1758. EBB to Cornelius Mathews
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 223–225.
50 Wimpole Street
November 14th 1844.
My dear Mr Mathews,
I write to tell you only that there is nothing to tell—only in guard of my gratitude, .. lest you shd come to think all manner of evil of me [1] & of my supposed propensity to let everything pass like Mr Horne’s copies of the American edition of his work, .. sub silentio. [2] Therefore I must write—and you are to please to understand that I have not, up to this moment, received either letter or book by the packet of the tenth of October, which was charged, according to your intimation, with so much. I, being quite out of patience & out of breath with expectation, have repeatedly sent to Mr Putnam,—& he replies with undisturbed politeness that the ship has come in, & that his part & lot in her, together with mine, remain at the disposal of the Custom house officers, & may remain some time longer. So you see how it is! I am waiting—simply waiting! and it is better to let you know that I am not forgetting, instead.
In the meantime, your kindness will be glad to learn of the prosperity of my poems in my own country. I am more than satisfied in my most sanguine hope for them—and a little surprised besides. The critics have been good to me. Blackwood and Tait have, this month, both been generous—& the New Monthly & Ainsworth’s Magazine did what they could. [3] Then I have the Examiner in my favour—and such heads & hearts as are better & purer than the purely critical, & I am very glad altogether, & very grateful,—& hope to live long enough to acknowledge, if not to justify, such unexpected kindness– Of course, some hard criticism is mixed with the liberal sympathy, .. as you will see in Blackwood,—but some of it I deserve, even in my own eyes,—& all of it I am willing to be patient under. The strange thing is, that without a single personal friend among these critics, they should have expended on me so much “gentillesse”—& this strangeness I feel very sensitively.
Mr Horne has not returned to England yet, and in a letter which I received from him some fortnight ago, he desired to have my book sent to him to Germany, just as if he never meant to return to England again. I answered his sayings & reiterated, in a way that wd make you smile, my information about your having sent the American copies to him. I made my oyez very plain & articulate. He wont say again that he never heard of it—be sure of that. Well! and then, Mr Browning is not in England either,—so that whatever you send for him must await his return from the East or the west or the south, wherever he is. [4] The new spirit of the Age is a wandering spirit. Mr Dickens is in Italy– Even Miss Mitford talks of going to France—which is an extreme case for her. Do you never feel inclined to flash across the Atlantic to us? or can you really remain still in one place?
I must not forget to assure you, dear Mr Mathews, as I may conscientiously do,—even before I have looked into or received the Democratic Review, .. that whatever fault you may find with me, my strongest feeling on reading your article will & must be, .. the sense of your kindness. Of course I do not expect, nor shd I wish, that your personal interest in me (proved in so many ways) would destroy your critical faculty in regard to me– Such an expectation, if I had entertained it, wd have been scarcely honorable to either of us—and I may assure you that I never did entertain it. No. Be at rest about the article. It is not likely that I shall think it “inadequate.” And I may as well mention in connection with it, that before you spoke of reviewing me, I (in my despair of Mr Horne’s absence, & my impotency to assist your book) had thrown into my desk, .. to watch for some opportunity of publication, .. a review of your ‘Poems on Man’ from my own hand, .. & that I am still waiting, & considering, & taking courage before I send it to some current periodical. [5] There is a difficulty—there is a feeling of shyness on my part,—because as I told you, I have no personal friend or introduction among these press-men of the critics—and because the Athenæum, which I shd otherwise turn to first, has already treated of your work, & wd not of course consent to reconsider an expressed opinion. [6] Well!—I shall do it somewhere– Forgive me the appearance of my impotency under a general aspect.
Ah—you cannot guess at the estate of poetry in the eyes of even such poetical English publishers as Mr Moxon who can write sonnets himself. Poetry is in their eyes, just a desperate speculation. A poet must have tried his public, before he tries the publisher—that is, before he expects the publisher to run a risk for him– But I will make any effort you like to suggest, for any work of yours,—I only tell you how things are. By the way if I ever told you that Tennyson was ill, I may as rightly tell you now that he is well again,—or was, when I last heard of him. I do not know him personally. Also Harriet Martineau can walk five miles a day with ease, & believes in Mesmerism with all her strength. Mr Putnam had the goodness to write & open his readingroom to me,—who am in prison instead, in mine! May God bless you!– Do let me hear from you soon & believe me ever your friend
E B Barrett.
Address, on integral page: Cornelius Mathews / 111 Fulton Street / New York / United States.
Publication: LEBB, I, 213–215.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Cf. Matthew 5:11.
2. “Under silence.”
3. For the text of these reviews, see Appendix III.
4. RB left England on 12 August 1844, the day before Poems (1844) was published, and he returned in mid-December 1844.
5. EBB’s review of Mathews’s work was published in the June 1845 issue of Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine. It formed part of lot 122 of Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, D1277).
6. A somewhat negative review of Poems on Man had appeared in The Athenæum of 3 February 1844 (no. 849, pp. 104–105).
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