6066. Thomas Forbes Kelsall to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 324–326.
Fareham
26 May 68
My dear Sir,
You must allow me to acknowledge your delightful letter, & to tell you how much it gratified me. To listen to such eulogia, & from such a quarter, of the poetry I hold so dear, was really most delicious. ‘Me thought when I did hear it, that I was supping up a draught of wine’ [1] —neither was my delight, in your glowing admiration, in the least dashed by what you say of its defects—for this clear perception of my friend’s short comings, as a dramatic artist, gives the most emphatic assurance of the strength of that regard for his actual merits, which, taking this steady observation, still knows of no eclipse. Your criticism is true & just; I entirely acquiesce in it, & so, I think, would Beddoes himself have done. Of course, without these deficiencies, he wod have been a completer artist—‘teres totus atque rotundus.’ [2] But shod we have benefited by the change? Now it is always clearly Beddoes who speaks to us, & we never tire of hearing him. As in the glorious histrionic times it was joy enough to catch the deep tones of Edmund Kean, [3] from the lips of Othello, Hamlet, or Overreach [4] —& no mistake! But, after all, is there more than one tragic dramatist whom we really lose sight of in his creation? Is it so with the greatest tragedies, outside the Shakespearian? with the Duchess of Malfi? [5] Wallenstein? [6] or the Cenci? In comedy & prose it is different,—witness the frequent success of the superior novelists: and this is owing, I suppose, to the far less importance, in these, of style & language. A fine poet cannot conceal himself—and if he has a marked idiosyncrasy must perhaps resort to some of those contrivances, for effecting variation of effect, which Beddoes himself jotted down for his own guide—See Memoir p. 20. [7] Shakespeare’s wonderful success in individualizg his personages was not a little aided, I think, by his professional training & needs as a manager & actor. His bread depended on their success, & he was therefore well content to subordinate all the personal inclinations of the poet. Yr well to do poets wont do this, & the results correspond. Goethe had a great notion of trying his hand on the objective—but I dont think very successfully, in his dramas. Beddoes’ women are certainly rather insipid—Floribel [8] excepted—his best & most life like female creation. Still, whatever the deficiencies of Beddoes as a playwright, he had one great merit, which ought to be recognized: his plays are full of action. The D J B. abounds with novel & striking incidents. The 1st act is a complete drama in itself– The 2d & 3d present situations not borrowed from other plays, & highly affective to the reader, & why not to the spectator? Tho’ their glorious poetry throws all their other merits into shade. But surely the whole of that marvellous scene under Amala’s windows is full of tragic life, and, by its deep passion & unforeseen course of events wod give to the stage a spectacle and influence such as it has very rarely presented since the Elizabethan times. And then, immediately afterwds in the same act, that very striking ‘banquet scene,’ full of really good stage action & effects—which are not marred, but rather heightened, by gt rare poetry & subtle philosophizg—enough of this. I must not preach any longer to my Master. I cannot think of your agn losing sight of Beddoes—& I intend therefore to enable you to have his bodily effigies constantly in sight. When he was 23 he sate for his portrait to a Bristol artist of local celebrity. [9] It was done for his aunt Mrs King [10] (a sister of Maria Edgeworth) & her daughter gave it after her & his deaths to Beddoes’ survivg sister [11] —not however until she had had it photographed—& 2 of these she gave to me. One of them has always hung in my dressing room—the other I have much pleasure in pressing on yr acceptance. I know no one who has a better right to it (for all claims yield to those of sympathy & regard) and you can hardly be sensible of a greater pleasure in possessing than I have in bestowing it. I consider it a strong likeness of him at the time, & when he sees it Procter will, I think, confirm my dictum. When it suits you to receive more mss. you shall have them—not merely the literary—but personal details of a very interesting nature, & unpublished letters to members of his family & myself. I possess a photograph of a much later portrait, not photogr. taken in Switzerland, [12] which my wife, [13] who saw Beddoes in 1847, prefers to the other. I do not, for it does not bring him back to me either as he was in 1826 or since. This however you shall see, when I can manage the transmissn conveniently. Your own photog. shall be sent to you ere long by a friend returng to Bayswater. This is a filthy sheet—pray overlook it– My bad sight makes me a great blunderer with pen & ink. Excuse also my prolixity, which you must forget you owe to your own much valued answer.
I am, my dear Sir, with much esteem
Your obliged & faithful
T F Kelsall
Robt Browning Esq
Address: Robert Browning Esq / 19 Warwick Crescent / Upper Westbourne Terrace / London W.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Folger Shakespeare Library.
1. Cf. T.L. Beddoes, “Erminia Abbandonata,” lines 109–110: “… methinks, when I do tell it, / That I am supping up a draught of wine” (The Poems Posthumous and Collected of Thomas Lovell Beddoes, [ed. T.F. Kelsall], 2 vols., 1851, I, 93).
2. Cf. Horace, Satires, II, 7, 86: “… in se ipso totus, teres atque rotundus” (“… who in himself is a whole, smoothed and rounded”), trans. H. Rushton Fairclough.
3. Edmund Kean (1787–1833); see letter 3777, note 3.
4. Sir Giles Overreach, the greedy, intriguing uncle in Philip Massinger’s comedy A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1633).
5. The Duchess of Malfi (first performed ca. 1613, published 1623) by John Webster (ca. 1579–1638?).
8. A character in Death’s Jest-Book (1850).
9. Nathan Cooper Branwhite (1776–1857), who painted the portrait in March 1824 (see Donner, p. 153). The photograph of it that Kelsall gave to RB, mentioned below, sold as part of lot 230 in Browning Collections. It is inscribed by RB on the verso: “Given to me by Mr Kelsall, June, 1868, Robert Browning” (see Reconstruction, H178; now at Pembroke College, Oxford).
10. Emmeline King (née Edgeworth, 1770–1844), older sister of Beddoes’s mother, Anna Maria Beddoes (née Edgeworth, 1773–1824), both of whom were younger sisters of the novelist Maria Edgeworth (1767–1849). Mrs. King’s daughter was Zoë King (1803–81).
11. Anna Frances Emily Beddoes (1801–96).
12. A photograph of this portrait is reproduced as the frontispiece to The Works of Thomas Lovell Beddoes, ed. H.W. Donner (Oxford, 1935), with the following caption: “Photograph in the possession of C.H. Wilkinson, Esq., ‘from a portrait for which he sat for his friend [Leonhard] Tobler of Zurich (somewhere about 1847)’. This piece of information accompanied the original photograph sent by Zoë King to William Beddoes.”
13. Jane S. Kelsall (née Somerville, 1808–1903), photographer, second wife of T.F. Kelsall, whom she married in 1852.
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