1328. EBB to Benjamin Robert Haydon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 247–249.
[London]
Wednesday– [19] July– [1843] [1]
Indeed my dear friend, you judge me wrong if you doubt of the extent & fulness of the sympathy with which I have followed you in loss & disappointment. If I am unwilling to believe in persecution & treachery that is a natural unwillingness I think, both for your sake & the world’s. I am unwilling to think so ill of Eastlake in particular as would stamp him a traitor. And I thought it possible .. perhaps I think so still, .. that the sensitiveness which belongs to your temperament & which expresses itself so often in a generous vehemence for good or against evil, may have betrayed you on this occasion into a bitterness of personal reflection you would be eager to modify one year afterwards. I am judging coldly, you think perhaps, while you are suffering poignantly. True .. I am judging—not coldly .. because indeed I do not feel coldly—but with the degree of dispassionateness which an acquaintance with the facts apart from an acquaintance with the actors, (you being rather a sufferer than an actor!) would necessarily leave to me—and it is simply on this ground that the possibility rests, of my being nearer the truth than you are yourself–
Now try to forgive me for not being sure of the existence of this conspiracy against you– I am used, you know, to hold that occasional adversities, failures, & misconceptions are evils in the way of a noble ambition—& that the world throws stones before the feet of such an Ambition, instead of gravelling her path. Your late disappointment is a very bitter one—I can enter painfully into the whole bitterness of it—but it is not worse than other men of genius have sustained, & risen higher in consequence of. When Corinna took the crown from over Pindar’s head, [2] all Greece looking on, he was mortified & grieved of course—but he did not upbraid his judges with treachery: and who speaks now of Corinna? Wordsworth, all the reviewers & three quarters of the public laughed to scorn, [3] as an inarticulate idiot; but he upbraided none of them with conspiracy: and who scorns Wordsworth now?
Commissioner-prizes & academical crowns have been given since the world began to feeble hands & narrow foreheads—because the strong hand & broad brow can afford to wait while the ignorant learn to measure them—not so much because there is malice in the world, as because there is ignorance. What poem is estimated aright in this world of ours? There is over praise, or there is under-praise—there is seldom indeed a full & correct appreciation. And yet of what use wd it be, .. nay, what vain & mad extremity of impatience wd it be, if every poet who considered himself depreciated by either the public or the critics, cried aloud as a wronged man, accusing his fellow-men of personal malignity towards him? Is not the noble way for the poet, to destroy his critic by more poems instead of by critical pamphlets? I think so. I should aspire towards such a vengeance myself. And yet it is very hard as even I have felt, to bear silently unjust judgments founded sometimes upon a mistake in matters of fact. The critics have been goodnatured to me in my unimportance, as far as might be expected of critics: and yet even I have felt it hard. To some persons, it must be peculiarly hard & oppressive,—and they are nevertheless silent.
Now I think that all producers of works of art, whether musical composers, painters or poets, are subjected to the same occasional adversities from the fluctuation of the rank popular breath: [4] & what they have all to fall back on, or rather to stand up by, is self-reliance & intensity of purpose. I rather doubt whether they have any right to reproach their critics for mistakes which have resulted from a critical ignorance & not from a social malice—but assuredly they can have no wisdom in making public such a reproach, & little dignity–
And with regard to these cartoons; having seen nothing at all of them, I cannot, you know, be sure whether justice or injustice has been done in the decision, however great may be my own regret & disappointment at it. You are a man of genius—but you may have failed in the cartoons .. in these particular cartoons, .. with all your genius:—and it is impossible for one who is most your friend to deny the hypothesis of it. On the other hand, you may not have failed—your cartoons may deserve the first prizes; & you may be a cruelly wronged man. Still a mistake may have wronged you, & not a treachery—and you cannot deny the possibility of this. It is better & happier to doubt of the knowledge of men than of their integrity—and it is for your own sake that I press this consideration upon you. Mr Lucas called your cartoon of Adam & Eve “a sublime work”—I had never doubted for a moment your gaining one prize at least—and I understand, I repeat, to the uttermost the anguish of the re-action of your aspiration. But think .. if you were to write violently! .. if you were to speak violently to another besides me! I beseech you .. pause!
A little forbearance—and you may have work in the Houses of Parliament—a rest for the sole of the foot of your genius within the walls of the Legislature. I hope earnestly so.
How can our dear friend have expressed herself “coldly”? I am sure you were never “cold to her” [5] —and
“I would not hear your enemy say so”: [6]
nor would she say so, who is your friend! She has often & anxiously spoken of you to me—coldly never! and you shd consider that if she speaks little of the cartoons, she has seen none of them .. and that further to excite your sensitive feelings by violent words, would not be the part of a friend, in either herself or me. I have said very little to her on the subject .. & nothing in regard to deposits, [7] .. to be more worthy of your confidence: but you must not on that account my dear friend, reproach either of us with coldness– I can scarcely believe such a word of her!
Most faithfully yours
Elizabet B Barrett–
After all there may be injustice—by favoritism toward others, not malice towards you! The Academicians have come in for the recompensing codicil of hundreds, I see– [8]
Publication: EBB-BRH, pp. 128–131.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. This letter is in reply to nos. 1325 and 1326.
2. Corinna several times defeated Pindar in competition for prizes for poetry, “but it must be acknowledged her beauty influenced the judges, and contributed to the defeat of her rivals” (Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary).
3. Cf. Macbeth, V, 7, 12.
4. Cf. Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, III, cxiii, 2.
5. See the conclusion of letter 1326.
6. Hamlet, I, 2, 170.
7. i.e., the papers, etc. in EBB’s care, sent with letter 1302.
8. i.e., they participated in the additional ten £100 prizes announced in The Times on 18 July.
___________________