1323. EBB to George Goodin Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 241–243.
[London]
July 13– 1843.
My dearest dearest George—Tomorrow is your birthday, [1] & I consent to run all risks of the post in my run after you, to wish you all possible human joy, not so much of it as on it. Perhaps you may have my letter before you leave Colwall, [2] —otherwise it will be sent in your track,—& you will become aware, either way, of my good intentions. May God bless you my dear dear Georgie! As long as I live I must love you tenderly as one of the very dearest things left to me on earth to love—and afterwards, may you have children & grand-children to call this day their holiday & love it for your sake. Before we get to the grandchildren (whom you may think premature) I hope it may be celebrated by a host of clients in a shower of briefs meeting you at Worcester tomorrow evening– [3] You wd rather be the “honored instrument” [4] of hanging your complement in this generation, than of multiplying the generation after next—you translate the “vita brevis” [5] by Life’s a brief .. and your prospective talk of grey hairs is all metonymy for a chancellor’s wig. Therefore I violently put down my disposition towards pathos & sentiment, & wont commit to your scorn one section of the thoughts I shall have of you tomorrow or of the prayers which I shall make for you. Dear dear Georgie! … There now! I have done–
Arabel who wrote to you yesterday probably told you of the bad account from Cheltenham. I do hope Bummy will think of writing again in a day or two as I have entreated, & that the next letter may be modified for the better in its statements– But it’s a bad case I much fear. That Mr Shawe shd not have gone away, leaving his patient with a man who cannot act upon his own responsibility. The heat, Bummy suggests, may make her more languid!—but ah! I fear, I do fear– I am very anxious about it–
Dearest George, you must forgive me, & Miss M Bulman must forgive me—but notwithstanding your [‘]‘noble expectations” from my vanity, I never did think, from the moment of reading your first letter to the moment of reading your second, about the autograph. It went out of my head in a flash of darkness. Here however it is enclosed—and inasmuch, George, as I can by no means consent according to your suggestion to enclose it myself to your fair friend, with a .. “Miss Barrett does Miss Bulman the honor of presenting her with the treasure of her autograph”, I must leave it to you to arrange the transmission: Deus in machinä. [6]
Mr Horne has been kind enough to let me see some of the letters which he has received on the subject of Orion .. from Browning, Goëthe-Lewes (meaning that Lewes wrote on Goëthe), Powell, Tomlins of the Synthetic society, Douglas Jerrold, Leigh Hunt, Ld Lyndhurst [7] & Reade who wd be greater than all the rest. You who know my tendencies toward divination from handwriting & familiar phrases, will understand how well I have been amused– Browning sends a drawing of a spider’s web growing from a skull in his writing-room—something like this
“A picturesque bit of ghastliness: in this little writing-room of mine are two skulls, each on its bracket by the window. Few brooms trouble walls & ceiling, you may be sure—so here has a huge field-spider woven his platform-web from the underjaw of one of these sculls to the window-sill.” [8]
[ART]
Mr Kenyon came to see me yesterday for a moment, & sate for an hour in his wet things—but might well be kept from catching cold by the glow of happiness in which he talked of the return & settlement in England of his brother & new sister. They arrived suddenly on saturday, & she is “too well pleased” he says with everything, too joyous in the first dawn & forms of England, .. & repeating, when people wish she may be happy here, .. “Happy! I could be happy in Africa with him”– She speaks good English,—& combines in good German, simple active household habits with refined & intelligent tastes. My Mr Kenyon is delighted with her, & with the sight of his brother—& I could understand his joy so well that it quite moved me to sadness.
My poetical fit continues, but the muses have done beating me––and my ‘achës’ have gone away. [9] If the “softness” you suppose in me were rightly supposed, & the soreness & stiffness I moaned about, proceeded from actual blows, .. I shd be nothing more nor less than batter pudding by this time .. or peradventure, reduced to the melancholy liquidity of a custard. But as it happened I was not soft, Fr George .. & retain my ‘face divine’ [10] accordingly. I am writing such poems .. allegorical-philosophical-poetical-ethical .. synthetically arranged! I am in a fit of writing—could write all day & night, .. & long to live by myself for three months in a forest of chesnuts & cedars, in an hourly succession of poetical paragraphs & morphine draughts– Not that I do such a thing! ‘The flesh is weak.’ [11] And … nota bene! you are not to say a word of morphine when you write next, or something worse may happen than your being sent to school to learn to write!
Papa says that he is going to the city to get your money, & that it shall be sent tomorrow– How is Mr Venables, & what does he say of Tennyson? [12]
Tell us too about your business, & whether you do by any means flourish in the strict legal sense.
My ivy is fit for Bacchus, or the Isthmian Games. [13] I shall live in a bower at last.
That is all I shall say today. Collin Mackintosh is to marry on tuesday week, & Arabel is bridesmaid. [14] All our loves to you & Gods blessing!
Your most attached
Ba–
(Did I remember to tell you that you are the kindest of kind people for writing .. or rather in writing.[)]
Kind love to dear Mrs Martin, & Mr Martin if you please, & have not lost the opportunity of giving it.
I have sent a sonnet, as being the shortest– Brevis laboro esse—the rest is inapplicable of course! [15]
Address: G Goodin M Barrett Esqr / Colwall / near Ledbury / Herefordshire.
Publication: B-GB, pp. 103–106.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. His 27th birthday was actually 15 July.
2. Letter 1315 indicated that he would be staying with Mr. and Mrs. Martin.
3. The three-day Summer Assizes opened on 17 July. The trials reported in The Worcester Chronicle of 19 July and The Worcester Herald of 22 July made no mention of George’s participation.
4. Cf. All’s Well That Ends Well, III, 6, 66.
5. “Short life” (see Seneca, De Brevitate Vitæ, I, 1).
6. In some Greek tragedies, the dénouement was effected by the appearance of a god lowered by machine, as if from the sky; hence “deus ex machina.” EBB’s substitution of “in” for “ex” gives the sense of “into” or “towards” rather than “out of.” George’s friend, Miss Bulman, has not been further identified.
7. George Henry Lewes (1817–78) contributed articles on drama to a number of magazines. Frederick Guest Tomlins (1804–67) founded the Shakespeare Society in 1840, later (1849) having his own play, Garcia, or the Noble Error, produced at Sadler’s Wells Theatre; in view of his interests, it seems probable that EBB means to link him with the Syncretic Society, formed to secure abolition of the monopolistic Theatre Act of 1737. Douglas William Jerrold (1803–57) was the author of Black-Eyed Susan (1829) and other plays, as well as being a regular contributor to Punch; he had just founded The Illuminated Magazine. John Singleton Copley, Lord Lyndhurst (1772–1863), was Lord Chancellor in the administrations of Canning, Goderich and Wellington, 1827–30, and again under Peel in 1834–35 and 1841–46.
8. EBB is quoting from letter 1283.
9. When writing to George the previous week, EBB had said she was “in a poetical fit” but with “ominous symptoms of having been beaten all over” (letter 1315).
10. Paradise Lost, III, 44.
11. Matthew, 26:41.
12. George Stovin Venables, who was on circuit with George, had been at Cambridge with Tennyson and they remained friends for life.
13. i.e., fit to wreathe the thyrsus carried by the devotees of Bacchus, or to crown the victors in the Games.
14. The Times of 28 July announced the marriage, on 25 July, of “Colin Fanny, eldest daughter of Mrs. M’Intosh, of 26, Upper Berkeley-street, Portman-square, to the Rev. Alfred Pyne, vicar of Roydon, Essex.”
15. “Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio” (“Striving to be brief, I become obscure”; Horace, Ars Poetica, 25–26, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough). EBB’s “the rest is inapplicable of course!” is a wry acknowledgement of criticisms of her poetic style; the last word is underscored five times.
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