616. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 14–16.
74 Gloucester Place
Wednesday. [ca. March 1838] [1]
Indeed dear Mr. Kenyon, I have not at all liked leaving your two notes unanswered several days in this manner—wishing as I did even before I received them to write and assure you how gladly & thankfully I have heard of every step taken by you towards recovery. Some other people’s friends may need a frightening such as yours have had, to teach them their value,—and tho’ yours did never & can never need such, yet a fear followed by so much gladness can scarcely be called a useless thing– May God bless you in all ways & always!–
It was very good of you to indulge my “particular taste for cutting & slashing”—which, considering that expression, is, tho’ particular, not peculiar–— And here, enclosed, are the fruits of the steel. And do observe that even if you were bound to believe in its striking always or generally or often or at all, wisely, you would have very little trouble in consequence—there being scarcely any except verbal findings-fault!—— It seems to me that you have dealt triumphantly with the potatoes—& may put to shame the poetical mob with roses lilies & violets by basketfulls!– What a mistake it is, to make a locality for Beauty! It is as well to make one for the Chief Spirit!——
Your description of evening is very lovely—beginning—[‘]‘evening now
Was slanting her long shadows &c”
The pause of the cloud—the laboring of the rook—& that line which undulates so expressively–
“Swayed leisurely by to food & needful rest”–
these are all rests for the memory. I must thank you for the pleasure this Amphitheatre has given me, [2] independently of the particular one of cutting & slashing.
As to your vow of not writing any more, I hope that those are among the perjuries at which Jove laughs! that it is a mere eastern idiomatic vow, & that Mr Landor made his at the same time & upon the same Zendavesta!—— [3] His book is quite exquisite—with pages in it almost too beautiful to be turned over! [4]
It is quite as well to say upon another sheet, that I did think of “trying the public” & not at all of printing a book without publishing it. I have wanted very much to ask your advice almost ever since you went into Devonshire, about the manner of doing this—for as to sending you any of the sheets, which I would do still more eagerly, I am afraid of provoking your kindness into putting you to inconvenience– I know that you have not as much leisure as kindness.
But I will tell you, if you will hear so far dear Mr Kenyon, just what I have thought of printing.
First, the Seraphim, the first part of which I once mentioned to you as being sent to & lost at Mr Colburn’s. Partly from a very rough copy, & partly from memory, I recovered it,—& added to it a second part of about twice the length. The length of the whole is within twenty lines I think, of that of my (not Æschylus’s) Prometheus—& the form, rather a dramatic lyric, than a lyrical drama, & the subject, the supposed impression made upon angelic beings by the incarnation & crucifixion—a very daring subject, which suggested itself to me whilst I was doing that translation from Æschylus .. which makes me shiver to think of, this cold day.
Then, would come the Poets’ vow, & Margret, & several poems of a length almost equal to them, & some shorter ones at the end.– The whole book might be between two & three hundred pages thick—or more—or less.
Now do you not think that there wd be no harm in submitting some of these mss, by the mediation of a note or my brother, to a publisher—just to see, whether he wd take just so much of the risk as wd secure his taking a little interest about the sale– I wd rather not be asked again as Mr Valpy asked me, (after he had enquired whether I had been skaiting on the Regent’s Park Canal—women who meddle with such being thought brave or bad enough for anything) if my books had sold at all—when no human being except himself, cd know a word about them. I have “a lady’s oath” [5] (not upon the Zendavesta) to put no more mss to be changed to print, in Mr Valpy’s hands–
Perhaps it is almost too late, & wd at any rate be vain to put them into anybody’s– And I dont very much mind if it is, & wd be– For altho’ ambition is a grand angelic sin, I fell a good way from the sphere of it, soon after I left the nursery. I have at any rate a long futurity of coughing abstract me from it by thinking of [6] ––until April or May, Dr Chambers says! But I am better—particularly as there is a hope of a little thawing. I do trust that this terrible weather has not affected you——and that besides, you dont think me the most tiresome person in the world—which I am sure you must do, if you are not the most patient. But indeed you have brought it upon yourself by your too great kindness to me.
Dear Miss Mitford wrote again & again to me during your illness, in the utmost anxiety: & now I fear that she is herself very unwell–
Sette & Occy are so much obliged to you for your intention with regard to the fossils—but you shd not rob yourself any more– The repairs are going on busily in the house—which reminds me (too late) that I ought not to begin our neighbourhood of twenty five years by tiring you thus!——
Believe me dear Mr Kenyon,
Ever & most truly yours,
E B Barrett–
Thank you for Alford’s poems. [7] There is much beauty in some of them—but there is a want of abiding power. Do you not think so?– It might be a fault in my humour at the time I read them. The boys told me to enclose the book which you leant [sic] to them last year—& they have gone out without giving it to me– It shall be sent.
With many thanks Occy & Sette return the long detained book–
Address, on integral page: John Kenyon Esqr / 4 Harley Place.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Dated by the further references to Kenyon’s manuscript poems, and the fact that EBB was still at Gloucester Place.
2. The lines quoted by EBB refer to “Dorchester Amphitheatre,” which appeared on pp. 168–185 of the printed text (the lines quoted: p. 170).
3. The sacred writings of Zoroaster that formed the basis of the prevailing religion in Persia from the 6th century B.C. to the 7th A.D.
4. Presumably EBB refers to Landor’s latest work, The Pentameron and Pentalogia (1837).
5. Cf. Fletcher, The Chances, II, 1, 118.
6. EBB originally wrote “a long futurity of coughing to think of––”. When she altered that to the present reading, it seems probable that she intended the phrase to end with “thinking of me” but omitted to add the final word.
7. Henry Alford (1810–71), later (1857) Dean of Canterbury, had published Poems and Poetical Fragments (1833) and School of the Heart, and Other Poems (1835).
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