952. RB to Euphrasia Fanny Haworth
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 328–329.
New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey
Saty Mg [May 1842] [1]
Now, was ever such a strong-head such a wrong head? My dear friend, as I am to be believed, I read your note twice before I found out its drift—having clean forgotten all about the reading-proceeding, and supposing you had misunderstood some part of the Moxon-disquisition. All I meant, as I thought I had said, was that my recitation of my own verses is too bad for any deliberate purpose, & that, if you were expecting even a little, you would be sadly disappointed: what I meant to try, would have done tolerably well “next morning”—do you see? Do you see? And do you not see, that if you seriously so please, I will run over now, then, howsoever, whensoever, and give you enough & over that! Do you but get a pretty girl (mind!)—and a low reading table—but the girl’s prettiness matters most.
When I wrote, (it is but just to say) I was in real sorrow of heart,—for my dear friend Alfred Domett, God bless him, left that night (was it not Saturday?)—for New Zealand– Now, he, to my knowledge, presented himself to Moxon with the poem I send you,—and not even his earnest handsome face (the proffered Amount-in-full-of Expenses, I knew would not avail—but—) not his sincere voice & gentlemanly bearing, could tempt Moxon to look at a line of it. So, he printed it where you see [2] .. they would print Montgomery’s execrabilities. [3] And the poem fell dead from the press—that poor creature Wilson, who had paralleled Domett with Milton in his customary bleating-speech, and praised away at a mad rate so long as his poems were contributions to Blackwood [4] —never said a little sneaking Scotch word about this! —I told D. how Moxon would act—and as simple telling succeeded so indifferently with him, I wanted really to spare you, (by telling it you a little more explicitly, a mortification—as there is no doubt it would be. I shall now tell you (au secret) that the most bepraised Poetess of that Time, met with the same rebuff just after—thro’ a real friend’s mediation) too!
Write and say your favour rests again on
Yours ever,
RB.
The copy is a proof sheet—pray keep it safely.
Publication: NL, pp. 26–27.
Manuscript: Yale University.
1. Dated by the reference to Domett’s recent departure (see letter 950, note 1).
2. Domett’s poem, Venice, was published by Saunders & Otley in 1839 (see Reconstruction, A810 and 811).
3. Robert Montgomery (1807–55), author and preacher, who combined “an unfortunate facility in florid versification” with “no genuinely poetic gift”; Macaulay had described him as a writer of “detestable verses on religious subjects” (DNB). It was Saunders & Otley who had printed Pauline, at the expense of RB’s aunt; the implication is that they would print whatever the author would pay for.
4. An unsigned article entitled “Our Two Vases,” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (April 1837, pp. 429–448), included two poems by Domett, introduced by this comment: “Sit close, and we shall sing thee a song—by—by Alfred Domett—a new name to our old ears—but he has the prime virtue of a song-writer—a heart.” Domett later made several contributions to Blackwood’s (see, for example, the issues of May 1837 and March 1839).
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