1805. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 5.
[London]
Friday morning. [3 January 1845] [1]
Thank you, dearest Mr Kenyon—I send back your ‘Vestiges of Creation’. [2] The writer has a certain power in tying a knot––(in mating a system)—but it is not a love-knot,—& it appears to me that I have read in my life few more melancholy books– Did the thought ever strike you of the possibility of Mr Crosse having anything to do with the writing? [3] I understand that Sir Richard Vivian denies it determinedly—& his brother, who visits here, does it for him besides, by all manner of oaths. [4]
Most affectionately yours always
EBB.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Bodleian Library.
1. Dated by the reference to Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), mentioned in three other letters written during January 1845.
2. Vestiges of Creation was published anonymously. It deals with the development of life, and it was a popular topic of conversation for a number of years. Authorship was oft-discussed and was attributed to numerous individuals, including Prince Albert and Sir Charles Lyell; but not until the twelfth edition was published in 1884, in an “Introduction” by Alexander Ireland, was the author identified as Robert Chambers (1802–71), Scottish writer and publisher.
3. Kenyon’s friend, Andrew Crosse, was a scientist (see letter 565).
4. Richard Rawlinson Vyvyan (1800–1879), author of scientific writings and a politician, always denied being the author of Vestiges of Creation. His obituary in The Times reported that “gossip for a time imputed to him, without any warrant, the authorship of another book, very notorious in its day, though it has now gone entirely out of vogue—‘The Vestiges of Creation’” (18 August 1879). His brother referred to here was Edward Walter Vyvyan (1808–1901).
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