1584. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 279–280.
[London]
Friday evening [?29] [March 1844] [1]
My very dear cousin I must try at another note, before I sleep tonight,—finding it impossible to consent to leave to your imagination, (though that, like all the rest of you, must be the kindest in the whole world) the contents of the m∙s. which perished on your threshold. [2]
I wrote in it to the effect, that, not for fifty Pans, alive or dead, goats or gods, wd I have consciously caused you the vexation implied in your preceding letter—& that I entreated you to forget, as far as possible, whatever word or intention of mine had induced that vexation. I explained to you precisely how it had been, .. that while I was meditating doubtfully this unfortunate scheme of a compromise,—Papa came into the room, & looking at poor ‘Pan’, said, the last three stanzas were “best of all,” & took fright at your suggestion of “papistical” ideas in the other stanza, [3] & thought the one ending “secure His beautiful” shd be left out [4] —& another “somewhere at the beginning,” shd be left out. That clash was the tocsin! I could not doubt a moment more: there seemed nothing for me but suppression. Was it not pardonable (almost) in me, & not pettish, to forget in the confusion that I ran the risk of vexing you?
Well—never mind! ‘Pan’ comes back to his post; and I promise to think about him, & alter what I can. Your suggestion of ‘common’ will do very excellently, & you will find it where you desire. [5] Only this must be for the second volume .. so as to give time both for thoughts & oblivions. My dear dearest Papa is a bloody minded critic upon manuscript—& I grow giddy when he puts out his hand by a rare accident, to any m∙s. of mine—but he likes everything in print, with my name belonging to it—and he will like this, presently, & with a few changes.
And so, it is all right again—is it not? Your exceeding kindness in proposing to come to see me today, when to all appearance I was the most ungrateful, unfeeling, illtempered & sulkey EBB that anybody ever dreamt of in an indigestion, .. filled me with the most unaffected astonishment. If I had been playing archbishop of Granada all that time, [6] I deserved hanging instead of coming to see. It was a great mistake, you see– I was so pained, on the contrary, for having vexed you, that I wrote instantly to tell you so,—and to tell you besides that I felt as if I had behaved very ill, in vexing you .. tho’ ever so unconsciously!—begging you to “unfrock” me as archbishop of Granada.
So you will prove your forgiveness on me by criticising harder & harder! do.
Ever most gratefully & affectionately yours
EBB.
A proof sheet just come. By the way, they mean it for a revise, I see—having sent two of them. What writing!!
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. As this letter was written the same day as the previous one, its conjectural dating is based on the same assumptions.
2. As indicated in the previous letter, EBB feared that one of her notes to Kenyon had miscarried.
3. This probably has some connection with EBB’s reference to St. Peter’s in letter 1571.
4. Stanza 36; EBB did not accept her father’s proposal.
5. Kenyon’s suggestion may have related to lines 218–219: “Get to dust, as common mortals, / By a common doom and track!”
6. Assumed to be a reference to Luis de Granada (1504–88), the Spanish cleric and religious author, although he was not an archbishop, having declined the archiepiscopate when it was offered to him. His famous work, Guia de Peccadores (1567), was published in English as The Sinners’ Guide (1598).
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