2226. EBB to Allan Park Paton
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 12, 104.
50 Wimpole Street
[25] February 1846. [1]
My dear Sir,
I am vexed, in finding your note, to remember that I omitted to answer it so long since, & when I was really so much obliged to you for the gift of your poems [2] & felt so true an interest in your ultimate success:——the silence was bearing a false witness against myself, do believe me. Forgive me too. I have been absorbed a good deal lately .. & less by thought than by feeling, .. (which, as a woman, renders me excusable if not excused)—& thus while remembering you & the poems, I forgot to write to you of them. At last I write, & thank you, & acknowledge the indications of faculty which will, I trust, go on to manifest itself & carry you on to the crowning-place. If I feared for your book .. from knowing something of the ways of the public & the booksellers in reference to rising merit among poets, I am sure I am more glad to hope for you, now——only the courage you have acted by, you must not faint in .. & to work is still more necessary for all of us (of whom I myself am last) than to print. I agree with you that there are signs of immaturity in the collections of poems you have published, & neither you nor I need scruple to make the admission when there are also signs of a good grape through all the occasional acidity. What is wanted is the labour in the vineyard! [3] —& ‘the blue sky bendeth over all,” [4] for the rest.
<It is ungrateful to your kind enquiry to forget to say that my health is considerably improved through the mildness of this extraordinary winter.
With sincere good wishes and sympathy
believe me, Dear Mr Paton
faithfully Yours
Elisabeth Barrett Barrett> [5]
Address: Allan Park Paton Esqre / Pmalder Cottage / Greenock / Glasgow.
Publication: Kind Words From a Sick Room (Greenock, 1891), pp. 8–9.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Dated by a Glasgow receiving stamp of 26 February 1846.
2. Poems (1845).
3. EBB alludes to the parable of the labourers in the vineyard in Matthew 20:1–16.
4. Coleridge, Christabel (1816), line 331.
5. Paton interpolated the bracketed portion with an explanation that the passage had been excised and given to a friend.
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