2372. EBB to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 12, 342–344.
[London]
Wednesday, May 20. [1846] [1]
Was it very wrong of me that never did I once think of the possibility of your coming here with Mr Kenyon? Never once had I the thought of it. If I had, I should have put it away by saying aloud ‘Don’t come’; because as you say, it would have prevented saturday’s coming, the coming today would, .. & also, as you do not say, it would have been infinitely hard for me to meet you & Mr Kenyon in one battalion. Oh no, no!– The gods forefend that you should come in that way! It was bad enough as it was, today, when, while he sate here his ten minutes, (first showing me a sonnet from America, which began “Daughter of Græcian Genius!”) [2] he turned those horrible spectacles full on me & asked, “Does Mrs Jameson know that Mr Browning comes here?” “No,” said I,—suddenly abashed, though I had borne the sonnet like a hero. “Well, then! I advise you to give directions to the servants that when she or anyone else asks for you, they should not say Mr Browning is with you,—as they said the other day to Miss Bayley who told me of it.” Now, was’nt that pleasant to hear? I thanked him for his advice, & felt as uncomfortable as was well possible—& am, at this moment, a little in doubt how he was thinking while he spoke– Perhaps after the fashion of my sisters, when they cry out “Such a state of things never was heard of before!” Not that they have uttered one word of opposition .. not, from the first they knew, … understand!—but that they are frightened at what may be said by people who take for granted that we are strangers, you & I, to one another. Ah!—a little more, a little less .. of what consequence is it?–
Such a day, today!—it was finer last year I remember! & tuesday, instead of wednesday! Your sister was right, very right—though mine went—but the distance was less, with us. A party of twelve went from this house—“among us but not of us.” For my part, I have not stirred from my room of course—the carriage was out of the question. And, if you please, I never ‘promised’ to be at the park gate—oh indeed, I never meditated seeing you even from afar—I thought only that I should hear a little distant music & remember that, where it sounded, you were—that was all, .. & too much, the stars made out, & so drove down the clouds.
Poor Mr Kenyon was grave—depressed about his friend, who is in a desperate state—dying in fact. [3] He returns to Portsmouth tomorrow to be with him till the change comes.
Dearest, how are you? Never now will you condescend to say how you are. Which is not to be allowed in this second year of our reign. I am very well. Yesterday I heard some delightful matrimonial details of an ‘establishment’ in Regent’s Park, quite like an old pastoral in the quickness of the repartee. “I hate you”—. “I abhor you”. “I never liked you”—“I always detested you”. A cup & saucer thrown bodily, here, by the lady! On which the gentleman upsets her, .. chair & all, .. flat on the floor. The witness, who is a friend of mine, gets frightened & begins to cry. She was invited to the house to be godmother to their child, & now she is pressed to stay longer to witness the articles of separation.
Oh, I suppose such things are common enough!– But what is remarkable here, is the fact that neither party is a poet, by the remotest courtesy. [4]
Goodnight, dear dearest–
I am your Ba–
Address: Robert Browning Esqre / New Cross / Hatcham / Surrey.
Postmark: 10FN10 MY21 1846 E.
Docket, in RB’s hand: 178.
Publication: RB-EBB, pp. 716–717.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark. EBB has underscored “May 20” twice to emphasize the anniversary of RB’s first visit.
2. By Richard Henry Wilde (1789–1847), a prominent American lawyer, politician, and minor poet, who divided his time between his legal profession and his interest in literature. The manuscript bears a docket in RB’s hand: “Wylde & Miss Barett.” It sold as part of lot 98 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, L276; MS now at University of Virginia), and reads as follows:
New-Orleans
29th March 1846
Daughter of Grecian Genius! from whose soul
Pure—English—womanly high thought and feeling
Their heart-sprung Poetry’s rich treasures roll
Ev’n critic taste and reason’s wonder stealing,
As hurrying tow’rd impassion’d meaning’s goal,
Expression under Fancy’s torrent reeling,
Thy spirit seems to burst from Earth’s control
Its Heav’n-born Myths in music’s breath revealing!
How sweet, how bright, how lovely, how sublime,
Majestic and exhaustless is the stream,
Pour’d forth by Nature, thus enrich’d by Time,
Shaming the golden tides that poets dream—
The ever-glorious Sea of deathless rhyme
Wherein Sun sky, and stars reflected gleam!
Richard Henry Wilde
RB had anonymously reviewed Wilde’s book on Tasso in The Foreign Quarterly Review in 1842. This review was first reprinted as RB’s work in Browning’s Essay on Chatterton, ed. Donald Smalley (Cambridge, Mass., 1948).
3. Captain Jones (see letter 2353, note 3).
4. EBB is probably alluding to Mrs. Jameson’s remarks on the immaturity of poets; see letter 2288.
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