1397. RB to Alfred Domett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 364–366.
New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey.
Oct 9. 1843.
My dear Domett,
Once again I am to “get a letter ready,” writes C. Dowson, seeing that a ship is ready for it: and again, I must go thro’ the series of hopes and anxieties and good wishes about you—which are as fresh and true as the first time I expressed them, and felt what a poor kind of expression it was; or how poor a hand I was, and am, at it. All I want to give you is assurance of my being the very R.B. and ugly rest of a name, you left behind—so shall you find me the sooner when you come back. I make no new friends, which sometimes seems a pity; but I strengthen myself with the old—find better & better reasons for the faith that was in me. You do not .. that is, did not six months ago .. write to me—but there is the best of reasons for it, I know.
We are all here, in the same quiet way: people read my works a little more, they say—and I have some real works here, in hand, but now that I could find it in my heart to labour earnestly, I doubt if I shall ever find it in my head,—which rings & whirls and stops me even now, at this minute—an evening minute, by the way.
The most stable thing of the years has been, to me, the visit of Father Mathew [1] to London: this reverting to the simplest form of worship (—for the converts are converts to his hand and voice and eye, and nothing beyond—) all these men choosing to become better because he, who was standing there, better; he bade them so become .. you should have seen it, as I did. I must write out my feeling on the subject in as plain prose as I can, somewhere and somehow, and send it you. I stood on the scaffold with him; and heard him preach beside.
I saw Carlyle three or four days back: he had just returned from Scotland, where he, too, had his narrow escape from becoming lame—his horse having fallen with him, bruising his ancle &c. He is now busy at “that cursed Oliver Cromwell” [2] —meantime, his “Past & Present” continues to figure in Reviews & newspapers. Which of them do you see?
C. Dowson & Mrs D. have just come up for the winter from Woodford– C. as vigilant of theatrical polity as ever: he quotes a new play that came out or went in, the other night, at Covent Garden; [3] but nothing more can be done at present with plays; yet something may with actors, for true as I write to you, a week or two since, the new man who is to figure at that very Covent Garden, rehearsed his two capital parts in my presence, Hamlet & Othello—and was persuaded by me, to “cut Shakespeare,” as he termed it,—so that misery has been saved an audience that might have been!– [4] I saw your father at Melvill’s, [5] yesterday only, and wondered at his well-looking. Arnould I called on, but did not see, the other day.
I say this little & have done: I don’t suppose I should say much more, if you rang the bell, while I write, and they called me down to you, and we sate together again. Saying, or writing—what is it, or what does it? When I was at Woodford in the summer I got hold of certain Albums, and got all your verses copied: there they are six inches from my desk– “Glee for Winter”—so good! and “Hougoumont” and all, indeed. [6] Write more, and justify my prophecy then and now.
My head is really unmanageable, and I must leave off. God bless you, my dear Domett– I am ever and always
Yours faithfully,
R Browning.
Publication: RB-AD, pp. 91–95.
Manuscript: British Library.
1. Theobald Mathew (1790–1856) was an Irish Catholic priest who advocated temperance. He himself signed a pledge of total abstinence from alcohol in 1838 and within five or six years it was estimated that nearly half the adult population of Ireland followed his lead (DNB). In 1843, he came to London and was received with enthusiasm. Mrs. Carlyle, writing to her husband on 9 August 1843, described one of Mathew’s meetings, with “thousands of people all hushed into awful silence” and said “When I went to bed I could not sleep; the faces I had seen haunted me, and Father Mathew’s smile” (Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, ed. J.A. Froude, 1883, I, 220–224).
2. Carlyle published The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell in 1845. Past and Present came out in 1843.
3. Woman, by Dion Boucicault (1820?–90), opened the season at Covent Garden on 2 October. It was pronounced “Wholly destitute of real character and passion … devoid of interest and congruity” by The Athenæum. The reviewer also noted that “There was considerable dissent, and loudly expressed, when the piece was announced for repetition” (no. 832, 7 October 1843, p. 908). Only four further performances were attempted.
4. We have not identified this “new man.”
5. “Melvill of the Golden Mouth” was the incumbent of Camden Chapel, Camberwell, attended by RB and Sarianna Browning (see letter 991, note 3, and Maynard, pp. 51 and 309).
6. “Glee for Winter” was published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in April 1837 (p. 442). Several other poems by Domett appeared in other issues of the magazine, but we have found no record of the publication of “Hougoumont” prior to Flotsam and Jetsam (1877), a collection of Domett’s works dedicated to RB. (RB’s copy of this is now at ABL; see Reconstruction, A806.)
___________________
