The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume I Part 28

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 s.h.i.+ne, 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 G.o.d 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 grat.i.tude 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 G.o.d--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 G.o.d.' 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 'd.u.c.h.ess 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 t.i.tle 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 grat.i.tude to the profession.

I forgot to say that what the Dublin reviewer did me the honor of considering an Iris.h.i.+sm 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 'n.o.blest of your s.e.x'? '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_ Sat.u.r.day [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 ill.u.s.trations, 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 G.o.ds, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 dest.i.tution of s.h.i.+rts and sheets. Oh! I have very good hopes that for the future Wimpole Street may be found endurable.