1119. EBB to Benjamin Robert Haydon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 277–279.
[London]
Jany. 8. 1843.
Your autobiography my dear Mr Haydon is delightful! I have been deeply interested in it in all ways—& I do trust that the day is not distant when, with the suppression of an unmeasured word or two, you will take the public into your confidence & throw wide the pleasure. It appears to me that you should do it!—that you owe this M∙S. to the world as you owe to it the productions of your Art—the spectacle of the life-agony, (if I may use such an expression) of a gifted mind, being a no less noble & exalting sight to look on, than any shewn by canvass or fresco. No irreverence to the brush in this!—But be sure of it!–
The scene between the mother & son—where genius carries it over love—was very affecting to me! [1] and the descriptions of Northcote, Opie, & Fuseli are highly graphic & life like– [2]
Dear Mr Haydon—I value more the confidence; the more I see to value in its bestower. Pray give me some more MS. I cd read a thousand miles of it.
Ever sincerely yours
Elizabeth B Barrett.
If you send me any more M∙S. fold it in a larger sheet—will you? .. as I have done– Otherwise there is a risk in opening the seals of tearing the written paper .. as I have done .. in one place I fear! Nobody has seen a passage of it– Nobody inhabits this room with me, to look over my shoulder—always excepting my little spaniel Flush & he cant read—the only thing impossible to him!
Publication: EBB-BRH, pp. 20–22.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. In his autobiography, Haydon tells how “on the 13th of May, 1804, [I] took my place in the mail for the next day.... Affection for home was smothered, not extinguished, in me: I thought only of London—Sir Joshua [Reynolds]—Drawing—Dissection—and High Art. The next day … I hung about my mother with a fluttering at my heart, in which duty, affection and ambition were struggling for the mastery. As evening approached I missed my mother. At last the guard’s horn announced the coming mail; I rushed upstairs, called her dear name, and was answered only by violent sobbings from my own bedroom. She could not speak—she could not see me. ‘God bless you, my dear child,’ I could just make out in her sobbings.... I returned slowly downstairs with my heart too full to speak … got in … the whip cracked, the horses pranced and started off—my career for life had begun!” (Haydon, I, 16.)
2. Calling on Northcote, Haydon “was shown first into a dirty gallery, then upstairs into a dirtier painting-room, and there, under a high window with the light shining full on his bald grey head, stood a diminutive wizened figure in an old blue-striped dressing-gown, his spectacles pushed up on his forehead. Looking keenly at me with his little shining eyes, he opened the letter, read it, and with the broadest Devon dialect said: ‘Zo, you mayne tu bee a peinter—doo-ee? what zort of peinter?’ ‘Historical painter, sir.’ ‘Heestoricaul peinter! why yee’ll starve with a bundle of straw under yeer head!’” Passing on to Opie’s studio, Haydon “was shown into a clean gallery of masculine and broadly painted pictures. After a minute down came a coarse-looking intellectual man. He read my letter, eyed me quietly, and said: ‘You are studying anatomy—master it—were I your age, I would do the same.’ … ‘I have just come from Mr Northcote, and he says I am wrong, sir.’ ‘Never mind what he says,’ said Opie; ‘he doesn’t know it himself, and would be very glad to keep you as ignorant’....
“Fuseli had a great reputation for the terrible. His sublime conception of Uriel and Satan had impressed me when a boy. I had a mysterious awe of him.... and I was quite nervous when … I found myself at Fuseli’s door! I followed [the maid] into a gallery or showroom, enough to frighten anybody at twilight.... humour, pathos, terror, blood, and murder, met one at every look!… I heard [Fuseli’s] footsteps, and saw a little bony hand slide round the edge of the door, followed by a little white-headed lion-faced man in an old flannel dressing-gown tied round his waist with a piece of rope … all apprehension vanished on his saying in the mildest and kindest way: ‘Well, Mr Haydon, I have heard a great deal of you from Mr Hoare’.” (Haydon, I, 19–22.)
James Northcote (1746–1831) studied under Reynolds, whose biography he subsequently wrote. He painted a number of historical subjects, but his reputation rests principally on his portraiture. John Opie (1761–1807) also produced mainly portraits and historical paintings. He succeeded Fuseli as Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy. Henry Fuseli (né Johann Heinrich Füssli, 1741–1825) settled in England in 1763 and in 1799 was appointed Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy.
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