1580. Bryan Waller Procter to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 276–277.
13 Upper Harley Street
Tuesday Night [?26] [March 1844] [1]
My dear Browning
I got your play last night then read it with very great pleasure (to say nothing of the sugar plums at the beginning [2] —about which you will perhaps think I have spoken too much in the tandem style in my last,)—well, Colombe is a charming creature. The play—I say this very sincerely—is full of interest & capital situations—the language excellent. You have done well—if I may say so—to lay aside all mystery of language & speak direct—I think that you have done this in almost every case. There are one or two passages which I should have liked to make some little alteration on—as on p. 16 (top)– You say ‘Get more assurance’—(the word ‘get’ is the objection, with me)– [3] And on p. 12[–] Is not the speech concerning
‘When is man strong until he feels alone?[’]
too long, considering the predicament of the speaker? [4] —It begins well, & with a truth that I do not remember to have seen in verse before. I thought at first that you were going to say pretty much what my [what an infernal pen this is] [5] what my friend Beddoes wrote, in a tragedy never printed—viz
“Isbrand, thou tragic fool,
Art thou alone?– Alone!– Why so should be
Creators, and Destroyers!” [6]
but your speech had another thing in view of course.
And now let me wish you success in this & other labours—& let me advise you not to worry yourself too much with them. You have an irritable brain, & one brain fever is more than enough to my thinking. One would not check the Muse when she is gracious—but one or two or three sittings will hurt no one– It is your week’s—or month’s—incessant labour that damages—& this you might avoid without injury to your schemes or posterity– I want to show you some of my scraps—& I hope to do so in a few days. In the meantime I am a good deal vexed by my wife & 3 or 4 other persons wishing me to cancel one of my poems––as if I were a writer of Marseilles’ hymns! [7]
Yours ever
B W Procter
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Brown University.
1. Written on the manuscript, in an unidentified hand, possibly from a postmark, is “Mar. 28. 1844.” The previous Tuesday was the 26th. The play was sent to the printer on 9 March and was published 20 April.
2. The dedication of Colombe’s Birthday read: “No one loves and honours Barry Cornwall more than Robert Browning; who, having nothing better than this play to give him in proof of it, must say so.”
3. However, RB retained “Get” (IV, 357).
4. Act III, 231ff.
5. In this case, the square brackets are the writer’s, not an editorial addition.
6. Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–49) was the author of The Bride’s Tragedy (1822). In 1825, he commenced work on his magnum opus, Death’s Jest-Book; or the Fool’s Tragedy, which occupied him for more than 20 years (DNB), and which was published posthumously in 1850. The passage quoted by Procter appears in act I, sc. 1.
7. i.e., a revolutionary.
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