The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume I Part 6

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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 Baccha.n.a.lian 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 G.o.d 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 friends.h.i.+ps 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 subst.i.tute 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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.s 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 G.o.d, 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 suns.h.i.+ne (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 t.i.tle 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 friends.h.i.+p'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. Sh.e.l.ley, 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 auth.o.r.ess'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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sages 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 auth.o.r.ess '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 princ.i.p.al 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 repet.i.tion of the name of G.o.d'--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 pa.s.sages 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 auth.o.r.ess herself.