next summer. <i>You and summer are not out
+of the question yet</i>. Therefore, you see, I cannot be very
+deep in tribulation. But you may consider it a bad symptom
+that I have just finished a poem of some five hundred lines
+in stanzas, called 'The Lost Bower,'<a name="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73"><sup>[73]</sup></a> and about nothing at
+all in particular.</p>
+
+<p>As to Arabel, she is not an icicle. There are flowers
+which blow in the frost&mdash;when we brambles are brown with
+their inward death&mdash;and she is of them, dear thing. <i>You</i>
+are not a bramble, though, and I hope that when you talk
+of 'feeling the cold,' you mean simply to refer to your
+sensation, and not to your health. Remember also, dearest
+Mr. Boyd, what a glorious winter we have had. Take away
+the last ten days and a few besides, and call the whole
+summer rather than winter. Ought we to complain, really?
+Really, no.</p>
+
+<p>I venture another prophecy upon the shoulders of the
+ast, though my hand shakes so that nobody will read it.</p>
+
+<p><i>You can't abide my 'Cry of the Human,' and four sonnets</i>.
+They have none of them found favor in your eyes.</p>
+
+<p>In or out of favor,</p>
+
+<p>Ever your affectionate E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>Do you think that next summer you <i>might, could</i>, or
+<i>would</i> walk across the park to see me&mdash;supposing always
+that I fail in my aspiration to go and see you? I only ask
+by way of <i>hypothesis</i>. Consider and revolve it so. We live
+on the verge of the town rather than in it, and our noises
+are cousins to silence; and you should pass into a room
+where the silence is most absolute. Flush's breathing is my
+loudest sound, and then the watch's tickings, and then my
+own heart when it beats too turbulently. Judge of the
+quiet and the solitude!</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+April 19, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;The earth turns round, to be
+sure, and we turn with it, but I never anticipated the day
+and the hour for <i>you</i> to turn round and be guilty of high
+treason to our Greeks. I cry '<i>Ai</i>! <i>ai</i>!' as if I were a
+chorus, and all vainly. For, you see, arguing about it will
+only convince you of my obstinacy, and not a bit of Homer's
+supremacy. Ossian has wrapt you in a cloud, a fog, a true
+Scotch mist. You have caught cold in the critical faculty,
+perhaps. At any rate, I can't see a bit more of your
+reasonableness than I can see of Fingal. <i>Sic transit</i>!
+Homer like the darkened half of the moon in eclipse!
+You have spoilt for me now the finest image in your
+Ossian-Macpherson.</p>
+
+<p>My dearest Mr. Boyd, you will find as few believers in
+the genuineness of these volumes among the most
+accomplished antiquarians in poetry as in the genuineness
+of Chatterton's Rowley, and of Ireland's Shakespeare.
+The latter impostures boasted of disciples in the first
+instance, but the discipleship perished by degrees, and the
+place thereof, during this present 1843, knows it no more.
+So has it been with the belief in Macpherson's Ossian. Of
+those who believed in the poems at the first sight of them,
+who kept his creed to the end? And speaking so, I speak
+of Macpherson's contemporaries whom you respect.</p>
+
+<p>I do not consider Walter Scott a great poet, but he was
+highly accomplished in matters of poetical antiquarianism,
+and is certainly citable as an authority on this question.</p>
+
+<p>Try not to be displeased with me. I cannot conceal
+from you that my astonishment is profound and unutterable
+at your new religion&mdash;your new faith in this pseud-Ossian&mdash;and
+your desecration, in his service, of the old Hellenic
+altars. And by the way, my own figure reminds me to inquire
+of you whether you are not sometimes struck with a <i>want</i>
+in him&mdash;a want very grave in poetry, and very strange
+in antique poetry&mdash;the want of devotional feeling and
+conscience of God. Observe, that all antique poets rejoice
+greatly and abundantly in their divine mythology; and
+that if this Ossian be both antique and godless, he is an
+exception, a discrepancy, a monster in the history of letters
+and experience of humanity. As such I leave him.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, how angry you will be with me. But you seemed
+tolerably prepared in your last letter for my being in a
+passion.... Ever affectionately yours,</p>
+
+<p>ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>Why should I be angry with Flush? <i>He</i> does not
+believe in Ossian. Oh, I assure you he doesn't.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>The following letter was called forth by a criticism of
+Mr. Kenyon's on Miss Barrett's poem, <i>The Dead Pan</i>, which
+he had seen in manuscript; but it also meets some criticisms
+which others had made upon her last volume (see above,
+p. 65).</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To John Kenyan</i><br />
+Wimpole Street: March 25, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Cousin,&mdash;Your kindness having touched
+me much, and your good opinion, whether literary or otherwise,
+being of great price to me, it is even with tears in my
+eyes that I begin to write to you upon a difference between
+us. And what am I to say? To admit, of course, in the
+first place, the injuriousness to the 'popularity,' of the
+scriptural tone. But am I to sacrifice a principle to
+popularity? Would you advise me to do so? Should I be
+more worthy of your kindness by doing so? and could you
+(apart from the kindness) call my refusal to do so either
+perverseness or obstinacy? Even if you could, I hope you
+will try a little to be patient with me, and to forgive, at least,
+what you find it impossible to approve.</p>
+
+<p>My dear cousin, if you had not reminded me of
+Wordsworth's exclamation&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot">
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">I would rather be</span><br />
+A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn&mdash;<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>and if he had never made it, I do think that its significance
+would have occurred to me, by a sort of instinct,
+in connection with this discussion. Certainly <i>I</i> would
+rather be a pagan whose religion was actual, earnest,
+continual&mdash;for week days, work days, and song days&mdash;than
+I would be a <i>Christian</i> who, from whatever motive,
+shrank from hearing or uttering the name of Christ out of
+a 'church.' I am no fanatic, but I like truth and earnestness
+in all things, and I cannot choose but believe that such
+a Christian shows but ill beside such a pagan. What pagan
+poet ever thought of casting his gods out of his poetry?
+In what pagan poem do they not shine and thunder? And
+if <i>I</i>&mdash;to approach the point in question&mdash;if <i>I</i>, writing
+a poem the end of which is the extolment of what
+I consider to be Christian truth over the pagan myths
+shrank even <i>there</i> from naming the name of my God lest it
+should not meet the sympathies of some readers, or lest it
+should offend the delicacies of other readers, or lest,
+generally, it should be unfit for the purposes of poetry
+in what more forcible manner than by that act (I appeal to
+Philip against Philip) can I controvert my own poem, or
+secure to myself and my argument a logical and unanswerable
+shame? If Christ's name is improperly spoken
+in that poem, then indeed is Schiller right, and the true
+gods of poetry are to be sighed for mournfully. For be
+sure that <i>Burns</i> was right, and that a poet without devotion
+is below his own order, and that poetry without religion will
+gradually lose its elevation. And then, my dear friend, we
+do not live among dreams. The Christian religion is true
+or it is not, and if it is true it offers the highest and purest
+objects of contemplation. And the poetical faculty, which
+expresses the highest moods of the mind, passes naturally
+to the highest objects. Who can separate these things?
+Did Dante? Did Tasso? Did Petrarch? Did Calderon?
+Did Chaucer? Did the poets of our best British days?
+Did any one of these shrink from speaking out Divine
+names when the occasion came? Chaucer, with all his
+jubilee of spirit and resounding laughter, had the name of
+Jesus Christ and God as frequently to familiarity on his lips
+as a child has its father's name. You say 'our religion is
+not vital&mdash;not week-day&mdash;enough.' Forgive me, but <i>that</i>
+is a confession of a wrong, not an argument. And if a
+poet be a poet, it is his business to work for the elevation
+and purification of the public mind, rather than for his
+own popularity! while if he be not a poet, no sacrifice of
+self-respect will make amends for a defective faculty, nor
+<i>ought</i> to make amends.</p>
+
+<p>My conviction is that the <i>poetry of Christianity</i> will one
+day be developed greatly and nobly, and that in the meantime
+we are wrong, poetically as morally, in desiring to
+restrain it. No, I never felt repelled by any Christian
+phraseology in Cowper&mdash;although he is not a favorite poet
+of mine from other causes&mdash;nor in Southey, nor even in
+James Montgomery, nor in Wordsworth where he writes
+'ecclesiastically,' nor in Christopher North, nor in
+Chateaubriand, nor in Lamartine.</p>
+
+<p>It is but two days ago since I had a letter&mdash;and not
+from a fanatic&mdash;to reproach my poetry for not being
+Christian enough, and this is not the first instance, nor the
+second, of my receiving such a reproach. I tell you this to
+open to you the possibility of another side to the question,
+which makes, you see, a triangle of it!</p>
+
+<p>Can you bear with such a long answer to your letter,
+and forbear calling it a 'preachment'? There may be
+such a thing as an awkward and untimely introduction of
+religion, I know, and I have possibly been occasionally
+guilty in this way. But for <i>my principle</i> I must contend,
+for it is a poetical principle <i>and more</i>, and an entire sincerity
+in respect to it is what I owe to you and to myself. Try to
+forgive me, dear Mr. Kenyon. I would propitiate your
+indulgence for me by a libation of your own eau de
+Cologne poured out at your feet! It is excellent eau de
+Cologne, and you are very kind to me, but, notwithstanding
+all, there is a foreboding within me that my 'conventicleisms'
+will be inodorous in your nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>[<i>Incomplete</i>.]</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To John Kenyon</i><br />
+Tuesday [about March 1843].<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Cousin,&mdash;I have read your letter again
+and again, and feel your kindness fully and earnestly. You
+have advised me about the poem,<a name="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74"><sup>[74]</sup></a> entering into the questions
+referring to it with the warmth rather of the author of
+it than the critic of it, and this I am sensible of as absolutely
+as anyone can be. At the same time, I have a strong
+perception rather than opinion about the poem, and also, if
+you would not think it too serious a word to use in such a
+place, I have a <i>conscience</i> about it. It was not written in a
+desultory fragmentary way, the last stanzas thrown in, as they
+might be thrown out, but with a <i>design</i>, which leans its whole
+burden on the last stanzas. In fact, the last stanzas were in
+my mind to say, and all the others presented the mere
+avenue to the end of saying them. Therefore I cannot
+throw them out&mdash;I cannot yield to the temptation even
+of pleasing <i>you</i> by doing so; I make a compromise with
+myself, and <i>do not throw them out, and do not print the poem</i>.
+Now say nothing against this, my dear cousin, because I am
+obstinate, as you know, as you have good evidence for
+knowing. I <i>will not</i> either alter or print it. Then you have
+your manuscript copy, which you can cut into any shape
+you please as long as you keep it out of print; and seeing
+that the poem really does belong to you, having had its
+origin in your paraphrase of Schiller's stanzas, I see a great
+deal of poetical justice in the manuscript copyright remaining
+in your hands. For the rest I shall have quite enough
+to print and to be responsible for without it, and I am
+quite satisfied to let it be silent for a few years until either
+I or you (as may be the case even with <i>me</i>!) shall have
+revised our judgments in relation to it.</p>
+
+<p>This being settled, you must suffer me to explain (for
+mere personal reasons, and not for the good of the poem)
+that no mortal priest (of St. Peter's or otherwise) is referred
+to in a particular stanza, but the Saviour Himself. Who is
+'the High Priest of our profession,' and the only 'priest'
+recognised in the New Testament. In the same way the
+altar candles are altogether spiritual, or they could not be
+supposed, even by the most amazing poetical exaggeration,
+to 'light the earth and skies.' I explain this, only that I
+may not appear to you to have compromised the principle
+of the poem, by compromising any truth (such in my eyes)
+for the sake of a poetical effect.</p>
+
+<p>And now I will not say any more. I know that you will
+be inclined to cry, 'Print it in any case,' but I will entreat
+of your kindness, which I have so much right to trust in
+while entreating, <i>not to say one such word. Be kind, and let
+me follow my own way silently</i>. I have not, indeed, like a
+spoilt child in a fret, thrown the poem up because I would
+not alter it, though you have done much to spoil me. I
+act advisedly, and have made up my mind as to what is the
+wisest and best thing to do, and personally the pleasantest
+to myself, after a good deal of serious reflection. 'Pan is
+dead,' and so best, for the present at least.</p>
+
+<p>I shall take your advice about the preface in every
+respect, and thanks for the letter and Taylor's memoirs.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Mitford talks of coming to town for a day, and of
+bringing Flush with her, as soon as the weather settles, and
+to-day looks so like it that I have mused this morning on
+the possibility of breaking my prison doors and getting into
+the next room. Only there is a forbidding north wind, they say.</p>
+
+<p>Don't be vexed with me, dear Mr. Kenyon. You know
+there are obstinacies in the world as well as mortalities, and
+thereto appertaining. And then you will perceive through
+all mine, that it is difficult for me to act against your judgment
+so far as to put my own tenacity into print.</p>
+
+<p>Ever gratefully and affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>It is to the honour of America that it recognised from
+the first the genius of Miss Barrett; and for a large part of
+her life some of the closest of her personal and literary
+connections were with Americans. The same is true in
+both respects of Robert Browning. As appears from some
+letters printed farther on in these volumes, at a time when
+the sale of his poems in England was almost infinitesimal,
+they were known and highly prized in the United States.
+Expressions of Mrs. Browning's sympathy with America and
+of gratitude for the kindly feelings of Americans recur
+frequently in the letters, and it is probable that there are
+still extant in the States many letters written to friends and
+correspondents there. Only three or four such have been made
+available for the present collection; and of these the first
+follows here in its place in the chronological sequence. It
+was written to Mr. Cornelius Mathews, then editor of
+'Graham's Magazine,' who had invited Miss Barrett to send
+contributions to his periodical. The warm expression in it
+of sympathy with the poetry of Robert Browning, whom she
+did not yet know personally, is especially interesting to
+readers of this later day, who, like the spectators at a Greek
+tragedy, watch the development of a drama of which the
+<i>d&eacute;nouement</i> is already known to them.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Cornelius Mathews</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: April 28, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mr. Mathews,&mdash;In replying to your kind letter
+I send some more verse for Graham's, praying such demi-semi-gods
+as preside over contributors to magazines that I
+may not appear over-loquacious to my editor. Of course
+it is not intended to thrust three or four poems into one
+number. My pluralities go to you simply to 'bide your
+time,' and be used one by one as the opportunity is presented.
+In the meanwhile you have received, I hope, a short letter
+written to explain my unwillingness to apply, as you desired
+me at first, to Wiley and Putnam&mdash;an unwillingness
+justified by what you told me afterwards. I did not apply,
+nor have I applied, and I would rather not apply at all.
+Perhaps I shall hear from them presently. The pamphlet
+on International Copyright is welcome at a distance, but it
+has not come near me yet; and for all your kindness in
+relation to the prospective gift of your works I thank you
+again and earnestly. You are kind to me in many ways,
+and I would willingly know as much of your intellectual
+habits as you teach me of your genial feelings. This
+'Pathfinder' (what an excellent name for an American
+journal!) I also owe to you, with the summing up of your
+performances in it, and with a notice of Mr. Browning's
+'Blot on the Scutcheon,' which would make one poet
+furious (the 'infelix Talfourd') and another a little
+melancholy&mdash;namely, Mr. Browning himself. There is truth on
+both sides, but it seems to me hard truth on Browning. I
+do assure you I never saw him in my life&mdash;do not know
+him even by correspondence&mdash;and yet, whether through
+fellow-feeling for Eleusinian mysteries, or whether through
+the more generous motive of appreciation of his powers, I
+am very sensitive to the thousand and one stripes with
+which the assembly of critics doth expound its vocation
+over him, and the 'Athenaeum,' for instance, made me quite
+cross and misanthropical last week.<a name="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75"><sup>[75]</sup></a> The truth is&mdash;and the
+world should know the truth&mdash;it is easier to find a more
+faultless writer than a poet of equal genius. Don't let us
+fall into the category of the sons of Noah. Noah was once
+drunk, indeed, but once he built the ark. Talking of poets,
+would your 'Graham's Miscellany' care at all to have
+occasional poetical contributions from Mr. Horne? I am
+in correspondence with him, and I think I could manage
+an arrangement upon the same terms as my engagement
+rests on, if you please and your friends please, that is, and
+without formality, if it should give you any pleasure. He
+is a writer of great power, I think. And this reminds me
+that you may be looking all the while for the 'Athenaeum's'
+reply to your friend's proposition&mdash;of which I lost no time
+in apprising the editor, Mr. Dilke, and here are some of
+his words: 'An American friend who had been long
+in England, and often conversed with me on the subject,
+resolved on his return to establish such a correspondence.
+In all things worth knowing&mdash;all reviews of good books'
+(which 'are published first or simultaneously,' says Mr.
+Dilke, 'in London'), 'he was anticipated, and after
+some months he was driven of necessity to geological
+surveys, centenary celebrations, progress of railroads, manufactures,
+&amp;c., and thus the prospect was abandoned altogether.'
+Having made this experiment, Mr. Dilke is unwilling
+to risk another. Neither must we blame him for
+the reserve. When the international copyright shall at once
+protect the national <i>meum</i> and <i>tuum</i> in literature and give
+it additional fullness and value, we shall cease to say
+insolently to you that what we want of your books we will
+get without your help, but as it is, the Mr. Dilkes of us
+have nothing much more courteous to do. I wish I could
+have been of any use to your friend&mdash;I have done what I
+could. In regard to critical papers of mine, I would willingly
+give myself up to you, seeing your good nature; but it is
+the truth that I never published any prose papers at all
+except the series on the Greek Christian poets and the other
+series on the English poets in the 'Athenaeum' of last year,
+and both of which you have probably seen. Afterwards I
+threw up my brief and went back to my poetry, in which I
+feel that I must do whatever I am equal to doing at all.
+That life is short and art long appears to us more true
+than usual when we lie all day long on a sofa and are
+as frightened of the east wind as if it were a tiger. Life
+is not only short, but uncertain, and art is not only
+long, but absorbing. What have I to do with writing
+'<i>scandal</i>' (as Mr. Jones would say) upon my neighbour's
+work, when I have not finished my own? So I threw up
+my brief into Mr. Dilke's hands, and went back to my
+verses. Whenever I print another volume you shall have it,
+if Messrs. Wiley and Putnam will convey it to you. How
+can I send you, by the way, anything I may have to send
+you? Why will you not, as a nation, embrace our great
+penny post scheme, and hold our envelopes in all acceptation?
+You do not know&mdash;cannot guess&mdash;what a wonderful
+liberty our Rowland Hill has given to British spirits, and
+how we '<i>flash</i> a thought' instead of 'wafting' it from our
+extreme south to our extreme north, paying 'a penny for
+our thought' and for the electricity included. I recommend
+you our penny postage as the most successful revolution
+since the 'glorious three days' of Paris.</p>
+
+<p>And so, you made merry with my scorn of my
+'Prometheus.' Believe me&mdash;believe me absolutely&mdash;I did
+not strike that others might spare, but from an earnest
+remorse. When you know me better, you will know, I hope,
+that I am <i>true</i>, whether right or wrong, and you know
+already that I am right in this thing, the only merit of the
+translation being its closeness. Can I be of any use to you,
+dear Mr. Mathews? When I can, make use of me. You
+surprise and disappoint me in your sketch of the Boston
+poet, for the letter he wrote to me struck me as frank and
+honest. I wonder if he made any use of the verses I sent
+him; and I wonder what I sent him&mdash;for I never made a
+note of it, through negligence, and have quite forgotten.
+Are you acquainted with Mrs. Sigourney? She has offended
+us much by her exposition of Mrs. Southey's letter, and I
+must say not without cause. I rejoice in the progress of
+'Wakondah,' wishing the influences of mountain and river
+to be great over him and in him. And so I will say the
+'God bless you' your kindness cares to hear, and remain,</p>
+
+<p>Sincerely and thankfully yours,<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p><i>(Endorsed in another hand)</i><br />
+E.B. Barrett, London, received May 12, 1843,<br />
+4 poems, previously furnished to <i>Graham's Magazine</i>, $50.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To John Kenyan</i><br />
+May 1, 1843<br />
+
+<p>My dear Cousin,&mdash;Here is my copyright for you, and
+you will see that I have put 'word' instead of 'sound,' as
+certainly the proper 'word.' Do let me thank you once
+more for all the trouble and interest you have taken with
+me and in me. Observe besides that I have altered the
+title according to your unconscious suggestion, and made it
+'The Dead Pan,' which is a far better name, I think, than
+the repetition of the <i>refrain</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But I spoil my exemplary docility so far, by confessing
+that I don't like 'scornful children' half&mdash;no, not half
+so well as my 'railing children,' although, to be sure, you
+proved to me that the last was nigh upon nonsense. You
+proved it&mdash;that is, you almost proved it, for don't we say&mdash;at
+least, <i>mightn't</i> we say&mdash;'the thunder was silent'?
+'<i>thunder</i>' involving the idea of noise, as much as 'railing
+children' do. Consider this&mdash;I give it up to you.<a name="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76"><sup>[76]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>I am ashamed to have kept Carlyle so long, but I quite
+failed in trying to read him at my &quot;usual pace&mdash;he <i>won't</i> be
+read quick. After all, and full of beauty and truth as that
+book is, and strongly as it takes hold of my sympathies,
+there is nothing new in it&mdash;not even a new Carlyleism,
+which I do not say by way of blaming the book,
+because the author of it might use words like the apostle's:
+'To write the same things unto you, to me indeed is not
+grievous, and to you it is safe.' The world being blind
+and deaf and rather stupid, requires a reiteration of certain
+uncongenial truths....</p>
+
+<p>Thank you for the address.<br />
+Ever affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>I observe that the <i>most questionable rhymes</i> are not
+objected to by Mr. Merivale; also&mdash;but this letter is too
+long already.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+May 3, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;If <i>you</i> promised (which you
+did), <i>I</i> ought to have promised&mdash;and therefore we may ask
+each other's pardon....</p>
+
+<p>How is the dog? and how does dear Mr. Martin find
+himself in Arcadia? Do we all stand in his recollection
+like a species of fog, or a concentrated essence of brick
+wall? How I wish&mdash;and since I said it aloud to you I
+have often wished it over in a whisper&mdash;that you would
+put away your romance, or cut it in two, and spend six
+months of the year in London with us! Miss Mitford
+believes that wishes, if wished hard enough, realise themselves,
+but my experience has taught me a less cheerful
+creed. Only if wishes <i>do</i> realise themselves!</p>
+
+<p>Miss Mitford is at Bath, where she has spent one week
+and is about to spend two, and then goes on her way into
+Devonshire. She amused me so the other day by desiring
+me to look at the date of Mr. Landor's poems in their first
+edition, because she was sure that it must be fifty years
+since, and she finds him at this 1843, the very Lothario of
+Bath, enchanting the wives, making jealous the husbands,
+and 'enjoying,' altogether, the worst of reputations. I
+suggested that if she proved him to be seventy-five, as long
+as he proved himself enchanting, it would do no manner of
+good in the way of practical ethics; and that, besides, for her
+to travel round the world to investigate gentlemen's ages
+was invidious, and might be alarming as to the safe inscrutability
+of ladies' ages. She is delighted with the <i>scenery of Bath</i>,
+which certainly, take it altogether, marble
+and mountains, is the most beautiful town I ever looked
+upon. Cheltenham, I think, is a mere commonplace to it,
+although the avenues are beautiful, to be sure....</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Southey complains that she has lost half her income
+by her marriage, and her friend Mr. Landor is anxious
+to persuade, by the means of intermediate friends, Sir
+Robert Peel to grant her a pension. She is said to be
+in London now, and has at least left Keswick for ever. It
+is not likely that Wordsworth should come here this year,
+which I am sorry for now, although I should certainly be
+sorry if he did come. A happy state of contradiction, not
+confined either to that particular movement or no-movement,
+inasmuch as I was gratified by his sending me the poem
+you saw, and yet read it with such extreme pain as to incapacitate
+me from judging of it. Such stuff we are made of!</p>
+
+<p>This is a long letter&mdash;and you are tired, I feel by
+instinct!</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you, my dearest Mrs. Martin. Give my
+love to Mr. Martin, and think of me as</p>
+
+<p>Your very affectionate,<br />
+BA.</p>
+
+<p>Henry and Daisy have been to see the <i>lying in state</i>, as
+lying stark and dead is called whimsically, of the Duke of
+Sussex. It was a fine sight, they say.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+May 9, 1843 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;I thank you much for the
+copies of your 'Anti-Puseyistic Pugilism.' The papers
+reached my hands quite safely and so missed setting the
+world on fire; and I shall be as wary of them evermore
+(be sure) as if they were gunpowder. Pray send them to
+Mary Hunter. Why not? Why should you think that I
+was likely to 'object' to your doing so? She will laugh.
+<i>I</i> laughed, albeit in no smiling mood; for I have been
+transmigrating from one room to another, and your packet
+found me half tired and half excited, and <i>whole</i> grave. But
+I could not choose but laugh at your Oxford charge; and
+when I had counted your great guns and javelin points and
+other military appurtenances of the Punic war, I said to
+myself&mdash;or to Flush, 'Well, Mr. Boyd will soon be back
+again with the dissenters.' Upon which I think Flush
+said, 'That's a comfort.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary's direction is, 111 London Road, Brighton. You
+ought to send the verses to her yourself, if you mean to
+please her entirely: and I cannot agree with you that there
+is the slightest danger in sending them by the post. Letters
+are never opened, unless you tempt the flesh by putting
+sovereigns, or shillings, or other metallic substances inside
+the envelope; and if the devil entered into me causing me
+to write a libel against the Queen, I would send it by the
+post fearlessly from John o' Groat's to Land's End inclusive.</p>
+
+<p>One of your best puns, if not the best,</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot">
+Hatching succession apostolical,<br />
+With other falsehoods diabolical,<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>lies in an octosyllabic couplet; and what business has <i>that</i>
+in your heroic libel?</p>
+
+<p>The 'pearl' of maidens sends her love to you.</p>
+
+<p>Your very affectionate<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+May 14, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;I hear with wonder from Arabel
+of your repudiation of my word 'octosyllabic' for the two
+lines in your controversial poem. Certainly, if you count
+the syllables on your fingers, there are ten syllables in each
+line: of <i>that</i> I am perfectly aware; but the lines are none
+the less belonging to the species of versification called
+octosyllabic. Do you not observe, my dearest Mr. Boyd,
+that the final accent and rhyme fall on the eighth syllable
+instead of the tenth, and that <i>that</i> single circumstance
+determines the class of verse&mdash;that they are in fact octosyllabic
+verses with triple rhymes?</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot">
+Hatching succession apostolical,<br />
+With other falsehoods diabolical.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Pope has double rhymes in his heroic verses, but how does
+he manage them? Why, he admits eleven syllables, throwing
+the final accent and rhyme on the tenth, thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot">
+Worth makes the man, and want of it the f<i>e</i>llow,<br />
+The rest is nought but leather and prun<i>e</i>lla.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Again, if there is a double rhyme to an octosyllabic verse,
+there are always <i>nine</i> syllables in that verse, the final accent
+and rhyme falling on the eighth syllable, thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot">
+Compound for sins that we're incl<i>i</i>ned to,<br />
+By damning those we have no m<i>i</i>nd to.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>('Hudibras.')</p>
+
+<p>Again, if there is a triple rhyme to an octosyllabic verse
+(precisely the present case) there must always be ten syllables
+in that verse, the final accent and rhyme falling on the
+eighth syllable; thus from 'Hudibras' again:</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot">
+Then in their robes the penit<i>e</i>ntials<br />
+Are straight presented with cred<i>e</i>ntials.<br />
+Remember how in arms and p<i>o</i>litics,<br />
+We still have worsted all your h<i>o</i>ly tricks.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>You will admit that these last couplets are precisely of the
+same structure as yours, and certainly they are octosyllabics,
+and made use of by Butler in an octosyllabic poem, whereas
+yours, to be rendered of the heroic structure, should run
+thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot">
+Hatching at ease succession apostolical,<br />
+With many other falsehoods diabolical.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I have written a good deal about an oversight on your part
+of little consequence; but as you charged me with a mistake
+made in cold blood and under corrupt influences from
+Lake-mists, why I was determined to make the matter clear
+to you. And as to the <i>influences</i>, if I were guilty of
+this mistake, or of a thousand mistakes, Wordsworth would
+not be guilty <i>in</i> me. I think of him now, exactly as I
+thought of him during the first years of my friendship for
+you, only with <i>an equal</i> admiration. He was a great
+poet to me always, and always, while I have a soul for
+poetry, will be so; yet I said, and say in an under-voice,
+but steadfastly, that Coleridge was the grander genius.
+There is scarcely anything newer in my estimation of
+Wordsworth than in the colour of my eyes!</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps I was wrong in saying '<i>a pun.</i>' But I thought
+I apprehended a double sense in your application of the
+term 'Apostolical succession' to Oxford's 'breeding' and
+'hatching,' words which imply succession in a way unecclesiastical.</p>
+
+<p>After all which quarrelling, I am delighted to have to
+talk of your coming nearer to me&mdash;within reach&mdash;almost
+within my reach. Now if I am able to go in a
+carriage at all this summer, it will be hard but that I manage
+to get across the park and serenade you in Greek under
+your window.</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+May 18, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;Yes, you have surprised me!</p>
+
+<p>I always have thought of you, and I always think and
+say, that you are truthful and candid in a supreme degree,
+and therefore it is not your candour about Wordsworth
+which surprises me.</p>
+
+<p>He had the kindness to send me the poem upon Grace
+Darling when it first appeared; and with a curious mixture
+of feelings (for I was much gratified by his attention in
+sending it) I yet read it with <i>so</i> much pain from the nature
+of the subject, that my judgment was scarcely free to consider
+the poetry&mdash;I could scarcely determine to myself what
+I <i>thought</i> of it from feeling too much.</p>
+
+<p><i>But</i> I do confess to you, my dear friend, that I
+suspect&mdash;through the mist of my sensations&mdash;the poem in
+question to be very inferior to his former poems; I confess
+that the impression left on my mind is, of its decided
+inferiority, and I have heard that the poet's friends and
+critics (all except <i>one</i>) are mourning over its appearance;
+sighing inwardly, 'Wordsworth is old.'</p>
+
+<p>One thing is clear to me, however, and over <i>that</i> I
+rejoice and triumph greatly. If you can esteem this poem
+of 'Grace Darling,' you must be susceptible to the grandeur
+and beauty of the poems which preceded it; and the cause
+of your past reluctance to recognise the poet's power must
+be, as I have always suspected, from your having given a
+very partial attention and consideration to his poetry. You
+were partial in your attention <i>I</i>, perhaps, was injudicious in
+my extracts; but with your truth and his genius, I cannot
+doubt but that the time will come for your mutual amity.
+Oh that I could stand as a herald of peace, with my wool-twisted
+fillet! I do not understand the Greek metres as
+well as you do, but I understand Wordsworth's genius
+better, and do you forgive that it should console me.</p>
+
+<p>I will ask about his collegian extraction. Such a question
+never occurred to me. Apollo taught him under the laurels,
+while all the Muses looked through the boughs.</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT,</p>
+
+<p>Oh, yes, it delights me that you should be nearer. Of
+course you know that Wordsworth is Laureate.<a name="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77"><sup>[77]</sup></a></p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To John Kenyan</i><br />
+May 19, 1843,<br />
+
+<p>Thank you, my dear cousin, for all your kindness to me.
+There is ivy enough for a thyrsus, and I almost feel ready
+to enact a sort of Bacchus triumphalis 'for jollitie,' as I
+see it already planted, and looking in at me through the
+window. I never thought to see such a sight as <i>that</i> in my
+London room, and am overwhelmed with my own glory.</p>
+
+<p>And then Mr. Browning's note! Unless you say 'nay'
+to me, I shall keep this note, which has pleased me so much,
+yet not more than it ought. <i>Now</i>, I forgive Mr. Merivale
+for his hard thoughts of my easy rhymes. But all this
+pleasure, my dear Mr. Kenyon, I owe to <i>you</i>, and shall
+remember that I do.</p>
+
+<p>Ever affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+May 26, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>... I thank you for your part in the gaining of my bed,
+dearest Mrs. Martin, most earnestly; and am quite ready to
+believe that it was gained by <i>wishdom</i>, which believing is
+wisdom! No, you would certainly never recognise my
+prison if you were to see it. The bed, like a sofa and no
+Bed; the large table placed out in the room, towards the
+wardrobe end of it; the sofa rolled where a sofa should be
+rolled&mdash;opposite the arm-chair: the drawers crowned with
+a coronal of shelves fashioned by Sette and Co. (of papered
+deal and crimson merino) to carry my books; the washing
+table opposite turned into a cabinet with another coronal of
+shelves; and Chaucer's and Homer's busts in guard over
+these two departments of English and Greek poetry; three
+more busts consecrating the wardrobe which there was no
+annihilating; and the window&mdash;oh, I must take a new
+paragraph for the window, I am out of breath.</p>
+
+<p>In the window is fixed a deep box full of soil, where are
+<i>springing up</i> my scarlet runners, nasturtiums, and
+convolvuluses, although they were disturbed a few days ago by
+the revolutionary insertion among them of a great ivy root with
+trailing branches so long and wide that the top tendrils are
+fastened to Henrietta's window of the higher storey, while
+the lower ones cover all my panes. It is Mr. Kenyon's gift.
+He makes the like to flourish out of mere flowerpots, and
+embower his balconies and windows, and why shouldn't this
+flourish with me? But certainly&mdash;there is no shutting
+my eyes to the fact that it does droop a little. Papa
+prophesies hard things against it every morning, 'Why, Ba,
+it looks worse and worse,' and everybody preaches despondency.
+I, however, persist in being sanguine, looking out
+for new shoots, and making a sure pleasure in the meanwhile
+by listening to the sound of the leaves against the pane, as
+the wind lifts them and lets them fall. Well, what do you
+think of my ivy? Ask Mr. Martin, if he isn't jealous
+already.</p>
+
+<p>Have you read 'The Neighbours,' Mary Howitt's translation
+of Frederica Bremer's Swedish? Yes, perhaps.
+Have you read 'The Home,' fresh from the same springs?
+<i>Do</i>, if you have not. It has not only charmed me, but
+made me happier and better: it is fuller of Christianity
+than the most orthodox controversy in Christendom; and
+represents to my perception or imagination a perfect and
+beautiful embodiment of Christian outward life from the
+inward, purely and tenderly. At the same time, I should
+tell you that Sette says, 'I might have liked it ten years
+ago, but it is too young and silly to give me any pleasure
+now.' For <i>me</i>, however, it is not too young, and perhaps
+it won't be for you and Mr. Martin. As to Sette, he is
+among the patriarchs, to say nothing of the lawyers&mdash;and
+there we leave him....</p>
+
+<p>Ever your affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To John Kenyan</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street:<br />
+Wednesday, or is it Thursday? [summer 1843].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Cousin,&mdash;... I send you my friend Mr. Horne's
+new epic,<a name="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78"><sup>[78]</sup></a> and beg you, if you have an opportunity, to drop
+it at Mr. Eagles' feet, so that he may pick it up and look
+at it. I have not gone through it (I have another copy),
+but it appears to me to be full of fine things. As to the
+author's fantasy of selling it for a farthing, I do not enter
+into the secret of it&mdash;unless, indeed, he should intend
+a sarcasm on the age's generous patronage of poetry,
+which is possible.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To John Kenyan</i><br />
+June 30, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>Thank you, my dear Mr. Kenyon, for the Camden
+Society books, and also for these which I return; and also
+for the hope of seeing you, which I kept through yesterday.
+I honor Mrs. Coleridge for the readiness of reasoning and
+integrity in reasoning, for the learning, energy, and
+impartiality which she has brought to her purpose, and I
+agree with her in many of her objects; and disagree, by
+opposing her opponents with a fuller front than she is
+always inclined to do. In truth, I can never see anything
+in these sacramental ordinances except a prospective sign
+in one (Baptism), and a memorial sign in the other,
+the Lord's Supper, and could not recognise either under
+any modification as a peculiar instrument of grace, mystery,
+or the like. The tendencies we have towards making
+mysteries of God's simplicities are as marked and sure
+as our missing the actual mystery upon occasion. God's
+love is the true mystery, and the sacraments are only too
+simple for us to understand. So you see I have read the
+book in spite of prophecies. After all I should like to
+cut it in two&mdash;it would be better for being shorter&mdash;and
+it might be clearer also. There is, in fact, some dullness
+and perplexity&mdash;a few passages which are, to my impression,
+contradictory of the general purpose&mdash;something
+which is not generous, about nonconformity&mdash;and what
+I cannot help considering a superfluous tenderness for
+Puseyism. Moreover she is certainly wrong in imagining
+that the ante-Nicene fathers did not as a body teach
+regeneration by baptism&mdash;even Gregory Nazianzen, the most
+spiritual of many, did, and in the fourth century. But,
+after all, as a work of theological controversy it is very
+un-bitter and well-poised, gentle, and modest, and as the
+work of a woman <i>you</i> must admire it and <i>we</i> be proud of
+it&mdash;<i>that</i> remains certain at last.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Mr. Haydon! I am so sorry for his reverse in the
+cartoons.<a name="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79"><sup>[79]</sup></a> It is a thunderbolt to him. I wonder, in the
+pauses of my regret, whether Mr. Selous is <i>your</i> friend&mdash;whether
+'Boadicea visiting the Druids,' suggested by you,
+I think, as a subject, is this victorious 'Boadicea' down
+for a hundred pound prize? You will tell me when you
+come.</p>
+
+<p>I have just heard an uncertain rumour of the arrival
+of your brother. If it is not all air, I congratulate you
+heartily upon a happiness only not past my appreciation.</p>
+
+<p>Ever affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>I send the copy of 'Orion' for <i>yourself</i>, which you asked
+for. It is in the fourth edition.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+July 8, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>Thank you, my dearest Mrs. Martin, for your kind sign
+of interest in the questioning note, although I will not
+praise the <i>stenography</i> of it. I shall be as brief to-day
+as you, not quite out of revenge, but because I have
+been writing to George and am the less prone to activities
+from having caught cold in an inscrutable manner,
+and being stiff and sore from head to foot and inclined to
+be a little feverish and irritable of nerves. No, it is not
+of the slightest consequence; I tell you the truth. But I
+would have written to you the day before yesterday if it
+had not been for this something between cramp and
+rheumatism, which was rather unbearable at first, but
+yesterday was better, and is to-day better than better, and
+to-morrow will leave me quite well, if I may prophesy. I
+only mention it lest you should have upbraided me for
+not answering your note in a moment, as it deserved to be
+answered. So don't put any nonsense into Georgie's head&mdash;forgive
+me for beseeching you! I have been very well&mdash;downstairs
+seven or eight times; lying on the floor in Papa's room;
+meditating <i>the chair</i>, which would have amounted to
+more than a meditation except for this little contrariety.
+In a day or two more, if this cool warmth perseveres in serving
+me, and no Ariel refills me 'with aches,' I shall fulfil your kind
+wishes perhaps and be out&mdash;and so, no more about me!...</p>
+
+<p>Oh, I do believe you think me a Cockney&mdash;a
+metropolitan barbarian! But I persist in seeing no merit
+and no superior innocence in being shut up even in
+precincts of rose-trees, away from those great sources of
+human sympathy and occasions of mental elevation and
+instruction without which many natures grow narrow,
+many others gloomy, and perhaps, if the truth were
+known, very few prosper entirely, lit is not that I, who
+have always lived a good deal in solitude and live in it still
+more now, and love the country even painfully in my
+recollections of it, would decry either one or the other&mdash;solitude
+is most effective in a contrast, and if you do
+not break the bark you cannot bud the tree, and, in short
+(not to be <i>in long</i>), I could write a dissertation, which I will
+spare you, 'about it and about it.' ...</p>
+
+<p>Tell George to lend you&mdash;nay, I think I will be
+generous and let him give you, although the author
+gave me the book&mdash;the copy of the new epic, 'Orion,'
+which he has with him. You have probably observed
+the advertisement, and are properly instructed that Mr.
+Horne the poet, who has sold three editions already at a
+farthing a copy, and is selling a fourth at a shilling, and is
+about to sell a fifth at half a crown (on the precise principle
+of the a&euml;rial machine&mdash;launching himself into popularity
+by a first impulse on the people), is my unknown friend,
+with whom I have corresponded these four years without
+having seen his face. Do you remember the beech leaves
+sent to me from Epping Forest? Yes, you must. Well,
+the sender is the poet, and the poem I think a very noble
+one, and I want you to think so too. So hereby I empower
+you to take it away from George and keep it for my sake&mdash;if
+you will!</p>
+
+<p>Dear Mr. Martin was so kind as to come and see me as
+you commanded, and I must tell you that I thought him
+looking so better than well that I was more than commonly
+glad to see him. Give my love to him, and join me in
+as much metropolitan missionary zeal as will bring you
+both to London for six months of the year. Oh, I wish
+you would come! Not that it is necessary for <i>you</i>, but
+that it will be <i>so</i> good for <i>us</i>.</p>
+
+<p>My ivy is growing, and I have <i>green blinds</i>, against
+which there is an outcry. They say that I do it out of
+envy, and for the equalisation of complexions.</p>
+
+<p>Ever your affectionate,<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: August 1843.<br />
+
+<p>Dear Mr. Westwood,&mdash;I thank you very much for the
+kindness of your questioning, and am able to answer that
+notwithstanding the, as it seems to you, fatal significance of
+a woman's silence, I am alive enough to be sincerely grateful
+for any degree of interest spent upon me. As to Flush,
+he should thank you too, but at the present moment he is
+quite absorbed in finding a cool place in this room to lie
+down in, having sacrificed his usual favorite place at my
+feet, his head upon them, oppressed by the torrid necessity
+of a thermometer above 70. To Flopsy's acquaintance he
+would aspire gladly, only hoping that Flopsy does not
+'delight to bark and bite,' like dogs in general, because
+if he does Flush would as soon be acquainted with a <i>cat</i>, he
+says, for he does not pretend to be a hero. Poor Flush!
+'the bright summer days on which I am ever likely to take
+him out for a ramble over hill and meadow' are never likely
+to shine! But he follows, or rather leaps into my wheeled
+chair, and forswears merrier company even now, to be near
+me. I am a good deal better, it is right to say, and look
+forward to a possible prospect of being better still, though I
+may be shut out from climbing the Brocken otherwise than
+in a vision.</p>
+
+<p>You will see by the length of the 'Legend'<a name="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80"><sup>[80]</sup></a> which I
+send to you (in its only printed form) <i>why</i> I do not send it
+to you in manuscript. Keep the book as long as you please.
+My new volume is not yet in the press, but I am writing
+more and more in a view to it, pleased with the thought that
+some kind hands are already stretched out in welcome
+and acceptance of what it may become. Not as idle as I
+appear, I have also been writing some fugitive verses for
+American magazines. This is my confession. Forgive
+its tediousness, and believe me thankfully and very sincerely
+yours,</p>
+
+<p>ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: September 2, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>Dear Mr. Westwood,&mdash;Your letter comes to remind me
+how much I ought to be ashamed of myself.... I received
+the book in all safety, and read your kind words about my
+'Rosary' with more grateful satisfaction than appears from
+the evidence. It is great pleasure to me to have written for
+such readers, and it is great hope to me to be able to write
+for them. The transcription of the 'Rosary' is a compliment
+which I never anticipated, or you should have had the manuscript
+copy you asked for, although I have not a perfect one
+in my hands. The poem is full of faults, as, indeed, all my
+poems appear to myself to be when I look back upon them
+instead of looking down. I hope to be worthier in poetry
+some day of the generous appreciation which you and your
+friends have paid me in advance.</p>
+
+<p>Tennyson is a great poet, I think, and Browning, the
+author of 'Paracelsus,' has to my mind very noble capabilities.
+Do you know Mr. Horne's 'Orion,' the poem published for
+a farthing, to the wonder of booksellers and bookbuyers who
+could not understand 'the speculation in its eyes?' There
+are very fine things in this poem, and altogether I recommend
+it to your attention. But what is 'wanting' in
+Tennyson? He can think, he can feel, and his language is
+highly expressive, characteristic, and harmonious. I am
+very fond of Tennyson. He makes me thrill sometimes to
+the end of my fingers, as only a true great poet can.</p>
+
+<p>You praise me kindly, and if, indeed, the considerations
+you speak of could be true of me, I am not one who could
+lament having 'learnt in suffering what I taught in song.'
+In any case, working for the future and counting gladly on
+those who are likely to consider any work of mine acceptable
+to themselves, I shall be very sure not to forget my friends
+at Enfield.</p>
+
+<p>Dear Mr. Westwood, I remain sincerely yours,<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+September 4, 1843. Finished September 5.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin, ... I have had a great
+gratification within this week or two in receiving a letter&mdash;nay,
+two letters&mdash;from Miss Martineau, one of the last
+strangers in the world from whom I had any right to expect
+a kindness. Yet most kind, most touching in kindness,
+were both of these letters, so much so that I was not far
+from crying for pleasure as I read them. She is very
+hopelessly ill, you are probably aware, at Tynemouth in
+Northumberland, suffering agonies from internal cancer,
+and conquering occasional repose by the strength of opium,
+but 'almost forgetting' (to use her own words) 'to wish for
+health, in the intense enjoyment of pleasures independent
+of the body.' She sent me a little work of hers called
+'Traditions of Palestine.' Her friends had hoped by the
+stationary character of some symptoms that the disease was
+suspended, but lately it is said to be gaining ground, and
+the serenity and elevation of her mind are more and more
+triumphantly evident as the bodily pangs thicken....</p>
+
+<p>And now I am going to tell you what will surprise you,
+if you do not know it already. Stormie and Georgie are
+passing George's vacation on the Rhine. You are certainly
+surprised if you did not know it. Papa signed and sealed
+them away on the ground of its being good and refreshing
+for both of them, and I was even mixed up a little with the
+diplomacy of it, until I found <i>they were going</i>, and then it
+was a hard, terrible struggle with me to be calm and see
+them go. But <i>that</i> was childish, and when I had heard
+from them at Ostend I grew more satisfied again, and
+attained to think less of the fatal influences of <i>my star</i>.
+They went away in great spirits, Stormie 'quite elated,' to
+use his own words, and then at the end of the six weeks
+they <i>must</i> be at home at Sessions; and no possible way of
+passing the interim could be pleasanter and better and more
+exhilarating for themselves. The plan was to go from
+Ostend by railroad to Brussels and Cologne, then to pass
+down the Rhine to Switzerland, spend a few days at Geneva,
+and a week in Paris as they return. The only fear is that
+Stormie won't go to Paris. We have too many friends there&mdash;a
+strange obstacle.</p>
+
+<p>Dearest Mrs. Martin, I am doing something more than
+writing you a letter, I think.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you all with the most enduring consolations!
+Give my love to Mr. Martin, and believe also, both
+of you, in my sympathy. I am glad that your poor Fanny
+should be so supported. May God bless her and all of
+you!</p>
+
+<p>Dearest Mrs. Martin's affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+
+<p>I am very well for <i>me</i>, and was out in the chair
+yesterday.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+September 8, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;I ask you humbly not to fancy
+me in a passion whenever I happen to be silent. For a
+woman to be silent is ominous, I know, but it need not be
+significant of anything quite so terrible as ill-humour. And
+yet it always happens so; if I do not write I am sure to be
+cross in your opinion. You set me down directly as 'hurt,'
+which means <i>irritable</i>; or 'offended,' which means <i>sulky</i>;
+your ideal of me having, in fact, 'its finger in its eye' all day
+long.</p>
+
+<p>I, on the contrary, humbled as I was by your hard
+criticism of my soft rhymes about Flush,<a name="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81"><sup>[81]</sup></a> waited for Arabel
+to carry a message for me, begging to know whether you
+would care at all to see my 'Cry of the Children'<a name="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82"><sup>[82]</sup></a> before I
+sent it to you. But Arabel went without telling me that
+she was going: twice she went to St. John's Wood and made
+no sign; and now I find myself thrown on my own resources.
+Will you see the 'Cry of the Human'<a name="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83"><sup>[83]</sup></a> or not? It will not
+please you, probably. It wants melody. The versification
+is eccentric to the ear, and the subject (the factory miseries)
+is scarcely an agreeable one to the fancy. Perhaps altogether
+you had better not see it, because I know you think me
+to be deteriorating, and I don't want you to have further
+hypothetical evidence of so false an opinion. Humbled as
+I am, I say 'so false an opinion.' Frankly, if not humbly,
+I believe myself to have gained power since the time of the
+publication of the 'Seraphim,' and lost nothing except happiness.
+Frankly, if not humbly!</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the 'House of Clouds'<a name="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84"><sup>[84]</sup></a> I disagree both
+with you and Miss Mitford, thinking it, comparatively with
+my other poems, neither so bad nor so good as you two
+account it. It has certainly been singled out for great
+praise both at home and abroad, and only the other day
+Mr. Horne wrote to me to reproach me for not having
+mentioned it to him, because he came upon it accidentally
+and considered it 'one of my best productions.' Mr.
+Kenyon holds the same opinion. As for Flush's verses,
+they are what I call cobweb verses, thin and light enough;
+and Arabel was mistaken in telling you that Miss Mitford
+gave the prize to them. Her words were, 'They are as
+tender and true as anything you ever wrote, but nothing is
+equal to the &quot;House of Clouds.&quot;' Those were her words,
+or to that effect, and I refer to them to you, not for the sake
+of Flush's verses, which really do not appear even to myself,
+their writer, worth a defence, but for the sake of <i>your</i> judgment
+of <i>her</i> accuracy in judging.</p>
+
+<p>Lately I have received two letters from the profoundest
+woman thinker in England, Miss Martineau&mdash;letters which
+touched me deeply while they gave me pleasure I did not
+expect.</p>
+
+<p>My poor Flush has fallen into tribulation. Think of
+Catiline, the great savage Cuba bloodhound belonging to
+this house, attempting last night to worry him just as the
+first Catiline did Cicero. Flush was rescued, but not before
+he had been wounded severely: and this morning he is on
+three legs and in great depression of spirits. My poor, poor
+Flushie! He lies on my sofa and looks up to me with most
+pathetic eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Where is Annie? If I send my love to her, will it ever
+be found again?</p>
+
+May God bless you both!<br />
+
+<p>Dearest Mr. Boyd's affectionate and grateful<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Monday, September 19, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>My own dear Friend,&mdash;I should have written instantly
+to explain myself out of appearances which did me injustice,
+only I have been in such distress as to have no courage for
+writing. Flush was stolen away, and for three days I could
+neither sleep nor eat, nor do anything much more rational
+than cry. <i>Confiteor tibi</i>, oh reverend father. And if you
+call me very silly, I am so used to the reproach throughout
+the week as to be hardened to the point of vanity. The
+worst of it is, now, that there will be no need of more
+'Houses of Clouds' to prove to you the deterioration of my
+faculties. Q.E.D.</p>
+
+<p>In my own defence, I really believe that my distress
+arose somewhat less from the mere separation from dear
+little Flushie than from the consideration of how he was
+breaking his heart, cast upon the cruel world. Formerly,
+when he has been prevented from sleeping on my bed he
+has passed the night in moaning piteously, and often he has
+refused to eat from a strange hand. And then he loves me,
+heart to heart; there was no exaggeration in my verses about
+him, if there was no poetry. And when I heard that he cried
+in the street and then vanished, there was little wonder that
+I, on my part, should cry in the house.</p>
+
+<p>With great difficulty we hunted the dog-banditti into
+their caves of the city, and bribed them into giving back
+their victim. Money was the least thing to think of in
+such case; I would have given a thousand pounds if I had
+had them in my hand. The audacity of the wretched men
+was marvellous. They said that they had been 'about
+stealing Flush these two years,' and warned us plainly to
+take care of him for the future.</p>
+
+<p>The joy of the meeting between Flush and me would be
+a good subject for a Greek ode&mdash;I recommend it to you.
+It might take rank next to the epical parting of Hector and
+Andromache. He dashed up the stairs into my room and
+into my arms, where I hugged him and kissed him, black
+as he was&mdash;black as if imbued in a distillation of St. Giles's.
+Ah, I can break jests about it <i>now</i>, you see. Well, to go
+back to the explanations I promised to give you, I must tell
+you that Arabel <i>perfectly forgot</i> to say a word to me about
+'Blackwood' and your wish that I should send the magazine.
+It was only after I heard that you had procured it yourself,
+and after I mentioned this to her, that she remembered her
+omission all at once. Therefore I am quite vexed and
+disappointed, I beg you to believe&mdash;<i>I</i>, who have pleasure
+in giving you any printed verses of mine that you care to have.
+Never mind! I may print another volume before long, and
+lay it at your feet. In the meantime, you <i>endure</i> my 'Cry of
+the Children' better than I had anticipated&mdash;just because I
+never anticipated your being able to read it to the end, and was
+over-delicate of placing it in your hands on that very account.
+My dearest Mr. Boyd, you are right in your complaint against
+the rhythm. The first stanza came into my head in a hurricane,
+and I was obliged to make the other stanzas like it&mdash;<i>that</i>
+is the whole mystery of the iniquity. If you look Mr. Lucas
+from head to foot, you will never find such a rhythm on his
+person. The whole crime of the versification belongs to
+<i>me</i>. So blame <i>me</i>, and by no means another poet, and I
+will humbly confess that I deserve to be blamed in some
+<i>measure</i>. There is a roughness, my own ear being witness,
+and I give up the body of my criminal to the rod of your
+castigation, kissing the last as if it were Flush.</p>
+
+<p>A report runs in London that Mr. Boyd says of
+Elizabeth Barrett: 'She is a person of the most perverted
+judgment in England.' Now, if this be true, I shall not
+mend my evil position in your opinion, my very dear friend,
+by confessing that I differ with you, the more the longer I
+live, on the ground of what you call 'jumping lines.' I am
+speaking not of particular cases, but of the principle, the
+general principle, of these cases, and the tenacity of my
+judgment does not arise from the teaching of 'Mr. Lucas,'
+but from the deeper study of the old master-poets&mdash;English
+poets&mdash;those of the Elizabeth and James ages, before the
+corruption of French rhythms stole in with Waller and
+Denham, and was acclimated into a national inodorousness
+by Dryden and Pope. We differ so much upon this subject
+that we must proceed by agreeing to differ, and end, perhaps,
+by finding it agreeable to differ; there can be no possible
+use in an argument. Only you must be upright in justice,
+and find Wordsworth innocent of misleading me. So far
+from having read him more within these three years, I have
+read him <i>less</i>, and have taken no new review, I do assure
+you, of his position and character as a poet, and these facts
+are testified unto by the other fact that my poetry, neither
+in its best features nor its worst, is adjusted after the fashion
+of his school.</p>
+
+<p>But I am writing too much; you will have no patience
+with me. 'The Excursion' is accused of being lengthy,
+and so you will tell me that I convict myself of plagiarism,
+<i>currente calamo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I have just finished a poem of some eight hundred
+lines, called 'The Vision of Poets,'<a name="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85"><sup>[85]</sup></a> philosophical,
+allegorical&mdash;anything but popular. It is in stanzas, every one
+an octosyllabic triplet, which you will think odd, and I
+have not <i>sanguinity</i> enough to defend.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you, my dearest Mr. Boyd! Yes, I
+heard&mdash;I was glad to hear&mdash;of your having resumed that
+which used to be so great a pleasure to you&mdash;Miss Marcus's
+society. I remain,</p>
+
+<p>Affectionately and gratefully yours,<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>My love to dear Annie.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+October 1843.<br />
+
+<p>You are probably right in respect to Tennyson, for
+whom, with all my admiration of him, I would willingly
+secure more exaltation and a broader clasping of truth.
+Still, it is not possible to have so much beauty without a
+certain portion of truth, the position of the Utilitarians being
+true in the inverse. But I think as I did of 'uses' and
+'responsibilities,' and do hold that the poet is a preacher
+and must look to his doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>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,<a name="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86"><sup>[86]</sup></a> which very deeply affected
+me.</p>
+
+<p>Take away the last stanzas, which should be applied
+more definitely to the <i>body</i>, 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.
+<i>Then</i> 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 <i>dreamed</i>, however, for me&mdash;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, <i>is</i> as far as we can stretch out
+our hands.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: December 26, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>Dear Mr. Westwood,&mdash;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.'</p>
+
+<p>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
+<i>even</i> 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 <i>more knowledge</i>, as a stronger
+apprehension, by the faith and affections, of what we already
+know.</p>
+
+<p>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....<a name="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87"><sup>[87]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>It is such a lovely <i>May</i> day, that I am afraid of breaking
+the spell by writing down Christmas wishes.</p>
+
+<p>Very faithfully yours,<br />
+ELIZABETH BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: December 31, 1843.<br />
+
+<p>If you do find the paper I was invited to write upon
+Wordsworth<a name="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88"><sup>[88]</sup></a>, 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 <i>will</i> be a blind admirer of Wordsworth's. I <i>will</i> shut my
+eyes and be blind. Better so, than see too well for the
+thankfulness which is his due from me....</p>
+
+<p>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,'<a name="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89"><sup>[89]</sup></a> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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....</p>
+
+<p>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....</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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....</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And what are you doing? Writing&mdash;reading&mdash;or
+musing of either? Are you a reviewer-man&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you, &amp;c. &amp;c.<br />
+ELIZABETH BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+[Undated.]<br />
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p><i>This</i> is a fact. And to this extent has the art, once
+called divine, been desecrated among the educated classes
+of our country.</p>
+
+<p>Very sincerely yours,<br />
+ELIZABETH BARRETT.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>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&mdash;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.<a name="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90"><sup>[90]</sup></a> 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.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="CHAPTER_IV"></a><h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<h3>1844-46</h3>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<p>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&mdash;no one
+with the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' in his mind can
+affirm so much as that&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>'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 &quot;The First Day's
+Exile from Eden&quot;&mdash;or rather it fell upon me, and beset me
+till I would finish it.'<a name="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91"><sup>[91]</sup></a></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+January 8, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>these</i> have a double association....</p>
+
+<p>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
+<i>spending</i> 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&mdash;very. Should you suppose that four
+hundred pounds in Vienna go as far as a thousand in
+England? I should never have fancied it.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But shall you not be coming&mdash;setting out&mdash;very soon,
+before I can write again?</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To John Kenyan</i><br />
+[?January 1844.]<br />
+
+<p>I am so sorry, dear Mr. Kenyon, to hear&mdash;which I did,
+last night, for the first time&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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 '<i>only fault</i>,' 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.</p>
+
+<p>I do hope, dear Mr. Kenyon, soon to hear that you are
+better&mdash;and well&mdash;and that your course of prophecy may
+not run smooth all through next week.</p>
+
+<p>Very truly yours,<br />
+E. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+Saturday.<br />
+<i>To John Kenyon</i><br />
+Saturday night [about March 1844].<br />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>I wrote all this to begin with, hesitating how else to
+begin. My very dear and kind friend, you understand&mdash;do
+you not?&mdash;through an expression which, whether written or
+spoken, must remain imperfect, to what deep, full feeling
+of gratitude your kindness has moved me.<a name="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92"><sup>[92]</sup></a> 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&mdash;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&mdash;<i>that</i> is
+another question; but I shall not fail, to begin with, and
+<i>that</i> I owe to <i>you</i>, 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&mdash;no, 'troubled' is not the word for your kindness!&mdash;and
+remember, as I shall do, the great good you have done me.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you, my dear cousin.</p>
+
+<p>Affectionately yours always,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>This note is not to be answered.</p>
+
+<p>I am thinking of writing to Moxon, as there does not
+seem much to arrange. The type and size of Tennyson's
+books seem, upon examination, to suit my purpose
+excellently.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To John Kenyan</i><br />
+March 21, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>No, you never sent me back Miss Martineau's letter, my
+dear cousin; but you will be sure, or rather Mr. Crabb
+Robinson will, to find it in some too safe a place;
+and then I shall have it. In the meantime here are
+the other letters back again. You will think that I was
+keeping them for a deposit, a security, till I 'had my
+ain again,' but I have only been idle and busy together.
+They are the most interesting that can be, and have
+quite delighted me. By the way, <i>I</i>, who saw nothing to
+object to in the 'Life in the Sick Room,' object very much
+to her argument in behalf of it&mdash;an argument certainly
+founded on a miserable misapprehension of the special
+doctrine referred to in her letter. There is nothing so
+elevating and ennobling to the nature and mind of man as
+the view which represents it raised into communion with
+God Himself, by the justification and purification of God
+Himself. Plato's dream brushed by the gate of this doctrine
+when it walked highest, and won for him the title of 'Divine.'
+That it is vulgarised sometimes by narrow-minded teachers
+in theory, and by hypocrites in action, might be an
+argument (if admitted at all) against all truth, poetry, and
+music!</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, I was glad to see the leaning on the
+Education question; in which all my friends the Dissenters
+did appear to me so painfully wrong and so unworthily wrong
+at once.</p>
+
+<p>And Southey's letters! I did quite delight in <i>them</i>!
+They are more <i>personal</i> than any I ever saw of his; and
+have more warm every-day life in them.</p>
+
+<p>The particular Paul Pry in question (to come down to
+<i>my</i> life) never 'intrudes.' It is his peculiarity. And I put
+the stop exactly where I was bid; and was going to put
+Gabriel's speech,<a name="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93"><sup>[93]</sup></a> only&mdash;with the pen in my hand to
+do it&mdash;I found that the angel was a little too exclamatory
+altogether, and that he had cried out, 'O ruined earth!' and
+'O miserable angel!' just before, approaching to the habit of
+a mere caller of names. So I altered the passage otherwise;
+taking care of your full stop after 'despair.' Thank you, my
+dear Mr. Kenyon.</p>
+
+<p>Also I sent enough manuscript for the first sheet, and a
+note to Moxon yesterday, last night, thanking him for
+his courtesy about Leigh Hunt's poems; and following
+your counsel in every point. 'Only last night,' you will
+say! But I have had <i>such</i> a headache&mdash;and some very
+painful vexation in the prospect of my maid's leaving me,
+who has been with me throughout my illness; so that
+I am much attached to her, with the best reasons for being
+so, while the idea of a stranger is scarcely tolerable to me
+under my actual circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>The 'Palm Leaves'<a name="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94"><sup>[94]</sup></a> are full of strong thought and good
+thought&mdash;thought expressed excellently well; but of poetry, in
+the true sense, and of imagination in any, I think them bare
+and cold&mdash;somewhat wintry leaves to come from the East,
+surely, surely!</p>
+
+<p>May the change of air be rapid in doing you good&mdash;the
+weather seems to be softening on purpose for you. May
+God bless you, dear Mr. Kenyon; I never can thank you
+enough. When you return I shall be rustling my 'proofs'
+about you, to prove my faith in your kindness.</p>
+
+<p>Ever affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+March 22, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mr. Boyd,&mdash;I heard that once I wrote three
+times too long a letter to you; I am aware that nine
+times too long a silence is scarcely the way to make up
+for it. Forgive me, however, as far as you can, for every
+sort of fault. When I once begin to write to you, I do
+not know how to stop; and I have had so much to do
+lately as scarcely to know how to begin to write to you.
+<i>Hence these</i> faults&mdash;not quite tears&mdash;in spite of my penitence
+and the quotation.</p>
+
+<p>At last my book is in the press. My great poem (in
+the modest comparative sense), my 'Masque of Exile' (as
+I call it at last<a name="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95"><sup>[95]</sup></a>), consists of some nineteen hundred or
+two thousand lines, and I call it 'Masque of <i>Exile</i>' because
+it refers to Lucifer's exile, and to that other mystical exile
+of the Divine Being which was the means of the return
+homewards of my Adam and Eve. After the exultation
+of boldness of composition, I fell into one of my deepest
+fits of despondency, and at last, at the end of most painful
+vacillations, determined not to print it. Never was a
+manuscript so near the fire as my 'Masque' was. I had
+not even the instinct of applying for help to anybody.
+In the midst of this Mr. Kenyon came in by accident,
+and asked about my poem. I told him that I had given
+it up, despairing of my republic. In the kindest way he
+took it into his hands, and proposed to carry it home and
+read it, and tell me his impression. 'You know,' he said,
+'I have a prejudice against these sacred subjects for poetry,
+but then I have another prejudice <i>for you</i>, and one may
+neutralise the other.' The next day I had a letter from him
+with the returned manuscript&mdash;a letter which I was absolutely
+certain, before I opened it, would counsel <i>against</i> the
+publication. On the contrary! His impression is clearly in
+favour of the poem, and, while he makes sundry criticisms
+on minor points, he considers it very superior as a whole to
+anything I ever did before&mdash;more sustained, and fuller in
+power. So my nerves are braced, and I grow a man again;
+and the manuscript, as I told you, is in the press. Moreover,
+you will be surprised to hear that I think of bringing
+out <i>two volumes of poems</i> instead of one, by advice of Mr.
+Moxon, the publisher. Also, the Americans have commanded
+an American edition, to come out in numbers, either a little
+before or simultaneously with the English one, and provided with
+a separate preface for themselves.</p>
+
+<p>There now! I have told you all this, knowing your
+kindness, and that you will care to hear of it.</p>
+
+<p>It has given me the greatest concern to hear of dear
+Annie's illness, and I do hope, both for your sake and for
+all our sakes, that we may have better news of her before
+long.</p>
+
+<p>But I don't mean to fall into another scrape to-day by
+writing too much. May God bless you, my very dear
+friend!</p>
+
+<p>I am ever your affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+April I, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;Your kind letter I was delighted
+to receive. You mistake a good deal the capacities in
+judgment of 'the man.'<a name="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96"><sup>[96]</sup></a> The 'man' is highly refined in his
+tastes, and leaning to the classical (I was going to say to
+<i>your</i> classical, only suddenly I thought of Ossian) a good
+deal more than I do. He has written satires in the manner
+of Pope, which admirers of Pope have praised warmly and
+deservedly. If I had hesitated about the conclusiveness of
+his judgments, it would have been because of his confessed
+indisposition towards subjects religious and ways mystical,
+and his occasional insufficient indulgence for rhymes and
+rhythms which he calls '<i>Barrettian</i>.' But these things
+render his favourable inclination towards my 'Drama of
+Exile' still more encouraging (as you will see) to my hopes
+for it.</p>
+
+<p>Still, I do tremble a good deal inwardly when I come to
+think of what your own thoughts of my poem, and poems
+in their two-volume development, may finally be. I am
+afraid of you. You will tell me the truth as it appears to
+you&mdash;upon <i>that</i> I may rely; and I should not wish you to
+suppress a single disastrous thought for the sake of the
+unpleasantness it may occasion to me. My own faith is
+that I have made progress since 'The Seraphim,' only it is
+too possible (as I confess to myself and you) that your
+opinion may be exactly contrary to it.</p>
+
+<p>You are very kind in what you say about wishing to
+have some conversation, as the medium of your information
+upon architecture, with Octavius&mdash;Occy, as we call him.
+He is very much obliged to you, and proposes, if it should
+not be inconvenient to you, to call upon you on Friday,
+with Arabel, at about one o'clock. Friday is mentioned
+because it is a holiday, no work being done at Mr. Barry's.
+Otherwise he is engaged every day (except, indeed, Sunday)
+from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon. May
+God bless you, dearest Mr. Boyd. I am ever</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+April 16, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>... Surely, surely, it was not likely I should lean to
+utilitarianism in the notice on Carlyle, as I remember the
+writer of that article leans somewhere&mdash;<i>I</i>, who am reproached
+with trans-trans-transcendentalisms, and not without reason,
+or with insufficient reason.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, and I should say also that Mr. Home, in his
+kindness, has enlarged considerably in his annotations and
+reflections on me personally.<a name="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97"><sup>[97]</sup></a> My being in correspondence
+with all the Kings of the East, for instance, is an exaggeration,
+although literary work in one way will bring with it,
+happily, literary association in others.... Still, I am not a
+great letter writer, and I don't write 'elegant Latin verses,'
+as all the gods of Rome know, and I have not been shut
+up in the dark for seven years by any manner of means.
+By the way, a barrister said to my barrister brother the
+other day, 'I suppose your sister is dead?' 'Dead?' said
+he, a little struck; 'dead?' 'Why, yes. After Mr. Home's
+account of her being sealed up hermetically in the dark
+for so many years, one can only calculate upon her being
+dead by this time.'</p>
+
+<p>ELIZABETH BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>Several of the letters to Mr. Boyd which follow refer to
+that celebrated gift of Cyprus wine which led to the
+composition of one of Miss Barrett's best known and most
+quoted poems.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+June 18, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>Thank you, my very dear friend! I write to you drunk
+with Cyprus. Nothing can be worthier of either gods or
+demi-gods; and if, as you say, Achilles did not drink of it,
+I am sorry for him. I suppose Jupiter had it instead, just
+then&mdash;Hebe pouring it, and Juno's ox-eyes bellowing their
+splendour at it, if you will forgive me that broken metaphor,
+for the sake of Aeschylus's genius, and my own particular
+intoxication.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, there <i>never was</i>, in modern days, such wine.
+Flush, to whom I offered the last drop in my glass, felt it
+was supernatural, and ran away. I have an idea that if he
+had drunk that drop, he would have talked afterwards&mdash;either
+Greek or English.</p>
+
+<p>Never was such wine! The very taste of ideal nectar,
+only stiller, from keeping. If the bubbles of eternity were
+on it, <i>we</i> should run away, perhaps, like Flush.</p>
+
+<p>Still, the thought comes to me, ought I to take it from
+you? Is it right of me? are you not too kind in sending
+it? and should you be allowed to be too kind? In any
+case, you must, not think of sending me more than you
+have already sent. It is more than enough, and I am not
+less than very much obliged to you.</p>
+
+<p>I have passed the middle of my second volume, and I
+only hope that critics may say of the rest that it smells of
+Greek wine. Dearest Mr. Boyd's</p>
+
+<p>Ever affectionate<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+June 28, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mr. Westwood,&mdash;I have certainly and considerably
+increased the evidence of my own death by the
+sepulchral silence of the last few days. But after all I am
+not dead, not even <i>at heart</i>, so as to be insensible to your
+kind anxiety, and I can assure you of this, upon very fair
+authority, neither is the book dead yet. It has turned the
+corner of the <i>felo de se</i>, and if it is to die, it will be by the
+critics. The mystery of the long delay, it would not be
+very easy for me to explain, notwithstanding I hear Mr.
+Moxon says: 'I suppose Miss Barrett is not in a hurry
+about her publication;' and <i>I</i> say: 'I suppose Moxon is
+not in a hurry about the publication.' There may be a
+little fault on my side, when I have kept a proof a day
+beyond the hour, or when 'copy' has put out new buds
+in my hands as I passed it to the printer's. Still, in my
+opinion, it is a good deal more the fault of Mr. Moxon's
+not being in a hurry, than in the excessive virtue of my
+patience, or vice of my indolence. Miss Mitford says, as
+you do, that she never heard of so slow-footed a book.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street:<br />
+Wednesday, August I, 1844 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;Have you expected to hear from
+me? and are you vexed with me? I am a little ambitious
+of the first item&mdash;yet hopeful of an escape from the last.
+If you did but know how I am pressed for time, and how
+I have too much to do every day, you would forgive me
+for my negligence; even if you had sent me nectar instead
+of mountain,<a name="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98"><sup>[98]</sup></a> and I had neglected laying my gratitude at
+your feet. Last Saturday, upon its being discovered that
+my first volume consisted of only 208 pages, and my second
+of 280 pages, Mr. Moxon uttered a cry of reprehension,
+and wished to tear me to pieces by his printers, as the
+Bacchantes did Orpheus. Perhaps you might have heard
+my head moaning all the way to St. John's Wood! He
+wanted to tear away several poems from the end of the
+second volume, and tie them on to the end of the first!
+I could not and would not hear of this, because I had set
+my mind on having 'Dead Pan' to conclude with. So
+there was nothing for it but to finish a ballad poem called
+'Lady Geraldine's Courtship,' which was lying by me, and
+I did so by writing, i.e. composing, <i>one hundred and forty
+lines last Saturday!</i><a name="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99"><sup>[99]</sup></a> I seemed to be in a dream all day!
+Long lines too&mdash;with fifteen syllables in each! I see you
+shake your head all this way off. Moreover it is a 'romance
+of the age,' treating of railroads, routes, and all manner of
+'temporalities,' and in so radical a temper that I expect
+to be reproved for it by the Conservative reviews round.
+By the way, did I tell you of the good news I had from
+America the third of this month? The 'Drama of Exile' is
+in the hands of a New York publisher; and having been
+submitted to various chief critics of the country on its way,
+was praised loudly and extravagantly. This was, however,
+by a <i>private reading</i> only. A bookseller at Philadelphia
+had announced it for publication&mdash;he intended to take
+it up when the English edition reached America; but
+upon its being represented to him that the New York
+publisher had proof sheets direct from the author and would
+give copy money, he abandoned his intention to the other.
+I confess I feel very much pleased at the kind spirit&mdash;the
+spirit of eager kindness indeed&mdash;with which the Americans
+receive my poetry. It is not wrong to be pleased, I hope.
+In this country there may be mortifications waiting for me;
+quite enough to keep my modesty in a state of cultivation.
+I do not know. I hope the work will be out this week,
+and <i>then</i>! Did I explain to you that what 'Lady Geraldine's
+Courtship' was wanted for was to increase the size of the
+first volume, so as to restore the equilibrium of volumes,
+without dislocating 'Pan'? Oh, how anxious I shall be to
+hear your opinion! If you tell me that I have lost
+my intellects, what in the world shall I do <i>then</i>&mdash;what
+<i>shall</i> I do? My Americans&mdash;that is, my Americans
+who were in at the private reading, and perhaps I myself&mdash;are
+of opinion that I have made great progress since 'The Seraphim.'
+It seems to me that I have more <i>reach</i>, whether in thought
+or language. But then, to <i>you</i> it may appear quite otherwise,
+and I shall be very melancholy if it does. Only you must tell me
+the <i>precise truth</i>; and I trust to you that you will let me
+have it in its integrity.</p>
+
+<p>All the life and strength which are in me, seem to have
+passed into my poetry. It is my <i>pou sto</i>&mdash;not to move the
+world; but to live on in.</p>
+
+<p>I must not forget to tell you that there is a poem towards
+the end of the second volume, called 'Cyprus Wine,' which
+I have done myself the honor and pleasure of associating
+with your name. I thought that you would not be displeased
+by it, as a proof of grateful regard from me.</p>
+
+<p>Talking of wines, the Mountain has its attraction, but
+certainly is not to be compared to the Cyprus. You will
+see how I have praised the latter. Well, now I must say
+'good-bye,' which you will praise <i>me</i> for!</p>
+
+<p>Dearest Mr. Boyd's affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>P.S.&mdash;<i>Nota bene</i>&mdash;I wish to forewarn you that I have cut
+away in the text none of my vowels by apostrophes. When
+I say 'To efface,' wanting two-syllable measure, I do not
+write 'T' efface' as in the old fashion, but 'To efface' full
+length. This is the style of the day. Also you will find
+me a little lax perhaps in metre&mdash;a freedom which is
+the result not of carelessness, but of <i>conviction</i>, and
+indeed of much patient study of the great Fathers of
+English poetry&mdash;not meaning Mr. Pope. Be as patient
+with me as you can. You shall have the volumes as soon
+as they are ready.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+August 6, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;I cannot be certain, from my
+recollections, whether I did or did not write to you before,
+as you suggest; but as you never received the letter and I
+was in a continual press of different thoughts, the probability
+is that I did not write. The Cyprus wine in the second
+vial I certainly <i>did</i> receive; and was grateful to you with
+the whole force of the aroma of it. And now I will tell
+you an anecdote.</p>
+
+<p>In the excess of my filial tenderness, I poured out a
+glass for papa, and offered it to him with my right hand.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>What is this</i>?' said he.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Taste it</i>,' said I as laconically, but with more emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>He raised it to his lips; and, after a moment, recoiled,
+with such a face as sinned against Adam's image, and with
+a shudder of deep disgust.</p>
+
+<p>'Why,' he said, 'what most beastly and nauseous thing
+is this? Oh,' he said, 'what detestable drug is this? Oh,
+oh,' he said, 'I shall never, never, get this horrible taste
+out of my mouth.'</p>
+
+<p>I explained with the proper degree of dignity that 'it
+was Greek wine, Cyprus wine, and of very great value.'</p>
+
+<p>He retorted with acrimony, that 'it might be Greek,
+twice over; but that it was exceedingly beastly.'</p>
+
+<p>I resumed, with persuasive argument, that 'it could
+scarcely be beastly, inasmuch as the taste reminded one
+of oranges and orange flower together, to say nothing of
+the honey of Mount Hymettus.'</p>
+
+<p>He took me up with stringent logic, 'that any wine
+must positively be beastly, which, pretending to be wine,
+tasted sweet as honey, and that it was beastly on my own
+showing!' I send you this report as an evidence of a
+curious opinion. But drinkers of port wine cannot be
+expected to judge of nectar&mdash;and I hold your 'Cyprus' to
+be pure nectar.</p>
+
+<p>I shall have pleasure in doing what you ask me to do&mdash;that
+is, I <i>will</i>&mdash;if you promise never to call me Miss Barrett
+again. You have often quite vexed me by it. There is
+Ba&mdash;Elizabeth&mdash;Elzbeth&mdash;Ellie&mdash;any modification of my
+name you may call me by&mdash;but I won't be called Miss
+Barrett by <i>you</i>. Do you understand? Arabel means to
+carry your copy of my book to you. And I beg you not
+to fancy that I shall be impatient for you to read the two
+volumes through. If you <i>ever</i> read them through, it will
+be a sufficient compliment, and indeed I do not expect that
+you <i>ever will</i>.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you, dearest Mr. Boyd.</p>
+
+<p>I remain,</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate and grateful<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>The date of this last letter marks, as nearly as need be,
+the date of publication of Miss Barrett's volumes. The
+letters which follow deal mainly with their reception, first
+at the hand of friends, and then by the regular critics. The
+general verdict of the latter was extremely complimentary.
+Mr. Chorley, in the 'Athenaeum,'<a name="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100"><sup>[100]</sup></a> described the volumes
+as 'extraordinary,' adding that 'between her [Miss Barrett's]
+poems and the slighter lyrics of most of the sisterhood, there
+is all the difference which exists between the putting-on of
+&quot;singing robes&quot; for altar service, and the taking up lute or
+harp to enchant an indulgent circle of friends and kindred.'
+In the 'Examiner,'<a name="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101"><sup>[101]</sup></a> John Forster declared that 'Miss
+Barrett is an undoubted poetess of a high and fine order as
+regards the first requisites of her art&mdash;imagination and
+expression.... She is a most remarkable writer, and her
+volumes contain not a little which the lovers of poetry will
+never willingly let die,' a phrase then not quite so hackneyed
+as it has since become. The 'Atlas'<a name="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102"><sup>[102]</sup></a> asserted that 'the
+present volumes show extraordinary powers, and, abating the
+failings of which all the followers of Tennyson are guilty,
+extraordinary genius.' More influential even than these,
+'Blackwood'<a name="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103"><sup>[103]</sup></a> paid her the compliment of a whole article,
+criticising her faults frankly, but declaring that 'her poetical
+merits infinitively outweigh her defects. Her genius is
+profound, unsullied, and without a flaw.' All agreed in
+assigning her a high, or the highest, place among the
+poetesses of England; but, as Miss Barrett herself pointed
+out, this, in itself, was no great praise.<a name="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104"><sup>[104]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>With regard to individual poems, the critics did not take
+kindly to the 'Drama of Exile,' and 'Blackwood' in particular
+criticised it at considerable length, calling it 'the least
+successful of her works.' The subject, while half challenging
+comparison with Milton, lends itself only too readily to
+fancifulness and unreality, which were among the most
+besetting sins of Miss Barrett's genius. The minor poems
+were incomparably more popular, and the favourite of all
+was that masterpiece of rhetorical sentimentality, 'Lady
+Geraldine's Courtship.' It must have been a little mortifying
+to the authoress to find this piece, a large part of
+which had been dashed off at a single heat in order to
+supply the printers' needs, preferred to others on which she
+had employed all the labour of her deliberate art; but
+with the general tone of all the critics she had every reason
+to be as content as her letters show her to have been. Only
+two criticisms rankled: the one that she was a follower of
+Tennyson, the other that her rhymes were slovenly and careless.
+And these appeared, in varying shapes, in nearly all
+the reviews.</p>
+
+<p>The former of these allegations is of little weight.
+Whatever qualities Miss Barrett may have shared with
+Tennyson, her substantial independence is unquestionable.
+It is a case rather of coincidence than imitation; or if
+imitation, it is of a slight and unconscious kind. The second
+criticism deserves fuller notice, because it is constantly
+repeated to this day. The following letters show how
+strongly Miss Barrett protested against it. As she told
+Horne,<a name="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105"><sup>[105]</sup></a> with reference to this very subject:</p>
+
+<blockquote>'If I fail ultimately before the public&mdash;that is, before the people&mdash;for
+an ephemeral popularity does not appear to me to be
+worth trying for&mdash;it will not be because I have shrunk from
+the amount of labour, where labour could do anything. I
+have <i>worked</i> at poetry; it has not been with me reverie, but
+art.'
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>That her rhymes were inexact, especially in such
+poems as 'The Dead Pan,' she did not deny; but her
+defence was that the inexactness was due to a deliberate
+attempt to widen the artistic capabilities of the English
+language. Partly, perhaps, as a result of her acquaintance
+with Italian literature, she had a marked fondness for
+disyllabic rhymes; and since pure rhymes of this kind are
+not plentiful in English, she tried the experiment of using
+assonances instead. Hence such rhymes as <i>silence</i> and
+<i>islands</i>, <i>vision</i> and <i>procession</i>,
+<i>panther</i> and <i>saunter</i>, examples
+which could be indefinitely multiplied if need were. Now
+it may be that a writer with a very sensitive ear would not
+have attempted such an experiment, and it is a fact that public
+taste has not approved it; but the experiment itself is as
+legitimate as, say, the metrical experiments in hexameters
+and hendecasyllabics of Longfellow or Tennyson, and
+whether approved or not it should be criticised as an
+experiment, not as mere carelessness. That Mrs. Browning's
+ear was quite-capable of discerning true rhymes is shown by
+the fact that she tacitly abandoned her experiment in
+assonances. Not only in the pure and high art of the
+'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' but even in 'Casa Guidi
+Windows,' the rhetorical and sometimes colloquial tone of
+which might have been thought to lend itself to such
+devices, imperfect rhymes occur but rarely not exceeding
+the limits allowed to himself by every poet who has rhymed
+<i>given</i> and <i>heaven</i>; and the roll of those who have
+<i>not</i> done so must be small indeed.</p>
+
+<p>The point has seemed worth dwelling on, because it
+touches a commonplace of criticism as regards Mrs. Browning;
+but we may now make way for her own comments on
+her critics and friends.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Tuesday, August 13, 1844 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;I must thank you for the great
+kindness with which you have responded to a natural
+expression of feeling on my part, and for all the pleasure of
+finding you pleased with the inscription of 'Cyprus Wine.'
+Your note has given me much true pleasure. Yes; if my
+verses survive me, I should wish them to relate the fact of
+my being your debtor for many happy hours.</p>
+
+<p>And now I must explain to you that most of the 'incorrectnesses'
+you speak of may be 'incorrectnesses,' but are not
+<i>negligences</i>. I have a theory about double rhymes for
+which&mdash;I shall be attacked by the critics, but which I could
+justify perhaps on high authority, or at least analogy. In
+fact, these volumes of mine have more double rhymes than
+any two books of English poems that ever to my knowledge
+were printed; I mean of English poems <i>not comic</i>. Now,
+of double rhymes in use, which are perfect rhymes, you are
+aware how few there are, and yet you are also aware of
+what an admirable effect in making a rhythm various and
+vigorous, double rhyming is in English poetry. Therefore
+I have used a certain licence; and after much thoughtful
+study of the Elizabethan writers, have ventured it with the
+public. And do <i>you</i> tell me, <i>you</i> who object to the use of
+a different <i>vowel</i> in a double rhyme, <i>why</i> you rhyme (as
+everybody does, without blame from anybody) 'given' to
+'heaven,' when you object to my rhyming 'remember' and
+'chamber'? The analogy surely is all on my side, and I
+<i>believe</i> that the spirit of the English language is also.</p>
+
+<p>I write all this because you will find many other sins
+of the sort, besides those in the 'Cyprus Wine;' and
+because I wish you to consider the subject as <i>a point for
+consideration</i> seriously, and not to blame me as a writer of
+careless verses. If I deal too much in licences, it is not
+because I am idle, but because I am speculative for freedom's
+sake. It is possible, you know, to be wrong conscientiously;
+and I stand up for my conscience only.</p>
+
+<p>I thank you earnestly for your candour hitherto, and I
+beseech you to be candid to the end.</p>
+
+It is tawny as Rhea's lion.<br />
+
+<p>I know (although you don't say so) you object to that
+line. Yet consider its structure. Does not the final 'y' of
+'tawny' suppose an apostrophe and apocope? Do you not
+run 'tawny as' into two syllables naturally? I want you to
+see my principle.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to blank verse, the great Fletcher admits
+sometimes seventeen syllables into his lines.</p>
+
+<p>I hope Miss Heard received her copy, and that you will
+not think me arrogant in writing freely to you.</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, I write only freely and not arrogantly; and
+I am impressed with the conviction that my work abounds
+with far more faults than you in your kindness will discover,
+notwithstanding your acumen.</p>
+
+<p>Always your affectionate and grateful<br />
+ELIBET.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Wednesday, August 14, 1844 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mr. Boyd,&mdash;I must thank you for the great
+great pleasure with which I have this moment read your
+note, the more welcome, as (without hypocrisy) I had
+worked myself up into a nervous apprehension, from your
+former one, that I should seem so 'rudis atque incomposita'
+to you, in consequence of certain licences, as to end by
+being intolerable. I know what an ear you have, and how
+you can hear the dust on the wheel as it goes on. Well, I
+wrote to you yesterday, to beg you to be patient and considerate.</p>
+
+<p>But you are always given to surprise me with abundant
+kindness&mdash;with supererogatory kindness. I believe in <i>that</i>,
+certainly.</p>
+
+<p>I am very very glad that you think me stronger and
+more perspicuous. For the perspicuity, I have struggled
+hard....</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate and grateful<br />
+ELZBETH.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: August 22, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>... Thank you for your welcome letter, so kind in its
+candour, <i>I</i> angry that you should prefer 'The Seraphim'!
+Angry? No <i>indeed, indeed</i>, I am grateful for 'The Seraphim,'
+and not exacting for the 'Drama,' and all the more because
+of a secret obstinate persuasion that the 'Drama' will have
+a majority of friends in the end, and perhaps deserve to have
+them. Nay, why should I throw perhapses over my own
+impressions, and be insincere to you who have honoured
+me by being sincere? Why should I dissemble my own
+belief that the 'Drama' is worth two or three 'Seraphims'&mdash;<i>my
+own</i> belief, you know, which is worth nothing, writers
+knowing themselves so superficially, and having such a
+natural leaning to their last work. Still, I may say honestly
+to you, that I have a far more modest value for 'The Seraphim'
+than your kindness suggests, and that I have seemed to
+myself to have a clear insight into the fact that that poem
+was only borne up by the minor poems published with it,
+from immediate destruction. There is a want of unity in it
+which vexes me to think of, and the other faults magnify
+themselves day by day, more and more, in my eyes. Therefore
+it is not that I care <i>more</i> for the 'Drama,' but I care
+less for 'The Seraphim.' Both poems fall short of my
+aspiration and desire, but the 'Drama' seems to me fuller,
+freer and stronger, and worth the other three times over.
+If it has anything new, I think it must be something new
+into which I have lived, for certainly I wrote it sincerely and
+from an inner impulse. In fact, I never wrote any poem
+with so much sense of pleasure in the composition, and so
+rapidly, with continuous flow&mdash;from fifty to a hundred lines
+a day, and quite in a glow of pleasure and impulse all
+through. Still, you have not been used to see me in blank
+verse, and there may be something in that. That the poem
+is full of faults and imperfections I do not in the least doubt.
+I have vibrated between exultations and despondencies in
+the correcting and printing of it, though the composition
+went smoothly to an end, and I am prepared to receive the
+bastinado to the critical degree, I do assure you. The few
+opinions I have yet had are all to the effect that my advance
+on the former publication is very great and obvious, but
+then I am aware that people who thought exactly the
+contrary would be naturally backward in giving me their
+opinion.... Indeed, I thank you most earnestly. Truth
+and kindness, how rarely do they come together! I am
+very grateful to you. It is curious that 'Duchess May' is
+not a favorite of mine, and that I have sighed one or two
+secret wishes towards its extirpation, but other writers
+besides yourself have singled it out for praise in private
+letters to me. There has been no printed review yet, I
+believe; and when I think of them, I try to think of something
+else, for with no private friends among the critical
+body (not that I should desire to owe security in such a
+matter to private friendship) it is awful enough, this looking
+forward to be reviewed. Never mind, the ultimate prosperity
+of the book lies far above the critics, and can neither
+be mended nor made nor unmade by <i>them</i>.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To John Kenyan</i><br />
+Wednesday morning [August 1844].<br />
+
+<p>I return Mr. Chorley's<a name="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106"><sup>[106]</sup></a> note, my dear cousin, with
+thankful thoughts of him&mdash;as of you. I wish I could persuade
+you of the rightness of my view about 'Essays on
+Mind' and such things, and how the difference between them
+and my present poems is not merely the difference between
+two schools, as you seemed to intimate yesterday, nor even
+the difference between immaturity and maturity; but that
+it is the difference between the dead and the living, between
+a copy and an individuality, between what is myself and
+what is not myself. To you who have a personal interest
+and&mdash;may I say? affection for me, the girl's exercise assumes
+a factitious value, but to the public the matter is otherwise
+and ought to be otherwise. And for the 'psychological'
+side of the question, <i>do</i> observe that I have not reputation
+enough to suggest a curiosity about <i>my legends</i>. Instead of
+your 'legendary lore,' it would be just a legendary bore.
+Now you understand what I mean. I do not underrate
+Pope nor his school, but I <i>do</i> disesteem everything which,
+bearing the shape of a book, is not the true expression of a
+mind, and I know and feel (and so do <i>you</i>) that a girl's
+exercise written when all the experience lay in books, and
+the mind was suited rather for intelligence than production,
+lying like an infant's face with an undeveloped expression,
+must be valueless in itself, and if offered to the public
+directly or indirectly as a work of mine, highly injurious to
+me. Why, of the 'Prometheus' volume, even, you know what
+I think and desire. 'The Seraphim,' with all its feebleness
+and shortcomings and obscurities, yet is the first utterance
+of my own individuality, and therefore the only volume
+except the last which is not a disadvantage to me to have
+thought of, and happily for me, the early books, never
+having been advertised, nor reviewed, except by accident,
+once or twice, are as safe from the public as manuscript.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, I shudder to think of the lines which might have
+been 'nicked in,' and all through Mr. Chorley's good nature.
+As if I had not sins enough to ruin me in the new poems,
+without reviving juvenile ones, sinned when I knew no
+better. Perhaps you would like to have the series of epic
+poems which I wrote from nine years old to eleven. They
+might illustrate some doctrine of innate ideas, and enrich
+(to that end) the myths of metaphysicians.</p>
+
+<p>And also agree with me in reverencing that wonderful
+genius <i>Keats</i>, who, rising as a grand exception from among
+the vulgar herd of juvenile versifiers, was an individual <i>man</i>
+from the beginning, and spoke with his own voice, though
+surrounded by the yet unfamiliar murmur of antique
+echoes.<a name="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107"><sup>[107]</sup></a> Leigh Hunt calls him 'the young poet' very
+rightly. Most affectionately and gratefully yours,</p>
+
+<p>E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>Do thank Mr. Chorley for me, will you?</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Thursday, August 1844.<br />
+
+<p>Thank you, my dearest Mrs. Martin, for your most kind
+letter, a reply to which should certainly, as you desired, have
+met you at Colwall; only, right or wrong, I have been
+flurried, agitated, put out of the way altogether, by Stormie's
+and Henry's plan of going to Egypt. Ah, now you are
+surprised. Now you think me excusable for being silent
+two days beyond my time&mdash;yes, and <i>they have gone</i>, it is no
+vague speculation. You know, or perhaps you don't know,
+that, a little time back, papa bought a ship, put a captain
+and crew of his own in it, and began to employ it in his
+favourite 'Via Lactea' of speculations. It has been once to
+Odessa with wool, I think; and now it has gone to
+Alexandria with coals. Stormie was wild to go to both
+places; and with regard to the last, papa has yielded. And
+Henry goes too. This was all arranged weeks ago, but
+nothing was said of it until last Monday to me; and when
+I heard it, I was a good deal moved of course, and although
+resigned now to their having their way in it, and their
+<i>pleasure</i>, which is better than their way, still I feel I have
+entered a new anxiety, and shall not be quite at ease again
+till they return....</p>
+
+<p>And now to thank you, my ever-dearest Mrs. Martin,
+for your kind and welcome letter from the Lakes. I knew
+quite at the first page, and long before you said a word
+specifically, that dear Mr. Martin was better, and think that
+such a scene, even from under an umbrella, must have done
+good to the soul and body of both of you. I wish I could
+have looked through your eyes for once. But I suppose
+that neither through yours, nor through my own, am I ever
+likely to behold that sight. In the meantime it is with considerable
+satisfaction that I hear of your <i>failure of Wordsworth</i>,
+which was my salvation in a very awful sense. Why,
+if you had done such a thing, you would have put me to the
+shame of too much honor. The speculation consoles me
+entirely for your loss in respect to Rydal Hall and its poet.
+By the way, I heard the other day that Rogers, who was
+intending to visit him, said, 'It is a bad time of year for it.
+The god is on his pedestal; and can only give gestures to
+his worshippers, and no conversation to his friends.' ...</p>
+
+<p>Although you did not find a letter from me on your
+return to Colwall, I do hope that you found <i>me</i>&mdash;viz. my
+book, which Mr. Burden took charge of, and promised to
+deliver or see delivered. When you have read it, <i>do</i> let me
+hear your own and Mr. Martin's true impression; and
+whether you think it worse or better than 'The Seraphim.'
+The only review which has yet appeared or had time to
+appear has been a very kind and cordial one in the
+'Athenaeum.' ...</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+August 31, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mr. Westwood,&mdash;I send you the manuscript you
+ask for, and also my certificate that, although I certainly
+was once a little girl, yet I never in my life had fair hair, or
+received lessons when you mention. I think a cousin of
+mine, now dead, may have done it. The 'Barrett Barrett'
+seems to specify my family. I have a little cousin with
+bright fair hair at this moment who is an Elizabeth Barrett
+(the subject of my 'Portrait'<a name="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108"><sup>[108]</sup></a>), but then she is a 'Georgiana'
+besides, and your friend must refer to times past. My
+hair is very dark indeed, and always was, as long as I
+remember, and also I have a friend who makes serious
+affidavit that I have never changed (except by being rather
+taller) since I was a year old. Altogether, you cannot
+make a case of identity out, and I am forced to give up the
+glory of being so long remembered for my cleverness.</p>
+
+<p>You do wrong in supposing me inclined to underrate
+Mr. Melville's power. He is inclined to High-Churchism,
+and to such doctrines as apostolical succession, and I, who,
+am a Dissenter, and a believer in a universal Christianity,
+recoil from the exclusive doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>But then, that is not depreciatory of his power and
+eloquence&mdash;surely not.</p>
+
+<p>E.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mr. Chorley</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: Monday.<br />
+[About the end of August 1844.]<br />
+
+<p>Dear Mr. Chorley,&mdash;Kindnesses are more frequent things
+with me than gladnesses, but I thank you earnestly for both
+in the letter I have this moment received.<a name="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109"><sup>[109]</sup></a> You have given
+me a quick sudden pleasure which goes deeper (I am very
+sure) than self-love, for it must be something better than
+vanity that brings the tears so near the eyes. I thank you,
+dear Mr. Chorley.</p>
+
+<p>After all, we are not quite strangers. I have had some
+early encouragement and direction from you, and much
+earlier (and later) literary pleasures from such of your
+writings as did not refer to me. I have studied 'Music and
+Manners'<a name="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110"><sup>[110]</sup></a> under you, and found an excuse for my love of
+romance-reading from your grateful fancy. Then, as dear
+Miss Mitford's friend, you could not help being (however
+against your will!) a little my acquaintance; and this she
+daringly promised to make you in reality some day, till I
+took the fervour for prophecy.</p>
+
+<p>Altogether I am justified, while I thank you as a stranger,
+to say one more word as a friend, and <i>that</i> shall be the
+best word&mdash;'<i>May God bless you</i>!' The trials with which
+He tries us all are different, but our faces may be turned
+towards the end in cheerfulness, for '<i>to</i> the end He has loved
+us.' I remain,</p>
+
+<p>Very faithfully, your obliged<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>You may trust me with the secret of your kindness to
+me. It shall not go farther.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Monday, September 1, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mr. Boyd,&mdash;I thank you for the Cyprus, and
+also for a still sweeter amreeta&mdash;your praise. Certainly to
+be praised as you praise me might well be supposed likely
+to turn a sager head than mine, but I feel that (with all
+my sensitive and grateful appreciation of such words) I am
+removed rather below than above the ordinary temptations
+of vanity. Poetry is to me rather a passion than an
+ambition, and the gadfly which drives me along that road
+pricks deeper than an expectation of fame could do.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, there will be plenty of counter-irritation to
+prevent me from growing feverish under your praises.
+And as a beginning, I hear that the 'John Bull' newspaper
+has cut me up with sanguinary gashes, for the edification of
+its Sabbath readers. I have not seen it yet, but I hear so.
+The 'Drama' is the particular victim. Do not send for the
+paper. I will let you have it, if you should wish for it.</p>
+
+<p>One thing is left to me to say. Arabel told you of a
+letter I had received from a professional critic, and I am
+sorry that she should have told you so without binding you
+to secrecy on the point at the same time. In fact, the
+writer of the letter begged me <i>not</i> to speak of it, and I
+took an engagement to him <i>not</i> to speak of it. Now it
+would be very unpleasant to me, and dishonorable to me,
+if, after entering into this engagement, the circumstance of
+the letter should come to be talked about. Of course you
+will understand that I do not object to your having been
+informed of the thing, only Arabel should have remembered
+to ask you not to mention again the name of the critic who
+wrote to me.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you, my very dear friend. I drink
+thoughts of you in Cyprus every day.</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+ELIBET.</p>
+
+<p>There is no review in the 'Examiner' yet, nor any continuation
+in the 'Athenaeum.'<a name="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111"><sup>[111]</sup></a></p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+September 10, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;I will not lose a post in assuring
+you that I was not silent because of any disappointment
+from your previous letter. I could only feel the <i>kindness</i> of
+that letter, and this was certainly the chief and uppermost
+feeling at the time of reading it, and since. Your
+preference of 'The Seraphim' one other person besides
+yourself has acknowledged to me in the same manner, and
+although I myself&mdash;perhaps from the natural leaning to
+last works, and perhaps from a wise recognition of the
+complete failure of the poem called 'The Seraphim '&mdash;do
+disagree with you, yet I can easily forgive you for such a
+thought, and believe that you see sufficient grounds for
+entertaining it. More and more I congratulate myself (at
+any rate) for the decision I came to at the last moment, and
+in the face of some persuasions, to call the book 'Poems,'
+instead of trusting its responsibility to the 'Drama,' by such
+a title as 'A Drama of Exile, and Poems.' It is plain, as I
+anticipated, that for one person who is ever so little pleased
+with the 'Drama,' fifty at least will like the smaller poems.
+And perhaps they are right. The longer sustaining of a
+subject requires, of course, more power, and I may have failed
+in it altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, I think I may say that I am satisfied so far with
+the aspect of things in relation to the book. You see there
+has scarcely been time yet to give any except a sanguine or
+despondent judgment&mdash;I mean, there is scarcely room yet
+for forming a very rational inference of what will ultimately
+be, without the presentiments of hope or fear. The book
+came out too late in August for any chance of a mention
+in the September magazines, and at the dead time of
+year, when the very critics were thinking more of holiday
+innocence than of their carnivorous instincts. This will not
+hurt it ultimately, although it might have hurt a <i>novel</i>. The
+regular critics will come back to it; and in the meantime
+the newspaper critics are noticing it all round, with more
+or less admissions to its advantage. The 'Atlas' is the
+best of the newspapers for literary notices; and it spoke
+graciously on the whole; though I do protest against being
+violently attached to a 'school.' I have faults enough, I
+know; but it is just to say that they are at least my own.
+Well, then! It is true that the 'Westminster Review' says
+briefly what is great praise, and promises to take the earliest
+opportunity of reviewing me 'at large.' So that with regard
+to the critics, there seems to be a good prospect. Then I
+have had some very pleasant private letters&mdash;one from
+Carlyle; an oath from Miss Martineau to give her whole
+mind to the work and tell me her free and full opinion,
+which I have not received yet; an assurance from an
+acquaintance of Mrs. Jameson that she was much pleased.
+But the letter which pleased me most was addressed to me by
+a professional critic, personally unknown to me, who wrote
+to say that he had traced me up, step by step, ever since I
+began to print, and that my last volumes were so much
+better than any preceding them, and were such <i>living books</i>,
+that they restored to him the impulses of his youth and
+constrained him to thank me for the pleasant emotions they
+had excited. I cannot say the name of the writer of this
+letter, because he asked me not to do so, but of course it was
+very pleasant to read. Now you will not call me vain for
+speaking of this. I would not speak of it; only I want (you
+see) to prove to you how faithfully and gratefully I have a
+trust in your kindness and sympathy. It is certainly the
+best kindness to speak the truth to me. I have written
+those poems as well as I could, and I hope to write others
+better. I have not reached my own ideal; and I cannot
+expect to have satisfied other people's expectation. But it
+is (as I sometimes say) the least ignoble part of me, that
+I love poetry better than I love my own successes in it.</p>
+
+<p>I am glad that you like 'The Lost Bower.' The scene of
+that poem is the wood above the garden at Hope End.</p>
+
+<p>It is very true, my dearest Mrs. Martin, all that you say
+about the voyage to Alexandria. And I do not feel the
+anxiety I <i>thought I should</i>. In fact, <i>I am surprised to feel
+so little anxiety</i>. Still, when they are at home again, I shall
+be happier than I am now, <i>that</i> I feel strongly besides.</p>
+
+<p>What I missed most in your first letter was what I do
+not miss in the second, the good news of dear Mr. Martin.
+Both he and you are very vainglorious, I suppose, about
+O'Connell; but although I was delighted on every account at
+his late victory,<a name="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112"><sup>[112]</sup></a> or rather at the late victory of justice and
+constitutional law, he never was a hero of mine and is not
+likely to become one. If he had been (by the way) a hero
+of mine, I should have been quite ashamed of him for being
+so unequal to his grand position as was demonstrated by the
+speech from the balcony. Such poetry in the position, and
+such prose in the speech! He has not the stuff in him
+of which heroes are made. There is a thread of cotton
+everywhere crossing the silk....</p>
+
+<p>With our united love to both of you,<br />
+Ever, dearest Mrs. Martin, most affectionately yours,<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Wednesday [about September 1844].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin, ... Did I tell you that Miss
+Martineau had promised and vowed to me to tell me the
+whole truth with respect to the poems? Her letter did not
+come until a few days ago, and for a full month after the
+publication; and I was so fearful of the probable sentence
+that my hands shook as they broke the seal. But such a
+pleasant letter! I have been overjoyed with it. She says
+that her 'predominant impression is of the <i>originality</i>'&mdash;very
+pleasant to hear. I must not forget, however, to say that
+she complains of 'want of variety' in the general effect of
+the drama, and that she 'likes Lucifer less than anything
+in the two volumes.' You see how you have high backers.
+Still she talks of 'immense advances,' which consoles me
+again. In fact, there is scarcely a word to <i>require</i> consolation
+in her letter, and what did not please me least&mdash;nay, to
+do myself justice, what put all the rest out of my head
+for some minutes with joy&mdash;is the account she gives of
+herself. For she is better and likely still to be better;
+she has recovered appetite and sleep, and lost the most
+threatening symptoms of disease; she has been out for the
+first time for four years and a half, lying on the grass
+flat, she says, with my books open beside her day after day.
+(That <i>does</i> sound vain of me, but I cannot resist the temptation
+of writing it!) And the means&mdash;the means! Such
+means you would never divine! It is <i>mesmerism</i>. She is
+thrown into the magnetic trance twice a day; and the
+progress is manifest; and the hope for the future clear.
+Now, what do you both think? Consider what a case it
+is! No case of a weak-minded woman and a nervous
+affection; but of the most manlike woman in the three
+kingdoms&mdash;in the best sense of man&mdash;a woman gifted
+with admirable fortitude, as well as exercised in high logic,
+a woman of sensibility and of imagination certainly, but
+apt to carry her reason unbent wherever she sets her foot;
+given to utilitarian philosophy and the habit of logical
+analysis; and suffering under a disease which has induced
+change of structure and yielded to no tried remedy! Is it
+not wonderful, and past expectation? She suggests that
+I should try the means&mdash;but I understand that in cases
+like mine the remedy has done harm instead of good, by
+over-exciting the system. But her experience will settle
+the question of the reality of magnetism with a whole
+generation of infidels. For my own part, I have long
+been a believer, <i>in spite of papa</i>. Then I have had very
+kind letters from Mrs. Jameson, the 'Ennuy&eacute;e'<a name="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113"><sup>[113]</sup></a> and
+from Mr. Serjeant Talfourd and some less famous persons.
+And a poet with a Welsh name wrote to me yesterday to
+say that he was writing a poem 'similar to my &quot;Drama of
+Exile,&quot;' and begged me to subscribe to it. Now I tell you
+all this to make you smile, and because some of it will
+interest you more gravely. It will prove to dear unjust
+Mr. Martin that I do not distrust your sympathy. How
+could he think so of me? I am half vexed that he should
+think so. Indeed&mdash;indeed I am not so morbidly vain.
+Why, if you had told me that the books were without any
+sort of value in your eyes, do you imagine that I should
+not have valued you, reverenced you ever after for your
+truth, so sacred a thing in friendship? I really believe it
+would have been my predominant feeling. But you
+proved your truth without trying me so hardly; I had <i>both</i>
+truth and praise from you, and surely quite enough, and
+<i>more</i> than enough, as many would think, of the latter.</p>
+
+<p>My dearest papa left us this morning to go for a few
+days into Cornwall for the purpose of examining a quarry
+in which he has bought or is about to buy shares, and he
+means to strike on for the Land's End and to see Falmouth
+before he returns. It depresses me to think of his being
+away; his presence or the sense of his nearness having so
+much cheering and soothing influence with me; but it will
+be an excellent change for him, even if he does not, as he
+expects, dig an immense fortune out of the quarries....</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate and ever obliged<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Cornelius Mathews</i><br />
+London, 50 Wimpole Street: October 1, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mr. Mathews,&mdash;I have just received your note,
+which, on the principle of single sighs or breaths being
+wafted from Indies to the poles, arrived quite safely, and I
+was very glad to have it. I shall fall into monotony if I
+go on to talk of my continued warm sense of your wonderful
+kindness to me, a stranger according to the manner of men;
+and, indeed, I have just this moment been writing a note to
+a friend two streets away, and calling it 'wonderful kindness.'
+I cannot, however, of course, allow you to run the
+tether of your impulse and furnish me with the reviews of my
+books and other things you speak of at your own expense,
+and I should prefer, if you would have the goodness to give
+the necessary direction to Messrs. Putnam &amp; Co., that they
+should send what would interest me to see, together with a
+note of the pecuniary debt to themselves. I shall like to
+see the reviews, of course; and that you should have taken
+the first word of American judgment into your own mouth
+is a pleasant thought to me, and leaves me grateful. In
+England I have no reason so far to be otherwise than well
+pleased. There has not, indeed, been much yet besides newspaper
+criticisms&mdash;except 'Ainsworth's Magazine,' which is
+benignant!&mdash;there has not been time. The monthly reviews
+give themselves 'pause' in such matters to set the plumes
+of their dignity, and I am rather glad than otherwise not to
+have the first fruits of their haste. The 'Atlas,' the best
+newspaper for literary reviews, excepting always the
+'Examiner,' who does not speak yet, is generous to me, and I
+have reason to be satisfied with others. And our most influential
+quarterly (after the 'Edinburgh' and right 'Quarterly'),
+the 'Westminster Review,' promises an early paper with
+passing words of high praise. What vexed me a little in
+one or two of the journals was an attempt made to fix me in
+a school, and the calling me a follower of Tennyson for my
+habit of using compound words, noun-substantives, which
+I used to do before I knew a page of Tennyson, and
+adopted from a study of our old English writers, and
+Greeks and even Germans. The custom is so far from
+being peculiar to Tennyson, that Shelley and Keats and
+Leigh Hunt are all redolent of it, and no one can read our
+old poets without perceiving the leaning of our Saxon to
+that species of coalition. Then I have had letters of great
+kindness from 'Spirits of the Age,' whose praises are so
+many crowns, and altogether am far from being out of
+spirits about the prospect of my work. I am glad, however,
+that I gave the name of 'Poems' to the work instead of admitting
+the 'Drama of Exile' into the title-page and increasing
+its responsibility; for one person who likes the 'Drama,'
+ten like the other poems. Both Carlyle and Miss Martineau
+select as favorite 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship,' which amuses
+and surprises me somewhat. In that poem I had endeavoured
+to throw conventionalities (turned asbestos for the nonce)
+into the fire of poetry, to make them glow and glitter as if
+they were not dull things. Well, I shall soon hear what <i>you</i>
+like best&mdash;and worst. I wonder if you have been very
+carnivorous with me! I tremble a little to think of your
+hereditary claim to an instrument called the tomahawk.
+Still, I am sure I shall have to think <i>most</i>, ever as now, of
+your kindness; and <i>truth</i> must be sacred to all of us,
+whether we have to suffer or be glad by it. As for Mr.
+Horne, I cannot answer for what he has received or not
+received. I had one note from him on silver paper (fear of
+postage having reduced him to a transparency) from
+Germany, and that is all, and I did not think him in good
+spirits in what he said of himself. I will tell him what you
+have the goodness to say, and something, too, on my own
+part. He has had a hard time of it with his 'Spirit of the
+Age;' the attacks on the book here being bitter in the
+extreme. Your 'Democratic' does not comfort him for the
+rest, by the way, and, indeed, he is almost past comfort on
+the subject. I had a letter the other day from Dr. Shelton
+Mackenzie, whom I do not know personally, but who is
+about to publish a 'Living Author Dictionary,' and who, by
+some association, talked of the effeminacy of 'the American
+poets,' so I begged him to read your poems on 'Man' and
+prepare an exception to his position. I wish to write more
+and must not.</p>
+
+<p>Most faithfully yours,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>Am I the first with the great and good news for America
+and England that Harriet Martineau is better and likely to
+be better? She told me so herself, and attributes the change
+to the agency of <i>mesmerism</i>.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+October 4, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mr. Boyd,&mdash;... As to 'The Lost Bower,'
+I am penitent about having caused you so much disturbance.
+I sometimes fancy that a little varying of the accents, though
+at the obvious expense of injuring the smoothness of every
+line considered separately, gives variety of cadence and fuller
+harmony to the general effect. But I do not question that I
+deserve a great deal of blame on this point as on others. Many
+lines in 'Isobel's Child' are very slovenly and weak from a
+multitude of causes. I hope you will like 'The Lost Bower'
+better when you try it again than you did at first, though I
+do not, of course, expect that you will not see much to cry
+out against. The subject of the poem was an actual fact of
+my childhood.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, and I think I told you, when giving you the history
+of 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship,' that I wrote the <i>thirteen</i>
+last pages of it in one day. I ought to have said <i>nineteen</i>
+pages instead. But don't tell anybody; only keep the
+circumstance in your mind when you need it and see the
+faults. Nobody knows of it except you and Mr. Kenyon
+and my own family for the reason I told you. I sent off
+that poem to the press piece-meal, as I never in my life did
+before with any poem. And since I wrote to you I have
+heard of Mr. Eagles, one of the first writers in 'Blackwood'
+and a man of very refined taste, adding another name to the
+many of those who have preferred it to anything in the two
+volumes. He says that he has read it at least six times
+aloud to various persons, and calls it a 'beautiful <i>sui
+generis</i> drama.' On which Mr. Kenyon observes that I am 'ruined
+for life, and shall be sure never to take pains with any poem
+again.'</p>
+
+<p>The American edition (did Arabel tell you?) was to be
+out in New York a week ago, and was to consist of fifteen
+hundred copies in two volumes, as in England.</p>
+
+<p>She sends you the verses and asks you to make allowances
+for the delay in doing so. I cannot help believing that if
+you were better read in Wordsworth you would appreciate
+him better. Ever since I knew what poetry is, I have
+believed in him as a great poet, and I do not understand
+how reasonably there can be a doubt of it. Will you remember
+that nearly all the first minds of the age have admitted
+his power (without going to intrinsic evidence), and then say
+that he <i>can</i> be a mere Grub Street writer? It is not that he
+is only or chiefly admired by the <i>profanum vulgus</i>, that he
+is a mere popular and fashionable poet, but that men of
+genius in this and other countries unite in confessing his
+genius. And is not this a significant circumstance&mdash;significant,
+at least?...</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, yourself, your affectionate and grateful<br />
+ELIBET B.B.</p>
+
+<p>How kind you are, far too kind, about the Cyprus wine;
+I thank you very much.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+October 5, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;... Well, papa came back
+from Cornwall just as I came back to my own room, and he
+was as pleased with his quarry as I was to have the sight
+again of his face. During his absence, Henrietta had a
+little polka (which did not bring the house down on its
+knees), and I had a transparent blind put up in my open
+window. There is a castle in the blind, and a castle gate-way,
+and two walks, and several peasants, and groves of
+trees which rise in excellent harmony with the fall of my
+green damask curtains&mdash;new, since you saw me last. Papa
+insults me with the analogy of a back window in a confectioner's
+shop, but is obviously moved when the sunshine
+lights up the castle, notwithstanding. And Mr. Kenyon
+and everybody in the house grow ecstatic rather than otherwise,
+as they stand in contemplation before it, and tell me
+(what is obvious without their evidence) that the effect
+is beautiful, and that the whole room catches a light
+from it. Well, and then Mr. Kenyon has given me a new
+table, with a rail round it to consecrate it from Flush's
+paws, and large enough to hold all my varieties of vanities.</p>
+
+<p>I had another letter from Miss Martineau the other day,
+and she says she has a 'hat of her own, a parasol of her
+own,' and that she can 'walk a mile with ease.' <i>What do
+miracles mean</i>? Miracle or not, however, one thing is
+certain&mdash;it is very joyful; and her own sensations on being
+removed suddenly from the verge of the prospect of a most
+painful death&mdash;a most painful and lingering death&mdash;must be
+strange and overwhelming.</p>
+
+<p>I hope I may hear soon from you that you had much
+pleasure at Clifton, and some benefit in the air and change,
+and that dear Mr. Martin and yourself are both as well as
+possible. Do you take in 'Punch'? If not, you <i>ought</i>.
+Mr. Kenyon and I agreed the other day that we should be
+more willing 'to take our politics' from 'Punch' than from
+any other of the newspaper oracles. 'Punch' is very
+generous, and I like him for everything, except for his rough
+treatment of Louis Philippe, whom I believe to be a great
+man&mdash;for a king. And then, it is well worth fourpence to
+laugh once a week. I do recommend 'Punch' to you.<a name="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114"><sup>[114]</sup></a>
+Douglas Jerrold is the editor, I fancy, and he has a troop of
+'wits,' such as Planch&eacute;, Titmarsh, and the author of 'Little
+Peddlington,' to support him....</p>
+
+<p>Now I have written enough to tire you, I am sure.
+May God bless you both! Did you read 'Coningsby,' that
+very able book, without character, story, or specific teaching?
+It is well worth reading, and worth wondering over.
+D'Israeli, who is a man of genius, has written, nevertheless,
+books which will live longer, and move deeper. But everybody
+should read 'Coningsby.' It is a sign of the times.
+Believe me, my dearest Mrs. Martin,</p>
+
+<p>Your very affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To John Kenyon</i><br />
+Tuesday, October 8, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>Thank you, my dearest cousin, for your kind little note,
+which I run the chance of answering by that Wednesday's
+post you think you may wait for. So (<i>via</i> your table) I set
+about writing to you, and the first word, of course, must be
+an expression of my contentment with the 'Examiner'
+review. Indeed, I am more than contented&mdash;delighted
+with it. I had some dread, vaguely fashioned, about the
+'Examiner'; the very delay looked ominous. And then, I
+thought to myself, though I did not say, that if Mr. Forster
+praised the verses on Flush to you, it was just because he
+had no sympathy for anything else. But it is all the
+contrary, you see, and I am the more pleased for the want
+of previous expectation; and I must add that if <i>you</i> were
+so kind as to be glad of being associated with me by Mr.
+Forster's reference, <i>I</i> was so <i>human</i> as to be very very glad
+of being associated with <i>you</i> by the same. Also you shall
+criticise 'Geraldine' exactly as you like&mdash;mind, I don't think
+it all so rough as the extracts appear to be, and some variety
+is attained by that playing at ball with the <i>pause</i>, which
+causes the apparent roughness&mdash;still you shall criticise
+'Geraldine' exactly as you like. I have a great fancy for
+writing some day a longer poem of a like class&mdash;a poem
+comprehending the aspect and manners of modern life, and
+flinching at nothing of the conventional. I think it might be
+done with good effect. You said once that Tennyson had
+done it in 'Locksley Hall,' and I half agreed with you. But
+looking at 'Locksley Hall' again, I find that not much has
+been done in that <i>way</i>, noble and passionate and <i>full</i> as the
+poem is in other ways. But there is no story, no <i>manners</i>,
+no modern allusion, except in the grand general adjuration
+to the 'Mother-age,' and no approach to the treatment of a
+conventionality. But Crabbe, as you say, has done it, and
+Campbell in his 'Theodore' in a few touches was near to
+do it; but <i>Hayley</i> clearly apprehends the species of poem
+in his 'Triumphs of Temper' and 'Triumphs of Music,'
+and so did Miss Seward, who called it the '<i>poetical novel</i>.'
+Now I do think that a true poetical novel&mdash;modern, and on
+the level of the manners of the day&mdash;might be as good a
+poem as any other, and much more popular besides. Do
+you not think so?</p>
+
+<p>I had a letter from dear Miss Mitford this morning,
+with yours, but I can find nothing in it that you will care
+to hear again. She complains of the vagueness of
+'Coningsby,' and praises the French writers&mdash;a sympathy
+between us, that last, which we wear hidden in our sleeves
+for the sake of propriety. Not a word of coming to
+London, though I asked. Neither have I heard again from
+Miss Martineau....</p>
+
+<p>Ever most affectionately and gratefully yours,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+October 15, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>... Not a word more have I heard from Miss Martineau;
+and shall not soon, perhaps, as she is commanded not to
+write, not to read&mdash;to do nothing, in fact, except the getting
+better. I am not, I confess, quite satisfied myself. But
+she herself appears to be so altogether, and she speaks of
+'<i>symptoms</i> having given way,' implying a structural change.
+Yes, I use the common phrase in respect to mesmerism,
+and think 'there is something in it.' Only I think, besides,
+that, if something, there must be a great deal in it. Clairvoyance
+has precisely the same evidence as the phenomenon
+of the trance has, and scientific and philosophical minds
+are recognising all the phenomena <i>as facts</i> on all sides of
+us. Mr. Kenyon's is the best distinction, and the immense
+quantity of <i>humbug</i> which embroiders the truth over and
+over, and round and round, makes it needful: 'I believe in
+mesmerism, but not in <i>mesmerists</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>We have had no other letter from our Egyptians, but
+can wait a little longer without losing our patience.</p>
+
+<p>The blind rises in favour, and the ivy would not fall,
+if it would but live. Alas! I am going to try <i>guano</i> as a
+last resource. You see, in painting the windows, papa was
+forced to have it taken down, and the ivy that grows on
+ruins and oaks is not usually taken down 'for the nonce.'
+I think I shall have a myrtle grove in two or three large
+pots inside the window. I have a mind to try it.</p>
+
+<p>I heard twice from dear Mr. Kenyon at Dover, where
+he was detained by the weather, but not since his entrance
+into France. Which is grand enough word for the French
+Majesty itself&mdash;'entrance into France.' By the way, I do
+hope you have some sympathy with me in my respect for the
+King of the French&mdash;that right kingly king, Louis Philippe.
+If France had <i>borne</i> more liberty, he would not have withheld
+it, and, for the rest, and in all truly royal qualities, he
+is the noblest king, according to my idea, in Europe&mdash;the
+most royal king in the encouragement of art and literature,
+and in the honoring of artists and men of letters. Let
+a young unknown writer accomplish a successful tragedy,
+and the next day he sits at the king's table&mdash;not in a metaphor,
+but face to face. See how different the matter is in
+our court, where the artists are shown up the back stairs,
+and where no poet (even by the back stairs) can penetrate,
+unless so fortunate as to be a banker also. What is the use
+of kings and queens in these days, except to encourage arts
+and letters? Really I cannot see. Anybody can hunt an
+otter out of a box&mdash;who has nerve enough.</p>
+
+<p>I had a letter from America to-day, and heard that my
+book was not published there until the fifth of this October.
+Still, a few copies had preceded the publication, and made
+way among the critics, and several reviews were in the
+course of germinating very greenly. Yes, I was delighted
+with the 'Examiner,' and all the more so from having
+interpreted the long delay of the notice, the gloomiest
+manner possible. My friends try to persuade me that the
+book is making some impression, and I am willing enough
+to be convinced. Thank you for all your kind sympathy,
+my dear friend.</p>
+
+<p>Now, do write to me soon again! Have you read
+Dr. Arnold's Life? I have not, but am very anxious to do
+so, from the admirable extracts in the 'Examiner' of last
+Saturday, and also from what I hear of it in other quarters.
+That Dr. Arnold must have been <i>a man</i>, in the largest and
+noblest sense. May God bless you, both of you! I think
+of you, dearest Mrs. Martin, much, and remain</p>
+
+<p>Your very affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To John Kenyon</i><br />
+Saturday, October 29, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>The moral of your letter, my dearest cousin, certainly is
+that no green herb of a secret will spring up and flourish
+between you and me.</p>
+
+<p>The loss of Flush was a secret. My aunt's intention of
+coming to England (for I know not how to explain what
+she said to you, but by the supposition of an unfulfilled
+intention!) was a secret. And Mr. Chorley's letter to me
+was a third secret. All turned into light!</p>
+
+<p>For the last, you may well praise me for discretion.
+The letter he wrote was pleasanter to me than many of
+the kindnesses (apart from your own) occasioned by my
+book&mdash;and when you asked me once 'what letters I had
+received,' if ever a woman deserved to be canonised for
+her silence, <i>I</i> did! But the effort was necessary&mdash;for he
+particularly desired that I would not mention to 'our common
+friends' the circumstance of his having written to me;
+and 'common friends' could only stand for 'Mr. Kenyon
+and Miss Mitford.' Of course what you tell me, of his
+liking the poems better still, is delightful to hear; but he
+reviewed them in the 'Athenaeum' surely! The review we
+read in the 'Athenaeum' was by his hand&mdash;could not be
+mistaken ...</p>
+
+<p>Well; but Flushie! It is too true that he has been
+lost&mdash;lost and won; and true besides that I was a good
+deal upset by it <i>meo more</i>; and that I found it hard to eat
+and sleep as usual while he was in the hands of his enemies.
+It is a secret too. We would not tell papa of it. Papa
+would have been angry with the unfortunate person who
+took Flush out without a chain; and would have kicked
+against the pricks of the necessary bribing of the thief in
+order to the getting him back. Therefore we didn't tell
+papa; and as I had a very bad convenient headache the
+day my eyes were reddest, I did not see him (except once)
+till Flush was on the sofa again. As to the thieves, you
+are very kind to talk daggers at them; and I feel no
+inclination to say 'Don't.' It is quite too bad and cruel.
+And think of their exceeding insolence in taking Flush away
+from this very door, while Arabel was waiting to have the
+door opened on her return from her walk; and in observing
+(as they gave him back for six guineas and a half) that they
+intended to have him again at the earliest opportunity and
+that <i>then</i> they must have <i>ten</i> guineas! I tell poor Flushie
+(while he looks very earnestly in my face) that he and I
+shall be ruined at last, and that I shall have no money to
+buy him cakes; but the worst is the anxiety! Whether I
+am particularly silly, or not, I don't know; they say here,
+that I am; but it seems to me impossible for anybody who
+really cares for a dog, to think quietly of his being in the
+hands of those infamous men. And then I know how poor
+Flushie must feel it. When he was brought home, he
+began to cry in his manner, whine, as if his heart was full!
+It was just what I was inclined to do myself&mdash;' and thus
+was Flushie lost and won.'</p>
+
+<p>But we are both recovered now, thank you; and intend
+to be very prudent for the future. I am delighted to
+think of your being in England; it is the next best thing
+to your being in London. In regard to Miss Martineau,
+I agree with you word for word; but I cannot overcome
+an additional <i>horror</i>, which you do not express, or feel
+probably.</p>
+
+<p>There is an excellent refutation of Puseyism in the
+'Edinburgh Review'&mdash;by whom? and I have been reading
+besides the admirable paper by Macaulay in the same
+number. And now I must be done; having resolved to
+let you hear without a post's delay. Otherwise I might
+have American news for you, as I hear that a packet has
+come in.</p>
+
+<p>My brothers arrived in great spirits at Malta, after a
+<i>three weeks' voyage</i> from Gibraltar; and must now be in
+Egypt, I think and trust.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you, my dear cousin.</p>
+
+<p>Most affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To John Kenyan</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: November 5, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>Well, but am I really so bad? ' <i>Et tu</i>!' Can <i>you</i> call
+me careless? Remember all the altering of manuscript
+and proof&mdash;and remember how the obscurities used to fly
+away before your cloud-compelling, when you were the
+Jove of the criticisms! That the books (I won't call them
+<i>our</i> books when I am speaking of the faults) are remarkable
+for defects and superfluities of evil, I can see quite
+as well as another; but then I won't admit that ' it comes'
+of my carelessness, and refusing to take pains. On the
+contrary, my belief is, that very few writers called ' correct '
+who have selected classical models to work from, pay more
+laborious attention than I do habitually to the forms of
+thought and expression. ' Lady Geraldine ' was an exception
+in her whole history. If I write fast sometimes
+(and the historical fact is that what has been written fastest,
+has pleased most), l am not apt to print without consideration.
+I appeal to Philip sober, if I am! My dearest cousin, do
+remember! As to the faults, I do not think of defending
+them, be very sure. My consolation is, that I may try to
+do better in time, if I may talk of time. The worst fault
+of all, as far as expression goes (the adjective-substantives,
+whether in prose or verse, I cannot make up my mind
+to consider faulty), is that kind of obscurity which is the
+same thing with inadequate expression. Be very sure&mdash;try
+to be very sure&mdash;that I am not obstinate and self-opiniated
+beyond measure. To <i>you</i> in case, who have done so
+much for me, and who think of me so more than kindly, I
+feel it to be both duty and pleasure to defer and yield.
+Still, you know, we could not, if we were ten years about it,
+alter down the poems to the terms of all these reviewers.
+You would not desire it, if it were possible. I do not
+remember that you suggested any change in the verse on
+Aeschylus. The critic<a name="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115"><sup>[115]</sup></a> mistakes my allusion, which was
+to the fact that in the acting of the Eumenides, when the
+great tragic poet did actually 'frown as the gods did,'
+women fell down fainting from the benches. I did not
+refer to the effect of his human countenance 'during
+composition.' But I am very grateful to the reviewer
+whoever he may be&mdash;very&mdash;and with need. See how the
+'Sun' shines in response to 'Blackwood' (thank you for
+sending me that notice), when previously we had had but
+a wintry rag from the same quarter! No; if I am not
+spoilt by <i>your kindness</i>, I am not likely to be so by any of
+these exoteric praises, however beyond what I expected or
+deserved. And then I am like a bird with one wing broken.
+Throw it out of the window; and after the first feeling of
+pleasure in liberty, it falls heavily. I have had moments of
+great pleasure in hearing whatever good has been thought
+of the poems; but the feeling of <i>elation</i> is too strong or
+rather too <i>long</i> for me....</p>
+
+<p>Can it be true that Mr. Newman has at last joined the
+Church of Rome?<a name="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116"><sup>[116]</sup></a> If it is true, it will do much to prove
+to the most illogical minds the real character of the late
+movement. It will prove what the <i>point of sight</i> is, as by
+the drawing of a straight line. Miss Mitford told me that
+he had lately sent a message to a R. Catholic convert
+from the English Church, to the effect&mdash;'you have done
+a good deed, but not at a right time.' It can but be a
+question of time, indeed, to the whole party; at least to
+such as are logical&mdash;and honest.... [<i>Unsigned</i>]</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To John Kenyan</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: November 8, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>Thank you, my dear dear cousin, for the kind thought of
+sending me Mr. Eagles's letter, and most for your own
+note. You know we <i>both</i> saw that he couldn't have written
+the paper in question; we <i>both</i> were poets and prophets by
+that sign, but I hope he understands that I shall gratefully
+remember what his intention was. As to his 'friend' who
+told him that I had 'imitated Tennyson,' why I can only
+say and feel that it is very particularly provoking to hear
+such things said, and that I wish people would find fault
+with my 'metre' in the place of them. In the matter of
+'Geraldine' I shall not be puffed up. I shall take to mind
+what you suggest. Of course, if you find it hard to read, it
+must be my fault. And then the fact of there being a <i>story</i>
+to a poem will give a factitious merit in the eyes of many
+critics, which could not be an occasion of vainglory to the
+consciousness of the most vainglorious of writers. You
+made me smile by your suggestion about the aptitude of critics
+aforesaid for courting Lady Geraldines. Certes&mdash;however
+it may be&mdash;the poem has had more attention than its due.
+Oh, and I must tell you that I had a letter the other day
+from Mr. Westwood (one of my correspondents unknown)
+referring to 'Blackwood,' and observing on the mistake about
+Goethe. 'Did you not mean &quot;fell&quot; the verb,' he said, 'or
+do <i>I</i> mistake?' So, you see, some people in the world did
+actually understand what I meant. I am eager to prove
+that possibility sometimes.</p>
+
+<p>How full of life of mind Mr. Eagles's letter is. Such
+letters always bring me to think of Harriet Martineau's
+pestilent plan of doing to destruction half of the intellectual
+life of the world, by suppressing every mental breath
+breathed through the post office. She was not in a state of
+clairvoyance when she said such a thing. I have not heard
+from her, but you observed what the 'Critic' said of William
+Howitt's being empowered by her to declare the circumstances
+of her recovery?</p>
+
+<p>Again and again have I sent for Dr. Arnold's 'Life,' and
+I do hope to have it to-day. I am certain, by the extracts,
+besides your opinion, that I shall be delighted with it.</p>
+
+<p>Why shouldn't Miss Martineau's apocalyptic housemaid<a name="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117"><sup>[117]</sup></a>
+tell us whether Flush has a soul, and what is its 'future
+destination'? As to the fact of his soul, I have long had
+a strong opinion on it. The 'grand peut-&ecirc;tre,' to which
+'without revelation' the human argument is reduced, covers
+dog-nature with the sweep of its fringes.</p>
+
+<p>Did you ever read Bulwer's 'Eva, or the Unhappy
+Marriage'? <i>That</i> is a sort of poetical novel, with modern
+manners inclusive. But Bulwer, although a poet in prose,
+writes all his rhythmetical compositions somewhat prosaically,
+providing an instance of that curious difference which exists
+between the poetical writer and the poet. It is easier to
+give the instance than the reason, but I suppose the cause
+of the rhythmetical impotence must lie somewhere in the
+want of the power of concentration. For is it not true that
+the most prolix poet is capable of briefer expression than
+the least prolix prose writer, or am I wrong?...</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Cornelius Mathews</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: November 14, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mr. Mathews,&mdash;I write to tell you&mdash;only that
+there is nothing to tell&mdash;only in guard of my gratitude, lest
+you should come to think all manner of evil of me and of
+my supposed propensity to let everything pass like Mr.
+Horne's copies of the American edition of his work, <i>sub
+silentio</i>. Therefore I must write, and you are to please to
+understand that I have not up to this moment received
+either letter or book by the packet of October 10 which
+was charged, according to your intimation, with so much.
+I, being quite out of patience and out of breath with
+expectation, have repeatedly sent to Mr. Putnam, and he
+replies with undisturbed politeness that the ship has come
+in, and that his part and lot in her, together with mine,
+remain at the disposal of the Custom-house officers, and
+may remain some time longer. So you see how it is. I am
+waiting&mdash;simply <i>waiting</i>, and it is better to let you know
+that I am not forgetting instead.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, your kindness will be glad to learn of
+the prosperity of my poems in my own country. I am more
+than satisfied in my most sanguine hope for them, and a
+little surprised besides. The critics have been good to me.
+'Blackwood' and 'Tait' have this month both been generous,
+and the 'New Monthly' and 'Ainsworth's Magazine' did
+what they could. Then I have the 'Examiner' in my
+favor, and such heads and hearts as are better and purer
+than the purely critical, and I am very glad altogether, and
+very grateful, and hope to live long enough to acknowledge,
+if not to justify, much unexpected kindness. Of course,
+some hard criticism is mixed with the liberal sympathy, as
+you will see in 'Blackwood,' but some of it I deserve, even
+in my own eyes; and all of it I am willing to be patient
+under. The strange thing is, that without a single personal
+friend among these critics, they should have expended on
+me so much 'gentillesse,' and this strangeness I feel very
+sensitively. Mr. Horne has not returned to England yet,
+and in a letter which I received from him some fortnight
+ago he desired to have my book sent to him to Germany,
+just as if he never meant to return to England again. I
+answered his sayings, and reiterated, in a way that would
+make you smile, my information about your having sent the
+American copies to him. I made my <i>oyez</i> very plain and
+articulate. He won't say again that he never heard of it&mdash;be
+sure of <i>that</i>. Well, and then Mr. Browning is not in
+England either, so that whatever you send for <i>him</i> must
+await his return from the east or the west or the south,
+wherever he is. The new spirit of the age is a wandering
+spirit. Mr. Dickens is in Italy. Even Miss Mitford <i>talks</i>
+of going to France, which is an extreme case for <i>her</i>. Do
+you never feel inclined to flash across the Atlantic to us, or
+can you really remain still in one place?</p>
+
+<p>I must not forget to assure you, dear Mr. Mathews, as I
+may conscientiously do, even before I have looked into or
+received the 'Democratic Review,' that whatever fault you
+may find with me, my strongest feeling on reading your
+article will or must be <i>the sense of your kindness</i>. Of course
+I do not expect, nor should I wish, that your personal
+interest in me (proved in so many ways) would destroy your
+critical faculty in regard to me. Such an expectation, if I
+had entertained it, would have been scarcely honorable to
+either of us, and I may assure you that I never did entertain
+it. No; be at rest about the article. It is not likely that
+I shall think it 'inadequate.' And I may as well mention
+in connection with it that before you spoke of reviewing me
+<i>I</i> (in my despair of Mr. Horne's absence, and my impotency
+to assist your book) had thrown into my desk, to watch
+for some opportunity of publication, a review of your 'Poems
+on Man,' from my own hand, and that I am still waiting
+and considering and taking courage before I send it to
+some current periodical. There is a difficulty&mdash;there is a
+feeling of shyness on my part, because, as I told you, I have
+no personal friend or introduction among the pressmen
+or the critics, and because the 'Athenaeum,' which I should
+otherwise turn to first, has already treated of your work, and
+would not, of course, consent to reconsider an expressed
+opinion. Well, I shall do it somewhere. Forgive me the
+<i>appearance</i> of my impotency under a general aspect.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, you cannot guess at the estate of poetry in the eyes
+of even such poetical English publishers as Mr. Moxon,
+who can write sonnets himself. Poetry is in their eyes just
+a desperate speculation. A poet must have tried his public
+before he tries the publisher&mdash;that is, before he expects the
+publisher to run a risk for him. But I will make any effort
+you like to suggest for any work of yours; I only tell you
+how <i>things are</i>. By the way, if I ever told you that
+Tennyson was ill, I may as rightly tell you now that he is
+well, again, or was when I last heard of him. I do not
+know him personally. Also Harriet Martineau can walk
+five miles a day with ease, and believes in mesmerism with
+all her strength. Mr. Putnam had the goodness to write
+and open his reading room to me, who am in prison instead
+in mine.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you. Do let me hear from you soon,
+and believe me ever your friend,</p>
+
+<p>E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+November 16, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin, ... To-day I perceive in the
+'contents' of the new 'Westminster Review' that my poems
+are reviewed in it, and I hope that you will both be interested
+enough in my fortunes to read at the library what may be
+said of them. Did George tell you that he imagined (as I
+also did) the 'Blackwood' paper to be by Mr. Phillimore the
+barrister? Well, Mr. Phillimore denies it altogether, has in
+fact quarrelled with Christopher North, and writes no more
+for him, so that I am quite at a loss now where to carry my
+gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>Do write to me soon. I hear that everybody should
+read Dr. Arnold's 'Life.' Do you know also 'E&#333; then,' a work
+of genius? You have read, perhaps, Hewitt's 'Visits to
+Remarkable Places' in the first series and second; and
+Mrs. Jameson's 'Visits and Sketches' and 'Life in Mexico.'
+Do you know the 'Santa F&eacute; Expedition,' and Custine's
+'Russia,' and 'Forest Life' by Mrs. Clavers? You will think
+that my associative process is in a most disorderly state, by
+all this running up and down the stairs of all sorts of subjects,
+in the naming of books. I would write a list, more as a list
+should be written, if I could see my way better, and this
+will do for a beginning in any case. You do not like
+romances, I believe, as I do, and then nearly every romance
+now-a-days sets about pulling the joints of one's heart and
+soul out, as a process of course. 'Ellen Middleton' (which I
+have not read yet) is said to be very painful. Do you know
+Leigh Hunt's exquisite essays called 'The Indicator and
+Companion' &amp;c., published by Moxon? I hold them at
+once in delight and reverence.
+May God bless you both.</p>
+
+<p>I am ever your affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street:<br />
+Tuesday, November 26, 1844 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;I thank you much for your
+little notes; and you know too well how my sympathy
+answers you, 'as face to face in a glass,' for me to assure
+you of it here. Your account of yourselves altogether I
+take to be satisfactory, because I never expected anybody
+to gain strength very <i>rapidly</i> while in the actual endurance
+of hard medical discipline. I am glad you have found out
+a trustworthy adviser at Dover, but I feel nevertheless that
+you may <i>both trust</i> and <i>hope</i> in Dr. Bright, of whom I heard
+the very highest praises the other day....</p>
+
+<p>Now really I don't know why I should fancy you to
+be so deeply interested in Dr. Bright, that all this detail
+should be necessary. What I <i>do</i> want you to be interested in,
+is in Miss Martineau's mesmeric experience,<a name="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118"><sup>[118]</sup></a> for a copy of
+which, in the last 'Athenaeum,' I have sent ever since
+yesterday, in the intention of sending it to you. You will
+admit it to be curious as philosophy, and beautiful as
+composition; for the rest, I will not answer. Believing in
+mesmerism as an agency, I hesitate to assent to the necessary
+connection between Miss Martineau's cure and the
+power; and also I am of opinion that unbelievers will not
+very generally become converts through her representations.
+There is a tone of exaltation which will be observed upon,
+and one or two sentences are suggestive to scepticism. I
+will send it to you when I get the number. I understand
+that an intimate friend of hers (a lady) travelled
+down from the south of England to Tynemouth, simply to
+try to prevent the public exposition, but could not prevail.
+Mr. Milnes has, besides, been her visitor. He is fully a
+believer, she says, and affirms to having seen the same
+phenomena in the East, but regards the whole subject with
+<i>horror</i>. This still appears to be Mrs. Jameson's feeling, as
+you know it is mine. Mrs. Jameson came again to this
+door with a note, and overcoming by kindness, was let in
+on Saturday last; and sate with me for nearly an hour,
+and so ran into what my sisters call 'one of my sudden
+intimacies' that there was an embrace for a farewell. Of
+course she won my affections through my vanity (Mr. Martin
+will be sure to say, so I hasten to anticipate him) and by
+exaggerations about my poetry; but really, and although my
+heart beat itself almost to pieces for fear of seeing her as
+she walked upstairs, I do think I should have liked her
+<i>without the flattery</i>. She is very light&mdash;has the lightest
+of eyes, the lightest of complexions; no eyebrows, and
+what looked to me like very pale red hair, and thin
+lips of no colour at all. But with all this indecision of
+exterior the expression is rather acute than soft; and the
+conversation in its principal characteristics, analytical and
+examinative; throwing out no thought which is not as clear
+as glass&mdash;critical, in fact, in somewhat of an austere sense. I
+use 'austere,' of course, in its intellectual relation, for nothing
+in the world could be kinder, or more graciously kind,
+than her whole manner and words were to me. She is
+coming again in two or three days, she says. Yes, and she
+said of Miss Martineau's paper in the 'Athenaeum,' that she
+very much doubted the wisdom of publishing it now; and
+that for the public's sake, if not for her own, Miss M. should
+have waited till the excitement of recovered health had a
+little subsided. She said of mesmerism altogether that she
+was inclined to believe it, but had not finally made up her
+convictions. She used words so exactly like some I have
+used myself that I must repeat them, 'that if there was <i>anything</i>
+in it, there was <i>so much</i>, it became scarcely possible to
+limit consequences, and the subject grew awful to contemplate.' ...</p>
+
+<p>On Saturday I had some copies of my American edition,
+which dazzle the English one; and one or two reviews,
+transatlantically transcendental in 'oilie flatterie.' And I
+heard yesterday from the English publisher Moxon, and he
+was 'happy to tell me that the work was selling very well,'
+and this without an inquiry on my part. To say the truth,
+I was <i>afraid</i> to inquire. It is good news altogether. The
+'Westminster Review' won't be out till next month.</p>
+
+<p>Wordsworth is so excited about the railroad that his wife
+persuaded him to go away to recover his serenity, but he has
+returned raging worse than ever. He says that fifty
+members of Parliament have promised him their opposition.
+He is wrong, I think, but I also consider that if the people
+remembered his genius and his age, and suspended the
+obnoxious Act for a few years, they would be right....</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you both.</p>
+
+<p>Most affectionately yours,<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To James Martin</i><br />
+December 10, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>I have been thinking of you, my dear Mr. Martin, more
+and more the colder it has been, and had made up my
+mind to write to-day, let me feel as dull as I might. So,
+the vane only turns to <i>you</i> instead of to dearest Mrs. Martin
+in consequence of your letter&mdash;your letter makes <i>that</i> difference.
+I should have written to Dover in any case....</p>
+
+<p>You are to know that Miss Martineau's mesmeric
+experience is only peculiar as being Harriet Martineau's,
+otherwise it exhibits the mere commonplaces of the agency.
+You laugh, I see. I wish I could laugh too. I mean, I
+seriously wish that I could disbelieve in the reality of the
+power, which is in every way most repulsive to me....</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Martin is surprised at me and others on account
+of our 'horror.' Surely it is a natural feeling, and she
+would herself be liable to it if she were <i>more credulous</i>.
+The agency seems to me like the shaking of the flood-gates
+placed by the Divine Creator between the unprepared soul
+and the unseen world. Then&mdash;the subjection of the will
+and vital powers of one individual to those of another, to
+the extent of the apparent solution of the very identity, is
+abhorrent from me. And then (as to the expediency of
+the matter, and to prove how far believers may be carried)
+there is even now a religious sect at Cheltenham, of persons
+who call themselves advocates of the 'third revelation,'
+and profess to receive their system of theology entirely from
+patients in the sleep.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, poor Miss Martineau, as the consequence
+of her desire to speak the truth as she apprehends
+it, is overwhelmed with atrocious insults from all quarters.
+For my own part I would rather fall into the hands of God
+than of man, and suffer as she did in the body, instead of
+being the mark of these cruel observations. But she has
+singular strength of mind, and calmly continues her testimony.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Mitford writes to me: 'Be sure it is <i>all true</i>. I
+see it every day in my Jane'&mdash;her maid, who is mesmerised
+for deafness, but not, I believe, with much success curatively.
+As a remedy, the success has been far greater in the
+Martineau case than in others. With Miss Mitford's maid,
+the sleep is, however, produced; and the girl professed, at
+the third <i>s&eacute;ance</i>, to be able to <i>see behind her</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I am glad I have so much interesting matter to look
+forward to in the 'Eldon Memoirs' as Pincher's biography.
+I am only in the first volume. Are English chancellors
+really made of such stuff? I couldn't have thought it.
+Pincher will help to reconcile me to the Law Lords perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>And, to turn from Tory legislators, I am vainglorious
+in announcing to you that the Anti-Corn-Law League has
+taken up my poems on the top of its pikes as antithetic to
+'War and Monopoly.' Have I not had a sonnet from
+Gutter Lane? And has not the journal called the 'League'
+reviewed me into the third heaven, high up&mdash;above the pure
+ether of the five points? Yes, indeed. Of course I should
+be a (magna) chartist for evermore, even without the
+previous predilection.</p>
+
+<p>And what do you and Mrs. Martin say about O'Connell?
+Did you read last Saturday's 'Examiner'? Tell her that I
+welcomed her kind letter heartily, and that this is an answer
+to both of you. My best love to her always. May God
+bless you, dear Mr. Martin! Probably I have written your
+patience to an end. If papa or anybody were in the room,
+I should have a remembrance for you.</p>
+
+<p>I remain, myself,</p>
+
+<p>Affectionately yours,<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Wednesday [December 1844].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;Hardly had my letter gone to
+you yesterday, when your kind present and not <i>et</i> 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
+<i>her</i>. But the 'great idea' '&agrave; propos des bottes,' which
+occurred to myself, ought to be unspeakable, like Miss
+Martineau's great ideas&mdash;for I do believe it was&mdash;that I
+needn't have the trouble every morning, <i>now</i>, of putting on
+my stockings....</p>
+
+<p>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....</p>
+
+<p>Did I tell you, or Mr. Martin, that Rogers the poet, at
+eighty-three or four years of age, bore the bank robbery<a name="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119"><sup>[119]</sup></a>
+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 <i>first</i> went to see Wordsworth at the Lakes.</p>
+
+<p>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. <i>But</i>,'
+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 <i>that</i> man is <i>Rogers</i>.' 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.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you both!</p>
+
+<p>Your most affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<p>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&mdash;no, out of
+the way&mdash;it is whispered that when Queen Victoria goes to
+Strathfieldsea<a name="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120"><sup>[120]</sup></a> (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.'</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To John Kenyan</i><br />
+Wednesday morning [about December 1844].<br />
+
+<p>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 <i>hear</i> me without
+inconvenience. Which is for <i>you</i> to consider, and not for
+<i>me</i>. And indeed the fog, in addition to the cold, makes
+it inexpedient for anyone to leave the house except upon
+business and compulsion.</p>
+
+<p>Oh no&mdash;we need not mind any scorn which assails
+Tennyson and <i>us</i> together. There is a dishonor that
+does honor&mdash;and 'this is of it.' I never heard of Barnes.<a name="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121"><sup>[121]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>Were you aware that the review you brought was in
+a newspaper called the 'League,' and laudatory to the
+utmost extravagance&mdash;praising us too for courage in opposing
+'war and monopoly'?&mdash;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, <i>do you know, I should be very
+much pleased</i>? You remember that I am a sort of (magna)
+chartist&mdash;only going a little farther!</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;for his ingratitude seems to 'strike
+through' to me; and I am not without remorse.</p>
+
+<p>Ever most affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>I inclose Mr. Chorley's note which you left behind you,
+but which I did not see until just now. <i>You</i> know that I
+am not ashamed of '<i>progress</i>.' On the contrary, my only
+hope is in it. But the question is not <i>there</i>, nor, I think,
+for the public, except in cases of ripe, established reputations,
+as I said before.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+(On returning some illustrations of Spenser by Mr. Woods)<br />
+December 11, 1844.<br />
+
+<p>... 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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;I do not pretend to be right. I only tell
+you (as you ask for them) what my impressions are.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;alas! an impossible vegetable!&mdash;fabulous
+as the Halcyon!</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Monday, December 24, 1844 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mr. Boyd,&mdash;I wish I had a note from you
+to-day&mdash;which optative aorist I am not sure of being either
+grammatical or reasonable! Perhaps you have expected
+to hear from <i>me</i> with more reason....</p>
+
+<p>I fancied that you would be struck by Miss Martineau's
+lucid and able style. She is a very admirable woman&mdash;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 <i>publicity</i>, and ventured it all
+for the sake of what she considered the truth&mdash;she was
+sustained, she said, by the recollection of Godiva.</p>
+
+<p>Do you remember who Godiva was&mdash;or shall I tell
+you? Think of it&mdash;Godiva of Coventry, and peeping
+Tom. The worst and basest is, that in this nineteenth
+century there are thousands of Toms to one.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>themselves</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>ELIBET.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>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 Ennuy&eacute;e' (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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Jameson</i><br />
+[End of December 1844.]<br />
+
+<p>... For the 'Athenaeum,' I have always held it as a
+journal, first&mdash;in the very first rank&mdash;both in ability and
+integrity; and knowing Mr. Dilke <i>is</i> 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 <i>don't</i> laugh), that I hold her to have been hardly used
+in the late controversy. And, if you don't laugh at <i>that</i>,
+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 <i>are</i>
+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, <i>and is she ever
+unjust</i>? I ask you. <i>I</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 <i>that</i> a 'peradventure' worth considering? I
+am sure that you have no <i>right</i> to be uneasy in any case.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>impression</i> 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mr. Chorley</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: January 3, 1845.<br />
+
+<p>Dear Mr. Chorley,&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>While I am writing of the 'New Quarterly,' I take the
+liberty of making a remark, not of course in relation to
+myself&mdash;I know too well my duty to my judges&mdash;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&mdash;poetess in the true sense? Lady Winchilsea
+had an <i>eye</i>, as Wordsworth found out; but the Duchess of
+Newcastle had more poetry in her&mdash;the comparative praise
+proving the negative position&mdash;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 <i>but</i> for her letters and her wit?
+Not a poetess, surely! unless we accept for poetry her
+graceful <i>vers de soci&eacute;t&eacute;</i>.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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....</p>
+
+<p>I remain, very truly yours,<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mr. Chorley</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: January 7, 1845.<br />
+
+<p>Dear Mr. Chorley,&mdash;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&mdash;the
+error of all imperfect knowledge; and into unreasonable
+exclusiveness&mdash;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&mdash;and more and more since my long seclusion&mdash;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&mdash;to say nothing about the
+justest and wisest. Sympathies are our opportunities of good.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, I know nothing of your 'sweet mistress
+Anne.'<a name="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122"><sup>[122]</sup></a> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>Joannan aera</i>.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>poet</i> 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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;witness my reverent love of the grandfathers!</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;though I
+too (<i>anch' io</i>) 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.</p>
+
+<p>But you shall not think me exclusive. Of poor L.E.L.,
+for instance, I could write with <i>more</i> praiseful appreciation
+than you can. It appears to me that she had the gift&mdash;though
+in certain respects she dishonored the art&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>genius</i>, which
+dear Mr. Kenyon calls my 'immoral sympathy with power;'
+and if Madame Dudevant<a name="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123"><sup>[123]</sup></a> is not the first female genius of
+any country or age, I really do not know who is. And
+then she has certain noblenesses&mdash;granting all the evil and
+'perilous stuff'&mdash;noblenesses and royalnesses which make
+me loyal. Do pardon me for intruding all this on you,
+though you cannot justify me&mdash;<i>you</i>, who are occupied
+beyond measure, and <i>I</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&mdash;the
+right of being grateful to you.</p>
+
+<p>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</p>
+
+<p>Truly and faithfully yours,<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mr. Chorley</i><br />
+[<i>The beginning of this letter is lost</i>]<br />
+[1845]<br />
+
+<p>... to the awful consideration of the possibility of my
+reading a novel or caring for the story of it (<i>proh pudor!</i>),
+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, <i>as</i> 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 '<i>Ci-g&icirc;t</i> 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, &#949;&#953;&#962; &#964;&#959;&#965;&#962; &#945;&#953;&#969;&#957;&#945;&#962; [eis tous
+ai&ocirc;nas]. 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.</p>
+
+<p>This is a long preface to coming to speak of the
+'Improvisatore.'<a name="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124"><sup>[124]</sup></a> 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.</p>
+
+<p>And for the <i>rococo</i>, 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,'<a name="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125"><sup>[125]</sup></a> 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 <i>beauty in detail</i>,
+which we all should do if our senses were better educated.</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>And do <i>you</i> know that dear Miss Mitford spent this
+day week with me, notwithstanding the rain?</p>
+
+<p>Very truly yours,<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>I have forgotten what I particularly wished to say&mdash;viz.
+that I never thought of <i>expecting</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>The east wind seems to be blowing all my letters about
+to-day; the <i>t's</i> and <i>e's</i> wave like willows. Now if crooked
+<i>e's</i> mean a 'greenshade' (not taken rurally), what awful
+significance can have the whole crooked alphabet?</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Saturday, January 1844 [should be 1845].<a name="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126"><sup>[126]</sup></a><br />
+
+<p>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 <i>s&eacute;ance</i> in five foreign languages,
+viz. Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and German. When
+the mesmeriser touches the organ of <i>imitation</i> 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 <i>language</i> is touched, she simply
+answers in English what is said.</p>
+
+<p>My 'few words of comment' upon this are, that I feel
+to be more and more standing on my head&mdash;which does
+not mean, you will be pleased to observe, that I understand.</p>
+
+<p>Well, and how are you both going on? My voice is
+quite returned; and papa continues, I am sorry to say, to
+have a bad cold and cough. He means to stay in the
+house to-day and try what prudence will do.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And I had a letter from Browning the poet last night,
+which threw me into ecstasies&mdash;Browning, the author of
+'Paracelsus,' and king of the mystics.</p>
+
+<p>[<i>The rest of this letter is missing</i>.]</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Saturday, January 1845.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>you</i>, 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&mdash;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'<a name="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127"><sup>[127]</sup></a> at last, by this
+day's railroad.</p>
+
+<p>Thursday.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;an imperfect fossil letter,
+which no comparative anatomy will bring much sense out
+of&mdash;except the plain fact <i>that you were not forgotten</i>....</p>
+
+<p>From Alexandria we heard yesterday that they sailed
+from thence on the first of January, and the home passage
+may be long.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>changes</i> 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&mdash;according to my
+mind&mdash;to be wondered at. By the way, I had a letter
+and the present of a work on mesmerism&mdash;Mr. Newnham's&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;or perhaps you do <i>not</i> know&mdash;that
+there are two women whom I have hated all my life long&mdash;<i>Lady
+Byron and Marie Louise</i>. To prove how false the
+public effigy of the former is, however, Mrs. Jameson told
+me that she knew <i>nothing of mathematics, nothing of science</i>,
+and that the element preponderating in her mind is the
+<i>poetical</i> element&mdash;that she cares much for <i>my</i> poetry! How
+deep in the knowledge of the depths of vanity must
+Mrs. J. be, to tell me <i>that</i>&mdash;now mustn't she? But there
+was&mdash;yes, and is&mdash;a strong adverse feeling to work upon,
+and it is not worked away.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>languages</i>) to be 'equally beautiful, wonderful,
+and <i>undeniable</i>' but he is prudent enough to desire that no
+use should be made of this letter ... And now no more
+for to-day.</p>
+
+<p>With love to Mr. Martin, ever believe me<br />
+Your affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To John Kenyan</i><br />
+Saturday, February 8, 1845.<br />
+
+<p>I return to you, dearest Mr. Kenyon, the two numbers
+of Jerold Douglas's<a name="FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128"><sup>[128]</sup></a> 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 <i>Leeds Ladies' Committee</i>, authorised and backed
+by the London <i>General Council of the League</i>, 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&mdash;<i>I</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.'</p>
+
+<p>Ever affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Miss Commeline</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: [February-March 1845].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Miss Commeline,&mdash;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 <i>were</i>!) 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 <i>you</i> 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 our 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 <i>silk</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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....</p>
+
+<p>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>I's</i> and <i>we's</i>, and kindly trust to
+me for being interested in yours....</p>
+
+<p>Yours affectionately,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Saturday, March 3, 1845.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Friend,&mdash;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.'</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>were</i> 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&mdash;I
+cannot at all guess at the writer.</p>
+
+<p>I have had a kind note from Lord Teynham, whose
+oblivion I had ceased to doubt, it seemed so <i>proved</i> 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, <i>all things are pure</i>.' 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.</p>
+
+<p>But I do not agree with <i>you</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate and grateful<br />
+ELIBET.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+March 4, 1845.<br />
+
+<p>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&mdash;on the whole!&mdash;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) <i>will</i> come with the fall of the thermometer,
+and the voice will go!...</p>
+
+<p>And then I have another question to enunciate&mdash;will
+the oracle answer?</p>
+
+<p>Do you know <i>who wrote the article in the 'Metropolitan'</i>?
+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&mdash;for one the graciousness is too
+graceful, and for another the grace almost too gracious.
+I am puzzled and dizzy with doubt; and&mdash;is it you?
+Answer me, will you? If so, I should owe so much
+gratitude to you. Suffer me to pay it!&mdash;permit the pleasure
+to me of paying it!&mdash;for I know too much of the pleasures
+of gratitude to be willing to lose one of them.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To John Kenyan</i><br />
+March 6, [1845].<br />
+
+<p>Thank you, dearest Mr. Kenyon&mdash;they are very fine.
+The poetry is in <i>them</i>, 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<a name="FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129"><sup>[129]</sup></a> within the 'hour,' they
+shall wait for the 'Responsibility,' and the two go to you
+together.</p>
+
+<p>And as to the tiring, it has not been much, and the
+happy day was well worth being tired <i>for</i>. 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&mdash;only uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But as to the review, be sure&mdash;be very sure that it
+is not Mr. Browning's. How you could <i>think</i> even of
+Mr. Browning, surprises me. Now, as for me, I know as
+well <i>as he does himself</i> that he has had nothing to do
+with it.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you always. I have heard from dear
+Miss Mitford.</p>
+
+<p>Ever affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+March 29, 1845 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mr. Boyd,&mdash;As Arabel has written out for
+you the glorification of 'Peter of York,'<a name="FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130"><sup>[130]</sup></a> 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&mdash;not being able to
+recover the veins, I suppose, all in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>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. All truth and
+all beauty and all music belong to God&mdash;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 <i>me</i>. 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.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, what a dream! What a thought! Too good even
+to come true!</p>
+
+<p>I did not think that you would much like the 'Duchess
+May;' but among the <i>profanum vulgus</i> 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 <i>that</i> 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
+<i>story</i> that has power with people, just what <i>you</i> do not care
+for!</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>Whig</i> 'American,' <i>not</i>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>you</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate and grateful<br />
+ELIBET.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To John Kenyan</i><br />
+Friday [about January-March 1845].<br />
+
+<p>Dearest Mr. Kenyon,&mdash;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
+<i>German</i>, I think, <i>not</i> a Robinson <i>purified</i>, mind, but a
+Robinson multiplied and compounded.<a name="FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131"><sup>[131]</sup></a> 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 <i>me</i>, not so many
+years ago.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>To-day Mr. Poe sent me a volume containing his poems
+and tales collected, so now I <i>must</i> 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 <i>you</i> gave it to him (<i>I</i> explained
+<i>that</i>), and yet never came upstairs to express to you his
+sense of obligation.</p>
+
+<p>Affectionately yours always,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To John Kenyan</i><br />
+Saturday [beginning of April 1845].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Cousin,&mdash;After all <i>I</i>/ said to <i>you</i>, 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 <i>two</i>, which I
+am doing and shall finish anon.<a name="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132_132"><sup>[132]</sup></a> 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 <i>you would hesitate about rejecting the whole in a
+body</i>, from any consideration for <i>me</i>, 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 <i>bear</i> the remotest approach to ceremony in the
+matter. What is wrong? what is right? what is too much?
+those are the only considerations.</p>
+
+<p>Apuleius is <i>florid</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>But probably (I say to myself) you do not want so many
+illustrations, and all too from one hand?</p>
+
+<p>The two I do not send are 'Psyche contemplating Cupid
+asleep,' and 'Psyche and the Eagle.'</p>
+
+<p>And I wait to hear how Polyphemus is to <i>look</i>&mdash;and also
+Adonis.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;better even!</p>
+
+<p>Oh&mdash;such happy news to-day! The 'Statira' is at Plymouth,
+and my brothers quite well, notwithstanding their
+hundred days on the sea! <i>It makes me happy</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Yours most affectionately,<br />
+BA.</p>
+
+<p>You shall have your 'Radical' almost immediately. I
+am ashamed. <i>In such haste</i>.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+April 3, 1845.<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;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 <i>me</i>; 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 <i>your</i> kind ones. How delightful it is
+to have this sense of a summer at hand. <i>Shall</i> I see you
+this summer, I wonder. That is a question among my
+dreams.</p>
+
+<p>By the last American packet I had two letters, one from
+a poet of Massachusetts, and another from a poetess: the
+<i>he</i>, Mr. Lowell, and the <i>she</i>, 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....</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate and grateful friend,<br />
+ELIBET.</p>
+
+<p>Arabel and Mr. Hunter talk of paying you a visit some
+day.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+April 3, 1845.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;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'&mdash;and the
+safety of the beans is rather a Pythagoraean<a name="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133_133"><sup>[133]</sup></a> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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, should <i>dare</i> 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 <i>conclusive</i>
+in logic and sentiment. The sensation everywhere is extraordinary,
+I am sorry really to say!</p>
+
+<p>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
+'<i>fluttered</i>' 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 <i>that</i>; 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.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you.</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+
+<p>I hear that Guizot suffers intensely, and that there are
+fears lest he may sink. Not that the complaint is mortal.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+Wimpole Street: April 9, 1845.<br />
+
+<p>Poor Hood! Ah! I had feared that the scene was
+closing on him. And I am glad that a little of the poor
+gratitude of the world is laid down at his door just now to
+muffle to his dying ear the harsher sounds of life. I
+forgive much to Sir Robert for the sake of that letter&mdash;though,
+after all, the minister is not high-hearted, or made
+of heroic stuff.<a name="FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134"><sup>[134]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>I am delighted that you should appreciate Mr. Browning's
+high power&mdash;very high, according to my view&mdash;very high,
+and various. Yes, 'Paracelsus' you <i>should</i> have. 'Sordello'
+has many fine things in it, but, having been thrown down
+by many hands as unintelligible, and retained in mine as
+certainly of the Sphinxine literature, with all its power, I
+hesitate to be imperious to you in my recommendations
+of it. Still, the book <i>is</i> worth being <i>studied</i>&mdash;study is
+necessary to it, as, indeed, though in a less degree, to all
+the works of this poet; study is peculiarly necessary to it.
+He is a true poet, and a poet, I believe, of a large '<i>future
+in-rus, about to be</i>.' He is only growing to the height he will
+attain.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+April 1845.<br />
+
+<p>The sin of Sphinxine literature I admit. Have I not
+struggled hard to renounce it? Do I not, day by day? Do
+you know that I have been told that <i>I</i> have written things
+harder to interpret than Browning himself?&mdash;only I cannot,
+cannot believe it&mdash;he is so very hard. Tell me honestly
+(and although I attributed the excessive good nature of the
+'Metropolitan' criticism to you, I <i>know</i> that you can speak
+the truth <i>truly</i>!) if anything like the Sphinxineness of
+Browning, you discover in me; take me as far back as 'The
+Seraphim' volume and answer! As for Browning, the fault
+is certainly great, and the disadvantage scarcely calculable,
+it is so great. He cuts his language into bits, and one has
+to join them together, as young children do their dissected
+maps, in order to make any meaning at all, and to study
+hard before one can do it. Not that I grudge the study
+or the time. The depth and power of the significance
+(when it is apprehended) glorifies the puzzle. With you
+and me it is so; but with the majority of readers, even of
+readers of poetry, it is not and cannot be so.</p>
+
+<p>The consequence is, that he is not read except in a
+peculiar circle very strait and narrow. He will not die,
+because the principle of life is in him, but he will not live
+the warm summer life which is permitted to many of very
+inferior faculty, because he does not come out into the sun.</p>
+
+<p>Faithfully your friend,<br />
+E.B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<p>The following letter relates to the controversy raging
+round Miss Martineau and her mesmerism. Miss Barrett
+had evidently referred to it in a letter to Mr. Chorley, which
+has not been preserved.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mr. Chorley</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: April 28, 1845.<br />
+
+<p>Dear Mr. Chorley,&mdash;I felt quite sure that you would
+take my postscript for a womanish thing, and a little doubtful
+whether you would not take the whole allusion (in or out of
+a postscript) for an impertinent thing; but the impulse to
+speak was stronger than the fear of speaking; and from the
+peculiarities of my position, I have come to write by impulses
+just as other people talk by them. Still, if I had
+known that the subject was so painful to you, I certainly
+would not have touched on it, strong as my feeling has
+been about it, and full and undeniable as is my sympathy
+with our noble-minded friend, both as a woman and a
+thinker. Not that I consider (of course I cannot) that she
+has made out anything like a '<i>fact</i>' in the Tynemouth
+story&mdash;not that I think the evidence offered in any sort sufficient;
+take it as it was in the beginning and unimpugned&mdash;not
+that I have been otherwise than of opinion throughout
+that she was precipitate and indiscreet, however generously
+so, in her mode and time of advocating the mesmeric question;
+but that she is at liberty as a thinking being (in my
+mind) to hold an opinion, the grounds of which she cannot
+yet justify to the world. Do you not think she may be?
+Have you not opinions yourself beyond what you can prove
+to others? Have we not all? And because some of the
+links of the outer chain of a logical argument fail, or seem
+to fail, are we therefore to have our 'honours' questioned,
+because we do not yield what is suspended to an inner
+uninjured chain of at once subtler and stronger formation?
+For what I venture to object to in the argument of the
+'Athenaeum' is the making a <i>moral obligation</i> of an <i>intellectual
+act</i>, which is the first step and gesture (is it not?) in all
+persecution for opinion; and the involving of the 'honour'
+of an opponent in the motion of recantation she is invited
+to. This I do venture to exclaim against. I do cry aloud
+against this; and I do say this, that when we call it
+'hard,' we are speaking of it softly. Why, consider how it
+is! The 'Athenaeum' has done quite enough to <i>disprove
+the proving</i> of the wreck story,<a name="FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135"><sup>[135]</sup></a> and no more at all. The
+disproving of the proof of the wreck story is indeed enough
+to disprove the wreck story and to disprove mesmerism
+itself (as far as the proof of mesmerism depends on the
+proof of the wreck story, and no farther) with all doubters
+and undetermined inquirers; but with the very large class
+of previous <i>believers</i>, this disproof of a proof is a mere accident,
+and cannot be expected to have much logical consequence.
+Believing that such things may be as this revelation
+of a wreck, they naturally are less exacting of the stabilities
+of the proving process. What we think probable we do
+not call severely for the proof of. Moreover Miss Martineau
+is not only a believer in the mysteries of mesmerism (and
+she wrote to me the other day that in Birmingham, where
+she is, she has present cognisance of <i>three cases of clairvoyance</i>),
+but she is a believer in the personal integrity of
+her witnesses. She has what she has well called an 'incommunicable
+confidence.' And this, however incommunicable,
+is sufficiently comprehensible to all persons who
+know what personal faith is, to place her 'honour,' I do
+maintain, high above any suspicion, any charge with the
+breath of man's lips. I am sure you agree with me, dear
+Mr. Chorley&mdash;ah! it will be a comfort and joy together.
+Dear Miss Mitford and I often quarrel softly about literary
+life and its toils and sorrows, she against and I in favour of;
+but we never could differ about the worth and comfort of
+domestic affection.</p>
+
+<p>Ever sincerely yours,<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+
+<p>I am delighted to hear of the novel. And the comedy?</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mr. Chorley</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: April 28, 1845.<br />
+
+<p>Dear Mr. Chorley,&mdash;... For Miss Martineau, is it not
+true that she <i>has</i> admitted her wreck story to have no proof?
+Surely she has. Surely she said that the evidence was
+incapable, at this point of time, of justification to the
+<i>exoteric</i>, and that the question had sunk now to one of
+character, to which her opponent answered that it had always
+<i>been</i> one of character. And you must admit that the
+direct and unmitigated manner of depreciating the reputation,
+not merely of Jane Arrowsmith, but of Mrs. Wynyard,
+a personal friend of Miss Martineau's to whom she professes
+great obligations, could not be otherwise than exasperating
+to a woman of her generous temper, and this just in the
+crisis of her gratitude for her restoration to life and enjoyment
+by the means (as she considers it) of this friend. Not
+that I feel at all convinced of her having been cured by
+mesmerism; I have told her openly that I doubt it a little,
+and she is not angry with me for saying so. Also, the
+wreck story, and (as you suggest) the three new cases of clairvoyance;
+why, one <i>cannot</i>, you know, give one's specific
+convictions to general sweeping testimonies, with a mist all
+round them. Still, I do lean to believing this <i>class</i> of
+mysteries, and I see nothing more incredible in the
+apocalypse of the wreck and other marvels of clairvoyance,
+than in that singular adaptation of another person's senses,
+which is a common phenomenon of the simple forms of
+mesmerism. If it is credible that a person in a mesmeric
+sleep can taste the sourness of the vinegar on another
+person's palate, I am ready to go the whole length of the
+transmigration of senses. But after all, except from hearing
+so much, I am as ignorant as you are, in my own experience.
+One of my sisters was thrown into a sort of swoon, and
+could not open her eyelids, though she heard what passed,
+once or twice or thrice; and she might have been a
+prophetess by this time, perhaps, if, partly from her own
+feeling on the subject, and partly from mine, she had not
+determined never to try the experiment again. It is hideous
+and detestable to my imagination; as I confessed to you, it
+makes my blood run backwards; and if I were <i>you</i>, I would
+not (with the nervous weakness you speak of) throw myself
+into the way of it, I really would not. Think of a female
+friend of mine begging me to give her a lock of my hair, or
+rather begging my sister to 'get it for her,' that she might
+send it to a celebrated prophet of mesmerism in Paris, to
+have an oracle concerning me. Did you ever, since the
+days of the witches, hear a more ghastly proposition? It
+shook me so with horror, I had scarcely voice to say 'no,'
+hough I <i>did</i> say it very emphatically at last, I assure you.
+A lock of my hair for a Parisian prophet? Why, if I
+had yielded, I should have felt the steps of pale spirits
+treading as thick as snow all over my sofa and bed, by day
+and night, and pulling a corresponding lock of hair on my
+head at awful intervals. <i>I</i>, who was born with a double set
+of nerves, which are always out of order; the most excitable
+person in the world, and nearly the most superstitious. I
+should have been scarcely sane at the end of a fortnight, I
+believe of myself! Do you remember the little spirit in gold
+shoe-buckles, who was a familiar of Heinrich Stilling's?
+Well, I should have had a French one to match the German,
+with Balzac's superfine boot-polish in place of the buckles,
+as surely as I lie here a mortal woman.</p>
+
+<p>I congratulate you (amid all cares and anxieties) upon
+the view of Naples in the distance, but chiefly on your own
+happy and just estimate of your selected position in life.
+It does appear to me wonderfully and mournfully wrong,
+when men of letters, as it is too much the fashion for them
+to do, take to dishonoring their profession by fruitless
+bewailings and gnashings of teeth; when, all the time, it
+must be their own fault if it is not the noblest in the world.
+Miss Mitford treats me as a blind witness in this case;
+because I have seen nothing of the literary world, or any
+other sort of world, and yet cry against her 'pen and ink'
+cry. It is the cry I least like to hear from her lips, of all
+others; and it is unworthy of them altogether. On the lips
+of a woman of letters, it sounds like jealousy (which it cannot
+be with <i>her</i>), as on the lips of a woman of the world, like
+ingratitude. Madame Girardin's 'Ecole des Journalistes'
+deserved Jules Janin's reproof of it; and there is something
+noble and touching in that feeling of brotherhood among
+men of letters, which he invokes. I am so glad to hear you
+say that I am right, glad for your sake and glad for mine.
+In fact, there is something which is attractive to <i>me</i>, and
+which has been attractive ever since I was as high as this
+table, even in the old worn type of Grub Street authors and
+garret poets. Men and women of letters are the first in the
+whole world to me, and I would rather be the least among
+them, than 'dwell in the courts of princes.'</p>
+
+<p>Forgive me for writing so fast and far. Just as if you
+had nothing to do but to read me. Oh, for patience for the
+novel.</p>
+
+<p>I am, faithfully yours,<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Thomson</i><a name="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136_136"><sup>[136]</sup></a><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: Friday, May 16, 1845 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>I write one line to thank you, dear Miss Thomson, for
+<i>your</i> translation (so far too liberal, though true to the spirit
+of my intention) of my work for your album. How could
+it <i>not</i> be a pleasure to me to work for you?</p>
+
+<p>As to my using those manuscripts otherwise than in
+your service, I do not at all think of it, and I wish to say
+this. Perhaps I do not (also) partake quite your 'divine
+fury' for converting our sex into Greek scholarship, and I
+do not, I confess, think it as desirable as you do. Where
+there is a love for poetry, and thirst for beauty strong enough
+to justify labour, let these impulses, which are noble, be
+obeyed; but in the case of the multitude it is different;
+and the mere <i>fashion of scholarship</i> among women would
+be a disagreeable vain thing, and worse than vain. You,
+who are a Greek yourself, know that the Greek language is
+not to be learnt in a flash of lightning and by Hamiltonian
+systems, but that it swallows up year after year of studious life.
+Now I have a 'doxy' (as Warburton called it), that there is
+no exercise of the mind so little profitable to the mind as
+the study of languages. It is the nearest thing to a passive
+recipiency&mdash;is it not?&mdash;as a mental action, though it leaves
+one as weary as ennui itself. Women want to be made to
+<i>think actively</i>: their apprehension is quicker than that of
+men, but their defect lies for the most part in the logical
+faculty and in the higher mental activities. Well, and then,
+to remember how our own English poets are neglected and
+scorned; our poets of the Elizabethan age! I would
+rather that my countrywomen began by loving <i>these</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Not that I would blaspheme against Greek poetry, or
+depreciate the knowledge of the language as an attainment.
+I congratulate <i>you</i> on it, though I never should think of
+trying to convert other women into a desire for it. Forgive
+me.</p>
+
+<p>To think of Mr. Burges's comparing my Nonnus to the
+right Nonnus makes my hair stand on end, and the truth is
+I had flattered myself that nobody would take such trouble.
+I have not much reverence for Nonnus, and have pulled
+him and pushed him and made him stand as I chose, never
+fearing that my naughty impertinences would be brought to
+light. For the rest, I thank you gratefully (and may I
+respectfully and gratefully thank Miss Bayley?) for the kind
+words of both of you, both in this letter and as my sister
+heard them. It is delightful to me to find such grace in the
+eyes of dearest Mr. Kenyon's friends, and I remain, dear
+Miss Thomson,</p>
+
+<p>Truly yours, and gladly,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>If there should be anything more at any time for me to
+do, I trust to your trustfulness.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Thomson</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: Monday [1845].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Miss Thomson,&mdash;Believe of me that it can
+only give me pleasure when you are affectionate enough to
+treat me as a friend; and for the rest, nobody need apologise
+for taking another into the vineyards&mdash;least Miss Bayley
+and yourself to <i>me</i>. At the first thought I felt sure that
+there must be a great deal about vines in these Greeks of
+ours, and am surprised, I confess, in turning from one to
+another, to find how few passages of length are quotable,
+and how the images drop down into a line or two. Do you
+know the passage in the seventh 'Odyssey' where there is a
+vineyard in different stages of ripeness?&mdash;of which Pope has
+made the most, so I tore up what I began to write, and
+leave you to him. It is in Alcinous' gardens, and between
+the first and second hundred lines of the book. The one
+from the 'Iliad,' open to Miss Bayley's objection, is yet too
+beautiful and appropriate, I fancy, for you to throw over.
+Curious it is that my first recollection went from that
+shield of Achilles to Hesiod's 'Shield of Hercules,' from
+which I send you a version&mdash;leaving out of it what dear Miss
+Bayley would object to on a like ground with the other:</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot">
+Some gathered grapes, with reap-hooks in their hands,<br />
+While others bore off from the gathering hands<br />
+Whole baskets-full of bunches, black and white,<br />
+From those great ridges heaped up into fight,<br />
+With vine-leaves and their curling tendrils. So<br />
+They bore the baskets ...<br />
+<br />
+... Yes! and all were saying<br />
+Their jests, while each went staggering in a row<br />
+Beneath his grape-load to the piper's playing.<br />
+The grapes were purple-ripe. And here, in fine,<br />
+Men trod them out, and there they drained the wine.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>In the 'Works and Days' Hesiod says again, what is not
+worth your listening to, perhaps:</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot">
+And when that Sinus and Orion come<br />
+To middle heaven, and when Aurora&mdash;she<br />
+O' the rosy fingers&mdash;looks inquiringly<br />
+Full on Arcturus, straightway gather home<br />
+The general vintage. And, I charge you, see<br />
+All, in the sun and open air, outlaid<br />
+Ten days and nights, and five days in the shade.<br />
+The sixth day, pour in vases the fine juice&mdash;<br />
+The gift of Bacchus, who gives joys for use.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Anacreon talks to the point so well that you must
+forgive him, I think, for being Anacreontic, and take from
+his hands what is not defiled. The translation you send
+me does not 'smell of Anacreon,' nor please me. Where
+did you get it? Would this be at all fresher?</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot">
+Grapes that wear a purple skin,<br />
+Men and maidens carry in,<br />
+Brimming baskets on their shoulders,<br />
+Which they topple one by one<br />
+Down the winepress. Men are holders<br />
+Of the place there, and alone<br />
+Tread the grapes out, crush them down,<br />
+Letting loose the soul of wine&mdash;<br />
+Praising Bacchus as divine,<br />
+With the loud songs called his own!<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>You are aware of the dresser of the vine in Homer's
+'Hymn to Mercury' translated so exquisitely by Shelley, and
+of a very beautiful single figure in Theocritus besides.
+Neither probably would suit your purpose. In the 'Pax'
+of Aristophanes there is an idle 'Chorus' who talks of
+looking at the vines and watching the grapes ripen, and
+eating them at last, but there is nothing of vineyard work
+in it, so I dismiss the whole.</p>
+
+<p>For 'Hector and Andromache,' would you like me to
+try to do it for you? It would amuse me, and you should
+not be bound to do more with what I send you than to
+throw it into the fire if it did not meet your wishes precisely.
+The same observation applies, remember, to this
+little sheet, which I have <i>kept</i>&mdash;delayed sending&mdash;just
+because I wanted to let you have a trial of my strength
+on 'Andromache' in the same envelope; but the truth
+is that it is not <i>begun</i> yet, partly through other occupation,
+and partly through the lassitude which the cold wind
+of the last few days always brings down on me. Yesterday
+I made an effort, and felt like a broken stick&mdash;not even
+a bent one! So wait for a warm day (and what a season
+we have had! I have been walking up and down stairs
+and pretending to be quite well), and I will promise to
+do my best, and certainly an inferior hand may get nearer
+to touch the great Greek lion's mane than Pope's did.</p>
+
+<p>Will you give my love to dear Miss Bayley? She shall
+hear from me&mdash;and <i>you</i> shall, in a day or two. And do
+not mind Mr. Kenyon. He 'roars as softly as a sucking dove;'
+nevertheless he is an intolerant monster, as I half
+told him the other day.</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, dear Miss Thomson,<br />
+Affectionately yours,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: May 22, 1845.<br />
+
+<p>Did you persevere with 'Sordello'? I hope so. Be
+sure that we may all learn (as poets) much and deeply
+from it, for the writer speaks true oracles. When you
+have read it through, then read for relaxation and recompense
+the last 'Bell and Pomegranate' by the same poet,
+his 'Colombo's Birthday,' which is exquisite. Only 'Pippa
+Passes' I lean to, or kneel to, with the deepest reverence.
+Wordsworth has been in town, and is gone. Tennyson is
+still here. He likes London, I hear, and hates Cheltenham,
+where he resides with his family, and he smokes pipe
+after pipe, and does not mean to write any more poems.
+Are we to sing a requiem?</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, faithfully yours,<br />
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Saturday, July 21, 1845 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;You are kind to exceeding
+kindness, and I am as grateful as any of your long-ago kind
+invitations ever found me. It is something pleasant, indeed,
+and like a return to life, to be asked by you to spend two
+or three days in your house, and I thank you for this
+pleasantness, and for the goodness, on your own part,
+which induced it. You may be perfectly sure that no
+Claypon, though he should live in Arcadia, would be preferred
+by me to <i>you</i> as a host, and I wonder how you could
+entertain the imagination of such a thing. Mr. Kenyon,
+indeed, has asked me repeatedly to spend a few hours on a
+sofa in his house, and, the Regent's Park being so much
+nearer than you are, I had promised to think of it. But I
+have not yet found it possible to accomplish even that
+quarter of a mile's preferment, and my ambition is forced
+to be patient when I begin to think of St. John's Wood.
+I am considerably stronger, and increasing in strength, and
+in time, with a further advance of the summer, I may
+do 'such things&mdash;what they are yet, I know not.' Yes, I
+<i>know</i> that they relate to <i>you</i>, and that I have a hope, as
+well as an earnest, affectionate desire, to sit face to face
+with you once more before this summer closes. Do, in the
+meantime, believe that I am very grateful to you for your
+kind, considerate proposal, and that it is not made in vain
+for my wishes, and that I am not likely willingly 'to spend
+two or three days' with anybody in the world before I do
+so with yourself.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hunter has not paid us his usual Saturday's visit,
+and therefore I have no means of answering the questions
+you put in relation to him. We will ask him about 'times
+and seasons' when next we see him, and you shall hear.</p>
+
+<p>Did you ever hear much of Robert Montgomery,
+commonly called Satan Montgomery because the author of
+'Satan,' of the 'Omnipresence of the Deity,' and of various
+poems which pass through edition after edition, nobody
+knows how or <i>why</i>? I understand that his pew (he is a
+clergyman) is sown over with red rosebuds from ladies of
+the congregation, and that the same fair hands have made
+and presented to him, in the course of a single season, one
+hundred pairs of slippers. Whereupon somebody said to
+this Reverend Satan, 'I never knew before, Mr. Montgomery,
+that you were a <i>centipede</i>'</p>
+
+<p>Dearest Mr. Boyd's affectionate and grateful<br />
+ELIBET.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>Through the summer of 1845, Miss Barrett, as usual,
+recovered strength, but so slightly that her doctor urged that
+she should not face the winter in England. Plans were
+accordingly made for her going abroad, to which the
+following letters refer, but the scheme ultimately broke
+down before the prohibition of Mr. Barrett&mdash;a prohibition
+for which no valid reason was put forward, and which, to
+say the least, bore the colour of unaccountable indifference
+to his daughter's health and wishes. The matter is of
+some importance on account of its bearing on the action
+taken by Miss Barrett in the autumn of the following
+year.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Monday, July 29, 1845 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;I am ashamed not to have
+written before, and yet have courage enough to ask you to
+write to me as soon as you can. Day by day I have had
+good intentions enough (the fact is) about writing, to seem
+to deserve some good deeds from you, which is contrary to
+all wisdom and reason, I know, but is rather natural, after
+all. What <i>my</i> deeds have been, you will be apt to ask.
+Why, all manner of idleness, which is the most interrupting,
+you know, of all things. The Hedleys have been flitting
+backwards and forwards, staying, some of them, for a month
+at a time in London, and then going, and then coming
+again; and I have had other visitors, few but engrossing
+'after their kind.' And I have been <i>getting well</i>&mdash;which is
+a process&mdash;going out into the carriage two or three times a
+week, abdicating my sofa for my armchair, moving from one
+room to another now and then, and walking about mine
+quite as well as, and with considerably more complacency
+than, a child of two years old. Altogether, I do think that
+if you were kind enough to be glad to see me looking better
+when you were in London, you would be kind enough to be
+still gladder if you saw me now. Everybody praises me,
+and I look in the looking-glass with a better conscience.
+Also, it is an improving improvement, and will be, until,
+you know, the last hem of the garment of summer is lost
+sight of, and then&mdash;and then&mdash;I must either follow to another
+climate, or be ill again&mdash;<i>that</i> I know, and am prepared for.
+It is but dreary work, this undoing of my Penelope web in
+the winter, after the doing of it through the summer, and
+the more progress one makes in one's web, the more dreary
+the prospect of the undoing of all these fine silken stitches.
+But we shall see....</p>
+
+<p>Ever your affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Tuesday [October 1845].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;Do believe that I have not
+been, as I have seemed, perhaps, forgetful of you through
+this silence. This last proof of your interest and affection
+for me&mdash;in your letter to Henrietta&mdash;quite rouses me to
+<i>speak out</i> my remembrance of you, and I have been
+remembering you all the time that I did not speak, only I
+was so perplexed and tossed up and down by doubts and
+sadnesses as to require some shock from without to force
+the speech from me. Your verses, in their grace of kindness,
+and the ivy from Wordsworth's cottage, just made me think
+to myself that I would write to you before I left England,
+but when you talk really of coming to see me, why, I must
+speak! You overcome me with the sense of your goodness
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, after all, I will not have you come! The farewells
+are bad enough which come to us, without our going to
+seek them, and I would rather wait and meet you on the
+Continent, or in England again, than see you now, just to
+part from you. And you cannot guess how shaken I am,
+and how I cling to every plank of a little calm. Perhaps I
+am going on the 17th or 20th. Certainly I have made up my
+mind to do it, and shall do it as a bare matter of duty; and
+it is one of the most painful acts of duty which my whole
+life has set before me. The road is as rough as possible,
+as far as I can see it. At the same time, being absolutely
+convinced from my own experience and perceptions, and
+the unhesitating advice of two able medical men (Dr.
+Chambers, one of them), that to escape the English winter
+will be <i>everything for me</i>, and that it involves the comfort
+and usefulness of the rest of my life, I have resolved to do
+it, let the circumstances of the doing be as painful as they
+may. If you were to see me you would be astonished to
+see the work of the past summer; but all these improvements
+will ebb away with the sun&mdash;while I am assured of
+permanent good if I leave England. The struggle with me
+has been a very painful one; I cannot enter on the how and
+wherefore at this moment. I had expected more help than
+I have found, and am left to myself, and thrown so on my
+own sense of duty as to feel it right, for the sake of future years,
+to make an effort to stand by myself as I best can. At the
+same time, I will not tell you that at the last hour something
+may not happen to keep me at home. <i>That</i> is neither impossible
+nor improbable. If, for instance, I find that I cannot
+have one of my brothers with me, why, the going in that case
+would be out of the question. Under ordinary circumstances
+I shall go, and if the experiment of going fails, why,
+then I shall have had the satisfaction of having tried it, and
+of knowing that it is God's will which keeps me a prisoner,
+and makes me a burden. As it is, I have been told that
+if I had gone years ago I <i>should be well now</i>; that one lung
+is very slightly affected, but the nervous system <i>absolutely
+shattered</i>, as the state of the pulse proves. I am in the habit
+of taking forty drops of laudanum a day, and <i>cannot do with
+less</i>, that is, the medical man <i>told me</i> that I could not do
+with less, saying so with his hand on the pulse. The cold
+weather, they say, acts on the lungs, and produces the
+weakness indirectly, whereas the necessary shutting up acts
+on the <i>nerves</i> and prevents them from having a chance
+of recovering their tone. And thus, without any mortal
+disease, or any disease of equivalent seriousness, I am
+thrown out of life, out of the ordinary sphere of its enjoyment
+and activity, and made a burden to myself and to
+others. Whereas there is a means of escape from these
+evils, and God has opened the door of escape, as wide
+as I see it!</p>
+
+<p>In all ways, for my own <i>happiness's sake</i> I do need <i>a
+proof</i> that the evil is irremediable. And this proof (or the
+counter-proof) I am about to seek in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Chambers has advised <i>Pisa</i>, and I go in the direct
+steamer from the Thames to Leghorn. I have good courage,
+and as far as my own strength goes, sufficient means.</p>
+
+<p>Dearest Mrs. Martin, more than I thought at first of
+telling you, I have told you. Much beside there is, painful
+to talk of, but I hope I have determined to do what is right,
+and that the determination has not been formed ungently,
+unscrupulously, nor unaffectionately in respect to the
+feelings of others. I would die for some of those, but there,
+has been affection opposed to affection.</p>
+
+<p>This in confidence, of course. May God bless both of
+you! Pray for me, dearest Mrs. Martin. Make up your
+mind to go somewhere soon&mdash;shall you not?&mdash;before the
+winter shuts the last window from which you see the sun.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Chambers said that he would 'answer for it' that
+the voyage would rather do me good than harm. Let me
+suffer sea sickness or not, he said, he would answer for its
+doing me no harm.</p>
+
+<p>I hope to take Arabel with me, and either Storm or
+Henry. This is my hope.</p>
+
+<p>Gratefully and affectionately I think of all your kindness
+and interest. May dear Mr. Martin lose nothing in this
+coming winter! I shall think of you, and not cease to love
+you. Moreover, you shall hear again from</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+October 27, 1845 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My very dear Friend,&mdash;It is so long since I wrote that I
+must write, I must ruffle your thoughts with a little breath
+from my side. Listen to me, my dear friend. That I have
+not written has scarcely been my fault, but my misfortune
+rather, for I have been quite unstrung and overcome by
+agitation and anxiety, and thought that I should be able to
+tell you at last of being calmer and happier, but it was all
+in vain. I do not leave England, my dear friend. It is
+decided that I remain on in my prison. It was my full
+intention to go. I considered it to be a clear duty, and I
+made up my mind to perform it, let the circumstances be
+ever so painfully like obstacles; but when the moment
+came it appeared impossible for me to set out alone, and
+also impossible to take my brother and sister with me
+without involving them in difficulties and displeasure. Now
+what I could risk for myself I could not risk for others, and
+the very kindness with which they desired me not to think
+of them only made me think of them more, as was natural
+and just. So Italy is given up, and I fall back into the hands
+of God, who is merciful, trusting Him with the time that
+shall be.</p>
+
+<p>Arabel would have gone to tell you all this a fortnight
+since, but one of my brothers has been ill with fever which
+was not exactly typhus, but of the typhoid character, and
+we knew that you would rather not see her under the circumstances.
+He is very much better (it is Octavius), and has
+been out of bed to-day and yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>Do not reproach me either for not writing or for not
+going, my very dear friend. I have been too heavy-hearted
+for words; and as to the deeds, you would not have wished
+me to lead others into difficulties, the extent and result of
+which no one could calculate. It would not have been just
+of me.</p>
+
+<p>And <i>you</i>, how are you, and what are you doing?</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you, my dear dear friend!</p>
+
+<p>Ever yours I am, affectionately and gratefully,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mr. Chorley</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: November 1845.<br />
+
+<p>I must trouble you with another letter of thanks, dear
+Mr. Chorley, now that I have to thank you for the value of
+the work as well as the kindness of the gift, for I have read
+your three volumes of 'Pomfret'<a name="FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137"><sup>[137]</sup></a> with interest and moral
+assent, and with great pleasure in various ways: it is a pure,
+true book without effort, which, in these days of gesture
+and rolling of the eyes, is an uncommon thing. Also you
+make your 'private judgment' work itself out quietly as a
+simple part of the love of truth, instead of being the loud
+heroic virtue it is so apt in real life to profess itself, seldom
+moving without drums and trumpets and the flying of
+party colours. All these you have put down rightly, wisely,
+and boldly, and it was, in my mind, no less wise than bold
+of you to let in that odour of Tyrrwhitism into the folds of
+the purple, and so prevent the very possibility of any
+'prestige.' If I complained it might be that your 'private
+judgment' confines its reference to 'public opinion,' and
+shuns, too proudly perhaps, the higher and deeper relations
+of human responsibility. But there are difficulties, I see,
+and you choose your path advisedly, of course. The
+best character in the book I take to be <i>Rose</i>; I cannot
+hesitate in selecting him. He is so lifelike with the world's
+conventional life that you hear his footsteps when he walks,
+and, indeed, I think his boots were apt to creak just the
+<i>soup&ccedil;on</i> of a creak, just as a gentleman's boots might,
+and he is excellently consistent, even down to the choice of
+a wife whom he could patronise. I hope you like your own
+Mr. Rose, and that you will forgive me for jilting Grace for
+Helena, which I could not help any more than Walter
+could. But now, may I venture to ask a question? Would
+it not have been wise of you if, on the point of <i>reserve</i>, you
+had thrown a deeper shade of opposition into the characters
+or rather manners of these women? Helena sits like a
+statue (and could Grace have done more?) when she wins
+Walter's heart in Italy. Afterwards, and by fits at the time,
+indeed, the artist fire bursts from her, but there was a great
+deal of smouldering when there should have been a clear
+heat to justify Walter's change of feeling. And then, in
+respect to <i>that</i>, do you really think that your Grace was
+generous, heroic (with the evidence she had of the change)
+in giving up her engagement? For her own sake, could
+she have done otherwise? I fancy not; the position
+seems surrounded by its own necessities, and no room for
+a doubt. I write on my own doubts, you see, and you will
+smile at them, or understand all through them that if the
+book had not interested me like a piece of real life, I should
+not find myself <i>backbiting</i> as if all these were 'my neighbours.'
+The pure tender feeling of the closing scenes
+touched me to better purpose, believe me, and I applaud
+from my heart and conscience your rejection of that low
+creed of 'poetical justice' which is neither justice nor poetry
+which is as degrading to virtue as false to experience, and
+which, thrown from your book, raises it into a pure atmosphere
+at once.</p>
+
+<p>I could go on talking, but remind myself (I do hope in
+time) that I might show my gratitude better. With sincere
+wishes for the success of the work (for just see how practically
+we come to trust to poetical justices after all our
+theories&mdash;<i>I</i>, I mean, and <i>mine</i>!), and with respect and
+esteem for the writer,</p>
+
+<p>I remain very truly yours,<br />
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Jameson</i><br />
+50 Wimpole Street: December 1, 1845.<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mrs. Jameson,&mdash;I receive your letter, as I
+must do every sign of your being near and inclined to think
+of me in kindness, gladly, and assure you at once that whenever
+you can spend a half-hour on me you will find me
+enough myself to have a true pleasure in welcoming you,
+say any day except next Saturday or the Monday immediately
+following.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as I heard of your return to England I ventured
+to hope that some good might come of it to me in my room
+here, besides the general good, which I look for with the
+rest of the public, when the censer swings back into the
+midst of us again. And how good of you, dear Mrs.
+Jameson, to think of me there where the perfumes were set
+burning; it makes me glad and grand that you should have
+been able to do so. Also the kind wishes which came with
+the thoughts (you say) were not in vain, for I have been
+very idle and very <i>well</i>; the angel of the summer has done
+more for me even than usual, and till the last wave of his
+wing I took myself to be quite well and at liberty, and even
+now I am as well as anyone can be who has heard the
+prison door shut for a whole winter at least, and knows it to
+be the only English alternative of a grave. Which is a
+gloomy way of saying that I am well but forced to shut
+myself up with disagreeable precautions all round, and I
+ought to be gratified instead of gloomy. Believe me that
+I <i>shall</i> be so when you come to see me, remaining in the
+meanwhile</p>
+
+<p>Most truly yours,<br />
+ELIZABETH BARRETT.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Friday [about December 1845].<br />
+
+<p>I am the guilty person, dearest Mrs. Martin! You
+would have heard from Henrietta at least yesterday, only
+I persisted in promising to write instead of her; and so, if
+there are reproaches, let them fall. Not that I am audacious
+and without shame! But I have grown familiar with an
+evil conscience as to these matters of not writing when I
+ought; and long ago I grew familiar with your mercy and
+power of pardoning; and then&mdash;and then&mdash;if silence and
+sulkiness are proved crimes of mine to ever such an extreme,
+why it would not be unnatural. Do you think I was born to
+live the life of an oyster, such as I <i>do</i> live here? And so,
+the moaning and gnashing of teeth are best done alone
+and without taking anyone into confidence. And so, this is
+all I have to say for myself, which perhaps you will be glad
+of; for you will be ready to agree with me that next to such
+faults of idleness, negligence, silence (call them by what
+names you please!) as I have been guilty of, is the repentance
+of them, if indeed the latter be not the most unpardonable
+of the two.</p>
+
+<p>And what are you doing so late in Herefordshire? Is
+dear Mr. Martin too well, and tempting the demons? I do
+hope that the next news of you will be of your being about
+to approach the sun and visit us on the road. You do not
+give your wisdom away to your friends, all of it, I hope and
+trust&mdash;not even to Reynolds.</p>
+
+<p>Tell Mr. Martin that a new great daily newspaper, professing
+'<i>ultraism</i>' at the right end (meaning his and mine),
+is making 'mighty preparation,' to be called the 'Daily
+News,'<a name="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138_138"><sup>[138]</sup></a> to be edited by Dickens and to combine with the
+most liberal politics such literature as gives character to the
+French journals&mdash;the objects being both to help the people
+and to give a <i>status</i> to men of letters, socially and
+politically&mdash;great objects which will not be attained, I fear,
+by any such means. In the first place, I have misgivings as to
+Dickens. He has not, I think, <i>breadth</i> of mind enough for
+such work, with all his gifts; but we shall see. An immense
+capital has been offered and actually advanced. Be good
+patriots and order the paper. And talking of papers, I
+hope you read in the 'Morning Chronicle' Landor's verses
+to my friend and England's poet, Mr. Browning.<a name="FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139_139"><sup>[139]</sup></a> They
+have much beauty.</p>
+
+<p>You know that Occy has been ill, and that he is well?
+I hope you are not so behindhand in our news as not to
+know. For me, I am not yet undone by the winter. I
+still sit in my chair and walk about the room. But the
+prison doors are shut close, and I could dash myself against
+them sometimes with a passionate impatience of the need-less
+captivity. I feel so intimately and from evidence, how,
+with air and warmth together in any fair proportion, I
+should be as well and happy as the rest of the world, that
+it is intolerable&mdash;well, it is better to sympathise quietly with
+Lady&mdash;and other energetic runaways, than amuse you
+with being riotous to no end; and it is <i>best</i> to write one's
+own epitaph still more quietly, is it not?...</p>
+
+<p>And oh how lightly I write, and then sigh to think of
+what different colours my spirits and my paper are. Do
+you know what it is to laugh, that you may not cry? Yet I
+hold a comfort fast.... Your very affectionate</p>
+
+<p>BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Saturday [February-March 1846].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;Indeed it has been tantalising
+and provoking to have you close by without being able to
+gather a better advantage from it than the knowledge that
+you were suffering. So passes the world and the glory of it.
+I have been vexed into a high state of morality, I assure you.
+Now that you are gone away I hear from you again; and it
+does seem to me that almost always it happens so, and that
+you come to London to be ill and leave it before you can
+be well again. It is a comfort in every case to know of
+your being better, and Hastings is warm and quiet, and the
+pretty country all round (mind you go and see the 'Rocks'
+<i>par excellence</i>)! will entice you into very gentle exercise.
+At the same time, don't wish me into the house you speak
+of. I can lose nothing here, shut up in my prison, and the
+nightingales come to my windows and sing through the
+sooty panes. If I were at Hastings I should risk the chance
+of recovering liberty, and the consolations of slavery would
+not reach me as they do here. Also, if I were to set my
+heart upon Hastings, I might break it at leisure; there
+would be exactly as much difficulty in turning my face that
+way as towards Italy&mdash;ah, you do not understand! And
+<i>I do, at last</i>, I am sorry to say; and it has been very long,
+tedious and reluctant work, the learning of the lesson....</p>
+
+<p>Did Henrietta tell you that I heard at last from Miss
+Martineau, who thought me in Italy, she said, and therefore
+was silent? She has sent me her new work (have you read
+it?) and speaks of her strength and of being able to walk
+fifteen miles a day, which seems to me like a fairy tale, or
+the 'Three-leagued Boots' at least.</p>
+
+<p>What am I doing, to tell you of? Nothing! The
+winter is kind, and this divine 'muggy' weather (is <i>that</i> the
+technical word and spelling thereof?), which gives all reasonable
+people colds in their heads, leaves <i>me</i> the hope of
+getting back to the summer without much injury. A friend
+of mine&mdash;one of the greatest poets in England too&mdash;brought
+me primroses and polyanthuses the other day, as they are
+grown in Surrey!<a name="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140_140"><sup>[140]</sup></a> Surely it must be nearer spring than
+we think.</p>
+
+<p>Dearest Mrs. Martin, write and say how you are. And
+say, God bless you, both the yous, and mention Mr. Martin
+particularly, and what your plans are.</p>
+
+<p>Ever your affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Tuesday [end of June 1846].<br />
+
+<p>So, my dearest Mrs. Martin, you are quite angry with all
+of us and with me chiefly. Oh, you need not say no! I
+see it, I understand it, and shall therefore take up my own
+cause precisely as if I were an injured person. In the first
+place, dearest Mrs. Martin, when you wrote to me (at last!)
+to say that we were both guilty correspondents, you should
+have spoken in the singular number; for I was not guilty
+at all, I beg to say, while you were on the Continent. You
+were uncertain, you said, on going, where you should go and
+how long you should stay, and you promised to write and
+give me some sort of address&mdash;a promise never kept&mdash;and
+where was I to write to you? I heard for the first time,
+from the Peytons, of your being at Pau, and then you were
+expected at home. So innocent I am, and because it is
+a pleasure rather rare to make a sincere profession of
+innocence, I meant to write to you at least ten days ago;
+and then (believe me you will, without difficulty) the dreadful
+death of poor Mr. Haydon,<a name="FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141_141"><sup>[141]</sup></a> the artist, quite upset me, and
+made me disinclined to write a word beyond necessary ones.
+I thank God that I never saw him&mdash;poor gifted Haydon&mdash;but,
+a year and a half ago, we had a correspondence which
+lasted through several months and was very pleasant while
+it lasted. Then it was dropped, and only a few days before
+the event he wrote three or four notes to me to ask me to
+take charge of some papers and pictures, which I acceded
+to as once I had done before. He was constantly in
+pecuniary difficulty, and in apprehension of the seizure of
+goods; and nothing of <i>fear</i> suggested itself to my
+mind&mdash;nothing. The shock was very great. Oh! I do not write
+to you to write of this. Only I would have you understand
+the real case, and that it is not an excuse, and that it was
+natural for me to be shaken a good deal. No artist is left
+behind with equal largeness of poetical conception! If the
+hand had always obeyed the soul, he would have been a
+genius of the first order. As it is, he lived on the <i>slope</i> of
+greatness and could not be steadfast and calm. His life
+was one long agony of self-assertion. Poor, poor Haydon!
+See how the world treats those who try too openly for its
+gratitude! 'Tom Thumb for ever' over the heads of the
+giants.</p>
+
+<p>So you heard that I was quite well? Don't believe
+everything you hear. But I am really in <i>a way</i> to be well,
+if I could have such sunshine as we have been burning in
+lately, and a fair field of peace besides. Generally, I am
+able to go out every day, either walking or in the
+carriage&mdash;'<i>walking</i>' means as far as Queen Anne's Street. The
+wonderful winter did not cast me down, and the hot summer
+helps me up higher. Now, to <i>keep in the sun</i> is the problem
+to solve; and if I can do it, I shall be 'as well as anybody.'
+If I can't, as ill as ever. Which is the <i>r&eacute;sum&eacute;</i> of me, without
+a word more....</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+June 27, 1846 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>Dearest Mr. Boyd,&mdash;Let me be clear of your reproaches
+for not going to you this week. The truth is that I have
+been so much shocked and shaken by the dreadful suicide
+of poor Mr. Haydon, the artist, I had not spirits for it. He
+was not personally my friend. I never saw him face to face.
+But we had corresponded, and one of his last acts was an
+act of <i>trust</i> towards me. Also I admired his genius. And
+all to end <i>so</i>! It has naturally affected me much.</p>
+
+<p>So I could not come, but in a few days I <i>will</i> come;
+and in the meantime, I have had the sound of your voice to
+think of, more than I could think of the deep melodious
+bells, though they made the right and solemn impression.
+How I felt, to be under your roof again!</p>
+
+May God bless you, my very dear friend.<br />
+These words in the greatest haste.<br />
+
+<p>From your ever affectionate<br />
+ELIBET</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="CHAPTER_V"></a><h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<h3>1846-1849</h3>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>It is now time to tell the story of the romance which, during
+the last eighteen months, had entered into Elizabeth Barrett's
+life, and was destined to divert its course into new and
+happier channels. It is a story which fills one of the
+brightest pages in English literary history.</p>
+
+<p>The foregoing letters have shown something of Miss
+Barrett's admiration for the poetry of Robert Browning, and
+contain allusions to the beginning of their personal acquaintance.
+Her knowledge of his poetry dates back to the
+appearance of 'Paracelsus,' not to 'Pauline,' of which there
+is no mention in her letters, and which had been practically
+withdrawn from circulation by the author. Her personal
+acquaintance with him was of much later date, and was
+directly due to the publication of the 'Poems' in 1844.
+Chancing to express his admiration of them to Mr. Kenyon,
+who had been his friend since 1839 and his father's school-fellow
+in years long distant, Mr. Browning was urged by him
+to write to Miss Barrett himself, and tell her of his pleasure
+in her work. Possibly the allusion to him in 'Lady
+Geraldine's Courtship' may have been felt as furnishing an
+excuse for addressing her; however that may be, he took
+Mr. Kenyon's advice, and in January 1845 we find Miss
+Barrett in 'ecstasies' over a letter (evidently the first) from
+'Browning the poet, Browning the author of &quot;Paracelsus&quot;
+and king of the mystics' (see p. 236, above).</p>
+
+<p>The correspondence, once begun, continued to flourish,
+and in the course of the same month Miss Barrett tells Mrs.
+Martin that she is 'getting deeper and deeper into correspondence
+with Robert Browning, poet and mystic; and we
+are growing to be the truest of friends.' At the end of
+May, when the return of summer brought her a renewal of
+strength, they met face to face for the first time; and from
+that time Robert Browning was included in the small list
+of privileged friends who were admitted to visit her in person.</p>
+
+<p>How this friendship ripened into love, and love into
+courtship, it is not for us to inquire too closely. Something
+has been told already in Mrs. Orr's 'Life of Robert
+Browning;' something more is told in the long and
+most interesting letter which stands first in the present
+chapter. More precious than either is the record of her
+fluctuating feelings which Mrs. Browning has enshrined for
+ever in her 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' and in the
+handful of other poems&mdash;'Life and Love,' 'A Denial,'
+'Proof and Disproof,' 'Inclusions,' 'Insufficiency,'<a name="FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142"><sup>[142]</sup></a> which
+likewise belong to this period and describe its hesitations,
+its sorrows and its overwhelming joys. In the difficult circumstances
+under which they were placed, the conduct of both
+was without reproach. Mr. Browning knew that he was
+asking to be allowed to take charge of an invalid's
+life&mdash;believed indeed that she was even worse than was really
+the case, and that she was hopelessly incapacitated from ever
+standing on her feet&mdash;but was sure enough of his love to
+regard that as no obstacle. Miss Barrett, for her part,
+shrank from burdening the life of the man she loved with a
+responsibility so trying and perhaps so painful, and refused
+his unchanging devotion for his sake, not for her own.</p>
+
+<p>The situation was complicated by the character of Mr.
+Barrett, and by the certainty&mdash;for such it was to his
+daughter&mdash;that he would refuse to entertain the idea of her
+marriage, or, indeed, that of any of his children. The truth
+of this view was absolutely vindicated not only in the case
+of Elizabeth, but also in those of two others of the
+family in later years. The reasons for his feeling it is
+probable he could not have explained to himself. He was
+fond of his family after his own fashion&mdash;proud, too, of his
+daughter's genius; but he could not, it would seem, regard
+them in any other light than as belonging to himself. The
+wish to leave his roof and to enter into new relations was
+looked upon as unfilial treachery; and no argument or persuasion
+could shake him from his fixed idea. So long as
+this disposition could be regarded as the result of a devoted
+love of his children, it could be accepted with respect, if not
+with full acquiescence; but circumstances brought the proof
+that this was not the case, and thereby ultimately paved
+the way to Elizabeth's marriage.</p>
+
+<p>These circumstances are stated in several of her letters,
+and alluded to in several others, but it may help to the
+understanding of them if a brief summary be given here.
+In the autumn of 1845, as described above, Miss Barrett's
+doctors advised her to winter abroad. The advice was
+strongly pressed, as offering a good prospect of a real
+improvement of health, and as the only way of avoiding
+the annual relapse brought on by the English winter.
+One or more of her brothers could have gone with her,
+and she was willing and able to try the experiment; but
+in face of this express medical testimony, Mr. Barrett
+interposed a refusal. This indifference to her health
+naturally wounded Miss Barrett very deeply; but it also
+gave her the right of taking her fate into her own hands.
+Convinced at last that no refusal on her part could
+alter Mr. Browning's devotion to her, and that marriage
+with him, so far from being an increase of risk to her
+health, offered the only means by which she might
+hope for an improvement in it, she gave him the conditional
+promise that if she came safely through the then impending
+winter, she would consent to a definite engagement.</p>
+
+<p>The winter of 1845-6 was an exceptionally mild one,
+and she suffered less than usual; and in the spring of 1846
+her lover claimed her promise. Throughout the summer
+she continued to gain strength, being able, not only to
+drive out, but even to walk short distances, and to visit a
+few of her special friends such as Mr. Kenyon and Mr.
+Boyd. Accordingly it was agreed that at the end of the
+summer they should be married, and leave England for
+Italy before the cold weather should return. The uselessness
+of asking her father's consent was so evident, and the
+certainty that it would only result in the exclusion of Mr.
+Browning from the house so clear, that no attempt was
+made to obtain it. Only her two sisters were aware of what
+was going on; but even they were not informed of the final
+arrangements for the marriage, in order that they might
+not be involved in their father's anger when it should
+become known. For the same reason the secret was kept
+from so close a friend of both parties as Mr. Kenyon;
+though both he and Mr. Boyd, and possibly also Mrs.
+Jameson, had suspicions amounting to different degrees of
+certainty as to the real state of affairs. It had been
+intended that they should wait until the end of September,
+but a project for a temporary removal of the family into
+the country precipitated matters; and on September 12,
+accompanied only by her maid, Wilson, Miss Barrett slipped
+from the house and was married to Robert Browning
+in Marylebone Church.<a name="FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143_143"><sup>[143]</sup></a> The associations which that
+ponderous edifice has gained from this act for all lovers of
+English poetry tempt one to forgive its unromantic appearance,
+and to remember rather the pilgrimages which
+Robert Browning on his subsequent visits to England
+never failed to pay to its threshold.</p>
+
+<p>For a week after the marriage Mrs. Browning&mdash;by which
+more familiar name we now have the right to call
+her&mdash;remained in her father's house; her husband refraining
+from seeing her, since he could not now ask for her by
+her proper name without betraying their secret. Then,
+on September 19, accompanied once more by her maid and
+the ever-beloved Flushie, she left her home, to which she
+was never to return, crossed the Channel with her husband
+to Havre, and so travelled on to Paris. Her father's anger,
+if not loud, was deep and unforgiving. From that moment
+he cast her off and disowned her. He would not read or
+open her letters; he would not see her when she returned
+to England. Even the birth of her child brought no
+relenting; he expressed no sympathy or anxiety, he would
+not look upon its face. He died as he lived, unrelenting,
+cut off by his own unbending anger from a daughter who
+could with difficulty bring herself to speak a harsh word of
+him, even to her most intimate friends.</p>
+
+<p>It was a more unexpected and consequently an even
+more bitter blow to find that her brothers at first disapproved
+of her action; the more so, since they had sympathised with
+her in the struggle of the previous autumn. This disapprobation
+was, however, less deep-seated, resting partly upon
+doubts as to the practical prudence of the match, partly, no
+doubt, upon a natural annoyance at having been kept in the
+dark. Such an estrangement could only be temporary, and
+as time went on was replaced by a full renewal of the old
+affection towards herself and a friendly acceptance of her
+husband. With her sisters, on the other hand, there was
+never a shadow of difference or estrangement. That love
+remained unaffected; and almost the only circumstance
+that caused Mrs. Browning to regret her enforced absence
+from England was the separation which it entailed from
+her two sisters.</p>
+
+<p>In Paris the fugitives found a friend who proved a friend
+indeed. A few weeks earlier Mrs. Jameson, knowing of
+the needs of Miss Barrett's health, had offered to take her
+to Italy; but her offer had been refused. Her astonishment
+may be imagined when, after this short interval of
+time, she found her invalid friend in Paris as the wife of
+Robert Browning. The prospect filled her with almost as
+much dismay as pleasure. 'I have here,' she wrote to a
+friend from Paris, 'a poet and a poetess&mdash;two celebrities who
+have run away and married under circumstances peculiarly
+interesting, and such as to render imprudence the height of
+prudence. Both excellent; but God help them! for I
+know not how the two poet heads and poet hearts will get
+on through this prosaic world.'<a name="FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144"><sup>[144]</sup></a> Mrs. Jameson, who was
+travelling with her young niece, Miss Geraldine Bate,<a name="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145_145"><sup>[145]</sup></a> lent
+her aid to smooth the path of her poet friends, and it was
+in her company that, after a week's rest in Paris, the
+Brownings proceeded on their journey to Italy. It is easy
+to imagine what a comfort her presence must have been to
+the invalid wife and her naturally anxious husband; and
+this journey sealed a friendship of no ordinary depth and
+warmth. Mrs. Browning bore the journey wonderfully,
+though suffering much from fatigue. During a rest of two
+days at Avignon, a pilgrimage was made to Vaucluse, in
+honour of Petrarch and his Laura; and there, as Mrs.
+Macpherson has recorded in an often quoted passage of
+her biography of her aunt, 'there, at the very source of the
+&quot;chiare, fresche e dolci acque,&quot; Mr. Browning took his
+wife up in his arms, and carrying her across the shallow,
+curling water, seated her on a rock that rose throne-like
+in the middle of the stream. Thus love and poetry
+took a new possession of the spot immortalised by
+Petrarch's loving fancy.'<a name="FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146_146"><sup>[146]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>So at the beginning of October the party reached
+Pisa; and there the newly wedded pair settled for the
+winter. Here first since the departure from London was
+there leisure to renew the intercourse with friends at home,
+to answer congratulations and good wishes, to explain what
+might seem strange and unaccountable. From this point
+Mrs. Browning's correspondence contains nearly a full
+record of her life, and can be left to tell its own story in
+better language than the biographer's. The first letter to
+Mrs. Martin is an 'apologia pro connubio suo' in fullest
+detail; the others carry on the story from the point at
+which that leaves it.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to this first letter, full as it is of the
+most intimate personal and family revelations, it has
+seemed right to give it entire. The marriage of Robert and
+Elizabeth Browning has passed into literary history, and it
+is only fair that it should be set, once for all, in its true
+light. Those who might be pained by any expressions in it
+have passed away; and those in whose character and reputation
+the lovers of English literature are interested have
+nothing to fear from the fullest revelation. If anything
+were kept back, false and injurious surmises might be
+formed; the truth leaves little room for controversy, and
+none for slander.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Collegio Ferdinando, Pisa; October 20(?), 1846.<a name="FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147"><sup>[147]</sup></a><br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;Will you believe that I began
+a letter to you before I took this step, to give you the whole
+story of the impulses towards it, feeling strongly that I
+owed what I considered my justification to such dear friends
+as yourself and Mr. Martin, that you might not hastily conclude
+that you had thrown away upon one who was quite
+unworthy the regard of years? I had begun such a letter&mdash;when,
+by the plan of going to Little Bookham, my plans
+were all hurried forward&mdash;changed&mdash;driven prematurely into
+action, and the last hours of agitation and deep anguish&mdash;for
+it was the deepest of its kind, to leave Wimpole Street
+and those whom I tenderly loved&mdash;<i>so</i> would not admit of
+my writing or thinking: only I was able to think that my
+beloved sisters would send you some account of me when I
+was gone. And now I hear from them that your generosity
+has not waited for a letter from me to do its best for me, and
+that instead of being vexed, as you might well be, at my
+leaving England without a word sent to you, you have used
+kind offices in my behalf, you have been more than the
+generous and affectionate friend I always considered you.
+So my first words must be that I am deeply grateful to you,
+my very dear friend, and that to the last moment of my life
+I shall remember the claim you have on my gratitude.
+Generous people are inclined to acquit generously; but it
+has been very painful to me to observe that with all my mere
+friends I have found more sympathy and <i>trust</i>, than in
+those who are of my own household and who have been
+daily witnesses of my life. I do not say this for papa,
+who is peculiar and in a peculiar position; but it pained
+me that&mdash;&mdash;, who <i>knew</i> all that passed last year&mdash;for
+instance, about Pisa&mdash;who knew that the alternative of
+making a single effort to secure my health during the
+winter was the severe displeasure I have incurred now,
+and that the fruit of yielding myself a prisoner was the
+sense of being of no use nor comfort to any soul; papa
+having given up coming to see me except for five minutes,
+a day; ==&mdash;, who said to me with his own lips, 'He does
+not love you&mdash;do not think it' (said and repeated it two
+months ago)&mdash;that &mdash;&mdash; should now turn round and reproach
+me for want of affection towards my family, for not letting
+myself drop like a dead weight into the abyss, a sacrifice
+without an object and expiation&mdash;this did surprise me
+and pain me&mdash;pained me more than all papa's dreadful words.
+But the personal feeling is nearer with most of us than
+the tenderest feeling for another; and my family had been
+so accustomed to the idea of my living on and on in that
+room, that while my heart was eating itself, their love for me
+was consoled, and at last the evil grew scarcely perceptible.
+It was no want of love in them, and quite natural in itself:
+we all get used to the thought of a tomb; and I was buried,
+that was the whole. It was a little thing even for myself a
+short time ago, and really it would be a pneumatological
+curiosity if I could describe and let you see how perfectly
+for years together, after what broke my heart at Torquay, I
+lived on the outside of my own life, blindly and darkly
+from day to day, as completely dead to hope of any kind
+as if I had my face against a grave, never feeling a personal
+instinct, taking trains of thought to carry out as an occupation
+absolutely indifferent to the <i>me</i> which is in every
+human being. Nobody quite understood this of me,
+because I am not morally a coward, and have a hatred of
+all the forms of audible groaning. But God knows what is
+within, and how utterly I had abdicated myself and thought
+it not worth while to put out my finger to touch my share of
+life. Even my poetry, which suddenly grew an interest,
+was a thing on the outside of me, a thing to be done, and
+then done! What people said of it did not touch <i>me</i>. A
+thoroughly morbid and desolate state it was, which I look
+back now to with the sort of horror with which one would
+look to one's graveclothes, if one had been clothed in them
+by mistake during a trance.</p>
+
+<p>And now I will tell you. It is nearly two years ago since
+I have known Mr. Browning. Mr. Kenyon wished to bring
+him to see me five years ago, as one of the lions of London
+who roared the gentlest and was best worth my knowing;
+but I refused then, in my blind dislike to seeing strangers.
+Immediately, however, after the publication of my last
+volumes, he wrote to me, and we had a correspondence
+which ended in my agreeing to receive him as I never had
+received any other man. I did not know why, but it was
+utterly impossible for me to refuse to receive him, though
+I consented against my will. He writes the most exquisite
+letters possible, and has a way of putting things
+which I have not, a way of putting aside&mdash;so he came.
+He came, and with our personal acquaintance began his
+attachment for me, a sort of <i>infatuation</i> call it, which
+resisted the various denials which were my plain duty at the
+beginning, and has persisted past them all. I began with&mdash;a
+grave assurance that I was in an exceptional position
+and saw him just in consequence of it, and that if ever he
+recurred to that subject again I never could see him again
+while I lived; and he believed me and was silent. To my
+mind, indeed, it was a bare impulse&mdash;a generous man of
+quick sympathies taking up a sudden interest with both
+hands! So I thought; but in the meantime the letters
+and the visits rained down more and more, and in every one
+there was something which was too slight to analyse and
+notice, but too decided not to be understood; so that at
+last, when the 'proposed respect' of the silence gave way,
+it was rather less dangerous. So then I showed him how
+he was throwing into the ashes his best affections&mdash;how
+the common gifts of youth and cheerfulness were behind
+me&mdash;how I had not strength, even of <i>heart</i>, for the ordinary
+duties of life&mdash;everything I told him and showed him. 'Look
+at this&mdash;and this,' throwing down all my disadvantages.
+To which he did not answer by a single
+compliment, but simply that he had not then to choose,
+and that I might be right or he might be right, he was
+not there to decide; but that he loved me and should to
+his last hour. He said that the freshness of youth had
+passed with him also, and that he had studied the world
+out of books and seen many women, yet had never loved
+one until he had seen me. That he knew himself, and
+knew that, if ever so repulsed, he should love me to his
+last hour&mdash;it should be first and last. At the same time,
+he would not tease me, he would wait twenty years if I
+pleased, and then, if life lasted so long for both of us, then
+when it was ending perhaps, I might understand him and
+feel that I might have trusted him. For my health, he had
+believed when he first spoke that I was suffering from an
+incurable injury of the spine, and that he never could hope
+to see me stand up before his face, and he appealed to my
+womanly sense of what a pure attachment should be&mdash;whether
+such a circumstance, if it had been true, was inconsistent
+with it. He preferred, he said, of free and deliberate choice,
+to be allowed to sit only an hour a day by my side, to the
+fulfilment of the brightest dream which should exclude me, in
+any possible world.</p>
+
+<p>I tell you so much, my ever dear friend, that you may
+see the manner of man I have had to do with, and the sort
+of attachment which for nearly two years has been drawing
+and winning me. I know better than any in the world,
+indeed, what Mr. Kenyon once unconsciously said before
+me&mdash;that 'Robert Browning is great in everything.' Then,
+when you think how this element of an affection so pure
+and persistent, cast into my dreary life, must have acted on
+it&mdash;how little by little I was drawn into the persuasion that
+something was left, and that still I could do something to
+the happiness of another&mdash;and he what he was, for I have
+deprived myself of the privilege of praising him&mdash;then it
+seemed worth while to take up with that unusual energy (for
+me!), expended in vain last year, the advice of the physicians
+that I should go to a warm climate for the winter. Then
+came the Pisa conflict of last year. For years I had looked
+with a sort of indifferent expectation towards Italy, knowing
+and feeling that I should escape there the annual relapse,
+yet, with that <i>laisser aller</i> manner which had become a
+habit to me, unable to form a definite wish about it. But
+last year, when all this happened to me, and I was better
+than usual in the summer, I <i>wished</i> to make the experiment&mdash;to
+live the experiment out, and see whether there was
+hope for me or not hope. Then came Dr. Chambers, with his
+encouraging opinion. 'I wanted simply a warm climate and
+<i>air</i>,' he said; 'I might be well if I pleased.' Followed what
+you know&mdash;or do not precisely know&mdash;the pain of it was
+acutely felt by me; for I never had doubted but that papa
+would catch at any human chance of restoring my health.
+I was under the delusion always that the difficulty of
+making such trials lay in <i>me</i>, and not in <i>him</i>. His manner
+of acting towards me last summer was one of the most
+painful griefs of my life, because it involved a disappointment
+in the affections. My dear father is a very peculiar
+person. He is naturally stern, and has exaggerated notions
+of authority, but these things go with high and noble
+qualities; and as for feeling, the water is under the rock,
+and I had faith. Yes, and have it. I admire such qualities
+as he has&mdash;fortitude, integrity. I loved him for his courage
+in adverse circumstances which were yet felt by him more
+literally than I could feel them. Always he has had the
+greatest power over my heart, because I am of those weak
+women who reverence strong men. By a word he might
+have bound me to him hand and foot. Never has he
+spoken a gentle word to me or looked a kind look which
+has not made in me large results of gratitude, and throughout
+my illness the sound of his step on the stairs has had
+the power of quickening my pulse&mdash;I have loved him so
+and love him. Now if he had said last summer that he was
+reluctant for me to leave him&mdash;if he had even allowed me
+to think <i>by mistake</i> that his affection for me was the
+motive of such reluctance&mdash;I was ready to give up Pisa in
+a moment, and I told him as much. Whatever my new
+impulses towards life were, my love for him (taken so)
+would have resisted all&mdash;I loved him so dearly. But his
+course was otherwise, quite otherwise, and I was wounded
+to the bottom of my heart&mdash;cast off when I was ready to
+cling to him. In the meanwhile, at my side was another;
+I was driven and I was drawn. Then at last I said, 'If
+you like to let this winter decide it, you may. I will allow
+of no promises nor engagement. I cannot go to Italy, and
+I know, as nearly as a human creature can know any fact,
+that I shall be ill again through the influence of this
+English winter. If I am, you will see plainer the foolishness
+of this persistence; if I am not, I will do what you
+please.' And his answer was, 'If you are ill and keep
+your resolution of not marrying me under those circumstances,
+I will keep mine and love you till God shall take
+us both.' This was in last autumn, and the winter came
+with its miraculous mildness, as you know, and I was saved
+as I dared not hope; my word therefore was claimed in
+the spring. Now do you understand, and will you feel for
+me? An application to my father was certainly the obvious
+course, if it had not been for his peculiar nature and my
+peculiar position. But there is no speculation in the case;
+it is a matter of <i>knowledge</i> that if Robert had applied to
+him in the first instance he would have been forbidden the
+house without a moment's scruple; and if in the last (as my
+sisters thought best as a respectable <i>form</i>), I should have
+been incapacitated from any after-exertion by the horrible
+scenes to which, as a thing of course, I should have been
+exposed. Papa will not bear some subjects, it is a thing
+<i>known</i>; his peculiarity takes that ground to the largest.
+Not one of his children will ever marry without a breach,
+which we all know, though he probably does not&mdash;deceiving
+himself in a setting up of <i>obstacles</i>, whereas the real obstacle
+is in his own mind. In my case there was, or would have
+been, a great deal of apparent reason to hold by; my
+health would have been motive enough&mdash;ostensible motive.
+I see that precisely as others may see it. Indeed, if I were
+charged now with want of generosity for casting myself so,
+a dead burden, on the man I love, nothing of the sort
+could surprise me. It was what occurred to myself, that
+thought was, and what occasioned a long struggle and
+months of agitation, and which nothing could have overcome
+but the very uncommon affection of a very uncommon
+person, reasoning out to me the great fact of love making
+its own level. As to vanity and selfishness blinding me,
+certainly I may have made a mistake, and the future may
+prove it, but still more certainly I was not blinded <i>so</i>. On
+the contrary, never have I been more humbled, and never
+less in danger of considering any personal pitiful advantage,
+than throughout this affair. You, who are generous and a
+woman, will believe this of me, even if you do not comprehend
+the <i>habit</i> I had fallen into of casting aside the
+consideration of possible happiness of my own. But I was
+speaking of papa. Obvious it was that the application to
+him was a mere form. I knew the result of it. I had
+made up my mind to act upon my full right of taking my
+own way. I had long believed such an act (the most
+strictly personal act of one's life) to be within the rights of
+every person of mature age, man or woman, and I had
+resolved to exercise that right in my own case by a resolution
+which had slowly ripened. All the other doors of
+life were shut to me, and shut me in as in a prison, and
+only before this door stood one whom I loved best and
+who loved me best, and who invited me out through it for
+the good's sake which he thought I could do him. Now if
+for the sake of the mere form I had applied to my father,
+and if, as he would have done directly, he had set up his
+'curse' against the step I proposed to take, would it have
+been doing otherwise than placing a knife in his hand? A
+few years ago, merely through the reverberation of what he
+said to another on a subject like this, I fell on the floor in
+a fainting fit, and was almost delirious afterwards. I
+cannot bear some words. I would much rather have
+blows without them. In my actual state of nerves and
+physical weakness, it would have been the sacrifice of my
+whole life&mdash;of my convictions, of my affections, and,
+above all, of what the person dearest to me persisted in
+calling <i>his</i> life, and the good of it&mdash;if I had observed that
+'form.' Therefore, wrong or right, I determined not to
+observe it, and, wrong or right, I did and do consider that
+in not doing so I sinned against no duty. That I was <i>constrained</i>
+to act clandestinely, and did not <i>choose</i> to do so,
+God is witness, and will set it down as my heavy misfortune
+and not my fault. Also, up to the very last act we stood in
+the light of day for the whole world, if it pleased, to judge
+us. I never saw him out of the Wimpole Street house; he
+came twice a week to see me&mdash;or rather, three times in the
+fortnight, openly in the sight of all, and this for nearly
+two years, and neither more nor less. Some jests used to
+be passed upon us by my brothers, and I allowed them
+without a word, but it would have been infamous in me to
+have taken any into my confidence who would have
+suffered, as a direct consequence, a blighting of his own
+prospects. My secrecy towards them all was my simple
+duty towards them all, and what they call want of affection
+was an affectionate consideration for them. My sisters did
+indeed know the truth to a certain point. They knew of
+the attachment and engagement&mdash;I could not help that&mdash;but
+the whole of the event I kept from them with a strength
+and resolution which really I did not know to be in me,
+and of which nothing but a sense of the injury to be done
+to them by a fuller confidence, and my tender gratitude and
+attachment to them for all their love and goodness, could
+have rendered me capable. Their faith in me, and undeviating
+affection for me, I shall be grateful for to the end
+of my existence, and to the extent of my power of feeling
+gratitude. My dearest sisters!&mdash;especially, let me say, my
+own beloved Arabel, who, with no consolation except the
+exercise of a most generous tenderness, has looked only to
+what she considered my good&mdash;never doubting me, never
+swerving for one instant in her love for me. May God
+reward her as I cannot. Dearest Henrietta loves me too,
+but loses less in me, and has reasons for not misjudging
+me. But both my sisters have been faultless in their bearing
+towards me, and never did I love them so tenderly as I love
+them now.</p>
+
+<p>The only time I met R.B. clandestinely was in the
+parish church, where we were married before two witnesses&mdash;it
+was the first and only time. I looked, he says, more
+dead than alive, and can well believe it, for I all but
+fainted on the way, and had to stop for sal volatile at a
+chemist's shop. The support through it all was <i>my trust
+in him</i>, for no woman who ever committed a like act of
+trust has had stronger motives to hold by. Now may I not
+tell you that his genius, and all but miraculous attainments,
+are the least things in him, the moral nature being
+of the very noblest, as all who ever knew him admit?
+Then he has had that wide experience of men which ends
+by throwing the mind back on itself and God; there is
+nothing incomplete in him, except as all humanity is
+incompleteness. The only wonder is how such a man,
+whom any woman could have loved, should have loved
+<i>me</i>; but men of genius, you know, are apt to love with
+their imagination. Then there is something in the sympathy,
+the strange, straight sympathy which unites us on all
+subjects. If it were not that I look up to him, we should
+be too alike to be together perhaps, but I know my place
+better than he does, who is too humble. Oh, you cannot
+think how well we get on after six weeks of marriage. If I
+suffer again it will not be through <i>him</i>. Some day, dearest
+Mrs. Martin, I will show you and dear Mr. Martin how his
+<i>prophecy was fulfilled</i>, saving some picturesque particulars.
+I did not know before that Saul was among the prophets.</p>
+
+<p>My poor husband suffered very much from the constraint
+imposed on him by my position, and did, for the
+first time in his life, for my sake do that in secret which
+he could not speak upon the housetops. <i>Mea culpa</i> all of
+it! If one of us two is to be blamed, it is I, at whose
+representation of circumstances he submitted to do violence
+to his own self-respect. I would not suffer him to
+tell even our dear common friend Mr. Kenyon. I felt that
+it would be throwing on dear Mr. Kenyon a painful
+responsibility, and involve him in the blame ready to fall.
+And dear dear Mr. Kenyon, like the noble, generous
+friend I love so deservedly, comprehends all at a word,
+sends us <i>not</i> his forgiveness, but his sympathy, his
+affection, the kindest words which can be written! I
+cannot tell you all his inexpressible kindness to us both.
+He justifies us to the uttermost, and, in that, all the
+grateful attachment we had, each on our side, so long
+professed towards him. Indeed, in a note I had from him
+yesterday, he uses this strong expression after gladly
+speaking of our successful journey: 'I considered that you
+had <i>perilled your life</i> upon this undertaking, and, reflecting
+upon your last position, I thought that <i>you had done well</i>.'
+But my life was not perilled in the journey. The agitation
+and fatigue were evils, to be sure, and Mrs. Jameson, who
+met us in Paris by a happy accident, thought me 'looking
+horribly ill' at first, and persuaded us to rest there for a
+week on the promise of accompanying us herself to Pisa
+to help Robert to take care of me. He, who was in a fit of
+terror about me, agreed at once, and so she came with us,
+she and her young niece, and her kindness leaves us both
+very grateful. So kind she was, and is&mdash;for still she is in
+Pisa&mdash;opening her arms to us and calling us 'children of
+light' instead of ugly names, and declaring that she should
+have been 'proud' to have had anything to do with our
+marriage. Indeed, we hear every day kind speeches and
+messages from people such as Mr. Chorley of the 'Athenaeum,'
+who 'has tears in his eyes,' Monckton Milnes,
+Barry Cornwall, and other friends of my husband's, but who
+only know <i>me</i> by my books, and I want the love and
+sympathy of those who love me and whom I love. I was
+talking of the influence of the journey. The change of air
+has done me wonderful good notwithstanding the fatigue,
+and I am renewed to the point of being able to throw off
+most of my invalid habits; and of walking quite like a
+woman. Mrs. Jameson said the other day, 'You are not
+<i>improved</i>, you are <i>transformed</i>.' We have most
+comfortable rooms here at Pisa and have taken them for six
+months, in the best situation for health, and close to the
+Duomo and Leaning Tower. It is a beautiful, solemn
+city, and we have made acquaintance with Professor
+Ferucci, who is about to admit us to [a sight]<a name="FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148"><sup>[148]</sup></a> of the
+[University Lib]rary. We shall certainly [spend] next
+summer in Italy <i>somewhere</i>, and [talk] of Rome for the
+next winter, but, of course, this is all in air. Let me hear</p>
+
+<p>from you, dearest Mrs. Martin, and direct, 'M. Browning,
+Poste Restante, Pisa'&mdash;it is best. Just before we left Paris
+I wrote to my aunt Jane, and from Marseilles to Bummy,
+but from neither have I heard yet.</p>
+
+<p>With best love to dearest Mr. Martin, ever both my
+dear kind friends,</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate and grateful<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><a name="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149_149"><sup>[149]</sup></a><br />
+Moulins: October 2, 1846.<br />
+
+<p>I began to write to you, my beloved friend, earlier, that
+I might follow your kindest wishes literally, and also to
+thank you at once for your goodness to me, for which may
+God bless you. But the fatigue and agitation have been
+very great, and I was forced to break off&mdash;as now I dare not
+revert to what is behind. I will tell you more another
+day. At Orleans, with your kindest letter, I had one from
+my dearest, gracious friend Mr. Kenyon, who, in his goodness,
+does more than exculpate&mdash;even <i>approves</i>&mdash;he wrote
+a joint letter to both of us. But oh, the anguish I have
+gone through! You are good, you are kind. I thank
+you from the bottom of my heart for saying to me that you
+would have gone to the church with me. <i>Yes, I know you
+would</i>. And for that very reason I forbore involving you
+in such a responsibility and drawing you into such a net.
+I took Wilson with me. I had courage to keep the secret
+to my sisters for their sakes, though I will tell you in strict
+confidence that it was known to them <i>potentially</i>, that is,
+the attachment and engagement were known, the necessity
+remaining that, for stringent reasons affecting their own
+tranquillity, they should be able to say at last, 'We were not
+instructed in this and this.' The dearest, fondest, most
+affectionate of sisters they are to me, and if the sacrifice of
+a life, or of all prospect of happiness, would have worked
+any lasting good to them, it should have been made even
+in the hour I left them. I knew <i>that</i> by the anguish I
+suffered in it. But a sacrifice, without good to anyone&mdash;I
+shrank from it. And also, it was the sacrifice of <i>two</i>. And
+<i>he</i>, as you say, had done everything for me, had loved me
+for reasons which had helped to weary me of myself, loved
+me heart to heart persistently&mdash;in spite of my own will&mdash;drawn
+me back to life and hope again when I had done
+with both. My life seemed to belong to him and to none
+other at last, and I had no power to speak a word. Have
+faith in me, my dearest friend, till you can know him.
+The intellect is so little in comparison to all the rest, to the
+womanly tenderness, the inexhaustible goodness, the high
+and noble aspiration of every hour. Temper, spirits,
+manners: there is not a flaw anywhere. I shut my eyes
+sometimes and fancy it all a dream of my guardian angel.
+Only, if it had been a dream, the pain of some parts of it
+would have awakened me before now; it is not a dream.
+I have borne all the emotion of fatigue miraculously well,
+though, of course, a good deal exhausted at times. We
+had intended to hurry on to the South at once, but at
+Paris we met Mrs. Jameson, who opened her arms to us
+with the most literal affectionateness, <i>kissed us both</i>, and
+took us by surprise by calling us 'wise people, wild poets
+or not.' Moreover, she fixed us in an apartment above her
+own in the H&ocirc;tel de la Ville de Paris, that I might rest for
+a week, and crowned the rest of her goodnesses by agreeing
+to accompany us to Pisa, where she was about to travel
+with her young niece. Therefore we are five travelling,
+Wilson being with me. Oh, yes, Wilson came; her attachment
+to me never shrank for a moment. And Flush came
+and I assure you that nearly as much attention has been
+paid to Flush as to me from the beginning, so that he is
+perfectly reconciled, and would be happy if the people at the
+railroads were not barbarians, and immovable in their evil
+designs of shutting him up in a box when we travel that
+way.</p>
+
+<p>You understand now, ever dearest Miss Mitford, how
+the pause has come about writing. The week at Paris!
+Such a strange week it was, altogether like a vision.
+Whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell
+scarcely. Our Balzac should be flattered beyond measure
+by my thinking of him at all. Which I did, but of <i>you</i>
+more. I will write and tell you more about Paris. You
+should go there indeed. And to our hotel, if at all. Once
+we were at the Louvre, but we kept very still of course, and
+were satisfied with the <i>idea</i> of Paris. I could have
+borne to live on there, it was all so strange and full of contrast....</p>
+
+<p>Now you will write&mdash;I feel my way on the paper to
+write this. Nothing is changed between us, nothing can
+ever interfere with sacred confidences, remember. I do
+not show letters, you need not fear my turning traitress....
+Pray for me, dearest friend, that the bitterness of old affections
+may not be too bitter with me, and that God may turn those
+salt waters sweet again.</p>
+
+<p>Pray for your grateful and loving<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+[Pisa:] November 5, [1846].<br />
+
+<p>It was pleasant to me, my dearest friend, to think while
+I was reading your letter yesterday, that almost by that
+time you had received mine, and could not even seem to
+doubt a moment longer whether I admitted your claim of
+hearing and of speaking to the uttermost. I recognised you
+too entirely as my friend. Because you had put faith in me,
+so much the more reason there was that I should justify it
+as far as I could, and with as much frankness (which was a
+part of my gratitude to you) as was possible from a woman
+to a woman. Always I have felt that you have believed in
+me and loved me; and, for the sake of the past and of the
+present, your affection and your esteem are more to me
+than I could afford to lose, even in these changed and
+happy circumstances. So I thank you once more, my dear
+kind friends, I thank you both&mdash;I never shall forget your
+goodness. I feel it, of course, the more deeply, in proportion
+to the painful disappointment in other quarters.... Am I,
+bitter? The feeling, however, passes while I write it out,
+and my own affection for everybody will wait patiently to
+be 'forgiven' in the proper form, when everybody shall be
+at leisure properly. Assuredly, in the meanwhile, however,
+my case is not to be classed with other cases&mdash;what
+happened to me could not have happened, perhaps, with
+any other family in England.... I hate and loathe everything
+too which is clandestine&mdash;we <i>both</i> do, Robert and I;
+and the manner the whole business was carried on in
+might have instructed the least acute of the bystanders.
+The flowers standing perpetually on my table for the last
+two years were brought there by one hand, as everybody
+knew; and really it would have argued an excess of benevolence
+in an unmarried man with quite enough resources
+in London, to pay the continued visits he paid to me without
+some strong motive indeed. Was it his fault that he
+did not associate with everybody in the house as well as
+with me? He desired it; but no&mdash;that was not to be. The
+endurance of the pain of the position was not the least
+proof of his attachment to me. How I thank you for
+believing in him&mdash;how grateful it makes me! He will
+justify to the uttermost that faith. We have been married
+two months, and every hour has bound me to him more and
+more; if the beginning was well, still better it is now&mdash;that
+is what he says to me, and I say back again day by day.
+Then it is an 'advantage,' to have an inexhaustible companion
+who talks wisdom of all things in heaven and earth,
+and shows besides as perpetual a good humour and gaiety
+as if he were&mdash;a fool, shall I say? or a considerable quantity
+more, perhaps. As to our domestic affairs, it is not to
+<i>my</i> honour and glory that the 'bills' are made up every
+week and paid more regularly 'than hard beseems,' while
+dear Mrs. Jameson laughs outright at our miraculous
+prudence and economy, and declares that it is past belief
+and precedent that we should not burn the candles at both
+ends, and the next moment will have it that we remind her
+of the children in a poem of Heine's who set up housekeeping
+in a tub, and inquired gravely the price of coffee.
+Ah, but she has left Pisa at last&mdash;left it yesterday. It was
+a painful parting to everybody. Seven weeks spent in such
+close neighbourhood&mdash;a month of it under the same roof
+and in the same carriages&mdash;will fasten people together, and
+then travelling <i>shakes</i> them together. A more affectionate,
+generous woman never lived than Mrs. Jameson, and it is
+pleasant to be sure that she loves us both from her heart,
+and not only <i>du bout des l&egrave;vres</i>. Think of her making
+Robert promise (as he has told me since) that in the case
+of my being unwell he would write to her instantly, and she
+would come at once if anywhere in Italy. So kind, so like
+her. She spends the winter in Rome, but an intermediate
+month at Florence, and we are to keep tryst with her somewhere
+in the spring, perhaps at Venice. If not, she says
+that she will come back here, for that certainly she will see
+us. She would have stayed altogether perhaps, if it had
+not been for her book upon art which she is engaged to
+bring out next year, and the materials for which are to be
+<i>sought</i>. As to Pisa, she liked it just as we like it. Oh, it is
+so beautiful and so full of repose, yet not <i>desolate</i>: it is
+rather the repose of sleep than of death. Then after the
+first ten days of rain, which seemed to refer us fatally to
+Alfieri's 'piove e ripiove,' came as perpetual a divine sunshine,
+such cloudless, exquisite weather that we ask
+whether it may not be June instead of November. Every
+day I am out walking while the golden oranges look at me
+over the walls, and when I am tired Robert and I sit down
+on a stone to watch the lizards. We have been to your
+seashore, too, and seen your island, only he insists on it
+(Robert does) that it is not Corsica but Gorgona, and that
+Corsica is not in sight. <i>Beautiful</i> and blue the island was,
+however, in any case. It might have been Romero's instead
+of either. Also we have driven up to the foot of mountains,
+and seen them reflected down in the little pure lake of
+Ascuno, and we have seen the pine woods, and met the
+camels laden with faggots all in a line. So now ask me
+again if I enjoy my liberty as you expect. My head goes
+round sometimes, that is all. I never was happy before in
+my life. Ah, but, of course, the painful thoughts recur!</p>
+
+<p>There are some whom I love too tenderly to be easy under
+their displeasure, or even under their injustice. Only it,
+seems to me that with time and patience my poor dearest
+papa will be melted into opening his arms to us&mdash;will
+be melted into a clearer understanding of motives and
+intentions; I cannot believe that he will forget me, as
+he says he will, and go on thinking me to be dead rather
+than alive and happy. So I manage to hope for the best,
+and all that remains, all my life here, <i>is</i> best already, could
+not be better or happier. And willingly tell dear Mr.
+Martin I would take him and you for witnesses of it, and in
+the meanwhile he is not to send me tantalising messages;
+no, indeed, unless you really, really, should let yourselves be
+wafted our way, and could you do so much better at Pau?
+particularly if Fanny Hanford should come here. Will she
+really? The climate is described by the inhabitants as a
+'pleasant spring throughout the winter,' and if you were to
+see Robert and me threading our path along the shady side
+everywhere to avoid the 'excessive heat of the sun' in this
+November (!) it would appear a good beginning. We are
+not in the warm orthodox position by the Arno because we
+heard with our ears one of the best physicians of the place
+advise against it. 'Better,' he said, 'to have cool rooms to
+live in and warm walks to go out along.' The rooms we
+have are rather over-cool perhaps; we are obliged to have
+a little fire in the sitting-room, in the mornings and evenings
+that is; but I do not fear for the winter, there is too much
+difference to my feelings between this November and any
+English November I ever knew. We have our dinner from
+the Trattoria at two o'clock, and can dine our favorite way
+on thrushes and chianti with a miraculous cheapness, and
+no trouble, no cook, no kitchen; the prophet Elijah or the
+lilies of the field took as little thought for their dining,
+which exactly suits us. It is a continental fashion which we
+never cease commending. Then at six we have coffee, and
+rolls of milk, made of milk, I mean, and at nine our supper
+(call it supper, if you please) of roast chestnuts and grapes.
+So you see how primitive we are, and how I forget to praise
+the eggs at breakfast. The worst of Pisa is, or would be to
+some persons, that, socially speaking, it has its dullnesses;
+it is not lively like Florence, not in that way. But we do
+not want society, we shun it rather. We like the Duomo
+and the Campo Santo instead. Then we know a little of
+Professor Ferucci, who gives us access to the University
+library, and we subscribe to a modern one, and we have
+plenty of writing to do of our own. If we can do anything
+for Fanny Hanford, let us know. It would be too happy,
+I suppose, to have to do it for yourselves. Think, however,
+I am quite well, quite well. I can thank God, too, for being
+alive and well. Make dear Mr. Martin keep well, and not
+forget himself in the Herefordshire cold&mdash;draw him into the
+sun somewhere. Now write and tell me everything of your
+plans and of you both, dearest friends. My husband bids
+me say that he desires to have my friends for his own friends,
+and that he is grateful to you for not crossing that feeling. Let
+him send his regards to you. And let me be throughout all
+changes,</p>
+
+<p>Your ever faithful and most affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+
+<p>I am expecting every day to hear from my dearest
+sisters. Write to them and love them for me.</p>
+
+<p>This letter has been kept for several days from different
+causes. Will you inclose the little note to Miss Mitford?
+I do not hear from home, and am uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you!</p>
+
+<p>November 9.</p>
+
+<p>I am so vexed about those poems appearing just now in
+'Blackwood.'<a name="FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150"><sup>[150]</sup></a> Papa must think it <i>impudent</i> of me. It is
+unfortunate.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+[Pisa]: November 5, 1846.<br />
+
+<p>I have your letter, ever dearest Miss Mitford, and it is
+welcome even more than your letters have been used to be
+to me&mdash;the last charm was to come, you see, by this distance.
+For all your affection and solicitude, may you trust
+my gratitude; and if you love me a little, I love you indeed,
+and never shall cease. The only difference shall be that two
+may love you where one did, and for my part I will answer
+for it that if you could love the poor one you will not refuse
+any love to the other when you come to know him. I never
+could bear to speak to you of <i>him</i> since quite the beginning,
+or rather I never could dare. But when you know him and
+understand how the mental gifts are scarcely half of him,
+you will not wonder at your friend, and, indeed, two
+years of steadfast affection from such a man would have,
+overcome any woman's heart. I have been neither much
+wiser nor much foolisher than all the shes in the world, only
+much happier&mdash;the difference is in the happiness. Certainly
+I am not likely to repent of having given myself to him. I
+cannot, for all the pain received from another quarter, the
+comfort for which is that my conscience is pure of the sense
+of having broken the least known duty, and that the same
+consequence would follow any marriage of any member of
+my family with any possible man or woman. I look to
+time, and reason, and natural love and pity, and to the
+justification of the events acting through all; I look on so
+and hope, and in the meanwhile it has been a great comfort
+to have had not merely the indulgence but the approbation
+and sympathy of most of my old personal friends&mdash;oh, such
+kind letters; for instance, yesterday one came from dear
+Mrs. Martin, who has known me, she and her husband, since
+the very beginning of my womanhood, and both of them
+are acute, thinking people, with heads as strong as their
+hearts. I in my haste left England without a word to them,
+for which they might naturally have reproached me; instead
+of which they write to say that never <i>for a moment</i> have
+they doubted my having acted for the best and happiest,
+and to assure me that, having sympathised with me in every
+sorrow and trial, they delightedly feel with me in the new
+joy; nothing could be more cordially kind. See how I
+write to you as if I could speak&mdash;all these little things which
+are great things when seen in the light. Also R, and I
+are not in the least tired of one another notwithstanding
+the very perpetual <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> into which we have fallen, and
+which (past the first fortnight) would be rather a trial in
+many cases. Then our housekeeping may end perhaps in
+being a proverb among the nations, for at the beginning it
+makes Mrs. Jameson laugh heartily. It disappoints her
+theories, she admits&mdash;finding that, albeit poets, we abstain
+from burning candles at both ends at once, just as if we did
+statistics and historical abstracts by nature instead. And do
+not think that the trouble falls on me. Even the pouring
+out of the coffee is a divided labour, and the ordering of the
+dinner is quite out of my hands. As for me, when I am
+so good as to let myself be carried upstairs, and so angelical
+as to sit still on the sofa, and so considerate, moreover, as
+<i>not</i> to put my foot into a puddle, why <i>my</i> duty is considered
+done to a perfection which is worthy of all adoration; it
+really is not very hard work to please this taskmaster. For
+Pisa, we both like it extremely. The city is full of beauty
+and repose, and the purple mountains gloriously seem to
+beckon us on deeper into the vineland. We have rooms
+close to the Duomo and Leaning Tower, in the great
+Collegio built by Vasari, three excellent bedrooms and a
+sitting-room, matted and carpeted, looking comfortable even
+for England. For the last fortnight, except the very last
+few sunny days, we have had rain; but the climate is as mild
+as possible, no cold, with all the damp. Delightful weather
+we had for the travelling. Ah, you, with your terrors of
+travelling, how you amuse me! Why, the constant change
+of air in the continued fine weather made me better and
+better instead of worse. It did me infinite good. Mrs.
+Jameson says she 'won't call me <i>improved</i>, but <i>transformed</i>
+rather.' I like the new sights and the movement; my spirits
+rise; I live&mdash;I can adapt myself. If you really tried it and
+got as far as Paris you would be drawn on, I fancy, and on&mdash;on
+to the East perhaps with H. Martineau, or at least as
+near it as we are here. By the way, or out of the way, it
+struck me as unfortunate that my poems should have been
+printed <i>just now</i> in 'Blackwood;' I wish it had been otherwise.
+Then I had a letter from one of my Leeds readers
+the other day to expostulate about the <i>inappropriateness</i> of
+certain of them! The fact is that I sent a heap of verses
+swept from my desk and belonging to old feelings and
+impressions, and not imagining that they were to be used
+in that quick way. There can't be very much to like, I
+fear, apart from your goodness for what calls itself mine.
+Love me, dearest dear Miss Mitford, my dear kind friend&mdash;love
+me, I beg of you, still and ever, only ceasing when I
+cease to think of you; I will allow of that clause. Mrs.
+Jameson and Gerardine are staying at the hotel here in Pisa
+still, and we manage to see them every day; so good and
+true and affectionate she is, and so much we shall miss her
+when she goes, which will be in a day or two now. She
+goes to Florence, to Siena, to Rome to complete her work
+upon art, which is the object of her Italian journey. I read
+your vivid and glowing description of the picture to her, or
+rather I showed your picture to her, and she quite believes
+with you that it is most probably a <i>Velasquez</i>. Much to be
+congratulated the owner must be. I mean to know something
+about pictures some day. Robert does, and I shall
+get him to open my eyes for me with a little instruction.
+You know that in this place are to be seen the first steps of
+art, and it will be interesting to trace them from it as we go
+farther ourselves. Our present residence we have taken for
+six months; but we have dreams, dreams, and we discuss
+them like soothsayers over the evening's roasted chestnuts
+and grapes. Flush highly approves of Pisa (and the roasted
+chestnuts), because here he goes out every day and speaks
+Italian to the little dogs. Oh, Mr. Chorley, such a kind,
+feeling note he wrote to Robert from Germany, when he
+read of our marriage in 'Galignani;' we were both touched
+by it. And Monckton Milnes and others&mdash;very kind all.
+But in a particular manner I remember the kindness of my
+valued friend Mr. Horne, who never failed me nor could fail.
+Will you explain to him, or rather ask him to understand,
+why I did not answer his last note? I forget even Balzac here;
+tell me what he writes, and help me to love that dear,
+generous Mr. Kenyon, whom I can love without help. And
+let me love you, and you love me.</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate and grateful<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Jameson</i><br />
+Collegio Ferdinando [Pisa]:<br />
+Saturday, November 23, 1846 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>We were delighted to have your note, dearest Aunt
+Nina, and I answer it with my feet on your stool, so that
+my feet are full of you even if my head is not, always.
+Now, I shall not go a sentence farther without thanking
+you for that comfort; you scarcely guessed perhaps what a
+comfort it would be, that stool of yours. I am even apt to
+sit on it for hours together, leaning against the sofa, till I
+get to be scolded for putting myself so into the fire, and
+prophesied of in respect to the probability of a 'general
+conflagration' of stools and Bas; on which the prophet is
+to leap from the Leaning Tower, and Flush to be left to
+make the funeral oration of the establishment. In the
+meantime, it really is quite a comfort that our housekeeping
+should be your 'example' at Florence; we have edifying
+countenances whenever we think of it. And Robert will
+not by any means believe that you passed us on our own
+ground, though the eleven pauls a week for breakfast, and
+my humility, seemed to suggest something of the sort. I
+am so glad, we are both so glad, that you are enjoying yourself
+at the fullest and highest among the wonders of art,
+and cannot be chilled in the soul by any of those fatal winds
+you speak of. For me, I am certainly better here at Pisa,
+though the penalty is to see Frate Angelico's picture with
+the remembrance of you rather than the presence. Here,
+indeed, we have had a little too much cold for two days;
+there was a feeling of frost in the air, and a most undeniable
+east wind which prevented my going out, and made me feel
+less comfortable than usual at home. But, after all, one felt
+ashamed to call it <i>cold</i>, and Robert found the heat on the
+Arno insupportable; which set us both mourning over our
+'situation' at the Collegio, where one of us could not get
+out on such days without a blow on the chest from the
+'wind at the corner.' Well, experience teaches, and we
+shall be taught, and the cost of it is not so very much after
+all. We have seen your professor once since you left us
+(oh, the leaving!), or <i>spoken</i> to him once, I should say, when
+he came in one evening and caught us reading, sighing,
+yawning over 'Nicol&ograve; de' Lapi,' a romance by the son-in law
+of Manzoni. Before we could speak, he called it 'excellent,
+tr&egrave;s beau,' one of their very best romances, upon which, of
+course, dear Robert could not bear to offend his literary and
+national susceptibilities by a doubt even. <i>I</i>, not being so
+humane, thought that any suffering reader would be justified
+(under the rack-wheel) in crying out against such a book,
+as the dullest, heaviest, stupidest, lengthiest. Did you ever
+read it? If not, <i>don't</i>. When a father-in-law imitates
+Scott, and a son-in-law imitates his father-in-law, think of
+the consequences! Robert, in his zeal for Italy and against
+Eug&egrave;ne Sue, tried to persuade me at first (this was before
+the scene with your professor) that 'really, Ba, it wasn't so
+bad,' 'really you are too hard to be pleased,' and so on; but
+after two or three chapters, the dullness grew too strong for
+even his benevolence, and the yawning catastrophe (supposed
+to be peculiar to the 'Guida') overthrew him as completely
+as it ever did me, though we both resolved to hold on by
+the stirrup to the end of the two volumes. The catalogue of
+the library (for observe that we subscribe now&mdash;the object is
+attained!) offers a most melancholy insight into the actual
+literature of Italy. Translations, translations, translations
+from third and fourth and fifth rate French and English
+writers, chiefly French; the roots of thought, here in Italy,
+seem dead in the ground. It is well that they have great
+memories&mdash;nothing else lives.</p>
+
+<p>We have had the kindest of letters from dear noble Mr.
+Kenyon; who, by the way, speaks of you as we like to hear
+him. Dickens is going to Paris for the winter, and Mrs.
+Butler<a name="FNanchor_151_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151_151"><sup>[151]</sup></a> (he adds) is expected in London. Dear Mr. Kenyon
+calls me 'crotchety,' but Robert 'an incarnation of the
+good and the true,' so that I have everything to thank him
+for. There are noble people who take the world's side and
+make it seem 'for the <i>nonce</i>' almost respectable; but he
+gives up all the talk and fine schemes about money-making,
+and allows us to wait to see whether we want it or not&mdash;the
+money, I mean.</p>
+
+<p>It is Monday, and I am only finishing this note. In the
+midst came letters from my sisters, making me feel so glad
+that I could not write. Everybody is well and happy, and
+dear papa <i>in high spirits</i> and <i>having people to dine with him
+every day</i>, so that I have not really done anyone harm in
+doing myself all this good. It does not indeed bring us a
+step nearer to the forgiveness, but to hear of his being in
+good spirits makes me inclined to jump, with Gerardine.<a name="FNanchor_152_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152_152"><sup>[152]</sup></a>
+Dear Geddie! How pleased I am to hear of her being
+happy, particularly (perhaps) as she is not too happy to
+forget <i>me</i>. Is all that glory of art making her very ambitious
+to work and enter into the court of the Temple?...</p>
+
+<p>Robert's love to you both. We often talk of our prospect
+of meeting you again. And for the <i>past</i>, dearest Aunt Nina,
+believe of me that I feel to you more gratefully than ever I
+can say, and remain, while I live,</p>
+
+<p>Your faithful and affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Pisa: December 19, [1846].<br />
+
+<p>Ever dearest Miss Mitford, your kindest letter is three
+times welcome as usual. On the day you wrote it in the
+frost, I was sitting out of doors, just in my summer mantilla,
+and complaining 'of the heat this December!' But woe
+comes to the discontented. Within these three or four
+days we too have had frost&mdash;yes, and a little snow, for the
+first time, say the Pisans, during five years. Robert says
+that the mountains are powdered toward Lucca, and I, who
+cannot see the mountains, can see the cathedral&mdash;the
+Duomo&mdash;how it glitters whitely at the summit, between the
+blue sky and its own walls of yellow marble. Of course I do
+not stir an inch from the fire, yet have to struggle a little
+against my old languor. Only, you see, this can't last!
+it is exceptional weather, and, up to the last few days,
+has been divine. And then, after all we talk of frost, my
+bedroom, which has no fireplace, shows not an English
+sign on the window, and the air is not <i>metallic</i> as in
+England. The sun, too, is so hot that the women are
+seen walking with fur capes and parasols, a curious combination.</p>
+
+<p>I hope you had your visit from Mr. Chorley, and that
+you both had the usual pleasure from it. Indeed I <i>am</i>
+touched by what you tell me, and was touched by his note
+to my husband, written in the first surprise; and because
+Robert has the greatest regard for him, besides my own
+personal reasons, I do count him in the forward rank of
+our friends. You will hear that he has obliged us by
+accepting a trusteeship to a settlement, forced upon me in
+spite of certain professions or indispositions of mine; but
+as my husband's gifts, I had no right, it appeared, by
+refusing it to place him in a false position for the sake of
+what dear Mr. Kenyon calls my 'crotchets.' Oh, dear
+Mr. Kenyon! His kindness and goodness to us have been
+past thinking of, past thanking for; we can only fall into
+silence. He has thrust his hand into the fire for us by
+writing to papa himself, by taking up the management of
+my small money-matters when nearer hands let them drop,
+by justifying us with the whole weight of his personal
+influence; all this in the very face of his own habits and
+susceptibilities. He has resolved that I shall not miss the
+offices of father, brother, friend, nor the tenderness and
+sympathy of them all. And this man is called a mere man
+of the world, and would be called so rightly if the world
+were a place for angels. I shall love him dearly and
+gratefully to my last breath; we both shall....</p>
+
+<p>Robert and I are deep in the fourth month of wedlock;
+there has not been a shadow between us, nor a <i>word</i> (and
+I have observed that all married people confess to <i>words</i>),
+and that the only change I can lay my finger on in him is
+simply and clearly an increase of affection. Now I need
+not say it if I did not please, and I should not please, you
+know, to tell a story. The truth is, that I who always did
+certainly believe in love, yet was as great a sceptic as you
+about the evidences thereof, and having held twenty times
+that Jacob's serving fourteen years for Rachel was not too
+long by fourteen days, I was not a likely person (with my
+loathing dread of marriage as a loveless state, and absolute
+contentment with single life as the alternative to the great
+majorities of marriages), I was not likely to accept a feeling
+not genuine, though from the hand of Apollo himself,
+crowned with his various godships. Especially too, in my
+position, I could not, would not, should not have done it.
+Then, genuine feelings are genuine feelings, and do not
+pass like a cloud. We are as happy as people can be, I do
+believe, yet are living in a way to <i>try</i> this new relationship
+of ours&mdash;in the utmost seclusion and perpetual <i>t&eacute;te-&agrave;-t&eacute;te</i>&mdash;no
+amusement nor distraction from without, except some of
+the very dullest Italian romances which throw us back on
+the memory of Balzac with reiterated groans. The Italians
+seem to hang on translations from the French&mdash;as we find
+from the library&mdash;not merely of Balzac, but Dumas, your
+Dumas, and reaching lower&mdash;long past De Kock&mdash;to the
+third and fourth rate novelists. What is purely Italian is, as
+far as we have read, purely dull and conventional. There
+is no breath nor pulse in the Italian genius. Mrs. Jameson
+writes to us from Florence that in politics and philosophy
+the people are getting alive&mdash;which may be, for aught we
+know to the contrary, the poetry and imagination leave
+them room enough by immense vacancies.</p>
+
+<p>Yet we delight in Italy, and dream of 'pleasures new'
+for the summer&mdash;<i>pastures</i> new, I should have said&mdash;but it
+comes to the same thing. The <i>padrone</i> in this house
+sent us in as a gift (in gracious recognition, perhaps, of our
+lawful paying of bills) an immense dish of oranges&mdash;two
+hanging on a stalk with the green leaves still moist with the
+morning's dew&mdash;every great orange of twelve or thirteen
+with its own stalk and leaves. Such a pretty sight! And
+better oranges, I beg to say, never were eaten, when we are
+barbarous enough to eat them day by day after our two
+o'clock dinner, softening, with the vision of them, the
+winter which has just shown itself. Almost I have been as
+pleased with the oranges as I was at Avignon by the
+<i>pomegranate</i> given to me much in the same way. Think of
+my being singled out of all our caravan of travellers&mdash;Mrs.
+Jameson and Gerardine Jameson<a name="FNanchor_153_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153_153"><sup>[153]</sup></a> both there&mdash;for
+that significant gift of the pomegranates! I had never seen
+one before, and, of course, proceeded instantly to cut one
+'deep down the middle'<a name="FNanchor_154_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154_154"><sup>[154]</sup></a>&mdash;accepting the omen. Yet, in
+shame and confusion of face, I confess to not being able to
+appreciate it properly. Olives and pomegranates I set on
+the same shelf, to be just looked at and called by their
+names, but by no means eaten bodily.</p>
+
+<p>But you mistake me, dearest friend, about the 'Blackwood'
+verses. I never thought of writing <i>applicative poems</i>&mdash;the
+heavens forfend! Only that just <i>then</i>, [in] the midst of
+all the talk, <i>any</i> verses of mine should come into print&mdash;and
+some of them to that <i>particular effect</i>&mdash;looked unlucky.
+I dare say poor papa (for instance) thought me turned
+suddenly to brass itself. Well, it is perhaps more my
+fancy than anything else, and was only an impression, even
+there. Mr. Chorley will tell you of a play of his, which I
+hope will make its way, though I do wonder how people can
+bear to write for the theatres in the present state of things.
+Robert is busy preparing a new edition of his collected
+poems which are to be so clear that everyone who has
+understood them hitherto will lose all distinction. We
+both mean to be as little idle as possible.... We shall
+meet one day in joy, I do hope, and then you will love my
+husband for his own sake, as for mine you do not hate him
+now.</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+[Pisa:] December 21 [1846].<br />
+
+<p>You must let me tell you, my dearest Mr. Boyd, that I
+dreamed of you last night, and that you were looking very
+well in my dream, and that you told me to break a crust
+from a loaf of bread which lay by you on the table; which I
+accept on recollection as a sacramental sign between us, of
+peace and affection. Wasn't it strange that I should dream
+so of you? Yet no; thinking awake of you, the sleeping
+thoughts come naturally. Believe of me this Christmas
+time, as indeed at every time, that I do not forget you, and
+that all the distance and change of country can make no
+difference. Understand, too (for <i>that</i> will give pleasure to
+your goodness), that I am very happy, and not unwell,
+though it is almost Christmas....</p>
+
+<p>Dearest friend, are you well and in good spirits? Think
+of me over the Cyprus, between the cup and the lip, though
+bad things are said to fall out so. We have, instead of
+Cyprus, <i>Montepulciano</i>, the famous 'King of Wine,' crowned
+king, you remember, by the grace of a poet! Your Cyprus,
+however, keeps supremacy over me, and will not abdicate
+the divine right of being associated with you. I speak of
+wine, but we live here the most secluded, quiet life possible&mdash;reading
+and writing, and talking of all things in heaven and
+earth, and a little besides; and sometimes even laughing as
+if we had twenty people to laugh with us, or rather <i>hadn't</i>.
+We know not a creature, I am happy to say, except an
+Italian professor (of the university here) who called on us
+the other evening and praised aloud the scholars of England.
+'English Latin was best,' he said, 'and English Greek
+foremost.' Do you clap your hands?</p>
+
+<p>The new pope is more liberal than popes in general, and
+people write odes to him in consequence.</p>
+
+<p>Robert is going to bring out a new edition of his collected
+poems, and you are not to read any more, if you please, till
+this is done. I heard of Carlyle's saying the other day
+'that he hoped more from Robert Browning, for the
+people of England, than from any living English writer,'
+which pleased me, of course. I am just sending off an anti-slavery
+poem for America,<a name="FNanchor_155_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_155_155"><sup>[155]</sup></a> too ferocious, perhaps, for the
+Americans to publish: but they asked for a poem and shall
+have it.</p>
+
+<p>If I ask for a letter, shall I have it, I wonder?
+Remember me and love me a little, and pray for me,
+dearest friend, and believe how gratefully and ever affectionately</p>
+
+<p>I am your</p>
+
+<p>ELIBET,</p>
+
+<p>Though Robert always calls me <i>Ba</i>, and thinks it the
+prettiest name in the world! which is a proof, you will say,
+not only of blind love but of deaf love.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>It was during the stay at Pisa, and early in the year
+1847, that Mr. Browning first became acquainted with his
+wife's 'Sonnets from the Portuguese.' Written during the
+course of their courtship and engagement, they were not
+shown even to him until some months after their marriage.
+The story of it was told by Mr. Browning in later life to
+Mr. Edmund Gosse, with leave to make it known to the
+world in general; and from Mr. Gosse's publication it is
+here quoted in his own words.<a name="FNanchor_156_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156_156"><sup>[156]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>'Their custom was, Mr. Browning said, to write alone,
+and not to show each other what they had written. This
+was a rule which he sometimes broke through, but she
+never. He had the habit of working in a downstairs room,
+where their meals were spread, while Mrs. Browning studied
+in a room on the floor above. One day, early in 1847, their
+breakfast being over, Mrs. Browning went upstairs, while
+her husband stood at the window watching the street till
+the table should be cleared. He was presently aware of
+some one behind him, although the servant was gone. It
+was Mrs. Browning, who held him by the shoulder to prevent
+his turning to look at her, and at the same time pushed
+a packet of papers into the pocket of his coat. She told
+him to read that, and to tear it up if he did not like it; and
+then she fled again to her own room.'</p>
+
+<p>The sonnets were intended for her husband's eye alone;
+in the first instance, not even for his. No poems can ever
+have been composed with less thought of the public;
+perhaps for that very reason they are unmatched for simplicity
+and sincerity in all Mrs. Browning's work. Her
+genius in them has full mastery over its material, as it has
+in few of her other poems. All impurities of style or
+rhythm are purged away by the fire of love; and they stand,
+not only highest among the writings of their authoress, but
+also in the very forefront of English love-poems. With the
+single exception of Rossetti, no modern English poet has
+written of love with such genius, such beauty, and such
+sincerity, as the two who gave the most beautiful example of
+it in their own lives.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately for all those who love true poetry, Mr.
+Browning judged rightly of the obligation laid upon him by
+the possession of these poems. 'I dared not,' he said,
+'reserve to myself the finest sonnets written in any language
+since Shakespeare's.' Accordingly he persuaded his wife
+to commit the printing of them to her friend, Miss Mitford;
+and in the course of the year they appeared in a slender
+volume, entitled 'Sonnets, by E.B.B.,' with the imprint
+'Reading, 1847,' and marked 'Not for publication.' It was
+not until three years later that they were offered to the
+general public, in the volumes of 1850. Here first they
+appeared under the title of 'Sonnets from the Portuguese'&mdash;a
+title suggested by Mr. Browning (in preference to his
+wife's proposal, 'Sonnets translated from the Bosnian') for
+the sake of its half-allusion to her other poem, 'Catarina to
+Camoens,' which was one of his chief favourites among her
+works.</p>
+
+<p>To these sonnets there is, however, no allusion in the
+letters here published, which say little for some time of her
+own work.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+February 8, 1847.<br />
+
+<p>But, my dearest Miss Mitford, your scheme about
+Leghorn is drawn out in the clouds. Now just see how
+impossible. Leghorn is fifteen miles off, and though there
+is a railroad there is no liberty for French books to wander
+backwards and forwards without inspection and seizure.
+Why, do remember that we are in Italy after all! Nevertheless,
+I will tell you what we have done: transplanted our
+subscription from the Italian library, which was wearing us
+away into a misanthropy, or at least despair of the wits of
+all Southerns, into a library which has a tolerable supply of
+French books, and gives us the privilege besides of having
+a French newspaper, the 'Si&egrave;cle,' left with us every evening.
+Also, this library admits (is allowed to admit on certain
+conditions) some books forbidden generally by the censureship,
+which is of the strictest; and though Balzac appears
+very imperfectly, I am delighted to find him at all, and
+shall dun the bookseller for the 'Instruction criminelle,'
+which I hope discharges your Lucien as a 'for&ccedil;at'&mdash;neither
+man nor woman&mdash;and true poet, least of all....</p>
+
+<p>The 'Si&egrave;cle' has for a <i>feuilleton</i> a new romance of
+Souli&eacute;'s, called 'Saturnin Fichet,' which is really not good,
+and tiresome to boot. Robert and I began by each of us
+reading it, but after a little while he left me alone, being
+certain that no good could come of such a work. So, of
+course, ever since, I have been exclaiming and exclaiming
+as to the wonderful improvement and increasing beauty and
+glory of it, just to justify myself, and to make him sorry for
+not having persevered! The truth is, however, that but for
+obstinacy I should give up too. Deplorably dull the story
+is, and there is a crowd of people each more indifferent than
+each, to you; the pith of the plot being (very characteristically)
+that the hero has somebody exactly like him. To
+the reader, it's <i>all one</i> in every sense&mdash;who's who, and what's
+what. Robert is a warm admirer of Balzac and has read
+most of his books, but certainly&mdash;oh certainly&mdash;he does not
+in a general way appreciate our French people quite with
+our warmth; he takes too high a standard, I tell him, and
+won't listen to a story for a story's sake. I can bear to be
+amused, you know without a strong pull on my admiration.
+So we have great wars sometimes, and I put up Dumas'
+flag, or Souli&eacute;'s, or Eug&egrave;ne Sue's (yet he was properly
+possessed by the 'Myst&egrave;res de Paris') and carry it till my
+arms ache. The plays and vaudevilles he knows far more
+of than I do, and always maintains they are the happiest
+growth of the French school&mdash;setting aside the <i>masters</i>,
+observe&mdash;for Balzac and George Sand hold all their honours;
+and, before your letter came, he had told me about the
+'Kean' and the other dramas. Then we read together the
+other day the 'Rouge et Noir,' that powerful book of
+Stendhal's (Beyle), and he thought it very striking, and
+observed&mdash;what I had thought from the first and again and
+again&mdash;that it was exactly like Balzac <i>in the raw</i>, in the
+material and undeveloped conception. What a book it is
+really, and so full of pain and bitterness, and the gall of
+iniquity! The new Dumas I shall see in time, perhaps,
+and it is curious that Robert had just been telling me the
+very story you speak of in your letter, from the 'Causes
+C&eacute;l&egrave;bres.' I never read it&mdash;the more shame! Dearest
+friend, all this talk of French books and no talk about <i>you</i>&mdash;the
+<i>most</i> shame! You don't tell me enough of yourself,
+and I want to hear, because (besides the usual course of
+reasons) Mr. Chorley spoke of you as if you were not as
+cheerful as usual; do tell me. Ah! if you fancy that I
+do not love you as near, through being so far, you are unjust
+to me as you never were before. For myself, the brightness
+round me has had a cloud on it lately by an illness of poor
+Wilson's.... She would not go to Dr. Cook till I was
+terrified one night, while she was undressing me, by her
+sinking down on the sofa in a shivering fit. Oh, so
+frightened I was, and Robert ran out for a physician; and
+I could have shivered too, with the fright. But she is
+convalescent now, thank God! and in the meanwhile I have
+acquired a heap of practical philosophy, and have learnt
+how it is possible (in certain conditions of the human
+frame) to comb out and twist up one's own hair, and lace
+one's very own stays, and cause hooks and eyes to meet
+behind one's very own back, besides making toast and water
+for Wilson&mdash;which last miracle, it is only just to say, was
+considerably assisted by Robert's counsels 'not quite to set
+fire to the bread' while one was toasting it. He was the
+best and kindest all that time, as even <i>he</i> could be, and
+carried the kettle when it was too heavy for me, and helped
+me with heart and head. Mr. Chorley could not have
+praised him too much, be very sure. I, who always
+rather appreciated him, do set down the thoughts I had
+as merely unjust things; he exceeds them all, indeed. Yes,
+Mr. Chorley has been very kind to us. I had a kind note
+myself from him a few days since, and do you know that
+we have a sort of hope of seeing him in Italy this year, with
+dearest Mr. Kenyon, who has the goodness to crown his
+goodness by a 'dream' of coming to see us? We leave
+Pisa in April (did I tell you that?) and pass through Florence
+towards the north of Italy&mdash;to <i>Venice</i>, for instance. In the
+way of writing, I have not done much yet&mdash;just finished my
+rough sketch of an anti-slavery ballad and sent it off to
+America, where nobody will print it, I am certain, because
+I could not help making it bitter. If they <i>do</i> print it, I
+shall thank them more boldly in earnest than I fancy now.
+Tell me of Mary Howitt's new collection of ballads&mdash;are
+they good? I warmly wish that Mr. Chorley may succeed
+with his play; but how can Miss Cushman promise a
+hundred nights for an untried work?... Perhaps you may
+find the two last numbers of the 'Bells and Pomegranates'
+less obscure&mdash;it seems so to me. Flush has grown an absolute
+monarch and barks one distracted when he wants a door
+opened. Robert spoils him, I think. Do think of me as
+your ever affectionate and grateful</p>
+
+<p>BA.</p>
+
+<p>Have you seen 'Agnes de Misanie,' the new play by
+the author of 'Lucretia'? A witty feuilletoniste says of it
+that, besides all the unities of Aristotle, it comprises, from beginning
+to end, <i>unity of situation</i>. Not bad, is it? Madame
+Ancelot has just succeeded with a comedy, called 'Une
+Ann&eacute;e &agrave; Paris.' By the way, <i>shall you go to Paris this spring</i>?<a name="FNanchor_157_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157_157"><sup>[157]</sup></a></p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>From Mr. Browning's family, though she had as yet had no
+opportunity of making acquaintance with them face to face,
+Mrs. Browning from the first met with an affectionate
+reception. The following is the first now extant of a series
+of letters written by her to Miss Browning, the poet's
+sister. The abrupt and private nature of the marriage
+never seems to have caused the slightest coldness of feeling
+in this quarter, though it must have caused anxiety; and the
+tone of the early letters, in which so new and unfamiliar a
+relation had to be taken up, does equal honour to the
+writer and to the recipient.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Browning</i><br />
+[Pisa: about February 1847.]<br />
+
+<p>I must begin by thanking dearest Sarianna again for her
+note, and by assuring her that the affectionate tone of it
+quite made me happy and grateful together&mdash;that I am grateful
+to <i>all of you</i>: do <i>feel</i> that I am. For the rest, when
+I see (afar off) Robert's minute manuscripts, a certain distrust
+steals over me of anything I can possibly tell you of
+our way of living, lest it should be the vainest of repetitions,
+and by no means worth repeating, both at once. Such a
+quiet silent life it is&mdash;going to hear the Friar preach in the
+Duomo, a grand event in it, and the wind laying flat all our
+schemes about Volterra and Lucca! I have had to give up
+even the Friar for these three days past; there is nothing for
+me when I have driven out Robert to take his necessary walk
+but to sit and watch the pinewood blaze. He is grieved
+about the illness of his cousin, only I do hope that your next
+letter will confirm the happy change which stops the further
+anxiety, and come soon for that purpose, besides others.
+Your letters never can come too often, remember, even when
+they have not to speak of illness, and I for my part must
+always have a thankful interest in your cousin for the kind
+part he took in the happiest event of my life. You have to
+tell us too of your dear mother&mdash;Robert is so anxious about
+her always. How deeply and tenderly he loves her and all
+of you, never could have been more manifest than now when
+he is away from you and has to talk <i>of</i> you instead of
+<i>to</i> you. By the way (or rather out of the way) I quite
+took your view of the purposed ingratitude to poor Miss
+Haworth<a name="FNanchor_158_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158_158"><sup>[158]</sup></a>&mdash;it would have been worse in him than the sins of
+'Examiner' and 'Athenaeum.' If authors won't feel for one another,
+there's an end of the world of writing! Oh, I think he proposed
+it in a moment of hardheartedness&mdash;we all put on tortoiseshell
+now and then, and presently come out into the sun as
+sensitively as ever. Besides Miss Haworth has written to us
+very kindly; and kindness doesn't spring up everywhere,
+like the violets in your gravel walks. See how I understand
+Hatcham. Do try to love me a little, dearest Sarianna, and
+(with my grateful love always to your father and mother) let
+me be your affectionate sister,</p>
+
+<p>ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING,<br />
+or rather BA.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>The correspondence with Mr. Westwood, which had
+lapsed for a considerable time, was resumed with the
+following letter:</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+Collegio Ferdinando, Pisa: March 10, 1847.<br />
+
+<p>If really, my dear Mr. Westwood, it was an 'ill temper'
+in you, causing the brief note, it was a most flattering ill
+temper, and I thank you just as I have had reason to do
+for the good nature which has caused you to bear with me
+so often and so long. You have been misled on some
+points. I did not go to Italy last year, or rather the year
+before last! I was disappointed and forced to stay in
+Wimpole Street after all; but the winter being so mild, so
+miraculously mild for England you may remember, I was
+spared my winter relapse and left liberty for new plans such
+as I never used to think were in my destiny! Such a change
+it is to me, such a strange happiness and freedom, and you
+must not in your kindness wish me back again, but rather
+be contented, like a friend as you are, to hear that I am
+very happy and very well, and still doubtful whether all the
+brightness can be meant for <i>me</i>! It is just as if the sun
+rose again at 7 o'clock P.M. The strangeness seems so
+great....</p>
+
+<p>I am now very well, and so happy as not to think much
+of it, except for the sake of another. And do you fancy
+how I feel, carried; into the visions of nature from my
+gloomy room. Even now I walk as in a dream. We
+made a pilgrimage from Avignon to Vaucluse in right
+poetical duty, and I and my husband sate upon two stones
+in the midst of the fountain which in its dark prison of
+rocks flashes and roars and testifies to the memory of
+Petrarch. It was louder and fuller than usual when we
+were there, on account of the rains; and Flush, though by
+no means born to be a hero, considered my position so
+outrageous that he dashed through the water to me,
+splashing me all over, so he is baptised in Petrarch's name.
+The scenery is full of grandeur, the rocks sheathe themselves
+into the sky, and nothing grows there except a little cypress
+here and there, and a straggling olive tree; and the fountain
+works out its soul in its stony prison, and runs away in a
+green rapid stream. Such a striking sight it is. I sate
+upon deck, too, in our passage from Marseilles to Genoa,
+and had a vision of mountains, six or seven deep, one
+behind another. As to Pisa, call it a beautiful town, you
+cannot do less with Arno and its palaces, and above all the
+wonderful Duomo and Campo Santo, and Leaning Tower
+and Baptistery, all of which are a stone's throw from our
+windows. We have rooms in a great college-house built
+by Vasari, and fallen into desuetude from collegiate
+purposes; and here we live the quietest and most <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i>
+of lives, knowing nobody, hearing nothing, and for nearly
+three months together never catching a glimpse of a paper.
+Oh, how wrong you were about the 'Times'! Now, however,
+we subscribe to a French and Italian library, and have
+a French newspaper every evening, the 'Si&egrave;cle,' and so look
+through a loophole at the world. Yet, not too proud are
+we, even now, for all the news you will please to send us in
+charity: 'da obolum Belisario!'</p>
+
+<p>What do you mean about poor Tennyson? I heard of
+him last on his return from a visit to the Swiss mountains,
+which 'disappointed him,' he was <i>said to say</i>. Very wrong,
+either of mountains or poet!</p>
+
+<p>Tell me if you make acquaintance with Mrs. Hewitt's
+new ballads.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jameson is engaged in a work on art which will be
+very interesting....</p>
+
+<p>Flush's love to your Flopsy. Flush has grown very
+overbearing in this Italy, I think because my husband
+spoils him (if not for the glory at Vaucluse); Robert
+declares that the said Flush considers him, my husband, to
+be created for the especial purpose of doing him service, and
+really it looks rather like it.</p>
+
+<p>Never do I see the 'Athenaeum' now, but before I left
+England some pure gushes between the rocks reminded
+me of you. Tell me all you can; it will all be like rain
+upon dry ground. My husband bids me offer his regards
+to you&mdash;if you will accept them; and that you may do it
+ask your heart. I will assure you (aside) that his poetry is as
+the prose of his nature: he himself is so much better and
+higher than his own works.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<p>In the middle of April the Brownings left Pisa and
+journeyed to Florence, arriving there on April 20. There,
+however, the programme was arrested, and, save for an
+abortive excursion to Vallombrosa, whence they were
+repulsed by the misogynist principles of the monks, they
+continued to reside in Florence for the remainder of the
+year. Their first abode was in the Via delle Belle Donne;
+but after the return from Vallombrosa, in August, they
+moved across the river, and took furnished rooms in the
+Palazzo Guidi, the building which, under the name of
+'Casa Guidi,' is for ever associated with their memory.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Florence: April 24, 1847.<br />
+
+<p>I received your letter, my dearest friend, by this day's
+post, and wrote a little note directly to the office as a trap
+for the feet of your travellers. If they escape us after all,
+therefore, they may praise their stars for it rather than my
+intentions&mdash;<i>our</i> intentions, I should say, for Robert will
+gladly do everything he can in the way of expounding a
+text or two of the glories of Florence, and we both shall be
+much pleased and cordially pleased to learn more of Fanny
+and her brother than the glance at Pisa could teach us. As
+for me, she will let me have a little talking for my share: I
+can't walk about or see anything. I lie here flat on the sofa
+in order to be wise; I rest and take port wine by wineglasses;
+and a few more days of it will prepare me, I hope
+and trust, for an interview with the Venus de' Medici.
+Think of my having been in Florence since Tuesday, this
+being Saturday, and not a step taken into the galleries. It
+seems a disgrace, a sort of involuntary disgraceful act, or
+rather no-act, which to complain of relieves one to some
+degree. And how kind of you to wish to hear from me of
+myself! There is nothing really much the matter with me;
+I am just <i>weak</i>, sleeping and eating dreadfully well considering
+that Florence isn't seen yet, and 'looking well,' too,
+says Mrs. Jameson, who, with her niece, is our guest just
+now. It would have been wise if I had rested longer at
+Pisa, but, you see, there was a long engagement to meet
+Mrs. Jameson here, and she expressed a very kind
+unwillingness to leave Italy without keeping it: also she had
+resolved to come out of her way on purpose for this, and, as
+I had the consent of my physician, we determined to perform
+our part of the compact; and in order to prepare for
+the longer journey I went out in the carriage a little too
+soon, perhaps, and a little too long. At least, if I had kept
+quite still I should have been strong by this time&mdash;not that
+I have done myself harm in the serious sense, observe&mdash;and
+now the affair is accomplished, I shall be wonderfully discreet
+and self-denying, and resist Venuses and Apollos like
+some one wiser than the gods themselves. My chest is very
+well; there has been no symptom of evil in that quarter....
+We took the whole coup&eacute; of the diligence&mdash;but regretted
+our first plan of the <i>vettura</i> nevertheless&mdash;and now are
+settled in very comfortable rooms in the 'Via delle Belle
+Donne' just out of the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, very
+superior rooms to our apartment in Pisa, in which we were
+cheated to the uttermost with all the subtlety of Italy and
+to the full extent of our ignorance; think what <i>that</i> must
+have been! Our present apartment, with the hire of a grand
+piano and music, does not cost us so much within ever so
+many francisconi. Oh, and you don't frighten me though
+we are on the north side of the Arno! We have taken our
+rooms for two months, and may be here longer, and the
+fear of the heat was stronger with me than the fear of the cold,
+or we might have been in the Pitti and 'arrostiti' by this time.
+We expected dear Mrs. Jameson on Saturday, but she came
+on Friday evening, having suddenly remembered that it was
+Shakespeare's birthday, and bringing with her from Arezzo
+a bottle of wine to 'drink to his memory with two other
+poets,' so there was a great deal of merriment, as you may
+fancy, and Robert played Shakespeare's favorite air, 'The
+Light of Love,' and everybody was delighted to meet
+everybody, and Roman news and Pisan dullness were
+properly discussed on every side. She saw a good deal of
+Cobden in Rome, and went with him to the Sistine Chapel.
+He has no feeling for art, and, being very true and earnest,
+could only do his best to <i>try</i> to admire Michael Angelo;
+but here and there, where he understood, the pleasure was
+expressed with a blunt characteristic simplicity. Standing
+before the statue of Demosthenes, he said: 'That man is
+persuaded himself of what he speaks, and will therefore
+persuade others.' She liked him exceedingly. For my part,
+I should join in more admiration if it were not for his having
+<i>accepted money</i>, but paid patriots are no heroes of mine.
+'Verily they have their reward.' O'Connell had arrived in
+Rome, and it was considered that he came only to die.
+Among the artists, Gibson and Wyatt were doing great
+things; she wishes us to know Gibson particularly. As to
+the Pope he lives in an atmosphere of love and admiration,
+and 'he is doing <i>what he can</i>,' Mrs. Jameson believes.
+Robert says: 'A dreadful situation, after all, for a man of
+understanding and honesty! I pity him from my soul, for
+he can, at best, only temporise with truth.' But human
+nature is doomed to pay a high price for its opportunities.
+Delighted I am to have your good account of dear Mr.
+Martin, though you are naughty people to persist in going
+to England so soon. Do write to me and tell me all about
+both of you. I will do what I can&mdash;like the Pope&mdash;but
+what can I do? Yes, indeed, I mean to enjoy art and
+nature too; one shall not exclude the other. This
+Florence seems divine as we pass the bridges, and my
+husband, who knows everything, is to teach and show me
+all the great wonders, so that I am reasonably impatient
+to try my advantages. His kind regards to you both, and
+my best love, dearest friends....</p>
+
+<p>Your very affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Jameson</i><br />
+Florence: May 12, [1847].<br />
+
+<p>I was afraid, we both were afraid for you, dearest
+friend, when we saw the clouds gather and heard the rain
+fall as it did that day at Florence. It seemed impossible
+that you should be beyond the evil influence, should you
+have travelled ever so fast; but, after all, a storm in the
+Apennines, like many a moral storm, will be better perhaps
+than a calm to look back upon. We talked of you and
+thought of you, and missed you at coffee time, and
+regretted that so pleasant a week (for us) should have gone
+so fast, as fast as a dull week, or, rather, a good deal faster.
+Dearest friend, do believe that we <i>felt</i> your goodness in
+Coming to us&mdash;in making us an object&mdash;before you left
+Italy; it fills up the measure of goodness and kindness for
+which we shall thank and love you all our lives. Never
+fancy that we can forget you or be less touched by the
+memory of what you have been to us in affection and
+sympathy&mdash;never. And don't <i>you</i> lose sight of <i>us</i>; do
+write often, and do, <i>do</i> make haste and come back to Italy,
+and then make use of us in any and every possible way as
+house-takers or house-mates, for we are ready to accept the
+lowest place or the highest. The week you gave us would
+be altogether bright and glad if it had not been for the
+depression and anxiety on your part. May God turn it
+all to gain and satisfaction in some unlooked-for way. To
+be a <i>road-maker</i> is weary work, even across the Apennines
+of life. We have not science enough for it if we have
+strength, which we haven't either. Do you remember how
+Sindbad shut his eyes and let himself be carried over the
+hills by an eagle? <i>That</i> was better than to set about
+breaking stones. Also what you could do you have done;
+you have finished your part, and the sense of a fulfilled
+duty is in itself satisfying&mdash;is and must be. My sympathies
+go with you entirely, while I wish your dear Gerardine to
+be happy; I wish it from my heart.... Just after you
+left us arrived our box with the precious deeds, which are
+thrown into the cabinet for want of witnesses. And then
+Robert has had a letter from Mr. Forster with the date of
+<i>Shakespeare's birthday</i>, and overflowing with kindness really
+both to himself and me. It quite touched me, that letter.
+Also we have had a visitation from an American, but on the
+point of leaving Florence and very tame and inoffensive, and
+we bore it very well considering. He sent us a new literary
+periodical of the old world, in which, among other interesting
+matter, I had the pleasure of reading an account of my
+own 'blindness,' taken from a French paper (the 'Presse'),
+and mentioned with humane regret. Well! and what more
+news is there to tell you? I have been out once, only
+once, and only for an inglorious glorious drive round the
+Piazza Gran Duca, past the Duomo, outside the walls, and
+in again at the Cascine. It was like the trail of a vision in
+the evening sun. I saw the Perseus in a sort of flash.
+The Duomo is more after the likeness of a Duomo than
+Pisa can show; I like those masses in ecclesiastical
+architecture. Now we are plotting how to, engage a
+carriage for a month's service without ruining ourselves, for
+we <i>must</i> see, and I <i>can't</i> walk and see, though much
+stronger than when we parted, and looking much better, as
+Robert and the looking glass both do testify. I have
+seemed at last 'to leap to a conclusion' of convalescence.
+But the heat&mdash;oh, so hot it is. If it is half as hot with you,
+you must be calling on the name of St. Lawrence by this
+time, and require no 'turning.' I should not like to travel
+under such a sun. It would be too like playing at snapdragon.
+Yes, 'brightly happy.' Women generally <i>lose</i> by
+marriage, but I have gained the world by mine. If it were
+not for some griefs, which are and must be griefs, I should
+be too happy perhaps, which is good for nobody. May
+God bless you, my dear, dearest friend! Robert must be
+content with sending his love to-day, and shall write
+another day. We both love you every day. My love and
+a kiss to dearest Gerardine, who is to remember to write
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To H.S. Boyd</i><br />
+Florence: May 26, 1847.<br />
+
+<p>I should have answered your letter, my dearest friend,
+more quickly, but when it came I was ill, as you may have
+heard, and afterwards I wished to wait until I could send
+you information about the Leaning Tower and the bells<a name="FNanchor_159_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159_159"><sup>[159]</sup></a>.
+The book you required, about the cathedral, Robert has
+tried in vain to procure for you. Plenty of such books,
+but <i>not in English</i>. In London such things are to be
+found, I should think, without difficulty, for instance,
+'Murray's Handbook to Northern Italy,' though rather
+dear (12<i>s.</i>), would give you sufficiently full information
+upon the ecclesiastical glories both of Pisa and of this
+beautiful Florence, from whence I write to you.... I
+will answer for the harmony of the bells, as we lived within
+a stone's throw of them, and they began at four o'clock
+every morning and rang my dreams apart. The Pasquareccia
+(the fourth) especially has a profound note in it,
+which may well have thrilled horror to the criminal's heart.<a name="FNanchor_160_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_160_160"><sup>[160]</sup></a>
+It was ghastly in its effects; dropped into the deep of
+night like a thought of death. Often have I said, 'Oh,
+how ghastly!' and then turned on my pillow and dreamed a
+bad dream. But if the bell founders at Pisa have a merited
+reputation, let no one say as much for the bellringers.
+The manner in which all the bells of all the churches in
+the city are shaken together sometimes would certainly
+make you groan in despair of your ears. The discord is
+fortunately indescribable. Well&mdash;but here we are at
+Florence, the most beautiful of the cities devised by
+man....</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile I have seen the Venus, I have seen
+the divine Raphaels. I have stood by Michael Angelo's
+tomb in Santa Croce. I have looked at the wonderful
+Duomo. This cathedral! After all, the elaborate grace of
+the Pisan cathedral is one thing, and the massive grandeur
+of this of Florence is another and better thing; it struck
+me with a sense of the sublime in architecture. At Pisa
+we say, 'How beautiful!' here we say nothing; it is enough
+if we can breathe. The mountainous marble masses overcome
+as we look up&mdash;we feel the weight of them on the
+soul. Tesselated marbles (the green treading its elaborate
+pattern into the dim yellow, which seems the general hue of
+the structure) climb against the sky, self-crowned with that
+prodigy of marble domes. It struck me as a wonder in
+architecture. I had neither seen nor imagined the like of
+it in any way. It seemed to carry its theology out with it;
+it signified more than a mere building. Tell me everything
+you want to know. I shall like to answer a thousand
+questions. Florence is beautiful, as I have said before, and
+must say again and again, most beautiful. The river rushes
+through the midst of its palaces like a crystal arrow, and it
+is hard to tell, when you see all by the clear sunset,
+whether those churches, and houses, and windows, and
+bridges, and people walking, in the water or out of the
+water, are the real walls, and windows, and bridges, and
+people, and churches. The only difference is that, down
+below, there is a double movement; the movement of the
+stream besides the movement of life. For the rest, the
+distinctness of the eye is as great in one as in the
+other.... Remember me to such of my friends as
+remember me kindly when unreminded by me. I am very
+happy&mdash;happier and happier.</p>
+
+<p>ELIBET.</p>
+
+<p>Robert's best regards to you always.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Jameson</i><br />
+Palazzo Guidi, Via Maggio, Florence:<br />
+August 7, 1847 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>You will be surprised perhaps, and perhaps not, dearest
+friend, to find that we are still at Florence. Florence 'holds
+us with a glittering eye;' there's a charm cast round us, and
+we can't get away. In the first place, your news of Recoaro
+came so late that, as you said yourself, we ought to have
+been there before your letter reached us. Nobody would
+encourage us to go north on any grounds, indeed, and if
+anybody speaks a word now in favour of Venice, straight
+comes somebody else speaking the direct contrary. Altogether,
+we took to making a plan of our own&mdash;a great, wild,
+delightful plan of plunging into the mountains and spending
+two or three months at the monastery of Vallombrosa,
+until the heat was passed, and dear Mr. Kenyon decided,
+and we could either settle for the winter at Florence or
+pass on to Rome. Could anything look more delightful than
+that? Well, we got a letter of recommendation to the abbot,
+and left our apartment, Via delle Belle Donne, a week
+before our three months were done, thoroughly burned
+out by the sun; set out at four in the morning, reached
+Pelago, and from thence travelled five miles along a 'via
+non rotabile' through the most romantic scenery. Oh,
+such mountains!&mdash;as if the whole world were alive with
+mountains&mdash;such ravines&mdash;black in spite of flashing waters
+in them&mdash;such woods and rocks&mdash;travelled in basket
+sledges drawn by four white oxen&mdash;Wilson and I and the
+luggage&mdash;and Robert riding step by step. We were four
+hours doing the five miles, so you may fancy what rough
+work it was. Whether I was most tired or charmed was a
+<i>tug</i> between body and soul. The worst was that, there
+being a new abbot at the monastery&mdash;an austere man
+jealous of his sanctity and the approach of women&mdash;our
+letter, and Robert's eloquence to boot, did nothing for us,
+and we were ingloriously and ignominiously expelled at the
+end of five days. For three days we were welcome; for two
+more we kept our ground; but after <i>that</i>, out we were
+thrust, with baggage and expectations. Nothing could be
+much more provoking. And yet we came back very
+merrily for disappointed people to Florence, getting up at
+three in the morning, and rolling or sliding (as it might
+happen) down the precipitous path, and seeing round us a
+morning glory of mountains, clouds, and rising sun, such as
+we never can forget&mdash;back to Florence and our old lodgings,
+and an eatable breakfast of coffee and bread, and a confession
+one to another that if we had won the day instead
+of losing it, and spent our summer with the monks, we
+should have grown considerably <i>thinner</i> by the victory.
+They make their bread, I rather imagine, with the sawdust
+of their fir trees, and, except oil and wine&mdash;yes, and plenty
+of beef (of <i>fleisch</i>, as your Germans say, of all kinds,
+indeed), which isn't precisely the fare to suit us&mdash;we were
+thrown for nourishment on the great sights around. Oh,
+but so beautiful were mountains and forests and waterfalls
+that I could have kept my ground happily for the two
+months&mdash;even though the only book I saw there was the
+chronicle of their San Gualberto. Is he not among your
+saints? Being routed fairly, and having breakfasted fully
+at our old apartment, Robert went out to find cool rooms, if
+possible, and make the best of our position, and now we are
+settled magnificently in this Palazzo Guidi on a first floor
+in an apartment which <i>looks</i> quite beyond our means, and
+<i>would be</i> except in the dead part of the season&mdash;a suite of
+spacious rooms opening on a little terrace and furnished
+elegantly&mdash;rather to suit our predecessor the Russian prince
+than ourselves&mdash;but cool and in a delightful situation, six
+paces from the Piazza Pitti, and with right of daily
+admission to the Boboli gardens. We pay what we paid
+in the Via Belle Donne. Isn't this prosperous? You
+would be surprised to see <i>me</i>, I think, I am so very well
+(and look so)&mdash;dispensed from being carried upstairs, and
+inclined to take a run, for a walk, every now and then. I
+scarcely recognise myself or my ways, or my own spirits, all
+is so different....</p>
+
+<p>We have made the acquaintance of Mr. Powers,<a name="FNanchor_161_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161_161"><sup>[161]</sup></a> who is
+delightful&mdash;of a most charming simplicity, with those great
+burning eyes of his. Tell me what you think of his boy
+listening to the shell. Oh, your Raphaels! how divine!
+And M. Angelo's sculptures! His pictures I leap up to
+in vain, and fall back regularly. Write of your book and
+yourself, and write soon; and let me be, as always, your
+affectionate BA.</p>
+
+<p>We are here for two months certain, and perhaps longer.
+Do write.</p>
+
+<p>Dear Aunt Nina,&mdash;Ba has said something for me, I
+hope. In any case, my love goes with hers, I trust you
+are well and happy, as we are, and as we would make you
+if we could. Love to Geddie. Ever yours, [R.B.]</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Florence: August 7, 1847.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;How I have been longing to
+get this letter, which comes at last, and justifies the longing
+by the pleasure it gives!... How kind, how affectionate
+you are to me, and how strong your claim is that I should
+thrust on you, in defiance of good taste and conventions,
+every evidence and assurance of my happiness, so as to
+justify your <i>faith</i> to yourselves and others. Indeed, indeed,
+dearest Mrs. Martin, you may 'exult' for me&mdash;and this
+though it should all end here and now. The uncertainties
+of life and death seem nothing to me. A year (nearly) is
+saved from the darkness, and if that one year has compensated
+for those that preceded it&mdash;which it has, abundantly&mdash;why,
+let it for those that shall follow, if it so please God.
+Come what may, I feel as if I never could have a right to
+murmur. I have been happy enough. Brought about too
+it was, indeed, by a sort of miracle which to this moment,
+when I look back, bewilders me to think of; and if you
+knew the details, counted the little steps, and could;
+compare my moral position three years and a half ago with
+<i>this</i>, you would come to despise San Gualberto's miraculous
+tree at Vallombrosa, which, being dead, gave out green leaves
+in recognition of his approach, as testified by the inscription&mdash;do
+you remember? But you can't stop to-day to read mine,
+so rather I shall tell you of our exploit in the mountains.
+Only one thing I must say first, one thing which you must
+forgive me for the vanity of resolving to say at last, having had
+it in my head very often. There's a detestable engraving,
+which, if you have the ill luck to see (and you <i>may</i>, because,
+horrible to relate, it is in the shop windows), will you have the
+kindness, for my sake, not to fancy <i>like Robert</i>?&mdash;it being, as
+he says himself, the very image of '<i>a young man at Waterloo
+House</i>, in a moment of inspiration&mdash;&quot;A lovely blue,
+ma'am.&quot;' It is as like Robert as Flush. And now I am
+going to tell you of Vallombrosa. You heard how we
+meant to stay two months there, and you are to imagine
+how we got up at three in the morning to escape the heat
+(imagine me!)&mdash;and with all our possessions and a 'dozen
+of port' (which my husband doses me with twice a day
+because once it was necessary) proceeded to Pelago by
+vettura, and from thence in two sledges, drawn each by
+two white bullocks up to the top of the holy mountain.
+(Robert was on horseback.) Precisely it must be as you
+left it. Who can make a road up a house? We were four
+hours going five miles, and I with all my goodwill was
+dreadfully tired, and scarcely in appetite for the beef and
+oil with which we were entertained at the House of
+Strangers. We are simple people about diet, and had said
+over and over that we would live on eggs and milk and
+bread and butter during these two months. We might
+as well have said that we would live on manna from
+heaven. The things we had fixed on were just the impossible
+things. Oh, that bread, with the fetid smell, which stuck
+in the throat like Macbeth's amen! I am not surprised,
+you recollect it! The hens had 'got them to a nunnery,'
+and objected to lay eggs, and the milk and the holy water
+stood confounded. But of course we spread the tablecloth,
+just as you did, over all drawbacks of the sort; and
+the beef and oil, as I said, and the wine too, were liberal
+and excellent, and we made our gratitude apparent in
+Robert's best Tuscan&mdash;in spite of which we were turned
+out ignominiously at the end of five days, having been
+permitted to overstay the usual three days by only two. No,
+nothing could move the lord abbot. He is a new abbot, and;
+given to sanctity, and has set his face against women.
+'While he is abbot,' he said to our mediating monk, 'he
+<i>will</i> be abbot. So he is abbot, and we had to come back to
+Florence.' As I read in the 'Life of San Gualberto,' laid
+on the table for the edification of strangers, the brothers
+attain to sanctification, among other means, by cleaning
+out pigsties with their bare hands, without spade or shovel;
+but <i>that</i> is uncleanliness enough&mdash;they wouldn't touch the
+little finger of a woman. Angry I was, I do assure you.
+I should have liked to stay there, in spite of the bread.
+We should have been only a little thinner at the end. And
+the scenery&mdash;oh, how magnificent! How we enjoyed that
+great, silent, ink-black pine wood! And do you remember
+the sea of mountains to the left? How grand it is! We
+were up at three in the morning again to return to Florence,
+and the glory of that morning sun breaking the clouds to
+pieces among the hills is something ineffaceable from my
+remembrance. We came back ignominiously to our old
+rooms, but found it impossible to stay on account of the
+suffocating heat, yet we scarcely could go far from Florence,
+because of Mr. Kenyon and our hope of seeing him here
+(since lost). A perplexity ended by Robert's discovery of
+our present apartments, on the Pitti side of the river (indeed,
+close to the Grand Duke's palace), consisting of a suite of
+spacious and delightful rooms, which come within our
+means only from the deadness of the summer season, comparatively
+quite cool, and with a terrace which I enjoy to
+the uttermost through being able to walk there without a
+bonnet, by just stepping out of the window. The church of
+San Felice is opposite, so we haven't a neighbour to look
+through the sunlight or moonlight and take observations.
+Isn't that pleasant altogether? We ordered back the piano
+and the book subscription, and settled for two months, and
+forgave the Vallombrosa monks for the wrong they did us,
+like secular Christians. What is to come after, I can't tell
+you. But probably we shall creep slowly along toward
+Rome, and spend some hot time of it at Perugia, which is
+said to be cool enough. I think more of other things,
+wishing that my dearest, kindest sisters had a present as
+bright as mine&mdash;to think nothing at all of the future.
+Dearest Henrietta's position has long made me uneasy,
+and, since she frees me into confidence by her confidence to
+you, I will tell you so. Most undesirable it is that this
+should be continued, and yet where is there a door open
+to escape?<a name="FNanchor_162_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162_162"><sup>[162]</sup></a> ... My dear brothers have the illusion that
+nobody should marry on less than two thousand a year.
+Good heavens! how preposterous it does seem to me!
+<i>We</i> scarcely spend three hundred, and I have every luxury,
+I ever had, and which it would be so easy to give up, at
+need; and Robert wouldn't sleep, I think, if an unpaid
+bill dragged itself by any chance into another week. He
+says that when people get into 'pecuniary difficulties,' his
+'sympathies always go with the butchers and bakers.' So
+we keep out of scrapes yet, you see....</p>
+
+<p>Your grateful and most affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+
+<p>We have had the most delightful letter from Carlyle,
+who has the goodness to say that not for years has a
+marriage occurred in his private circle in which he so
+heartily rejoiced as in ours. He is a personal friend of
+Robert's, so that I have reason to be very proud and glad.</p>
+
+<p>Robert's best regards to you both always, and he is no
+believer in magnetism (only <i>I</i> am). Do mention Mr. C.
+Hanford's health. How strange that he should come to
+witness my marriage settlement! Did you hear?</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: August 20, [1847],<br />
+
+<p>I have received your letter at last, my ever dearest Miss
+Mitford, not the missing letter, but the one which comes to
+make up for it and to catch up my thoughts, which were
+grumbling at high tide, I do assure you.... As you
+observed last year (not without reason), these are the days
+of marrying and giving in marriage. Mr. Horne<a name="FNanchor_163_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163_163"><sup>[163]</sup></a>, you
+see ... With all my heart I hope he may be very happy.
+Men risk a good deal in marriage, though not as much as
+women do; and on the other hand, the singleness of a man
+when his youth is over is a sadder thing than the saddest
+which an unmarried woman can suffer. Nearly all my
+friends of both sexes have been draining off into marriage
+these two years, scarcely one will be left in the sieve, and I
+may end by saying that I have happiness enough for my
+own share to be divided among them all and leave everyone,
+contented. For me, I take it for pure magic, this life of
+mine. Surely nobody was ever so happy before. I shall
+wake some morning with my hair all dripping out of the
+enchanted bucket, or if not we shall both claim the 'Flitch'
+next September, if you can find one for us in the land of
+Cockaigne, drying in expectancy of the revolution in
+Tennyson's 'Commonwealth.' Well, I don't agree with
+Mr. Harness in admiring the lady of 'Locksley Hall.' I
+<i>must</i> either pity or despise a woman who could have married
+Tennyson and chose a common man. If happy in her
+choice, I despise her. That's matter of opinion, of course.
+You may call it matter of foolishness when I add that I
+personally would rather be teased a little and smoked over a
+good deal by a man whom I could look up to and be proud of,
+than have my feet kissed all day by a Mr. Smith in boots and
+a waistcoat, and thereby chiefly distinguished. Neither I nor
+another, perhaps, had quite a right to expect a combination
+of qualities, such as meet, though, in my husband, who is as
+faultless and pure in his private life as any Mr. Smith of
+them all, who would not owe five shillings, who lives like a
+woman in abstemiousness on a pennyworth of wine a day,
+never touches a cigar even.... Do you hear, as we do,
+from Mr. Forster, that his<a name="FNanchor_164_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_164_164"><sup>[164]</sup></a> new poem is his best work? As
+soon as you read it, let me have your opinion. The subject
+seems almost identical with one of Chaucer's. Is it not so?
+We have spent here the most delightful of summers,
+notwithstanding the heat, and I begin to comprehend the
+possibility of St. Lawrence's ecstasies on the gridiron.
+Very hot it certainly has been and is, yet there have been
+cool intermissions; and as we have spacious and airy rooms,
+and as Robert lets me sit all day in my white dressing gown
+without a single masculine criticism, and as we can step out
+of the window on a sort of balcony terrace which is quite
+private and swims over with moonlight in the evenings, and
+as we live upon water melons and iced water and figs and
+all manner of fruit, we bear the heat with an angelic patience
+and felicity which really are edifying. We tried to make the
+monks of Vallombrosa let us stay with them for two months,
+but their new abbot said or implied that Wilson and I stank in
+his nostrils, being women, and San Gualberto, the establishes
+of their order, had enjoined on them only the mortification
+of cleaning out pigsties without fork or shovel. So here a
+couple of women besides was (as Dickens's American said)
+'a piling it up rayther too mountainious.' So we were sent
+away at the end of five days. So provoking! Such scenery,
+such hills, such a sea of hills looking alive among the clouds.
+<i>Which</i> rolled, it was difficult to discern. Such pine woods,
+supernaturally silent, with the ground black as ink, such
+chestnut and beech forests hanging from the mountains,
+such rocks and torrents, such chasms and ravines. There
+were eagles there, too, [and] there was <i>no road</i>. Robert
+went on horseback, and Flush, Wilson, and I were drawn
+in a sledge (i.e. an old hamper, a basket wine hamper
+without a wheel) by two white bullocks up the precipitous
+mountains. Think of my travelling in that fashion in those
+wild places at four o'clock in the morning, a little frightened,
+dreadfully tired, but in an ecstasy of admiration above all!
+It was a sight to see before one died and went away to
+another world. Well, but being expelled ignominiously at
+the end of five days, we had to come back to Florence, and
+find a new apartment cooler than the old, and wait for dear
+Mr. Kenyon. And dear Mr. Kenyon does not come (not this
+autumn, but he may perhaps at the first dawn of spring), and
+on September 20 we take up our knapsacks and turn our
+faces towards Rome, I think, creeping slowly along, with a
+pause at Arezzo, and a longer pause at Perugia, and another
+perhaps at Terni. Then we plan to take an apartment we
+have heard of, over the Tarpeian Rock, and enjoy Rome as
+we have enjoyed Florence. More can scarcely be. This
+Florence is unspeakably beautiful, by grace both of nature and
+art, and the wheels of life slide on upon the grass (according
+to continental ways) with little trouble and less expense.
+Dinner, 'unordered,' comes through the streets and spreads
+itself on our table, as hot as if we had smelt cutlets hours
+before. The science of material life is understood here and
+in France. Now tell me, what right has England to be the
+dearest country in the world? But I love dearly dear
+England, and we hope to spend many a green summer in
+her yet. The winters you will excuse us, will you not?
+People who are, like us, neither rich nor strong, claim
+such excuses. I am wonderfully well, and far better and
+stronger than before what you call the Pisan 'crisis.'
+Robert declares that nobody would know me, I <i>look</i> so
+much better. And you heard from dearest Henrietta. Ah,
+both of my dearest sisters have been perfect to me. No
+words can express my feelings towards their goodness.
+Otherwise, I have good accounts from home of my father's
+excellent health and spirits, which is better even than to hear
+of his loving and missing me. I had a few kind lines yesterday
+from Miss Martineau, who invites us from Florence to
+Westmoreland. She wants to talk to me, she says, of 'her
+beloved Jordan.' She is looking forward to a winter of
+work by the lakes, and to a summer of gardening. The
+kindest of letters Robert has had from Carlyle, who makes
+us very happy by what he says of our marriage. Shakespeare's
+favorite air of the 'Light of Love,' with the full
+evidence of its being Shakespeare's favorite air, is given in
+Charles Knight's edition. Seek for it there. Now do write
+to me and at length, and tell me everything of yourself.
+Flush hated Vallombrosa, and was frightened out of his
+wits by the pine forests. Flush likes civilised life, and the
+society of little dogs with turned-up tails, such as Florence
+abounds with. Unhappily it abounds also with <i>fleas</i>, which
+afflict poor Flush to the verge sometimes of despair. Fancy
+Robert and me down on our knees combing him, with a
+basin of water on one side! He suffers to such a degree
+from fleas that I cannot bear to witness it. He tears off his
+pretty curls through the irritation. Do you know of a
+remedy? Direct to me, Poste Restante, Florence. Put <i>via</i>
+France. Let me hear, do; and everything of yourself,
+mind. Is Mrs. Partridge in better spirits? Do you read
+any new French books? Dearest friend, let me offer you
+my husband's cordial regards, with the love of your own
+affectionate</p>
+
+<p>E.B.B., BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+Florence: September 1847.<br />
+
+<p>Yes, indeed, my dear Mr. Westwood, I have seen
+'friars.' We have been on a pilgrimage to Vallombrosa,
+and while my husband rode up and down the precipitous
+mountain paths, I and my maid and Flush were dragged in
+a hamper by two white bullocks&mdash;and such scenery; such
+hilly peaks, such black ravines and gurgling waters, and
+rocks and forests above and below, and at last such a
+monastery and such friars, who wouldn't let us stay with
+them beyond five days for fear of corrupting the fraternity.
+The monks had a new abbot, a St. Sejanus of a holy man,
+and a petticoat stank in his nostrils, said he, and all the I
+beseeching which we could offer him with joined hands was
+classed with the temptations of St. Anthony. So we had
+to come away as we went, and get the better as we could of
+our disappointment, and really it was a disappointment not
+to be able to stay our two months out in the wilderness as
+we had planned it, to say nothing of the heat of Florence,
+to which at the moment it was not pleasant to return. But
+we got new lodgings in the shade and comforted ourselves
+as well as we could. 'Comforted'&mdash;there's a word for
+Florence&mdash;that ingratitude was a slip of the pen, believe
+me. Only we had set our hearts upon a two months'
+seclusion in the deep of the pine forests (which have such
+a strange dialect in the silence they speak with), and the
+mountains were divine, and it was provoking to be crossed
+in our ambitions by that little holy abbot with the red face,
+and to be driven out of Eden, even to Florence. It is said,
+observe, that Milton took his description of Paradise from
+Vallombrosa&mdash;so driven out of Eden we were, literally. To
+Florence, though! and what Florence is, the tongue of man
+or poet may easily fail to describe. The most beautiful of
+cities, with the golden Arno shot through the breast of her
+like an arrow, and 'non dolet' all the same. For what
+helps to charm here is the innocent gaiety of the people,
+who, for ever at feast day and holiday celebrations, come
+and go along the streets, the women in elegant dresses and
+with glittering fans, shining away every thought of Northern
+cares and taxes, such as make people grave in England.
+No little orphan on a house step but seems to inherit,
+naturally his slice of water-melon and bunch of purple
+grapes, and the rich fraternise with the poor as we are
+unaccustomed to see them, listening to the same music and
+walking in the same gardens, and looking at the same
+Raphaels even! Also we were glad to be here just now,
+when there is new animation and energy given to Italy by
+this new wonderful Pope, who is a great man and doing
+greatly. I hope you give him your sympathies. Think
+how seldom the liberation of a people begins from the
+throne, <i>&agrave; fortiori</i> from a papal throne, which is so high and
+straight.<a name="FNanchor_165_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165_165"><sup>[165]</sup></a> And the spark spreads! here is even our Grand
+Duke conceding the civic guard,<a name="FNanchor_166_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166_166"><sup>[166]</sup></a> and forgetting his Austrian
+prejudices. The world learns, it is pleasant to observe....</p>
+
+<p>So well I am, dear Mr. Westwood, and so happy after
+a year's trial of the stuff of marriage, happier than ever,
+perhaps, and the revolution is so complete that one has to
+learn to stand up straight and steadily (like a landsman in a
+sailing ship) before one can do any work with one's hand
+and brain.</p>
+
+<p>We have had a delightful letter from Carlyle, who loves
+my husband, I am proud to say.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+[Florence:] October 1, 1847 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>Ever dearest Miss Mitford,&mdash;I am delighted to have your
+letter, and lose little time in replying to it. The lost letter
+meanwhile does not appear. The moon has it, to make
+more shine on these summer nights; if still one may say
+'summer' now that September is deep and that we are cool
+as people hoped to be when at hottest.... Do tell me your
+full thought of the commonwealth of women.<a name="FNanchor_167_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167_167"><sup>[167]</sup></a> I begin by
+agreeing with you as to his implied under-estimate of women;
+his women are too voluptuous; however, of the most
+refined voluptuousness. His gardener's daughter, for
+instance, is just a rose: and 'a Rose,' one might beg
+all poets to observe, is as precisely <i>sensual</i> as fricasseed
+chicken, or even boiled beef and carrots. Did you read
+Mrs. Butler's 'Year of Consolation,' and how did you think
+of it in the main? As to Mr. Home's illustrations of national
+music, I don't know; I feel a little jealous of his doing
+well what many inferior men have done well&mdash;men who
+couldn't write 'Orion' and the 'Death of Marlowe.' Now,
+dearest dear Miss Mitford, you shall call him 'tiresome' if
+you like, because I never heard him talk, and he may be
+tiresome for aught I know, of course; but you <i>sha'n't</i> say
+that he has not done some fine things in poetry. Now,
+you <i>know</i> what the first book of 'Orion' is, and 'Marlowe,'
+and 'Cosmo;' and you <i>sha'n't</i> say that you don't know it,
+and that when you forgot it for a moment, I did not remind
+you.... It was our plan to leave Florence on the 21st.
+We stay, however, one month longer, half through temptation,
+half through reason. Which is strongest, who knows?
+We quite love Florence, and have delightful rooms; and
+then, though I am quite well now as to my general health,
+it is thought better for me to travel a month hence. So I
+suppose we shall stay. In the meanwhile our Florentines
+kept the anniversary of our wedding day (and the establishment
+of the civic guard) most gloriously a day or two or
+three ago, forty thousand persons flocking out of the
+neighbourhood to help the expression of public sympathy
+and overflowing the city. The procession passed under our
+eyes into the Piazza Pitti, where the Grand Duke and all his
+family stood at the palace window melting into tears, to
+receive the thanks of his people. The joy and exultation on
+all sides were most affecting to look upon. Grave men
+kissed one another, and grateful young women lifted up their
+children to the level of their own smiles, and the children
+themselves mixed their shrill little <i>vivas</i> with the shouts of
+the people. At once, a more frenetic gladness and a more
+innocent manifestation of gladness were never witnessed.
+During three hours and a half the procession wound on
+past our windows, and every inch of every house seemed
+alive with gazers all that time, the white handkerchiefs
+fluttering like doves, and clouds of flowers and laurel
+leaves floating down on the heads of those who passed.
+Banners, too, with inscriptions to suit the popular
+feeling&mdash;'Liberty'&mdash;the 'Union of Italy'&mdash;the 'Memory of
+the Martyrs'&mdash;'Viva Pio Nono'&mdash;'Viva Leopoldo Secondo'&mdash;were
+quite stirred with the breath of the shouters. I am glad to
+have seen that sight, and to be in Italy at this moment, when
+such sights are to be seen.<a name="FNanchor_168_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168_168"><sup>[168]</sup></a> My wrist aches a little even
+now with the waving I gave to my handkerchief, I assure
+you, for Robert and I and Flush sate the whole sight out at
+the window, and would not be reserved with the tribute of
+our sympathy. Flush had his two front paws over the
+window sill, with his ears hanging down, but he confessed
+at last that he thought they were rather long about it,
+particularly as it had nothing to do with dinner and chicken
+bones and subjects of consequence. He is less tormented
+and looks better; in excellent spirits and appetite always&mdash;and
+<i>thinner</i>, like your Flush&mdash;and very fond of Robert, as
+indeed he ought to be. On the famous evening of that
+famous day I have been speaking of, we lost him&mdash;he ran
+away and stayed away all night&mdash;which was too bad,
+considering that it was our anniversary besides, and that he
+had no right to spoil it. But I imagine he was bewildered
+with the crowd and the illumination, only as he <i>did</i> look so
+very guilty and conscious of evil on his return, there's room
+for suspecting him of having been very much amused,
+'motu proprio,' as our Grand Duke says in the edict. He
+was found at nine o'clock in the morning at the door of our
+apartment, waiting to be let in&mdash;mind, I don't mean the
+Grand Duke. Very few acquaintances have we made at
+Florence, and very quietly lived out our days. Mr. Powers
+the sculptor is our chief friend and favorite, a most
+charming, simple, straight-forward, genial American, as
+simple as the man of genius he has proved himself needs
+be. He sometimes comes to talk and take coffee with us,
+and we like him much. His wife is an amiable woman,
+and they have heaps of children from thirteen downwards,
+all, except the eldest boy, Florentines, and the sculptor has
+eyes like a wild Indian's, so black and full of light. You
+would scarcely wonder if they clave the marble without the
+help of his hands. We have seen besides the Hoppners,
+Lord Byron's friends at Venice, you will remember. And
+Miss Boyle, the niece of the Earl of Cork, and authoress
+and poetess on her own account, having been introduced
+once to Robert in London at Lady Morgan's, has hunted
+us out and paid us a visit. A very vivacious little person,
+with sparkling talk enough. Lord Holland has lent her
+mother and herself the famous Careggi Villa, where Lorenzo
+the Magnificent died, and they have been living there
+among the vines these four months. These and a few
+American visitors are all we have seen at Florence. We
+live a far more solitary life than you do, in your village and
+with the 'prestige' of the country wrapping you round.
+Pray give your sympathies to our Pope, and call him a great
+man. For liberty to spring from a throne is wonderful, but
+from a papal throne is miraculous. That's my doxy. I
+suppose dear Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Chorley are still abroad.
+French books I get at, but at scarcely a new one, which is
+very provoking. At Rome it may be better. I have not
+read 'Martin' even, since the first volume in England, nor
+G. Sand's 'Lucretia.'</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you. Think sometimes of your ever
+affectionate
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>The 'month' lengthened itself out, and December
+found the Brownings still in Florence, and definitely
+established there for the winter. During this time,
+although there is no allusion to it in the letters, Mrs.
+Browning must have been engaged in writing the first part
+of 'Casa Guidi Windows' with its hopeful aspirations for
+Italian liberty. It was, indeed, a time when hope seemed
+justifiable. Pius IX. had ascended the papal throne&mdash;then
+a temporal as well as a spiritual sovereignty&mdash;in June 1846,
+with the reputation of being anxious to introduce liberal
+reforms, and even to promote the formation of a united
+Italy. The English Government was diplomatically advocating
+reform, in spite of the opposition of Austria; and its
+representative, Lord Minto, who was sent on a special
+mission to Italy to bring this influence to bear on the rulers
+of the various Italian States, was received with enthusiastic
+joy by the zealots for Italian liberty. The Grand Duke of
+Tuscany, as was noticed above, had taken the first step in
+the direction of popular government by the institution of a
+National Guard; and Charles Albert of Piedmont was
+always supposed to have the cause of Italy at heart in spite
+of the vacillations of his policy. The catastrophe of 1848
+was still in the distance; and for the moment a friend of
+freedom and of Italy might be permitted to hope much.</p>
+
+<p>Yet a difference will be noticed between the tone of Mrs.
+Browning's letters at this time and that which marks her
+language in 1859. In 1847 she was still comparatively new
+to the country. She is interested in the experiment which
+she sees enacted before her; she feels, as any poet must
+feel, the attraction of the idea of a free and united Italy.
+But her heart is not thrown into the struggle as it was at a
+later time. She can write, and does, for the most part,
+write, of other matters. The disappointment of Milan and
+Novara could not break her heart, as the disappointment of
+Villafranca went near to doing. They are not, indeed, so
+much as mentioned in detail in the letters that follow. It
+is in 'Casa Guidi Windows'&mdash;the first part written in 1847-8,
+the second in 1851&mdash;that her reflections upon Italian
+politics, alike in their hopes and in their failures, must be
+sought.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: December 8, 1847.<br />
+
+<p>Have you thought me long, my dearest Miss Mitford, in
+writing? When your letter came we were distracted by
+various uncertainties, torn by wild horses of sundry speculations,
+and then, when one begins by delay in answering a
+letter, you are aware how a silence grows and grows. Also
+I heard <i>of</i> you through my sisters and Mrs. Duprey[?], and
+<i>that</i> made me lazier still. Now don't treat me according to
+the Jewish law, an eye for an eye; no! but a heart for a
+heart, if you please; and you never can have reason to
+reproach mine for not loving you. Think what we have
+done since I wrote last to you. Taken two houses, that is,
+two apartments, each for six months, presigning the contract.
+You will set it down as excellent poet's work in the
+way of domestic economy; but the fault was altogether mine
+as usual, and my husband, to please me, took rooms which
+I could not be pleased by three days, through the absence
+of sunshine and warmth. The consequence was that we had
+to pay heaps of guineas away for leave to go away ourselves,
+any alternative being preferable to a return of illness, and I
+am sure I should have been ill if we had persisted in staying
+there. You can scarcely fancy the wonderful difference
+which the sun makes in Italy. Oh, he isn't a mere 'round
+O' in the air in this Italy, I assure you! He makes us feel
+that he rules the day to all intents and purposes. So away
+we came into the blaze of him here in the Piazza Pitti,
+precisely opposite the Grand Duke's palace, I with my
+remorse, and poor Robert without a single reproach. Any
+other man, a little lower than the angels, would have
+stamped and sworn a little for the mere relief of the thing,
+but as to <i>his</i> being angry with <i>me</i> for any cause, except not
+eating enough dinner, the said sun would turn the wrong
+way first. So here we are on the Pitti till April, in small
+rooms yellow with sunshine from morning to evening; and
+most days I am able to get out into the piazza, and walk up
+and down for some twenty minutes without feeling a shadow
+of breath from the actual winter. Also it is pleasant to
+be close to the Raffaels, to say nothing of the immense
+advantage of the festa days, when, day after day, the civic
+guard comes to show the whole population of Florence,
+their Grand Duke inclusive, the new helmets and epaulettes
+and the glory thereof. They have swords, too, I believe,
+somewhere. The crowds come and come, like children to
+see rows of dolls, only the children would tire sooner than
+the Tuscans. Robert said musingly the other morning as
+we stood at the window, 'Surely, after all this, they would
+<i>use</i> those muskets.' It's a problem, a 'grand peut-&ecirc;tre.'
+I was rather amused by hearing lately that our civic heroes
+had the gallantry to propose to the ancient military that
+these last should do the night work, i.e. when nobody was
+looking on and there was no credit, as they found it dull and
+fatiguing. Ah, one laughs, you see; one can't help it now
+and then. But at the real and rising feeling of the people
+by night and day one doesn't laugh indeed. I hear and see
+with the deepest sympathy of soul, on the contrary. I love
+the Italians, too, and none the less that something of the
+triviality and innocent vanity of children abounds in them.
+A delightful and most welcome letter was the last you sent
+me, my dearest friend. Your bridal visit must have charmed
+you, and I am glad you had the gladness of witnessing some
+of the happiness of your friend, Mrs. Acton Tyndal, <i>you</i> who
+have such quick sympathies, and to whom the happiness
+of a friend is a gain counted in your own. The swan's
+shadow is something in a clear water. For poor Mrs.&mdash;&mdash;,
+if she is really, as you say Mrs. Tyndal thinks, pining
+in an access of literary despondency, why <i>that</i> only
+proves to me that she is not happy otherwise, that her life
+and soul are not sufficiently filled for her woman's need. I
+cannot believe of any woman that she can think of <i>fame
+first</i>. A woman of genius may be absorbed, indeed, in the
+exercise of an active power, engrossed in the charges of the
+course and the combat; but this is altogether different to
+a vain and bitter longing for prizes, and what prizes, oh,
+gracious heavens! The empty cup of cold metal! <i>so</i> cold,
+<i>so</i> empty to a woman with a heart. So, if your friend's
+belief is true, still more deeply do I pity that other friend,
+who is supposed to be unhappy from such a cause. A few
+days ago I saw a bride of my own family, Mrs. Reynolds, Arlette
+Butler, who married Captain Reynolds some five months
+since.... Many were her exclamations at seeing me. She
+declared that such a change was never seen, I was so transfigured
+with my betterness: 'Oh, Ba, it is quite wonderful
+indeed!' We had been calculated on, during her three
+months in Rome, as a 'piece of resistance,' and it was a
+disappointment to find us here in a corner with the salt.
+Just as I was praised was poor Flush criticised. Flush has
+not recovered from the effects yet of the summer plague of
+fleas, and his curls, though growing, are not grown. I
+never saw him in such spirits nor so ugly; and though
+Robert and I flatter ourselves upon 'the sensible improvement,'
+Arlette could only see him with reference to the
+past, when in his Wimpole Street days he was sleek and
+over fat, and she cried aloud at the loss of his beauty.
+Then we have had [another] visitor, Mr. Hillard, an American
+critic, who reviewed me in [the old] world, and so came to
+<i>view</i> me in the new, a very intelligent man, of a good, noble
+spirit. And Miss Boyle, ever and anon, comes at night,
+at nine o'clock, to catch us at our hot chestnuts and mulled
+wine, and warm her feet at our fire; and a kinder, more
+cordial little creature, full of talent and accomplishment,
+never had the world's polish on it. Very amusing, too,
+she is, and original, and a good deal of laughing she and
+Robert make between them. Did I tell you of her before,
+and how she is the niece of Lord Cork, and poetess by
+grace of certain Irish Muses? Neither of us know her
+writings in any way, but we like her, and for the best
+reasons. And this is nearly all, I think, we see of the 'face
+divine,' masculine and feminine, and I can't make Robert
+go out a single evening, not even to a concert, nor to hear
+a play of Alfieri's, yet we fill up our days with books and
+music (and a little writing has its share), and wonder at the
+clock for galloping. It's twenty-four o'clock with us almost
+as soon as we begin to count. Do tell me of Tennyson's
+book, and of Miss Martineau's. I was grieved to hear a
+distant murmur of a rumour of an apprehension of a return
+of her complaint: somebody said that she could not bear
+the <i>pressure of dress</i>, and that the exhaustion resulting from
+the fits of absorption in work and enthusiasm on the new
+subject of Egypt was painfully great, and that her friends
+feared for her. I should think that the bodily excitement
+and fatigue of her late travels must have been highly
+hazardous, and that indeed, throughout her convalescence,
+she should have more spared herself in climbing hills and
+walking and riding distances. A strain obviously might
+undo everything. Still, I do hope that the bitter cup may
+not be filled for her again. What a wonderful discovery
+this substitute for ether inhalations<a name="FNanchor_169_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169_169"><sup>[169]</sup></a> seems to be. Do you
+hear anything of its operation in your neighbourhood? We
+have had a letter from Mr. Horne, who appears happy, and
+speaks of his success in lecturing on Ireland, and of a new
+novel which he is about to publish in a separate form after
+having printed it in a magazine. We have not set up the
+types even of our <i>plans</i> about a book, very distinctly, but
+we shall do something some day, and you shall hear of it
+the evening before. Being too happy doesn't agree with
+literary activity quite as well as I should have thought;
+and then, dear Mr. Kenyon can't persuade us that we are
+not rich enough, so as to bring into force a lower order of
+motives. He talks of Rome still. Now write, dear,
+dearest Miss Mitford, and tell me of yourself and your
+health, and do, <i>do</i> love me as you used to do. As to
+French books, one may swear, but you can't get a new
+publication, except by accident, at this excellent celebrated
+library of Vieusseux, and I am reduced to read some of
+my favorites over again, I and Robert together. You ought
+to hear how we go to single combat, ever and anon, with
+shield and lance. The greatest quarrel we have had since
+our marriage, by the way (always excepting my crying
+conjugal wrong of not eating enough!), was brought up
+by Masson's pamphlet on the Iron Mask and Fouquet. I
+wouldn't be persuaded that Fouquet was 'in it,' and so
+'the anger of my lord waxed hot.' To this day he says
+sometimes: 'Don't be cross, Ba! <i>Fouquet wasn't the Iron
+Mask after all</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>God bless you, dearest Miss Mitford.<br />
+Your ever affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>We are here till April.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Jameson</i><br />
+Florence: December 1847.<br />
+
+<p>Indeed, my dear friend, you have a right to complain of
+<i>me</i>, whether or not <i>we</i> had any in thinking ourselves deeply
+injured creatures by your last silence. Yet when in your
+letter which came at last, you said, 'Write directly,' I <i>meant</i>
+to write directly; I did not take out my vengeance in a
+foregone malice, be very sure. Just at the time we were in
+a hard knot of uncertainties about Rome and Venice and
+Florence, and a cold house and a warm house; for instance
+we managed (that is <i>I</i> did, for altogether it was my fault) to
+take two apartments in the course of ten days, each for a
+term of six months, getting out of one of them by leaving
+the skirts of our garments, <i>rent</i>, literally, in the hand of the
+proprietor. You have heard most of this, I dare say, from
+Mr. Kenyon or my sisters. Now, too, you are aware of our
+being in Piazza Pitti, in a charmed circle of sun blaze. Our
+rooms are small, but of course as cheerful as being under the
+very eyelids of the sun must make everything; and we have
+a cook in the house who takes the office of <i>traiteur</i> on him
+and gives us English mutton chops at Florentine prices,
+both of us quite well and in spirits, and (though you never
+will believe this) happier than ever. For my own part, you
+know I need not say a word if it were not true, and I must
+say to you, who saw the beginning with us, that this end of
+fifteen months is just fifteen times better and brighter; the
+mystical 'moon' growing larger and larger till scarcely room is
+left for any stars at all: the only differences which have
+touched me being the more and more happiness. It would
+have been worse than unreasonable if in marrying I had expected
+one quarter of such happiness, and indeed I did not,
+to do myself justice, and every now and then I look round
+in astonishment and thankfulness together, yet with a sort of
+horror, seeing that this is not heaven after all. We live just
+as we did when you knew us, just as shut-up a life. Robert
+never goes anywhere except to take a walk with Flush, which
+isn't my fault, as you may imagine: he has not been out one
+evening of the fifteen months; but what with music and books
+and writing and talking, we scarcely know how the days go, it's
+such a gallop on the grass. We are going through some
+of old Sacchetti's novelets now: characteristic work for
+Florence, if somewhat dull elsewhere. Boccaccios can't be
+expected to spring up with the vines in rows, even in this
+climate. We got a newly printed addition to Savonarola's
+poems the other day, very flat and cold, they did not catch
+fire when he was burnt. The most poetic thing in the book
+is his face on the first page, with that eager, devouring soul
+in the eyes of it. You may suppose that I am able sometimes
+to go over to the gallery and adore the Raphaels, and
+Robert will tell you of the divine Apollino which you missed
+seeing in Poggio Imperiale, and which I shall be set face to
+face before, some day soon, I hope....</p>
+
+<p>Father Prout was in Florence for some two hours in
+passing to Rome, and of course, according to contract of
+spirits of the air, Robert met him, and heard a great deal
+of you and Geddie (saw Geddie's picture, by the way, and
+thought it very like), was told much to the advantage of Mr.
+Macpherson,<a name="FNanchor_170_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_170_170"><sup>[170]</sup></a> and at the end of all, kissed in the open street
+as the speaker was about to disappear in the diligence. When
+you write, tell me of the <i>book</i>. Surely it will be out anon,
+and then you will be free, shall you not? Have you seen
+Tennyson's new poem, and what of it? Miss Martineau is
+to discourse about Egypt, I suppose; but in the meanwhile
+do you hear that she forswears mesmerism, as Mr. Spenser
+Hall does, according to the report Robert brings me home
+from the newspaper reading. Now I shall leave him room
+to stand on and speak a word to you. Give my love to
+Gerardine, and don't forget to mention her letter. I hope
+you are happy about your friends, and that, in particular,
+Lady Byron's health is strengthening and to strengthen.
+Always my dear friend's</p>
+
+<p>Most affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>Dear Aunt Nina,&mdash;A corner is just the place for eating
+Christmas pies in, but for venting Christmas wishes, hardly!
+What has Ba told you and wished you in the way of love?
+I wish you the same and love you the same, but Geddie,
+being part of you, gets her due part. We are as happy as
+two owls in a hole, two toads under a tree stump; or any
+other queer two poking creatures that we let live, after the
+fashion of their black hearts, only Ba is fat and rosy; yes,
+indeed! Florence is empty and pleasant. Goodbye, therefore,
+till next year&mdash;shall it not be then we meet? God bless
+you. R.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: February 22, [1848].<br />
+
+<p>Your letter, my dearest friend, which was written, a part
+at least, before Christmas, came lingering in long after
+the new year had seen out its matins. Oh, I had wondered
+so, and wished so over the long silence. My fault, perhaps
+in a measure, for I know how silent <i>I</i> was before. Yes,
+and you tell me of your having been unwell (bad news), and
+of your dear Flush's death, which made me sorrowful for
+you, as I might reasonably be. And now tell me more.
+Have you a successor to him? Once you told me that
+one of the race was in training, but as you say nothing now
+I am all in a doubt. Let me hear everything. If I had
+been you, I think I should have preferred some quite other
+kind of dog, as the unlikeness of a likeness would be apt to
+bring a pain to me; but people can't reason about feelings,
+and feelings are like the colour of eyes, not the same in
+different faces, however general may be the proximity of
+noses.... The great subject with <i>everybody</i> just now is
+the new hope of Italy, and the liberal constitution, given
+nobly by our good, excellent Grand Duke, whose praise is
+in all the houses, streets, and piazzas. The other evening,
+the evening after the gift, he went privately to the opera,
+was recognised, and in a burst of triumph and a glory of
+waxen torches was brought back to the Pitti by the people.
+I was undressing to go to bed, had my hair down over my
+shoulders under Wilson's ministry, when Robert called me
+to look out of the window and see. Through the dark
+night a great flock of stars seemed sweeping up the piazza,
+but not in silence, nor with very heavenly noises. The
+'<i>Evvivas</i>' were deafening. So glad I was. <i>I, too</i>, stood at
+the window and clapped my hands. If ever Grand Duke
+deserved benediction this Duke does. We hear that he
+was quite moved, overpowered, and wept like a child.
+Nevertheless the most of Italy is under the cloud, and God
+knows how all may end as the thunder ripens. Now I
+mustn't, I suppose, write politics. Our plans about England
+are afloat. Impossible to know what we shall do, but if not
+this summer, the summer after <i>must</i> help us to the sight
+of some beloved faces. It will be a midsummer dream, and
+we shall return to winter in Italy. My Flush is as well as
+ever, and perhaps gayer than ever I knew him. He runs
+out in the piazza whenever he pleases, and plays with the
+dogs when they are pretty enough, and wags his tail at the
+sentinels and civic guard, and takes the Grand Duke as a
+sort of neighbour of his, whom it is proper enough to
+patronise, but who has considerably less inherent merit and
+dignity than the spotted spaniel in the alley to the left. We
+have been reading over again 'Andr&eacute;' and 'Leone Leoni,'<a name="FNanchor_171_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_171_171"><sup>[171]</sup></a>
+and Robert is in an enthusiasm about the first. Happy
+person, you are, to get so at new books. Blessed is the
+man who reads Balzac, or even Dumas. I have got to
+admire Dumas doubly since that fight and scramble for his
+brains in Paris. Now do think of me and love me, and let
+me be as ever your affectionate</p>
+
+<p>BA.</p>
+
+<p>Robert's regards always. Say particularly how you are,
+and may God bless you, dearest Miss Mitford, and make
+you happy.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: April 15, [1848].<br />
+
+<p>... My Flush has recovered his beauty, and is in
+more vivacious spirits than I remember to have seen him.
+Still, the days come when he will have no pleasure and
+plenty of fleas, poor dog, for Savonarola's martyrdom here
+in Florence is scarcely worse than Flush's in the summer.
+Which doesn't prevent his enjoying the spring, though, and
+just now, when, by medical command, I drive out two
+hours every day, his delight is to occupy the seat in the
+carriage opposite to Robert and me, and look disdainfully
+on all the little dogs who walk afoot. We drive day by day
+through the lovely Cascine (where the trees have finished
+and spread their webs of full greenery, undimmed by the
+sun yet), first sweeping through the city, past such a window
+where Bianca Capello looked out to see the Duke go by,<a name="FNanchor_172_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_172_172"><sup>[172]</sup></a>
+and past such a door where Lapo stood, and past the famous
+stone where Dante drew his chair out to sit.<a name="FNanchor_173_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173_173"><sup>[173]</sup></a> Strange,
+to have all that old-world life about us, and the blue sky so
+bright besides, and ever so much talk on our lips about the
+new French revolution, and the King of Prussia's cunning,
+and the fuss in Germany and elsewhere. Not to speak of
+our own particular troubles and triumphs in Lombardy close
+by. The English are flying from Florence, by the way, in
+a helter skelter, just as they always do fly, except (to do
+them justice) on a field of battle. The family Englishman
+is a dreadful coward, be it admitted frankly. See how they
+run from France, even to my dear excellent Uncle Hedley,
+who has too many little girls in his household to stay
+longer at Tours. Oh, I don't <i>blame</i> him exactly. I only
+wish that he had waited a little longer, the time necessary
+for being quite reassured. He has great stakes in the
+country&mdash;a house at Tours and in Paris, and twenty
+thousand pounds in the Rouen railway. But Florence will
+fall upon her feet we may all be certain, let the worst
+happen that can. Meanwhile, republicans as I and my,
+husband are by profession, we very anxiously, anxiously even
+to pain, look on the work being attempted and done just
+now by the theorists in Paris; far from half approving of it
+we are, and far from being absolutely confident of the durability
+of the other half. Tell me what you think, and if you
+are not anxious too. As to communism, surely the
+practical part of <i>that</i>, the only not dangerous part, is
+attainable simply by the consent of individuals who may
+try the experiment of associating their families in order to
+the cheaper employment of the means of life, and successfully
+in many cases. But make a government scheme of
+<i>even so much</i>, and you seem to trench on the individual
+liberty. All such patriarchal planning in a government
+issues naturally into absolutism, and is adapted to states of
+society more or less barbaric. Liberty and civilisation
+when married together lawfully rather evolve individuality
+than tend to generalisation. Is this not true? I fear, I
+fear that mad theories promising the impossible may, in
+turn, make the people mad. I Louis Blanc knows not what
+he says. Have I not mentioned to you a very gifted
+woman, a sculptress, Mademoiselle de Fauveau, who lives
+in Florence with her mother practising her profession, an
+exile from France, in consequence of their royalist opinions
+and participation in the Vend&eacute;e struggle, some sixteen or
+fifteen years? On that occasion she was mistaken for and
+allowed herself to be arrested as Madame de la Roche
+Jacquelin; therefore she has justified, by suffering in the
+cause, her passionate attachment to it. A most interesting
+person she is; she called upon us a short time ago and interested
+us much. And Mrs. Jameson would tell you that her
+celebrity in her art is not comparative 'for a woman,' but
+that, since Benvenuto Cellini, more beautiful works of the
+kind have not been accomplished. An exquisite fountain
+she has lately done for the Emperor of Russia. She has
+workmen under her, and is as 'professional' in every
+respect as if neither woman nor noble. At the first throb
+of this revolution of course she dreamt the impossible
+about that dear 'Henri Cinq,' who is as much out of the
+question as Henri Quatre himself; and now it ends with the
+'French Legation' coming to settle in the house precisely
+opposite to hers, with a hideous sign-painting appended O
+the Gallic cock on one leg and at full crow inscribed,
+'Libert&eacute;, Egalit&eacute;, Fraternit&eacute;.' This, and the death of her
+favorite dog, whom, after seventeen years' affection, she
+was forced to have destroyed on account of a combination
+of diseases, has quite saddened the sculptress. When she
+came to see us I observed that after so long a residence at
+Florence she must regard it as a second country. 'Ah
+non!' (the answer was) 'il n'y a pas de seconde patrie.'
+What you tell me of 'Jane Eyre' makes me long to see the
+book. I may long, I fancy. It is dismal to have to
+disappoint my dearest sisters, who hoped for me in England
+this summer, but our English visit <i>must</i> be for next
+summer instead; there seems too much against it just now.
+The drawback of Italy is the distance from England. If it
+were but as near as Paris, for instance, why in that case we
+should settle here at once, I do think, the conveniences and
+luxuries of life are of such incredible cheapness, the climate
+so divine, and the way of things altogether so serene and
+suited to our tastes and instincts. But to give up England
+and the <i>English</i>, the dear, dearest treasure of English love,
+is impossible, so we just linger and linger. The Boyles go
+to England from the press of panic, Lady Boyle being old
+and infirm. Ah, but your talking friend would interest
+you, and you might accept the talk in infinitesimal doses,
+you know. Lamartine has surely acted down the fallacy
+of the impractical tendencies of imaginative men. I am
+full of France just now. Are you all prepared for an
+outbreak in Ireland? I hope so. My husband has the
+second edition of his collected poems<a name="FNanchor_174_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_174_174"><sup>[174]</sup></a> in the press by this
+time, by grace of Chapman and Hall, who accept all risks.
+You speak of Tennyson's vexation about the reception of
+the 'Princess.' Why did Mr. Harness and others, who
+'never could understand' his former divine works, praise
+this in manuscript till the poet's hope grew to the height of
+his ambition? Strangely unfortunate. We have not read
+it yet. I hear that Tennyson had the other day everything
+packed for Italy, then turned his face toward Ireland, and
+went there. Oh, for a talk with you. But this is a sort of
+talk, isn't it? Accept my husband's regards. As to my
+love, I throw it to you over the [sea] with both hands.
+God bless you.</p>
+
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To John Kenyan</i><br />
+[Florence:] May I, [1848].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mr. Kenyon,&mdash;Surely it is quite wrong that
+we three, Robert, you, and I, should be satisfied with
+writing little dry notes, as short as so many proclamations,
+and those of the order of your anti-Chartist magistracy,
+'Whereas certain evil disposed persons &amp;c. &amp;c.,' instead of
+our anti-Austrian Grand duchy's 'O figli amati' (how
+characteristic of the north and the south, to be sure, is this
+contrast! Yet, after all, they might have managed it
+rather better in England!)&mdash;little dry notes brief and
+business-like as an anti-Chartist proclamation! And,
+indeed, two of us are by no means satisfied, whatever the
+third may be. The other day we were looking over some
+of the dear delightful letters you used to write to us. Real
+letters those were, and not little dry notes at all. Robert
+said, 'When I write to dear Mr. Kenyon I really do feel
+overcome by the sense of what I owe to him, and so, as it
+is beyond words to say, why generally I say as little as
+possible of anything, keeping myself to matters of business.'
+An alternative very objectionable, I told him; for to have
+'a dumb devil' from ever such grateful and sentimental
+reasons, when the Alps stand betwixt friend, is damnatory
+in the extreme. Then, as <i>you</i> are not 'too grateful' to <i>us</i>,
+why don't <i>you</i> write? Pray do, my dear friend. Let us
+all write as we used to do. And to make sure of it, I
+begin.</p>
+
+<p>Since I ended last the world has turned over on its
+other side, in order, one must hope, to some happy change
+in the dream. Our friend, Miss Bayley, in that very kind
+letter which has just reached me and shall be answered
+directly (will you tell her with my thankful love?), asks
+if Robert and I are communists, and then half draws back
+her question into a discreet reflection that <i>I</i>, at least, was
+never much celebrated for acumen on political economy.
+Most true indeed! And therefore, and on that very ground,
+is it not the more creditable to me that I don't set up for a
+communist immediately? In proportion to the ignorance
+might be the stringency of the embrace of 'la v&eacute;rit&eacute; sociale:'
+so I claim a little credit that it isn't. For really we are not
+communists, farther than to admit the wisdom of voluntary
+association in matters of material life among the poorer
+classes. And to legislate even on such points seems as
+objectionable as possible; all intermeddlings of government
+with domesticities, from Lacedaemon to Peru, were and
+must be objectionable; and of the growth of absolutism, let
+us, theorise as we choose. I would have the government
+educate the people absolutely, and <i>then</i> give room for the
+individual to develop himself into life freely. Nothing
+can be more hateful to me than this communist idea of
+quenching individualities in the mass. As if the hope
+of the world did not always consist in the eliciting of the
+individual man from the background of the masses, in the
+evolvement of individual genius, virtue, magnanimity. Do
+you know how I love France and the French? Robert
+laughs at me for the mania of it, or used to laugh long
+before this revolution. When I was a prisoner, my other
+mania for imaginative literature used to be ministered to
+through the prison bars by Balzac, George Sand, and the
+like immortal improprieties. They kept the colour in my
+life to some degree and did good service in their time to
+me, I can assure you, though in dear discreet England
+women oughtn't to confess to such reading, I believe, or
+you told me so yourself one day. Well, but through
+reading the books I grew to love France, in a mania too;
+and the interest, which all must feel in the late occurrences
+there, has been with me, and is, quite painful. I read the
+newspapers as I never did in my life, and hope and fear in
+paroxysms, yes, and am guilty of thinking far more of Paris
+than of Lombardy itself, and try to understand financial
+difficulties and social theories with the best will in the
+world; much as Flush tries to understand me when I tell
+him that barking and jumping may be unseasonable things.
+Both of us open our eyes a good deal, but the comprehension
+is questionable after all. What, however, I do seem
+least of all to comprehend, is your hymn of triumph in
+England, just because you have a lower ideal of liberty
+than the French people have. See if in Louis Philippe's
+time France was not in many respects more advanced
+than England is now, property better divided, hereditary
+privilege abolished! Are we to blow with the trumpet
+because we respect the ruts while everywhere else they
+are mending the roads? I do not comprehend. As to
+the Chartists, it is only a pity in my mind that you have
+not more of them. That's their fault. Mine, you will say,
+is being pert about politics when you would rather have
+anything else in a letter from Italy. You have heard of
+my illness, and will have been sorry for me, I am certain;
+but with blessings edging me round, I need not catch at a
+thistle in the hedge to make a 'sorrowful complaignte' of.
+Our plans have floated round and round, in and out of all
+the bays and creeks of the Happy Islands....</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile here we are&mdash;and when do you mean to
+come to see us, pray? Mind, I hold by the skirts of the
+vision for next winter. Why, surely <i>you</i> won't talk of
+'disturbances' and 'revolutions,' and the like disloyal reasons
+which send our brave countrymen flying on all sides, as if
+every separate individual expected to be bombarded <i>per se</i>.
+Now, mind you come; dear dear Mr. Kenyon, how
+delighted past expression we should be to see you! Ah,
+do you fancy that I have no regret for our delightful gossips?
+If I have the feeling I told you of for Balzac and George
+Sand, what must I have for <i>you</i>? Now come, and let us
+see you! And still sooner, if you please, write to us&mdash;and
+write of yourself and in detail&mdash;and tell us particularly,
+first if the winter has left no sign of a cough with you, and
+next, what you mean by something which suggests to my
+fancy that you have a book in the course of printing. Is
+that true? Tell me all about it&mdash;<i>all</i>! Who can be
+interested, pray, if <i>I</i> am not? For your and Mr. Chorley's
+and Mr. Forster's kind dealings with Robert's poems I
+thank you gratefully; and as a third volume can bring up
+the rear quickly in the case of success, I make no wailing
+for my 'Luria,' however dear it may be.<a name="FNanchor_175_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175_175"><sup>[175]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>You are not to fancy that I am unwell now. On the
+contrary, I am nearly as strong as ever, and go out in the carriage
+for two hours every day, besides a little walk sometimes.
+Not a word more to-day. Write&mdash;do&mdash;and you shall
+hear from us at length. Robert sends his own love, I
+suppose. We both love you from our hearts.</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate and grateful<br />
+BA.</p>
+
+<p>(who can't read over, and writes in such a hurry!)</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p class="figure">
+    <a href="images/379.jpg">
+    <img width="50%" src="images/379.jpg" alt="Casa Guidi From a Photograph.jpg" /></a><br />
+
+<i>Casa Guidi From a Photograph</i></p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>It was about this time, as appears from the following
+letter, that the Brownings finally anchored themselves in
+Florence by taking an unfurnished suite of rooms in the
+Palazzo Guidi, and making there a home for themselves,
+Here, in the Via Maggio, almost opposite the Pitti Palace,
+and within easy distance of the Ponte Vecchio, is the
+dwelling known to all lovers of English poetry as Casa
+Guidi, and bearing now upon its walls the name of the
+English poetess whose life and writings formed, in the
+graceful words of the Italian poet, 'a golden ring between
+Italy and England.' Whatever might be their migrations&mdash;and
+they were many, especially in later years&mdash;Casa Guidi
+was henceforth their home.<a name="FNanchor_176_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_176_176"><sup>[176]</sup></a></p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+May 28, 1848.<br />
+
+<p>... And now I must tell you what we have done since
+I wrote last, little thinking of doing so. You see our
+problem was to get to England as much in our summers as
+possible, the expense of the intermediate journeys making
+it difficult of solution. On examination of the whole case,
+it appeared manifest that we were throwing money into the
+like to hear you talk of poor France; how I hope that you
+are able to hope for her. Oh, this absurdity of communism
+and mythological f&ecirc;te-ism! where can it end? They had
+better have kept Louis Philippe after all, if they are no
+more practical. Your Madame must be insufferable indeed,
+seeing that her knowledge of these subjects and men did
+not make her sufferable to you. My curiosity never is
+exhausted. What I hold is that the French have a higher
+ideal than we, and that all this clambering, leaping, struggling
+of indefinite awkwardness simply proves it. But <i>success in
+the republic</i> is different still. I fear for them. My uncle
+and his family are safe at Tunbridge Wells, my aunt longing
+to be able to get back again. For those who are still nearer
+to me, I have no heart to speak of <i>them</i>, loving them as I
+do and must to the end, whatever that end may be; but
+my dearest sisters write often to me&mdash;never let me miss
+their affection. I am quite well again, and strong, and
+Robert and I go out after tea in a wandering walk to sit in
+the Loggia and look at the Perseus, or, better still, at
+the divine sunsets on the Arno, turning it to pure gold
+under the bridges. After more than twenty months of
+marriage, we are happier than ever&mdash;I may say <i>we</i>. Italy
+will regenerate herself in all senses, I hope and believe. In
+Florence we are very quiet, and the English fly in proportion.
+N.B.&mdash;<i>Always</i> first fly the majors and gallant
+captains, unless there's a general. How I should like to
+see dear Mr. Horne's poem! <i>He's</i> bold, at least&mdash;yes, and
+has a great heart to be bold with. A cloud has fallen on
+me some few weeks ago, in the illness and death of my
+dear friend Mr. Boyd,<a name="FNanchor_177_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177_177"><sup>[177]</sup></a> but he did not suffer, and is not to
+be mourned by those without hope [<i>sic</i>]. Still, it has been a
+cloud. May God bless you, my beloved friend. Write
+soon, and of yourself, to your ever affectionate</p>
+
+<p>BA.</p>
+
+<p>My husband's regards go to you, of course.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Browning</i><br />
+[Florence: about June 1848.]<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Sarianna,&mdash;At last, you see, I give sign of
+life. The <i>love</i>, I hope you believed in without sign or
+symbol; and even for the rest, Robert promised to answer
+for me like godfather or godmother, and bear the consequence
+of my sins....</p>
+
+<p>We are a little uneasy just now as to whether you will
+be overjoyed or <i>under</i> joyed by our new scheme of taking
+an unfurnished apartment. It would spoil all, for instance,
+if your dear mother seemed disappointed&mdash;vexed&mdash;in the
+least degree. And I can understand how, to persons at a
+distance and of course unable to understand the whole
+circumstances of the case, the fact of an apartment taken
+and furnished may seem to involve some dreadful giving up
+for ever and ever of country and family&mdash;which would be
+as dreadful to us as to you! How could we give you up,
+do you think, when we love you more and more? Oh no.
+If Robert has succeeded in making clear the subject to you,
+you will all perceive, just as <i>we know</i>, that we have simply
+thus solved the problem of making our small income carry
+us to England, not only next summer, but many a summer
+after. We should like to give every summer to dear
+England, and hide away from the cold only when it comes.
+By our scheme we shall have saved money even at the end
+of the present year; while for afterward, here's a residence&mdash;that
+is, a<i>pied &agrave; terre</i>&mdash;in Italy, all but free when we wish to
+use it; and when we care to let it, producing eight or ten
+pounds a month in help of travelling expenses. It's the
+best investment for Mr. Moxon's money we could have
+looked the world over for. So the learned tell us; and
+after all, you know, we only pay in the proportion of your
+working classes in the Pancras building contrived for them
+by the philanthropy of your Southwood Smiths. I do wish
+you could see what rooms we have, what ceilings, what
+height and breadth, what a double terrace for orange trees;
+how cool, how likely to be warm, how perfect every way!
+Robert leaned once to a ground floor in the Frescobaldi Palace,
+being bewitched by a garden full of camellias, and a little
+pond of gold and silver fish; but while he saw the fish I saw
+the mosquitos in clouds, such an apocalypse of them as has not
+yet been visible to me in all Florence, and I dread mosquitos
+more than Austrians; and he, in his unspeakable goodness,
+deferred to my fear in a moment and gave up the camellias
+without one look behind. A heavy conscience I should
+have if it were not that the camellia garden was certainly less
+private than our terrace here, where we can have camellias also
+if we please. How pretty and pleasant your cottage at Windsor
+must be! We had a long <i>muse</i> over your father's sketch of
+it, and set faces at the windows. That the dear invalid is
+better for the change must have brightened it, too, to her
+companions, and the very sound of a 'forest' is something
+peculiarly delightful and untried to me. I know hills well,
+and of the sea too much; but now I want forests, or quite,
+quite mountains, such as you have not in England.</p>
+
+<p>Robert says that if 'Blackwood' likes to print a poem
+of mine and send you the proofs, you will be so very good as
+to like to correct them. To me it seems too much to ask,
+when you have work for him to do beside. Will it be too
+much, or is nothing so to your kindness? I would ask my
+<i>other</i> sisters, who would gladly, dear things, do it for me;
+but I have misgivings through their being so entirely
+unaccustomed to occupations of the sort, or any critical
+reading of poetry of any sort. Robert is quite well and in
+the best spirits, and has the headache now only very
+occasionally. I am as well as he, having quite recovered
+my strength and power of walking. So we wander to the
+bridge of Trinit&agrave; every evening after tea to see the sunset
+on the Arno. May God bless you all! Give my true love
+to your father and mother, and my loving thanks to yourself
+for that last stitch in the stool. How good you are,
+Sarianna, to your ever affectionate sister</p>
+
+<p>BA.</p>
+
+<p>Always remind your dear mother that we are no more
+<i>bound</i> here than when in furnished lodgings. It is a mere
+name.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Palazzo Guidi: June 20, [1848].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;Now I am going to answer
+your letter, which I all but lost, and got ever so many days
+beyond the right day, because you directed it to Mrs.
+<i>William</i> Browning. Pray remember <i>Robert Browning</i> for
+the future, in right descent from <i>Robert Brunnyng</i>,<a name="FNanchor_178_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_178_178"><sup>[178]</sup></a> the first
+English poet. Mrs. Jameson says, 'It's ominous of the
+actual Robert's being the <i>last</i> English poet;' a saying which
+I give you to remember us by, rejecting the omen.... We
+have grown to be Florentine citizens, as perhaps you have
+heard. Health and means both forbade our settlement in
+England; and the journey backwards and forwards being
+another sort of expense, and very necessary with our ties and
+affections, we had to think how to live here, when we were
+here, at the cheapest. The difference between taking a
+furnished apartment and an unfurnished one is something
+immense. For our furnished rooms we have had always
+to pay some four guineas a month; and unfurnished rooms
+of equal pretension we could have for twelve a year, and the
+furniture (out and out) for fifty pounds. This calculation,
+together with the consideration that we could let our apartment
+whenever we travelled and receive back the whole
+cost, could not choose, of course, but determine us. On
+coming to the point, however, we grew ambitious, and
+preferred giving five-and-twenty guineas for a noble suite of
+rooms in the Palazzo Guidi, a stone's throw from the Pitti,
+and furnishing them after our own taste rather than after
+our economy, the economy having a legitimate share of
+respect notwithstanding; and the satisfactory thing being
+that the whole expense of this furnishing&mdash;rococo chairs,
+spring sofas, carved bookcases, satin from cardinals' beds,
+and the rest&mdash;is covered by the proceeds of our books
+during the last two winters. This is satisfying, isn't it?
+We shall stand safe within the borders of our narrow
+income even this year, and next year comes the harvest!
+We shall go to England in the spring, and return <i>home</i> to
+Italy. Do you understand? Mr. Kenyon, our friend and
+counsellor, writes to applaud&mdash;such prudence was never
+known before among poets. Then we have a plan, that
+when the summer (this summer) grows too hot, we shall just
+take up our carpet-bag and Wilson and plunge into the
+mountains in search of the monasteries beyond Vallombrosa,
+from Arezzo go to St. Sepolchro in the Apennines, and
+thence to Fano on the seashore, making a round back
+perhaps (after seeing the great fair at Sinigaglia) to Ravenna
+and Bologna home. As to Rome, our plan is to give up
+Rome next winter, seeing that we <i>must</i> go to England in
+the spring. I <i>must</i> see my dearest sisters and whoever else
+dear will see me, and Robert <i>must</i> see his family beside; and
+going to Rome will take us too far from the route and cost too
+much; and then we are not inclined to give the first-fruits of
+our new apartment to strangers if we could let it ever so easily
+this year. You can't think how well the rooms look already;
+you must come and see them, you and dear Mr. Martin.
+Three immense rooms we have, and a fourth small one for
+a book room and winter room&mdash;windows opening on a little
+terrace, eight windows to the south; two good bedrooms
+behind, with a smaller terrace, and kitchen, &amp;c., all on a
+first floor and Count Guidi's favorite suite. The Guidi were
+connected by marriage with the Ugolino of Pisa, Dante's
+Ugolino, only we shun all traditions of the Tower of
+Famine, and promise to give you excellent coffee whenever
+you will come to give us the opportunity. We shall have
+vines and myrtles and orange trees on the terrace, and I
+shall have a watering-pot and garden just as you do, though
+it must be on the bricks instead of the ground. For
+temperature, the stoves are said to be very effective in the
+winter, and in the summer we are cool and airy; the
+advantage of these thick-walled palazzos is coolness in
+summer and warmth in winter. I am very well and quite
+strong again, or rather, stronger than ever, and able to walk
+as far as Cellini's Perseus in the moonlight evenings, on
+the other side of the Arno. Oh, that Arno in the sunset,
+with the moon and evening star standing by, how divine it
+is!...</p>
+
+<p>Think of me as ever your most affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: July 4, [1848].<br />
+
+<p>It does grieve me, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, to hear
+of the suffering which has fallen upon you! Oh, rheumatism
+or not, whatever the name may be, do take care, do
+consider, and turn your dear face toward the seaside; somewhere
+where you can have warm sea bathing and sea air,
+and be able to associate the word 'a drive' not with mad
+ponies, but the mildest of donkeys, on a flat sand. The
+good it would do you is incalculable, I am certain; it is
+precisely a case for change of air, with quiet....</p>
+
+<p>As for when you come to Florence, we won't have 'a
+pony carriage between us,' if you please, because we may
+have a carriage and a pair of horses and a coachman, and
+pay as little as for the pony-chair in England. For three
+hundred a year one may live much like the Grand Duchess,
+and go to the opera in the evening at fivepence-halfpenny
+inclusive. Indeed, poor people should have their patriotism
+tenderly dealt with, when, after certain experiments, they
+decide on living upon the whole on the Continent. The
+differences are past belief, beyond expectation, and when
+the sunshine is thrown in, the head turns at once, and you
+fall straight into absenteeism. Ah, for the 'long chats' and
+the 'having England at one another's fireside!' You talk
+of delightful things indeed. We are very quiet, politically
+speaking, and though we hear now and then of melancholy
+mothers who have to part with their sons for Lombardy,<a name="FNanchor_179_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_179_179"><sup>[179]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>and though there are processions for the blessing of flags
+and an occasional firing of guns for a victory, or a cry in
+the streets, 'Notizie della guerra&mdash;leggete, signori;' this is all
+we know of Radetsky in Florence; while, for civil politics,
+the meeting of the senate took place a few days since to the
+satisfaction of everybody, and the Grand Duke's speech was
+generally admired. The elections have returned moderate
+men, and many land-proprietors, and Robert, who went out
+to see the procession of members, was struck by the grave
+thoughtful faces and the dignity of expression. We are
+going some day to hear the debates, but it has pleased their
+signoria to fix upon twelve (noon) for meeting, and really I
+do not dare to go out in the sun. The hour is sufficiently
+conclusive against dangerous enthusiasm. Poor France,
+poor France! News of the dreadful massacre at Paris just
+reaches us, and the letters and newspapers not arriving
+to-day, everybody fears a continuation of the crisis. How
+is it to end? Who 'despairs of the republic?' Why, <i>I</i> do!
+I fear, I fear, that it cannot stand in France, and you seem
+to have not much more hope. My husband has a little,
+with melancholy intermediate prospects; but my own belief
+that the people have had enough of democratic institutions
+and will be impatient for a kingship anew. Whom
+will they have? How did you feel when the cry was raised,
+'Vive l'Empereur'? Only Prince Napoleon is a Napoleon
+cut out in paper after all. The Prince de Joinville is said
+to be very popular. It makes me giddy to think of the
+awful precipices which surround France&mdash;to think, too, that
+the great danger is on the question of <i>property</i>, which is
+perhaps divided there more justly than in any other country
+of Europe. Lamartine has comprehended nothing, that is
+clear, even if his amount of energy had been effectual....
+Yes, do send me the list of Balzac, <i>after</i> 'Les Mis&egrave;res de la
+Vie Conjugale,' I mean. I left him in the midst of 'La
+Femme de Soixante Ans,' who seemed on the point of
+turning the heads of all 'la jeunesse' around her; and,
+after all, she did not strike me as so charming. But Balzac
+charms me, let him write what he will; he's an inspired
+man. Tell me, too, exactly what Sue has done after 'Martin.'
+I read only one volume of 'Martin.' And did poor Souli&eacute;
+finish his 'Dramas'? And after 'Lucretia' what did George
+Sand write? When Robert and I are ambitious, we talk of
+buying Balzac in full some day, to put him up in our bookcase
+from the convent, if the carved-wood angels, infants
+and serpents, should not finish mouldering away in horror
+at the touch of him. But I fear it will rather be an
+expensive purchase, even here. Would that he gave up the
+drama, for which, as you observe, he has no faculty whatever.
+In fact, the faculty he has is the very reverse of the dramatic,
+ordinarily understood.... Dearest Mr. Kenyon is called
+quite well and delightful by the whole world, though he
+suffered from cough in the winter; and he is bringing out
+a new book of poems, a 'Day at Tivoli,' and others; and
+he talks energetically of coming to Florence this autumn.
+Also, we have hopes of Mr. Chorley. I congratulate you
+on the going away of Madame. Coming and going bring
+very various associations in this life of ours. Why, if <i>you</i>
+were to come we should appreciate our fortune, and you
+should have my particular chair, which Robert calls mine
+because I like sitting in a cloud; it's so sybaritically soft a
+chair. Now I love you for the kind words you say of <i>him</i>,
+who deserves the best words of the best women and men,
+wherever spoken! Yes, indeed, I am happy. Otherwise,
+I should have a stone where the heart is, and sink by the
+weight of it. You must have faith in me, for I never can
+make you thoroughly to understand what he is, of himself,
+and to me&mdash;the noblest and perfectest of human beings.
+After a year and ten months' absolute soul-to-soul intercourse
+and union, I have to look higher still for my first
+ideal. You won't blame me for bad taste that I say these
+things, for can I help it, when I am writing my heart to you?
+It is a heart which runs over very often with a grateful joy
+for a most peculiar destiny, even in the midst of some bitter
+drawbacks which I need not allude to farther....</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you continually, even as I am</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Jameson</i><br />
+Palazzo Guidi: July 15, [1848].<br />
+
+<p>Now at last, my very dear friend, I am writing to you,
+and the reproach you sent to me in your letter shall not be
+driven inwardly any more by my self-reproaches. Wasn't
+it your fault after all, a little, that we did not hear one
+another's voice oftener? You are <i>so long</i> in writing. Then
+I have been putting off and putting off my letter to you,
+just because I wanted to make a full letter of it; and
+Robert always says that it's the bane of a correspondence to
+make a full letter a condition of writing at all. But so
+much I had to tell you! while the mere outline of facts you
+had from others, I knew. Which is just said that you may
+forgive us both, and believe that we think of you and love
+you, yes, and talk of you, even when we don't write to you,
+and that we shall write to you for the future more regularly,
+indeed. Your letter, notwithstanding its reproach, was
+very welcome and very kind, only you must be fagged with
+the book, and saddened by Lady Byron's state of health,
+and anxious about Gerardine perhaps. The best of all was
+the prospect you hold out to us of coming to Italy this
+year. Do, do come. Delighted we shall be to see you in
+Florence, and wise it will be in you to cast behind your back
+both the fear of Radetsky and as much English care as may
+be. Now, would it not do infinite good to Lady Byron if
+you could carry her with you into the sun? Surely it would
+do her great good; the change, the calm, the atmosphere
+of beauty and brightness, which harmonises so wonderfully
+with every shade of human feeling. Florence just now,
+and thanks to the panic, is tolerably <i>clean</i> of the
+English&mdash;you scarcely see an English face anywhere&mdash;and perhaps
+this was a circumstance that helped to give Robert courage
+to take our apartment here and 'settle down.' You were
+surprised at so decided a step I dare say, and, I believe,
+though too considerate to say it in your letter, you have
+wondered in your thoughts at our fixing at Florence instead
+of Rome, and without seeing more of Italy before the finality
+of making a choice. But observe, Florence is wonderfully
+cheap, one lives here for just nothing; and the convenience
+in respect to England, letters, and the facility of letting our
+house in our absence, is incomparable altogether. At
+Rome a house would be habitable only half the year, and the
+distance and the expense are objections at the first sight of
+the subject.... Altogether, if I could but get a supply of
+French books, turning the cock easily, it would be perfect;
+but as to <i>anything</i> new in the book way, Vieusseux seems
+to have made a vow against it, and poor Robert comes and
+goes in a state of desperation between me and the bookseller
+('But what <i>can</i> I do, Ba?'), and only brings news of
+some pitiful revolution or other which promises a full flush
+of republican virtues and falls off into the fleur de lis as
+usual. Think of our not having read 'Lucretia' yet&mdash;George
+Sand's. And Balzac is six or seven works deep from
+us; but these are evils to be borne. We live on just in the
+same way, having very few visitors, and receiving them in
+the quietest of hospitalities. Mr. Ware, the American, who
+wrote the 'Letters from Palmyra,' and is a delightful,
+earnest, simple person, comes to have coffee with us once
+or twice a week, and very much we like him. Mr. Hillard,
+another cultivated American friend of ours, you have in
+London, and we should gladly have kept longer. Mr.
+Powers does not spend himself much upon visiting, which
+is quite right, but we do hope to see a good deal of
+Mademoiselle de Fauveau. Robert exceedingly admires her.
+As to Italian society, one may as well take to longing for
+the evening star, for it seems quite as inaccessible; and
+indeed, of society of any sort, we have not much, nor wish
+for it, nor miss it. Dearest friend, if I could open my heart
+to you in all seriousness, you would see nothing there but a
+sort of enduring wonder of happiness&mdash;yes, and some gratitude,
+I do hope, besides. Could everything be well in
+England, I should only have to melt out of the body at
+once in the joy and the glow of it. Happier and happier I
+have been, month after month; and when I hear <i>him</i> talk
+of being happy too, my very soul seems to swim round with
+feelings which cannot be spoken. But I tell you a little,
+because I owe the telling to you, and also that you may set
+down in your philosophy the possibility of book-making
+creatures living happily together. I admit, though, to
+begin (or end), that my husband is an exceptional human
+being, and that it wouldn't be just to measure another by
+him. We are planning a great deal of enjoyment in this
+'going to the fair' at Sinigaglia, meaning to go by Arezzo
+and San Sepolchro, and Urbino, to Fano, where we shall
+pitch our tent for the benefit, as Robert says, of the sea air
+and the oysters. Fano is very habitable, and we may get
+to Pesaro and the footsteps of Castiglione's 'courtier,' to say
+nothing of Bernardo Tasso; and Ancona beckons from the
+other side of Sinigaglia, and Loreto beside, only we shall
+have to restrain our flights a little. The passage of the
+Apennine is said to be magnificent, and, altogether, surely
+it must be delightful; and we take only two carpet bags&mdash;not
+to be weighed down by 'impedimenta,' and have our
+own home, left in charge of the porter, to return to at last,
+I am very well and shall be better for the change, though
+Robert is dreadfully afraid, as usual, that I shall fall to pieces
+at the first motion....</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you!<br />
+Ever I am your affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+
+<p>Write to Florence as usual&mdash;Poste Restante. You will
+hear how we are in great hopes of dear Mr. Kenyon.</p>
+
+<p>Dear Aunt Nina,&mdash;Only a word in all the hurry of setting
+off. We love you as you love us, and are pretty nearly as
+happy as you would have us. All love and prosperity to
+dear Geddie, too; what do you say of 'Landor,' and my
+not sending it to Forster or somebody? <i>Che che</i> (as the
+Tuscans exclaim), <i>who</i> was it promised to call at my people's,
+who would have tendered it forthwith? I will see about it as
+it is. Goodbye, dearest aunt, and let no revolution disturb
+your good will to Ba and</p>
+
+<p>R.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: August 24, 1848.<br />
+
+<p>Ever dearest Miss Mitford,&mdash;It's great comfort to have
+your letter; for as it came more lingeringly than usual, I
+had time to be a little anxious, and even my husband has
+confessed since that he thought what he would not say
+aloud for fear of paining me, as to the probability of your
+being less well than usual. Your letters come so regularly
+to the hour, you see, that when it strikes without them, we
+ask why. Thank God, you are better after all, and reviving
+in spirits, as I saw at the first glance before the words said
+it clearly....</p>
+
+<p>As for ourselves, we have scarcely done so well, yet
+well; having enjoyed a great deal in spite of drawbacks.
+Murray, the traitor, sent us to Fano as a 'delightful summer
+residence for an English family,' and we found it uninhabitable
+from the heat, vegetation scorched with paleness,
+the very air swooning in the sun, and the gloomy looks of
+the inhabitants sufficiently corroborative of their words, that
+no drop of rain or dew ever falls there during the summer.
+A 'circulating library' 'which doesn't give out books,' and
+'a refined and intellectual Italian society' (I quote Murray for
+that phrase) which 'never reads a book through' (I quote
+Mrs. Wiseman, Dr. Wiseman's mother, who has lived in
+Fano seven years), complete the advantages of the place,
+yet the churches are beautiful, and a divine picture of
+Guercino's is worth going all that way to see.<a name="FNanchor_180_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_180_180"><sup>[180]</sup></a> By a happy</p>
+
+<p>accident we fell in with Mrs. Wiseman, who, having married
+her daughter to Count Gabrielli with ancestral possessions
+in Fano, has lived on there from year to year, in a state of
+permanent moaning as far as I could apprehend. She is a
+very intelligent and vivacious person, and having been used
+to the best French society, bears but ill this exile from the
+common civilities of life. I wish Dr. Wiseman, of whose
+childhood and manhood she spoke with touching pride,
+would ask her to minister to the domestic rites of his
+bishop's palace in Westminster; there would be no hesitation,
+I fancy, in her acceptance of the invitation. Agreeable as
+she and her daughter were, however, we fled from Fano
+after three days, and, finding ourselves cheated out of our
+dream of summer coolness, resolved on substituting for it
+what the Italians call 'un bel giro.' So we went to Ancona,
+a striking sea city, holding up against the brown rocks and
+elbowing out the purple tides, beautiful to look upon. An
+exfoliation of the rock itself, you would call the houses that
+seem to grow there, so identical is the colour and character.
+I should like to visit Ancona again when there is a little air
+and shadow; we stayed a week as it was, living upon fish
+and cold water. Water, water, was the cry all day long, and
+really you should have seen me (or you should not have
+seen me) lying on the sofa, and demoralised out of all sense
+of female vanity, not to say decency, with dishevelled hair
+at full length, and 'sans gown, sans stays, sans shoes, sans
+everything,' except a petticoat and white dressing wrapper.
+I said something feebly once about the waiter; but I don't
+think I meant it for earnest, for when Robert said, 'Oh, don't
+mind, dear,' certainly I didn't mind in the least. People
+<i>don't</i>, I suppose, when they are in ovens, or in exhausted
+receivers. Never before did I guess what heat was&mdash;that's
+sure. We went to Loreto for a day, back through Ancona,
+Sinigaglia (oh, I forgot to tell you, there was no fair this
+year at Sinigaglia; Italy will be content, I suppose, with
+selling her honour), Fano, Pesaro, Rimini to Ravenna,
+back again over the Apennines from Forli. A 'bel giro,'
+wasn't it? Ravenna, where Robert positively wanted to go
+to live once, has itself put an end to those yearnings. The
+churches are wonderful: holding an atmosphere of purple
+glory, and if one could live just in them, or in Dante's
+tomb&mdash;well, otherwise keep me from Ravenna. The very
+antiquity of the houses is whitewashed, and the marshes on
+all sides send up stenches new and old, till the hot air is
+sick with them. To get to the pine forest, which is exquisite,
+you have to go a mile along the canal, the exhalations
+pursuing you step for step, and, what ruffled me more than all
+beside, we were not admitted into the house of Dante's tomb
+'without an especial permission from the authorities.'
+Quite furious I was about this, and both of us too angry to
+think of applying: but we stood at the grated window and
+read the pathetic inscription as plainly as if we had touched
+the marble. We stood there between three and four in the
+morning, and then went straight on to Florence from that
+tomb of the exiled poet. Just what we should have done,
+had the circumstances been arranged in a dramatic intention.
+From Forli, the air grew pure and quick again; and the
+exquisite, almost visionary scenery of the Apennines, the
+wonderful variety of shape and colour, the sudden transitions
+and vital individuality of those mountains, the chestnut
+forests dropping by their own weight into the deep ravines,
+the rocks cloven and clawed by the living torrents, and the
+hills, hill above hill, piling up their grand existences as if
+they did it themselves, changing colour in the effort&mdash;of these
+things I cannot give you any idea, and if words could not,
+painting could not either. Indeed, the whole scenery of
+our journey, except when we approached the coast, was full
+of beauty. The first time we crossed the Apennine (near
+Borgo San Sepolcro) we did it by moonlight, and the flesh
+was weak, and one fell asleep, and saw things between sleep
+and wake, only the effects were grand and singular so, even
+though of course we lost much in the distinctness. Well,
+but you will understand from all this that we were delighted
+to get home&mdash;<i>I</i> was, I assure you. Florence seemed as
+cool as an oven after the fire; indeed, we called it quite cool,
+and I took possession of my own chair and put up my feet
+on the cushions and was charmed, both with having been
+so far and coming back so soon. Three weeks brought us
+home. Flush was a fellow traveller of course, and enjoyed
+it in the most obviously amusing manner. Never was there
+so good a dog in a carriage before his time! Think of
+Flush, too! He has a supreme contempt for trees and hills
+or anything of that kind, and, in the intervals of natural
+scenery, he drew in his head from the window and didn't
+consider it worth looking at; but when the population
+thickened, and when a village or a town was to be passed
+through, then his eyes were starting out of his head with
+eagerness; he looked east, he looked west, you would
+conclude that he was taking notes or preparing them. His
+eagerness to get into the carriage first used to amuse the
+Italians. Ah, poor Italy! I am as mortified as an Italian
+ought to be. They have only the rhetoric of patriots and
+soldiers, I fear! Tuscany is to be spared forsooth, if she
+lies still, and here she lies, eating ices and keeping the
+feast of the Madonna. Perdoni! but she has a review in the
+Cascine besides, and a gallant show of some 'ten thousand
+men' they are said to have made of it&mdash;only don't think
+that I and Robert went out to see that sight. We should
+have sickened at it too much. An amiable, refined people,
+too, these Tuscans are, conciliating and affectionate. When
+you look out into the streets on feast days, you would take
+it for one great 'rout,' everybody appears dressed for a
+drawing room, and you can scarcely discern the least
+difference between class and class, from the Grand Duchess
+to the Donna di facenda; also there is no belying of the
+costume in the manners, the most gracious and graceful
+courtesy and gentleness being apparent in the thickest
+crowds. This is all attractive and delightful; but the
+people wants <i>stamina</i>, wants conscience, wants self-reverence.
+Dante's soul has died out of the land. Enough of this.
+As for France, I have 'despaired of the republic' for very
+long, but the nation is a great nation, and will right itself
+under some flag, white or red. Don't you think so? Thank
+you for the news of our authors, it is as 'the sound of a
+trumpet afar off,' and I am like the war-horse. Neglectful
+that I am, I forgot to tell you before that you heard quite
+rightly about Mr. Thackeray's wife, who is ill <i>so</i>. Since
+your question, I had in gossip from England that the book
+'Jane Eyre' was written by a governess in his house, and
+that the preface to the foreign edition refers to him in some
+marked way. We have not seen the book at all. But the
+first letter in which you mentioned your Oxford student
+caught us in the midst of his work upon art.<a name="FNanchor_181_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181_181"><sup>[181]</sup></a> Very vivid,
+very graphic, full of sensibility, but inconsequent in some of
+the reasoning, it seemed to me, and rather flashy than full
+in the metaphysics. Robert, who knows a good deal about
+art, to which knowledge I of course have no pretence,
+could agree with him only by snatches, and we, both of us,
+standing before a very expressive picture of Domenichino's
+(the 'David'&mdash;at Fano) wondered how he could blaspheme
+so against a great artist. Still, he is no ordinary man, and
+for a critic to be so much a poet is a great thing. Also, we
+have by no means, I should imagine, seen the utmost of his
+stature. How kindly you speak to me of my dearest sisters.
+Yes, go to see them whenever you are in London, they are
+worthy of the gladness of receiving you. And will you
+write soon to me, and tell me everything of yourself, how
+you are, how home agrees with you, and the little details
+which are such gold dust to absent friends....</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you, my beloved friend. Let me ever
+be (my husband joining in all warm regards) your most
+affectionate</p>
+
+<p>BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: October 10, 1848.<br />
+
+<p>My ever dearest Miss Mitford,&mdash;Have you not thought
+some hard thoughts of me, for not instantly replying to a
+letter which necessarily must have been, to one who loved you,
+of such painful interest? Do I not love you truly? Yes, indeed.
+But while preparing to write to you my deep regret
+at hearing that you had been so ill, illness came in another
+form to prevent me from writing, my husband being laid up
+for nearly a month with fever and ulcerated sore throat. I
+had not the heart to write a line to anyone, much less to
+prepare a packet to escort your letter free from foreign
+postage; and to make you pay for a chapter of Lamentations'
+without the spirit of prophecy, would have been too hard on
+you, wouldn't it? Quite unhappy I have been over those
+burning hands and languid eyes, the only unhappiness I
+ever had by <i>them</i>, and then he wouldn't see a physician; and
+if it hadn't been that, just at the right moment, Mr. Mahony,
+the celebrated Jesuit, and Father Prout of 'Fraser,' knowing
+everything as those Jesuits are apt to do, came in to us on
+his way to Rome, pointed out that the fever got ahead
+through weakness and mixed up with his own kind hand a
+potion of eggs and port wine, to the horror of our Italian
+servant, who lifted up his eyes at such a prescription
+for a fever, crying, 'O Inglesi, Inglesi!' the case would have
+been far worse, I have no kind of doubt. For the eccentric
+prescription gave the power of sleeping, and the pulse grew
+quieter directly. I shall always be grateful to Father Prout,
+always. The very sight of some one with a friend's name
+and a cheerful face, his very jests at me for being a 'bambina'
+and frightened without cause, were as comforting as the
+salutation of angels. Also, he has been in Florence ever
+since, and we have seen him every day; he came to doctor
+and remained to talk. A very singular person, of whom the
+world tells a thousand and one tales, you know, but of whom
+I shall speak as I find him, because the utmost kindness
+and warmheartedness have characterised his whole bearing
+towards us. Robert met him years ago at dinner at Emerson
+Tennent's, and since has crossed paths with him on various
+points of Europe. The first time I saw him was as he
+stood on a rock at Leghorn, at our disembarkation in Italy.
+Not refined in a social sense by any manner of means, yet
+a most accomplished scholar and vibrating all over with
+learned associations and vivid combinations of fancy and
+experience&mdash;having seen all the ends of the earth and the
+men thereof, and possessing the art of talk and quotation to
+an amusing degree. In another week or two he will be at
+Rome.... How graphically you give us your Oxford
+student! Well! the picture is more distinct than Turner's,
+and if you had called it, in the manner of the Master, 'A
+Rock Limpet,' we should have recognised in it the corresponding
+type of the gifted and eccentric writer in question.
+Very eloquent he is, I agree at once, and true views he takes
+of Art in the abstract, true and elevating. It is in the
+application of connective logic that he breaks away from one so
+violently.... We are expecting our books by an early
+vessel, and are about to be very busy, building up a rococo
+bookcase of carved angels and demons. Also we shall get
+up curtains, and get down bedroom carpets, and finish the
+remainder of our furnishing business, now that the hot
+weather is at an end. I say 'at an end,' though the glass
+stands at seventy. As to the 'war,' <i>that</i> is rather different,
+it is painful to feel ourselves growing gradually cooler and
+cooler on the subject of Italian patriotism, valour, and good
+sense; but the process is inevitable. The child's play
+between the Livornese and our Grand Duke provokes a
+thousand pleasantries. Every now and then a day is fixed
+for a revolution in Tuscany, but up to the present time a
+shower has come and put it off. Two Sundays ago
+Florence was to have been 'sacked' by Leghorn, when a
+drizzle came and saved us. You think this a bad joke of
+mine or an impotent sarcasm, perhaps; whereas I merely
+speak historically. Brave men, good men, even sensible men
+there are of course in the land, but they are not strong
+enough for the times or for masterdom. For France, it is a
+great nation; but even in France they want a man, and
+Cavaignacso<a name="FNanchor_182_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_182_182"><sup>[182]</sup></a> only a soldier. If Louis Napoleon had the
+muscle of his uncle's little finger in his soul, he would be
+president, and king; but he is flaccid altogether, you see,
+and Joinville stands nearer to the royal probability after all.
+'Henri Cinq' is said to be too closely espoused to the
+Church, and his connections at Naples and Parma don't help
+his cause. Robert has more hope of the <i>republic</i> than I
+have: but call ye <i>this</i> a republic? Do you know that
+Miss Martineau takes up the 'History of England' under
+Charles Knight, in the continuation of a popular book?
+I regret her fine imagination being so wasted. So you saw
+Mr. Chorley? What a pleasant flashing in the eyes! We
+hear of him in Holland and Norway. Dear Mr. Kenyon
+won't stir from England, we see plainly. Ah! Frederic
+Souli&eacute;! he is too dead, I fear. Perhaps he goes on, though,
+writing romances, after the fashion of poor Miss Pickering,
+that prove nothing. I long for my French fountains of
+living literature, which, pure or impure, plashed in one's
+face so pleasantly. Some old French 'M&eacute;moires' we have
+got at lately, 'Brienne' for instance. It is curious how the
+leaders of the last revolution (under Louis XVIII.) seem to
+have despised one another. Brienne is very dull and flat.
+For Puseyism, it runs counter to the spirit of our times,
+after all, and will never achieve a church. May God bless
+you! Robert's regards go with the love of your ever
+affectionate</p>
+
+<p>BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Florence: December 3, 1848.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;It seemed long to me that
+you had not written, and it seems long to me now that
+I have not answered the kind letter which came at
+last. Then Henrietta told me of your being unwell at
+the moment of her mad excursion into Herefordshire.
+Altogether I want to speak to you and hear from you, and
+shall be easier and gladder when both are done. Do
+forgive my sins and write directly, and tell me everything
+about both of you, and how you are in spirits and health,
+and whether you really make up your minds to see more
+danger in the stormy influences of the Continent in the
+moral point of view than in those of England in the
+physical. For my part I hold to my original class of fear,
+and would rather face two or three revolutions than an east
+wind of an English winter. If I were you I would go to Pau
+as usual and take poor Abd-el-Kader's place (my husband is
+furious about the treatment of Abd-el-Kader, so I hear a
+good deal about him<a name="FNanchor_183_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183_183"><sup>[183]</sup></a>), or I would go to Italy and try</p>
+
+<p>Florence, where really democratic ministries roar as gently
+as sucking doves, particularly when they are safe in place.
+We have listened to dreadful rumours&mdash;Florence was to
+have been sacked several times by the Livornese; the
+Grand Duke went so far as to send away his family to
+Siena, and we had 'Morte a Fiorentini!' chalked up on the
+walls. Still, somehow or other, the peace has been kept in
+Florentine fashion; it has rained once or twice, which is
+always enough here to moderate the most revolutionary
+when they wear their best surtouts, and I look forward to
+an unbroken tranquillity just as I used to do, even though
+the windows of the Ridolfi Palace (the ambassador in
+London) were smashed the other evening a few yards from
+ours. Perhaps a gentle and affectionate approach to
+contempt for our Florentines mixes a little with this feeling
+of security, but what then? They are an amiable, refined,
+graceful people, with much of the artistic temperament as
+distinguished from that of men of genius&mdash;effeminate, no,
+rather <i>feminine</i> in a better sense&mdash;of a fancy easily turned
+into impulse, but with no strenuous and determinate
+strength in them. What they comprehend best in the
+'Italian League' is probably a league to wear silk velvet
+and each a feather in his hat, to carry flags and cry <i>vivas</i>,
+and keep a grand festa day in the piazzas. Better and
+happier in this than in stabbing prime ministers, or hanging
+up their dead bodies to shoot at; and not much more
+childish than these French patriots and republicans, who
+crown their great deeds by electing to the presidency such
+a man as Prince Louis Napoleon, simply because 'C'est le
+neveu de son oncle!'<a name="FNanchor_184_184"></a><a href="#Footnote_184_184"><sup>[184]</sup></a> A curious precedent for a president,
+certainly; but, oh heavens and earth, what curious
+things abroad everywhere just now, inclusive of the sea
+serpent! I agree with you that much of all is very melancholy
+and disheartening, though holding fast by my hope and
+belief that good will be the end, as it always <i>is</i> God's
+end to man's frenzies, and that all we observe is but the
+fermentation necessary to the new wine, which presently we
+shall drink pure. Meanwhile, the saddest thing is the
+impossibility (which I, for one, feel) to sympathise, to go
+along with, the <i>people</i> to whom and to whose cause all my
+natural sympathies yearn. The word 'Liberty' ceases to
+make me thrill, as at something great and unmistakable,
+as, for instance, the other great words Truth, and Justice;
+do. The salt has lost its savour, the meaning has escaped
+from the term; we know nothing of what people will <i>do</i>
+when they aspire to Liberty. The holiness of liberty is
+desecrated by the sign of the ass's hoof. Fixed principles,
+either of opinion or action, seem clearly gone out of the
+world. The principle of Destruction is in the place of the
+principle of Re-integration, or of Radical Reform, as we
+called it in England. I look all round and can sympathise
+nowhere. The rulers hold by rottenness, and the people
+leap into the abyss, and nobody knows why this is, or why
+that is. As to France, my tears (which I really couldn't
+help at the time of the expulsion of poor Louis Philippe
+and his family, not being very strong just then) are justified,
+it appears, though my husband thought them foolish (and so
+did I), and though we both began by an adhesion to the
+Republic in the cordial manner. But, just see, the Republic
+was a 'man in an iron mask' or helmet, and turns out a
+military dictatorship, a throttling of the press, a starving of
+the finances, and an election of Louis Napoleon to be
+President. Louis Philippe was better than all this, take
+him at worst, and at worst he did <i>not</i> deserve the mud and
+stones cast at him, which I have always maintained and
+maintain still. England might have got up ('happy
+country') more crying grievances than France at the
+moment of outbreak; but what makes outbreaks now-a-days
+is not 'the cause, my soul,' but the stuff of the people.
+You are huckaback on the other side of the Channel, and
+you wear out the poor Irish linen, let the justice of the case
+be what it may. Politics enough and too much, surely,
+especially now when they are depressing to you, and more
+or less to everybody.... We are still in the slow agonies
+of furnishing our apartment. You see, being the poorest
+and most prudent of possible poets, we had to solve the
+problem of taking our furniture out of our year's income
+(proceeds of poems and the like), and of not getting into
+debt. Oh, I take no credit to myself; I was always in
+debt in my little way ('small <i>im</i> morals,' as Dr. Bowring
+might call it) before I married, but Robert, though a poet
+and dramatist by profession, being descended from the
+blood of all the Puritans, and educated by the strictest of
+dissenters, has a sort of horror about the dreadful fact of
+owing five shillings five days, which I call quite morbid in
+its degree and extent, and which is altogether unpoetical
+according to the traditions of the world. So we have been
+dragging in by inches our chairs and tables throughout the
+summer, and by no means look finished and furnished at
+this late moment, the slow Italians coming at the heels of
+our slowest intentions with the putting up of our curtains,
+which begin to be necessary in this November tramontana.
+Yet in a month or three weeks we shall look quite
+comfortable&mdash;before Christmas; and in the meantime we heap
+up the pine wood and feel perfectly warm with these thick
+palace walls between us and the outside air. Also my
+husband's new edition is on the <i>edge</i> of coming out, and we
+have had an application from Mr. Phelps, of Sadler's Wells,
+for leave to act his 'Blot on the 'Scutcheon,' which, if it
+doesn't succeed, its public can have neither hearts nor
+intellects (that being an impartial opinion), and which, if it
+succeeds, will be of pecuniary advantage to us. Look out
+in the papers.... My love and my husband's go to you,
+our dear friends. Let me be always</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate and grateful<br />
+BA.</p>
+
+<p>While Italy shows herself so politically demoralised,
+and the blood of poor Russia smokes from the ground, the
+ground seems to care no more for it than the newspapers,
+or anybody else.</p>
+
+<p>Such a jar of flowers we have to keep December.
+White roses, as in June.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: December 16, [1848].<br />
+
+<p>... You are wondering, perhaps, how we are so fool-hardy
+as to keep on furnishing rooms in the midst of
+'anarchy,' the Pope a fugitive, and the crowned heads
+packing up. Ah, but we have faith in the <i>softness</i> of our
+Florentines, who must be well spurred up to the leap
+before they do any harm. These things look worse at a
+distance than they do near, although, seen far and near,
+nothing <i>can</i> be worse than the evidence of demoralisation
+of people, governors, and journalists, in the sympathy given
+everywhere to the assassination of poor Rossi.<a name="FNanchor_185_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185_185"><sup>[185]</sup></a> If Rossi</p>
+
+<p>was retrocessive, he was at least a constitutional minister,
+and constitutional means of opposing him were open to all,
+but Italy understands nothing constitutional; liberty is a
+fair word and a watchword, nothing more; an idea it is
+not in the minds of any. The poor Pope I deeply pity;
+he is a weak man with the noblest and most disinterested
+intentions. His faithful flock have nearly broken his heart
+by the murder of his two personal friends, Rossi and
+Palma, and the threat, which they sent him by embassy, of
+murdering every man, woman, and child in the Quirinal,
+with the exception of his Holiness, unless he accepted
+their terms. He should have gone out to them and so
+died, but having missed that opportunity, nothing remained
+but flight. He was a mere Pope hostage as long as he
+stayed in Rome. Curious, the 'intervention of the French,'
+so long desired by the Italians, and vouchsafed <i>so</i>.<a name="FNanchor_186_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_186_186"><sup>[186]</sup></a> The
+Florentines open their eyes in mute astonishment, and
+some of them 'won't read the journals any more.' The
+boldest say softly that the <i>Romans are sure not to bear it</i>.
+And what is to happen in France? Why, what a world we
+have just now.... Father Prout is gone to Rome for a
+fortnight, has stayed three weeks, and day by day we
+expect him back again. I don't understand how the Prout
+papers should have hurt him ecclesiastically, but that he
+should be <i>known</i> for their writer is not astonishing, as the
+secret was never, I believe, attempted to be kept. We
+have been, at least <i>I</i> have been, a little anxious lately
+about the fate of the 'Blot on the 'Scutcheon,' which
+Mr. Phelps applied for my husband's permission to revive
+at Sadler's. Of course, putting the request was a mere
+form, as he had every right to act the play, and there was
+nothing to answer but one thing. Only it made one
+anxious&mdash;made <i>me</i> anxious&mdash;till we heard the result, and
+we, both of us, are very grateful to dear Mr. Chorley, who
+not only made it his business to be at the theatre the first
+night, but, before he slept, sat down like a true friend to
+give us the story of the result, and never, he says, was a
+more complete and legitimate success. The play went
+straight to the heart of the audience, it seems, and we hear
+of its continuance on the stage from the papers. So far, so
+well. You may remember, or may not have heard, how
+Macready brought it out and put his foot on it in the flash
+of a quarrel between manager and author, and Phelps,
+knowing the whole secret and feeling the power of the play,
+determined on making a revival of it on his own theatre,
+which was wise, as the event proves. Mr. Chorley called
+his acting really 'fine.' I see the second edition of the
+'Poetical Works' advertised at last in the 'Athenaeum,' and
+conclude it to be coming out directly. Also my second edition
+is called for, only nothing is yet arranged on that point.
+We have had a most interesting letter from Mr. Home,
+giving terrible accounts, to be sure, of the submersion of all
+literature in England and France since the French Revolution,
+but noble and instructive proof of individual wave-riding
+energy, such as I have always admired in him. He
+and his wife, he says, live chiefly on the produce of their
+garden, and keep a cheerful heart for the rest; even the
+'Institutes' expect gratuitous lectures, so that the sweat of
+the brain seems less productive than the sweat of the brow.
+I am glad that Mr. Serjeant Talfourd and his wife spoke
+affectionately of my husband, for he is attached to both of
+them.... My Flush has grown to be passionately fond of
+grapes, devouring bunch after bunch, and looking so fat
+and well that we attribute some virtue to them. When he
+goes to England he will be as much in a strait as an
+Italian who related to us his adventures in London; he
+had had a long walk in the heat, and catching sight of
+grapes hanging up in a grocer's shop, he stopped short to
+have a pennyworth, as he said inwardly to himself. Down
+he sat and made out a Tuscan luncheon in purple bunches.
+At last, taking out his purse to look for the halfpence:
+'Fifteen shillings, sir, if you please,' said the shopman.
+Now do write soon, and speak particularly of your health,
+and take care of it and don't be too complaisant to visitors.
+May God bless you, my very dear friend! Think of me as</p>
+
+<p>Ever your affectionate and grateful<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+
+<i>My husband's regards always.</i><br />
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="CHAPTER_VI"></a><h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<h3>1849-1851</h3>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>There is here a pause of two months in the correspondence
+of Mrs. Browning, during which the happiness of
+her already happy life was crowned by the birth, on
+March 9, 1849, of her son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett
+Browning.<a name="FNanchor_187_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187_187"><sup>[187]</sup></a> How great a part this child henceforward
+played in her life will be shown abundantly by the
+letters that follow. Some passages referring to the child's
+growth, progress, and performances have been omitted,
+partly in the necessary reduction of the bulk of the
+correspondence, and partly because too much of one subject
+may weary the reader. But enough has been left to show
+that, in the case of Mrs. Browning (and of her husband
+likewise), the parent was by no means lost in the poet.
+There is little in what she says which might not equally be
+said, and is in substance said, by hundreds of happy mothers
+in every age; but it would be a suppression of one essential
+part of her nature, and an injury to the pleasant picture
+which the whole life of this poet pair presents, if her
+enthusiasms over her child were omitted or seriously
+curtailed. Biographers are fond of elaborating the details
+in which the lives of poets have not conformed to the
+standard of the moral virtues; let us at least recognise
+that, in the case of Robert and Elizabeth Browning, the
+moral and the intellectual virtues flourished side by side,
+each contributing its share to the completeness of the whole
+character.</p>
+
+<p>The joy of this firstborn's birth was, however, very
+quickly dimmed by the news of the death, only a few days
+later, of Mr. Browning's mother, to whom he was devotedly
+attached. Her death was very sudden, and the shock of
+the reaction completely prostrated him for a long time.
+The following letters from Mrs. Browning tell how he felt
+this loss.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Browning</i><br />
+April 1, 1849 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>I do indeed from the bottom of my heart pity you and
+grieve with you, my dearest Sarianna. I may grieve with
+you as well as for you; for I too have lost. Believe that,
+though I never saw her face; I loved that pure and tender
+spirit (tender to me even at this distance), and that she will
+be dear and sacred to me to the end of my own life.</p>
+
+<p>Dearest Sarianna, I thank you for your consideration
+and admirable self-control in writing those letters. I do
+thank and bless you. If the news had come unbroken by
+such precaution to my poor darling Robert, it would have
+nearly killed him, I think. As it is, he has been able to
+cry from the first, and I am able to tell you that though
+dreadfully affected, of course, for you know his passionate
+love for her, he is better and calmer now&mdash;much better.
+He and I dwell on the hope that you and your dear father
+will come to us at once. Come&mdash;dear, dear Sarianna&mdash;I
+will at least love you as you deserve&mdash;you and him&mdash;if
+I can do no more. If you would comfort Robert, come.</p>
+
+<p>No day has passed since our marriage that he has not
+fondly talked of her. I know how deep in his dear heart
+her memory lies. God comfort you, my dearest Sarianna.
+The blessing of blessed duties heroically fulfilled <i>must</i> be
+With you. May the blessing of the Blessed in heaven be
+added to the rest!</p>
+
+<p>Robert stops me. My dear love to your father.</p>
+
+<p>Your ever attached sister,
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Browning</i><br />
+[April 1849.]<br />
+
+<p>You will have comfort in hearing, my dearest Sarianna,
+that Robert is better on the whole than when I wrote last,
+though still very much depressed. I wish I could get him
+to go somewhere or do something&mdash;at any rate God's
+comforts are falling like dew on all this affliction, and must
+in time make it look a green memory to you both. Continually
+he thinks of you and of his father&mdash;believe how
+continually and tenderly he thinks of you. Dearest
+Sarianna, I feel so in the quick of my heart how you must
+feel, that I scarcely have courage to entreat you to go out
+and take the necessary air and exercise, and yet that is a
+duty, clear as other duties, and to be discharged like others
+by you, as fully, and with as little shrinking of the will. If
+your health should suffer, what grief upon grief to those
+who grieve already! And besides, we who have to live
+are not to lie down under the burden. There will be time
+enough for lying down presently, very soon; and in the
+meanwhile there is plenty of God's work to do with the
+body and with the soul, and we have to do it as cheerfully
+as we can. Dearest Sarianna, you can look behind and
+before, on blessed memories and holy hopes&mdash;love is as
+full for you as ever in the old relation, even though her
+life in the world is cut off. There is no drop of bitterness
+in all this flood of sorrow. In the midst of the great
+anguish which God has given, you have to thank Him
+for some blessing with every pang as it comes. Never was
+a more beautiful, serene, assuring death than this we are
+all in tears for&mdash;for, believe me, my very dear sister, I
+have mourned with you, knowing what we all have lost,
+I who never saw her nor shall see her until a few years
+shall bring us all together to the place where none mourn
+nor are parted. Sarianna, will it not be possible, do you
+think, for you and your father to come here, if only for a
+few months? Then you might decide on the future upon
+more knowledge than you have now. It would be comfort
+and joy to Robert and me if we could all of us live together
+henceforward. Think what you would like, and how you
+would best like it. Your living on <i>even through this summer
+at that house</i>, I, who have well known the agony of such
+bindings to the rack, do protest against. Dearest Sarianna,
+it is not good or right either for you or for your dear father.
+For Robert to go back to that house unless it were to do one
+of you some good, think how it would be with <i>him</i>! Tell us
+now (for he yearns towards you&mdash;we both do), what is the
+best way of bringing us all together, so as to do every one of
+us some good? If Florence is too far off, is there any other
+place where we could meet and arrange for the future?
+Could not your dear father's leave of absence be extended
+this summer, out of consideration of what has happened,
+and would he not be so enabled to travel with you and
+meet us <i>somewhere</i>? We will do anything. For my part,
+I am full of anxiety; and for Robert, you may guess what
+his is, you who know him. Very bitter has it been to me
+to have interposed unconsciously as I have done and
+deprived him of her last words and kisses&mdash;very bitter&mdash;and
+nothing could be so consolatory to me as to give him
+back to <i>you</i> at least. So think for me, dearest Sarianna&mdash;think
+for your father and yourself, think for Robert&mdash;and
+remember that Robert and I will do anything which shall
+appear possible to you. May God bless you, both of you!
+Give my true love to your father. Feeling for you and with
+you always and most tenderly, I am your affectionate sister,
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: April 30, 1849.<br />
+
+<p>I am writing to you, <i>at last</i>, you will say, ever dearest
+Miss Mitford; but, except once to Wimpole Street, this is
+the first packet of letters which goes from me since my
+confinement. You will have heard how our joy turned
+suddenly into deep sorrow by the death of my husband's
+mother. An unsuspected disease (ossification of the heart)
+terminated in a fatal way, and she lay in the insensibility
+precursive of the grave's, when the letter, written in such
+gladness by my poor husband, and announcing the birth of
+his child, reached her address. 'It would have made her
+heart bound,' said her daughter to us. Poor, tender heart,
+the last throb was too near. The medical men would not
+allow the news to be communicated. The next joy she
+felt was to be in heaven itself. My husband has been in
+the deepest anguish, and indeed, except for the courageous
+consideration of his sister, who wrote two letters of preparation
+saying that 'she was not well,' and she 'was very ill,'
+when in fact all was over, I am frightened to think what the
+result would have been to him. He has loved his mother
+as such passionate natures only can love, and I never saw a
+man so bowed down in an extremity of sorrow&mdash;never.
+Even now the depression is great, and sometimes when I
+leave him alone a little and return to the room, I find him
+in tears. I do earnestly wish to change the scene and air;
+but where to go? England looks terrible now. He says it
+would break his heart to see his mother's roses over the
+wall, and the place where she used to lay her scissors and
+gloves. Which I understand so thoroughly that I can't say,
+'Let us go to England.' We must wait and see what his
+father and sister will choose to do or choose us to do, for of
+course a duty plainly seen would draw us anywhere. My
+own dearest sisters will be painfully disappointed by any
+change of plan, only they are too good and kind not to
+understand the difficulty, not to see the motive. So do
+<i>you</i>, I am certain. It has been very very painful altogether,
+this drawing together of life and death. Robert was too
+enraptured at my safety, and with his little son, and the
+sudden reaction was terrible. You see how natural that
+was. How kind of you to write that note to him full of
+affectionate expressions towards me! Thank you, dearest
+friend. He had begged my sisters to let you know of my
+welfare, and I hope they did; and now it is my turn to know
+of <i>you</i>, and so I do entreat you not to delay, but to let me
+hear exactly how you are and what your plans are for the
+summer. Do you think of Paris seriously? Am I not a
+sceptic about your voyages round the world? It's about
+the only thing that I don't thoroughly believe you <i>can</i> do.
+But (not to be impertinent) I want to hear so much! I
+want first and chiefly to hear of your health; and occupations
+next, and next your plans for the summer. Louis
+Napoleon is astonishing the world, you see, by his firmness
+and courage; and though really I don't make out the aim
+and end of his French republicans in going to Rome to
+extinguish the republic there, I wait before I swear at him
+for it till my information becomes fuller. If they have at
+Rome such a republic as we have had in Florence, without
+a public, imposed by a few bawlers and brawlers on many
+mutes and cowards, why, the sooner it goes to pieces the
+better, of course. Probably the French Government acts
+upon information. In any case, if the Romans are in earnest
+they may resist eight thousand men. We shall see. My
+<i>faith</i> in every species of Italian is, however, nearly tired out.
+I don't believe they are men at all, much less heroes and
+patriots. Since I wrote last to you, I think we have had
+two revolutions here at Florence, Grand Duke out, Grand
+Duke in.<a name="FNanchor_188_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_188_188"><sup>[188]</sup></a> The bells in the church opposite rang for both.
+They first planted a tree of liberty close to our door, and,
+then they pulled it down. The same tune, sung under the
+windows, did for 'Viva la republica!' and 'Viva Leopoldo!'
+The genuine popular feeling is certainly for the Grand Duke
+('O, santissima madre di Dio!' said our nurse, clasping her
+hands, 'how the people do love him!'); only nobody would
+run the risk of a pin's prick to save the ducal throne. If
+the Leghornese, who put up Guerazzi on its ruins, had not
+refused to pay at certain Florentine caf&eacute;s, we shouldn't have
+had revolution the second, and all this shooting in the
+street! Dr. Harding, who was coming to see me, had time
+to get behind a stable door, just before there was a fall
+against it of four shot corpses; and Robert barely managed
+to get home across the bridges. He had been out walking
+in the city, apprehending nothing, when the storm gathered
+and broke. Sad and humiliating it all has been, and the
+author of 'Vanity Fair' might turn it to better uses for a
+chapter. By the way, we have just been reading 'Vanity
+Fair.' Very clever, very effective, but cruel to human
+nature. A painful book, and not the pain that purifies and
+exalts. Partial truths after all, and those not wholesome.
+But I certainly had no idea that Mr. Thackeray had
+intellectual force for such a book; the power is considerable.
+For Balzac, Balzac may have gone out of the world as far as
+we are concerned. Isn't it hard on us? exiles from Balzac!
+The bookseller here, having despaired of the republic and
+the Grand Duchy both, I suppose, and taking for granted
+on the whole that the world must be coming shortly to an
+end, doesn't give us the sign of a new book. We ought to,
+be done with such vanities. There! and almost I have
+done my paper without a single word to you of the <i>baby</i>!
+Ah, you won't believe that I forgot him even if I pretend,
+so I won't. He is a lovely, fat, strong child, with double
+chins and rosy cheeks, and a great wide chest, undeniable
+lungs, I can assure you. Dr. Harding called him 'a robust
+child' the other day, and 'a more beautiful child he never
+saw.' I never saw a child half as beautiful, for my part....
+Dear Mr. Chorley has written the kindest letter to my
+husband. I much regard him indeed. May God bless
+you. Let me ever be (with Robert's thanks and warm
+remembrance)</p>
+
+<p>Your most affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+
+<p>Flush's jealousy of the baby would amuse you. For a
+whole fortnight he fell into deep melancholy and was proof
+against all attentions lavished on him. Now he begins to
+be consoled a little and even condescends to patronise the
+cradle.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Browning</i><br />
+[Florence:] May 2, 1849.<br />
+
+<p>Robert gives me this blank, and three minutes to write
+across it. Thank you, my very dear Sarianna, for all your
+kindness and affection. I understand what I have lost. I
+know the worth of a tenderness such as you speak of,
+and I feel that for the sake of my love for Robert she was
+ready out of the fullness of her heart to love <i>me</i> also. It
+has been bitter to me that I have unconsciously deprived
+him of the personal face-to-face shining out of her angelic
+nature for more than two years, but she has forgiven me,
+and we shall all meet, when it pleases God, before His
+throne. In the meanwhile, my dearest Sarianna, we are
+thinking much of you, and neither of us can bear the
+thought of your living on where you are. If you could
+imagine the relief it would be to us&mdash;to me as well as to
+Robert&mdash;to be told frankly what we ought to do, where we
+ought to go, to please you best&mdash;you and your dearest
+father&mdash;you would think the whole matter over and use
+plain words in the speaking of it. Robert naturally shrinks
+from the idea of going to New Cross under the circumstances
+of dreary change, and for his sake England has
+grown suddenly to me a land of clouds. Still, to see you
+and his father, and to be some little comfort to you both,
+would be the best consolation to him, I am very sure; and
+so, dearest Sarianna, think of us and speak to us. Could
+not your father get a long vacation? Could we not meet
+somewhere? Think how we best may comfort ourselves by
+comforting you. Never think of us, Sarianna, as apart
+from you&mdash;as if our interest or our pleasure <i>could</i> be apart
+from yours. The child is so like Robert that I can believe
+in the other likeness, and may the inner nature indeed, as
+you say, be after that pure image! He is so fat and rosy
+and strong that almost I am sceptical of his being my child.
+I suppose he is, after all. May God bless you, both of you.
+I am ashamed to send all these letters, but Robert makes
+me. He is better, but still much depressed sometimes, and
+over your letters he drops heavy tears. Then he treasures
+them up and reads them again and again. Better, however,
+on the whole, he is certainly. Poor little babe, who was too
+much rejoiced over at <i>first</i>, fell away by a most natural
+recoil (even <i>I</i> felt it to be <i>most natural</i>) from all that
+triumph, but Robert is still very fond of him, and goes to
+see him bathed every morning, and walks up and down on
+the terrace with him in his arms. If your dear father can
+toss and rock babies as Robert can, he will be a nurse in
+great favour.</p>
+
+<p>Dearest Sarianna, take care of yourself, and do walk
+out. No grief in the world was ever freer from the
+corroding drop of bitterness&mdash;was ever sweeter, holier, and
+more hopeful than this of yours must be. Love is for you
+on both sides of the grave, and the blossoms of love meet
+over it. May God's love, too, bless you!</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate sister,<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Florence: May 14, [1849].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;At last I come to thank you
+for all your kindness, all your goodness, all your sympathy
+for both of us. Robert would have written to you in the
+first instance (for we <i>both</i> thought of you) if we had not
+agreed that you would hear as quickly from Henrietta, we
+not knowing your direct address. Also your welcome little
+note should have had an immediate acknowledgment from
+him if he had not been so depressed at that time that I was
+glad to ask him to wait till I should be ready to write
+myself. In fact, he has suffered most acutely from the
+affliction you have since of course heard of; and just because
+he was <i>too happy</i> when the child was born, the pain was
+overwhelming afterwards. That is easy to understand, I
+think. While he was full of joy for the child, his mother
+was dying at a distance, and the very thought of accepting
+that new affection for the old became a thing to recoil
+from&mdash;do you not see? So far from suffering less through
+the particular combination of circumstances, as some people
+seemed to fancy he would, he suffered much more, I am
+certain, and very naturally. Even now he is looking very
+unwell&mdash;thinner and paler than usual, and his spirits, which
+used to be so good, have not rallied. I long to get him
+away from Florence somewhere&mdash;<i>where</i>, I can't fix my
+wishes; our English plans seem flat on the ground for the
+present, <i>that</i> is one sad certainty. My dearest sisters will
+be very grieved if we don't go to England, and yet how can
+I even try to persuade my husband back into the scene of
+old associations where he would feel so much pain? Do I
+not know what I myself should suffer in some places?
+And he loved his mother with all his power of loving, which
+is deeper and more passionate than love is with common
+men. She hearts of men are generally strong in proportion
+to their heads. Well, I am not to send you such a dull
+letter though, after waiting so long, and after receiving so
+much to speak thankfully of. My child you never would
+believe to be <i>my child</i>, from the evidence of his immense
+cheeks and chins&mdash;for pray don't suppose that he has only
+one chin. People call him a lovely child, and if <i>I</i> were to
+call him the same it wouldn't be very extraordinary, only I
+assure you 'a robust child' I may tell you that he is with a
+sufficient modesty, and also that Wilson says he is universally
+admired in various tongues when she and the nurse go out
+with him to the Cascine&mdash;'What a beautiful baby!' and
+'Che bel bambino!' He has had a very stormy entrance
+upon life, poor little fellow; and when he was just three
+days old, a grand festa round the liberty tree planted at our
+door, attended with military music, civic dancing and
+singing, and the firing of cannons and guns from morning
+to night, made him start in his cradle, and threw my careful
+nurse into paroxysms of devotion before the 'Vergine
+Santissima' that I mightn't have a fever in consequence.
+Since then the tree of liberty has come down with a crash
+and we have had another festa as noisy on that occasion.
+Revolution and counter-revolution, Guerazzi<a name="FNanchor_189_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_189_189"><sup>[189]</sup></a> and Leopold,
+sacking of Florence and entrance of the Austrian army&mdash;we
+live through everything, you see, and baby grows fat
+indiscriminately. For my part, I am altogether <i>blas&eacute;e</i> about
+revolutions and invasions. Don't think it want of feeling in
+me, or want of sympathy with 'the people,' but really I
+can't help a certain political latitudinarianism from creeping
+over me in relation to this Tuscany. You ought to be here
+to understand what I mean and how I think. Oh heavens!
+how ignoble it all has been and is! A revolution made by
+boys and <i>vivas</i>, and unmade by boys and <i>vivas</i>&mdash;no,
+there was blood shed in the unmaking&mdash;some horror and
+terror, but not as much patriotism and truth as could lift
+up the blood from the kennel. The counter-revolution was
+strictly <i>counter</i>, observe. I mean, that if the Leghornese
+troops here bad paid their debts at the Florentine coffee
+houses, the Florentines would have let their beloved Grand
+Duke stay on at Gaeta to the end of the world. The
+Grand Duke, too, whose part I have been taking hitherto
+(because he did seem to me a good man, more sinned
+against than sinning)&mdash;the Grand Duke I give up from
+henceforth, seeing that he has done this base thing of
+taking again his Austrian titles in his proclamations
+coincidently with the approach of the Austrians. Of Rome,
+knowing nothing, I don't like to speak. If a republic <i>in
+earnest</i> is established there, Louis Napoleon should not try
+to set his foot on it. Dearest Mrs. Martin, how you
+mistake me about France, and how too lightly I must have
+spoken. If you knew how I admire the French as a nation!
+Robert always calls them '<i>my beloved French</i>.' Their very
+faults appear to me to arise from an excess of ideality
+land aspiration; but I was vexed rather at their selection
+of Louis Napoleon&mdash;a selection since justified by the
+firmness and apparent integrity of the man. His reputation
+in England, you will admit, did not promise the conclusion.
+Will he be emperor, do you imagine? And shall I ever
+have done talking politics? I would far rather talk of <i>you</i>,
+after all. Henrietta tells me of your looking well, but of
+your not being strong yet. Now do, <i>for once</i>, have a fit of
+egotism and tell me a little about yourself.... Surely I ought
+especially to thank you, dearest kind friend, for your goodness
+in writing to&mdash;, of which Henrietta very properly told
+me. I never shall forget this and other proofs of your
+affection for me, and shall remember them with warm
+gratitude always. As to&mdash;, I have held out both [my]
+hands, and my husband's hands in mine, again and again
+to him; he cannot possibly, in the secret place of his heart,
+expect more from either of us. My husband would have
+written to him in the first place, but for the obstacles raised
+by himself and others, and now what <i>could</i> Robert write
+and say except the bare repetition of what I have said over
+and over for him and myself? It is exactly an excuse&mdash;not
+more and not less. Just before I was ill I sent my last
+messages, because, with certain hazards before me, my
+heart turned to them naturally. I might as well have turned
+to a rock.&mdash;has been by far the kindest, and has
+written to me two or three little notes, and one since the
+birth of our child. I love them all far too well to be proud,
+and my husband loves me too well not to wish to be friends
+with every one of them; we have neither of us any stupid
+feeling about 'keeping up our dignity.' Yes, I had a letter
+from&mdash;some time ago, in which something was said
+of Robert's being careless of reconciliation. I answered
+it most explicitly and affectionately, with every possible
+assurance from Robert, and offering them from himself the
+affection of a brother. Not a word in answer! To my
+poor dearest papa I have written very lately, and as my
+letter has not, after a week, been sent back, I catch at the
+hope of his being moved a little. If he neither sends it
+back nor replies severely, I shall take courage to write to
+him again after a while. It will be an immense gain to get
+him only to read my letters. My father and my brothers
+hold quite different positions, of course, and though he has
+acted sternly towards me, I, knowing his peculiarities, do
+not feel embittered and astonished and disappointed as in
+the other cases. Absolutely happy my marriage has been&mdash;never
+could there be a happier marriage (as there are no
+marriages in heaven); but dear Henrietta is quite wrong in
+fancying, or seeming to fancy, that this quarrel with my
+family has given or gives me slight pain. Old affections
+are not so easily trodden out of me, indeed, and while I
+live unreconciled to them, there must be a void and
+drawback. Do write to me and tell me of both of you,
+my very dear friends. Don't fancy that we are not anxious
+for brave Venice and Sicily, and that we don't hate this
+Austrian invasion. But Tuscany has acted a vile part
+altogether&mdash;<i>so</i> vile, that I am sceptical about the Romans.
+We expect daily the Austrians in Florence, and have made
+up our minds to be very kind. May God bless you! Do
+write, and mention your health particularly, as I am anxious
+about it. I am quite well myself, and, as ever,</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+
+<p>Don't you both like Macaulay's History? We are
+delighted just now with it.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Browning</i><br />
+[Florence: about June 1849.]<br />
+
+<p>I must say to my dearest Sarianna how delighted we are
+at the thought of seeing her in Florence. I wish it had
+been before the autumn, but since autumn is decided for
+we must be content to reap our golden harvest at the time
+for such things. Certainly the summer heat of Florence is
+terrible enough&mdash;only we should have carried you with us
+into the shade somewhere to the sea or to the mountains&mdash;and
+Robert has, of course, told you of our Spezzia plan.
+The 'fatling of the flock' has been sheared closely of his
+long petticoats. Did he tell you that? And you can't
+think how funny the little creature looks without his train,
+his wise baby face appearing to approve of the whole
+arrangement. He talks to himself now and smiles at
+everybody, and admired my roses so much the other day
+that he wanted to eat them; having a sublime transcendental
+notion about the mouth being the receptacle of all
+beauty and glory in this world. Tell your dear father that
+certainly he <i>is</i> a 'sweet baby,' there's no denying it. We
+lay him down on the floor to let him kick at ease, and he
+makes violent efforts to get up by himself, and Wilson
+declares that the least encouragement would set him walking.
+Robert's nursing does not mend his spirits much. I
+shall be very glad to get him away from Florence; he has
+suffered too much here to rally as I long to see him do,
+because, dearest Sarianna, we have to live after all; and to
+live rightly we must turn our faces forward and press
+forward and not look backward morbidly for the footsteps
+in the dust of those beloved ones who travelled with us but
+yesterday. They themselves are not behind but before,
+and we carry with us our tenderness living and undiminished
+towards them, to be completed when the round of this life
+is complete for us also. Dearest Sarianna, why do I say
+such things, but because I have known what grief is? Oh,
+and how I could have compounded with you, grief for grief,
+mine for yours, for <i>I</i> had no last words nor gestures,
+Sarianna. God keep you from such a helpless bitter agony
+as mine then was. Dear Sarianna, you will think of us and
+of Florence, my dear sister, and remember how you have
+made us a promise and have to keep it. May God bless
+you and comfort you. We think of you and love you
+continually, and I am always your most affectionate</p>
+
+<p>BA.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>In July the move from Florence, of which Mrs. Browning
+speaks in the above letter, was effected, the place ultimately
+chosen for escape from the summer heat in the valley of
+the Arno being the Bagni di Lucca. Here three months
+were spent, as the following letters describe. By this time
+the struggle for Italian liberty had ended in failure everywhere.
+The battle of Novara, on March 23, had prostrated
+Piedmont, and caused the abdication of its king, Charles
+Albert. The Tuscan Republic had come and gone, and
+the Grand Duke had re-entered his capital under the
+protection of Austrian bayonets. Sicily had been reduced
+to subjection to the Bourbons of Naples. On July 2 the
+French entered Rome, bringing back the Pope cured of his
+leanings to reform and constitutional government; on the
+24th, Venice, after an heroic resistance, capitulated to the
+Austrians. The struggle was over for the time; the longing
+for liberty becomes, of necessity, silent; and we hear little,
+for a space, of Italian politics. For the moment it might
+seem justifiable to despair of the republic.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Bagni di Lucca, Toscana: [about July 1849].<br />
+
+<p>At last, you will say, dearest friend. The truth is, I have
+not been forgetting you (how far from that!) but wandering
+in search of cool air and a cool bough among all the olive
+trees to build our summer nest on. My husband has been
+suffering beyond what one could shut one's eyes to in consequence
+of the great mental shock of last March&mdash;loss of
+appetite, loss of sleep, looks quite worn and altered. His
+spirits never rallied except with an effort, and every letter
+from New Cross threw him back into deep depressions. I
+was very anxious, and feared much that the end of it all
+(the intense heat of Florence assisting) would be a nervous
+fever or something similar. And I had the greatest difficulty
+in persuading him to leave Florence for a month or two&mdash;he
+who generally delights so in travelling, had no mind for
+change or movement. I had to say and swear that baby
+and I couldn't bear the heat, and that we must and would
+go away. <i>Ce que femme veut</i>, if the latter is at all reasonable,
+or the former persevering. At last I gained the
+victory. It was agreed that we two should go on an
+exploring journey to find out where we could have most
+shadow at least expense; and we left our child with his
+nurse and Wilson while we were absent. We went along
+the coast to Spezzia, saw Carrara with the white marble
+mountains, passed through the olive forests and the vineyards,
+avenues of acacia trees, chestnut woods, glorious
+surprises of most exquisite scenery. I say olive forests
+advisedly; the olive grows like a forest tree in those regions,
+shading the ground with tents of silvery network. The
+olive near Florence is but a shrub in comparison, and I
+have learnt to despise a little, too, the Florentine vine,
+which does not swing such portcullises of massive dewy
+green from one tree to another as along the whole road
+where we travelled. Beautiful, indeed, it was. Spezzia
+wheels the blue sea into the arms of the wooded mountains,
+and we had a glance at Shelley's house at Lerici. It was
+melancholy to me, of course. I was not sorry that the
+lodgings we inquired about were far above our means. We
+returned on our steps (after two days in the dirtiest of
+possible inns), saw Seravezza, a village in the mountains,
+where rock, river, and wood enticed us to stay, and the
+inhabitants drove us off by their unreasonable prices. It is
+curious, but just in proportion to the want of civilisation the
+prices rise in Italy. If you haven't cups and saucers you are
+made to pay for plate. Well, so finding no rest for the
+
+sole of our feet, I persuaded Robert to go to the Baths of
+Lucca, only to see them. We were to proceed afterwards
+to San Marcello or some safer wilderness. We had both of
+us, but he chiefly, the strongest prejudice against these Baths
+of Lucca, taking them for a sort of wasp's nest of scandal
+and gaming, and expecting to find everything trodden flat
+by the Continental English; yet I wanted to see the place,
+because it is a place to see after all. So we came, and were
+so charmed by the exquisite beauty of the scenery, by the
+coolness of the climate and the absence of our countrymen,
+political troubles serving admirably our private requirements,
+that we made an offer for rooms on the spot, and returned
+to Florence for baby and the rest of our establishment
+without further delay. Here we are, then; we have been
+here more than a fortnight. We have taken an apartment
+for the season&mdash;four months&mdash;paying twelve pounds for the
+whole term, and hoping to be able to stay till the end of
+October. The living is cheaper than even at Florence, so
+that there has been no extravagance in coming here. In
+fact, Florence is scarcely tenable during the summer from
+the excessive heat by day and night, even if there were no
+particular motive for leaving it. We have taken a sort of eagle's
+nest in this place, the highest house of the highest of the three
+villages which are called the Bagni di Lucca, and which lie
+at the heart of a hundred mountains sung to continually by
+a rushing mountain stream. The sound of the river and of
+the cicala is all the noise we hear. Austrian drums and
+carriage wheels cannot vex us; God be thanked for it; the
+silence is full of joy and consolation. I think my husband's
+spirits are better already and his appetite improved.
+Certainly little babe's great cheeks are growing rosier and
+rosier. He is out all day when the sun is not too strong,
+and Wilson will have it that he is prettier than the whole
+population of babies here. He fixes his blue eyes on
+everybody and smiles universal benevolence, rather too
+indiscriminately it might be if it were not for Flush. But
+certainly, on the whole he prefers Flush. He pulls his ears
+and rides on him, and Flush, though his dignity does not
+approve of being used as a pony, only protests by turning
+his head round to kiss the little bare dimpled feet. A
+merrier, sweeter-tempered child there can't be than our
+baby, and people wonder at his being so forward at four
+months old and think there must be a mistake in his age.
+He is so strong that when I put out two fingers and he has
+seized them in his fists he can draw himself up on his feet,
+but we discourage this forwardness, which is not desirable,
+say the learned. Children of friends of mine at ten months
+and a year can't do so much. Is it not curious that <i>my</i>
+child should be remarkable for strength and fatness? He
+has a beaming, thinking little face, too; oh, I wish you
+could see it. Then my own strength has wonderfully improved,
+just as my medical friends prophesied; and it seems
+like a dream when I find myself able to climb the hills with
+Robert and help him to lose himself in the forests. I have
+been growing stronger and stronger, and where it is to stop
+I can't tell, really; I can do as much, or more, now than at
+any point of my life since I arrived at woman's estate. The
+air of this place seems to penetrate the heart and not the lungs
+only; it draws you, raises you, excites you. Mountain air
+without its keenness, sheathed in Italian sunshine, think
+what <i>that</i> must be! And the beauty and the solitude&mdash;for
+with a few paces we get free of the habitations of men&mdash;all
+is delightful to me. What is peculiarly beautiful and
+wonderful is the variety of the shapes of the mountains. They
+are a multitude, and yet there is no likeness. None, except
+where the golden mist comes and transfigures them into
+one glory. For the rest, the mountain there wrapt in the
+chestnut forest is not like that bare peak which tilts against
+the sky, nor like that serpent twine of another which seems
+to move and coil in the moving coiling shadow. Oh, I
+wish you were here. You would enjoy the shade of the
+chestnut trees, and the sound of the waterfalls, and at nights
+seem to be living among the stars; the fireflies are so
+thick, you would like that too. We have subscribed to a
+French library where there are scarcely any new books. I have
+read Bernard's 'Gentilhomme Campagnard' (see how <i>arri&eacute;r&eacute;s</i>
+we are in French literature!), and thought it the dullest and
+worst of his books. I wish I could see the 'Memoirs of
+Louis Napoleon,' but there is no chance of such good
+fortune. All this egotism has been written with a heart full
+of thoughts of you and anxieties for you. Do write to me
+directly and say first how your precious health is, and then
+that you have ceased to suffer pain for your friends....
+But your dear self chiefly&mdash;how are you, my dearest Miss
+Mitford? I do long so for good news of you. On our
+arrival here Mr. Lever called on us. A most cordial
+vivacious manner, a glowing countenance, with the animal
+spirits somewhat predominant over the intellect, yet the
+intellect by no means in default; you can't help being
+surprised into being pleased with him, whatever your previous
+inclination may be. Natural too, and a <i>gentleman</i>
+past mistake. His eldest daughter is nearly grown up, and
+his youngest six months old. He has children of every sort
+of intermediate age almost, but he himself is young enough
+still. Not the slightest Irish accent. He seems to have
+spent nearly his whole life on the Continent and by no
+means to be tired of it. Ah, dearest Miss Mitford, hearts
+feel differently, adjust themselves differently before the prick
+of sorrow, and I confess I agree with Robert. There are
+places stained with the blood of my heart for ever, and
+where I could not bear to stand again. If duty called him
+to New Cross it would be otherwise, but his sister is rather
+inclined to come to us, I think, for a few weeks in the
+autumn perhaps. Only these are scarcely times for plans
+concerning foreign travel. It is something to talk of. It
+has been a great disappointment to me the not going to
+England this year, but I could not run the risk of the bitter
+pain to him. May God bless you from all pain! Love me
+and write to me, who am ever and ever your affectionate
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Jameson</i><br />
+Bagni di Lucca: August 11, 1849.<br />
+
+<p>I thank you, dearest friend, for your most affectionate
+and welcome letter would seem to come by instinct, and we
+have thanked you in our thoughts long before this moment,
+when I begin at last to write some of them. Do believe
+that to value your affection and to love you back again are
+parts of our life, and that it must be always delightful to us
+to read in your handwriting or to hear in your voice that we
+are not exiled from your life. Give us such an assurance
+whenever you can. Shall we not have it face to face at
+Florence, when the booksellers let you go? And meantime
+there is the post; do write to us.... Did you ever see
+this place, I wonder? The coolness, the charm of the
+mountains, whose very heart you seem to hear beating in
+the rush of the little river, the green silence of the chestnut
+forests, and the seclusion which anyone may make for
+himself by keeping clear of the valley-villages; all these
+things drew us. We took a delightful apartment over the
+heads of the whole world in the highest house of the Bagni
+Caldi, where only the donkeys and the <i>portantini</i> can
+penetrate, and where we sit at the open windows and hear
+nothing but the cicale. Not a mosquito! think of that!
+The thermometer ranges from sixty-eight to seventy-four,
+but the seventy-four has been a rare excess: the nights,
+mornings, and evenings are exquisitely cool. Robert and I
+go out and lose ourselves in the woods and mountains, and
+sit by the waterfalls on the starry and moonlit nights, and
+neither by night nor day have the fear of picnics before our
+eyes. We were observing the other day that we never met
+anybody except a monk girt with a rope, now and then, or
+a barefooted peasant. The sight of a pink parasol never
+startles us into unpleasant theories of comparative anatomy.
+One cause, perhaps, may be that on account of political
+matters it is a delightfully 'bad season,' but, also, we are
+too high for the ordinary walkers, who keep to the valley
+and the flatter roads. Robert is better, looking better, and
+in more healthy spirits; and we are both enjoying this
+great sea of mountains and our way of life here altogether.
+Of course, we remembered to go back to Florence for baby
+and the rest of our little establishment, and we mean to stay
+as long as we can, perhaps to the end of October. Baby
+is in the triumph of health and full-blown roses, and as
+he does not hide himself in the woods like his ancestors,
+but smiles at everybody, he is the most popular of possible
+babies.... We had him baptised before we left Florence, without
+godfathers and godmothers, in the simplicities of the French
+Lutheran Church. I gave him your kiss as a precious
+promise that you would love him one day like a true dear
+Aunt Nina; and I promise you on my part that he shall be
+taught to understand both the happiness and the honour of
+it. Robert is expecting a visit from his sister in the course
+of this autumn. She has suffered much, and the change
+will be good for her, even if, as she says, she can stay with
+us only a few weeks. With her we shall have your book, to
+be disinherited of which so long has been hard on us.
+Robert's own we have not seen yet. It must be satisfactory
+to you to have had such a clear triumph after all the dust
+and toil of the way. And now tell me, won't it be <i>necessary</i>
+for you to come again to Italy for what remains to be done?
+Poor Florence is quiet enough under the heel of Austria,
+and Leopold 'l'intrepido,' as he was happily called by a
+poet of Viareggio in a welcoming burst of inspiration, sits
+undisturbed at the Pitti. I despair of the republic in Italy,
+or rather of Italy altogether. The instructed are not
+patriotic, and the patriots are not instructed. We want not
+only a <i>man</i>, but men, and we must throw, I fear, the bones
+of their race behind us before the true deliverers can spring
+up. Still, it is not all over; there will be deliverance
+presently, but it will not be now. We are full of painful
+sympathy for poor Venice. There! why write more about
+politics? It makes us sick enough to think of Austrians in
+our Florence without writing the thought out into greater
+expansion. Only don't let the 'Times' newspaper persuade
+you that there is no stepping with impunity out of England.
+... We have 'lectures on Shakespeare' just now by a Mr.
+Stuart, who is enlightening the English barbarians at the
+lower village, and quoting Mrs. Jameson to make his
+discourse more brilliant. We like to hear 'Mrs. Jameson
+observes.' Give our love to dear Gerardine. I am anxious
+for her happiness and yours involved in it. Love and
+remember us, dearest friend.</p>
+
+<p>Your E.B.B., or rather, BA.</p>
+<div class="blkquot">
+<p>The following note is added in Mr. Browning's handwriting:</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Dear Aunt Nina,&mdash;Will there be three years before I see
+you again? And Geddie; does she not come to Italy?
+When we passed through Pisa the other day, we went to
+your old inn in love of you, and got your very room to dine
+in (the landlord is dead and gone, as is Peveruda&mdash;of the
+other house, you remember). There were the old vile
+prints, the old look-out into the garden, with its orange
+trees and painted sentinel watching them. Ba must have
+told you about our babe, and the little else there is to tell&mdash;that
+is, for <i>her</i> to tell, for she is not likely to encroach upon
+<i>my</i> story which I <i>could</i> tell of her entirely angel nature, as
+divine a heart as God ever made; I know more of her every
+day; I, who thought I knew something of her five years
+ago! I think I know you, too, so I love you and am</p>
+
+Ever yours and dear Geddie's<br />
+R.B.<br />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Bagni di Lucca: August 31, 1849.<br />
+
+<p>I told Mr. Lever what you thought of him, dearest
+friend, and then he said, all in a glow and animation, that
+you were not only his own delight but the delight of his
+children, which is affection by refraction, isn't it? Quite
+gratified he seemed by the hold of your good opinion. Not
+only is he the notability <i>par excellence</i> of these Baths of
+Lucca, where he has lived a whole year, during the snows
+upon the mountains, but he presides over the weekly balls
+at the casino where the English 'do congregate' (all except
+Robert and me), and is said to be the light of the flambeaux
+and the spring of the dancers. There is a general desolation
+when he <i>will</i> retire to play whist. In addition to
+which he really seems to be loving and loveable in his
+family. You always see him with his children and his wife;
+he drives her and her baby up and down along the only
+carriageable road of Lucca: so set down that piece of
+domestic life on the bright side in the broad charge against
+married authors; now do. I believe he is to return to
+Florence this winter with his family, having had enough of
+the mountains. Have you read 'Roland Cashel,' isn't <i>that</i>
+the name of his last novel? The 'Athenaeum' said of it
+that it was '<i>new ground</i>,' and praised it. I hear that he gets
+a hundred pounds for each monthly number. Oh, how
+glad I was to have your letter, written in such pain, read in
+such pleasure! It was only fair to tell me in the last lines
+that the face-ache was better, to keep off a fit of remorse.
+I do hope that Mr. May is not right about neuralgia, because
+that is more difficult to cure than pain which arises from
+the teeth. Tell me how you are in all ways. I look into
+your letters eagerly for news of your health, then of your
+spirits, which are a part of health. The cholera makes me
+very frightened for my dearest people in London, and
+silence, the last longer than usual, ploughs up my days
+and nights into long furrows. The disease rages in the
+neighbourhood of my husband's family, and though Wimpole
+Street has been hitherto clear, who can calculate on what
+may be? My head goes round to think of it. And papa,
+who <i>will</i> keep going into that horrible city! Even if my
+sisters and brothers should go into the country as every
+year, he will be left, he is no more movable than St.
+Paul's. My sister-in-law will probably not come to us
+as soon as she intended, through a consideration for her
+father, who ought not, Robert thinks, to stay alone in the
+midst of such contingencies, so perhaps we may go to seek
+her ourselves in the spring, if she does not seek us out
+before in Italy. God keep us all, and near to one another.
+Love runs dreadful risks in the world. Yet Love is, how
+much the best thing in the world? We have had a great
+event in our house. Baby has cut a tooth.... His little
+happy laugh is always ringing through the rooms. He is
+afraid of nobody or nothing in the world, and was in fits
+of ecstasy at the tossing of the horse's head, when he rode
+on Wilson's knee five or six miles the other day to a village
+in the mountains&mdash;screaming for joy, she said. He is not
+six months yet by a fortnight! His father loves him;
+passionately, and the sentiment is reciprocated, I assure
+you. We have had the coolest of Italian summers at these
+Baths of Lucca, the thermometer at the hottest hour of the
+hottest day only at seventy-six, and generally at sixty-eight
+or seventy. The nights invariably cool. Now the freshness
+of the air is growing almost too fresh. I only hope we shall
+be able (for the cold) to keep our intention of staying here
+till the end of October, I have enjoyed it so entirely, and
+shall be so sorry to break off this happy silence into the
+Austrian drums at poor Florence. And then we want to see
+the vintage. Some grapes are ripe already, but it is not
+vintage time. We have every kind of good fruit, great
+water-melons, which with both arms I can scarcely carry, at
+twopence halfpenny each, and figs and peaches cheap in
+proportion. And the place agrees with Baby, and has done
+good to my husband's spirits, though the only 'amusement'
+or distraction he has is looking at the mountains and
+climbing among the woods with me. Yes, we have been
+reading some French romances, 'Monte Cristo,' for instance,
+I for the second time&mdash;but I have liked it, to read it with
+him. That Dumas certainly has power; and to think of
+the scramble there was for his brains a year or two ago in
+Paris! For a man to write so much and so well together
+is a miracle. Do you mean that they have left off writing&mdash;those
+French writers&mdash;or that they have tired you out with
+writing that looks faint beside the rush of facts, as the range
+of French politics show those? Has not Eug&egrave;ne Sue been
+illustrating the passions? Somebody told me so. Do <i>you</i>
+tell me how you like the French President, and whether he
+will ever, in your mind, sit on Napoleon's throne. It
+seems to me that he has given proof, as far as the evidence
+goes, of prudence, integrity, and conscientious patriotism;
+the situation is difficult, and he fills it honorably. The
+Rome business has been miserably managed; this is the
+great blot on the character of his government. But I, for
+my own part (my husband is not so minded), do consider
+that the French motive has been good, the intention pure,
+the occupation of Rome by the Austrians being imminent
+and the French intervention the only means (with the
+exception of a European war) of saving Rome from the hoof
+of the Absolutists. At the same time if Pius IX. is the
+obstinate idiot he seems to be, good and tenderhearted man
+as he surely is, and if the old abuses are to be restored, why
+Austria might as well have done her own dirty work and
+saved French hands from the disgrace of it. It makes us
+two very angry. Robert especially is furious. We are
+not within reach of the book you speak of, 'Portraits des
+Orateurs Fran&ccedil;ais' oh, we might nearly as well live on a
+desert island as far as modern books go. And here, at
+Lucca, even Robert can't catch sight of even the 'Athenaeum.'
+We have a two-day old 'Galignani,' and think ourselves
+royally off; and then this little shop with French books in
+it, just a few, and the 'Gentilhomme Campagnard' the
+latest published. Yes, but somebody lent us the first
+volume of 'Chateaubriand's M&eacute;moires.' Have you seen
+it? Curiously uninteresting, considering 'the man and the
+hour.' He writes of his youth with a grey goose quill; the
+paper is all wrinkled. And then he is not frank; he must
+have more to tell than he tells. I looked for a more intense
+and sincere book <i>outre tombe</i> certainly. I am busy
+about my new edition, that is all at present, but some things
+are written. Good of Mr. Chorley (he is <i>good</i>) to place
+you face to face with Robert's books, and I am glad you
+like 'Colombe' and 'Luria.' Dear Mr. Kenyon's poems
+we have just received and are about to read, and I am
+delighted at a glance to see that he has inserted the
+'Gipsy Carol,' which in MS. was such a favorite of
+mine. Really, is he so rich? I am glad of it, if he is.
+Money could not be in more generous and intelligent
+hands. Dearest Miss Mitford, you are only just in being
+trustful of my affection for you. Never do I forget
+nor cease to love you. Write and tell me of your dear
+self; how you are <i>exactly</i>, and whether you have been
+at Three Mile Cross all the summer. May God bless
+you. Robert's regards. Can you read? Love a little
+your</p>
+
+<p>Ever affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Jameson</i><br />
+Bagni di Lucca: October 1, [1849].<br />
+
+<p>There seems to be a fatality about our letters, dearest
+friend, only the worst fate comes to me! I lose, and you
+are <i>near</i> losing! And I should not have liked you to lose
+any least proof of my thinking of you, lest a worst loss
+should happen to me as a consequence, even worse than
+the loss of your letters; for then, perhaps, and by degrees,
+you might leave off thinking of Robert and me, which, rich
+as we are in this mortal world, I do assure you we could
+neither of us afford.... We have had much quiet enjoyment
+here in spite of everything, read some amusing books
+(Dumas and Sue&mdash;shake your head!), and seen our child
+grow fuller of roses and understanding day by day. Before
+he was six months old he would stretch out his hands and
+his feet too, when bidden to do so, and his little mouth to
+kiss you. This is said to be a miracle of forwardness
+among the learned. He knows Robert and me quite well
+as 'Papa' and 'Mama,' and laughs for joy when he meets
+us out of doors. Robert is very fond of him, and threw
+me into a fit of hilarity the other day by springing away
+from his newspaper in an indignation against me because
+he hit his head against the floor rolling over and over. 'Oh,
+Ba, I really can't trust you!' Down Robert was on the
+carpet in a moment, to protect the precious head. He
+takes it to be made of Venetian glass, I am certain.
+We may leave this place much sooner than the end of
+October, as everything depends upon the coming in of the
+cold. It will be the end of October, won't it, before
+Gerardine can reach Florence? I wish I knew. We have
+made an excursion into the mountains, five miles deep,
+with all our household, baby and all, on horseback and
+donkeyback, and people open their eyes at our having
+performed such an exploit&mdash;I and the child. Because it is
+five miles straight up the Duomo; you wonder how any
+horse could keep its footing, the way is so precipitous, up
+the exhausted torrent courses, and with a palm's breadth
+between you and the headlong ravines. Such scenery.
+Such a congregation of mountains: looking alive in the
+stormy light we saw them by. We dined with the goats,
+and baby lay on my shawl rolling and laughing. He wasn't
+in the least tired, not he! I won't say so much for myself.
+The Mr. Stuart who lectured here on Shakespeare (I think
+I told you that) couldn't get through a lecture without quoting
+you, and wound up by a declaration that no English critic
+had done so much for the divine poet as a woman&mdash;Mrs.
+Jameson. He appears to be a cultivated and refined person,
+and especially versed in German criticism, and we mean to
+<i>use</i> his society a little when we return to Florence, where
+he resides.... What am I to say about Robert's idleness
+and mine? I scold him about it in a most anti-conjugal
+manner, but, you know, his spirits and nerves have been
+shaken of late; we must have patience. As for me, I am
+much better, and do something, really, now and then. Wait,
+and you shall have us both on you; too soon, perhaps.
+May God bless you. How are your friends? Lady Byron,
+Madame de Goethe. The dreadful cholera has made us
+anxious about England.</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot">
+<p>Mr. Browning adds the following note:</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Dear Aunt Nina,&mdash;Ba will have told you everything,
+and how we wish you and Geddie all manner of happiness.
+I hope we shall be in Florence when she passes through it.
+The place is otherwise distasteful to me, with the creeping
+curs and the floggers of the same. But the weather is
+breaking up here, and I suppose we ought to go back soon.
+Shall you indeed come to Italy next year? That will
+indeed be pleasant to expect. We hope to go to England
+in the spring. What comes of 'hoping,' however, we [know]
+by this time.</p>
+
+<p>Ever yours affectionately,<br />
+R.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Bagni di Lucca: October 2, 1849.<br />
+
+<p>Thank you, my dearest Miss Mitford: It is great
+comfort to know that you are better, and that the cholera
+does not approach your neighbourhood. My brothers and
+sisters have gone to Worthing for a few weeks; and though
+my father (dearest Papa!) is not persuadeable, I fear, into
+joining them, yet it is something to know that the horrible
+pestilence is abating in London. Oh, it has made me so
+anxious: I have caught with such a frightened haste at the
+newspaper to read the 'returns,' leaving even such subjects
+as Rome and the President's letter to quite the last, as if
+they were indifferent, or, at most, bits of Mrs. Manning's
+murder. By the way and talking of murder, how do you
+account for the crown of wickedness which England bears
+just now over the heads of the nations, in murders of all
+kinds, by poison, by pistol, by knife? In this poor
+Tuscany, which has not brains enough to govern itself, as
+you observe, and as really I can't deny, there have been
+two murders (properly so called) since we came, just three
+years ago, one from jealousy and one from revenge
+(respectable motives compared to the advantages of the
+burying societies!), and the horror on all sides was great, as
+if the crime were some rare prodigy, which, indeed, it is in
+this country. We have <i>no punishment of death</i> here,
+observe! The people are gentle, courteous, refined, and
+tenderhearted. What Balzac would call 'femmelette.' All
+Tuscany is 'Lucien' himself. The leaning to the artistic
+nature without the strength of genius implies demoralisation
+in most cases, and it is this which makes your 'good
+for nothing poets and poetesses,' about which I love so to
+battle with you. Genius, I maintain always, you know, is
+a purifying power and goes with high moral capacities.
+Well, and so you invite us home to civilisation and 'the
+&quot;Times&quot; newspaper.' We <i>mean</i> to go next spring, and shall
+certainly do so unless something happen to catch us and
+keep us in a net. But always something does happen: and
+I have so often built upon seeing England, and been
+precipitated from the fourth storey, that I have learnt to
+think warily now. I hunger and thirst for the sight of some
+faces; must I not long, do you think, to see your face?
+And then, I shall be properly proud to show my child to
+those who loved me before him. He is beginning to
+understand everything&mdash;chiefly in Italian, of course, as his
+nurse talks in her sleep, I fancy, and can't be silent a
+second in the day&mdash;and when told to 'dare un bacio a
+questo povero Flush,' he mixes his little face with Flush's
+ears in a moment.... You would wonder to see Flush
+just now. He suffered this summer from the climate
+somewhat as usual, though not nearly as much as usual;
+and having been insulted oftener than once by a supposition
+of 'mange,' Robert wouldn't bear it any longer (he is as
+fond of Flush as I am), and, taking a pair of scissors, clipped
+him all over into the likeness of a lion, much to his
+advantage in both health and appearance. In the winter
+he is always quite well; but the heat and the fleas together
+are too much in the summer. The affection between baby
+and him is not equal, baby's love being far the stronger.
+He, on the other hand, looks down upon baby. What bad
+news you tell me of our French writers! What! Is it
+possible that Dumas even is struck dumb by the revolution?
+His first works are so incomparably the worst that I can't
+admit your theory of the 'first runnings.' So of Balzac.
+So of Sue! George Sand is probably writing 'banners'
+for the 'Reds,' which, considering the state of parties
+in France, does not really give me a higher opinion of
+her intelligence or virtue. Ledru Rollin's<a name="FNanchor_190_190"></a><a href="#Footnote_190_190"><sup>[190]</sup></a> <i>confidante</i> and
+councillor can't occupy an honorable position, and I am
+sorry, for her sake and ours. When we go to Florence we
+must try to get the 'Portraits' and Lamartine's autobiography,
+which I still more long to see. So, two women
+were in love with him, were they? That must be a comfort
+to look back upon, now, when nobody will have him. I
+see by extracts from his newspaper in Galignani that he
+can't be accused of temporising with the Socialists any
+longer, whatever other charge may be brought against him:
+and if, as he says, it was he who made the French republic,
+he is by no means irreproachable, having made a bad and
+false thing. The President's letter about Rome<a name="FNanchor_191_191"></a><a href="#Footnote_191_191"><sup>[191]</sup></a> has
+delighted us. A letter worth writing and reading! We
+read it first in the Italian papers (long before it was printed
+in Paris), and the amusing thing was that where he speaks
+of the 'hostile influences' (of the cardinals) they had misprinted
+it '<i>orribili</i> influenze,' which must have turned still
+colder the blood in the veins of Absolutist readers. The
+misprint was not corrected until long after&mdash;more than a
+week, I think. The Pope is just a pope; and, since you
+give George Sand credit for having known it, I am the more
+vexed that Blackwood (under 'orribili influenze') did not
+publish the poem I wrote two years ago,<a name="FNanchor_192_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_192_192"><sup>[192]</sup></a> in the full glare
+and burning of the Pope-enthusiasm, which Robert and I
+never caught for a moment. Then, <i>I</i> might have passed a
+little for a prophetess as well as George Sand! Only, to
+confess a truth, the same poem would have proved how fairly
+I was taken in by our Tuscan Grand Duke. Oh, the traitor!</p>
+
+<p>I saw the 'Ambarvalia'<a name="FNanchor_193_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_193_193"><sup>[193]</sup></a> reviewed somewhere&mdash;I fancy
+in the 'Spectator '&mdash;and was not much struck by the
+extracts. They may, however, have been selected without
+much discrimination, and probably were. I am very glad
+that you like the gipsy carol in dear Mr. Kenyon's volume,
+because it is, and was in MS., a great favorite of mine.
+There are excellent things otherwise, as must be when he
+says them: one of the most radiant of benevolences with
+one of the most refined of intellects! How the paper
+seems to dwindle as I would fain talk on more. I have
+performed a great exploit, ridden on a donkey five miles
+deep into the mountains to an almost inaccessible volcanic
+ground not far from the stars. Robert on horseback, and
+Wilson and the nurse (with baby) on other donkeys;
+guides, of course. We set off at eight in the morning and
+returned at six P.M., after dining on the mountain pinnacle,
+I dreadfully tired, but the child laughing as usual, and
+burnt Brick-colour for all bad effect. No horse or ass,
+untrained to the mountains, could have kept foot a moment
+where we penetrated, and even as it was one could not
+help the natural thrill. No road except the bed of exhausted
+torrents above and through the chestnut forests, and
+precipitous beyond what you would think possible for
+ascent or descent. Ravines tearing the ground to pieces
+under your feet. The scenery, sublime and wonderful,
+satisfied us wholly, however, as we looked round on the
+world of innumerable mountains bound faintly with the
+grey sea, and not a human habitation. I hope you will go
+to London this winter; it will be good for you, it seems to
+me. Take care of yourself, my much and ever loved friend!
+I love you and think of you indeed. Write of your health,
+remembering this,</p>
+
+<p>And your affectionate,<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>My husband's regards always. You had better, I think,
+direct to <i>Florence</i>, as we shall be there in the course of
+October.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<p>To Florence, accordingly, they returned in October, and
+settled down once more in Casa Guidi for the winter.
+Mrs. Browning's principal literary occupation at this time
+was the preparation of a new edition of her poems, including
+nearly all the contents of the 'Seraphim' volume of 1838,
+more or less revised, as well as the 'Poems' of 1844. This
+edition, published in 1850, has formed the basis of all subsequent
+editions of her poems. Meanwhile her husband was
+engaged in the preparation of 'Christmas Eve and Easter
+Day,' which was also published in the course of 1850.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: December I, 1849.<br />
+
+<p>My ever loved friend, you will have wondered at this
+unusual silence; and so will my sisters to whom I wrote
+just now, after a pause as little in my custom. It was not
+the fault of my head and heart, but of this unruly body,
+which has been laid up again in the way of all flesh of
+mine....</p>
+
+<p>I am well again now, only obliged to keep quiet and
+give up my grand walking excursions, which poor Robert
+used to be so boastful of. If he is vain about anything in
+the world, it is about my improved health, and I used to
+say to him, 'But you needn't talk so much to people of
+how your wife walked here with you and there with you, as
+if a wife with a pair of feet was a miracle of nature.' Now
+the poor feet have fallen into their old ways again. Ah,
+but if God pleases it won't be for long....</p>
+
+<p>The American authoress, Miss Fuller, with whom we
+had had some slight intercourse by letter, and who has been
+at Rome during the siege, as a devoted friend of the republicans
+and a meritorious attendant on the hospitals, has
+taken us by surprise at Florence, retiring from the Roman
+field with a husband and child above a year old. Nobody
+had even suspected a word of this underplot, and her
+American friends stood in mute astonishment before this
+apparition of them here. The husband is a Roman marquis,
+appearing amiable and gentlemanly, and having fought well,
+they say, at the siege, but with no pretension to cope with
+his wife on any ground appertaining to the intellect. She
+talks, and he listens. I always wonder at that species of
+marriage; but people are so different in their matrimonial
+ideals that it may answer sometimes. This Mdme.
+Ossoli saw George Sand in Paris&mdash;was at one of her
+soir&eacute;es&mdash;and called her 'a magnificent creature.' The
+soir&eacute;e was 'full of rubbish' in the way of its social composition,
+which George Sand likes, <i>nota bene</i>. If Mdme.
+Ossoli called it '<i>rubbish</i>' it must have been really
+rubbish&mdash;not expressing anything conventionally so&mdash;she being
+one of the out and out <i>Reds</i> and scorners of grades of
+society. She said that she did not see Balzac. Balzac
+went into the world scarcely at all, frequenting the lowest
+caf&eacute;s, so that it was difficult to track him out. Which
+information I receive doubtingly. The rumours about
+Balzac with certain parties in Paris are not likely to be
+too favorable nor at all reliable, I should fancy; besides,
+I never entertain disparaging thoughts of my demi-gods
+unless they should be forced upon me by evidence you
+must know. I have not made a demi-god of Louis
+Napoleon, by the way&mdash;no, and I don't mean it. I expect
+some better final result than he has just proved himself to
+be of the French Revolution, with all its bitter and cruel
+consequences hitherto, so I can't quite agree with you.
+Only so far, that he has shown himself up to this point to be
+an upright man with noble impulses, and that I give him
+much of my sympathy and respect in the difficult position
+held by him. A man of genius he does not seem to be&mdash;and
+what, after all, will he manage to do at Rome? I
+don't take up the frantic Republican cry in Italy. I know
+too well the want of knowledge and the consequent want of i
+effective faith and energy among the Italians; but there
+is a stain upon France in the present state of the Roman
+affair, and I don't shut my eyes to that either. To cast
+Rome helpless and bound into the hands of the priests is
+dishonor to the actors, however we consider the act; and
+for the sake of France, even more than for the sake of Italy,
+I yearn to see the act cancelled. Oh, we have had the
+sight of Clough and Burbidge, at last. Clough has more
+thought, Burbidge more music; but I am disappointed in
+the book on the whole. What I like infinitely better is
+Clough's 'Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich,' a 'long vacation
+pastoral,' written in loose and more-than-need-be unmusical
+hexameters, but full of vigour and freshness, and with
+passages and indeed whole scenes of great beauty and
+eloquence. It seems to have been written before the other
+poems. Try to get it, if you have not read it already. I
+feel certain you will like it and think all the higher of the
+poet. Oh, it strikes both Robert and me as being worth
+twenty of the other little book, with its fragmentary,
+dislocated, unartistic character. Arnold's volume has two
+good poems in it: 'The Sick King of Bokhara' and 'The
+Deserted Merman.' I like them both. But none of these
+writers are <i>artists</i>, whatever they may be in future days.
+Have you read 'Shirley,' and is it as good as 'Jane Eyre'?
+We heard not long since that Mr. Chorley had discovered
+the author, <i>the</i> 'Currer Bell.' A woman, most certainly.
+We hear, too, that three large editions of the 'Princess' are
+sold. So much the happier for England and poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Dearest dear Miss Mitford, mind you write to me, and
+don't pay me out in my own silence! <i>You</i> have not been
+ill, I hope and trust. Write and tell me every little thing
+of yourself&mdash;how you are, and whether there is still danger
+of your being uprooted from Three Mile Cross. I love
+and think of you always. Fancy Flush being taken in the
+light of a rival by baby! Oh, baby was quite jealous the
+other day, and strugggled and kicked to get to me because
+he saw Flush leaning his pretty head on my lap. There's
+a great strife for privileges between those two. May God
+bless you! My husband's kind regards always, while I
+am your most</p>
+
+<p>Affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: January 9, 1850.<br />
+
+<p>Thank you, ever dearest Miss Mitford, for this welcome
+letter written on your birthday! May the fear of small-pox
+have passed away long before now, and every hope and
+satisfaction have strengthened and remained!...</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you and give you many happy years,
+you who can do so much towards the happiness of others.
+May I not answer for my own?...</p>
+
+<p>Little Wiedeman began to crawl on Christmas Day.
+Before, he used to roll. We throw things across the floor
+and he crawls for them like a little dog, on all fours....</p>
+
+<p>He has just caught a cold, which I make more fuss
+about than I ought, say the wise; but I can't get resigned
+to the association of any sort of suffering with his laughing
+dimpled little body&mdash;it is the blowing about in the wind
+of such a heap of roses. So you prefer 'Shirley' to 'Jane
+Eyre'! Yet I hear from nobody such an opinion; yet you
+are very probably right, for 'Shirley' may suffer from the
+natural reaction of the public mind. What you tell me of
+Tennyson interests me as everything about him must. I
+like to think of him digging gardens&mdash;room for cabbage and
+all. At the same time, what he says about the public
+'<i>hating</i> poetry' is certainly not a word for Tennyson.
+Perhaps no true poet, having claims upon attention <i>solely</i>
+through his poetry, has attained so certain a success with
+such short delay. Instead of being pelted (as nearly every
+true poet has been), he stands already on a pedestal, and is
+recognised as a master spirit not by a coterie but by the
+great public. Three large editions of the 'Princess' have
+already been sold. If he isn't satisfied after all, I think
+he is wrong. Divine poet as he is, and no laurel being
+too leafy for him, yet he must be an unreasonable
+man, and not understanding of the growth of the laurel
+trees and the nature of a reading public. With regard to
+the other garden-digger, dear Mr. Home, I wish as you do
+that I could hear something satisfactory of him. I wrote
+from Lucca in the summer, and have no answer. The
+latest word concerning him is the announcement in the
+'Athenaeum' of a third edition of his 'Gregory the Seventh,'
+which we were glad to see, but very, very glad we should
+be to have news of his prosperity in the flesh as well as in
+the <i>litterae scriptae</i>....</p>
+
+<p>I have not been out of doors these two months, but
+people call me 'looking well,' and a newly married niece of
+Miss Bayley's, the accomplished Miss Thomson, who has
+become the wife of Dr. Emil Braun (the learned German
+secretary of the Archaeological Society), and just passed
+through Florence on her way to Rome, where they are to
+reside, declared that the change she saw in me was
+miraculous&mdash;'wonderful indeed.' I took her to look at Wiedeman
+in his cradle, fast asleep, and she won my heart (over again,
+for always she was a favorite of mine) by exclaiming at
+his prettiness. Charmed, too, we both were with Dr.
+Braun&mdash;I mean Robert and I were charmed. He has a mixture
+of fervour and simplicity which is still more delightfully
+picturesque in his foreign English. Oh, he speaks English
+perfectly, only with an obvious accent enough. I am sure
+we should be cordial friends, if the lines had fallen to us in
+the same pleasant places; but he is fixed at Rome, and we
+are half afraid of the enervating effects of the Roman
+climate on the constitutions of children. Tell me, do you
+hear often from Mr. Chorley? It quite pains us to observe
+from his manner of writing the great depression of his
+spirits. His mother was ill in the summer, but plainly the
+sadness does not arise entirely or chiefly from this cause.
+He seems to me over-worked, taxed in the spirit. I advise
+nobody to give up work; but that 'Athenaeum' labour is a
+sort of treadmill discipline in which there is no progress,
+nor triumph, and I do wish he would give that up and
+come out to us with a new set of anvils and hammers.
+Only, of course, he couldn't do it, even if he would, while
+there is illness in his family. May there be a whole sun
+of success shining on the new play! Robert is engaged on
+a poem,<a name="FNanchor_194_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_194_194"><sup>[194]</sup></a> and I am busy with my edition. So much to
+correct, I find, and many poems to add. Plainly 'Jane
+Eyre' was by a woman. It used to astound me when
+sensible people said otherwise. Write to me, will you? I
+long to hear again. Tell me everything of yourself; accept
+my husband's true regards, and think of me as your</p>
+
+<p>Ever affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Miss Browning</i><br />
+Florence: January 29, 1850.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Sarianna,&mdash;I have waited to thank you for
+your great and ready kindness about the new edition, until
+now when it is fairly on its way to England. Thank you,
+thank you! I am only afraid, not that you will find anything
+too 'learned,' as you suggest, but a good many things too
+careless, I was going to say, only Robert, with various deep
+sighs for 'his poor Sarianna,' devoted himself during several
+days to rearranging my arrangements, and simplifying my
+complications. It was the old story of Order and Disorder
+over again. He pulled out the knotted silks with an indefatigable
+patience, so that really you will owe to <i>him</i> every
+moment of ease and facility which may be enjoyable in the
+course of the work. I am afraid that at the easiest you
+will find it a vexatious business, but I throw everything on
+your kindness, and am not distrustful on such a point of
+weights and measures.</p>
+
+<p>Your letter was full of sad news. Robert was deeply
+affected at the account of the illness of his cousin&mdash;was in
+tears before he could end the letter. I do hope that in a
+day or two we may hear from you that the happy change
+was confirmed as time passed on. I do hope so; it will be
+joy, not merely to Robert, but to me, for indeed I never
+forget the office which his kindness performed for both of
+us at a crisis ripe with all the happiness of my life.</p>
+
+<p>Then it was sad to hear of your dear father suffering
+from lumbago. May the last of it have passed away long
+before you get what I am writing! Tell him with my love
+that Wiedeman shall hear some day (if we all live) the verses
+he wrote to him; and I have it in my head that little
+Wiedeman will be very sensitive to verses and kindness
+too&mdash;he likes to hear anything rhythmical and musical, and he
+likes to be petted and kissed&mdash;the most affectionate little
+creature he is&mdash;sitting on my knee, while I give him books
+to turn the leaves over (a favorite amusement), every two
+minutes he puts up his little rosebud of a mouth to have a
+kiss. His cold is quite gone, and he has taken advantage
+of the opportunity to grow still fatter; as to his activities,
+there's no end to them. His nurse and I agree that he
+doesn't remain quiet a moment in the day....<a name="FNanchor_195_195"></a><a href="#Footnote_195_195"><sup>[195]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>Now the love of nephews can't bear any more, Sarianna,
+can it? Only your father will take my part and say that it
+isn't tedious&mdash;beyond pardoning.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless both of you, and enable you to send a
+brighter letter next time. Robert will be very anxious.</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate sister<br />
+BA.</p>
+
+Mention yourself, <i>do</i>.<br />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: February 18, 1850.<br />
+
+<p>Ever dearest Miss Mitford, you <i>always</i> give me pleasure,
+so for love's sake don't say that you 'seldom give it,' and
+such a magical act as conjuring up for me the sight of a
+new poem by Alfred Tennyson<a name="FNanchor_196_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_196_196"><sup>[196]</sup></a> is unnecessary to prove
+you a right beneficent enchantress. Thank you, thank you.
+We are not so unworthy of your redundant kindness as to
+abuse it by a word spoken or sign signified. You may
+trust us indeed. But now you know how free and sincere
+I am always! Now tell me. Apart from the fact of this lyric's
+being a fragment of fringe from the great poet's 'singing
+clothes' (as Leigh Hunt says somewhere), and apart from a
+certain sweetness and rise and fall in the rhythm, do you
+really see much for admiration in the poem? Is it <i>new</i> in,
+any way? I admire Tennyson with the most worshipping
+part of the multitude, as you are aware, but I do <i>not</i>
+perceive much in this lyric, which strikes me, and Robert
+also (who goes with me throughout), as quite inferior to the
+other lyrical snatches in the 'Princess.' By the way, if he
+introduces it in the 'Princess,' it will be the only <i>rhymed</i>
+verse in the work. Robert thinks that he was thinking of
+the Rhine echoes in writing it, and not of any heard in his
+Irish travels. I hear that Tennyson has taken rooms above
+Mr. Forster's in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and is going to try a
+London life. So says Mr. Kenyon.... I am writing with
+an easier mind than when I wrote last, for I was for a little
+time rendered very unhappy (so unhappy that I couldn't
+touch on the subject, which is always the way with me when
+pain passes a certain point), by hearing accidentally that
+papa was unwell and looking altered. My sister persisted
+in replying to my anxieties that they were unfounded, that
+I was quite absurd, indeed, in being anxious at all; only
+people are not generally reformed from their absurdities
+through being scolded for them. Now, however, it
+really appears that the evil has passed. He left his doctor
+who had given him lowering medicines, and, coincidently
+with the leaving, he has recovered looks and health altogether.
+Arabel says that I should think he was looking
+as well as ever, if I saw him, and that appetite and spirits
+are even redundant. Thank God.... To have this good
+news has made me very happy, and I overflow to you accordingly.
+Oh, there is pain enough from that quarter, without
+hearing of his being out of health. I write to him continually
+and he does not now return my letters, which is a
+melancholy something gained. Now enough of such a
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>I certainly don't think that the qualities, half savage and
+half freethinking, expressed in 'Jane Eyre' are likely to suit
+a model governess or schoolmistress; and it amuses me to
+consider them in that particular relation. Your account
+falls like dew upon the parched curiosity of some of our
+friends here, to whom (as mere gossip, which did not leave
+you responsible) I couldn't resist the temptation of
+communicating it. People <i>are</i> so curious&mdash;even here among
+the Raffaels&mdash;about this particular authorship, yet nobody
+seems to have read 'Shirley'; we are too slow in getting
+new books. First Galignani has to pirate them himself, and
+then to hand us over the spoils. By the way, there's to be
+an international copyright, isn't there? Something is talked
+of it in the 'Athenaeum.' Meanwhile the Americans have
+already reprinted my husband's new edition. 'Landthieves,
+I mean pirates.' I used to take that for a slip of the pen in
+Shakespeare; but it was a slip of the pen into prophecy.
+Sorry I am at Mrs. &mdash;&mdash; falling short of your warm-hearted
+ideas about her! Can you understand a woman's
+hating a girl because it is not a boy&mdash;her first child too?
+I understand it so little that scarcely I can believe it. Some
+women <i>have</i>, however, undeniably an indifference to children,
+just as many men have, though it must be unnatural
+and morbid in both sexes. Men often affect it&mdash;very foolishly,
+if they count upon the scenic effects; affectation never
+succeeds well, and this sort of affectation is peculiarly
+unbecoming, except in old bachelors, for there is a pathetic
+side to the question so viewed. For my part and my
+husband's, we may be frank and say that we have caught
+up our parental pleasures with a sort of passion. But then,
+Wiedeman is such a darling little creature; who <i>could</i> help
+loving the child?... Little darling! So much mischief
+was not often put before into so small a body. Fancy the
+child's upsetting the water jugs till he is drenched (which
+charms him), pulling the brooms to pieces, and having
+serious designs upon cutting up his frocks with a pair of
+scissors. He laughs like an imp when he can succeed in
+doing anything wrong. Now, see what you get, in return
+for your kindness of 'liking to hear about' him! Almost I
+have the grace to be ashamed a little. Just before I had
+your letter we sent my new edition to England. I gave
+much time to the revision, and did not omit reforming
+some of the rhymes, although you must consider that the
+irregularity of these in a certain degree rather falls in with
+my system than falls out through my carelessness. So
+much the worse, you will say, when a person is <i>systematically</i>
+bad. The work will include the best poems of the 'Seraphim'
+volume, strengthened and improved as far as the circumstances
+admitted of. I had not the heart to leave out the
+wretched sonnet to yourself, for your dear sake; but I rewrote
+the latter half of it (for really it wasn't a sonnet at all,
+and 'Una and her lion' are rococo), and so placed it with
+my other poems of the same class. There are some new,
+verses also.<a name="FNanchor_197_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_197_197"><sup>[197]</sup></a> The Miss Hardings I have seen, and talked
+with them of <i>you</i>, a sure way of finding them delightful.
+But, my dearest friend, I shall not see any of the Trollope
+party&mdash;it is not likely. You can scarcely image to yourself
+the retired life we live, or how we have retreated from the
+kind advances of the English society here. Now people
+seem to understand that we are to be left alone; that
+nothing is to be made of us. The fact is, we are not like
+our child, who kisses everybody who smiles at him! Neither
+my health nor our pecuniary circumstances, nor our inclinations
+perhaps, would admit of our entering into English
+society here, which is kept up much after the old English
+models, with a proper disdain for Continental simplicities
+of expense. We have just heard from Father Prout, who
+often, he says, sees Mr. Horne, 'who is as dreamy as ever.'
+So glad I am, for I was beginning to be uneasy about him.
+He has not answered my letter from Lucca. The verses
+in the 'Athenaeum'<a name="FNanchor_198_198"></a><a href="#Footnote_198_198"><sup>[198]</sup></a> are on Sophia Cottrell's child.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you, dearest friend. Speak of <i>yourself</i>
+more particularly to your ever affectionate</p>
+
+<p>E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>Robert's kindest regards. Tell us of Mr. Chorley's
+play, do.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Florence: February 22, 1850.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Mrs. Martin,&mdash;Have you wondered that I
+did not write before? It was not that I did not thank
+you in my heart for your kind, considerate letter, but I was
+unconquerably uncomfortable about papa; and, what with
+the weather, which always has me in its power somehow, and
+other things, I fell into a dislike of writing, which I hope
+you didn't mistake for ingratitude, because it was not in the
+least like the same fault. Now the severe weather (such
+weather for Italy!) has broken up, and I am relieved in all
+ways, having received the most happy satisfactory news
+from Wimpole Street, and the assurance from my sisters
+that if I were to see papa I should think him looking as well
+as ever. He grew impatient with Dr. Elliotson's medicines
+which, it appears, were of a very lowering character&mdash;suddenly
+gave them up, and as suddenly recovered his looks and all the rest,
+and everybody at home considers him to be <i>quite well</i>. It
+has relieved me of a mountain's weight, and I thank God with great
+joy. Oh, you must have understood how natural it was for me to be
+unhappy under the other circumstances. But if you thought, dearest
+friend, that <i>they</i> were necessary to induce me to write to
+him the humblest and most beseeching of letters, you do
+not know how I feel his alienation or my own love for him.
+I With regard to my brothers, it is quite different, though
+even towards <i>them</i> I may faithfully say that my affection
+has borne itself higher than my pride. But as to papa, I
+have never contended about the right or the wrong, I have
+never irritated him by seeming to suppose that his severity
+to me has been more than justice. I have confined myself
+simply to a supplication for&mdash;his forgiveness of what he
+called, in his own words, the only fault of my life towards
+him, and an expression of the love which even I must feel
+I for him, whether he forgives me or not. This has been
+done in letter after letter, and they are not sent back&mdash;it is
+all. In my last letter, I ventured to ask him to let it be an
+understood thing that he should before the world, and to
+every practical purpose, act out his idea of justice by
+excluding me formally, me and mine, from every advantage
+he intended his other children&mdash;that, having so been
+just, he might afford to be merciful by giving me his
+forgiveness and affection&mdash;all I asked and desired. My
+husband and I had talked this over again and again; only
+it was a difficult thing to say, you see. At last I took
+courage and said it, because, doing it, papa might seem
+to himself to reconcile his notion of strict justice, and
+whatever remains of pity and tenderness might still be in
+his heart towards me, if there are any such. I <i>know</i> he
+has strong feelings at bottom&mdash;otherwise, should I love him
+so?&mdash;but he has adopted a bad system, and he (as well as
+I) is crushed by it.... If I were to write to you the
+political rumours we hear every day, you would scarcely
+think our situation improved in safety by the horrible
+Austrian army. Florence bristles with cannon on all sides,
+and at the first movement we are promised to be bombarded.
+On the other hand, if the red republicans get uppermost
+there will be a universal massacre; not a priest, according
+to their own profession, will be left alive in Italy. The
+constitutional party hope they are gaining strength, but the
+progress which depends on intellectual growth must necessarily
+be slow. That the Papacy has for ever lost its
+prestige and power over souls is the only evident truth;
+bright and strong enough to cling to. I hear even devout
+women say: 'This cursed Pope! it's all his fault.' Protestant
+places of worship are thronged with Italian faces, and the
+minister of the Scotch church at Leghorn has been
+threatened with exclusion from the country if he admits
+Tuscans to the church communion. Politically speaking,
+much will depend upon France, and I have strong hope for
+France, though it is so strictly the fashion to despair of her.
+Tell me dear Mr. Martin's impression and your own&mdash;everything
+is good that comes from you. But most <i>particularly</i>,
+tell me how you both are&mdash;tell me whether you are strong
+again, dearest Mrs. Martin, for indeed I do not like to
+hear of your being in the least like an invalid. Do speak
+of yourself a little more. Do you know, you are very
+unsatisfactory as a letter-writer when you write about
+yourself&mdash;the reason being that you never do write about
+yourself except by the suddenest snatches, when you can't
+possibly help the reference....</p>
+
+<p>Robert sends his true regards with those of your<br />
+Gratefully affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mrs. Jameson</i><br />
+April 2, [1850].<br />
+
+<p>You have perhaps thought us ungrateful people, my ever
+dear friend, for this long delay in thanking you for your
+beautiful and welcome present.<a name="FNanchor_199_199"></a><a href="#Footnote_199_199"><sup>[199]</sup></a> Here is the truth.
+Though we had the books from Rome last month, they
+were snatched from us by impatient hands before we had
+finished the first volume. The books are hungered and
+thirsted for in Florence, and, although the English reading
+club has them, they can't go fast enough from one to
+another. Four of our friends entreated us for the reversion,
+and although it really is only just that we should be let
+read our own books first, yet Robert's generosity can't resist
+the need of this person who is 'going away,' and of that
+person who is 'so particularly anxious'&mdash;for particular
+reasons perhaps&mdash;so we renounce the privilege you gave us
+(with the pomps of this world) and are still waiting to
+finish even the first volume. Our cultivated friends the
+Ogilvys, who had the work from us earliest, because they
+were going to Naples, were charmed with it. Mr. Kirkup
+the artist, who disputes with Mr. Bezzi the glory of finding
+Dante's portrait&mdash;yes, and breathes fire in the dispute&mdash;has
+it now. Madame Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, the American
+authoress, who brought from the siege of Rome a noble
+marquis as her husband, asks for it. And your adorer
+Mr. Stuart, who has lectured upon Shakespeare all the
+winter, entreats for it. So when we shall be free to enjoy
+it thoroughly for ourselves remains doubtful. Robert
+promises every day, 'You shall have it next, certainly,' and
+I only hope you will put him and me in your next edition
+of the martyrs, for such a splendid exercise of the gifts
+of self-renunciation. But don't fancy that we have not
+been delighted with the sight of the books, with your
+kindness, and besides with the impressions gathered from
+a rapid examination of the qualities of the work. It
+seems to us in every way a valuable and most interesting
+work; it must render itself a <i>necessity</i> for art students,
+and general readers and seers of pictures like me, who
+carry rather sentiment than science into the consideration
+of such subjects. We much admire your introduction&mdash;excellent
+in all ways, besides the grace and eloquence.
+Altogether, the work must set you higher with a high class
+of the public, and I congratulate you on what is the gain of
+all of us. Robert has begun a little pencil list of trifling
+criticisms he means to finish. We both cry aloud at what
+you say of Guercino's angels, and never would have said if
+you had been to Fano and seen his divine picture of the
+'Guardian Angel,' which affects me every time I think of it.
+Our little Wiedeman had his part of pleasure in the book
+by being let look at the engravings. He screamed for joy
+at the miracle of so many bird-men, and kissed some of
+them very reverentially, which is his usual way of expressing
+admiration....</p>
+
+<p>Whether you will like Robert's new book I don't know,
+but I am sure you will admit the originality and power in it.
+I wish we had the option of giving it to you, but Chapman
+&amp; Hall never seem to think of our giving copies away,
+nor leave them at our disposal. There is nothing <i>Italian</i>
+in the book; poets are apt to be most present with the
+distant. A remark of Wilson's<a name="FNanchor_200_200"></a><a href="#Footnote_200_200"><sup>[200]</sup></a> used to strike me as
+eminently true&mdash;that the perfectest descriptive poem (descriptive
+of rural scenery) would <i>be</i> naturally produced in a
+London cellar. I have read 'Shirley' lately; it is not equal
+to 'Jane Eyre' in spontaneousness and earnestness. I
+found it heavy, I confess, though in the mechanical part of
+the writing&mdash;the compositional <i>savoir faire</i>&mdash;there is an
+advance. Robert has exhumed some French books, just
+now, from a little circulating library which he had not tried,
+and we have been making ourselves uncomfortable over
+Balzac's 'Cousin Pons.' But what a wonderful writer he
+is! Who else could have taken such a subject, out of the
+lowest mud of humanity, and glorified and consecrated it?
+He is wonderful&mdash;there is not another word for him&mdash;profound,
+as Nature is. S I complain of Florence for the want of
+books. We have to dig and dig before we can get anything
+new, and <i>I</i> can read the newspapers only through
+Robert's eyes, who only can read them at Vieusseux's in a
+room sacred from the foot of woman. And this isn't always
+satisfactory to me, as whenever he falls into a state of
+disgust with any political <i>r&eacute;gime</i>, he throws the whole
+subject over and won't read a word more about it.
+Every now and then, for instance, he ignores France
+altogether, and I, who am more tolerant and more curious,
+find myself suspended over an hiatus <i>(valde deflendus</i>), and
+what's to be said and done? M. Thiers' speech&mdash;'Thiers
+is a rascal; I make a point of not reading one word said
+by M. Thiers.' M. Prudhon&mdash;'Prudhon is a madman;
+who cares for Prudhon?' The President&mdash;'The President's
+an ass; <i>he</i> is not worth thinking of.' And so we treat of
+politics.</p>
+
+<p>I wish you would write to us a little oftener (or rather, a
+good deal) and tell us much of yourself. It made me very
+sorry that you should be suffering in the grief of your
+sister&mdash;you whose sympathies are so tender and quick! May it
+be better with you now! Mention Lady Byron. I shall
+be glad to hear that she is stronger notwithstanding this
+cruel winter. We have lovely weather here now, and I am
+quite well and able to walk out, and little Wiedeman rolls
+with Flush on the grass of the Cascine. Dear kind Wilson
+is doatingly fond of the child, and sometimes gives it as
+her serious opinion that 'there never <i>was</i> such a child
+before.' Of course I don't argue the point much. Now,
+will you write to us? Speak of your plans particularly when
+you do. We have taken this apartment on for another
+year from May. May God bless you! Robert unites in
+affectionate thanks and thoughts of all kinds, with your</p>
+
+<p>E.B.B.&mdash;rather, BA.</p>
+
+<p>This letter has waited some days to be sent away, as you
+will see by the date.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>At the end of March 1850, the long-deferred marriage of
+Mrs. Browning's sister, Henrietta, to Captain Surtees Cook
+took place. It is of interest here mainly as illustrating
+Mr. Barrett's behaviour to his daughters. An application
+for his consent only elicited the pronouncement, 'If
+Henrietta marries you, she turns her back on this house
+for ever,' and a letter to Henrietta herself reproaching
+her with the 'insult' she had offered him in asking his
+consent when she had evidently made up her mind to the
+conclusion, and declaring that, if she married, her name
+should never again be mentioned in his presence. The
+marriage having thereupon taken place, his decision was
+forthwith put into practice, and a second child was thenceforward
+an exile from her father's house.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: [end of] April 1850.<br />
+
+<p>You will have seen in the papers, dearest friend, the
+marriage of my sister Henrietta, and will have understood
+why I was longer silent than usual. Indeed, the event
+has much moved me, and so much of the emotion was
+painful&mdash;painfulness being inseparable from events of the sort
+in our family&mdash;that I had to make an effort to realise to myself
+the reasonable degree of gladness and satisfaction in her release
+from a long, anxious, transitional state, and her prospect of
+happiness with a man who has loved her constantly and who
+is of an upright, honest, reliable, and religious mind. Our
+father's objections were to his Tractarian opinions and insufficient
+income. I have no sympathy myself with Tractarian
+opinions, but I cannot under the circumstances think an
+objection of the kind tenable by a third person, and in truth
+we all know that if it had not been this objection, it would
+have been another&mdash;there was no escape any way. An
+engagement of five years and an attachment still longer
+were to have some results; and I can't regret, or indeed do
+otherwise than approve from my heart, what she has done
+from hers. Most of her friends and relatives have considered
+that there was no choice, and that her step is abundantly
+justified. At the same time, I thank God that a letter sent
+to me to ask my advice never reached me (the <i>second</i> letter
+of my sisters' lost, since I left them), because no advice
+<i>ought</i> to be given on any subject of the kind, and because I,
+especially, should have shrunk from accepting such a responsibility.
+So I only heard of the marriage three days before
+it took place&mdash;no, four days before&mdash;and was upset, as you
+may suppose, by the sudden news. Captain Surtees Cook's
+sister was one of the bridesmaids, and his brother performed
+the ceremony. The <i>means</i> are very small of course&mdash;he has
+not much, and my sister has nothing&mdash;still it seems to me
+that they will have enough to live prudently on, and he looks
+out for a further appointment. Papa 'will never again let her
+name be mentioned in his hearing,' he <i>says</i>, but we must
+hope. The dreadful business passed off better on the whole
+than poor Arabel expected, and things are going on as
+quietly as usual in Wimpole Street now. I feel deeply for
+<i>her</i>, who in her pure disinterestedness just pays the price
+and suffers the loss. She represents herself, however, to be
+relieved at the crisis being passed. I earnestly hope for her
+sake that we may be able to get to England this year&mdash;a sight
+of us will be some comfort. Henrietta is to live at Taunton
+for the present, as he has a military situation there, and they
+are preparing for a round of visits among their many friends
+who are anxious to have them previous to their settling.
+All this, you see, will throw me back with papa, even if I
+can be supposed to have gained half a step, and I doubt it.
+Oh yes, dearest Miss Mitford. I have indeed again and
+again thought of your 'Emily,' stripping the situation of
+'the favour and prettiness' associated with that heroine.
+Wiedeman might compete, though, in darlingness with the
+child, as the poem shows him. Still, I can accept no omen.
+My heart sinks when I dwell upon peculiarities difficult to
+analyse. I love him very deeply. When I write to him, I
+lay myself at his feet. Even if I had gained half a step (and
+I doubt it, as I said), see how I must be thrown back by the
+indisposition to receive others. But I cannot write of this
+subject. Let us change it....</p>
+
+<p>Madame Ossoli sails for America in a few days, with the
+hope of returning to Italy, and indeed I cannot believe that
+her Roman husband will be easily naturalised among the
+Yankees. A very interesting person she is, far better than
+her writings&mdash;thoughtful, spiritual in her habitual mode of
+mind; not only exalted, but <i>exalt&eacute;e</i> in her opinions, and yet
+calm in manner. We shall be sorry to lose her. We have
+lost, besides, our friends Mr. and Mrs. Ogilvy, cultivated and
+refined people: they occupied the floor above us the last
+winter, and at the Baths of Lucca and Florence we have
+seen much of them for a year past. She published some
+time since a volume of 'Scottish Minstrelsy,' graceful and
+flowing, and aspires strenuously towards poetry; a pretty
+woman with three pretty children, of quick perceptions and
+active intelligence and sensibility. They are upright,
+excellent people in various ways, and it is a loss to us that
+they should have gone to Naples now. Dearest friend, how
+your letter delighted me with its happy account of your
+improved strength. Take care of yourself, do, to lose no
+ground. The power of walking must refresh your spirits as
+well as widen your daily pleasures. I am so glad. Thank
+God. We have heard from Mr. Chorley, who seems to
+have received very partial gratification in respect to his play
+and yet prepares for more plays, more wrestlings in the same
+dust. Well, I can't make it out. A man of his sensitiveness
+to choose to appeal to the coarsest side of the public&mdash;which,
+whatever you dramatists may say, you all certainly do&mdash;is
+incomprehensible to me. Then I cannot help thinking
+that he might achieve other sorts of successes more easily
+and surely. Your criticism is very just. But <i>I</i> like his
+'Music and Manners in Germany' better than anything he
+has done. I believe I always <i>did</i> like it best, and since
+coming to Florence I have heard cultivated Americans
+speak of it with enthusiasm, yes, with enthusiasm. 'Pomfret'
+they would scarcely believe to be by the same author. I
+agree with you, but it is a pity indeed for him to tie himself
+to the wheels of the 'Athenaeum,' to <i>approfondir</i> the ruts;
+what other end? And, by the way, the 'Athenaeum,' since
+Mr. Dilke left it, has grown duller and duller, colder and
+colder, flatter and flatter. Mr. Dilke was not brilliant, but
+he was a Brutus in criticism; and though it was his
+speciality to condemn his most particular friends to the
+hangman, the survivors thought there was something grand
+about it on the whole, and nobody could hold him in contempt.
+Now it is all different. We have not even 'public
+virtue' to fasten our admiration to. You will be sure to
+think I am vexed at the article on my husband's new poem.<a name="FNanchor_201_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_201_201"><sup>[201]</sup></a>
+Why, certainly I am vexed! Who would <i>not</i> be vexed with
+such misunderstanding and mistaking. Dear Mr. Chorley
+writes a letter to appreciate most generously: so you see
+how little power he has in the paper to insert an opinion,
+or stop an injustice. On the same day came out a burning
+panegyric of six columns in the 'Examiner,' a curious
+cross-fire. If you read the little book (I wish I could send
+you a copy, but Chapman &amp; Hall have not offered us
+copies, and you will catch sight of it somewhere), I hope
+you will like things in it at least. It seems to me full of
+power. Two hundred copies went off in the first fortnight,
+which is a good beginning in these days. So I am to confess
+to a satisfaction in the American piracies. Well, I
+confess, then. Only it is rather a complex smile with which
+one hears: 'Sir or Madam, we are selling your book at
+half price, as well printed as in England.' 'Those apples
+we stole from your garden, we sell at a halfpenny, instead
+of a penny as you do; they are much appreciated.' Very
+gratifying indeed. It's worth while to rob us, that's plain,
+and there's something magnificent in supplying a distant
+market with apples out of one's garden. Still the smile is
+complex in its character, and the morality&mdash;simple, that's all I
+meant to say. A letter from Henrietta and her husband,
+glowing with happiness; it makes <i>me</i> happy. She says, 'I
+wonder if I shall be as happy as you, Ba.' God grant it.
+It was signified to her that she should at once give up her
+engagement of five years, or leave the house. She married
+directly. I do not understand how it could be otherwise,
+indeed. My brothers have been kind and affectionate, I
+am glad to say; in her case, poor dearest papa does injustice
+chiefly to his own nature, by these severities, hard as they
+seem. Write soon and talk of yourself to</p>
+
+<p>Ever affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+
+<p>I am rejoicing in the People's Edition of your work.
+'Viva!' (Robert's best regards.)</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Jameson</i><br />
+Florence: May 4, [1850],<br />
+
+<p>Dearest Friend,&mdash;This little note will be given to you
+by the Mr. Stuart of whom I once told you that he was
+holding you up to the admiration of all Florence and the
+Baths of Lucca as the best English critic of Shakespeare, in
+his lectures on the great poet....</p>
+
+<p>Robert bids me say that he wrote you a constrained
+half-dozen lines by Mr. Henry Greenough, who asked for a
+letter of introduction to you, while the asker was sitting in
+the room, and the form of 'dear Mrs. Jameson' couldn't
+well be escaped from. He loves you as well as ever, you
+are to understand, through every complication of forms,
+and you are to love him, and <i>me</i>, for I come in as a part of
+him, if you please. Did you get my thanks for the dear
+Petrarch pen (so steeped in double-distilled memories that
+it seems scarcely fit to be steeped in ink), and our appreciation
+as well as gratitude for the books&mdash;which, indeed,
+charm us more and more? Robert has been picking up
+pictures at a few pauls each, 'hole and corner' pictures
+which the 'dealers' had not found out; and the other day
+he covered himself with glory by discovering and seizing on
+(in a corn shop a mile from Florence) five pictures among
+heaps of trash; and one of the best judges in Florence
+(Mr. Kirkup) throws out such names for them as Cimabue,
+Ghirlandaio, Giottino, a crucifixion painted on a banner,
+Giottesque, if not Giotto, but <i>unique</i>, or nearly so, on
+account of the linen material, and a little Virgin by a
+Byzantine master. The curious thing is that two angel
+pictures, for which he had given a scudo last year, prove to
+have been each sawn off the sides of the Ghirlandaio, so
+called, representing the 'Eterno Padre' clothed in a
+mystical garment and encircled by a rainbow, the various
+tints of which, together with the scarlet tips of the flying
+seraphs' wings, are darted down into the smaller pictures
+and complete the evidence, line for line. It has been a
+grand altar-piece, cut to bits. Now come and see for
+yourself. We can't say decidedly yet whether it will be
+possible or impossible for us to go to England this year,
+but in any case you must come to see Gerardine and Italy,
+and we shall manage to catch you by the skirts then&mdash;so do
+come. Never mind the rumbling of political thunders,
+because, even if a storm breaks, you will slip under cover
+in these days easily, whether in France or Italy. I can't
+make out, for my part, how anybody can be afraid of such
+things.</p>
+
+<p>Will you be among the likers or dislikers, I wonder
+sometimes, of Robert's new book? The <i>faculty</i>, you will
+recognise, in all cases; he can do anything he chooses. I
+have complained of the <i>asceticism</i> in the second part, but he
+said it was 'one side of the question.' Don't think that he
+has taken to the cilix&mdash;indeed he has not&mdash;but it is his way
+to <i>see</i> things as passionately as other people <i>feel</i> them....</p>
+
+<p>Chapman &amp; Hall offer us no copies, or you should
+have had one, of course. So Wordsworth is gone&mdash;a great
+light out of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>May God bless you, my dear friend!</p>
+
+<p>Love your affectionate and grateful, for so many<br />
+reasons,<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>The death of Wordsworth on April 23 left the Laureateship
+vacant, and though there was probably never any likelihood
+of Mrs. Browning's being invited to succeed him, it
+is worth noticing that her claims were advocated by so
+prominent a paper as the 'Athenaeum,' which not only
+urged that the appointment would be eminently suitable
+under a female sovereign, but even expressed its opinion
+that 'there is no living poet of either sex who can prefer a
+higher claim than Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning.' No
+doubt there would have been a certain appropriateness in
+the post of Laureate to a Queen being held by a poetess,
+but the claims of Tennyson to the primacy of English
+poetry were rightly regarded as paramount. The fact that
+in Robert Browning there was a poet of equal calibre with
+Tennyson, though of so different a type, seems to have
+occurred to no one.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: June 15, 1850.<br />
+
+<p>My ever dear Friend,&mdash;How it grieves me that you should
+have been so unwell again! From what you say about the
+state of the house, I conclude that your health suffers from
+that cause precisely; and that when you are warmly and
+dryly walled in, you will be less liable to these attacks,
+grievous to your friends as to you. Oh, I don't praise
+anybody, I assure you, for wishing to entice you to live
+near them. We come over the Alps for a sunny climate;
+what should we not do for a moral atmosphere like yours?
+I dare say you have chosen excellently your new residence,
+and I hope you will get over the fuss of it with great
+courage, remembering the advantages which it is likely to
+secure to you. Tell me as much as you can about it all,
+that I may shift the scene in the right grooves, and be able
+to imagine you to myself out of Three Mile Cross. You
+have the local feeling so eminently that I have long been
+resolved on never asking you to migrate. Doves won't
+travel with swallows; who should persuade them? This
+is no migration&mdash;only a shifting from one branch to
+another. With Reading on one side of you still, you will
+lose nothing, neither sight nor friend. Oh, do write to me
+as soon as you can, and say that the deepening summer
+has done you good and given you strength; say it, if
+possible. I shall be very anxious for the next letter....
+My only objection to Florence is the distance from
+London, and the expense of the journey. One's heart is
+pulled at through different English ties and can't get the
+right rest, and I think we shall move northwards&mdash;try
+France a little, after a time. The present year has been
+full of petty vexation to us about the difficulty of going to
+England, and it becomes more and more doubtful whether
+we can attain to the means of doing it. There are four of
+us and the child, you see, and precisely this year we are
+restricted in means, as far as our present knowledge goes;
+but I can't say yet, only I do very much fear. Nobody will
+believe our promises, I think, any more, and my poor
+Arabel will be in despair, and I shall lose the opportunity
+of <i>authenticating</i> Wiedeman; for, as Robert says, all our fine
+stories about him will go for nothing, and he will be set
+down as a sham child. If not sham, how could human
+vanity resist the showing him off bodily? That sounds
+reasonable....</p>
+
+<p>Certainly you are disinterested about America, and, of
+course, all of us who have hearts and heads must feel the
+sympathy of a greater nation to be more precious than a
+thick purse. Still, it is not just and dignified, this vantage
+ground of American pirates. Liking the ends and
+motives, one disapproves the means. Yes, even <i>you</i> do;
+and if I were an American I should dissent with still more
+emphasis. It should be made a point of honour with the
+nation, if there is no point of law against the re publishers.
+For my own part, I have every possible reason to thank and
+love America; she has been very kind to me, and the visits
+we receive here from delightful and cordial persons of that
+country have been most gratifying to us. The American
+minister at the court of Vienna, with his family, did not
+pass through Florence the other day without coming to see
+us&mdash;General Watson Webbe-with an air of moral as well as
+military command in his brow and eyes. He looked, and
+talked too, like one of oar dignities of the Old World. The
+go-ahead principle didn't seem the least over-strong in
+him, nor likely to disturb his official balance. What is to
+happen next in France? Do you trust still your President?
+He is in a hard position, and, if he leaves the Pope
+where he is, in a dishonored one. As for the change in
+the electoral law and the increase of income, I see nothing
+in either to make an outcry against. There is great injustice
+everywhere and a rankling party-spirit, and to speak
+the truth and act it appears still more difficult than usual.
+I was sorry, do you know, to hear of dear Mr. Horne's
+attempt at Shylock; he is fit for higher things. Did I tell
+you how we received and admired his Judas Iscariot?
+Yes, surely I did. He says that Louis Blanc is a friend of
+his and much with him, speaking with enthusiasm. I
+should be more sorry at his being involved with the
+Socialists than with Shylock&mdash;still more sorry; for I love
+liberty so intensely that I hate Socialism. I hold it to be
+the most desecrating and dishonouring to humanity of all
+creeds. I would rather (for <i>me</i>) live under the absolutism
+of Nicholas of Russia than in a Fourier machine, with my
+individuality sucked out of me by a social air-pump. Oh,
+if you happen to write again to Mrs. Deane, thank her
+much for her kind anxiety; but, indeed, if I had lost my
+darling I should not write verses about it.<a name="FNanchor_202_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_202_202"><sup>[202]</sup></a> As for the
+Laureateship, it won't be given to <i>me</i>, be sure,
+though the suggestion has gone the round of the English
+newspapers&mdash;'Galignani' and all&mdash;and notwithstanding that most
+kind and flattering recommendation of the 'Athenaeum,' for which
+I am sure we should be grateful to Mr. Chorley. I think
+Leigh Hunt should have the Laureateship. He has condescended
+to wish for it, and has 'worn his singing clothes'
+longer than most of his contemporaries, deserving the price
+of long as well as noble service. Whoever has it will be,
+of course, exempted from Court lays; and the distinction of
+the title and pension should remain for Spenser's sake, if
+not for Wordsworth's. We are very anxious to know about
+Tennyson's new work, 'In Memoriam.' Do tell us about
+it. You are aware that it was written years ago, and relates
+to a son of Mr. Hallam, who was Tennyson's intimate
+friend and the betrothed of his sister. I have heard,
+through someone who had seen the MS., that it is full of
+beauty and pathos.... Dearest, ever dear Miss Mitford,
+speak particularly of your health. May God bless you,
+prays</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>Robert's kindest regards.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: July 8, 1850.<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Miss Mitford,&mdash;I this moment have your
+note; and as a packet of ours is going to England, I snatch
+up a pen to do what I can with it in the brief moments
+between this and post time. I don't wait till it shall be
+possible to write at length, because I have something
+immediate to say to you. Your letter is delightful, yet it is
+not for <i>that</i> that I rush so upon answering it. Nor even is
+it for the excellent news of your consenting, for dear Mr.
+Chorley's sake, to give us some more of your 'papers,'<a name="FNanchor_203_203"></a><a href="#Footnote_203_203"><sup>[203]</sup></a>
+though 'blessed be the hour, and month, and year' when
+he set about editing the 'Ladies' Companion' and persuading
+you to do such a thing. No, what I want to say is
+strictly personal to me. You are the kindest, warmest-hearted,
+most affectionate of critics, and precisely as such it
+is that you have thrown me into a paroxysm of terror. My
+dearest friend, <i>for the love of me</i>&mdash;I don't argue the point
+with you&mdash;but I beseech you humbly,&mdash;kissing the hem of
+your garment, and by all sacred and tender recollections of
+sympathy between you and me, <i>don't</i> breathe a word about
+any juvenile performance of mine&mdash;<i>don't</i>, if you have any
+love left for me. Dear friend, 'disinter' anybody or anything
+you please, but don't disinter <i>me</i>, unless you mean the
+ghost of my vexation to vex you ever after. 'Blessed be
+she who spares these stones.' All the saints know that I
+have enough to answer for since I came to my mature
+mind, and that I had difficulty enough in making most of
+the 'Seraphim' volume presentable a little in my new
+edition, because it was too ostensible before the public to
+be caught back; but if the sins of my rawest juvenility are
+to be thrust upon me&mdash;and sins are extant of even twelve
+or thirteen, or earlier, and I was in print once when I was
+ten, I think&mdash;what is to become of me? I shall groan as
+loud as Christian did. Dearest Miss Mitford, now forgive
+this ingratitude which is gratitude all the time. I love you
+and thank you; but, right or wrong, mind what I say, and
+let me love and thank you still more. When you see my
+new edition you will see that everything worth a straw I
+ever wrote is there, and if there were strength in conjuration
+I would conjure you to pass an act of oblivion on
+the stubble that remains&mdash;if anything does remain, indeed.
+Now, more than enough of this. For the rest, I am
+delighted. I am even so generous as not to be jealous of
+Mr. Chorley for prevailing with you when nobody else
+could. I had given it up long ago; I never thought you
+would stir a pen again. By what charm did he prevail?
+Your series of papers will be delightful, I do not doubt;
+though I never could see anything in some of your heroes,
+American or Irish. Longfellow is a poet; I don't refer to
+<i>him</i>. Still, whatever you say will be worth hearing, and the
+<i>guide</i> through 'Pompeii' will be better than many of the
+ruins. 'The Pleader's Guide' I never heard of before.
+Praed has written some sweet and tender things. Then I
+shall like to hear you on Beaumont and Fletcher, and
+Andrew Marvell.</p>
+
+<p>I have seen nothing of Tennyson's new poem. Do you
+know if the echo-song is the most popular of his verses?
+It is only another proof to my mind of the no-worth of
+popularity. That song would be eminently sweet for a
+common writer, but Tennyson has done better, surely; his
+eminences are to be seen above. As for the laurel, in a
+sense he is worthier of it than Leigh Hunt; only Tennyson
+can wait, that is the single difference.</p>
+
+<p>So anxious I am about your house. Your health seems
+to me mainly to depend on your moving, and I do urge
+your moving; if not there, elsewhere. May God bless you,
+ever dear friend!</p>
+
+<p>I dare say you will think I have given too much importance
+to the rococo verses you had the goodness to speak
+of; but I have a horror of being disinterred, there's the
+truth! Leave the violets to grow over me. Because that
+wretched school-exercise of a version of the 'Prometheus'
+had been named by two or three people, wasn't I at the
+pains of making a new translation before I left England, so
+to erase a sort of half-visible and half invisible 'Blot on the
+Scutcheon'? After such an expenditure of lemon-juice,
+you will not wonder that I should trouble you with all this
+talk about nothing....</p>
+
+<p>I am so delighted that you are to lift up your voice
+again, and so grateful to Mr. Chorley.</p>
+
+<p>Ah yes, if we go to Paris we shall draw you. Mr.
+Chorley shan't have all the triumphs to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Not a word more, says Robert, or the post will be
+missed. God bless you! Do take care of yourself, and
+<i>don't</i> stay in that damp house. And do make allowances
+for love.</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+
+<p>How glad I shall be if it is true that Tennyson is
+married! I believe in the happiness of marriage, for men
+especially.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+<p>Through the greater part of the summer of 1850 the
+Brownings held fast in Florence, and it was not until September,
+when Mrs. Browning was recovering from a rather
+sharp attack of illness, that they took a short holiday, going
+for a few weeks to Siena, a place which they were again to
+visit some years later, during the last two summers of Mrs.
+Browning's life. The letter announcing their arrival is the
+first in the present collection addressed to Miss Isa
+Blagden. Miss Blagden was a resident in Florence for
+many years, and was a prominent member of English
+society there. Her friendship, not only with Mrs. Browning,
+but with her husband, was of a very intimate character, and
+was continued after Mrs. Browning's death until the end of
+her own life in 1872.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss I. Blagden</i><br />
+Siena: September [1850].<br />
+
+<p>Here I am keeping my promise, my dear Miss Blagden.
+We arrived quite safely, and I was not too tired to sleep at
+night, though tired of course, and the baby was a miracle
+of goodness all the way, only inclining once to a <i>rabbia</i>
+through not being able to get at the electric telegraph, but in
+ecstasies otherwise at everything new. We had to stay at the
+inn all night. We heard of a multitude of villas, none of
+which could be caught in time for the daylight. On Sunday,
+however, just as we were beginning to give it up, in Robert
+came with good news, and we were settled in half an hour
+afterwards here, a small house of some seven rooms, two
+miles from Siena, and situated delightfully in its own grounds
+of vineyard and olive ground, not to boast too much of a
+pretty little square flower-garden. The grapes hang in
+garlands (too tantalising to Wiedeman) about the walls and
+before them, and, through and over, we have magnificent
+views of a noble sweep of country, undulating hills and
+various verdure, and, on one side, the great Maremma
+extending to the foot of the Roman mountains. Our villa
+is on a hill called 'poggio dei venti,' and the winds give us
+a turn accordingly at every window. It is delightfully cool,
+and I have not been able to bear my window open at night
+since our arrival; also we get good milk and bread and eggs
+and wine, and are not much at a loss for anything. Think
+of my forgetting to tell you (Robert would not forgive me
+for that) how we have a <i>specola</i> or sort of belvedere at the
+top of the house, which he delights in, and which I shall
+enjoy presently, when I have recovered my taste for climbing
+staircases. He carried me up once, but the being carried
+down was so much like being carried down the flue of a
+chimney, that I waive the whole privilege for the future.
+What is better, to my mind, is the expected fact of being
+able to get books at Siena&mdash;<i>nearly</i> as well as at Brecker's,
+really; though Dumas fils seems to fill up many of the
+interstices where you think you have found something.
+<i>Three</i> pauls a month, the subscription is; and for seven,
+we get a 'Galignani,' or are promised to get it. We pay for
+our villa ten scudi the month, so that altogether it is not
+ruinous. The air is as fresh as English air, without English
+dampness and transition; yes, and we have English lanes
+with bowery tops of trees, and brambles and blackberries,
+and not a wall anywhere, except the walls of our villa.</p>
+
+<p>For my part, I am recovering strength, I hope and believe.
+Certainly I can move about from one room to another,
+without reeling much: but I still look so ghastly, as to 'back
+recoil,' perfectly knowing 'Why,' from everything in the
+shape of a looking glass. Robert has found an armchair for
+me at Siena. To say the truth, my time for enjoying this
+country life, except the enchanting silence and the look from
+the window, has not come yet: I must wait for a little more
+strength. Wiedeman's cheeks are beginning to redden
+already, and he delights in the pigeons and the pig and the
+donkey and a great yellow dog and everything else now;
+only he would change all your trees (except the apple trees),
+he says, for the Austrian band at any moment. He is rather
+a town baby....</p>
+
+<p>Our drawback is, dear Miss Blagden, that we have not
+room to take you in. So sorry we both are indeed. Write
+and tell me whether you have decided about Vallombrosa.
+I hope we shall see much of you still at Florence, if not
+here. We could give you everything here except a bed.</p>
+
+<p>Robert's kindest regards with those of</p>
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.</p>
+
+<p>My love to Miss Agassiz, whenever you see her.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Siena: September 24, 1850.<br />
+
+<p>To think that it is more than two months since I wrote
+last to you, my beloved friend, makes the said two months
+seem even longer to me than otherwise they would necessarily
+be&mdash;a slow, heavy two months in every case, 'with all the
+weights of care and death hung at them.' Your letter reached
+me when I was confined to my bed, and could scarcely read
+it, for all the strength at my heart.... As soon as I could be
+moved, and before I could walk from one room to another,
+Dr. Harding insisted on the necessity of change of air (for
+my part, I seemed to myself more fit to change the world
+than the air), and Robert carried me into the railroad like a
+baby, and off we came here to Siena. We took a villa a
+mile and <i>a</i> half from the town, a villa situated on a windy
+hill (called 'poggio al vento'), with magnificent views from
+all the windows, and set in the midst of its own vineyard
+and olive ground, apple trees and peach trees, not to speak
+of a little square flower-garden, for which we pay <i>eleven
+shillings one penny farthing the week</i>; and at the end of
+these three weeks, our medical comforter's prophecy, to
+which I listened so incredulously, is fulfilled, and I am able
+to walk a mile, and am really as well as ever in all essential
+respects.... Our poor little darling, too (see what disasters!),
+was ill four-and-twenty hours from a species of sunstroke,
+and frightened us with a heavy hot head and glassy staring
+eyes, lying in a half-stupor. Terrible, the silence that fell
+suddenly upon the house, without the small pattering feet
+and the singing voice. But God spared us; he grew quite
+well directly and sang louder than ever. Since we came
+here his cheeks have turned into roses....</p>
+
+<p>What still further depressed me during our latter days at
+Florence was the dreadful event in America&mdash;the loss of our
+poor friend Madame Ossoli,<a name="FNanchor_204_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_204_204"><sup>[204]</sup></a> affecting in itself, and also
+through association with that past, when the arrowhead of
+anguish was broken too deeply into my life ever to be quite
+drawn out. Robert wanted to keep the news from me till I
+was stronger, but we live too <i>close</i> for him to keep anything
+from me, and then I should have known it from the first
+letter or visitor, so there was no use trying. The poor
+Ossolis spent part of their last evening in Italy with us, he
+and she and their child, and we had a note from her off
+Gibraltar, speaking of the captain's death from smallpox.
+Afterwards it appears that her child caught the disease and
+lay for days between life and death; <i>recovered</i>, and then
+came the final agony. 'Deep called unto deep,' indeed.
+Now she is where there is no more grief and 'no more sea;'
+and none of the restless in this world, none of the ship-wrecked
+in heart ever seemed to me to want peace more
+than she did. We saw much of her last winter; and over a
+great gulf of differing opinion we both felt drawn strongly to
+her. High and pure aspiration she had&mdash;yes, and a tender
+woman's heart&mdash;and we honoured the truth and courage in
+her, rare in woman or man. The work she was preparing
+upon Italy would probably have been more equal to her
+faculty than anything previously produced by her pen (her
+other writings being curiously inferior to the impressions
+her conversation gave you); indeed, she told me it was the
+only production to which she had given time and labour.
+But, if rescued, the manuscript would be nothing but the raw
+material. I believe nothing was finished; nor, if finished,
+could the work have been otherwise than deeply coloured
+by those blood colours of Socialistic views, which would
+have drawn the wolves on her, with a still more howling
+enmity, both in England and America. Therefore it was
+better for her to go. Only God and a few friends can be
+expected to distinguish between the pure personality of a
+woman and her professed opinions. She was chiefly known
+in America, I believe, by oral lectures and a connection
+with the newspaper press, neither of them happy means of
+publicity. Was she happy in anything, I wonder? She told
+me that she never was. May God have made her happy in
+her death!</p>
+
+<p>Such gloom she had in leaving Italy! So full she was
+of sad presentiment! Do you know she gave a <i>Bible</i> as a
+parting gift from her child to ours, writing in it '<i>In memory
+of</i> Angelo Eugene Ossoli'&mdash;a strange, prophetical expression?
+That last evening a prophecy was talked of jestingly&mdash;an
+old prophecy made to poor Marquis Ossoli, 'that he should
+shun the sea, for that it would be fatal to him.' I remember
+how she turned to me smiling and said, 'Our ship is called
+the &quot;Elizabeth,&quot; and I accept the omen.'</p>
+
+<p>Now I am making you almost dull perhaps, and myself
+certainly duller. Rather let me tell you, dearest Miss
+Mitford, how delightedly I look forward to reading whatever
+you have written or shall write. You write 'as well as
+twenty years ago'! Why, I should think so, indeed. Don't
+I know what your letters are? Haven't I had faith in you
+always? Haven't I, in fact, teased you half to death in
+proof of it? I, who was a sort of Brutus, and oughtn't to
+have done it, you hinted. Moreover, Robert is a great
+admirer of yours, as I must have told you before, and has
+the pretension (unjustly though, as I tell <i>him</i>) to place you
+still higher among writers than I do, so that we are two
+in expectancy here. May Mr. Chorley's periodical live a
+thousand years!</p>
+
+<p>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: <i>None of these
+simple poems of mine have been favorites with general readers</i>.
+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&mdash;for the rest, don't mistake what I write to you
+sometimes&mdash;don't fancy that I undervalue simplicity and
+think nothing of legitimate fame&mdash;I only mean to say that
+the vogue which begins with the masses generally comes to
+nought (B&eacute;ranger is an exceptional case, from the <i>form</i> 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&mdash;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&mdash;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.<a name="FNanchor_205_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_205_205"><sup>[205]</sup></a> I arranged that it should come next
+to the 'Cry of the Children,' to appear impartial as to
+national grievances....</p>
+
+<p>Oh&mdash;Balzac&mdash;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. Souli&eacute;, Bernard, gone too; George Sand translating
+Mazzini; Sue in a socialistical state of decadence&mdash;what
+he means by writing such trash as the 'P&eacute;ch&eacute;s' 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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<i>finances</i> 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 <i>me</i> down in your thoughts as
+quite well, and ever yours in warm and grateful affection.</p>
+
+<p>E.B.B.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: November 13, 1850 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>I <i>meant</i> 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&mdash;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 <i>to come back to</i>. 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 <i>nude</i>,
+in order, I conjecture, to the ultimate perfection of French
+delicacy in morals and manners....</p>
+
+<p>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>I</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 <i>make</i> poetry; and
+absolutely vain they are, and indeed all other qualities,
+without the essential thing, the genius, the inspiration, the
+insight&mdash;let us call it what we please&mdash;without which
+the most accomplished verse-writers had far better write
+prose, for their own sakes as for the world's&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;he had seen enough of
+us, he could 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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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</p>
+
+<p>Your ever affectionate<br />
+E.B.B.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<p>What books by Souli&eacute; 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 <i>vice vers&acirc;</i>. Sue is in decided decadence,
+for the rest, since he has taken to illustrating Socialism!</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss I. Blagden</i><br />
+[Florence:] Sunday morning [about 1850].<br />
+
+<p>My dear Miss Blagden,&mdash;In spite of all your <i>drawing</i>
+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.'</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>North British</i>? 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 <i>beyond the world</i>; 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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'&mdash;restricting the very
+possibility of progress by the use of the lights of genius.
+Genius is <i>always individual</i>.</p>
+
+<p>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</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate<br />
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+
+<i>To Mr. Westwood</i><br />
+Florence: Thursday, December 12, 1850.<br />
+
+<p>My dear Mr. Westwood,&mdash;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....</p>
+
+<p><i>December</i> 13.&mdash;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&mdash;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 <i>have</i>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;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 <i>r&eacute;gime</i>.
+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'&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>And as to your book, it will come, it will come, and
+meantime I may assure you that posterity 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&mdash;but
+I must leave room for the words you ask for from a certain
+hand below.</p>
+
+<p>Ever dear Mr. Westwood's obliged and faithful</p>
+
+<p>E.B.B.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Mitford</i><br />
+Florence: December 13, 1850.<br />
+
+<p><i>Did</i> 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 <i>write</i>,
+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 &amp; 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 &amp; 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 <i>another hundred pounds</i> 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&mdash;and
+there's the end of my story. Two hundred pounds is a good
+price&mdash;isn't it?&mdash;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 <i>them</i>, 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&mdash;she can shake
+and she can pierce&mdash;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&mdash;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 &quot;Bride of Lammermoor,&quot; nothing
+had appeared equal to &quot;Mary Barton&quot;?' 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&mdash;dear
+Mr. Kenyon had the goodness to send it to me by an
+American traveller&mdash;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 <i>that</i> for every reason I wish
+away&mdash;it's a discord in the music. The monotony is a
+part of the position&mdash;(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&mdash;<i>I</i> do&mdash;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 <i>nom de guerre</i>&mdash;Sidney
+Yendys. Observe, <i>Yendys</i> is <i>Sidney</i> 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&mdash;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&mdash;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 <i>not</i> 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&mdash;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'?&mdash;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
+what 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&mdash;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&mdash;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</p>
+
+<p>BA.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Mrs. Martin</i><br />
+Florence: January 30, 1851.<br />
+
+<p>Here I am at last, dearest friend. But you forget how
+you told me, when you wrote your 'long letter,' that you
+were going away into chaos somewhere, and that your
+address couldn't be known yet. It was this which made
+me delay the answer to that welcome letter&mdash;and to begin
+to 'put off' is fatal, as perhaps you know. Now forgive me,
+and I will behave better in future, indeed....</p>
+
+<p>I am quite well, and looking well, they say; but the
+frightful illness of the autumn left me paler and thinner
+long after the perfect recovery. The physician told Robert
+afterwards that few women would have recovered at all;
+and when I left Siena I was as able to walk, and as well in
+every respect as ever, notwithstanding everything&mdash;think,
+for instance, of my walking to St. Miniato, here in
+Florence! You remember, perhaps, what that pull is. I
+dare say you heard from Henrietta how we enjoyed our
+rustication at Siena. It is pleasant even to look back on
+it. We were obliged to look narrowly at the economies,
+more narrowly than usual; but the cheapness of the place
+suited the occasion, and the little villa, like a mere tent
+among the vines, charmed us, though the doors didn't shut,
+and though (on account of the smallness) Robert and I had
+to whisper all our talk whenever Wiedeman was asleep. Oh,
+I wish you were in Italy. I wish you had come here this
+winter which has been so mild, and which, with ordinary
+prudence, would certainly have suited dear Mr. Martin....
+I tried to dissuade the Peytons from making the
+experiment, through the fear of its not answering.... We
+can't get them into society, you see, because we are out of
+it, having struggled to keep out of it with hands and feet,
+and partially having succeeded, knowing scarcely anybody
+except bringers of letters of introduction, and those chiefly
+Americans and not residents in Florence. The other day,
+however, Mrs. Trollope and her daughter-in-law called on
+us, and it is settled that we are to know them; though
+Robert had made a sort of vow never to sit in the same
+room with the author of certain books directed against
+liberal institutions and Victor Hugo's poetry. I had a
+longer battle to fight, on the matter of this vow, than any
+since my marriage, and had some scruples at last of taking
+advantage of the pure goodness which induced him to yield
+to my wishes; but I <i>did</i>, because I hate to seem ungracious
+and unkind to people; and human beings, besides, are
+better than their books, than their principles, and even than
+their everyday actions, sometimes. I am always crying out:
+'Blessed be the inconsistency of men.' Then I thought it
+probable that, the first shock of the cold water being over,
+he would like the proposed new acquaintances very much&mdash;and
+so it turns out. She was very agreeable, and kind, and
+good-natured, and talked much about <i>you</i>, which was a
+charm of itself; and we mean to be quite friends, and to
+lend each other books, and to forget one another's offences,
+in print or otherwise. Also, she admits us on her private
+days; for she has public days (dreadful to relate!), and is
+in the full flood and flow of Florentine society. Do write
+to me, will you? or else I shall set you down as vexed with
+me. The state of politics here is dismal. Newspapers put
+down; Protestant places of worship shut up. It is so bad
+that it must soon be better. What are you both thinking of
+the 'Papal aggression'?<a name="FNanchor_206_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_206_206"><sup>[206]</sup></a> 'Are you frightened? Are you
+frenzied? For my part I can't get up much steam about
+it. The 'Great Insult' was simply a great mistake, the
+consequence (natural enough) of the Tractarian idiocies as
+enacted in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>God bless both of you, dearest and always remembered
+friends! Robert's best regards, he says.</p>
+
+<p>Your affectionate<br />
+BA.</p>
+
+<p>Tell me your thoughts about France. I am so anxious
+about the crisis there.<a name="FNanchor_207_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_207_207"><sup>[207]</sup></a> We have had a very interesting visit lately from the grandson of Goethe.</p>
+<br /><br />
+
+<i>To Miss Browning</i><br />
+Florence: April 23, 1851 [postmark].<br />
+
+<p>My dearest Sarianna,&mdash;I do hope that Robert takes his
+share of the blame in using and abusing you as we have
+done. It was altogether too bad&mdash;shameful&mdash;to send that
+last MS. for you to copy out; and I did, indeed, make a
+little outcry about it, only he insisted on having it so. Was
+it very wrong, I wonder? Your kindness and affectionateness
+I never doubt of; but if you are not quite strong just
+now, you might be teased, in spite of your heart, by all that
+copying work&mdash;not pleasant at any time. Well, believe that
+I thank you, at least gratefully, for what you have done.
+So quickly too! The advertisement at the end of the week
+proves how you must have worked for me. Thank you,
+dear Sarianna.</p>
+
+<p>Robert will have told you our schemes, and how we are
+going to work, and are to love you <i>near</i> for the future, I
+hope. You, who are wise, will approve of us, I think, for
+keeping on our Florentine apartment, so as to run no more
+risk than is necessary in making the Paris experiment. We
+shall let the old dear rooms, and make money by them, and
+keep them to fall back upon, in case we fail at Paris. 'But
+we'll not fail.' Well, I hope not, though I am very brittle
+still and susceptible to climate. Dearest Sarianna, it will do
+you infinite good to come over to us every now and then&mdash;you
+want change, absolute change of scene and air and
+climate, I am confident; and you never will be right till
+you have had it. We talk, Robert and I, of carrying you
+back with us to Rome next year as an English trophy.
+Meanwhile you will see Wiedeman, you and dear Mr.
+Browning. Don't expect to see a baby of Anak, that's all.
+Robert is always measuring him on the door, and reporting
+such wonderful growth (some inch a week, I think), that if
+you receive his reports you will cry out on beholding the
+child. At least, you'll say: 'How little he must have been
+to be no larger now.' You'll fancy he must have begun
+from a mustard-seed! The fact is, he is small, only full of
+life and joy to the brim. I am not afraid of your not
+loving him, nor of his not loving you. He has a loving
+little heart, I assure you. If anyone pricks a finger with
+a needle he begins to cry&mdash;he can't bear to see the least
+living thing hurt. And when he loves, it is well. Robert
+says I must finish, so here ends dearest Sarianna's</p>
+
+<p>Ever affectionate sister<br />
+BA.</p>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>END OF THE FIRST VOLUME</h2>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<br />
+<br />
+<h2>SMITH, ELDER, &amp; CO.'S NEW BOOKS.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<br /><br />
+
+<p><b><font size="4">DEEDS THAT WON THE EMPIRE.</font></b> By the Rev. W.H. F<font size="2">ITCHETT</font>,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">THIRD EDITION. With 11 Plans and 16 Portraits. Crown 8vo. 6s.</span></p>
+
+<p><b><font size="4">INDIAN FRONTIER POLICY.</font></b> An Historical Sketch. By General<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sir JOHN ADYE, G.C.B., R.A. With Map. Demy 8vo. 3s. 6d.</span></p>
+
+<p><b><font size="4">THE STORY OF THE CHURCH OF EGYPT</font>:</b> being an Outline of<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">the History of the Egyptians under their successive Masters from the Roman</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Conquest until now. By E. L. B<font size="2">UTCHER</font>, Author of 'A Strange Journey,'</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">'A Black Jewel,' &amp;c. In "2" vols. Crown 8vo. 16s.</span></p>
+
+<p><b><font size="4">LORD COCHRANE'S TRIAL BEFORE LORD ELLENBOROUGH</font></b><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><font size="4">IN 1814</font>. By J. B. A<font size="2">TLAY</font>.
+With a Preface by E<font size="2">DWARD</font> D<font size="2">OWNES </font>L<font size="2">AW</font>,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Commander Royal Navy, With Portrait. 8vo. 18s.</span></p>
+
+<p><font size="4"><b>THE LIFE OF SIR JOHN HAWLEY GLOVER, R.N., G.C.M.G.</b></font><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">By Lady G<font size="2">LOVER</font>. Edited by the Right Hon. Sir R<font size="2">ICHARD</font> T<font size="2">EMPLE</font>, Bart.,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">G.C.S.I., D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S. With Portrait and Maps. Demy 8vo. 14s.</span></p>
+
+<p><b><font size="4">THE LETTERS OF ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING</font>.</b><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Edited, with Biographical Additions, by F<font size="2">REDERIC</font> G. K<font size="2">ENYON</font>. In 2 vols.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">With Portraits. THIRD EDITION. Crown 8vo. 15s. net.</span></p>
+
+<p><b><font size="4">THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ARTHUR YOUNG.</font></b> With Selections<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">from his Correspondence. Edited by M. B<font size="2">ETHAM</font> <font size="2">EDWARDS</font>. With 2 Portraits</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">and 2 Views. Large crown 8vo. 12s. 6d.</span></p>
+
+<p><b><font size="4">THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE, 1821-1833</font>.</b> By W.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A<font size="2">LISON</font> P<font size="2">HILLIPS</font>, M.A., late Scholar of Merton College, Senior Scholar of</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">St. John's College, Oxford. With Map. Large crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.</span></p>
+
+<p><b><font size="4">TWELVE YEARS IN A MONASTERY</font>.</b> By J<font size="2">OSEPH</font> M<font size="2">CCABE</font>, late<br />
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+
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+
+<p><b><font size="4">FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XV.</font></b> By J<font size="2">AMES</font> B<font size="2">RECK</font> P<font size="2">ERKINS</font>, Author<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">of 'France Under the Regency.' In 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 16s.</span></p>
+
+<p><b><font size="4">A BROWNING COURTSHIP</font>;</b> and other Stories. By E<font size="2">LIZA</font> O<font size="2">RNE</font><br />
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+
+<p><b><font size="4">THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ELIZABETH BARRETT</font></b><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><font size="4"><b>BROWNING</b></font>, 1 volume. With Portrait and Facsimile of the MS. of a 'Sonnet</span><br />
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+
+<p class="ctr">
+*** <b>This Edition is uniform with the Two-volume Edition of<br />
+Robert Browning's Complete Works.</b></p>
+
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+
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+
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+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Edition. Small crown 8vo. bound in white cloth, 4s. 6d.</span></p>
+
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+
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+<br />
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+
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+
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+
+<p><b><font size="4">IN KEDAR'S TENTS</font>.</b> By H<font size="2">ENRY</font> S<font size="2">ETON</font> M<font size="2">>ERRIMAN</font>, Author of<br />
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+
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+knowledge that have been made in recent years.... The illustrations
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">E<font size="2">ARLE</font>. With an Appendix by Lady C<font size="2">ONSTANCE</font> L<font size="2">YTTON</font>. Ninth Edition.</span><br />
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+</table>
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+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">With Illustrations from Sketches by the Author. Crown 8vo, 6s. net.</span></p>
+
+<p><a><img src="images/493.jpg" width="6%" border="0" alt="Finger pointing to word"></img></a>NOTE.&mdash;The Edition of the Work for
+sale in this country is limited to 260 copies.</p>
+<br />
+
+<p><b><font size="4">THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL</font>.</b> From Official Records and<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">the Archives of Native Families. By Sir W.W. H<font size="2">UNTER</font>, K.S.C.I., C.I.E.,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">LL.D., &amp;c. New, Revised, and Cheaper Edition (the Seventh). Crown Svo. 7s.</span><br />
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+
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+
+<p><b><font size="4">FROM GRAVE TO GAY</font></b>: being Essays and Studies concerned with<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Certain Subjects of Serious Interest, with the Puritans, with</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Literature, and with the Humours of Life, now for the first time</span><br />
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+S<font size="2">TRACHEY</font>. Crown 8vo, 6s.</span></p>
+
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+TIMES</p>
+
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+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">With an Appendix on the Opium Habit in India. By Sir W<font size="2">ILLIAM</font> R<font size="2">OBERTS</font>,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">M.D., F.R.S. Second Edition. Crown Svo. 5s.</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>London: SMITH, ELDER, &amp; CO.; 15 Waterloo Place.</h4>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<br />
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1">[1]</a><div class="note"><p> Mrs. Sutherland-Orr had access to these letters for
+her biography of Robert Browning, and quotes several passages from
+them. With this exception, none of the letters have been published
+previously; and the published letters of Miss Barrett to Mr. R.H.
+Horne have not been drawn upon, except for biographical information.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2">[2]</a><div class="note"><p> See <i>Notes and Queries</i> for July 20, 1889,
+supplemented by a note from Mr. Browning himself in the same
+paper on August 24.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3">[3]</a><div class="note"><p> These estates still remain in the family, and Mr.
+Charles Barrett, the eldest surviving brother of Mrs. Browning,
+now lives there.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4">[4]</a><div class="note"><p> R.H. Horne, <i>Letters of E.B. Browning</i>,
+i. 158-161.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5">[5]</a><div class="note"><p> R.H. Horne, <i>Letters of E.B. Browning</i>, i. 164.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6">[6]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Dict. of Nat. Biography</i>, vii. 78.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7">[7]</a><div class="note"><p> Mrs. Browning usually spells such words as 'favour,'
+'honour,' and the like, without the <i>u</i>, after the fashion
+which one is accustomed to regard as American.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8">[8]</a><div class="note"><p> Octavius, her youngest brother.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9">[9]</a><div class="note"><p> Hugh Stuart Boyd, the blind scholar whose friendship with
+Elizabeth Barrett is commemorated in her poem, 'Wine of Cyprus,' and
+in three sonnets expressly addressed to him. He was at this time
+living at Great Malvern, where Miss Barrett frequently visited him,
+reading and discussing Greek literature with him, especially the works
+of the Greek Christian Fathers. But to call him her tutor, as has
+more than once been done, is a mistake: see Miss Barrett's letter to;
+him of March 3, 1845. Her knowledge of Greek was due to her
+volunteering to share her brother Edward's work under his tutor,
+Mr. MacSwiney.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10">[10]</a><div class="note"><p> Mr. Ingram, in his <i>Life of E.B. Browning</i> ('Eminent
+Women' Series) connects this fact with the abolition of colonial
+slavery, and a consequent decrease in Mr. Barrett's income; but since
+the abolition only took place in 1833, while Hope End was given up in
+the preceding year, this conclusion does not appear to be certain.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11">[11]</a><div class="note"><p> The Martins' home near Malvern, about a mile from Hope End.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12">[12]</a><div class="note"><p> Her brothers Edward and Septimus.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13">[13]</a><div class="note"><p> Archbishop Whately.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14">[14]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>The New Monthly Magazine</i>, at this time edited by
+Bulwer, afterwards the first Lord Lytton.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15">[15]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Letters to R.H. Home</i>, i. 162.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16">[16]</a><div class="note"><p> It need hardly be said that the literary resurrectionist
+has been too much for her, and the version of 1833 has recently been
+reprinted. Of this reprint the best that can be said is that it
+provides an occasion for an essay by Mrs. Meynell.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17">[17]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Athenaeum</i>, June 8, 1833.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18">[18]</a><div class="note"><p> Alfred, the fifth brother.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19">[19]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>The Fathers not Papists</i>, including a reprint
+of some translations from the Greek Fathers, which Mr. Boyd had
+published previously.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20">[20]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Poetical Works</i>, ii. 3.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21">[21]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Ib</i>. i. 277.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22">[22]</a><div class="note"><p> Miss Barrett's Greek is habitually written without accents or
+breathings.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23">[23]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Poetical Works</i>, ii. 278.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24">[24]</a><div class="note"><p> An allusion to the first line of 'The Poet's Vow.'</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25">[25]</a><div class="note"><p> The 'Seraphim,' published in 1838.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26">[26]</a><div class="note"><p> The bodkin seems to be a favourite weapon with ancient dames
+whose genius was for killing (note by E.B.B.).</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27">[27]</a><div class="note"><p> A reference to Pindar, <i>Pyth</i>.i. 9.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28">[28]</a><div class="note"><p> These verses are inclosed with the foregoing letter, as a
+retort to Mr. Boyd's parody.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29">[29]</a><div class="note"><p> Elizabeth Barrett's 'pet name' (see her poem, <i>Poetical
+Works</i>, ii. 249), given to her as a child by her brother Edward,
+and used by her family and friends, and by herself in her letters to
+them, throughout her life.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30">[30]</a><div class="note"><p><br />
+Do you mind that deed of At&eacute;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Which you bound me to so fast,&mdash;</span><br />
+Reading 'De Virginitate,'<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From the first line to the last?</span><br />
+How I said at ending solemn,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As I turned and looked at you,</span><br />
+That Saint Simeon on the column<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Had had somewhat less to do?</span><br />
+</p><p>
+'Wine of Cyprus' (<i>Poetical Works</i>, iii. 139)</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31">[31]</a><div class="note"><p> As a matter of fact, 'The Seraphim' was not printed
+in the <i>New Monthly</i>, being probably thought too long.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32">[32]</a><div class="note"><p> Serjeant Talfourd.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33">[33]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Poetical Works</i>, ii. 248.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34">[34]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Poetical Works</i>, ii. 83.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35">[35]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Poems, for the most part occasional</i>, by John Kenyon.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36">[36]</a><div class="note"><p> John Kenyon (1784-1856) was born in Jamaica, the son of a
+wealthy West Indian landowner, but came to England while quite a
+boy, and was a conspicuous figure in literary society during the second
+quarter of the century. He published some volumes of minor verse,
+but is best known for his friendships with many literary men and
+women, and for his boundless generosity and kindliness to all with
+whom he was brought into contact. Crabb Robinson described him as
+a man 'whose life is spent in making people happy.' He was a distant
+cousin of Miss Barrett, and a friend of Robert Browning, who dedicated
+to him his volume of 'Dramatic Romances,' besides writing and sending
+to him 'Andrea del Sarto' as a substitute for a print of the painter's
+portrait which he had been unable to find. The best account of
+Kenyon is to be found in Mrs. Crosse's 'John Kenyon and his Friends'
+(in <i>Red-Letter Days of My Life</i>, vol. i.).</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37">[37]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Poetical Works</i>, ii. 40.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38">[38]</a><div class="note"><p> 'The Romaunt of the Page.'</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39">[39]</a><div class="note"><p> July 7, 1838.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40">[40]</a><div class="note"><p> June 24, 1838.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41">[41]</a><div class="note"><p> June 23, 1838.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42">[42]</a><div class="note"><p> September 1840.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43">[43]</a><div class="note"><p> This was written about the end of 1851.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44">[44]</a><div class="note"><p> Probably John Kenyon, whom Miss Mitford elsewhere calls
+'the pleasantest man in London;' he, on his side, said of Miss Mitford
+that 'she was better and stronger than any of her books.'</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45">[45]</a><div class="note"><p> Nineteen years, Miss Mitford having been born in 1787.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46">[46]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Recollections of a Literary Life</i>, by Mary Russell
+Mitford, p. 155 (1859).</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47">[47]</a><div class="note"><p> i.e. copies of the <i>Essay on Mind</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48">[48]</a><div class="note"><p> This is an error. Mr. Chorley was not editor of the
+<i>Athenaeum</i>, though he was one of its principal contributors.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49">[49]</a><div class="note"><p> Andrew Crosse, the electrician, who had recently
+published his observations of a remarkable development of insect
+life in connection with certain electrical experiments&mdash;a discovery
+which caused much controversy at the time, on account of its supposed
+bearings on the origin of life and the doctrine of creation.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50">[50]</a><div class="note"><p> Altered in later editions to 'satisfies.'</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51">[51]</a><div class="note"><p> In later editions 'not' is repeated instead of 'nor,' which
+looks like a compromise between her own opinion and Mr. Boyd's.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52">[52]</a><div class="note"><p> The poem entitled 'Sounds,' in the volume of 1838, contained
+the line 'As erst in Patmos apolyptic John,' presumably for 'apocalyptic.'
+This being naturally held to be 'without excuse,' the line was
+altered in subsequent editions to 'As the seer-saint of Patmos,
+loving John.'</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53">[53]</a><div class="note"><p> The engagement of Prince Albert to Queen Victoria
+took place in October 1839.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54">[54]</a><div class="note"><p> 'Crowned and Buried' <i>(Poetical Works</i>, iii. 9).</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55">[55]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Poetical Works</i>, iii. 152.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56">[56]</a><div class="note"><p> These versions are not reprinted in her collected
+<i>Poetical Works</i>, but are to be found in 'Poems of Geoffrey
+Chaucer modernised,' (1841).</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57">[57]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Poetical Works</i>, iii. 186.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58">[58]</a><div class="note"><p> Translations of three poems of Gregory Nazianzen,
+printed in the <i>Athenaeum</i> of January 8, 1842.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59">[59]</a><div class="note"><p> Mr. Thomas Westwood was the author of a volume of 'Poems,'
+published in 1840, 'Beads from a Rosary' (1843), 'The Burden of the
+Bell' (1850), and other volumes of verse. Several of his compositions
+were appearing occasionally in the <i>Athenaeum</i> at the time when this
+correspondence with Miss Barrett commenced.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60">[60]</a><div class="note"><p> The <i>Essay on Mind</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61">[61]</a><div class="note"><p> The series of papers on the Greek Christian Poets appeared in
+the <i>Athenaeum</i> for February and March 1842; they are reprinted in
+the <i>Poetical Works</i>, v. 109-200.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62">[62]</a><div class="note"><p> This scheme took shape in the series of papers on the English
+Poets which appeared in the <i>Athenaeum</i> in the course of June and
+August 1842 (reprinted in <i>Poetical Works</i>, v. 201-290).</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63">[63]</a><div class="note"><p> Miss Barrett's dog, the gift of Miss Mitford. His praise
+is sung in her poem, 'To Flush, my Dog' (<i>Poetical Works</i>, iii.
+19), and in many of the following letters. He accompanied his mistress
+to Italy, lived to a good old age, and now lies buried in the vaults
+of Casa Guidi.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64">[64]</a><div class="note"><p> George Burges, the classical scholar. He had in 1832
+contributed to the <i>Gentleman's Magazine</i> (under a pseudonym)
+some lines purporting to be a newly discovered portion of the
+<i>Bacchae</i>, but really composed by himself on the basis of a
+parallel passage in the <i>Christus Patiens</i>. It is apparently
+to these lines that Miss Barrett alludes, though the 'discovery' was
+then nearly ten years old.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65">[65]</a><div class="note"><p> Ultimately five.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66">[66]</a><div class="note"><p> This refers to the recent publication of Tennyson's
+<i>Poems</i>, in two volumes, the first containing a re-issue of
+poems previously published, while the second was wholly new, and
+included such poems as the 'Morte d'Arthur,' 'Ulysses,' and 'Locksley
+Hall.'</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67">[67]</a><div class="note"><p> No doubt Mr. Kenyon's translation of Schiller's 'Gods
+of Greece,' which was the occasion of Miss Barrett's poem 'The Dead Pan.'</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68">[68]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Poems, chiefly of early and late years, including The
+Borderers, a Tragedy</i> (1842).</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69">[69]</a><div class="note"><p> It was this picture that called forth the sonnet, 'On a
+Portrait of Wordsworth by B.R. Haydon' (<i>Poetical Works</i>, iii.
+62), alluded to in the next letter.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70">[70]</a><div class="note"><p> The following is the letter from Wordsworth which gave such
+pleasure to Miss Barrett, and which she treasured among her papers for
+the rest of her life. Two slips of the pen have been corrected between
+brackets.
+</p><p>
+'Rydal Mount: Oct. 26, '42.
+</p><p>
+'Dear Miss Barrett,&mdash;Through our common friend Mr. Haydon I
+have received a sonnet which his portrait of me suggested. I should
+have thanked you sooner for that effusion of a feeling towards myself,
+with which I am much gratified, but I have been absent from home
+and much occupied.
+</p><p>
+'The conception of your sonnet is in full accordance with the
+painter's intended work, and the expression vigorous; yet the word
+&quot;ebb,&quot; though I do not myself object to it, nor wish to have it altered,
+will I fear prove obscure to nine readers out of ten.
+</p><p>
+</p><p><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&quot;A vision free</span><br />
+And noble, Haydon, hath thine art released.&quot;<br />
+</p><p>
+Owing to the want of inflections in our language the construction here is
+obscure. Would it not be a little [better] thus? I was going to write a
+small change in the order of the words, but I find it would not remove
+the objection. The verse, as I take it, would be somewhat clearer thus,
+if you would tolerate the redundant syllable:
+</p><p>
+</p><p><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&quot;By a vision free</span><br />
+And noble, Haydon, is thine art released.&quot;<br />
+</p><p>
+I had the gratification of receiving, a good while ago, two copies of a
+volume of your writing, which I have read with much pleasure, and
+beg that the thanks which I charged a friend to offer may be repeated
+[to] you.
+</p><p>
+'It grieved me much to hear from Mr. Kenyon that your health is
+so much deranged. But for that cause I should have presumed to call
+upon you when I was in London last spring.
+</p><p>
+'With every good wish, I remain, dear Miss Barrett, your much
+obliged
+</p><p>
+'WM. WORDSWORTH.'
+</p><p>
+(Postmark: Ambleside, Oct. 28, 1842.)
+</p><p>
+It may be added that although Miss Barrett altered the passage
+criticised by the great poet, she did not accept his amendment. It
+now runs
+</p><p>
+</p><p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'A noble vision free</span><br />
+Our Haydon's hand has flung out from the mist.</p></div><br />
+
+<a name="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71">[71]</a><div class="note"><p> The Greek &#960;&#961;&#959;&#947;&#953;&#947;&#957;&#8061;&#963;&#954;&#949;&#953;&#957; [progign&ocirc;skein], used in Romans viii. 29.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72">[72]</a><div class="note"><p> See 'Hector in the Garden' (<i>Poetical Works</i>, iii. 37).</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73">[73]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Poetical Works</i>, iii. 105.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74">[74]</a><div class="note"><p> 'The Dead Pan' (<i>Poetical Works</i>, iii. 280).</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75">[75]</a><div class="note"><p> The <i>Athenaeum</i> of April 22 contained a review of
+Browning's 'Dramatic Lyrics,' charging him with taking pleasure in being
+enigmatical, and declaring this to be a sign of weakness, not strength.
+It spoke of many of the pieces composing the volume as being rather
+fragments and sketches than having any right to independent existence.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76">[76]</a><div class="note"><p> Mr. Kenyon's view evidently prevailed, for stanza 19 now has
+'scornful children.'</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77">[77]</a><div class="note"><p> Wordsworth was nominated Poet Laureate after the death of
+Southey in March 1843.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78">[78]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Orion</i>, the early editions of which were sold
+at a farthing, in accordance with a fancy of the author. Miss Barrett
+reviewed it in the <i>Athenaum</i> (July 1843).</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79">[79]</a><div class="note"><p> This refers to the competition for the cartoons to
+be painted in the Houses of Parliament, in which Haydon was
+unsuccessful. The disappointment was the greater, inasmuch as the
+scheme for decorating the building with historical pictures was
+mainly due to his initiative.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80">[80]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>The Lay of the Brown Rosary</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81">[81]</a><div class="note"><p> 'To Flush, my dog' (<i>Poetical Works</i>, iii. 19).</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82">[82]</a><div class="note"><p> Published in <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i> for August 1843,
+and called forth by Mr. Horne's report as assistant commissioner on
+the employment of children in mines and manufactories.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83">[83]</a><div class="note"><p> Evidently a slip of the pen for 'Children.'</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84">[84]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Poetical Works</i>, iii. 186. Mr. Boyd's opinion of it
+may be learnt from Miss Barrett's letter to Horne, dated August 31,
+1843 (<i>Letters to R.H. Horne</i>, i. 84): 'Mr. Boyd told me that he
+had read my papers on the Greek Fathers with the more satisfaction
+because he had inferred from my &quot;House of Clouds&quot; that illness
+had <i>impaired my faculties</i>.'</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85">[85]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Poetical Works</i>, i. 223.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86">[86]</a><div class="note"><p> The lines 'To J.S.,' which begin:
+</p><p>
+</p><p><br />
+'The wind that beats the mountain blows<br />
+More softly round the open wold.'</p></div><br />
+
+<a name="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87">[87]</a><div class="note"><p> About the same date she writes to Home (<i>Letters
+to R.H. Horne</i>, i. 86): 'I am very glad to hear that nothing
+really very bad is the matter with Tennyson. If anything were to
+happen to Tennyson, the world should go into mourning.'</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88">[88]</a><div class="note"><p> In the <i>Athenaeum</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89">[89]</a><div class="note"><p> 'Crowned and Buried' (<i>Poetical Works</i>, iii. 9).</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90">[90]</a><div class="note"><p> Her contributions to the essays on Tennyson and Carlyle have
+recently been printed in Messrs. Nichols and Wise's <i>Literary Anecdotes
+of the Nineteenth Century</i>, i. 33, ii. 105.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91">[91]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Letters to R.H. Home</i>, ii. 146.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92">[92]</a><div class="note"><p> Referring to Mr. Kenyon's encouraging comments on
+the 'Drama of Exile,' which he had seen in manuscript at a time
+when Miss Barrett was very despondent about it.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93">[93]</a><div class="note"><p> In the 'Drama of Exile,' near the beginning
+(<i>Poetical Works</i>, i. 7).</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94">[94]</a><div class="note"><p> By Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95">[95]</a><div class="note"><p> There was, however, a still later last, when it became
+the 'Drama of Exile.'</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96">[96]</a><div class="note"><p> John Kenyon: see the last letter.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97">[97]</a><div class="note"><p> In <i>The New Spirit of the Age</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98">[98]</a><div class="note"><p> Evidently a reference to the name of some wine
+(perhaps Montepulciano) sent her by Mr. Boyd. See the end of
+the letter.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99">[99]</a><div class="note"><p> It will be observed that this is not quite the same
+as the current legend, which asserts that the whole poem (of 412
+lines) was composed in twelve hours.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100">[100]</a><div class="note"><p> August 24, 1844.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101">[101]</a><div class="note"><p> October 5, 1844.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102">[102]</a><div class="note"><p> September 31, 1844.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103">[103]</a><div class="note"><p> November 1844.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104">[104]</a><div class="note"><p> See letter of January 3, 1845.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105">[105]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Letters to R.H. Horne</i>, ii. 119.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106">[106]</a><div class="note"><p> Henry Fothergill Chorley (1808-1872) was one of
+the principal members of the staff of the <i>Athenaeum</i>,
+especially in literary and musical matters. Dr. Garnett (in the
+<i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>) says of him, shortly after
+his first joining the staff in 1833, that 'his articles largely
+contributed to maintain the reputation the <i>Athenaeum</i> had
+already acquired for impartiality at a time when puffery was more
+rampant than ever before or since, and when the only other London
+literary journal of any pretension was notoriously venal.' He also
+wrote several novels and dramas, which met with but little popular
+success.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107">[107]</a><div class="note"><p> Compare Aurora Leigh's asseveration:
+</p><p>
+</p><p><br />
+'By Keats' soul, the man who never stepped<br />
+In gradual progress like another man,<br />
+But, turning grandly on his central self,<br />
+Ensphered himself in twenty perfect years<br />
+And died, <i>not</i> young.'<br />
+</p><p>
+('Aurora Leigh,' book i.; <i>Poetical Works</i>, vi. 38.)</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108">[108]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Poetical Works</i>, iii. 172.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109">[109]</a><div class="note"><p> A summary of its contents is given in the next letter
+but one.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110">[110]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Music and Manners in France and Germany: a
+Series of Travelling Sketches of Art and Society</i>, published
+by Mr. Chorley in 1841.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111">[111]</a><div class="note"><p> The <i>Athenaeum</i> had reserved the two longer poems,
+the 'Drama of Exile' and the 'Vision of Poets,' for possible notice
+in a second article, which, however, never appeared.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112">[112]</a><div class="note"><p> The reversal by the House of Lords of his conviction in
+Ireland for conspiracy, which the English Court of Queen's Bench had
+confirmed.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113">[113]</a><div class="note"><p> Mrs. Jameson's earliest book, and one which achieved
+considerable popularity, was her <i>Diary of an Ennuy&eacute;e</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114">[114]</a><div class="note"><p> It will be remembered that 'Punch' had only been in
+existence for three years at this time, which will account for
+this apparently superfluous advice.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115">[115]</a><div class="note"><p> In <i>Blackwood</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116">[116]</a><div class="note"><p> Newman did not actually enter the Church of Rome
+until nearly a year later, in October 1845.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117">[117]</a><div class="note"><p> Miss Martineau, besides having been cured by mesmerism
+herself, was blest with a housemaid who had visions under the same
+influence, concerning which Miss Martineau subsequently wrote at
+great length in the <i>Athenaeum</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118">[118]</a><div class="note"><p> The <i>Athenaum</i> of November 23 contained the
+first of a series of articles by Miss Martineau, giving her experiences
+of mesmerism.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119">[119]</a><div class="note"><p> A great robbery from Rogers' bank on November 23,
+1844, in which the thieves carried off 40,000&pound; worth of notes,
+besides specie and securities.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120">[120]</a><div class="note"><p> Strathfieldsaye, the Duke of Wellington's house.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121">[121]</a><div class="note"><p> William Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, the first part
+of whose <i>Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect</i> appeared
+in 1844.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122">[122]</a><div class="note"><p> Probably Miss Anne Seward, a minor poetess who enjoyed
+considerable popularity at the end of the eighteenth century. Her
+elegies on Captain Cook and Major Andr&eacute; went through several editions,
+as did her <i>Louisa</i>, a poetical novel, a class of composition in
+which she was the predecessor of Mrs. Browning herself. Her collected
+poetical works were edited after her death by Sir Walter Scott (1810).</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123">[123]</a><div class="note"><p> The real name of George Sand.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124">[124]</a><div class="note"><p> By Hans Andersen; an English translation by Mary Howitt was
+published in 1845.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125">[125]</a><div class="note"><p> Duchesses in the French court had the privilege of seating
+themselves on a <i>tabouret</i> or stool while the King took his meals;
+hence the <i>droit du tabouret</i> comes to mean the rank of a duchess.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126">[126]</a><div class="note"><p> The mention of her brothers being at Alexandria is
+sufficient to show that 1845 must be the true date.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127">[127]</a><div class="note"><p> A copy of the 1838 volume for which Mrs. Martin had asked.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128_128">[128]</a><div class="note"><p> Evidently a slip of the pen for Douglas Jerrold, whose
+'Shilling Magazine' began to come out in 1845.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129_129">[129]</a><div class="note"><p> By Porson, on the authenticity of I John v. 7.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130_130">[130]</a><div class="note"><p> A monster bell for York Minster, then being exhibited
+at the Baker Street Bazaar. Mr. Boyd was an enthusiast on bells and bell
+ringing.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131_131">[131]</a><div class="note"><p> No doubt <i>The Swiss Family Robinson</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132_132">[132]</a><div class="note"><p> These versions were not published in Mrs. Browning's
+lifetime, but were included in the posthumous <i>Last Poems</i> (1862).
+They now appear in the <i>Poetical Works</i>, v. 72-83.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133_133">[133]</a><div class="note"><p> Referring to the Pythagorean doctrine of the sanctity of
+beans.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134_134">[134]</a><div class="note"><p> Hood died on May 3, 1845; while on his deathbed
+he received from Sir Robert Peel the notification that he had
+conferred on him a pension of 100&pound; a year, with remainder to his
+wife.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135_135">[135]</a><div class="note"><p> One of the visions of Miss Martineau's 'apocalyptic
+housemaid' related to the wreck of a vessel in which the Tynemouth
+people were much interested. Unfortunately it appeared that news of
+the wreck had reached the town shortly before her vision, and that
+she had been out of doors immediately before submitting to the
+mesmeric trance.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136_136">[136]</a><div class="note"><p> Afterwards Mdme. Emil Braun; see the letter of
+January 9, 1850. At this time she was engaged in editing an album
+or anthology, to which she had asked Miss Barrett to contribute some
+classical translations.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137_137">[137]</a><div class="note"><p> A novel by Mr. Chorley, a copy of which he had presented to
+Miss Barrett.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138_138">[138]</a><div class="note"><p> The first number of the <i>Daily News</i> appeared on
+January 2l, 1846, under the editorship of Charles Dickens.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139_139">[139]</a><div class="note"><p> The well-known lines beginning, 'There is delight in
+singing.' They appeared in the <i>Morning Chronicle</i> for November
+22, 1845.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140_140">[140]</a><div class="note"><p>
+</p><p>
+</p><p><br />
+Beloved, them hast brought me many flowers<br />
+Plucked in the garden, all the summer through,<br />
+And winter, and it seemed as if they grew<br />
+In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers.<br />
+</p><p>
+<i>Sonnets from the Portuguese</i>, xliv.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141_141">[141]</a><div class="note"><p> He committed suicide on June 22, under the influence of the
+disappointment caused by the indifference of the public to his pictures,
+the final instance of which was its flocking to see General Tom Thumb
+and neglecting Haydon's large pictures of 'Aristides' and 'Nero,' which
+were being exhibited in an adjoining room of the Egyptian Hall.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142_142">[142]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Poetical Works</i>, iv. 20-32.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143_143">[143]</a><div class="note"><p> Mrs. Sutherland Orr says that the marriage took place in
+St. Pancras Church; but this is a mistake, as the parish register of
+St. Marylebone proves.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144_144">[144]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Memoirs of Anna Jameson</i>, by G. Macpherson, p. 218.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145_145">[145]</a><div class="note"><p> Afterwards Mrs. Macpherson, and Mrs. Jameson's biographer.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146_146">[146]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Memoirs</i>, p. 231.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147_147">[147]</a><div class="note"><p> The date at the head of the letter is October 2, but
+that is certainly a slip of the pen, since at that date, as the
+following letter to Miss Mitford shows, they had not reached Pisa.
+See also the reference to 'six weeks of marriage' on p. 295. The Pisa
+postmark appears to be October 20 (or later), and the English postmark
+is November 5.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148_148">[148]</a><div class="note"><p> The original is torn here.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149_149">[149]</a><div class="note"><p> This letter is of earlier date than the last, having been
+written <i>en route</i> between Orleans and Lyons; but it has seemed
+better to place the more detailed narrative first.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150_150">[150]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i> for October 1846 contained
+the following poems by Mrs. Browning, some phrases in which might
+certainly be open to comment if they were supposed to have been
+deliberately chosen for publication at this particular time:
+'A Woman's Shortcomings,' 'A Man's Requirements,' 'Maude's Spinning,'
+'A Dead Rose,' 'Change on Change,' 'A Reed,' and 'Hector in the
+Garden.'</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_151_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151_151">[151]</a><div class="note"><p> Better known as Fanny Kemble.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_152_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_152_152">[152]</a><div class="note"><p> Miss Gerardine Bate, Mrs. Jameson's niece.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_153_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153_153">[153]</a><div class="note"><p> This surname is a mistake on Mrs. Browning's part; see her
+letter of October 1, 1849.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_154_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_154_154">[154]</a><div class="note"><p> See <i>Lady Geraldine's Courtship</i>, stanza xli.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_155_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_155_155">[155]</a><div class="note"><p> 'The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point' <i>(Poetical
+Works</i>, ii. 192). It was first printed in a collection called
+<i>The Liberty Bell</i>, for sale at the Boston National Anti-slavery
+Bazaar of 1848. It was separately printed in England in 1849 as a
+small pamphlet, which is now a rare bibliographical curiosity.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_156_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156_156">[156]</a><div class="note"><p> '<i>Critical Kit-Kats</i>,' by E. Gosse, p. 2 (1896).</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_157_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_157_157">[157]</a><div class="note"><p> A list of the works composing Balzac's <i>Com&eacute;die
+Humaine</i> is attached to this letter for Miss Mitford's benefit.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_158_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_158_158">[158]</a><div class="note"><p> Miss E.F. Haworth (several letters to whom are given farther
+on) was an old friend of Robert Browning's, and published a volume
+of verse in 1847, to which this passage seems to allude.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_159_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159_159">[159]</a><div class="note"><p> It will be remembered that Mr. Boyd took a great interest
+in bells and bell ringing. The passage omitted below contains an
+extract from Murray's <i>Handbook</i> with reference to the bells
+of Pisa.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_160_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_160_160">[160]</a><div class="note"><p> This bell was tolled on the occasion of an execution.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_161_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_161_161">[161]</a><div class="note"><p> The American sculptor.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_162_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_162_162">[162]</a><div class="note"><p> Miss Henrietta Barrett was engaged to Captain Surtees
+Cook, an engagement of which her brothers, as well as her father,
+disapproved, partly on the ground of insufficiency of income.
+Ultimately the difficulty was solved in the same way as in the case
+of Mrs. Browning.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_163_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_163_163">[163]</a><div class="note"><p> Mr. Horne was just engaged to be married.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_164_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_164_164">[164]</a><div class="note"><p> Tennyson's <i>Princess</i> had just been published.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_165_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_165_165">[165]</a><div class="note"><p>
+</p><p>
+</p><p><br />
+'This country saving is a glorious thing:<br />
+And if a common man achieved it? well.<br />
+Say, a rich man did? excellent. A king?<br />
+That grows sublime. A priest? Improbable.<br />
+A pope? Ah, there we stop, and cannot bring<br />
+Our faith up to the leap, with history's bell<br />
+</p><p><br />
+So heavy round the neck of it&mdash;albeit<br />
+We fain would grant the possibility<br />
+For thy sake, Pio Nono!'<br />
+</p><p>
+<i>Casa Guidi Windows</i>, part i.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_166_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_166_166">[166]</a><div class="note"><p> The grant of a National Guard was made by the Grand
+Duke of Tuscany on September 4, 1847, in defiance of the threat of
+Austria to occupy any Italian state in which such a concession was
+made to popular aspirations.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_167_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_167_167">[167]</a><div class="note"><p> In Tennyson's <i>Princess</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_168_168"></a><a href="#FNanchor_168_168">[168]</a><div class="note"><p> A picture of the same scene in verse will be found in
+<i>Casa Guidi Windows</i>, part i.:
+</p><p>
+</p><p><br />
+'Shall I say<br />
+What made my heart beat with exulting love<br />
+A few weeks back,' &amp;c.</p></div><br />
+
+<a name="Footnote_169_169"></a><a href="#FNanchor_169_169">[169]</a><div class="note"><p> Chloroform, then beginning to come into use.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_170_170"></a><a href="#FNanchor_170_170">[170]</a><div class="note"><p> Miss Bate's <i>fianc&eacute;</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_171_171"></a><a href="#FNanchor_171_171">[171]</a><div class="note"><p> Novels by George Sand.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_172_172"></a><a href="#FNanchor_172_172">[172]</a><div class="note"><p> See Browning's <i>The Statue and the Bust</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_173_173"></a><a href="#FNanchor_173_173">[173]</a><div class="note"><p> 'the stone Called Dante's&mdash;a plain flat stone scarce
+discerned From others in the pavement&mdash;whereupon He used to bring
+his quiet chair out, turned To Brunelleschi's church, and pour alone
+the lava of his spirit when it burned.' <i>Casa Guidi Windows</i>,
+part i.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_174_174"></a><a href="#FNanchor_174_174">[174]</a><div class="note"><p> This edition, published in 1849 in two volumes
+contained only <i>Paracelsus</i> and the plays and poems of the
+<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i> series.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_175_175"></a><a href="#FNanchor_175_175">[175]</a><div class="note"><p> Apparently it had been proposed to omit <i>Luria</i>
+from the new edition; but, if so, the intention was not carried out.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_176_176"></a><a href="#FNanchor_176_176">[176]</a><div class="note"><p> It will interest many readers to know that Casa Guidi
+is now the property of Mr. R. Barrett Browning.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_177_177"></a><a href="#FNanchor_177_177">[177]</a><div class="note"><p> Mr. Boyd died on May 10, 1848.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_178_178"></a><a href="#FNanchor_178_178">[178]</a><div class="note"><p> Otherwise known as Robert Mannyng, or Robert de Brunne,
+author of the <i>Handlyng Synne</i> and a <i>Chronicle of England</i>.
+He flourished about 1288-1338.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_179_179"></a><a href="#FNanchor_179_179">[179]</a><div class="note"><p> The insurrection of Lombardy against Austrian rule
+had taken place in March, and was immediately followed by war
+between Sardinia and Austria, in which the Italians gained some
+initial successes. Fighting continued through the summer, and was
+temporarily closed by an armistice in August.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_180_180"></a><a href="#FNanchor_180_180">[180]</a><div class="note"><p><br />
+'Guercino drew this angel I saw teach<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(Alfred, dear friend!) that little child to pray</span><br />
+Holding his little hands up, each to each<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pressed gently, with his own head turned away,</span><br />
+Over the earth where so much lay before him<br />
+Of work to do, though heaven was opening o'er him,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And he was left at Fano by the beach.</span><br />
+</p><p><br />
+'We were at Fano, and three times we went<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To sit and see him in his chapel there,</span><br />
+And drink his beauty to our soul's content<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My angel with me too.'</span></p></div><br />
+
+<a name="Footnote_181_181"></a><a href="#FNanchor_181_181">[181]</a><div class="note"><p> The first two volumes of <i>Modern Painters</i> bore no
+author's name, but were described as being 'by a graduate of Oxford.'
+At a later date Mrs. Browning made Mr. Ruskin's acquaintance, as some
+subsequent letters testify.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_182_182"></a><a href="#FNanchor_182_182">[182]</a><div class="note"><p> At this time President of the Council,
+after suppressing the Communist rising of June 1848.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_183_183"></a><a href="#FNanchor_183_183">[183]</a><div class="note"><p> Abd-el-Kader surrendered to the French in Algeria early
+in 1848, under an express promise that he should be sent either to
+Alexandria or to St. Jean d'Acre; in spite of which he was sent to
+France and kept there as a prisoner for several years.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_184_184"></a><a href="#FNanchor_184_184">[184]</a><div class="note"><p> Louis Napoleon was elected President of the French
+Republic by a popular vote on December 10.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_185_185"></a><a href="#FNanchor_185_185">[185]</a><div class="note"><p> Count Pellegrino Rossi, chief minister to the Pope,
+was assassinated in Rome, at the entrance of the Chamber of Deputies, on
+November 15, 1848. Ten days later the Pope fled to Gaeta, and his
+experiments in 'reform' came to a final end.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_186_186"></a><a href="#FNanchor_186_186">[186]</a><div class="note"><p> The Pope, having declared war against Austria before his
+flight, had invited French support, with the concurrence of his
+people; being expelled from Rome, he invited (and obtained) French
+help to restore him, in spite of the desperate opposition of his
+people.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_187_187"></a><a href="#FNanchor_187_187">[187]</a><div class="note"><p> Wiedeman was the maiden name of Mr. Browning's mother,
+her father having been a German who settled in Scotland and married
+a Scotch wife.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_188_188"></a><a href="#FNanchor_188_188">[188]</a><div class="note"><p> A revolution, fomented chiefly by the Leghornese,
+expelled the Grand Duke in March 1849; about seven weeks later
+a counter-revolution, chiefly by the peasantry, recalled him.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_189_189"></a><a href="#FNanchor_189_189">[189]</a><div class="note"><p> Chief administrator of the Republic of Tuscany
+during the short absence of the Grand Duke Leopold.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_190_190"></a><a href="#FNanchor_190_190">[190]</a><div class="note"><p> Minister of the Interior in the Republic of 1848, and
+one of the most prominent f the advanced Republican leaders.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_191_191"></a><a href="#FNanchor_191_191">[191]</a><div class="note"><p> A letter, addressed to a private friend but intended
+to be made public, denouncing the reactionary and oppressive
+administration of the restored Pope.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_192_192"></a><a href="#FNanchor_192_192">[192]</a><div class="note"><p> Probably the first part of <i>Casa Guidi Windows</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_193_193"></a><a href="#FNanchor_193_193">[193]</a><div class="note"><p> By A.H. Clough and T. Burbidge.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_194_194"></a><a href="#FNanchor_194_194">[194]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Christmas Eve and Easter Day</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_195_195"></a><a href="#FNanchor_195_195">[195]</a><div class="note"><p> A long description of the baby's meals and
+daily programme follows, the substance of which can probably
+be imagined by connoisseurs in the subject.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_196_196"></a><a href="#FNanchor_196_196">[196]</a><div class="note"><p> Apparently the <i>Echo-song</i> which now precedes canto
+iv. of the <i>Princess</i>, though one is surprised at the opinion
+here expressed of it. It will be remembered that this and the other
+lyrical interludes did not appear in the original edition of the
+<i>Princess</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_197_197"></a><a href="#FNanchor_197_197">[197]</a><div class="note"><p> Notably the <i>Sonnets from the Portuguese</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_198_198"></a><a href="#FNanchor_198_198">[198]</a><div class="note"><p> 'A Child's Death at Florence,' which appeared in the
+<i>Athenaeum</i> of December 22, 1849.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_199_199"></a><a href="#FNanchor_199_199">[199]</a><div class="note"><p> Mrs. Jameson's <i>Legends of the Monastic Orders</i>,
+which had just been published.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_200_200"></a><a href="#FNanchor_200_200">[200]</a><div class="note"><p> Presumably <i>not</i> Mrs. Browning's maid, but 'Christopher
+North.'</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_201_201"></a><a href="#FNanchor_201_201">[201]</a><div class="note"><p> The <i>Athenaeum</i> review of <i>Christmas Eve and
+Easter Day</i>, while recognising the beauty of many passages in
+the two poems, criticised strongly the discussion of theological
+subjects in 'doggrel verse;' and its analysis of the theology would
+hardly be satisfactory to the author.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_202_202"></a><a href="#FNanchor_202_202">[202]</a><div class="note"><p> Referring to the lines entitled <i>A Child's Grave at
+Florence</i>, which had apparently been misunderstood as implying
+the death of Mrs. Browning's own child.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_203_203"></a><a href="#FNanchor_203_203">[203]</a><div class="note"><p> These are the papers subsequently published under the title
+<i>Recollections of a Literary Life</i>. Among them was an article on the
+Brownings, giving biographical detail with respect to Mrs. Browning's
+early life, especially as to the loss of her brother, which caused extreme
+pain to her sensitive nature, as a later letter testifies.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_204_204"></a><a href="#FNanchor_204_204">[204]</a><div class="note"><p> Drowned with her husband on their way to America.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_205_205"></a><a href="#FNanchor_205_205">[205]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_206_206"></a><a href="#FNanchor_206_206">[206]</a><div class="note"><p> The Papal Bull appointing Roman Catholic bishops
+throughout England was issued on September 24, 1850, and England
+was now in the throes of the anti-papal excitement produced by it.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_207_207"></a><a href="#FNanchor_207_207">[207]</a><div class="note"><p> &quot;Where Louis Napoleon was engaged in his series of
+encroachments on the power of the Assembly and intrigues for the
+imperial throne.&quot;</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett
+Browning (1 of 2), by Frederic G. Kenyon
+
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
+(1 of 2), by Frederic G. Kenyon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2)
+
+Author: Frederic G. Kenyon
+
+Release Date: July 25, 2004 [EBook #13018]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING LETTERS, VOL. 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Jonathan Ingram, Bill Hershey and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Elizabeth Barrett Browning]
+
+
+
+
+THE LETTERS
+OF
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
+
+
+EDITED WITH BIOGRAPHICAL ADDITIONS
+BY
+FREDERIC G. KENYON
+
+_WITH PORTRAITS_
+
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES
+
+VOLUME I.
+
+_THIRD EDITION_
+
+
+1898
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The writer of any narrative of Mrs. Browning's life, or the editor of
+a collection of her letters, is met at the outset of his task by the
+knowledge that both Mrs. Browning herself and her husband more than,
+once expressed their strong dislike of any such publicity in regard to
+matters of a personal and private character affecting themselves. The
+fact that expressions to this effect are publicly extant is one which
+has to be faced or evaded; but if it could not be fairly faced, and
+the apparent difficulty removed, the present volumes would never
+have seen the light. It would be a poor qualification for the task of
+preparing a record of Mrs. Browning's life, to be willing therein to
+do violence to her own expressed wishes and those of her husband. But
+the expressions to which reference has been made are limited, either
+formally or by implication, to publications made during their own
+lifetime. They shrank, as any sensitive person must shrink, from
+seeing their private lives, their personal characteristics, above
+all, their sorrows and bereavements, offered to the inspection and
+criticism of the general public; and it was to such publications that
+their protests referred. They could not but be aware that the details
+of their lives would be of interest to the public which read and
+admired their works, and there is evidence that they recognised that
+the public has some claims with regard to writers who have appealed
+to, and partly lived by, its favour. They only claimed that during
+their own lifetime their feelings should be consulted first; when they
+should have passed away, the rights of the public would begin.
+
+It is in this spirit that the following collection of Mrs. Browning's
+letters has now been prepared, in the conviction that the lovers of
+English literature will be glad to make a closer and more intimate
+acquaintance with one--or, it may truthfully be said, with two--of
+the most interesting literary characters of the Victorian age. It is a
+selection from a large mass of letters, written at all periods in Mrs.
+Browning's life, which Mr. Browning, after his wife's death, reclaimed
+from the friends to whom they had been written, or from their
+representatives. No doubt, Mr. Browning's primary object was to
+prevent publications which would have been excessively distressing
+to his feelings; but the letters, when once thus collected, were
+not destroyed (as was the case with many of his own letters), but
+carefully preserved, and so passed into the possession of his son,
+Mr. R. Barrett Browning, with whose consent they are now published. In
+this collection are comprised the letters to Miss Browning (the poet's
+sister, whose consent has also been freely given to the publication),
+Mr. H.S. Boyd, Mrs. Martin, Miss Mitford, Mrs. Jameson, Mr. John
+Kenyon, Mr. Chorley, Miss Blagden, Miss Haworth, and Miss Thomson
+(Madame Emil Braun).[1] To these have been added a number of letters
+which have been kindly lent by their possessors for the purpose of the
+present volumes.
+
+[Footnote 1: Mrs. Sutherland-Orr had access to these letters for her
+biography of Robert Browning, and quotes several passages from
+them. With this exception, none of the letters have been published
+previously; and the published letters of Miss Barrett to Mr. R.H.
+Horne have not been drawn upon, except for biographical information.]
+
+
+The duties of the editor have been mainly those of selection and
+arrangement. With regard to the former task one word is necessary. It
+may be thought that the almost entire absence of bitterness (except on
+certain political topics), of controversy, of personal ill feeling
+of any kind, is due to editorial excisions. This is not the case.
+The number of passages that have been removed for fear of hurting the
+feelings of persons still living is almost infinitesimal; and in
+these the cause of offence is always something inherent in the facts
+recorded, not in the spirit in which they are mentioned. No person had
+less animosity than Mrs. Browning; it seems as though she could hardly
+bring herself to speak harshly of anyone. The omissions that have been
+made are almost wholly of passages containing little or nothing of
+interest, or repetitions of what has been said elsewhere; and
+they have been made with the object of diminishing the bulk and
+concentrating the interest of the collection, never with the purpose
+of modifying the representation of the writer's character.
+
+The task of arranging the letters has been more arduous owing to Mrs.
+Browning's unfortunate habit of prefixing no date's, or incomplete
+ones, to her letters. Many of them are dated merely by the day of the
+week or month, and can only be assigned to their proper place in the
+series on internal evidence. In some cases, however, the envelopes
+have been preserved, and the date is then often provided by the
+postmarks. These supply fixed points by which the others can be
+tested; and ultimately all have fallen into line in chronological
+order, and with at least approximate dates to each letter.
+
+The correspondence, thus arranged in chronological order, forms an
+almost continuous record of Mrs. Browning's life, from the early
+days in Herefordshire to her death in Italy in 1861; but in order to
+complete the record, it has been thought well to add connecting links
+of narrative, which should serve to bind the whole together into the
+unity of a biography. It is a chronicle, rather than a biography in
+the artistic sense of the term; a chronicle of the events of a life in
+which there were but few external events of importance, and in which
+the subject of the picture is, for the most part, left to paint her
+own portrait, and that, moreover, unconsciously. Still, this is a
+method which may be held to have its advantages, in that it can hardly
+be affected by the feelings or prejudices of the biographer; and if
+it does not present a finished portrait to the reader, it provides him
+with the materials from which he can form a portrait for himself. The
+external events are placed upon record, either in the letters or in
+the connecting links of narrative; the character and opinions of Mrs.
+Browning reveal themselves in her correspondence; and her genius is
+enshrined in her poetry. And these three elements make up all that may
+be known of her personality, all with which a biographer has to deal.
+
+It is essentially her character, not her genius, that is presented
+to the reader of these letters. There are some letter-writers whose
+genius is so closely allied with their daily life that it shines
+through into their familiar correspondence with their friends, and
+their letters become literature. Such, in their very different ways,
+with very different types of genius and very different habits of daily
+life, are Gray, Cowper, Lamb, perhaps Fitzgerald. But letter-writers
+such as these are few. More often the correspondence of men and women
+of letters is valuable for the light it throws upon the character and
+opinions of those whose character and opinions we are led to regard
+with admiration or respect, or at least interest, on account of their
+other writings. In these cases it may be held that the publication
+is justifiable or not, according as the character which it reveals is
+affected favourably or the reverse. Not all truth, even about famous
+men, is useful for publication, but only such as enables us to
+appreciate better the works which have made them famous. Their highest
+selves are expressed in their literary work; and it is a poor service
+to truth to insist on bringing to light the fact that they also had
+lower selves--common, dull, it may be vicious. What illustrates their
+genius and enhances our respect for their character, may rightly be
+made known; but what shakes our belief and mars our enjoyment in them,
+is simply better left in obscurity.
+
+With regard to Mrs. Browning, however, there is no room for doubt
+upon these points. These letters, familiarly written to her private
+friends, without the smallest idea of publication, treating of the
+thoughts that came uppermost in the ordinary language of conversation,
+can lay no claim to make a new revelation of her genius. On the other
+hand, perhaps because the circumstances of Mrs. Browning's life
+cut her off to an unusual extent from personal intercourse with her
+friends, and threw her back upon letter-writing as her principal means
+of communication with them, they contain an unusually full revelation
+of her character. And this is not wholly unconnected with her literary
+genius, since her personal convictions, her moral character, entered
+more fully than is often the case into the composition of her poetry.
+Her best poetry is that which is most full of her personal emotions.
+The 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' the 'Cry of the Children,'
+'Cowper's Grave,' the 'Dead Pan,' 'Aurora Leigh,' and all the Italian
+poems, owe their value to the pure and earnest character, the strong
+love of truth and right, the enthusiasm on behalf of what is oppressed
+and the indignation against all kinds of oppression and wrong, which
+were prominent elements in a personality of exceptional worth and
+beauty.
+
+An editor can generally serve his readers best by remaining in the
+background; but he is allowed one moment for the expression of his
+personal feelings, when he thanks those who have assisted him in his
+work. In the present case there are many to whom it is a pleasure to
+offer such thanks. In the first place, I have to thank Mr. R. Barrett
+Browning and Miss Browning most cordially for having accepted the
+proposal of the publishers (Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., to whom
+likewise my gratitude is due) to put so pleasant and congenial a
+task into my hands. Mr. Browning has also contributed a number of
+suggestions and corrections while the sheets have been passing through
+the press. I have also to thank those who have been kind enough to
+offer letters in their possession for inclusion in these volumes: Lady
+Alwyne Compton for the letters to Mr. Westwood; Mrs. Arthur Severn
+for the letters to Mr. Ruskin; Mr. G.L. Craik for the letters to Miss
+Mulock; Mrs. Commeline for the letters to Miss Commeline; Mr. T.J.
+Wise for the letters to Mr. Cornelius Mathews; Mr. C. Aldrich for
+the letter to Mrs. Kinney; Col. T.W. Higginson for a letter to Miss
+Channing; and the Rev. G. Bainton for a letter to Mr. Kenyon. It
+has not been possible to print all the letters which have been thus
+offered; but this does not diminish the kindness of the lenders, nor
+the gratitude of the editor.
+
+Finally, I should wish to offer my sincere thanks to Lady Edmond
+Fitzmaurice for much assistance and advice in the selection and
+revision of the letters; a labour which her friendship with Mr.
+Browning towards the close of his life has prompted her to bestow most
+freely and fully upon this memorial of his wife.
+
+F.G.K.
+
+_July 1897_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+1806-1835
+
+Birth--Hope End--Early Poems--Sidmouth--'Prometheus'
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+1835-1841
+
+London--Magazine Poems--'The Seraphim and other Poems'--Torquay--Death
+of Edward Barrett--Return to London
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+1841-1843
+
+Wimpole Street--'The Greek Christian Poets'--'The English
+Poets'--'The New Spirit of the Age'--Miscellaneous Letters
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+1844-1846
+
+The 'Poems' of 1844--Miss Martineau and Mesmerism--Pro-posed
+Journey to Italy
+
+CHAPTER V
+1846-1849
+
+Friendship with Robert Browning--Love and Marriage--Paris
+and Pisa--Florence--Vallombrosa--Casa Guidi--Italian Politics
+in 1848
+
+CHAPTER VI
+1849-1851
+
+Birth of a Son--Death of Mrs. Browning, senior--Bagni di
+Lucca--New Edition of Poems--Siena--Florentine Life
+
+PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. _Frontispiece_ CASA GUIDI
+
+
+
+
+THE LETTERS
+OF
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+1806-1835
+
+
+Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, still better known to the world as
+Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was born on March 6, 1806, the eldest
+child of Edward and Mary Moulton Barrett. I Both the date and place
+of her birth have been matters of uncertainty and dispute, and even so
+trustworthy an authority as the 'Dictionary of National Biography' is
+inaccurate with respect to them. All doubt has, however, been set at
+rest by the discovery of the entry of her birth in the parish register
+of Kelloe Church, in the county of Durham.[2] She was born at Coxhoe
+Hall, the residence of Mr. Barrett's only brother, Samuel, about
+five miles south of the city of Durham. Her father, whose name was
+originally Edward Barrett Moulton, had assumed the additional surname
+of Barrett on the death of his maternal grandfather, to whose estates
+in Jamaica he was the heir. Of Mr. Barrett it is recorded by Mr.
+Browning, in the notes prefixed by him to the collected edition of his
+wife's poems, that 'on the early death of his father he was brought
+from Jamaica to England when a very young child, as a ward of the
+late Chief Baron Lord Abinger, then Mr. Scarlett, whom he frequently
+accompanied in his post-chaise when on circuit. He was sent to Harrow,
+but received there so savage a punishment for a supposed offence
+(burning the toast)'--which, indeed, has been a 'supposed offence' at
+other schools than Harrow--'by the youth whose fag he had become, that
+he was withdrawn from the school by his mother, and the delinquent
+was expelled. At the age of sixteen he was sent by Mr. Scarlett to
+Cambridge, and thence, for an early marriage, went to Northumberland.'
+His wife was Miss Mary Graham-Clarke, daughter of J. Graham-Clarke,
+of Fenham Hall, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but of her nothing seems to be
+known, and her comparatively early death causes her to be little heard
+of in the record of her daughter's life.
+
+[Footnote 2: See _Notes and Queries_ for July 20, 1889, supplemented
+by a note from Mr. Browning himself in the same paper on August 24.]
+
+Nothing is to be gained by trying to trace back the genealogy of the
+Barrett family, and it need merely be noted that it had been
+connected for some generations with the island of Jamaica, and owned
+considerable estates there.[3] It is a curious coincidence that Robert
+Browning was likewise in part of West Indian descent, and so, too, was
+John Kenyon, the lifelong friend of both, by whose means the poet and
+poetess were first introduced to one another.
+
+[Footnote 3: These estates still remain in the family, and Mr. Charles
+Barrett, the eldest surviving brother of Mrs. Browning, now lives
+there.]
+
+The family of Mr. Edward Barrett was a fairly large one, consisting,
+besides Elizabeth, of two daughters, Henrietta and Arabel, and eight
+sons--Edward, whose tragic death at Torquay saddened so much of his
+sister's life, Charles (the 'Stormie' of the letters), Samuel, George,
+Henry, Alfred, Septimus, and Octavius; Mr. Barrett's inventiveness
+having apparently given out with the last two members of his family,
+reducing him to the primitive method of simple enumeration, an
+enumeration in which, it may be observed, the daughters counted for
+nothing. Not many of these, however, can have been born at Coxhoe; for
+while Elizabeth was still an infant--apparently about the beginning
+of the year 1809--Mr. Barrett removed to his newly purchased estate
+of Hope End, in Herefordshire, among the Malvern hills, and only a few
+miles from Malvern itself. It is to Hope End that the admirers of Mrs.
+Browning must look as the real home of her childhood and youth. Here
+she spent her first twenty years of conscious life. Here is the scene
+of the childish reminiscences which are to be found among her earlier
+poems, of 'Hector in the Garden,' 'The Lost Bower,' and 'The Deserted
+Garden.' And here too her earliest verses were written, and the
+foundations laid of that omnivorous reading of literature of all sorts
+and kinds, which was so strong a characteristic of her tastes and
+leanings.
+
+On this subject she may be left to tell her own tale. In a letter
+written on October 5, 1843, to Mr. R.H. Horne, she furnishes him with
+the following biographical details for his study of her in 'The New
+Spirit of the Age.' They supply us with nearly all that we know of her
+early life and writings.
+
+'And then as to stories, my story amounts to the knife-grinder's, with
+nothing at all for a catastrophe. A bird in a cage would have as good
+a story, Most of my events, and nearly all my intense pleasures, have
+passed in my _thoughts_. I wrote verses--as I dare say many have done
+who never wrote any poems--very early; at eight years old and earlier.
+But, what is less common, the early fancy turned into a will, and
+remained with me, and from that day to this, poetry has been a
+distinct object with me--an object to read, think, and live for. And I
+could make you laugh, although you could not make the public laugh,
+by the narrative of nascent odes, epics, and didactics crying aloud on
+obsolete muses from childish lips. The Greeks were my demi-gods, and
+haunted me out of Pope's Homer, until I dreamt more of Agamemnon than
+of Moses the black pony. And thus my great "epic" of eleven or twelve
+years old, in four books, and called "The Battle of Marathon," and of
+which fifty copies were printed because papa was bent upon spoiling
+me--is Pope's Homer done over again, or rather undone; for, although a
+curious production for a child, it gives evidence only of an
+imitative faculty and an ear, and a good deal of reading in a peculiar
+direction. The love of Pope's Homer threw me into Pope on one side and
+into Greek on the other, and into Latin as a help to Greek--and the
+influence of all these tendencies is manifest so long afterwards as
+in my "Essay on Mind," a didactic poem written when I was seventeen or
+eighteen, and long repented of as worthy of all repentance. The poem
+is imitative in its form, yet is not without traces of an individual
+thinking and feeling--the bird pecks through the shell in it. With
+this it has a pertness and pedantry which did not even then belong to
+the character of the author, and which I regret now more than I do the
+literary defectiveness.
+
+'All this time, and indeed the greater part of my life, we lived at
+Hope End, a few miles from Malvern, in a retirement scarcely broken to
+me except by books and my own thoughts, and it is a beautiful country,
+and was a retirement happy in many ways, although the very peace of it
+troubles the heart as it looks back. There I had my fits of Pope, and
+Byron, and Coleridge, and read Greek as hard under the trees as some
+of your Oxonians in the Bodleian; gathered visions from Plato and the
+dramatists, and eat and drank Greek and made my head ache with it. Do
+you know the Malvern Hills? The hills of Piers Plowman's Visions? They
+seem to me my native hills; for, although I was born in the county of
+Durham, I was an infant when I went first into their neighbourhood,
+and lived there until I had passed twenty by several years. Beautiful,
+beautiful hills they are! And yet, not for the whole world's beauty
+would I stand in the sunshine and the shadow of them any more. It
+would be a mockery, like the taking back of a broken flower to its
+stalk.'[4]
+
+[Footnote 4: R.H. Horne, _Letters of E.B. Browning_, i. 158-161.]
+
+So, while the young Robert Browning was enthusiastically declaiming
+passages of Pope's Homer, and measuring out heroic couplets with
+his hand round the dining table in Camberwell, Elizabeth Barrett was
+drinking from the same fount of inspiration among the Malvern Hills,
+and was already turning it to account in the production of her first
+epic. The fifty copies of the 'Battle of Marathon,' which Mr. Barrett,
+proud of his daughter's precocity, insisted on having printed, bear
+the date of 1819. Only five of them are now known to exist, and these
+are all in private hands; even the British Museum possesses only the
+reprint which the hero-worship of the present generation caused to be
+produced in 1891. Seven years later, when she had just reached the
+age of twenty, her first volume of verse was offered to the world
+in general. It was entitled 'An Essay on Mind, and other Poems,' and
+included, besides the didactic poem after the manner of Pope which
+formed the _piece de resistance_, a number of shorter pieces, several
+of which, as she informed Horne,[5] had been written when she was not
+more than thirteen.
+
+[Footnote 5: R.H. Horne, _Letters of E.B. Browning_, i. 164.]
+
+It was during the years at Hope End that Elizabeth Barrett was
+first attacked by serious illness. 'At fifteen,' she says in her
+autobiographical letter, already quoted in part, 'I nearly died;' and
+this may be connected with a statement by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, to
+the effect that 'one day, when Elizabeth was about fifteen, the young
+girl, impatient for her ride, tried to saddle her pony alone, in a
+field, and fell with the saddle upon her, in some way injuring her
+spine so seriously that she was for years upon her back.'[6] The
+latter part of this statement cannot indeed be quite accurate; for
+her period of long confinement to a sick-room was of later date, and
+began, according to her own statement, from a different cause. Mr.
+R. Barrett Browning states that the injury to the spine was not
+discovered for some time, but was afterwards attributed, not to a
+fall, but to a strain whilst tightening her pony's girths. No doubt
+this injury contributed towards the general weakness of health to
+which she was always subject.
+
+[Footnote 6: _Dict. of Nat. Biography_, vii. 78.]
+
+Of her earliest letters, belonging to the Hope End period, very few
+have been preserved, and most of those which remain are of little
+interest. The first to be printed here belongs to the period of her
+mother's last illness, which ended in her death on October 1, 1828. It
+is addressed to Mrs. James Martin, a lifelong friend, whose name will
+appear frequently in these pages. At the time when it was written she
+was living near Tewkesbury, within visiting distance of the Barretts.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Hope End: Thursday, [about September 1828].
+
+My dear Mrs. Martin,--I am happy to be able to tell you that Mr.
+Garden was here two days ago, and that he has not thought it necessary
+to adopt any violent measure with regard to our beloved invalid.
+He seems entirely to rely, for her ultimate restoration, upon a
+discipline as to diet, and a course of strengthening medicine. This
+is most satisfactory to us; and her spirits have been soothed and
+tranquillised by his visit. She has slept quietly for the last few
+nights, and reports herself to be _brisker_ and stronger, and to
+be comparatively free from pain. This account is, perhaps, too
+favorable,[7] and will appear so to you when you see her, as I am
+afraid you will, not looking much better, _much_ more cheerful, than
+when you paid us your last visit. But when we are very _willing_ to
+hope, we are apt to be too _ready_ to hope: though really, without
+being _too_ sanguine, we may consider quiet nights and diminished pain
+to be satisfactory signs of amendment. I know you will be glad to hear
+of them, and I hope you will _witness_ them very soon, in spite of
+this repulsive snow. It will do mama good, and I am sure it will give
+us all pleasure, to benefit by some of your charitable pilgrimages
+over the hill.
+
+With our best regards, and sincerest thanks for your kind interest
+
+Believe me, dear Mrs. Martin, most truly yours,
+
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 7: Mrs. Browning usually spells such words as 'favour,'
+'honour,' and the like, without the _u_, after the fashion which one
+is accustomed to regard as American.]
+
+
+
+_To Miss Commeline_
+Hope End: Monday, [October 1828].
+
+My dear Miss Commeline,--Thank you for the sympathy and interest
+which you have extended towards us in our heavy affliction. Even _you_
+cannot know _all_ that we have lost; but God knows, and it has pleased
+Him to take away the blessing that He gave. And all _must_ be right
+since He doeth all! Indeed we did not foresee this great grief! If we
+had we could not have felt it less; but I should not then have been
+denied the consolation of being with her at the last.
+
+It is idle to speak now of such thoughts, and circumstances have
+unquestionably been rightly and mercifully ordered. We are all well
+and composed--poor papa supporting us by his own surpassing fortitude.
+It is an inexpressible comfort to me to witness his calmness.
+
+I cannot say that we shall not be glad to see you, but the weather is
+dreary and the distance long: and if you were to come, we might not be
+able to meet you and to speak to you with calmness. In that case you
+would receive a melancholy impression which I should like to spare
+you. Perhaps it would be better for you and less selfish in us, if
+we were to defer this meeting a little while longer--but do what you
+prefer doing! I can never forget the regard and esteem entertained for
+you by one whose tenderness and watchfulness I have felt every day
+and hour since she gave me that life which her loss embitters--whose
+memory is more precious to me than any earthly blessing left behind; I
+have written what is ungrateful, and what I ought not to have written,
+and what I ought not to feel, and do not always feel, but I did not
+just then remember that I had so much left to love.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Boyd_
+Hope End: Saturday morning, [1828-1832].
+
+My dear Mrs. Boyd,--You were quite wrong in supposing that papa was
+likely to complain about 'the number of letters from Malvern;' and as
+to my doing so, why did you suggest that? To fill up a sentence, or
+to conjure up some kind of limping excuse for idle people? Among
+idle people, perhaps you have written _me_ down. But the reason of
+my silence was far more reasonable than yours. I have been engaged in
+alternately wishing in earnest and wishing in vain for the power of
+saying when I could go to Malvern--and in being unwell besides. For
+the last week I have not been at all well, and indeed was obliged
+yesterday to go to bed after breakfast instead of after tea, where
+I contrived to abstract myself out of a good deal of pain into Lord
+Byron's Life by Moore. To-day this abstraction is not necessary; I am
+much better; and, indeed, little remains of the indisposition but
+the _vulgar fractions_ of a cough and cold. I dare say (and Occyta[8]
+agrees with me) cold was at the bottom of it all, for I was so very
+wise as to lie down upon the grass last Monday, when the sun was
+shining deceitfully, though the snow was staring at me from the
+hedges, with an expression anything but dog-daysical!
+
+Henrietta's face-ache is quite well, and I don't mean to give any more
+bulletins to-day. I hope your 'tolerably well' is turned into 'quite
+well' too by this time.
+
+In reply to your query, I will mention that _the existence_ actually
+extended until Thursday without the visit here--a phenomenon in
+physics and metaphysics. I was desired by a note a short time
+previously, 'to embrace all my circle with the utmost tenderness,'
+_as proxy_. Considering the extent of the said circle, this was a very
+comprehensive request, and a very unreasonable one to offer to anyone
+less than the hundred-armed Indian god Baly. I am glad that
+your alternative of a house is so near to the right side of the
+turnpike--in which case, a _miss_ is certainly not as _bad_ as
+a _mile_. May Place is to be vacated in May, though its present
+inhabitants do not leave Malvern. I mention this to you, but pray
+don't _re-mention_ it to anybody. The rent is 15L. Mr. Boyd[9] will
+not be angry with me for not going to see him sooner than I can. At
+least, I am sure he ought not. Though you are all kind enough to wish
+me to go, I always think and know (which is consolatory to everything
+but my vanity) that no one can wish it half as much as I myself do.
+
+Believe me, dear Mrs. Boyd, affectionately yours,
+
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 8: Octavius, her youngest brother.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Hugh Stuart Boyd, the blind scholar whose friendship with
+Elizabeth Barrett is commemorated in her poem, 'Wine of Cyprus,'
+and in three sonnets expressly addressed to him. He was at this time
+living at Great Malvern, where Miss Barrett frequently visited him,
+reading and discussing Greek literature with him, especially the works
+of the Greek Christian Fathers. But to call him her tutor, as has more
+than once been done, is a mistake: see Miss Barrett's letter to; him
+of March 3, 1845. Her knowledge of Greek was due to her volunteering
+to share her brother Edward's work under his tutor, Mr. MacSwiney.]
+
+
+The fear 1832 brought a great change in the fortunes of the Barrett
+family, and may be said to mark the end of the purely formative period
+in Elizabeth Barrett's life. Hitherto she had been living in the home
+and among the surroundings of her childhood, absorbing literature
+rather than producing it; or if producing it, still mainly for her own
+amusement and instruction, rather than with any view of appealing to
+the general public. But in 1832 this home was broken up by the sale,
+of Hope End,[10] and with the removal thence we seem to find
+her embarking definitely on literature as the avowed pursuit and
+occupation of her life. Sidmouth in Devonshire was the place to which
+the Barrett family now removed, and the letters begin henceforth to be
+longer and more frequent, and to tell a more connected tale.
+
+[Footnote 10: Mr. Ingram, in his _Life of E.B. Browning_ ('Eminent
+Women' Series) connects this fact with the abolition of colonial
+slavery, and a consequent decrease in Mr. Barrett's income; but since
+the abolition only took place in 1833, while Hope End was given up in
+the preceding year, this conclusion does not appear to be certain.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+[Sidmouth: September 1832.]
+
+How can I thank you enough, dearest Mrs. Martin, for your letter?
+How kind of you to write so soon and so very kindly! The postmark and
+handwriting were in themselves pleasant sights to me, and the kindness
+yet more welcome. Believe that I am grateful to you for _all_ your
+kindness--for your kindness now, and your kindness in the days which
+are past. Some of those past days were very happy, and some of them
+very sorrowful--more sorrowful than even our last days at dear, dear
+Hope End. _Then_, I well recollect, though I could not then thank you
+as I ought, how you _felt for_ us and _with_ us. Do not think I can
+ever forget _that time_, or _you_. I had written a note to you, which
+the bearer of Bummy's and Arabel's to Colwall[11] omitted to take.
+Afterwards I thought it best to spare you any more farewells, which
+are upon human lips, of all words, the most natural, and of all the
+most painful.
+
+They told us of our having past your carriage in Ledbury. Dear
+Mrs. Martin, I cannot dwell upon the pain of that first hour of our
+journey; but you will know what it must have been. The dread of it,
+for some hours before, was almost worse; but it is all over now,
+blessed be God. Before the first day's journey was at end, we felt
+inexpressibly relieved--relieved from the restlessness and anxiety
+which have so long oppressed us--and now we are calmer and happier
+than we have been for very long. If we could only have papa and Bro
+and Sette[12] with us! About half an hour before we set off, papa
+found out that he _could not_ part with Sette, who sleeps with
+him, and is always an amusing companion to him. Papa was, however,
+unwilling to separate him perforce from his little playfellows, and
+asked him whether he wished very much to go. Sette's heart was quite
+full, but he answered immediately, 'Oh, no, papa, I would _much_
+rather stay with _you_.' He is a dear affectionate little thing. He
+and Bro being with poor Papa, we are far more comfortable about him
+than we should otherwise be--and perhaps our going was his sharpest
+pang. I hope it was, as it is over. Do not think, dear Mrs. Martin,
+that you or Mr. Martin can ever 'intrude'--you know you use that
+word in your letter. I have often been afraid, on account of papa not
+having been for so long a time at Colwall, lest you should fancy that
+he did not value your society and your kindness. Do not fancy it.
+Painful circumstances produce--as we have often had occasion to
+observe--different effects upon different minds; and some feeling,
+with which I certainly have no sympathy has made papa shrink from
+society of any kind lately. He would not even attend the religious
+societies in Ledbury, which he was so much pledged to support, and so
+interested in supporting. If you knew how much he has talked of you,
+and asked every particular about you, you could not fancy that his
+regard for you was estranged. He has an extraordinary degree of
+strength of mind on most points--and strong feeling, when it is not
+allowed to run in the natural channel, will sometimes force its way
+where it is not expected. You will think it strange; but never up to
+this moment has he even alluded to the subject, before _us_--never, at
+the moment of parting with us. And yet, though he had not power to say
+_one word_, he could play at cricket with the boys on the very last
+evening.
+
+We slept at the York House in Bath. Bath is a beautiful town _as
+a town_, and the country harmonises well with it, without being a
+beautiful country. As _mere country_, nobody would stand still to look
+at it; though as town country, many bodies would. Somersetshire in
+general seems to be hideous, and I could fancy from the walls which
+intersect it in every direction, that they had been turned to stone
+by looking at the _Gorgonic_ scenery. The part of Devonshire through
+which our journey lay is nothing _very_ pretty, though it must be
+allowed to be beautiful after Somersetshire. We arrived here almost
+in the dark, and were besieged by the crowd of disinterested
+tradespeople, who _would_ attend us through the town to our house, to
+help to unload the carriages. This was not a particularly agreeable
+reception in spite of its cordiality; and the circumstance of there
+being not a human being in our house, and not even a rushlight
+burning, did not reassure us. People were tired of expecting us every
+day for three weeks. Nearly the whole way from Honiton to this place
+is a descent. Poor dear Bummy said she thought we were going into
+the _bowels of the earth_, but suspect she thought we were going
+much deeper. Between you and me, she does not seem _delighted_ with
+Sidmouth; but her spirits are a great deal better, and in time she
+will, I dare say, be better pleased. _We_ like very much what we have
+seen of it. The town is small and not superfluously clean, but, of
+course, the respectable houses are not a part of the town. Ours is one
+which the Grand Duchess Helena had, not at all _grand_, but extremely
+comfortable and cheerful, with a splendid sea view in front, and
+pleasant green, hills and trees behind. The drawing-room's four
+windows all look to the sea, and I am never tired of looking out of
+them. I was doing so, with a most hypocritical book before me, when
+your letter arrived, and I _felt_ all that you said in it. I always
+thought that the sea was the sublimest object in nature. Mont
+Blanc--Niagara must be nothing to it. _There_, the Almighty's form
+glasses itself in tempests--and not only in tempests, but in calm--in
+space, in eternal motion, in eternal regularity. How can we look at
+it, and consider our puny sorrows, and not say, 'We are dumb--because
+_Thou_ didst it'? Indeed, dear Mrs. Martin, we must feel every hour,
+and we shall feel every year, that what He did is _well done_--and not
+only well, but mercifully.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. H----, with whom papa is slightly acquainted, have
+called upon us, and shown us many kind attentions. They are West India
+people, not very polished, but certainly _very_ good-natured. We hear
+that the place is extremely full and gay; but this is, of course, only
+an _on dit_ to us at present. I have been riding a donkey two or three
+times, and enjoy very much going to the edge of the sea. The air has
+made me sleep more soundly than I have done for some time, and I dare
+say it will do me a great deal of good in every way.
+
+You may suppose what a southern climate this is, when I tell you that
+myrtles and verbena, three or four feet high, and hydrangeas are in
+flower in the gardens--even in ours, which is about a hundred and
+fifty yards from the sea. I have written to the end of my paper. Give
+our kindest regards to Mr. Martin, and ever believe me,
+
+Your affectionate and grateful
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 11: The Martins' home near Malvern, about a mile from Hope
+End.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Her brothers Edward and Septimus.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+[Sidmouth:] Wednesday, September 27, 1832 [postmark].
+
+How very kind of you, dearest Mrs. Martin, to write to me so much at
+length and at such a time. Indeed, it was exactly the time when, if
+we were where we have been, we should have wished you to walk over
+the hill and talk to us; and although, after all that the most zealous
+friends of letter writing can say for it, it is _not_ such a happy
+thing as talking with those you care for, yet it is the next happiest
+thing. I am sure I thought so when I read your letter ...
+
+And now I must tell you about ourselves. Papa and Bro and Sette have
+made us so much happier by coming, and we have the comfort of seeing
+dear papa in good spirits, and not only satisfied but pleased with
+this place. It is scarcely possible, at least it seems so to me, to do
+otherwise than admire the beauty of the country. It is the very land
+of green lanes and pretty thatched cottages. I don't mean the kind of
+cottages which are generally thatched, with pigstyes and cabbages and
+dirty children, but thatched cottages with verandas and shrubberies,
+and sounds from the harp or piano coming through the windows. When
+you stand upon any of the hills which stand round Sidmouth, the whole
+valley seems to be thickly wooded down to the very verge of the sea,
+and these pretty villas to be springing from the ground almost as
+thickly and quite as naturally as the trees themselves. There are
+certainly many more houses out of the town than in it, and they all
+stand apart, yet near, hiding in their own shrubberies, or behind the
+green rows of elms which wall in the secluded lanes on either side.
+Such a number of green lanes I never saw; some of them quite black
+with foliage, where it is twilight in the middle of the day, and
+others letting in beautiful glimpses of the spreading heathy hills
+or of the sunny sea. I am sure you would like the transition from the
+cliffs, from the bird's eye view to, I was going to say, the mole's
+eye view, but I believe moles don't see quite clearly enough to suit
+my purpose. There are a great number of people here. Sam was at an
+evening party a week ago where there were a hundred and twenty people;
+but they don't walk about the parade and show themselves as one might
+expect. _We_ know only the Herrings and Mrs. and the Miss Polands
+and Sir John Kean. Mrs. and Miss Weekes, and Mr. and Mrs. James have
+called upon us, but we were out when they came. I suppose it will be
+necessary to return their visits and to know them; and when we do,
+you shall hear about them, and about everybody whom we know. I
+am certainly much better in health, stronger than I was, and less
+troubled with the cough. Every day I attend [_word torn out_]
+their walks on my donkey, if we do not go in a boat, which is still
+pleasanter. I believe Henrietta walks out about _three_ times a day.
+She is looking particularly well, and often talks, and I am sure still
+oftener thinks, of you. You know how fond of you she is. Papa walks
+out with her--and _us_; and we all, down to
+
+Occyta, breakfast and drink tea together. The dining takes place at
+five o'clock. To-morrow, if this lovely weather will stand still and
+be accommodating, we talk of rowing to Dawlish, which is about ten
+miles off. We have had a few cases of cholera, at least _suspicious_
+cases: one a fortnight before we arrived, and five since, in
+the course of a month. All dead except one. I confess a little
+nervousness; but it is wearing away. The disease does not seem to make
+any progress; and for the last six days there have been no patients at
+all.
+
+Do let us hear very soon, my dear Mrs. Martin, how you are--how your
+spirits are, and whether Rome is still in your distance. Surely no
+plan could be more delightful for you than this plan; and if you don't
+stay _very_ long away, I shall be sorry to hear of your abandoning it.
+Do you recollect your promise of coming to see us? _We_ do.
+
+You must have had quite enough now of my 'little hand' and of my
+details. Do not go to Matton or to the Bartons or to Eastnor without
+giving my love. How often my thoughts are at _home_! I cannot help
+calling it so still in my thoughts. I may like other places, but no
+other place can ever appear to me to deserve that name.
+
+Dearest Mrs. Martin's affectionate
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Sidmouth: December 14, 1832.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I hope you are very angry indeed with us for
+not writing. We are as penitent as we ought to be--that is, I am,
+for I believe I am the idle person; yet not altogether idle, but
+procrastinating and waiting for news rather more worthy of being read
+in Rome than any which even now I can send you.... And now, my dear
+Mrs. Martin, I mean to thank you, as I ought to have done long ago,
+for your kindness in offering to procure for me the _Archbishop of
+Dublin's_[13] valuable opinion upon my 'Prometheus. I am sure that if
+you have not thought me very ungrateful, you must be very indulgent.
+My mind was at one time so crowded by painful thoughts, that they shut
+out many others which are interesting to me; and among other things, I
+forgot once or twice, when I had an opportunity, to thank _you_, dear
+Mrs. Martin. I believe I should have taken advantage of your proposal,
+but papa said to me, 'If he criticises your manuscript in a manner
+which does not satisfy you, you won't be easy without defending
+yourself, and he might be drawn into taking more trouble than you
+have now any idea of giving him.' I sighed a little at losing such an
+opportunity of gaining a great advantage, but there seemed to be some
+reason in what papa said I have completed a preface and notes to my
+translation; and since doing so, a work of exactly the same character
+by a Mr. Medwin has been published, and commended in Bulwer's
+magazine.[14] Therefore it is probable enough that my trouble,
+excepting as far as my own amusement went, has been in vain. But papa
+means to try Mr. Valpy, I believe. He left us since I began to write
+this letter, with a promise of returning before Christmas Day. We
+_do_ miss him. Mr. Boyd has made me quite angry by publishing his
+translations by rotation in numbers of the 'Wesleyan Magazine,'
+instead of making them up into a separate publication, as I had
+persuaded him to do. There is the effect, you see, of going, even for
+a time, out of my reach! The readers of the 'Wesleyan Magazine' are
+pious people, but not cultivated, nor, for the most part, capable of
+estimating either the talents of Gregory or his translator's. I have
+begun already to _insist_ upon another publication in a separate form,
+and shall gain my point, I dare say. I have been reading Bulwer's
+novels and Mrs. Trollope's libels, and Dr. Parr's works. I am sure
+_you_ are not an admirer of Mrs. Trollope's. She has neither the
+delicacy nor the candour which constitute true nobility of mind and
+her extent of talent forms but a scanty veil to shadow her other
+defects. Bulwer has quite delighted me. He has all the dramatic talent
+which Scott has, and all the passion which Scott has not, and
+he appears to me to be besides a far profounder discriminator of
+character. There are very fine things in his 'Denounced.' We subscribe
+to the best library here, but the best is not a good one. I have,
+however, a table-load of my own books, and with them I can always be
+satisfied. Do you know that Mr. Curzon has left Ledbury? We were glad
+to receive your letter from Dover although it told us that you were
+removing so far from us. Do let us hear of your enjoying Italy. Is
+there much English society in Rome, and is it like English society
+here? I can scarcely fancy an invitation card, 'Mrs. Huggin-muggin at
+home,' carried through the _Via Sacra_. I am sure my 'little hand' has
+done its duty to-day. I shall leave the corners to Henrietta. Give
+our kindest regards to Mr. Martin, and ever believe me, my dear Mrs.
+Martin,
+
+Your affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 13: Archbishop Whately.]
+
+[Footnote 14: _The New Monthly Magazine_, at this time edited by
+Bulwer, afterwards the first Lord Lytton.]
+
+
+The letter just printed contains the first allusion in Miss Barrett's
+letters to any of her own writings. The translation of the 'Prometheus
+Bound' of Aeschylus was the first-fruits of the removal to Sidmouth.
+It was written, as she told Horne eleven years afterwards, 'in twelve
+days, and should have been thrown into the fire afterwards--the only
+means of giving it a little warmth.'[15] Indeed, so dissatisfied
+did she subsequently become with it, that she did what she could to
+suppress it, and in the collected edition of 1850 substituted another
+version, written in 1845, which she hoped would secure the final
+oblivion of her earlier attempt.[16] The letter given above shows that
+the composition of the earlier version took place at the end of 1832;
+and in the following year it was published by Mr. Valpy, along with
+some shorter poems, of which Miss Barrett subsequently wrote that 'a
+few of the fugitive poems may be worth a little, perhaps; but they
+have not so much goodness as to overcome the badness of the blasphemy
+of Aeschylus.' The volume, which was published anonymously, received
+two sentences of contemptuous notice from the 'Athenaeum,' in which
+the reviewer advised 'those who adventure in the hazardous lists of
+poetic translation to touch anyone rather than Aeschylus, and they may
+take warning by the author before us.'[17]
+
+[Footnote 15: _Letters to R.H. Home_, i. 162.]
+
+[Footnote 16: It need hardly be said that the literary resurrectionist
+has been too much for her, and the version of 1833 has recently
+been reprinted. Of this reprint the best that can be said is that it
+provides an occasion for an essay by Mrs. Meynell.]
+
+[Footnote 17: _Athenaeum_, June 8, 1833.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Sidmouth: May 27, 1833.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I am half afraid of your being very angry
+indeed with me; and perhaps it would be quite as well to spare this
+sheet of paper an angry look of yours, by consigning it over to
+Henrietta. Yet do believe me, I have been anxious to write to you a
+long time, and did not know where to direct my letter. The history
+of all my unkindness to you is this: I delayed answering your kind
+welcome letter from Rome, for three weeks, because Henrietta was at
+Torquay, and I knew that she would like to write in it, and because
+I was unreasonable enough to expect to hear every day of her coming
+home. At the end of the three weeks, and on consulting your dates and
+plans, I found out that you would probably have quitted Rome before
+any letter of mine arrived there. Since then, I have been inquiring,
+and all in vain, about where I could find you out. All I could hear
+was, that you were somewhere between Italy and England; and all I
+could do was, to wait patiently, and throw myself at your feet as soon
+as you came within sight and hearing. And now do be as generous as you
+can, my dear Mrs. Martin, and try to forgive one who never _could_ be
+guilty of the fault of forgetting you, notwithstanding appearances. We
+heard only yesterday of your being expected at Colwall. And although
+we cannot welcome you there, otherwise than in this way, at the
+distance of 140 miles, yet we must welcome you in this way, and assure
+both of you how glad we are that the same island holds all of us once
+more. It pleased us very much to hear how you were enjoying yourselves
+in Rome; and you must please us now by telling us that you are
+enjoying yourselves at Colwall, and that you bear the change with
+English philosophy. The fishing at Abbeville was a link between
+the past and the present; and would make the transition between the
+eternal city and the eternal tithes a little less striking. My wonder
+is how you could have persuaded yourselves to keep your promise and
+leave Italy as soon as you did. Tell me how you managed it. And tell
+me everything about yourselves--how you are and how you feel, and
+whether you look backwards or forwards with the most pleasure, and
+whether the influenza has been among your welcomers to England.
+Henrietta and Arabel and Daisy[18] were confined by it to their beds
+for several days and the two former are only now recovering their
+strength. Three or four of the other boys had symptoms which were not
+strong enough to put them to bed. As for me, I have been quite well
+all the spring, and almost all the winter. I don't know when I have
+been so long well as I have been lately; without a cough or anything
+else disagreeable. Indeed, if I may place the influenza in a
+parenthesis, we have all been perfectly well, in spite of our
+fishing and boating and getting wet three times a day. There is good
+trout-fishing at the Otter, and the noble river Sid, which, if I liked
+to stand in it, _might_ cover my ankles. And lately, Daisy and
+Sette and Occyta have studied the art of catching shrimps, and soak
+themselves up to their waists like professors. My love of water
+concentrates itself in the boat; and this I enjoy very much, when the
+sea is as blue and calm as the sky, which it has often been lately. Of
+society we have had little indeed; but Henrietta had more than much
+of it at Torquay during three months; and as for me, you know I don't
+want any though I am far from meaning to speak disrespectfully of _Mr.
+Boyds_, which has been a pleasure and comfort to me. His house is
+not farther than a five minutes' walk from ours; and I often make it
+_four_ in my haste to get there. Ask Eliza Cliffe to lend you the May
+number of the 'Wesleyan Magazine;' and if you have an opportunity of
+procuring last December's number, _do_ procure _that_. There are
+some translations in each of them, which I think you will like. The
+December translation is my favourite, though I was amanuensis only
+in the May one. Henrietta and Arabel have a drawing master, and are
+meditating soon beginning to sketch out of doors--that is, if before
+the meditation is at an end we do not leave Sidmouth. Our plans are
+quite uncertain; and papa has not, I believe, made up his mind whether
+or not to take this house on after the beginning of next month;
+when our engagement with our present landlord closes. If we do leave
+Sidmouth, you know as well as I do where we shall go. Perhaps to
+Boulogne! perhaps to the Swan River. The West Indians are irreparably
+ruined if the Bill passes. Papa says that in the case of its passing,
+nobody in his senses would think of even attempting the culture of
+sugar, and that they had better hang weights to the sides of the
+island of Jamaica and sink it at once. Don't you think certain heads
+might be found heavy enough for the purpose? No insinuation, I assure
+you, against the Administration, in spite of the dagger in their right
+hands. Mr. Atwood seems to me a demi-god of ingratitude! So much for
+the 'fickle reek of popular breath' to which men have erected their
+temple of the winds--who would trust a feather to it? I am almost more
+sorry for poor Lord Grey who is going to ruin us, than for our poor
+selves who are going to be ruined. You will hear that my 'Prometheus
+and other Poems' came into light a few weeks ago--a fortnight ago, I
+think. I dare say I shall wish it out of the light before I have done
+with it. And I dare say Henrietta is wishing me anywhere, rather than
+where I am. Certainly I have past _all bounds_. Do write soon, and
+tell us everything about Mr. Martin and yourself. And ever believe me,
+dearest Mrs. Martin,
+
+Your affectionate
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 18: Alfred, the fifth brother.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Sidmouth: September 7, 1833.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Are you a _little_ angry _again_? I do hope
+not. I should have written long ago if it had not been for Henrietta;
+and Henrietta would have written very lately if it had not been for
+me: and we must beg of you to forgive us both for the sake of each
+other. Thank you for the kind letter which I have been so tardy in
+thanking you for, but which was not, on that account, the less gladly
+received. Do believe how much it pleases me _always_ to see and read
+dear Mrs. Martin's handwriting. But I must try to tell you some
+less ancient truths. We are still in the ruinous house. Without any
+poetical fiction, the walls are too frail for even _me_, who enjoy the
+situation in a most particularly particular manner, to have any desire
+to pass the winter within them. One wind we have had the privilege of
+hearing already; and down came the tiles while we were at dinner, and
+made us all think that down something else was coming. We have had
+one chimney pulled down to prevent it from tumbling down; and have
+received especial injunctions from the bricklayers not to lean too
+much out of the windows, for fear the walls should follow the destiny
+of the chimney. Altogether there is every reasonable probability
+that the whole house will in the course of next winter be as like
+Persepolis as anything so ugly can be! If another house which will fit
+us can be found in Sidmouth, I am sure papa will take it; but, as he
+said the other day, 'If I can't find a house, I must go.' I hope he
+may find one, and as near the sea as this ruin. I have enjoyed its
+moonlight and its calmness all the summer; and am prepared to enjoy
+its tempestuousness of the winter with as true an enjoyment. What we
+shall do ultimately, I do not even dream; and, if I know papa, _he_
+does not. My visions of the future are confined to 'what shall I
+write or read next,' and 'when shall we next go out in the boat,' and
+_they_, you know, can do no harm to anybody. Of one thing I have a
+comforting certainty--that wherever we may go or stay, the decree
+which moves or fixes us will and must be the 'wisest virtuousest
+discreetest best!' ...
+
+So, I will change the subject to myself. You told me that you were
+going to read my book, and I want to know what you think of it. If you
+were given to compliment and insincerity, I should be afraid of asking
+you; because, among other _evident_ reasons, I might then appear to
+be asking for your praise instead of your opinion. As it is--I want to
+know what you think of my book. Is the translation stiff? If you know
+me at all (and I venture to hope that you do) you will be certain that
+I shall _like_ your honesty, and love you for being honest, even if
+you put on the very blackest of black caps....
+
+Of course you know that the late Bill has ruined the West Indians.
+That is settled. The consternation here is very great. Nevertheless I
+am glad, and always shall be, that the negroes are--virtually--free!
+
+May God bless you, dear Mrs. Martin!
+Ever believe me, your affectionate
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Sidmouth: Friday [1834].
+
+My dear Friend,--I don't know how I shall begin to persuade you not to
+be angry with me, but perhaps the best plan will be to confess as many
+sins as would cover this sheet of paper, and then to go on with my
+merits. Certainly I am altogether guiltless of your charge of not
+noticing your book's arrival because no Calvinism arrived with it.
+I told you the bare truth when I told you _why_ I did not write
+immediately. The passage relating to Calvinism I certainly read,
+and as certainly was sorry for; but as certainly as both those
+certainties, such reading and such regret had nothing whatever to do
+with the silence which made you so angry with me.
+
+The other particular thing of which I should have written is Mr.
+Parker and my letters. I am more and, more sorry that you should have
+sent them to him at all--not that their loss is any loss to anybody,
+but that I scarcely like the idea--indeed, I don't like it at all--of
+their remaining, worthless as they are, at Mr. P.'s mercy. As for
+my writing about them, I should not be able to make up my mind to
+do _that_. You know I had nothing to do with their being sent to Mr.
+Parker, and was indeed in complete ignorance of it. Besides, I should
+be half ashamed to write to him now on any subject. A very long
+interregnum took place in our correspondence, which was his own work;
+and when he wrote to me the summer before last, I delayed from week
+to week, and then from month to month, answering it. And now I feel
+ashamed to write at all.
+
+Perhaps you will wonder why I am not ashamed to write to _you_. Indeed
+I have meant to do it very, very often. Don't be severe upon me. I am
+always afraid of writing to you too often, and so the opposite fault
+is apt to be run into--of writing too seldom. IF THAT is a _fault_.
+You see my scepticism is becoming faster and faster developed.
+
+Let me hear from you soon, if you are not angry. I have been reading
+the Bridgewater treatise, and am now trying to understand Prout upon
+Chemistry. I shall be worth something at last, shall I not? Who knows
+but what I may die a glorious death under the _pons asinorum_ after
+all? Prout (if I succeed in understanding him) does not hold that
+matter is infinitely divisible; and so I suppose the seeds of
+matter--the ultimate molecules--are a kind of _tertium quid_ between
+matter and spirit. Certainly I can't believe that any kind of matter,
+primal or ultimate, can be _indivisible_, which it must according to
+his view.
+
+Chalmers's treatise is, as to eloquence, surpassingly beautiful; as to
+matter, I could not walk with him all the way, although I longed to
+do it, for he walked on flowers, and under shade--'no tree on which a
+fine bird did not sit.' ...
+
+Believe me, your affectionate friend,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Sidmouth: September 14, [1834].
+
+My dear Mr. Boyd,--I won't ask you to forgive me for not writing
+before, because I know very well that you would rather have not heard
+from me immediately.... And so, you and Mrs. Mathew have been tearing
+to pieces--to the very rags--all my elaborate theology! And when Mr.
+Young is 'strong enough,' he is to help you at your cruel work! 'The
+points upon which you and I differed' are so numerous, that if I
+really _am_ wrong upon every one of them, Mrs. Mathew has indeed
+reason to 'punish me with hard thoughts.' Well, she can't help my
+feeling for her much esteem, although I never saw her. And if I _were_
+to see her, I would not argue with her; I would only ask her to let me
+love her. I am weary of controversy in religion, and should be so
+were I stronger and more successful in it than I am or care to be. The
+command is not 'argue with one another,' but 'love one another.' It
+is better to love than to convince. They who lie on the bosom of Jesus
+must lie there _together_!
+
+Not a word about your book![19] Don't you mean to tell me anything
+of it? I saw a review of it--rather a satisfactory one--I think in an
+_August_ number of the 'Athenaeum.' If you will look into 'Fraser's
+Magazine' for August, at an article entitled 'Rogueries of Tom Moore,'
+you will be amused with a notice of the 'Edinburgh Review's' criticism
+in the text, and of yourself in a note. We have had a crowded Bible
+meeting, and a Church Missionary and London Missionary meeting
+besides; and I went last Tuesday to the Exmouth Bible meeting with
+Mrs. Maling, Miss Taylor, and Mr. Hunter. We did not return until
+half-past one in the morning.... The Bishop of Barbadoes and the Dean
+of Winchester were walking together on the beach yesterday, making
+Sidmouth look quite episcopal. You would not have despised it _half so
+much_, had you been here.
+
+Do you know any person who would like to send his or her son to
+Sidmouth, for the sake of the climate, and private instruction: and
+if you do, will you mention it to me? I am very sorry to hear of Mrs.
+Boyd being so unwell. Arabel had a letter two days ago from Annie, and
+as it mentions Mrs. Boyd's having gone to Dover, I trust that she is
+well again. Should she be returned, give my love to her.
+
+The black-edged paper may make you wonder at its cause. Our dear
+aunt Mrs. Butler died last month at Dieppe--and died _in Jesus_. Miss
+Clarke is going, if she is not gone, to Italy for the winter.
+
+Believe me, affectionately yours,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+Write to me whenever you _dislike it least_, and tell me what your
+plans are. I hear nothing about our leaving Sidmouth.
+
+[Footnote 19: _The Fathers not Papists_, including a reprint of some
+translations from the Greek Fathers, which Mr. Boyd had published
+previously.]
+
+
+_To Miss Commeline_
+September 22, 1834 [Sidmouth].
+
+I am afraid that there can be no chance of my handwriting at least
+being unforgotten by you, dear Miss Commeline, but in the case of your
+having a very long memory you may remember the name which shall be
+written at the end of this note, and which belongs to one who does
+not, nor is likely to forget you! I was much, _much_ obliged to you
+for the kind few lines you wrote to me--how long ago! No, do not
+remember how long--do not remember _that_ for fear you should think me
+unkind, and--what I am not! I have intended again and again to answer
+your note, and I am doing it--_at last_! Are you all quite well? Mrs.
+Commeline and all of you? Shall I ever see any of you again? Perhaps
+I shall not; but even if I do not, I shall not cease to wish you to be
+well and happy 'in the body or out of the body.'
+
+We came to Sidmouth for two months, and you see we are here still; and
+when we are likely to go is as uncertain as ever. I like the place,
+and some of its inhabitants. I like the greenness and the tranquillity
+and the sea; and the solitude of one dear seat which hangs over it,
+and which is too far or too lonely for many others to like besides
+myself. We are living in a thatched cottage, with a green lawn bounded
+by a _Devonshire lane_. Do you know what that is? Milton did when he
+wrote of 'hedgerow elms and hillocks green.' Indeed Sidmouth is a nest
+among elms; and the lulling of the sea and the shadow of the hills
+make it a peaceful one. But there are no majestic features in the
+country. It is all green and fresh and secluded; and the grandeur is
+concentrated upon the ocean without deigning to have anything to do
+with the earth. I often find my thoughts where my footsteps once used
+to be! but there is no use in speaking of that....
+
+Pray believe me, affectionately yours,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Sidmouth: Friday, December 19, 1834 [postmark].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--... We have lately had deep anxiety with
+regard to our dear papa. He left us two months ago to do his London
+business: and a few weeks since we were told by a letter from him that
+he was ill; he giving us to understand that his complaint was of
+a rheumatic character. By the next coach, we were so daring (I can
+scarcely understand how we managed it) as to send Henry to him:
+thinking that it would be better to be scolded than to suffer him to
+be alone and in suffering at a London hotel. We were not scolded: but
+my prayer to be permitted to follow Henry was condemned to silence:
+and what was said being said emphatically, I was obliged to submit,
+and to be
+
+thankful for the unsatisfactory accounts which for many days
+afterwards we received.... I cannot help being anxious and fearful.
+You know he is _all_ left to us--and that without him we should indeed
+be orphans and desolate. Therefore you may well know what feelings
+those are with which we look back upon his danger; and forwards to any
+threatening of a return of it.... It may not be so. Do not, when you
+write, allude to my fearing about it. Our only feeling now should
+certainly be a deep feeling of thankfulness towards that God of all
+consolation Who has permitted us to know His love in the midst of many
+griefs; and Who while He has often cast upon us the sorrow and the
+shadow, has yet enabled us to recognise it as that 'shadow of the
+wings of the Almighty,' wherein we may 'rejoice.' We shall probably
+see our dear papa next week. At least we know that he is only waiting
+for strength and that he is already able to go out--I fear, not to
+_walk_ out. Here we are all well. Belle Vue is sold, and we shall
+probably have to leave it in March: but I do not think that we shall
+do so before. Henrietta is still very anxious to leave Sidmouth
+altogether; and I still feel that I shall very much grieve to leave
+it: so that it is happy for us that neither is the _decider_ on this
+point. I have often thought that it is happier _not_ to do what one
+pleases, and perhaps you will agree with me--if you don't please at
+the present moment to do something very particular. And do tell me,
+dear Mrs. Martin, what you are pleasing to do, and what you are doing:
+for it seems to me, and indeed is, a long time since I heard of
+you and Mr. Martin _in detail_. Miss Maria Commeline sent a note to
+Henrietta a fortnight ago: and in it was honorable mention of you--but
+I won't interfere with the sublimities of your imagination, by telling
+you what it was.... I should like to hear something of Hope End:
+whether there are many alterations, and whether the new lodge, of
+which I heard, is built. Even now, the thought stands before me
+sometimes like an object in a dream that I shall see no more those
+hills and trees which seemed to me once almost like portions of my
+existence. This is not meant for murmuring. I have had much happiness
+at Sidmouth, though with a character of its own. Henrietta and Arabel
+and I are the only guardians just now of the three youngest boys, the
+only ones at home: and I assure you, we have not too little to do.
+They are no longer _little_ boys. There is an anxiety among us just
+now to have letters from Jamaica--from my dear dear Bro--but the
+packet is only 'expected.' The last accounts were comforting ones;
+and I am living on the hope of seeing him back again in the spring.
+Stormie and Georgie are doing well at Glasgow. So Dr. Wardlaw says....
+Henrietta's particular love to you; and _do_ believe me always,
+
+Your affectionate
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+You have of course heard of poor Mrs. Boyd's death. Mr. Boyd and his
+daughter are both in London, and likely, I think, to remain there.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Sidmouth: Tuesday [spring 1835].
+
+My dear Mr. Boyd,--... Now I am going to tell you the only good news I
+know, and you will be glad, I know, to be told what I am going to
+tell you. Dear Georgie has taken his degree, and very honorably, at
+Glasgow, and is coming to us in all the dignity of a Bachelor of Arts.
+He was examined in Logic, Moral Philosophy, Greek and Latin, of course
+publicly: and we have heard from a fellow student of his, that his
+answers were more pertinent than those of any other of the examined,
+and elicited much applause. Mr. Groube is the fellow student--but he
+has ceased to be one, having found the Glasgow studies too heavy for
+his health. Stormie shrank from the public examination, on account of
+the hesitation in his speech. He would not go up; although, according
+to report, as well qualified as Georgie. Mr. Groube says that the
+ladies of Glasgow are preparing to break their hearts for Georgie's
+departure: and he and Stormie leave Glasgow on May I. Now, I am sure
+you will rejoice with me in the result of the examination. Do you not,
+dear friend? I was very anxious about it; and almost resigned to hear
+of a failure--for Georgie was in great alarm and prepared us for the
+very worst. Therefore the surprise and pleasure were great.
+
+I can't tell you of our plans; although the Glasgow students come to
+us in a week and this house will be too small to receive them. We
+may leave Sidmouth immediately, or not at all. I shall soon be quite
+qualified to write a poem on the 'Pleasures of _Doubt_'--and a very
+good subject it will be. The pleasures of certainty are generally far
+less enjoyable--I mean as pleasures go in this unpleasing world. Papa
+is in London, and much better when we heard from him last--and we are
+awaiting his decree....
+
+And now what remains for me to tell you? I believe I have read more
+Hebrew than Greek lately; yet the dear Greek is not less dear than
+ever. Who reads Greek to you? Who holds my office? Some one, I hope,
+with an articulation of more congenial slowness.
+
+Give Annie my kind love. May God preserve both of you!
+
+Believe me, your affectionate friend,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+1835-1841
+
+The residence of the Barretts at Sidmouth had never been a very
+settled one--never intended to be permanent, and yet never having a
+fixed term nor any reason for a fixed term. Hence it spread itself
+gradually over a space of nearly three years, before the long
+contemplated move to London actually took place. During the latter
+part of that period, however, extant letters of Miss Barrett are
+almost wholly wanting, and there is little information from any other
+source as to the course of her life. It was apparently in the summer
+of 1835 that Sidmouth was finally left behind, Mr. Barrett having
+then taken a house at 74 Gloucester Place (near Baker Street), which,
+though never regarded as more than a temporary residence, continued to
+be the home of his family for the next three years.
+
+The move to London was followed by two results of great importance
+for Elizabeth Barrett. In the first place, her health, which had never
+been strong, broke down altogether in the London atmosphere, and it is
+from some time shortly after the arrival in Gloucester Place that
+the beginning of her invalid life must be dated. On the other hand,
+residence in London brought her into the neighbourhood of new friends;
+and although the number of those admitted to see her in her sick-room
+was always small, we yet owe to this fact the commencement of some of
+her closest friendships, notably those with her distant cousin, John
+Kenyon, and with Miss Mitford, the authoress of 'Our Village,' and of
+a correspondence on a much fuller and more elaborate scale than any of
+the earlier period. To this, no doubt, the fact of her confinement to
+her room contributed not a little; for being unable to go out and see
+her friends, much of her communication with them was necessarily by
+letter. At the same time her literary activity was increasing. She
+began to contribute poems to various magazines, and to be brought
+thereby into connection with literary men; and she was also employed
+on the longer compositions which went to make up her next volume of
+published verse.
+
+All this was, however, only of gradual development; and for some time
+her correspondence is limited to Mr. Boyd, who was now living in St.
+John's Wood, and Mrs. Martin. The exact date of the first letter is
+uncertain, but it seems to belong to a time soon after the arrival of
+the Barretts in town.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[74 Gloucester Place, London: autumn 1835.]
+
+My dear Mr. Boyd,--As Georgie is going to do what I am afraid I shall
+not be able to do to-day--namely, to visit _you_--he must take with
+him a few lines from _Porsonia_ _greeting_, to say how glad I am to
+feel myself again at only a short distance from you, and how still
+gladder I shall be when the same room holds both of us. Don't be angry
+because I have not visited you immediately. You know--or you _will_
+know, if you consider--I cannot open the window and fly.
+
+Papa and I were very much obliged to you for the poison--and are ready
+to smile upon you whenever you give us the opportunity, as graciously
+as Socrates did upon his executioner. How much you will have to say
+to me about the Greeks, unless you begin first to abuse me about
+the _Romans_; and if you begin _that_, the peroration will be a
+very pathetic one, in my being turned out of your doors. Such is my
+prophecy.
+
+Papa has been telling me of your abusing my stanzas on Mrs. Hemans's
+death. I had a presentiment that you would: and behold, why I said
+nothing to you of them. Of course, I maintain, _versus_ both you and
+papa, that they are very much to be admired: as well as everything
+else proceeding from or belonging to ME. Upon which principle, I hope
+you will admire George particularly.
+
+Believe me, dear Mr. Boyd, your affectionate friend,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+Arabel's and my love to Annie. Won't she come to see us?
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+74 Gloucester Place, Portman Square, London: Jan. I, 1836.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I am half willing and half unwilling to write
+to you when, among such dearer interests and deep anxieties, you may
+perhaps be scarcely at liberty to attend to what I write. And yet I
+_will_ write, if it be only briefly, that you may not think--if you
+think of us at all--that we have changed our hearts with our residence
+so much as to forget to sympathise with you, dear Mrs. Martin, or to
+neglect to apprise you ourselves of our movements. Indeed, a letter
+to you should have been written among my first letters on arriving in
+London, only Henrietta (my scape-goat, _you_ will say) said, '_I_ will
+write to Mrs. Martin.' And then after I had waited, and determined
+to write without waiting any longer, we heard of poor Mrs. Hanford's
+affliction and your anxiety, and I have considered day after day
+whether or not I should intrude upon you; until I find myself--_thus_!
+
+I do hope that you have from the hand of God those consolations which
+only He in Jesus Christ can give to the so afflicted. For I know well
+that you are afflicted with the afflicted, and that with you sympathy
+is suffering; and that while the tenderest earthly comfort is
+administered by your presence and kindness to your dear friends, you
+will feel bitterly for them what a little thing earthly comfort is,
+when the earthly beloved perish before them. May He who is the Beloved
+in the sight of His Father and His Church be near to them and you, and
+cause you to _feel_ as well as _know_ the truth, that what is sudden
+sorrow, to our judgments, is only long-prepared mercy in _His_ will
+whose names are _Wisdom_ and _Love_. Should it not be, dear friend,
+that the tears of our human eyes ought to serve the happy and touching
+purpose of reminding us of those tears of Jesus which He shed in
+assuming our sorrow with our flesh? And the memory of those tears
+involves all comfort. A recognition of the oneness of the human nature
+of that Divine Saviour who ever liveth, with ours which perishes and
+sorrows so; an assurance drawn from thence of _His_ sympathy who sits
+on the throne of God, with us who suffer in the dust of earth, and
+of all those doctrines of redemption and sanctification and happiness
+which come from Him and by Him.
+
+Now you will forgive me for writing all this, dearest Mrs. Martin. I
+like to write my thoughts and feelings out of my own head and heart,
+just as they suggest themselves, when I write to you; and I cannot
+think of affliction, particularly when it comes near to me in the
+affliction or anxiety of dear friends, without looking back and
+remembering what voice of God used to sound softly to me when none
+other could speak comfort. You will forgive me, and not be angry with
+me for trying, or seeming to try, to be a sermon writer.
+
+Perhaps, dear Mrs. Martin, when you do feel inclined and able to
+write, you would write me a few lines. Remember, I do not ask for them
+_now_. No, do not think of writing now. I shall very much like to hear
+how your dear charge is--whether there should appear any prospect of
+improvement; and how poor Mrs. Hanford bears up against this heavy
+calamity; and whether the anxiety and nursing affect your health. But
+we shall try to hear this from the Biddulphs; and so do put me out of
+your head, except when its thoughts would dwell on those on earth who
+sympathise with you and care for you.
+
+You see we are in London after all, and poor Sidmouth left afar. I
+am almost inclined to say 'poor us' instead of 'poor Sidmouth.' But
+I dare say I shall soon be able to see in my dungeon, and begin to be
+amused with the spiders. Half my soul, in the meantime, seems to have
+stayed behind on the seashore, which I love more than ever now that I
+cannot walk on it in the body. London is wrapped up like a mummy, in
+a yellow mist, so closely that I have had scarcely a glimpse of its
+countenance since we came. Well, I am trying to like it all very much,
+and I dare say that in time I may change my taste and my senses--and
+succeed. We are in a house large enough to hold us, for four months,
+at the end of which time, if the experiment of our being able to live
+in London succeed, I _believe_ that papa's intention is to take an
+unfurnished house and have his furniture from Ledbury. You may wonder
+at me, but I wish that were settled _so_, and _now_. I am _satisfied_
+with London, although I cannot enjoy it. We are not likely, in the
+case of leaving it, to return to Devonshire, and I should look with
+weary eyes to another strangership and pilgrimage even among green
+fields that know not these fogs. Papa's object in settling here refers
+to my brothers. George will probably enter as a barrister student at
+the Inner Temple on the fifth or sixth of this month, and he will
+have the advantage of his home by our remaining where we are. Another
+advantage of London is, that we shall see here those whom we might see
+nowhere else. This year, dear Mrs. Martin, may it bring with it the
+true pleasure of seeing _you_! Three have gone, and we have not seen
+you.... May God bless you and all that you care for, being with you
+always as the God of consolation and peace.
+
+Your affectionate
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+It is from the middle of this year that Miss Barrett's active
+appearance as an author may be dated. Hitherto her publications had
+been confined to a few small anonymous volumes, printed rather to
+please herself and her friends than with any idea of appealing to a
+wider public. She was now anxious to take this farther step, and, with
+that object, to obtain admission to some of the literary magazines.
+This was obtained through the instrumentality of Mr. R.H. Home,
+subsequently best known as the author of 'Orion.' He was at this
+time personally unknown to Miss Barrett, but an application through a
+common friend led both to the opening to the poetess of the pages of
+the 'New Monthly Magazine,' then edited by Bulwer, and also to the
+commencement of a friendship which has left its mark in the two
+volumes of published letters to Mr. Home. The following is Mr. Home's
+account of the opening of the acquaintance ('Letters,' i. 7, 8):
+
+
+    'My first introduction to Miss Barrett was by a note from Mrs.
+    Orme, inclosing one from the young lady containing a short
+    poem with the modest request to be frankly told whether it
+    might be ranked as poetry or merely verse. As there could be
+    no doubt in the recipient's mind on that point, the poem was
+    forwarded to Colburn's "New Monthly," edited at that time by
+    Mr. Bulwer (afterwards the late [first] Lord Lytton), where it
+    duly appeared in the current number. The next manuscript sent
+    to me was "The Dead Pan," and the poetess at once started on
+    her bright and noble career.'
+
+The poem with which Miss Barrett thus made her bow to the world of
+letters was 'The Romaunt of Margret,'[20] which appeared in the July
+number of the magazine. Mr. Home must, however, have been in error
+in speaking of 'The Dead Pan' as its successor, since that was not
+written till some years later. More probably it was 'The Poet's
+Vow,[21] which was printed in the October number of the 'New Monthly.'
+
+[Footnote 20: _Poetical Works_, ii. 3.]
+
+[Footnote 21: _Ib_. i. 277.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[London:] October 14, Friday [1836].
+
+My dear Friend,--Be as little angry with me as you can. I have not
+been very well for a day or two, and shall enjoy a visit to you on
+Monday so much more than I shall be able to do to-day, that I will ask
+you to forgive my not going to you this week, and to receive me kindly
+on that day instead--provided, you know, it is not wet.
+
+The [Greek: Achaiides] approach the [Greek: Achaioi][22] more
+tremblingly than usual, with the 'New Monthly Magazine' in their
+hands. Now pray don't annoy yourself by reading a single word which
+you would rather not read except for the sake of being kind to me.
+And my prophecy is, that even by annoying yourself and making a
+_strenuous_ effort, the whole force of friendship would not carry you
+down the first page. Georgie says you want to know the verdict of the
+'Athenaeum.' That paper unfortunately has been lent out of the house;
+but my memory enables me to send you the words very correctly, I
+think. After some observations on other periodicals, the writer goes
+on to say: 'The "New Monthly Magazine" has not one heavy article. It
+is rich in poetry, including some fine sonnets by the Corn Law Rhymer,
+and a fine although too dreamy ballad, "The Poet's Vow." We are
+almost tempted to pause and criticise the work of a writer of so much
+inspiration and promise as the author of this poem, and exhort him
+once again, to greater clearness of expression and less quaintness in
+the choice of his phraseology; but this is not the time or place for
+digression.'
+
+You see my critic has condemned me with a very gracious countenance.
+Do put on yours,
+
+And believe me, affectionately yours,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+I forgot to say that you surprised and pleased me at the same time by
+your praise of my 'Sea-mew.'[23] Love to Annie. We were glad to hear
+that she did not _continue_ unwell, and that you are well again, too.
+I hope you have had no return of the rheumatic pain.
+
+[Footnote 22: Miss Barrett's Greek is habitually written without
+accents or breathings.]
+
+[Footnote 23: _Poetical Works_, ii. 278.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[74 Gloucester Place:] Saturday, [October 1836].
+
+My dear Friend,--I am much disappointed in finding myself at the end
+of this week without having once seen you--particularly when your two
+notes are waiting all this time to be answered. Do believe that they
+were not, either of them, addressed to an ungrateful person, and that
+the only reason of their being received _silently_ was my hope of
+answering them more agreeably to both of us--by talking instead of
+writing.
+
+Yes; you have read my mystery.[24]
+
+You paid a tithe to your human nature in reading only _nine-tenths_
+of it, and the rest was a pure gift to your friendship for me, and is
+taken and will be remembered as such. But you have a cruel heart for
+a parody, and this one tried my sensibility so much that I cried--with
+laughing. I confess to you notwithstanding, it was _very fair_, and
+dealt its blow with a shining pointed weapon.
+
+But what will you say to me when I confess besides that, in the face
+of all your kind encouragement, my Drama of the Angels[25] has never
+been touched until the last three days? It was _not_ out of pure
+idleness on my part, nor of disregard to your admonition; but when my
+thoughts were distracted with other things, books just begun inclosing
+me all around, a whole load of books upon my conscience, I could not
+possibly rise up to the gate of heaven and write about my angels.
+You know one can't sometimes sit down to the sublunary, occupation
+of reading Greek, unless one feels _free_ to it. And writing poetry
+requires a double liberty, and an inclination which comes only of
+itself.
+
+But I have begun. I tried the blank metre once, and it _would not
+do_, and so I had to begin again in lyrics. Something above an hundred
+lines is written, and now I am in two panics, just as if one were not
+enough. First, because it seems to me a very daring subject--a subject
+almost beyond our sympathies, and therefore quite beyond the sphere of
+human poetry. Perhaps when all is written courageously, I shall have
+no courage left to publish it. Secondly, because all my tendencies
+towards mysticism will be called into terrible operation by this
+dreaming upon angels.
+
+    Yes; you _will_ read a mystery,
+
+but don't make any rash resolutions about reading anything. As I have
+begun, I certainly will go on with the writing.
+
+Here is a question for you:
+
+Am I to accept your generous sacrifice of reading nine-tenths of my
+'Vow,' as an atonement for your WANT OF CONFIDENCE IN ME? Oh,
+your conscience will understand very well what I mean, without a
+dictionary.
+
+Arabel and I intend to pay you a visit on Monday, and if we can, and
+it is convenient to you, we are inclined to invite ourselves to your
+dinner table. But this is all dependent on the weather.
+
+Believe me, dear Mr. Boyd, your affectionate friend,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 24: An allusion to the first line of 'The Poet's Vow.']
+
+[Footnote 25: The 'Seraphim,' published in 1838.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[74 Gloucester Place:] November 26, 1836 [postmark].
+
+My dear Mr. Boyd,--I have been so busy that I have not been able until
+this morning to take breath or _inspiration_ to answer your lyrics.
+You shall see me soon, but I am sorry to say it can't be Monday or
+Tuesday.
+
+I have had another note from the editor of the 'New Monthly
+Magazine'--very flattering, and praying for farther supplies. The
+Angels were not ready, and I was obliged to send something else, which
+I will not ask you to read. So don't be very uneasy.
+
+Arabel's and my best love to Annie. And believe me in a great hurry,
+for I won't miss this post,
+
+Yours affectionately,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+  Your lyrics found me dull as prose
+  Among a file of papers
+  And analysing London fogs
+  To nothing but the vapours.
+
+  They knew their part; but through the fog
+  Their flaming lightning raising;
+  They missed my fancy, and instead,
+  My choler set a-blazing.
+
+  Quoth I, 'I need not care a pin
+  For charge unjust, unsparing;
+  Yet oh! for ancient bodkin[26] keen,
+  To punish this _Pindaring_.
+
+  'Yet oh! that I, a female Jove,
+  These fogs sublime might float on,
+  Where, eagle-like, my dove might show
+  A very [Greek: _ugron noton_].[27]
+
+  'Then lightning should for lightning flash,
+  Vexation for vexation,
+  And shades of St. John's Wood should glow
+  In awful conflagration.'
+
+  I spoke; when lo! my birds of peace,
+  The vengeance disallowing,
+  Replied, 'Coo, coo!' But _keep in mind_,
+  That _cooing_ is not _cowing_.[28]
+
+[Footnote 26: The bodkin seems to be a favourite weapon with ancient
+dames whose genius was for killing (note by E.B.B.).]
+
+[Footnote 27: A reference to Pindar, _Pyth_.i. 9.]
+
+[Footnote 28: These verses are inclosed with the foregoing letter, as
+a retort to Mr. Boyd's parody.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+74 Gloucester Place: December 7, 1836.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Indeed I have long felt the need of writing
+to you (I mean the need to myself), and although so many weeks and
+even months have passed away in silence, they have not done so in lack
+of affection and thought.
+
+I had wished very much to have been able to tell you in this letter
+where we had taken our house, or where we were going to take it. We
+remain, however, in our usual state of conscious ignorance, although
+there is a good deal of talking and walking about a house in Wimpole
+Street--which, between ourselves, I am not very anxious to live in,
+on account of the gloominesses of that street, and of that part of the
+street, whose walls look so much like Newgate's turned inside out. I
+would rather go on, in my old way, inhabiting castles in the air than
+that particular house. Nevertheless, if it _is_ decided upon, I dare
+say I shall contrive to be satisfied with it, and sleep and wake very
+much as I should in any other. It will certainly be a point gained
+to be settled somewhere, and I do so long to sit in my own
+armchair--strange as it will look out of my own room--and to read from
+my own books.... For our own particular parts, our healths continue
+good--none of us, I think, the worse for fog or wind. As to wind, we
+were almost elevated into the prerogative of _pigs_ in the late storm.
+We could almost _see_ it, and the feeling it might have been fatal to
+us. Bro and I were moralising about shipwrecks, in the dining-room,
+when down came the chimney through the skylight into the entrance
+passage. You may imagine the crashing effect of the bricks bounding
+from the staircase downwards, breaking the stone steps in the process,
+in addition to the falling in of twenty-four large panes of glass,
+frames and all. We were terrified out of all propriety, and there has
+been a dreadful calumny about Henrietta and me--that we had the hall
+door open for the purpose of going out into the street with our
+hair on end, if Bro had not _encouraged_ us by shutting the door and
+locking it. I confess to opening the door, but deny the purpose of
+it--at least, maintain that I only meant to keep in reserve a way of
+escape, _in case_, as seemed probable, the whole house was on its
+way to the ground. Indeed, we should think much of the _mercy_ of the
+escape. Bro had been on the staircase only five minutes before. Sarah
+the housemaid was actually there. She looked up accidentally and saw
+the nodding chimneys, and ran down into the drawing-room to papa,
+shrieking, but escaping with one graze of the hand from one brick. How
+did _you_ fare in the wind? I never much imagined before that anything
+so true to nature as a real live storm could make itself heard in our
+streets. But it has come too surely, and carried away with it, besides
+our chimney, all that was left to us of the country, in the shape of
+the Kensington Garden trees. Now do write to me, dearest Mrs. Martin,
+and soon, and tell me all you can of your chances and mischances, and
+how Mr. Martin is getting on with the parish, and yourself with the
+parishioners. But you have more the name of living at Colwall than the
+thing. You seem to me to lead a far more wandering life than we,
+for all our homelessness and 'pilgrim shoon.' Why, you have been in
+Ireland since I last said a word to you, even upon paper....
+
+I sometimes think that a pilgrim's life is the wisest--at least, the
+most congenial to the 'uses of this world.' We give our sympathies and
+associations to our hills and fields, and then the providence of God
+gives _them_ to another, It is better, perhaps, to keep a stricter
+_identity_, by calling only our thoughts our own.
+
+Was there anybody in the world who ever loved London for itself? Did
+Dr. Johnson, in his paradise of Fleet Street, love the pavement and
+the walls? I doubt _that_--whether I ought to do so or not--though I
+don't doubt at all that one may be contented and happy here, and love
+much _in_ the place. But the place and the privileges of it don't mix
+together in one's love, as is done among the hills and by the seaside.
+
+I or Henrietta must have told you that one of my privileges has been
+to see Wordsworth twice. He was very kind to me, and let me hear
+his conversation. I went with him and Miss Mitford to Chiswick, and
+thought all the way that I must certainly be dreaming. I saw her
+almost every day of her week's visit to London (this was all long ago,
+while you were in France); and she, who overflows with warm affections
+and generous benevolences, showed me every present and absent
+kindness, professing to love me, and asking me to write to her. Her
+novel is to be published soon after Christmas, and I believe a new
+tragedy is to appear about the same time, 'under the protection of Mr.
+Forrest.' Papa has given me the first two volumes of Wordsworth's new
+edition. The engraving in the first is his _own face_. You might think
+me affected if I told you all I felt in seeing the living face.
+His manners are very simple, and his conversation not at all
+_prominent_--if you quite understand what I mean by _that_. I do
+myself, for I saw at the same time Landor--the brilliant Landor!--and
+_felt_ the difference between great genius and eminent talent; All
+these visions have passed now. I hear and see nothing, except my doves
+and the fireplace, and am doing little else than [_words torn out_]
+write all day long. And then people ask me what I _mean_ in [_words
+torn out_]. I hope you were among the six who understood or half
+understood my 'Poet's Vow'--that is, if you read it at all. Uncle
+Hedley made a long pause at the first part. But I have been reading,
+too, Sheridan Knowles's play of the 'Wreckers.' It is full of passion
+and pathos, and made me shed a great many tears. How do you get on
+with the reading society? Do you see much or anything of Lady Margaret
+Cocks, from whom I never hear now? I promised to let her have 'Ion,'
+if I could, before she left Brighton, but the person to whom it was
+lent did not return it to me in time. Will you tell her this, if you
+do see her, and give her my kind regards at the same time? Dear Bell
+was so sorry not to have seen you. If she had, you would have thought
+her looking _very_ well, notwithstanding the thinness--perhaps, in
+some measure, on account of it--and in _eminent_ spirits. I have not
+seen her in such spirits for very, very long. And there she is, down
+at Torquay, with the Hedleys and Butlers, making quite a colony of it,
+and everybody, in each several letter, grumbling in an undertone at
+the dullness of the place. What would _I_ give to see the waves once
+more! But perhaps if I were there, I should grumble too. It is a
+happiness to them to be _together_, and that, I am sure, they all
+feel....
+
+Believe me, dearest Mrs. Martin, your affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+Oh that you would call me Ba![29]
+
+
+[Footnote 29: Elizabeth Barrett's 'pet name' (see her poem, _Poetical
+Works_, ii. 249), given to her as a child by her brother Edward, and
+used by her family and friends, and by herself in her letters to them,
+throughout her life.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[74 Gloucester Place:]
+Thursday, December 15, 1836 [postmark].
+
+My dear Mr. Boyd,--... Two mornings since, I saw in the paper, under
+the head of literary news, that a change of editorship was taking
+place in the 'New Monthly Magazine;' and that Theodore Hook was to
+preside in the room of Mr. Hall. I am so much too modest and too wise
+to expect the patronage of two editors in succession, that I expect
+both my poems in a return cover, by every twopenny post. Besides, what
+has Theodore Hook to do with Seraphim? So, I shall leave that poem of
+mine to your imagination; which won't be half as troublesome to you as
+if I asked you to read it; begging you to be assured--to write it down
+in your critical rubric--that it is the very finest composition you
+ever read, _next_ (of course) to the beloved 'De Virginitate' of
+Gregory Nazianzen.[30]
+
+Mr. Stratten has just been here. I admire him more than I ever did,
+for his admiration of my doves. By the way, I am sure he thought them
+the most agreeable of the whole party; for he said, what he never did
+before, that he could sit here for an hour! Our love to Annie--and
+forgive me for Baskettiring a letter to you. I mean, of course, as to
+size, not type.
+
+Yours affectionately,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+Is your poem printed yet?
+
+  [Footnote 30:Do you mind that deed of Ate
+  Which you bound me to so fast,--
+  Reading 'De Virginitate,'
+  From the first line to the last?
+  How I said at ending solemn,
+  As I turned and looked at you,
+  That Saint Simeon on the column
+  Had had somewhat less to do?
+
+'Wine of Cyprus' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 139)]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[74 Gloucester Place:] Tuesday [Christmas 1836].
+
+My dear Friend,--I am very much obliged to you for the _two_ copies
+of your poem, so beautifully printed, with such 'majestical' types,
+on such 'magnifical' paper, as to be almost worthy of Baskett himself.
+You are too liberal in sending me more than one copy; and pray accept
+in return a duplicate of gratitude.
+
+As to my 'Seraphim,' they are not returned to me, as in the case of
+their being unaccepted, I expressly begged they might be. Had the old
+editor been the present one, my inference would of course be, that
+their insertion was a determined matter; but as it is, I don't
+know what to think.[31] A long list of great names, belonging to
+_intending_ contributors, appeared in the paper a day or two ago, and
+among them was Miss Mitford's.
+
+Are you wroth with me for not saying a word about going to see
+you? Arabel and I won't affirm it mathematically--but we are,
+metaphysically, _talking_ of paying our visit to you next Tuesday.
+Don't expect us, nevertheless.
+
+Yours affectionately,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+What are my Christmas good wishes to be? That you may hold a Field in
+your right hand, and a Baskerville in your left, before the year is
+out! That degree of happiness will satisfy at least the _bodily_ part
+of you.
+
+You may wish, in return, for _me_, that I may learn to write rather
+more legibly than 'at these presents.'
+
+Our love to Annie.
+
+Won't you send your new poem to Mr. Barker, to the care of Mr. Valpy,
+with your Christmas benedictions?
+
+[Footnote 31: As a matter of fact, 'The Seraphim' was not printed in
+the _New Monthly_, being probably thought too long.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_.
+[74 Gloucester Place:] January 23, 1837 [postmark].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I am standing in Henrietta's place, she
+says--but not, _I_ say, to answer your letter to _her_ yesterday, but
+your letter to _me_, some weeks ago--which I meant to answer much
+more immediately if the _ignis fatuus_ of a house (you see to what
+a miserable fatuity I am reduced, of applying your pure country
+metaphors to our brick pollutions) had not been gliding just
+before us, and I had not much wished to be able to tell you of our
+settlement. As it is, however, I must write, and shall keep a solemn
+silence on the solemn subject of our shifting plans....
+
+No! I was not at all disappointed in Wordsworth, although perhaps I
+should not have singled him from the multitude as a great man. There
+is a _reserve_ even in his countenance, which does not lighten
+as Landor's does, whom I saw the same evening. His eyes have more
+meekness than brilliancy; and in his slow even articulation there
+is rather the solemnity and calmness of _truth_ itself, than the
+animation and energy of those who seek for it. As to my being quite at
+my ease when I spoke to him, why how could you ask such a question? I
+trembled both in my soul and body. But he was very kind, and sate
+near me and talked to me as long as he was in the room--and recited
+a translation by Cary of a sonnet of Dante's--and altogether, it was
+quite a dream! Landor too--Walter Savage Landor ... in whose hands
+the ashes of antiquity burn again--gave me two Greek epigrams he had
+lately written ... and talked brilliantly and prominently until Bro
+(he and I went together) abused him for _ambitious_ singularity and
+affectation. But it was very interesting. And dear Miss Mitford too!
+and Mr. Raymond, a great Hebraist and the ancient author of 'A Cure
+for a Heartache!' I never walked in the skies before; and perhaps
+never shall again, when so many stars are out! I shall at least see
+dear Miss Mitford, who wrote to me not long ago to say that she would
+soon be in London with 'Otto,' her new tragedy, which was written at
+Mr. Forrest's own request, he in the most flattering manner having
+applied to her a stranger, as the authoress of 'Rienzi,' for a
+dramatic work worthy of his acting--after rejecting many plays offered
+to him, and among them Mr. Knowles's.... She says that her play will
+be quite opposed, in its execution, to 'Ion,' as unlike it 'as a
+ruined castle overhanging the Rhine, to a Grecian temple.' And I do
+not doubt that it will be full of ability; although my own opinion
+is that she stands higher as the authoress of 'Our Village' than of
+'Rienzi,' and writes prose better than poetry, and transcends rather
+in Dutch minuteness and high finishing, than in Italian ideality and
+passion. I think besides that Mr. Forrest's rejection of any play
+of Sheridan Knowles must refer rather to its unfitness for the
+development of his own personal talent, than to its abstract demerit,
+whatever Transatlantic tastes he may bring with him. The published
+title of the last play is 'The Daughter,' not 'The Wreckers,' although
+I believe it was acted as the last. I am very anxious to read 'Otto,'
+not to _see_ it. I am not going to see it, notwithstanding an offered
+temptation to sit in the authoress's own box. With regard to 'Ion,'
+I think it is a beautiful work, but beautiful _rather_ morally than
+intellectually. Is this right or not? Its moral tone is very noble,
+and sends a grand and touching harmony into the midst of the full
+discord of this utilitarian age. As dramatic _poetry_, it seems to me
+to want, not beauty, but power, passion, and condensation. This is my
+_doxy_ about 'Ion.' Its author[32] made me very proud by sending it to
+me, although we do not know him personally. I have _heard_ that he is
+a most amiable man (who else could have written 'Ion'?), but that he
+was a little _elevated_ by his popularity last year!...
+
+I have read Combe's 'Phrenology,' but not the 'Constitution of Man.'
+The 'Phrenology' is very clever, and amusing; but I do not think it
+logical or satisfactory. I forget whether 'slowness of the pulse' _is_
+mentioned in it as a symptom of the poetical aestus. I am afraid, if
+it be a symptom, I dare not take my place even in the 'forlorn hope of
+poets' in this age so forlorn as to its poetry; for my pulse is in a
+continual flutter and my feet not half cold enough for a pedestal--so
+I must make my honours over to poor papa straightway. He has been
+shivering and shuddering through the cold weather; and partaking our
+influenza in the warmer. I am very sorry that you should have been a
+sufferer too. It seems to have been a universal pestilence, even down
+in Devonshire, where dear Bummy and the whole colony have had their
+share of 'groans.' And one of my doves shook its pretty head and
+ruffled its feathers and shut its eyes, and became subject to pap and
+nursing and other infirmities for two or three days, until I was in
+great consternation for the result. But it is well again--cooing as
+usual; and so indeed we all are. But indeed, I can't write a
+sentence more without saying some of the evil it deserves--of the
+utilitarianisms of this corrupt age--among some of the chief of which
+are steel pens!
+
+I am so glad that you liked my 'Romaunt,' and so resigned that you did
+not understand some of my 'Poet's Vow,' and so obliged that you should
+care to go on reading what I write. They vouchsafed to publish in the
+first number of the new series of the 'New Monthly' a little poem of
+mine called 'The Island,'[33] but so incorrectly that I was glad at
+the additional oblivion of my signature. If you see it, pray alter the
+last senseless line of the first page into 'Leaf sounds with water, in
+your ear,' and put 'amreeta' instead of 'amneta' on the second page;
+and strike out '_of_' in the line which names Aeschylus! There are
+other blunders, [but] these are intolerable, and cast me out of my
+'contentment' for some time. I have begged for [proof] sheets in
+future; and as none have come for the ensuing month, I suppose I shall
+have nothing in the next number. They have a lyrical dramatic poem of
+mine, 'The Two Seraphim,' which, whenever it appears, I shall like to
+have your opinion of. As to the incomprehensible line in the 'Poet's
+Vow' of which you asked me the meaning, 'One making one in strong
+compass,' I meant to express how that oneness of God, 'in whom are all
+things,' produces a oneness or sympathy (sympathy being the tendency
+of many to become one) in all things. Do you understand? or is the
+explanation to be explained? The unity of God preserves a unity in
+men--that is, a perpetual sympathy between man and man--which sympathy
+we must be subject to, if not in our joys, yet in our griefs. I
+believe the subject itself involves the necessity of some mysticism;
+but I must make no excuses. I am afraid that my very Seraphim will not
+be thought to stand in a very clear light, even at heaven's gate. But
+this is much _asay_ about nothing ...
+
+The Bishop of Exeter is staying and preaching at Torquay. Do you not
+envy them all for making part of his congregation? I am sure I do
+_as much_. I envy you your before-breakfast activity. I am never a
+_complete man_ without my breakfast--it seems to be some integral part
+of my soul. _You_ 'read all O'Connell's speeches.' I never read any of
+them--unless they take me by surprise. I keep my devotion for _unpaid_
+patriots; but Miss Mitford is another devotee of Mr. O'Connell ...
+
+Dearest Mrs. Martin's affectionate
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+Thank you for the 'Ba' in Henrietta's letter. If you knew how many
+people, whom I have known only within this year or two, whether I like
+them or not, say 'Ba, Ba,' quite naturally and pastorally, you would
+not come to me with the detestable 'Miss B.'
+
+[Footnote 32: Serjeant Talfourd.]
+
+[Footnote 33: _Poetical Works_, ii. 248.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+London: August 16, 1837.
+
+My dear Mrs. Martin,--It seems a long long time since we had any
+intercourse; and the answer to your last pleasant letter to Henrietta
+_must_ go to you from me. We have heard of you that you don't mean to
+return to England before the spring--which news proved me a prophet,
+and disappointed me at the same time, for one can't enjoy even a
+prophecy in this world without something vexing. Indeed, I do long to
+see you again, dearest Mrs. Martin, and should always have the same
+pleasure in it, and affection for you, if my friends and acquaintances
+were as much multiplied as you _wrongly_ suppose them to be. But the
+truth is that I have almost none at all, in this place; and, except
+our relative Mr. Kenyon, not one literary in any sense. Dear Miss
+Mitford, one of the very kindest of human beings, lies buried in
+geraniums, thirty miles away. I could not conceive what Henrietta
+had been telling you, or what you meant, for a long time--until we
+conjectured that it must have been something about Lady Dacre, who
+kindly sent me her book, and intimated that she would be glad to
+receive me at her conversations--and you know me better than to
+doubt whether I would go or not. There was an equal unworthiness and
+unwillingness towards the honor of it. Indeed, dearest Mrs. Martin,
+it is almost surprising how we contrive to be as dull in London as in
+Devonshire--perhaps more so, for the sight of a multitude induces a
+sense of seclusion which one has not without it; and, besides, there
+were at Sidmouth many more known faces and listened-to voices than we
+see and hear in this place. No house yet! And you will scarcely
+have patience to read that papa has seen and likes another house in
+Devonshire Place, and that he _may_ take it, and we _may_ be settled
+in it, before the year closes. I myself think of the whole business
+indifferently. My thoughts have turned so long on the subject of
+houses, that the pivot is broken--and now they won't turn any more.
+All that remains is, a sort of consciousness, that we should be more
+comfortable in a house with cleaner carpets, and taken for rather
+longer than a week at a time. Perhaps, after all, we are quite as well
+_sur le tapis_ as it is. It is a thousand to one but that the feeling
+of four red London walls closing around us for seven, eleven, or
+twenty-five years, would be a harsh and hard one, and make us cry
+wistfully to 'get out.' I am sure you will look up to your mountains,
+and down to your lakes, and enter into this conjecture.
+
+Talking of mountains and lakes is itself a trying thing to us poor
+prisoners. Papa has talked several times of taking us into the country
+for two months this summer, and we have dreamt of it a hundred times
+in addition; but, after all, we are not likely to go I dare say. It
+would have been very delightful--and who knows what may take place
+next summer? We may not absolutely _die_, without seeing a tree.
+Henrietta has seen a great many. You will have heard, I dare say, of
+the enjoyment she had in her week at Camden House. She seems to have
+walked from seven in the morning to seven at night; and was quite
+delighted with the kindness within doors and the sunshine without. I
+assure you that, fresh as she was from the air and dew, she saluted us
+amidst the sentiment of our sisterly meeting just in this way--it was
+almost her first exclamation--'What a very disagreeable smell there is
+here!' And this, although she had brought geraniums enough from Camden
+to perfume the Haymarket!...
+
+I am happy to announce to you that a new little dove has appeared
+from a shell--over which nobody had prognosticated good--on August
+16, 1837. I and the senior doves appear equally delighted, and we
+all three, in the capacity of good sitters and indefatigable
+pullers-about, take a good deal of credit upon ourselves....
+
+Arabel has begun oil painting, and without a master--and you can't
+think how much effect and expression she has given to several of her
+own sketches, notwithstanding all difficulties. Poor Henrietta is
+without a piano, and is not to have one again _until we have another
+house_! This is something like 'when Homer and Virgil are forgotten.'
+_Speaking of Homer and Virgil_, I have been writing a 'Romance of the
+Ganges,'[34] in order to illustrate an engraving in the new annual
+to be edited by Miss Mitford, Finden's tableaux for 1838. It does not
+sound a _very_ Homeric undertaking--I confess I don't hold any kind of
+annual, gild it as you please, in too much honour and awe--but from
+my wish to please her, and from the necessity of its being done in a
+certain time, I was 'quite frightful,' as poor old Cooke used to
+say, in order to express his own nervousness. But she was quite
+pleased--she is very soon pleased--and the ballad, gone the way of
+all writing, now-a-days, to the press. I do wish I could send you some
+kind of news that would interest you; but you see scarcely any except
+all this selfishness is in my beat. Dearest Bro draws and reads
+German, and I fear is dull notwithstanding. But we are every one of
+us more reconciled to London than we were. Well! I must not write
+any more. Whenever you think of me, dearest Mrs. Martin, remember how
+deeply and unchangeably I must regard you--both with my _mind_, my
+_affections_, and that part of either, called my gratitude. BA.
+
+Henrietta's kindest love and thanks for your letter. She desires me
+to say that she and Bro are going to dine with Mrs. Robert Martin
+to-morrow. I must tell you that Georgie and I went to hear Dr.
+Chalmers preach, three Sundays ago. His sermon was on a text whose
+extreme beauty would diffuse itself into any sermon preached upon
+it--God is love. His eloquence was very great, and his views noble and
+grasping. I expected much from his imagination, but not so much from
+his knowledge. It was truer to Scripture than I was prepared for,
+although there seemed to me some _want_ on the subject of the work
+of the Holy Spirit on the heart, which work we cannot dwell upon too
+emphatically. 'He worketh in us to will and to do,' and yet we are apt
+to will and do without a transmission of the praise to Him. May God
+bless you.
+
+[Footnote 34: _Poetical Works_, ii. 83.]
+
+
+_To Miss Commeline_
+London: August 19, 1837.
+
+My dear Miss Commeline,--I could not hear of your being in affliction
+without very frequent thoughts of you and a desire to express some of
+them in this way, and although so much time has passed I do hope that
+you will believe in the sympathy with which I, or rather _we_, have
+thought of you, and in the regard we shall not cease to feel for you
+even if we meet no more in this world. It is blessed to know both
+for ourselves and for each other that while there is a darkness that
+_must_ come to all, there is a light which _may_; and may He who is
+the light in the dark place be with you [now] and always, causing you
+to feel rather the glory that is in Him than the shadow which is in
+all beside--that so the sweetness of the consolation may pass the
+bitterness of even grief. Do give my love to Mrs. Commeline and to
+your sisters, and believe me, all of you, that the friends who have
+gone from your neighbourhood have not gone from my old remembrance,
+either of your kindness to them, or of their own feelings of interest
+in you.
+
+Trusting to such old remembrances, I will believe that you care to
+know what we are doing and how we are settling--that word which has
+now been on our lips for years, which it is marvellous to think how
+it got upon human lips at all. We came from Sidmouth to try London and
+ourselves, and see whether or not we could live together; and after
+more than a year and a half close contact with smoke we find no very
+good excuse for not remaining in it; and papa is going on with his
+eternal hunt for houses--the wild huntsman in the ballad is nothing
+to him, all except the sublimity--intending very seriously to take
+the first he can. He is now about one in particular, but I won't tell
+where it is because we have considered so many houses in particular
+that our considerations have come to be a jest in general. I shall
+be heartily glad, at least I _think_ so, for it is possible that
+the reality of being bricked up for a lease time may not be very
+agreeable. I think I shall be heartily glad when a house is taken, and
+we have made it look like our own with our furniture and pictures and
+books. I am so anxious to see my old books. I believe I shall begin at
+the beginning and read every story book through in the joy of meeting,
+and shall be as sedentary as ever I was in my own arm-chair. I
+remember when I was a child spreading my vitality, not over trees and
+flowers (I do that still--I still believe they have a certain animal
+susceptibility to pleasure and pain; 'it is my creed,' and, being
+Wordsworth's besides, I am not ashamed of it), but over chairs and
+tables and books in particular, and being used to fancy a kind of love
+in them to suit my love to them. And so if I were a child I should
+have an intense pity for my poor folios, quartos, and duodecimos, to
+say nothing of the arm-chair, shut up all these weeks and months in
+boxes, without a rational eye to look upon them. Pray forgive me if I
+have written a great deal of nonsense--'Je m'en doute.'
+
+Henrietta has spent a fortnight at Chislehurst with the Martins, and
+was very joyous there, and came back to us with that happy triumphant
+air which I always fancy people 'just from the country' put on towards
+us hapless Londoners.
+
+But you must not think I am a discontented person and grumble all day
+long at being in London. _There are many advantages here_, as I say to
+myself whenever it is particularly disagreeable; and if we can't see
+even a leaf or a sparrow without soot on it, there are the parrots at
+the Zoological Gardens and the pictures at the Royal Academy; and real
+live poets above all, with their heads full of the trees and birds and
+sunshine of paradise. I have stood face to face with Wordsworth and
+Landor; and Miss Mitford, who is in herself what she is in her books,
+has become a dear friend of mine, but a distant one. She visits London
+at long intervals, and lives thirty miles away....
+
+Bro and I were studying German together all last summer with Henry,
+before he left us to become a German, and I believe this is the last
+of my languages, for I have begun absolutely to detest the sight of a
+dictionary or grammar, which I never liked except as a means, and love
+poetry with an intenser love, if that be possible, than I ever did.
+Not that Greek is not as dear to me as ever, but I write more than I
+read, even of Greek poetry, and am resolute to work whatever little
+faculty I have, clear of imitations and conventionalisms which
+cloud and weaken more poetry (particularly now-a-days) than would be
+believed possible without looking into it....
+
+As to society in London, I assure you that none of us have much, and
+that as for me, you would wonder at seeing how possible it is to
+live as secludedly in the midst of a multitude as in the centre
+of solitude. My doves are my chief acquaintances, and I am so very
+intimate with _them_ that they accept and even demand my assistance in
+building their innumerable nests. Do tell me if there is any hope of
+seeing any of you in London at any time. I say 'do tell me,' for I
+will venture to ask you, dear Miss Commeline, to write me a few lines
+in one of the idlest hours of one of your idlest days just to tell me
+a little about you, and whether Mrs. Commeline is tolerably well. Pray
+believe me under all circumstances,
+
+Yours sincerely and affectionately,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+The spring of 1838 was marked by two events of interest to Miss
+Barrett and her family. In the first place, Mr. Barrett's apparently
+interminable search for a house ended in his selection of 50 Wimpole
+Street, which continued to be his home for the rest of his life, and
+which is, consequently, more than any other house in London, to
+be associated with his daughter's memory. The second event was
+the publication of 'The Seraphim, and other Poems,' which was Miss
+Barrett's first serious appearance before the public, and in her
+own name, as a poet. The early letters of this year refer to the
+preparation of this volume, as well as to the authoress's health,
+which was at this time in a very serious condition, owing to the
+breaking of a blood-vessel. Indeed, from this time until her marriage
+in 1846 she held her life on the frailest of tenures, and lived in all
+respects the life of an invalid.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Monday morning, March 27, 1838 [postmark].
+
+My dear Friend,--I do hope that you may not be very angry, but papa
+thinks--and, indeed, I think--that as I have already _had_ two proof
+sheets and forty-eight pages, and the printers have gone on to the
+rest of the poem, it would not be very welcome to them if we were
+to ask them to retrace their steps. Besides, I would rather--_I_ for
+myself, _I_--that you had the whole poem at once and clearly printed
+before you, to insure as many chances as possible of your liking it.
+I am _promised_ to see the volume completed in three weeks from this
+time, so that the dreadful moment of your reading it--I mean the
+'Seraphim' part of it--cannot be far off, and perhaps, the season
+being a good deal advanced even now, you might not, on consideration,
+wish me to retard the appearance of the book, except for some very
+sufficient reason. I feel very nervous about it--far more than I did
+when my 'Prometheus' crept out [of] the Greek, or I myself out of
+the shell, in the first 'Essay on Mind.' Perhaps this is owing to Dr.
+Chambers's medicines, or perhaps to a consciousness that my present
+attempt _is_ actually, and will be considered by others, more a trial
+of strength than either of my preceding ones.
+
+Thank you for the books, and especially for the _editio rarissima_,
+which I should as soon have thought of your trusting to me as of your
+admitting me to stand with gloves on within a yard of Baxter. This
+extraordinary confidence shall not be abused.
+
+I thank you besides for your kind inquiries about my health. Dr.
+Chambers did not think me worse yesterday, notwithstanding the last
+cold days, which have occasioned some uncomfortable sensations, and he
+still thinks I shall be better in the summer season. In the meantime
+he has ordered me to take ice--out of sympathy with nature, I suppose;
+and not to speak a word, out of contradiction to my particular, human,
+feminine nature.
+
+Whereupon I revenge myself, you see, by talking all this nonsense upon
+paper, and making you the victim.
+
+To propitiate you, let me tell you that your commands have been
+performed to the letter, and that one Greek motto (from 'Orpheus')
+is given to the first part of 'The Seraphim,' and another from
+_Chrysostom_ to the second.
+
+Henrietta desires me to say that she means to go to see you very soon.
+Give my very kind remembrance to Miss Holmes, and believe me,
+
+Your affectionate friend,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+I saw Mr. Kenyon yesterday. He has a book just coming out.[35] I
+should like you to read it. If you would, you would thank me for
+saying so.
+
+[Footnote 35: _Poems, for the most part occasional_, by John Kenyon.]
+
+
+_To John Kenyon_[36]
+[1838.]
+
+Thank you, dearest Mr. Kenyon; and I should (and _shall_) thank Miss
+Thomson too for caring to spend a thought on me after all the Parisian
+glories and rationalities which I sympathise with by many degrees
+nearer than you seem to do. We, in this England here, are just social
+barbarians, to my mind--that is, we know how to read and write and
+think, and even talk on occasion; but we carry the old rings in our
+noses, and are proud of the flowers pricked into our cuticles. By so
+much are they better than we on the Continent, I always think. Life
+has a thinner rind, and so a livelier sap. And _that_ I can see in the
+books and the traditions, and always understand people who like living
+in France and Germany, and should like it myself, I believe, on some
+accounts.
+
+Where did you get your Bacchanalian song? Witty, certainly, but
+the recollection of the _scores_ a little ghastly for the occasion,
+perhaps. You have yourself sung into silence, too, all possible songs
+of Bacchus, as the god and I know.
+
+Here is a delightful letter from Miss Martineau. I cannot be so
+selfish as to keep it to myself. The sense of natural beauty and the
+_good_ sense of the remarks on rural manners are both exquisite of
+their kinds, and Wordsworth is Wordsworth as she knows him. Have I
+said that Friday will find me expecting the kind visit you promise?
+_That_, at least, is what I meant to say with all these words.
+
+Ever affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 36: John Kenyon (1784-1856) was born in Jamaica, the son
+of a wealthy West Indian landowner, but came to England while quite
+a boy, and was a conspicuous figure in literary society during the
+second quarter of the century. He published some volumes of minor
+verse, but is best known for his friendships with many literary men
+and women, and for his boundless generosity and kindliness to all with
+whom he was brought into contact. Crabb Robinson described him as a
+man 'whose life is spent in making people happy.' He was a distant
+cousin of Miss Barrett, and a friend of Robert Browning, who dedicated
+to him his volume of 'Dramatic Romances,' besides writing and sending
+to him 'Andrea del Sarto' as a substitute for a print of the painter's
+portrait which he had been unable to find. The best account of Kenyon
+is to be found in Mrs. Crosse's 'John Kenyon and his Friends' (in
+_Red-Letter Days of My Life_, vol. i.).]
+
+
+_To John Kenyon_
+Wimpole Street: Sunday evening [1838?].
+
+My dear Mr. Kenyon,--I am _so_ sorry to hear of your going, and I not
+able to say 'good-bye' to you, that--I am _not_ writing this note on
+that account.
+
+It is a begging note, and now I am wondering to myself whether you
+will think me very childish or womanish, or silly enough to be both
+together (I know your thoughts upon certain parallel subjects), if
+I go on to do my begging fully. I hear that you are going to Mr.
+Wordsworth's--to Rydal Mount--and I want you to ask _for yourself_,
+and then to send to me in a letter--by the post, I mean, two cuttings
+out of the garden--of myrtle or geranium; I care very little which, or
+what else. Only I say 'myrtle' because it is less given to die and I
+say _two_ to be sure of my chances of saving one. Will you? You would
+please me very much by doing it; and certainly not _dis_ please me by
+refusing to do it. Your broadest 'no' would not sound half so strange
+to me as my 'little crooked thing' does to you; but you see everybody
+in the world is fanciful about something, and why not _E.B.B._?
+
+Dear Mr. Kenyon, I have a book of yours--M. Rio's. If you want it
+before you go, just write in two words, 'Send it,' or I shall infer
+from your silence that I may keep it until you come back. No necessity
+for answering this otherwise. Is it as bad as asking for autographs,
+or worse? At any rate, believe me _in earnest_ this time--besides
+being, with every wish for your enjoyment of mountains and lakes and
+'cherry trees,'
+
+Ever affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[May 1838.]
+
+My dear friend,--I am rather better than otherwise within the last
+few days, but fear that nothing will make me essentially so except
+the invisible sun. I am, however, a little better, and God's will is
+always done in mercy.
+
+As to the poems, do forgive me, dear Mr. Boyd; and refrain from
+executing your cruel threat of suffering 'the desire of reading them
+to pass away.'
+
+I have not one sheet of them; and papa--and, to say the truth, I
+myself--would so very much prefer your reading the preface first, that
+you must try to indulge us in our phantasy. The book Mr. Bentley half
+promises to finish the printing of this week. At any rate it is likely
+to be all done in the next: and you may depend upon having a copy _as
+soon_ as I have power over one.
+
+With kind regards to Miss Holmes,
+Believe me, your affectionate friend,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street; Wednesday [May 1838].
+
+Thank you for your inquiry, my dear friend. I had begun to fancy that
+between Saunders and Otley and the 'Seraphim' I had fallen to the
+ground of your disfavour. But I do trust to be able to send you a copy
+before next Sunday.
+
+I am thrown back a little just now by having caught a very bad cold,
+which has of course affected my cough. The worst seems, however, to be
+past, and Dr. Chambers told me yesterday that he expected to see me
+in two days nearly as well as before this casualty. And I have been,
+thank God, pretty well lately; and although when the stethoscope was
+applied three weeks ago, it did not speak very satisfactorily of the
+state of the lungs, yet Dr. Chambers seems to be hopeful still, and to
+talk of the wonders which the summer sunshine (when it does come) may
+be the means of doing for me. And people say that I look rather better
+than worse, even now.
+
+Did you hear of an autograph of Shakespeare's being sold lately for a
+very large sum (I _think_ it was above a hundred pounds) on the credit
+of its being the only genuine autograph extant? Is yours quite safe?
+And are _you_ so, in your opinion of its veritableness?
+
+I have just finished a very long barbarous ballad for Miss Mitford and
+the Finden's tableaux of this year. The title is 'The Romaunt of the
+Page,'[37] and the subject not of my own choosing.
+
+I believe that you will certainly have 'The Seraphim' this week. Do
+macadamise the frown from your brow in order to receive them.
+
+Give my love to Miss Holmes.
+Your affectionate friend,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 37: _Poetical Works_, ii. 40.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+June 7, 1838 [postmark].
+
+My dear Mr. Boyd,--Papa is scarcely inclined, nor am I for myself, to
+send my book or books to the East Indies. Let them alone, poor things,
+until they can walk about a little! and then it will be time enough
+for them to 'learn to _fly_.'
+
+I am so sorry that Emily Harding saw Arabel and went away without this
+note, which I have been meaning to write to you for several days, and
+have been so absorbed and drawn away (all except my thoughts) by
+other things necessary to be done, that I was forced to defer it. My
+ballad,[38] containing a ladye dressed up like a page and galloping
+off to Palestine in a manner that would scandalise you, went to Miss
+Mitford this morning. But I augur from its length that she will not be
+able to receive it into Finden.
+
+Arabel has told me what Miss Harding told her of your being in the act
+of going through my 'Seraphim' for the second time. For the feeling
+of interest in me which brought this labour upon you, I thank you, my
+dear friend. What your opinion _is_, and _will_ be, I am prepared to
+hear with a good deal of awe. You will _certainly not approve of the
+poem_.
+
+There now! You see I am prepared. Therefore do not keep back one rough
+word, for friendship's sake, but be as honest as--you could not help
+being, without this request.
+
+If I should live, I shall write (_I believe_) better poems than 'The
+Seraphim;' which belief will help me to survive the condemnation heavy
+upon your lips.
+
+Affectionately yours,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 38: 'The Romaunt of the Page.']
+
+
+'The Seraphim, and other Poems,' a duodecimo of 360 pages, at last
+made its appearance at the end of May. At the time of its publication,
+English poetry was experiencing one of its periods of ebb between
+two flood tides of great achievement. Shelley, Keats, Byron, Scott,
+Coleridge were dead; Wordsworth had ceased to produce poetry of the
+first order; no fresh inspiration was to be expected from Landor,
+Southey, Rogers, Campbell, and such other writers of the Georgian era
+as still were numbered with the living. On the other hand, Tennyson,
+though already the most remarkable among the younger poets, was still
+but exercising himself in the studies in language and metrical music
+by which his consummate art was developed; Browning had published only
+'Pauline,' 'Paracelsus,' and 'Strafford;' the other poets who have
+given distinction to the Victorian age had not begun to write. And
+between the veterans of the one generation and the young recruits of
+the next there was a singular want of writers of distinction. There
+was thus every opportunity for a new poet when Miss Barrett entered
+the lists with her first volume of acknowledged verse.
+
+Its reception, on the whole, does credit alike to its own merits and
+to the critics who reviewed it. It does not contain any of those poems
+which have proved the most popular among its authoress's complete
+works, except 'Cowper's Grave;' but 'The Seraphim' was a poem which
+deserved to attract attention, and among the minor poems were 'The
+Poet's Vow,' 'Isobel's Child,' 'The Romaunt of Margret,' 'My Doves,'
+and 'The Sea-mew.' The volume did not suffice to win any wide
+reputation for Miss Barrett, and no second edition was called for; on
+the other hand, it was received with more than civility, with genuine
+cordiality, by several among the reviewers, though they did not fail
+to note its obvious defects. The 'Athenaeum'[39] began its review with
+the following declaration:
+
+    This is an extraordinary volume--especially welcome as an
+    evidence of female genius and accomplishment--but it is hardly
+    less disappointing than extraordinary. Miss Barrett's genius
+    is of a high order; active, vigorous, and versatile, but
+    unaccompanied by discriminating taste. A thousand strange and
+    beautiful views flit across her mind, but she cannot look on
+    them with steady gaze; her descriptions, therefore, are
+    often shadowy and indistinct, and her language wanting in the
+    simplicity of unaffected earnestness.
+
+[Footnote 39: July 7, 1838.]
+
+The 'Examiner,'[40] after quoting at length from the preface and 'The
+Seraphim,' continued:
+
+    Who will deny to the writer of such verses as these (and they
+    are not sparingly met with in the volume) the possession of
+    many of the highest qualities of the divine art? We regret
+    to have some restriction to add to an admission we make so
+    gladly. Miss Barrett is indeed a genuine poetess, of no common
+    order; yet is she in danger of being spoiled by over-ambition;
+    and of realising no greater or more final reputation than
+    a hectical one, like Crashaw's. She has fancy, feeling,
+    imagination, expression; but for want of some just equipoise
+    or other, between the material and spiritual, she aims
+    at flights which have done no good to the strongest, and
+    therefore falls infinitely short, except in such detached
+    passages as we have extracted above, of what a proper exercise
+    of her genius would infallibly reach.... Very various, and
+    in the main beautiful and true, are the minor poems. But the
+    entire volume deserves more than ordinary attention.
+
+[Footnote 40: June 24, 1838.]
+
+The 'Atlas,'[41] another paper whose literary judgments were highly
+esteemed at that date, was somewhat colder, and dwelt more on
+the faults of the volume, but added nevertheless that 'there are
+occasional passages of great beauty, and full of deep poetical
+feeling. In 'The Romaunt of Margret' it detected the influence of
+Tennyson--a suggestion which Miss Barrett repudiated rather warmly;
+and it concluded with the declaration that the authoress 'possesses
+a fine poetical temperament, and has given to the public, in this
+volume, a work of considerable merit.'
+
+[Footnote 41: June 23, 1838.]
+
+Such were the principal voices among the critical world when Miss
+Barrett first ventured into its midst; and she might well be satisfied
+with them. Two years later, the 'Quarterly Review'[42] included her
+name in a review of 'Modern English Poetesses,' along with Caroline
+Norton, 'V.,' and others whose names are even less remembered to-day.
+But though the reviewer speaks of her genius and learning in high
+terms of admiration, he cannot be said to treat her sympathetically.
+He objects to the dogmatic positiveness of her prefaces, and protests
+warmly against her 'reckless repetition of the name of God'--a charge
+which, in another connection, will be found fully and fairly met in
+one of her later letters. On points of technique he criticises
+her frequent use of the perfect participle with accented final
+syllable--'kissed,' 'bowed,' and the like--and her fondness for the
+adverb 'very;' both of which mannerisms he charges to the example of
+Tennyson. He condemns the 'Prometheus,' though recognising it as 'a
+remarkable performance for a young lady.' He criticises the subject of
+'The Seraphim,' 'from which Milton would have shrunk;' but adds, 'We
+give Miss Barrett, however, the full credit of a lofty purpose, and
+admit, moreover, that several particular passages in her poem
+are extremely fine; equally profound in thought and striking in
+expression.' He sums up as follows:
+
+[Footnote 42: September 1840.]
+
+    In a word, we consider Miss Barrett to be a woman of undoubted
+    genius and most unusual learning; but that she has indulged
+    her inclination for themes of sublime mystery, not certainly
+    without displaying great power, yet at the expense of that
+    clearness, truth, and proportion, which are essential to
+    beauty; and has most unfortunately fallen into the trammels
+    of a school or manner of writing, which, of all that ever
+    existed--Lycophron, Lucan, and Gongora not forgotten--is most
+    open to the charge of being _vitiis imitabile exemplar_.
+
+So much for the reception of 'The Seraphim' volume by the outside
+world. The letters show how it appeared to the authoress herself.
+
+The first of them deserves a word of special notice, because it is
+likewise the first in these volumes addressed to Miss Mary Russell
+Mitford, whose name holds a high and honourable place in the roll
+of Miss Barrett's friends. Her own account of the beginning of the
+friendship should be quoted in any record of Mrs. Browning's life.
+
+'My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett commenced about fifteen
+years ago.[43] She was certainly one of the most interesting persons
+that I had ever seen. Everybody who then saw her said the same;
+so that it is not merely the impression of my partiality or my
+enthusiasm. Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls
+falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes,
+richly fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such
+a look of youthfulness that I had some difficulty in persuading a
+friend, in whose carriage we went together to Chiswick, that the
+translatress of the "Prometheus" of Aeschylus, the authoress of the
+"Essay on Mind," was old enough to be introduced into company,
+in technical language, was 'out.' Through the kindness of another
+invaluable friend,[44] to whom I owe many obligations, but none so
+great as this, I saw much of her during my stay in town. We met so
+constantly and so familiarly that, in spite of the difference of
+age,[45] intimacy ripened into friendship, and after my return into
+the country we corresponded freely and frequently, her letters being
+just what letters ought to be--her own talk put upon paper.'[46]
+
+[Footnote 43: This was written about the end of 1851.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Probably John Kenyon, whom Miss Mitford elsewhere calls
+'the pleasantest man in London;' he, on his side, said of Miss Mitford
+that 'she was better and stronger than any of her books.']
+
+[Footnote 45: Nineteen years, Miss Mitford having been born in 1787.]
+
+[Footnote 46: _Recollections of a Literary Life_, by Mary Russell
+Mitford, p. 155 (1859).]
+
+Miss Barrett's letters show how warmly she returned this feeling of
+friendship, which lasted until Miss Mitford's death in 1855. Of the
+earlier letters many must have disappeared: for it is evident from
+Miss Mitford's just quoted words, and also from many references in
+her published correspondence, that they were in constant communication
+during these years of Miss Barrett's life in London. After her
+marriage, however, the extant letters are far more frequent, and will
+be found to fill a considerable place in the later pages of this work.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+50 Wimpole Street: Thursday [June 1838].
+
+We thank you gratefully, dearest Miss Mitford. Papa and I and all of
+us thank you for your more than kindnesses. The extracts were both
+gladdening and surprising--and the one the more for being the other
+also. Oh! it was _so_ kind of you, in the midst of your multitude of
+occupations, to make time (out of love) to send them to us!
+
+As to the ballad, dearest Miss Mitford, which you and Mr. Kenyon are
+indulgent enough to like, remember that he passed his criticism
+over it--before it went to you--and so if you did not find as many
+obscurities as he did in it, the reason is--_his_ merit and not mine.
+But don't believe him--no!--don't believe even Mr. Kenyon--whenever
+he says that I am _perversely_ obscure. Unfortunately obscure, not
+perversely--that is quite a wrong word. And the last time he used it
+to me (and then, I assure you, another word still worse was with it)
+I begged him to confine them for the future to his jesting moods.
+Because, _indeed_, I am not in the very least degree perverse in this
+fault of mine, which is my destiny rather than my choice, and comes
+upon me, I think, just where I would eschew it most. So little has
+perversity to do with its occurrence, that my fear of it makes me
+sometimes feel quite nervous and thought-tied in composition....
+
+I have not seen Mr. Kenyon since I wrote last. All last week I was
+not permitted to get out of bed, and was haunted with leeches and
+blisters. And in the course of it, Lady Dacre was so kind as to call
+here, and to leave a note instead of the personal greeting which I was
+not able to receive. The honor she did me a year ago, in sending me
+her book, encouraged me to offer her my poems. I hesitated about doing
+so at first, lest it should appear as if my vanity were dreaming of
+a _return_; but Mr. Kenyon's opinion turned the balance. I was very
+sorry not to have seen Lady Dacre and have written a reply to her
+note expressive of this regret. But, after all, this inaudible voice
+(except in its cough) could have scarcely made her understand that I
+was obliged by her visit, had I been able to receive it.
+
+Dr. Chambers has freed me again into the drawing-room, and I am much
+better or he would not have done so. There is not, however, much
+strength or much health, nor any near prospect of regaining either.
+It is well that, in proportion to our feebleness, we may feel our
+dependence upon God.
+
+I feel as if I had not said half, and they have come to ask me if I
+have not said _all_! My beloved friend, may you be happy in all ways!
+
+Do write whenever you wish to talk and have no one to talk to nearer
+you than I am! _Indeed_, I did not forget Dr. Mitford when I wrote
+those words, although they look like it.
+
+Your gratefully affectionate
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street: Wednesday morning [June 1838].
+
+My dear Friend,--Do not think me depraved in ingratitude for not
+sooner thanking you for the pleasure, made so much greater by the
+surprise, which your note of judgment gave me. The truth is that I
+have been very unwell, and delayed answering it immediately until the
+painful physical feeling went away to make room for the pleasurable
+moral one--and this I fancied it would do every hour, so that I might
+be able to tell you at ease all that was in my thoughts. The fancy was
+a vain one. The pain grew worse and worse, and Dr. Chambers has been
+here for two successive days shaking his head as awfully as if it bore
+all Jupiter's ambrosial curls; and is to be here again to-day, but
+with, I trust, a less grave countenance, inasmuch as the leeches last
+night did their duty, and I feel much better--God be thanked for the
+relief. But I am not yet as well as before this attack, and am still
+confined to my bed--and so you must rather imagine than read what I
+thought and felt in reading your wonderful note. Of course it pleased
+me very much, very very much--and, I dare say, would have made me vain
+by this time, if it had not been for the opportune pain and the sight
+of Dr. Chambers's face.
+
+I sent a copy of my book to Nelly Bordman _before_ I read your
+suggestion. I knew that her kind feeling for me would interest her in
+the sight of it.
+
+Thank you once more, dear Mr. Boyd! May all my critics be gentle after
+the pattern of your gentleness!
+
+Believe me, affectionately yours,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street: June 17 [1838].
+
+My dear Friend,--I send you a number of the 'Atlas' which you may
+keep. It is a favorable criticism, certainly--but I confess this of my
+vanity, that it has not altogether pleased me. You see what it is to
+be spoilt.
+
+As to the 'Athenaeum,' although I am _not_ conscious of the quaintness
+and mannerism laid to my charge, and am very sure that I have always
+written too naturally (that is, too much from the impulse of thought
+and feeling) to have studied '_attitudes_,' yet the critic was quite
+right in stating his opinion, and so am I in being grateful to him for
+the liberal praise he has otherwise given me. Upon the whole, I like
+his review better than even the 'Examiner,' notwithstanding my being
+perfectly satisfied with _that_.
+
+Thank you for the question about my health. I am very tolerably
+well--for _me_: and am said to look better. At the same time I am
+aware of being always on the verge of an increase of illness--I mean,
+in a very excitable state--with a pulse that flies off at a word
+and is only to be caught by digitalis. But I am better--for the
+present--while the sun shines.
+
+Thank you besides for your criticisms, which I shall hold in memory,
+and use whenever I am not particularly _obstinate_, in all my
+SUCCEEDING EDITIONS!
+
+You will smile at that, and so do _I._
+
+Arabel is walking in the Zoological Gardens with the Cliffes--but I
+think you will see her before long.
+
+Your affectionate friend,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+Don't let me forget to mention the Essays[47]. You shall have
+yours--and Miss Bordman hers--and the delay has not arisen from either
+forgetfulness or indifference on my part--although I never deny that
+I don't like giving the Essay to anybody because I don't like it.
+Now that sounds just like 'a woman's reason,' but it isn't, albeit so
+reasonable! I meant to say 'because I don't like the ESSAY.'
+
+[Footnote 47: i.e. copies of the _Essay on Mind_.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street: Thursday, June 21 [1838].
+
+My dear Friend,--Notwithstanding this silence so ungrateful in
+appearance, I thank you at last, and very sincerely, for your kind
+letter. It made me laugh, and amused me--and gratified me besides.
+Certainly your 'quality of mercy is not strained.'
+
+My reason for not writing more immediately is that Arabel has meant,
+day after day, to go to you, and has had a separate disappointment for
+every day. She says now, '_Indeed_, I hope to see Mr. Boyd to-morrow.'
+But _I_ say that I will not keep this answer of mine to run the risk
+of another day's contingencies, and that _it_ shall go, whether _she_
+does or not.
+
+I am better a great deal than I was last week, and have been allowed
+by Dr. Chambers to come downstairs again, and occupy my old place
+on the sofa. My health remains, however, in what I cannot help
+considering myself, and in what, I _believe_, Dr. Chambers considers,
+a very precarious state, and my weakness increases, of course, under
+the remedies which successive attacks render necessary. Dr. Chambers
+deserves my confidence--and besides the skill with which he has met
+the different modifications of the complaint, I am grateful to him
+for a feeling and a sympathy which are certainly rare in such of his
+profession as have their attention diverted, as his must be, by an
+immense practice, to fifty objects in a day. But, notwithstanding all,
+one breath of the east wind undoes whatever he labours to do. It is
+well to look up and remember that in the eternal reality these second
+causes are no causes at all.
+
+Don't leave this note about for Arabel to see. I am anxious not to
+alarm her, or any one of my family: and it may please God to make me
+as well and strong again as ever. And, indeed, I am twice as well this
+week as I was last.
+
+Your affectionate friend, dear Mr. Boyd,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+I have seen an extract from a private letter of Mr. Chorley, editor
+of the 'Athenaeum,'[48] which speaks _huge_ praises of my poems. If he
+were to say a tithe of them in print, it would be nine times above my
+expectation!
+
+[Footnote 48: This is an error. Mr. Chorley was not editor of the
+_Athenaeum_, though he was one of its principal contributors.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[June 1838.]
+
+My dear Friend,--I begged your servant to wait--how long ago I am
+afraid to think--but certainly I must not make this note very long. I
+did intend to write to you to-day in any case. Since Saturday I have
+had my thanks ready at the end of my fingers waiting to slide along
+to the nib of my pen. Thank you for all your kindness and criticism,
+which is kindness too--thank you at last. Would that I deserved the
+praises as well as I do most of the findings-fault--and there is no
+time now to say more of _them_. Yet I believe I have something to say,
+and will find a time to say it in.
+
+Dr. Chambers has just been here, and does not think me quite as well
+as usual. The truth is that I was rather excited and tired yesterday
+by rather too much talking and hearing talking, and suffer for it
+to-day in my _pulse_. But I am better on the whole.
+
+Mr. Cross,[49] the great lion, the insect-making lion, came yesterday
+with Mr. Kenyon, and afterwards Lady Dacre. She is kind and gentle in
+her manner. She told me that she had 'placed my book in the hands of
+Mr. Bobus Smith, the brother of Sidney Smith, and the best judge
+in England,' and that it was to be returned to her on Tuesday. If I
+_should_ hear the 'judgment,' I will tell you, whether you care to
+hear it or not. There is no other review, as far as I am aware.
+
+Give my love to Miss Bordman. When is she coming to see me?
+
+The thunder did not do me any harm.
+
+Your affectionate friend, in great haste, although your servant is not
+likely to think so, E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 49: Andrew Crosse, the electrician, who had recently
+published his observations of a remarkable development of insect life
+in connection with certain electrical experiments--a discovery which
+caused much controversy at the time, on account of its supposed
+bearings on the origin of life and the doctrine of creation.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[June 1838.]
+
+My dear Friend,--You must let me _feel_ my thanks to you, even when
+I do not _say_ them. I have put up your various notes together, and
+perhaps they may do me as much good hereafter, as they have already,
+for the most part, given me pleasure.
+
+The 'burden pure _have_ been' certainly was a misprint, as certainly
+'nor man nor nature satisfy'[50] is ungrammatical. But I am _not_ so
+sure about the passage in Isobel:
+
+I am not used to tears at nights Instead of slumber--nor to prayer.
+
+Now I think that the passage may imply a repetition of the words with
+which it begins, after 'nor'--thus--'nor _am I used_ to prayer,' &c.
+Either you or I may be right about it, and either 'or' or 'nor' may be
+grammatical. At least, so I pray.[51]
+
+You did not answer one question. Do you consider that '_apolyptic_'
+stands without excuse?[52]
+
+I never read Greek to any person except yourself and Mr. MacSwiney,
+my brother's tutor. To him I read longer than a few weeks, but then
+it was rather guessing and stammering and tottering through parts of
+Homer and extracts from Xenophon than reading. _You_ would not have
+called it reading if you had heard it.
+
+I studied hard by myself afterwards, and the kindness with which
+afterwards still you assisted me, if yourself remembers gladly _I_
+remember _gratefully_ and gladly.
+
+I have just been told that your servant was desired by you _not to
+wait a minute_.
+
+The wind is unfavorable for the sea. I do not think there is the least
+probability of my going before the end of next week, if then. You
+shall hear.
+
+Affectionately yours,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+I am tolerably well. I have been forced to take digitalis again, which
+makes me feel weak; but still I am better, I think.
+
+[Footnote 50: Altered in later editions to 'satisfies.']
+
+[Footnote 51: In later editions 'not' is repeated instead of 'nor,'
+which looks like a compromise between her own opinion and Mr. Boyd's.]
+
+[Footnote 52: The poem entitled 'Sounds,' in the volume of 1838,
+contained the line 'As erst in Patmos apolyptic John,' presumably for
+'apocalyptic.' This being naturally held to be 'without excuse,'
+the line was altered in subsequent editions to 'As the seer-saint of
+Patmos, loving John.']
+
+
+In the course of this year the failure in Miss Barrett's health had
+become so great that her doctor advised removal to a warmer climate
+for the winter. Torquay was the place selected, and thither she
+went in the autumn, accompanied by her brother Edward, her favourite
+companion from childhood. Other members of the family, including Mr.
+Barrett, joined them from time to time. At Torquay she was able to
+live, but no more, and it was found necessary for her to stay during
+the summers as well as the winters of the next three years. Letters
+from this period are scarce, though it is clear from Miss Mitford's
+correspondence that a continuous interchange of letters was kept up
+between the two friends, and her acquaintanceship with Horne was now
+ripening into a close literary intimacy. A story relating to Bishop
+Phillpotts of Exeter, the hero of so many racy anecdotes, is contained
+in a letter of Miss Barrett's which must have been written about
+Christmas of either 1838 or 1839:--
+
+'He [the bishop] was, however, at church on Christmas Day, and upon
+Mr. Elliot's being mercifully inclined to omit the Athanasian Creed,
+prompted him most episcopally from the pew with a "whereas;" and
+further on in the Creed, when the benign reader substituted the
+word _condemnation_ for the terrible one--"Damnation!" exclaimed the
+bishop. The effect must have been rather startling.'
+
+A slight acquaintance with the words of the Athanasian Creed will
+suggest that the story had suffered in accuracy before it reached Miss
+Barrett, who, of course, was unable to attend church, and whose own
+ignorance on the subject may be accounted for by remembering that
+she had been brought up as a Nonconformist. With a little correction,
+however, the story may be added to the many others on record with
+respect to 'Henry of Exeter.'
+
+The following letter is shown, by the similarity of its contents
+to the one which succeeds it, to belong to November 1839, when Miss
+Barrett was entering on her second winter in Torquay.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Beacon Terrace, Torquay: November 24 [1839].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Henrietta _shall not_ write to-day, whatever
+she may wish to do. I felt, in reading your unreproaching letter
+to her, as self-reproachful as anybody could with a great deal of
+innocence (in the way of the world) to fall back upon. I felt sorry,
+very sorry, not to have written something to you something sooner,
+which was a possible thing--although, since the day of my receiving
+your welcome letter, I have written scarcely at all, nor that little
+without much exertion. Had it been with me as usual, be sure that
+you should not have had any silence to complain of. Henrietta knew I
+wished to write, and felt, I suppose, unwilling to take my place when
+my filling it myself before long appeared possible. A long story--and
+not as entertaining as Mother Hubbard. But I would rather tire
+you than leave you under any wrong impression, where my regard and
+thankfulness to you, dearest Mrs. Martin, are concerned.
+
+To reply to your kind anxiety about me, I may call myself decidedly
+better than I have been. Since October I I have not been out of
+bed--except just for an hour a day, when I am lifted to the sofa with
+the bare permission of my physician--who tells me that it is so much
+easier to make me worse than better, that he dares not permit anything
+like exposure or further exertion. I like him (Dr. Scully) very
+much, and although he evidently thinks my case in the highest degree
+precarious, yet knowing how much I bore last winter and understanding
+from him that the worst _tubercular_ symptoms have not actually
+appeared, I am willing to think it may be God's will to keep me here
+still longer. I would willingly stay, if it were only for the sake of
+that tender affection of my beloved family which it so deeply affects
+me to consider. Dearest papa is with us now--to my great comfort
+and joy: and looking very well!--and astonishing everybody with his
+eternal youthfulness! Bro and Henrietta and Arabel besides, I can
+count as companions--and then there is dear Bummy! We are fixed at
+Torquay for the winter--that is, until the end of May: and after that,
+if I have any will or power and am alive to exercise either, I do
+trust and hope to go away. The death of my kind friend Dr. Bury
+was, as you suppose, a great grief and shock to me. How could it be
+otherwise, after his daily kindness to me for a year? And then his
+young wife and child--and the rapidity (a three weeks' illness) with
+which he was hurried away from the energies and toils and honors of
+professional life to the stillness of _that_ death!
+
+'_God's Will_' is the only answer to the mystery of the world's
+afflictions....
+
+Don't fancy me worse than I am--or that this bed-keeping is the result
+of a gradual sinking. It is not so. A feverish attack prostrated me
+on October 2--and such will leave their effects--and Dr. Scully is so
+afraid of leading me into danger by saying, 'You may get up and dress
+as usual' that you should not be surprised if (in virtue of being the
+senior Torquay physician and correspondingly prudent) he left me
+in this durance vile for a great part of the winter. I am decidedly
+better than I was a month ago, really and truly.
+
+May God bless you, dearest Mrs. Martin! My best and kindest regards
+to Mr. Martin. Henrietta desires me to promise for her a letter to
+Colwall soon; but I think that one from Colwall should come first. May
+God bless you! Bro's fancy just now is painting in water colours and
+he performs many sketches. Do you ever in your dreams of universal
+benevolence dream of travelling into Devonshire?
+
+Love your affectionate BA,
+
+--found guilty of egotism and stupidity 'by this sign' and at once!
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+1 Beacon Terrace, Torquay:
+Wednesday, November 27, 1839.
+
+If you can forgive me, my ever dear friend, for a silence which has
+not been intended, there will be another reason for being thankful to
+you, in addition to the many. To do myself justice, one of my earliest
+impulses on seeing my beloved Arabel, and recurring to the kindness
+with which you desired that happiness for me long before I possessed
+it, was to write and tell you how happy I felt. But she had promised,
+she said, to write herself, and moreover she and only she was to send
+you the ballad--in expectation of your dread judgment upon which I
+delayed my own writing. It came in the first letter we received in our
+new house, on the first of last October. An hour after reading it, I
+was upon my bed; was attacked by fever in the night, and from that
+bed have never even been lifted since--to these last days of
+November--except for one hour a day to the sofa at two yards'
+distance. I am very much better now, and have been so for some time;
+but my physician is so persuaded, he says, that it is easier to do
+me harm than good, that he will neither permit any present attempt at
+further exertion, nor hint at the time when it may be advisable for
+him to permit it. Under the circumstances it has of course been more
+difficult than usual for me to write. Pray believe, my dear and kind
+friend, in the face of all circumstances and appearances, that I never
+forget you, nor am reluctant (oh, how could that be?) to write to you;
+and that you shall often have to pay 'a penny for my thoughts' under
+the new Postage Act--if it be in God's wisdom and mercy to spare me
+through the winter. Under the new act I shall not mind writing ten
+words and then stopping. As it is, they would scarcely be worth eleven
+pennies.
+
+Thank you again and again for your praise of the ballad, which both
+delighted and _surprised_ me ... as I had scarcely hoped that you
+might like it at all. Think of Mr. Tilt's never sending me a proof
+sheet. The consequences are rather deplorable, and, if they had
+occurred to you, might have suggested a deep melancholy for life.
+In my case, _I_, who am, you know, hardened to sins of carelessness,
+simply look _aghast_ at the misprints and mispunctuations coming in as
+a flood, and sweeping away meanings and melodies together. The annual
+itself is more splendid than usual, and its vignettes have illustrated
+my story--angels, devils and all--most beautifully. Miss Mitford's
+tales (in prose) have suffered besides by reason of Mr. Tilt--but are
+attractive and graphic notwithstanding--and Mr. Horne has supplied a
+dramatic poem of great power and beauty.
+
+How I rejoice with you in the glorious revelation (about to be) of
+Gregory's second volume! The 'De Virginitate' poem will, in its new
+purple and fine linen, be more dazzling than ever.
+
+Do you know that George is barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple--_is_?
+I have seen him gazetted.
+
+My dearest papa is with me now, making me very happy of course. I have
+much reason to be happy--more to be grateful--yet am more obedient
+to the former than to the latter impulse. May the Giver of good
+give gratitude with as full a hand! May He bless _you_--and bring us
+together again, if no more in the flesh, yet in the spirit!
+
+Your ever affectionate friend,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+Do write--when you are able and _least_ disinclined. Do you approve of
+Prince Albert or not?[53]
+
+[Footnote 53: The engagement of Prince Albert to Queen Victoria took
+place in October 1839.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Torquay: May 29, 1840.
+
+My ever dear Friend,--It was very pleasant to me to see your seal
+upon a letter once more; and although the letter itself left me with
+a mournful impression of your having passed some time so much less
+happily than I would wish and pray for you, yet there remains the
+pleasant thought to me still that you have not altogether forgotten
+me. Do receive the expression of my most affectionate sympathy under
+this and every circumstance--and I fear that the shock to your nerves
+and spirits could not be a light one, however impressed you might be
+and must be with the surety and verity of God's love working in all
+His will. Poor poor Patience! Coming to be so happy with you, with
+that joyous smile I thought so pretty! Do you not remember my telling
+you so? Well--it is well and better for her; happier for her, if God
+in Christ Jesus have received her, than her hopes were of the holiday
+time with you. The holiday is _for ever_ now....
+
+I heard from Nelly Bordman only a few days before receiving your
+letter, and so far from preparing me for all this sadness and
+gloom, she pleased me with her account of you whom she had lately
+seen--dwelling upon your retrograde passage into youth, and the
+delight you were taking in the presence and society of some still
+more youthful, fair, and gay _monstrum amandum_, some prodigy of
+intellectual accomplishment, some little Circe who never turned
+anybodies into pigs. I learnt too from her for the first time that you
+were settled at Hampstead! Whereabout at Hampstead, and for how long?
+She didn't tell me _that_, thinking of course that I knew something
+more about you than I do. Yes indeed; you _do_ treat me very shabbily.
+I agree with you in thinking so. To think that so many hills and woods
+should interpose between us--that I should be lying here, fast bound
+by a spell, a sleeping beauty in a forest, and that _you_, who used
+to be such a doughty knight, should not take the trouble of cutting
+through even a hazel tree with your good sword, to find out what
+had become of me. Now do tell me, the hazel tree being down at last,
+whether you mean to live at Hampstead, whether you have taken a
+house there and have carried your books there, and wear Hampstead
+grasshoppers in your bonnet (as they did at Athens) to prove yourself
+of the soil.
+
+All this nonsense will make you think I am better, and indeed I am
+pretty well just now--quite, however, confined to the bed--except when
+lifted from it to the sofa baby-wise while they make it; even then
+apt to faint. Bad symptoms too do not leave me; and I am obliged to be
+blistered every few days--but I am free from any attack just now, and
+am a good deal less feverish than I am occasionally. There has been
+a consultation between an Exeter physician and my own, and they agree
+exactly, both hoping that with care I shall pass the winter, and rally
+in the spring, both hoping that I may be able to go about again with
+some comfort and independence, although I never can be fit again for
+anything like exertion....
+
+Do you know, did you ever hear anything of Mr. Horne who wrote 'Cosmo
+de Medici,' and the 'Death of Marlowe,' and is now desecrating his
+powers (I beg your pardon) by writing the life of Napoleon? By the
+way, he is the author of a dramatic sketch in the last Finden.
+
+He is in my mind one of the very first poets of the day, and has
+written to me so kindly (offering, although I never saw him in my
+life, to cater for me in literature, and send me down anything likely
+to interest me in the periodicals), that I cannot but think his
+amiability and genius do honor to one another.
+
+
+Do you remember Mr. Caldicott who used to preach in the infant
+schoolroom at Sidmouth? He died here the death of a saint, as he had
+lived a saintly life, about three weeks ago. It affected me a good
+deal. But he was always so associated in my thoughts more with heaven
+than earth, that scarcely a transition seems to have passed upon his
+locality. 'Present with the Lord' is true of him now; even as 'having
+his conversation in heaven' was formerly. There is little difference.
+
+May it be so with us all, with you and with me, my ever and very dear
+friend! In the meantime do not forget me. I never can forget _you_.
+
+Your affectionate and grateful
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+Arabel desires her love to be offered to you.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+1 Beacon Terrace, Torquay: July 8, 1840.
+
+My ever dear Friend,--I must write to you, although it is so very
+long, or at least seems so, since you wrote to me. But you say to
+Arabel in speaking of me that I '_used_ to care for what is poetical;'
+therefore, perhaps you say to yourself sometimes that I _used_ to
+care for _you_! I am anxious to vindicate my identity to you, in that
+respect above all.
+
+It is a long, dreary time since I wrote to you. I admit the pause on
+my own part, while I charge you with another. But _your_ silence has
+embraced more pleasantness and less suffering to you than mine has to
+me, and I thank God for a prosperity in which my unchangeable regard
+for you causes me to share directly....
+
+I have not rallied this summer as soon and well as I did last. I was
+very ill early in April at the time of our becoming conscious to our
+great affliction--so ill as to believe it utterly improbable, speaking
+humanly, that I ever should be any better. I am, however, a very great
+deal better, and gain strength by sensible degrees, however slowly,
+and do hope for the best--'the best' meaning one sight more of London.
+In the meantime I have not yet been able to leave my bed.
+
+To prove to you that I who 'used to care' for poetry do so still, and
+that I have not been absolutely idle lately, an 'Athenaeum' shall
+be sent to you containing a poem on the subject of the removal of
+Napoleon's ashes.[54] It is a fitter subject for you than for me.
+Napoleon is no idol of _mine. I_ never made a 'setting sun' of him.
+But my physician suggested the subject as a noble one and then there
+was something suggestive in the consideration that the 'Bellerophon'
+lay on those very bay-waters opposite to my bed.
+
+Another poem (which you won't like, I dare say) is called 'The Lay of
+the Rose,'[55] and appeared lately in a magazine. Arabel is going to
+write it out for you, she desires me to tell you with her best love.
+Indeed, I have written lately (as far as manuscript goes) a good deal,
+only on all sorts of subjects and in as many shapes.
+
+Lazarus would make a fine poem, wouldn't he? I lie here, weaving a
+great many schemes. I am seldom at a loss for thread.
+
+Do write sometimes to me, and tell me if you do anything besides
+hearing the clocks strike and bells ring. My beloved papa is with me
+still. There are so many mercies close around me (and his presence
+is far from the least), that God's _Being_ seems proved to me,
+_demonstrated_ to me, by His manifested love. May His blessing in
+the full lovingness rest upon you always! Never fancy I can forget or
+think of you coldly.
+
+Your affectionate and grateful
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 54: 'Crowned and Buried' _(Poetical Works_, iii. 9).]
+
+[Footnote 55: _Poetical Works_, iii. 152.]
+
+
+The above letter was written only three days before the tragedy which
+utterly wrecked Elizabeth Barrett's life for a time, and cast a
+deep shadow over it which never wholly passed away--the death of her
+brother Edward through drowning. On July 11, he and two friends had
+gone for a sail in a small boat. They did not return when they were
+expected, and presently a rumour came that a boat, answering in
+appearance to theirs, had been seen to founder in Babbicombe Bay;
+but it was not until three days later that final confirmation of the
+disaster was obtained by the discovery of the bodies. What this blow
+meant to the bereaved sister cannot be told: the horror with which she
+refers to it, even at a distance of many years, shows how deeply it
+struck. It was the loss of the brother whom she loved best of all; and
+she had the misery of thinking that it was to attend on her that he
+had come to the place where he met his death. Little wonder if Torquay
+was thenceforward a memory from which she shrank, and if even the
+sound of the sea became a horror to her.
+
+One natural consequence of this terrible sorrow is a long break in her
+correspondence. It is not until the beginning of 1841 that she seems
+to have resumed the thread of her life and to have returned to her
+literary occupations. Her health had inevitably suffered under the
+shock, and in the autumn of 1840 Miss Mitford speaks of not daring to
+expect more than a few months of lingering life. But when things were
+at the worst, she began unexpectedly to take a turn for the better.
+Through the winter she slowly gathered strength, and with strength the
+desire to escape from Torquay, with its dreadful associations, and
+to return to London. Meanwhile her correspondence with her friends
+revived, and with Horne in particular she was engaged during 1841 in
+an active interchange of views with regard to two literary projects.
+Indeed, it was only the return to work that enabled her to struggle
+against the numbing effect of the calamity which had overwhelmed her.
+Some time afterwards (in October 1843) she wrote to Mrs. Martin:
+'For my own part and experience--I do not say it as a phrase or
+in exaggeration, but from very clear and positive conviction--I do
+believe that I should be _mad_ at this moment, if I had not forced
+back--dammed out--the current of rushing recollections by work, work,
+work.' One of the projects in which she was concerned was 'Chaucer
+Modernised,' a scheme for reviving interest in the father of English
+poetry, suggested in the first instance by Wordsworth, but committed
+to the care of Horne, as editor, for execution. According to the
+scheme as originally planned, all the principal poets of the day were
+to be invited to share the task of transmuting Chaucer into modern
+language. Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, Horne, and others actually executed
+some portions of the work; Tennyson and Browning, it was hoped, would
+lend a hand with some of the later parts. Horne invited Miss Barrett
+to contribute, and, besides executing modernisations of 'Queen
+Annelida and False Arcite' and 'The Complaint of Annelida,'[56] she
+also advised generally on the work of the other writers during its
+progress through the press. The other literary project was for a
+lyrical drama, to be written in collaboration with Horne. It was to be
+called 'Psyche Apocalypte,' and was to be a drama on the Greek model,
+treating of the birth and self-realisation of the soul of man.
+
+[Footnote 56: These versions are not reprinted in her collected
+_Poetical Works_, but are to be found in 'Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer
+modernised,' (1841).]
+
+The sketch of its contents, given in the correspondence with Horne,
+will make the modern reader accept with equanimity the fact that it
+never progressed beyond the initial stage of drafting the plot. It is
+allegorical, philosophical, fantastic, unreal--everything which was
+calculated to bring out the worst characteristics of Miss Barrett's
+style and to intensify her faults. Fortunately her removal from
+Torquay to London interrupted the execution of the scheme. It
+was never seriously taken up again, and, though never explicitly
+abandoned, died a natural death from inanition, somewhat to the relief
+of Miss Barrett, who had come to recognise its impracticability.
+
+Apart from the correspondence with Horne, which has been published
+elsewhere, very few letters are left from this period; but those which
+here follow serve to bridge over the interval until the departure
+from Torquay, which closes one well-marked period in the life of the
+poetess.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+December 11, 1840.
+
+My ever dearest Mrs. Martin,--I should have written to you without
+this last proof of your remembrance--this cape, which, warm and pretty
+as it is, I value so much more as the work of your hands and gift of
+your affection towards me. Thank you, dearest Mrs. Martin, and thank
+you too for _all the rest_--for all your sympathy and love. And do
+believe that although grief had so changed me from myself and warped
+me from my old instincts, as to prevent my looking forwards with
+pleasure to seeing you again, yet that full amends are made in the
+looking back with a pleasure more true because more tender than any
+old retrospections. Do give my love to dear Mr. Martin, and say what I
+could not have said even if I had seen him.
+
+Shall you really, dearest Mrs. Martin, come again? Don't think we do
+not think of the hope you left us. Because we do indeed.
+
+A note from papa has brought the comforting news that my dear, dear
+Stormie is in England again, in London, and looking perfectly well. It
+is a mercy which makes me very thankful, and would make me joyful if
+anything could. But the meanings of some words change as we live on.
+Papa's note is hurried. It was a sixty-day passage, and that is all he
+tells me. Yes--there is something besides about Sette and Occy being
+either unknown or misknown, through the fault of their growing. Papa
+is not near returning, I think. He has so much to do and see, and so
+much cause to be enlivened and renewed as to spirits, that I begged
+him not to think about me and stay away as long as he pleased. And the
+accounts of him and of all at home are satisfying, I thank God....
+
+There is an east wind just now, which I feel. Nevertheless, Dr. Scully
+has said, a few minutes since, that I am as well as he could hope,
+considering the season.
+
+May God bless you ever!
+Your gratefully attached
+BA.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+March 29, 1841.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Have you thought 'The dream has come true'?
+I mean the dream of the flowers which you pulled for me and I wouldn't
+look at, even? I fear you must have thought that the dream about my
+ingratitude has come true.
+
+And yet it has not. Dearest Mrs. Martin, it has _not_. I have not
+forgotten you or remembered you less affectionately through all the
+silence, or longed less for the letters I did not ask for. But the
+truth is, my faculties seem to hang heavily now, like flappers when
+the spring is broken. _My_ spring _is_ broken, and a separate exertion
+is necessary for the lifting up of each--and then it falls down again.
+I never felt so before: there is no wonder that I should feel so now.
+Nevertheless, I don't give up much to the pernicious languor--the
+tendency to lie down to sleep among the snows of a weary journey--I
+don't give up much to it. Only I find it sometimes at the root of
+certain negligences--for instance, of this toward _you_.
+
+Dearest Mrs. Martin, receive my sympathy, _our_ sympathy, in the
+anxiety you have lately felt so painfully, and in the rejoicing for
+its happy issue. Do say when you write (I take for granted, you see,
+that you will write) how Mrs. B---- is now--besides the intelligence
+more nearly touching me, of your own and Mr. Martin's health and
+spirits. May God bless you both!
+
+Ah! but you did not come: I was disappointed!
+
+And Mrs. Hanford! Do you know, I tremble in my reveries sometimes,
+lest you should think it, guess it to be half unkind in me not to have
+made an exertion to see Mrs. Hanford. It was not from want of interest
+in her--least of all from want of love to _you_. But I have not
+stirred from my bed yet. But, to be honest, that was not the reason--I
+did not feel as if I _could_, without a painful effort, which, on the
+other hand, could not, I was conscious, result in the slightest shade
+of satisfaction to her, receive and talk to her. Perhaps it is hard
+for you to _fancy_ even how I shrink away from the very thought of
+seeing a human face--except those immediately belonging to me in love
+or relationship--(yours _does_, you know)--and a stranger's might be
+easier to look at than one long known....
+
+For my own part, my dearest Mrs. Martin, my heart has been lightened
+lately by kind, _honest_ Dr. Scully (who would never give an opinion
+just to please me), saying that I am 'quite right' to mean to go to
+London, and shall probably be fit for the journey early in June.
+He says that I may pass the winter there moreover, and with
+impunity--that wherever I am it will probably be necessary for me
+to remain shut up during the cold weather, and that under such
+circumstances it is quite possible to warm a London room to as safe
+a condition as a room _here_. So my heart is lightened of the fear
+of opposition: and the only means of regaining whatever portion of
+earthly happiness is not irremediably lost to me by the Divine decree,
+I am free to use. In the meantime, it really does seem to me that I
+make some progress in health--if the word in my lips be not a mockery.
+Oh, I fancy I shall be strengthened to get home!
+
+Your remarks on Chaucer pleased me very much. I am glad you liked what
+I did--or tried to do--and as to the criticisms, you were right--and
+they sha'n't be unattended to if the opportunity of correction be
+given to me.
+
+Ever your affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+August 28, 1841.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I have fluctuated from one shadow of uncertainty
+and anxiety to another, all the summer, on the subject to which my
+last earthly wishes cling, and I delayed writing to you to be able to
+say I am going to London. I may say so now--as far as the human may
+say 'yes' or 'no' of their futurity. The carriage, a patent carriage
+with a bed in it, and set upon some hundreds of springs, is, I
+believe, on its road down to me, and immediately upon its arrival
+we begin our journey. Whether we shall ever complete it remains
+uncertain--_more_ so than other uncertainties. My physician appears a
+good deal alarmed, calls it an undertaking full of hazard, and myself
+the 'Empress Catherine' for insisting upon attempting it. But I must.
+I go, as 'the doves to their windows,' to the only earthly daylight I
+see here. I go to rescue myself from the associations of this dreadful
+place. I go to restore to my poor papa the companionships family.
+Enough has been done and suffered for _me_. I thank God I am going
+home at last.
+
+How kind it was in you, my very kind and ever very dear friend, to ask
+me to visit you at Hampstead! I felt myself smiling while I read that
+part of your letter, and laid it down and suffered the vision to arise
+of your little room and your great Gregory and your dear self scolding
+me softly as in the happy olden times for not reading slow enough.
+Well--we do not know what _may_ happen! I _may_ (even that is
+probable) read to you again. But now--ah, my dear friend--if you could
+imagine me such as I am!--you would not think I could visit you! Yet
+I am wonderfully better this summer; and if I can but reach home
+and bear the first painful excitement, it will do me more good than
+anything--I know it will! And if it does not, it will be _well_ even
+so.
+
+I shall tell them to send you the 'Athenaeum' of last week, where I
+have a 'House of Clouds,'[57] which papa likes so much that he would
+wish to live in it if it were not for the damp. There is not a clock
+in one room--that's another objection. How are your clocks? Do they
+go? and do you like their voices as well as you used to do?
+
+I think Annie is not with you; but in case of her still being so, do
+give her (and yourself too) Arabel's love and mine. I wish I heard of
+you oftener. Is there nobody to write? May God bless you!
+
+Your ever affectionate friend,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+August 31, 1831 [_sic_].
+
+Thank you, my ever dear friend, with almost my last breath at Torquay,
+for your kindness about the Gregory, besides the kind note itself. It
+is, however, too late. We go, or mean at present to go, to-morrow;
+and the carriage which is to waft us through the air upon a thousand
+springs has actually arrived. You are not to think severely upon Dr.
+Scully's candour with me as to the danger of the journey. He _does_
+think it 'likely to do me harm;' therefore, you know, he was justified
+by his medical responsibility in laying before me all possible
+consequences. I have considered them all, and dare them gladly and
+gratefully. Papa's domestic comfort is broken up by the separation in
+his family, and the associations of this place lie upon me, struggle
+as I may, like the oppression of a perpetual night-mare. It is an
+instinct of self-preservation which impels me to escape--or to try
+to escape. And In God's mercy--though God forbid that I should deny
+either His mercy or His justice, if He should deny me--we may be
+together in Wimpole Street in a few days. Nelly Bordman has kindly
+written to me Mr. Jago's favourable opinion of the patent carriages,
+and his conviction of my accomplishing the journey without
+inconvenience.
+
+May God bless you, my dear dear friend! Give my love to dearest Annie!
+Perhaps, if I am ever really in Wimpole Street, _safe enough for
+Greek_, you will trust the poems to me which you mention. I care as
+much for poetry as ever, and could not more.
+
+Your affectionate and grateful
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 57: _Poetical Works_, iii. 186.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+1841-1843
+
+
+In September 1841 the journey from Torquay was actually achieved, and
+Miss Barrett returned to her father's house in London, from which she
+was never to be absent for more than a few hours at a time until the
+day, five years later, when she finally left it to join her husband,
+Robert Browning. Her life was that of an invalid, confined to her room
+for the greater part of each year, and unable to see any but a
+few intimate friends. Still, she regained some sort of strength,
+especially during the warmth of the summer months, and was able to
+throw herself with real interest into literary work. In a life such
+as this there are few outward events to record, and its story is best
+told in Miss Barrett's own letters, which, for the most part, need
+little comment. The letters of the end of 1841 and beginning of 1842
+are almost entirely written to Mr. Boyd, and the main subject of them
+is the series of papers on the Greek Christian poets and the English
+poets which, at the suggestion of Mr. Dilke, then editor of the
+'Athenaeum,' she contributed to that periodical. Of the composition of
+original poetry we hear less at this time.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street: October 2, 1841.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I thank you for the letter and books which
+crossed the threshold of this house before me, and looked like your
+welcome to me home. I have read the passages you wished me to read--I
+have read them _again_: for I remember reading them under your star
+(or the greater part of them) a long while ago. You, on the other
+hand, may remember of _me_, that I never could concede to you much
+admiration for your Gregory as a poet--not even to his grand work 'De
+Virginitate.' He is one of those writers, of whom there are instances
+in our own times, who are only poetical in prose.
+
+The passage imitative of Chryses I cannot think much of. Try to be
+forgiving. It is toasted dry between the two fires of the Scriptures
+and Homer, and is as stiff as any dry toast out of the simile. To be
+sincere, I like dry toast better.
+
+The Hymns and Prayers I very much prefer; and although I remembered a
+good deal about them, it has given me a pleasure you will approve of
+to go through them in this edition. The one which I like best, which I
+like far best, which I think worth all the rest ('De Virginitate'
+and all put together), is the _second_ upon page 292, beginning 'Soi
+charis.' It is very fine, I think, written out of the heart and for
+the heart, warm with a natural heat, and not toasted dry and brown and
+stiff at a fire by any means.
+
+Dear Mr. Boyd, I coveted Arabel's walk to you the other day. I shall
+often covet my neighbour's walks, I believe, although (and may God be
+praised for it!) I am more happy--that is, nearing to the feeling of
+happiness now--than a month since I could believe possible to a heart
+so bruised and crushed as mine has [been] be at home is a blessing and
+a relief beyond what these words can say.
+
+But, dear Mr. Boyd, you said something in a note to Arabel some little
+time ago, which I will ask of your kindness to avoid saying again. I
+have been through the whole summer very much better; and even if it
+were not so I should dread being annoyed by more medical speculations.
+Pray do not suggest any. I am not in a state to admit of experiments,
+and my case is a very clear and simple one. I have not _one symptom_
+like those of my old illness; and after more than fifteen years'
+absolute suspension of them, their recurrence is scarcely probable. My
+case is very clear: not tubercular consumption, not what is called a
+'decline,' but an affection of the lungs which leans towards it. You
+know a blood-vessel broke three years ago, and I never quite got over
+it. Mr. Jago, not having seen me, could scarcely be justified in a
+conjecture of the sort, when the opinions of four able physicians,
+two of them particularly experienced in diseases of the chest, and
+the other two the most eminent of the faculty in the east and west of
+England, were decided and contrary, while coincident with each other.
+Besides, you see, I am becoming better--and I could not desire more
+than that. Dear Mr. Boyd, do not write a word about it any more,
+either to me or others. I am sure you would not willingly disturb me.
+Nelly Bordman is good and dear, but I can't let her prescribe for me
+anything except her own affection.
+
+I hope Arabel expressed for me my thankful sense of Mrs. Smith's kind
+intention. But, indeed, although I would see _you_, dear Mr. Boyd,
+gladly, or an angel or a fairy or any very particular friend, I am
+not fit either in body or spirit for general society. I _can't_ see
+people, and if I could it would be very bad for me. Is Mrs. Smith
+writing? Are you writing? Part of me is worn out; but the poetical
+part--that is, the _love_ of poetry--is growing in me as freshly and
+strongly as if it were watered every day. Did anybody ever love it and
+stop in the middle? I wonder if anybody ever did?... Believe me your
+affectionateE.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street: December 29, 1841.
+
+My dear Friend,--I should not have been half as idle about
+transcribing these translations[58] if I had fancied you could care so
+much to have them as Arabel tells me you do. They are recommended to
+your mercy, O Greek Daniel! The _last_ sounds in my ears most like
+English poetry; but I assure you I took the least pains with it. The
+second is obscure as its original, if it do not (as it does not) equal
+it otherwise. The first is yet more unequal to the Greek. I praised
+that Greek poem above all of Gregory's, for the reason that it has
+_unity and completeness_, for which, to speak generally, you may
+search the streets and squares and alleys of Nazianzum in vain. Tell
+me what you think of my part.
+
+Ever affectionately yours,
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+Have you a Plotinus, and would you trust him to me in that case? Oh
+no, you do not tempt me with your musical clocks. My time goes to the
+best music when I read or write; and whatever money I can spend upon
+my own pleasures flows away in books.
+
+[Footnote 58: Translations of three poems of Gregory Nazianzen,
+printed in the _Athenaeum_ of January 8, 1842.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_[59]
+50 Wimpole Street: January 2, 1842.
+
+Miss Barrett, inferring Mr. Westwood from the handwriting, begs his
+acceptance of the unworthy little book[60] he does her the honour of
+desiring to see.
+
+It is more unworthy than he could have expected when he expressed that
+desire, having been written in very early youth, when the mind was
+scarcely free in any measure from trammels and Popes, and, what is
+worse, when flippancy of language was too apt to accompany immaturity
+of opinion. The miscellaneous verses are, still more than the chief
+poem, 'childish things' in a strict literal sense, and the whole
+volume is of little interest even to its writer except for personal
+reasons--except for the traces of dear affections, since rudely
+wounded, and of that _love_ of poetry which began with her sooner than
+so soon, and must last as long as life does, without being subject
+to the changes of life. Little more, therefore, can remain for such
+a volume than to be humble and shrink from circulation. Yet Mr.
+Westwood's kind words win it to his hands. Will he receive at the same
+moment the expression of touched and gratified feelings with which
+Miss Barrett read what he wrote on the subject of her later volumes,
+still very imperfect, although more mature and true to the _truth_
+within? Indeed she is thankful for what he said so kindly in his note
+to her.
+
+[Footnote 59: Mr. Thomas Westwood was the author of a volume of
+'Poems,' published in 1840, 'Beads from a Rosary' (1843), 'The Burden
+of the Bell' (1850), and other volumes of verse. Several of his
+compositions were appearing occasionally in the _Athenaeum_ at the
+time when this correspondence with Miss Barrett commenced.]
+
+[Footnote 60: The _Essay on Mind_.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street: January 6, 1842.
+
+My dear Friend,--I have done your bidding and sent the translations
+to the 'Athenaeum,' attaching to them an infamous prefatory note which
+says all sorts of harm of Gregory's poetry. You will be very angry
+with it and me.
+
+And you _may_ be angry for another reason--that in the midst of my
+true thankfulness for the emendations you sent me, I ventured to
+reject one or two of them. You are right, probably, and I wrong; but
+still, I thought within myself with a womanly obstinacy not altogether
+peculiar to me,--'If he and I were to talk together about them, he
+would kindly give up the point to me--so that, now we cannot talk
+together, _I might as well take it_.' Well, you will see what I have
+done. Try not to be angry with me. You shall have the 'Athenaeum' as
+soon as possible.
+
+My dear Mr. Boyd, you know how I disbelieved the probability of these
+papers being accepted. You will comprehend my surprise on receiving
+last night a very courteous: note from the editor, which I would
+send to you if it were legible to anybody except people used to
+learn reading from the pyramids. He wishes me to contribute to the
+'Athenaeum' some prose papers in the form of reviews--'the review
+being a mere form, and the book a mere text.' He is not very
+clear--but I fancy that a few translations of _excerpta_, with a prose
+analysis and synthesis of the original author's genius, might suit
+his purpose. Now suppose I took up some of the early Christian Greek
+poets, and wrote a few continuous papers _so_?[61] Give me your
+advice, my dear friend! I think of Synesius, for one. Suppose you send
+me a list of the names which occur to you! _Will_ you advise me? Will
+you write directly? Will you make allowance for my teazing you? Will
+you lend me your little Synesius, and Clarke's book? I mean the one
+commenced by Dr. Clarke and continued by his son. Above all things,
+however, I want the advice.
+
+Ever affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Wednesday, January 13, 1842 (postmark).
+
+My dear Friend,--Thank you, thank you, for your kind suggestion and
+advice altogether. I had just (when your note arrived) finished two
+hymns of Synesius, one being the seventh and the other the ninth.
+Oh! I do remember that you performed upon the latter, and my modesty
+should have certainly bid me 'avaunt' from it. Nevertheless, it is so
+fine, so prominent in the first class of Synesius's beauties, that I
+took courage and dismissed my scruples, and have produced a version
+which I have not compared to yours at all hitherto, but which probably
+is much rougher and _rather_ closer, winning in faith what it loses
+in elegance. 'Elegance' isn't a word for me, you know, generally
+speaking. The barbarians herd with me, 'by two and three.'
+
+I had a letter to-day from Mr. Dilke, who agrees to everything, closes
+with the idea about 'Christian Greek poets' (only begging me to keep
+away from theology), and suggesting a subsequent reviewal of English
+poetical literature, from Chaucer down to our times.[62] Well, but
+the Greek poets. With all your kindness, I have scarcely sufficient
+materials for a full and minute survey of them. I have won a sight of
+the 'Poetae Christiani,' but the price is ruinous--_fourteen guineas_,
+and then the work consists almost entirely of Latin poets, deducting
+Gregory and Nonnus, and John Damascenus, and a cento from Homer by
+somebody or other. Turning the leaves rapidly, I do not see much else;
+and you know I may get a separate copy of John Dam., and have access
+to the rest. Try to turn in your head what I should do. Greg. Nyssen
+did not write poems, did he? Have I a chance of seeing your copy of
+Mr. Clarke's book? It would be useful in the matters of chronology.
+
+I humbly beg your pardon, and Gregory's, for the insolence of my note.
+It was as brief as it could be, and did not admit of any extended
+reference and admiration to his qualities as an orator. But whoever
+read it to you should have explained that when I wrote 'He was an
+orator,' the word _orator_ was marked emphatically, so as to appear
+printed in capital letters of emphasis. Do not say 'you _chose_,' 'you
+_chose_.' I didn't and don't choose to be obstinate, indeed; but I
+can't see the sense of that 'heavenly soul.'
+
+Ever your grateful and affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+I shall have room for praising Gregory in these papers.
+
+[Footnote 61: The series of papers on the Greek Christian Poets
+appeared in the _Athenaeum_ for February and March 1842; they are
+reprinted in the _Poetical Works_, v. 109-200.]
+
+[Footnote 62: This scheme took shape in the series of papers on the
+English Poets which appeared in the _Athenaeum_ in the course of June
+and August 1842 (reprinted in _Poetical Works_, v. 201-290).]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+February 4, 1842.
+
+My dear Friend,--You must be thinking, if you are not a St. Boyd for
+good temper, that among the Gregorys and Synesiuses I have forgotten
+everything about you. No; indeed it has not been so. I have never
+_stopped_ being grateful to you for your kind notes, and the two last
+pieces of Gregory, although I did not say an overt 'Thank you;' but
+I have been very very busy besides, and thus I answered to myself for
+your being kind enough to pardon a silence which was compelled rather
+than voluntary.
+
+Do you ever observe that as vexations don't come alone, occupations
+don't, and that, if you happen to be engaged upon one particular
+thing, it is the signal for your being waylaid by bundles of letters
+desiring immediate answers, and proof sheets or manuscript works whose
+writers request your opinion while their 'printer waits'? The old
+saints are not responsible for all the filling up of my time. I have
+been _busy upon busy_.
+
+The first part of my story about the Greek poets went to the
+'Athenaeum' some days ago, but, although graciously received by the
+editor, it won't appear this week, or I should have had a proof sheet
+(which was promised to me) before now. I must contrive to include all
+I have to say on the subject in _three parts_. They will admit, they
+tell me, a fourth _if I please_, but evidently they would prefer as
+much brevity as I could vouchsafe. Only two poets are in the first
+notice, and _twenty_ remain--and neither of the two is Gregory.
+
+Will you let me see that volume of Gregory which contains the
+'Christus Patiens'? Send it by any boy on the heath, and I will
+remunerate him for the walk and the burden, and thank you besides. Oh,
+don't be afraid! I am not going to charge it upon Gregory, but on the
+younger Apollinaris, whose claim is stronger, and I rather wish to
+refresh my recollection of the height and breadth of that tragic
+misdemeanour.
+
+It is quite true that I never have suffered much pain, and equally so
+that I continue most decidedly better, notwithstanding the winter. I
+feel, too--I do hope not ungratefully--the blessing granted to me in
+the possibility of literary occupation,--which is at once occupation
+and distraction. Carlyle (not the infidel, but the philosopher) calls
+literature a 'fireproof pleasure.' How truly! How deeply I have felt
+that truth!
+
+May God bless you, dear Mr. Boyd. I don't despair of looking in your
+face one day yet before my last.
+
+Ever your affectionate and obliged
+E.B.B.
+
+Arabel's love.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+March 2, 1842.
+
+My ever very dear Friend,--Do receive the assurance that whether I
+leave out the right word or put in the wrong one, you never can be
+other to me than just _that_ while I live, and why not after I have
+ceased to live? And now--what have I done in the meantime, to be
+called 'Miss Barrett'? 'I pause for a reply.'
+
+Of course it gives me very great pleasure to hear you speak so kindly
+of my first paper. Some _bona avis_ as good as a nightingale must have
+shaken its wings over me as I began it; and if it will but sit on
+the same spray while I go on towards the end, I shall rejoice exactly
+four-fold. The third paper went to Mr. Dilke to-day, and I was so
+fidgety about getting it away (and it seemed to cling to my writing
+case with both its hands), that I would not do any writing, even as
+little as this note, until it was quite gone out of sight. You know it
+is possible that he, the editor, may not please to have the _fourth_
+paper; but even in that case, it is better for the 'Remarks' to remain
+fragmentary, than be compressed till they are as dry as a _hortus
+siccus_ of poets.
+
+Certainly you do and must praise my number one too much. Number one
+(that's myself) thinks so. I do really; and the supererogatory virtue
+of kindness may be acknowledged out of the pale of the Romish Church.
+
+In regard to Gregory and Synesius, you will see presently that I have
+not wronged them altogether.
+
+As you have ordered the 'Athenaeums,' I will not send one to-morrow
+so as to repeat my ill fortune of being too late. But tell me if you
+would like to have any from me, and how many.
+
+It was very kind in you to pat Flush's[63] head in defiance of danger
+and from pure regard for me. I kissed his head where you had patted
+it; which association of approximations I consider as an imitation
+of shaking hands with you and as the next best thing to it. You
+understand--don't you?--that Flush is my constant companion, my
+friend, my amusement, lying with his head on one page of my folios
+while I read the other. (Not _your_ folios--I respect _your_ books,
+be sure.) Oh, I dare say, if the truth were known, Flush understands
+Greek excellently well.
+
+I hope you are right in thinking that we shall meet again. Once I
+wished _not_ to live, but the faculty of life seems to have sprung up
+in me again, from under the crushing foot of heavy grief.
+
+Be it all as God wills.
+
+Believe me, your ever affectionate
+
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 63: Miss Barrett's dog, the gift of Miss Mitford. His praise
+is sung in her poem, 'To Flush, my Dog' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 19),
+and in many of the following letters. He accompanied his mistress to
+Italy, lived to a good old age, and now lies buried in the vaults of
+Casa Guidi.]
+
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Saturday night, March 5, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I am quite angry with myself for forgetting your
+questions when I answered your letter.
+
+Could you really imagine that I have not looked into the Greek
+tragedians for years, with my true love for Greek poetry? That is
+asking a question, you will say, and not answering it. Well, then,
+I answer by a 'Yes' the one you put to me. I had two volumes of
+Euripides with me in Devonshire, and have read him as well as
+Aeschylus and Sophocles--that is _from_ them--both before and since
+I went there. You know I have gone through every line of the three
+tragedians long ago, in the way of regular, consecutive reading.
+
+You know also that I had at different times read different dialogues
+of Plato; but when three years ago, and a few months previous to my
+leaving home, I became possessed of a complete edition of his works,
+edited by Bekker, why then I began with the first volume and went
+through the whole of his writings, both those I knew and those I did
+not know, one after another: and have at this time read, not only all
+that is properly attributed to Plato, but even those dialogues and
+epistles which pass falsely under his name--everything except two
+books I think, or three, of the treatise 'De Legibus,' which I shall
+finish in a week or two, as soon as I can take breath from Mr. Dilke.
+
+Now the questions are answered.
+
+Ever your affectionate and grateful friend,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Thursday, March 10, 1842 [postmark].
+
+My very dear Friend,--I did not know until to-day whether the paper
+would appear on Saturday or not; but as I have now received the proof
+sheets, there can be no doubt of it. I have been and _am_ hurried and
+hunted almost into a corner through the pressing for the fourth paper,
+and the difficulty about books. You will forgive a very short note to
+night.
+
+I have read of Aristotle only his Poetics, his Ethics, and his work
+upon Rhetoric, but I mean to take him regularly into both hands when I
+finish Plato's last page. Aristophanes I took with me into Devonshire;
+and after all, I do not know much more of _him_ than three or four of
+his plays may stand for. Next week, my very dear friend, I shall be at
+your commands, and sit in spirit at your footstool, to hear and answer
+anything you may care to ask me--but oh! what have I done that you
+should talk to _me_ about 'venturing,' or 'liberty,' or anything of
+that kind?
+
+From your affectionate and grateful catechumen,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_.
+March 29, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I received your long letter and receive your
+short one, and thank you for the pleasure of both. Of course I am very
+_very_ glad of your approval in the matter of the papers, and your
+kindness could not have wished to give me more satisfaction than
+it gave actually. Mr. Kenyon tells me that Mr. Burgess[64] has been
+reading and commending the papers, and has brought me from him a newly
+discovered scene of the 'Bacchae' of Euripides, edited by Mr. Burgess
+himself for the 'Gentlemen's Magazine,' and of which he considers that
+the 'Planctus Mariae,' at least the passage I extracted from it, is an
+imitation. Should you care to see it? Say 'Yes,'--and I will send it
+to you.
+
+Do you think it was wrong to make _eternity_ feminine? I knew that
+the Greek word was not feminine; but imagined that the English
+personification should be so. Am I wrong in this? Will you consider
+the subject again?
+
+Ah, yes! That was a mistake of mine about putting Constantine for
+Constantius. I wrote from memory, and the memory betrayed me. But say
+nothing about it. Nobody will find it out. I send you Silentiarius and
+some poems of Pisida in the same volume. Even if you had not asked for
+them, I should have asked you to look at some passages which are fine
+in both. It appears to me that Silentiarius writes difficult Greek,
+overlaying his description with a multitude of architectural and
+other far fetched words! Pisida is hard, too, occasionally, from other
+causes, particularly in the 'Hexaemeron,' which is not in the book
+I send you but in another very gigantic one (as tall as the Irish
+giants), which you may see if you please. I will send a coach and six
+with it if you please.
+
+John Mauropus, of the Three Towns, I owe the knowledge of to _you.
+You_ lent me the book with his poems, you know. He is a great favorite
+of mine in all ways. I very much admire his poetry.
+
+Believe me, ever your affectionate and grateful
+
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+Pray tell me what you think. I am sorry to observe that the book I
+send you is marked very irregularly; that is, marked in some places,
+unmarked in others, just as I happened to be near or far from
+my pencil and inkstand. Otherwise I should have liked to compare
+judgments with you.
+
+Keep the book as long as you please; it is my own.
+
+[Footnote 64: George Burges, the classical scholar. He had in 1832
+contributed to the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (under a pseudonym) some
+lines purporting to be a newly discovered portion of the _Bacchae_,
+but really composed by himself on the basis of a parallel passage
+in the _Christus Patiens_. It is apparently to these lines that Miss
+Barrett alludes, though the 'discovery' was then nearly ten years
+old.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street: April 2, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--... As to your kind desire to hear whatever in
+the way of favorable remark I have gathered together for fruit of my
+papers, I put on a veil and tell you that Mr. Kenyon thought it well
+done, although 'labour thrown away, from the unpopularity of
+the subject;' that Miss Mitford was very much pleased, with the
+warmheartedness common to her; that Mrs. Jamieson [_sic_] read them
+'with great pleasure' unconsciously of the author; and that Mr. Home
+the poet and Mr. Browning the poet were not behind in approbation. Mr.
+Browning is said to be learned in Greek, especially in the dramatists;
+and of Mr. Home I should suspect something similar. Miss Mitford and
+Mrs. Jamieson, although very gifted and highly cultivated women,
+are not Grecians, and therefore judge the papers simply as English
+compositions.
+
+The single unfavorable opinion _is_ Mr. Hunter's, who thinks that
+the criticisms are not given with either sufficient seriousness or
+diffidence, and that there is a painful sense of effort through the
+whole. Many more persons may say so whose voices I do not hear. I am
+glad that yours, my dear indulgent friend, is not one of them.
+
+Believe me, your ever affectionate
+
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+May 17, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--Have you thought all unkindness out of my
+silence? Yet the inference is not a true one, however it may look in
+logic.
+
+You do not like Silentiarius _very much_ (that is _my_ inference),
+since you have kept him so short a time. And I quite agree with you
+that he is not a poet of the same interest as Gregory Nazianzen,
+however he may appear to me of more lofty cadence in his
+versification. My own impression is that John of Euchaita is worth two
+of each of them as a poet. His poems strike me as standing in the very
+first class of the productions of the Christian centuries. Synesius
+and John of Euchaita! I shall always think of those two together--not
+by their similarity, but their dignity.
+
+I return you the books you lent me with true thanks, and also those
+which Mrs. Smith, I believe, left in your hands for me. I thank _you_
+for them, and _you_ must be good enough to thank _her_. They were of
+use, although of a rather sublime indifference for poets generally....
+
+I shall send you soon the series of the Greek papers you asked for,
+and also perhaps the first paper of a Survey of the English Poets,
+under the pretence of a review of 'The Book of the Poets,' a
+bookseller's selection published lately. I begin from Langland, of
+Piers Plowman and the Malvern Hills. The first paper went to the
+editor last week, and I have heard nothing as to whether it will
+appear on Saturday or not, and perhaps if it does you won't care
+to have it sent to you. Tell me if you do or don't. I have suffered
+unpleasantly in the heart lately from this tyrannous dynasty of east
+winds, but have been well otherwise, and am better, in _that_. Flushie
+means to bark the next time he sees you in revenge for what you say of
+him.
+
+Good bye, dear Mr. Boyd; think of me as
+
+Your ever affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+June 3, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I disobeyed you in not simply letting you know
+of the publication of my 'English Poets,' because I did not know
+myself when the publication was to take place, and I hope you will
+forgive the innocent crime and accept the first number going to you
+with this note. I warn you that there will be two numbers more at
+_least_. Therefore do not prepare yourself for perhaps the impossible
+magnanimity of reading them through.
+
+And now I am fit for rivalship with your clocks, papa having given me
+an Aeolian harp for the purpose. Do you know the music of an Aeolian
+harp, and that nothing below the spherical harmonies is so sweet
+and soft and mournfully wild? The amusing part of it is (after the
+poetical) that Flushie is jealous and thinks it is alive, and takes
+it as very hard that I should say 'beautiful' to anything except his
+ears!
+
+Arabel talks of going to see you; but if you are sensible to this
+intense and most overcoming heat, you will pardon her staying away for
+the present.
+
+We have heard to-day that Annie proposes to publish her Miscellany by
+subscription; and although I know it to be the only way, compatible
+with publication at all, to avoid a pecuniary loss, yet the custom
+is so entirely abandoned except in the case of persons of a lower
+condition of life than _your daughter_, that I am sorry to think of
+the observations it may excite. The whole scheme has appeared to me
+from the beginning _most foolish_, and if you knew what I know of
+the state and fortune of our ephemeral literature, you would use
+what influence you have with her to induce her to condemn her
+'contributions' to the adorning of a private annual rather than the
+purpose in unhappy question. I wish I dared to appeal through my true
+love for her to her own good sense once more.
+
+My very dear friend's affectionate and grateful
+E.B.B.
+
+If you _do_ read any of the papers, let me know, I beseech you, your
+full and free opinion of them.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+June 22, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I thank you gratefully for your two notes, with
+their united kindness and candour--the latter still rarer than the
+former, if less 'sweet upon the tongue.' Sir William Alexander's
+tragedy _(that_ is the right name, I think, Sir William Alexander,
+Earl of Stirling) you will not find mentioned among my dramatic
+notices, because I was much pressed for room, and had to treat the
+whole subject as briefly as possible, striking off, like the Roman,
+only the heads of the flowers, and I did not, besides, receive your
+injunction until my third paper on the dramatists was finished and in
+the press. When you read it you will find some notice of that tragedy
+by Marlowe, the first knowledge of which I owe to you, my dear Mr.
+Boyd, as how much besides? And then comes the fourth paper, and I
+tremble to anticipate the possible--nay, the very probable--scolding I
+may have from you, upon my various heresies as to Dryden and Pope and
+Queen Anne's versificators. In the meantime you have breathing time,
+for Mr. Dilke, although very gracious and courteous to my offence of
+extending the two papers he asked for _into four_,[65] yet could find
+no room in the 'Athenaeum' last week for me, and only _hopes_ for it
+this week. And after this week comes the British Association business,
+which always fills every column for a month, so that a further delay
+is possible enough. 'It will increase,' says Mr. Dilke, 'the zest of
+the reader,' whereas _I_ say (at least think) that it will help him
+quite to forget me. I explain all this lest you should blame me for
+neglect to yourself in not sending the papers. I am so pleased that
+you like at least the second article. That is encouragement to me.
+
+Flushie did not seem to think the harp alive when it was taken out of
+the window and laid close to him. He examined it particularly, and
+is a philosophical dog. But I am sure that at first and while it was
+playing he thought so.
+
+In the same way he can't bear me to look into a glass, because he
+thinks there is a little brown dog inside every looking glass, and he
+is jealous of its being so close to _me_. He used to tremble and bark
+at it, but now he is _silently_ jealous, and contents himself with
+squeezing close, close to me and kissing me expressively.
+
+My very dear friend's ever gratefully affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 65: Ultimately five.]
+
+
+_To John Kenyon_
+50 Wimpole Street: Sunday night [September 1842].
+
+My dear Mr. Kenyon,--Having missed my pleasure to-day by a coincidence
+worse for me than for you, I must, tired as I am to-night, tell
+you--ready for to-morrow's return of the books--what I have waited
+three whole days hoping to tell you by word of mouth. But mind, before
+I begin, I don't do so out of despair ever to see you again, because I
+trust steadfastly to your kindness to _come_ again when _you_ are not
+'languid' and I am alone as usual; only that I dare not keep back from
+you any longer the following message of Miss Mitford. She says: 'Won't
+he take us in his way to Torquay? or from Torquay? Beg him to do
+so--and of all love, to tell us _when_.' Afterwards, again: 'I think
+my father is better. Tell Mr. Kenyon what I say, and stand my friend
+with him and beg him to come.'
+
+Which I do in the most effectual way--in her own words.
+
+She is much pleased by means of your introduction. 'Tell dear Mr.
+Kenyon how very very much I like Mrs. Leslie. She seems all that is
+good and kind, and to add great intelligence and agreeableness to
+these prime qualities.'
+
+Now I have done with being a messenger of the gods, and verily my
+caduceus is trembling in my hand.
+
+O Mr. Kenyon! what have you done? You will know the interpretation of
+the reproach, your conscience holding the key of the cypher.
+
+In the meantime I ought to be thanking you for your great kindness
+about this divine Tennyson.[66] Beautiful! beautiful! After all, it
+is a noble thing to be a poet. But notwithstanding the poetry of the
+novelties--and you will observe that his two preceding volumes (only
+one of which I had seen before, having inquired for the other vainly)
+are included in these two--nothing appears to me quite equal to
+'Oenone,' and perhaps a few besides of my ancient favorites. That is
+not said in disparagement of the last, but in admiration of the
+first. There is, in fact, more thought--more bare brave working of the
+intellect--in the latter poems, even if we miss something of the high
+ideality, and the music that goes with it, of the older ones. Only I
+am always inclined to believe that philosophic thinking, like music,
+is involved, however occultly, in high ideality of any kind.
+
+You have not a key to the cypher of this at least, and I am so tired
+that one word seems tumbling over another all the way.
+
+Ever affectionately yours,
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+You will let me keep your beautiful ballad and the gods[67] a little
+longer.
+
+[Footnote 66: This refers to the recent publication of Tennyson's
+_Poems_, in two volumes, the first containing a re-issue of poems
+previously published, while the second was wholly new, and included
+such poems as the 'Morte d'Arthur,' 'Ulysses,' and 'Locksley Hall.']
+
+[Footnote 67: No doubt Mr. Kenyon's translation of Schiller's 'Gods
+of Greece,' which was the occasion of Miss Barrett's poem 'The Dead
+Pan.']
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+September 14, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I have made you wait a long time for the 'North
+American Review,' because when your request came it was no longer
+within my reach, and because since then I have not been so well
+as usual from a sweep of the wing of the prevailing epidemic. Now,
+however, I am _better_ than I was even before the attack, only wishing
+that it were possible to hook-and-eye on another summer to the hem
+of the garment of this last sunny one. At the end of such a double
+summer, to measure things humanly, I might be able to go to see you at
+Hampstead. Nevertheless, winters and adversities are more fit for us
+than a constant sun.
+
+I suppose, dear Mr. Boyd, you want only to have this review read to
+you, and not _written_. Because it isn't out of laziness that I send
+the book to you; and Arabel would copy whatever you please willingly,
+provided you wished it. Keep the book as long as you please. I have
+put a paper mark and a pencil mark at the page and paragraph where I
+am taken up. It seems to me that the condemnation of 'The Seraphim' is
+not too hard. The poem wants _unity_.
+
+As to your 'words of fire' about Wordsworth, if I had but a cataract
+at command I would try to quench them. His powers should not be judged
+of by my extracts or by anybody's extracts from his last-published
+volume.[68] Do you remember his grand ode upon Childhood--worth, to my
+apprehension, just twenty of Dryden's 'St. Cecilia's Day'--his sonnet
+upon Westminster Bridge, his lyric on a lark, in which the lark's
+music swells and exults, and the many noble and glorious passages
+of his 'Excursion'? You must not indeed blame me for estimating
+Wordsworth at _his height_, and on the other side I readily confess to
+you that he is occasionally, and not unfrequently, heavy and dull, and
+that Coleridge had an intenser genius. Tell me if you know anything of
+Tennyson. He has just published two volumes of poetry, one of which is
+a republication, but both full of inspiration.
+
+Ever my very dear friend's affectionate and grateful
+E.B.B.
+
+
+[Footnote 68: _Poems, chiefly of early and late years, including The
+Borderers, a Tragedy_ (1842).]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+50 Wimpole Street: October 22, 1842.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Waiting first for you to write to me, and
+then waiting that I might write to you cheerfully, has ended by making
+so long a silence that I am almost ashamed to break it. And perhaps,
+even if I were not ashamed, you would be angry--perhaps you _are_
+angry, and don't much care now whether or not you ever hear from me
+again. Still I must write, and I must moreover ask you to write to me
+again; and I must in particular assure you that I have continued to
+love you sincerely, notwithstanding all the silence which might seem
+to say the contrary. What I should like best just now is to have a
+letter speaking comfortable details of your being comparatively well
+again; yet I hope on without it that you really are so much better as
+to be next to quite well. It was with great concern that I heard
+of the indisposition which hung about you, dearest Mrs. Martin,
+so long--I who had congratulated myself when I saw you last on the
+promise of good health in your countenance. May God bless you, and
+keep you better! And may you take care of yourself, and remember how
+many love you in the world, from dear Mr. Martin down to--E.B.B.
+
+Well, now I must look around me and consider what there is to tell
+you. But I have been uneasy in various ways, sometimes by reason and
+sometimes by fantasy; and even now, although my dear old friend Dr.
+Scully is something better, he lies, I fear, in a very precarious
+state, while dearest Miss Mitford's letters from the deathbed of her
+father make my heart ache as surely almost as the post comes. There
+is nothing more various in character, nothing which distinguishes
+one human being from another more strikingly, than the expression of
+feeling, the manner in which it influences the outward man. If I were
+in her circumstances, I should sit paralysed--it would be impossible
+to me to write or to cry. And she, who loves and feels with the
+intensity of a nature warm in everything, seems to turn to sympathy
+by the very instinct of grief, and sits at the deathbed of her last
+relative, writing there, in letter after letter, every symptom,
+physical or moral--even to the very words of the raving of a delirium,
+and those, heart-breaking words! I could not write such letters; but I
+know she feels as deeply as any mourner in the world can. And all this
+reminds me of what you once asked me about the inscriptions in
+Lord Brougham's villa at Nice. There are probably as many different
+dialects for the heart as for the tongue, are there not?...
+
+And now you will kindly like to have a word said about myself, and it
+need not be otherwise than a word to give your kindness pleasure. The
+long splendid summer, exhausting as the heat was to me sometimes, did
+me essential good, and left me walking about the room and equal to
+going downstairs (which I achieved four or five times), and even to
+going out in the chair, without suffering afterwards. And, best of
+all, the spitting of blood (I must tell you), which more or less kept
+by me continually, _stopped quite_ some six weeks ago, and I have thus
+more reasonable hopes of being really and essentially better than
+I could have with such a symptom loitering behind accidental
+improvements. Weak enough, and with a sort of pulse which is not
+excellent, I certainly remain; but still, if I escape any decided
+attack this winter--and I am in garrison now--there are expectations
+of further good for next summer, and I may recover some moderate
+degree of health and strength again, and be able to _do_ good instead
+of receiving it only.
+
+I write under the eyes of Wordsworth. Not Wordsworth's living eyes,
+although the actual living poet had the infinite kindness to ask Mr.
+Kenyon twice last summer when he was in London, if he might not
+come to see me. Mr. Kenyon said 'No'--I couldn't have said 'No' to
+Wordsworth, though I had never gone to sleep again afterwards. But
+this Wordsworth who looks on me now is Wordsworth in a picture. Mr.
+Haydon the artist, with the utmost kindness, has sent me the portrait
+he was painting of the great poet--an unfinished portrait--and I am
+to keep it until he wants to finish it. Such a head! such majesty! and
+the poet stands musing upon Helvellyn! And all that--poet, Helvellyn,
+and all--is in my room![69]
+
+Give my kind love to Mr. Martin--_our_ kind love, indeed, to both of
+you--and believe me, my dearest Mrs. Martin,
+
+Your ever affectionate BA.
+
+Is there any hope for us of you before the winter ends? Do consider.
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Monday, October 31, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I have put off from day to day sending you
+these volumes, and in the meantime _I have had a letter from the great
+poet_! Did Arabel tell you that my sonnet on the picture was sent to
+Mr. Haydon, and that Mr. Haydon sent it to Mr. Wordsworth? The result
+was that Mr. Wordsworth wrote to me. King John's barons were never
+better pleased with their Charta than I am with this letter.[70]
+
+But I won't tell you any more about it until you have read the poems
+which I send you. Read first, to put you into good humour, the sonnet
+written on Westminster Bridge, vol. iii. page 78. Then take from the
+sixth volume, page 152, the passage beginning 'Within the soul' down
+to page 153 at 'despair,' and again at page 155 beginning with
+
+  I have seen
+  A curious child, &c.
+
+down to page 157 to the end of the paragraph. If you admit these
+passages to be fine poetry, I wish much that you would justify me
+further by reading, out of the _second_ volume, the two poems called
+'Laodamia' and 'Tintern Abbey' at page 172 and page 161. I will not
+ask you to read any more; but I dare say you will rush on of your own
+account, in which case there is a fine ode upon the 'Power of Sound'
+in the same volume. Wordsworth is a philosophical and Christian poet,
+with depths in his soul to which poor Byron could never reach. Do be
+candid. Nay, I need not say so, because you always are, as I am,
+
+Your ever affectionate
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 69: It was this picture that called forth the sonnet, 'On
+a Portrait of Wordsworth by B.R. Haydon' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 62),
+alluded to in the next letter.]
+
+[Footnote 70: The following is the letter from Wordsworth which gave
+such pleasure to Miss Barrett, and which she treasured among her
+papers for the rest of her life. Two slips of the pen have been
+corrected between brackets.
+
+'Rydal Mount: Oct. 26, '42.
+
+'Dear Miss Barrett,--Through our common friend Mr. Haydon I have
+received a sonnet which his portrait of me suggested. I should have
+thanked you sooner for that effusion of a feeling towards myself, with
+which I am much gratified, but I have been absent from home and much
+occupied.
+
+'The conception of your sonnet is in full accordance with the
+painter's intended work, and the expression vigorous; yet the word
+"ebb," though I do not myself object to it, nor wish to have it
+altered, will I fear prove obscure to nine readers out of ten.
+
+  "A vision free
+  And noble, Haydon, hath thine art released."
+
+Owing to the want of inflections in our language the construction here
+is obscure. Would it not be a little [better] thus? I was going to
+write a small change in the order of the words, but I find it would
+not remove the objection. The verse, as I take it, would be somewhat
+clearer thus, if you would tolerate the redundant syllable:
+
+  "By a vision free
+  And noble, Haydon, is thine art released."
+
+I had the gratification of receiving, a good while ago, two copies of
+a volume of your writing, which I have read with much pleasure, and
+beg that the thanks which I charged a friend to offer may be repeated
+[to] you.
+
+'It grieved me much to hear from Mr. Kenyon that your health is so
+much deranged. But for that cause I should have presumed to call upon
+you when I was in London last spring.
+
+'With every good wish, I remain, dear Miss Barrett, your much obliged
+
+'WM. WORDSWORTH.'
+
+[Postmark: Ambleside, Oct. 28, 1842.]
+
+It may be added that although Miss Barrett altered the passage
+criticised by the great poet, she did not accept his amendment. It now
+runs
+
+  'A noble vision free
+  Our Haydon's hand has flung out from the mist.
+
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+December 4, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--You will think me in a discontented state of
+mind when I knit my brows like a 'sleeve of care' over your kind
+praises. But the truth is, I _won't_ be praised for being liberal in
+Calvinism and love of Byron. _I_ liberal in commending Byron! Take out
+my heart and try it! look at it and compare it with yours; and answer
+and tell me if I do not love and admire Byron more warmly than you
+yourself do. I suspect it indeed. Why, I am always reproached for my
+love to Byron. Why, people say to me, '_You_, who overpraise Byron!'
+Why, when I was a little girl (and, whatever you may think, my
+tendency is not to cast off my old loves!) I used to think seriously
+of dressing up like a boy and running away to be Lord Byron's page.
+And _I_ to be praised now for being 'liberal' in admitting the merit
+of his poetry! _I_!
+
+As for the Calvinism, I don't choose to be liberal there either.
+I don't call myself a Calvinist. I hang suspended between the two
+doctrines, and hide my eyes in God's love from the sights which other
+people _say_ they see. I believe simply that the saved are saved by
+grace, and that they shall hereafter know it fully; and that the lost
+are lost by their choice and free will--by choosing to sin and die;
+and I believe absolutely that the deepest damned of all the lost will
+not dare to whisper to the nearest devil that reproach of Martha: 'If
+the Lord had been near me, I had not died.' But of the means of the
+working of God's grace, and of the time of the formation of the
+Divine counsels, I know nothing, guess nothing, and struggle to
+guess nothing; and my persuasion is that when people talk of what was
+ordained or approved by God before the foundations of the world, their
+tendency is almost always towards a confusion of His eternal nature
+with the human conditions of ours; and to an oblivion of the fact that
+with _Him_ there can be no after nor before.
+
+At any rate, I do not find it good for myself to examine any more the
+brickbats of controversy--there is more than enough to think of in
+truths clearly revealed; more than enough for the exercise of the
+intellect and affections and adorations. I would rather not suffer
+myself to be disturbed, and perhaps irritated, where it is not likely
+that I should ever be informed. And although you tell me that your
+system of investigation is different from some others, answer me with
+your accustomed candour, and admit, my very dear friend, that this
+argument does not depend upon the construction of a Greek sentence or
+the meaning of a Greek word. Let a certain word[71] be 'fore-know' or
+'publicly _favor_,' room for a stormy controversy yet remains. I went
+through the Romans with you partially, and wholly by myself, by your
+desire, and in reference to the controversy, long ago; and I could not
+then, and cannot now, enter into that view of Taylor and Adam Clarke,
+and yourself I believe, as to the _Jews and Gentiles_. Neither could
+I conceive that a particular part of the epistle represents an actual
+dialogue between a Jew and Gentile, since the form of question and
+answer appears to me there simply rhetorical. The Apostle Paul was
+learned in rhetoric; and I think he described so, by a rhetorical and
+vivacious form, that struggle between the flesh and the spirit common
+to all Christians; the spirit being triumphant through God in Christ
+Jesus. These are my impressions. Yours are different. And since we
+should not probably persuade each other, and since we are both of us
+fond of and earnest in what we fancy to be the truth, why should
+we cast away the thousand sympathies we rejoice in, religious and
+otherwise, for the sake of a fruitless contention? 'What!' you would
+say (by the time we had quarrelled half an hour), 'can't you talk
+without being excited?' Half an hour afterwards: 'Pray _do_ lower
+your voice--it goes through my head!' In another ten minutes: 'I could
+scarcely have believed you to be so obstinate.' In another: 'Your
+prejudices are insurmountable, and your reason most womanly--you are
+degenerated to the last degree.' In another--why, _then_ you would
+turn me and Flush out of the room and so finish the controversy
+victoriously.
+
+Was I wrong too, dearest Mr. Boyd, in sending the poems to the
+'Athenaeum'? Well, I meant to be right. I fancied that you would
+rather they were sent; and as your _name_ was not attached, there
+could be no harm in leaving them to the editor's disposal. They
+are not inserted, as I anticipated. The religious character was a
+sufficient objection--their character of _prayer_. Mr. Dilke begged me
+once, while I was writing for him, to write the name of God and Jesus
+Christ as little as I could, because those names did not accord with
+the secular character of the journal!
+
+Ever your affectionate and grateful
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+Tell me how you like the sonnet; but you won't (I prophesy) like it.
+Keep the 'Athenaeum.'
+
+[Footnote 71: The Greek [Greek: progignoskein], used in Romans viii.
+29.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+December 24, 1842.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I am afraid that you will infer from my silence
+that you have affronted me into ill temper by your parody upon my
+sonnet. Yet 'lucus a non lucendo' were a truer derivation. I laughed
+and thanked you over the parody, and put off writing to you until I
+had the headache, which forced me to put it off again....
+
+May God bless you, my dear Mr. Boyd. Mr. Savage Landor once said that
+anybody who could write a parody deserved to be shot; but as he has
+written one himself since saying so, he has probably changed his mind.
+Arabel sends her love.
+
+Ever your affectionate and grateful
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+January 5, 1842 [1843].
+
+My very dear Friend,--My surprise was inexpressible at your utterance
+of the name. What! Ossian superior as a poet to Homer! Mr. Boyd saying
+so! Mr. Boyd treading down the neck of Aeschylus while he praises
+Ossian! The fact appears to me that anomalous thing among believers--a
+miracle without an occasion.
+
+I confess I never, never should have guessed the name; not though
+I had guessed to Doomsday. In the first place I do not believe in
+Ossian, and having partially examined the testimony (for I don't
+pretend to any exact learning about it) I consider him as the poetical
+_lay figure_ upon which Mr. Macpherson dared to cast his personality.
+There is a sort of phraseology, nay, an identity of occasional
+phrases, from the antique--but that these so-called Ossianic poems
+were ever discovered and translated as they stand in their present
+form, I believe in no wise. As Dr. Johnson wrote to Macpherson, so I
+would say, 'Mr. Macpherson, I thought you an impostor, and think so
+still.'
+
+It is many years ago since I looked at Ossian, and I never did much
+delight in him, as that fact proves. Since your letter came I have
+taken him up again, and have just finished 'Carthon.' There are
+beautiful passages in it, the most beautiful beginning, I think,
+'Desolate is the dwelling of Moina,' and the next place being filled
+by that address to the sun you magnify so with praise. But the charm
+of these things is the _only_ charm of all the poems. There is a sound
+of wild vague music in a monotone--nothing is articulate, nothing
+_individual_, nothing various. Take away a few poetical phrases from
+these poems, and they are colourless and bare. Compare them with the
+old burning ballads, with a wild heart beating in each. How cold they
+grow in the comparison! Compare them with Homer's grand breathing
+personalities, with Aeschylus's--nay, but I cannot bear upon my lips
+or finger the charge of the blasphemy of such comparing, even for
+religion's sake....
+
+I had another letter from America a few days since, from an American
+poet of Boston who is establishing a magazine, and asked for
+contributions from my pen. The Americans are as good-natured to me as
+if they took me for the high Radical I am, you know.
+
+You won't be angry with me for my obliquity (as you will consider it)
+about Ossian. You know I always talk sincerely to you, and you have
+not made me afraid of telling you the truth--that is, _my_ truth, the
+truth of my belief and opinions.
+
+I do not defend much in the 'Idiot Boy.' Wordsworth is a great poet,
+but he does not always write equally.
+
+And that reminds me of a distinction you suggest between Ossian and
+Homer. _I_ fashion it in this way: Homer sometimes nods, but Ossian
+_makes his readers nod_.
+
+Ever your affectionate
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+Did I tell you that I had been reading through a manuscript
+translation of the 'Gorgias' of Plato, by Mr. Hyman of Oxford, who is
+a stepson of Mr. Haydon's the artist? It is an excellent translation
+with learned notes, but it is _not elegant_. He means to try the
+public upon it, but, as I have intimated to him, the Christians of the
+present day are not civilised enough for Plato.
+
+Arabel's love.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[About the end of January 1843.]
+
+My very dear Friend,--The image you particularly admire in Ossian, I
+admire with you, although I am not sure that I have not seen it or its
+like somewhere in a classical poet, Greek or Latin. Perhaps Lord
+Byron remembered it when in the 'Siege of Corinth' he said of
+his Francesca's uplifted arm, 'You might have seen the moon shine
+through.' It reminds me also that Maclise the artist, a man of
+poetical imagination, gives such a transparency to the ghost of Banquo
+in his picture of Macbeth's banquet, that we can discern through it
+the lights of the festival. That is good poetry for a painter, is it
+not?
+
+I send you the magazines which I have just received from America, and
+which contain, one of them, 'The Cry of the Human,' and the other,
+four of my sonnets. My correspondent tells me that the 'Cry' is
+considered there one of the most successful of my poems, but you
+probably will not think so. Tell me exactly what you do think. At
+page 343 of 'Graham's Magazine,' _Editor's Table_, is a review of
+me, which, however extravagant in its appreciation, will give your
+kindness pleasure. I confess to a good deal of pleasure myself from
+these American courtesies, expressed not merely in the magazines,
+but in the newspapers; a heap of which has been sent to me by my
+correspondent--the 'New York Tribune,' 'The Union,' 'The Union Flag,'
+&c.--all scattered over with extracts from my books and benignant
+words about their writer. Among the extracts is the whole of the
+review of Wordsworth from the London 'Athenaeum,' an unconscious
+compliment, as they do not guess at the authorship, and one which you
+won't thank them for. Keep the magazines, as I have duplicates.
+
+Dearest Mr. Boyd, since you admit that I am not prejudiced about
+Ossian, I take courage to tell you what I am thinking of.
+
+_I am thinking_ (this is said in a whisper, and in confidence--of two
+kinds), _I am thinking that you don't admire him quite as much as you
+did three weeks ago_.
+
+Ever most affectionately yours,
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+Arabel not being here, I send her love without asking for it.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+January 30, 1843.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Thank you for your letter and for dear Mr.
+Martin's thought of writing one! Ah! _I_ thought he would not write,
+but not for the reason you say; it was something more palpable and
+less romantic! Well, I will not grumble any more about not having my
+letter, since you are coming, and since you seem, my dear Mrs. Martin,
+something in better spirits than your note from Southampton bore
+token of. Madeira is the Promised Land, you know; and you should hope
+hopefully for your invalid from his pilgrimage there. You should hope
+with those who hope, my dearest Mrs. Martin....
+
+Our '_event_' just now is a new purchase of a 'Holy Family,' supposed
+to be by Andrea del Sarto. It has displaced the Glover over the
+chimney-piece in the drawing-room, and dear Stormie and Alfred nearly
+broke their backs in carrying it upstairs for me to see before the
+placing. It is probably a fine picture, and I seem to see my
+way through the dark of my ignorance, to admire the grouping and
+colouring, whatever doubt as to the expression and divinity may occur
+otherwise. Well, you will judge. I won't tell you _how_ I think of it.
+And you won't care if I do. There is also a new very pretty landscape
+piece, and you may imagine the local politics of the arrangement and
+hanging, with their talk and consultation; while _I_, on the storey
+higher, have my arranging to manage of my pretty new books and my
+three hyacinths, and a pot of primroses which dear Mr. Kenyon had the
+good nature to carry himself through the streets to our door. But all
+the flowers forswear me, and die either suddenly or gradually as soon
+as they become aware of the want of fresh air and light in my room.
+Talking of air and light, what exquisite weather this is! What a
+summer in winter! It is the fourth day since I have had the fire wrung
+from me by the heat of temperature, and I sit here _very warm indeed_,
+notwithstanding that bare grate. Nay, yesterday I had the door thrown
+open for above an hour, and was warm still! You need not ask, you see,
+how I am.
+
+Tell me, have you read Mr. Dickens's 'America;' and what is your
+thought of it like? If I were an American, it would make me rabid, and
+certain of the free citizens _are_ furious, I understand, while others
+'speak peace and ensue it,' admire as much of the book as deserves
+any sort of admiration, and attribute the blameable parts to the
+prejudices of the party with whom the writer 'fell in,' and not to
+a want of honesty or brotherhood in his own intentions. I admire Mr.
+Dickens as an imaginative writer, and I love the Americans--I cannot
+possibly admire or love this book. Does Mr. Martin? Do _you_?
+
+Henrietta would send her love to you if I could hear her voice nearer
+than I do actually, as she sings to the guitar downstairs. And her
+love is not the only one to be sent. Give mine to dear Mr. Martin,
+though he can't make up his mind to the bore of writing to me. And
+remember us all, both of you, as we do you.
+
+Dearest Mrs. Martin, your affectionate BA.
+
+
+_To James Martin_
+February 6, 1843.
+
+You make us out, my dear Mr. Martin, to be such perfect parallel lines
+that I should be half afraid of completing the definition by our never
+meeting, if it were not for what you say afterwards, of the coming
+to London, and of promising to come and see Flush. If you should be
+travelling while I am writing, it was only what happened to me when I
+wrote not long ago to dearest Mrs. Martin, and everybody in this house
+cried out against the fatuity of the coincidence. As if I could know
+that she was travelling, when nobody told me, and I wasn't a witch!
+If the same thing happens to-day, believe in the innocence of my
+ignorance. I shall be consoled if it does--for certain reasons. But
+for none in the world can I help thanking you for your letter, which
+gave me so much pleasure from the first sight of the handwriting to
+the thought of the kindness spent upon me in it, that after all I
+cannot thank you as I would.
+
+Yet I won't let you fancy me of such an irrational state of simplicity
+as not to be fully aware that _you_, with your 'nature of the fields
+and forests,' look down disdainfully and with an inward heat of
+glorying, upon _me_ who have all my pastime in books--dead and
+seethed. Perhaps, if it were a little warmer, I might even grant that
+you are right in your pride. As it is, I grumble feebly to myself
+something about the definition of _nature_, and how we in the town
+(which 'God made' just as He made your hedges) have _our_ share
+of nature too; and then I have secret thoughts of the state of the
+thermometer, and wonder how people can breathe out of doors. In the
+meantime, Flush, who is a better philosopher, pushes deep into
+my furs, and goes to sleep. Perhaps I should fear the omen for my
+correspondent.
+
+Oh yes! That picture in 'Boz' is beautiful. For my own part, and by a
+natural womanly contradiction, I have never cared so much in my life
+for flowers as since being shut out from gardens--unless, indeed, in
+the happy days of old when I had a garden of my own, and cut it out
+into a great Hector of Troy, in relievo, with a high heroic box nose
+and shoeties of columbine.[72] But that was long ago. Now I count the
+buds of my primrose with a new kind of interest, and you never
+saw such a primrose! I begin to believe in Ovid, and look for a
+metamorphosis. The leaves are turning white and springing up as high
+as corn. Want of air, and of sun, I suppose. I should be loth to think
+it--want of friendship to _me_!
+
+Do you know that the royal Boz lives close to us, three doors from Mr.
+Kenyon in Harley Place? The new numbers appear to me admirable, and
+full of life and blood--whatever we may say to the thick rouging and
+extravagance of gesture. There is a beauty, a tenderness, too, in the
+organ scene, which is worthy of the gilliflowers. But my admiration
+for 'Boz' fell from its 'sticking place,' I confess, a good furlong,
+when I read Victor Hugo; and my creed is, that, _not_ in his
+tenderness, which is as much his own as his humour, but in his serious
+powerful Jew-trial scenes, he has followed Hugo closely, and never
+scarcely looked away from 'Les Trois Jours d'un Condamne.'
+
+If you should not be on the road, I hope you won't be very long
+before you are, and that dearest Mrs. Martin will put off building her
+greenhouse--you see I believe she _will_ build it--until she gets home
+again.
+
+How kind of you and of her to have poor old Mrs. Barker at Colwall!
+
+Do believe me, both of you, with love from all of _us_,
+
+Very affectionately yours,
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 72: See 'Hector in the Garden' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 37).]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+February 21, 1843.
+
+Thank you, my very dear friend, I am as well as the east wind will
+suffer me to be; and _that_, indeed, is not very well, my heart being
+fuller of all manner of evil than is necessary to its humanity. But
+the wind is changed, and the frost is gone, and it is not quite out of
+my fancy yet that I may see you next summer. _You and summer are not
+out of the question yet_. Therefore, you see, I cannot be very deep
+in tribulation. But you may consider it a bad symptom that I have just
+finished a poem of some five hundred lines in stanzas, called 'The
+Lost Bower,'[73] and about nothing at all in particular.
+
+As to Arabel, she is not an icicle. There are flowers which blow in
+the frost--when we brambles are brown with their inward death--and she
+is of them, dear thing. _You_ are not a bramble, though, and I hope
+that when you talk of 'feeling the cold,' you mean simply to refer
+to your sensation, and not to your health. Remember also, dearest Mr.
+Boyd, what a glorious winter we have had. Take away the last ten days
+and a few besides, and call the whole summer rather than winter. Ought
+we to complain, really? Really, no.
+
+I venture another prophecy upon the shoulders of the ast, though my
+hand shakes so that nobody will read it.
+
+_You can't abide my 'Cry of the Human,' and four sonnets_. They have
+none of them found favor in your eyes.
+
+In or out of favor,
+
+Ever your affectionate E.B.B.
+
+Do you think that next summer you _might, could_, or _would_ walk
+across the park to see me--supposing always that I fail in my
+aspiration to go and see you? I only ask by way of _hypothesis_.
+Consider and revolve it so. We live on the verge of the town rather
+than in it, and our noises are cousins to silence; and you should pass
+into a room where the silence is most absolute. Flush's breathing is
+my loudest sound, and then the watch's tickings, and then my own heart
+when it beats too turbulently. Judge of the quiet and the solitude!
+
+[Footnote 73: _Poetical Works_, iii. 105.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+April 19, 1843.
+
+My very dear Friend,--The earth turns round, to be sure, and we turn
+with it, but I never anticipated the day and the hour for _you_ to
+turn round and be guilty of high treason to our Greeks. I cry '_Ai_!
+_ai_!' as if I were a chorus, and all vainly. For, you see, arguing
+about it will only convince you of my obstinacy, and not a bit of
+Homer's supremacy. Ossian has wrapt you in a cloud, a fog, a true
+Scotch mist. You have caught cold in the critical faculty, perhaps. At
+any rate, I can't see a bit more of your reasonableness than I can see
+of Fingal. _Sic transit_! Homer like the darkened half of the moon
+in eclipse! You have spoilt for me now the finest image in your
+Ossian-Macpherson.
+
+My dearest Mr. Boyd, you will find as few believers in the genuineness
+of these volumes among the most accomplished antiquarians in poetry
+as in the genuineness of Chatterton's Rowley, and of Ireland's
+Shakespeare. The latter impostures boasted of disciples in the first
+instance, but the discipleship perished by degrees, and the place
+thereof, during this present 1843, knows it no more. So has it been
+with the belief in Macpherson's Ossian. Of those who believed in the
+poems at the first sight of them, who kept his creed to the end? And
+speaking so, I speak of Macpherson's contemporaries whom you respect.
+
+I do not consider Walter Scott a great poet, but he was highly
+accomplished in matters of poetical antiquarianism, and is certainly
+citable as an authority on this question.
+
+Try not to be displeased with me. I cannot conceal from you that my
+astonishment is profound and unutterable at your new religion--your
+new faith in this pseud-Ossian--and your desecration, in his service,
+of the old Hellenic altars. And by the way, my own figure reminds me
+to inquire of you whether you are not sometimes struck with a _want_
+in him--a want very grave in poetry, and very strange in antique
+poetry--the want of devotional feeling and conscience of God. Observe,
+that all antique poets rejoice greatly and abundantly in their divine
+mythology; and that if this Ossian be both antique and godless, he is
+an exception, a discrepancy, a monster in the history of letters and
+experience of humanity. As such I leave him.
+
+Oh, how angry you will be with me. But you seemed tolerably prepared
+in your last letter for my being in a passion.... Ever affectionately
+yours,
+
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+Why should I be angry with Flush? _He_ does not believe in Ossian. Oh,
+I assure you he doesn't.
+
+
+The following letter was called forth by a criticism of Mr. Kenyon's
+on Miss Barrett's poem, _The Dead Pan_, which he had seen in
+manuscript; but it also meets some criticisms which others had made
+upon her last volume (see above, p. 65).
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+Wimpole Street: March 25, 1843.
+
+My very dear Cousin,--Your kindness having touched me much, and your
+good opinion, whether literary or otherwise, being of great price to
+me, it is even with tears in my eyes that I begin to write to you upon
+a difference between us. And what am I to say? To admit, of course,
+in the first place, the injuriousness to the 'popularity,' of the
+scriptural tone. But am I to sacrifice a principle to popularity?
+Would you advise me to do so? Should I be more worthy of your kindness
+by doing so? and could you (apart from the kindness) call my refusal
+to do so either perverseness or obstinacy? Even if you could, I hope
+you will try a little to be patient with me, and to forgive, at least,
+what you find it impossible to approve.
+
+My dear cousin, if you had not reminded me of Wordsworth's
+exclamation--
+
+  I would rather be
+  A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn--
+
+and if he had never made it, I do think that its significance would
+have occurred to me, by a sort of instinct, in connection with this
+discussion. Certainly _I_ would rather be a pagan whose religion
+was actual, earnest, continual--for week days, work days, and song
+days--than I would be a _Christian_ who, from whatever motive, shrank
+from hearing or uttering the name of Christ out of a 'church.' I am no
+fanatic, but I like truth and earnestness in all things, and I cannot
+choose but believe that such a Christian shows but ill beside such
+a pagan. What pagan poet ever thought of casting his gods out of
+his poetry? In what pagan poem do they not shine and thunder? And if
+_I_--to approach the point in question--if _I_, writing a poem the
+end of which is the extolment of what I consider to be Christian truth
+over the pagan myths shrank even _there_ from naming the name of my
+God lest it should not meet the sympathies of some readers, or lest it
+should offend the delicacies of other readers, or lest, generally,
+it should be unfit for the purposes of poetry in what more forcible
+manner than by that act (I appeal to Philip against Philip) can I
+controvert my own poem, or secure to myself and my argument a logical
+and unanswerable shame? If Christ's name is improperly spoken in that
+poem, then indeed is Schiller right, and the true gods of poetry are
+to be sighed for mournfully. For be sure that _Burns_ was right, and
+that a poet without devotion is below his own order, and that poetry
+without religion will gradually lose its elevation. And then, my dear
+friend, we do not live among dreams. The Christian religion is true or
+it is not, and if it is true it offers the highest and purest objects
+of contemplation. And the poetical faculty, which expresses the
+highest moods of the mind, passes naturally to the highest objects.
+Who can separate these things? Did Dante? Did Tasso? Did Petrarch? Did
+Calderon? Did Chaucer? Did the poets of our best British days? Did any
+one of these shrink from speaking out Divine names when the occasion
+came? Chaucer, with all his jubilee of spirit and resounding laughter,
+had the name of Jesus Christ and God as frequently to familiarity on
+his lips as a child has its father's name. You say 'our religion
+is not vital--not week-day--enough.' Forgive me, but _that_ is a
+confession of a wrong, not an argument. And if a poet be a poet, it is
+his business to work for the elevation and purification of the public
+mind, rather than for his own popularity! while if he be not a poet,
+no sacrifice of self-respect will make amends for a defective faculty,
+nor _ought_ to make amends.
+
+My conviction is that the _poetry of Christianity_ will one day be
+developed greatly and nobly, and that in the meantime we are wrong,
+poetically as morally, in desiring to restrain it. No, I never felt
+repelled by any Christian phraseology in Cowper--although he is not a
+favorite poet of mine from other causes--nor in Southey, nor even
+in James Montgomery, nor in Wordsworth where he writes
+'ecclesiastically,' nor in Christopher North, nor in Chateaubriand,
+nor in Lamartine.
+
+It is but two days ago since I had a letter--and not from a
+fanatic--to reproach my poetry for not being Christian enough, and
+this is not the first instance, nor the second, of my receiving such
+a reproach. I tell you this to open to you the possibility of another
+side to the question, which makes, you see, a triangle of it!
+
+Can you bear with such a long answer to your letter, and forbear
+calling it a 'preachment'? There may be such a thing as an awkward and
+untimely introduction of religion, I know, and I have possibly
+been occasionally guilty in this way. But for _my principle_ I must
+contend, for it is a poetical principle _and more_, and an entire
+sincerity in respect to it is what I owe to you and to myself. Try to
+forgive me, dear Mr. Kenyon. I would propitiate your indulgence for me
+by a libation of your own eau de Cologne poured out at your feet!
+It is excellent eau de Cologne, and you are very kind to me,
+but, notwithstanding all, there is a foreboding within me that my
+'conventicleisms' will be inodorous in your nostrils.
+
+[_Incomplete_.]
+
+
+_To John Kenyon_
+Tuesday [about March 1843].
+
+My very dear Cousin,--I have read your letter again and again, and
+feel your kindness fully and earnestly. You have advised me about the
+poem,[74] entering into the questions referring to it with the warmth
+rather of the author of it than the critic of it, and this I am
+sensible of as absolutely as anyone can be. At the same time, I have a
+strong perception rather than opinion about the poem, and also, if you
+would not think it too serious a word to use in such a place, I have
+a _conscience_ about it. It was not written in a desultory fragmentary
+way, the last stanzas thrown in, as they might be thrown out, but with
+a _design_, which leans its whole burden on the last stanzas. In fact,
+the last stanzas were in my mind to say, and all the others presented
+the mere avenue to the end of saying them. Therefore I cannot throw
+them out--I cannot yield to the temptation even of pleasing _you_ by
+doing so; I make a compromise with myself, and _do not throw them
+out, and do not print the poem_. Now say nothing against this, my dear
+cousin, because I am obstinate, as you know, as you have good evidence
+for knowing. I _will not_ either alter or print it. Then you have your
+manuscript copy, which you can cut into any shape you please as long
+as you keep it out of print; and seeing that the poem really does
+belong to you, having had its origin in your paraphrase of Schiller's
+stanzas, I see a great deal of poetical justice in the manuscript
+copyright remaining in your hands. For the rest I shall have quite
+enough to print and to be responsible for without it, and I am quite
+satisfied to let it be silent for a few years until either I or you
+(as may be the case even with _me_!) shall have revised our judgments
+in relation to it.
+
+This being settled, you must suffer me to explain (for mere personal
+reasons, and not for the good of the poem) that no mortal priest (of
+St. Peter's or otherwise) is referred to in a particular stanza, but
+the Saviour Himself. Who is 'the High Priest of our profession,' and
+the only 'priest' recognised in the New Testament. In the same way the
+altar candles are altogether spiritual, or they could not be supposed,
+even by the most amazing poetical exaggeration, to 'light the earth
+and skies.' I explain this, only that I may not appear to you to have
+compromised the principle of the poem, by compromising any truth (such
+in my eyes) for the sake of a poetical effect.
+
+And now I will not say any more. I know that you will be inclined
+to cry, 'Print it in any case,' but I will entreat of your kindness,
+which I have so much right to trust in while entreating, _not to say
+one such word. Be kind, and let me follow my own way silently_. I have
+not, indeed, like a spoilt child in a fret, thrown the poem up because
+I would not alter it, though you have done much to spoil me. I act
+advisedly, and have made up my mind as to what is the wisest and best
+thing to do, and personally the pleasantest to myself, after a good
+deal of serious reflection. 'Pan is dead,' and so best, for the
+present at least.
+
+I shall take your advice about the preface in every respect, and
+thanks for the letter and Taylor's memoirs.
+
+Miss Mitford talks of coming to town for a day, and of bringing Flush
+with her, as soon as the weather settles, and to-day looks so like
+it that I have mused this morning on the possibility of breaking
+my prison doors and getting into the next room. Only there is a
+forbidding north wind, they say.
+
+Don't be vexed with me, dear Mr. Kenyon. You know there are
+obstinacies in the world as well as mortalities, and thereto
+appertaining. And then you will perceive through all mine, that it is
+difficult for me to act against your judgment so far as to put my own
+tenacity into print.
+
+Ever gratefully and affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 74: 'The Dead Pan' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 280).]
+
+
+It is to the honour of America that it recognised from the first the
+genius of Miss Barrett; and for a large part of her life some of the
+closest of her personal and literary connections were with Americans.
+The same is true in both respects of Robert Browning. As appears from
+some letters printed farther on in these volumes, at a time when the
+sale of his poems in England was almost infinitesimal, they were known
+and highly prized in the United States. Expressions of Mrs. Browning's
+sympathy with America and of gratitude for the kindly feelings of
+Americans recur frequently in the letters, and it is probable that
+there are still extant in the States many letters written to friends
+and correspondents there. Only three or four such have been made
+available for the present collection; and of these the first follows
+here in its place in the chronological sequence. It was written to Mr.
+Cornelius Mathews, then editor of 'Graham's Magazine,' who had
+invited Miss Barrett to send contributions to his periodical. The warm
+expression in it of sympathy with the poetry of Robert Browning, whom
+she did not yet know personally, is especially interesting to readers
+of this later day, who, like the spectators at a Greek tragedy, watch
+the development of a drama of which the _denouement_ is already known
+to them.
+
+
+_To Cornelius Mathews_
+50 Wimpole Street: April 28, 1843.
+
+My dear Mr. Mathews,--In replying to your kind letter I send some
+more verse for Graham's, praying such demi-semi-gods as preside over
+contributors to magazines that I may not appear over-loquacious to
+my editor. Of course it is not intended to thrust three or four poems
+into one number. My pluralities go to you simply to 'bide your
+time,' and be used one by one as the opportunity is presented. In the
+meanwhile you have received, I hope, a short letter written to explain
+my unwillingness to apply, as you desired me at first, to Wiley and
+Putnam--an unwillingness justified by what you told me afterwards.
+I did not apply, nor have I applied, and I would rather not apply
+at all. Perhaps I shall hear from them presently. The pamphlet on
+International Copyright is welcome at a distance, but it has not come
+near me yet; and for all your kindness in relation to the prospective
+gift of your works I thank you again and earnestly. You are kind to me
+in many ways, and I would willingly know as much of your intellectual
+habits as you teach me of your genial feelings. This 'Pathfinder'
+(what an excellent name for an American journal!) I also owe to you,
+with the summing up of your performances in it, and with a notice
+of Mr. Browning's 'Blot on the Scutcheon,' which would make one
+poet furious (the 'infelix Talfourd') and another a little
+melancholy--namely, Mr. Browning himself. There is truth on both
+sides, but it seems to me hard truth on Browning. I do assure you I
+never saw him in my life--do not know him even by correspondence--and
+yet, whether through fellow-feeling for Eleusinian mysteries, or
+whether through the more generous motive of appreciation of his
+powers, I am very sensitive to the thousand and one stripes with which
+the assembly of critics doth expound its vocation over him, and the
+'Athenaeum,' for instance, made me quite cross and misanthropical last
+week.[75] The truth is--and the world should know the truth--it is
+easier to find a more faultless writer than a poet of equal genius.
+Don't let us fall into the category of the sons of Noah. Noah was once
+drunk, indeed, but once he built the ark. Talking of poets, would
+your 'Graham's Miscellany' care at all to have occasional poetical
+contributions from Mr. Horne? I am in correspondence with him, and
+I think I could manage an arrangement upon the same terms as my
+engagement rests on, if you please and your friends please, that is,
+and without formality, if it should give you any pleasure. He is a
+writer of great power, I think. And this reminds me that you may be
+looking all the while for the 'Athenaeum's' reply to your friend's
+proposition--of which I lost no time in apprising the editor, Mr.
+Dilke, and here are some of his words: 'An American friend who had
+been long in England, and often conversed with me on the subject,
+resolved on his return to establish such a correspondence. In all
+things worth knowing--all reviews of good books' (which 'are published
+first or simultaneously,' says Mr. Dilke, 'in London'), 'he was
+anticipated, and after some months he was driven of necessity to
+geological surveys, centenary celebrations, progress of railroads,
+manufactures, &c., and thus the prospect was abandoned altogether.'
+Having made this experiment, Mr. Dilke is unwilling to risk another.
+Neither must we blame him for the reserve. When the international
+copyright shall at once protect the national _meum_ and _tuum_ in
+literature and give it additional fullness and value, we shall cease
+to say insolently to you that what we want of your books we will get
+without your help, but as it is, the Mr. Dilkes of us have nothing
+much more courteous to do. I wish I could have been of any use to
+your friend--I have done what I could. In regard to critical papers
+of mine, I would willingly give myself up to you, seeing your good
+nature; but it is the truth that I never published any prose papers
+at all except the series on the Greek Christian poets and the other
+series on the English poets in the 'Athenaeum' of last year, and both
+of which you have probably seen. Afterwards I threw up my brief and
+went back to my poetry, in which I feel that I must do whatever I am
+equal to doing at all. That life is short and art long appears to us
+more true than usual when we lie all day long on a sofa and are as
+frightened of the east wind as if it were a tiger. Life is not only
+short, but uncertain, and art is not only long, but absorbing. What
+have I to do with writing '_scandal_' (as Mr. Jones would say) upon
+my neighbour's work, when I have not finished my own? So I threw up my
+brief into Mr. Dilke's hands, and went back to my verses. Whenever I
+print another volume you shall have it, if Messrs. Wiley and Putnam
+will convey it to you. How can I send you, by the way, anything I may
+have to send you? Why will you not, as a nation, embrace our great
+penny post scheme, and hold our envelopes in all acceptation? You do
+not know--cannot guess--what a wonderful liberty our Rowland Hill has
+given to British spirits, and how we '_flash_ a thought' instead of
+'wafting' it from our extreme south to our extreme north, paying 'a
+penny for our thought' and for the electricity included. I recommend
+you our penny postage as the most successful revolution since the
+'glorious three days' of Paris.
+
+And so, you made merry with my scorn of my 'Prometheus.' Believe
+me--believe me absolutely--I did not strike that others might spare,
+but from an earnest remorse. When you know me better, you will know,
+I hope, that I am _true_, whether right or wrong, and you know already
+that I am right in this thing, the only merit of the translation being
+its closeness. Can I be of any use to you, dear Mr. Mathews? When I
+can, make use of me. You surprise and disappoint me in your sketch of
+the Boston poet, for the letter he wrote to me struck me as frank and
+honest. I wonder if he made any use of the verses I sent him; and
+I wonder what I sent him--for I never made a note of it, through
+negligence, and have quite forgotten. Are you acquainted with
+Mrs. Sigourney? She has offended us much by her exposition of Mrs.
+Southey's letter, and I must say not without cause. I rejoice in the
+progress of 'Wakondah,' wishing the influences of mountain and river
+to be great over him and in him. And so I will say the 'God bless you'
+your kindness cares to hear, and remain,
+
+Sincerely and thankfully yours,
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+_(Endorsed in another hand)_
+E.B. Barrett, London, received May 12, 1843,
+4 poems, previously furnished to _Graham's Magazine_, $50.
+
+[Footnote 75: The _Athenaeum_ of April 22 contained a review of
+Browning's 'Dramatic Lyrics,' charging him with taking pleasure in
+being enigmatical, and declaring this to be a sign of weakness, not
+strength. It spoke of many of the pieces composing the volume as being
+rather fragments and sketches than having any right to independent
+existence.]
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+May 1, 1843
+
+My dear Cousin,--Here is my copyright for you, and you will see that I
+have put 'word' instead of 'sound,' as certainly the proper 'word.' Do
+let me thank you once more for all the trouble and interest you have
+taken with me and in me. Observe besides that I have altered the title
+according to your unconscious suggestion, and made it 'The Dead
+Pan,' which is a far better name, I think, than the repetition of the
+_refrain_.
+
+But I spoil my exemplary docility so far, by confessing that I don't
+like 'scornful children' half--no, not half so well as my 'railing
+children,' although, to be sure, you proved to me that the last was
+nigh upon nonsense. You proved it--that is, you almost proved it, for
+don't we say--at least, _mightn't_ we say--'the thunder was silent'?
+'_thunder_' involving the idea of noise, as much as 'railing children'
+do. Consider this--I give it up to you.[76]
+
+I am ashamed to have kept Carlyle so long, but I quite failed in
+trying to read him at my "usual pace--he _won't_ be read quick. After
+all, and full of beauty and truth as that book is, and strongly as it
+takes hold of my sympathies, there is nothing new in it--not even a
+new Carlyleism, which I do not say by way of blaming the book, because
+the author of it might use words like the apostle's: 'To write the
+same things unto you, to me indeed is not grievous, and to you it is
+safe.' The world being blind and deaf and rather stupid, requires a
+reiteration of certain uncongenial truths....
+
+Thank you for the address.
+Ever affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+I observe that the _most questionable rhymes_ are not objected to by
+Mr. Merivale; also--but this letter is too long already.
+
+[Footnote 76: Mr. Kenyon's view evidently prevailed, for stanza 19 now
+has 'scornful children.']
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+May 3, 1843.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--If _you_ promised (which you did), _I_ ought
+to have promised--and therefore we may ask each other's pardon....
+
+How is the dog? and how does dear Mr. Martin find himself in Arcadia?
+Do we all stand in his recollection like a species of fog, or a
+concentrated essence of brick wall? How I wish--and since I said it
+aloud to you I have often wished it over in a whisper--that you would
+put away your romance, or cut it in two, and spend six months of the
+year in London with us! Miss Mitford believes that wishes, if wished
+hard enough, realise themselves, but my experience has taught me a
+less cheerful creed. Only if wishes _do_ realise themselves!
+
+Miss Mitford is at Bath, where she has spent one week and is about to
+spend two, and then goes on her way into Devonshire. She amused me so
+the other day by desiring me to look at the date of Mr. Landor's poems
+in their first edition, because she was sure that it must be fifty
+years since, and she finds him at this 1843, the very Lothario
+of Bath, enchanting the wives, making jealous the husbands, and
+'enjoying,' altogether, the worst of reputations. I suggested that
+if she proved him to be seventy-five, as long as he proved himself
+enchanting, it would do no manner of good in the way of practical
+ethics; and that, besides, for her to travel round the world to
+investigate gentlemen's ages was invidious, and might be alarming as
+to the safe inscrutability of ladies' ages. She is delighted with the
+_scenery of Bath_, which certainly, take it altogether, marble and
+mountains, is the most beautiful town I ever looked upon. Cheltenham,
+I think, is a mere commonplace to it, although the avenues are
+beautiful, to be sure....
+
+Mrs. Southey complains that she has lost half her income by her
+marriage, and her friend Mr. Landor is anxious to persuade, by the
+means of intermediate friends, Sir Robert Peel to grant her a pension.
+She is said to be in London now, and has at least left Keswick for
+ever. It is not likely that Wordsworth should come here this year,
+which I am sorry for now, although I should certainly be sorry if he
+did come. A happy state of contradiction, not confined either to that
+particular movement or no-movement, inasmuch as I was gratified by his
+sending me the poem you saw, and yet read it with such extreme pain as
+to incapacitate me from judging of it. Such stuff we are made of!
+
+This is a long letter--and you are tired, I feel by instinct!
+
+May God bless you, my dearest Mrs. Martin. Give my love to Mr. Martin,
+and think of me as
+
+Your very affectionate,
+
+BA.
+
+Henry and Daisy have been to see the _lying in state_, as lying stark
+and dead is called whimsically, of the Duke of Sussex. It was a fine
+sight, they say.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+May 9, 1843 [postmark].
+
+My very dear Friend,--I thank you much for the copies of your
+'Anti-Puseyistic Pugilism.' The papers reached my hands quite safely
+and so missed setting the world on fire; and I shall be as wary of
+them evermore (be sure) as if they were gunpowder. Pray send them
+to Mary Hunter. Why not? Why should you think that I was likely to
+'object' to your doing so? She will laugh. _I_ laughed, albeit in no
+smiling mood; for I have been transmigrating from one room to another,
+and your packet found me half tired and half excited, and _whole_
+grave. But I could not choose but laugh at your Oxford charge; and
+when I had counted your great guns and javelin points and other
+military appurtenances of the Punic war, I said to myself--or to
+Flush, 'Well, Mr. Boyd will soon be back again with the dissenters.'
+Upon which I think Flush said, 'That's a comfort.'
+
+Mary's direction is, 111 London Road, Brighton. You ought to send
+the verses to her yourself, if you mean to please her entirely: and
+I cannot agree with you that there is the slightest danger in sending
+them by the post. Letters are never opened, unless you tempt the flesh
+by putting sovereigns, or shillings, or other metallic substances
+inside the envelope; and if the devil entered into me causing me
+to write a libel against the Queen, I would send it by the post
+fearlessly from John o' Groat's to Land's End inclusive.
+
+One of your best puns, if not the best,
+
+  Hatching succession apostolical,
+  With other falsehoods diabolical,
+
+lies in an octosyllabic couplet; and what business has _that_ in your
+heroic libel?
+
+The 'pearl' of maidens sends her love to you.
+
+Your very affectionate
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+May 14, 1843.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I hear with wonder from Arabel of your
+repudiation of my word 'octosyllabic' for the two lines in your
+controversial poem. Certainly, if you count the syllables on your
+fingers, there are ten syllables in each line: of _that_ I am
+perfectly aware; but the lines are none the less belonging to the
+species of versification called octosyllabic. Do you not observe, my
+dearest Mr. Boyd, that the final accent and rhyme fall on the eighth
+syllable instead of the tenth, and that _that_ single circumstance
+determines the class of verse--that they are in fact octosyllabic
+verses with triple rhymes?
+
+  Hatching succession apostolical,
+  With other falsehoods diabolical.
+
+Pope has double rhymes in his heroic verses, but how does he manage
+them? Why, he admits eleven syllables, throwing the final accent and
+rhyme on the tenth, thus:
+
+  Worth makes the man, and want of it the f_e_llow,
+  The rest is nought but leather and prun_e_lla.
+
+Again, if there is a double rhyme to an octosyllabic verse, there
+are always _nine_ syllables in that verse, the final accent and rhyme
+falling on the eighth syllable, thus:
+
+  Compound for sins that we're incl_i_ned to,
+  By damning those we have no m_i_nd to.
+
+('Hudibras.')
+
+Again, if there is a triple rhyme to an octosyllabic verse (precisely
+the present case) there must always be ten syllables in that verse,
+the final accent and rhyme falling on the eighth syllable; thus from
+'Hudibras' again:
+
+  Then in their robes the penit_e_ntials
+  Are straight presented with cred_e_ntials.
+  Remember how in arms and p_o_litics,
+  We still have worsted all your h_o_ly tricks.
+
+You will admit that these last couplets are precisely of the same
+structure as yours, and certainly they are octosyllabics, and made use
+of by Butler in an octosyllabic poem, whereas yours, to be rendered of
+the heroic structure, should run thus:
+
+  Hatching at ease succession apostolical,
+  With many other falsehoods diabolical.
+
+I have written a good deal about an oversight on your part of little
+consequence; but as you charged me with a mistake made in cold blood
+and under corrupt influences from Lake-mists, why I was determined to
+make the matter clear to you. And as to the _influences_, if I were
+guilty of this mistake, or of a thousand mistakes, Wordsworth would
+not be guilty _in_ me. I think of him now, exactly as I thought of him
+during the first years of my friendship for you, only with _an equal_
+admiration. He was a great poet to me always, and always, while I have
+a soul for poetry, will be so; yet I said, and say in an under-voice,
+but steadfastly, that Coleridge was the grander genius. There is
+scarcely anything newer in my estimation of Wordsworth than in the
+colour of my eyes!
+
+Perhaps I was wrong in saying '_a pun._' But I thought I apprehended a
+double sense in your application of the term 'Apostolical succession'
+to Oxford's 'breeding' and 'hatching,' words which imply succession in
+a way unecclesiastical.
+
+After all which quarrelling, I am delighted to have to talk of your
+coming nearer to me--within reach--almost within my reach. Now if I am
+able to go in a carriage at all this summer, it will be hard but that
+I manage to get across the park and serenade you in Greek under your
+window.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+May 18, 1843.
+
+My very dear Friend,--Yes, you have surprised me!
+
+I always have thought of you, and I always think and say, that you are
+truthful and candid in a supreme degree, and therefore it is not your
+candour about Wordsworth which surprises me.
+
+He had the kindness to send me the poem upon Grace Darling when it
+first appeared; and with a curious mixture of feelings (for I was much
+gratified by his attention in sending it) I yet read it with _so_ much
+pain from the nature of the subject, that my judgment was scarcely
+free to consider the poetry--I could scarcely determine to myself what
+I _thought_ of it from feeling too much.
+
+_But_ I do confess to you, my dear friend, that I suspect--through the
+mist of my sensations--the poem in question to be very inferior to his
+former poems; I confess that the impression left on my mind is, of
+its decided inferiority, and I have heard that the poet's friends and
+critics (all except _one_) are mourning over its appearance; sighing
+inwardly, 'Wordsworth is old.'
+
+One thing is clear to me, however, and over _that_ I rejoice and
+triumph greatly. If you can esteem this poem of 'Grace Darling,' you
+must be susceptible to the grandeur and beauty of the poems which
+preceded it; and the cause of your past reluctance to recognise the
+poet's power must be, as I have always suspected, from your having
+given a very partial attention and consideration to his poetry. You
+were partial in your attention _I_, perhaps, was injudicious in my
+extracts; but with your truth and his genius, I cannot doubt but that
+the time will come for your mutual amity. Oh that I could stand as a
+herald of peace, with my wool-twisted fillet! I do not understand the
+Greek metres as well as you do, but I understand Wordsworth's genius
+better, and do you forgive that it should console me.
+
+I will ask about his collegian extraction. Such a question never
+occurred to me. Apollo taught him under the laurels, while all the
+Muses looked through the boughs.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT,
+
+Oh, yes, it delights me that you should be nearer. Of course you know
+that Wordsworth is Laureate.[77]
+
+[Footnote 77: Wordsworth was nominated Poet Laureate after the death
+of Southey in March 1843.]
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+May 19, 1843,
+
+Thank you, my dear cousin, for all your kindness to me. There is
+ivy enough for a thyrsus, and I almost feel ready to enact a sort of
+Bacchus triumphalis 'for jollitie,' as I see it already planted, and
+looking in at me through the window. I never thought to see such a
+sight as _that_ in my London room, and am overwhelmed with my own
+glory.
+
+And then Mr. Browning's note! Unless you say 'nay' to me, I shall keep
+this note, which has pleased me so much, yet not more than it ought.
+_Now_, I forgive Mr. Merivale for his hard thoughts of my easy rhymes.
+But all this pleasure, my dear Mr. Kenyon, I owe to _you_, and shall
+remember that I do.
+
+Ever affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+May 26, 1843.
+
+... I thank you for your part in the gaining of my bed, dearest Mrs.
+Martin, most earnestly; and am quite ready to believe that it
+was gained by _wishdom_, which believing is wisdom! No, you would
+certainly never recognise my prison if you were to see it. The bed,
+like a sofa and no Bed; the large table placed out in the room,
+towards the wardrobe end of it; the sofa rolled where a sofa should be
+rolled--opposite the arm-chair: the drawers crowned with a coronal
+of shelves fashioned by Sette and Co. (of papered deal and crimson
+merino) to carry my books; the washing table opposite turned into a
+cabinet with another coronal of shelves; and Chaucer's and Homer's
+busts in guard over these two departments of English and Greek
+poetry; three more busts consecrating the wardrobe which there was no
+annihilating; and the window--oh, I must take a new paragraph for the
+window, I am out of breath.
+
+In the window is fixed a deep box full of soil, where are _springing
+up_ my scarlet runners, nasturtiums, and convolvuluses, although they
+were disturbed a few days ago by the revolutionary insertion among
+them of a great ivy root with trailing branches so long and wide that
+the top tendrils are fastened to Henrietta's window of the higher
+storey, while the lower ones cover all my panes. It is Mr. Kenyon's
+gift. He makes the like to flourish out of mere flowerpots, and
+embower his balconies and windows, and why shouldn't this flourish
+with me? But certainly--there is no shutting my eyes to the fact that
+it does droop a little. Papa prophesies hard things against it every
+morning, 'Why, Ba, it looks worse and worse,' and everybody preaches
+despondency. I, however, persist in being sanguine, looking out for
+new shoots, and making a sure pleasure in the meanwhile by listening
+to the sound of the leaves against the pane, as the wind lifts them
+and lets them fall. Well, what do you think of my ivy? Ask Mr. Martin,
+if he isn't jealous already.
+
+Have you read 'The Neighbours,' Mary Howitt's translation of Frederica
+Bremer's Swedish? Yes, perhaps. Have you read 'The Home,'[1] fresh
+from the same springs? _Do_, if you have not. It has not only charmed
+me, but made me happier and better: it is fuller of Christianity than
+the most orthodox controversy in Christendom; and represents to
+my perception or imagination a perfect and beautiful embodiment of
+Christian outward life from the inward, purely and tenderly. At the
+same time, I should tell you that Sette says, 'I might have liked it
+ten years ago, but it is too young and silly to give me any pleasure
+now.' For _me_, however, it is not too young, and perhaps it won't be
+for you and Mr. Martin. As to Sette, he is among the patriarchs, to
+say nothing of the lawyers--and there we leave him....
+
+Ever your affectionate
+BA.
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+50 Wimpole Street:
+Wednesday, or is it Thursday? [summer 1843].
+
+My dear Cousin,--... I send you my friend Mr. Horne's new epic,[78]
+and beg you, if you have an opportunity, to drop it at Mr. Eagles'
+feet, so that he may pick it up and look at it. I have not gone
+through it (I have another copy), but it appears to me to be full of
+fine things. As to the author's fantasy of selling it for a farthing,
+I do not enter into the secret of it--unless, indeed, he should
+intend a sarcasm on the age's generous patronage of poetry, which is
+possible.
+
+[Footnote 78: _Orion_, the early editions of which were sold at a
+farthing, in accordance with a fancy of the author. Miss Barrett
+reviewed it in the _Athenaum_ (July 1843).]
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+June 30, 1843.
+
+Thank you, my dear Mr. Kenyon, for the Camden Society books, and also
+for these which I return; and also for the hope of seeing you, which
+I kept through yesterday. I honor Mrs. Coleridge for the readiness of
+reasoning and integrity in reasoning, for the learning, energy, and
+impartiality which she has brought to her purpose, and I agree with
+her in many of her objects; and disagree, by opposing her opponents
+with a fuller front than she is always inclined to do. In truth, I
+can never see anything in these sacramental ordinances except a
+prospective sign in one (Baptism), and a memorial sign in the
+other, the Lord's Supper, and could not recognise either under any
+modification as a peculiar instrument of grace, mystery, or the like.
+The tendencies we have towards making mysteries of God's simplicities
+are as marked and sure as our missing the actual mystery upon
+occasion. God's love is the true mystery, and the sacraments are only
+too simple for us to understand. So you see I have read the book in
+spite of prophecies. After all I should like to cut it in two--it
+would be better for being shorter--and it might be clearer also. There
+is, in fact, some dullness and perplexity--a few passages which are,
+to my impression, contradictory of the general purpose--something
+which is not generous, about nonconformity--and what I cannot help
+considering a superfluous tenderness for Puseyism. Moreover she is
+certainly wrong in imagining that the ante-Nicene fathers did not as
+a body teach regeneration by baptism--even Gregory Nazianzen, the most
+spiritual of many, did, and in the fourth century. But, after all,
+as a work of theological controversy it is very un-bitter and
+well-poised, gentle, and modest, and as the work of a woman _you_ must
+admire it and _we_ be proud of it--_that_ remains certain at last.
+
+Poor Mr. Haydon! I am so sorry for his reverse in the cartoons.[79] It
+is a thunderbolt to him. I wonder, in the pauses of my regret, whether
+Mr. Selous is _your_ friend--whether 'Boadicea visiting the Druids,'
+suggested by you, I think, as a subject, is this victorious 'Boadicea'
+down for a hundred pound prize? You will tell me when you come.
+
+I have just heard an uncertain rumour of the arrival of your brother.
+If it is not all air, I congratulate you heartily upon a happiness
+only not past my appreciation.
+
+Ever affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+I send the copy of 'Orion' for _yourself_, which you asked for. It is
+in the fourth edition.
+
+[Footnote 79: This refers to the competition for the cartoons to be
+painted in the Houses of Parliament, in which Haydon was unsuccessful.
+The disappointment was the greater, inasmuch as the scheme for
+decorating the building with historical pictures was mainly due to his
+initiative.]
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+July 8, 1843.
+
+Thank you, my dearest Mrs. Martin, for your kind sign of interest in
+the questioning note, although I will not praise the _stenography_ of
+it. I shall be as brief to-day as you, not quite out of revenge,
+but because I have been writing to George and am the less prone to
+activities from having caught cold in an inscrutable manner, and being
+stiff and sore from head to foot and inclined to be a little feverish
+and irritable of nerves. No, it is not of the slightest consequence;
+I tell you the truth. But I would have written to you the day before
+yesterday if it had not been for this something between cramp and
+rheumatism, which was rather unbearable at first, but yesterday was
+better, and is to-day better than better, and to-morrow will leave me
+quite well, if I may prophesy. I only mention it lest you should have
+upbraided me for not answering your note in a moment, as it deserved
+to be answered. So don't put any nonsense into Georgie's head--forgive
+me for beseeching you! I have been very well--downstairs seven or
+eight times; lying on the floor in Papa's room; meditating _the
+chair_, which would have amounted to more than a meditation except
+for this little contrariety. In a day or two more, if this cool warmth
+perseveres in serving me, and no Ariel refills me 'with aches,' I
+shall fulfil your kind wishes perhaps and be out--and so, no more
+about me!...
+
+Oh, I do believe you think me a Cockney--a metropolitan barbarian! But
+I persist in seeing no merit and no superior innocence in being shut
+up even in precincts of rose-trees, away from those great sources
+of human sympathy and occasions of mental elevation and instruction
+without which many natures grow narrow, many others gloomy, and
+perhaps, if the truth were known, very few prosper entirely, lit is
+not that I, who have always lived a good deal in solitude and live
+in it still more now, and love the country even painfully in my
+recollections of it, would decry either one or the other--solitude
+is most effective in a contrast, and if you do not break the bark
+you cannot bud the tree, and, in short (not to be _in long_), I could
+write a dissertation, which I will spare you, 'about it and about it.'
+...
+
+Tell George to lend you--nay, I think I will be generous and let him
+give you, although the author gave me the book--the copy of the new
+epic, 'Orion,' which he has with him. You have probably observed the
+advertisement, and are properly instructed that Mr. Horne the poet,
+who has sold three editions already at a farthing a copy, and is
+selling a fourth at a shilling, and is about to sell a fifth at half
+a crown (on the precise principle of the aerial machine--launching
+himself into popularity by a first impulse on the people), is my
+unknown friend, with whom I have corresponded these four years without
+having seen his face. Do you remember the beech leaves sent to me from
+Epping Forest? Yes, you must. Well, the sender is the poet, and the
+poem I think a very noble one, and I want you to think so too. So
+hereby I empower you to take it away from George and keep it for my
+sake--if you will!
+
+Dear Mr. Martin was so kind as to come and see me as you commanded,
+and I must tell you that I thought him looking so better than well
+that I was more than commonly glad to see him. Give my love to him,
+and join me in as much metropolitan missionary zeal as will bring you
+both to London for six months of the year. Oh, I wish you would come!
+Not that it is necessary for _you_, but that it will be _so_ good for
+_us_.
+
+My ivy is growing, and I have _green blinds_, against which there is
+an outcry. They say that I do it out of envy, and for the equalisation
+of complexions.
+
+Ever your affectionate,
+BA.
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+50 Wimpole Street: August 1843.
+
+Dear Mr. Westwood,--I thank you very much for the kindness of your
+questioning, and am able to answer that notwithstanding the, as it
+seems to you, fatal significance of a woman's silence, I am alive
+enough to be sincerely grateful for any degree of interest spent upon
+me. As to Flush, he should thank you too, but at the present moment he
+is quite absorbed in finding a cool place in this room to lie down in,
+having sacrificed his usual favorite place at my feet, his head upon
+them, oppressed by the torrid necessity of a thermometer above 70. To
+Flopsy's acquaintance he would aspire gladly, only hoping that Flopsy
+does not 'delight to bark and bite,' like dogs in general, because if
+he does Flush would as soon be acquainted with a _cat_, he says, for
+he does not pretend to be a hero. Poor Flush! 'the bright summer days
+on which I am ever likely to take him out for a ramble over hill and
+meadow' are never likely to shine! But he follows, or rather leaps
+into my wheeled chair, and forswears merrier company even now, to be
+near me. I am a good deal better, it is right to say, and look forward
+to a possible prospect of being better still, though I may be shut out
+from climbing the Brocken otherwise than in a vision.
+
+You will see by the length of the 'Legend'[80] which I send to you (in
+its only printed form) _why_ I do not send it to you in manuscript.
+Keep the book as long as you please. My new volume is not yet in the
+press, but I am writing more and more in a view to it, pleased with
+the thought that some kind hands are already stretched out in welcome
+and acceptance of what it may become. Not as idle as I appear, I have
+also been writing some fugitive verses for American magazines. This is
+my confession. Forgive its tediousness, and believe me thankfully and
+very sincerely yours,
+
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 80: _The Lay of the Brown Rosary_.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+50 Wimpole Street: September 2, 1843.
+
+Dear Mr. Westwood,--Your letter comes to remind me how much I ought to
+be ashamed of myself.... I received the book in all safety, and read
+your kind words about my 'Rosary' with more grateful satisfaction than
+appears from the evidence. It is great pleasure to me to have written
+for such readers, and it is great hope to me to be able to write for
+them. The transcription of the 'Rosary' is a compliment which I never
+anticipated, or you should have had the manuscript copy you asked for,
+although I have not a perfect one in my hands. The poem is full of
+faults, as, indeed, all my poems appear to myself to be when I look
+back upon them instead of looking down. I hope to be worthier in
+poetry some day of the generous appreciation which you and your
+friends have paid me in advance.
+
+Tennyson is a great poet, I think, and Browning, the author of
+'Paracelsus,' has to my mind very noble capabilities. Do you know Mr.
+Horne's 'Orion,' the poem published for a farthing, to the wonder of
+booksellers and bookbuyers who could not understand 'the speculation
+in its eyes?' There are very fine things in this poem, and altogether
+I recommend it to your attention. But what is 'wanting' in Tennyson?
+He can think, he can feel, and his language is highly expressive,
+characteristic, and harmonious. I am very fond of Tennyson. He makes
+me thrill sometimes to the end of my fingers, as only a true great
+poet can.
+
+You praise me kindly, and if, indeed, the considerations you speak of
+could be true of me, I am not one who could lament having 'learnt in
+suffering what I taught in song.' In any case, working for the future
+and counting gladly on those who are likely to consider any work of
+mine acceptable to themselves, I shall be very sure not to forget my
+friends at Enfield.
+
+Dear Mr. Westwood, I remain sincerely yours,
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+September 4, 1843. Finished September 5.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin, ... I have had a great gratification within
+this week or two in receiving a letter--nay, two letters--from Miss
+Martineau, one of the last strangers in the world from whom I had any
+right to expect a kindness. Yet most kind, most touching in kindness,
+were both of these letters, so much so that I was not far from crying
+for pleasure as I read them. She is very hopelessly ill, you are
+probably aware, at Tynemouth in Northumberland, suffering agonies from
+internal cancer, and conquering occasional repose by the strength of
+opium, but 'almost forgetting' (to use her own words) 'to wish for
+health, in the intense enjoyment of pleasures independent of the
+body.' She sent me a little work of hers called 'Traditions of
+Palestine.' Her friends had hoped by the stationary character of some
+symptoms that the disease was suspended, but lately it is said to be
+gaining ground, and the serenity and elevation of her mind are more
+and more triumphantly evident as the bodily pangs thicken....
+
+And now I am going to tell you what will surprise you, if you do not
+know it already. Stormie and Georgie are passing George's vacation on
+the Rhine. You are certainly surprised if you did not know it. Papa
+signed and sealed them away on the ground of its being good and
+refreshing for both of them, and I was even mixed up a little with the
+diplomacy of it, until I found _they were going_, and then it was a
+hard, terrible struggle with me to be calm and see them go. But _that_
+was childish, and when I had heard from them at Ostend I grew more
+satisfied again, and attained to think less of the fatal influences of
+_my star_. They went away in great spirits, Stormie 'quite elated,' to
+use his own words, and then at the end of the six weeks they _must_ be
+at home at Sessions; and no possible way of passing the interim could
+be pleasanter and better and more exhilarating for themselves. The
+plan was to go from Ostend by railroad to Brussels and Cologne, then
+to pass down the Rhine to Switzerland, spend a few days at Geneva, and
+a week in Paris as they return. The only fear is that Stormie won't go
+to Paris. We have too many friends there--a strange obstacle.
+
+Dearest Mrs. Martin, I am doing something more than writing you a
+letter, I think.
+
+May God bless you all with the most enduring consolations! Give my
+love to Mr. Martin, and believe also, both of you, in my sympathy. I
+am glad that your poor Fanny should be so supported. May God bless her
+and all of you!
+
+Dearest Mrs. Martin's affectionate
+BA.
+
+I am very well for _me_, and was out in the chair yesterday.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+September 8, 1843.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I ask you humbly not to fancy me in a passion
+whenever I happen to be silent. For a woman to be silent is ominous, I
+know, but it need not be significant of anything quite so terrible as
+ill-humour. And yet it always happens so; if I do not write I am sure
+to be cross in your opinion. You set me down directly as 'hurt,' which
+means _irritable_; or 'offended,' which means _sulky_; your ideal of
+me having, in fact, 'its finger in its eye' all day long.
+
+I, on the contrary, humbled as I was by your hard criticism of my soft
+rhymes about Flush,[81] waited for Arabel to carry a message for me,
+begging to know whether you would care at all to see my 'Cry of the
+Children'[82] before I sent it to you. But Arabel went without telling
+me that she was going: twice she went to St. John's Wood and made no
+sign; and now I find myself thrown on my own resources. Will you see
+the 'Cry of the Human'[83] or not? It will not please you, probably.
+It wants melody. The versification is eccentric to the ear, and the
+subject (the factory miseries) is scarcely an agreeable one to the
+fancy. Perhaps altogether you had better not see it, because I know
+you think me to be deteriorating, and I don't want you to have further
+hypothetical evidence of so false an opinion. Humbled as I am, I say
+'so false an opinion.' Frankly, if not humbly, I believe myself to
+have gained power since the time of the publication of the 'Seraphim,'
+and lost nothing except happiness. Frankly, if not humbly!
+
+With regard to the 'House of Clouds'[84] I disagree both with you and
+Miss Mitford, thinking it, comparatively with my other poems, neither
+so bad nor so good as you two account it. It has certainly been
+singled out for great praise both at home and abroad, and only
+the other day Mr. Horne wrote to me to reproach me for not having
+mentioned it to him, because he came upon it accidentally and
+considered it 'one of my best productions.' Mr. Kenyon holds the same
+opinion. As for Flush's verses, they are what I call cobweb verses,
+thin and light enough; and Arabel was mistaken in telling you that
+Miss Mitford gave the prize to them. Her words were, 'They are as
+tender and true as anything you ever wrote, but nothing is equal to
+the "House of Clouds."' Those were her words, or to that effect, and I
+refer to them to you, not for the sake of Flush's verses, which really
+do not appear even to myself, their writer, worth a defence, but for
+the sake of _your_ judgment of _her_ accuracy in judging.
+
+Lately I have received two letters from the profoundest woman thinker
+in England, Miss Martineau--letters which touched me deeply while they
+gave me pleasure I did not expect.
+
+My poor Flush has fallen into tribulation. Think of Catiline, the
+great savage Cuba bloodhound belonging to this house, attempting last
+night to worry him just as the first Catiline did Cicero. Flush was
+rescued, but not before he had been wounded severely: and this morning
+he is on three legs and in great depression of spirits. My poor, poor
+Flushie! He lies on my sofa and looks up to me with most pathetic
+eyes.
+
+Where is Annie? If I send my love to her, will it ever be found again?
+
+May God bless you both!
+Dearest Mr. Boyd's affectionate and grateful
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 81: 'To Flush, my dog' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 19).]
+
+[Footnote 82: Published in _Blackwood's Magazine_ for August 1843, and
+called forth by Mr. Horne's report as assistant commissioner on the
+employment of children in mines and manufactories.]
+
+[Footnote 83: Evidently a slip of the pen for 'Children.']
+
+[Footnote 84: _Poetical Works_, iii. 186. Mr. Boyd's opinion of it may
+be learnt from Miss Barrett's letter to Horne, dated August 31, 1843
+(_Letters to R.H. Horne_, i. 84): 'Mr. Boyd told me that he had read
+my papers on the Greek Fathers with the more satisfaction because he
+had inferred from my "House of Clouds" that illness had _impaired my
+faculties_.']
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Monday, September 19, 1843.
+
+My own dear Friend,--I should have written instantly to explain myself
+out of appearances which did me injustice, only I have been in such
+distress as to have no courage for writing. Flush was stolen away,
+and for three days I could neither sleep nor eat, nor do anything much
+more rational than cry. _Confiteor tibi_, oh reverend father. And if
+you call me very silly, I am so used to the reproach throughout the
+week as to be hardened to the point of vanity. The worst of it is,
+now, that there will be no need of more 'Houses of Clouds' to prove to
+you the deterioration of my faculties. Q.E.D.
+
+In my own defence, I really believe that my distress arose somewhat
+less from the mere separation from dear little Flushie than from the
+consideration of how he was breaking his heart, cast upon the cruel
+world. Formerly, when he has been prevented from sleeping on my bed he
+has passed the night in moaning piteously, and often he has refused to
+eat from a strange hand. And then he loves me, heart to heart; there
+was no exaggeration in my verses about him, if there was no poetry.
+And when I heard that he cried in the street and then vanished, there
+was little wonder that I, on my part, should cry in the house.
+
+With great difficulty we hunted the dog-banditti into their caves of
+the city, and bribed them into giving back their victim. Money was the
+least thing to think of in such case; I would have given a thousand
+pounds if I had had them in my hand. The audacity of the wretched men
+was marvellous. They said that they had been 'about stealing Flush
+these two years,' and warned us plainly to take care of him for the
+future.
+
+The joy of the meeting between Flush and me would be a good subject
+for a Greek ode--I recommend it to you. It might take rank next to the
+epical parting of Hector and Andromache. He dashed up the stairs into
+my room and into my arms, where I hugged him and kissed him, black as
+he was--black as if imbued in a distillation of St. Giles's. Ah, I
+can break jests about it _now_, you see. Well, to go back to the
+explanations I promised to give you, I must tell you that Arabel
+_perfectly forgot_ to say a word to me about 'Blackwood' and your wish
+that I should send the magazine. It was only after I heard that you
+had procured it yourself, and after I mentioned this to her, that she
+remembered her omission all at once. Therefore I am quite vexed and
+disappointed, I beg you to believe--_I_, who have pleasure in giving
+you any printed verses of mine that you care to have. Never mind! I
+may print another volume before long, and lay it at your feet. In
+the meantime, you _endure_ my 'Cry of the Children' better than I had
+anticipated--just because I never anticipated your being able to read
+it to the end, and was over-delicate of placing it in your hands
+on that very account. My dearest Mr. Boyd, you are right in your
+complaint against the rhythm. The first stanza came into my head in a
+hurricane, and I was obliged to make the other stanzas like it--_that_
+is the whole mystery of the iniquity. If you look Mr. Lucas from head
+to foot, you will never find such a rhythm on his person. The whole
+crime of the versification belongs to _me_. So blame _me_, and by no
+means another poet, and I will humbly confess that I deserve to be
+blamed in some _measure_. There is a roughness, my own ear being
+witness, and I give up the body of my criminal to the rod of your
+castigation, kissing the last as if it were Flush.
+
+A report runs in London that Mr. Boyd says of Elizabeth Barrett: 'She
+is a person of the most perverted judgment in England.' Now, if this
+be true, I shall not mend my evil position in your opinion, my very
+dear friend, by confessing that I differ with you, the more the longer
+I live, on the ground of what you call 'jumping lines.' I am speaking
+not of particular cases, but of the principle, the general principle,
+of these cases, and the tenacity of my judgment does not arise from
+the teaching of 'Mr. Lucas,' but from the deeper study of the old
+master-poets--English poets--those of the Elizabeth and James ages,
+before the corruption of French rhythms stole in with Waller and
+Denham, and was acclimated into a national inodorousness by Dryden
+and Pope. We differ so much upon this subject that we must proceed
+by agreeing to differ, and end, perhaps, by finding it agreeable to
+differ; there can be no possible use in an argument. Only you must be
+upright in justice, and find Wordsworth innocent of misleading me. So
+far from having read him more within these three years, I have read
+him _less_, and have taken no new review, I do assure you, of his
+position and character as a poet, and these facts are testified unto
+by the other fact that my poetry, neither in its best features nor its
+worst, is adjusted after the fashion of his school.
+
+But I am writing too much; you will have no patience with me. 'The
+Excursion' is accused of being lengthy, and so you will tell me that I
+convict myself of plagiarism, _currente calamo_.
+
+I have just finished a poem of some eight hundred lines, called
+'The Vision of Poets,'[85] philosophical, allegorical--anything but
+popular. It is in stanzas, every one an octosyllabic triplet, which
+you will think odd, and I have not _sanguinity_ enough to defend.
+
+May God bless you, my dearest Mr. Boyd! Yes, I heard--I was glad to
+hear--of your having resumed that which used to be so great a pleasure
+to you--Miss Marcus's society. I remain,
+
+Affectionately and gratefully yours,
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+My love to dear Annie.
+
+[Footnote 85: _Poetical Works_, i. 223.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+October 1843.
+
+You are probably right in respect to Tennyson, for whom, with all
+my admiration of him, I would willingly secure more exaltation and a
+broader clasping of truth. Still, it is not possible to have so
+much beauty without a certain portion of truth, the position of the
+Utilitarians being true in the inverse. But I think as I did of 'uses'
+and 'responsibilities,' and do hold that the poet is a preacher and
+must look to his doctrine.
+
+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,[86] 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.
+
+[Footnote 86: The lines 'To J.S.,' which begin:
+
+  'The wind that beats the mountain blows
+  More softly round the open wold.'
+
+
+
+_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....[87]
+
+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.
+
+[Footnote 87: About the same date she writes to Home (_Letters to R.H.
+Horne_, i. 86): 'I am very glad to hear that nothing really very bad
+is the matter with Tennyson. If anything were to happen to Tennyson,
+the world should go into mourning.']
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+50 Wimpole Street: December 31, 1843.
+
+If you do find the paper I was invited to write upon Wordsworth[88],
+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,'[89] 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.
+
+[Footnote 88: In the _Athenaeum_.]
+
+[Footnote 89: 'Crowned and Buried' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 9).]
+
+
+_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 the 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.[90] 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.
+
+[Footnote 90: Her contributions to the essays on Tennyson and Carlyle
+have recently been printed in Messrs. Nichols and Wise's _Literary
+Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century_, i. 33, ii. 105.]
+
+
+
+
+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.'[91]
+
+[Footnote 91: _Letters to R.H. Home_, ii. 146.]
+
+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.[92]
+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.
+
+May God bless you, my dear cousin.
+
+Affectionately yours always,
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 92: Referring to Mr. Kenyon's encouraging comments on the
+'Drama of Exile,' which he had seen in manuscript at a time when Miss
+Barrett was very despondent about it.]
+
+
+This note is not to be answered.
+
+I am thinking of writing to Moxon, as there does not seem much to
+arrange. The type and size of Tennyson's books seem, upon examination,
+to suit my purpose excellently.
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+March 21, 1844.
+
+No, you never sent me back Miss Martineau's letter, my dear cousin;
+but you will be sure, or rather Mr. Crabb Robinson will, to find it in
+some too safe a place; and then I shall have it. In the meantime here
+are the other letters back again. You will think that I was keeping
+them for a deposit, a security, till I 'had my ain again,' but I have
+only been idle and busy together. They are the most interesting that
+can be, and have quite delighted me. By the way, _I_, who saw nothing
+to object to in the 'Life in the Sick Room,' object very much to her
+argument in behalf of it--an argument certainly founded on a miserable
+misapprehension of the special doctrine referred to in her letter.
+There is nothing so elevating and ennobling to the nature and mind
+of man as the view which represents it raised into communion with God
+Himself, by the justification and purification of God Himself. Plato's
+dream brushed by the gate of this doctrine when it walked highest, and
+won for him the title of 'Divine.' That it is vulgarised sometimes by
+narrow-minded teachers in theory, and by hypocrites in action, might
+be an argument (if admitted at all) against all truth, poetry, and
+music!
+
+On the other hand, I was glad to see the leaning on the Education
+question; in which all my friends the Dissenters did appear to me so
+painfully wrong and so unworthily wrong at once.
+
+And Southey's letters! I did quite delight in _them_! They are more
+_personal_ than any I ever saw of his; and have more warm every-day
+life in them.
+
+The particular Paul Pry in question (to come down to _my_ life) never
+'intrudes.' It is his peculiarity. And I put the stop exactly where I
+was bid; and was going to put Gabriel's speech,[93] only--with the
+pen in my hand to do it--I found that the angel was a little too
+exclamatory altogether, and that he had cried out, 'O ruined earth!'
+and 'O miserable angel!' just before, approaching to the habit of a
+mere caller of names. So I altered the passage otherwise; taking care
+of your full stop after 'despair.' Thank you, my dear Mr. Kenyon.
+
+Also I sent enough manuscript for the first sheet, and a note to
+Moxon yesterday, last night, thanking him for his courtesy about Leigh
+Hunt's poems; and following your counsel in every point. 'Only last
+night,' you will say! But I have had _such_ a headache--and some very
+painful vexation in the prospect of my maid's leaving me, who has been
+with me throughout my illness; so that I am much attached to her,
+with the best reasons for being so, while the idea of a stranger is
+scarcely tolerable to me under my actual circumstances.
+
+The 'Palm Leaves'[94] are full of strong thought and good
+thought--thought expressed excellently well; but of poetry, in
+the true sense, and of imagination in any, I think them bare and
+cold--somewhat wintry leaves to come from the East, surely, surely!
+
+May the change of air be rapid in doing you good--the weather seems to
+be softening on purpose for you. May God bless you, dear Mr. Kenyon;
+I never can thank you enough. When you return I shall be rustling my
+'proofs' about you, to prove my faith in your kindness.
+
+Ever affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 93: In the 'Drama of Exile,' near the beginning (_Poetical
+Works_, i. 7).]
+
+[Footnote 94: By Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+March 22, 1844.
+
+My dearest Mr. Boyd,--I heard that once I wrote three times too long
+a letter to you; I am aware that nine times too long a silence is
+scarcely the way to make up for it. Forgive me, however, as far as you
+can, for every sort of fault. When I once begin to write to you, I do
+not know how to stop; and I have had so much to do lately as scarcely
+to know how to begin to write to you. _Hence these_ faults--not quite
+tears--in spite of my penitence and the quotation.
+
+At last my book is in the press. My great poem (in the modest
+comparative sense), my 'Masque of Exile' (as I call it at last[95]),
+consists of some nineteen hundred or two thousand lines, and I call it
+'Masque of _Exile_' because it refers to Lucifer's exile, and to that
+other mystical exile of the Divine Being which was the means of the
+return homewards of my Adam and Eve. After the exultation of boldness
+of composition, I fell into one of my deepest fits of despondency, and
+at last, at the end of most painful vacillations, determined not to
+print it. Never was a manuscript so near the fire as my 'Masque' was.
+I had not even the instinct of applying for help to anybody. In the
+midst of this Mr. Kenyon came in by accident, and asked about my poem.
+I told him that I had given it up, despairing of my republic. In the
+kindest way he took it into his hands, and proposed to carry it home
+and read it, and tell me his impression. 'You know,' he said, 'I have
+a prejudice against these sacred subjects for poetry, but then I have
+another prejudice _for you_, and one may neutralise the other.' The
+next day I had a letter from him with the returned manuscript--a
+letter which I was absolutely certain, before I opened it, would
+counsel _against_ the publication. On the contrary! His impression is
+clearly in favour of the poem, and, while he makes sundry criticisms
+on minor points, he considers it very superior as a whole to anything
+I ever did before--more sustained, and fuller in power. So my nerves
+are braced, and I grow a man again; and the manuscript, as I told you,
+is in the press. Moreover, you will be surprised to hear that I think
+of bringing out _two volumes of poems_ instead of one, by advice
+of Mr. Moxon, the publisher. Also, the Americans have commanded an
+American edition, to come out in numbers, either a little before or
+simultaneously with the English one, and provided with a separate
+preface for themselves.
+
+There now! I have told you all this, knowing your kindness, and that
+you will care to hear of it.
+
+It has given me the greatest concern to hear of dear Annie's illness,
+and I do hope, both for your sake and for all our sakes, that we may
+have better news of her before long.
+
+But I don't mean to fall into another scrape to-day by writing too
+much. May God bless you, my very dear friend!
+
+I am ever your affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+
+[Footnote 95: There was, however, a still later last, when it became
+the 'Drama of Exile.']
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+April I, 1844.
+
+My very dear Friend,--Your kind letter I was delighted to receive. You
+mistake a good deal the capacities in judgment of 'the man.'[96] The
+'man' is highly refined in his tastes, and leaning to the classical
+(I was going to say to _your_ classical, only suddenly I thought of
+Ossian) a good deal more than I do. He has written satires in the
+manner of Pope, which admirers of Pope have praised warmly and
+deservedly. If I had hesitated about the conclusiveness of his
+judgments, it would have been because of his confessed indisposition
+towards subjects religious and ways mystical, and his occasional
+insufficient indulgence for rhymes and rhythms which he calls
+'_Barrettian_.' But these things render his favourable inclination
+towards my 'Drama of Exile' still more encouraging (as you will see)
+to my hopes for it.
+
+Still, I do tremble a good deal inwardly when I come to think of
+what your own thoughts of my poem, and poems in their two-volume
+development, may finally be. I am afraid of you. You will tell me the
+truth as it appears to you--upon _that_ I may rely; and I should not
+wish you to suppress a single disastrous thought for the sake of the
+unpleasantness it may occasion to me. My own faith is that I have made
+progress since 'The Seraphim,' only it is too possible (as I confess
+to myself and you) that your opinion may be exactly contrary to it.
+
+You are very kind in what you say about wishing to have some
+conversation, as the medium of your information upon architecture,
+with Octavius--Occy, as we call him. He is very much obliged to you,
+and proposes, if it should not be inconvenient to you, to call upon
+you on Friday, with Arabel, at about one o'clock. Friday is mentioned
+because it is a holiday, no work being done at Mr. Barry's. Otherwise
+he is engaged every day (except, indeed, Sunday) from nine in the
+morning to five in the afternoon. May God bless you, dearest Mr. Boyd.
+I am ever
+
+Your affectionate
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 96: John Kenyon: see the last letter.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+April 16, 1844.
+
+... Surely, surely, it was not likely I should lean to utilitarianism
+in the notice on Carlyle, as I remember the writer of that
+article leans somewhere--_I_, who am reproached with
+trans-trans-transcendentalisms, and not without reason, or with
+insufficient reason.
+
+Oh, and I should say also that Mr. Home, in his kindness, has enlarged
+considerably in his annotations and reflections on me personally.[97]
+My being in correspondence with all the Kings of the East, for
+instance, is an exaggeration, although literary work in one way will
+bring with it, happily, literary association in others.... Still, I am
+not a great letter writer, and I don't write 'elegant Latin verses,'
+as all the gods of Rome know, and I have not been shut up in the dark
+for seven years by any manner of means. By the way, a barrister said
+to my barrister brother the other day, 'I suppose your sister is
+dead?' 'Dead?' said he, a little struck; 'dead?' 'Why, yes. After Mr.
+Home's account of her being sealed up hermetically in the dark for so
+many years, one can only calculate upon her being dead by this time.'
+
+ELIZABETH BARRETT.
+
+Several of the letters to Mr. Boyd which follow refer to that
+celebrated gift of Cyprus wine which led to the composition of one of
+Miss Barrett's best known and most quoted poems.
+
+[Footnote 97: In _The New Spirit of the Age_.]
+
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+June 18, 1844.
+
+Thank you, my very dear friend! I write to you drunk with Cyprus.
+Nothing can be worthier of either gods or demi-gods; and if, as you
+say, Achilles did not drink of it, I am sorry for him. I suppose
+Jupiter had it instead, just then--Hebe pouring it, and Juno's ox-eyes
+bellowing their splendour at it, if you will forgive me that broken
+metaphor, for the sake of Aeschylus's genius, and my own particular
+intoxication.
+
+Indeed, there _never was_, in modern days, such wine. Flush, to whom
+I offered the last drop in my glass, felt it was supernatural, and
+ran away. I have an idea that if he had drunk that drop, he would have
+talked afterwards--either Greek or English.
+
+Never was such wine! The very taste of ideal nectar, only stiller,
+from keeping. If the bubbles of eternity were on it, _we_ should run
+away, perhaps, like Flush.
+
+Still, the thought comes to me, ought I to take it from you? Is it
+right of me? are you not too kind in sending it? and should you be
+allowed to be too kind? In any case, you must, not think of sending me
+more than you have already sent. It is more than enough, and I am not
+less than very much obliged to you.
+
+I have passed the middle of my second volume, and I only hope that
+critics may say of the rest that it smells of Greek wine. Dearest Mr.
+Boyd's
+
+Ever affectionate
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+June 28, 1844.
+
+My dear Mr. Westwood,--I have certainly and considerably increased
+the evidence of my own death by the sepulchral silence of the last few
+days. But after all I am not dead, not even _at heart_, so as to be
+insensible to your kind anxiety, and I can assure you of this, upon
+very fair authority, neither is the book dead yet. It has turned the
+corner of the _felo de se_, and if it is to die, it will be by the
+critics. The mystery of the long delay, it would not be very easy for
+me to explain, notwithstanding I hear Mr. Moxon says: 'I suppose Miss
+Barrett is not in a hurry about her publication;' and _I_ say: 'I
+suppose Moxon is not in a hurry about the publication.' There may be
+a little fault on my side, when I have kept a proof a day beyond the
+hour, or when 'copy' has put out new buds in my hands as I passed it
+to the printer's. Still, in my opinion, it is a good deal more the
+fault of Mr. Moxon's not being in a hurry, than in the excessive
+virtue of my patience, or vice of my indolence. Miss Mitford says, as
+you do, that she never heard of so slow-footed a book.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+50 Wimpole Street:
+Wednesday, August I, 1844 [postmark].
+
+My very dear Friend,--Have you expected to hear from me? and are you
+vexed with me? I am a little ambitious of the first item--yet hopeful
+of an escape from the last. If you did but know how I am pressed for
+time, and how I have too much to do every day, you would forgive
+me for my negligence; even if you had sent me nectar instead of
+mountain,[98] and I had neglected laying my gratitude at your
+feet. Last Saturday, upon its being discovered that my first volume
+consisted of only 208 pages, and my second of 280 pages, Mr. Moxon
+uttered a cry of reprehension, and wished to tear me to pieces by his
+printers, as the Bacchantes did Orpheus. Perhaps you might have heard
+my head moaning all the way to St. John's Wood! He wanted to tear away
+several poems from the end of the second volume, and tie them on to
+the end of the first! I could not and would not hear of this, because
+I had set my mind on having 'Dead Pan' to conclude with. So there was
+nothing for it but to finish a ballad poem called 'Lady Geraldine's
+Courtship,' which was lying by me, and I did so by writing, i.e.
+composing, _one hundred and forty lines last Saturday!_[99] I seemed
+to be in a dream all day! Long lines too--with fifteen syllables in
+each! I see you shake your head all this way off. Moreover it is a
+'romance of the age,' treating of railroads, routes, and all manner
+of 'temporalities,' and in so radical a temper that I expect to be
+reproved for it by the Conservative reviews round. By the way, did I
+tell you of the good news I had from America the third of this month?
+The 'Drama of Exile' is in the hands of a New York publisher; and
+having been submitted to various chief critics of the country on its
+way, was praised loudly and extravagantly. This was, however, by a
+_private reading_ only. A bookseller at Philadelphia had announced it
+for publication--he intended to take it up when the English edition
+reached America; but upon its being represented to him that the New
+York publisher had proof sheets direct from the author and would give
+copy money, he abandoned his intention to the other. I confess I feel
+very much pleased at the kind spirit--the spirit of eager kindness
+indeed--with which the Americans receive my poetry. It is not wrong
+to be pleased, I hope. In this country there may be mortifications
+waiting for me; quite enough to keep my modesty in a state of
+cultivation. I do not know. I hope the work will be out this week, and
+_then_! Did I explain to you that what 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship'
+was wanted for was to increase the size of the first volume, so as to
+restore the equilibrium of volumes, without dislocating 'Pan'? Oh, how
+anxious I shall be to hear your opinion! If you tell me that I have
+lost my intellects, what in the world shall I do _then_--what _shall_
+I do? My Americans--that is, my Americans who were in at the private
+reading, and perhaps I myself--are of opinion that I have made
+great progress since 'The Seraphim.' It seems to me that I have more
+_reach_, whether in thought or language. But then, to _you_ it may
+appear quite otherwise, and I shall be very melancholy if it does.
+Only you must tell me the _precise truth_; and I trust to you that you
+will let me have it in its integrity.
+
+All the life and strength which are in me, seem to have passed into my
+poetry. It is my _pou sto_--not to move the world; but to live on in.
+
+I must not forget to tell you that there is a poem towards the end of
+the second volume, called 'Cyprus Wine,' which I have done myself the
+honor and pleasure of associating with your name. I thought that you
+would not be displeased by it, as a proof of grateful regard from me.
+
+Talking of wines, the Mountain has its attraction, but certainly is
+not to be compared to the Cyprus. You will see how I have praised the
+latter. Well, now I must say 'good-bye,' which you will praise _me_
+for!
+
+Dearest Mr. Boyd's affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+P.S.--_Nota bene_--I wish to forewarn you that I have cut away in the
+text none of my vowels by apostrophes. When I say 'To efface,'
+wanting two-syllable measure, I do not write 'T' efface' as in the old
+fashion, but 'To efface' full length. This is the style of the day.
+Also you will find me a little lax perhaps in metre--a freedom which
+is the result not of carelessness, but of _conviction_, and indeed of
+much patient study of the great Fathers of English poetry--not meaning
+Mr. Pope. Be as patient with me as you can. You shall have the volumes
+as soon as they are ready.
+
+
+[Footnote 98: Evidently a reference to the name of some wine (perhaps
+Montepulciano) sent her by Mr. Boyd. See the end of the letter.]
+
+[Footnote 99: It will be observed that this is not quite the same as
+the current legend, which asserts that the whole poem (of 412 lines)
+was composed in twelve hours.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+August 6, 1844.
+
+My very dear Friend,--I cannot be certain, from my recollections,
+whether I did or did not write to you before, as you suggest; but
+as you never received the letter and I was in a continual press of
+different thoughts, the probability is that I did not write. The
+Cyprus wine in the second vial I certainly _did_ receive; and was
+grateful to you with the whole force of the aroma of it. And now I
+will tell you an anecdote.
+
+In the excess of my filial tenderness, I poured out a glass for papa,
+and offered it to him with my right hand.
+
+'_What is this_?' said he.
+
+'_Taste it_,' said I as laconically, but with more emphasis.
+
+He raised it to his lips; and, after a moment, recoiled, with such
+a face as sinned against Adam's image, and with a shudder of deep
+disgust.
+
+'Why,' he said, 'what most beastly and nauseous thing is this? Oh,' he
+said, 'what detestable drug is this? Oh, oh,' he said, 'I shall never,
+never, get this horrible taste out of my mouth.'
+
+I explained with the proper degree of dignity that 'it was Greek wine,
+Cyprus wine, and of very great value.'
+
+He retorted with acrimony, that 'it might be Greek, twice over; but
+that it was exceedingly beastly.'
+
+I resumed, with persuasive argument, that 'it could scarcely be
+beastly, inasmuch as the taste reminded one of oranges and orange
+flower together, to say nothing of the honey of Mount Hymettus.'
+
+He took me up with stringent logic, 'that any wine must positively be
+beastly, which, pretending to be wine, tasted sweet as honey, and
+that it was beastly on my own showing!' I send you this report as an
+evidence of a curious opinion. But drinkers of port wine cannot be
+expected to judge of nectar--and I hold your 'Cyprus' to be pure
+nectar.
+
+I shall have pleasure in doing what you ask me to do--that is,
+I _will_--if you promise never to call me Miss Barrett again.
+You have often quite vexed me by it. There is
+Ba--Elizabeth--Elzbeth--Ellie--any modification of my name you may
+call me by--but I won't be called Miss Barrett by _you_. Do you
+understand? Arabel means to carry your copy of my book to you. And I
+beg you not to fancy that I shall be impatient for you to read the
+two volumes through. If you _ever_ read them through, it will be
+a sufficient compliment, and indeed I do not expect that you _ever
+will_.
+
+May God bless you, dearest Mr. Boyd.
+
+I remain,
+
+Your affectionate and grateful
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+The date of this last letter marks, as nearly as need be, the date of
+publication of Miss Barrett's volumes. The letters which follow deal
+mainly with their reception, first at the hand of friends, and then by
+the regular critics. The general verdict of the latter was extremely
+complimentary. Mr. Chorley, in the 'Athenaeum,'[100] described the
+volumes as 'extraordinary,' adding that 'between her [Miss Barrett's]
+poems and the slighter lyrics of most of the sisterhood, there is all
+the difference which exists between the putting-on of "singing robes"
+for altar service, and the taking up lute or harp to enchant an
+indulgent circle of friends and kindred.' In the 'Examiner,'[101] John
+Forster declared that 'Miss Barrett is an undoubted poetess of a high
+and fine order as regards the first requisites of her art--imagination
+and expression.... She is a most remarkable writer, and her volumes
+contain not a little which the lovers of poetry will never willingly
+let die,' a phrase then not quite so hackneyed as it has since become.
+The 'Atlas'[102] asserted that 'the present volumes show extraordinary
+powers, and, abating the failings of which all the followers of
+Tennyson are guilty, extraordinary genius.' More influential even than
+these, 'Blackwood'[103] paid her the compliment of a whole article,
+criticising her faults frankly, but declaring that 'her poetical
+merits infinitively outweigh her defects. Her genius is profound,
+unsullied, and without a flaw.' All agreed in assigning her a high,
+or the highest, place among the poetesses of England; but, as
+Miss Barrett herself pointed out, this, in itself, was no great
+praise.[104]
+
+[Footnote 100: August 24, 1844.]
+
+[Footnote 101: October 5, 1844.]
+
+[Footnote 102: September 31, 1844.]
+
+[Footnote 103: November 1844.]
+
+[Footnote 104: See letter of January 3, 1845.]
+
+With regard to individual poems, the critics did not take kindly to
+the 'Drama of Exile,' and 'Blackwood' in particular criticised it at
+considerable length, calling it 'the least successful of her works.'
+The subject, while half challenging comparison with Milton, lends
+itself only too readily to fancifulness and unreality, which were
+among the most besetting sins of Miss Barrett's genius. The minor
+poems were incomparably more popular, and the favourite of all was
+that masterpiece of rhetorical sentimentality, 'Lady Geraldine's
+Courtship.' It must have been a little mortifying to the authoress to
+find this piece, a large part of which had been dashed off at a single
+heat in order to supply the printers' needs, preferred to others on
+which she had employed all the labour of her deliberate art; but with
+the general tone of all the critics she had every reason to be as
+content as her letters show her to have been. Only two criticisms
+rankled: the one that she was a follower of Tennyson, the other that
+her rhymes were slovenly and careless. And these appeared, in varying
+shapes, in nearly all the reviews.
+
+The former of these allegations is of little weight. Whatever
+qualities Miss Barrett may have shared with Tennyson, her substantial
+independence is unquestionable. It is a case rather of coincidence
+than imitation; or if imitation, it is of a slight and unconscious
+kind. The second criticism deserves fuller notice, because it is
+constantly repeated to this day. The following letters show how
+strongly Miss Barrett protested against it. As she told Horne,[105]
+with reference to this very subject: 'If I fail ultimately before the
+public--that is, before the people--for an ephemeral popularity does
+not appear to me to be worth trying for--it will not be because I have
+shrunk from the amount of labour, where labour could do anything. I
+have _worked_ at poetry; it has not been with me reverie, but art.'
+That her rhymes were inexact, especially in such poems as 'The Dead
+Pan,' she did not deny; but her defence was that the inexactness was
+due to a deliberate attempt to widen the artistic capabilities of the
+English language. Partly, perhaps, as a result of her acquaintance
+with Italian literature, she had a marked fondness for disyllabic
+rhymes; and since pure rhymes of this kind are not plentiful in
+English, she tried the experiment of using assonances instead. Hence
+such rhymes as _silence_ and _islands_, _vision_ and _procession_,
+_panther_ and _saunter_, examples which could be indefinitely
+multiplied if need were. Now it may be that a writer with a very
+sensitive ear would not have attempted such an experiment, and it is a
+fact that public taste has not approved it; but the experiment itself
+is as legitimate as, say, the metrical experiments in hexameters and
+hendecasyllabics of Longfellow or Tennyson, and whether approved
+or not it should be criticised as an experiment, not as mere
+carelessness. That Mrs. Browning's ear was quite-capable of discerning
+true rhymes is shown by the fact that she tacitly abandoned her
+experiment in assonances. Not only in the pure and high art of the
+'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' but even in 'Casa Guidi Windows,' the
+rhetorical and sometimes colloquial tone of which might have been
+thought to lend itself to such devices, imperfect rhymes occur but
+rarely not exceeding the limits allowed to himself by every poet who
+has rhymed _given_ and _heaven_; and the roll of those who have _not_
+done so must be small indeed.
+
+[Footnote 105: _Letters to R.H. Horne_, ii. 119.]
+
+The point has seemed worth dwelling on, because it touches a
+commonplace of criticism as regards Mrs. Browning; but we may now make
+way for her own comments on her critics and friends.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Tuesday, August 13, 1844 [postmark].
+
+My very dear Friend,--I must thank you for the great kindness with
+which you have responded to a natural expression of feeling on
+my part, and for all the pleasure of finding you pleased with the
+inscription of 'Cyprus Wine.' Your note has given me much true
+pleasure. Yes; if my verses survive me, I should wish them to relate
+the fact of my being your debtor for many happy hours.
+
+And now I must explain to you that most of the 'incorrectnesses' you
+speak of may be 'incorrectnesses,' but are not _negligences_. I have
+a theory about double rhymes for which--I shall be attacked by the
+critics, but which I could justify perhaps on high authority, or at
+least analogy. In fact, these volumes of mine have more double rhymes
+than any two books of English poems that ever to my knowledge were
+printed; I mean of English poems _not comic_. Now, of double rhymes
+in use, which are perfect rhymes, you are aware how few there are, and
+yet you are also aware of what an admirable effect in making a rhythm
+various and vigorous, double rhyming is in English poetry. Therefore
+I have used a certain licence; and after much thoughtful study of the
+Elizabethan writers, have ventured it with the public. And do _you_
+tell me, _you_ who object to the use of a different _vowel_ in a
+double rhyme, _why_ you rhyme (as everybody does, without blame from
+anybody) 'given' to 'heaven,' when you object to my rhyming 'remember'
+and 'chamber'? The analogy surely is all on my side, and I _believe_
+that the spirit of the English language is also.
+
+I write all this because you will find many other sins of the sort,
+besides those in the 'Cyprus Wine;' and because I wish you to consider
+the subject as _a point for consideration_ seriously, and not to blame
+me as a writer of careless verses. If I deal too much in licences, it
+is not because I am idle, but because I am speculative for freedom's
+sake. It is possible, you know, to be wrong conscientiously; and I
+stand up for my conscience only.
+
+I thank you earnestly for your candour hitherto, and I beseech you to
+be candid to the end.
+
+  It is tawny as Rhea's lion.
+
+I know (although you don't say so) you object to that line. Yet
+consider its structure. Does not the final 'y' of 'tawny' suppose an
+apostrophe and apocope? Do you not run 'tawny as' into two syllables
+naturally? I want you to see my principle.
+
+With regard to blank verse, the great Fletcher admits sometimes
+seventeen syllables into his lines.
+
+I hope Miss Heard received her copy, and that you will not think me
+arrogant in writing freely to you.
+
+Believe me, I write only freely and not arrogantly; and I am impressed
+with the conviction that my work abounds with far more faults than you
+in your kindness will discover, notwithstanding your acumen.
+
+Always your affectionate and grateful
+ELIBET.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Wednesday, August 14, 1844 [postmark].
+
+My dearest Mr. Boyd,--I must thank you for the great great pleasure
+with which I have this moment read your note, the more welcome,
+as (without hypocrisy) I had worked myself up into a nervous
+apprehension, from your former one, that I should seem so 'rudis atque
+incomposita' to you, in consequence of certain licences, as to end by
+being intolerable. I know what an ear you have, and how you can hear
+the dust on the wheel as it goes on. Well, I wrote to you yesterday,
+to beg you to be patient and considerate.
+
+But you are always given to surprise me with abundant kindness--with
+supererogatory kindness. I believe in _that_, certainly.
+
+I am very very glad that you think me stronger and more perspicuous.
+For the perspicuity, I have struggled hard....
+
+Your affectionate and grateful
+ELZBETH.
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+50 Wimpole Street: August 22, 1844.
+
+... Thank you for your welcome letter, so kind in its candour, _I_
+angry that you should prefer 'The Seraphim'! Angry? No _indeed,
+indeed_, I am grateful for 'The Seraphim,' and not exacting for the
+'Drama,' and all the more because of a secret obstinate persuasion
+that the 'Drama' will have a majority of friends in the end, and
+perhaps deserve to have them. Nay, why should I throw perhapses over
+my own impressions, and be insincere to you who have honoured me by
+being sincere? Why should I dissemble my own belief that the 'Drama'
+is worth two or three 'Seraphims'--_my own_ belief, you know, which is
+worth nothing, writers knowing themselves so superficially, and having
+such a natural leaning to their last work. Still, I may say honestly
+to you, that I have a far more modest value for 'The Seraphim' than
+your kindness suggests, and that I have seemed to myself to have a
+clear insight into the fact that that poem was only borne up by the
+minor poems published with it, from immediate destruction. There is a
+want of unity in it which vexes me to think of, and the other faults
+magnify themselves day by day, more and more, in my eyes. Therefore
+it is not that I care _more_ for the 'Drama,' but I care less for 'The
+Seraphim.' Both poems fall short of my aspiration and desire, but the
+'Drama' seems to me fuller, freer and stronger, and worth the other
+three times over. If it has anything new, I think it must be something
+new into which I have lived, for certainly I wrote it sincerely and
+from an inner impulse. In fact, I never wrote any poem with so much
+sense of pleasure in the composition, and so rapidly, with continuous
+flow--from fifty to a hundred lines a day, and quite in a glow of
+pleasure and impulse all through. Still, you have not been used to see
+me in blank verse, and there may be something in that. That the poem
+is full of faults and imperfections I do not in the least doubt. I
+have vibrated between exultations and despondencies in the correcting
+and printing of it, though the composition went smoothly to an end,
+and I am prepared to receive the bastinado to the critical degree, I
+do assure you. The few opinions I have yet had are all to the effect
+that my advance on the former publication is very great and obvious,
+but then I am aware that people who thought exactly the contrary would
+be naturally backward in giving me their opinion.... Indeed, I thank
+you most earnestly. Truth and kindness, how rarely do they come
+together! I am very grateful to you. It is curious that 'Duchess May'
+is not a favorite of mine, and that I have sighed one or two secret
+wishes towards its extirpation, but other writers besides yourself
+have singled it out for praise in private letters to me. There has
+been no printed review yet, I believe; and when I think of them, I
+try to think of something else, for with no private friends among
+the critical body (not that I should desire to owe security in such a
+matter to private friendship) it is awful enough, this looking forward
+to be reviewed. Never mind, the ultimate prosperity of the book lies
+far above the critics, and can neither be mended nor made nor unmade
+by _them_.
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+Wednesday morning [August 1844].
+
+I return Mr. Chorley's[106] note, my dear cousin, with thankful
+thoughts of him--as of you. I wish I could persuade you of the
+rightness of my view about 'Essays on Mind' and such things, and how
+the difference between them and my present poems is not merely the
+difference between two schools, as you seemed to intimate yesterday,
+nor even the difference between immaturity and maturity; but that it
+is the difference between the dead and the living, between a copy and
+an individuality, between what is myself and what is not myself. To
+you who have a personal interest and--may I say? affection for me,
+the girl's exercise assumes a factitious value, but to the public
+the matter is otherwise and ought to be otherwise. And for the
+'psychological' side of the question, _do_ observe that I have not
+reputation enough to suggest a curiosity about _my legends_. Instead
+of your 'legendary lore,' it would be just a legendary bore. Now you
+understand what I mean. I do not underrate Pope nor his school, but I
+_do_ disesteem everything which, bearing the shape of a book, is not
+the true expression of a mind, and I know and feel (and so do _you_)
+that a girl's exercise written when all the experience lay in books,
+and the mind was suited rather for intelligence than production,
+lying like an infant's face with an undeveloped expression, must
+be valueless in itself, and if offered to the public directly or
+indirectly as a work of mine, highly injurious to me. Why, of the
+'Prometheus' volume, even, you know what I think and desire. 'The
+Seraphim,' with all its feebleness and shortcomings and obscurities,
+yet is the first utterance of my own individuality, and therefore the
+only volume except the last which is not a disadvantage to me to have
+thought of, and happily for me, the early books, never having been
+advertised, nor reviewed, except by accident, once or twice, are as
+safe from the public as manuscript.
+
+Oh, I shudder to think of the lines which might have been 'nicked in,'
+and all through Mr. Chorley's good nature. As if I had not sins enough
+to ruin me in the new poems, without reviving juvenile ones, sinned
+when I knew no better. Perhaps you would like to have the series of
+epic poems which I wrote from nine years old to eleven. They might
+illustrate some doctrine of innate ideas, and enrich (to that end) the
+myths of metaphysicians.
+
+And also agree with me in reverencing that wonderful genius _Keats_,
+who, rising as a grand exception from among the vulgar herd of
+juvenile versifiers, was an individual _man_ from the beginning, and
+spoke with his own voice, though surrounded by the yet unfamiliar
+murmur of antique echoes.[107] Leigh Hunt calls him 'the young poet'
+very rightly. Most affectionately and gratefully yours,
+
+E.B.B.
+
+Do thank Mr. Chorley for me, will you?
+
+[Footnote 106: Henry Fothergill Chorley (1808-1872) was one of the
+principal members of the staff of the _Athenaeum_, especially in
+literary and musical matters. Dr. Garnett (in the _Dictionary of
+National Biography_) says of him, shortly after his first joining the
+staff in 1833, that 'his articles largely contributed to maintain the
+reputation the _Athenaeum_ had already acquired for impartiality at a
+time when puffery was more rampant than ever before or since, and
+when the only other London literary journal of any pretension was
+notoriously venal.' He also wrote several novels and dramas, which met
+with but little popular success.]
+
+[Footnote 107: Compare Aurora Leigh's asseveration:
+
+  'By Keats' soul, the man who never stepped
+  In gradual progress like another man,
+  But, turning grandly on his central self,
+  Ensphered himself in twenty perfect years
+  And died, _not_ young.'
+
+('Aurora Leigh,' book i.; _Poetical Works_, vi. 38.)]
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Thursday, August 1844.
+
+Thank you, my dearest Mrs. Martin, for your most kind letter, a reply
+to which should certainly, as you desired, have met you at Colwall;
+only, right or wrong, I have been flurried, agitated, put out of the
+way altogether, by Stormie's and Henry's plan of going to Egypt. Ah,
+now you are surprised. Now you think me excusable for being silent
+two days beyond my time--yes, and _they have gone_, it is no vague
+speculation. You know, or perhaps you don't know, that, a little time
+back, papa bought a ship, put a captain and crew of his own in it, and
+began to employ it in his favourite 'Via Lactea' of speculations. It
+has been once to Odessa with wool, I think; and now it has gone to
+Alexandria with coals. Stormie was wild to go to both places; and with
+regard to the last, papa has yielded. And Henry goes too. This was all
+arranged weeks ago, but nothing was said of it until last Monday
+to me; and when I heard it, I was a good deal moved of course, and
+although resigned now to their having their way in it, and their
+_pleasure_, which is better than their way, still I feel I have
+entered a new anxiety, and shall not be quite at ease again till they
+return....
+
+And now to thank you, my ever-dearest Mrs. Martin, for your kind and
+welcome letter from the Lakes. I knew quite at the first page, and
+long before you said a word specifically, that dear Mr. Martin was
+better, and think that such a scene, even from under an umbrella, must
+have done good to the soul and body of both of you. I wish I could
+have looked through your eyes for once. But I suppose that neither
+through yours, nor through my own, am I ever likely to behold that
+sight. In the meantime it is with considerable satisfaction that I
+hear of your _failure of Wordsworth_, which was my salvation in a very
+awful sense. Why, if you had done such a thing, you would have put me
+to the shame of too much honor. The speculation consoles me entirely
+for your loss in respect to Rydal Hall and its poet. By the way, I
+heard the other day that Rogers, who was intending to visit him, said,
+'It is a bad time of year for it. The god is on his pedestal; and
+can only give gestures to his worshippers, and no conversation to his
+friends.' ...
+
+Although you did not find a letter from me on your return to Colwall,
+I do hope that you found _me_--viz. my book, which Mr. Burden took
+charge of, and promised to deliver or see delivered. When you have
+read it, _do_ let me hear your own and Mr. Martin's true impression;
+and whether you think it worse or better than 'The Seraphim.' The only
+review which has yet appeared or had time to appear has been a very
+kind and cordial one in the 'Athenaeum.' ...
+
+Your ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+August 31, 1844.
+
+My dear Mr. Westwood,--I send you the manuscript you ask for, and also
+my certificate that, although I certainly was once a little girl,
+yet I never in my life had fair hair, or received lessons when you
+mention. I think a cousin of mine, now dead, may have done it. The
+'Barrett Barrett' seems to specify my family. I have a little cousin
+with bright fair hair at this moment who is an Elizabeth Barrett (the
+subject of my 'Portrait'[108]), but then she is a 'Georgiana' besides,
+and your friend must refer to times past. My hair is very dark indeed,
+and always was, as long as I remember, and also I have a friend who
+makes serious affidavit that I have never changed (except by being
+rather taller) since I was a year old. Altogether, you cannot make a
+case of identity out, and I am forced to give up the glory of being so
+long remembered for my cleverness.
+
+You do wrong in supposing me inclined to underrate Mr. Melville's
+power. He is inclined to High-Churchism, and to such doctrines as
+apostolical succession, and I, who, am a Dissenter, and a believer in
+a universal Christianity, recoil from the exclusive doctrine.
+
+But then, that is not depreciatory of his power and eloquence--surely
+not.
+
+E.B.
+
+[Footnote 108: _Poetical Works_, iii. 172.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Chorley_
+50 Wimpole Street: Monday.
+[About the end of August 1844.]
+
+Dear Mr. Chorley,--Kindnesses are more frequent things with me than
+gladnesses, but I thank you earnestly for both in the letter I have
+this moment received.[109] You have given me a quick sudden pleasure
+which goes deeper (I am very sure) than self-love, for it must be
+something better than vanity that brings the tears so near the eyes. I
+thank you, dear Mr. Chorley.
+
+After all, we are not quite strangers. I have had some early
+encouragement and direction from you, and much earlier (and later)
+literary pleasures from such of your writings as did not refer to me.
+I have studied 'Music and Manners'[110] under you, and found an excuse
+for my love of romance-reading from your grateful fancy. Then, as dear
+Miss Mitford's friend, you could not help being (however against your
+will!) a little my acquaintance; and this she daringly promised to
+make you in reality some day, till I took the fervour for prophecy.
+
+Altogether I am justified, while I thank you as a stranger, to say one
+more word as a friend, and _that_ shall be the best word--'_May God
+bless you_!' The trials with which He tries us all are different, but
+our faces may be turned towards the end in cheerfulness, for '_to_ the
+end He has loved us.' I remain,
+
+Very faithfully, your obliged
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+You may trust me with the secret of your kindness to me. It shall not
+go farther.
+
+[Footnote 109: A summary of its contents is given in the next letter
+but one.]
+
+[Footnote 110: _Music and Manners in France and Germany: a Series of
+Travelling Sketches of Art and Society_, published by Mr. Chorley in
+1841.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Monday, September 1, 1844.
+
+My dearest Mr. Boyd,--I thank you for the Cyprus, and also for a still
+sweeter amreeta--your praise. Certainly to be praised as you praise
+me might well be supposed likely to turn a sager head than mine, but
+I feel that (with all my sensitive and grateful appreciation of such
+words) I am removed rather below than above the ordinary temptations
+of vanity. Poetry is to me rather a passion than an ambition, and
+the gadfly which drives me along that road pricks deeper than an
+expectation of fame could do.
+
+Moreover, there will be plenty of counter-irritation to prevent me
+from growing feverish under your praises. And as a beginning, I hear
+that the 'John Bull' newspaper has cut me up with sanguinary gashes,
+for the edification of its Sabbath readers. I have not seen it yet,
+but I hear so. The 'Drama' is the particular victim. Do not send for
+the paper. I will let you have it, if you should wish for it.
+
+One thing is left to me to say. Arabel told you of a letter I had
+received from a professional critic, and I am sorry that she should
+have told you so without binding you to secrecy on the point at the
+same time. In fact, the writer of the letter begged me _not_ to speak
+of it, and I took an engagement to him _not_ to speak of it. Now it
+would be very unpleasant to me, and dishonorable to me, if, after
+entering into this engagement, the circumstance of the letter should
+come to be talked about. Of course you will understand that I do not
+object to your having been informed of the thing, only Arabel should
+have remembered to ask you not to mention again the name of the critic
+who wrote to me.
+
+May God bless you, my very dear friend. I drink thoughts of you in
+Cyprus every day.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+ELIBET.
+
+There is no review in the 'Examiner' yet, nor any continuation in the
+'Athenaeum.'[111]
+
+[Footnote 111: The _Athenaeum_ had reserved the two longer poems, the
+'Drama of Exile' and the 'Vision of Poets,' for possible notice in a
+second article, which, however, never appeared.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+September 10, 1844.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I will not lose a post in assuring you that
+I was not silent because of any disappointment from your previous
+letter. I could only feel the _kindness_ of that letter, and this was
+certainly the chief and uppermost feeling at the time of reading it,
+and since. Your preference of 'The Seraphim' one other person besides
+yourself has acknowledged to me in the same manner, and although I
+myself--perhaps from the natural leaning to last works, and perhaps
+from a wise recognition of the complete failure of the poem called
+'The Seraphim '--do disagree with you, yet I can easily forgive you
+for such a thought, and believe that you see sufficient grounds for
+entertaining it. More and more I congratulate myself (at any rate)
+for the decision I came to at the last moment, and in the face of
+some persuasions, to call the book 'Poems,' instead of trusting its
+responsibility to the 'Drama,' by such a title as 'A Drama of Exile,
+and Poems.' It is plain, as I anticipated, that for one person who is
+ever so little pleased with the 'Drama,' fifty at least will like the
+smaller poems. And perhaps they are right. The longer sustaining of a
+subject requires, of course, more power, and I may have failed in it
+altogether.
+
+Yes, I think I may say that I am satisfied so far with the aspect of
+things in relation to the book. You see there has scarcely been time
+yet to give any except a sanguine or despondent judgment--I mean,
+there is scarcely room yet for forming a very rational inference of
+what will ultimately be, without the presentiments of hope or fear.
+The book came out too late in August for any chance of a mention in
+the September magazines, and at the dead time of year, when the
+very critics were thinking more of holiday innocence than of their
+carnivorous instincts. This will not hurt it ultimately, although it
+might have hurt a _novel_. The regular critics will come back to it;
+and in the meantime the newspaper critics are noticing it all round,
+with more or less admissions to its advantage. The 'Atlas' is the best
+of the newspapers for literary notices; and it spoke graciously on
+the whole; though I do protest against being violently attached to
+a 'school.' I have faults enough, I know; but it is just to say that
+they are at least my own. Well, then! It is true that the 'Westminster
+Review' says briefly what is great praise, and promises to take the
+earliest opportunity of reviewing me 'at large.' So that with regard
+to the critics, there seems to be a good prospect. Then I have had
+some very pleasant private letters--one from Carlyle; an oath from
+Miss Martineau to give her whole mind to the work and tell me her free
+and full opinion, which I have not received yet; an assurance from an
+acquaintance of Mrs. Jameson that she was much pleased. But the letter
+which pleased me most was addressed to me by a professional critic,
+personally unknown to me, who wrote to say that he had traced me up,
+step by step, ever since I began to print, and that my last volumes
+were so much better than any preceding them, and were such _living
+books_, that they restored to him the impulses of his youth and
+constrained him to thank me for the pleasant emotions they had
+excited. I cannot say the name of the writer of this letter, because
+he asked me not to do so, but of course it was very pleasant to read.
+Now you will not call me vain for speaking of this. I would not
+speak of it; only I want (you see) to prove to you how faithfully
+and gratefully I have a trust in your kindness and sympathy. It is
+certainly the best kindness to speak the truth to me. I have written
+those poems as well as I could, and I hope to write others better. I
+have not reached my own ideal; and I cannot expect to have satisfied
+other people's expectation. But it is (as I sometimes say) the least
+ignoble part of me, that I love poetry better than I love my own
+successes in it.
+
+I am glad that you like 'The Lost Bower.' The scene of that poem is
+the wood above the garden at Hope End.
+
+It is very true, my dearest Mrs. Martin, all that you say about the
+voyage to Alexandria. And I do not feel the anxiety I _thought I
+should_. In fact, _I am surprised to feel so little anxiety_. Still,
+when they are at home again, I shall be happier than I am now, _that_
+I feel strongly besides.
+
+What I missed most in your first letter was what I do not miss in the
+second, the good news of dear Mr. Martin. Both he and you are very
+vainglorious, I suppose, about O'Connell; but although I was delighted
+on every account at his late victory,[112] or rather at the late
+victory of justice and constitutional law, he never was a hero of mine
+and is not likely to become one. If he had been (by the way) a hero of
+mine, I should have been quite ashamed of him for being so unequal to
+his grand position as was demonstrated by the speech from the balcony.
+Such poetry in the position, and such prose in the speech! He has not
+the stuff in him of which heroes are made. There is a thread of cotton
+everywhere crossing the silk....
+
+With our united love to both of you,
+Ever, dearest Mrs. Martin, most affectionately yours,
+BA.
+
+
+
+[Footnote 112: The reversal by the House of Lords of his conviction in
+Ireland for conspiracy, which the English Court of Queen's Bench had
+confirmed.]
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Wednesday [about September 1844].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin, ... Did I tell you that Miss Martineau had
+promised and vowed to me to tell me the whole truth with respect to
+the poems? Her letter did not come until a few days ago, and for a
+full month after the publication; and I was so fearful of the probable
+sentence that my hands shook as they broke the seal. But such a
+pleasant letter! I have been overjoyed with it. She says that her
+'predominant impression is of the _originality_'--very pleasant to
+hear. I must not forget, however, to say that she complains of 'want
+of variety' in the general effect of the drama, and that she 'likes
+Lucifer less than anything in the two volumes.' You see how you have
+high backers. Still she talks of 'immense advances,' which consoles me
+again. In fact, there is scarcely a word to _require_ consolation
+in her letter, and what did not please me least--nay, to do myself
+justice, what put all the rest out of my head for some minutes with
+joy--is the account she gives of herself. For she is better and likely
+still to be better; she has recovered appetite and sleep, and lost the
+most threatening symptoms of disease; she has been out for the first
+time for four years and a half, lying on the grass flat, she says,
+with my books open beside her day after day. (That _does_ sound vain
+of me, but I cannot resist the temptation of writing it!) And
+the means--the means! Such means you would never divine! It is
+_mesmerism_. She is thrown into the magnetic trance twice a day; and
+the progress is manifest; and the hope for the future clear. Now,
+what do you both think? Consider what a case it is! No case of a
+weak-minded woman and a nervous affection; but of the most manlike
+woman in the three kingdoms--in the best sense of man--a woman gifted
+with admirable fortitude, as well as exercised in high logic, a woman
+of sensibility and of imagination certainly, but apt to carry her
+reason unbent wherever she sets her foot; given to utilitarian
+philosophy and the habit of logical analysis; and suffering under a
+disease which has induced change of structure and yielded to no tried
+remedy! Is it not wonderful, and past expectation? She suggests that
+I should try the means--but I understand that in cases like mine the
+remedy has done harm instead of good, by over-exciting the system. But
+her experience will settle the question of the reality of magnetism
+with a whole generation of infidels. For my own part, I have long been
+a believer, _in spite of papa_. Then I have had very kind letters from
+Mrs. Jameson, the 'Ennuyee'[113] and from Mr. Serjeant Talfourd and
+some less famous persons. And a poet with a Welsh name wrote to me
+yesterday to say that he was writing a poem 'similar to my "Drama of
+Exile,"' and begged me to subscribe to it. Now I tell you all this to
+make you smile, and because some of it will interest you more gravely.
+It will prove to dear unjust Mr. Martin that I do not distrust your
+sympathy. How could he think so of me? I am half vexed that he should
+think so. Indeed--indeed I am not so morbidly vain. Why, if you had
+told me that the books were without any sort of value in your eyes,
+do you imagine that I should not have valued you, reverenced you
+ever after for your truth, so sacred a thing in friendship? I really
+believe it would have been my predominant feeling. But you proved your
+truth without trying me so hardly; I had _both_ truth and praise from
+you, and surely quite enough, and _more_ than enough, as many would
+think, of the latter.
+
+My dearest papa left us this morning to go for a few days into
+Cornwall for the purpose of examining a quarry in which he has bought
+or is about to buy shares, and he means to strike on for the Land's
+End and to see Falmouth before he returns. It depresses me to think
+of his being away; his presence or the sense of his nearness having
+so much cheering and soothing influence with me; but it will be an
+excellent change for him, even if he does not, as he expects, dig an
+immense fortune out of the quarries....
+
+Your affectionate and ever obliged
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 113: Mrs. Jameson's earliest book, and one which achieved
+considerable popularity, was her _Diary of an Ennuyee_.]
+
+
+_To Cornelius Mathews_
+London, 50 Wimpole Street: October 1, 1844.
+
+My dear Mr. Mathews,--I have just received your note, which, on the
+principle of single sighs or breaths being wafted from Indies to the
+poles, arrived quite safely, and I was very glad to have it. I shall
+fall into monotony if I go on to talk of my continued warm sense of
+your wonderful kindness to me, a stranger according to the manner of
+men; and, indeed, I have just this moment been writing a note to
+a friend two streets away, and calling it 'wonderful kindness.'
+I cannot, however, of course, allow you to run the tether of your
+impulse and furnish me with the reviews of my books and other things
+you speak of at your own expense, and I should prefer, if you would
+have the goodness to give the necessary direction to Messrs. Putnam
+& Co., that they should send what would interest me to see, together
+with a note of the pecuniary debt to themselves. I shall like to see
+the reviews, of course; and that you should have taken the first word
+of American judgment into your own mouth is a pleasant thought to
+me, and leaves me grateful. In England I have no reason so far to
+be otherwise than well pleased. There has not, indeed, been much yet
+besides newspaper criticisms--except 'Ainsworth's Magazine,' which
+is benignant!--there has not been time. The monthly reviews give
+themselves 'pause' in such matters to set the plumes of their dignity,
+and I am rather glad than otherwise not to have the first fruits of
+their haste. The 'Atlas,' the best newspaper for literary reviews,
+excepting always the 'Examiner,' who does not speak yet, is generous
+to me, and I have reason to be satisfied with others. And our most
+influential quarterly (after the 'Edinburgh' and right 'Quarterly'),
+the 'Westminster Review,' promises an early paper with passing words
+of high praise. What vexed me a little in one or two of the journals
+was an attempt made to fix me in a school, and the calling me
+a follower of Tennyson for my habit of using compound words,
+noun-substantives, which I used to do before I knew a page of
+Tennyson, and adopted from a study of our old English writers, and
+Greeks and even Germans. The custom is so far from being peculiar to
+Tennyson, that Shelley and Keats and Leigh Hunt are all redolent of
+it, and no one can read our old poets without perceiving the leaning
+of our Saxon to that species of coalition. Then I have had letters of
+great kindness from 'Spirits of the Age,' whose praises are so many
+crowns, and altogether am far from being out of spirits about the
+prospect of my work. I am glad, however, that I gave the name of
+'Poems' to the work instead of admitting the 'Drama of Exile' into the
+title-page and increasing its responsibility; for one person who likes
+the 'Drama,' ten like the other poems. Both Carlyle and Miss Martineau
+select as favorite 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship,' which amuses and
+surprises me somewhat. In that poem I had endeavoured to throw
+conventionalities (turned asbestos for the nonce) into the fire of
+poetry, to make them glow and glitter as if they were not dull things.
+Well, I shall soon hear what _you_ like best--and worst. I wonder if
+you have been very carnivorous with me! I tremble a little to think of
+your hereditary claim to an instrument called the tomahawk. Still, I
+am sure I shall have to think _most_, ever as now, of your kindness;
+and _truth_ must be sacred to all of us, whether we have to suffer
+or be glad by it. As for Mr. Horne, I cannot answer for what he has
+received or not received. I had one note from him on silver paper
+(fear of postage having reduced him to a transparency) from Germany,
+and that is all, and I did not think him in good spirits in what he
+said of himself. I will tell him what you have the goodness to say,
+and something, too, on my own part. He has had a hard time of it with
+his 'Spirit of the Age;' the attacks on the book here being bitter in
+the extreme. Your 'Democratic' does not comfort him for the rest, by
+the way, and, indeed, he is almost past comfort on the subject. I had
+a letter the other day from Dr. Shelton Mackenzie, whom I do not know
+personally, but who is about to publish a 'Living Author Dictionary,'
+and who, by some association, talked of the effeminacy of 'the
+American poets,' so I begged him to read your poems on 'Man' and
+prepare an exception to his position. I wish to write more and must
+not.
+
+Most faithfully yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+Am I the first with the great and good news for America and England
+that Harriet Martineau is better and likely to be better? She told me
+so herself, and attributes the change to the agency of _mesmerism_.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+October 4, 1844.
+
+My dearest Mr. Boyd,--... As to 'The Lost Bower,' I am penitent about
+having caused you so much disturbance. I sometimes fancy that a little
+varying of the accents, though at the obvious expense of injuring
+the smoothness of every line considered separately, gives variety
+of cadence and fuller harmony to the general effect. But I do not
+question that I deserve a great deal of blame on this point as on
+others. Many lines in 'Isobel's Child' are very slovenly and weak from
+a multitude of causes. I hope you will like 'The Lost Bower' better
+when you try it again than you did at first, though I do not, of
+course, expect that you will not see much to cry out against. The
+subject of the poem was an actual fact of my childhood.
+
+Oh, and I think I told you, when giving you the history of 'Lady
+Geraldine's Courtship,' that I wrote the _thirteen_ last pages of it
+in one day. I ought to have said _nineteen_ pages instead. But don't
+tell anybody; only keep the circumstance in your mind when you need it
+and see the faults. Nobody knows of it except you and Mr. Kenyon and
+my own family for the reason I told you. I sent off that poem to the
+press piece-meal, as I never in my life did before with any poem.
+And since I wrote to you I have heard of Mr. Eagles, one of the first
+writers in 'Blackwood' and a man of very refined taste, adding another
+name to the many of those who have preferred it to anything in the
+two volumes. He says that he has read it at least six times aloud to
+various persons, and calls it a 'beautiful _sui generis_ drama.' On
+which Mr. Kenyon observes that I am 'ruined for life, and shall be
+sure never to take pains with any poem again.'
+
+The American edition (did Arabel tell you?) was to be out in New
+York a week ago, and was to consist of fifteen hundred copies in two
+volumes, as in England.
+
+She sends you the verses and asks you to make allowances for the delay
+in doing so. I cannot help believing that if you were better read in
+Wordsworth you would appreciate him better. Ever since I knew what
+poetry is, I have believed in him as a great poet, and I do not
+understand how reasonably there can be a doubt of it. Will you
+remember that nearly all the first minds of the age have admitted
+his power (without going to intrinsic evidence), and then say that
+he _can_ be a mere Grub Street writer? It is not that he is only or
+chiefly admired by the _profanum vulgus_, that he is a mere popular
+and fashionable poet, but that men of genius in this and other
+countries unite in confessing his genius. And is not this a
+significant circumstance--significant, at least?...
+
+Believe me, yourself, your affectionate and grateful
+ELIBET B.B.
+
+How kind you are, far too kind, about the Cyprus wine; I thank you
+very much.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+October 5, 1844.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--... Well, papa came back from Cornwall just
+as I came back to my own room, and he was as pleased with his quarry
+as I was to have the sight again of his face. During his absence,
+Henrietta had a little polka (which did not bring the house down on
+its knees), and I had a transparent blind put up in my open window.
+There is a castle in the blind, and a castle gate-way, and two walks,
+and several peasants, and groves of trees which rise in excellent
+harmony with the fall of my green damask curtains--new, since you
+saw me last. Papa insults me with the analogy of a back window in a
+confectioner's shop, but is obviously moved when the sunshine lights
+up the castle, notwithstanding. And Mr. Kenyon and everybody in
+the house grow ecstatic rather than otherwise, as they stand in
+contemplation before it, and tell me (what is obvious without their
+evidence) that the effect is beautiful, and that the whole room
+catches a light from it. Well, and then Mr. Kenyon has given me a new
+table, with a rail round it to consecrate it from Flush's paws, and
+large enough to hold all my varieties of vanities.
+
+I had another letter from Miss Martineau the other day, and she says
+she has a 'hat of her own, a parasol of her own,' and that she can
+'walk a mile with ease.' _What do miracles mean_? Miracle or not,
+however, one thing is certain--it is very joyful; and her own
+sensations on being removed suddenly from the verge of the prospect
+of a most painful death--a most painful and lingering death--must be
+strange and overwhelming.
+
+I hope I may hear soon from you that you had much pleasure at Clifton,
+and some benefit in the air and change, and that dear Mr. Martin and
+yourself are both as well as possible. Do you take in 'Punch'? If not,
+you _ought_. Mr. Kenyon and I agreed the other day that we should be
+more willing 'to take our politics' from 'Punch' than from any other
+of the newspaper oracles. 'Punch' is very generous, and I like him for
+everything, except for his rough treatment of Louis Philippe, whom
+I believe to be a great man--for a king. And then, it is well worth
+fourpence to laugh once a week. I do recommend 'Punch' to you.[114]
+Douglas Jerrold is the editor, I fancy, and he has a troop of 'wits,'
+such as Planche, Titmarsh, and the author of 'Little Peddlington,' to
+support him....
+
+Now I have written enough to tire you, I am sure. May God bless
+you both! Did you read 'Coningsby,' that very able book, without
+character, story, or specific teaching? It is well worth reading, and
+worth wondering over. D'Israeli, who is a man of genius, has written,
+nevertheless, books which will live longer, and move deeper. But
+everybody should read 'Coningsby.' It is a sign of the times. Believe
+me, my dearest Mrs. Martin,
+
+Your very affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To John Kenyon_
+Tuesday, October 8, 1844.
+
+Thank you, my dearest cousin, for your kind little note, which I run
+the chance of answering by that Wednesday's post you think you may
+wait for. So (_via_ your table) I set about writing to you, and the
+first word, of course, must be an expression of my contentment with
+the 'Examiner' review. Indeed, I am more than contented--delighted
+with it. I had some dread, vaguely fashioned, about the 'Examiner';
+the very delay looked ominous. And then, I thought to myself, though
+I did not say, that if Mr. Forster praised the verses on Flush to you,
+it was just because he had no sympathy for anything else. But it is
+all the contrary, you see, and I am the more pleased for the want of
+previous expectation; and I must add that if _you_ were so kind as to
+be glad of being associated with me by Mr. Forster's reference, _I_
+was so _human_ as to be very very glad of being associated with _you_
+by the same. Also you shall criticise 'Geraldine' exactly as you
+like--mind, I don't think it all so rough as the extracts appear to
+be, and some variety is attained by that playing at ball with
+the _pause_, which causes the apparent roughness--still you shall
+criticise 'Geraldine' exactly as you like. I have a great fancy for
+writing some day a longer poem of a like class--a poem comprehending
+the aspect and manners of modern life, and flinching at nothing of the
+conventional. I think it might be done with good effect. You said once
+that Tennyson had done it in 'Locksley Hall,' and I half agreed with
+you. But looking at 'Locksley Hall' again, I find that not much has
+been done in that _way_, noble and passionate and _full_ as the poem
+is in other ways. But there is no story, no _manners_, no modern
+allusion, except in the grand general adjuration to the 'Mother-age,'
+and no approach to the treatment of a conventionality. But Crabbe, as
+you say, has done it, and Campbell in his 'Theodore' in a few touches
+was near to do it; but _Hayley_ clearly apprehends the species of poem
+in his 'Triumphs of Temper' and 'Triumphs of Music,' and so did Miss
+Seward, who called it the '_poetical novel_.' Now I do think that a
+true poetical novel--modern, and on the level of the manners of the
+day--might be as good a poem as any other, and much more popular
+besides. Do you not think so?
+
+I had a letter from dear Miss Mitford this morning, with yours, but I
+can find nothing in it that you will care to hear again. She complains
+of the vagueness of 'Coningsby,' and praises the French writers--a
+sympathy between us, that last, which we wear hidden in our sleeves
+for the sake of propriety. Not a word of coming to London, though I
+asked. Neither have I heard again from Miss Martineau....
+
+Ever most affectionately and gratefully yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 114: It will be remembered that 'Punch' had only been in
+existence for three years at this time, which will account for this
+apparently superfluous advice.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+October 15, 1844.
+
+... Not a word more have I heard from Miss Martineau; and shall not
+soon, perhaps, as she is commanded not to write, not to read--to do
+nothing, in fact, except the getting better. I am not, I confess,
+quite satisfied myself. But she herself appears to be so altogether,
+and she speaks of '_symptoms_ having given way,' implying a structural
+change. Yes, I use the common phrase in respect to mesmerism, and
+think 'there is something in it.' Only I think, besides, that,
+if something, there must be a great deal in it. Clairvoyance has
+precisely the same evidence as the phenomenon of the trance has, and
+scientific and philosophical minds are recognising all the phenomena
+_as facts_ on all sides of us. Mr. Kenyon's is the best distinction,
+and the immense quantity of _humbug_ which embroiders the truth
+over and over, and round and round, makes it needful: 'I believe in
+mesmerism, but not in _mesmerists_.'
+
+We have had no other letter from our Egyptians, but can wait a little
+longer without losing our patience.
+
+The blind rises in favour, and the ivy would not fall, if it would but
+live. Alas! I am going to try _guano_ as a last resource. You see, in
+painting the windows, papa was forced to have it taken down, and the
+ivy that grows on ruins and oaks is not usually taken down 'for the
+nonce.' I think I shall have a myrtle grove in two or three large pots
+inside the window. I have a mind to try it.
+
+I heard twice from dear Mr. Kenyon at Dover, where he was detained by
+the weather, but not since his entrance into France. Which is grand
+enough word for the French Majesty itself--'entrance into France.' By
+the way, I do hope you have some sympathy with me in my respect for
+the King of the French--that right kingly king, Louis Philippe. If
+France had _borne_ more liberty, he would not have withheld it, and,
+for the rest, and in all truly royal qualities, he is the noblest
+king, according to my idea, in Europe--the most royal king in the
+encouragement of art and literature, and in the honoring of artists
+and men of letters. Let a young unknown writer accomplish a successful
+tragedy, and the next day he sits at the king's table--not in a
+metaphor, but face to face. See how different the matter is in our
+court, where the artists are shown up the back stairs, and where no
+poet (even by the back stairs) can penetrate, unless so fortunate
+as to be a banker also. What is the use of kings and queens in these
+days, except to encourage arts and letters? Really I cannot see.
+Anybody can hunt an otter out of a box--who has nerve enough.
+
+I had a letter from America to-day, and heard that my book was not
+published there until the fifth of this October. Still, a few copies
+had preceded the publication, and made way among the critics, and
+several reviews were in the course of germinating very greenly. Yes,
+I was delighted with the 'Examiner,' and all the more so from having
+interpreted the long delay of the notice, the gloomiest manner
+possible. My friends try to persuade me that the book is making some
+impression, and I am willing enough to be convinced. Thank you for all
+your kind sympathy, my dear friend.
+
+Now, do write to me soon again! Have you read Dr. Arnold's Life? I
+have not, but am very anxious to do so, from the admirable extracts
+in the 'Examiner' of last Saturday, and also from what I hear of it in
+other quarters. That Dr. Arnold must have been _a man_, in the largest
+and noblest sense. May God bless you, both of you! I think of you,
+dearest Mrs. Martin, much, and remain
+
+Your very affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To John Kenyon_
+Saturday, October 29, 1844.
+
+The moral of your letter, my dearest cousin, certainly is that no
+green herb of a secret will spring up and flourish between you and me.
+
+The loss of Flush was a secret. My aunt's intention of coming to
+England (for I know not how to explain what she said to you, but by
+the supposition of an unfulfilled intention!) was a secret. And Mr.
+Chorley's letter to me was a third secret. All turned into light!
+
+For the last, you may well praise me for discretion. The letter he
+wrote was pleasanter to me than many of the kindnesses (apart from
+your own) occasioned by my book--and when you asked me once 'what
+letters I had received,' if ever a woman deserved to be canonised
+for her silence, _I_ did! But the effort was necessary--for he
+particularly desired that I would not mention to 'our common friends'
+the circumstance of his having written to me; and 'common friends'
+could only stand for 'Mr. Kenyon and Miss Mitford.' Of course what you
+tell me, of his liking the poems better still, is delightful to hear;
+but he reviewed them in the 'Athenaeum' surely! The review we read in
+the 'Athenaeum' was by his hand--could not be mistaken ...
+
+Well; but Flushie! It is too true that he has been lost--lost and won;
+and true besides that I was a good deal upset by it _meo more_; and
+that I found it hard to eat and sleep as usual while he was in the
+hands of his enemies. It is a secret too. We would not tell papa of
+it. Papa would have been angry with the unfortunate person who took
+Flush out without a chain; and would have kicked against the pricks of
+the necessary bribing of the thief in order to the getting him back.
+Therefore we didn't tell papa; and as I had a very bad convenient
+headache the day my eyes were reddest, I did not see him (except once)
+till Flush was on the sofa again. As to the thieves, you are very kind
+to talk daggers at them; and I feel no inclination to say 'Don't.' It
+is quite too bad and cruel. And think of their exceeding insolence
+in taking Flush away from this very door, while Arabel was waiting to
+have the door opened on her return from her walk; and in observing (as
+they gave him back for six guineas and a half) that they intended to
+have him again at the earliest opportunity and that _then_ they must
+have _ten_ guineas! I tell poor Flushie (while he looks very earnestly
+in my face) that he and I shall be ruined at last, and that I shall
+have no money to buy him cakes; but the worst is the anxiety! Whether
+I am particularly silly, or not, I don't know; they say here, that I
+am; but it seems to me impossible for anybody who really cares for a
+dog, to think quietly of his being in the hands of those infamous men.
+And then I know how poor Flushie must feel it. When he was brought
+home, he began to cry in his manner, whine, as if his heart was full!
+It was just what I was inclined to do myself--' and thus was Flushie
+lost and won.'
+
+But we are both recovered now, thank you; and intend to be very
+prudent for the future. I am delighted to think of your being in
+England; it is the next best thing to your being in London. In regard
+to Miss Martineau, I agree with you word for word; but I cannot
+overcome an additional _horror_, which you do not express, or feel
+probably.
+
+There is an excellent refutation of Puseyism in the 'Edinburgh
+Review'--by whom? and I have been reading besides the admirable
+paper by Macaulay in the same number. And now I must be done; having
+resolved to let you hear without a post's delay. Otherwise I might
+have American news for you, as I hear that a packet has come in.
+
+My brothers arrived in great spirits at Malta, after a _three weeks'
+voyage_ from Gibraltar; and must now be in Egypt, I think and trust.
+
+May God bless you, my dear cousin.
+
+Most affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+50 Wimpole Street: November 5, 1844.
+
+Well, but am I really so bad? ' _Et tu_!' Can _you_ call me careless?
+Remember all the altering of manuscript and proof--and remember how
+the obscurities used to fly away before your cloud-compelling, when
+you were the Jove of the criticisms! That the books (I won't call
+them _our_ books when I am speaking of the faults) are remarkable for
+defects and superfluities of evil, I can see quite as well as another;
+but then I won't admit that ' it comes' of my carelessness, and
+refusing to take pains. On the contrary, my belief is, that very few
+writers called ' correct ' who have selected classical models to work
+from, pay more laborious attention than I do habitually to the forms
+of thought and expression. ' Lady Geraldine ' was an exception in her
+whole history. If I write fast sometimes (and the historical fact is
+that what has been written fastest, has pleased most), l am not apt
+to print without consideration. I appeal to Philip sober, if I am!
+My dearest cousin, do remember! As to the faults, I do not think of
+defending them, be very sure. My consolation is, that I may try to do
+better in time, if I may talk of time. The worst fault of all, as far
+as expression goes (the adjective-substantives, whether in prose or
+verse, I cannot make up my mind to consider faulty), is that kind of
+obscurity which is the same thing with inadequate expression. Be very
+sure--try to be very sure--that I am not obstinate and self-opiniated
+beyond measure. To _you_ in case, who have done so much for me, and
+who think of me so more than kindly, I feel it to be both duty and
+pleasure to defer and yield. Still, you know, we could not, if we were
+ten years about it, alter down the poems to the terms of all these
+reviewers. You would not desire it, if it were possible. I do not
+remember that you suggested any change in the verse on Aeschylus. The
+critic[115] mistakes my allusion, which was to the fact that in the
+acting of the Eumenides, when the great tragic poet did actually
+'frown as the gods did,' women fell down fainting from the benches.
+I did not refer to the effect of his human countenance 'during
+composition.' But I am very grateful to the reviewer whoever he may
+be--very--and with need. See how the 'Sun' shines in response to
+'Blackwood' (thank you for sending me that notice), when previously we
+had had but a wintry rag from the same quarter! No; if I am not spoilt
+by _your kindness_, I am not likely to be so by any of these exoteric
+praises, however beyond what I expected or deserved. And then I am
+like a bird with one wing broken. Throw it out of the window; and
+after the first feeling of pleasure in liberty, it falls heavily. I
+have had moments of great pleasure in hearing whatever good has been
+thought of the poems; but the feeling of _elation_ is too strong or
+rather too _long_ for me....
+
+Can it be true that Mr. Newman has at last joined the Church of
+Rome?[116] If it is true, it will do much to prove to the most
+illogical minds the real character of the late movement. It will prove
+what the _point of sight_ is, as by the drawing of a straight line.
+Miss Mitford told me that he had lately sent a message to a R.
+Catholic convert from the English Church, to the effect--'you have
+done a good deed, but not at a right time.' It can but be a question
+of time, indeed, to the whole party; at least to such as are
+logical--and honest.... [_Unsigned_]
+
+[Footnote 115: In _Blackwood_.]
+
+[Footnote 116: Newman did not actually enter the Church of Rome until
+nearly a year later, in October 1845.]
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+50 Wimpole Street: November 8, 1844.
+
+Thank you, my dear dear cousin, for the kind thought of sending me Mr.
+Eagles's letter, and most for your own note. You know we _both_ saw
+that he couldn't have written the paper in question; we _both_ were
+poets and prophets by that sign, but I hope he understands that I
+shall gratefully remember what his intention was. As to his 'friend'
+who told him that I had 'imitated Tennyson,' why I can only say and
+feel that it is very particularly provoking to hear such things said,
+and that I wish people would find fault with my 'metre' in the place
+of them. In the matter of 'Geraldine' I shall not be puffed up. I
+shall take to mind what you suggest. Of course, if you find it hard to
+read, it must be my fault. And then the fact of there being a _story_
+to a poem will give a factitious merit in the eyes of many critics,
+which could not be an occasion of vainglory to the consciousness of
+the most vainglorious of writers. You made me smile by your suggestion
+about the aptitude of critics aforesaid for courting Lady Geraldines.
+Certes--however it may be--the poem has had more attention than its
+due. Oh, and I must tell you that I had a letter the other day
+from Mr. Westwood (one of my correspondents unknown) referring to
+'Blackwood,' and observing on the mistake about Goethe. 'Did you not
+mean "fell" the verb,' he said, 'or do _I_ mistake?' So, you see, some
+people in the world did actually understand what I meant. I am eager
+to prove that possibility sometimes.
+
+How full of life of mind Mr. Eagles's letter is. Such letters always
+bring me to think of Harriet Martineau's pestilent plan of doing to
+destruction half of the intellectual life of the world, by suppressing
+every mental breath breathed through the post office. She was not in
+a state of clairvoyance when she said such a thing. I have not heard
+from her, but you observed what the 'Critic' said of William Howitt's
+being empowered by her to declare the circumstances of her recovery?
+
+Again and again have I sent for Dr. Arnold's 'Life,' and I do hope to
+have it to-day. I am certain, by the extracts, besides your opinion,
+that I shall be delighted with it.
+
+Why shouldn't Miss Martineau's apocalyptic housemaid[117] tell us
+whether Flush has a soul, and what is its 'future destination'? As
+to the fact of his soul, I have long had a strong opinion on it. The
+'grand peut-etre,' to which 'without revelation' the human argument is
+reduced, covers dog-nature with the sweep of its fringes.
+
+Did you ever read Bulwer's 'Eva, or the Unhappy Marriage'? _That_ is
+a sort of poetical novel, with modern manners inclusive. But Bulwer,
+although a poet in prose, writes all his rhythmetical compositions
+somewhat prosaically, providing an instance of that curious difference
+which exists between the poetical writer and the poet. It is easier
+to give the instance than the reason, but I suppose the cause of the
+rhythmetical impotence must lie somewhere in the want of the power of
+concentration. For is it not true that the most prolix poet is capable
+of briefer expression than the least prolix prose writer, or am I
+wrong?...
+
+Your ever affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 117: Miss Martineau, besides having been cured by mesmerism
+herself, was blest with a housemaid who had visions under the same
+influence, concerning which Miss Martineau subsequently wrote at great
+length in the _Athenaeum_.]
+
+
+_To Cornelius Mathews_
+50 Wimpole Street: November 14, 1844.
+
+My dear Mr. Mathews,--I write to tell you--only that there is nothing
+to tell--only in guard of my gratitude, lest you should come to
+think all manner of evil of me and of my supposed propensity to let
+everything pass like Mr. Horne's copies of the American edition of his
+work, _sub silentio_. Therefore I must write, and you are to please to
+understand that I have not up to this moment received either letter or
+book by the packet of October 10 which was charged, according to your
+intimation, with so much. I, being quite out of patience and out of
+breath with expectation, have repeatedly sent to Mr. Putnam, and he
+replies with undisturbed politeness that the ship has come in, and
+that his part and lot in her, together with mine, remain at the
+disposal of the Custom-house officers, and may remain some time
+longer. So you see how it is. I am waiting--simply _waiting_, and it
+is better to let you know that I am not forgetting instead.
+
+In the meantime, your kindness will be glad to learn of the prosperity
+of my poems in my own country. I am more than satisfied in my most
+sanguine hope for them, and a little surprised besides. The critics
+have been good to me. 'Blackwood' and 'Tait' have this month both been
+generous, and the 'New Monthly' and 'Ainsworth's Magazine' did what
+they could. Then I have the 'Examiner' in my favor, and such heads and
+hearts as are better and purer than the purely critical, and I am very
+glad altogether, and very grateful, and hope to live long enough to
+acknowledge, if not to justify, much unexpected kindness. Of course,
+some hard criticism is mixed with the liberal sympathy, as you will
+see in 'Blackwood,' but some of it I deserve, even in my own eyes; and
+all of it I am willing to be patient under. The strange thing is, that
+without a single personal friend among these critics, they should have
+expended on me so much 'gentillesse,' and this strangeness I feel
+very sensitively. Mr. Horne has not returned to England yet, and in a
+letter which I received from him some fortnight ago he desired to have
+my book sent to him to Germany, just as if he never meant to return to
+England again. I answered his sayings, and reiterated, in a way
+that would make you smile, my information about your having sent the
+American copies to him. I made my _oyez_ very plain and articulate.
+He won't say again that he never heard of it--be sure of _that_. Well,
+and then Mr. Browning is not in England either, so that whatever you
+send for _him_ must await his return from the east or the west or
+the south, wherever he is. The new spirit of the age is a wandering
+spirit. Mr. Dickens is in Italy. Even Miss Mitford _talks_ of going to
+France, which is an extreme case for _her_. Do you never feel inclined
+to flash across the Atlantic to us, or can you really remain still in
+one place?
+
+I must not forget to assure you, dear Mr. Mathews, as I may
+conscientiously do, even before I have looked into or received the
+'Democratic Review,' that whatever fault you may find with me, my
+strongest feeling on reading your article will or must be _the sense
+of your kindness_. Of course I do not expect, nor should I wish, that
+your personal interest in me (proved in so many ways) would destroy
+your critical faculty in regard to me. Such an expectation, if I had
+entertained it, would have been scarcely honorable to either of us,
+and I may assure you that I never did entertain it. No; be at
+rest about the article. It is not likely that I shall think it
+'inadequate.' And I may as well mention in connection with it that
+before you spoke of reviewing me _I_ (in my despair of Mr. Horne's
+absence, and my impotency to assist your book) had thrown into my
+desk, to watch for some opportunity of publication, a review of your
+'Poems on Man,' from my own hand, and that I am still waiting and
+considering and taking courage before I send it to some current
+periodical. There is a difficulty--there is a feeling of shyness on
+my part, because, as I told you, I have no personal friend or
+introduction among the pressmen or the critics, and because the
+'Athenaeum,' which I should otherwise turn to first, has already
+treated of your work, and would not, of course, consent to reconsider
+an expressed opinion. Well, I shall do it somewhere. Forgive me the
+_appearance_ of my impotency under a general aspect.
+
+Ah, you cannot guess at the estate of poetry in the eyes of even
+such poetical English publishers as Mr. Moxon, who can write sonnets
+himself. Poetry is in their eyes just a desperate speculation. A poet
+must have tried his public before he tries the publisher--that is,
+before he expects the publisher to run a risk for him. But I will make
+any effort you like to suggest for any work of yours; I only tell you
+how _things are_. By the way, if I ever told you that Tennyson was
+ill, I may as rightly tell you now that he is well, again, or was
+when I last heard of him. I do not know him personally. Also Harriet
+Martineau can walk five miles a day with ease, and believes in
+mesmerism with all her strength. Mr. Putnam had the goodness to write
+and open his reading room to me, who am in prison instead in mine.
+
+May God bless you. Do let me hear from you soon, and believe me ever
+your friend,
+
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+November 16, 1844.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin, ... To-day I perceive in the 'contents' of the
+new 'Westminster Review' that my poems are reviewed in it, and I hope
+that you will both be interested enough in my fortunes to read at the
+library what may be said of them. Did George tell you that he imagined
+(as I also did) the 'Blackwood' paper to be by Mr. Phillimore the
+barrister? Well, Mr. Phillimore denies it altogether, has in fact
+quarrelled with Christopher North, and writes no more for him, so that
+I am quite at a loss now where to carry my gratitude.
+
+Do write to me soon. I hear that everybody should read Dr. Arnold's
+'Life.' Do you know also 'E[=o]then,' a work of genius? You have read,
+perhaps, Hewitt's 'Visits to Remarkable Places' in the first series
+and second; and Mrs. Jameson's 'Visits and Sketches' and 'Life
+in Mexico.' Do you know the 'Santa Fe Expedition,' and Custine's
+'Russia,' and 'Forest Life' by Mrs. Clavers? You will think that my
+associative process is in a most disorderly state, by all this running
+up and down the stairs of all sorts of subjects, in the naming of
+books. I would write a list, more as a list should be written, if I
+could see my way better, and this will do for a beginning in any case.
+You do not like romances, I believe, as I do, and then nearly every
+romance now-a-days sets about pulling the joints of one's heart and
+soul out, as a process of course. 'Ellen Middleton' (which I have
+not read yet) is said to be very painful. Do you know Leigh Hunt's
+exquisite essays called 'The Indicator and Companion' &c., published
+by Moxon? I hold them at once in delight and reverence. May God bless
+you both.
+
+I am ever your affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+50 Wimpole Street:
+Tuesday, November 26, 1844 [postmark].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I thank you much for your little notes; and
+you know too well how my sympathy answers you, 'as face to face in a
+glass,' for me to assure you of it here. Your account of yourselves
+altogether I take to be satisfactory, because I never expected anybody
+to gain strength very _rapidly_ while in the actual endurance of hard
+medical discipline. I am glad you have found out a trustworthy adviser
+at Dover, but I feel nevertheless that you may _both trust_ and _hope_
+in Dr. Bright, of whom I heard the very highest praises the other
+day....
+
+Now really I don't know why I should fancy you to be so deeply
+interested in Dr. Bright, that all this detail should be necessary.
+What I _do_ want you to be interested in, is in Miss Martineau's
+mesmeric experience,[118] for a copy of which, in the last
+'Athenaeum,' I have sent ever since yesterday, in the intention of
+sending it to you. You will admit it to be curious as philosophy, and
+beautiful as composition; for the rest, I will not answer. Believing
+in mesmerism as an agency, I hesitate to assent to the necessary
+connection between Miss Martineau's cure and the power; and also I am
+of opinion that unbelievers will not very generally become converts
+through her representations. There is a tone of exaltation which
+will be observed upon, and one or two sentences are suggestive to
+scepticism. I will send it to you when I get the number. I understand
+that an intimate friend of hers (a lady) travelled down from the
+south of England to Tynemouth, simply to try to prevent the public
+exposition, but could not prevail. Mr. Milnes has, besides, been her
+visitor. He is fully a believer, she says, and affirms to having seen
+the same phenomena in the East, but regards the whole subject with
+_horror_. This still appears to be Mrs. Jameson's feeling, as you
+know it is mine. Mrs. Jameson came again to this door with a note, and
+overcoming by kindness, was let in on Saturday last; and sate with me
+for nearly an hour, and so ran into what my sisters call 'one of my
+sudden intimacies' that there was an embrace for a farewell. Of course
+she won my affections through my vanity (Mr. Martin will be sure to
+say, so I hasten to anticipate him) and by exaggerations about my
+poetry; but really, and although my heart beat itself almost to pieces
+for fear of seeing her as she walked upstairs, I do think I should
+have liked her _without the flattery_. She is very light--has the
+lightest of eyes, the lightest of complexions; no eyebrows, and what
+looked to me like very pale red hair, and thin lips of no colour at
+all. But with all this indecision of exterior the expression is
+rather acute than soft; and the conversation in its principal
+characteristics, analytical and examinative; throwing out no thought
+which is not as clear as glass--critical, in fact, in somewhat of
+an austere sense. I use 'austere,' of course, in its intellectual
+relation, for nothing in the world could be kinder, or more graciously
+kind, than her whole manner and words were to me. She is coming again
+in two or three days, she says. Yes, and she said of Miss Martineau's
+paper in the 'Athenaeum,' that she very much doubted the wisdom of
+publishing it now; and that for the public's sake, if not for her own,
+Miss M. should have waited till the excitement of recovered health
+had a little subsided. She said of mesmerism altogether that she was
+inclined to believe it, but had not finally made up her convictions.
+She used words so exactly like some I have used myself that I must
+repeat them, 'that if there was _anything_ in it, there was _so much_,
+it became scarcely possible to limit consequences, and the subject
+grew awful to contemplate.' ...
+
+On Saturday I had some copies of my American edition, which dazzle the
+English one; and one or two reviews, transatlantically transcendental
+in 'oilie flatterie.' And I heard yesterday from the English publisher
+Moxon, and he was 'happy to tell me that the work was selling very
+well,' and this without an inquiry on my part. To say the truth, I
+was _afraid_ to inquire. It is good news altogether. The 'Westminster
+Review' won't be out till next month.
+
+Wordsworth is so excited about the railroad that his wife persuaded
+him to go away to recover his serenity, but he has returned raging
+worse than ever. He says that fifty members of Parliament have
+promised him their opposition. He is wrong, I think, but I also
+consider that if the people remembered his genius and his age, and
+suspended the obnoxious Act for a few years, they would be right....
+
+May God bless you both.
+
+Most affectionately yours,
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 118: The _Athenaum_ of November 23 contained the first of
+a series of articles by Miss Martineau, giving her experiences of
+mesmerism.]
+
+
+_To James Martin_
+December 10, 1844.
+
+I have been thinking of you, my dear Mr. Martin, more and more the
+colder it has been, and had made up my mind to write to-day, let me
+feel as dull as I might. So, the vane only turns to _you_ instead
+of to dearest Mrs. Martin in consequence of your letter--your letter
+makes _that_ difference. I should have written to Dover in any
+case....
+
+You are to know that Miss Martineau's mesmeric experience is only
+peculiar as being Harriet Martineau's, otherwise it exhibits the mere
+commonplaces of the agency. You laugh, I see. I wish I could laugh
+too. I mean, I seriously wish that I could disbelieve in the reality
+of the power, which is in every way most repulsive to me....
+
+Mrs. Martin is surprised at me and others on account of our 'horror.'
+Surely it is a natural feeling, and she would herself be liable to it
+if she were _more credulous_. The agency seems to me like the shaking
+of the flood-gates placed by the Divine Creator between the unprepared
+soul and the unseen world. Then--the subjection of the will and vital
+powers of one individual to those of another, to the extent of the
+apparent solution of the very identity, is abhorrent from me. And then
+(as to the expediency of the matter, and to prove how far believers
+may be carried) there is even now a religious sect at Cheltenham, of
+persons who call themselves advocates of the 'third revelation,' and
+profess to receive their system of theology entirely from patients in
+the sleep.
+
+In the meantime, poor Miss Martineau, as the consequence of her desire
+to speak the truth as she apprehends it, is overwhelmed with atrocious
+insults from all quarters. For my own part I would rather fall into
+the hands of God than of man, and suffer as she did in the body,
+instead of being the mark of these cruel observations. But she has
+singular strength of mind, and calmly continues her testimony.
+
+Miss Mitford writes to me: 'Be sure it is _all true_. I see it every
+day in my Jane'--her maid, who is mesmerised for deafness, but not,
+I believe, with much success curatively. As a remedy, the success
+has been far greater in the Martineau case than in others. With
+Miss Mitford's maid, the sleep is, however, produced; and the girl
+professed, at the third _seance_, to be able to _see behind her_.
+
+I am glad I have so much interesting matter to look forward to in the
+'Eldon Memoirs' as Pincher's biography. I am only in the first volume.
+Are English chancellors really made of such stuff? I couldn't have
+thought it. Pincher will help to reconcile me to the Law Lords
+perhaps.
+
+And, to turn from Tory legislators, I am vainglorious in announcing to
+you that the Anti-Corn-Law League has taken up my poems on the top of
+its pikes as antithetic to 'War and Monopoly.' Have I not had a sonnet
+from Gutter Lane? And has not the journal called the 'League' reviewed
+me into the third heaven, high up--above the pure ether of the five
+points? Yes, indeed. Of course I should be a (magna) chartist for
+evermore, even without the previous predilection.
+
+And what do you and Mrs. Martin say about O'Connell? Did you read
+last Saturday's 'Examiner'? Tell her that I welcomed her kind letter
+heartily, and that this is an answer to both of you. My best love
+to her always. May God bless you, dear Mr. Martin! Probably I have
+written your patience to an end. If papa or anybody were in the room,
+I should have a remembrance for you.
+
+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' 'a 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[119] 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[120] (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.'
+
+[Footnote 119: A great robbery from Rogers' bank on November 23,
+1844, in which the thieves carried off 40,000L worth of notes, besides
+specie and securities.]
+
+[Footnote 120: Strathfieldsaye, the Duke of Wellington's house.]
+
+
+_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.[121]
+
+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.
+
+[Footnote 121: William Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, the first part of
+whose _Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect_ appeared in 1844.]
+
+
+_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 Ennuyee' (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 societe_.
+
+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.'[122] 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_.
+
+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[123] 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.
+
+[Footnote 122: Probably Miss Anne Seward, a minor poetess who enjoyed
+considerable popularity at the end of the eighteenth century. Her
+elegies on Captain Cook and Major Andre went through several editions,
+as did her _Louisa_, a poetical novel, a class of composition in
+which she was the predecessor of Mrs. Browning herself. Her collected
+poetical works were edited after her death by Sir Walter Scott
+(1810).]
+
+[Footnote 123: The real name of George Sand.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Chorley_
+[_The beginning of this letter is lost_]
+[1845]
+
+... 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-git_ 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 reading of romances ever new, [Greek: _eis tous aionas_.]
+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.'[124]
+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,'[125] 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?
+
+[Footnote 124: By Hans Andersen; an English translation by Mary Howitt
+was published in 1845.]
+
+[Footnote 125: Duchesses in the French court had the privilege of
+seating themselves on a _tabouret_ or stool while the King took his
+meals; hence the _droit du tabouret_ comes to mean the rank of a
+duchess.]
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Saturday, January 1844 [should be 1845].[126]
+
+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 _seance_ 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 sorry 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_.]
+
+[Footnote 126: The mention of her brothers being at Alexandria is
+sufficient to show that 1845 must be the true date.]
+
+
+
+_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'[127] 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.
+
+[Footnote 127: A copy of the 1838 volume for which Mrs. Martin had
+asked.]
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+Saturday, February 8, 1845.
+
+I return to you, dearest Mr. Kenyon, the two numbers of Jerold
+Douglas's[128] 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.
+
+[Footnote 128: Evidently a slip of the pen for Douglas Jerrold, whose
+'Shilling Magazine' began to come out in 1845.]
+
+
+_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 our 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....
+
+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, [1845].
+
+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[129] 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.
+
+[Footnote 129: By Porson, on the authenticity of I John v. 7.]
+
+
+_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,'[130] 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. All 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.
+
+[Footnote 130: A monster bell for York Minster, then being exhibited
+at the Baker Street Bazaar. Mr. Boyd was an enthusiast on bells and
+bell ringing.]
+
+
+_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.[131]
+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.
+
+[Footnote 131: No doubt _The Swiss Family Robinson_.]
+
+
+_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.[132] 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_.
+
+[Footnote 132: These versions were not published in Mrs. Browning's
+lifetime, but were included in the posthumous _Last Poems_ (1862).
+They now appear in the _Poetical Works_, v. 72-83.]
+
+
+_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[133] 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, should _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.
+
+May God bless you.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+I hear that Guizot suffers intensely, and that there are fears lest he
+may sink. Not that the complaint is mortal.
+
+[Footnote 133: Referring to the Pythagorean doctrine of the sanctity
+of beans.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+Wimpole Street: April 9, 1845.
+
+Poor Hood! Ah! I had feared that the scene was closing on him. And I
+am glad that a little of the poor gratitude of the world is laid down
+at his door just now to muffle to his dying ear the harsher sounds
+of life. I forgive much to Sir Robert for the sake of that
+letter--though, after all, the minister is not high-hearted, or made
+of heroic stuff.[134]
+
+I am delighted that you should appreciate Mr. Browning's high
+power--very high, according to my view--very high, and various. Yes,
+'Paracelsus' you _should_ have. 'Sordello' has many fine things in
+it, but, having been thrown down by many hands as unintelligible, and
+retained in mine as certainly of the Sphinxine literature, with all
+its power, I hesitate to be imperious to you in my recommendations of
+it. Still, the book _is_ worth being _studied_--study is necessary
+to it, as, indeed, though in a less degree, to all the works of this
+poet; study is peculiarly necessary to it. He is a true poet, and a
+poet, I believe, of a large '_future in-rus, about to be_.' He is only
+growing to the height he will attain.
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+April 1845.
+
+The sin of Sphinxine literature I admit. Have I not struggled hard to
+renounce it? Do I not, day by day? Do you know that I have been
+told that _I_ have written things harder to interpret than Browning
+himself?--only I cannot, cannot believe it--he is so very hard. Tell
+me honestly (and although I attributed the excessive good nature of
+the 'Metropolitan' criticism to you, I _know_ that you can speak the
+truth _truly_!) if anything like the Sphinxineness of Browning, you
+discover in me; take me as far back as 'The Seraphim' volume and
+answer! As for Browning, the fault is certainly great, and the
+disadvantage scarcely calculable, it is so great. He cuts his language
+into bits, and one has to join them together, as young children do
+their dissected maps, in order to make any meaning at all, and to
+study hard before one can do it. Not that I grudge the study or the
+time. The depth and power of the significance (when it is apprehended)
+glorifies the puzzle. With you and me it is so; but with the majority
+of readers, even of readers of poetry, it is not and cannot be so.
+
+The consequence is, that he is not read except in a peculiar circle
+very strait and narrow. He will not die, because the principle of
+life is in him, but he will not live the warm summer life which is
+permitted to many of very inferior faculty, because he does not come
+out into the sun.
+
+Faithfully your friend,
+E.B. BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 134: Hood died on May 3, 1845; while on his deathbed he
+received from Sir Robert Peel the notification that he had conferred
+on him a pension of 100L a year, with remainder to his wife.]
+
+
+The following letter relates to the controversy raging round Miss
+Martineau and her mesmerism. Miss Barrett had evidently referred to it
+in a letter to Mr. Chorley, which has not been preserved.
+
+
+_To Mr. Chorley_
+50 Wimpole Street: April 28, 1845.
+
+Dear Mr. Chorley,--I felt quite sure that you would take my postscript
+for a womanish thing, and a little doubtful whether you would not
+take the whole allusion (in or out of a postscript) for an impertinent
+thing; but the impulse to speak was stronger than the fear of
+speaking; and from the peculiarities of my position, I have come to
+write by impulses just as other people talk by them. Still, if I had
+known that the subject was so painful to you, I certainly would not
+have touched on it, strong as my feeling has been about it, and full
+and undeniable as is my sympathy with our noble-minded friend, both as
+a woman and a thinker. Not that I consider (of course I cannot) that
+she has made out anything like a '_fact_' in the Tynemouth story--not
+that I think the evidence offered in any sort sufficient; take it as
+it was in the beginning and unimpugned--not that I have been otherwise
+than of opinion throughout that she was precipitate and indiscreet,
+however generously so, in her mode and time of advocating the mesmeric
+question; but that she is at liberty as a thinking being (in my mind)
+to hold an opinion, the grounds of which she cannot yet justify to
+the world. Do you not think she may be? Have you not opinions yourself
+beyond what you can prove to others? Have we not all? And because some
+of the links of the outer chain of a logical argument fail, or seem to
+fail, are we therefore to have our 'honours' questioned, because we
+do not yield what is suspended to an inner uninjured chain of at once
+subtler and stronger formation? For what I venture to object to in the
+argument of the 'Athenaeum' is the making a _moral obligation_ of an
+_intellectual act_, which is the first step and gesture (is it not?)
+in all persecution for opinion; and the involving of the 'honour' of
+an opponent in the motion of recantation she is invited to. This I do
+venture to exclaim against. I do cry aloud against this; and I do say
+this, that when we call it 'hard,' we are speaking of it softly. Why,
+consider how it is! The 'Athenaeum' has done quite enough to _disprove
+the proving_ of the wreck story,[135] and no more at all. The
+disproving of the proof of the wreck story is indeed enough to
+disprove the wreck story and to disprove mesmerism itself (as far as
+the proof of mesmerism depends on the proof of the wreck story, and
+no farther) with all doubters and undetermined inquirers; but with the
+very large class of previous _believers_, this disproof of a proof
+is a mere accident, and cannot be expected to have much logical
+consequence. Believing that such things may be as this revelation of
+a wreck, they naturally are less exacting of the stabilities of the
+proving process. What we think probable we do not call severely for
+the proof of. Moreover Miss Martineau is not only a believer in the
+mysteries of mesmerism (and she wrote to me the other day that in
+Birmingham, where she is, she has present cognisance of _three cases
+of clairvoyance_), but she is a believer in the personal integrity
+of her witnesses. She has what she has well called an 'incommunicable
+confidence.' And this, however incommunicable, is sufficiently
+comprehensible to all persons who know what personal faith is, to
+place her 'honour,' I do maintain, high above any suspicion, any
+charge with the breath of man's lips. I am sure you agree with me,
+dear Mr. Chorley--ah! it will be a comfort and joy together. Dear Miss
+Mitford and I often quarrel softly about literary life and its toils
+and sorrows, she against and I in favour of; but we never could differ
+about the worth and comfort of domestic affection.
+
+Ever sincerely yours,
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+I am delighted to hear of the novel. And the comedy?
+
+[Footnote 135: One of the visions of Miss Martineau's 'apocalyptic
+housemaid' related to the wreck of a vessel in which the Tynemouth
+people were much interested. Unfortunately it appeared that news of
+the wreck had reached the town shortly before her vision, and that she
+had been out of doors immediately before submitting to the mesmeric
+trance.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Chorley_
+50 Wimpole Street: April 28, 1845.
+
+Dear Mr. Chorley,--... For Miss Martineau, is it not true that she
+_has_ admitted her wreck story to have no proof? Surely she has.
+Surely she said that the evidence was incapable, at this point of
+time, of justification to the _exoteric_, and that the question had
+sunk now to one of character, to which her opponent answered that it
+had always _been_ one of character. And you must admit that the direct
+and unmitigated manner of depreciating the reputation, not merely
+of Jane Arrowsmith, but of Mrs. Wynyard, a personal friend of Miss
+Martineau's to whom she professes great obligations, could not be
+otherwise than exasperating to a woman of her generous temper, and
+this just in the crisis of her gratitude for her restoration to life
+and enjoyment by the means (as she considers it) of this friend. Not
+that I feel at all convinced of her having been cured by mesmerism;
+I have told her openly that I doubt it a little, and she is not angry
+with me for saying so. Also, the wreck story, and (as you suggest)
+the three new cases of clairvoyance; why, one _cannot_, you know, give
+one's specific convictions to general sweeping testimonies, with a
+mist all round them. Still, I do lean to believing this _class_ of
+mysteries, and I see nothing more incredible in the apocalypse of
+the wreck and other marvels of clairvoyance, than in that singular
+adaptation of another person's senses, which is a common phenomenon
+of the simple forms of mesmerism. If it is credible that a person in
+a mesmeric sleep can taste the sourness of the vinegar on
+another person's palate, I am ready to go the whole length of the
+transmigration of senses. But after all, except from hearing so much,
+I am as ignorant as you are, in my own experience. One of my sisters
+was thrown into a sort of swoon, and could not open her eyelids,
+though she heard what passed, once or twice or thrice; and she might
+have been a prophetess by this time, perhaps, if, partly from her own
+feeling on the subject, and partly from mine, she had not determined
+never to try the experiment again. It is hideous and detestable to my
+imagination; as I confessed to you, it makes my blood run backwards;
+and if I were _you_, I would not (with the nervous weakness you speak
+of) throw myself into the way of it, I really would not. Think of a
+female friend of mine begging me to give her a lock of my hair, or
+rather begging my sister to 'get it for her,' that she might send
+it to a celebrated prophet of mesmerism in Paris, to have an oracle
+concerning me. Did you ever, since the days of the witches, hear a
+more ghastly proposition? It shook me so with horror, I had scarcely
+voice to say 'no,' hough I _did_ say it very emphatically at last, I
+assure you. A lock of my hair for a Parisian prophet? Why, if I had
+yielded, I should have felt the steps of pale spirits treading as
+thick as snow all over my sofa and bed, by day and night, and pulling
+a corresponding lock of hair on my head at awful intervals. _I_, who
+was born with a double set of nerves, which are always out of
+order; the most excitable person in the world, and nearly the most
+superstitious. I should have been scarcely sane at the end of a
+fortnight, I believe of myself! Do you remember the little spirit in
+gold shoe-buckles, who was a familiar of Heinrich Stilling's? Well,
+I should have had a French one to match the German, with Balzac's
+superfine boot-polish in place of the buckles, as surely as I lie here
+a mortal woman.
+
+I congratulate you (amid all cares and anxieties) upon the view
+of Naples in the distance, but chiefly on your own happy and just
+estimate of your selected position in life. It does appear to me
+wonderfully and mournfully wrong, when men of letters, as it is too
+much the fashion for them to do, take to dishonoring their profession
+by fruitless bewailings and gnashings of teeth; when, all the time,
+it must be their own fault if it is not the noblest in the world. Miss
+Mitford treats me as a blind witness in this case; because I have seen
+nothing of the literary world, or any other sort of world, and yet cry
+against her 'pen and ink' cry. It is the cry I least like to hear from
+her lips, of all others; and it is unworthy of them altogether. On the
+lips of a woman of letters, it sounds like jealousy (which it
+cannot be with _her_), as on the lips of a woman of the world, like
+ingratitude. Madame Girardin's 'Ecole des Journalistes' deserved Jules
+Janin's reproof of it; and there is something noble and touching in
+that feeling of brotherhood among men of letters, which he invokes.
+I am so glad to hear you say that I am right, glad for your sake and
+glad for mine. In fact, there is something which is attractive to
+_me_, and which has been attractive ever since I was as high as this
+table, even in the old worn type of Grub Street authors and garret
+poets. Men and women of letters are the first in the whole world to
+me, and I would rather be the least among them, than 'dwell in the
+courts of princes.'
+
+Forgive me for writing so fast and far. Just as if you had nothing to
+do but to read me. Oh, for patience for the novel.
+
+I am, faithfully yours,
+ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.
+
+
+_To Miss Thomson_[136]
+50 Wimpole Street: Friday, May 16, 1845 [postmark].
+
+I write one line to thank you, dear Miss Thomson, for _your_
+translation (so far too liberal, though true to the spirit of my
+intention) of my work for your album. How could it _not_ be a pleasure
+to me to work for you?
+
+As to my using those manuscripts otherwise than in your service, I
+do not at all think of it, and I wish to say this. Perhaps I do not
+(also) partake quite your 'divine fury' for converting our sex into
+Greek scholarship, and I do not, I confess, think it as desirable as
+you do. Where there is a love for poetry, and thirst for beauty strong
+enough to justify labour, let these impulses, which are noble, be
+obeyed; but in the case of the multitude it is different; and the
+mere _fashion of scholarship_ among women would be a disagreeable vain
+thing, and worse than vain. You, who are a Greek yourself, know that
+the Greek language is not to be learnt in a flash of lightning and
+by Hamiltonian systems, but that it swallows up year after year of
+studious life. Now I have a 'doxy' (as Warburton called it), that
+there is no exercise of the mind so little profitable to the mind
+as the study of languages. It is the nearest thing to a passive
+recipiency--is it not?--as a mental action, though it leaves one as
+weary as ennui itself. Women want to be made to _think actively_:
+their apprehension is quicker than that of men, but their defect lies
+for the most part in the logical faculty and in the higher mental
+activities. Well, and then, to remember how our own English poets
+are neglected and scorned; our poets of the Elizabethan age! I would
+rather that my countrywomen began by loving _these_.
+
+Not that I would blaspheme against Greek poetry, or depreciate the
+knowledge of the language as an attainment. I congratulate _you_ on
+it, though I never should think of trying to convert other women into
+a desire for it. Forgive me.
+
+To think of Mr. Burges's comparing my Nonnus to the right Nonnus makes
+my hair stand on end, and the truth is I had flattered myself that
+nobody would take such trouble. I have not much reverence for Nonnus,
+and have pulled him and pushed him and made him stand as I chose,
+never fearing that my naughty impertinences would be brought to light.
+For the rest, I thank you gratefully (and may I respectfully and
+gratefully thank Miss Bayley?) for the kind words of both of you, both
+in this letter and as my sister heard them. It is delightful to me
+to find such grace in the eyes of dearest Mr. Kenyon's friends, and I
+remain, dear Miss Thomson,
+
+
+Truly yours, and gladly,
+E.B.B.
+
+If there should be anything more at any time for me to do, I trust to
+your trustfulness.
+
+[Footnote 136: Afterwards Mdme. Emil Braun; see the letter of
+January 9, 1850. At this time she was engaged in editing an album
+or anthology, to which she had asked Miss Barrett to contribute some
+classical translations.]
+
+
+_To Miss Thomson_
+50 Wimpole Street: Monday [1845].
+
+My dear Miss Thomson,--Believe of me that it can only give me pleasure
+when you are affectionate enough to treat me as a friend; and for
+the rest, nobody need apologise for taking another into the
+vineyards--least Miss Bayley and yourself to _me_. At the first
+thought I felt sure that there must be a great deal about vines in
+these Greeks of ours, and am surprised, I confess, in turning from one
+to another, to find how few passages of length are quotable, and how
+the images drop down into a line or two. Do you know the passage in
+the seventh 'Odyssey' where there is a vineyard in different stages of
+ripeness?--of which Pope has made the most, so I tore up what I
+began to write, and leave you to him. It is in Alcinous' gardens, and
+between the first and second hundred lines of the book. The one from
+the 'Iliad,' open to Miss Bayley's objection, is yet too beautiful
+and appropriate, I fancy, for you to throw over. Curious it is that
+my first recollection went from that shield of Achilles to Hesiod's
+'Shield of Hercules,' from which I send you a version--leaving out
+of it what dear Miss Bayley would object to on a like ground with the
+other:
+
+  Some gathered grapes, with reap-hooks in their hands,
+  While others bore off from the gathering hands
+  Whole baskets-full of bunches, black and white,
+  From those great ridges heaped up into fight,
+  With vine-leaves and their curling tendrils. So
+  They bore the baskets ...
+
+  ... Yes! and all were saying
+  Their jests, while each went staggering in a row
+  Beneath his grape-load to the piper's playing.
+  The grapes were purple-ripe. And here, in fine,
+  Men trod them out, and there they drained the wine.
+
+In the 'Works and Days' Hesiod says again, what is not worth your
+listening to, perhaps:
+
+  And when that Sinus and Orion come
+  To middle heaven, and when Aurora--she
+  O' the rosy fingers--looks inquiringly
+  Full on Arcturus, straightway gather home
+  The general vintage. And, I charge you, see
+  All, in the sun and open air, outlaid
+  Ten days and nights, and five days in the shade.
+  The sixth day, pour in vases the fine juice--
+  The gift of Bacchus, who gives joys for use.
+
+Anacreon talks to the point so well that you must forgive him, I
+think, for being Anacreontic, and take from his hands what is not
+defiled. The translation you send me does not 'smell of Anacreon,' nor
+please me. Where did you get it? Would this be at all fresher?
+
+  Grapes that wear a purple skin,
+  Men and maidens carry in,
+  Brimming baskets on their shoulders,
+  Which they topple one by one
+  Down the winepress. Men are holders
+  Of the place there, and alone
+  Tread the grapes out, crush them down,
+  Letting loose the soul of wine--
+  Praising Bacchus as divine,
+  With the loud songs called his own!
+
+You are aware of the dresser of the vine in Homer's 'Hymn to Mercury'
+translated so exquisitely by Shelley, and of a very beautiful single
+figure in Theocritus besides. Neither probably would suit your
+purpose. In the 'Pax' of Aristophanes there is an idle 'Chorus' who
+talks of looking at the vines and watching the grapes ripen, and
+eating them at last, but there is nothing of vineyard work in it, so I
+dismiss the whole.
+
+For 'Hector and Andromache,' would you like me to try to do it for
+you? It would amuse me, and you should not be bound to do more with
+what I send you than to throw it into the fire if it did not meet
+your wishes precisely. The same observation applies, remember, to this
+little sheet, which I have _kept_--delayed sending--just because I
+wanted to let you have a trial of my strength on 'Andromache' in the
+same envelope; but the truth is that it is not _begun_ yet, partly
+through other occupation, and partly through the lassitude which the
+cold wind of the last few days always brings down on me. Yesterday I
+made an effort, and felt like a broken stick--not even a bent one!
+So wait for a warm day (and what a season we have had! I have been
+walking up and down stairs and pretending to be quite well), and I
+will promise to do my best, and certainly an inferior hand may get
+nearer to touch the great Greek lion's mane than Pope's did.
+
+Will you give my love to dear Miss Bayley? She shall hear from me--and
+_you_ shall, in a day or two. And do not mind Mr. Kenyon. He 'roars as
+softly as a sucking dove;' nevertheless he is an intolerant monster,
+as I half told him the other day.
+
+Believe me, dear Miss Thomson,
+Affectionately yours,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+50 Wimpole Street: May 22, 1845.
+
+Did you persevere with 'Sordello'? I hope so. Be sure that we may all
+learn (as poets) much and deeply from it, for the writer speaks true
+oracles. When you have read it through, then read for relaxation
+and recompense the last 'Bell and Pomegranate' by the same poet, his
+'Colombo's Birthday,' which is exquisite. Only 'Pippa Passes' I lean
+to, or kneel to, with the deepest reverence. Wordsworth has been in
+town, and is gone. Tennyson is still here. He likes London, I hear,
+and hates Cheltenham, where he resides with his family, and he smokes
+pipe after pipe, and does not mean to write any more poems. Are we to
+sing a requiem?
+
+Believe me, faithfully yours,
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Saturday, July 21, 1845 [postmark].
+
+My very dear Friend,--You are kind to exceeding kindness, and I am as
+grateful as any of your long-ago kind invitations ever found me. It is
+something pleasant, indeed, and like a return to life, to be asked by
+you to spend two or three days in your house, and I thank you for this
+pleasantness, and for the goodness, on your own part, which induced
+it. You may be perfectly sure that no Claypon, though he should live
+in Arcadia, would be preferred by me to _you_ as a host, and I wonder
+how you could entertain the imagination of such a thing. Mr. Kenyon,
+indeed, has asked me repeatedly to spend a few hours on a sofa in his
+house, and, the Regent's Park being so much nearer than you are, I
+had promised to think of it. But I have not yet found it possible to
+accomplish even that quarter of a mile's preferment, and my ambition
+is forced to be patient when I begin to think of St. John's Wood. I am
+considerably stronger, and increasing in strength, and in time, with
+a further advance of the summer, I may do 'such things--what they are
+yet, I know not.' Yes, I _know_ that they relate to _you_, and that I
+have a hope, as well as an earnest, affectionate desire, to sit face
+to face with you once more before this summer closes. Do, in the
+meantime, believe that I am very grateful to you for your kind,
+considerate proposal, and that it is not made in vain for my wishes,
+and that I am not likely willingly 'to spend two or three days' with
+anybody in the world before I do so with yourself.
+
+Mr. Hunter has not paid us his usual Saturday's visit, and therefore
+I have no means of answering the questions you put in relation to him.
+We will ask him about 'times and seasons' when next we see him, and
+you shall hear.
+
+Did you ever hear much of Robert Montgomery, commonly called Satan
+Montgomery because the author of 'Satan,' of the 'Omnipresence of the
+Deity,' and of various poems which pass through edition after
+edition, nobody knows how or _why_? I understand that his pew (he is
+a clergyman) is sown over with red rosebuds from ladies of the
+congregation, and that the same fair hands have made and presented to
+him, in the course of a single season, one hundred pairs of slippers.
+Whereupon somebody said to this Reverend Satan, 'I never knew before,
+Mr. Montgomery, that you were a _centipede_'
+
+Dearest Mr. Boyd's affectionate and grateful
+ELIBET.
+
+
+Through the summer of 1845, Miss Barrett, as usual, recovered
+strength, but so slightly that her doctor urged that she should not
+face the winter in England. Plans were accordingly made for her
+going abroad, to which the following letters refer, but the scheme
+ultimately broke down before the prohibition of Mr. Barrett--a
+prohibition for which no valid reason was put forward, and which, to
+say the least, bore the colour of unaccountable indifference to his
+daughter's health and wishes. The matter is of some importance on
+account of its bearing on the action taken by Miss Barrett in the
+autumn of the following year.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Monday, July 29, 1845 [postmark].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I am ashamed not to have written before, and
+yet have courage enough to ask you to write to me as soon as you
+can. Day by day I have had good intentions enough (the fact is)
+about writing, to seem to deserve some good deeds from you, which
+is contrary to all wisdom and reason, I know, but is rather natural,
+after all. What _my_ deeds have been, you will be apt to ask. Why, all
+manner of idleness, which is the most interrupting, you know, of
+all things. The Hedleys have been flitting backwards and forwards,
+staying, some of them, for a month at a time in London, and then
+going, and then coming again; and I have had other visitors, few but
+engrossing 'after their kind.' And I have been _getting well_--which
+is a process--going out into the carriage two or three times a week,
+abdicating my sofa for my armchair, moving from one room to another
+now and then, and walking about mine quite as well as, and with
+considerably more complacency than, a child of two years old.
+Altogether, I do think that if you were kind enough to be glad to see
+me looking better when you were in London, you would be kind enough to
+be still gladder if you saw me now. Everybody praises me, and I
+look in the looking-glass with a better conscience. Also, it is an
+improving improvement, and will be, until, you know, the last hem of
+the garment of summer is lost sight of, and then--and then--I must
+either follow to another climate, or be ill again--_that_ I know, and
+am prepared for. It is but dreary work, this undoing of my Penelope
+web in the winter, after the doing of it through the summer, and the
+more progress one makes in one's web, the more dreary the prospect of
+the undoing of all these fine silken stitches. But we shall see....
+
+Ever your affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Tuesday [October 1845].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Do believe that I have not been, as I have
+seemed, perhaps, forgetful of you through this silence. This last
+proof of your interest and affection for me--in your letter to
+Henrietta--quite rouses me to _speak out_ my remembrance of you, and
+I have been remembering you all the time that I did not speak, only I
+was so perplexed and tossed up and down by doubts and sadnesses as
+to require some shock from without to force the speech from me. Your
+verses, in their grace of kindness, and the ivy from Wordsworth's
+cottage, just made me think to myself that I would write to you before
+I left England, but when you talk really of coming to see me, why, I
+must speak! You overcome me with the sense of your goodness to me.
+
+Yet, after all, I will not have you come! The farewells are bad enough
+which come to us, without our going to seek them, and I would rather
+wait and meet you on the Continent, or in England again, than see you
+now, just to part from you. And you cannot guess how shaken I am, and
+how I cling to every plank of a little calm. Perhaps I am going on the
+17th or 20th. Certainly I have made up my mind to do it, and shall do
+it as a bare matter of duty; and it is one of the most painful acts
+of duty which my whole life has set before me. The road is as rough as
+possible, as far as I can see it. At the same time, being absolutely
+convinced from my own experience and perceptions, and the unhesitating
+advice of two able medical men (Dr. Chambers, one of them), that to
+escape the English winter will be _everything for me_, and that it
+involves the comfort and usefulness of the rest of my life, I have
+resolved to do it, let the circumstances of the doing be as painful
+as they may. If you were to see me you would be astonished to see the
+work of the past summer; but all these improvements will ebb away with
+the sun--while I am assured of permanent good if I leave England. The
+struggle with me has been a very painful one; I cannot enter on the
+how and wherefore at this moment. I had expected more help than I have
+found, and am left to myself, and thrown so on my own sense of duty as
+to feel it right, for the sake of future years, to make an effort to
+stand by myself as I best can. At the same time, I will not tell you
+that at the last hour something may not happen to keep me at home.
+_That_ is neither impossible nor improbable. If, for instance, I find
+that I cannot have one of my brothers with me, why, the going in that
+case would be out of the question. Under ordinary circumstances I
+shall go, and if the experiment of going fails, why, then I shall have
+had the satisfaction of having tried it, and of knowing that it is
+God's will which keeps me a prisoner, and makes me a burden. As it is,
+I have been told that if I had gone years ago I _should be well
+now_; that one lung is very slightly affected, but the nervous system
+_absolutely shattered_, as the state of the pulse proves. I am in the
+habit of taking forty drops of laudanum a day, and _cannot do with
+less_, that is, the medical man _told me_ that I could not do with
+less, saying so with his hand on the pulse. The cold weather, they
+say, acts on the lungs, and produces the weakness indirectly, whereas
+the necessary shutting up acts on the _nerves_ and prevents them from
+having a chance of recovering their tone. And thus, without any mortal
+disease, or any disease of equivalent seriousness, I am thrown out of
+life, out of the ordinary sphere of its enjoyment and activity, and
+made a burden to myself and to others. Whereas there is a means of
+escape from these evils, and God has opened the door of escape, as
+wide as I see it!
+
+In all ways, for my own _happiness's sake_ I do need _a proof_ that
+the evil is irremediable. And this proof (or the counter-proof) I am
+about to seek in Italy.
+
+Dr. Chambers has advised _Pisa_, and I go in the direct steamer from
+the Thames to Leghorn. I have good courage, and as far as my own
+strength goes, sufficient means.
+
+Dearest Mrs. Martin, more than I thought at first of telling you, I
+have told you. Much beside there is, painful to talk of, but I hope
+I have determined to do what is right, and that the determination
+has not been formed ungently, unscrupulously, nor unaffectionately in
+respect to the feelings of others. I would die for some of those, but
+there, has been affection opposed to affection.
+
+This in confidence, of course. May God bless both of you! Pray for me,
+dearest Mrs. Martin. Make up your mind to go somewhere soon--shall you
+not?--before the winter shuts the last window from which you see the
+sun.
+
+Dr. Chambers said that he would 'answer for it' that the voyage would
+rather do me good than harm. Let me suffer sea sickness or not, he
+said, he would answer for its doing me no harm.
+
+I hope to take Arabel with me, and either Storm or Henry. This is my
+hope.
+
+Gratefully and affectionately I think of all your kindness and
+interest. May dear Mr. Martin lose nothing in this coming winter! I
+shall think of you, and not cease to love you. Moreover, you shall
+hear again from
+
+Your ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+October 27, 1845 [postmark].
+
+My very dear Friend,--It is so long since I wrote that I must write, I
+must ruffle your thoughts with a little breath from my side. Listen
+to me, my dear friend. That I have not written has scarcely been my
+fault, but my misfortune rather, for I have been quite unstrung and
+overcome by agitation and anxiety, and thought that I should be able
+to tell you at last of being calmer and happier, but it was all in
+vain. I do not leave England, my dear friend. It is decided that I
+remain on in my prison. It was my full intention to go. I considered
+it to be a clear duty, and I made up my mind to perform it, let the
+circumstances be ever so painfully like obstacles; but when the
+moment came it appeared impossible for me to set out alone, and also
+impossible to take my brother and sister with me without involving
+them in difficulties and displeasure. Now what I could risk for myself
+I could not risk for others, and the very kindness with which they
+desired me not to think of them only made me think of them more, as
+was natural and just. So Italy is given up, and I fall back into the
+hands of God, who is merciful, trusting Him with the time that shall
+be.
+
+Arabel would have gone to tell you all this a fortnight since, but one
+of my brothers has been ill with fever which was not exactly typhus,
+but of the typhoid character, and we knew that you would rather
+not see her under the circumstances. He is very much better (it is
+Octavius), and has been out of bed to-day and yesterday.
+
+Do not reproach me either for not writing or for not going, my very
+dear friend. I have been too heavy-hearted for words; and as to the
+deeds, you would not have wished me to lead others into difficulties,
+the extent and result of which no one could calculate. It would not
+have been just of me.
+
+And _you_, how are you, and what are you doing?
+
+May God bless you, my dear dear friend!
+
+Ever yours I am, affectionately and gratefully,
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To Mr. Chorley_
+50 Wimpole Street: November 1845.
+
+I must trouble you with another letter of thanks, dear Mr. Chorley,
+now that I have to thank you for the value of the work as well as
+the kindness of the gift, for I have read your three volumes of
+'Pomfret'[137] with interest and moral assent, and with great pleasure
+in various ways: it is a pure, true book without effort, which, in
+these days of gesture and rolling of the eyes, is an uncommon thing.
+Also you make your 'private judgment' work itself out quietly as a
+simple part of the love of truth, instead of being the loud heroic
+virtue it is so apt in real life to profess itself, seldom moving
+without drums and trumpets and the flying of party colours. All these
+you have put down rightly, wisely, and boldly, and it was, in my mind,
+no less wise than bold of you to let in that odour of Tyrrwhitism into
+the folds of the purple, and so prevent the very possibility of any
+'prestige.' If I complained it might be that your 'private judgment'
+confines its reference to 'public opinion,' and shuns, too proudly
+perhaps, the higher and deeper relations of human responsibility. But
+there are difficulties, I see, and you choose your path advisedly, of
+course. The best character in the book I take to be _Rose_; I
+cannot hesitate in selecting him. He is so lifelike with the world's
+conventional life that you hear his footsteps when he walks, and,
+indeed, I think his boots were apt to creak just the _soupcon_ of
+a creak, just as a gentleman's boots might, and he is excellently
+consistent, even down to the choice of a wife whom he could patronise.
+I hope you like your own Mr. Rose, and that you will forgive me for
+jilting Grace for Helena, which I could not help any more than Walter
+could. But now, may I venture to ask a question? Would it not have
+been wise of you if, on the point of _reserve_, you had thrown a
+deeper shade of opposition into the characters or rather manners of
+these women? Helena sits like a statue (and could Grace have done
+more?) when she wins Walter's heart in Italy. Afterwards, and by fits
+at the time, indeed, the artist fire bursts from her, but there was a
+great deal of smouldering when there should have been a clear heat to
+justify Walter's change of feeling. And then, in respect to _that_,
+do you really think that your Grace was generous, heroic (with the
+evidence she had of the change) in giving up her engagement? For her
+own sake, could she have done otherwise? I fancy not; the position
+seems surrounded by its own necessities, and no room for a doubt.
+I write on my own doubts, you see, and you will smile at them, or
+understand all through them that if the book had not interested me
+like a piece of real life, I should not find myself _backbiting_ as if
+all these were 'my neighbours.' The pure tender feeling of the closing
+scenes touched me to better purpose, believe me, and I applaud from
+my heart and conscience your rejection of that low creed of 'poetical
+justice' which is neither justice nor poetry which is as degrading
+to virtue as false to experience, and which, thrown from your book,
+raises it into a pure atmosphere at once.
+
+
+I could go on talking, but remind myself (I do hope in time) that I
+might show my gratitude better. With sincere wishes for the success
+of the work (for just see how practically we come to trust to poetical
+justices after all our theories--_I_, I mean, and _mine_!), and with
+respect and esteem for the writer,
+
+I remain very truly yours,
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT.
+
+[Footnote 137: A novel by Mr. Chorley, a copy of which he had
+presented to Miss Barrett.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+50 Wimpole Street: December 1, 1845.
+
+My dear Mrs. Jameson,--I receive your letter, as I must do every sign
+of your being near and inclined to think of me in kindness, gladly,
+and assure you at once that whenever you can spend a half-hour on me
+you will find me enough myself to have a true pleasure in welcoming
+you, say any day except next Saturday or the Monday immediately
+following.
+
+As soon as I heard of your return to England I ventured to hope that
+some good might come of it to me in my room here, besides the general
+good, which I look for with the rest of the public, when the censer
+swings back into the midst of us again. And how good of you, dear Mrs.
+Jameson, to think of me there where the perfumes were set burning; it
+makes me glad and grand that you should have been able to do so. Also
+the kind wishes which came with the thoughts (you say) were not in
+vain, for I have been very idle and very _well_; the angel of the
+summer has done more for me even than usual, and till the last wave of
+his wing I took myself to be quite well and at liberty, and even now
+I am as well as anyone can be who has heard the prison door shut for a
+whole winter at least, and knows it to be the only English alternative
+of a grave. Which is a gloomy way of saying that I am well but forced
+to shut myself up with disagreeable precautions all round, and I ought
+to be gratified instead of gloomy. Believe me that I _shall_ be so
+when you come to see me, remaining in the meanwhile
+
+Most truly yours,
+ELIZABETH BARRETT.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Friday [about December 1845].
+
+I am the guilty person, dearest Mrs. Martin! You would have heard from
+Henrietta at least yesterday, only I persisted in promising to write
+instead of her; and so, if there are reproaches, let them fall. Not
+that I am audacious and without shame! But I have grown familiar with
+an evil conscience as to these matters of not writing when I ought;
+and long ago I grew familiar with your mercy and power of pardoning;
+and then--and then--if silence and sulkiness are proved crimes of mine
+to ever such an extreme, why it would not be unnatural. Do you think I
+was born to live the life of an oyster, such as I _do_ live here? And
+so, the moaning and gnashing of teeth are best done alone and without
+taking anyone into confidence. And so, this is all I have to say for
+myself, which perhaps you will be glad of; for you will be ready
+to agree with me that next to such faults of idleness, negligence,
+silence (call them by what names you please!) as I have been guilty
+of, is the repentance of them, if indeed the latter be not the most
+unpardonable of the two.
+
+And what are you doing so late in Herefordshire? Is dear Mr. Martin
+too well, and tempting the demons? I do hope that the next news of you
+will be of your being about to approach the sun and visit us on the
+road. You do not give your wisdom away to your friends, all of it, I
+hope and trust--not even to Reynolds.
+
+Tell Mr. Martin that a new great daily newspaper, professing
+'_ultraism_' at the right end (meaning his and mine), is making
+'mighty preparation,' to be called the 'Daily News,'[138] to be
+edited by Dickens and to combine with the most liberal politics such
+literature as gives character to the French journals--the objects
+being both to help the people and to give a _status_ to men of
+letters, socially and politically--great objects which will not
+be attained, I fear, by any such means. In the first place, I have
+misgivings as to Dickens. He has not, I think, _breadth_ of mind
+enough for such work, with all his gifts; but we shall see. An immense
+capital has been offered and actually advanced. Be good patriots
+and order the paper. And talking of papers, I hope you read in the
+'Morning Chronicle' Landor's verses to my friend and England's poet,
+Mr. Browning.[139] They have much beauty.
+
+You know that Occy has been ill, and that he is well? I hope you are
+not so behindhand in our news as not to know. For me, I am not yet
+undone by the winter. I still sit in my chair and walk about the room.
+But the prison doors are shut close, and I could dash myself
+against them sometimes with a passionate impatience of the need-less
+captivity. I feel so intimately and from evidence, how, with air and
+warmth together in any fair proportion, I should be as well and happy
+as the rest of the world, that it is intolerable--well, it is better
+to sympathise quietly with Lady--and other energetic runaways, than
+amuse you with being riotous to no end; and it is _best_ to write
+one's own epitaph still more quietly, is it not?...
+
+And oh how lightly I write, and then sigh to think of what different
+colours my spirits and my paper are. Do you know what it is to
+laugh, that you may not cry? Yet I hold a comfort fast.... Your very
+affectionate
+
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 138: The first number of the _Daily News_ appeared on
+January 2l, 1846, under the editorship of Charles Dickens.]
+
+[Footnote 139: The well-known lines beginning, 'There is delight in
+singing.' They appeared in the _Morning Chronicle_ for November 22,
+1845.]
+
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Saturday [February-March 1846].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Indeed it has been tantalising and provoking
+to have you close by without being able to gather a better advantage
+from it than the knowledge that you were suffering. So passes the
+world and the glory of it. I have been vexed into a high state of
+morality, I assure you. Now that you are gone away I hear from you
+again; and it does seem to me that almost always it happens so, and
+that you come to London to be ill and leave it before you can be well
+again. It is a comfort in every case to know of your being better, and
+Hastings is warm and quiet, and the pretty country all round (mind you
+go and see the 'Rocks' _par excellence_)! will entice you into very
+gentle exercise. At the same time, don't wish me into the house you
+speak of. I can lose nothing here, shut up in my prison, and the
+nightingales come to my windows and sing through the sooty panes. If
+I were at Hastings I should risk the chance of recovering liberty, and
+the consolations of slavery would not reach me as they do here. Also,
+if I were to set my heart upon Hastings, I might break it at leisure;
+there would be exactly as much difficulty in turning my face that way
+as towards Italy--ah, you do not understand! And _I do, at last_, I am
+sorry to say; and it has been very long, tedious and reluctant work,
+the learning of the lesson....
+
+Did Henrietta tell you that I heard at last from Miss Martineau, who
+thought me in Italy, she said, and therefore was silent? She has sent
+me her new work (have you read it?) and speaks of her strength and of
+being able to walk fifteen miles a day, which seems to me like a fairy
+tale, or the 'Three-leagued Boots' at least.
+
+What am I doing, to tell you of? Nothing! The winter is kind, and
+this divine 'muggy' weather (is _that_ the technical word and spelling
+thereof?), which gives all reasonable people colds in their heads,
+leaves _me_ the hope of getting back to the summer without much
+injury. A friend of mine--one of the greatest poets in England
+too--brought me primroses and polyanthuses the other day, as they are
+grown in Surrey![140] Surely it must be nearer spring than we think.
+
+Dearest Mrs. Martin, write and say how you are. And say, God bless
+you, both the yous, and mention Mr. Martin particularly, and what your
+plans are.
+
+Ever your affectionate
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 140:
+
+  Beloved, them hast brought me many flowers
+  Plucked in the garden, all the summer through,
+  And winter, and it seemed as if they grew
+  In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers.
+
+_Sonnets from the Portuguese_, xliv.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Tuesday [end of June 1846].
+
+So, my dearest Mrs. Martin, you are quite angry with all of us and
+with me chiefly. Oh, you need not say no! I see it, I understand it,
+and shall therefore take up my own cause precisely as if I were an
+injured person. In the first place, dearest Mrs. Martin, when you
+wrote to me (at last!) to say that we were both guilty correspondents,
+you should have spoken in the singular number; for I was not guilty
+at all, I beg to say, while you were on the Continent. You were
+uncertain, you said, on going, where you should go and how long
+you should stay, and you promised to write and give me some sort of
+address--a promise never kept--and where was I to write to you? I
+heard for the first time, from the Peytons, of your being at Pau, and
+then you were expected at home. So innocent I am, and because it is
+a pleasure rather rare to make a sincere profession of innocence, I
+meant to write to you at least ten days ago; and then (believe me you
+will, without difficulty) the dreadful death of poor Mr. Haydon,[141]
+the artist, quite upset me, and made me disinclined to write a word
+beyond necessary ones. I thank God that I never saw him--poor gifted
+Haydon--but, a year and a half ago, we had a correspondence which
+lasted through several months and was very pleasant while it lasted.
+Then it was dropped, and only a few days before the event he wrote
+three or four notes to me to ask me to take charge of some papers
+and pictures, which I acceded to as once I had done before. He was
+constantly in pecuniary difficulty, and in apprehension of the seizure
+of goods; and nothing of _fear_ suggested itself to my mind--nothing.
+The shock was very great. Oh! I do not write to you to write of this.
+Only I would have you understand the real case, and that it is not an
+excuse, and that it was natural for me to be shaken a good deal. No
+artist is left behind with equal largeness of poetical conception! If
+the hand had always obeyed the soul, he would have been a genius of
+the first order. As it is, he lived on the _slope_ of greatness
+and could not be steadfast and calm. His life was one long agony of
+self-assertion. Poor, poor Haydon! See how the world treats those who
+try too openly for its gratitude! 'Tom Thumb for ever' over the heads
+of the giants.
+
+So you heard that I was quite well? Don't believe everything you hear.
+But I am really in _a way_ to be well, if I could have such sunshine
+as we have been burning in lately, and a fair field of peace besides.
+Generally, I am able to go out every day, either walking or in
+the carriage--'_walking_' means as far as Queen Anne's Street. The
+wonderful winter did not cast me down, and the hot summer helps me up
+higher. Now, to _keep in the sun_ is the problem to solve; and if
+I can do it, I shall be 'as well as anybody.' If I can't, as ill as
+ever. Which is the _resume_ of me, without a word more....
+
+Your ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 141: He committed suicide on June 22, under the influence
+of the disappointment caused by the indifference of the public to his
+pictures, the final instance of which was its flocking to see General
+Tom Thumb and neglecting Haydon's large pictures of 'Aristides'
+and 'Nero,' which were being exhibited in an adjoining room of the
+Egyptian Hall.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+June 27, 1846 [postmark].
+
+Dearest Mr. Boyd,--Let me be clear of your reproaches for not going
+to you this week. The truth is that I have been so much shocked and
+shaken by the dreadful suicide of poor Mr. Haydon, the artist, I had
+not spirits for it. He was not personally my friend. I never saw him
+face to face. But we had corresponded, and one of his last acts was an
+act of _trust_ towards me. Also I admired his genius. And all to end
+_so_! It has naturally affected me much.
+
+So I could not come, but in a few days I _will_ come; and in the
+meantime, I have had the sound of your voice to think of, more than
+I could think of the deep melodious bells, though they made the right
+and solemn impression. How I felt, to be under your roof again!
+
+  May God bless you, my very dear friend.
+  These words in the greatest haste.
+
+From your ever affectionate
+ELIBET
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+1846-1849
+
+
+It is now time to tell the story of the romance which, during the last
+eighteen months, had entered into Elizabeth Barrett's life, and was
+destined to divert its course into new and happier channels. It is
+a story which fills one of the brightest pages in English literary
+history.
+
+The foregoing letters have shown something of Miss Barrett's
+admiration for the poetry of Robert Browning, and contain allusions
+to the beginning of their personal acquaintance. Her knowledge of his
+poetry dates back to the appearance of 'Paracelsus,' not to 'Pauline,'
+of which there is no mention in her letters, and which had been
+practically withdrawn from circulation by the author. Her personal
+acquaintance with him was of much later date, and was directly due
+to the publication of the 'Poems' in 1844. Chancing to express his
+admiration of them to Mr. Kenyon, who had been his friend since 1839
+and his father's school-fellow in years long distant, Mr. Browning
+was urged by him to write to Miss Barrett himself, and tell her of
+his pleasure in her work. Possibly the allusion to him in 'Lady
+Geraldine's Courtship' may have been felt as furnishing an excuse for
+addressing her; however that may be, he took Mr. Kenyon's advice,
+and in January 1845 we find Miss Barrett in 'ecstasies' over a letter
+(evidently the first) from 'Browning the poet, Browning the author of
+"Paracelsus" and king of the mystics' (see p. 236, above).
+
+The correspondence, once begun, continued to flourish, and in the
+course of the same month Miss Barrett tells Mrs. Martin that she is
+'getting deeper and deeper into correspondence with Robert Browning,
+poet and mystic; and we are growing to be the truest of friends.' At
+the end of May, when the return of summer brought her a renewal of
+strength, they met face to face for the first time; and from that time
+Robert Browning was included in the small list of privileged friends
+who were admitted to visit her in person.
+
+How this friendship ripened into love, and love into courtship, it is
+not for us to inquire too closely. Something has been told already in
+Mrs. Orr's 'Life of Robert Browning;' something more is told in the
+long and most interesting letter which stands first in the present
+chapter. More precious than either is the record of her fluctuating
+feelings which Mrs. Browning has enshrined for ever in her 'Sonnets
+from the Portuguese,' and in the handful of other poems--'Life
+and Love,' 'A Denial,' 'Proof and Disproof,' 'Inclusions,'
+'Insufficiency,'[142] which likewise belong to this period and
+describe its hesitations, its sorrows and its overwhelming joys. In
+the difficult circumstances under which they were placed, the conduct
+of both was without reproach. Mr. Browning knew that he was asking to
+be allowed to take charge of an invalid's life--believed indeed
+that she was even worse than was really the case, and that she was
+hopelessly incapacitated from ever standing on her feet--but was sure
+enough of his love to regard that as no obstacle. Miss Barrett, for
+her part, shrank from burdening the life of the man she loved with
+a responsibility so trying and perhaps so painful, and refused his
+unchanging devotion for his sake, not for her own.
+
+[Footnote 142: _Poetical Works_, iv. 20-32.]
+
+The situation was complicated by the character of Mr. Barrett, and by
+the certainty--for such it was to his daughter--that he would refuse
+to entertain the idea of her marriage, or, indeed, that of any of his
+children. The truth of this view was absolutely vindicated not only in
+the case of Elizabeth, but also in those of two others of the family
+in later years. The reasons for his feeling it is probable he could
+not have explained to himself. He was fond of his family after his own
+fashion--proud, too, of his daughter's genius; but he could not,
+it would seem, regard them in any other light than as belonging to
+himself. The wish to leave his roof and to enter into new relations
+was looked upon as unfilial treachery; and no argument or persuasion
+could shake him from his fixed idea. So long as this disposition could
+be regarded as the result of a devoted love of his children, it
+could be accepted with respect, if not with full acquiescence; but
+circumstances brought the proof that this was not the case, and
+thereby ultimately paved the way to Elizabeth's marriage.
+
+These circumstances are stated in several of her letters, and alluded
+to in several others, but it may help to the understanding of them
+if a brief summary be given here. In the autumn of 1845, as described
+above, Miss Barrett's doctors advised her to winter abroad. The
+advice was strongly pressed, as offering a good prospect of a real
+improvement of health, and as the only way of avoiding the annual
+relapse brought on by the English winter. One or more of her brothers
+could have gone with her, and she was willing and able to try the
+experiment; but in face of this express medical testimony, Mr. Barrett
+interposed a refusal. This indifference to her health naturally
+wounded Miss Barrett very deeply; but it also gave her the right of
+taking her fate into her own hands. Convinced at last that no refusal
+on her part could alter Mr. Browning's devotion to her, and that
+marriage with him, so far from being an increase of risk to her
+health, offered the only means by which she might hope for an
+improvement in it, she gave him the conditional promise that if she
+came safely through the then impending winter, she would consent to a
+definite engagement.
+
+The winter of 1845-6 was an exceptionally mild one, and she suffered
+less than usual; and in the spring of 1846 her lover claimed her
+promise. Throughout the summer she continued to gain strength, being
+able, not only to drive out, but even to walk short distances, and to
+visit a few of her special friends such as Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Boyd.
+Accordingly it was agreed that at the end of the summer they should
+be married, and leave England for Italy before the cold weather should
+return. The uselessness of asking her father's consent was so evident,
+and the certainty that it would only result in the exclusion of Mr.
+Browning from the house so clear, that no attempt was made to obtain
+it. Only her two sisters were aware of what was going on; but even
+they were not informed of the final arrangements for the marriage, in
+order that they might not be involved in their father's anger when it
+should become known. For the same reason the secret was kept from so
+close a friend of both parties as Mr. Kenyon; though both he and Mr.
+Boyd, and possibly also Mrs. Jameson, had suspicions amounting to
+different degrees of certainty as to the real state of affairs. It had
+been intended that they should wait until the end of September, but
+a project for a temporary removal of the family into the country
+precipitated matters; and on September 12, accompanied only by her
+maid, Wilson, Miss Barrett slipped from the house and was married to
+Robert Browning in Marylebone Church.[143] The associations which that
+ponderous edifice has gained from this act for all lovers of English
+poetry tempt one to forgive its unromantic appearance, and to remember
+rather the pilgrimages which Robert Browning on his subsequent visits
+to England never failed to pay to its threshold.
+
+[Footnote 143: Mrs. Sutherland Orr says that the marriage took place
+in St. Pancras Church; but this is a mistake, as the parish register
+of St. Marylebone proves.]
+
+For a week after the marriage Mrs. Browning--by which more familiar
+name we now have the right to call her--remained in her father's
+house; her husband refraining from seeing her, since he could not now
+ask for her by her proper name without betraying their secret.
+Then, on September 19, accompanied once more by her maid and the
+ever-beloved Flushie, she left her home, to which she was never
+to return, crossed the Channel with her husband to Havre, and so
+travelled on to Paris. Her father's anger, if not loud, was deep and
+unforgiving. From that moment he cast her off and disowned her. He
+would not read or open her letters; he would not see her when she
+returned to England. Even the birth of her child brought no relenting;
+he expressed no sympathy or anxiety, he would not look upon its face.
+He died as he lived, unrelenting, cut off by his own unbending anger
+from a daughter who could with difficulty bring herself to speak a
+harsh word of him, even to her most intimate friends.
+
+It was a more unexpected and consequently an even more bitter blow to
+find that her brothers at first disapproved of her action; the
+more so, since they had sympathised with her in the struggle of the
+previous autumn. This disapprobation was, however, less deep-seated,
+resting partly upon doubts as to the practical prudence of the match,
+partly, no doubt, upon a natural annoyance at having been kept in the
+dark. Such an estrangement could only be temporary, and as time went
+on was replaced by a full renewal of the old affection towards herself
+and a friendly acceptance of her husband. With her sisters, on the
+other hand, there was never a shadow of difference or estrangement.
+That love remained unaffected; and almost the only circumstance that
+caused Mrs. Browning to regret her enforced absence from England was
+the separation which it entailed from her two sisters.
+
+In Paris the fugitives found a friend who proved a friend indeed. A
+few weeks earlier Mrs. Jameson, knowing of the needs of Miss Barrett's
+health, had offered to take her to Italy; but her offer had been
+refused. Her astonishment may be imagined when, after this short
+interval of time, she found her invalid friend in Paris as the wife of
+Robert Browning. The prospect filled her with almost as much dismay as
+pleasure. 'I have here,' she wrote to a friend from Paris, 'a poet
+and a poetess--two celebrities who have run away and married under
+circumstances peculiarly interesting, and such as to render imprudence
+the height of prudence. Both excellent; but God help them! for I know
+not how the two poet heads and poet hearts will get on through this
+prosaic world.'[144] Mrs. Jameson, who was travelling with her young
+niece, Miss Geraldine Bate,[145] lent her aid to smooth the path of
+her poet friends, and it was in her company that, after a week's rest
+in Paris, the Brownings proceeded on their journey to Italy. It is
+easy to imagine what a comfort her presence must have been to the
+invalid wife and her naturally anxious husband; and this journey
+sealed a friendship of no ordinary depth and warmth. Mrs. Browning
+bore the journey wonderfully, though suffering much from fatigue.
+During a rest of two days at Avignon, a pilgrimage was made to
+Vaucluse, in honour of Petrarch and his Laura; and there, as Mrs.
+Macpherson has recorded in an often quoted passage of her biography of
+her aunt, 'there, at the very source of the "chiare, fresche e dolci
+acque," Mr. Browning took his wife up in his arms, and carrying her
+across the shallow, curling water, seated her on a rock that rose
+throne-like in the middle of the stream. Thus love and poetry took
+a new possession of the spot immortalised by Petrarch's loving
+fancy.'[146]
+
+[Footnote 144: _Memoirs of Anna Jameson_, by G. Macpherson, p. 218.]
+
+[Footnote 145: Afterwards Mrs. Macpherson, and Mrs. Jameson's
+biographer.]
+
+[Footnote 146: _Memoirs_, p. 231.]
+
+So at the beginning of October the party reached Pisa; and there
+the newly wedded pair settled for the winter. Here first since the
+departure from London was there leisure to renew the intercourse with
+friends at home, to answer congratulations and good wishes, to explain
+what might seem strange and unaccountable. From this point Mrs.
+Browning's correspondence contains nearly a full record of her life,
+and can be left to tell its own story in better language than the
+biographer's. The first letter to Mrs. Martin is an 'apologia pro
+connubio suo' in fullest detail; the others carry on the story from
+the point at which that leaves it.
+
+With regard to this first letter, full as it is of the most intimate
+personal and family revelations, it has seemed right to give it
+entire. The marriage of Robert and Elizabeth Browning has passed into
+literary history, and it is only fair that it should be set, once for
+all, in its true light. Those who might be pained by any expressions
+in it have passed away; and those in whose character and reputation
+the lovers of English literature are interested have nothing to fear
+from the fullest revelation. If anything were kept back, false and
+injurious surmises might be formed; the truth leaves little room for
+controversy, and none for slander.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Collegio Ferdinando, Pisa; October 20(?), 1846.[147]
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Will you believe that I began a letter to you
+before I took this step, to give you the whole story of the impulses
+towards it, feeling strongly that I owed what I considered my
+justification to such dear friends as yourself and Mr. Martin, that
+you might not hastily conclude that you had thrown away upon one
+who was quite unworthy the regard of years? I had begun such a
+letter--when, by the plan of going to Little Bookham, my plans were
+all hurried forward--changed--driven prematurely into action, and the
+last hours of agitation and deep anguish--for it was the deepest
+of its kind, to leave Wimpole Street and those whom I tenderly
+loved--_so_ would not admit of my writing or thinking: only I was able
+to think that my beloved sisters would send you some account of me
+when I was gone. And now I hear from them that your generosity has not
+waited for a letter from me to do its best for me, and that instead
+of being vexed, as you might well be, at my leaving England without
+a word sent to you, you have used kind offices in my behalf, you
+have been more than the generous and affectionate friend I always
+considered you. So my first words must be that I am deeply grateful
+to you, my very dear friend, and that to the last moment of my life I
+shall remember the claim you have on my gratitude. Generous people are
+inclined to acquit generously; but it has been very painful to me to
+observe that with all my mere friends I have found more sympathy and
+_trust_, than in those who are of my own household and who have
+been daily witnesses of my life. I do not say this for papa, who is
+peculiar and in a peculiar position; but it pained me that----, who
+_knew_ all that passed last year--for instance, about Pisa--who knew
+that the alternative of making a single effort to secure my health
+during the winter was the severe displeasure I have incurred now, and
+that the fruit of yielding myself a prisoner was the sense of being of
+no use nor comfort to any soul; papa having given up coming to see
+me except for five minutes, a day; ==--, who said to me with his own
+lips, 'He does not love you--do not think it' (said and repeated it
+two months ago)--that ---- should now turn round and reproach me for
+want of affection towards my family, for not letting myself drop
+like a dead weight into the abyss, a sacrifice without an object and
+expiation--this did surprise me and pain me--pained me more than all
+papa's dreadful words. But the personal feeling is nearer with most of
+us than the tenderest feeling for another; and my family had been so
+accustomed to the idea of my living on and on in that room, that while
+my heart was eating itself, their love for me was consoled, and at
+last the evil grew scarcely perceptible. It was no want of love in
+them, and quite natural in itself: we all get used to the thought of a
+tomb; and I was buried, that was the whole. It was a little thing even
+for myself a short time ago, and really it would be a pneumatological
+curiosity if I could describe and let you see how perfectly for years
+together, after what broke my heart at Torquay, I lived on the outside
+of my own life, blindly and darkly from day to day, as completely dead
+to hope of any kind as if I had my face against a grave, never feeling
+a personal instinct, taking trains of thought to carry out as an
+occupation absolutely indifferent to the _me_ which is in every human
+being. Nobody quite understood this of me, because I am not morally
+a coward, and have a hatred of all the forms of audible groaning. But
+God knows what is within, and how utterly I had abdicated myself and
+thought it not worth while to put out my finger to touch my share of
+life. Even my poetry, which suddenly grew an interest, was a thing on
+the outside of me, a thing to be done, and then done! What people said
+of it did not touch _me_. A thoroughly morbid and desolate state it
+was, which I look back now to with the sort of horror with which one
+would look to one's graveclothes, if one had been clothed in them by
+mistake during a trance.
+
+[Footnote 147: The date at the head of the letter is October 2,
+but that is certainly a slip of the pen, since at that date, as the
+following letter to Miss Mitford shows, they had not reached Pisa.
+See also the reference to 'six weeks of marriage' on p. 295. The Pisa
+postmark appears to be October 20 (or later), and the English postmark
+is November 5.]
+
+And now I will tell you. It is nearly two years ago since I have known
+Mr. Browning. Mr. Kenyon wished to bring him to see me five years ago,
+as one of the lions of London who roared the gentlest and was best
+worth my knowing; but I refused then, in my blind dislike to seeing
+strangers. Immediately, however, after the publication of my last
+volumes, he wrote to me, and we had a correspondence which ended in my
+agreeing to receive him as I never had received any other man. I
+did not know why, but it was utterly impossible for me to refuse to
+receive him, though I consented against my will. He writes the most
+exquisite letters possible, and has a way of putting things which I
+have not, a way of putting aside--so he came. He came, and with
+our personal acquaintance began his attachment for me, a sort of
+_infatuation_ call it, which resisted the various denials which were
+my plain duty at the beginning, and has persisted past them all. I
+began with--a grave assurance that I was in an exceptional position
+and saw him just in consequence of it, and that if ever he recurred to
+that subject again I never could see him again while I lived; and
+he believed me and was silent. To my mind, indeed, it was a bare
+impulse--a generous man of quick sympathies taking up a sudden
+interest with both hands! So I thought; but in the meantime the
+letters and the visits rained down more and more, and in every one
+there was something which was too slight to analyse and notice, but
+too decided not to be understood; so that at last, when the 'proposed
+respect' of the silence gave way, it was rather less dangerous.
+So then I showed him how he was throwing into the ashes his best
+affections--how the common gifts of youth and cheerfulness were behind
+me--how I had not strength, even of _heart_, for the ordinary duties
+of life--everything I told him and showed him. 'Look at this--and
+this,' throwing down all my disadvantages. To which he did not answer
+by a single compliment, but simply that he had not then to choose,
+and that I might be right or he might be right, he was not there to
+decide; but that he loved me and should to his last hour. He said
+that the freshness of youth had passed with him also, and that he
+had studied the world out of books and seen many women, yet had never
+loved one until he had seen me. That he knew himself, and knew that,
+if ever so repulsed, he should love me to his last hour--it should be
+first and last. At the same time, he would not tease me, he would wait
+twenty years if I pleased, and then, if life lasted so long for both
+of us, then when it was ending perhaps, I might understand him and
+feel that I might have trusted him. For my health, he had believed
+when he first spoke that I was suffering from an incurable injury of
+the spine, and that he never could hope to see me stand up before his
+face, and he appealed to my womanly sense of what a pure attachment
+should be--whether such a circumstance, if it had been true, was
+inconsistent with it. He preferred, he said, of free and deliberate
+choice, to be allowed to sit only an hour a day by my side, to the
+fulfilment of the brightest dream which should exclude me, in any
+possible world.
+
+I tell you so much, my ever dear friend, that you may see the manner
+of man I have had to do with, and the sort of attachment which for
+nearly two years has been drawing and winning me. I know better than
+any in the world, indeed, what Mr. Kenyon once unconsciously said
+before me--that 'Robert Browning is great in everything.' Then, when
+you think how this element of an affection so pure and persistent,
+cast into my dreary life, must have acted on it--how little by little
+I was drawn into the persuasion that something was left, and that
+still I could do something to the happiness of another--and he what he
+was, for I have deprived myself of the privilege of praising him--then
+it seemed worth while to take up with that unusual energy (for me!),
+expended in vain last year, the advice of the physicians that I should
+go to a warm climate for the winter. Then came the Pisa conflict
+of last year. For years I had looked with a sort of indifferent
+expectation towards Italy, knowing and feeling that I should escape
+there the annual relapse, yet, with that _laisser aller_ manner which
+had become a habit to me, unable to form a definite wish about it. But
+last year, when all this happened to me, and I was better than
+usual in the summer, I _wished_ to make the experiment--to live the
+experiment out, and see whether there was hope for me or not hope.
+Then came Dr. Chambers, with his encouraging opinion. 'I wanted simply
+a warm climate and _air_,' he said; 'I might be well if I pleased.'
+Followed what you know--or do not precisely know--the pain of it was
+acutely felt by me; for I never had doubted but that papa would catch
+at any human chance of restoring my health. I was under the delusion
+always that the difficulty of making such trials lay in _me_, and not
+in _him_. His manner of acting towards me last summer was one of the
+most painful griefs of my life, because it involved a disappointment
+in the affections. My dear father is a very peculiar person. He is
+naturally stern, and has exaggerated notions of authority, but these
+things go with high and noble qualities; and as for feeling, the water
+is under the rock, and I had faith. Yes, and have it. I admire such
+qualities as he has--fortitude, integrity. I loved him for his courage
+in adverse circumstances which were yet felt by him more literally
+than I could feel them. Always he has had the greatest power over my
+heart, because I am of those weak women who reverence strong men. By a
+word he might have bound me to him hand and foot. Never has he spoken
+a gentle word to me or looked a kind look which has not made in me
+large results of gratitude, and throughout my illness the sound of his
+step on the stairs has had the power of quickening my pulse--I have
+loved him so and love him. Now if he had said last summer that he was
+reluctant for me to leave him--if he had even allowed me to think
+_by mistake_ that his affection for me was the motive of such
+reluctance--I was ready to give up Pisa in a moment, and I told him
+as much. Whatever my new impulses towards life were, my love for him
+(taken so) would have resisted all--I loved him so dearly. But his
+course was otherwise, quite otherwise, and I was wounded to the
+bottom of my heart--cast off when I was ready to cling to him. In the
+meanwhile, at my side was another; I was driven and I was drawn. Then
+at last I said, 'If you like to let this winter decide it, you may. I
+will allow of no promises nor engagement. I cannot go to Italy, and I
+know, as nearly as a human creature can know any fact, that I shall be
+ill again through the influence of this English winter. If I am, you
+will see plainer the foolishness of this persistence; if I am not, I
+will do what you please.' And his answer was, 'If you are ill and keep
+your resolution of not marrying me under those circumstances, I will
+keep mine and love you till God shall take us both.' This was in last
+autumn, and the winter came with its miraculous mildness, as you know,
+and I was saved as I dared not hope; my word therefore was claimed
+in the spring. Now do you understand, and will you feel for me? An
+application to my father was certainly the obvious course, if it had
+not been for his peculiar nature and my peculiar position. But there
+is no speculation in the case; it is a matter of _knowledge_ that if
+Robert had applied to him in the first instance he would have been
+forbidden the house without a moment's scruple; and if in the last (as
+my sisters thought best as a respectable _form_), I should have been
+incapacitated from any after-exertion by the horrible scenes to which,
+as a thing of course, I should have been exposed. Papa will not bear
+some subjects, it is a thing _known_; his peculiarity takes that
+ground to the largest. Not one of his children will ever marry without
+a breach, which we all know, though he probably does not--deceiving
+himself in a setting up of _obstacles_, whereas the real obstacle is
+in his own mind. In my case there was, or would have been, a great
+deal of apparent reason to hold by; my health would have been motive
+enough--ostensible motive. I see that precisely as others may see
+it. Indeed, if I were charged now with want of generosity for casting
+myself so, a dead burden, on the man I love, nothing of the sort could
+surprise me. It was what occurred to myself, that thought was, and
+what occasioned a long struggle and months of agitation, and which
+nothing could have overcome but the very uncommon affection of a very
+uncommon person, reasoning out to me the great fact of love making its
+own level. As to vanity and selfishness blinding me, certainly I
+may have made a mistake, and the future may prove it, but still more
+certainly I was not blinded _so_. On the contrary, never have I been
+more humbled, and never less in danger of considering any personal
+pitiful advantage, than throughout this affair. You, who are generous
+and a woman, will believe this of me, even if you do not comprehend
+the _habit_ I had fallen into of casting aside the consideration of
+possible happiness of my own. But I was speaking of papa. Obvious it
+was that the application to him was a mere form. I knew the result of
+it. I had made up my mind to act upon my full right of taking my own
+way. I had long believed such an act (the most strictly personal act
+of one's life) to be within the rights of every person of mature age,
+man or woman, and I had resolved to exercise that right in my own case
+by a resolution which had slowly ripened. All the other doors of life
+were shut to me, and shut me in as in a prison, and only before
+this door stood one whom I loved best and who loved me best, and who
+invited me out through it for the good's sake which he thought I
+could do him. Now if for the sake of the mere form I had applied to
+my father, and if, as he would have done directly, he had set up his
+'curse' against the step I proposed to take, would it have been doing
+otherwise than placing a knife in his hand? A few years ago, merely
+through the reverberation of what he said to another on a subject like
+this, I fell on the floor in a fainting fit, and was almost delirious
+afterwards. I cannot bear some words. I would much rather have blows
+without them. In my actual state of nerves and physical weakness, it
+would have been the sacrifice of my whole life--of my convictions,
+of my affections, and, above all, of what the person dearest to me
+persisted in calling _his_ life, and the good of it--if I had observed
+that 'form.' Therefore, wrong or right, I determined not to observe
+it, and, wrong or right, I did and do consider that in not doing so I
+sinned against no duty. That I was _constrained_ to act clandestinely,
+and did not _choose_ to do so, God is witness, and will set it down as
+my heavy misfortune and not my fault. Also, up to the very last act we
+stood in the light of day for the whole world, if it pleased, to judge
+us. I never saw him out of the Wimpole Street house; he came twice a
+week to see me--or rather, three times in the fortnight, openly in
+the sight of all, and this for nearly two years, and neither more
+nor less. Some jests used to be passed upon us by my brothers, and I
+allowed them without a word, but it would have been infamous in me to
+have taken any into my confidence who would have suffered, as a direct
+consequence, a blighting of his own prospects. My secrecy towards them
+all was my simple duty towards them all, and what they call want of
+affection was an affectionate consideration for them. My sisters did
+indeed know the truth to a certain point. They knew of the attachment
+and engagement--I could not help that--but the whole of the event I
+kept from them with a strength and resolution which really I did not
+know to be in me, and of which nothing but a sense of the injury to
+be done to them by a fuller confidence, and my tender gratitude
+and attachment to them for all their love and goodness, could have
+rendered me capable. Their faith in me, and undeviating affection for
+me, I shall be grateful for to the end of my existence, and to
+the extent of my power of feeling gratitude. My dearest
+sisters!--especially, let me say, my own beloved Arabel, who, with
+no consolation except the exercise of a most generous tenderness, has
+looked only to what she considered my good--never doubting me, never
+swerving for one instant in her love for me. May God reward her as I
+cannot. Dearest Henrietta loves me too, but loses less in me, and has
+reasons for not misjudging me. But both my sisters have been faultless
+in their bearing towards me, and never did I love them so tenderly as
+I love them now.
+
+The only time I met R.B. clandestinely was in the parish church, where
+we were married before two witnesses--it was the first and only time.
+I looked, he says, more dead than alive, and can well believe it, for
+I all but fainted on the way, and had to stop for sal volatile at a
+chemist's shop. The support through it all was _my trust in him_,
+for no woman who ever committed a like act of trust has had stronger
+motives to hold by. Now may I not tell you that his genius, and all
+but miraculous attainments, are the least things in him, the moral
+nature being of the very noblest, as all who ever knew him admit? Then
+he has had that wide experience of men which ends by throwing the mind
+back on itself and God; there is nothing incomplete in him, except
+as all humanity is incompleteness. The only wonder is how such a man,
+whom any woman could have loved, should have loved _me_; but men of
+genius, you know, are apt to love with their imagination. Then there
+is something in the sympathy, the strange, straight sympathy which
+unites us on all subjects. If it were not that I look up to him, we
+should be too alike to be together perhaps, but I know my place better
+than he does, who is too humble. Oh, you cannot think how well we
+get on after six weeks of marriage. If I suffer again it will not be
+through _him_. Some day, dearest Mrs. Martin, I will show you and dear
+Mr. Martin how his _prophecy was fulfilled_, saving some picturesque
+particulars. I did not know before that Saul was among the prophets.
+
+My poor husband suffered very much from the constraint imposed on him
+by my position, and did, for the first time in his life, for my sake
+do that in secret which he could not speak upon the housetops. _Mea
+culpa_ all of it! If one of us two is to be blamed, it is I, at whose
+representation of circumstances he submitted to do violence to his
+own self-respect. I would not suffer him to tell even our dear common
+friend Mr. Kenyon. I felt that it would be throwing on dear Mr. Kenyon
+a painful responsibility, and involve him in the blame ready to fall.
+And dear dear Mr. Kenyon, like the noble, generous friend I love so
+deservedly, comprehends all at a word, sends us _not_ his forgiveness,
+but his sympathy, his affection, the kindest words which can be
+written! I cannot tell you all his inexpressible kindness to us both.
+He justifies us to the uttermost, and, in that, all the grateful
+attachment we had, each on our side, so long professed towards him.
+Indeed, in a note I had from him yesterday, he uses this strong
+expression after gladly speaking of our successful journey: 'I
+considered that you had _perilled your life_ upon this undertaking,
+and, reflecting upon your last position, I thought that _you had done
+well_.' But my life was not perilled in the journey. The agitation and
+fatigue were evils, to be sure, and Mrs. Jameson, who met us in Paris
+by a happy accident, thought me 'looking horribly ill' at first, and
+persuaded us to rest there for a week on the promise of accompanying
+us herself to Pisa to help Robert to take care of me. He, who was in
+a fit of terror about me, agreed at once, and so she came with us, she
+and her young niece, and her kindness leaves us both very grateful. So
+kind she was, and is--for still she is in Pisa--opening her arms to
+us and calling us 'children of light' instead of ugly names, and
+declaring that she should have been 'proud' to have had anything to
+do with our marriage. Indeed, we hear every day kind speeches and
+messages from people such as Mr. Chorley of the 'Athenaeum,' who 'has
+tears in his eyes,' Monckton Milnes, Barry Cornwall, and other friends
+of my husband's, but who only know _me_ by my books, and I want the
+love and sympathy of those who love me and whom I love. I was talking
+of the influence of the journey. The change of air has done me
+wonderful good notwithstanding the fatigue, and I am renewed to the
+point of being able to throw off most of my invalid habits; and of
+walking quite like a woman. Mrs. Jameson said the other day, 'You are
+not _improved_, you are _transformed_.' We have most comfortable rooms
+here at Pisa and have taken them for six months, in the best situation
+for health, and close to the Duomo and Leaning Tower. It is a
+beautiful, solemn city, and we have made acquaintance with Professor
+Ferucci, who is about to admit us to [a sight][148] of the [University
+Lib]rary. We shall certainly [spend] next summer in Italy _somewhere_,
+and [talk] of Rome for the next winter, but, of course, this is all in
+air. Let me hear
+
+from you, dearest Mrs. Martin, and direct, 'M. Browning, Poste
+Restante, Pisa'--it is best. Just before we left Paris I wrote to my
+aunt Jane, and from Marseilles to Bummy, but from neither have I heard
+yet.
+
+With best love to dearest Mr. Martin, ever both my dear kind friends,
+
+Your affectionate and grateful
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 148: The original is torn here.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_[149]
+Moulins: October 2, 1846.
+
+I began to write to you, my beloved friend, earlier, that I might
+follow your kindest wishes literally, and also to thank you at once
+for your goodness to me, for which may God bless you. But the fatigue
+and agitation have been very great, and I was forced to break off--as
+now I dare not revert to what is behind. I will tell you more another
+day. At Orleans, with your kindest letter, I had one from my dearest,
+gracious friend Mr. Kenyon, who, in his goodness, does more than
+exculpate--even _approves_--he wrote a joint letter to both of us.
+But oh, the anguish I have gone through! You are good, you are kind. I
+thank you from the bottom of my heart for saying to me that you would
+have gone to the church with me. _Yes, I know you would_. And for
+that very reason I forbore involving you in such a responsibility and
+drawing you into such a net. I took Wilson with me. I had courage to
+keep the secret to my sisters for their sakes, though I will tell you
+in strict confidence that it was known to them _potentially_, that
+is, the attachment and engagement were known, the necessity remaining
+that, for stringent reasons affecting their own tranquillity, they
+should be able to say at last, 'We were not instructed in this and
+this.' The dearest, fondest, most affectionate of sisters they are to
+me, and if the sacrifice of a life, or of all prospect of happiness,
+would have worked any lasting good to them, it should have been made
+even in the hour I left them. I knew _that_ by the anguish I suffered
+in it. But a sacrifice, without good to anyone--I shrank from it. And
+also, it was the sacrifice of _two_. And _he_, as you say, had done
+everything for me, had loved me for reasons which had helped to weary
+me of myself, loved me heart to heart persistently--in spite of my own
+will--drawn me back to life and hope again when I had done with both.
+My life seemed to belong to him and to none other at last, and I had
+no power to speak a word. Have faith in me, my dearest friend, till
+you can know him. The intellect is so little in comparison to all the
+rest, to the womanly tenderness, the inexhaustible goodness, the high
+and noble aspiration of every hour. Temper, spirits, manners: there is
+not a flaw anywhere. I shut my eyes sometimes and fancy it all a dream
+of my guardian angel. Only, if it had been a dream, the pain of some
+parts of it would have awakened me before now; it is not a dream. I
+have borne all the emotion of fatigue miraculously well, though, of
+course, a good deal exhausted at times. We had intended to hurry on
+to the South at once, but at Paris we met Mrs. Jameson, who opened her
+arms to us with the most literal affectionateness, _kissed us both_,
+and took us by surprise by calling us 'wise people, wild poets or
+not.' Moreover, she fixed us in an apartment above her own in the
+Hotel de la Ville de Paris, that I might rest for a week, and crowned
+the rest of her goodnesses by agreeing to accompany us to Pisa, where
+she was about to travel with her young niece. Therefore we are five
+travelling, Wilson being with me. Oh, yes, Wilson came; her attachment
+to me never shrank for a moment. And Flush came and I assure you that
+nearly as much attention has been paid to Flush as to me from the
+beginning, so that he is perfectly reconciled, and would be happy
+if the people at the railroads were not barbarians, and immovable in
+their evil designs of shutting him up in a box when we travel that
+way.
+
+You understand now, ever dearest Miss Mitford, how the pause has
+come about writing. The week at Paris! Such a strange week it was,
+altogether like a vision. Whether in the body or out of the body I
+cannot tell scarcely. Our Balzac should be flattered beyond measure
+by my thinking of him at all. Which I did, but of _you_ more. I will
+write and tell you more about Paris. You should go there indeed. And
+to our hotel, if at all. Once we were at the Louvre, but we kept very
+still of course, and were satisfied with the _idea_ of Paris. I
+could have borne to live on there, it was all so strange and full of
+contrast....
+
+Now you will write--I feel my way on the paper to write this.
+Nothing is changed between us, nothing can ever interfere with sacred
+confidences, remember. I do not show letters, you need not fear my
+turning traitress.... Pray for me, dearest friend, that the bitterness
+of old affections may not be too bitter with me, and that God may turn
+those salt waters sweet again.
+
+Pray for your grateful and loving
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 149: This letter is of earlier date than the last, having
+been written _en route_ between Orleans and Lyons; but it has seemed
+better to place the more detailed narrative first.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+[Pisa:] November 5, [1846].
+
+It was pleasant to me, my dearest friend, to think while I was reading
+your letter yesterday, that almost by that time you had received mine,
+and could not even seem to doubt a moment longer whether I admitted
+your claim of hearing and of speaking to the uttermost. I recognised
+you too entirely as my friend. Because you had put faith in me, so
+much the more reason there was that I should justify it as far as I
+could, and with as much frankness (which was a part of my gratitude to
+you) as was possible from a woman to a woman. Always I have felt that
+you have believed in me and loved me; and, for the sake of the past
+and of the present, your affection and your esteem are more to me than
+I could afford to lose, even in these changed and happy circumstances.
+So I thank you once more, my dear kind friends, I thank you both--I
+never shall forget your goodness. I feel it, of course, the more
+deeply, in proportion to the painful disappointment in other
+quarters.... Am I, bitter? The feeling, however, passes while I write
+it out, and my own affection for everybody will wait patiently to
+be 'forgiven' in the proper form, when everybody shall be at leisure
+properly. Assuredly, in the meanwhile, however, my case is not to be
+classed with other cases--what happened to me could not have happened,
+perhaps, with any other family in England.... I hate and loathe
+everything too which is clandestine--we _both_ do, Robert and I; and
+the manner the whole business was carried on in might have instructed
+the least acute of the bystanders. The flowers standing perpetually
+on my table for the last two years were brought there by one hand,
+as everybody knew; and really it would have argued an excess of
+benevolence in an unmarried man with quite enough resources in London,
+to pay the continued visits he paid to me without some strong motive
+indeed. Was it his fault that he did not associate with everybody in
+the house as well as with me? He desired it; but no--that was not to
+be. The endurance of the pain of the position was not the least proof
+of his attachment to me. How I thank you for believing in him--how
+grateful it makes me! He will justify to the uttermost that faith. We
+have been married two months, and every hour has bound me to him more
+and more; if the beginning was well, still better it is now--that is
+what he says to me, and I say back again day by day. Then it is an
+'advantage,' to have an inexhaustible companion who talks wisdom of
+all things in heaven and earth, and shows besides as perpetual a
+good humour and gaiety as if he were--a fool, shall I say? or a
+considerable quantity more, perhaps. As to our domestic affairs, it is
+not to _my_ honour and glory that the 'bills' are made up every week
+and paid more regularly 'than hard beseems,' while dear Mrs. Jameson
+laughs outright at our miraculous prudence and economy, and declares
+that it is past belief and precedent that we should not burn the
+candles at both ends, and the next moment will have it that we remind
+her of the children in a poem of Heine's who set up housekeeping in
+a tub, and inquired gravely the price of coffee. Ah, but she has
+left Pisa at last--left it yesterday. It was a painful parting to
+everybody. Seven weeks spent in such close neighbourhood--a month of
+it under the same roof and in the same carriages--will fasten
+people together, and then travelling _shakes_ them together. A more
+affectionate, generous woman never lived than Mrs. Jameson, and it
+is pleasant to be sure that she loves us both from her heart, and not
+only _du bout des levres_. Think of her making Robert promise (as he
+has told me since) that in the case of my being unwell he would write
+to her instantly, and she would come at once if anywhere in Italy. So
+kind, so like her. She spends the winter in Rome, but an intermediate
+month at Florence, and we are to keep tryst with her somewhere in the
+spring, perhaps at Venice. If not, she says that she will come back
+here, for that certainly she will see us. She would have stayed
+altogether perhaps, if it had not been for her book upon art which she
+is engaged to bring out next year, and the materials for which are to
+be _sought_. As to Pisa, she liked it just as we like it. Oh, it is so
+beautiful and so full of repose, yet not _desolate_: it is rather the
+repose of sleep than of death. Then after the first ten days of rain,
+which seemed to refer us fatally to Alfieri's 'piove e ripiove,' came
+as perpetual a divine sunshine, such cloudless, exquisite weather that
+we ask whether it may not be June instead of November. Every day I am
+out walking while the golden oranges look at me over the walls, and
+when I am tired Robert and I sit down on a stone to watch the lizards.
+We have been to your seashore, too, and seen your island, only he
+insists on it (Robert does) that it is not Corsica but Gorgona, and
+that Corsica is not in sight. _Beautiful_ and blue the island was,
+however, in any case. It might have been Romero's instead of either.
+Also we have driven up to the foot of mountains, and seen them
+reflected down in the little pure lake of Ascuno, and we have seen the
+pine woods, and met the camels laden with faggots all in a line. So
+now ask me again if I enjoy my liberty as you expect. My head goes
+round sometimes, that is all. I never was happy before in my life. Ah,
+but, of course, the painful thoughts recur!
+
+There are some whom I love too tenderly to be easy under their
+displeasure, or even under their injustice. Only it, seems to me
+that with time and patience my poor dearest papa will be melted into
+opening his arms to us--will be melted into a clearer understanding of
+motives and intentions; I cannot believe that he will forget me, as he
+says he will, and go on thinking me to be dead rather than alive and
+happy. So I manage to hope for the best, and all that remains, all
+my life here, _is_ best already, could not be better or happier. And
+willingly tell dear Mr. Martin I would take him and you for witnesses
+of it, and in the meanwhile he is not to send me tantalising messages;
+no, indeed, unless you really, really, should let yourselves be wafted
+our way, and could you do so much better at Pau? particularly if Fanny
+Hanford should come here. Will she really? The climate is described by
+the inhabitants as a 'pleasant spring throughout the winter,' and if
+you were to see Robert and me threading our path along the shady side
+everywhere to avoid the 'excessive heat of the sun' in this November
+(!) it would appear a good beginning. We are not in the warm orthodox
+position by the Arno because we heard with our ears one of the best
+physicians of the place advise against it. 'Better,' he said, 'to have
+cool rooms to live in and warm walks to go out along.' The rooms we
+have are rather over-cool perhaps; we are obliged to have a little
+fire in the sitting-room, in the mornings and evenings that is; but
+I do not fear for the winter, there is too much difference to my
+feelings between this November and any English November I ever knew.
+We have our dinner from the Trattoria at two o'clock, and can dine our
+favorite way on thrushes and chianti with a miraculous cheapness, and
+no trouble, no cook, no kitchen; the prophet Elijah or the lilies of
+the field took as little thought for their dining, which exactly suits
+us. It is a continental fashion which we never cease commending. Then
+at six we have coffee, and rolls of milk, made of milk, I mean, and at
+nine our supper (call it supper, if you please) of roast chestnuts and
+grapes. So you see how primitive we are, and how I forget to praise
+the eggs at breakfast. The worst of Pisa is, or would be to some
+persons, that, socially speaking, it has its dullnesses; it is not
+lively like Florence, not in that way. But we do not want society, we
+shun it rather. We like the Duomo and the Campo Santo instead. Then
+we know a little of Professor Ferucci, who gives us access to the
+University library, and we subscribe to a modern one, and we have
+plenty of writing to do of our own. If we can do anything for Fanny
+Hanford, let us know. It would be too happy, I suppose, to have to do
+it for yourselves. Think, however, I am quite well, quite well. I can
+thank God, too, for being alive and well. Make dear Mr. Martin keep
+well, and not forget himself in the Herefordshire cold--draw him into
+the sun somewhere. Now write and tell me everything of your plans and
+of you both, dearest friends. My husband bids me say that he desires
+to have my friends for his own friends, and that he is grateful to you
+for not crossing that feeling. Let him send his regards to you. And
+let me be throughout all changes,
+
+Your ever faithful and most affectionate
+BA.
+
+I am expecting every day to hear from my dearest sisters. Write to
+them and love them for me.
+
+This letter has been kept for several days from different causes. Will
+you inclose the little note to Miss Mitford? I do not hear from home,
+and am uneasy.
+
+May God bless you!
+
+
+November 9.
+
+I am so vexed about those poems appearing just now in
+'Blackwood.'[150] Papa must think it _impudent_ of me. It is
+unfortunate.
+
+[Footnote 150: _Blackwood's Magazine_ for October 1846 contained
+the following poems by Mrs. Browning, some phrases in which might
+certainly be open to comment if they were supposed to have been
+deliberately chosen for publication at this particular time: 'A
+Woman's Shortcomings,' 'A Man's Requirements,' 'Maude's Spinning,' 'A
+Dead Rose,' 'Change on Change,' 'A Reed,' and 'Hector in the Garden.']
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+[Pisa]: November 5, 1846.
+
+I have your letter, ever dearest Miss Mitford, and it is welcome even
+more than your letters have been used to be to me--the last charm
+was to come, you see, by this distance. For all your affection and
+solicitude, may you trust my gratitude; and if you love me a little,
+I love you indeed, and never shall cease. The only difference shall be
+that two may love you where one did, and for my part I will answer for
+it that if you could love the poor one you will not refuse any love
+to the other when you come to know him. I never could bear to speak to
+you of _him_ since quite the beginning, or rather I never could dare.
+But when you know him and understand how the mental gifts are scarcely
+half of him, you will not wonder at your friend, and, indeed, two
+years of steadfast affection from such a man would have, overcome any
+woman's heart. I have been neither much wiser nor much foolisher than
+all the shes in the world, only much happier--the difference is in the
+happiness. Certainly I am not likely to repent of having given myself
+to him. I cannot, for all the pain received from another quarter, the
+comfort for which is that my conscience is pure of the sense of having
+broken the least known duty, and that the same consequence would
+follow any marriage of any member of my family with any possible man
+or woman. I look to time, and reason, and natural love and pity, and
+to the justification of the events acting through all; I look on so
+and hope, and in the meanwhile it has been a great comfort to have had
+not merely the indulgence but the approbation and sympathy of most
+of my old personal friends--oh, such kind letters; for instance,
+yesterday one came from dear Mrs. Martin, who has known me, she and
+her husband, since the very beginning of my womanhood, and both of
+them are acute, thinking people, with heads as strong as their hearts.
+I in my haste left England without a word to them, for which they
+might naturally have reproached me; instead of which they write to say
+that never _for a moment_ have they doubted my having acted for the
+best and happiest, and to assure me that, having sympathised with me
+in every sorrow and trial, they delightedly feel with me in the new
+joy; nothing could be more cordially kind. See how I write to you as
+if I could speak--all these little things which are great things when
+seen in the light. Also R, and I are not in the least tired of one
+another notwithstanding the very perpetual _tete-a-tete_ into which
+we have fallen, and which (past the first fortnight) would be rather a
+trial in many cases. Then our housekeeping may end perhaps in being a
+proverb among the nations, for at the beginning it makes Mrs. Jameson
+laugh heartily. It disappoints her theories, she admits--finding that,
+albeit poets, we abstain from burning candles at both ends at once,
+just as if we did statistics and historical abstracts by nature
+instead. And do not think that the trouble falls on me. Even the
+pouring out of the coffee is a divided labour, and the ordering of the
+dinner is quite out of my hands. As for me, when I am so good as to
+let myself be carried upstairs, and so angelical as to sit still on
+the sofa, and so considerate, moreover, as _not_ to put my foot into
+a puddle, why _my_ duty is considered done to a perfection which is
+worthy of all adoration; it really is not very hard work to please
+this taskmaster. For Pisa, we both like it extremely. The city is
+full of beauty and repose, and the purple mountains gloriously seem
+to beckon us on deeper into the vineland. We have rooms close to the
+Duomo and Leaning Tower, in the great Collegio built by Vasari, three
+excellent bedrooms and a sitting-room, matted and carpeted, looking
+comfortable even for England. For the last fortnight, except the very
+last few sunny days, we have had rain; but the climate is as mild as
+possible, no cold, with all the damp. Delightful weather we had for
+the travelling. Ah, you, with your terrors of travelling, how you
+amuse me! Why, the constant change of air in the continued fine
+weather made me better and better instead of worse. It did me
+infinite good. Mrs. Jameson says she 'won't call me _improved_, but
+_transformed_ rather.' I like the new sights and the movement; my
+spirits rise; I live--I can adapt myself. If you really tried it and
+got as far as Paris you would be drawn on, I fancy, and on--on to the
+East perhaps with H. Martineau, or at least as near it as we are here.
+By the way, or out of the way, it struck me as unfortunate that my
+poems should have been printed _just now_ in 'Blackwood;' I wish it
+had been otherwise. Then I had a letter from one of my Leeds readers
+the other day to expostulate about the _inappropriateness_ of certain
+of them! The fact is that I sent a heap of verses swept from my desk
+and belonging to old feelings and impressions, and not imagining that
+they were to be used in that quick way. There can't be very much to
+like, I fear, apart from your goodness for what calls itself mine.
+Love me, dearest dear Miss Mitford, my dear kind friend--love me, I
+beg of you, still and ever, only ceasing when I cease to think of you;
+I will allow of that clause. Mrs. Jameson and Gerardine are staying at
+the hotel here in Pisa still, and we manage to see them every day; so
+good and true and affectionate she is, and so much we shall miss
+her when she goes, which will be in a day or two now. She goes to
+Florence, to Siena, to Rome to complete her work upon art, which
+is the object of her Italian journey. I read your vivid and glowing
+description of the picture to her, or rather I showed your picture
+to her, and she quite believes with you that it is most probably a
+_Velasquez_. Much to be congratulated the owner must be. I mean to
+know something about pictures some day. Robert does, and I shall get
+him to open my eyes for me with a little instruction. You know that
+in this place are to be seen the first steps of art, and it will be
+interesting to trace them from it as we go farther ourselves. Our
+present residence we have taken for six months; but we have dreams,
+dreams, and we discuss them like soothsayers over the evening's
+roasted chestnuts and grapes. Flush highly approves of Pisa (and the
+roasted chestnuts), because here he goes out every day and speaks
+Italian to the little dogs. Oh, Mr. Chorley, such a kind, feeling
+note he wrote to Robert from Germany, when he read of our marriage
+in 'Galignani;' we were both touched by it. And Monckton Milnes and
+others--very kind all. But in a particular manner I remember the
+kindness of my valued friend Mr. Horne, who never failed me nor could
+fail. Will you explain to him, or rather ask him to understand, why I
+did not answer his last note? I forget even Balzac here; tell me what
+he writes, and help me to love that dear, generous Mr. Kenyon, whom I
+can love without help. And let me love you, and you love me.
+
+Your ever affectionate and grateful
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+Collegio Ferdinando [Pisa]:
+Saturday, November 23, 1846 [postmark].
+
+We were delighted to have your note, dearest Aunt Nina, and I answer
+it with my feet on your stool, so that my feet are full of you even if
+my head is not, always. Now, I shall not go a sentence farther without
+thanking you for that comfort; you scarcely guessed perhaps what a
+comfort it would be, that stool of yours. I am even apt to sit on it
+for hours together, leaning against the sofa, till I get to be scolded
+for putting myself so into the fire, and prophesied of in respect to
+the probability of a 'general conflagration' of stools and Bas; on
+which the prophet is to leap from the Leaning Tower, and Flush to
+be left to make the funeral oration of the establishment. In the
+meantime, it really is quite a comfort that our housekeeping should be
+your 'example' at Florence; we have edifying countenances whenever we
+think of it. And Robert will not by any means believe that you passed
+us on our own ground, though the eleven pauls a week for breakfast,
+and my humility, seemed to suggest something of the sort. I am so
+glad, we are both so glad, that you are enjoying yourself at the
+fullest and highest among the wonders of art, and cannot be chilled
+in the soul by any of those fatal winds you speak of. For me, I am
+certainly better here at Pisa, though the penalty is to see Frate
+Angelico's picture with the remembrance of you rather than the
+presence. Here, indeed, we have had a little too much cold for two
+days; there was a feeling of frost in the air, and a most undeniable
+east wind which prevented my going out, and made me feel less
+comfortable than usual at home. But, after all, one felt ashamed to
+call it _cold_, and Robert found the heat on the Arno insupportable;
+which set us both mourning over our 'situation' at the Collegio, where
+one of us could not get out on such days without a blow on the chest
+from the 'wind at the corner.' Well, experience teaches, and we shall
+be taught, and the cost of it is not so very much after all. We have
+seen your professor once since you left us (oh, the leaving!), or
+_spoken_ to him once, I should say, when he came in one evening and
+caught us reading, sighing, yawning over 'Nicolo de' Lapi,' a romance
+by the son-in law of Manzoni. Before we could speak, he called it
+'excellent, tres beau,' one of their very best romances, upon which,
+of course, dear Robert could not bear to offend his literary and
+national susceptibilities by a doubt even. _I_, not being so humane,
+thought that any suffering reader would be justified (under the
+rack-wheel) in crying out against such a book, as the dullest,
+heaviest, stupidest, lengthiest. Did you ever read it? If not,
+_don't_. When a father-in-law imitates Scott, and a son-in-law
+imitates his father-in-law, think of the consequences! Robert, in his
+zeal for Italy and against Eugene Sue, tried to persuade me at first
+(this was before the scene with your professor) that 'really, Ba, it
+wasn't so bad,' 'really you are too hard to be pleased,' and so on;
+but after two or three chapters, the dullness grew too strong for even
+his benevolence, and the yawning catastrophe (supposed to be peculiar
+to the 'Guida') overthrew him as completely as it ever did me, though
+we both resolved to hold on by the stirrup to the end of the two
+volumes. The catalogue of the library (for observe that we subscribe
+now--the object is attained!) offers a most melancholy insight
+into the actual literature of Italy. Translations, translations,
+translations from third and fourth and fifth rate French and English
+writers, chiefly French; the roots of thought, here in Italy, seem
+dead in the ground. It is well that they have great memories--nothing
+else lives.
+
+We have had the kindest of letters from dear noble Mr. Kenyon; who,
+by the way, speaks of you as we like to hear him. Dickens is going to
+Paris for the winter, and Mrs. Butler[151] (he adds) is expected
+in London. Dear Mr. Kenyon calls me 'crotchety,' but Robert 'an
+incarnation of the good and the true,' so that I have everything to
+thank him for. There are noble people who take the world's side and
+make it seem 'for the _nonce_' almost respectable; but he gives up all
+the talk and fine schemes about money-making, and allows us to wait to
+see whether we want it or not--the money, I mean.
+
+It is Monday, and I am only finishing this note. In the midst came
+letters from my sisters, making me feel so glad that I could not
+write. Everybody is well and happy, and dear papa _in high spirits_
+and _having people to dine with him every day_, so that I have not
+really done anyone harm in doing myself all this good. It does not
+indeed bring us a step nearer to the forgiveness, but to hear of his
+being in good spirits makes me inclined to jump, with Gerardine.[152]
+Dear Geddie! How pleased I am to hear of her being happy, particularly
+(perhaps) as she is not too happy to forget _me_. Is all that glory of
+art making her very ambitious to work and enter into the court of the
+Temple?...
+
+Robert's love to you both. We often talk of our prospect of meeting
+you again. And for the _past_, dearest Aunt Nina, believe of me that
+I feel to you more gratefully than ever I can say, and remain, while I
+live,
+
+Your faithful and affectionate
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 151: Better known as Fanny Kemble.]
+
+[Footnote 152: Miss Gerardine Bate, Mrs. Jameson's niece.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Pisa: December 19, [1846].
+
+Ever dearest Miss Mitford, your kindest letter is three times welcome
+as usual. On the day you wrote it in the frost, I was sitting out of
+doors, just in my summer mantilla, and complaining 'of the heat this
+December!' But woe comes to the discontented. Within these three or
+four days we too have had frost--yes, and a little snow, for the
+first time, say the Pisans, during five years. Robert says that
+the mountains are powdered toward Lucca, and I, who cannot see the
+mountains, can see the cathedral--the Duomo--how it glitters whitely
+at the summit, between the blue sky and its own walls of yellow
+marble. Of course I do not stir an inch from the fire, yet have to
+struggle a little against my old languor. Only, you see, this can't
+last! it is exceptional weather, and, up to the last few days, has
+been divine. And then, after all we talk of frost, my bedroom, which
+has no fireplace, shows not an English sign on the window, and the
+air is not _metallic_ as in England. The sun, too, is so hot that
+the women are seen walking with fur capes and parasols, a curious
+combination.
+
+I hope you had your visit from Mr. Chorley, and that you both had the
+usual pleasure from it. Indeed I _am_ touched by what you tell me, and
+was touched by his note to my husband, written in the first surprise;
+and because Robert has the greatest regard for him, besides my own
+personal reasons, I do count him in the forward rank of our friends.
+You will hear that he has obliged us by accepting a trusteeship to
+a settlement, forced upon me in spite of certain professions or
+indispositions of mine; but as my husband's gifts, I had no right, it
+appeared, by refusing it to place him in a false position for the sake
+of what dear Mr. Kenyon calls my 'crotchets.' Oh, dear Mr. Kenyon! His
+kindness and goodness to us have been past thinking of, past thanking
+for; we can only fall into silence. He has thrust his hand into the
+fire for us by writing to papa himself, by taking up the management of
+my small money-matters when nearer hands let them drop, by justifying
+us with the whole weight of his personal influence; all this in the
+very face of his own habits and susceptibilities. He has resolved
+that I shall not miss the offices of father, brother, friend, nor the
+tenderness and sympathy of them all. And this man is called a mere man
+of the world, and would be called so rightly if the world were a place
+for angels. I shall love him dearly and gratefully to my last breath;
+we both shall....
+
+Robert and I are deep in the fourth month of wedlock; there has not
+been a shadow between us, nor a _word_ (and I have observed that all
+married people confess to _words_), and that the only change I can lay
+my finger on in him is simply and clearly an increase of affection.
+Now I need not say it if I did not please, and I should not please,
+you know, to tell a story. The truth is, that I who always did
+certainly believe in love, yet was as great a sceptic as you about the
+evidences thereof, and having held twenty times that Jacob's serving
+fourteen years for Rachel was not too long by fourteen days, I was
+not a likely person (with my loathing dread of marriage as a loveless
+state, and absolute contentment with single life as the alternative
+to the great majorities of marriages), I was not likely to accept a
+feeling not genuine, though from the hand of Apollo himself, crowned
+with his various godships. Especially too, in my position, I could
+not, would not, should not have done it. Then, genuine feelings are
+genuine feelings, and do not pass like a cloud. We are as happy as
+people can be, I do believe, yet are living in a way to _try_ this
+new relationship of ours--in the utmost seclusion and perpetual
+_tete-a-tete_--no amusement nor distraction from without, except some
+of the very dullest Italian romances which throw us back on the
+memory of Balzac with reiterated groans. The Italians seem to hang on
+translations from the French--as we find from the library--not merely
+of Balzac, but Dumas, your Dumas, and reaching lower--long past De
+Kock--to the third and fourth rate novelists. What is purely Italian
+is, as far as we have read, purely dull and conventional. There is no
+breath nor pulse in the Italian genius. Mrs. Jameson writes to us
+from Florence that in politics and philosophy the people are getting
+alive--which may be, for aught we know to the contrary, the poetry and
+imagination leave them room enough by immense vacancies.
+
+Yet we delight in Italy, and dream of 'pleasures new' for the
+summer--_pastures_ new, I should have said--but it comes to the same
+thing. The _padrone_ in this house sent us in as a gift (in gracious
+recognition, perhaps, of our lawful paying of bills) an immense dish
+of oranges--two hanging on a stalk with the green leaves still moist
+with the morning's dew--every great orange of twelve or thirteen with
+its own stalk and leaves. Such a pretty sight! And better oranges, I
+beg to say, never were eaten, when we are barbarous enough to eat them
+day by day after our two o'clock dinner, softening, with the vision
+of them, the winter which has just shown itself. Almost I have been
+as pleased with the oranges as I was at Avignon by the _pomegranate_
+given to me much in the same way. Think of my being singled out of
+all our caravan of travellers--Mrs. Jameson and Gerardine Jameson[153]
+both there--for that significant gift of the pomegranates! I had never
+seen one before, and, of course, proceeded instantly to cut one 'deep
+down the middle'[154]--accepting the omen. Yet, in shame and confusion
+of face, I confess to not being able to appreciate it properly. Olives
+and pomegranates I set on the same shelf, to be just looked at and
+called by their names, but by no means eaten bodily.
+
+But you mistake me, dearest friend, about the 'Blackwood' verses. I
+never thought of writing _applicative poems_--the heavens forfend!
+Only that just _then_, [in] the midst of all the talk, _any_ verses
+of mine should come into print--and some of them to that _particular
+effect_--looked unlucky. I dare say poor papa (for instance) thought
+me turned suddenly to brass itself. Well, it is perhaps more my
+fancy than anything else, and was only an impression, even there. Mr.
+Chorley will tell you of a play of his, which I hope will make its
+way, though I do wonder how people can bear to write for the theatres
+in the present state of things. Robert is busy preparing a new edition
+of his collected poems which are to be so clear that everyone who has
+understood them hitherto will lose all distinction. We both mean to
+be as little idle as possible.... We shall meet one day in joy, I do
+hope, and then you will love my husband for his own sake, as for mine
+you do not hate him now.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 153: This surname is a mistake on Mrs. Browning's part; see
+her letter of October 1, 1849.]
+
+[Footnote 154: See _Lady Geraldine's Courtship_, stanza xli.]
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+[Pisa:] December 21 [1846].
+
+You must let me tell you, my dearest Mr. Boyd, that I dreamed of you
+last night, and that you were looking very well in my dream, and that
+you told me to break a crust from a loaf of bread which lay by you
+on the table; which I accept on recollection as a sacramental sign
+between us, of peace and affection. Wasn't it strange that I should
+dream so of you? Yet no; thinking awake of you, the sleeping thoughts
+come naturally. Believe of me this Christmas time, as indeed at every
+time, that I do not forget you, and that all the distance and change
+of country can make no difference. Understand, too (for _that_ will
+give pleasure to your goodness), that I am very happy, and not unwell,
+though it is almost Christmas....
+
+Dearest friend, are you well and in good spirits? Think of me over
+the Cyprus, between the cup and the lip, though bad things are said to
+fall out so. We have, instead of Cyprus, _Montepulciano_, the famous
+'King of Wine,' crowned king, you remember, by the grace of a poet!
+Your Cyprus, however, keeps supremacy over me, and will not abdicate
+the divine right of being associated with you. I speak of wine, but we
+live here the most secluded, quiet life possible--reading and writing,
+and talking of all things in heaven and earth, and a little besides;
+and sometimes even laughing as if we had twenty people to laugh with
+us, or rather _hadn't_. We know not a creature, I am happy to say,
+except an Italian professor (of the university here) who called on us
+the other evening and praised aloud the scholars of England. 'English
+Latin was best,' he said, 'and English Greek foremost.' Do you clap
+your hands?
+
+The new pope is more liberal than popes in general, and people write
+odes to him in consequence.
+
+Robert is going to bring out a new edition of his collected poems,
+and you are not to read any more, if you please, till this is done.
+I heard of Carlyle's saying the other day 'that he hoped more from
+Robert Browning, for the people of England, than from any living
+English writer,' which pleased me, of course. I am just sending off
+an anti-slavery poem for America,[155] too ferocious, perhaps, for the
+Americans to publish: but they asked for a poem and shall have it.
+
+If I ask for a letter, shall I have it, I wonder? Remember me and
+love me a little, and pray for me, dearest friend, and believe how
+gratefully and ever affectionately
+
+I am your
+
+ELIBET,
+
+though Robert always calls me _Ba_, and thinks it the prettiest name
+in the world! which is a proof, you will say, not only of blind love
+but of deaf love.
+
+[Footnote 155: 'The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point' _(Poetical
+Works_, ii. 192). It was first printed in a collection called _The
+Liberty Bell_, for sale at the Boston National Anti-slavery Bazaar
+of 1848. It was separately printed in England in 1849 as a small
+pamphlet, which is now a rare bibliographical curiosity.]
+
+
+It was during the stay at Pisa, and early in the year 1847, that Mr.
+Browning first became acquainted with his wife's 'Sonnets from
+the Portuguese.' Written during the course of their courtship and
+engagement, they were not shown even to him until some months after
+their marriage. The story of it was told by Mr. Browning in later
+life to Mr. Edmund Gosse, with leave to make it known to the world in
+general; and from Mr. Gosse's publication it is here quoted in his own
+words.[156]
+
+[Footnote 156: '_Critical Kit-Kats_,' by E. Gosse, p. 2 (1896).]
+
+'Their custom was, Mr. Browning said, to write alone, and not to show
+each other what they had written. This was a rule which he sometimes
+broke through, but she never. He had the habit of working in a
+downstairs room, where their meals were spread, while Mrs. Browning
+studied in a room on the floor above. One day, early in 1847, their
+breakfast being over, Mrs. Browning went upstairs, while her husband
+stood at the window watching the street till the table should be
+cleared. He was presently aware of some one behind him, although the
+servant was gone. It was Mrs. Browning, who held him by the shoulder
+to prevent his turning to look at her, and at the same time pushed
+a packet of papers into the pocket of his coat. She told him to read
+that, and to tear it up if he did not like it; and then she fled again
+to her own room.'
+
+The sonnets were intended for her husband's eye alone; in the first
+instance, not even for his. No poems can ever have been composed with
+less thought of the public; perhaps for that very reason they are
+unmatched for simplicity and sincerity in all Mrs. Browning's work.
+Her genius in them has full mastery over its material, as it has in
+few of her other poems. All impurities of style or rhythm are purged
+away by the fire of love; and they stand, not only highest among the
+writings of their authoress, but also in the very forefront of English
+love-poems. With the single exception of Rossetti, no modern English
+poet has written of love with such genius, such beauty, and such
+sincerity, as the two who gave the most beautiful example of it in
+their own lives.
+
+Fortunately for all those who love true poetry, Mr. Browning judged
+rightly of the obligation laid upon him by the possession of these
+poems. 'I dared not,' he said, 'reserve to myself the finest sonnets
+written in any language since Shakespeare's.' Accordingly he persuaded
+his wife to commit the printing of them to her friend, Miss Mitford;
+and in the course of the year they appeared in a slender volume,
+entitled 'Sonnets, by E.B.B.,' with the imprint 'Reading, 1847,' and
+marked 'Not for publication.' It was not until three years later that
+they were offered to the general public, in the volumes of 1850.
+Here first they appeared under the title of 'Sonnets from the
+Portuguese'--a title suggested by Mr. Browning (in preference to his
+wife's proposal, 'Sonnets translated from the Bosnian') for the sake
+of its half-allusion to her other poem, 'Catarina to Camoens,' which
+was one of his chief favourites among her works.
+
+To these sonnets there is, however, no allusion in the letters here
+published, which say little for some time of her own work.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+February 8, 1847.
+
+But, my dearest Miss Mitford, your scheme about Leghorn is drawn out
+in the clouds. Now just see how impossible. Leghorn is fifteen miles
+off, and though there is a railroad there is no liberty for French
+books to wander backwards and forwards without inspection and seizure.
+Why, do remember that we are in Italy after all! Nevertheless, I will
+tell you what we have done: transplanted our subscription from the
+Italian library, which was wearing us away into a misanthropy, or at
+least despair of the wits of all Southerns, into a library which has
+a tolerable supply of French books, and gives us the privilege
+besides of having a French newspaper, the 'Siecle,' left with us every
+evening. Also, this library admits (is allowed to admit on certain
+conditions) some books forbidden generally by the censureship, which
+is of the strictest; and though Balzac appears very imperfectly, I
+am delighted to find him at all, and shall dun the bookseller for the
+'Instruction criminelle,' which I hope discharges your Lucien as a
+'forcat'--neither man nor woman--and true poet, least of all....
+
+The 'Siecle' has for a _feuilleton_ a new romance of Soulie's, called
+'Saturnin Fichet,' which is really not good, and tiresome to boot.
+Robert and I began by each of us reading it, but after a little while
+he left me alone, being certain that no good could come of such a
+work. So, of course, ever since, I have been exclaiming and exclaiming
+as to the wonderful improvement and increasing beauty and glory of
+it, just to justify myself, and to make him sorry for not having
+persevered! The truth is, however, that but for obstinacy I should
+give up too. Deplorably dull the story is, and there is a crowd of
+people each more indifferent than each, to you; the pith of the plot
+being (very characteristically) that the hero has somebody exactly
+like him. To the reader, it's _all one_ in every sense--who's who, and
+what's what. Robert is a warm admirer of Balzac and has read most of
+his books, but certainly--oh certainly--he does not in a general way
+appreciate our French people quite with our warmth; he takes too high
+a standard, I tell him, and won't listen to a story for a story's
+sake. I can bear to be amused, you know without a strong pull on my
+admiration. So we have great wars sometimes, and I put up Dumas' flag,
+or Soulie's, or Eugene Sue's (yet he was properly possessed by the
+'Mysteres de Paris') and carry it till my arms ache. The plays and
+vaudevilles he knows far more of than I do, and always maintains
+they are the happiest growth of the French school--setting aside the
+_masters_, observe--for Balzac and George Sand hold all their honours;
+and, before your letter came, he had told me about the 'Kean' and the
+other dramas. Then we read together the other day the 'Rouge et Noir,'
+that powerful book of Stendhal's (Beyle), and he thought it very
+striking, and observed--what I had thought from the first and again
+and again--that it was exactly like Balzac _in the raw_, in the
+material and undeveloped conception. What a book it is really, and so
+full of pain and bitterness, and the gall of iniquity! The new Dumas
+I shall see in time, perhaps, and it is curious that Robert had just
+been telling me the very story you speak of in your letter, from the
+'Causes Celebres.' I never read it--the more shame! Dearest friend,
+all this talk of French books and no talk about _you_--the _most_
+shame! You don't tell me enough of yourself, and I want to hear,
+because (besides the usual course of reasons) Mr. Chorley spoke of you
+as if you were not as cheerful as usual; do tell me. Ah! if you fancy
+that I do not love you as near, through being so far, you are unjust
+to me as you never were before. For myself, the brightness round me
+has had a cloud on it lately by an illness of poor Wilson's.... She
+would not go to Dr. Cook till I was terrified one night, while she was
+undressing me, by her sinking down on the sofa in a shivering fit. Oh,
+so frightened I was, and Robert ran out for a physician; and I could
+have shivered too, with the fright. But she is convalescent now,
+thank God! and in the meanwhile I have acquired a heap of practical
+philosophy, and have learnt how it is possible (in certain conditions
+of the human frame) to comb out and twist up one's own hair, and lace
+one's very own stays, and cause hooks and eyes to meet behind one's
+very own back, besides making toast and water for Wilson--which last
+miracle, it is only just to say, was considerably assisted by Robert's
+counsels 'not quite to set fire to the bread' while one was toasting
+it. He was the best and kindest all that time, as even _he_ could be,
+and carried the kettle when it was too heavy for me, and helped me
+with heart and head. Mr. Chorley could not have praised him too much,
+be very sure. I, who always rather appreciated him, do set down the
+thoughts I had as merely unjust things; he exceeds them all, indeed.
+Yes, Mr. Chorley has been very kind to us. I had a kind note myself
+from him a few days since, and do you know that we have a sort of hope
+of seeing him in Italy this year, with dearest Mr. Kenyon, who has the
+goodness to crown his goodness by a 'dream' of coming to see us? We
+leave Pisa in April (did I tell you that?) and pass through Florence
+towards the north of Italy--to _Venice_, for instance. In the way of
+writing, I have not done much yet--just finished my rough sketch of
+an anti-slavery ballad and sent it off to America, where nobody will
+print it, I am certain, because I could not help making it bitter. If
+they _do_ print it, I shall thank them more boldly in earnest than
+I fancy now. Tell me of Mary Howitt's new collection of ballads--are
+they good? I warmly wish that Mr. Chorley may succeed with his play;
+but how can Miss Cushman promise a hundred nights for an untried
+work?... Perhaps you may find the two last numbers of the 'Bells and
+Pomegranates' less obscure--it seems so to me. Flush has grown an
+absolute monarch and barks one distracted when he wants a door opened.
+Robert spoils him, I think. Do think of me as your ever affectionate
+and grateful
+
+BA.
+
+Have you seen 'Agnes de Misanie,' the new play by the author of
+'Lucretia'? A witty feuilletoniste says of it that, besides all the
+unities of Aristotle, it comprises, from beginning to end, _unity of
+situation_. Not bad, is it? Madame Ancelot has just succeeded with a
+comedy, called 'Une Annee a Paris.' By the way, _shall you go to Paris
+this spring_?[157]
+
+[Footnote 157: A list of the works composing Balzac's _Comedie
+Humaine_ is attached to this letter for Miss Mitford's benefit.]
+
+
+From Mr. Browning's family, though she had as yet had no opportunity
+of making acquaintance with them face to face, Mrs. Browning from the
+first met with an affectionate reception. The following is the first
+now extant of a series of letters written by her to Miss Browning,
+the poet's sister. The abrupt and private nature of the marriage
+never seems to have caused the slightest coldness of feeling in this
+quarter, though it must have caused anxiety; and the tone of the early
+letters, in which so new and unfamiliar a relation had to be taken up,
+does equal honour to the writer and to the recipient.
+
+
+_To Miss Browning_
+[Pisa: about February 1847.]
+
+I must begin by thanking dearest Sarianna again for her note, and by
+assuring her that the affectionate tone of it quite made me happy and
+grateful together--that I am grateful to _all of you_: do _feel_ that
+I am. For the rest, when I see (afar off) Robert's minute manuscripts,
+a certain distrust steals over me of anything I can possibly tell you
+of our way of living, lest it should be the vainest of repetitions,
+and by no means worth repeating, both at once. Such a quiet silent
+life it is--going to hear the Friar preach in the Duomo, a grand event
+in it, and the wind laying flat all our schemes about Volterra and
+Lucca! I have had to give up even the Friar for these three days past;
+there is nothing for me when I have driven out Robert to take his
+necessary walk but to sit and watch the pinewood blaze. He is grieved
+about the illness of his cousin, only I do hope that your next letter
+will confirm the happy change which stops the further anxiety, and
+come soon for that purpose, besides others. Your letters never can
+come too often, remember, even when they have not to speak of illness,
+and I for my part must always have a thankful interest in your cousin
+for the kind part he took in the happiest event of my life. You have
+to tell us too of your dear mother--Robert is so anxious about her
+always. How deeply and tenderly he loves her and all of you, never
+could have been more manifest than now when he is away from you and
+has to talk _of_ you instead of _to_ you. By the way (or rather out
+of the way) I quite took your view of the purposed ingratitude to poor
+Miss Haworth[158]--it would have been worse in him than the sins of
+'Examiner' and 'Athenaeum.' If authors won't feel for one another,
+there's an end of the world of writing! Oh, I think he proposed it in
+a moment of hardheartedness--we all put on tortoiseshell now and then,
+and presently come out into the sun as sensitively as ever. Besides
+Miss Haworth has written to us very kindly; and kindness doesn't
+spring up everywhere, like the violets in your gravel walks. See how I
+understand Hatcham. Do try to love me a little, dearest Sarianna, and
+(with my grateful love always to your father and mother) let me be
+your affectionate sister,
+
+ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING,
+or rather BA.
+
+[Footnote 158: Miss E.F. Haworth (several letters to whom are given
+farther on) was an old friend of Robert Browning's, and published a
+volume of verse in 1847, to which this passage seems to allude.]
+
+
+The correspondence with Mr. Westwood, which had lapsed for a
+considerable time, was resumed with the following letter:
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+Collegio Ferdinando, Pisa: March 10, 1847.
+
+If really, my dear Mr. Westwood, it was an 'ill temper' in you,
+causing the brief note, it was a most flattering ill temper, and I
+thank you just as I have had reason to do for the good nature which
+has caused you to bear with me so often and so long. You have been
+misled on some points. I did not go to Italy last year, or rather the
+year before last! I was disappointed and forced to stay in Wimpole
+Street after all; but the winter being so mild, so miraculously mild
+for England you may remember, I was spared my winter relapse and
+left liberty for new plans such as I never used to think were in
+my destiny! Such a change it is to me, such a strange happiness and
+freedom, and you must not in your kindness wish me back again, but
+rather be contented, like a friend as you are, to hear that I am very
+happy and very well, and still doubtful whether all the brightness can
+be meant for _me_! It is just as if the sun rose again at 7 o'clock
+P.M. The strangeness seems so great....
+
+I am now very well, and so happy as not to think much of it, except
+for the sake of another. And do you fancy how I feel, carried; into
+the visions of nature from my gloomy room. Even now I walk as in a
+dream. We made a pilgrimage from Avignon to Vaucluse in right poetical
+duty, and I and my husband sate upon two stones in the midst of the
+fountain which in its dark prison of rocks flashes and roars and
+testifies to the memory of Petrarch. It was louder and fuller than
+usual when we were there, on account of the rains; and Flush, though
+by no means born to be a hero, considered my position so outrageous
+that he dashed through the water to me, splashing me all over, so he
+is baptised in Petrarch's name. The scenery is full of grandeur, the
+rocks sheathe themselves into the sky, and nothing grows there except
+a little cypress here and there, and a straggling olive tree; and the
+fountain works out its soul in its stony prison, and runs away in a
+green rapid stream. Such a striking sight it is. I sate upon deck,
+too, in our passage from Marseilles to Genoa, and had a vision of
+mountains, six or seven deep, one behind another. As to Pisa, call it
+a beautiful town, you cannot do less with Arno and its palaces, and
+above all the wonderful Duomo and Campo Santo, and Leaning Tower and
+Baptistery, all of which are a stone's throw from our windows. We
+have rooms in a great college-house built by Vasari, and fallen into
+desuetude from collegiate purposes; and here we live the quietest and
+most _tete-a-tete_ of lives, knowing nobody, hearing nothing, and for
+nearly three months together never catching a glimpse of a paper. Oh,
+how wrong you were about the 'Times'! Now, however, we subscribe to a
+French and Italian library, and have a French newspaper every evening,
+the 'Siecle,' and so look through a loophole at the world. Yet, not
+too proud are we, even now, for all the news you will please to send
+us in charity: 'da obolum Belisario!'
+
+What do you mean about poor Tennyson? I heard of him last on his
+return from a visit to the Swiss mountains, which 'disappointed him,'
+he was _said to say_. Very wrong, either of mountains or poet!
+
+Tell me if you make acquaintance with Mrs. Hewitt's new ballads.
+
+Mrs. Jameson is engaged in a work on art which will be very
+interesting....
+
+Flush's love to your Flopsy. Flush has grown very overbearing in this
+Italy, I think because my husband spoils him (if not for the glory
+at Vaucluse); Robert declares that the said Flush considers him, my
+husband, to be created for the especial purpose of doing him service,
+and really it looks rather like it.
+
+Never do I see the 'Athenaeum' now, but before I left England some
+pure gushes between the rocks reminded me of you. Tell me all you can;
+it will all be like rain upon dry ground. My husband bids me offer his
+regards to you--if you will accept them; and that you may do it ask
+your heart. I will assure you (aside) that his poetry is as the prose
+of his nature: he himself is so much better and higher than his own
+works.
+
+
+In the middle of April the Brownings left Pisa and journeyed to
+Florence, arriving there on April 20. There, however, the programme
+was arrested, and, save for an abortive excursion to Vallombrosa,
+whence they were repulsed by the misogynist principles of the monks,
+they continued to reside in Florence for the remainder of the year.
+Their first abode was in the Via delle Belle Donne; but after the
+return from Vallombrosa, in August, they moved across the river, and
+took furnished rooms in the Palazzo Guidi, the building which, under
+the name of 'Casa Guidi,' is for ever associated with their memory.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Florence: April 24, 1847.
+
+I received your letter, my dearest friend, by this day's post, and
+wrote a little note directly to the office as a trap for the feet
+of your travellers. If they escape us after all, therefore, they may
+praise their stars for it rather than my intentions--_our_ intentions,
+I should say, for Robert will gladly do everything he can in the way
+of expounding a text or two of the glories of Florence, and we both
+shall be much pleased and cordially pleased to learn more of Fanny
+and her brother than the glance at Pisa could teach us. As for me, she
+will let me have a little talking for my share: I can't walk about or
+see anything. I lie here flat on the sofa in order to be wise; I rest
+and take port wine by wineglasses; and a few more days of it will
+prepare me, I hope and trust, for an interview with the Venus de'
+Medici. Think of my having been in Florence since Tuesday, this
+being Saturday, and not a step taken into the galleries. It seems a
+disgrace, a sort of involuntary disgraceful act, or rather no-act,
+which to complain of relieves one to some degree. And how kind of you
+to wish to hear from me of myself! There is nothing really much the
+matter with me; I am just _weak_, sleeping and eating dreadfully well
+considering that Florence isn't seen yet, and 'looking well,' too,
+says Mrs. Jameson, who, with her niece, is our guest just now. It
+would have been wise if I had rested longer at Pisa, but, you see,
+there was a long engagement to meet Mrs. Jameson here, and she
+expressed a very kind unwillingness to leave Italy without keeping it:
+also she had resolved to come out of her way on purpose for this, and,
+as I had the consent of my physician, we determined to perform our
+part of the compact; and in order to prepare for the longer journey I
+went out in the carriage a little too soon, perhaps, and a little too
+long. At least, if I had kept quite still I should have been strong
+by this time--not that I have done myself harm in the serious sense,
+observe--and now the affair is accomplished, I shall be wonderfully
+discreet and self-denying, and resist Venuses and Apollos like some
+one wiser than the gods themselves. My chest is very well; there has
+been no symptom of evil in that quarter.... We took the whole coupe
+of the diligence--but regretted our first plan of the _vettura_
+nevertheless--and now are settled in very comfortable rooms in the
+'Via delle Belle Donne' just out of the Piazza Santa Maria Novella,
+very superior rooms to our apartment in Pisa, in which we were cheated
+to the uttermost with all the subtlety of Italy and to the full
+extent of our ignorance; think what _that_ must have been! Our present
+apartment, with the hire of a grand piano and music, does not cost us
+so much within ever so many francisconi. Oh, and you don't frighten me
+though we are on the north side of the Arno! We have taken our rooms
+for two months, and may be here longer, and the fear of the heat was
+stronger with me than the fear of the cold, or we might have been in
+the Pitti and 'arrostiti' by this time. We expected dear Mrs.
+Jameson on Saturday, but she came on Friday evening, having suddenly
+remembered that it was Shakespeare's birthday, and bringing with her
+from Arezzo a bottle of wine to 'drink to his memory with two other
+poets,' so there was a great deal of merriment, as you may fancy, and
+Robert played Shakespeare's favorite air, 'The Light of Love,' and
+everybody was delighted to meet everybody, and Roman news and Pisan
+dullness were properly discussed on every side. She saw a good deal
+of Cobden in Rome, and went with him to the Sistine Chapel. He has no
+feeling for art, and, being very true and earnest, could only do his
+best to _try_ to admire Michael Angelo; but here and there, where he
+understood, the pleasure was expressed with a blunt characteristic
+simplicity. Standing before the statue of Demosthenes, he said:
+'That man is persuaded himself of what he speaks, and will therefore
+persuade others.' She liked him exceedingly. For my part, I should
+join in more admiration if it were not for his having _accepted
+money_, but paid patriots are no heroes of mine. 'Verily they have
+their reward.' O'Connell had arrived in Rome, and it was considered
+that he came only to die. Among the artists, Gibson and Wyatt were
+doing great things; she wishes us to know Gibson particularly. As to
+the Pope he lives in an atmosphere of love and admiration, and 'he is
+doing _what he can_,' Mrs. Jameson believes. Robert says: 'A dreadful
+situation, after all, for a man of understanding and honesty! I pity
+him from my soul, for he can, at best, only temporise with truth.'
+But human nature is doomed to pay a high price for its opportunities.
+Delighted I am to have your good account of dear Mr. Martin, though
+you are naughty people to persist in going to England so soon. Do
+write to me and tell me all about both of you. I will do what I
+can--like the Pope--but what can I do? Yes, indeed, I mean to enjoy
+art and nature too; one shall not exclude the other. This Florence
+seems divine as we pass the bridges, and my husband, who knows
+everything, is to teach and show me all the great wonders, so that I
+am reasonably impatient to try my advantages. His kind regards to you
+both, and my best love, dearest friends....
+
+Your very affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+Florence: May 12, [1847].
+
+I was afraid, we both were afraid for you, dearest friend, when we
+saw the clouds gather and heard the rain fall as it did that day at
+Florence. It seemed impossible that you should be beyond the evil
+influence, should you have travelled ever so fast; but, after all,
+a storm in the Apennines, like many a moral storm, will be better
+perhaps than a calm to look back upon. We talked of you and thought of
+you, and missed you at coffee time, and regretted that so pleasant a
+week (for us) should have gone so fast, as fast as a dull week, or,
+rather, a good deal faster. Dearest friend, do believe that we _felt_
+your goodness in Coming to us--in making us an object--before you left
+Italy; it fills up the measure of goodness and kindness for which we
+shall thank and love you all our lives. Never fancy that we can forget
+you or be less touched by the memory of what you have been to us in
+affection and sympathy--never. And don't _you_ lose sight of _us_; do
+write often, and do, _do_ make haste and come back to Italy, and
+then make use of us in any and every possible way as house-takers
+or house-mates, for we are ready to accept the lowest place or the
+highest. The week you gave us would be altogether bright and glad if
+it had not been for the depression and anxiety on your part. May God
+turn it all to gain and satisfaction in some unlooked-for way. To be a
+_road-maker_ is weary work, even across the Apennines of life. We
+have not science enough for it if we have strength, which we haven't
+either. Do you remember how Sindbad shut his eyes and let himself
+be carried over the hills by an eagle? _That_ was better than to set
+about breaking stones. Also what you could do you have done; you have
+finished your part, and the sense of a fulfilled duty is in itself
+satisfying--is and must be. My sympathies go with you entirely, while
+I wish your dear Gerardine to be happy; I wish it from my heart....
+Just after you left us arrived our box with the precious deeds, which
+are thrown into the cabinet for want of witnesses. And then Robert
+has had a letter from Mr. Forster with the date of _Shakespeare's
+birthday_, and overflowing with kindness really both to himself and
+me. It quite touched me, that letter. Also we have had a visitation
+from an American, but on the point of leaving Florence and very tame
+and inoffensive, and we bore it very well considering. He sent us
+a new literary periodical of the old world, in which, among other
+interesting matter, I had the pleasure of reading an account of my own
+'blindness,' taken from a French paper (the 'Presse'), and mentioned
+with humane regret. Well! and what more news is there to tell you?
+I have been out once, only once, and only for an inglorious glorious
+drive round the Piazza Gran Duca, past the Duomo, outside the walls,
+and in again at the Cascine. It was like the trail of a vision in the
+evening sun. I saw the Perseus in a sort of flash. The Duomo is more
+after the likeness of a Duomo than Pisa can show; I like those masses
+in ecclesiastical architecture. Now we are plotting how to, engage
+a carriage for a month's service without ruining ourselves, for we
+_must_ see, and I _can't_ walk and see, though much stronger than when
+we parted, and looking much better, as Robert and the looking glass
+both do testify. I have seemed at last 'to leap to a conclusion' of
+convalescence. But the heat--oh, so hot it is. If it is half as hot
+with you, you must be calling on the name of St. Lawrence by this
+time, and require no 'turning.' I should not like to travel under
+such a sun. It would be too like playing at snapdragon. Yes, 'brightly
+happy.' Women generally _lose_ by marriage, but I have gained the
+world by mine. If it were not for some griefs, which are and must be
+griefs, I should be too happy perhaps, which is good for nobody. May
+God bless you, my dear, dearest friend! Robert must be content with
+sending his love to-day, and shall write another day. We both love you
+every day. My love and a kiss to dearest Gerardine, who is to remember
+to write to me.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To H.S. Boyd_
+Florence: May 26, 1847.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+I should have answered your letter, my dearest friend, more quickly,
+but when it came I was ill, as you may have heard, and afterwards I
+wished to wait until I could send you information about the Leaning
+Tower and the bells[159]. The book you required, about the cathedral,
+Robert has tried in vain to procure for you. Plenty of such books,
+but _not in English_. In London such things are to be found, I
+should think, without difficulty, for instance, 'Murray's Handbook
+to Northern Italy,' though rather dear (12_s._), would give you
+sufficiently full information upon the ecclesiastical glories both of
+Pisa and of this beautiful Florence, from whence I write to you.... I
+will answer for the harmony of the bells, as we lived within a stone's
+throw of them, and they began at four o'clock every morning and
+rang my dreams apart. The Pasquareccia (the fourth) especially has
+a profound note in it, which may well have thrilled horror to the
+criminal's heart.[160] It was ghastly in its effects; dropped into
+the deep of night like a thought of death. Often have I said, 'Oh, how
+ghastly!' and then turned on my pillow and dreamed a bad dream. But if
+the bell founders at Pisa have a merited reputation, let no one say as
+much for the bellringers. The manner in which all the bells of all
+the churches in the city are shaken together sometimes would certainly
+make you groan in despair of your ears. The discord is fortunately
+indescribable. Well--but here we are at Florence, the most beautiful
+of the cities devised by man....
+
+In the meanwhile I have seen the Venus, I have seen the divine
+Raphaels. I have stood by Michael Angelo's tomb in Santa Croce. I
+have looked at the wonderful Duomo. This cathedral! After all, the
+elaborate grace of the Pisan cathedral is one thing, and the massive
+grandeur of this of Florence is another and better thing; it struck
+me with a sense of the sublime in architecture. At Pisa we say, 'How
+beautiful!' here we say nothing; it is enough if we can breathe. The
+mountainous marble masses overcome as we look up--we feel the weight
+of them on the soul. Tesselated marbles (the green treading its
+elaborate pattern into the dim yellow, which seems the general hue of
+the structure) climb against the sky, self-crowned with that prodigy
+of marble domes. It struck me as a wonder in architecture. I had
+neither seen nor imagined the like of it in any way. It seemed
+to carry its theology out with it; it signified more than a mere
+building. Tell me everything you want to know. I shall like to answer
+a thousand questions. Florence is beautiful, as I have said before,
+and must say again and again, most beautiful. The river rushes through
+the midst of its palaces like a crystal arrow, and it is hard to tell,
+when you see all by the clear sunset, whether those churches, and
+houses, and windows, and bridges, and people walking, in the water or
+out of the water, are the real walls, and windows, and bridges, and
+people, and churches. The only difference is that, down below, there
+is a double movement; the movement of the stream besides the movement
+of life. For the rest, the distinctness of the eye is as great in one
+as in the other.... Remember me to such of my friends as remember me
+kindly when unreminded by me. I am very happy--happier and happier.
+
+ELIBET.
+
+Robert's best regards to you always.
+
+[Footnote 159: It will be remembered that Mr. Boyd took a great
+interest in bells and bell ringing. The passage omitted below contains
+an extract from Murray's _Handbook_ with reference to the bells of
+Pisa.]
+
+[Footnote 160: This bell was tolled on the occasion of an execution.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+Palazzo Guidi, Via Maggio, Florence:
+August 7, 1847 [postmark].
+
+You will be surprised perhaps, and perhaps not, dearest friend,
+to find that we are still at Florence. Florence 'holds us with a
+glittering eye;' there's a charm cast round us, and we can't get away.
+In the first place, your news of Recoaro came so late that, as you
+said yourself, we ought to have been there before your letter reached
+us. Nobody would encourage us to go north on any grounds, indeed,
+and if anybody speaks a word now in favour of Venice, straight comes
+somebody else speaking the direct contrary. Altogether, we took to
+making a plan of our own--a great, wild, delightful plan of plunging
+into the mountains and spending two or three months at the monastery
+of Vallombrosa, until the heat was passed, and dear Mr. Kenyon
+decided, and we could either settle for the winter at Florence or pass
+on to Rome. Could anything look more delightful than that? Well, we
+got a letter of recommendation to the abbot, and left our apartment,
+Via delle Belle Donne, a week before our three months were done,
+thoroughly burned out by the sun; set out at four in the morning,
+reached Pelago, and from thence travelled five miles along a 'via non
+rotabile' through the most romantic scenery. Oh, such mountains!--as
+if the whole world were alive with mountains--such ravines--black in
+spite of flashing waters in them--such woods and rocks--travelled
+in basket sledges drawn by four white oxen--Wilson and I and the
+luggage--and Robert riding step by step. We were four hours doing the
+five miles, so you may fancy what rough work it was. Whether I was
+most tired or charmed was a _tug_ between body and soul. The worst was
+that, there being a new abbot at the monastery--an austere man jealous
+of his sanctity and the approach of women--our letter, and Robert's
+eloquence to boot, did nothing for us, and we were ingloriously and
+ignominiously expelled at the end of five days. For three days we were
+welcome; for two more we kept our ground; but after _that_, out we
+were thrust, with baggage and expectations. Nothing could be much more
+provoking. And yet we came back very merrily for disappointed people
+to Florence, getting up at three in the morning, and rolling or
+sliding (as it might happen) down the precipitous path, and seeing
+round us a morning glory of mountains, clouds, and rising sun, such
+as we never can forget--back to Florence and our old lodgings, and an
+eatable breakfast of coffee and bread, and a confession one to another
+that if we had won the day instead of losing it, and spent our summer
+with the monks, we should have grown considerably _thinner_ by the
+victory. They make their bread, I rather imagine, with the sawdust of
+their fir trees, and, except oil and wine--yes, and plenty of beef
+(of _fleisch_, as your Germans say, of all kinds, indeed), which isn't
+precisely the fare to suit us--we were thrown for nourishment on the
+great sights around. Oh, but so beautiful were mountains and forests
+and waterfalls that I could have kept my ground happily for the two
+months--even though the only book I saw there was the chronicle of
+their San Gualberto. Is he not among your saints? Being routed fairly,
+and having breakfasted fully at our old apartment, Robert went out to
+find cool rooms, if possible, and make the best of our position, and
+now we are settled magnificently in this Palazzo Guidi on a first
+floor in an apartment which _looks_ quite beyond our means, and _would
+be_ except in the dead part of the season--a suite of spacious rooms
+opening on a little terrace and furnished elegantly--rather to suit
+our predecessor the Russian prince than ourselves--but cool and in a
+delightful situation, six paces from the Piazza Pitti, and with right
+of daily admission to the Boboli gardens. We pay what we paid in the
+Via Belle Donne. Isn't this prosperous? You would be surprised to see
+_me_, I think, I am so very well (and look so)--dispensed from being
+carried upstairs, and inclined to take a run, for a walk, every now
+and then. I scarcely recognise myself or my ways, or my own spirits,
+all is so different....
+
+We have made the acquaintance of Mr. Powers,[161] who is
+delightful--of a most charming simplicity, with those great burning
+eyes of his. Tell me what you think of his boy listening to the
+shell. Oh, your Raphaels! how divine! And M. Angelo's sculptures! His
+pictures I leap up to in vain, and fall back regularly. Write of your
+book and yourself, and write soon; and let me be, as always, your
+affectionate BA.
+
+We are here for two months certain, and perhaps longer. Do write.
+
+Dear Aunt Nina,--Ba has said something for me, I hope. In any case, my
+love goes with hers, I trust you are well and happy, as we are, and as
+we would make you if we could. Love to Geddie. Ever yours, [R.B.]
+
+[Footnote 161: The American sculptor.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Florence: August 7, 1847.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--How I have been longing to get this letter,
+which comes at last, and justifies the longing by the pleasure it
+gives!... How kind, how affectionate you are to me, and how strong
+your claim is that I should thrust on you, in defiance of good taste
+and conventions, every evidence and assurance of my happiness, so
+as to justify your _faith_ to yourselves and others. Indeed, indeed,
+dearest Mrs. Martin, you may 'exult' for me--and this though it should
+all end here and now. The uncertainties of life and death seem nothing
+to me. A year (nearly) is saved from the darkness, and if that
+one year has compensated for those that preceded it--which it has,
+abundantly--why, let it for those that shall follow, if it so please
+God. Come what may, I feel as if I never could have a right to murmur.
+I have been happy enough. Brought about too it was, indeed, by a sort
+of miracle which to this moment, when I look back, bewilders me to
+think of; and if you knew the details, counted the little steps,
+and could; compare my moral position three years and a half ago with
+_this_, you would come to despise San Gualberto's miraculous tree at
+Vallombrosa, which, being dead, gave out green leaves in recognition
+of his approach, as testified by the inscription--do you remember? But
+you can't stop to-day to read mine, so rather I shall tell you of our
+exploit in the mountains. Only one thing I must say first, one thing
+which you must forgive me for the vanity of resolving to say at last,
+having had it in my head very often. There's a detestable engraving,
+which, if you have the ill luck to see (and you _may_, because,
+horrible to relate, it is in the shop windows), will you have the
+kindness, for my sake, not to fancy _like Robert_?--it being, as he
+says himself, the very image of '_a young man at Waterloo House_, in
+a moment of inspiration--"A lovely blue, ma'am."' It is as like Robert
+as Flush. And now I am going to tell you of Vallombrosa. You heard how
+we meant to stay two months there, and you are to imagine how we got
+up at three in the morning to escape the heat (imagine me!)--and with
+all our possessions and a 'dozen of port' (which my husband doses me
+with twice a day because once it was necessary) proceeded to Pelago
+by vettura, and from thence in two sledges, drawn each by two
+white bullocks up to the top of the holy mountain. (Robert was on
+horseback.) Precisely it must be as you left it. Who can make a road
+up a house? We were four hours going five miles, and I with all my
+goodwill was dreadfully tired, and scarcely in appetite for the beef
+and oil with which we were entertained at the House of Strangers. We
+are simple people about diet, and had said over and over that we would
+live on eggs and milk and bread and butter during these two months. We
+might as well have said that we would live on manna from heaven.
+The things we had fixed on were just the impossible things. Oh, that
+bread, with the fetid smell, which stuck in the throat like Macbeth's
+amen! I am not surprised, you recollect it! The hens had 'got them to
+a nunnery,' and objected to lay eggs, and the milk and the holy water
+stood confounded. But of course we spread the tablecloth, just as you
+did, over all drawbacks of the sort; and the beef and oil, as I
+said, and the wine too, were liberal and excellent, and we made our
+gratitude apparent in Robert's best Tuscan--in spite of which we
+were turned out ignominiously at the end of five days, having been
+permitted to overstay the usual three days by only two. No, nothing
+could move the lord abbot. He is a new abbot, and; given to sanctity,
+and has set his face against women. 'While he is abbot,' he said to
+our mediating monk, 'he _will_ be abbot. So he is abbot, and we had to
+come back to Florence.' As I read in the 'Life of San Gualberto,' laid
+on the table for the edification of strangers, the brothers attain to
+sanctification, among other means, by cleaning out pigsties with
+their bare hands, without spade or shovel; but _that_ is uncleanliness
+enough--they wouldn't touch the little finger of a woman. Angry I was,
+I do assure you. I should have liked to stay there, in spite of the
+bread. We should have been only a little thinner at the end. And
+the scenery--oh, how magnificent! How we enjoyed that great, silent,
+ink-black pine wood! And do you remember the sea of mountains to the
+left? How grand it is! We were up at three in the morning again to
+return to Florence, and the glory of that morning sun breaking the
+clouds to pieces among the hills is something ineffaceable from my
+remembrance. We came back ignominiously to our old rooms, but found it
+impossible to stay on account of the suffocating heat, yet we scarcely
+could go far from Florence, because of Mr. Kenyon and our hope of
+seeing him here (since lost). A perplexity ended by Robert's discovery
+of our present apartments, on the Pitti side of the river (indeed,
+close to the Grand Duke's palace), consisting of a suite of spacious
+and delightful rooms, which come within our means only from the
+deadness of the summer season, comparatively quite cool, and with
+a terrace which I enjoy to the uttermost through being able to walk
+there without a bonnet, by just stepping out of the window. The church
+of San Felice is opposite, so we haven't a neighbour to look through
+the sunlight or moonlight and take observations. Isn't that pleasant
+altogether? We ordered back the piano and the book subscription, and
+settled for two months, and forgave the Vallombrosa monks for the
+wrong they did us, like secular Christians. What is to come after, I
+can't tell you. But probably we shall creep slowly along toward Rome,
+and spend some hot time of it at Perugia, which is said to be cool
+enough. I think more of other things, wishing that my dearest, kindest
+sisters had a present as bright as mine--to think nothing at all of
+the future. Dearest Henrietta's position has long made me uneasy, and,
+since she frees me into confidence by her confidence to you, I will
+tell you so. Most undesirable it is that this should be continued, and
+yet where is there a door open to escape?[162] ... My dear brothers
+have the illusion that nobody should marry on less than two thousand a
+year. Good heavens! how preposterous it does seem to me! _We_ scarcely
+spend three hundred, and I have every luxury, I ever had, and which
+it would be so easy to give up, at need; and Robert wouldn't sleep,
+I think, if an unpaid bill dragged itself by any chance into another
+week. He says that when people get into 'pecuniary difficulties,' his
+'sympathies always go with the butchers and bakers.' So we keep out of
+scrapes yet, you see....
+
+Your grateful and most affectionate
+BA.
+
+We have had the most delightful letter from Carlyle, who has the
+goodness to say that not for years has a marriage occurred in his
+private circle in which he so heartily rejoiced as in ours. He is a
+personal friend of Robert's, so that I have reason to be very proud
+and glad.
+
+Robert's best regards to you both always, and he is no believer in
+magnetism (only _I_ am). Do mention Mr. C. Hanford's health. How
+strange that he should come to witness my marriage settlement! Did you
+hear?
+
+[Footnote 162: Miss Henrietta Barrett was engaged to Captain Surtees
+Cook, an engagement of which her brothers, as well as her father,
+disapproved, partly on the ground of insufficiency of income.
+Ultimately the difficulty was solved in the same way as in the case of
+Mrs. Browning.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: August 20, [1847],
+
+I have received your letter at last, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, not
+the missing letter, but the one which comes to make up for it and to
+catch up my thoughts, which were grumbling at high tide, I do assure
+you.... As you observed last year (not without reason), these are the
+days of marrying and giving in marriage. Mr. Horne, you see[163] ...
+With all my heart I hope he may be very happy. Men risk a good deal in
+marriage, though not as much as women do; and on the other hand, the
+singleness of a man when his youth is over is a sadder thing than the
+saddest which an unmarried woman can suffer. Nearly all my friends
+of both sexes have been draining off into marriage these two years,
+scarcely one will be left in the sieve, and I may end by saying that
+I have happiness enough for my own share to be divided among them all
+and leave everyone, contented. For me, I take it for pure magic, this
+life of mine. Surely nobody was ever so happy before. I shall wake
+some morning with my hair all dripping out of the enchanted bucket,
+or if not we shall both claim the 'Flitch' next September, if you can
+find one for us in the land of Cockaigne, drying in expectancy of the
+revolution in Tennyson's 'Commonwealth.' Well, I don't agree with Mr.
+Harness in admiring the lady of 'Locksley Hall.' I _must_ either pity
+or despise a woman who could have married Tennyson and chose a common
+man. If happy in her choice, I despise her. That's matter of opinion,
+of course. You may call it matter of foolishness when I add that I
+personally would rather be teased a little and smoked over a good deal
+by a man whom I could look up to and be proud of, than have my feet
+kissed all day by a Mr. Smith in boots and a waistcoat, and thereby
+chiefly distinguished. Neither I nor another, perhaps, had quite a
+right to expect a combination of qualities, such as meet, though, in
+my husband, who is as faultless and pure in his private life as any
+Mr. Smith of them all, who would not owe five shillings, who lives
+like a woman in abstemiousness on a pennyworth of wine a day, never
+touches a cigar even.... Do you hear, as we do, from Mr. Forster, that
+his[164] new poem is his best work? As soon as you read it, let me
+have your opinion. The subject seems almost identical with one of
+Chaucer's. Is it not so? We have spent here the most delightful of
+summers, notwithstanding the heat, and I begin to comprehend the
+possibility of St. Lawrence's ecstasies on the gridiron. Very hot it
+certainly has been and is, yet there have been cool intermissions; and
+as we have spacious and airy rooms, and as Robert lets me sit all day
+in my white dressing gown without a single masculine criticism, and
+as we can step out of the window on a sort of balcony terrace which is
+quite private and swims over with moonlight in the evenings, and as
+we live upon water melons and iced water and figs and all manner of
+fruit, we bear the heat with an angelic patience and felicity which
+really are edifying. We tried to make the monks of Vallombrosa let
+us stay with them for two months, but their new abbot said or
+implied that Wilson and I stank in his nostrils, being women, and San
+Gualberto, the establishes of their order, had enjoined on them only
+the mortification of cleaning out pigsties without fork or shovel.
+So here a couple of women besides was (as Dickens's American said) 'a
+piling it up rayther too mountainious.' So we were sent away at the
+end of five days. So provoking! Such scenery, such hills, such a
+sea of hills looking alive among the clouds. _Which_ rolled, it was
+difficult to discern. Such pine woods, supernaturally silent, with the
+ground black as ink, such chestnut and beech forests hanging from the
+mountains, such rocks and torrents, such chasms and ravines. There
+were eagles there, too, [and] there was _no road_. Robert went on
+horseback, and Flush, Wilson, and I were drawn in a sledge (i.e.
+an old hamper, a basket wine hamper without a wheel) by two white
+bullocks up the precipitous mountains. Think of my travelling in that
+fashion in those wild places at four o'clock in the morning, a little
+frightened, dreadfully tired, but in an ecstasy of admiration above
+all! It was a sight to see before one died and went away to another
+world. Well, but being expelled ignominiously at the end of five days,
+we had to come back to Florence, and find a new apartment cooler than
+the old, and wait for dear Mr. Kenyon. And dear Mr. Kenyon does
+not come (not this autumn, but he may perhaps at the first dawn of
+spring), and on September 20 we take up our knapsacks and turn our
+faces towards Rome, I think, creeping slowly along, with a pause at
+Arezzo, and a longer pause at Perugia, and another perhaps at Terni.
+Then we plan to take an apartment we have heard of, over the Tarpeian
+Rock, and enjoy Rome as we have enjoyed Florence. More can scarcely
+be. This Florence is unspeakably beautiful, by grace both of nature
+and art, and the wheels of life slide on upon the grass (according
+to continental ways) with little trouble and less expense. Dinner,
+'unordered,' comes through the streets and spreads itself on our
+table, as hot as if we had smelt cutlets hours before. The science
+of material life is understood here and in France. Now tell me, what
+right has England to be the dearest country in the world? But I love
+dearly dear England, and we hope to spend many a green summer in her
+yet. The winters you will excuse us, will you not? People who are,
+like us, neither rich nor strong, claim such excuses. I am wonderfully
+well, and far better and stronger than before what you call the Pisan
+'crisis.' Robert declares that nobody would know me, I _look_ so much
+better. And you heard from dearest Henrietta. Ah, both of my dearest
+sisters have been perfect to me. No words can express my feelings
+towards their goodness. Otherwise, I have good accounts from home of
+my father's excellent health and spirits, which is better even than
+to hear of his loving and missing me. I had a few kind lines yesterday
+from Miss Martineau, who invites us from Florence to Westmoreland. She
+wants to talk to me, she says, of 'her beloved Jordan.' She is
+looking forward to a winter of work by the lakes, and to a summer of
+gardening. The kindest of letters Robert has had from Carlyle, who
+makes us very happy by what he says of our marriage. Shakespeare's
+favorite air of the 'Light of Love,' with the full evidence of
+its being Shakespeare's favorite air, is given in Charles Knight's
+edition. Seek for it there. Now do write to me and at length, and tell
+me everything of yourself. Flush hated Vallombrosa, and was frightened
+out of his wits by the pine forests. Flush likes civilised life, and
+the society of little dogs with turned-up tails, such as Florence
+abounds with. Unhappily it abounds also with _fleas_, which afflict
+poor Flush to the verge sometimes of despair. Fancy Robert and me
+down on our knees combing him, with a basin of water on one side! He
+suffers to such a degree from fleas that I cannot bear to witness it.
+He tears off his pretty curls through the irritation. Do you know of a
+remedy? Direct to me, Poste Restante, Florence. Put _via_ France. Let
+me hear, do; and everything of yourself, mind. Is Mrs. Partridge in
+better spirits? Do you read any new French books? Dearest friend, let
+me offer you my husband's cordial regards, with the love of your own
+affectionate
+
+E.B.B., BA.
+
+[Footnote 163: Mr. Horne was just engaged to be married.]
+
+[Footnote 164: Tennyson's _Princess_ had just been published.]
+
+
+_To Mr. Westwood_
+Florence: September 1847.
+
+Yes, indeed, my dear Mr. Westwood, I have seen 'friars.' We have been
+on a pilgrimage to Vallombrosa, and while my husband rode up and down
+the precipitous mountain paths, I and my maid and Flush were dragged
+in a hamper by two white bullocks--and such scenery; such hilly peaks,
+such black ravines and gurgling waters, and rocks and forests above
+and below, and at last such a monastery and such friars, who wouldn't
+let us stay with them beyond five days for fear of corrupting the
+fraternity. The monks had a new abbot, a St. Sejanus of a holy
+man, and a petticoat stank in his nostrils, said he, and all the I
+beseeching which we could offer him with joined hands was classed with
+the temptations of St. Anthony. So we had to come away as we went, and
+get the better as we could of our disappointment, and really it was
+a disappointment not to be able to stay our two months out in the
+wilderness as we had planned it, to say nothing of the heat of
+Florence, to which at the moment it was not pleasant to return. But
+we got new lodgings in the shade and comforted ourselves as well as we
+could. 'Comforted'--there's a word for Florence--that ingratitude was
+a slip of the pen, believe me. Only we had set our hearts upon a two
+months' seclusion in the deep of the pine forests (which have such
+a strange dialect in the silence they speak with), and the mountains
+were divine, and it was provoking to be crossed in our ambitions by
+that little holy abbot with the red face, and to be driven out of
+Eden, even to Florence. It is said, observe, that Milton took his
+description of Paradise from Vallombrosa--so driven out of Eden we
+were, literally. To Florence, though! and what Florence is, the tongue
+of man or poet may easily fail to describe. The most beautiful of
+cities, with the golden Arno shot through the breast of her like an
+arrow, and 'non dolet' all the same. For what helps to charm here
+is the innocent gaiety of the people, who, for ever at feast day and
+holiday celebrations, come and go along the streets, the women in
+elegant dresses and with glittering fans, shining away every thought
+of Northern cares and taxes, such as make people grave in England.
+No little orphan on a house step but seems to inherit, naturally
+his slice of water-melon and bunch of purple grapes, and the rich
+fraternise with the poor as we are unaccustomed to see them, listening
+to the same music and walking in the same gardens, and looking at the
+same Raphaels even! Also we were glad to be here just now, when there
+is new animation and energy given to Italy by this new wonderful
+Pope, who is a great man and doing greatly. I hope you give him your
+sympathies. Think how seldom the liberation of a people begins from
+the throne, _a fortiori_ from a papal throne, which is so high and
+straight.[165] And the spark spreads! here is even our Grand
+Duke conceding the civic guard,[166] and forgetting his Austrian
+prejudices. The world learns, it is pleasant to observe....
+
+So well I am, dear Mr. Westwood, and so happy after a year's trial of
+the stuff of marriage, happier than ever, perhaps, and the revolution
+is so complete that one has to learn to stand up straight and steadily
+(like a landsman in a sailing ship) before one can do any work with
+one's hand and brain.
+
+We have had a delightful letter from Carlyle, who loves my husband, I
+am proud to say.
+
+  [Footnote 165:'This country saving is a glorious thing:
+  And if a common man achieved it? well.
+  Say, a rich man did? excellent. A king?
+  That grows sublime. A priest? Improbable.
+  A pope? Ah, there we stop, and cannot bring
+  Our faith up to the leap, with history's bell
+
+  So heavy round the neck of it--albeit
+  We fain would grant the possibility
+  For thy sake, Pio Nono!'
+
+_Casa Guidi Windows_, part i.]
+
+[Footnote 166: The grant of a National Guard was made by the Grand
+Duke of Tuscany on September 4, 1847, in defiance of the threat of
+Austria to occupy any Italian state in which such a concession was
+made to popular aspirations.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+[Florence:] October I, 1847 [postmark].
+
+Ever dearest Miss Mitford,--I am delighted to have your letter, and
+lose little time in replying to it. The lost letter meanwhile does not
+appear. The moon has it, to make more shine on these summer nights; if
+still one may say 'summer' now that September is deep and that we are
+cool as people hoped to be when at hottest.... Do tell me your full
+thought of the commonwealth of women.[168] I begin by agreeing with
+you as to his implied under-estimate of women; his women are
+too voluptuous; however, of the most refined voluptuousness. His
+gardener's daughter, for instance, is just a rose: and 'a Rose,'
+one might beg all poets to observe, is as precisely _sensual_ as
+fricasseed chicken, or even boiled beef and carrots. Did you read Mrs.
+Butler's 'Year of Consolation,' and how did you think of it in the
+main? As to Mr. Home's illustrations of national music, I don't know;
+I feel a little jealous of his doing well what many inferior men have
+done well--men who couldn't write 'Orion' and the 'Death of Marlowe.'
+Now, dearest dear Miss Mitford, you shall call him 'tiresome' if you
+like, because I never heard him talk, and he may be tiresome for aught
+I know, of course; but you _sha'n't_ say that he has not done some
+fine things in poetry. Now, you _know_ what the first book of 'Orion'
+is, and 'Marlowe,' and 'Cosmo;' and you _sha'n't_ say that you don't
+know it, and that when you forgot it for a moment, I did not remind
+you.... It was our plan to leave Florence on the 21st. We stay,
+however, one month longer, half through temptation, half through
+reason. Which is strongest, who knows? We quite love Florence, and
+have delightful rooms; and then, though I am quite well now as to my
+general health, it is thought better for me to travel a month hence.
+So I suppose we shall stay. In the meanwhile our Florentines kept the
+anniversary of our wedding day (and the establishment of the civic
+guard) most gloriously a day or two or three ago, forty thousand
+persons flocking out of the neighbourhood to help the expression of
+public sympathy and overflowing the city. The procession passed under
+our eyes into the Piazza Pitti, where the Grand Duke and all his
+family stood at the palace window melting into tears, to receive the
+thanks of his people. The joy and exultation on all sides were most
+affecting to look upon. Grave men kissed one another, and grateful
+young women lifted up their children to the level of their own smiles,
+and the children themselves mixed their shrill little _vivas_ with
+the shouts of the people. At once, a more frenetic gladness and a more
+innocent manifestation of gladness were never witnessed. During three
+hours and a half the procession wound on past our windows, and every
+inch of every house seemed alive with gazers all that time, the white
+handkerchiefs fluttering like doves, and clouds of flowers and laurel
+leaves floating down on the heads of those who passed. Banners, too,
+with inscriptions to suit the popular feeling--'Liberty'--the 'Union
+of Italy'--the 'Memory of the Martyrs'--'Viva Pio Nono'--'Viva
+Leopoldo Secondo'--were quite stirred with the breath of the shouters.
+I am glad to have seen that sight, and to be in Italy at this moment,
+when such sights are to be seen.[167] My wrist aches a little even now
+with the waving I gave to my handkerchief, I assure you, for Robert
+and I and Flush sate the whole sight out at the window, and would not
+be reserved with the tribute of our sympathy. Flush had his two
+front paws over the window sill, with his ears hanging down, but he
+confessed at last that he thought they were rather long about it,
+particularly as it had nothing to do with dinner and chicken bones
+and subjects of consequence. He is less tormented and looks better;
+in excellent spirits and appetite always--and _thinner_, like your
+Flush--and very fond of Robert, as indeed he ought to be. On the
+famous evening of that famous day I have been speaking of, we lost
+him--he ran away and stayed away all night--which was too bad,
+considering that it was our anniversary besides, and that he had no
+right to spoil it. But I imagine he was bewildered with the crowd and
+the illumination, only as he _did_ look so very guilty and conscious
+of evil on his return, there's room for suspecting him of having been
+very much amused, 'motu proprio,' as our Grand Duke says in the
+edict. He was found at nine o'clock in the morning at the door of our
+apartment, waiting to be let in--mind, I don't mean the Grand Duke.
+Very few acquaintances have we made at Florence, and very quietly
+lived out our days. Mr. Powers the sculptor is our chief friend and
+favorite, a most charming, simple, straight-forward, genial American,
+as simple as the man of genius he has proved himself needs be. He
+sometimes comes to talk and take coffee with us, and we like him much.
+His wife is an amiable woman, and they have heaps of children from
+thirteen downwards, all, except the eldest boy, Florentines, and the
+sculptor has eyes like a wild Indian's, so black and full of light.
+You would scarcely wonder if they clave the marble without the help of
+his hands. We have seen besides the Hoppners, Lord Byron's friends at
+Venice, you will remember. And Miss Boyle, the niece of the Earl
+of Cork, and authoress and poetess on her own account, having been
+introduced once to Robert in London at Lady Morgan's, has hunted
+us out and paid us a visit. A very vivacious little person, with
+sparkling talk enough. Lord Holland has lent her mother and herself
+the famous Careggi Villa, where Lorenzo the Magnificent died, and they
+have been living there among the vines these four months. These and a
+few American visitors are all we have seen at Florence. We live a
+far more solitary life than you do, in your village and with
+the 'prestige' of the country wrapping you round. Pray give your
+sympathies to our Pope, and call him a great man. For liberty
+to spring from a throne is wonderful, but from a papal throne is
+miraculous. That's my doxy. I suppose dear Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Chorley
+are still abroad. French books I get at, but at scarcely a new one,
+which is very provoking. At Rome it may be better. I have not read
+'Martin' even, since the first volume in England, nor G. Sand's
+'Lucretia.'
+
+May God bless you. Think sometimes of your ever affectionate
+
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 167: In Tennyson's _Princess_.]
+
+[Footnote 168: A picture of the same scene in verse will be found in
+_Casa Guidi Windows_, part i.:
+
+  'Shall I say
+  What made my heart beat with exulting love
+  A few weeks back,' &c.]
+
+The 'month' lengthened itself out, and December found the Brownings
+still in Florence, and definitely established there for the winter.
+During this time, although there is no allusion to it in the letters,
+Mrs. Browning must have been engaged in writing the first part of
+'Casa Guidi Windows' with its hopeful aspirations for Italian liberty.
+It was, indeed, a time when hope seemed justifiable. Pius IX. had
+ascended the papal throne--then a temporal as well as a spiritual
+sovereignty--in June 1846, with the reputation of being anxious to
+introduce liberal reforms, and even to promote the formation of a
+united Italy. The English Government was diplomatically advocating
+reform, in spite of the opposition of Austria; and its representative,
+Lord Minto, who was sent on a special mission to Italy to bring this
+influence to bear on the rulers of the various Italian States, was
+received with enthusiastic joy by the zealots for Italian liberty. The
+Grand Duke of Tuscany, as was noticed above, had taken the first
+step in the direction of popular government by the institution of a
+National Guard; and Charles Albert of Piedmont was always supposed to
+have the cause of Italy at heart in spite of the vacillations of his
+policy. The catastrophe of 1848 was still in the distance; and for
+the moment a friend of freedom and of Italy might be permitted to hope
+much.
+
+Yet a difference will be noticed between the tone of Mrs. Browning's
+letters at this time and that which marks her language in 1859. In
+1847 she was still comparatively new to the country. She is interested
+in the experiment which she sees enacted before her; she feels, as any
+poet must feel, the attraction of the idea of a free and united Italy.
+But her heart is not thrown into the struggle as it was at a later
+time. She can write, and does, for the most part, write, of other
+matters. The disappointment of Milan and Novara could not break her
+heart, as the disappointment of Villafranca went near to doing. They
+are not, indeed, so much as mentioned in detail in the letters that
+follow. It is in 'Casa Guidi Windows'--the first part written
+in 1847-8, the second in 1851--that her reflections upon Italian
+politics, alike in their hopes and in their failures, must be sought.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: December 8, 1847.
+
+Have you thought me long, my dearest Miss Mitford, in writing? When
+your letter came we were distracted by various uncertainties, torn by
+wild horses of sundry speculations, and then, when one begins by delay
+in answering a letter, you are aware how a silence grows and grows.
+Also I heard _of_ you through my sisters and Mrs. Duprey[?], and
+_that_ made me lazier still. Now don't treat me according to the
+Jewish law, an eye for an eye; no! but a heart for a heart, if you
+please; and you never can have reason to reproach mine for not loving
+you. Think what we have done since I wrote last to you. Taken two
+houses, that is, two apartments, each for six months, presigning the
+contract. You will set it down as excellent poet's work in the way of
+domestic economy; but the fault was altogether mine as usual, and
+my husband, to please me, took rooms which I could not be pleased
+by three days, through the absence of sunshine and warmth. The
+consequence was that we had to pay heaps of guineas away for leave
+to go away ourselves, any alternative being preferable to a return of
+illness, and I am sure I should have been ill if we had persisted in
+staying there. You can scarcely fancy the wonderful difference which
+the sun makes in Italy. Oh, he isn't a mere 'round O' in the air in
+this Italy, I assure you! He makes us feel that he rules the day to
+all intents and purposes. So away we came into the blaze of him here
+in the Piazza Pitti, precisely opposite the Grand Duke's palace, I
+with my remorse, and poor Robert without a single reproach. Any other
+man, a little lower than the angels, would have stamped and sworn a
+little for the mere relief of the thing, but as to _his_ being angry
+with _me_ for any cause, except not eating enough dinner, the said
+sun would turn the wrong way first. So here we are on the Pitti till
+April, in small rooms yellow with sunshine from morning to evening;
+and most days I am able to get out into the piazza, and walk up and
+down for some twenty minutes without feeling a shadow of breath from
+the actual winter. Also it is pleasant to be close to the Raffaels,
+to say nothing of the immense advantage of the festa days, when,
+day after day, the civic guard comes to show the whole population of
+Florence, their Grand Duke inclusive, the new helmets and epaulettes
+and the glory thereof. They have swords, too, I believe, somewhere.
+The crowds come and come, like children to see rows of dolls, only the
+children would tire sooner than the Tuscans. Robert said musingly the
+other morning as we stood at the window, 'Surely, after all this, they
+would _use_ those muskets.' It's a problem, a 'grand peut-etre.' I
+was rather amused by hearing lately that our civic heroes had the
+gallantry to propose to the ancient military that these last should
+do the night work, i.e. when nobody was looking on and there was no
+credit, as they found it dull and fatiguing. Ah, one laughs, you see;
+one can't help it now and then. But at the real and rising feeling of
+the people by night and day one doesn't laugh indeed. I hear and
+see with the deepest sympathy of soul, on the contrary. I love the
+Italians, too, and none the less that something of the triviality and
+innocent vanity of children abounds in them. A delightful and most
+welcome letter was the last you sent me, my dearest friend. Your
+bridal visit must have charmed you, and I am glad you had the gladness
+of witnessing some of the happiness of your friend, Mrs. Acton Tyndal,
+_you_ who have such quick sympathies, and to whom the happiness of a
+friend is a gain counted in your own. The swan's shadow is something
+in a clear water. For poor Mrs.----, if she is really, as you say Mrs.
+Tyndal thinks, pining in an access of literary despondency, why _that_
+only proves to me that she is not happy otherwise, that her life
+and soul are not sufficiently filled for her woman's need. I cannot
+believe of any woman that she can think of _fame first_. A woman of
+genius may be absorbed, indeed, in the exercise of an active power,
+engrossed in the charges of the course and the combat; but this is
+altogether different to a vain and bitter longing for prizes, and what
+prizes, oh, gracious heavens! The empty cup of cold metal! _so_ cold,
+_so_ empty to a woman with a heart. So, if your friend's belief is
+true, still more deeply do I pity that other friend, who is supposed
+to be unhappy from such a cause. A few days ago I saw a bride of
+my own family, Mrs. Reynolds, Arlette Butler, who married Captain
+Reynolds some five months since.... Many were her exclamations at
+seeing me. She declared that such a change was never seen, I was
+so transfigured with my betterness: 'Oh, Ba, it is quite wonderful
+indeed!' We had been calculated on, during her three months in Rome,
+as a 'piece of resistance,' and it was a disappointment to find us
+here in a corner with the salt. Just as I was praised was poor Flush
+criticised. Flush has not recovered from the effects yet of the summer
+plague of fleas, and his curls, though growing, are not grown. I never
+saw him in such spirits nor so ugly; and though Robert and I flatter
+ourselves upon 'the sensible improvement,' Arlette could only see him
+with reference to the past, when in his Wimpole Street days he was
+sleek and over fat, and she cried aloud at the loss of his beauty.
+Then we have had [another] visitor, Mr. Hillard, an American critic,
+who reviewed me in [the old] world, and so came to _view_ me in the
+new, a very intelligent man, of a good, noble spirit. And Miss Boyle,
+ever and anon, comes at night, at nine o'clock, to catch us at our
+hot chestnuts and mulled wine, and warm her feet at our fire; and
+a kinder, more cordial little creature, full of talent and
+accomplishment, never had the world's polish on it. Very amusing, too,
+she is, and original, and a good deal of laughing she and Robert make
+between them. Did I tell you of her before, and how she is the niece
+of Lord Cork, and poetess by grace of certain Irish Muses? Neither
+of us know her writings in any way, but we like her, and for the best
+reasons. And this is nearly all, I think, we see of the 'face divine,'
+masculine and feminine, and I can't make Robert go out a single
+evening, not even to a concert, nor to hear a play of Alfieri's, yet
+we fill up our days with books and music (and a little writing has
+its share), and wonder at the clock for galloping. It's twenty-four
+o'clock with us almost as soon as we begin to count. Do tell me of
+Tennyson's book, and of Miss Martineau's. I was grieved to hear a
+distant murmur of a rumour of an apprehension of a return of her
+complaint: somebody said that she could not bear the _pressure of
+dress_, and that the exhaustion resulting from the fits of absorption
+in work and enthusiasm on the new subject of Egypt was painfully
+great, and that her friends feared for her. I should think that the
+bodily excitement and fatigue of her late travels must have been
+highly hazardous, and that indeed, throughout her convalescence, she
+should have more spared herself in climbing hills and walking and
+riding distances. A strain obviously might undo everything. Still, I
+do hope that the bitter cup may not be filled for her again. What a
+wonderful discovery this substitute for ether inhalations[169] seems
+to be. Do you hear anything of its operation in your neighbourhood? We
+have had a letter from Mr. Horne, who appears happy, and speaks of his
+success in lecturing on Ireland, and of a new novel which he is about
+to publish in a separate form after having printed it in a magazine.
+We have not set up the types even of our _plans_ about a book, very
+distinctly, but we shall do something some day, and you shall hear
+of it the evening before. Being too happy doesn't agree with literary
+activity quite as well as I should have thought; and then, dear Mr.
+Kenyon can't persuade us that we are not rich enough, so as to bring
+into force a lower order of motives. He talks of Rome still. Now
+write, dear, dearest Miss Mitford, and tell me of yourself and your
+health, and do, _do_ love me as you used to do. As to French books,
+one may swear, but you can't get a new publication, except by
+accident, at this excellent celebrated library of Vieusseux, and I
+am reduced to read some of my favorites over again, I and Robert
+together. You ought to hear how we go to single combat, ever and anon,
+with shield and lance. The greatest quarrel we have had since our
+marriage, by the way (always excepting my crying conjugal wrong of not
+eating enough!), was brought up by Masson's pamphlet on the Iron Mask
+and Fouquet. I wouldn't be persuaded that Fouquet was 'in it,' and
+so 'the anger of my lord waxed hot.' To this day he says sometimes:
+'Don't be cross, Ba! _Fouquet wasn't the Iron Mask after all_.'
+
+God bless you, dearest Miss Mitford.
+Your ever affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+We are here till April.
+
+[Footnote 169: Chloroform, then beginning to come into use.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+Florence: December 1847.
+
+Indeed, my dear friend, you have a right to complain of _me_, whether
+or not _we_ had any in thinking ourselves deeply injured creatures
+by your last silence. Yet when in your letter which came at last, you
+said, 'Write directly,' I _meant_ to write directly; I did not take
+out my vengeance in a foregone malice, be very sure. Just at the time
+we were in a hard knot of uncertainties about Rome and Venice and
+Florence, and a cold house and a warm house; for instance we managed
+(that is _I_ did, for altogether it was my fault) to take two
+apartments in the course of ten days, each for a term of six months,
+getting out of one of them by leaving the skirts of our garments,
+_rent_, literally, in the hand of the proprietor. You have heard most
+of this, I dare say, from Mr. Kenyon or my sisters. Now, too, you are
+aware of our being in Piazza Pitti, in a charmed circle of sun blaze.
+Our rooms are small, but of course as cheerful as being under the very
+eyelids of the sun must make everything; and we have a cook in the
+house who takes the office of _traiteur_ on him and gives us English
+mutton chops at Florentine prices, both of us quite well and in
+spirits, and (though you never will believe this) happier than ever.
+For my own part, you know I need not say a word if it were not true,
+and I must say to you, who saw the beginning with us, that this end of
+fifteen months is just fifteen times better and brighter; the mystical
+'moon' growing larger and larger till scarcely room is left for any
+stars at all: the only differences which have touched me being the
+more and more happiness. It would have been worse than unreasonable if
+in marrying I had expected one quarter of such happiness, and indeed I
+did not, to do myself justice, and every now and then I look round
+in astonishment and thankfulness together, yet with a sort of horror,
+seeing that this is not heaven after all. We live just as we did when
+you knew us, just as shut-up a life. Robert never goes anywhere except
+to take a walk with Flush, which isn't my fault, as you may imagine:
+he has not been out one evening of the fifteen months; but what with
+music and books and writing and talking, we scarcely know how the days
+go, it's such a gallop on the grass. We are going through some of
+old Sacchetti's novelets now: characteristic work for Florence, if
+somewhat dull elsewhere. Boccaccios can't be expected to spring up
+with the vines in rows, even in this climate. We got a newly printed
+addition to Savonarola's poems the other day, very flat and cold, they
+did not catch fire when he was burnt. The most poetic thing in the
+book is his face on the first page, with that eager, devouring soul in
+the eyes of it. You may suppose that I am able sometimes to go over
+to the gallery and adore the Raphaels, and Robert will tell you of the
+divine Apollino which you missed seeing in Poggio Imperiale, and which
+I shall be set face to face before, some day soon, I hope....
+
+Father Prout was in Florence for some two hours in passing to Rome,
+and of course, according to contract of spirits of the air, Robert met
+him, and heard a great deal of you and Geddie (saw Geddie's picture,
+by the way, and thought it very like), was told much to the advantage
+of Mr. Macpherson,[170] and at the end of all, kissed in the open
+street as the speaker was about to disappear in the diligence. When
+you write, tell me of the _book_. Surely it will be out anon, and then
+you will be free, shall you not? Have you seen Tennyson's new poem,
+and what of it? Miss Martineau is to discourse about Egypt, I suppose;
+but in the meanwhile do you hear that she forswears mesmerism, as Mr.
+Spenser Hall does, according to the report Robert brings me home from
+the newspaper reading. Now I shall leave him room to stand on and
+speak a word to you. Give my love to Gerardine, and don't forget to
+mention her letter. I hope you are happy about your friends, and that,
+in particular, Lady Byron's health is strengthening and to strengthen.
+Always my dear friend's
+
+Most affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+Dear Aunt Nina,--A corner is just the place for eating Christmas pies
+in, but for venting Christmas wishes, hardly! What has Ba told you and
+wished you in the way of love? I wish you the same and love you the
+same, but Geddie, being part of you, gets her due part. We are as
+happy as two owls in a hole, two toads under a tree stump; or any
+other queer two poking creatures that we let live, after the fashion
+of their black hearts, only Ba is fat and rosy; yes, indeed! Florence
+is empty and pleasant. Goodbye, therefore, till next year--shall it
+not be then we meet? God bless you. R.B.
+
+[Footnote 170: Miss Bate's _fiance_.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: February 22, [1848].
+
+Your letter, my dearest friend, which was written, a part at least,
+before Christmas, came lingering in long after the new year had seen
+out its matins. Oh, I had wondered so, and wished so over the long
+silence. My fault, perhaps in a measure, for I know how silent _I_ was
+before. Yes, and you tell me of your having been unwell (bad news),
+and of your dear Flush's death, which made me sorrowful for you, as
+I might reasonably be. And now tell me more. Have you a successor to
+him? Once you told me that one of the race was in training, but as you
+say nothing now I am all in a doubt. Let me hear everything. If I had
+been you, I think I should have preferred some quite other kind of
+dog, as the unlikeness of a likeness would be apt to bring a pain to
+me; but people can't reason about feelings, and feelings are like the
+colour of eyes, not the same in different faces, however general may
+be the proximity of noses.... The great subject with _everybody_ just
+now is the new hope of Italy, and the liberal constitution, given
+nobly by our good, excellent Grand Duke, whose praise is in all the
+houses, streets, and piazzas. The other evening, the evening after the
+gift, he went privately to the opera, was recognised, and in a burst
+of triumph and a glory of waxen torches was brought back to the Pitti
+by the people. I was undressing to go to bed, had my hair down over my
+shoulders under Wilson's ministry, when Robert called me to look out
+of the window and see. Through the dark night a great flock of stars
+seemed sweeping up the piazza, but not in silence, nor with very
+heavenly noises. The '_Evvivas_' were deafening. So glad I was. _I,
+too_, stood at the window and clapped my hands. If ever Grand Duke
+deserved benediction this Duke does. We hear that he was quite moved,
+overpowered, and wept like a child. Nevertheless the most of Italy is
+under the cloud, and God knows how all may end as the thunder ripens.
+Now I mustn't, I suppose, write politics. Our plans about England are
+afloat. Impossible to know what we shall do, but if not this summer,
+the summer after _must_ help us to the sight of some beloved faces. It
+will be a midsummer dream, and we shall return to winter in Italy. My
+Flush is as well as ever, and perhaps gayer than ever I knew him. He
+runs out in the piazza whenever he pleases, and plays with the dogs
+when they are pretty enough, and wags his tail at the sentinels and
+civic guard, and takes the Grand Duke as a sort of neighbour of his,
+whom it is proper enough to patronise, but who has considerably less
+inherent merit and dignity than the spotted spaniel in the alley
+to the left. We have been reading over again 'Andre' and 'Leone
+Leoni,'[171] and Robert is in an enthusiasm about the first. Happy
+person, you are, to get so at new books. Blessed is the man who reads
+Balzac, or even Dumas. I have got to admire Dumas doubly since that
+fight and scramble for his brains in Paris. Now do think of me and
+love me, and let me be as ever your affectionate
+
+BA.
+
+Robert's regards always. Say particularly how you are, and may God
+bless you, dearest Miss Mitford, and make you happy.
+
+[Footnote 171: Novels by George Sand.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: April 15, [1848].
+
+... My Flush has recovered his beauty, and is in more vivacious
+spirits than I remember to have seen him. Still, the days come when he
+will have no pleasure and plenty of fleas, poor dog, for Savonarola's
+martyrdom here in Florence is scarcely worse than Flush's in the
+summer. Which doesn't prevent his enjoying the spring, though, and
+just now, when, by medical command, I drive out two hours every day,
+his delight is to occupy the seat in the carriage opposite to Robert
+and me, and look disdainfully on all the little dogs who walk afoot.
+We drive day by day through the lovely Cascine (where the trees have
+finished and spread their webs of full greenery, undimmed by the sun
+yet), first sweeping through the city, past such a window where Bianca
+Capello looked out to see the Duke go by,[172] and past such a door
+where Lapo stood, and past the famous stone where Dante drew his chair
+out to sit.[173] Strange, to have all that old-world life about us,
+and the blue sky so bright besides, and ever so much talk on our lips
+about the new French revolution, and the King of Prussia's cunning,
+and the fuss in Germany and elsewhere. Not to speak of our own
+particular troubles and triumphs in Lombardy close by. The English are
+flying from Florence, by the way, in a helter skelter, just as they
+always do fly, except (to do them justice) on a field of battle. The
+family Englishman is a dreadful coward, be it admitted frankly. See
+how they run from France, even to my dear excellent Uncle Hedley, who
+has too many little girls in his household to stay longer at Tours.
+Oh, I don't _blame_ him exactly. I only wish that he had waited a
+little longer, the time necessary for being quite reassured. He has
+great stakes in the country--a house at Tours and in Paris, and twenty
+thousand pounds in the Rouen railway. But Florence will fall upon her
+feet we may all be certain, let the worst happen that can. Meanwhile,
+republicans as I and my, husband are by profession, we very anxiously,
+anxiously even to pain, look on the work being attempted and done just
+now by the theorists in Paris; far from half approving of it we are,
+and far from being absolutely confident of the durability of the other
+half. Tell me what you think, and if you are not anxious too. As to
+communism, surely the practical part of _that_, the only not dangerous
+part, is attainable simply by the consent of individuals who may try
+the experiment of associating their families in order to the cheaper
+employment of the means of life, and successfully in many cases. But
+make a government scheme of _even so much_, and you seem to trench on
+the individual liberty. All such patriarchal planning in a government
+issues naturally into absolutism, and is adapted to states of society
+more or less barbaric. Liberty and civilisation when married together
+lawfully rather evolve individuality than tend to generalisation.
+Is this not true? I fear, I fear that mad theories promising the
+impossible may, in turn, make the people mad. I Louis Blanc knows
+not what he says. Have I not mentioned to you a very gifted woman, a
+sculptress, Mademoiselle de Fauveau, who lives in Florence with her
+mother practising her profession, an exile from France, in consequence
+of their royalist opinions and participation in the Vendee struggle,
+some sixteen or fifteen years? On that occasion she was mistaken for
+and allowed herself to be arrested as Madame de la Roche Jacquelin;
+therefore she has justified, by suffering in the cause, her passionate
+attachment to it. A most interesting person she is; she called upon us
+a short time ago and interested us much. And Mrs. Jameson would tell
+you that her celebrity in her art is not comparative 'for a woman,'
+but that, since Benvenuto Cellini, more beautiful works of the kind
+have not been accomplished. An exquisite fountain she has lately
+done for the Emperor of Russia. She has workmen under her, and is as
+'professional' in every respect as if neither woman nor noble. At the
+first throb of this revolution of course she dreamt the impossible
+about that dear 'Henri Cinq,' who is as much out of the question
+as Henri Quatre himself; and now it ends with the 'French Legation'
+coming to settle in the house precisely opposite to hers, with a
+hideous sign-painting appended O the Gallic cock on one leg and at
+full crow inscribed, 'Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite.' This, and the
+death of her favorite dog, whom, after seventeen years' affection, she
+was forced to have destroyed on account of a combination of diseases,
+has quite saddened the sculptress. When she came to see us I observed
+that after so long a residence at Florence she must regard it as a
+second country. 'Ah non!' (the answer was) 'il n'y a pas de seconde
+patrie.' What you tell me of 'Jane Eyre' makes me long to see the
+book. I may long, I fancy. It is dismal to have to disappoint my
+dearest sisters, who hoped for me in England this summer, but our
+English visit _must_ be for next summer instead; there seems too
+much against it just now. The drawback of Italy is the distance from
+England. If it were but as near as Paris, for instance, why in that
+case we should settle here at once, I do think, the conveniences and
+luxuries of life are of such incredible cheapness, the climate so
+divine, and the way of things altogether so serene and suited to our
+tastes and instincts. But to give up England and the _English_, the
+dear, dearest treasure of English love, is impossible, so we just
+linger and linger. The Boyles go to England from the press of panic,
+Lady Boyle being old and infirm. Ah, but your talking friend would
+interest you, and you might accept the talk in infinitesimal
+doses, you know. Lamartine has surely acted down the fallacy of the
+impractical tendencies of imaginative men. I am full of France just
+now. Are you all prepared for an outbreak in Ireland? I hope so. My
+husband has the second edition of his collected poems[174] in the
+press by this time, by grace of Chapman and Hall, who accept all
+risks. You speak of Tennyson's vexation about the reception of
+the 'Princess.' Why did Mr. Harness and others, who 'never could
+understand' his former divine works, praise this in manuscript
+till the poet's hope grew to the height of his ambition? Strangely
+unfortunate. We have not read it yet. I hear that Tennyson had the
+other day everything packed for Italy, then turned his face toward
+Ireland, and went there. Oh, for a talk with you. But this is a sort
+of talk, isn't it? Accept my husband's regards. As to my love, I throw
+it to you over the [sea] with both hands. God bless you.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 172: See Browning's _The Statue and the Bust_.]
+
+[Footnote 173: 'the stone Called Dante's--a plain flat stone scarce
+discerned From others in the pavement--whereupon He used to bring his
+quiet chair out, turned To Brunelleschi's church, and pour alone The
+lava of his spirit when it burned.' _Casa Guidi Windows_, part i.]
+
+[Footnote 174: This edition, published in 1849 in two volumes
+contained only _Paracelsus_ and the plays and poems of the _Bells and
+Pomegranates_ series.]
+
+
+_To John Kenyan_
+[Florence:] May I, [1848].
+
+My dearest Mr. Kenyon,--Surely it is quite wrong that we three,
+Robert, you, and I, should be satisfied with writing little dry notes,
+as short as so many proclamations, and those of the order of your
+anti-Chartist magistracy, 'Whereas certain evil disposed persons &c.
+&c.,' instead of our anti-Austrian Grand duchy's 'O figli amati'
+(how characteristic of the north and the south, to be sure, is this
+contrast! Yet, after all, they might have managed it rather better
+in England!)--little dry notes brief and business-like as an
+anti-Chartist proclamation! And, indeed, two of us are by no means
+satisfied, whatever the third may be. The other day we were looking
+over some of the dear delightful letters you used to write to us.
+Real letters those were, and not little dry notes at all. Robert said,
+'When I write to dear Mr. Kenyon I really do feel overcome by the
+sense of what I owe to him, and so, as it is beyond words to say, why
+generally I say as little as possible of anything, keeping myself to
+matters of business.' An alternative very objectionable, I told him;
+for to have 'a dumb devil' from ever such grateful and sentimental
+reasons, when the Alps stand betwixt friend, is damnatory in the
+extreme. Then, as _you_ are not 'too grateful' to _us_, why don't
+_you_ write? Pray do, my dear friend. Let us all write as we used to
+do. And to make sure of it, I begin.
+
+Since I ended last the world has turned over on its other side, in
+order, one must hope, to some happy change in the dream. Our friend,
+Miss Bayley, in that very kind letter which has just reached me and
+shall be answered directly (will you tell her with my thankful love?),
+asks if Robert and I are communists, and then half draws back her
+question into a discreet reflection that _I_, at least, was never
+much celebrated for acumen on political economy. Most true indeed! And
+therefore, and on that very ground, is it not the more creditable to
+me that I don't set up for a communist immediately? In proportion to
+the ignorance might be the stringency of the embrace of 'la verite
+sociale:' so I claim a little credit that it isn't. For really we
+are not communists, farther than to admit the wisdom of voluntary
+association in matters of material life among the poorer classes. And
+to legislate even on such points seems as objectionable as possible;
+all intermeddlings of government with domesticities, from Lacedaemon
+to Peru, were and must be objectionable; and of the growth of
+absolutism, let us, theorise as we choose. I would have the government
+educate the people absolutely, and _then_ give room for the individual
+to develop himself into life freely. Nothing can be more hateful to me
+than this communist idea of quenching individualities in the mass. As
+if the hope of the world did not always consist in the eliciting
+of the individual man from the background of the masses, in the
+evolvement of individual genius, virtue, magnanimity. Do you know how
+I love France and the French? Robert laughs at me for the mania of it,
+or used to laugh long before this revolution. When I was a prisoner,
+my other mania for imaginative literature used to be ministered to
+through the prison bars by Balzac, George Sand, and the like immortal
+improprieties. They kept the colour in my life to some degree and did
+good service in their time to me, I can assure you, though in dear
+discreet England women oughtn't to confess to such reading, I believe,
+or you told me so yourself one day. Well, but through reading the
+books I grew to love France, in a mania too; and the interest, which
+all must feel in the late occurrences there, has been with me, and is,
+quite painful. I read the newspapers as I never did in my life, and
+hope and fear in paroxysms, yes, and am guilty of thinking far more
+of Paris than of Lombardy itself, and try to understand financial
+difficulties and social theories with the best will in the world;
+much as Flush tries to understand me when I tell him that barking and
+jumping may be unseasonable things. Both of us open our eyes a good
+deal, but the comprehension is questionable after all. What, however,
+I do seem least of all to comprehend, is your hymn of triumph in
+England, just because you have a lower ideal of liberty than the
+French people have. See if in Louis Philippe's time France was not
+in many respects more advanced than England is now, property better
+divided, hereditary privilege abolished! Are we to blow with the
+trumpet because we respect the ruts while everywhere else they are
+mending the roads? I do not comprehend. As to the Chartists, it is
+only a pity in my mind that you have not more of them. That's their
+fault. Mine, you will say, is being pert about politics when you would
+rather have anything else in a letter from Italy. You have heard of
+my illness, and will have been sorry for me, I am certain; but with
+blessings edging me round, I need not catch at a thistle in the hedge
+to make a 'sorrowful complaignte' of. Our plans have floated round and
+round, in and out of all the bays and creeks of the Happy Islands....
+
+Meanwhile here we are--and when do you mean to come to see us, pray?
+Mind, I hold by the skirts of the vision for next winter. Why, surely
+_you_ won't talk of 'disturbances' and 'revolutions,' and the like
+disloyal reasons which send our brave countrymen flying on all sides,
+as if every separate individual expected to be bombarded _per
+se_. Now, mind you come; dear dear Mr. Kenyon, how delighted past
+expression we should be to see you! Ah, do you fancy that I have no
+regret for our delightful gossips? If I have the feeling I told you of
+for Balzac and George Sand, what must I have for _you_? Now come,
+and let us see you! And still sooner, if you please, write to us--and
+write of yourself and in detail--and tell us particularly, first if
+the winter has left no sign of a cough with you, and next, what you
+mean by something which suggests to my fancy that you have a book in
+the course of printing. Is that true? Tell me all about it--_all_! Who
+can be interested, pray, if _I_ am not? For your and Mr. Chorley's
+and Mr. Forster's kind dealings with Robert's poems I thank you
+gratefully; and as a third volume can bring up the rear quickly in the
+case of success, I make no wailing for my 'Luria,' however dear it may
+be.[175]
+
+[Illustration: _Casa Guidi From a Photograph_]
+
+You are not to fancy that I am unwell now. On the contrary, I am
+nearly as strong as ever, and go out in the carriage for two hours
+every day, besides a little walk sometimes. Not a word more to-day.
+Write--do--and you shall hear from us at length. Robert sends his own
+love, I suppose. We both love you from our hearts.
+
+Your ever affectionate and grateful
+BA.
+(who can't read over, and writes in such a hurry!)
+
+It was about this time, as appears from the following letter, that
+the Brownings finally anchored themselves in Florence by taking an
+unfurnished suite of rooms in the Palazzo Guidi, and making there
+a home for themselves, Here, in the Via Maggio, almost opposite the
+Pitti Palace, and within easy distance of the Ponte Vecchio, is the
+dwelling known to all lovers of English poetry as Casa Guidi, and
+bearing now upon its walls the name of the English poetess whose life
+and writings formed, in the graceful words of the Italian poet,
+'a golden ring between Italy and England.' Whatever might be their
+migrations--and they were many, especially in later years--Casa Guidi
+was henceforth their home.[176]
+
+[Footnote 175: Apparently it had been proposed to omit _Luria_ from
+the new edition; but, if so, the intention was not carried out.]
+
+[Footnote 176: It will interest many readers to know that Casa Guidi
+is now the property of Mr. R. Barrett Browning.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+May 28, 1848.
+
+... And now I must tell you what we have done since I wrote last,
+little thinking of doing so. You see our problem was to get to England
+as much in our summers as possible, the expense of the intermediate
+journeys making it difficult of solution. On examination of the whole
+case, it appeared manifest that we were throwing money into the like
+to hear you talk of poor France; how I hope that you are able to hope
+for her. Oh, this absurdity of communism and mythological fete-ism!
+where can it end? They had better have kept Louis Philippe after
+all, if they are no more practical. Your Madame must be insufferable
+indeed, seeing that her knowledge of these subjects and men did not
+make her sufferable to you. My curiosity never is exhausted. What I
+hold is that the French have a higher ideal than we, and that all
+this clambering, leaping, struggling of indefinite awkwardness simply
+proves it. But _success in the republic_ is different still. I fear
+for them. My uncle and his family are safe at Tunbridge Wells, my aunt
+longing to be able to get back again. For those who are still nearer
+to me, I have no heart to speak of _them_, loving them as I do and
+must to the end, whatever that end may be; but my dearest sisters
+write often to me--never let me miss their affection. I am quite well
+again, and strong, and Robert and I go out after tea in a wandering
+walk to sit in the Loggia and look at the Perseus, or, better still,
+at the divine sunsets on the Arno, turning it to pure gold under the
+bridges. After more than twenty months of marriage, we are happier
+than ever--I may say _we_. Italy will regenerate herself in all
+senses, I hope and believe. In Florence we are very quiet, and the
+English fly in proportion. N.B.--_Always_ first fly the majors and
+gallant captains, unless there's a general. How I should like to see
+dear Mr. Horne's poem! _He's_ bold, at least--yes, and has a great
+heart to be bold with. A cloud has fallen on me some few weeks ago, in
+the illness and death of my dear friend Mr. Boyd,[177] but he did not
+suffer, and is not to be mourned by those without hope [_sic_]. Still,
+it has been a cloud. May God bless you, my beloved friend. Write soon,
+and of yourself, to your ever affectionate
+
+BA.
+
+My husband's regards go to you, of course.
+
+[Footnote 177: Mr. Boyd died on May 10, 1848.]
+
+
+_To Miss Browning_
+[Florence: about June 1848.]
+
+My dearest Sarianna,--At last, you see, I give sign of life. The
+_love_, I hope you believed in without sign or symbol; and even
+for the rest, Robert promised to answer for me like godfather or
+godmother, and bear the consequence of my sins....
+
+We are a little uneasy just now as to whether you will be overjoyed or
+_under_ joyed by our new scheme of taking an unfurnished apartment.
+It would spoil all, for instance, if your dear mother seemed
+disappointed--vexed--in the least degree. And I can understand how,
+to persons at a distance and of course unable to understand the
+whole circumstances of the case, the fact of an apartment taken and
+furnished may seem to involve some dreadful giving up for ever and
+ever of country and family--which would be as dreadful to us as to
+you! How could we give you up, do you think, when we love you more and
+more? Oh no. If Robert has succeeded in making clear the subject to
+you, you will all perceive, just as _we know_, that we have simply
+thus solved the problem of making our small income carry us to
+England, not only next summer, but many a summer after. We should like
+to give every summer to dear England, and hide away from the cold only
+when it comes. By our scheme we shall have saved money even at the end
+of the present year; while for afterward, here's a residence--that is,
+a_pied a terre_--in Italy, all but free when we wish to use it; and
+when we care to let it, producing eight or ten pounds a month in help
+of travelling expenses. It's the best investment for Mr. Moxon's money
+we could have looked the world over for. So the learned tell us; and
+after all, you know, we only pay in the proportion of your working
+classes in the Pancras building contrived for them by the philanthropy
+of your Southwood Smiths. I do wish you could see what rooms we have,
+what ceilings, what height and breadth, what a double terrace for
+orange trees; how cool, how likely to be warm, how perfect every way!
+Robert leaned once to a ground floor in the Frescobaldi Palace, being
+bewitched by a garden full of camellias, and a little pond of gold and
+silver fish; but while he saw the fish I saw the mosquitos in clouds,
+such an apocalypse of them as has not yet been visible to me in all
+Florence, and I dread mosquitos more than Austrians; and he, in his
+unspeakable goodness, deferred to my fear in a moment and gave up the
+camellias without one look behind. A heavy conscience I should have if
+it were not that the camellia garden was certainly less private than
+our terrace here, where we can have camellias also if we please. How
+pretty and pleasant your cottage at Windsor must be! We had a long
+_muse_ over your father's sketch of it, and set faces at the windows.
+That the dear invalid is better for the change must have brightened
+it, too, to her companions, and the very sound of a 'forest' is
+something peculiarly delightful and untried to me. I know hills well,
+and of the sea too much; but now I want forests, or quite, quite
+mountains, such as you have not in England.
+
+Robert says that if 'Blackwood' likes to print a poem of mine and send
+you the proofs, you will be so very good as to like to correct them.
+To me it seems too much to ask, when you have work for him to do
+beside. Will it be too much, or is nothing so to your kindness? I
+would ask my _other_ sisters, who would gladly, dear things, do it for
+me; but I have misgivings through their being so entirely unaccustomed
+to occupations of the sort, or any critical reading of poetry of
+any sort. Robert is quite well and in the best spirits, and has the
+headache now only very occasionally. I am as well as he, having quite
+recovered my strength and power of walking. So we wander to the bridge
+of Trinita every evening after tea to see the sunset on the Arno. May
+God bless you all! Give my true love to your father and mother, and my
+loving thanks to yourself for that last stitch in the stool. How good
+you are, Sarianna, to your ever affectionate sister
+
+BA.
+
+Always remind your dear mother that we are no more _bound_ here than
+when in furnished lodgings. It is a mere name.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Palazzo Guidi: June 20, [1848].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Now I am going to answer your letter, which I
+all but lost, and got ever so many days beyond the right day, because
+you directed it to Mrs. _William_ Browning. Pray remember
+_Robert Browning_ for the future, in right descent from _Robert
+Brunnyng_,[178] the first English poet. Mrs. Jameson says, 'It's
+ominous of the actual Robert's being the _last_ English poet;' a
+saying which I give you to remember us by, rejecting the omen....
+We have grown to be Florentine citizens, as perhaps you have heard.
+Health and means both forbade our settlement in England; and the
+journey backwards and forwards being another sort of expense, and very
+necessary with our ties and affections, we had to think how to live
+here, when we were here, at the cheapest. The difference between
+taking a furnished apartment and an unfurnished one is something
+immense. For our furnished rooms we have had always to pay some four
+guineas a month; and unfurnished rooms of equal pretension we could
+have for twelve a year, and the furniture (out and out) for fifty
+pounds. This calculation, together with the consideration that we
+could let our apartment whenever we travelled and receive back the
+whole cost, could not choose, of course, but determine us. On coming
+to the point, however, we grew ambitious, and preferred giving
+five-and-twenty guineas for a noble suite of rooms in the Palazzo
+Guidi, a stone's throw from the Pitti, and furnishing them after
+our own taste rather than after our economy, the economy having a
+legitimate share of respect notwithstanding; and the satisfactory
+thing being that the whole expense of this furnishing--rococo chairs,
+spring sofas, carved bookcases, satin from cardinals' beds, and the
+rest--is covered by the proceeds of our books during the last two
+winters. This is satisfying, isn't it? We shall stand safe within the
+borders of our narrow income even this year, and next year comes the
+harvest! We shall go to England in the spring, and return _home_
+to Italy. Do you understand? Mr. Kenyon, our friend and counsellor,
+writes to applaud--such prudence was never known before among poets.
+Then we have a plan, that when the summer (this summer) grows too hot,
+we shall just take up our carpet-bag and Wilson and plunge into the
+mountains in search of the monasteries beyond Vallombrosa, from
+Arezzo go to St. Sepolchro in the Apennines, and thence to Fano on the
+seashore, making a round back perhaps (after seeing the great fair at
+Sinigaglia) to Ravenna and Bologna home. As to Rome, our plan is to
+give up Rome next winter, seeing that we _must_ go to England in the
+spring. I _must_ see my dearest sisters and whoever else dear will see
+me, and Robert _must_ see his family beside; and going to Rome will
+take us too far from the route and cost too much; and then we are not
+inclined to give the first-fruits of our new apartment to strangers if
+we could let it ever so easily this year. You can't think how well
+the rooms look already; you must come and see them, you and dear Mr.
+Martin. Three immense rooms we have, and a fourth small one for a
+book room and winter room--windows opening on a little terrace,
+eight windows to the south; two good bedrooms behind, with a smaller
+terrace, and kitchen, &c., all on a first floor and Count Guidi's
+favorite suite. The Guidi were connected by marriage with the Ugolino
+of Pisa, Dante's Ugolino, only we shun all traditions of the Tower
+of Famine, and promise to give you excellent coffee whenever you will
+come to give us the opportunity. We shall have vines and myrtles
+and orange trees on the terrace, and I shall have a watering-pot and
+garden just as you do, though it must be on the bricks instead of the
+ground. For temperature, the stoves are said to be very effective in
+the winter, and in the summer we are cool and airy; the advantage
+of these thick-walled palazzos is coolness in summer and warmth in
+winter. I am very well and quite strong again, or rather, stronger
+than ever, and able to walk as far as Cellini's Perseus in the
+moonlight evenings, on the other side of the Arno. Oh, that Arno in
+the sunset, with the moon and evening star standing by, how divine it
+is!...
+
+Think of me as ever your most affectionate
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 178: Otherwise known as Robert Mannyng, or Robert de Brunne,
+author of the _Handlyng Synne_ and a _Chronicle of England_. He
+flourished about 1288-1338.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: July 4, [1848].
+
+It does grieve me, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, to hear of the
+suffering which has fallen upon you! Oh, rheumatism or not, whatever
+the name may be, do take care, do consider, and turn your dear face
+toward the seaside; somewhere where you can have warm sea bathing
+and sea air, and be able to associate the word 'a drive' not with mad
+ponies, but the mildest of donkeys, on a flat sand. The good it would
+do you is incalculable, I am certain; it is precisely a case for
+change of air, with quiet....
+
+As for when you come to Florence, we won't have 'a pony carriage
+between us,' if you please, because we may have a carriage and a pair
+of horses and a coachman, and pay as little as for the pony-chair in
+England. For three hundred a year one may live much like the Grand
+Duchess, and go to the opera in the evening at fivepence-halfpenny
+inclusive. Indeed, poor people should have their patriotism tenderly
+dealt with, when, after certain experiments, they decide on living
+upon the whole on the Continent. The differences are past belief,
+beyond expectation, and when the sunshine is thrown in, the head turns
+at once, and you fall straight into absenteeism. Ah, for the 'long
+chats' and the 'having England at one another's fireside!' You talk of
+delightful things indeed. We are very quiet, politically speaking,
+and though we hear now and then of melancholy mothers who have to part
+with their sons for Lombardy,[179] and though there are processions
+for the blessing of flags and an occasional firing of guns for a
+victory, or a cry in the streets, 'Notizie della guerra--leggete,
+signori;' this is all we know of Radetsky in Florence; while, for
+civil politics, the meeting of the senate took place a few days since
+to the satisfaction of everybody, and the Grand Duke's speech was
+generally admired. The elections have returned moderate men, and many
+land-proprietors, and Robert, who went out to see the procession of
+members, was struck by the grave thoughtful faces and the dignity
+of expression. We are going some day to hear the debates, but it has
+pleased their signoria to fix upon twelve (noon) for meeting, and
+really I do not dare to go out in the sun. The hour is sufficiently
+conclusive against dangerous enthusiasm. Poor France, poor France!
+News of the dreadful massacre at Paris just reaches us, and the
+letters and newspapers not arriving to-day, everybody fears a
+continuation of the crisis. How is it to end? Who 'despairs of the
+republic?' Why, _I_ do! I fear, I fear, that it cannot stand in
+France, and you seem to have not much more hope. My husband has a
+little, with melancholy intermediate prospects; but my own belief
+that the people have had enough of democratic institutions and will be
+impatient for a kingship anew. Whom will they have? How did you feel
+when the cry was raised, 'Vive l'Empereur'? Only Prince Napoleon is a
+Napoleon cut out in paper after all. The Prince de Joinville is said
+to be very popular. It makes me giddy to think of the awful precipices
+which surround France--to think, too, that the great danger is on the
+question of _property_, which is perhaps divided there more justly
+than in any other country of Europe. Lamartine has comprehended
+nothing, that is clear, even if his amount of energy had been
+effectual.... Yes, do send me the list of Balzac, _after_ 'Les Miseres
+de la Vie Conjugale,' I mean. I left him in the midst of 'La Femme de
+Soixante Ans,' who seemed on the point of turning the heads of all
+'la jeunesse' around her; and, after all, she did not strike me as so
+charming. But Balzac charms me, let him write what he will; he's an
+inspired man. Tell me, too, exactly what Sue has done after 'Martin.'
+I read only one volume of 'Martin.' And did poor Soulie finish his
+'Dramas'? And after 'Lucretia' what did George Sand write? When Robert
+and I are ambitious, we talk of buying Balzac in full some day, to put
+him up in our bookcase from the convent, if the carved-wood angels,
+infants and serpents, should not finish mouldering away in horror at
+the touch of him. But I fear it will rather be an expensive purchase,
+even here. Would that he gave up the drama, for which, as you observe,
+he has no faculty whatever. In fact, the faculty he has is the very
+reverse of the dramatic, ordinarily understood.... Dearest Mr. Kenyon
+is called quite well and delightful by the whole world, though he
+suffered from cough in the winter; and he is bringing out a new book
+of poems, a 'Day at Tivoli,' and others; and he talks energetically of
+coming to Florence this autumn. Also, we have hopes of Mr. Chorley. I
+congratulate you on the going away of Madame. Coming and going bring
+very various associations in this life of ours. Why, if _you_ were
+to come we should appreciate our fortune, and you should have my
+particular chair, which Robert calls mine because I like sitting in a
+cloud; it's so sybaritically soft a chair. Now I love you for the kind
+words you say of _him_, who deserves the best words of the best women
+and men, wherever spoken! Yes, indeed, I am happy. Otherwise, I should
+have a stone where the heart is, and sink by the weight of it.
+You must have faith in me, for I never can make you thoroughly
+to understand what he is, of himself, and to me--the noblest and
+perfectest of human beings. After a year and ten months' absolute
+soul-to-soul intercourse and union, I have to look higher still for my
+first ideal. You won't blame me for bad taste that I say these things,
+for can I help it, when I am writing my heart to you? It is a heart
+which runs over very often with a grateful joy for a most peculiar
+destiny, even in the midst of some bitter drawbacks which I need not
+allude to farther....
+
+May God bless you continually, even as I am
+
+Your affectionate
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 179: The insurrection of Lombardy against Austrian rule
+had taken place in March, and was immediately followed by war between
+Sardinia and Austria, in which the Italians gained some initial
+successes. Fighting continued through the summer, and was temporarily
+closed by an armistice in August.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+Palazzo Guidi: July 15, [1848].
+
+Now at last, my very dear friend, I am writing to you, and the
+reproach you sent to me in your letter shall not be driven inwardly
+any more by my self-reproaches. Wasn't it your fault after all, a
+little, that we did not hear one another's voice oftener? You are
+_so long_ in writing. Then I have been putting off and putting off my
+letter to you, just because I wanted to make a full letter of it; and
+Robert always says that it's the bane of a correspondence to make a
+full letter a condition of writing at all. But so much I had to tell
+you! while the mere outline of facts you had from others, I knew.
+Which is just said that you may forgive us both, and believe that we
+think of you and love you, yes, and talk of you, even when we don't
+write to you, and that we shall write to you for the future more
+regularly, indeed. Your letter, notwithstanding its reproach, was
+very welcome and very kind, only you must be fagged with the book, and
+saddened by Lady Byron's state of health, and anxious about Gerardine
+perhaps. The best of all was the prospect you hold out to us of coming
+to Italy this year. Do, do come. Delighted we shall be to see you in
+Florence, and wise it will be in you to cast behind your back both the
+fear of Radetsky and as much English care as may be. Now, would it not
+do infinite good to Lady Byron if you could carry her with you into
+the sun? Surely it would do her great good; the change, the calm, the
+atmosphere of beauty and brightness, which harmonises so wonderfully
+with every shade of human feeling. Florence just now, and thanks to
+the panic, is tolerably _clean_ of the English--you scarcely see an
+English face anywhere--and perhaps this was a circumstance that helped
+to give Robert courage to take our apartment here and 'settle down.'
+You were surprised at so decided a step I dare say, and, I believe,
+though too considerate to say it in your letter, you have wondered in
+your thoughts at our fixing at Florence instead of Rome, and without
+seeing more of Italy before the finality of making a choice. But
+observe, Florence is wonderfully cheap, one lives here for just
+nothing; and the convenience in respect to England, letters, and
+the facility of letting our house in our absence, is incomparable
+altogether. At Rome a house would be habitable only half the year, and
+the distance and the expense are objections at the first sight of the
+subject.... Altogether, if I could but get a supply of French books,
+turning the cock easily, it would be perfect; but as to _anything_ new
+in the book way, Vieusseux seems to have made a vow against it, and
+poor Robert comes and goes in a state of desperation between me and
+the bookseller ('But what _can_ I do, Ba?'), and only brings news
+of some pitiful revolution or other which promises a full flush of
+republican virtues and falls off into the fleur de lis as usual. Think
+of our not having read 'Lucretia' yet--George Sand's. And Balzac is
+six or seven works deep from us; but these are evils to be borne. We
+live on just in the same way, having very few visitors, and receiving
+them in the quietest of hospitalities. Mr. Ware, the American, who
+wrote the 'Letters from Palmyra,' and is a delightful, earnest, simple
+person, comes to have coffee with us once or twice a week, and very
+much we like him. Mr. Hillard, another cultivated American friend of
+ours, you have in London, and we should gladly have kept longer.
+Mr. Powers does not spend himself much upon visiting, which is quite
+right, but we do hope to see a good deal of Mademoiselle de Fauveau.
+Robert exceedingly admires her. As to Italian society, one may as
+well take to longing for the evening star, for it seems quite as
+inaccessible; and indeed, of society of any sort, we have not much,
+nor wish for it, nor miss it. Dearest friend, if I could open my heart
+to you in all seriousness, you would see nothing there but a sort
+of enduring wonder of happiness--yes, and some gratitude, I do hope,
+besides. Could everything be well in England, I should only have to
+melt out of the body at once in the joy and the glow of it. Happier
+and happier I have been, month after month; and when I hear _him_ talk
+of being happy too, my very soul seems to swim round with feelings
+which cannot be spoken. But I tell you a little, because I owe the
+telling to you, and also that you may set down in your philosophy the
+possibility of book-making creatures living happily together. I admit,
+though, to begin (or end), that my husband is an exceptional human
+being, and that it wouldn't be just to measure another by him. We
+are planning a great deal of enjoyment in this 'going to the fair' at
+Sinigaglia, meaning to go by Arezzo and San Sepolchro, and Urbino, to
+Fano, where we shall pitch our tent for the benefit, as Robert says,
+of the sea air and the oysters. Fano is very habitable, and we may
+get to Pesaro and the footsteps of Castiglione's 'courtier,' to say
+nothing of Bernardo Tasso; and Ancona beckons from the other side
+of Sinigaglia, and Loreto beside, only we shall have to restrain
+our flights a little. The passage of the Apennine is said to be
+magnificent, and, altogether, surely it must be delightful; and we
+take only two carpet bags--not to be weighed down by 'impedimenta,'
+and have our own home, left in charge of the porter, to return to at
+last, I am very well and shall be better for the change, though Robert
+is dreadfully afraid, as usual, that I shall fall to pieces at the
+first motion....
+
+May God bless you!
+Ever I am your affectionate
+BA.
+
+Write to Florence as usual--Poste Restante. You will hear how we are
+in great hopes of dear Mr. Kenyon.
+
+Dear Aunt Nina,--Only a word in all the hurry of setting off. We love
+you as you love us, and are pretty nearly as happy as you would have
+us. All love and prosperity to dear Geddie, too; what do you say of
+'Landor,' and my not sending it to Forster or somebody? _Che che_ (as
+the Tuscans exclaim), _who_ was it promised to call at my people's,
+who would have tendered it forthwith? I will see about it as it is.
+Goodbye, dearest aunt, and let no revolution disturb your good will to
+Ba and
+
+R.B.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: August 24, 1848.
+
+Ever dearest Miss Mitford,--It's great comfort to have your letter;
+for as it came more lingeringly than usual, I had time to be a little
+anxious, and even my husband has confessed since that he thought what
+he would not say aloud for fear of paining me, as to the probability
+of your being less well than usual. Your letters come so regularly
+to the hour, you see, that when it strikes without them, we ask why.
+Thank God, you are better after all, and reviving in spirits, as I saw
+at the first glance before the words said it clearly....
+
+As for ourselves, we have scarcely done so well, yet well; having
+enjoyed a great deal in spite of drawbacks. Murray, the traitor, sent
+us to Fano as a 'delightful summer residence for an English family,'
+and we found it uninhabitable from the heat, vegetation scorched with
+paleness, the very air swooning in the sun, and the gloomy looks of
+the inhabitants sufficiently corroborative of their words, that no
+drop of rain or dew ever falls there during the summer. A 'circulating
+library' 'which doesn't give out books,' and 'a refined and
+intellectual Italian society' (I quote Murray for that phrase) which
+'never reads a book through' (I quote Mrs. Wiseman, Dr. Wiseman's
+mother, who has lived in Fano seven years), complete the advantages
+of the place, yet the churches are beautiful, and a divine picture
+of Guercino's is worth going all that way to see.[180] By a happy
+accident we fell in with Mrs. Wiseman, who, having married her
+daughter to Count Gabrielli with ancestral possessions in Fano, has
+lived on there from year to year, in a state of permanent moaning
+as far as I could apprehend. She is a very intelligent and vivacious
+person, and having been used to the best French society, bears but ill
+this exile from the common civilities of life. I wish Dr. Wiseman, of
+whose childhood and manhood she spoke with touching pride, would
+ask her to minister to the domestic rites of his bishop's palace in
+Westminster; there would be no hesitation, I fancy, in her acceptance
+of the invitation. Agreeable as she and her daughter were, however, we
+fled from Fano after three days, and, finding ourselves cheated out of
+our dream of summer coolness, resolved on substituting for it what
+the Italians call 'un bel giro.' So we went to Ancona, a striking sea
+city, holding up against the brown rocks and elbowing out the purple
+tides, beautiful to look upon. An exfoliation of the rock itself, you
+would call the houses that seem to grow there, so identical is the
+colour and character. I should like to visit Ancona again when there
+is a little air and shadow; we stayed a week as it was, living upon
+fish and cold water. Water, water, was the cry all day long, and
+really you should have seen me (or you should not have seen me) lying
+on the sofa, and demoralised out of all sense of female vanity, not
+to say decency, with dishevelled hair at full length, and 'sans gown,
+sans stays, sans shoes, sans everything,' except a petticoat and white
+dressing wrapper. I said something feebly once about the waiter; but
+I don't think I meant it for earnest, for when Robert said, 'Oh, don't
+mind, dear,' certainly I didn't mind in the least. People _don't_,
+I suppose, when they are in ovens, or in exhausted receivers. Never
+before did I guess what heat was--that's sure. We went to Loreto for a
+day, back through Ancona, Sinigaglia (oh, I forgot to tell you, there
+was no fair this year at Sinigaglia; Italy will be content, I suppose,
+with selling her honour), Fano, Pesaro, Rimini to Ravenna, back again
+over the Apennines from Forli. A 'bel giro,' wasn't it? Ravenna, where
+Robert positively wanted to go to live once, has itself put an end to
+those yearnings. The churches are wonderful: holding an atmosphere
+of purple glory, and if one could live just in them, or in Dante's
+tomb--well, otherwise keep me from Ravenna. The very antiquity of the
+houses is whitewashed, and the marshes on all sides send up stenches
+new and old, till the hot air is sick with them. To get to the pine
+forest, which is exquisite, you have to go a mile along the canal, the
+exhalations pursuing you step for step, and, what ruffled me more
+than all beside, we were not admitted into the house of Dante's tomb
+'without an especial permission from the authorities.' Quite furious I
+was about this, and both of us too angry to think of applying: but
+we stood at the grated window and read the pathetic inscription as
+plainly as if we had touched the marble. We stood there between three
+and four in the morning, and then went straight on to Florence from
+that tomb of the exiled poet. Just what we should have done, had the
+circumstances been arranged in a dramatic intention. From Forli, the
+air grew pure and quick again; and the exquisite, almost visionary
+scenery of the Apennines, the wonderful variety of shape and colour,
+the sudden transitions and vital individuality of those mountains, the
+chestnut forests dropping by their own weight into the deep ravines,
+the rocks cloven and clawed by the living torrents, and the hills,
+hill above hill, piling up their grand existences as if they did it
+themselves, changing colour in the effort--of these things I cannot
+give you any idea, and if words could not, painting could not either.
+Indeed, the whole scenery of our journey, except when we approached
+the coast, was full of beauty. The first time we crossed the Apennine
+(near Borgo San Sepolcro) we did it by moonlight, and the flesh was
+weak, and one fell asleep, and saw things between sleep and wake, only
+the effects were grand and singular so, even though of course we lost
+much in the distinctness. Well, but you will understand from all this
+that we were delighted to get home--_I_ was, I assure you. Florence
+seemed as cool as an oven after the fire; indeed, we called it quite
+cool, and I took possession of my own chair and put up my feet on the
+cushions and was charmed, both with having been so far and coming back
+so soon. Three weeks brought us home. Flush was a fellow traveller of
+course, and enjoyed it in the most obviously amusing manner. Never
+was there so good a dog in a carriage before his time! Think of Flush,
+too! He has a supreme contempt for trees and hills or anything of that
+kind, and, in the intervals of natural scenery, he drew in his head
+from the window and didn't consider it worth looking at; but when the
+population thickened, and when a village or a town was to be passed
+through, then his eyes were starting out of his head with eagerness;
+he looked east, he looked west, you would conclude that he was taking
+notes or preparing them. His eagerness to get into the carriage first
+used to amuse the Italians. Ah, poor Italy! I am as mortified as
+an Italian ought to be. They have only the rhetoric of patriots and
+soldiers, I fear! Tuscany is to be spared forsooth, if she lies still,
+and here she lies, eating ices and keeping the feast of the Madonna.
+Perdoni! but she has a review in the Cascine besides, and a gallant
+show of some 'ten thousand men' they are said to have made of it--only
+don't think that I and Robert went out to see that sight. We should
+have sickened at it too much. An amiable, refined people, too, these
+Tuscans are, conciliating and affectionate. When you look out into
+the streets on feast days, you would take it for one great 'rout,'
+everybody appears dressed for a drawing room, and you can scarcely
+discern the least difference between class and class, from the Grand
+Duchess to the Donna di facenda; also there is no belying of the
+costume in the manners, the most gracious and graceful courtesy
+and gentleness being apparent in the thickest crowds. This is all
+attractive and delightful; but the people wants _stamina_, wants
+conscience, wants self-reverence. Dante's soul has died out of
+the land. Enough of this. As for France, I have 'despaired of the
+republic' for very long, but the nation is a great nation, and will
+right itself under some flag, white or red. Don't you think so? Thank
+you for the news of our authors, it is as 'the sound of a trumpet afar
+off,' and I am like the war-horse. Neglectful that I am, I forgot to
+tell you before that you heard quite rightly about Mr. Thackeray's
+wife, who is ill _so_. Since your question, I had in gossip from
+England that the book 'Jane Eyre' was written by a governess in his
+house, and that the preface to the foreign edition refers to him
+in some marked way. We have not seen the book at all. But the first
+letter in which you mentioned your Oxford student caught us in the
+midst of his work upon art.[181] Very vivid, very graphic, full of
+sensibility, but inconsequent in some of the reasoning, it seemed to
+me, and rather flashy than full in the metaphysics. Robert, who
+knows a good deal about art, to which knowledge I of course have no
+pretence, could agree with him only by snatches, and we, both of
+us, standing before a very expressive picture of Domenichino's (the
+'David'--at Fano) wondered how he could blaspheme so against a great
+artist. Still, he is no ordinary man, and for a critic to be so much
+a poet is a great thing. Also, we have by no means, I should imagine,
+seen the utmost of his stature. How kindly you speak to me of my
+dearest sisters. Yes, go to see them whenever you are in London, they
+are worthy of the gladness of receiving you. And will you write soon
+to me, and tell me everything of yourself, how you are, how home
+agrees with you, and the little details which are such gold dust to
+absent friends....
+
+May God bless you, my beloved friend. Let me ever be (my husband
+joining in all warm regards) your most affectionate
+
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 180:'Guercino drew this angel I saw teach
+  (Alfred, dear friend!) that little child to pray
+  Holding his little hands up, each to each
+  Pressed gently, with his own head turned away,
+  Over the earth where so much lay before him
+  Of work to do, though heaven was opening o'er him,
+  And he was left at Fano by the beach.
+
+  'We were at Fano, and three times we went
+  To sit and see him in his chapel there,
+  And drink his beauty to our soul's content
+  My angel with me too.']
+
+[Footnote 181: The first two volumes of _Modern Painters_ bore no
+author's name, but were described as being 'by a graduate of Oxford.'
+At a later date Mrs. Browning made Mr. Ruskin's acquaintance, as some
+subsequent letters testify.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: October 10, 1848.
+
+My ever dearest Miss Mitford,--Have you not thought some hard thoughts
+of me, for not instantly replying to a letter which necessarily must
+have been, to one who loved you, of such painful interest? Do I not
+love you truly? Yes, indeed. But while preparing to write to you
+my deep regret at hearing that you had been so ill, illness came in
+another form to prevent me from writing, my husband being laid up for
+nearly a month with fever and ulcerated sore throat. I had not the
+heart to write a line to anyone, much less to prepare a packet to
+escort your letter free from foreign postage; and to make you pay for
+a chapter of Lamentations' without the spirit of prophecy, would have
+been too hard on you, wouldn't it? Quite unhappy I have been over
+those burning hands and languid eyes, the only unhappiness I ever had
+by _them_, and then he wouldn't see a physician; and if it hadn't been
+that, just at the right moment, Mr. Mahony, the celebrated Jesuit, and
+Father Prout of 'Fraser,' knowing everything as those Jesuits are apt
+to do, came in to us on his way to Rome, pointed out that the fever
+got ahead through weakness and mixed up with his own kind hand a
+potion of eggs and port wine, to the horror of our Italian servant,
+who lifted up his eyes at such a prescription for a fever, crying, 'O
+Inglesi, Inglesi!' the case would have been far worse, I have no kind
+of doubt. For the eccentric prescription gave the power of sleeping,
+and the pulse grew quieter directly. I shall always be grateful to
+Father Prout, always. The very sight of some one with a friend's name
+and a cheerful face, his very jests at me for being a 'bambina' and
+frightened without cause, were as comforting as the salutation of
+angels. Also, he has been in Florence ever since, and we have seen
+him every day; he came to doctor and remained to talk. A very singular
+person, of whom the world tells a thousand and one tales, you know,
+but of whom I shall speak as I find him, because the utmost kindness
+and warmheartedness have characterised his whole bearing towards us.
+Robert met him years ago at dinner at Emerson Tennent's, and since has
+crossed paths with him on various points of Europe. The first time I
+saw him was as he stood on a rock at Leghorn, at our disembarkation
+in Italy. Not refined in a social sense by any manner of means, yet
+a most accomplished scholar and vibrating all over with learned
+associations and vivid combinations of fancy and experience--having
+seen all the ends of the earth and the men thereof, and possessing the
+art of talk and quotation to an amusing degree. In another week or
+two he will be at Rome.... How graphically you give us your Oxford
+student! Well! the picture is more distinct than Turner's, and if you
+had called it, in the manner of the Master, 'A Rock Limpet,' we
+should have recognised in it the corresponding type of the gifted and
+eccentric writer in question. Very eloquent he is, I agree at once,
+and true views he takes of Art in the abstract, true and elevating. It
+is in the application of connective logic that he breaks away from one
+so violently.... We are expecting our books by an early vessel, and
+are about to be very busy, building up a rococo bookcase of carved
+angels and demons. Also we shall get up curtains, and get down bedroom
+carpets, and finish the remainder of our furnishing business, now
+that the hot weather is at an end. I say 'at an end,' though the glass
+stands at seventy. As to the 'war,' _that_ is rather different, it is
+painful to feel ourselves growing gradually cooler and cooler on the
+subject of Italian patriotism, valour, and good sense; but the process
+is inevitable. The child's play between the Livornese and our Grand
+Duke provokes a thousand pleasantries. Every now and then a day is
+fixed for a revolution in Tuscany, but up to the present time a shower
+has come and put it off. Two Sundays ago Florence was to have been
+'sacked' by Leghorn, when a drizzle came and saved us. You think this
+a bad joke of mine or an impotent sarcasm, perhaps; whereas I merely
+speak historically. Brave men, good men, even sensible men there are
+of course in the land, but they are not strong enough for the times
+or for masterdom. For France, it is a great nation; but even in
+France they want a man, and Cavaignacso[182] only a soldier. If Louis
+Napoleon had the muscle of his uncle's little finger in his soul, he
+would be president, and king; but he is flaccid altogether, you see,
+and Joinville stands nearer to the royal probability after all.
+'Henri Cinq' is said to be too closely espoused to the Church, and his
+connections at Naples and Parma don't help his cause. Robert has more
+hope of the _republic_ than I have: but call ye _this_ a republic? Do
+you know that Miss Martineau takes up the 'History of England' under
+Charles Knight, in the continuation of a popular book? I regret her
+fine imagination being so wasted. So you saw Mr. Chorley? What a
+pleasant flashing in the eyes! We hear of him in Holland and Norway.
+Dear Mr. Kenyon won't stir from England, we see plainly. Ah! Frederic
+Soulie! he is too dead, I fear. Perhaps he goes on, though, writing
+romances, after the fashion of poor Miss Pickering, that prove
+nothing. I long for my French fountains of living literature, which,
+pure or impure, plashed in one's face so pleasantly. Some old French
+'Memoires' we have got at lately, 'Brienne' for instance. It is
+curious how the leaders of the last revolution (under Louis XVIII.)
+seem to have despised one another. Brienne is very dull and flat. For
+Puseyism, it runs counter to the spirit of our times, after all, and
+will never achieve a church. May God bless you! Robert's regards go
+with the love of your ever affectionate
+
+BA.
+
+[Footnote 182: At this time President of the Council, after
+suppressing the Communist rising of June 1848.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Florence: December 3, 1848.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--It seemed long to me that you had not
+written, and it seems long to me now that I have not answered the kind
+letter which came at last. Then Henrietta told me of your being unwell
+at the moment of her mad excursion into Herefordshire. Altogether
+I want to speak to you and hear from you, and shall be easier and
+gladder when both are done. Do forgive my sins and write directly, and
+tell me everything about both of you, and how you are in spirits and
+health, and whether you really make up your minds to see more danger
+in the stormy influences of the Continent in the moral point of view
+than in those of England in the physical. For my part I hold to my
+original class of fear, and would rather face two or three revolutions
+than an east wind of an English winter. If I were you I would go to
+Pau as usual and take poor Abd-el-Kader's place (my husband is furious
+about the treatment of Abd-el-Kader, so I hear a good deal about
+him[183]), or I would go to Italy and try Florence, where really
+democratic ministries roar as gently as sucking doves, particularly
+when they are safe in place. We have listened to dreadful
+rumours--Florence was to have been sacked several times by the
+Livornese; the Grand Duke went so far as to send away his family
+to Siena, and we had 'Morte a Fiorentini!' chalked up on the walls.
+Still, somehow or other, the peace has been kept in Florentine
+fashion; it has rained once or twice, which is always enough here to
+moderate the most revolutionary when they wear their best surtouts,
+and I look forward to an unbroken tranquillity just as I used to
+do, even though the windows of the Ridolfi Palace (the ambassador in
+London) were smashed the other evening a few yards from ours. Perhaps
+a gentle and affectionate approach to contempt for our Florentines
+mixes a little with this feeling of security, but what then? They
+are an amiable, refined, graceful people, with much of the artistic
+temperament as distinguished from that of men of genius--effeminate,
+no, rather _feminine_ in a better sense--of a fancy easily turned into
+impulse, but with no strenuous and determinate strength in them. What
+they comprehend best in the 'Italian League' is probably a league to
+wear silk velvet and each a feather in his hat, to carry flags and cry
+_vivas_, and keep a grand festa day in the piazzas. Better and happier
+in this than in stabbing prime ministers, or hanging up their dead
+bodies to shoot at; and not much more childish than these French
+patriots and republicans, who crown their great deeds by electing to
+the presidency such a man as Prince Louis Napoleon, simply because
+'C'est le neveu de son oncle!'[184] A curious precedent for a
+president, certainly; but, oh heavens and earth, what curious things
+abroad everywhere just now, inclusive of the sea serpent! I agree
+with you that much of all is very melancholy and disheartening, though
+holding fast by my hope and belief that good will be the end, as it
+always _is_ God's end to man's frenzies, and that all we observe is
+but the fermentation necessary to the new wine, which presently we
+shall drink pure. Meanwhile, the saddest thing is the impossibility
+(which I, for one, feel) to sympathise, to go along with, the _people_
+to whom and to whose cause all my natural sympathies yearn. The
+word 'Liberty' ceases to make me thrill, as at something great and
+unmistakable, as, for instance, the other great words Truth, and
+Justice; do. The salt has lost its savour, the meaning has escaped
+from the term; we know nothing of what people will _do_ when they
+aspire to Liberty. The holiness of liberty is desecrated by the sign
+of the ass's hoof. Fixed principles, either of opinion or action, seem
+clearly gone out of the world. The principle of Destruction is in the
+place of the principle of Re-integration, or of Radical Reform, as we
+called it in England. I look all round and can sympathise nowhere.
+The rulers hold by rottenness, and the people leap into the abyss,
+and nobody knows why this is, or why that is. As to France, my tears
+(which I really couldn't help at the time of the expulsion of poor
+Louis Philippe and his family, not being very strong just then) are
+justified, it appears, though my husband thought them foolish (and so
+did I), and though we both began by an adhesion to the Republic in
+the cordial manner. But, just see, the Republic was a 'man in an iron
+mask' or helmet, and turns out a military dictatorship, a throttling
+of the press, a starving of the finances, and an election of Louis
+Napoleon to be President. Louis Philippe was better than all this,
+take him at worst, and at worst he did _not_ deserve the mud and
+stones cast at him, which I have always maintained and maintain still.
+England might have got up ('happy country') more crying grievances
+than France at the moment of outbreak; but what makes outbreaks
+now-a-days is not 'the cause, my soul,' but the stuff of the people.
+You are huckaback on the other side of the Channel, and you wear out
+the poor Irish linen, let the justice of the case be what it may.
+Politics enough and too much, surely, especially now when they are
+depressing to you, and more or less to everybody.... We are still
+in the slow agonies of furnishing our apartment. You see, being
+the poorest and most prudent of possible poets, we had to solve the
+problem of taking our furniture out of our year's income (proceeds
+of poems and the like), and of not getting into debt. Oh, I take no
+credit to myself; I was always in debt in my little way ('small _im_
+morals,' as Dr. Bowring might call it) before I married, but Robert,
+though a poet and dramatist by profession, being descended from
+the blood of all the Puritans, and educated by the strictest of
+dissenters, has a sort of horror about the dreadful fact of owing
+five shillings five days, which I call quite morbid in its degree and
+extent, and which is altogether unpoetical according to the traditions
+of the world. So we have been dragging in by inches our chairs and
+tables throughout the summer, and by no means look finished and
+furnished at this late moment, the slow Italians coming at the heels
+of our slowest intentions with the putting up of our curtains, which
+begin to be necessary in this November tramontana. Yet in a month or
+three weeks we shall look quite comfortable--before Christmas; and
+in the meantime we heap up the pine wood and feel perfectly warm
+with these thick palace walls between us and the outside air. Also my
+husband's new edition is on the _edge_ of coming out, and we have had
+an application from Mr. Phelps, of Sadler's Wells, for leave to act
+his 'Blot on the 'Scutcheon,' which, if it doesn't succeed, its
+public can have neither hearts nor intellects (that being an impartial
+opinion), and which, if it succeeds, will be of pecuniary advantage to
+us. Look out in the papers.... My love and my husband's go to you, our
+dear friends. Let me be always
+
+Your affectionate and grateful
+BA.
+
+
+While Italy shows herself so politically demoralised, and the blood of
+poor Russia smokes from the ground, the ground seems to care no more
+for it than the newspapers, or anybody else.
+
+Such a jar of flowers we have to keep December. White roses, as in
+June.
+
+[Footnote 183: Abd-el-Kader surrendered to the French in Algeria early
+in 1848, under an express promise that he should be sent either to
+Alexandria or to St. Jean d'Acre; in spite of which he was sent to
+France and kept there as a prisoner for several years.]
+
+[Footnote 184: Louis Napoleon was elected President of the French
+Republic by a popular vote on December 10.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: December 16, [1848].
+
+... You are wondering, perhaps, how we are so fool-hardy as to keep on
+furnishing rooms in the midst of 'anarchy,' the Pope a fugitive, and
+the crowned heads packing up. Ah, but we have faith in the _softness_
+of our Florentines, who must be well spurred up to the leap before
+they do any harm. These things look worse at a distance than they do
+near, although, seen far and near, nothing _can_ be worse than the
+evidence of demoralisation of people, governors, and journalists, in
+the sympathy given everywhere to the assassination of poor Rossi.[185]
+If Rossi was retrocessive, he was at least a constitutional minister,
+and constitutional means of opposing him were open to all, but Italy
+understands nothing constitutional; liberty is a fair word and a
+watchword, nothing more; an idea it is not in the minds of any. The
+poor Pope I deeply pity; he is a weak man with the noblest and most
+disinterested intentions. His faithful flock have nearly broken his
+heart by the murder of his two personal friends, Rossi and Palma, and
+the threat, which they sent him by embassy, of murdering every man,
+woman, and child in the Quirinal, with the exception of his Holiness,
+unless he accepted their terms. He should have gone out to them and so
+died, but having missed that opportunity, nothing remained but flight.
+He was a mere Pope hostage as long as he stayed in Rome. Curious, the
+'intervention of the French,' so long desired by the Italians,
+and vouchsafed _so_.[186] The Florentines open their eyes in mute
+astonishment, and some of them 'won't read the journals any more.' The
+boldest say softly that the _Romans are sure not to bear it_. And what
+is to happen in France? Why, what a world we have just now.... Father
+Prout is gone to Rome for a fortnight, has stayed three weeks, and
+day by day we expect him back again. I don't understand how the Prout
+papers should have hurt him ecclesiastically, but that he should be
+_known_ for their writer is not astonishing, as the secret was never,
+I believe, attempted to be kept. We have been, at least _I_ have
+been, a little anxious lately about the fate of the 'Blot on the
+'Scutcheon,' which Mr. Phelps applied for my husband's permission to
+revive at Sadler's. Of course, putting the request was a mere form,
+as he had every right to act the play, and there was nothing to answer
+but one thing. Only it made one anxious--made _me_ anxious--till we
+heard the result, and we, both of us, are very grateful to dear Mr.
+Chorley, who not only made it his business to be at the theatre the
+first night, but, before he slept, sat down like a true friend to give
+us the story of the result, and never, he says, was a more complete
+and legitimate success. The play went straight to the heart of the
+audience, it seems, and we hear of its continuance on the stage from
+the papers. So far, so well. You may remember, or may not have heard,
+how Macready brought it out and put his foot on it in the flash of
+a quarrel between manager and author, and Phelps, knowing the whole
+secret and feeling the power of the play, determined on making a
+revival of it on his own theatre, which was wise, as the event proves.
+Mr. Chorley called his acting really 'fine.' I see the second edition
+of the 'Poetical Works' advertised at last in the 'Athenaeum,' and
+conclude it to be coming out directly. Also my second edition is
+called for, only nothing is yet arranged on that point. We have had a
+most interesting letter from Mr. Home, giving terrible accounts, to be
+sure, of the submersion of all literature in England and France since
+the French Revolution, but noble and instructive proof of individual
+wave-riding energy, such as I have always admired in him. He and his
+wife, he says, live chiefly on the produce of their garden, and keep
+a cheerful heart for the rest; even the 'Institutes' expect gratuitous
+lectures, so that the sweat of the brain seems less productive than
+the sweat of the brow. I am glad that Mr. Serjeant Talfourd and his
+wife spoke affectionately of my husband, for he is attached to both
+of them.... My Flush has grown to be passionately fond of grapes,
+devouring bunch after bunch, and looking so fat and well that we
+attribute some virtue to them. When he goes to England he will be as
+much in a strait as an Italian who related to us his adventures in
+London; he had had a long walk in the heat, and catching sight of
+grapes hanging up in a grocer's shop, he stopped short to have a
+pennyworth, as he said inwardly to himself. Down he sat and made out
+a Tuscan luncheon in purple bunches. At last, taking out his purse to
+look for the halfpence: 'Fifteen shillings, sir, if you please,' said
+the shopman. Now do write soon, and speak particularly of your health,
+and take care of it and don't be too complaisant to visitors. May God
+bless you, my very dear friend! Think of me as
+
+Ever your affectionate and grateful
+E.B.B.
+_My husband's regards always._
+
+[Footnote 185: Count Pellegrino Rossi, chief minister to the Pope, was
+assassinated in Rome, at the entrance of the Chamber of Deputies,
+on November 15, 1848. Ten days later the Pope fled to Gaeta, and his
+experiments in 'reform' came to a final end.]
+
+[Footnote 186: The Pope, having declared war against Austria before
+his flight, had invited French support, with the concurrence of his
+people; being expelled from Rome, he invited (and obtained) French
+help to restore him, in spite of the desperate opposition of his
+people.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+1849-1851
+
+There is here a pause of two months in the correspondence of Mrs.
+Browning, during which the happiness of her already happy life was
+crowned by the birth, on March 9, 1849, of her son, Robert Wiedeman
+Barrett Browning.[187] How great a part this child henceforward played
+in her life will be shown abundantly by the letters that follow. Some
+passages referring to the child's growth, progress, and performances
+have been omitted, partly in the necessary reduction of the bulk of
+the correspondence, and partly because too much of one subject may
+weary the reader. But enough has been left to show that, in the case
+of Mrs. Browning (and of her husband likewise), the parent was by no
+means lost in the poet. There is little in what she says which might
+not equally be said, and is in substance said, by hundreds of happy
+mothers in every age; but it would be a suppression of one essential
+part of her nature, and an injury to the pleasant picture which the
+whole life of this poet pair presents, if her enthusiasms over her
+child were omitted or seriously curtailed. Biographers are fond of
+elaborating the details in which the lives of poets have not conformed
+to the standard of the moral virtues; let us at least recognise
+that, in the case of Robert and Elizabeth Browning, the moral and the
+intellectual virtues flourished side by side, each contributing its
+share to the completeness of the whole character.
+
+[Footnote 187: Wiedeman was the maiden name of Mr. Browning's mother,
+her father having been a German who settled in Scotland and married a
+Scotch wife.]
+
+The joy of this firstborn's birth was, however, very quickly dimmed
+by the news of the death, only a few days later, of Mr. Browning's
+mother, to whom he was devotedly attached. Her death was very sudden,
+and the shock of the reaction completely prostrated him for a long
+time. The following letters from Mrs. Browning tell how he felt this
+loss.
+
+
+_To Miss Browning_
+April i, 1849 [postmark].
+
+I do indeed from the bottom of my heart pity you and grieve with you,
+my dearest Sarianna. I may grieve with you as well as for you; for I
+too have lost. Believe that, though I never saw her face; I loved that
+pure and tender spirit (tender to me even at this distance), and that
+she will be dear and sacred to me to the end of my own life.
+
+Dearest Sarianna, I thank you for your consideration and admirable
+self-control in writing those letters. I do thank and bless you.
+If the news had come unbroken by such precaution to my poor darling
+Robert, it would have nearly killed him, I think. As it is, he has
+been able to cry from the first, and I am able to tell you that though
+dreadfully affected, of course, for you know his passionate love for
+her, he is better and calmer now--much better. He and I dwell on
+the hope that you and your dear father will come to us at once.
+Come--dear, dear Sarianna--I will at least love you as you
+deserve--you and him--if I can do no more. If you would comfort
+Robert, come.
+
+No day has passed since our marriage that he has not fondly talked of
+her. I know how deep in his dear heart her memory lies. God comfort
+you, my dearest Sarianna. The blessing of blessed duties heroically
+fulfilled _must_ be With you. May the blessing of the Blessed in
+heaven be added to the rest!
+
+Robert stops me. My dear love to your father.
+
+Your ever attached sister, BA.
+
+
+_To Miss Browning_
+[April 1849.]
+
+You will have comfort in hearing, my dearest Sarianna, that Robert
+is better on the whole than when I wrote last, though still very much
+depressed. I wish I could get him to go somewhere or do something--at
+any rate God's comforts are falling like dew on all this affliction,
+and must in time make it look a green memory to you both. Continually
+he thinks of you and of his father--believe how continually and
+tenderly he thinks of you. Dearest Sarianna, I feel so in the quick
+of my heart how you must feel, that I scarcely have courage to entreat
+you to go out and take the necessary air and exercise, and yet that
+is a duty, clear as other duties, and to be discharged like others
+by you, as fully, and with as little shrinking of the will. If your
+health should suffer, what grief upon grief to those who grieve
+already! And besides, we who have to live are not to lie down under
+the burden. There will be time enough for lying down presently, very
+soon; and in the meanwhile there is plenty of God's work to do with
+the body and with the soul, and we have to do it as cheerfully as
+we can. Dearest Sarianna, you can look behind and before, on blessed
+memories and holy hopes--love is as full for you as ever in the old
+relation, even though her life in the world is cut off. There is no
+drop of bitterness in all this flood of sorrow. In the midst of the
+great anguish which God has given, you have to thank Him for some
+blessing with every pang as it comes. Never was a more beautiful,
+serene, assuring death than this we are all in tears for--for, believe
+me, my very dear sister, I have mourned with you, knowing what we all
+have lost, I who never saw her nor shall see her until a few years
+shall bring us all together to the place where none mourn nor are
+parted. Sarianna, will it not be possible, do you think, for you and
+your father to come here, if only for a few months? Then you might
+decide on the future upon more knowledge than you have now. It
+would be comfort and joy to Robert and me if we could all of us live
+together henceforward. Think what you would like, and how you would
+best like it. Your living on _even through this summer at that house_,
+I, who have well known the agony of such bindings to the rack, do
+protest against. Dearest Sarianna, it is not good or right either
+for you or for your dear father. For Robert to go back to that house
+unless it were to do one of you some good, think how it would be with
+_him_! Tell us now (for he yearns towards you--we both do), what is
+the best way of bringing us all together, so as to do every one of us
+some good? If Florence is too far off, is there any other place where
+we could meet and arrange for the future? Could not your dear father's
+leave of absence be extended this summer, out of consideration of what
+has happened, and would he not be so enabled to travel with you and
+meet us _somewhere_? We will do anything. For my part, I am full of
+anxiety; and for Robert, you may guess what his is, you who know him.
+Very bitter has it been to me to have interposed unconsciously as
+I have done and deprived him of her last words and kisses--very
+bitter--and nothing could be so consolatory to me as to give him back
+to _you_ at least. So think for me, dearest Sarianna--think for your
+father and yourself, think for Robert--and remember that Robert and
+I will do anything which shall appear possible to you. May God bless
+you, both of you! Give my true love to your father. Feeling for you
+and with you always and most tenderly, I am your affectionate sister,
+BA.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: April 30, 1849.
+
+I am writing to you, _at last_, you will say, ever dearest Miss
+Mitford; but, except once to Wimpole Street, this is the first packet
+of letters which goes from me since my confinement. You will have
+heard how our joy turned suddenly into deep sorrow by the death of my
+husband's mother. An unsuspected disease (ossification of the heart)
+terminated in a fatal way, and she lay in the insensibility precursive
+of the grave's, when the letter, written in such gladness by my poor
+husband, and announcing the birth of his child, reached her address.
+'It would have made her heart bound,' said her daughter to us. Poor,
+tender heart, the last throb was too near. The medical men would not
+allow the news to be communicated. The next joy she felt was to be in
+heaven itself. My husband has been in the deepest anguish, and indeed,
+except for the courageous consideration of his sister, who wrote two
+letters of preparation saying that 'she was not well,' and she 'was
+very ill,' when in fact all was over, I am frightened to think what
+the result would have been to him. He has loved his mother as such
+passionate natures only can love, and I never saw a man so bowed down
+in an extremity of sorrow--never. Even now the depression is great,
+and sometimes when I leave him alone a little and return to the room,
+I find him in tears. I do earnestly wish to change the scene and air;
+but where to go? England looks terrible now. He says it would break
+his heart to see his mother's roses over the wall, and the place
+where she used to lay her scissors and gloves. Which I understand so
+thoroughly that I can't say, 'Let us go to England.' We must wait and
+see what his father and sister will choose to do or choose us to
+do, for of course a duty plainly seen would draw us anywhere. My own
+dearest sisters will be painfully disappointed by any change of plan,
+only they are too good and kind not to understand the difficulty, not
+to see the motive. So do _you_, I am certain. It has been very very
+painful altogether, this drawing together of life and death. Robert
+was too enraptured at my safety, and with his little son, and the
+sudden reaction was terrible. You see how natural that was. How kind
+of you to write that note to him full of affectionate expressions
+towards me! Thank you, dearest friend. He had begged my sisters to let
+you know of my welfare, and I hope they did; and now it is my turn
+to know of _you_, and so I do entreat you not to delay, but to let me
+hear exactly how you are and what your plans are for the summer. Do
+you think of Paris seriously? Am I not a sceptic about your voyages
+round the world? It's about the only thing that I don't thoroughly
+believe you _can_ do. But (not to be impertinent) I want to hear so
+much! I want first and chiefly to hear of your health; and occupations
+next, and next your plans for the summer. Louis Napoleon is
+astonishing the world, you see, by his firmness and courage;
+and though really I don't make out the aim and end of his French
+republicans in going to Rome to extinguish the republic there, I wait
+before I swear at him for it till my information becomes fuller. If
+they have at Rome such a republic as we have had in Florence, without
+a public, imposed by a few bawlers and brawlers on many mutes and
+cowards, why, the sooner it goes to pieces the better, of course.
+Probably the French Government acts upon information. In any case, if
+the Romans are in earnest they may resist eight thousand men.[1] We
+shall see. My _faith_ in every species of Italian is, however, nearly
+tired out. I don't believe they are men at all, much less heroes
+and patriots. Since I wrote last to you, I think we have had two
+revolutions here at Florence, Grand Duke out, Grand Duke in.[188] The
+bells in the church opposite rang for both. They first planted a tree
+of liberty close to our door, and, then they pulled it down. The same
+tune, sung under the windows, did for 'Viva la republica!' and 'Viva
+Leopoldo!' The genuine popular feeling is certainly for the Grand Duke
+('O, santissima madre di Dio!' said our nurse, clasping her hands,
+'how the people do love him!'); only nobody would run the risk of a
+pin's prick to save the ducal throne. If the Leghornese, who put up
+Guerazzi on its ruins, had not refused to pay at certain Florentine
+cafes, we shouldn't have had revolution the second, and all this
+shooting in the street! Dr. Harding, who was coming to see me, had
+time to get behind a stable door, just before there was a fall against
+it of four shot corpses; and Robert barely managed to get home
+across the bridges. He had been out walking in the city, apprehending
+nothing, when the storm gathered and broke. Sad and humiliating it all
+has been, and the author of 'Vanity Fair' might turn it to better uses
+for a chapter. By the way, we have just been reading 'Vanity Fair.'
+Very clever, very effective, but cruel to human nature. A painful
+book, and not the pain that purifies and exalts. Partial truths after
+all, and those not wholesome. But I certainly had no idea that
+Mr. Thackeray had intellectual force for such a book; the power is
+considerable. For Balzac, Balzac may have gone out of the world as
+far as we are concerned. Isn't it hard on us? exiles from Balzac! The
+bookseller here, having despaired of the republic and the Grand Duchy
+both, I suppose, and taking for granted on the whole that the world
+must be coming shortly to an end, doesn't give us the sign of a new
+book. We ought to, be done with such vanities. There! and almost I
+have done my paper without a single word to you of the _baby_! Ah, you
+won't believe that I forgot him even if I pretend, so I won't. He is
+a lovely, fat, strong child, with double chins and rosy cheeks, and
+a great wide chest, undeniable lungs, I can assure you. Dr. Harding
+called him 'a robust child' the other day, and 'a more beautiful child
+he never saw.' I never saw a child half as beautiful, for my part....
+Dear Mr. Chorley has written the kindest letter to my husband. I much
+regard him indeed. May God bless you. Let me ever be (with Robert's
+thanks and warm remembrance),
+
+Your most affectionate
+BA.
+
+Flush's jealousy of the baby would amuse you. For a whole fortnight
+he fell into deep melancholy and was proof against all attentions
+lavished on him. Now he begins to be consoled a little and even
+condescends to patronise the cradle.
+
+Footnote 1: As they did until the 8,000 had been increased to 35,000.]
+
+[Footnote 188: A revolution, fomented chiefly by the Leghornese,
+expelled the Grand Duke in March 1849; about seven weeks later a
+counter-revolution, chiefly by the peasantry, recalled him.]
+
+
+_To Miss Browning_
+[Florence:] May 2, 1849.
+
+Robert gives me this blank, and three minutes to write across it.
+Thank you, my very dear Sarianna, for all your kindness and affection.
+I understand what I have lost. I know the worth of a tenderness such
+as you speak of, and I feel that for the sake of my love for Robert
+she was ready out of the fullness of her heart to love _me_ also. It
+has been bitter to me that I have unconsciously deprived him of the
+personal face-to-face shining out of her angelic nature for more than
+two years, but she has forgiven me, and we shall all meet, when it
+pleases God, before His throne. In the meanwhile, my dearest Sarianna,
+we are thinking much of you, and neither of us can bear the thought of
+your living on where you are. If you could imagine the relief it would
+be to us--to me as well as to Robert--to be told frankly what we ought
+to do, where we ought to go, to please you best--you and your dearest
+father--you would think the whole matter over and use plain words in
+the speaking of it. Robert naturally shrinks from the idea of going to
+New Cross under the circumstances of dreary change, and for his sake
+England has grown suddenly to me a land of clouds. Still, to see you
+and his father, and to be some little comfort to you both, would be
+the best consolation to him, I am very sure; and so, dearest Sarianna,
+think of us and speak to us. Could not your father get a long
+vacation? Could we not meet somewhere? Think how we best may comfort
+ourselves by comforting you. Never think of us, Sarianna, as apart
+from you--as if our interest or our pleasure _could_ be apart from
+yours. The child is so like Robert that I can believe in the other
+likeness, and may the inner nature indeed, as you say, be after
+that pure image! He is so fat and rosy and strong that almost I am
+sceptical of his being my child. I suppose he is, after all. May God
+bless you, both of you. I am ashamed to send all these letters, but
+Robert makes me. He is better, but still much depressed sometimes, and
+over your letters he drops heavy tears. Then he treasures them up
+and reads them again and again. Better, however, on the whole, he
+is certainly. Poor little babe, who was too much rejoiced over at
+_first_, fell away by a most natural recoil (even _I_ felt it to be
+_most natural_) from all that triumph, but Robert is still very fond
+of him, and goes to see him bathed every morning, and walks up and
+down on the terrace with him in his arms. If your dear father can toss
+and rock babies as Robert can, he will be a nurse in great favour.
+
+Dearest Sarianna, take care of yourself, and do walk out. No grief in
+the world was ever freer from the corroding drop of bitterness--was
+ever sweeter, holier, and more hopeful than this of yours must be.
+Love is for you on both sides of the grave, and the blossoms of love
+meet over it. May God's love, too, bless you!
+
+Your ever affectionate sister,
+BA.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Florence: May 14, [1849].
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--At last I come to thank you for all your
+kindness, all your goodness, all your sympathy for both of us. Robert
+would have written to you in the first instance (for we _both_ thought
+of you) if we had not agreed that you would hear as quickly from
+Henrietta, we not knowing your direct address. Also your welcome
+little note should have had an immediate acknowledgment from him if he
+had not been so depressed at that time that I was glad to ask him to
+wait till I should be ready to write myself. In fact, he has suffered
+most acutely from the affliction you have since of course heard of;
+and just because he was _too happy_ when the child was born, the pain
+was overwhelming afterwards. That is easy to understand, I think.
+While he was full of joy for the child, his mother was dying at a
+distance, and the very thought of accepting that new affection for
+the old became a thing to recoil from--do you not see? So far from
+suffering less through the particular combination of circumstances,
+as some people seemed to fancy he would, he suffered much more, I
+am certain, and very naturally. Even now he is looking very
+unwell--thinner and paler than usual, and his spirits, which used to
+be so good, have not rallied. I long to get him away from Florence
+somewhere--_where_, I can't fix my wishes; our English plans seem flat
+on the ground for the present, _that_ is one sad certainty. My dearest
+sisters will be very grieved if we don't go to England, and yet how
+can I even try to persuade my husband back into the scene of old
+associations where he would feel so much pain? Do I not know what I
+myself should suffer in some places? And he loved his mother with all
+his power of loving, which is deeper and more passionate than love is
+with common men. She hearts of men are generally strong in proportion
+to their heads. Well, I am not to send you such a dull letter though,
+after waiting so long, and after receiving so much to speak thankfully
+of. My child you never would believe to be _my child_, from the
+evidence of his immense cheeks and chins--for pray don't suppose that
+he has only one chin. People call him a lovely child, and if _I_ were
+to call him the same it wouldn't be very extraordinary, only I assure
+you 'a robust child' I may tell you that he is with a sufficient
+modesty, and also that Wilson says he is universally admired in
+various tongues when she and the nurse go out with him to the
+Cascine--'What a beautiful baby!' and 'Che bel bambino!' He has had
+a very stormy entrance upon life, poor little fellow; and when he was
+just three days old, a grand festa round the liberty tree planted at
+our door, attended with military music, civic dancing and singing, and
+the firing of cannons and guns from morning to night, made him start
+in his cradle, and threw my careful nurse into paroxysms of devotion
+before the 'Vergine Santissima' that I mightn't have a fever in
+consequence. Since then the tree of liberty has come down with a crash
+and we have had another festa as noisy on that occasion. Revolution
+and counter-revolution, Guerazzi[189] and Leopold, sacking of Florence
+and entrance of the Austrian army--we live through everything, you
+see, and baby grows fat indiscriminately. For my part, I am altogether
+_blasee_ about revolutions and invasions. Don't think it want of
+feeling in me, or want of sympathy with 'the people,' but really I
+can't help a certain political latitudinarianism from creeping over me
+in relation to this Tuscany. You ought to be here to understand what I
+mean and how I think. Oh heavens! how ignoble it all has been and
+is! A revolution made by boys and _vivas_, and unmade by boys and
+_vivas_--no, there was blood shed in the unmaking--some horror and
+terror, but not as much patriotism and truth as could lift up the
+blood from the kennel. The counter-revolution was strictly _counter_,
+observe. I mean, that if the Leghornese troops here bad paid their
+debts at the Florentine coffee houses, the Florentines would have let
+their beloved Grand Duke stay on at Gaeta to the end of the world. The
+Grand Duke, too, whose part I have been taking hitherto (because he
+did seem to me a good man, more sinned against than sinning)--the
+Grand Duke I give up from henceforth, seeing that he has done this
+base thing of taking again his Austrian titles in his proclamations
+coincidently with the approach of the Austrians. Of Rome, knowing
+nothing, I don't like to speak. If a republic _in earnest_ is
+established there, Louis Napoleon should not try to set his foot on
+it. Dearest Mrs. Martin, how you mistake me about France, and how too
+lightly I must have spoken. If you knew how I admire the French as
+a nation! Robert always calls them '_my beloved French_.' Their
+very faults appear to me to arise from an excess of ideality land
+aspiration; but I was vexed rather at their selection of Louis
+Napoleon--a selection since justified by the firmness and apparent
+integrity of the man. His reputation in England, you will admit, did
+not promise the conclusion. Will he be emperor, do you imagine? And
+shall I ever have done talking politics? I would far rather talk of
+_you_, after all. Henrietta tells me of your looking well, but of your
+not being strong yet. Now do, _for once_, have a fit of egotism and
+tell me a little about yourself.... Surely I ought especially to thank
+you, dearest kind friend, for your goodness in writing to--, of which
+Henrietta very properly told me. I never shall forget this and other
+proofs of your affection for me, and shall remember them with warm
+gratitude always. As to--, I have held out both [my] hands, and my
+husband's hands in mine, again and again to him; he cannot possibly,
+in the secret place of his heart, expect more from either of us. My
+husband would have written to him in the first place, but for the
+obstacles raised by himself and others, and now what _could_ Robert
+write and say except the bare repetition of what I have said over and
+over for him and myself? It is exactly an excuse--not more and not
+less. Just before I was ill I sent my last messages, because, with
+certain hazards before me, my heart turned to them naturally. I might
+as well have turned to a rock.--has been by far the kindest, and has
+written to me two or three little notes, and one since the birth of
+our child. I love them all far too well to be proud, and my husband
+loves me too well not to wish to be friends with every one of them; we
+have neither of us any stupid feeling about 'keeping up our dignity.'
+Yes, I had a letter from--some time ago, in which something was said
+of Robert's being careless of reconciliation. I answered it most
+explicitly and affectionately, with every possible assurance from
+Robert, and offering them from himself the affection of a brother. Not
+a word in answer! To my poor dearest papa I have written very lately,
+and as my letter has not, after a week, been sent back, I catch at
+the hope of his being moved a little. If he neither sends it back nor
+replies severely, I shall take courage to write to him again after a
+while. It will be an immense gain to get him only to read my letters.
+My father and my brothers hold quite different positions, of
+course, and though he has acted sternly towards me, I, knowing his
+peculiarities, do not feel embittered and astonished and disappointed
+as in the other cases. Absolutely happy my marriage has been--never
+could there be a happier marriage (as there are no marriages in
+heaven); but dear Henrietta is quite wrong in fancying, or seeming to
+fancy, that this quarrel with my family has given or gives me slight
+pain. Old affections are not so easily trodden out of me, indeed, and
+while I live unreconciled to them, there must be a void and drawback.
+Do write to me and tell me of both of you, my very dear friends. Don't
+fancy that we are not anxious for brave Venice and Sicily, and that we
+don't hate this Austrian invasion. But Tuscany has acted a vile part
+altogether--_so_ vile, that I am sceptical about the Romans. We expect
+daily the Austrians in Florence, and have made up our minds to be
+very kind. May God bless you! Do write, and mention your health
+particularly, as I am anxious about it. I am quite well myself, and,
+as ever,
+
+Your affectionate
+BA.
+
+Don't you both like Macaulay's History? We are delighted just now with
+it.
+
+[Footnote 189: Chief administrator of the Republic of Tuscany during
+the short absence of the Grand Duke Leopold.]
+
+
+_To Miss Browning_
+[Florence: about June 1849.]
+
+I must say to my dearest Sarianna how delighted we are at the thought
+of seeing her in Florence. I wish it had been before the autumn, but
+since autumn is decided for we must be content to reap our golden
+harvest at the time for such things. Certainly the summer heat of
+Florence is terrible enough--only we should have carried you with us
+into the shade somewhere to the sea or to the mountains--and Robert
+has, of course, told you of our Spezzia plan. The 'fatling of the
+flock' has been sheared closely of his long petticoats. Did he tell
+you that? And you can't think how funny the little creature looks
+without his train, his wise baby face appearing to approve of the
+whole arrangement. He talks to himself now and smiles at everybody,
+and admired my roses so much the other day that he wanted to eat
+them; having a sublime transcendental notion about the mouth being
+the receptacle of all beauty and glory in this world. Tell your dear
+father that certainly he _is_ a 'sweet baby,' there's no denying it.
+We lay him down on the floor to let him kick at ease, and he makes
+violent efforts to get up by himself, and Wilson declares that the
+least encouragement would set him walking. Robert's nursing does
+not mend his spirits much. I shall be very glad to get him away from
+Florence; he has suffered too much here to rally as I long to see him
+do, because, dearest Sarianna, we have to live after all; and to live
+rightly we must turn our faces forward and press forward and not look
+backward morbidly for the footsteps in the dust of those beloved ones
+who travelled with us but yesterday. They themselves are not
+behind but before, and we carry with us our tenderness living and
+undiminished towards them, to be completed when the round of this life
+is complete for us also. Dearest Sarianna, why do I say such things,
+but because I have known what grief is? Oh, and how I could have
+compounded with you, grief for grief, mine for yours, for _I_ had no
+last words nor gestures, Sarianna. God keep you from such a helpless
+bitter agony as mine then was. Dear Sarianna, you will think of us
+and of Florence, my dear sister, and remember how you have made us
+a promise and have to keep it. May God bless you and comfort you.
+We think of you and love you continually, and I am always your most
+affectionate
+
+BA.
+
+
+In July the move from Florence, of which Mrs. Browning speaks in the
+above letter, was effected, the place ultimately chosen for escape
+from the summer heat in the valley of the Arno being the Bagni
+di Lucca. Here three months were spent, as the following letters
+describe. By this time the struggle for Italian liberty had ended in
+failure everywhere. The battle of Novara, on March 23, had prostrated
+Piedmont, and caused the abdication of its king, Charles Albert. The
+Tuscan Republic had come and gone, and the Grand Duke had re-entered
+his capital under the protection of Austrian bayonets. Sicily had been
+reduced to subjection to the Bourbons of Naples. On July 2 the French
+entered Rome, bringing back the Pope cured of his leanings to reform
+and constitutional government; on the 24th, Venice, after an heroic
+resistance, capitulated to the Austrians. The struggle was over for
+the time; the longing for liberty becomes, of necessity, silent; and
+we hear little, for a space, of Italian politics. For the moment it
+might seem justifiable to despair of the republic.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Bagni di Lucca, Toscana: [about July 1849].
+
+At last, you will say, dearest friend. The truth is, I have not been
+forgetting you (how far from that!) but wandering in search of cool
+air and a cool bough among all the olive trees to build our summer
+nest on. My husband has been suffering beyond what one could shut
+one's eyes to in consequence of the great mental shock of last
+March--loss of appetite, loss of sleep, looks quite worn and altered.
+His spirits never rallied except with an effort, and every letter from
+New Cross threw him back into deep depressions. I was very anxious,
+and feared much that the end of it all (the intense heat of Florence
+assisting) would be a nervous fever or something similar. And I had
+the greatest difficulty in persuading him to leave Florence for a
+month or two--he who generally delights so in travelling, had no
+mind for change or movement. I had to say and swear that baby and I
+couldn't bear the heat, and that we must and would go away. _Ce
+que femme veut_, if the latter is at all reasonable, or the former
+persevering. At last I gained the victory. It was agreed that we two
+should go on an exploring journey to find out where we could have
+most shadow at least expense; and we left our child with his nurse and
+Wilson while we were absent. We went along the coast to Spezzia, saw
+Carrara with the white marble mountains, passed through the olive
+forests and the vineyards, avenues of acacia trees, chestnut woods,
+glorious surprises of most exquisite scenery. I say olive forests
+advisedly; the olive grows like a forest tree in those regions,
+shading the ground with tents of silvery network. The olive near
+Florence is but a shrub in comparison, and I have learnt to despise
+a little, too, the Florentine vine, which does not swing such
+portcullises of massive dewy green from one tree to another as along
+the whole road where we travelled. Beautiful, indeed, it was. Spezzia
+wheels the blue sea into the arms of the wooded mountains, and we had
+a glance at Shelley's house at Lerici. It was melancholy to me, of
+course. I was not sorry that the lodgings we inquired about were
+far above our means. We returned on our steps (after two days in the
+dirtiest of possible inns), saw Seravezza, a village in the mountains,
+where rock, river, and wood enticed us to stay, and the inhabitants
+drove us off by their unreasonable prices. It is curious, but just in
+proportion to the want of civilisation the prices rise in Italy. If
+you haven't cups and saucers you are made to pay for plate. Well, so
+finding no rest for the sole of our feet, I persuaded Robert to go to
+the Baths of Lucca, only to see them. We were to proceed afterwards
+to San Marcello or some safer wilderness. We had both of us, but he
+chiefly, the strongest prejudice against these Baths of Lucca, taking
+them for a sort of wasp's nest of scandal and gaming, and expecting to
+find everything trodden flat by the Continental English; yet I wanted
+to see the place, because it is a place to see after all. So we came,
+and were so charmed by the exquisite beauty of the scenery, by the
+coolness of the climate and the absence of our countrymen, political
+troubles serving admirably our private requirements, that we made an
+offer for rooms on the spot, and returned to Florence for baby and the
+rest of our establishment without further delay. Here we are, then; we
+have been here more than a fortnight. We have taken an apartment for
+the season--four months--paying twelve pounds for the whole term,
+and hoping to be able to stay till the end of October. The living is
+cheaper than even at Florence, so that there has been no extravagance
+in coming here. In fact, Florence is scarcely tenable during the
+summer from the excessive heat by day and night, even if there were no
+particular motive for leaving it. We have taken a sort of eagle's nest
+in this place, the highest house of the highest of the three villages
+which are called the Bagni di Lucca, and which lie at the heart of a
+hundred mountains sung to continually by a rushing mountain stream.
+The sound of the river and of the cicala is all the noise we hear.
+Austrian drums and carriage wheels cannot vex us; God be thanked for
+it; the silence is full of joy and consolation. I think my husband's
+spirits are better already and his appetite improved. Certainly little
+babe's great cheeks are growing rosier and rosier. He is out all day
+when the sun is not too strong, and Wilson will have it that he is
+prettier than the whole population of babies here. He fixes his
+blue eyes on everybody and smiles universal benevolence, rather too
+indiscriminately it might be if it were not for Flush. But certainly,
+on the whole he prefers Flush. He pulls his ears and rides on him, and
+Flush, though his dignity does not approve of being used as a pony,
+only protests by turning his head round to kiss the little bare
+dimpled feet. A merrier, sweeter-tempered child there can't be than
+our baby, and people wonder at his being so forward at four months
+old and think there must be a mistake in his age. He is so strong that
+when I put out two fingers and he has seized them in his fists he can
+draw himself up on his feet, but we discourage this forwardness, which
+is not desirable, say the learned. Children of friends of mine at ten
+months and a year can't do so much. Is it not curious that _my_ child
+should be remarkable for strength and fatness? He has a beaming,
+thinking little face, too; oh, I wish you could see it. Then my
+own strength has wonderfully improved, just as my medical friends
+prophesied; and it seems like a dream when I find myself able to climb
+the hills with Robert and help him to lose himself in the forests.
+I have been growing stronger and stronger, and where it is to stop I
+can't tell, really; I can do as much, or more, now than at any point
+of my life since I arrived at woman's estate. The air of this place
+seems to penetrate the heart and not the lungs only; it draws you,
+raises you, excites you. Mountain air without its keenness, sheathed
+in Italian sunshine, think what _that_ must be! And the beauty and
+the solitude--for with a few paces we get free of the habitations
+of men--all is delightful to me. What is peculiarly beautiful and
+wonderful is the variety of the shapes of the mountains. They are a
+multitude, and yet there is no likeness. None, except where the golden
+mist comes and transfigures them into one glory. For the rest, the
+mountain there wrapt in the chestnut forest is not like that bare peak
+which tilts against the sky, nor like that serpent twine of another
+which seems to move and coil in the moving coiling shadow. Oh, I wish
+you were here. You would enjoy the shade of the chestnut trees, and
+the sound of the waterfalls, and at nights seem to be living among the
+stars; the fireflies are so thick, you would like that too. We have
+subscribed to a French library where there are scarcely any new books.
+I have read Bernard's 'Gentilhomme Campagnard' (see how _arrieres_ we
+are in French literature!), and thought it the dullest and worst of
+his books. I wish I could see the 'Memoirs of Louis Napoleon,' but
+there is no chance of such good fortune. All this egotism has been
+written with a heart full of thoughts of you and anxieties for you.
+Do write to me directly and say first how your precious health is, and
+then that you have ceased to suffer pain for your friends.... But your
+dear self chiefly--how are you, my dearest Miss Mitford? I do long so
+for good news of you. On our arrival here Mr. Lever called on us. A
+most cordial vivacious manner, a glowing countenance, with the animal
+spirits somewhat predominant over the intellect, yet the intellect by
+no means in default; you can't help being surprised into being pleased
+with him, whatever your previous inclination may be. Natural too, and
+a _gentleman_ past mistake. His eldest daughter is nearly grown up,
+and his youngest six months old. He has children of every sort of
+intermediate age almost, but he himself is young enough still. Not the
+slightest Irish accent. He seems to have spent nearly his whole life
+on the Continent and by no means to be tired of it. Ah, dearest Miss
+Mitford, hearts feel differently, adjust themselves differently before
+the prick of sorrow, and I confess I agree with Robert. There are
+places stained with the blood of my heart for ever, and where I could
+not bear to stand again. If duty called him to New Cross it would be
+otherwise, but his sister is rather inclined to come to us, I think,
+for a few weeks in the autumn perhaps. Only these are scarcely times
+for plans concerning foreign travel. It is something to talk of. It
+has been a great disappointment to me the not going to England this
+year, but I could not run the risk of the bitter pain to him. May God
+bless you from all pain! Love me and write to me, who am ever and ever
+your affectionate E.B.B.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+Bagni di Lucca: August 11, 1849.
+
+I thank you, dearest friend, for your most affectionate and welcome
+letter would seem to come by instinct, and we have thanked you in our
+thoughts long before this moment, when I begin at last to write some
+of them. Do believe that to value your affection and to love you back
+again are parts of our life, and that it must be always delightful to
+us to read in your handwriting or to hear in your voice that we are
+not exiled from your life. Give us such an assurance whenever you can.
+Shall we not have it face to face at Florence, when the booksellers
+let you go? And meantime there is the post; do write to us.... Did
+you ever see this place, I wonder? The coolness, the charm of the
+mountains, whose very heart you seem to hear beating in the rush of
+the little river, the green silence of the chestnut forests, and the
+seclusion which anyone may make for himself by keeping clear of
+the valley-villages; all these things drew us. We took a delightful
+apartment over the heads of the whole world in the highest house
+of the Bagni Caldi, where only the donkeys and the _portantini_ can
+penetrate, and where we sit at the open windows and hear nothing but
+the cicale. Not a mosquito! think of that! The thermometer ranges
+from sixty-eight to seventy-four, but the seventy-four has been a
+rare excess: the nights, mornings, and evenings are exquisitely cool.
+Robert and I go out and lose ourselves in the woods and mountains, and
+sit by the waterfalls on the starry and moonlit nights, and neither
+by night nor day have the fear of picnics before our eyes. We were
+observing the other day that we never met anybody except a monk girt
+with a rope, now and then, or a barefooted peasant. The sight of a
+pink parasol never startles us into unpleasant theories of comparative
+anatomy. One cause, perhaps, may be that on account of political
+matters it is a delightfully 'bad season,' but, also, we are too
+high for the ordinary walkers, who keep to the valley and the flatter
+roads. Robert is better, looking better, and in more healthy spirits;
+and we are both enjoying this great sea of mountains and our way of
+life here altogether. Of course, we remembered to go back to Florence
+for baby and the rest of our little establishment, and we mean to
+stay as long as we can, perhaps to the end of October. Baby is in
+the triumph of health and full-blown roses, and as he does not hide
+himself in the woods like his ancestors, but smiles at everybody, he
+is the most popular of possible babies.... We had him baptised
+before we left Florence, without godfathers and godmothers, in the
+simplicities of the French Lutheran Church. I gave him your kiss as a
+precious promise that you would love him one day like a true dear
+Aunt Nina; and I promise you on my part that he shall be taught
+to understand both the happiness and the honour of it. Robert is
+expecting a visit from his sister in the course of this autumn. She
+has suffered much, and the change will be good for her, even if, as
+she says, she can stay with us only a few weeks. With her we shall
+have your book, to be disinherited of which so long has been hard on
+us. Robert's own we have not seen yet. It must be satisfactory to you
+to have had such a clear triumph after all the dust and toil of the
+way. And now tell me, won't it be _necessary_ for you to come again to
+Italy for what remains to be done? Poor Florence is quiet enough under
+the heel of Austria, and Leopold 'l'intrepido,' as he was happily
+called by a poet of Viareggio in a welcoming burst of inspiration,
+sits undisturbed at the Pitti. I despair of the republic in Italy, or
+rather of Italy altogether. The instructed are not patriotic, and the
+patriots are not instructed. We want not only a _man_, but men, and we
+must throw, I fear, the bones of their race behind us before the true
+deliverers can spring up. Still, it is not all over; there will be
+deliverance presently, but it will not be now. We are full of painful
+sympathy for poor Venice. There! why write more about politics? It
+makes us sick enough to think of Austrians in our Florence without
+writing the thought out into greater expansion. Only don't let the
+'Times' newspaper persuade you that there is no stepping with impunity
+out of England. ... We have 'lectures on Shakespeare' just now by a
+Mr. Stuart, who is enlightening the English barbarians at the
+lower village, and quoting Mrs. Jameson to make his discourse more
+brilliant. We like to hear 'Mrs. Jameson observes.' Give our love to
+dear Gerardine. I am anxious for her happiness and yours involved in
+it. Love and remember us, dearest friend.
+
+Your E.B.B., or rather, BA.
+
+
+The following note is added in Mr. Browning's handwriting:
+
+Dear Aunt Nina,--Will there be three years before I see you again? And
+Geddie; does she not come to Italy? When we passed through Pisa the
+other day, we went to your old inn in love of you, and got your very
+room to dine in (the landlord is dead and gone, as is Peveruda--of the
+other house, you remember). There were the old vile prints, the old
+look-out into the garden, with its orange trees and painted sentinel
+watching them. Ba must have told you about our babe, and the little
+else there is to tell--that is, for _her_ to tell, for she is not
+likely to encroach upon _my_ story which I _could_ tell of her
+entirely angel nature, as divine a heart as God ever made; I know more
+of her every day; I, who thought I knew something of her five years
+ago! I think I know you, too, so I love you and am
+
+Ever yours and dear Geddie's
+R.B.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Bagni di Lucca: August 31, 1849.
+
+I told Mr. Lever what you thought of him, dearest friend, and then
+he said, all in a glow and animation, that you were not only his
+own delight but the delight of his children, which is affection by
+refraction, isn't it? Quite gratified he seemed by the hold of your
+good opinion. Not only is he the notability _par excellence_ of these
+Baths of Lucca, where he has lived a whole year, during the snows upon
+the mountains, but he presides over the weekly balls at the casino
+where the English 'do congregate' (all except Robert and me), and is
+said to be the light of the flambeaux and the spring of the dancers.
+There is a general desolation when he _will_ retire to play whist.
+In addition to which he really seems to be loving and loveable in his
+family. You always see him with his children and his wife; he drives
+her and her baby up and down along the only carriageable road of
+Lucca: so set down that piece of domestic life on the bright side in
+the broad charge against married authors; now do. I believe he is to
+return to Florence this winter with his family, having had enough of
+the mountains. Have you read 'Roland Cashel,' isn't _that_ the name of
+his last novel? The 'Athenaeum' said of it that it was '_new ground_,'
+and praised it. I hear that he gets a hundred pounds for each monthly
+number. Oh, how glad I was to have your letter, written in such pain,
+read in such pleasure! It was only fair to tell me in the last lines
+that the face-ache was better, to keep off a fit of remorse. I do
+hope that Mr. May is not right about neuralgia, because that is more
+difficult to cure than pain which arises from the teeth. Tell me how
+you are in all ways. I look into your letters eagerly for news of your
+health, then of your spirits, which are a part of health. The cholera
+makes me very frightened for my dearest people in London, and silence,
+the last longer than usual, ploughs up my days and nights into long
+furrows. The disease rages in the neighbourhood of my husband's
+family, and though Wimpole Street has been hitherto clear, who can
+calculate on what may be? My head goes round to think of it. And papa,
+who _will_ keep going into that horrible city! Even if my sisters and
+brothers should go into the country as every year, he will be left, he
+is no more movable than St. Paul's. My sister-in-law will probably not
+come to us as soon as she intended, through a consideration for her
+father, who ought not, Robert thinks, to stay alone in the midst of
+such contingencies, so perhaps we may go to seek her ourselves in the
+spring, if she does not seek us out before in Italy. God keep us all,
+and near to one another. Love runs dreadful risks in the world. Yet
+Love is, how much the best thing in the world? We have had a great
+event in our house. Baby has cut a tooth.... His little happy laugh is
+always ringing through the rooms. He is afraid of nobody or nothing
+in the world, and was in fits of ecstasy at the tossing of the horse's
+head, when he rode on Wilson's knee five or six miles the other day to
+a village in the mountains--screaming for joy, she said. He is not six
+months yet by a fortnight! His father loves him; passionately, and the
+sentiment is reciprocated, I assure you. We have had the coolest
+of Italian summers at these Baths of Lucca, the thermometer at the
+hottest hour of the hottest day only at seventy-six, and generally at
+sixty-eight or seventy. The nights invariably cool. Now the freshness
+of the air is growing almost too fresh. I only hope we shall be able
+(for the cold) to keep our intention of staying here till the end of
+October, I have enjoyed it so entirely, and shall be so sorry to break
+off this happy silence into the Austrian drums at poor Florence. And
+then we want to see the vintage. Some grapes are ripe already, but
+it is not vintage time. We have every kind of good fruit, great
+water-melons, which with both arms I can scarcely carry, at twopence
+halfpenny each, and figs and peaches cheap in proportion. And the
+place agrees with Baby, and has done good to my husband's spirits,
+though the only 'amusement' or distraction he has is looking at the
+mountains and climbing among the woods with me. Yes, we have been
+reading some French romances, 'Monte Cristo,' for instance, I for
+the second time--but I have liked it, to read it with him. That Dumas
+certainly has power; and to think of the scramble there was for his
+brains a year or two ago in Paris! For a man to write so much and
+so well together is a miracle. Do you mean that they have left off
+writing--those French writers--or that they have tired you out with
+writing that looks faint beside the rush of facts, as the range of
+French politics show those? Has not Eugene Sue been illustrating
+the passions? Somebody told me so. Do _you_ tell me how you like
+the French President, and whether he will ever, in your mind, sit on
+Napoleon's throne. It seems to me that he has given proof, as far
+as the evidence goes, of prudence, integrity, and conscientious
+patriotism; the situation is difficult, and he fills it honorably. The
+Rome business has been miserably managed; this is the great blot on
+the character of his government. But I, for my own part (my husband is
+not so minded), do consider that the French motive has been good, the
+intention pure, the occupation of Rome by the Austrians being imminent
+and the French intervention the only means (with the exception of a
+European war) of saving Rome from the hoof of the Absolutists. At the
+same time if Pius IX. is the obstinate idiot he seems to be, good and
+tenderhearted man as he surely is, and if the old abuses are to be
+restored, why Austria might as well have done her own dirty work
+and saved French hands from the disgrace of it. It makes us two very
+angry. Robert especially is furious. We are not within reach of the
+book you speak of, 'Portraits des Orateurs Francais' oh, we might
+nearly as well live on a desert island as far as modern books go. And
+here, at Lucca, even Robert can't catch sight of even the 'Athenaeum.'
+We have a two-day old 'Galignani,' and think ourselves royally off;
+and then this little shop with French books in it, just a few, and the
+'Gentilhomme Campagnard' the latest published. Yes, but somebody lent
+us the first volume of 'Chateaubriand's Memoires.' Have you seen it?
+Curiously uninteresting, considering 'the man and the hour.' He writes
+of his youth with a grey goose quill; the paper is all wrinkled.
+And then he is not frank; he must have more to tell than he tells. I
+looked for a more intense and sincere book _outre tombe_ certainly. I
+am busy about my new edition, that is all at present, but some things
+are written. Good of Mr. Chorley (he is _good_) to place you face
+to face with Robert's books, and I am glad you like 'Colombe' and
+'Luria.' Dear Mr. Kenyon's poems we have just received and are about
+to read, and I am delighted at a glance to see that he has inserted
+the 'Gipsy Carol,' which in MS. was such a favorite of mine. Really,
+is he so rich? I am glad of it, if he is. Money could not be in more
+generous and intelligent hands. Dearest Miss Mitford, you are only
+just in being trustful of my affection for you. Never do I forget nor
+cease to love you. Write and tell me of your dear self; how you are
+_exactly_, and whether you have been at Three Mile Cross all the
+summer. May God bless you. Robert's regards. Can you read? Love a
+little your
+
+  Ever affectionate
+  E.B.B.
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+Bagni di Lucca: October 1, [1849].
+
+There seems to be a fatality about our letters, dearest friend, only
+the worst fate comes to me! I lose, and you are _near_ losing! And I
+should not have liked you to lose any least proof of my thinking of
+you, lest a worst loss should happen to me as a consequence, even
+worse than the loss of your letters; for then, perhaps, and by
+degrees, you might leave off thinking of Robert and me, which, rich
+as we are in this mortal world, I do assure you we could neither of
+us afford.... We have had much quiet enjoyment here in spite of
+everything, read some amusing books (Dumas and Sue--shake your head!),
+and seen our child grow fuller of roses and understanding day by day.
+Before he was six months old he would stretch out his hands and his
+feet too, when bidden to do so, and his little mouth to kiss you. This
+is said to be a miracle of forwardness among the learned. He knows
+Robert and me quite well as 'Papa' and 'Mama,' and laughs for joy when
+he meets us out of doors. Robert is very fond of him, and threw
+me into a fit of hilarity the other day by springing away from his
+newspaper in an indignation against me because he hit his head against
+the floor rolling over and over. 'Oh, Ba, I really can't trust you!'
+Down Robert was on the carpet in a moment, to protect the precious
+head. He takes it to be made of Venetian glass, I am certain. We may
+leave this place much sooner than the end of October, as everything
+depends upon the coming in of the cold. It will be the end of October,
+won't it, before Gerardine can reach Florence? I wish I knew. We have
+made an excursion into the mountains, five miles deep, with all our
+household, baby and all, on horseback and donkeyback, and people open
+their eyes at our having performed such an exploit--I and the child.
+Because it is five miles straight up the Duomo; you wonder how any
+horse could keep its footing, the way is so precipitous, up the
+exhausted torrent courses, and with a palm's breadth between you and
+the headlong ravines. Such scenery. Such a congregation of mountains:
+looking alive in the stormy light we saw them by. We dined with the
+goats, and baby lay on my shawl rolling and laughing. He wasn't in the
+least tired, not he! I won't say so much for myself. The Mr. Stuart
+who lectured here on Shakespeare (I think I told you that) couldn't
+get through a lecture without quoting you, and wound up by a
+declaration that no English critic had done so much for the divine
+poet as a woman--Mrs. Jameson. He appears to be a cultivated and
+refined person, and especially versed in German criticism, and we mean
+to _use_ his society a little when we return to Florence, where he
+resides.... What am I to say about Robert's idleness and mine? I
+scold him about it in a most anti-conjugal manner, but, you know, his
+spirits and nerves have been shaken of late; we must have patience.
+As for me, I am much better, and do something, really, now and then.
+Wait, and you shall have us both on you; too soon, perhaps. May God
+bless you. How are your friends? Lady Byron, Madame de Goethe. The
+dreadful cholera has made us anxious about England.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+Mr. Browning adds the following note:
+
+Dear Aunt Nina,--Ba will have told you everything, and how we wish
+you and Geddie all manner of happiness. I hope we shall be in Florence
+when she passes through it. The place is otherwise distasteful to me,
+with the creeping curs and the floggers of the same. But the weather
+is breaking up here, and I suppose we ought to go back soon. Shall
+you indeed come to Italy next year? That will indeed be pleasant
+to expect. We hope to go to England in the spring. What comes of
+'hoping,' however, we [know] by this time.
+
+Ever yours affectionately,
+R.B.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Bagni di Lucca: October 2, 1849.
+
+Thank you, my dearest Miss Mitford: It is great comfort to know
+that you are better, and that the cholera does not approach your
+neighbourhood. My brothers and sisters have gone to Worthing for a
+few weeks; and though my father (dearest Papa!) is not persuadeable, I
+fear, into joining them, yet it is something to know that the horrible
+pestilence is abating in London. Oh, it has made me so anxious: I
+have caught with such a frightened haste at the newspaper to read
+the 'returns,' leaving even such subjects as Rome and the President's
+letter to quite the last, as if they were indifferent, or, at most,
+bits of Mrs. Manning's murder. By the way and talking of murder, how
+do you account for the crown of wickedness which England bears just
+now over the heads of the nations, in murders of all kinds, by poison,
+by pistol, by knife? In this poor Tuscany, which has not brains enough
+to govern itself, as you observe, and as really I can't deny, there
+have been two murders (properly so called) since we came, just three
+years ago, one from jealousy and one from revenge (respectable motives
+compared to the advantages of the burying societies!), and the horror
+on all sides was great, as if the crime were some rare prodigy, which,
+indeed, it is in this country. We have _no punishment of death_ here,
+observe! The people are gentle, courteous, refined, and tenderhearted.
+What Balzac would call 'femmelette.' All Tuscany is 'Lucien' himself.
+The leaning to the artistic nature without the strength of genius
+implies demoralisation in most cases, and it is this which makes
+your 'good for nothing poets and poetesses,' about which I love so to
+battle with you. Genius, I maintain always, you know, is a purifying
+power and goes with high moral capacities. Well, and so you invite us
+home to civilisation and 'the "Times" newspaper.' We _mean_ to go next
+spring, and shall certainly do so unless something happen to catch us
+and keep us in a net. But always something does happen: and I have so
+often built upon seeing England, and been precipitated from the fourth
+storey, that I have learnt to think warily now. I hunger and thirst
+for the sight of some faces; must I not long, do you think, to see
+your face? And then, I shall be properly proud to show my child
+to those who loved me before him. He is beginning to understand
+everything--chiefly in Italian, of course, as his nurse talks in her
+sleep, I fancy, and can't be silent a second in the day--and when told
+to 'dare un bacio a questo povero Flush,' he mixes his little face
+with Flush's ears in a moment.... You would wonder to see Flush just
+now. He suffered this summer from the climate somewhat as usual,
+though not nearly as much as usual; and having been insulted oftener
+than once by a supposition of 'mange,' Robert wouldn't bear it
+any longer (he is as fond of Flush as I am), and, taking a pair of
+scissors, clipped him all over into the likeness of a lion, much
+to his advantage in both health and appearance. In the winter he is
+always quite well; but the heat and the fleas together are too much
+in the summer. The affection between baby and him is not equal, baby's
+love being far the stronger. He, on the other hand, looks down upon
+baby. What bad news you tell me of our French writers! What! Is it
+possible that Dumas even is struck dumb by the revolution? His first
+works are so incomparably the worst that I can't admit your theory of
+the 'first runnings.' So of Balzac. So of Sue! George Sand is probably
+writing 'banners' for the 'Reds,' which, considering the state of
+parties in France, does not really give me a higher opinion of
+her intelligence or virtue. Ledru Rollin's[190] _confidante_ and
+councillor can't occupy an honorable position, and I am sorry, for
+her sake and ours. When we go to Florence we must try to get the
+'Portraits' and Lamartine's autobiography, which I still more long to
+see. So, two women were in love with him, were they? That must be a
+comfort to look back upon, now, when nobody will have him. I see by
+extracts from his newspaper in Galignani that he can't be accused of
+temporising with the Socialists any longer, whatever other charge may
+be brought against him: and if, as he says, it was he who made the
+French republic, he is by no means irreproachable, having made a bad
+and false thing. The President's letter about Rome[191] has delighted
+us. A letter worth writing and reading! We read it first in the
+Italian papers (long before it was printed in Paris), and the amusing
+thing was that where he speaks of the 'hostile influences' (of the
+cardinals) they had misprinted it '_orribili_ influenze,' which must
+have turned still colder the blood in the veins of Absolutist readers.
+The misprint was not corrected until long after--more than a week, I
+think. The Pope is just a pope; and, since you give George Sand
+credit for having known it, I am the more vexed that Blackwood (under
+'orribili influenze') did not publish the poem I wrote two years
+ago,[192] in the full glare and burning of the Pope-enthusiasm, which
+Robert and I never caught for a moment. Then, _I_ might have passed
+a little for a prophetess as well as George Sand! Only, to confess a
+truth, the same poem would have proved how fairly I was taken in by
+our Tuscan Grand Duke. Oh, the traitor!
+
+I saw the 'Ambarvalia'[193] reviewed somewhere--I fancy in the
+'Spectator '--and was not much struck by the extracts. They may,
+however, have been selected without much discrimination, and probably
+were. I am very glad that you like the gipsy carol in dear Mr.
+Kenyon's volume, because it is, and was in MS., a great favorite of
+mine. There are excellent things otherwise, as must be when he says
+them: one of the most radiant of benevolences with one of the most
+refined of intellects! How the paper seems to dwindle as I would fain
+talk on more. I have performed a great exploit, ridden on a donkey
+five miles deep into the mountains to an almost inaccessible volcanic
+ground not far from the stars. Robert on horseback, and Wilson and the
+nurse (with baby) on other donkeys; guides, of course. We set off at
+eight in the morning and returned at six P.M., after dining on the
+mountain pinnacle, I dreadfully tired, but the child laughing as
+usual, and burnt Brick-colour for all bad effect. No horse or ass,
+untrained to the mountains, could have kept foot a moment where we
+penetrated, and even as it was one could not help the natural thrill.
+No road except the bed of exhausted torrents above and through the
+chestnut forests, and precipitous beyond what you would think possible
+for ascent or descent. Ravines tearing the ground to pieces under
+your feet. The scenery, sublime and wonderful, satisfied us wholly,
+however, as we looked round on the world of innumerable mountains
+bound faintly with the grey sea, and not a human habitation. I hope
+you will go to London this winter; it will be good for you, it seems
+to me. Take care of yourself, my much and ever loved friend! I love
+you and think of you indeed. Write of your health, remembering this,
+
+And your affectionate,
+E.B.B.
+
+My husband's regards always. You had better, I think, direct to
+_Florence_, as we shall be there in the course of October.
+
+[Footnote 190: Minister of the Interior in the Republic of 1848, and
+one of the most prominent f the advanced Republican leaders.]
+
+[Footnote 191: A letter, addressed to a private friend but intended
+to be made public, denouncing the reactionary and oppressive
+administration of the restored Pope.]
+
+[Footnote 192: Probably the first part of _Casa Guidi Windows_.]
+
+[Footnote 193: By A.H. Clough and T. Burbidge.]
+
+
+To Florence, accordingly, they returned in October, and settled down
+once more in Casa Guidi for the winter. Mrs. Browning's principal
+literary occupation at this time was the preparation of a new edition
+of her poems, including nearly all the contents of the 'Seraphim'
+volume of 1838, more or less revised, as well as the 'Poems' of
+1844. This edition, published in 1850, has formed the basis of all
+subsequent editions of her poems. Meanwhile her husband was engaged
+in the preparation of 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day,' which was also
+published in the course of 1850.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: December I, 1849.
+
+My ever loved friend, you will have wondered at this unusual silence;
+and so will my sisters to whom I wrote just now, after a pause as
+little in my custom. It was not the fault of my head and heart, but of
+this unruly body, which has been laid up again in the way of all flesh
+of mine....
+
+I am well again now, only obliged to keep quiet and give up my grand
+walking excursions, which poor Robert used to be so boastful of. If he
+is vain about anything in the world, it is about my improved health,
+and I used to say to him, 'But you needn't talk so much to people of
+how your wife walked here with you and there with you, as if a wife
+with a pair of feet was a miracle of nature.' Now the poor feet have
+fallen into their old ways again. Ah, but if God pleases it won't be
+for long....
+
+The American authoress, Miss Fuller, with whom we had had some slight
+intercourse by letter, and who has been at Rome during the siege, as
+a devoted friend of the republicans and a meritorious attendant on
+the hospitals, has taken us by surprise at Florence, retiring from the
+Roman field with a husband and child above a year old. Nobody had even
+suspected a word of this underplot, and her American friends stood in
+mute astonishment before this apparition of them here. The husband is
+a Roman marquis, appearing amiable and gentlemanly, and having fought
+well, they say, at the siege, but with no pretension to cope with his
+wife on any ground appertaining to the intellect. She talks, and he
+listens. I always wonder at that species of marriage; but people are
+so different in their matrimonial ideals that it may answer sometimes.
+This Mdme. Ossoli saw George Sand in Paris--was at one of her
+soirees--and called her 'a magnificent creature.' The soiree was 'full
+of rubbish' in the way of its social composition, which George Sand
+likes, _nota bene_. If Mdme. Ossoli called it '_rubbish_' it must have
+been really rubbish--not expressing anything conventionally so--she
+being one of the out and out _Reds_ and scorners of grades of society.
+She said that she did not see Balzac. Balzac went into the world
+scarcely at all, frequenting the lowest cafes, so that it was
+difficult to track him out. Which information I receive doubtingly.
+The rumours about Balzac with certain parties in Paris are not likely
+to be too favorable nor at all reliable, I should fancy; besides,
+I never entertain disparaging thoughts of my demi-gods unless they
+should be forced upon me by evidence you must know. I have not made
+a demi-god of Louis Napoleon, by the way--no, and I don't mean it. I
+expect some better final result than he has just proved himself to be
+of the French Revolution, with all its bitter and cruel consequences
+hitherto, so I can't quite agree with you. Only so far, that he
+has shown himself up to this point to be an upright man with noble
+impulses, and that I give him much of my sympathy and respect in the
+difficult position held by him. A man of genius he does not seem to
+be--and what, after all, will he manage to do at Rome? I don't take
+up the frantic Republican cry in Italy. I know too well the want of
+knowledge and the consequent want of i effective faith and energy
+among the Italians; but there is a stain upon France in the present
+state of the Roman affair, and I don't shut my eyes to that either. To
+cast Rome helpless and bound into the hands of the priests is dishonor
+to the actors, however we consider the act; and for the sake of
+France, even more than for the sake of Italy, I yearn to see the act
+cancelled. Oh, we have had the sight of Clough and Burbidge, at last.
+Clough has more thought, Burbidge more music; but I am disappointed
+in the book on the whole. What I like infinitely better is Clough's
+'Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich,' a 'long vacation pastoral,' written in
+loose and more-than-need-be unmusical hexameters, but full of vigour
+and freshness, and with passages and indeed whole scenes of great
+beauty and eloquence. It seems to have been written before the other
+poems. Try to get it, if you have not read it already. I feel certain
+you will like it and think all the higher of the poet. Oh, it strikes
+both Robert and me as being worth twenty of the other little book,
+with its fragmentary, dislocated, unartistic character. Arnold's
+volume has two good poems in it: 'The Sick King of Bokhara' and 'The
+Deserted Merman.' I like them both. But none of these writers
+are _artists_, whatever they may be in future days. Have you read
+'Shirley,' and is it as good as 'Jane Eyre'? We heard not long since
+that Mr. Chorley had discovered the author, _the_ 'Currer Bell.' A
+woman, most certainly. We hear, too, that three large editions of the
+'Princess' are sold. So much the happier for England and poetry.
+
+Dearest dear Miss Mitford, mind you write to me, and don't pay me out
+in my own silence! _You_ have not been ill, I hope and trust. Write
+and tell me every little thing of yourself--how you are, and whether
+there is still danger of your being uprooted from Three Mile Cross. I
+love and think of you always. Fancy Flush being taken in the light
+of a rival by baby! Oh, baby was quite jealous the other day, and
+strugggled and kicked to get to me because he saw Flush leaning his
+pretty head on my lap. There's a great strife for privileges between
+those two. May God bless you! My husband's kind regards always, while
+I am your most
+
+Affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: January 9, 1850.
+
+Thank you, ever dearest Miss Mitford, for this welcome letter written
+on your birthday! May the fear of small-pox have passed away long
+before now, and every hope and satisfaction have strengthened and
+remained!...
+
+May God bless you and give you many happy years, you who can do so
+much towards the happiness of others. May I not answer for my own?...
+
+Little Wiedeman began to crawl on Christmas Day. Before, he used to
+roll. We throw things across the floor and he crawls for them like a
+little dog, on all fours....
+
+He has just caught a cold, which I make more fuss about than I ought,
+say the wise; but I can't get resigned to the association of any sort
+of suffering with his laughing dimpled little body--it is the blowing
+about in the wind of such a heap of roses. So you prefer 'Shirley' to
+'Jane Eyre'! Yet I hear from nobody such an opinion; yet you are very
+probably right, for 'Shirley' may suffer from the natural reaction
+of the public mind. What you tell me of Tennyson interests me
+as everything about him must. I like to think of him digging
+gardens--room for cabbage and all. At the same time, what he says
+about the public '_hating_ poetry' is certainly not a word for
+Tennyson. Perhaps no true poet, having claims upon attention _solely_
+through his poetry, has attained so certain a success with such short
+delay. Instead of being pelted (as nearly every true poet has been),
+he stands already on a pedestal, and is recognised as a master spirit
+not by a coterie but by the great public. Three large editions of the
+'Princess' have already been sold. If he isn't satisfied after all, I
+think he is wrong. Divine poet as he is, and no laurel being too leafy
+for him, yet he must be an unreasonable man, and not understanding
+of the growth of the laurel trees and the nature of a reading public.
+With regard to the other garden-digger, dear Mr. Home, I wish as you
+do that I could hear something satisfactory of him. I wrote from Lucca
+in the summer, and have no answer. The latest word concerning him is
+the announcement in the 'Athenaeum' of a third edition of his 'Gregory
+the Seventh,' which we were glad to see, but very, very glad we should
+be to have news of his prosperity in the flesh as well as in the
+_litterae scriptae_....
+
+I have not been out of doors these two months, but people call me
+'looking well,' and a newly married niece of Miss Bayley's, the
+accomplished Miss Thomson, who has become the wife of Dr. Emil Braun
+(the learned German secretary of the Archaeological Society), and just
+passed through Florence on her way to Rome, where they are to reside,
+declared that the change she saw in me was miraculous--'wonderful
+indeed.' I took her to look at Wiedeman in his cradle, fast asleep,
+and she won my heart (over again, for always she was a favorite of
+mine) by exclaiming at his prettiness. Charmed, too, we both were
+with Dr. Braun--I mean Robert and I were charmed. He has a mixture of
+fervour and simplicity which is still more delightfully picturesque
+in his foreign English. Oh, he speaks English perfectly, only with an
+obvious accent enough. I am sure we should be cordial friends, if the
+lines had fallen to us in the same pleasant places; but he is fixed
+at Rome, and we are half afraid of the enervating effects of the Roman
+climate on the constitutions of children. Tell me, do you hear often
+from Mr. Chorley? It quite pains us to observe from his manner of
+writing the great depression of his spirits. His mother was ill in
+the summer, but plainly the sadness does not arise entirely or chiefly
+from this cause. He seems to me over-worked, taxed in the spirit. I
+advise nobody to give up work; but that 'Athenaeum' labour is a sort
+of treadmill discipline in which there is no progress, nor triumph,
+and I do wish he would give that up and come out to us with a new set
+of anvils and hammers. Only, of course, he couldn't do it, even if he
+would, while there is illness in his family. May there be a whole sun
+of success shining on the new play! Robert is engaged on a poem,[194]
+and I am busy with my edition. So much to correct, I find, and many
+poems to add. Plainly 'Jane Eyre' was by a woman. It used to astound
+me when sensible people said otherwise. Write to me, will you? I long
+to hear again. Tell me everything of yourself; accept my husband's
+true regards, and think of me as your
+
+Ever affectionate
+E.B.B.
+
+[Footnote 194: _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_.]
+
+
+_To Miss Browning_
+Florence: January 29, 1850.
+
+My dearest Sarianna,--I have waited to thank you for your great and
+ready kindness about the new edition, until now when it is fairly on
+its way to England. Thank you, thank you! I am only afraid, not that
+you will find anything too 'learned,' as you suggest, but a good many
+things too careless, I was going to say, only Robert, with various
+deep sighs for 'his poor Sarianna,' devoted himself during several
+days to rearranging my arrangements, and simplifying my complications.
+It was the old story of Order and Disorder over again. He pulled out
+the knotted silks with an indefatigable patience, so that really
+you will owe to _him_ every moment of ease and facility which may be
+enjoyable in the course of the work. I am afraid that at the easiest
+you will find it a vexatious business, but I throw everything on
+your kindness, and am not distrustful on such a point of weights and
+measures.
+
+Your letter was full of sad news. Robert was deeply affected at the
+account of the illness of his cousin--was in tears before he could end
+the letter. I do hope that in a day or two we may hear from you that
+the happy change was confirmed as time passed on. I do hope so; it
+will be joy, not merely to Robert, but to me, for indeed I never
+forget the office which his kindness performed for both of us at a
+crisis ripe with all the happiness of my life.
+
+Then it was sad to hear of your dear father suffering from lumbago.
+May the last of it have passed away long before you get what I am
+writing! Tell him with my love that Wiedeman shall hear some day (if
+we all live) the verses he wrote to him; and I have it in my head that
+little Wiedeman will be very sensitive to verses and kindness too--he
+likes to hear anything rhythmical and musical, and he likes to
+be petted and kissed--the most affectionate little creature he
+is--sitting on my knee, while I give him books to turn the leaves
+over (a favorite amusement), every two minutes he puts up his little
+rosebud of a mouth to have a kiss. His cold is quite gone, and he has
+taken advantage of the opportunity to grow still fatter; as to his
+activities, there's no end to them. His nurse and I agree that he
+doesn't remain quiet a moment in the day....[195]
+
+Now the love of nephews can't bear any more, Sarianna, can it? Only
+your father will take my part and say that it isn't tedious--beyond
+pardoning.
+
+May God bless both of you, and enable you to send a brighter letter
+next time. Robert will be very anxious.
+
+Your ever affectionate sister
+BA.
+Mention yourself, _do_.
+
+[Footnote 195: A long description of the baby's meals and daily
+programme follows, the substance of which can probably be imagined by
+connoisseurs in the subject.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: February 18, 1850.
+
+Ever dearest Miss Mitford, you _always_ give me pleasure, so for
+love's sake don't say that you 'seldom give it,' and such a magical
+act as conjuring up for me the sight of a new poem by Alfred
+Tennyson[196] is unnecessary to prove you a right beneficent
+enchantress. Thank you, thank you. We are not so unworthy of your
+redundant kindness as to abuse it by a word spoken or sign signified.
+You may trust us indeed. But now you know how free and sincere I
+am always! Now tell me. Apart from the fact of this lyric's being a
+fragment of fringe from the great poet's 'singing clothes' (as Leigh
+Hunt says somewhere), and apart from a certain sweetness and rise and
+fall in the rhythm, do you really see much for admiration in the poem?
+Is it _new_ in, any way? I admire Tennyson with the most worshipping
+part of the multitude, as you are aware, but I do _not_ perceive much
+in this lyric, which strikes me, and Robert also (who goes with me
+throughout), as quite inferior to the other lyrical snatches in the
+'Princess.' By the way, if he introduces it in the 'Princess,' it
+will be the only _rhymed_ verse in the work. Robert thinks that he was
+thinking of the Rhine echoes in writing it, and not of any heard in
+his Irish travels. I hear that Tennyson has taken rooms above Mr.
+Forster's in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and is going to try a London life.
+So says Mr. Kenyon.... I am writing with an easier mind than when
+I wrote last, for I was for a little time rendered very unhappy (so
+unhappy that I couldn't touch on the subject, which is always the way
+with me when pain passes a certain point), by hearing accidentally
+that papa was unwell and looking altered. My sister persisted in
+replying to my anxieties that they were unfounded, that I was quite
+absurd, indeed, in being anxious at all; only people are not generally
+reformed from their absurdities through being scolded for them. Now,
+however, it really appears that the evil has passed. He left his
+doctor who had given him lowering medicines, and, coincidently with
+the leaving, he has recovered looks and health altogether. Arabel says
+that I should think he was looking as well as ever, if I saw him, and
+that appetite and spirits are even redundant. Thank God.... To
+have this good news has made me very happy, and I overflow to you
+accordingly. Oh, there is pain enough from that quarter, without
+hearing of his being out of health. I write to him continually and
+he does not now return my letters, which is a melancholy something
+gained. Now enough of such a subject.
+
+I certainly don't think that the qualities, half savage and half
+freethinking, expressed in 'Jane Eyre' are likely to suit a model
+governess or schoolmistress; and it amuses me to consider them in
+that particular relation. Your account falls like dew upon the parched
+curiosity of some of our friends here, to whom (as mere gossip, which
+did not leave you responsible) I couldn't resist the temptation
+of communicating it. People _are_ so curious--even here among the
+Raffaels--about this particular authorship, yet nobody seems to have
+read 'Shirley'; we are too slow in getting new books. First Galignani
+has to pirate them himself, and then to hand us over the spoils.
+By the way, there's to be an international copyright, isn't there?
+Something is talked of it in the 'Athenaeum.' Meanwhile the Americans
+have already reprinted my husband's new edition. 'Landthieves, I mean
+pirates.' I used to take that for a slip of the pen in Shakespeare;
+but it was a slip of the pen into prophecy. Sorry I am at Mrs. ----
+falling short of your warm-hearted ideas about her! Can you understand
+a woman's hating a girl because it is not a boy--her first child too?
+I understand it so little that scarcely I can believe it. Some women
+_have_, however, undeniably an indifference to children, just as many
+men have, though it must be unnatural and morbid in both sexes.
+Men often affect it--very foolishly, if they count upon the scenic
+effects; affectation never succeeds well, and this sort of affectation
+is peculiarly unbecoming, except in old bachelors, for there is a
+pathetic side to the question so viewed. For my part and my husband's,
+we may be frank and say that we have caught up our parental pleasures
+with a sort of passion. But then, Wiedeman is such a darling little
+creature; who _could_ help loving the child?... Little darling! So
+much mischief was not often put before into so small a body. Fancy
+the child's upsetting the water jugs till he is drenched (which charms
+him), pulling the brooms to pieces, and having serious designs upon
+cutting up his frocks with a pair of scissors. He laughs like an imp
+when he can succeed in doing anything wrong. Now, see what you get, in
+return for your kindness of 'liking to hear about' him! Almost I have
+the grace to be ashamed a little. Just before I had your letter we
+sent my new edition to England. I gave much time to the revision, and
+did not omit reforming some of the rhymes, although you must consider
+that the irregularity of these in a certain degree rather falls in
+with my system than falls out through my carelessness. So much the
+worse, you will say, when a person is _systematically_ bad. The work
+will include the best poems of the 'Seraphim' volume, strengthened and
+improved as far as the circumstances admitted of. I had not the heart
+to leave out the wretched sonnet to yourself, for your dear sake; but
+I rewrote the latter half of it (for really it wasn't a sonnet at all,
+and 'Una and her lion' are rococo), and so placed it with my other
+poems of the same class. There are some new, verses also.[197] The
+Miss Hardings I have seen, and talked with them of _you_, a sure way
+of finding them delightful. But, my dearest friend, I shall not see
+any of the Trollope party--it is not likely. You can scarcely image to
+yourself the retired life we live, or how we have retreated from
+the kind advances of the English society here. Now people seem to
+understand that we are to be left alone; that nothing is to be made of
+us. The fact is, we are not like our child, who kisses everybody who
+smiles at him! Neither my health nor our pecuniary circumstances, nor
+our inclinations perhaps, would admit of our entering into English
+society here, which is kept up much after the old English models, with
+a proper disdain for Continental simplicities of expense. We have just
+heard from Father Prout, who often, he says, sees Mr. Horne, 'who is
+as dreamy as ever.' So glad I am, for I was beginning to be uneasy
+about him. He has not answered my letter from Lucca. The verses in the
+'Athenaeum'[198] are on Sophia Cottrell's child.
+
+May God bless you, dearest friend. Speak of _yourself_ more
+particularly to your ever affectionate
+
+E.B.B.
+
+Robert's kindest regards. Tell us of Mr. Chorley's play, do.
+
+[Footnote 196: Apparently the _Echo-song_ which now precedes canto
+iv. of the _Princess_, though one is surprised at the opinion here
+expressed of it. It will be remembered that this and the other lyrical
+interludes did not appear in the original edition of the _Princess_.]
+
+[Footnote 197: Notably the _Sonnets from the Portuguese_.]
+
+[Footnote 198: 'A Child's Death at Florence,' which appeared in the
+_Athenaeum_ of December 22, 1849.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Florence: February 22, 1850.
+
+My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Have you wondered that I did not write
+before? It was not that I did not thank you in my heart for your kind,
+considerate letter, but I was unconquerably uncomfortable about papa;
+and, what with the weather, which always has me in its power somehow,
+and other things, I fell into a dislike of writing, which I hope you
+didn't mistake for ingratitude, because it was not in the least like
+the same fault. Now the severe weather (such weather for Italy!) has
+broken up, and I am relieved in all ways, having received the most
+happy satisfactory news from Wimpole Street, and the assurance from my
+sisters that if I were to see papa I should think him looking as well
+as ever. He grew impatient with Dr. Elliotson's medicines which, it
+appears, were of a very lowering character--suddenly gave them up,
+and as suddenly recovered his looks and all the rest, and everybody
+at home considers him to be _quite well_. It has relieved me of a
+mountain's weight, and I thank God with great joy. Oh, you must have
+understood how natural it was for me to be unhappy under the other
+circumstances. But if you thought, dearest friend, that _they_
+were necessary to induce me to write to him the humblest and most
+beseeching of letters, you do not know how I feel his alienation or my
+own love for him. I With regard to my brothers, it is quite different,
+though even towards _them_ I may faithfully say that my affection
+has borne itself higher than my pride. But as to papa, I have never
+contended about the right or the wrong, I have never irritated him by
+seeming to suppose that his severity to me has been more than justice.
+I have confined myself simply to a supplication for--his forgiveness
+of what he called, in his own words, the only fault of my life towards
+him, and an expression of the love which even I must feel I for him,
+whether he forgives me or not. This has been done in letter after
+letter, and they are not sent back--it is all. In my last letter, I
+ventured to ask him to let it be an understood thing that he should
+before the world, and to every practical purpose, act out his idea of
+justice by excluding me formally, me and mine, from every advantage
+he intended his other children--that, having so been just, he might
+afford to be merciful by giving me his forgiveness and affection--all
+I asked and desired. My husband and I had talked this over again and
+again; only it was a difficult thing to say, you see. At last I took
+courage and said it, because, doing it, papa might seem to himself to
+reconcile his notion of strict justice, and whatever remains of pity
+and tenderness might still be in his heart towards me, if there are
+any such. I _know_ he has strong feelings at bottom--otherwise, should
+I love him so?--but he has adopted a bad system, and he (as well as I)
+is crushed by it.... If I were to write to you the political rumours
+we hear every day, you would scarcely think our situation improved in
+safety by the horrible Austrian army. Florence bristles with cannon on
+all sides, and at the first movement we are promised to be bombarded.
+On the other hand, if the red republicans get uppermost there will be
+a universal massacre; not a priest, according to their own profession,
+will be left alive in Italy. The constitutional party hope they are
+gaining strength, but the progress which depends on intellectual
+growth must necessarily be slow. That the Papacy has for ever lost its
+prestige and power over souls is the only evident truth; bright and
+strong enough to cling to. I hear even devout women say: 'This cursed
+Pope! it's all his fault.' Protestant places of worship are thronged
+with Italian faces, and the minister of the Scotch church at Leghorn
+has been threatened with exclusion from the country if he admits
+Tuscans to the church communion. Politically speaking, much will
+depend upon France, and I have strong hope for France, though it is
+so strictly the fashion to despair of her. Tell me dear Mr. Martin's
+impression and your own--everything is good that comes from you. But
+most _particularly_, tell me how you both are--tell me whether you are
+strong again, dearest Mrs. Martin, for indeed I do not like to hear of
+your being in the least like an invalid. Do speak of yourself a little
+more. Do you know, you are very unsatisfactory as a letter-writer when
+you write about yourself--the reason being that you never do write
+about yourself except by the suddenest snatches, when you can't
+possibly help the reference....
+
+Robert sends his true regards with those of your
+Gratefully affectionate
+BA.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+April 2, [1850].
+
+You have perhaps thought us ungrateful people, my ever dear friend,
+for this long delay in thanking you for your beautiful and welcome
+present.[199] Here is the truth. Though we had the books from Rome
+last month, they were snatched from us by impatient hands before we
+had finished the first volume. The books are hungered and thirsted
+for in Florence, and, although the English reading club has them,
+they can't go fast enough from one to another. Four of our friends
+entreated us for the reversion, and although it really is only
+just that we should be let read our own books first, yet Robert's
+generosity can't resist the need of this person who is 'going away,'
+and of that person who is 'so particularly anxious'--for particular
+reasons perhaps--so we renounce the privilege you gave us (with the
+pomps of this world) and are still waiting to finish even the first
+volume. Our cultivated friends the Ogilvys, who had the work from us
+earliest, because they were going to Naples, were charmed with it. Mr.
+Kirkup the artist, who disputes with Mr. Bezzi the glory of finding
+Dante's portrait--yes, and breathes fire in the dispute--has it now.
+Madame Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, the American authoress, who brought
+from the siege of Rome a noble marquis as her husband, asks for it.
+And your adorer Mr. Stuart, who has lectured upon Shakespeare all
+the winter, entreats for it. So when we shall be free to enjoy it
+thoroughly for ourselves remains doubtful. Robert promises every day,
+'You shall have it next, certainly,' and I only hope you will put
+him and me in your next edition of the martyrs, for such a splendid
+exercise of the gifts of self-renunciation. But don't fancy that
+we have not been delighted with the sight of the books, with your
+kindness, and besides with the impressions gathered from a rapid
+examination of the qualities of the work. It seems to us in every
+way a valuable and most interesting work; it must render itself
+a _necessity_ for art students, and general readers and seers of
+pictures like me, who carry rather sentiment than science into
+the consideration of such subjects. We much admire your
+introduction--excellent in all ways, besides the grace and eloquence.
+Altogether, the work must set you higher with a high class of the
+public, and I congratulate you on what is the gain of all of us.
+Robert has begun a little pencil list of trifling criticisms he means
+to finish. We both cry aloud at what you say of Guercino's angels,
+and never would have said if you had been to Fano and seen his divine
+picture of the 'Guardian Angel,' which affects me every time I think
+of it. Our little Wiedeman had his part of pleasure in the book by
+being let look at the engravings. He screamed for joy at the miracle
+of so many bird-men, and kissed some of them very reverentially, which
+is his usual way of expressing admiration....
+
+Whether you will like Robert's new book I don't know, but I am sure
+you will admit the originality and power in it. I wish we had the
+option of giving it to you, but Chapman & Hall never seem to think
+of our giving copies away, nor leave them at our disposal. There is
+nothing _Italian_ in the book; poets are apt to be most present with
+the distant. A remark of Wilson's[200] used to strike me as eminently
+true--that the perfectest descriptive poem (descriptive of rural
+scenery) would _be_ naturally produced in a London cellar. I have read
+'Shirley' lately; it is not equal to 'Jane Eyre' in spontaneousness
+and earnestness. I found it heavy, I confess, though in the mechanical
+part of the writing--the compositional _savoir faire_--there is an
+advance. Robert has exhumed some French books, just now, from a little
+circulating library which he had not tried, and we have been making
+ourselves uncomfortable over Balzac's 'Cousin Pons.' But what a
+wonderful writer he is! Who else could have taken such a subject, out
+of the lowest mud of humanity, and glorified and consecrated it? He is
+wonderful--there is not another word for him--profound, as Nature is.
+S I complain of Florence for the want of books. We have to dig and dig
+before we can get anything new, and _I_ can read the newspapers only
+through Robert's eyes, who only can read them at Vieusseux's in a room
+sacred from the foot of woman. And this isn't always satisfactory to
+me, as whenever he falls into a state of disgust with any political
+_regime_, he throws the whole subject over and won't read a word
+more about it. Every now and then, for instance, he ignores France
+altogether, and I, who am more tolerant and more curious, find myself
+suspended over an hiatus _(valde deflendus_), and what's to be said
+and done? M. Thiers' speech--'Thiers is a rascal; I make a point of
+not reading one word said by M. Thiers.' M. Prudhon--'Prudhon is a
+madman; who cares for Prudhon?' The President--'The President's an
+ass; _he_ is not worth thinking of.' And so we treat of politics.
+
+I wish you would write to us a little oftener (or rather, a good deal)
+and tell us much of yourself. It made me very sorry that you should
+be suffering in the grief of your sister--you whose sympathies are so
+tender and quick! May it be better with you now! Mention Lady Byron. I
+shall be glad to hear that she is stronger notwithstanding this cruel
+winter. We have lovely weather here now, and I am quite well and able
+to walk out, and little Wiedeman rolls with Flush on the grass of
+the Cascine. Dear kind Wilson is doatingly fond of the child, and
+sometimes gives it as her serious opinion that 'there never _was_ such
+a child before.' Of course I don't argue the point much. Now, will
+you write to us? Speak of your plans particularly when you do. We have
+taken this apartment on for another year from May. May God bless you!
+Robert unites in affectionate thanks and thoughts of all kinds, with
+your
+
+E.B.B.--rather, BA.
+
+This letter has waited some days to be sent away, as you will see by
+the date.
+
+[Footnote 199: Mrs. Jameson's _Legends of the Monastic Orders_, which
+had just been published.]
+
+[Footnote 200: Presumably _not_ Mrs. Browning's maid, but 'Christopher
+North.']
+
+
+At the end of March 1850, the long-deferred marriage of Mrs.
+Browning's sister, Henrietta, to Captain Surtees Cook took place. It
+is of interest here mainly as illustrating Mr. Barrett's behaviour
+to his daughters. An application for his consent only elicited the
+pronouncement, 'If Henrietta marries you, she turns her back on this
+house for ever,' and a letter to Henrietta herself reproaching her
+with the 'insult' she had offered him in asking his consent when she
+had evidently made up her mind to the conclusion, and declaring
+that, if she married, her name should never again be mentioned in his
+presence. The marriage having thereupon taken place, his decision was
+forthwith put into practice, and a second child was thenceforward an
+exile from her father's house.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: [end of] April 1850.
+
+You will have seen in the papers, dearest friend, the marriage of my
+sister Henrietta, and will have understood why I was longer silent
+than usual. Indeed, the event has much moved me, and so much of the
+emotion was painful--painfulness being inseparable from events of the
+sort in our family--that I had to make an effort to realise to myself
+the reasonable degree of gladness and satisfaction in her release from
+a long, anxious, transitional state, and her prospect of happiness
+with a man who has loved her constantly and who is of an upright,
+honest, reliable, and religious mind. Our father's objections were to
+his Tractarian opinions and insufficient income. I have no sympathy
+myself with Tractarian opinions, but I cannot under the circumstances
+think an objection of the kind tenable by a third person, and in truth
+we all know that if it had not been this objection, it would have been
+another--there was no escape any way. An engagement of five years
+and an attachment still longer were to have some results; and I can't
+regret, or indeed do otherwise than approve from my heart, what she
+has done from hers. Most of her friends and relatives have considered
+that there was no choice, and that her step is abundantly justified.
+At the same time, I thank God that a letter sent to me to ask my
+advice never reached me (the _second_ letter of my sisters' lost,
+since I left them), because no advice _ought_ to be given on any
+subject of the kind, and because I, especially, should have shrunk
+from accepting such a responsibility. So I only heard of the marriage
+three days before it took place--no, four days before--and was upset,
+as you may suppose, by the sudden news. Captain Surtees Cook's sister
+was one of the bridesmaids, and his brother performed the ceremony.
+The _means_ are very small of course--he has not much, and my sister
+has nothing--still it seems to me that they will have enough to live
+prudently on, and he looks out for a further appointment. Papa 'will
+never again let her name be mentioned in his hearing,' he _says_, but
+we must hope. The dreadful business passed off better on the whole
+than poor Arabel expected, and things are going on as quietly as
+usual in Wimpole Street now. I feel deeply for _her_, who in her
+pure disinterestedness just pays the price and suffers the loss.
+She represents herself, however, to be relieved at the crisis being
+passed. I earnestly hope for her sake that we may be able to get to
+England this year--a sight of us will be some comfort. Henrietta is to
+live at Taunton for the present, as he has a military situation there,
+and they are preparing for a round of visits among their many friends
+who are anxious to have them previous to their settling. All this, you
+see, will throw me back with papa, even if I can be supposed to have
+gained half a step, and I doubt it. Oh yes, dearest Miss Mitford. I
+have indeed again and again thought of your 'Emily,' stripping the
+situation of 'the favour and prettiness' associated with that heroine.
+Wiedeman might compete, though, in darlingness with the child, as the
+poem shows him. Still, I can accept no omen. My heart sinks when I
+dwell upon peculiarities difficult to analyse. I love him very deeply.
+When I write to him, I lay myself at his feet. Even if I had gained
+half a step (and I doubt it, as I said), see how I must be thrown back
+by the indisposition to receive others. But I cannot write of this
+subject. Let us change it....
+
+Madame Ossoli sails for America in a few days, with the hope of
+returning to Italy, and indeed I cannot believe that her Roman husband
+will be easily naturalised among the Yankees. A very interesting
+person she is, far better than her writings--thoughtful, spiritual
+in her habitual mode of mind; not only exalted, but _exaltee_ in her
+opinions, and yet calm in manner. We shall be sorry to lose her. We
+have lost, besides, our friends Mr. and Mrs. Ogilvy, cultivated and
+refined people: they occupied the floor above us the last winter, and
+at the Baths of Lucca and Florence we have seen much of them for
+a year past. She published some time since a volume of 'Scottish
+Minstrelsy,' graceful and flowing, and aspires strenuously towards
+poetry; a pretty woman with three pretty children, of quick
+perceptions and active intelligence and sensibility. They are upright,
+excellent people in various ways, and it is a loss to us that they
+should have gone to Naples now. Dearest friend, how your letter
+delighted me with its happy account of your improved strength. Take
+care of yourself, do, to lose no ground. The power of walking must
+refresh your spirits as well as widen your daily pleasures. I am so
+glad. Thank God. We have heard from Mr. Chorley, who seems to have
+received very partial gratification in respect to his play and yet
+prepares for more plays, more wrestlings in the same dust. Well, I
+can't make it out. A man of his sensitiveness to choose to appeal to
+the coarsest side of the public--which, whatever you dramatists may
+say, you all certainly do--is incomprehensible to me. Then I cannot
+help thinking that he might achieve other sorts of successes more
+easily and surely. Your criticism is very just. But _I_ like his
+'Music and Manners in Germany' better than anything he has done. I
+believe I always _did_ like it best, and since coming to Florence I
+have heard cultivated Americans speak of it with enthusiasm, yes, with
+enthusiasm. 'Pomfret' they would scarcely believe to be by the same
+author. I agree with you, but it is a pity indeed for him to tie
+himself to the wheels of the 'Athenaeum,' to _approfondir_ the ruts;
+what other end? And, by the way, the 'Athenaeum,' since Mr. Dilke
+left it, has grown duller and duller, colder and colder, flatter
+and flatter. Mr. Dilke was not brilliant, but he was a Brutus in
+criticism; and though it was his speciality to condemn his most
+particular friends to the hangman, the survivors thought there was
+something grand about it on the whole, and nobody could hold him in
+contempt. Now it is all different. We have not even 'public virtue' to
+fasten our admiration to. You will be sure to think I am vexed at the
+article on my husband's new poem.[201] Why, certainly I am vexed! Who
+would _not_ be vexed with such misunderstanding and mistaking. Dear
+Mr. Chorley writes a letter to appreciate most generously: so you see
+how little power he has in the paper to insert an opinion, or stop an
+injustice. On the same day came out a burning panegyric of six columns
+in the 'Examiner,' a curious cross-fire. If you read the little book
+(I wish I could send you a copy, but Chapman & Hall have not offered
+us copies, and you will catch sight of it somewhere), I hope you will
+like things in it at least. It seems to me full of power. Two hundred
+copies went off in the first fortnight, which is a good beginning
+in these days. So I am to confess to a satisfaction in the American
+piracies. Well, I confess, then. Only it is rather a complex smile
+with which one hears: 'Sir or Madam, we are selling your book at half
+price, as well printed as in England.' 'Those apples we stole from
+your garden, we sell at a halfpenny, instead of a penny as you do;
+they are much appreciated.' Very gratifying indeed. It's worth
+while to rob us, that's plain, and there's something magnificent in
+supplying a distant market with apples out of one's garden. Still the
+smile is complex in its character, and the morality--simple, that's
+all I meant to say. A letter from Henrietta and her husband, glowing
+with happiness; it makes _me_ happy. She says, 'I wonder if I shall be
+as happy as you, Ba.' God grant it. It was signified to her that she
+should at once give up her engagement of five years, or leave the
+house. She married directly. I do not understand how it could be
+otherwise, indeed. My brothers have been kind and affectionate, I am
+glad to say; in her case, poor dearest papa does injustice chiefly to
+his own nature, by these severities, hard as they seem. Write soon and
+talk of yourself to
+
+Ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+I am rejoicing in the People's Edition of your work. 'Viva!' (Robert's
+best regards.)
+
+[Footnote 201: The _Athenaeum_ review of _Christmas Eve and Easter
+Day_, while recognising the beauty of many passages in the two poems,
+criticised strongly the discussion of theological subjects in 'doggrel
+verse;' and its analysis of the theology would hardly be satisfactory
+to the author.]
+
+
+_To Mrs. Jameson_
+Florence: May 4, [1850],
+
+Dearest Friend,--This little note will be given to you by the Mr.
+Stuart of whom I once told you that he was holding you up to the
+admiration of all Florence and the Baths of Lucca as the best English
+critic of Shakespeare, in his lectures on the great poet....
+
+Robert bids me say that he wrote you a constrained half-dozen lines
+by Mr. Henry Greenough, who asked for a letter of introduction to you,
+while the asker was sitting in the room, and the form of 'dear Mrs.
+Jameson' couldn't well be escaped from. He loves you as well as ever,
+you are to understand, through every complication of forms, and you
+are to love him, and _me_, for I come in as a part of him, if you
+please. Did you get my thanks for the dear Petrarch pen (so steeped in
+double-distilled memories that it seems scarcely fit to be steeped in
+ink), and our appreciation as well as gratitude for the books--which,
+indeed, charm us more and more? Robert has been picking up pictures at
+a few pauls each, 'hole and corner' pictures which the 'dealers' had
+not found out; and the other day he covered himself with glory by
+discovering and seizing on (in a corn shop a mile from Florence) five
+pictures among heaps of trash; and one of the best judges in Florence
+(Mr. Kirkup) throws out such names for them as Cimabue, Ghirlandaio,
+Giottino, a crucifixion painted on a banner, Giottesque, if not
+Giotto, but _unique_, or nearly so, on account of the linen material,
+and a little Virgin by a Byzantine master. The curious thing is that
+two angel pictures, for which he had given a scudo last year, prove
+to have been each sawn off the sides of the Ghirlandaio, so called,
+representing the 'Eterno Padre' clothed in a mystical garment and
+encircled by a rainbow, the various tints of which, together with the
+scarlet tips of the flying seraphs' wings, are darted down into the
+smaller pictures and complete the evidence, line for line. It has been
+a grand altar-piece, cut to bits. Now come and see for yourself. We
+can't say decidedly yet whether it will be possible or impossible for
+us to go to England this year, but in any case you must come to see
+Gerardine and Italy, and we shall manage to catch you by the skirts
+then--so do come. Never mind the rumbling of political thunders,
+because, even if a storm breaks, you will slip under cover in these
+days easily, whether in France or Italy. I can't make out, for my
+part, how anybody can be afraid of such things.
+
+Will you be among the likers or dislikers, I wonder sometimes, of
+Robert's new book? The _faculty_, you will recognise, in all cases; he
+can do anything he chooses. I have complained of the _asceticism_ in
+the second part, but he said it was 'one side of the question.' Don't
+think that he has taken to the cilix--indeed he has not--but it is his
+way to _see_ things as passionately as other people _feel_ them....
+
+Chapman & Hall offer us no copies, or you should have had one, of
+course. So Wordsworth is gone--a great light out of heaven.
+
+May God bless you, my dear friend!
+
+Love your affectionate and grateful, for so many
+reasons,
+BA.
+
+
+The death of Wordsworth on April 23 left the Laureateship vacant,
+and though there was probably never any likelihood of Mrs. Browning's
+being invited to succeed him, it is worth noticing that her claims
+were advocated by so prominent a paper as the 'Athenaeum,' which not
+only urged that the appointment would be eminently suitable under a
+female sovereign, but even expressed its opinion that 'there is no
+living poet of either sex who can prefer a higher claim than Mrs.
+Elizabeth Barrett Browning.' No doubt there would have been a certain
+appropriateness in the post of Laureate to a Queen being held by a
+poetess, but the claims of Tennyson to the primacy of English poetry
+were rightly regarded as paramount. The fact that in Robert Browning
+there was a poet of equal calibre with Tennyson, though of so
+different a type, seems to have occurred to no one.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: June 15, 1850.
+
+My ever dear Friend,--How it grieves me that you should have been
+so unwell again! From what you say about the state of the house, I
+conclude that your health suffers from that cause precisely; and that
+when you are warmly and dryly walled in, you will be less liable to
+these attacks, grievous to your friends as to you. Oh, I don't praise
+anybody, I assure you, for wishing to entice you to live near them.
+We come over the Alps for a sunny climate; what should we not do for
+a moral atmosphere like yours? I dare say you have chosen excellently
+your new residence, and I hope you will get over the fuss of it with
+great courage, remembering the advantages which it is likely to secure
+to you. Tell me as much as you can about it all, that I may shift the
+scene in the right grooves, and be able to imagine you to myself out
+of Three Mile Cross. You have the local feeling so eminently that I
+have long been resolved on never asking you to migrate. Doves
+won't travel with swallows; who should persuade them? This is no
+migration--only a shifting from one branch to another. With Reading
+on one side of you still, you will lose nothing, neither sight nor
+friend. Oh, do write to me as soon as you can, and say that the
+deepening summer has done you good and given you strength; say it,
+if possible. I shall be very anxious for the next letter.... My only
+objection to Florence is the distance from London, and the expense of
+the journey. One's heart is pulled at through different English
+ties and can't get the right rest, and I think we shall move
+northwards--try France a little, after a time. The present year has
+been full of petty vexation to us about the difficulty of going to
+England, and it becomes more and more doubtful whether we can attain
+to the means of doing it. There are four of us and the child, you
+see, and precisely this year we are restricted in means, as far as our
+present knowledge goes; but I can't say yet, only I do very much
+fear. Nobody will believe our promises, I think, any more, and my
+poor Arabel will be in despair, and I shall lose the opportunity of
+_authenticating_ Wiedeman; for, as Robert says, all our fine stories
+about him will go for nothing, and he will be set down as a sham
+child. If not sham, how could human vanity resist the showing him off
+bodily? That sounds reasonable....
+
+Certainly you are disinterested about America, and, of course, all
+of us who have hearts and heads must feel the sympathy of a greater
+nation to be more precious than a thick purse. Still, it is not just
+and dignified, this vantage ground of American pirates. Liking the
+ends and motives, one disapproves the means. Yes, even _you_ do; and
+if I were an American I should dissent with still more emphasis. It
+should be made a point of honour with the nation, if there is no
+point of law against the re publishers. For my own part, I have every
+possible reason to thank and love America; she has been very kind to
+me, and the visits we receive here from delightful and cordial persons
+of that country have been most gratifying to us. The American minister
+at the court of Vienna, with his family, did not pass through Florence
+the other day without coming to see us--General Watson Webbe-with
+an air of moral as well as military command in his brow and eyes. He
+looked, and talked too, like one of oar dignities of the Old World.
+The go-ahead principle didn't seem the least over-strong in him, nor
+likely to disturb his official balance. What is to happen next in
+France? Do you trust still your President? He is in a hard position,
+and, if he leaves the Pope where he is, in a dishonored one. As for
+the change in the electoral law and the increase of income, I see
+nothing in either to make an outcry against. There is great injustice
+everywhere and a rankling party-spirit, and to speak the truth and act
+it appears still more difficult than usual. I was sorry, do you know,
+to hear of dear Mr. Horne's attempt at Shylock; he is fit for higher
+things. Did I tell you how we received and admired his Judas Iscariot?
+Yes, surely I did. He says that Louis Blanc is a friend of his and
+much with him, speaking with enthusiasm. I should be more sorry at
+his being involved with the Socialists than with Shylock--still more
+sorry; for I love liberty so intensely that I hate Socialism. I hold
+it to be the most desecrating and dishonouring to humanity of all
+creeds. I would rather (for _me_) live under the absolutism of
+Nicholas of Russia than in a Fourier machine, with my individuality
+sucked out of me by a social air-pump. Oh, if you happen to write
+again to Mrs. Deane, thank her much for her kind anxiety; but, indeed,
+if I had lost my darling I should not write verses about it.[202] As
+for the Laureateship, it won't be given to _me_, be sure, though the
+suggestion has gone the round of the English newspapers--'Galignani'
+and all--and notwithstanding that most kind and flattering
+recommendation of the 'Athenaeum,' for which I am sure we should
+be grateful to Mr. Chorley. I think Leigh Hunt should have the
+Laureateship. He has condescended to wish for it, and has 'worn his
+singing clothes' longer than most of his contemporaries, deserving
+the price of long as well as noble service. Whoever has it will be, of
+course, exempted from Court lays; and the distinction of the title and
+pension should remain for Spenser's sake, if not for Wordsworth's. We
+are very anxious to know about Tennyson's new work, 'In Memoriam.'
+Do tell us about it. You are aware that it was written years ago, and
+relates to a son of Mr. Hallam, who was Tennyson's intimate friend
+and the betrothed of his sister. I have heard, through someone who had
+seen the MS., that it is full of beauty and pathos.... Dearest, ever
+dear Miss Mitford, speak particularly of your health. May God bless
+you, prays
+
+Your ever affectionate
+E.B.B.
+Robert's kindest regards.
+
+[Footnote 202: Referring to the lines entitled _A Child's Grave at
+Florence_, which had apparently been misunderstood as implying the
+death of Mrs. Browning's own child.]
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Florence: July 8, 1850.
+
+My dearest Miss Mitford,--I this moment have your note; and as a
+packet of ours is going to England, I snatch up a pen to do what I can
+with it in the brief moments between this and post time. I don't wait
+till it shall be possible to write at length, because I have something
+immediate to say to you. Your letter is delightful, yet it is not
+for _that_ that I rush so upon answering it. Nor even is it for the
+excellent news of your consenting, for dear Mr. Chorley's sake, to
+give us some more of your 'papers,'[203] though 'blessed be the hour,
+and month, and year' when he set about editing the 'Ladies' Companion'
+and persuading you to do such a thing. No, what I want to say is
+strictly personal to me. You are the kindest, warmest-hearted, most
+affectionate of critics, and precisely as such it is that you have
+thrown me into a paroxysm of terror. My dearest friend, _for the
+love of me_--I don't argue the point with you--but I beseech you
+humbly,--kissing the hem of your garment, and by all sacred and tender
+recollections of sympathy between you and me, _don't_ breathe a word
+about any juvenile performance of mine--_don't_, if you have any love
+left for me. Dear friend, 'disinter' anybody or anything you please,
+but don't disinter _me_, unless you mean the ghost of my vexation to
+vex you ever after. 'Blessed be she who spares these stones.' All the
+saints know that I have enough to answer for since I came to my
+mature mind, and that I had difficulty enough in making most of the
+'Seraphim' volume presentable a little in my new edition, because it
+was too ostensible before the public to be caught back; but if the
+sins of my rawest juvenility are to be thrust upon me--and sins are
+extant of even twelve or thirteen, or earlier, and I was in print once
+when I was ten, I think--what is to become of me? I shall groan
+as loud as Christian did. Dearest Miss Mitford, now forgive this
+ingratitude which is gratitude all the time. I love you and thank you;
+but, right or wrong, mind what I say, and let me love and thank you
+still more. When you see my new edition you will see that everything
+worth a straw I ever wrote is there, and if there were strength in
+conjuration I would conjure you to pass an act of oblivion on the
+stubble that remains--if anything does remain, indeed. Now, more than
+enough of this. For the rest, I am delighted. I am even so generous as
+not to be jealous of Mr. Chorley for prevailing with you when nobody
+else could. I had given it up long ago; I never thought you would stir
+a pen again. By what charm did he prevail? Your series of papers will
+be delightful, I do not doubt; though I never could see anything in
+some of your heroes, American or Irish. Longfellow is a poet; I don't
+refer to _him_. Still, whatever you say will be worth hearing, and the
+_guide_ through 'Pompeii' will be better than many of the ruins. 'The
+Pleader's Guide' I never heard of before. Praed has written some
+sweet and tender things. Then I shall like to hear you on Beaumont and
+Fletcher, and Andrew Marvell.
+
+I have seen nothing of Tennyson's new poem. Do you know if the
+echo-song is the most popular of his verses? It is only another proof
+to my mind of the no-worth of popularity. That song would be eminently
+sweet for a common writer, but Tennyson has done better, surely; his
+eminences are to be seen above. As for the laurel, in a sense he is
+worthier of it than Leigh Hunt; only Tennyson can wait, that is the
+single difference.
+
+So anxious I am about your house. Your health seems to me mainly
+to depend on your moving, and I do urge your moving; if not there,
+elsewhere. May God bless you, ever dear friend!
+
+I dare say you will think I have given too much importance to the
+rococo verses you had the goodness to speak of; but I have a horror of
+being disinterred, there's the truth! Leave the violets to grow
+over me. Because that wretched school-exercise of a version of the
+'Prometheus' had been named by two or three people, wasn't I at the
+pains of making a new translation before I left England, so to erase a
+sort of half-visible and half invisible 'Blot on the Scutcheon'? After
+such an expenditure of lemon-juice, you will not wonder that I should
+trouble you with all this talk about nothing....
+
+I am so delighted that you are to lift up your voice again, and so
+grateful to Mr. Chorley.
+
+Ah yes, if we go to Paris we shall draw you. Mr. Chorley shan't have
+all the triumphs to himself.
+
+Not a word more, says Robert, or the post will be missed. God bless
+you! Do take care of yourself, and _don't_ stay in that damp house.
+And do make allowances for love.
+
+Your ever affectionate
+BA.
+
+How glad I shall be if it is true that Tennyson is married! I believe
+in the happiness of marriage, for men especially.
+
+[Footnote 203: These are the papers subsequently published under the
+title _Recollections of a Literary Life_. Among them was an article
+on the Brownings, giving biographical detail with respect to Mrs.
+Browning's early life, especially as to the loss of her brother,
+which caused extreme pain to her sensitive nature, as a later letter
+testifies.]
+
+
+Through the greater part of the summer of 1850 the Brownings held fast
+in Florence, and it was not until September, when Mrs. Browning was
+recovering from a rather sharp attack of illness, that they took a
+short holiday, going for a few weeks to Siena, a place which they were
+again to visit some years later, during the last two summers of Mrs.
+Browning's life. The letter announcing their arrival is the first in
+the present collection addressed to Miss Isa Blagden. Miss Blagden was
+a resident in Florence for many years, and was a prominent member of
+English society there. Her friendship, not only with Mrs. Browning,
+but with her husband, was of a very intimate character, and was
+continued after Mrs. Browning's death until the end of her own life in
+1872.
+
+
+_To Miss I. Blagden_
+Siena: September [1850].
+
+Here I am keeping my promise, my dear Miss Blagden. We arrived quite
+safely, and I was not too tired to sleep at night, though tired of
+course, and the baby was a miracle of goodness all the way, only
+inclining once to a _rabbia_ through not being able to get at the
+electric telegraph, but in ecstasies otherwise at everything new. We
+had to stay at the inn all night. We heard of a multitude of villas,
+none of which could be caught in time for the daylight. On Sunday,
+however, just as we were beginning to give it up, in Robert came with
+good news, and we were settled in half an hour afterwards here, a
+small house of some seven rooms, two miles from Siena, and situated
+delightfully in its own grounds of vineyard and olive ground, not to
+boast too much of a pretty little square flower-garden. The grapes
+hang in garlands (too tantalising to Wiedeman) about the walls and
+before them, and, through and over, we have magnificent views of a
+noble sweep of country, undulating hills and various verdure, and,
+on one side, the great Maremma extending to the foot of the Roman
+mountains. Our villa is on a hill called 'poggio dei venti,' and the
+winds give us a turn accordingly at every window. It is delightfully
+cool, and I have not been able to bear my window open at night since
+our arrival; also we get good milk and bread and eggs and wine, and
+are not much at a loss for anything. Think of my forgetting to tell
+you (Robert would not forgive me for that) how we have a _specola_ or
+sort of belvedere at the top of the house, which he delights in, and
+which I shall enjoy presently, when I have recovered my taste for
+climbing staircases. He carried me up once, but the being carried
+down was so much like being carried down the flue of a chimney, that I
+waive the whole privilege for the future. What is better, to my mind,
+is the expected fact of being able to get books at Siena--_nearly_ as
+well as at Brecker's, really; though Dumas fils seems to fill up many
+of the interstices where you think you have found something.
+_Three_ pauls a month, the subscription is; and for seven, we get a
+'Galignani,' or are promised to get it. We pay for our villa ten scudi
+the month, so that altogether it is not ruinous. The air is as fresh
+as English air, without English dampness and transition; yes, and
+we have English lanes with bowery tops of trees, and brambles and
+blackberries, and not a wall anywhere, except the walls of our villa.
+
+For my part, I am recovering strength, I hope and believe. Certainly
+I can move about from one room to another, without reeling much: but
+I still look so ghastly, as to 'back recoil,' perfectly knowing 'Why,'
+from everything in the shape of a looking glass. Robert has found an
+armchair for me at Siena. To say the truth, my time for enjoying this
+country life, except the enchanting silence and the look from the
+window, has not come yet: I must wait for a little more strength.
+Wiedeman's cheeks are beginning to redden already, and he delights
+in the pigeons and the pig and the donkey and a great yellow dog and
+everything else now; only he would change all your trees (except the
+apple trees), he says, for the Austrian band at any moment. He is
+rather a town baby....
+
+Our drawback is, dear Miss Blagden, that we have not room to take you
+in. So sorry we both are indeed. Write and tell me whether you have
+decided about Vallombrosa. I hope we shall see much of you still at
+Florence, if not here. We could give you everything here except a bed.
+
+Robert's kindest regards with those of
+Your ever affectionate
+ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.
+
+My love to Miss Agassiz, whenever you see her.
+
+
+_To Miss Mitford_
+Siena: September 24, 1850.
+
+To think that it is more than two months since I wrote last to you, my
+beloved friend, makes the said two months seem even longer to me than
+otherwise they would necessarily be--a slow, heavy two months in every
+case, 'with all the weights of care and death hung at them.' Your
+letter reached me when I was confined to my bed, and could scarcely
+read it, for all the strength at my heart.... As soon as I could be
+moved, and before I could walk from one room to another, Dr. Harding
+insisted on the necessity of change of air (for my part, I seemed to
+myself more fit to change the world than the air), and Robert carried
+me into the railroad like a baby, and off we came here to Siena. We
+took a villa a mile and _a_ half from the town, a villa situated on a
+windy hill (called 'poggio al vento'), with magnificent views from
+all the windows, and set in the midst of its own vineyard and olive
+ground, apple trees and peach trees, not to speak of a little square
+flower-garden, for which we pay _eleven shillings one penny
+farthing the week_; and at the end of these three weeks, our medical
+comforter's prophecy, to which I listened so incredulously, is
+fulfilled, and I am able to walk a mile, and am really as well as ever
+in all essential respects.... Our poor little darling, too (see
+what disasters!), was ill four-and-twenty hours from a species of
+sunstroke, and frightened us with a heavy hot head and glassy staring
+eyes, lying in a half-stupor. Terrible, the silence that fell suddenly
+upon the house, without the small pattering feet and the singing
+voice. But God spared us; he grew quite well directly and sang louder
+than ever. Since we came here his cheeks have turned into roses....
+
+What still further depressed me during our latter days at Florence
+was the dreadful event in America--the loss of our poor friend Madame
+Ossoli,[204] affecting in itself, and also through association with
+that past, when the arrowhead of anguish was broken too deeply into my
+life ever to be quite drawn out. Robert wanted to keep the news
+from me till I was stronger, but we live too _close_ for him to keep
+anything from me, and then I should have known it from the first
+letter or visitor, so there was no use trying. The poor Ossolis spent
+part of their last evening in Italy with us, he and she and their
+child, and we had a note from her off Gibraltar, speaking of the
+captain's death from smallpox. Afterwards it appears that her
+child caught the disease and lay for days between life and death;
+_recovered_, and then came the final agony. 'Deep called unto deep,'
+indeed. Now she is where there is no more grief and 'no more sea;' and
+none of the restless in this world, none of the ship-wrecked in heart
+ever seemed to me to want peace more than she did. We saw much of her
+last winter; and over a great gulf of differing opinion we both felt
+drawn strongly to her. High and pure aspiration she had--yes, and a
+tender woman's heart--and we honoured the truth and courage in her,
+rare in woman or man. The work she was preparing upon Italy would
+probably have been more equal to her faculty than anything previously
+produced by her pen (her other writings being curiously inferior to
+the impressions her conversation gave you); indeed, she told me it was
+the only production to which she had given time and labour. But,
+if rescued, the manuscript would be nothing but the raw material. I
+believe nothing was finished; nor, if finished, could the work
+have been otherwise than deeply coloured by those blood colours of
+Socialistic views, which would have drawn the wolves on her, with a
+still more howling enmity, both in England and America. Therefore it
+was better for her to go. Only God and a few friends can be expected
+to distinguish between the pure personality of a woman and her
+professed opinions. She was chiefly known in America, I believe, by
+oral lectures and a connection with the newspaper press, neither of
+them happy means of publicity. Was she happy in anything, I wonder?
+She told me that she never was. May God have made her happy in her
+death!
+
+Such gloom she had in leaving Italy! So full she was of sad
+presentiment! Do you know she gave a _Bible_ as a parting gift
+from her child to ours, writing in it '_In memory of_ Angelo Eugene
+Ossoli'--a strange, prophetical expression? That last evening a
+prophecy was talked of jestingly--an old prophecy made to poor Marquis
+Ossoli, 'that he should shun the sea, for that it would be fatal to
+him.' I remember how she turned to me smiling and said, 'Our ship is
+called the "Elizabeth," and I accept the omen.'
+
+Now I am making you almost dull perhaps, and myself certainly duller.
+Rather let me tell you, dearest Miss Mitford, how delightedly I look
+forward to reading whatever you have written or shall write. You write
+'as well as twenty years ago'! Why, I should think so, indeed. Don't I
+know what your letters are? Haven't I had faith in you always? Haven't
+I, in fact, teased you half to death in proof of it? I, who was a sort
+of Brutus, and oughtn't to have done it, you hinted. Moreover, Robert
+is a great admirer of yours, as I must have told you before, and has
+the pretension (unjustly though, as I tell _him_) to place you still
+higher among writers than I do, so that we are two in expectancy here.
+May Mr. Chorley's periodical live a thousand years!
+
+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
+(Beranger 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.[205]
+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. Soulie, Bernard, gone too; George Sand translating
+Mazzini; Sue in a socialistical state of decadence--what he means
+by writing such trash as the 'Peches' 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.
+
+
+[Footnote 204: Drowned with her husband on their way to America.]
+
+[Footnote 205: _The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point_.]
+
+
+_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 could 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 Soulie 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 versa_. 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 _regime_. 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 posterity 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 what 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
+
+BA.
+
+
+_To Mrs. Martin_
+Florence: January 30, 1851.
+
+Here I am at last, dearest friend. But you forget how you told me,
+when you wrote your 'long letter,' that you were going away into chaos
+somewhere, and that your address couldn't be known yet. It was this
+which made me delay the answer to that welcome letter--and to begin
+to 'put off' is fatal, as perhaps you know. Now forgive me, and I will
+behave better in future, indeed....
+
+I am quite well, and looking well, they say; but the frightful
+illness of the autumn left me paler and thinner long after the perfect
+recovery. The physician told Robert afterwards that few women would
+have recovered at all; and when I left Siena I was as able to
+walk, and as well in every respect as ever, notwithstanding
+everything--think, for instance, of my walking to St. Miniato, here
+in Florence! You remember, perhaps, what that pull is. I dare say you
+heard from Henrietta how we enjoyed our rustication at Siena. It is
+pleasant even to look back on it. We were obliged to look narrowly
+at the economies, more narrowly than usual; but the cheapness of the
+place suited the occasion, and the little villa, like a mere tent
+among the vines, charmed us, though the doors didn't shut, and though
+(on account of the smallness) Robert and I had to whisper all our talk
+whenever Wiedeman was asleep. Oh, I wish you were in Italy. I wish
+you had come here this winter which has been so mild, and which, with
+ordinary prudence, would certainly have suited dear Mr. Martin.... I
+tried to dissuade the Peytons from making the experiment, through the
+fear of its not answering.... We can't get them into society, you
+see, because we are out of it, having struggled to keep out of it
+with hands and feet, and partially having succeeded, knowing scarcely
+anybody except bringers of letters of introduction, and those chiefly
+Americans and not residents in Florence. The other day, however, Mrs.
+Trollope and her daughter-in-law called on us, and it is settled that
+we are to know them; though Robert had made a sort of vow never to
+sit in the same room with the author of certain books directed against
+liberal institutions and Victor Hugo's poetry. I had a longer battle
+to fight, on the matter of this vow, than any since my marriage, and
+had some scruples at last of taking advantage of the pure goodness
+which induced him to yield to my wishes; but I _did_, because I hate
+to seem ungracious and unkind to people; and human beings, besides,
+are better than their books, than their principles, and even than
+their everyday actions, sometimes. I am always crying out: 'Blessed be
+the inconsistency of men.' Then I thought it probable that, the first
+shock of the cold water being over, he would like the proposed new
+acquaintances very much--and so it turns out. She was very agreeable,
+and kind, and good-natured, and talked much about _you_, which was
+a charm of itself; and we mean to be quite friends, and to lend
+each other books, and to forget one another's offences, in print or
+otherwise. Also, she admits us on her private days; for she has public
+days (dreadful to relate!), and is in the full flood and flow of
+Florentine society. Do write to me, will you? or else I shall set
+you down as vexed with me. The state of politics here is dismal.
+Newspapers put down; Protestant places of worship shut up. It is so
+bad that it must soon be better. What are you both thinking of the
+'Papal aggression'?[206] 'Are you frightened? Are you frenzied? For my
+part I can't get up much steam about it. The 'Great Insult' was simply
+a great mistake, the consequence (natural enough) of the Tractarian
+idiocies as enacted in Italy.
+
+God bless both of you, dearest and always remembered friends! Robert's
+best regards, he says.
+
+Your affectionate
+BA.
+
+Tell me your thoughts about France. I am so anxious about the crisis
+there.[207] We have had a very interesting visit lately from the
+grandson of Goethe.
+
+[Footnote 206: The Papal Bull appointing Roman Catholic bishops
+throughout England was issued on September 24, 1850, and England was
+now in the throes of the anti-papal excitement produced by it.]
+
+[Footnote 207: "Where Louis Napoleon was engaged in his series of
+encroachments on the power of the Assembly and intrigues for the
+imperial throne."]
+
+
+_To Miss Browning_
+Florence: April 23, 1851 [postmark].
+
+My dearest Sarianna,--I do hope that Robert takes his share of the
+blame in using and abusing you as we have done. It was altogether too
+bad--shameful--to send that last MS. for you to copy out; and I did,
+indeed, make a little outcry about it, only he insisted on having it
+so. Was it very wrong, I wonder? Your kindness and affectionateness I
+never doubt of; but if you are not quite strong just now, you might be
+teased, in spite of your heart, by all that copying work--not pleasant
+at any time. Well, believe that I thank you, at least gratefully, for
+what you have done. So quickly too! The advertisement at the end
+of the week proves how you must have worked for me. Thank you, dear
+Sarianna.
+
+Robert will have told you our schemes, and how we are going to work,
+and are to love you _near_ for the future, I hope. You, who are wise,
+will approve of us, I think, for keeping on our Florentine apartment,
+so as to run no more risk than is necessary in making the Paris
+experiment. We shall let the old dear rooms, and make money by them,
+and keep them to fall back upon, in case we fail at Paris. 'But
+we'll not fail.' Well, I hope not, though I am very brittle still and
+susceptible to climate. Dearest Sarianna, it will do you infinite
+good to come over to us every now and then--you want change, absolute
+change of scene and air and climate, I am confident; and you never
+will be right till you have had it. We talk, Robert and I, of carrying
+you back with us to Rome next year as an English trophy. Meanwhile you
+will see Wiedeman, you and dear Mr. Browning. Don't expect to see a
+baby of Anak, that's all. Robert is always measuring him on the door,
+and reporting such wonderful growth (some inch a week, I think), that
+if you receive his reports you will cry out on beholding the child. At
+least, you'll say: 'How little he must have been to be no larger now.'
+You'll fancy he must have begun from a mustard-seed! The fact is, he
+is small, only full of life and joy to the brim. I am not afraid of
+your not loving him, nor of his not loving you. He has a loving little
+heart, I assure you. If anyone pricks a finger with a needle he begins
+to cry--he can't bear to see the least living thing hurt. And when
+he loves, it is well. Robert says I must finish, so here ends dearest
+Sarianna's
+
+Ever affectionate sister
+BA.
+
+
+
+
+END OF THE FIRST VOLUME SMITH, ELDER, & CO.'S NEW BOOKS.
+
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+Additions, by FREDERIC G. KENYON. In 2 vols. With Portraits. THIRD
+EDITION. Crown 8vo. 15s. net.
+
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+Correspondence. Edited by M. BETHAM EDWARDS. With 2 Portraits and 2
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+M.A., late Scholar of Merton College, Senior Scholar of St. John's
+College, Oxford. With Map. Large crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.
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+=TWELVE YEARS IN A MONASTERY.= By JOSEPH MCCABE, late FATHER ANTONY,
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+
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+
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+'With Edged Tools,' &c. SIXTH EDITION. Crown 8vo. 6s.
+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+Compiled from the Family Papers of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Children,
+1791-1887, Translated by CLARA NORDLINGER. With Portraits and Preface
+by Sir EDWARD B. MALET, G.C.B., G.C.M.G., &c. Demy 8vo. 16s.
+
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+opportunity of becoming acquainted with a very charming personality,
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+[Illustration: Right pointing hand.] NOTE.--The Edition of the Work
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett
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