1578. EBB to George Goodin Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 271–273.
[London]
Sunday. [?24] [March 1844] [1]
My dearest George It seems to me that the prudent way is not to write to you at all. It brings one the most letters. Certes I have behaved abominably to you, .. never written once: & you, returning my evil with good, much more like a Christian than a lawyer,—write twice to me! Thank you my dearest George. The fact is, I have been so busy day after day, that the sun set before I could turn my head towards you. I have been so busy, so vexed .. so anxious .. so absorbed in all manner of ways except thinking of you ...... There now! That will do! I had better not say any more lest I should spoil it!
To begin my biography since you & I parted, .. day after day I fell lower & lower in my thoughts of my poem, & my hopes from its publication; and at last I came to the last step & the resolution to publish it by no means. I determined to make one or two extracts from Lucifer’s speeches & mix them up into a monodram[a] which I might call “Lucifer,” & publish that alone with the rest of my Miscellanies. This was my ultimate resolution .. or final despair—call it which you please. Mr Horne failed me. He was ill with the effects of his first edition,—& preparing for a second. I could not press my poem on him, & have his murder on my soul. So I adopted that final resolution instead. In the midst of it, came Mr Kenyon,—kindest of friends. I never shd have spoken—I was down [2] —! but he spoke, & enquired what I was about with my poem. I said, it was all over—I have given it up—and taking it up in my left hand, added in a voice of elegy that I had done my best for it, but had failed signally & for evermore. He took it from me, & looked at a passage or two by flashes-of-lightening-looks, & was very exclamatory & interrogative—and then, .. without my asking him … for indeed I never shd have had courage to ask him, .. proposed of his own accord, & with a kindness which between this & the day of my death I never shall forget, to read it through himself. “He wd tell me his precise impression. His prejudice was against poems of religious subjects—but then his prejudice was in favor of me; & the two feelings being mutually neutralized, would leave him a just judge.”
The next day, he sent the ms back to me: & I was so prepared for a “Dont publish it” that the circumstance of his sending it so soon, only made me a little surer of his negative. On the contrary!! He wrote me a letter, a long letter, to enjoin the publication, [3] —& assured me both there & since, that I never wrote anything equal to the poem before, as to sustained power. I shall enclose this letter to you I think, .. & you can bring it back. Never mind sending it. He has spoken more in detail to me, since, in conversation; and I must tell you that the zodiac in particular struck him, as being forcible & expressive, & carefully worked out– [4] You saw nothing but a fragment,—& were not in a position to judge of the whole, from the partial view you had: therefore I do not consider this a differing judgement from yours, the least in the world. I hope you will not like the zodiac least, when you see it in its full effects.
And now you see, that Mr Kenyon’s imprimatur is, from various & obvious reasons, a stronger thing to me than Mr Horne’s wd have been— on account of these very oppositions of his against sacred subjects & mystical tendencies. If I had been in good spirits about the poem myself, Mr Horne’s veto to the publication wd have been more final & satisfactory,—but as I said veto to myself, under the actual circumstances. Mr Kenyon’s least ‘nay’ wd have been quite final enough. As it was, I was raised, astonished, electrified—encouraged wonderfully. And it is settled that Moxon will do it, .. & that it will be done in four or five weeks,—& that I am to come out in two volumes,—which will be rather sublime, I think. Moxon advises the two volumes. Also my American friends have commanded an edition, which is to come out in numbers, with half profits for the author—and a separate preface to the American edition being also commanded, I am going to set about it instantly. [5]
This is an example-letter for you—you who never say a word about yourself—not one word.!
Crow causes me to break off suddenly though, .. when much remains to tell. A long letter for instance from Miss Martineau! May God bless you my dearest George.
Ever your most attached
Ba.
And Mr Mathews asks about my relationship to Mr Tennyson.
Publication: B-GB, pp. 115–118.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. This letter precedes no. 1585, in which EBB says a new maid has been engaged to replace Crow; the continued mention of Kenyon’s favourable opinion of “A Drama of Exile” suggests this date.
2. Underscored three times.
3. This letter is believed to be in the private collection of Aurelia Brooks Harlan, to which we have been denied access (see List of Absent Letters). See letters 1570 and 1576 for more comment on Kenyon’s reaction to the poem.
4. “A Drama of Exile,” lines 975ff.
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