Correspondence

2781.  EBB to Elizabeth Cranch

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 244–245.

[Florence]

Saturday– [31 March 1849] [1]

I write to explain to you, my dear Mrs Cranch, the apparent negligence with which Mr Cranch’s letter has been treated by us. I am sure you will both forgive us when you know that we have been in affliction—that my husband has lost his mother & been in great anguish of mind, to which I in my weakness of body could do little towards helping to alleviate. Thank God who has helped us both, for he is better & calmer now—and his first thought has turned on you lest you should think him unkind. So I write to tell you his opinion of the poem [2] —that nothing in the versification justifies the rejection by the American editor, the only exceptionable line appearing to him to be the last but one, where the rhythm forces you into a false emphasis .. “as I [3] do”. For the rest, the poem is full of poetical feeling, and if magazines in America can afford to reject such, .. so much the better for them … or the worse! The editor probably holds to exploded systems of versification—which wd explain something–

I am sure you will feel for us, dear Mrs Cranch. There was no time to go to England. My poor husband, strong in all his affections, adored his mother. See how near Death & Life are! Our little babe grows fat & strong as if there were no sorrow in the world.

God bless you.

Most truly yours

Elizabeth Barrett Browning–

Publication: Leonora Cranch Scott, The Life and Letters of Christopher Pearse Cranch, Boston, 1917, pp. 158–159.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. Conjectural dating based upon the reference to the death of RB’s mother; 31 March 1849 was the first Saturday after the Brownings could have heard the news.

2. “Vesuvius,” as identified in letter 2788. It was published in Poems of Places, ed. Henry W. Longfellow (Boston, 1877), III, 227–230.

3. Underscored twice.

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