1208. Benjamin Robert Haydon to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 64–66.
London
April 8th 1843
My dearest Friend /
Read his Despatches bit by bit, Volume by Volume—line by line—every one—they are as fine as any thing in the World, finer than the Commentaries, a million times [1] —& Prove him to be a greater Man than Cæsar, they are applicable to all humanity—they will & must be recommended to Youth of all professions, they are as generally & morally beautiful as any Young Man’s Companion[;] [2] they are as generally applicable as Reynolds[’] lectures, [3] and there is not the slightest taint of bombast, imposture, or falsehood like the trash of Napoleon’s bulletins– Read them my dearest Friend but Read them with Faith—— Get interested, as you do, in Richardson’s novels— Wade the Volume 1st—you are not Military, but the 1st Vol is so—but still read it as a duty–
There is a letter in the Despatches to Colville (I think) softening his disappointment at not being made a Peer; exquisite– Read that[,] I think I am right as to Names– “If any thing could have compensated me (said I think Colville) for not getting my reward It was the Duke’s letter[”]—& well he might say so– [4]
The fact is, you invisible Napoleonette you do not know the Duke— His perfect Completeness of character. But you do know Lady Byron[.] I’ll send you one of my lectures on Fuzeli, in which I allude, to that double X icicle, Lady B____ I only came in contact twice with her [5] —& We quarrelled without hope, the second time—— The first day, I though[t] Byron a brute—the second day I was convinced she was—a Mathematician[.]
The morning dress was dimity
The Evening silk– [6]
Think of the Cant of Women & Men she refused him once because it was proper to be sought– [7] By Heaven I should have liked to have seen the Woman who would have refused me in the flush of Youth—because it was proper!– She should have had all the propriety to herself– I have a theory—perhaps you will be very angry– It is this—A Man who is ever refused must be an XXX—because no Man would ever propose, who was not first quite sure of being agreable– Miranda is my Woman. [8] Mary is Miranda– She did not run away when I had an execution—her Friends said it was not proper to follow me to Prison [9] —but go to her Mother’s– They were to come next day—and directly they were gone in solemn humbug she took a Coach & drove down to me– Frank was then a Baby—that’s my Woman & that was Byron’s—but the refusal of Miss Chawworth—destroyed his mind– [10]
I heard from Wordsworth to day [11] —he sent Mary, some touching lines on Grace Darling—which I enclose, and which you must return, or Lord have mercy on us [12] both—I regret he was prevailed on, to be honorary laureat[e] for that he tells me is the condition [13] —in his 74th Year, with his foes prostrate & his Genius acknowledged, he should have gone out of the World, on his own Pinions alone!!!
This is the way great principles are compromised, that Men may escape the imputation of not being polite.
I was on the point of writing him a letter saying “I am delighted you did not accept the laureat[e]ship—if you had, you old Lake Poet—I would have taken out all your sonnets & danced upon them![”]
Now what shall I do?—there is one thing sure—I [14] shall have no more[;] this I fear is his weak point– Keats & I years ago—could tell you something but you will read my Memoirs when I am gone. O God grant me One Year before I die, of clear, powerful, lucid intellectual power, unencumbered, to give the World, my records of 40 Years.
Adieu—Napoleonettina
B R Haydon
Miss B Barrett
Address: Miss B. Barrett / 50– Wimpole St.
Publication: EBB-BRH, pp. 73–75.
Manuscript: University of Vermont.
2. We have traced two publications with this title: one by J. Hornsey (1811) and the other by W. Mavor (1840).
3. Discourses Delivered at the Royal Academy (1820). Reynolds (1723–92), “the greatest portrait-painter that England has produced” (DNB), was the first President of the Royal Academy (1768–92).
4. Sir Charles Colville (1770–1843) served with the Army in various overseas campaigns before being posted to the Peninsula in 1810, where he rapidly found favour with Wellington. He commanded the 4th Division at Waterloo, overcoming the French fortress of Cambray, and was subsequently promoted to lieutenant-general. Haydon does not appear to be “right as to Names” as we found no such letter to Colville in Wellington’s Despatches.
5. Lecturing on Fuseli in 1839, Haydon alluded to the difficulties faced by any creative person through the intrusion of the minutiæ of daily life. He recounted how Byron, to escape scrutiny “night and day by a domestic police … hired a room to be alone in one of the streets in Piccadilly; here, whilst in the very act of writing the Siege of Corinth … in bolted two physicians, felt his pulse, looked profound” and later told Lady Byron “that at present they did not think they were authorized to advise confinement!” (Lectures on Painting and Design, 1844–46, II, 22). Lady Byron, who was included in Haydon’s depiction of “The Anti-Slavery Convention,” sat for him on 2 and 3 July 1840. He saw in her “a lambent sorrow” but thought her “no more fit for [Byron] than a Dove for a Volcano” (Pope, IV, 645).
6. Byron, Don Juan, I, xii, 6–7, slightly misquoted.
7. Lady Byron refused Byron’s first proposal of marriage in October 1812. He repeated his offer in September 1814, and they were married in January 1815.
8. Prospero’s innocent daughter in The Tempest. Raised without contact with humans other than her father, she is overcome at her first sight of other men (V, 1).
9. Haydon was imprisoned for debt four times, the first being in 1823, two years after his marriage.
10. As a young man, Byron paid many visits to Annesley Hall, some three miles from Newstead Abbey. It was the home of his distant cousins, the Chaworths, and he fell desperately in love with Mary Anne Chaworth, two years his senior; she refused to take him seriously, and in 1805 married another.
11. Wordsworth’s letter of 6 April 1843 can be found in Ernest De Sélincourt’s 1939 edition of the poet’s correspondence (III, 1160–61).
12. Psalms, 123:3.
13. The letter from Wordsworth included this paragraph: “The Laureatship has just been offered to me. At first I declined it on account of my age, but afterwards it was so urgently pressed upon me, and in so flattering a manner, by the Lord Chamberlain, that I could not but alter my determination. I am to hold it as merely honorary.” Wordsworth’s letters to Earl De La Warr and Sir Robert Peel regarding the appointment can also be found in De Sélincourt (III, 1157–60).
14. Underscored three times.
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