1078. EBB to Benjamin Robert Haydon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 208–209.
[London]
Dec. 8. 1842–
My dear Mr Haydon,
I wont betray your confidence—either for past present or future: and I agree with you that Milton’s Hell [1] were a sight worth seeing.
And so is your Arab—& the suggestion of Curtius. [2] What an eye in the Arab! not so much startled as ready to startle. Is the nostril quite sensitive in proportion? I wonder if it is! I am not accomplished for a critic, & if I were you might well frown away any critical impertinence—but … it does strike me that the nostril is at once meeker & calmer than the eye is! Forgive me!
I have looked at it, till I shd not be astonished if it neighed. Yet the nostril wd swell even then—yes, certainly then! “But not now” you say. Well!
How kind of you my dear Mr Haydon to trust these fine things with me. Who shall say that I am alone now? Why here is Wordsworth—& Quintus Curtius [3] —& when I grow weary of that high company, an Arab charger to ride away on–
Curtius looks noble & serene amidst the yawning death .. & the horse is just losing, I see, his balance in the leap .. the head sinking between the forelegs! the hind quarters still with the glory of the spring in them, .. and the tail streaming grandly with a look of life & triumph. The picture must be magnificent. And your kindness .. your kindness!—how am I to thank you for that?
I had a very few words from our dear friend this morning. She says—“This sad scene is drawing to a close. All day I have been hovering over my dear dear father. He is composed & tranquil, but has not spoken. Certainly he does not suffer & Mr May says that he has seldom seen a death-bed so blessedly peaceful. I am myself more supported than I had dared to hope”.
May God comfort her—& let us pray that He may.
I never saw Dr Mitford—but I feel for her sake, as if I knew & regarded him.
Ever your obliged
Elizabeth B Barrett–
Publication: EBB-BRH, pp. 14–15.
Manuscript: Harvard University.
1. i.e., as described in Paradise Lost.
2. “The Head of an Arab Horse” was exhibited at the British Institution in 1843. Haydon produced six versions of “Curtius Leaping Into the Gulf”; the third of these was completed on 15 December 1842, and it was probably the sketch of this that he had sent to EBB.
3. It was Marcus Curtius, not Quintus Curtius, who gave his life for Rome by riding his horse into a fissure created in the Forum by an earthquake, thus fulfilling a soothsayer’s prediction that the sacrifice of something precious would cause the gulf to close.
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