1553. Benjamin Robert Haydon to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 233–234.
London
Fb 26 1844
It is true—my faces tend to a Standard, & may resemble, because I choose Heroes, & Gods & they are of a Kidney—and therefore your Friend, whose opinion is not worth a straw, has with his straw, tickled me to reflection– We have been wretched, & Mary quite worn out with anxiety about my daughter—we feared her spine, & Elliotson, has examined her & pronounced it straight as an arrow & perfect & no cause for alarm. She has nothing but weakness left—nothing but weakness! as if that was nothing—the necessity of examination has hurt her feelings—& she has been crying ever since—dear little soul, her mother is worn out,—it is hard work with the sick, if their temper gives in, but we who are well ought to remember their condition.
I hope Spring & Summer will do the rest for her–
I have been painting small Napoleons—& a set of his musings[.] 1 Musing in his garden at Fontainbleau in his glory!– 2 musing in his bed room the night before his abdication. 3 musing, over the King of Rome in his Cradle– 4 musing at St Helena! [1]
I feel the truth of his own saying <as applied to himself> [2]
“Je suis moi seul une revolution!” [3]
Now he gains as Posterity approaches[.] Poor Hazlitt!—after Waterloo, he went about for a month getting intoxicated, at all the public houses from despair—& then relinquished drinking [“] for Ever.”—a fact— [4]
I have prepared Macbeth on the Staircase, after the Murder[,] Lady Macbeth looking murder & listening—I send you the Sketch to look at, the Painting is large– I have Sketched Christ looking down on the Temple in its Splendor, & foretelling its ruin—& George IV & the Duke at Waterloo! [5] But these are straggling struggles[;] my Soul is longing for a Fresco dome like St Paul’s—“ah the pity of it Iago—the pity of it[.]” [6]
I shall go out of the World, like a Lion in an iron net, who did nothing but roar till he died! Like Lear on my death bed I shall say “stretch me no longer on the rack of this tough World[.”] [7]
Jersey!—no!—to drink vinegar claret, where the Sea is even luke warm, & people anomalous English & French!– If you knash your Teeth, I[’]ll bite my lip in two—she is dreaming—or idle—or capricious, or plaguing—if she go, I[’]ll write her Epitaph——
Adieu, my dear Friend–
I[’]ll have both jars of oil if not troublesome–
Ever & Ever—Amen
B. R. Haydon
Miss B. Barrett–
Address: Miss B. Barrett / 50. Wimpole St.
Publication: EBB-BRH, pp. 172–173.
Manuscript: University of Vermont.
1. These are nos. 149–151 and 156 in Pope’s checklist (Pope, V, 598).
2. The bracketed passage is squeezed in between lines.
3. “I am myself alone a revolution.” We have not been able to establish when Napoleon made this observation.
4. While it is true that Hazlitt’s health suffered from “habits of intemperance” and that he gave up alcohol “about 1815 under medical advice” (DNB), Haydon appears to be the sole authority for ascribing this sudden sobriety to Napoleon’s defeat.
5. The first and third of these works are presumably those listed as nos. 145 and 121 in Pope’s checklist (Pope, V, 596, 598). There is no record of Haydon’s completing the depiction of Christ viewing the Temple.
6. Othello, IV, 1, 195–196, slightly misquoted.
7. King Lear, V, 3, 315–316. Haydon also used this quotation as the final entry in his diary on 22 June 1846, just before his suicide (Pope, V, 553).
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