1103. Cornelius Mathews to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 248–250.
New York,
Dec. 28th 1842.
Dear Miss Barrett.
Dear Madam, I should say, but friendliness conquers form– I owe you sincere thanks for the generous eye with which you are inclined to regard the imperfect and unfinished Poem “Wakondah”– I sent it to you with doubt and trembling, casting my bread upon the waters, [1] and after many days it has returned to me with a better and higher character. Your kind approval has given it a new interest in my eyes and when I return to it, as I shall in a good season of propitious thought, it will be with new strength and spirit.– [2] What you say of our American Poetry and its imitative character is true enough: our Poets are not Men but Echoes. An European looks to America, naturally, for strength and vigour of conception and execution, and not for the last refinements of Literature which belong to older countries. If the first Pilgrims and settlers had been thrust forth into the wilderness with no other knowledge of the other world but Homer and Shakespeare, it strikes me, America would have furnished much better and nobler additions to Literature than she can claim to have yet furnished. And this brings me to say that although you sympathize with us in our strong desire for a Law of International Copyright, you can scarcely have a conception of the hardship of the present state of things as it bears upon the American writer. He has in truth and in effect no paymaster—no Publisher—no Public. He may at times make his voice heard but it is in the midst of so great a din and clashing of, what is here called, the Mammoth Press—in venting of ill-gotten gains—the pluckings and plunderings of British Literature—that it perishes almost instantly. There are two re-publishing Establishments in this city, which (to give you a notion of the Extent of this system) pledge themselves to issue a new work complete, every week: upwards of 100 novels or other British productions a year for which the British author is not only to have nothing, and the American still less—that is not even the privilege of appearing in print on any terms whatever.–
As to periodical literature, to which you refer, it is, with us, just now taking the shape of Fashionable Monthly Magazines, with plates of costumes and borrowed engravings of other subjects. These at present absorb the enterprize of Publishers and the subscription-money of the Public. There are a few of a different kind—but they languish and live by permission and not subscription. Elevated standards of opinion and criticism are among the great wants of this country. The question you ask—and which you seem to think is put across the Atlantic as if you were at one side of a great table and I at the other—How I was pleased with Mr. Dickens’ judgement? [3] —can be safely answered, Displeased? not at all. I regard it, with errors of fact and opinion as might be expected from his hasty travel, as an eminently sincere and honest book. He has written in a fair spirit, meaning well by us, and in points where most fault has been found with him, should be regarded as yielding—where he speaks gravely—to the impulses of a fresh and generous nature: in others, where his tone is lighter, as indulging, not censurably, his genius for sportive comment on life and manners.
For the Poets—whose names occur in your note—Tennyson, Browning and Horne—I have in part and am still more inclined from your kind mention of them—to encourage a true regard. Of Mr. Horne I happen to know less than the others, because, perhaps, his writings have appeared in less accessible shapes; Browning fixed my attention at the start in the extracts from Paracelsus in the “New-Monthly”, [4] which has followed him since, in his various advances, through the “Examiner”– [5] The true Poet is in him breaking his bonds, and I hope to live yet to see him standing forth, in the disencumbered attitude, which his friendly critics, think he should assume. Tennyson’s two volumes have been read in this country with great pleasure: a slight evidence of the esteem in which he is held you will find in a couple of newspapers one of which, if you think it worth the conveyance, belongs to Mr. Tennyson himself. Due allowance must be made for sundry transpositions & awkward prin<ters’> blunders. <An> ungenerous word in the North American & one still more so in the Christian Examiner [6] —he need not heed a jot: Ten chances to one they spring from some of his many imitators in this country, who may think to escape the punishment that belongs to “children’s sins” by a long score on the back of the “father.”– [7]
I am glad that anything of mine is going into the hands of Miss Mitford—a name thronged with kindly associations in America—and whose “Rienzi” shows a spirit capable of entering the stronghold of passion & expression when it chooses.– In a small parcel which accompanies this, I have sent you “Grahams Magazine” & the “Boston Misc[e]llany”—containing sonnets by Miss Barrett & “The Cry of the Human.” [8] Reperusing the last in print, I cannot avoid saying, that I concur in the general verdict that it is one of the most successful poems you have written. You must know that you are in some request when I tell you I had a message from Boston soliciting the original M.SS. as something more than commonly valuable.
If agreeable to you the conductor of “Graham’s Magazine” would be pleased to have from you such future Poems as you might find it convenient to contribute. The money-part I could arrange for you—but as this is so mere a trifle (2 guineas for a poem of even the breifest [sic] length & 1½ guineas for anything longer) you may not think it worth your while to trouble yourself with the undertaking. In the event of any arrangement I would endeavour to fix it so that you could draw on Wiley & Putnam, Paternoster Row for, say, £10—at once.
Yours, with sincere regard,
Cornelius Mathews
P.S. after wavering back & forth half a dozen times, I have thrust into the bundle a newspaper containing a few lines on “The Death of Channing” [9] —which may be almost said to have been written or spoken aloud to myself over the paper where I first met the annct of his death. The Articles on Tennyson are by a friend, whose judgements on most literary questions go abreast with mine: if I had written them they would have been in some passages worded otherwise.
Address, on integral page: Elizabeth B. Barrett / 50 Wimpole Street / London.
Publication: B-GB, pp. 363–366.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Cf. Ecclesiastes, 11:1.
2. Despite this comment, he never finished the poem.
3. In American Notes for General Circulation (1842), containing Dickens’s impressions of his visit to America.
4. See volume 3, pp. 372–383.
5. See volume 3, pp. 400–402; and this volume, pp. 388–390.
6. As noted previously (letter 1059, note 10), we have been unable to locate the “ungenerous word” in The North American Review. The Christian Examiner, in the November 1842 issue (pp. 237–244), spoke of Tennyson’s “extraordinary demerits” and “stanzas of most melodious unmeaningness”; of his being “deficient in manly thought and strong expression”; and held that “affectation is his prevailing intellectual vice.” The article was signed “C.C.F.” (believed to be Cornelius Conway Felton, 1807–62, Professor of Greek at Harvard 1832–44).
7. Cf. Exodus, 20:5.
8. The poems printed in Graham’s Magazine (December 1842, p. 303) and The Boston Miscellany of Literature and Fashion (November 1842, pp. 197–199) were those intended for publication in Arcturus (see letter 986).
9. These lines, signed and dated 5 October 1842, were printed in The United States Magazine, and Democratic Review of November 1842 (p. 554).
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