Correspondence

2644.  EBB to James Russell Lowell

An amended version of the text that appeared in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 14, 86–87.

Pisa.

Decr 17– 1846.

Dear Mr Lowell,

Certainly I have every reason to fear for myself in approaching you at last– I come up “with my lesson” like a lagging schoolboy, with a sidelong glance at the shelf where the rod lies. Extend your pardon to me at once, that I may take courage & speak.

I believe you had my letter about your ‘Conversations’ while I was having yours on the subject of the Slave poem,—but being haunted by a dreadful doubt even upon that point, I must mention it .. not to pass with you for a monster of ingratitude. Did you get that letter? The book was so interesting, that if my name had not been in it, I should have had reasons for thanking you with ever so much earnestness. It has the beauty & fancy, which a poet’s book talking of poets, is apt to have.

And now for this Slave-poem, which at the eleventh hour, I enclose to you. I ought to have at once answered your request last year, & should have done so but was driven by a great wind of vexatious circumstances, altogether from my purpose. Driven up & down, distracted from writing & reading I have been since, too, .. & you will make allowances for me in remembering that I am only three month’s married, & in the sudden glare of light & happiness, here in Italy, after my long years of imprisonment in sickness & depression, without so much as the hope of this liberty. Ill or well, sad or joyful, however, the great antislavery cause must always be dear to me,—and for the sake, I will say, as much of American honour as of general mercy & right– In the poem I enclose to you I have taken up this double feeling, (with an application of the case to women especially) perhaps you will think too bitterly & passionately for publication in your country. I do not presume to decide—I leave it entirely, of course, to your judgement– I will only say, for my own part, that in writing this poem, I have not forgotten, as an Englishwoman, that we have scarcely done washing our national garments clear of the dust of the very same reproach. Neither would I have it forgotten by any of you, that I have written this poem precisely because, as an Englishwoman ought, I love & honour the American people.

Will you have the goodness to forward to Mrs Chapman [1] who wrote to me on this same subject, nearly at the same time with yourself, the note addressed to her?

And will you accept my husband’s compliments & wishes, in a right spirit of poetical brotherhood? That you know him a little, I learnt pleasantly from your ‘Conversations.’

We shall stay at Pisa only for a few months longer, but shall remain in Italy an indefinite time–

I am very faithfully yours

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

I fear that the paper used for the ms poem, is rather too thin—but with a little care, the reading may be found possible, perhaps.

Address, on cover sheet: J R Lowell Esqre / Cambridge, / Massachusetts, / United States. / Amérique. [2]

Publication: BC, 14, 86–87 (in part).

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. EBB’s letter to Maria Chapman (née Weston, 1806–85) has not been found.

2. The cover sheet and EBB’s poem “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” have become separated from this letter (see Reconstruction, D805), now in Camellia Collection.

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