1381. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 330–333.
[London]
Monday. Sept 19 [sic, for 18] 1843. [1]
My very dear friend, I should have written instantly to explain myself out of appearances which did me injustice, only I have been in such distress as to have no courage for writing. Flush was stolen away,—& for three days I could neither sleep nor eat, nor do anything much more rational than cry. Confiteor tibi, [2] oh reverend father! And if you call me very silly, I am so used to the reproach throughout the week, as to be hardened on the point of vanity. The worst of it is, now, that there will be no need of more “Houses of Clouds” to prove to you the deterioration of my faculties. Q.E.D.
In my own defence, I really believe that my distress arose somewhat less from the mere separation from dear little Flushie, than from the consideration of how he was breaking his heart, cast upon the cruel world. Formerly when he has been prevented from sleeping on my bed, he has passed the night in moaning pitiously—& often he has refused to eat from a strange hand. And then he loves me, heart to heart—there was no exaggeration in my verses about him, if there was no poetry. And when I heard that he cried in the street & then vanished, there was little wonder that I on my part, shd cry in the house.
With great difficulty, we hunted the dog-banditti into their caves of the city, & bribed them into giving back their victim. Money was the least thing to think of in such case—I wd have given a thousand pounds if I had had them in my hand. The audacity of the wretched men was marvellous– They said that they had been “about stealing” Flush these two years,—& warned us plainly to take care of him for the future.
The joy of the meeting between Flush & me wd be a good subject for a Greek ode—I recommend it to you. It might take rank next to the epical parting of Hector & Andromache. [3] He dashed up the stairs into my room & into my arms, where I hugged him & kissed him, black as he was, .. black as if imbued in a distillation of St Giles’s– [4] Ah! I can break jests about it now, you see! Well! To go back to the explanations I promised to give you, I must tell you that Arabel perfectly forgot to say a word to me about Blackwood & your wish that I shd send the magazine. It was only after I heard that you had procured it yourself & after I mentioned this to her, that she remembered her omission all at once. Therefore I am quite vexed & disappointed, I beg you to believe,—I, who have pleasure in giving you any printed verses of mine that you care to have. Never mind. I may print another volume before long, & lay it at your feet. In the meantime, you endure my “Cry of the children” better than I had anticipated—just because I never anticipated your being able to read it to the end; & was over-delicate of placing it in your hands on that very account. My dearest Mr Boyd, you are right in your complaint against the rhythm. The first stanza came into my head in a hurricane, [5] & I was obliged to make the other stanzas like it,—that is the whole mystery of the iniquity! If you look Mr Lucas from head to foot, you will never find such a rhythm on his person. [6] The whole crime of the versification belongs to me! So blame me, & by no means another poet,—& I will humbly confess that I deserve to be blamed in some measure! There is a roughness, my own ear being witness! & I give up the body of my criminal to the rod of your castigation, kissing the last [7] as if it were Flush.
A report runs in London that Mr Boyd says of Elizabeth Barrett,—“she is a person of the most perverted judgement in England.” Now, if this be true, I shall not mend my evil position in your opinion, my very dear friend, by confessing that I differ with you, the more the longer I live, on the ground of what you call “jumping lines.” I am speaking not of particular cases, but of the principle, the general principle of these cases; and the tenacity of my judgement does not arise from the teaching of “Mr Lucas”, but from the deeper study of the old master-poets, English poets, those of the Elizabeth & James ages, before the corruption of French rhythms stole in with Waller [8] & Denham, & was acclimated into a national inodorousness by Dryden & Pope. We differ so much upon this subject, that we may proceed by agreeing to differ, & end perhaps by finding it agreeable to differ—there can be no possible use in an argument. Only you must be upright in justice, & find Wordsworth innocent of misleading me. So far from having read him more, within these three years, I have read him less,—and have taken no new view, I do assure you, of his position & character as a poet—and these facts are testified unto by the other fact that my poetry, neither in its best features nor its worst, is adjusted after the fashion of his school.
But I am writing too much—you will have no patience with me. ‘The Excursion’ is accused of being lengthy,—& so you will tell me that I convict myself of plagiarism, curente calamo– [9]
I have just finished a poem of some eight hundred lines, called “The Vision of poets,” philosophical, allegorical,—anything but popular. It is in stanzas, every one an octosyllabic triplet—which you will think odd, and I have not sanguinity enough to defend.
May God bless you, my dearest Mr Boyd. Yes, I heard, & was glad to hear, of your having resumed that which used to be so great a pleasure to you,—Miss Marcus’s society. [10]
I remain
Affectionately & gratefully yours
Elizabeth B Barrett.
My love to dear Annie.
Address: H S Boyd Esqr / 24 (a) Grove End Road / St John’s Wood.
Publication: LEBB, I, 154–157.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. This letter is postmarked 18 September 1843, a Monday.
2. “I will confess to thee” (Psalms, 32:5).
3. Homer describes the parting of Hector and Andromache, when he is leaving for his fatal battle with Achilles, in the Iliad (VI, 389–502).
4. St. Giles-in-the-Fields, at the east end of Oxford Street, was a place of execution in the 15th century. It was now infamous for the Rookery, an abode of squalor and wretchedness.
5. The opening lines of “The Cry of the Children” were “Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers! / Ere the sorrow comes with years? / They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, / And that cannot stop their tears.” The subsequent stanzas followed this irregular form.
6. Robert Lucas (1748?–1812) translated into English heroic verse Homer’s “Hymn to Ceres” in 1781.
7. Cf. Two Gentlemen of Verona, I, 2, 59.
8. Edmund Waller (1606–87) was exiled by Cromwell in 1643 and lived in France until permitted to return to England in 1651. He published his first collected edition of poems in 1645.
9. “With a running pen” (i.e., off-hand).
10. Believed to be Caroline Marcus, the daughter of the Rev. M. Marcus of 16 Caroline Street, Bedford Square.
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