1652. EBB to Cornelius Mathews
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 51–53.
50 Wimpole Street
July 17. 1844.
My dear Mr Mathews,
Although very much pressed for time,—& under a vow (almost) not to write at length to you until able once more to do as I please in some degree, by being released from the actual necessity of economizing my insufficient strength to supply the necessities of this publishing undertaking, .. I am forced by various instincts & natural motives to answer your letter received yesterday, & to thank you from my heart of heart for the ease & satisfaction it brought me. The portentous silence from America was more awful to me than thunder! What a long deep silence, you will comprehend, when I tell you that I received yesterday your two letters together. I began to dream of Dragons. The too expressive Silence (oh, woefully expressive!) seemed to damn my book.—or seemed as if meant to confound me, … who had been presumptuous & naïve enough to take literally the ‘foreign idiom’ of an offer to take charge of certain proofs! Had I disgusted you into silence by my muses, or my liberties!– How cd I tell? What cd such a silence mean, bad enough to imagine, under such besettingly anxious circumstances?– Well—but your letters, .. which I smiled to see, but trembled to open, … gave me a pleasure the greater for the past fears,—& I do thank you, my kind, generous friend, cordially & gratefully for the whole length & breadth of this pleasure! I thank you in words poorly––in thoughts, deeply.— I wd fain do so in deeds! You have taken as much trouble for me, I am sure, as if I were your friend in a right personal sense,—and it is but right & grateful that I shd feel as if I were. Of course your whole report of the first signs of American welcome, & of your own critical approval especially, was full of gladness to me,—while for the rest, .. I mean for the business-details of the pecuniary department, I assent fully & with full satisfaction & a hearty gratitude to you individually, to everything. I am much & naturally touched by the consideration of the many proofs of your interest in me & my poetry .. which is myself … or perhaps more .. in my own eyes—and I hope I shall never quite disgrace a kindness which came to me in the first instance, as more of your gift than my deserving.
And this draws me back to a subject you touch upon in one of your letters .. the discovery of the black-letter offence of my early youth, called an “Essay on Mind”. Nothing but the youth .. cd excuse such a perpetration, .. and I shake my head over the injudicious tenderness of my friends, who because I was once that disastrous monster a precocious child, took everything as fruit, (growing on that branch), fit for the market. It is an imitation poem (after Pope & Campbell) as all young poems are apt to be, .. & so very pert besides, that I groan in the spirit when I think of being haunted, in a state of maturity, by the ghost of it. And so, now, this is to pray .. that you will either destroy the volume aforesaid or put it in the darkest place on the shelf, behind your oldest newspapers, … somewhere where it will be safe from every age that can read. Will you promise me never to mention it in a review, or to a reviewer? It is a girl’s exercise .. nothing more nor less! not at all known to the public, nor fit to be known! & then, as I say, so pert .. so unamiable! Put it away! I, for my own part, desire to acknowledge nothing before my volume of Seraphim poems, which however unworthy, have my life & heart in them in some audible degree. My ‘Prometheus’ you know what I think of——& moreover I am under an oath to my own soul, to translate the whole of that great tragedy over again, in order to wipe out with my hand, the stain upon my conscience & poetic honour, which lies upon both in connection with my former work. Now this is all said in honesty & truth—heart to heart, .. as it might be face to face. I trust the truth to you as a friend .. and I beseech you not to suffer the sins of my youth [1] to rise up against me in America.
I have indeed some hope & belief, that I have made progress from the Seraphim, in the forth-coming volumes. Continue your goodness to them. You are very very good! We are nearly done, here in England, with the printing, but not quite, .. which makes my friend Miss Mitford say, that it is the longest book in the doing, she ever heard of in her life.
Your sympathy is a pleasant thing: Mr Horne exaggerated in some respects,—for indeed I have not been shut up in “darkness equal to night” [2] for seven years!! A few years since I broke a blood-vessel on the chest, & have suffered both then & ever since, from excessive general weakness,—seeming to gain some strength in the summer, but still unable to rally up to the point of enjoying society or coming out into the light of Life. But I do not suffer pain,—& I am considerably better on the whole than I was two or three years ago. It seems to be God’s will that I shd live. Thank you for [your] sympathy once more! This is the most egotistical of letters—and I wished to write in it of your poems & other subjects of great interest to me. Yes, certainly, I shall like to have a few American copies— Thank you for all your kind consideration.
Ever gratefully & faithfully
Elizabeth B Barrett.
Address, on integral page: Cornelius Mathews Esqr / 14 Pine Street / New York / United States.
Publication: The Collector, February 1892, pp. 89–90.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Cf. Psalms 25:7.
2. EBB quotes from Horne’s article on herself and Mrs. Norton in A New Spirit (II, 134); the text of this is reprinted in vol. 8, p. 342.
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