The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume I Part 27

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: d.u.c.h.esses 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 d.u.c.h.ess.]

_To Mrs. Martin_ Sat.u.r.day, 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 Flus.h.i.+e, 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_ Sat.u.r.day, 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, n.o.body 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 pa.s.sage may be long.

The _changes_ in Mary Minto on account of mesmerism were merely imaginary as far as I can understand. n.o.body 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 grat.i.tude 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. a.s.sured me that she knew all the circ.u.mstances 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_ Sat.u.r.day, 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 's.h.i.+lling 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.ds, 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_ Sat.u.r.day, 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 tutors.h.i.+p if you do not kick against the p.r.i.c.ks of the insinuation yourself, and especially as I consider that you _were_ in a sense my 'tutor,' inasmuch as I may say, both that n.o.body 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 cla.s.sics 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 grat.i.tude. 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 G.o.d'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? Was.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.ses 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 grat.i.tude to you. Suffer me to pay it!--permit the pleasure to me of paying it!--for I know too much of the pleasures of grat.i.tude to be willing to lose one of them.

_To John Kenyan_ March 6, [1845].