1717. Harriet Martineau to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 140–144.
Tynemouth
Sepr 16th [1844] [1]
Dear Miss Barrett
I have not been the strongly ungrateful & indifferent person I may have appeared. When you hear my story (a very pleasant one) you will see how it was that I cd not write before. You have been in my mind, & your vols—or one at a time, while the other was out,—open before me daily, & many times in a day: & you will ever be associated in my mind with a very peculiar season of experience.
Yet I believe I cd & shd have written sooner, but for the deadly shame of the thought that I had undertaken to criticize you. As soon as I opened your vols, I sickened at my rashness. Indeed it is my more proper business humbly to receive from you, than to examine the quality of what you offer. I cannot (on account of feelings & principles I have already explained to you,) say at all adequately what I think of the (to me) best poems in this collection. I could not do it. I am susceptible at present,—& especy to every thing from you: & my emotions are too strong to be recorded,—much more in a record wh is to be tomorrow under your eye. I saw at once—in cutting the leaves—that you had made an immense advance on the former volume. A few pieces there are worthy of a place here; & there was formerly the comprehensiveness in your own idea wh you now convey to us. But in precision, in dignity & clearness,—in the whole art of utterance, I think your improvement vast. It is like wandering, indefinite, fitful lights combined into a complete & vivid rainbow. —I own I still like your shorter poems the best,—though particular passages of the longer have as much concentration. Some—many—of the shorter please—satisfy—gratify me, to the ultimate point. They transport me. (I was going to say which,—but on glancing over the contents, I find I shd specify nearly all, in different moods of my own mind.) —In the “Exile,” & also in the “Poets,” I find ideas (of construction as well as utterance) wh are grand, moving & beautiful beyd my power of acknowledgment: but as a whole—on review & also in the reading, I feel there is something the matter,—I cannot well say what. Each separate part is well-sustained, & has a complete beauty of its own: & there is no likeness of one personage or scene to another. Yet there is a sense of the whole piece being long drawn out. Is it that there is a sameness in each person,—in Eve—in the Earth & Dante Spirits &c?– Or is the fault in me? Very likely. Of the whole 2 vols, I like Lucifer least: & no wonder. This was to be expected. You must have less in common with Lucifer than with most other personages; & his sarcasms must be tolerably unmanageable by such a gentle soul as you. —The conceptions of the different utterances in the Exile poem are, to my mind, exquisitely beautiful. Each new apparition thrills me. Yet, at the end, I have a general impression of want of variety,—wh must, I fancy, arise from there being a deficiency of action. But I always end in saying to myself, when such objections arise—“I am no critic,—I know nothing about it.”
Your Rhyme, Romaunt, lay-style of poem seems to me as fine as possible,—of vigorous march, as well as nobleness of thought, & beauty all along the wayside. They stir me & melt me. But I return oftenest to a sonnet, or other condensed piece here & there. “Substitution” & “Comfort” (& the two preceding, in the former vol) “Work & Contemplation”, “L.E.L.”—“the Child asleep”––but I am again likely to mark all. Lady Geraldine is glorious. I was swept through it.
Do you know, I don’t find the obscurity you are (you say) complained of for,—except in a few images wh to me do not seem distinct,—(as some in the chorus of invisible angels in the Exile &c)—but the thoughts, the substantial ideas, seem to me quite clear & usually expressed directly. A certain mannerism remains; but either it is much lessened, or I have become so accustomed to you that I am unaware of it.
The predominant impression is, I rejoice to say, of your originality. Of this I am perfectly certain. Your mind is to me a new one: & its utterances are fresh as if no one had spoken poetry before you. This, taken together with the depth of the ideas & feelings,—the wide spiritual experience—I take to be the reason why (as seems to me) you are yet so far from being appreciated. The few notices & reviews I have seen are respectful & admiring: but they are, I think, unspeakably inadequate. The reviewers have no conception of what they have in hand: & I see indeed that reviews cannot ever do you justice. Your fame will not be brought into houses & chambers by periodicals. It will be carried out into critical literature hereafter, from chambers & nooks of meditation & tête à tête. I know nothing like this poetry in such lore as I am familiar with. I am much tempted to say, under present influences, that, in some essential points of yearning & liking, I know nothing to equal it. Its power over me is genuine, strong, & inspiring a sort of reverence wh makes it somewhat difficult to me to write about it.
I cannot bear to dwell on technical faults—feeling as I do: but I ought to ask you how you can send out such rhymes as some here? I know nothing of your art: but I do see & hear that some,—many of your rhymes are too bad.
Angles Treading Glory Inclose me
Candles [2] Eden [3] Before thee [4] Across me [5]
Silence Calmly Poems Glory
Islands [6] Palm tree [7] Flowings [8] evermore thee [9]
& so on. —I shd be so perplexed myself in the bondage of rhyme, that I wd not scold any one else for halting & slipping, but that I see our greatest poets have managed to utter themselves freely in perfect rhymes. And now I can only thank you for making me early, & in the most agreeable way, a partaker in this sweet & elevating spiritual stimulus & gratification. I have been conscious of a penetrating benefit & pleasure in these vols: & how many hours of good will they yet give me!
You will, I fear, think I have sinned towards you in the very fcway wh I complained of so lately. I can only say, that we wholly agree about hero-worship,—intellect & spirit-worship. Where we differ is about the restraint of the expression. The above is absolutely called for. It relates to a specific performance; & what I have said about you is incidental & unavoidable, & wd not have been said to yourself in any other connexion.
I wish I knew your father. And who knows but I may? I cannot now go fully into my own story. Here is an outline.
In June, obstacles wh had made any trial of Mesmerism appear impossible, suddenly cleared away. I was found susceptible of the influence, & my affecte maid, from that time, mesmerized me twice a day, <in silence outwardly, & deviousness together.> [10] My sickness & distress left me,—appetite returned,—then sleep,—then nerve & spirits. I left off all medicines but opiates, have reduced them to a mere trifle, wh is still in course of reduction. The departure, in August, of local & peculiar uneasiness made me suspect some change in the seat of disease: & till that was ascertained, I kept silence, lest any possible relapse might tell agst Mesmerism. It is so. There is a change. The hopeless symptom has partially given way! —A first-rate mesmerist has kindly come to our aid:—a benevolent lady,—widow of a clergyman,—at liberty to stay out the experiment. [11] She hopes for cure. I don’t know how to think this possible: but neither did the present reality seem possible. I get down to the little grass plot below, on fine days, & feel no fatigue from lying there, under the wide sky, after not having been out for 4½ years. —I am always thinking whether you might not share my good. I will answer any questions, give any history, to your sister, or father, or to Mr Kenyon. I have hoped his enquiries might be for your sake. I first got out last Wedy, my maid lending me her Sunday bonnet, in excessive agitation, bless her! Every body may know now.
Poor Langtree is coughing away his life: but he is in comfort, & kindly tended.
Farewell. God bless you.
Yours affecly
H. Martineau
Our process, & basking on the grass, & resting, use up all my leisure, but for essential letters, you understand.
Address: Miss Barrett / 50. Wimpole St / London.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Yale University.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. “The Dead Pan,” lines 239 and 241.
3. “A Drama of Exile,” lines 299 and 301; 325 and 327; 351 and 353; 386 and 388.
4. “A Drama of Exile,” lines 845–846.
5. “A Drama of Exile,” lines 1089–1090.
6. “The Dead Pan,” lines 197 and 199.
7. “A Drama of Exile,” lines 1524 and 1526.
8. “A Vision of Poets,” lines 811 and 813.
9. “The Dead Pan,” lines 71 and 73.
10. Bracketed portion is inserted above the line.
11. Mrs. Montagu Wynyard. “She had been married to an abominable husband, a clergyman in York … After his death, she had got into wretched health—presumably a nervous breakdown—and was cured by Henry Atkinson [a mesmerist]. She then became a practitioner herself” (R.K. Webb, Harriet Martineau, A Radical Victorian, 1960, pp. 226–229).
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