936. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 296–297.
50 Wimpole Street
Thursday Night. [31 March 1842] [1]
I send you the Prometheus, my dear Mr Kenyon & have written to Duncan to desire that an Essay on Mind may be sent to you. [2] As you please to have it, I have done so,—& you are of course at liberty to do with it what you please—only I hope that thro’ consideration for me you will save it generously from any risk of general circulation .. I mean of circulation anywhere, at home or abroad, where the extenuating circumstances of its production cannot be known– Now you will be sure to laugh at this!—as if ‘general circulation’ were an evil plenty as blackberries, [3] now a days! But a bad conscience you know, always was a great coward!
My note of thanks to Mr Lowell, I enclose to you—& two Prometheus’s instead of one (in case you may care to have two) with the House of Clouds written in one, past reading, by my hand.
Ever affectionately yours
Elizabeth B Barrett.
Dont forget the gypsies .. & the gods.
Friday night– Dear Mr Kenyon, you will see my willingness to do your bidding quickly by the date of the last page. But after I had transcribed a stanza of the House of Clouds into the book last night, I found that my m∙s. wanted certain variations which were only to be found in the printed copy, while not an Athenæum containing that cd be found in the house. I waited in vain—& it was only tonight that I set about rifling my memory & brains generally & discovered the thing missing. In the meantime you come!– Well!—since you have a Prometheus, I will send you only one instead of the two I intended—& you will find in it both the Cloud House & the “Confiteor tibi” [4] which you desired to have & which expresses my disturbance of conscience much as I feel it. You will receive also an Essay on Mind from Duncan, to whom I wrote yesterday directing a copy of that melancholy ‘lusus naturæ’ [5] to be sent to you. All that it is worth to me consists in some verses towards the end, of no work as poetry, but precious to me from their association .. & as witnesses of happy emotions & satisfied affections which never more can move me or bless me on this side the grave!
Dear Mr Kenyon, how kind & like yourself (because kind) is your proposal to take Henrietta with you to Strawberry Hill. She is very much pleased.
Affectionately yours again
EBB
Address: John Kenyon Esqr / 4. Harley Place.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Dartmouth College.
1. Dated by the enclosed note to Lowell (letter 937).
2. EBB’s father had previously given Kenyon a copy of An Essay on Mind in November 1840; Kenyon subsequently (1845) gave it to RB (see Reconstruction, A327). Kenyon sent this second copy to George Ticknor, the American scholar and historian, together with Prometheus Bound. Both books, together with this letter, are now in the Ticknor Library of Dartmouth College, Ticknor’s alma mater (see Reconstruction, D345, M41 and M67).
3. Cf. I Henry IV, II, 4, 239.
4. “I confess to thee,” the opening words of the liturgical General Confession; cf. Psalms 32:5. The copy of Prometheus Bound, given to Kenyon and subsequently to Ticknor, contained 10 of the 13 stanzas of “The House of Clouds.” “Confiteor tibi” apparently refers to the following apologia, written facing the title-page: “For this version, which is cold stiff & meagre, unfaithful to the genius if servile to the letter of the great poet, too hastily executed & altogether immature, the translator’s only apology is — — her remorse. EBB.”
5. “Freak of nature.”
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