1590. EBB to George Goodin Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 289–292.
[London]
Wednesday. [3 April 1844] [1]
My dearest George you are justified in your complaints, as I am in my silence. Which is not after all a paradox. You had a right to expect to hear: and I have been by turns so busy & tired, that to put off the performance of a duty, seemed to me the most moral, & was the most natural thing in the world.
To reply … the ‘Spirit of the Age’ speaks very kindly of me .. & analyzes me into the extreme of Greek, Latin, Hebrew & Chaldaic, shows me shut up in a dark room, .. & frightens people away from me, with very beneficent intentions, .. as a sort of dictionary-monster, past bearing. Then, at the conclusion, my poetry is spoken of, with excellent kindness still, but by no means critically or with any philosophy. The article suggests the idea of the writer being in an agony to build up (with cards) a monument to the memory of a personal friend—& I have been expecting, .. in a little counter-agony of my own, .. the goodnatured critics to insinuate so. I am grateful to Mr Horne, & thoroughly aware of the full kindness of his intentions——but (in the strictest confidence between you & me), I shd have much preferred his giving a calm & honest estimate of my poetry, in some half page of simple writing, with whatever severity of accompanying stricture. It wd have been more really flattering to me as a writer—. You know I am the last to pique myself upon dictionary-pedantries—& have a sort of scorn & disparaging judgement of such acquirements,—which are possible to the lowest intellects (with a little patience & memory) and often injurious to the highest. Also, it strikes me that whether I live in the dark or not, or write “charming notes” [2] or not, is of small importance to the public. Therefore, you see, I am both satisfied & discontented with the notice. What is amusing, is the courtesy of the Athenæum, who starts up, .. crying .. that this, & this, & this, is not said of Miss Barrett, .. & puts a note of depreciative astonishment to the ‘grand-junction’ with Mrs Norton—tearing the book, otherwise, all to rags. [3] Well—you will see what you will think! Mr Horne’s kindness is the only certain & most prominent thing to me in the whole.
The Weekly Chronicle, in a very clever article,—written, he cd not tell by whom,—finds fault with the want of unity & consistent philosophy, [4] (quite a true objection—only the fault of the publishers!) & observes that, in the utilitarian & transcendental parties now striving, Harriet Martineau & Elizabeth Barrett are forward combatants, .. referring also to “the powerful poem of the factory children in Blackwood.” [5] The Morning Chronicle is very severe against the book, [6] .. from personal reasons, I suspect, .. but nothing unkind has been said or implied against me. Generally, the criticisms are very favorable.
Do you hear in Herefordshire whether Mrs Archer Clive has published lately a prose romance in one volume, called Agathonia? [7] I have just received a copy “from the author,” & the book being anonymous, I guess at the origin, simply from the unusual circumstance of the title page motto, quoted from V, being advertised with the title. It makes me think that V is in the authorship of the whole.
And then, I have had two proofs—which look tolerably well. And Mr Merivale has sent me his translations of Schiller’s lyrics; [8] and Mr Lowell of America (Boston) the new edition of his poems. [9] You who expect to hear everything & never tell anything, must be satisfied now– Bells [10] & Mintos are coming here today, either to dinner or to tea—and Henrietta & Henry dined with the Chapmans yesterday—and I was in Papa’s room for several hours yesterday—and I have my window open today .. and Mrs Smith (Dr Adam Clarke’s daughter) has desired Mr Boyd to tell me that if I wd write to her occasionally to describe the course of my “physical improvement & brilliant literary successes,” she shd have no objection in the world to answer my letters; & wd probably be “improved in her tastes” by the correspondence,—as well as receiving a great deal of personal satisfaction. This last is the most curious piece of news I can find for you. Without assuming too much, it wd not be difficult to ‘improve the taste’ of the author of the proposition contained in it——do you think so?
One thing more there is,—but I have not courage or heart to write about the approaching parting with my dear Crow .. so inexpressibly painful to me. It is well for me that I have more to do than is comfortable, just now—for the sake of excluding as far as may be,—thoughts more painful than fatigue. How I shall ever bear to have a stranger .... with my morbid feelings about strangers—I cannot guess. A necessity however is a necessity. Only it is not a necessity to talk of it. You will be sorry for me, I am sure.
May God bless you my dear dear George– Give my love to aunt Clarke & everyone at Kinnersley.
Ever your most attached
Ba
Occy likes Mr Barry & architecture so far–
Address: G G M Barrett Esqr / Kinnersley Castle / near Hereford.
Publication: B-GB, pp. 118–121 (as Spring 1844).
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. This letter is postmarked 4 April 1844, a Thursday.
2. In A New Spirit, Horne wrote of EBB’s “delightfully gossipping notes to fair friends” (II, 133 and our Appendix IV, p. 342).
3. The Athenæum reviewed A New Spirit in the issues of 23 and 30 March (for the text, see pp. 371–373 and 378–381).
4. For the text of the review of 23 March, see pp. 373–376.
5. “The Cry of the Children” appeared in the August 1843 issue of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine; the version in Poems (1844) contained some changes.
6. The Morning Chronicle of 2 April reviewed the book (see pp. 387–390).
7. Caroline Clive had published two volumes of poetry using the pseudonym “V,” but, as EBB later discovered, Agathonia was by Catherine Grace Frances Gore (née Moody, 1798–1861). The copy presented to EBB appeared in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A1064).
8. The Minor Poems of Schiller of the Second and Third Periods (1844); many of the translations had previously been printed in The New Monthly Magazine in 1840. EBB’s copy appeared in Browning Collections and is now at the Folger Shakespeare Library (see Reconstruction, A2019).
9. Poems (2nd edn., 1844) also appeared in Browning Collections and is now at ABL (see Reconstruction, A1490).
10. Henry Bell, of Newbiggin House, Northumberland, and his wife Susanna Jane (née Mainwaring) were the parents of Mrs. Barrett, who was a temporary guest at Wimpole Street (see letter 1585, note 16).
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