1202. EBB to Benjamin Robert Haydon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 52–54.
[London]
April 4. 1843.
Oh to be sure my dear Mr Haydon, do send me the letters if you can lay your hand upon them. [1] I wrote a poem once upon Napoleon & published it in the Athenæum, [2] & if I can lay my hand on that, which was written some three years ago, you shall see what I had the insolence to write of my hero. Did I call him my hero? No, No! he shall not be my hero … except, except .. when you hold up Wellington for yours, right before me, & insist upon my listening to all your excellent good reasons for the same, wrong against me!—–
But, Mr Haydon, .. you are Marcus Curtius ‘juvenis bello egregius’ [3] ... to say nothing at all of your being Solomon; [4] & therefore it is scarcely fair, I beg you to consider, that I, who am Elizabeth Barrett a woman & unwise, shd be exposed to the full fire, drums & trumpets, of your military tactics. And so, if you please, we wont fight like Napoleon & Wellington about Napoleon & Wellington .. we will leave them to posterity. Certainly you deserve to be opposed to a general of the Empire .. you clash your arguments with such iron eloquence. You deserve, twice over, to be Curtius .. & I tell you so– Moreover, I will tell you something besides– Shall I? will you be angry? Yes, I will– No—you wont–
Well, then, this is what I will tell you—i.. e.. that I am almost satisfied with what your nature has wrung from you on the subject of St Helena & the St Helena prisoner too– You admit, perhaps scarcely consciously, but a generous nature wd not suffer you to say less .. that George the fourth & his generation (inclusive, mark, of your hero) did not comprehend the touch of poetry in Napoleon & his situation .. & that to the chivalrous language used by him, they answered nothing with their deaf souls– You admit this—and I see clearly through the doubled & tripled pages you have written to me, that you feel the shame of it .. that you wd rather shut your eyes, than stare upon this stain in our country’s escutcheon … that you wd give your hopes for your Curtius with posterity, to efface this memory from our Past–! Am I right? Not very wrong, in any case.
Expedient! To be sure the rock [5] was expedient. Nay—if they had given him hemlock before he touched it, the expediency wd have been undeniable. The ocean-girt dungeon, the friendless desert, the spiritual iron which entered into the soul, [6] .. much that tortured, .. all that helped to kill, .. was very expedient indeed. It was safe .. it was prudent .. it was nearly wise. Pity that it shd also be so ungenerous & so shameful. Pity that it had not magnanimity in proportion to the expediency: but this, unhappily it had not. Unhappily .... for whom? Not for Napoleon now—not for us! for our dignity among the nations, & our praise with the chronicles of the future.
Oh! that you who can prove so much good for Wellington, could prove that he stirred one step, uttered one word, breathed one wish in that great emergency, in order to secure a generous reception of his defenceless foe. Prove that, & Wellington shall be my hero as well as yours—prove that, & he shall be greater to me than ten Waterloos could make him seem to me otherwise. But alas and alas, for him & for England—you cannot prove it–
Possible dangers there might be & were—but an English hero shd have remembered that shame is more dangerous than danger– One fact pricks me, with regard to this question, like a sword .. Alexander of Russia said, .. “If he had come to me....”
Your account of your visit to Paris is very interesting—& I shd very much like to see your two letters in detail upon the subject.
Napoleon was a great man—Bourrienne a traitor. Bourrienne gave me false impressions before I cross questioned him with other writers. [7] Napoleon was a great man .. with gigantic faults, & certain littlenesses in the grain of the marble. With regard to his kingship, Paul Courier said of him “il aspire à descendre”, [8] & that was the precise verity. Still, he was great—if greater than a great conqueror: … & if his arms were extended for the siezure of the world he had a mind large enough to comprehend it– I believe he was ‘sincere’ in his over-estimate of English generosity in that letter to the Prince Regent– [9] He hated us certainly—but esteem & hatred are compatible—Ask Plutarch else!—— [10]
Most truly yours
EBB.
Our dear friend at Three Mile Cross is prospering in the subscription which has passed the sixteenth hundred: & the debts are not understated.
Publication: EBB-BRH, pp. 70–73 (as 7 April 1843).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. i.e., those promised in letter 1200.
2. “Napoleon’s Return,” printed in The Athenæum of 4 July 1840 (no. 662, p. 532). A modified version, under the title “Crowned and Buried,” appeared in Poems (1844).
3. “A young man distinguished in war.” (Cf. Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, V, 47, 4.)
4. In letter 1173, Haydon had told EBB that he had used his own head as the model in several of his paintings, including “Curtius Leaping into the Gulf” and “The Judgment of Solomon.”
5. i.e., St. Helena.
6. Sterne, “The Captive. Paris” in A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768).
7. Haydon had previously mentioned Bourienne’s Mémoires in letter 1197.
8. “He aspires to descend.” Paul Louis Courier de Méré (1772–1825) was echoing Corneille’s phrase in Cinna, act I, scene 2.
9. See letter 1197, note 9.
10. Cf. “De capienda ex inimicus utilitate,” cap. 9, in Plutarch’s Moralia.
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