1695. EBB to Thomas Westwood
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 109–111.
50 Wimpole Street
Thursday. August 22. 1844.
My dear Mr Westwood, you will start back at this tall, white ghost of my usual note paper!—but take courage. I do not premeditate the overwhelming you with a third volume—only my usual sheets are out of my reach,—& I snatch this nearest one, to thank you for your welcome letter, so kind in its candour. I, angry that you shd prefer my Seraphim? Angry? No, indeed, indeed. I am grateful for the Seraphim—and not exacting for the Drama—& all this the more, because of a recent obstinate persuasion that the Drama will have a majority of friends in the end, & perhaps deserve to have them. Nay, why shd I throw perhapses over my own impressions, & be insincere to you who have honored me by being sincere? Why shd I dissemble my own belief that the Drama is worth two or three Seraphims,—my own belief, you know, which is worth nothing—writers knowing themselves so superficially, and having such a natural leaning to their last work. Still, I may say honestly to you, that I have a far more modest value for the Seraphim than your kindness suggests,—& that I have seemed to myself to have a clear insight into the fact, that that poem was only borne up by the minor poems published with it, from immediate destruction. There is a want of unity in it, which vexes me to think of,—& the other faults magnify themselves day by day, more & more, in my eyes. Therefore it is not that I care more for the Drama, but that I care less for the Seraphim. Both poems fell short of my aspiration & desire,—but the Drama seems to me fuller, freer, & stronger,—& worth the other three times over. If it has anything “new,” I think it must be something new into which I have lived, for certainly I wrote it sincerely & from an inner impulse. In fact, I never wrote any poem with so much sense of pleasure in the composition, or so rapidly, with continuous flow—from fifty to a hundred lines a day, & quite in a glow of pleasure & impulse all through. Still, you have not been used to see me in blank verse, & there may be something in that. That the poem is full of faults & inefficiencies I do not in the least doubt. I have vibrated between exaltations and despondencies, in the correcting & printing of it,—though the composition went smoothly to an end—and I am prepared to receive the bastinado to the critical degree, I do assure you. The few opinions I have yet had, are all to the effect that my advance on the former publication is very great & obvious—but then I am aware that people who thought exactly the contrary wd be naturally backward in giving me their opinion. The sincerity, the honest pure-hearted sincerity, for which I so earnestly thank you, has scarcely had time to act & express itself with readers in general, neither has the dispepsy. Indeed I thank you most earnestly. Truth & kindness,—how rarely do they come together! I am very grateful to you. It is curious that “Duchess May” is not a favorite of mine, & that I have sighed one or two secret wishes toward its extirpation,—but other critics besides yourself have singled it out for praise, in private letters to me. There has been no printed review yet I believe [1] —& when I think of them, I try to think of something else—for with no private friends among the critical body, (not that I cd desire to owe security in such a matter, to private friendship) it is awful enough, this looking forward to be reviewed. Never mind. The ultimate prosperity of a book lies far above the critics, & can neither be mended nor made, nor unmade, by them.
The little poem called “The Claim in an allegory” could not find page-room, & it did not find enough favour with me, to force page-room. [2] That is the fact.
Dear Mr Westwood, with a repetition of warm & earnest thanks to you & yours—to you & my other Enfield friends—for your kindness, your sympathy, &, above all, your candour,
I beg you to believe me
most faithfully yours
Elizabeth B Barrett.
Text: Books & Letters Collected by W.H. Arnold (New York, 1901), pp. 8–9.
1. A review of Poems (1844) appeared in The Globe and Traveller on this date; it was evidently the first review published in England. Reviews in The Athenæum and The Spectator followed shortly thereafter on 24 August. See Appendix III for the text of these reviews.
2. See previous letter, note 5.
___________________
